Tosha, I don't understand them either. But I have to face the facts - they've been there since legal enslavement, they never went away, and they represent a huge number of Americans. Not as many as they pretend to, but still, horrifyingly huge. So I'm realizing that instead of trying to understand them it might be more productive to unpack and understand how for a few decades this country was able to shame the worst of them into containing their outright bigotry, to make it unacceptable in public office. Because Fox and the Christofascists and tfg dissolved those restraints so quickly I don't even recognize the country anymore.
How did we manage to box them, and how can we put them back in that box?
I’m not too sure re boxing the worst of the already terrible can happen; at least not for a few more voting cycles of Dems and indies sending the MAGAT’s back to the Hell they all came from and subsequently put us through.
We didn’t get here overnight so we won’t climb out of it fast either. I do believe we’ve all been given sufficient time to realize that the system of government that most of us will require constant work, involvement and giving enough of a damn about so that if given another chance to make things right, we do just that. We must resolve to learn about all of our history and strive to do better for everyone. We will then deserve the Perfect Union that was once envisioned so long ago.
SPW, I agree with every word you just wrote, but I have to wonder if enough good people have enough energy left to fight that fight. That's got to be a huge part of the evil master plan, of course - make just getting through the day so hard for ordinary people that they don't have time to fight the Christofascist takeover.
The energy to go after this "backwards looking plan" is a real problem. I remember the days before retirement with work and raising a family I didn't have much time to keep on top the news or anything else but day to day living. We old farts have got to keep working to get the message through. It is our job Now.
As Jessica Craven says, “Chop wood, Carry water.” This is our work til our last breath. To paraphrase the Torah, “ we are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are we free to abandon it.”
Why does anyone think we reached the “Perfect Union” and our work was done? Because we elected a Black president?There is still grinding poverty in this country, still people who don’t have enough to eat, still predatory capitalism, still sick people who need medical care they cannot afford, still people living paycheck-to-paycheck! There has always been evil in the world; I dare say there always will be.
Those of us who are retired and can contribute, we have no time to be depressed, stay in bed with the covers over our heads. We have important work to do. We all do what we can.
We are the most backward of the major industrialized western nations, as you, Paula Mandell, have so eloquently stated.
We started to come out of it under FDR, and, really, we were doing pretty well. And then RFK was assassinated. That was followed by Nixon stealing the 1968 election. And then Reagan stole the 1980 election, and among other things killed the Fairness Doctrine, and undercut unions. And then SCOTUS stole the 2000 election for Bush2, who got us into wars for the sake of his weak sense of manhood... And a multiplicity of bad actors stole the 2016 election...
Biden has done amazing things. Lets hope we can keep the momentum going!
Well, one would hope. However, there are people who think what is happening was foretold in Revelation in the Bible. FOX News pales in comparison to the word of God. Of course, many of these same folks have been sitting in their lawn chairs waiting to be air lifted to Heaven, so there's that to consider.
I just re-read Dr. Heather’s second paragraph which talks to “loading the bill with a wish list from the far right.” As horrible as this is, it is nothing new. The term EARMARKS applies here. An earmark is a congressional directive that funds should be spent on a specific project. Basically, it’s a way for legislators to get funding for pet projects. Going back in my time machine, I recall the SAFETEA-LU legislation for funding the interstate highways, etc. The acronym stands for Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Transportation Equity Act – A Legacy for Users. It was introduced by Don Young (R-AK) in February 2005 and passed in March. Scandals surround this legislation. Don Young was crazy about his wife LU. So initially, the LU at the tail end was to honor his wife. One of the infamous earmarks was THE BRIDGE TO NOWHERE in Alaska to connect sparsely populated regions at tremendous cost – good example of Pork Barrel Politics. Then there is the case of Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House of Representatives (2006). He championed for the construction of a $207 Million earmark for the Prairie Parkway in his Illinois District which would benefit a land investment that Hastert and his wife made. Their net worth went from $300,000 to $6.2 Million. His resignation was called for but he had support from President Bush.
Yes, Jeri they are because the former may to out to be in some cases a form of corruption while this is an attempt to undermine democracy that applies to everyone and force their views on abortion on everyone as well. What about the Rs in swing districts. This will surely count against them.
Earmarks (aka pork) is generally a project or organization in a particular legislative district, designed to win votes for that legislator. This is something entirely different, designed to force a policy on the entire Nation.
Despite the anecdotal scandals like the Bridge to Nowhere, earmarks turned out to be a very effective way of keeping major infrastructure modernized throughout the country, so in recent years, they have been reintroduced.
Thank you for sharing this explanation about Earmarks. In the case of this legislation it seems that the repubs aren’t building bridges, but tearing down social structure that is changing. Fear and a host of isms are parts of the repub reasoning.
Agreed. Too tired, too ill-informed, too discouraged by SCOTUS decisions, lacking paid vacations, overwhelmed by worry about their and their children’s futures, etc., etc. Meanwhile, remembering WWII and the efforts we as children made as the fear our parents had seeped down to us, a fear that DeSantis is trying to stir about learning our history so that we will look to him if we don’t look to Trump to “save” US. This morning I woke to an interview about a book on climate change (6:15 MSNBC, weekly rerun of segments of “Morning Joe”). If anyone knows this book, which reports why President Carter had solar panels put on the White House, please post it and alert me. It’s the kind of history all of us need to spur us to action, no matter how turned off we may be.
Wishing for everyone who is reading this that you are safe in the current disasters.
It is hot here in the Willamette Valley today, but not like other places because the humidity is absent. Of course, that means wildfires can easily get going and spread with wind. We are also under a wildfire alert. This week my husband and I took a drive up the Santiam Canyon east of Salem which had a terrible wildfire in 2020, making our sky red and filled with ash here in Salem. We hadn't been up there since then. It is our old hiking area where we spent many a time in the Mt. Jefferson wilderness. We went as far as Detroit and back. When we got there, the place still smelled strongly of wood smoke and the mountains all around were covered with dead trees. Landmarks had disappeared and the restaurant where we did many pre or post hike meals is only the sign. We saw lots of new construction as people try to get their lives back together. The people affected by the fires recently won a large suit against the electric company which failed to shut off the power. The utility offered some pretty weak tea excuses. It will be a long time before this area recovers although we did see lots of new construction. This will be the case in any area now which has suffered destruction. The heat, however, is another story. Saw an article in The Atlantic about when the Southwest will become unlivable. I would say we are well on our way. So what do we have from the party of death.....lots of stirring of the culture wars pot and attempts to undermine, at least here in Oregon, every attempt to further doing something about climate change.
Thank you for this account. Perhaps it will push more of HCR’s readers to get involved. Anyone who can still write can write postcards to get out the vote. If you don’t have a local Indivisible chapter, you can find one online that will lead you to postcards and voter lists (Democrats, of course, although the organization was begun by congressional staffers in November 2016).
We also live in the Willamette Valley near Portland, and I just drove back from Bend down Highway 22 back to Salem. We have vivid memories of the Labor Day 2020 fires and the aftermath. Besides the hills covered with dead trees, what also struck me was the evidence that the MAGA cult is still alive and well in the Santiam Canyon. Trump 2024 flags and the like. What is it going to take to pierce the bubble of the alternative reality that these people live in?
I want to add in this context: have you any idea how many books are being banned? The MoveOn book mobile came to my neighborhood this week so I went to see it. First book I saw was George Takei’s on being part of the Japanese internment in 1942; I got Malala’s “Magic Pencil” for a small friend; saw “To Kill a Mockingbird” and had to leave before learning more. Can we survive this idiocy?
Jeff, thank you very much. When I learned from the interview about Carter’s asking the Academy of Science to give him “the word,” I immediately thought of the 15 minutes Congress “gave” James Hansen in 1988, the fight Jon Tester (the only “real” farmer that I know of in Congress is having in Montana, Al Gore’s 1980 (?) book which I read in 1999 (he was another farmer in summer when he wasn’t in DC with his farmer father, Senator Al Gore, Sr.) and knew I have to read and get the book to as many as possible before it gets banned.
SLWeston, thank you for ID’ing this book. And Virginia, thanks for elevating the “Morning Joe” interview & asking about the title of this book. Adding it to my list of What To Read.
Just ordered it....thank you for the suggestion. We have invested in a solar farm, have a tesla (which many don't agree with, but gotta start somewhere), have a garden, buy organic as much as possible, vegetarian as much as possible, recycle, yada yada. All this is an investment, of course, and we are lucky enough to be able to invest in the future. If we don't come together as a people of the planet, we will be but a memory for the life in the forest that goes on after us.
Ironically, we behave as though it is 70/30 Fascism over decent Americans, when the reality is the reverse.
There is no denying the sledgehammer of money in the tens of billions and how it overwhelms the senses to the point of now making Orwell dystopia real.
The genuine tragedy is that despite our genuine majority, and despite voter suppression, we can still win handily and send these cockroaches back under the rocks from which they crawled.
All we have to do is get off our collective asses and VOTE! and VOTE repeatedly.
