The Biden administration has been quite open about its belief that we are in a global war to reestablish the security of democracy in the face of rising authoritarianism.
It is good to have an admin that foregrounds human rights issues, just as it's necessary to directly confront America's own dismal, violent history of violating those rights. For most of the past 250 years the US has displayed rank hypocrisy, with only the 1970 and 80s offering any substantial respite from slavery, racist terror, lynchings, massacres and riots, biased and draconian laws, and police brutality.
Like many readers, I hope that Dr Richardson will again, and soon, address the matter of the Atlanta mass murders in the context of struggles over rights. This could be a watershed moment -- hopefully the Atlanta atrocity galvanizes American support behind equal rights for all, as the George Floyd protests did last year. In one week the Asian American community has made dramatic strides in organizing for protests; there is still much to learn from Black American political organization.
A key sign will be the extent to which different segments of society identify their own struggles with other, related ones. That is another promising type of political action that Republicans face with mortal dread. I can't wait to be part of regular large, well-integrated crowds in the coming summer protests. We The People, All Of Us This Time, Every Time, For All Time!
My eyes turned a bit away as did my mind while reading today's Letter. I woke up with ten people dead in Colorado. As I write these words the massacres are fixed in me. I see the people in the stores in which I shop; the worn coats and assorted shopping bags as we trudge through the aisles. We keep our distance; bend over each other to reach a jar on a high shelf. We can't see each other's smiles, just our tired eyes. Without a pause, I then see the eyes of Asian commentators and talk-show guests. The faces of reporters and hosts look as those they are stunned and awkwardly approach those that have been maimed and carry the marks in their minds and bodies of always feeling discriminated against and made small.
Heather mentioned the voter suppression bills. They mark our history, our mates, families, friends, neighbors, colleagues... They mark us all. I cannot get away from this. I will mail my tax return forms, clean the apartment and talk to a couple of friends; all the while, these murders, the gun violence, the mental illnesses, the hatred, isolation, social media, scapegoating, small minds and dark places drench all else. The nobility of Joe and Jill Biden, the gigantic efforts made by the people in the administration and the heavy toll on the good Americans are the lights I see on this day of little visibility.
TPJ helped me write this today. The force of his feelings and words brought me out. I join TPJ, all other subscribers and the people in the USA on this day of mourning with the determination to make life right for us all.
Thank you to those who appreciate my comments, but you all are the ones who inform and influence me. There is a high standard of thinking and writing to match on LFAA.
The Boulder atrocity is simply too much, too soon. We've barely begun to process the Atlanta killing and grieve for our dear fellow Americans murdered there.
My family has ties to Colorado going back to the 1880s. Dad born in Denver; family land (now sold) in Rifle Boebert's district; several summers in camp in Florissant; brother and SIL went to Colorado College; cousins in Littleton. We're among the few who heard of Littleton before Columbine, and have fond memories from visiting. I wish to recall the good times.
At dozens of racial-justice rallies, and hundreds of protests over the decades, I survey the crowds for numbers and composition. Asian Americans are a visible presence since we lost George Floyd. I noticed very few Black Americans at the two Atlanta-related vigils, and two Zoom meetings, I attended in the last week. This is truly unfortunate, but still, Blacks care deeply about the travails of fellow Americans also besieged by white supremacist hate, so hopefully support increases for Asian American rights. The benefits of well-integrated, diverse protests multiply and ramify beyond particular causes and tragedies. Supporting other people's rights boosts our own and many others.
TPJ, A dear friend, a teacher, lives in Englewood, CO. She texted me soon after learning of the massacre, and I was about to text her about it when I saw hers to me. I have visited Colorado a few times, spent a some time in Boulder and will look up Florissant. Can you tell us where you family's land was? Wherever we may be, we are alongside the Coloradans.
Granddad bought land as an investment near Rifle CO in the 1930s or 40s, I believe. We visited once on vacation but none of us lived there or derived benefits; it caused bitter quarrels among our elders til they sold it in 1980s, retaining underground mineral rights (still nothing). Family land and Rep Boebert both in/near Rifle = never worth the trouble!
CO has its own tragically distinctive history of hatred and violence.
Sand Creek Massacre 1864
Washita Massacre 1868
Ludlow Massacre 1913
Columbine, Aurora, Boulder Massacres
These are just from memory. Undoubtedly there are more, but I cannot bear to think about or look up others. It's time to write in sympathy to my cousin in Littleton.
Sorry to have taken you to the unfortunate investment and the differences that ensued. Communication with my friend in CO included that Boulder had enacted bans on assault-style weapons and large-capacity magazines after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla. A state district court judge ruled this month that Boulder could not enforce the bans. The country's addiction to guns assaults us without end. TPJ, your mind and heart always seem full. I wish that good thoughts and rich experiences outweigh the sorrow. Thank you for your generosity.
Thanks so much, Fern. It's really no big deal now for us and our cousins.
In 2018 there was a 30-second photo op with Eliz Warren and Ayanna Pressley. I said that, if they ever were in position to form a cabinet, go with the Parkland FL students, who are ready RIGHT NOW. Sen Warren said "You are so right! They are great!" Several weeks later she declared for president. Whoops!
In late 2019 I had the privilege of meeting one of my heroes: Jaclyn Corin, MSDHS '19, in her freshman college year. I asked and she agreed to speak to my class, but then the pandemic engulfed all ... the rest is history.
Those are my recent brushes with greatness, I suppose. We are but plankton borne on the tides of fate.
...human rights issues, including the right to freedom from gun violence--as we were so painfully reminded once again by the mass shooting in Boulder, CO.
If we want to end armed violence, what will the gun owners do with all those guns ? Can you picture something happening that would convince them to recycle them into something usefull? This requires a lot of creative imagination. What new behavior can replace their insecure behavior? If I were a teacher in a room full of kindergarteners, how would I divert their attention to something productive? And meanwhile the mafias and gangs don’t know another way to exist. How do we teach them, teach them another way?
Maybe we can ask Jill Biden if she has some ideas?
Several countries and US states have had successful gun buyback initiatives. Australia had two very effective buyback campaigns, with destruction of surrendered firearms. Scrap metal has many worthwhile uses. Let's get "scrappy," folks!
I don't even remember which buyback campaign here in the US started it, but I posted an article on Facebook lauding one such effort - and that was the beginning of the dissolution of my family ties on Facebook. You'd think I was trying to walk into their houses and confiscate all their toys the way my sibs and sibs-in-law reacted, when all I was saying was that this was a good way to encourage people to get rid of firearms they didn't want or need.
Like TPJ writes, gun buybacks. Southern California law enforcement agencies have had periodic gun buyback campaigns.
Swords into plowshares. I think of that when I watch colorguard members of drum & bugle corps and high school/college marching bands spin that wooden rifle facsimile high up into the air and catch it--without getting any heads cracked!
This is not the answer for present day owners of gun arsenals. The change will require gun safety laws with enforcement in the short term, and educating our young in the long term.
TPJ, you have highlighted for me one of the issues that has dogged the reformist movements for more than 50 years: the problem of one reformist group (such as the 1960s version of the Black Panthers) not being willing to join up with other reformist groups (such as the Women's Movement--which had its own huge problems in the 1960s and 1970s with racism and homophobia). The push these days toward an understanding of the impact of intersectionality on the human condition--that it is not enough to locate the forms of oppression within one state of being but in the combination of lived realities--is a relief to me and has to continue and be a lot more publicly acknowledged and discussed.
It's highly significant that women's-rights activism emerged partly in response to sexism and marginalization in the 1960s antiwar and Civil Rights movements. There was a rallying cry then: "Chicks up front!" So the roosters shoved the "chicks" to the forefront of crowds -- often without informed or any consent -- believing (falsely) that police and Natl Guard were less likely to shoot women. With such disregard, it'd be more surprising if a revitalized women's movement did NOT arise.
It is refreshing to read about a global foreign policy goal that includes human rights. So far it has been looking like China will be the superpower of the 21st century and that the United States may very well be in the position of a has been super power. If the For the People Act is not passed we will no longer be a democracy at all by 2024 when the last election ever becomes the death knell of democracy by putting a Republican President in the White House after the Senate and perhaps the House are back in Republican hands in 2022. There is hope that the Biden administration will pass the For the People Act and will start bringing both the United States and the global community back to democracy. There must be a major shift in our perspective from a we vs they hate, the winner-take-all competition, one is up only if others are down, and the only measure of success is not happiness but how many material goods you can accumulate and hoard before you die society to one of teamwork and community, where we all do the right thing for all around us and we value our differences which makes the pie grow bigger so we, all of us, are all winners, and wealth is measured by well-being and generosity toward others where everyone is treated with respect and feels they truly belong. That's how I felt at M.I.T. where the feeling of community, respect and belonging were felt by everyone there; all with the mission of making the world a better place. Not the OR world of patriarchy but the AND world of egalitarianism. A world of synergy. A world For the People, ALL of us this time. This year can be, NO is.. the pivotal year with the passage of the For the People Act as the defining act and tipping point.
I agree completely. Sadly, I think there is very little chance HR 1 will pass. The grim scenario you mentioned at the beginning of your comment seems the most likely outcome. And even though Manchin, Sinema, and Biden are the primary boosters of the filibuster, there are dozens of Democratic Senators who are reluctant to change it.
Reid, My goal was one of encouragement with the feeling that negatively can stifle the will to fight. I am sorry that you took my comment as a confrontation and regret to have prompted an attack. At least, I hope to be clear that my words were not imbued with 'wishful' thinking but a call to attention.
Then yell like hell instead of sulking in what you think may happen. Organize your neighborhood, friends, and raise cain - meaning probably, going outside your comfort zone to get what you want. It's time to keep daring your own edges.
I was incredibly amused by Sidney Powell arguing that the defamation case that Dominion voting machine company brought against her should be dismissed on the basis that what she said as a member of the Donald's legal team was so outlandish that no reasonable person would believe her!
Hi Cathy, hi cig. I wish I could be amused, but I heard an NPR interview with the CEO of Dominion, back in Jan., I think. Dominion has been devastated. They were spending in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars a month on security for their employees because of death threats and other harassment. That security extended to those employees and their families at home. Financially their business has also been ruined, and the lawsuit will never repair the damage to their reputation. Sidney Powell would be a joke if she and her Fox and Trumpster associates had not done such irreversible damage. It’s a Canadian company. I don’t usually feel compassion for companies, but listening to this very honest CEO it was impossible not to have your heartstrings hurting.
My county in Ohio was ready to buy all new Dominion voting machines in early December. The sale was duly researched and approved by the Board of Elections, and only needed the OK from the county commissioners. Then came all of the false claims that these machines were rigged, etc. The county office building was picketed, the commissioners (all Republicans) got hate mail, phone calls, you name it. Guess what? They voted no on the sale. Now the Elections Board are suing the Commissioners. And we will be using 20-year- old voting machines (outdated, hard to fix) for the foreseeable future. All because of LIES!
Ok, I mis-spoke. The Weirdness Collective has rightly taken issue with my inadvertent and ill-considered use of terminology implying Sydney Powell could be one of us. Big mistake. Sydney Powell, Loser Extraordinaire. If someone jumps in and starts defending losers, I don’t know where else to turn. 😉
I haven't seen any comments about it here in my brief scan, but did you hear that Weird Sidney argued in court filings that no reasonable person would have believed her election fraud claims? Apparently, that makes her blameless. Hubris! Tell that to the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Officer Sicknick's family.
Honestly this is red meat for satirists...and so delicious in a way — good luck to weird Sydney weird former guy and weird Repugs who still feel no shame.
She was weird before she ever made her latest "defense" statement. The Lin Wood/Sidney Powell show provided a glimpse into the weird, bizarre world of Failed45 nuts. Even judges appointed by F45 won't buy it.
Hubris to the nth degree so she was just blatantly lying in the efforts to back up the liar in chief and her attorney thinks this is her best case. I hope she loses big time— how does she look at herself in the mirror? The insurrectionists were drowning in this BS. Maybe the ones who go to prison for sedition will finally get how duped they were.
We all know he's a user, and will turn on a dime. The thing that is so frightening in all of this is the number of people, ignorant and educated, who take the bait. Many hateful, twisted folks, just waiting for that dog whistle's permission. She knew better.
Sadly, the financial benefits of winning may not exist. As they say in that particular business, you can't get blood from a stone, and I'm guessing that SP is stone broke already.
I'd bet on that. Now, here's where Brad Raffensperger could step in and vouch for Dominion, since he was defending his Dominion equipment, not Georgia voters' rights when he broke with Failed45 and declared, after 3 recounts, that F45 lost. Since he's now scrambling to suppress voting here to regain his footing and manage his reelection, I wouldn't bet on his vocal defense of Dominion, thus helping it financially.
Ha! But what about all the unreasonable people who believed her -- such as those involved in the Jan 6 insurrection and the numerous "Stop the Steal" rallies?
Trouble is....if you get them to accept that it was all a lie what can they be angry about? They have then to concentrate clearly and unequivocally on their real anxieties for their position in society, their economic security etc......and they might then discover that there are actually some answers that they can find in help already available programs.
And if they did that, they would have to accept some personal responsibility for their state of affairs. Another example of moral decay. I'm coming to believe that what we are living through is really a crisis (and I do not like that word) of spirituality. We have lost touch with our essence. Rant off.
