And now, after 40+ years of Reagan's trickle down economics and the ensuing race to the bottom, the United States needs it's own Marshall Plan. Perhaps it can be called "Build Back Better"!
Most readers seem to be focusing exclusively on America; but it is worldwide that things are falling apart.
Sometimes, thank goodness, it is extremism that is imploding. Look at India's election results -- those are the big news of the moment.
Nevertheless, take nothing for granted. Mussolini's hold on power was severely shaken by the scandal that ensued in 1924 when Fascist hitmen murdered star opposition leader Giacomo Matteotti... just on the point of denouncing major corruption in the form of a sell-out of a deal with Sinclair Oil of Teapot Dome fame... Mussolini emerged from the ordeal strengthened, put an end to democratic forms and ruled as dictator. In the longer term, the disaster for Italy was immeasurable.
Modi is as dangerous as they come. Watch.
Watch the maneuvers of Netanyahu and his Nazi-style sidekicks.
Watch Europe, too, this weekend, where the Duce's sugar-coated successors may be on the point of making a killing at elections to the European Parliament.
Watch South Africa, unstable after the collapse of the ANC. Watch Mexico...
Don't for one moment take your eyes off the crucial threat to the planet, America's homegrown would-be Fuehrer. Yet, stay wide awake to the global crisis brought on by degenerate gone-to-seed capitalism.
According to Prof. Katheleen Belew in her book, Bring the War Home: White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, a global plan was made by White Supremacists who gathered in the USA in the Northwest from around the world. In the late 1980s/early 1990s they planned to stop fighting against the government and instead take it over, by joining it. By running for office. By toning down their overtly racist rhetoric and instead pretend that they were just against immigration. You can imagine that White South Africans were part of this. It seems to me as I see the right wing taking over our Congress, many state governments, Sweden, Italy as well as some former Soviet Union countries, like Russia, Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia and as such Immigrants became the new "Jews" on which every problem that exists in a country is blamed. I appreciate the tools that reading Prof. Belew's book has given me to recognize the coded meaning of the term "immigrants." This has been very intentional. Yes. I am voting in the elections of two countries. One for democracy in the USA, and the other for democracy in the EU. It is a different sort of election, and now there is a lot of action in terms of demonstration and marches against the right-wing parties. In Germany, specifically against the AfD, which I call The New German Nazi Party, while I call the Republican party The New American Nazi Party. In fact, I can ascribe names from Hitler's henchmen to some of the figures. Texas Governor Abbott is the new Himmler, who oversaw the death camps, and Speaker Johnson is the new Goebbels, who was the propaganda minister for Hitler and spun his lies to the German people into webs of gold.
As for Republicans who just enjoy the drama of the MAGA extremists, I can't help but wonder if these are not Jerry Springer and like shows acolytes, who got used to all of this drama on television, and now seek it out as a way of feeling like their lives are no so empty. It is very disturbed and disturbing.
Yes. Marshall was a great visionary. Without him, the world would be much diminished. A Marshall plan for Latin America and Africa would be at least as impactful. Instead, Republicans are promoting Project 2025.
Thank you for spelling it out far more clearly than I did. The psychology of your closing paragraph is very much to the point. Only, the problem affects far more than Republicans, it is that of society today.
While there's some resonance in your comparison of Abbott with Himmler, you flatter Speaker Johnson...
True about Speaker Johnson. He is one of many that I call the Goebbels Brigade. Johnson and his Seven Mountain Magic is just not that clever. However, as a group of apologists for Trump, they do perform the task that Goebbels had as the spin doctor. We can add all of the people on the Fox Network that perform this same function to the Goebbels Brigade as well. The press in Germany under Hitler did not get to decide what to publish so these useful idiots may find themselves out of a job, or promoted. I bet they are counting on the later. However, there is no loyalty from a fascist dictator. His loyalty is only to himself.
That Seven Mountains business should not be underestimated. Two of the seven "mountains" that the New Apostolic Reformation people have set out to control are the judiciary and education. They already control much of the judiciary because of the dozens of federal judges Trump appointed while in office but most particularly, his three Supreme Court nominations giving Republicans 6 of 9 Supreme Court justices - a majority that can give a re-elected Trump any decision he wants. The second "mountain" is education. There are already 28 states funding fundamentalist Christian religious schools with taxpayer money. Check out the Hartmann Report, Substack. June 5. Very scary.
NL...there was a new story here in Oregon just yesterday about school vouchers. They are trying to get it on the ballot. The spokeswoman made it sound innocuous, but I wasn't fooled by her drivel. I do not want my tax dollars funding private schools or charter schools for that matter. I was in education for many years and am so glad to be retired. I confess to shouting at the TV while the story was airing.
The thing that gets me is how Speaker Mike gets away with referring to himself as a Christian. A person who says, in effect, "Praise the Lord, and thank you for your advice, but no thanks -- we'll take it from here ..." is not a Christian.
Speaker Pelosi is a real Christian. When asked if she hated Donald Trump, she said she has a heart full of love, that she prays for him, and that she doesn't hate anyone.
Or maybe it's me. Maybe I have this backwards and upside down. I thought being a Christian meant looking at my enemy and seeing a neighbor. Maybe Speaker Mike has it right. Maybe being a Christian means looking at my neighbor and seeing an enemy.
But I have a plan to settle this once and for all. I'm going to go to the Bible and see what it says.
Hear, hear. We must not forget that even the Marshall Plan did not know the future. Perhaps, the US did not do its due diligence and read signs that were not available to the world in 1947. So much technology happened that I truly believe the world could not keep up with the pace and influence it would have on the plan. Communication avenues - good and bad - was never considered the weapon it is today. Hence Fox News. Weapons proliferation may not have even been considered. I may not know all the ins and outs of the effects of the Marshal Plan, but, I truly believe while the plan was immediately needed and its goals were humanitarian maybe it did not grow and change with time.
It resulted in NATO. Following Marshall, George F. Kennan, President Truman, and Dean Acheson worked to focus on western Europe to maintain democratic ideals.
I think we need a two state solution in the Middle East and then a Marshal Plan for Palestine. Hopefully a victory for Ukraine and a Marshal Plan there as well.
The Ukraine "Marshall Plan" must be paid for with Russian assets seized from around the globe. I support our support, but Russia must pay for the damages it has caused. The NYT yesterday reported that they analyzed every building damaged or destroyed in Ukraine over the past 2 years -- they counted 210,000 of them, across the country, with cities and neighborhoods looking like Dresden at the end of WW2.
The countries that benefited from The Marshall Plan had a) defined borders, and b) had been non-violent (on the whole) before WWII.
Neither can be said of the Palestinians. There is little to rebuild—rebuild Gaza to hand to Hamas or the Islamic Jihad? Or to the Palestinian Authority that has had 30+ years to establish effective governance with billions of international dollars and hasn’t?—the Palestinians in the West Bank have been caught smuggling in weapons from Iran through Jordan.
MadRussian, Mexico indeed is very interesting. A woman and a Jew as president. I read another story yesterday that a female mayor of some city was shot to death.
Just watched an interview of Jon Stewart and Ken Buck and was so disturbed and disappointed to hear him say Ken Buck, in essence...the trial against Trump was a witch hunt. His defense was that Bragg ran on prosecuting Trump. That made it partisan.
I can be pretty dense sometimes, but haven't other politicians run on prosecuting mafiosi bosses. Weren't they also named? And if a jury if his peers, people Trump and his lawyers selected, find him guilty, doesn't that destroy the witch hunt claims?
"The trial against Trump was a witch hunt... Bragg ran on prosecuting Trump. That made it partisan."
PROBLEM -- THE CONVICTION IS OVERDUE
Bragg has done his duty.
Only, what he has done should have been done decades ago: nailing a notorious crook, a not-so-petty criminal who got away with whatever he fancied doing by dint of wealth and a network of influence... until he exposed himself by overdoing things, grabbing America by the genitals.
He hasn't let go and won't, so long as his hands are free.
Bragg ran on prosecuting White Collar crime. Trump was not mentioned by name. This is another piece of disinformation. Trump was found guilty on all counts by a jury that the defense helped select and witnesses defense cross examined.
Bragg is not likely to say a thing until sentencing and appeals are exhausted. He put Cy Vance’s charges aside and selected his own statues and wrote up his own charges This is a matter of public record and all within the public’s view.
Many, myself included, were worried that Bragg was abandoning Vance’s groundwork. No, he was building a stronger case and won.
Politically, prosecuting Trump seemed like a long shot. Sentencing and appeals lie ahead. It’s too soon to say Trump won’t go get off the hook. It’s not over until it’s over. 🤞
As I have gleaned out of my reading in the last 4 years, the gatherings of these wealthy trust fund billionaires at places like, Davos, Jackson Hole, Aspen and Palm Springs lead by the Koch coalition, have allowed these people to coordinate their plans on a global basis. Most importantly their plans require "Stealth" as James Buchanan and Milton Friedman both knew about their "free" market ideas and libertarian plans. They understood how popular the New Deal programs were and how those ideas could not be attacked directly. That is why these meeting have closed door sessions with minutes of the meetings destroyed or taken in secret.
I know I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but this effort started with Clinton’s election over Bush the Elder. The basic plan was toFund and develop their own think tanks to study and publish on their ideology, fund chairs at colleges and universities to get a voice in hiring professors and administrators, give grants and full scholarships to “worthy” students referred to them by “friends of” and well-placed administrators. And, of course, The Federalist Society in 1982.
They already had Skull & Bones, the Bohemian Grove, and someone’s ranch gatherings (Harlan Crowe?). FOX “News” came later
Have you also taken these prescient thoughts further to the end? I'm sure you have. My guess is that you see the end of this travesty similar to how I see it. The destruction of the US system of justice by these individuals. I assign the names of Nazi hierarchy a bit differently. I see Stephen Miller as Himmler, Tucker Carlson as Goebbels, Abbot feels a bit more like Reinhardt Heidrich, a "governor" of a particular area of the Reich.
Steve Bannon seems a lot like Ernst Roehm, don't you think? Thuggish, nasty etc.
No matter how the names are assigned the thought of these individuals in places of power is terrifying if people would look at what happened to Nazi Germany I think that at least a few might think better of supporting the idea of autocracy.
Steve Bannon had an organization to help teach individuals how to subvert an established government. He bought a place in Italy or France for his school. That nation’s government refused to allow Bannon’s school to open. Bannon has tentacles around the world.
Interestingly, all Bannon wants to do is tear down/blow up, he’s not on the front line developing something new.
He is an anarchist. I have to wonder how many anarchists think they themselves can survive if the rule of law becomes defunct. How does anyone survive renegade gangs roaming the country, especially in this country with more guns than people. I guess we can ask Mexico with their cartels & their 37 political assassinations how they survive!
"Not on the front line developing something new..."
No, something old, Julius Evola etc. reheated, then blended with Ultramontane stuff from the days when the Vatican was in bed with the Mussolini regime.
Linda and Peter, I in full agreement. But we must not and I repeat, we must not give them the ammunition that the far right uses to gain strength. And one obvious issue is porous borders. This is nothing new. The Moors were driven from Spain. And you can go back as far as you want. When there are major human movements, a backlash is sure to come. I illustrate Germany under Chancellor Merkle when she was asked why she had an open door policy toward the migratory movements and she responded that it was the guilt Germany felt toward WWII. Little could she surmise that she was seeding the next nationalistic movement and now it’s I believe the 2nd most popular political movement in Germany today. Was it worth it? A categoric NO. This is called not learning anything history has taught.
Here in the States, the southern border. The bleeding hearts respond that we need to take in these people. For what price? The loss of democracy? Is that what you want? I don’t. We have laws of immigration. No one is denying people entry but uncontrolled entry, yes. It makes me real mad that many of us just don’t get it. And we are willing to lose it all over this one issue (well maybe more issues) but this one is taking the proverbial cake.
Allow me to add on the the British conservatives under Boris Johnson parted from the European Union over this issue. It will break up everything positive that has developed post WWII most assuredly.
Bill, I know you feel that Biden should have been tougher on this subject long ago. But Biden was ready to sign a bipartisan bill that was very tough and co-written by Republicans. It was Trump who killed the bill. It is a REPUBLICAN failure. Spread the word!
But let's live in the present moment. What do you think of Biden now that he has effectively closed the border? Ready to spread the word?
There is so much ammunition for Democrats about immigration. If Republican businessmen really cared about it, why do they employ undocumented workers on our farms? Undocumented children in slaughter houses? It's the greed of the Oligarchs that allows this to happen. Tell a friend!
It is Republicans who own the immigration problem. Yell it from the roof tops!
Well said, Bill. We need immigrants and their labor. Processing them and incorporating them into the workforce takes $$$, which the GOP, and now the MAGAts refuse to provide in their never ending quest to support their ideology. Happened to be reading an old ProPublica article yesterday on the GOP’s refusal to fund the replenishment of the pandemic stockpile, helping lead to the disaster that was Trump’s handling of Covid. Let’s put the blame squarely where it belongs.
In most cases “immigrants” means brown people. That’s the real problem. Capitalists give lip service to immigration but they like it because they get a captured workforce.
Immigration is used as a tool to divide and conquer just like racism. Remember-they’re “poisoning our blood”, they’re “rapists” and are killing people.
Obviously we can’t accept everyone who wants entry-we need common sense laws-but the Rs are hypocritical-they’re just using the issue to stoke fear and win votes.
If we could minimize war, famine, climate change, greed etc then maybe people wouldn’t be leaving their home countries to seek better environments.
So true. When in actually the only non-immigrants are Brown people if we look at the original people here. However, I consider everyone born in the USA to be a Native of the US. My mom came to the USA in the 1950s and she said she was just asked a few questions on which she could have easily lied. No difficulty getting in then from Germany even though they had just been the enemy country around 10 years earlier.
Bill, yes, the immigration problem could have been solved years ago if not for some people using very cheap exploitable immigrant labor which they still are doing. It is a travesty and the idea that immigrants vote, when they do everything they can to not call attention to themselves. They also do all the hard physical labor that white people do not want to do. When it was time to spread the cement on the sidewalk project in front of our house, it was Hispanics who did that. They also do most of the landscaping and roofing around here and that doesn't count those out in the fields and on dairy farms.
Bill, I am not advocating that Germany or the USA not have controls on who enters the borders. As the daughter of a German immigrant, and the wife of a German immigrant, and now living in a community of Germans and American as well as other immigrants in Germany where I am both a citizen and an immigrant, I can understand that there are times where we need a lot of new people, and times where we do not. The Right-wing Germans are responding to what I assume is a lot of Russian disinformation. I can hardly find people to do work on our house in Germany because they are so, so, so booked. No one can come before a month or two. Things that should take 6 months drag out 2 years. In a nation where the median age is 44.9 years, and would be higher if not for the recent surge of immigrants, they need new and younger people. In 2010 before the surge of immigrants the population was dropping. It has had some increase, but not enough to help the economy. The Russians seed this nationalism as much as anyone else, because the people here are naive about the ways of Bot manipulation. Most Leftist people that I know here have no knowledge of this either. The Southern states economies would crash without all the work done my immigrants. In 2022 immigrants made up 17.2% of the population in Texas. So, almost 1/5 of the population there. In the USA in general immigrants make up 14% of the population.
Do we really want to blame Angela Merkel for German's who easily embrace racism? Or Biden? Britain's right wingers made a racist move, had Brexit and it is just downhill from there. I consider the flow of different people into Europe as a positive thing. And, it is true the northern half of the planet has been exploiting the environment which is affecting us all, but particularly the southern half of the planet. I am not making a case for the violent extremists, but many people are contributing. My husband happens to be an expert in his field. He works on a research team that is made up of people from many countries. The USA has benefitted from his work, as much as the people working in the fields to produce our food do too.
Thank you, Linda. With a growing percentage of the U.S. population over age 65, we need young immigrants to fill jobs and contribute to Social Security. There is no question in my mind that all the rhetoric about "closing the border" - and it's always the southern border! - is about racism... the "othering" of people from Central and South America. Do you hear anyone complaining about immigrants from Britain, Norway, or Australia?? Of course not.
