But DeSantis, a Yale and Harvard Law grad, is not a blithering idiot. Rather, he is someone who knows how to pander to an electorate including enough blithering idiots to keep him and his party in power. Governmentally, If Floriduh were not one of the fifty States, it would be just another Central American Banana Republic.
Harvard has fallen mightily in my estimation as it “educated” DeSantis, Kayleigh McEnany, Jared Kushner and Steve Brannon, among others! SHAME ON HARVARD LAW, I say.
It’s really not fair to blame Harvard. Barack Obama went to Harvard Law, too! I’m grasping in a way, still can’t believe the stupidity of the followers of these misinformation spreaders. They have truly become lemmings as they March toward their covid deaths.
Both of my parents were Harvard graduates--my father with a PhD, my mother, who could have gotten a PhD with a month's more work but didn't because she'd decided to switch fields from econ to psych, got a bachelor's. Both were good people.
I do think Harvard should avoid admitting people who lack a sense of decency, like deSantis, Kushner, Bannon, et al.
She got a PhD in Clinical Psych from University of Washington (where my father first taught) and ultimately taught at Tufts for around 25 years. One of her mentors had told her that if she spent a month tweaking a paper she'd written for one of the major agencies in DC, where they'd lived for a year or two, he'd give her a PhD. She was quite something. So were her sister and their mother.
David expands on the point I was making. SOME students are in it for unsavory preparation. I do, however respect Barack Obama's choices; he did attend Columbia and lived in my neighborhood.
This San Francisco State graduate used to really RELISH firing wannabe "writeurs" with Ivy League degrees and tell them to their faces they were talentless semi-literates. More than a few walked out of the office crying - which when I knew I had gotten through their entitlement.
I wish they could/would take back the diplomas of those on the basis of promoting stands that are Idiotic, malicious, endangering of life, and flat out lies.
If a rotten kid gets some higher education, I wouldn't expect a good kid to emerge. We can't blame Harvard for being unable to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
I think they should try to weed out these sorts of people before admitting them. Sh!ts should not get the influence that goes with having a high class education. Among the non-famous people that didn't deserve a Harvard education: One of my friends, now a very old woman, was formerly married to a famous and somewhat controversial American. Her granddaughter went to Harvard, where she met a fellow student who swept her off of her feet. My friend wrote up some memoirs, and was interested in finding someone to edit them. The granddaughter recommended her boyfriend. At some point, the two of them split up, and the now ex boyfriend absconded with a digital copy of the memoirs.
Harvard's origins were in non-competitive selection for entry, and still are to a large extent. Admission was granted based on family status. John Adams, who had a low family standing, had to ride his horse around to prominent families to get recommendations and financial support.
Likewise, final class standing at the end of the four year curriculum was based on family standing. One's actual performance at Harvard had zero influence on class standing until the 20th Century when grades began to matter.
However, even today, Harvard ensures that enough dumb, white males from prominent families enter Harvard with poor grades and zero SAT scores to keep their endowment growing.
Hence, Harvard and Yale often accept the likes of George W. Bush, Donald J. Trump, Jared Kushner, etc.
None of the above three names would have been able garner entry into even their local community college based on performance.
I wonder if Yale and Harvard shouldn't be in some way embarrassed by their association with a blithering idiot. Wouldn't they want to save their reputations by rescinding his degrees? Oh right, then they would have to rescind George Bush's and a host of other graduates who've proven to be unworthy.
Ambition without scruples has nothing to do with education but often generates generous endowments in lieu of repentence for ill-perceived "sins" ....not to mention a place for similarly lacking in values offspring.
The traditional Ivy League colleges, and the Seven Sister schools as well, were hallmarks of American culture and higher education back in the days when whiteness, wealth and waspiness were the American image and the top rung of the ladder of opportunity. Fortunately, that is not true any longer.
TFG was allowed to transfer to the University of Pennsylvania, but his grades were too low for the (then) lower standards than now to gain admission to Wharton, though he was allowed to AUDIT classes at Wharton.
He was recalled by one of the Wharton professors thus: "Donald Trump was the dumbest fucking student to ever walk into my classroom!"
It took a little "pull" from Daddy to get him into Wharton as a transfer student. His record there is not available, but it doesn't appear he was among those honored at his graduation. Trump put in his time there and little more. When as president, he awarded economist Arthur Laffer the Medal of Freedom, he commented on studying the man's work while at Wharton. Laffer's theories, which are as phony as the 45th president was, came out after Trump's graduation! Just another lie from the guy who wrote the "Fart of the Deal."
See my note above. He audited classes at Wharton, but was not an admitted student, being "the dumbest fucking student who ever walked into my classroom!" in the words of one Wharton professor.
I spent a week in Mississippi, and it felt like the third world. The neighborhood we stayed in had no paved roads, no mail service (residents had to drive to another city to their P.O. Boxes), and some of the houses were partly under water from a recent storm that had flooded a river. And everyone that lived there was Black. It was heartbreaking. And I was younger and less aware of my own weird nice white racist tendencies. Still, it was shameful that that was also America.
I love it. I had not seen nor heard of this song before yesterday. I watched to the end. Watch her stand up at the end. See her face? The defiance and the commitment. That’s what we need now!
We are becoming a third world country, what with the shredded social safety net. Hopefully the Dems can fix this, and that enough GOPers will realize who's helping people that we'll stay in the majority.
I've read extensively about the Civil War. The Ron Chernow book, Grant, was particularly informative about the aftermath of the Civil War and the Dixiecrats.
It very well may happen. Some geopolitically-oriented theorists foresee a stronger Mexico, in about another century, recapturing from a hopelessly divided United States the land they feel rightfully belongs to them encompassing Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
My fantasy is the secession if the West Coast states to form a new country with Mexico and Canada. World’s third largest economy. Close to second. I usually call it Canada++ but Mexico++ would also be fine. Or some other name. New Mexico is also welcome. Maybe Arizona. No Texans, though. Too many obnoxious blowhards.
Texas has a lot of good people - it's just that the GOP has managed to redistrict them into apparent silence (from the outside). On the inside, there is a lot of blue life!
Yes, I know. Have a brother among them, and Lawrence Wright, who knows what he’s takling about, says Texas would be blue now if the Latino electorate voted at the same rate as they do in California (but with the new suppression laws, that’ll never happen). Regardless (or “irregardless” as W, the village idiot and former chief blowhard would say), the blowhards are just too obnoxious to bear. No Texas in Mexico++. Ironic, I know, but that’s what happens when the loudmouths hold the floor.
Yes. I know Friedman's work well. I live one State over and here in Southern AZ we refer to ourselves as citizens of Baja. If we could, we'd lobby to negate the Gadsden Purchase. But, then there is this matter of Sen. Synema - I'm not too sure the Mexican folk would want her as a representative.
Did you know that when California became a state, a law was created that made it mandatory for the teaching of both English and Spanish in California schools. It may still be on the books, but I doubt Spanish is a mandatory subject. That is a shame for all Americans not to know at least two languages.
Until we return the value to obtaining educational knowledge, make advanced education affordable, and use the knowledge gained by educators and professors, we will remain educationally lazy. Our public education system values college after 12th grade and nothing more. There are kids who cannot attain that for whatever reason. We need to strive for preparing every child for becoming a productive citizen after graduation. So many options out there.
Part of the problem in education, I am sorry to say, by the emphasis on sports. Several of our worst teachers were hired as coaches. Not only were they bad teachers, they were also totally lacking in integrity.
John Maynard Hutchins, President of the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1951, wrote an article in 1954 in Sports Illustrated about what he believed the role of a university might be. He had his own ideas, and in 1939, the University of Chicago, under his leadership, dropped football. Here is an excerpt from the 1954 article.
“The ancient Athenians were as crazy about sport as modern Americans are. So were the ancient Romans and the Renaissance Italians. So are contemporary Britons and Germans. But we Americans are the only people in human history who ever got sport mixed up with higher education. No other country looks to its universities as a prime source of athletic entertainment. In some other countries university athletic teams are unheard of; in others; like England, the teams are there, but their activities are valued chiefly as affording the opportunity for them and their adherents to assemble in the open air. Anybody who has watched, as I have, 12 university presidents spend half a day solemnly discussing the Rose Bowl agreement, or anybody who has read—as who has not?—portentous discussions of the "decline" of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or Chicago because of the recurring defeats of its football team must realize that we in America are in a different world."
Another problem is that racial equity is not a priority in faculty, staff, and administration hiring in too many school districts and in higher education. The state board of community and technical colleges in Washington has developed a racial equity mission, vision, and goals that will hopefully improve outcomes here. I know that other states are also working toward equity - even despite a lack of a federal coordinative effort across the board.
Actually, many American educated people do not speak English grammar correctly. "I ain't got no money." "I seen her in the grocery store." I cringe when politicians demonstrate their lack of regard for correct English grammar, indicating that in America, the ability to speak English correctly is not important. Unfortunately, I have witnessed that many homeschooled children have not been educated in correct English grammar. Such a short fall can limit career options for ambitious students.
I'm of two minds on this one. I have a lot of my own grammatical biases, but when I teach English grammar to English language learners, I try to differentiate between prescriptive grammar and descriptive grammar. If a usage is ubiquitous, even among the educated, but it does not adhere to the grammar rules I was taught way back in the dark ages, I will defer to current usage. Or, I will at any rate offer two versions and explain that both are understandable. My favorite bugbear is "different than" - I prefer "different from/to" because that respects the meaning of different (which is not a comparative adjective); however, "different than" is ubiquitous in the US, so if a student uses it or it appears in a text, I'm not going to quibble.
The principle I try to keep in mind is that languages change over time and that English is a world language. It does not only belong to England and its former colonies - it belongs also to India, Singapore, South Africa, and an ever-increasing host of countries where English has become a lingua franca.
A completely separate discussion would involve Ebonics, pidgeon, and other dialectical variations.
Although I understand and somewhat agree with your comments, I still maintain that we have an obligation to work with students who, by nature of their community speak, fall into a deleterious habit of using fractured English grammar: I seen, I aint got no, She aint my friend, They is, etc. I do not advocate introducing them to the concepts of prescriptive and descriptive grammar in a way that proves to cloud my objective of helping them become more employable in case they have aspirations of professional development.
As a whole it has many problems, but I know many excellent teachers who have made or make a world of difference to their students. I have also heard a number of rants about the cost of education. Here in Oregon the state pays for most of the cost. Before that, it was getting the damn local budget passed and often the people whose children cost the most to educate were the most negative. Right now school board meetings are battles over masks, etc. There is also a conservative move to people the boards with radical right ideologues. Thankfully, here in Salem, the progressive slate won this time.
When I taught high school in Tustin, CA, 1990s - 2003, the school had a student population that spoke about 35 different languages. Most of them spoke English, many of them spoke a different language at home, and some of them needed classes in English as a Second Language. It was interesting getting to know a little about the various cultural backgrounds of students who came into my classroom.
By 1993 the concept of integration comprised a multitude of bi-lingual and emerging English language students. The home communities were mostly accustomed to a pantheon of bi-lingual and emerging English language students living around them: as neighbors, at gas stations, in grocery stores, and throughout the community. I was not aware of any high school that was primarily white.
Language carries the culture. If we can't use it correctly, the culture fails. Researchers at Standford even note that the way you speak or tweet can betray your political affiliation. “Understanding what different groups of people say and why is the first step in determining how we can help bring people together. This research can also help us figure out how polarization spreads and how it changes over time.” https://news.stanford.edu/2019/06/25/analyzing-tweets-republicans-democrats/
How we speak forms us as a person and predicts our behavior.
When I was in elementary school in the Bay Area, we started classes in Spanish in 5th grade. There may have been other choices available, but I was in Spanish class because it just made sense to study a language I could use every day in my community.
Although it all belonged for many hundreds of centuries (at least) to the indigenous people of the Americas. My impression, however, is that ownership of land was a concept introduced by Europeans.
Jack, you are spot on about DeSantis, and others like him, not being blithering idiots but adept practitioners of various political cons and slights of hand to keep their base stupified and numb to reality.
Morning Jack. He is not a blithering idiot in only that he knows how to follow his instructions from and pander to the Heritage Foundation and the bullhorn bullsh*t reaching his ears from Mar-a-Lardo.
As far as knowing how to pander to the electorate? Idiot. He forgot about a very large swath of the electorate.
Not a large enough swath, apparently, and with the voter suppression measures the Republican legislature is busy strengthening, Florida will continue to be governed by a viciously cruel kakistocracy for the foreseeable future. Probably far beyond the foreseeable future.
Kakistocracy - had to look that one up. I assumed it was related to 'cack-handed', as in clumsy, or crappy. But kak (meaning 'worst') works just as well.
I would still say he *is* governing like one, in his ignorance of the consequences. But if you don't like "Blithering Idiot", how about "Vile Poltroon"?
Is it fair to use a Spanish appellation? Actually, not being a Floridian, I don't know how appropriate that would be - perhaps the right-leaning bent of second or third gen Cuban-Americans makes that a fair choice?
Interesting theory, but the same factors which might cause him to lose in Florida in 2022 might cause him to lose nationally as well. But I am not so certain he will lose in 'Floriduh,' a State which elected him as well as Rubio and Scott and where the Republicans play dirty, backing shadow independent candidates with the same last name as Democratic legislative candidates to siphon off votes ... which works for them.
what other Gov and senators lost a state election and used their loss, to springboard nationally?
He’s all about keeping the National Trumppets agitated and thus donating. It could work with continued gerrymandering and voter suppression in swing states. This terrifies me. We have to consider it, in order to prevent it.
Blithering....from Old Norse "blathra" and through Ulster Irish....talking indistinctly. Usage in English takes us back to 1870s and the Reconstruction after the Civil War and always associated with "idiot"! Thanks Fern.
Thank you, Stuart. See the second meaning, '2 : stir, commotion'. To 'stir' commotion; that has been his goal. May it be turning to into non- blathra against him?
The truth ('light') about DeSantis is clear and straight forward. It just hasn't, so far, been able to penetrate the minds of millions of Cultists who bought into Trump's and the Republican Party's grievance campaign.
Here’s a good place to post Supt Carlee Simon PH.D’s response to Commish of Educ Richard Corcoran’s edict to Alachua Co to list their transgressions in getting ALL kids to mask up regarding their “unlawful face covering mask mandate”. In other words, assuming the terrible treatment of children ordered by their parent to defy and not wear masks, she was to send a detailed report of what they “did” to the children. Her words…..
“Given that the School Board of Alachua County does not have an unlawful face covering mandate policy, WE HAVE NOTHING TO REPORT.”
Bam! Put that in your pipes and smoke it, RegenerRON and Dick.
To bring non-Floridians up to speed, Alachua County, despite its location in neanderthal North Central Floriduh, is the site of the University of Florida and that's why a lot of smart people there make it not particularly supportative of Republican nonsense. And I wonder if Commissioner Corcoran could even be admitted to the University there, looking at the places where he got his degrees, good schools, but far from being major institutions.
Isn't it amazing that when there is a natural disaster, such as a hurricane or flood, those same people who scream and holler about their individual rights and, in our immediate situation, refuse to help their neighbors by wearing masks, demand immediate action from FEMA? This is one of the things that has always demonstrated to me the utter mendacity and hypocrisy of the Repugnants.
This is the backbone of “Rugged Individualism” - the claim that their financial success came at their own hand, but that any failures, especially those that affect the community are failures of the Government. In the southern COVID 19 disasters, the latter is true, but governors still deflect to Big Gov as the reason for their demise.
