First, a follow-up to last night’s letter on foreign affairs: Russian president Vladimir Putin visited North Korea today for a meeting with leader Kim Jong Un, who greeted his visitor personally as he got off the plane. Putin is looking for more weapons for his war on Ukraine. U.S. national security spokesman John Kirby expressed concern about “the deepening relationship between these two countries.”
St. Ronnie re-introduced the notion that messy old democracy is a sorry joke, and that the proper leaders and greatest benefactors of society were and are the very wealthiest; and yes, here we are at the edge of an abyss.
My Mom would like it to be known that her first vote for President was to re-elect Carter, she waited in the cold in a bad neighborhood to do so, she did so even after she saw him conceding on the TV in the store window, she does not regret it, and she was right all along.
Barbara, what a different (and better, I'd surmise) world we would be living in today if Carter had been reelected. But he continued to strive to make it better internationally, post-presidency, with his efforts to increase access to fair voting, eradication of Guinea worm in Africa, expansion of human rights, etc.; and domestically by his participation in Habitat for Humanity. Jonathan Alter's bio of Carter is excellent.
And back to the Babtists - I believe our wonderful JC (Jimmy Carter) was a lifelong devoted Babtist. Until his church refused to honor women as equals by not allowing them to become priests. He and Roslyn left their "church" behind and instead lived simply, as true Christians.
Gore vs Bush was another another historically crucial race, but I see the candidacy of obviously incompetent GWB as ultimately enabled by the so called "Reagan Revolution". Lay the onset of the Reagan presidency over the dramatic shift of the sum of US assets away from the middle class, and towards the richest one tenth of one percent of our citizens; and follow the flow of money into our political process in multiple aspects.
George, believe me when I say I loathed GWB (and still do), but he did serve, albeit in the National Guard. The fact that he evaded the draft has no effect whatsoever on my judgment of him, as thousands of others did as well, including Clinton under whom he served as VP. I turned 18 in 1973, but only 1 draft number was picked that year, and it wasn't mine. Had I been drafted I probably would have gone to Canada or something. (On the other hand, if I'd come of age in '68, I think I'd have reported).
Rabid political anti-environmentalism began with Reagan, it got to be absurd pretty quickly, with Watt and Gorsuch (mom of THAT Gorsuch) proving to be political embarrassments. I keep wondering where we might be today, in terms of climate, prices, international petrostate intrigues, etc. had we taken the high road vs "oil is King". Vs environment be damned.
J L, as I believe I stated here before, '76 was the 1st election I was eligible to vote in, and I voted for Carter. However, I was rabidly anti-nuclear power, while he was a big supporter, so I shunned him in '80 and voted for John Anderson, who wasn't a spoiler as a 3rd party, as it turned out. My views on nuclear have softened ever so slightly (I still worry about accidents, loooonnng term storage of materials, and other possible catastrophic scenarios) -- Big Oil, as we all know, is a threat to humanity's future on a habitable planet, for the reasons you cite.
No. He was not "profesionally trained" in international anything. He had a BA from Whittier College (then a 'cow college") and a second-rate law school. He was like all the other right wing "hex-spurtz" - a legend in his own mind.
TC—that sounds like Tricky Dick Nixon you are describing. When Nixon died, he lay in repose in Southern California and thousands of people passed by the bier. My brother and I agreed that if we had been close enough, we would have joined in the line, with a mallet and a stake.
I humbly beg your pardon: I remembered incorrectly.
Clinton attended the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., receiving a Bachelor of Science in foreign service degree in 1968.
Except he was the president who started withdrawing money from Social Security. The federal government owes SS $1.7T, hence the reason the fund is in trouble.
She certainly was. I have yet to forgive Carter for that act of moron stupidity. Conceding at 4:45pm when the polls were still open on the west coast depressed turnout, with the result that several Democratic congressional seats became Republiscum, and it took 20 years to repair the damage. Carter was an excellent ex-president, but a failure as the actual thing. I believe it was because he believed everyone was good, which is seldom if ever true of people in politics and power.
I too revere my vote for Carter as an Act for the Greater Good.
When Reagan announced his candidacy in the center of hate country where vote organizers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had been murdered less than two decades before and succeeded through this public knowledge to his candidacy I was certain Carter would win.
Reagan’s victory signaled the victory of the South and beginning of a very dark era.
My first vote was for Carter in 1976. He came to our college campus to meet and greet and we all knew he was the man Raygun wanted to be. Carter although not the best speaker was intelligent, knowledgeable and cared about the country.
My first vote, at 18, was for McGovern in '72. And as I think back through the decades, I can't think of a single democratic contender who wouldn't have done a better job than the republican. I have never thought the democrat did a great job, but I am certain that they would have done more good and less harm than the repub winner in every instance. While I expect the upcoming election to be turned into a death match by the current gop, I am still inclined to believe that president Biden and Kamala Harris will earn a second term when the dust settles. I do believe that there is real evidence for my guarded optimism, not just fear-fueled wishcasting. But I am also afraid that trump/maga might muscle their way into power. Terrifying! Why wont Americans learn from their mistakes?
That was my first vote for President, too. I knew I was voting for the better man. We'll never know for sure if he'd have been a better President during those four years, but I believe we'd be in a much better place today had Carter won. Doubtful that Ronnie would have been elected four years later with ageism being what it is in our country.
Will, your mom really was right. I made the mistake in 1980 of voting for a 3rd party candidate, John Anderson. I liked him, but I didn't realize at the time that act was actually throwing away my vote. There was so much anti-Carter politicking I couldn't see what was really going on. Carter was a decent president, not always with the best support in the White House and a pro-Reagan force that constantly lied about who Reagan was and kept portraying this run-of-the-mill actor as something he was not. There are not enough negatives to describe who Reagan really was in addition to moving rather steadily into Alzheimer's almost from the beginning of his reign. His wife and his aides knew it and just like with Trump, no one is sharing the truth with the American people. Reagan got re-elected even though they knew, but We the People didn't. I could never vote for Reagan because living in DC at the time, his weaknesses and cruelties were more obvious than in many other parts of America. Trump may also be re-elected the same way. We seem not to be able to learn.
Carter was a far better president than most give him credit for. What is was not, was a polished TV personality, which in the screen age has become a prerequisite for the job and and a large part of how the input of billionaires to our political climate has exploded. Lincoln was eloquent, but TV is set up to score slick one-liners. I doubt he would be elected today. Reagan was just a "B" actor, but a practiced pitch-man who knew the medium. I still encounter liberals who score Reagan as one of our best presidents, or the last "good" Republican president. The media fell in love with him, and that count's a lot for popularity, but little for perspicacity, honesty, or wisdom. Our future is too real to just be a game, and alternative political outcomes are of far more consequence than mere "likes" or just changing channels.
Carter was the first President I voted for. I missed the 1972 election by a month, but I was ready to vote the next time around. I never regretted that vote!
Will - being young, disconnected from politics and therefore still under the influence of my dad, I pulled the lever for Raygun. Never since have I voted R.
I didn’t understand my dad’s politics until I read the R’s party platform from the ‘70s: respect for the natural world, respect for unions (my dad was a pilot’s union leader), care for others, and true fiscal responsibility. That party is as dead as my dad, who would have absolutely detested The GLOAT (greatest loser/liar of all time).
But I carry forward his legacy of appreciation for Nature, unions and service to others. And I’m sure I’m not the only person with such sentiments. We just need to motivate them!
Piety anyway. I am struck by the contrasts between the humility, asceticism, and compassion Jesus (so far as records show) actually preached and the wealth and brutal power seeking churches, at the ones that got the most historical attention, that claim to act in Jesus's name. I know less about Islam, but hear of similar complaints between the scripture and it's supposed implementation. It seem that power, and a thirst tor coercive power, tends to corrupt.
One of my favorite comments about the election of Ronald Reagan was from Paul Newman. When a reporter asked him, “What do you think about an actor becoming President?’, he replied, “Who said he could act?”
J L, and within that very rich set, the "players" are white and male almost to a person. It's not that rich, white, ego-driven men don't have anything to offer, it's that they don't have everything to offer and are simply not equipped to deal with most of the challenges any society has. Their bubble does not let them see any world view beyond their own. Even a glimpse they might have, is immediately dismissed as "nowhere as good as what they already have." And that is why we are at the cliff's edge and the only thing the crew in charge can imagine is how they can get richer, how they can shut everyone else up, and how they can keep the power they have accumulated through the wealth they erroneously believe they gained on their own merrits. Yep, we are in trouble!
Some people who amass great fortunes are multi-talented, but according to the guardian the #1 thing the super rich have in common is being born into a rich family. Aside from ties to organized crime, "money pouring in from Russia" and a sucker being born every minute, that's certainly the story of Trump's fortune that Robert Reich claims would be much greater had he parked his inheritance in an index fund and let it cook. Add to that tax laws tailored to benefit the well off, such as capital gains, carried interest, etc.
That's to say nothing of the scratch to hire lobbyists who sometime literally write the laws Congress dutifully passes, or effectively vetoes them. Nor armies of tricky lawyers. Nor billion dollar gifts to right wing causes or multi-million dollar gifts to $COTUS judges, all perfectly legally, since they buy the laws.
I read that the famed Monopoly game was originally invented to demonstrate how people get robbed by monopolists; but most players of the table game retire to cozy beds, not the street, if they lose.
JL, realize that Nixon was very influential in the Reagan administration. St. Ronnie called on Nixon for advice frequently, but kept it quiet for obvious reasons. "Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush began to consult him although they did not publicize that fact. Republicans were still wary of the public's reaction to Nixon but they were interested in his opinions about foreign affairs. He remained an acknowledged expert on foreign policy,..." https://millercenter.org/president/nixon/life-after-the-presidency
I could miss a lot of the subtleties of Nixon's history, and he was a "dirty tricks" sort from early in his career, which set the tone for much that has followed, but I noticed that he at least played along, and perhaps maintained some elements of fealty to the common good, while Reagan was ready to hand over the whole of the nation to plutocrats. Nixon promoted environmental protection, and even established the EPA, which was an anathema to Reagan and the energy industry. Nixon pushed the nation to the right, but It seemed that Reagan Inc. managed a virtual coup. Anyway, they were both bad news and pioneers of the bad faith politics we see full blown in the "GOP" today.
You should also read Rick Perlstein's four volume history of the Right in the last half of the 20th Century. "Before the Storm" on Goldwater; Nixonland" on you know who; "The Invisible Bridge" about the political creation of Reagan and Reaganism; and "Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-80".
Nixon did NOT "establish the EPA". Well technically, I guess establish is a good word. He consolidated several existing agencies into one, like a good little bepureaucrst.