Charlie, the worldview of the United States rests on a Western protestant assumption of human Individualism (not individuality). Here is a quote from a book, The Transforming Vison by Brian Walsh identifying the essential elements of U.S. cultural worldview belief.
"I am me, an individual, the free and independent master of my own destiny. I stand in a world full of natural potential. My task is to utilize that potential to economic good. Nature is ignorant of its purpose and sometimes I lack the tools for controlling and managing it, nevertheless my hope rests in the good life of progress and development wherein nature yields is bounty for human benefit. Only then will all find happiness in a life of material affluence, with no needs and no dependence."
This core belief system lends itself to absolving its believers of any responsibility for the concept of "state of affairs".
Charlie, I visited your web site. There seems to be a contradiction. I agree "we" thinking must begin to replace "me" thinking in social areas of life. However, there remains a focus on individual potential rather than individual response ability.
Stuart, these are people who are highly resistant to accepting that they might have a personal problem that could be fixed with help. They are so pathetically trying to prove that they are in control that few will be willing to seek help. There are some moving stories: Ted has several talks by people who have made that journey and are trying to reach out to others who are where they were. The most striking thing about these stories is the admission of the needs, and the recognition of how hard it is for these people to admit they even have needs. It's really sad.
Going to consult any of the psychology specialists is a difficult decision for anybody even when the economic and social consequences of their actions...or inactions...are not piling up.
Same defense as Fox "News" of course! She is a provacative entertainer not a lawyer......i'm sure that this can be made official and her legal qualifications removed to avoid ambiguity. She's going to have to crack a lot of jokes to pay off the Dominion settlement that she is going to suffer.
Now is the time to get these lies and liars under control! But how? Reinstate some version of the Fairness Doctrine? Bring back truth in communications companies? This new pet project of his smells like trouble 😡
I smell bullshit. I don't think he can 1) raise the capital to do it and 2) attract branded talent to operate it. I put on my business school professor hat and observe too many competitors in a shrinking market space, high barriers to entry, and low customer substitution costs. Sorry, this one doesn't go to the funding committee.
If it actually happens, it will be because the Mercers or Putin or some such oligarch decided to pay for it with failed-former-45's name attached. There may be too much hot air already escaped from that balloon for them to bother.
"He who has been deceived is turned into a thing"- Mikhail Bakhtin, 1943 ( from The Road to Unfreedom-Tim Snyder. And we see how "things" behaved on Jan 6th.
Ted keyes, I got on the zoom for 30 minutes before I lost the signal. Here ic a link I found on YouTube about why History is important to factuality and democracy. It is about 30 minutes long. He would be a colleague with HCR. I think other people on this list serv would enjoy his clarity of the significance of January 6
Thing is, she believes what she says. I encounter people who say the most outlandish things AND THEY BELIEVE THEM!!. this is what frightens me far more than the liars and manipulators. The liars and manipulators I can handle. The people who are brainwashed are the dangerous ones in my opinion.
So if she believes that "anyone would know that my statements were outlandish", then she's admitting she lied to begin with. Either way she's a huge loser!
Wow, HCR, you laid it all out. It's as if this letter is from a sprots reporter laying out at half time the strategies Democratic Capitalism needs to do to take back the field from Authoritarianism after the last quarterback was acused of trying to throw the game to the world Oligarchs.
My commentary is that the United States has not yet figured out that the game has changed to soccar also known as Democratic Socialism. The uniform has changed from cold war militarism with helmets and 300 pound line backers to agile runners. Capitalism is antithical to human rights, civil rights, and a sustainable planet. Democracy cannot free the world as long as markets are run by the invisible hand of capitalist Oligarchs.
Bureaucracies public and private. The bureaucracies of rival States and systems.
I am not going to spell this out here and now, but... start thinking about it and about the complex issues it implies. And don't limit thinking to the United States.
The highly successful Reagan doctrine was a scam, one that handed all power over to corporate interests and THEIR bureaucracies.
Before this happened, governments had to balance service to citizens against service to major economic agents. Now, it's socialism for the corporations and the citizenry reduced to... not even subjects but objects, passengers on whatever mystery tour big corporate interests want to take us. Or even baggage not wanted on the voyage.
There may be plenty of sense in the substance of Jay’s comment—like the Soviets’ political and economic regime, the ruling system is inhuman and it does not work—but the crude ideological forms he employs trip him up, and scatter the contents of his mental rucksack.
The wildly excessive privilege granted to corporate interests is unhealthy, for them, for us all. All the more so in that their bulimia comes at the cost of mass underprivilege and a dangerous degree of total deprivation. An imbalance that make for a gravely sick society. That said, it isn’t by flinging diagnostic labels around or by touting abstract verbal panaceas that things are going to get any better. Sounds painfully like the worst of President Colt 45’s zapping at waves on the beach when faced with Covid-19.
President Biden may enjoy mass support, but for the time being the percentages cited by HCR are statistical abstractions. President Obama had immense popular backing but made the mistake of withdrawing into an ivory tower while he sent his supporters home, to resume inactivity as passive couch potatoes. What’s needed is action like FDR’s to mobilize the population in support of the Administration’s program.
Unfortunately, the only action on those lines we have seen in recent years was that of the Pied Piper President with that unstoppable flow of drool addressed to his fans.
And it’s not only citizens who need to be restored to their status as participants in society, corporations need to be coopted—by carrot more than the big presidential stick—wherever possible. What’s needed all round is more of a conversion than a revolution in the sense of 1776, 1789, 1871 or 1917, a turn-around in thinking, in mentalities, away from ingrained habits of thought, away from prejudices unsupported by anything better than we-all-think-so-therefore-it-must-be-so. There are vast reserves of imagination and creativity in our societies and in the corporate world and it is these we need to tap in the common interest. The problem is that we are so very imaginative, so very inventive, and so damned mean and stupid when it comes to how we exploit our marvelous faculties.
It isn’t just the kids who need far better education—Finnish education!—it is our entire society, from those on its margins to those at the summit. We need to think and to learn to feel and to think… for something better than the disruptive and self-destructive idiocies to which we’ve harnessed our efforts. We need again to master our economy—which currently has nothing to do with the management and service of our common household, one in which none will be treated as vermin—we need to restore citizens’ full participation, economic and political, we need to return technology to its prosthetic public service role instead of being totally divorced from human beings and human needs.
If we and our planet are to survive we shall need to recover dependency on our innate means instead of tech-junkie servers of our tools.
Sorry for the scattershot scatterthought, but aren’t we going to need a lot more of that before we pull ourselves and our lives together?
Oh... and come off it with that "invisible hand"—I can see nothing but that vast clutching hand, though not, of course, what's in it.
Fern, thank you, but after the latest atrocity I just want to sign off, after saying how bad I feel for all Americans, especially in Boulder CO. Yes, it does hurt us all.
I shall have a question about gun legislation -- but not now.
Thank you Roland. Metaphors only work when there is a common popular culture. As the Internet homogenizes popular culture everything becomes PewDiePie.
Great analogies, Jay. The game has indeed changed, and the 300 pound suited up defensive players cannot compete in a world full of runners, be they sprinters or marathoners.
I am relieved you understood my point, Ally House. Also, I meant "sports reporters" and I want to add that sports reporters are respected because of their insights into the game. I meant it as a compliment to HCR.
A few days ago Greg Olear sent me a private email asking if everything was OK at home. He’s barely seen me in the last few weeks in the comments.
We are no longer chewing our fingernails off. We are no longer waking up in the middle of the night in a sweat. We are no longer obsessed with looking anxiously and with dread at our news sources for the latest atrocity committed by a racist sexist gender-identity-ist human Frankenstein monster with characteristics of a rabid animal.
So guess what? I actually have time to spend on my story project! I am actually relaxed a lot of the time! And feeling joy and satisfaction with myself and my world.
A week or two after I posted here that, against my better judgment, I was wondering if Joe Biden might be the best president of my lifetime, my wife started telling me the same thing. She doesn’t read what I write here, and I don’t usually talk about it. She came up with that echo unprompted.
The Biden administration looks for all the world like my highest expectation for a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren presidency.
Now that is truly remarkable. Another miracle to go along with the miracle of a Senate led by Chuck Schumer and not Mitch McConnell. And of course we couldn’t have some of this legislation if it weren’t for this Senate.
Roland, good morning! I don’t need to vote on the best president of all time, but I can say this is the President , First Lady and administration we need now. His patience , his knowledge of the system, and his love for both country and process. What a package!
i’m being something of a ghost on HCR and Greg Olear because of where i am with my sci-fi brighter-future humanity-in-harmony-with-the-earth story project. it’s taking a big part of my attention right now, i am at a critical creative wall with it.
Great coverage of the multiple moves by Joe Biden and company to restore the Strength and Dignity of America.
I was born in the sixth year of the Great Depression and raised in the midst of the Sacrifices and Patriotism of WWII. I am proud that my love of my nation can be challenged with temporary crappy Political Styles the American Way of magnificent open sharing of our bounty and our Freedom always triumphs.
I watched those Chinese Apparatchiks try to lecture Secretary of State Antony Blinken about Human Rights obviously not realizing the difference between State sponsored crushing of human rights across the entire spectrum of China and American Government efforts at ending Racial Prejudice that result despite a Civil War that ended State Sponsored Slavery.
It is also amusing to note China’s appraisal of a “waning,” America. Especially in view of their two 1970 style Aircraft Carriers supposedly ready to challenge the might of 11 US Carrier Groups.
But the emergence of the State Department and stern assertion of the Defense Department in India are indications the nation returns to active stalwart policies that are thoughtful, clear cut and the chaos of the past four years not being dumped in The dust bin of History.
I am joyous I lived long enough to see my values back in the Shared Public Square.
You sound like my father did, optimis,tic and full of hope for our country. I too share this hope and optimism. But we must end the practice of the filibuster as it stands. The troglodytes like Mitch are still determined to rebuild our Democratic Republic into an oligarchy wherein the people serve the leaders. Serfdom should not be one of the options going forward.
I'm not at all certain that this kind of American boosterism is healthy. Our oppression of lower caste people (in particular Black people) is legendary and ongoing. It is instructive to read Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and note that the Nazis admired our racial model but thought in some cases we went too far! Very little has changed in the way race is viewed in this country and white supremacy is on the rise, not waning. We are not a free country in any meaningful way; corporations run the country and have their hands on the levers of power and control in a totalitarian way that China must envy. Voter suppression is worsening, but has always been a feature of our "democracy." And our influence in the world IS waning, in that China is correct, but this is not a bad thing. The U.S. taking the moral high ground while supporting rapacious capitalism and racial apartheid was always suspect and retreating back to being one nation among many rather than the supposed avatar of Freedom and Democracy is good for us and good for the world.
I agree add add that James Baldwin predicted that While Supremacy would destroy the US unless as he put it “white people figure out why they needed to invent the nigger” .
Baldwin debating William Buckley at Cambridge in 1965 is spellbinding.
Consider the Human Rights conditions of the US and China.
China has an avowed, official and active suppression of anything not approved by the central Chinese Government. The suppression of the Uigher Muslims people amounts to a form of genocide by way of snuffing a culture.
Matching anything in the way of cultural and democratic cleansing in Hong Kong is not possible anywhere. in US History.
In fact US history is rife with the Human Rights destructive practices but each time Slavery and the continued Regional denial of equality, Native American Destructive Practices and the dismal treatment of Japanese and Asians in
This is a straw man argument. I never said that China is the good guy in this equation, merely that they have a point when it comes to the U.S. They can be right in what they say while being entirely wrong in who they are.
WWII has morphed into anguished remorse and attempts at corrective measures and even reparations.
In the case of "waning," the vaunted Chinese might is obviously superficial and considering the marginal survival of great parts of the population is not sustainable.
China, like its South China Sea "islands," of dredged spoils now eroding faster than can be replenished is a Potemkin Edifice that totters on fragmentation while pretending unassailable strength.
Air-sea battles like the Coral Sea or Midway cannot be won again. Any country that tries to win a 21C war relying on aircraft carriers as in WW2 will end up with trillions of dollars and thousands of lives on the ocean floor. Britain won the 1982 Falklands War, the last fought in conventional mid-20C style. But it revealed that surface vessels are virtually indefensible against missile assault, which is remarkably cost-effective as well as lethal. Far better to work toward peaceful resolution of conflicts.
Hmm, now we're in TC territory, the man who has written over 40 books, mostly on WW2. I find your words heartening, TPJ, because it suggests that war is becoming obsolete.
War between advanced militaries, I should say. We still have the drug cartel wars in Mexico and elsewhere, the small militias that terrorize innocent people.
And when countries in the Middle East construct defense systems to counter drones, even that weapon will eventually become obsolete.
The lead Chinese diplomat accuses the U.S. of arrogance and hypocrisy when it presents itself as a global champion of democracy and human rights. There is, unfortunately, considerable truth in his criticism. All too often, our foreign policy advances not our proclaimed ideals but the economic interests of our corporations. A step in the right direction would be to reduce the powerful influence of our war (not "defense") industry, but the Biden Administration shows no sign of doing this. If it tried, it's likely the Dems would lose the 2022 and 2024 elections.
As he left office, Eisenhower warned about the growing influence of a powerful military-industrial complex. Subsequent decades of bloated military spending, and an attendant proclivity of belligerence, small-scale interventions, and all-out warfare--in service of corporate interests-- have proven his concern to be all too correct.
