Ok, so maybe Trump is going down. Not enough. His cohort of toxic masculinity, indifferent oligarchs, and fellow political technologists have got to go
Ok, so maybe Trump is going down. Not enough. His cohort of toxic masculinity, indifferent oligarchs, and fellow political technologists have got to go
The thing about Unreality is that though I don't think it's penetrable by what we call facts, I do think it has a tendency to collapse from its own weight--or maybe better, to shred in a stiff breeze! The Unreal doesn't have as many pixels as the Real. It looks a bit stylized. Plus his fans got energy from our constant denouncements, or clicking on stories about him in order to go "Tsk, tsk!" A non-presidential, visibly weakened Trump, no longer drawing massive ire, will have less magnetic force. (What a 5-bean stew of metaphors I've made here!)
Nice metaphors--each one could be the basis for an essay! The Acultamuricans believe their facts are reality and that ours are the "Unreality." As Jonathan Swift may or may not have actually said, "You can't reason people out of something they weren't reasoned into." When this mess-iah implodes, they'll just find another one.
It's a depressingly long story, but Steven Pinker and others have argued that overall historically compassion has been on the rise. That said, there is always an element that wants to keep the goodies science enabled, yet pull society back to feudalism and the "Dark Ages".
I have the knee-jerk response here of a medievalist. Having spent my life studying and teaching late classical and medieval literature and history, especially the history of everyday life, I'm pretty sure Pinker, not a historian, is wrong. (He's certainly dead wrong about how we're less violent now--I'm astonished he got away with that fairy tale!) One thing that would good for folks in Texas and Wyoming etc if we went back to the Middle Ages in Europe is that abortion was legal through about the 5th month....
Thanks for forgiving the conglomeration of them! But I don't think "they'll just find another one." I know some of these people. They didn't have one before. No one outside ancient Palestine has been so successfully promoted as the Messiah before--this was our first real Social Media President--and whatever he may be in terms of Trumpian ideas and "values," DeSantis is no Messiah figure.
My little thought for this Sunday morning: a man addressed Jesus as "Good Teacher." Jesus replied, "Why do you call me good? Only G-d is good." I'm certain that Jesus wanted nothing to do with the Messiah stuff.
The thing is, Trump diehards will never hear the truth emerging because they only listen to Fox News and Breitbart. During the two sets of impeachment hearings, my husband would watch segments of the evening тАЬpersonalitiesтАЭ coverage. You never heard the articulate and learned testimony of the State Department personnel, or Alexander Vindeman. They didnтАЩt broadcast it, just gave false statements about what was said and outraged, inaccurate defenses for former President Trump. You could hear some straight news reporting on the midday newscasts from the real journalists like Chris Wallace, but one by one, they all left in disgust. It was the same for the second impeachment hearings. They didnтАЩt air testimony. Whoever heard of an impeachment investigation where the Senate called no witnesses?
Except for precious little, the film footage and extensive testimony of the January 6th committee hearings were not shown on Fox Entertainment. Bits like CarlsonтАЩs latest fantasy were shown, giving the impression it was mostly a peaceful crowd. The revelations from the Dominion voting machine suit with texts, emails and testimonies from Murdoch, Carlson, Hannity and Inagram have not been seen by Fox viewers because they refuse to watch anything else!
I send articles from the NYT to my dad, who was hijacked ages ago by faux nooz. IтАЩm sure he considers factual reporting of legal proceedings the same way I view opinion pieces in the WSJ, but I try.
My parents passed away 10 years ago at age 90. They both had been republicans for much of their lives and I was eternally grateful they never saw the shit show that was and is trump and the republican party that exists today.
The first time my father "pulled the lever" for Obama (my mother was already on board), I told my brothers either "hell froze over" or "pigs could fly". :) Never-the-less, the last few years of their lives, my mother would call me daily -(groan!) to say my father was watching that G-D Hannity and she couldn't stand it! Full disclosure - he did have dementia by then.
The last few years, she moved to being more liberal in her thinking and was not always filtered as she let some in her circle know how set in their ways, intolerant and ignorant they were! It took her 85+ years to find her own voice and by God she was not going to shut up!! I like to think she got some of that from me :)
)- ; Ditto sistuh. Mom was a Kennedy closet democrat at heart; Dad an Eisenhower r., who became hostage to the 'Moral Majority' propaganda; so sadly too, as he was Korean war veteran Marine, who all his living days and lives on in my memory, as the embodiment of what real integrity and honor 'look like' as they walk the earth humbly with every living step.
I think facts play a part in it, they have a "nasty" habit of intruding and just won't go away. I think that part of the "own weight". The night Trump was elected a lot of my neighbors let off fireworks, but after a while the novelty seems to be wearing off, and what does anyone have to show for it except the .01%?
