In 1883, as the Republican Party moved into full-throated support for the industrialists who were concentrating the nation’s wealth into their own hands while factory workers stayed above the poverty line only by working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, Yale sociologist William Graham Sumner responded to those worried about the extremes of wealth and poverty in the country with his book
To all who voted for Trump you have screwed yourselves and the rest of us at the same time. The days of the middle class Americans will quickly disappear even faster under Trump’s rule and you will be left with a poverty stricken working class for robber baron employers who enjoy an even wider pay gap between their employees than exists now. Your stupidity and short sighted delusions are destroying our country. You put a con man, convicted felon, sex offender, bankrupting businessman, who stiffs his subcontractors in the White House.
And those who voted for Trump will never read this comment or Heathers column. They will continue to believe the lies published in media controlled by the oligarchs.
The "bad people" are not coming to learn Patrick. They are coming to destroy. We have got to stop trying to educate cult members. It is a waste of time and resources. We need to educate:
1. Democratic Party members who voted.
2. Independent voters.
3. Latinos and Black men
4. People who did not vote.
We need to be more informed and louder than the media.
Barbara, yes, they are beyond the pale and often love to get in people's faces with their hatred. I do not know how we speak to the misogyny and racism which played a part in this election. And we have the usual calculations that this will not harm me personally as some reported Latinos saying, forgetting that some family, friends, and other fellow Latinos will get swept up in this. As for people who did not vote, I think part of it was voter suppression and intimidation, some who could not vote for either, some who were somehow making a protest by not voting, and just plain apathy. I am appalled by the number of vets who voted for this monster. Many vets have disabilities and even if they don't, they should care enough about their fellow vets.
I wonder how it would've gone if the non-voters voted? In my small town (@ 19,000 registered voters) about 80-90% voted. Of course, it was a democratic, well educated middle-upper middle class populace in CT (blue state).
That's why Heather, Robert Hubbell, Joyce Vance, Jessica Craven, Prof. Timothy Snyder, MeidasTouch and others on Substack and Bluesky are critical now and going forward as voices of facts, reason and inspiration to figure out ways to counter the ongoing barrage of lies and disinformation by radical right-wing media.
We cannot make Fox viewers turn it off and read real news. That is a fundamental problem for which I see no solution. Adding more liberal media will not do it.
You cannot have somebody "read and learn" if they refuse to acknowledge that the source is more truthful than what they are consuming willingly from faux and worse sources of angertainment.
Ally, yes, I have encountered many who truly believe faux and do their "research" on far right wing nut sites while telling me to dig deeper. Well, soon it won't matter because they and the rest of us will experience higher prices for starters and who knows what else. Since death star has cognitive problems and is not healthy, he is already a puppet. He may be aware enough still to throw a few people who kissed his rear under the bus once they have too much of the stage or do something he doesn't like. I love your word angertainment.
Bluesky is geared toward blue voters and sings to the choir. We need to also post it on red leaning sites to reach others and on more neutral sites to reach those in the middle.
Question: I'm trying to share stuff on Instagram. It looks like you can only post pictures or videos. Is it possible to post text or articles? If so, how? Thanks!
I often repost Heather's letters on Facebook and post on Public. Hoping at least ONE person has the curiosity to open it and learn something. So many do not know our history, it is astounding. And not by accident. We have crippled education, and forced so many to be at the economy's mercy that they have no time to understand the true nature of what is at stake. We must continue to be the proxies of accurate information and historical perspectives. Or this will continue to repeat itself.
Having taught social studies in public schools, I can tell you that adolescents have a lot more immediate concerns than history. Those students who are college-bound and tracked into AP or IB classes are a delight, but it's the rare student in general education who is fascinated by history and current events. I suspect this has always been the case.
Having been in education for 29 years I respectfully disagree. I have seen so many bright, energetic young people interested in so much more than people give them credit for. Schools systems can drain the life out of anyone. A good school with energized teachers can accomplish wonders and it doesn't have to have a ton of money
Barbara, I don't disagree with you. It's certainly true that "a good school with energized teachers can accomplish wonders..." Good teachers and good public schools are the foundation of a healthy democracy.
Learning history, a passion for history has been a lifelong avocation for me. I had good teachers and relatives who were very interested in it. I can't say, however, that my sons share my passion for the topic. To each his/her own.
History in context of today's political climate and economy and, as you said, their immediate concerns. We can help them make those connections. That is often the piece that is missing. And so much of what they do learn burnishes our image in national and international events. Don't ask them about the Vietnam War.....I am sure you get some doozies. Anyway, my point is their knowledge base is lacking and skewed and that is by design, imo.
Oh, they are on Facebook. Often they will come to a site where they know the person is opposite of them and spew their hatred. i have blocked a number of this people. I have also read that people are editing their friends and blocking or unfriending certain family members and friends. I have a good friend who lives in the small town where I taught and she has decided to take a stand and she knows lots of people who love death star. She is in my age group (early 80s) and is now one of those outspoken old ladies. She had one male tell her to respect the position and she told him respect has to be earned. With death star that argument is completely moot.
Thank you Frank. I am and i still have my sense of humor. The friend above and I share lots of laughs. We have a FO list and death star has long been number one. She wondered about Muskrat and I suggested number one A. My humor usually tends to be dry and sometimes people do not get it. I do often smile when I reading the posts here. We have some real wits amongst us.
All of these are top rated pidcasts and shows with exponentially more listeners than all three major networks combined. Bongino has 150,000 plus listeners live daily, not to mention those who listen to his show afterwards.
Perhaps most on here should spend time listening to their thoughts and ideals to better understand why the Democrats are currently so out of touch with the majority?
Nearly all those except Rogan are right-wing propagandists. Rogan I believe supported Bernie Sanders before he swung to Trump. I do think I should listen to him to at least discover why he's so popular. Any ideas?
Most swing voters are non-ideological, without much knowledge nor interest in history or current events, and more swayed by who their parents, friends, and colleagues are voting for, and swayed by the culture of their communities. It's difficult to vote Democrat if you're a white guy in a red state.
Jim, I'm clenching my teeth and listening to Rogan's October 25 interview with Trump. Besides being a good representation of Rogan's on-air persona and interviewing skills (both are impressive), it's an education on why Trump won. Far from the unhinged rants we saw at rallies on the news, Trump came across as fluent, coherent and friendly. It's worth some time (the whole show is 3 hours; I'm halfway through hour 2) to see how Rogan brings Trump out and to understand Trump's abilities. He is ever so much more in control and dangerous than most of us think he is.
Correct Joe Rogan was Bernie Bro and until recently was hesitant to vote republican, same for Elon Musk. Many in media keep saying “we need someone like Joe Rogan on our side”. YOU HAD HIM! Tim Poole has always been independent. Do you think Rachel Maddow is balanced news? People on here liken her to prophet. You had The Young Turks until you called Anna a birthing person. You lost Bill Maher and Charlemane the god when you kept pushing extreme leftist ideals. Now you have women shaving their heads, divorcing their husbands, withholding sex and hoarding abortion drugs because the election didn’t go their way. Did anyone think when Brittany Spears shaved her head that was a sane way to make a point? Bottom line, Biden had mental deficiencies and trying to cover for it made people trust media and the party less. Deep fakes…. Telling the average American voter they are uneducated and rascist when they are not does not help your argument.. No one ever liked Kamala, period. Lying and saying anyone did simply makes the party look insane. Republicans have strengths and abilities far beyond the average elderly ivory tower reader on here, but the snobs on here are unwilling to admit their shortcomings. HVAC, plumbers, auto mechanics, welders, bus drivers are all hard working salt of the earth people who spend their days talking to other hard working Americans. They don’t care about skin color, they just want to get through their day, earn a living, and enjoy their free time. The readers on here are angry old elitist holed up in their gated communities reading the latest publication that only echoes their beliefs. They write big fat checks to make themselves feel better about helping those beneath them, but rarely get their hands dirty. It is absolute joke when the cry if we shut border on illegals who will pick the beans? They are so out of touch they don’t even realize how rascist that statement is. They don’t actually house migrants, nor do they want them in their ups ale communities, remember Martha’s Vineyard? They Thad those people back on the bus and out of their in a few short hours. I bet Obama’s house alone could house half the bus. And they probably aren’t even there at the time- hypocrites! They bash religion, and never recognize it is often the church and its community that are the ones feeding, clothing and housing those in need. Heather often speaks of the parties having previously flipped. What she doesn’t see is now they have flipped once again. The Republican Party has become the party of the working middle class, the freedom of speech party, the anti war party, the health and humanity party, those championing freedom of religion, the right to bear arms. The Republicans now represent the Bill of Rights and Democracy. What happened to Democrats ideal of COEXIST. Now it’s lockstep conformity or else, no wonder why so many are leaving the party.
Threads, too. The only place not controlled by MAGA is BlueSky for now. I left X the day Muskrat took it over and left all Meta apps last Friday. I feel concerned about Facebook and Threads continued descent into the abyss.
Good for you. I’m sharing it but not as broadly as you’re suggesting. Otherwise I continue with Indivisible and hope many others are too. Listening to commercials for Medicare Advantage, I suspect that the companies thriving on tax dollars will not let Medicare go. (Maybe Medicaid also.)
This is exactly what I think each morning when I open Heather’s post. As I try to make sense of what has happened and search for something that I can do about it, I have found this (https://youtu.be/ww47bR86wSc) to be a though-provoking analysis..
Bonhoeffer said: "The process at work here is not that particular human capabilities, such as intellect, suddenly fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and more or less consciously, give up an autonomous position." This key statement explains in detail the weak minded who feel power for the first time. We saw it in the McCarthy hearings in 1954 when one Roy Cohn became empowered to act as McCarthy's legal counsel. Before his stint as legal counsel, Cohn's credibility was humiliatingly damaged during the trial of one Annie Lee Moss. Moss, accused of having her name on the membership rolls of the Communist Party, patently denied the allegations. As it turns out, the individual who "outed" her identified a white man who was associating with Moss. The individual had the same name as one of Moss's friends who was, instead, African American. Clearly, Cohn not only had the wrong individual, but he also had the wrong association with the same name as Moss's friend. His reputation was forever damaged. That Trump would hire Cohn as his legal advisor and fixer only demonstrates how stupidity searches for the like-minded. It's bad enough that Trump was so callously advised by his father only to be further advised callously by Roy Cohn. And now, all of us must contend with stupidity, searching for a safe place, to land in the White House and its tentacle like administrations. Just today, there broke a news item referring to a march by over 100 Navy Seals ready to intimidate republican senators regarding Pete Hegseth's nomination. Obviously, a bullying tactic that may well work with the weak minded GQP.
Jules Henry, a cultural anthropologist, once wrote an essay in the NYRB's on the idea of culturally induced stupidity. I wonder if he had read Bonfoeffer's essay? I really enjoyed reading the remarks you directed us to. Carry on.
I shared it on Facebook. I've sent this stuff to my conservative friends already - they ignore it. I guess you have to touch the fire to understand how it burns.
Terry, ignorance can be fixed, but there is no fix for stupid. There are those among us who intentionally remain ignorant. That is a case of stupid. We are definitely at a tipping point and the tilt right now is not good.
Until they no longer receive their government benefits ~ then they'll blame Biden and the Democrats... at which point I will remind/correct them like I did to the morons at BJ this week.
America has spoken on the economy. They rendered their verdict. NO THANK to the Democrats. Instead of retooling and getting a clue its time to blame the voters?
This is exactly the formula that loses elections.
Give the middle finger to middle America and then demand they voter for you? No they did the right thing and gave you the middle finger back.
Time to call me out for a superficial reading of the numbers. When one wonders that one hundred, thirty-five thousand jobs created by the CHIPs Act is less than ten per cent of the total on one million six hundred thousand jobs created overall, I would venture to say that the eight per cent CHIP-shot spurred other job growth. 🤔
What concerns me, however, is that the job creation number is so low. Perhaps that indicates the efficiency of technology and robotics evaporating jobs that might have been created. Yet that statistic is of manufacturing and construction jobs generated, roughly ten per cent of the total jobs created under President Biden. 🔍
Looking at the article from the American Entreprise Institute -- in actuality, a relatively untainted center of conservative thinking -- one must net out about ten million 'bounce-back' jobs. Overall the Biden Admin. has added four-to-SIX million fresh jobs, quite an accomplishment. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7259852498906025984/ 🚀
and there are those who learn to repeat it. Remember Stalin - it is not how many vote, but who counts the vote. And today's world with technology, it might be much easier to be the who that counts.
Is this what they mean by bringing on the Rapture? Certainly no god will come and take them all to a wonderful place so they’re going to create their own. I still want to know who they think will do all their labor if they allow them to die of starvation and disease. If you make them homeless they won’t work jobs.
Ivory towers are only good if others do the work to sustain them.
Yes, they are actively trying to bring it on. That's flat out heresy, as are much of the Evangelical's beliefs. It's become a self-fullfilling prophecy of sorts. They will rejoice if they touch off WW III.
Jon, I can’t argue with what you’ve said about Trump/MAGA (I realize you already know there’s a “but” coming). But, we can’t afford to let those two facts and that remarkable, disturbing poem stop us from stiffening our spines and standing up to block their way. Can we?
The reason they voted for Trump is we did not get the word out about Biden. Harris did not mention any of Biden’s sweeping changes. in her campaign. No one in NC mentioned this in their bid for election. Biden spent millions in Nc for internet. Not one NC politicians mentioned this
Biden's economic accomplishments have been endlessly derided by an effective, shrill right wing media. It was just enough this time, to tip the margins. Winner take all electoral system exaggerate wins. Though the percentages are small, the general lean towards Trump makes his political victory seem outsized. The Electoral College, as we all know, does not provide a fair representation of the popular vote.
Not just right-wing Frank. I have read so, so many times in these comments that the Democrats were not the Party of the middle class.
One thing we might want to remember is the stunning fact that the so-called liberal voter has been deeply influenced by the very same media who ignored the progress made by the Biden Administration.
Democrats have shot themselves in the foot as well. I invite people to stop chanting nannie nannie boo boo. Look at how well you campaigned with those things called facts. How many Democrats were knowledgeable of the economics of the Biden Administration and could speak clearly with people about them during this election. How many people got caught up in the culture wars of we "hate him and he is a bad man"? How many people dropped back to the lazy cry of "but Democracy"?
My facts Guru during the Biden Administration was Oliver Willis. He maintained a running list of Biden's accomplishments. I invite people to look it up.
Anyway. It's all spilled milk now. Lesson learned? Be an educated voter.
Why isn't anyone blaming the gerry meandering we have allowed for so many years and the corruption of politicians and courts as a reason dems lost the election?
The NDRC (National Democratic Redistricting Committee) courtesy of Eric Holder and Barack Obama have been fighting gerrymandering for years. Give them your financial support if you can.
Because it WASN'T the reason. Sure its an important thing to fix someday but unless you believe in conspiracy theories (which I conclude are nonsense concocted by losers) Harris lost because MILLIONS of voters said "sorry not interested". Fixing the gerrymandering is a great idea but it's a slow process. Someday it will be fixed. But if the same voters had voted this year in a better environment, Trump still probably would have won. Worse he MIGHT have won the popular vote which has NOTHING TO DO with gerrymandering and lost the electoral vote and then the Republican voters would have had a much right to compassion about "losing the election due to the electoral college" as we did in 2016!
Keep that in mind when you are wishing for things!
Respectfully Jon, I disagree. I feel making it hard for voters is a real good excuse for them to stay home. I am not sure I would be willing to stand in line for 10 hours to cast my vote or drive long distance to hand in an absentee ballot.
This happened, yes, but it was rare. I SERIOUSLY doubt that was the reason that most of the 7 or so MILLION voters didn't vote. In addition many of those people in fact by DID vote but NOT FOR PRESIDENT. I haven't done the state by state calculations yet but u expect we will see about 2 million of those "non president voters" went to the polls and simply left the President space blank.
This was clearly a sharp backlash against the Biden team in general more than any other reason although there were plenty of reasons to go around (Gaza, the economy, illegal immigration, etc).
In the end the story is actually fairly simple. Harris lost a relatively close election but still by a million or more votes not by the 700 votes that AL Gore lost by in 2000. And it wasn't that Trump GAINED a lot of votes (although in the end he did gain) but Harris lost many many votes that had elected Biden.
Good call out but there are many reasons why Harris lost.
I believe one of the foundational reasons was she didn’t know her audience. Harris needed to win over the angry MAGA and undecided voters to name a few. When you are angry and undecided you don’t remember what happened 4 years ago (aka Trump 1.0).
Maybe if Harris traveled to Republican areas and spoke their language using “angry” vocabulary like “What did Trump do for you? Let me tell you what he did! While your friends, neighbors, families were sick and dying from Covid Trump was telling you to drink bleach!”
Or “When you were out of work due to the pandemic, Trump was giving testing machines to his buddy Putin. Testing machines that could have put you back at work sooner (yeah that’s a stretch but again we are speaking Trump 😉) “
Or Harris could have given a speech that “Trump knew in January how deadly the virus was and instead of mobilizing the Government (they love that phase)Trump was giving a paid interview to Bob Woodward for his book.” Challenge their belief system and tell them in the same angry tone Trump doesn’t care about you.
Ohhh, and definitely feed into the homophobia brainwashed fools the fact Trump used their tax payer dollars for prisoners sex change operations. I would have teams of volunteers putting copies of that executive order on every car windshield in the church parking lots.
Yup, that is EXACTLY what Harris needed to do (and some!), she needed to seize the offensive against Trump. She needed to go on Fox and all the MSM that tended to favor Trump and blow her horn to the heavens about his insanity. But she played it cautiously, not engaging with the important media outlets that GOP voters listen to. And that cost her dearly, because the GOP voters never heard that trumpet.
I do NOT know if it would have changed the election outcome, but at least it would have given her a better chance. Playing it safe didn't at all. And talking about all the mundane stuff that Biden did didn't help either. People didn't care about the student loan forgiveness (if anything they hated it and hated Biden/Harris because of it). The infrastructure stuff was important but not as important as grocery bills.
In the end it was a tough election and in some ways surprising it was as close as it was.
I want to continually emphasize the importance of calling the legacy media out. They are the other bad kids hiding behind the bigger bad kids of the right wing media. There is a discussion running around now on whether to keep legacy media or forge a new media world. Dr. Richardson favors keeping the current system.
Barbara Mullen -- I've noticed you've referred twice in this thread to "legacy media". Would you clarify who you mean by "legacy media?" I've never seen this term used before.) Thanks!
New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, ABC, MSNBC etc.
You know. Those entities that bill themselves as liberal but are not at all. these entities gave him top billing for 9 years. They had a huge hand in re-electing him.
And I think you are just wrong here. Some did what you say (Fox, many of the local newspaper chains) but many especially the ones you note did not at all. MSNBC? Hardly! The Times? No way! They wrote many editorials condemning Trump and their news coverage was quite balanced. You can repeatedly say that's not the case but factually it was.
The problem is simply that many 2020 Biden supporters checked out. It had little to do with the media. It had EVERYTHING to do with how Biden conducted himself.
Dictionary (more or less) defined as "Legacy media is really just another way of describing our historic, traditional sources of information, whether it be newspapers, radio, or television." I'm going to go with the "legacy" left behind of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Molly Ivins, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, with others my insufficiently caffeinated brain cannot recall at the moment.
You make a good point Ally. I hadn't thought of it that way. I believe the term as it is used today refers to the current "liberal" media as opposed to the Murdoch empire.
Me too. I continue to point out Barbara that we differ greatly here. I think (as does HCR) that for at least the foreseeable future "legacy" media (at least some of it) will continue to be the primary communication medium. We ignore that at our peril.