Regarding your point about your husband's research team being "made up of people from many countries": Maybe I'm a "bleeding heart" in Bill Katz's mind, but I believe strongly that diversity is a positive for businesses and organizations. People of different genders, races, nationalities, and so on can offer different perspectives that contribute to workplace teams.
America wouldn’t be a “superpower” without immigration. It’s trite but diversity is strength. All of nature is diverse-why shouldn’t we have diversity of experience, ideas and opportunities?
Ellen, Ellen, stop it already. Did I lose you on “bleeding heart?”
I choose a different tac. Sometimes you pull back when issues are going against the tide for the sake of winning and no, not winning at any price. And our current political mess in the US must be won there is no recovery from this loss. Do you get it now?
Linda, I also am the daughter of a German immigrant, married to an Italian immigrant. My husband, too, is a researcher, heading a university lab with scientists and engineers from many different countries, working on topics with great relevance to today’s world (vehicle electrification, alternative fuels, battery storage). The labor situation you describe in Germany holds true here in the US as well. If you try to hire a contractor for any kind of work, you’re lucky if you get a call back from one out of ten requests, and the backlog is long.
Not just contractors, but doctors and other medical positions seem understaffed. We lost a lot of them in Covid, one way or the other. Friends and relatives of the million lost to Covid should think seriously about how Don conned us. He was saved by medical science and then basically spit on it.
As you note, "The labor situation you describe in Germany holds true here in the US as well." Japan has an even lower birth rate, and very much needs labor from the younger people of the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia, and other nearby countries.
A strong, deep racism mitigates against the decent programs the government here has initiated, said government trying to look to the tax base as well as to the needs of so many industries desperate for labor.
German-American (immigrant) here. Have to call out on one thing, Linda: Germans embrace racism no more easily than any -ANY- other group of humans on the planet. ("Voelkerwanderung" (we go where we can best survive) is as old as humanity itself. I embrace it.)
I don't believe in "races," but the human race with physical variation. So much of that is just outdated thinking and scientifically ignorant. Where my daughter is studying in Germany they are seeking to have more current models to talk about race and gender. Still, on the streets, most of the people I encounter do not think of this. As a dual American-German, who was raised in the US, spent time back and forth, and now mainly live in Germany, I see the racism in both countries. Both are countries of White Supremacy. My knowledge of recent German history is why I warn about the parallels in the US right now. You might notice that I have made several of these comparisons in this chain. Can't say that everyone is as racist. I think Native American groups are viewing people in a different way, than the Western model of divide and conquer. Of course, I have met Native Americans that I thought were racist. Still, I just don't know about people everywhere. It seems an over generalization. I have been wondering which people are most susceptible to the influence of fake information, such as Russian bots used to influence the elections in the US and EU right now.
Linda, it’s rough out there isn’t it. I’m just presenting you a cause and effect and a historical context. I never said I was against immigration. But control it. You ask me if I want to blame Angela and Boris and Joe and anyone else and the answer is, yes. I do.
We are living in incredibly complex world now with disinformation and so on. It’s hard enough for thinking people to make smart decisions. Forget about the dumb ones. And do not forget, those at the top, the invisible puppeteers are sowing disinformation for the purposes of power and money. All logic is tossed out the window.
Both sets of my grandparents were immigrants; southern Italian and Eastern European. Once backpacking through Sicily , I met old timers that told me how towns emptied and moved to America. Yep, among those were Santa and Paulo, my grandparents. Even at that time,I thought, cheeses, we let that many people in? So I don’t discriminate.
The worse thing that Boris Johnson did was enact Brexit. The second worst thing that the European Union did was not set limits on migration. It’s my opinion. You can have your opinion. I want to save good developments like the European Union but it will most assuredly break apart if they don’t set limits.
Every one needs to set limits, but who and how. I would say, if the elevator is full, you don't want to put more into it because the cables might break and you will all fall and die with it. On the other hand, the US needs more immigrants. A year ago I read that we had a 10 mil job shortage and only 5 mil seeking work. We have money for a lot of frivolous things, I think everyone can think of these, and should be making more for people to help them live. I feel that your discussion is one of blaming the victim. If doing what is right is victimized by evil greedy people, then should we always cater to them? What world do we create if we do that?
Oh stop it George. You want to put words in my mouth now. Heal, I say. But frankly, I’m surprised I have gotten pushback when all I advocated is respecting laws. In the case of Europe, it needs to set limits on immigration. Without such limits, it implodes. Is that what you want. Be careful what you ask for.
I think there must be coordination with Mexico and other countries these refugees are leaving and the United States. Does anyone know about our legal immigration "list"? How long a wait before those on the "list" can get a hearing? Are the applicants for "asylum" who cross the border illegally getting on another "list" ahead of those who apply legally? Is their incentive to come across the border illegally that they will be put on a waiting list for asylum and then allowed to disperse in the US to wait for years and possibly to be lost in the system? It sounds all broken to me.
These people have highly developed divide-and-conquer skills... They're more like Hernán Cortés than Hitler,successfully overseeing conquest by what was at first barely a minority, a mere handful.
You pegged it on so many points ... I keep thinking that the one true, universal "enemy" is ignorance. The global, youthful, and perpetual ignorance of history, along with the willful ignorance (stupidity) of angry, hateful fools who refuse to see the consequences of what they're voting for, what they're against or that they're allowing to ascend by not voting.
Once again, follow the money, and those who would be bullies.
“While all other Sciences have advanced, that of Government is at a stand; little better understood; little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.”
– John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, Jul. 9, 1813
The power of corruption in the pursuit of political and economic power is no less than the halcyon days of Imperial Rome. Continue to teach STEM and bury liberal education and we are doomed to tyranny of the MAGA amongst us.
Note I am speaking of dark money and the corporate elite not student debt. Our will to govern is failing us and we are failing ourselves. Thinking our political economy doesn’t depend on the institutions of liberal democracy is foolery. Thinking Ukraine doesn’t matter will be the doom of the liberal democracy Marshall envisaged in Harvard Yard in ‘47. How can we be so naive and foolish? Complacency led to sleepwalking and now, over the cliff we go. Infuriating 😡
The scientific method is a procedure, so you can use it to produce results whatever you might believe about the virtues of science. Yet as I see it, the beating heart of science is a philosophical epistemology, a practiced theory of knowing. That coupled with a commitment to intellectual integrity, to "the truth" insofar as we get to approximate it;.
Yet I think that falls outside of the modern concept of "STEM". I was such a science nerd that my most cherished TV program in kindergarten was "Watch Mr. Wizard" an excellent introduction of scientific thinking to children circa 1953. I have cried at the beauty of a vivid, connecting concept in a science instruction film.
But I was also an arts nerd, and just as the Universe is one thing (as in "Uni") I think human awareness is ideally one unified thing, despite some of distinct advantages of specialization. Yes, specialization, but also comprehending; "prehend" as in "prehensile", to grasp. We are tasked with seeing BOTH the forest and the trees; and since the trees go on to virtual infinity, to picking out the distinctions and connections that matter most to human lives. By that I don't mean a narcissistic notion that it only matters if it matters to us, or that we should not try to "question everything"; but rather recognizing key details and key connecting principles in order to sharpen our internal maps of reality. The better we know reality, the better we get along with her.
And I think it is true of life. We humans individually and in concert are muddling our way to better understanding ourselves and our circumstances, and while it may or be literally so, it seems that truth is beauty and beauty truth. It seems to me that there profound truth IN Keats' simple formulation; for the sciences, for the arts, in love, in life. Of course, there is more to it than that, but this I believe in my soul.
Fascism was an explicit appeal to the "Make Rome Great Again" era of Roman conquest; the word referring to Roman Empire icon. Liberal and liberty share the same etymological root. Liberal Arts were originally instruction for the free, that is, not slaves; but it became studies designed to liberate the mind, and with it, society. Some of the Enlightenment period philosophies that found their way into our founding documents I see as very much in harmony with liberation and empowerment, even in the context of shocking hypocrisy. Those principles that Marshall cherished can be found there, and as time advanced, so to, if haltingly, principles of universal rights, responsibilities, and empowerment have grown and been more universally applied, albeit now facing a redoubled effort by plutocrats to defeat them.
What do we, as humans most want, most need, and in what priority? We benefit richly from a civilization that "countless" people have bequeathed us, for the good and the bad of it. I doubt that much that really matters matters gets advertised. Not as specific products, anyway. It has been said that the best things in life are free; and when enabled by a freeing environment, and the chop wood, carry water necessary to sustain a sustainable environment of freedom, I think that is so. I am aided by commercial products throughout my days, not the least of which is the apparatus upon which I am typing, and the vast network of communications technology that delivers what I type. Yet what do I suppose I might cherish on my deathbed, a prospect that may be come sooner than later as I fall quite firmly in "senior" status. So many lives lost in "road rage", on the highway and on the battlefield. What's so important?
It is occurring to me (not a new thought, but perhaps now with more focus) that those who want to dominate have visibly mounted a massive, richly financed, and organized effort to confuse, divide, and mislead. Plenty of authors have warned of the ultimate outcome, but what do we do in an organized way to focus, unite, and disabuse the public of how the lie machine works and what it is up to? It's more a feeling than a mature thought on my part. I have encountered the idea from time to time of a Department of Peace to compliment what used to be called "The War Department". Not that DOD does not examine ways to avoid conflict, and not that such a department is necessarily the answer, or nearly enough, but can we make more visible and concerted efforts for head off problems and deesscalate conflicts? To educate, not just train?
Our current crises are massive; climate abuse, human abuse, the looming possibility of US fascism. Is there anything that we in concert could be doing better to foil the plans of those who thirst for absolute power? A long term strategy if we are lucky enough to get to deploy it?
These nationalists, dictators, oligarchs, murderers -- almost too many to list.
And aren't they all scrambling over each other to ally with U.S. billionaires and what you rather nicely call their "degenerate gone-to-seed capitalism"?
The U.S. billionaires got their tax cuts from their now 34-count-convicted criminal. That's one of two lasting damages that he did in all his four years in office -- grow the U.S. national debt by $7 trillion just further to enrich his fellow predators. Yes, he also gave the shaft to all U.S. women, in stuffing the court with medieval theocrats having states take over their family and health care choices.
But, yes, Peter: keep an eye on, watch out for the international thugs with whom our worst ally.
The big news yesterday is that OPEC agreed to raise production quotas. Hopefully energy prices will drop in time for the election and Russia, Iran, et al will have less funding for their wars in the Ukraine, Syria, Yemen and Gaza.
I keep asking why Treasury doesn't arbitrage part of the debt: borrow from our "allies" like Japan, Switzerland, Scandinavia, at their 1% rates to retire some 7% US debt? Why we haven't held OPEC accountable for arbitrarily fixing high prices?
Oil prices have been dropping for the past 6 weeks or so. You just don't see it at the pump.
I don't see the point of raising production unless they are trying to compete against the US who has raised production to record levels.
Beware, the US oil reserves have dropped to less than 10 years at current production rates. We better be switching to renewables at an accelerated rate before 2035.
Actually, also an environmental issue. California sued Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips and Chevron (the largest oil and gas companies doing business in California) for misleading the public about climate change. The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of the State of California, not in federal court. Other states will join.
It's also a national security issue. Saudis own our largest refineries and control Exxon and other domestic companies.
Daniel, where does this info come about the Saudis ? I’m totally ignorant of it though of the last couple years realize the slow infiltration of foreign ownership..lands as well..we might need to get a better grip on this, you think? Seems to me suspicious! To say the least.
While both Phil ,Peter , many in fact here, close in on where the trouble really lays, I always feel not quite the focus on the rich going rogue as is unfortunately natural and expected -we keep dancing around the main culprits who align themselves with the known despots. The main aggressors and proxy waring few. Through more and more covert interactions they undermine , infiltrate , promise, then take over and control making their rich richer. Essentially what capitalism has accomplished through neglecting the stop guards…ie corporate monopolies, cartel control, and trafficking ( people,drugs,knock-offs, scams, hacking).
Being ‘the good guy’ isn’t entertaining enough though sells big under the long standing cloak of Christianity. Which, noted, is obviously unveiled often enough to have just as many ‘perverted’ ( wide umbrella) as any other faction. Most know who the good samaritans are …and ‘Bless Their Hearts’ as we WV’ians add (mostly genuinely)…my profound thanks to you (and you both know who you are, and rarely wave it as a flag of righteousness).
There are no magic wands..a constant battle will forever exists between good and evil and its shades of grey.
It isn’t only my observation that THESE Substack , the many writers , some classic now, provide the format for truth, highlight educational excerpts , and a place to read enough variety of thought processes for quality journalism through print.
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll …still apparent as second , third, and forth runners up..your own choice of order -not mine intended 😉
Heather is featured in “Pennsylvania: Putting Democracy in Action” Tuesday, June 11, 2:00 PM PT/5:00 PM ET. She will discuss how the struggle for economic justice is feeding into pressure for political change. https://airlift.fund/
I am originally from Pennsyltucky. My home county went 2 to 1 for Trump in 2020. Stats show about a fifth of the electorate is either undecided or willing to change their mind before the election. Many slit their own throats by voting to cut, even kill their own sources of income. The lumpen proletariat? Mostly visceral stuff that has little to do with issues works. "Trump hates dogs" "Would you support stealing from kids with cancer?" Even works on MAGATs. https://rvat.org/
From Dan Phillips: to win, Biden doesn’t need a single person who voted for Trump in 2020 (although we would gladly welcome them into our coalition). Our targets are people who voted for Biden in 2020, especially Black, Hispanic, and younger voters. We know these people. They are in our lives. Their numbers are in our phones. We are connected to them via social media.
Finally, changes in the media environment mean these folks are only reachable through one-on-one conversations over the phone, at the door, or in text group chats.
• In 2022, Field Team 6 reached 5 million unregistered likely Democrats
• The result? 1.57 million registered - 660,000 of them VOTED!
• The cost? 93¢ per registration - $2.24 per vote!
I use BYOP every day to reach about 50 unregistered people. Takes about 20 minutes. We attach voterizer.org. so folks can register themselves in 10 minutes. If I can influence 10 people to do the same, extrapolating, we can cover the swing states.
Thanks for all you and the likes do, Daniel. I work the quiet end and strive to inform. I’m remote , no cell service, back-to-the-lander. Pretty impressed with WiFi 😉. Yea the 2-1 ratio , same here in WV… I’ll not get on a rant today…🙄
Well the news from Mexico at least is wonderful! But yes, Europe is fragile and Modi, though his grip on India is now weakened, is scary. All I could think of reading this however was Gaza—its state of ruin and depletion and depopulation is worse even than Europe’s after WWII. And instead of a Marshall plan the U.S. Congress wants to sanction the ICC for trying to hold accountable those responsible. We have abandoned the culture from which the Marshall plan emerged. Why?
Thanks for the link Sieglinde. I'm not overly surprised--the government of our other next-door neighbor, Canada, is mimicking our horrible policy too, including (unlike Mexico) sending arms to Israel. While the rest of the world's democracies are edging away from us, our neighbors know which side of their bread the butter is on. Everything I've read about Claudia Sheinbaum in the progressive press so far is positive, and she doesn't take office till October 1 so I'm willing to give her a chance to make her own policies. Fingers crossed!
Still shocking to see Israel be the evil that Bibi has brought. He is apparently (to me) trying to support chump and piss on Joe. We need to qualify our support for those terrorists.
Thank you, Peter. General Marshall reminded us that we are part of the larger world and can ill afford to lose sight of that. Your admonition to be watchful, including BTW, our neighbor to the South, is imperative.
Every now and then, I take another look at the Tytler Cycle diagram to refocus my attention. Your "watch list" forced another visit.
I view Tytler's analysis as useful, not predictive. Useful, however. only if we remain vigilant, as you and Linda note. Vigilance is a form of action that almost always requires further action. I am also reminded that we must be vigilant regarding ourselves--a major reason for tuning in to Heather's history lessons regularly.
