Way past time to call Rupert’s Fox what they are. The purveyor of our destruction. Fox is licensed as “entertainment,” yet they have “News” plastered all over their slimy operation. Flipping channels yesterday, I heard someone on Nicole Wallace’s show ask the seminal question - paraphrase - if they are entertainment, why do they hav…
Way past time to call Rupert’s Fox what they are. The purveyor of our destruction. Fox is licensed as “entertainment,” yet they have “News” plastered all over their slimy operation. Flipping channels yesterday, I heard someone on Nicole Wallace’s show ask the seminal question - paraphrase - if they are entertainment, why do they have a seat at WH briefings, why are they treated as a legitimate news entity? It is a scam perpetuated on us all by Ronnie’s crew of thugs, deliberate and designed to destroy. No more “the most trusted man in America” type news reporting, just more Goebbels style blather. It has been a slow-growing cancer that is about to deal a fatal blow, with the acquiescence of most of the MSM.
As to the gun issue, republicans rule the fools. What will republicans accept? Why is that the question? I ask over and over…They worship anything but sanity these days. Even McConaughey’s impassioned plea does not suggest prohibiting the weapons of mass murder. Make no mistake, there are plenty of deranged 21+ disaffected out there. We all know that. Some care, some have proved that they don’t. They are vermin…
"What will republicans accept? Why is that the question?"
A very large fraction of America, including the three gentleman I had dinner with last night at a local bar, fully support/fully believe the far right, Fox News interpretations.
Usually, we all avoid any conversation about politics because we know that 1/4 of the total get together is not Republican (me).
But, last night one of the guys brought up McConaughy and guns. I, not having been inside all day, had not heard or even known about his speech. But, I guessed it might be for something reasonable. At any rate, these three guys are pretty nice folks 1:1 and in a bar and none of them "carry" (guns around all the time).
But, they were using language like: "soon it is going to be like Venezuela here". Which, is language DIRECTLY from Fox News and Newsmax. You would think these guys have no brain since what has happened in Venezuela has not even slight similarity here since it is the REPUBLICANS who have tried to become dictators, not the democrats.
So, I briefly tried to explain that Venezuela's Maduro is most similar to America's Trump. Jeri, these three guys went nuts as if I had accused Jesus of faking his resurrection. Simply making a reasonable comparison set them off. Instead, ALL THREE of them "believe" that BIDEN is like Maduro, about to put in place a dictatorship.
All three of these grown men are bright, well spoken, educated, (engineers), respectful to their wives and kids and decent people.
But, FOX NEWS has brainwashed them completely. I mean, completely.
So, "why is the question "what Republicans will accept"?
Because FOX NEWS has converted more than half of America into radicals who believe lies about Biden and the Democrats and these people are AFRAID that Democrats will do what TRUMP tried to do.
Except, the reason they believe that is because of lies from a Russian funded misinformation platform: FOX NEWS.
FOX NEWS should be being treated, by all branches of our military and our intelligence services as a foreign agent in America. We should be, as a country, working to disable Fox from broadcast capability over the next 24 hours.
But, we won't. And, it might be too late. Like I say, 3/4 of the gathering last night was fully ensconced in FOX lies. Only I was sitting there amazed at the BS these guys believed.
Engineers who can think through complex electronic stuff Jeri. Cannot think their way past Fox lies.
I am not sure why I am immune and have always known Fox was BS. I really cannot say why I am different, but, it is not HCR. I thought that FOX was BS when Dr. Richardson was still preparing history lessons for classes I never heard of.
But, America is in danger Jeri, and Fox is the ENEMY.
An otherwise nice man, but avid trump/Faux News cultist, told us a few days ago that under Biden “we live in a tyranny.” When we expressed our belief that the citizenry should not own military-strength weapons, he replied: “when we have the next civil war, you’ll be glad to be friends with someone who owns an AR-15.”
Rose, we attended a funeral on Saturday. While gathering at the gravesite, I overhead a conversation by a group of people who said basically the same thing. FOX Entertainment has drilled into their heads, "the next Civil War and you better know someone with an AR-15" mantra. These people were the top end of the local volunteer fire department. So many questions I would have asked them had we not been at a funeral.
I do know people who own AR-15s (and yes, that is a plural). I also know that those people will view me as the enemy. Much as their "rhetoric" indicates otherwise, I am who they identify as an enemy.
Since we are liberal/progressive, we would be viewed as the enemy by many in our neighborhood and I am sure there are plenty of assault weapons. The right wing guy across the street now has a drone and if he flies it into our yard, he will at least get the one finger salute although I would like to pull a Kathy Bates in Harry on him. He won't speak to us because we told him to lessen his noise and called the county several times. Large unmuffled engines going full blast, so that we couldn't even hear the TV with the sound up. His wife, thankfully, got him to stop because the noise bothered her too. She is a progressive Democrat, so they are an interesting couple.
Yes. Given the friend who's funeral it was, he would have been incredibly disappointed in those people. Granted it was prior to the funeral when people were gathering ......still.
I truly wonder if the people touting civil war understand what a civil war in America would look like. It would resemble Syria where the government called in the army to quell the uprising. If Trump or another trumpish president gains office in 2025 and if there are uprisings, Trump wouldn't hesitate to call in air strikes to subdue uprisings. Local militias would carry on much as the brown shirts did in 1930s Germany, slaughtering the opposition. God only knows whom the militias would deem as the opposition, Democrats, immigrants, Blacks? The thought of a civil war scares me to death.
Well, Rose, you know where to go to get an AR-15. He is a fool to tell you.
What he really means is he does not know what civil war is. Because, telling people he has a weapons armory means he is the first dead man at the outbreak.
You may be right. I did wonder if he had any idea of what a tyranny is like; certainly, if were living in one, he would not be free to criticize the administration—nor to brag about the armament he owns…
I think Fox News has normalized this concept of "civil war" so that people who have no experience or not much experience hunting or shooting something live with a gun think "Civil War" will not be the very ugly, horrifying, gory thing that it will be.
The good news is: My own observation is that those most attracted to the "Civil War" ideology are also the most out of shape people I know.
So, a 100 yard run will be tough on them. They will last about half a day in a real war.
Yes and no. Unfortunately enough of them were in good enough shape to storm the Capitol on January 6 and do real damage. The crowd brain had taken over and I believe they really would have hung Pence or Pelosi or Schiff that day.
I've been perplexed by the media softening with the 'mock' gallows reporting. How do those in the media know what was symbolic? It was a gallows, poorly built, perhaps, but certainly would have been tested had the mob put hands on Pence or Pelosi.
Mike S: While I, unfortunately, understand the Civil War analogies (& to preface my point, I must say that it is “very ugly, horrifying”)--& though this comment is not addressed (except here) only to you--but I know, from experience, that calling people “out” by derogatory names is just never helpful (except re playing to the crowd). I have a big issue w derogatory names in general: they never further any conversation in a positive fashion, imo.
And your observations that those reposing CW ideology are mostly “out of shape” is not helpful & not accurate. You must not be exposed to the same so-called-2nd amendment militias that I have, unfortunately (or perhaps you’re fortunate?)
Way too many former military & police & first responders belong to these militias, imagining themselves as 21st C Jehoshaphats, who worship at the temple of the gym (& nothing wrong w being a gym rat--that’s NOT what I’m saying).
Just my observation, BUT I very much dislike body shaming--or any derogatory shaming, regardless of its intent or to whom it’s directed. That’s what I believe.
Yes. What worries me Is that people who never owned a gun, didn’t grow up with weapons or hunting or worrying about self defense will arm themselves and their families in the belief that they need to protect themselves for the first time ever. As long as military weapons are available no one is safe. Or weapons on the open market. About 20 years ago, my hairdresser’s twelve year old son committed suicide. The family had a hunting rifle in their travel trailer and separate ammunition in a cupboard. The boy was diagnosed as ADD and had trouble at school. The teachers often isolated him as discipline. And he was in trouble again. Report cards were being mailed and he knew he would disappoint his parents. Imagine if there no guns in his home. He found the gun and ammunition and the family history will always be heartbreaking. I grew up with no guns in my home and never have had guns. Thinking about the danger and knowing about the gun accidents and numbers of child gun deaths should be enough to make us all consider who is being protected.
I never imagined 30, 40, or even 10 years ago we would be having these kinds of conversations. Irenie it appears we may have already gone over the cliff into some kind of pre-Civil War situation. And getting hotter every day.
Barbara, I think we’re reading the future and it’s a future many Americans, even Democrats, think we can save. I wish I could be so optimistic for our children, our grandchildren, the future. J6 is a harbinger of the next few years, unless we can turn the tide for repubs and SCOTUS to care for the future and the laws more than their loyalty to TFG and his minions. Women’s reproductive choices and equality, racial equality, much more stringent gun laws and regulations. And critically, Climate Change. Long list. Just my opinion.
Sick. Especially because he speaks for too many citizens who believe we have to be prepared. It’s unbelievable that military weapons were ever available to the general public. Or not unbelievable. More like unconscionable.
This really got me in the gut. I actually have pains in my stomach with this reality. How horrifying a thought! Years ago I never paid attention to what my friends thought of things like this. And now, they so openly talk about it that I wonder how I never knew. I think it's just that my mind has never thought about guns and I would never want to HAVE TO own one. I hope it never comes to that.
of course, you will be the enemy and will have no real friends who have ar15s. they just can't get the simplest things straight. awhile ago i was talking to a guy who said that biden had shut down 'that pipeline.' i said no, he hadn't shut down any pipeline. sure he did, he said. i said that he had stopped the extension of the pipeline from omaha to new orleans, but that there were thousands of miles of that canadian pipeline still open. well, we should be energy independent, he said. then why do you want a canadian pipeline in the us in the first place, i said. and the price of gas is sky high, he said, and now he's releasing all of that strategic reserve, like a traitor, he said. well, that's to lower the price of oil, i said. it might keep gas prices down. we shouldn't be buying oil from other countries, he said, spending all that money. american oil, i said, isn't any cheaper. you'd pay the same price, i said, and besides we want other countries to have the income from oil. trade promotes peace. somehow these people think they understand real life. they don't have a clue. the best way to talk to them is to talk the way they do. don't attack, counter-attack. don't try to be persuasive. show the same offhanded contempt for their thinking that they show to you. and above all don't qualify your statements. that takes too long. just make them. the current crop of gun people are not part of any real gun culture. they are the self defense crowd that deep down wants to kill the perp, not defend themselves. they are afraid of a slave rebellion. it all started with huey newton and bobby seales and the black panther party for self defense. when i guy who is convinced that white voters are being replaced by non-white voters drives 200 miles to kill black people in buffalo, people who have been here since 1619, before the irish, before the italians, before the jews and scandinavians, and people show sympathy for the shooter, well what can you say? you say, hey they were here before we were, like the mexicans in texas. we are the replacements. but there won't be a civil war like the last one. at that time, there were 17,000 active troops in the us army when the war started and two armies fought each other and both grew larger and larger. this time it will be the us military against a paramilitary and its peashooters. the joint chiefs know who they are, and they know where they live and can't wait to try out their new toys.
I had a similar conversation with my ex-husband. I could tell immediately where he was getting his info from. I tried to counter what he was saying but I should have known better. If he doesn't get his way, he resorts to violence...thus my ex.
An otherwise nice man is not a trumper or fan of fox news. The fact that sane people are trying to find good in them has given them so much power. But then I don't have friends who own AR-15s and would probably be on the receiving end.
I’ve know my friend for over two decades. He is like family! But the reality is that this last visit I saw him in a light I had never witnessed before. It was scary, even eerie…
I’m sorry that this has happened to an old friend but when an 11 year old survivor talks about their experience to a house committee and republican politicians make it clear that they will allow no gun control then I can’t help but blame every person who votes for republicans thereby enabling nothing to done. I will never understand how they can be good or nice. How can a first world country not do anything after this? Because republicans have a heart of pure evil.
I would like to agree with you, as that would make my life so much easier, but this person is not even a registered Republican. And I was talking to his wife yesterday and she swears he doesn’t watch Fox News! This is what scares me about the people supporting trump and AR-15s in civilian hands: the more I know, the less I understand…
Thank you. Hopefully, the US Government is able to see a foreign agent in our midst and is taking steps to neutralize. But, I have my doubts after 20 years of BS emanating from Fox.