Jon. I acknowledged Dr. Richardson's view. I respectfully disagree. Why keep using a broken megaphone? In practical terms what change can readers/voters effect in main stream oligarch run media today?
the forces of evil played a long game and spent years putting things in place. redistricting voting maps, instilling fear in voting methods, placing judges etc. in vital places. until it was enough. and those things remain in place so will be a long time to untangle.
But. Frank, repubs whose states have benefited from the infrastructure act, the public-private companies, etc. are asking these not to be shut down bc their constituents like the results.
PsyOps is an abbreviation for Psychological Operations, usually as a way of influencing people's beliefs in a non-violent manner. An example might be made of the allegations that Haitian Immigrants were eating peoples pets, or that Obama was not a US citizen. There are other, better examples.
I know two brilliant men completely seduced by psyops. They have lived through trickledown and are totally disillusioned by “democracy.” Both are artists, and have simply given up on the promise of democracy. Both think I am some sort of freak for my continuing to support it.
Sadly, the NYT quote in Heathers post tells the tale. “it is difficult to quarrel with their deductions, however one may feel one’s finer instincts hurt by their apparent cruelty.” Lordy, piss on “equality for all” and hop on board the gravy train. The working poor are just a drain on the rich and powerful. Then comes the “shirtwaist factory fire” and some have a conscience it seems. But is a conscience one of those traits that are passed down, or do they have to be renewed with every generation. Me thinks the latter, but it could be “you have to be carefully taught.”
Jeri, back in 1985, I was working in the medical lab of a Chicago suburban hospital. There was a salmonella outbreak, I think tied to a dairy. Anyhow, each area of the lab had a room that came off that hallway; blood bank, Hematology, Chemistry, and of course, Microbiology. You could not step into that hallway without being nearly overcome with the smell of shit. No joke, there were carts filled with tubs of diarrhea lined up to be analyzed. (I had a hard time purchasing frozen whipped topping for years after that, as people recycled those containers to bring in their samples. Yuck.)
After that, it seemed like there was the occasional recall of products, but in the last year---anyone notice how it seems every few weeks there is a MAJOR recall due to salmonella, Listeria, E. Coli ???
So, SURE, go right ahead and cut the regulations that keep our food supply "safe"---just yesterday I heard a radio report of a meat processing plant being fined for having underage immigrant children sanitizing the plant using caustic chemicals. Immigrant CHILDREN.
a lot of folks complain that we have too many regulations or that they are crazy complicating to business. BUT a lot of that has to do with how things get changed in order to pass. and regulations do come about usually not as foresight, but after something stirs folks. death and or disaster.
and I have been wondering how so many things are becoming contaminated apparently lately-just better or wider reporting, so we now hear about it, less standards, more contamination-why? and now what to do about it.
Thank you for noting this.... I was planning to if no one else said it first. This quote alone has convinced me to finally drop my digital sub to the New York Times.
They were!!! No one was listening. The media ignored the Democrats. The other guy was more interesting for the past 9 years.
Quick questions. How much independent research did you do on the facts of the Biden Administration? How much do you rely on the media to tell you about the world?
I stopped paying attention to the corporate media a while back. Gave up the New York Times and Washington Post subscriptions. Now I get all my info from sub stack and a few people on YouTube that I trust. I have a brother who is a maggot and I have to tell you there is no reasoning with those people. They are brainwashed and brain dead. I watched a lot of Kamala’s rallies and listened to her, and what she had to say, she did not talk enough about all the good things Biden did. But yeah, there’s no way to reach the magats.
I am not talking about reaching the MAGA voter. They are in a cult. I always focus on facts not culture war stuff. The MAGAs always ignore facts and only speak propaganda, double speak and lies.
We must, must stay informed. Legacy media does not inform.
Barbara Mullen -- "The media ignored the Democrats." That was the crux of the Whole Catastrophe! They never really covered him, and I've never understood why. The media made Trump what he is today starting at least in 2015. (Ten Years Plus.) And will continue to help him achieve his goal of being a dictator. And now I'm p'ed off at President Biden for not stepping down sooner than he did so the party could vet other candidates.
I understand the anger at Biden not stepping down (I encounter it frequently) but I do wish people would let it go. None of us has any idea how the election would have gone if Biden had stepped down earlier, not run again, stayed in the race, etc. It's all conjecture. You're probably right, but I am going to remember Biden as possibly the last good president of the United States.
because the contentious, the ugly, the scary and the titillating sell, and generate clicks- and all media is needing the cash, they are a business. Trumps is outrageous and flashy. great click-bait.
The media is a disaster, all billionaires' agenda all the time, but it's much deeper than that. The dems have no plan to fight against the repubs and haven't for 40 years. They have no spine, no gumption, no imagination, no fight in them. They just roll over like an abused dog.
Barbara Mullen -- Thanks to the press! (As I commented to you before!) But I don't think I'll ever forgive President Biden for not stepping down sooner.
The ivory towner millionaire political consultants like Plouffe and Messina have NO clue about the concerns of average Americans as their failed mismanagement of Harris's campaign proved!
I beg to differ if you think Harris’ campaign failed how did she ever manage to amass in 6 short the number of votes that put her within about 1.5% of the votes Trump acquired over a 4 year campaign? Harris nor her campaign failed us. Those who failed to vote or actually voted for Trump over the crisis in Gaza, those who stated they voted for Trump because their grocery and gas costs hurt them, or who cast votes for Trump over his manipulation of the border issue failed us. They failed to chose democracy over authoritarianism.
Thank you Nanci Bishof. Per her historian methodology, HCR, places the realities of wealth & opportunity barriers back to the Gilded Age which is "still with us".
An icon of that era is still quite permanently visible at C. Vanderbilt's
138,300 square foot, "70 room cottage" aka the "Breakers" forever located on Ochre Point Avenue on the perimeter road overlooking Easton Bay, Rhode Island.
Hat tip to The Preservation Society of Newport County, Rhode Island.
Of course, several "cottages". I'm checking with a Rhode Islander on 'Breakers' & more history.
*************
Just got a evening response from a Rhode Islander that went to "finishing school" aka 'Newport School for Girls' 2 doors down from the Vanderbilts later taken over by Salve Regina.
MLMin ET, you are correct about the Biltmore. A Rhode Island architect designed the Biltmore down in NC. My contact reports this move was part of a of a larger economic trend moving textile mills from New England down to the Carolinas to obtain cheaper labor.
If your messaging is off, the other side has a wide opening to pass thru. As a former elected official I know first hand how the mutual admiration society works. Their self-important back slapping cliques isolate them from the sound on the ground! The MAGA crowd was jacked up by a menacing narcissist who pushed buttons of hate, racism, misogyny! We are in for a rough ride and I guess postmortems are irrelevant as Oceania becomes reality.
yes so many blamed things that were not results of any administration on the one in office when it hit their pocketbook. Ignorance has brought a player to the highest office and he brought his chorus.
Protesting by not voting in a time when the alternative is MAGA is supremely immature. There are other ways to express anger or outrage or the desire for change. Those that did not vote as protest left the country to this fate. small pebbles in a large stream can change the course of a river if there are enough of them. and they will deny collective responsibility to the end. It is childish and may end up as tragic. we shall see.
It is not the "...concerns of average Americans as their failed mismanagement of Harris's campaign..." It is the steady firehose volume of lies coming from unregulated right wing "news" and "information" sources.
I suspect that a very important tipping point was all the ads run during the football season lying about how transgender surgery was a thing at elementary schools. Gender reassignment surgery is a years long process, not something that happens at elementary school, which can't even give a kid with a fever Tylenol without parental approval.
I agree with Plouffe who said that the cardinal sin was the fact that Biden didn’t drop out earlier. We would have had a primary and whoever came out on top would have had the time to get his/her message out to the voters.
The answer to this question may lie somewhere in how we elect our political leaders. Most senators and congressmen are owned and paid for and owned by special interests working both sides of the aisle depending on which business or institutional clients they represent. The result is greater partisan divide in Congress which leads to less interest in the health and stability of the nation and more newly created laws that increase profits for their clients at the expense of well, everyone else. And money is the original sin with a few exceptions, those being perhaps environmentalists and save the earth, save the babies, save the whatevers. But mostly, it’s the endless pursuit of more money through new legislation.
Corporations own America and use patriotism as the opiate for the masses to calm our sores and the people, yes, We, the People, be damned. The unmitigated influence of big business (money) is almost unique in developed nations especially in Western Europe. A British journalist now headquartered in New York City recently lamented in a CNN article that our medical system was broken. I responded directly to his comments and he then asked me, “Why don’t you Americans rise up in rage and change things?” I replied that we have long ago been whipped, divided, beaten and conquered. It’s not in the capacity of the defeated to structurally fix anything including real gun control legislation because we’ve been so toughly defeated.
The late Senator John McCain once warned about this growing menace in America and he was able to sponsor and pass the McCain/Feingold bill in 2002 limiting soft money to influence elections. But then the trusty ole conservative majority of the Supreme Court, those guys who purport to support individual rights, until it restricts the super wealthy to gobble up even more wealth, decided that political spending was a form of free speech in Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission in 2010. This created new ways of corrupting the political process. Secret money returned and today, we have a elected to office a most unstable individual. We all have been seduced and induced into a hyper-partisan fight that until now, has limited the fight to the ballot box. However, Trump has tacitly encouraged violence and mass carnage has already resulted.
Donald “Adolph” Trump is simply the manifestation and infestation of government gone wrong because money has become the only decider. No principles. No ideology. No ethics. And now we have a dysfunctional dystopian society in the purported Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Everyday Joe is scared about having a reduced income or any income at all. And what does Everyday Joe do besides augmenting his income with a part time service job at Walmart? As his puppet strings are yanked, he pulls the lever (the wrong one) that opens the trap door on which he stands with a rope around his gullet.
Indeed. I have been critical of how we have messed up. How Joe Biden was in my opinion, 💤 on the border for 3 years. I don’t want to express this anymore. Our side lost we are all feeling a sense of despondency. Better to move on and build an adequate defense to what we are about to slam into for the next 4 years. And maybe we will come out of this not unharmed because we haven’t yet felt the true devastation awaiting all of us. I dislike slogans like “Keep hole alive” but that’s all we have to work with for now. Divided we lose but United we win.
Biden also sent Kamala to S American countries to help work on alleviating conditions that drive migration…not just bar the door! Helping people to solve problems driving them from their homes is a smarter strategy..
We have a serious problem. Republican legislators are now likely to put in place processes that ensure that they retain power. Democracy in America is on life support. The next year could seal our fate for decades to come. I am very angry at those so ill informed and stupid to have voted for the fascists.
his voter base did not really increase, he did nothing to expand it, he purposefully derided groups, and yet he still got about the same number of votes. So how does that happen? It is almost as if he knew he would not lose any votes, just had to keep democrat voters suppressed. It was his little "secret". We may never know the extent to what the manipulation of the system republicans were comfortable with.
Nanci, you’ve expressed the anger that many of us feel and I’m glad you did. MAGA have made no effort to contain their anger and Trump has already shown he intends to fulfill his promise to be their retribution. In light of this, I think we all should stiffen our spines and start fighting fire with fire (although without resorting to violence, cruelty, lying, crime, and gaslighting, all of which are the tactics of Trump/MAGA). And, as a part of this, I think President Biden should go beyond pardoning his son to pardoning in advance every person on the Trump/MAGA enemies list. We should be done with the weak, hesitant, vacillating Merrick Garland approach.
I agree with you, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about this loss and I get myself so depressed. The mainstream media failed the voters, as many were not informed. The left needs to find a Joe Rogan. HCR is widely read, but that is the issue--those MAGA voters DON'T READ. We need to find voices who will draw in the other side to listen.
There are YouTube channels that a liberal bases but DO have the other side watch. The first that comes to mind is the former "Beau of the Fifth Column" which is now voiced by his wife "Belle of the Ranch". The team behind her reads the comments and she DOES get snarky complaints from the right, and answers them on her clips. Also, on the Medias Touch network, there is "Tennessee Brando" who comments from in his words "the deepest red of a red state". He also has the other side listen to him.
It really helps promote these people and their messages if we subscribe to their channels, run the occasional videos, and forward them onto other people. I chose these two although there are others on the Medias network (that I like, but I think the right would find too condescending), along with Brian Tyler Cohen's "No Lie" (who I suspect the right would dismiss at elite) and Marc Elias "Democracy Docket" (who is fantastic, but I suspect he's too intellectual for the right).
I have noticed that Tennessee Brando is rapidly picking up subscribers. "Belle" is growing as well, as that channel is expanding their already present "The Roads with Beau" with "Research Road" and "Interstate News".
I encourage anyone reading who is unfamiliar with these channels (many on here already watch at least Belle) to take a moment to listen and subscribe. Pushing these messages up in the computer algorithm certainly wouldn't hurt.
Miselle, thanks for all of this good, helpful info. I agree, it has been hard to avoid despair and I have experienced it myself. It looks to me like you are taking action and I think many people have found relief from the tendency to despair by doing exactly that.
And if there are any residual benefits from the long range plans and programs of the Biden administration that carry into Trump's term, Trump will take credit for them while attempting to blame Biden for the pain from his own. And MAGA will take the hook. I'm so sick of the negligence of the legacy press, I will only give my time to a few trusted sources now, and that doesn't even include PBS or NPR at the moment... they can sometimes seem too wary of appearing biased to raise their voice against the evidence of pending tyranny.
Didn't Muskmelon fire 6,000 people as they walked in the door? Any disabled vet who voted for trump will feel their disability reduced. They should remember trump's interference with SEAL punishment for Gary Gallagher who posed with a dead enemy just like Don Jr posed with the endangered Tibetan sheep he killed. They should remember his disdain for handicapped vets who nobody wanted to see or the thumbs up and a grin on his face like a 16 year was giving him a below the belt massage (I am trying not to be too offensive here) in a memorial service held in a hallowed cemetery. No pictures allowed yet I am sure it showed up in Twitter, Instagram, Face Book, Reddit right before election. Just screams Campaign to me.
The people who received the jobs should know what Biden did. The people who worked on construction on the roads, bridges, and new factories should know. BUT it is more interesting to hear about trump's trials which seem to be dismissed anyway. It is more interesting to hear about his useless exploits. It's more interesting to see him over dramatize his "injury". Soldiers with injuries like that would shake it off and get back into the fray.
I will give you that he is a much more interesting and expressive speaker. Words like "Fight. Fight" and "Bloodbath", his exaggerations (21 million undocumented workers), his Haitians eating family pets are very much like clique bait. Biden is boring. People love bad. Look how many people are up in arms about Biden pardoning his son. No mention of Jared's father being pardoned. No mention of the fact trump probably plans on pardoning himself.
Sorry about ranting. The words just keep on coming. Thanks for letting me vent.
I agree and wonder how much of what's about to unfold wasn't already in the minds of the likes of supply-side pusher Robert Bork, Moral Majority's mastermind Jerry Falwell and their salesman Ronald Regan. I read a series of articles back around '79 or '80 about just such a plan. However, that writer did not mention the Christian National takeover. But apparently, it was always a key part of the scheme.
Moving to eliminate the electoral college and having ranked choice voting as well as eliminating gerrymandering would go a long way toward fixing what is broken.
I agree with you. I do hope Biden sees his way to protecting those who put it on the line, on both sides of the aisle, to try to inform and influence voters about the dangers of the coming Trump presidency. I am not convinced we will even have the privilege of any national elections again. I hope for our democracy’s sake we do.
Then the economic system will collapse again, just as it did in the 1930s. 💔 The consequences will prove more severe in a nuclear age and a far more interwoven global finance system in which the anchor-baby (i.e., the United States) is drowning in national debt and precipitating a trade war. 😳 With fascism on a belligerent trajectory in Europe, possibly here, and the Chinese century in full swing with Peking's embargo against the United States of certain rare earth minerals -- eerily like that of the U.S. of oil and tin against Japan in 1940 -- the pixure sure ain't pretty. 😱
Spot on. I will bet that most of the pain the tRump administration will cause will affect those who voted for him more than those who voted for Harris/Walz.
And he is a grifter - hawking crap to put money in his pocket. And if you are one of those who would buy any of the crap he is hawking you can think of yourself as a sucker because that is exactly what he thinks you are.
Nanci, all the more reason to overhaul our educational system. We need to value education by using the expertise of experts as we do doctors. We need to stop giving parents a say in the curriculum. We wouldn't allow a bricklayer to perform brain surgery, nor should we allow people who know nothing about the most effective teaching strategies to have a say in the curriculum or in the classroom. That's how we got book bans and school libraries that were stripped of the Classics. While we're at it, we should not allow political hacks and right wing religious extremists from Red states to be dictating what can and cannot be taught in the classroom. That's how we got Bush II-teaching to the test curriculums and subsidies for religious education, Challenger schools and private school subsidies that rob public education budgets. The practice of bribing politicians by large publishing corporations should have been stopped years ago. That's why with each new administration, they peddle the latest and greatest snake oil educational panacea. High standards for a teaching credential needs to be restored. It begins with the teacher training programs at our colleges. In summary, respect for knowledge should be the nation's goal!
We might establish some sort of outpost on Mars. I doubt it will come to much, except for the science and perhps a last ditch refuge if we transform our own planet into hell. The Martian environment makes Antarctica look positively hospitable, and our own very inhabited lands like a Garden of Eden, which in fact it is. Our "bird in the hand" is very exceptional. We ought not to be cooking the goose that lays our golden eggs, hoping to find something better in the bush.
Over 3/4 of the earth is covered with water, which has barely been explored. It has the potential to provide unimaginable amounts of energy. (see https://minesto.com/faroe-islands/ )
"With a total capacity of 120 MW tidal energy, generating an estimated 350 GWh per year, the arrays would supply 40% of the Faroe Islands’ growing electricity consumption"
Of course, Republicans hate this idea, because it runs counter to their "drill, drill, drill" ideology. Fracking requires immense amounts of water to extract the remaining oil from the ground and with the harsh secret chemicals the predatory oil companies use to extract the oil, the water is polluted even more.
While, the US has been concentrating on solar, wind and energy storage solutions, several other potential technologies have been developed and deployed around the world. Even as we dismantle our dams to rebuild the ecosystems, run of the river solutions are being deployed which allows much of the river to be run free while capturing the potential from the rest.
Energy costs in much of the country having spiraled over the past 40 years. While Trump wants to suck the remaining oil reserves out of the ground, countries like Norway and Germany are closing in on 100% EVs or hydrogen vehicles and very low cost electric rates.
Clean Energy is so import. What is equally important is the unsustainable population growth. We never address this. Back to the chaos. Affordability for so many has been brought on by not higher prices across the board but housing prices and rental prices. So many cannot afford any necessities more than paying their rents. My gut tells me the Trump effect of making fortunes in real estate has had an accumulative effect over time. Everybody wants to buy and rent.
In many ways we are feeling knock-on effects of expanding population, including in the form of climate abuse. We are likely to run out of resources before we run out of actual space if we are attend only to what makes somebody maximum profit.
Thank you for reminding everyone that the US is not the only country in the world. Other countries are moving forward with solutions to climate problems. The US will be left behind by their own failures.
In which we put it. Not that the rest of the world would not naturally catch up to our post WWII lead, but we greatly boosted our own competition by offshoring manufacturing.
Have civilians ever seen an abandoned fracking site? The humanitarian oil companies put whirly gigs to keep birds off the polluted water left there. If it is so good, why were some of the flood victims keeping FEMA away because they thought that they would kick them off their land to use for fracking?
