536 Comments

Thank you Professor Richardson.

It is an important reminder that a highly collaborative world can yield peace and security, while the destructive vision of Putin, Orban, Trump, and behind the scenes criminals like Steve Bannon prefer nationalistic isolation. This is because tension and insecurity creates populations that are far easier to manipulate and control.

It's ironic and maddening that so many of the willfully ignorant who blindly yell "freedom" would usher in closed, authoritarian societies always under the threat of war and conflict -a dystopian hell for the majority of people while a handful at the top control most of the wealth and resources. In 2016 too many in the United States bought into the fraud that led to both Trump and Brexit.

I can only hope that more people are catching on to Trump and Putin as crime bosses stealing peace and security from the rest of the world.

Expand full comment

George, Regrettably, those, largely white, who earn under $50,000 substantially comprise the swath of the population who, quoting you, “blindly yell ‘freedom’” in reaction to regulations meant to contain capitalism’s excesses. Paradoxically, I fear we increasingly are experiencing a linkage between those who so often are the victims of modernity’s unevenly distributed benefits, which look to them like brute indifference to their welfare and their claims of justice, and political lethargy. Moreover, I fret over whether any democracy can survive with a sizable segment of its population so aggrieved that it is willing to accept any authoritarian option in order to provide some sense of normalcy and security in their lives. Sadly, this relative erosion also opens the door for significant segments of this group to scapegoat those who are most vulnerable.

Expand full comment

Propaganda may be the defining factor in so much division. My MAGAt relatives are not needy, just impressed with bully celebrity. Damned embarrassing.

Expand full comment

Mine don't approve of the bully celebrity but disapprove of "liberals" more so they shield their eyes and pretend otherwise. Oh and tax cuts! They want another one.

Expand full comment

Some just like the "rebel" status. I could have predicted when many were young who would fall for the bull schitt. Same with the jr high kids i worked with in the 80's. The anti-authority ones are the magats today. The anti-liberals come from the Rush fans, as a rule.

Expand full comment

How on earth did you survive working with jr high kids! Hats off to you!

Expand full comment

Learned a lot. A kid that I didn’t remember posted on my daughter’s FB that I seemed to have a soft spot for the kids who struggled so much. My best review…

Expand full comment

I agree, Marj. I remember handling a call involving two twelve-year-old boys at the middle school. Their birthdates were 6 months apart (October to April, IIRC). The slightly younger one looked about 10 years old, was 4'10" and looked like he played with matchbox cars. The slightly older one was 5'9", shaving, and dating. I remember asking the principal how they did it. She replied "very carefully".

Expand full comment

The combination inherent in Middle School kids of almost embarrassing honesty and affection, not infrequent capacity for wonder, innocent and sometimes frightening capacity for making one face one's own contradictions as an adult, sheer stubbornness, open excitement in learning, eagerness to discuss all sorts of issues (no matter how naively), innocent, open joy in doing well are part and parcel of the age.I taught history to kids that age for over 40 years, and I can promise you that for all the difficulties inherent in teaching, maintaining discipline, educational bureaucracy, some parental craziness, I never went into a classroom without a feeling akin to wonder, sometimes verging on awe at the pleasure of being in the midst of this place of constant discovery.

I admit to having been being primed for it - my family has been in some branch of education since 1894, nearly half the history of the US itself - but if one is looking for a profession that is never, ever dull, it would be hard to top teaching. Two thoughts help. One should always teach what one would love even apart from the classroom, and having the humility to understand that the profession is not about selling a point of view, no matter how fervently one may hold that point, but rather about teaching one's students how to discover whatever truth there is rather than deciding one is the font of that truth.

Expand full comment

My first year teaching was in junior high. They ate me alive. I learned and it was a very good lesson!

Expand full comment

Many of my government students who were not college prep were indifferent and I wondered how many of them would actually vote. This was a small rural school in a community where now MAGAs abound. I have friends out there who are still amazed by how awful people have become with the advent of death star.

Expand full comment

Some are so susceptible to the local pressures. West of where I live, there is a large bill board with the cretin’s smirking, ugly face. I lived there for 20 years and am mortified to the max.