I’m so glad to hear you bring it back around to HR1/S1 the For The People Act. I was worrying the whole way through that you weren’t going to get there. I bet it is hard to hear us newbies and amateurs commenting on your project. Yet we do.
This is such a crux time though. We are like rock climbers who have gotten to the hard part and rather than study our way through it we are looking up past it to some place that looks easier, looks like it makes more sense. But the crux remains in front of us. Without the For The People Act and thus the ability to elect representative leadership, leadership that voices the actual concerns of the majority of Americans, our future path is for-ordained and it involves partnering with the inhumane monsters in the closet that are no longer contained there for the purpose of short term profit. And, it doesn’t involve an America that shines a light into the future with the integrity to speak to the world’s injustice because we just won’t have that right.
There are so many topics addressed in the comments. So many that preceded your voice on the For The People Act and yet none of them can be sustainably addressed without it. Wouldn’t it be more effective to focus on what is absolutely next, what must be done before anything else can be done?
What if it was full stop until The For The People Act was passed? What ever it takes. It is the discussion, the event, that exposes all else.
Is it time for all of us to ask President Biden to do this job so that we can move forward for longer than 12 months? https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
And what is happening with it now? 12 days it has been in the Senate. What? Is it on a shelf?
Yes, this needs to be priority no. 1. The filibuster is a creation of the Senate. Way behind the times. Get rid of it, modify it, whatever but move on. FTPA can be a massive sea change BACK to democracy.
This is one time that I am actually regretting my not developing a on line presence via FB, Twit and the like. I just had a conversation with my wife about this. She does enjoy FB and has lots of useful information coming through that venue that I also benefit from. However, in asking her to post the letter to the president her reality is that the HATE blow back will be so fierce as to affect her too strongly to post it. I respect her in this and believe it is a true reality for her and most likely for many others. This renders those platforms available only for the promotion of ideas that the haters promote such as Biden tripping on the plane steps. I trip and I'm 67. He is 78!
It is probable that the White House only responds when thousands of letters arrive saying the same thing. Therefore, those of us like me who generally lead lives that don't generate lots of contacts or the ability to speak loudly are compromised in our representation. Hate is always loud. Considered thought not so much.
Just keep doing your part. Then you wont have any regrets. Remember the ripple effect. No effort made in good conscience is wasted. And I need to hear you.
Patrick, you are absolutely correct to acknowledge your wife’s reticence to post things that will generate hateful blowback. No matter how reasonable the argument might be, there will be those that pick an “in your face” argument. I’ve unfriendly many of them. But another tactic might be for her to create a “subset” group of like minded friends and when posting something just post to that group and not the entire group. It takes a bit of work up front to choose the members, but once created and named, it’s there for the choosing.
Hello Patrick, please keep writing and calling. The White House and Congress consider each communication as representing 100 other citizens. We don't need conventional contact-rich lives to express the prayers of millions (pace Horace Greeley's 1862 "The Prayer of Twenty Millions"). We have more power than we know.
Regarding the hate blowback - one can control one's audience on FB by posting only to friends. If one posts to the general public, those posts can be attacked by persons unknown. I do tend to post to the public however (just because I'm ornery) and then, when attacked, I block and/or report those who come at me. The same is true of Twitter. Just block. Haters will be haters, but we don't have to allow them into our "spaces" and "pages." I've been sharing HCR's letters every day on both platforms and have been successful in convincing a few to sign on with her. One never knows who might get the HCR bug!
But the problem comes when some of your so called "friends" attack what you've said. There are people still on my FB feed that have been friends, or relatives. I can unfriend them all but I would rather not have to do that to some of them (cousins and in-laws) so I just leave them out of the smaller group and post general stuff, like pictures of my cats, to everyone.
True. I have had to "hide" things from one cousin and one friend...I can't cut them out of my life! Most of my family know that politically we are at complete odds, so we have an understanding not to go "there"!
I have written to the White House directly and posted that letter on HCR a few days ago I will repost in case anyone wants to use it or some of it or forward it to others. At this point I am simply not giving up but trying to get others (more Others) to send something as well. Here is the letter and link if any one is interested.
Mr. President I would like to do what ever I can to encourage you to support the For The People Act. I know this is in process but I cannot personally tell you how important I feel the passage of this act is. There are many details to your day as president, I’m sure, but I feel that passage of this act relates to all, ALL, of the details of what is happening in our country from racial violence, to international trade, and to bringing our population towards more involvement in its government.
I am writing because I feel that without your visible leadership on this issue no matter what else you may accomplish it will be dust in the wind of a history that is further sustained by minority power in the US. This would simply be a tragedy of enormous proportion. I feel that this requires frequent, clear, visible leadership from the top.
What I understand now is that you are not speaking out visibly and frequently because you feel that this is the proper functioning of our government where you allow the house and the senate to ‘do their jobs’ and also because you feel that it would bring you into a position of having to decide for or against the filibuster in its current form and you “believe in unlimited debate” in the senate. I submit to you that we, the People, were just barely able to deliver you to the White House with an even split in the senate. We, the people, need your leadership in bringing the For The People Act through the senate. The filibuster in its current form doesn’t, from my perspective, encourage debate at least not the public, visible debate on the senate floor that I would like. In its current form the filibuster ends debate, empties the chamber and stifles even the process of bringing potential change forward.
I strongly urge you, as I did with my personal vote, to become loud and visible on this issue. We need this as a country and I need it as an individual if I am to maintain faith in our system of government.
Thanks for re-posting your letter, Patrick. I hope others will take you up on it as I did and send a letter to the WH too, as well as their senators. Doesn't take much time when you've already done the heavy lifting (writing) for us.
Thank you, Patrick, for trying to keep this in the forefront. I thought of you this morning as I read Heather's letter. I'm afraid Dems are too habituated to playing nice and won't end the filibuster to get this passed. What else can we do to encourage them?
I also just emailed my senators. They're moderate Dems and I couldn't find anything on their websites about the bill. Afraid they're going to face challenges to their office, they may play nice, so I asked them to please not do that and to support the bill and get vocal about it. Thinking a LTE is the next step.
And here's a response from one of them, Maggie Hassan. I'm posting it here because it has some good language for including in future LTEs and letters to other lawmakers:
Thank you for contacting me regarding S. 1, the For the People Act of 2021. I value your opinion and appreciate you taking the time to write to me.
We must defend and strengthen our democratic institutions, and stand up for the democratic principles and values that define our nation. That is why I joined my colleagues in introducing the For the People Act of 2021, which includes fundamental reforms that will restore public trust in our democracy, protect our institutions, and ensure that our government works for and represents all people.
These reforms would help protect the right to vote, promote and protect mail and absentee voting, fix our broken campaign finance system, root out dark money in the political system, combat foreign interference in our elections, and take on corruption in politics. New Hampshire has a strong record of administering fair and free elections, which this law would not change. Rather, the For the People Act would help ensure that all Americans have the same opportunities to participate in our democracy. This is a large bill with a number of significant provisions, and I am open to feedback and continued work to ensure that this bill works for New Hampshire.
Please rest assured that I will do everything in my power to ensure the integrity of our democracy and our democratic institutions, and that I will encourage my colleagues in the Senate, on both sides of the aisle, to do the same.
Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes. If the GOP is allowed to suppress the vote to the degree it is trying to, all else is moot. Thanks for the link to the WH contact page. Will do this right now. My niece lives in AZ, so I will send her this info with a copy of the letter you wrote and ask her to contact Sen. Sinema.
It's unwise to introduce a bill unless it will pass, or has a good chance. Jumping the gun would be counterproductive. Think about the hundreds of times the GQP voted to kill the ACA when there was no chance of succeeding. It did not advance their agenda beyond fundraising from Deplorables.
This is the kind of reasoning I would like to understand. I can see your point but what does that mean for next steps for the bill from the perspective of supportive democratic senators and for the executive branch? It has been my understanding that Sinema AZ is most likely waiting for something. That she wouldn't hold up S1 or split with the Dem's to kill the bill out of hand and that Manchin is in a similar position. He doesn't want to give up the filibuster but would support S1 if pressed or at least wouldn't want to be the one who killed it. Thus, neither would choose to kill S1 but they haven't been publicly put to the task. Rather the focus has been on the filibuster, which hasn't even been called for S1 as yet, there is simply that assumption.
Therefore the only way to move this along is either to engage in non public back room negotiation with them thus without using the public leverage that could come from exposing the process or for the president to say that the bill must pass and to keep talking about it publicly and specifically detailing what is holding up the bill. What I don't want to see happen is that the bill sits with no action as if it isn't important and public focus is never brought to bear. It seems it shouldn't be possible that the Dems could just loose focus but if you look at the generally topic-ing of the news that is what you see.
Something that has been wandering around in my mind for the last couple of years is the possibility of our country itself breaking apart in the sense of beginning to function as a set of regions building relationships and coalitions to get things done. States have always done this kind of collaboration, but it seems to me that there is developing an increasing tendency for state governments to turn to each other for ideas, mutual support, and coordination of actions. I note that New England states have coordinated border openings and closings (speaking of state borders, not Canada here), quarantine periods, etc. as an example. Despite some distinct differences in politics, these seem to be effective. This is going on in other geo regions as well, some well, some contentious. I think the effort at base is one of convenience as well as necessity, particularly when the other guy was in office and there was no national coordination going on. That has changed to a remarkable degree since Biden/Harris took office, but there are still uncertainties, particularly around the ability of the Senate to return to a functioning body that is able to pass legislation that states rely on to recover economically and people to recover their lives and communities. I am conjecturing here, but I wonder if interstate collaboration will continue to increase as a practical matter to ensure that we have, for instance, functioning infrastructure, trade among states, and the exchange of ideas that can move us forward. No idea if I'm blowing air out my ears with this, and certainly no sense if this would help unite us or result in stresses that could lead to a kind of balkanization. I can see it being a positive thing, but I can also see it going the other way, manipulated by some of the politicians who've lost a sense of public good. I don't have an answer, just a question that brings with it a worry.
An aside: I am still up because one of my smoke alarms apparently got a bad battery in the changeover, and is beeping every half minute. AND I CAN'T FIND THE EFFING 9 V BATTERIES! The downside of living in a small, picturesque VT village is that there is no place to buy batteries in the middle of the night without driving about 25 miles and back. Nope. Gonna go bury myself in my bed with a pillow covering my ears.
Good thinking, Annie. Interstate regionalism, in the form of planning, coordinating and resource sharing, has grown in the last four decades as Republicans have shrunk the role of federal govt. It accelerated as the Trumpsky admin flat-out abdicated its responsibilities, notably climaxing during the pandemic. A more activist Biden admin is an improvement, but regionalism will remain as a necessary supplement in the future. It's usually good when different centers of power cooperate together on core policy matters benefiting the public.
Wired in, with battery backup. The whole house beeped. Fortunately, pushing the reset button on the errant alarm stopped that, and just left the one beep every 30 seconds. By that time I decided I could manage that. Today I will go buy some 9v batteries and also talk to the guy at the hardware store about replacements for the smoke alarms. Fortunately, the connectors are still in use. Oh, god, I need coffee first.
Coffee may not solve our problems, but it keeps our mouths and hands happy while we figure out what to do. Hm. Mine is cooling off. Better drink it fast and make another pot!
That's when the problem started, Dick. Annual changeover, but either one battery was not good, ooooor.... I didn't get it in tight enough. In frustration, I gave the housing a couple of good whacks (the ceilings are high and the ladder is in the barn and I am NOT going our to the barn at 3 in the morning in my night clothes to lug the ladder up a flight of stairs, right angle it through the mud room and through the house to the parlor!) After I have a couple cups of coffee, I'll think about it. Right now the dang thing is quiet. But it is waiting for me, I know.
I should have known that my simple response wouldn't address your problem. I might have been tempted to shoot the thing, not with a canon but something proportionate to the problem. Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
I whacked it a couple times with a broom handle before heading to bed. Nothing changed then, but overnight the beeping stopped and the indicator light blinked back on. Apparently the broom handle was adequate to the job. At least for now.
I had that happen to a smoke detector that needed a tall ladder to get to...of course, I did not own said ladder. My alarm clock has sounds on it & the smoke detector bended with the chirping cricket sounds. I could deal with the crickets.
As long as Republicans are in control and eliminating the electoral system....what is there to cooperate about when government is in their eyes the problem?
When you look at other successful federal/regionalized systems....like Germany but unlike France......you require fewer actors in the first place; 50+ regions is at least 5xs too much. The first principle is a clear definition of respective roles and of the local delegation of federal policy implementation powers and resources to the regions based upon federally defined strategic objectives and allowance for locally defined means to attain them.......AND based on a constitution and a legal system that are devized to allow it to function and not preventing it from representing the interests of the people as voiced by all of them.
Oligarch thinking trims the weak fat off the profit making meat. Then the meaty states must be centrally controlled to efficently compete on the world markets. The break up of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovikia is one example. Yugoslavia into Serbia, Croatia, and a third country is an example of another break up. Sudan and South Sudan divided the oil rich off the poorer geography. Instead of divide and conquer, it is divide and spoil. Oligarchs are not loyal to any country. Their country is money. They have houses in several geographies and custom bunkers in other geographies.
An alternative might be localism with local markets, but usually Oligarchs do not allow that until they starve in their bunkers. * I have heard that large cargo planes cannot fly when the temperature reaches over 110 degrees. Cargo ships still depend upon oil so maybe only a hotter climate will change global markets. Humans will live under ground or under salt water and only go outside in modified space suits. We will become fungus and algae farmers and eat insects for protein. There, problem solved in an armchair. No voting required, just coast to our shared conclusion.* sarcasm
One or two other considerations entered into the breakup of the central European countries that you use as examples and not the least are......
