Nothing short of brilliant, Heather, and an early night for you for once. I am so grateful to be reading you every day and I know I speak for thousands. Thank you From the bottom of our hearts!
Here's the pattern I've observed during my lifetime as a Democrat: When Republicans are in office, they tax based on the theory that "a rising tide floats all boats." They spend liberally on what matters to them and when the Dems come in, they have to figure out a way to pay for the deficits run up by the Republicans.
When trying to redress the inequalities in our country thanks to the previous administration, Democrats are called "socialists" and "big spenders." Perfect example: Biden after TFG and his tax cuts for the rich.
Democrats need to tell this story over and over again because the Republicans will continue to use the same old playbook!
You've nailed the Republican playbook that they turn to whenever in power. Talk incessantly about their fiscal conservatism while spending like mad. Then bitch and moan about the deficit they created when Democrats take over. The breathtaking hypocrisy is lost on much of the public, which comes to believe the Republicans are prudent with tax money and Democrats are irresponsible with it.
Well, that's what they are told, all the time, and analytical thinking didn't form a large part of their education. Fascinating - and appalling - to see how long ago this started, and why. Slavery as a means of getting wealth! it was legally abolished in England, from whose domination America had freed itself fifty-odd years earlier, in 1833. Has anything changed?
Heather McGhee: A New “We The People” For a Sustainable Future | Bioneers 2017
"... It’s important to remember — because so much of this history has been suppressed — just how essential to the creation of the American economy slavery was. And slave labor on plantation land expropriated from Native Americans. That is our economy.
"The historian Edward Baptist, in his book The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, calculates that by 1860, slave labor produced 80% of the gross national product. Even in the north, our systems of finance and capitalization, our industrial textile mills, all sprang out of and fed into a slave-driven economy. Black lives were the original currency of America.
"At our founding, those in power chose to make American slavery different from other forms, not just indentured labor but hereditary, inexorable, and they did it alongside these proclamations of equality and liberty that we now hold dear as our American creed, that it is self-evident that all men are created equal, that all men are entitled to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s a heart-stopping contradiction. The only way for men to write those words while owning other human beings was to create a belief system in which those people were not human beings.
"So for our first centuries, African Americans were property. For the subsequent
ones, and up until the late 1980s, in fact, explicitly racist laws conspired to deny African Americans of property. We live on one of most biologically and ecologically diverse lands on the planet. We have rainforests and deserts, this treasure that we sing about from sea to shining sea, and yet it is not ours. It has never been ours. We stole it, we killed for it, and we have not made amends.
"It’s hard to admit all of that, to hold all of that, while at the same time holding a vision of we the people, and of a country and a population that is worth fighting for and creating solidarity amongst. You know, we have this myth of American innocence. I really commend to you a new book called Hitler’s American Model, which goes right to the heart of puncturing that myth. World War II, is it not, is our shining example of when America saved the world, when America, the good guys, went and defeated the bad guys, the Nazis.
"Even today, when Nazis are marching down our streets, it’s become very easy for a bipartisan consensus to say, well at least not that. We know that the Nazis are the bad guys. That’s what we know. If one thing we know for sure it’s that the Nazis are the bad guys.
"My friends, why is it not common knowledge to us that when Hitler and his regime looked for a model of a way to create a society where citizenship and humanity was cabined only to whites in every single legal policy, economic piece of infrastructure, they looked only to us as the model. So how is it possible that we can say with a straight face that we are the good guys and the Nazis are the bad guys?"
I’m so glad you posted this additional resource. My mind spins over how many “good” people have closed their minds to looking at the truths we were shielded from, misled about. Keep sharing, folks. Don’t be silent. Don’t be afraid to tell the truth. I, for one, see that it gives me a chance to craft my messages in a way that won’t make people slam the door in my face. When I think of how long it has taken me to be open to all of this myself … and so thankful there have been persistent people to keep sharing. Our whole group of HCR readers has picked up the baton.
My R ex-classmate told me she is very glad she is not as well educated as I am as I reported here before. She is always angry with me if she posts something political and I respond. Once someone on the thread made threats (I think now it was a reference to January 6th which had not occurred yet) and she chose to castigate me instead of him. Only once did she sorta back down (and lied about why she had posted the meme in the first place) when I called her out about posting that God used wildfires to punish CA. This was after the terrible wildfires here in Oregon and I pointed out to her that lots of the people who had suffered had the same views as she did. That didn't prevent us from making a donation to the recovery fund despite their politics.
"So now, we have to admit that we are in a moment of racial panic. But it is challenging us to shed the self-imposed color-blindness of our movements and engage forcefully in this question: Who is an American? What are we to one another? We have to admit that this question is harder for us than it is for most other countries because we are the world’s most radical experiment in democracy. A nation of ancestral strangers met here with the audacious promise that out of many we could become one. Everything depends on the answer to this question: Who is an American, and what are we to one another?"
Yes, it is time to look at our history for what it truly is. Slavery is a form of human trafficking. It is generally considered to be a crime. The American nation was built on human trafficking on a mass scale. The words “human trafficking” shed light on the abhorrent aspects of our history.
Bingo! Love this finely-tuned perspective that EVERYONE should understand the illegality of — taking someone else's freedoms away. These are humans. Makes all the whining about owning weapons of mass destruction look rather pitiful in comparison. But we need to send this out, far and wide, beyond the choir here.
Heather McGhee's book, "The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together," is superb. And for those of you who like numbers, they are included often!
Reading this reminds me why the gop are screaming at school board meetings. Learning any of this chips away at their support. Heather McGhee is an important voice clearly acknowledging our history and pointing a way forward.
Just read an article in the local rag here in Salem about a group that is touting itself as non-partisan on schools. One person went to the first meeting and didn't know what to expect. It didn't take long for her (and her partner) to figure it out and they were the only two who were masked. She wrote an op-ed for another local paper and since then has had to put up with the usual radical right response. Luckily the progressive community is on to this group, so they won't be able to sustain the lie that they are non-partisan.
I just bought the audiobook. And I posted that I did that on my Facebook page. Very exciting to see all these resources rolling out and to discover the work and the people who have been trying to get "my" attention for many, many years. Still, it is always better late than never.
Thank you for mentioning The Half.... I must try to finish it. So we have a nation built on slavery and stolen land. But we must not teach any of this. Last night as I was listening to Club Mod on All Classical, the host featured music by living black composers, I was trying to remember which Presidents were slaver holders. For the first few, it was easier to remember which ones weren't. Also thank you for the reference to Hitler's American Model which is going on my book list (very long as always).
'... anyone who remains silent in the face of injustice is contributing to it.'
'... We cannot redeem the past. But, on this day, as we mourn humanity’s capacity to inflict inhuman cruelty, let us commit to making a better future and to always upholding the fundamental values of justice, equality, and diversity that strengthen free societies."
Yes, an old friend of mine, now gone, found himself on the last Kindertransport out of Hamburg at age 16, thanks to his Aryan grandparents who saw what was coming. And he'd been brought up in Hitler Youth!
"There are over 870,000 inmates working full-time in American prisons. Their median wage in state and federal prisons is around 20 and 31 cents an hour, respectively. In Texas, Georgia, and Arkansas prisoners are forced to work for free."
Cotton slavery was very lucrative and many slaves further north were sold south to do the work. This meant splitting families and a long trek usually, if not always, on foot to fuel the bonanza for both southern cotton growers and ultimately the industrial revolution both here and in England. I still haven't finished The Half That Has Never Been Told about cotton slavery as I was just so appalled.
and it is mind-boggling how the press paints a slanted portrait favoring R's. listen to the headlines recently only focused on 'inflation ', or supply chain issues,rather than the incredible rebounding of the economy.
Ingrained habits are hard to change, even when we know them for what they are, vices, hand-me-down prejudices aping true knowledge.
The truth—knowledge directly perceived—has a hard time establishing itself and is all too easily stifled by the powerful weeds of opinion received. And the kind of education that is pure conditioning, rote learning with no training in thinking things through for oneself, makes for a poor environment in which to develop our human potential. Mere shadows of our true selves, never becoming what we are…
When you gain a deeper insight into what’s right and what’s wrong, it will typically come as intuition, a moment of pure perception. But then you say, “That can’t be true, it goes against everything I’ve ever been told…”
It is only when that first intuition keeps repeating, only when you meet others who confirm and establish the seedlings of understanding that you come to make the effort of thinking the matter through for yourself—it is so much easier not to think, so much easier to accept hearsay uncritically. Quite apart from the courage it takes to go against the tide of received opinion. It’s so much easier to be dependent on being told you’re free than to be free.
Even when you get the point, even when you’re convinced, old habits will tend to return and take root. You thought you’d woken up to the truth, but it’s so easy to doze off and slide back into the automatisms of delusion.
Over and over. We need to be reminded—above all to remind ourselves—over and over again.
I said that zombie education, the superficial in-one-ear-and-out-the-other practice of inculcating enough information to pass tests without ever having understood what’s involved, makes for much of the problem: a mass of people uneducated and seemingly uneducable. Zombified consumers. Cannon fodder. Office fodder. The junkies drug pushers dream of… Debased religion deepens and establishes these delusions—which is curious… But I suppose that it’s obvious that while the Truth will make you free, untruths and half-truths will make you unfree… If hearers really reflected on the Parable of the Sower, they’d wake up to when their preacher’s sowing weeds to stifle the wheat…
So it must be said over and over again, regardless of whether we’re bright or we’re stupid. I know this. I’ve seen it for myself, in myself. Over decades and decades, I’ve seen the need for constant reminders. It’s like staying awake and keeping my eyes on the road and knowing when to stop and rest.
Attention’s a survival skill. And much of the population’s asleep at the wheel.
Peter, your comment sounds like a pretty fair analysis of our human tendencies to me, you are a man who is deeply introspective as well as a keen observer of life and humanity. I appreciate your efforts to find cause and effect, and your willingness to share your own struggles with us. Let me tell you that you are not alone with the bad mental habits that keep coming back. I would bet that everyone in this group has a story or two to admit having the same problems! And our efforts to improve, to be as wise and stable as we know we are easily capable of being, are just made even more disappointing in times of high stress, rapid change, and multiple moving threats, exactly like we are going through right now. Does it sound like I am in serious therapy right now? I didn’t think it was that obvious....
Keep on trying man, and always ALWAYS love yourself!
Despite everything I know about the idiocy I was immersed in growing up, and lots of work to drop that shit, I'm constantly amazed to catch myself with some aspect of the "stinking thinking" playing in my mind. Just another reminder that the answer to the question, "How many times do you have to pick yourself up?" is "One more time than you fall down."
That it SO true. In a certain way, our “sin” is ever before us.
I do a lot of reading in what archeology derives about ancient cultures: also reading ancient describers of culture; from Hammurabi and the Chronicles of Gilgamesh to other ancient codes of conduct that most people call mythologies.
I am of the opinion that in all of these texts, what appears most often is that despite so-called improvements in “civilization”, human behavior remains relatively consistent over time.
Hit the "refresh" circle in the top left corner of the screen. It's a Substack glitch, but they do take the "likes" and you can see you did it if you do that.
Have you read Daniel Kahnemann's "Think, fast think slow"? His theory of the division of our conscious thinking process into an automatic, "intuitive" instant response which requires no effort and a second slower process, when the first doesn't quite "cut it" that actually requires the effort of "thinking through the issue" and this is harder and uncomfortable. No prizes for guessing that most people go for the easy, instantaneous solution at all times....and we end up where we are....in a mess.
Well, this community here is Critical Thinkers' Group Therapy, Gus! It is where I find sanity and camaraderie in these times. I send everyone, particularly Heather, a big, warm, group hug on this cold winter's day in Vermont.
I tried to answer you and TC just after you'd both written to say how much I'd appreciated the resonance. Message vanished... Anyway, it's great to have a mentor like HCR, so committed, so utterly reliable, so deeply versed in the material she’s presenting. Great, too, to be able to be so open and unguarded with each other—altercations and all! Let’s hope the members of this community will infect others all around us and that, even if we can’t wean all the addicts off Agent Orange—bear in mind how much the poor so-and-sos must have needed something, someone to believe in—we’ll be able to sow the seeds of truth for spring, summer… or whenever.
Mr. Burnett, you make so many points in your message it seems like water on a plate! I would like to address one of your comments concerning education.
I was born on the leading edge of the Baby Boom. One of the educational advantages of that time was there was a lot less technology a child had to learn than is the case today so students could learn those dreaded, boring classes like history, social studies, and, the worst, civics.
I was a very indifferent student. I rarely did my homework. I was once confined to my bedroom for Easter Week (now called spring break) because I had to write four book reports. I read four other books and never did write a book report. My school career up to graduation was more of the same. However, when I was in college I made the President’s list.
My husband and I have three children. They are all very successful. They did well in school and in college. The generation my children belong to is not considered to have had a sterling education - at least in comparison to the education we Boomers got. I could rant for hours about what I believe were the inadequacies of K-12 education when my kids were in school. There were lots of “losers” from that time - the “Zombie educated” who never seemed to make much of themselves.
My kids all had public education. Let me tell you some of the careers these Zombie educated friends (all publicly educated) of my children: lawyers, concert pianist, the owner of one of the largest independent book stores, CEOs (my son among them), graphic designer, several doctors. I’m sure you get the point. The point *I* want you to know is those who want to learn will learn nonetheless. Going to a school in a poor school district in a poverty stricken neighborhood is not easy, but to graduate and go on to higher education is not impossible, either. Going to school in a good neighborhood is no guarantee of success. It all depends on lots of mitigating circumstances. There have been in-one-ear-out-the-other students always and it will continue to be so.
A wonderful teacher said to me the secret of success requires three things. If you are missing any one of the three you will not be successful in that particular endeavor. You must have talent; intelligence; and persistence. So, Mr. Barrett, I will leave you with that.
"You must have talent; intelligence; and persistence". I agree, no doubt, except, I don't really know what intelligence is but that is another issue.
I would only add you also need:
Good nutrition, a place to sleep, parents who are there (and don't have to work two shifts to make rent and are not there), a place to sleep (sleep is critical to the learning process), and a safe environment.
Einstein, denied good nutrition, a place to sleep and no parents around would have never been heard from. So, I guess I do place "intelligence" as dead last on the list of things that make one successful.
Also, I have met too many people who are "successful" who seem to have the brains of mush to believe that intelligence plays much of role really.
Trump would be in that category as would "W" Bush. Mush for brains but monetarily doing great.
I believe you are absolutely right, Mike. As an educator in a high-poverty area, I have seen the truth of Alan Beck's quote "In teaching, you can't do the Bloom stuff until you take care of the Maslow stuff." To those unfamiliar with that, Bloom created a hierarchy of cognitive skills ranging from the bottom skill of rote memorization to the top skill of creating; Maslow proposed a hierarchy of human needs that must be met before learning can occur. At the bottom are physiological needs such as food, water, rest, followed by the next level - safety. I'm including a link here: https://jessichristian.medium.com/the-new-hierarchy-of-needs-maslows-lost-apex-5e51031ce3fb
When I was a high school teacher, my first year, there was a boy in 9th grade who had intelligence and drive. He came to school every day. He always had a place to sleep. The trouble was, he never knew when he arrived at school in the morning where he would be sleeping at night. That chaos was too much. We lost him to the streets, where he likely died violently before he was 25. Circumstances matter.
I had a lovely young man assigned to me in the library through special ed. He was in a creative writing class and he showed me something that he had written that was his dream for the future. We all worked to do our best for him, but family circumstances proved to be too much. His father told him to kill someone, and he did. So sad.
As once again the “like” function is MIA, thank you. I’ve been seeing more and more bootstrap references lately, especially regarding education. Usually it piggybacks with a condemnation of single parent households. Another example of lazy thinking.
Bootstrap expectations and opinions have often (mostly) been party/politically driven. Funding and programming in a Dem administration ended later by repub. It’s heartbreaking (again) to know what works and what is needed and watch it dumped by an unfeeling and ignorant group of politicians and their constituents who lament and criticize those “lazy” people.
The bootstrap references are big red flags for me. I agree with your comment of “lazy thinking”. Thank you to each person who took the time to comment.
TC, I am going to add the absence of a chaotic environment to your list. I am aware of people who had horrible childhoods (my father-in-law among them) whose food/housing insecurity made learning almost impossible. I saw many students in my professional career who may have not had those problems, but with a drug addicted/psychotic/abusive parent had the same result of inability to succeed.
Yes. You're right. I should have listed that myself. I've come to understand my mother as an abused child never treated. I should put one of the main reasons for my success being "a room of my own" to which I could retreat while the banshee was wailing around the house.
The definition of intelligence given by Todd Eastin's friend is highly perceptive. Here's something that the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead had to say on the matter:
"Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended."
When I spoke of success, I was speaking of people who found fulfilment in life and succeeded in doing something of what they'd set out to achieve. As for the "success" that is commonly measured in $ and many digits, Seneca put it succinctly:
"Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That is why it satisfies nobody."
I used to make a fair (actually more than fair) living rewriting screenplays written by people better-known than I so they made sense and worked, for which the "credit" was the kind bank managers recognize as well as producers who have a movie that works. Now I write books, for which the income is fair. An idiot once asked why I had switched (I won't go into the long part of the reply, if you go over to TAFM you can read "Why The Movies Mostly Suck Nowadays" for that). I responded: "I get to write what I like, the way I like, working with people who like making the book successful." There's a lot more "success" shown on my Amazon page than there would be on my IMDb page if one could list the things one did that "worked" for which "credit" was not given.
You just wrote a version of my reply, Mike. I once had a similar conversation with a fellow teacher colleague who talked about resilience as it were genetic. Possibly, but not only. It’s even more. Besides the desire, a student needs the basics- love, shelter, nutrition, safety but as important is to be mentored or supported by a model or a supportive person, parent, teacher, neighbor, someone who encourages as well as watches out for or helps the child. Kids who don’t have their basic needs met at home or in their world, who fall through the cracks, are less likely to be able to take advantage of opportunities some might believe are available to everyone. It takes a village….
One or two of the wisest and most knowledgeable -- and successful -- men I've known had very little education at all apart from what they taught themselves.
Yes-Curiosity is a good motivator for learning. Learning doesn’t just come from books-although I’m a real fan of research and reading. Life experiences teach us a lot. My 90 year old grandmother taught me more than most of my teachers.
As a kid, I tried hard to understand religion but didn't. I'd have been drawn to it if I'd known the saying of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux:
"Believe me, you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters."
That I knew. My teachers seem to have been aware of it too, they complained that I was forever staring out of the window, dreaming... And it was true, I couldn't wait to get away up the mountainside or onto the beach... I was fortunate. I pity kids who see nothing but concrete and asphalt.
Here's to staring out the window. My fifth grade teacher reported to my mother that I was staring out the window. She was concerned about my future; mom was devastated. Poetry writing became part of my calling. My inspiration lay far behind that musty classroom, through the giant windows capped with yellowed, rolling shades. I have since led writing workshops validating the importance of day dreaming...
Unless I've misunderstood, you seem to be talking of previous generations, but how about now? I worry about my teenage granddaughter who has all three of the qualities you cite. On a grand scale. I worry because I have the impression that, increasingly, the backing of money matters more than all three. And, despite the exceptional abilities of her parents, that fourth factor is missing.
More than ever, America needs to invest in education, yet one of the major political parties seems set on undermining adequate education, the kind that encourages students to think for themselves. I'm reminded of my childhood in South Africa when the National Party used Apartheid to place a heavy lid on the education and social advancement of non-whites; except that here, it goes further -- or am I mistaken? At all events, I regard the system of lifelong indentures that has spread outward from America as a deliberately imposed impediment. The country's interest in this investment is such that students and their families should not be compelled to foot the bill for such a high proportion of the cost.
Another aspect of the investment required concerns teachers' pay and their status. Since society appears to be stratified almost entirely on the basis of wealth and income levels, I often gain the impression that many teachers status and incomes are far lower than they should be. Compare with Finland... Well, that's unfair. Almost no one can. But Scandinavians are really good at matching policies to real priorities -- not just the haphazard vagaries of the market.
So here I am worrying in a big way about the future of American society -- like most of us here -- but worrying, too (perhaps unnecessarily) about someone who may be the brightest star in my family for over a century. And I can assure you, the talent isn't and wasn't lacking.
