Heather sadly leaves out the one most salient fact:
The tens of millions who voted for the convicted criminal need no facts, only fantasy.
When they attended those American schools all hollowed out of humanities -- humanities all gone -- reality TV and far-right entertainment sensationalism filled that void.
Heather sadly leaves out the one most salient fact:
The tens of millions who voted for the convicted criminal need no facts, only fantasy.
When they attended those American schools all hollowed out of humanities -- humanities all gone -- reality TV and far-right entertainment sensationalism filled that void.
People hunger for fiction, for stories. The convicted criminal can spin yarns, con games, and fantasyland with a straight face -- as well as with "bing-bing-boing-bong" and lugubrious dance moves. But as those tens of millions have never read a whole novel, of any kind, they lack sober perspective on the madness they inhabit.
OMG you are so right and expressed something that’s has been on my mind about the humanities no longer being emphasized in basic education…a frame of reference for morality and decency has vanished.
Neatly put. And in these days, when I'm looking for books for my young granddaughters, it's that frame of reference that I'm finding it hard to find. I could wrap up some of my childhood books in pretty paper and gift them, but will they read or listen to them? Love them as I did?
Our elites, Anne-Louise, don't model taking any books seriously.
No whole books such as history, memoirs, novels, or biographies -- and the whole matters because such bits as we might quote (or summarize, cite without quotation marks) bear as important due to their larger context.
Phil, the problem of relative mass illiteracy has been around since even i, 79, was a kid in Canada. Even then history for example was a near bottom in popularity. Same today in good old USA. And i imagine you might rember the mindless anti communism parroted by soldiers headed forVietnam? I suredo.
History taught as rolling dates in time to remember for tests does nothing to teach about the actual period and the human condition during those times.
John Jakes, "North and South" was a very personal and relatable trilogy that set the scenes for early 1800's through the civil war and beyond. Very enlightening.
History is our guides if we wish to actually move forward other than our current capitalism (Trump'ism type) that drives - "create more junk" model. We are too hyper focused on wealth as a destination (Trumps only measure of success and he worships it) with money as an item to collect vs. use as means of trade for goods and services.
Bill, I taught history for a few years and I did not do dates although I hoped the kids had a relative idea of what came before and in what sequence. I tried to encourage them to think critically and they had lots of projects, group and individual. No textbook because the class was ancient and English history to match our college prep English sequence. One of the things we started out with was "The Gods Must Be Crazy" because for one thing, I wanted to them to note what happened when the new technology of the coke bottle arrived. Many other good lessons in that movie too. One of my students wondered about the use of a comedy and I said we could have humor in a history class.
Oh Bill...pity those who do not hunger for books...John Jakes enraptured me....lost all sense of time as I became one with his word depictions... You truly describe a poor man when success in his eyes equates solely to material wealth. Cannot allow anyone else the feelings of success, for then ,in his eyes he would feel diminished ! A little like Frank Morgan, I believe it was, as the Wizard in " The Wizard.of Oz" . trump ( small t deliberate) ...the real donald trump without the trappings of obfuscation...for all to see.
I remember the old school teachers I was blessed with...wish they were around now to guide our great grandchildren. Good memories.
But like an afternoon at the movies...Time Marches On!
I’ve been reminding people that Aristophanes is still funny, hoping that might pique interest. The only sitcom I’ve ever watched other than a couple of excepts of “All in the Family,” was “Servant of the People,” which took three nights of binge watching. Anyone who has doubts about Zelenskyy and Ukraine should see it. He wrote it; Ukrainians made him president. The rest is history which, I trust, at least half of America knows by now.
Thank you, Phil Balla, and all of those mourning the stupidity of American voters, who un-and undereducated as they are, cannot distinguish truth from fiction and lack all perspective of history
UNC-Chapel Hill, from which I have three (“useless”) degrees, put a quiz on my phone last week about valuing a liberal arts education. Did I and why or why not? I knew I did, but the questions made me see how much I did and why. Coming from a family of teachers (neither of my parents taught or went to college but valued history, politics, math and language), I got a jolt in the spring of my freshman year at a liberal arts college on learning that the lowest 25% of SAT scorers pursued education degrees. I knew from then on that I would have to teach at university level or forget teaching. Stayed in graduate schools (2—wives move universities with husbands) until I was 40, all of Thibaut’s poems translated for my dissertation, when my advisor was shot and killed and his replacement was a 3-year wonder from Princeton. After the French profs at UNC, this was too much. I quit. At that time French was disappearing from undergraduate curricula, but I was hired for three more years to teach beginners and advanced students at another university. Still reading novels (I started in high school), know their importance, especially to teach history and language.
As an aside, so I can quit: Arrrived in Champagne to visit farmer friend. Ten minutes later she’s shoving “Devenir” (“Becoming”), Michelle Obama’s book into my hands telling me that I MUST read it. As I was leaving, having read three chapters, she informed me that I was taking the book with me. Arriving in Warsaw two weeks later, I discovered a multitude of copies there. Meanwhile I was reading, enjoying the excellent French translation. The university bookstore in Kraków was nearly sold out however. I bought three of the last four copies for Polish friends recognizing that Mrs. Obama is appreciated for who she is perhaps even more in Western Europe than at home.
Oh cmon... John Jake's NOVELS North and South were at best enjoyable pulp fiction, hardly anything like real history.
And worse, my guess would be that 95% of people who would reference that series didn't even read the books but rather just saw it on the television series. Really Bill, that is a poor frame of reference for anything like history.
Difference is people choose what they want! capitalism allows that. People want less treadmill they can live somewhere else or they can live here and be content. No one is stopping them.
Why do you think everyone wants to live here? Economic freedom and opportunity
I was one of those mindless kids who enlisted out of patriotic fervor specifically to go to Viet Nam and "Kill Commies For Christ". The experience hollowed me out and I came home a very confused 19 year old door gunner. Took going to a community college in N. Michigan just for the GI Bill money for my education in the Humanities to begin. That school and those profs brought me back to life.
Robert, I didn't go in a patriotic fervor, I just went because I didn't have other options at the time (May 1969-May 1970). I was in a supply role with the U.S. Navy on the Mekong Delta, delivering supplies to Army and Navy installations all along the river between the coast and Cambodia. But, I too, and in Michigan, went to college after I got back (I was in my 30's at that time) and took social science/humanities courses. And, like you, as regards the education, it was the single best thing that ever happened in my life.
Anti-communist, or pro-arms industry. Another thing that seems to me to be overlooked all too often is, it ain't just the Republican politicians who are beholden to our corporate world. Also, I did spend a year in Vietnam in 1969-70; it's a beautiful place with wonderful people.
David Halberstam described them, Ed, in "The Best and the Brightest."
Ever since then -- ever since the Powell memo of 1971 -- the standardized testers have corralled, numbered, rank-&-filed, and filled them with all the worst, most dehumanized conceits of abstracting, categorizing, and linearity.
Just read the appendices, please, in Diane Ravitch's "The Language Police," 2003.
We read to our daughter. She read to her children. All the classics. And then, like us, followed this up with discussion and active inclusion of the imaginative landscapes in play. Consequent upon this hard humanitarian work her eldest has increasingly rejected the shallow societal demands his generation is conforming to and her young teen daughter has recently had to leave mainstream education in the UK for her ‘sensitivities’. They attracted heinous bullying from her class mates.
Our grandchildren are experiencing the stigmata of being framed as social outcasts, their ‘out of the box’ empathic creative thinking increasingly pathologized as manifestations of ‘mental illness’.
The cultural destruction in Western societies of the past 50 years, the sacrifice and whoring of culture upon the altar of perpetual economic Progress, will take decades to heal and yet more to recreate a nurturing societal environment for true dreamers and thinkers to freely live, move and have their being 🐈⬛
My middle-aged son (schoolteacher) said to me recently that the reason for his extensive vocabulary is probably that I used to read Dickens to them at bedtime. He's very proud that his 8-year-old is a "great reader". It turns out that everything she's given to read is in comic-strip form. Now, at 8 I enjoyed Prince Valiant, (well drawn, especially the horses), and thrilled to Val's romance with Aleta, Queen of the Misty Isles, but I also enjoyed Hamlet, read in the boxed set of miniature complete works, printed on vellum, gold-leafed edges, which Grannie had sent me from England. The last volume was poetry. I found the sonnets heavy going, but the graphic descriptions in things like "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece" were a bit of a shock. I read and re-read them. Nobody ever knew, and school libraries were well-stocked with conventional reading for the designated age group. I could polish one off in a day, and be back for another.
The Complete Works of H W Longfellow fell into my hands when I was 12 or 13, by which time I was too sophisticated not to feel that "Well whistled, my sweet caramillo, well whistled!" wouldn't sound very good actually spoken. It took a lot of reading to figure out what his sweet caramillo was, furthermore.
But I might start her off as I did, with Enid Blyton...
It is so rewarding nurturing loved ones culturally first and foremost from your own lived literary experiences. It is infinitely fascinating how other generations will perceive different things in the same works 🐈⬛
In the late 1950s, 15 years after the Holocaust, no one talked about it at home or in school. I found out about it by reading the books of Leon Uris, and then I needed to find out everything I could about WWII. SO many good authors: Willa Cather, James Michener, Hemingway, Faulkner, the Russian authors, Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck, Rachel Carson, etc.. And they are still out there.