Tytler does offer this:
(he) does admit that there are individual exceptions to the rule, and that he is ready to allow "that this form of government (democratic) is the best adapted to produce, though not the most frequent, yet the most striking, examples of virtue in individuals", paradoxically because a "democratic government opposes more impediments to disinterested patriotism than any other form." More here:
India has always been the place I feared WWIII would start. With climate change threatening its water supply as the Himalayan glaciers retreat, a nuclear armed and starving Indian population is scary.
(Pay particular attention to the last quote. From "Donald's Vanity Tantrums.)
Reverse Presidential Evolution
“I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.”
George Washington
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
Abraham Lincoln
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
“Now, as a nation, we don’t promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That’s the essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.”
Barack Obama
“Statements are made about me by certain people in the crazy Mueller Report, in itself written by 18 angry Democrat Trump haters which are fabricated and… total bullshit.”
First and foremost you need to get people to calm down and recognize that to do so we need to recognize the concept of liberty and justice for all. It will take time and patience.
A perfectly timed history lesson - thank you. Europe increasingly looks to be preparing for the possibility that Trump will win again, undo the coalition, and back whatever fresh hell Putin has in mind.
But Putin must know that Trump is quickly becoming a losing bet. I question whether he will make it to November, what with a demented mind misfiring, justice finally corralling him, and voters turning away.
Eight Senate Republicans vow to oppose all Biden nominees, Democratic legislation
Their threats come after former President Donald Trump's conviction on dozens of felonies in New York.
"We are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart," the senators wrote.
Signatories of the letter include Lee and fellow Republicans J.D. Vance (Ohio), Tommy Tuberville (Ala.), Eric Schmitt (Mo.), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Rick Scott (Fla.), Roger Marshall (Kan.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.). Both Vance and Rubio are thought to be on Trump's running mate short-list.
Embroiled in what I thought was a discussion of the political scene one participant wrote a litany of nonsense. Tara Reid, Biden showered with a child, Jill had an affair with a granddaughter, blah blah blah. It’s all bright shiny objects.
Senator Schumer and Vice President Harris as senate leaders should accept their “letter of resignation”…as a business would do if you said you no longer wanted to do your job
The only ones "tearing this country apart" are this Gang of 8 (which at one time referred to a bipartisan group working together on immigration reform).
My daughter echoed Carville's concerns on how Biden discusses the economy as if it's been good for everybody when it's not been. She reassured me that she likes Biden but thinks he can be tone deaf about certain matters and gave exorbitant credit card interest rates as an example of something that is hurting average Americans. She was not aware that Biden and Dems had tried to pass legislation to reduce cc interest rates. I encouraged her to subscribe to the daily newsletter What did Biden Do Today. Someone suggested it to me, here. (Thank you) I've been sharing it with others as well.
I'm sure Biden would like to give a more accurate assessment of the economy and opine on what can be done to assist those in the margins, but then Republicans would just run with it and use his own words against him, so he is forced to constantly focus on the positive results.
The disinformation and bias in the media (look at coverage of Gaza) is heading Biden in that direction. I've never seen so many lifelong progressives and liberals turn away from Biden as I do now. The left is being radicalized while the focus is on MAGA, and the current DNC seem as unaware of those trends as they were in 2016.
Imagine, if posssible.. having a One-Mmillion dollar bill in your dresser drawer, and having 999 more of them in a shoe-box in your closet. That's only ONE billion bucks, but you have 6 billion more, not counting your tangible assets.?Not much one can't buy with some of that (in cash) is there? Jurors? They'll be fine. This trial is just a little slap to #45s' ego. Punishment for what he's found guilty of is no big deal for him.., he'll be out on 'work release', or at the most, restricted to travel between Trump Tower and his golf course with a soft ankle-bracelet, in his limo along with the security detachment (poor bastrds), That's it. No need to bother with jurors, judges, prosecutors. And the $$$ will keep on rolling in..., and rolling out, but there is just SO MUCH money WGAS!
I worry each day that Biden will lose but I also think the MSM help Cheetolinni by having every other news story about him. Why aren’t they touting the good that Biden has done? Negative sells!! If Biden loses, we are doomed to having “ forever trump” because I believe if he steps one foot in the White House, he will never leave.
Not sure how long trump would be able to stay in office now that his dementia is escalating. If he wins, I’m not sure he’ll make it through four years, let alone stay forever. But I don’t doubt the oligarchs and acolytes have plans to keep the grift going when Donny goes down.
"Why," Sharon, "aren’t they touting the good that Biden has done?"
One very simple reason, Sharon.
By design (of the far-right post-Powell memo foundations) Dems have turned illiterate to the great American humanities which have well recorded the incredible needs of Americans massively damaged by the U.S. billionaires offshoring their jobs, creating more inflation to boost corporate bottom lines, and funding all the cretins boosting their fat, orange, 34-count convicted felon.
I can't help but worry I am as guilty of consuming media that is telling me what I want to hear as much as those who get their news from FOX and X. I recently had the disturbing experience of a discussion with an immigrant Uber driver in Montreal who was convinced Trump's economic policies were much better than what has happened under the Biden administration. Our 20 minute ride was not long enough to explore his reasoning and he does not vote in the US, so convincing him did not seem pressing, but it did leave me wondering if there is a way to get the message across to people who need to hear it.
Re: Trump imploding before November: Wishful thinking I fear. We need to remember that, unlike normal people, Trump THRIVES on chaos. What would tire and depress a normal person energizes him. Anyone hoping for Trump to crumble by November must hope for a medical problem with this 78 year old man. Mentally, he's on fire.
When I say "on fire" I don't mean normal or positive or even sane. Of course what Trump does is sick. I'm just saying that mental or emotional collapse is NOT going to stop him.
One thing we can do is refer to TFFG as Convicted Felon Donald Trump. This apparently pisses him off and a good percentage of his MAGAs and Evangelicals
I agree. I don't think he will make it until November. And the Republicans don't have a backup plan. There is no second-string quarterback to come onto the field. It will be brutal, and it will take them a decade to rebuild anything that will look like a functioning national party.
And vote, and convince others to vote, and talk politics (and history) with folks we don't know, and not give up hope. I anticipate a surprising Dem landslide when all is said and done, but we have to make it happen.
I was just wondering the other day how long it takes to rebuild after war's devastation. In Gaza and Ukraine can the ravages of was be reversed with proper support or will they remain an area supplying the world with more immigrants who cannot live in the places they occupied before the war? Maybe we can have a new Marshall plan for these regions. Seems unlikely under America first.
In the late ‘70’s a medical emergency forced my student group off the Intourist route in Kyiv (Then still Kiev). Off that route the destruction of WWII remained un rebuilt. What a lesson in “he who has the gold, rules”.
Interesting- it was 1976 when I first visited Kiev - perhaps the same year as you - and my impression (and photos) were of gray blocks of apartments all alike, no color, minimal adverts, aside from large ‘social realism’ sculptures.
It was in January, 1979. While visiting Babi Yar my Russian professor stepped on a sparkler wire hidden in the snow. It went through his shoe and foot, necessitating a trip to the hospital, transport by our bus. There were about 6 of us. “Imagine the filthiest gas station bathroom you’ve ever seen” was his comment about the interior. They gave him a tetanus shot, with instructions to receive monthly shots thereafter for about 6 months. Tetanus boosters weren’t available. The route to the hospital was lined with WWII ruins. We were sent shopping while he was being treated. I still have that mink hat, somewhere.
I would highly recommend this Commencement speech by Ken Burns to all of you. It is masterful, speaking eloquently and passionately about the times in which we live.
Um, err, "evelyn": that photo showing Ken beaming with pleasure alongside the ever-sucking-up-to-billionaires Clarence Thomas, and their billionaire benefactor friend whose name I've conveniently forgotten (the aficionado of Nazi memorabilia)?
Thanks for posting this Barbara. I was going to let Phil know that, but in a personal way. Phil, I have pictures of me from President Nixon's funeral. At the time, I thought he was our worst president. However, out of respect for the office and because it was historical, I stood in line, overnight, to walk past his casket. Those pics could be mistaken for affection for him which is far from how I felt about him.
I will add that it is generally on point except for his advice that everyone should "make babies" - not everyone is suited for parenthood nor desires the responsibility.
"At some point, make babies, one of the greatest things that will happen to you, I mean it, one of the greatest things that will happen to you is that you will have to worry, I mean really worry, about someone other than yourself. It is liberating and exhilarating, I promise. Ask your parents."
"...DELANO — Johnny Itliong, son of the famous Filipino farm labor movement organizer Larry Itliong, teared up as he recalled how he and his siblings would honor their uncles, whom they referred to using the Tagalog term “manongs.”
Although they were not related to them, Johnny Itliong said the manongs would watch over him as if he were their own child while they worked in the Delano grape fields in the 1970s. Johnny Itliong said although these manongs would become the building blocks of the local Filipino community, most of his manongs did not have families of their own.
“One of the worst things about being the son of Larry Itliong was having to bury manongs who didn’t have families and I didn’t realize this. I thought everybody did this until like only a few years ago,” Johnny Itliong said. “That was the worst part but also the best part because those people were family.”
Born in 1965 — the same year as the Delano Grape Strike — Johnny Itliong remembers the work his father and manongs did to fight for better working conditions for farmworkers.
Larry Itliong was one of the leaders in the Filipino community who inspired the strike. He also worked with labor union activists Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to start the United Farm Workers..."
I guess I benefited more than most from spending 2nd through 5th grades in Hawaiian schools with kids of so many different races (many Filipino, especially). I wish more parents would be as interested in all babies nearly as much as their own, their nieces and nephews, cousins, their children's classmates, and all children of the same ages.
I really appreciate the link to the Brandeis transcript.
I worked through the auto generated transcript to make it mostly into sentences as paragraphs themselves, before planning to try to make them into paragraphs of as many sentences as seemed appropriate (not that easy from the automated transcript), when I get some free time from taking care of our very fragile cat. Your timely link saves me that effort.
Now I have two versions, one with my own as a bit easier to pick out particularly good highlights.
Even those of us who do not "make" the babies can care for them. I relish my role as an "Auntie", both in my family and with an ever-changing group of college students in the tuba studio at U of O.
Making babies does not need to be literal; what is really intended is making babies into citizens. It takes a village is absolutely true; you can help to make babies into citizens by being part of that village that supports that transition.
One of the worst things about the convicted felon trump and his minions/overlords is the example children are seeing of an adult. The convicted felon trump is a truly despicable man; the opposite of what we want our children to aspire to be. His minions/overlords are also the worst possible examples of citizens. The village they aspire to create would be the worst possible way to raise citizens for a world I want to live in.
Being a parent also places within us a desire to work for a better future because we have invested interests in the lives of those whom we hold precious.
And now, where is the most poisonous agitation against liberal democracy? In the U.S., all the cult members for the 34-count convicted but yet arrogant criminal look around and see nothing but menacing national institutions, dangerous schools, and an entire fantasy world. This fictitious construct brims with things they can be paranoid over, scripts and scenarios for which they wield only the most vile of labels. All scurry with but the most vulgar, nastiest of adjectives.
The criminal did his crimes. And more. Did his business frauds regularly. Cheated. Lied. Raped. Got the Clarence court to take away women's Constitutional rights. Mocked cripples. Insulted veterans. Grew the national debt for tax write-offs for the predator rich. Yet millions flock to his sour views of the world (of fellow citizens as vermin, as needing imprisonment, execution, millions deported).
It's fantasy. Fiction. For which there's only one appropriate answer.
Dems need loudly and often to cite their own all-American novels, memoirs, histories, films, songs, and other arts. Show the acceptance of and love for all our varied communities, landscapes. If the arts show places and people needing help, then yes, let's help.
That's it. Astonishingly simple. Tens of millions have gotten sold into depravity simply because the side that could be decent has somehow too largely become helplessly neutered instead.
"Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos." Now, that sounds like a fine idea to me.
George C. Marshall is my American Man of the 20th Century. He was FDR’s essential right-hand man in the conduct of World War II. His selflessness resulted in his staying in Washington while Dwight Eisenhower became the hero of the European sector.
As Secretary of State, Defense Secretary, and in other service to the United States of America, Marshall was remarkable. He didn’t take a single day off during WW II. Then, at war’s end, he didn’t hesitate to respond to President Truman’s request that he go to China for a year to ‘try to work things out between Chang and Mao.’
For me, WWII and the Marshall Plan were capstones in an unparalleled career. [He never wrote an autobiography or accepted lucrative offers to write about his service. He believed that he shouldn’t benefit financially from his service to his country.]
As Secretary of State, he went to Russia, where he met with Stalin, who he had known during WW II. He realized that the Cold War was deep rooted. On his way back to the United States, he experienced a ravaged post-war Europe. Upon his return, he charged George Kennan [who had authored the famous ‘containment’ policy paper on the Soviet Union] to coordinate an economic program intended to resurrect a crippled Europe.
When he had the basis shape of this rescue plan, he contacted Harvard, where he was scheduled to receive an honorary degree, and asked whether he could make a brief speech. There is no video of his 11-minute speech. However, it sparked a reaction in London and Paris within hours.
The timing was critical. The communists were making serious inroads in Italy, France, Greece, and elsewhere, while Germans were experiencing near starvation and the situation in England was worse than during WW II.
Seeking $13 billion [a massive amount back then] from a rather isolationist Republican Congress seemed an impossible hurdle. Marshall crisscrossed America explaining the need for this program AND that the great majority of these funds would be spent in the United States. He personally spent countless hours in Congress. The Marshall Plan was enacted and, according to impartial observers, this ‘saved’ democracy in much of Europe.
Marshall was the only general ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Thank you for this. As a child born not long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, I have distinct memories of newsreels showing the devastation in Europe. I recall my mother packing up clothing for European refugees, and when I hesitated to part with some dress (nothing was store bought in those days), she would say, "Think of how happy this will make some little girl whose home was bombed." It wasn't a guilt trip but a way of cultivating compassion for which I am grateful.
Progwoman Kudos to your mother! During WW II we would go to a factory in Philadelphia and pack boxes for American prisoners of war. After WW II, my mother organized Packages for Britain, with my sister’s assistance. Post-war England was in dreadful shape.
On my first trip to Europe in 1962, I saw buildings in England that STILL had not been razed and rebuilt. Later, I became friends with a man who as a child was sent to the English countryside. As he developed dementia later, any trip outside Greater New York, especially friends' farm in Pennsylvania, would bring it all back and he wondered when the war would end. I hope we never witness that kind of devastation here, but it's not impossible.
Thank you for this “window” into displacement. A few days ago a photo of Ukrainian orphans taken to Russia was another wrenching displacement snapshot.
Mary Ellen I was in England in 1949 and was told that food rationing was worse than during the war. My sister got married there in 1949. Sending sugar and other ingredients for a wedding cake made her seem like a smiuggler. A couple of nasty encounters.
Hear! Hear! You speak great truth, Keith. Marshall was the man ofthe century. As one American Historian said in an A&E bio on Marshall, "We desperately need another George Marhall now. "
In a related vein, I thought to run an idea by you, Keith. In that same A&E bio, I saw some closing remarks made by General Colin Powell. He spoke as a great admirer of General Marshall. Powell noted that Marshall had been Secretary of State and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I believe Powell wanted to achieve the level of respect and acclaim Marshall had. So, I imagine Bush/Cheney approached him to join their government and offered him the Secretary of State position through which Powell thought he could get a Nobel Prize as well. Then, things went south.... And the fraudulence of the Iraq War came to light. In later years, Powell said, "Now, I'll be remembered as the guy who started the Iraq War."
Heydon This is a delightful story, but it doesn’t ring true to me. As a long-time trustee of Eisenhower Fellowships I had the opportunity to know various distinguished chairmen. General Colin Powell was one. [At one time he and I had the same ‘godfather’ in government—Frank Carlucci.] I spoke with Powell about Marshall, whom he tremendously admired. I didn’t sense that he sought to emulate him.