Just a postcriptum (sorry, I know you found I was piling it all on too thick) but as a European, I find American efficiency is hampered by quite excessive pressures allowing insufficient time and space for relaxation, a product of meanness and what looks from the outside like anxiety neurosis. It's as though you were forever opening and closing doors from the hinge side. Pardon the gross over-generalization -- but this unhealthy attitude is spreading worldwide!
Many nations, America among them, are now experiencing the snowball effect of having poorly educated teachers, “educating” a majority of the country’s children.
The pernicious attacks on education today (school board fracases, book banning, steering away from anything remotely controversial, sanitizing curricula and the like) are in the process of ensuring that thrashers flood out of the profession. The general rule I and others observed is that the best leave the soonest because they are wise enough to understand the moral imperatives in education and have sufficient integrity not to participate in a rotting system. In the main, those who stay are either incurious or intent on the paycheck.
America could begin serious reforms today and they would not show results for a minimum of a generation, more probably two.
The vacuum caused by an education system that fails to educate will be filled by whatever government replaces your democracy.
Nothing is more important than addressing the shocking fall of education in America.
And ramping up technology in schools is the first and laziest non-solution that will be tried.
I’m sure there’s truth to much you write. However I would be careful of generalizations. “In the main, those who stay are either incurious or intent on the paycheck.” In today’s political climate quality education is also dependent on funding, sociopolitical agendas and the economy. I taught for 30 years all levels and encountered excellent teachers who worked in adverse conditions and persisted and those who were burned out, not because of the paycheck but because of policy, politics and lack of support from administration and/or parents. It’s true in many districts, however, that pay and support and school funding and retirement policies differ greatly, so maybe our comments are a matter of semantics.
Absolutely, but investment needs to be in quality education. Bush 2 and No Child Left Behind invested money into the system but definitely not quality.
I was feeling so guilty, sitting here in my recliner, enjoying a crossword puzzle, that I scolded myself, "You must DO something today!" So I decided to read the comments to HCR's letter. Now, I suffer another anxious dilemma: Is reading HCR's comments sufficiently relaxing to qualify as true relaxation, or must I dig out John Grisham's "A Time for Mercy", open my new bag of Hu chocolates (try them!), and play a bit of Roy Orbison? Bye.
Attunement, engagement, structure, routine, freedom to explore safely, consistency, patience, tolerance, most of all agape love. If you received it chances are good you will give it. Heartbreakingly many never receive it.
Many attributes we see as catalysts for success are developed. I’ll add a few others that make a difference: consistent adult modeling/ support/attention/positive relationships; and three meals a day and safe places to sleep. Safe housing. Medical needs met. There’s more.
I wonder what recourse the educational system has to combat the zombie approach to education. Like when W administration required No Child Left Behind, educators everywhere knew it was not a good system and it wasn’t funded. The data behind it was falsified. So why did we have to blindly follow that order of rule? We’re basically still following it! Teaching to the test. Politicians shouldn’t be in control of education. They make our objectives, and our rules and requirements. We need educational leadership to do that.
In Texas, millions go every year to a company in the UK for our state test and testing materials. No logic to it at all. And we spend countless hours teaching kids “strategies” for passing the test. It’s not purely true of all districts but it’s still the highest priority.
I don’t think we can get schools out of the zombie approach if the administrators continue to fall in line instead of bucking the status quo.
I swear I do have other interests than education! Just Dr HCR brings it to the fore front of my brain!
“Politicians should not be in control of education.”
“Control” doesn’t seem to be quite the right word for this. To control something, you need competence, you need to understand it. Sticking dirty brown noses into the exercise of every profession amounts to sabotage, not control. The ability of judges to render justice may vary but political interference with sentencing guarantees injustice. Physicians are already forced to take cover from the crossfire between big pharma, insurance companies and parasitic lawyers without having to take instruction in the use of bleach as medicine from those whose grey matter (if any) was bleached long ago. And politicians do relish sending young men and women to war.
I don’t know how political leadership manages this but the selection of education ministers seems to be determined by mysterious factors, mostly, no doubt, financial. The outcome? Ministers chosen from among the uneducated and the uneducable but with big bumble-bee ideas buzzing around in their bonnet. Betsy DeVos seems to have represented the lowest common denominator among those messing around with education.
From political interference, Good Lord deliver us!
TFG was a master at assigning the hungriest foxes (secretaries) to his henhouses (Cabinets). His mission was deconstruction of the administrative state. With a severe and disabling personality disorder, all of his focus was directed towards his single mission which he excelled at. Folks saw the bumbling and couldn’t believe he would be capable of such extraordinary damage to our democracy. I maintain we will be decades still discovering the destruction that he accomplished.
WaPo, 04/03/2017 “the United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater President, Erik Prince and a Russian close to …Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-Elect Trump, according to US, European and Arab officials”. Erik Prince is Betsy DeVos brother. DeVos was confirmed Feb. 7 2017, as Education Secretary. Quid pro quo?
Oh, yes, and Bumble Bee ideas, true! There was a reading program called Whole Language in the early ‘90s. The state superintendent bought a commercially supplied version of this. No more phonics drill and kill, hooray! Instead, baby thrown out with the bath water. In practice, first graders would chant from a large chart an insipid text (changed weekly) and be directed to notice its rhymes and such. My instructions as a substitute teacher: Make sure they keep their eyes on the words as they read (“read”) from the chart.
Whole Language, developed by a moron who is considered a Genius in Education at CSU San Bernardino, is proof the Ed.D. degree and those who hold it should be invited to be a participant at the hanging of every MBA in America.
My grandmothers, both teachers, taught me phonics at age 4, and my first grade class was taught by the last teacher to use phonics in the Denver Public Schools. My brother and sister got taught "word recognition" and were functional illiterates, as was every other kid sabotaged with that. I cannot think of a single "edumacational reforyum" that was done while I was in school ("new math," I'm looking at you) that didn't screw things up worse. The only college I could get into after the Navy, Colorado State College (now the "University" of Northern Colorado), the state teacher's school, because they had to take you if you graduated from high school, even 125 from the bottom of a class of 900 like me (due to being Aspergian). I worked at the school's PR department and read a study they had there, that for 80% of the students, they were the first in the family to go to college, and for 75% it wasn't in their top three choices (hey, if you can't do anything else, you can always be a teacher). When I finally took an "edumcation" class (Ed Psych, taught by the author of the book whose "tests" were "fill in the blank" from his book) I realized why I had hated every minute of 12 years of public misedumacation, when I saw what they made the majority of teachers out of and how they did it. (How the good ones survive that is beyond me, but it there hadn't been two among the faceless mass of moron stupidity at the front of the classroom, I wouldn't have the career I do or be writing this).
I agree generally but think there’s a bit of overreach here. A great teacher can teach children to read using the best of phonics and whole reading. S(he) can teach children math using the best of the new math and older ways.
At the heart of learning is motivation. At the heart of motivation are the great teachers. The “systems” do not dictate the outcome.
And, as a general rule, the least visionary, hidebound and unpopular (with children) teachers end up as consultants for curricula, and force their approach on the most impressionable teachers.
Whole language should always have been paired with phonics. Not one or the other. What a mess when the continuing changes in policies, funding and curriculum do damage. And sad if a teacher can’t or couldn’t figure out how to close the door and teach. It isn’t exactly sabotage to teach beyond or make changes in the mandated curriculum. However I was happy to leave the classroom because following the mandates and time wasting paperwork was more than enough. And I know I was an excellent teacher, but if I had it to do again?
I think that you and I are in the same boat; I am most passionate about the things that I have a good knowledge base for (you, education and for me, law enforcement). It is what has made us good at our jobs, and in this environment, we have the opportunity to share it with people who understand it, even better than our fellow professionals, sometimes.
The increasing conservative school boards in some states are dictating curriculum, censoring books, making medical decisions affecting teachers and students, etc.
Recently a school superintendent was fired in Douglas County, CO
“The school board has been politically split since the most recent election. Four new school board members have taken the district in a decidedly different direction. The first policies of the new board have been to rescind the district's mask policy and make major changes to its equity policy.“
It started with CRT.
“The policy has raised concerns from some members of our community who have asked if this will change DCSD curriculum to incorporate Critical Race Theory.”
The CRT and 1619 Project have been addressed by the State. They stated we can’t teach those things. When our principal told us, most teachers looked at each other and said what is that? Elementary teachers don’t teach CRT!
It’s always about the money! As long as they don’t give it to teachers, that is.
CRT has been effectively distorted because it sounds like ‘critical race thinking’ or critical thinking about racism. Radical rightists have not missed that our young people tend toward progressive and open hearted. They want to change that by turning the schools into right wing indoctrination centers. One of the many clues is that they constantly talk about indoctrinating kids at school. So many of their false charges are things they themselves are actually doing.
The last time I was in Douglas County, the Boy Scouts used to camp in the "wilderness" there and Castle Rock was a place you stopped for gas between Denver and Colorado Springs, that you could drive through from end to end in 5 minutes (six if the only traffic light turned red). Now the whole area from Denver to Colorado Springs is houses, and the evil Christian Wrong HQ in Colorado Springs has spread throughout.
The trouble is, of course, that this living as though there were no tomorrow is yet another false economy: comfort now, chaos later. And bills someone else will have to pay.
Now... where was it that I heard of that smart practice, never paying your own bills, always getting someone else to foot them?
Seems I was lucky at school and later, all my history teachers were excellent and my special subject was the American Revolution and the birth of the Republic.
My good luck was my grandmothers teaching me to read and my father letting me use his adult library card at the institution where I was educated: the stacks at the main branch of the Denver Public Library. I certainly never had more than ten minutes of "an educational moment" in 12 years wasted in the classroom. My experience with the "history teachers" can be shown in the story of how in Colorado State History in 8th grade, the book and the teacher talked about the "Battle of Sand Creek" and raised my hand and said the proper word was "massacre." For which I spent another few hours "polishing the bench" outside the Vice Principal's office. I all my "bench polishing" as a badge of honor. All my report cards had the note "Fails to recognize or obey properly constituted authority."
But, really... What ever did you expect if you were so imprudent as to practice free speech?
I thought all Americans knew the rules...
"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."
That's friendly -- and I've found so much friendliness here that it won't be unfriendly to say I'd be happy to have lunch with no few people here. So, you're welcome. Only trouble is, you'd have to join me in or near Nice, in France...
Mind you, I just heard that friends from Chicago arrived here yesterday... and are delighted to be out in bright sunshine under a blue, blue sky, 60°F after getting out of the icebox.
Agreed! I'm very taken with downtown Chicago but, what with the tall buildings and all that ice on Lake Michigan, the Windy City is even more of a cold store than Saint Petersburg or Helsinki...
We’ve already determined children are disposable. Otherwise we’d have more effective gun control instead of active shooter training. And we send our youth into war zones.
Denise, there's no way I can "like" what you've just written, but it's as well I can't get near some of the gun-whore lobbyists or their vile political minions with a big stick... The temptation might be too great...
I always learn from you. Usually I have to look a few things up, like the adage of getting a quart into a pot. LOL. You’re such a generous spirit. Thank you.
Mina, Though your analysis is spot on, my concerns rest with how to impart a more relatable story, one that shows rather than tells. The lessons I’ve gleaned partially are a bi-product of trying to understand why the Biden Administration’s accomplishments are not resonating with enough of the public (e.g., recent polling indicates that while 60+% of Republicans are enthused about the approaching fall midterms, only 40% of Democrats report the same). Though there likely are several contributing factors, one that stands out is the tendency to talk about abstract legislation and non-relatable numbers and data. Whether it’s the bi-partisan infrastructure $20 billion investment for semi-conductor manufacturing in Ohio or some other comparable project, we rarely, if ever, hear how the people working at these jobs speak about what this investment has meant to them and to their families. Note I haven’t even touched on how such investments mitigate our dependence on foreign imports, thus easing supply chain hang ups at our ports. Nor have I mentioned the tendency of Republicans to take credit for said projects despite having voted against the bipartisan Infrastructure bill.
Though I haven’t worked up an analogous, relatable script for the dynamic you so adeptly described, suffice it to say we can’t afford not to try.
Barbara J.K.: Thanks so much for your fulsome reply. I think our current toxic political situation has much to do with Trump, the distrust of government he's fostered; Republican legislators who put their lust for power above truth; and right and far right-wing media's decision to put profit over democracy.
There was so much outrageous news generated by TFG and his administration, that regular news outlets became addicted to outrage and excitement. A normal administration is unexciting and not prone to calling for outrage.
However, Biden's people are not selling their accomplishments. They'd better figure out how to do it -- and figure it out quick!
Mad magazine sold because us poor kids found it funny and scrounged pennies to buy it. Their advertisers were happy because lots of kids bought it. And some even bought the salve they were trying to sell. I did. I bought a case.., I knew I could sell it and make money.. I didn't.
The TV "Shows" couldn't stay on the air unless their advertisers were assured of sales..so the "shows" provided the entertainment people WANTED. If you lacked for viewers, the shdow was d o n e and so were those jobs.
Over the past 50 years with the proliferation of "shows"... you had better have something titillating or 'outrageous' or you lost viewers...lost advertisers..., DONE.
So now it's sex that sells. No need to go to the drugstore on the top book shelf.
Just google it....and google away for whatever you're interested in. No wonder "the media" (the 'heads' the cameramen, etc) are sweating their jobs. Trump provided an avalanch of total crap for the networks to feed from. Is is any wonder we saw so much cleavage? The best cleavage guaranteed your coverage of numbnutz would get the most views. And it catered to MEN....remember "C" Cup? She was a disappointment.
So, today it continues...sex sells, right along with plane crashes, condo collapses, DIRT man... gimme dirt.
Yes, it's disgusting.
From the beginning I encouraged everyone to read the Emperors New Clothes.. I hope you are at least familiar with the title. Now in a 3rd grade classroom bookshelf I see "Capt. Underpants".., so nice.
Mina, I agree and would add, excluding the far right, that I believe Americans overall would galvanize around a much tougher, much stronger Biden, who both amplified his accomplishments and also pressed for legislation most Americans are asking for: universal child care and Pre-K, reinstatement of the child tax credit, expanded health care, tax reform, investments in housing, in home and community-based care, and in climate. Biden must demonstrate that he can advance at least some of this legislation currently stalled in the Senate.
The problem with making progress in the Senate is that Manchin has declared that BBB is dead!! What a snake in the grass! This weekend he actually stuck his nose into the Alaskan race for the Senate by stating support for Lisa Murkowski against a Trump supported challenger.
It would help if the supposedly center and liberal media would let go of bashing Biden every chance they get and refusing to highlight important stories like historic job gains.
Joan, I would repeat that amplifying historic job gains, though important, is but a piece of a broader story we would expect leadership to render relative to its accomplishments.
A commenter this week linked to a great Politics Girl podcast with Jan Psaki. She acknowledged the messaging issue and that most Americans aren’t watching her pressers. She also pointed out the White House has no advertising budget.
Good news that Zucker resigned from CNN ! His promotion of TFG..ugh!
DeSantis is proposing to essentially zero out FL gas tax for an unspecified period. He said this won’t hinder transportation projects that are funded through fuel taxes because….. he’ll use $ 1 billion in stimulus $$ to make up for lost revenues. I’ll be sure to keep reminding all those who sing his gassy praises😂
Kathy, I view Psaki’s role as Press Secretary as serving a very different function from enlisting, say, an Explainer-in Chief to educate the public about both the Administration’s accomplishments and also its plans for advancing legislation currently stalled in the Senate.
Agreed, Barbara ! But my, perhaps naive, interpretation of Psaki’s chat is that the DNC should step up to fund their own Explainer-in-Chief to counter all the “legitimate civil discourse “ bull*&$# .
In the mean time…we all do what we can do to counter the bull*&$# !
Republicans have used the playbook of "supply-side economics" since 1872, with the exception of the Eisenhower Administration. That's what you meant about their "rising tide floats all boats".
One of my uncles was a professional Republican politician in a Northern city during much of the later 20th century. He told me once that it was a conscious pattern. Power goes back and forth between the two parties. When the R’s are in power, they spend all the money. When the Dems get in, they have to raise taxes to pay the bills. The R’s shout “Dems tax and spend,” and get back into power. Of course, that was then. The trumplicans have no intention of taking turns.
So true-I was an economics major in college and at the end of the day my “intuition” tells me that the economy boils down to human decisions and behavior. HCR’s narrative points to who was making the decisions and why. Wealth has ruled the day since the beginning. Look at all that was done to keep slavery alive and to tamp down organized labor.
“There never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not in point of fact, live on the labor of the other.” -John C. Calhoun (in his speech about slavery as a “positive good”.)
The Democrats are far greater friends of those in the "red" states than those red state dwellers would or could ever believe. They are seduced by their own poison.
Mike...Mike... you forgot CLEAVAGE. Plenty of 'fake' and very slippery stuff behind all that... no? :)))) Give em a flippin break Mike, they're "under god" too ya kno.
Correct. No better sugar coating for pills loaded with conspiracy theories and what you will... (or I won't). I duly noted the effect on some men who got addicted to watching all the prancing, the poses and exposés of the pulchritude and hypnotized into buying all the crap.
Hypno-tube is more like it...but Peter, please go easy on us functionally-challenged males. Plenty room-temperature IQ women seem enamored by him, not to mention his proclivity for and appreciation of what Victoria Secret* can provide his dates. *Victoria Secret.., "push up or hush up" has certainly been one of my most dependable sponsors.
I quit the Republican Party when Reagan came into office. My "gut" told me the man was evil; and, he was. The list of his sins is too long to recite. I became an Independent and have remained such ever since, voting mostly for Democrats. That you are a Social Justice Warrior is admirable, but social justice in a real and authentic sense is a quagmire. Regarding Hillary: A VERY smart woman who intimidates many, many men. Yes, she like the rest of us is flawed. Yet, she survived the Benghazi grilling flawlessly. That was $7 million of our money wasted. What disturbs me the most at this moment in our history is how many Americans do not "get" what is taking place today.
"This (economic growth better under Democrats) should not come as a surprise to anyone."
This is obvious to me Dr. Richardson.
Here is what I have observed only in my own adult lifetime, beginning in 1980 (yikes!)
In 1980, Jimmy Carter, after having run a balanced budget and continued to pay down WWII debt, but, having been demonized by Reagan as running giant "wasteful welfare" programs lost the election (I BELIEVED Carter was irresponsible and I BELIEVED Reagan would be responsible).
However, I DO remember that I graduated with a ChE degree in 1982 and HALF of my classmates could not get jobs and a large fraction of that graduating class NEVER was able to get a good job under Reagan and left the field.
At the end of Reagan's EIGHT years (supported by me twice I shamefully admit), the United States had acquired an extra $2.1 TRILLION ($5.5 TRILLION in today's dollars) in additional debt, almost all of it having gone to military contractors who were Reagan's main donors.
For the first time since WWII a President, REAGAN, ran a giagantic deficit. NOT Carter.
So, in fact, after a long postwar period of "responsible" spending (because even during the wasteful Vietnam adventure the US kept reducing WW II debt) REAGAN was the first President to actually begin a NEW WELFARE PROGRAM: WELFARE FOR MILITARY CONTRACTORS.
Big money for Military Contractors is essentially "Welfare for White People" because, until very, very, very recently (and even now to a large extent) those contractors only hired WHITE engineers and managers. This explains, completely, why the only bipartisan vote that ever happens is for the military budget every year.
Welfare for white people is popular.
But, the story continues. In 1998 in a bipartisan disaster, the Glass Steagall Act was repealed which prevented banks from betting in the markets with your personal money and then in 2001 DERIVATIVES were legalized by the Bush administration for the first time in history.
And, so began the 2008 debacle in the housing market which resulted in banks betting, with derivatives (mortgage backed securities) on assets that simply did not exist. A huge fraud on the American people then preceded as we gave Federal Money to banks to "bail them out" for a drunken gambling spree legalized by Republicans under Bush.
Now, at this point we could have just let the economy tank and let people starve in the streets. THAT would have helped more people understand Republican Party economic failures.