The beauty of petroleum for Republicans is that significant deposits are rare, and can be controlled by very few people. Many sustainable solutions tap energy sources that are far more widely distributed. In rural Japan I saw solar farms no bigger than a typical vacant lot. The initial cost of equipment is a barrier, but the sites that can make use of it are plentiful, and Germany, that sites a lot of it, is not the most advantageous latitude, yet it works.
Freedom is for all, or it's not really freedom. Societies in which the wealthy have impunity and the poor are subjugated are not free. The former "Party of Lincoln" has been bought and paid for to billionaires' benefit. Ain't it obvious? The royal road to massive personal wealth is monopoly, of markets and of governance. Wars have been fought to preserve monopolies, of one sort or another; even of the sale of spices. Like a fire, private enterprise, applied within certain boundaries , (such as a stove) can offer immense benefits to human beings. Outside of those boundaries, which in commercial terms, takes the form of judicious regulation, it can be immensely destructive. Is that not what history demonstrates?
Moreover even IF they really can figure out a way to transform Mars into a habitable place (a highly speculative venture at the cost of at least trillions of dollars if not dozens of trillions as well as almost certainly dozens if not hundreds or thousands of lives lost to accidents and other unpredictable events) how many people could realistically be transported to live there in let's say 50 years? A million? That seems way too high to me, probably more like a few thousand or even a hundred thousand. Even a million if that was even possible is a drop in the bucket in a country of 300+million let alone a world of 9 BILLION people.
I'm all for selective space exploration to advance science but not at the cost of ignoring the incredibly important mission to try to fix our home planet before it becomes inhospitable for the masses. Musk and company are on a self congratulatory ego driven mission which is mostly useless to society as a whole. If he wants to fund this out of his own pocket, more power to him but the government should not be providing him with "shelter" to let him proceed.
Exploring space with telescopes and landers and the Space Station has had a lot of value...colonizing Mars now, with all of our issues here is an absurd use of tax dollars. Let's take care of our Vets, our elderly...schools...let's care about the people here now with our taxes.
By the way to repeat something I posted several weeks ago as a reminder, in the first 60 years of aviation, we went from the Wright Brothers to commercial air transport carrying millions of passengers every day by jet liner. In the first 60 years of space travel we have achieved sending approximately 500 people TOTAL out of a planet of almost 9 billion, to space for a cumulative experience of a few thousand human years of space travel. We sent 6 pairs of humans to walk in the moon for a total of about 20 days of time, the ONLY extra planetary travel the entire human race has accomplished. We have ONE "international" space station which has provided home for a few hundred or so travelers in total, a miniscule number to even attain low earth orbit, a relatively safe place to be (just a few hours to get back to earth in the event of an emergency) compared to Mars where any human would be literally months away from returning of it became necessary.
I grew up on space travel. I LOVE the idea of it and hope we continue to explore. But we are still just BARELY Christopher Columbus at this point. Space travel is HARD (WAY harder than anything Columbus ever did) and it is in its infancy no matter what Musk tries to tell you.
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too." - JFK
But that was then. Just let the billionaires "fix it".
Yep he sure did. Changed it to 2026 a few months ago when it was clear they won't even get a manned mission to the MOON in 2025. He is just doing what he always does.
Conning people.
Remember that PTBarnum said "There's a sucker born every minute!"
Hey boss, the inmates at the crazy farm are now about to run things. Here is a prediction. The economy will remain strong. Investment markets will continue rising. But as the reality hits that consumer spending plummets and credit defaults along with housing defaults, we will finally get our long delayed recession. And Trump will rightfully get the blame.
I admit I do not know a lot about economics, but it seems that if you send all of the undocumented workers away (causing a shortage of produce and construction workers) and raise the prices of things being imported(tariffs) wouldn't prices go up and therefore lower consumer spending?
You got that right. As of November 15th over $695 billion in funding and over 74,000 projects announced thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda.
Exactly that: ego-driven. Darth Musk’s narcissism is going so far, he wants to become the God of Mars, and doesn’t care a rat’s*ss if all of us here are left behind to burn in poverty in the wake of his space ship. He’ll sacrifice Earth and all of its creatures fir his megalomaniac dream.
As is obvious to anyone, except Elon Musk himself perhaps (though I think he knows this!), is that the trip to Mars is a one way trip unless just maybe you are filthy rich enough to buy your way back; how much would that cost?!?! more than a few hundred bucks on Delta!
More than a few million bucks! The folks who bought their suborbital joyride flight paid $2.5 million a seat. For 11 minutes, 4 minutes weightless. Whoopee doo.
Space travel is hard, expensive and barely out of the womb. We are a lot farther from establishing a colony on Mars than Musk wants anyone to believe.
forget the a$$ hats in power. we do need to get to space. science is finding alternatives to things we are running short on but that is not a never-ending cure for extraction economics for 7 billion humans. not to live in or conquer space which the space station has shown to be hard on our human structure, but mining base materials is going to be important when the ones we sit on start getting scarce. we are already having issues with a necessary mineral for agriculture.
and yes, we will never find anything more perfect than the environment in which we EVOLVED. we are matched to literally everything here through millennia of selective forces. and it is beautiful, if occasionally terrifying.
I find a bit of merit in the suggestion that if we keep a few humans alive outside of our terrestrial environment, they might (like a seed bank) keep our species alive should we take the whole earth FUBAR. It might be very cold comfort though. Stepping off the highway to hell would seem the wisest and most fruitful option.
You wrote “ science is finding alternatives to things we are running short on but that is not a never-ending cure for extraction economics for 7 billion humans.”
I think that mindset is a recipie for disaster. We must learn to live sustainably on Earth.
I’m not against humans going to Mars per se, but not as an alternative to living sustainably.
As a kid we watched the moon landings and I thought space travel and exploration was very cool. Today we have far more pressing needs here on earth, than "colonizing Mars" so the rich get richer.
As teenagers we joined the people out in the street at night scanning the sky for a star that wasn't a star. We had a new word. A Russian word: "Sputnik".
“The ride to Mars”. I wish they would all get on Musk’s rocket ship and take the trip. Anyone with a tiny knowledge of science knows that it is impossible to colonize Mars. This group rejects science. Not in my wildest dreams do I see any one of these billionaires capable of doing the manual labor it would take or giving up their lives of luxury to live on Mars. They refuse to take care of this planet so they’re want to escape to an even more unlivable one.
I read an article last week that likened them to comic book heroes and villains and it hit the nail on the head. People with too much money, greedy and immature, living lives of delusion. Unfortunately too many of the poor and working class believe them.
Yeah it's pretty crazy...they do visualize themselves as Super Heroes and the smartest guys in the room...and they are neither...they have money and buy things and indulge themselves in their fantasies....it still astounds me that enough voters bought this comic book version of America...I guess they watched the Apprentice and Super Hero movies and believe these guys will save the day....Good F..ing luck.
There is just one little problem with manned space light to Mars. The late husband of a friend of mine was a world class rocket scientist working on unmanned rocketry to Mars: the one problem we haven’t solved is radiation. No human will be able to survive a trip to Mars until we do. No matter what Elon says. I’d be happy for him to volunteer be the first guinea pig!
There has always been a state of war between those who benefit from feudalism (and those who shortsightedly THINK they benefit) and those who call for equal opportunity and unalienable rights. Power (of which money is a species) tends to corrupt when unaccountable, and much of the purpose of government, at least in a free society, it to bring it to account when applied recklessly. Moreover without rules, money and other forms of power, can be applied to concentrate power in abusive ways, which is where the perennial blight of tyranny comes from. Does not history over centuries and from around the globe illustrate this?
Project 2025 is a formula for turning the US into a third world country. What I don't see, is even if the democrats regain control how they will get out of that. See this film on Argentina that is made by DW. Here is the English language version. It is called Argentina after one year of President Milei.
When I read his Milei's name I think of My lai massacre. If you notice, Musk is visiting in the film. A difference is our economy was the opposite of failing when he came to power, but there are the same libertarians that we see with Musk as one of them, and Trump as another, and the rest being Christian Nationalists who want to destroy the USA. So, looking at things reasonably is not the model for understanding how to motivate the people Trump is appointing and who voted for him.
Here is how we "get out of that" - how we reverse the direction towards "Third World Status". We WILL return to leading the government after much pain. Project 2029:
Hey Elon! If $50 trillion went to the top 1% in the last 40 years .... we could make a big dent in our budget deficit and our Federal Debt by clawing it back, right? Be a budget hero, dude. If we didn't have such a huge debt to service, we could solve a whole lot of problems. Guess what? The solution to our governments messed up balance sheet could be solved by YOU and your friends! Let's just do it!
I Googled "Federal debt and cost to service it":
AI overview -
"The federal debt of the United States is currently $36 trillion, and the cost to service it is increasing:
Debt size
As of November 2024, the federal debt is $36 trillion. This is up from $33.1 trillion in December 2023, and $34.4 trillion in February 2024.
Cost to service
The annualized cost to service the debt was $726 billion in July 2023, which was 14% of total federal spending. In FY 2024, interest on the debt was $1,126.5 billion, which is an increase from FY 2023."
This sounds kinda radical. Yup. But right now, the Maga Nazis are standing in the castle looking out at the rabble of humanity and yelling: "Let them eat cake."
You are going to compare Argentina to the US? Inflation was 25.5 percent in December 2023. It just dropped to 2,7 percent. The central bank Interest rate down 98 percent to still high 35 percent. The government is running a surplus. The country was in economic shambles.
A group and I read this and discussed it and then someone in our group shared this video in German, and I found the English Language counterpart. Then, I also saw this Chanel 24 video covering the same thing, but by interviewing an economist, and little discussion of the people who are suffering. https://youtu.be/Ra-WB4FL7zs?si=0aeN0HCWpymU_8Gn
I should not have said the only difference, but there are things in common. Each country has elected an illiberal leader who promises shock therapy. They have cut pensions (read social security), and programs for the poor, and not cut taxes. He claims that not cutting taxes is why they have a surplus. Do you believe that will happen in the US too? Is the focus to be just to get rid of the budget deficit?
It's interesting that we should be pining for the days of Eva Peron. Well at least Little Eva, while milking the country of its money, did actually believe in populism and help for the common people. Trump only gives it lip service.
Rowshan, Because Trump’s Cabinet and other high-level picks, in my view, make clear that the plan not only is to tear down democracy but also to crash the economy and sell off its parts (Source: Sarah Kendzior), my first thought has been to join the resistance by starting an Indivisible chapter in my hometown. For more on Indivisible’s nationwide effort, visit indivisible.org
Betsy, Thank you for writing. I have grown increasingly confident that as more of us organize and use our constituent power to help in the nationwide effort to resist the infiltration of MAGA into our states the greater the likelihood of beating back MAGA in 2026 and 2028.
Thank you, Barbara. A group of us have started something similar here, but I will read more about Indivisible to help direct us. I appreciate your heads-up.
Sandra, I turned to Indivisible because its co-founders, both of whom are former congressional aids, have created a Guide, replete with action plans tailored to blue, red, and battleground states, for using our local constituent power to help in the nationwide effort to beat back MAGA.
Late for thud but the time is to contrast Biden and Trump. The MAGA does not care how bad is unless it is compared to the good. If we want to make a point about trumps picks. Shoe who is there now., contrast and compare
You miss the point that MAGAts care about appearances, not effectiveness. Trump appoints people from "central casting". He cares not how well they can do a job, just that they look good in a photo op. Comparing them to the current crop of "do somethings but look like nothings" is a waste of time.
"Linda McMahon will make a GREAT Secretary of Education! Look at her! And she ran the World Wrestling Federation, too."
I mean, seriously, we are in a bizarro world again. The only two things that count are looks and money. Its like being in high school all over again. Just the money part is bigger.
Jon, don’t forget blind subservient loyalty to the king. And a criminal history helps. Criminals don’t want to be surrounded by honest people. They need to have the goods on each other so no one squeals. I’ve long suspected trump has “files” on a lot of congressional representatives- and their family members (maybe even particularly on their family members). If pocketing a share of the grift isn’t motivating enough, blackmail can prove useful.
Jon, nominees get extra credit if they are sexual deviants just like Trump. Or if they have been convicted and pardoned by Trump for crimes. Or if they have grifted or grafted money from the US Treasury.
They lose points for having been competent or worth less than a billion $$$$s.
Trump's dementia has resulted in selecting candidates that he hasn't even heard of. But, if they sign a loyalty pledge, they are in.
"Sumner called for a “laissez-faire” world in which those who failed should be permitted to sink into poverty, and even to die, to keep America from becoming a land where lazy folks waited for a handout. Such people should be weeded out of society for the good of the nation."
I doubt that many of the dumb-as-dirt billionaires looking to head up the country have even heard of Sumner but this does seem to sum up what they're thinking. Dumb as they are, these people sure know how to manipulate the vast swathe of religious fanatics in this country, and the even vaster swathe of racists and misogynists.
I've never understood why at this stage of so-called civilization the world hasn't put combatting, treating and eliminating sociopathy on its list of priorities.
The Sumner approach epitomizes George Lakoff’s model of conservatives seeing government through the metaphor of a strict father family that uses tough “love” to teach children to be self-sufficient. Self-sufficient people are seen as deserving what they’ve earned. The wife comes second in this hierarchy, which is strictly enforced.
In his view, liberals see government through the metaphor of a nurturant parent family, where both parents are equal and children are allowed to have their views and raised to have empathy. By liberal standards, conservative families that enforce discipline through corporal punishment are abusive. People born into such families intuitively feel their approaches are morally right and don’t understand how people can justify the opposite position.
In my view, we also see the contrast here between religious fundamentalists who believe that people are fundamentally bad, versus the opposite and often psychological view that most people are fundamentally good but may be hindered by psychological wounds or major mental illnesses or physical problems that affect mental health. There’s a video of Lakoff describing the strict father versus equal parent families from 2006.
Lakoff also presents his model in his book, Moral Politics.
These moral intuitions are deeply held, and we've got a huge challenge to establish a working dialog with each other to address how their expression engenders a view of the other side as morally offensive. There is truth to valuing both self-sufficiency and empathy.
We see other forces at work, of course, driven, as Heather implies, by the ancient system of kings versus peasants. Human beings historically don't have to live in hierarchical systems, an argument made by a recent book exploring ancient civilizations, The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
Some people are passionately drawn to a hierarchical society of extremes of haves and have-nots. Seems like a fitting world for predators, as long as you're not the one being predated. Some seem to get a bang out of living in a well heeled family where you own kin might be your assassin. Others, the more puzzling ones, passionately defend this system, even though they suffer greatly under it. Hard to tell if that some kind of masochism or implanted delusion, but I suspect it's primarily the latter since the delusions are no accident, and from time to time, the suckers get good and sick of being used.
Lakoff also wrote a book I think needs a wider audience is Whose Freedom.
“ Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has relentlessly invoked the word "freedom." Al-Qaeda attacked us because "they hate our freedom." The U.S. can strike preemptively because "freedom is on the march." Social security should be privatized in order to protect individual freedoms. The 2005 presidential inaugural speech was a kind of crescendo: the words "freedom," "free," and "liberty," were used forty-nine times in President Bush's twenty-minute speech.
In Whose Freedom?, Lakoff surveys the political landscape and offers an essential map of the Republican battle plan that has captured the hearts and minds of Americans--and shows how progressives can fight to reinvigorate this most beloved of American political ideas. George Lakoff is the author of Don't Think of an Elephant and Moral Politics, as well as many seminal books on linguistics. He lives and teaches in Berkeley, California. Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has relentlessly invoked the word "freedom." The United States can strike preemptively because "freedom is on the march." Social security should be privatized and taxes for the wealthy cut in order to enhance individual freedoms. Intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in the name of freedom of speech. The 2005 presidential inaugural speech was a kind of crescendo: the words "freedom," "free," and "liberty" were used forty-nine times in President Bush's twenty-minute speech. "Freedom" is one of the most contested words in American political discourse. For many Democrats, it seems that President Bush's use of the word is meaningless and contradictorydeployed opportunistically to justify American military action abroad and the curtailing of civil liberties at home. But in Whose Freedom?, George Lakoff, a linguist and cognitive scientist, reveals that in fact the right has effected a devastatingly coherent and ideological redefinition of freedom. Disregarding the progressive ideal of freedom taken for granted throughout our history, the conservative revolution has made "freedom" its central weapon on the front lines of everything from the war on terror to the battles over religion in the classroom and abortion. In his analysis, Lakoff describes how the country is divided by two dramatically different worldviews, cognitive frames that determine how we think about economic policy, religion, science, foreign affairsand freedom. He reveals the mechanisms behind the right-wing hijacking of our most cherished political idea. And he shows how progressives not only have failed at every turn to counter this attack, but also have failed to recognize its nature and, even worse, have failed to articulate their own intuitive understanding of freedom. Whose Freedom? argues what progressives must do to take back ground in this high-stakes war over the most central idea in American life. "For Lakoff, [George W.] Bush's idea of freedom is deeply problematicantithetical, in fact, to the 'progressive freedom' that Lakoff argues has defined America and made it great. This progressive definition of freedomthe more or less continuous expansion of rights, opportunity and citizen enfranchisementstood unchallenged for many years. But now, that freedom is 'up for grabs,' and Lakoff is worried: 'To lose freedom is a terrible thing; to lose the idea of freedom is even worse' . . . In a series of chapters on economics, religion, foreign policy and personal freedom, Lakoff compares the implications of the liberal and conservative definitions of freedom . . . Lakoff is right to identify freedom as a concept that liberals need to think about more." Michael Tomasky, The Washington Post Book World "For Lakoff, [George W.] Bush's idea of freedom is deeply problematicantithetical, in fact, to the 'progressive freedom' that Lakoff argues has defined America and made it great. This progressive definition of freedomthe more or less continuous expansion of rights, opportunity and citizen enfranchisementstood unchallenged for many years. But now, that freedom is 'up for grabs,' and Lakoff is worried: 'To lose freedom is a terrible thing; to lose the idea of freedom is even worse' . . . In a series of chapters on economics, religion, foreign policy and personal freedom, Lakoff compares the implications of the liberal and conservative definitions of freedom . . . Lakoff is right to identify freedom as a concept that liberals need to think about more. It's to liberals' shame that the words 'freedom' and 'liberty' are more closely associated with today's American right than with today's American left, so I admired the polemical intent of Whose Freedom?"Michael Tomasky, The Washington Post Book World ”
Ed, read American Crusade by Andrew L. Seidel. Religious freedom seen as having the right to discriminate (against anyone or any group the Old Testament god dislikes?). SCOTUS has used this concept to justify case law prohibiting health restrictions, chipping away at equal protection, supporting the anti-Muslim travel ban, and generally tearing down the wall between Church (Christian, of course) and State.
"Freedom" is just one of many words that are thrown around with only implied definition, in in politics, words seem selected as often to mislead as to inform. My personal view is that as the word "freedom" ("or liberty") applied as a social principle is inclusive or it's not meaningfully freedom. An autocrat, or oligarchy may experience absolute impunity, at the cost of subjugation of the many; so "freedom"? No.
Moreover, freedom is an environment of freedom from as well as freedom to; as in freedom from being attacked just walking down a street. Freedom TO speak with freedom FROM legal retaliation, in most cases. We should have freedom TO breathe, with freedom FROM breathing pollution that will shorten our lives. Freedom to fully exercise unalienable rights without some creep taking that away from us. So societal freedom implies, and in fact requires abiding responsibilities. We are free to pursue happiness within the boundaries of responsible behavior.
What is and isn't responsible may be ambiguous along the interface of the two, but other choices are clearly one or the other; and a system of collective choice inevitably involves shared responsibilities. We, as an ostensibly self-determining society, share responsibilities to the whole of our society, along with a share of personal choice.