I craved for the "Great Books of Western Civilization" and bought the set. I've been through maybe 1/8th of the collection as it often provokes deep thoughts that just need to sit for a while to think about. I love history of great authors that do not shy from the truths that they knew. I am now 60 and still learning. I was so certain at 20 ;-)
It is also interesting to contemplate how their truth of the day is still relevant in our human condition or has moved forward as science has shown differently.
Hiding our human history is a crime in my opinion - warts and all make us better people. Trying to beat morality into a uniformed people without internal understandings or having different views (for self vs. others) seems to be a constant theme.
Bill, back in the early 1970's my wife and I visited friends in Iowa. In his library I saw a set of the "Great Books of Western Civilization". I spent the few days we were there reading from his collection. :)
Bravo! To you and now your daughter. I’m a literacy educator who only promotes just that, and it has been novels that we have grown together as kind humans we pulling to listen to other’s ideas. It truly is about books.
Thanks, Heather for highlighting President Biden’s speech at the Brookings Institute where he laid out the facts of the U.S. economy after his four years in office. President Biden’s benchmark facts need to be clearly established in the collective memory of every working American to compare with the next four years under the next administration. Will the media do its part in making that comparison?
And yes, Anne-Louise, I agree with you and Phil that voters who fail to read novels and biographies are depriving themselves of one way of developing empathy. I am currently reading one such book:
Hawaiian Senator Mazie Hirono’s memoir: Heart of Fire, An Immigrant Daughter’s Story (2021).
Senator Hirono lays bare her personal story of coming to Hawaii from Japan as a young child. Mazie Hirono overcame the limitations of extreme poverty by the sheer determination of her strong mother and her own belief in hard work to become an exceptionally empathetic legislator who has served her uniquely diverse constituency since 2007. Stories like hers are powerful indeed.
But reading books is, sadly, time-consuming! As long as our lifestyle is focused on consumption of material goods in a 21st century capitalist society, time for reading is restricted by demands of higher paying jobs to pay the rent or mortgage and put food on the table.
We are left at the mercy of influencers of today, movie makers, book/song writers, athletes, celebrities, media personalities, (and Substack writers!) etc. who will all have to have their own epiphany and begin to fuel the hearts of fire within each of our fellow Americans by whatever mode they utilize. The fire is there in each of us and waiting to be sparked for greater change…thinking now of old E.Scrooge! We all seek a good life. We are still learning how money plays into that good life.
It was my wife and still she is the one that read books to our 6 grandkids at bed time. Our last, now 8 is still expecting to be read a few pages of a book before falling asleep. I always preferred to make up stories about dolphins or gray cats going across the street . Hope they do that to their kids and grandkids, it's a great communal feeling .😄
My former husband occasionally used to take his turn - always in Italian - and the children listened rapt to "Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess, bella bella bella, who lived in a castle/palace/whatever the night's choice was, buona notte buona notte buona notte!" and out went the light.
"Cultural literacy is a term coined by American educator and literary critic E. D. Hirsch, referring to the ability to understand and participate fluently in a given culture. Cultural literacy is an analogy to literacy proper (the ability to read and write letters). A literate reader knows the object-language's alphabet, grammar, and a sufficient set of vocabulary; a culturally literate person knows a given culture's signs and symbols, including its language, particular dialectic, stories,[1] entertainment, idioms, idiosyncrasies, and so on. The culturally literate person is able to talk to and understand others of that culture with fluency."
Phil, is this what we're missing by removing humanities from the curriculum.
Hirsch released a couple of follow-up books as well.
Hirsch, Eric Donald; Kett, Joseph F.; Trefil, James S. (2002). The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (3rd ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 0-618-22647-8.
If you read the dictionary, each of you will likely be familiar with most of the terms he defines. To Phil's point, the cultural literacy of Gen-X, Gen-Z and Millineals is not so robust.
Yes and when considering cultural literacy it's helpful to consider the sub-cultures that have their own defining characteristics. An example for me is the literacy of plant people -- whether scholars or rural farmers, reading the health of living landscapes (and weather) can become bonding when spoken language is vastly different.
I didn't know then, however, that it was the swan song for any humanities anymore in any American schools.
Hirsch only kicked off a vitriolic competition for what should be the canon in U.S. ed. As if one single set of reading lists sufficed. Reps from so many communities argued, no, our experiences need to be brought forward, not yours.
I learned from then that we needed simply an essaying willingness to venture some of our culture, and the skills to put that in the context of others, and what they had ventured of their cultures.
An example I like is Bettina Love who's designed Hip Hop civics curriculum: https://getfreehiphopcivics.com/ . There are YouTube videos of her that inspire me and show that lots is happening. She's written many books: https://bettinalove.com/books/.
That is a good point. You have to meet people where they are. People are not reading books and long narratives. Even beautiful children’s books are replaced by kindles and iPads with computer games.
If they're young, read those books to them. If they're older, make sure they frequently see you reading books. Suggest books to them. Give them books. That's what we did and we ended up with a pair of bookworms. Their kids are mostly strong readers, too. It's a generational thing that needs to be modeled in front of the young.
Give them the books you loved as a child and make sure they know how much they mean to you. They may not appreciate the gesture right away, but it will likely be a cherished memory later in their lives.
If the history classes in HS were presented by people impassioned by, and vastly enthused by, their appreciation for, and knowledge of our history, you are very fortunate indeed! My senior year I had such advantage, AND, the class was team taught by three equally enthusiastic teachers, Mrs. Woodruff, Mr. Banks, and Mr. Hernandez, in the school auditorium. Preparing to soon ship out via the draft, I paid attention. I named them here, some of my many mentors. Thank you Madam, and sirs. "We've seen the enemy, and he is us!" Pogo. Remember him?
Anne-Louise, it's worth a try to give your next generation family what you loved and encourage them to read. They may find they do love it as you did, but perhaps with a different slant. You could then discuss it with them. My students often liked the books I had liked and their explanations for why were different from mine, but no less valid. It truly is worth the effort!!
I reported "Rick" to Substack Inc. as a good example IMO of what HCR described on "The News Hour", 'America at the Crossroads', as a "Disinformation Crisis".
So what do you exactly men by "ignore him" -- let disinformation drown low-info voters who HCR correctly noted on The News Hour as voting 19% for Trump?
*****
JAMS-SF: I have previously filed a mediation claim against Substack Inc a year or so back on he matter of liability for 3rd party torts. Last week, I have identified nine (9) LFAA Troll incidents (human or non-human) to get to the larger legal issues in construing Substack Inc's latest 9/2024 TOU & Substack's representations under their choice of law at their choice of Venue, JAMS-SF.
I will update with the facts regarding the issues I mediate that concern HCR & many other Substack "Readers" & "Authors"..
I share your regret about the loss of the humanities in education. But the root problem our country faces is deeper--low literacy and numeracy scores, especially in our urban school districts. This started long before the pandemic. Without these basics, students grow into adulthood with no ability to make their own assessment of 30-second political statements, etc.
Completely agree. Even graduate students cannot seem to write a coherent sentence. And now they won’t have to thanks to AI.
We sorely need to address our education goals and strategies… to educate ALL of our students to be ready for and competitive in the workplace but also to attract and retain good teachers.
Less basic education is getting more and more expensive and is turning young people away to avoid being saddled with hundred of thousands of debt. Excellent education and health care is free in Finland. My daughter received two masters degrees from an esteemed school in France specializing in public health policy-- a two-year program for $15,000. Where are our priorities? I am terrified of the next four years....
Lizabeth, in my way of looking at it, what I see is a failure of our schools to teach people how to test a proposition and how to think through it, i.e., critical thinking skills. Then we didn't learn enough about comparative governments, what it's like to live in dictatorships, in oligarchies where the wealthy control the economy and the government. That's what', in part, the American Revolution was all about. And then, there are the issues of racisim, the overwhelming disgust for the immigrants, for gay people, for transgender people, for women libbers, etc. Trump used hate and ignorance to win the election. Next election it is the Democrats time to turn the table and show why Americans should hate Trump fascism since it will be the primary reason for their desperation.
I would love to see all of the schools in this country to start using Melanie Trecek-King's tools and approach such as thinkingispower.com.
"In the Washington Post yesterday, Catherine Rampell noted that Republicans’ claim that extending those cuts isn’t extraordinarily expensive means “getting rid of math."
Some spectacular gaslighting returns on January 20th.
George H.W. Bush called supply-side economics “voodoo economics.” Paul Krugman called trickle down economics a “zombie idea,” meaning it’s undead; it just won’t go away. Supply side economics is basically build it and they will come. But that is a movie line from “Field of Dreams,” and it’s not reality. 45’s tax cuts in 2017 resulted in stock buybacks, not business investments and job creation. Buybacks are stock manipulation. A small business might invest a tax cut windfall in needed business items, but a large business, not pressed for cash, doesn’t do that. Trickle down economics is like quitting your job and going on a spending spree.
I have friends in Silicon Valley who are with large tech firms. I asked what they did with the tax savings. Did the companies give across-the-board raises? The answer? The company bought back its own stock.
John Stoehr sees one big problem in Democrats not investing in their own media outlets, the the Republicans did with Fox. They constantly keep their voters marinating in lies and hate. No wonder they believe all sorts of lies.
Rupert Murdoch - not dead yet, unfortunately - but a Nevada court this week has rejected his attempt to get his family trust into the hands of his eldest son, who follows his father's lying fascist footsteps, instead of to all four of his offspring, three of whom seem possibly reasonable human beings.
