A friend just commented on Facebook how hopeless she felt--like we will never be made whole. This is my response:
We will heal, at least in good measure. It will take time and there will be scars. But the progress, once we have everything in place, will be undeniable.
The word courage is directly related to the word "Heart"
Take heart--a cool breeze is blowing through the body politic. What Joe Biden planted will bear fruit under Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
The forty year dystopian march through the neoliberal mire is nearly done.
I have a feeling we will find out what color some of these ostensibly red states are once the regular citizens have enough cohesion to rise up and take back the American dream.
Like Jean and Ally, I find your words inspiring, but I must add a warning when you say that "the neoliberal mire is nearly done." We may chase it off the stage or even underground for a while, but remember, Project 2025 took decades to be an immediate threat and they will just change the numbers in years to come. Jefferson had it right when he said that, if we expect to keep our liberty, we must exert eternal vigilance.
And to Heather’s historical diatribe, I say, “Wow… Holy Shit.” This is the most profound and powerful work I have read.
Wow. Truth to Power.
This should be offered to the New York Times editorial department. Or sent to every household in the country. Let’s raise funds and get this sent snail mail to very damn address in the country. I will copy it and distribute it with my local get out the vote group.
Kamala Harris says Walz was “raised by a community of folks who understood that the true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down. It’s based on who you lift up.” Maybe so. But then, why did Gov. Walz create a 1-800 snitch line so that people could report on their neighbors who were gathering for the holidays? He may be popular in the Twin Cities but not in small-town Minnesota where small businesses were devastated by his 18 months of draconian lockdown policies. Please, let’s not idealize authoritarians.
The tension between labor and capital (i.e., oligarchs) has existed from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Marx saw the tension and Lincoln commented on it: "Labor is the superior to capital because without labor there would be no capital." [paraphrasing] Reagan launched the war on labor unions here in the U.S. Reagan's legacy is a black mark on American history.
Richard-Don’t forget about Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 when laborers revolted against capitalists. This rebellion is what led us to race based slavery and gave capitalists the mechanism to keep us divided. Let’s hope that this election will give us the chance to come together as Americans so we can overcome racism and win a victory over greed.
Not just unions but democracy itself, and pushed plutocracy in it's place. If we really believe in government of the people, by the people, for the people, that who should we blame if government is less than perfect. Elon Musk can do spectacular things because he more money than some nations do, and he can act like a tyrant (such as cutting off satellite access to Ukraine in an defensive attack on Russia just because he can, and chooses to. People complained of "Robber Barons" in the Gilded Age, for Reagan, those were the good old days. Reagan loathed environmental protection, and much else supporting the "common good". We are living with the consequences, as will our posterity. You can draw a pretty straight path from Reagan's contempt for democracy to Project 2025 and Trump.
Loved by the oligarchs and others on the right as the "Great Communicator", he destroyed the safety net for so many marginalized people, communicating contempt for the people he should have been serving.
Back in the day, I was a Reagan supporter. That is until I realized who he was actually working for, the wealthy. My favorite article on Reagan, because it paints such a vivid word picture is Thom Hartmann's 2014 Salon piece, "Reaganomics killed America's middle class, This country's fate was sealed when our government slashed taxes on the rich back in 1980."
The lead paragraphs paint the picture:
"There's nothing "normal" about having a middle class. Having a middle class is a choice that a society has to make, and it's a choice we need to make again in this generation, if we want to stop the destruction of the remnants of the last generation's middle class.
Despite what you might read in the Wall Street Journal or see on Fox News, capitalism is not an economic system that produces a middle class. In fact, if left to its own devices, capitalism tends towards vast levels of inequality and monopoly. The natural and most stable state of capitalism actually looks a lot like the Victorian England depicted in Charles Dickens' novels.
At the top there is a very small class of superrich. Below them, there is a slightly larger, but still very small, "middle" class of professionals and mercantilists - doctor, lawyers, shop-owners - who help keep things running for the superrich and supply the working poor with their needs. And at the very bottom there is the great mass of people - typically over 90 percent of the population - who make up the working poor. They have no wealth - in fact they're typically in debt most of their lives - and can barely survive on what little money they make.
So, for average working people, there is no such thing as a middle class in "normal" capitalism. Wealth accumulates at the very top among the elites, not among everyday working people. Inequality is the default option.
You can see this trend today in America. When we had heavily regulated and taxed capitalism in the post-war era, the largest employer in America was General Motors, and they paid working people what would be, in today's dollars, about $50 an hour with benefits. Reagan began deregulating and cutting taxes on capitalism in 1981, and today, with more classical "raw capitalism," what we call "Reaganomics," or "supply side economics," our nation's largest employer is WalMart and they pay around $10 an hour.
This is how quickly capitalism reorients itself when the brakes of regulation and taxes are removed - this huge change was done in less than 35 years.
The only ways a working-class "middle class" can come about in a capitalist society are by massive social upheaval - a middle class emerged after the Black Plague in Europe in the 14th century - or by heavily taxing the rich."
You're so right, but remember that modern technology has long since had a commanding presence which anchors so much of the national economy and infrastructure. As such governments in turn must manage those interests to the social common good.
the trick being just who "the people" represent on divisive issues. The "social common good" is similarly challenged too. Even if Harris wins, god willing, she'll struggle to "unite" the electorate. Biden's unity pleas fell on many a deaf ear. Polarization is a killer of democracies. To wit, the rise of fascist and communist parties across Europe a while back.
Betsy Smith, to reinforce your warning; this may be a long read. I pulled information for. number of sources:
Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Duke professor Nancy MacLean's 2017 book, "Democracy in Chains" names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority.
In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us.
Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into “makers” and “takers.” And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy.
Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Mike Pence as Vice President, a longtime loyalist the cause, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, "Democracy in Chains" tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.
Duke historian Nancy MacLean plunged in, and she read through boxes and drawers full of papers that included personal correspondence between Buchanan and billionaire industrialist Charles Koch. That’s when she had an amazing realization: here was the intellectual linchpin of a stealth revolution currently in progress...Buchanan, MacLean notes, was incensed at what he saw as a move toward socialism and deeply suspicious of any form of state action that channels resources to the public. Why should the increasingly powerful federal government be able to force the wealthy to pay for goods and programs that served ordinary citizens and the poor?... MacLean observes that Buchanan saw society as a cutthroat realm of makers (entrepreneurs) constantly under siege by takers (everybody else) His own language was often more stark, warning the alleged “prey” of “parasites” and “predators” out to fleece them...She notes that he took care to use economic and political precepts, rather than overtly racial arguments, to make his case, which nonetheless gave cover to racists who knew that spelling out their prejudices would alienate the country...Buchanan wanted a private governing elite of corporate power that was wholly released from public accountability...Charles Koch, who became interested in his (Buchanan's) work in the ‘70s and sought the economist’s input in promoting “Austrian economics” in the U.S. and in advising the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank... Koch, whose mission was to save capitalists like himself from democracy...By the 1990s, Koch realized that Buchanan’s ideas — transmitted through stealth and deliberate deception, as MacLean amply documents — could help take government down through incremental assaults that the media would hardly notice. The tycoon knew that the project was extremely radical, even a “revolution” in governance, but he talked like a conservative to make his plans sound more palatable.
MacLean details how partnered with Koch, Buchanan’s outpost at George Mason University was able to connect libertarian economists with right-wing political actors and supporters of corporations like Shell Oil, Exxon, Ford, IBM, Chase Manhattan Bank, and General Motors. Together they could push economic ideas to the public through media, promote new curricula for economics education, and court politicians in nearby Washington, D.C.... To put the success into perspective, MacLean points to the fact that Henry Manne, whom Buchanan was instrumental in hiring, created legal programs for law professors and federal judges which could boast that by 1990 two of every five sitting federal judges had participated. “40 percent of the U.S. federal judiciary,” writes MacLean, “had been treated to a Koch-backed curriculum.”
Peter Temin, former head of the MIT economics department, INET grantee, and author of The Vanishing Middle Class, as well as economist Gordon Lafer of the University of Oregon and author of The One Percent Solution, have provided eye-opening analyses of where America is headed and why. MacLean adds another dimension to this dystopian big picture, acquainting us with what has been overlooked in the capitalist right wing’s playbook... that many liberals have missed the point of strategies like privatization. Efforts to “reform” public education and Social Security are not just about a preference for the private sector over the public sector, she argues. You can wrap your head around those, even if you don’t agree. Instead, MacLean contends, the goal of these strategies is to radically alter power relations, weakening pro-public forces and enhancing the lobbying power and commitment of the corporations that take over public services and resources, thus advancing the plans to dismantle democracy and make way for a return to oligarchy. The majority will be held captive so that the wealthy can finally be free to do as they please, no matter how destructive...The oligarchs require a government with tremendous new powers so that they can bypass the will of the people. This, as MacLean points out, requires greatly expanding police powers “to control the resultant popular anger.” The spreading use of pre-emption by GOP-controlled state legislatures to suppress local progressive victories such as living wage ordinances is another example of the right’s aggressive use of state power.
The oligarchs require a government with tremendous new powers so that they can bypass the will of the people. This, as MacLean points out, requires greatly expanding police powers “to control the resultant popular anger.” The spreading use of pre-emption by GOP-controlled state legislatures to suppress local progressive victories such as living wage ordinances is another example of the right’s aggressive use of state power... “To value liberty for the wealthy minority above all else and enshrine it in the nation’s governing rules, as Calhoun and Buchanan both called for and the Koch network is achieving, play by play, is to consent to an oligarchy in all but the outer husk of representative form.”
"Nobody can say we weren’t warned."
“Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America” by Nancy MacLean Viking June 13, 2017
Thank you.. Elon Musk awakened me as no other force prior (somehow, it's become blatant). And he allies with Trump..Trump and the GOP as the means. It's been stealthy and slow in coming. Money certainly speaks. But it also enslaves. The goal, stated or unstated is to make slaves of the rest of us and before we realize it. Look at Russia today. But this realization will be for the few, not that I am despondent now with Harris/Walz plain talk. The choice is clear- the choice to push back on all the fronts.
All money spends the same, but some many purchases (such as of a $COTUS judge) are beyond most peoples means. Not all money is collected the same. Some is "made" completely honorably, some less honorably, and some exploitative. A blacksmith made money differently than an enslaver. A nurse makes money differently than a mafioso, or a billionaire who pays no tax.
Bob W-Thanks for these details from MacLean’s book. When Americans realize that our system has been intentionally set up to favor capitalists over labor maybe they’ll wake up to the Ds cry for “freedom” and opportunity for everyone.
Large scale organizations are inherently based on modern technology and the ability to organized and co-ordinate, and distribute. For business and much more. So what principles of ownership do we wish to apply, considering the American mantra for "getting ahead" and typical human ambitions. That inevitably involves dominance in one form or another.
That was certainly true in the Gilded Age, and political corruption was rife. Between social movements and progressive elected leaders we crafted a "New Deal". Reagan used media to discredit it; and we are. What rhymes with"Gilded Age"?
Yes; and that's what billionaires are building on islands and mountainsides to weather the destruction they are unleashing. I was pretty unclear with my question since I was (unconventionally) thinking of rhyme in history, not of verse. In that sense, though every era is also unique, I see parallels between "robber barons" of the 19th Century and the role of some of the billionaires of today. In between eras, while their influence was forced to ebb, were successful efforts to expand economic, political, and social equality.
Buchanan “knew that spelling out their prejudices would alienate the country.” Making our case involves spelling out our prejudice because it will serve to galvanize the country in that our prejudice is to abide by the moral “treat others the way you would want to be treated if the shoe was on the other foot” principle, the effect of which is to abstain from Buchanan’s immoral “do unto others before they do unto you” principle.
I suggest we do more than spell it out. I suggest we shout it out.
Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are alike, and that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. In addition to being true of families, it is also true of individuals, communities, businesses, political parties, and nations.
Those who adopt the immoral principle might experience short-term pleasure at the expense of innocent victims, but the inevitable long-term outcome is unnecessary suffering for everyone, including themselves. Those who adopt the moral principle inevitably experience short-term suffering, but it’s the necessary suffering that results from being fully human (if you want easy, be a flatworm), and the long-term benefit is joy, a word we seem to be hearing a lot lately.
My mother used to tell me that those who set out to intentionally hurt others will wind up getting hurt worse in the long run. I have seen that to be true with members of our extended family. To rephrase my gentle mother's words, "Karma is a bitch, and she will take you out!"
I love the "Mind your own damn business" mantra from Governor Walz. He doesn't need to talk about abortion rights or "reproductive freedom." Everyone knows what he means, and his statement is LONG overdue!
Those who adopt the immoral principle need a good discussion about what is moral. The immoral can be rationalized to be moral. It is and has been. So we are talking about something we assume is universally understood when it is not. Alternatively people may know what is moral, but it is buried, perhaps deeply...and again rationalized.
You hit the nail on the head. So, based on Aristotle idea that the more you know, the more you know how much you don’t know, I started thinking about your reply, and ended up with the following.
One of Maya Angelou’s famous quotes: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Because I believe Maya, I believe that Trump will put himself and his family ahead of the country and put himself ahead of his family. Likewise, I believe that Joe Biden will put the country ahead of his family and put his family ahead of himself.
Every individual has—and is moral within—an unconscious circle of concern. Intuition tells us to expect a too-small circle in children. And intuition tells us to expect to be included in an adult’s circle, except experience too often teaches us otherwise. When a child has a too-small circle, we call that immaturity. We don’t always think of an adult with a too-small circle as being immature, but they’re showing us that’s who they are.
Wisdom is another name for maturity. Joe Biden is wise. I assume Donald Trump was born caring about his mother, and that it’s plausible to think he may be less mature now than he was then.
Joe Biden disappointed when he first decided to run again after a period of indecision that kept others from running. And we went along with that even though many thought he was too old. And the charge "ageism" popped into discussion as if age could not be disqualifying. Well it is not in and of itself but aging is individual. We began to see Biden aging before our eyes; that he could not campaign effectively and was in fact losing. Still he hung on. Things came to a head after the debate of 6/27/24. Still he hung on. Biden had to be pressured to bow out. To this day he is not really accepting that he had to bow out because he could not win the presidency, and he was not going to be functioning fully as a POTUS needs to for the next four years. Joe Biden was not wise about himself and not acting in the best interests of the country until there was enough pressure.
He's been a good president in many ways and done many good things especially given the opposition. He has been good domestically except rarely. I fault him on being too fearful to give Ukraine what it needed early on to push Putin out. I also fault him on being too acquiescent with re Israel. We are way beyond the point where our military aid should have ended after we so politely asked Netanyahu to stop the slaughter in Gaza. I won't get into the particulars which I presume you know.
So I don't feel Joe Biden was putting the country ahead of his own personal need to save it (perversely).
I'm not sure I agree with Tolstoy on that one. All families are in some ways unique, and in some ways the same, and if there are patterns of choices that more reliably bring contentment, there must be other choices that pretty reliably bring suffering, over and above the slings and arrows we all are heir to. Perceptive awareness of extended consequences would seem to fall on the plus side, perspicacious tactics and strategy.
Speak loud enough to be heard bu leaving shouting to TFG except when there is a fire, and even then, one can be passionate, yet sufficiently calm and focused. We want professional fire fighters to have that. We need all those in socially extremely consequential roles to have that. Greta Thunberg precociously displayed that, which helped make her so effective.
I think that one of the essential qualities of democratic leadership, grass roots or elected, is to help a mass of people to retain their focus on something that really matters. Keep their eyes on the prize and don't let what is achingly wrong be glossed over. Democratic gathering is voluntary, so this is an exercise in education, not use of force; it may involve disruption but not violence. Not unless it's war, and that tends to be ugly and unpredictable, even when justified.
A just democracy is the hard road, though, as you say, the most rewarding. Callow Mitt Romney mused:
"-- I got to go to the Olympic Games in China. It's pretty impressive over there how quickly they can build things, how productive they are as a society. You should see their airport compared to our airports, their highways, their train systems."
Yup. It is easier to get things done in an autocracy, and that appeals to many. But "consent of the governed"? Democratic herding of cats gets things done too; not so easily, yet while preserving, as best we can, essential liberty.
We are human, and we have the free will, so we get to choose how to act. IMHO, Tolstoy is saying our happiness depends on acting in harmony with our human nature, and we don’t get to choose our genetically inherited human nature.
I would say that “adhering to the moral principle,” “staying attached to reality,” and “acting in harmony with our shared human nature” are different phrases expressing the same meaning. When everyone does, the social system is healthy because we’re all staying attached to the one reality. Likewise, “violating the moral principle,” “being detached from reality,” and “acting at cross purposes with our shared human nature” are different phrases expressing the same meaning. When anyone does, it’s a signal that the social system is unhealthy.
Being delusional is easy in the short term because it’s easy to create chaos. Being rational is easier in the long term because, in a healthy social system, whenever the system’s parts are in conflict, the conflict is resolved.
Rationality’s short-term challenge in an unhealthy system is because the harmonious signal gets drown out by noise of discord. As Russell Ackoff put it, “It is far better to do the right thing wrong than do the wrong thing right.” So, Greta Thunberg kept doing the right thing wrong until she found a way to cut through the noise, aka doing the right thing right. That’s where her exceptional intelligence was an asset because it helps to get there faster.
Mr. Smith was popular went he went to Washington because he was unsophisticated, and he was successful because he was mature. Sarah Palin was popular because she was unsophisticated, and she was unsuccessful because she was immature. Mr. Romney is sophisticated and immature. Translation: don’t confuse “sophisticated” with “mature.”
Thank you for this. At last, someone has tied all the ends together to explain the hell-bent meanness of the radical right. That is a huge 'knot' to untangle. Sometimes I fear, no matter how persuasive our president may be, he or she is in the grasp of a monster.
I think the meanness of any sort of fanaticism has to do with malignant narcissism; supremacy; the notion of entitlement to bully others. Tyrants feed that impulse in others to enable their own. Kill one person, go to jail. Kill millions and run a country.
Right you are! I've often thought, when leaders want to go to war, they should joust like Henry VIII. Or debate with each other. But ruthlessly expending 10s of theousands lives of the people is rediculous.
This is such a marvelous compilation . The emerging CHEER needs the eloquence and hard work, the research , not only applauded 👏👏👏 …spread , encompassing this dream we’ve long intended to balance us …and THEM!
Recognizing the covert mess is critical to understanding the road ahead…as lessons ALWAYS DO 😉
This is all brilliant Bob W, and the Substack community. So much leadership is obvious
Thank you, Bob. “Democracy in Chains” deserves a thorough read.
For now, I would like to respond to one of the lead ideas in the first paragraph, reaching into the Jim
Crow South with what I believe may be a central question about the influence of Karl Marx’s “Das Capital,” beginning with the former enslavers reaction to Ulysses S. Grant’s “Force Acts.” I would like your thoughts.
“The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did.”