....the break-up of Treaty of Versailles errors committed in making the Austro-Hungarian Empire disappear
....Ethinic, language and other cultural factors made nonsense of both the "South Slav Dream".
....Historical oppression of the Croats by the Hungarians, Croatian rivalries with Serbs and combined memories of the Ottoman oppression were devastation waitning to happen for Yugoslavia
....Economic, ethnic and language differences were quite enough for the remnant of Austro-German Imperialism represented by the anachronism of Czeckoslovakia
....The Communist regimes and a second world war have passed under the bridge since their formation.
The Oligarch Model fits better where the communist parties were more successful in maintaining some popular support and particularly in Bulgaria with their pre-existing "mafia" connection.....just like the Russian experience.
Useful reading on these subjects would perhaps be "From Peoples into Nations" by John Connelly.
This model however still has some appeal for instance in Italy where the norther hard right parties would dearly love to be shod of the problem of the south and to be able to stop paying for it.....and that since 1870. However, their regionalized system is a perfect example of what doesn't work...at national or local levels whatever the subject you are talking about. The question that intrigues me here is very simple "Is this an example of Reagan being right?".....but no, not even there as they have a health system that works and is efficiently dealing with the Covid crisis despite the administration.....and life is good, contentious without being violent, concentrated upon enjoying the good things in life that money cannot buy.
Thanks Stuart, for a helpful, concise glance at post-WW1 developments, and the recommendation. We tend to think of recent or current national boundaries in naturalistic terms, as if they always existed or always should exist. The Treaty of Paris (Versailles) made decisions which were partisan and contested even when the intentions were good, though they often were not.
Here are some recs on the aftermath and legacies of the Great War in Eastern Europe.
The problem I have with your scenario is that I'm too old to last through the transition, but young enough to experience plenty of the coasting to starvation (with all the violence, upheaval, and endless meetings about possible solutions that are never acted upon). Selfish thoughts...
I'm having one of those days when the worst of the science fiction projections for Planet Earth seem the most likely. I live on a lake which is being treated with alum for the next week and am trying to figure out where I stand on the struggle between two groups over how the lake will be managed. Right now, it looks like one group is composed of rich, white male boat owners who want the lake stripped of vegetation to make it better for ski-boats, and the other group is a very loose bunch of property owners still trying to decide whether their goal is cleaning up the water, not paying the taxes raised to pay the bond for the alum treatment, protecting the lives of lake fish and the eagles that feed on them, or keeping the ski-boats from eroding their lakefronts. I've offered to build a website for the second group, but their scatter-shot approach is making my head spin. This is why my political efforts have mostly been voting, marching, and postcard writing. I hate meetings and endless discussion of goals. And to think that in my youth I thought diplomacy would be an interesting career path!
Good ideas. Regional coalitions. One of the great ones in the midwest in the Great Lakes Compact (I thinks that's its name) that also includes some Canadian provinces that regulates water quality and water draw downs from the Great Lakes and, in so doing, provides means for protecting vital resources, build climate change practices, binds cities together for other common purposes. In you suggestions I see potential for achieving multiple objectives and serve as models for collaboration on national and regional goals and legislation. National and regional initiatives might be more important than federal-state partnerships if we want initiatives designed to address needs identified for the nation at large to be effective and sustainable beyond one administration or one party's reign. Guess I am also suggesting the importance of interdependence of states, as regional entities might bring validity to working solutions to say an infrastructure issue like broadband or a societal need for quality public higher education or an economic need such as living wage and labor protections.
A friend of mine is involved in some way with that coalition. It's very impressive. There are many of this kind of thing on various cross-border issues. All technically require approval from federal govt. There are even more informal collaborations both between states and even local governments along borders to deal with practical matters. VT and NH have at least one shared school district, for instance (I think another one is being launched). Bridges on river borders are common: WA and OR are in a joint committee to work out the details on expanding the I-5 bridge and possibly others crossing the Columbia River. WA and Idaho share a highly vulnerable aquifer and have a joint groundwater protection program (this one is interesting because of the very different political philosophies of the two states). VT and northern NY are looking at a possible broadband coalition, much needed.
These kind of cooperative projects and programs are simply a standard way of getting things done across state borders. Some involve fed regulation, espec if commerce is involved (as Bonneville Power Admin in the NW). Others are as simple as an interstate MOU. And yeah, Texas screwed up when they tried to bypass fed regulation by keeping their electrical grid within their borders. They will pay big time for that at several levels.
But what I think may be beginning to happen are regions choosing to work together on common issues across borders in ways not limited to a single issue. This has always happened, and it is often informal. But there are regions with formalized relationship with agreed upon general goals, and I see those relationships being used more than in the past, obviously for pandemic planning, but also anticipating economic recovery and coordination. That covers a lot of territory and more complex agreements.
I don't do forecasts: I don't know how this will play out. States will continue to coordinate specific projects with specific goals as they always have since we first agreed as a nascent nation to use the same money throughout. But this is a bit different, and I wonder if there is a possibility that we will start relying more on our regional collaborations than depending on the central government to initiate regional efforts. I have wonderings about the various shapes that could take. It might not happen at all, if our federal government proves capable of assuming the role of coordination, enabling, providing the grounding for those kinds of needs. Or it could lead to a blended federation, something more like Canada. There are so many directions we could go in. And whatever direction we go in, it will happen organically, I think. We Americans are really not very good at planning, and tend to respond to things as they develop, ad hoc. I kind of wish I were younger so I could watch: this will take a while, even if we end up resuming the pattern we started with in the mid-20th century. I'm pretty sure we won't go back further than that (speaking in terms of structure and fed/state relationship), and I think that there's a chance we could end up being an entirely different kind of nation.
Connect to below: ... that allows the individual states and counties within to overcome provincial traditions? Might these enable the rural and urban communities to break the downward spiraling of the quality of life and economic security of the citizens? Might this make these same state more competitive in ways beyond lowest wages and educational level? Imagine what labor organizing could look like if the challenge and solutions derive across these states? But, I do fantasize some days.
I wish I could be around as well. As you point to, there are many good examples of how-to-get-things-done around to learn from and immulate. As you note, the federal government has to power to enable collaboration through initiative and taxation. Getting needs widely addressed successfully means making the solutions fit the size of need and capacity to accept the solution that makes sense at a more micro-level. My point, but seems it might fit into your vision. I sometimes wonder what a welface/poverty solution look like were it to come from a regional view of several of the most impoverished southern states. Would they or could they achieve a vision and series of policies and a strategies that follow from such and a standards and timeline
Alas, janjamm, I am one of those unfortunate people whose ears are unable to hold earplugs. And it is darn hard to sleep with industrial level ear protectors on (I have two pair). The pillow worked well enough and this morning the battery indicator light says all is well. Right now I just don't want to try to figure that out. I have a hunch it means that I need to simply replace the whole set of smoke alarms. It's probably time.
Glad the pillow solution worked for you! I did try several different styles until I found the right fit. I have had my smoke alarms since 2007 and live in a 600 sf 2-story, row house in Baltimore. The alarms are tied into one system and I haven't replaced an alarm, but I have had to replace 9V batteries. Sleep well.
Thank you for sharing your middle of the night musings! I don't know about the breaking into regions part, but I really do like the collaboration and coordination part. We here in my state just endured a terrible winter storm with no power and no water because of NO collaboration and coordination in the sphere of energy. Whether any lessons were learned is doubtful. But aside from energy, I am thinking that when our WATER wars commence in a few years, we'll either have to work together or lose large portions of our country to famine and drought. This makes no sense, when we have water aplenty in various places at various times...harnessing and sharing (collaborating and coordinating) could be the solution. Perhaps the Biden/Harris infrastructure bill will be one way to initiate some of this across-state-lines sharing, much like the work of the CCC back in Depression days.
Thanks for sounding the alarm, Ellen. The water wars have already begun, with the prominent Standing Rock and other pipeline battles. Also in Bolivia, Darfur, South Sudan, and in Chile on last night's news.
"Even the Rain" is a memorable film about the Cochabama Water War of 2000.
There is always water conservation education, you know, something the kooky hippies implored back in the day. It makes too much sense for entitled Americans.
I believe envisioning a better future is important history making:
You mention the coming "waterwars"; I think the Senate should represent water sheds. The lower 48 states would have about 13 regions. The citizens who voted for the "Science Senate" would elect 3 senators each, representing two senators with Masters degrees in the physical sciences and one senator with a Masters degree in the social sciences. Of course college education would be required to be free in these subject areas. Citizens already experience different geographies between Representatives and senators, so the Science Senate would cross state boundaries to represent policies focused on water sheds.
Thank you HCR! You have clarified the state of the union. You have made clear the agenda of President Biden and his cabinet. You have outlined obstructions to the President's efforts to reclaim the government for the American people. We must not get caught up in an argument about Red states and Blue states. Red or Blue citizens. All states, All citizens are American. President Biden understands that.
I am continually amazed at the stark contrast and growing gulf between our two major political parties. It is not exaggerating to say that the near-term future of democracy in America hangs in the balance. Ever since the founding of our country, the electorate has, slowly but surely ben expanded (with some obvious backsliding along the way). We can't afford to lose the momentum of this moment in history. Biden has many important policy initiatives deserving of consideration, but kiss them goodbye if HR 1 does not pas when it gets to the Senate.
“be absolutely devastating for Republicans in this country.”
There's another option. Republicans can shift their agenda to be closer to aligning with the majority of Americans. Hell, they "shift" anything and everything else that suits their sponsors... uh, I mean purpose.
One key thing for the benefit of the nation would be for the Republicans to collectively pull their heads out of their ass, the way they are operating now is like a headless chicken, with zero policy ideas that benefit the nation as a whole, with one half of the elected “public servants” MIA, the half that has the nation’s interest at heart is trying to engage with a void. The Republicans are either going to become a party that contributes to the evolution of the nation or they are going to disappear, from the appearance of things, I as a 40 year Republican think it will be the latter.
But they have power and the ability to hang on to it. How the Republican Party became about power and not service is somewhat unfathomable, even though we know its history. These two years are a temporary respite.
If Repugnants like McConnell were able to overcome the vacuum that has their heads firmly up their rears, the resultant effect would be like the igniting of a fusion reactor and we would have free energy forever. Both pie in the sky fantasies.
What's the point of "imposing" partisanship when all the cooperation comes from one side. This effectively nullifies the peoples vote and thus meets the Republican's objectives and not the peoples'.
Good Heavens! Our arrogant self-righteous attitude dictating what and how other countries should act as a cover for our own imperialist materialist and power hungry interests has become utterly sickening. Our own democracy hangs by a tenuous thread because of our ever expanding allowances given corporations and the wealthy not just expand but to cement their pre-eminence over the public will. Our abominable treatment of our own people - no health care for all (the only country in the so-called 1st world), 1 in 5 children with food scarcity, structural racism hurting blacks, browns, yellows, militarized police and police thuggery, evisceration of voting rights, caging children at the border, "As of June 2020, the United States had the highest prisoner rate, with 655 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population. El Salvador, Turkmenistan, Thailand, and Palau rounded out the top five countries with the highest rate of incarceration.".......and this "48.8 million Americans , including 16.2 million children, live in households that lack the means to get enough nutritious food on a regular basis. As a result, about 1 in 5 children go hungry at some point during the year."(google), and this...."800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad"....When did we become pure as the driven snow dictating to others about the unfairness of their elections? "the U.S. performed at least 81 overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections during the period 1946–2000. Another study found that the U.S. engaged in 64 covert and six overt attempts at regime change during the Cold War." (Google). "The" imperial power IS waning. Sending more dragon breaths to singe other countries is breath better redirected toward cleaning up our own democracy.
Yes. China sucks and is demonstrating the beginnings of some serious power plays. We can criticise all we want, but the past 4-5 years have basically destroyed every bit of "cred" we had in the pantheon of nations. The "former guy" and his minions (along with Putin?) saw to it that our leadership role in the world was thoroughly trashed. We forfeited our right to criticise or say anything to other countries about human rights abuses because of serious troubles within OUR borders. The insurrection of January 6th sent shock waves through-out the world and showed WE are just as vulnerable as other countries to populism/fascism. Our power and credibility are all now suspect. It will take a long time to repair the damage done to ruin our reputation. We gave up our leadership position, so China, and Russia to a degree, were there to fill the void. We need to get our own house in order FIRST, but keep a wary eye on powers like China, AND simultaneously "keep our powder dry", as it were.
China sucks, we suck. Rather than trying to show that another country sucks more or harder, why don't we work at NOT sucking?
While it is worthwhile to continue a dialogue with China about their human and civil rights records, I agree with Selina that we should be looking more closely at our own egregious behavior. And it isn't the whole of China that sucks, it is the current government. Eventually, the Chinese people will have another revolution (as has regularly happened throughout their long, long, long history) and there will be changes, perhaps even for the better. Certainly, we can refuse to import and purchase products made by the hands of incarcerated Uighurs, but what about products (and tele-services) from within our own prison system made by virtually unpaid workers.