OOPS! when I stated repeatedly ? I meant , turn our for each and every election. NOT cast more than one vote in a given one🤣. I’ll leave that BS fantasy to Fascist Republicans
Wasn’t it Stalin who said. It matters not who votes, it matters who counts the votes. Repubs know this, and, boy, have they been busy. Get on it Jack Smith
Getting out to vote is almost impossible for many thousands/millions of Americans in red states or half and half states. Why can't the Fed's step in or it is the supremes who are in control of this country? Obviously the answer is yes. Maybe that is where we should all start
I agree. Add to that, too depressed and deflated. As horrific as today's letter is, I am thankful that we have Heather to keep us apprised of "the good, the bad, and the ugly."Non-violent acts of resistance are needed now more than ever. We know the enemy is bad and ugly and must deal with them daily accordingly.
This is my prayer: When it comes to giving up on democracy, we all have fight left no matter what our age. This is NOT happening! Even if it takes a long game. True democracy is too precious an ideal for thinking people just to roll over!
To really suck the life and hope outta this July morning: The climate crisis is quickly zapping the energy and fight and future out of all sides of this battle.
Just as we have passed the “tipping point” on climate change and damage to the planet can only be mitigated to some degree, I fear we have reached the “tipping point” of our republic. Awash in dark money, corrupted by gerrymandering, fueled by misinformation, disinformation, prejudice, and hate, our elections no longer hinge on ideas but on grievances. A clown car of vote-splintering Republican candidates, the arcane Electoral College, and a vast cadre of MAGA ideologues put Trump in a good position to win the nomination. Even if Democrats, Independents, and more traditional Republicans band to defeat him in the general election, Trump will never concede defeat, and January 6 will look like a quaint dress rehearsal. As Franklin supposedly said, we have a Republic, if we can keep it. Keeping it depends on honest, civil, full-throated debate on matters of interest to all Americans, not fact-free rants by self-centered, self-serving ideologues.
I’m seeing cracks in the wall of dumpty support. It helps.
Fox is getting b-slapped not only by corporations but the J6 marauders themselves who claim they wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for Fox. Whatever happened to the party of personal responsibility? Dude, that starts in your head.
Dumpty is terrified as the Smith investigation grows around him. His attorneys are finding no sympathy for his increasingly desperate legal briefs and I’m sure he’s starting to wonder if they’ll really incarcerate an elderly man.. well know he’s truly despairing when he pulls that one out.
One thing this rabid mob hates is a loser who can’t protect them. They’ll eat him alive.
Those thoughts give me hope the fever will break. Or at least the MAGAts will go back underground.
I hope you are right, but Trump’s popularity among his hardcore supporters grows with each indictment and conviction. Gutless Republican “leaders” either repeat his baseless persecution lies or mumble vague criticisms, off the record, of course. His well-armed, grievance-driven followers are, at best, unpredictable. Some are unstable. Some are white supremacists itching for conflict. Some are just happy about the chaos he creates because it helps their bottom line. We’re devolving into a nation with many of the hallmarks of the “shit-hole countries” Trump deplored: violence as a political tool; a popular media outlet that loyally mouths the leader’s lies; labeling other media as the enemy of the people; denial of election results; distrust of law enforcement agencies and the courts; divisions of class, race, and gender; widespread homelessness and crushing poverty amid outrageous wealth for a few. I’m not saying we’re finished, but there are signs of serious trouble ahead. And, oh yeah, the planet is burning.
Yes his witless sycophants become more crazed with every attack on Der Fuhrer. But remember they are only a minority percent of a minority oarty, and they are elderly themselves. Maybe they will forget to vote.
The Extreme Court is a disgrace, but I think the House may flip in the next election, and maybe…the rethugs will forget to vote.
But yes the planet is burning. The ocean temperatures are truly alarming; we got away with the CO2 greenhouse for decades because the oceans sucked up so much of it. When you consider how much energy it takes to increase the temp of water, and the planet is 70% water…I don’t think this can be turned back.
I feel immense grief for every child I see.
So I’d rather think about Eric Holders contention that sure, the federal penal system can handle a dumpty in prison.
John Adams prediction is coming true. Our democracy can only fail through "self-suicide." The blood drops from our self-inflicted wrist slashing are increasing by the day.
SPW, beautiful ❤️. I'm ready to work "like the dickens" to stop the magat onslaught. Register Gen Z and all other voters and get them to the polls. I don't see any other way.
I was outraged when RR tore Jimmy Carter's solar panels off the White House roof... And when RR, the former president of SAG, fired all the striking air traffic controllers. Hypocrisy seems to be in R DNA.
That certainly didn’t help but our problems began way before that. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. While that is a law of physics, the same tends to hold true in politics as well. As you probably know, there was a huge and to many, quite fearful, move to the Left in the middle of the Viet Nam war. There were violent protests, bombings and the killings of four Kent State students by a National Guard unit. In the wake of all that upheaval was Nixon’s resignation over Watergate and Ford’s pardon of him. The time was right for the Moral Majority to step in to soothe the “troubled beast” that was this country. They got behind Jimmy Carter but found that his honest faith would not align with theirs therefore the nasty bit of business between the Ayatollah of Iran and Reagan over the US hostages taken in Iranian revolution. James Earl Carter III was way too good for the direction this country was set to head. The Right had 12 years to put their plans into place and the technology was ready and waiting for them to weaponize early. Rush Limbaugh had softened up those who found him on the airwaves then along came Ailes. The rest is just generational(30 yrs)history and look at what all has happened in these last 30 years. Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it.
Well said, and the analogy between physics and politics is one of my favorites. I'm a handful of years younger than you (conceived in Truman, born in during Eisenhower's first summer) but I do remember almost all of what you're saying, although you sound to me like your knowledge on this is deeper than mine. If you're in or near the Boston area maybe we should have coffee, and if you're so inclined, you can find me at supernova1@aol.com. And if you want to subscribe to one more, try Robert Hubbell, who I find to be the most consistently and widely illuminating. (Joyce Vance is also superb, though her focus is narrower, and Hubbell often refers readers to her.)
I’m a leading edge Boomer; parents married on VJ Day and I came along exactly 9 months later. I vaguely remember comments about Truman or his daughter but really got into the “I Like Ike” slogan and thought the conventions made for good entertainment on the radio. All my family were typical ‘50s Republicans. I do remember how conflicted they were with the Kennedy/Nixon election. They hated Nixon(crook)AND Kennedy(Catholic). That was the one election I followed and was thrilled when Kennedy won. Thing is, down here in NC we believed that one never discussed politics or religion outside of immediate family. I couldn’t vote until I was 21, I voted split ticket usually and only declared a party when the board of elections said they needed a registrar in the main district of our town. Eye-opener, that! Those were the good old days of hand counted ballots too. After about 3 years of putting up with all sorts of BS, I got fired-for not being partisan enough. I guess since I was the republican registrar, I was supposed to have my finger on the Republican scale.
I moved back to my hometown after my separation, got a job, remarried(for 39 yrs)and since my husbands death last year I’ve just been trying to readjust to single and MUCH OLDER living.
TMI most likely but since you’re in Boston and I’m in NC, we’ll have to forego our coffee and let this be our conversation.
Well put, SPW. We must all work for the ideals of the Constitution. That means, besides being informed on the issues, working to get out the vote, and voting ourselves in every election especially the local ones where these wing nuts can spread their dreck into schools, etc.
Alexandra: exactly! With 70 to 80 percent of American women insisting that they urgently want our laws to protect--not harm--pregnant women and their own individual choices as their own bodies with the advice of her doctor, yet yesterday virtually the entire Republican caucus in Congress--205 of them--gleefully voted NO!
If you are serving in our Armed Forces, we won’t even let you take medical leave to go to another state for an abortion! Disgraceful!Shame on each and every one of them forever!
...which often is why abortions are needed! That is something that should be highlighted. Somehow, I doubt it was even mentioned in any discussions in Congress.
Very important column. It appears clear that the ultimate agenda of the former Republican Party, now the NAF ( New Authoritarian Fascist) party is to drive all decent sane patriotic American out of the military and saturate our armed forces with white supremacist Christian Nationalists. Very terrifying and ominous times.
Somebody please help me understand, are there no republican women in the military who get raped and need to take time off to have an abortion? Aren't there any republican gays in the military? Isn't it about time that a revolt mushroomed within the armed forces? This "Christian" crusade is the most un-Christian concept imaginable--its extreme members have molded themselves into the repugnant Pharisees of the Bible. But I believe in karma. Let's see what happens when one of Ron DeSantis' kids announces that they are transgender....