Mike, are you OK with copying and pasting your comments on other newsletter sites? I'm thinking The Dispatch and maybe the Bulwark as well as Robert Hubbell's Newsletter if you haven't already gone there. It's not the wide dissemination it deserves but it's a start.
The shouted query “are you grandstanding?” at the presser said a lot. A movie star rich enough to buy himself some nice peace and quiet in luxury yet who chooses to use his celebrity to open himself to invective and death threats is spun as “self-serving” and “attention-seeking” in order to deflect from his message of common-sense gun ownership reform and common ground.
He can afford the extra security for himself, his wife, and their children, but he willingly placed himself -and them- in the way of real harm, not just a bit of invective from the perpetually disgruntled do-nothings who populate chatty corners of the internet.
(And if that rings any bells, I’ve had a bit of poorly-phrased invective sent inboxward from people in this tiny group who object to my discussing a run for office in this forum😂…as if blisters, no time to read, and having to converse with shitwits on the street who don’t know women only got the right to vote a century ago but won’t sign a petition themselves because they “aren’t political” [articulated in that nasal sorority twang] is anyone’s idea of a good time?!? Bitches, if I wanted attention I’d fabricate a wardrobe malfunction at my next standup 5mins, not run for office in safely D NYC..)
Because in the current USA, having a sometime actor advocate for the most anemic change gets exponentially more attention than the earnest politician, or the fleeting 15seconds of fame granted a victim (who, once their exclusives are up, are put back on the shelf of us regular Joes and not given the mic again).
The Rs leveraged that with brutal intelligence with Reagan, and the conservative think tanks and hate radio flourished under his genial, doddering reign. The Ds need to get methodical about GOTV and draft some feelgood personality to front for us…but who among those who have made good is willing to suffer the abuse it would entail?
Jane Fonda stood tall. We stood for her in Vietnam. Those of us embroiled in the machinations of the war, not those who weren’t there but purport to know all about it vicariously, supported her support of us. To this day thank you for your humanity against all cost. And we need people who don’t fall down like Laura Thomas.
I played informal intramural ice hockey for fun. The well-behaved bleats here aren’t gnat level, but thanks! Getting shoved out of buildings by guys twice my size in NYC calling me a “fucking cunt” only gives me good material for standup, although another bout with Covid might not be a blast and they seem to love screaming in my face (smelly breath simply bonus). Democracy in action!😂😂❤️❤️🇺🇸❤️❤️😂😂
What in the world? I think it fabulous that you are running for office. I have to wait until 2024 to run again for School Board since it is now district instead of at large seats. 🙄
Everyone benefits from running for office or volunteering in election process or participating in someone else’s campaign.
Critical thinking skills, some people learned them, some didn't. IQ does not seem to have much to do with it. The only exception I have to your comment is that "half" of us are brainwashed by Faux (Bad) News. It is less than half. About 7M less. To look at a problem and see only obstacles is to only look at part of the picture. We have assets, too.
Throughout all of this Trumpian mess, the most hopeful thing I've seen is a hand painted sign one of my neighbors put up (he is a damned good car mechanic) saying "Black Lifes Matter". He also has a couple of "Go Away" signs and a silhouette sign of an AR-15. The guy is clearly nuanced. Many of us are.
That is very interesting. I had spent a lot of time in Venezuela in the early 2000's and also used to say that we might become like Venezuela if we were not careful. But I meant that if a leader like Trump kept at it, we would- if we lived under a cult of personality, with a leader who did not promote businesses to function normally, replaced skilled people in the administration with cronies, polarized the dialog, we could end up like Venezuela. It was only when I said this to an old friend who like your friends for some reason follows Fox news and so on, that I realized I had inadvertently landed on a right wing talking point. It made no sense to me, any more than what I had said made sense to her. She had been barraging me for years with political rhetoric, before giving up in the Trump era. She thought I might be "open-minded" enough to get it, to understand her point of view, which she viewed as truth. I probably was open-minded enough to try, anyway; in that she was right. I still try. On Monday I had brunch with a group of my son's friends, who were from urban areas, very left-leaning, and in general open-minded thinking people. We were discussing the virtues and deficits of slogans- how the slogans people carry such as BLM can cut down dialog possibilities, keep us from finding common ground. The urban young people, it turns out, know no one who disagrees with them on any of these matters. They live in a bubble. For them, it makes no difference to know that far from them, people who don't know them assume that because of one or two signals, their entire world is being characterized as having a certain flavor, their beliefs a certain roster of characteristics- just as I assume that the people who live on the opposite side of the river with the All Lives Matter sign in red, white and black have a certain set of beliefs and characteristics. One of the group of friends is working towards dialog- he has the opportunity and wish to keep trying to find common ground, and get beyond the labels. It's very difficult work. I keep thinking it's worth doing, worth listening to those who have other ideas and beliefs.
Studies show that it reinforces our own beliefs to be exposed to different ones. They say that has been shown to be true. But you know what? They also say the opposite, that we can learn new ways of looking at things if given new information. I'm hopeful that that thing that they say, is truer than the former thing they say.
Yes. When a young man who was being groomed to lead the KKK eventually, went away to college and learned from his very kind college mates, once learning about his upbringing and future, helped him to slowly see other viewpoints. He evolved in his thinking and he left the KKK. Exposure to other ideas is very, very healthy for everyone.
There are on the left, people who are almost innocuous compared to Fox listeners, have similar problems seeing reality. On that I highly recommend a book by the black American Studies Columbia professor John McWhorter, Woke Racism: How a New Religion has Betrayed Black America.
FOX “NEWS” is a foreign agent, literally. Incorporated in October 1986, the network currently has 18 owned-and-operated stations, and current affiliation agreements with 227 other television stations. That’s just TV stations. The empire includes print and radio media as well.
In the ensuing years it has actively divided our nation with attacks on our institutions and outright lies. Chuck Todd put up graphics showing how many counties supported Clinton (1117) in 1996 and the subsequent drop in each election. By 2020 Biden only won 194 counties.
Fox has actively and deliberately used propaganda to divide our nation against itself. Murdock, as a foreign national, could never run for president. Instead he bought up airways and began an audacious campaign to turn America against itself. If this isn’t the work of a foreign agent, I don’t know what is.
Total agreement from me...Fox News is an agent of Russian-funded sedition and insurrection and it will not only encourage and enable the destruction of this country, but cheer it on as it happens.
Mike, I see this in my former law enforcement colleagues. They. Believe. The. Lies. It must feed something deep in their souls, because they have lost their humanity. Your description here of your dinner is stunning.
Mike, with respect to the rest of your otherwise excellent comment, Fox has not converted more than half of America to believe the lies. Please remember that Republicans are the minority party - the numbers vary from poll to poll but around 28 percent of registered voters. The number of registered Democrats is higher - in some places, dramatically so.
As for engineers, my ex-husband has a Masters in Planetary Science and worked for NASA, then Honeywell. A registered Dem. My late husband had a Masters in Industrial education - shop teacher and registered Dem. I live in a cul de sac with 9 houses. Four residents are engineers - 2 mechanical, 1 chemical and 1 optical engineer; 3 Dems, one independent. We also have two lawyers and a doctor here. Only one household watches Fox. All this by way of saying that your experience is way different than mine. If you want have a beer and talk politics here, you would definitely get a different response to your statement. Argument, yes. But only in the degree to which current Republicans have damaged our Republic.
No question that Fox Entertainment is dangerous. And I wish there were easier answers for how to silence their lies or at least regulate them in some reasonable fashion. But my degrees are in journalism. Free speech in a foundational freedom as you well know. Proving that Fox is dangerous and should be silenced is damn near impossible. Countering the BS is also an arduous task.
My only answer personally is to counter the BS when i hear it and work to get out the vote. There are more of us than there are of them!
The biggest thing on my mind these days is the online conversation I have been having with a friend who grew up and lives in the south. I have posted a digest of her comments in these Comments twice, but my timing was off and few responded. The value to me is her honesty. She is a good person. She tries to do what is right. As far as I know she does not watch FOX or any other news show. She has a large extended family, and they are all close. One is a preacher. I have just sent her another list of questions. I will post the digest of her comments (strung together for easy posting, but essentially unchanged from her words) at the end here.
My greatest, greatest, greatest, GREATEST concern is that we are not listening to each other as individuals. One on one. With respect, understanding that the other is a valuable human being just as we are, and they are trying to make the best life for themselves and their families, just as we are, and that when they get hysterical, it is because they are challenged, as we do too. Can we ask questions and listen to what a person is saying behind the yelling? Nobody forces anyone to watch FOX. So why do they? I think the answers to our divisions are in understanding the psychology. I'm not at all saying we should give up the fight for democracy! I'm saying we need to understand why others disagree, really deep down why, and that requires that we not judge but listen until we understand. Start with one person, as I have.
Her words:
"First let me say that I believe in God the Father, God the son Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit. Because of my religious beliefs, I see things in that light. I am very saddened by the deaths of the children and teachers, but I know that they have gone to a better place than this earth. I grieve with the parents and families because they are the ones left here to mourn. That's the hard part.
"I don't think gun control has anything to do with what is happening in this world. Kids are not being taught what is right and wrong. The family unit is broken and there are too many one-parent households. Children are not taught to respect any kind of authority at all. This did not start recently. We need better counseling and hopefully recognize mental problem in children sooner. The problems in this world didn't start now. It's been a progression for many years. It doesn't matter who the president is when it comes to this issue.
"I believe things started going badly when we took prayer out of school, when the kids stopped saying the pledge of allegiance in school and being taught to honor our flag and believe in our laws and country. People don't know the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day. I cringe when I see a Facebook post that says Happy Memorial Day because Memorial Day is the day we honor and remember the dead, those who died in battle. Veterans Day is for those who served, and Armed Forces Day is for those currently serving. When I was going to school, we went outside each morning and raised the flag and said the Pledge of Allegiance.
"I voted for Donald Trump every time. I don't talk politics with people because it's become such a hot topic. All my family voted for Mr. Trump. It was all the crud I was seeing on the news that made me stop watching the news. I have not watched the news since, except for BBC news, and I will sometimes read the local news. This didn't start recently either. (She talks about when 60 Minutes did a story in her community in the 1970s.) When the episode aired, they had twisted so many things giving their own negative spin on things. They had cut and pasted different parts together to make a different story. I have not watched 60 minutes since that day, and that was in the late 70's.
"(She uses my name here) you need to stop watching so much news and turn your attention to helping others, making afghans for neonatal units or nursing homes or going to the library to read books to children.
"I firmly believe what people have been posting, that guns don't kill people, people kill people. If a person owns a gun they need to have it locked up, like in a gun safe, or put away safely where children cannot get it.
"I seriously doubt we need assault weapons, but once the government starts telling us which gun we can have, I think we’re in trouble. There will come a time when we will need guns for our safety and food. Everyone in my family has guns. I remember growing up when I went to school the boys had gun racks in the back of their pickup trucks and it was perfectly okay. They would hunt on the way home from school. Growing up there were many times that mama would take the shotgun after she got off from work and go out into the field and kill a rabbit or whatever she could see so that we had food for dinner that night. The reason I think people need to be preparing for harder times is because of what we are going through now. The grocery stores are having a hard time keeping some foods in stock. There are so many positions for employment everywhere, and people don't want to work. When my Daddy was in the third grade, he worked in a gravel pit carrying gravel in a bucket for 50 cents a week.
"I believe that children need more attention and a better home life and that we should concentrate on that instead of gun control. My top answer is get the children in church."
What a painful combination: sincerity, seriously good intentions and Pavlovian conditioning, making use of ingrained beliefs -- good beliefs -- to undermine what those very beliefs truly stand for and to inculcate new, off-the-shelf ideas that displace them, as a cuckoo's egg will empty the nest of all its original occupants...
I appreciate what you're doing here. I have had that conversation (almost verbatim) with folks. I cannot rebut the Christian rhetoric that defines me as a sinner and therefore only valuable in my redemption if I abandon who I am. (Yes, I have had this conversation. "You're a good person, except for that gay thing." Direct quote.) Pray tell, how do I get around that? I cannot establish common ground with anyone who tells me who I am is an anathema.