We and other nations essentially "created" China by relocating the bulk of manufacturing to them and their cheap labour force, all done out of pure capitalist greed. Now, the monster we helped create is turning around and biting us all in the ass. All through their history, China learned that the best way to deal with the West was to simply be patient. They have long seen us as highly impatient people and all they have to do is wait things out because we'll screw up eventually. It's brilliant, really. I greatly admire the Chinese many many things, but their current regime (Xi) I don't trust. But then, to be honest, we haven't recently shown ourselves to be that much more trustworthy in the eyes of the world either.
I so appreciate the measured response, Bruce. While the current regime under Xi Jinping in China is more repressive than some previous administrations in our lifetimes, the people of China have the right to try to prosper and advance. When I lived in Beijing in the late 1990's, I had many conversations with ordinary people (taxi drivers, farmers' market merchants, small shop owners, and students) who did not support everything their government does, but who loved their country as much as any American loves this one. I fear that when a government and the people who live under that government are conflated that the result is too often one of fear and violence; vid., the current uprise in violent acts against Asian-Americans (because our former POTUS kept calling COVID-19 "the China virus").
China, Iran, African and Arab nations, Central America, Myanmar, Russia, etc -- all countries containing billions of decent, ordinary people yearning to participate fully in the modern world. They seek to enjoy the rights and opportunities long associated with democratic governance, even as they erode in the West. We must get back to setting an example that others will wish to emulate.
"... we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that [there shall be] a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Lanita, Your appreciation for the Chinese people and care for the Uigurs, a Turkic ethnic group, provided an important dimension to our comments. It took me a little while to get there as your 'sucks and sucking' were an amusing distraction.
I wish there were a way for our comments to come out in an order that makes sense. Because I know your "So what?" needs to be at the beginning of these comments, rather than at the end, where it looks like you are dismissing whatever the last person added to the (very interesting) conversation you started.
There is much to criticize about our country, but I don't think that precludes us from working with other nations, our allies, to stand up to Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, or to call out China for their treatment of the Uighurs and their repression of free speech and democracy in Hong Kong. The last guy gave them a free pass, cozying up to Xi in return for trade deals. I'm glad this administration is being so frank and direct in its stance toward China.
Gina - This from Goodman at Counterpunch: "Maybe Biden is displaying a tough line toward both Russia and China in order to signal Moscow and Beijing that the amateurs of the Trump administration are no longer on the scene, and to convince right-wing critics at home that he is tough enough to handle both states. My concern, however, is that Biden has sanctioned a round of dueling accusations that will get out of control and kill any opportunity to find common ground with key players in the geopolitical community. Another important concern is the danger of further inciting anti-Chinese sentiment in this country, albeit unintentionally, when Asian-Americans are being assaulted in record numbers." counterpunch.org
This makes sense. Yes, I think Biden is sending a strong signal to both China and Russia that his administration is going to be very different from the previous administration. In my opinion this is good and necessary. Is there a danger that matters could escalate and opportunities for cooperation when interests overlap be lost? Yes. Always. I do, however, believe that both Xi and Putin need to be approached with firmness and resolve. After the public meeting with the Chinese delegation, Blinkin said that during the private session, the conversation was less heated and more amiable. (My words, not his.) This is typical of many of these kinds of negotiations. During the public session, both sides were talking as much to their domestic audiences as to each other.
Regarding inciting further anti-Chinese sentiment, I think, thanks to T***p, that bridge has already been crossed by any individuals who are ignorant enough to confuse governments with individuals, or see Asian-Americans as anything other than Americans whose ancestors, or they, came from Asia.
Thanks for the link to Counterpunch. It looks interesting.
"This is typical of many of these kinds of negotiations. During the public session, both sides were talking as much to their domestic audiences as to each other." This was my thought when I first heard about the public session. And not only to domestic audiences in a broader sense, but particularly to bosses listening in Beijing. In graduate school, we had a visiting Chinese economist come to our China Colloquium who gave a very political talk about the future of Shanghai as the financial center of Asia planned for after Hong Kong's 1997 "hui gui" (return). On each side of him sat two "colleagues" who had come on the trip to Seattle with him. These people contributed nothing to the talk, in fact were probably not even economists, but Party minders to make sure our guest did not step out of line. You could tell by the look on the poor man's face at some of our questions that he wanted to say much more than he was allowed, but that he was very nervous of upsetting his "team".
It would be interesting to know how often our own diplomats have been under similar pressure to toe the political line.
Interesting! And yes, bosses who are listening are likely the prime audience. I may be naive, but my guess is Chinese diplomats are under more pressure than our diplomats.
Love your passion AND your research of the facts. Speak truth to power. What I get grumpy about is what I call "comparison righteousness". As if "We are not as bad as them" makes U.S. alright.
Just two comments. Infrastructure must include a regulated internet system which brings broadband to every community and possibly a community based energy grid as well. And second , no caregiving can not include care for elders, respectful and universal care.
It is good to have an admin that foregrounds human rights issues, just as it's necessary to directly confront America's own dismal, violent history of violating those rights. For most of the past 250 years the US has displayed rank hypocrisy, with only the 1970 and 80s offering any substantial respite from slavery, racist terror, lynchings, massacres and riots, biased and draconian laws, and police brutality.
Like many readers, I hope that Dr Richardson will again, and soon, address the matter of the Atlanta mass murders in the context of struggles over rights. This could be a watershed moment -- hopefully the Atlanta atrocity galvanizes American support behind equal rights for all, as the George Floyd protests did last year. In one week the Asian American community has made dramatic strides in organizing for protests; there is still much to learn from Black American political organization.
A key sign will be the extent to which different segments of society identify their own struggles with other, related ones. That is another promising type of political action that Republicans face with mortal dread. I can't wait to be part of regular large, well-integrated crowds in the coming summer protests. We The People, All Of Us This Time, Every Time, For All Time!
My eyes turned a bit away as did my mind while reading today's Letter. I woke up with ten people dead in Colorado. As I write these words the massacres are fixed in me. I see the people in the stores in which I shop; the worn coats and assorted shopping bags as we trudge through the aisles. We keep our distance; bend over each other to reach a jar on a high shelf. We can't see each other's smiles, just our tired eyes. Without a pause, I then see the eyes of Asian commentators and talk-show guests. The faces of reporters and hosts look as those they are stunned and awkwardly approach those that have been maimed and carry the marks in their minds and bodies of always feeling discriminated against and made small.
Heather mentioned the voter suppression bills. They mark our history, our mates, families, friends, neighbors, colleagues... They mark us all. I cannot get away from this. I will mail my tax return forms, clean the apartment and talk to a couple of friends; all the while, these murders, the gun violence, the mental illnesses, the hatred, isolation, social media, scapegoating, small minds and dark places drench all else. The nobility of Joe and Jill Biden, the gigantic efforts made by the people in the administration and the heavy toll on the good Americans are the lights I see on this day of little visibility.
TPJ helped me write this today. The force of his feelings and words brought me out. I join TPJ, all other subscribers and the people in the USA on this day of mourning with the determination to make life right for us all.
(Camb MA)just now
Thank you to those who appreciate my comments, but you all are the ones who inform and influence me. There is a high standard of thinking and writing to match on LFAA.
The Boulder atrocity is simply too much, too soon. We've barely begun to process the Atlanta killing and grieve for our dear fellow Americans murdered there.
My family has ties to Colorado going back to the 1880s. Dad born in Denver; family land (now sold) in Rifle Boebert's district; several summers in camp in Florissant; brother and SIL went to Colorado College; cousins in Littleton. We're among the few who heard of Littleton before Columbine, and have fond memories from visiting. I wish to recall the good times.
At dozens of racial-justice rallies, and hundreds of protests over the decades, I survey the crowds for numbers and composition. Asian Americans are a visible presence since we lost George Floyd. I noticed very few Black Americans at the two Atlanta-related vigils, and two Zoom meetings, I attended in the last week. This is truly unfortunate, but still, Blacks care deeply about the travails of fellow Americans also besieged by white supremacist hate, so hopefully support increases for Asian American rights. The benefits of well-integrated, diverse protests multiply and ramify beyond particular causes and tragedies. Supporting other people's rights boosts our own and many others.
TPJ, A dear friend, a teacher, lives in Englewood, CO. She texted me soon after learning of the massacre, and I was about to text her about it when I saw hers to me. I have visited Colorado a few times, spent a some time in Boulder and will look up Florissant. Can you tell us where you family's land was? Wherever we may be, we are alongside the Coloradans.
Granddad bought land as an investment near Rifle CO in the 1930s or 40s, I believe. We visited once on vacation but none of us lived there or derived benefits; it caused bitter quarrels among our elders til they sold it in 1980s, retaining underground mineral rights (still nothing). Family land and Rep Boebert both in/near Rifle = never worth the trouble!
CO has its own tragically distinctive history of hatred and violence.
Sand Creek Massacre 1864
Washita Massacre 1868
Ludlow Massacre 1913
Columbine, Aurora, Boulder Massacres
These are just from memory. Undoubtedly there are more, but I cannot bear to think about or look up others. It's time to write in sympathy to my cousin in Littleton.
Sorry to have taken you to the unfortunate investment and the differences that ensued. Communication with my friend in CO included that Boulder had enacted bans on assault-style weapons and large-capacity magazines after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla. A state district court judge ruled this month that Boulder could not enforce the bans. The country's addiction to guns assaults us without end. TPJ, your mind and heart always seem full. I wish that good thoughts and rich experiences outweigh the sorrow. Thank you for your generosity.
Thanks so much, Fern. It's really no big deal now for us and our cousins.
In 2018 there was a 30-second photo op with Eliz Warren and Ayanna Pressley. I said that, if they ever were in position to form a cabinet, go with the Parkland FL students, who are ready RIGHT NOW. Sen Warren said "You are so right! They are great!" Several weeks later she declared for president. Whoops!
In late 2019 I had the privilege of meeting one of my heroes: Jaclyn Corin, MSDHS '19, in her freshman college year. I asked and she agreed to speak to my class, but then the pandemic engulfed all ... the rest is history.
Those are my recent brushes with greatness, I suppose. We are but plankton borne on the tides of fate.
...human rights issues, including the right to freedom from gun violence--as we were so painfully reminded once again by the mass shooting in Boulder, CO.
If we want to end armed violence, what will the gun owners do with all those guns ? Can you picture something happening that would convince them to recycle them into something usefull? This requires a lot of creative imagination. What new behavior can replace their insecure behavior? If I were a teacher in a room full of kindergarteners, how would I divert their attention to something productive? And meanwhile the mafias and gangs don’t know another way to exist. How do we teach them, teach them another way?
Maybe we can ask Jill Biden if she has some ideas?
Several countries and US states have had successful gun buyback initiatives. Australia had two very effective buyback campaigns, with destruction of surrendered firearms. Scrap metal has many worthwhile uses. Let's get "scrappy," folks!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_buyback_program
I don't even remember which buyback campaign here in the US started it, but I posted an article on Facebook lauding one such effort - and that was the beginning of the dissolution of my family ties on Facebook. You'd think I was trying to walk into their houses and confiscate all their toys the way my sibs and sibs-in-law reacted, when all I was saying was that this was a good way to encourage people to get rid of firearms they didn't want or need.
The mafias, gangs and nazis have managed to get elected.
Like TPJ writes, gun buybacks. Southern California law enforcement agencies have had periodic gun buyback campaigns.
Swords into plowshares. I think of that when I watch colorguard members of drum & bugle corps and high school/college marching bands spin that wooden rifle facsimile high up into the air and catch it--without getting any heads cracked!
This is not the answer for present day owners of gun arsenals. The change will require gun safety laws with enforcement in the short term, and educating our young in the long term.
Plowshares.
THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM FROM GUN VIOLENCE. Which amendment # will this be?
And Freedom from Fear of Gun Violence!
YES
TPJ, you have highlighted for me one of the issues that has dogged the reformist movements for more than 50 years: the problem of one reformist group (such as the 1960s version of the Black Panthers) not being willing to join up with other reformist groups (such as the Women's Movement--which had its own huge problems in the 1960s and 1970s with racism and homophobia). The push these days toward an understanding of the impact of intersectionality on the human condition--that it is not enough to locate the forms of oppression within one state of being but in the combination of lived realities--is a relief to me and has to continue and be a lot more publicly acknowledged and discussed.
It's highly significant that women's-rights activism emerged partly in response to sexism and marginalization in the 1960s antiwar and Civil Rights movements. There was a rallying cry then: "Chicks up front!" So the roosters shoved the "chicks" to the forefront of crowds -- often without informed or any consent -- believing (falsely) that police and Natl Guard were less likely to shoot women. With such disregard, it'd be more surprising if a revitalized women's movement did NOT arise.
Sara Evans, Personal Politics
Robin Morgan, Sisterhood is Powerful
_____, Sisterhood is Forever
Deborah Tannen, You Just Don't Understand
You GO, brother!
you totally rock, IMHO
Same here—I get my second vaccine today and I’m ready to march with real crowds.
With you, TPJ!
We The People, All Of Us This Time, Every Time, For All Time!