Expand full comment

Jeri, kids learn from their parents. Our hair person showed us a picture yesterday of a couple children of one of his Virginia relatives. The 11 year old girl was surreptitiously giving the white power sign with a big smirk on her face.

Expand full comment

I was surprised that in 9th many of the kids were embarrassed by things their parents did. By 11th, they had adopted the same things. Don’t know if it was just my experience, but I felt like there was a window when light could get in. BTW. A great psychologist and I had groups with jr and high school for years. I felt for their struggles. One year, when asking how their Thanksgiving holiday was, one kid said “I bailed my dad out of jail.” Even with my flawed parents, I never had to do that.

Expand full comment

“They have to be carefully taught…”

Expand full comment

How can ani-authoritarians champion authoritarians? Oxymoron.

Expand full comment

It is indeed. Maybe they feel an affinity with chump for defying our rules, laws, and traditions. I can see some really admiring that. When I followed a couple on FB, it was depressing.

Expand full comment

Tracy, oh yes, got to own the libs and stay away from woke. People around here want government to do all sorts of things including solving the housing, the homeless, the fentanyl crisis, but no more taxes and let's get rid of the ones we have. Story on the news yesterday about a murder in a homeless camp here in a Salem park where one of the dog walkers wanted more police. Voters here recently defeated a payroll tax which I agree was poorly done. The one that really got me was the tax for our local fire district which is a rural fire district, covering part of an urban area in Salem, but not part of Salem, with the rural area nearby. It took three votes to have a fire district available 24/7. I was appalled at the arguments against it. None of those people, I guess, will ever have an emergency where time matters.

Expand full comment

How frustrating. There seems to be a sense of selfishness out there. Not much generosity of spirit.

Expand full comment

Did the4y know their tax cut has expired while the corporations keep theirs? probably not.

Expand full comment

Jeri, I would consider the junk food of propaganda a “defining factor,” particularly seeing we are speaking of different segments of the population that comprise the MAGA base.

Expand full comment

Rupert has done a bang up job, just what Reagan wanted, and what I watched

become reality, even with people I thought were like me. Based in Walter Cronkite's reality

Expand full comment

Jeri, it is a shock to find out how many people were just waiting to come out of the woodwork.

Expand full comment

Indeed, it was like aliens within my balliwick…

Expand full comment

Jeri, I write to reaffirm, that while the influence wielded by media is a significant factor in shaping what counts as fact, it is not the only factor. Hence, my original comment amplifying the impact of institutionally oppressive forces largely beyond the control of a substantial swath of the population.

Expand full comment

There are grievances that extend beyond the divisiveness of the unequal distribution of wealth and many have to do with increased bureaucratic demands that seemingly take away valuable time and sometimes impose one size fits all absurdities. Some of these are based on outmoded or wrongly imposed rules. This can be “un-freedom” and create the sense of a weaponized state. Then such evil as Bannon proposes gets soul traction. Yet without a populace willing to stand for and implement moral and socially & environmentally healthy practices, in comes the state. So often it seems like an autocrat who destroys the system versus a system that can seem soul destructive. But have one East Palestine train wreck, or one environmental disaster, and people long for commonwealth help and preventive measures. Bringing in an autocrat bent on enriching himself (or herself for that matter) can only make all lives worse. Whatever one’s relationship to the Bible, seeing that the love of money is the root of all evil, or that we need (and are yet to learn) to love our neighbors, enemies & our world — makes a lot of sense. In the realm of production and consumption, the healthiest would be to meet our diverse needs in a way that can provide a satisfactory basis for ongoing human development.

Expand full comment

Good points. sort of like walking a tight rope. With any "preventive" measures, there are restraints that chafe. I ran across a bunch of bureaucratic rules when my husband died. Stayed pissed for awhile, so I see Bill Maher's blather about Dem's ridiculous rules that delay and complicate. Still, I prefer a caring stance rather than a "free for all." Middle ground would be nice...