There are 2 local FB forums here in a more conservative part of our notedly liberal state that feast on Fox. For some, Fox is now passé as they have moved farther to the right. The hate on these forums is so obvious it has been reduced to an echo chamber. ANY and ALL reasonable comments by even centrist folks will immediately trigger disgusting memes - Biden in diapers and clown shoes, grooming children - an on-going borderline harassment of a forum member who shared that for environmental reasons, she prefers to have her coffee in a recycled cup at the Dunkin’s drive through. The over-all ‘take away’ is that it is becoming very obvious that each of these small minds has fallen for the whole package - abortion. 2A rights. Free Speech. Climate change, LGBTQ issues. Public school curriculum. Definitions of “patriotism”….. And now, creeping in around the edges - criticism of Ukraine’s fight for their own democracy - (thereby celebrating Putin’s politics). They buy it all — no nuance, no restrictions - same phrasing used by each and every one of them. A lesson in the power of”free speech”!
The "power of propaganda" was cleverly put in place by Roger Ailes. I read The Loudest Voice in the Room by Gabriel Sherman when it first came out in 2014. It's all about how Fox News got to be the way it is. I was trying desperately to understand why all the people I kept encountering in Florida (I had just moved here) were so taken in by what they were seeing and hearing on Fox News. Repetition of images and words results in brainwashing big time! Facts don't matter. I encouraged Fox News watchers to read it, but none wanted to believe it once they opened the book. Not sure any of them got through it. It is a long book, but it's well written and referenced. It had the scoop on Bill O'Reilly way before he was ousted by Fox.
Fay, I'm asking the question without knowing the answers, but I think one important answer is that there was a growing secularization—abandoning religion for spirituality and a morality based on doing what is right rather than what a patriarchal church tells you to do. It's no accident the Rs are weaponizing religion to crush that progress.
I agree, that is a good part of the problem. Those of us with some intelligence, do not want someone assuming authority and telling us how to think and act. While others still cling to the need for "daddy" telling them what to do while assuring them everything will be alright, just leave it to father.
Alexandra, excellent comment. Expresses my thoughts perfectly. Slavery is only possible if those who are enslaved are believed to be inferior sub humans. And I believe that is the basis of all the racists that exists today.
Great job isolating the central question! How did we place guardrails around the hate filled, misogynistic, bigotry? Can we do so again?
One of the strongest set of guardrails was the FCC fairness doctrine. Growing up in the 80s & 90s, I recall American’s disagreeing on all things political, as we do today, but we formed a consensus around basic facts. Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, our network TV anchors were trusted by virtually all Americans. That trust gave us a shared set of facts as a spring board from which the public could make their opinions & debate topics & from which policy makers could form their decisions.
Slowly since 1987 when the FCC abolished the fairness doctrine, our guardrails have disappeared & cable news (mostly Fox) has polarized us, misinformed & radicalized many.
Tfg’s embrace of hate & bigotry ripped down the remaining guardrails, making some conflate cruelty & viciousness with masculinity. Men searching for validation of there manhood, and women, falling for the ruse, also came to believe that loud equates to proud & bullying equals bravery.
Social media, the religious right & exploiting a fear some white peoples held (many unbeknownst to themselves) or becoming a minority have also been significant agitators, influencing the climate & chaos we find ourselves in.
As for how to get those guardrails back, the only solutions I can come up with are long term, beginning with education reform. Teaching students at every level how to discern fact from fiction, making newspaper reading a part of their reading instruction, constant practice in identifying misinformation & disinformation, repeated lessons on journalistic integrity & bias, teaching student to find and use reputable sources of information.
Also, a continued push for SEL (Social Emotional Learning), helping students to practice empathy, strength their social skills & lean to self regulate.
Alexandra, I’m reasonably sure that it’s true that racism and intolerance have always been simmering among conservatives, but the level of vitriol they express today has been deliberately cultivated. In other words, it’s not that resentment wasn’t always there, it’s that it has been stoked actively to a higher intensity than it’s been in decades. I think that’s an important point to keep in mind. The problem is better understood as one of psychological warfare. The crazier the right gets, the more ludicrous the rationalizations with which they justify themselves become. We are never going to put them in a box, but perhaps we can put this unhinged psychology in a box. The Biden administration has opted to demonstrate the difference between crazy and not crazy, and call out the cowards who do know the difference but pretend otherwise. I think the strategy is something like holding the fire line until the fire burns itself out.
Jim, thanks for that - you're so right! It has been stoked. And maybe the far right being so crazy helps ordinary bigot conservatives get what they want because we're all so freaking grateful when the agenda gets pulled back from the brink even a little. I do appreciate every day that Biden is holding the line. I hope to god you're right about the fire burning itself out. I'll try to hold that thought.
Yeah. There are no guarantees. But Biden has been on a winning streak lately and the crazies are desperate to make themselves look relevant. More crazy is all they have. Holding up the defense bill over an abortion issue is making Tuberville a lot of enemies in both parties. On the GOP side it’s not just because he’s got a really bad idea, but because he’s putting a face on stupidity and it makes the whole party look stupid. So there, we have some agreement with people on the right. It’s a start.
I have posted this before, but i return to it because, like many of Lincoln's thoughts, it gets to the root of our most persistent behaviors:
"That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles -- right and wrong -- throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings."
How I look at it, it does not just apply to kings, but any top-down, autocratic stratification of society as opposed to a very different base up society in which those with authority are lent it by the will of the public and a social contract agreement pertaining to universal, unalienable, human rights. The thing is that they both haev staying power, they both "get things done", they both attract a base of adherents who will fight to maintain the method. I think that history illustrates this. The problem with power in the hands of a few is the lack of limits to what they may be inclined to do with it, and the desire to live like kings is seductive, I'm not immune to it. Politicians aren't either. when one has the power to make rules, it is tempting to advance self-serving components. And don't we see a whole lot of that, even with within our republican (SMALL "r") governmental infrastructure?
Also, as human beings, we have the capacity for both compassionate and sociopathic behavior. History indicates that both can spread in human societies. Compassion and democracy is the harder row to hoe, requiring a tolerance for more ambiguity, a lot of effort, and far less certainty and defined "order". Despite horrifying historical object lessons, many seem to find the more authoritarian options more comforting, but a lot of that comfort depends on misleading one's self.
I worry it’s too late. We are in the dying stages of capitalism that has allowed a few billionaires to influence everything up to and including the Supreme Court. Meanwhile Mother Earth doesn’t have the decades it may take to right the wrongs of the last 40 years. I’m not sure we put the toothpaste back in the tube at this point but we can certainly work with our children to plan navigation of this new reality.
the problem goes back to Reagan's rescinding of the Fairness Doctrine, where the media had to give equal time to both sides (or something close to that). That enabled the MAGAts to be unaware of what the other side had to say. MAGAts in other parts of the country may not even be aware that temperatures in places like Phoenix and Florida have spiked dangerously, because Fox probably doesn't report on this, and it may be hard for MAGATs feeling the heat to avoid finding out the cause from their neighbors. And those elsewhere may hear what's going on from friends in such places, and the information may begin to seep into their ranks.
The republicans of today are the dems of the pre-civil war era. I am sorry to say that it was the democrats who defended slavery, started the civil war, and then the klu klux klan. It was Abraham Lincoln who built the republican party to abolish slavery and it was John Wilkes Booth, a democrat who assassinated him. In the 1857 Supreme Court case, Dred Scott vs Stanford, that ruled slaves weren't citizens but property, the seven justices that ruled for were democrats and the two against were republicans. This has always perplexed me. I need to learn more about how these two parties turned on their heads to where today most Blacks vote with the party that once oppressed them, and the republicans of today have become the scum that are hell bent on oppressing them and keep them from voting....
sharon tobin -- Thank you very much for this fabulous article! To see the history of The Great Switch so concisely written is highly illuminating, as well as (for me) to see/learn that it was FDR who was pivotal, and how quickly it happened. It's interesting to think about our tendencies (as humans) to pigeon-hole and hold onto our thinking and beliefs -- how restrictive that action is. Carl Jung (Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst) introduced the West to the concept of "enantiodromia" -- "the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time." This certainly applies to our politics. (Wikipedia has an informative entry on the word, if you're interested.)
I think we need to form focused coalitions with, what I continue to believe are sane people who don’t think ignorance and bigotry are cool. One interesting coalition is beginning to form between the humanists and mainstream religious groups who are open to change. The Republican noise machine has been great at grabbing headlines, but their empty-headed braying of bad old news is wearing thin in a lot of quarters.
BRILLIANTLY stated, Alexandra. They’ve been so clever about hiding their true nature that I was absolutely CLUELESS that this, this, this terrifying contagion of hate and revenge was roiling under the surface. So well described …. Ugh.
Alexandra, I believe they were boxed after World War Two, by Dwight Eisenhower and a broad consensus. But what created that consensus? Was it backlash to the extremism of the war? Could backlash to Trump, January 6, and an extreme SCOTUS create a new consensus?
That's true, Nancy, and FDR (and Eleanor, and Frances Perkins, and the team) also had a lot to do with it, presenting a positive and humanitarian alternative in a really dire time.
These people are the same people H.L. Menken described 99 years ago during another period of social insanity, "The Scopes Monkey Trial": "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average American."
Or to quote the courageous German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer,who was executed in Germany during WWII, “Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.”