In “Twilight of Democracy,” Anne Applebaum asserts, quite rightly, that planter-billionaires and their colleagues in Congress and on the Supreme Court operated a fully-functioning fascist government in the 1850’s, ideology which has persisted, with varying degrees of power and fringe groups, since the adoption of the Confederacy’s Constitution in 1861, extending into Reconstruction with South’s “Black Codes,” even into the 1930s when the “Southern wing” of Congress blocked the passage of federal anti-lynching legislation.
In his biography of Ulysses S. Grant, Ron Chernov revisited the wanton killing of newly-enfranchised blacks in broad daylight in the 1870s, as they were standing in line to vote in South Carolina. (Bamberg County, near Walterborough, Colleton County, iwhich has its own history of anti-federalist, white nationalist violence harking back to S.C.’s nullification crisis, and the rhetoric of S.C. politician Barnwell Rhett in 1828.)
In Grant’s effort to subdue the violence in S.C., he asked Congress to establish what became the “U.S.. Department of Justice” whereby Grant could dispatch U.S. militia to stop the rash of killings. Incensed at the government’s interference with local self-appointed authorities, the Southern States decried federal taxation supporting post-Civil War amendments, suddenly overturning the self-interest and authority of former ruling class in the Confederacy.
“Das Capital,” 1867, Karl Marx’s critical analysis of capitalism, further fueled the fire in post-Civil War America. Read in German by intellectuals here and abroad, it was translated into English in the 1880’s (gifted to Darwin by Marx, 1872). Disseminated widely among American powerful elites, Marx’s text gave rise to attacking “equity” and “fairness” policy as “socialist” or “communist” or Marxist,” i.e., un-American, from that time until today.
I can't speak directly to the influence of Karl Marx’s “Das Capital.”
Across time, we have seen this constant struggle between the plutocratic class and "we the people"; the 1800s leading up to the civil war; the 1890s up to the depression; and from the Reagan years to today. Interesting how Dr. Cox wove this fabric in her 2020 book, "How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America." The underlying belief that a few wealthy, primarily white men, are entitled to run the country; they know what is best! As in the 1948 election, the people must turn out to fulfill their democratic civic responsibility to prevent this take over and revision of our democracy.
Interesting also how the KKK has morphed into various right wing hate groups who are trying to assert their minority view on the rest of us, much like the extreme religious right groups, e.g., the New Apostolic Reformation who believe “Christians have a God-given right to rule all earthly institutions.”
Thank you for the long comment. It explains what I have observed over the last 50+ years I’ve been watching politics. I go back to the McCarthy hearings and knew as a child it was not going away. By the time of Reagan it was obvious to me that evil was behind this and it was creeping into education. I had never heard of Buchanan, and I did know of Koch. Thanks for telling me about Nancy MacLean’s book. So I’m not just a paranoid old cranky stubborn woman who reads books. At least not paranoid. And I will read this book.
Bob W.— thank you for that “long read”. It summarized something that we as Americans need to be apprised of. It’s not enough just to be aware of doctrines like Project 2025, we need to see a background of where this way of thinking took root in our modern history.
Please do not buy it (or anything) from Amazon. I'm guessing that Powell's in Portland, OR, has it, or can order it for you. CLAMS, our Cape-wide library system, has copies (although, unfortunately, none in large print), so see if your local library does, and if they don't, ask them either to buy a copy or to get one for you using inter-library loan.
Bob do you think this is a conspiracy? Is this saying there is one? . I think it's more a community (including overtime) of interests that evolve,that has built. I shared your above with s/o and the response was: grains of truth, but a conspiracy theory ( in the negative sense).
"Eternal vigilance" is the right expression! Since the beginning of recorded history, oligarchs or aristocrats have held sway over people more often than not. Democracy has been the exception rather than the rule, and a democracy that gives a stake to all citizens, regardless of gender or origin, even more so. The forces of oligarchy never sleep and are always ready to seize back what they believe is theirs.
"Since the beginning of recorded history," is the right phrase. I fell in love with "The Dawn of Everything," a wonderful archeological/anthropological study, which gave ample examples of early humanity being communal and democratic. I take heart that the trend toward authoritarianism and greed is only about 6000-8000 years old! It is not necessarily humankind's preferred paradigm.
I just ordered "The Dawn of Everything . . ." Another MUST read is HCR's "How the South Won the Civil War." It should be a text book in high schools and colleges. Simply put: it is brilliant. And it goes on and on and on. The oligarchs vs. the rest of us. It's at the heart of it all, only now the oligarchs have new tools to cement their hold on us: mass media.
Thanks! I hope you enjoy "Dawn." Anything by Heather is a marvel. Older societies were inclusive of women. Not to be a female chauvinist, but it occurs to me that a fatal flaw of the radical right is its emphasis on white male supremacy and its subjugation of women and BIPOC. What a symbol in Kamala Harris. Go, Kamala! Tim is the best of men, too. P.S. So is Joe!
As a 77 yr old woman who fought hard for all the rights we enjoy today, I often shake my head and wonder what is going on in the heads of right wing women. Why look stupid when they’re smart? Not all of course, but the vast majority of women I’ve met in my life are awesome smart in many ways.
We were fools to let that coup slip past. I was shocked when I heard on the radio that the "fairness doctrine" had been rescinded when I never even knew that was under consideration. I knew it spelled trouble, though I could not imagine how much.
Replaced by the "Dollar Directive", the fairness doctrine was the rational glue that held our society together. We desperately need a reinstatement of this Very Important Doctrine, before the MAGGOTS start shooting..
And I think what sometimes looks like a conspiracy (not that there are no obvious conspiracies to capture power, such as "stop the steal") are choices for which we pay far too little attention to for overall and extended consequences; incentives and inhibitors that we do or don't put forward or do or we don't tolerate, that shapes behaviors of individuals that in sum, act together.
The shortcut to riches is to subjugate others. "St. Peter doncha call me 'cause I can't go; I owe my soul to the company store" is a reference to history.
I agree with what you say. T8ump is the symptom, and Project 2025 will linger and fester even if MAGA is defeated for the time being. It is not specific to t*ump, it is there for the next would-be dictator to seize and use if ever given a position of power.
I generally respect the journalism of the Washington Post. That said, Bezos' putting Murdoch dirty tricksters in charge seems to be seeping into WaPo's 2024 coverage. I am not cancelling my subscription, but I am writing to their Newsroom editors, Corrections, and Fact Checker.
Also in reporting on the unauthorized release of Trump campaign docs there was no mention that they might have been leaked. Yes, Microsoft reported an unspecified Iran hack of a campaign but in speaking of the docs Trump pointed to "low-esteem leakers." His administration was a sieve. Also the article quotes Chris Krebs as an authority on hacking, but fails to note that the former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the United States Department of Homeland Security was fired by Pres. Trump for contradicting Trump's claims of election fraud in the 2020 election.
I agree! and there was nothing more powerful than the presidency of the FG and his ilk to shake us awake. Project 25, spells out the ideology of the poison that aims to take down a government whose founding document begins with…”We the People of the United States…”
Correct, well said. The process will strengthen, the road is defined even more and broadens the scope of cohesion. Balance is emerging, hope is rising, renewing our spirit with the lift of grace in action, it the perfume of success and the world hears the sighs of relief.
Annabel, I was born and raised in Minnesota and though I have lived elsewhere, I’ve always returned. The reason is simple: people like Tim Walz are everywhere here. All other things being equal, being around caring, concerned folks offered “insulation” against the madness that seemed to overtake us in the Reagan years and thereafter.
I was at an Indivisible event today writing postcards in support of a state candidate for MN House of Representatives. The candidate stopped by, thanked us profusely for our help, and shared a brief story.
Julie has been out door knocking since February. When Biden stepped down two weeks ago, she said things suddenly changed. More folks answered their doors last week eager to chat, including an elderly man. She asked him if he would be voting in the primary this Tuesday. What he said then surprised her; “yes I will. And I will vote for Democrats for the first time. I voted for Trump twice but January 6th was too much. I will vote gladly for Kamala Harris and Tim walz is my kind of Governor.” Julie was still blown away - the district (southern suburbs of Minneapolis) is purple and leans Republican in some neighborhoods.
The healing has started in just two weeks. It will take time, of course, but the joy is very, very real and not limited to one party or the other. The US has always been a work in progress. Harris has repeatedly said that we have yet to live up to the ideals found in our Constitution. But Biden and the Democrats have made real progress. And a functioning democracy requires actions and input from ALL of its citizens. “We’re not going back!”
What needs to happen for healing to truly take place is to remove tRump from the national stage. He is a huge source of toxicity by himself. He needs to be held responsible for his many acts of treason (betrayal of the interests of the US. There are other sources of toxicity. Citizens United, gutting of the Voting Rights Act, SCOTUS immunity opinion, denial of reproductive healthcare, etc. The corrupt members of the SCOTUS need to be held responsible for their corrupt actions. All of this toxicity stems from robber barons who want to hoard all the opportunities and wealth for themselves. Rules for everyone but them. We have to hold the big fish like tRump accountable, not just the smaller fish like tRump lawyer, Jenna Ellis.
trump is a weapon wielded by oligarchs He may be dimly aware of his function (a delivery vehicle of toxicity), but that is irrelevant to him, for the same reason that he is such an ideal weapon: he is profoundly broken. So, I agree literally — both that he must be removed, and that he is big. However, I disagree with the implication that it would be any kind of lethal blow. His removal is an immediate necessity, but it is not sufficient to defeat the Spencers, Mercers, Thiels, Crows, Kochs, Musks, et. al., who pull his strings. And, while he feeds on smaller fish, he is not the top of the food chain. They are.
Please tell your friend, If we can survive the Civil War we can survive anything. It has not been easy...and the wealthy and powerful always try to dominate the politics and politicians. This election is our MOST focused political fight since the Civil War. President Biden said in his CBS interview that this election, defines the next 60 years. I agree. Despair does not win...working a plan, wins.
I was born in 1940 in Uvalde, Texas, one of seven children who lived with our parents in a one-room house with a screened-in porch. The house had no utilities and no plumbing. I remember some very tough times when my mom worried where we'd get $3.23 to pay an electric bill once we had moved to West Texas. But things got better and better. We graduated into the Middle Class. Of the seven children, five of us got college degrees. I went on to get a Ph.D. and a J.D. I was a Republican - until Ronald Reagan. It is because of Reaganomics that there are now 800 wealthy Americans whose wealth is equal to that of one-half of America's population, that is 800 vs. 169,000,000. We now have an oligarchy supported by ill-informed racist white Protestant nationalists. Everything is now on the line as this election is most likely the most important in world history, with democracy here and around the world hanging in the balance.
Annabel, in military parlance (I think, at least in the movie): a mission-critical statement. We need compassion toward the M.A.G.A. base, at least the non-violent part of it and convince these people, primarily through the example we set, that, like one another or not, we are all in this republican experiment together. 🤝
Mercy is the highest form of tolerance and compassion the crowning human virtue. ❤️
Compassion is the highest form of justice and mercy the crowning human charity. ⚖️
The task before us is to enable the M.A.G.A. base, increasingly isolated, to feel safe in understanding that people are not out to take anything from them but that we are committed to making this land better one day at a time and one step at a time. 😇
Ned, I just had a former supervisor post a very offensive post: The back of a pick up that had: "If you should use this (Mens Room sign) but I see you follow my wife or daughter into this (Women's Room) sign, then you are going to need this (Handicap Restroom) sign. I asked the question "So, you support someone following me into the women's restroom and beating me up because they think I'm a guy?" His reply was "you know me better than that". I acknowledged he had been a staunch supporter of me throughout my career (even as other supervisors were not supportive and two actively tried to get me reassigned or fired), but that his meme indicated otherwise to me.
Ally, in fairness to your mentor, I can see myself saying the same thing but meaning something different: namely a separate category for transgenders. That disability symbol would be intended to denote a specific category set aside for a specific constituency, not intending to imply that transgenders or transitioning genders are somehow disabled.
An increasing number of places with individual toilets or plentiful stalls are going non-gender. Locker rooms are a different story. Legitimate questions of fairness in athletic competition do exist and will remain difficult to resolve. The issue will work itself out over a generation or two as the culture catches up; likely to be less than perfect.
P.S., Ally, I sympathize with your feelings. In your position, I would likely have taken the comment as a disparagement for trans-genders and reacted with anger, too.
Ned-I agree with you about being compassionate and having mercy. The MAGAs who represent all economic levels and geographic locations are afraid of losing white privilege because of the “browning of America”. They have to be convinced that living up to America’s ideals involving “unalienable rights”, “freedom”, “justice” and “equality” is not detrimental but good for all of us.
Agree. The solution you propose is hard work. Racism is a telling example for me. I am a racist or, at least, I am prone (almost reflexively) to pre-judgement of Blacks. Either I can justify it or I can try to live up to being the man my parents raised me to be.
To do the latter, I have to dismiss the pre-judgement every time it pops into my wretched little mind, uninvited. In effect, I say from me to me, "Oh, you, again. Stop putting your arm around my shoulder. You are not wanted here."
While I will never extirpate the prejudice, it is sufficiently dulled for me to grasp, albeit imperfectly, the feelings of those dreaded 'coloured others' and view the upcoming 'white' minority in the U.S. as a historical opportunity.
Gina, I agree with a very good friend of mine. Because of the racial tensions in this country, the U.S. is likely the least racist country in the world since the awkward questions and their inevitably conflicting answers are on the table, out in the open.
Yes, we all have our judgemental parts that are components of our "wretched little mind{s}". One thing that we can do, while endeavoring to be self-aware enough to recognize it when it shows up, is acknowledge, then accept and even appreciate that this part is a protector of sorts; or thinks it is; comes from a primitive part of the brain. This takes it's power away and we can then exert conscious choice in the direction of our values. Easier said than done, of course.
The hard work, for me, comes subtle intellectual legerdemains. For example, with racism, using terms like racialism, tribalism, or concrete data of lower test scores.
That is for sure, but it won't happen without us. All of us working and doing all we can to get the despairing to see that it will be possible if we all pull together. There is one goal that will preserve our system that allows our more personal issues to be addressed and resolved.
Lke the young Berniecrat progressives who could not morally vote for Hillary and gave us Trump, there will never be a free and independant Palestine if Trump returns to power.
"...but it won't happen without us. All of us working and doing..." True this, Ransom. In a related note, I watched the closing ceremonies of the Olympics. A French leader (I forget who!) began by thanking all "the usual suspects"! But then turned his gratitude to the French citizenry in particular. Because in his eyes, it was the people who showed up and supported the idea of the Olympiad that turned it into the success that, in my opinion, it was. So to your point, We the People, All of Us This Time!
Do you have data on how many Sanders supporters would not vote for Clinton? Sanders endorsed Clinton despite being treated badly by the DNC (Schultz,was forced to resign over it). Earlier poll showed that nether Trump nor Clinton was striking a chord with voters (which is probably why Sanders did well). Plus, I think even Trump was surprised when he actually won. He seemed as though he was. I Knew the race would be a bit scary, but the dominant expectation seemed to be that Trump would not win. I don't think that the Democrats will be quite so relaxed about it this time around.
I agree with J L Graham that “even Trump was surprised when he actually won.”
I’ve always felt like Trump’s whole organization was taken by surprise when he won. I stayed up all night watching in disbelief yet couldn’t help notice the organized chaos as his family gathered on-stage for his “acceptance” speech. To a person their expressions ranged from excited disbelief to confusion to even a bit of deer-in-the-headlight’s shock. The body language was so telling. Then to learn that he had no transition team set up, no plan for cabinet picks, none of the typical preparations had been made to transition from campaign to administration.
Perhaps the only good than has grown from this painful time period is that NOW more citizens are paying attention and, better yet, more have become active participants in the election process. Even when “joy” carries us over the finish line in November we can’t ever again let ourselves become politically apathetic.
I don't believe I have ever seen Trump more shocked than when he realized he "won."
And we all lost.
I thought my wife and I had voted for Hillary, but she finally admitted she voted for someone other than Trump or Hillary (probably Jill Stein). That was a very delayed shock for me, but seems too common for people that even bothered to vote.
I do wonder how many, and where, more votes than the 2,864,985 Hillary won the Popular Vote by would have been needed, and how few more in red states would have been enough to win the outdated Electoral College vote.
I'll never again submit a protest vote like when I wrote in Sheila Bair in California (where it seemed not to make a bit of difference in the 2004 election).
My son was a Bernie supporter in 2016 and voted Mickey Mouse despite all our discussions. There was nothing I could say to change his mind. As we live in Minnesota it was likely not consequential, but reflected the feelings of his on line community. He is very excited about the Harris campaign which gives me hope. It kills me that Mr bone spurs and the typewriter marine are trying to discredit Walz's military record. As Walz would say "give me a break".
I have only anecdotal data: The dozen or so BernieBros that I know all sat the entire election out. I have maintained contact with about half of them, and only two have acknowledged that I was right when I said that the 2016 election was more about SCOTUS than who was elected President.
That has not been my experience, but, especially now in retirement, my contacts are not many. In the primaries, Sanders delegate total was not that far from Clinton's, especially in terns of non-"Superdelegates", so clearly it was not a majority of those voters who initially supported Sanders who did not ultimately vote for Clinton. Also, it's more work than I want to take on, but my suspicion is that some most contested states would not have been big on Sanders support compared to others that might have been less Trump friendly anyway, but that's only me speculating. With our anti-democratic EC, not all votes are equal to others.
David, by the way, I really appreciated your last comment to me. You reminded me that we need, really need, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, not in a bellicose manner but is a solidarity of knowing that we are in this republicanism together and that, while maany differ in their views, we can make this a better country.
As a Midwesterner, I am grateful to Dr Cox Richardson for her essay this evening. Speaking to the gopher state, one of the very few times I ever saw my mother cry was the day after the 1968 election; Dad was bummed out, too. Albeit moderate Republicans who likely agreed with President Nixon, they could not trust him at all.
While working in Aerospace, I had two Black acquaintances (while I was a member of a professional logistics society), that were, to me, among the sharpest logistics types who had worked in close enough proximity to the executive branch to be invited to work within the administration. I think one did but the other said he would never work under Nixon having gotten close enough to see what he was truly like (in his eyes). He never elaborated on details but took a lessor job than he was qualified for (in my eyes).
Thanks for an interesting memory. I feel like we are back in 1968 again, but, thus far, doing a better job of confronting the shadow on the wall lending to politics off the wall.
Strong words, thank you. We must understand that the people's struggle with the oligarchs will continue. Their threat to democracy may subside, but, as HCR's book "How the South Won the Civil War" shows, it is unlikely to disappear. In addressing the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1852, Wendell Phillips warned that "[e]ternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few". It is imperative for each generation to heed that warning and be prepared to defend democracy.
Trump is a 3 time loser. Even Maggie Haberman and her sidekick Swann have now acknowledged as much. . . . My 2 cts? In this upside down world Ds should take advantage of trumps tantrum by endorsing Kemp. With or without a return endorsement. It will still make the point. Turn about etc. And who knows? They can make endorsement reciprocal, ie Here's how Ds can make GA a better place. Really. Bipartisanship is the new black or something like that.