I agree - lies are much tougher to manage than truth. Ask any lying teenager. That is why I plead to all Democratic leaders to keep honest, keep clean, but be tough on the liars and cheats. Jamie Raskin comes to mind. However, there are skillful and devious liars out there. The climate denier movement is still strong. The election denier movement is too. And we have a large portion of our electorate who are still so gullible and fed up that they will glom onto what they like. Trump - part of me wants him to succeed until he doesn't. Let him destroy his competition during the primaries, just like 2016 only hopefully under several indictments and/or convictions. Then get destroyed in the general. But oh man - talk about playing Russian roulette! The other part of me wants him to go down in flames ASAP. He is just poisonous to our country's politics. Nothing good can come of it.
He is poisonous, and yet he is more a symptom of the post Nixon Republican Big Lie Strategy than it's cause. He is just more extreme to support it, and his minions and patrons rush to shield and support it, even once-target Pence who is talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Yes, yes, yes. Be Truthful, be Responsible, be Fair, be emotionally "Adult", but give "em the Hell they deserve. Democrats need to be the adult in the room, and not let miscreants get away with it. The more they get away with, the worse they become.
I agree: this all began with Tricky Dick. Back in the day, sigh, when you could scare a crooked President into resigning instead of starting an insurrection.
Nothing practical Joanne. Publish and broadcast only the facts as dispassionately as possible for my part. And hope lessons have been learned and indelibly imprinted on all concerned, including me; a blessed democracy if we are to keep it, is Not a spectator sport.
Yes, thatтАЩs whatтАЩs made me a phone banker and postcard-writer. ThatтАЩs the work of Get Out the Vote efforts. Which have expanded the electorate in the last 10 years. We have to keep it up!
I'm writing letters via Vote Forward to Wisconsin voters for their April 4th election. Deadline is March 28th, still time to sign up to write or to write more letters. Please help!
Thank you Mary. Yes , we have to keep it up. Our County Democratic Women's Club has been doing these 2 things, plus doorknocking and lots of outreach events like our children's Egg Hunt in April, exhibiting at the Green Expo in May, the NAACP Day at the Farm in June, etc., for 4 years now. It's a lot of work by dedicated volunteers!
Yes the millions of hours we all put into it and still do. I heard the first warning bell of the Biden presidency ring when Biden, in his litany of thanks after his election was declared, didnтАЩt think to mention us. What a missed opportunityтАФthousands of those people were under 25 and new to politics, and had had to swallow bitter disappointment at the losses of their primary choices, Sanders and Warren, and were still out there in every kind of weather or home on the phones for him and his partyтАж
I have been waiting to read that someone else thinks that education is the answer! Thank you. I couldnтАЩt open the link to The Atlantic article because I donтАЩt have a subscription.
I think the right wing extremists see that too. ThatтАЩs why theyтАЩre doing everything they can to prevent the education of facts by hiding the facts via actions like banning books.
Last big book burning I know of was the Reichstag fire (?1933), which tells all except the story I wrote earlier about my Professor of medieval French who bragged that he got his PhD from Harvard тАЬwhile it was still a university,тАЭ ie, the year before the business school was inaugurated.
The uneducated are easier to rule. Republicans have been starving public schools for years. And now they are demanding that history books be rewritten to make them look better.
Oh man, in the list of massive changes to America that need to be done yesterday to save even shreds of the American Dream, education is 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
Education is called upon in America to wear several hats. For the most part, itтАЩs juggling too much, poorly. On top of that it has become a tool of the obstructionist bloc in America, thus subject to relentless subversion.
First of all, education must... well, educate. The great revolution in education in the Sixties is now largely a mere historical memory.
Teaching children as honestly as the known record allows? Gone in so much of the country.
Teaching children from the best sources available, regardless of age, gender, race? Gone if the writer offends some of our poor modern sensibilities, which must not be challenged. Thus the opportunity of teaching human striving towards these sensibilities is lost. We can learn from the most brilliant writers who held the stereotypes of their time in two ways. Instead we choose none by cleaving them from the curriculum.
Teaching children critical thinking. Gone, partly for fear of offending one side or another and partly because our current teachers are not *themselves* well educated enough to do this sensitively. Because the system has been steadily degrading for two generations minimum, rot runs riot.
And lest you think otherwise, I take my hat to these uneducated teachers. Most labor heroically and with love. They just donтАЩt have the depth of education to light the spark.
Teaching to the standardized test? Very much present. A cruel and ultimately pointless game, if education is reformed.
Making teachersтАЩ education more rigorous and then paying them proportionately more? A consummation devoutly to be wished for.
Adjusting the relationship between parents and teachers. Needed. In some schools teachers are surrogate parents, taking on responsibilities that have been abdicated. In some schools parents tremble in fear of parents, who ruthlessly take a hatchet to them to advance their own, often demented, goals.
The famous adage of teachers bears repeating here: Everybody thinks they can teach because they went to school. How many people storm firehalls?
All of this costs money. Make it an infrastructure project spread over ten years and do it.
It is an axiom that college-educated voters do not vote for the Trumps of the world. LetтАЩs have more of them.