A corporation is a societal license to do business in certain ways, but is pretty obviously not itself a person, People who act under corporate rules are no less responsible to society than anyone; more so if they do things that can affect many.
Obama's AG Eric Holder said:
"But it remains true that, at some institutions that engaged in inappropriate conduct before, and may yet again, the buck still stops nowhere. Responsibility remains so diffuse, and top executives so insulated, that any misconduct could again be considered more a symptom of the institution’s culture than a result of the willful actions of any single individual."
Lakoff has great insight and clarity. His ideas have been read and rejected by leaders in the Democratic Party since his major works became widespread. I suspect he would be labeled “woke” by the powers that be.
I agree about the power of framing to subtly bias ideas. Frank Luntz was a master with such corrosive gems as “tax relief” for lowering taxes. Relief implies a malady.
His “death tax” moniker for the estate tax was perhaps his most pernicious. What!? Democrats even tax you for dying!? How low can they go?
Thanks, I never liked Rahm Emmanuel. A good metaphor is the brood parasite cuckoo bird.
“The metaphor for a bird nest predator of eggs is a cuckoo's egg, which represents brood parasitism. Brood parasitism is when a parasitic bird lays its eggs in another bird's nest, and the host bird incubates and feeds the cuckoo chick. The host bird may even sacrifice its own offspring in the process.” AI text
Really great post, Gary. There's no way to overemphasize "Religious fundamentalists who believe that people are fundamentally bad." They can't let themselves off the hook, or even allow themselves consensual pleasure, so they're damn well not going to let anyone else off the hook for their twisted definition of transgression. Except, of course, for Dear Leader and whomever he installs.
Loved that book, exploring all the models of governance people have tried to function as a society. Also, challenges the progression from hunter gatherer to farming society. May be time for a reread as I try to shelter from the events of the next couple of years.
What do you mean by “…challenges the progression from hunter gatherer to farming society.”?
Certainly hunter gatherer societies preceded agricultural societies. And the sedentary nature of agricultural societies enabled a much greater division of labor, as well
As much higher local
Population densities and thus fostered social progress that was hitherto impossible.
Gary, great post. I like the way you’ve captured the deeply moral (even if only superficially held) values of both sides. Yet too often today the patriarchal and benevolent “father” goes beyond rewarding self-reliance and becomes the judge, jury and executioner for behavior outside his personal standards. The strict father slides into absolute control and abuse. Punishment is meted out for questioning his authority. That’s where things are heading now - and it scares the s$&t out of me. True confession: I’ve always been the rebellious child.
These values are deeply held, not shallow. When you invoke a frame, an unconscious filter learned when growing up in a family and community, you tap into feeling intuitions and identity.
Exactly. Sociopathy is the bane of humanity, no? Yet is the not some shades of "Mr. Hyde" in us all? We learn, or are suppose to learn to civilize the "reptile" elements of our nature. We expect kids to do it anyway, but amid the vicissitudes of life, the reptile finds purchase, and reptilian impulses try to dress it up purdy:
"The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits."
- Milton Friedman
So if such an entity is legally a person, is not that "person" a sociopath?
…to maximize profits FOR SHAREHOLDERS ONLY. No other stakeholders count for anything in Friedman’s view.
That mindset helped devastate American manufacturing and create the rustbelt when corporations realized they could increase profits by moving production overseas to low wage countries, where workers made mere pennies per hour with zero benefits.
“ AI Overview
The Friedman doctrine, also known as the shareholder theory, is a business ethics theory developed by Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman:
Explanation: The doctrine states that a business's only social responsibility is to maximize profits for its shareholders while staying within the rules. Friedman believed that shareholders are the backbone of a business and should be treated with respect. He also argued that executives should be held accountable for their decisions, which should align with the desires of their employers.
The Friedman doctrine shaped corporate governance, business education, and financial markets for decades. However, the doctrine has been increasingly challenged in the 21st century. Critics argue that the doctrine's narrow focus can lead to negative externalities, such as: environmental degradation, income inequality, and lack of accountability for social and ethical responsibilities.
Some say that the global pandemic has shown that the system needs to be transformed, and that companies must reposition themselves to meet the needs of the world.”
Decrying this view is a 2023 book: THE BIG MYTH, How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market by Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway. They also wrote Merchants of Doubt which is also excellent.
plus, data has shown over and over that it is middle class disposable income that turns/runs an economy, not the spending of the much smaller wealthy class. yes, they are buying million-dollar homes and expensive cars and such, but it does not tip the scale against the sheer volume of 'most of the people'. the current situation will shrink the financial health of the middle class -wait and see- and then the check will come to the table.
Gratefully, I was able to invest for my retirement during my 20 years in the military and my second 20 year career. I was also injured during my time in service and have service connected disabilities, I also collect social security and depend upon Medicare and Tricare for my health care needs. Musk and a butt load of Con Don’s proposed cabinet have no military service, don’t have to depend on Medicare and Tricare or disability pay. But they sure would be happy to strip as much of my benefits as they can to enrich themselves. Our congress needs to use the power of the filibuster to prevent damaging legislation to be enacted and protect our hard earned rights.
I wouldn't expect the filibuster to last long in the Trump 2 world. When you barely have a majority, super majority concepts are an obstacle to avoid if possible. And the filibuster will be gone as soon as it creates an obstacle to Trump's plans.
Meanwhile, at The New York Times-sponsored DealBook Summit, multibillionaire Jeff Bezos, on any given day the world's second-wealthiest person behind Elon Musk, described President-elect Trump as "calmer than he was the first time – more confident, more settled” and expressed the desire to "help" Trump pursue his agenda. Anyone who had suspected Bezos, The Washington Post's owner, of brazen self-interest and craven opportunism for abruptly pulling the plug on the endorsement of Harris, already written by the editorial board, turns out to be absolutely correct. Welcome to the oligarchy.
The very notion of someone driving Uber "being their own boss" is right up there with Peter Pan and Tinkerbell and pixie dust! You are a f*^#ing taxi cab driver without the benefits. They call you an "independent contractor" to avoid paying you minimum wage and giving you health benefits.
Sadly, the middle class will be expected to foot the bill for all the brilliant ideas from muskrat and his co-destroyer. Thereby destroying any hope of recovery, at least in our lifetimes, and likely our children.
As Christmas approaches, I suggest seeing the GOP and its billionaire supporters as believing what Scrooge believed… that we live in a world in which there cannot possibly be enough for all. As Scrooge comments in the story, "If people are going to die, then let them do so and decrease the surplus population". (I’m paraphrasing)
The believe that there can never be enough for everyone denies the lessons offered by scientific visionaries such as Buckminster Fuller and Gerard Piel, the publisher of Scientific American magazine. 
They began writing in the 1960s about how scientific advancement had made "scarcity of resources" a no longer true foundation for human society. They knew that if science was allowed to function worldwide in the synergistic approach available, all of humanity could shift to a sociological design based on sufficiency, trending towards abundance rather than scarcity.
Bucky inspired a core group of scientists who today are developing the tools and techniques to make that transformational sociological design change. However, their work never gets in the news. The aim of the work I am doing between now and 2026 (when America turns 250) is designed to create a breakthrough in public awareness of this option. Transforming society is possible, but only if enough people learn that that possibility exists. Here’s Bucky in the late 1970s taking about this opportunity. The video is 2 1/2 minutes long.
No amount of scientific advancement is going to compensate for the human population having expanded well beyond the Earth's realistic carrying capacity.
You have your facts wrong. And it’s not your fault. It’s our education system, which doesn’t teach Systems Thinking. Search on Russell Ackoff on YouTube. What you’ll learn will literally blow your mind (your world view). You’ll thank me later.
I'd love to see link between this work -- scientists working out ways away from the atavism of scarcity-thinking -- and how we might work out other ways away from the goons, criminals, and sociopaths newly ascendant now in this very old republic.
Until we address the legacy of trauma in this country, we’re going to keep electing sociopathic daddy figures to “save us from ourselves” by abusing us. I fully agree with the promised abundant future that’s possible. We need a national movement of healing first.
Thank you for making this point. Psychological trauma absolutely holds us back from having the kind of progress that’s possible. I do not think one must come before the other, however. I know from my own life that having hope (from the options we see presented to us) helps drive healing. We need to both eliminate the psychological elements that hold us back and strengthen those that can power us forward.
Except their core idea is that people (women) need to have more babies in order to create more worker bees all while screaming to deport the worker bees we have because they’re not white. Then they forget that if you don’t care for the worker bees they will die. None of it makes sense to me. Greed, lust in the form of rape, and endless drug abuse are all so prominent in this ruling class that it’s sickening.
They seem to forget that it would take about 20 years to get all those babies into the work force. Oh wait, my bad. They want to put children to work. Nice start: Musk starting a school where preschoolers learn to sweep.
Thank you, Professor such a great historical read. I always put the blame for the change in modern times on the shoulders of Ronald Reagan. And he allowed unlimited spending to political parties. Destroyed the psychiatric institutions for people who really needed help. Now they are on the streets. How can we not care for people indeed? That really unleveled the playing field. It makes me sad. I’ve said before I’m OK with capitalism. But I believe in a compassionate capitalism. And I was going to write more until the end of your article made me decide that, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, is something we must never lose. It’s one of our few safety valves to keep some balance in this country for the people in need. Just because people are poor doesn’t mean they don’t work, and it doesn’t mean that they don’t want to achieve more. We must give them that chance. Thank you. I will spread this word to the people that I can in a positive and forthright way. Again, thank you so much for keeping my spirit alive.
Well said, Sav. "Keeping my spirit alive" is why I come here and engage every morning. I definite ancillary benefit is I learn something from both the Professor and my fellow Readers!
A post graduate history paper… every morning! Amazing that with just 15 minutes of reading LETTERS, I’m more informed than any other time during my life. #grateful
Ted, I view this as auditing a graduate level history class (reading the Letter From an American" and then going out for coffee/beer afterwards (reading and engaging in the Comment section with fellow Readers).
Let me add a brief historical note: Sumner had an important opponent, Lester Frank Ward, professor at Brown University and one of the founders of sociology in the U.S. Ward strongly opposed Sumner's individualistic reading of Darwin as a struggle of all against all, and argued instead that the improvement of society worked best when government was mobilized to aid its weakest rather than its strongest members. Unfortunately, his work, and the fact that this position even existed in Sumner's day, have disappeared from public memory. Just saying.
Thank you, Dr. Richardson. In other words, trump and company, plan to turn America into the feudal economic system where a small minority group of 'aristocrats' hold most of the wealth, a slightly larger group of the 'merchant class' hold between them 90% f the wealth, while 80% olf the population struggle in serfdom. Good luck with that. America will soon become a third world country.
One of the most compelling and enduring American myths is the myth of the self-made millionaire. The robber barons of the 1800’s got obscenely rich on the backs of workers, including children, earning subsistence wages working six and seven days a week, often in unsafe, unhealthy conditions. Yet these very wealthy men all characterized themselves as “self-made”.
There is no such thing as a “self-made” millionaire/billionaire. Period! Full stop!
The progressive income tax merely returns value from where value was derived. If you pay a lot it means you made a lot. Be grateful. Stop complaining.
It is so enervating. Having this lay of the land so eloquently mapped out really puts pay to the myth that the Trump administration V 2.0 and his allies in Congress are fighting for the "working class" (What ever that is...see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/03/american-working-class.) I wish Musk and Isaacman would set up their office on Mars ASAP, takin Vivek with them.
Heather does well to cite the sociopathy behind the picks of the convicted criminal.
He, the orange felon, seems to be an exception. Exceptionally pampered, spoiled as a boy.
But he keeps finding misfits and low-lifes uncannily like him. From many Republicans who apparently grew up similarly. They, too, hold American institutions in contempt, hold themselves above the law – certainly above the laws of human decency.
But it gets worse.
As schools in all modern countries have kicked humanities off the curriculum, they have also vaulted more standardized testing instead.
This testing does something rigorously, demonically consistent. It abstracts all life into categories. Nothing human. Nothing personal. Nothing natural. Just super logical, super rational groupings. “Life” is but packaging. Unit-by-unit chronological linearity. Add to that how schools virtually nowhere ask anyone to read any books anymore whole. No one learns to see any larger contexts – because standardized testing limits logic, rationality, and analysis to machine gradable snippets only.
Boys suffer from this neutering much more than girls. Guys all over the world glom away onto their phones. No social life, no human desire, no dating.
So true. Then when their sexuality literally grabs them by the balls they have no emotional landscape in which to negotiate its visceral demands. They turn instead to simplistic, often deeply misogynistic, representations of sexuality seen in video games or film as behavioral examples to follow. This brutalization harms everyone.
They have no healthy role models — mentors to explain, this is how you handle those urges without hurting other people. What they see is “influencers” telling them they and and should just “take what they want.”
Heather’s sighting of Jennifer Rubin’s quote highlighting the lack of legacy media coverage around the “Investing in America” agenda/outcomes compels me to write and ask what we can do to motivate the media to dial up communications on the topic.
I really miss Jennifer Rubin's 3 or 4 columns a day in the WAPO as well as Catherine Rampell's columns. The fact that the professor apparently reads the WAPO and The NY Times as well as lots of other corporate media columnists makes me miss them even more. Thankfully, many have moved to other media like Substack.
I'm not sure if this helps, but we need to stop supporting corporate media. Many people have that post here. The next thing we need to do is quit supporting X and move to Blue Sky.
To all who voted for Trump you have screwed yourselves and the rest of us at the same time. The days of the middle class Americans will quickly disappear even faster under Trump’s rule and you will be left with a poverty stricken working class for robber baron employers who enjoy an even wider pay gap between their employees than exists now. Your stupidity and short sighted delusions are destroying our country. You put a con man, convicted felon, sex offender, bankrupting businessman, who stiffs his subcontractors in the White House.
And those who voted for Trump will never read this comment or Heathers column. They will continue to believe the lies published in media controlled by the oligarchs.
And that is why we share it on other sites.
Share it on Bluesky
Never mind. I just did.
BTW. I recommend Bluesky. It is new and rich with good stuff and the bad people haven't shown up. Enjoy while you can and contribute good stuff.
doesn't this contradict the original point? if we want "the bad people" to read and learn, who does posting it on the echo chamber social media help?
The "bad people" are not coming to learn Patrick. They are coming to destroy. We have got to stop trying to educate cult members. It is a waste of time and resources. We need to educate:
1. Democratic Party members who voted.
2. Independent voters.
3. Latinos and Black men
4. People who did not vote.
We need to be more informed and louder than the media.
Barbara, yes, they are beyond the pale and often love to get in people's faces with their hatred. I do not know how we speak to the misogyny and racism which played a part in this election. And we have the usual calculations that this will not harm me personally as some reported Latinos saying, forgetting that some family, friends, and other fellow Latinos will get swept up in this. As for people who did not vote, I think part of it was voter suppression and intimidation, some who could not vote for either, some who were somehow making a protest by not voting, and just plain apathy. I am appalled by the number of vets who voted for this monster. Many vets have disabilities and even if they don't, they should care enough about their fellow vets.
I wonder how it would've gone if the non-voters voted? In my small town (@ 19,000 registered voters) about 80-90% voted. Of course, it was a democratic, well educated middle-upper middle class populace in CT (blue state).
That's why Heather, Robert Hubbell, Joyce Vance, Jessica Craven, Prof. Timothy Snyder, MeidasTouch and others on Substack and Bluesky are critical now and going forward as voices of facts, reason and inspiration to figure out ways to counter the ongoing barrage of lies and disinformation by radical right-wing media.
We cannot make Fox viewers turn it off and read real news. That is a fundamental problem for which I see no solution. Adding more liberal media will not do it.
It is Facebook with the short blast of info, for example Trumps ton ten accomplishments
You cannot have somebody "read and learn" if they refuse to acknowledge that the source is more truthful than what they are consuming willingly from faux and worse sources of angertainment.
Ally, yes, I have encountered many who truly believe faux and do their "research" on far right wing nut sites while telling me to dig deeper. Well, soon it won't matter because they and the rest of us will experience higher prices for starters and who knows what else. Since death star has cognitive problems and is not healthy, he is already a puppet. He may be aware enough still to throw a few people who kissed his rear under the bus once they have too much of the stage or do something he doesn't like. I love your word angertainment.
Or if they if the can’t or don’t read.
Bluesky is geared toward blue voters and sings to the choir. We need to also post it on red leaning sites to reach others and on more neutral sites to reach those in the middle.
It' s geared toward anyone who wants to be on it. It doesn't ask your political affiliation. It just doesn't want the crazy right wingers.
One Facebook post that list Biden top ten accomplishments would be the way
Question: I'm trying to share stuff on Instagram. It looks like you can only post pictures or videos. Is it possible to post text or articles? If so, how? Thanks!
I often repost Heather's letters on Facebook and post on Public. Hoping at least ONE person has the curiosity to open it and learn something. So many do not know our history, it is astounding. And not by accident. We have crippled education, and forced so many to be at the economy's mercy that they have no time to understand the true nature of what is at stake. We must continue to be the proxies of accurate information and historical perspectives. Or this will continue to repeat itself.
Having taught social studies in public schools, I can tell you that adolescents have a lot more immediate concerns than history. Those students who are college-bound and tracked into AP or IB classes are a delight, but it's the rare student in general education who is fascinated by history and current events. I suspect this has always been the case.
Having been in education for 29 years I respectfully disagree. I have seen so many bright, energetic young people interested in so much more than people give them credit for. Schools systems can drain the life out of anyone. A good school with energized teachers can accomplish wonders and it doesn't have to have a ton of money
Barbara, I don't disagree with you. It's certainly true that "a good school with energized teachers can accomplish wonders..." Good teachers and good public schools are the foundation of a healthy democracy.
Learning history, a passion for history has been a lifelong avocation for me. I had good teachers and relatives who were very interested in it. I can't say, however, that my sons share my passion for the topic. To each his/her own.
History in context of today's political climate and economy and, as you said, their immediate concerns. We can help them make those connections. That is often the piece that is missing. And so much of what they do learn burnishes our image in national and international events. Don't ask them about the Vietnam War.....I am sure you get some doozies. Anyway, my point is their knowledge base is lacking and skewed and that is by design, imo.
What sites do they use, other than trump’s? I’ve read they do use Facebook.
Oh, they are on Facebook. Often they will come to a site where they know the person is opposite of them and spew their hatred. i have blocked a number of this people. I have also read that people are editing their friends and blocking or unfriending certain family members and friends. I have a good friend who lives in the small town where I taught and she has decided to take a stand and she knows lots of people who love death star. She is in my age group (early 80s) and is now one of those outspoken old ladies. She had one male tell her to respect the position and she told him respect has to be earned. With death star that argument is completely moot.
Michele hang in there. Don't loss your sense of humor.
Thank you Frank. I am and i still have my sense of humor. The friend above and I share lots of laughs. We have a FO list and death star has long been number one. She wondered about Muskrat and I suggested number one A. My humor usually tends to be dry and sometimes people do not get it. I do often smile when I reading the posts here. We have some real wits amongst us.
They don’t read anything—they get their news from Fox and TicToc. They also have their conservative sites.
Heaven help us! FOX has come to the White House now.
Fox had been there for years of and on. Nothing new there.
Dan Bongino
Ben Shapiro
Clay Travis & Buck Sexton
Glen Beck
Tim Poole
Jack Posobic
Charlie Kirk
Greg Gutfeld
Jesse Watters
Joe Rogan
All of these are top rated pidcasts and shows with exponentially more listeners than all three major networks combined. Bongino has 150,000 plus listeners live daily, not to mention those who listen to his show afterwards.
Perhaps most on here should spend time listening to their thoughts and ideals to better understand why the Democrats are currently so out of touch with the majority?