So now, Americans are experiencing both realities at once - the rhetoric of rugged individualism for all those who financially survived the pandemic recession, (with help from the feds) AND the expectation that the feds will hold their hand out in aid to hurricane stricken lands.
I worry for southern states who are facing hurricane Ida. I hope people who have suffered losses by listening to these individual governors as they abandon them wise up and vote them out. They all deserve better.
Yes, they are always first in line for government benefits after complaining about them for others. My spouse worked many years in the Employment Division and he has some stories about egregious examples of this. Yesterday, one of my relatives in Indiana (Terre Haute) posted a nasty meme about Biden. She did hear from me, more polite than I wanted to be because I know damn well that the entire family has had help from the government, probably lots of it. They represent the poor base that is easily manipulated by Rs.
What about another poem of his. 'In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other European nations.' (History Matters)
😣 Fern, you have, rightly, disillusioned me. That is balanced by my favorote poem ever, Rudyard Kipling's "If." He has gotten me through so many scrapes. But first here is some Wickipedia insight on "White Man's Burden":
"Since the late 20th-century, with the growth of concepts such as decolonization and the developing world, the phrase "the white man's burden" is often used by critics of foreign expansionism and interventionism to illustrate the perceived false good-intentions of Western neo-colonialism for the non-white world and show how the process of "civilizing" indigenous populations is actually part of colonial domination.[26][37].
I understand your disappointment, MaryPat. On the other hand, the poet served you until he no longer could. You were prepared for the truth. Think of those who have rationalized their grievances to obstruct the truth and the monsters who manufacture the LIES and profit from them as well as from those misguided folks.
Kipling can be both the poet of "If" and "Take Up The White Man's Burden." Nobody has ever been 100% anything one way or the other, though also seldom 50-50. Churchill's colonial policies make him still detested 100 years later in India. He's also still rightfully remembered as the man who led the resistance to Hitler. I could go on, particularly with reference to creative people such as Sinatra or Picasso.
Not said to start an argument, but understanding the world is shades of grey and hardly ever only black and white generally leads (In my experience) to better decisions.
TC, I would like to have an argument with you, preferably face to face, but we have no argument here. I do think, however, that you could improve upon my writing from time to time, but that's not an invite. I'm glad you dropped by. Your comments are usually charged with knowledge and vigor, along with the bitters, when you're in the mood.
TC, 'topping' - capital punishment, beheading or competitive play? I imagine thoughtful challenges and feisty exchanges Getting angry at one another is unlikely. I haven't noted deep differences between us. As for your counsel to see grey, the world looks mostly red with much uncertainty to me.
I don't know that much about Kipling as a person, but my first read of "White Man's Burden" has always been satire. He was, after all, the author of the Road-Song of the Bandar Log in Jungle Book, of the tribes of monkeys posturing like a bunch of wigged Men in the halls of government. Or The Man Who Would Be King, which (if nothing else) is a cautionary tale about White arrogance.
'Kipling has been variously labelled a colonialist, a jingoist, a racist, an anti-Semite, a misogynist, a right-wing imperialist warmonger; and—though some scholars have argued that his views were more complicated than he is given credit for—to some degree he really was all those things. That he was also a prodigiously gifted writer who created works of inarguable greatness hardly matters anymore, at least not in many classrooms, where Kipling remains politically toxic.'
'In a prologue to “If: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years” (Penguin Press), Christopher Benfey, a professor at Mount Holyoke, writes that some of his friends, when they learned what he was working on, asked him what on earth he was thinking, and warned that he’d better be ready to defend himself. Benfey’s best defense turns out to be the book itself, which doesn’t attempt a full-throated rehab job. An Americanist who has written very good books about Emily Dickinson and Stephen Crane, among others, Benfey mostly steers clear of Kipling’s politics, and instead concentrates on a little-known chapter in Kipling’s life: the four years that this outspoken defender of the British Empire spent living just outside Brattleboro, Vermont, where he wrote some of his best work, including “The Jungle Book” and “The Second Jungle Book,” “Captains Courageous,” and the first draft of “Kim.” ' (The New Yorker,) Link to the book review below:
Huh. Satire is a two-edged sword. You can sanctify the devil by seeing satire where none was intended, and condemn a saint by failing to see the intended satire.
Sorry, wasn't disagreeing, or sticking with anything. I REALLY don't know much about Kipling, and I take your word for it. It's always a mistake to read too much about an author, because it sometimes poisons a book you loved.
When people take government support they are now associated with poor whites, Blacks, immigrants. Just imaging how they feel about their new karass. Hate would be a mild descriptor.
I"m certainly of an advanced age and rather silly, but have read and appreciated fewer works of KV than have you, I'm surmising. Does that make you older and sillier?
Louisiana is such a poor state that I would be cautious about lumping all the unvaxxed into the antivax. Having a racist antivax state government I suspect there has been a dearth of public health efforts to get vaccine into arms.
This is true. While anti mouths are shout the loudest and get the attention, we can not forever those who are silent and those voices of hesitancy born of decades of distrust in an oppressive one party state. ( the south). Would you trust your oppressor?
Public Health, like Public Education, is an institution of good governance. Both have been hollowed out by Republicans since 1980. This is why we see some states suffering more than others. Vax rates are directly related to education and income levels. This is just but one window to our Oligarchy.
The rise in pediatric cases is telling. And we have all seen the data on unvaccinated adults. Here in Oregon the governor has sent the National Guard to help some hospitals and another one (in Bend) is getting help from a company that provides medical personnel. The governor has just issued masks for outside (in crowded situations like the State Fair which is has started). Several sheriffs have made their defiance of her orders public. And we are back to being cautious as we were before.
Governor Brown is between a rock and a hard spot. I have to say that the crisis in southern Oregon is devastating to me; that's where I grew up. My sister works in a large discount supermarket (Food 4 Less) and is daily subjected to the hatred and vitriol of people who refuse to mask up as if she is personally responsible for the requirements.
Ally. Here’s a brief story. Let your sister know. I was in Publix on a busy Saturday evening and was about the only customer masked up. The hairs on the back of my neck made me aware of a hard stare on my back. I stopped and looked over the tomatoes and sure ‘nuf, there’s Bubba following me with his worn, red make America not so great hat on. So I stroll on through a few aisles and stop suddenly at the Lorna Doones and turn around. And laser focus on him with a toss of my head. He averts his eyes and pretends to shop and puts something in his cart (I was wishing it had been the tampon section) and then he carts towards me. He’s almost even with me and I reach into my purse and casually put a second mask on over the first. And stare right at him. With my patented schoolmarm look. He scurried on like the weasel he was. Ha!
Don’t interrupt my zen and my grocery shopping.
You tell your sister I consider the checkout people at the grocery stores frontline workers.
Let's all make it an essential part of our grocery shopping to thank not only the checkers and baggers, but also the lonely sentinels at the doors who face the vitriol of the anti-vaxxers. I never want to be in such a hurry that I can't spare a few words of appreciation.
She certainly is. I admire her for making the tough decisions. People wanted local control and then they, with some notable exceptions, did nothing, or actively stood against those measures that would help stop the spread of the virus. I am sorry for your sister; it is often those people out front who get the hatred for the decisions of others.
A lot of the sheriffs I am referencing believe in that constitutional sheriff nonsense. Much of it is red meat to the base, so they will be elected again. Some people are staging (or have staged) a protest against the Polk County sheriff....everything across the river from Salem to the west is Polk County. And of course if you want to come across as manly rugged take no crap individual, you can't be a wimp and get the vaccine.
Has anyone ever seen a Sheriff's department that wouldn't improve the community if it was disbanded? Here in L.A., the Sheriff's Deputies are the gangbangers (literal gangs!) in tan. Starting them out as jail guards before letting them on the streets insures they're rotten.
I think many in our local department are just fine. Our sheriff was vey careful how he worded his response to mask mandates. What it amounted to is if there is a crime involved like an assault, they will make an arrest. However, they will not be the mask police. Some are far right racist awful nasty members of the party of death and are applauded for giving the middle finger to the governor who, although she has made the tough decisions, is not popular. And a certain number of LE seem to relish beating the crap out of helpless people.
Both Douglas County (Roseburg) and Josephine County (Grants Pass) not to mention most of the eastern rural counties. I suspect the Linn and Benton County Sheriffs as well.
The virus will be devastating to that demographic. Who wants devastation? And the potential chias of over worked over burdened civil servants? Isn’t health care worker crisis now bad enough? Libertarians want catastrophe they crave it. They have taken over the Republican Party.
Yes, from the Vietnam war era. The song was, I think written by Country Joe, of Country Joe and the Fish, and was performed by lots of folks. I'm forgetting the exact title, but the line went "Be the first one on you block to have your kid come home in a box."
I wasn't old enough to go - and the parents wouldn't have let me! But every time I see a clip from Woodstock, I think, "We were so beautiful and idealistic!"
I heard part of a story on NPR yesterday in which a British reporter or guest was talking about how the Chinese all follow the safety protocols and their numbers are down. In comparison, he said, to the selfish Americans who have made this second wave a disaster. So shameful. I blame tfg and the tsunami of stupidity he unleashed.
Authoritarianism seems very attractive at times like this - but when it takes over, we don't get to pick the parts we like (such as mass obedience to mask and social distancing mandates) and leave out the ones we don't (such as the government sending in tanks to bulldoze thousands of students).
I see what you mean. I guess some democracies and republics closer to their authoritarian roots are able to see the public value in health mandates easier, so, like China, have better numbers than the U.S. I don’t want or expect lockstep agreement. But Fox and Trump have poisoned the well, so that a humanitarian joint effort to stop this pandemic is impossible.
There’s so much in Biden’s handout. He is trying to demonstrate to the people who voted for a state and local government that they don’t have to settle with their inaction. He’s trying to offer ALL Americans the relief they need at a time of disaster. AND he is trying to tell those people they don’t have to keep voting for bums.
I agree with you. At the same time I remember something my mother use to say. "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It will only irritate the pig and waste your time."
However, pigs are very intelligent in comparison to many in the demographic of which we write. If porcines don't sing, it's because they have thought it over and decided that it isn't practicable, given their apparatus of articulation. Their irritation comes from our dubious efforts based on lack of knowledge about what it takes to sing. I'm pretty sure that level of thought is not possible for some of our human brethren and sistren (yes, I made that one up).
My father in law, who has lived his whole life in south/central NH, says that all the time! I never heard my dad, who grew up around Boston, say it. Is it a Pogo thing, like "we have met the enemy and it is us"? He likes that one too, a big fan of Pogo.
Heard a LOT of little hummers like that when I was growing up - but not that one. I'm sure we could apply it "somewhere" in the current climate, right?
I was considering that as a response, too. Surely there can be a way to publicly link the state's request for help from the government to their criticism of said government and how they think the government should stay out of their lives.
And that they are satisfied with the CALL for FEMA to respond but ok if it doesn’t happen very well. Hurricane Katrina remains a national tragedy and embarrassment.
"You're doing a great job, Brownie!" That's a quote by President George W. Bush that he made to his horse racing friend he had made the head of FEMA. Brownie had no clue what he was doing when Katrina hit New Orleans. Imagine how many people lost so much because of this political appointee.
The Republicans are saying that Biden is incompetent, yet they fail to remember their incompetent Republican president George W. Bush and his VP Dick Cheney, a five-time draft dodger and the de facto president, both of whom invaded Iraq and Afghanistan! Of course the R's were so happy that those invasions have made U.S. weapons manufacturers filthy rich. Talk about sicko!
Y'know, the constitutionality of vaccine mandates is really settled law, and has been for a long time. Look to Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 US 11 (1905), and Zucht v. King, 260 US 174 (1922), that together hold that public health requirements override individual desires, even in the absence of a public health emergency. For these governors, all well equipped with attorneys general, to claim otherwise is starkly disingenuous.
As Justice Harlan wrote in Jacobson, "in every well ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand" and that "[r]eal liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own [liberty], whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others."
If it was really so obvious, and Governor DeSantis’s attorneys were making such disingenuous claims, then why shouldn’t they be sanctioned right alongside the attorneys who promoted the insurrection?
The last Cafe Insider 8/24 "Covid Court" spent the hour on this topic. To start they distilled the argument down to "..the liberty of your fist is constrained by the proximity of my chin."
Citing the Jacobson decision they quoted it: “The liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States does not import an absolute right in each person to be at all times and in all circumstances holy freed from restraint.” It goes on to say, “It is within the police power of a state to enact a compulsory vaccination law."
Seems clear enough to me, but there's always muddy water everywhere.
Cuomo got shot down last year over his restrictive attendance measures that affected attending religious services. He was overruled by the Supreme Court for violating 1st Amendment rights. So there can be exceptions whether we like them or not and even if it lets people put themselves in danger.
This SCOTUS decision didn't override Jacobson, but proves it can co-exist with other situation. When the Cuomo case was cited later in a case involving an Indiana University vaccine mandate. A Trump appointee upheld the University's decision saying you can't make a blanket case using religion as a reason and apply it to a public university.
So, it seems states and schools can have mandates and the same goes for companies, but there will always be challenges.
What about the right to be free FROM religion? Isn't that also covered by the 1st amendment? Why must my rights be abridged by somebody else's religion? This speaks to many related issues, including the sanctity of a woman's body, financing of some charter schools, and taxation of religious property.
Not trying to be facetious, but when was the last time you were marched into church with the butt of a gun to your back? Has religion been granted too many inroads regarding the separation clause? I would say yes. Are we now seeing the error of those inroads? I would say yes again. Are we seeing a decline in church attendance? Again I say yes. Is the problem of religious influence over government getting worse? Seems like it is but the needle is swinging against theocratic domination of Congress. At least it is to me when almost daily we learn of another religious figure being found committing some kind of hypocrisy.
If by to be free FROM religion means to not have to support their schools with your tax dollars while they remain tax exempt, we're singing in the same choir brother.
And how often are public policies that don't do as much as they should turn out to be the result of religious bullshit? That's the "religion" I want freedom FROM.
If they want to keep souls in the pews, they'd better not all try to be exempt and they won't because there will be no one to pass the collection plate. Amen!
You are spot on - churches and political parties rely heavily on donations in order to survive. Why, then, are so many of each so willing to kill off their donors? The parasites are killing their hosts, as often happens in the natural world.
Going to have to sit with this letter for quite some time, not just the issues covered, but the excellent citations and the multitude of responding comments which come from the community that has developed over the past couple of years trying so hard to be informed and make some sense of these critical times we are experiencing.
In my mind I am comparing the image of the Biden government and allies moving heaven and earth to fly tens of thousands of people out of Afghanistan in a coordinated undertaking never before attempted or accomplished, and reports of Hillary Rodham Clinton arranging private flights to remove at risk girls and women, versus the discordant reports of Betsy DeVos' brother, Erik Prince, charging $6500 a person for passage out - representative of both the individualism and opportunity for personal gain in a capitalistic system espoused by the GOP.
Not only has the former guy made comments in praise of the Taliban, but some of the policies being pursued by the GOP would have similar or worse effects on women's rights as those feared in countries such as Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, and the dystopian novels such as The Handmaid's Tale.
One political cartoon portrayed the situation poignantly: Trump handing Biden a grenade labeled Afghanistan and saying "I've already pulled the pin."
