Reading this this morning reminds me of what I went to sleep watching from the US Capitol. The respect being shown to Office Brian Sicknick is what's right about America. The fact that this is happening shows how we need to repair so much in America. And having President Biden and the First Lady show up, and show up quietly, shows we have competent, caring and decent leadership back in the White House. January 6 is a date that we must remember as a day that terror struck this country -- and it was instigated by the then-still-President of the United States. Let us learn. Let us place a higher value on facts and truth. Let no government employee like Ms. Conway ever try to say there was something truthful in alternative facts. Brian Sicknick died for his country. A country the President takes the oath of office to protect.
Good morning Sharon...Like you, I want to remember January 6 as a day when we saw the threat of domestic terrorism become real ending in murder and deaths. It's a day in which we saw the then-President of the United States equate patriots with being people who were White Supremacists and those wearing t-shirts embracing the awfulness of Nazi Germany. And i hope Donald Trump is convicted in his Senate Impeachment Trial and that he is indicted for his criminality that he has displayed throughout his adult life. I truly don't think there is an individual who i have hated in my lifetime as much as him, yet, I also think we need to be careful about the suggestion above as we need all of us to stand above his actions and point to a better way. Let the Majorie Greens, the Tommy Tubervilles and the Matt Gaetzs be the awful ones and we will remain the ones who our next generations can be proud of.
What we need is for the Senators to hold trump responsible and vote their conscience not their political future. I hope all their constituents are calling them.
The Capitol Hill switchboard allows you to connect to anyone, not just your legislators. Wait for option 3 to get a live operator and just say their name and state. These days, it will be a chance to leave a message. Mitch’s mailbox is always full.
As children we would build a cloth and straw figure of Guido each Nov 5 and burn him on the big local, communal bonfire celebrating with fireworks. mr Faukes after all was part of a Catholic plot to blow up the Protestant Houses of Parliament during a "sitting".Guess what who's effigy will go on the burning inferno on Jan 6th celebrations? How are the kids going to copy the orange " foxtail"?
I think burning him in effigy is more likely to turn him into even more of a counter-culture hero. I'd rather he just goes down in history as a complete failure, financial, political, and psychological.
Maybe for a little while, but I think in time he'll be seen as a bad joke. A dangerously bad joke. I really like the idea of burning him in effigy. I'll mark my calendar.
Kellyanne Conway ought to be remembered as the leader of the United States' Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, just as Joseph Goebbels is remembered for being the Nazi head of the German ministry in 1932. She worked hard to rock the American public off the foundation of objective facts and truth and she should be accorded much credit for the success of the Regime in promoting self-serving lies.
Always pretty obvious whenever Trump opened his mouth, as to whether he was using his own words (minimalist and repetitive vocabulary), or those of his speech “manipulators” (grandiose and for him almost unpronounceable).
The Terror struck me way back on Nov. 3, 2016. King of Q was so obviously a baby Hitler in speeches and rallies and propaganda. But Jan. 6, 2021 was the full Krystallnacht of the republican seditionist coup on our country. I do not see it tamed unless we convict ALL those seditionists to show others there are consequences to commit felonies and attempted murders against our government and our elected officials. This behavior MUST end. They only understand strongarms. We need to show force via legal means, harsh and loud.
Here I am naive again, should seditionists lose their country after trying to overthrow it? Let them be immigrant refugees, scale walls somewhere looking for political asylum from the USA. See which countries will take them. That ex-military and law enforcement people participated in this coup is so appalling and says something about teaching people how to strategize and kill. How do we de-program our warriors when they return to us? And what the hell is wrong with SOME of our police? White supremacists are attracted to positions of power via their fears. And we are witnessing them being trigger-happy terrorists versus Officers of the Peace? Our challenges are many, thank goodness there are more of us than them. But we have so much work to do....
Definitely. We all remember where we were when we heard, how we reacted, how our teachers, classmates, and families reacted. I am ashamed to admit that in my tiny, developing 3rd grade mind, I thought it was a good thing that my parents would be happy about and I actually cheered! Then we were called in from recess and my Catholic classmates (who outnumbered the rest of us) and my teacher were all crying. We listened to a tearful announcement over the intercom by our principal and were sent home early. When I got home, my anti-Catholic, anti-Democrat, anti-Kennedy parents were also crying. That was a real wake-up moment for me - that my parents' vociferous disagreement with the religious and political views of our President did not include a wish for him to die. The honestly deeply-felt anguish they expressed as we later watched the funeral procession with brave young John-John holding his mother's hand moved me and confused me at the same time. However, by the time Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated so soon after that dark November, I had learned that religion and politics were not worth killing for. My parents and I disagreed over so many aspects of religion and politics, but I never doubted their essential decentness toward their compatriots.
We are witnessing one of the greatest instances of mass insanity in history. If we assume a certain number of wealthy people and racists voted for Trump out of perceived self-interest, knowing full well that Trump is a pathological liar, that leaves roughly 30-40% of the American electorate whom we can consider to be literally delusional, wacko, bonkers, nut cases.
Failure to convict Trump in the Senate and/or try him in a court of law would be a disaster, confirmation that our system of government, our Constitution and our way of life are a total failure. National suicide.
So if our legitimately elected Senators choose to acquit the former president, we will dissent. We will protest. We will perhaps say the conviction was stolen. What we will not do is storm the Capitol armed with weapons. What we will not do is call for physical harm to our legitimately elected Senators. What we will not do is attempt to destroy our democracy.
We will apply Stacey Abrams grassroots efforts and VOTE THEM OUT. This is how our democratic republic works. Starting now we resist R's efforts at voter suppression and gerrymandering. MI will now have a citizen commission redrawing district lines instead of the legislature. We worked hard starting in 2016 to get a bill passed in2018 to do this. Join a local Demoratic Club, work to find candidates to sponser at the local level, tell others in a respectful manner why you vote Democratic. It takes the village to govern itself. Become involved.
Sally, thank you for bringing Stacey Abrams into the conversation. She is my leadership role model, and I look to working with and for Fair Fight, Indivisible, Vote Forward, and Vote Save America on the 2022 midterm elections. Voting issues are my chosen activist focus, because I believe every issue I care about comes down to policy and who is elected to represent me from the local to the national level. ❤️🤍💙
Thank you. I would like to see Stacy Abrams take FairFight national, to get every state to pass a "tri-partisan" Redistricting Commission like Michigan's. Let's continue our donations to this truly democratic cause!
Gerrymandering is major a threat but it takes time. Many Repug-controlled state legislatures are trying to enact more oppressive voter-suppression measures right now. But as the estimable Ms Abrams showed in GA (twice), Dems can win a "Fair Fight" by expanding registration and turnout. (She actually did it a third time in 2018, but Brian Kemp dropped 300,000+ voters off the rolls. If they had voted her margin of victory would have been substantial.)
Better than nothing but I still strongly believe that trump should be held accountable in some way for his incitement (and other wrongs) or this will be perpetuated.
Btw, Stuart, I live in VT which votes mostly Democrat despite being very rural with lots of struggling farmers. We do have white supremacy groups, 200 of whom inculding a state trooper took buses to the Capitol. I know, "'tis a puzzlement..."
Hi Sally, I too live in VT. I was so concerned about our republican Governor Scott replacing Sen Leahy with a republican if he became too ill to serve. Looks like he is back in the saddle. Wishing him, and all of us, good health while we tackle...EVERYTHING before us.
Gov. Scott has said he'd replace Leahy and Sanders with Dems if they were incapacitated, but an election would have to happen within 6 months, not the end of the term of office.
Glad to hear about Leahy, Penelope. I remember many moons ago seeing a newly elected Leahy at subcommittee hearings. So funny, he's among the very few I do remember from those days!
There's something about the abundance of old Volvo' and Saab's on the roads. I always love coming to Vermont. I often used to "drop down" to Burlington; buying textiles, towels and sheets at the factory outlets.
I truly hope all the lawsuits being discussed for the past couple of years come to fruition. Bleed him dry of money, opportunities, a voice. Sure I would love to see him be convicted so that he can never hold office again and so that he is not privy to a pension, SS protection, or a travel allowance. But that's not going to happen. My prediction is that the moment the senate votes not to convict he will announce his presidential run for 2024 and we'll all be thrown back into his sh*t show again.
I would give you a "like" but I do not want that last sentence to be manifested ever! Shooosh! Visualize him in a small room surrounded by four walls like any other criminal most deserving.
And if we begin burning effigies in this country, it should represent all seditionists that who are Nazis, KKK, alt right (Reich), white supremacists, and looney tune Q'ers. Include, of course, the current trumplicans who signed on to overthrowing our fair election, use slave-era gerrymandering and are suppressing votes. In essence, anti-democracy pinheads with guns and bombs.
Gerrymandering: I read a letter to Judge Santelle by Samuel Isscharoff a few days ago (Racial Gerrymandering in a Complex World: A Reply to Judge
Sentelle, Catholic University Law Review, 1996) that the racial argument against gerrymandering... "From Nazi Germany to South African apartheid-and, by implication to the Jim Crow South as well-the defining feature of these odious forms of oppression always has been: a nasty, brutish power grab." I agree with his ideas that redistricting is racist, oppressive and with computers is odious. Tuskegee, Alabama has one district that has 32 sides!!!
Issacharoff states that white supremacists' officials goals in gerrymandering are twofold:
1. "Cracking" (i.e. diluting the voting power of the opposing party's supporters across many districts) and "packing" (concentrating the opposing party's voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts).
Isn't it time for a cool change for our citizens of color? Have they and our indigenous people paid a very high price? Is it not their turn for us to right the wrongs of our colonial ancestors? Do they not deserve for all of us to stand up and fight for them to be equal? To have equal opportunities in voting, jobs, and feeling safe driving or walking down the street in our country and not profiled and bullied by police and peers?
Let's end our 200+ year old American Apartheids. We can be much better than our colonial history. (And that history must be taught to our people, in honesty).
I think in case of acquittal I may begin to look elsewhere in the world for a better example of democracy, one where voting is a birthright and not subject to gerrymandering or any other sort of party-specific shenanigans, where every vote carries equal weight regardless of geographical provenance, where mere acreage and cows cannot vote, only people, where 200-year-old racist institutions no longer condition our politics, where basic facts and statistics prevail over lies, half-truths and scary, crazy conspiracy theories and where all necessary public services - including internet platforms - are subject to regulation consistent with the constitution and laws of said democracy.
Perhaps we need to look to all of the social democracies, such as Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, etc. There are so many! Wonderful examples of the melding of democracy with regulated capitalism.
I agree. Democratic socialism works and brings greater social fairness - and happiness if certain indexes are accurate - than our current crony capitalism.
I think we need to stay away from the ‘socialism’ until we have defined it in American terminology. I like “democratic capitalism” and then explain the difference between democracy and crony capitalism (crony capitalism). What do you think of that?
74 million voters and 88 million Twitter followers are all drinking the Kool-Aid. And then there’s Fox News, and Newsmax, and OAN and the millions upon millions of people who watch that swill. If you order the right-wing news cable package of channels, they might as well label it the Kool-Aid Package.
Look to who funds all of those propaganda machines. We need to corral around the head of the snakes (all the oligarchs --Mercers, Kochs, Murdoch, etc.) and squeeze them. They will only understand mass revolution against them--stop the flow of money to them, reveal what they do everyday and their crazy conspiracies and propaganda.
We, as a world need to figure out how to handle the propaganda of the internet. I have no idea, but maybe we need a second internet that is for REALITY and TRUTH and let this old one die out. (Spoken from total ignorance, but all options during a potential brainstorm should be entertained!).
You are dead on target. That's where the Good Guys have finally turned to common sense. Nowadays organizations with integrity are playing by the Republican playbook and attacking the Republicans where it really hurts, their funding. If I didn't have my father, I would not understand this side of Republicans. I am far too principled. I have walked away from very large amounts of money several times, because it was the best choice. My father values money above nearly all else, family being the only obvious exception. He would never say these words, but a person's net worth and their assets is his #1 standard. The people he admires the most are the (mostly men) who are wealthy in the material sense.
The only thing I have seen get under McConnell's skin is the label "Moscow Mitch." He must be ashamed of taking money from Russia. He also doesn't want that news to become public knowledge, obviously, it wouldn't sit well with the older Republican generation of voters who see Russia as the enemy dating back to the Cold War.
As for the "propaganda of the internet," I could not agree more that there is a serious problem. Even the employees in the big companies like FB and Tw have been pressuring their own management because of the serious social damage of their business policy. The Twitter owner guy was whining about cutting off Tя☭mp, what an idiot. Does this dork have the slightest clue how Putin's propaganda machine is affecting the U.S. democracy by using commercials to encourage voters to drink Kool-Aid?
