Methinks we're going to need a nationwide Texas Catastrophe to get the people who keep electing Republicans to see the error of their ways. Apparently, 500,000+ Covid deaths and all that comes with fighting the pandemic weren't enough.
Willful ignorance and prideful stupidity are tough obstacles to overcome.
Three weeks to the equinox and the first day of Spring.
Methinks we're going to need a nationwide Texas Catastrophe to get the people who keep electing Republicans to see the error of their ways. Apparently, 500,000+ Covid deaths and all that comes with fighting the pandemic weren't enough.
Willful ignorance and prideful stupidity are tough obstacles to overcome.
Three weeks to the equinox and the first day of Spring.
It is hard to figure, Ralph. Time and again I’ve tried to wrap my head around it, to ascertain some principled reason why the Republican Party obstructs to the apparent detriment of their constituents.
I can almost understand an objection to a nationwide minimum wage on the rationale that it could cost jobs in the short run, but beyond that, the reasoning keeps coming down to a politics of division – a political philosophy to hold power at all costs, even the loss of life.
The people who vote for them must be getting something of value for their support and you have to ask yourself what that might be. Beyond those who benefit from the tax cuts, business deregulation and suppressed wages, what is the Republican Party actually doing for their average supporters?
One answer – everything they can to disenfranchise minority voters they know will ultimately vote them out of office and thereby put the reins of power in the hands of a coalition of minorities and liberal white voters. In fact, by 2045 people of color will no longer be in the minority – something the Republicans know all too well and are already preparing for.
Richard Nixon was elected twice, so was Ronald Reagan, both employed a rhetoric of thinly veiled racism. George HW Bush beat Michael Dukakis only after floating the Willie Horton ad. And then Democrat Bill Clinton followed suit with his Crime Bill – for which he expressed regret only when his wife decided to run for President. These campaigns were grounded in an appeal to racism.
This admission by Nixon henchman, John Ehrlichman is illuminating.
“Dan Baum, the author of 1996's "Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure," wrote in Harper's Magazine in 2016 that while researching his book, [John] Ehrlichman gave a reason for the war of drugs that had little to do with protecting Americans from reefer madness.
"You want to know what this was really all about?" Ehrlichman asked, referring to the war on drugs.
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news."
"Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."”
Sound familiar? Then: Black people are criminals – lock them up and deprive them of their right to vote for life. Now: Immigrants are criminals – lock them up, toss them out, deny them their rights. And the whopper: The 2020 election was stolen because the Democrats cheated (translation: people of color voted against us in numbers large enough to win the Presidency and cost us the Senate.)
Biden’s Covid relief bill is collateral damage in the Republican’s continuing war on the Constitution. They will manufacture justifications that sound like, “limited government”, “fiscal responsibility”, “defending against socialism” – but none of that matters to them as the last four years have demonstrated - tax cuts, subsidies and deregulation that benefit large contributors, i.e., socialism for the rich.
One thing Republicans did well during their last lap in power was ram conservative judges through the Senate. Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case, the outcome of which could impact the rights of minority voters across the nation.
“On March 2, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a challenge to a pair of Arizona voting policies that make it harder for people to vote, especially in communities of color and Native American communities. The case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, is significant because it likely won’t just affect voters in the state. It could have broad implications for the fairness of our democracy across the country because of what the decision might mean for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, known as the VRA.”
So, I don’t know if more suffering and death are going to tilt the scales – 500,000 deaths, many resulting from Trump’s criminally botched response to the virus, have made no significant difference to core Republicans, not to mention the MAGA nation. Getting people back to work, relieving the anxiety of debt – these will help turn the tide and Biden is certainly doing all the right things.
But if we lose the battle to preserve the right of all Americans to vote, it will be for naught, because that seems to be the glue that holds the Republican house of cards together. The man who invented the Big Lie does not give a damn about the integrity of our elections – he and his followers want to remove as many people of color as possible from the voting rolls to stay in power. And that is something their voters seem to support.