I've been thinking a lot about Bonhoeffer recently. He could have stayed at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he studied when the war broke out, but he went back to Germany because he thought he could influence the Lutheran Church, which never put up significant resistance to Hitler.
Thank you for quoting Bonhoeffer. I only know the “...they came for me...” quote. Having been railing against stupidity since waking today, particularly delighted to add this.
This quote gave me goosebumps. Thank you Jerry Carbone. I wish you could somehow get this quote into the hands of my heroes in Congress, Jamie Raskin and/or Adam Schiff. Or Biden himself. It is beyond apropos in dealing with the far right all over this country but especially in Congress. Maybe Heather could pull some strings. . . .
This is chilling enough but seeing it in action, as we so often experience now, brings the force of it home. I'm not at all familiar with Bonhoeffer but this quote makes absolute sense to me in the context of reactions I experience when trying to reason with anyone who supports MAGAt ideology.
Good comment. Thanks for the Bonhoeffer quote. I c & pasted it to use somewhere later. I supposedly studied him in my college philosophy class a zillion years ago but I was far more interested in playing cards than going to class. Guess I should have stayed in class.
Speaking of stupid, perhaps the model for today's doctors who slice off the breasts and penises of teenagers should be the Nazi doctors who were hanged at Nuremberg.
I don't know how Republicans came with the rule of jungle to the Congress and get away with it easily.
Their partisanship is born out of superiority.
But, history can give us a hint of their modern behaviour.
Currently, Republicans continue to move to the far right more than Democrats to the left wing. As a per the Pew Research Center, when the 92nd (1971-1972) and the current Congress (117th) are compared, both parties are shifting further away from their ideological identity, but Republicans are worst hit by their political seismic movements. Statistically, House Democrats have shifted from 0.31 to 0.38 to imply that their shift is modest on average. However, House Republicans have moved from 0.25 to 0.51 and this represents the biggest increase towards a more conservative direction.
"As Democrats have grown more liberal over time and Republicans much more conservative, the “middle” – where moderate-to-liberal Republicans could sometimes find common ground with moderate-to-conservative Democrats on contentious issues – has vanished."
As we move forward, ideological overlap zone continues to decrease or has already been lost as occasioned by less liberal Democrats and less conservative Republicans getting out of touch with their caucases and voters in their respective party regions. As a result, most of them have perhaps retired, lost reelection, or shift to other parties. Thus, the middle ground of bipartisanship is so minimal to the extent that partisan polarisation is extreme. As obvious, Republicans will shoot down overwhelmingly abortion bills meant for military.
50 years ago, there were only 144 less conservative Republicans, but that number has shrink to the lowest level of not more than 20 based on how to they vote on must-have bills.
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It’s 18th century French mob radicalism, not “conservatism.” Please make the distinction. Conservatives conserve; Radicals destroy as the Republicans are doing.
"Since 2002, when Republican Rep. Constance Morella of Maryland was defeated for reelection and GOP Rep. Benjamin Gilman of New York retired, there’s been no overlap at all between the least liberal Democrats and the least conservative Republicans in the House. In the Senate, the end of overlap came in 2004, when Democrat Zell Miller of Georgia retired."
"The gaps between the least conservative Republicans and least liberal Democrats in both the House and Senate have widened – making it ever less likely that there’s any common ground to find. This is partly due to geographical and demographic shifts."
MAGA Republicans are simply the grandchildren of the KKK. Timothy Egan's book, "A Fever in the Heartland" about the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the Midwest in the early 1920's is a must read to understand today's MAGAs. What motivates MAGA people? Race, religion, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia and anti-LGBTQ sentiments. D.C. Hutchinson, the leader of the Indiana KKK said: " "I did not sell the Klan in Indiana on hatreds. I sold it on Americanism." In other words, white Protestant supremacy.
White supremacy is a mental disorder that motivates too many people. We’ve all been conditioned for more than 200 years to divide people according to skin color. Obama’s election was the “wake up” call for racists-that’s why they viciously came out of their box.
If we don’t face the truth about the way racism is destroying our democracy then we’ll all go over the cliff with these folks who want to gain and hold power to keep people down including women and LGBTQ folks. We’re living in perilous times.
Racists are frightened ignorant people. When they band together they are formidable without insight - the worst combination. If they weren't so dangerous, they would just be pathetic - people unable to see how they allow their own ignorance and fear to control themselves. I know there are many people who are trying to figure out how to shift this way of thinking (reactionary) in racists, since our very survival may depend on that. It may not be possible, so perhaps the only way forward for those of us who see the danger is to get out and work like heck to unseat their leadership. And then we might try to address the actual source of their fears.
Money is a factor, but it's more than that. Why did Evangelicals vote for Trump, a sinner if ever there was one? Google "The Anger Games, Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election, and Why?" In short, the Big Three are racism, misogyny and xenophobia.
This was worse than the Norfolk Southern train crash in East Palestine, Ohio.
So what is it to be KrazyTown or Disneyland? My representative Scott Perry, (R, 10th District of PA), is for the former. He's one of the KrazyTown leaders of the Freedom Caucus and a general in the Army National Guard. For him to use the word "righteous" is insanity. Unfortunately, in this district there are far too many MAGA people who vote him. This is where KrazyTown folks predominate.
Tosha, I don’t believe the voters for one minute understood or were prepared for what the generally GOP candidates might do or vote for under the influence of the MAGA leadership and Freedom Caucus. It is essential that they all be exposed as risking American lives and the mighty military that defend us. I remain hopeful these nuisance radical right wing “add ons” to an essential funding package will be defeated in the Senate and vetoed by President Biden. That Marjorie Taylor Greene cannot get off her right wing nutcase pulpit is literally making me crazy! She takes Twitter by storm, demeans Biden, she is McCarthy’s go to BFF, and now she is invited to participate in negotiations as a non-committee member? This is so APPALLING at every level. I am beginning to believe she is our worst enemy in the House. But how do we get her out of the sphere of influence?
One of the worst things that we can do is to underestimate their resolve. They are literally "True Believers." Stopping fanaticism isn't easy. Rational discourse doesn't work. Power at the polls itself may not even be enough.
It is because somewhere in their makeup they too are cowardly bigots. All the more need for the 2024 elections to produce strong Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress.
These republicans are off the rails. I will never understand the people that vote to put these cowardly bigots in office.
Tosha, I don't understand them either. But I have to face the facts - they've been there since legal enslavement, they never went away, and they represent a huge number of Americans. Not as many as they pretend to, but still, horrifyingly huge. So I'm realizing that instead of trying to understand them it might be more productive to unpack and understand how for a few decades this country was able to shame the worst of them into containing their outright bigotry, to make it unacceptable in public office. Because Fox and the Christofascists and tfg dissolved those restraints so quickly I don't even recognize the country anymore.
How did we manage to box them, and how can we put them back in that box?
I’m not too sure re boxing the worst of the already terrible can happen; at least not for a few more voting cycles of Dems and indies sending the MAGAT’s back to the Hell they all came from and subsequently put us through.
We didn’t get here overnight so we won’t climb out of it fast either. I do believe we’ve all been given sufficient time to realize that the system of government that most of us will require constant work, involvement and giving enough of a damn about so that if given another chance to make things right, we do just that. We must resolve to learn about all of our history and strive to do better for everyone. We will then deserve the Perfect Union that was once envisioned so long ago.
SPW, I agree with every word you just wrote, but I have to wonder if enough good people have enough energy left to fight that fight. That's got to be a huge part of the evil master plan, of course - make just getting through the day so hard for ordinary people that they don't have time to fight the Christofascist takeover.
The energy to go after this "backwards looking plan" is a real problem. I remember the days before retirement with work and raising a family I didn't have much time to keep on top the news or anything else but day to day living. We old farts have got to keep working to get the message through. It is our job Now.
Amen, Dave🙏🏽👍🏽
As Jessica Craven says, “Chop wood, Carry water.” This is our work til our last breath. To paraphrase the Torah, “ we are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are we free to abandon it.”
Why does anyone think we reached the “Perfect Union” and our work was done? Because we elected a Black president?There is still grinding poverty in this country, still people who don’t have enough to eat, still predatory capitalism, still sick people who need medical care they cannot afford, still people living paycheck-to-paycheck! There has always been evil in the world; I dare say there always will be.
Those of us who are retired and can contribute, we have no time to be depressed, stay in bed with the covers over our heads. We have important work to do. We all do what we can.
Chop wood, Carry Water!
We are the most backward of the major industrialized western nations, as you, Paula Mandell, have so eloquently stated.
We started to come out of it under FDR, and, really, we were doing pretty well. And then RFK was assassinated. That was followed by Nixon stealing the 1968 election. And then Reagan stole the 1980 election, and among other things killed the Fairness Doctrine, and undercut unions. And then SCOTUS stole the 2000 election for Bush2, who got us into wars for the sake of his weak sense of manhood... And a multiplicity of bad actors stole the 2016 election...
Biden has done amazing things. Lets hope we can keep the momentum going!
I think rising tempereatures and floods will send a message to MAGATs that fox isn't telling them everything that's going on.