Not sure it's the "greatest" (i.e. worst) incident of mass insanity, but it ranks in that class. I suspect the Rwandan genocide of 1994 was worse, for instance. But it certainly takes the cake in the United States.
Please forgive my hyperbole. Perhaps I should have said that recent events are the most extreme example in US history of nearly half of the electorate supporting and voting for (twice!) a presidential candidate who is petty, unhinged, evil, uninformed, self-centered, unpatriotic and stupid, though his feral instincts and ability to sniff out the weak points in others are well developed.
I am not a psychologist, so I should perhaps not attribute insanity to people I don't know personally, but selfish, thoughtless, irresponsible, racist and demagogic are attributes I think I know when I encounter them.
And yes, the Rwandan genocide was far worse than 4 years of Trump, but it could have been prevented - or at least limited - by certain former colonial and other western powers who failed to intervene. I am not sure that the USA is necessarily immune from similar genocidal tendencies, though I am quite sure no one will intervene to save us if we decide to go down that road.
A great deal of Trump's support was also certain people's innate, egocentric approach to politics and the society in which they "exist". There are three rules that dominate their conscious...
"I'm all right, Jack" is the first rule, "devil take the hindmost" the second and
"i don't want to pay for it" is the third
Lots of "good samartans" passing on the other side of the road!
Psychosis? Insanity? I'm not qualified to offer those judgments. But may I suggest what we witnessing is at its base, a crisis of spirit. In Buddhist thought, there are three 'poisons' which give rise to all suffering. Roughly translated from the Sanskrit: Greed, hate, and delusion. We see them in full bloom now coming from people without a spiritual anchor, conscious connection to the cosmos nor reverence for their fellow humans. Hopi legend has it that we are on the cusp of the coming of the 'Fifth World'. Hang on it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Absolutely! We are certainly heading for that open door now and before we restore ourselves individually and collectively to some important level of harmony...a lot of things are going to change.
Thank you D and J, it is indeed frightening. The "perceived self-interest" segment likely is larger still. It's less likely that so many people are clinically insane. We all are prone to dismissing aberration as insanity, but Trumpsky's bitter-enders, especially the insurrectionists, are capable of distinguishing between right and wrong. No one gets off the hook due to mental incompetence.
The Rwanda genocide is not well understood in America. Cast as a mass hysteria or hallucination, in fact there was much central planning and direction, not mere spontaneous mayhem, though some did occur. The genocidaires manipulated longstanding (but not primordial) ethnic tensions in time of war, but Hutus didn't murder Tutsis simply "because they've always hated and killed each other." German and Belgian colonial policies helped set the stage for tragedy, so its history is long but not immemorial, and can be understood in rational terms.
It is meaningful that Holocaust museums, including in Paris, Warsaw, and Los Angeles, have exhibits and events to raise awareness about the Rwanda Genocide.
We clearly cannot learn enough about how to prevent such atrocities.
When talking of Rwanda and the genocide you can't leave Burundi out of the equation or for that matter the eastern regions of the Congo. The relationship between the Tutsi and Hutu tribe in all three areas has been one of rivalry and domination ...and even slavery...for centuries; it is far from the first time they have massacred each other. However what is particularly offensive and indeed sickening, over and above the horror of the killings, this time is that all those who could have stopped the affaire...the French Military presence and powers in the area amongst others... did nothing to prevent or stop it while it was apparently clear that it was coming.
The pullout of French forces from southern Rwanda as genocide commenced was especially outrageous, though it's been defended as fulfilling bilateral treaty obligations. A few years after Rwanda's 1994 genocide, Pres Clinton apologized, describing his policy as a failed attempt at intervention. No. It was a successful attempt at noninternvention. Rwandans didn't have valuable resources, simply didn't matter enough to US decisionmakers. A Frontline documentary (from the late 1990s?) has Clinton's speech and much else, including the inimitable Will Lyman.
I am not informed about the circumstances of these genocides, but I will say this: the more time passes since Clinton was president, the more I mistrust him and the more naïve I think we were in selecting him. With the passage of time, he looks more and more like a sicko and a self-serving opportunist. Someday after he’s gone the definitive full story of William Jefferson Clinton will come out, like the fact that he f***ked everything that moved, including likely a small army of underage girls in Epstein’s universe. Has anyone else seen that photograph of Bill Clinton wearing a blue women’s dress, a large framed item that was in Epstein’s New York residence? Sometimes when I see something of this nature, it looks fun and playful. But when Bill does it, for some reason I see depths of depravity that shock me. And I’m not easily shocked that way, certainly not by cross dressing. Something is way off.
It's a toss-up between the King of Belgium, the President of France and the Kaiser Wilhelm....but Rwanda and Burundi i think have 2 of the very few boundaries in Africa that actually respect ancient kingdom divisions. The role of "kings" is still very important in Africa especially with societal and property issues. I came across this a great deal in West Africa.
I started looking at population statistics for Germany in the 30s. Then I remembered that Germany controlled a healthy portion of Europe. Now there is an example of mass insanity out of control, starting to take over a whole continent.
David Herrick makes excellent points but you seem more sharply aware than most people of the painful reality that collective psychosis is a far greater problem than the madness of individuals; the exception being when a deluded deluder casts his net over an entire population beset by deep underlying mind poisons of fear, hatred and resentment and gives voice to their diseased silence.
Nietzsche understood this reality: “Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.”
"... How much do we really know about the vaults and caverns which lie somewhere under the structure of a great nation—about these psychic catacombs in which all our concealed desires, our fearful dreams and evil spirits, our vices and our forgotten and unexpiated sins, have been buried for generations? In healthy times, these emerge as the spectres in our dreams. ... But suppose, now, that all of these things generally kept buried in our subconscious were to push their way to the surface, as in the blood-cleansing function of a boil? Suppose that this underworld now and again liberated by Satan bursts forth, and the evil spirits escape the Pandora's box?"
I can see that, Roland, that's why I sent it to you.
People would do well to read books like Reck-Malleczewen's diary of the Hitler years. But there's a problem: even hatred for great evil taints our minds. But we're not saints, we're not the kind of pure-hearted warriors who fight without hatred, to do what must be done. And there's the rub: hatred's a tenacious weed, it harms many a harvest. It will infect the unborn.
It's one thing to feel fear, to rage, another to become enslaved by anger and hatred, fear our taskmaster. Then we're drifting towards the paranoid Niagara that swept away so many on January 6th.
There's a dose of paranoia in almost all of us, we're forever blaming others for everything we don't like, forever looking outside of ourselves, finding fault with someone else. A great dodge, a great compensation, finding fault, judging others as a means of expressing our own meanness while avoiding personal responsibility.
Hence the injunction:
Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.
Beautifully stated. As in physical discrimination — so in religious discrimination. The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” can be found in every great religious expression. If there is any proof of a “soul” to be had — those universal statements of a higher good should be that proof. In our collective hearts, we can recognize right from wrong.
"National suicide," "delusional." Yes, this is it and well said. Unfortunately. Republicans' continued support of former president Trump mirrors their support during his tenure, all for one reason: So they can get re-elected, damn the truth. Any argument against term limits is now mute. If politicians are so willing to crawl up the ars* of Trump for self-preservation, men and women of conscience don't stand a chance.
Call your Republican legislators and tell them they WON'T get reelected if they support Trump, that the party is splitting and you and your fellow Republicans (not a Republican? You can be one for 10 minutes) are going with the party's traditional Lincoln values.
1. If Donald Trump had not assembled a mob on January sixth, worked them into a frenzy with lies about a stolen election snd sent them to the Capitol to “Stop the Steal”, Officer Brian D. Sicknick would still be alive. He was only 42 years old. It makes me heartsick. Donald Trump has Officer Sicknick’s blood on his hands.
2. Donald Trump was still President when the House of Representatives impeached him. Mitch McConnell refused to call the Senate back into session and have the trial in the Senate until after the Biden inauguration. Then he voted to investigate whether it was constitutional to impeach a past president.
Rest in Peace Officer Bryan Sicknick. Pray for Justice.
I always return to "Vengence is mine. Sayeth the Lord" Everyone will eventually be judged for their lives, fairly by one who sees the heart. It may not happen in their lifetime but eternity is a long long time. I do the best I can here on earth to see justice done but I rest in the knowledge that they will be judged eventually.
I was particularly interested this morning to see the NYT's detailed vote map showing with "horrifying" clarity, with my apologies for the generalization, of the Urban-Rural divide. Does living in the country drive people crazy so they buy Trump's lies and accept the strict and varying limits he would impose on freedom? Is city living so "bad" that they have no choice but to vote for the party that will "save" them? Is it a question of population density? Is it a question of availability of public services? Is it about the number of ancestors you can trace since the first "got of the boat".....and in what condition you were placed on that boat? Is it strictly about money....the very rich and the very poor "whites" in the rural areas and everyone else of all colours and means in the subdivision/tenement/condiminium?
The cities are growing and the country population is declining. Is it enough to say, time will solve the problem? Do we want an empty countryside? Do we want people to have the power or for wealth to decide? Hell No! Time to get to the root of the problem and not just to assuage the symptomes of what is driving us apart and to stop Trump or his ilk happening again.
Trump speaks for let’s call it 40% of the country. He is not the problem. The 40% of the US is the problem. He is the mouthpiece that speaks for them, he is their elected leader.
It was here on HCR that I really began to get a handle on this issue. Old social order versus new social order. Red vs. Blue (GOP vs. people who vote Dem). Whites first, males first, straights first adherents and believers, and anarchist-types, the people like Waco and Ruby Ridge and Malheur NWR. BTW “malheur” is French for “illness,” as in “malaise.”
There is a very strong libertarian and anarchist ethic in the US, particularly in the West. Think TV westerns and all that. In the southeast, it’s the history of slavery. You would think that eventually people would grow out of the belief of whites first and blacks second, but confederate flags and monuments on the license plates and state flags and at NASCAR (until 2020 and George Floyd) indicate otherwise. Don’t let the overt changes fool you: just because the symbols now banned at NASCAR are being removed from some or all of those listed items, that doesn’t mean the consciousness is changing for that 40% of the population. .
I’m still at work with an iPhone. Let’s get you a better response when I get home. I’m just warming up.
My father is one. I have been speaking to him for 20 straight years. Almost all the truck drivers I work with fall in that group. Let’s face it, most of them are dummies in someway shape or form. A lot of them are white men who have inferiority complex is, maybe because of their lot in life, self-esteem issues, they’re not blessed with the type of gifts that you and I have become accustomed to. Gifts of access to privileges. Being educated, being articulate, and being part of the world community is a very very different Weltanschauung than struggling to gain money, privilege, resources, and status and standing. When you’re at the bottom of the heap, your male privilege and your white privilege might be the only thing you have, and you might be hanging onto it with everything you’ve got. Having somebody try to rip that away from you might be like losing two of your only advantages left in the world. You and I, Stuart, we have gifts. We have blessings. We have smarts. Be grateful. Be grateful that we don’t have to clutch on to social privileges that are going the way of the Dodo bird, becoming extinct.
You’d have to be a genius to figure it out from NYT. Just drop yourself anywhere in America and start talking to white men with blue-collar jobs, or do a little bit of hunting, it won’t take much, in any snooty country club or retirement home. Republicans galore. Welcome to America, the divided country.
Yes Susan, there's an entire large conversation here today about City/Rural. And someone else posted exactly as you did, about Republicans in blue cities. My response was (something like), "That would be my dad. We live in a blue county in California. He is member of a country club and now lives in a snooty Republican retirement home."
I work in a law office and in a building that is 95% accountants, architects and attorneys in a downtown capital city and most everyone is a die hard Republican. Not a Drumpf fan but always vote red. After Biden won they stopped paying attention to the news. No one on my floor watched the inauguration, no one watched the riots, no one watches the impeachment news, no one knows who Eugene Goodman is, no one knows who MTG is or what she has been putting out in the world. There is a real head in the sand issue going on with choosing your own news and it does not just come from rural areas, or the uneducated or the poor or the "forgotten". It's really wild. When I tried to pull a couple co-workers over to my computer screen when I was watching the insurrection on 1/6 AS IT HAPPENED they both walked away and one said "everyone is crazy" and the other said"I'm with him, they are crazy on both sides". I can't stop shaking my head.
Wow. Thank you Kimberley for sharing this perspective.
I had the odd thought, "Hmm, this must be how the rumor started that Antifa is responsible for Jan. 6. The people in denial of the truth, like these people in Kimberley's world, would just rather believe what they believe, that Trump supporters are innocent of any culpability."