I thought that Powell’s decision to join the Bush/Cheney administration was a big mistake. He got chewed up in the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld meat grinder. His February, 2003 speech on Iraq Powell profoundly regrets.
Our current chairman is Robert Gates, who had been SecDef under Bush/Obama. As Gates knows, I consider him the best American SecDef, with the exception of Marshall, who was A+ at everything.
Yes! As a child I “knew” Marshall as a fellow Virginian. As an Episcopalian I helped my mother put together clothes to send clothes to England. In public school we learned the Marshall Plan and the countries that joined the UN as they joined. I have seen the battlefields of the Marne that can only be seen from a boat and the Warsaw City Museum film of the total debris field in that city when the Germans and the Russians had tried to destroy Poland, that ancient empire, forever. What stuck with me was that farmers brought their carts and wagons to the city to haul off the debris so the city could be rebuilt. There is still WWII construction in Warsaw. The Marshall Plan could have encompassed all of Europe had Stalin not been Stalin. The General-Statesman’s view of Europe has infused a vision of world peace that I think our current president shares. Who knows? If Gorbachev’s understanding that led him to try to give up on Stalinism had remained dominant what a world we might have now! If we can hold together and look to Tony Judt’s vision for US, we may yet achieve the unity that will allow us to use our wealth and intelligence to realize the vision of our Founding Fathers.
Virginia If Stalin had volunteered to become a recipient of the Marshall Plan, it almost certainly not have been approved in Congress. The Czechs came out for it, before a Stalin NYET.
But Keith I wrote “had Stalin not been Stalin.” Didn’t know about the Czechs, but not surprised. Do you ever wonder what Russia would be like without czars or Stalins? There hasn’t been a decent government in that enormous country for more than a few hours, has there? You would know. I forget the small moments.
I only have one small third hand story about Gorby. The only CIA agent I ever knew (second hand) had a pleasant Christmas dinner with Gorby (? 1989). I never learned what they talked about but apparently there was a certain pleasure in each other’s company. I wish I could have known “Uncle Harry,” but his niece-by-name, who told the story, was a thoroughly respectable contemporary of ours. She dealt with 7 languages, worked in national cartography, and visited much of Yugoslavia in 1957. We were planning to sit in our rocking chairs in our 90’s and settle the world but she died suddenly in 2003 while I was in France. We met in college then turned up on the same block in uptown New Orleans where we just went on telling stories. Both of us were born in Virginia about 60 miles apart, but before we really spent time together we had traveled two widely different paths, surviving various guns but never owning any.
Huge thank you Keith. I was off to 2 graduations today, Pleased to comeback to my computer tonight to see your comments on the Marshall Plan. I believe this Community is aware of your decades long experience.👏 I hope there is a book coming sometime.
Bryan Happy graduations! I hope that these students didn’t spend their time taking courses such as the oversubscribed Harvard course on Taylor Swift. Marshall’s 11 minutes were monumentally better.
Warm thanks for your kind words. At 90 with four compression fractures of my lower back, I am all ‘booked out.’ I do enjoy spontaneously riffing on Heather, Joyce, the NYT, and James Fallows. This all comes from my head, since looking up facts would break my spontaneous flow.
I have just completed 42 stories for Storyworth. This included 20 questions provided by them and 22 that I initiated. I found it an exhilarating and personally spelunking exercise ranging from how luck and serendipity affected my life to how my views on religion and racism evolved.
This will be assembled into a book for my family and close friends. I consider it far more honest than ‘autobiography.’
Virginia It probably will be X rated and you wouldn’t be permitted to even glance at this banned book. Will be produced in a few months. I’ve completed all of my stories.
Yes, the rich ore of honesty. Since Covid 19 & the Movie 'Once' I wander daily in the thriving music community, music outside, music in garages, in bedrooms. wherever ... put your string or horn section stacked up & elevated up on your stairwell 🎶
It is Thursdaymorn' so I gather with a couple 1000 folks at SCOTUSblog.com LIVE to hear & analyze the last 29 to 31 opinions yet to be published.
I just reread your paean to George Marshall. When I first heard that his Plan for Europe was an exploitive US move, I was furious that anyone could be so cynical about this brilliant real American patriot. Rereading your piece I remembered it and was all the more moved by the power of the person and the Plan.
Just two months after the end of the war, the French journalist Claude Blanchard (who had been on the Front Lines with the Allied Forces until the German surrender) was sent to Moscow by his editor at Paris-Soir, Pierre Lazareff. Lazareff wanted Blanchard to interview Stalin and average citizens for a report on real life in the Soviet Union in order to give French readers a closer look at communism. Blanchard began his return to Paris after two months in Russia, stopping to change planes in Cairo. Whether from mechanical failure or sabotage, his plane never made it and he and six other passengers perished, along with his massive reportage.
I'd rather have seen that money go into a good system of national inter-linking high speed rail, with matching light rail in cities and linked small towns across the land.
Imagine a U.S. without all those concrete, multi-lane congestion arteries, with their land-gulping spidery overpasses, their more-land-eating shopping malls, their massive concrete and asphalt parking lagoons.
While a rail system may have worked for the eastern US which had European-like population density, the size of the terrain west of the Rockies would have required government intervention and the railroads were already well established empires.
Interstate Highways could be sold as military necessity.
We're driving east on Interstate 84 on the Columbia Plateau between places that people who live in Oregon have never been to; even with railroads on both sides of the Columbia River, the Interstate Highway is essential.
Was that one of the options on the table at the time? Considering the American car culture already in place by then, I would bet it wouldn't have gotten much play. But of course, in hindsight, it would have been a better solution for, at the very least, moving goods over distance than trucks have become. But it might have made us too "European". (I admit I love having a highway to use between Augusta Maine and the Boston and western Mass areas, rather than a train, when I have a lot of pieces of luggage.)
While visiting for a month last year in France, we had many people tell us, with thanks, that the Marshall Plan saved their communities and country. They also pointed out that they are about 1,500 miles from Ukraine, or 2 1/2 hours by air. They are nervous.
I have met German kids who were taught about the Marshall Plan and they expressed appreciation...followed by 'how can such a country elect WBush and Trump? I had no answer.
I remember hearing about it somewhere along the line before I graduated high school in 1970, but don't remember much except it had something to do with Europe after WWII.
Is it Beth, on the next, upcoming standardized test?
If not, it goes forgotten, ignored, like the personal of oneself and all others, like all humanities our elites have carefully learned also to exclude.
JUne 4th 1989, a date, even a number that is forbidden China. Any. mention Is purged from social media. Even in Hong Kong there isn longer any public awareness. It will soon be erased from the public consciousness, at least in China, but even here, it is remarkable how. little it is mentioned.
The image of the Chinese man standing in front of the CCP tank nobly blocking same, will live forever in the memories of so many. This is so irrespective of how censorious the powers that be may be.
Market capitalism is no guarantor of liberal democracy. Look at the damage the likes of Miltin Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics caused in Latin America.
Thanks. I am prone to typos. Sometimes even omitting to type words that are necessary to make sense. I try to keep things proofread but am not good at that either. My wife catches most of the "bugs" when necessary.
But unfortunately, the pro-dictator wing of the GOP, which reached its maximum strength before the war in the America First movement, was still around and reorganizing itself after the war. It continued to grow and spread its influence, until today there is a credible possibility of a man dedicated to ending these 77 years of cooperation in the West, tearing it all down, becoming the next president.
Couldn’t be more appropriate reminder I’ve always wanted to learn about the Marshall plan and now I know. Thank you Heather may those eleven minutes refresh in the minds of MAGAS just what’s at stake!
Lisa, agreed that it was an important reminder, and reading the text of that speech taught me 95% of what I now know about the Marshall Plan. Refers in the minds of MAGAts? Oh, heavens no. It does not fit their narrative, so it will be either devoutly ignored or met with an intelligent, well-reasoned response of "Nuh uh. That's librul propaganda".
General Marshall’s plan was amazing, no punishment of the civilian population, no destroying the countries beyond redemption, no demand for territory… the United States would help Europe become a strong democratic ally. I am so proud of my country magnanimous in victory.
My grandfather was a ceramic engineer who went to Dresden Germany to help rebuild the pottery industry there. He was an amputee from a sports injury so was ineligible to fight in the war, but was proud to do his part in the recovery after the war. It also began an interest in our family in travel and information about other countries that has persisted. It has enriched our lives.
Molly, I've always wished we'd been more magnanimous to the USSR when the wall fell. We might have been able to help Russia avoid the terrible direction in which it's gone. Yes, compassionate, but strategically wise more to the point.
Sorry, Joan, but a different history was in place in 1991.
Then, all the worst energized from the Powell memo of 20 years earlier had taken over U.S. higher ed, so the biz schools were dominant, all humanities dead, marginalized.
So many grads of high finance from the Ivy League flocked to the former Soviet Union to invest in all the worst of the former nomenklatura. Thus, the new oligarch states that seized all the former public resources for private, greedy profit for themselves and their unwitting, also glassy-eyed greedy U.S. financiers (with the U.S. Department of State facilitating the plunder.).
The Soviet refusal to participate in the Marshall plan to the detriment of their people reminds me of a similar refusal by red-state governors to participate in the expansion of Medicaid in their respective states, putting politics before the well-being of people.
MacArthur's postwar administration of Japan ranks right up there with the Marshall Plan. Interesting that generals who waged war against Japan and Germany should be at the vanguard of such enlightened policies, whereas politicians -- notably Lloyd George and Clemenceau overriding naive Wilson-- oversaw the vengeful reparations and arbitrary redrawing of national boundaries post-World War I sowing the seeds of fascism and World War II. Truman, Marshall, and MacArthur demonstrated the ability to learn from past mistakes. Sadly, I see no evidence of it now.
“I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.”
-Douglas MacArthur's speech to the Texas Legislature in Austin (June 13, 1951)
He must have been aware of the Republicans who were colluding with Nazi propagandist groups as described in Rachael Maddow’s book Prequel. Which all got covered up by Truman.
And now, after 40+ years of Reagan's trickle down economics and the ensuing race to the bottom, the United States needs it's own Marshall Plan. Perhaps it can be called "Build Back Better"!
Most readers seem to be focusing exclusively on America; but it is worldwide that things are falling apart.
Sometimes, thank goodness, it is extremism that is imploding. Look at India's election results -- those are the big news of the moment.
Nevertheless, take nothing for granted. Mussolini's hold on power was severely shaken by the scandal that ensued in 1924 when Fascist hitmen murdered star opposition leader Giacomo Matteotti... just on the point of denouncing major corruption in the form of a sell-out of a deal with Sinclair Oil of Teapot Dome fame... Mussolini emerged from the ordeal strengthened, put an end to democratic forms and ruled as dictator. In the longer term, the disaster for Italy was immeasurable.
Modi is as dangerous as they come. Watch.
Watch the maneuvers of Netanyahu and his Nazi-style sidekicks.
Watch Europe, too, this weekend, where the Duce's sugar-coated successors may be on the point of making a killing at elections to the European Parliament.
Watch South Africa, unstable after the collapse of the ANC. Watch Mexico...
Don't for one moment take your eyes off the crucial threat to the planet, America's homegrown would-be Fuehrer. Yet, stay wide awake to the global crisis brought on by degenerate gone-to-seed capitalism.
According to Prof. Katheleen Belew in her book, Bring the War Home: White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, a global plan was made by White Supremacists who gathered in the USA in the Northwest from around the world. In the late 1980s/early 1990s they planned to stop fighting against the government and instead take it over, by joining it. By running for office. By toning down their overtly racist rhetoric and instead pretend that they were just against immigration. You can imagine that White South Africans were part of this. It seems to me as I see the right wing taking over our Congress, many state governments, Sweden, Italy as well as some former Soviet Union countries, like Russia, Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia and as such Immigrants became the new "Jews" on which every problem that exists in a country is blamed. I appreciate the tools that reading Prof. Belew's book has given me to recognize the coded meaning of the term "immigrants." This has been very intentional. Yes. I am voting in the elections of two countries. One for democracy in the USA, and the other for democracy in the EU. It is a different sort of election, and now there is a lot of action in terms of demonstration and marches against the right-wing parties. In Germany, specifically against the AfD, which I call The New German Nazi Party, while I call the Republican party The New American Nazi Party. In fact, I can ascribe names from Hitler's henchmen to some of the figures. Texas Governor Abbott is the new Himmler, who oversaw the death camps, and Speaker Johnson is the new Goebbels, who was the propaganda minister for Hitler and spun his lies to the German people into webs of gold.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674286078
As for Republicans who just enjoy the drama of the MAGA extremists, I can't help but wonder if these are not Jerry Springer and like shows acolytes, who got used to all of this drama on television, and now seek it out as a way of feeling like their lives are no so empty. It is very disturbed and disturbing.
Yes. Marshall was a great visionary. Without him, the world would be much diminished. A Marshall plan for Latin America and Africa would be at least as impactful. Instead, Republicans are promoting Project 2025.
Great idea. It would pay great dividends.
Yes Tex, good comment.
Thank you for spelling it out far more clearly than I did. The psychology of your closing paragraph is very much to the point. Only, the problem affects far more than Republicans, it is that of society today.
While there's some resonance in your comparison of Abbott with Himmler, you flatter Speaker Johnson...
True about Speaker Johnson. He is one of many that I call the Goebbels Brigade. Johnson and his Seven Mountain Magic is just not that clever. However, as a group of apologists for Trump, they do perform the task that Goebbels had as the spin doctor. We can add all of the people on the Fox Network that perform this same function to the Goebbels Brigade as well. The press in Germany under Hitler did not get to decide what to publish so these useful idiots may find themselves out of a job, or promoted. I bet they are counting on the later. However, there is no loyalty from a fascist dictator. His loyalty is only to himself.
That Seven Mountains business should not be underestimated. Two of the seven "mountains" that the New Apostolic Reformation people have set out to control are the judiciary and education. They already control much of the judiciary because of the dozens of federal judges Trump appointed while in office but most particularly, his three Supreme Court nominations giving Republicans 6 of 9 Supreme Court justices - a majority that can give a re-elected Trump any decision he wants. The second "mountain" is education. There are already 28 states funding fundamentalist Christian religious schools with taxpayer money. Check out the Hartmann Report, Substack. June 5. Very scary.
NL...there was a new story here in Oregon just yesterday about school vouchers. They are trying to get it on the ballot. The spokeswoman made it sound innocuous, but I wasn't fooled by her drivel. I do not want my tax dollars funding private schools or charter schools for that matter. I was in education for many years and am so glad to be retired. I confess to shouting at the TV while the story was airing.
It was the Hartmann Report on June 4. I thought today was tomorrow... 🤪Apologies.
It is so much craziness that I am sickened. I am not underestimating the goals, just think that the followers are liars.
Thanks for alerting us to this.
The thing that gets me is how Speaker Mike gets away with referring to himself as a Christian. A person who says, in effect, "Praise the Lord, and thank you for your advice, but no thanks -- we'll take it from here ..." is not a Christian.
Speaker Pelosi is a real Christian. When asked if she hated Donald Trump, she said she has a heart full of love, that she prays for him, and that she doesn't hate anyone.
Or maybe it's me. Maybe I have this backwards and upside down. I thought being a Christian meant looking at my enemy and seeing a neighbor. Maybe Speaker Mike has it right. Maybe being a Christian means looking at my neighbor and seeing an enemy.
But I have a plan to settle this once and for all. I'm going to go to the Bible and see what it says.
Pfft. Little Johnson is not a Christian. He is an aberration that does not speak to what Jesus taught in the first three Gospels.
Hear, hear. We must not forget that even the Marshall Plan did not know the future. Perhaps, the US did not do its due diligence and read signs that were not available to the world in 1947. So much technology happened that I truly believe the world could not keep up with the pace and influence it would have on the plan. Communication avenues - good and bad - was never considered the weapon it is today. Hence Fox News. Weapons proliferation may not have even been considered. I may not know all the ins and outs of the effects of the Marshal Plan, but, I truly believe while the plan was immediately needed and its goals were humanitarian maybe it did not grow and change with time.