I am also distraught by the fact the officer who fired the fatal shot defending the Capitol on January 6 has been identified by name and image, and compound that by the fact it turns out he is African-American. Violent action has already been taken in response to various conspiracies and by white supremacist groups, and they have put this individual and his family at mortal risk.
Any of the officers could have been called upon to do their duty on that day and in that situation. The repeated attacks and called for retribution of anyone who has taken a stand against the Big Lie and defended truth and stood up against tyranny and upheld the Constitution
instead of supporting the former guy or those competing for his base with aspirations for their own presidential run frankly sicken me.
I agree. His courage is formidable and beyond admirable. Like so many others, I am worried for his safety. We need something similar to the witness protection program to ensure his safety until this craziness settles down. These terrorists are literally like rabid animals.
Too bad they didn't shoot more of them. That worthless bimbo was too fucking stupid to make it past E-3 in the Air Force(!) in 18 years. I didn't know people that stupid were allowed to re-enlist.
What a day! Biden kept his promise and the military executed his plan to fight back. Then a judge rules against DeSantis which was wonderful to hear. Unfortunately, he will appeal. Fortunately, he’s losing ground with oeople in his state. Then we see a letter from Republican House member Jim Banks, basically whining that Congress has no right to conduct investigations into private matters that the GOP seems to have had prior to and up to events of 1/6. No tears shed for these guys, but tears and sadness shed for our young Marines who lost their lives as well as the Afghanis they were trying to save.
Again, a reminder that not a single Repub voted for the Voting Rights Act.
Apparently, Congressman Jim Banks, representing Indiana's Third Congressional District, could not be bothered with going to law school before publishing his letter to Congressman Bennie Thompson, Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, arguing that committee subpoenas to telecommunications companies exceeded his authority under the Constitution. He presumes that the subpoenas relating to the individuals who invaded the House of Representatives and Senate in their assault on the Capitol building were in furtherance of a law enforcement effort to identify and prosecute those individuals for insurrection, inference with a governmental function, trespass, and several other federal crimes. That is his assumption, and that assumption is unfounded. As far as the Constitution is concerned, the function of Congress is to legislate, and congressional investigations can be wide-ranging and in great depth in order to fully understand the problem to be addressed by appropriate legislation in the future.
Whoever wrote that letter for Congressman Banks did a shoddy piece of work. Even someone with an undergraduate degree in political science knows, or has reason to know, that Congress's powers of investigation are not nearly so limited. The ongoing investigation is multifaceted, looking into the extent to which the Executive Departments of the Federal Government anticipated the January 6 invasion of the Capitol building, the extent to which they had prior warning about what was to occur, the extent to which they had prior information about who might be involved in planning and executing the assault on the Capitol building, and whether any Member of Congress or staff of the House of Representatives in any way facilitated that assault. Needless to say, Congressman Banks has made every effort to thwart the sort of official inquiry that the House Committee on Homeland Security is currently conducting. From my perspective, is simply another way that the Trump Republicans are abusing the courts to end democratic government as we know it.
I would have thought that Congressman Banks, in preparing his letter, would have hearkened back to his undergraduate years in college when he would have taken the introductory course in government, typically denoted as Political Science 101, which course focuses on the powers of government and how they interrelate. I would also have thought that he might have remembered selected readings and textbooks, old lecture notes, and reference to sources of information that he is privy to now, now that he is a Congressman, that would have edified him as to what Congress's power actually is under the Constitution. Doubtless, he may have remembered something about those studies and lectures he might have attended; but it is equally apparent that there is a great deal that he overlooked, or had not bothered to read, or simply decided not to mention in his letter to Chairman Thompson. Congress has plenary power to investigate what it will if a nexus to potential legislation, however tenuous at the moment that prospective legislation might appear to be. Mr. Banks' letter is certainly not going to derail the investigation; and doubtless, those outside telecommunications companies to whom subpoenas have been forwarded would be ill advised to rely on the shoddy piece of work that Congressman Banks has provided as a fig leaf to cover his obvious political concerns that members of his Republican conference within the House of Representatives were in fact complicit in staging the attack on the Capitol, and with it the House chamber in which Mr. Banks currently serves. Indeed, Congressman Banks, and members of his official staff, are subject to compulsory process to obtain any and all information that they may have had relating to the January 6 invasion. Could it be that Congressman Banks or any of his Republican cohort have reasons to want to suppress the inquiry that bear on their personal responsibility for enabling the January 6 invasion to happen. It would seem so, given the circumstance that a protest on January 6 have been widely advertised, and the Trump supporters from Indiana were known to have participated in the invasion.
Investigation into prospective legislation can go on for years, decades, before legislative draftsmen put pen to paper to prepare legislative proposals, policy statements, compilations of investigative reports, and information pertaining to such formative, even inchoate proposals. The court is going to turn thumbs down because information that might be turned up might prove to be evidence of a crime. Evidence of a crime, conducted in a new and novel way, are preeminently the subjects of pending legislation, even if those legislative proposals are scrawled on yellow legal pads, with scratch outs, and marginalia. It is all legislation.
The fact that Congressman Banks is supplying telecommunications companies and other outside parties with copies of his letter is highly unlikely to change the outcome of the investigation by the House Committee on Homeland Security. Those companies are already being queried by the Federal Bureau of investigation and the Department of Justice. This is simply request for business records maintained by those companies regarding activities by subscribers to services that those companies provide as part of their business. Law enforcement obtains those records every day. There is nothing privileged in those records. A congressional inquiry looking into the depth and breadth of the Capitol building invasion would certainly want to know how widely communications went using communication services provided by the companies to whom subpoenas were directed. In all likelihood, these records link phone calls from one telephone to others, stating the time, date, identity of the caller and recipient, length of call, and other metadata. None of this information will be used for law enforcement purposes, simply because the FBI exercises the same power to make inquiry. In other words, if the FBI is looking to put people in jail for their roles in the assault on the Capitol building; and the House Committee on Homeland Security is looking at the January 6 event on a much broader scope, including the identities of particular groups of people, not necessarily looking at individual members of such groups, it seems clear to me that there is a firm legislative purpose in protecting Homeland security against the domestic terrorism. The way that is done is through legislation, and in order to draft legislation that appropriately addresses the problems and threats to national security, Congress needs to have information that goes to the granular level of how this particular assault was planned, organized, propagated and advertised, and who did it. Congressional investigators and prosecutors may be looking at the same evidence for entirely different purposes. There is nothing to suggest that there is anything nefarious about the fact that Department of Justice investigators, FBI agents, and investigators employed by the Committee on Homeland Security are all conducting their respective inquiries; nor is there anything untoward about intragovernmental communications that share information: they all work for the same people, the American people. Let us keep that in mind. When it comes to the Constitution, the interests of the Republican Party, or any political party, enjoy no special standing. Here the phrase 'country over party' has real meaning. All else is propaganda.
"Mr. Banks' letter is certainly not going to derail the investigation".
Of course not. More theater. THE WHOLE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT is total theater.
Their constituents just need raw meat, think World Wrestling Entertainment. For those here who think their followers are merely misinformed, or feel powerless, it's much larger than that. They don't even believe this stuff themselves. Just another justification for resentment and provocation.
They remind me of the students who thought the class clown was the cat's meow and were cruel to other students. It is the immaturity that many never grow out of.
I spent many years in education. And I know the types you are talking about. Class clowns are not always just funny guys and as you know students can be cruel and nasty. I did smile about my generous nature and reluctance to speak ill of others. I have no problem doing that especially now that I am retired and don't have to put up with nonsense from administrators, a certain type of parent, and some of my colleagues who left a lot to be desired in the integrity department.
As a young man I taught in the South Bronx Public Schools where I grew up. I knew I had to protect children from these predators. That is who these people are; they acted like clowns as children, but even then I knew they'd be Trouble when they grew up.
You're very generous in your description of them, David. The accurate terms for them would tax the ability of the old Navy Chief I knew who could swear for 30 minutes without repeating himself.
Maybe true, but calling their behavior ‘immaturity’ is a great way to trivialize the extreme harm they are perpetrating. Nothing justifies the horrors they are creating.
I am not trying to justify any horrors and I loathe the party of death. But they do remind me of the casual cruelty of a certain part of the student body. I have always considered class clowns of the type I am talking about to be insidious. And I take umbrage at the idea of trivializing this. I also hear the middle schoolers talk on the way home from school and they too are often cruel. Immaturity can encompass many things.
I usually post here early in the am and perhaps I should have chosen a better word. As I posted above, the student I had in mind turned out to be a real piece of work. The last time I saw him he was just surly. I didn't foresee that he would come close to being murdered. I thought that he would just continue to be a jerk.
In order to provide a framework to better understand the questions of morality and kindness as a balance between cooperation and conflict I suggest reflecting on the work of Dr. Oliver Scott Curry. You can learn more about Dr. Curry here - https://www.anthro.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-oliver-scott-curry#/.
Dr. Curry advances the idea that morality is all about cooperation in a set of basic societal rules that advance the common good. His scientific studies show these basic facets of cooperation extend to every culture. You can listen to his Ted Talk where he explains this idea here - https://www.oliverscottcurry.com/.
I have long been a follower and advocate of Dr. Curry’s work and believe it also provides a framework for better understanding an essential difference between the more moral positions and policies of Democrats versus the … well let’s just say less moral positions and policies of Republicans. Cooperation to advance the common good is more moral and kinder than individualism and conflict that sees competition for resources as a zero sum game in which one party must lose in order for the other to win.
I urge all to listen to Dr. Curry’s Ted Talk and reflect on these thoughts. It may help explain why you decide which side of the collectivism versus individualism discussion you prefer to advance.
Thank you for this informed and appropriately contemptuous letter. Well done. But you likely give Rep. Banks way more credit than he deserves in suggesting that he ever gave a thought to hearkening back to what he learned as an undergraduate, or cared a whit what the text of the Constitution, the case law, or custom and practice taught. Almost certainly, he simply instructed some congressional aide, likely a first year lawyer just out of a third rate law school, the way he wanted to come out and told him or her to come up with something that sounds lawyerly, with lots of legalese in it. He's an idiot, and a reactionary. So, likely, is the aide who helped him out. Best to you in retirement and best to your adult daughters. Regards.
I understand that your comment was not meant to be taken seriously, or literally; you were being sarcastic or snarky or funny or some variant of same, But this particular bit of sarcasm, I suggest, betrays a fundamental misunderstanding on your part, the misunderstanding in turn betraying a default, albeit a minor one, as noted below. There are, as you suggest, any number of neo-fascists, racists, islamaphobes, xenophobes, and homophobes (choose your terms) who are graduates of Yale or Harvard Law School, Cruz, Cotton, DeSantis, Pompeo, Hawley among them (There are also many extremely progressive and worthy graduates of these law schools, but that is a side show). None of these individuals are "stupid" and "ignorant" in the usual sense of those terms. Their academic records make that contention, which is effectively yours, risible. Rather they are distinguished by their deep moral failings, denoted by the terms accurately used to characterize them above. You let them off the hook, big time, when you ascribe their failings to stupidity (low intelligence being immutable) and ignorance (which would be the product of being poorly educated , which they are not). Collectively, narratives like yours (or more precisely, beliefs like yours, your single snarky comment hardly counts as a narrative) add nothing, certainly nothing accurate, to the political discourse, but instead cheapen and disfigure it. To be sure, your single comment, of itself, is of no political consequence, neither is this reply. It follows that that I am not suggesting that you did anything wrong or destructive or would want to (you were writing in good faith), only that you might want to reexamine some of your views. Best regards.
You are both right. Im with TC because i share a similar very deep resentment towards Putins useful fool and everyone who supports him for messing up my country and
embarrassing
me beypnd forgiveness. There arent enough negative words in the English to describe my anger. TC gives me some relief and helps me find pacience to wait for Bidens team to do their job. And i would bet he, like i and others, re-examines his views when new data becomes available. I appreciate your very courteous comment and will read Curry.
Thank you for this excellent analysis. I note where Mr. Banks is from, my home state of Indiana and I know his mind set very well. I am amazed how little these people know about what our democracy is all about and our government functions.
For many, democracy has been left behind long ago. I mean, why would they want to be fellow citizens with us ("us" = anyone who is not like them). As far as knowing about how government functions, well Trump made an art of not knowing. The same way as he demonstrated the art of not understanding the real estate business, and life in general. Not knowing is the new knowing.
Willful ignorance. It would be like a mass shooter claiming that CCI or Federal are responsible for the deaths and destruction because their ammunition worked.
Yes, the Republican office holder display willful ignorance. Trump and his Followers are genuinely that way. On a visit to Lancaster to visit some lovely Quaker relatives I noted, within moments, a bumper sticker which read: "I Follow Trump" and a road sign promoting a performance that included a live Jesus.
The followers of Jesus were prepared to pay money to see a live performance by Jesus. This impossible promise was being taken up by these "True Believers".
The bumper sticker displayed the TB in the exact same way. They committed to following Trump, no matter what.
My great great grandfather was in the Union army. Indiana, in my mind, has always been a part of the upper south. In the 1920s it had the largest KKK numbers of any state. Cross burnings as far north as St. Joseph, MI, in this case, the yard of a Catholic. So I can understand your surprise.
Excellent addition to today's discourse. Another one of those knowledgeable additions caused by LFAA which I wish I could include in a collection of ATLFAAs (Addendum to LFAA). I always learned from the questions and discussions that followed lectures in college. Here, nearing 80, I sometimes feel like that Social Studies major in the 1960s when I listen in with you all. Thanks
Your mention of the courts has me concerned. Will the R's submit to SCOTUS that the investigation is illegal? Given the current make up of SCOTUS, I posit that they might go along w/ the R's...
If you were to graph the extremism and treason gripping the GOP, with the horizontal bar being time and the vertical being degree of extremism/treason. the line over the past 20 years would look like a parabola, and in the past 12 months it would have approached going up at around a 90 degree angle. We are in far more danger from these scum now than we were 12 months ago. The election didn't resolve anything. They become worse and more dangerous by the week.
I understand, as I’m oversubscribed too , but you’ll feel so much better if you subscribe and support writers like TC. I took advantage of his yearly rate. I had to give up a few things that month, but it was worth it.
Totally agree. TC, your column is excellent and I want to support your work. Have to unsubscribe from others first, as I have a budget. But, join the chorus of Thank You’s here today.
They don't accept the election. They don't accept voting. These are just two more causes of resentment and causes to fight as far as they are concerned.
I wish there were more Democratic officeholders who grew up in harsh neighborhoods.
They would know what is plain to see and, more importantly, have the courage and strength to survive.
I've just finished...in one day...reading Anne Applebaum's "Twilight of Democracy".... which is very, very interesting... and she refers to it as circular. I see it as a spiral which come back to not quite the same.
Thank you! I am 21% into the Applebaum book on Kindle. Here is a gem that highlights the difference between the complexity of governing adopted by the current administration and the bullet point conspiracy approach of the last one.
"The emotional appeal of a conspiracy theory is in its simplicity. It explains away complex phenomena, accounts for chance and accidents, offers the believer the satisfying sense of having special, privileged access to the truth. For those who become the one-party state’s gatekeepers, the repetition of these conspiracy theories also brings another reward: power." ( Anne Applebaum, The Twilight of Democracy, p.45, Kindle)
What is most disturbing is the idea that the Republican party has incorporated this m.o. (once an aberration) as something conventional--without the need of the histrionic FG ( former guy).
( see Peter Wehner, The Atlantic, "Trumpism Has Entered Its Final Form").