I was wondering how that Trust case came out. The younger son doesn’t agree with his father and older brother. I think that’s why Rupert wanted to change the estate. The younger son (in particular) foresees a revolt against the greed of his father and brother.
Perhaps the execution of the United Healthcare CEO gave the judge the reality check to the pleadings of the other children.
Don't get overconfident. First of all R Murdoch plans to appeal that decision. Second do NOT expect the other three Murdochs to be some holy grail of liberalism. They will be less outrageous than their father and brother Lachlin, but don't confuse James Murdoch with Bernie Sanders. Under James, Fox will STILL be a right wing network just maybe a little less insane than the current situation.
We liberals tend to see things in such monochromatic terms. Just like in Syria. The new regime MAY be a little better than Assad, but it's STILL going to be a fundamentalist Islamic regime, not some idealistic liberal democracy.
It doesn't seem like they've been reading much of anything. They're every bit as agnorant of science as they are of the humanities - why they fall for conmen like Trump and RFK Jr.
Really who is ignorant? If the democrats are not getting the message out to where it is being read then who is really smart? There is plenty of “reading” on Facebook. Top ten things Trump accomplished, where is Biden’s list? Get it out in the form and contest people in which people will be exposed to the message.
Sadly too late for the voters and not in a format or place they would be likely to come across. It guts me that the GOP will turn Biden's achievements into dust - and then blame him.
And educating the public—if it can be done <sigh>—needed to be done every day, not all at once in one speech. But it’s just not Biden’s style. So someone else should have done it. OTOH, there was probably no way to counter tfg’s constant me, me, me, look at me to which the press is addicted.
There is still potentially an option for the Senate to try to block Trump. Although SCOTUS rejected the attempt of Colorado and two other states to block him, the decision leaves the congressional option available. It would require a 2/3 vote. In the Colorado case, facts show that Trump aided, abetted and gave comfort to insurrectionists.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Are too ignorant to know how ignorant they are… yep. Agree for most, and some are just self-righteous bastards. Some just Fox haters for anything Dem. A perfect storm of ignorance, apostasy, greed, and hate. Miasma for the masses…
Had to refresh my memory on lugubrious, you nailed it.
The flaw in the democratic experiment is that if the majority is fooled, either through ignorance or misrepresentation, it can be led down a path of self-destruction by a minority that collects all the resources and power to itself. It happened in Nazi Germany during the period of 1923-1934, when Hitler became Fuhrer, and it's happening here in America 100 years later.
But the planet cannot survive another world war, or unaddressed climate change, so we either have to defeat maga or perish.
No matter what the benchmarks, facts, or truth are, maga will create their own reality and the sheep will eat it up. We must destroy the maga illusion and do it quickly -- this will take opposition leadership that has not yet emerged. We are in desperate need of a miracle.
I think that, to act against the horrific direction this country is taking, we have to dig further into the flaw. Ignorance and misrepresentation are so effective, for example, because the MAGA propaganda made an inseparable link between LGBTQ, the bane of the average MAGA supporter, and Biden economics. The election was stolen, FEMA will take your house, children surprise parents with a new sexual identity: all of these confuse the MAGA decision-making process because they feed a hatred for liberal ideals to the point that their absurdity and destruction of democracy are invisible to the MAGA supporter. I understand Nazism capitalized on similar hatred for the Versailles Treaty. According to Life in the Third Reich (Paul Roland, Kindle Edition), "a sizeable proportion of Germany’s citizens impassively witnessed the country’s descent into dictatorship because they believed they were simply powerless to prevent it – as well as many more who could not see the danger until it was too late." This piece of history is repeating itself.
That the American voter believed this sh!t is a worse problem! This nonsense didn’t come from nowhere before this last election; that as many people as did believed these loony, insane statements means we have a longer and wider problem than just tfg’s ravings.
I'm going with media (in its broadest sense) manipulation. The USian voter who buys into the firehose of lies, insane statements, et al has only one source of information (I call it "angertainment") from their various "news" sources. There are a host of factors ranging from the takeover of school system curricula to churches preaching "gospel" politics to the anger and hatred unleashed by the election of a Black man in 2008 and given license for expression during the 2016 Presidential campaign.
I disagree. We failed the people by not getting the message out. We focused on beating up trump with what we don’t want rather than providing what we do want in quick short sentences. I met people that could not tell me one thing Biden accomplished. Unless we change the way we communicate this info will not be well known. Where is the list of the top ten accomplishments?
Getting the message out, Sandra, depends on listening skills, too.
The reason to quote from a novel, memoir, history, or bio is to cite something that speaks to the pain of someone to whom you're listening, we're listening.
Tens of millions of working-class Americans have real pain, partly from the mass offshoring of jobs by the corporate suits, partly because schools anymore treat kids like zombies for the dehumanized standardized testing, and partly, too, for the huge widening of the wealth gap purposely sought by the billionaire classes.
Add in the AR-15 epidemic, the opioid epidemic, the obesity epidemic.
They don't feel seen or heard, these many who've been exploited, abandoned. Citing the right book can locate them in a world you know and can sympathize with.
It could have provided Dems with the human messaging they so sorely lacked.
I agree with you and also see how social ingestion of thought-provoking content is moving ideas -- to address many of your points, I hope you'll watch/listen to Ben Wikler (aims to be chair of the DNC) and Jon Stewart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfBtlvfysjw
Willer, for those not familiar, created the playbook for (and followed through) breaking the stranglehold of state Republicans in Wisconsin. His energy level and enthusiasm is infective, and listening to him lifted me from the morass I’ve been in since the election. Strongly recommend the Stewart interview.
Sandra, in the months up to the election, I saw several lists of the Biden administration's accomplishments. There were out there... but the media did not, and still does not, report on these accomplishments. If you get all your news from Fox, you will see only negative stories about Biden.
When President Biden initiated his policies, I figured he had returned to Keynesian economics; he may have staved off a depression in doing so. The price was the inflation, aggravated by the supply shocks and, unfortunately, predatory pricing attendant to COVID. 🤔
As Dr Cox Richardson details carefully, President Biden had a lot more in mind than a re-run of Keynesianism following the exhaustion and ill effects of a re-run of classical economics. The President had a radical new polity -- one of equality of, with, for opportunity. ⚖️
With civics training of generations past washed away, consumerism and hyper-stimulation of simulated violence have vitiated our citizenry. Sadly, we live and breathe republican virtue no more. Let us pray that President Biden's record cements into a legacy. 🙏
I can agree with you (and do), but I avoided the humanities (and spent more time in math and science) throughout my education. More than fantasy, I believe these (MAGA) people crave connection and excitement. They're not getting it in their daily lives (as are many non-MAGA folks) and (somehow) find it in Trump and his cabal.
I have a few serious MAGA people in my orbit (and I ignore them as much as possible, excluding my sister), and they're literate, read novels, visit museums, and appreciate art. (I know this because I knew it Pre-Trump.) They continue to do these things. They don't go to Trump rallies (but he doesn't come to Massachusetts, fortunately.)
I agree that education (and especially the humanities and arts) have been impacted, but I also believe these MAGA enthusiasts are finding more than fantasy in Trump et al.
I think that the MAGA movement feeds something in their souls. They are scared of anyone/thing other than white, Christian, male dominated, heteronormative, and cisgendered, and what MAGA has given them is a place to turn fear into anger, and the ability to express this hatred of/disdain for those who are not any of those 5 categories I mentioned above.
Now that is cold hard truth! Agreed Phil, agreed. I personally belive we must fight back on every level now. Local on up. Push back like our lives depend on it.
Phil, the No Child Left Behind act had such a good-sounding goal—making sure that each student had a good education, regardless of where they live or the wealth of their school district. The reality is a series of tests and fragmented teaching as teachers “teach to the test” so that they, and their schools continue to get money. I don’t know how to spread the best methods of teaching, but the current system is clearly not working for children whose families are unable, or unwilling, to spread the love of reading and learning.
You are so right! There’s a reason the Greeks called them the “liberal” arts—the humanities inform scientific knowledge, which they called the “servile” arts, which have value not in and of themselves, but only in service to a wider world view and a greater humanitarian context. When the so-called servile arts are divorced from the liberal arts, they lose meaning and value.
Sounds like you’re suggesting to just give up. I think the benchmarks that Biden pointed out will stand as a great reference for the sure to come economic downturn. And if a billionaire like Mark Cuban will match the dollars spent for misinformation perhaps that uninformed electorate will clearly see the truth and vote accordingly.
A bit more than 30 years ago I ran the first program at any university in central Europe for students to hear -- weekly -- discussions among 1) a professor from their own culture; 2) a visiting prof from either England or the U.S.; and 3) rotating writers (mostly) from neighboring central European cultures. (Thank you Soros money.)
I've replicated it twice since, in other parts of the world.
I've continued to spend energy trying to get the U.S. to use its Fulbright program (or Peace Corps) so cultural neighbors in conflict with each other might get schools to teach essay writing for seeing "others" as individuals in the other cultures, not just repetitive units in old stereotypes.
I've been trying, and trying, and trying.
In the recent U.S. national elections I contacted many in the Dem party urging teams of well-known Dems to appear together and cite not just needed programs, but also humanities (books, films, songs) that could put a human face on some of the deep and galling hurt abroad the land -- hurt which good public programs could remedy.