But No!. Obama then spent 8 TRILLION dollars of deficit, on the books, soft landing the economy which DID get him elected twice. BUT, the consequence was: We all forgot how bad Republican leadership crashes the economy and how much debt is necessary to bail out Republican policy failures.
Plus, off the books the Fed literally, without anyone voting, put another $5 Trillion of the worthless mortgage assets on its books by buying them from banks at inflated prices.
Yep. On purpose, we kept people from starving in the streets on the backs of something like $14 Trillion dollars in printed money. If that seems like a bad idea, well, it is even worse than you think because:
Everyone forgot how BAD Republican Policy is for the economy. But, not me. I was paying attention.
Every time a Republican gets in office said Republican will directly or indirectly add a gigantic amount to the deficit and even then, the economy will fail.
Like it did under Reagan (yes, 1982 to 1986 was disaster that everyone forgot about),
Like it did under Bush (complete disaster)
and like it did under Trump (although Pubs are blaming the Coronavirus) but Trump ended up his Presidency with massively increased debt and an economic disaster to give to Biden.
JUST in my adult lifetime, Republicans have always been a complete economic catastrophe for America and, to me, it is mind boggling that ANYONE would do anything but vote against any Republican running for any position, including dogcatcher at the local town.
I remember ALL this, also read, on Twitter, the following “All recessions during the last 100 years happened during republican administrations, every one!” I believe this to be true, but didn’t check it out. However, have seen plenty of graphs that are well “graphic” and support this statement. I never blamed Obama for bailing out the evil, considering the alternative. But I never expected the Tea Party nuts to lay it on him, considering how obvious the Bush horror was. That’s when I knew how low republicans would go. They have not disappointed. There is no bottom, also proved what Churchill said about a five-minute chat with the average voter.
Exactly why the Dems promise to go high is a recipe for disaster.. as long as Rupert is considered other than 100% propaganda. If they really did a "both sides" argument, Democrats would look like the only way to go. Call repubs what they are, a cult of evil. They would have to do more than follow Fox down their latest rabbit hole.
Mike, Reading your of your experience, i can only conclude that the real underlying support for gop comes perniciously from white supremacist adherence. The gop strategists were spot on identifying abortion and guns to be the perfect cover issues to signal and corral otherwise negatively impacted (because of gop supply-side policies) supporters. “Prosperity Gospel”, “Family Values”, “Pro-Life”, “ Tough on Crime” and “Guns-Don’t-Kill-People”. The dog-whistle truth behind all of these “beliefs” is white power. The results of policies created from these positions always disproportionally, negatively impact POC. But they are not good for any common citizen. They never level the playing field. Since the 2022 midterms will, once again, be an “It’s-the-Economy-Stupid” election, we need to double down on the push back against the dog-whistles. We need to have on loop, the scene from “The Wizard of Oz” where the curtain is ripped back to reveal an inept little man, mixed with scenes of the January 6th “legitimate public discourse”.
"the real underlying support for gop comes perniciously from white supremacist adherence."
Michele, I guess I don't really feel good about agreeing with you, but, I do.
The tropes Reagan rolled out about wasting money on "welfare for black people", which, is what he definitely did, really appealed to a lot of people.
But, lying, as Reagan did about Carter, and, creating a fake trope about a woman Chicago that had umpteen adresses?
That was appealing to those whites who want to believe they are superior to those lazy blacks. Yes it was.
But, the truth is, the largest government largesse goes to white people (Military Contractors (overwhelmingly white employees), Government Employees (overwhelmingly white), consulting firms (yep, mostly white), etc.
By the time you add up all the welfare going to white people in this country?
It simply dwarfs any social assistance given to any person of color whose grandparents were beaten because they wanted their kids in school.
I agree with you, Mike. This, I'm sure, is out of the wheelhouse (so to speak) of most commenters here, however - in another issue, the welfare subsidies still being handed out to livestock producers on our (OUR) public lands & forests AND national monuments - the contracts handed to a few chosen contractors paid very well to round up Wild Horses on those lands, the warehousing of those same Wild Horses - if they are lucky & not sold to slaughter. Then there is the destruction & damage done to these lands and forests and national monuments by livestock? THEN the slaughter of our wild predators - to protect livestock (of course) with the added "benefit" of killing off any other animal that wanders into the wrong place. Yet another government agency: Wildlife "Services" - a misnomer if there ever was one. And still, with the many lawsuits against the BLM & Forest Service - this all continues. The excuse is: all those advocates are just too emotional!
I'm sure that SS Dbl. isnt just for "white" people, Mike. And I really wouldnt call it welfare - not positive about this in particular, but we all pay into SS, & I kind of think SS dbl works the same way. You know, what the naysayers call socialism, right?
People who think the insurrection of 01/06 was due to Trump are ignoring our history. The Confederate state house in Montgomery is still standing. The people who engineered the sedition of 1861 are still in business, having never faced accounting for their sedition. They still need the support of the church. Their combined whining and lying are their only hope of winning an election.
Thanks to the electoral college we are ruled by an insurrectionist religious minority.
"An attempted coup unpunished is an exercise." Rick Wilson
We will have more. What Wilson meant was that it was an exercise at getting better at overthrowing the government. The implication of that is 'practice makes perfect.' Their hope for success depends on our determination to maintain the democracy.
Our ability to play depends on the outcome of the next election. If the fascist win, then all resistance is immediately outlawed. We can, and we will, still play, but at a much-limited level. Our best hope is to win now.
Hitler failed on his first attempt. It was an exercise.
I know a black young man who needs SSDI desperately, has for years. He didn’t want to be on welfare, but finally did apply. Having one hell of a time, I live too far away to help him, but seems like stonewalling to me.
I’m glad someone in this country has the ability to admit a mistake. I never worshipped at the throne of Reagan and could NOT understand it—in fact, I knew he was neurologically impaired, probably from a stroke or Alzheimer’s, as soon as they began propping him up in public. . . Me, a lowly nurse. Where were the experts? The people in charge? The Repugs have no sense of accountability, morality—just insatiable greed.
All true. What I have never understood, is why Obama continued Bush’s approach of bailing out the banks directly. An indirect bank bailout, with the government paying off all those mortgages at a reasonable discount, would have helped so many more people.
I believe, that as a black man, Obama carried a heavier burden, in the office of the Presidency, than any other President; and carried it with grace and tact. Qualities that the opposing party have forgotten.
Patricia, In the (almost, they let me in) all Black school I attended, the fundamental principle was "Twice as Good" -- which means that a Black graduate has to be twice as good in order to make it in a White world....
Mike. C'mon let's not go there with accusations and innuendo. You know both Obamas had record breaking book sales, speaking engagements and other endeavors after leaving office.
I had hoped when I joined this comments section of this blog stuff like this wouldn't happen. Yet here we are.
You, Sir have made my day. We all from time to time in the heat of the political environment make verbal missteps. I'll follow your example in the future.
Mike, I remember much the same as you from this period. A small technical issue I wondered about--I thought Carter was paying down the Vietnam war debt instead of WWII debt, but that's a technical issue which carries little importance. The important thing is that Carter was responsibly paying down war debt. A side issue which most Americans don't know about or remember is that President Johnson proposed a surtax of 10% on Americans to help pay for the war. He proposed it in early 1967, and Congress finally passed it about a year later. That only lasted some months as I recall because it was very unpopular. Lesson learned: Americans enjoyed the temporary economic benefits of war (i.e., from increased employment and wages), but they didn't want to pay for the war. That demonstrates how little Americans understand about the financial costs of war.
Back to Carter responsibly paying down war debt. That led to high inflation (20% or so) which was one big reason Reagan was elected. Reagan's proposed economic plan said essentially: "Don't worry about paying for the war debts. Let your children and grandchildren pay them." Bush Sr. was running against Reagan for the repub. nomination, and he told the American people that Reagan's economic plan was "Voodoo economics." He was right, but the American people didn't listen. Corporate power was behind Reagan, and he got the nomination and won the election. He allowed the creation of "Junk bonds" by Michael Milken. Then, we had corporate hostile takeovers and their results. (Remember Gordon Gekko in the movie "Wall Street" and his mantra, "Greed is good.") That represented repub. Reagan's 1980s. Social Security tax was increased under Reagan on the premise that it would beef up the Social Security fund. The tax was collected but then borrowed back by Reagan and Congress (leaving IOU's to the American people) in what the administration declared "a bipartisan victory"--a term which still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Back in 1980, Reagan also made a deal with the Iranians to sell them missiles in exchange for the American prisoners there. That led to the Iran-contra crimes, and Reagan's war in Central America. The Iran-Contra perpetrators under Reagan were prosecuted, but when Bush Sr. became president in 1988, he pardoned all of them. Another disgusting move just as pardoning President Nixon had been. No accountability for the crimes of the high rollers.
The combination of Clinton's destruction of the Glass-Steagall act and Bush Jr.'s allowance of Wall Street's rape of the economy led to the 2008 economic crisis. Then Obama bailed them out and obligated Americans to much more debt. He bailed them out dollar for dollar, not to mention also salvaging their huge bonuses. The American people lost again, and not one banker was prosecuted. In Iceland, a country with 1% of the U.S. population and probably 1% of the economy, 29 bankers were sent to prison for their role in that scam. U.S. administrators rarely face penalties for their crimes. No wonder that the U.S. congress is further enriching themselves by stock trading on insider information. They face no penalties for it.
Then came Trump, and things got even worse. Woe is us if we don't get a grip on reality and take charge.
I wonder, was it really "paying down (WWII AND Vietnam) war debt" that led to inflation?" Is it really so easy to pin down the origins? Because, we had been paying down War debt since 1945 without inflation.
Remember, businesses raise prices not Jimmy Carter or the government.
At the time, an 80lb box of baling wire for our balers cost almost as much as gold. I remember hating on US Steel in a BIG way back then. Big time.
I wonder: Maybe business was just gauging Americans?
Yes on the inflation at 15%. I believe the 20% I mentioned was the interest being paid on CDs at the worst of the inflation. And, yes, it is hard to pin down the exact cause(s) of inflation.
"I wonder: Maybe business was just gauging Americans?"
That makes sense. However, I would add that business was not just gauging Americans but also gouging them.
I also graduated in 1982. So many of my classmates could not get jobs.
I went on to graduate school because I sort of had brainwashed myself into thinking that because I did well in school a Ph.D. might be a good thing, but, that is another story.......EXCEPT
When I started my meager income was not taxed, but, REAGAN began taxing it even though he LIED about cutting taxes.
He only meant cutting taxes on the RICH. Grad students making nothing?
Had to pay tax all of a sudden.
Ridiculous to penalize those making nothing and reward billionaires. No lie.
Mike I have a sincere and genuinely curious question. In light of what you have just eloquently written why did you keep voting Republican? What were the other factors besides financial policies? What is that magic nugget that keeps people voting against their own best interests? I have my own thoughts but I wanted to hear from someone who has voted Republican.
Barbara, first, after George W. Bush openly and obviously lied about both Afghanistan and Iraq and invaded both, I DID, permanently stop voting Republican. Also, in the same time frame I googled a graph of the Federal deficit and realized everything I had BELIEVED had been wrong. The data did not support what I believed.
Before that it was more difficult to get data AND.....
BEFORE that I used my belief system more than my analytic system even though I had grown that analytic system in many ways in other areas.
After 2001, I have applied my analytic system to the area of our politics and now clearly understand that Republicans exist because a large fraction of America is BELIEF based, not DATA BASED.
Thanks for sharing this, Mike. It's easy to forget that data was not readily accessible the way it is now. I grew up in a family that read 5 daily papers, all points of view, because they understood that history repeats itself, and were so horrified by the Nazi uprising, and then Viet Nam. Grew upm8n university town, so this was common. It wasn't until college that I realized my peers were so uninformed.
But 2 points: 1) storytelling has always been the way to communicate, and 2) why are the Dems so awful at it?
I will also throw out another theory on another subject on the rise of Trump: since the Viet Nam war, we've had decade after decade of vets returning with PTSD, and children have been raised in unstable environments. I think to a large segment of the population (not a majority, but enough to have an impact ) have been raised in an erratic, abusive home. Trump's behavior is the norm for them.
I honestly don't think the Democrats are bad at messaging. This misconception sure is part of the enduring fabric of our Country. I believe the Democrat's message of Democracy at work, decency and fair play is just plain boring to most people. The Republican's messages of chaos, fear and hatred is much more interesting to the public. Hence it sells.
In other words decency=boring and chaos=excitement.
Point 2: RE Dems messaging. We got lazy when the bulk of media supported the progressive agreement established under FDR and then continued under Eisenhower. In the meantime, Rs built up a propaganda system to contest the Progressive norm. And Dems acquiesced to that under the concept of “Freedom of Speech”. The starvation of the educational system and the development of the internet spread “Alternative facts” exponentially, and here we are. Within just a few states of being able to hold a constitutional convention to alter said constitution.
That being said, perhaps Dems and some Rs naively thought that Democracy would naturally prevail. Since all of this is merely my opinion, it can be taken with a grain of salt if desired.
I believed Ronald Reagan's accusations that Carter was irresponsible with money AND.......
I believed his tropes about faked black woman in Chicago.
I was from a poor farm. I had worked 12 hour days since I was 12 years old.
The thought of someone getting money for no work? Was anathema to me. BUT, I still did not yet know that nobody in America would HIRE a black person into almost any job. That was not known to me.
However, I did have other experiences that tempered this but ..... only later.
Don't leave out the Nixon administration, ending the gold standard, creating the stagflation during the Carter administration. Carter's one-term presidency ended under the shadow of a national loss of confidence, but he also added 9.3 million jobs, one of the largest increases of any president.
Republicans never failed to leave a gigantic mess for Democrats. The only other goal while they were in power was to make sure the mess looked like it was a Dem mess. NEVER failed.
I remember this as well. And an overview of history only reveals more. Kudos to HCR for her giant education project! And kudos to you for having the wisdom to see through the rhetorical fog!
Mike, your story is important because you are a real person who went through this transformation, not an abstraction. And you very clearly and transparently express the process. That makes your story real to people.
My ignorance of American history appalls me — and I thought I’d had a good education. Thank you, HCR, for educating this 75 year old graduate of one of the Seven Sisters colleges and a law school dropout to boot. I am much obliged and very grateful to you.
I can't claim to clearly remember (at 71) everything I was taught in my youth. But I feel confident that the last part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century were glossed over. No exaggeration, I've learned more about those tumultuous periods in our country from the professor than I did in the classroom.
I actually have a very good education in history, and just got a good history lesson tonight. Mostly the connections she made. I knew the events.
Tonight's history reminded me of two things:
1. Harry Truman was right in 1948 when he said "The only 'good Republicans' are pushing up daisies." As HCR demonstrated, they've been scum for 150 years. Not just the past 40.
2. Adlai Stevenson was right back in 1952, when he said: “The strange alchemy of time has somehow converted the Democrats into the truly conservative party of this country — the party dedicated to conserving all that is best, and building solidly and safely on these foundations.”
Yea TC. My favorite HST quote “Socialism is the name they give almost anything that helps all the people.” Favorite Stevenson quote “I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my republican friends, that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.” Great men who knew republicans well. (However I did like Ike, but he should have been a Dem).
You did read HCR's history lesson did you not? Truman was right back in 1948 that "the only 'good Republicans' are pushing up daisies." Look at every single thing HCR listed in that history lesson and tell me the people in the story are not scum. Scum who were willing to sell their mothers if it made them a dime. They were willing to bring on the Panic of 1893 to advance their political power, an act that is the exact same as what they have done every day since Obama took the oath of office. Just as one example.
Of course I read it. Your comment about scum seemed to apply to all Republicans during that long period, or that's how I interpreted it. that's what I object to.
Have to appreciate Adlai. To your point about HCR ... experience and learning do cause us to make the connections of events and antecedents 😌. Like that. Therein is the role of intelligence coming to fore.
I went to high school in Arkansas and university in Texas. My American history classes pretty much ended at the Civil War (states rights!) with a smattering of Reconstruction and even smaller smattering beyond that.
Sara, I hope you hung in there for most of the first year of law school for the history of contracts, torts & constitutional law. If not, a read of Marbury vs Madison is always well worth it. Our courts founded in the common law going back centuries say what the Law is.
For those of us, myself included, who don't know the case: "Summary: Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, was a U.S. Supreme Court case that established the precedent of judicial review. This judicial review power allows the Supreme Court to invalidate or declare unconstitutional actions or laws created by levels of government." https://sites.gsu.edu/us-constipedia/marbury-v-madison-1803/
I didn't attend law school. But by far the best subject I studied as an undergraduate majoring in political science was political history of constitutional law. The two five-hour courses taught me so much and provided the context of much of what is happening today. Of course Marbury v. Madison was a focus. It's safe to assume that the present Supreme Court will honor that ruling as a precedent not to be ignored.
Michael, my first introduction to Marbury vs. Maddson was as a UCLA undergrad in my Constitutional Law political science course. My professor spent an hour lecture on it. The case law was referenced throughout the class. The casec is foundational near the very beginning of SCOTUS.
A main reason the classes have stayed with me all these decades later is, predictably, the professor — his ability to enliven the key cases and their significance, as well as his passion.
Reading that book back in the early '90's was the moment I knew why smatterings of the history I was taught in school seemed so biased compared to what my adopted grandmother would teach me when we would travel around the southwest visiting Indian reservations. I was stunned how they lived on such barren land and yet were such kind people to us. She grew up in New Mexico in a very small, humble canyon. Am thinking that her lovely, very wrinkled face looked quite Indian even though she had red hair and blue eyes. I now wonder if, like my biological father, she had Native ancestors but no one knew or talked about it, for shame. We spent many hours looking for pottery shards, arrowheads, geodes and squaw tears in the southwest and in the Hesperia desert where we stayed in her beloved vacation cabin, in nature, away from the world. She thought I had an "eagle eye" for scanning. Feels like I am still piecing "shards" together of my family history. It gets clearer and clearer as I age and "feel" the impact of the lying, controlling, white patriarchy on my family and country—on both sides. I thank her and my mother, in this moment, for instilling in me, the only female in my generation, to be alert, strong, respectful, question authority and fight for equality for all people. Witnessing the rise of fascism so blatantly in 2016. Violent Nazis in the open in Florida. I truly hope our laws will put a stop to all this tyranny and seditious uprising. Squaw tears...for us and the planet, otherwise.
(I am very aware that "squaw" is derogatory today, but that is part of history and the adjective of my little, obsidian, pile of tears).
It appears that historical lessons about what works is to pay workers enough to buy the products they make (e.g., Ford). The impoverishment of workers savages the economy. The concentration of wealth impoverishes the workers. It seems so simple, no?
'Advanced' capitalism trashes Earth as well as the beings who populate it. Extinction, anyone? The shame of profit off the backs of the elderly, the workers, the habitat of co-existing beings, planetary health, etc., appears to be water off a duck's back to the greedy profiteers.
The tragedy of the greed gene will continue to evidence in the changed climate catastrophes.
I would like to see this theme get much more play. "The persistence of the myth that Democrats are bad for the economy is an interesting example of the endurance of political rhetoric over reality." I am not a historian but took notice when the Reagan Administration became known for dominating publicity with its skilled communication team and the promotion of a message of the day. That administration was criticized for running every day as a campaign. The most outrageous Republican pronouncements have the same effect, to dominate attention. Again, although not a historian, I noticed this with the Tea Party's antics. Trump's feverish Twitter posts and his outlandish lies took up all of the oxygen in the room. And the monolithic Republican media juggernaut combined with politicians who are disciplined in repeated messaging and outrage from the national stage down to the local school board continue to get much more notice. Meanwhile Democrats plan to win by governing better. How's that working? If Democrats refuse to focus on disciplined messaging that captures attention, we'll continue to lose, when doing so is increasingly disastrous. I'm sure that there is more history behind this.
Evidence supporting your argument is how Republicans consistently crow about infrastructure projects for their states and districts that they voted against. And get away with it.
Because they haven't been punished for it electorally. Yes, the media calls them out for their vile hypocrisy but not prominently. And does the news resonate with large swathes of Republican voters?
And they are not being called out politically because the media loves the chaos of the Republican's lies and anger much more that the calmness of the Democratic Party (some hyperbole here for making my point.)