Kemp may not be a Trumper, but he is the guy who guided the work of the Republican party when he was Secretary of State to gerrymander the legislature, and as governor pushed for the laws making it easier to remove people from the voter rolls, harder to register new voters, and illegal to do things like give people standing in line to vote any water. Kemp is no "good guy." He's the enemy as sure as Trump is; in fact he's worse because he's smarter and understands how things work, which makes him more dangerous. Let the Republicans tear each other apart and vote straight Democratic down there. Making nice to those people is just giving them the opportunity to knife you when you have your back to them. "Bipartisanship" with bad actors is not a good idea. The Jubilee has not come to the South and probably never will. "Can't we all just get along?" doesn't work with these people.
He was the SoS who rigged his Own election for Governor, beating Stacie Abrams with a thousand cuts to voter rights. Another deplorable. Just a lot slicker than the rest. Beware. His hand is All over what's happening with Trump and Willis.
Still, there are the Republicans who can still do something right, vs. the Republicans who are so criminal and full of hate they cannot do anything right. Kemp runs the state like an outhouse and is racist as they come, but still, did not steal the election in the way Trump wanted him too. That like Pence's was an act of bravery. We are realizing each day the Republicans who stand up to Trump, and there are not enough have to be brave. I am expecting many to vote against him while saying they support him because life is easier if Dems are in charge. Also, a lot of them realize they are less safe with him in charge. Some are just too racist and twistedly religious, to move beyond backing him.
Much respect for Georgia’s former Lt. Governor Duncan who is speaking truth and denouncing Trump. It takes courage to say out loud that he’s voting for the Ds.
I realize politics requires opposing teams. Bipartisship is an act of courage. I just think that maybe, when someone acts noble and responsibly, despite other shortcomings, it is worth exploring alliances. Esp when the stakes are high. Just a thought.
TCinLA-Your assertion that “bipartisanship with bad actors is not a good idea” has been proven throughout our history. Most of the compromises made with slaveholders set up the systems we now have including the electoral college.
Is competence an asset or a liability? It depends. If an individual or group is serving the greater good, then competence is an asset. But Kemp and his group serve the group at the expense of the greater good, and that is when competence is a liability. Thank God Trump was an evil idiot and not an evil genius. But watch Speaker Mike like a hawk.
JBR, wait isn't Kemp condoning R's making it harder for Dems to vote (massive voter roll purges, etc.) and easier for R's to cheat in elections? I can't think of any reason to endorse anyone's grossly unethical, seemingly fraudulent, and wholly undemocratic actions.
Yes, Kemp is a snake in the grass, forked tongue talking out both sides of hims mouth kinda guy.
Anyway, what is Kemp running for?
Interesting idea. But I think we should stop short of endorsing Any Republican because even Cheney is anti-choice and a much bigger hawk than I'd ever want. The apple didn't really fall far from the tree.
We will see her plenty in 2028.
Kinzinger is young. But no. Just like Kasich. Still going backward in too many ways.
Patrice Curedale, yes. They can do good things worthy of praise. And praise should be given for bravery and moral principles. But remember their core beliefs and missions are against ours.
I tend to agree with the other two respondents, based on the very little knowledge I have. Nevertheless, that endorsement idea is worth considering since it is a form of moral suasion.
Today, some one pulled the typical trumper tantrum by bring up an unrelated issue; saying Vice President Harris could not deal with it; and that I had Trump Derangement Syndrome. A month ago, I might have gone nuclear. Tonight, instead, it occurred to me to say, after pointing out the false issue technique, that were I "a supporter of the former President, I suppose I would be defensive, too."
Why are we dems always the ones to forgive and reach out so quickly when they would just as soon cut that offered hand off? No it is not the time for this at all. It's time to show them that we will not become a fascist country. We will not relinquish our rights as women and people of color and LGBTQ people. Hell no! We will fight to see justice for all and not allow a corrupt obscene court divide us and take away the rights of some in order to make a felon, and adjudicated rapist a king!
When tested the people of this country have stood strong. Once again we have been tested and I feel strength flowing back into the veins of our body politic.
Agree, "the forty year dystopian march" an apt description to be sure. We'll move on from the 'trump thing'. We've digested it enough. And, as long as our courts ( our legal system! ) remains functional the people who have violated the law will be taken to task. Whether they get a slap on the wrist, disbarred, fined, spend 30 days in jail, or 18 months. Most of us will never know or read about it. That's fact. And, that those trials have been taking place, largely un-publicized (hohoho.. as you might well imagine), is comforting. But, VP harris has "the Pulpit"..., she's speaking, and she need to jerk some chains. Many of those Heritage and Federalist clucks are senile and their trust-fund kids have no moral compass. This "Debate" better be good!
I really feel inspired by the hope of a new way forward. Joe Biden was the rebound guy after that awful “bad bf”, but Kamala and Tim present a way forward that can launch a renaissance of the middle class. Joe reset the narrative of the Democrats, and Kamala will move that needle further, especially when the Trump tax cuts end.
Having grown up with Ford and then Nixon as my first Republican presidents, I never really paid attention to the Republican party as worthy of anything other than scorn. I knew about Teddy Roosevelt, but thanks to Heather Cox Richardson. I get a sense that he wasn’t an anomaly.
I’ve been hoping for years that honorable conservatives would be able to push aside today’s #CORPservatives who work in servitude only to their corporate and billionaire donors.
My hope is that the lead coattails that cowardly Republicans still cling to will bring the downfall of this version of the GOP. Their careers, too, will be dragged down the drain in Trump’s whirlpool of lies.
And if GOP 2.0 is to emerge from the ashes, wouldn’t be nice if their inspiratory hero would be Teddy instead of Ronald?
I think Teddy was sort of in his own category. My understanding that he felt betrayed by his party's embrace to plutocrats. I think his family were admirers of Lincoln. I think if the GOP pulls itself out of the mud, it will be at least its third incarnation.
The whirlpool of lies became a category 4 today with Trump calming photos of Harris' crowds in Michigan were fake AI concoctions. Mr. Fake Personified seems to be painting himself into a corner, although most of his base seems unlikely to waver.
Fox is a division of the Gross Old Psychotic Ministry of Truth. I'm hoping that at some point Big Lies get so big that they start to collapse under their own weight. It seems like we might be entering that territory. I'm seeing increasing external pressure on Republicans' very tangled web.
Along with convict 34+ and stephen miller & comrades., fox commentators share the position of extremist republican Ministers of Propaganda, the position of Goebbels when hitler reigned despicably. We are making the right choice to steer our ship away from those wannabe nazi waters.
I think pmurT's inner mental world is almost completely dissociated from the consensus reality most of the rest of us share. Occasionally his world and our world experience juxtaposed points of similarity, but he remains isolated in his bad trip mental universe.
Ned, I had one or two unpleasant experiences. But I could always find my way back home. Most of my experiences were ecstatic, or at one with the universe, or spectacular natural beauty. And music! I have no regrets in that regard.
I think Trump is delusional, but not so much as his faithful. He is cunning enough to provoke his flock's reptile responses (we all have then , just not so much) and to know when he's in check. After Nixon's disgrace, the patron'$ of the "GOP" took the lesson that if you are going to lie, lie BIG and never admit a thing, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Trump built his whole identity on dishonesty and a massive inheritance, plus a certain kind of media presence, so he was an (almost*) perfect fit for the modern "GOP" MO. Lying is as natural as breathing to Trump. His shamelessness is most of what he's got going for him.
* I imagine plutocrats regret that Trump is not a smoother criminal. He Lies big but clumsy. And his over-defensive outrage looks weak after a while. The reptile T-rump can't bear to be the butt of jokes.
I predict that the orange menace will lapse into ill health before the election in November, due to age, infirmity, and the stress of this election cycle.
The Republican party leaders like Mark Hanna detested Teddy Roosevelt and his commitment to reform. It's why they got rid of him (they thought) by making him Vice President where he could do nothing. And then McKinley got assassinated.
All three of the "good" Republican presidents - Lincoln, T. Roosevelt and Eisenhower, were detested by the Republican leadersip, which all came from the "Whig wing" (pro buisiness) of the Republican triad - Abolitionists, Whigs, and former Know Nothings.
Damn, I thought he used Goebbels tactics. I remember the crap pulled on Texas and then all of us. Don’t forget W’s comment that you can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on. Sad but true, apparently…
I think it is probably useful to distinguish between "pro business" and pro-monopoly. I have encountered a fair number of small businesses that I very much admire, and truly morn is they close. Business can be fair trade, what Teddy called a "Square Deal".
Monopolies of money, political power, of any other form of power are dangerous to civilization, and inimical to liberty and justice for all. A lot of folks got that in Teddy's era after the cruelty and corruption of the Gilded Age. Modern Republicans use of the term "free market" is Orwellian. They are pro-monopoly, not pro-business nor pro-freedom in the meaningful sense of universal human rights, rather than regal impunity for the most powerful.
Trump is jealous that his rallies are almost deserted and that VP Harris’s rallies are very well-attended, he’s behaving like the emotional toddler he is.
I seriously think we have the analog of a computer virus here. An accepted command to reject the evidence of your eyes, ears, and analytical capacities renders you vulnerable to believing ANYTHING uncritically, which the history of some classic cults illustrates. It's a go-to tool for tyrants.
And thanks to your reminder of the obvious, I was able to correct that for my restack note. I added a few things to Heather’s analysis, including DLC details. Please check it out if you get a chance, and comment there as well!
I do wish people would start using the word. Journalism correctly. Heather is awesome, but she is not a journalist. She is a historian with a point of view and that's totally cool but it doesn't make her a journalist.
A journalist reports things objectively without a point of view. And we really need to keep that in mind when we use that word. As I pointed out during the Lawrence o'donnell thread a few days ago o'Donnell is not a journalist. He is a television commentator who has a point of view. You can like his position or not. But don't call him a journalist because he isn't one and has never been one.
And that is true for almost everybody on msnbc. It Is also true for all of the columnists and editorial writers for the New York times. those people Have points of view and they are often good points of view but that does not make them journalists.
So, do not watch it. We have choices here. Like most others I know, I tend to stick with sources whom I trust -- likely meaning I would like to sit down and have a beer with them (e.g., David Brooks, George Will, Ellen Goodman, Chris Wallace). Obviously, the definition of the word "journalist" or "journalist" is highly idiosyncratic.
P.S., the journalism we knew as we grew up was tempered by the Fairness Doctrine, a triopoly of national networks and a consensus on what constituted current events worthy of rapportage.
I disagree 1,111%. Bias is unavoidable since past experiences, temperaments, etc. shape how one interprets current events -- what information to include or to exclude -- or just about any information beyond ostensive definitions.
By your definition, for example, investigative journalism is not journalism because the journalist is testing a hypothesis (e.g., President Nixon's involvement in Watergate), drawing a conclusion, or expressing an affect implicitly (e.g., gotcha journalism seeking to be a source of accountability.
Tying in current events with history and precedents so the reader can conclude for him-or-herself whether an analogy applies for prescriptive thinking. qualifies as journalism, just as the long article in "The Atlantic" that 'Dan Quayle was Right' drawing on data from the social sciences qualifies as (contextual) journalism.
Yes, indeed. One of the things that stood out to me in this letter are the references to political parties that didn't immediately dominate but tugged at the edges, moving us to a different future.
Nicely done HCR! While the for-profit media breathlessly trumpet the “challenges” the Harris-Walz ticket faces in order to claim that this election is still being driven by the deranged pronouncements of CFDT and Baby Stewie “Vance,” demanding that our current VP respond to every belching nonsense phrase that emerges from the Orange Menace’s mouth, Harris and Walz simply continue on the path they chose of speaking directly to people, not to the idiots looking for tasty sound bites. And those of us who are sick and tired of the utter drivel being produced by the likes of The NY Times and the Washington Post—I don’t bother with TV news as it is even worse—are rejoicing.
Their caution around highlighting Trumps treachery in infamous, but they seem to be on top of Trump's false claims about Harris' crowds. "GOP" cult delusionality seems at this point virtually psychotic.
Wapo has had many positive things to say recently about Harris/Walz and I continue to read Jennifer Rubin. Was surprised to hear her identified as a Republican in a recent radio interview.
At 90 I have encountered, in the Middle East, Congo, and elsewhere, individuals who are BONKERS.
After 21/2 hours alone with Iraqi President Abdel Qarim Kassem, I concluded that he was BONKERS. [The bloody uniform in a glass case behind him after his first assassination attempt was one indicator.]
More recently:
1) A presidential candidate who claims that his opponent used AI to fake photos of a mob of people around her plane and crowds of 10,000-15,000 participants at her rallies, despite hundreds of press photos to the contrary, is BONKERS.
2) A presidential candidate who, at a convention of Black journalists, seriously questioned when his Black opponent became Black, is BONKERS.
3) A presidential candidate who suggests that President Biden, who stepped aside as presidential candidate for Kamala Harris, may seek re-nomination at the Democratic presidential convention is BONKERS.
4) A presidential candidate who enabled Project 2025, which is a handbook on how to create an authoritarian government, were he to return to the White House, is BONKERS.
5) A president who took an oath to protect the Constitution and then trashed the Constitution and triggered an attack on the Capitol Building is BONKERS.
6) A president who says that anyone who serves in the armed forces is a ‘sucker’ and is a ‘loser’ if he is killed serving his country is BONKERS.
With such overwhelming evidence, why doesn’t the media consistently highlight that Trump is BONKERS?
That might be why reporters give him a pass in press conferences, but newspaper owners might have a more sinister reason: reporting on Trump brings them oodles of cash, so keeping him in the spotlight beyond November is important to their bottom line.
Nailed. It. They lost half their readers/viewers when Trump left office, and they want to make the losing legacy media "profitable" again so they can unload it on the first rube who comes along.
That is the reason why Jeff Zucker kept covering Trump and giving him all manner of coverage in 2016. It was great for CNN’s ratings, but not so great for the country.
Sorry this is just unadulterated bs. It simply is not happening. The journalists are trying to do their jobs and taking pot shots at them like this is discrediting of you IMHO.
Jon-I hear what you’re saying about journalists but the profession needs to take a good look at what integrity means when it comes to honest reporting vs. offering opinions and using sensational headlines and words to “educate” and influence the public.
Can you give us a few examples of who you think are the real journalists?
Hi Gina. I just read your comment again. And I have a feeling that you are mistaking balanced journalism which you may not like with biased journalism. Maybe I'm wrong here but many of the comments have said things like "why don't the stories come down on trump?" Because that is NOT their job. Their job is to report, not take sides.
Well pretty much anyone who reports for the New York times is doing a GREAT job IMHO. Maggie Hagerman is a truly serious journalist. Read her stuff, there is NO opinion buried in it. "Just the facts, ma'am!" And most of the rest of the NYT reporters do s pretty decent job. (NOT the columnists like Jamelle and Ross, those guys are strictly opinion writers and identified as such) in sure you can point out exceptions but its rare. The NYT is really serious about journalism, at least in their political news.
It's not there is no excellent journalism out there, and it appears in many publications, but there seems to man that the press often downplays the perfidy of Trump compared to Biden. The press notes, but seems not to have shown the persistence to correct the perception that the economy sucks under Biden though in fact his is much better than Trumps, for example. When Bush II was winding up for war, I stated reading the Guardian, and found useful information about what was going on here that was absent, or picked up much later by the US press and TV I was aware of. There seemed to me to be a dearth of deep investigative journalism, at least in some papers compared to the Vietnam and Watergate eras. Plus I have been bothered by things like this https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464/ . It seemed to me there were way to many serial weakly supported stories about growing signs of Biden's incompetence, which is different from questioning if he was the strongest candidate available. Biden does not have a strong TV presence and had a reputation of being gaff-prone way back in the Obama administration. Now that Harris is a cheerful, energetic wildcard, and Trump is more dramatically losing it, the press seems to be paying closer attention.
You SERIOUSLY cite the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER as a serious journalistic news source? Anyone who takes the HR as a serious source of news needs to stop drinking the Kool-aid. If you had cited the Times, or even a semi-serious source like the WaPo or LA Times or WSJ, I might have raised my eyebrows, but you would do yourself a great favor by STOP reading the Hollywood Reporter for anything except job offers and TV/Cable news and start reading the New York TImes.
A journalist COVERS Trump. They don't cover him "like he is normal". Good journalists do NOT let opinions into their articles. They fact check their sources whenever possible and most of the journalists I read, especially the ones in the times, fully vet Trump's nonsensical spoutings and report on the factual issues, but they carefully (and correctly) do NOT inject opinions about his "normality". THAT IS FOR THE READER TO DECIDE. Use your brain and analyze the reporting. If the reporting is not FAIR and BALANCED, then it is perfectly acceptable to criticize, but I dare say you can't find a recent example of that in the New York Times. Anywhere (except of course on the Editorial page and in their columns, which are expressly NOT news and are absolutely opinions... if you don't like those, then of course, find a better paper... if you can but I doubt it).
Reporters are scared of Trump’s insubordination and it’s ridiculous how they stick their head in the sand to avoid his bullying. They make good salaries - get a thicker skin!
Reporters who would rather not be reduced to being forced to just repeat Ministry of Truth press releases verbatim might want to dig a bit deeper now, as the precipice draws closer.
JL, "reporters" are regular folks with families, not martyrs. Are you in a position to be a martyr. Would you throw yourself 'under the bus'..? Here on HCR we're somewhat safe expressing our views.
I quite agree, and resisting suppression of telling the truth is everyone's responsibility. We don't do nearly enough to protect whistleblowers. If we allow organized crime to stop the flow of needed public information, we're all cooked.
Oh good grief! This is such nonsense. Show me a New York Times article where a reporter "repeated Ministry of Truth press releases". Really? Are you that out of touch? Maybe you don't even read the New York TImes, you just like to throw trash talk at it. That is NOT a good look.
Hell no. He's having his whole head bronzed.. the bullet went clean thru. Or didn't you know that? The photo clearly showed it... in one ear and out the other.. super-sonic. They haven't owned up to that yet. Whoooooooshhhh!!
It doesn’t look remotely like a bullet grazed his ear. I still think it may have been a tiny shard - flying debris coming stand behind Trump. We will never know, but he certainly used the incident to say he’d taken a bullet for his MAGA followers. When, in fact, it was the tragically unfortunate man in the stands “who took the bullet.” And notice, Trump has stopped talking about it.
Whatever the case, it is alarming that an assassination came so close. I worry about the safety of all of the candidates.
Adding: We have no fact-basis for a bullet grazing his ear, nothing from the physicians who treated his injury, not a word in fact from his campaign - only Trump’s unsubstantiated claims.
Well, we saw him bleeding. Did you watch it happen? That was pretty good evidence that he was hit with SOMETHING, and frankly I find it offensive that anyone is questioning this. The man almost got killed. Hey, I can't stand him and hope he never gets NEAR the White House again, even as a tourist, but there is NO WAY i am spreading rumors about whether he was shot at (he clearly was SHOT AT) and hit or missed when I know nothing. You should take that advice yourself. Feel free to mock him when he spouts nonsense. DON'T MOCK HIM WHEN HE IS ALMOST ASSASSINATED. No one deserves that, not even the most vile political creature ever to run for President.