The people you are describing are like my dad. Clueless. Seeing only what they want to see, not what's really there. These are the same people sending money to Tя☭mp which he then uses to feather his own nest.
We have super powers they don’t have. Even my dad. My dad is a millionaire. He got very lucky. But he grew up barely educated in Germany, at the bottom of his class in a farming community outside Munich. He emigrated to America, learned English in the US Army, and managed to succeed financially, and to have a family that’s doing well as well, even though he isn’t all that sharp. He is a diehard Republican, one of the ones with money. And he still believes completely in the old social order trust me. Like I said, self-esteem issues, inferiority complex. In his case, growing up in that era of Germany of course had an influence as well, very strong and lasting influence. I don’t think the social programming is quite as severe in America but it’s definitely there, take a look at the impact MeToo and George Floyd is having. Btw I’m rooting for BLM to get the Peace prize.
We're not responsible for our parents, just fortunate to have them and love them if we can somtimes despite themselves! Mine was dead to me as of the age of 7. He died unlamented by anyone in 2012.
Similar father and brothers story. Deep insecurities. Disappointments. Fears. And all Republicans who voted for Trump. Rooting for BLM to receive Nobel Peace Prize, too. ❤️🤍💙
Oh, wow, father *and* brothers. Fortunately my sisters are both non-Republicans. I don't know what I would do. I would barely speak with them. This year I realized how grateful I am that this Tя☭mp moment-in-history didn't estrange me from my sisters.
Sadly, the case for them may be bolstered by yet another outrageous police murder which could occur any time. It is inevitable, and if next summer has any resemblance to 2020, the Committee won't need archived video to recall why Black Lives Matter.
Just the other day in a neighboring city, police handcuffed and pepper sprayed a 9 year old girl. She was in an extremely agitated state but even young nurses in psychiatric EDs are trained to take a person down safely without harming them.
Awesome! So many deserving, so few Peace Prizes to go around. Navalny belongs in the Kremlin. He deserves that Peace Prize now, and later when he gets there, he deserves it again.
Let's not forget the Native Americans in this. Their genocide involved North, East, South and West of America and their continued treatment as subserviant, inconvenient groups with only secondary rights too......secondary to the rights of the moneymen that is!
Trust me, I do not forget. I also do not forget Chinese and other Asians. In California particularly a sordid history of lynchings and cold-blooded murders of all of the above.
Yes. When they finished building the railways they had the nerve to want to join the goldrush! Heaven forbid...had to put a stop to such outrageous behaviour!
The Gold Rush came first, creating the need for railways and other necessary infrastructure. Most of the first Chinese immigrants came seeking success on what they called "Gold Mountain." When it didn't (literally) pan out, often due to exclusion and intimidation, they shifted into other sectors of the economy, including railway construction, domestic labor ( i.e. laundry), and the service sector (restaurants and retail).
I'm afraid i sinned against the historical timeline on purpose as it made for a funnier reponse and underlined a very basic attitude towards the Chinese community...denying their right to independant existence.
Racism didn't stop them. There is still a town named Chinese Camp. In my gold rush town, lineages of Chinese people with ancestry that goes back to the Gold Rush, how else would a Chinese-American find this rural town? The freeway built through this town in the 1960s with Eisenhower Interstate Highway funds was routed right through the Chinese section of town. Imagine that. Dodger Stadium wiped out Chavez Ravine neighborhood, my wife and her sister grew up in L.A. and they have never forgotten. Latin neighborhood eliminated, everyone displaced. Notice they didn't build Dodger Stadium in Beverly Hills or Bel-Air or even Brentwood or Anaheim.
I recommend "Wind River" from 2017, starring Jeremy Renner. It's a feature film but has great depth and insight on the ongoing ordeal of Native American women. Not for the faint of heart.
I saw it when it as soon as it came out. Horrific but not new to me. It was equally revealing for the despair and drugs of her 2 brothers and the dignity of the father sitting in the garden. There have been many similar real-life tragedies...for one concerning inner British Columbia with girls leaving the reserve to go to Vancouver and never to be seen again.
Roland: 20+ yrs ago, Idaho. My good friend Fr. Bill Wassmuth (RiP) headed up an inter-faith, anti- hate, anti-white supremacist movement. A late night phone call from a friend got him out of bed and into his living room, saving him from the bomb that seconds later blew up his bedroom ! You are right. Long histories.
It is often hard not to take on the characteristics of our parents and the environment we grew up in. I became a democrat because my parents, grandparents ... were democrats. Some people walk away from their upbringing, but I feel that most do not. We may see their leanings as terrible and uneducated but they do not. They have a hard time understanding why they should change when they are "right."
Trump was much more than a symptom. He was recruited by nefarious forces domestic and abroad, unleashed his exploitative talents in a new playground of power, and from the start of his campaign, exponentially and terrorizingly exacerbated the problem of the great American experiment in democracy.
A good one....I was being far too serious there and it got in the way of a well merited laugh. I was thinking of the start to end point of the rook's move not the intermediary moves....oblique too! I hope we are not heading for a simple "castling" in the next few weeks§
My chess fanatic husband applauds you! Yes, the rook is actually a very powerful piece. BTW, I hope you have watched "The Queen's Gambit" on Netflix! It is fabulous.
Donald John Tя☭mp. imagine a small swastika in place of "n" in "John." The origin of John is likely Johann and likely from his grand[parents, both ancestors born in Kallstadt, Germany, what was then Bavaria, the place Hitler came to power after WWI when the German democracy was fresh and new.
I think the cause can 100% be traced to the fact that rural media bandwidths are cheap and easy for right wing propaganda groups to buy up, to the savvy way those media groups have targeted and exploited the natural cultural differences and pride in a certain rural identity, and the cynical way those groups have taken advantage of the end of the Fairness Doctrine to increasingly entrench the rural narrative in pride and anger and disinformation. We have a real mess to clean up.
Great question, and for years I felt that there's been a missed opportunity here. It's not just the bandwidth that's the issue, though. NPR broadcasts to a pretty comprehensive area, but it's seen by a lot of folks as elitist. Even more than investing in bandwidth, you have to invest in the kind of programming that caters to and celebrates certain cultural differences. Finding talent who can do that from a liberal perspective without pandering sounds to me like a daunting task and a real investment.
Leftish media exists in this liberal comfort zone where we all know how to talk to each other about our favorite novels and arthouse movies and the latest pan-Asian recipe we tried. The leftish media CEOs and CFOs looked at dollar signs and found it obvious that catering to urban and suburban folks pays the biggest dividends. Bandwidth costs money. Programming costs more.
Right wing activists, on the other hand, played a long game: a game where you invest in influence, not in advertising dividends, and you take your time and hone your message and you engage folks in a conversation until you know what works. They have decades of practice at this.
I live in a rural area in a Bible belt state. Beautiful and yet exhausting. I work in the city. The difference between rural and city mentality is striking. IMO, it seems like the lack of cross pollination of experiencing different people and cultures makes a huge impact. Rural people have a very limited range and scope - work, church, family, grocery store, and Wal-Mart/Target. There is a limited - if any - appreciation of the arts. I'm not trying to stereotype or be elitist but to show the limited range of experiences. Anyone or thing outside of this circle is viewed with suspicion. Anyone or thing that is viewed as a threat to this circle brings them together. The lack of life experiences, problem-solving that comes from those experiences, and desire to consider another viewpoint is a toxic combination. Anyone that is viewed as a 'savior' to save them from the threat creates a blind following. Hence, the extreme version we saw on 1/6..
This is not to say that this does not exist in cities. It most definitely does. But the limited experiences in a rural area create a larger population that is susceptible to this mentality.
I have lived in large cities (Austin, Houston, Memphis), medium sized cities (Oxford, New Braunfels, Fayetteville, Shreveport) and small towns (Hosston, Lockhart) and rural areas (Canyon Lake.) In all of these, I found clusters of people who fit your description above: individuals who chose to cling together because of their limited life experiences and their "sameness." Those of us who traveled, read, had interest in the world and its varied peoples were not welcome in those clusters. We were always the "outsiders" and perceived as being weird or different. So, we too would create our own "clusters" of like minded people. It was not so much that we considered ourselves "elite," but that we wanted to associate with people with whom we could talk, enjoy entertainment (as in the arts) and share stories and experiences. Most of those folks remain in my world even to this day, from Hawaii, to DC, to UK, to Spain and even Dubais. I am not an anthropologist, but among those of us here, perhaps there are some who understand this apparent tendency of people to seek out and stay with others with whom they share values and interests. In the small town in which I now live, diversity exists but the only shared experience that appears to cross cultural divides is politics. Just my two cents!
Great comment. My younger sister is a year younger than me. Same small rural town, same friends, same employment circles, same everything her entire life. She has a memory about everyone’s lives and happenings like a steel trap. And even with this limited life experience and view she is one of the happiest and kindest persons I know. She has a robust social life. Completely unaware of almost everything that I fret over re the world and life in the US. We have nothing in common but recipes and wine.
I left that small town at 17 and never to return. Im 56 now. I have college degrees, have traveled the world for 20 years, very full and intense professional life, news junkie and love my politics and causes. Have met and maintained relationships with really neat people all over the world. Yet more and more all I see around me are people like my sister. I feel alone and unable to relate outside of interest blogging.
Many days I’d give anything to be just like her. To swap my life for hers. Sometimes ignorance is bliss and the more you know the more difficult life is.
Connecting with compatible people is even harder during the pandemic. I suggest joining mailing lists for seminar series, book, worship or support groups, and thematic discussions. Libraries offer many and can direct us to more. As Poirot would say, "stimulate the little grey cells."
Your sister is not ignorant. Her life is not easier, better or more/less satisfying than yours. She is choosing to focus her energies on the people, things and places she can affect. Her soul purpose is different than yours. Do what nourishes you as she does what nourishes her.
Tricia, You named the reason for your discontent, feeling 'alone', and TPJ made some thoughtful suggestions. I do not know why your are lonely, but I will add a few ideas to TPJ's. Sometimes it is a bit depressing to transition from a very active life to one more quiet and, perhaps, to missing the 'old self.' . It could be enjoyable to fish around for companionship with people in your age group go in the opposite direction towards younger folks. Life will be easier when the pandemic releases it hold. Classes on subjects you would like to pursue, book clubs on line and group tours are options. Another possibly is talking with a counselor or social worker. Personal conversations with a knowledgeable professional may provide you with more insight; Zoom can make such conversations possible at this difficult time. This socio-political forum is also a good place to exercise you political spirit. Onward!
Thanks, Fern. I appreciate the time you took to list out things that may be of help. I'm a mental health therapist and suggest much of the same for my clients.
I guess the point I was trying to make, yet obviously wasn't too clear about, is that I find myself seeing more and more people like I described in my sister and less and less like myself. In the workplace, in society. It can feel lonely at times to feel different than the majority, but also I wanted to convey the thought that progressive experiences and thinking can take some people into territory that can be psychologically and emotionally draining. I've seen this with many of my clients and know how it feels myself. The last 3 sentences of my comment above was the true meaning behind my post. And the fact that oftentimes we view people who are so unlike ourselves as something wrong or pathological or that don't mirror what our nations stands for. Some are, of course, but some just want to live, and seem to enjoy, a more simple existence.
It is a benefit to me for us to have this exchange. About three months ago I realized how politically far apart a friend and I are. I don't know if the Trump years brought that to fore or if our differences grew with our different interpretations of who did what. Our differences were bred in the bone. I became involved in social issues at a young age, and he grew up in a narrow minded, right-wing family. He is a very good person and quite attentive to his family, friends and clients. My accommodation is to focus on his humane instincts and to handle differences bit by bit, not in big chunks. I have also missed lively and challenging discussions with other progressives. Two like-minded good friends live far away, but we email, text and have long telephone conversations every week or two. While I sometimes feel as you do, I am content with my political philosophy. Reading and participation also keep the feeling of isolation at bay. This is a frightening time for the country. That is all the more reason to seek out the people we can talk with.
I agree that there can be a contentment and simplicity to routine and the sameness of your family, friends, social life, neighborhood, job...while it may lack variety and "excitement" I am envious of some who can relax into their life and just be.
Exactly our thought and our hesitancy in settling permanently in Provence. In the village cafés you tend to find much of the clan and the "foreigners" (those not born in the village) tend to form more discrete, "invitation only" groups out of sight of the crowds.
Completely agree. The rural folks - Ole Yankees - I encountered in my youth were cynical, stubborn, backward viewing, and proudly faithful to the old ways/beliefs of their ancestors. They world only hard enough to get by. Their view of the world is binary: us and them; have's and have not's. This is their way. It is interesting that 45 is their demigod because he could not care less about them. They are pawns in his shell game of power grabbing. Nothing more. He doesn't love them even in the slightest.