It resulted in NATO. Following Marshall, George F. Kennan, President Truman, and Dean Acheson worked to focus on western Europe to maintain democratic ideals.
The anti-communism part of the Marshal Plan led to the domino theory and wars in Korea and Vietnam.
Yours was a good post Peter. And, Mexico..., that is an interesting one indeed.
I think we need a two state solution in the Middle East and then a Marshal Plan for Palestine. Hopefully a victory for Ukraine and a Marshal Plan there as well.
The Ukraine "Marshall Plan" must be paid for with Russian assets seized from around the globe. I support our support, but Russia must pay for the damages it has caused. The NYT yesterday reported that they analyzed every building damaged or destroyed in Ukraine over the past 2 years -- they counted 210,000 of them, across the country, with cities and neighborhoods looking like Dresden at the end of WW2.
The countries that benefited from The Marshall Plan had a) defined borders, and b) had been non-violent (on the whole) before WWII.
Neither can be said of the Palestinians. There is little to rebuild—rebuild Gaza to hand to Hamas or the Islamic Jihad? Or to the Palestinian Authority that has had 30+ years to establish effective governance with billions of international dollars and hasn’t?—the Palestinians in the West Bank have been caught smuggling in weapons from Iran through Jordan.
First woman president for Mexico.
MadRussian, Mexico indeed is very interesting. A woman and a Jew as president. I read another story yesterday that a female mayor of some city was shot to death.
Just watched an interview of Jon Stewart and Ken Buck and was so disturbed and disappointed to hear him say Ken Buck, in essence...the trial against Trump was a witch hunt. His defense was that Bragg ran on prosecuting Trump. That made it partisan.
I can be pretty dense sometimes, but haven't other politicians run on prosecuting mafiosi bosses. Weren't they also named? And if a jury if his peers, people Trump and his lawyers selected, find him guilty, doesn't that destroy the witch hunt claims?
I watched that too. Buck is a slippery slimy thing and always has been. Glad he's no longer my rep.
The Dem running agwinst a perennial failed republicans candidate has a good chance of replacing him this month. Watch for Trisha Calvarese.
And she'll also be running against Boebert this fall I expect.
In response to your last question: of course it does!
Is it a witch hunt if you found an actual jury affirmed witch?
STANDARD GOP MISREPRESENTATION:
"The trial against Trump was a witch hunt... Bragg ran on prosecuting Trump. That made it partisan."
PROBLEM -- THE CONVICTION IS OVERDUE
Bragg has done his duty.
Only, what he has done should have been done decades ago: nailing a notorious crook, a not-so-petty criminal who got away with whatever he fancied doing by dint of wealth and a network of influence... until he exposed himself by overdoing things, grabbing America by the genitals.
He hasn't let go and won't, so long as his hands are free.
Sure destroys those claims in my book!
Bragg ran on prosecuting White Collar crime. Trump was not mentioned by name. This is another piece of disinformation. Trump was found guilty on all counts by a jury that the defense helped select and witnesses defense cross examined.
Bragg is not likely to say a thing until sentencing and appeals are exhausted. He put Cy Vance’s charges aside and selected his own statues and wrote up his own charges This is a matter of public record and all within the public’s view.
Many, myself included, were worried that Bragg was abandoning Vance’s groundwork. No, he was building a stronger case and won.
Politically, prosecuting Trump seemed like a long shot. Sentencing and appeals lie ahead. It’s too soon to say Trump won’t go get off the hook. It’s not over until it’s over. 🤞
Joe, thanks for clarifying what Bragg ran on—it’s not Bragg’s fault that Trump engaged in white collar crime.
And not just white collar...
As I have gleaned out of my reading in the last 4 years, the gatherings of these wealthy trust fund billionaires at places like, Davos, Jackson Hole, Aspen and Palm Springs lead by the Koch coalition, have allowed these people to coordinate their plans on a global basis. Most importantly their plans require "Stealth" as James Buchanan and Milton Friedman both knew about their "free" market ideas and libertarian plans. They understood how popular the New Deal programs were and how those ideas could not be attacked directly. That is why these meeting have closed door sessions with minutes of the meetings destroyed or taken in secret.
Read Kochland.
I know I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but this effort started with Clinton’s election over Bush the Elder. The basic plan was toFund and develop their own think tanks to study and publish on their ideology, fund chairs at colleges and universities to get a voice in hiring professors and administrators, give grants and full scholarships to “worthy” students referred to them by “friends of” and well-placed administrators. And, of course, The Federalist Society in 1982.
They already had Skull & Bones, the Bohemian Grove, and someone’s ranch gatherings (Harlan Crowe?). FOX “News” came later
And "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer.
Citizens United got the ball rolling.........
Yes Rickey, money, money, money.
Have you also taken these prescient thoughts further to the end? I'm sure you have. My guess is that you see the end of this travesty similar to how I see it. The destruction of the US system of justice by these individuals. I assign the names of Nazi hierarchy a bit differently. I see Stephen Miller as Himmler, Tucker Carlson as Goebbels, Abbot feels a bit more like Reinhardt Heidrich, a "governor" of a particular area of the Reich.
Steve Bannon seems a lot like Ernst Roehm, don't you think? Thuggish, nasty etc.
No matter how the names are assigned the thought of these individuals in places of power is terrifying if people would look at what happened to Nazi Germany I think that at least a few might think better of supporting the idea of autocracy.
Steve Bannon had an organization to help teach individuals how to subvert an established government. He bought a place in Italy or France for his school. That nation’s government refused to allow Bannon’s school to open. Bannon has tentacles around the world.
Interestingly, all Bannon wants to do is tear down/blow up, he’s not on the front line developing something new.
He is an anarchist. I have to wonder how many anarchists think they themselves can survive if the rule of law becomes defunct. How does anyone survive renegade gangs roaming the country, especially in this country with more guns than people. I guess we can ask Mexico with their cartels & their 37 political assassinations how they survive!
Or we could send them to Somalia and report back.
"Not on the front line developing something new..."
No, something old, Julius Evola etc. reheated, then blended with Ultramontane stuff from the days when the Vatican was in bed with the Mussolini regime.
Linda and Peter, I in full agreement. But we must not and I repeat, we must not give them the ammunition that the far right uses to gain strength. And one obvious issue is porous borders. This is nothing new. The Moors were driven from Spain. And you can go back as far as you want. When there are major human movements, a backlash is sure to come. I illustrate Germany under Chancellor Merkle when she was asked why she had an open door policy toward the migratory movements and she responded that it was the guilt Germany felt toward WWII. Little could she surmise that she was seeding the next nationalistic movement and now it’s I believe the 2nd most popular political movement in Germany today. Was it worth it? A categoric NO. This is called not learning anything history has taught.
Here in the States, the southern border. The bleeding hearts respond that we need to take in these people. For what price? The loss of democracy? Is that what you want? I don’t. We have laws of immigration. No one is denying people entry but uncontrolled entry, yes. It makes me real mad that many of us just don’t get it. And we are willing to lose it all over this one issue (well maybe more issues) but this one is taking the proverbial cake.
Allow me to add on the the British conservatives under Boris Johnson parted from the European Union over this issue. It will break up everything positive that has developed post WWII most assuredly.
Bill, I know you feel that Biden should have been tougher on this subject long ago. But Biden was ready to sign a bipartisan bill that was very tough and co-written by Republicans. It was Trump who killed the bill. It is a REPUBLICAN failure. Spread the word!
But let's live in the present moment. What do you think of Biden now that he has effectively closed the border? Ready to spread the word?
There is so much ammunition for Democrats about immigration. If Republican businessmen really cared about it, why do they employ undocumented workers on our farms? Undocumented children in slaughter houses? It's the greed of the Oligarchs that allows this to happen. Tell a friend!
It is Republicans who own the immigration problem. Yell it from the roof tops!
Well said, Bill. We need immigrants and their labor. Processing them and incorporating them into the workforce takes $$$, which the GOP, and now the MAGAts refuse to provide in their never ending quest to support their ideology. Happened to be reading an old ProPublica article yesterday on the GOP’s refusal to fund the replenishment of the pandemic stockpile, helping lead to the disaster that was Trump’s handling of Covid. Let’s put the blame squarely where it belongs.
In most cases “immigrants” means brown people. That’s the real problem. Capitalists give lip service to immigration but they like it because they get a captured workforce.
Immigration is used as a tool to divide and conquer just like racism. Remember-they’re “poisoning our blood”, they’re “rapists” and are killing people.
Obviously we can’t accept everyone who wants entry-we need common sense laws-but the Rs are hypocritical-they’re just using the issue to stoke fear and win votes.
If we could minimize war, famine, climate change, greed etc then maybe people wouldn’t be leaving their home countries to seek better environments.
Yes, Gina. The Rs are the party of death full of hypocrites of the highest order.
Yes you hit it on the head.
So true. When in actually the only non-immigrants are Brown people if we look at the original people here. However, I consider everyone born in the USA to be a Native of the US. My mom came to the USA in the 1950s and she said she was just asked a few questions on which she could have easily lied. No difficulty getting in then from Germany even though they had just been the enemy country around 10 years earlier.
Bill, yes, the immigration problem could have been solved years ago if not for some people using very cheap exploitable immigrant labor which they still are doing. It is a travesty and the idea that immigrants vote, when they do everything they can to not call attention to themselves. They also do all the hard physical labor that white people do not want to do. When it was time to spread the cement on the sidewalk project in front of our house, it was Hispanics who did that. They also do most of the landscaping and roofing around here and that doesn't count those out in the fields and on dairy farms.
Spot on, Bill Alstrom.
Bill, I am not advocating that Germany or the USA not have controls on who enters the borders. As the daughter of a German immigrant, and the wife of a German immigrant, and now living in a community of Germans and American as well as other immigrants in Germany where I am both a citizen and an immigrant, I can understand that there are times where we need a lot of new people, and times where we do not. The Right-wing Germans are responding to what I assume is a lot of Russian disinformation. I can hardly find people to do work on our house in Germany because they are so, so, so booked. No one can come before a month or two. Things that should take 6 months drag out 2 years. In a nation where the median age is 44.9 years, and would be higher if not for the recent surge of immigrants, they need new and younger people. In 2010 before the surge of immigrants the population was dropping. It has had some increase, but not enough to help the economy. The Russians seed this nationalism as much as anyone else, because the people here are naive about the ways of Bot manipulation. Most Leftist people that I know here have no knowledge of this either. The Southern states economies would crash without all the work done my immigrants. In 2022 immigrants made up 17.2% of the population in Texas. So, almost 1/5 of the population there. In the USA in general immigrants make up 14% of the population.
Do we really want to blame Angela Merkel for German's who easily embrace racism? Or Biden? Britain's right wingers made a racist move, had Brexit and it is just downhill from there. I consider the flow of different people into Europe as a positive thing. And, it is true the northern half of the planet has been exploiting the environment which is affecting us all, but particularly the southern half of the planet. I am not making a case for the violent extremists, but many people are contributing. My husband happens to be an expert in his field. He works on a research team that is made up of people from many countries. The USA has benefitted from his work, as much as the people working in the fields to produce our food do too.
Who is not contributing is Jared Kushner selling out to Serbia. See here in SpyTalk. https://www.spytalk.co/p/kushners-deal-with-pro-russia-serbs/comments
Thank you, Linda. With a growing percentage of the U.S. population over age 65, we need young immigrants to fill jobs and contribute to Social Security. There is no question in my mind that all the rhetoric about "closing the border" - and it's always the southern border! - is about racism... the "othering" of people from Central and South America. Do you hear anyone complaining about immigrants from Britain, Norway, or Australia?? Of course not.
Regarding your point about your husband's research team being "made up of people from many countries": Maybe I'm a "bleeding heart" in Bill Katz's mind, but I believe strongly that diversity is a positive for businesses and organizations. People of different genders, races, nationalities, and so on can offer different perspectives that contribute to workplace teams.
That's enough on my soapbox for today!
Ellen, if you listen to Mike Johnson, we don't need immigrants. We need more white American girls and women having white babies.
America wouldn’t be a “superpower” without immigration. It’s trite but diversity is strength. All of nature is diverse-why shouldn’t we have diversity of experience, ideas and opportunities?
Ellen, Ellen, stop it already. Did I lose you on “bleeding heart?”
I choose a different tac. Sometimes you pull back when issues are going against the tide for the sake of winning and no, not winning at any price. And our current political mess in the US must be won there is no recovery from this loss. Do you get it now?
Linda, I also am the daughter of a German immigrant, married to an Italian immigrant. My husband, too, is a researcher, heading a university lab with scientists and engineers from many different countries, working on topics with great relevance to today’s world (vehicle electrification, alternative fuels, battery storage). The labor situation you describe in Germany holds true here in the US as well. If you try to hire a contractor for any kind of work, you’re lucky if you get a call back from one out of ten requests, and the backlog is long.
Not just contractors, but doctors and other medical positions seem understaffed. We lost a lot of them in Covid, one way or the other. Friends and relatives of the million lost to Covid should think seriously about how Don conned us. He was saved by medical science and then basically spit on it.
Ditto Japan, KR.
As you note, "The labor situation you describe in Germany holds true here in the US as well." Japan has an even lower birth rate, and very much needs labor from the younger people of the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia, and other nearby countries.
A strong, deep racism mitigates against the decent programs the government here has initiated, said government trying to look to the tax base as well as to the needs of so many industries desperate for labor.
German-American (immigrant) here. Have to call out on one thing, Linda: Germans embrace racism no more easily than any -ANY- other group of humans on the planet. ("Voelkerwanderung" (we go where we can best survive) is as old as humanity itself. I embrace it.)
I don't believe in "races," but the human race with physical variation. So much of that is just outdated thinking and scientifically ignorant. Where my daughter is studying in Germany they are seeking to have more current models to talk about race and gender. Still, on the streets, most of the people I encounter do not think of this. As a dual American-German, who was raised in the US, spent time back and forth, and now mainly live in Germany, I see the racism in both countries. Both are countries of White Supremacy. My knowledge of recent German history is why I warn about the parallels in the US right now. You might notice that I have made several of these comparisons in this chain. Can't say that everyone is as racist. I think Native American groups are viewing people in a different way, than the Western model of divide and conquer. Of course, I have met Native Americans that I thought were racist. Still, I just don't know about people everywhere. It seems an over generalization. I have been wondering which people are most susceptible to the influence of fake information, such as Russian bots used to influence the elections in the US and EU right now.
Linda, it’s rough out there isn’t it. I’m just presenting you a cause and effect and a historical context. I never said I was against immigration. But control it. You ask me if I want to blame Angela and Boris and Joe and anyone else and the answer is, yes. I do.
We are living in incredibly complex world now with disinformation and so on. It’s hard enough for thinking people to make smart decisions. Forget about the dumb ones. And do not forget, those at the top, the invisible puppeteers are sowing disinformation for the purposes of power and money. All logic is tossed out the window.
Both sets of my grandparents were immigrants; southern Italian and Eastern European. Once backpacking through Sicily , I met old timers that told me how towns emptied and moved to America. Yep, among those were Santa and Paulo, my grandparents. Even at that time,I thought, cheeses, we let that many people in? So I don’t discriminate.
The worse thing that Boris Johnson did was enact Brexit. The second worst thing that the European Union did was not set limits on migration. It’s my opinion. You can have your opinion. I want to save good developments like the European Union but it will most assuredly break apart if they don’t set limits.
Every one needs to set limits, but who and how. I would say, if the elevator is full, you don't want to put more into it because the cables might break and you will all fall and die with it. On the other hand, the US needs more immigrants. A year ago I read that we had a 10 mil job shortage and only 5 mil seeking work. We have money for a lot of frivolous things, I think everyone can think of these, and should be making more for people to help them live. I feel that your discussion is one of blaming the victim. If doing what is right is victimized by evil greedy people, then should we always cater to them? What world do we create if we do that?