Thank you so much for sharing that Eric. I get that you strive to be brief and concise; alas, lest meaning be only insinuated where expansion, space, and agency compete. I feel you, and will happily seek out your space. One thing expansion worthy is quality and effective education, which often gets lost in the hustle. I have lived experiences that I might be tempted to share in your space. Thanks again ~
You got it James. Age old. An uneducated populace is much less likely to see through the wrongdoings and all-around skullduggery of a non-representative leadership of any kind that wants to stay in power or get it. Be it a monarchy, a dictatorship, or an outsized religious institution.
James, education opens the door. You are exactly right. Exactly. In American sub-cultures isolation is key to creating and maintaining an intact body politic. One of the most effective methods of creating isolation is to limit education. A good example is to keep English a second language not spoken or learned in early childhood. Also prevalent is to curtail the process to the eighth grade. If you can include a religious philosophy that exists exclusively then you have really put the lid on the the container. Geographic or communal isolation caps the process. When combined these phenomena turn out the lights. Teach your children well.
Absolutely. That being said, I think our system needs to evolve to focus more on asking questions and being engaged than being "smart" and knowing the answers. Rewarding for knowing the answers has been causing problems where insecurity and lack of confidence are not addressed and knowing answers becomes an issue of its own--status, bullying, feral competition, etc. We need kinder, more empathetic intelligent, thoughtful citizens not smarty pants bullies knocking others down to get theirs.
This is a brilliant comment. Thank you Kim. Competition is so in the American bloodstream though. This will be a hard pull.
I spent my life in education, especially with gifted kids. They most often have deeply low self-esteem and dread competition - even in their area of particular acuity.
The hardest competitors come from (in my Canadian experience) the тАЬbestтАЭ private schools where parents fight to get their kids in. And then push the hell out of them. The biggest competitors are the smart, not gifted, kids. Most elite private schools do not accept gifted kids unless they are low maintenance - not a trait of the gifted who are often afflicted with two exceptionalities and also donтАЩt fit in.
I once interviewed a parent whose best friend was a school nurse at two тАЬeliteтАЭ private schools for girls. She told me the rate of anorexia was 40-50%. I didnтАЩt believe it. The school I ran, admittedly smaller, had 1 kid we worried about for anorexia (my school was for gifted only).
You wonтАЩt believe the next part. Two months later the Head of Admissions for one of the 2 girlsтАЩ schools noted above, visited me to see if I would take her Grade 8 daughter in. Nice irony.
I told her what IтАЩd heard about anorexia at her school and the others - 40-50%. Of course I said that it couldnтАЩt possibly be true, so it wouldnтАЩt sound like an accusation.
She paused, clearly doing a mental inventory. Then she replied, тАЬYes, that would be about rightтАЭ.
I had many more eye-opening experiences like that.
Thank you for writing Eric. And thank you for supporting my thinking.What an interesting and relevant perspective you have. I must say Admire that head who wanted the right thing for her daughter but wonder what her challenges were (in heading her school) that her school couldn't be that school. As a woman, it does not surprise me one iota that girls have anorexia or some eating adorer at that rate. Not one bit. And recently a study said that girls start being concerned about their weight at age 6. I myself was obsessed with food through high school and college and later on I realized how much energy and time I could have been doing great things. That's the crime, that girls are not free to be who they are and free to explore what they want to do and what they love. Of course, having the right answer is implicated in much of our current political discourse: the polarization, the media people choose to watch/listen to. Do they want to learn or do they want to be right? An interesting discussion. Thanks so much and take care. Will look up your Substack pieces.
Thanks. IтАЩm just hitting the first two decades of this century now - when all the chickens have come to roost. ItтАЩs been a perfect storm, building in all its different facets since the Fifties. So IтАЩve covered it chronologically.
AnywaysтАжthe problems with girls and body image is hopelessly sad. It sounds like you managed to escape the trap in a relatively short time. I hope it wasnтАЩt too much of a nightmare for you.
I have a daughter and 5 granddaughters. The strongest belief I have in regard to this is that sports are immensely good for girls. They build a can-do attitude and they focus most who play away from their looks and weight as being the dominant factors in their worth. Obviously much more goes into it than just playing sports - but I think itтАЩs kind of a tentpole thing. IтАЩve seen a ton of girls avoid the worst of teenage angst by being deeply into sports.
Caveat: Girls can be spectacularly harmed by coaches, male and female, who coach to enjoy power over girls. I coached both genders. Boys - you had to break them down and then build them up. TheyтАЩre often very cocky and know it all. Girls donтАЩt come in with that ego. You can coach straightaway. However the control the coach has is too intoxicating to some and they abuse it in vile ways.
One final point.
Having said that about girls, itтАЩs boys who are in deep trouble societally. They are going off the cliff like lemmings. It is scary to see how easily turned off education they are. Girls are blowing them out of the water in university and then in the job market. ThereтАЩs a direct correlation to computers there, as well as the changing nature of work.