I once worked with a young woman who had not traveled outside her home state of New Hampshire. She was quiet, hard working, fiercely loyal and honest. In New England it's actually challenging not to set foot into another state since they are all so small. Going on a "mountain" hike, at the peak you can usuals see at least 3 states in a 360° view.
They are stuck in the last century so it's not surprising they are rebelling against time and the 21st century.
Kim, who put that chip on your shoulder about New Englanders? You've just stereotyped an entire population of people - that's part of what has gotten us into this mess in the first place - based how knowing how many people for how long??? I was born in Maine and have lived in NH almost my entire 59 years. Heather is from Maine and it's astonishing to me that you would insult and lump together "Ole Yankees" in this way on the author's page. Your comment that we only work hard enough to get by would be laughable if it weren't so completely opposite the truth. Clearly you never spent time on a lobster boat or a dairy farm or a construction site or with a tradesperson or a public health nurse, just for starters. Why are you saying we're stuck in the last century? Vermont gave us Bernie, NH (which by the way went for Biden and Hilary in 2016) gave us Dean Kamen, inventor of, among other things, the autosyringe and insulin pump, Massachusetts gave us the ACA; must I go on? You knew one person who had never traveled outside the state of NH and you make a huge leap about all of us? So what she never left? The elitist attitude about travel in this thread is very revealing.
But my main concern about your post is that it bears a striking resemblence to things I've read about "them" and the "other" in posts from Trumpeters.
Thank you Ben. I spent my youth in New England (ME/NH/MA/CT/NY) and left in my early twenties. Had exposure to lots of different people of all stripes and backgrounds. Which was my point in the thread. Traveling broadens scope and temperance. So does reading, education, volunteering, being a parent and grandparent. My work of the past 30 years has been in the construction industry and there are lots of red maga hats to be seen. My political hat is blue.
It would be interesting to compare the propensity to travel of the 2 populations. On the one hand, Travel broadens the mind and leads to understanding and acceptance of the new or the different. On the other, absence might lead to seeing the new or different as a threat damaging the certainties of close physical and clan ties which ensure their "safety" .
Here in Provence, the "ordinary" people often move about more than in Paris as they have to find opportunity and services where the can; the city dweller gets lazy as the are always a little "spoon fed" . They fly off all over the place too as do some Parisiens but probably from Barcelona rather than Paris; it's closer and cheaper all round.
This is an interesting discussion but I believe one element that has been left out is financial ability to travel. Yes, I agree that in more insular, small communities people tend to feel more comfortable with people like themselves but is that a symptom of a closed mind or a symptom of inability to access other points of view because travel and attending cultural events is out of reach for them due to location and also financial status.
I believe that leaving out the financial factor is somewhat elitist. It is also true that travel in different places teaches one to be less ethnocentric. I was fortunate enough to live in Argentina as an ex pat for about a year. When exposed to other cultures you learn that our way of life is not necessarily the "right" way of life. Other cultures our not quaint or frightening. They are just different. I think my experience made me much more open to differing life styles. I think the fact that I lived with different people and became truly bilingual made me the person I am today.
It is also true that while living there, although I did have many friends of different cultures, I did spend a great deal of time with my American friends.
So agree with your comment and regarding other cultures. I lived in Buenos Aires for 2 years and the Saudi Arabia for 8 years. All those years I traveled a lot. Living, traveling and working in different cultures taught me so much about humanity, politics, and just life overall. I didn't spend a great deal of time with my American colleagues while abroad. I found them less interesting.
Very true. However the "democratization" of international travel through radical reduction of air fares had gone a long way to removing the financial barriers. However, I don't think that this will survive the Covid disaster. Prior to the outbreak, hotel accomadation was already turning much more towards meeting the needs of the 1% through signifcant "quality" and price rises and despite initial encouragement AirBnB etc followed suite and maintained it's relative positioning...nolonger really accesible to the "ordinary" folk!
I travel to VA each year and have turned away from flying. Amtrak is similar cost, more comfy, more scenic, better amenities, and the full door-to-door trip is barely longer. Forget lines -- just show up and it's all aboard!!
Arriving at Union Station -- as in those who vanquished the Confederacy -- is always an added thrill. See you on the train ... or not, we'll never know!
From what I've seen, rural people rarely go away for vacations. If they do, it is a place that is very similar to their safe circle and relatively close to home. The notion of exploring another part of the world or country doesn't cross their mind. The cross culture in a city tends to expand your world vision and the desire/knowledge to make that trip happen. I live with someone (not my wisest life choice) that is the epitome of this rural mindset and it would absolutely never cross his mind to go to another country nor does he have the desire. Whereas, my overseas trips have broadened my life and viewpoints. I want to travel and explore more when safe!
I think it is not helpful to create a black and white dichotomy between rural and urban people. I live in both places and it is not true that rural people do not travel and are not curious. We need to look to the way policies of both parties have disenfranchised large swaths of our population, who are angry and who do not believe that mainstream politics has any interest in making their lives better. If we fail to consider the reality of this, we will see more extremism and not just from rural areas.
When there was a military draft, conscription often took isolated people to new places and experiences. A cousin who is a red-state rancher served a couple of years in Germany, but otherwise has rarely left his state; now he rarely leaves the ranch. It's just one example, but it illustrates how sojourning, forced or not, can broaden horizons. Also consider the many servicemen who found spouses in Vietnam, Philippines, Japan, etc.
The demise of the conscription army in France and its civilizing influence on street gang members has had a disasterous effect on agressive incivility on the steets for the whole population.
France was the biggest tourist destination in the world, but the French are the people in Europe who travel the least outside their own national boundaries.
If you look at cities like New York, i'm not sure that residents of Harlem or the Bronx have the same propensity for international travel as Manhattan...or of nearby nice, wealthy NJ or Pa leafy townships for that matter. A mixed bag of course and as always when you take averages in statistics you lose a little of the truth.
Way back in the last millennium I spent a semester in Rodez, and still feel great affection for France. It's perhaps the most geographically and climatically diverse European nation, offering a range of experiences within one country. The same is even more true here. Americans can travel extensively, see a variety of places (but not people) without ever crossing international borders. "Travel broadens the mind," but not all travel has that effect.
I think being well read and having access to museums of all sorts is more important than travel. Even in many rural areas, it's just a day trip into a decent city to spend hours at a museum, very do-able. Only Europeans or extremely weathly Americans can take the length vacations needed to spend enough time in new places to even get a sense of how life there is different. A week in a new city doesn't do it. It requires being able to sink in and live among the locals for some time and Americans don't get that sort of time off. And most travel is not sustainable, Flying particularly is incredibly detrimental to the environment.
Marx & Engels referred to "the idiocy of rural life." It doesn't mean that rural dwellers are more stupid, but it tends to confirm the lack of diverse culture described here. The gap was greater in the 19C.
Pause for one moment and consider this: cities are not self sustaining. Cities depend upon the exploitation of rural places foreign and domestic. American Imperalism has come to the homeland. Urban centers depend upon their privlage to sustain their way of life. Only rural people who work in blue collar jobs like farming, ranching, manufacturing and mining feel the oppression of capital supporting urban life.
It's all very well talking about "localizing" food supply chains but the rural and urban workers are totally essential to each other to maintain harmony and "comfortable" life on earth
Capitalism to date, is ONLY about making humans comfortable and entertained at the expense of the planet. Adam Smith wrote during a time of "natural law". Capitalism boasts about an economic system based upon self-interest. No wonder the people who commit to it are distroying the planet. Supply and demand is not a natural law like gravity. It is a human invention, as is money.
Interesting conversation. I’d say the greater divide is between rich and poor. Hunger Games without the annual, deadly war games. Wealthy people whether urban or rural rely on service workers to enjoy the benefits of their wealth. Without the entire support system and infrastructure provided by workers who build, farm, manufacture, clean, repair and provide care, money would be meaningless. The eternal challenge for the powerful minority is how to divide, control and suppress the essential majority. They have become very good at keeping us under control. This is not a US problem. It’s a human problem. The clock is ticking.
The red-blue division is there precisely to disguise the division between the very very rich and everyone else. We have seen over the last fifty years that the more inequality increases, the more the radical right creates "culture war" light shows to deflect attention, anger, away from the real sources of inequality.
Exploitation is a capitalist problem the same way racism is a white problem. The whole earth suffers under capitalim the same way people of color suffer under racism.
Yes but the rural areas need the city just as much. Who else will buy what they grow? Who will pay for the state colleges in the less populated rural areas? Who will pay for the infrastructure-- road maintenance, internet, power, waste treatment, water treatment hospitals?
The same argument was used by the British Empire to brag about the blessings "bestowed" upon India.
Note, I am not against "modern" farming, but against policies that reward the use of farmland to supply cheap High Frutose Corn Syrup. I am not against education, but the policy of using up all the sand from around the world to make buildings for Americans in the U.S. I am not against roads, but the policy of building roads out of asphalt, built by rivers that prevent animals from drinking the water without learning to dodge cars and polluting the water from run off.
The best book to look at about re-imagining a sustainable and nuturing society is The Empathetic Civilization by Jeremy Rufkin.
Reading this this morning reminds me of what I went to sleep watching from the US Capitol. The respect being shown to Office Brian Sicknick is what's right about America. The fact that this is happening shows how we need to repair so much in America. And having President Biden and the First Lady show up, and show up quietly, shows we have competent, caring and decent leadership back in the White House. January 6 is a date that we must remember as a day that terror struck this country -- and it was instigated by the then-still-President of the United States. Let us learn. Let us place a higher value on facts and truth. Let no government employee like Ms. Conway ever try to say there was something truthful in alternative facts. Brian Sicknick died for his country. A country the President takes the oath of office to protect.
I hope I live to see the day we observe January 6th by burning the former president in effigy, as the British do on Guy Fawkes Day.
Good morning Sharon...Like you, I want to remember January 6 as a day when we saw the threat of domestic terrorism become real ending in murder and deaths. It's a day in which we saw the then-President of the United States equate patriots with being people who were White Supremacists and those wearing t-shirts embracing the awfulness of Nazi Germany. And i hope Donald Trump is convicted in his Senate Impeachment Trial and that he is indicted for his criminality that he has displayed throughout his adult life. I truly don't think there is an individual who i have hated in my lifetime as much as him, yet, I also think we need to be careful about the suggestion above as we need all of us to stand above his actions and point to a better way. Let the Majorie Greens, the Tommy Tubervilles and the Matt Gaetzs be the awful ones and we will remain the ones who our next generations can be proud of.
What we need is for the Senators to hold trump responsible and vote their conscience not their political future. I hope all their constituents are calling them.
I want them to vote the truth. They have no moral compass and no conscience.
A few might, but conscience fails in the face of losing power and privilege for many of them.
The Capitol Hill switchboard allows you to connect to anyone, not just your legislators. Wait for option 3 to get a live operator and just say their name and state. These days, it will be a chance to leave a message. Mitch’s mailbox is always full.
202-224-3121
Thanks G. NB, when people call or write the WH or Congress, they count each contact as representing 100 others (est.).
Flood Mitch with postcards.
As children we would build a cloth and straw figure of Guido each Nov 5 and burn him on the big local, communal bonfire celebrating with fireworks. mr Faukes after all was part of a Catholic plot to blow up the Protestant Houses of Parliament during a "sitting".Guess what who's effigy will go on the burning inferno on Jan 6th celebrations? How are the kids going to copy the orange " foxtail"?
They can use a leftover rotten pumpkin from Halloween.
I think burning him in effigy is more likely to turn him into even more of a counter-culture hero. I'd rather he just goes down in history as a complete failure, financial, political, and psychological.
Hopefully we'll see many monuments to Trumpsky. Tearing them down will be exhilarating!
Maybe for a little while, but I think in time he'll be seen as a bad joke. A dangerously bad joke. I really like the idea of burning him in effigy. I'll mark my calendar.
I’d really rather he is made to live out the rest of his life in a deep, dark, damp dungeon filled with other rats
Kellyanne Conway ought to be remembered as the leader of the United States' Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, just as Joseph Goebbels is remembered for being the Nazi head of the German ministry in 1932. She worked hard to rock the American public off the foundation of objective facts and truth and she should be accorded much credit for the success of the Regime in promoting self-serving lies.
And I think Steven Miller put the words in Trump’s mouth.
Always pretty obvious whenever Trump opened his mouth, as to whether he was using his own words (minimalist and repetitive vocabulary), or those of his speech “manipulators” (grandiose and for him almost unpronounceable).
He's the real Joseph Goebbels; Conway, despite her "alternative facts' statement, was just a cheerleader.