The destruction of the Republican Party began long before either Nixon or Reagan were gleams in their parents' eyes. Go read Jacob Heilbrunn's "America Last: The Republican Love Affair With Foreign Dictators."
Never forget Reagan's original cabinet was comprised entirely of hoods retrieved from Nixon's arsenal. It was an overt move to re-establish everything he'd begun.
It certainly does. All the Big Gargolyles in Republican/fascist circles nowadays got their start as Small Gargoyles under Nixon. Like Jill Wine-Banks said back when Ford pardoned the war criminal (his extra four years of the Vietnam war saw the majority of American casualties, not to mention a few million Southeast Asians, and all he got in December 1972 was a peace that offered less than the one he sabotaged in 1968 that LBJ negotiated) "I wanted to see that shovel nose sticking out between bars."
Not so saintly Ronnie was head of the Screen Actor's Guild in blacklisting days; Ronnie was on the General Electric (GE) Chicken & Jello lunch circuit for many years before becoming Governor. As governor his first target was the University of California where he & other Regents raised tuition fees which more than tripled in my undergraduates years at UCLA.
The faces of undergraduates changed significantly in my university days.
I strongly recommend Lou Cannon's biography of Reagan: "President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime"
I just wrote about that last week, Bryan. Ronnie's calm voice gained the trust of the nation to accept massive Cold War expenditures and trickle down econ, as well as dumbing down the finest educational system in the world so people would stop asking educated questions about war profiteering and, you know.... GE being the biggest "defense" contractor in the world. What's happening with the psyciatrists and the Merchan sentencing hearing? BTW.
I always hated his voice -- sounded so faux gee-shucks and yet patronizing. Yech. And the Nancy Regan adoration stare -- which she handed down to Mike Pence.
Reagan also sold out his members when he was president of SAG and accepted the half-offer for residuals, only going forward from 1961, nothing in arrears.
Bryan Spot On! Lou Cannon followed Reagan from CA to the White House. His insights into Reagan are the most persuasive that I have read. Reagan was a curious individual who even Nancy didn’t fully know.
Pulitzer-Prize biographer Ed Morris, chosen to be Reagan’s official biographer, took a $3 million advance and couldn’t deliver. In desperation, he intruded himself into his mishmash biography. The result was akin to day old scrambled eggs.
MaryPat Like Trump, it’s difficult to know when Reagan’s dementia began. Some of his activities early in his administration would suggest dementia, though not clinically diagnosed.
James Garner - who worked with Reagan in SAG - had a two-word description of him: "amiable dunce." When I was involved professionally in California politics, I had occasion to meet him while he was governor. Garner was being generous. Reagan was the shill for all the Republican gargoyles who'd been waiting since 1932 to start tearing down the modern United States, destroying the most affluent middle class of any country in history.
An article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, March 17, 1985 by Lewis Lehrman, detailed their plans. A few sentences “We are at the beginning of this conservative revolution…we are not even in the middle of it….Our economic policies, our social policies, and our international policies are going to be altered in every significant aspect….The president hasn’t even begun the program of constitutional reform and the change in social policy…,This is a peaceful, conservative revolution that will take 20, 30, 40 years to complete.” The title of the article was “Conservative Revolution will alter all policies, says spokesman.”
If I read any more about Reagan’s evil I will be permanently brain dead. This is way enough, considering how successful they were.
I have searched, but cannot find this article online. Do you have a link? It sounds prescient. I am currently reading Olivia Butler's The Sower, a dystopian novel which starts in July 2024 and is predicting worse than our current reality, but is hauntingly believable.
I can't post my copy here but I can send you a message if I have email or some way to do it. Wish I could put it on every front page. It blew my socks off. If you are close, I might bring it to you. Ft Worth is in the neck of the woods.
Is it too frivolous in the context of these comments to say that I have loved James Garner ever since Maverick and that learning about his comment about Ronnie made me love him more?
I was just thinking the same thing. Loved all of his movies. One very minor film, but a favorite, “Murphy’s Law.” I keep thinking of it now with his car, parked in front of his pharmacy, covered in political stickers. No one was to touch them.
"Support Your Local Sheriff" is a minor comedy classic. The Maverick episode I still love (hunted it down a few months ago watched it again) is "Gun Shy" - season two, episode 16, "Gun Shy", a send-up of "Gunsmoke." Maverick is seeking buried Confederate treasure in Elwood, Kansas, ad keeps running afoul of U.S. Marshal Mort Dooley, who keeps running him out of town. But he keeps outwitting the lawman., Marshal Dooley comments that several strange people have been passing through his town lately, specifically referring to "that gunslinger who handed out business cards." The opening scene is that opening of the Gunsmoke show,, the pov between the marshal's legs of the guy he's going to shoot. He fires once - the guy is still there. He fires five more times. The guy is still there. Close on Maverick with the opening line, "Would you like me to step into range, Marshal?" delivered as only Garner could.
A couple of friends, now passed away, left California after R.R. became gov., and moved to our little town in New England. Nixon’s unelected insider “advisers” like Cheney, G.H.W. Bush, were there with Presidents Reagan, G.H.W., and G.W., whose V.P., of course, was Cheney. It seems that no actions occurred that made did not them richer.
The decisions for action after 9/11 made them all a lot richer. Allegedly, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and some others knew every petroleum facility and pipeline in Iraq. Afghanistan was just an excuse to get started. The citizens of this nation are still paying the price of that seemingly endless war, especially those who lost family members.
“Mission Accomplished” was just a PR stunt.
And this little bit is just the “tip of the iceberg.”
Tom I gather that you do not have a high opinion of Reagan. I acknowledge that he was highly scripted and details were not his forte. However, I do give him credit for staying the course with Paul Volcker’s draconian measures against ‘stagflation.’ This cost Reagan significant short-term popularity and hurt the Reps in the 1982 elections.
Also, Reagan, the staunch opponent of the ‘evil empire,’ played a vital role with Gorby in bringing the Cold War to an end with a whimper rather than a bang.
But, as he screamed in a movie, “Where is the rest of me.” Was Bonzo his vice president?
Yeah. But the interesting/dangerous thing about Trump is that he has the con-man's ability to make people like him. I know people here who met him during the Apprentice days and they refer to him as "a funny guy."
Reagan had it too. I experienced his Hollywood-trained ability to concentrate completely on the individual he was interacting with, as though there were no other people around; you felt "special."
And I knew three top World War II German aces back in the 80s, who had met with Hitler more than once, and each told me that he could be the most charming person you ever met - until something he didn't like happened.
All monsters have the ability to put the prey at ease before taking the killing bite.
I lived in California when he ran for office. I voted against him. He wanted to take away financial aide to college students born brilliant to poor families. Of course, he was only an actor. But taking away college funding means less educated students, means less high earning graduates which means less taxes going in to fund California. No one could ever get that in his empty head.
Martin, you're right about the straight line. My argument is that the line is longer than you think.
There is also a straight line heading in the opposite direction—toward a just society—defined by Adam Smith in his book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). In it, he argued that society's failure is due to those with more power imposing their will on those with less power, and that its success depends on our willingness to do the opposite, which is to resolve the dilemmas that inevitably emerge. It is on that foundation that he developed the practice we now refer to as capitalism.
Saint Ronnie took the country in the opposite direction thinking he was promoting capitalism, but who gets to define capitalism? Personally, I believe the guy who invented the concept. That makes Saint Ronnie and the entire MAGA Republican Party a bunch of anti-capitalists.
Bernie Sanders says it's okay to be angry about capitalism. To me, he's unintentionally making the good guys out to be the bad guys. The real bad guys are the anti-capitalist Republicans who hypocritically refer to themselves as capitalists. And then they refer to President Biden—a person who actually understands and believes in capitalism—as a socialist. I'd love to see the Biden-Harris campaign flip the script on them.
So, the straight line to a just society was defined by Adam Smith in the 18th century, and Saint Ronnie was simply following the long straight line of the many who went before him heading in the opposite direction.
If my claim appears to be wrong, my promise is that the appearance is an illusion. That said, trust but verify. To verify, I suggest three references. The first two are in the "Being Human" podcasts at firsthuman.com. The first is around 36 minutes into podcast 112 with Michael J. Gelb (What if da Vinci Built Companies?), and the second is around 25 minutes into podcast 109 with Raj Sisodia (The Healing Organization),. The third reference is the Wikipedia article on Adam Smith's book.
Thank you. When the Republicans embraced Reagan, I woke from my libertarian bubble and registered Democrat. Reagan was a polished actor with a mean streak who punched down on the vulnerable. He broke the Air Traffic Controllers’ Union while the rest of the unions stayed quiet. Those air traffic controllers had a stressful job under constant pressure to make air travel safe. And the there was his calling ketchup a vegetable and his solution to homeless people sleeping on heat grates for warmth in the cold ? Raise the grates to make them inaccessible. So when some of these never trump Republicans take comfort in being a Reagan Republican, they would do well to remember that Reagan’s reign laid the foundation.
There aren't enough dirty words in the English to accurately convey the depth of my hatred for that c***s***er and all his ilk. May they rot in h-e-double-sticks.
I recall vividly the day it was announced that Reagan had won the election. A coworker asked me why was I so angry? I replied,, "This is one of the worst days in our country's history." I never liked Reagan, even as the voice over for 20 Mule Team Borax, sponsor of "Death Valley Days". (Yep, I am THAT old!) Reagan was a phony to his core. His wife, Nancy, dabbled in all types of sorcery which she used to "guide" and advise Ronnie. (Or, so the reports went.) The cultists already were laying the grroundwork to seize the country.
He was just another figurehead who shook his head and agreed when others talked. He was not schooled in what was good for the country and listened to what was good for conservatives and republicans.
I would say from Nixon to Reagan to Trump....straight line. Dishonesty, pandering to the wealthy and grudges Negative- except that Reagan gave a false positive.
Yeah, but those pouring in over the Southern border are not from Europe. They are not white. That makes them inferior and we can't have that. The developed world's birth rate is way below replacement rates. We will be the only developed country with a population that is not shrinking thanks to those inferior brown and black people looking for a better life. (note sarcasm)
Good question. Here's my answer. As soon as humans learn that wisdom is not connected to intelligence. There's a lot of very intelligent—not to mention well educated—people in the MAGA Republican Party. But add up all the wisdom of that entire group, then add up all the wisdom of a randomly selected classroom of fifth graders, then place a bet on which group has more wisdom. I'm all in on the fifth graders.