All kids have it so rough now, but in extraordinarily different ways. I do not envy todayтАЩs parents.
To 'push' responsibility and cost *off to 'others'. I've long called out the gop as being the party 'leadership' of as a prime policy exemplary of "kick shit down the road."
Tax the crap out of them. Claw back the billions stolen by the Oligarchs and Oiligarchs. The Earth and its resources belong to the people as a whole - not just big corporations.
I'd love to, but it's the same problem we have getting serious about passing drunk driving laws. It's nearly impossible to get legislators to pass laws against crimes they are routinely committing.
I have always said that DUII is everyman's crime. Oregon has some pretty stringent DUII laws (Currently a minimum blood alcohol content--BA-- of .08%, use of Drug Recognition Experts (DRE) when other substances than alcohol impact driving, mandatory driver's license suspensions (no acronym for those) and Implied Consent (that when receiving your drivers' license, you consent in advance to perform field sobriety tests (FST) and submit to an Intoxylizer for measuring the alcohol content of the driver's blood. Where DUI investigations bog down is with the case law that makes determinations on just how the "request" to submit to tests is phrased, and other minutiae that comes down about 2 or 3 times a year.
Same protocols in VT. Having DRE's making judgement calls lack scientific basis, and therefore can be used disproportionately against minorities, and current sparse statistics indicate this is what's happening.
But the main problem isn't administrative or even procedural details; current penalties and sentencing precedents result in 4th, 5th, 6th offenses with some regularity. In many European countries, this doesn't happen; 1st offense gets license suspended for several years, second offense means permanent revocation. As with their more sensible gun laws, it results in greater respect for the laws, and a more civilized culture around drinking and impaired driving. My son, who's a cop, confirms the broad discretion police officers have, and the relatively low priority this work has in urban PDs.
... And so embodied and practiced in places like Alaska, where it's (for now) settled law that plunderers are required to share the profit they 'would not' share otherwise. Watch out for the challenges to continue anew attacking those laws... by guess who. *edit in > My personal heart and soul bleeds for places like Appalachia who suffer still from the consequences of the rapacious extractors ! There's far more to that conviction that I'll belay here; However, the origin of my convictions in that regard are real and lived as I'm forever a 'Son' of Appalachia to begin with. Proud... and sad.
And IтАЩm a daughter of those same mountains. But my area is being forever raped by the tourist and all that a continual, turnover of those who treat my loved environment as their playground from which they will depart after their Air B&B week or two runs out. I realize our damage is slower than the god awful mountaintop mining that made me sick when I had to fly over the extensive environmental rape of an historic mountain range. Unforgivable that those who should have been looking out for the environment and all who lived in it sold it all out to the highest nasty coal bidder.
It breaks my heart. They donтАЩt realize what theyтАЩve done. They canтАЩt possibly know and continue to do it. How often these days the fox is put in charge of the henhouse.
Believe when I say, I 'feel' that pain. The hint in your comment tells me just where you live, I suppose anyway. Might it be a 'tell' for you if I told you my uncle was a builder of that bridge from start to finish, and has shared a vast library of photo's, etc., of the entire build with me ?
The removing of oil from deep in the ground, blasting, gouging, poisoning, injecting, razing off mountain tops, using the rivers and oceans as dump sights, filling the air with particles of poison, all that and more. ItтАЩs as though the connection between The Earth Mother and her multifarious offspring is not noticed not respected or not even realized. This is what I call un-woke.
Jerry, agreed. Maybe he will, maybe not. The finer point is that bag of bones that is nearing his end anyway isn't the problem. It's his MAGA clones , in office and out. I'm more concerned about a MAGA gun toting idiot that lives in my village than I will ever care about Donald Trump.
Ok, so maybe Trump is going down. Not enough. His cohort of toxic masculinity, indifferent oligarchs, and fellow political technologists have got to go
True. What to do about the millions of people who made it all possible by voting for him?
The thing about Unreality is that though I don't think it's penetrable by what we call facts, I do think it has a tendency to collapse from its own weight--or maybe better, to shred in a stiff breeze! The Unreal doesn't have as many pixels as the Real. It looks a bit stylized. Plus his fans got energy from our constant denouncements, or clicking on stories about him in order to go "Tsk, tsk!" A non-presidential, visibly weakened Trump, no longer drawing massive ire, will have less magnetic force. (What a 5-bean stew of metaphors I've made here!)
Nice metaphors--each one could be the basis for an essay! The Acultamuricans believe their facts are reality and that ours are the "Unreality." As Jonathan Swift may or may not have actually said, "You can't reason people out of something they weren't reasoned into." When this mess-iah implodes, they'll just find another one.
It's a depressingly long story, but Steven Pinker and others have argued that overall historically compassion has been on the rise. That said, there is always an element that wants to keep the goodies science enabled, yet pull society back to feudalism and the "Dark Ages".