The Terror struck me way back on Nov. 3, 2016. King of Q was so obviously a baby Hitler in speeches and rallies and propaganda. But Jan. 6, 2021 was the full Krystallnacht of the republican seditionist coup on our country. I do not see it tamed unless we convict ALL those seditionists to show others there are consequences to commit felonies and attempted murders against our government and our elected officials. This behavior MUST end. They only understand strongarms. We need to show force via legal means, harsh and loud.
Here I am naive again, should seditionists lose their country after trying to overthrow it? Let them be immigrant refugees, scale walls somewhere looking for political asylum from the USA. See which countries will take them. That ex-military and law enforcement people participated in this coup is so appalling and says something about teaching people how to strategize and kill. How do we de-program our warriors when they return to us? And what the hell is wrong with SOME of our police? White supremacists are attracted to positions of power via their fears. And we are witnessing them being trigger-happy terrorists versus Officers of the Peace? Our challenges are many, thank goodness there are more of us than them. But we have so much work to do....
"Banishment from the country is decidedly unconstitutional, at least for U.S. citizens."
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/01/banishment-as-punishment-is-it-constitutional-for-states-to-exile-criminals.html
We may need to enact new laws, or revise old ones.
Mention July 4, December 7, September 11 or January 6 and Americans will know the meaning, until forever runs out.
My (boomer) generation would include November 22. Alas, increasing numbers of people don't recognize it as JFK's assassination. Alas!
Definitely. We all remember where we were when we heard, how we reacted, how our teachers, classmates, and families reacted. I am ashamed to admit that in my tiny, developing 3rd grade mind, I thought it was a good thing that my parents would be happy about and I actually cheered! Then we were called in from recess and my Catholic classmates (who outnumbered the rest of us) and my teacher were all crying. We listened to a tearful announcement over the intercom by our principal and were sent home early. When I got home, my anti-Catholic, anti-Democrat, anti-Kennedy parents were also crying. That was a real wake-up moment for me - that my parents' vociferous disagreement with the religious and political views of our President did not include a wish for him to die. The honestly deeply-felt anguish they expressed as we later watched the funeral procession with brave young John-John holding his mother's hand moved me and confused me at the same time. However, by the time Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated so soon after that dark November, I had learned that religion and politics were not worth killing for. My parents and I disagreed over so many aspects of religion and politics, but I never doubted their essential decentness toward their compatriots.
We are witnessing one of the greatest instances of mass insanity in history. If we assume a certain number of wealthy people and racists voted for Trump out of perceived self-interest, knowing full well that Trump is a pathological liar, that leaves roughly 30-40% of the American electorate whom we can consider to be literally delusional, wacko, bonkers, nut cases.
Failure to convict Trump in the Senate and/or try him in a court of law would be a disaster, confirmation that our system of government, our Constitution and our way of life are a total failure. National suicide.
This is it, folks.
So if our legitimately elected Senators choose to acquit the former president, we will dissent. We will protest. We will perhaps say the conviction was stolen. What we will not do is storm the Capitol armed with weapons. What we will not do is call for physical harm to our legitimately elected Senators. What we will not do is attempt to destroy our democracy.
We will apply Stacey Abrams grassroots efforts and VOTE THEM OUT. This is how our democratic republic works. Starting now we resist R's efforts at voter suppression and gerrymandering. MI will now have a citizen commission redrawing district lines instead of the legislature. We worked hard starting in 2016 to get a bill passed in2018 to do this. Join a local Demoratic Club, work to find candidates to sponser at the local level, tell others in a respectful manner why you vote Democratic. It takes the village to govern itself. Become involved.
Sally, thank you for bringing Stacey Abrams into the conversation. She is my leadership role model, and I look to working with and for Fair Fight, Indivisible, Vote Forward, and Vote Save America on the 2022 midterm elections. Voting issues are my chosen activist focus, because I believe every issue I care about comes down to policy and who is elected to represent me from the local to the national level. ❤️🤍💙
Excellent choice, DB.
Thank you. I would like to see Stacy Abrams take FairFight national, to get every state to pass a "tri-partisan" Redistricting Commission like Michigan's. Let's continue our donations to this truly democratic cause!
"I propose to move immediately upon your works!"
--Ulysses Grant at Fort Donelson, 1862
Exactly! Elections have consequences. Democrats must win and win and win.
Gerrymandering is major a threat but it takes time. Many Repug-controlled state legislatures are trying to enact more oppressive voter-suppression measures right now. But as the estimable Ms Abrams showed in GA (twice), Dems can win a "Fair Fight" by expanding registration and turnout. (She actually did it a third time in 2018, but Brian Kemp dropped 300,000+ voters off the rolls. If they had voted her margin of victory would have been substantial.)
GOP is quadrupling down on gerrymandering and we are late to the starting line. It definitely starts at the local level.
THIS. ONLY THIS.
What we will do is sue the pants off of him in civil and ordinary courts.
Better than nothing but I still strongly believe that trump should be held accountable in some way for his incitement (and other wrongs) or this will be perpetuated.
Btw, Stuart, I live in VT which votes mostly Democrat despite being very rural with lots of struggling farmers. We do have white supremacy groups, 200 of whom inculding a state trooper took buses to the Capitol. I know, "'tis a puzzlement..."
Hi Sally, I too live in VT. I was so concerned about our republican Governor Scott replacing Sen Leahy with a republican if he became too ill to serve. Looks like he is back in the saddle. Wishing him, and all of us, good health while we tackle...EVERYTHING before us.
Gov. Scott has said he'd replace Leahy and Sanders with Dems if they were incapacitated, but an election would have to happen within 6 months, not the end of the term of office.
Glad to hear about Leahy, Penelope. I remember many moons ago seeing a newly elected Leahy at subcommittee hearings. So funny, he's among the very few I do remember from those days!
Patrick Leahy is a bulwark of the republic. To his health!
There's something about the abundance of old Volvo' and Saab's on the roads. I always love coming to Vermont. I often used to "drop down" to Burlington; buying textiles, towels and sheets at the factory outlets.
And I miss going across the border, still closed due to Covid, to Quebec and love Montreal...
I truly hope all the lawsuits being discussed for the past couple of years come to fruition. Bleed him dry of money, opportunities, a voice. Sure I would love to see him be convicted so that he can never hold office again and so that he is not privy to a pension, SS protection, or a travel allowance. But that's not going to happen. My prediction is that the moment the senate votes not to convict he will announce his presidential run for 2024 and we'll all be thrown back into his sh*t show again.
I would give you a "like" but I do not want that last sentence to be manifested ever! Shooosh! Visualize him in a small room surrounded by four walls like any other criminal most deserving.
And if we begin burning effigies in this country, it should represent all seditionists that who are Nazis, KKK, alt right (Reich), white supremacists, and looney tune Q'ers. Include, of course, the current trumplicans who signed on to overthrowing our fair election, use slave-era gerrymandering and are suppressing votes. In essence, anti-democracy pinheads with guns and bombs.
Gerrymandering: I read a letter to Judge Santelle by Samuel Isscharoff a few days ago (Racial Gerrymandering in a Complex World: A Reply to Judge
Sentelle, Catholic University Law Review, 1996) that the racial argument against gerrymandering... "From Nazi Germany to South African apartheid-and, by implication to the Jim Crow South as well-the defining feature of these odious forms of oppression always has been: a nasty, brutish power grab." I agree with his ideas that redistricting is racist, oppressive and with computers is odious. Tuskegee, Alabama has one district that has 32 sides!!!
Issacharoff states that white supremacists' officials goals in gerrymandering are twofold:
1. "Cracking" (i.e. diluting the voting power of the opposing party's supporters across many districts) and "packing" (concentrating the opposing party's voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts).
Isn't it time for a cool change for our citizens of color? Have they and our indigenous people paid a very high price? Is it not their turn for us to right the wrongs of our colonial ancestors? Do they not deserve for all of us to stand up and fight for them to be equal? To have equal opportunities in voting, jobs, and feeling safe driving or walking down the street in our country and not profiled and bullied by police and peers?
Let's end our 200+ year old American Apartheids. We can be much better than our colonial history. (And that history must be taught to our people, in honesty).
Well said, Lyell, but....
I think in case of acquittal I may begin to look elsewhere in the world for a better example of democracy, one where voting is a birthright and not subject to gerrymandering or any other sort of party-specific shenanigans, where every vote carries equal weight regardless of geographical provenance, where mere acreage and cows cannot vote, only people, where 200-year-old racist institutions no longer condition our politics, where basic facts and statistics prevail over lies, half-truths and scary, crazy conspiracy theories and where all necessary public services - including internet platforms - are subject to regulation consistent with the constitution and laws of said democracy.
Acquittal or no, our work is cut out for us.
A beautiful dream, but I'm with you!
Perhaps we need to look to all of the social democracies, such as Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, etc. There are so many! Wonderful examples of the melding of democracy with regulated capitalism.
I agree. Democratic socialism works and brings greater social fairness - and happiness if certain indexes are accurate - than our current crony capitalism.
I think we need to stay away from the ‘socialism’ until we have defined it in American terminology. I like “democratic capitalism” and then explain the difference between democracy and crony capitalism (crony capitalism). What do you think of that?
A rose by any other name.... I get it and find the substitution politically acceptable :-)
Democratic Capitalism!!
Might be difficult to find. Some comprise would be essential. Nowhere's perfect like that.
You already live there. What you outline above is the means to achieve it.
Agree, David. All these things must be changed...but for me by rule of law, not by force.
74 million voters and 88 million Twitter followers are all drinking the Kool-Aid. And then there’s Fox News, and Newsmax, and OAN and the millions upon millions of people who watch that swill. If you order the right-wing news cable package of channels, they might as well label it the Kool-Aid Package.
Look to who funds all of those propaganda machines. We need to corral around the head of the snakes (all the oligarchs --Mercers, Kochs, Murdoch, etc.) and squeeze them. They will only understand mass revolution against them--stop the flow of money to them, reveal what they do everyday and their crazy conspiracies and propaganda.
We, as a world need to figure out how to handle the propaganda of the internet. I have no idea, but maybe we need a second internet that is for REALITY and TRUTH and let this old one die out. (Spoken from total ignorance, but all options during a potential brainstorm should be entertained!).
Hit 'em in the bank account, it's the only place they feel anything.
You are dead on target. That's where the Good Guys have finally turned to common sense. Nowadays organizations with integrity are playing by the Republican playbook and attacking the Republicans where it really hurts, their funding. If I didn't have my father, I would not understand this side of Republicans. I am far too principled. I have walked away from very large amounts of money several times, because it was the best choice. My father values money above nearly all else, family being the only obvious exception. He would never say these words, but a person's net worth and their assets is his #1 standard. The people he admires the most are the (mostly men) who are wealthy in the material sense.
The only thing I have seen get under McConnell's skin is the label "Moscow Mitch." He must be ashamed of taking money from Russia. He also doesn't want that news to become public knowledge, obviously, it wouldn't sit well with the older Republican generation of voters who see Russia as the enemy dating back to the Cold War.
As for the "propaganda of the internet," I could not agree more that there is a serious problem. Even the employees in the big companies like FB and Tw have been pressuring their own management because of the serious social damage of their business policy. The Twitter owner guy was whining about cutting off Tя☭mp, what an idiot. Does this dork have the slightest clue how Putin's propaganda machine is affecting the U.S. democracy by using commercials to encourage voters to drink Kool-Aid?
I am trying to wrap my head around moscow mitch feeling...particularly shame!
Not sure it's the "greatest" (i.e. worst) incident of mass insanity, but it ranks in that class. I suspect the Rwandan genocide of 1994 was worse, for instance. But it certainly takes the cake in the United States.
Picking nits, of course.
Yes! What you said.
Please forgive my hyperbole. Perhaps I should have said that recent events are the most extreme example in US history of nearly half of the electorate supporting and voting for (twice!) a presidential candidate who is petty, unhinged, evil, uninformed, self-centered, unpatriotic and stupid, though his feral instincts and ability to sniff out the weak points in others are well developed.
I am not a psychologist, so I should perhaps not attribute insanity to people I don't know personally, but selfish, thoughtless, irresponsible, racist and demagogic are attributes I think I know when I encounter them.
And yes, the Rwandan genocide was far worse than 4 years of Trump, but it could have been prevented - or at least limited - by certain former colonial and other western powers who failed to intervene. I am not sure that the USA is necessarily immune from similar genocidal tendencies, though I am quite sure no one will intervene to save us if we decide to go down that road.
Happy reading!
A great deal of Trump's support was also certain people's innate, egocentric approach to politics and the society in which they "exist". There are three rules that dominate their conscious...