Unfortunately Americans quit investigating, researching and questioning for themselves. I am not sure when this began in earnest but I suspect it coincides with the rise of corporate media and the internet.
It was under Reagan that the cost of housing began to rise at a ridiculous rate. The cost of housing has made a middle class life impossible for tens of millions of people. Does anyone know of a book about the rise in housing costs since the eighties?
Nope. Wrong!! Housing prices started going "nuts" in the mid-70s, 1972 to be specific (I know because I bought a house for the amazing high price of $36,000 in 1974 and sold it for the ridiculous price of $60,000 in 1978 and by 1980 the guy who bought it for $69 sold it for $95K). It's why California passed Proposition 13 in 1978 (although it was more Republican bait-and-switch, since the only way to have it work for you is to not sell your property for a very long time. And the only part of the economy that does that is corporations and their property. Residential property is taxed much higher here than corporate as a result, because nobody keeps their house longer than 3-5 years (and much less right now while they're playing Monopoly with houses).
LFFA,Greenpeace, Democratic Party, The Xerces Society and hundreds more progressive organizations would benefit by uniting in a common cause to push back against the Republican media juggernaut. Without Democratic victories in 2022 and 2024 what these organizations stand for will be doomed.
The media is not helping either. I’ve seen so many interviews of Trump folks’ opposition-very few interviews with Democrats touting their satisfaction with the Biden administration.
Gina, you're reinforcing my point. The MAGA folks are making so much noise around the same simplistic messaging that they are dragging the media along with them. Democrats need to drive the messaging so that the media will have to cover it in a way that we get heard.
Democratic messaging also fails because it's poorly crafted. Messages need to stick. Compare "tax and spend" and "Make America Great Again" with its MAGA acronym and American flags, and "shining city on a hill" to "Build Back Better." The latter includes the word "back." It's not even forward-moving, and repeats three "b's" that take a bumpy ride before it rolls out of your mouth. Democrats are the party of democracy. We stand for one person, one vote. We create opportunity. We are building the future. Is there anyone driving Democratic messaging at all levels of government?
Another high-impact Republican strategy -- a form of misinformation really -- is blaming Democrats for Republican bad behavior that is either planned or underway. "Stop the steal" is an effective example of this. Democrats need to name Republican misbehavior. They've even stolen our momentum on education by making so much noise about CRT and parental rights to influence what their children are learning instead of teaching the truth, because the truth sets you free. We have no unified arguments to their banning books and censoring teachers instead of supporting them?
And then there's the matter of charisma. We need to promote more candidates who are orators like Raphael Warnock.
This is the comment of the day! The Democrats' messaging, especially in this era of colliding tsunamis of instant communication, undermines achievements and keeps the party perpetually on the defensive.
Another successful Republican strategy is defining Democrats before Democrats define themselves. Republicans anticipate what Democrats will promote. They develop unified messaging to smear Democrats and promote it in a unified way across all of their platforms. 97+% of the BLM protests were peaceful. But Dems are branded for wanting to "defund the police" and for causing riots in the streets because of a few inevitable exceptions. Democrats are associated with Antifa. Republican "patriots" opposed Democratic "lawlessness" even as we try to weaken the influence of a former president who is in Putin's pocket. Democrats are believed to have cheated at the ballot box when that's a Republican excuse for doing exactly that. "Liberal" is now a tainted word. How did we let that happen?
When we elect a national trifecta and gain the bully pulpit, that pulpit is not just a president speaking at a podium. It's using the power of an elected government to get the message out.
Excellent points. I've read that the Republicans, a top-down organization if there ever was one, send out daily talking points. And they all recite them throughout the daily news cycle. And certainly Fox News receives them, too.
We blame the immovable Republican base. The base only exists because of the GOP messaging juggernaut. Fox News, OAN, AM talk radio, etc. have even replaced the pulpit in the Evangelical community.
Such riveting reading, Heather! While I have tried hard to become well-versed in US history during my thirty years as an immigrant, nothing has educated me more deeply nor more fully than your letters. Sometimes, I have to read them more than once to fill my heart and mind with your uncanny acuity.
This letter, filled with such profound sensitivity, is one for the books:
"And yet, of course, it has been Republican economic policies that opened up the possibility for Democrats to try new approaches to the economy, to make it serve all Americans, rather than a favored few. As FDR put it: 'It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.'"
Heather, you always give us a spin on history. As is the case tonight, we often see that everything old is new again. Thanks for your knowledge and wisdom.
Well! This is altogether not what I have understood to be the path of political history of the Democrats and Republicans that I learned in school, albeit MANY years ago. I am not a historian nor do I claim to be particularly well read on this topic, but I would not get into a spitting contest over something like this with Heather Cox Robinson!
This is exactly why I do read material like this. It isn’t simply because it reinforces my own attitudes, but even more, it explains clearly and informs me with facts that are backed up with footnotes for the statements made in the article.
What Prof. Cox Richardson does with her letters is akin to magic! She will take a topic of the day expound on the matter at hand, then point by point, she will break everything down to its constituent parts so the reader can understand what is happening, why it is happening, and if it is possible, she will offer pathways for avoiding calamity.
I am so grateful for the Letter to an American! I am even more grateful that Heather Cox Richardson is willing to make the tremendous effort to write these letters for us with full annotations daily. Saying thank you is not adequate to express my full gratitude for this effort. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!
Why don’t we own it? With pride? If having complex moral emotions like empathy, sympathy, compassion for others is ‘socialism,’ if wanting those who have much share with those who have little is ‘socialism,’ if justice, fairness, access and equality are words in one’s active vocabulary is ‘socialism,’ then I’m a proud socialist. A democratic socialist. Move over, Bernie!
Gus I am proud to be a ‘socialist.’ I benefit from Medicare, Social Security, and FEMA-subsidized insurance on my property. My cousin, who was with the Marine 1st Division, that landed on Guadalcanal in 1942, was the first major ‘socialist’ in my family. He survived the deadly island hopping and, under the GI Bill, was the first in my immediate family to complete college.
I am proud to be associated with other ‘socialists’ who have been provided unemployment benefits, child care benefits, had their pensions covered when corporations finagled themselves into bankruptcy, and all those citizens and companies that received ‘hand outs’ to permit them to survive through a prolonged pandemic. I am a proud ‘socialist’ when Obamacare [officially the Affordable Health Care Act] has provided health care to tens of millions of Americans who deserve health coverage.
I am a reluctant ‘socialist’ when I see pork barrel agriculture payments that often go to large corporate farmers. More so, when Trump provided tens of billions of dollars to farmers to offset farm losses due to his misguided China tariff war. I am an extremely reluctant ‘socialist’ when Trump provides $1.7 trillion in tax benefits overwhelmingly for very wealthy citizens and corporations, while the middle class and others were paying more than their fair share in taxes.
The word socialism has been a Republican bugaboo since before I was born. Treasury Secretary Mellon (part of the ultra wealthy elite) was clearly anti-socialist during his tenure under Coolidge and Hoover. The Republicans were apoplectic at FDR’s New Deal and other initiatives intended to enhance the livelihood of citizens during the Great Depression and to curb some of free wheeling by the wealthy elite.
I am proud to be a SOCIALIST, as should any American who cares about his country and their fellow citizens. Incidentally, I believe that some of the most vociferous anti-socialists come from states that are heavily rewarded with ‘federal funds’ that come from states that provide a disproportionately large amount of tax money.
Democratic Socialist would be the term in Europe, Gus. Words have a meaning. Socialism as such has a meaning and it's not just about caring for the people and providing for the poor....it's a totally different economic system of "collective", i.e. government ownership of everything and whenever tried has ended up very undemocratic and has impoverished the people. For instance, Venezuela is hardly a good advertisement for "socialism" but proclaims itself to be pursuing that "ideal".
Stuart, Though your comment was not addressed to me, I felt compelled to write seeing how Republicans, in my view, are able to incite fear of any policy aimed at redressing inequities because of a tendency in the States to conflate socialism and democratic socialism. A critical consequence is that we’re losing elections we should be winning.
i trust that you are not telling me that thereby their winning. Is illegitimate...and only the democrats should win if everybody played by democrats rules...gerrymandering is of course practiced by both sides.
Stuart, I wrote, initially, merely to note my observation that Republicans are able to incite fear of any policy aimed at redressing inequities because of a tendency in the States, at least among some, to blur the distinction between Democratic Socialism, that merely calls for a more equitable distribution of a nation’s wealth, and Socialism, that advocates for government control and ownership of the means of production. My point about elections was meant to underscore how people not armed with knowledge are susceptible to manipulation aimed at serving interests that are not necessarily their own. Hence, my belief that we’re losing elections we should be winning.
I understood you perfectly, Barbara, but I'm afraid I used your response as an excuse...a platform... to add something that you quite evidently didn't say...that it is often construed that people vote against you because they are ignorant, uneducated or simply panicked. Some are quite evidently, but many are not .This often underestimates the degree of free choice in opponents that simply don't want what you are proposing. Many didn't vote for Biden, they just didn't want Trump. That doesn't mean they are in agreement with his program.
No, no! Don’t ever doubt the Republicans’ ability! There definitely some loud mouths who have more volume than brains (see: January 6, 2021), but simply because I disagree with almost everything they say and do, there are absolutely well- educated Republicans out there. I’m sure you were joking when you made your comment, but underestimating one’s opponent can be lead to unforeseen consequences. Most people underestimated TFG and look where we are now!
After what we've seen over the past five years, it would seem that any well-educated Republicans are ill-intentioned. And absolutely not to be underestimated. Know your enemy.
"Ill" being of course a judgement based upon personal values....their intentions are contrary to yours and probably destructive of yours but from the point of view of their values, they are well intentioned.
It wouldn't surprise you to learn that most people proclaiming ideologies supposedly based on their works haven't read them either....evidenced by the theories and practice of governance and attendant policies that they proclaim.
Before there was a question of whether wealthy Northerners would support the Union, there was the question of whether they would sign the Declaration of Independence.
And in fact John Dickinson, Delegate to the Continental Congress of Pennsylvania - one of the most eloquent writers in defense of colonists' interests and articulators of their grievances, and one of the wealthiest men in the Colonies - did not. Although his motives were as much loyalty to England and a wish for reform through reconciliation. He resigned from Congress rather than sign, and then headed up a militia to join Washington's troops in battle. And of course, it was Dickinson's "Letters from a farmer in Pennsylvania, to the inhabitants of the British Colonies" which inspired the title of HCR's letters.
Before there was "Hamilton" there was the 1969 play "1776" which depicted all this. The play was was performed in 1970 in the White House for Pres. Nixon who demanded of his friend Jack Warner that the song depicting Dickinson's position be cut from the 1972 film version.
"In the musical “1776,” the song “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men” depicts Revolutionary War era conservatives as power-hungry wheedlers focused on maintaining wealth. So it’s not surprising that then-President Richard Nixon, who saw the show at a special White House performance in 1970, wasn’t a big fan of the number.
What is surprising is that according to Jack L. Warner, the film’s producer and a friend of the president, Nixon pressured him to cut the song from the 1972 film version of the show–which Warner did. Warner also wanted the original negative of the song shredded, but the film’s editor secretly kept it intact." - LA Times
. . .
"and Howard Da Silva, who played Ben Franklin. The last time Da Silva had received an invitation from Nixon, it was to testify before 1947’s House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), the anti-communist star chamber that Nixon helped to revivify during his time in Congress. Da Silva refused to talk and was subsequently blacklisted from Hollywood for many years." - LA Times
No wonder Nixon objected. (And if you watch the youtube film clip, please note the rather goose-steppy minuet.) And in the category of political rhetoric over reality, Dickinson's retort to Hancock just about sums up the GOP's successful, if baffling, strategy of ensnaring the working class populists to serve the 1% plutocrats.
[DICKINSON, spoken]
But why, sir? For personal glory? For a... place in history? Be careful, sir. History will brand Mr. Adams and his followers as traitors
[HANCOCK, spoken]
Traitors, Mr. Dickinson? To what? The British crown? Or the British half-crown? Fortunately, there are not enough men of property in America to dictate policy
[DICKINSON, spoken]
Well, perhaps not. But don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor. And that is why they will follow us!
Though I cannot begin to calculate the immeasurable benefits of receiving LFAA’s near daily historical accountings shaping contemporary perspectives, considering we have but a small window to effect the mood of the country if, next fall, we’re to have a shot at retaining both the House and the Senate, I wish to fast forward to the immediate present.
Though there likely are a number of factors that could help explain why the Administration’s accomplishments are not resonating with enough of the public (e.g., recent polls show that 60+% of Republicans are enthused about the November midterms compared with only 40% of Democrats), my comment today will address just one factor I deem mighty critical. I submit that Democrats ought to focus far more on rendering their story as opposed to talking about abstract legislation and non relatable numbers and data. One example is the $20 billion federal investment in semi-conductors in Ohio replete with stories from people about what these manufacturing and construction jobs have meant to them and to their families. Note I haven’t even touched on how said investment helps to remedy a dependence on South Korea and Taiwan, a dependence that has contributed to mounting supply chain hang-ups at our ports. My point is that Dems need to gin up their constituents’ enthusiasm with a host of stories related to the impact of the American Rescue Plan and the Bipartisan Infrastructure legislation for which Republicans are taking credit, despite the legislation not receiving a single House Republican vote. On a final note, people also should understand what they’re losing while the human infrastructure piece of the President’s BBB agenda remains stalled in the Senate.
Sadly, many people view that "human infrastructure" piece of that legislation as essentially a plan that gives money to "undeserving" (in their minds) people. I see this constantly from my "conservative" friends (who are no more conservative than the folks receiving benefits are undeserving, but I digress...) and bleat the "socialism" theory until it bleeds.
Ally, Excluding the far right, I would submit that Americans overall would mobilize around a much tougher, much stronger Biden, who both amplified his accomplishments and also pressed to advance a good amount of the human infrastructure piece currently stalled in the Senate. I state this because, nationwide, I hear a broad spectrum of people asking for: universal child care and Pre-K, reinstatement of the child tax credit, expanded healthcare, investments in housing, in home and community-based care, and in climate.
Which modern Presidents left a surplus in the treasury? Which ones spent it to deficits, lavishing debt to buy more arms for senseless wars? It’s not just $ they are spending ( robbing?), but the blood and promise of the young.
You make our collective history a novel, an exploration, a window (of discovery) and a great reading experience. You’re not just a great teacher, you’re an incredibly talented writer. The way you weave history into current events is seamless and beautiful.
Nothing short of brilliant, Heather, and an early night for you for once. I am so grateful to be reading you every day and I know I speak for thousands. Thank you From the bottom of our hearts!
Here's the pattern I've observed during my lifetime as a Democrat: When Republicans are in office, they tax based on the theory that "a rising tide floats all boats." They spend liberally on what matters to them and when the Dems come in, they have to figure out a way to pay for the deficits run up by the Republicans.
When trying to redress the inequalities in our country thanks to the previous administration, Democrats are called "socialists" and "big spenders." Perfect example: Biden after TFG and his tax cuts for the rich.
Democrats need to tell this story over and over again because the Republicans will continue to use the same old playbook!
You've nailed the Republican playbook that they turn to whenever in power. Talk incessantly about their fiscal conservatism while spending like mad. Then bitch and moan about the deficit they created when Democrats take over. The breathtaking hypocrisy is lost on much of the public, which comes to believe the Republicans are prudent with tax money and Democrats are irresponsible with it.
Well, that's what they are told, all the time, and analytical thinking didn't form a large part of their education. Fascinating - and appalling - to see how long ago this started, and why. Slavery as a means of getting wealth! it was legally abolished in England, from whose domination America had freed itself fifty-odd years earlier, in 1833. Has anything changed?
Heather McGhee: A New “We The People” For a Sustainable Future | Bioneers 2017
"... It’s important to remember — because so much of this history has been suppressed — just how essential to the creation of the American economy slavery was. And slave labor on plantation land expropriated from Native Americans. That is our economy.
"The historian Edward Baptist, in his book The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, calculates that by 1860, slave labor produced 80% of the gross national product. Even in the north, our systems of finance and capitalization, our industrial textile mills, all sprang out of and fed into a slave-driven economy. Black lives were the original currency of America.
"At our founding, those in power chose to make American slavery different from other forms, not just indentured labor but hereditary, inexorable, and they did it alongside these proclamations of equality and liberty that we now hold dear as our American creed, that it is self-evident that all men are created equal, that all men are entitled to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s a heart-stopping contradiction. The only way for men to write those words while owning other human beings was to create a belief system in which those people were not human beings.
"So for our first centuries, African Americans were property. For the subsequent
ones, and up until the late 1980s, in fact, explicitly racist laws conspired to deny African Americans of property. We live on one of most biologically and ecologically diverse lands on the planet. We have rainforests and deserts, this treasure that we sing about from sea to shining sea, and yet it is not ours. It has never been ours. We stole it, we killed for it, and we have not made amends.
"It’s hard to admit all of that, to hold all of that, while at the same time holding a vision of we the people, and of a country and a population that is worth fighting for and creating solidarity amongst. You know, we have this myth of American innocence. I really commend to you a new book called Hitler’s American Model, which goes right to the heart of puncturing that myth. World War II, is it not, is our shining example of when America saved the world, when America, the good guys, went and defeated the bad guys, the Nazis.
"Even today, when Nazis are marching down our streets, it’s become very easy for a bipartisan consensus to say, well at least not that. We know that the Nazis are the bad guys. That’s what we know. If one thing we know for sure it’s that the Nazis are the bad guys.
"My friends, why is it not common knowledge to us that when Hitler and his regime looked for a model of a way to create a society where citizenship and humanity was cabined only to whites in every single legal policy, economic piece of infrastructure, they looked only to us as the model. So how is it possible that we can say with a straight face that we are the good guys and the Nazis are the bad guys?"
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6HLMe22HCu8
https://bioneers.org/heather-mcghee-a-new-we-the-people-for-a-sustainable-future-ztvz1217/
I’m so glad you posted this additional resource. My mind spins over how many “good” people have closed their minds to looking at the truths we were shielded from, misled about. Keep sharing, folks. Don’t be silent. Don’t be afraid to tell the truth. I, for one, see that it gives me a chance to craft my messages in a way that won’t make people slam the door in my face. When I think of how long it has taken me to be open to all of this myself … and so thankful there have been persistent people to keep sharing. Our whole group of HCR readers has picked up the baton.
My R ex-classmate told me she is very glad she is not as well educated as I am as I reported here before. She is always angry with me if she posts something political and I respond. Once someone on the thread made threats (I think now it was a reference to January 6th which had not occurred yet) and she chose to castigate me instead of him. Only once did she sorta back down (and lied about why she had posted the meme in the first place) when I called her out about posting that God used wildfires to punish CA. This was after the terrible wildfires here in Oregon and I pointed out to her that lots of the people who had suffered had the same views as she did. That didn't prevent us from making a donation to the recovery fund despite their politics.
One of my sisters is always angry at me for getting too much education too. She calls me a well educated monster.
Because, when she throws out one of our old beliefs, I throw out something that is based on fact.
It really angers her.
Yes and I hope Katie Porter does more of her white board’s!
“Slaves are wealth, not people”. -Samuel Chase, appointed to Supreme Court by George Washington
... uh, wake up call ...
Nice.
That white patriarchy's "Alternative Reality" is at our country's foundation. Time to reconcile our history and present, and reconstruct.
"So now, we have to admit that we are in a moment of racial panic. But it is challenging us to shed the self-imposed color-blindness of our movements and engage forcefully in this question: Who is an American? What are we to one another? We have to admit that this question is harder for us than it is for most other countries because we are the world’s most radical experiment in democracy. A nation of ancestral strangers met here with the audacious promise that out of many we could become one. Everything depends on the answer to this question: Who is an American, and what are we to one another?"
(Heather McGhee)
The 14th Amendment defines an American.
Anyone born on American soil.
Then, the immigration laws define everyone else who is also a legal American.
Ooooh, Kathleen, you keep posting "keepers" for my political memory file!!
Yes, “Radical experiment in Democracy.” And Radical Experiment in Diversity. A radical challenge.
This is THE question!