Isn’t it sad that you have to actually note that you are being sarcastic. Welcome to America, a gated community and resort for the wealthy , privileged and powerful. Oh and please close and lock the gate as you enter. ( disgust and sarcasm )
That’s why the Rs are promoting wife and mother as highest calling. And many evangelicals (and others) are increasingly having more than the 2 children (replacement value).
Elites of the southern Baptists have been raping, abusing people?
Other outright Republican elites have been abusing America's working classes?
I'd like to suggest a seven-year-old piece by Rebecca Solnit which a friend of mine recently sent me -- and which I'd not known of previously:
Rebecca Solnit: The Loneliness of Donald Trump ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)
Please, fellow Heather readers, don't be put off by the title -- having Donald feel lonely doesn't come close to the beauty of this piece -- which speaks exactly to the rapists and abusers Heather cites today.
Midway through Rebecca's, she quotes that great succinct statement on too many American elites, and how "“They were careless people,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in "The Great Gatsby." "They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
Elsewhere in Rebecca's she itemizes how even seven years ago Trump and his minions were at full war with American democracy, our key institutions -- and this, with the January 6 insurrection nowhere yet in sight.
The SBC and Robert Morris's church elders knew what was going on. They HAD to've.
In addition, Morris had already been exposed once before and been forgiven after claiming to be repentant. It couldn't have taken him long to get back to his regular ways.
An amazing conundrum, Gary -- how people lie. And so much.
We can pathologize the el-sicko, fat, orange guy. We can note how our late-night comics have long had his number. We can appreciate how a jury of 12 everyday Americans quickly return guilty verdicts to his criminality.
But so many Republicans just sucking up to him, repeating, worsening his lies? And sufficiently corrupt justices of the Clarence court just unwinding all the rope he might like for evading the 14th amendment's section three, and for delay after delay after delay?
The overarching theme to outlawing abortion in the red states is the legalization of sexual predation by men. TX under the current administration prosecutes 1/3 as many sexual predator cases as the previous administration.
So if you're inclined to rape someone, head south white man. /S
Rape was indeed a long standing practice in the South, especially the rape of enslaved Black women. The descendants of enslaved Black people are not “pure” Africans. Look at the range of skin colors-“light skin to dark skin”.
If you read the truth about our history these practices will be revealed. Raping a Black woman was a right of passage for some young white men. It solidified their “right” to do so. It also increased their wealth because any child born by a Black woman was a slave for life.
“As it relates to amalgamation I can say, that I have been in respectable families (so called) where I could distinguish the family resemblance in the slaves who waited upon the table..it is so common for the female slaves to have White children, that little or nothing is ever said about it. Very few inquiries are made as to who the father is.” -Reverend Francis Hawley (1839) Hawley was from Connecticut and lived in North Carolina for 14 years.
“No property can be vested more profitably than in young healthy negro women. They will, by breeding, double their value every five years. Mulattoes are surer than pure negroes. White men were motivated to rape black women because ‘mixed blood’ demands a considerably higher price than pure black.” (Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the U.S. 1841, p. 33)
Most people have no idea how
much slavery based on skin color has shaped not just America but world affairs. Happy Juneteenth.
Thank you for sharing this Gina. It really does explain why the Southern Baptist Convention is so lenient when it comes to sexual assault and also the Southern politicians rarely say a thing about rape.
Thank you, Lynell, for your most kind notice, and practical service for other readers.
By the way, too, Lynell -- here's a bit from that Rebecca Solnit on how easily elites lie, and remain stupid in their lying:
"I always pair privilege with obliviousness; obliviousness is privilege’s form of deprivation. When you don’t hear others, you don’t imagine them, they become unreal, and you are left in the wasteland of a world with only yourself in it, and that surely makes you starving, though you know not for what, if you have ceased to imagine others exist in any true deep way that matters."
“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.”
Rebecca Solnit's description of privileged obliviousness that leads to ceasing "to imagine others exist in any true deep way that matters" captures the danger of othering, of having no empathy or caring. That lays the foundation for state repression and exploitation of targeted groups, as with the slave trade of the European colonies and with the Holocaust and pogroms of the Hitler and Stalin regimes. And that obviously, painfully continues today by corporations and the top 1% of the rest of us.
Phil, the silo schooling in which privileged students never meet poor or even middle class students, vastly reduces knowledge of, or empathy for, the circumstances of those less fortunate. Very possibly the only only good side effect of the draft was that it often put poor kids in contact with rich kids in circumstances that forged friendships.
But in addition to the physical separating, isolation, what you nicely note as "silo schooling," we have also the imaginative separating, whereby instructors have learned to keep all humanities out of their purview.
There’s a parallel between this obliviousness and the dissociation that comes from trauma. I think many, many people are dissociated this way. When they’re powerful it does widespread harm.
Wisdom is our species-specific talent. In other words, it's a talent we're born with, but to be developed to a high level, it must be practiced. President Biden has developed it to a world-class level.
MAGA Republicans have regressed by failing to constrain their ignorance with wisdom. Instead, they are practicing unconstrained ignorance, which is an acquired skill that can be developed to a high level through practice. President Biden's predecessor has developed it to a world-class level.
Put another way, an individual can get really good at caring, which is good for everyone in the long term, or the individual can get really good at not caring, which is bad for everyone in the long term, including the individual.
For the excessively wealthy, everything is fungible, including wisdom.
Nixon saw himself as the decision-maker while Dr. Kissinger was only his court "wise-man". If Dick decided he'd like a different wise-man, Kissinger could be gone - just like that!
I think it depends on your definition of wisdom. Here's mine:
Everyone has a circle of influence and a circle of concern. The more powerful a person is, the larger that person's circle of influence. Money is a form of power. Regardless of power, if the person's circle of influence is encompassed by the person's circle of concern, then the person is sufficiently wise and otherwise insufficiently wise. So, if a person's actions are having a significant negative effect on other people, and the actor doesn't care, then the actor is unwise.
By that measure, Nixon and Kissinger were insufficiently wise. Also, if you chose the name of an excessively wealthy person at random and asked me to bet that the person was insufficiently wise, I'd go all in.
Thank you for the correct link. After reading and upon reflection, he seems to survive by the wealth and influence of those who prop him up as their stooge. At the time of Ms. Solnit’s writing, he didn’t own the judiciary so they bought it for him. It seems there is always someone waiting in the wings. Someone who sees the flaw in the plan and is patiently thinking far enough ahead to execute the manipulations necessary to pave the path for the buffoon to look successful once again. The world knows he has no clothes, but the Americans who are blinded by lies see him beautifully costumed. The rest of us see who clearly flounder in our attempts to simultaneously protect our idealistic experiment in governance and bring about his demise.
The "GOP" is in a rising fever of hubris. I like to think it's pride before a fall. Trumps remarks are restoring student debt? Is that really going to garner votes?
Phil, that's a great quote from Fitzgerald. It could not be more appropriate to describe the architects of the Reagan disaster and their later acolytes.
Wonderful piece. Thanks for the link. As Heather points out, the support of the "moral majority" like the Southern Baptists makes sense in light of the underlying tolerance for the bad behavior of many in their leadership. Behind Trump's conviction is the belief at the time that following the "grab them by the pussy" remarks the revelation he had an affair with a porn star while his wife dealt with pregnancy and delivery would have a bad effect on his support. We are now finding out that the good moral MAGA crowd are not at all put out by this behavior. Bewildering.
As always, Solnit is worth reading, and it saddens me to see how we had a chance to squalch him four years ago, but he popped up (and was propped up) again. LitHub is now behind a paywall, but you can negotiate it if you wade through the ads.
I've not gotten any notice of paywall, progwoman. But I can understand it.
Several hundred commented (for free) on Rebecca's great piece. Almost all ignored everything, all the great details in it, somehow carried away instead to right-wing, left-wing takes on Biblical relevance.
I'll be happy to pay for LitHub, if it means ridding those whose group conceits cancel out needed voices as Rebecca's.
I tell people they need to know two things about Evangelicals and Southern Baptists: they are more okay with brutal violence than you want to imagine, and more fearful and weird about sex than you could ever imagine.
When I was a teenager, one of my only few friends disappeared, as if his own family had placed him in witness protection. He fell in love with a girl from our group. He participated in swooning acts of courtship (that is what they still call it, as if the buggy is around the corner): he carved her furniture, he wrote stories where every main character was her name. He touched her too. Turns out he also touched his sisters. And took illicit photos of the girls he wanted to touch but didn't. Just like those priests, he went to live somewhere else, and no one spoke of it, except all they did was speak of it through a myriad of back channels.
I wish I was more surprised when I found out, more shocked, more disgusted, more inclined to write him off as a liar, someone totally different than who I knew. But it all seemed so terribly of a piece with the glimpses I would get behind the curtain of his family, the details he would let slip when we were talking boy-to-boy behind some stairwell while younger kids were dancing. Like my few other friends of that religious persuasion, every time a feeling normal to budding men would begin to bubble up verbally, suddenly there was a feeling of paranoia in the air, as if the Stasi lived somewhere behind his own eyes. I'm sure it came from his Dad. The first time I went over to their house when his father was home, I swear I could feel something thick and black permeating the air of the interior. I couldn't believe the smoke detectors weren't going off. He was the sort of person who knew he created that feeling in his space, and liked it. My friend spoke of connecting to his father through violence, almost thankful for the existence of violence, for here was *some* acceptable way to connect: watching bloody zombie shows the girls weren't allowed near, backyard gun ranges for birthdays, wrestling matches to settle scores.
His sister was commanded not to violence but purity, in the form of a literal ring around her finger. Too bad that ring wasn't powerful enough to protect her from her own home. Her Mom dressed as if she had been beamed in from Little House on the Prairie, but of course she had not been. She was an educated person before she gave her heart to an oppressive form of love, both from the man in her kitchen and the man up in the sky. Her kindness couldn't be snuffed, and when it came to her daughter, sometimes a bit of her own mind would assert itself again. The mother saw to it that her daughter could be seen in front of her friends wearing normal clothes, carrying the "family phone" as if it was her own, speaking into it with as much personality as she could find within her.
My friend's sister took that inch her mother gave her and then took a mile in her own name. She took off the purity ring and got out. She took some of her friends with her. and when she did, they were called whores to their face. Just as Jesus would have done, I'm sure. I guess Jesus looks more forgivingly at those who must be sent away than those who choose to send themselves. I ran into her years later at the county fair, hair in the wind, fashions mismatched, and bearing the proudest nose ring I have ever seen in my life, and a sense of relief and justice coursed through me.
I looked up "evangelical" in the dictionary. It's someone who promotes the good news of the Gospel. The good news of the Gospel is that things will turn out well if we all adhere to the "treat others the way you would want to be treated if you were them" principle in every context. It doesn't make any sense to me to refer to people as evangelist when, in every word and deed, they are saying to Jesus "Thanks for your advice, but no thanks."