Living inside the drug war zone (Kensington, Philadelphia) I believe that the only solution is that which worked in Switzerland, and now in Portugal. Decriminalize all drugs; use the money saved from the failed enforcement to make the drugs easily available through clinics if you qualify as an addict, create back-to-work programs with other social services. The factual data is that Portugal has seen the opioid addiction rate drop by 50%, the crime rate of addicts by 80%, and the inner city neighborhoods rejuvenated.
Thank you for posting this TED talk. As a lifelong addict of course now being managed with other drugs a system that doesn't stigmatize.and punish addiction is the only way forward in this country. A few generations of Black and Brown people have been isolated from society
How does that help anyone?
It only helps those whose goal is to put them where they can't see them and don't have to think of them.
So very true— thank you for that perspective going back to the Nixon years. I wish Stacey Abrams would give an on line master. Lass on exactly how she succeeded in getting Georgia to turn blue. It almost makes me feel like moving to Alabama so I could knock on doors etc
You are absolutely correct. Republicans can only win if there is voter suppression and voter suppression always means suppression of people of color. Everything they do smells like racism to me. Your points about the War an Drugs being just one way to criminalize Black people is very real. Dumping drugs in ghettos has happened since after WWii that I know of but surely before.
The biggest fight going forward will be against voter suppression. It's time for a new national Voting Rights Act.
Because this is all states’ rights and it would be illegal. So they just continue the gerrymandering and the deliberate process of making voting rights more and more opaque kind of like our impossible income tax laws.
Something has to give to break this impass because if the Supreme Court continues to refuse voting rights equality then, as John Roberts knows very well, the Court will be changed so that it cannot stop it.
Some of the decisions they’ve made lately have been moderate and pleasing despite dt’s jamming it with his picks— and maybe Garland will get confirmation this week.
In the end this is the only way they can stay in power and thereafter to use violence to prevent it being questioned. They've already experienced the "economic deficiencies"... to say nothing of human values...of slavery and they know that this system left them trailing very far behind northern wage-labour factories in the first half of the 19thC. The end result of this GOP autocratic strain (or stain) of thought is effectively a return to a situation where the few rich ruled a sub-class of poor whites while both sat upon a majority slave-class. Very similar by the way to the social classification system set up by the Spanish in the 16th C in Central America well before Northern European Colonialist started to arrive on the East Coast. The question that comes to mind is, in this sort of society there will obviously be far too many people in the slave class even with a massive drop in this labour's productivity, so what do they do with them? Restart the movement "Back to Africa? I don't think that anybody on either side of the Atlantic would be particularly interested. So what could they do as the new "Plantation Aristocracy certainly won't want to feed surplus slaves? Soylant Green here we come with the blessing of Trump!
Stuart, I have long believed that the ultimate goal of the Republican party was to create a social structure not unlike that you describe. I am, by nature, a cynic, so I have no problem visualizing their end goal. When I think about how long the folks in the Rust Belt, the closed coal fields, the Reservations with no power or water, the inner cities, the migrant laborers, service industry workers and domestic workers have been grasping at straws to survive, I wonder how and why more people don't see what's going on. The very base Trump and the current Republican party appeal to are too stupid to understand that they, too, will become part of the underclass in the not too distant future. Those who are white will have a slight edge as they always have. But not by much.
It's easy for those of us who are modestly fortunate to say more education will solve the problems but it's not that clear cut or simple, especially when even moderately well educated people have swallowed the decades of crap the Republican party has been dishing out. Nothing has trickled down other than poverty, hunger, sickness, 2nd rate education, (no, I'm not slinging mud at teachers but at legislators and administrators).
We call ourselves the wealthiest nation in the world. How can that be? On what do we base that notion? We have become a country, where, from cradle to grave, the expectation of a better life for all is nothing more than a very mean spirited pipe dream. How can anyone expect a person in the United States to live on the 12 year old Federal Minimum Wage of $7.25 an hour? And yes, there are many states that have a higher minimum wage, but there are a good number that don't. Not one lawmaker pushing against the $15.00 minimum could live on that let alone live on the current $7.25.