The journalistic press should NOT express such opinions. They should REPORT all the facts you stated. That is their job. It is your job and mine to read those reports and draw the conclusion (which I personally totally agree with) that Trump is bonkers. But the facts are the job of the journalists. The opinions are for us to draw from those facts. Or the job of an editorial writer or columnist to draw for you to see. We shouldn't confuse those two responsibilities.
By the way fact CHECKING is journalism. To state that the nonsensical opinion of trump about the so called ai photos is not true is journalism. To draw a conclusive that that makes him bonkers is an opinion and NOT the job of journalists.
Jon Reporters can ask and re-ask specific questions of Trump and others. They can take statements and place them within a factual perspective. This is the responsibility of a serious journalist. Such reporting should b3 balanced. Recent reporting on Biden’s ‘age factor’ without similar focus on Trump was, in my opinion, unprofessional. Editorial and opinion pages are distinct.
You don't have to do "similar" reporting on all candidates at exactly the same time (tit for tat is NOT required). I won't argue that there was a LOT of emphasis in the REPORTING (not the opinion columns, which are fair game to do whatever they want and say whatever they want as long as it is clear it is opinion) on Biden's weakness, but at that time, he WAS the weakest candidate and the one who needed to be reported on. Now that he is gone from the race, there has been a clear switch to reporting on Trump's issues as well. Maybe not perfect timing, but hardly a violation of journalistic standards.
Jon I suspect that we are pretty much in agreement. I have dealt with the press in many parts of the world. My personal conclusion is that if something looks, walks, and quacks like a duck, then most likely it is a duck.
Assessing facts for my 1960 book NASSER’S NEW EGYPT: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS was a ducky experience. My Foreign Service political reporting from Congo and Chile sharply separated factual analysis with personal opinion.
On occasion my opinion was spot on. At other times, not. But my readers could read my factual analysis and draw their own conclusions.
Jon You are a glutton for ‘punishment’ In 1954 I took a verbal message from Nasser to David Ben-Gurion, with whom I lunched and spent an afternoon.
My book, published 1960, was banned by Nasser and featured by The Economist.
I stayed away from discussing personalities, since, at 25, I thought this could distract from my analysis. When I was at Nasser’s home discussing the genesis of the ‘revolution,’ he told me “See Anwar on that. He has nothing to do.”
That’s how I got to spent time at Anwar Sadat’s home. I got to know someone who went to jail with Anwar.
It was a challenge to research when followed by two Egyptian security agencies. On my tapped telephone, I created Mustafa Osmosis, who was always doing something strange.
Once I invited an Egyptian security colonel,who was on my case, for dinner that night. after he declined, I expressed regret, saying that Mustafa would be there. He looked stunned. Had he been listening to my taped conversations?
I suggest that you read the concluding chapter of my book. By then I began to have a more cohesive sense that is not reflected in the individual chapters.
Well Jon, it is the "job" of forensic psychiatrists. Regardless, you do not have to be Dr. Bandy X. Lee to understand that trump's Sunday words were not 'opinion' but, the sinking psychopathy of a dangerous person.
You do not have to be a professional to call it out. I thought, Stephen King's analysis of trump's Sunday words was spot on. True, Stephen is an expert on horror but,
I wouldn't listen to Stephen King's opinions if he was the last person who could still write. He is a FICTION writer and has never that I know of provided factual information in a non-fiction form that was of any interest whatsoever. Nor would I listen to George Clooney, who I think is a very smart man but with no credentials as a journalist. He has a right to express his opinion (as does King) but it is just that, and right now, I am seeking facts from which to draw my OWN opinions, not the opinions of talking heads (including those on MSNBC and/or FOX SNOOZE).
And insists Kamala do in-depth interviews, to which I say, when Trump does them, sans Fox or OEN, then maybe she will. Until then, MSM, just know you’re irrelevant!
ES Perhaps Trump can’t do new conferences because the FACT CHECKERS UNION demands combat pay to cover his bloviations. They are checking their records to find when Trump last made a factually accurate statement.
C'mon Wheelock, if our country was in the ditch "the media" would be on a different tack. Other than grocery prices along with steel and repair-shop rates making life difficult for regular folks.., this country has never been greater. So, the media capitalizes on what pays their wages: The Trump Comedy. It's where the money is.
Madrusky I agree that are country, in this convoluted world, is pretty great. BUT bad news captures the headlines sand listener/watcher interest.
A headline 954 PLANES FLEW SAFELY ACROSS THE ATLANTIC YESTERDAY would be a yawner. My basic complaint is bias in ‘reporting.’ President Biden got pummeled with the ‘age factor,’ while Trump, a few years younger and clearly without all his marbles, tended to be overlooked. Now with a younger Democratic team, Trump is more of a daily target because of what’s he says.
To be completely fair here, no one ever questioned Biden on his "facts". What was questioned is his ability to speak understandably. Trump has always been completely understandable, even when what he says is nonsensical. There is a big difference between understandability and speaking nonsense. The concern with Biden was his ability to speak in a way that let you know he was able to communicate what he was thinking to us clearly. Trump has always been able to do that, but of course sadly what he communicates is nonsensical. And the journalistic media has ALWAYS been critical of that (I can point to dozens of articles all across the media where Trump is fact checked and called repeatedly a liar). But having Biden unable to communicate clearly at all was a much more serious issue, especially as it was clearly sinking the Democratic party (and thus the country). Frankly, I think it took bravery for journalists to FOCUS on that and not worry about Trump for a short time, until the rest of the country took notice and started to demand that he step aside.
Should we want the same for Trump? In my opinion, ABSOLUTELY NOT! Trump is the BEST person Harris can be running against because the contrasts are clear and easy to see. If Trump WAS to step aside, and be replaced by, who, Vance? Haley? Whoever, it would make Harris' job that much harder and frankly, my personal view is I want Harris to WIN. Only after that happens will I call for Trump to walk away.
As a retired union activist, I keep hearing the unspoken word that unites all union members, and, if we think about it, all of us: Solidarity. Solidarity across racial and religious and gender and even class lines. I may have heard it elsewhere, but Victory in Unity seems like an appropriate motto to me.
Exactly. We need to talk more about what solidarity is. Families fail without it. Societies fail without it. Liberty worthy of the name is not possible without solidarity.
Tyrants demand conformity, which is way different.
Solidarity would be even stronger if the powers that be weren't allowing the brutal slaughter of innocents in Gaza to continue. Call it what it is. Genocide. This is not Israel, it is Netanyahu and his band or zealots, just like Trump and his Christian Nationalists. I pray Harris pivots away from Biden's policy of "blanket support" for "blanket bombing."
The Convention is starting.
School is starting.
The Solidarity is about to be tested Hard.
How to walk the tightrope between AIPAC's powerful representation of Israel in our national politics combined with the RW Jewish billionaires in cahoots with the Oligarchy,
while maintaining our professed respect for international law and equality before the law?
Biden is failing. Will Harris do better?
For the sake of the Palestinians under Israeli control, I pray.
Heather has got exactly correct the human and community decency Kamala and Tim target.
We need to recall this good, rich history, as Heather here does -- and to which Kamala and Tim harken.
We can put it all in perspective, thanks to other history -- such as a book out now which adds the longer perspective of what today's U.S.’s most rancid billionaires and their Republican toadies have ever aimed at.
It’s William Hogeland’s “The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding.”
Fact is, for over 300 years what’s now our billionaire classes have campaigned and organized to hurt workers, artisans, immigrants, and the homeless or near homeless. Before 1775, 1776 and war with military forces of the royal crown, as Hogeland tells it, the landed gentry used public sentiment against British injustice to deflect from their own predations. It’s just been endemic to all our history, including the laws and government agencies letting the rich succor themselves by slavery.
Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo, Tucker, Clarence, the entire Heritage Project 2025, and the orange felon? Such callow nihilists abounded in the days of the founders, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and MLK Jr. But we had the good figures, those Heather cites here -- and from 1862 and the beginning of our land grant education system, to 1971 and the Powell memo, we had perhaps our greatest instruments for all Heather, Kamala, Tim, and many good others would nurture.
We still do, in many ways. That's why they've been able to withstand William Bennet to "no child left behind" to Moms of Liberty somewhat intact.
Now it's time for the US to learn from Other nations re education. No more navel gazing. For better or for worse, we don't need a reboot, we need a rebuild.
Somewhat intact, but riddled with wounds from the institutions that they depend on for support. My parents were not educated, but they made sure that all eight of us knew the value of an education. We did and we are.
At the K-12 level, kick out all standardized testing and put all decisions in the hands of the actual teachers. Humanities could occupy central place in addition to all courses.
Teachers themselves alone decide books and other materials to use -- no public officials, no admin, no bureaucrats, no corporate reps for any giant corporate textbook packagers.
In higher ed, key personal literacy, so students continuously write essays, improving skills for quoting others and their personal concerns, in the room, across campus, and in other departments with analogously apt issues (quoting directly, indirectly students as well as instructors).
An article in Mpls Star Tribune Sunday interviews Tim Walz' former Mankato students. He made learning fun and showed compassion for downtrodden students such as the gays. He taught social studies and geography encouraging students to read up on current events something the whole country needs more of now.
The Finns got the best public schools in the world, cameron, when they
1) kicked out the standardized testing, and
2) made it a rule to look for and hire only the best teachers graduating from college. And then they gave all power to the best. Not heaps of money. Just the respect that everyone has for that intangible thing we call the best.
I'm now reading the Anthony Doerr novel, "All the Light We Cannot See." It's amazing for the many, many, splendid, marvelous intangibles -- so many odd details, surprises, wonders in people, in life.
Our vulgar (the billionaires and cult hungry) want to systematize everything. Put numbers on all. Make life linear only, mechanical, replicable, interchangeable, boxed, packaged.
The best teachers see things in people, in life, such as Tim Walz's students knew he saw in them. Such as Anthony Doerr or any decent novelist creates.
Your idea in a country of 350 million people is nonsensical sorry. The variation in teachers for the number of students that need education is huge and there is no way a system which leaves it all up to the teachers will ever work. There needs to be some level of standards that teachers must adhere to or in a few years you will ask me back here complaining about how students are being screwed based on which teacher is assigned to them. Some teachers will be great, others okay, others awful. It will never work and pointing to a Scandinavian country with a population less than California is not a good example to use.
". . . some level of standards that teachers must adhere to."
Come on, Jon, you really dismiss all teachers as incapable of standards themselves?
What? You need J. D. Vance or the orange felon to dictate standards to them? Clarence? A bunch of high finance whiz kids also working for Putin? The cretins of standardized testing who imagine no life other than the numbered, mechanical, and packaged? The algorithm ghouls of social media selling only most crass sensationalism?
Really, Jon, by your own total dismissal of teachers don't you underline the bottom line to which most schools have already sunk?
Phil-and connecting classrooms with communities through service learning would really help us to build. The schools now are set up to serve employers who want to maintain an uninformed and docile workforce motivated only by salary levels.
This right here; the historical perspective putting the present in context is what makes LFAA so powerful. I appreciate the political documentation for future historians, and this is what the meat of the Letter gives us.
To my mind, this is one of the very best and on-point pieces you've written for this remarkable series of thoughtful, intelligent and meaningful essays. Thank you for providing us with the backstory and context for important current events.
You continue to bring light to areas that appear to be dark, threatening and dangerous, and in doing so you reassure and enlighten us so that we can understand the present and look toward a brighter future with confidence. That's a very rare ability, and is so very much appreciated.
Your letters of late seem even more deep rooted in your passion for democracy, if that’s possible, and are exceptional. I was stunned to see that in the 1870s someone had also claimed that corporations are people under the 14th Amendment, raising the idea that now in the 21st century has come to fruition as an albatross around our necks.
"....true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down. It’s based on who you lift up.” Biden does it for Harris. Now Harris does it for Walz. The entire country benefits!
"This election can be more than a story of two aging presidents. It can be a story of two younger Vice Presidents: Mike Pence and Kamala Harris. Trump already says Pence belongs in Jail (as recorded in the New York Times six days ago). Biden still has a chance to say that Harris belongs in the White House. Biden helps Obama become the first black president. Biden now has the opportunity...to help Harris become the first black woman President."
Beyond truth is another dimension - a dimension of lies, a dimension of treachery, a dimension of utter unreality. You're moving into a land of both shadow and abject corruption, of bribes and cronyism. You've just crossed over into the Republican Zone.
Well, further fallen anyway. I used to admire what little I knew of Musk until his craziness around the group of students, perilously trapped in a cave. Musk sent am utterly useless submersible and was childishly miffed when the rescue team said they could not use it (the passage was way too narrow and twisty). In response Musk charged the heroic leader of the rescue with pedophilia, a claim he was forced to withdraw. A typically infantile attack from a tyrant insecure in his own delusion of entitlement. "Off with their heads".
Absolutely! We first heard of him in Australia in 2017 when a huge electrical storm knocked over the power grid in South Australia - long story short, Musk tweeted "If my Tesla big battery isn't installed and working within 100 days of contract signature, you get it free. Serious enough for you?". And it was. There's much more to it, not all as good, but you can read all about it on the internet if you're really curious. Those of us who applauded this daring young man, stopped applauding the mad-scientist mini-submarine slanderer. And Lucifer fell.
I watched JFK murdered on tv. I saw RFK murdered in pictures in the paper the day he was taken. I heard on the tv about MLK and saw pictures in the paper the day after he was taken. I suffered through Viet Nam with my brother there. I watched black children attacked by police dogs on the tv. And I saw pictures of what happened on The Bridge to the black women and men who marched for civil rights in the paper the day after. I watched MLK's famous speech on the tv. So, for me, having suffered through the Nixon/Reagan/Bush's criminal violence, seeing Kamala and Tim speak to 10s of thousands of people in rallies where thousands of people were turned away for safety, I feel a sense of calm I do not remember having before. I think young people will make this happen as they do not tolerate anything people in power do to violate their sense of fairness. Social media has made them strong together. I am grateful I lived long enough to see this transition begin and hope to watch our country rise to its potential. What I am most pleased about is Tim's second in command will be a Governor as an Indigenous woman who will follow her conscience. It's time to right these wrongs and I am hopeful Kamala and Tim will make it so.
This is so exciting! Thank you for describing it this way. It feels like a breath of fresh air blowing across the country, uniting us not only in joy, but in purpose: to stand up for each other. Bring it!
Thank you, Dr. Richardson, for such an uplifting history lesson on the switching of ideas and ideals of the Democratic and Republican Parties. Had he been alive today. Abraham Lincoln would undoubtedly be the leader of today's Democratic Party.
What a brilliant moment.... Tim Walzing with Kamala! The emotional temperature in the US soared to a new high! America sorely needed this moment... And in the sunlight of the coming together, Donald shrank..
A friend just commented on Facebook how hopeless she felt--like we will never be made whole. This is my response:
We will heal, at least in good measure. It will take time and there will be scars. But the progress, once we have everything in place, will be undeniable.
The word courage is directly related to the word "Heart"
Take heart--a cool breeze is blowing through the body politic. What Joe Biden planted will bear fruit under Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
The forty year dystopian march through the neoliberal mire is nearly done.
I have a feeling we will find out what color some of these ostensibly red states are once the regular citizens have enough cohesion to rise up and take back the American dream.
Like Jean and Ally, I find your words inspiring, but I must add a warning when you say that "the neoliberal mire is nearly done." We may chase it off the stage or even underground for a while, but remember, Project 2025 took decades to be an immediate threat and they will just change the numbers in years to come. Jefferson had it right when he said that, if we expect to keep our liberty, we must exert eternal vigilance.
As Yogi said "It ain't over till it's over"....and in this case, the season never ends...but we can win this game...and make Trump...OVER...
And to Heather’s historical diatribe, I say, “Wow… Holy Shit.” This is the most profound and powerful work I have read.
Wow. Truth to Power.
This should be offered to the New York Times editorial department. Or sent to every household in the country. Let’s raise funds and get this sent snail mail to very damn address in the country. I will copy it and distribute it with my local get out the vote group.
Hi Bill, please check out my substack for today...Pogo provides the headline
Yes, very best to date! A mastercalss in a few mighty paragraphs!
Those who aim to dominate never go away, but can be pushed back, as they have been from time to time.
"...the true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down. It’s based on who you lift up.”
THIS is where we're going. And how lovely it is to cry tears of hope and joy these days, yes?
Or help to.
Kamala Harris says Walz was “raised by a community of folks who understood that the true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down. It’s based on who you lift up.” Maybe so. But then, why did Gov. Walz create a 1-800 snitch line so that people could report on their neighbors who were gathering for the holidays? He may be popular in the Twin Cities but not in small-town Minnesota where small businesses were devastated by his 18 months of draconian lockdown policies. Please, let’s not idealize authoritarians.
The tension between labor and capital (i.e., oligarchs) has existed from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Marx saw the tension and Lincoln commented on it: "Labor is the superior to capital because without labor there would be no capital." [paraphrasing] Reagan launched the war on labor unions here in the U.S. Reagan's legacy is a black mark on American history.
Richard-Don’t forget about Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 when laborers revolted against capitalists. This rebellion is what led us to race based slavery and gave capitalists the mechanism to keep us divided. Let’s hope that this election will give us the chance to come together as Americans so we can overcome racism and win a victory over greed.
Not just unions but democracy itself, and pushed plutocracy in it's place. If we really believe in government of the people, by the people, for the people, that who should we blame if government is less than perfect. Elon Musk can do spectacular things because he more money than some nations do, and he can act like a tyrant (such as cutting off satellite access to Ukraine in an defensive attack on Russia just because he can, and chooses to. People complained of "Robber Barons" in the Gilded Age, for Reagan, those were the good old days. Reagan loathed environmental protection, and much else supporting the "common good". We are living with the consequences, as will our posterity. You can draw a pretty straight path from Reagan's contempt for democracy to Project 2025 and Trump.
Loved by the oligarchs and others on the right as the "Great Communicator", he destroyed the safety net for so many marginalized people, communicating contempt for the people he should have been serving.
Yes, he destroyed the national controllers' union first thing, and got away with it.
Back in the day, I was a Reagan supporter. That is until I realized who he was actually working for, the wealthy. My favorite article on Reagan, because it paints such a vivid word picture is Thom Hartmann's 2014 Salon piece, "Reaganomics killed America's middle class, This country's fate was sealed when our government slashed taxes on the rich back in 1980."
The lead paragraphs paint the picture:
"There's nothing "normal" about having a middle class. Having a middle class is a choice that a society has to make, and it's a choice we need to make again in this generation, if we want to stop the destruction of the remnants of the last generation's middle class.
Despite what you might read in the Wall Street Journal or see on Fox News, capitalism is not an economic system that produces a middle class. In fact, if left to its own devices, capitalism tends towards vast levels of inequality and monopoly. The natural and most stable state of capitalism actually looks a lot like the Victorian England depicted in Charles Dickens' novels.