I have the knee-jerk response here of a medievalist. Having spent my life studying and teaching late classical and medieval literature and history, especially the history of everyday life, I'm pretty sure Pinker, not a historian, is wrong. (He's certainly dead wrong about how we're less violent now--I'm astonished he got away with that fairy tale!) One thing that would good for folks in Texas and Wyoming etc if we went back to the Middle Ages in Europe is that abortion was legal through about the 5th month....
Thanks for forgiving the conglomeration of them! But I don't think "they'll just find another one." I know some of these people. They didn't have one before. No one outside ancient Palestine has been so successfully promoted as the Messiah before--this was our first real Social Media President--and whatever he may be in terms of Trumpian ideas and "values," DeSantis is no Messiah figure.
Always room for the next тАЬredeemerтАЭ, sadly.
My little thought for this Sunday morning: a man addressed Jesus as "Good Teacher." Jesus replied, "Why do you call me good? Only G-d is good." I'm certain that Jesus wanted nothing to do with the Messiah stuff.
That quote is good. It applies to fear and hate of all kinds and especially hate of skin pigmentation.
She has her good points.
The thing is, Trump diehards will never hear the truth emerging because they only listen to Fox News and Breitbart. During the two sets of impeachment hearings, my husband would watch segments of the evening тАЬpersonalitiesтАЭ coverage. You never heard the articulate and learned testimony of the State Department personnel, or Alexander Vindeman. They didnтАЩt broadcast it, just gave false statements about what was said and outraged, inaccurate defenses for former President Trump. You could hear some straight news reporting on the midday newscasts from the real journalists like Chris Wallace, but one by one, they all left in disgust. It was the same for the second impeachment hearings. They didnтАЩt air testimony. Whoever heard of an impeachment investigation where the Senate called no witnesses?
Except for precious little, the film footage and extensive testimony of the January 6th committee hearings were not shown on Fox Entertainment. Bits like CarlsonтАЩs latest fantasy were shown, giving the impression it was mostly a peaceful crowd. The revelations from the Dominion voting machine suit with texts, emails and testimonies from Murdoch, Carlson, Hannity and Inagram have not been seen by Fox viewers because they refuse to watch anything else!
I send articles from the NYT to my dad, who was hijacked ages ago by faux nooz. IтАЩm sure he considers factual reporting of legal proceedings the same way I view opinion pieces in the WSJ, but I try.
My parents passed away 10 years ago at age 90. They both had been republicans for much of their lives and I was eternally grateful they never saw the shit show that was and is trump and the republican party that exists today.
The first time my father "pulled the lever" for Obama (my mother was already on board), I told my brothers either "hell froze over" or "pigs could fly". :) Never-the-less, the last few years of their lives, my mother would call me daily -(groan!) to say my father was watching that G-D Hannity and she couldn't stand it! Full disclosure - he did have dementia by then.
The last few years, she moved to being more liberal in her thinking and was not always filtered as she let some in her circle know how set in their ways, intolerant and ignorant they were! It took her 85+ years to find her own voice and by God she was not going to shut up!! I like to think she got some of that from me :)
)- ; Ditto sistuh. Mom was a Kennedy closet democrat at heart; Dad an Eisenhower r., who became hostage to the 'Moral Majority' propaganda; so sadly too, as he was Korean war veteran Marine, who all his living days and lives on in my memory, as the embodiment of what real integrity and honor 'look like' as they walk the earth humbly with every living step.
Faux network talkin heads and those who provide them air time force me to believe that some people are innately evil!
Have you ever met an evil baby?
Mary I never met baby Trump.
That's it in a nutshell, Candace! I'm more worried about Kim's ICBMs ending life as we knew it.
That's certainly true of my extended family Fox-watchers.
I share your consternation Candace.. I've thought long, hard, and passionately about the nature of our consternations in that regard. Peace ~
I think facts play a part in it, they have a "nasty" habit of intruding and just won't go away. I think that part of the "own weight". The night Trump was elected a lot of my neighbors let off fireworks, but after a while the novelty seems to be wearing off, and what does anyone have to show for it except the .01%?
And when he was defeated in 2020, across the country people were dancing in the streets.
Across the world. My overseas friends were almost more excited than I was!
And the day after he тАЬtookтАЭ office (and thatтАЩs what he did) women marched all across the country wearing pussy hats. I still have mine.
Fireworks? That's some neighborhood you live in!
It was delicious.
I agree - lies are much tougher to manage than truth. Ask any lying teenager. That is why I plead to all Democratic leaders to keep honest, keep clean, but be tough on the liars and cheats. Jamie Raskin comes to mind. However, there are skillful and devious liars out there. The climate denier movement is still strong. The election denier movement is too. And we have a large portion of our electorate who are still so gullible and fed up that they will glom onto what they like. Trump - part of me wants him to succeed until he doesn't. Let him destroy his competition during the primaries, just like 2016 only hopefully under several indictments and/or convictions. Then get destroyed in the general. But oh man - talk about playing Russian roulette! The other part of me wants him to go down in flames ASAP. He is just poisonous to our country's politics. Nothing good can come of it.