Bill Katz, it is not an all or nothing issue. Isolation is not a solution.
Oh stop it George. You want to put words in my mouth now. Heal, I say. But frankly, I’m surprised I have gotten pushback when all I advocated is respecting laws. In the case of Europe, it needs to set limits on immigration. Without such limits, it implodes. Is that what you want. Be careful what you ask for.
I think there must be coordination with Mexico and other countries these refugees are leaving and the United States. Does anyone know about our legal immigration "list"? How long a wait before those on the "list" can get a hearing? Are the applicants for "asylum" who cross the border illegally getting on another "list" ahead of those who apply legally? Is their incentive to come across the border illegally that they will be put on a waiting list for asylum and then allowed to disperse in the US to wait for years and possibly to be lost in the system? It sounds all broken to me.
Go back to Linda Weide's exposé and to the main literature she cites: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674286078
These people have highly developed divide-and-conquer skills... They're more like Hernán Cortés than Hitler,successfully overseeing conquest by what was at first barely a minority, a mere handful.
Wow, you know them well. Agree with every word and sentiment. Thanks for ref
Excellent insight.
I wonder sometimes if we will be addicted to the drama of this time and be distracted by it enough that we just grab our popcorn instead of fighting.
Wow Linda you have done your research. Thank you for your comment.
Skinhead seem to be rising in Idaho again.
You pegged it on so many points ... I keep thinking that the one true, universal "enemy" is ignorance. The global, youthful, and perpetual ignorance of history, along with the willful ignorance (stupidity) of angry, hateful fools who refuse to see the consequences of what they're voting for, what they're against or that they're allowing to ascend by not voting.
Yes Linda. Good thinking.
Once again, follow the money, and those who would be bullies.
“While all other Sciences have advanced, that of Government is at a stand; little better understood; little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.”
– John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, Jul. 9, 1813
But could we learn?
The power of corruption in the pursuit of political and economic power is no less than the halcyon days of Imperial Rome. Continue to teach STEM and bury liberal education and we are doomed to tyranny of the MAGA amongst us.
Note I am speaking of dark money and the corporate elite not student debt. Our will to govern is failing us and we are failing ourselves. Thinking our political economy doesn’t depend on the institutions of liberal democracy is foolery. Thinking Ukraine doesn’t matter will be the doom of the liberal democracy Marshall envisaged in Harvard Yard in ‘47. How can we be so naive and foolish? Complacency led to sleepwalking and now, over the cliff we go. Infuriating 😡
Joe, I agree with what you said and the way you said it. I appreciate the truth of your remarks and the urgency of your tone! Carry on!!
Joe Palau. Don't bury STEM in your pursuit of liberalism.
The scientific method is a procedure, so you can use it to produce results whatever you might believe about the virtues of science. Yet as I see it, the beating heart of science is a philosophical epistemology, a practiced theory of knowing. That coupled with a commitment to intellectual integrity, to "the truth" insofar as we get to approximate it;.
Yet I think that falls outside of the modern concept of "STEM". I was such a science nerd that my most cherished TV program in kindergarten was "Watch Mr. Wizard" an excellent introduction of scientific thinking to children circa 1953. I have cried at the beauty of a vivid, connecting concept in a science instruction film.
But I was also an arts nerd, and just as the Universe is one thing (as in "Uni") I think human awareness is ideally one unified thing, despite some of distinct advantages of specialization. Yes, specialization, but also comprehending; "prehend" as in "prehensile", to grasp. We are tasked with seeing BOTH the forest and the trees; and since the trees go on to virtual infinity, to picking out the distinctions and connections that matter most to human lives. By that I don't mean a narcissistic notion that it only matters if it matters to us, or that we should not try to "question everything"; but rather recognizing key details and key connecting principles in order to sharpen our internal maps of reality. The better we know reality, the better we get along with her.
And I think it is true of life. We humans individually and in concert are muddling our way to better understanding ourselves and our circumstances, and while it may or be literally so, it seems that truth is beauty and beauty truth. It seems to me that there profound truth IN Keats' simple formulation; for the sciences, for the arts, in love, in life. Of course, there is more to it than that, but this I believe in my soul.
Fascism was an explicit appeal to the "Make Rome Great Again" era of Roman conquest; the word referring to Roman Empire icon. Liberal and liberty share the same etymological root. Liberal Arts were originally instruction for the free, that is, not slaves; but it became studies designed to liberate the mind, and with it, society. Some of the Enlightenment period philosophies that found their way into our founding documents I see as very much in harmony with liberation and empowerment, even in the context of shocking hypocrisy. Those principles that Marshall cherished can be found there, and as time advanced, so to, if haltingly, principles of universal rights, responsibilities, and empowerment have grown and been more universally applied, albeit now facing a redoubled effort by plutocrats to defeat them.
What do we, as humans most want, most need, and in what priority? We benefit richly from a civilization that "countless" people have bequeathed us, for the good and the bad of it. I doubt that much that really matters matters gets advertised. Not as specific products, anyway. It has been said that the best things in life are free; and when enabled by a freeing environment, and the chop wood, carry water necessary to sustain a sustainable environment of freedom, I think that is so. I am aided by commercial products throughout my days, not the least of which is the apparatus upon which I am typing, and the vast network of communications technology that delivers what I type. Yet what do I suppose I might cherish on my deathbed, a prospect that may be come sooner than later as I fall quite firmly in "senior" status. So many lives lost in "road rage", on the highway and on the battlefield. What's so important?
It is occurring to me (not a new thought, but perhaps now with more focus) that those who want to dominate have visibly mounted a massive, richly financed, and organized effort to confuse, divide, and mislead. Plenty of authors have warned of the ultimate outcome, but what do we do in an organized way to focus, unite, and disabuse the public of how the lie machine works and what it is up to? It's more a feeling than a mature thought on my part. I have encountered the idea from time to time of a Department of Peace to compliment what used to be called "The War Department". Not that DOD does not examine ways to avoid conflict, and not that such a department is necessarily the answer, or nearly enough, but can we make more visible and concerted efforts for head off problems and deesscalate conflicts? To educate, not just train?
Our current crises are massive; climate abuse, human abuse, the looming possibility of US fascism. Is there anything that we in concert could be doing better to foil the plans of those who thirst for absolute power? A long term strategy if we are lucky enough to get to deploy it?
Graham. Great post.
Good, Peter, your international eye.
These nationalists, dictators, oligarchs, murderers -- almost too many to list.
And aren't they all scrambling over each other to ally with U.S. billionaires and what you rather nicely call their "degenerate gone-to-seed capitalism"?
The U.S. billionaires got their tax cuts from their now 34-count-convicted criminal. That's one of two lasting damages that he did in all his four years in office -- grow the U.S. national debt by $7 trillion just further to enrich his fellow predators. Yes, he also gave the shaft to all U.S. women, in stuffing the court with medieval theocrats having states take over their family and health care choices.
But, yes, Peter: keep an eye on, watch out for the international thugs with whom our worst ally.
The big news yesterday is that OPEC agreed to raise production quotas. Hopefully energy prices will drop in time for the election and Russia, Iran, et al will have less funding for their wars in the Ukraine, Syria, Yemen and Gaza.
I keep asking why Treasury doesn't arbitrage part of the debt: borrow from our "allies" like Japan, Switzerland, Scandinavia, at their 1% rates to retire some 7% US debt? Why we haven't held OPEC accountable for arbitrarily fixing high prices?
Oil prices have been dropping for the past 6 weeks or so. You just don't see it at the pump.
I don't see the point of raising production unless they are trying to compete against the US who has raised production to record levels.
Beware, the US oil reserves have dropped to less than 10 years at current production rates. We better be switching to renewables at an accelerated rate before 2035.
I don't know it as a fact, but I bet Biden was persuasive. The point is that supply reduces demand.
As to prices, location, location, location. In many parts of the US wells are capped to reduce competition, and refineries do the same.
Good, David, though you do realize you're asking a reasonable question.
And, David, you do really know that one cannot ask any reasonable questions of anyone involved in any part of the fossil fuel rackets?
Is there anything in any biz school anyone learns appropriate to anything in these criminal syndicates?
David is a cousin.
Actually, also an environmental issue. California sued Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips and Chevron (the largest oil and gas companies doing business in California) for misleading the public about climate change. The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of the State of California, not in federal court. Other states will join.
It's also a national security issue. Saudis own our largest refineries and control Exxon and other domestic companies.
Correct you are, Daniel.
Correct on the issues you well cite. As well as on your own name, which (sorry) I miffed.
Daniel, where does this info come about the Saudis ? I’m totally ignorant of it though of the last couple years realize the slow infiltration of foreign ownership..lands as well..we might need to get a better grip on this, you think? Seems to me suspicious! To say the least.
Thanks
And if they give DJT a billion dollars they can do whatever they want-this includes the Saudis and other countries.
While both Phil ,Peter , many in fact here, close in on where the trouble really lays, I always feel not quite the focus on the rich going rogue as is unfortunately natural and expected -we keep dancing around the main culprits who align themselves with the known despots. The main aggressors and proxy waring few. Through more and more covert interactions they undermine , infiltrate , promise, then take over and control making their rich richer. Essentially what capitalism has accomplished through neglecting the stop guards…ie corporate monopolies, cartel control, and trafficking ( people,drugs,knock-offs, scams, hacking).
Being ‘the good guy’ isn’t entertaining enough though sells big under the long standing cloak of Christianity. Which, noted, is obviously unveiled often enough to have just as many ‘perverted’ ( wide umbrella) as any other faction. Most know who the good samaritans are …and ‘Bless Their Hearts’ as we WV’ians add (mostly genuinely)…my profound thanks to you (and you both know who you are, and rarely wave it as a flag of righteousness).
There are no magic wands..a constant battle will forever exists between good and evil and its shades of grey.
It isn’t only my observation that THESE Substack , the many writers , some classic now, provide the format for truth, highlight educational excerpts , and a place to read enough variety of thought processes for quality journalism through print.
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll …still apparent as second , third, and forth runners up..your own choice of order -not mine intended 😉
💙VOTING 💙 Stop.The.Coup.💙
Heather is featured in “Pennsylvania: Putting Democracy in Action” Tuesday, June 11, 2:00 PM PT/5:00 PM ET. She will discuss how the struggle for economic justice is feeding into pressure for political change. https://airlift.fund/
I am originally from Pennsyltucky. My home county went 2 to 1 for Trump in 2020. Stats show about a fifth of the electorate is either undecided or willing to change their mind before the election. Many slit their own throats by voting to cut, even kill their own sources of income. The lumpen proletariat? Mostly visceral stuff that has little to do with issues works. "Trump hates dogs" "Would you support stealing from kids with cancer?" Even works on MAGATs. https://rvat.org/
From Dan Phillips: to win, Biden doesn’t need a single person who voted for Trump in 2020 (although we would gladly welcome them into our coalition). Our targets are people who voted for Biden in 2020, especially Black, Hispanic, and younger voters. We know these people. They are in our lives. Their numbers are in our phones. We are connected to them via social media.
Finally, changes in the media environment mean these folks are only reachable through one-on-one conversations over the phone, at the door, or in text group chats.
• In 2022, Field Team 6 reached 5 million unregistered likely Democrats
• The result? 1.57 million registered - 660,000 of them VOTED!
• The cost? 93¢ per registration - $2.24 per vote!
I use BYOP every day to reach about 50 unregistered people. Takes about 20 minutes. We attach voterizer.org. so folks can register themselves in 10 minutes. If I can influence 10 people to do the same, extrapolating, we can cover the swing states.
https://voterizer.org/
Thanks for all you and the likes do, Daniel. I work the quiet end and strive to inform. I’m remote , no cell service, back-to-the-lander. Pretty impressed with WiFi 😉. Yea the 2-1 ratio , same here in WV… I’ll not get on a rant today…🙄
I signed up for the zoom on 11th, thanks.
Well the news from Mexico at least is wonderful! But yes, Europe is fragile and Modi, though his grip on India is now weakened, is scary. All I could think of reading this however was Gaza—its state of ruin and depletion and depopulation is worse even than Europe’s after WWII. And instead of a Marshall plan the U.S. Congress wants to sanction the ICC for trying to hold accountable those responsible. We have abandoned the culture from which the Marshall plan emerged. Why?
Mary, I was thinking like you in re Mexico and then received an article from a friend that dashed some of my enthusiasm: https://mondoweiss.net/2024/05/the-mexico-israel-connection-repression-and-resistance/ There's always more to the story, darn it.
Thanks for the link Sieglinde. I'm not overly surprised--the government of our other next-door neighbor, Canada, is mimicking our horrible policy too, including (unlike Mexico) sending arms to Israel. While the rest of the world's democracies are edging away from us, our neighbors know which side of their bread the butter is on. Everything I've read about Claudia Sheinbaum in the progressive press so far is positive, and she doesn't take office till October 1 so I'm willing to give her a chance to make her own policies. Fingers crossed!
Still shocking to see Israel be the evil that Bibi has brought. He is apparently (to me) trying to support chump and piss on Joe. We need to qualify our support for those terrorists.
Maybe you should be giving commencement addresses.
Oh no! An oil company involved in an international scandal! Shocking! NOT!
Two things, Peter: Your 4 "watch" admonitions and the last paragraph is the warning that we need. Spot on!
Also, I had no idea that Sinclair oil, still going strong, was involved in Teapot Dome. Why am I not surprised...
Thank you, Peter. General Marshall reminded us that we are part of the larger world and can ill afford to lose sight of that. Your admonition to be watchful, including BTW, our neighbor to the South, is imperative.
Every now and then, I take another look at the Tytler Cycle diagram to refocus my attention. Your "watch list" forced another visit.
I view Tytler's analysis as useful, not predictive. Useful, however. only if we remain vigilant, as you and Linda note. Vigilance is a form of action that almost always requires further action. I am also reminded that we must be vigilant regarding ourselves--a major reason for tuning in to Heather's history lessons regularly.
Tytler does offer this:
(he) does admit that there are individual exceptions to the rule, and that he is ready to allow "that this form of government (democratic) is the best adapted to produce, though not the most frequent, yet the most striking, examples of virtue in individuals", paradoxically because a "democratic government opposes more impediments to disinterested patriotism than any other form." More here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fraser_Tytler,_Lord_Woodhouselee
As always, we have a lot of work to do.
Great recap of history and present. Capitalism only works when it is regulated and the rule of law is upheld.
So true-we focus a lot on democracy which is needed but we also have to remember how unfettered capitalism works and impacts our world.
India has always been the place I feared WWIII would start. With climate change threatening its water supply as the Himalayan glaciers retreat, a nuclear armed and starving Indian population is scary.
PWINY - Politics Will Not Ignore You.
And Vote and urge everyone to use that right
Yes, you are correct and alert to the many dangers to our civilization.
(Pay particular attention to the last quote. From "Donald's Vanity Tantrums.)
Reverse Presidential Evolution
“I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.”
George Washington
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
Abraham Lincoln
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
“Now, as a nation, we don’t promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That’s the essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.”
Barack Obama
“Statements are made about me by certain people in the crazy Mueller Report, in itself written by 18 angry Democrat Trump haters which are fabricated and… total bullshit.”
Donald Trump
That last one enthusiastically supported by 1/3 of America. Amirite?
And vigorously defended by half of “leaders” in government.
Yep yourite.
😪
First and foremost you need to get people to calm down and recognize that to do so we need to recognize the concept of liberty and justice for all. It will take time and patience.
Annabel! 🎯👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
A perfectly timed history lesson - thank you. Europe increasingly looks to be preparing for the possibility that Trump will win again, undo the coalition, and back whatever fresh hell Putin has in mind.
But Putin must know that Trump is quickly becoming a losing bet. I question whether he will make it to November, what with a demented mind misfiring, justice finally corralling him, and voters turning away.
They must consider all possibilities and prepare for contingencies.