In other words, they are phony evangelicals. There are real evangelicals. If we continue to say evangelicals are bad, then we're making a lot of the good guys out to be the bad guys.
One absolutely essential and easy-to-take step we must make to defeat the MAGA Republicans in November is, metaphorically speaking, to stop acting like the fish who notices the worm without noticing the hook.
I do NOT believe he wants to be President for another 4 years; he wants to SERVE our democracy.
I am sure his family would much prefer he retire from politics and concentrate on his Biden Library. But, he wants to SERVE.. He's younger than I am, and I can still put 2 and 2 together....God dammit!
Judith, of all the slurs that the MAGA send his way, those labeling him in various ways as a bad man--I think: ARE YOU BLIND? We are living in the upside-down. The truly good people are scorned while those living the "deadly sins" in full sight are championed.
Judith-I share your disappointment about human beings on this earth. We have to believe in something though so I’m keeping the faith that more people will open their eyes, hearts and minds-in other words I’m hoping they’ll be “woke”.
Thank you Judith Dyer. Keep writing as clearly as you can… President Biden is the life long student (senator and active participant in governing our United States.)
The BEST communicator of How DEMOCRACY Works. Notice that Pres Biden has kept a stable group of committed workers at the White House since the day he was sworn into the Presidency for his first four years.
And you can be sure they are all staying with him if possible as the work they are doing to keep our country moving through such complex diplomatic, and politically and socially and economically challenging times ( not to add the weather /CLIMATE changes internationally)…. Biden has the brains and the team to help us learn how to live safely…
It’s too early on Weds … good day and keep thinking, talking w friends who are voting, we have our own important piece coming up very soon!
Trump and Program 2025 are the Republican agenda for the rich and corporate wealth…Biden and the Dems are the party with the plans to help the average guy and his or her personal interests. It’s not rocket science…but this time..the price of a Republican win is our democracy….its been moving in that direction in the past few decades..but we are here..right now, today.
What pres. Biden is doing matches what responsible business leaders SHOULD be doing.
Instead of looting our assets in order to carve out as many short-term gains as possible (or ethical) he's making the nation function with an eye toward longevity and rational growth. These days we're doing our best to pay our bills on time and follow our original operational mandate.
Doing that conflicts directly with the Republican "Bob Welch" model, and brings their game to a halt, so we can be sure they'll be loud and resentful. These guys play dirty, so be forewarned.
I think what President Biden is doing through our government mirrors what Melinda French Gates and Mackenzie Scott have been doing by donating directly vast fortunes of their wealth to the masses. Make no mistake, as to Ms. French Gates, she was a full partner of the Gates Foundation, not just a wife behind the man. The same is true for Ms. Scott.
"Now people who have lived in the U.S. for at least ten years and are legally married to a U.S. citizen can apply without leaving first. So can those who were brought here as children who have earned a degree at an accredited U.S. institution of higher learning in the United States and who have received a job offer from a U.S. employer in a field related to their degree.
This rule will affect about 500,000 spouses of U.S. citizens and about 50,000 noncitizen children under the age of 21 whose parent is married to a U.S. citizen. It will affect 50,000 to 100,000 “Dreamers.” "
“We’re a nation of immigrants,” Biden said as he announced the order. “That’s who we are.”
I came from a place of poverty into a family that had, in my mind, great wealth due to a family business. My husband at the time looked through his inch and a half thick tax return and reported an exorbitant figure, at least in my mind, that he owed in taxes. When I asked him how he could pay such a sum his response was, "I'm happy to pay it because it means that we made good money last year." His attitude, and that of his family and partners, is the truest form of responsibility.
It always puzzles me what these so-called religious leaders, Baptists, Catholics, etc., who rape and abuse in secret for decades think will happen at the end of their lives. They must not actually believe in God or heaven and hell, so they are nothing but complete shams and impostors. Why are so many people fooled and deceived by them? I hope they will meet their God face to face. What will they have to say for themselves?
The Christian religion in America was built on a foundation of white supremacy and patriarchy. Churches, schools, media and laws were intentionally targeted to inculcate their caste ideology.
It’s all written down-original documents, speeches and newspaper accounts from the early years of America are fascinating reads.
A quote that most appropriately found me this morning- “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)
Things aren't very black & white these days. I admire how Biden is using a lot of nuance and wisdom in his decision making. As always , thank you for the info Dr Richards.
This has cult written all over it...''A 2022 report on the [Southern Baptist] church and sex abuse was so damning that Russell Moore wrote: “I was wrong to call sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention…a crisis. Crisis is too small a word. It is an apocalypse.” The investigation, he says, “uncovers a reality far more evil and systematic than I imagined it could be.”
The SBC is just a symptom of what the GOP has become.
Both the SBC and the GOP exhibit characteristics of a cult, such as blind loyalty, unaccountable leadership, and harmful practices concealed from outsiders.
Pedofilia is the charismatic pastors desire and stock in trade. Gain the trust and rely on your moral charcter to cast aside any suspision. There is at least 150 years of history documenting various cult leaders and their crimes. How the Baptist Church keeps it's tax exempt status is a mystery, also, considering how overtly politically active it has been for many decades.
Boy Scouts, LDS. Catholic Church. This Baptist's obituary is only another telling of a long known story.
As for the MAGAs , follow the money. Adolph Hitler was a face that roused the crowds as was Ronald Raygun and Donald Trump, for the same big money interests. Their goal of world domination has been working 24/7 since the opportunity arose in the failing Weimar. Nuremberg only got the official perpetrators of WWII and the money has been working diligently ever since. They just might pull it off this time, considering how polite all the Democratic Party has been for the past nine years. You know who I'm talking about.
Saint Ronnie was a son-of-a-bitch, first as governor of California then as President. There's a straight line from him to the Orange Jesus.
St. Ronnie re-introduced the notion that messy old democracy is a sorry joke, and that the proper leaders and greatest benefactors of society were and are the very wealthiest; and yes, here we are at the edge of an abyss.
My Mom would like it to be known that her first vote for President was to re-elect Carter, she waited in the cold in a bad neighborhood to do so, she did so even after she saw him conceding on the TV in the store window, she does not regret it, and she was right all along.
Me too, Will….well, except for the cold, bad neighborhood and concession speech part….still admire the man and Rosalyn too.
Barbara, what a different (and better, I'd surmise) world we would be living in today if Carter had been reelected. But he continued to strive to make it better internationally, post-presidency, with his efforts to increase access to fair voting, eradication of Guinea worm in Africa, expansion of human rights, etc.; and domestically by his participation in Habitat for Humanity. Jonathan Alter's bio of Carter is excellent.
And back to the Babtists - I believe our wonderful JC (Jimmy Carter) was a lifelong devoted Babtist. Until his church refused to honor women as equals by not allowing them to become priests. He and Roslyn left their "church" behind and instead lived simply, as true Christians.
Thanks for the unknown true goodness of President Carter.
Yes Doug, but a bigger difference would have been Al Gore instead of the draft dodger Bush.
Gore vs Bush was another another historically crucial race, but I see the candidacy of obviously incompetent GWB as ultimately enabled by the so called "Reagan Revolution". Lay the onset of the Reagan presidency over the dramatic shift of the sum of US assets away from the middle class, and towards the richest one tenth of one percent of our citizens; and follow the flow of money into our political process in multiple aspects.
George, believe me when I say I loathed GWB (and still do), but he did serve, albeit in the National Guard. The fact that he evaded the draft has no effect whatsoever on my judgment of him, as thousands of others did as well, including Clinton under whom he served as VP. I turned 18 in 1973, but only 1 draft number was picked that year, and it wasn't mine. Had I been drafted I probably would have gone to Canada or something. (On the other hand, if I'd come of age in '68, I think I'd have reported).
Rabid political anti-environmentalism began with Reagan, it got to be absurd pretty quickly, with Watt and Gorsuch (mom of THAT Gorsuch) proving to be political embarrassments. I keep wondering where we might be today, in terms of climate, prices, international petrostate intrigues, etc. had we taken the high road vs "oil is King". Vs environment be damned.
J L, as I believe I stated here before, '76 was the 1st election I was eligible to vote in, and I voted for Carter. However, I was rabidly anti-nuclear power, while he was a big supporter, so I shunned him in '80 and voted for John Anderson, who wasn't a spoiler as a 3rd party, as it turned out. My views on nuclear have softened ever so slightly (I still worry about accidents, loooonnng term storage of materials, and other possible catastrophic scenarios) -- Big Oil, as we all know, is a threat to humanity's future on a habitable planet, for the reasons you cite.
He was the onlybpresidentbwevevhad who was trained in international deplomacy.
No. He was not "profesionally trained" in international anything. He had a BA from Whittier College (then a 'cow college") and a second-rate law school. He was like all the other right wing "hex-spurtz" - a legend in his own mind.
Carter was hardly a right-wing anything.
TC—that sounds like Tricky Dick Nixon you are describing. When Nixon died, he lay in repose in Southern California and thousands of people passed by the bier. My brother and I agreed that if we had been close enough, we would have joined in the line, with a mallet and a stake.
I humbly beg your pardon: I remembered incorrectly.
Clinton attended the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., receiving a Bachelor of Science in foreign service degree in 1968.
I think you're talking about Reagan, but replying to a post on Carter.
Or, as U.Utah Phillips, the "the golden voice of the great Southwest" put it, "An 'ex' is a has been, and 'spurt' is a drip under pressure".
Except he was the president who started withdrawing money from Social Security. The federal government owes SS $1.7T, hence the reason the fund is in trouble.
She certainly was. I have yet to forgive Carter for that act of moron stupidity. Conceding at 4:45pm when the polls were still open on the west coast depressed turnout, with the result that several Democratic congressional seats became Republiscum, and it took 20 years to repair the damage. Carter was an excellent ex-president, but a failure as the actual thing. I believe it was because he believed everyone was good, which is seldom if ever true of people in politics and power.
Everyone is flawed. Main lesson I have learned in my long life.
Love your new name for the Republiscum!
I too revere my vote for Carter as an Act for the Greater Good.
When Reagan announced his candidacy in the center of hate country where vote organizers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had been murdered less than two decades before and succeeded through this public knowledge to his candidacy I was certain Carter would win.
Reagan’s victory signaled the victory of the South and beginning of a very dark era.
My first vote was for Carter in 1976. He came to our college campus to meet and greet and we all knew he was the man Raygun wanted to be. Carter although not the best speaker was intelligent, knowledgeable and cared about the country.