Easy for me to say, I know, but let it go. Not important. You know who you are. Go to a movie together. Find some laughs. You may have an impact, and if you don't, nothing is lost. And you'll become a better person for the effort. But again, I know, easy to say.
Thanks so much for going to the trouble to post this. You're right, it won't get seen as much as it should. What you say reflects a lot of what is so heartbreaking about this strange divisive atmosphere we live in now and maybe always have. I spent a bit of time recently in Louisiana and Arkansas, and met so many sincere people trying to live right, who were Christian, who brought their beliefs into all matters. It seemed inadvisable to ask about their politics, so I did not bring it up- the circumstances that brought me there were anyway not conducive to getting into that sort of thing.
Being from a place is a thing. We grow up surrounded by an atmosphere, a culture, that creates our reality. I'm now from the Northeast, though I was born in Missouri to artists from NYC. Part of me yearns to believe in the same values that those I attended first grade with had- those beliefs that made them into the good people they are. Is it possible that those folks, who may admire a man like Trump, have no idea who he is?
So what is it that makes people racially prejudiced? It's fear and self interest, right? It's lack of exposure to others. I love those folks I met in the south because I met them. I don't care about their politics, on that level, but I'd fight them verbally with vigor if I had a chance. I wouldn't challenge their belief in Christ or their way of life. In a way I am sorry I won't have that chance. Keep talking to your friend. ,and once again, thanks for posting.
"who brought their beliefs into all matters..." I think this is the problem. Assuming your beliefs are the only true beliefs, turning away from reality in order to nurture those beliefs and denying even the lives of children in the cause of your beliefs is the core of the problem. If people want to embrace an Evangelical Christianity I respect their choice. They have been given that choice because they live in a Democracy. The pickle is their insistence in denying the healthy separation of Church and State. Trying to fit their beliefs into the complex make up of this Country and it's Laws is causing much pain and harm.
Thank you! I will keep talking to her. I don't know what makes people racially prejudiced. My mother's family was from Georgia, and they astonished me by their racial prejudice, as much as I loved them. My grandmother wrote poetry, and some of it was racist. The family that still lives there was not offended, but I was. I don't know about our differences, but I know we need to keep the lines of communication open.
Your friend uses two common dysfunctional tactics.
First, rationalization, the feigned helplessness and dismissal as “gods will” or the dead now reside with a religious deity. Terrorists use this same language! This dismisses real time and far reaching trauma to the living. Religious belief has NO place in determining broader law.
The second common response is blame. Blame parents, teachers, the failure of enforcement. Here we avoid the clear role of firearms. WTF? I find this so small minded. Blame the victims and everything else?
What I find contradictory in the GOP verbiage is conveying a need for more arms, added school security, and then COMPLAIN about increased taxes. Has this HUGE financial burden for “freedom” to have unregulated guns been assessed? No.
I add to this the current rant against a half century of regulated abortion rights, risking more babies being raised in unprepared, unsafe, negligent environments. The GOP votes down all assistance to address this.
Yes, I have listened and I am tired of the shallow vision of Chumpster followers. They defy intelligent logic and then call it “elitist”. They are Koolaid drinkers of the Jim Jones ilk. They poison not only their cult, but this entire democracy.
Feel free to share my response with your good friend.
Berry, your mention of dysfunctional tactics is interesting. I don't think she is trying to rationalize the deaths by saying it is God's will. She is being absolutely sincere. This is what she believes. About your second tactic, blame, my friend does place the blame for gun misuse on adults - parents and others - who raise irresponsible children. Again, though, she really believes this. Can you see that? We may disagree with her, but she is not trying to manipulate. She might change her mind if she had more facts and wanted to consider them, but I don't fault her for that, for that is true of us as well. She is being sincere.
My response does not imply your friend is intentionally manipulating. These are established "cultural devices" embraced by too many. Forms of denial and gaslighting that have been timeless and ubiquitous over history. The young terrorists who flew into the WTT on 9/11 fully believed they were acting in accordance to their religious faith, too.
Oops, sorry if I got you wrong. I looked up "dysfunctional tactics" because I wasn't sure what that meant, exactly, and what I found on quick perusal seemed to indicate that a person was intentionally misleading. I can see how this could be unconscious because of the culture that person grew up in, and I think that is probably the case with my friend. But she wouldn't recognize that. To tell her would be to say I know better than she does, which I don't want to do. So I have a question for you: how do we know that we ourselves are not misled?
To those who have asked, I did ask some further questions of my friend today. Here they are with her answers:
> 1. Do you or any of your family watch FOX news? I assume you don't, but I'm wondering if you know if any of your family does. Answer: some family but (my daughter) watched local stations from Jackson, and they show global news.
>
> 2. As of your feelings now, would you vote for Donald Trump in 2024? Answer: No
>
> 3. Do you think our current government, a democracy, should become more authoritative? By that I mean that one person is at the top and controls most of the decisions in the country. Answer: Absolutely not. OK we are not a democracy anyway. We are a republic. Google that with democratic principles. We are a republic with democratic principles.
>
> 4. Do you think the federal government wields too much power? Answer: We need the federal government, but we also need to have the states regulate their own government and be able to make decisions for their state without too much government interference.
>
> 5. Do you think the federal government should provide help to those in need through social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, etc.? Answer: I do believe in helping and I also believe in Medicare and Medicaid, but I think the states should do more to help their needy. On the other hand, when government gives away so much money, as happened during Covid, some people don’t want to work. They would rather get government money. Everywhere we go here businesses have “Help Wanted” signs in the windows.
>
> 6. Do you think the government should promote religion? Answer: No but they shouldn’t try removing it either. Our country has become insensitive to the needs of Christians.
>
> 7. Do you think Roe v. Wade should be overturned? Answer: Absolutely not. But I also believe that it should not be used as birth control. There are many ways to prevent getting pregnant, so abortion should be the very last choice. I would hate to see Roe v. Wade overturned. I would really hate to see people go back to kitchen table and back street abortions. That makes me sad.
Your friend is wise, as are you, and I hope your friendship continues to grow in appreciation for each other. Bravo to you for reaching out to her.... to all of us.
Thank you, Becky. You impress me a good friend and wonderful model to us. Your questions covered what interests most Americans. I appreciate your friend. She is thoughtful and cares about the needs of others. Becky, along with all your strengths, you are a natural born teacher.
Becky: I read this when you first posted it, though I didn’t comment. But having many relatives from Louisiana as well as several people I still call “friend,” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard all of the things your friend wrote to you. And, yes, it does no good to negate anyone’s religious views.
I have no idea what your religious beliefs are, but as a Xtian agnostic (raised baptist), the only tact I’ve found to be at all helpful is to share my own beliefs on biblical interpretations. And she’s not on solid ground, there. (I had an evangelical preacher as an uncle, & he never missed a pulpit chance to talk against racism.) But I doubt it would help--your friend is piling up what she considers “good deeds” & waiting for the rapture.
And I must add that while she says she watches very little news, she must be on social media in some form if she agrees with “what people have been posting;” sure sounds like a news source, to me.
Yes, she is on social media. We have not seen each other for about 5 years now, as I returned to my home in Vermont after 16 years in the south caring for my parents. But we have stayed in close touch. She has a family she loves to distraction. She is the 10th of 10 children in her family of origin. She and I are currently involved together in a project we hope will raise 3K for a library in my area.
Becky, you are lucky to be able to have this conversation with your friend. Unfortunately it's not like that with everyone. I have tried but get tired of being yelled at and not being allowed to voice my opinion (as if it doesn't matter). I too feel that if we could just understand where each other's views are coming from. maybe we could have mutual respect. From my experience, it's not always possible.
I know that, Jeanne. That is why this seems like a bit of communication that is really important. This gal and I have been friends for a long time, beginning when she volunteered through Hospice to help me with my mother. She is an amazing person. It is hard for me to believe there are such differences between us. She has not had the educational advantages I have had, which is a shame.
Becky, Your comment is a tremendously helpful illustration of thinking on the part of some Americans who support Trump. I hope that you will continue to enlighten us in this way. I am curious to know what you wrote in response to your friend and whether she replies. Can you share your dialogue? The respect you show and how you manifest it, may be another valuable teaching lesson for us. Thank you.
"But, FOX NEWS has brainwashed them completely. I mean, completely." Mike, these folks brainwashed by FOX are not victims. They chose to watch and listen and read the FOX lies because it was scintillating, smacked of the good old days, or they simply felt like it. If you or I had wandered over to a FOX News segment we would have been horrified or at least confused and doubting.
Barbara, are we not all tempted to listen to someone who attracts us into his or her circle by plying us with messages that appeal to our prejudices? The devil's no fool... And it's all too easy to tell more fairytales to kids that never grew up and never had a thought that was truly their own.
Hmmm. Yes and no. An awful lot of people would (and have) turned away from evil. We all have our prejudices. It's human nature. It is the kind of prejudices that land us in the lair of evil and make us susceptible to those spouting evil that gets us into trouble. I am not using the word "evil" lightly here.
There is a man where I work who is a racist. If he sits at your table at lunch you will quickly find that out. One day he tried it with me and I let him have it. Later someone told me I was the only person who had ever stood up to his racism. Ever since then he avoids me like crazy. I enjoy that fact and always make sure I glare at him and shake my head if he is even across a room from me.
"Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them." LICHTENBERG
Yes, they have their political uses, keeping vast tracts of Middle America as clean of thought as Roundup keeps crops clean of rival forms of life...
And yes, we all do have them, we usually call them "beliefs", they're like bad breath, bad posture or bad habits... Nothing to be proud of, just something adults need to become aware of, however painful that may be for those living in an unkind, aggressive social environment. I try. But there are days like today when deep anger at the antics of vicious hypocrites in high places gets the better of me.
I don't think that anger is a product of prejudice but I do think that, like prejudices, it is best kept under control... But on such days I do dream of bulletproof pillories... Those would need cleaning with a fire hose every half hour...
Substack didn’t allow me to like your comment, Peter. Such wise advice, though: anger leads nowhere. Of late, it has become very difficult to hold anger in check. The irrational retorts of “conservatives” to what should ne commonsensical, preventive regulations are simply disgusting!
Mike, I find your 25%group immunity to Fox BS interesting. These guys are by your account 1:1 nice folk, intelligent. What are their thoughts about “replacement theory”. My guess is that is why you were, and continue to be, immune to Fox BS. You don’t strike me as a guy hijacked by fear of ‘the Other”. Just wondering your thoughts.
I have a theory about Americans being afraid of "the Other" and is not meant as a criticism. It has changed a bit since I got here in the 60's, but an awful lot of Americans have never left the US (except perhaps in the military) and many don't own passports making some people insular.
My experience is that I was privileged to spend time with my family growing up in India and in Africa. "The Other" became my parents' friends and were at the house often. I knew at an early age that we were all alike under our skin colour and my brother and I had to treat everyone with respect, it didn't occur to us not to, because of our parents example.
You have to be carefully trained to hate others. What we are experiencing today is terrorism, intentionally manipulated, vulnerable or racist people who want power and to maintain the white caste system. Authoritarian tactics are being used to sow division and fear.
If you are in NYC check out Tracy Letts' play, The Minutes. Set in a city council meeting, it begins as a watching paint dry event like most council meetings are, though Austin Pendleton is hilarious throughout. The story shifts to the dark side, with these innocuous council members showing their true colors, right out of today's headlines. Chilling. Thought-provoking.
My family of origin spent a year in Paris, 1965-66. I was 12. At home, I'd always been interested in foreigners, who I'd occasionally see in Harvard Square. I would approach them, ask them where they were from, and a little about themselves.
I noticed that year in Paris, that Parisians never approached me, and in fact, were hostile to Americans. I realize now that Paris was flooded with Americans, who often didn't behave all that well towards Parisians.
There's a book I highly recommend: Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth ($9 on Amazon). It reads well despite being a scholarly survey, among other things, of the relevant academic economic literature.
Basically, for 200 years, businesses have been importing foreigners, originally to replace black workers, now to replace any American, or even less recent immigrant workers. New immigrants are easily exploitable, and so this behavior enables reducing wages. As some black poultry workers who had left their jobs told the author, the pay now was so low that their replacements were having to sleep in cars or many to a room.