Nearly all those except Rogan are right-wing propagandists. Rogan I believe supported Bernie Sanders before he swung to Trump. I do think I should listen to him to at least discover why he's so popular. Any ideas?
Most swing voters are non-ideological, without much knowledge nor interest in history or current events, and more swayed by who their parents, friends, and colleagues are voting for, and swayed by the culture of their communities. It's difficult to vote Democrat if you're a white guy in a red state.
Jim, I'm clenching my teeth and listening to Rogan's October 25 interview with Trump. Besides being a good representation of Rogan's on-air persona and interviewing skills (both are impressive), it's an education on why Trump won. Far from the unhinged rants we saw at rallies on the news, Trump came across as fluent, coherent and friendly. It's worth some time (the whole show is 3 hours; I'm halfway through hour 2) to see how Rogan brings Trump out and to understand Trump's abilities. He is ever so much more in control and dangerous than most of us think he is.
Correct Joe Rogan was Bernie Bro and until recently was hesitant to vote republican, same for Elon Musk. Many in media keep saying “we need someone like Joe Rogan on our side”. YOU HAD HIM! Tim Poole has always been independent. Do you think Rachel Maddow is balanced news? People on here liken her to prophet. You had The Young Turks until you called Anna a birthing person. You lost Bill Maher and Charlemane the god when you kept pushing extreme leftist ideals. Now you have women shaving their heads, divorcing their husbands, withholding sex and hoarding abortion drugs because the election didn’t go their way. Did anyone think when Brittany Spears shaved her head that was a sane way to make a point? Bottom line, Biden had mental deficiencies and trying to cover for it made people trust media and the party less. Deep fakes…. Telling the average American voter they are uneducated and rascist when they are not does not help your argument.. No one ever liked Kamala, period. Lying and saying anyone did simply makes the party look insane. Republicans have strengths and abilities far beyond the average elderly ivory tower reader on here, but the snobs on here are unwilling to admit their shortcomings. HVAC, plumbers, auto mechanics, welders, bus drivers are all hard working salt of the earth people who spend their days talking to other hard working Americans. They don’t care about skin color, they just want to get through their day, earn a living, and enjoy their free time. The readers on here are angry old elitist holed up in their gated communities reading the latest publication that only echoes their beliefs. They write big fat checks to make themselves feel better about helping those beneath them, but rarely get their hands dirty. It is absolute joke when the cry if we shut border on illegals who will pick the beans? They are so out of touch they don’t even realize how rascist that statement is. They don’t actually house migrants, nor do they want them in their ups ale communities, remember Martha’s Vineyard? They Thad those people back on the bus and out of their in a few short hours. I bet Obama’s house alone could house half the bus. And they probably aren’t even there at the time- hypocrites! They bash religion, and never recognize it is often the church and its community that are the ones feeding, clothing and housing those in need. Heather often speaks of the parties having previously flipped. What she doesn’t see is now they have flipped once again. The Republican Party has become the party of the working middle class, the freedom of speech party, the anti war party, the health and humanity party, those championing freedom of religion, the right to bear arms. The Republicans now represent the Bill of Rights and Democracy. What happened to Democrats ideal of COEXIST. Now it’s lockstep conformity or else, no wonder why so many are leaving the party.
x
Threads, too. The only place not controlled by MAGA is BlueSky for now. I left X the day Muskrat took it over and left all Meta apps last Friday. I feel concerned about Facebook and Threads continued descent into the abyss.
They do actively use Facebook and troll with a vengeance there too.
But they still won’t read it.
I'm not talking about trying to convert MAGA! Why are people so stuck on that? The MAGA core is only about 28-30% of the electorate.
It is the other millions who voted for trump that we need to educate.
And the voters who couldn't be bothered to go to the polls.
We need to find out why Gregg.
I have shared several times, notating with comments about cutting SS and Medicare, as well as the wealth of those in Trump's Cabinet.
I occasionally comment on Graham Allen's site. And he is a medaled vet-obviously not disabled.
“Obviously not disabled “ 🤔
I share it everywhere possible including the pages of my legislators and Mike Johnson.
Good for you. I’m sharing it but not as broadly as you’re suggesting. Otherwise I continue with Indivisible and hope many others are too. Listening to commercials for Medicare Advantage, I suspect that the companies thriving on tax dollars will not let Medicare go. (Maybe Medicaid also.)
They suffer from their inability to understand or recognize the truth to everyone’s detriment!
This is exactly what I think each morning when I open Heather’s post. As I try to make sense of what has happened and search for something that I can do about it, I have found this (https://youtu.be/ww47bR86wSc) to be a though-provoking analysis..
Bonhoeffer said: "The process at work here is not that particular human capabilities, such as intellect, suddenly fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and more or less consciously, give up an autonomous position." This key statement explains in detail the weak minded who feel power for the first time. We saw it in the McCarthy hearings in 1954 when one Roy Cohn became empowered to act as McCarthy's legal counsel. Before his stint as legal counsel, Cohn's credibility was humiliatingly damaged during the trial of one Annie Lee Moss. Moss, accused of having her name on the membership rolls of the Communist Party, patently denied the allegations. As it turns out, the individual who "outed" her identified a white man who was associating with Moss. The individual had the same name as one of Moss's friends who was, instead, African American. Clearly, Cohn not only had the wrong individual, but he also had the wrong association with the same name as Moss's friend. His reputation was forever damaged. That Trump would hire Cohn as his legal advisor and fixer only demonstrates how stupidity searches for the like-minded. It's bad enough that Trump was so callously advised by his father only to be further advised callously by Roy Cohn. And now, all of us must contend with stupidity, searching for a safe place, to land in the White House and its tentacle like administrations. Just today, there broke a news item referring to a march by over 100 Navy Seals ready to intimidate republican senators regarding Pete Hegseth's nomination. Obviously, a bullying tactic that may well work with the weak minded GQP.
Dear Sir:
Jules Henry, a cultural anthropologist, once wrote an essay in the NYRB's on the idea of culturally induced stupidity. I wonder if he had read Bonfoeffer's essay? I really enjoyed reading the remarks you directed us to. Carry on.
Welcome to 1930's Germany.
Well, it may seem extreme, Trump is following Hitler’s playbook and rise to power, which is where Trump really wants to be.
Absolutely.
I shared it on Facebook. I've sent this stuff to my conservative friends already - they ignore it. I guess you have to touch the fire to understand how it burns.
Terry, ignorance can be fixed, but there is no fix for stupid. There are those among us who intentionally remain ignorant. That is a case of stupid. We are definitely at a tipping point and the tilt right now is not good.
Until they no longer receive their government benefits ~ then they'll blame Biden and the Democrats... at which point I will remind/correct them like I did to the morons at BJ this week.
I read it and ITS A JOKE.
America has spoken on the economy. They rendered their verdict. NO THANK to the Democrats. Instead of retooling and getting a clue its time to blame the voters?
This is exactly the formula that loses elections.
Give the middle finger to middle America and then demand they voter for you? No they did the right thing and gave you the middle finger back.
Terry: A hate campaign that feeds off of hate.
Time to call me out for a superficial reading of the numbers. When one wonders that one hundred, thirty-five thousand jobs created by the CHIPs Act is less than ten per cent of the total on one million six hundred thousand jobs created overall, I would venture to say that the eight per cent CHIP-shot spurred other job growth. 🤔
https://www.aei.org/opportunity-social-mobility/bill-clintons-misleading-job-creation-statistic/
What concerns me, however, is that the job creation number is so low. Perhaps that indicates the efficiency of technology and robotics evaporating jobs that might have been created. Yet that statistic is of manufacturing and construction jobs generated, roughly ten per cent of the total jobs created under President Biden. 🔍
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/04/bidens-numbers-april-2024-update/
Looking at the article from the American Entreprise Institute -- in actuality, a relatively untainted center of conservative thinking -- one must net out about ten million 'bounce-back' jobs. Overall the Biden Admin. has added four-to-SIX million fresh jobs, quite an accomplishment. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7259852498906025984/ 🚀
Truth!
And the main culprit, Fox News, where they will learn nothing of the impending doom.
You have a point, Terry.
Yeah but they did that once already and it didn't seem to faze anyone did it.
"Those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it."
Welcome to the second coming...
and there are those who learn to repeat it. Remember Stalin - it is not how many vote, but who counts the vote. And today's world with technology, it might be much easier to be the who that counts.
Is this what they mean by bringing on the Rapture? Certainly no god will come and take them all to a wonderful place so they’re going to create their own. I still want to know who they think will do all their labor if they allow them to die of starvation and disease. If you make them homeless they won’t work jobs.
Ivory towers are only good if others do the work to sustain them.
Yes, they are actively trying to bring it on. That's flat out heresy, as are much of the Evangelical's beliefs. It's become a self-fullfilling prophecy of sorts. They will rejoice if they touch off WW III.
Jon, I can’t argue with what you’ve said about Trump/MAGA (I realize you already know there’s a “but” coming). But, we can’t afford to let those two facts and that remarkable, disturbing poem stop us from stiffening our spines and standing up to block their way. Can we?
Jon, more like welcome to the second scamming. 😉
The reason they voted for Trump is we did not get the word out about Biden. Harris did not mention any of Biden’s sweeping changes. in her campaign. No one in NC mentioned this in their bid for election. Biden spent millions in Nc for internet. Not one NC politicians mentioned this
Biden's economic accomplishments have been endlessly derided by an effective, shrill right wing media. It was just enough this time, to tip the margins. Winner take all electoral system exaggerate wins. Though the percentages are small, the general lean towards Trump makes his political victory seem outsized. The Electoral College, as we all know, does not provide a fair representation of the popular vote.
Not just right-wing Frank. I have read so, so many times in these comments that the Democrats were not the Party of the middle class.
One thing we might want to remember is the stunning fact that the so-called liberal voter has been deeply influenced by the very same media who ignored the progress made by the Biden Administration.
Democrats have shot themselves in the foot as well. I invite people to stop chanting nannie nannie boo boo. Look at how well you campaigned with those things called facts. How many Democrats were knowledgeable of the economics of the Biden Administration and could speak clearly with people about them during this election. How many people got caught up in the culture wars of we "hate him and he is a bad man"? How many people dropped back to the lazy cry of "but Democracy"?
My facts Guru during the Biden Administration was Oliver Willis. He maintained a running list of Biden's accomplishments. I invite people to look it up.
Anyway. It's all spilled milk now. Lesson learned? Be an educated voter.
Why isn't anyone blaming the gerry meandering we have allowed for so many years and the corruption of politicians and courts as a reason dems lost the election?
The NDRC (National Democratic Redistricting Committee) courtesy of Eric Holder and Barack Obama have been fighting gerrymandering for years. Give them your financial support if you can.
It will be these things that allow Republicans to keep a stranglehold on the nation. Even if voters wake up. We are screwed.
That is part of it, except added to it was a lower Dem turnout, resulting in a slight lean to Trump overall, across the entire country.
Because it WASN'T the reason. Sure its an important thing to fix someday but unless you believe in conspiracy theories (which I conclude are nonsense concocted by losers) Harris lost because MILLIONS of voters said "sorry not interested". Fixing the gerrymandering is a great idea but it's a slow process. Someday it will be fixed. But if the same voters had voted this year in a better environment, Trump still probably would have won. Worse he MIGHT have won the popular vote which has NOTHING TO DO with gerrymandering and lost the electoral vote and then the Republican voters would have had a much right to compassion about "losing the election due to the electoral college" as we did in 2016!
Keep that in mind when you are wishing for things!
Respectfully Jon, I disagree. I feel making it hard for voters is a real good excuse for them to stay home. I am not sure I would be willing to stand in line for 10 hours to cast my vote or drive long distance to hand in an absentee ballot.
This happened, yes, but it was rare. I SERIOUSLY doubt that was the reason that most of the 7 or so MILLION voters didn't vote. In addition many of those people in fact by DID vote but NOT FOR PRESIDENT. I haven't done the state by state calculations yet but u expect we will see about 2 million of those "non president voters" went to the polls and simply left the President space blank.
This was clearly a sharp backlash against the Biden team in general more than any other reason although there were plenty of reasons to go around (Gaza, the economy, illegal immigration, etc).
In the end the story is actually fairly simple. Harris lost a relatively close election but still by a million or more votes not by the 700 votes that AL Gore lost by in 2000. And it wasn't that Trump GAINED a lot of votes (although in the end he did gain) but Harris lost many many votes that had elected Biden.
That combination was deadly.
You forgot to add that once you have jumped through those hoops, your vote does not count because it was gerrymandered anyway.
Can't wait to see the faces when people start witnessing Trump's s / GOP inflation
Good call out but there are many reasons why Harris lost.
I believe one of the foundational reasons was she didn’t know her audience. Harris needed to win over the angry MAGA and undecided voters to name a few. When you are angry and undecided you don’t remember what happened 4 years ago (aka Trump 1.0).
Maybe if Harris traveled to Republican areas and spoke their language using “angry” vocabulary like “What did Trump do for you? Let me tell you what he did! While your friends, neighbors, families were sick and dying from Covid Trump was telling you to drink bleach!”
Or “When you were out of work due to the pandemic, Trump was giving testing machines to his buddy Putin. Testing machines that could have put you back at work sooner (yeah that’s a stretch but again we are speaking Trump 😉) “
Or Harris could have given a speech that “Trump knew in January how deadly the virus was and instead of mobilizing the Government (they love that phase)Trump was giving a paid interview to Bob Woodward for his book.” Challenge their belief system and tell them in the same angry tone Trump doesn’t care about you.
Ohhh, and definitely feed into the homophobia brainwashed fools the fact Trump used their tax payer dollars for prisoners sex change operations. I would have teams of volunteers putting copies of that executive order on every car windshield in the church parking lots.
Comments from this peanut gallery!
Yup, that is EXACTLY what Harris needed to do (and some!), she needed to seize the offensive against Trump. She needed to go on Fox and all the MSM that tended to favor Trump and blow her horn to the heavens about his insanity. But she played it cautiously, not engaging with the important media outlets that GOP voters listen to. And that cost her dearly, because the GOP voters never heard that trumpet.
I do NOT know if it would have changed the election outcome, but at least it would have given her a better chance. Playing it safe didn't at all. And talking about all the mundane stuff that Biden did didn't help either. People didn't care about the student loan forgiveness (if anything they hated it and hated Biden/Harris because of it). The infrastructure stuff was important but not as important as grocery bills.
In the end it was a tough election and in some ways surprising it was as close as it was.
The question is, what do we do now.
exactly-it starts at the roots
I want to continually emphasize the importance of calling the legacy media out. They are the other bad kids hiding behind the bigger bad kids of the right wing media. There is a discussion running around now on whether to keep legacy media or forge a new media world. Dr. Richardson favors keeping the current system.
Barbara Mullen -- I've noticed you've referred twice in this thread to "legacy media". Would you clarify who you mean by "legacy media?" I've never seen this term used before.) Thanks!
New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, ABC, MSNBC etc.
You know. Those entities that bill themselves as liberal but are not at all. these entities gave him top billing for 9 years. They had a huge hand in re-electing him.
And I think you are just wrong here. Some did what you say (Fox, many of the local newspaper chains) but many especially the ones you note did not at all. MSNBC? Hardly! The Times? No way! They wrote many editorials condemning Trump and their news coverage was quite balanced. You can repeatedly say that's not the case but factually it was.
The problem is simply that many 2020 Biden supporters checked out. It had little to do with the media. It had EVERYTHING to do with how Biden conducted himself.
Actions MATTER.
Big Time.
Dictionary (more or less) defined as "Legacy media is really just another way of describing our historic, traditional sources of information, whether it be newspapers, radio, or television." I'm going to go with the "legacy" left behind of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Molly Ivins, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, with others my insufficiently caffeinated brain cannot recall at the moment.
Dan Rather--who continues to write a Substack.
You make a good point Ally. I hadn't thought of it that way. I believe the term as it is used today refers to the current "liberal" media as opposed to the Murdoch empire.
The liberal media will disappear. The only thing you will get is Republican propaganda
Me too. I continue to point out Barbara that we differ greatly here. I think (as does HCR) that for at least the foreseeable future "legacy" media (at least some of it) will continue to be the primary communication medium. We ignore that at our peril.
Jon. I acknowledged Dr. Richardson's view. I respectfully disagree. Why keep using a broken megaphone? In practical terms what change can readers/voters effect in main stream oligarch run media today?
And they cheated in more ways than we can dream
Yes. They did. But there is not the energy nor passion to call it out. We, as a nation, and as a people are exhausted from this man.
the forces of evil played a long game and spent years putting things in place. redistricting voting maps, instilling fear in voting methods, placing judges etc. in vital places. until it was enough. and those things remain in place so will be a long time to untangle.
They did every thing in the book and created a new book.
Yes we are, although some enthralled. The conundrum of my life
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/12/appeasement-new-age-trump/680871/#:~:text=The%20Sound%20of%20Fear%20on%20Air
But. Frank, repubs whose states have benefited from the infrastructure act, the public-private companies, etc. are asking these not to be shut down bc their constituents like the results.
Very perceptive insight there, Frank. Thank you.
The reason Trump won is that Russian psy ops was effective. Das vedanya democracy.
Exactly so, Daniel. And stand by for much, much more.
Ally, please explain psy ops for me. I posted this question earlier this week but received no answer, so I’m counting on you. Thanks
PsyOps is an abbreviation for Psychological Operations, usually as a way of influencing people's beliefs in a non-violent manner. An example might be made of the allegations that Haitian Immigrants were eating peoples pets, or that Obama was not a US citizen. There are other, better examples.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-4-2024/comment/80177671?utm_campaign=reaction&utm_medium=email&utm_source=substack&utm_content=comment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(United_States)#:~:text=Psychological%20operations%20(PSYOP)%20are%20operations,Role
I know two brilliant men completely seduced by psyops. They have lived through trickledown and are totally disillusioned by “democracy.” Both are artists, and have simply given up on the promise of democracy. Both think I am some sort of freak for my continuing to support it.
Thanks, Ally!
Why don’t dems blow their own horn? Why did everyone turn so quickly against Biden ? Why didn’t Harris talk about it? Why do democrats suck so bad?
Sadly, the NYT quote in Heathers post tells the tale. “it is difficult to quarrel with their deductions, however one may feel one’s finer instincts hurt by their apparent cruelty.” Lordy, piss on “equality for all” and hop on board the gravy train. The working poor are just a drain on the rich and powerful. Then comes the “shirtwaist factory fire” and some have a conscience it seems. But is a conscience one of those traits that are passed down, or do they have to be renewed with every generation. Me thinks the latter, but it could be “you have to be carefully taught.”
Jeri, back in 1985, I was working in the medical lab of a Chicago suburban hospital. There was a salmonella outbreak, I think tied to a dairy. Anyhow, each area of the lab had a room that came off that hallway; blood bank, Hematology, Chemistry, and of course, Microbiology. You could not step into that hallway without being nearly overcome with the smell of shit. No joke, there were carts filled with tubs of diarrhea lined up to be analyzed. (I had a hard time purchasing frozen whipped topping for years after that, as people recycled those containers to bring in their samples. Yuck.)
After that, it seemed like there was the occasional recall of products, but in the last year---anyone notice how it seems every few weeks there is a MAJOR recall due to salmonella, Listeria, E. Coli ???
So, SURE, go right ahead and cut the regulations that keep our food supply "safe"---just yesterday I heard a radio report of a meat processing plant being fined for having underage immigrant children sanitizing the plant using caustic chemicals. Immigrant CHILDREN.