Yes, it is time to look at our history for what it truly is. Slavery is a form of human trafficking. It is generally considered to be a crime. The American nation was built on human trafficking on a mass scale. The words “human trafficking” shed light on the abhorrent aspects of our history.
Bingo! Love this finely-tuned perspective that EVERYONE should understand the illegality of — taking someone else's freedoms away. These are humans. Makes all the whining about owning weapons of mass destruction look rather pitiful in comparison. But we need to send this out, far and wide, beyond the choir here.
That piece by Heather McGhee explained so much about why the Republicans are the way they are. This is Jacob and Esau.
Heather McGhee's book, "The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together," is superb. And for those of you who like numbers, they are included often!
Reading this reminds me why the gop are screaming at school board meetings. Learning any of this chips away at their support. Heather McGhee is an important voice clearly acknowledging our history and pointing a way forward.
Just read an article in the local rag here in Salem about a group that is touting itself as non-partisan on schools. One person went to the first meeting and didn't know what to expect. It didn't take long for her (and her partner) to figure it out and they were the only two who were masked. She wrote an op-ed for another local paper and since then has had to put up with the usual radical right response. Luckily the progressive community is on to this group, so they won't be able to sustain the lie that they are non-partisan.
I just bought the audiobook. And I posted that I did that on my Facebook page. Very exciting to see all these resources rolling out and to discover the work and the people who have been trying to get "my" attention for many, many years. Still, it is always better late than never.
Thank you for mentioning The Half.... I must try to finish it. So we have a nation built on slavery and stolen land. But we must not teach any of this. Last night as I was listening to Club Mod on All Classical, the host featured music by living black composers, I was trying to remember which Presidents were slaver holders. For the first few, it was easier to remember which ones weren't. Also thank you for the reference to Hitler's American Model which is going on my book list (very long as always).
yes, when the Nazi's were making laws, they came to the US to exam the Jim Crow laws.
However, Nazi's found Jim Crow laws TOO harsh.
Instead of ONE DROP of Jewish blood needed to be Jewish (like one drop of black blood to be black in Jim Crow), the Nazi's settled on on grandparent.
Highly Recommend CASTE by Isabel Wilkerson. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/books/review-caste-isabel-wilkerson-origins-of-our-discontents.html?smid=url-share
From Myra Goodman of QUEST FOR ETERNAL SUNSHINE:
Bronia’s Afternoon with President Biden
https://questforeternalsunshine.com/blog/bronias-afternoon-with-president-biden
President Joe Biden:
'... anyone who remains silent in the face of injustice is contributing to it.'
'... We cannot redeem the past. But, on this day, as we mourn humanity’s capacity to inflict inhuman cruelty, let us commit to making a better future and to always upholding the fundamental values of justice, equality, and diversity that strengthen free societies."
Sign up for Myra's weekly newsletter here:
https://questforeternalsunshine.com
Yes, an old friend of mine, now gone, found himself on the last Kindertransport out of Hamburg at age 16, thanks to his Aryan grandparents who saw what was coming. And he'd been brought up in Hitler Youth!
Slavery is still alive and well...
"There are over 870,000 inmates working full-time in American prisons. Their median wage in state and federal prisons is around 20 and 31 cents an hour, respectively. In Texas, Georgia, and Arkansas prisoners are forced to work for free."
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/0c81132a46c64d3ba412b588c21cd578
Thank you for posting this.
Cotton slavery was very lucrative and many slaves further north were sold south to do the work. This meant splitting families and a long trek usually, if not always, on foot to fuel the bonanza for both southern cotton growers and ultimately the industrial revolution both here and in England. I still haven't finished The Half That Has Never Been Told about cotton slavery as I was just so appalled.
and it is mind-boggling how the press paints a slanted portrait favoring R's. listen to the headlines recently only focused on 'inflation ', or supply chain issues,rather than the incredible rebounding of the economy.
Yes For the press everything that happens "today" had no precedent. They sre exact OPPOSITE of Heather
Yes! Exactly
Correct.
"Over and over again."
Wake Up calls over and over again.
Ingrained habits are hard to change, even when we know them for what they are, vices, hand-me-down prejudices aping true knowledge.
The truth—knowledge directly perceived—has a hard time establishing itself and is all too easily stifled by the powerful weeds of opinion received. And the kind of education that is pure conditioning, rote learning with no training in thinking things through for oneself, makes for a poor environment in which to develop our human potential. Mere shadows of our true selves, never becoming what we are…
When you gain a deeper insight into what’s right and what’s wrong, it will typically come as intuition, a moment of pure perception. But then you say, “That can’t be true, it goes against everything I’ve ever been told…”
It is only when that first intuition keeps repeating, only when you meet others who confirm and establish the seedlings of understanding that you come to make the effort of thinking the matter through for yourself—it is so much easier not to think, so much easier to accept hearsay uncritically. Quite apart from the courage it takes to go against the tide of received opinion. It’s so much easier to be dependent on being told you’re free than to be free.
Even when you get the point, even when you’re convinced, old habits will tend to return and take root. You thought you’d woken up to the truth, but it’s so easy to doze off and slide back into the automatisms of delusion.
Over and over. We need to be reminded—above all to remind ourselves—over and over again.
I said that zombie education, the superficial in-one-ear-and-out-the-other practice of inculcating enough information to pass tests without ever having understood what’s involved, makes for much of the problem: a mass of people uneducated and seemingly uneducable. Zombified consumers. Cannon fodder. Office fodder. The junkies drug pushers dream of… Debased religion deepens and establishes these delusions—which is curious… But I suppose that it’s obvious that while the Truth will make you free, untruths and half-truths will make you unfree… If hearers really reflected on the Parable of the Sower, they’d wake up to when their preacher’s sowing weeds to stifle the wheat…
So it must be said over and over again, regardless of whether we’re bright or we’re stupid. I know this. I’ve seen it for myself, in myself. Over decades and decades, I’ve seen the need for constant reminders. It’s like staying awake and keeping my eyes on the road and knowing when to stop and rest.
Attention’s a survival skill. And much of the population’s asleep at the wheel.
Peter, your comment sounds like a pretty fair analysis of our human tendencies to me, you are a man who is deeply introspective as well as a keen observer of life and humanity. I appreciate your efforts to find cause and effect, and your willingness to share your own struggles with us. Let me tell you that you are not alone with the bad mental habits that keep coming back. I would bet that everyone in this group has a story or two to admit having the same problems! And our efforts to improve, to be as wise and stable as we know we are easily capable of being, are just made even more disappointing in times of high stress, rapid change, and multiple moving threats, exactly like we are going through right now. Does it sound like I am in serious therapy right now? I didn’t think it was that obvious....
Keep on trying man, and always ALWAYS love yourself!
Despite everything I know about the idiocy I was immersed in growing up, and lots of work to drop that shit, I'm constantly amazed to catch myself with some aspect of the "stinking thinking" playing in my mind. Just another reminder that the answer to the question, "How many times do you have to pick yourself up?" is "One more time than you fall down."
That it SO true. In a certain way, our “sin” is ever before us.
I do a lot of reading in what archeology derives about ancient cultures: also reading ancient describers of culture; from Hammurabi and the Chronicles of Gilgamesh to other ancient codes of conduct that most people call mythologies.
I am of the opinion that in all of these texts, what appears most often is that despite so-called improvements in “civilization”, human behavior remains relatively consistent over time.
TC - like button not working. Love your comment.
Hit the "refresh" circle in the top left corner of the screen. It's a Substack glitch, but they do take the "likes" and you can see you did it if you do that.
So THAT's where it is! thanks!
That's a good assessment, TC.
Have you read Daniel Kahnemann's "Think, fast think slow"? His theory of the division of our conscious thinking process into an automatic, "intuitive" instant response which requires no effort and a second slower process, when the first doesn't quite "cut it" that actually requires the effort of "thinking through the issue" and this is harder and uncomfortable. No prizes for guessing that most people go for the easy, instantaneous solution at all times....and we end up where we are....in a mess.
Hm. Once we used to be taught "Think before you speak".
Another version: Engage Brain before engaging mouth.
Quite so!
Well, this community here is Critical Thinkers' Group Therapy, Gus! It is where I find sanity and camaraderie in these times. I send everyone, particularly Heather, a big, warm, group hug on this cold winter's day in Vermont.
I tried to answer you and TC just after you'd both written to say how much I'd appreciated the resonance. Message vanished... Anyway, it's great to have a mentor like HCR, so committed, so utterly reliable, so deeply versed in the material she’s presenting. Great, too, to be able to be so open and unguarded with each other—altercations and all! Let’s hope the members of this community will infect others all around us and that, even if we can’t wean all the addicts off Agent Orange—bear in mind how much the poor so-and-sos must have needed something, someone to believe in—we’ll be able to sow the seeds of truth for spring, summer… or whenever.
Beckett said it all:
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
Love this response !
Mr. Burnett, you make so many points in your message it seems like water on a plate! I would like to address one of your comments concerning education.
I was born on the leading edge of the Baby Boom. One of the educational advantages of that time was there was a lot less technology a child had to learn than is the case today so students could learn those dreaded, boring classes like history, social studies, and, the worst, civics.
I was a very indifferent student. I rarely did my homework. I was once confined to my bedroom for Easter Week (now called spring break) because I had to write four book reports. I read four other books and never did write a book report. My school career up to graduation was more of the same. However, when I was in college I made the President’s list.
My husband and I have three children. They are all very successful. They did well in school and in college. The generation my children belong to is not considered to have had a sterling education - at least in comparison to the education we Boomers got. I could rant for hours about what I believe were the inadequacies of K-12 education when my kids were in school. There were lots of “losers” from that time - the “Zombie educated” who never seemed to make much of themselves.
My kids all had public education. Let me tell you some of the careers these Zombie educated friends (all publicly educated) of my children: lawyers, concert pianist, the owner of one of the largest independent book stores, CEOs (my son among them), graphic designer, several doctors. I’m sure you get the point. The point *I* want you to know is those who want to learn will learn nonetheless. Going to a school in a poor school district in a poverty stricken neighborhood is not easy, but to graduate and go on to higher education is not impossible, either. Going to school in a good neighborhood is no guarantee of success. It all depends on lots of mitigating circumstances. There have been in-one-ear-out-the-other students always and it will continue to be so.
A wonderful teacher said to me the secret of success requires three things. If you are missing any one of the three you will not be successful in that particular endeavor. You must have talent; intelligence; and persistence. So, Mr. Barrett, I will leave you with that.
"You must have talent; intelligence; and persistence". I agree, no doubt, except, I don't really know what intelligence is but that is another issue.
I would only add you also need:
Good nutrition, a place to sleep, parents who are there (and don't have to work two shifts to make rent and are not there), a place to sleep (sleep is critical to the learning process), and a safe environment.
Einstein, denied good nutrition, a place to sleep and no parents around would have never been heard from. So, I guess I do place "intelligence" as dead last on the list of things that make one successful.
Also, I have met too many people who are "successful" who seem to have the brains of mush to believe that intelligence plays much of role really.
Trump would be in that category as would "W" Bush. Mush for brains but monetarily doing great.
I believe you are absolutely right, Mike. As an educator in a high-poverty area, I have seen the truth of Alan Beck's quote "In teaching, you can't do the Bloom stuff until you take care of the Maslow stuff." To those unfamiliar with that, Bloom created a hierarchy of cognitive skills ranging from the bottom skill of rote memorization to the top skill of creating; Maslow proposed a hierarchy of human needs that must be met before learning can occur. At the bottom are physiological needs such as food, water, rest, followed by the next level - safety. I'm including a link here: https://jessichristian.medium.com/the-new-hierarchy-of-needs-maslows-lost-apex-5e51031ce3fb
Jennifer. yes, I agree. It is hard to learn and be hungry at the same time.
Without the necessary glucose, a brain doesn't function well.
I think we were commenting at the same time!!
When I was a high school teacher, my first year, there was a boy in 9th grade who had intelligence and drive. He came to school every day. He always had a place to sleep. The trouble was, he never knew when he arrived at school in the morning where he would be sleeping at night. That chaos was too much. We lost him to the streets, where he likely died violently before he was 25. Circumstances matter.
I had a lovely young man assigned to me in the library through special ed. He was in a creative writing class and he showed me something that he had written that was his dream for the future. We all worked to do our best for him, but family circumstances proved to be too much. His father told him to kill someone, and he did. So sad.
Shocking. Really.
:(
Yes. Chaos and hunger do not promote learning.
As once again the “like” function is MIA, thank you. I’ve been seeing more and more bootstrap references lately, especially regarding education. Usually it piggybacks with a condemnation of single parent households. Another example of lazy thinking.
Bootstrap expectations and opinions have often (mostly) been party/politically driven. Funding and programming in a Dem administration ended later by repub. It’s heartbreaking (again) to know what works and what is needed and watch it dumped by an unfeeling and ignorant group of politicians and their constituents who lament and criticize those “lazy” people.
As I pointed out above, if you hit "refresh" you can regain the like button. It appears to be a Substack glitch.
Yeah, but after refreshing, TC, you have to hunt your way back to where you had been in the Comments. Just another effin’ annoyance. Haha
The bootstrap references are big red flags for me. I agree with your comment of “lazy thinking”. Thank you to each person who took the time to comment.
I have a friend who when asked "how would you define intelligence?" replied "Intelligence is the ability to perceive relationships." Succinct.
As my father - who really was a leading creative genius in his field - once said, "The real mark of intelligence is to know where you're stupid."
TC, I am going to add the absence of a chaotic environment to your list. I am aware of people who had horrible childhoods (my father-in-law among them) whose food/housing insecurity made learning almost impossible. I saw many students in my professional career who may have not had those problems, but with a drug addicted/psychotic/abusive parent had the same result of inability to succeed.
Yes. You're right. I should have listed that myself. I've come to understand my mother as an abused child never treated. I should put one of the main reasons for my success being "a room of my own" to which I could retreat while the banshee was wailing around the house.
The definition of intelligence given by Todd Eastin's friend is highly perceptive. Here's something that the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead had to say on the matter:
"Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended."
When I spoke of success, I was speaking of people who found fulfilment in life and succeeded in doing something of what they'd set out to achieve. As for the "success" that is commonly measured in $ and many digits, Seneca put it succinctly:
"Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That is why it satisfies nobody."
I used to make a fair (actually more than fair) living rewriting screenplays written by people better-known than I so they made sense and worked, for which the "credit" was the kind bank managers recognize as well as producers who have a movie that works. Now I write books, for which the income is fair. An idiot once asked why I had switched (I won't go into the long part of the reply, if you go over to TAFM you can read "Why The Movies Mostly Suck Nowadays" for that). I responded: "I get to write what I like, the way I like, working with people who like making the book successful." There's a lot more "success" shown on my Amazon page than there would be on my IMDb page if one could list the things one did that "worked" for which "credit" was not given.
Success is a good friend.
You just wrote a version of my reply, Mike. I once had a similar conversation with a fellow teacher colleague who talked about resilience as it were genetic. Possibly, but not only. It’s even more. Besides the desire, a student needs the basics- love, shelter, nutrition, safety but as important is to be mentored or supported by a model or a supportive person, parent, teacher, neighbor, someone who encourages as well as watches out for or helps the child. Kids who don’t have their basic needs met at home or in their world, who fall through the cracks, are less likely to be able to take advantage of opportunities some might believe are available to everyone. It takes a village….
It's called inherited wealth.
🤔😳🙄🥺😔
Thanks for the reminder and... for sure!!!
One or two of the wisest and most knowledgeable -- and successful -- men I've known had very little education at all apart from what they taught themselves.
Yes-Curiosity is a good motivator for learning. Learning doesn’t just come from books-although I’m a real fan of research and reading. Life experiences teach us a lot. My 90 year old grandmother taught me more than most of my teachers.
As a kid, I tried hard to understand religion but didn't. I'd have been drawn to it if I'd known the saying of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux:
"Believe me, you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters."
That I knew. My teachers seem to have been aware of it too, they complained that I was forever staring out of the window, dreaming... And it was true, I couldn't wait to get away up the mountainside or onto the beach... I was fortunate. I pity kids who see nothing but concrete and asphalt.
Here's to staring out the window. My fifth grade teacher reported to my mother that I was staring out the window. She was concerned about my future; mom was devastated. Poetry writing became part of my calling. My inspiration lay far behind that musty classroom, through the giant windows capped with yellowed, rolling shades. I have since led writing workshops validating the importance of day dreaming...
We auto-didacts like you mentioning that. :-)
Betsy B. I'm just going to add something.
Unless I've misunderstood, you seem to be talking of previous generations, but how about now? I worry about my teenage granddaughter who has all three of the qualities you cite. On a grand scale. I worry because I have the impression that, increasingly, the backing of money matters more than all three. And, despite the exceptional abilities of her parents, that fourth factor is missing.
More than ever, America needs to invest in education, yet one of the major political parties seems set on undermining adequate education, the kind that encourages students to think for themselves. I'm reminded of my childhood in South Africa when the National Party used Apartheid to place a heavy lid on the education and social advancement of non-whites; except that here, it goes further -- or am I mistaken? At all events, I regard the system of lifelong indentures that has spread outward from America as a deliberately imposed impediment. The country's interest in this investment is such that students and their families should not be compelled to foot the bill for such a high proportion of the cost.
Another aspect of the investment required concerns teachers' pay and their status. Since society appears to be stratified almost entirely on the basis of wealth and income levels, I often gain the impression that many teachers status and incomes are far lower than they should be. Compare with Finland... Well, that's unfair. Almost no one can. But Scandinavians are really good at matching policies to real priorities -- not just the haphazard vagaries of the market.
So here I am worrying in a big way about the future of American society -- like most of us here -- but worrying, too (perhaps unnecessarily) about someone who may be the brightest star in my family for over a century. And I can assure you, the talent isn't and wasn't lacking.
Just a postcriptum (sorry, I know you found I was piling it all on too thick) but as a European, I find American efficiency is hampered by quite excessive pressures allowing insufficient time and space for relaxation, a product of meanness and what looks from the outside like anxiety neurosis. It's as though you were forever opening and closing doors from the hinge side. Pardon the gross over-generalization -- but this unhealthy attitude is spreading worldwide!
"More than ever, America needs to invest in education"
Thomas Jefferson would agree.
Many nations, America among them, are now experiencing the snowball effect of having poorly educated teachers, “educating” a majority of the country’s children.
The pernicious attacks on education today (school board fracases, book banning, steering away from anything remotely controversial, sanitizing curricula and the like) are in the process of ensuring that thrashers flood out of the profession. The general rule I and others observed is that the best leave the soonest because they are wise enough to understand the moral imperatives in education and have sufficient integrity not to participate in a rotting system. In the main, those who stay are either incurious or intent on the paycheck.
America could begin serious reforms today and they would not show results for a minimum of a generation, more probably two.
The vacuum caused by an education system that fails to educate will be filled by whatever government replaces your democracy.
Nothing is more important than addressing the shocking fall of education in America.
And ramping up technology in schools is the first and laziest non-solution that will be tried.
I’m sure there’s truth to much you write. However I would be careful of generalizations. “In the main, those who stay are either incurious or intent on the paycheck.” In today’s political climate quality education is also dependent on funding, sociopolitical agendas and the economy. I taught for 30 years all levels and encountered excellent teachers who worked in adverse conditions and persisted and those who were burned out, not because of the paycheck but because of policy, politics and lack of support from administration and/or parents. It’s true in many districts, however, that pay and support and school funding and retirement policies differ greatly, so maybe our comments are a matter of semantics.
Absolutely, but investment needs to be in quality education. Bush 2 and No Child Left Behind invested money into the system but definitely not quality.
A perfect description, Peter!
I was feeling so guilty, sitting here in my recliner, enjoying a crossword puzzle, that I scolded myself, "You must DO something today!" So I decided to read the comments to HCR's letter. Now, I suffer another anxious dilemma: Is reading HCR's comments sufficiently relaxing to qualify as true relaxation, or must I dig out John Grisham's "A Time for Mercy", open my new bag of Hu chocolates (try them!), and play a bit of Roy Orbison? Bye.
Attunement, engagement, structure, routine, freedom to explore safely, consistency, patience, tolerance, most of all agape love. If you received it chances are good you will give it. Heartbreakingly many never receive it.