Key: using our arts, artists, to message listening and action skills.
I've been doing this a long time, Ken1 -- and am not giving up.
Phil, you address the reality that my HS English teacher faces daily.
We talked about what she faces in attempting to teach unwilling students over this past Thanksgiving. Anyone whose read any of my comments on prior days might remember this, so I apologize for being repetitious (and you can stop reading now) but this does alarm me.
She said that she can't get these kids off their phones. They enter the class and immediately are on TikTok and when class time starts, tell HER "uh...just another minute."
She said they can't stay in their seats, and will get up and wander around the class. Last year, one class period was totally lost when a student un-bent a paperclip, reached over and stuck it in a electrical outlet and got shocked. Thankfully, not serious enough to require hospitalization, but the resultant spark scared her and the rest of the class. (When questioned why he did it, he said "I guess I'm just stupid")
She is an excellent teacher. She has taught for ten years, and her school's English scores are rising. (Their school enrollment ranges between 100-120 students and she teaches 80% of the English classes.) Readers might question why she doesn't address these behavioral issues, and she has told me that the administration will often be intimidated by the school board, which is often comprised of the parents of students. (Thankfully, she currently has administration with a backbone, which has not always been the case in the past.) Fighting to get them to put down their phones, send them to the dean, or even to get them to SHUT UP wastes so much class time that it often isn't worth it. They are frequently behind, because she needs to use class time to allow them to do homework.
She told us that she "can't assign reading homework, because THEY DON'T READ." That's it. They just won't do it. She is struggling to teach Shakespeare to one class.
Her sister, a few years older and also an English teacher, teaches in a nearby state. Same stories, same issues. (And btw, while both were RA's in college, this one became a house manager of a dorm and was referred to by the residents as "The Hammer". She had no problem enforcing rules among her own peers.)
Both daughters have spent their careers teaching in rural areas. When they started, there was actually a glut of English teachers! Most of their classmates needed to start their careers in rural areas, and while many then transferred to suburban or urban areas (also known as higher paying jobs--neither daughter has broken over $50k/yr in their careers.) Both of them love to teach, and love to teach in rural areas because they then teach their students over multiple years, which might account for the rising English scores. They know these kids well, know their siblings, and know the parents--that is, the ones who show up for P/T conferences. (This semester, the younger of my daughters had less than 10 parents of her 80 or so kids show up.)
The rural areas don't have a lot of money, and to get a new set of novels for the class to read is problematic enough, so I used to scour thrift shops, our local library booksales, etc, to get novels for each to establish a "classroom library" for their student's entertainment reading. When the elder daughter first started teaching, this was well received by the kids, as these were "new" books and they'd fight over them. Now, my daughters told me to stop, as one said "I don't have time to read every novel to make sure there is NOTHING that some parent will object to" and the other said "They just don't read. It's a waste of your money."
I recall how I used to have to purchase THREE copies of every Harry Potter book as my three kids would fight to read it. I recall those were my first Amazon purchases, and how excited my kids were to hear that delivery thump against the door. Reading continues to be one of my greatest pleasures. To think that this is being lost is disheartening. I blame the internet for this.
I will add that SOME kids "get it" and are very grateful to both my daughters, and contact them after graduation to tell them how much they appreciate the education they received. While my daughters could teach elsewhere, definitely at a higher salary, don't rural students deserve a quality education as well?
I know that you bring up the humanities all the time, Phil, sometimes to the annoyance of others here. I'm quite sure my long comments annoy others, too. (I could claim free speech, or that nobody is compelled to read our comments)
When I look around me at the state of this country, sometimes I think, it's good to be old.
I sometimes wish my daughters would change careers. The amount of time they spend every night and on weekends--if they calculated their hourly rate, oh heavens, no! We don't want to go there.
I blame myself as we always held up teachers in high esteem. Of course, the teachers in our public hs were making close to (or over 6 figures.)
Here in Japan, Miselle, high school teachers all do over 90 hours overtime every month.
It's all totally unproductive. The only measures for any high school here come from testing. Just relentless series of standardized tests. Lots of make-work around that. Many, many group activities.
And, even in such a famously, historically great old culture, virtually no high school in the country assigns any whole book, classic or modern, for students to read ever.
The standardized tests set the standard that all reading comes in short snippets, for "analysis" of everything totally without regard for any larger context, let alone for anything human.
And then those teachers -- drudging along showing their total fealty to unproductive hours. And they frequently call in students on weekends, just to show they can waste students' time as the teachers all waste theirs.
We read to our kids endlessly when they were little. . . often falling asleep with the book on our faces and woken up being told to "reeeaaad Mommy". What has been cracking us up the past year is the routine our son has established with his 10-month old by reading to her every day (since she was 6 mos) from the "big book", the 1300 page "Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York"!! She listens intently (obviously engaged in his voice) before drifting off to sleep. Yes, they also repeatedly read her favorite "Pout Pout Fish". :)
Generations are being raised in a world of soundbites, screen time, hundreds of cable TV channels with a full range of good, bad, and evil, social media - as we have long suspected these are so damaging to young, developing minds that cannot yet process but absorb everything. Very few adults and kids take the time to read books anymore. I'm also guilty of this lately after a life time being a voracious reader but I also have a foundation from which to make informed decisions . . . too many people today, do not and we are paying the price for that ignorance and lack of "executive" thinking.
Something as simple as the teaching of cursive writing (my best "subject" in the 3rd grade!!) was eliminated from the curriculum 35 years ago (slowly being reinstated). My undergraduate degree was in early education and to put pencil to paper is a brain development process . . . fine eye-hand coordination as well as lighting up the synapsis for some creativity as one writes (including doodles). Most of the 30-somethings I know can't read cursive let alone write it. Many younger people can't even sign their names and that was noted this year during voter registration.
Phill, I guess the idea about facts is they are essential for certain aspects of our American culture that we here at HCR's Letters believe in. Me, I am just trying to understand how this happened and what it all means. Trying to avoid judging because in the 1st trump term he was mocked, scoffed at, ridiculed, impeached, indicted, eventually convicted and none of that helped. The word "fact" exists in our Constitution twice, in the 7th amendment and Article three: the judicial (correct me if I'm wrong). Nowadays, for example, science, medicine, justice and laws rely on provable facts. Lawyers will say that "we are a nation of laws". I'm not a lawyer but I understand that laws are the guardrails against the excesses of this other aspect we Americans love so much and value: Freedom. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were 17th and 18th century philosophers that crafted a theory that helped Jefferson, Madison and the rest to believe that a Social Contract, a government based in law was the way to provide what the Preamble states, plus what the Bill of Rights and seventeen other Amendments have given us. Laws put restrictions on our desire for a very human concept, unlimited freedom...do whatever you feel like doing. Right from the start there was enough of a majority in congress and the states on occasions that required corrections to make improvements to our social contract. The people, the tens of millions you refer to have been dumbed down, acculturated and coaxed into feeling like government is too restrictive or it is incompetent or it is threatening. These people have been brought along for 45 years, be afraid, be very afraid they've been told and the only thing that was needed was an outlaw to invite them into believing that this outlaw business was just frickin dandy. Fictions are the basis for most everything we believe in. Equality, human rights, capitalism, corporatism are all fictions, some good, some bad. Remember Kelly Ann Conway saying there were "alternative facts"! Facts are a tool to help us feel certain about our world. These people don't need facts to feel certain, they have elevated "Belief" and "Faith" above and beyond the certainty that facts provide.
Heather sadly leaves out the one most salient fact:
The tens of millions who voted for the convicted criminal need no facts, only fantasy.
When they attended those American schools all hollowed out of humanities -- humanities all gone -- reality TV and far-right entertainment sensationalism filled that void.
People hunger for fiction, for stories. The convicted criminal can spin yarns, con games, and fantasyland with a straight face -- as well as with "bing-bing-boing-bong" and lugubrious dance moves. But as those tens of millions have never read a whole novel, of any kind, they lack sober perspective on the madness they inhabit.
OMG you are so right and expressed something that’s has been on my mind about the humanities no longer being emphasized in basic education…a frame of reference for morality and decency has vanished.
Neatly put. And in these days, when I'm looking for books for my young granddaughters, it's that frame of reference that I'm finding it hard to find. I could wrap up some of my childhood books in pretty paper and gift them, but will they read or listen to them? Love them as I did?
Our elites, Anne-Louise, don't model taking any books seriously.
No whole books such as history, memoirs, novels, or biographies -- and the whole matters because such bits as we might quote (or summarize, cite without quotation marks) bear as important due to their larger context.
We've entered terrifyingly vulgar times.
A return of the dark ages really where fundamentalist religious oppression, ignorance and feudalism reign...
Oh no, I hadn't thought of this but it's so true! "Witch Hunts" oy
'Terrifyingly, vulgar times' of the shortform scholars.
Phil, the problem of relative mass illiteracy has been around since even i, 79, was a kid in Canada. Even then history for example was a near bottom in popularity. Same today in good old USA. And i imagine you might rember the mindless anti communism parroted by soldiers headed forVietnam? I suredo.
History taught as rolling dates in time to remember for tests does nothing to teach about the actual period and the human condition during those times.
John Jakes, "North and South" was a very personal and relatable trilogy that set the scenes for early 1800's through the civil war and beyond. Very enlightening.