We really are regressing.
a lot of folks complain that we have too many regulations or that they are crazy complicating to business. BUT a lot of that has to do with how things get changed in order to pass. and regulations do come about usually not as foresight, but after something stirs folks. death and or disaster.
and I have been wondering how so many things are becoming contaminated apparently lately-just better or wider reporting, so we now hear about it, less standards, more contamination-why? and now what to do about it.
Dangerously so, people can expect the worst, purposefully and by neglect of vigilance that regs demand
They think we are useless eaters and want to starve us off. They think a world of billionaires and robots sounds cool…
“Useless eaters”. Yep, those workers are just eating some of my pie. The rich mantra
Thank you for noting this.... I was planning to if no one else said it first. This quote alone has convinced me to finally drop my digital sub to the New York Times.
I did, WaPo next.
They were!!! No one was listening. The media ignored the Democrats. The other guy was more interesting for the past 9 years.
Quick questions. How much independent research did you do on the facts of the Biden Administration? How much do you rely on the media to tell you about the world?
I stopped paying attention to the corporate media a while back. Gave up the New York Times and Washington Post subscriptions. Now I get all my info from sub stack and a few people on YouTube that I trust. I have a brother who is a maggot and I have to tell you there is no reasoning with those people. They are brainwashed and brain dead. I watched a lot of Kamala’s rallies and listened to her, and what she had to say, she did not talk enough about all the good things Biden did. But yeah, there’s no way to reach the magats.
I am not talking about reaching the MAGA voter. They are in a cult. I always focus on facts not culture war stuff. The MAGAs always ignore facts and only speak propaganda, double speak and lies.
We must, must stay informed. Legacy media does not inform.
Barbara Mullen -- "The media ignored the Democrats." That was the crux of the Whole Catastrophe! They never really covered him, and I've never understood why. The media made Trump what he is today starting at least in 2015. (Ten Years Plus.) And will continue to help him achieve his goal of being a dictator. And now I'm p'ed off at President Biden for not stepping down sooner than he did so the party could vet other candidates.
I understand the anger at Biden not stepping down (I encounter it frequently) but I do wish people would let it go. None of us has any idea how the election would have gone if Biden had stepped down earlier, not run again, stayed in the race, etc. It's all conjecture. You're probably right, but I am going to remember Biden as possibly the last good president of the United States.
because the contentious, the ugly, the scary and the titillating sell, and generate clicks- and all media is needing the cash, they are a business. Trumps is outrageous and flashy. great click-bait.
I blame the media
The media is a disaster, all billionaires' agenda all the time, but it's much deeper than that. The dems have no plan to fight against the repubs and haven't for 40 years. They have no spine, no gumption, no imagination, no fight in them. They just roll over like an abused dog.
and because it takes more than 3-4 years for changes to spread out and touch enough of the population to be felt and seen.
The word was out but not in the media those voters believe.
That is because Harris was running as Harris. Remember that Harris was introducing herself. Plus, Biden hasn't been popular.
Barbara Mullen -- Thanks to the press! (As I commented to you before!) But I don't think I'll ever forgive President Biden for not stepping down sooner.
We all have had a huge chunk taken out of us in this election. I know I am deeply grieving.
Well put.
The ivory towner millionaire political consultants like Plouffe and Messina have NO clue about the concerns of average Americans as their failed mismanagement of Harris's campaign proved!
I beg to differ if you think Harris’ campaign failed how did she ever manage to amass in 6 short the number of votes that put her within about 1.5% of the votes Trump acquired over a 4 year campaign? Harris nor her campaign failed us. Those who failed to vote or actually voted for Trump over the crisis in Gaza, those who stated they voted for Trump because their grocery and gas costs hurt them, or who cast votes for Trump over his manipulation of the border issue failed us. They failed to chose democracy over authoritarianism.
Thank you Nanci Bishof. Per her historian methodology, HCR, places the realities of wealth & opportunity barriers back to the Gilded Age which is "still with us".
An icon of that era is still quite permanently visible at C. Vanderbilt's
138,300 square foot, "70 room cottage" aka the "Breakers" forever located on Ochre Point Avenue on the perimeter road overlooking Easton Bay, Rhode Island.
Hat tip to The Preservation Society of Newport County, Rhode Island.
Newport County? Don't ask.
Also, Biltmore in North Carolina.
Of course, several "cottages". I'm checking with a Rhode Islander on 'Breakers' & more history.
*************
Just got a evening response from a Rhode Islander that went to "finishing school" aka 'Newport School for Girls' 2 doors down from the Vanderbilts later taken over by Salve Regina.
MLMin ET, you are correct about the Biltmore. A Rhode Island architect designed the Biltmore down in NC. My contact reports this move was part of a of a larger economic trend moving textile mills from New England down to the Carolinas to obtain cheaper labor.
Lot of history on Ochre Point.
They were warned and shrugged, as did the media
If your messaging is off, the other side has a wide opening to pass thru. As a former elected official I know first hand how the mutual admiration society works. Their self-important back slapping cliques isolate them from the sound on the ground! The MAGA crowd was jacked up by a menacing narcissist who pushed buttons of hate, racism, misogyny! We are in for a rough ride and I guess postmortems are irrelevant as Oceania becomes reality.
Don’t forget Rupert and muskrat. They weigh heavy on the scales of political power
Agreed, RIch. I maintain that tfg's popularity is that he gives them not just permission to but encourages them to hate all us "others".
yes so many blamed things that were not results of any administration on the one in office when it hit their pocketbook. Ignorance has brought a player to the highest office and he brought his chorus.
Protesting by not voting in a time when the alternative is MAGA is supremely immature. There are other ways to express anger or outrage or the desire for change. Those that did not vote as protest left the country to this fate. small pebbles in a large stream can change the course of a river if there are enough of them. and they will deny collective responsibility to the end. It is childish and may end up as tragic. we shall see.
Nancy Bishof -- and regretfully President Biden failed us by not not seeing the writing on the wall stepping down sooner.
Had he but kept his promise to be a one term president...
It is not the "...concerns of average Americans as their failed mismanagement of Harris's campaign..." It is the steady firehose volume of lies coming from unregulated right wing "news" and "information" sources.
I suspect that a very important tipping point was all the ads run during the football season lying about how transgender surgery was a thing at elementary schools. Gender reassignment surgery is a years long process, not something that happens at elementary school, which can't even give a kid with a fever Tylenol without parental approval.
I agree with Plouffe who said that the cardinal sin was the fact that Biden didn’t drop out earlier. We would have had a primary and whoever came out on top would have had the time to get his/her message out to the voters.
Plouffe, like Biden, need to head to pasture.
And they did it knowing full well what his intentions were FFS… unforgivable.
(From my book, "Donald's Vanity Tantrums")
Why Are We All Screaming at Each Other?
The answer to this question may lie somewhere in how we elect our political leaders. Most senators and congressmen are owned and paid for and owned by special interests working both sides of the aisle depending on which business or institutional clients they represent. The result is greater partisan divide in Congress which leads to less interest in the health and stability of the nation and more newly created laws that increase profits for their clients at the expense of well, everyone else. And money is the original sin with a few exceptions, those being perhaps environmentalists and save the earth, save the babies, save the whatevers. But mostly, it’s the endless pursuit of more money through new legislation.
Corporations own America and use patriotism as the opiate for the masses to calm our sores and the people, yes, We, the People, be damned. The unmitigated influence of big business (money) is almost unique in developed nations especially in Western Europe. A British journalist now headquartered in New York City recently lamented in a CNN article that our medical system was broken. I responded directly to his comments and he then asked me, “Why don’t you Americans rise up in rage and change things?” I replied that we have long ago been whipped, divided, beaten and conquered. It’s not in the capacity of the defeated to structurally fix anything including real gun control legislation because we’ve been so toughly defeated.
The late Senator John McCain once warned about this growing menace in America and he was able to sponsor and pass the McCain/Feingold bill in 2002 limiting soft money to influence elections. But then the trusty ole conservative majority of the Supreme Court, those guys who purport to support individual rights, until it restricts the super wealthy to gobble up even more wealth, decided that political spending was a form of free speech in Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission in 2010. This created new ways of corrupting the political process. Secret money returned and today, we have a elected to office a most unstable individual. We all have been seduced and induced into a hyper-partisan fight that until now, has limited the fight to the ballot box. However, Trump has tacitly encouraged violence and mass carnage has already resulted.
Donald “Adolph” Trump is simply the manifestation and infestation of government gone wrong because money has become the only decider. No principles. No ideology. No ethics. And now we have a dysfunctional dystopian society in the purported Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Everyday Joe is scared about having a reduced income or any income at all. And what does Everyday Joe do besides augmenting his income with a part time service job at Walmart? As his puppet strings are yanked, he pulls the lever (the wrong one) that opens the trap door on which he stands with a rope around his gullet.
We the people are like a sailing ship, the wind has been taken from our sails and we are adrift in the raging MAGA sea!
Indeed. I have been critical of how we have messed up. How Joe Biden was in my opinion, 💤 on the border for 3 years. I don’t want to express this anymore. Our side lost we are all feeling a sense of despondency. Better to move on and build an adequate defense to what we are about to slam into for the next 4 years. And maybe we will come out of this not unharmed because we haven’t yet felt the true devastation awaiting all of us. I dislike slogans like “Keep hole alive” but that’s all we have to work with for now. Divided we lose but United we win.
Biden was thwarted by Republicans, who killed an intelligent border bill because Trump wanted to use the border as a campaign issue.
Biden also sent Kamala to S American countries to help work on alleviating conditions that drive migration…not just bar the door! Helping people to solve problems driving them from their homes is a smarter strategy..
Hope
How do we do that, Bill?
We have a serious problem. Republican legislators are now likely to put in place processes that ensure that they retain power. Democracy in America is on life support. The next year could seal our fate for decades to come. I am very angry at those so ill informed and stupid to have voted for the fascists.
and this question remains:
his voter base did not really increase, he did nothing to expand it, he purposefully derided groups, and yet he still got about the same number of votes. So how does that happen? It is almost as if he knew he would not lose any votes, just had to keep democrat voters suppressed. It was his little "secret". We may never know the extent to what the manipulation of the system republicans were comfortable with.
Nanci, you’ve expressed the anger that many of us feel and I’m glad you did. MAGA have made no effort to contain their anger and Trump has already shown he intends to fulfill his promise to be their retribution. In light of this, I think we all should stiffen our spines and start fighting fire with fire (although without resorting to violence, cruelty, lying, crime, and gaslighting, all of which are the tactics of Trump/MAGA). And, as a part of this, I think President Biden should go beyond pardoning his son to pardoning in advance every person on the Trump/MAGA enemies list. We should be done with the weak, hesitant, vacillating Merrick Garland approach.
I agree with you, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about this loss and I get myself so depressed. The mainstream media failed the voters, as many were not informed. The left needs to find a Joe Rogan. HCR is widely read, but that is the issue--those MAGA voters DON'T READ. We need to find voices who will draw in the other side to listen.
There are YouTube channels that a liberal bases but DO have the other side watch. The first that comes to mind is the former "Beau of the Fifth Column" which is now voiced by his wife "Belle of the Ranch". The team behind her reads the comments and she DOES get snarky complaints from the right, and answers them on her clips. Also, on the Medias Touch network, there is "Tennessee Brando" who comments from in his words "the deepest red of a red state". He also has the other side listen to him.
It really helps promote these people and their messages if we subscribe to their channels, run the occasional videos, and forward them onto other people. I chose these two although there are others on the Medias network (that I like, but I think the right would find too condescending), along with Brian Tyler Cohen's "No Lie" (who I suspect the right would dismiss at elite) and Marc Elias "Democracy Docket" (who is fantastic, but I suspect he's too intellectual for the right).
I have noticed that Tennessee Brando is rapidly picking up subscribers. "Belle" is growing as well, as that channel is expanding their already present "The Roads with Beau" with "Research Road" and "Interstate News".
Here's a recent "Belle"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEDMycLGMgA
(BTW, Belle, a former military nurse, has been predicting a Trump cut to Veteran benefits for weeks now.)
Here's a recent Interstate News:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzEU0IWHVes
Here's a recent Research Road
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSyatPBYvYY
Here's a recent Tennessee Brando:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HpKbZoflFI
I encourage anyone reading who is unfamiliar with these channels (many on here already watch at least Belle) to take a moment to listen and subscribe. Pushing these messages up in the computer algorithm certainly wouldn't hurt.
Miselle, thanks for all of this good, helpful info. I agree, it has been hard to avoid despair and I have experienced it myself. It looks to me like you are taking action and I think many people have found relief from the tendency to despair by doing exactly that.
“They” don’t seem to care. And “they” are our relatives and neighbors and friends.
And if there are any residual benefits from the long range plans and programs of the Biden administration that carry into Trump's term, Trump will take credit for them while attempting to blame Biden for the pain from his own. And MAGA will take the hook. I'm so sick of the negligence of the legacy press, I will only give my time to a few trusted sources now, and that doesn't even include PBS or NPR at the moment... they can sometimes seem too wary of appearing biased to raise their voice against the evidence of pending tyranny.
Didn't Muskmelon fire 6,000 people as they walked in the door? Any disabled vet who voted for trump will feel their disability reduced. They should remember trump's interference with SEAL punishment for Gary Gallagher who posed with a dead enemy just like Don Jr posed with the endangered Tibetan sheep he killed. They should remember his disdain for handicapped vets who nobody wanted to see or the thumbs up and a grin on his face like a 16 year was giving him a below the belt massage (I am trying not to be too offensive here) in a memorial service held in a hallowed cemetery. No pictures allowed yet I am sure it showed up in Twitter, Instagram, Face Book, Reddit right before election. Just screams Campaign to me.
The people who received the jobs should know what Biden did. The people who worked on construction on the roads, bridges, and new factories should know. BUT it is more interesting to hear about trump's trials which seem to be dismissed anyway. It is more interesting to hear about his useless exploits. It's more interesting to see him over dramatize his "injury". Soldiers with injuries like that would shake it off and get back into the fray.
I will give you that he is a much more interesting and expressive speaker. Words like "Fight. Fight" and "Bloodbath", his exaggerations (21 million undocumented workers), his Haitians eating family pets are very much like clique bait. Biden is boring. People love bad. Look how many people are up in arms about Biden pardoning his son. No mention of Jared's father being pardoned. No mention of the fact trump probably plans on pardoning himself.
Sorry about ranting. The words just keep on coming. Thanks for letting me vent.
I agree and wonder how much of what's about to unfold wasn't already in the minds of the likes of supply-side pusher Robert Bork, Moral Majority's mastermind Jerry Falwell and their salesman Ronald Regan. I read a series of articles back around '79 or '80 about just such a plan. However, that writer did not mention the Christian National takeover. But apparently, it was always a key part of the scheme.
Yes, you said it right. Now let’s start exchanging ideas and plans to minimize the Trump damages. We need to act before die hungry.
Moving to eliminate the electoral college and having ranked choice voting as well as eliminating gerrymandering would go a long way toward fixing what is broken.
I agree with you. I do hope Biden sees his way to protecting those who put it on the line, on both sides of the aisle, to try to inform and influence voters about the dangers of the coming Trump presidency. I am not convinced we will even have the privilege of any national elections again. I hope for our democracy’s sake we do.
Then the economic system will collapse again, just as it did in the 1930s. 💔 The consequences will prove more severe in a nuclear age and a far more interwoven global finance system in which the anchor-baby (i.e., the United States) is drowning in national debt and precipitating a trade war. 😳 With fascism on a belligerent trajectory in Europe, possibly here, and the Chinese century in full swing with Peking's embargo against the United States of certain rare earth minerals -- eerily like that of the U.S. of oil and tin against Japan in 1940 -- the pixure sure ain't pretty. 😱
Spot on. I will bet that most of the pain the tRump administration will cause will affect those who voted for him more than those who voted for Harris/Walz.
And he is a grifter - hawking crap to put money in his pocket. And if you are one of those who would buy any of the crap he is hawking you can think of yourself as a sucker because that is exactly what he thinks you are.
We’ll said, Nanci!
Nanci, all the more reason to overhaul our educational system. We need to value education by using the expertise of experts as we do doctors. We need to stop giving parents a say in the curriculum. We wouldn't allow a bricklayer to perform brain surgery, nor should we allow people who know nothing about the most effective teaching strategies to have a say in the curriculum or in the classroom. That's how we got book bans and school libraries that were stripped of the Classics. While we're at it, we should not allow political hacks and right wing religious extremists from Red states to be dictating what can and cannot be taught in the classroom. That's how we got Bush II-teaching to the test curriculums and subsidies for religious education, Challenger schools and private school subsidies that rob public education budgets. The practice of bribing politicians by large publishing corporations should have been stopped years ago. That's why with each new administration, they peddle the latest and greatest snake oil educational panacea. High standards for a teaching credential needs to be restored. It begins with the teacher training programs at our colleges. In summary, respect for knowledge should be the nation's goal!
Unless we pay close attention to what is happening in Trump’s government and make our voices heard, we could end up a nation of illiterate paupers!
- Pulled Quote -
''On X this week, Musk commented that a thread by Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) attacking Social Security was “interesting.” ''
Yep, the ride to Mars will be on the backs of millions of suffering American retirees and disabled (that is if we don't stand up and fight back!)
We might establish some sort of outpost on Mars. I doubt it will come to much, except for the science and perhps a last ditch refuge if we transform our own planet into hell. The Martian environment makes Antarctica look positively hospitable, and our own very inhabited lands like a Garden of Eden, which in fact it is. Our "bird in the hand" is very exceptional. We ought not to be cooking the goose that lays our golden eggs, hoping to find something better in the bush.
Over 3/4 of the earth is covered with water, which has barely been explored. It has the potential to provide unimaginable amounts of energy. (see https://minesto.com/faroe-islands/ )
"With a total capacity of 120 MW tidal energy, generating an estimated 350 GWh per year, the arrays would supply 40% of the Faroe Islands’ growing electricity consumption"
Of course, Republicans hate this idea, because it runs counter to their "drill, drill, drill" ideology. Fracking requires immense amounts of water to extract the remaining oil from the ground and with the harsh secret chemicals the predatory oil companies use to extract the oil, the water is polluted even more.
While, the US has been concentrating on solar, wind and energy storage solutions, several other potential technologies have been developed and deployed around the world. Even as we dismantle our dams to rebuild the ecosystems, run of the river solutions are being deployed which allows much of the river to be run free while capturing the potential from the rest.
Energy costs in much of the country having spiraled over the past 40 years. While Trump wants to suck the remaining oil reserves out of the ground, countries like Norway and Germany are closing in on 100% EVs or hydrogen vehicles and very low cost electric rates.
Thank you Gary. This is the conversation we should be having. Not which sexual predator to install in the Cabinet.
Clean Energy is so import. What is equally important is the unsustainable population growth. We never address this. Back to the chaos. Affordability for so many has been brought on by not higher prices across the board but housing prices and rental prices. So many cannot afford any necessities more than paying their rents. My gut tells me the Trump effect of making fortunes in real estate has had an accumulative effect over time. Everybody wants to buy and rent.
In many ways we are feeling knock-on effects of expanding population, including in the form of climate abuse. We are likely to run out of resources before we run out of actual space if we are attend only to what makes somebody maximum profit.
Thank you for reminding everyone that the US is not the only country in the world. Other countries are moving forward with solutions to climate problems. The US will be left behind by their own failures.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/06/why-the-us-doesnt-really-make-solar-panels-anymore-industrial-policy/619213/
As much as trump hates China and wants to be A ME rica first, China is in the position to take over the environmental efforts.
In which we put it. Not that the rest of the world would not naturally catch up to our post WWII lead, but we greatly boosted our own competition by offshoring manufacturing.