The book gives the lie to the notion that there are jobs American workers won't do. But there are levels of pay that workers who have had houses to themselves won't accept, and shouldn't accept.
Mike, I've been in similar situations. I no longer speak to my closest friend since childhood. The first time I knew there was going to be trouble was when her husband dragged her away while screaming at me because I said to her," Come on, you have to admit that he has some kind of mental illness." and she had a huge meltdown. You know who we were talking about. The next time I saw her she apologized but the phone conversations from that point on grew into her just talking over me and finally when she wouldn't stop screaming at me, protecting her T and spewing Fox lies, I hung up on her and have never spoken to her again. That was a few years ago and I realized that she was no kind of friend that I wanted to remain in contact with. Yes, it can be shocking but at least you know where they stand. Pray for them as I pray for her.
Jeanne, join many of us, especially since 2016. For me, the first real political divide, awakening, was the election of President Obama, who I supported from the beginning. One person I thought was Progressive was not. She started sending me birther emails and Repub lies and I had to decide if many voters who were anti-Obama were really racist. And I think that was the truth. I’ve hardly seen her since.
Marlene, I think your observation is true. A political party is more than a label. If we think about what it stands for, the values, we have to decide if we agree and it becomes identity. Or maybe we voted the way our family did. That’s if we understand or want to learn History and government and social movements. No wonder many repugs don’t want to teach what they call CRT. Critical Race Theory. Their children might feel uncomfortable or guilty. Or become Democrats. The Truth has a way of waking us up.
I hate to say this. Jeanne, prayers are a thing of the past. Our gods (he/she/it) aren’t listening. If they were, we wouldn’t have tragedies such as Uvaldie, Parkland, Sandy Hook, Columbine, Buffalo, the church in SC, the people in the synagogue, and many many more.
Irenie, Marlene, no two ways about the bad smell of “prayers in politics”. Yet…
Whether we’re atheists, agnostics or follow a religion, don’t the real questions entailed go deeper than this? For a start… “our gods”—which gods? I’ve mentioned Money, but there are other deities people worship that are even more terrible…
Before we start talking about gods and how we do or don’t relate to them—including those human beings that get the god/idol/fetish treatment—don’t we need to consider first how we relate to ourselves?
This is fearfully demanding, but does not man’s future depend on our seeking and finding ourselves, our inner freedom? And so, despite all the confusion, our inner strength. A fragment from a religious text:
“If you do not know yourselves, then you exist in poverty and you are that poverty.”
Now that I’ve spent almost all day in anger, looking at human frailty and worse, I’m getting angry with myself and I need a wash, really, metaphorically. So please don’t take what I’ve just said badly, it’s myself I’m reminding to stop running in all directions except the one that matters, and pull myself together.
Peter, your point is well taken, believe me. I left out the Holocaust, of which both of my parents were immigrant victims. 6 million died and for what? I got robbed of grandparents and cousins. This is the direction I keep running towards, justice, equality, and freedom for all.
Sadly, Marlene, I agree. Prayers in politics are code words for sorry for your loss but it’s yours and you’ll have to deal with it because we’re not going there. After Katrina. After every shooting. Everyone can add to the list.
When faced by people who want to discuss this kind of issue, one member of my family says he refuses to embroil himself in discussions about religion...
I get his point. So much politics today reminds me of the bloody wars of religion in 16th and 17th century Europe, blind belief against blind belief. But while Brits believe in nothing, many Americans seem to have blind faith in both God and Mammon... Not surprising, then, that some just cannot cope with their own contradictions, let alone with anyone questioning their shaky standpoint.
Keeping people constantly afraid is the stock-in-trade of all authoritarian regimes. And what could be scarier than being afraid to send your child to school?
It is vile beyond the most hellish imagining, it is demons at work. Congressmen, governors on mission from who knows what depth of the Inferno.
Spreaders of a debased materialism -- nothing to do with Marx, with Democritus, with Lucretius -- one that reduces human beings to cattle (called "consumers"), to cannon fodder (called "patriots") a disease that is doing its damnedest to bring all political regimes everywhere, Russian, American, Chinese, Indian, to the same lower-than-lowest common denominator.
Given the vast speed and ever-increasing acceleration of change in our world, people are anxious and vulnerable. So they have been targeted by certain major financial interests and their chosen instruments, for whom you rightly use the term “vector”.
Now, I don’t think labels like “cultism” are going to get anyone very far in describing, let alone countering the wildfire spread of a mass psychosis deliberately set off in just the same way as industrialists and financiers (with some real cause at the time to fear Communist forces) financed Hitler, whose uncanny ability to give voice to the vilest stirrings in Germans’ collective unconscious made possible the greatest, most murderous outbreak of mass madness that the world has yet seen.
Yes. In just the same way. This time, their Goebbels is Murdoch, whose adventures in mass manipulation do not, however, seem to be grounded in any ideology other than whatever destruction he can profitably get away with.
Now, however, the situation is potentially far more dangerous than in 1933 because America’s material power is immeasurably greater than that of Nazi Germany. Thus, there is no need for an obvious embodiment of evil like the Fuehrer, a fool in the White House can do harm on a scale that no conqueror in history could ever have imagined. By crimes of omission alone, such a one could destroy most life on Earth.
Yes, and even in the US the change has been huge. Imagine yourself an American worker. There's a new book, Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth, by Roy Beck. The backbone of the book is academic economic history (296 footnotes) but the author also draws from black periodicals, statements of black leaders, and gov't commissions on immigration reform, all of which recommended substantial reductions in immigration and strict enforcement of immigration laws.
From 1990-2020 the US added 40 million immigrants, the population of twice New York State. Biden wants to double those numbers.
Those numbers have turned many small towns into largely Spanish speaking, they've led to reduced wages and job loss among not just black, but white American workers, and currently even many immigrant workers, which is undoubtedly why Trump increased his share of the Hispanic vote in 2020.
As the author states repeatedly, these numbers aren't immigrants' fault, and people should not blame immigrants. They are Congress' fault. And I can tell you, much as I love most of my senators' and my congresswoman's policies, their immigration policies are terrible, and they are clueless on this issue (I've spoken with all of them, and with Warren and Katherine Clark numerous (brief) times).
As you said, people don't like change, and Americans have gotten a flood of it. (Press 1 for English and 2 for Spanish.)
But it goes back to the first New England settlements. Those who came “for religious freedom” were paranoid from being persecuted in England. The Founding Fathers were, on the whole, educated men—but their paranoia against the power/persecution by monarchy they were keenly aware of permeates the Articles of Confederation and Constitution. Why they repeatedly refused Washington a draft and were against a standing army.
After Cromwell's Commonwealth -- especially after the division of the country into Regions, each under the command of a major-general, a regime coming as close to that of the Ayatollahs, even the Taliban, as any that Britain has ever seen -- the military (unlike the Navy) came into disrepute for a long time and Kings, denied a standing army, raised guards regiments... The Catholic James II's attempts to build up a large standing army, including many Catholic officers led to disaffection and, in time, to his downfall.
To make matters worse, Hanoverian troops were sent to America, part of a growing -- and long-lasting -- pattern of using foreign mercenaries, developed with great success against the French in India during the Seven Years War...
When my friends first showed me Manila in the 1970s, we came to a quarter where everyone looked like Indians and I asked about this. I was told that these are Filipinos like everyone else, but that they're descended from a regiment of 600 sepoys whom the British left behind when they abandoned the city after an 18-month occupation in 1762-'64...
Citizen60, it is a bit more complex than that. The puritans and a few others came for religious freedom. There were not many of them, and for the most part got along reasonably well with the indigenous people, with some notable exceptions.
But after them came the "companies" of people sponsored by investors seeking a return on their investment, who were not particularly religious, and to the degree they espoused religion, used it to justify their greed and sense of entitlement.
There were many of them, and settlements spread rapidly, as did exploitation of resources. Families were large with fewer lost babies, so more land needed, thus rapid expansion to west occurred, cities (small by our standards) sprouted up and became centers of commerce. The behavior of the founders came from a different fear than the fear of the first puritan settlers. It grew out of the greed and desire to expand territory more than fear of persecution from the British monarchy. The tax thing? Ha, taxation without representation? The Colonists were actually paying less tax than their counterparts in Britain, who were paying for the wars to protect the colonists from the consequences of their own land greed.
The British government had treaties with Indigenous Nations that the settlers from Europe would not go past the Appalachian Mts, and tried to enforce it. That is the real reason for the drive to separate. The settlers ignored the treaties and extended forcefully into lands guaranteed protected.
The litany of complaints against Geo III were the justification, he being the figurehead of the British government. But extending settlement into lands to the west was the real reason. This is the short version. The rest is just as interesting.
Yes, I know. It’s both simple and multifaceted. Why the later 13 colonies chose to declare independence is not what I was referring to in my comment. I was focused on the paranoia and fear from the earliest New England settlers. But The Founding Fathers’ biographies and Federalist Papers make clear their fear of tyranny and of the populace.
I think it is the old, white-privileged male patriarchy that we are having to confront, finally. Trump just tapped into it (and was paid a lot of money to do so, he is purely transactional about life).
Heather's very credible reason for why the Republican Congress won't vote for gun laws is because their mission is to take any and all power away from the Federal Government. You'll find her words in the last 10 minutes or so of her FB chat yesterday. https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/videos/1168841863968581
I agree with all but you very last line. They are horrible, miserable, dangerous people. Calling them vermin is the same ugly propaganda they use to dehumanizing anyone they target. Call them out, for sure! But let's not use their dehumanizing techniques.
Very good, but on your narrow point, I suspect that CBS, NBC and ABC are also licensed as entertainment, and that that’s the way the statute is written.
Way past time to call Rupert’s Fox what they are. The purveyor of our destruction. Fox is licensed as “entertainment,” yet they have “News” plastered all over their slimy operation. Flipping channels yesterday, I heard someone on Nicole Wallace’s show ask the seminal question - paraphrase - if they are entertainment, why do they have a seat at WH briefings, why are they treated as a legitimate news entity? It is a scam perpetuated on us all by Ronnie’s crew of thugs, deliberate and designed to destroy. No more “the most trusted man in America” type news reporting, just more Goebbels style blather. It has been a slow-growing cancer that is about to deal a fatal blow, with the acquiescence of most of the MSM.
As to the gun issue, republicans rule the fools. What will republicans accept? Why is that the question? I ask over and over…They worship anything but sanity these days. Even McConaughey’s impassioned plea does not suggest prohibiting the weapons of mass murder. Make no mistake, there are plenty of deranged 21+ disaffected out there. We all know that. Some care, some have proved that they don’t. They are vermin…
Jeri,
"What will republicans accept? Why is that the question?"
A very large fraction of America, including the three gentleman I had dinner with last night at a local bar, fully support/fully believe the far right, Fox News interpretations.
Usually, we all avoid any conversation about politics because we know that 1/4 of the total get together is not Republican (me).
But, last night one of the guys brought up McConaughy and guns. I, not having been inside all day, had not heard or even known about his speech. But, I guessed it might be for something reasonable. At any rate, these three guys are pretty nice folks 1:1 and in a bar and none of them "carry" (guns around all the time).
But, they were using language like: "soon it is going to be like Venezuela here". Which, is language DIRECTLY from Fox News and Newsmax. You would think these guys have no brain since what has happened in Venezuela has not even slight similarity here since it is the REPUBLICANS who have tried to become dictators, not the democrats.
So, I briefly tried to explain that Venezuela's Maduro is most similar to America's Trump. Jeri, these three guys went nuts as if I had accused Jesus of faking his resurrection. Simply making a reasonable comparison set them off. Instead, ALL THREE of them "believe" that BIDEN is like Maduro, about to put in place a dictatorship.
All three of these grown men are bright, well spoken, educated, (engineers), respectful to their wives and kids and decent people.
But, FOX NEWS has brainwashed them completely. I mean, completely.
So, "why is the question "what Republicans will accept"?
Because FOX NEWS has converted more than half of America into radicals who believe lies about Biden and the Democrats and these people are AFRAID that Democrats will do what TRUMP tried to do.
Except, the reason they believe that is because of lies from a Russian funded misinformation platform: FOX NEWS.