So your spiral may be the better model as it takes things to another place-- as opposed to being trapped in a circular loop of repitition.
Daria, she comes from the Conservative end of the spectrum and is appalled at the extent to which many people who agreed with her 30 years ago are now rabid pre-autocratic, foxites. She examines what effectively "turned" them looking at Poland, Hungary, UK and of course the US.
One thing that has to be remembered is, had there not been an Eastern Front, it is very likely Hitler could have won, or at least taken all of western Europe including the UK, making a US invasion not possible. Had Stalin not lived up to his promise at Tehran to start his 1944 summer offensive a week after the Normandy invasion, it is very likely the Germans could have expelled the US and UK from France - the only reason we won the Battle of France was because the Germans couldn't bring any units from the Eastern Front, since they had to meet an enormous Soviet offensive that swept them out of the USSR and most of Eastern Europe by that fall. 80 PERCENT OF ALL CASUALTIES IN WORLD WAR II occurred on the Eastern Front. Stalin did keep one Yalta promise: to enter the Pacific War 90 days after the defeat of Germany, and it was that - not the A-bombs - that brought about the Japanese surrender, since they knew they had no defenses in northern Japan and that the Soviets would be on Hokkaido by the end of September, a good 6-7 weeks before the US was going to invade southern Japan. It was that fact that led Churchill and Roosevelt to do as they did at Yalta. Anything to the contrary is right wing (pro-Nazi) propaganda.
Another thing to remember is that without the beaches of Normandy Stalin would have continued to lose. Was it necessary to give him control over all the smaller countries he pushed through on his campaign, successful because of Churchill help, to defeat Hitler?
In fact, no, they were not. If the Japanese were going to surrender as a result of bombing, the firebombing of Tokyo on the night of March 9-10 killed more people than the A-bombing. They knew what the Soviets had done in Germany after the surrender, and they knew how much their traditional enemy hated them, and that the Russians would have taken Hokkaido and Honshu by the time the Americans landed. So they surrendered to us and then proceeded to tell us what we wanted to hear, that it was the A-bombs that did it. Which also set up the unrepentant imperial militarists allowed to remain in power by MacArthur to play the "Ultimate Victim" card ever since. "How can you ask us to apologize for the rape of Nanking, or the Bataan Death March, or the Malayan railroad ("The Bridge on the River Kwai"), or the Korean comfort women, when you dropped A-bombs on us?"
You're right about treason, and there isnt a nice way to put it. If i could afford to live in the USA, i would be collecting license plates and taking videos photos of trouble makers and bullies for future reference.
It's far more than "individualism" vs "government help". All autocrats use government to help themselves. Republicans have become masters at this. They will take FEMA money, covid19 relief money, military and government contracts, power to stop abortions and to expand gun rights until there is no safety anywhere. But fight giving funds to others, voting rights to others, healthcare protection to others, etc.
It's always been "us" vs "them" for Republicans since Reagan. The change has been that it was once southern Democrats, now they are rebranded Republicans. They may say it's about "individual rights" but it's about their "individual rights", power, benefits & largesse at the expense of all others including now, our democracy, our nation.
Yes. We have heard this from our Republican friends who criticized covid19 funds but took it anyway, and a family member who criticized the 2008 economic collapse assistance but took a huge amount under his business, more than his income taxes. We see this with Senator Collins taking credit for covid19 funding and Federal contracts given out in Maine to industries and workers who still support Trump and LePage. Trump and LePage took tax payer and donor money for themselves and gave a trickle to their friends and supporters, ie their refined "trickle down" economics.
Our news is filled with recriminations over the 13 American soldiers (and sometimes the tens of Afghans) killed during that attack on the withdrawal, coming from the same people who make no sound over the thousand-plus Americans dying needlessly each day of covid-19. The hypocrisy is thick enough to bottle.
We are in a fix for certain. It is as if there are 2 completely independent governments within this Country. Total division. Us against them.
I do not see the concept of bipartisan in our future. This isn't how I thought life would be like when Biden took office. I think we all agreed it would be rocky at first. I'm back to not wanting to look at the news or read the papers.
I feel what we are seeing in Kabul was a well orchestrated shit storm set up by the last Administration to hobble Biden. I can honestly say that without wearing a tinfoil hat.
When I looked at my phone early this morning I found out a friend lost her son in Kabul. Caleb is one of the 13 souls that fought for this Country. It's heartbreaking.
Be safe, be well. Please put Caleb and his family in your thoughts.
As someone who was on the receiving end of an explosive device a little over 50 years ago, I can tell you that he probably didn’t feel a thing, one second he was there helping those he was sent there to help evacuate, and the next he was on the other side. We are all heading there eventually, I personally, and we as a nation mourn his abrupt passing and pray that his family find some comfort in that knowledge. He was a courageous man who, along with his companions, was doing a very dangerous job for the benefit of so many that were in need of his help, I know of no more honorable calling than that. RIP 🙏
“well orchestrated shit storm” just about covers it.
Prayers for comfort for Caleb’s and the other families who received that knock on the door, and for the recovery of the wounded. Also for courage and safety for our remaining troops while they complete their mission.
Linda, I am so sorry about Caleb. It is heartbreaking, for sure, You are right about the two independent governments. The fact that the one side continues to exploit this situation for political points is abominable. I, like you, have not wanted to watch the news lately either. I just can't take any more of the "piling on".
Thank you for your letters. I recognize that they take a great deal of your time and energy, but they help me focus on national and international events so much more clearly than if I’mleft to my own devices. Enjoy your weekend.
What can you say after reading such a brilliant, compassionate, and reasonable account of the events that define America these days! It is so exhaustive that any comment would pale by not contributing much to what Heather exposed as the clear truth: about Afghanistan, about Biden, about the GOP weasels, and about the covid situation.
Governors DeSantis and Abbott remind me of Leopold and Loeb, two wealthy University of Chicago students who kidnapped and murdered 14 year-old Bobby Franks. The two young men thought because of their status and superior intelligence they could get away with “the perfect crime.” Thrill seeking was their main motive. Clarence Darrow was able to finagle a life sentence for them both. Loeb was razor slashed and killed in prison in 1936 and Leopold was paroled in 1958.
DeSantis and Abbott are getting away with the perfect crime. They have within their power to save lives yet choose to lean on “personal responsibility and freedom” to supersede the public safety of their constituents. And now children are being infected and dying in record numbers. A deadly plan by the devil himself couldn’t be more devious. Citizens of Florida and Texas must say to them, “You have your ideals; we have our dead.”
It should be mentioned that Herbert Hoover of all people, that icon of rectitude, coined the term “rugged individualism”, which has been incorporated into the lexicon of American virtue and used to beat back efforts to allow government to maintain a just and fair society.
As a real American icon has said “America has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor”
Hoover. Erghhh. Rugged individualism was and remains a path to white grievance. What happens when white people are told they just need work harder and harder. When they do, but cannot achieve what Hoover promised them, what happens? White grievance happens. And the cycle of racism can be self perpetuating. George Floyd . Cops won’t vaccinate happens. Jan 6th happens.
Your expertise in weaving datum, events, facts and historical evidence bring together an intricate tapestry of the US/world stage where we, as spectators, must play the parts of active and involved audience members. I love that you educate us as critically aware spectators who can decipher and piece together the intrigue during these disruptive times.
How you can do all this with a new semester looming, is beyond me. I can barely pull my syllabi together without feeling depleted! All this to say: thank you! You are a life saver in this tragi-comedy of the 22nd century! I almost called it a theatre of the oppressed, but I refuse to see us all as totally suppressed and subservient. After all, you lead us through this political labyrinth with such insight and élan that we are bound to do our part!
Today's letter is an excellent piece of writing, and a perfect parallel to your thesis in HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR. I am now "devouring" that book at the rate of a chapter a day, with meticulous notes in the margins. So much of our history is finally making sense to me. Confederate ideology moved west only to be re-introduced to the national stage by Goldwater and Reagan, finally reaching a fever pitch with the era of Trump and the Confederate flags at the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
Florida Judge Rules That Residents Have a Right to a Smarter Governor
The Constitution “does not grant you the right to govern a state like a blithering idiot,” the judge said.
(By Andy Borowitz, New Yorker)
But DeSantis, a Yale and Harvard Law grad, is not a blithering idiot. Rather, he is someone who knows how to pander to an electorate including enough blithering idiots to keep him and his party in power. Governmentally, If Floriduh were not one of the fifty States, it would be just another Central American Banana Republic.
Harvard has fallen mightily in my estimation as it “educated” DeSantis, Kayleigh McEnany, Jared Kushner and Steve Brannon, among others! SHAME ON HARVARD LAW, I say.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/10/19/shroff-harvard-trump-administration/
A degree does not equal smartness. I'd say those folks are doing some major brand damage to Hahvaard.
AMEN, Charlie!
This.
When I was at B-School, I soon learned that there were some students there only to figure out how to extract. I expect the Law School is similar.
It’s really not fair to blame Harvard. Barack Obama went to Harvard Law, too! I’m grasping in a way, still can’t believe the stupidity of the followers of these misinformation spreaders. They have truly become lemmings as they March toward their covid deaths.
Both of my parents were Harvard graduates--my father with a PhD, my mother, who could have gotten a PhD with a month's more work but didn't because she'd decided to switch fields from econ to psych, got a bachelor's. Both were good people.
I do think Harvard should avoid admitting people who lack a sense of decency, like deSantis, Kushner, Bannon, et al.
What did your mom end up doing after getting her bachelor’s degree?
Just wondering.
She got a PhD in Clinical Psych from University of Washington (where my father first taught) and ultimately taught at Tufts for around 25 years. One of her mentors had told her that if she spent a month tweaking a paper she'd written for one of the major agencies in DC, where they'd lived for a year or two, he'd give her a PhD. She was quite something. So were her sister and their mother.
That is wonderful! Brava!
Thank you Christine!
I wrote a short piece about my mother--here https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/The-home-forum/2020/0805/heeding-her-invitation-six-decades-later
David expands on the point I was making. SOME students are in it for unsavory preparation. I do, however respect Barack Obama's choices; he did attend Columbia and lived in my neighborhood.
What does extract mean in this case?
I interpret it to mean exploit any situation to their own gain.
Financial extraction is a particular exploitation. It is a common term on Wall Street. (See:Yves Smith Book "ECONned" 2010)
Some get there on there on merit. Others by family connections and family donations.
This San Francisco State graduate used to really RELISH firing wannabe "writeurs" with Ivy League degrees and tell them to their faces they were talentless semi-literates. More than a few walked out of the office crying - which when I knew I had gotten through their entitlement.
HA! My daughter graduated from SF State! Then into USF for her masters.
I wish they could/would take back the diplomas of those on the basis of promoting stands that are Idiotic, malicious, endangering of life, and flat out lies.
With that as the basis, I'm afraid that most Americanos would find themselves with only high-school diplomas.
If a rotten kid gets some higher education, I wouldn't expect a good kid to emerge. We can't blame Harvard for being unable to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Who's blaming Harvard?
Although it's no Columbia.
(Disclosure: All the men in my family attended Columbia professional schools and love pizza.)
I think they should try to weed out these sorts of people before admitting them. Sh!ts should not get the influence that goes with having a high class education. Among the non-famous people that didn't deserve a Harvard education: One of my friends, now a very old woman, was formerly married to a famous and somewhat controversial American. Her granddaughter went to Harvard, where she met a fellow student who swept her off of her feet. My friend wrote up some memoirs, and was interested in finding someone to edit them. The granddaughter recommended her boyfriend. At some point, the two of them split up, and the now ex boyfriend absconded with a digital copy of the memoirs.
one cannot educate the uneducable, as my father would have said :-) ... it does seem to be a sad truth
My granpa used to say, "You can educate a fool but you can't put brains in their head."
Or, as the famed philosopher Jeff Foxworthy has said, "you can't fix stupid."
Poor character precedes the academic schooling. You can boost Harvard back up a notch noting that HCR went there.
As they say, 'you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear' :- )
As did her classmate Tony Blinken.
Harvard's origins were in non-competitive selection for entry, and still are to a large extent. Admission was granted based on family status. John Adams, who had a low family standing, had to ride his horse around to prominent families to get recommendations and financial support.
Likewise, final class standing at the end of the four year curriculum was based on family standing. One's actual performance at Harvard had zero influence on class standing until the 20th Century when grades began to matter.
However, even today, Harvard ensures that enough dumb, white males from prominent families enter Harvard with poor grades and zero SAT scores to keep their endowment growing.
Hence, Harvard and Yale often accept the likes of George W. Bush, Donald J. Trump, Jared Kushner, etc.
None of the above three names would have been able garner entry into even their local community college based on performance.
Bravo, Kaivan Shroff.
I wonder if Yale and Harvard shouldn't be in some way embarrassed by their association with a blithering idiot. Wouldn't they want to save their reputations by rescinding his degrees? Oh right, then they would have to rescind George Bush's and a host of other graduates who've proven to be unworthy.
Ambition without scruples has nothing to do with education but often generates generous endowments in lieu of repentence for ill-perceived "sins" ....not to mention a place for similarly lacking in values offspring.
Another example of the admonition to follow the money.
The traditional Ivy League colleges, and the Seven Sister schools as well, were hallmarks of American culture and higher education back in the days when whiteness, wealth and waspiness were the American image and the top rung of the ladder of opportunity. Fortunately, that is not true any longer.
While it may not be factual, it is still truth in the minds of too many who hold power.
To quote Celia Green, "The human race's favorite method for being in control of facts is to ignore them." (The Decline and Fall of Science, 1976)
I kept hoping Wharton would rescind TFG’s diploma. I’d always believed the school set high standards.
HE DIDN'T GO TO WHARTON!!!
TFG was allowed to transfer to the University of Pennsylvania, but his grades were too low for the (then) lower standards than now to gain admission to Wharton, though he was allowed to AUDIT classes at Wharton.
He was recalled by one of the Wharton professors thus: "Donald Trump was the dumbest fucking student to ever walk into my classroom!"
One more fraud upon another, an another… and…
It took a little "pull" from Daddy to get him into Wharton as a transfer student. His record there is not available, but it doesn't appear he was among those honored at his graduation. Trump put in his time there and little more. When as president, he awarded economist Arthur Laffer the Medal of Freedom, he commented on studying the man's work while at Wharton. Laffer's theories, which are as phony as the 45th president was, came out after Trump's graduation! Just another lie from the guy who wrote the "Fart of the Deal."
See my note above. He audited classes at Wharton, but was not an admitted student, being "the dumbest fucking student who ever walked into my classroom!" in the words of one Wharton professor.
"Third World America" is how a friend of mine describes living in Mississippi. Floriduh is about the same. Maybe with more golf courses and condos.
I spent a week in Mississippi, and it felt like the third world. The neighborhood we stayed in had no paved roads, no mail service (residents had to drive to another city to their P.O. Boxes), and some of the houses were partly under water from a recent storm that had flooded a river. And everyone that lived there was Black. It was heartbreaking. And I was younger and less aware of my own weird nice white racist tendencies. Still, it was shameful that that was also America.
Listen to the late Nina Simone singing 'Mississippi Goddam' which you can find online.
you can go straight to the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ25-U3jNWM
Below, someone has pasted in the lyrics.
Thank you.
Jack, thank you, thank you! I was going to college in Birmingham in 1964 when she performed at Carnegie Hall. She’s my kind of woman!
That song stays in your head. And the version I have is live at Carnegie Hall I think. The courage she had!