"I'm all right, Jack" is the first rule, "devil take the hindmost" the second and
"i don't want to pay for it" is the third
Lots of "good samartans" passing on the other side of the road!
Psychosis? Insanity? I'm not qualified to offer those judgments. But may I suggest what we witnessing is at its base, a crisis of spirit. In Buddhist thought, there are three 'poisons' which give rise to all suffering. Roughly translated from the Sanskrit: Greed, hate, and delusion. We see them in full bloom now coming from people without a spiritual anchor, conscious connection to the cosmos nor reverence for their fellow humans. Hopi legend has it that we are on the cusp of the coming of the 'Fifth World'. Hang on it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Absolutely! We are certainly heading for that open door now and before we restore ourselves individually and collectively to some important level of harmony...a lot of things are going to change.
In Joseph Campbell's "The Hero's Journey" we haven't yet reached the dark night of the soul. We, first, need to recognize we are on a journey.
Thank you D and J, it is indeed frightening. The "perceived self-interest" segment likely is larger still. It's less likely that so many people are clinically insane. We all are prone to dismissing aberration as insanity, but Trumpsky's bitter-enders, especially the insurrectionists, are capable of distinguishing between right and wrong. No one gets off the hook due to mental incompetence.
The Rwanda genocide is not well understood in America. Cast as a mass hysteria or hallucination, in fact there was much central planning and direction, not mere spontaneous mayhem, though some did occur. The genocidaires manipulated longstanding (but not primordial) ethnic tensions in time of war, but Hutus didn't murder Tutsis simply "because they've always hated and killed each other." German and Belgian colonial policies helped set the stage for tragedy, so its history is long but not immemorial, and can be understood in rational terms.
A Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story
T Longman, Christianity & Genocide in Rwanda
C Newbury, The Cohesion of Oppression
G Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis
It is meaningful that Holocaust museums, including in Paris, Warsaw, and Los Angeles, have exhibits and events to raise awareness about the Rwanda Genocide.
We clearly cannot learn enough about how to prevent such atrocities.
When talking of Rwanda and the genocide you can't leave Burundi out of the equation or for that matter the eastern regions of the Congo. The relationship between the Tutsi and Hutu tribe in all three areas has been one of rivalry and domination ...and even slavery...for centuries; it is far from the first time they have massacred each other. However what is particularly offensive and indeed sickening, over and above the horror of the killings, this time is that all those who could have stopped the affaire...the French Military presence and powers in the area amongst others... did nothing to prevent or stop it while it was apparently clear that it was coming.
The pullout of French forces from southern Rwanda as genocide commenced was especially outrageous, though it's been defended as fulfilling bilateral treaty obligations. A few years after Rwanda's 1994 genocide, Pres Clinton apologized, describing his policy as a failed attempt at intervention. No. It was a successful attempt at noninternvention. Rwandans didn't have valuable resources, simply didn't matter enough to US decisionmakers. A Frontline documentary (from the late 1990s?) has Clinton's speech and much else, including the inimitable Will Lyman.
I am not informed about the circumstances of these genocides, but I will say this: the more time passes since Clinton was president, the more I mistrust him and the more naïve I think we were in selecting him. With the passage of time, he looks more and more like a sicko and a self-serving opportunist. Someday after he’s gone the definitive full story of William Jefferson Clinton will come out, like the fact that he f***ked everything that moved, including likely a small army of underage girls in Epstein’s universe. Has anyone else seen that photograph of Bill Clinton wearing a blue women’s dress, a large framed item that was in Epstein’s New York residence? Sometimes when I see something of this nature, it looks fun and playful. But when Bill does it, for some reason I see depths of depravity that shock me. And I’m not easily shocked that way, certainly not by cross dressing. Something is way off.
Yes.
And who was it that said what the boundaries between places like Rwanda, Burundi and the Congo would be?
It's a toss-up between the King of Belgium, the President of France and the Kaiser Wilhelm....but Rwanda and Burundi i think have 2 of the very few boundaries in Africa that actually respect ancient kingdom divisions. The role of "kings" is still very important in Africa especially with societal and property issues. I came across this a great deal in West Africa.
I started looking at population statistics for Germany in the 30s. Then I remembered that Germany controlled a healthy portion of Europe. Now there is an example of mass insanity out of control, starting to take over a whole continent.
David Herrick makes excellent points but you seem more sharply aware than most people of the painful reality that collective psychosis is a far greater problem than the madness of individuals; the exception being when a deluded deluder casts his net over an entire population beset by deep underlying mind poisons of fear, hatred and resentment and gives voice to their diseased silence.
Nietzsche understood this reality: “Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.”
"... How much do we really know about the vaults and caverns which lie somewhere under the structure of a great nation—about these psychic catacombs in which all our concealed desires, our fearful dreams and evil spirits, our vices and our forgotten and unexpiated sins, have been buried for generations? In healthy times, these emerge as the spectres in our dreams. ... But suppose, now, that all of these things generally kept buried in our subconscious were to push their way to the surface, as in the blood-cleansing function of a boil? Suppose that this underworld now and again liberated by Satan bursts forth, and the evil spirits escape the Pandora's box?"
Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen
In August 1936, from Diary of a Man in Despair
This quote is right up my alley, Peter. *reflecting . . . “
I can see that, Roland, that's why I sent it to you.
People would do well to read books like Reck-Malleczewen's diary of the Hitler years. But there's a problem: even hatred for great evil taints our minds. But we're not saints, we're not the kind of pure-hearted warriors who fight without hatred, to do what must be done. And there's the rub: hatred's a tenacious weed, it harms many a harvest. It will infect the unborn.
It's one thing to feel fear, to rage, another to become enslaved by anger and hatred, fear our taskmaster. Then we're drifting towards the paranoid Niagara that swept away so many on January 6th.
There's a dose of paranoia in almost all of us, we're forever blaming others for everything we don't like, forever looking outside of ourselves, finding fault with someone else. A great dodge, a great compensation, finding fault, judging others as a means of expressing our own meanness while avoiding personal responsibility.
Hence the injunction:
Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.
Beautifully stated. As in physical discrimination — so in religious discrimination. The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” can be found in every great religious expression. If there is any proof of a “soul” to be had — those universal statements of a higher good should be that proof. In our collective hearts, we can recognize right from wrong.
IMHO one of the best tools the human mind has available to it for building resilence against evil is the practicing of gratitude. I’m not able to watch scary movies, but I once sat thru “Fallen” (with Denzel Washington) and the metaphor for the contagion of evil just about did me in. https://gratefulness.org/grateful-day/?fbclid=IwAR1ZTVBlylm3VeTgwG2K4-Sd_Eu39ElbdmZrh-DNNvfvt3dSFiHDeMEiE2s
Love your posts, Peter. Thank you.
"National suicide," "delusional." Yes, this is it and well said. Unfortunately. Republicans' continued support of former president Trump mirrors their support during his tenure, all for one reason: So they can get re-elected, damn the truth. Any argument against term limits is now mute. If politicians are so willing to crawl up the ars* of Trump for self-preservation, men and women of conscience don't stand a chance.
Call your Republican legislators and tell them they WON'T get reelected if they support Trump, that the party is splitting and you and your fellow Republicans (not a Republican? You can be one for 10 minutes) are going with the party's traditional Lincoln values.
"(not a Republican? You can be one for 10 minutes)" LOL!
Lethal toxin. Apply the antidote immediately afterward.
"(not a Republican? You can be one for 10 minutes)"
Lethal toxin. Apply the antidote immediately afterward.
Nice!
“This is it, folks.“
Maybe that’s why substack is burying us in multiple copies.
Yes, I've deleted HCR 3 or 4 times already, but I kept one...
1. If Donald Trump had not assembled a mob on January sixth, worked them into a frenzy with lies about a stolen election snd sent them to the Capitol to “Stop the Steal”, Officer Brian D. Sicknick would still be alive. He was only 42 years old. It makes me heartsick. Donald Trump has Officer Sicknick’s blood on his hands.
2. Donald Trump was still President when the House of Representatives impeached him. Mitch McConnell refused to call the Senate back into session and have the trial in the Senate until after the Biden inauguration. Then he voted to investigate whether it was constitutional to impeach a past president.
Rest in Peace Officer Bryan Sicknick. Pray for Justice.
I always return to "Vengence is mine. Sayeth the Lord" Everyone will eventually be judged for their lives, fairly by one who sees the heart. It may not happen in their lifetime but eternity is a long long time. I do the best I can here on earth to see justice done but I rest in the knowledge that they will be judged eventually.
Great reminder, Sally Hart. I will hold fast to the Lord's words...and yours as well.
Loose the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword
-- Julia Ward Howe
So heartsick. Why can tRump not be tried for murder.
Is it possible that the Capitol police will charge him?
Wow.
Thanks, Candace!
I was particularly interested this morning to see the NYT's detailed vote map showing with "horrifying" clarity, with my apologies for the generalization, of the Urban-Rural divide. Does living in the country drive people crazy so they buy Trump's lies and accept the strict and varying limits he would impose on freedom? Is city living so "bad" that they have no choice but to vote for the party that will "save" them? Is it a question of population density? Is it a question of availability of public services? Is it about the number of ancestors you can trace since the first "got of the boat".....and in what condition you were placed on that boat? Is it strictly about money....the very rich and the very poor "whites" in the rural areas and everyone else of all colours and means in the subdivision/tenement/condiminium?
The cities are growing and the country population is declining. Is it enough to say, time will solve the problem? Do we want an empty countryside? Do we want people to have the power or for wealth to decide? Hell No! Time to get to the root of the problem and not just to assuage the symptomes of what is driving us apart and to stop Trump or his ilk happening again.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/upshot/2020-election-map.html
Getting Trump definitively out of the way is extremely important, but he is a symptome and not the cause of the problem.
Trump speaks for let’s call it 40% of the country. He is not the problem. The 40% of the US is the problem. He is the mouthpiece that speaks for them, he is their elected leader.
It was here on HCR that I really began to get a handle on this issue. Old social order versus new social order. Red vs. Blue (GOP vs. people who vote Dem). Whites first, males first, straights first adherents and believers, and anarchist-types, the people like Waco and Ruby Ridge and Malheur NWR. BTW “malheur” is French for “illness,” as in “malaise.”
There is a very strong libertarian and anarchist ethic in the US, particularly in the West. Think TV westerns and all that. In the southeast, it’s the history of slavery. You would think that eventually people would grow out of the belief of whites first and blacks second, but confederate flags and monuments on the license plates and state flags and at NASCAR (until 2020 and George Floyd) indicate otherwise. Don’t let the overt changes fool you: just because the symbols now banned at NASCAR are being removed from some or all of those listed items, that doesn’t mean the consciousness is changing for that 40% of the population. .
I’m still at work with an iPhone. Let’s get you a better response when I get home. I’m just warming up.
My father is one. I have been speaking to him for 20 straight years. Almost all the truck drivers I work with fall in that group. Let’s face it, most of them are dummies in someway shape or form. A lot of them are white men who have inferiority complex is, maybe because of their lot in life, self-esteem issues, they’re not blessed with the type of gifts that you and I have become accustomed to. Gifts of access to privileges. Being educated, being articulate, and being part of the world community is a very very different Weltanschauung than struggling to gain money, privilege, resources, and status and standing. When you’re at the bottom of the heap, your male privilege and your white privilege might be the only thing you have, and you might be hanging onto it with everything you’ve got. Having somebody try to rip that away from you might be like losing two of your only advantages left in the world. You and I, Stuart, we have gifts. We have blessings. We have smarts. Be grateful. Be grateful that we don’t have to clutch on to social privileges that are going the way of the Dodo bird, becoming extinct.
You’d have to be a genius to figure it out from NYT. Just drop yourself anywhere in America and start talking to white men with blue-collar jobs, or do a little bit of hunting, it won’t take much, in any snooty country club or retirement home. Republicans galore. Welcome to America, the divided country.
I found out many of the people I worked with were Trump voters, true believers. It really shook my faith in the hearts of others.
I have friends who are white collar, educated(?) trumpets...and in cities. It's not just rural...IMHO.
Yes Susan, there's an entire large conversation here today about City/Rural. And someone else posted exactly as you did, about Republicans in blue cities. My response was (something like), "That would be my dad. We live in a blue county in California. He is member of a country club and now lives in a snooty Republican retirement home."
I mean "blue districts" not "blue cities."