It is refreshing to read about a global foreign policy goal that includes human rights. So far it has been looking like China will be the superpower of the 21st century and that the United States may very well be in the position of a has been super power. If the For the People Act is not passed we will no longer be a democracy at all by 2024 when the last election ever becomes the death knell of democracy by putting a Republican President in the White House after the Senate and perhaps the House are back in Republican hands in 2022. There is hope that the Biden administration will pass the For the People Act and will start bringing both the United States and the global community back to democracy. There must be a major shift in our perspective from a we vs they hate, the winner-take-all competition, one is up only if others are down, and the only measure of success is not happiness but how many material goods you can accumulate and hoard before you die society to one of teamwork and community, where we all do the right thing for all around us and we value our differences which makes the pie grow bigger so we, all of us, are all winners, and wealth is measured by well-being and generosity toward others where everyone is treated with respect and feels they truly belong. That's how I felt at M.I.T. where the feeling of community, respect and belonging were felt by everyone there; all with the mission of making the world a better place. Not the OR world of patriarchy but the AND world of egalitarianism. A world of synergy. A world For the People, ALL of us this time. This year can be, NO is.. the pivotal year with the passage of the For the People Act as the defining act and tipping point.
GOTV
I agree completely. Sadly, I think there is very little chance HR 1 will pass. The grim scenario you mentioned at the beginning of your comment seems the most likely outcome. And even though Manchin, Sinema, and Biden are the primary boosters of the filibuster, there are dozens of Democratic Senators who are reluctant to change it.
No time for cynicism; no time to think what 'they're' going to do and what 'we' are not going to do. The fierce urgency of determination is alive.
Wishing does not make things so.
'Wishing' is not determination. Please try to avoid transferring your feelings to another whose thoughts are her own.
You criticized my perspective, I criticized yours. If you don't wish to be confronted, don't confront.
Reid, My goal was one of encouragement with the feeling that negatively can stifle the will to fight. I am sorry that you took my comment as a confrontation and regret to have prompted an attack. At least, I hope to be clear that my words were not imbued with 'wishful' thinking but a call to attention.
Then yell like hell instead of sulking in what you think may happen. Organize your neighborhood, friends, and raise cain - meaning probably, going outside your comfort zone to get what you want. It's time to keep daring your own edges.
I was incredibly amused by Sidney Powell arguing that the defamation case that Dominion voting machine company brought against her should be dismissed on the basis that what she said as a member of the Donald's legal team was so outlandish that no reasonable person would believe her!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/03/22/sidney-powell-argues-her-dominion-defamation-lawsuit-should-be-dropped-because-no-reasonable-person-would-believe-her/?sh=52f555811dad
Hi Cathy, hi cig. I wish I could be amused, but I heard an NPR interview with the CEO of Dominion, back in Jan., I think. Dominion has been devastated. They were spending in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars a month on security for their employees because of death threats and other harassment. That security extended to those employees and their families at home. Financially their business has also been ruined, and the lawsuit will never repair the damage to their reputation. Sidney Powell would be a joke if she and her Fox and Trumpster associates had not done such irreversible damage. It’s a Canadian company. I don’t usually feel compassion for companies, but listening to this very honest CEO it was impossible not to have your heartstrings hurting.
My county in Ohio was ready to buy all new Dominion voting machines in early December. The sale was duly researched and approved by the Board of Elections, and only needed the OK from the county commissioners. Then came all of the false claims that these machines were rigged, etc. The county office building was picketed, the commissioners (all Republicans) got hate mail, phone calls, you name it. Guess what? They voted no on the sale. Now the Elections Board are suing the Commissioners. And we will be using 20-year- old voting machines (outdated, hard to fix) for the foreseeable future. All because of LIES!
If they can not win the process, then destroy the faith in the process. That is what Republicans are doing.
Yes and the next logical step is they destroy their credibility and themselves.
That's okay, so long as they take themselves out before the rest of us are toast. Their credibility train left the station over four years ago.
That’s for dam sure.
So true and there we are.
This makes me angry.
Furious.
Right.
Good morning Roland. I feel compassion for Dominion but none for that weird Sidney.
Good morning Liz. How could anyone feel compassion for Her Weirdness? What a piece of work.
Hey there, don't tar weird people in general with that lawyer's horrendous behavior. Most of us are good people, just different.
Ok, I mis-spoke. The Weirdness Collective has rightly taken issue with my inadvertent and ill-considered use of terminology implying Sydney Powell could be one of us. Big mistake. Sydney Powell, Loser Extraordinaire. If someone jumps in and starts defending losers, I don’t know where else to turn. 😉
Roland I love you...officially
Hey I’m as weird as anyone Joan.
Looks like we have a NY-MA-weird collective happening, Liz
Her weirdness—Roland you definitely have a way with words.
I haven't seen any comments about it here in my brief scan, but did you hear that Weird Sidney argued in court filings that no reasonable person would have believed her election fraud claims? Apparently, that makes her blameless. Hubris! Tell that to the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Officer Sicknick's family.
That makes her weird. Good luck proving that no one believed her.
Honestly this is red meat for satirists...and so delicious in a way — good luck to weird Sydney weird former guy and weird Repugs who still feel no shame.
She was weird before she ever made her latest "defense" statement. The Lin Wood/Sidney Powell show provided a glimpse into the weird, bizarre world of Failed45 nuts. Even judges appointed by F45 won't buy it.
F45 I ❤️ love it. It makes the Cheeto sound like a future failed fighter jet program.
Thanks, David. Full disclosure: I stole it from another contributor here. Just can't use the moron's name!
Hubris to the nth degree so she was just blatantly lying in the efforts to back up the liar in chief and her attorney thinks this is her best case. I hope she loses big time— how does she look at herself in the mirror? The insurrectionists were drowning in this BS. Maybe the ones who go to prison for sedition will finally get how duped they were.
Morning Roland! Fortunately, it is unlikely that her defense of her actions will meet with approval in a court of law.
How about being laughed out of court for that ridiculous argument?
Powell should be disbarred.
From your lips . . .
To the...
Hopefully, something much more severe.
And she's unlightly now to be "pardoned" for whatever.
She wasn't likely to be pardoned by Failed45. I doubt that she was his "type."
He only pardoned those that successfully did his bidding and who he still needed. She loses on both counts.
We all know he's a user, and will turn on a dime. The thing that is so frightening in all of this is the number of people, ignorant and educated, who take the bait. Many hateful, twisted folks, just waiting for that dog whistle's permission. She knew better.
Sadly, the financial benefits of winning may not exist. As they say in that particular business, you can't get blood from a stone, and I'm guessing that SP is stone broke already.
I'd bet on that. Now, here's where Brad Raffensperger could step in and vouch for Dominion, since he was defending his Dominion equipment, not Georgia voters' rights when he broke with Failed45 and declared, after 3 recounts, that F45 lost. Since he's now scrambling to suppress voting here to regain his footing and manage his reelection, I wouldn't bet on his vocal defense of Dominion, thus helping it financially.
SP is irrelevant whether she’s flush or not—
Ha! But what about all the unreasonable people who believed her -- such as those involved in the Jan 6 insurrection and the numerous "Stop the Steal" rallies?
Trouble is....if you get them to accept that it was all a lie what can they be angry about? They have then to concentrate clearly and unequivocally on their real anxieties for their position in society, their economic security etc......and they might then discover that there are actually some answers that they can find in help already available programs.
And if they did that, they would have to accept some personal responsibility for their state of affairs. Another example of moral decay. I'm coming to believe that what we are living through is really a crisis (and I do not like that word) of spirituality. We have lost touch with our essence. Rant off.
Charlie, the worldview of the United States rests on a Western protestant assumption of human Individualism (not individuality). Here is a quote from a book, The Transforming Vison by Brian Walsh identifying the essential elements of U.S. cultural worldview belief.
"I am me, an individual, the free and independent master of my own destiny. I stand in a world full of natural potential. My task is to utilize that potential to economic good. Nature is ignorant of its purpose and sometimes I lack the tools for controlling and managing it, nevertheless my hope rests in the good life of progress and development wherein nature yields is bounty for human benefit. Only then will all find happiness in a life of material affluence, with no needs and no dependence."
This core belief system lends itself to absolving its believers of any responsibility for the concept of "state of affairs".
Jay, I couldn't agree more. Those beliefs are contrary to human betterment, life-affirmation, and planetary sustainability. They have run their course. Please see my extended comments at https://media.awakeningtowholeness.net/walking-backwards-into-the-future/
Charlie, I visited your web site. There seems to be a contradiction. I agree "we" thinking must begin to replace "me" thinking in social areas of life. However, there remains a focus on individual potential rather than individual response ability.
Oh. Darn.
What’s missing from this? Is freedom and only about the individual? What role does society play in individual freedom?
Stuart, these are people who are highly resistant to accepting that they might have a personal problem that could be fixed with help. They are so pathetically trying to prove that they are in control that few will be willing to seek help. There are some moving stories: Ted has several talks by people who have made that journey and are trying to reach out to others who are where they were. The most striking thing about these stories is the admission of the needs, and the recognition of how hard it is for these people to admit they even have needs. It's really sad.
Going to consult any of the psychology specialists is a difficult decision for anybody even when the economic and social consequences of their actions...or inactions...are not piling up.
They will be angry at the same stuff they were before the Big Lie.
Some people are born angry. I know a man who would start a fight with a room full of furniture. He’s 80 and was like that from day one.
Exactly. She WAS believed, so this is not a credible defense (though it was never a credible defense to begin with).
I’m afraid they’re still out there.
Same defense as Fox "News" of course! She is a provacative entertainer not a lawyer......i'm sure that this can be made official and her legal qualifications removed to avoid ambiguity. She's going to have to crack a lot of jokes to pay off the Dominion settlement that she is going to suffer.
Good Morning everyone! Good to see you Roland, Stuart, Liz and all!
...And speaking of lies, the former president has plans in the works to create a new media platform so he and his followers can get back on line.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/21/media/donald-trump-social-media-network/index.html
Now is the time to get these lies and liars under control! But how? Reinstate some version of the Fairness Doctrine? Bring back truth in communications companies? This new pet project of his smells like trouble 😡
Have a great day all ☀️
I smell bullshit. I don't think he can 1) raise the capital to do it and 2) attract branded talent to operate it. I put on my business school professor hat and observe too many competitors in a shrinking market space, high barriers to entry, and low customer substitution costs. Sorry, this one doesn't go to the funding committee.
Apparently the Trump voter base agrees with you.
https://www.rawstory.com/amp/trump-social-media-2651169240-2651169240
If it actually happens, it will be because the Mercers or Putin or some such oligarch decided to pay for it with failed-former-45's name attached. There may be too much hot air already escaped from that balloon for them to bother.
https://www.rawstory.com/amp/trump-social-media-2651169240-2651169240
Darn. The FBI and CIA were looking forward to monitoring it.
The good news for her is that the jokes don't have to be funny
Wow. Sheer madness. May she feel the full repercussions of spreading downright bullshit in the public square. Are there any?
"He who has been deceived is turned into a thing"- Mikhail Bakhtin, 1943 ( from The Road to Unfreedom-Tim Snyder. And we see how "things" behaved on Jan 6th.
Time to watch Tim Snyder's lecture soon!
Register via Zoom here:
https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ehmpha7g4b354c1e&oseq=&c=&ch=
Ted keyes, I got on the zoom for 30 minutes before I lost the signal. Here ic a link I found on YouTube about why History is important to factuality and democracy. It is about 30 minutes long. He would be a colleague with HCR. I think other people on this list serv would enjoy his clarity of the significance of January 6
Http://.youtube.com/watch?v=JUZizitn5v4
“Tens of millions have bought into the big lie, dt’s fiction of victimhood”
It was a really good lecture. 5 pages of notes and a lot more to read.
Thanks Ted! I just tuned in using your original info, no registration needed.
uh oh. Stay responsible! ha ha So I just love how TS says only, mr. T****p and NEVER President T***P or former President T.....
Two history lectures on the schedule today! Two of the world's best!
Or Telephone:
Dial
US: +l 312 626 6799
Webinar ID: 925 7892 4394
I registered but have not received a link!?
She has logic on her side with that. Unfortunately, many many people have believed her, and that was clearly her goal.
I'd hate to have her representing me if her legal mind says "just say the most outlandish thing you can. Someone will believe you!"
Thing is, she believes what she says. I encounter people who say the most outlandish things AND THEY BELIEVE THEM!!. this is what frightens me far more than the liars and manipulators. The liars and manipulators I can handle. The people who are brainwashed are the dangerous ones in my opinion.
So if she believes that "anyone would know that my statements were outlandish", then she's admitting she lied to begin with. Either way she's a huge loser!
Who knows if she (Sydney) really believes in anything other than money or power?
Of what bar will Sidney the Sillly soon be a former member?
Barroom brawls?
She might be welcome there 🤣. Being from Missouri I have no room to talk, but I would not like to be in a state that kept her as a member of the bar.
Who’s paying Sydney Powell? She has started a Super Pac.
She still hangin around? 🦇
Wow, HCR, you laid it all out. It's as if this letter is from a sprots reporter laying out at half time the strategies Democratic Capitalism needs to do to take back the field from Authoritarianism after the last quarterback was acused of trying to throw the game to the world Oligarchs.
My commentary is that the United States has not yet figured out that the game has changed to soccar also known as Democratic Socialism. The uniform has changed from cold war militarism with helmets and 300 pound line backers to agile runners. Capitalism is antithical to human rights, civil rights, and a sustainable planet. Democracy cannot free the world as long as markets are run by the invisible hand of capitalist Oligarchs.
We are into a battle between bureaucracies.
Bureaucracies public and private. The bureaucracies of rival States and systems.
I am not going to spell this out here and now, but... start thinking about it and about the complex issues it implies. And don't limit thinking to the United States.
The highly successful Reagan doctrine was a scam, one that handed all power over to corporate interests and THEIR bureaucracies.
