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Phil Balla's avatar

Thank you, Robin.

One thing I like in Heather's today is the balanced way she looks at courts at their best.

Decorum matters in court proceedings. Rules matters because they, like the law itself, spring from experience, from a considered history in how we may keep many freedoms, that based on some modicum of respect for each other.

I think too many of our elites have lost it because they've been to schools where no one accesses humanities for seeing others.

Where none has humanities (for public use), there emerge all the scoundrels, excesses you cite.

Courts, to go on reading Heather, may keep some balance. But courts unaided by schools to keep us apprised of each other?

We've Jane Mayer and others recording the self-poisoning of our billionaires. She, Sheldon Whitehouse, Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow -- all necessary.

But can we count on these few, if our schools as a rule just succumb to the billionaires' plans to keep our schools and thus most of us dehumanized, ready for the mobs which the Clarence court, the fat orange guy, and too many Republicans succor?

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GJ Loft ME CA FL IL NE CT MI's avatar

Too many of our 1% are trustifarians-- where their wealth was handed to them on a silver platter. They never had to think about what they want to be when they grow up, only where I can party when I get to college.

Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and many others have worked their entire lives to build their empires and they don't consider themselves to be elites. And then there are the Betsy Devoses and the Linda Waltons who have never accomplished anything but yet they are part of the elite class.

As Warren Buffett says, "inheritance is welfare for the rich." He let his kids believe they would receive nothing from him and his wife, until they were productive citizens.

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JDinTX's avatar

Being born poor was a gift, at least I knew that I would have to earn what I got.

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