FOX NEWS should be being treated, by all branches of our military and our intelligence services as a foreign agent in America. We should be, as a country, working to disable Fox from broadcast capability over the next 24 hours.
But, we won't. And, it might be too late. Like I say, 3/4 of the gathering last night was fully ensconced in FOX lies. Only I was sitting there amazed at the BS these guys believed.
Engineers who can think through complex electronic stuff Jeri. Cannot think their way past Fox lies.
I am not sure why I am immune and have always known Fox was BS. I really cannot say why I am different, but, it is not HCR. I thought that FOX was BS when Dr. Richardson was still preparing history lessons for classes I never heard of.
But, America is in danger Jeri, and Fox is the ENEMY.
This merits a far wider readership than it is going to get here in Substack.
Check out HCR'S Facebook following
HCR is awesome on FB; unfortunately many people have dropped FB and social media, so they miss out.
I'm just saying that she maintains a strong following:) every contact helps!
An otherwise nice man, but avid trump/Faux News cultist, told us a few days ago that under Biden “we live in a tyranny.” When we expressed our belief that the citizenry should not own military-strength weapons, he replied: “when we have the next civil war, you’ll be glad to be friends with someone who owns an AR-15.”
We were left speechless…
I can't bring myself to hit the "Like" button. Too horrifying...
I agree!
Rose, we attended a funeral on Saturday. While gathering at the gravesite, I overhead a conversation by a group of people who said basically the same thing. FOX Entertainment has drilled into their heads, "the next Civil War and you better know someone with an AR-15" mantra. These people were the top end of the local volunteer fire department. So many questions I would have asked them had we not been at a funeral.
I do know people who own AR-15s (and yes, that is a plural). I also know that those people will view me as the enemy. Much as their "rhetoric" indicates otherwise, I am who they identify as an enemy.
Ally, I feel we are 1 newscast away from FOX or _ucker Carlson from being the hunted.
Since we are liberal/progressive, we would be viewed as the enemy by many in our neighborhood and I am sure there are plenty of assault weapons. The right wing guy across the street now has a drone and if he flies it into our yard, he will at least get the one finger salute although I would like to pull a Kathy Bates in Harry on him. He won't speak to us because we told him to lessen his noise and called the county several times. Large unmuffled engines going full blast, so that we couldn't even hear the TV with the sound up. His wife, thankfully, got him to stop because the noise bothered her too. She is a progressive Democrat, so they are an interesting couple.
Making me question, who thinks I am the enemy? Hard to even imagine...
😔😥😠😡
👀
My take on this is if people are speaking of such things at a funeral then this mindset has really saturated the core of our society.
Yes. Given the friend who's funeral it was, he would have been incredibly disappointed in those people. Granted it was prior to the funeral when people were gathering ......still.
I am sincerely sorry.
I truly wonder if the people touting civil war understand what a civil war in America would look like. It would resemble Syria where the government called in the army to quell the uprising. If Trump or another trumpish president gains office in 2025 and if there are uprisings, Trump wouldn't hesitate to call in air strikes to subdue uprisings. Local militias would carry on much as the brown shirts did in 1930s Germany, slaughtering the opposition. God only knows whom the militias would deem as the opposition, Democrats, immigrants, Blacks? The thought of a civil war scares me to death.
I completely agree. I firmly believe they are living a becareful what you wish for mentality.
Oh, Linda! That must have been horrible: a double loss!
Rose, Howard was a very dear friend of ours and it was a hard loss for us.
Knowing him as well as we did, I know the conversation from the other people would have ended quickly as he never would have tolerated such nonsense.
Well, Rose, you know where to go to get an AR-15. He is a fool to tell you.
What he really means is he does not know what civil war is. Because, telling people he has a weapons armory means he is the first dead man at the outbreak.
You may be right. I did wonder if he had any idea of what a tyranny is like; certainly, if were living in one, he would not be free to criticize the administration—nor to brag about the armament he owns…
He seems to think that only people like him are armed. He will be really surprised when someone shoots back.
Good point.
We are under an armed attack now. What would a civil war look like to these people? Serious question not rhetoric.
I think Fox News has normalized this concept of "civil war" so that people who have no experience or not much experience hunting or shooting something live with a gun think "Civil War" will not be the very ugly, horrifying, gory thing that it will be.
The good news is: My own observation is that those most attracted to the "Civil War" ideology are also the most out of shape people I know.
So, a 100 yard run will be tough on them. They will last about half a day in a real war.
Yes and no. Unfortunately enough of them were in good enough shape to storm the Capitol on January 6 and do real damage. The crowd brain had taken over and I believe they really would have hung Pence or Pelosi or Schiff that day.
I've been perplexed by the media softening with the 'mock' gallows reporting. How do those in the media know what was symbolic? It was a gallows, poorly built, perhaps, but certainly would have been tested had the mob put hands on Pence or Pelosi.
Mike S: While I, unfortunately, understand the Civil War analogies (& to preface my point, I must say that it is “very ugly, horrifying”)--& though this comment is not addressed (except here) only to you--but I know, from experience, that calling people “out” by derogatory names is just never helpful (except re playing to the crowd). I have a big issue w derogatory names in general: they never further any conversation in a positive fashion, imo.
And your observations that those reposing CW ideology are mostly “out of shape” is not helpful & not accurate. You must not be exposed to the same so-called-2nd amendment militias that I have, unfortunately (or perhaps you’re fortunate?)
Way too many former military & police & first responders belong to these militias, imagining themselves as 21st C Jehoshaphats, who worship at the temple of the gym (& nothing wrong w being a gym rat--that’s NOT what I’m saying).
Just my observation, BUT I very much dislike body shaming--or any derogatory shaming, regardless of its intent or to whom it’s directed. That’s what I believe.
Yes. What worries me Is that people who never owned a gun, didn’t grow up with weapons or hunting or worrying about self defense will arm themselves and their families in the belief that they need to protect themselves for the first time ever. As long as military weapons are available no one is safe. Or weapons on the open market. About 20 years ago, my hairdresser’s twelve year old son committed suicide. The family had a hunting rifle in their travel trailer and separate ammunition in a cupboard. The boy was diagnosed as ADD and had trouble at school. The teachers often isolated him as discipline. And he was in trouble again. Report cards were being mailed and he knew he would disappoint his parents. Imagine if there no guns in his home. He found the gun and ammunition and the family history will always be heartbreaking. I grew up with no guns in my home and never have had guns. Thinking about the danger and knowing about the gun accidents and numbers of child gun deaths should be enough to make us all consider who is being protected.
I never imagined 30, 40, or even 10 years ago we would be having these kinds of conversations. Irenie it appears we may have already gone over the cliff into some kind of pre-Civil War situation. And getting hotter every day.
Barbara, I think we’re reading the future and it’s a future many Americans, even Democrats, think we can save. I wish I could be so optimistic for our children, our grandchildren, the future. J6 is a harbinger of the next few years, unless we can turn the tide for repubs and SCOTUS to care for the future and the laws more than their loyalty to TFG and his minions. Women’s reproductive choices and equality, racial equality, much more stringent gun laws and regulations. And critically, Climate Change. Long list. Just my opinion.
Sick. Especially because he speaks for too many citizens who believe we have to be prepared. It’s unbelievable that military weapons were ever available to the general public. Or not unbelievable. More like unconscionable.
THAT is our reality. And once Civil War II is ignited we will be like children sitting in a school, armed friends or not.
This really got me in the gut. I actually have pains in my stomach with this reality. How horrifying a thought! Years ago I never paid attention to what my friends thought of things like this. And now, they so openly talk about it that I wonder how I never knew. I think it's just that my mind has never thought about guns and I would never want to HAVE TO own one. I hope it never comes to that.
of course, you will be the enemy and will have no real friends who have ar15s. they just can't get the simplest things straight. awhile ago i was talking to a guy who said that biden had shut down 'that pipeline.' i said no, he hadn't shut down any pipeline. sure he did, he said. i said that he had stopped the extension of the pipeline from omaha to new orleans, but that there were thousands of miles of that canadian pipeline still open. well, we should be energy independent, he said. then why do you want a canadian pipeline in the us in the first place, i said. and the price of gas is sky high, he said, and now he's releasing all of that strategic reserve, like a traitor, he said. well, that's to lower the price of oil, i said. it might keep gas prices down. we shouldn't be buying oil from other countries, he said, spending all that money. american oil, i said, isn't any cheaper. you'd pay the same price, i said, and besides we want other countries to have the income from oil. trade promotes peace. somehow these people think they understand real life. they don't have a clue. the best way to talk to them is to talk the way they do. don't attack, counter-attack. don't try to be persuasive. show the same offhanded contempt for their thinking that they show to you. and above all don't qualify your statements. that takes too long. just make them. the current crop of gun people are not part of any real gun culture. they are the self defense crowd that deep down wants to kill the perp, not defend themselves. they are afraid of a slave rebellion. it all started with huey newton and bobby seales and the black panther party for self defense. when i guy who is convinced that white voters are being replaced by non-white voters drives 200 miles to kill black people in buffalo, people who have been here since 1619, before the irish, before the italians, before the jews and scandinavians, and people show sympathy for the shooter, well what can you say? you say, hey they were here before we were, like the mexicans in texas. we are the replacements. but there won't be a civil war like the last one. at that time, there were 17,000 active troops in the us army when the war started and two armies fought each other and both grew larger and larger. this time it will be the us military against a paramilitary and its peashooters. the joint chiefs know who they are, and they know where they live and can't wait to try out their new toys.
I had a similar conversation with my ex-husband. I could tell immediately where he was getting his info from. I tried to counter what he was saying but I should have known better. If he doesn't get his way, he resorts to violence...thus my ex.
Good thing you no longer are with him, Jeanne! Better alone than in bad company.
An otherwise nice man is not a trumper or fan of fox news. The fact that sane people are trying to find good in them has given them so much power. But then I don't have friends who own AR-15s and would probably be on the receiving end.
I’ve know my friend for over two decades. He is like family! But the reality is that this last visit I saw him in a light I had never witnessed before. It was scary, even eerie…
I’m sorry that this has happened to an old friend but when an 11 year old survivor talks about their experience to a house committee and republican politicians make it clear that they will allow no gun control then I can’t help but blame every person who votes for republicans thereby enabling nothing to done. I will never understand how they can be good or nice. How can a first world country not do anything after this? Because republicans have a heart of pure evil.
I would like to agree with you, as that would make my life so much easier, but this person is not even a registered Republican. And I was talking to his wife yesterday and she swears he doesn’t watch Fox News! This is what scares me about the people supporting trump and AR-15s in civilian hands: the more I know, the less I understand…
Tyranny? Really? Have they been mass hypnotized?
My sister says/believes the same exact thing.
Thanks for this message.
I support free speech- civil, truth-filled speech.
Fox is neither. A dangerous foreign agent. I agree with Peter Burnett, your response should be heard beyond this Substack community, Mike S.
Thank you. Hopefully, the US Government is able to see a foreign agent in our midst and is taking steps to neutralize. But, I have my doubts after 20 years of BS emanating from Fox.
Mike, are you OK with copying and pasting your comments on other newsletter sites? I'm thinking The Dispatch and maybe the Bulwark as well as Robert Hubbell's Newsletter if you haven't already gone there. It's not the wide dissemination it deserves but it's a start.
Call it by its name: propaganda
Fox et al Murdoch should be deported.
Yes Murdoch's Reagan-sponsored citizenship should be revoked and he should be shipped back to Australia from whence he came.
Preferably to Nauru, where Australia dumps unwanted migrants...
The shouted query “are you grandstanding?” at the presser said a lot. A movie star rich enough to buy himself some nice peace and quiet in luxury yet who chooses to use his celebrity to open himself to invective and death threats is spun as “self-serving” and “attention-seeking” in order to deflect from his message of common-sense gun ownership reform and common ground.
He can afford the extra security for himself, his wife, and their children, but he willingly placed himself -and them- in the way of real harm, not just a bit of invective from the perpetually disgruntled do-nothings who populate chatty corners of the internet.
(And if that rings any bells, I’ve had a bit of poorly-phrased invective sent inboxward from people in this tiny group who object to my discussing a run for office in this forum😂…as if blisters, no time to read, and having to converse with shitwits on the street who don’t know women only got the right to vote a century ago but won’t sign a petition themselves because they “aren’t political” [articulated in that nasal sorority twang] is anyone’s idea of a good time?!? Bitches, if I wanted attention I’d fabricate a wardrobe malfunction at my next standup 5mins, not run for office in safely D NYC..)