At the top there is a very small class of superrich. Below them, there is a slightly larger, but still very small, "middle" class of professionals and mercantilists - doctor, lawyers, shop-owners - who help keep things running for the superrich and supply the working poor with their needs. And at the very bottom there is the great mass of people - typically over 90 percent of the population - who make up the working poor. They have no wealth - in fact they're typically in debt most of their lives - and can barely survive on what little money they make.
So, for average working people, there is no such thing as a middle class in "normal" capitalism. Wealth accumulates at the very top among the elites, not among everyday working people. Inequality is the default option.
You can see this trend today in America. When we had heavily regulated and taxed capitalism in the post-war era, the largest employer in America was General Motors, and they paid working people what would be, in today's dollars, about $50 an hour with benefits. Reagan began deregulating and cutting taxes on capitalism in 1981, and today, with more classical "raw capitalism," what we call "Reaganomics," or "supply side economics," our nation's largest employer is WalMart and they pay around $10 an hour.
This is how quickly capitalism reorients itself when the brakes of regulation and taxes are removed - this huge change was done in less than 35 years.
The only ways a working-class "middle class" can come about in a capitalist society are by massive social upheaval - a middle class emerged after the Black Plague in Europe in the 14th century - or by heavily taxing the rich."
https://www.salon.com/2014/04/19/reaganomics_killed_americas_middle_class_partner/
You're so right, but remember that modern technology has long since had a commanding presence which anchors so much of the national economy and infrastructure. As such governments in turn must manage those interests to the social common good.
Of, by and for the people.
the trick being just who "the people" represent on divisive issues. The "social common good" is similarly challenged too. Even if Harris wins, god willing, she'll struggle to "unite" the electorate. Biden's unity pleas fell on many a deaf ear. Polarization is a killer of democracies. To wit, the rise of fascist and communist parties across Europe a while back.
People often prefer the overly-simple answer.
This struggle has roots in the Bible!
And beneath that, human nature; Jekyll and Hyde.
Betsy Smith, to reinforce your warning; this may be a long read. I pulled information for. number of sources:
Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Duke professor Nancy MacLean's 2017 book, "Democracy in Chains" names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority.
In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us.
Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into “makers” and “takers.” And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy.
Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Mike Pence as Vice President, a longtime loyalist the cause, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, "Democracy in Chains" tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.
Duke historian Nancy MacLean plunged in, and she read through boxes and drawers full of papers that included personal correspondence between Buchanan and billionaire industrialist Charles Koch. That’s when she had an amazing realization: here was the intellectual linchpin of a stealth revolution currently in progress...Buchanan, MacLean notes, was incensed at what he saw as a move toward socialism and deeply suspicious of any form of state action that channels resources to the public. Why should the increasingly powerful federal government be able to force the wealthy to pay for goods and programs that served ordinary citizens and the poor?... MacLean observes that Buchanan saw society as a cutthroat realm of makers (entrepreneurs) constantly under siege by takers (everybody else) His own language was often more stark, warning the alleged “prey” of “parasites” and “predators” out to fleece them...She notes that he took care to use economic and political precepts, rather than overtly racial arguments, to make his case, which nonetheless gave cover to racists who knew that spelling out their prejudices would alienate the country...Buchanan wanted a private governing elite of corporate power that was wholly released from public accountability...Charles Koch, who became interested in his (Buchanan's) work in the ‘70s and sought the economist’s input in promoting “Austrian economics” in the U.S. and in advising the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank... Koch, whose mission was to save capitalists like himself from democracy...By the 1990s, Koch realized that Buchanan’s ideas — transmitted through stealth and deliberate deception, as MacLean amply documents — could help take government down through incremental assaults that the media would hardly notice. The tycoon knew that the project was extremely radical, even a “revolution” in governance, but he talked like a conservative to make his plans sound more palatable.
MacLean details how partnered with Koch, Buchanan’s outpost at George Mason University was able to connect libertarian economists with right-wing political actors and supporters of corporations like Shell Oil, Exxon, Ford, IBM, Chase Manhattan Bank, and General Motors. Together they could push economic ideas to the public through media, promote new curricula for economics education, and court politicians in nearby Washington, D.C.... To put the success into perspective, MacLean points to the fact that Henry Manne, whom Buchanan was instrumental in hiring, created legal programs for law professors and federal judges which could boast that by 1990 two of every five sitting federal judges had participated. “40 percent of the U.S. federal judiciary,” writes MacLean, “had been treated to a Koch-backed curriculum.”
Peter Temin, former head of the MIT economics department, INET grantee, and author of The Vanishing Middle Class, as well as economist Gordon Lafer of the University of Oregon and author of The One Percent Solution, have provided eye-opening analyses of where America is headed and why. MacLean adds another dimension to this dystopian big picture, acquainting us with what has been overlooked in the capitalist right wing’s playbook... that many liberals have missed the point of strategies like privatization. Efforts to “reform” public education and Social Security are not just about a preference for the private sector over the public sector, she argues. You can wrap your head around those, even if you don’t agree. Instead, MacLean contends, the goal of these strategies is to radically alter power relations, weakening pro-public forces and enhancing the lobbying power and commitment of the corporations that take over public services and resources, thus advancing the plans to dismantle democracy and make way for a return to oligarchy. The majority will be held captive so that the wealthy can finally be free to do as they please, no matter how destructive...The oligarchs require a government with tremendous new powers so that they can bypass the will of the people. This, as MacLean points out, requires greatly expanding police powers “to control the resultant popular anger.” The spreading use of pre-emption by GOP-controlled state legislatures to suppress local progressive victories such as living wage ordinances is another example of the right’s aggressive use of state power.
The oligarchs require a government with tremendous new powers so that they can bypass the will of the people. This, as MacLean points out, requires greatly expanding police powers “to control the resultant popular anger.” The spreading use of pre-emption by GOP-controlled state legislatures to suppress local progressive victories such as living wage ordinances is another example of the right’s aggressive use of state power... “To value liberty for the wealthy minority above all else and enshrine it in the nation’s governing rules, as Calhoun and Buchanan both called for and the Koch network is achieving, play by play, is to consent to an oligarchy in all but the outer husk of representative form.”
"Nobody can say we weren’t warned."
“Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America” by Nancy MacLean Viking June 13, 2017
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Chains-History-Radical-Stealth/dp/1101980966/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Thank you.. Elon Musk awakened me as no other force prior (somehow, it's become blatant). And he allies with Trump..Trump and the GOP as the means. It's been stealthy and slow in coming. Money certainly speaks. But it also enslaves. The goal, stated or unstated is to make slaves of the rest of us and before we realize it. Look at Russia today. But this realization will be for the few, not that I am despondent now with Harris/Walz plain talk. The choice is clear- the choice to push back on all the fronts.
All money spends the same, but some many purchases (such as of a $COTUS judge) are beyond most peoples means. Not all money is collected the same. Some is "made" completely honorably, some less honorably, and some exploitative. A blacksmith made money differently than an enslaver. A nurse makes money differently than a mafioso, or a billionaire who pays no tax.
Bob W-Thanks for these details from MacLean’s book. When Americans realize that our system has been intentionally set up to favor capitalists over labor maybe they’ll wake up to the Ds cry for “freedom” and opportunity for everyone.
Large scale organizations are inherently based on modern technology and the ability to organized and co-ordinate, and distribute. For business and much more. So what principles of ownership do we wish to apply, considering the American mantra for "getting ahead" and typical human ambitions. That inevitably involves dominance in one form or another.
That was certainly true in the Gilded Age, and political corruption was rife. Between social movements and progressive elected leaders we crafted a "New Deal". Reagan used media to discredit it; and we are. What rhymes with"Gilded Age"?
Gilded Cage?
Yes; and that's what billionaires are building on islands and mountainsides to weather the destruction they are unleashing. I was pretty unclear with my question since I was (unconventionally) thinking of rhyme in history, not of verse. In that sense, though every era is also unique, I see parallels between "robber barons" of the 19th Century and the role of some of the billionaires of today. In between eras, while their influence was forced to ebb, were successful efforts to expand economic, political, and social equality.
Yes, but what's the counterargument?
Buchanan “knew that spelling out their prejudices would alienate the country.” Making our case involves spelling out our prejudice because it will serve to galvanize the country in that our prejudice is to abide by the moral “treat others the way you would want to be treated if the shoe was on the other foot” principle, the effect of which is to abstain from Buchanan’s immoral “do unto others before they do unto you” principle.
I suggest we do more than spell it out. I suggest we shout it out.
Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are alike, and that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. In addition to being true of families, it is also true of individuals, communities, businesses, political parties, and nations.
Those who adopt the immoral principle might experience short-term pleasure at the expense of innocent victims, but the inevitable long-term outcome is unnecessary suffering for everyone, including themselves. Those who adopt the moral principle inevitably experience short-term suffering, but it’s the necessary suffering that results from being fully human (if you want easy, be a flatworm), and the long-term benefit is joy, a word we seem to be hearing a lot lately.
My mother used to tell me that those who set out to intentionally hurt others will wind up getting hurt worse in the long run. I have seen that to be true with members of our extended family. To rephrase my gentle mother's words, "Karma is a bitch, and she will take you out!"
I love the "Mind your own damn business" mantra from Governor Walz. He doesn't need to talk about abortion rights or "reproductive freedom." Everyone knows what he means, and his statement is LONG overdue!
Those who adopt the immoral principle need a good discussion about what is moral. The immoral can be rationalized to be moral. It is and has been. So we are talking about something we assume is universally understood when it is not. Alternatively people may know what is moral, but it is buried, perhaps deeply...and again rationalized.
You hit the nail on the head. So, based on Aristotle idea that the more you know, the more you know how much you don’t know, I started thinking about your reply, and ended up with the following.
One of Maya Angelou’s famous quotes: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Because I believe Maya, I believe that Trump will put himself and his family ahead of the country and put himself ahead of his family. Likewise, I believe that Joe Biden will put the country ahead of his family and put his family ahead of himself.
Every individual has—and is moral within—an unconscious circle of concern. Intuition tells us to expect a too-small circle in children. And intuition tells us to expect to be included in an adult’s circle, except experience too often teaches us otherwise. When a child has a too-small circle, we call that immaturity. We don’t always think of an adult with a too-small circle as being immature, but they’re showing us that’s who they are.
Wisdom is another name for maturity. Joe Biden is wise. I assume Donald Trump was born caring about his mother, and that it’s plausible to think he may be less mature now than he was then.
Joe Biden disappointed when he first decided to run again after a period of indecision that kept others from running. And we went along with that even though many thought he was too old. And the charge "ageism" popped into discussion as if age could not be disqualifying. Well it is not in and of itself but aging is individual. We began to see Biden aging before our eyes; that he could not campaign effectively and was in fact losing. Still he hung on. Things came to a head after the debate of 6/27/24. Still he hung on. Biden had to be pressured to bow out. To this day he is not really accepting that he had to bow out because he could not win the presidency, and he was not going to be functioning fully as a POTUS needs to for the next four years. Joe Biden was not wise about himself and not acting in the best interests of the country until there was enough pressure.
He's been a good president in many ways and done many good things especially given the opposition. He has been good domestically except rarely. I fault him on being too fearful to give Ukraine what it needed early on to push Putin out. I also fault him on being too acquiescent with re Israel. We are way beyond the point where our military aid should have ended after we so politely asked Netanyahu to stop the slaughter in Gaza. I won't get into the particulars which I presume you know.
So I don't feel Joe Biden was putting the country ahead of his own personal need to save it (perversely).
I'm not sure I agree with Tolstoy on that one. All families are in some ways unique, and in some ways the same, and if there are patterns of choices that more reliably bring contentment, there must be other choices that pretty reliably bring suffering, over and above the slings and arrows we all are heir to. Perceptive awareness of extended consequences would seem to fall on the plus side, perspicacious tactics and strategy.
Speak loud enough to be heard bu leaving shouting to TFG except when there is a fire, and even then, one can be passionate, yet sufficiently calm and focused. We want professional fire fighters to have that. We need all those in socially extremely consequential roles to have that. Greta Thunberg precociously displayed that, which helped make her so effective.
I think that one of the essential qualities of democratic leadership, grass roots or elected, is to help a mass of people to retain their focus on something that really matters. Keep their eyes on the prize and don't let what is achingly wrong be glossed over. Democratic gathering is voluntary, so this is an exercise in education, not use of force; it may involve disruption but not violence. Not unless it's war, and that tends to be ugly and unpredictable, even when justified.
A just democracy is the hard road, though, as you say, the most rewarding. Callow Mitt Romney mused:
"-- I got to go to the Olympic Games in China. It's pretty impressive over there how quickly they can build things, how productive they are as a society. You should see their airport compared to our airports, their highways, their train systems."
Yup. It is easier to get things done in an autocracy, and that appeals to many. But "consent of the governed"? Democratic herding of cats gets things done too; not so easily, yet while preserving, as best we can, essential liberty.
We are human, and we have the free will, so we get to choose how to act. IMHO, Tolstoy is saying our happiness depends on acting in harmony with our human nature, and we don’t get to choose our genetically inherited human nature.
I would say that “adhering to the moral principle,” “staying attached to reality,” and “acting in harmony with our shared human nature” are different phrases expressing the same meaning. When everyone does, the social system is healthy because we’re all staying attached to the one reality. Likewise, “violating the moral principle,” “being detached from reality,” and “acting at cross purposes with our shared human nature” are different phrases expressing the same meaning. When anyone does, it’s a signal that the social system is unhealthy.
Being delusional is easy in the short term because it’s easy to create chaos. Being rational is easier in the long term because, in a healthy social system, whenever the system’s parts are in conflict, the conflict is resolved.
Rationality’s short-term challenge in an unhealthy system is because the harmonious signal gets drown out by noise of discord. As Russell Ackoff put it, “It is far better to do the right thing wrong than do the wrong thing right.” So, Greta Thunberg kept doing the right thing wrong until she found a way to cut through the noise, aka doing the right thing right. That’s where her exceptional intelligence was an asset because it helps to get there faster.
Mr. Smith was popular went he went to Washington because he was unsophisticated, and he was successful because he was mature. Sarah Palin was popular because she was unsophisticated, and she was unsuccessful because she was immature. Mr. Romney is sophisticated and immature. Translation: don’t confuse “sophisticated” with “mature.”
Thank you for this. At last, someone has tied all the ends together to explain the hell-bent meanness of the radical right. That is a huge 'knot' to untangle. Sometimes I fear, no matter how persuasive our president may be, he or she is in the grasp of a monster.
I think the meanness of any sort of fanaticism has to do with malignant narcissism; supremacy; the notion of entitlement to bully others. Tyrants feed that impulse in others to enable their own. Kill one person, go to jail. Kill millions and run a country.
Right you are! I've often thought, when leaders want to go to war, they should joust like Henry VIII. Or debate with each other. But ruthlessly expending 10s of theousands lives of the people is rediculous.
This is such a marvelous compilation . The emerging CHEER needs the eloquence and hard work, the research , not only applauded 👏👏👏 …spread , encompassing this dream we’ve long intended to balance us …and THEM!
Recognizing the covert mess is critical to understanding the road ahead…as lessons ALWAYS DO 😉
This is all brilliant Bob W, and the Substack community. So much leadership is obvious
BRAVO🫶🇺🇸💙
Thank you, Bob. “Democracy in Chains” deserves a thorough read.
For now, I would like to respond to one of the lead ideas in the first paragraph, reaching into the Jim
Crow South with what I believe may be a central question about the influence of Karl Marx’s “Das Capital,” beginning with the former enslavers reaction to Ulysses S. Grant’s “Force Acts.” I would like your thoughts.
“The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did.”
In “Twilight of Democracy,” Anne Applebaum asserts, quite rightly, that planter-billionaires and their colleagues in Congress and on the Supreme Court operated a fully-functioning fascist government in the 1850’s, ideology which has persisted, with varying degrees of power and fringe groups, since the adoption of the Confederacy’s Constitution in 1861, extending into Reconstruction with South’s “Black Codes,” even into the 1930s when the “Southern wing” of Congress blocked the passage of federal anti-lynching legislation.
In his biography of Ulysses S. Grant, Ron Chernov revisited the wanton killing of newly-enfranchised blacks in broad daylight in the 1870s, as they were standing in line to vote in South Carolina. (Bamberg County, near Walterborough, Colleton County, iwhich has its own history of anti-federalist, white nationalist violence harking back to S.C.’s nullification crisis, and the rhetoric of S.C. politician Barnwell Rhett in 1828.)
In Grant’s effort to subdue the violence in S.C., he asked Congress to establish what became the “U.S.. Department of Justice” whereby Grant could dispatch U.S. militia to stop the rash of killings. Incensed at the government’s interference with local self-appointed authorities, the Southern States decried federal taxation supporting post-Civil War amendments, suddenly overturning the self-interest and authority of former ruling class in the Confederacy.
“Das Capital,” 1867, Karl Marx’s critical analysis of capitalism, further fueled the fire in post-Civil War America. Read in German by intellectuals here and abroad, it was translated into English in the 1880’s (gifted to Darwin by Marx, 1872). Disseminated widely among American powerful elites, Marx’s text gave rise to attacking “equity” and “fairness” policy as “socialist” or “communist” or Marxist,” i.e., un-American, from that time until today.
I can't speak directly to the influence of Karl Marx’s “Das Capital.”
Across time, we have seen this constant struggle between the plutocratic class and "we the people"; the 1800s leading up to the civil war; the 1890s up to the depression; and from the Reagan years to today. Interesting how Dr. Cox wove this fabric in her 2020 book, "How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America." The underlying belief that a few wealthy, primarily white men, are entitled to run the country; they know what is best! As in the 1948 election, the people must turn out to fulfill their democratic civic responsibility to prevent this take over and revision of our democracy.
Interesting also how the KKK has morphed into various right wing hate groups who are trying to assert their minority view on the rest of us, much like the extreme religious right groups, e.g., the New Apostolic Reformation who believe “Christians have a God-given right to rule all earthly institutions.”
OMG. YOU HAVE DONE A GREAT SERVICE TO INFORM US WHO READ THE COMMENTS. THANK YOU
Thank you for the long comment. It explains what I have observed over the last 50+ years I’ve been watching politics. I go back to the McCarthy hearings and knew as a child it was not going away. By the time of Reagan it was obvious to me that evil was behind this and it was creeping into education. I had never heard of Buchanan, and I did know of Koch. Thanks for telling me about Nancy MacLean’s book. So I’m not just a paranoid old cranky stubborn woman who reads books. At least not paranoid. And I will read this book.
Well done, Bob, and thank you!
Thanks, it's in many formats on Amazon.
Bob W.— thank you for that “long read”. It summarized something that we as Americans need to be apprised of. It’s not enough just to be aware of doctrines like Project 2025, we need to see a background of where this way of thinking took root in our modern history.
I intend to purchase “Democracy in Chains”.