I think of Heather and her talks referring to Mudsills. This is where we're headed. I am angry, sickened and sad.
Now thats downright depressing - the number of states with $7.25 in 2010 and STILL $7.25! Nice to see NYS actually increased the past 10 years to $12.50! But mind-boggling at the states that just remained the same. Thank you, Daria. Since I retired have paid little to no attention.
Maggie, you know, my husband and I have been discussing the minimum wage issue for a while now. And that piqued my curiosity in re how individual states have addressed the minimum wage. It is downright depressing and unreasonable. It's hard to imagine what basics people are doing without because they don't earn enough to cover their expenses.
In many ways I think we’re the dumbest nation on the planet— we can’t figure out how to give citizens healthcare, we are so stupid about the minimum wage, our tax code is as complicated as a brand new hieroglyph every year, we won’t get around to a modern train system, our public schools pay good teachers not much. No wonder the French shake their heads and smile. My friend says—you Americans love to fight.
Boy does that say it all! You look at those issues & think whats the big deal? Take care of the stuff that matters - thats the reason our politicians are put in office & THATS what they are supposed to do! How hard is that? Yet they spend all this time working on their re-elections! Could it be that should tell us something?? Maybe?
A long and valuable posting, outlining the racial evils Republican voters seem to support. HCR concluded her comments today by writing "The coronavirus relief bill illustrates just how dangerously close we are to minority rule" and this posting enlightens us as to the vile nature of that minority.
We’ve already had so many major catastrophes though like the California fires recent Texas too etc but it’s clear that they just don’t give a u know what. It’s got to come down to the voting rights. There are a good number of repugs who have announced they won’t run for the next cycle.
Ralph it won't change the vote in TX even though the Repulsives have crated the disaster there. They are busy working on voter suppression even as we speak. So that would not work--and, as Liz has pointed out, we already have had an unmitigated and preventable disaster for all of 2020, yet an unconscionable number of people voted for fascism.
"..an unconscionable number of people voted for fascism."
And incompetent fascism at that. (Mussolini did make the trains run on time.)
Point taken, Linda. Ted Cruz (R, Cancun) would probably be re-elected today.
At CPAC there is a golden calf/statue of the former president, and all those bible-thumping christians apparently don't want to see the screamingly obvious biblical parallel.
You know, right after I posted that I just knew it was really "casting aspersions" (as my grandmother used to say) on pigs & hogs. But then, I really like calves, too so it just was a trade-off!
I believe that Biden, Warnock and Ossoff won because the pandemic made enough people wake up to the realization that culture wars are not enough reason to continue the horrors of the last 4+ years. However, as you aptly point out, "ignorance and prideful stupidity" remain.
How many catastrophe’s do those Red State dingalings need?
They just stick their hands in the air and ask their god to grant them miracles rather than plucking their heads out of their bums and using their brains.
Honestly, we should herd them to edge of the Earth they likely think is flat and then boot them off.
The Pandemic is a national disaster that has been woefully mis managed and lasted a whole year— mostly the repugs denied it was going Oman’s I heard the big conference that had this weekend continued to spread the lie. Sickening
Cross Country Ski season is over a month early here in Northern Michigan, and it didn't begin until nearly the end of January. Used to start mid-November. Grieving...
Methinks we're going to need a nationwide Texas Catastrophe to get the people who keep electing Republicans to see the error of their ways. Apparently, 500,000+ Covid deaths and all that comes with fighting the pandemic weren't enough.
Willful ignorance and prideful stupidity are tough obstacles to overcome.
Three weeks to the equinox and the first day of Spring.
It is hard to figure, Ralph. Time and again I’ve tried to wrap my head around it, to ascertain some principled reason why the Republican Party obstructs to the apparent detriment of their constituents.
I can almost understand an objection to a nationwide minimum wage on the rationale that it could cost jobs in the short run, but beyond that, the reasoning keeps coming down to a politics of division – a political philosophy to hold power at all costs, even the loss of life.