Because in the current USA, having a sometime actor advocate for the most anemic change gets exponentially more attention than the earnest politician, or the fleeting 15seconds of fame granted a victim (who, once their exclusives are up, are put back on the shelf of us regular Joes and not given the mic again).
The Rs leveraged that with brutal intelligence with Reagan, and the conservative think tanks and hate radio flourished under his genial, doddering reign. The Ds need to get methodical about GOTV and draft some feelgood personality to front for us…but who among those who have made good is willing to suffer the abuse it would entail?
I'm sorry you've gotten invective here. I admire your running for office and hope you'll announce victory here after election day.
Jane Fonda stood tall. We stood for her in Vietnam. Those of us embroiled in the machinations of the war, not those who weren’t there but purport to know all about it vicariously, supported her support of us. To this day thank you for your humanity against all cost. And we need people who don’t fall down like Laura Thomas.
Somehow, I am not surprised that you've gotten some blowback, even here. I am sorry.
I played informal intramural ice hockey for fun. The well-behaved bleats here aren’t gnat level, but thanks! Getting shoved out of buildings by guys twice my size in NYC calling me a “fucking cunt” only gives me good material for standup, although another bout with Covid might not be a blast and they seem to love screaming in my face (smelly breath simply bonus). Democracy in action!😂😂❤️❤️🇺🇸❤️❤️😂😂
👍🏼
What in the world? I think it fabulous that you are running for office. I have to wait until 2024 to run again for School Board since it is now district instead of at large seats. 🙄
Everyone benefits from running for office or volunteering in election process or participating in someone else’s campaign.
I know you will not let naysayers deter you.
UNITA!
Critical thinking skills, some people learned them, some didn't. IQ does not seem to have much to do with it. The only exception I have to your comment is that "half" of us are brainwashed by Faux (Bad) News. It is less than half. About 7M less. To look at a problem and see only obstacles is to only look at part of the picture. We have assets, too.
Throughout all of this Trumpian mess, the most hopeful thing I've seen is a hand painted sign one of my neighbors put up (he is a damned good car mechanic) saying "Black Lifes Matter". He also has a couple of "Go Away" signs and a silhouette sign of an AR-15. The guy is clearly nuanced. Many of us are.
That is very interesting. I had spent a lot of time in Venezuela in the early 2000's and also used to say that we might become like Venezuela if we were not careful. But I meant that if a leader like Trump kept at it, we would- if we lived under a cult of personality, with a leader who did not promote businesses to function normally, replaced skilled people in the administration with cronies, polarized the dialog, we could end up like Venezuela. It was only when I said this to an old friend who like your friends for some reason follows Fox news and so on, that I realized I had inadvertently landed on a right wing talking point. It made no sense to me, any more than what I had said made sense to her. She had been barraging me for years with political rhetoric, before giving up in the Trump era. She thought I might be "open-minded" enough to get it, to understand her point of view, which she viewed as truth. I probably was open-minded enough to try, anyway; in that she was right. I still try. On Monday I had brunch with a group of my son's friends, who were from urban areas, very left-leaning, and in general open-minded thinking people. We were discussing the virtues and deficits of slogans- how the slogans people carry such as BLM can cut down dialog possibilities, keep us from finding common ground. The urban young people, it turns out, know no one who disagrees with them on any of these matters. They live in a bubble. For them, it makes no difference to know that far from them, people who don't know them assume that because of one or two signals, their entire world is being characterized as having a certain flavor, their beliefs a certain roster of characteristics- just as I assume that the people who live on the opposite side of the river with the All Lives Matter sign in red, white and black have a certain set of beliefs and characteristics. One of the group of friends is working towards dialog- he has the opportunity and wish to keep trying to find common ground, and get beyond the labels. It's very difficult work. I keep thinking it's worth doing, worth listening to those who have other ideas and beliefs.
Studies show that it reinforces our own beliefs to be exposed to different ones. They say that has been shown to be true. But you know what? They also say the opposite, that we can learn new ways of looking at things if given new information. I'm hopeful that that thing that they say, is truer than the former thing they say.
Yes. When a young man who was being groomed to lead the KKK eventually, went away to college and learned from his very kind college mates, once learning about his upbringing and future, helped him to slowly see other viewpoints. He evolved in his thinking and he left the KKK. Exposure to other ideas is very, very healthy for everyone.
There are on the left, people who are almost innocuous compared to Fox listeners, have similar problems seeing reality. On that I highly recommend a book by the black American Studies Columbia professor John McWhorter, Woke Racism: How a New Religion has Betrayed Black America.
I do read his columns in the NYT, will check out the book, thank you!
You're welcome!
FOX “NEWS” is a foreign agent, literally. Incorporated in October 1986, the network currently has 18 owned-and-operated stations, and current affiliation agreements with 227 other television stations. That’s just TV stations. The empire includes print and radio media as well.
In the ensuing years it has actively divided our nation with attacks on our institutions and outright lies. Chuck Todd put up graphics showing how many counties supported Clinton (1117) in 1996 and the subsequent drop in each election. By 2020 Biden only won 194 counties.
Fox has actively and deliberately used propaganda to divide our nation against itself. Murdock, as a foreign national, could never run for president. Instead he bought up airways and began an audacious campaign to turn America against itself. If this isn’t the work of a foreign agent, I don’t know what is.
We need some good investigative reporting to expose this.
Why Australia and the UK imposed restraints on the Murdoch’s media. So they came to the US
Total agreement from me...Fox News is an agent of Russian-funded sedition and insurrection and it will not only encourage and enable the destruction of this country, but cheer it on as it happens.
Mike, I see this in my former law enforcement colleagues. They. Believe. The. Lies. It must feed something deep in their souls, because they have lost their humanity. Your description here of your dinner is stunning.
Mike, with respect to the rest of your otherwise excellent comment, Fox has not converted more than half of America to believe the lies. Please remember that Republicans are the minority party - the numbers vary from poll to poll but around 28 percent of registered voters. The number of registered Democrats is higher - in some places, dramatically so.
As for engineers, my ex-husband has a Masters in Planetary Science and worked for NASA, then Honeywell. A registered Dem. My late husband had a Masters in Industrial education - shop teacher and registered Dem. I live in a cul de sac with 9 houses. Four residents are engineers - 2 mechanical, 1 chemical and 1 optical engineer; 3 Dems, one independent. We also have two lawyers and a doctor here. Only one household watches Fox. All this by way of saying that your experience is way different than mine. If you want have a beer and talk politics here, you would definitely get a different response to your statement. Argument, yes. But only in the degree to which current Republicans have damaged our Republic.
No question that Fox Entertainment is dangerous. And I wish there were easier answers for how to silence their lies or at least regulate them in some reasonable fashion. But my degrees are in journalism. Free speech in a foundational freedom as you well know. Proving that Fox is dangerous and should be silenced is damn near impossible. Countering the BS is also an arduous task.
My only answer personally is to counter the BS when i hear it and work to get out the vote. There are more of us than there are of them!
The biggest thing on my mind these days is the online conversation I have been having with a friend who grew up and lives in the south. I have posted a digest of her comments in these Comments twice, but my timing was off and few responded. The value to me is her honesty. She is a good person. She tries to do what is right. As far as I know she does not watch FOX or any other news show. She has a large extended family, and they are all close. One is a preacher. I have just sent her another list of questions. I will post the digest of her comments (strung together for easy posting, but essentially unchanged from her words) at the end here.
My greatest, greatest, greatest, GREATEST concern is that we are not listening to each other as individuals. One on one. With respect, understanding that the other is a valuable human being just as we are, and they are trying to make the best life for themselves and their families, just as we are, and that when they get hysterical, it is because they are challenged, as we do too. Can we ask questions and listen to what a person is saying behind the yelling? Nobody forces anyone to watch FOX. So why do they? I think the answers to our divisions are in understanding the psychology. I'm not at all saying we should give up the fight for democracy! I'm saying we need to understand why others disagree, really deep down why, and that requires that we not judge but listen until we understand. Start with one person, as I have.
Her words:
"First let me say that I believe in God the Father, God the son Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit. Because of my religious beliefs, I see things in that light. I am very saddened by the deaths of the children and teachers, but I know that they have gone to a better place than this earth. I grieve with the parents and families because they are the ones left here to mourn. That's the hard part.
"I don't think gun control has anything to do with what is happening in this world. Kids are not being taught what is right and wrong. The family unit is broken and there are too many one-parent households. Children are not taught to respect any kind of authority at all. This did not start recently. We need better counseling and hopefully recognize mental problem in children sooner. The problems in this world didn't start now. It's been a progression for many years. It doesn't matter who the president is when it comes to this issue.
"I believe things started going badly when we took prayer out of school, when the kids stopped saying the pledge of allegiance in school and being taught to honor our flag and believe in our laws and country. People don't know the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day. I cringe when I see a Facebook post that says Happy Memorial Day because Memorial Day is the day we honor and remember the dead, those who died in battle. Veterans Day is for those who served, and Armed Forces Day is for those currently serving. When I was going to school, we went outside each morning and raised the flag and said the Pledge of Allegiance.
"I voted for Donald Trump every time. I don't talk politics with people because it's become such a hot topic. All my family voted for Mr. Trump. It was all the crud I was seeing on the news that made me stop watching the news. I have not watched the news since, except for BBC news, and I will sometimes read the local news. This didn't start recently either. (She talks about when 60 Minutes did a story in her community in the 1970s.) When the episode aired, they had twisted so many things giving their own negative spin on things. They had cut and pasted different parts together to make a different story. I have not watched 60 minutes since that day, and that was in the late 70's.
"(She uses my name here) you need to stop watching so much news and turn your attention to helping others, making afghans for neonatal units or nursing homes or going to the library to read books to children.
"I firmly believe what people have been posting, that guns don't kill people, people kill people. If a person owns a gun they need to have it locked up, like in a gun safe, or put away safely where children cannot get it.
"I seriously doubt we need assault weapons, but once the government starts telling us which gun we can have, I think we’re in trouble. There will come a time when we will need guns for our safety and food. Everyone in my family has guns. I remember growing up when I went to school the boys had gun racks in the back of their pickup trucks and it was perfectly okay. They would hunt on the way home from school. Growing up there were many times that mama would take the shotgun after she got off from work and go out into the field and kill a rabbit or whatever she could see so that we had food for dinner that night. The reason I think people need to be preparing for harder times is because of what we are going through now. The grocery stores are having a hard time keeping some foods in stock. There are so many positions for employment everywhere, and people don't want to work. When my Daddy was in the third grade, he worked in a gravel pit carrying gravel in a bucket for 50 cents a week.
"I believe that children need more attention and a better home life and that we should concentrate on that instead of gun control. My top answer is get the children in church."
What a painful combination: sincerity, seriously good intentions and Pavlovian conditioning, making use of ingrained beliefs -- good beliefs -- to undermine what those very beliefs truly stand for and to inculcate new, off-the-shelf ideas that displace them, as a cuckoo's egg will empty the nest of all its original occupants...
I wonder...
I appreciate what you're doing here. I have had that conversation (almost verbatim) with folks. I cannot rebut the Christian rhetoric that defines me as a sinner and therefore only valuable in my redemption if I abandon who I am. (Yes, I have had this conversation. "You're a good person, except for that gay thing." Direct quote.) Pray tell, how do I get around that? I cannot establish common ground with anyone who tells me who I am is an anathema.
Easy for me to say, I know, but let it go. Not important. You know who you are. Go to a movie together. Find some laughs. You may have an impact, and if you don't, nothing is lost. And you'll become a better person for the effort. But again, I know, easy to say.
Thanks so much for going to the trouble to post this. You're right, it won't get seen as much as it should. What you say reflects a lot of what is so heartbreaking about this strange divisive atmosphere we live in now and maybe always have. I spent a bit of time recently in Louisiana and Arkansas, and met so many sincere people trying to live right, who were Christian, who brought their beliefs into all matters. It seemed inadvisable to ask about their politics, so I did not bring it up- the circumstances that brought me there were anyway not conducive to getting into that sort of thing.