Please do not buy it (or anything) from Amazon. I'm guessing that Powell's in Portland, OR, has it, or can order it for you. CLAMS, our Cape-wide library system, has copies (although, unfortunately, none in large print), so see if your local library does, and if they don't, ask them either to buy a copy or to get one for you using inter-library loan.
Bob do you think this is a conspiracy? Is this saying there is one? . I think it's more a community (including overtime) of interests that evolve,that has built. I shared your above with s/o and the response was: grains of truth, but a conspiracy theory ( in the negative sense).
"Eternal vigilance" is the right expression! Since the beginning of recorded history, oligarchs or aristocrats have held sway over people more often than not. Democracy has been the exception rather than the rule, and a democracy that gives a stake to all citizens, regardless of gender or origin, even more so. The forces of oligarchy never sleep and are always ready to seize back what they believe is theirs.
"Since the beginning of recorded history," is the right phrase. I fell in love with "The Dawn of Everything," a wonderful archeological/anthropological study, which gave ample examples of early humanity being communal and democratic. I take heart that the trend toward authoritarianism and greed is only about 6000-8000 years old! It is not necessarily humankind's preferred paradigm.
I just ordered "The Dawn of Everything . . ." Another MUST read is HCR's "How the South Won the Civil War." It should be a text book in high schools and colleges. Simply put: it is brilliant. And it goes on and on and on. The oligarchs vs. the rest of us. It's at the heart of it all, only now the oligarchs have new tools to cement their hold on us: mass media.
Thanks! I hope you enjoy "Dawn." Anything by Heather is a marvel. Older societies were inclusive of women. Not to be a female chauvinist, but it occurs to me that a fatal flaw of the radical right is its emphasis on white male supremacy and its subjugation of women and BIPOC. What a symbol in Kamala Harris. Go, Kamala! Tim is the best of men, too. P.S. So is Joe!
As a 77 yr old woman who fought hard for all the rights we enjoy today, I often shake my head and wonder what is going on in the heads of right wing women. Why look stupid when they’re smart? Not all of course, but the vast majority of women I’ve met in my life are awesome smart in many ways.
We were fools to let that coup slip past. I was shocked when I heard on the radio that the "fairness doctrine" had been rescinded when I never even knew that was under consideration. I knew it spelled trouble, though I could not imagine how much.
Replaced by the "Dollar Directive", the fairness doctrine was the rational glue that held our society together. We desperately need a reinstatement of this Very Important Doctrine, before the MAGGOTS start shooting..
not sure what to say to that, Hope, modern governments across the board have conspired, if that's the right word for it, to enhance wealth inequality.
Indeed. Some days, I hold my breath.
And I think what sometimes looks like a conspiracy (not that there are no obvious conspiracies to capture power, such as "stop the steal") are choices for which we pay far too little attention to for overall and extended consequences; incentives and inhibitors that we do or don't put forward or do or we don't tolerate, that shapes behaviors of individuals that in sum, act together.
Yes, fabulous book.
The shortcut to riches is to subjugate others. "St. Peter doncha call me 'cause I can't go; I owe my soul to the company store" is a reference to history.
Perhaps an alternative ending ‘sleazier what they have not yet stolen’!
I agree with what you say. T8ump is the symptom, and Project 2025 will linger and fester even if MAGA is defeated for the time being. It is not specific to t*ump, it is there for the next would-be dictator to seize and use if ever given a position of power.
CRUCIAL
Re: Vigilance
I generally respect the journalism of the Washington Post. That said, Bezos' putting Murdoch dirty tricksters in charge seems to be seeping into WaPo's 2024 coverage. I am not cancelling my subscription, but I am writing to their Newsroom editors, Corrections, and Fact Checker.
matea.gold@washpost.com
corrections@washpost.com
Glenn.Kessler@washpost.com
For instance this headline which indicates the tone of the entire article:
"Harris’s short but Trump-influenced Senate tenure"
Seriously? Speaker Mike Johnson's has had a short but Trump-influenced House tenure. There is a difference.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/12/kamala-harris-senator-bold-statement-thin-record/
Also in reporting on the unauthorized release of Trump campaign docs there was no mention that they might have been leaked. Yes, Microsoft reported an unspecified Iran hack of a campaign but in speaking of the docs Trump pointed to "low-esteem leakers." His administration was a sieve. Also the article quotes Chris Krebs as an authority on hacking, but fails to note that the former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the United States Department of Homeland Security was fired by Pres. Trump for contradicting Trump's claims of election fraud in the 2020 election.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/11/trump-hack-iran-elections/
I agree! and there was nothing more powerful than the presidency of the FG and his ilk to shake us awake. Project 25, spells out the ideology of the poison that aims to take down a government whose founding document begins with…”We the People of the United States…”
It will be an ongoing battle no doubt about it.
Say amen sister.
Robert🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏😀
Correct, well said. The process will strengthen, the road is defined even more and broadens the scope of cohesion. Balance is emerging, hope is rising, renewing our spirit with the lift of grace in action, it the perfume of success and the world hears the sighs of relief.
💙💙VOTE BLUE, END.THIS.COUP.💙💙
Annabel, I was born and raised in Minnesota and though I have lived elsewhere, I’ve always returned. The reason is simple: people like Tim Walz are everywhere here. All other things being equal, being around caring, concerned folks offered “insulation” against the madness that seemed to overtake us in the Reagan years and thereafter.
I was at an Indivisible event today writing postcards in support of a state candidate for MN House of Representatives. The candidate stopped by, thanked us profusely for our help, and shared a brief story.
Julie has been out door knocking since February. When Biden stepped down two weeks ago, she said things suddenly changed. More folks answered their doors last week eager to chat, including an elderly man. She asked him if he would be voting in the primary this Tuesday. What he said then surprised her; “yes I will. And I will vote for Democrats for the first time. I voted for Trump twice but January 6th was too much. I will vote gladly for Kamala Harris and Tim walz is my kind of Governor.” Julie was still blown away - the district (southern suburbs of Minneapolis) is purple and leans Republican in some neighborhoods.
The healing has started in just two weeks. It will take time, of course, but the joy is very, very real and not limited to one party or the other. The US has always been a work in progress. Harris has repeatedly said that we have yet to live up to the ideals found in our Constitution. But Biden and the Democrats have made real progress. And a functioning democracy requires actions and input from ALL of its citizens. “We’re not going back!”
So let’s do this!
Love to hear this. And there has probably never been a better time to knock on doors!
I read somewhere, not sure who wrote it,
“it’s like America is waking up and deciding not to be in an abusive relationship any longer.”
This instantly resonated with me. 💙🩵💙🩵💙🩵
What needs to happen for healing to truly take place is to remove tRump from the national stage. He is a huge source of toxicity by himself. He needs to be held responsible for his many acts of treason (betrayal of the interests of the US. There are other sources of toxicity. Citizens United, gutting of the Voting Rights Act, SCOTUS immunity opinion, denial of reproductive healthcare, etc. The corrupt members of the SCOTUS need to be held responsible for their corrupt actions. All of this toxicity stems from robber barons who want to hoard all the opportunities and wealth for themselves. Rules for everyone but them. We have to hold the big fish like tRump accountable, not just the smaller fish like tRump lawyer, Jenna Ellis.
trump is a weapon wielded by oligarchs He may be dimly aware of his function (a delivery vehicle of toxicity), but that is irrelevant to him, for the same reason that he is such an ideal weapon: he is profoundly broken. So, I agree literally — both that he must be removed, and that he is big. However, I disagree with the implication that it would be any kind of lethal blow. His removal is an immediate necessity, but it is not sufficient to defeat the Spencers, Mercers, Thiels, Crows, Kochs, Musks, et. al., who pull his strings. And, while he feeds on smaller fish, he is not the top of the food chain. They are.
I have to elevate one of the et. al. to the list of named villains: DeVos.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecause/p/betsy-devos-comes-out-in-favor-of?r=29yw8x&utm_medium=ios
Beautifully said!
I consider Mayor John Giles a bright star emerging from the darkness and a symbol of the healing that is simmering....
Thank you. I find your words inspiring!
I would like to hope you are one of those Floridians trying to get rid of the DeSatan influence.
I would like nothing more than to rid my state of Desatan and Scott and Byron and Rubio…..
Well said!
Please tell your friend, If we can survive the Civil War we can survive anything. It has not been easy...and the wealthy and powerful always try to dominate the politics and politicians. This election is our MOST focused political fight since the Civil War. President Biden said in his CBS interview that this election, defines the next 60 years. I agree. Despair does not win...working a plan, wins.
I was born in 1940 in Uvalde, Texas, one of seven children who lived with our parents in a one-room house with a screened-in porch. The house had no utilities and no plumbing. I remember some very tough times when my mom worried where we'd get $3.23 to pay an electric bill once we had moved to West Texas. But things got better and better. We graduated into the Middle Class. Of the seven children, five of us got college degrees. I went on to get a Ph.D. and a J.D. I was a Republican - until Ronald Reagan. It is because of Reaganomics that there are now 800 wealthy Americans whose wealth is equal to that of one-half of America's population, that is 800 vs. 169,000,000. We now have an oligarchy supported by ill-informed racist white Protestant nationalists. Everything is now on the line as this election is most likely the most important in world history, with democracy here and around the world hanging in the balance.
Annabel, in military parlance (I think, at least in the movie): a mission-critical statement. We need compassion toward the M.A.G.A. base, at least the non-violent part of it and convince these people, primarily through the example we set, that, like one another or not, we are all in this republican experiment together. 🤝
Mercy is the highest form of tolerance and compassion the crowning human virtue. ❤️
Compassion is the highest form of justice and mercy the crowning human charity. ⚖️
The task before us is to enable the M.A.G.A. base, increasingly isolated, to feel safe in understanding that people are not out to take anything from them but that we are committed to making this land better one day at a time and one step at a time. 😇
Ned, I just had a former supervisor post a very offensive post: The back of a pick up that had: "If you should use this (Mens Room sign) but I see you follow my wife or daughter into this (Women's Room) sign, then you are going to need this (Handicap Restroom) sign. I asked the question "So, you support someone following me into the women's restroom and beating me up because they think I'm a guy?" His reply was "you know me better than that". I acknowledged he had been a staunch supporter of me throughout my career (even as other supervisors were not supportive and two actively tried to get me reassigned or fired), but that his meme indicated otherwise to me.
Ally, in fairness to your mentor, I can see myself saying the same thing but meaning something different: namely a separate category for transgenders. That disability symbol would be intended to denote a specific category set aside for a specific constituency, not intending to imply that transgenders or transitioning genders are somehow disabled.
An increasing number of places with individual toilets or plentiful stalls are going non-gender. Locker rooms are a different story. Legitimate questions of fairness in athletic competition do exist and will remain difficult to resolve. The issue will work itself out over a generation or two as the culture catches up; likely to be less than perfect.
P.S., Ally, I sympathize with your feelings. In your position, I would likely have taken the comment as a disparagement for trans-genders and reacted with anger, too.
Ned-I agree with you about being compassionate and having mercy. The MAGAs who represent all economic levels and geographic locations are afraid of losing white privilege because of the “browning of America”. They have to be convinced that living up to America’s ideals involving “unalienable rights”, “freedom”, “justice” and “equality” is not detrimental but good for all of us.
Agree. The solution you propose is hard work. Racism is a telling example for me. I am a racist or, at least, I am prone (almost reflexively) to pre-judgement of Blacks. Either I can justify it or I can try to live up to being the man my parents raised me to be.
To do the latter, I have to dismiss the pre-judgement every time it pops into my wretched little mind, uninvited. In effect, I say from me to me, "Oh, you, again. Stop putting your arm around my shoulder. You are not wanted here."
While I will never extirpate the prejudice, it is sufficiently dulled for me to grasp, albeit imperfectly, the feelings of those dreaded 'coloured others' and view the upcoming 'white' minority in the U.S. as a historical opportunity.
Gina, I agree with a very good friend of mine. Because of the racial tensions in this country, the U.S. is likely the least racist country in the world since the awkward questions and their inevitably conflicting answers are on the table, out in the open.
Yes, we all have our judgemental parts that are components of our "wretched little mind{s}". One thing that we can do, while endeavoring to be self-aware enough to recognize it when it shows up, is acknowledge, then accept and even appreciate that this part is a protector of sorts; or thinks it is; comes from a primitive part of the brain. This takes it's power away and we can then exert conscious choice in the direction of our values. Easier said than done, of course.
The hard work, for me, comes subtle intellectual legerdemains. For example, with racism, using terms like racialism, tribalism, or concrete data of lower test scores.
That is for sure, but it won't happen without us. All of us working and doing all we can to get the despairing to see that it will be possible if we all pull together. There is one goal that will preserve our system that allows our more personal issues to be addressed and resolved.
Lke the young Berniecrat progressives who could not morally vote for Hillary and gave us Trump, there will never be a free and independant Palestine if Trump returns to power.
"...but it won't happen without us. All of us working and doing..." True this, Ransom. In a related note, I watched the closing ceremonies of the Olympics. A French leader (I forget who!) began by thanking all "the usual suspects"! But then turned his gratitude to the French citizenry in particular. Because in his eyes, it was the people who showed up and supported the idea of the Olympiad that turned it into the success that, in my opinion, it was. So to your point, We the People, All of Us This Time!
Well said, Lynell. And good morning!
Morning, Ally! Have a good one!
Do you have data on how many Sanders supporters would not vote for Clinton? Sanders endorsed Clinton despite being treated badly by the DNC (Schultz,was forced to resign over it). Earlier poll showed that nether Trump nor Clinton was striking a chord with voters (which is probably why Sanders did well). Plus, I think even Trump was surprised when he actually won. He seemed as though he was. I Knew the race would be a bit scary, but the dominant expectation seemed to be that Trump would not win. I don't think that the Democrats will be quite so relaxed about it this time around.
I agree with J L Graham that “even Trump was surprised when he actually won.”
I’ve always felt like Trump’s whole organization was taken by surprise when he won. I stayed up all night watching in disbelief yet couldn’t help notice the organized chaos as his family gathered on-stage for his “acceptance” speech. To a person their expressions ranged from excited disbelief to confusion to even a bit of deer-in-the-headlight’s shock. The body language was so telling. Then to learn that he had no transition team set up, no plan for cabinet picks, none of the typical preparations had been made to transition from campaign to administration.
Perhaps the only good than has grown from this painful time period is that NOW more citizens are paying attention and, better yet, more have become active participants in the election process. Even when “joy” carries us over the finish line in November we can’t ever again let ourselves become politically apathetic.
I don't believe I have ever seen Trump more shocked than when he realized he "won."
And we all lost.
I thought my wife and I had voted for Hillary, but she finally admitted she voted for someone other than Trump or Hillary (probably Jill Stein). That was a very delayed shock for me, but seems too common for people that even bothered to vote.
I do wonder how many, and where, more votes than the 2,864,985 Hillary won the Popular Vote by would have been needed, and how few more in red states would have been enough to win the outdated Electoral College vote.
I'll never again submit a protest vote like when I wrote in Sheila Bair in California (where it seemed not to make a bit of difference in the 2004 election).
My son was a Bernie supporter in 2016 and voted Mickey Mouse despite all our discussions. There was nothing I could say to change his mind. As we live in Minnesota it was likely not consequential, but reflected the feelings of his on line community. He is very excited about the Harris campaign which gives me hope. It kills me that Mr bone spurs and the typewriter marine are trying to discredit Walz's military record. As Walz would say "give me a break".
I have only anecdotal data: The dozen or so BernieBros that I know all sat the entire election out. I have maintained contact with about half of them, and only two have acknowledged that I was right when I said that the 2016 election was more about SCOTUS than who was elected President.
That has not been my experience, but, especially now in retirement, my contacts are not many. In the primaries, Sanders delegate total was not that far from Clinton's, especially in terns of non-"Superdelegates", so clearly it was not a majority of those voters who initially supported Sanders who did not ultimately vote for Clinton. Also, it's more work than I want to take on, but my suspicion is that some most contested states would not have been big on Sanders support compared to others that might have been less Trump friendly anyway, but that's only me speculating. With our anti-democratic EC, not all votes are equal to others.
Brava, Annabel!
Well said!
David, by the way, I really appreciated your last comment to me. You reminded me that we need, really need, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, not in a bellicose manner but is a solidarity of knowing that we are in this republicanism together and that, while maany differ in their views, we can make this a better country.
As a Midwesterner, I am grateful to Dr Cox Richardson for her essay this evening. Speaking to the gopher state, one of the very few times I ever saw my mother cry was the day after the 1968 election; Dad was bummed out, too. Albeit moderate Republicans who likely agreed with President Nixon, they could not trust him at all.
While working in Aerospace, I had two Black acquaintances (while I was a member of a professional logistics society), that were, to me, among the sharpest logistics types who had worked in close enough proximity to the executive branch to be invited to work within the administration. I think one did but the other said he would never work under Nixon having gotten close enough to see what he was truly like (in his eyes). He never elaborated on details but took a lessor job than he was qualified for (in my eyes).
Thanks for an interesting memory. I feel like we are back in 1968 again, but, thus far, doing a better job of confronting the shadow on the wall lending to politics off the wall.
P.S., Hear, here!
Strong words, thank you. We must understand that the people's struggle with the oligarchs will continue. Their threat to democracy may subside, but, as HCR's book "How the South Won the Civil War" shows, it is unlikely to disappear. In addressing the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1852, Wendell Phillips warned that "[e]ternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few". It is imperative for each generation to heed that warning and be prepared to defend democracy.
Trump is a 3 time loser. Even Maggie Haberman and her sidekick Swann have now acknowledged as much. . . . My 2 cts? In this upside down world Ds should take advantage of trumps tantrum by endorsing Kemp. With or without a return endorsement. It will still make the point. Turn about etc. And who knows? They can make endorsement reciprocal, ie Here's how Ds can make GA a better place. Really. Bipartisanship is the new black or something like that.
Kemp may not be a Trumper, but he is the guy who guided the work of the Republican party when he was Secretary of State to gerrymander the legislature, and as governor pushed for the laws making it easier to remove people from the voter rolls, harder to register new voters, and illegal to do things like give people standing in line to vote any water. Kemp is no "good guy." He's the enemy as sure as Trump is; in fact he's worse because he's smarter and understands how things work, which makes him more dangerous. Let the Republicans tear each other apart and vote straight Democratic down there. Making nice to those people is just giving them the opportunity to knife you when you have your back to them. "Bipartisanship" with bad actors is not a good idea. The Jubilee has not come to the South and probably never will. "Can't we all just get along?" doesn't work with these people.
He was the SoS who rigged his Own election for Governor, beating Stacie Abrams with a thousand cuts to voter rights. Another deplorable. Just a lot slicker than the rest. Beware. His hand is All over what's happening with Trump and Willis.