For those who haven't listened to the song Nina Simone sang in 1964, here are the lyrics:
Mississippi Goddam
Nina Simone
This song was first performed and recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1964, a turbulent year in the Civil Rights struggle.
[Spoken Introduction]
The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it
[Verse 1]
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi, goddamn
Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer
[Chorus]
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi, goddamn
(This is a show tune, but the show hasn't been written for it, yet)
[Verse 2]
Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last
Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer
Don't tell me, I'll tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"
[Refrain]
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"Too slow"
Picking the cotton
"Too slow"
You're just plain rotten
"Too slow"
You're too damn lazy
"Too slow"
The thinking's crazy
"Too slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know
Just try to do your very best
Stand up, be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi, goddamn
(I bet you thought I was kidding, didn't you)
[Verse 3]
Picket lines, school boycotts
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
For my sister, my brother, my people, and me
Yes, you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie
Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"
[Refrain]
But that's just the trouble
"Too slow"
Desegregation
"Too slow"
Mass participation
"Too slow"
Reunification
"Too slow"
Do things gradually
"Too slow"
But bring more tragedy
"Too slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know
[Chorus]
You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi, goddamn
[Spoken Outro]
That's it!
And here we are in 2021 - still nowhere near done.
I love it. I had not seen nor heard of this song before yesterday. I watched to the end. Watch her stand up at the end. See her face? The defiance and the commitment. That’s what we need now!
Ummmm, that’s what we have now, Ted. If you could have seen my face yesterday, you would have seen that and more. And I see it in your posts daily!
Salud!
I listened to that yesterday morning. Someone here had linked it. Wow.
We are becoming a third world country, what with the shredded social safety net. Hopefully the Dems can fix this, and that enough GOPers will realize who's helping people that we'll stay in the majority.
David, the Dems started it. "What?" you say. Those Dems from the Civil War onward switched parties to become Dixiecrats and then today's Republicans.
I've read extensively about the Civil War. The Ron Chernow book, Grant, was particularly informative about the aftermath of the Civil War and the Dixiecrats.
My comment applies to the time period beginning with Reagan.
And, Texas would be part of Mexico.
It very well may happen. Some geopolitically-oriented theorists foresee a stronger Mexico, in about another century, recapturing from a hopelessly divided United States the land they feel rightfully belongs to them encompassing Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
My fantasy is the secession if the West Coast states to form a new country with Mexico and Canada. World’s third largest economy. Close to second. I usually call it Canada++ but Mexico++ would also be fine. Or some other name. New Mexico is also welcome. Maybe Arizona. No Texans, though. Too many obnoxious blowhards.
Texas has a lot of good people - it's just that the GOP has managed to redistrict them into apparent silence (from the outside). On the inside, there is a lot of blue life!
Yes, I know. Have a brother among them, and Lawrence Wright, who knows what he’s takling about, says Texas would be blue now if the Latino electorate voted at the same rate as they do in California (but with the new suppression laws, that’ll never happen). Regardless (or “irregardless” as W, the village idiot and former chief blowhard would say), the blowhards are just too obnoxious to bear. No Texas in Mexico++. Ironic, I know, but that’s what happens when the loudmouths hold the floor.
Canamex, Mexica, Mexida,
Canado, Pacifica?
Is nyc in?
Yes. NYC welcome. That would get us close to second largest economy, not far below China.
Well at least linguistically, the cultural shock would be minimized.
And of course, California as well. Read the writings and prognostications of George Friedman on this subject.
Yes. I know Friedman's work well. I live one State over and here in Southern AZ we refer to ourselves as citizens of Baja. If we could, we'd lobby to negate the Gadsden Purchase. But, then there is this matter of Sen. Synema - I'm not too sure the Mexican folk would want her as a representative.
Did you know that when California became a state, a law was created that made it mandatory for the teaching of both English and Spanish in California schools. It may still be on the books, but I doubt Spanish is a mandatory subject. That is a shame for all Americans not to know at least two languages.
Any many can't speak our own national language well or correctly. We are educationally lazy people.
Until we return the value to obtaining educational knowledge, make advanced education affordable, and use the knowledge gained by educators and professors, we will remain educationally lazy. Our public education system values college after 12th grade and nothing more. There are kids who cannot attain that for whatever reason. We need to strive for preparing every child for becoming a productive citizen after graduation. So many options out there.
Part of the problem in education, I am sorry to say, by the emphasis on sports. Several of our worst teachers were hired as coaches. Not only were they bad teachers, they were also totally lacking in integrity.
John Maynard Hutchins, President of the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1951, wrote an article in 1954 in Sports Illustrated about what he believed the role of a university might be. He had his own ideas, and in 1939, the University of Chicago, under his leadership, dropped football. Here is an excerpt from the 1954 article.
“The ancient Athenians were as crazy about sport as modern Americans are. So were the ancient Romans and the Renaissance Italians. So are contemporary Britons and Germans. But we Americans are the only people in human history who ever got sport mixed up with higher education. No other country looks to its universities as a prime source of athletic entertainment. In some other countries university athletic teams are unheard of; in others; like England, the teams are there, but their activities are valued chiefly as affording the opportunity for them and their adherents to assemble in the open air. Anybody who has watched, as I have, 12 university presidents spend half a day solemnly discussing the Rose Bowl agreement, or anybody who has read—as who has not?—portentous discussions of the "decline" of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or Chicago because of the recurring defeats of its football team must realize that we in America are in a different world."
Another problem is that racial equity is not a priority in faculty, staff, and administration hiring in too many school districts and in higher education. The state board of community and technical colleges in Washington has developed a racial equity mission, vision, and goals that will hopefully improve outcomes here. I know that other states are also working toward equity - even despite a lack of a federal coordinative effort across the board.
Yes, back during my tenure as an educator, all the male administrators were old or practicing sports coaches. Not a brain among them.
Actually, many American educated people do not speak English grammar correctly. "I ain't got no money." "I seen her in the grocery store." I cringe when politicians demonstrate their lack of regard for correct English grammar, indicating that in America, the ability to speak English correctly is not important. Unfortunately, I have witnessed that many homeschooled children have not been educated in correct English grammar. Such a short fall can limit career options for ambitious students.
I'm of two minds on this one. I have a lot of my own grammatical biases, but when I teach English grammar to English language learners, I try to differentiate between prescriptive grammar and descriptive grammar. If a usage is ubiquitous, even among the educated, but it does not adhere to the grammar rules I was taught way back in the dark ages, I will defer to current usage. Or, I will at any rate offer two versions and explain that both are understandable. My favorite bugbear is "different than" - I prefer "different from/to" because that respects the meaning of different (which is not a comparative adjective); however, "different than" is ubiquitous in the US, so if a student uses it or it appears in a text, I'm not going to quibble.
The principle I try to keep in mind is that languages change over time and that English is a world language. It does not only belong to England and its former colonies - it belongs also to India, Singapore, South Africa, and an ever-increasing host of countries where English has become a lingua franca.
A completely separate discussion would involve Ebonics, pidgeon, and other dialectical variations.
Okay, rant over.
Although I understand and somewhat agree with your comments, I still maintain that we have an obligation to work with students who, by nature of their community speak, fall into a deleterious habit of using fractured English grammar: I seen, I aint got no, She aint my friend, They is, etc. I do not advocate introducing them to the concepts of prescriptive and descriptive grammar in a way that proves to cloud my objective of helping them become more employable in case they have aspirations of professional development.
Although, to be fair, many students, despite their faulty grammar, do succeed in life which speaks to American possibilities for everyone.
Correct! And with the piss poor amount the states and the national government budget for education, our entire education system sucks.
As a whole it has many problems, but I know many excellent teachers who have made or make a world of difference to their students. I have also heard a number of rants about the cost of education. Here in Oregon the state pays for most of the cost. Before that, it was getting the damn local budget passed and often the people whose children cost the most to educate were the most negative. Right now school board meetings are battles over masks, etc. There is also a conservative move to people the boards with radical right ideologues. Thankfully, here in Salem, the progressive slate won this time.
When I taught high school in Tustin, CA, 1990s - 2003, the school had a student population that spoke about 35 different languages. Most of them spoke English, many of them spoke a different language at home, and some of them needed classes in English as a Second Language. It was interesting getting to know a little about the various cultural backgrounds of students who came into my classroom.
I lived in Tustin 1985 - 1992
I was 35 then, and never knew the “white”schools were seggregated the only ones with air conditioning until a teacher told me
By 1993 the concept of integration comprised a multitude of bi-lingual and emerging English language students. The home communities were mostly accustomed to a pantheon of bi-lingual and emerging English language students living around them: as neighbors, at gas stations, in grocery stores, and throughout the community. I was not aware of any high school that was primarily white.
Language carries the culture. If we can't use it correctly, the culture fails. Researchers at Standford even note that the way you speak or tweet can betray your political affiliation. “Understanding what different groups of people say and why is the first step in determining how we can help bring people together. This research can also help us figure out how polarization spreads and how it changes over time.” https://news.stanford.edu/2019/06/25/analyzing-tweets-republicans-democrats/
How we speak forms us as a person and predicts our behavior.
When I was in elementary school in the Bay Area, we started classes in Spanish in 5th grade. There may have been other choices available, but I was in Spanish class because it just made sense to study a language I could use every day in my community.
Salem has bilingual classes at the elementary level at least. I don't know after that.
My parents were studying Spanish when I was a pre-schooler anyway, and we had a lot of Spanish speaking acquaintances.
Also California, southwestern Colorado, Utah and Nevada.
Although it all belonged for many hundreds of centuries (at least) to the indigenous people of the Americas. My impression, however, is that ownership of land was a concept introduced by Europeans.
Interesting thought.
Of course Texas and most of the other western states were part of Mexico.
It isn't?
It is now.
Jack, you are spot on about DeSantis, and others like him, not being blithering idiots but adept practitioners of various political cons and slights of hand to keep their base stupified and numb to reality.
Would you buy a used car from DeSantis?
You're kidding me, right? I wouldn't buy squat from DeSantis! You mistake me for someone else I think😉
No! No! I know you wouldn't. It was a wink-wink, nudge-nudge, knowhatimean?
😆! I know that I was being cantankerous!
Morning Jack. He is not a blithering idiot in only that he knows how to follow his instructions from and pander to the Heritage Foundation and the bullhorn bullsh*t reaching his ears from Mar-a-Lardo.
As far as knowing how to pander to the electorate? Idiot. He forgot about a very large swath of the electorate.
Not a large enough swath, apparently, and with the voter suppression measures the Republican legislature is busy strengthening, Florida will continue to be governed by a viciously cruel kakistocracy for the foreseeable future. Probably far beyond the foreseeable future.
We shall see. Following his no mask debacle? The swath increases.
Kakistocracy - had to look that one up. I assumed it was related to 'cack-handed', as in clumsy, or crappy. But kak (meaning 'worst') works just as well.
And in French slang, "ka ka" means shit.
I would still say he *is* governing like one, in his ignorance of the consequences. But if you don't like "Blithering Idiot", how about "Vile Poltroon"?
That works, too.
His IQ and education might indicate otherwise, but his actions appear to denote that he is an evil blithering idiot, regardless.
How about Florameaula or Costa Stupido?
Costa Stupido
Is it fair to use a Spanish appellation? Actually, not being a Floridian, I don't know how appropriate that would be - perhaps the right-leaning bent of second or third gen Cuban-Americans makes that a fair choice?
He could lose Florida as Gov,in order to win the presidency. I think this is what he is calculating.
Interesting theory, but the same factors which might cause him to lose in Florida in 2022 might cause him to lose nationally as well. But I am not so certain he will lose in 'Floriduh,' a State which elected him as well as Rubio and Scott and where the Republicans play dirty, backing shadow independent candidates with the same last name as Democratic legislative candidates to siphon off votes ... which works for them.
Rethuglicans dirty tricks. Fitting Roger Stone lives there.
Where else?
Reptile climate.
I wonder if iDJT will campaign for him though, given his disdain for the gov. That, and his need to vanquish all rivals.
Ted, How would that work? If he loses Floridah in 2022 doesn't that do major brand damage nationally. Can't win his home state kind of thing?
what other Gov and senators lost a state election and used their loss, to springboard nationally?
He’s all about keeping the National Trumppets agitated and thus donating. It could work with continued gerrymandering and voter suppression in swing states. This terrifies me. We have to consider it, in order to prevent it.
With a very strange demographic pyramid.
Rabble-rousing.
Blithering....from Old Norse "blathra" and through Ulster Irish....talking indistinctly. Usage in English takes us back to 1870s and the Reconstruction after the Civil War and always associated with "idiot"! Thanks Fern.
Thank you, Stuart. See the second meaning, '2 : stir, commotion'. To 'stir' commotion; that has been his goal. May it be turning to into non- blathra against him?
The "light" has always been their enemy and it is not necessarily complex.
The truth ('light') about DeSantis is clear and straight forward. It just hasn't, so far, been able to penetrate the minds of millions of Cultists who bought into Trump's and the Republican Party's grievance campaign.
😮😯😳🙄😵💫
Here’s a good place to post Supt Carlee Simon PH.D’s response to Commish of Educ Richard Corcoran’s edict to Alachua Co to list their transgressions in getting ALL kids to mask up regarding their “unlawful face covering mask mandate”. In other words, assuming the terrible treatment of children ordered by their parent to defy and not wear masks, she was to send a detailed report of what they “did” to the children. Her words…..
“Given that the School Board of Alachua County does not have an unlawful face covering mandate policy, WE HAVE NOTHING TO REPORT.”
Bam! Put that in your pipes and smoke it, RegenerRON and Dick.
To bring non-Floridians up to speed, Alachua County, despite its location in neanderthal North Central Floriduh, is the site of the University of Florida and that's why a lot of smart people there make it not particularly supportative of Republican nonsense. And I wonder if Commissioner Corcoran could even be admitted to the University there, looking at the places where he got his degrees, good schools, but far from being major institutions.
Ha! So true Jack! He is such a DeVos sychophant.
Andy only thinks he’s a satirist!
I think that he would appreciate your review. It deserves a Borowitz!
One of the few laughs I've had in days. Thank you, Fern!
By gawwwd….I so love Borowitz!
Thanks Fern! I needed this!
Good to see you MaryPat. We Americans yearn for a laugh between the moans, groans and tears.
Laughter is the lubrication for our old politicsl joints!
Isn't it amazing that when there is a natural disaster, such as a hurricane or flood, those same people who scream and holler about their individual rights and, in our immediate situation, refuse to help their neighbors by wearing masks, demand immediate action from FEMA? This is one of the things that has always demonstrated to me the utter mendacity and hypocrisy of the Repugnants.
This is the backbone of “Rugged Individualism” - the claim that their financial success came at their own hand, but that any failures, especially those that affect the community are failures of the Government. In the southern COVID 19 disasters, the latter is true, but governors still deflect to Big Gov as the reason for their demise.
So now, Americans are experiencing both realities at once - the rhetoric of rugged individualism for all those who financially survived the pandemic recession, (with help from the feds) AND the expectation that the feds will hold their hand out in aid to hurricane stricken lands.
I worry for southern states who are facing hurricane Ida. I hope people who have suffered losses by listening to these individual governors as they abandon them wise up and vote them out. They all deserve better.
Yes, they are always first in line for government benefits after complaining about them for others. My spouse worked many years in the Employment Division and he has some stories about egregious examples of this. Yesterday, one of my relatives in Indiana (Terre Haute) posted a nasty meme about Biden. She did hear from me, more polite than I wanted to be because I know damn well that the entire family has had help from the government, probably lots of it. They represent the poor base that is easily manipulated by Rs.