Well, one would hope. However, there are people who think what is happening was foretold in Revelation in the Bible. FOX News pales in comparison to the word of God. Of course, many of these same folks have been sitting in their lawn chairs waiting to be air lifted to Heaven, so there's that to consider.
We can only hope!
I just re-read Dr. Heather’s second paragraph which talks to “loading the bill with a wish list from the far right.” As horrible as this is, it is nothing new. The term EARMARKS applies here. An earmark is a congressional directive that funds should be spent on a specific project. Basically, it’s a way for legislators to get funding for pet projects. Going back in my time machine, I recall the SAFETEA-LU legislation for funding the interstate highways, etc. The acronym stands for Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Transportation Equity Act – A Legacy for Users. It was introduced by Don Young (R-AK) in February 2005 and passed in March. Scandals surround this legislation. Don Young was crazy about his wife LU. So initially, the LU at the tail end was to honor his wife. One of the infamous earmarks was THE BRIDGE TO NOWHERE in Alaska to connect sparsely populated regions at tremendous cost – good example of Pork Barrel Politics. Then there is the case of Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House of Representatives (2006). He championed for the construction of a $207 Million earmark for the Prairie Parkway in his Illinois District which would benefit a land investment that Hastert and his wife made. Their net worth went from $300,000 to $6.2 Million. His resignation was called for but he had support from President Bush.
This isn't earmarks. This is hatred of the Other.
These crazies are way worse than the pork barrel hogs
Yes, Jeri they are because the former may to out to be in some cases a form of corruption while this is an attempt to undermine democracy that applies to everyone and force their views on abortion on everyone as well. What about the Rs in swing districts. This will surely count against them.
Earmarks (aka pork) is generally a project or organization in a particular legislative district, designed to win votes for that legislator. This is something entirely different, designed to force a policy on the entire Nation.
Despite the anecdotal scandals like the Bridge to Nowhere, earmarks turned out to be a very effective way of keeping major infrastructure modernized throughout the country, so in recent years, they have been reintroduced.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/earmarks-are-back-and-americans-should-be-glad/
Thank you for sharing this explanation about Earmarks. In the case of this legislation it seems that the repubs aren’t building bridges, but tearing down social structure that is changing. Fear and a host of isms are parts of the repub reasoning.
Grrrrrrrr
Agreed. Too tired, too ill-informed, too discouraged by SCOTUS decisions, lacking paid vacations, overwhelmed by worry about their and their children’s futures, etc., etc. Meanwhile, remembering WWII and the efforts we as children made as the fear our parents had seeped down to us, a fear that DeSantis is trying to stir about learning our history so that we will look to him if we don’t look to Trump to “save” US. This morning I woke to an interview about a book on climate change (6:15 MSNBC, weekly rerun of segments of “Morning Joe”). If anyone knows this book, which reports why President Carter had solar panels put on the White House, please post it and alert me. It’s the kind of history all of us need to spur us to action, no matter how turned off we may be.
Wishing for everyone who is reading this that you are safe in the current disasters.
It is hot here in the Willamette Valley today, but not like other places because the humidity is absent. Of course, that means wildfires can easily get going and spread with wind. We are also under a wildfire alert. This week my husband and I took a drive up the Santiam Canyon east of Salem which had a terrible wildfire in 2020, making our sky red and filled with ash here in Salem. We hadn't been up there since then. It is our old hiking area where we spent many a time in the Mt. Jefferson wilderness. We went as far as Detroit and back. When we got there, the place still smelled strongly of wood smoke and the mountains all around were covered with dead trees. Landmarks had disappeared and the restaurant where we did many pre or post hike meals is only the sign. We saw lots of new construction as people try to get their lives back together. The people affected by the fires recently won a large suit against the electric company which failed to shut off the power. The utility offered some pretty weak tea excuses. It will be a long time before this area recovers although we did see lots of new construction. This will be the case in any area now which has suffered destruction. The heat, however, is another story. Saw an article in The Atlantic about when the Southwest will become unlivable. I would say we are well on our way. So what do we have from the party of death.....lots of stirring of the culture wars pot and attempts to undermine, at least here in Oregon, every attempt to further doing something about climate change.
Thank you for this account. Perhaps it will push more of HCR’s readers to get involved. Anyone who can still write can write postcards to get out the vote. If you don’t have a local Indivisible chapter, you can find one online that will lead you to postcards and voter lists (Democrats, of course, although the organization was begun by congressional staffers in November 2016).
We also live in the Willamette Valley near Portland, and I just drove back from Bend down Highway 22 back to Salem. We have vivid memories of the Labor Day 2020 fires and the aftermath. Besides the hills covered with dead trees, what also struck me was the evidence that the MAGA cult is still alive and well in the Santiam Canyon. Trump 2024 flags and the like. What is it going to take to pierce the bubble of the alternative reality that these people live in?
Virginia, the book is called “The Heat Will Kill You First,” by Jeff Goodell.
Terrifying. The first paragraph made me nauseous.
I want to add in this context: have you any idea how many books are being banned? The MoveOn book mobile came to my neighborhood this week so I went to see it. First book I saw was George Takei’s on being part of the Japanese internment in 1942; I got Malala’s “Magic Pencil” for a small friend; saw “To Kill a Mockingbird” and had to leave before learning more. Can we survive this idiocy?
Jeff, thank you very much. When I learned from the interview about Carter’s asking the Academy of Science to give him “the word,” I immediately thought of the 15 minutes Congress “gave” James Hansen in 1988, the fight Jon Tester (the only “real” farmer that I know of in Congress is having in Montana, Al Gore’s 1980 (?) book which I read in 1999 (he was another farmer in summer when he wasn’t in DC with his farmer father, Senator Al Gore, Sr.) and knew I have to read and get the book to as many as possible before it gets banned.
SLWeston, thank you for ID’ing this book. And Virginia, thanks for elevating the “Morning Joe” interview & asking about the title of this book. Adding it to my list of What To Read.
Just ordered it....thank you for the suggestion. We have invested in a solar farm, have a tesla (which many don't agree with, but gotta start somewhere), have a garden, buy organic as much as possible, vegetarian as much as possible, recycle, yada yada. All this is an investment, of course, and we are lucky enough to be able to invest in the future. If we don't come together as a people of the planet, we will be but a memory for the life in the forest that goes on after us.
This book is the lead review in the NYT book review section today.
Ironically, we behave as though it is 70/30 Fascism over decent Americans, when the reality is the reverse.
There is no denying the sledgehammer of money in the tens of billions and how it overwhelms the senses to the point of now making Orwell dystopia real.
The genuine tragedy is that despite our genuine majority, and despite voter suppression, we can still win handily and send these cockroaches back under the rocks from which they crawled.
All we have to do is get off our collective asses and VOTE! and VOTE repeatedly.
This is the only peaceful franchise we have left.
OOPS! when I stated repeatedly ? I meant , turn our for each and every election. NOT cast more than one vote in a given one🤣. I’ll leave that BS fantasy to Fascist Republicans
Wasn’t it Stalin who said. It matters not who votes, it matters who counts the votes. Repubs know this, and, boy, have they been busy. Get on it Jack Smith
I’ve heard this quote attributed to Stalin before, but I think it is false. Stalin could have cared less about voting or elections.
Sounds more like what a Tammany Hall or Chicago precinct boss might say.
Getting out to vote is almost impossible for many thousands/millions of Americans in red states or half and half states. Why can't the Fed's step in or it is the supremes who are in control of this country? Obviously the answer is yes. Maybe that is where we should all start
I am certain part of the plan is keeping us too broke and too busy to care.
I agree. Add to that, too depressed and deflated. As horrific as today's letter is, I am thankful that we have Heather to keep us apprised of "the good, the bad, and the ugly."Non-violent acts of resistance are needed now more than ever. We know the enemy is bad and ugly and must deal with them daily accordingly.
This is my prayer: When it comes to giving up on democracy, we all have fight left no matter what our age. This is NOT happening! Even if it takes a long game. True democracy is too precious an ideal for thinking people just to roll over!
To really suck the life and hope outta this July morning: The climate crisis is quickly zapping the energy and fight and future out of all sides of this battle.
No matter how emotionally fatigued we all are, we MUST fight on! It is our only hope.
Thanks, Colette. One day at a time.
Just as we have passed the “tipping point” on climate change and damage to the planet can only be mitigated to some degree, I fear we have reached the “tipping point” of our republic. Awash in dark money, corrupted by gerrymandering, fueled by misinformation, disinformation, prejudice, and hate, our elections no longer hinge on ideas but on grievances. A clown car of vote-splintering Republican candidates, the arcane Electoral College, and a vast cadre of MAGA ideologues put Trump in a good position to win the nomination. Even if Democrats, Independents, and more traditional Republicans band to defeat him in the general election, Trump will never concede defeat, and January 6 will look like a quaint dress rehearsal. As Franklin supposedly said, we have a Republic, if we can keep it. Keeping it depends on honest, civil, full-throated debate on matters of interest to all Americans, not fact-free rants by self-centered, self-serving ideologues.