My first vote, at 18, was for McGovern in '72. And as I think back through the decades, I can't think of a single democratic contender who wouldn't have done a better job than the republican. I have never thought the democrat did a great job, but I am certain that they would have done more good and less harm than the repub winner in every instance. While I expect the upcoming election to be turned into a death match by the current gop, I am still inclined to believe that president Biden and Kamala Harris will earn a second term when the dust settles. I do believe that there is real evidence for my guarded optimism, not just fear-fueled wishcasting. But I am also afraid that trump/maga might muscle their way into power. Terrifying! Why wont Americans learn from their mistakes?
That was my first vote for President, too. I knew I was voting for the better man. We'll never know for sure if he'd have been a better President during those four years, but I believe we'd be in a much better place today had Carter won. Doubtful that Ronnie would have been elected four years later with ageism being what it is in our country.
Will, your mom really was right. I made the mistake in 1980 of voting for a 3rd party candidate, John Anderson. I liked him, but I didn't realize at the time that act was actually throwing away my vote. There was so much anti-Carter politicking I couldn't see what was really going on. Carter was a decent president, not always with the best support in the White House and a pro-Reagan force that constantly lied about who Reagan was and kept portraying this run-of-the-mill actor as something he was not. There are not enough negatives to describe who Reagan really was in addition to moving rather steadily into Alzheimer's almost from the beginning of his reign. His wife and his aides knew it and just like with Trump, no one is sharing the truth with the American people. Reagan got re-elected even though they knew, but We the People didn't. I could never vote for Reagan because living in DC at the time, his weaknesses and cruelties were more obvious than in many other parts of America. Trump may also be re-elected the same way. We seem not to be able to learn.
my first vote for president and my favorite president... Jimmy Carter - a shining beacon
The first time I didn’t vote for him. The send time I did. Today, Jimmy Carter’s photo is the only ex-president that I framed and have on my walls.
Failure to reelect Carter is a testimony of the ignorance of voters who are easily influenced by outward entertainment attraction.
Carter was a far better president than most give him credit for. What is was not, was a polished TV personality, which in the screen age has become a prerequisite for the job and and a large part of how the input of billionaires to our political climate has exploded. Lincoln was eloquent, but TV is set up to score slick one-liners. I doubt he would be elected today. Reagan was just a "B" actor, but a practiced pitch-man who knew the medium. I still encounter liberals who score Reagan as one of our best presidents, or the last "good" Republican president. The media fell in love with him, and that count's a lot for popularity, but little for perspicacity, honesty, or wisdom. Our future is too real to just be a game, and alternative political outcomes are of far more consequence than mere "likes" or just changing channels.
Carter was the first President I voted for. I missed the 1972 election by a month, but I was ready to vote the next time around. I never regretted that vote!
Will - being young, disconnected from politics and therefore still under the influence of my dad, I pulled the lever for Raygun. Never since have I voted R.
I didn’t understand my dad’s politics until I read the R’s party platform from the ‘70s: respect for the natural world, respect for unions (my dad was a pilot’s union leader), care for others, and true fiscal responsibility. That party is as dead as my dad, who would have absolutely detested The GLOAT (greatest loser/liar of all time).
But I carry forward his legacy of appreciation for Nature, unions and service to others. And I’m sure I’m not the only person with such sentiments. We just need to motivate them!
The elevation of white supremacy cloaked in economic promises.
And religious piety.
Piety anyway. I am struck by the contrasts between the humility, asceticism, and compassion Jesus (so far as records show) actually preached and the wealth and brutal power seeking churches, at the ones that got the most historical attention, that claim to act in Jesus's name. I know less about Islam, but hear of similar complaints between the scripture and it's supposed implementation. It seem that power, and a thirst tor coercive power, tends to corrupt.
I'm pretty sure a lot of white supremacy came out of the Baptist Church. Hell Fire!
Yeah but he could deliver a speech. Americans fall for actors/ frauds again.
One of my favorite comments about the election of Ronald Reagan was from Paul Newman. When a reporter asked him, “What do you think about an actor becoming President?’, he replied, “Who said he could act?”
Thank you for a good laugh to start my day. It eases a little of the angst I usually feel these days.
J L, and within that very rich set, the "players" are white and male almost to a person. It's not that rich, white, ego-driven men don't have anything to offer, it's that they don't have everything to offer and are simply not equipped to deal with most of the challenges any society has. Their bubble does not let them see any world view beyond their own. Even a glimpse they might have, is immediately dismissed as "nowhere as good as what they already have." And that is why we are at the cliff's edge and the only thing the crew in charge can imagine is how they can get richer, how they can shut everyone else up, and how they can keep the power they have accumulated through the wealth they erroneously believe they gained on their own merrits. Yep, we are in trouble!
Some people who amass great fortunes are multi-talented, but according to the guardian the #1 thing the super rich have in common is being born into a rich family. Aside from ties to organized crime, "money pouring in from Russia" and a sucker being born every minute, that's certainly the story of Trump's fortune that Robert Reich claims would be much greater had he parked his inheritance in an index fund and let it cook. Add to that tax laws tailored to benefit the well off, such as capital gains, carried interest, etc.
That's to say nothing of the scratch to hire lobbyists who sometime literally write the laws Congress dutifully passes, or effectively vetoes them. Nor armies of tricky lawyers. Nor billion dollar gifts to right wing causes or multi-million dollar gifts to $COTUS judges, all perfectly legally, since they buy the laws.
I read that the famed Monopoly game was originally invented to demonstrate how people get robbed by monopolists; but most players of the table game retire to cozy beds, not the street, if they lose.
Yes Graham.
I'd argue the straight line runs from Nixon to the Orange Clown through St. Ronnie and WBush.
Yeah, Nixon got things rolling off the rails, but the whole of the party was not yet on board. By Reagan, outrageous big lies were the core GOP MO.
JL, realize that Nixon was very influential in the Reagan administration. St. Ronnie called on Nixon for advice frequently, but kept it quiet for obvious reasons. "Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush began to consult him although they did not publicize that fact. Republicans were still wary of the public's reaction to Nixon but they were interested in his opinions about foreign affairs. He remained an acknowledged expert on foreign policy,..." https://millercenter.org/president/nixon/life-after-the-presidency
I could miss a lot of the subtleties of Nixon's history, and he was a "dirty tricks" sort from early in his career, which set the tone for much that has followed, but I noticed that he at least played along, and perhaps maintained some elements of fealty to the common good, while Reagan was ready to hand over the whole of the nation to plutocrats. Nixon promoted environmental protection, and even established the EPA, which was an anathema to Reagan and the energy industry. Nixon pushed the nation to the right, but It seemed that Reagan Inc. managed a virtual coup. Anyway, they were both bad news and pioneers of the bad faith politics we see full blown in the "GOP" today.
You should also read Rick Perlstein's four volume history of the Right in the last half of the 20th Century. "Before the Storm" on Goldwater; Nixonland" on you know who; "The Invisible Bridge" about the political creation of Reagan and Reaganism; and "Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-80".
thank you -- I will look for these books!
Yes, "Invisible Bridge" is a real eye opener. As a Californian, I lived through his terms as governor. What a harbringer for the chaos to come,
Nixon did NOT "establish the EPA". Well technically, I guess establish is a good word. He consolidated several existing agencies into one, like a good little bepureaucrst.
An expert on turning foreign policy into war crimes.
Same could be said of Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State & National Security Advisor during Nixon and on into the Ford presidency.
Oh yes, Kissinger was the Very Big Gargoyle.
The poster gargoyle
Expert on foreign policy, seems like a joke to me.
Banana republicans maketh me to lie down in green pastures and puketh my guts out.
One way to put it.
Yep, not sick except when I have to look at or listen to repubs
Jeri, yes, Kissinger was something in foreign policy; he was a disrupter, murderer, hater, user while pretending to be such a good guy. Disgusting!
Makes me wish I believed in hell; though I would worry the Kissinger would get a heroes welcome when he got there.
And he thought he was God's gift to women. Deluded as well, with an ego to match Nixons
The destruction of the Republican Party began long before either Nixon or Reagan were gleams in their parents' eyes. Go read Jacob Heilbrunn's "America Last: The Republican Love Affair With Foreign Dictators."
Evil abuses of power and money seem to lurk in every generation, but the degree to which they predominate seems to move around and ebb and flow;
Never forget Reagan's original cabinet was comprised entirely of hoods retrieved from Nixon's arsenal. It was an overt move to re-establish everything he'd begun.
It certainly does. All the Big Gargolyles in Republican/fascist circles nowadays got their start as Small Gargoyles under Nixon. Like Jill Wine-Banks said back when Ford pardoned the war criminal (his extra four years of the Vietnam war saw the majority of American casualties, not to mention a few million Southeast Asians, and all he got in December 1972 was a peace that offered less than the one he sabotaged in 1968 that LBJ negotiated) "I wanted to see that shovel nose sticking out between bars."
No, it’s antecedents are Barry Goldwater , Joe McCarthy and way before them, Woodrow Wilson, if ya really want to get funky.
Or……Roy Cohn, Lee Atwater, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon.
Paul Weyrich started it all.
I had more respect for Goldwater than Joe McCarthy.
Don't forget Goldwater. He was John the Baptist for these troglodytes.
It didn't miss HW.
100Panthers, don't forget Daddy Bush. He was seriously problematic too, just a little less obvious about it than the others.
Agree wholeheartedly except that line is crooked and now so bent that it resembles a boomerang 🪃
Not so saintly Ronnie was head of the Screen Actor's Guild in blacklisting days; Ronnie was on the General Electric (GE) Chicken & Jello lunch circuit for many years before becoming Governor. As governor his first target was the University of California where he & other Regents raised tuition fees which more than tripled in my undergraduates years at UCLA.
The faces of undergraduates changed significantly in my university days.
I strongly recommend Lou Cannon's biography of Reagan: "President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime"
I just wrote about that last week, Bryan. Ronnie's calm voice gained the trust of the nation to accept massive Cold War expenditures and trickle down econ, as well as dumbing down the finest educational system in the world so people would stop asking educated questions about war profiteering and, you know.... GE being the biggest "defense" contractor in the world. What's happening with the psyciatrists and the Merchan sentencing hearing? BTW.
I always hated his voice -- sounded so faux gee-shucks and yet patronizing. Yech. And the Nancy Regan adoration stare -- which she handed down to Mike Pence.
He grated on my every nerve fiber, and she made me heave.
Just say no. Nancy cured all of us.
Wish MAGAts would follow her advice. Nobody else did, I think
Just say no to thugs.
He somehow creeped me out as a pre-pubescent kid. To me he just radiated phony. It was shocking to see how many people loved big bother.