Expand full comment

The bureaucratic rules for earthlings like you and me can be totally mind numbing. I could not continue to fight for what was mine at one point. The bureaucratics gave it to me and then yanked it away.

Expand full comment

I have to laugh. A letter from the SSA said that if they could give me something it would be $641. We had been getting $132. But sorry, I could get nothing. Lordy

Expand full comment

Mine watch Fox, Newsmax, and the like; their local papers--if there are any--either don't cover national and world news or just regurgitate wire service items that feature tfg at every opportunity.

Expand full comment

The Epoch Times is big in Texas. I complained to a grocery store manager about them allowing propaganda in their store. Of course, that was their intention. My BFF's husband had Fox on 24-7 (no exaggeration) in their house. I spent a lot of time there in late 90's. It was horrid with the "fair and balanced" bull schitt. But they lapped it up. All were educated and smart. About half are current magats. Some resisted. Propaganda is powerful and snares much more than stupid.

Expand full comment

Epoch Times has billboards in this area. And in this most-red-county in Michigan, we are pushing back against a county commission that has a majority who are anti-mask, anti-health department, anti-DEI, pro "constitutional county," overtly Christian, etc, etc. They have run up huge legal bills, hired obviously unqualified administrators, and are generally making a mess of a county that was previously well run by a majority of sane Republicans (yes, there are some on the local level).

Expand full comment

It’s deeply offensive to me that red county commissioners have and are anti public health, anti election integrity, anti democracy. These are fools at a very critical level of government. Erghhh. I share your frustration and disappointment in their failure to be leaders.

Expand full comment

There used to be. In fact, Everett Dirksen was a fave of mine.

Expand full comment

Isn’t Michigan DeVos country? I’m from down South so eaten up with problems of our own. But isn’t DeVos money the root of a lot of the red menace there?

Expand full comment

Epoch Times is where I look for “opinions from the other side”. Dear gawd, the comments are jaw dropping in the complete lack of understanding of the current world, the preferred language being bumper sticker.

Expand full comment

I was shocked at the insanity. My complaint fell on deaf ears.

Expand full comment

Is Epoch Times China backed miss and did info?

Expand full comment

Jeri, it seems to me that 45’s cunning snares the educated by whispering that they are smarter than the other followers and that he’s depending on their seeing “the big picture” of what he’s trying to accomplish—fewer wars, better healthcare and a return to their “innocent childhoods”. It’s always someone else’s fault that he hasn’t achieved the great plan.

As for their “innocent childhoods”, look at how many memes there circulating that celebrate “riding bikes until the street lights come on, drinking out of a hose, swinging so high that the legs of the swing set leave the ground” etc. The reminiscing ignores the truth of the permanently scarred bodies of kids who attempted stunts that any rational adult would have stopped.

Expand full comment

He blathers bull Schitt, and always blames somebody else. In my innocent childhood, my mother would have tanned our hide if we were bullies and blamed others for our wrongs.

Expand full comment

Epoch Times must have received a large cash infusion lately, because they also have multiple billboards in the Los Angeles metropolitan area claiming they're a "#1 Trusted News Source." I keep wondering on whose authority they make such a claim. Their own, perhaps?

Expand full comment

Trusted my arse. When I looked at the one in the grocery store, it looked just like Fox in print.

Expand full comment

Final sentence is very true…and disheartening.

Expand full comment

I still love them, from a distance.

Expand full comment

There's stupid and there's ignorant. The combination can be deadly.

Expand full comment

Often they go hand in hand.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
Apr 5Edited
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

Reagan started this

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
Apr 5
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

And frankly scary. No movement at all among these believers.

Expand full comment

A case of brain freeze, happens with cults.

Expand full comment

No. Not propaganda, but racism. If the white working class could be sure no benefits would accrue to black Americans, they’d be all in on government-supported healthcare, childcare, and many other programs to make capitalism work better … even guaranteed minimum income (for white Americans).