I’m seeing cracks in the wall of dumpty support. It helps.
Fox is getting b-slapped not only by corporations but the J6 marauders themselves who claim they wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for Fox. Whatever happened to the party of personal responsibility? Dude, that starts in your head.
Dumpty is terrified as the Smith investigation grows around him. His attorneys are finding no sympathy for his increasingly desperate legal briefs and I’m sure he’s starting to wonder if they’ll really incarcerate an elderly man.. well know he’s truly despairing when he pulls that one out.
One thing this rabid mob hates is a loser who can’t protect them. They’ll eat him alive.
Those thoughts give me hope the fever will break. Or at least the MAGAts will go back underground.
You've cheered me right up, Jen!
I hope you are right, but Trump’s popularity among his hardcore supporters grows with each indictment and conviction. Gutless Republican “leaders” either repeat his baseless persecution lies or mumble vague criticisms, off the record, of course. His well-armed, grievance-driven followers are, at best, unpredictable. Some are unstable. Some are white supremacists itching for conflict. Some are just happy about the chaos he creates because it helps their bottom line. We’re devolving into a nation with many of the hallmarks of the “shit-hole countries” Trump deplored: violence as a political tool; a popular media outlet that loyally mouths the leader’s lies; labeling other media as the enemy of the people; denial of election results; distrust of law enforcement agencies and the courts; divisions of class, race, and gender; widespread homelessness and crushing poverty amid outrageous wealth for a few. I’m not saying we’re finished, but there are signs of serious trouble ahead. And, oh yeah, the planet is burning.
Well there went my tiny bit of hope.
Here’s a counter:
Yes his witless sycophants become more crazed with every attack on Der Fuhrer. But remember they are only a minority percent of a minority oarty, and they are elderly themselves. Maybe they will forget to vote.
The Extreme Court is a disgrace, but I think the House may flip in the next election, and maybe…the rethugs will forget to vote.
But yes the planet is burning. The ocean temperatures are truly alarming; we got away with the CO2 greenhouse for decades because the oceans sucked up so much of it. When you consider how much energy it takes to increase the temp of water, and the planet is 70% water…I don’t think this can be turned back.
I feel immense grief for every child I see.
So I’d rather think about Eric Holders contention that sure, the federal penal system can handle a dumpty in prison.
Great vision, I’ll sign on
John Adams prediction is coming true. Our democracy can only fail through "self-suicide." The blood drops from our self-inflicted wrist slashing are increasing by the day.
Yes: “... our elections no longer hinge on ideas but on grievances.”
A concise summary of how I too see it.
SPW, beautiful ❤️. I'm ready to work "like the dickens" to stop the magat onslaught. Register Gen Z and all other voters and get them to the polls. I don't see any other way.
Thank you!
see my comment above yours. The problem began with Reagan's rescinding of the fairness doctrine
I was outraged when RR tore Jimmy Carter's solar panels off the White House roof... And when RR, the former president of SAG, fired all the striking air traffic controllers. Hypocrisy seems to be in R DNA.
Reagan was a truly loathsome person.
That certainly didn’t help but our problems began way before that. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. While that is a law of physics, the same tends to hold true in politics as well. As you probably know, there was a huge and to many, quite fearful, move to the Left in the middle of the Viet Nam war. There were violent protests, bombings and the killings of four Kent State students by a National Guard unit. In the wake of all that upheaval was Nixon’s resignation over Watergate and Ford’s pardon of him. The time was right for the Moral Majority to step in to soothe the “troubled beast” that was this country. They got behind Jimmy Carter but found that his honest faith would not align with theirs therefore the nasty bit of business between the Ayatollah of Iran and Reagan over the US hostages taken in Iranian revolution. James Earl Carter III was way too good for the direction this country was set to head. The Right had 12 years to put their plans into place and the technology was ready and waiting for them to weaponize early. Rush Limbaugh had softened up those who found him on the airwaves then along came Ailes. The rest is just generational(30 yrs)history and look at what all has happened in these last 30 years. Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it.
Well said, and the analogy between physics and politics is one of my favorites. I'm a handful of years younger than you (conceived in Truman, born in during Eisenhower's first summer) but I do remember almost all of what you're saying, although you sound to me like your knowledge on this is deeper than mine. If you're in or near the Boston area maybe we should have coffee, and if you're so inclined, you can find me at supernova1@aol.com. And if you want to subscribe to one more, try Robert Hubbell, who I find to be the most consistently and widely illuminating. (Joyce Vance is also superb, though her focus is narrower, and Hubbell often refers readers to her.)
I’m a leading edge Boomer; parents married on VJ Day and I came along exactly 9 months later. I vaguely remember comments about Truman or his daughter but really got into the “I Like Ike” slogan and thought the conventions made for good entertainment on the radio. All my family were typical ‘50s Republicans. I do remember how conflicted they were with the Kennedy/Nixon election. They hated Nixon(crook)AND Kennedy(Catholic). That was the one election I followed and was thrilled when Kennedy won. Thing is, down here in NC we believed that one never discussed politics or religion outside of immediate family. I couldn’t vote until I was 21, I voted split ticket usually and only declared a party when the board of elections said they needed a registrar in the main district of our town. Eye-opener, that! Those were the good old days of hand counted ballots too. After about 3 years of putting up with all sorts of BS, I got fired-for not being partisan enough. I guess since I was the republican registrar, I was supposed to have my finger on the Republican scale.
I moved back to my hometown after my separation, got a job, remarried(for 39 yrs)and since my husbands death last year I’ve just been trying to readjust to single and MUCH OLDER living.
TMI most likely but since you’re in Boston and I’m in NC, we’ll have to forego our coffee and let this be our conversation.
Well put, SPW. We must all work for the ideals of the Constitution. That means, besides being informed on the issues, working to get out the vote, and voting ourselves in every election especially the local ones where these wing nuts can spread their dreck into schools, etc.
Good comment, needs a little proofreading.
Don’t think it’s a typo, think it’s a play on words…. Maggot.
Alexandra: exactly! With 70 to 80 percent of American women insisting that they urgently want our laws to protect--not harm--pregnant women and their own individual choices as their own bodies with the advice of her doctor, yet yesterday virtually the entire Republican caucus in Congress--205 of them--gleefully voted NO!
If you are serving in our Armed Forces, we won’t even let you take medical leave to go to another state for an abortion! Disgraceful!Shame on each and every one of them forever!
And let's not forget the high rate of sexual assault against women in the military.
...which often is why abortions are needed! That is something that should be highlighted. Somehow, I doubt it was even mentioned in any discussions in Congress.
Exactly so, progwoman.
Very important column. It appears clear that the ultimate agenda of the former Republican Party, now the NAF ( New Authoritarian Fascist) party is to drive all decent sane patriotic American out of the military and saturate our armed forces with white supremacist Christian Nationalists. Very terrifying and ominous times.
And remember: “abortion care” includes treatment for miscarriage and ensuring a woman’s right to have more children.
And meanwhile, what's going to happen to the people who needed this help?
Is Viagra covered by the military health plan? If yes it tells you all you need to know.
Think that might be next on SCOTUS list of banning...? I’d lay bets
Somebody please help me understand, are there no republican women in the military who get raped and need to take time off to have an abortion? Aren't there any republican gays in the military? Isn't it about time that a revolt mushroomed within the armed forces? This "Christian" crusade is the most un-Christian concept imaginable--its extreme members have molded themselves into the repugnant Pharisees of the Bible. But I believe in karma. Let's see what happens when one of Ron DeSantis' kids announces that they are transgender....
DeSantis will force his kid to endure conversion therapy and disown them if that doesn’t work.
The cruelty knows no bounds....
Vote them out!
People used to be ashamed of such , now they just revel in it, Pandora’s Box flung wide open…
And that sums it up Jeri. Those Americans who love to hate are all over the streets, the news, the talk shows, talking about how hate is the way.
Every day, all day, on Fox, they spew it out and Americans absolutely LOVE to HATE.
There are 2 local FB forums here in a more conservative part of our notedly liberal state that feast on Fox. For some, Fox is now passé as they have moved farther to the right. The hate on these forums is so obvious it has been reduced to an echo chamber. ANY and ALL reasonable comments by even centrist folks will immediately trigger disgusting memes - Biden in diapers and clown shoes, grooming children - an on-going borderline harassment of a forum member who shared that for environmental reasons, she prefers to have her coffee in a recycled cup at the Dunkin’s drive through. The over-all ‘take away’ is that it is becoming very obvious that each of these small minds has fallen for the whole package - abortion. 2A rights. Free Speech. Climate change, LGBTQ issues. Public school curriculum. Definitions of “patriotism”….. And now, creeping in around the edges - criticism of Ukraine’s fight for their own democracy - (thereby celebrating Putin’s politics). They buy it all — no nuance, no restrictions - same phrasing used by each and every one of them. A lesson in the power of”free speech”!
If they hate democracy here why defend it in Ukraine?
They don't. They want to give Ukraine to Russia.