I hope you’re right Michael. It’s such a scary thought to have trump back in the WH.
Eight Senate Republicans vow to oppose all Biden nominees, Democratic legislation
Their threats come after former President Donald Trump's conviction on dozens of felonies in New York.
"We are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart," the senators wrote.
Signatories of the letter include Lee and fellow Republicans J.D. Vance (Ohio), Tommy Tuberville (Ala.), Eric Schmitt (Mo.), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Rick Scott (Fla.), Roger Marshall (Kan.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.). Both Vance and Rubio are thought to be on Trump's running mate short-list.
Why are we paying these morons?
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/05/31/congress/gop-senators-new-vow-against-dems-00161031
And all this because our criminal justice system worked just as it should.
Convicted Felon Donald Trump isn't worth the trouble.
Gary Loft,
The real tragedy is that too many fellow Americans are completely blind to what is taking place within our country....and our world....or worse......
Embroiled in what I thought was a discussion of the political scene one participant wrote a litany of nonsense. Tara Reid, Biden showered with a child, Jill had an affair with a granddaughter, blah blah blah. It’s all bright shiny objects.
Every time I suggest to my friends who repeat such things "check your sources", I get laughed at. The MAGAt crazy is bursting at the seams.
When this occurred the last reply I made ended with “the mouse is dead”, from I think yesterday’s letter?
Do you think Tuberville even knows what he signed?
Senator Schumer and Vice President Harris as senate leaders should accept their “letter of resignation”…as a business would do if you said you no longer wanted to do your job
Gary Loft: "Why are we paying these morons?"
Why, indeed!
The only ones "tearing this country apart" are this Gang of 8 (which at one time referred to a bipartisan group working together on immigration reform).
Good gosh I hope you are right. I'm beginning to walk the floor at night again.
I am cautiously optimistic while seriously worried.
Perfect description. Exactly how I feel these days.
Agreed.
Me, too. Anyone convinced that President Biden will win in November ought to watch:
The Undecideds: Focus Group Discusses the 2024 Election and Trump's Conviction | Mark Halperin
https://www.youtube.com/live/qIi-lBDBA3Y?si=5MWzc2-GaV1kqno1
and
Conversations with Bill Kristol
https://conversationswithbillkristol.org/conversation/james-carville-on-biden-v-trump-2024/
This election is President Biden’s to lose, and I worry that he’s headed in that direction.
My daughter echoed Carville's concerns on how Biden discusses the economy as if it's been good for everybody when it's not been. She reassured me that she likes Biden but thinks he can be tone deaf about certain matters and gave exorbitant credit card interest rates as an example of something that is hurting average Americans. She was not aware that Biden and Dems had tried to pass legislation to reduce cc interest rates. I encouraged her to subscribe to the daily newsletter What did Biden Do Today. Someone suggested it to me, here. (Thank you) I've been sharing it with others as well.
I'm sure Biden would like to give a more accurate assessment of the economy and opine on what can be done to assist those in the margins, but then Republicans would just run with it and use his own words against him, so he is forced to constantly focus on the positive results.
https://open.substack.com/pub/whatdidbidendotoday/p/what-did-joe-biden-do-today-11e?r=aqdkd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
The disinformation and bias in the media (look at coverage of Gaza) is heading Biden in that direction. I've never seen so many lifelong progressives and liberals turn away from Biden as I do now. The left is being radicalized while the focus is on MAGA, and the current DNC seem as unaware of those trends as they were in 2016.
It's disturbing indeed.
No worries! Work to get out the vote! The talking heads get paid to talk! Negative comments sell! Talk, talk, talk!
Imagine, if posssible.. having a One-Mmillion dollar bill in your dresser drawer, and having 999 more of them in a shoe-box in your closet. That's only ONE billion bucks, but you have 6 billion more, not counting your tangible assets.?Not much one can't buy with some of that (in cash) is there? Jurors? They'll be fine. This trial is just a little slap to #45s' ego. Punishment for what he's found guilty of is no big deal for him.., he'll be out on 'work release', or at the most, restricted to travel between Trump Tower and his golf course with a soft ankle-bracelet, in his limo along with the security detachment (poor bastrds), That's it. No need to bother with jurors, judges, prosecutors. And the $$$ will keep on rolling in..., and rolling out, but there is just SO MUCH money WGAS!
I've seen that as WGASA, with "anyway" being the last word.
What is WGAS??
Never underestimate Joe.
I worry each day that Biden will lose but I also think the MSM help Cheetolinni by having every other news story about him. Why aren’t they touting the good that Biden has done? Negative sells!! If Biden loses, we are doomed to having “ forever trump” because I believe if he steps one foot in the White House, he will never leave.
Not sure how long trump would be able to stay in office now that his dementia is escalating. If he wins, I’m not sure he’ll make it through four years, let alone stay forever. But I don’t doubt the oligarchs and acolytes have plans to keep the grift going when Donny goes down.
"Why," Sharon, "aren’t they touting the good that Biden has done?"
One very simple reason, Sharon.
By design (of the far-right post-Powell memo foundations) Dems have turned illiterate to the great American humanities which have well recorded the incredible needs of Americans massively damaged by the U.S. billionaires offshoring their jobs, creating more inflation to boost corporate bottom lines, and funding all the cretins boosting their fat, orange, 34-count convicted felon.
Carville is such a turn-off. I really can't stand him.
I can't help but worry I am as guilty of consuming media that is telling me what I want to hear as much as those who get their news from FOX and X. I recently had the disturbing experience of a discussion with an immigrant Uber driver in Montreal who was convinced Trump's economic policies were much better than what has happened under the Biden administration. Our 20 minute ride was not long enough to explore his reasoning and he does not vote in the US, so convincing him did not seem pressing, but it did leave me wondering if there is a way to get the message across to people who need to hear it.
Re: Trump imploding before November: Wishful thinking I fear. We need to remember that, unlike normal people, Trump THRIVES on chaos. What would tire and depress a normal person energizes him. Anyone hoping for Trump to crumble by November must hope for a medical problem with this 78 year old man. Mentally, he's on fire.
When I say "on fire" I don't mean normal or positive or even sane. Of course what Trump does is sick. I'm just saying that mental or emotional collapse is NOT going to stop him.
David, I can only hope that means “he’s toast”……
Sadly, he id not toast. He LOVES unending controversy and chaos. I'm must saying that he will not crumble under the weight of that.
One thing we can do is refer to TFFG as Convicted Felon Donald Trump. This apparently pisses him off and a good percentage of his MAGAs and Evangelicals
I agree. I don't think he will make it until November. And the Republicans don't have a backup plan. There is no second-string quarterback to come onto the field. It will be brutal, and it will take them a decade to rebuild anything that will look like a functioning national party.
Well, just bless their hearts.
I pray that you are correct.
We can only hope!
And vote, and convince others to vote, and talk politics (and history) with folks we don't know, and not give up hope. I anticipate a surprising Dem landslide when all is said and done, but we have to make it happen.
Exactly! All these groans of "Ooh, it's not looking good!"
Italian proverb: "Chi vive sperando, muore cagando." Delicacy forbids me to translate here, but you can look it up.
Not being delicate, here’s the translation. “He who lives hoping, dies shitting.”
David will understand!
Such a timely reminder of the enormous benefits, including to self, of generosity and a generous spirit.
So true! Selfishness & isolationism are counterproductive!
Extreme selfishness is the highway to hell. Perhaps some of the perpetrators are pleased with their lives, but humanity suffers.
I was just wondering the other day how long it takes to rebuild after war's devastation. In Gaza and Ukraine can the ravages of was be reversed with proper support or will they remain an area supplying the world with more immigrants who cannot live in the places they occupied before the war? Maybe we can have a new Marshall plan for these regions. Seems unlikely under America first.
In the late ‘70’s a medical emergency forced my student group off the Intourist route in Kyiv (Then still Kiev). Off that route the destruction of WWII remained un rebuilt. What a lesson in “he who has the gold, rules”.
Interesting- it was 1976 when I first visited Kiev - perhaps the same year as you - and my impression (and photos) were of gray blocks of apartments all alike, no color, minimal adverts, aside from large ‘social realism’ sculptures.
It was in January, 1979. While visiting Babi Yar my Russian professor stepped on a sparkler wire hidden in the snow. It went through his shoe and foot, necessitating a trip to the hospital, transport by our bus. There were about 6 of us. “Imagine the filthiest gas station bathroom you’ve ever seen” was his comment about the interior. They gave him a tetanus shot, with instructions to receive monthly shots thereafter for about 6 months. Tetanus boosters weren’t available. The route to the hospital was lined with WWII ruins. We were sent shopping while he was being treated. I still have that mink hat, somewhere.
And enlightened self-interest. Win-win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n1OqPzIKH4
I would highly recommend this Commencement speech by Ken Burns to all of you. It is masterful, speaking eloquently and passionately about the times in which we live.
It was excellent. Ken Burns is a National treasure, IMO.
Um, err, "evelyn": that photo showing Ken beaming with pleasure alongside the ever-sucking-up-to-billionaires Clarence Thomas, and their billionaire benefactor friend whose name I've conveniently forgotten (the aficionado of Nazi memorabilia)?
Phil, pictures don’t always tell a story, at the least not the “whole” story: https://variety.com/2023/film/news/ken-burns-supreme-court-justice-clarence-thomas-photo-1235732696/. Not sure this pic is worth 1,000 words!!!
Thanks for posting this Barbara. I was going to let Phil know that, but in a personal way. Phil, I have pictures of me from President Nixon's funeral. At the time, I thought he was our worst president. However, out of respect for the office and because it was historical, I stood in line, overnight, to walk past his casket. Those pics could be mistaken for affection for him which is far from how I felt about him.
Transcript here: https://alumni.brandeis.edu/news/2024/commencement/transcripts/ken-burns-remarks.html
I will add that it is generally on point except for his advice that everyone should "make babies" - not everyone is suited for parenthood nor desires the responsibility.
"At some point, make babies, one of the greatest things that will happen to you, I mean it, one of the greatest things that will happen to you is that you will have to worry, I mean really worry, about someone other than yourself. It is liberating and exhilarating, I promise. Ask your parents."
Our family has a priority of taking care of babies (up through adulthood), whether as a father or an "uncle" like the Filipino farm worker Manongs ("uncles" or elders) as described at https://www.yahoo.com/news/meant-something-labor-history-delano-035900285.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall
"...DELANO — Johnny Itliong, son of the famous Filipino farm labor movement organizer Larry Itliong, teared up as he recalled how he and his siblings would honor their uncles, whom they referred to using the Tagalog term “manongs.”
Although they were not related to them, Johnny Itliong said the manongs would watch over him as if he were their own child while they worked in the Delano grape fields in the 1970s. Johnny Itliong said although these manongs would become the building blocks of the local Filipino community, most of his manongs did not have families of their own.
“One of the worst things about being the son of Larry Itliong was having to bury manongs who didn’t have families and I didn’t realize this. I thought everybody did this until like only a few years ago,” Johnny Itliong said. “That was the worst part but also the best part because those people were family.”
Born in 1965 — the same year as the Delano Grape Strike — Johnny Itliong remembers the work his father and manongs did to fight for better working conditions for farmworkers.
Larry Itliong was one of the leaders in the Filipino community who inspired the strike. He also worked with labor union activists Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to start the United Farm Workers..."
I remember them as the "uncles" (though they often had no children of their own), that funded the educations up through college for many of the other children. NPR covered important parts of their story but left out how the bachelors went so far as funding the educations of their "nieces and nephews." See https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/16/440861458/grapes-of-wrath-the-forgotten-filipinos-who-led-a-farmworker-revolution
One of the local elementary schools here is named for Larry Itliong.
Thank you for the transcript and in complete agreement that not everyone needs to have children or feel obligated to procreate.
I guess I benefited more than most from spending 2nd through 5th grades in Hawaiian schools with kids of so many different races (many Filipino, especially). I wish more parents would be as interested in all babies nearly as much as their own, their nieces and nephews, cousins, their children's classmates, and all children of the same ages.
I really appreciate the link to the Brandeis transcript.
I worked through the auto generated transcript to make it mostly into sentences as paragraphs themselves, before planning to try to make them into paragraphs of as many sentences as seemed appropriate (not that easy from the automated transcript), when I get some free time from taking care of our very fragile cat. Your timely link saves me that effort.
Now I have two versions, one with my own as a bit easier to pick out particularly good highlights.
From Brandeis U, named for Louis D. Brandeis, with a history of involvement of Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt,
Even those of us who do not "make" the babies can care for them. I relish my role as an "Auntie", both in my family and with an ever-changing group of college students in the tuba studio at U of O.
Making babies does not need to be literal; what is really intended is making babies into citizens. It takes a village is absolutely true; you can help to make babies into citizens by being part of that village that supports that transition.
One of the worst things about the convicted felon trump and his minions/overlords is the example children are seeing of an adult. The convicted felon trump is a truly despicable man; the opposite of what we want our children to aspire to be. His minions/overlords are also the worst possible examples of citizens. The village they aspire to create would be the worst possible way to raise citizens for a world I want to live in.
JustRaven,
Being a parent also places within us a desire to work for a better future because we have invested interests in the lives of those whom we hold precious.
Thank you very much for this link! I had read parts of Burns' speech at Brandeis, but not the whole thing.
Ken Burns is a national hero. He is wise ...his love for this country and his deep historical knowledge makes him one of my favorite fellow Americans.
Thank you for the suggestion and posting. Really outstanding. What a mensch that Ken Burns is.
Brilliant! Thank you for sharing the link to Ken Burns address. I hope everyone passes this on.
So do I.
Yes, the liberal democracies held.
And now, where is the most poisonous agitation against liberal democracy? In the U.S., all the cult members for the 34-count convicted but yet arrogant criminal look around and see nothing but menacing national institutions, dangerous schools, and an entire fantasy world. This fictitious construct brims with things they can be paranoid over, scripts and scenarios for which they wield only the most vile of labels. All scurry with but the most vulgar, nastiest of adjectives.
The criminal did his crimes. And more. Did his business frauds regularly. Cheated. Lied. Raped. Got the Clarence court to take away women's Constitutional rights. Mocked cripples. Insulted veterans. Grew the national debt for tax write-offs for the predator rich. Yet millions flock to his sour views of the world (of fellow citizens as vermin, as needing imprisonment, execution, millions deported).
It's fantasy. Fiction. For which there's only one appropriate answer.
Dems need loudly and often to cite their own all-American novels, memoirs, histories, films, songs, and other arts. Show the acceptance of and love for all our varied communities, landscapes. If the arts show places and people needing help, then yes, let's help.
That's it. Astonishingly simple. Tens of millions have gotten sold into depravity simply because the side that could be decent has somehow too largely become helplessly neutered instead.
Stop it, Dems. Sing the body electric.
Phil, I love your impassioned comments! Thank you for inspiration!
"Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos." Now, that sounds like a fine idea to me.
Indeed it does!
George C. Marshall is my American Man of the 20th Century. He was FDR’s essential right-hand man in the conduct of World War II. His selflessness resulted in his staying in Washington while Dwight Eisenhower became the hero of the European sector.
As Secretary of State, Defense Secretary, and in other service to the United States of America, Marshall was remarkable. He didn’t take a single day off during WW II. Then, at war’s end, he didn’t hesitate to respond to President Truman’s request that he go to China for a year to ‘try to work things out between Chang and Mao.’
For me, WWII and the Marshall Plan were capstones in an unparalleled career. [He never wrote an autobiography or accepted lucrative offers to write about his service. He believed that he shouldn’t benefit financially from his service to his country.]
As Secretary of State, he went to Russia, where he met with Stalin, who he had known during WW II. He realized that the Cold War was deep rooted. On his way back to the United States, he experienced a ravaged post-war Europe. Upon his return, he charged George Kennan [who had authored the famous ‘containment’ policy paper on the Soviet Union] to coordinate an economic program intended to resurrect a crippled Europe.