Have civilians ever seen an abandoned fracking site? The humanitarian oil companies put whirly gigs to keep birds off the polluted water left there. If it is so good, why were some of the flood victims keeping FEMA away because they thought that they would kick them off their land to use for fracking?
The beauty of petroleum for Republicans is that significant deposits are rare, and can be controlled by very few people. Many sustainable solutions tap energy sources that are far more widely distributed. In rural Japan I saw solar farms no bigger than a typical vacant lot. The initial cost of equipment is a barrier, but the sites that can make use of it are plentiful, and Germany, that sites a lot of it, is not the most advantageous latitude, yet it works.
Freedom is for all, or it's not really freedom. Societies in which the wealthy have impunity and the poor are subjugated are not free. The former "Party of Lincoln" has been bought and paid for to billionaires' benefit. Ain't it obvious? The royal road to massive personal wealth is monopoly, of markets and of governance. Wars have been fought to preserve monopolies, of one sort or another; even of the sale of spices. Like a fire, private enterprise, applied within certain boundaries , (such as a stove) can offer immense benefits to human beings. Outside of those boundaries, which in commercial terms, takes the form of judicious regulation, it can be immensely destructive. Is that not what history demonstrates?
Moreover even IF they really can figure out a way to transform Mars into a habitable place (a highly speculative venture at the cost of at least trillions of dollars if not dozens of trillions as well as almost certainly dozens if not hundreds or thousands of lives lost to accidents and other unpredictable events) how many people could realistically be transported to live there in let's say 50 years? A million? That seems way too high to me, probably more like a few thousand or even a hundred thousand. Even a million if that was even possible is a drop in the bucket in a country of 300+million let alone a world of 9 BILLION people.
I'm all for selective space exploration to advance science but not at the cost of ignoring the incredibly important mission to try to fix our home planet before it becomes inhospitable for the masses. Musk and company are on a self congratulatory ego driven mission which is mostly useless to society as a whole. If he wants to fund this out of his own pocket, more power to him but the government should not be providing him with "shelter" to let him proceed.
Exploring space with telescopes and landers and the Space Station has had a lot of value...colonizing Mars now, with all of our issues here is an absurd use of tax dollars. Let's take care of our Vets, our elderly...schools...let's care about the people here now with our taxes.
Tax dollars? Let’s just let Melon Husk do it as a private venture, with no subsidy.
By the way to repeat something I posted several weeks ago as a reminder, in the first 60 years of aviation, we went from the Wright Brothers to commercial air transport carrying millions of passengers every day by jet liner. In the first 60 years of space travel we have achieved sending approximately 500 people TOTAL out of a planet of almost 9 billion, to space for a cumulative experience of a few thousand human years of space travel. We sent 6 pairs of humans to walk in the moon for a total of about 20 days of time, the ONLY extra planetary travel the entire human race has accomplished. We have ONE "international" space station which has provided home for a few hundred or so travelers in total, a miniscule number to even attain low earth orbit, a relatively safe place to be (just a few hours to get back to earth in the event of an emergency) compared to Mars where any human would be literally months away from returning of it became necessary.
I grew up on space travel. I LOVE the idea of it and hope we continue to explore. But we are still just BARELY Christopher Columbus at this point. Space travel is HARD (WAY harder than anything Columbus ever did) and it is in its infancy no matter what Musk tries to tell you.
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too." - JFK
But that was then. Just let the billionaires "fix it".
Well put, Jon. I can't name a source so it might be fiction, but didn't Musk say he'd get people on Mars by 2025? 2026? Can anyone confirm that?
Yep he sure did. Changed it to 2026 a few months ago when it was clear they won't even get a manned mission to the MOON in 2025. He is just doing what he always does.
Conning people.
Remember that PTBarnum said "There's a sucker born every minute!"
Read "The End of the World News" by Anthony Burgess.
I’m all for getting Musk to Mars, and leaving him there
Hey boss, the inmates at the crazy farm are now about to run things. Here is a prediction. The economy will remain strong. Investment markets will continue rising. But as the reality hits that consumer spending plummets and credit defaults along with housing defaults, we will finally get our long delayed recession. And Trump will rightfully get the blame.
I admit I do not know a lot about economics, but it seems that if you send all of the undocumented workers away (causing a shortage of produce and construction workers) and raise the prices of things being imported(tariffs) wouldn't prices go up and therefore lower consumer spending?
Give the lady a cigar!!!
Sorry that was NOT intended as sarcasm but honoring the truth!
Trump will never get the blame. It will be a long game of “blame the libs”…
You got that right. As of November 15th over $695 billion in funding and over 74,000 projects announced thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/11/15/fact-sheet-biden-%E2%81%A0harris-administration-transforms-nations-infrastructure-celebrates-historic-progress-in-rebuilding-america-for-the-three-year-anniversary-of-the-bipartisan-infrast/
In fact, it is so impressive that dozens of Republicans have taken credit for these projects which have helped virtually everyone in the US.
Exactly that: ego-driven. Darth Musk’s narcissism is going so far, he wants to become the God of Mars, and doesn’t care a rat’s*ss if all of us here are left behind to burn in poverty in the wake of his space ship. He’ll sacrifice Earth and all of its creatures fir his megalomaniac dream.
It seems that a simple space ship was stuck in space. It was like a Gilligan's Island episode. A few days turn into months.
As is obvious to anyone, except Elon Musk himself perhaps (though I think he knows this!), is that the trip to Mars is a one way trip unless just maybe you are filthy rich enough to buy your way back; how much would that cost?!?! more than a few hundred bucks on Delta!
More than a few million bucks! The folks who bought their suborbital joyride flight paid $2.5 million a seat. For 11 minutes, 4 minutes weightless. Whoopee doo.
Space travel is hard, expensive and barely out of the womb. We are a lot farther from establishing a colony on Mars than Musk wants anyone to believe.
Lots of opportunities for failure by overconfident moronic “genuses.”
Send Elon Musk to Mars permanently!
Or to the Universe. and BEYOND!!! (Text when you get there).
Heck, he's buying a stairway to Heaven.
Musk is sucking up money
“We might establish some sort of outpost on Mars.”
I expect Musk will claim Mars as his property, and any who visit his will pay dearly to rent space there.
I think he hankers to own at least one planet.
I have never wished for a failure in the space race before…
forget the a$$ hats in power. we do need to get to space. science is finding alternatives to things we are running short on but that is not a never-ending cure for extraction economics for 7 billion humans. not to live in or conquer space which the space station has shown to be hard on our human structure, but mining base materials is going to be important when the ones we sit on start getting scarce. we are already having issues with a necessary mineral for agriculture.
and yes, we will never find anything more perfect than the environment in which we EVOLVED. we are matched to literally everything here through millennia of selective forces. and it is beautiful, if occasionally terrifying.
I find a bit of merit in the suggestion that if we keep a few humans alive outside of our terrestrial environment, they might (like a seed bank) keep our species alive should we take the whole earth FUBAR. It might be very cold comfort though. Stepping off the highway to hell would seem the wisest and most fruitful option.
You wrote “ science is finding alternatives to things we are running short on but that is not a never-ending cure for extraction economics for 7 billion humans.”
I think that mindset is a recipie for disaster. We must learn to live sustainably on Earth.
I’m not against humans going to Mars per se, but not as an alternative to living sustainably.
I would make one exception to colonizing Mars. Let Musk go there, the sooner the better!
As a kid we watched the moon landings and I thought space travel and exploration was very cool. Today we have far more pressing needs here on earth, than "colonizing Mars" so the rich get richer.
As teenagers we joined the people out in the street at night scanning the sky for a star that wasn't a star. We had a new word. A Russian word: "Sputnik".
That shook things up didn't it ?
I remember doing that in Buenos Aires...😄
And we were also in the Southern Hemisphere - same night sky.
Musk, the felon elect and all their buddies need to go to Mars and stay there!
Let them go colonize Mars and run it any way they want. Maybe it would end like the film "Don't Look Up".
🤣🤣🤣
we MUST revolt against this, and now.
“The ride to Mars”. I wish they would all get on Musk’s rocket ship and take the trip. Anyone with a tiny knowledge of science knows that it is impossible to colonize Mars. This group rejects science. Not in my wildest dreams do I see any one of these billionaires capable of doing the manual labor it would take or giving up their lives of luxury to live on Mars. They refuse to take care of this planet so they’re want to escape to an even more unlivable one.
I read an article last week that likened them to comic book heroes and villains and it hit the nail on the head. People with too much money, greedy and immature, living lives of delusion. Unfortunately too many of the poor and working class believe them.
Yeah it's pretty crazy...they do visualize themselves as Super Heroes and the smartest guys in the room...and they are neither...they have money and buy things and indulge themselves in their fantasies....it still astounds me that enough voters bought this comic book version of America...I guess they watched the Apprentice and Super Hero movies and believe these guys will save the day....Good F..ing luck.
People with WAAAYYY more money than sense.
There is just one little problem with manned space light to Mars. The late husband of a friend of mine was a world class rocket scientist working on unmanned rocketry to Mars: the one problem we haven’t solved is radiation. No human will be able to survive a trip to Mars until we do. No matter what Elon says. I’d be happy for him to volunteer be the first guinea pig!
The plan is for us to be the indentured servants for the oligarchy on Mars. It’s the only way off this planet.
Exactly. Also on the backs of hungry children and anyone requiring decent health care which is all of us.
There has always been a state of war between those who benefit from feudalism (and those who shortsightedly THINK they benefit) and those who call for equal opportunity and unalienable rights. Power (of which money is a species) tends to corrupt when unaccountable, and much of the purpose of government, at least in a free society, it to bring it to account when applied recklessly. Moreover without rules, money and other forms of power, can be applied to concentrate power in abusive ways, which is where the perennial blight of tyranny comes from. Does not history over centuries and from around the globe illustrate this?
Project 2025 is a formula for turning the US into a third world country. What I don't see, is even if the democrats regain control how they will get out of that. See this film on Argentina that is made by DW. Here is the English language version. It is called Argentina after one year of President Milei.
https://youtu.be/SWhDTdWND1I?si=ILOzRsdyDyZ93kKp
When I read his Milei's name I think of My lai massacre. If you notice, Musk is visiting in the film. A difference is our economy was the opposite of failing when he came to power, but there are the same libertarians that we see with Musk as one of them, and Trump as another, and the rest being Christian Nationalists who want to destroy the USA. So, looking at things reasonably is not the model for understanding how to motivate the people Trump is appointing and who voted for him.
Here is how we "get out of that" - how we reverse the direction towards "Third World Status". We WILL return to leading the government after much pain. Project 2029:
Hey Elon! If $50 trillion went to the top 1% in the last 40 years .... we could make a big dent in our budget deficit and our Federal Debt by clawing it back, right? Be a budget hero, dude. If we didn't have such a huge debt to service, we could solve a whole lot of problems. Guess what? The solution to our governments messed up balance sheet could be solved by YOU and your friends! Let's just do it!
I Googled "Federal debt and cost to service it":
AI overview -
"The federal debt of the United States is currently $36 trillion, and the cost to service it is increasing:
Debt size
As of November 2024, the federal debt is $36 trillion. This is up from $33.1 trillion in December 2023, and $34.4 trillion in February 2024.
Cost to service
The annualized cost to service the debt was $726 billion in July 2023, which was 14% of total federal spending. In FY 2024, interest on the debt was $1,126.5 billion, which is an increase from FY 2023."
This sounds kinda radical. Yup. But right now, the Maga Nazis are standing in the castle looking out at the rabble of humanity and yelling: "Let them eat cake."
And how do we change that. We do we do to change this?
You are going to compare Argentina to the US? Inflation was 25.5 percent in December 2023. It just dropped to 2,7 percent. The central bank Interest rate down 98 percent to still high 35 percent. The government is running a surplus. The country was in economic shambles.
I am not. They were compared in an article in Journal of Democracy called Misunderstanding Democratic Backsliding https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/misunderstanding-democratic-backsliding/.
A group and I read this and discussed it and then someone in our group shared this video in German, and I found the English Language counterpart. Then, I also saw this Chanel 24 video covering the same thing, but by interviewing an economist, and little discussion of the people who are suffering. https://youtu.be/Ra-WB4FL7zs?si=0aeN0HCWpymU_8Gn
I should not have said the only difference, but there are things in common. Each country has elected an illiberal leader who promises shock therapy. They have cut pensions (read social security), and programs for the poor, and not cut taxes. He claims that not cutting taxes is why they have a surplus. Do you believe that will happen in the US too? Is the focus to be just to get rid of the budget deficit?
It's interesting that we should be pining for the days of Eva Peron. Well at least Little Eva, while milking the country of its money, did actually believe in populism and help for the common people. Trump only gives it lip service.
While Putin applauds and Europe worries.
Putin, Xi, and Jung-Un applaud, and plot to overtake.
Rowshan, Because Trump’s Cabinet and other high-level picks, in my view, make clear that the plan not only is to tear down democracy but also to crash the economy and sell off its parts (Source: Sarah Kendzior), my first thought has been to join the resistance by starting an Indivisible chapter in my hometown. For more on Indivisible’s nationwide effort, visit indivisible.org
Excellent idea. We've had a chapter on the Lower Cape since Leah and Ezra's first Indivisible Guide.
Betsy, Thank you for writing. I have grown increasingly confident that as more of us organize and use our constituent power to help in the nationwide effort to resist the infiltration of MAGA into our states the greater the likelihood of beating back MAGA in 2026 and 2028.
I agree!
Thank you, Barbara. A group of us have started something similar here, but I will read more about Indivisible to help direct us. I appreciate your heads-up.
But what are we doing about it? Does anytime have a comparison of Biden vs Trump cabinet
Sandra, I turned to Indivisible because its co-founders, both of whom are former congressional aids, have created a Guide, replete with action plans tailored to blue, red, and battleground states, for using our local constituent power to help in the nationwide effort to beat back MAGA.
Do you mean we are no going to be Great Again?
In his dreams. In his campaigns. A lie, like everything else.
Maybe great like in 1929.
Exactly where we are heading, a huge depression.
Trump will have the dubious honor of having led the US into two recessions. Of course, he will blame the Democrats when it happens the next time.
Well the economy was great during the Roaring Twenties, at least until the poetic threshold of the eleventh hour.
The stock market crashed on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, when the Great Depression kicked in.
We are great now. At least until trump ruins it again
Depends how you define great. I’m sure Elon Musk thinks things are great.
Precisely!
We might be too
Late for thud but the time is to contrast Biden and Trump. The MAGA does not care how bad is unless it is compared to the good. If we want to make a point about trumps picks. Shoe who is there now., contrast and compare
You miss the point that MAGAts care about appearances, not effectiveness. Trump appoints people from "central casting". He cares not how well they can do a job, just that they look good in a photo op. Comparing them to the current crop of "do somethings but look like nothings" is a waste of time.
"Linda McMahon will make a GREAT Secretary of Education! Look at her! And she ran the World Wrestling Federation, too."
I mean, seriously, we are in a bizarro world again. The only two things that count are looks and money. Its like being in high school all over again. Just the money part is bigger.
Jon, don’t forget blind subservient loyalty to the king. And a criminal history helps. Criminals don’t want to be surrounded by honest people. They need to have the goods on each other so no one squeals. I’ve long suspected trump has “files” on a lot of congressional representatives- and their family members (maybe even particularly on their family members). If pocketing a share of the grift isn’t motivating enough, blackmail can prove useful.
Jon, nominees get extra credit if they are sexual deviants just like Trump. Or if they have been convicted and pardoned by Trump for crimes. Or if they have grifted or grafted money from the US Treasury.
They lose points for having been competent or worth less than a billion $$$$s.
Trump's dementia has resulted in selecting candidates that he hasn't even heard of. But, if they sign a loyalty pledge, they are in.
Hello. I think many are already there. They voted for him
"Sumner called for a “laissez-faire” world in which those who failed should be permitted to sink into poverty, and even to die, to keep America from becoming a land where lazy folks waited for a handout. Such people should be weeded out of society for the good of the nation."
I doubt that many of the dumb-as-dirt billionaires looking to head up the country have even heard of Sumner but this does seem to sum up what they're thinking. Dumb as they are, these people sure know how to manipulate the vast swathe of religious fanatics in this country, and the even vaster swathe of racists and misogynists.
I've never understood why at this stage of so-called civilization the world hasn't put combatting, treating and eliminating sociopathy on its list of priorities.
The Sumner approach epitomizes George Lakoff’s model of conservatives seeing government through the metaphor of a strict father family that uses tough “love” to teach children to be self-sufficient. Self-sufficient people are seen as deserving what they’ve earned. The wife comes second in this hierarchy, which is strictly enforced.
In his view, liberals see government through the metaphor of a nurturant parent family, where both parents are equal and children are allowed to have their views and raised to have empathy. By liberal standards, conservative families that enforce discipline through corporal punishment are abusive. People born into such families intuitively feel their approaches are morally right and don’t understand how people can justify the opposite position.
In my view, we also see the contrast here between religious fundamentalists who believe that people are fundamentally bad, versus the opposite and often psychological view that most people are fundamentally good but may be hindered by psychological wounds or major mental illnesses or physical problems that affect mental health. There’s a video of Lakoff describing the strict father versus equal parent families from 2006.
https://youtu.be/5f9R9MtkpqM?si=OMapikrtQTVDH47J
Lakoff also presents his model in his book, Moral Politics.
These moral intuitions are deeply held, and we've got a huge challenge to establish a working dialog with each other to address how their expression engenders a view of the other side as morally offensive. There is truth to valuing both self-sufficiency and empathy.
We see other forces at work, of course, driven, as Heather implies, by the ancient system of kings versus peasants. Human beings historically don't have to live in hierarchical systems, an argument made by a recent book exploring ancient civilizations, The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
Some people are passionately drawn to a hierarchical society of extremes of haves and have-nots. Seems like a fitting world for predators, as long as you're not the one being predated. Some seem to get a bang out of living in a well heeled family where you own kin might be your assassin. Others, the more puzzling ones, passionately defend this system, even though they suffer greatly under it. Hard to tell if that some kind of masochism or implanted delusion, but I suspect it's primarily the latter since the delusions are no accident, and from time to time, the suckers get good and sick of being used.
JL, I suspect that the Christian religion as practiced by fundamentalists might influence that mechanism that "skews" people in that direction.
Stockholm syndrome, maybe?
Lakoff also wrote a book I think needs a wider audience is Whose Freedom.
“ Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has relentlessly invoked the word "freedom." Al-Qaeda attacked us because "they hate our freedom." The U.S. can strike preemptively because "freedom is on the march." Social security should be privatized in order to protect individual freedoms. The 2005 presidential inaugural speech was a kind of crescendo: the words "freedom," "free," and "liberty," were used forty-nine times in President Bush's twenty-minute speech.