The people who vote for them must be getting something of value for their support and you have to ask yourself what that might be. Beyond those who benefit from the tax cuts, business deregulation and suppressed wages, what is the Republican Party actually doing for their average supporters?
One answer – everything they can to disenfranchise minority voters they know will ultimately vote them out of office and thereby put the reins of power in the hands of a coalition of minorities and liberal white voters. In fact, by 2045 people of color will no longer be in the minority – something the Republicans know all too well and are already preparing for.
Richard Nixon was elected twice, so was Ronald Reagan, both employed a rhetoric of thinly veiled racism. George HW Bush beat Michael Dukakis only after floating the Willie Horton ad. And then Democrat Bill Clinton followed suit with his Crime Bill – for which he expressed regret only when his wife decided to run for President. These campaigns were grounded in an appeal to racism.
This admission by Nixon henchman, John Ehrlichman is illuminating.
“Dan Baum, the author of 1996's "Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure," wrote in Harper's Magazine in 2016 that while researching his book, [John] Ehrlichman gave a reason for the war of drugs that had little to do with protecting Americans from reefer madness.
"You want to know what this was really all about?" Ehrlichman asked, referring to the war on drugs.
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news."
"Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."”
Sound familiar? Then: Black people are criminals – lock them up and deprive them of their right to vote for life. Now: Immigrants are criminals – lock them up, toss them out, deny them their rights. And the whopper: The 2020 election was stolen because the Democrats cheated (translation: people of color voted against us in numbers large enough to win the Presidency and cost us the Senate.)
Biden’s Covid relief bill is collateral damage in the Republican’s continuing war on the Constitution. They will manufacture justifications that sound like, “limited government”, “fiscal responsibility”, “defending against socialism” – but none of that matters to them as the last four years have demonstrated - tax cuts, subsidies and deregulation that benefit large contributors, i.e., socialism for the rich.
One thing Republicans did well during their last lap in power was ram conservative judges through the Senate. Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case, the outcome of which could impact the rights of minority voters across the nation.
“On March 2, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a challenge to a pair of Arizona voting policies that make it harder for people to vote, especially in communities of color and Native American communities. The case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, is significant because it likely won’t just affect voters in the state. It could have broad implications for the fairness of our democracy across the country because of what the decision might mean for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, known as the VRA.”
So, I don’t know if more suffering and death are going to tilt the scales – 500,000 deaths, many resulting from Trump’s criminally botched response to the virus, have made no significant difference to core Republicans, not to mention the MAGA nation. Getting people back to work, relieving the anxiety of debt – these will help turn the tide and Biden is certainly doing all the right things.
But if we lose the battle to preserve the right of all Americans to vote, it will be for naught, because that seems to be the glue that holds the Republican house of cards together. The man who invented the Big Lie does not give a damn about the integrity of our elections – he and his followers want to remove as many people of color as possible from the voting rolls to stay in power. And that is something their voters seem to support.
Sources:
https://www.businessinsider.com/nixon-adviser-ehrlichman-anti-left-anti-black-war-on-drugs-2019-7?r=DE&IR=T
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/supreme-court-case-challenging-voting-restrictions-arizona-explained
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/
To follow up on that point about the drug wars, read “Chasing the Scream,” by Johann Hari:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22245552-chasing-the-scream
Living inside the drug war zone (Kensington, Philadelphia) I believe that the only solution is that which worked in Switzerland, and now in Portugal. Decriminalize all drugs; use the money saved from the failed enforcement to make the drugs easily available through clinics if you qualify as an addict, create back-to-work programs with other social services. The factual data is that Portugal has seen the opioid addiction rate drop by 50%, the crime rate of addicts by 80%, and the inner city neighborhoods rejuvenated.
15 minutes that opened a whole new world for me:
https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong?language=en
I have seen this first hand as I have dear friends who live in Portugal. The changes there are astounding.
Thank you for posting this TED talk. As a lifelong addict of course now being managed with other drugs a system that doesn't stigmatize.and punish addiction is the only way forward in this country. A few generations of Black and Brown people have been isolated from society
How does that help anyone?