B movie star, would have passed him by
And the orange turds weird speaking style. wtf is with that?
Speaking “style”= increasing dementia.
But the press found it charming.
😊
Ransom Almost been killed in an assassination attempt pushed his tax cuts through Congress.
Side perk
Did you listen to Bandy Lees zoom call Sunday? Pretty depressing.
GOP don't need no education.
"Yes, you do! You just used a double negative!" -Moss, from The IT Crowd
Will, I’ve used advice from that show frequently: “Have you tried turning it off and back on again?”
It often works.
🤣
They think they know it all already, it’s us smucks that they want to keep ignorant.
But you do, and so does everyone else, if the Right is to be defeated and broken.
Broken should include punishment for crimes committed. Confederate leadership were not punished for their treason.
True, and here we are. Someone suggested yesterday Biden should pardon dumpty. Not this time
Reagan also sold out his members when he was president of SAG and accepted the half-offer for residuals, only going forward from 1961, nothing in arrears.
Go read Perlstein's two books on Reagan. Lou Cannon suffered from being friends with Reagan too closely in Sacramento.
Bryan Spot On! Lou Cannon followed Reagan from CA to the White House. His insights into Reagan are the most persuasive that I have read. Reagan was a curious individual who even Nancy didn’t fully know.
Pulitzer-Prize biographer Ed Morris, chosen to be Reagan’s official biographer, took a $3 million advance and couldn’t deliver. In desperation, he intruded himself into his mishmash biography. The result was akin to day old scrambled eggs.
But Nancy fully knew how to hide his dementia.
MaryPat Like Trump, it’s difficult to know when Reagan’s dementia began. Some of his activities early in his administration would suggest dementia, though not clinically diagnosed.
James Garner - who worked with Reagan in SAG - had a two-word description of him: "amiable dunce." When I was involved professionally in California politics, I had occasion to meet him while he was governor. Garner was being generous. Reagan was the shill for all the Republican gargoyles who'd been waiting since 1932 to start tearing down the modern United States, destroying the most affluent middle class of any country in history.
An article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, March 17, 1985 by Lewis Lehrman, detailed their plans. A few sentences “We are at the beginning of this conservative revolution…we are not even in the middle of it….Our economic policies, our social policies, and our international policies are going to be altered in every significant aspect….The president hasn’t even begun the program of constitutional reform and the change in social policy…,This is a peaceful, conservative revolution that will take 20, 30, 40 years to complete.” The title of the article was “Conservative Revolution will alter all policies, says spokesman.”
If I read any more about Reagan’s evil I will be permanently brain dead. This is way enough, considering how successful they were.
Thanks for sharing. Enough for me, I don't need to read any more Reagan or Nixon crap. Lived it.
Wish others who lived it would stop blaming Dems for Repub disasters
Jeri, that is it in a nutshell. Blaming the Democratic Party for the things that RepubliKan politicians have done/are doing.
One of Goebbels major rules for propaganda and why I got banned from FB and T when I posted it as Repub actions.
I have searched, but cannot find this article online. Do you have a link? It sounds prescient. I am currently reading Olivia Butler's The Sower, a dystopian novel which starts in July 2024 and is predicting worse than our current reality, but is hauntingly believable.
Did you get copy of article that I emailed.
I can't post my copy here but I can send you a message if I have email or some way to do it. Wish I could put it on every front page. It blew my socks off. If you are close, I might bring it to you. Ft Worth is in the neck of the woods.
Is it too frivolous in the context of these comments to say that I have loved James Garner ever since Maverick and that learning about his comment about Ronnie made me love him more?
I was just thinking the same thing. Loved all of his movies. One very minor film, but a favorite, “Murphy’s Law.” I keep thinking of it now with his car, parked in front of his pharmacy, covered in political stickers. No one was to touch them.
"Support Your Local Sheriff" is a minor comedy classic. The Maverick episode I still love (hunted it down a few months ago watched it again) is "Gun Shy" - season two, episode 16, "Gun Shy", a send-up of "Gunsmoke." Maverick is seeking buried Confederate treasure in Elwood, Kansas, ad keeps running afoul of U.S. Marshal Mort Dooley, who keeps running him out of town. But he keeps outwitting the lawman., Marshal Dooley comments that several strange people have been passing through his town lately, specifically referring to "that gunslinger who handed out business cards." The opening scene is that opening of the Gunsmoke show,, the pov between the marshal's legs of the guy he's going to shoot. He fires once - the guy is still there. He fires five more times. The guy is still there. Close on Maverick with the opening line, "Would you like me to step into range, Marshal?" delivered as only Garner could.
Everybody (on our side) has that reaction.
They've always hated the New Deal 🙄
A couple of friends, now passed away, left California after R.R. became gov., and moved to our little town in New England. Nixon’s unelected insider “advisers” like Cheney, G.H.W. Bush, were there with Presidents Reagan, G.H.W., and G.W., whose V.P., of course, was Cheney. It seems that no actions occurred that made did not them richer.
The decisions for action after 9/11 made them all a lot richer. Allegedly, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and some others knew every petroleum facility and pipeline in Iraq. Afghanistan was just an excuse to get started. The citizens of this nation are still paying the price of that seemingly endless war, especially those who lost family members.
“Mission Accomplished” was just a PR stunt.
And this little bit is just the “tip of the iceberg.”
Tom I gather that you do not have a high opinion of Reagan. I acknowledge that he was highly scripted and details were not his forte. However, I do give him credit for staying the course with Paul Volcker’s draconian measures against ‘stagflation.’ This cost Reagan significant short-term popularity and hurt the Reps in the 1982 elections.
Also, Reagan, the staunch opponent of the ‘evil empire,’ played a vital role with Gorby in bringing the Cold War to an end with a whimper rather than a bang.
But, as he screamed in a movie, “Where is the rest of me.” Was Bonzo his vice president?
And Trump is an example of the “non-amiable dunce”.
Yeah. But the interesting/dangerous thing about Trump is that he has the con-man's ability to make people like him. I know people here who met him during the Apprentice days and they refer to him as "a funny guy."
Reagan had it too. I experienced his Hollywood-trained ability to concentrate completely on the individual he was interacting with, as though there were no other people around; you felt "special."
And I knew three top World War II German aces back in the 80s, who had met with Hitler more than once, and each told me that he could be the most charming person you ever met - until something he didn't like happened.
All monsters have the ability to put the prey at ease before taking the killing bite.
I lived in California when he ran for office. I voted against him. He wanted to take away financial aide to college students born brilliant to poor families. Of course, he was only an actor. But taking away college funding means less educated students, means less high earning graduates which means less taxes going in to fund California. No one could ever get that in his empty head.
It was filled with whatever script he was blathering
I always had the impression that he was just playing a character, like he did in movies and on TV.
That's actually true.
Better actor than I thought, but guess he was just following Noonan’s scripts.
with some help from Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist and others along the way!
And he was stupid as f as well.
Martin, you're right about the straight line. My argument is that the line is longer than you think.
There is also a straight line heading in the opposite direction—toward a just society—defined by Adam Smith in his book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). In it, he argued that society's failure is due to those with more power imposing their will on those with less power, and that its success depends on our willingness to do the opposite, which is to resolve the dilemmas that inevitably emerge. It is on that foundation that he developed the practice we now refer to as capitalism.
Saint Ronnie took the country in the opposite direction thinking he was promoting capitalism, but who gets to define capitalism? Personally, I believe the guy who invented the concept. That makes Saint Ronnie and the entire MAGA Republican Party a bunch of anti-capitalists.
Bernie Sanders says it's okay to be angry about capitalism. To me, he's unintentionally making the good guys out to be the bad guys. The real bad guys are the anti-capitalist Republicans who hypocritically refer to themselves as capitalists. And then they refer to President Biden—a person who actually understands and believes in capitalism—as a socialist. I'd love to see the Biden-Harris campaign flip the script on them.
So, the straight line to a just society was defined by Adam Smith in the 18th century, and Saint Ronnie was simply following the long straight line of the many who went before him heading in the opposite direction.
If my claim appears to be wrong, my promise is that the appearance is an illusion. That said, trust but verify. To verify, I suggest three references. The first two are in the "Being Human" podcasts at firsthuman.com. The first is around 36 minutes into podcast 112 with Michael J. Gelb (What if da Vinci Built Companies?), and the second is around 25 minutes into podcast 109 with Raj Sisodia (The Healing Organization),. The third reference is the Wikipedia article on Adam Smith's book.
Thank you. When the Republicans embraced Reagan, I woke from my libertarian bubble and registered Democrat. Reagan was a polished actor with a mean streak who punched down on the vulnerable. He broke the Air Traffic Controllers’ Union while the rest of the unions stayed quiet. Those air traffic controllers had a stressful job under constant pressure to make air travel safe. And the there was his calling ketchup a vegetable and his solution to homeless people sleeping on heat grates for warmth in the cold ? Raise the grates to make them inaccessible. So when some of these never trump Republicans take comfort in being a Reagan Republican, they would do well to remember that Reagan’s reign laid the foundation.
There aren't enough dirty words in the English to accurately convey the depth of my hatred for that c***s***er and all his ilk. May they rot in h-e-double-sticks.
I recall vividly the day it was announced that Reagan had won the election. A coworker asked me why was I so angry? I replied,, "This is one of the worst days in our country's history." I never liked Reagan, even as the voice over for 20 Mule Team Borax, sponsor of "Death Valley Days". (Yep, I am THAT old!) Reagan was a phony to his core. His wife, Nancy, dabbled in all types of sorcery which she used to "guide" and advise Ronnie. (Or, so the reports went.) The cultists already were laying the grroundwork to seize the country.
Annenberg! Does anyone recall Annenberg who was Ronnie’s puppeteer and benefactor! Later he was made an Ambassador by Ronnie.
He was just another figurehead who shook his head and agreed when others talked. He was not schooled in what was good for the country and listened to what was good for conservatives and republicans.
Martin, succinct and to the point. Loathed that guy and still do.
I would say from Nixon to Reagan to Trump....straight line. Dishonesty, pandering to the wealthy and grudges Negative- except that Reagan gave a false positive.
We’re a nation of immigrants,” Biden said as he announced the order. “That’s who we are.”
Yeah, but those pouring in over the Southern border are not from Europe. They are not white. That makes them inferior and we can't have that. The developed world's birth rate is way below replacement rates. We will be the only developed country with a population that is not shrinking thanks to those inferior brown and black people looking for a better life. (note sarcasm)
When will humans learn that melanin is not connected to intelligence
Good question. Here's my answer. As soon as humans learn that wisdom is not connected to intelligence. There's a lot of very intelligent—not to mention well educated—people in the MAGA Republican Party. But add up all the wisdom of that entire group, then add up all the wisdom of a randomly selected classroom of fifth graders, then place a bet on which group has more wisdom. I'm all in on the fifth graders.