Ah, Jamie RaskinтАж. Our first Jewish president?!
He is poisonous, and yet he is more a symptom of the post Nixon Republican Big Lie Strategy than it's cause. He is just more extreme to support it, and his minions and patrons rush to shield and support it, even once-target Pence who is talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Yes, yes, yes. Be Truthful, be Responsible, be Fair, be emotionally "Adult", but give "em the Hell they deserve. Democrats need to be the adult in the room, and not let miscreants get away with it. The more they get away with, the worse they become.
I agree: this all began with Tricky Dick. Back in the day, sigh, when you could scare a crooked President into resigning instead of starting an insurrection.
Mary YouтАЩre on a marvelous metaphor roll. Put it to music and you have a a hummable hit.
You are тАШhurtingтАЩ your self chuckling at what you wrote! Brava!
lol Mary !
Nothing practical Joanne. Publish and broadcast only the facts as dispassionately as possible for my part. And hope lessons have been learned and indelibly imprinted on all concerned, including me; a blessed democracy if we are to keep it, is Not a spectator sport.
Ever wonder if half the electorate who never to rarely vote, DID?
.
Yes, thatтАЩs whatтАЩs made me a phone banker and postcard-writer. ThatтАЩs the work of Get Out the Vote efforts. Which have expanded the electorate in the last 10 years. We have to keep it up!
I'm writing letters via Vote Forward to Wisconsin voters for their April 4th election. Deadline is March 28th, still time to sign up to write or to write more letters. Please help!
I'm writing postcards!
Thank you Mary. Yes , we have to keep it up. Our County Democratic Women's Club has been doing these 2 things, plus doorknocking and lots of outreach events like our children's Egg Hunt in April, exhibiting at the Green Expo in May, the NAACP Day at the Farm in June, etc., for 4 years now. It's a lot of work by dedicated volunteers!
Yes the millions of hours we all put into it and still do. I heard the first warning bell of the Biden presidency ring when Biden, in his litany of thanks after his election was declared, didnтАЩt think to mention us. What a missed opportunityтАФthousands of those people were under 25 and new to politics, and had had to swallow bitter disappointment at the losses of their primary choices, Sanders and Warren, and were still out there in every kind of weather or home on the phones for him and his partyтАж
What? Who, me? I never voted for that dude.
We can be sure that there are many armed lunatics heading for Mar. Lardo right now. Don and his kids should be so proud.
Deplorable!ЁЯШ│
"What to do about the millions of people who made it all possible by voting for him?"
Perhaps they could be sent to reeducation camps to understand the errors of their choice.
I have been waiting to read that someone else thinks that education is the answer! Thank you. I couldnтАЩt open the link to The Atlantic article because I donтАЩt have a subscription.
I think the right wing extremists see that too. ThatтАЩs why theyтАЩre doing everything they can to prevent the education of facts by hiding the facts via actions like banning books.
Why do you think white slave-owners made it illegal to teach a slave to read and write? "...la plus que la change".
It's sad that kids in FLA, TX, and most red states will not know this...or any of the other truths about their history .
Last big book burning I know of was the Reichstag fire (?1933), which tells all except the story I wrote earlier about my Professor of medieval French who bragged that he got his PhD from Harvard тАЬwhile it was still a university,тАЭ ie, the year before the business school was inaugurated.
The uneducated are easier to rule. Republicans have been starving public schools for years. And now they are demanding that history books be rewritten to make them look better.
Oh man, in the list of massive changes to America that need to be done yesterday to save even shreds of the American Dream, education is 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
Education is called upon in America to wear several hats. For the most part, itтАЩs juggling too much, poorly. On top of that it has become a tool of the obstructionist bloc in America, thus subject to relentless subversion.
First of all, education must... well, educate. The great revolution in education in the Sixties is now largely a mere historical memory.
Teaching children as honestly as the known record allows? Gone in so much of the country.
Teaching children from the best sources available, regardless of age, gender, race? Gone if the writer offends some of our poor modern sensibilities, which must not be challenged. Thus the opportunity of teaching human striving towards these sensibilities is lost. We can learn from the most brilliant writers who held the stereotypes of their time in two ways. Instead we choose none by cleaving them from the curriculum.
Teaching children critical thinking. Gone, partly for fear of offending one side or another and partly because our current teachers are not *themselves* well educated enough to do this sensitively. Because the system has been steadily degrading for two generations minimum, rot runs riot.
And lest you think otherwise, I take my hat to these uneducated teachers. Most labor heroically and with love. They just donтАЩt have the depth of education to light the spark.
Teaching to the standardized test? Very much present. A cruel and ultimately pointless game, if education is reformed.
Making teachersтАЩ education more rigorous and then paying them proportionately more? A consummation devoutly to be wished for.