Rudyard Kipling said it well in his poem Tommy.
“You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an` Chuck him out, the brute! "
But it's " Saviour of 'is country " when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An 'Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!”
What about another poem of his. 'In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other European nations.' (History Matters)
'Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child
Take up the White Man’s burden
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit
And work another’s gain
Take up the White Man’s burden—
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah slowly) to the light:
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
“Our loved Egyptian night?”
Take up the White Man’s burden-
Have done with childish days-
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!'
See link below:
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5478/
IF, by Rudyard Kipling:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
https://www.africanamerica.org/topic/128788938051399553?reply=128788938051399558#128788938051399558
Modern version for women because we have different hormones
😣 Fern, you have, rightly, disillusioned me. That is balanced by my favorote poem ever, Rudyard Kipling's "If." He has gotten me through so many scrapes. But first here is some Wickipedia insight on "White Man's Burden":
"Since the late 20th-century, with the growth of concepts such as decolonization and the developing world, the phrase "the white man's burden" is often used by critics of foreign expansionism and interventionism to illustrate the perceived false good-intentions of Western neo-colonialism for the non-white world and show how the process of "civilizing" indigenous populations is actually part of colonial domination.[26][37].
I understand your disappointment, MaryPat. On the other hand, the poet served you until he no longer could. You were prepared for the truth. Think of those who have rationalized their grievances to obstruct the truth and the monsters who manufacture the LIES and profit from them as well as from those misguided folks.
Kipling can be both the poet of "If" and "Take Up The White Man's Burden." Nobody has ever been 100% anything one way or the other, though also seldom 50-50. Churchill's colonial policies make him still detested 100 years later in India. He's also still rightfully remembered as the man who led the resistance to Hitler. I could go on, particularly with reference to creative people such as Sinatra or Picasso.
Not said to start an argument, but understanding the world is shades of grey and hardly ever only black and white generally leads (In my experience) to better decisions.
And one person’s satire is another’s gospel truth.
Amen. See my comment above.
TC, I would like to have an argument with you, preferably face to face, but we have no argument here. I do think, however, that you could improve upon my writing from time to time, but that's not an invite. I'm glad you dropped by. Your comments are usually charged with knowledge and vigor, along with the bitters, when you're in the mood.
You and I would be just topping each other, Fern, not arguing.
TC, 'topping' - capital punishment, beheading or competitive play? I imagine thoughtful challenges and feisty exchanges Getting angry at one another is unlikely. I haven't noted deep differences between us. As for your counsel to see grey, the world looks mostly red with much uncertainty to me.
Nothing physical - only intellectual, and it would likely be a tie (if I was lucky).
I don't know that much about Kipling as a person, but my first read of "White Man's Burden" has always been satire. He was, after all, the author of the Road-Song of the Bandar Log in Jungle Book, of the tribes of monkeys posturing like a bunch of wigged Men in the halls of government. Or The Man Who Would Be King, which (if nothing else) is a cautionary tale about White arrogance.
'Kipling has been variously labelled a colonialist, a jingoist, a racist, an anti-Semite, a misogynist, a right-wing imperialist warmonger; and—though some scholars have argued that his views were more complicated than he is given credit for—to some degree he really was all those things. That he was also a prodigiously gifted writer who created works of inarguable greatness hardly matters anymore, at least not in many classrooms, where Kipling remains politically toxic.'
'In a prologue to “If: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years” (Penguin Press), Christopher Benfey, a professor at Mount Holyoke, writes that some of his friends, when they learned what he was working on, asked him what on earth he was thinking, and warned that he’d better be ready to defend himself. Benfey’s best defense turns out to be the book itself, which doesn’t attempt a full-throated rehab job. An Americanist who has written very good books about Emily Dickinson and Stephen Crane, among others, Benfey mostly steers clear of Kipling’s politics, and instead concentrates on a little-known chapter in Kipling’s life: the four years that this outspoken defender of the British Empire spent living just outside Brattleboro, Vermont, where he wrote some of his best work, including “The Jungle Book” and “The Second Jungle Book,” “Captains Courageous,” and the first draft of “Kim.” ' (The New Yorker,) Link to the book review below:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/08/rudyard-kipling-in-america
Huh. Satire is a two-edged sword. You can sanctify the devil by seeing satire where none was intended, and condemn a saint by failing to see the intended satire.
Joseph Nemeth (CA)Aug 29
I don't know that much about Kipling
I would say your words above sum it up. On the other hand, having read "White Man's Burden' as satire, you're sticking with that. 'Huh.'
Sorry, wasn't disagreeing, or sticking with anything. I REALLY don't know much about Kipling, and I take your word for it. It's always a mistake to read too much about an author, because it sometimes poisons a book you loved.
When people take government support they are now associated with poor whites, Blacks, immigrants. Just imaging how they feel about their new karass. Hate would be a mild descriptor.
But is their karass a wampeterless granfalloon? (I must admit I resorted to Wikipedia - I haven't read Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle".)
You need to be of an advanced age and silly about yourself to have read and appreciated Kurt.
I"m certainly of an advanced age and rather silly, but have read and appreciated fewer works of KV than have you, I'm surmising. Does that make you older and sillier?
Sillier and wiser. Younger but older. Makes sense to you, I hope.
Louisiana is such a poor state that I would be cautious about lumping all the unvaxxed into the antivax. Having a racist antivax state government I suspect there has been a dearth of public health efforts to get vaccine into arms.
This is true. While anti mouths are shout the loudest and get the attention, we can not forever those who are silent and those voices of hesitancy born of decades of distrust in an oppressive one party state. ( the south). Would you trust your oppressor?
I agree, but again, the state government couldn’t be bothered with vaccine access for all its citizens.
Public Health, like Public Education, is an institution of good governance. Both have been hollowed out by Republicans since 1980. This is why we see some states suffering more than others. Vax rates are directly related to education and income levels. This is just but one window to our Oligarchy.
Yes.
😔
It would seem that the Republicans all want to be the first on their blocks to have their kids and adults be buried in a box.
The rise in pediatric cases is telling. And we have all seen the data on unvaccinated adults. Here in Oregon the governor has sent the National Guard to help some hospitals and another one (in Bend) is getting help from a company that provides medical personnel. The governor has just issued masks for outside (in crowded situations like the State Fair which is has started). Several sheriffs have made their defiance of her orders public. And we are back to being cautious as we were before.
Governor Brown is between a rock and a hard spot. I have to say that the crisis in southern Oregon is devastating to me; that's where I grew up. My sister works in a large discount supermarket (Food 4 Less) and is daily subjected to the hatred and vitriol of people who refuse to mask up as if she is personally responsible for the requirements.
Keeping your sister in my thoughts, Ally.
Ally. Here’s a brief story. Let your sister know. I was in Publix on a busy Saturday evening and was about the only customer masked up. The hairs on the back of my neck made me aware of a hard stare on my back. I stopped and looked over the tomatoes and sure ‘nuf, there’s Bubba following me with his worn, red make America not so great hat on. So I stroll on through a few aisles and stop suddenly at the Lorna Doones and turn around. And laser focus on him with a toss of my head. He averts his eyes and pretends to shop and puts something in his cart (I was wishing it had been the tampon section) and then he carts towards me. He’s almost even with me and I reach into my purse and casually put a second mask on over the first. And stare right at him. With my patented schoolmarm look. He scurried on like the weasel he was. Ha!
Don’t interrupt my zen and my grocery shopping.
You tell your sister I consider the checkout people at the grocery stores frontline workers.
Brava!
Let's all make it an essential part of our grocery shopping to thank not only the checkers and baggers, but also the lonely sentinels at the doors who face the vitriol of the anti-vaxxers. I never want to be in such a hurry that I can't spare a few words of appreciation.
I’ll pass that on to her. She’ll love it.
She certainly is. I admire her for making the tough decisions. People wanted local control and then they, with some notable exceptions, did nothing, or actively stood against those measures that would help stop the spread of the virus. I am sorry for your sister; it is often those people out front who get the hatred for the decisions of others.
Southern Oregon and California north of Sacramento (and some areas south) could be joined into the State of Dumbass.
AKA the "State of Jefferson". It's a movement...
Like I said, the state of Dumbass...
I'd like to add a selection of counties in WA state to that list, please.
😣
It’s very interesting the vax hesitant in the police and sheriffs. This will not go well for them.
A lot of the sheriffs I am referencing believe in that constitutional sheriff nonsense. Much of it is red meat to the base, so they will be elected again. Some people are staging (or have staged) a protest against the Polk County sheriff....everything across the river from Salem to the west is Polk County. And of course if you want to come across as manly rugged take no crap individual, you can't be a wimp and get the vaccine.
Has anyone ever seen a Sheriff's department that wouldn't improve the community if it was disbanded? Here in L.A., the Sheriff's Deputies are the gangbangers (literal gangs!) in tan. Starting them out as jail guards before letting them on the streets insures they're rotten.
I like to think that I retired from one.
I think many in our local department are just fine. Our sheriff was vey careful how he worded his response to mask mandates. What it amounted to is if there is a crime involved like an assault, they will make an arrest. However, they will not be the mask police. Some are far right racist awful nasty members of the party of death and are applauded for giving the middle finger to the governor who, although she has made the tough decisions, is not popular. And a certain number of LE seem to relish beating the crap out of helpless people.
We do have a fair number of those here, don’t we? I just read a story about one that just baffled me.
Since you grew up in southern Oregon, I am sure you know the type who are likely to run for sheriff. Which one, btw?
Both Douglas County (Roseburg) and Josephine County (Grants Pass) not to mention most of the eastern rural counties. I suspect the Linn and Benton County Sheriffs as well.
Here's a link to Jo County:
https://www.kdrv.com/content/news/Josephine-County-Sheriff-wont-enforce-state-COVID-19-mandates-575180941.html
And Douglas County:
https://www.nrtoday.com/news/health/coronavirus/douglas-county-sheriff-says-he-wont-enforce-oregon-mask-mandate/article_1a3043e0-68db-5d6b-b256-524660d74c77.html
I was thinking of the gem we have next door in Polk County who managed to get a protest against him Thanks for the cites
One of our local police officers just died of COVID. Only 27% of his colleagues are vaccinated.
The virus will be devastating to that demographic. Who wants devastation? And the potential chias of over worked over burdened civil servants? Isn’t health care worker crisis now bad enough? Libertarians want catastrophe they crave it. They have taken over the Republican Party.
😔
There's a song in there
Yes, from the Vietnam war era. The song was, I think written by Country Joe, of Country Joe and the Fish, and was performed by lots of folks. I'm forgetting the exact title, but the line went "Be the first one on you block to have your kid come home in a box."
I believe it was "Fixin to Die Rag" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRl6-bHlz-4
Thanks, Annette! You are absolutely correct!
Here’s song with lyrics, Richard. Those rascals.
https://youtu.be/LxEyg61LC4g
I wasn't old enough to go - and the parents wouldn't have let me! But every time I see a clip from Woodstock, I think, "We were so beautiful and idealistic!"
Annette is right. "Fixin' To Die Rag" "Be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box!"
This reminds me that we are far from being a great nation.
We were only a great nation to certain White men.
And even that is now slipping away.
I heard part of a story on NPR yesterday in which a British reporter or guest was talking about how the Chinese all follow the safety protocols and their numbers are down. In comparison, he said, to the selfish Americans who have made this second wave a disaster. So shameful. I blame tfg and the tsunami of stupidity he unleashed.
New Zealand!
And I blame faux news.
Authoritarianism seems very attractive at times like this - but when it takes over, we don't get to pick the parts we like (such as mass obedience to mask and social distancing mandates) and leave out the ones we don't (such as the government sending in tanks to bulldoze thousands of students).
I see what you mean. I guess some democracies and republics closer to their authoritarian roots are able to see the public value in health mandates easier, so, like China, have better numbers than the U.S. I don’t want or expect lockstep agreement. But Fox and Trump have poisoned the well, so that a humanitarian joint effort to stop this pandemic is impossible.
And far from being great individuals (with a few exceptions).
Too many pretend Christians.
Good thing Biden is a decent person, because after Ida does her damage, i would have left Trump-publican individuals to rot, so to speak.
There’s so much in Biden’s handout. He is trying to demonstrate to the people who voted for a state and local government that they don’t have to settle with their inaction. He’s trying to offer ALL Americans the relief they need at a time of disaster. AND he is trying to tell those people they don’t have to keep voting for bums.
I agree with you. At the same time I remember something my mother use to say. "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It will only irritate the pig and waste your time."
However, pigs are very intelligent in comparison to many in the demographic of which we write. If porcines don't sing, it's because they have thought it over and decided that it isn't practicable, given their apparatus of articulation. Their irritation comes from our dubious efforts based on lack of knowledge about what it takes to sing. I'm pretty sure that level of thought is not possible for some of our human brethren and sistren (yes, I made that one up).
Great explanation, Lanita! I totally agree even more with the last sentence - whether you made it up or not!!
My father in law, who has lived his whole life in south/central NH, says that all the time! I never heard my dad, who grew up around Boston, say it. Is it a Pogo thing, like "we have met the enemy and it is us"? He likes that one too, a big fan of Pogo.
Heard a LOT of little hummers like that when I was growing up - but not that one. I'm sure we could apply it "somewhere" in the current climate, right?
I'm definitely in favor of denying treatment to the morons who take Ivermectin. Call it "culling the herd."
I was considering that as a response, too. Surely there can be a way to publicly link the state's request for help from the government to their criticism of said government and how they think the government should stay out of their lives.
And that they are satisfied with the CALL for FEMA to respond but ok if it doesn’t happen very well. Hurricane Katrina remains a national tragedy and embarrassment.
"You're doing a great job, Brownie!" That's a quote by President George W. Bush that he made to his horse racing friend he had made the head of FEMA. Brownie had no clue what he was doing when Katrina hit New Orleans. Imagine how many people lost so much because of this political appointee.
The Republicans are saying that Biden is incompetent, yet they fail to remember their incompetent Republican president George W. Bush and his VP Dick Cheney, a five-time draft dodger and the de facto president, both of whom invaded Iraq and Afghanistan! Of course the R's were so happy that those invasions have made U.S. weapons manufacturers filthy rich. Talk about sicko!
I was just reading about the improvements made in the levees since Katrina. Thankful for that at least.
Recallling John McPhee’s Atchafalaya
Always.
Y'know, the constitutionality of vaccine mandates is really settled law, and has been for a long time. Look to Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 US 11 (1905), and Zucht v. King, 260 US 174 (1922), that together hold that public health requirements override individual desires, even in the absence of a public health emergency. For these governors, all well equipped with attorneys general, to claim otherwise is starkly disingenuous.
As Justice Harlan wrote in Jacobson, "in every well ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand" and that "[r]eal liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own [liberty], whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others."
If it was really so obvious, and Governor DeSantis’s attorneys were making such disingenuous claims, then why shouldn’t they be sanctioned right alongside the attorneys who promoted the insurrection?
Thanks for sharing this. My sentiments exactly. Liberty without considerate constraints = tyranny
The last Cafe Insider 8/24 "Covid Court" spent the hour on this topic. To start they distilled the argument down to "..the liberty of your fist is constrained by the proximity of my chin."