Bravo!
Many attributes we see as catalysts for success are developed. I’ll add a few others that make a difference: consistent adult modeling/ support/attention/positive relationships; and three meals a day and safe places to sleep. Safe housing. Medical needs met. There’s more.
I wonder what recourse the educational system has to combat the zombie approach to education. Like when W administration required No Child Left Behind, educators everywhere knew it was not a good system and it wasn’t funded. The data behind it was falsified. So why did we have to blindly follow that order of rule? We’re basically still following it! Teaching to the test. Politicians shouldn’t be in control of education. They make our objectives, and our rules and requirements. We need educational leadership to do that.
In Texas, millions go every year to a company in the UK for our state test and testing materials. No logic to it at all. And we spend countless hours teaching kids “strategies” for passing the test. It’s not purely true of all districts but it’s still the highest priority.
I don’t think we can get schools out of the zombie approach if the administrators continue to fall in line instead of bucking the status quo.
I swear I do have other interests than education! Just Dr HCR brings it to the fore front of my brain!
“Politicians should not be in control of education.”
“Control” doesn’t seem to be quite the right word for this. To control something, you need competence, you need to understand it. Sticking dirty brown noses into the exercise of every profession amounts to sabotage, not control. The ability of judges to render justice may vary but political interference with sentencing guarantees injustice. Physicians are already forced to take cover from the crossfire between big pharma, insurance companies and parasitic lawyers without having to take instruction in the use of bleach as medicine from those whose grey matter (if any) was bleached long ago. And politicians do relish sending young men and women to war.
I don’t know how political leadership manages this but the selection of education ministers seems to be determined by mysterious factors, mostly, no doubt, financial. The outcome? Ministers chosen from among the uneducated and the uneducable but with big bumble-bee ideas buzzing around in their bonnet. Betsy DeVos seems to have represented the lowest common denominator among those messing around with education.
From political interference, Good Lord deliver us!
TFG was a master at assigning the hungriest foxes (secretaries) to his henhouses (Cabinets). His mission was deconstruction of the administrative state. With a severe and disabling personality disorder, all of his focus was directed towards his single mission which he excelled at. Folks saw the bumbling and couldn’t believe he would be capable of such extraordinary damage to our democracy. I maintain we will be decades still discovering the destruction that he accomplished.
WaPo, 04/03/2017 “the United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater President, Erik Prince and a Russian close to …Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-Elect Trump, according to US, European and Arab officials”. Erik Prince is Betsy DeVos brother. DeVos was confirmed Feb. 7 2017, as Education Secretary. Quid pro quo?
Must have been God's will.
Oh, yes, and Bumble Bee ideas, true! There was a reading program called Whole Language in the early ‘90s. The state superintendent bought a commercially supplied version of this. No more phonics drill and kill, hooray! Instead, baby thrown out with the bath water. In practice, first graders would chant from a large chart an insipid text (changed weekly) and be directed to notice its rhymes and such. My instructions as a substitute teacher: Make sure they keep their eyes on the words as they read (“read”) from the chart.
Whole Language, developed by a moron who is considered a Genius in Education at CSU San Bernardino, is proof the Ed.D. degree and those who hold it should be invited to be a participant at the hanging of every MBA in America.
My grandmothers, both teachers, taught me phonics at age 4, and my first grade class was taught by the last teacher to use phonics in the Denver Public Schools. My brother and sister got taught "word recognition" and were functional illiterates, as was every other kid sabotaged with that. I cannot think of a single "edumacational reforyum" that was done while I was in school ("new math," I'm looking at you) that didn't screw things up worse. The only college I could get into after the Navy, Colorado State College (now the "University" of Northern Colorado), the state teacher's school, because they had to take you if you graduated from high school, even 125 from the bottom of a class of 900 like me (due to being Aspergian). I worked at the school's PR department and read a study they had there, that for 80% of the students, they were the first in the family to go to college, and for 75% it wasn't in their top three choices (hey, if you can't do anything else, you can always be a teacher). When I finally took an "edumcation" class (Ed Psych, taught by the author of the book whose "tests" were "fill in the blank" from his book) I realized why I had hated every minute of 12 years of public misedumacation, when I saw what they made the majority of teachers out of and how they did it. (How the good ones survive that is beyond me, but it there hadn't been two among the faceless mass of moron stupidity at the front of the classroom, I wouldn't have the career I do or be writing this).
I agree generally but think there’s a bit of overreach here. A great teacher can teach children to read using the best of phonics and whole reading. S(he) can teach children math using the best of the new math and older ways.
At the heart of learning is motivation. At the heart of motivation are the great teachers. The “systems” do not dictate the outcome.
And, as a general rule, the least visionary, hidebound and unpopular (with children) teachers end up as consultants for curricula, and force their approach on the most impressionable teachers.
It’s a form of the Peter Principle.
Whole language should always have been paired with phonics. Not one or the other. What a mess when the continuing changes in policies, funding and curriculum do damage. And sad if a teacher can’t or couldn’t figure out how to close the door and teach. It isn’t exactly sabotage to teach beyond or make changes in the mandated curriculum. However I was happy to leave the classroom because following the mandates and time wasting paperwork was more than enough. And I know I was an excellent teacher, but if I had it to do again?
Education IS political. Always follow the $-the testing industry has made billions with every state having the NCLB requirement.
No child left untested.
I think that you and I are in the same boat; I am most passionate about the things that I have a good knowledge base for (you, education and for me, law enforcement). It is what has made us good at our jobs, and in this environment, we have the opportunity to share it with people who understand it, even better than our fellow professionals, sometimes.
“Politicians shouldn’t be in control…”
But they are.
The increasing conservative school boards in some states are dictating curriculum, censoring books, making medical decisions affecting teachers and students, etc.
Recently a school superintendent was fired in Douglas County, CO
“The school board has been politically split since the most recent election. Four new school board members have taken the district in a decidedly different direction. The first policies of the new board have been to rescind the district's mask policy and make major changes to its equity policy.“
It started with CRT.
“The policy has raised concerns from some members of our community who have asked if this will change DCSD curriculum to incorporate Critical Race Theory.”
The CRT and 1619 Project have been addressed by the State. They stated we can’t teach those things. When our principal told us, most teachers looked at each other and said what is that? Elementary teachers don’t teach CRT!
It’s always about the money! As long as they don’t give it to teachers, that is.
CRT has been effectively distorted because it sounds like ‘critical race thinking’ or critical thinking about racism. Radical rightists have not missed that our young people tend toward progressive and open hearted. They want to change that by turning the schools into right wing indoctrination centers. One of the many clues is that they constantly talk about indoctrinating kids at school. So many of their false charges are things they themselves are actually doing.
The last time I was in Douglas County, the Boy Scouts used to camp in the "wilderness" there and Castle Rock was a place you stopped for gas between Denver and Colorado Springs, that you could drive through from end to end in 5 minutes (six if the only traffic light turned red). Now the whole area from Denver to Colorado Springs is houses, and the evil Christian Wrong HQ in Colorado Springs has spread throughout.
😔
Agree.
Hear! hear!
Could it be said that while “The Truth will set you free”, untruths and half-truths will keep you comfortable. And therein lies the problem.
How well you've put it -- so perspicacious.
The trouble is, of course, that this living as though there were no tomorrow is yet another false economy: comfort now, chaos later. And bills someone else will have to pay.
Now... where was it that I heard of that smart practice, never paying your own bills, always getting someone else to foot them?
Knowledge is work, and learning should always be a work in progress. Learning is not enough recall to regurgitate the information to pass the test.
I had zombie history classes. I cannot believe how interesting history really is.
Seems I was lucky at school and later, all my history teachers were excellent and my special subject was the American Revolution and the birth of the Republic.
My good luck was my grandmothers teaching me to read and my father letting me use his adult library card at the institution where I was educated: the stacks at the main branch of the Denver Public Library. I certainly never had more than ten minutes of "an educational moment" in 12 years wasted in the classroom. My experience with the "history teachers" can be shown in the story of how in Colorado State History in 8th grade, the book and the teacher talked about the "Battle of Sand Creek" and raised my hand and said the proper word was "massacre." For which I spent another few hours "polishing the bench" outside the Vice Principal's office. I all my "bench polishing" as a badge of honor. All my report cards had the note "Fails to recognize or obey properly constituted authority."
Congratulations on a perfect start!
But, really... What ever did you expect if you were so imprudent as to practice free speech?
I thought all Americans knew the rules...
"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."
(Following the Equator by Mark Twain)
Write this out 50 times!
Unfortunately, I didn't get the memo till much later, then threw it in the "round file." As Twain did.
Yeh.. D & F students... "My Friends"
Peter, I’d sure like to sit down to lunch with you. Long lunch. Long long lunch.
That's friendly -- and I've found so much friendliness here that it won't be unfriendly to say I'd be happy to have lunch with no few people here. So, you're welcome. Only trouble is, you'd have to join me in or near Nice, in France...
Mind you, I just heard that friends from Chicago arrived here yesterday... and are delighted to be out in bright sunshine under a blue, blue sky, 60°F after getting out of the icebox.
Sounds delightful. Next time I'm passing through. (Chicago is my home town, BTW)
Agreed! I'm very taken with downtown Chicago but, what with the tall buildings and all that ice on Lake Michigan, the Windy City is even more of a cold store than Saint Petersburg or Helsinki...
And then you have the "Lake Effect"! Yikes
As long as "zombie" does not translate into "disposable", I'm okay with your comments.
We’ve already determined children are disposable. Otherwise we’d have more effective gun control instead of active shooter training. And we send our youth into war zones.
Denise, there's no way I can "like" what you've just written, but it's as well I can't get near some of the gun-whore lobbyists or their vile political minions with a big stick... The temptation might be too great...
I LOVE your words and thoughts Peter. ❤️🙏 Thank you.
Thank you Christy, but I'm far more taken with your three lines around agape. That says it all.
I must cut the verbiage.
Life in old age is becoming a constant struggle to get a quart into, and often out of, a pint pot.
I always learn from you. Usually I have to look a few things up, like the adage of getting a quart into a pot. LOL. You’re such a generous spirit. Thank you.
Mina, Though your analysis is spot on, my concerns rest with how to impart a more relatable story, one that shows rather than tells. The lessons I’ve gleaned partially are a bi-product of trying to understand why the Biden Administration’s accomplishments are not resonating with enough of the public (e.g., recent polling indicates that while 60+% of Republicans are enthused about the approaching fall midterms, only 40% of Democrats report the same). Though there likely are several contributing factors, one that stands out is the tendency to talk about abstract legislation and non-relatable numbers and data. Whether it’s the bi-partisan infrastructure $20 billion investment for semi-conductor manufacturing in Ohio or some other comparable project, we rarely, if ever, hear how the people working at these jobs speak about what this investment has meant to them and to their families. Note I haven’t even touched on how such investments mitigate our dependence on foreign imports, thus easing supply chain hang ups at our ports. Nor have I mentioned the tendency of Republicans to take credit for said projects despite having voted against the bipartisan Infrastructure bill.
Though I haven’t worked up an analogous, relatable script for the dynamic you so adeptly described, suffice it to say we can’t afford not to try.
Barbara J.K.: Thanks so much for your fulsome reply. I think our current toxic political situation has much to do with Trump, the distrust of government he's fostered; Republican legislators who put their lust for power above truth; and right and far right-wing media's decision to put profit over democracy.
There was so much outrageous news generated by TFG and his administration, that regular news outlets became addicted to outrage and excitement. A normal administration is unexciting and not prone to calling for outrage.
However, Biden's people are not selling their accomplishments. They'd better figure out how to do it -- and figure it out quick!
That's right.
It's so simply explained though.
Mad magazine sold because us poor kids found it funny and scrounged pennies to buy it. Their advertisers were happy because lots of kids bought it. And some even bought the salve they were trying to sell. I did. I bought a case.., I knew I could sell it and make money.. I didn't.
The TV "Shows" couldn't stay on the air unless their advertisers were assured of sales..so the "shows" provided the entertainment people WANTED. If you lacked for viewers, the shdow was d o n e and so were those jobs.
Over the past 50 years with the proliferation of "shows"... you had better have something titillating or 'outrageous' or you lost viewers...lost advertisers..., DONE.
So now it's sex that sells. No need to go to the drugstore on the top book shelf.
Just google it....and google away for whatever you're interested in. No wonder "the media" (the 'heads' the cameramen, etc) are sweating their jobs. Trump provided an avalanch of total crap for the networks to feed from. Is is any wonder we saw so much cleavage? The best cleavage guaranteed your coverage of numbnutz would get the most views. And it catered to MEN....remember "C" Cup? She was a disappointment.
So, today it continues...sex sells, right along with plane crashes, condo collapses, DIRT man... gimme dirt.
Yes, it's disgusting.
From the beginning I encouraged everyone to read the Emperors New Clothes.. I hope you are at least familiar with the title. Now in a 3rd grade classroom bookshelf I see "Capt. Underpants".., so nice.
Mina, I agree and would add, excluding the far right, that I believe Americans overall would galvanize around a much tougher, much stronger Biden, who both amplified his accomplishments and also pressed for legislation most Americans are asking for: universal child care and Pre-K, reinstatement of the child tax credit, expanded health care, tax reform, investments in housing, in home and community-based care, and in climate. Biden must demonstrate that he can advance at least some of this legislation currently stalled in the Senate.
The problem with making progress in the Senate is that Manchin has declared that BBB is dead!! What a snake in the grass! This weekend he actually stuck his nose into the Alaskan race for the Senate by stating support for Lisa Murkowski against a Trump supported challenger.
It would help if the supposedly center and liberal media would let go of bashing Biden every chance they get and refusing to highlight important stories like historic job gains.
Joan, I would repeat that amplifying historic job gains, though important, is but a piece of a broader story we would expect leadership to render relative to its accomplishments.
A commenter this week linked to a great Politics Girl podcast with Jan Psaki. She acknowledged the messaging issue and that most Americans aren’t watching her pressers. She also pointed out the White House has no advertising budget.
Good news that Zucker resigned from CNN ! His promotion of TFG..ugh!
DeSantis is proposing to essentially zero out FL gas tax for an unspecified period. He said this won’t hinder transportation projects that are funded through fuel taxes because….. he’ll use $ 1 billion in stimulus $$ to make up for lost revenues. I’ll be sure to keep reminding all those who sing his gassy praises😂
We all do what we can do !
Kathy, I view Psaki’s role as Press Secretary as serving a very different function from enlisting, say, an Explainer-in Chief to educate the public about both the Administration’s accomplishments and also its plans for advancing legislation currently stalled in the Senate.
Agreed, Barbara ! But my, perhaps naive, interpretation of Psaki’s chat is that the DNC should step up to fund their own Explainer-in-Chief to counter all the “legitimate civil discourse “ bull*&$# .
In the mean time…we all do what we can do to counter the bull*&$# !
Republicans have used the playbook of "supply-side economics" since 1872, with the exception of the Eisenhower Administration. That's what you meant about their "rising tide floats all boats".
One of my uncles was a professional Republican politician in a Northern city during much of the later 20th century. He told me once that it was a conscious pattern. Power goes back and forth between the two parties. When the R’s are in power, they spend all the money. When the Dems get in, they have to raise taxes to pay the bills. The R’s shout “Dems tax and spend,” and get back into power. Of course, that was then. The trumplicans have no intention of taking turns.
Cleaning up after their mess... Inevitable Dem party "platform." i.e.task... by default Terrible! But your uncle was spot on
Yes!! Why can they not find a way to make this clear as day??!!
Because for most people, economic history is filed under MEGO - My Eyes Glaze Over.
And occasionally you find a professor who can write for the MESO file which needs to be kept where you can get at it - My Eyes Stay Open.
Robert Reich just announced his class will be available free every Friday. I believe through Facebook but he is also on Substack letters.
So true-I was an economics major in college and at the end of the day my “intuition” tells me that the economy boils down to human decisions and behavior. HCR’s narrative points to who was making the decisions and why. Wealth has ruled the day since the beginning. Look at all that was done to keep slavery alive and to tamp down organized labor.
“There never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not in point of fact, live on the labor of the other.” -John C. Calhoun (in his speech about slavery as a “positive good”.)
Grrrrrrrrr
Reagan popularized the "trickle down" slogan to sell his tax cuts but in reality the money flowed uphill.
No trickle -- a torrent. More like a vacuum cleaner than rich men's drool...
Every time I hear "trickle down" and "Reagan" I think of "yellow water" raining down upon us lowly folk.
Yup! I've heard all my life about "tax and spend Democrats" and not nearly enough about "borrow and spend Republicans".
And not enough about corporate welfare, especially the obscene fossil fuel company subsidies.
KAaaBLAMMMM. Good shot Joan..right in the balls., NEXT
The Republican "rising tide" is the equivalent of swimming in the effluent in the outhouse.
You meant the Republican Bed n Brothel..down in Mar E Lago... no?
Watch out for the bed bugs and lice.
The Democrats are far greater friends of those in the "red" states than those red state dwellers would or could ever believe. They are seduced by their own poison.
Democrats do not have a Fox News willing to spill out lies while fake blondes show their legs.
I hate to say, that (fake blonde and legs) really makes a difference to a lot of people.
Mike...Mike... you forgot CLEAVAGE. Plenty of 'fake' and very slippery stuff behind all that... no? :)))) Give em a flippin break Mike, they're "under god" too ya kno.
Correct. No better sugar coating for pills loaded with conspiracy theories and what you will... (or I won't). I duly noted the effect on some men who got addicted to watching all the prancing, the poses and exposés of the pulchritude and hypnotized into buying all the crap.
Hypno-tube is more like it...but Peter, please go easy on us functionally-challenged males. Plenty room-temperature IQ women seem enamored by him, not to mention his proclivity for and appreciation of what Victoria Secret* can provide his dates. *Victoria Secret.., "push up or hush up" has certainly been one of my most dependable sponsors.
I quit the Republican Party when Reagan came into office. My "gut" told me the man was evil; and, he was. The list of his sins is too long to recite. I became an Independent and have remained such ever since, voting mostly for Democrats. That you are a Social Justice Warrior is admirable, but social justice in a real and authentic sense is a quagmire. Regarding Hillary: A VERY smart woman who intimidates many, many men. Yes, she like the rest of us is flawed. Yet, she survived the Benghazi grilling flawlessly. That was $7 million of our money wasted. What disturbs me the most at this moment in our history is how many Americans do not "get" what is taking place today.
"This (economic growth better under Democrats) should not come as a surprise to anyone."
This is obvious to me Dr. Richardson.
Here is what I have observed only in my own adult lifetime, beginning in 1980 (yikes!)
In 1980, Jimmy Carter, after having run a balanced budget and continued to pay down WWII debt, but, having been demonized by Reagan as running giant "wasteful welfare" programs lost the election (I BELIEVED Carter was irresponsible and I BELIEVED Reagan would be responsible).
However, I DO remember that I graduated with a ChE degree in 1982 and HALF of my classmates could not get jobs and a large fraction of that graduating class NEVER was able to get a good job under Reagan and left the field.
At the end of Reagan's EIGHT years (supported by me twice I shamefully admit), the United States had acquired an extra $2.1 TRILLION ($5.5 TRILLION in today's dollars) in additional debt, almost all of it having gone to military contractors who were Reagan's main donors.
For the first time since WWII a President, REAGAN, ran a giagantic deficit. NOT Carter.
So, in fact, after a long postwar period of "responsible" spending (because even during the wasteful Vietnam adventure the US kept reducing WW II debt) REAGAN was the first President to actually begin a NEW WELFARE PROGRAM: WELFARE FOR MILITARY CONTRACTORS.
Big money for Military Contractors is essentially "Welfare for White People" because, until very, very, very recently (and even now to a large extent) those contractors only hired WHITE engineers and managers. This explains, completely, why the only bipartisan vote that ever happens is for the military budget every year.
Welfare for white people is popular.
But, the story continues. In 1998 in a bipartisan disaster, the Glass Steagall Act was repealed which prevented banks from betting in the markets with your personal money and then in 2001 DERIVATIVES were legalized by the Bush administration for the first time in history.