Adjusting the relationship between parents and teachers. Needed. In some schools teachers are surrogate parents, taking on responsibilities that have been abdicated. In some schools parents tremble in fear of parents, who ruthlessly take a hatchet to them to advance their own, often demented, goals.
The famous adage of teachers bears repeating here: Everybody thinks they can teach because they went to school. How many people storm firehalls?
All of this costs money. Make it an infrastructure project spread over ten years and do it.
It is an axiom that college-educated voters do not vote for the Trumps of the world. LetтАЩs have more of them.
Thank you so much for sharing that Eric. I get that you strive to be brief and concise; alas, lest meaning be only insinuated where expansion, space, and agency compete. I feel you, and will happily seek out your space. One thing expansion worthy is quality and effective education, which often gets lost in the hustle. I have lived experiences that I might be tempted to share in your space. Thanks again ~
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You got it James. Age old. An uneducated populace is much less likely to see through the wrongdoings and all-around skullduggery of a non-representative leadership of any kind that wants to stay in power or get it. Be it a monarchy, a dictatorship, or an outsized religious institution.
So true. Brownstein nails it. If only the bureaucracy would allow education to take place.
James, education opens the door. You are exactly right. Exactly. In American sub-cultures isolation is key to creating and maintaining an intact body politic. One of the most effective methods of creating isolation is to limit education. A good example is to keep English a second language not spoken or learned in early childhood. Also prevalent is to curtail the process to the eighth grade. If you can include a religious philosophy that exists exclusively then you have really put the lid on the the container. Geographic or communal isolation caps the process. When combined these phenomena turn out the lights. Teach your children well.
I couldnтАЩt agree with you more, education is the key to getting out of this mess, lack of it is what got us into it in the first place.
Absolutely. That being said, I think our system needs to evolve to focus more on asking questions and being engaged than being "smart" and knowing the answers. Rewarding for knowing the answers has been causing problems where insecurity and lack of confidence are not addressed and knowing answers becomes an issue of its own--status, bullying, feral competition, etc. We need kinder, more empathetic intelligent, thoughtful citizens not smarty pants bullies knocking others down to get theirs.
This is a brilliant comment. Thank you Kim. Competition is so in the American bloodstream though. This will be a hard pull.
I spent my life in education, especially with gifted kids. They most often have deeply low self-esteem and dread competition - even in their area of particular acuity.
The hardest competitors come from (in my Canadian experience) the тАЬbestтАЭ private schools where parents fight to get their kids in. And then push the hell out of them. The biggest competitors are the smart, not gifted, kids. Most elite private schools do not accept gifted kids unless they are low maintenance - not a trait of the gifted who are often afflicted with two exceptionalities and also donтАЩt fit in.
I once interviewed a parent whose best friend was a school nurse at two тАЬeliteтАЭ private schools for girls. She told me the rate of anorexia was 40-50%. I didnтАЩt believe it. The school I ran, admittedly smaller, had 1 kid we worried about for anorexia (my school was for gifted only).
You wonтАЩt believe the next part. Two months later the Head of Admissions for one of the 2 girlsтАЩ schools noted above, visited me to see if I would take her Grade 8 daughter in. Nice irony.
I told her what IтАЩd heard about anorexia at her school and the others - 40-50%. Of course I said that it couldnтАЩt possibly be true, so it wouldnтАЩt sound like an accusation.
She paused, clearly doing a mental inventory. Then she replied, тАЬYes, that would be about rightтАЭ.
I had many more eye-opening experiences like that.
Thank you for writing Eric. And thank you for supporting my thinking.What an interesting and relevant perspective you have. I must say Admire that head who wanted the right thing for her daughter but wonder what her challenges were (in heading her school) that her school couldn't be that school. As a woman, it does not surprise me one iota that girls have anorexia or some eating adorer at that rate. Not one bit. And recently a study said that girls start being concerned about their weight at age 6. I myself was obsessed with food through high school and college and later on I realized how much energy and time I could have been doing great things. That's the crime, that girls are not free to be who they are and free to explore what they want to do and what they love. Of course, having the right answer is implicated in much of our current political discourse: the polarization, the media people choose to watch/listen to. Do they want to learn or do they want to be right? An interesting discussion. Thanks so much and take care. Will look up your Substack pieces.
Thanks. IтАЩm just hitting the first two decades of this century now - when all the chickens have come to roost. ItтАЩs been a perfect storm, building in all its different facets since the Fifties. So IтАЩve covered it chronologically.
AnywaysтАжthe problems with girls and body image is hopelessly sad. It sounds like you managed to escape the trap in a relatively short time. I hope it wasnтАЩt too much of a nightmare for you.
I have a daughter and 5 granddaughters. The strongest belief I have in regard to this is that sports are immensely good for girls. They build a can-do attitude and they focus most who play away from their looks and weight as being the dominant factors in their worth. Obviously much more goes into it than just playing sports - but I think itтАЩs kind of a tentpole thing. IтАЩve seen a ton of girls avoid the worst of teenage angst by being deeply into sports.