History is our guides if we wish to actually move forward other than our current capitalism (Trump'ism type) that drives - "create more junk" model. We are too hyper focused on wealth as a destination (Trumps only measure of success and he worships it) with money as an item to collect vs. use as means of trade for goods and services.
Humanity exists for more than the work treadmill.
Bill, I taught history for a few years and I did not do dates although I hoped the kids had a relative idea of what came before and in what sequence. I tried to encourage them to think critically and they had lots of projects, group and individual. No textbook because the class was ancient and English history to match our college prep English sequence. One of the things we started out with was "The Gods Must Be Crazy" because for one thing, I wanted to them to note what happened when the new technology of the coke bottle arrived. Many other good lessons in that movie too. One of my students wondered about the use of a comedy and I said we could have humor in a history class.
Oh Bill...pity those who do not hunger for books...John Jakes enraptured me....lost all sense of time as I became one with his word depictions... You truly describe a poor man when success in his eyes equates solely to material wealth. Cannot allow anyone else the feelings of success, for then ,in his eyes he would feel diminished ! A little like Frank Morgan, I believe it was, as the Wizard in " The Wizard.of Oz" . trump ( small t deliberate) ...the real donald trump without the trappings of obfuscation...for all to see.
I remember the old school teachers I was blessed with...wish they were around now to guide our great grandchildren. Good memories.
But like an afternoon at the movies...Time Marches On!
I’ve been reminding people that Aristophanes is still funny, hoping that might pique interest. The only sitcom I’ve ever watched other than a couple of excepts of “All in the Family,” was “Servant of the People,” which took three nights of binge watching. Anyone who has doubts about Zelenskyy and Ukraine should see it. He wrote it; Ukrainians made him president. The rest is history which, I trust, at least half of America knows by now.
Thank you, Phil Balla, and all of those mourning the stupidity of American voters, who un-and undereducated as they are, cannot distinguish truth from fiction and lack all perspective of history
UNC-Chapel Hill, from which I have three (“useless”) degrees, put a quiz on my phone last week about valuing a liberal arts education. Did I and why or why not? I knew I did, but the questions made me see how much I did and why. Coming from a family of teachers (neither of my parents taught or went to college but valued history, politics, math and language), I got a jolt in the spring of my freshman year at a liberal arts college on learning that the lowest 25% of SAT scorers pursued education degrees. I knew from then on that I would have to teach at university level or forget teaching. Stayed in graduate schools (2—wives move universities with husbands) until I was 40, all of Thibaut’s poems translated for my dissertation, when my advisor was shot and killed and his replacement was a 3-year wonder from Princeton. After the French profs at UNC, this was too much. I quit. At that time French was disappearing from undergraduate curricula, but I was hired for three more years to teach beginners and advanced students at another university. Still reading novels (I started in high school), know their importance, especially to teach history and language.
As an aside, so I can quit: Arrrived in Champagne to visit farmer friend. Ten minutes later she’s shoving “Devenir” (“Becoming”), Michelle Obama’s book into my hands telling me that I MUST read it. As I was leaving, having read three chapters, she informed me that I was taking the book with me. Arriving in Warsaw two weeks later, I discovered a multitude of copies there. Meanwhile I was reading, enjoying the excellent French translation. The university bookstore in Kraków was nearly sold out however. I bought three of the last four copies for Polish friends recognizing that Mrs. Obama is appreciated for who she is perhaps even more in Western Europe than at home.
So true.
Not my point at all Bill, but thought appreciated.
Thanks for mentioning that series. I will have to revisit it.
Oh cmon... John Jake's NOVELS North and South were at best enjoyable pulp fiction, hardly anything like real history.
And worse, my guess would be that 95% of people who would reference that series didn't even read the books but rather just saw it on the television series. Really Bill, that is a poor frame of reference for anything like history.
Difference is people choose what they want! capitalism allows that. People want less treadmill they can live somewhere else or they can live here and be content. No one is stopping them.
Why do you think everyone wants to live here? Economic freedom and opportunity
I was one of those mindless kids who enlisted out of patriotic fervor specifically to go to Viet Nam and "Kill Commies For Christ". The experience hollowed me out and I came home a very confused 19 year old door gunner. Took going to a community college in N. Michigan just for the GI Bill money for my education in the Humanities to begin. That school and those profs brought me back to life.
Robert, I didn't go in a patriotic fervor, I just went because I didn't have other options at the time (May 1969-May 1970). I was in a supply role with the U.S. Navy on the Mekong Delta, delivering supplies to Army and Navy installations all along the river between the coast and Cambodia. But, I too, and in Michigan, went to college after I got back (I was in my 30's at that time) and took social science/humanities courses. And, like you, as regards the education, it was the single best thing that ever happened in my life.
I'm 78 in a couple of weeks, Frank.
Christmas, 1968, I flew to Vancouver, to visit an anti-Viet-war friend of mine in Ann Arbor. A whole community of them there.
Anti-communist, or pro-arms industry. Another thing that seems to me to be overlooked all too often is, it ain't just the Republican politicians who are beholden to our corporate world. Also, I did spend a year in Vietnam in 1969-70; it's a beautiful place with wonderful people.
Phil, your last sentence says it all. I am a voracious reader and could not live without reading.
Who do you consider to be “Our elites?”
David Halberstam described them, Ed, in "The Best and the Brightest."
Ever since then -- ever since the Powell memo of 1971 -- the standardized testers have corralled, numbered, rank-&-filed, and filled them with all the worst, most dehumanized conceits of abstracting, categorizing, and linearity.
Just read the appendices, please, in Diane Ravitch's "The Language Police," 2003.
We read to our daughter. She read to her children. All the classics. And then, like us, followed this up with discussion and active inclusion of the imaginative landscapes in play. Consequent upon this hard humanitarian work her eldest has increasingly rejected the shallow societal demands his generation is conforming to and her young teen daughter has recently had to leave mainstream education in the UK for her ‘sensitivities’. They attracted heinous bullying from her class mates.
Our grandchildren are experiencing the stigmata of being framed as social outcasts, their ‘out of the box’ empathic creative thinking increasingly pathologized as manifestations of ‘mental illness’.
The cultural destruction in Western societies of the past 50 years, the sacrifice and whoring of culture upon the altar of perpetual economic Progress, will take decades to heal and yet more to recreate a nurturing societal environment for true dreamers and thinkers to freely live, move and have their being 🐈⬛
My middle-aged son (schoolteacher) said to me recently that the reason for his extensive vocabulary is probably that I used to read Dickens to them at bedtime. He's very proud that his 8-year-old is a "great reader". It turns out that everything she's given to read is in comic-strip form. Now, at 8 I enjoyed Prince Valiant, (well drawn, especially the horses), and thrilled to Val's romance with Aleta, Queen of the Misty Isles, but I also enjoyed Hamlet, read in the boxed set of miniature complete works, printed on vellum, gold-leafed edges, which Grannie had sent me from England. The last volume was poetry. I found the sonnets heavy going, but the graphic descriptions in things like "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece" were a bit of a shock. I read and re-read them. Nobody ever knew, and school libraries were well-stocked with conventional reading for the designated age group. I could polish one off in a day, and be back for another.
The Complete Works of H W Longfellow fell into my hands when I was 12 or 13, by which time I was too sophisticated not to feel that "Well whistled, my sweet caramillo, well whistled!" wouldn't sound very good actually spoken. It took a lot of reading to figure out what his sweet caramillo was, furthermore.
But I might start her off as I did, with Enid Blyton...
It is so rewarding nurturing loved ones culturally first and foremost from your own lived literary experiences. It is infinitely fascinating how other generations will perceive different things in the same works 🐈⬛
In the late 1950s, 15 years after the Holocaust, no one talked about it at home or in school. I found out about it by reading the books of Leon Uris, and then I needed to find out everything I could about WWII. SO many good authors: Willa Cather, James Michener, Hemingway, Faulkner, the Russian authors, Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck, Rachel Carson, etc.. And they are still out there.
You don't mention Herman Wouk.
I craved for the "Great Books of Western Civilization" and bought the set. I've been through maybe 1/8th of the collection as it often provokes deep thoughts that just need to sit for a while to think about. I love history of great authors that do not shy from the truths that they knew. I am now 60 and still learning. I was so certain at 20 ;-)
It is also interesting to contemplate how their truth of the day is still relevant in our human condition or has moved forward as science has shown differently.
Hiding our human history is a crime in my opinion - warts and all make us better people. Trying to beat morality into a uniformed people without internal understandings or having different views (for self vs. others) seems to be a constant theme.
Bill, back in the early 1970's my wife and I visited friends in Iowa. In his library I saw a set of the "Great Books of Western Civilization". I spent the few days we were there reading from his collection. :)
We have the set. All that wisdom and history at our fingertips.
I'm jealous of that boxed set. It sounds amazing. There's nothing quite like a quality book in your hands.
My Mom had that set; my sister has it now. She's not getting any grandkids, but has an eye on who she wants to pass that set to.
Bravo! To you and now your daughter. I’m a literacy educator who only promotes just that, and it has been novels that we have grown together as kind humans we pulling to listen to other’s ideas. It truly is about books.
"All Creatures Great and Small", James Herriott, 1972 was one heck of book in my early teens.
I believe books give us empathy through seeing the world through other's eyes.
Monnina, I am sorry about what has happened to your grandchildren and I note your excellent last paragraph...whoring indeed.