Still, there are the Republicans who can still do something right, vs. the Republicans who are so criminal and full of hate they cannot do anything right. Kemp runs the state like an outhouse and is racist as they come, but still, did not steal the election in the way Trump wanted him too. That like Pence's was an act of bravery. We are realizing each day the Republicans who stand up to Trump, and there are not enough have to be brave. I am expecting many to vote against him while saying they support him because life is easier if Dems are in charge. Also, a lot of them realize they are less safe with him in charge. Some are just too racist and twistedly religious, to move beyond backing him.
Much respect for Georgia’s former Lt. Governor Duncan who is speaking truth and denouncing Trump. It takes courage to say out loud that he’s voting for the Ds.
I realize politics requires opposing teams. Bipartisship is an act of courage. I just think that maybe, when someone acts noble and responsibly, despite other shortcomings, it is worth exploring alliances. Esp when the stakes are high. Just a thought.
TCinLA-Your assertion that “bipartisanship with bad actors is not a good idea” has been proven throughout our history. Most of the compromises made with slaveholders set up the systems we now have including the electoral college.
How I wish it did, but some are just waiting for their opportunity to go low. Know the difference…
Bravo TC!
Is competence an asset or a liability? It depends. If an individual or group is serving the greater good, then competence is an asset. But Kemp and his group serve the group at the expense of the greater good, and that is when competence is a liability. Thank God Trump was an evil idiot and not an evil genius. But watch Speaker Mike like a hawk.
JBR, wait isn't Kemp condoning R's making it harder for Dems to vote (massive voter roll purges, etc.) and easier for R's to cheat in elections? I can't think of any reason to endorse anyone's grossly unethical, seemingly fraudulent, and wholly undemocratic actions.
Yes, Kemp is as much the enemy as Trump is.
Yes, Kemp is a snake in the grass, forked tongue talking out both sides of hims mouth kinda guy.
Anyway, what is Kemp running for?
Interesting idea. But I think we should stop short of endorsing Any Republican because even Cheney is anti-choice and a much bigger hawk than I'd ever want. The apple didn't really fall far from the tree.
We will see her plenty in 2028.
Kinzinger is young. But no. Just like Kasich. Still going backward in too many ways.
Patrice Curedale, yes. They can do good things worthy of praise. And praise should be given for bravery and moral principles. But remember their core beliefs and missions are against ours.
I tend to agree with the other two respondents, based on the very little knowledge I have. Nevertheless, that endorsement idea is worth considering since it is a form of moral suasion.
Today, some one pulled the typical trumper tantrum by bring up an unrelated issue; saying Vice President Harris could not deal with it; and that I had Trump Derangement Syndrome. A month ago, I might have gone nuclear. Tonight, instead, it occurred to me to say, after pointing out the false issue technique, that were I "a supporter of the former President, I suppose I would be defensive, too."
Why are we dems always the ones to forgive and reach out so quickly when they would just as soon cut that offered hand off? No it is not the time for this at all. It's time to show them that we will not become a fascist country. We will not relinquish our rights as women and people of color and LGBTQ people. Hell no! We will fight to see justice for all and not allow a corrupt obscene court divide us and take away the rights of some in order to make a felon, and adjudicated rapist a king!
When tested the people of this country have stood strong. Once again we have been tested and I feel strength flowing back into the veins of our body politic.
Hook your friends up with the FT 6 community. Breeze becomes a blue tsunami.
https://www.fieldteam6.org/
Agree, "the forty year dystopian march" an apt description to be sure. We'll move on from the 'trump thing'. We've digested it enough. And, as long as our courts ( our legal system! ) remains functional the people who have violated the law will be taken to task. Whether they get a slap on the wrist, disbarred, fined, spend 30 days in jail, or 18 months. Most of us will never know or read about it. That's fact. And, that those trials have been taking place, largely un-publicized (hohoho.. as you might well imagine), is comforting. But, VP harris has "the Pulpit"..., she's speaking, and she need to jerk some chains. Many of those Heritage and Federalist clucks are senile and their trust-fund kids have no moral compass. This "Debate" better be good!
Oh my…succinct. Cohesive. Synopsis.🫶
God I hope you are right
Another brilliant letter tying today and history together based on actual facts Thanks our guiding brilliant light Heather Cox Richardson💐🇺🇸🗳️💙
I really feel inspired by the hope of a new way forward. Joe Biden was the rebound guy after that awful “bad bf”, but Kamala and Tim present a way forward that can launch a renaissance of the middle class. Joe reset the narrative of the Democrats, and Kamala will move that needle further, especially when the Trump tax cuts end.
Excellent analogy, JaneDough!
Having grown up with Ford and then Nixon as my first Republican presidents, I never really paid attention to the Republican party as worthy of anything other than scorn. I knew about Teddy Roosevelt, but thanks to Heather Cox Richardson. I get a sense that he wasn’t an anomaly.
I’ve been hoping for years that honorable conservatives would be able to push aside today’s #CORPservatives who work in servitude only to their corporate and billionaire donors.
My hope is that the lead coattails that cowardly Republicans still cling to will bring the downfall of this version of the GOP. Their careers, too, will be dragged down the drain in Trump’s whirlpool of lies.
And if GOP 2.0 is to emerge from the ashes, wouldn’t be nice if their inspiratory hero would be Teddy instead of Ronald?
I think Teddy was sort of in his own category. My understanding that he felt betrayed by his party's embrace to plutocrats. I think his family were admirers of Lincoln. I think if the GOP pulls itself out of the mud, it will be at least its third incarnation.
The whirlpool of lies became a category 4 today with Trump calming photos of Harris' crowds in Michigan were fake AI concoctions. Mr. Fake Personified seems to be painting himself into a corner, although most of his base seems unlikely to waver.
The sad thing about Trump is that no matter how many corners he paints himself into, Fox News is all always ready to build him another one…
Fox is a division of the Gross Old Psychotic Ministry of Truth. I'm hoping that at some point Big Lies get so big that they start to collapse under their own weight. It seems like we might be entering that territory. I'm seeing increasing external pressure on Republicans' very tangled web.
Rupert has kids, he has taught them well, at least one seems to be a clone of the evil.
It's all about the money.
Along with convict 34+ and stephen miller & comrades., fox commentators share the position of extremist republican Ministers of Propaganda, the position of Goebbels when hitler reigned despicably. We are making the right choice to steer our ship away from those wannabe nazi waters.
To put it mildly.
I think pmurT's inner mental world is almost completely dissociated from the consensus reality most of the rest of us share. Occasionally his world and our world experience juxtaposed points of similarity, but he remains isolated in his bad trip mental universe.
Dissociated isolation
"Bad trip." Great thought; I remember how isolated and essentially nuts I was when I had bad trips.
Ned, I had one or two unpleasant experiences. But I could always find my way back home. Most of my experiences were ecstatic, or at one with the universe, or spectacular natural beauty. And music! I have no regrets in that regard.
I think Trump is delusional, but not so much as his faithful. He is cunning enough to provoke his flock's reptile responses (we all have then , just not so much) and to know when he's in check. After Nixon's disgrace, the patron'$ of the "GOP" took the lesson that if you are going to lie, lie BIG and never admit a thing, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Trump built his whole identity on dishonesty and a massive inheritance, plus a certain kind of media presence, so he was an (almost*) perfect fit for the modern "GOP" MO. Lying is as natural as breathing to Trump. His shamelessness is most of what he's got going for him.
* I imagine plutocrats regret that Trump is not a smoother criminal. He Lies big but clumsy. And his over-defensive outrage looks weak after a while. The reptile T-rump can't bear to be the butt of jokes.
[Edit: revised for brevity, 10:45 pm 12 Aug 2024]
I predict that the orange menace will lapse into ill health before the election in November, due to age, infirmity, and the stress of this election cycle.
The Republican party leaders like Mark Hanna detested Teddy Roosevelt and his commitment to reform. It's why they got rid of him (they thought) by making him Vice President where he could do nothing. And then McKinley got assassinated.
All three of the "good" Republican presidents - Lincoln, T. Roosevelt and Eisenhower, were detested by the Republican leadersip, which all came from the "Whig wing" (pro buisiness) of the Republican triad - Abolitionists, Whigs, and former Know Nothings.
Karl Rove is a modern fan of Mark Hanna and studied Hanna’s tactics to use them on behalf of George W. Bush.
Damn, I thought he used Goebbels tactics. I remember the crap pulled on Texas and then all of us. Don’t forget W’s comment that you can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on. Sad but true, apparently…
He also wrote a biography of Hanna's Presidential protege, William McKinley.
I think it is probably useful to distinguish between "pro business" and pro-monopoly. I have encountered a fair number of small businesses that I very much admire, and truly morn is they close. Business can be fair trade, what Teddy called a "Square Deal".
Monopolies of money, political power, of any other form of power are dangerous to civilization, and inimical to liberty and justice for all. A lot of folks got that in Teddy's era after the cruelty and corruption of the Gilded Age. Modern Republicans use of the term "free market" is Orwellian. They are pro-monopoly, not pro-business nor pro-freedom in the meaningful sense of universal human rights, rather than regal impunity for the most powerful.
Trump is jealous that his rallies are almost deserted and that VP Harris’s rallies are very well-attended, he’s behaving like the emotional toddler he is.
Every day is a new episode of the Apprentice of DonOLD. And poll numbers are how he scores how he is doing.
The reason he says he is up by a lot is that his staff only feeds him the poll numbers that show he is ahead.
Not exactly the adult in the room.
Guess we will soon see how much of his base is cult and how many still have brain cells stirring…
I seriously think we have the analog of a computer virus here. An accepted command to reject the evidence of your eyes, ears, and analytical capacities renders you vulnerable to believing ANYTHING uncritically, which the history of some classic cults illustrates. It's a go-to tool for tyrants.
Seems that Orwell encountered such or predicted such. Prescient man…
Also observant of exiting totalitarian states.
JL, what I see of the fpotus supporters in my feed (who I had devoutly hoped knew better) are all in and doubling down on him.
It is alarming that everyone knows people (I do) who used to seem reasonably civil who are now aggressive and fanatical; for the likes of Trump???
I agree. I grew up in a Republican household. Voted Nixon in '72 and Ford in '76. Haven't voted Republican since.
As I recall, Nixon came before Ford. :-)
Damn, I knew that. Major face-palm.
And thanks to your reminder of the obvious, I was able to correct that for my restack note. I added a few things to Heather’s analysis, including DLC details. Please check it out if you get a chance, and comment there as well!
You got it.
If Teddy Roosevelt was alive today, I think he would be a democrat.
Can not beat Dr Cox Richardson for contextual, educative journalism.
I do wish people would start using the word. Journalism correctly. Heather is awesome, but she is not a journalist. She is a historian with a point of view and that's totally cool but it doesn't make her a journalist.
A journalist reports things objectively without a point of view. And we really need to keep that in mind when we use that word. As I pointed out during the Lawrence o'donnell thread a few days ago o'Donnell is not a journalist. He is a television commentator who has a point of view. You can like his position or not. But don't call him a journalist because he isn't one and has never been one.
And that is true for almost everybody on msnbc. It Is also true for all of the columnists and editorial writers for the New York times. those people Have points of view and they are often good points of view but that does not make them journalists.
Jon, I love what you say here. Journalism, as we knew it, is in its death throes. Infotainment is rampant, and then there are the outright lies.
So, do not watch it. We have choices here. Like most others I know, I tend to stick with sources whom I trust -- likely meaning I would like to sit down and have a beer with them (e.g., David Brooks, George Will, Ellen Goodman, Chris Wallace). Obviously, the definition of the word "journalist" or "journalist" is highly idiosyncratic.
P.S., the journalism we knew as we grew up was tempered by the Fairness Doctrine, a triopoly of national networks and a consensus on what constituted current events worthy of rapportage.
I disagree 1,111%. Bias is unavoidable since past experiences, temperaments, etc. shape how one interprets current events -- what information to include or to exclude -- or just about any information beyond ostensive definitions.
By your definition, for example, investigative journalism is not journalism because the journalist is testing a hypothesis (e.g., President Nixon's involvement in Watergate), drawing a conclusion, or expressing an affect implicitly (e.g., gotcha journalism seeking to be a source of accountability.
Tying in current events with history and precedents so the reader can conclude for him-or-herself whether an analogy applies for prescriptive thinking. qualifies as journalism, just as the long article in "The Atlantic" that 'Dan Quayle was Right' drawing on data from the social sciences qualifies as (contextual) journalism.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/04/dan-quayle-was-right/307015/
That is why we are here.
Yes, indeed. One of the things that stood out to me in this letter are the references to political parties that didn't immediately dominate but tugged at the edges, moving us to a different future.
Nicely done HCR! While the for-profit media breathlessly trumpet the “challenges” the Harris-Walz ticket faces in order to claim that this election is still being driven by the deranged pronouncements of CFDT and Baby Stewie “Vance,” demanding that our current VP respond to every belching nonsense phrase that emerges from the Orange Menace’s mouth, Harris and Walz simply continue on the path they chose of speaking directly to people, not to the idiots looking for tasty sound bites. And those of us who are sick and tired of the utter drivel being produced by the likes of The NY Times and the Washington Post—I don’t bother with TV news as it is even worse—are rejoicing.
Their caution around highlighting Trumps treachery in infamous, but they seem to be on top of Trump's false claims about Harris' crowds. "GOP" cult delusionality seems at this point virtually psychotic.
"Baby Stewie"!!! That's priceless!
Wapo has had many positive things to say recently about Harris/Walz and I continue to read Jennifer Rubin. Was surprised to hear her identified as a Republican in a recent radio interview.
I think that is "former Republican."
BONE SPUR DONALD IS BONKERS
At 90 I have encountered, in the Middle East, Congo, and elsewhere, individuals who are BONKERS.
After 21/2 hours alone with Iraqi President Abdel Qarim Kassem, I concluded that he was BONKERS. [The bloody uniform in a glass case behind him after his first assassination attempt was one indicator.]
More recently:
1) A presidential candidate who claims that his opponent used AI to fake photos of a mob of people around her plane and crowds of 10,000-15,000 participants at her rallies, despite hundreds of press photos to the contrary, is BONKERS.
2) A presidential candidate who, at a convention of Black journalists, seriously questioned when his Black opponent became Black, is BONKERS.
3) A presidential candidate who suggests that President Biden, who stepped aside as presidential candidate for Kamala Harris, may seek re-nomination at the Democratic presidential convention is BONKERS.
4) A presidential candidate who enabled Project 2025, which is a handbook on how to create an authoritarian government, were he to return to the White House, is BONKERS.
5) A president who took an oath to protect the Constitution and then trashed the Constitution and triggered an attack on the Capitol Building is BONKERS.
6) A president who says that anyone who serves in the armed forces is a ‘sucker’ and is a ‘loser’ if he is killed serving his country is BONKERS.
With such overwhelming evidence, why doesn’t the media consistently highlight that Trump is BONKERS?
That is a very good question. They might be afraid of retribution should the Bonkers One regain the White House.
That might be why reporters give him a pass in press conferences, but newspaper owners might have a more sinister reason: reporting on Trump brings them oodles of cash, so keeping him in the spotlight beyond November is important to their bottom line.
Nailed. It. They lost half their readers/viewers when Trump left office, and they want to make the losing legacy media "profitable" again so they can unload it on the first rube who comes along.
That is the reason why Jeff Zucker kept covering Trump and giving him all manner of coverage in 2016. It was great for CNN’s ratings, but not so great for the country.
Aid and comfort to the enemy
Sorry this is just unadulterated bs. It simply is not happening. The journalists are trying to do their jobs and taking pot shots at them like this is discrediting of you IMHO.
Jon-I hear what you’re saying about journalists but the profession needs to take a good look at what integrity means when it comes to honest reporting vs. offering opinions and using sensational headlines and words to “educate” and influence the public.
Can you give us a few examples of who you think are the real journalists?
Hi Gina. I just read your comment again. And I have a feeling that you are mistaking balanced journalism which you may not like with biased journalism. Maybe I'm wrong here but many of the comments have said things like "why don't the stories come down on trump?" Because that is NOT their job. Their job is to report, not take sides.
Well pretty much anyone who reports for the New York times is doing a GREAT job IMHO. Maggie Hagerman is a truly serious journalist. Read her stuff, there is NO opinion buried in it. "Just the facts, ma'am!" And most of the rest of the NYT reporters do s pretty decent job. (NOT the columnists like Jamelle and Ross, those guys are strictly opinion writers and identified as such) in sure you can point out exceptions but its rare. The NYT is really serious about journalism, at least in their political news.
“Don’t believe what your eyes and ears are telling you.”
What do you want to believe, what you imagine? Then you are just making it up. Get real please.
It's not there is no excellent journalism out there, and it appears in many publications, but there seems to man that the press often downplays the perfidy of Trump compared to Biden. The press notes, but seems not to have shown the persistence to correct the perception that the economy sucks under Biden though in fact his is much better than Trumps, for example. When Bush II was winding up for war, I stated reading the Guardian, and found useful information about what was going on here that was absent, or picked up much later by the US press and TV I was aware of. There seemed to me to be a dearth of deep investigative journalism, at least in some papers compared to the Vietnam and Watergate eras. Plus I have been bothered by things like this https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464/ . It seemed to me there were way to many serial weakly supported stories about growing signs of Biden's incompetence, which is different from questioning if he was the strongest candidate available. Biden does not have a strong TV presence and had a reputation of being gaff-prone way back in the Obama administration. Now that Harris is a cheerful, energetic wildcard, and Trump is more dramatically losing it, the press seems to be paying closer attention.
You SERIOUSLY cite the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER as a serious journalistic news source? Anyone who takes the HR as a serious source of news needs to stop drinking the Kool-aid. If you had cited the Times, or even a semi-serious source like the WaPo or LA Times or WSJ, I might have raised my eyebrows, but you would do yourself a great favor by STOP reading the Hollywood Reporter for anything except job offers and TV/Cable news and start reading the New York TImes.
Just "Wow!"
Don’t click, unsubscribe, and don’t watch the media that is obsessed with covering the rump like he is normal!
A journalist COVERS Trump. They don't cover him "like he is normal". Good journalists do NOT let opinions into their articles. They fact check their sources whenever possible and most of the journalists I read, especially the ones in the times, fully vet Trump's nonsensical spoutings and report on the factual issues, but they carefully (and correctly) do NOT inject opinions about his "normality". THAT IS FOR THE READER TO DECIDE. Use your brain and analyze the reporting. If the reporting is not FAIR and BALANCED, then it is perfectly acceptable to criticize, but I dare say you can't find a recent example of that in the New York Times. Anywhere (except of course on the Editorial page and in their columns, which are expressly NOT news and are absolutely opinions... if you don't like those, then of course, find a better paper... if you can but I doubt it).
Nailed it, they are greedy bastards
Reporters are scared of Trump’s insubordination and it’s ridiculous how they stick their head in the sand to avoid his bullying. They make good salaries - get a thicker skin!
Reporters who would rather not be reduced to being forced to just repeat Ministry of Truth press releases verbatim might want to dig a bit deeper now, as the precipice draws closer.