Caveat: Girls can be spectacularly harmed by coaches, male and female, who coach to enjoy power over girls. I coached both genders. Boys - you had to break them down and then build them up. TheyтАЩre often very cocky and know it all. Girls donтАЩt come in with that ego. You can coach straightaway. However the control the coach has is too intoxicating to some and they abuse it in vile ways.
One final point.
Having said that about girls, itтАЩs boys who are in deep trouble societally. They are going off the cliff like lemmings. It is scary to see how easily turned off education they are. Girls are blowing them out of the water in university and then in the job market. ThereтАЩs a direct correlation to computers there, as well as the changing nature of work.
All kids have it so rough now, but in extraordinarily different ways. I do not envy todayтАЩs parents.
Ditto Kim, and to Eric !
Thank you so much for sharing that Eric.
To 'push' responsibility and cost *off to 'others'. I've long called out the gop as being the party 'leadership' of as a prime policy exemplary of "kick shit down the road."
Tax the crap out of them. Claw back the billions stolen by the Oligarchs and Oiligarchs. The Earth and its resources belong to the people as a whole - not just big corporations.
I'd love to, but it's the same problem we have getting serious about passing drunk driving laws. It's nearly impossible to get legislators to pass laws against crimes they are routinely committing.
I have always said that DUII is everyman's crime. Oregon has some pretty stringent DUII laws (Currently a minimum blood alcohol content--BA-- of .08%, use of Drug Recognition Experts (DRE) when other substances than alcohol impact driving, mandatory driver's license suspensions (no acronym for those) and Implied Consent (that when receiving your drivers' license, you consent in advance to perform field sobriety tests (FST) and submit to an Intoxylizer for measuring the alcohol content of the driver's blood. Where DUI investigations bog down is with the case law that makes determinations on just how the "request" to submit to tests is phrased, and other minutiae that comes down about 2 or 3 times a year.
Same protocols in VT. Having DRE's making judgement calls lack scientific basis, and therefore can be used disproportionately against minorities, and current sparse statistics indicate this is what's happening.
But the main problem isn't administrative or even procedural details; current penalties and sentencing precedents result in 4th, 5th, 6th offenses with some regularity. In many European countries, this doesn't happen; 1st offense gets license suspended for several years, second offense means permanent revocation. As with their more sensible gun laws, it results in greater respect for the laws, and a more civilized culture around drinking and impaired driving. My son, who's a cop, confirms the broad discretion police officers have, and the relatively low priority this work has in urban PDs.
ThatтАЩs more or less what we have in Oregon. DoesnтАЩt stops few of them from driving.
... And so embodied and practiced in places like Alaska, where it's (for now) settled law that plunderers are required to share the profit they 'would not' share otherwise. Watch out for the challenges to continue anew attacking those laws... by guess who. *edit in > My personal heart and soul bleeds for places like Appalachia who suffer still from the consequences of the rapacious extractors ! There's far more to that conviction that I'll belay here; However, the origin of my convictions in that regard are real and lived as I'm forever a 'Son' of Appalachia to begin with. Proud... and sad.
And IтАЩm a daughter of those same mountains. But my area is being forever raped by the tourist and all that a continual, turnover of those who treat my loved environment as their playground from which they will depart after their Air B&B week or two runs out. I realize our damage is slower than the god awful mountaintop mining that made me sick when I had to fly over the extensive environmental rape of an historic mountain range. Unforgivable that those who should have been looking out for the environment and all who lived in it sold it all out to the highest nasty coal bidder.
It breaks my heart. They donтАЩt realize what theyтАЩve done. They canтАЩt possibly know and continue to do it. How often these days the fox is put in charge of the henhouse.
I feel sad for you having to see and experience this rape of your home.
I think of the indigenous people a lot these days.
Believe when I say, I 'feel' that pain. The hint in your comment tells me just where you live, I suppose anyway. Might it be a 'tell' for you if I told you my uncle was a builder of that bridge from start to finish, and has shared a vast library of photo's, etc., of the entire build with me ?
The removing of oil from deep in the ground, blasting, gouging, poisoning, injecting, razing off mountain tops, using the rivers and oceans as dump sights, filling the air with particles of poison, all that and more. ItтАЩs as though the connection between The Earth Mother and her multifarious offspring is not noticed not respected or not even realized. This is what I call un-woke.
Jerry, agreed. Maybe he will, maybe not. The finer point is that bag of bones that is nearing his end anyway isn't the problem. It's his MAGA clones , in office and out. I'm more concerned about a MAGA gun toting idiot that lives in my village than I will ever care about Donald Trump.
тАЬSack of shitтАЭ. .....more appropriate
Hale, yes it is.
If Putin and Trump go down simultaneously, there will be a huge sigh throughout the world...the sound of people taking in a breath of freedom.
ItтАЩs a very old story, follow the money.