And, so began the 2008 debacle in the housing market which resulted in banks betting, with derivatives (mortgage backed securities) on assets that simply did not exist. A huge fraud on the American people then preceded as we gave Federal Money to banks to "bail them out" for a drunken gambling spree legalized by Republicans under Bush.
Now, at this point we could have just let the economy tank and let people starve in the streets. THAT would have helped more people understand Republican Party economic failures.
But No!. Obama then spent 8 TRILLION dollars of deficit, on the books, soft landing the economy which DID get him elected twice. BUT, the consequence was: We all forgot how bad Republican leadership crashes the economy and how much debt is necessary to bail out Republican policy failures.
Plus, off the books the Fed literally, without anyone voting, put another $5 Trillion of the worthless mortgage assets on its books by buying them from banks at inflated prices.
Yep. On purpose, we kept people from starving in the streets on the backs of something like $14 Trillion dollars in printed money. If that seems like a bad idea, well, it is even worse than you think because:
Everyone forgot how BAD Republican Policy is for the economy. But, not me. I was paying attention.
Every time a Republican gets in office said Republican will directly or indirectly add a gigantic amount to the deficit and even then, the economy will fail.
Like it did under Reagan (yes, 1982 to 1986 was disaster that everyone forgot about),
Like it did under Bush (complete disaster)
and like it did under Trump (although Pubs are blaming the Coronavirus) but Trump ended up his Presidency with massively increased debt and an economic disaster to give to Biden.
JUST in my adult lifetime, Republicans have always been a complete economic catastrophe for America and, to me, it is mind boggling that ANYONE would do anything but vote against any Republican running for any position, including dogcatcher at the local town.
I remember ALL this, also read, on Twitter, the following “All recessions during the last 100 years happened during republican administrations, every one!” I believe this to be true, but didn’t check it out. However, have seen plenty of graphs that are well “graphic” and support this statement. I never blamed Obama for bailing out the evil, considering the alternative. But I never expected the Tea Party nuts to lay it on him, considering how obvious the Bush horror was. That’s when I knew how low republicans would go. They have not disappointed. There is no bottom, also proved what Churchill said about a five-minute chat with the average voter.
There is no bottom for a Republican. No low that a Republican will not stoop below to go even lower to bottom fish ethics and responsible behaviors.
Exactly why the Dems promise to go high is a recipe for disaster.. as long as Rupert is considered other than 100% propaganda. If they really did a "both sides" argument, Democrats would look like the only way to go. Call repubs what they are, a cult of evil. They would have to do more than follow Fox down their latest rabbit hole.
That, Sir, is an insult to Catfish! 🙀 Ha! Ha!
Absolutely!
Yes, Mike. You must know that crabs and bottom fish consume the dregs and that Republicans are indeed bottom fish.
You made me do a little research. 😎
https://www.thebalance.com/deficit-by-president-what-budget-deficits-hide-3306151
Here is another view of your data
https://zfacts.com/national-debt/
Didn't know that quote, "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Is that true today?
He also said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”.
Putting his finger on the most intractable problem any society faces.
Well, that quote works for sure with all who vote for Republicans and many who refuse to vote, and many who vote for Democrats. Here is another quote:
"Ignorance is bliss."
Mike, Reading your of your experience, i can only conclude that the real underlying support for gop comes perniciously from white supremacist adherence. The gop strategists were spot on identifying abortion and guns to be the perfect cover issues to signal and corral otherwise negatively impacted (because of gop supply-side policies) supporters. “Prosperity Gospel”, “Family Values”, “Pro-Life”, “ Tough on Crime” and “Guns-Don’t-Kill-People”. The dog-whistle truth behind all of these “beliefs” is white power. The results of policies created from these positions always disproportionally, negatively impact POC. But they are not good for any common citizen. They never level the playing field. Since the 2022 midterms will, once again, be an “It’s-the-Economy-Stupid” election, we need to double down on the push back against the dog-whistles. We need to have on loop, the scene from “The Wizard of Oz” where the curtain is ripped back to reveal an inept little man, mixed with scenes of the January 6th “legitimate public discourse”.
"the real underlying support for gop comes perniciously from white supremacist adherence."
Michele, I guess I don't really feel good about agreeing with you, but, I do.
The tropes Reagan rolled out about wasting money on "welfare for black people", which, is what he definitely did, really appealed to a lot of people.
But, lying, as Reagan did about Carter, and, creating a fake trope about a woman Chicago that had umpteen adresses?
That was appealing to those whites who want to believe they are superior to those lazy blacks. Yes it was.
But, the truth is, the largest government largesse goes to white people (Military Contractors (overwhelmingly white employees), Government Employees (overwhelmingly white), consulting firms (yep, mostly white), etc.
By the time you add up all the welfare going to white people in this country?
It simply dwarfs any social assistance given to any person of color whose grandparents were beaten because they wanted their kids in school.
I agree with you, Mike. This, I'm sure, is out of the wheelhouse (so to speak) of most commenters here, however - in another issue, the welfare subsidies still being handed out to livestock producers on our (OUR) public lands & forests AND national monuments - the contracts handed to a few chosen contractors paid very well to round up Wild Horses on those lands, the warehousing of those same Wild Horses - if they are lucky & not sold to slaughter. Then there is the destruction & damage done to these lands and forests and national monuments by livestock? THEN the slaughter of our wild predators - to protect livestock (of course) with the added "benefit" of killing off any other animal that wanders into the wrong place. Yet another government agency: Wildlife "Services" - a misnomer if there ever was one. And still, with the many lawsuits against the BLM & Forest Service - this all continues. The excuse is: all those advocates are just too emotional!
Just in case you think I was exaggerating?
Osher: Feds hold monthly grazing fee to Reagan-era minimum
https://newsregister.com/article?articleTitle=osher-feds-hold-monthly-grazing-fee-to-reagan-era-minimum--1644005879--42369--commentary&fbclid=IwAR3WLfOiTx-gTijxOUcAqG-dp_qffGXz1sxMMyKOdsHY5yKA2QiGoI-HXVU
I assume people are telling their truth unless otherwise indicated.
Thank you, oh thank you!
You are more than welcome - Its nice to know someone shares my opinion on this subject!
Maggie, RIGHT! I am only vaguely aware of this. We are all probably in the dark about the many welfare programs out there for white people.
I'm sure that SS Dbl. isnt just for "white" people, Mike. And I really wouldnt call it welfare - not positive about this in particular, but we all pay into SS, & I kind of think SS dbl works the same way. You know, what the naysayers call socialism, right?
People who think the insurrection of 01/06 was due to Trump are ignoring our history. The Confederate state house in Montgomery is still standing. The people who engineered the sedition of 1861 are still in business, having never faced accounting for their sedition. They still need the support of the church. Their combined whining and lying are their only hope of winning an election.
Thanks to the electoral college we are ruled by an insurrectionist religious minority.
"An attempted coup unpunished is an exercise." Rick Wilson
Correct. We had an exercise. We may have more.
But, next time we can all play. Right??
We will have more. What Wilson meant was that it was an exercise at getting better at overthrowing the government. The implication of that is 'practice makes perfect.' Their hope for success depends on our determination to maintain the democracy.
Our ability to play depends on the outcome of the next election. If the fascist win, then all resistance is immediately outlawed. We can, and we will, still play, but at a much-limited level. Our best hope is to win now.
Hitler failed on his first attempt. It was an exercise.
Social Security disability is White mans welfare.
Seriously? I realize there likely are people taking advantage - but sorry, H A, I know too many who are disabled & this HELPS them survive!
I know a black young man who needs SSDI desperately, has for years. He didn’t want to be on welfare, but finally did apply. Having one hell of a time, I live too far away to help him, but seems like stonewalling to me.
According to people I know, its quite a long drawn out process - and yeah, does seem like stonewalling - no matter what color you are.
Got data?
Probably, but I don't know much about it. I would not be surprised.
Michele, I can see that split screen in my head, with a shrunken tfg behind the curtain. The controls all have republican heads in them.
I’m glad someone in this country has the ability to admit a mistake. I never worshipped at the throne of Reagan and could NOT understand it—in fact, I knew he was neurologically impaired, probably from a stroke or Alzheimer’s, as soon as they began propping him up in public. . . Me, a lowly nurse. Where were the experts? The people in charge? The Repugs have no sense of accountability, morality—just insatiable greed.
I only admit my mistakes to those who I am NOT married to. I am a guy after all.
:-)
All true. What I have never understood, is why Obama continued Bush’s approach of bailing out the banks directly. An indirect bank bailout, with the government paying off all those mortgages at a reasonable discount, would have helped so many more people.
Jail time for just a few of the CEOs responsible would have gone a long way as well.
I believe, that as a black man, Obama carried a heavier burden, in the office of the Presidency, than any other President; and carried it with grace and tact. Qualities that the opposing party have forgotten.
Patricia, In the (almost, they let me in) all Black school I attended, the fundamental principle was "Twice as Good" -- which means that a Black graduate has to be twice as good in order to make it in a White world....
This is also said of women. Really, its the fate of all who have no privilege.
deleted
Mike. C'mon let's not go there with accusations and innuendo. You know both Obamas had record breaking book sales, speaking engagements and other endeavors after leaving office.
I had hoped when I joined this comments section of this blog stuff like this wouldn't happen. Yet here we are.
OK. I agree. I deleted my comment.
You, Sir have made my day. We all from time to time in the heat of the political environment make verbal missteps. I'll follow your example in the future.
Mike, I have deleted one or two myself. You're a mensch. (Does that make me one too?)
Mike, I remember much the same as you from this period. A small technical issue I wondered about--I thought Carter was paying down the Vietnam war debt instead of WWII debt, but that's a technical issue which carries little importance. The important thing is that Carter was responsibly paying down war debt. A side issue which most Americans don't know about or remember is that President Johnson proposed a surtax of 10% on Americans to help pay for the war. He proposed it in early 1967, and Congress finally passed it about a year later. That only lasted some months as I recall because it was very unpopular. Lesson learned: Americans enjoyed the temporary economic benefits of war (i.e., from increased employment and wages), but they didn't want to pay for the war. That demonstrates how little Americans understand about the financial costs of war.
Back to Carter responsibly paying down war debt. That led to high inflation (20% or so) which was one big reason Reagan was elected. Reagan's proposed economic plan said essentially: "Don't worry about paying for the war debts. Let your children and grandchildren pay them." Bush Sr. was running against Reagan for the repub. nomination, and he told the American people that Reagan's economic plan was "Voodoo economics." He was right, but the American people didn't listen. Corporate power was behind Reagan, and he got the nomination and won the election. He allowed the creation of "Junk bonds" by Michael Milken. Then, we had corporate hostile takeovers and their results. (Remember Gordon Gekko in the movie "Wall Street" and his mantra, "Greed is good.") That represented repub. Reagan's 1980s. Social Security tax was increased under Reagan on the premise that it would beef up the Social Security fund. The tax was collected but then borrowed back by Reagan and Congress (leaving IOU's to the American people) in what the administration declared "a bipartisan victory"--a term which still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Back in 1980, Reagan also made a deal with the Iranians to sell them missiles in exchange for the American prisoners there. That led to the Iran-contra crimes, and Reagan's war in Central America. The Iran-Contra perpetrators under Reagan were prosecuted, but when Bush Sr. became president in 1988, he pardoned all of them. Another disgusting move just as pardoning President Nixon had been. No accountability for the crimes of the high rollers.
The combination of Clinton's destruction of the Glass-Steagall act and Bush Jr.'s allowance of Wall Street's rape of the economy led to the 2008 economic crisis. Then Obama bailed them out and obligated Americans to much more debt. He bailed them out dollar for dollar, not to mention also salvaging their huge bonuses. The American people lost again, and not one banker was prosecuted. In Iceland, a country with 1% of the U.S. population and probably 1% of the economy, 29 bankers were sent to prison for their role in that scam. U.S. administrators rarely face penalties for their crimes. No wonder that the U.S. congress is further enriching themselves by stock trading on insider information. They face no penalties for it.
Then came Trump, and things got even worse. Woe is us if we don't get a grip on reality and take charge.
Thank you for your nice reply.
"Back to Carter responsibly paying down war debt. That led to high inflation (20% or so) which was one big reason Reagan was elected. "
Peak inflation looks like it was 15%.
https://www.businessinsider.com/historical-cpi-in-one-chart-2013-11
I wonder, was it really "paying down (WWII AND Vietnam) war debt" that led to inflation?" Is it really so easy to pin down the origins? Because, we had been paying down War debt since 1945 without inflation.
Remember, businesses raise prices not Jimmy Carter or the government.
At the time, an 80lb box of baling wire for our balers cost almost as much as gold. I remember hating on US Steel in a BIG way back then. Big time.
I wonder: Maybe business was just gauging Americans?
Yes on the inflation at 15%. I believe the 20% I mentioned was the interest being paid on CDs at the worst of the inflation. And, yes, it is hard to pin down the exact cause(s) of inflation.
"I wonder: Maybe business was just gauging Americans?"
That makes sense. However, I would add that business was not just gauging Americans but also gouging them.
I completely agree with your very succinct analysis! I am the same age and have watched this unfolding since graduating college in 1982.
I also graduated in 1982. So many of my classmates could not get jobs.
I went on to graduate school because I sort of had brainwashed myself into thinking that because I did well in school a Ph.D. might be a good thing, but, that is another story.......EXCEPT
When I started my meager income was not taxed, but, REAGAN began taxing it even though he LIED about cutting taxes.
He only meant cutting taxes on the RICH. Grad students making nothing?
Had to pay tax all of a sudden.
Ridiculous to penalize those making nothing and reward billionaires. No lie.
Mike I have a sincere and genuinely curious question. In light of what you have just eloquently written why did you keep voting Republican? What were the other factors besides financial policies? What is that magic nugget that keeps people voting against their own best interests? I have my own thoughts but I wanted to hear from someone who has voted Republican.
Barbara, first, after George W. Bush openly and obviously lied about both Afghanistan and Iraq and invaded both, I DID, permanently stop voting Republican. Also, in the same time frame I googled a graph of the Federal deficit and realized everything I had BELIEVED had been wrong. The data did not support what I believed.
Before that it was more difficult to get data AND.....
BEFORE that I used my belief system more than my analytic system even though I had grown that analytic system in many ways in other areas.
After 2001, I have applied my analytic system to the area of our politics and now clearly understand that Republicans exist because a large fraction of America is BELIEF based, not DATA BASED.
That's it.
Thanks for sharing this, Mike. It's easy to forget that data was not readily accessible the way it is now. I grew up in a family that read 5 daily papers, all points of view, because they understood that history repeats itself, and were so horrified by the Nazi uprising, and then Viet Nam. Grew upm8n university town, so this was common. It wasn't until college that I realized my peers were so uninformed.
But 2 points: 1) storytelling has always been the way to communicate, and 2) why are the Dems so awful at it?
I will also throw out another theory on another subject on the rise of Trump: since the Viet Nam war, we've had decade after decade of vets returning with PTSD, and children have been raised in unstable environments. I think to a large segment of the population (not a majority, but enough to have an impact ) have been raised in an erratic, abusive home. Trump's behavior is the norm for them.
I honestly don't think the Democrats are bad at messaging. This misconception sure is part of the enduring fabric of our Country. I believe the Democrat's message of Democracy at work, decency and fair play is just plain boring to most people. The Republican's messages of chaos, fear and hatred is much more interesting to the public. Hence it sells.
In other words decency=boring and chaos=excitement.
Fox News is just better at making up titillating news and presenting with fake blondes showing lots of legs.
It is sort of like giving the news from a stip joint really.
And every time I see the women on FOX I think this: Another giant step backward for womankind.
Also true!
Point 2: RE Dems messaging. We got lazy when the bulk of media supported the progressive agreement established under FDR and then continued under Eisenhower. In the meantime, Rs built up a propaganda system to contest the Progressive norm. And Dems acquiesced to that under the concept of “Freedom of Speech”. The starvation of the educational system and the development of the internet spread “Alternative facts” exponentially, and here we are. Within just a few states of being able to hold a constitutional convention to alter said constitution.
That being said, perhaps Dems and some Rs naively thought that Democracy would naturally prevail. Since all of this is merely my opinion, it can be taken with a grain of salt if desired.
Well said! Thanks.
Karen, I like your origins of being fooled hypotheses. They make sense to me.
Wow! Astute! No irony intended. Congratulations!
I'll repeat my question. What made you vote Republican in the first place? What was your belief system?
I understand:
I believed Ronald Reagan's accusations that Carter was irresponsible with money AND.......
I believed his tropes about faked black woman in Chicago.
I was from a poor farm. I had worked 12 hour days since I was 12 years old.
The thought of someone getting money for no work? Was anathema to me. BUT, I still did not yet know that nobody in America would HIRE a black person into almost any job. That was not known to me.
However, I did have other experiences that tempered this but ..... only later.
Thanks.
No problem.
Don't leave out the Nixon administration, ending the gold standard, creating the stagflation during the Carter administration. Carter's one-term presidency ended under the shadow of a national loss of confidence, but he also added 9.3 million jobs, one of the largest increases of any president.
Jeff,
Excellent, EXCELLENT point! I remember Nixon's move to what libertarians call "fiat" money.
Republicans never failed to leave a gigantic mess for Democrats. The only other goal while they were in power was to make sure the mess looked like it was a Dem mess. NEVER failed.
I remember this as well. And an overview of history only reveals more. Kudos to HCR for her giant education project! And kudos to you for having the wisdom to see through the rhetorical fog!
Well, I wonder what I am missing now??
We all find out what we missed sooner or later — whether we wanted to or not!
May I post elsewhere with attribution?
Sure, you don't have to attribute. No big deal. All public knowledge.
Mike, your story is important because you are a real person who went through this transformation, not an abstraction. And you very clearly and transparently express the process. That makes your story real to people.
My ignorance of American history appalls me — and I thought I’d had a good education. Thank you, HCR, for educating this 75 year old graduate of one of the Seven Sisters colleges and a law school dropout to boot. I am much obliged and very grateful to you.
I can't claim to clearly remember (at 71) everything I was taught in my youth. But I feel confident that the last part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century were glossed over. No exaggeration, I've learned more about those tumultuous periods in our country from the professor than I did in the classroom.
I actually have a very good education in history, and just got a good history lesson tonight. Mostly the connections she made. I knew the events.
Tonight's history reminded me of two things:
1. Harry Truman was right in 1948 when he said "The only 'good Republicans' are pushing up daisies." As HCR demonstrated, they've been scum for 150 years. Not just the past 40.
2. Adlai Stevenson was right back in 1952, when he said: “The strange alchemy of time has somehow converted the Democrats into the truly conservative party of this country — the party dedicated to conserving all that is best, and building solidly and safely on these foundations.”
Yea TC. My favorite HST quote “Socialism is the name they give almost anything that helps all the people.” Favorite Stevenson quote “I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my republican friends, that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.” Great men who knew republicans well. (However I did like Ike, but he should have been a Dem).
All Republicans scum? Too strong, though it's true for today's version of the party except for a few precious exceptions. Love the Stevenson quote.
You did read HCR's history lesson did you not? Truman was right back in 1948 that "the only 'good Republicans' are pushing up daisies." Look at every single thing HCR listed in that history lesson and tell me the people in the story are not scum. Scum who were willing to sell their mothers if it made them a dime. They were willing to bring on the Panic of 1893 to advance their political power, an act that is the exact same as what they have done every day since Obama took the oath of office. Just as one example.
Of course I read it. Your comment about scum seemed to apply to all Republicans during that long period, or that's how I interpreted it. that's what I object to.
Have to appreciate Adlai. To your point about HCR ... experience and learning do cause us to make the connections of events and antecedents 😌. Like that. Therein is the role of intelligence coming to fore.
I went to high school in Arkansas and university in Texas. My American history classes pretty much ended at the Civil War (states rights!) with a smattering of Reconstruction and even smaller smattering beyond that.
Sara, I hope you hung in there for most of the first year of law school for the history of contracts, torts & constitutional law. If not, a read of Marbury vs Madison is always well worth it. Our courts founded in the common law going back centuries say what the Law is.