Expand full comment

Agree, Hasn’t that been the driver for so much of our turmoil. But the spewing of propaganda exacerbates the tribal nonsense

Expand full comment

I second that

Expand full comment

It’s almost like the door has slammed shut for any new information

Expand full comment

Why anyone is impressed by bullies is beyond me. That must be frustrating for you. All the more reason to support one another. Good luck.

Expand full comment

My parents would never have put up with that. When I worked at a jr high, the principal wouldn’t tolerate such. He made the bully responsible for the victim being treated with respect in the lunch room. He knew how to stop such, I was impressed

Expand full comment

Ally, she grew up in the creme de la creme town of Carmel. One of my most favorite cities! Your mom sounded like she was certainly revered.

Expand full comment

In times of economic retrenchment history is littered with the rise of authoritarianism. The same people who were quick to embrace Reagan didn’t realize that they were diminishing the quality and opportunity of the next and future generations paving a road leading to Trump.

Expand full comment

George, While I can’t speak to what Reagan voters did or did not recognize about that era’s impact on future generations, I unequivocally would trace much of the country’s grotesque inequalities of wealth and income to that era.

Expand full comment

I didn't recognize the long-term implications, but the junk bond fiasco gave me a clue

Expand full comment

Justice is the opposite of Poverty. Can you imagine if DJT had to rely on court appointed attorneys working pro bono. He would already be serving multiple life sentences in the hoosegow.

Expand full comment

Gary, I believe preserving and expanding democracy in the States largely is linked to enacting substantial reform of the judiciary, which at present largely has been absorbed by Trump.

Expand full comment

Gary, a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Expand full comment

You raise good points! The Republican base is made up mostly of Republicans poor dissatisfied people and the extremely wealthy who want to amass even more $$$$$ from the poor that they are purposely suffocating.

Expand full comment

I think that it is time to drop the word Republican when defining these folks. It is now MAGA, or, in other words, 21st century KKK. Those folks back in the 20th century (grab a copy of Timothy Egan's book, "A Fever in the Heartland," about the rise of the KKK in the Midwest in the 1920's) were all about white Protestantism. And the marchers at Charlottesville in 2017 shouting "Jews will not replace us" were spewing Klan talk.

Expand full comment

I refer to them as the AFP - the American Fascist Party. There is no more Republican party in America.

Expand full comment

Daniel, I completely concur. The MAGAs are Fascists, it is Fascism. If Trump had a brain, he'd shut his mouth and quit announcing what his intentions are. The Chinese have an old saying: "The height of cleverness is the ability to conceal it." TFFG's mouth is simply motivating and mobilizing us to resist.

Expand full comment

Well then, the rest of the AFP must be very clever, because the vast majority of them are absolutely silent! But me thinks what they are concealing is their collective cowardice.

Expand full comment

It is why I spell RepubliKan the way I do; with a nod to the Klan as their "guiding light".

Expand full comment

Maybe if we can brutally smash them this November, they will go back into their caves, re-invent themselves into something more American, and re-join us on Earth 1.

Expand full comment

Stephanie McKurry's Masters of Small Worlds is another good source for understanding the motives.

Expand full comment

thank you for this reference, Gary. I will look into Stephanie McCurry's "Masters of Small Worlds." Wow, the Kindle edition is $42.

Expand full comment

No. That lets Republicans off the hook. All of them, every last one since Reagan, is guilty of contributing to the descent to MAGAtism. Call them Republicans, and solidify the association of that name with kleptocratic autocracy.

Expand full comment

Mary Kay, Aside from my wanting to replace the word “suffocating” with “exploiting,” we very much agree.

Expand full comment

Both

Expand full comment

You seem to be saying there are few republicans in the middle class. What’s your source for the polling or data that supports your comment?

Expand full comment

Paul, Though your comment is not addressed to me, I would note the data show, contrary to those, largely white, who are paid less than $50,000 and currently mostly vote Republican, those paid between $50,000 and $100,000 mostly vote Democratic. Accordingly, Dems largely are focused on how to win back the former group.

Expand full comment

My family nuts are not poor, but well off. No excuse

Expand full comment

Jeri, My comment is not intended as justifying excuses. I merely am recounting voting trends that strategists are urging Democrats to note.