A lesson in the power of propaganda and political power!
Chilling.
A lesson in the power of propaganda. Fox metastasized long ago.
The "power of propaganda" was cleverly put in place by Roger Ailes. I read The Loudest Voice in the Room by Gabriel Sherman when it first came out in 2014. It's all about how Fox News got to be the way it is. I was trying desperately to understand why all the people I kept encountering in Florida (I had just moved here) were so taken in by what they were seeing and hearing on Fox News. Repetition of images and words results in brainwashing big time! Facts don't matter. I encouraged Fox News watchers to read it, but none wanted to believe it once they opened the book. Not sure any of them got through it. It is a long book, but it's well written and referenced. It had the scoop on Bill O'Reilly way before he was ousted by Fox.
😘
See anything Christian about that. I parted company with the Pharisees years ago. Golden Rule does it for me.
I’m assuming that you live by the real Golden Rule; not “Do unto others before they do unto you”?
I guess so, even my magat relatives seem to like me...
Great comment Alexandra. You're right, what did we do right in the 60's and 70's? How did we become complacent, and how do we turn it around now?
Fay, I'm asking the question without knowing the answers, but I think one important answer is that there was a growing secularization—abandoning religion for spirituality and a morality based on doing what is right rather than what a patriarchal church tells you to do. It's no accident the Rs are weaponizing religion to crush that progress.
I agree, that is a good part of the problem. Those of us with some intelligence, do not want someone assuming authority and telling us how to think and act. While others still cling to the need for "daddy" telling them what to do while assuring them everything will be alright, just leave it to father.
The attack on public schools, denying facts, banning books that offer another view of the world, all lead to blind voters.
Blind, obedient voters.
Excellent point, my cogent friend!
Alexandra, excellent comment. Expresses my thoughts perfectly. Slavery is only possible if those who are enslaved are believed to be inferior sub humans. And I believe that is the basis of all the racists that exists today.
Harvey, yes. Direct line.
Great job isolating the central question! How did we place guardrails around the hate filled, misogynistic, bigotry? Can we do so again?
One of the strongest set of guardrails was the FCC fairness doctrine. Growing up in the 80s & 90s, I recall American’s disagreeing on all things political, as we do today, but we formed a consensus around basic facts. Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, our network TV anchors were trusted by virtually all Americans. That trust gave us a shared set of facts as a spring board from which the public could make their opinions & debate topics & from which policy makers could form their decisions.
Slowly since 1987 when the FCC abolished the fairness doctrine, our guardrails have disappeared & cable news (mostly Fox) has polarized us, misinformed & radicalized many.
Tfg’s embrace of hate & bigotry ripped down the remaining guardrails, making some conflate cruelty & viciousness with masculinity. Men searching for validation of there manhood, and women, falling for the ruse, also came to believe that loud equates to proud & bullying equals bravery.
Social media, the religious right & exploiting a fear some white peoples held (many unbeknownst to themselves) or becoming a minority have also been significant agitators, influencing the climate & chaos we find ourselves in.
As for how to get those guardrails back, the only solutions I can come up with are long term, beginning with education reform. Teaching students at every level how to discern fact from fiction, making newspaper reading a part of their reading instruction, constant practice in identifying misinformation & disinformation, repeated lessons on journalistic integrity & bias, teaching student to find and use reputable sources of information.
Also, a continued push for SEL (Social Emotional Learning), helping students to practice empathy, strength their social skills & lean to self regulate.
They're going after education because they KNOW it's the antidote to their agenda.
Alexandra, I’m reasonably sure that it’s true that racism and intolerance have always been simmering among conservatives, but the level of vitriol they express today has been deliberately cultivated. In other words, it’s not that resentment wasn’t always there, it’s that it has been stoked actively to a higher intensity than it’s been in decades. I think that’s an important point to keep in mind. The problem is better understood as one of psychological warfare. The crazier the right gets, the more ludicrous the rationalizations with which they justify themselves become. We are never going to put them in a box, but perhaps we can put this unhinged psychology in a box. The Biden administration has opted to demonstrate the difference between crazy and not crazy, and call out the cowards who do know the difference but pretend otherwise. I think the strategy is something like holding the fire line until the fire burns itself out.
Jim, thanks for that - you're so right! It has been stoked. And maybe the far right being so crazy helps ordinary bigot conservatives get what they want because we're all so freaking grateful when the agenda gets pulled back from the brink even a little. I do appreciate every day that Biden is holding the line. I hope to god you're right about the fire burning itself out. I'll try to hold that thought.
Yeah. There are no guarantees. But Biden has been on a winning streak lately and the crazies are desperate to make themselves look relevant. More crazy is all they have. Holding up the defense bill over an abortion issue is making Tuberville a lot of enemies in both parties. On the GOP side it’s not just because he’s got a really bad idea, but because he’s putting a face on stupidity and it makes the whole party look stupid. So there, we have some agreement with people on the right. It’s a start.
I have posted this before, but i return to it because, like many of Lincoln's thoughts, it gets to the root of our most persistent behaviors:
"That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles -- right and wrong -- throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings."
How I look at it, it does not just apply to kings, but any top-down, autocratic stratification of society as opposed to a very different base up society in which those with authority are lent it by the will of the public and a social contract agreement pertaining to universal, unalienable, human rights. The thing is that they both haev staying power, they both "get things done", they both attract a base of adherents who will fight to maintain the method. I think that history illustrates this. The problem with power in the hands of a few is the lack of limits to what they may be inclined to do with it, and the desire to live like kings is seductive, I'm not immune to it. Politicians aren't either. when one has the power to make rules, it is tempting to advance self-serving components. And don't we see a whole lot of that, even with within our republican (SMALL "r") governmental infrastructure?
Also, as human beings, we have the capacity for both compassionate and sociopathic behavior. History indicates that both can spread in human societies. Compassion and democracy is the harder row to hoe, requiring a tolerance for more ambiguity, a lot of effort, and far less certainty and defined "order". Despite horrifying historical object lessons, many seem to find the more authoritarian options more comforting, but a lot of that comfort depends on misleading one's self.
I worry it’s too late. We are in the dying stages of capitalism that has allowed a few billionaires to influence everything up to and including the Supreme Court. Meanwhile Mother Earth doesn’t have the decades it may take to right the wrongs of the last 40 years. I’m not sure we put the toothpaste back in the tube at this point but we can certainly work with our children to plan navigation of this new reality.
It's my fear too, Tosha. Climate change and AI might make everything else null.
the problem goes back to Reagan's rescinding of the Fairness Doctrine, where the media had to give equal time to both sides (or something close to that). That enabled the MAGAts to be unaware of what the other side had to say. MAGAts in other parts of the country may not even be aware that temperatures in places like Phoenix and Florida have spiked dangerously, because Fox probably doesn't report on this, and it may be hard for MAGATs feeling the heat to avoid finding out the cause from their neighbors. And those elsewhere may hear what's going on from friends in such places, and the information may begin to seep into their ranks.
Thanks David and Gina - for pointing out the rescinding of the Fairness Doctrine as an important cause of the horrific mess we're in.
The republicans of today are the dems of the pre-civil war era. I am sorry to say that it was the democrats who defended slavery, started the civil war, and then the klu klux klan. It was Abraham Lincoln who built the republican party to abolish slavery and it was John Wilkes Booth, a democrat who assassinated him. In the 1857 Supreme Court case, Dred Scott vs Stanford, that ruled slaves weren't citizens but property, the seven justices that ruled for were democrats and the two against were republicans. This has always perplexed me. I need to learn more about how these two parties turned on their heads to where today most Blacks vote with the party that once oppressed them, and the republicans of today have become the scum that are hell bent on oppressing them and keep them from voting....
Please study what is known as the "Southern Strategy" and Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for President in 1964
www.studentsofhistory.com/ideologies-flip-Democratic-Republican-parties
sharon tobin -- Thank you very much for this fabulous article! To see the history of The Great Switch so concisely written is highly illuminating, as well as (for me) to see/learn that it was FDR who was pivotal, and how quickly it happened. It's interesting to think about our tendencies (as humans) to pigeon-hole and hold onto our thinking and beliefs -- how restrictive that action is. Carl Jung (Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst) introduced the West to the concept of "enantiodromia" -- "the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time." This certainly applies to our politics. (Wikipedia has an informative entry on the word, if you're interested.)
Thank you for exactly the information I needed!
Sophia, Sharon's article will fill you in. Everyone does need to know how the Southern Strategy flipped the parties.
I think we need to form focused coalitions with, what I continue to believe are sane people who don’t think ignorance and bigotry are cool. One interesting coalition is beginning to form between the humanists and mainstream religious groups who are open to change. The Republican noise machine has been great at grabbing headlines, but their empty-headed braying of bad old news is wearing thin in a lot of quarters.
BRILLIANTLY stated, Alexandra. They’ve been so clever about hiding their true nature that I was absolutely CLUELESS that this, this, this terrifying contagion of hate and revenge was roiling under the surface. So well described …. Ugh.