Thanks, Heather for highlighting President Biden’s speech at the Brookings Institute where he laid out the facts of the U.S. economy after his four years in office. President Biden’s benchmark facts need to be clearly established in the collective memory of every working American to compare with the next four years under the next administration. Will the media do its part in making that comparison?
And yes, Anne-Louise, I agree with you and Phil that voters who fail to read novels and biographies are depriving themselves of one way of developing empathy. I am currently reading one such book:
Hawaiian Senator Mazie Hirono’s memoir: Heart of Fire, An Immigrant Daughter’s Story (2021).
Senator Hirono lays bare her personal story of coming to Hawaii from Japan as a young child. Mazie Hirono overcame the limitations of extreme poverty by the sheer determination of her strong mother and her own belief in hard work to become an exceptionally empathetic legislator who has served her uniquely diverse constituency since 2007. Stories like hers are powerful indeed.
But reading books is, sadly, time-consuming! As long as our lifestyle is focused on consumption of material goods in a 21st century capitalist society, time for reading is restricted by demands of higher paying jobs to pay the rent or mortgage and put food on the table.
We are left at the mercy of influencers of today, movie makers, book/song writers, athletes, celebrities, media personalities, (and Substack writers!) etc. who will all have to have their own epiphany and begin to fuel the hearts of fire within each of our fellow Americans by whatever mode they utilize. The fire is there in each of us and waiting to be sparked for greater change…thinking now of old E.Scrooge! We all seek a good life. We are still learning how money plays into that good life.
If we stop reading, we stop being human.
Good post, Jane. Thanks.
A dedicated readership has always been a minority in my experience, Jane, just the same your thoughts are appreciated.
Hello, is there a name for Bidenomics that we can use like Supply Side Economics?
Always time to read.
I bet they will hold up. I hope you can read them together. ❤️🎄
Heather, that was a great interview you participated in on The News Hour.
Along with Judge Luttig! Both sharp & on point.
READ TO your granddaughters yourself.. in person or on FaceTime or zoom ! Give them the books and keep your own copy by our phone!
At the end tell them a little bit of your childhood memories … will read to you , etc story!
It was my Grannie who taught me about books and poetry. And I loved it when she told me about "the olden days".
It was my wife and still she is the one that read books to our 6 grandkids at bed time. Our last, now 8 is still expecting to be read a few pages of a book before falling asleep. I always preferred to make up stories about dolphins or gray cats going across the street . Hope they do that to their kids and grandkids, it's a great communal feeling .😄
My former husband occasionally used to take his turn - always in Italian - and the children listened rapt to "Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess, bella bella bella, who lived in a castle/palace/whatever the night's choice was, buona notte buona notte buona notte!" and out went the light.
We read toour kids, i became the finger picture teller. They loved it all. Literacy skills are major through much of the economy
"Cultural literacy is a term coined by American educator and literary critic E. D. Hirsch, referring to the ability to understand and participate fluently in a given culture. Cultural literacy is an analogy to literacy proper (the ability to read and write letters). A literate reader knows the object-language's alphabet, grammar, and a sufficient set of vocabulary; a culturally literate person knows a given culture's signs and symbols, including its language, particular dialectic, stories,[1] entertainment, idioms, idiosyncrasies, and so on. The culturally literate person is able to talk to and understand others of that culture with fluency."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_literacy
Phil, is this what we're missing by removing humanities from the curriculum.
Hirsch released a couple of follow-up books as well.
Hirsch, Eric Donald; Kett, Joseph F.; Trefil, James S. (2002). The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (3rd ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 0-618-22647-8.
If you read the dictionary, each of you will likely be familiar with most of the terms he defines. To Phil's point, the cultural literacy of Gen-X, Gen-Z and Millineals is not so robust.
Yes and when considering cultural literacy it's helpful to consider the sub-cultures that have their own defining characteristics. An example for me is the literacy of plant people -- whether scholars or rural farmers, reading the health of living landscapes (and weather) can become bonding when spoken language is vastly different.
I remember the E. D. Hirsch days, Gary.
I didn't know then, however, that it was the swan song for any humanities anymore in any American schools.
Hirsch only kicked off a vitriolic competition for what should be the canon in U.S. ed. As if one single set of reading lists sufficed. Reps from so many communities argued, no, our experiences need to be brought forward, not yours.
I learned from then that we needed simply an essaying willingness to venture some of our culture, and the skills to put that in the context of others, and what they had ventured of their cultures.
Listening. Hearing. Being open.
Could be, as a kid i heard how kids weren't as robust as they used to be, that was 1955
An example I like is Bettina Love who's designed Hip Hop civics curriculum: https://getfreehiphopcivics.com/ . There are YouTube videos of her that inspire me and show that lots is happening. She's written many books: https://bettinalove.com/books/.
That is a good point. You have to meet people where they are. People are not reading books and long narratives. Even beautiful children’s books are replaced by kindles and iPads with computer games.
If they're young, read those books to them. If they're older, make sure they frequently see you reading books. Suggest books to them. Give them books. That's what we did and we ended up with a pair of bookworms. Their kids are mostly strong readers, too. It's a generational thing that needs to be modeled in front of the young.
Give them the books you loved as a child and make sure they know how much they mean to you. They may not appreciate the gesture right away, but it will likely be a cherished memory later in their lives.
If the history classes in HS were presented by people impassioned by, and vastly enthused by, their appreciation for, and knowledge of our history, you are very fortunate indeed! My senior year I had such advantage, AND, the class was team taught by three equally enthusiastic teachers, Mrs. Woodruff, Mr. Banks, and Mr. Hernandez, in the school auditorium. Preparing to soon ship out via the draft, I paid attention. I named them here, some of my many mentors. Thank you Madam, and sirs. "We've seen the enemy, and he is us!" Pogo. Remember him?
Anne-Louise, it's worth a try to give your next generation family what you loved and encourage them to read. They may find they do love it as you did, but perhaps with a different slant. You could then discuss it with them. My students often liked the books I had liked and their explanations for why were different from mine, but no less valid. It truly is worth the effort!!
Give it a try at least!
Try it, you might be surprised, and very pleasantly.
I will.
Would you mind share some of books you think good for frame of reference?
Well, sadly, I never heard back from you on the Israel Palestinian thing. What a shame.
You should buy my book, Rick.
Bill, rick is a bot. Engagement is futile. Please ignore him/it.
No Steve.
I reported "Rick" to Substack Inc. as a good example IMO of what HCR described on "The News Hour", 'America at the Crossroads', as a "Disinformation Crisis".
So what do you exactly men by "ignore him" -- let disinformation drown low-info voters who HCR correctly noted on The News Hour as voting 19% for Trump?
*****
JAMS-SF: I have previously filed a mediation claim against Substack Inc a year or so back on he matter of liability for 3rd party torts. Last week, I have identified nine (9) LFAA Troll incidents (human or non-human) to get to the larger legal issues in construing Substack Inc's latest 9/2024 TOU & Substack's representations under their choice of law at their choice of Venue, JAMS-SF.
I will update with the facts regarding the issues I mediate that concern HCR & many other Substack "Readers" & "Authors"..
Two of the greatest traits of a human being, patience, and persistence. Keep it up Bill you may persuade me lol
I share your regret about the loss of the humanities in education. But the root problem our country faces is deeper--low literacy and numeracy scores, especially in our urban school districts. This started long before the pandemic. Without these basics, students grow into adulthood with no ability to make their own assessment of 30-second political statements, etc.
Completely agree. Even graduate students cannot seem to write a coherent sentence. And now they won’t have to thanks to AI.
We sorely need to address our education goals and strategies… to educate ALL of our students to be ready for and competitive in the workplace but also to attract and retain good teachers.
Don’t blame urban schools - rural schools are hurting a lot too and losing literally a day a week of education.
Less basic education is getting more and more expensive and is turning young people away to avoid being saddled with hundred of thousands of debt. Excellent education and health care is free in Finland. My daughter received two masters degrees from an esteemed school in France specializing in public health policy-- a two-year program for $15,000. Where are our priorities? I am terrified of the next four years....
Lizabeth, in my way of looking at it, what I see is a failure of our schools to teach people how to test a proposition and how to think through it, i.e., critical thinking skills. Then we didn't learn enough about comparative governments, what it's like to live in dictatorships, in oligarchies where the wealthy control the economy and the government. That's what', in part, the American Revolution was all about. And then, there are the issues of racisim, the overwhelming disgust for the immigrants, for gay people, for transgender people, for women libbers, etc. Trump used hate and ignorance to win the election. Next election it is the Democrats time to turn the table and show why Americans should hate Trump fascism since it will be the primary reason for their desperation.
I would love to see all of the schools in this country to start using Melanie Trecek-King's tools and approach such as thinkingispower.com.
Phil is correct!! So true. The facts either didn’t matter to voters or didn’t get communicated.
I try to remain hopeful but it’s really hard!
- Pulled Quote -
"In the Washington Post yesterday, Catherine Rampell noted that Republicans’ claim that extending those cuts isn’t extraordinarily expensive means “getting rid of math."
Some spectacular gaslighting returns on January 20th.
It's already present in their defense of Hegseth and the other clowns!
George H.W. Bush called supply-side economics “voodoo economics.” Paul Krugman called trickle down economics a “zombie idea,” meaning it’s undead; it just won’t go away. Supply side economics is basically build it and they will come. But that is a movie line from “Field of Dreams,” and it’s not reality. 45’s tax cuts in 2017 resulted in stock buybacks, not business investments and job creation. Buybacks are stock manipulation. A small business might invest a tax cut windfall in needed business items, but a large business, not pressed for cash, doesn’t do that. Trickle down economics is like quitting your job and going on a spending spree.