Expand full comment

The ones I know have become cult nuts, not a sane sliver of DNA

Expand full comment

It's not just the lower income lot who vote for Drumpf. My retired pilot across the street, my multimillionaire inherited wealth ex husband, my doctor, all buy into this crap, bellowing "lower taxes". They, who already have plenty.

Drumpf speaks to greed and self-righteous misogyny.

Expand full comment

Don't forget racism and xenophobia!

Expand full comment

There needs to be a sad emoji.

White people with peni seem to do a lot of damage. Followed by many of the similarly equipped.

Expand full comment

Jen, I would note my original comment was a reply to George’s reference to “the willfully ignorant who blindly yell ‘freedom’” My intent was to portray that part of the MAGA base to which I understood he was referring.

Expand full comment

A lot to unpack there, Barbara! Did you know that besides being white, religiously conservative, a majority of these folk are family-centric? A bit over half of all white families vote Republican. A majority of the rest of voters vote Democrat-ish. A major reason Republicans make a big deal about "family values". Dems get where they do because it's a multi-ethnic coalition which also embraces racial ethnic and sexual minorities. A long-burning firestorm which has ignited a huge incendiary backlash as epitomized in the Republicans, or a substantial fraction thereof, alas, now dominated by Trump, who is literally adored and worshipped by "the base".

Expand full comment

Frank, Admittedly I chose to focus on income due to the marked distinction in voting patterns between those, mostly white, paid under $50,000 and those paid between $50,000 and $100,000.

Expand full comment

The very people who cry “freedom” are endorsing the rights of Oligarchs to continue to freely exploit them, their labor, and their loyalty.

Our long and asinine Cold War {at first a bulwark against the spread of a Soviet police state, but devolving into plain old school-yard competition} created the entity that is still used to cow the Trumpists into submission…. All you need to do is say “socialism” to them, and they are ready to enable any oligarch to eke away at their real rights in favor of things like “the right to work” [for abysmally low wages], eviscerating regulations that are meant to help us maintain safe work environments where we turn out safe and functional products.

It’s Upside-Down World with Trumpers mouthing support for freedoms while giving them all up to a Dissipated Orange Blowhard!!|

We’re in the Twilight Zone.

I hope we get out of it … Look! Up ahead! I see a patch of BLUE!!!

Vote Blue.

Expand full comment

Pat, I appreciate you explaining how elites motivated by greedy and self-serving impulses effectively have manipulated working families throughout the country to cast votes that run counter to their interests and concerns.

Expand full comment

George and Barbara, thank you for your insights. This is another problem aided and abetted by death star who has cranked up the anger and incivility and made it nearly impossible to find common ground. I also agree with Jeri below about being people being impressed by "bully celebrity". This aspect reminds me of those who went along with the class clown while the rest of the students wanted to get things done. This speaks to their basic immaturity where it's funny to make fun of others and have no respect for the elements of authority that keep us from chaos.

Expand full comment

Michele, Thank you for writing. In my view, the outcome of the November election largely could land on how effectively Biden and fellow Democrats manage the hate and division, the anger and despair that Trump/ Trumpism persists in stoking.

Expand full comment

I am still not happy with the 2016 election which, for all her faults, HRC should have won. What a difference that would have made in terms of foreign affairs, COVID response and not giving carte blanche to the haters and dividers, for starters. My husband and I and many of our friends are in our so-called golden years, and I think none of us really expected them to be this fraught. Creaky bodies yes, but not the sickness of the body politic with a former president having an "envoy" and calling the shots in Congress to the detriment of all of us and not just in the US. I confess to not being comfortable wishing ill on other people, but he and his minions are an exception.

Expand full comment

Michele, In retrospect, I don’t believe HRC was well-served by advisors who didn’t send her either to rural or to ex-urban parts of the country. Consequently, she didn’t bank enough votes to overcome, for example, the harm perpetrated by Comey.

As for everyday life, the one piece of advice I pass whenever the opportunity presents itself is that all of us, regardless of how intently we work for justice, must also find joy in our personal lives. I wish that for you and your family and friends.