Before this happened, governments had to balance service to citizens against service to major economic agents. Now, it's socialism for the corporations and the citizenry reduced to... not even subjects but objects, passengers on whatever mystery tour big corporate interests want to take us. Or even baggage not wanted on the voyage.
Citizenry becomes reduced to consumers and the world becomes a commodity.
Exactly.
There may be plenty of sense in the substance of Jay’s comment—like the Soviets’ political and economic regime, the ruling system is inhuman and it does not work—but the crude ideological forms he employs trip him up, and scatter the contents of his mental rucksack.
The wildly excessive privilege granted to corporate interests is unhealthy, for them, for us all. All the more so in that their bulimia comes at the cost of mass underprivilege and a dangerous degree of total deprivation. An imbalance that make for a gravely sick society. That said, it isn’t by flinging diagnostic labels around or by touting abstract verbal panaceas that things are going to get any better. Sounds painfully like the worst of President Colt 45’s zapping at waves on the beach when faced with Covid-19.
President Biden may enjoy mass support, but for the time being the percentages cited by HCR are statistical abstractions. President Obama had immense popular backing but made the mistake of withdrawing into an ivory tower while he sent his supporters home, to resume inactivity as passive couch potatoes. What’s needed is action like FDR’s to mobilize the population in support of the Administration’s program.
Unfortunately, the only action on those lines we have seen in recent years was that of the Pied Piper President with that unstoppable flow of drool addressed to his fans.
And it’s not only citizens who need to be restored to their status as participants in society, corporations need to be coopted—by carrot more than the big presidential stick—wherever possible. What’s needed all round is more of a conversion than a revolution in the sense of 1776, 1789, 1871 or 1917, a turn-around in thinking, in mentalities, away from ingrained habits of thought, away from prejudices unsupported by anything better than we-all-think-so-therefore-it-must-be-so. There are vast reserves of imagination and creativity in our societies and in the corporate world and it is these we need to tap in the common interest. The problem is that we are so very imaginative, so very inventive, and so damned mean and stupid when it comes to how we exploit our marvelous faculties.
It isn’t just the kids who need far better education—Finnish education!—it is our entire society, from those on its margins to those at the summit. We need to think and to learn to feel and to think… for something better than the disruptive and self-destructive idiocies to which we’ve harnessed our efforts. We need again to master our economy—which currently has nothing to do with the management and service of our common household, one in which none will be treated as vermin—we need to restore citizens’ full participation, economic and political, we need to return technology to its prosthetic public service role instead of being totally divorced from human beings and human needs.
If we and our planet are to survive we shall need to recover dependency on our innate means instead of tech-junkie servers of our tools.
Sorry for the scattershot scatterthought, but aren’t we going to need a lot more of that before we pull ourselves and our lives together?
Oh... and come off it with that "invisible hand"—I can see nothing but that vast clutching hand, though not, of course, what's in it.
Peter, Far from scattershot...your words speak as our hearts and from what we know and must do. Thank you.
Fern, thank you, but after the latest atrocity I just want to sign off, after saying how bad I feel for all Americans, especially in Boulder CO. Yes, it does hurt us all.
I shall have a question about gun legislation -- but not now.
Jay Jordet, I am always impressed with your analysis, and this might be your best post yet that I have seen. Excellent. Exceptional. Outstanding.
Thank you Roland. Metaphors only work when there is a common popular culture. As the Internet homogenizes popular culture everything becomes PewDiePie.
Great analogies, Jay. The game has indeed changed, and the 300 pound suited up defensive players cannot compete in a world full of runners, be they sprinters or marathoners.
I am relieved you understood my point, Ally House. Also, I meant "sports reporters" and I want to add that sports reporters are respected because of their insights into the game. I meant it as a compliment to HCR.
My dyslexia fixed that for me...
A few days ago Greg Olear sent me a private email asking if everything was OK at home. He’s barely seen me in the last few weeks in the comments.
We are no longer chewing our fingernails off. We are no longer waking up in the middle of the night in a sweat. We are no longer obsessed with looking anxiously and with dread at our news sources for the latest atrocity committed by a racist sexist gender-identity-ist human Frankenstein monster with characteristics of a rabid animal.
So guess what? I actually have time to spend on my story project! I am actually relaxed a lot of the time! And feeling joy and satisfaction with myself and my world.
A week or two after I posted here that, against my better judgment, I was wondering if Joe Biden might be the best president of my lifetime, my wife started telling me the same thing. She doesn’t read what I write here, and I don’t usually talk about it. She came up with that echo unprompted.
The Biden administration looks for all the world like my highest expectation for a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren presidency.
Now that is truly remarkable. Another miracle to go along with the miracle of a Senate led by Chuck Schumer and not Mitch McConnell. And of course we couldn’t have some of this legislation if it weren’t for this Senate.
Roland, good morning! I don’t need to vote on the best president of all time, but I can say this is the President , First Lady and administration we need now. His patience , his knowledge of the system, and his love for both country and process. What a package!
Really well stated Cathy 🏆
Tell Greg Olear I really like his writing style, please.
Ok I will!
I sent him an email and copied your note to him. 👍👍
Reply from Greg (unlike me, not a wordy man in emails):
“Thanks to both of you!”
i was wondering where you had gone, also
i’m being something of a ghost on HCR and Greg Olear because of where i am with my sci-fi brighter-future humanity-in-harmony-with-the-earth story project. it’s taking a big part of my attention right now, i am at a critical creative wall with it.
Glad to see you back, Roland! I wondered if you were on a trucking journey. Looking forward to hear more about the story project. 😊
at a critical juncture right now, a wall
Great coverage of the multiple moves by Joe Biden and company to restore the Strength and Dignity of America.
I was born in the sixth year of the Great Depression and raised in the midst of the Sacrifices and Patriotism of WWII. I am proud that my love of my nation can be challenged with temporary crappy Political Styles the American Way of magnificent open sharing of our bounty and our Freedom always triumphs.
I watched those Chinese Apparatchiks try to lecture Secretary of State Antony Blinken about Human Rights obviously not realizing the difference between State sponsored crushing of human rights across the entire spectrum of China and American Government efforts at ending Racial Prejudice that result despite a Civil War that ended State Sponsored Slavery.
It is also amusing to note China’s appraisal of a “waning,” America. Especially in view of their two 1970 style Aircraft Carriers supposedly ready to challenge the might of 11 US Carrier Groups.
But the emergence of the State Department and stern assertion of the Defense Department in India are indications the nation returns to active stalwart policies that are thoughtful, clear cut and the chaos of the past four years not being dumped in The dust bin of History.
I am joyous I lived long enough to see my values back in the Shared Public Square.
You sound like my father did, optimis,tic and full of hope for our country. I too share this hope and optimism. But we must end the practice of the filibuster as it stands. The troglodytes like Mitch are still determined to rebuild our Democratic Republic into an oligarchy wherein the people serve the leaders. Serfdom should not be one of the options going forward.
I'm not at all certain that this kind of American boosterism is healthy. Our oppression of lower caste people (in particular Black people) is legendary and ongoing. It is instructive to read Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and note that the Nazis admired our racial model but thought in some cases we went too far! Very little has changed in the way race is viewed in this country and white supremacy is on the rise, not waning. We are not a free country in any meaningful way; corporations run the country and have their hands on the levers of power and control in a totalitarian way that China must envy. Voter suppression is worsening, but has always been a feature of our "democracy." And our influence in the world IS waning, in that China is correct, but this is not a bad thing. The U.S. taking the moral high ground while supporting rapacious capitalism and racial apartheid was always suspect and retreating back to being one nation among many rather than the supposed avatar of Freedom and Democracy is good for us and good for the world.
I agree add add that James Baldwin predicted that While Supremacy would destroy the US unless as he put it “white people figure out why they needed to invent the nigger” .
Baldwin debating William Buckley at Cambridge in 1965 is spellbinding.
Thank you
https://youtu.be/5Tek9h3a5wQ
Consider the Human Rights conditions of the US and China.
China has an avowed, official and active suppression of anything not approved by the central Chinese Government. The suppression of the Uigher Muslims people amounts to a form of genocide by way of snuffing a culture.
Matching anything in the way of cultural and democratic cleansing in Hong Kong is not possible anywhere. in US History.
In fact US history is rife with the Human Rights destructive practices but each time Slavery and the continued Regional denial of equality, Native American Destructive Practices and the dismal treatment of Japanese and Asians in
This is a straw man argument. I never said that China is the good guy in this equation, merely that they have a point when it comes to the U.S. They can be right in what they say while being entirely wrong in who they are.
... who they are...
Is it wrong to be Chinese?
I was speaking of Chinese governmental leaders.
WWII has morphed into anguished remorse and attempts at corrective measures and even reparations.
In the case of "waning," the vaunted Chinese might is obviously superficial and considering the marginal survival of great parts of the population is not sustainable.
China, like its South China Sea "islands," of dredged spoils now eroding faster than can be replenished is a Potemkin Edifice that totters on fragmentation while pretending unassailable strength.
Air-sea battles like the Coral Sea or Midway cannot be won again. Any country that tries to win a 21C war relying on aircraft carriers as in WW2 will end up with trillions of dollars and thousands of lives on the ocean floor. Britain won the 1982 Falklands War, the last fought in conventional mid-20C style. But it revealed that surface vessels are virtually indefensible against missile assault, which is remarkably cost-effective as well as lethal. Far better to work toward peaceful resolution of conflicts.
M Hastings & S Jenkins, Battle for the Falklands
G Smith, Battle Atlas of the Falklands War 1982
Hmm, now we're in TC territory, the man who has written over 40 books, mostly on WW2. I find your words heartening, TPJ, because it suggests that war is becoming obsolete.
War between advanced militaries, I should say. We still have the drug cartel wars in Mexico and elsewhere, the small militias that terrorize innocent people.
And when countries in the Middle East construct defense systems to counter drones, even that weapon will eventually become obsolete.
Glad you are here. And thank you for perspective
The lead Chinese diplomat accuses the U.S. of arrogance and hypocrisy when it presents itself as a global champion of democracy and human rights. There is, unfortunately, considerable truth in his criticism. All too often, our foreign policy advances not our proclaimed ideals but the economic interests of our corporations. A step in the right direction would be to reduce the powerful influence of our war (not "defense") industry, but the Biden Administration shows no sign of doing this. If it tried, it's likely the Dems would lose the 2022 and 2024 elections.
As he left office, Eisenhower warned about the growing influence of a powerful military-industrial complex. Subsequent decades of bloated military spending, and an attendant proclivity of belligerence, small-scale interventions, and all-out warfare--in service of corporate interests-- have proven his concern to be all too correct.
I’m so glad to hear you bring it back around to HR1/S1 the For The People Act. I was worrying the whole way through that you weren’t going to get there. I bet it is hard to hear us newbies and amateurs commenting on your project. Yet we do.
This is such a crux time though. We are like rock climbers who have gotten to the hard part and rather than study our way through it we are looking up past it to some place that looks easier, looks like it makes more sense. But the crux remains in front of us. Without the For The People Act and thus the ability to elect representative leadership, leadership that voices the actual concerns of the majority of Americans, our future path is for-ordained and it involves partnering with the inhumane monsters in the closet that are no longer contained there for the purpose of short term profit. And, it doesn’t involve an America that shines a light into the future with the integrity to speak to the world’s injustice because we just won’t have that right.
There are so many topics addressed in the comments. So many that preceded your voice on the For The People Act and yet none of them can be sustainably addressed without it. Wouldn’t it be more effective to focus on what is absolutely next, what must be done before anything else can be done?
What if it was full stop until The For The People Act was passed? What ever it takes. It is the discussion, the event, that exposes all else.
Is it time for all of us to ask President Biden to do this job so that we can move forward for longer than 12 months? https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
And what is happening with it now? 12 days it has been in the Senate. What? Is it on a shelf?
Yes, this needs to be priority no. 1. The filibuster is a creation of the Senate. Way behind the times. Get rid of it, modify it, whatever but move on. FTPA can be a massive sea change BACK to democracy.
This is one time that I am actually regretting my not developing a on line presence via FB, Twit and the like. I just had a conversation with my wife about this. She does enjoy FB and has lots of useful information coming through that venue that I also benefit from. However, in asking her to post the letter to the president her reality is that the HATE blow back will be so fierce as to affect her too strongly to post it. I respect her in this and believe it is a true reality for her and most likely for many others. This renders those platforms available only for the promotion of ideas that the haters promote such as Biden tripping on the plane steps. I trip and I'm 67. He is 78!
It is probable that the White House only responds when thousands of letters arrive saying the same thing. Therefore, those of us like me who generally lead lives that don't generate lots of contacts or the ability to speak loudly are compromised in our representation. Hate is always loud. Considered thought not so much.
I haven't the solution to this,,, yet. Any Ideas?
Just keep doing your part. Then you wont have any regrets. Remember the ripple effect. No effort made in good conscience is wasted. And I need to hear you.
Patrick, you are absolutely correct to acknowledge your wife’s reticence to post things that will generate hateful blowback. No matter how reasonable the argument might be, there will be those that pick an “in your face” argument. I’ve unfriendly many of them. But another tactic might be for her to create a “subset” group of like minded friends and when posting something just post to that group and not the entire group. It takes a bit of work up front to choose the members, but once created and named, it’s there for the choosing.