In Whose Freedom?, Lakoff surveys the political landscape and offers an essential map of the Republican battle plan that has captured the hearts and minds of Americans--and shows how progressives can fight to reinvigorate this most beloved of American political ideas. George Lakoff is the author of Don't Think of an Elephant and Moral Politics, as well as many seminal books on linguistics. He lives and teaches in Berkeley, California. Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has relentlessly invoked the word "freedom." The United States can strike preemptively because "freedom is on the march." Social security should be privatized and taxes for the wealthy cut in order to enhance individual freedoms. Intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in the name of freedom of speech. The 2005 presidential inaugural speech was a kind of crescendo: the words "freedom," "free," and "liberty" were used forty-nine times in President Bush's twenty-minute speech. "Freedom" is one of the most contested words in American political discourse. For many Democrats, it seems that President Bush's use of the word is meaningless and contradictorydeployed opportunistically to justify American military action abroad and the curtailing of civil liberties at home. But in Whose Freedom?, George Lakoff, a linguist and cognitive scientist, reveals that in fact the right has effected a devastatingly coherent and ideological redefinition of freedom. Disregarding the progressive ideal of freedom taken for granted throughout our history, the conservative revolution has made "freedom" its central weapon on the front lines of everything from the war on terror to the battles over religion in the classroom and abortion. In his analysis, Lakoff describes how the country is divided by two dramatically different worldviews, cognitive frames that determine how we think about economic policy, religion, science, foreign affairsand freedom. He reveals the mechanisms behind the right-wing hijacking of our most cherished political idea. And he shows how progressives not only have failed at every turn to counter this attack, but also have failed to recognize its nature and, even worse, have failed to articulate their own intuitive understanding of freedom. Whose Freedom? argues what progressives must do to take back ground in this high-stakes war over the most central idea in American life. "For Lakoff, [George W.] Bush's idea of freedom is deeply problematicantithetical, in fact, to the 'progressive freedom' that Lakoff argues has defined America and made it great. This progressive definition of freedomthe more or less continuous expansion of rights, opportunity and citizen enfranchisementstood unchallenged for many years. But now, that freedom is 'up for grabs,' and Lakoff is worried: 'To lose freedom is a terrible thing; to lose the idea of freedom is even worse' . . . In a series of chapters on economics, religion, foreign policy and personal freedom, Lakoff compares the implications of the liberal and conservative definitions of freedom . . . Lakoff is right to identify freedom as a concept that liberals need to think about more." Michael Tomasky, The Washington Post Book World "For Lakoff, [George W.] Bush's idea of freedom is deeply problematicantithetical, in fact, to the 'progressive freedom' that Lakoff argues has defined America and made it great. This progressive definition of freedomthe more or less continuous expansion of rights, opportunity and citizen enfranchisementstood unchallenged for many years. But now, that freedom is 'up for grabs,' and Lakoff is worried: 'To lose freedom is a terrible thing; to lose the idea of freedom is even worse' . . . In a series of chapters on economics, religion, foreign policy and personal freedom, Lakoff compares the implications of the liberal and conservative definitions of freedom . . . Lakoff is right to identify freedom as a concept that liberals need to think about more. It's to liberals' shame that the words 'freedom' and 'liberty' are more closely associated with today's American right than with today's American left, so I admired the polemical intent of Whose Freedom?"Michael Tomasky, The Washington Post Book World ”
https://www.powells.com/book/whose-freedom-9780312426477
Ed, read American Crusade by Andrew L. Seidel. Religious freedom seen as having the right to discriminate (against anyone or any group the Old Testament god dislikes?). SCOTUS has used this concept to justify case law prohibiting health restrictions, chipping away at equal protection, supporting the anti-Muslim travel ban, and generally tearing down the wall between Church (Christian, of course) and State.
thanks, will add it to my list!
"Freedom" is just one of many words that are thrown around with only implied definition, in in politics, words seem selected as often to mislead as to inform. My personal view is that as the word "freedom" ("or liberty") applied as a social principle is inclusive or it's not meaningfully freedom. An autocrat, or oligarchy may experience absolute impunity, at the cost of subjugation of the many; so "freedom"? No.
Moreover, freedom is an environment of freedom from as well as freedom to; as in freedom from being attacked just walking down a street. Freedom TO speak with freedom FROM legal retaliation, in most cases. We should have freedom TO breathe, with freedom FROM breathing pollution that will shorten our lives. Freedom to fully exercise unalienable rights without some creep taking that away from us. So societal freedom implies, and in fact requires abiding responsibilities. We are free to pursue happiness within the boundaries of responsible behavior.
What is and isn't responsible may be ambiguous along the interface of the two, but other choices are clearly one or the other; and a system of collective choice inevitably involves shared responsibilities. We, as an ostensibly self-determining society, share responsibilities to the whole of our society, along with a share of personal choice.
A corporation is a societal license to do business in certain ways, but is pretty obviously not itself a person, People who act under corporate rules are no less responsible to society than anyone; more so if they do things that can affect many.
Obama's AG Eric Holder said:
"But it remains true that, at some institutions that engaged in inappropriate conduct before, and may yet again, the buck still stops nowhere. Responsibility remains so diffuse, and top executives so insulated, that any misconduct could again be considered more a symptom of the institution’s culture than a result of the willful actions of any single individual."
No human responsibility? BS!
Lakoff has great insight and clarity. His ideas have been read and rejected by leaders in the Democratic Party since his major works became widespread. I suspect he would be labeled “woke” by the powers that be.
Do you have links to share for any references in that regard?
This was a hot topic some 15 or so years ago. You can google “democrats and Lakoff.”
See: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2010/1/30/832359/-
I have long thought the whole “framing” concept was very insightful. “Don’t think of an elephant” is a great intro.
I agree about the power of framing to subtly bias ideas. Frank Luntz was a master with such corrosive gems as “tax relief” for lowering taxes. Relief implies a malady.
His “death tax” moniker for the estate tax was perhaps his most pernicious. What!? Democrats even tax you for dying!? How low can they go?
Thanks, I never liked Rahm Emmanuel. A good metaphor is the brood parasite cuckoo bird.
“The metaphor for a bird nest predator of eggs is a cuckoo's egg, which represents brood parasitism. Brood parasitism is when a parasitic bird lays its eggs in another bird's nest, and the host bird incubates and feeds the cuckoo chick. The host bird may even sacrifice its own offspring in the process.” AI text
Really great post, Gary. There's no way to overemphasize "Religious fundamentalists who believe that people are fundamentally bad." They can't let themselves off the hook, or even allow themselves consensual pleasure, so they're damn well not going to let anyone else off the hook for their twisted definition of transgression. Except, of course, for Dear Leader and whomever he installs.
Alexandra, not dear leader but VILLIAN
Loved that book, exploring all the models of governance people have tried to function as a society. Also, challenges the progression from hunter gatherer to farming society. May be time for a reread as I try to shelter from the events of the next couple of years.
Right now “Moral Politics” is available free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited. Just downloaded it.
Thanks, Jean!
What do you mean by “…challenges the progression from hunter gatherer to farming society.”?
Certainly hunter gatherer societies preceded agricultural societies. And the sedentary nature of agricultural societies enabled a much greater division of labor, as well
As much higher local
Population densities and thus fostered social progress that was hitherto impossible.
Gary, great post. I like the way you’ve captured the deeply moral (even if only superficially held) values of both sides. Yet too often today the patriarchal and benevolent “father” goes beyond rewarding self-reliance and becomes the judge, jury and executioner for behavior outside his personal standards. The strict father slides into absolute control and abuse. Punishment is meted out for questioning his authority. That’s where things are heading now - and it scares the s$&t out of me. True confession: I’ve always been the rebellious child.
These values are deeply held, not shallow. When you invoke a frame, an unconscious filter learned when growing up in a family and community, you tap into feeling intuitions and identity.
Exactly. Sociopathy is the bane of humanity, no? Yet is the not some shades of "Mr. Hyde" in us all? We learn, or are suppose to learn to civilize the "reptile" elements of our nature. We expect kids to do it anyway, but amid the vicissitudes of life, the reptile finds purchase, and reptilian impulses try to dress it up purdy:
"The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits."
- Milton Friedman
So if such an entity is legally a person, is not that "person" a sociopath?
…to maximize profits FOR SHAREHOLDERS ONLY. No other stakeholders count for anything in Friedman’s view.
That mindset helped devastate American manufacturing and create the rustbelt when corporations realized they could increase profits by moving production overseas to low wage countries, where workers made mere pennies per hour with zero benefits.
“ AI Overview
The Friedman doctrine, also known as the shareholder theory, is a business ethics theory developed by Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman:
Explanation: The doctrine states that a business's only social responsibility is to maximize profits for its shareholders while staying within the rules. Friedman believed that shareholders are the backbone of a business and should be treated with respect. He also argued that executives should be held accountable for their decisions, which should align with the desires of their employers.
The Friedman doctrine shaped corporate governance, business education, and financial markets for decades. However, the doctrine has been increasingly challenged in the 21st century. Critics argue that the doctrine's narrow focus can lead to negative externalities, such as: environmental degradation, income inequality, and lack of accountability for social and ethical responsibilities.
Some say that the global pandemic has shown that the system needs to be transformed, and that companies must reposition themselves to meet the needs of the world.”
Decrying this view is a 2023 book: THE BIG MYTH, How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market by Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway. They also wrote Merchants of Doubt which is also excellent.
plus, data has shown over and over that it is middle class disposable income that turns/runs an economy, not the spending of the much smaller wealthy class. yes, they are buying million-dollar homes and expensive cars and such, but it does not tip the scale against the sheer volume of 'most of the people'. the current situation will shrink the financial health of the middle class -wait and see- and then the check will come to the table.
Gratefully, I was able to invest for my retirement during my 20 years in the military and my second 20 year career. I was also injured during my time in service and have service connected disabilities, I also collect social security and depend upon Medicare and Tricare for my health care needs. Musk and a butt load of Con Don’s proposed cabinet have no military service, don’t have to depend on Medicare and Tricare or disability pay. But they sure would be happy to strip as much of my benefits as they can to enrich themselves. Our congress needs to use the power of the filibuster to prevent damaging legislation to be enacted and protect our hard earned rights.
I wouldn't expect the filibuster to last long in the Trump 2 world. When you barely have a majority, super majority concepts are an obstacle to avoid if possible. And the filibuster will be gone as soon as it creates an obstacle to Trump's plans.
Meanwhile, at The New York Times-sponsored DealBook Summit, multibillionaire Jeff Bezos, on any given day the world's second-wealthiest person behind Elon Musk, described President-elect Trump as "calmer than he was the first time – more confident, more settled” and expressed the desire to "help" Trump pursue his agenda. Anyone who had suspected Bezos, The Washington Post's owner, of brazen self-interest and craven opportunism for abruptly pulling the plug on the endorsement of Harris, already written by the editorial board, turns out to be absolutely correct. Welcome to the oligarchy.
Bezos lost the best thing he had going for him when Mackenzie left.
He seems intent on setting a record for the longest, most embarrassing midlife crisis.
Muskrat wins that one
Yeah, but Bezos is trying real hard...
Indeed he is, what a clown car
I truly hate the prospect of telling a couple of people, "I told ya so".
One guy who is the son of a dear friend is a big donvict supporters.
His mom lives with him, his wife, their two young sons and a 21 year old (no job) from a previous marriage.
Wife works for the school district. He used to work for the schools but wanted to be his own boss so he quit and now drives uber/lyft.
He doesn't have insurance and neither does the 21 year old.
His two young sons are both on medicaid and have IEP's
So after the donvict takes a knife to medicaid and the DOE, I wonder what he will say because he told me that the donvict didn't support project 2025.
Sad that people listen to faux snooze to get their angertainment from, only to be the ones who end up getting hurt.
The very notion of someone driving Uber "being their own boss" is right up there with Peter Pan and Tinkerbell and pixie dust! You are a f*^#ing taxi cab driver without the benefits. They call you an "independent contractor" to avoid paying you minimum wage and giving you health benefits.
"But the libs don't own me and my manhood is intact", so he believes.
FAFO, so I hear
I just wish we didn't all have to suffer.
MAGA wishes that too, and TFFG knows exactly who should. 😏
Anybody but them
Sadly, the middle class will be expected to foot the bill for all the brilliant ideas from muskrat and his co-destroyer. Thereby destroying any hope of recovery, at least in our lifetimes, and likely our children.
As Christmas approaches, I suggest seeing the GOP and its billionaire supporters as believing what Scrooge believed… that we live in a world in which there cannot possibly be enough for all. As Scrooge comments in the story, "If people are going to die, then let them do so and decrease the surplus population". (I’m paraphrasing)
The believe that there can never be enough for everyone denies the lessons offered by scientific visionaries such as Buckminster Fuller and Gerard Piel, the publisher of Scientific American magazine. 
They began writing in the 1960s about how scientific advancement had made "scarcity of resources" a no longer true foundation for human society. They knew that if science was allowed to function worldwide in the synergistic approach available, all of humanity could shift to a sociological design based on sufficiency, trending towards abundance rather than scarcity.
Bucky inspired a core group of scientists who today are developing the tools and techniques to make that transformational sociological design change. However, their work never gets in the news. The aim of the work I am doing between now and 2026 (when America turns 250) is designed to create a breakthrough in public awareness of this option. Transforming society is possible, but only if enough people learn that that possibility exists. Here’s Bucky in the late 1970s taking about this opportunity. The video is 2 1/2 minutes long.
https://youtu.be/LQ3DXDONKmQ
No amount of scientific advancement is going to compensate for the human population having expanded well beyond the Earth's realistic carrying capacity.
You have your facts wrong. And it’s not your fault. It’s our education system, which doesn’t teach Systems Thinking. Search on Russell Ackoff on YouTube. What you’ll learn will literally blow your mind (your world view). You’ll thank me later.
Good for you, Steve, and the good work you note.
I'd love to see link between this work -- scientists working out ways away from the atavism of scarcity-thinking -- and how we might work out other ways away from the goons, criminals, and sociopaths newly ascendant now in this very old republic.
Thank you, Phil. As a start, search for William McDonough’s Cradle to Cradle Design work… and Amory Lovins’ Rocky Mountain Institute. www.rmi.org
Until we address the legacy of trauma in this country, we’re going to keep electing sociopathic daddy figures to “save us from ourselves” by abusing us. I fully agree with the promised abundant future that’s possible. We need a national movement of healing first.
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/06/authoritarianism-roots-origin
Thank you for making this point. Psychological trauma absolutely holds us back from having the kind of progress that’s possible. I do not think one must come before the other, however. I know from my own life that having hope (from the options we see presented to us) helps drive healing. We need to both eliminate the psychological elements that hold us back and strengthen those that can power us forward.
Google: "Resourceism"
Except their core idea is that people (women) need to have more babies in order to create more worker bees all while screaming to deport the worker bees we have because they’re not white. Then they forget that if you don’t care for the worker bees they will die. None of it makes sense to me. Greed, lust in the form of rape, and endless drug abuse are all so prominent in this ruling class that it’s sickening.
They seem to forget that it would take about 20 years to get all those babies into the work force. Oh wait, my bad. They want to put children to work. Nice start: Musk starting a school where preschoolers learn to sweep.
Not with all those new laws allowing child labor.
Interesting, but…
Thank you, Professor such a great historical read. I always put the blame for the change in modern times on the shoulders of Ronald Reagan. And he allowed unlimited spending to political parties. Destroyed the psychiatric institutions for people who really needed help. Now they are on the streets. How can we not care for people indeed? That really unleveled the playing field. It makes me sad. I’ve said before I’m OK with capitalism. But I believe in a compassionate capitalism. And I was going to write more until the end of your article made me decide that, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, is something we must never lose. It’s one of our few safety valves to keep some balance in this country for the people in need. Just because people are poor doesn’t mean they don’t work, and it doesn’t mean that they don’t want to achieve more. We must give them that chance. Thank you. I will spread this word to the people that I can in a positive and forthright way. Again, thank you so much for keeping my spirit alive.
Well said, Sav. "Keeping my spirit alive" is why I come here and engage every morning. I definite ancillary benefit is I learn something from both the Professor and my fellow Readers!
And in 20 states, 1.6 million people work for $7.25 an hour, the Federal minimum wage.
If you live in a box and dumpster dive, you can't live on $14K a year.
A post graduate history paper… every morning! Amazing that with just 15 minutes of reading LETTERS, I’m more informed than any other time during my life. #grateful
Thank you Dr Richardson.
Ted, you spoke my heart! These letters are a mini-seminar every morning! Thank you, Professor!
Ted, I view this as auditing a graduate level history class (reading the Letter From an American" and then going out for coffee/beer afterwards (reading and engaging in the Comment section with fellow Readers).
Let me add a brief historical note: Sumner had an important opponent, Lester Frank Ward, professor at Brown University and one of the founders of sociology in the U.S. Ward strongly opposed Sumner's individualistic reading of Darwin as a struggle of all against all, and argued instead that the improvement of society worked best when government was mobilized to aid its weakest rather than its strongest members. Unfortunately, his work, and the fact that this position even existed in Sumner's day, have disappeared from public memory. Just saying.
Thank you, Dr. Richardson. In other words, trump and company, plan to turn America into the feudal economic system where a small minority group of 'aristocrats' hold most of the wealth, a slightly larger group of the 'merchant class' hold between them 90% f the wealth, while 80% olf the population struggle in serfdom. Good luck with that. America will soon become a third world country.
Fay, yes and the majority of voters chose the villain to run the country into the ground.
One of the most compelling and enduring American myths is the myth of the self-made millionaire. The robber barons of the 1800’s got obscenely rich on the backs of workers, including children, earning subsistence wages working six and seven days a week, often in unsafe, unhealthy conditions. Yet these very wealthy men all characterized themselves as “self-made”.
There is no such thing as a “self-made” millionaire/billionaire. Period! Full stop!
The progressive income tax merely returns value from where value was derived. If you pay a lot it means you made a lot. Be grateful. Stop complaining.
It is so enervating. Having this lay of the land so eloquently mapped out really puts pay to the myth that the Trump administration V 2.0 and his allies in Congress are fighting for the "working class" (What ever that is...see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/03/american-working-class.) I wish Musk and Isaacman would set up their office on Mars ASAP, takin Vivek with them.
Except they will merely send their enemies to Mars. Mars, the concentration camps going forward.
In other words, a government run by and for billionaires.
Heather does well to cite the sociopathy behind the picks of the convicted criminal.
He, the orange felon, seems to be an exception. Exceptionally pampered, spoiled as a boy.
But he keeps finding misfits and low-lifes uncannily like him. From many Republicans who apparently grew up similarly. They, too, hold American institutions in contempt, hold themselves above the law – certainly above the laws of human decency.
But it gets worse.
As schools in all modern countries have kicked humanities off the curriculum, they have also vaulted more standardized testing instead.
This testing does something rigorously, demonically consistent. It abstracts all life into categories. Nothing human. Nothing personal. Nothing natural. Just super logical, super rational groupings. “Life” is but packaging. Unit-by-unit chronological linearity. Add to that how schools virtually nowhere ask anyone to read any books anymore whole. No one learns to see any larger contexts – because standardized testing limits logic, rationality, and analysis to machine gradable snippets only.
Boys suffer from this neutering much more than girls. Guys all over the world glom away onto their phones. No social life, no human desire, no dating.
So true. Then when their sexuality literally grabs them by the balls they have no emotional landscape in which to negotiate its visceral demands. They turn instead to simplistic, often deeply misogynistic, representations of sexuality seen in video games or film as behavioral examples to follow. This brutalization harms everyone.
They have no healthy role models — mentors to explain, this is how you handle those urges without hurting other people. What they see is “influencers” telling them they and and should just “take what they want.”
Bullying toxic masculinity leads to deep harm for everyone regardless of gender or age.
“Exceptionally pampered as a boy” — materially, perhaps, but also emotionally starved, humiliated, bullied.
I would not exclude Mr 47 from the sociopathic roll call, tho.
Heather’s sighting of Jennifer Rubin’s quote highlighting the lack of legacy media coverage around the “Investing in America” agenda/outcomes compels me to write and ask what we can do to motivate the media to dial up communications on the topic.
I really miss Jennifer Rubin's 3 or 4 columns a day in the WAPO as well as Catherine Rampell's columns. The fact that the professor apparently reads the WAPO and The NY Times as well as lots of other corporate media columnists makes me miss them even more. Thankfully, many have moved to other media like Substack.
I'm not sure if this helps, but we need to stop supporting corporate media. Many people have that post here. The next thing we need to do is quit supporting X and move to Blue Sky.
Hope Jennifer does, ditching WaPo