It only helps those whose goal is to put them where they can't see them and don't have to think of them.
Thank you, Jeff.
An amazing presentation- thanks again.
WOW!!! Thank You for this. Will spread far and wide.
Wow - thank you.
So very true— thank you for that perspective going back to the Nixon years. I wish Stacey Abrams would give an on line master. Lass on exactly how she succeeded in getting Georgia to turn blue. It almost makes me feel like moving to Alabama so I could knock on doors etc
There are doors everywhere, in every state, in every community. You are right, let's
ALL channel Stacey Abrams.
You are absolutely correct. Republicans can only win if there is voter suppression and voter suppression always means suppression of people of color. Everything they do smells like racism to me. Your points about the War an Drugs being just one way to criminalize Black people is very real. Dumping drugs in ghettos has happened since after WWii that I know of but surely before.
The biggest fight going forward will be against voter suppression. It's time for a new national Voting Rights Act.
And it promises to be one hell of a fight.
Why wouldn't they just remove voting rights for all and get it over with? Autocracy.
Because this is all states’ rights and it would be illegal. So they just continue the gerrymandering and the deliberate process of making voting rights more and more opaque kind of like our impossible income tax laws.
Something has to give to break this impass because if the Supreme Court continues to refuse voting rights equality then, as John Roberts knows very well, the Court will be changed so that it cannot stop it.
Some of the decisions they’ve made lately have been moderate and pleasing despite dt’s jamming it with his picks— and maybe Garland will get confirmation this week.
In the end this is the only way they can stay in power and thereafter to use violence to prevent it being questioned. They've already experienced the "economic deficiencies"... to say nothing of human values...of slavery and they know that this system left them trailing very far behind northern wage-labour factories in the first half of the 19thC. The end result of this GOP autocratic strain (or stain) of thought is effectively a return to a situation where the few rich ruled a sub-class of poor whites while both sat upon a majority slave-class. Very similar by the way to the social classification system set up by the Spanish in the 16th C in Central America well before Northern European Colonialist started to arrive on the East Coast. The question that comes to mind is, in this sort of society there will obviously be far too many people in the slave class even with a massive drop in this labour's productivity, so what do they do with them? Restart the movement "Back to Africa? I don't think that anybody on either side of the Atlantic would be particularly interested. So what could they do as the new "Plantation Aristocracy certainly won't want to feed surplus slaves? Soylant Green here we come with the blessing of Trump!
Stuart, I have long believed that the ultimate goal of the Republican party was to create a social structure not unlike that you describe. I am, by nature, a cynic, so I have no problem visualizing their end goal. When I think about how long the folks in the Rust Belt, the closed coal fields, the Reservations with no power or water, the inner cities, the migrant laborers, service industry workers and domestic workers have been grasping at straws to survive, I wonder how and why more people don't see what's going on. The very base Trump and the current Republican party appeal to are too stupid to understand that they, too, will become part of the underclass in the not too distant future. Those who are white will have a slight edge as they always have. But not by much.
It's easy for those of us who are modestly fortunate to say more education will solve the problems but it's not that clear cut or simple, especially when even moderately well educated people have swallowed the decades of crap the Republican party has been dishing out. Nothing has trickled down other than poverty, hunger, sickness, 2nd rate education, (no, I'm not slinging mud at teachers but at legislators and administrators).
We call ourselves the wealthiest nation in the world. How can that be? On what do we base that notion? We have become a country, where, from cradle to grave, the expectation of a better life for all is nothing more than a very mean spirited pipe dream. How can anyone expect a person in the United States to live on the 12 year old Federal Minimum Wage of $7.25 an hour? And yes, there are many states that have a higher minimum wage, but there are a good number that don't. Not one lawmaker pushing against the $15.00 minimum could live on that let alone live on the current $7.25.
I think of Heather and her talks referring to Mudsills. This is where we're headed. I am angry, sickened and sad.