Warmly,

Barbara

Expand full comment

Agreed, Barbara. And yes, Comey who later death star threw under the bus. I told my doctor I was upset by his victory and she told me I was not alone. We tried to warn people about the Supreme Court, for example, but met up with a lot of know-it-all far lefts, most of whom joined my blocked list.

I do try to enjoy my personal life. We are just home from the Saturday Market, where we know many of the venders, and are now having a cup of coffee and a pecan roll while listening to the choir of Trinity College, Cambridge. I bought a few things for my veggie garden and we have some smoked black cod($$$). Then we did our grocery shopping and they know us too. It's cold today, more like winter. Thank you for your warm wishes and I send the same to you. Michele

Expand full comment

I suspect the vast majority of MAGAs know almost nothing about NATO, including what the acronym stands for and, most importantly, the security it provides to all member nations. All the Trump cults needs to know is that Putin's puppet wants to kill it. Beyond shameful.

Expand full comment

Michael, Considering the only folks, right or wrong, who are thoughtfully critical of NATO are not MAGA, I’m inclined to agree with you.

Expand full comment

I agree, but with our two party system, the democrats, by plan, neglect or ignorance abandoned many citizens. Generations feeling left out are now visible as almost half of those that might be allowed to vote. I am skeptical that corporate democrats will acknowledge their contribution to our decayed society. So called “progressivism” is still marginalized in corporate media. Repairs will take much more that four years, and the pendulum swings slowly…

Expand full comment

Abryhan, I share your concerns regarding corporate Democrats, and would add that I view prescribed forms of public accountability for institutions that have a disproportionate amount of wealth, power, and influence as an issue of democratic survival.

Expand full comment

Abryhan, yes, Democrats did not hold the line against the Republican juggernaut that was set on the country around the Nixon years, but especially during Reagan and HW Bush. Deregulating investment and banking, and cutting taxes on “investment” gains … wow. It was a goldmine for the already-rich.

Clinton, following on the heels of HW Bush, was too much in the pocket of the Wall Street machine, too … Even Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, talks about that. I can’t believe Slick Willy didn’t fight for Glass Steagall to stay in force.

How anyone who feels “left behind” and “forgotten” can turn to a Republican administration to make that better is beyond me. They are the architects of the problem, migrating wealth out of labor’s pockets into oligarchs’, hollowing out workplace rules and regs to keep people well-paid and safe, and convincing “Middle America” that it’s the “eggheads” they should resent.

It wasn’t the eggheads that stole their money ….It was the guys like the one who sits at the head of the table and hollers, ‘You’re fired!”

Expand full comment

The demise of the middle class is accurately dated to 1980 when Reagan’s ascent marked the beginning of the dismantling of the New Deal. His abrupt dilution of fair progressive taxation with particularly asymmetrical benefit to those in the top 1% plus active deregulation set the stage for the steady loss of industrial jobs and economic security for those who largely undergird trump’s ‘base.’

Having typed that — the full picture of today’s (worldwide) rightward and (yes) fascist direction is not just economic. An example is illustrated in What’s Wrong With Kansas.

A large proportion of trump supporters are in the sub $50K demographic. Those fully embracing trumpism fear loss of white privilege, demographic trends inexorably reducing their majority, ‘brown immigration’ (clearly helping to fuel our economic lead without deserved recognition), a cultural divide in values — singularly well documented by Heather Cox Richardson to aggressive pre antebellum southern attempts oppose equal rights, promote white supremacy, and plutocratic/authoritarian control.

But so blinded is this constituency by decades of well organized propaganda (such as The ‘Heritage’ Foundation), conspiracy mongering, lies, racist whistle calls, christian nationalist delusions — that the base totally ignores the complete disregard the gQp political apparatus has for its more economically challenged members. They are unable to vote in their best economic interests.

The last very critical element in this twisted world view is the recrudescence of the ‘America First’ ideas from the mid 1930s. trump’s plans to thwart Ukraine, withdraw from NATO, and hand putin’s

Expand full comment