Being from a place is a thing. We grow up surrounded by an atmosphere, a culture, that creates our reality. I'm now from the Northeast, though I was born in Missouri to artists from NYC. Part of me yearns to believe in the same values that those I attended first grade with had- those beliefs that made them into the good people they are. Is it possible that those folks, who may admire a man like Trump, have no idea who he is?
So what is it that makes people racially prejudiced? It's fear and self interest, right? It's lack of exposure to others. I love those folks I met in the south because I met them. I don't care about their politics, on that level, but I'd fight them verbally with vigor if I had a chance. I wouldn't challenge their belief in Christ or their way of life. In a way I am sorry I won't have that chance. Keep talking to your friend. ,and once again, thanks for posting.
"who brought their beliefs into all matters..." I think this is the problem. Assuming your beliefs are the only true beliefs, turning away from reality in order to nurture those beliefs and denying even the lives of children in the cause of your beliefs is the core of the problem. If people want to embrace an Evangelical Christianity I respect their choice. They have been given that choice because they live in a Democracy. The pickle is their insistence in denying the healthy separation of Church and State. Trying to fit their beliefs into the complex make up of this Country and it's Laws is causing much pain and harm.
Thank you! I will keep talking to her. I don't know what makes people racially prejudiced. My mother's family was from Georgia, and they astonished me by their racial prejudice, as much as I loved them. My grandmother wrote poetry, and some of it was racist. The family that still lives there was not offended, but I was. I don't know about our differences, but I know we need to keep the lines of communication open.
Your friend uses two common dysfunctional tactics.
First, rationalization, the feigned helplessness and dismissal as “gods will” or the dead now reside with a religious deity. Terrorists use this same language! This dismisses real time and far reaching trauma to the living. Religious belief has NO place in determining broader law.
The second common response is blame. Blame parents, teachers, the failure of enforcement. Here we avoid the clear role of firearms. WTF? I find this so small minded. Blame the victims and everything else?
What I find contradictory in the GOP verbiage is conveying a need for more arms, added school security, and then COMPLAIN about increased taxes. Has this HUGE financial burden for “freedom” to have unregulated guns been assessed? No.
I add to this the current rant against a half century of regulated abortion rights, risking more babies being raised in unprepared, unsafe, negligent environments. The GOP votes down all assistance to address this.
Yes, I have listened and I am tired of the shallow vision of Chumpster followers. They defy intelligent logic and then call it “elitist”. They are Koolaid drinkers of the Jim Jones ilk. They poison not only their cult, but this entire democracy.
Feel free to share my response with your good friend.
Berry, your mention of dysfunctional tactics is interesting. I don't think she is trying to rationalize the deaths by saying it is God's will. She is being absolutely sincere. This is what she believes. About your second tactic, blame, my friend does place the blame for gun misuse on adults - parents and others - who raise irresponsible children. Again, though, she really believes this. Can you see that? We may disagree with her, but she is not trying to manipulate. She might change her mind if she had more facts and wanted to consider them, but I don't fault her for that, for that is true of us as well. She is being sincere.
My response does not imply your friend is intentionally manipulating. These are established "cultural devices" embraced by too many. Forms of denial and gaslighting that have been timeless and ubiquitous over history. The young terrorists who flew into the WTT on 9/11 fully believed they were acting in accordance to their religious faith, too.
Oops, sorry if I got you wrong. I looked up "dysfunctional tactics" because I wasn't sure what that meant, exactly, and what I found on quick perusal seemed to indicate that a person was intentionally misleading. I can see how this could be unconscious because of the culture that person grew up in, and I think that is probably the case with my friend. But she wouldn't recognize that. To tell her would be to say I know better than she does, which I don't want to do. So I have a question for you: how do we know that we ourselves are not misled?
Thank you all so very, very much for reading me, hearing me, and for your replies. It means so much to me. Thank you. Thank you.
To those who have asked, I did ask some further questions of my friend today. Here they are with her answers:
> 1. Do you or any of your family watch FOX news? I assume you don't, but I'm wondering if you know if any of your family does. Answer: some family but (my daughter) watched local stations from Jackson, and they show global news.
>
> 2. As of your feelings now, would you vote for Donald Trump in 2024? Answer: No
>
> 3. Do you think our current government, a democracy, should become more authoritative? By that I mean that one person is at the top and controls most of the decisions in the country. Answer: Absolutely not. OK we are not a democracy anyway. We are a republic. Google that with democratic principles. We are a republic with democratic principles.
>
> 4. Do you think the federal government wields too much power? Answer: We need the federal government, but we also need to have the states regulate their own government and be able to make decisions for their state without too much government interference.
>
> 5. Do you think the federal government should provide help to those in need through social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, etc.? Answer: I do believe in helping and I also believe in Medicare and Medicaid, but I think the states should do more to help their needy. On the other hand, when government gives away so much money, as happened during Covid, some people don’t want to work. They would rather get government money. Everywhere we go here businesses have “Help Wanted” signs in the windows.
>
> 6. Do you think the government should promote religion? Answer: No but they shouldn’t try removing it either. Our country has become insensitive to the needs of Christians.
>
> 7. Do you think Roe v. Wade should be overturned? Answer: Absolutely not. But I also believe that it should not be used as birth control. There are many ways to prevent getting pregnant, so abortion should be the very last choice. I would hate to see Roe v. Wade overturned. I would really hate to see people go back to kitchen table and back street abortions. That makes me sad.
Your friend is wise, as are you, and I hope your friendship continues to grow in appreciation for each other. Bravo to you for reaching out to her.... to all of us.
Thank you, Becky. You impress me a good friend and wonderful model to us. Your questions covered what interests most Americans. I appreciate your friend. She is thoughtful and cares about the needs of others. Becky, along with all your strengths, you are a natural born teacher.
Wow, Fern, thanks! I wish I were as good as you say!
The WOW is for you, Becky. May I also add that your modesty is another aspect of your character, friendship and teaching. With appreciation.
Becky: I read this when you first posted it, though I didn’t comment. But having many relatives from Louisiana as well as several people I still call “friend,” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard all of the things your friend wrote to you. And, yes, it does no good to negate anyone’s religious views.
I have no idea what your religious beliefs are, but as a Xtian agnostic (raised baptist), the only tact I’ve found to be at all helpful is to share my own beliefs on biblical interpretations. And she’s not on solid ground, there. (I had an evangelical preacher as an uncle, & he never missed a pulpit chance to talk against racism.) But I doubt it would help--your friend is piling up what she considers “good deeds” & waiting for the rapture.
And I must add that while she says she watches very little news, she must be on social media in some form if she agrees with “what people have been posting;” sure sounds like a news source, to me.
Yes, she is on social media. We have not seen each other for about 5 years now, as I returned to my home in Vermont after 16 years in the south caring for my parents. But we have stayed in close touch. She has a family she loves to distraction. She is the 10th of 10 children in her family of origin. She and I are currently involved together in a project we hope will raise 3K for a library in my area.
Becky, you are lucky to be able to have this conversation with your friend. Unfortunately it's not like that with everyone. I have tried but get tired of being yelled at and not being allowed to voice my opinion (as if it doesn't matter). I too feel that if we could just understand where each other's views are coming from. maybe we could have mutual respect. From my experience, it's not always possible.
I know that, Jeanne. That is why this seems like a bit of communication that is really important. This gal and I have been friends for a long time, beginning when she volunteered through Hospice to help me with my mother. She is an amazing person. It is hard for me to believe there are such differences between us. She has not had the educational advantages I have had, which is a shame.
Becky, Your comment is a tremendously helpful illustration of thinking on the part of some Americans who support Trump. I hope that you will continue to enlighten us in this way. I am curious to know what you wrote in response to your friend and whether she replies. Can you share your dialogue? The respect you show and how you manifest it, may be another valuable teaching lesson for us. Thank you.
Thank you for your kind words, Fern. We are all doing our best.
"But, FOX NEWS has brainwashed them completely. I mean, completely." Mike, these folks brainwashed by FOX are not victims. They chose to watch and listen and read the FOX lies because it was scintillating, smacked of the good old days, or they simply felt like it. If you or I had wandered over to a FOX News segment we would have been horrified or at least confused and doubting.
Barbara, are we not all tempted to listen to someone who attracts us into his or her circle by plying us with messages that appeal to our prejudices? The devil's no fool... And it's all too easy to tell more fairytales to kids that never grew up and never had a thought that was truly their own.
Hmmm. Yes and no. An awful lot of people would (and have) turned away from evil. We all have our prejudices. It's human nature. It is the kind of prejudices that land us in the lair of evil and make us susceptible to those spouting evil that gets us into trouble. I am not using the word "evil" lightly here.
There is a man where I work who is a racist. If he sits at your table at lunch you will quickly find that out. One day he tried it with me and I let him have it. Later someone told me I was the only person who had ever stood up to his racism. Ever since then he avoids me like crazy. I enjoy that fact and always make sure I glare at him and shake my head if he is even across a room from me.
"Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them." LICHTENBERG
Yes, they have their political uses, keeping vast tracts of Middle America as clean of thought as Roundup keeps crops clean of rival forms of life...
And yes, we all do have them, we usually call them "beliefs", they're like bad breath, bad posture or bad habits... Nothing to be proud of, just something adults need to become aware of, however painful that may be for those living in an unkind, aggressive social environment. I try. But there are days like today when deep anger at the antics of vicious hypocrites in high places gets the better of me.
I don't think that anger is a product of prejudice but I do think that, like prejudices, it is best kept under control... But on such days I do dream of bulletproof pillories... Those would need cleaning with a fire hose every half hour...
Substack didn’t allow me to like your comment, Peter. Such wise advice, though: anger leads nowhere. Of late, it has become very difficult to hold anger in check. The irrational retorts of “conservatives” to what should ne commonsensical, preventive regulations are simply disgusting!
Mike, I find your 25%group immunity to Fox BS interesting. These guys are by your account 1:1 nice folk, intelligent. What are their thoughts about “replacement theory”. My guess is that is why you were, and continue to be, immune to Fox BS. You don’t strike me as a guy hijacked by fear of ‘the Other”. Just wondering your thoughts.
I have a theory about Americans being afraid of "the Other" and is not meant as a criticism. It has changed a bit since I got here in the 60's, but an awful lot of Americans have never left the US (except perhaps in the military) and many don't own passports making some people insular.
My experience is that I was privileged to spend time with my family growing up in India and in Africa. "The Other" became my parents' friends and were at the house often. I knew at an early age that we were all alike under our skin colour and my brother and I had to treat everyone with respect, it didn't occur to us not to, because of our parents example.
You have to be carefully trained to hate others. What we are experiencing today is terrorism, intentionally manipulated, vulnerable or racist people who want power and to maintain the white caste system. Authoritarian tactics are being used to sow division and fear.
"You've got to be carefully taught". As true now as it was in 1950.
No you don't, necessarily, although some may well be. See my comment which, as I write this, is two above yours.
“Teach your children” (well)
Our parents model our behaviors and beliefs
Teaching acceptance is a conscious effort
Teaching bigotry is subtle but powerful
We are decades away from Generational Change
Yet, start now. “Teach your children well”
… You, who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so, become yourself
Because the past is just a goodbye
… Teach your children well
Their father's hell did slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's the one you'll know by
… Don't you ever ask them, "Why?"
If they told you, you would cry
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you
… And you (Can you hear?) of tender years (And do you care?)
Can't know the fears (And can you see?)
That your elders grew by (We must be free)
And so, please help (To teach your children)
Them with your youth (What you believe in)
They seek the truth (Make a world)
Before they can die (That we can live in)
… And teach your parents well
Their children's hell will slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's the one you'll know by
… Don't you ever ask them, "Why?
If they told you, you will cry
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you
Songwriter: Graham Nash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vnYKRacKQc
👌🏼
If you are in NYC check out Tracy Letts' play, The Minutes. Set in a city council meeting, it begins as a watching paint dry event like most council meetings are, though Austin Pendleton is hilarious throughout. The story shifts to the dark side, with these innocuous council members showing their true colors, right out of today's headlines. Chilling. Thought-provoking.
See my comment which is now directly above yours, but by the time you read this may be a few above yours, for a different explanation.