I have friends in Silicon Valley who are with large tech firms. I asked what they did with the tax savings. Did the companies give across-the-board raises? The answer? The company bought back its own stock.
I thought that was a great quote. I continue to think of the story of the Emperor's New Clothes.
lots of Google searches for "how do I change my vote?"
John Stoehr sees one big problem in Democrats not investing in their own media outlets, the the Republicans did with Fox. They constantly keep their voters marinating in lies and hate. No wonder they believe all sorts of lies.
FOX is a creation of Australian mega wealthy … can’t remember name.. died leaving the whole business to three sons ..
Rupert Murdoch - not dead yet, unfortunately - but a Nevada court this week has rejected his attempt to get his family trust into the hands of his eldest son, who follows his father's lying fascist footsteps, instead of to all four of his offspring, three of whom seem possibly reasonable human beings.
I was wondering how that Trust case came out. The younger son doesn’t agree with his father and older brother. I think that’s why Rupert wanted to change the estate. The younger son (in particular) foresees a revolt against the greed of his father and brother.
Perhaps the execution of the United Healthcare CEO gave the judge the reality check to the pleadings of the other children.
Don't get overconfident. First of all R Murdoch plans to appeal that decision. Second do NOT expect the other three Murdochs to be some holy grail of liberalism. They will be less outrageous than their father and brother Lachlin, but don't confuse James Murdoch with Bernie Sanders. Under James, Fox will STILL be a right wing network just maybe a little less insane than the current situation.
We liberals tend to see things in such monochromatic terms. Just like in Syria. The new regime MAY be a little better than Assad, but it's STILL going to be a fundamentalist Islamic regime, not some idealistic liberal democracy.
Democrats Lost the Propaganda War by Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect. quite a good read.
Did not get communicated. You nailed it
It doesn't seem like they've been reading much of anything. They're every bit as agnorant of science as they are of the humanities - why they fall for conmen like Trump and RFK Jr.
Really who is ignorant? If the democrats are not getting the message out to where it is being read then who is really smart? There is plenty of “reading” on Facebook. Top ten things Trump accomplished, where is Biden’s list? Get it out in the form and contest people in which people will be exposed to the message.
This whole Letter, and Biden's whole speech, that's where..
Sadly too late for the voters and not in a format or place they would be likely to come across. It guts me that the GOP will turn Biden's achievements into dust - and then blame him.
And educating the public—if it can be done <sigh>—needed to be done every day, not all at once in one speech. But it’s just not Biden’s style. So someone else should have done it. OTOH, there was probably no way to counter tfg’s constant me, me, me, look at me to which the press is addicted.
There is still potentially an option for the Senate to try to block Trump. Although SCOTUS rejected the attempt of Colorado and two other states to block him, the decision leaves the congressional option available. It would require a 2/3 vote. In the Colorado case, facts show that Trump aided, abetted and gave comfort to insurrectionists.
I don't expect this to happen, but.......https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-719_19m2.pdfs
Section 3
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Great and important point! Why aren’t they getting it?
Don't forget ignorant of economics, too.
Are too ignorant to know how ignorant they are… yep. Agree for most, and some are just self-righteous bastards. Some just Fox haters for anything Dem. A perfect storm of ignorance, apostasy, greed, and hate. Miasma for the masses…
Had to refresh my memory on lugubrious, you nailed it.
BTW, trolls are the perfect example of above
I learned that word from my band director... When placed in the context of a piece of lively, uplifting music, it is an amazing insult and challenge.
I love weird words, and people who know them and can teach me. Greg O is the best.
Agree Phil Balla.
The flaw in the democratic experiment is that if the majority is fooled, either through ignorance or misrepresentation, it can be led down a path of self-destruction by a minority that collects all the resources and power to itself. It happened in Nazi Germany during the period of 1923-1934, when Hitler became Fuhrer, and it's happening here in America 100 years later.
But the planet cannot survive another world war, or unaddressed climate change, so we either have to defeat maga or perish.
No matter what the benchmarks, facts, or truth are, maga will create their own reality and the sheep will eat it up. We must destroy the maga illusion and do it quickly -- this will take opposition leadership that has not yet emerged. We are in desperate need of a miracle.
I think that, to act against the horrific direction this country is taking, we have to dig further into the flaw. Ignorance and misrepresentation are so effective, for example, because the MAGA propaganda made an inseparable link between LGBTQ, the bane of the average MAGA supporter, and Biden economics. The election was stolen, FEMA will take your house, children surprise parents with a new sexual identity: all of these confuse the MAGA decision-making process because they feed a hatred for liberal ideals to the point that their absurdity and destruction of democracy are invisible to the MAGA supporter. I understand Nazism capitalized on similar hatred for the Versailles Treaty. According to Life in the Third Reich (Paul Roland, Kindle Edition), "a sizeable proportion of Germany’s citizens impassively witnessed the country’s descent into dictatorship because they believed they were simply powerless to prevent it – as well as many more who could not see the danger until it was too late." This piece of history is repeating itself.
That the American voter believed this sh!t is a worse problem! This nonsense didn’t come from nowhere before this last election; that as many people as did believed these loony, insane statements means we have a longer and wider problem than just tfg’s ravings.
I'm going with media (in its broadest sense) manipulation. The USian voter who buys into the firehose of lies, insane statements, et al has only one source of information (I call it "angertainment") from their various "news" sources. There are a host of factors ranging from the takeover of school system curricula to churches preaching "gospel" politics to the anger and hatred unleashed by the election of a Black man in 2008 and given license for expression during the 2016 Presidential campaign.
Nailed it.
I disagree. We failed the people by not getting the message out. We focused on beating up trump with what we don’t want rather than providing what we do want in quick short sentences. I met people that could not tell me one thing Biden accomplished. Unless we change the way we communicate this info will not be well known. Where is the list of the top ten accomplishments?
Getting the message out, Sandra, depends on listening skills, too.
The reason to quote from a novel, memoir, history, or bio is to cite something that speaks to the pain of someone to whom you're listening, we're listening.
Tens of millions of working-class Americans have real pain, partly from the mass offshoring of jobs by the corporate suits, partly because schools anymore treat kids like zombies for the dehumanized standardized testing, and partly, too, for the huge widening of the wealth gap purposely sought by the billionaire classes.
Add in the AR-15 epidemic, the opioid epidemic, the obesity epidemic.
They don't feel seen or heard, these many who've been exploited, abandoned. Citing the right book can locate them in a world you know and can sympathize with.
It could have provided Dems with the human messaging they so sorely lacked.
Do perfectly said. Schools are such a mess. We were in the top three for educating our young, in the world. Now we are literally last.
I agree with you and also see how social ingestion of thought-provoking content is moving ideas -- to address many of your points, I hope you'll watch/listen to Ben Wikler (aims to be chair of the DNC) and Jon Stewart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfBtlvfysjw
Willer, for those not familiar, created the playbook for (and followed through) breaking the stranglehold of state Republicans in Wisconsin. His energy level and enthusiasm is infective, and listening to him lifted me from the morass I’ve been in since the election. Strongly recommend the Stewart interview.
Sandra, in the months up to the election, I saw several lists of the Biden administration's accomplishments. There were out there... but the media did not, and still does not, report on these accomplishments. If you get all your news from Fox, you will see only negative stories about Biden.
Right. In short clear sentences.
When President Biden initiated his policies, I figured he had returned to Keynesian economics; he may have staved off a depression in doing so. The price was the inflation, aggravated by the supply shocks and, unfortunately, predatory pricing attendant to COVID. 🤔
As Dr Cox Richardson details carefully, President Biden had a lot more in mind than a re-run of Keynesianism following the exhaustion and ill effects of a re-run of classical economics. The President had a radical new polity -- one of equality of, with, for opportunity. ⚖️
With civics training of generations past washed away, consumerism and hyper-stimulation of simulated violence have vitiated our citizenry. Sadly, we live and breathe republican virtue no more. Let us pray that President Biden's record cements into a legacy. 🙏
I can agree with you (and do), but I avoided the humanities (and spent more time in math and science) throughout my education. More than fantasy, I believe these (MAGA) people crave connection and excitement. They're not getting it in their daily lives (as are many non-MAGA folks) and (somehow) find it in Trump and his cabal.
I have a few serious MAGA people in my orbit (and I ignore them as much as possible, excluding my sister), and they're literate, read novels, visit museums, and appreciate art. (I know this because I knew it Pre-Trump.) They continue to do these things. They don't go to Trump rallies (but he doesn't come to Massachusetts, fortunately.)
I agree that education (and especially the humanities and arts) have been impacted, but I also believe these MAGA enthusiasts are finding more than fantasy in Trump et al.
I think that the MAGA movement feeds something in their souls. They are scared of anyone/thing other than white, Christian, male dominated, heteronormative, and cisgendered, and what MAGA has given them is a place to turn fear into anger, and the ability to express this hatred of/disdain for those who are not any of those 5 categories I mentioned above.
Now that is cold hard truth! Agreed Phil, agreed. I personally belive we must fight back on every level now. Local on up. Push back like our lives depend on it.