Beautiful
I would respectfully add-melanin is not synonymous with inferior.
Just an adaptation to living in a hot, sunny hell. Sorry Africa. We may join you, Texas is already hell in the summer.
✅️ Noted! 👍
Isn’t it sad that you have to actually note that you are being sarcastic. Welcome to America, a gated community and resort for the wealthy , privileged and powerful. Oh and please close and lock the gate as you enter. ( disgust and sarcasm )
That’s why the Rs are promoting wife and mother as highest calling. And many evangelicals (and others) are increasingly having more than the 2 children (replacement value).
“If we need people we want them to be us”
Elites of the southern Baptists have been raping, abusing people?
Other outright Republican elites have been abusing America's working classes?
I'd like to suggest a seven-year-old piece by Rebecca Solnit which a friend of mine recently sent me -- and which I'd not known of previously:
Rebecca Solnit: The Loneliness of Donald Trump ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)
Please, fellow Heather readers, don't be put off by the title -- having Donald feel lonely doesn't come close to the beauty of this piece -- which speaks exactly to the rapists and abusers Heather cites today.
Midway through Rebecca's, she quotes that great succinct statement on too many American elites, and how "“They were careless people,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in "The Great Gatsby." "They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
Elsewhere in Rebecca's she itemizes how even seven years ago Trump and his minions were at full war with American democracy, our key institutions -- and this, with the January 6 insurrection nowhere yet in sight.
The SBC and Robert Morris's church elders knew what was going on. They HAD to've.
In addition, Morris had already been exposed once before and been forgiven after claiming to be repentant. It couldn't have taken him long to get back to his regular ways.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
An amazing conundrum, Gary -- how people lie. And so much.
We can pathologize the el-sicko, fat, orange guy. We can note how our late-night comics have long had his number. We can appreciate how a jury of 12 everyday Americans quickly return guilty verdicts to his criminality.
But so many Republicans just sucking up to him, repeating, worsening his lies? And sufficiently corrupt justices of the Clarence court just unwinding all the rope he might like for evading the 14th amendment's section three, and for delay after delay after delay?
It’s obvious to most people that Trump is an incorrigible buffoon and a liar extraordinaire! His sycophants are just plain nauseating! Thanks Phil!
My cab driver in NYC Sunday had nothing good to say about tfg. Says the dislike really amped up after he became prez.
It’s who is funding the circus. He’s just the carnival barker (courtesy of Obama, I think)
The overarching theme to outlawing abortion in the red states is the legalization of sexual predation by men. TX under the current administration prosecutes 1/3 as many sexual predator cases as the previous administration.
So if you're inclined to rape someone, head south white man. /S
Rape was indeed a long standing practice in the South, especially the rape of enslaved Black women. The descendants of enslaved Black people are not “pure” Africans. Look at the range of skin colors-“light skin to dark skin”.
If you read the truth about our history these practices will be revealed. Raping a Black woman was a right of passage for some young white men. It solidified their “right” to do so. It also increased their wealth because any child born by a Black woman was a slave for life.
“As it relates to amalgamation I can say, that I have been in respectable families (so called) where I could distinguish the family resemblance in the slaves who waited upon the table..it is so common for the female slaves to have White children, that little or nothing is ever said about it. Very few inquiries are made as to who the father is.” -Reverend Francis Hawley (1839) Hawley was from Connecticut and lived in North Carolina for 14 years.
“No property can be vested more profitably than in young healthy negro women. They will, by breeding, double their value every five years. Mulattoes are surer than pure negroes. White men were motivated to rape black women because ‘mixed blood’ demands a considerably higher price than pure black.” (Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the U.S. 1841, p. 33)
Most people have no idea how
much slavery based on skin color has shaped not just America but world affairs. Happy Juneteenth.
How can I "like" this. Horrific history. They never tsught us this in Catholic school.
Thank you for sharing this Gina. It really does explain why the Southern Baptist Convention is so lenient when it comes to sexual assault and also the Southern politicians rarely say a thing about rape.
Hey, Phil. I didn't find the story through your link. This one worked for me:
https://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-the-loneliness-of-donald-trump/
Thank you, Lynell, for your most kind notice, and practical service for other readers.
By the way, too, Lynell -- here's a bit from that Rebecca Solnit on how easily elites lie, and remain stupid in their lying:
"I always pair privilege with obliviousness; obliviousness is privilege’s form of deprivation. When you don’t hear others, you don’t imagine them, they become unreal, and you are left in the wasteland of a world with only yourself in it, and that surely makes you starving, though you know not for what, if you have ceased to imagine others exist in any true deep way that matters."
“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.”
– John Adams
dems should post this quote everywhere.as always, John Adams saw things clearly.
Rebecca Solnit's description of privileged obliviousness that leads to ceasing "to imagine others exist in any true deep way that matters" captures the danger of othering, of having no empathy or caring. That lays the foundation for state repression and exploitation of targeted groups, as with the slave trade of the European colonies and with the Holocaust and pogroms of the Hitler and Stalin regimes. And that obviously, painfully continues today by corporations and the top 1% of the rest of us.
Anti-social personality disorder.
Phil, the silo schooling in which privileged students never meet poor or even middle class students, vastly reduces knowledge of, or empathy for, the circumstances of those less fortunate. Very possibly the only only good side effect of the draft was that it often put poor kids in contact with rich kids in circumstances that forged friendships.
https://www.thedp.com/article/2022/01/wharton-professor-nina-strohminger-average-annual-salary-twitter
Contact and of necessity, cooperation.
You've said a lot here, Mary.
But in addition to the physical separating, isolation, what you nicely note as "silo schooling," we have also the imaginative separating, whereby instructors have learned to keep all humanities out of their purview.
There’s a parallel between this obliviousness and the dissociation that comes from trauma. I think many, many people are dissociated this way. When they’re powerful it does widespread harm.
The world shrinks to the dimensions of their orbit
Wisdom is our species-specific talent. In other words, it's a talent we're born with, but to be developed to a high level, it must be practiced. President Biden has developed it to a world-class level.
MAGA Republicans have regressed by failing to constrain their ignorance with wisdom. Instead, they are practicing unconstrained ignorance, which is an acquired skill that can be developed to a high level through practice. President Biden's predecessor has developed it to a world-class level.
Put another way, an individual can get really good at caring, which is good for everyone in the long term, or the individual can get really good at not caring, which is bad for everyone in the long term, including the individual.
For the excessively wealthy, everything is fungible, including wisdom.
Nixon saw himself as the decision-maker while Dr. Kissinger was only his court "wise-man". If Dick decided he'd like a different wise-man, Kissinger could be gone - just like that!
I think it depends on your definition of wisdom. Here's mine:
Everyone has a circle of influence and a circle of concern. The more powerful a person is, the larger that person's circle of influence. Money is a form of power. Regardless of power, if the person's circle of influence is encompassed by the person's circle of concern, then the person is sufficiently wise and otherwise insufficiently wise. So, if a person's actions are having a significant negative effect on other people, and the actor doesn't care, then the actor is unwise.
By that measure, Nixon and Kissinger were insufficiently wise. Also, if you chose the name of an excessively wealthy person at random and asked me to bet that the person was insufficiently wise, I'd go all in.
Thank you for the correct link. After reading and upon reflection, he seems to survive by the wealth and influence of those who prop him up as their stooge. At the time of Ms. Solnit’s writing, he didn’t own the judiciary so they bought it for him. It seems there is always someone waiting in the wings. Someone who sees the flaw in the plan and is patiently thinking far enough ahead to execute the manipulations necessary to pave the path for the buffoon to look successful once again. The world knows he has no clothes, but the Americans who are blinded by lies see him beautifully costumed. The rest of us see who clearly flounder in our attempts to simultaneously protect our idealistic experiment in governance and bring about his demise.
The "GOP" is in a rising fever of hubris. I like to think it's pride before a fall. Trumps remarks are restoring student debt? Is that really going to garner votes?
The Repub Party is still around, but the GOP it ain’t. Think of the GOP as you will, but it is gone and will not be back.
Well said. Let’s hold onto “our idealistic experiment in government”. In truth we can make it work for everyone.
Lynell, Rebecca Solnit’s artistry at its best! Thank you!!
Thank You, I think, Lynell.
I appreciate the link to the article!❣️ It's very well written, and oh, so accurate!
I think I know what you mean, MaryPat 😕
Morning, Lynell. Thanks for finding that!
Morning, Ally! No problem!
Morning. Ally!! Thanks for seconding that!
Morning, MP!
Morning, Lynell!
Wow.
Speaking of retreating back into ones money, Matt Gaetz is about to gaet it in the ethics committee hearing.
I saw that, Ransom, in passing. A bit confused by this since the R's control who chairs these committees. We shall see!
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/18/politics/matt-gaetz-house-ethics-committee/index.html
I believe the investigation started before 2022.
How long do investigations take, really?
In this case, it will last until leadership of Congress returns to the Dems.
Really, thought he had escaped
If only
Phil, that's a great quote from Fitzgerald. It could not be more appropriate to describe the architects of the Reagan disaster and their later acolytes.
Wonderful piece. Thanks for the link. As Heather points out, the support of the "moral majority" like the Southern Baptists makes sense in light of the underlying tolerance for the bad behavior of many in their leadership. Behind Trump's conviction is the belief at the time that following the "grab them by the pussy" remarks the revelation he had an affair with a porn star while his wife dealt with pregnancy and delivery would have a bad effect on his support. We are now finding out that the good moral MAGA crowd are not at all put out by this behavior. Bewildering.
I remember that great saying, "The moral majority is neither." Still fits!
Not really. Men—especially “religious” man—do not police their own.
They think he is a reformed sinner, the most elevated type. Hahaha hahahaha
Love her take on everything. And Fitzgerald’s quote. Thanks for this. She did nail him from the beginning…
"Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care." —Theodore Roosevelt.
Translation: There's at least one former Republican POTUS who agrees with Rebecca Solnit.
As always, Solnit is worth reading, and it saddens me to see how we had a chance to squalch him four years ago, but he popped up (and was propped up) again. LitHub is now behind a paywall, but you can negotiate it if you wade through the ads.
I've not gotten any notice of paywall, progwoman. But I can understand it.
Several hundred commented (for free) on Rebecca's great piece. Almost all ignored everything, all the great details in it, somehow carried away instead to right-wing, left-wing takes on Biblical relevance.