Minimum Wage by State, 2010-2021:
https://www.laborlawcenter.com
Now thats downright depressing - the number of states with $7.25 in 2010 and STILL $7.25! Nice to see NYS actually increased the past 10 years to $12.50! But mind-boggling at the states that just remained the same. Thank you, Daria. Since I retired have paid little to no attention.
Maggie, you know, my husband and I have been discussing the minimum wage issue for a while now. And that piqued my curiosity in re how individual states have addressed the minimum wage. It is downright depressing and unreasonable. It's hard to imagine what basics people are doing without because they don't earn enough to cover their expenses.
In many ways I think we’re the dumbest nation on the planet— we can’t figure out how to give citizens healthcare, we are so stupid about the minimum wage, our tax code is as complicated as a brand new hieroglyph every year, we won’t get around to a modern train system, our public schools pay good teachers not much. No wonder the French shake their heads and smile. My friend says—you Americans love to fight.
Boy does that say it all! You look at those issues & think whats the big deal? Take care of the stuff that matters - thats the reason our politicians are put in office & THATS what they are supposed to do! How hard is that? Yet they spend all this time working on their re-elections! Could it be that should tell us something?? Maybe?
They’re so good at the smoke and mirrors they don’t have to get anything done and they still have their rock solid base.
Thank you R. Dooley.
A long and valuable posting, outlining the racial evils Republican voters seem to support. HCR concluded her comments today by writing "The coronavirus relief bill illustrates just how dangerously close we are to minority rule" and this posting enlightens us as to the vile nature of that minority.
We’ve already had so many major catastrophes though like the California fires recent Texas too etc but it’s clear that they just don’t give a u know what. It’s got to come down to the voting rights. There are a good number of repugs who have announced they won’t run for the next cycle.
Ralph it won't change the vote in TX even though the Repulsives have crated the disaster there. They are busy working on voter suppression even as we speak. So that would not work--and, as Liz has pointed out, we already have had an unmitigated and preventable disaster for all of 2020, yet an unconscionable number of people voted for fascism.
"..an unconscionable number of people voted for fascism."
And incompetent fascism at that. (Mussolini did make the trains run on time.)
Point taken, Linda. Ted Cruz (R, Cancun) would probably be re-elected today.
At CPAC there is a golden calf/statue of the former president, and all those bible-thumping christians apparently don't want to see the screamingly obvious biblical parallel.
I won't despair because, well, just because.
Thank you for responding to my post.
I have to respond to the gold "calf" remark - it really looks closer to a hog to me.
Looks are deceptive....hogs are not stupid!
You know, right after I posted that I just knew it was really "casting aspersions" (as my grandmother used to say) on pigs & hogs. But then, I really like calves, too so it just was a trade-off!
Perhaps Sloth, Tasmanian Devil or some slithering beasty might be more appropriate
They have NO clue how ridiculous they look. Remember how Deplorables swamped and sank themselves at that TX boat rally? The jokes write themselves.
I believe that Biden, Warnock and Ossoff won because the pandemic made enough people wake up to the realization that culture wars are not enough reason to continue the horrors of the last 4+ years. However, as you aptly point out, "ignorance and prideful stupidity" remain.
How many catastrophe’s do those Red State dingalings need?
They just stick their hands in the air and ask their god to grant them miracles rather than plucking their heads out of their bums and using their brains.
Honestly, we should herd them to edge of the Earth they likely think is flat and then boot them off.
The Pandemic is a national disaster that has been woefully mis managed and lasted a whole year— mostly the repugs denied it was going Oman’s I heard the big conference that had this weekend continued to spread the lie. Sickening
The weather akready feels like mid summer here in FL. Yup, gonna be a hot one.
I've got both daffodils and crocus blooming before the end of February, and those are mid and early March bloomers for me, respectively.
and i've got my spring pollen allergies early after a couple of weeks of nice warmer weather!
Cross Country Ski season is over a month early here in Northern Michigan, and it didn't begin until nearly the end of January. Used to start mid-November. Grieving...