I work in a law office and in a building that is 95% accountants, architects and attorneys in a downtown capital city and most everyone is a die hard Republican. Not a Drumpf fan but always vote red. After Biden won they stopped paying attention to the news. No one on my floor watched the inauguration, no one watched the riots, no one watches the impeachment news, no one knows who Eugene Goodman is, no one knows who MTG is or what she has been putting out in the world. There is a real head in the sand issue going on with choosing your own news and it does not just come from rural areas, or the uneducated or the poor or the "forgotten". It's really wild. When I tried to pull a couple co-workers over to my computer screen when I was watching the insurrection on 1/6 AS IT HAPPENED they both walked away and one said "everyone is crazy" and the other said"I'm with him, they are crazy on both sides". I can't stop shaking my head.
Wow. Thank you Kimberley for sharing this perspective.
I had the odd thought, "Hmm, this must be how the rumor started that Antifa is responsible for Jan. 6. The people in denial of the truth, like these people in Kimberley's world, would just rather believe what they believe, that Trump supporters are innocent of any culpability."
The people you are describing are like my dad. Clueless. Seeing only what they want to see, not what's really there. These are the same people sending money to Tя☭mp which he then uses to feather his own nest.
Yes, and if I try to throw a few facts in there about the election, the riots, the impeachment I start to sound like the conspiracy theorist. LOL
Grateful every day, buddy! You betcha!
We have super powers they don’t have. Even my dad. My dad is a millionaire. He got very lucky. But he grew up barely educated in Germany, at the bottom of his class in a farming community outside Munich. He emigrated to America, learned English in the US Army, and managed to succeed financially, and to have a family that’s doing well as well, even though he isn’t all that sharp. He is a diehard Republican, one of the ones with money. And he still believes completely in the old social order trust me. Like I said, self-esteem issues, inferiority complex. In his case, growing up in that era of Germany of course had an influence as well, very strong and lasting influence. I don’t think the social programming is quite as severe in America but it’s definitely there, take a look at the impact MeToo and George Floyd is having. Btw I’m rooting for BLM to get the Peace prize.
We're not responsible for our parents, just fortunate to have them and love them if we can somtimes despite themselves! Mine was dead to me as of the age of 7. He died unlamented by anyone in 2012.
Did your father have any family in Philadelphia PA? My last name was Attewell for 25 years. It is a very unusual name in the US
Similar father and brothers story. Deep insecurities. Disappointments. Fears. And all Republicans who voted for Trump. Rooting for BLM to receive Nobel Peace Prize, too. ❤️🤍💙
The Black Lives Matter movement is so much larger than the original BLM organization. Which has been nominated for the Nobel Prize?
Oh, wow, father *and* brothers. Fortunately my sisters are both non-Republicans. I don't know what I would do. I would barely speak with them. This year I realized how grateful I am that this Tя☭mp moment-in-history didn't estrange me from my sisters.
BLM Yes!!!
Sadly, the case for them may be bolstered by yet another outrageous police murder which could occur any time. It is inevitable, and if next summer has any resemblance to 2020, the Committee won't need archived video to recall why Black Lives Matter.
Just the other day in a neighboring city, police handcuffed and pepper sprayed a 9 year old girl. She was in an extremely agitated state but even young nurses in psychiatric EDs are trained to take a person down safely without harming them.
Me too! BLM!
I just read that Walesa nominated Navalny for the peace prize.
Awesome! So many deserving, so few Peace Prizes to go around. Navalny belongs in the Kremlin. He deserves that Peace Prize now, and later when he gets there, he deserves it again.
😁🙏🙏
So true
Let's not forget the Native Americans in this. Their genocide involved North, East, South and West of America and their continued treatment as subserviant, inconvenient groups with only secondary rights too......secondary to the rights of the moneymen that is!
Trust me, I do not forget. I also do not forget Chinese and other Asians. In California particularly a sordid history of lynchings and cold-blooded murders of all of the above.
Yes. When they finished building the railways they had the nerve to want to join the goldrush! Heaven forbid...had to put a stop to such outrageous behaviour!
The Gold Rush came first, creating the need for railways and other necessary infrastructure. Most of the first Chinese immigrants came seeking success on what they called "Gold Mountain." When it didn't (literally) pan out, often due to exclusion and intimidation, they shifted into other sectors of the economy, including railway construction, domestic labor ( i.e. laundry), and the service sector (restaurants and retail).
Y Chen, Chop Suey USA
A Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy
P Siu, The Chinese Laundryman
R Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore
I'm afraid i sinned against the historical timeline on purpose as it made for a funnier reponse and underlined a very basic attitude towards the Chinese community...denying their right to independant existence.
Racism didn't stop them. There is still a town named Chinese Camp. In my gold rush town, lineages of Chinese people with ancestry that goes back to the Gold Rush, how else would a Chinese-American find this rural town? The freeway built through this town in the 1960s with Eisenhower Interstate Highway funds was routed right through the Chinese section of town. Imagine that. Dodger Stadium wiped out Chavez Ravine neighborhood, my wife and her sister grew up in L.A. and they have never forgotten. Latin neighborhood eliminated, everyone displaced. Notice they didn't build Dodger Stadium in Beverly Hills or Bel-Air or even Brentwood or Anaheim.
Particularly the continuing genocide of indigenous women in this country and in Canada.
I recommend "Wind River" from 2017, starring Jeremy Renner. It's a feature film but has great depth and insight on the ongoing ordeal of Native American women. Not for the faint of heart.
I saw it when it as soon as it came out. Horrific but not new to me. It was equally revealing for the despair and drugs of her 2 brothers and the dignity of the father sitting in the garden. There have been many similar real-life tragedies...for one concerning inner British Columbia with girls leaving the reserve to go to Vancouver and never to be seen again.
Roland: 20+ yrs ago, Idaho. My good friend Fr. Bill Wassmuth (RiP) headed up an inter-faith, anti- hate, anti-white supremacist movement. A late night phone call from a friend got him out of bed and into his living room, saving him from the bomb that seconds later blew up his bedroom ! You are right. Long histories.
Fellow Idahoan Wassmuth Center volunteer. Even here we hold the line.
Thank you, Laurie.
Wow. That's horrible.
It is often hard not to take on the characteristics of our parents and the environment we grew up in. I became a democrat because my parents, grandparents ... were democrats. Some people walk away from their upbringing, but I feel that most do not. We may see their leanings as terrible and uneducated but they do not. They have a hard time understanding why they should change when they are "right."
Trump was much more than a symptom. He was recruited by nefarious forces domestic and abroad, unleashed his exploitative talents in a new playground of power, and from the start of his campaign, exponentially and terrorizingly exacerbated the problem of the great American experiment in democracy.
A pawn in the game, not the king or Queen!
Maybe a rook.
Perhaps! Rendering possible his often "oblique" moves.
The rook, or castle, moves only on 90 degree lines. I picked it for the pun on 'rooking', or conning, someone. It's the bishop that moves on an angle.
A good one....I was being far too serious there and it got in the way of a well merited laugh. I was thinking of the start to end point of the rook's move not the intermediary moves....oblique too! I hope we are not heading for a simple "castling" in the next few weeks§
My chess fanatic husband applauds you! Yes, the rook is actually a very powerful piece. BTW, I hope you have watched "The Queen's Gambit" on Netflix! It is fabulous.
Puppet. Putin's Puppet. Putin's Pawn. Russia invaded us from within.
Russia is still invading us from within. They have funded numerous Republican members of Congress. https://americanindependent.com/republicans-congress-celebrated-fourth-of-july-russia/
Why do folks believe The Big Lie but scoff at The Big Truth?
Grrrrrrrrrrr
Donald John Tя☭mp. imagine a small swastika in place of "n" in "John." The origin of John is likely Johann and likely from his grand[parents, both ancestors born in Kallstadt, Germany, what was then Bavaria, the place Hitler came to power after WWI when the German democracy was fresh and new.
I think the cause can 100% be traced to the fact that rural media bandwidths are cheap and easy for right wing propaganda groups to buy up, to the savvy way those media groups have targeted and exploited the natural cultural differences and pride in a certain rural identity, and the cynical way those groups have taken advantage of the end of the Fairness Doctrine to increasingly entrench the rural narrative in pride and anger and disinformation. We have a real mess to clean up.
So . . . why aren't liberal or progressive groups buying up some of those rural media bandwidths?
Great question, and for years I felt that there's been a missed opportunity here. It's not just the bandwidth that's the issue, though. NPR broadcasts to a pretty comprehensive area, but it's seen by a lot of folks as elitist. Even more than investing in bandwidth, you have to invest in the kind of programming that caters to and celebrates certain cultural differences. Finding talent who can do that from a liberal perspective without pandering sounds to me like a daunting task and a real investment.
Leftish media exists in this liberal comfort zone where we all know how to talk to each other about our favorite novels and arthouse movies and the latest pan-Asian recipe we tried. The leftish media CEOs and CFOs looked at dollar signs and found it obvious that catering to urban and suburban folks pays the biggest dividends. Bandwidth costs money. Programming costs more.
Right wing activists, on the other hand, played a long game: a game where you invest in influence, not in advertising dividends, and you take your time and hone your message and you engage folks in a conversation until you know what works. They have decades of practice at this.
Why not have an obligation of local ownership as a condition of keeping the licence?
That used to be the case, but it was lost in the Great Deregulation a couple of decades ago.
I live in a rural area in a Bible belt state. Beautiful and yet exhausting. I work in the city. The difference between rural and city mentality is striking. IMO, it seems like the lack of cross pollination of experiencing different people and cultures makes a huge impact. Rural people have a very limited range and scope - work, church, family, grocery store, and Wal-Mart/Target. There is a limited - if any - appreciation of the arts. I'm not trying to stereotype or be elitist but to show the limited range of experiences. Anyone or thing outside of this circle is viewed with suspicion. Anyone or thing that is viewed as a threat to this circle brings them together. The lack of life experiences, problem-solving that comes from those experiences, and desire to consider another viewpoint is a toxic combination. Anyone that is viewed as a 'savior' to save them from the threat creates a blind following. Hence, the extreme version we saw on 1/6..
This is not to say that this does not exist in cities. It most definitely does. But the limited experiences in a rural area create a larger population that is susceptible to this mentality.
I have lived in large cities (Austin, Houston, Memphis), medium sized cities (Oxford, New Braunfels, Fayetteville, Shreveport) and small towns (Hosston, Lockhart) and rural areas (Canyon Lake.) In all of these, I found clusters of people who fit your description above: individuals who chose to cling together because of their limited life experiences and their "sameness." Those of us who traveled, read, had interest in the world and its varied peoples were not welcome in those clusters. We were always the "outsiders" and perceived as being weird or different. So, we too would create our own "clusters" of like minded people. It was not so much that we considered ourselves "elite," but that we wanted to associate with people with whom we could talk, enjoy entertainment (as in the arts) and share stories and experiences. Most of those folks remain in my world even to this day, from Hawaii, to DC, to UK, to Spain and even Dubais. I am not an anthropologist, but among those of us here, perhaps there are some who understand this apparent tendency of people to seek out and stay with others with whom they share values and interests. In the small town in which I now live, diversity exists but the only shared experience that appears to cross cultural divides is politics. Just my two cents!
Great comment. My younger sister is a year younger than me. Same small rural town, same friends, same employment circles, same everything her entire life. She has a memory about everyone’s lives and happenings like a steel trap. And even with this limited life experience and view she is one of the happiest and kindest persons I know. She has a robust social life. Completely unaware of almost everything that I fret over re the world and life in the US. We have nothing in common but recipes and wine.
I left that small town at 17 and never to return. Im 56 now. I have college degrees, have traveled the world for 20 years, very full and intense professional life, news junkie and love my politics and causes. Have met and maintained relationships with really neat people all over the world. Yet more and more all I see around me are people like my sister. I feel alone and unable to relate outside of interest blogging.
Many days I’d give anything to be just like her. To swap my life for hers. Sometimes ignorance is bliss and the more you know the more difficult life is.
Connecting with compatible people is even harder during the pandemic. I suggest joining mailing lists for seminar series, book, worship or support groups, and thematic discussions. Libraries offer many and can direct us to more. As Poirot would say, "stimulate the little grey cells."
Thank you. See my comment to Fern below.
Your sister is not ignorant. Her life is not easier, better or more/less satisfying than yours. She is choosing to focus her energies on the people, things and places she can affect. Her soul purpose is different than yours. Do what nourishes you as she does what nourishes her.
But once you've "eaten of the fruit" there is no putting it back on the tree. Dealing with all that is why we are here.
I so completely understand Tricia. Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you, Linda. That means a lot to me.