Citing the Jacobson decision they quoted it: “The liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States does not import an absolute right in each person to be at all times and in all circumstances holy freed from restraint.” It goes on to say, “It is within the police power of a state to enact a compulsory vaccination law."
Seems clear enough to me, but there's always muddy water everywhere.
Cuomo got shot down last year over his restrictive attendance measures that affected attending religious services. He was overruled by the Supreme Court for violating 1st Amendment rights. So there can be exceptions whether we like them or not and even if it lets people put themselves in danger.
This SCOTUS decision didn't override Jacobson, but proves it can co-exist with other situation. When the Cuomo case was cited later in a case involving an Indiana University vaccine mandate. A Trump appointee upheld the University's decision saying you can't make a blanket case using religion as a reason and apply it to a public university.
So, it seems states and schools can have mandates and the same goes for companies, but there will always be challenges.
What about the right to be free FROM religion? Isn't that also covered by the 1st amendment? Why must my rights be abridged by somebody else's religion? This speaks to many related issues, including the sanctity of a woman's body, financing of some charter schools, and taxation of religious property.
Not trying to be facetious, but when was the last time you were marched into church with the butt of a gun to your back? Has religion been granted too many inroads regarding the separation clause? I would say yes. Are we now seeing the error of those inroads? I would say yes again. Are we seeing a decline in church attendance? Again I say yes. Is the problem of religious influence over government getting worse? Seems like it is but the needle is swinging against theocratic domination of Congress. At least it is to me when almost daily we learn of another religious figure being found committing some kind of hypocrisy.
If by to be free FROM religion means to not have to support their schools with your tax dollars while they remain tax exempt, we're singing in the same choir brother.
And how often are public policies that don't do as much as they should turn out to be the result of religious bullshit? That's the "religion" I want freedom FROM.
You say “the needle is swinging against theocratic domination of Congress.” I disagree. Over half of the House are Catholic Republicans
And Churches will get exemptions till kingdom come. Ugh.
If they want to keep souls in the pews, they'd better not all try to be exempt and they won't because there will be no one to pass the collection plate. Amen!
You are spot on - churches and political parties rely heavily on donations in order to survive. Why, then, are so many of each so willing to kill off their donors? The parasites are killing their hosts, as often happens in the natural world.
Donors often leave large donations to churches in their wills. Church members are really clients.
Truth is not an effective tool for them
Thanks for that!
Dirk, thank you for this!
Going to have to sit with this letter for quite some time, not just the issues covered, but the excellent citations and the multitude of responding comments which come from the community that has developed over the past couple of years trying so hard to be informed and make some sense of these critical times we are experiencing.
In my mind I am comparing the image of the Biden government and allies moving heaven and earth to fly tens of thousands of people out of Afghanistan in a coordinated undertaking never before attempted or accomplished, and reports of Hillary Rodham Clinton arranging private flights to remove at risk girls and women, versus the discordant reports of Betsy DeVos' brother, Erik Prince, charging $6500 a person for passage out - representative of both the individualism and opportunity for personal gain in a capitalistic system espoused by the GOP.
Not only has the former guy made comments in praise of the Taliban, but some of the policies being pursued by the GOP would have similar or worse effects on women's rights as those feared in countries such as Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, and the dystopian novels such as The Handmaid's Tale.
One political cartoon portrayed the situation poignantly: Trump handing Biden a grenade labeled Afghanistan and saying "I've already pulled the pin."
I am also distraught by the fact the officer who fired the fatal shot defending the Capitol on January 6 has been identified by name and image, and compound that by the fact it turns out he is African-American. Violent action has already been taken in response to various conspiracies and by white supremacist groups, and they have put this individual and his family at mortal risk.
Any of the officers could have been called upon to do their duty on that day and in that situation. The repeated attacks and called for retribution of anyone who has taken a stand against the Big Lie and defended truth and stood up against tyranny and upheld the Constitution
instead of supporting the former guy or those competing for his base with aspirations for their own presidential run frankly sicken me.
I am proud of Lieutenant Michael Byrd and hiding is not the answer.
I agree. His courage is formidable and beyond admirable. Like so many others, I am worried for his safety. We need something similar to the witness protection program to ensure his safety until this craziness settles down. These terrorists are literally like rabid animals.
Rabid animals poked and prodded by a maniac with a big stick, and a big shield he hides behind.
Exactly!
Yes. The Capital Police Lieutenant should be protected by our government. We all should be. Things gotta' change 'round here.
Too bad they didn't shoot more of them. That worthless bimbo was too fucking stupid to make it past E-3 in the Air Force(!) in 18 years. I didn't know people that stupid were allowed to re-enlist.
Did you see the video of her driving to Washington D C? I wonder if she was drugged?
His name was already out there in the right wing media and he was already receiving threats. He wanted the opportunity to tell his side of the story.
A hero at the Capital and a hero for speaking now. You can't keep a man like this down.
thanks for the clarification. I still say he shouldn't be targeted.
You are so right. I wish I had seen that cartoon. It sounds spot on.
https://images.app.goo.gl/gWikDFPHTptHRjAK8
Thanks!
What a day! Biden kept his promise and the military executed his plan to fight back. Then a judge rules against DeSantis which was wonderful to hear. Unfortunately, he will appeal. Fortunately, he’s losing ground with oeople in his state. Then we see a letter from Republican House member Jim Banks, basically whining that Congress has no right to conduct investigations into private matters that the GOP seems to have had prior to and up to events of 1/6. No tears shed for these guys, but tears and sadness shed for our young Marines who lost their lives as well as the Afghanis they were trying to save.
Again, a reminder that not a single Repub voted for the Voting Rights Act.
Including the "good" pair serving on the 1/6 investigation.
Apparently, Congressman Jim Banks, representing Indiana's Third Congressional District, could not be bothered with going to law school before publishing his letter to Congressman Bennie Thompson, Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, arguing that committee subpoenas to telecommunications companies exceeded his authority under the Constitution. He presumes that the subpoenas relating to the individuals who invaded the House of Representatives and Senate in their assault on the Capitol building were in furtherance of a law enforcement effort to identify and prosecute those individuals for insurrection, inference with a governmental function, trespass, and several other federal crimes. That is his assumption, and that assumption is unfounded. As far as the Constitution is concerned, the function of Congress is to legislate, and congressional investigations can be wide-ranging and in great depth in order to fully understand the problem to be addressed by appropriate legislation in the future.
Whoever wrote that letter for Congressman Banks did a shoddy piece of work. Even someone with an undergraduate degree in political science knows, or has reason to know, that Congress's powers of investigation are not nearly so limited. The ongoing investigation is multifaceted, looking into the extent to which the Executive Departments of the Federal Government anticipated the January 6 invasion of the Capitol building, the extent to which they had prior warning about what was to occur, the extent to which they had prior information about who might be involved in planning and executing the assault on the Capitol building, and whether any Member of Congress or staff of the House of Representatives in any way facilitated that assault. Needless to say, Congressman Banks has made every effort to thwart the sort of official inquiry that the House Committee on Homeland Security is currently conducting. From my perspective, is simply another way that the Trump Republicans are abusing the courts to end democratic government as we know it.
I would have thought that Congressman Banks, in preparing his letter, would have hearkened back to his undergraduate years in college when he would have taken the introductory course in government, typically denoted as Political Science 101, which course focuses on the powers of government and how they interrelate. I would also have thought that he might have remembered selected readings and textbooks, old lecture notes, and reference to sources of information that he is privy to now, now that he is a Congressman, that would have edified him as to what Congress's power actually is under the Constitution. Doubtless, he may have remembered something about those studies and lectures he might have attended; but it is equally apparent that there is a great deal that he overlooked, or had not bothered to read, or simply decided not to mention in his letter to Chairman Thompson. Congress has plenary power to investigate what it will if a nexus to potential legislation, however tenuous at the moment that prospective legislation might appear to be. Mr. Banks' letter is certainly not going to derail the investigation; and doubtless, those outside telecommunications companies to whom subpoenas have been forwarded would be ill advised to rely on the shoddy piece of work that Congressman Banks has provided as a fig leaf to cover his obvious political concerns that members of his Republican conference within the House of Representatives were in fact complicit in staging the attack on the Capitol, and with it the House chamber in which Mr. Banks currently serves. Indeed, Congressman Banks, and members of his official staff, are subject to compulsory process to obtain any and all information that they may have had relating to the January 6 invasion. Could it be that Congressman Banks or any of his Republican cohort have reasons to want to suppress the inquiry that bear on their personal responsibility for enabling the January 6 invasion to happen. It would seem so, given the circumstance that a protest on January 6 have been widely advertised, and the Trump supporters from Indiana were known to have participated in the invasion.
Investigation into prospective legislation can go on for years, decades, before legislative draftsmen put pen to paper to prepare legislative proposals, policy statements, compilations of investigative reports, and information pertaining to such formative, even inchoate proposals. The court is going to turn thumbs down because information that might be turned up might prove to be evidence of a crime. Evidence of a crime, conducted in a new and novel way, are preeminently the subjects of pending legislation, even if those legislative proposals are scrawled on yellow legal pads, with scratch outs, and marginalia. It is all legislation.
The fact that Congressman Banks is supplying telecommunications companies and other outside parties with copies of his letter is highly unlikely to change the outcome of the investigation by the House Committee on Homeland Security. Those companies are already being queried by the Federal Bureau of investigation and the Department of Justice. This is simply request for business records maintained by those companies regarding activities by subscribers to services that those companies provide as part of their business. Law enforcement obtains those records every day. There is nothing privileged in those records. A congressional inquiry looking into the depth and breadth of the Capitol building invasion would certainly want to know how widely communications went using communication services provided by the companies to whom subpoenas were directed. In all likelihood, these records link phone calls from one telephone to others, stating the time, date, identity of the caller and recipient, length of call, and other metadata. None of this information will be used for law enforcement purposes, simply because the FBI exercises the same power to make inquiry. In other words, if the FBI is looking to put people in jail for their roles in the assault on the Capitol building; and the House Committee on Homeland Security is looking at the January 6 event on a much broader scope, including the identities of particular groups of people, not necessarily looking at individual members of such groups, it seems clear to me that there is a firm legislative purpose in protecting Homeland security against the domestic terrorism. The way that is done is through legislation, and in order to draft legislation that appropriately addresses the problems and threats to national security, Congress needs to have information that goes to the granular level of how this particular assault was planned, organized, propagated and advertised, and who did it. Congressional investigators and prosecutors may be looking at the same evidence for entirely different purposes. There is nothing to suggest that there is anything nefarious about the fact that Department of Justice investigators, FBI agents, and investigators employed by the Committee on Homeland Security are all conducting their respective inquiries; nor is there anything untoward about intragovernmental communications that share information: they all work for the same people, the American people. Let us keep that in mind. When it comes to the Constitution, the interests of the Republican Party, or any political party, enjoy no special standing. Here the phrase 'country over party' has real meaning. All else is propaganda.
"Mr. Banks' letter is certainly not going to derail the investigation".
Of course not. More theater. THE WHOLE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT is total theater.
Their constituents just need raw meat, think World Wrestling Entertainment. For those here who think their followers are merely misinformed, or feel powerless, it's much larger than that. They don't even believe this stuff themselves. Just another justification for resentment and provocation.
And grist for claims that what the Democrats do is illegal, which is a key part of the legend the Republicans are creating.
They remind me of the students who thought the class clown was the cat's meow and were cruel to other students. It is the immaturity that many never grow out of.
You have a very generous nature and don't like to speak ill of other.
So I will do it for you.
They are dangerous.
They are anti-social.
They are selfish.
In short they hate...
...and are of a different species.
I can prove each of these with behavioral examples.
I spent many years in education. And I know the types you are talking about. Class clowns are not always just funny guys and as you know students can be cruel and nasty. I did smile about my generous nature and reluctance to speak ill of others. I have no problem doing that especially now that I am retired and don't have to put up with nonsense from administrators, a certain type of parent, and some of my colleagues who left a lot to be desired in the integrity department.
As a young man I taught in the South Bronx Public Schools where I grew up. I knew I had to protect children from these predators. That is who these people are; they acted like clowns as children, but even then I knew they'd be Trouble when they grew up.
The class clown I have in mind got involved in drugs and was nearly killed in some kind of home invasion. He wasn't funny either.
Predictable outcome. I observed kids in my classes who would likely end up in prison.
You're very generous in your description of them, David. The accurate terms for them would tax the ability of the old Navy Chief I knew who could swear for 30 minutes without repeating himself.
Maybe true, but calling their behavior ‘immaturity’ is a great way to trivialize the extreme harm they are perpetrating. Nothing justifies the horrors they are creating.
I am not trying to justify any horrors and I loathe the party of death. But they do remind me of the casual cruelty of a certain part of the student body. I have always considered class clowns of the type I am talking about to be insidious. And I take umbrage at the idea of trivializing this. I also hear the middle schoolers talk on the way home from school and they too are often cruel. Immaturity can encompass many things.
I completely agree. Apologies that I implied anything else.
I usually post here early in the am and perhaps I should have chosen a better word. As I posted above, the student I had in mind turned out to be a real piece of work. The last time I saw him he was just surly. I didn't foresee that he would come close to being murdered. I thought that he would just continue to be a jerk.
In order to provide a framework to better understand the questions of morality and kindness as a balance between cooperation and conflict I suggest reflecting on the work of Dr. Oliver Scott Curry. You can learn more about Dr. Curry here - https://www.anthro.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-oliver-scott-curry#/.
Dr. Curry advances the idea that morality is all about cooperation in a set of basic societal rules that advance the common good. His scientific studies show these basic facets of cooperation extend to every culture. You can listen to his Ted Talk where he explains this idea here - https://www.oliverscottcurry.com/.
I have long been a follower and advocate of Dr. Curry’s work and believe it also provides a framework for better understanding an essential difference between the more moral positions and policies of Democrats versus the … well let’s just say less moral positions and policies of Republicans. Cooperation to advance the common good is more moral and kinder than individualism and conflict that sees competition for resources as a zero sum game in which one party must lose in order for the other to win.
I urge all to listen to Dr. Curry’s Ted Talk and reflect on these thoughts. It may help explain why you decide which side of the collectivism versus individualism discussion you prefer to advance.
Thanks, I will listen.
Thank you for this informed and appropriately contemptuous letter. Well done. But you likely give Rep. Banks way more credit than he deserves in suggesting that he ever gave a thought to hearkening back to what he learned as an undergraduate, or cared a whit what the text of the Constitution, the case law, or custom and practice taught. Almost certainly, he simply instructed some congressional aide, likely a first year lawyer just out of a third rate law school, the way he wanted to come out and told him or her to come up with something that sounds lawyerly, with lots of legalese in it. He's an idiot, and a reactionary. So, likely, is the aide who helped him out. Best to you in retirement and best to your adult daughters. Regards.
Oh no, not a "third rate law school." It took a Harvard Law or Yale Law grad to be that stupid and ignorant.