Phil, the No Child Left Behind act had such a good-sounding goal—making sure that each student had a good education, regardless of where they live or the wealth of their school district. The reality is a series of tests and fragmented teaching as teachers “teach to the test” so that they, and their schools continue to get money. I don’t know how to spread the best methods of teaching, but the current system is clearly not working for children whose families are unable, or unwilling, to spread the love of reading and learning.
You are so right! There’s a reason the Greeks called them the “liberal” arts—the humanities inform scientific knowledge, which they called the “servile” arts, which have value not in and of themselves, but only in service to a wider world view and a greater humanitarian context. When the so-called servile arts are divorced from the liberal arts, they lose meaning and value.
Sounds like you’re suggesting to just give up. I think the benchmarks that Biden pointed out will stand as a great reference for the sure to come economic downturn. And if a billionaire like Mark Cuban will match the dollars spent for misinformation perhaps that uninformed electorate will clearly see the truth and vote accordingly.
Not at all giving up, Ken1.
A bit more than 30 years ago I ran the first program at any university in central Europe for students to hear -- weekly -- discussions among 1) a professor from their own culture; 2) a visiting prof from either England or the U.S.; and 3) rotating writers (mostly) from neighboring central European cultures. (Thank you Soros money.)
I've replicated it twice since, in other parts of the world.
I've continued to spend energy trying to get the U.S. to use its Fulbright program (or Peace Corps) so cultural neighbors in conflict with each other might get schools to teach essay writing for seeing "others" as individuals in the other cultures, not just repetitive units in old stereotypes.
I've been trying, and trying, and trying.
In the recent U.S. national elections I contacted many in the Dem party urging teams of well-known Dems to appear together and cite not just needed programs, but also humanities (books, films, songs) that could put a human face on some of the deep and galling hurt abroad the land -- hurt which good public programs could remedy.
Key: using our arts, artists, to message listening and action skills.
I've been doing this a long time, Ken1 -- and am not giving up.
I haven't heard this tidbit about Mark Cuban, but I'd love to see it.
I completely agree - I still recall my humanities classes from high school - they opened my eyes - and my heart - to so much.
Phil, you address the reality that my HS English teacher faces daily.
We talked about what she faces in attempting to teach unwilling students over this past Thanksgiving. Anyone whose read any of my comments on prior days might remember this, so I apologize for being repetitious (and you can stop reading now) but this does alarm me.
She said that she can't get these kids off their phones. They enter the class and immediately are on TikTok and when class time starts, tell HER "uh...just another minute."
She said they can't stay in their seats, and will get up and wander around the class. Last year, one class period was totally lost when a student un-bent a paperclip, reached over and stuck it in a electrical outlet and got shocked. Thankfully, not serious enough to require hospitalization, but the resultant spark scared her and the rest of the class. (When questioned why he did it, he said "I guess I'm just stupid")
She is an excellent teacher. She has taught for ten years, and her school's English scores are rising. (Their school enrollment ranges between 100-120 students and she teaches 80% of the English classes.) Readers might question why she doesn't address these behavioral issues, and she has told me that the administration will often be intimidated by the school board, which is often comprised of the parents of students. (Thankfully, she currently has administration with a backbone, which has not always been the case in the past.) Fighting to get them to put down their phones, send them to the dean, or even to get them to SHUT UP wastes so much class time that it often isn't worth it. They are frequently behind, because she needs to use class time to allow them to do homework.
She told us that she "can't assign reading homework, because THEY DON'T READ." That's it. They just won't do it. She is struggling to teach Shakespeare to one class.
Her sister, a few years older and also an English teacher, teaches in a nearby state. Same stories, same issues. (And btw, while both were RA's in college, this one became a house manager of a dorm and was referred to by the residents as "The Hammer". She had no problem enforcing rules among her own peers.)
Both daughters have spent their careers teaching in rural areas. When they started, there was actually a glut of English teachers! Most of their classmates needed to start their careers in rural areas, and while many then transferred to suburban or urban areas (also known as higher paying jobs--neither daughter has broken over $50k/yr in their careers.) Both of them love to teach, and love to teach in rural areas because they then teach their students over multiple years, which might account for the rising English scores. They know these kids well, know their siblings, and know the parents--that is, the ones who show up for P/T conferences. (This semester, the younger of my daughters had less than 10 parents of her 80 or so kids show up.)
The rural areas don't have a lot of money, and to get a new set of novels for the class to read is problematic enough, so I used to scour thrift shops, our local library booksales, etc, to get novels for each to establish a "classroom library" for their student's entertainment reading. When the elder daughter first started teaching, this was well received by the kids, as these were "new" books and they'd fight over them. Now, my daughters told me to stop, as one said "I don't have time to read every novel to make sure there is NOTHING that some parent will object to" and the other said "They just don't read. It's a waste of your money."
I recall how I used to have to purchase THREE copies of every Harry Potter book as my three kids would fight to read it. I recall those were my first Amazon purchases, and how excited my kids were to hear that delivery thump against the door. Reading continues to be one of my greatest pleasures. To think that this is being lost is disheartening. I blame the internet for this.
I will add that SOME kids "get it" and are very grateful to both my daughters, and contact them after graduation to tell them how much they appreciate the education they received. While my daughters could teach elsewhere, definitely at a higher salary, don't rural students deserve a quality education as well?
I know that you bring up the humanities all the time, Phil, sometimes to the annoyance of others here. I'm quite sure my long comments annoy others, too. (I could claim free speech, or that nobody is compelled to read our comments)
When I look around me at the state of this country, sometimes I think, it's good to be old.
Thank you, Miselle, for your good, detailed reporting from the trenches.
I sometimes wish my daughters would change careers. The amount of time they spend every night and on weekends--if they calculated their hourly rate, oh heavens, no! We don't want to go there.
I blame myself as we always held up teachers in high esteem. Of course, the teachers in our public hs were making close to (or over 6 figures.)
Here in Japan, Miselle, high school teachers all do over 90 hours overtime every month.
It's all totally unproductive. The only measures for any high school here come from testing. Just relentless series of standardized tests. Lots of make-work around that. Many, many group activities.
And, even in such a famously, historically great old culture, virtually no high school in the country assigns any whole book, classic or modern, for students to read ever.
The standardized tests set the standard that all reading comes in short snippets, for "analysis" of everything totally without regard for any larger context, let alone for anything human.
And then those teachers -- drudging along showing their total fealty to unproductive hours. And they frequently call in students on weekends, just to show they can waste students' time as the teachers all waste theirs.
We read to our kids endlessly when they were little. . . often falling asleep with the book on our faces and woken up being told to "reeeaaad Mommy". What has been cracking us up the past year is the routine our son has established with his 10-month old by reading to her every day (since she was 6 mos) from the "big book", the 1300 page "Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York"!! She listens intently (obviously engaged in his voice) before drifting off to sleep. Yes, they also repeatedly read her favorite "Pout Pout Fish". :)
Generations are being raised in a world of soundbites, screen time, hundreds of cable TV channels with a full range of good, bad, and evil, social media - as we have long suspected these are so damaging to young, developing minds that cannot yet process but absorb everything. Very few adults and kids take the time to read books anymore. I'm also guilty of this lately after a life time being a voracious reader but I also have a foundation from which to make informed decisions . . . too many people today, do not and we are paying the price for that ignorance and lack of "executive" thinking.
Something as simple as the teaching of cursive writing (my best "subject" in the 3rd grade!!) was eliminated from the curriculum 35 years ago (slowly being reinstated). My undergraduate degree was in early education and to put pencil to paper is a brain development process . . . fine eye-hand coordination as well as lighting up the synapsis for some creativity as one writes (including doodles). Most of the 30-somethings I know can't read cursive let alone write it. Many younger people can't even sign their names and that was noted this year during voter registration.
Phill, I guess the idea about facts is they are essential for certain aspects of our American culture that we here at HCR's Letters believe in. Me, I am just trying to understand how this happened and what it all means. Trying to avoid judging because in the 1st trump term he was mocked, scoffed at, ridiculed, impeached, indicted, eventually convicted and none of that helped. The word "fact" exists in our Constitution twice, in the 7th amendment and Article three: the judicial (correct me if I'm wrong). Nowadays, for example, science, medicine, justice and laws rely on provable facts. Lawyers will say that "we are a nation of laws". I'm not a lawyer but I understand that laws are the guardrails against the excesses of this other aspect we Americans love so much and value: Freedom. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were 17th and 18th century philosophers that crafted a theory that helped Jefferson, Madison and the rest to believe that a Social Contract, a government based in law was the way to provide what the Preamble states, plus what the Bill of Rights and seventeen other Amendments have given us. Laws put restrictions on our desire for a very human concept, unlimited freedom...do whatever you feel like doing. Right from the start there was enough of a majority in congress and the states on occasions that required corrections to make improvements to our social contract. The people, the tens of millions you refer to have been dumbed down, acculturated and coaxed into feeling like government is too restrictive or it is incompetent or it is threatening. These people have been brought along for 45 years, be afraid, be very afraid they've been told and the only thing that was needed was an outlaw to invite them into believing that this outlaw business was just frickin dandy. Fictions are the basis for most everything we believe in. Equality, human rights, capitalism, corporatism are all fictions, some good, some bad. Remember Kelly Ann Conway saying there were "alternative facts"! Facts are a tool to help us feel certain about our world. These people don't need facts to feel certain, they have elevated "Belief" and "Faith" above and beyond the certainty that facts provide.