My family of origin spent a year in Paris, 1965-66. I was 12. At home, I'd always been interested in foreigners, who I'd occasionally see in Harvard Square. I would approach them, ask them where they were from, and a little about themselves.
I noticed that year in Paris, that Parisians never approached me, and in fact, were hostile to Americans. I realize now that Paris was flooded with Americans, who often didn't behave all that well towards Parisians.
There's a book I highly recommend: Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth ($9 on Amazon). It reads well despite being a scholarly survey, among other things, of the relevant academic economic literature.
Basically, for 200 years, businesses have been importing foreigners, originally to replace black workers, now to replace any American, or even less recent immigrant workers. New immigrants are easily exploitable, and so this behavior enables reducing wages. As some black poultry workers who had left their jobs told the author, the pay now was so low that their replacements were having to sleep in cars or many to a room.
The book gives the lie to the notion that there are jobs American workers won't do. But there are levels of pay that workers who have had houses to themselves won't accept, and shouldn't accept.
So scary!
Mike, I've been in similar situations. I no longer speak to my closest friend since childhood. The first time I knew there was going to be trouble was when her husband dragged her away while screaming at me because I said to her," Come on, you have to admit that he has some kind of mental illness." and she had a huge meltdown. You know who we were talking about. The next time I saw her she apologized but the phone conversations from that point on grew into her just talking over me and finally when she wouldn't stop screaming at me, protecting her T and spewing Fox lies, I hung up on her and have never spoken to her again. That was a few years ago and I realized that she was no kind of friend that I wanted to remain in contact with. Yes, it can be shocking but at least you know where they stand. Pray for them as I pray for her.
Jeanne, join many of us, especially since 2016. For me, the first real political divide, awakening, was the election of President Obama, who I supported from the beginning. One person I thought was Progressive was not. She started sending me birther emails and Repub lies and I had to decide if many voters who were anti-Obama were really racist. And I think that was the truth. I’ve hardly seen her since.
Unfortunately, and actually maybe fortunately, we are seeing people for who they really are. It’s a reality check for us all.
Marlene, I think your observation is true. A political party is more than a label. If we think about what it stands for, the values, we have to decide if we agree and it becomes identity. Or maybe we voted the way our family did. That’s if we understand or want to learn History and government and social movements. No wonder many repugs don’t want to teach what they call CRT. Critical Race Theory. Their children might feel uncomfortable or guilty. Or become Democrats. The Truth has a way of waking us up.
I am waiting for Coney Barrett’s Haitian kids who she adopted, will come to that realization.
I hate to say this. Jeanne, prayers are a thing of the past. Our gods (he/she/it) aren’t listening. If they were, we wouldn’t have tragedies such as Uvaldie, Parkland, Sandy Hook, Columbine, Buffalo, the church in SC, the people in the synagogue, and many many more.
Irenie, Marlene, no two ways about the bad smell of “prayers in politics”. Yet…
Whether we’re atheists, agnostics or follow a religion, don’t the real questions entailed go deeper than this? For a start… “our gods”—which gods? I’ve mentioned Money, but there are other deities people worship that are even more terrible…
Before we start talking about gods and how we do or don’t relate to them—including those human beings that get the god/idol/fetish treatment—don’t we need to consider first how we relate to ourselves?
This is fearfully demanding, but does not man’s future depend on our seeking and finding ourselves, our inner freedom? And so, despite all the confusion, our inner strength. A fragment from a religious text:
“If you do not know yourselves, then you exist in poverty and you are that poverty.”
Now that I’ve spent almost all day in anger, looking at human frailty and worse, I’m getting angry with myself and I need a wash, really, metaphorically. So please don’t take what I’ve just said badly, it’s myself I’m reminding to stop running in all directions except the one that matters, and pull myself together.
A must at times like this.
Peter, your point is well taken, believe me. I left out the Holocaust, of which both of my parents were immigrant victims. 6 million died and for what? I got robbed of grandparents and cousins. This is the direction I keep running towards, justice, equality, and freedom for all.
Thank you. We agree. Your last words represent Truth.
Sadly, Marlene, I agree. Prayers in politics are code words for sorry for your loss but it’s yours and you’ll have to deal with it because we’re not going there. After Katrina. After every shooting. Everyone can add to the list.
Yes, Katrina was yet another horrid unnecessary nightmare.
When faced by people who want to discuss this kind of issue, one member of my family says he refuses to embroil himself in discussions about religion...
I get his point. So much politics today reminds me of the bloody wars of religion in 16th and 17th century Europe, blind belief against blind belief. But while Brits believe in nothing, many Americans seem to have blind faith in both God and Mammon... Not surprising, then, that some just cannot cope with their own contradictions, let alone with anyone questioning their shaky standpoint.
Keeping people constantly afraid is the stock-in-trade of all authoritarian regimes. And what could be scarier than being afraid to send your child to school?
There.
You have said it all, Talia.
I called this INSTITUTIONALIZED PARANOIA.
It is vile beyond the most hellish imagining, it is demons at work. Congressmen, governors on mission from who knows what depth of the Inferno.
Spreaders of a debased materialism -- nothing to do with Marx, with Democritus, with Lucretius -- one that reduces human beings to cattle (called "consumers"), to cannon fodder (called "patriots") a disease that is doing its damnedest to bring all political regimes everywhere, Russian, American, Chinese, Indian, to the same lower-than-lowest common denominator.
Well said, Peter! The disease is cultism, and the vector is trump.
Given the vast speed and ever-increasing acceleration of change in our world, people are anxious and vulnerable. So they have been targeted by certain major financial interests and their chosen instruments, for whom you rightly use the term “vector”.
Now, I don’t think labels like “cultism” are going to get anyone very far in describing, let alone countering the wildfire spread of a mass psychosis deliberately set off in just the same way as industrialists and financiers (with some real cause at the time to fear Communist forces) financed Hitler, whose uncanny ability to give voice to the vilest stirrings in Germans’ collective unconscious made possible the greatest, most murderous outbreak of mass madness that the world has yet seen.
Yes. In just the same way. This time, their Goebbels is Murdoch, whose adventures in mass manipulation do not, however, seem to be grounded in any ideology other than whatever destruction he can profitably get away with.
Now, however, the situation is potentially far more dangerous than in 1933 because America’s material power is immeasurably greater than that of Nazi Germany. Thus, there is no need for an obvious embodiment of evil like the Fuehrer, a fool in the White House can do harm on a scale that no conqueror in history could ever have imagined. By crimes of omission alone, such a one could destroy most life on Earth.
Yes, and even in the US the change has been huge. Imagine yourself an American worker. There's a new book, Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth, by Roy Beck. The backbone of the book is academic economic history (296 footnotes) but the author also draws from black periodicals, statements of black leaders, and gov't commissions on immigration reform, all of which recommended substantial reductions in immigration and strict enforcement of immigration laws.
From 1990-2020 the US added 40 million immigrants, the population of twice New York State. Biden wants to double those numbers.
Those numbers have turned many small towns into largely Spanish speaking, they've led to reduced wages and job loss among not just black, but white American workers, and currently even many immigrant workers, which is undoubtedly why Trump increased his share of the Hispanic vote in 2020.
As the author states repeatedly, these numbers aren't immigrants' fault, and people should not blame immigrants. They are Congress' fault. And I can tell you, much as I love most of my senators' and my congresswoman's policies, their immigration policies are terrible, and they are clueless on this issue (I've spoken with all of them, and with Warren and Katherine Clark numerous (brief) times).
As you said, people don't like change, and Americans have gotten a flood of it. (Press 1 for English and 2 for Spanish.)
Well said.
Thank you, Ally, but given the threat both to mankind today and to posterity, I'd be far happier to be mistaken.
But it goes back to the first New England settlements. Those who came “for religious freedom” were paranoid from being persecuted in England. The Founding Fathers were, on the whole, educated men—but their paranoia against the power/persecution by monarchy they were keenly aware of permeates the Articles of Confederation and Constitution. Why they repeatedly refused Washington a draft and were against a standing army.
After Cromwell's Commonwealth -- especially after the division of the country into Regions, each under the command of a major-general, a regime coming as close to that of the Ayatollahs, even the Taliban, as any that Britain has ever seen -- the military (unlike the Navy) came into disrepute for a long time and Kings, denied a standing army, raised guards regiments... The Catholic James II's attempts to build up a large standing army, including many Catholic officers led to disaffection and, in time, to his downfall.
To make matters worse, Hanoverian troops were sent to America, part of a growing -- and long-lasting -- pattern of using foreign mercenaries, developed with great success against the French in India during the Seven Years War...
When my friends first showed me Manila in the 1970s, we came to a quarter where everyone looked like Indians and I asked about this. I was told that these are Filipinos like everyone else, but that they're descended from a regiment of 600 sepoys whom the British left behind when they abandoned the city after an 18-month occupation in 1762-'64...
Pardon the digression...
I love history, so appreciated
Citizen60, it is a bit more complex than that. The puritans and a few others came for religious freedom. There were not many of them, and for the most part got along reasonably well with the indigenous people, with some notable exceptions.
But after them came the "companies" of people sponsored by investors seeking a return on their investment, who were not particularly religious, and to the degree they espoused religion, used it to justify their greed and sense of entitlement.
There were many of them, and settlements spread rapidly, as did exploitation of resources. Families were large with fewer lost babies, so more land needed, thus rapid expansion to west occurred, cities (small by our standards) sprouted up and became centers of commerce. The behavior of the founders came from a different fear than the fear of the first puritan settlers. It grew out of the greed and desire to expand territory more than fear of persecution from the British monarchy. The tax thing? Ha, taxation without representation? The Colonists were actually paying less tax than their counterparts in Britain, who were paying for the wars to protect the colonists from the consequences of their own land greed.
The British government had treaties with Indigenous Nations that the settlers from Europe would not go past the Appalachian Mts, and tried to enforce it. That is the real reason for the drive to separate. The settlers ignored the treaties and extended forcefully into lands guaranteed protected.
The litany of complaints against Geo III were the justification, he being the figurehead of the British government. But extending settlement into lands to the west was the real reason. This is the short version. The rest is just as interesting.
Yes, I know. It’s both simple and multifaceted. Why the later 13 colonies chose to declare independence is not what I was referring to in my comment. I was focused on the paranoia and fear from the earliest New England settlers. But The Founding Fathers’ biographies and Federalist Papers make clear their fear of tyranny and of the populace.
I think it is the old, white-privileged male patriarchy that we are having to confront, finally. Trump just tapped into it (and was paid a lot of money to do so, he is purely transactional about life).
The vector is FOX. The infection is FOX.
John Birchers & Rush Limbaugh and several like him on radio across the US found an audience for their hate.
Or go shopping. Or go to worship. Or go to the movies. Or go to a concert. Or go to a nightclub. Or peacefully protest.
The republicans are willing to sacrifice the lives of children and others for money. Their devotion is to money!
And skin color and power over.
👌🏼
No, it is the deluders in Congress and in State Houses that are worse than verminous. Go for the head, not the feet.
The deluders are vector parasites…
Heather's very credible reason for why the Republican Congress won't vote for gun laws is because their mission is to take any and all power away from the Federal Government. You'll find her words in the last 10 minutes or so of her FB chat yesterday. https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/videos/1168841863968581
Important correction: "their mission is to take any and all power away from (a Democratic led) Federal Government."
It remains to be seen (IMO) if it's true that they want to govern at all; just want the power of their offices.
Thanks for posting this. I l have been off of FB for a while and miss her chats.
I'm only on FB to listen to her chats, and if I catch Politics Girl while I'm there.
Aren’t they on YouTube also?
I just checked and the last one is from April 19.
I agree with all but you very last line. They are horrible, miserable, dangerous people. Calling them vermin is the same ugly propaganda they use to dehumanizing anyone they target. Call them out, for sure! But let's not use their dehumanizing techniques.
Very good, but on your narrow point, I suspect that CBS, NBC and ABC are also licensed as entertainment, and that that’s the way the statute is written.
The aren’t cable TV, and such etc to the few laws about what content can go out on free TV. Cable is private, and wholly unregulated
Oh. Hmm.
Australia and the UK restricted Rupert Murdoch’s unsavory “investigations” and lies, so Roger Ailes invited him to FOX.