SL, I was naive about the numbers of them. And I lived in the South for a while and I still didn't believe it.
MT is full of them & cheered on by Congressional Rep Rosendale. We need Monica Tranel & Jon Tester elected to the House & Senate to stop the madness.
Alexandra, I believe they were boxed after World War Two, by Dwight Eisenhower and a broad consensus. But what created that consensus? Was it backlash to the extremism of the war? Could backlash to Trump, January 6, and an extreme SCOTUS create a new consensus?
That's true, Nancy, and FDR (and Eleanor, and Frances Perkins, and the team) also had a lot to do with it, presenting a positive and humanitarian alternative in a really dire time.
I have wondered if Heather and the students of history (us) will contribute to a new consensus.
These people are the same people H.L. Menken described 99 years ago during another period of social insanity, "The Scopes Monkey Trial": "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average American."
Or to quote the courageous German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer,who was executed in Germany during WWII, “Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.”
This is the best explanation of stupidity I have ever read! Thank you.
I've been thinking a lot about Bonhoeffer recently. He could have stayed at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he studied when the war broke out, but he went back to Germany because he thought he could influence the Lutheran Church, which never put up significant resistance to Hitler.
In sum: you can’t fix stupid.
Stupid people don't believe they are stupid. They don't question themselves and believe everything they do is right.
The problem in a nutshell!
I had not seen this before. Thank you!
Thank you for quoting Bonhoeffer. I only know the “...they came for me...” quote. Having been railing against stupidity since waking today, particularly delighted to add this.
Jerry Carbone -- Thank you for this very up-to-date contribution from Bonhoeffer! On the dot true.
This quote gave me goosebumps. Thank you Jerry Carbone. I wish you could somehow get this quote into the hands of my heroes in Congress, Jamie Raskin and/or Adam Schiff. Or Biden himself. It is beyond apropos in dealing with the far right all over this country but especially in Congress. Maybe Heather could pull some strings. . . .
This is chilling enough but seeing it in action, as we so often experience now, brings the force of it home. I'm not at all familiar with Bonhoeffer but this quote makes absolute sense to me in the context of reactions I experience when trying to reason with anyone who supports MAGAt ideology.
Oh, that IS what we are seeing, hearing. SO dangerous. Thank you, I think.
Good comment. Thanks for the Bonhoeffer quote. I c & pasted it to use somewhere later. I supposedly studied him in my college philosophy class a zillion years ago but I was far more interested in playing cards than going to class. Guess I should have stayed in class.
That's very good.
Fantastic quote, Jerry! Thanks!
These people with zero critical thinking skills are made stupid and being brainwashed by Fox News.
Speaking of stupid, perhaps the model for today's doctors who slice off the breasts and penises of teenagers should be the Nazi doctors who were hanged at Nuremberg.
I don't know how Republicans came with the rule of jungle to the Congress and get away with it easily.
Their partisanship is born out of superiority.
But, history can give us a hint of their modern behaviour.
Currently, Republicans continue to move to the far right more than Democrats to the left wing. As a per the Pew Research Center, when the 92nd (1971-1972) and the current Congress (117th) are compared, both parties are shifting further away from their ideological identity, but Republicans are worst hit by their political seismic movements. Statistically, House Democrats have shifted from 0.31 to 0.38 to imply that their shift is modest on average. However, House Republicans have moved from 0.25 to 0.51 and this represents the biggest increase towards a more conservative direction.
"As Democrats have grown more liberal over time and Republicans much more conservative, the “middle” – where moderate-to-liberal Republicans could sometimes find common ground with moderate-to-conservative Democrats on contentious issues – has vanished."
As we move forward, ideological overlap zone continues to decrease or has already been lost as occasioned by less liberal Democrats and less conservative Republicans getting out of touch with their caucases and voters in their respective party regions. As a result, most of them have perhaps retired, lost reelection, or shift to other parties. Thus, the middle ground of bipartisanship is so minimal to the extent that partisan polarisation is extreme. As obvious, Republicans will shoot down overwhelmingly abortion bills meant for military.
50 years ago, there were only 144 less conservative Republicans, but that number has shrink to the lowest level of not more than 20 based on how to they vote on must-have bills.
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It’s 18th century French mob radicalism, not “conservatism.” Please make the distinction. Conservatives conserve; Radicals destroy as the Republicans are doing.
This is a good explanation of where “the middle” went and why we are at such extreme polarization.
"Since 2002, when Republican Rep. Constance Morella of Maryland was defeated for reelection and GOP Rep. Benjamin Gilman of New York retired, there’s been no overlap at all between the least liberal Democrats and the least conservative Republicans in the House. In the Senate, the end of overlap came in 2004, when Democrat Zell Miller of Georgia retired."
"The gaps between the least conservative Republicans and least liberal Democrats in both the House and Senate have widened – making it ever less likely that there’s any common ground to find. This is partly due to geographical and demographic shifts."
But they are there. The stones are weeping.
MAGA Republicans are simply the grandchildren of the KKK. Timothy Egan's book, "A Fever in the Heartland" about the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the Midwest in the early 1920's is a must read to understand today's MAGAs. What motivates MAGA people? Race, religion, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia and anti-LGBTQ sentiments. D.C. Hutchinson, the leader of the Indiana KKK said: " "I did not sell the Klan in Indiana on hatreds. I sold it on Americanism." In other words, white Protestant supremacy.
I so agree-Egan is a masterful storyteller. His book gives us a look behind the curtain of racism, greed and political power grabs.
Well stated. Egan's book is a real page-turner.
We have 219 white supremacists in the House. Unbelievable.
Well,
If you read the 1619 Book Project, maybe it is not so unbelievable.
White supremacy is a mental disorder that motivates too many people. We’ve all been conditioned for more than 200 years to divide people according to skin color. Obama’s election was the “wake up” call for racists-that’s why they viciously came out of their box.
If we don’t face the truth about the way racism is destroying our democracy then we’ll all go over the cliff with these folks who want to gain and hold power to keep people down including women and LGBTQ folks. We’re living in perilous times.
Racists are frightened ignorant people. When they band together they are formidable without insight - the worst combination. If they weren't so dangerous, they would just be pathetic - people unable to see how they allow their own ignorance and fear to control themselves. I know there are many people who are trying to figure out how to shift this way of thinking (reactionary) in racists, since our very survival may depend on that. It may not be possible, so perhaps the only way forward for those of us who see the danger is to get out and work like heck to unseat their leadership. And then we might try to address the actual source of their fears.
Agree 100%. We must win at the polls.
It's just $$$$$$$$. They have sold their souls to the Devil.
Money is a factor, but it's more than that. Why did Evangelicals vote for Trump, a sinner if ever there was one? Google "The Anger Games, Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election, and Why?" In short, the Big Three are racism, misogyny and xenophobia.
ABSOLUTE MAMMONITES and POWER SNATCHERS !! The dEVILS TIME ! is REAL SHORT !!
Tosha. The debt ceiling hostage taking didn’t work. Time to up the stakes
Krazytown Republicans hold our National Security hostage to their ideological demands
The only way this ends is when Charles Koch & Company ( their real leaders) tell them he’s cutting off their funding until they straighten up
This was worse than the Norfolk Southern train crash in East Palestine, Ohio.
So what is it to be KrazyTown or Disneyland? My representative Scott Perry, (R, 10th District of PA), is for the former. He's one of the KrazyTown leaders of the Freedom Caucus and a general in the Army National Guard. For him to use the word "righteous" is insanity. Unfortunately, in this district there are far too many MAGA people who vote him. This is where KrazyTown folks predominate.
I didn’t think anything could shock me anymore, but Perry using the word “righteous” did it! They don’t even try to hide their bigotry anymore!
Tosha, I don’t believe the voters for one minute understood or were prepared for what the generally GOP candidates might do or vote for under the influence of the MAGA leadership and Freedom Caucus. It is essential that they all be exposed as risking American lives and the mighty military that defend us. I remain hopeful these nuisance radical right wing “add ons” to an essential funding package will be defeated in the Senate and vetoed by President Biden. That Marjorie Taylor Greene cannot get off her right wing nutcase pulpit is literally making me crazy! She takes Twitter by storm, demeans Biden, she is McCarthy’s go to BFF, and now she is invited to participate in negotiations as a non-committee member? This is so APPALLING at every level. I am beginning to believe she is our worst enemy in the House. But how do we get her out of the sphere of influence?
One of the worst things that we can do is to underestimate their resolve. They are literally "True Believers." Stopping fanaticism isn't easy. Rational discourse doesn't work. Power at the polls itself may not even be enough.
Why bother to understand them? Seriously, don't waste your time. Instead, think about getting them the hell out of politics.
Bigots vote for bigots, that is the answer.
I'm with you in not understanding them at all. I'm afraid gerrymandering in key states helps keep these extremists in Congress
That is the real crux of the problem.
It is because somewhere in their makeup they too are cowardly bigots. All the more need for the 2024 elections to produce strong Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress.
Are their supporters cowardly bigots also?
Yes