I'll be happy to pay for LitHub, if it means ridding those whose group conceits cancel out needed voices as Rebecca's.
I tell people they need to know two things about Evangelicals and Southern Baptists: they are more okay with brutal violence than you want to imagine, and more fearful and weird about sex than you could ever imagine.
When I was a teenager, one of my only few friends disappeared, as if his own family had placed him in witness protection. He fell in love with a girl from our group. He participated in swooning acts of courtship (that is what they still call it, as if the buggy is around the corner): he carved her furniture, he wrote stories where every main character was her name. He touched her too. Turns out he also touched his sisters. And took illicit photos of the girls he wanted to touch but didn't. Just like those priests, he went to live somewhere else, and no one spoke of it, except all they did was speak of it through a myriad of back channels.
I wish I was more surprised when I found out, more shocked, more disgusted, more inclined to write him off as a liar, someone totally different than who I knew. But it all seemed so terribly of a piece with the glimpses I would get behind the curtain of his family, the details he would let slip when we were talking boy-to-boy behind some stairwell while younger kids were dancing. Like my few other friends of that religious persuasion, every time a feeling normal to budding men would begin to bubble up verbally, suddenly there was a feeling of paranoia in the air, as if the Stasi lived somewhere behind his own eyes. I'm sure it came from his Dad. The first time I went over to their house when his father was home, I swear I could feel something thick and black permeating the air of the interior. I couldn't believe the smoke detectors weren't going off. He was the sort of person who knew he created that feeling in his space, and liked it. My friend spoke of connecting to his father through violence, almost thankful for the existence of violence, for here was *some* acceptable way to connect: watching bloody zombie shows the girls weren't allowed near, backyard gun ranges for birthdays, wrestling matches to settle scores.
His sister was commanded not to violence but purity, in the form of a literal ring around her finger. Too bad that ring wasn't powerful enough to protect her from her own home. Her Mom dressed as if she had been beamed in from Little House on the Prairie, but of course she had not been. She was an educated person before she gave her heart to an oppressive form of love, both from the man in her kitchen and the man up in the sky. Her kindness couldn't be snuffed, and when it came to her daughter, sometimes a bit of her own mind would assert itself again. The mother saw to it that her daughter could be seen in front of her friends wearing normal clothes, carrying the "family phone" as if it was her own, speaking into it with as much personality as she could find within her.
My friend's sister took that inch her mother gave her and then took a mile in her own name. She took off the purity ring and got out. She took some of her friends with her. and when she did, they were called whores to their face. Just as Jesus would have done, I'm sure. I guess Jesus looks more forgivingly at those who must be sent away than those who choose to send themselves. I ran into her years later at the county fair, hair in the wind, fashions mismatched, and bearing the proudest nose ring I have ever seen in my life, and a sense of relief and justice coursed through me.
You’re a wonderful writer, Will. I felt I was right there with you, like a shadow following along.
Saw some like this when I worked at jr high. Homes were no safe haven
I looked up "evangelical" in the dictionary. It's someone who promotes the good news of the Gospel. The good news of the Gospel is that things will turn out well if we all adhere to the "treat others the way you would want to be treated if you were them" principle in every context. It doesn't make any sense to me to refer to people as evangelist when, in every word and deed, they are saying to Jesus "Thanks for your advice, but no thanks."
In other words, they are phony evangelicals. There are real evangelicals. If we continue to say evangelicals are bad, then we're making a lot of the good guys out to be the bad guys.
One absolutely essential and easy-to-take step we must make to defeat the MAGA Republicans in November is, metaphorically speaking, to stop acting like the fish who notices the worm without noticing the hook.
Thanks for sharing your talent for storytelling and the lessons we learn from the truth of real life experiences.
Thank you for highlighting a range on important issues. There is so much going on, it can be overwhelming.
It seemed to me that Putin was not presenting his typical arrogance when visiting Lil’ Kim. Guess he must be desperate.
Putin was able to get Bush and Trump to just adore him. He's no dummy. They are.
Sly eyes.
Beggars do tend to put on their best face when requesting something from another!
and dangerous.
Love Joe Biden a little more every day.
I do NOT believe he wants to be President for another 4 years; he wants to SERVE our democracy.
I am sure his family would much prefer he retire from politics and concentrate on his Biden Library. But, he wants to SERVE.. He's younger than I am, and I can still put 2 and 2 together....God dammit!
Yes, Judith! That's exactly it.
Thanks!
Judith, of all the slurs that the MAGA send his way, those labeling him in various ways as a bad man--I think: ARE YOU BLIND? We are living in the upside-down. The truly good people are scorned while those living the "deadly sins" in full sight are championed.
More evidence that the human race is the most disappointing critter on the planet.
Even if one could believe in a god, that god has turned his/her/it's back in disgust. Off to try again in another galaxy.
Judith-I share your disappointment about human beings on this earth. We have to believe in something though so I’m keeping the faith that more people will open their eyes, hearts and minds-in other words I’m hoping they’ll be “woke”.
Age does not equal incompetence. Not necessarily.
I think if one starts out mindless, it just goes downhill from there. Heather's commenters have been questioning and thinking their whole lives.
............Those MAGAs just gobble up whatever they are fed. They'll probably end up as feeble minded old folks.
Thank you Judith Dyer. Keep writing as clearly as you can… President Biden is the life long student (senator and active participant in governing our United States.)
The BEST communicator of How DEMOCRACY Works. Notice that Pres Biden has kept a stable group of committed workers at the White House since the day he was sworn into the Presidency for his first four years.
And you can be sure they are all staying with him if possible as the work they are doing to keep our country moving through such complex diplomatic, and politically and socially and economically challenging times ( not to add the weather /CLIMATE changes internationally)…. Biden has the brains and the team to help us learn how to live safely…
It’s too early on Weds … good day and keep thinking, talking w friends who are voting, we have our own important piece coming up very soon!
Trump and Program 2025 are the Republican agenda for the rich and corporate wealth…Biden and the Dems are the party with the plans to help the average guy and his or her personal interests. It’s not rocket science…but this time..the price of a Republican win is our democracy….its been moving in that direction in the past few decades..but we are here..right now, today.
What pres. Biden is doing matches what responsible business leaders SHOULD be doing.
Instead of looting our assets in order to carve out as many short-term gains as possible (or ethical) he's making the nation function with an eye toward longevity and rational growth. These days we're doing our best to pay our bills on time and follow our original operational mandate.
Doing that conflicts directly with the Republican "Bob Welch" model, and brings their game to a halt, so we can be sure they'll be loud and resentful. These guys play dirty, so be forewarned.
I think what President Biden is doing through our government mirrors what Melinda French Gates and Mackenzie Scott have been doing by donating directly vast fortunes of their wealth to the masses. Make no mistake, as to Ms. French Gates, she was a full partner of the Gates Foundation, not just a wife behind the man. The same is true for Ms. Scott.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mackenzie-scott-donates-640-million-361-nonprofits-rcna144113
https://apnews.com/article/melinda-french-gates-donation-reproductive-women-rights-ab3512903cac247960d1fe03eabaeb89
🩷
O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years
Biden is mostly alone, with support shakey at best.
People said that about Lincoln too.
So true, but we have social media to color our world.
The best part of today's LFAA:
"Now people who have lived in the U.S. for at least ten years and are legally married to a U.S. citizen can apply without leaving first. So can those who were brought here as children who have earned a degree at an accredited U.S. institution of higher learning in the United States and who have received a job offer from a U.S. employer in a field related to their degree.
This rule will affect about 500,000 spouses of U.S. citizens and about 50,000 noncitizen children under the age of 21 whose parent is married to a U.S. citizen. It will affect 50,000 to 100,000 “Dreamers.” "
“We’re a nation of immigrants,” Biden said as he announced the order. “That’s who we are.”
I came from a place of poverty into a family that had, in my mind, great wealth due to a family business. My husband at the time looked through his inch and a half thick tax return and reported an exorbitant figure, at least in my mind, that he owed in taxes. When I asked him how he could pay such a sum his response was, "I'm happy to pay it because it means that we made good money last year." His attitude, and that of his family and partners, is the truest form of responsibility.
I was a grad student at Baylor U when Pressler and Patterson began their takeover. I left the SBC immediately.
Rest in HEAT Paul Pressler, rest in HEAT.
It always puzzles me what these so-called religious leaders, Baptists, Catholics, etc., who rape and abuse in secret for decades think will happen at the end of their lives. They must not actually believe in God or heaven and hell, so they are nothing but complete shams and impostors. Why are so many people fooled and deceived by them? I hope they will meet their God face to face. What will they have to say for themselves?
Narcissism masquerading as religion. MLK wasn't that, but the pushy ones seem to be.
The Christian religion in America was built on a foundation of white supremacy and patriarchy. Churches, schools, media and laws were intentionally targeted to inculcate their caste ideology.
It’s all written down-original documents, speeches and newspaper accounts from the early years of America are fascinating reads.
The truth will set us free…
The followers are the believers. The leaders are the perpetrators.
Exactly
Great point, Kristin.
Hard to believe that they believe in anything..,
A quote that most appropriately found me this morning- “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)
Things aren't very black & white these days. I admire how Biden is using a lot of nuance and wisdom in his decision making. As always , thank you for the info Dr Richards.
Pulled quote:
This has cult written all over it...''A 2022 report on the [Southern Baptist] church and sex abuse was so damning that Russell Moore wrote: “I was wrong to call sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention…a crisis. Crisis is too small a word. It is an apocalypse.” The investigation, he says, “uncovers a reality far more evil and systematic than I imagined it could be.”
The SBC is just a symptom of what the GOP has become.
Both the SBC and the GOP exhibit characteristics of a cult, such as blind loyalty, unaccountable leadership, and harmful practices concealed from outsiders.
I admire those religious leaders who not only left, but called out those who sinned. That has not happened in the Catholic Church.
Pedofilia is the charismatic pastors desire and stock in trade. Gain the trust and rely on your moral charcter to cast aside any suspision. There is at least 150 years of history documenting various cult leaders and their crimes. How the Baptist Church keeps it's tax exempt status is a mystery, also, considering how overtly politically active it has been for many decades.
Boy Scouts, LDS. Catholic Church. This Baptist's obituary is only another telling of a long known story.
As for the MAGAs , follow the money. Adolph Hitler was a face that roused the crowds as was Ronald Raygun and Donald Trump, for the same big money interests. Their goal of world domination has been working 24/7 since the opportunity arose in the failing Weimar. Nuremberg only got the official perpetrators of WWII and the money has been working diligently ever since. They just might pull it off this time, considering how polite all the Democratic Party has been for the past nine years. You know who I'm talking about.