JL, "reporters" are regular folks with families, not martyrs. Are you in a position to be a martyr. Would you throw yourself 'under the bus'..? Here on HCR we're somewhat safe expressing our views.
I quite agree, and resisting suppression of telling the truth is everyone's responsibility. We don't do nearly enough to protect whistleblowers. If we allow organized crime to stop the flow of needed public information, we're all cooked.
Oh good grief! This is such nonsense. Show me a New York Times article where a reporter "repeated Ministry of Truth press releases". Really? Are you that out of touch? Maybe you don't even read the New York TImes, you just like to throw trash talk at it. That is NOT a good look.
And get some guts while you’re at it
Better walk in their shoes.
I don’t have to walk in them to imagine what it would feel like. Some are more at risk than others, but we all have to do our part.
Scaredy cats rarely ever rule for long, no matter who is pulling the strings.
More like they're just plain WEIRD!!!
Weird for sure, but also certainly BONKERS, as are, at least for the foreseeable future, his rapt followers.
Dangerously weird
Creepy and weird
BINGO. I wonder if Trump had his ear bandage bronzed?
Hell no. He's having his whole head bronzed.. the bullet went clean thru. Or didn't you know that? The photo clearly showed it... in one ear and out the other.. super-sonic. They haven't owned up to that yet. Whoooooooshhhh!!
MadRusky I believe that the doctor used a pipe cleaner to go in one ear and out the other. No evidence of a brain.
I knew you were holding back the details! you knew all along :)).
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
It doesn’t look remotely like a bullet grazed his ear. I still think it may have been a tiny shard - flying debris coming stand behind Trump. We will never know, but he certainly used the incident to say he’d taken a bullet for his MAGA followers. When, in fact, it was the tragically unfortunate man in the stands “who took the bullet.” And notice, Trump has stopped talking about it.
Whatever the case, it is alarming that an assassination came so close. I worry about the safety of all of the candidates.
Adding: We have no fact-basis for a bullet grazing his ear, nothing from the physicians who treated his injury, not a word in fact from his campaign - only Trump’s unsubstantiated claims.
Well, we saw him bleeding. Did you watch it happen? That was pretty good evidence that he was hit with SOMETHING, and frankly I find it offensive that anyone is questioning this. The man almost got killed. Hey, I can't stand him and hope he never gets NEAR the White House again, even as a tourist, but there is NO WAY i am spreading rumors about whether he was shot at (he clearly was SHOT AT) and hit or missed when I know nothing. You should take that advice yourself. Feel free to mock him when he spouts nonsense. DON'T MOCK HIM WHEN HE IS ALMOST ASSASSINATED. No one deserves that, not even the most vile political creature ever to run for President.
Yup.., it just doesn't smell right, does it. It's ripe!
The journalistic press should NOT express such opinions. They should REPORT all the facts you stated. That is their job. It is your job and mine to read those reports and draw the conclusion (which I personally totally agree with) that Trump is bonkers. But the facts are the job of the journalists. The opinions are for us to draw from those facts. Or the job of an editorial writer or columnist to draw for you to see. We shouldn't confuse those two responsibilities.
By the way fact CHECKING is journalism. To state that the nonsensical opinion of trump about the so called ai photos is not true is journalism. To draw a conclusive that that makes him bonkers is an opinion and NOT the job of journalists.
Jon Reporters can ask and re-ask specific questions of Trump and others. They can take statements and place them within a factual perspective. This is the responsibility of a serious journalist. Such reporting should b3 balanced. Recent reporting on Biden’s ‘age factor’ without similar focus on Trump was, in my opinion, unprofessional. Editorial and opinion pages are distinct.
You don't have to do "similar" reporting on all candidates at exactly the same time (tit for tat is NOT required). I won't argue that there was a LOT of emphasis in the REPORTING (not the opinion columns, which are fair game to do whatever they want and say whatever they want as long as it is clear it is opinion) on Biden's weakness, but at that time, he WAS the weakest candidate and the one who needed to be reported on. Now that he is gone from the race, there has been a clear switch to reporting on Trump's issues as well. Maybe not perfect timing, but hardly a violation of journalistic standards.
Jon I suspect that we are pretty much in agreement. I have dealt with the press in many parts of the world. My personal conclusion is that if something looks, walks, and quacks like a duck, then most likely it is a duck.
Assessing facts for my 1960 book NASSER’S NEW EGYPT: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS was a ducky experience. My Foreign Service political reporting from Congo and Chile sharply separated factual analysis with personal opinion.
On occasion my opinion was spot on. At other times, not. But my readers could read my factual analysis and draw their own conclusions.
Wow, hey, I just ordered your book from Amazon! I am a huge Egypt "fan" (being Jewish LOL). It says its from 2013, though. I assume it is a reprint?
Jon You are a glutton for ‘punishment’ In 1954 I took a verbal message from Nasser to David Ben-Gurion, with whom I lunched and spent an afternoon.
My book, published 1960, was banned by Nasser and featured by The Economist.
I stayed away from discussing personalities, since, at 25, I thought this could distract from my analysis. When I was at Nasser’s home discussing the genesis of the ‘revolution,’ he told me “See Anwar on that. He has nothing to do.”
That’s how I got to spent time at Anwar Sadat’s home. I got to know someone who went to jail with Anwar.
It was a challenge to research when followed by two Egyptian security agencies. On my tapped telephone, I created Mustafa Osmosis, who was always doing something strange.
Once I invited an Egyptian security colonel,who was on my case, for dinner that night. after he declined, I expressed regret, saying that Mustafa would be there. He looked stunned. Had he been listening to my taped conversations?
I suggest that you read the concluding chapter of my book. By then I began to have a more cohesive sense that is not reflected in the individual chapters.
Any thoughts/questions, feel free to e-mail me at kwheelock1@comcast.net.
Oi Vey, Allah u Ahkbar.
Well Jon, it is the "job" of forensic psychiatrists. Regardless, you do not have to be Dr. Bandy X. Lee to understand that trump's Sunday words were not 'opinion' but, the sinking psychopathy of a dangerous person.
You do not have to be a professional to call it out. I thought, Stephen King's analysis of trump's Sunday words was spot on. True, Stephen is an expert on horror but,
Stephen also knows how this Ends.
I wouldn't listen to Stephen King's opinions if he was the last person who could still write. He is a FICTION writer and has never that I know of provided factual information in a non-fiction form that was of any interest whatsoever. Nor would I listen to George Clooney, who I think is a very smart man but with no credentials as a journalist. He has a right to express his opinion (as does King) but it is just that, and right now, I am seeking facts from which to draw my OWN opinions, not the opinions of talking heads (including those on MSNBC and/or FOX SNOOZE).
Keith, keep telling it like it is!
Anne I’m smiling and writing with hope and joy.
And insists Kamala do in-depth interviews, to which I say, when Trump does them, sans Fox or OEN, then maybe she will. Until then, MSM, just know you’re irrelevant!
ES Perhaps Trump can’t do new conferences because the FACT CHECKERS UNION demands combat pay to cover his bloviations. They are checking their records to find when Trump last made a factually accurate statement.
Excellent question, Keith.
C'mon Wheelock, if our country was in the ditch "the media" would be on a different tack. Other than grocery prices along with steel and repair-shop rates making life difficult for regular folks.., this country has never been greater. So, the media capitalizes on what pays their wages: The Trump Comedy. It's where the money is.
Madrusky I agree that are country, in this convoluted world, is pretty great. BUT bad news captures the headlines sand listener/watcher interest.
A headline 954 PLANES FLEW SAFELY ACROSS THE ATLANTIC YESTERDAY would be a yawner. My basic complaint is bias in ‘reporting.’ President Biden got pummeled with the ‘age factor,’ while Trump, a few years younger and clearly without all his marbles, tended to be overlooked. Now with a younger Democratic team, Trump is more of a daily target because of what’s he says.
To be completely fair here, no one ever questioned Biden on his "facts". What was questioned is his ability to speak understandably. Trump has always been completely understandable, even when what he says is nonsensical. There is a big difference between understandability and speaking nonsense. The concern with Biden was his ability to speak in a way that let you know he was able to communicate what he was thinking to us clearly. Trump has always been able to do that, but of course sadly what he communicates is nonsensical. And the journalistic media has ALWAYS been critical of that (I can point to dozens of articles all across the media where Trump is fact checked and called repeatedly a liar). But having Biden unable to communicate clearly at all was a much more serious issue, especially as it was clearly sinking the Democratic party (and thus the country). Frankly, I think it took bravery for journalists to FOCUS on that and not worry about Trump for a short time, until the rest of the country took notice and started to demand that he step aside.
Should we want the same for Trump? In my opinion, ABSOLUTELY NOT! Trump is the BEST person Harris can be running against because the contrasts are clear and easy to see. If Trump WAS to step aside, and be replaced by, who, Vance? Haley? Whoever, it would make Harris' job that much harder and frankly, my personal view is I want Harris to WIN. Only after that happens will I call for Trump to walk away.
Absolutely Jon. We need to keep him in place. We need to send that whole crew down the tubes.
Also the danger. Greed may take US down yet.
As a retired union activist, I keep hearing the unspoken word that unites all union members, and, if we think about it, all of us: Solidarity. Solidarity across racial and religious and gender and even class lines. I may have heard it elsewhere, but Victory in Unity seems like an appropriate motto to me.
Exactly. We need to talk more about what solidarity is. Families fail without it. Societies fail without it. Liberty worthy of the name is not possible without solidarity.
Tyrants demand conformity, which is way different.
Solidarity would be even stronger if the powers that be weren't allowing the brutal slaughter of innocents in Gaza to continue. Call it what it is. Genocide. This is not Israel, it is Netanyahu and his band or zealots, just like Trump and his Christian Nationalists. I pray Harris pivots away from Biden's policy of "blanket support" for "blanket bombing."
The Convention is starting.
School is starting.
The Solidarity is about to be tested Hard.
How to walk the tightrope between AIPAC's powerful representation of Israel in our national politics combined with the RW Jewish billionaires in cahoots with the Oligarchy,
while maintaining our professed respect for international law and equality before the law?
Biden is failing. Will Harris do better?
For the sake of the Palestinians under Israeli control, I pray.
Chump will certainly support Palestinians, joke of the century
Credit here to Lech Walęsa and his Solidarity movement in Poland. (Not so much credit to his later stances.)
Heather has got exactly correct the human and community decency Kamala and Tim target.
We need to recall this good, rich history, as Heather here does -- and to which Kamala and Tim harken.
We can put it all in perspective, thanks to other history -- such as a book out now which adds the longer perspective of what today's U.S.’s most rancid billionaires and their Republican toadies have ever aimed at.
It’s William Hogeland’s “The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding.”
Fact is, for over 300 years what’s now our billionaire classes have campaigned and organized to hurt workers, artisans, immigrants, and the homeless or near homeless. Before 1775, 1776 and war with military forces of the royal crown, as Hogeland tells it, the landed gentry used public sentiment against British injustice to deflect from their own predations. It’s just been endemic to all our history, including the laws and government agencies letting the rich succor themselves by slavery.
Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo, Tucker, Clarence, the entire Heritage Project 2025, and the orange felon? Such callow nihilists abounded in the days of the founders, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and MLK Jr. But we had the good figures, those Heather cites here -- and from 1862 and the beginning of our land grant education system, to 1971 and the Powell memo, we had perhaps our greatest instruments for all Heather, Kamala, Tim, and many good others would nurture.
We had great schools.
We still do, in many ways. That's why they've been able to withstand William Bennet to "no child left behind" to Moms of Liberty somewhat intact.
Now it's time for the US to learn from Other nations re education. No more navel gazing. For better or for worse, we don't need a reboot, we need a rebuild.
Somewhat intact, but riddled with wounds from the institutions that they depend on for support. My parents were not educated, but they made sure that all eight of us knew the value of an education. We did and we are.
Yes, Patrice -- "a rebuild."
At the K-12 level, kick out all standardized testing and put all decisions in the hands of the actual teachers. Humanities could occupy central place in addition to all courses.
Teachers themselves alone decide books and other materials to use -- no public officials, no admin, no bureaucrats, no corporate reps for any giant corporate textbook packagers.
In higher ed, key personal literacy, so students continuously write essays, improving skills for quoting others and their personal concerns, in the room, across campus, and in other departments with analogously apt issues (quoting directly, indirectly students as well as instructors).
An article in Mpls Star Tribune Sunday interviews Tim Walz' former Mankato students. He made learning fun and showed compassion for downtrodden students such as the gays. He taught social studies and geography encouraging students to read up on current events something the whole country needs more of now.
The Finns got the best public schools in the world, cameron, when they
1) kicked out the standardized testing, and
2) made it a rule to look for and hire only the best teachers graduating from college. And then they gave all power to the best. Not heaps of money. Just the respect that everyone has for that intangible thing we call the best.
I'm now reading the Anthony Doerr novel, "All the Light We Cannot See." It's amazing for the many, many, splendid, marvelous intangibles -- so many odd details, surprises, wonders in people, in life.
Our vulgar (the billionaires and cult hungry) want to systematize everything. Put numbers on all. Make life linear only, mechanical, replicable, interchangeable, boxed, packaged.
The best teachers see things in people, in life, such as Tim Walz's students knew he saw in them. Such as Anthony Doerr or any decent novelist creates.
Your idea in a country of 350 million people is nonsensical sorry. The variation in teachers for the number of students that need education is huge and there is no way a system which leaves it all up to the teachers will ever work. There needs to be some level of standards that teachers must adhere to or in a few years you will ask me back here complaining about how students are being screwed based on which teacher is assigned to them. Some teachers will be great, others okay, others awful. It will never work and pointing to a Scandinavian country with a population less than California is not a good example to use.
". . . some level of standards that teachers must adhere to."
Come on, Jon, you really dismiss all teachers as incapable of standards themselves?
What? You need J. D. Vance or the orange felon to dictate standards to them? Clarence? A bunch of high finance whiz kids also working for Putin? The cretins of standardized testing who imagine no life other than the numbered, mechanical, and packaged? The algorithm ghouls of social media selling only most crass sensationalism?
Really, Jon, by your own total dismissal of teachers don't you underline the bottom line to which most schools have already sunk?
Phil-and connecting classrooms with communities through service learning would really help us to build. The schools now are set up to serve employers who want to maintain an uninformed and docile workforce motivated only by salary levels.
This right here; the historical perspective putting the present in context is what makes LFAA so powerful. I appreciate the political documentation for future historians, and this is what the meat of the Letter gives us.
Brava!
This letter is outstanding.
I agree, Ally! I think these letters will be an invaluable resource to future historians, and Dr. Richardson will have achieved immortality.
To my mind, this is one of the very best and on-point pieces you've written for this remarkable series of thoughtful, intelligent and meaningful essays. Thank you for providing us with the backstory and context for important current events.
You continue to bring light to areas that appear to be dark, threatening and dangerous, and in doing so you reassure and enlighten us so that we can understand the present and look toward a brighter future with confidence. That's a very rare ability, and is so very much appreciated.
Your letters of late seem even more deep rooted in your passion for democracy, if that’s possible, and are exceptional. I was stunned to see that in the 1870s someone had also claimed that corporations are people under the 14th Amendment, raising the idea that now in the 21st century has come to fruition as an albatross around our necks.
That's when the Supreme Court "decided" that corporations were persons. The foundational decision that has led to the neoliberal corporatism.
That clarifies it for me.. Thanks.
Shocked me too, had no idea
"....true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down. It’s based on who you lift up.” Biden does it for Harris. Now Harris does it for Walz. The entire country benefits!
From an article I wrote on July 7th
https://jonathanbrownson.substack.com/p/persons-of-the-year?r=gdp9j
"This election can be more than a story of two aging presidents. It can be a story of two younger Vice Presidents: Mike Pence and Kamala Harris. Trump already says Pence belongs in Jail (as recorded in the New York Times six days ago). Biden still has a chance to say that Harris belongs in the White House. Biden helps Obama become the first black president. Biden now has the opportunity...to help Harris become the first black woman President."
Thank you, Heather. Harris and Walz are bringing us "joy" for a change! I like it!
Don't get too joyful - according to that renowned connoisseur of crowd numbers, those gigantic rallies are all CGI (or AI, as he seems to think). S/
Beyond truth is another dimension - a dimension of lies, a dimension of treachery, a dimension of utter unreality. You're moving into a land of both shadow and abject corruption, of bribes and cronyism. You've just crossed over into the Republican Zone.
And Elon Musk, the fallen angel, is its prophet.
Well, further fallen anyway. I used to admire what little I knew of Musk until his craziness around the group of students, perilously trapped in a cave. Musk sent am utterly useless submersible and was childishly miffed when the rescue team said they could not use it (the passage was way too narrow and twisty). In response Musk charged the heroic leader of the rescue with pedophilia, a claim he was forced to withdraw. A typically infantile attack from a tyrant insecure in his own delusion of entitlement. "Off with their heads".
Absolutely! We first heard of him in Australia in 2017 when a huge electrical storm knocked over the power grid in South Australia - long story short, Musk tweeted "If my Tesla big battery isn't installed and working within 100 days of contract signature, you get it free. Serious enough for you?". And it was. There's much more to it, not all as good, but you can read all about it on the internet if you're really curious. Those of us who applauded this daring young man, stopped applauding the mad-scientist mini-submarine slanderer. And Lucifer fell.
Playing this in Rod Serling voice!
I watched JFK murdered on tv. I saw RFK murdered in pictures in the paper the day he was taken. I heard on the tv about MLK and saw pictures in the paper the day after he was taken. I suffered through Viet Nam with my brother there. I watched black children attacked by police dogs on the tv. And I saw pictures of what happened on The Bridge to the black women and men who marched for civil rights in the paper the day after. I watched MLK's famous speech on the tv. So, for me, having suffered through the Nixon/Reagan/Bush's criminal violence, seeing Kamala and Tim speak to 10s of thousands of people in rallies where thousands of people were turned away for safety, I feel a sense of calm I do not remember having before. I think young people will make this happen as they do not tolerate anything people in power do to violate their sense of fairness. Social media has made them strong together. I am grateful I lived long enough to see this transition begin and hope to watch our country rise to its potential. What I am most pleased about is Tim's second in command will be a Governor as an Indigenous woman who will follow her conscience. It's time to right these wrongs and I am hopeful Kamala and Tim will make it so.
This country has more surprises, I’m ready after witnessing the things that we have endured.
Well said.. I was there with you too.
This is so exciting! Thank you for describing it this way. It feels like a breath of fresh air blowing across the country, uniting us not only in joy, but in purpose: to stand up for each other. Bring it!
Thank you, Dr. Richardson, for such an uplifting history lesson on the switching of ideas and ideals of the Democratic and Republican Parties. Had he been alive today. Abraham Lincoln would undoubtedly be the leader of today's Democratic Party.
What a brilliant moment.... Tim Walzing with Kamala! The emotional temperature in the US soared to a new high! America sorely needed this moment... And in the sunlight of the coming together, Donald shrank..
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are a breath of fresh air, undoing the lock on hope and enthusiasm.