I understand that your comment was not meant to be taken seriously, or literally; you were being sarcastic or snarky or funny or some variant of same, But this particular bit of sarcasm, I suggest, betrays a fundamental misunderstanding on your part, the misunderstanding in turn betraying a default, albeit a minor one, as noted below. There are, as you suggest, any number of neo-fascists, racists, islamaphobes, xenophobes, and homophobes (choose your terms) who are graduates of Yale or Harvard Law School, Cruz, Cotton, DeSantis, Pompeo, Hawley among them (There are also many extremely progressive and worthy graduates of these law schools, but that is a side show). None of these individuals are "stupid" and "ignorant" in the usual sense of those terms. Their academic records make that contention, which is effectively yours, risible. Rather they are distinguished by their deep moral failings, denoted by the terms accurately used to characterize them above. You let them off the hook, big time, when you ascribe their failings to stupidity (low intelligence being immutable) and ignorance (which would be the product of being poorly educated , which they are not). Collectively, narratives like yours (or more precisely, beliefs like yours, your single snarky comment hardly counts as a narrative) add nothing, certainly nothing accurate, to the political discourse, but instead cheapen and disfigure it. To be sure, your single comment, of itself, is of no political consequence, neither is this reply. It follows that that I am not suggesting that you did anything wrong or destructive or would want to (you were writing in good faith), only that you might want to reexamine some of your views. Best regards.
You are both right. Im with TC because i share a similar very deep resentment towards Putins useful fool and everyone who supports him for messing up my country and
embarrassing
me beypnd forgiveness. There arent enough negative words in the English to describe my anger. TC gives me some relief and helps me find pacience to wait for Bidens team to do their job. And i would bet he, like i and others, re-examines his views when new data becomes available. I appreciate your very courteous comment and will read Curry.
Thank you for this excellent analysis. I note where Mr. Banks is from, my home state of Indiana and I know his mind set very well. I am amazed how little these people know about what our democracy is all about and our government functions.
For many, democracy has been left behind long ago. I mean, why would they want to be fellow citizens with us ("us" = anyone who is not like them). As far as knowing about how government functions, well Trump made an art of not knowing. The same way as he demonstrated the art of not understanding the real estate business, and life in general. Not knowing is the new knowing.
The Know Nothing party. We have a long history here of thinking not knowing is great. Now with the internet, everyone can be an "expert."
Willful ignorance. It would be like a mass shooter claiming that CCI or Federal are responsible for the deaths and destruction because their ammunition worked.
Yes, the Republican office holder display willful ignorance. Trump and his Followers are genuinely that way. On a visit to Lancaster to visit some lovely Quaker relatives I noted, within moments, a bumper sticker which read: "I Follow Trump" and a road sign promoting a performance that included a live Jesus.
What a contrast!
I didn't see it that way.
The followers of Jesus were prepared to pay money to see a live performance by Jesus. This impossible promise was being taken up by these "True Believers".
The bumper sticker displayed the TB in the exact same way. They committed to following Trump, no matter what.
I was always surprised that Indiana was on the Union side.
My great great grandfather was in the Union army. Indiana, in my mind, has always been a part of the upper south. In the 1920s it had the largest KKK numbers of any state. Cross burnings as far north as St. Joseph, MI, in this case, the yard of a Catholic. So I can understand your surprise.
Indiana, upper South. Aka Northern Kentucky.
Excellent addition to today's discourse. Another one of those knowledgeable additions caused by LFAA which I wish I could include in a collection of ATLFAAs (Addendum to LFAA). I always learned from the questions and discussions that followed lectures in college. Here, nearing 80, I sometimes feel like that Social Studies major in the 1960s when I listen in with you all. Thanks
Same here. These contributors open many doors and windows and help solve ages old mysteries!
For subscribers interested in good lesson about government functions here, this is the one to read.
Your mention of the courts has me concerned. Will the R's submit to SCOTUS that the investigation is illegal? Given the current make up of SCOTUS, I posit that they might go along w/ the R's...
If you were to graph the extremism and treason gripping the GOP, with the horizontal bar being time and the vertical being degree of extremism/treason. the line over the past 20 years would look like a parabola, and in the past 12 months it would have approached going up at around a 90 degree angle. We are in far more danger from these scum now than we were 12 months ago. The election didn't resolve anything. They become worse and more dangerous by the week.
TC, your substack column is excellent and I love it. I am over subscribed this year so can only read the free version but I did want to thank you.
Me too, Allen....thanks TC
Hear, hear!!
I understand, as I’m oversubscribed too , but you’ll feel so much better if you subscribe and support writers like TC. I took advantage of his yearly rate. I had to give up a few things that month, but it was worth it.
Thank you so much MaryB.
Totally agree. TC, your column is excellent and I want to support your work. Have to unsubscribe from others first, as I have a budget. But, join the chorus of Thank You’s here today.
Thanks to all of you.
They don't accept the election. They don't accept voting. These are just two more causes of resentment and causes to fight as far as they are concerned.
I wish there were more Democratic officeholders who grew up in harsh neighborhoods.
They would know what is plain to see and, more importantly, have the courage and strength to survive.
Yes, like AOC.
Yes
Like our covid graph in floriduh.
But is the trend of civilization always upward. Through peaks and valleys?
What valley?
Peaks and valleys, throughout the history of the world.
I've just finished...in one day...reading Anne Applebaum's "Twilight of Democracy".... which is very, very interesting... and she refers to it as circular. I see it as a spiral which come back to not quite the same.
Thank you! I am 21% into the Applebaum book on Kindle. Here is a gem that highlights the difference between the complexity of governing adopted by the current administration and the bullet point conspiracy approach of the last one.
"The emotional appeal of a conspiracy theory is in its simplicity. It explains away complex phenomena, accounts for chance and accidents, offers the believer the satisfying sense of having special, privileged access to the truth. For those who become the one-party state’s gatekeepers, the repetition of these conspiracy theories also brings another reward: power." ( Anne Applebaum, The Twilight of Democracy, p.45, Kindle)
What is most disturbing is the idea that the Republican party has incorporated this m.o. (once an aberration) as something conventional--without the need of the histrionic FG ( former guy).
( see Peter Wehner, The Atlantic, "Trumpism Has Entered Its Final Form").
So your spiral may be the better model as it takes things to another place-- as opposed to being trapped in a circular loop of repitition.
I'll add that to my reading list. Tbanks.!
Love Anne Applebaum. And she called out Tucker Carlson for the bored with democracy jerk he is.
Daria, she comes from the Conservative end of the spectrum and is appalled at the extent to which many people who agreed with her 30 years ago are now rabid pre-autocratic, foxites. She examines what effectively "turned" them looking at Poland, Hungary, UK and of course the US.
Stuart, I just borrowed the ebook from my library. It looks like a very interesting read.
It definitely is.
Read this last year. Also read "Gulag" and it makes you grind your teeth at what FDR and Churchill agreed to at Yalta.
One thing that has to be remembered is, had there not been an Eastern Front, it is very likely Hitler could have won, or at least taken all of western Europe including the UK, making a US invasion not possible. Had Stalin not lived up to his promise at Tehran to start his 1944 summer offensive a week after the Normandy invasion, it is very likely the Germans could have expelled the US and UK from France - the only reason we won the Battle of France was because the Germans couldn't bring any units from the Eastern Front, since they had to meet an enormous Soviet offensive that swept them out of the USSR and most of Eastern Europe by that fall. 80 PERCENT OF ALL CASUALTIES IN WORLD WAR II occurred on the Eastern Front. Stalin did keep one Yalta promise: to enter the Pacific War 90 days after the defeat of Germany, and it was that - not the A-bombs - that brought about the Japanese surrender, since they knew they had no defenses in northern Japan and that the Soviets would be on Hokkaido by the end of September, a good 6-7 weeks before the US was going to invade southern Japan. It was that fact that led Churchill and Roosevelt to do as they did at Yalta. Anything to the contrary is right wing (pro-Nazi) propaganda.
Another thing to remember is that without the beaches of Normandy Stalin would have continued to lose. Was it necessary to give him control over all the smaller countries he pushed through on his campaign, successful because of Churchill help, to defeat Hitler?
Stalin actually was winning by 1944. The Beaches at Normandy meant the Red Army didn't end up on the Channel coast in 1946.
I hate sounding cynical, but we didn't lose as many in all of World War II as the Soviets lost at Stalingrad.
Were the A bombs necessary? I never thought so.
In fact, no, they were not. If the Japanese were going to surrender as a result of bombing, the firebombing of Tokyo on the night of March 9-10 killed more people than the A-bombing. They knew what the Soviets had done in Germany after the surrender, and they knew how much their traditional enemy hated them, and that the Russians would have taken Hokkaido and Honshu by the time the Americans landed. So they surrendered to us and then proceeded to tell us what we wanted to hear, that it was the A-bombs that did it. Which also set up the unrepentant imperial militarists allowed to remain in power by MacArthur to play the "Ultimate Victim" card ever since. "How can you ask us to apologize for the rape of Nanking, or the Bataan Death March, or the Malayan railroad ("The Bridge on the River Kwai"), or the Korean comfort women, when you dropped A-bombs on us?"
Is this 20-20 hindsight or were the school history books just propaganda?
One doesn't have to be pro-Soviet to see this - only pro-accuracy. What Stalin did in eastern Europe was horrid.
You're right about treason, and there isnt a nice way to put it. If i could afford to live in the USA, i would be collecting license plates and taking videos photos of trouble makers and bullies for future reference.
It's far more than "individualism" vs "government help". All autocrats use government to help themselves. Republicans have become masters at this. They will take FEMA money, covid19 relief money, military and government contracts, power to stop abortions and to expand gun rights until there is no safety anywhere. But fight giving funds to others, voting rights to others, healthcare protection to others, etc.
It's always been "us" vs "them" for Republicans since Reagan. The change has been that it was once southern Democrats, now they are rebranded Republicans. They may say it's about "individual rights" but it's about their "individual rights", power, benefits & largesse at the expense of all others including now, our democracy, our nation.
"once southern Democrats, now they are rebranded Republicans."
Repel and reject. Marginalize. Let them eat their own vomit.
That’s it. Bam.
They would say: "Not take government money? Now that would be stupid." Because they have good uses for that money!
Yes. We have heard this from our Republican friends who criticized covid19 funds but took it anyway, and a family member who criticized the 2008 economic collapse assistance but took a huge amount under his business, more than his income taxes. We see this with Senator Collins taking credit for covid19 funding and Federal contracts given out in Maine to industries and workers who still support Trump and LePage. Trump and LePage took tax payer and donor money for themselves and gave a trickle to their friends and supporters, ie their refined "trickle down" economics.
They do take it but just not where it will benefit "others". A "bridge to no where" is a bridge into a Republican bank account.
We had one of those here in AK; House GOP.
Our news is filled with recriminations over the 13 American soldiers (and sometimes the tens of Afghans) killed during that attack on the withdrawal, coming from the same people who make no sound over the thousand-plus Americans dying needlessly each day of covid-19. The hypocrisy is thick enough to bottle.
Joan, you’re absolutely right. Such hypocrisy.
I wonder, how could hypocrisy be bottled?
If I could find the answer, I too would become a billionaire.
Of course, there are parties and politicians that are amply self-sufficient in the product and they have bottled fried air and sold it to millions.
Thank you Heather.
We are in a fix for certain. It is as if there are 2 completely independent governments within this Country. Total division. Us against them.
I do not see the concept of bipartisan in our future. This isn't how I thought life would be like when Biden took office. I think we all agreed it would be rocky at first. I'm back to not wanting to look at the news or read the papers.
I feel what we are seeing in Kabul was a well orchestrated shit storm set up by the last Administration to hobble Biden. I can honestly say that without wearing a tinfoil hat.
When I looked at my phone early this morning I found out a friend lost her son in Kabul. Caleb is one of the 13 souls that fought for this Country. It's heartbreaking.
Be safe, be well. Please put Caleb and his family in your thoughts.
As someone who was on the receiving end of an explosive device a little over 50 years ago, I can tell you that he probably didn’t feel a thing, one second he was there helping those he was sent there to help evacuate, and the next he was on the other side. We are all heading there eventually, I personally, and we as a nation mourn his abrupt passing and pray that his family find some comfort in that knowledge. He was a courageous man who, along with his companions, was doing a very dangerous job for the benefit of so many that were in need of his help, I know of no more honorable calling than that. RIP 🙏
Thank you for sending comfort to those who mourn. And, for your own service over 50 years ago, I am grateful.
“well orchestrated shit storm” just about covers it.
Prayers for comfort for Caleb’s and the other families who received that knock on the door, and for the recovery of the wounded. Also for courage and safety for our remaining troops while they complete their mission.
Linda, I am so sorry about Caleb. It is heartbreaking, for sure, You are right about the two independent governments. The fact that the one side continues to exploit this situation for political points is abominable. I, like you, have not wanted to watch the news lately either. I just can't take any more of the "piling on".
Oddly enough, I can’t stop watching and reading!
I am so sorry to hear of your friend's son Caleb. Deepest condolences to his family and friends.
Daria, I will send your condolences on to Leslie. Thank you.
Thank you, Linda.
I’m so sorry! 💔
Thank you for your letters. I recognize that they take a great deal of your time and energy, but they help me focus on national and international events so much more clearly than if I’mleft to my own devices. Enjoy your weekend.
What can you say after reading such a brilliant, compassionate, and reasonable account of the events that define America these days! It is so exhaustive that any comment would pale by not contributing much to what Heather exposed as the clear truth: about Afghanistan, about Biden, about the GOP weasels, and about the covid situation.
I just say thank you. Dr R is my hero.
Governors DeSantis and Abbott remind me of Leopold and Loeb, two wealthy University of Chicago students who kidnapped and murdered 14 year-old Bobby Franks. The two young men thought because of their status and superior intelligence they could get away with “the perfect crime.” Thrill seeking was their main motive. Clarence Darrow was able to finagle a life sentence for them both. Loeb was razor slashed and killed in prison in 1936 and Leopold was paroled in 1958.
DeSantis and Abbott are getting away with the perfect crime. They have within their power to save lives yet choose to lean on “personal responsibility and freedom” to supersede the public safety of their constituents. And now children are being infected and dying in record numbers. A deadly plan by the devil himself couldn’t be more devious. Citizens of Florida and Texas must say to them, “You have your ideals; we have our dead.”
It should be mentioned that Herbert Hoover of all people, that icon of rectitude, coined the term “rugged individualism”, which has been incorporated into the lexicon of American virtue and used to beat back efforts to allow government to maintain a just and fair society.
As a real American icon has said “America has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor”
Hoover. Erghhh. Rugged individualism was and remains a path to white grievance. What happens when white people are told they just need work harder and harder. When they do, but cannot achieve what Hoover promised them, what happens? White grievance happens. And the cycle of racism can be self perpetuating. George Floyd . Cops won’t vaccinate happens. Jan 6th happens.
Dear Prof. HCR,
Your expertise in weaving datum, events, facts and historical evidence bring together an intricate tapestry of the US/world stage where we, as spectators, must play the parts of active and involved audience members. I love that you educate us as critically aware spectators who can decipher and piece together the intrigue during these disruptive times.
How you can do all this with a new semester looming, is beyond me. I can barely pull my syllabi together without feeling depleted! All this to say: thank you! You are a life saver in this tragi-comedy of the 22nd century! I almost called it a theatre of the oppressed, but I refuse to see us all as totally suppressed and subservient. After all, you lead us through this political labyrinth with such insight and élan that we are bound to do our part!
P.S., any thoughts on Nafthali Bennett's visit?
"If Lincoln had lived in peace, no one would know his name" so yes, thank you, HCR
Today's letter is an excellent piece of writing, and a perfect parallel to your thesis in HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR. I am now "devouring" that book at the rate of a chapter a day, with meticulous notes in the margins. So much of our history is finally making sense to me. Confederate ideology moved west only to be re-introduced to the national stage by Goldwater and Reagan, finally reaching a fever pitch with the era of Trump and the Confederate flags at the Jan. 6 insurrection.