When he had the basis shape of this rescue plan, he contacted Harvard, where he was scheduled to receive an honorary degree, and asked whether he could make a brief speech. There is no video of his 11-minute speech. However, it sparked a reaction in London and Paris within hours.
The timing was critical. The communists were making serious inroads in Italy, France, Greece, and elsewhere, while Germans were experiencing near starvation and the situation in England was worse than during WW II.
Seeking $13 billion [a massive amount back then] from a rather isolationist Republican Congress seemed an impossible hurdle. Marshall crisscrossed America explaining the need for this program AND that the great majority of these funds would be spent in the United States. He personally spent countless hours in Congress. The Marshall Plan was enacted and, according to impartial observers, this ‘saved’ democracy in much of Europe.
Marshall was the only general ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Thank you for this. As a child born not long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, I have distinct memories of newsreels showing the devastation in Europe. I recall my mother packing up clothing for European refugees, and when I hesitated to part with some dress (nothing was store bought in those days), she would say, "Think of how happy this will make some little girl whose home was bombed." It wasn't a guilt trip but a way of cultivating compassion for which I am grateful.
Progwoman Kudos to your mother! During WW II we would go to a factory in Philadelphia and pack boxes for American prisoners of war. After WW II, my mother organized Packages for Britain, with my sister’s assistance. Post-war England was in dreadful shape.
On my first trip to Europe in 1962, I saw buildings in England that STILL had not been razed and rebuilt. Later, I became friends with a man who as a child was sent to the English countryside. As he developed dementia later, any trip outside Greater New York, especially friends' farm in Pennsylvania, would bring it all back and he wondered when the war would end. I hope we never witness that kind of devastation here, but it's not impossible.
Thank you for this “window” into displacement. A few days ago a photo of Ukrainian orphans taken to Russia was another wrenching displacement snapshot.
I remember a friend's mother sending food boxes to family in Great Britain clear into the 1960s.
Mary Ellen I was in England in 1949 and was told that food rationing was worse than during the war. My sister got married there in 1949. Sending sugar and other ingredients for a wedding cake made her seem like a smiuggler. A couple of nasty encounters.
I too remember that 1949 was “worse” than during the war. England imported food even before the war so “catching up” was a nightmare.
Hear! Hear! You speak great truth, Keith. Marshall was the man ofthe century. As one American Historian said in an A&E bio on Marshall, "We desperately need another George Marhall now. "
In a related vein, I thought to run an idea by you, Keith. In that same A&E bio, I saw some closing remarks made by General Colin Powell. He spoke as a great admirer of General Marshall. Powell noted that Marshall had been Secretary of State and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I believe Powell wanted to achieve the level of respect and acclaim Marshall had. So, I imagine Bush/Cheney approached him to join their government and offered him the Secretary of State position through which Powell thought he could get a Nobel Prize as well. Then, things went south.... And the fraudulence of the Iraq War came to light. In later years, Powell said, "Now, I'll be remembered as the guy who started the Iraq War."
Heydon This is a delightful story, but it doesn’t ring true to me. As a long-time trustee of Eisenhower Fellowships I had the opportunity to know various distinguished chairmen. General Colin Powell was one. [At one time he and I had the same ‘godfather’ in government—Frank Carlucci.] I spoke with Powell about Marshall, whom he tremendously admired. I didn’t sense that he sought to emulate him.
I thought that Powell’s decision to join the Bush/Cheney administration was a big mistake. He got chewed up in the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld meat grinder. His February, 2003 speech on Iraq Powell profoundly regrets.
Our current chairman is Robert Gates, who had been SecDef under Bush/Obama. As Gates knows, I consider him the best American SecDef, with the exception of Marshall, who was A+ at everything.
Thank you for this information, Keith. You bring so much to these comments, and I appreciate your sharing your "boots on the ground" experiences.
Yes! As a child I “knew” Marshall as a fellow Virginian. As an Episcopalian I helped my mother put together clothes to send clothes to England. In public school we learned the Marshall Plan and the countries that joined the UN as they joined. I have seen the battlefields of the Marne that can only be seen from a boat and the Warsaw City Museum film of the total debris field in that city when the Germans and the Russians had tried to destroy Poland, that ancient empire, forever. What stuck with me was that farmers brought their carts and wagons to the city to haul off the debris so the city could be rebuilt. There is still WWII construction in Warsaw. The Marshall Plan could have encompassed all of Europe had Stalin not been Stalin. The General-Statesman’s view of Europe has infused a vision of world peace that I think our current president shares. Who knows? If Gorbachev’s understanding that led him to try to give up on Stalinism had remained dominant what a world we might have now! If we can hold together and look to Tony Judt’s vision for US, we may yet achieve the unity that will allow us to use our wealth and intelligence to realize the vision of our Founding Fathers.
Virginia If Stalin had volunteered to become a recipient of the Marshall Plan, it almost certainly not have been approved in Congress. The Czechs came out for it, before a Stalin NYET.
But Keith I wrote “had Stalin not been Stalin.” Didn’t know about the Czechs, but not surprised. Do you ever wonder what Russia would be like without czars or Stalins? There hasn’t been a decent government in that enormous country for more than a few hours, has there? You would know. I forget the small moments.
Virginia If Stalin hadn’t been Stalin, and Hitler hadn’t been Hitler, sand Trump hadn’t been Trump—-but they were. What about Gorby?
I only have one small third hand story about Gorby. The only CIA agent I ever knew (second hand) had a pleasant Christmas dinner with Gorby (? 1989). I never learned what they talked about but apparently there was a certain pleasure in each other’s company. I wish I could have known “Uncle Harry,” but his niece-by-name, who told the story, was a thoroughly respectable contemporary of ours. She dealt with 7 languages, worked in national cartography, and visited much of Yugoslavia in 1957. We were planning to sit in our rocking chairs in our 90’s and settle the world but she died suddenly in 2003 while I was in France. We met in college then turned up on the same block in uptown New Orleans where we just went on telling stories. Both of us were born in Virginia about 60 miles apart, but before we really spent time together we had traveled two widely different paths, surviving various guns but never owning any.
Huge thank you Keith. I was off to 2 graduations today, Pleased to comeback to my computer tonight to see your comments on the Marshall Plan. I believe this Community is aware of your decades long experience.👏 I hope there is a book coming sometime.
Bryan Happy graduations! I hope that these students didn’t spend their time taking courses such as the oversubscribed Harvard course on Taylor Swift. Marshall’s 11 minutes were monumentally better.
Warm thanks for your kind words. At 90 with four compression fractures of my lower back, I am all ‘booked out.’ I do enjoy spontaneously riffing on Heather, Joyce, the NYT, and James Fallows. This all comes from my head, since looking up facts would break my spontaneous flow.
I have just completed 42 stories for Storyworth. This included 20 questions provided by them and 22 that I initiated. I found it an exhilarating and personally spelunking exercise ranging from how luck and serendipity affected my life to how my views on religion and racism evolved.
This will be assembled into a book for my family and close friends. I consider it far more honest than ‘autobiography.’
Hey! I want a copy as serendipity is underrated and yours is exemplary. Which of your relatives will publish it?
Virginia It probably will be X rated and you wouldn’t be permitted to even glance at this banned book. Will be produced in a few months. I’ve completed all of my stories.
Yes, the rich ore of honesty. Since Covid 19 & the Movie 'Once' I wander daily in the thriving music community, music outside, music in garages, in bedrooms. wherever ... put your string or horn section stacked up & elevated up on your stairwell 🎶
It is Thursdaymorn' so I gather with a couple 1000 folks at SCOTUSblog.com LIVE to hear & analyze the last 29 to 31 opinions yet to be published.
Again, my sincere thanks. 🙏🏻
I just reread your paean to George Marshall. When I first heard that his Plan for Europe was an exploitive US move, I was furious that anyone could be so cynical about this brilliant real American patriot. Rereading your piece I remembered it and was all the more moved by the power of the person and the Plan.
Just two months after the end of the war, the French journalist Claude Blanchard (who had been on the Front Lines with the Allied Forces until the German surrender) was sent to Moscow by his editor at Paris-Soir, Pierre Lazareff. Lazareff wanted Blanchard to interview Stalin and average citizens for a report on real life in the Soviet Union in order to give French readers a closer look at communism. Blanchard began his return to Paris after two months in Russia, stopping to change planes in Cairo. Whether from mechanical failure or sabotage, his plane never made it and he and six other passengers perished, along with his massive reportage.
How tragic! That first person account would have been so helpful.
True enough. His fascinating story, including the one that was never published, is all in my upcoming (hopefully) book.
Good luck with that. It's a worthwhile endeavor.
I recommend “Stalin’s Daughter” if you’ve not read it. I look forward to your book!
That thought must have crossed other minds...
I believe that the Marshall Plan, the GI Bill, and the Interstate Highway Act formed the foundation of what became known as “The American Century“.
America has never prospered from isolationism. Half-baked dimwits like MTG not only don’t understand history, they refuse to understand it.
The GI Bill was great--if you were white. https://www.history.com/news/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-benefits
Not so sure about that third item you list, Herb.
I'd rather have seen that money go into a good system of national inter-linking high speed rail, with matching light rail in cities and linked small towns across the land.
Imagine a U.S. without all those concrete, multi-lane congestion arteries, with their land-gulping spidery overpasses, their more-land-eating shopping malls, their massive concrete and asphalt parking lagoons.
In hindsight, the Interstate Highway System supercharged climate change. Its conception may have been naive but its consequences have been disastrous.
Perhaps in Iowa. Certainly in Los Angeles. Not out here between The Dalles and Pendleton.
While a rail system may have worked for the eastern US which had European-like population density, the size of the terrain west of the Rockies would have required government intervention and the railroads were already well established empires.
Interstate Highways could be sold as military necessity.
We're driving east on Interstate 84 on the Columbia Plateau between places that people who live in Oregon have never been to; even with railroads on both sides of the Columbia River, the Interstate Highway is essential.
Was that one of the options on the table at the time? Considering the American car culture already in place by then, I would bet it wouldn't have gotten much play. But of course, in hindsight, it would have been a better solution for, at the very least, moving goods over distance than trucks have become. But it might have made us too "European". (I admit I love having a highway to use between Augusta Maine and the Boston and western Mass areas, rather than a train, when I have a lot of pieces of luggage.)
While visiting for a month last year in France, we had many people tell us, with thanks, that the Marshall Plan saved their communities and country. They also pointed out that they are about 1,500 miles from Ukraine, or 2 1/2 hours by air. They are nervous.
I have met German kids who were taught about the Marshall Plan and they expressed appreciation...followed by 'how can such a country elect WBush and Trump? I had no answer.
Kinda makes ya wonder how many American kids were taught about the Marshall Plan...
I can tell you that as a student in the Medford, Oregon school system from 1964 to 1976, I wasn't.
I remember hearing about it somewhere along the line before I graduated high school in 1970, but don't remember much except it had something to do with Europe after WWII.
It might even be a good Jeopardy question 🤩🤩
Is it Beth, on the next, upcoming standardized test?
If not, it goes forgotten, ignored, like the personal of oneself and all others, like all humanities our elites have carefully learned also to exclude.
OK, you sent me down a 🐇🕳. It is included in the CA curriculum framework for 11th grade but don't know about standardized test.
P.S. Now that I'm retired, I seldom access the website.
C. Schomer, I am just back from Poland. Same fears about Putin, Russia, and tffg. They are far less naive than the US In general.
JUne 4th 1989, a date, even a number that is forbidden China. Any. mention Is purged from social media. Even in Hong Kong there isn longer any public awareness. It will soon be erased from the public consciousness, at least in China, but even here, it is remarkable how. little it is mentioned.
Right on, R!
The image of the Chinese man standing in front of the CCP tank nobly blocking same, will live forever in the memories of so many. This is so irrespective of how censorious the powers that be may be.
I visited Tiananmen Square on a visit to China 5 years ago. There was an echo there, even then.
Wow! I can only imagine, Ally. Take care!
Market capitalism is no guarantor of liberal democracy. Look at the damage the likes of Miltin Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics caused in Latin America.
Or the damage it has caused here. His view of the relationship of responsibility to profit was and is a recipe for sociopathy.
J L, you can go to the ". . ." (three dots at your text's lower right) and edit, so your first line reads "it has caused."
I've had to use that edit function many times myself.
Thanks. I am prone to typos. Sometimes even omitting to type words that are necessary to make sense. I try to keep things proofread but am not good at that either. My wife catches most of the "bugs" when necessary.
But unfortunately, the pro-dictator wing of the GOP, which reached its maximum strength before the war in the America First movement, was still around and reorganizing itself after the war. It continued to grow and spread its influence, until today there is a credible possibility of a man dedicated to ending these 77 years of cooperation in the West, tearing it all down, becoming the next president.
RNC Co-Chair Tells Newsmax Republicans Are Planning For Possibility of Trump Addressing Convention From Prison
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/rnc-co-chair-tells-newsmax-republicans-are-planning-for-possibility-of-trump-addressing-convention-from-prison/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=What%20A%20Day%3A%20%22Border%20disorder%22&_kx=xAcSZhbe6kRKmrPoLYMRn9Y-NZolx5a_cIQIairoLow.VVEwpW
We;ll follow our leader anywhere! It's also a good way to scam more money from the rubes and hayshakers.
Unbelievable
🤮
Couldn’t be more appropriate reminder I’ve always wanted to learn about the Marshall plan and now I know. Thank you Heather may those eleven minutes refresh in the minds of MAGAS just what’s at stake!
Lisa, agreed that it was an important reminder, and reading the text of that speech taught me 95% of what I now know about the Marshall Plan. Refers in the minds of MAGAts? Oh, heavens no. It does not fit their narrative, so it will be either devoutly ignored or met with an intelligent, well-reasoned response of "Nuh uh. That's librul propaganda".
General Marshall’s plan was amazing, no punishment of the civilian population, no destroying the countries beyond redemption, no demand for territory… the United States would help Europe become a strong democratic ally. I am so proud of my country magnanimous in victory.
My grandfather was a ceramic engineer who went to Dresden Germany to help rebuild the pottery industry there. He was an amputee from a sports injury so was ineligible to fight in the war, but was proud to do his part in the recovery after the war. It also began an interest in our family in travel and information about other countries that has persisted. It has enriched our lives.
Molly, I've always wished we'd been more magnanimous to the USSR when the wall fell. We might have been able to help Russia avoid the terrible direction in which it's gone. Yes, compassionate, but strategically wise more to the point.
Sorry, Joan, but a different history was in place in 1991.
Then, all the worst energized from the Powell memo of 20 years earlier had taken over U.S. higher ed, so the biz schools were dominant, all humanities dead, marginalized.
So many grads of high finance from the Ivy League flocked to the former Soviet Union to invest in all the worst of the former nomenklatura. Thus, the new oligarch states that seized all the former public resources for private, greedy profit for themselves and their unwitting, also glassy-eyed greedy U.S. financiers (with the U.S. Department of State facilitating the plunder.).
General Marshall knew that punishment of Germany for WWI only laid the groundwork for WWII.
The Soviet refusal to participate in the Marshall plan to the detriment of their people reminds me of a similar refusal by red-state governors to participate in the expansion of Medicaid in their respective states, putting politics before the well-being of people.
MacArthur's postwar administration of Japan ranks right up there with the Marshall Plan. Interesting that generals who waged war against Japan and Germany should be at the vanguard of such enlightened policies, whereas politicians -- notably Lloyd George and Clemenceau overriding naive Wilson-- oversaw the vengeful reparations and arbitrary redrawing of national boundaries post-World War I sowing the seeds of fascism and World War II. Truman, Marshall, and MacArthur demonstrated the ability to learn from past mistakes. Sadly, I see no evidence of it now.
“I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.”
-Douglas MacArthur's speech to the Texas Legislature in Austin (June 13, 1951)
Wow-thanks for this insightful quote that reveals our ongoing struggle to live with democratic principles.
He must have been aware of the Republicans who were colluding with Nazi propagandist groups as described in Rachael Maddow’s book Prequel. Which all got covered up by Truman.