Bryan, I did! I also had criminal law and ethics. I guess lots of attorneys in the previous administration missed these. 😉
For those of us, myself included, who don't know the case: "Summary: Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, was a U.S. Supreme Court case that established the precedent of judicial review. This judicial review power allows the Supreme Court to invalidate or declare unconstitutional actions or laws created by levels of government." https://sites.gsu.edu/us-constipedia/marbury-v-madison-1803/
Thank you Judith.
I didn't attend law school. But by far the best subject I studied as an undergraduate majoring in political science was political history of constitutional law. The two five-hour courses taught me so much and provided the context of much of what is happening today. Of course Marbury v. Madison was a focus. It's safe to assume that the present Supreme Court will honor that ruling as a precedent not to be ignored.
Michael, my first introduction to Marbury vs. Maddson was as a UCLA undergrad in my Constitutional Law political science course. My professor spent an hour lecture on it. The case law was referenced throughout the class. The casec is foundational near the very beginning of SCOTUS.
A main reason the classes have stayed with me all these decades later is, predictably, the professor — his ability to enliven the key cases and their significance, as well as his passion.
Absolutely, like Professor Richardson.
Howard Zinn's "A Peoples History of the United States" was not written until 1980.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_United_States
Reading that book back in the early '90's was the moment I knew why smatterings of the history I was taught in school seemed so biased compared to what my adopted grandmother would teach me when we would travel around the southwest visiting Indian reservations. I was stunned how they lived on such barren land and yet were such kind people to us. She grew up in New Mexico in a very small, humble canyon. Am thinking that her lovely, very wrinkled face looked quite Indian even though she had red hair and blue eyes. I now wonder if, like my biological father, she had Native ancestors but no one knew or talked about it, for shame. We spent many hours looking for pottery shards, arrowheads, geodes and squaw tears in the southwest and in the Hesperia desert where we stayed in her beloved vacation cabin, in nature, away from the world. She thought I had an "eagle eye" for scanning. Feels like I am still piecing "shards" together of my family history. It gets clearer and clearer as I age and "feel" the impact of the lying, controlling, white patriarchy on my family and country—on both sides. I thank her and my mother, in this moment, for instilling in me, the only female in my generation, to be alert, strong, respectful, question authority and fight for equality for all people. Witnessing the rise of fascism so blatantly in 2016. Violent Nazis in the open in Florida. I truly hope our laws will put a stop to all this tyranny and seditious uprising. Squaw tears...for us and the planet, otherwise.
(I am very aware that "squaw" is derogatory today, but that is part of history and the adjective of my little, obsidian, pile of tears).
Ditto all of this from another elder Seven Sister.
It appears that historical lessons about what works is to pay workers enough to buy the products they make (e.g., Ford). The impoverishment of workers savages the economy. The concentration of wealth impoverishes the workers. It seems so simple, no?
'Advanced' capitalism trashes Earth as well as the beings who populate it. Extinction, anyone? The shame of profit off the backs of the elderly, the workers, the habitat of co-existing beings, planetary health, etc., appears to be water off a duck's back to the greedy profiteers.
The tragedy of the greed gene will continue to evidence in the changed climate catastrophes.
Eloquently stated!
Great comment Kim! And SO true. Tragically so.
Well said.
I would like to see this theme get much more play. "The persistence of the myth that Democrats are bad for the economy is an interesting example of the endurance of political rhetoric over reality." I am not a historian but took notice when the Reagan Administration became known for dominating publicity with its skilled communication team and the promotion of a message of the day. That administration was criticized for running every day as a campaign. The most outrageous Republican pronouncements have the same effect, to dominate attention. Again, although not a historian, I noticed this with the Tea Party's antics. Trump's feverish Twitter posts and his outlandish lies took up all of the oxygen in the room. And the monolithic Republican media juggernaut combined with politicians who are disciplined in repeated messaging and outrage from the national stage down to the local school board continue to get much more notice. Meanwhile Democrats plan to win by governing better. How's that working? If Democrats refuse to focus on disciplined messaging that captures attention, we'll continue to lose, when doing so is increasingly disastrous. I'm sure that there is more history behind this.
Evidence supporting your argument is how Republicans consistently crow about infrastructure projects for their states and districts that they voted against. And get away with it.
They have been called by Biden. his Administration and the media on numerous occasions. What made you think they were getting away with it?
Because they haven't been punished for it electorally. Yes, the media calls them out for their vile hypocrisy but not prominently. And does the news resonate with large swathes of Republican voters?
And they are not being called out politically because the media loves the chaos of the Republican's lies and anger much more that the calmness of the Democratic Party (some hyperbole here for making my point.)
Unfortunately Americans quit investigating, researching and questioning for themselves. I am not sure when this began in earnest but I suspect it coincides with the rise of corporate media and the internet.
It was under Reagan that the cost of housing began to rise at a ridiculous rate. The cost of housing has made a middle class life impossible for tens of millions of people. Does anyone know of a book about the rise in housing costs since the eighties?
Nope. Wrong!! Housing prices started going "nuts" in the mid-70s, 1972 to be specific (I know because I bought a house for the amazing high price of $36,000 in 1974 and sold it for the ridiculous price of $60,000 in 1978 and by 1980 the guy who bought it for $69 sold it for $95K). It's why California passed Proposition 13 in 1978 (although it was more Republican bait-and-switch, since the only way to have it work for you is to not sell your property for a very long time. And the only part of the economy that does that is corporations and their property. Residential property is taxed much higher here than corporate as a result, because nobody keeps their house longer than 3-5 years (and much less right now while they're playing Monopoly with houses).
yes, Reagan began the massive deficit spending that brought on massive inflation.
LFFA,Greenpeace, Democratic Party, The Xerces Society and hundreds more progressive organizations would benefit by uniting in a common cause to push back against the Republican media juggernaut. Without Democratic victories in 2022 and 2024 what these organizations stand for will be doomed.
The media is not helping either. I’ve seen so many interviews of Trump folks’ opposition-very few interviews with Democrats touting their satisfaction with the Biden administration.
Gina, you're reinforcing my point. The MAGA folks are making so much noise around the same simplistic messaging that they are dragging the media along with them. Democrats need to drive the messaging so that the media will have to cover it in a way that we get heard.
Democratic messaging also fails because it's poorly crafted. Messages need to stick. Compare "tax and spend" and "Make America Great Again" with its MAGA acronym and American flags, and "shining city on a hill" to "Build Back Better." The latter includes the word "back." It's not even forward-moving, and repeats three "b's" that take a bumpy ride before it rolls out of your mouth. Democrats are the party of democracy. We stand for one person, one vote. We create opportunity. We are building the future. Is there anyone driving Democratic messaging at all levels of government?
Another high-impact Republican strategy -- a form of misinformation really -- is blaming Democrats for Republican bad behavior that is either planned or underway. "Stop the steal" is an effective example of this. Democrats need to name Republican misbehavior. They've even stolen our momentum on education by making so much noise about CRT and parental rights to influence what their children are learning instead of teaching the truth, because the truth sets you free. We have no unified arguments to their banning books and censoring teachers instead of supporting them?
And then there's the matter of charisma. We need to promote more candidates who are orators like Raphael Warnock.
This is the comment of the day! The Democrats' messaging, especially in this era of colliding tsunamis of instant communication, undermines achievements and keeps the party perpetually on the defensive.
Another successful Republican strategy is defining Democrats before Democrats define themselves. Republicans anticipate what Democrats will promote. They develop unified messaging to smear Democrats and promote it in a unified way across all of their platforms. 97+% of the BLM protests were peaceful. But Dems are branded for wanting to "defund the police" and for causing riots in the streets because of a few inevitable exceptions. Democrats are associated with Antifa. Republican "patriots" opposed Democratic "lawlessness" even as we try to weaken the influence of a former president who is in Putin's pocket. Democrats are believed to have cheated at the ballot box when that's a Republican excuse for doing exactly that. "Liberal" is now a tainted word. How did we let that happen?
When we elect a national trifecta and gain the bully pulpit, that pulpit is not just a president speaking at a podium. It's using the power of an elected government to get the message out.
Excellent points. I've read that the Republicans, a top-down organization if there ever was one, send out daily talking points. And they all recite them throughout the daily news cycle. And certainly Fox News receives them, too.
We blame the immovable Republican base. The base only exists because of the GOP messaging juggernaut. Fox News, OAN, AM talk radio, etc. have even replaced the pulpit in the Evangelical community.
Such riveting reading, Heather! While I have tried hard to become well-versed in US history during my thirty years as an immigrant, nothing has educated me more deeply nor more fully than your letters. Sometimes, I have to read them more than once to fill my heart and mind with your uncanny acuity.
This letter, filled with such profound sensitivity, is one for the books:
"And yet, of course, it has been Republican economic policies that opened up the possibility for Democrats to try new approaches to the economy, to make it serve all Americans, rather than a favored few. As FDR put it: 'It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.'"
"If you want to live like a Republican, vote for the Democrats." -- President Harry Truman
Heather, you always give us a spin on history. As is the case tonight, we often see that everything old is new again. Thanks for your knowledge and wisdom.
Well! This is altogether not what I have understood to be the path of political history of the Democrats and Republicans that I learned in school, albeit MANY years ago. I am not a historian nor do I claim to be particularly well read on this topic, but I would not get into a spitting contest over something like this with Heather Cox Robinson!
This is exactly why I do read material like this. It isn’t simply because it reinforces my own attitudes, but even more, it explains clearly and informs me with facts that are backed up with footnotes for the statements made in the article.
What Prof. Cox Richardson does with her letters is akin to magic! She will take a topic of the day expound on the matter at hand, then point by point, she will break everything down to its constituent parts so the reader can understand what is happening, why it is happening, and if it is possible, she will offer pathways for avoiding calamity.
I am so grateful for the Letter to an American! I am even more grateful that Heather Cox Richardson is willing to make the tremendous effort to write these letters for us with full annotations daily. Saying thank you is not adequate to express my full gratitude for this effort. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!
I believe I’ll send this onto my republican family members. Socialism is their new word of the day…
Why don’t we own it? With pride? If having complex moral emotions like empathy, sympathy, compassion for others is ‘socialism,’ if wanting those who have much share with those who have little is ‘socialism,’ if justice, fairness, access and equality are words in one’s active vocabulary is ‘socialism,’ then I’m a proud socialist. A democratic socialist. Move over, Bernie!
Gus I am proud to be a ‘socialist.’ I benefit from Medicare, Social Security, and FEMA-subsidized insurance on my property. My cousin, who was with the Marine 1st Division, that landed on Guadalcanal in 1942, was the first major ‘socialist’ in my family. He survived the deadly island hopping and, under the GI Bill, was the first in my immediate family to complete college.
I am proud to be associated with other ‘socialists’ who have been provided unemployment benefits, child care benefits, had their pensions covered when corporations finagled themselves into bankruptcy, and all those citizens and companies that received ‘hand outs’ to permit them to survive through a prolonged pandemic. I am a proud ‘socialist’ when Obamacare [officially the Affordable Health Care Act] has provided health care to tens of millions of Americans who deserve health coverage.
I am a reluctant ‘socialist’ when I see pork barrel agriculture payments that often go to large corporate farmers. More so, when Trump provided tens of billions of dollars to farmers to offset farm losses due to his misguided China tariff war. I am an extremely reluctant ‘socialist’ when Trump provides $1.7 trillion in tax benefits overwhelmingly for very wealthy citizens and corporations, while the middle class and others were paying more than their fair share in taxes.
The word socialism has been a Republican bugaboo since before I was born. Treasury Secretary Mellon (part of the ultra wealthy elite) was clearly anti-socialist during his tenure under Coolidge and Hoover. The Republicans were apoplectic at FDR’s New Deal and other initiatives intended to enhance the livelihood of citizens during the Great Depression and to curb some of free wheeling by the wealthy elite.
I am proud to be a SOCIALIST, as should any American who cares about his country and their fellow citizens. Incidentally, I believe that some of the most vociferous anti-socialists come from states that are heavily rewarded with ‘federal funds’ that come from states that provide a disproportionately large amount of tax money.
Democratic Socialist would be the term in Europe, Gus. Words have a meaning. Socialism as such has a meaning and it's not just about caring for the people and providing for the poor....it's a totally different economic system of "collective", i.e. government ownership of everything and whenever tried has ended up very undemocratic and has impoverished the people. For instance, Venezuela is hardly a good advertisement for "socialism" but proclaims itself to be pursuing that "ideal".
Stuart, Though your comment was not addressed to me, I felt compelled to write seeing how Republicans, in my view, are able to incite fear of any policy aimed at redressing inequities because of a tendency in the States to conflate socialism and democratic socialism. A critical consequence is that we’re losing elections we should be winning.
i trust that you are not telling me that thereby their winning. Is illegitimate...and only the democrats should win if everybody played by democrats rules...gerrymandering is of course practiced by both sides.
Stuart, I wrote, initially, merely to note my observation that Republicans are able to incite fear of any policy aimed at redressing inequities because of a tendency in the States, at least among some, to blur the distinction between Democratic Socialism, that merely calls for a more equitable distribution of a nation’s wealth, and Socialism, that advocates for government control and ownership of the means of production. My point about elections was meant to underscore how people not armed with knowledge are susceptible to manipulation aimed at serving interests that are not necessarily their own. Hence, my belief that we’re losing elections we should be winning.
I understood you perfectly, Barbara, but I'm afraid I used your response as an excuse...a platform... to add something that you quite evidently didn't say...that it is often construed that people vote against you because they are ignorant, uneducated or simply panicked. Some are quite evidently, but many are not .This often underestimates the degree of free choice in opponents that simply don't want what you are proposing. Many didn't vote for Biden, they just didn't want Trump. That doesn't mean they are in agreement with his program.
That's not what I understood from Barbara Jo's reply.
Thank you, Anne-Louise. Momentarily, I will reply to Stuart.
I should hope not
YES, Gus! Beautiful words. I'd like to see them written large and clear, on an oft-visited screen.
Thank you, Anne-Louise for your beautiful compliment. Be my guest — put it on any screen you like. Definitely too long for a bumper sticker....
It's intriguing to see that it was their new word back then too. Were they all reading Marx and Engels?
You're suggesting Republicans can read and use reading comprehension. A fact never in evidence.
No, no! Don’t ever doubt the Republicans’ ability! There definitely some loud mouths who have more volume than brains (see: January 6, 2021), but simply because I disagree with almost everything they say and do, there are absolutely well- educated Republicans out there. I’m sure you were joking when you made your comment, but underestimating one’s opponent can be lead to unforeseen consequences. Most people underestimated TFG and look where we are now!
After what we've seen over the past five years, it would seem that any well-educated Republicans are ill-intentioned. And absolutely not to be underestimated. Know your enemy.
"Ill" being of course a judgement based upon personal values....their intentions are contrary to yours and probably destructive of yours but from the point of view of their values, they are well intentioned.
Quite so. Based on personal values, and observation over this five-year period.
'Twas irony.
I know. I just couldn't resist. :-)
It wouldn't surprise you to learn that most people proclaiming ideologies supposedly based on their works haven't read them either....evidenced by the theories and practice of governance and attendant policies that they proclaim.
TC, I don’t think they want to. All those inconvenient facts and stuff....
Before there was a question of whether wealthy Northerners would support the Union, there was the question of whether they would sign the Declaration of Independence.
And in fact John Dickinson, Delegate to the Continental Congress of Pennsylvania - one of the most eloquent writers in defense of colonists' interests and articulators of their grievances, and one of the wealthiest men in the Colonies - did not. Although his motives were as much loyalty to England and a wish for reform through reconciliation. He resigned from Congress rather than sign, and then headed up a militia to join Washington's troops in battle. And of course, it was Dickinson's "Letters from a farmer in Pennsylvania, to the inhabitants of the British Colonies" which inspired the title of HCR's letters.
Before there was "Hamilton" there was the 1969 play "1776" which depicted all this. The play was was performed in 1970 in the White House for Pres. Nixon who demanded of his friend Jack Warner that the song depicting Dickinson's position be cut from the 1972 film version.
"In the musical “1776,” the song “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men” depicts Revolutionary War era conservatives as power-hungry wheedlers focused on maintaining wealth. So it’s not surprising that then-President Richard Nixon, who saw the show at a special White House performance in 1970, wasn’t a big fan of the number.
What is surprising is that according to Jack L. Warner, the film’s producer and a friend of the president, Nixon pressured him to cut the song from the 1972 film version of the show–which Warner did. Warner also wanted the original negative of the song shredded, but the film’s editor secretly kept it intact." - LA Times
. . .
"and Howard Da Silva, who played Ben Franklin. The last time Da Silva had received an invitation from Nixon, it was to testify before 1947’s House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), the anti-communist star chamber that Nixon helped to revivify during his time in Congress. Da Silva refused to talk and was subsequently blacklisted from Hollywood for many years." - LA Times
No wonder Nixon objected. (And if you watch the youtube film clip, please note the rather goose-steppy minuet.) And in the category of political rhetoric over reality, Dickinson's retort to Hancock just about sums up the GOP's successful, if baffling, strategy of ensnaring the working class populists to serve the 1% plutocrats.
[DICKINSON, spoken]
But why, sir? For personal glory? For a... place in history? Be careful, sir. History will brand Mr. Adams and his followers as traitors
[HANCOCK, spoken]
Traitors, Mr. Dickinson? To what? The British crown? Or the British half-crown? Fortunately, there are not enough men of property in America to dictate policy
[DICKINSON, spoken]
Well, perhaps not. But don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor. And that is why they will follow us!
[DICKINSON & CONGRESS]
To the right, ever to the right
Never to the left, forever to the right.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LxaAw2viEIQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_from_a_Farmer_in_Pennsylvania
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-sep-07-ca-42982-story.html
https://longreads.com/2017/07/06/the-1972-movie-of-the-1969-musical-1776/
Thanks for these links. 1776 is one of my favorites, and I never knew that backstory about Nixon. Wow.
Though I cannot begin to calculate the immeasurable benefits of receiving LFAA’s near daily historical accountings shaping contemporary perspectives, considering we have but a small window to effect the mood of the country if, next fall, we’re to have a shot at retaining both the House and the Senate, I wish to fast forward to the immediate present.
Though there likely are a number of factors that could help explain why the Administration’s accomplishments are not resonating with enough of the public (e.g., recent polls show that 60+% of Republicans are enthused about the November midterms compared with only 40% of Democrats), my comment today will address just one factor I deem mighty critical. I submit that Democrats ought to focus far more on rendering their story as opposed to talking about abstract legislation and non relatable numbers and data. One example is the $20 billion federal investment in semi-conductors in Ohio replete with stories from people about what these manufacturing and construction jobs have meant to them and to their families. Note I haven’t even touched on how said investment helps to remedy a dependence on South Korea and Taiwan, a dependence that has contributed to mounting supply chain hang-ups at our ports. My point is that Dems need to gin up their constituents’ enthusiasm with a host of stories related to the impact of the American Rescue Plan and the Bipartisan Infrastructure legislation for which Republicans are taking credit, despite the legislation not receiving a single House Republican vote. On a final note, people also should understand what they’re losing while the human infrastructure piece of the President’s BBB agenda remains stalled in the Senate.
Sadly, many people view that "human infrastructure" piece of that legislation as essentially a plan that gives money to "undeserving" (in their minds) people. I see this constantly from my "conservative" friends (who are no more conservative than the folks receiving benefits are undeserving, but I digress...) and bleat the "socialism" theory until it bleeds.
Ally, Excluding the far right, I would submit that Americans overall would mobilize around a much tougher, much stronger Biden, who both amplified his accomplishments and also pressed to advance a good amount of the human infrastructure piece currently stalled in the Senate. I state this because, nationwide, I hear a broad spectrum of people asking for: universal child care and Pre-K, reinstatement of the child tax credit, expanded healthcare, investments in housing, in home and community-based care, and in climate.
Which modern Presidents left a surplus in the treasury? Which ones spent it to deficits, lavishing debt to buy more arms for senseless wars? It’s not just $ they are spending ( robbing?), but the blood and promise of the young.
FDR- “But above all try something.”
Republicans don’t even have a platform that their party will run on.
You make our collective history a novel, an exploration, a window (of discovery) and a great reading experience. You’re not just a great teacher, you’re an incredibly talented writer. The way you weave history into current events is seamless and beautiful.