Tricia, You named the reason for your discontent, feeling 'alone', and TPJ made some thoughtful suggestions. I do not know why your are lonely, but I will add a few ideas to TPJ's. Sometimes it is a bit depressing to transition from a very active life to one more quiet and, perhaps, to missing the 'old self.' . It could be enjoyable to fish around for companionship with people in your age group go in the opposite direction towards younger folks. Life will be easier when the pandemic releases it hold. Classes on subjects you would like to pursue, book clubs on line and group tours are options. Another possibly is talking with a counselor or social worker. Personal conversations with a knowledgeable professional may provide you with more insight; Zoom can make such conversations possible at this difficult time. This socio-political forum is also a good place to exercise you political spirit. Onward!
Thanks, Fern. I appreciate the time you took to list out things that may be of help. I'm a mental health therapist and suggest much of the same for my clients.
I guess the point I was trying to make, yet obviously wasn't too clear about, is that I find myself seeing more and more people like I described in my sister and less and less like myself. In the workplace, in society. It can feel lonely at times to feel different than the majority, but also I wanted to convey the thought that progressive experiences and thinking can take some people into territory that can be psychologically and emotionally draining. I've seen this with many of my clients and know how it feels myself. The last 3 sentences of my comment above was the true meaning behind my post. And the fact that oftentimes we view people who are so unlike ourselves as something wrong or pathological or that don't mirror what our nations stands for. Some are, of course, but some just want to live, and seem to enjoy, a more simple existence.
It is a benefit to me for us to have this exchange. About three months ago I realized how politically far apart a friend and I are. I don't know if the Trump years brought that to fore or if our differences grew with our different interpretations of who did what. Our differences were bred in the bone. I became involved in social issues at a young age, and he grew up in a narrow minded, right-wing family. He is a very good person and quite attentive to his family, friends and clients. My accommodation is to focus on his humane instincts and to handle differences bit by bit, not in big chunks. I have also missed lively and challenging discussions with other progressives. Two like-minded good friends live far away, but we email, text and have long telephone conversations every week or two. While I sometimes feel as you do, I am content with my political philosophy. Reading and participation also keep the feeling of isolation at bay. This is a frightening time for the country. That is all the more reason to seek out the people we can talk with.
I agree that there can be a contentment and simplicity to routine and the sameness of your family, friends, social life, neighborhood, job...while it may lack variety and "excitement" I am envious of some who can relax into their life and just be.
You may not be a professional anthropologist, but this is a worthwhile mini-ethnography. Write on!
Exactly our thought and our hesitancy in settling permanently in Provence. In the village cafés you tend to find much of the clan and the "foreigners" (those not born in the village) tend to form more discrete, "invitation only" groups out of sight of the crowds.
Completely agree. The rural folks - Ole Yankees - I encountered in my youth were cynical, stubborn, backward viewing, and proudly faithful to the old ways/beliefs of their ancestors. They world only hard enough to get by. Their view of the world is binary: us and them; have's and have not's. This is their way. It is interesting that 45 is their demigod because he could not care less about them. They are pawns in his shell game of power grabbing. Nothing more. He doesn't love them even in the slightest.
I once worked with a young woman who had not traveled outside her home state of New Hampshire. She was quiet, hard working, fiercely loyal and honest. In New England it's actually challenging not to set foot into another state since they are all so small. Going on a "mountain" hike, at the peak you can usuals see at least 3 states in a 360° view.
They are stuck in the last century so it's not surprising they are rebelling against time and the 21st century.
Kim, who put that chip on your shoulder about New Englanders? You've just stereotyped an entire population of people - that's part of what has gotten us into this mess in the first place - based how knowing how many people for how long??? I was born in Maine and have lived in NH almost my entire 59 years. Heather is from Maine and it's astonishing to me that you would insult and lump together "Ole Yankees" in this way on the author's page. Your comment that we only work hard enough to get by would be laughable if it weren't so completely opposite the truth. Clearly you never spent time on a lobster boat or a dairy farm or a construction site or with a tradesperson or a public health nurse, just for starters. Why are you saying we're stuck in the last century? Vermont gave us Bernie, NH (which by the way went for Biden and Hilary in 2016) gave us Dean Kamen, inventor of, among other things, the autosyringe and insulin pump, Massachusetts gave us the ACA; must I go on? You knew one person who had never traveled outside the state of NH and you make a huge leap about all of us? So what she never left? The elitist attitude about travel in this thread is very revealing.
But my main concern about your post is that it bears a striking resemblence to things I've read about "them" and the "other" in posts from Trumpeters.
Thank you Ben. I spent my youth in New England (ME/NH/MA/CT/NY) and left in my early twenties. Had exposure to lots of different people of all stripes and backgrounds. Which was my point in the thread. Traveling broadens scope and temperance. So does reading, education, volunteering, being a parent and grandparent. My work of the past 30 years has been in the construction industry and there are lots of red maga hats to be seen. My political hat is blue.
It would be interesting to compare the propensity to travel of the 2 populations. On the one hand, Travel broadens the mind and leads to understanding and acceptance of the new or the different. On the other, absence might lead to seeing the new or different as a threat damaging the certainties of close physical and clan ties which ensure their "safety" .
Here in Provence, the "ordinary" people often move about more than in Paris as they have to find opportunity and services where the can; the city dweller gets lazy as the are always a little "spoon fed" . They fly off all over the place too as do some Parisiens but probably from Barcelona rather than Paris; it's closer and cheaper all round.
This is an interesting discussion but I believe one element that has been left out is financial ability to travel. Yes, I agree that in more insular, small communities people tend to feel more comfortable with people like themselves but is that a symptom of a closed mind or a symptom of inability to access other points of view because travel and attending cultural events is out of reach for them due to location and also financial status.
I believe that leaving out the financial factor is somewhat elitist. It is also true that travel in different places teaches one to be less ethnocentric. I was fortunate enough to live in Argentina as an ex pat for about a year. When exposed to other cultures you learn that our way of life is not necessarily the "right" way of life. Other cultures our not quaint or frightening. They are just different. I think my experience made me much more open to differing life styles. I think the fact that I lived with different people and became truly bilingual made me the person I am today.
It is also true that while living there, although I did have many friends of different cultures, I did spend a great deal of time with my American friends.
So agree with your comment and regarding other cultures. I lived in Buenos Aires for 2 years and the Saudi Arabia for 8 years. All those years I traveled a lot. Living, traveling and working in different cultures taught me so much about humanity, politics, and just life overall. I didn't spend a great deal of time with my American colleagues while abroad. I found them less interesting.
Very true. However the "democratization" of international travel through radical reduction of air fares had gone a long way to removing the financial barriers. However, I don't think that this will survive the Covid disaster. Prior to the outbreak, hotel accomadation was already turning much more towards meeting the needs of the 1% through signifcant "quality" and price rises and despite initial encouragement AirBnB etc followed suite and maintained it's relative positioning...nolonger really accesible to the "ordinary" folk!
But air travel is ruinous to the environment.
I travel to VA each year and have turned away from flying. Amtrak is similar cost, more comfy, more scenic, better amenities, and the full door-to-door trip is barely longer. Forget lines -- just show up and it's all aboard!!
Arriving at Union Station -- as in those who vanquished the Confederacy -- is always an added thrill. See you on the train ... or not, we'll never know!
From what I've seen, rural people rarely go away for vacations. If they do, it is a place that is very similar to their safe circle and relatively close to home. The notion of exploring another part of the world or country doesn't cross their mind. The cross culture in a city tends to expand your world vision and the desire/knowledge to make that trip happen. I live with someone (not my wisest life choice) that is the epitome of this rural mindset and it would absolutely never cross his mind to go to another country nor does he have the desire. Whereas, my overseas trips have broadened my life and viewpoints. I want to travel and explore more when safe!
I think it is not helpful to create a black and white dichotomy between rural and urban people. I live in both places and it is not true that rural people do not travel and are not curious. We need to look to the way policies of both parties have disenfranchised large swaths of our population, who are angry and who do not believe that mainstream politics has any interest in making their lives better. If we fail to consider the reality of this, we will see more extremism and not just from rural areas.
When there was a military draft, conscription often took isolated people to new places and experiences. A cousin who is a red-state rancher served a couple of years in Germany, but otherwise has rarely left his state; now he rarely leaves the ranch. It's just one example, but it illustrates how sojourning, forced or not, can broaden horizons. Also consider the many servicemen who found spouses in Vietnam, Philippines, Japan, etc.
The demise of the conscription army in France and its civilizing influence on street gang members has had a disasterous effect on agressive incivility on the steets for the whole population.
France was the biggest tourist destination in the world, but the French are the people in Europe who travel the least outside their own national boundaries.
If you look at cities like New York, i'm not sure that residents of Harlem or the Bronx have the same propensity for international travel as Manhattan...or of nearby nice, wealthy NJ or Pa leafy townships for that matter. A mixed bag of course and as always when you take averages in statistics you lose a little of the truth.
Way back in the last millennium I spent a semester in Rodez, and still feel great affection for France. It's perhaps the most geographically and climatically diverse European nation, offering a range of experiences within one country. The same is even more true here. Americans can travel extensively, see a variety of places (but not people) without ever crossing international borders. "Travel broadens the mind," but not all travel has that effect.
Very valid points!
I think being well read and having access to museums of all sorts is more important than travel. Even in many rural areas, it's just a day trip into a decent city to spend hours at a museum, very do-able. Only Europeans or extremely weathly Americans can take the length vacations needed to spend enough time in new places to even get a sense of how life there is different. A week in a new city doesn't do it. It requires being able to sink in and live among the locals for some time and Americans don't get that sort of time off. And most travel is not sustainable, Flying particularly is incredibly detrimental to the environment.
Marx & Engels referred to "the idiocy of rural life." It doesn't mean that rural dwellers are more stupid, but it tends to confirm the lack of diverse culture described here. The gap was greater in the 19C.
Life viewed from the library of the reading room of the British Museum where the former was doing his thinking and writing!
I was born in a rural Southern town. You are exactly right.
Pause for one moment and consider this: cities are not self sustaining. Cities depend upon the exploitation of rural places foreign and domestic. American Imperalism has come to the homeland. Urban centers depend upon their privlage to sustain their way of life. Only rural people who work in blue collar jobs like farming, ranching, manufacturing and mining feel the oppression of capital supporting urban life.
It's all very well talking about "localizing" food supply chains but the rural and urban workers are totally essential to each other to maintain harmony and "comfortable" life on earth
The question is "Comfort for whom?" I am surprised you enclude the word "comfort" for "life on earth" not merely Human life.
I was merely looking for a way to include our economic system and level. Harmony was for the human side of things.
Capitalism to date, is ONLY about making humans comfortable and entertained at the expense of the planet. Adam Smith wrote during a time of "natural law". Capitalism boasts about an economic system based upon self-interest. No wonder the people who commit to it are distroying the planet. Supply and demand is not a natural law like gravity. It is a human invention, as is money.
Hopefully there's time enough to convince most people that saving the earth is the ultimate self-interest. But time is a-wasting.
Capitalism depends on the "free market", a myth that doesn't work, has never worked and cannot work.
Some significantly and increasingly more comfortable than others.
Interesting conversation. I’d say the greater divide is between rich and poor. Hunger Games without the annual, deadly war games. Wealthy people whether urban or rural rely on service workers to enjoy the benefits of their wealth. Without the entire support system and infrastructure provided by workers who build, farm, manufacture, clean, repair and provide care, money would be meaningless. The eternal challenge for the powerful minority is how to divide, control and suppress the essential majority. They have become very good at keeping us under control. This is not a US problem. It’s a human problem. The clock is ticking.
The red-blue division is there precisely to disguise the division between the very very rich and everyone else. We have seen over the last fifty years that the more inequality increases, the more the radical right creates "culture war" light shows to deflect attention, anger, away from the real sources of inequality.
Wow, Joan, I never thought of the red-blue division before in the way you describe it here, but makes perfect sense. Thanks.
Agreed, redirecting our anger away from the real problem keeps us fighting one another instead of dealing with the real problem.
Oh!
Exploitation is a capitalist problem the same way racism is a white problem. The whole earth suffers under capitalim the same way people of color suffer under racism.
100%
Yes but the rural areas need the city just as much. Who else will buy what they grow? Who will pay for the state colleges in the less populated rural areas? Who will pay for the infrastructure-- road maintenance, internet, power, waste treatment, water treatment hospitals?
The same argument was used by the British Empire to brag about the blessings "bestowed" upon India.
Note, I am not against "modern" farming, but against policies that reward the use of farmland to supply cheap High Frutose Corn Syrup. I am not against education, but the policy of using up all the sand from around the world to make buildings for Americans in the U.S. I am not against roads, but the policy of building roads out of asphalt, built by rivers that prevent animals from drinking the water without learning to dodge cars and polluting the water from run off.
The best book to look at about re-imagining a sustainable and nuturing society is The Empathetic Civilization by Jeremy Rufkin.