Hello Patrick, please keep writing and calling. The White House and Congress consider each communication as representing 100 other citizens. We don't need conventional contact-rich lives to express the prayers of millions (pace Horace Greeley's 1862 "The Prayer of Twenty Millions"). We have more power than we know.
Regarding the hate blowback - one can control one's audience on FB by posting only to friends. If one posts to the general public, those posts can be attacked by persons unknown. I do tend to post to the public however (just because I'm ornery) and then, when attacked, I block and/or report those who come at me. The same is true of Twitter. Just block. Haters will be haters, but we don't have to allow them into our "spaces" and "pages." I've been sharing HCR's letters every day on both platforms and have been successful in convincing a few to sign on with her. One never knows who might get the HCR bug!
But the problem comes when some of your so called "friends" attack what you've said. There are people still on my FB feed that have been friends, or relatives. I can unfriend them all but I would rather not have to do that to some of them (cousins and in-laws) so I just leave them out of the smaller group and post general stuff, like pictures of my cats, to everyone.
True. I have had to "hide" things from one cousin and one friend...I can't cut them out of my life! Most of my family know that politically we are at complete odds, so we have an understanding not to go "there"!
You can also specify per post who can see it. You can make a particular post visable to only Uncle Larry and Bishop Tutu if you want.
It is possible to write to the president on whitehouse.gov, without being on public social media.
I have written to the White House directly and posted that letter on HCR a few days ago I will repost in case anyone wants to use it or some of it or forward it to others. At this point I am simply not giving up but trying to get others (more Others) to send something as well. Here is the letter and link if any one is interested.
.... https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Mr. President I would like to do what ever I can to encourage you to support the For The People Act. I know this is in process but I cannot personally tell you how important I feel the passage of this act is. There are many details to your day as president, I’m sure, but I feel that passage of this act relates to all, ALL, of the details of what is happening in our country from racial violence, to international trade, and to bringing our population towards more involvement in its government.
I am writing because I feel that without your visible leadership on this issue no matter what else you may accomplish it will be dust in the wind of a history that is further sustained by minority power in the US. This would simply be a tragedy of enormous proportion. I feel that this requires frequent, clear, visible leadership from the top.
What I understand now is that you are not speaking out visibly and frequently because you feel that this is the proper functioning of our government where you allow the house and the senate to ‘do their jobs’ and also because you feel that it would bring you into a position of having to decide for or against the filibuster in its current form and you “believe in unlimited debate” in the senate. I submit to you that we, the People, were just barely able to deliver you to the White House with an even split in the senate. We, the people, need your leadership in bringing the For The People Act through the senate. The filibuster in its current form doesn’t, from my perspective, encourage debate at least not the public, visible debate on the senate floor that I would like. In its current form the filibuster ends debate, empties the chamber and stifles even the process of bringing potential change forward.
I strongly urge you, as I did with my personal vote, to become loud and visible on this issue. We need this as a country and I need it as an individual if I am to maintain faith in our system of government.
Thank you for the link and the example. I have sent my letter.
Thanks for re-posting your letter, Patrick. I hope others will take you up on it as I did and send a letter to the WH too, as well as their senators. Doesn't take much time when you've already done the heavy lifting (writing) for us.
Done
And posted on fb
Thank you! Done!
Done! Letter sent!
Another option is to create a gmail account solely for writing political letters, and not look at what comes back.
Thank you, Patrick, for trying to keep this in the forefront. I thought of you this morning as I read Heather's letter. I'm afraid Dems are too habituated to playing nice and won't end the filibuster to get this passed. What else can we do to encourage them?
I also just emailed my senators. They're moderate Dems and I couldn't find anything on their websites about the bill. Afraid they're going to face challenges to their office, they may play nice, so I asked them to please not do that and to support the bill and get vocal about it. Thinking a LTE is the next step.
And here's a response from one of them, Maggie Hassan. I'm posting it here because it has some good language for including in future LTEs and letters to other lawmakers:
Thank you for contacting me regarding S. 1, the For the People Act of 2021. I value your opinion and appreciate you taking the time to write to me.
We must defend and strengthen our democratic institutions, and stand up for the democratic principles and values that define our nation. That is why I joined my colleagues in introducing the For the People Act of 2021, which includes fundamental reforms that will restore public trust in our democracy, protect our institutions, and ensure that our government works for and represents all people.
These reforms would help protect the right to vote, promote and protect mail and absentee voting, fix our broken campaign finance system, root out dark money in the political system, combat foreign interference in our elections, and take on corruption in politics. New Hampshire has a strong record of administering fair and free elections, which this law would not change. Rather, the For the People Act would help ensure that all Americans have the same opportunities to participate in our democracy. This is a large bill with a number of significant provisions, and I am open to feedback and continued work to ensure that this bill works for New Hampshire.
Please rest assured that I will do everything in my power to ensure the integrity of our democracy and our democratic institutions, and that I will encourage my colleagues in the Senate, on both sides of the aisle, to do the same.
LTE?
Sorry, letter to the editor.
Dems arent too nice. They are ethical. Make it an ethics issue and they will act.
Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes. If the GOP is allowed to suppress the vote to the degree it is trying to, all else is moot. Thanks for the link to the WH contact page. Will do this right now. My niece lives in AZ, so I will send her this info with a copy of the letter you wrote and ask her to contact Sen. Sinema.
Done.
Thank you for the link. I just sent my own impassioned message to the POTUS.
It's unwise to introduce a bill unless it will pass, or has a good chance. Jumping the gun would be counterproductive. Think about the hundreds of times the GQP voted to kill the ACA when there was no chance of succeeding. It did not advance their agenda beyond fundraising from Deplorables.
This is the kind of reasoning I would like to understand. I can see your point but what does that mean for next steps for the bill from the perspective of supportive democratic senators and for the executive branch? It has been my understanding that Sinema AZ is most likely waiting for something. That she wouldn't hold up S1 or split with the Dem's to kill the bill out of hand and that Manchin is in a similar position. He doesn't want to give up the filibuster but would support S1 if pressed or at least wouldn't want to be the one who killed it. Thus, neither would choose to kill S1 but they haven't been publicly put to the task. Rather the focus has been on the filibuster, which hasn't even been called for S1 as yet, there is simply that assumption.
Therefore the only way to move this along is either to engage in non public back room negotiation with them thus without using the public leverage that could come from exposing the process or for the president to say that the bill must pass and to keep talking about it publicly and specifically detailing what is holding up the bill. What I don't want to see happen is that the bill sits with no action as if it isn't important and public focus is never brought to bear. It seems it shouldn't be possible that the Dems could just loose focus but if you look at the generally topic-ing of the news that is what you see.
Something that has been wandering around in my mind for the last couple of years is the possibility of our country itself breaking apart in the sense of beginning to function as a set of regions building relationships and coalitions to get things done. States have always done this kind of collaboration, but it seems to me that there is developing an increasing tendency for state governments to turn to each other for ideas, mutual support, and coordination of actions. I note that New England states have coordinated border openings and closings (speaking of state borders, not Canada here), quarantine periods, etc. as an example. Despite some distinct differences in politics, these seem to be effective. This is going on in other geo regions as well, some well, some contentious. I think the effort at base is one of convenience as well as necessity, particularly when the other guy was in office and there was no national coordination going on. That has changed to a remarkable degree since Biden/Harris took office, but there are still uncertainties, particularly around the ability of the Senate to return to a functioning body that is able to pass legislation that states rely on to recover economically and people to recover their lives and communities. I am conjecturing here, but I wonder if interstate collaboration will continue to increase as a practical matter to ensure that we have, for instance, functioning infrastructure, trade among states, and the exchange of ideas that can move us forward. No idea if I'm blowing air out my ears with this, and certainly no sense if this would help unite us or result in stresses that could lead to a kind of balkanization. I can see it being a positive thing, but I can also see it going the other way, manipulated by some of the politicians who've lost a sense of public good. I don't have an answer, just a question that brings with it a worry.
An aside: I am still up because one of my smoke alarms apparently got a bad battery in the changeover, and is beeping every half minute. AND I CAN'T FIND THE EFFING 9 V BATTERIES! The downside of living in a small, picturesque VT village is that there is no place to buy batteries in the middle of the night without driving about 25 miles and back. Nope. Gonna go bury myself in my bed with a pillow covering my ears.
Good thinking, Annie. Interstate regionalism, in the form of planning, coordinating and resource sharing, has grown in the last four decades as Republicans have shrunk the role of federal govt. It accelerated as the Trumpsky admin flat-out abdicated its responsibilities, notably climaxing during the pandemic. A more activist Biden admin is an improvement, but regionalism will remain as a necessary supplement in the future. It's usually good when different centers of power cooperate together on core policy matters benefiting the public.
Just take the battery out and replace it when you get a chance
If her alarm is wired in, taking the battery out may not solve the problem.
Wired in, with battery backup. The whole house beeped. Fortunately, pushing the reset button on the errant alarm stopped that, and just left the one beep every 30 seconds. By that time I decided I could manage that. Today I will go buy some 9v batteries and also talk to the guy at the hardware store about replacements for the smoke alarms. Fortunately, the connectors are still in use. Oh, god, I need coffee first.
Coffee may not solve our problems, but it keeps our mouths and hands happy while we figure out what to do. Hm. Mine is cooling off. Better drink it fast and make another pot!
That's when the problem started, Dick. Annual changeover, but either one battery was not good, ooooor.... I didn't get it in tight enough. In frustration, I gave the housing a couple of good whacks (the ceilings are high and the ladder is in the barn and I am NOT going our to the barn at 3 in the morning in my night clothes to lug the ladder up a flight of stairs, right angle it through the mud room and through the house to the parlor!) After I have a couple cups of coffee, I'll think about it. Right now the dang thing is quiet. But it is waiting for me, I know.
I should have known that my simple response wouldn't address your problem. I might have been tempted to shoot the thing, not with a canon but something proportionate to the problem. Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
I whacked it a couple times with a broom handle before heading to bed. Nothing changed then, but overnight the beeping stopped and the indicator light blinked back on. Apparently the broom handle was adequate to the job. At least for now.
I had that happen to a smoke detector that needed a tall ladder to get to...of course, I did not own said ladder. My alarm clock has sounds on it & the smoke detector bended with the chirping cricket sounds. I could deal with the crickets.
I continually have this thought. There is nothing truly united anymore. Arrggghh. My ears hurt for you.
As long as Republicans are in control and eliminating the electoral system....what is there to cooperate about when government is in their eyes the problem?
When you look at other successful federal/regionalized systems....like Germany but unlike France......you require fewer actors in the first place; 50+ regions is at least 5xs too much. The first principle is a clear definition of respective roles and of the local delegation of federal policy implementation powers and resources to the regions based upon federally defined strategic objectives and allowance for locally defined means to attain them.......AND based on a constitution and a legal system that are devized to allow it to function and not preventing it from representing the interests of the people as voiced by all of them.
Oligarch thinking trims the weak fat off the profit making meat. Then the meaty states must be centrally controlled to efficently compete on the world markets. The break up of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovikia is one example. Yugoslavia into Serbia, Croatia, and a third country is an example of another break up. Sudan and South Sudan divided the oil rich off the poorer geography. Instead of divide and conquer, it is divide and spoil. Oligarchs are not loyal to any country. Their country is money. They have houses in several geographies and custom bunkers in other geographies.
An alternative might be localism with local markets, but usually Oligarchs do not allow that until they starve in their bunkers. * I have heard that large cargo planes cannot fly when the temperature reaches over 110 degrees. Cargo ships still depend upon oil so maybe only a hotter climate will change global markets. Humans will live under ground or under salt water and only go outside in modified space suits. We will become fungus and algae farmers and eat insects for protein. There, problem solved in an armchair. No voting required, just coast to our shared conclusion.* sarcasm
One or two other considerations entered into the breakup of the central European countries that you use as examples and not the least are......
....the break-up of Treaty of Versailles errors committed in making the Austro-Hungarian Empire disappear
....Ethinic, language and other cultural factors made nonsense of both the "South Slav Dream".
....Historical oppression of the Croats by the Hungarians, Croatian rivalries with Serbs and combined memories of the Ottoman oppression were devastation waitning to happen for Yugoslavia
....Economic, ethnic and language differences were quite enough for the remnant of Austro-German Imperialism represented by the anachronism of Czeckoslovakia
....The Communist regimes and a second world war have passed under the bridge since their formation.
The Oligarch Model fits better where the communist parties were more successful in maintaining some popular support and particularly in Bulgaria with their pre-existing "mafia" connection.....just like the Russian experience.
Useful reading on these subjects would perhaps be "From Peoples into Nations" by John Connelly.
This model however still has some appeal for instance in Italy where the norther hard right parties would dearly love to be shod of the problem of the south and to be able to stop paying for it.....and that since 1870. However, their regionalized system is a perfect example of what doesn't work...at national or local levels whatever the subject you are talking about. The question that intrigues me here is very simple "Is this an example of Reagan being right?".....but no, not even there as they have a health system that works and is efficiently dealing with the Covid crisis despite the administration.....and life is good, contentious without being violent, concentrated upon enjoying the good things in life that money cannot buy.
Thanks Stuart, for a helpful, concise glance at post-WW1 developments, and the recommendation. We tend to think of recent or current national boundaries in naturalistic terms, as if they always existed or always should exist. The Treaty of Paris (Versailles) made decisions which were partisan and contested even when the intentions were good, though they often were not.
Here are some recs on the aftermath and legacies of the Great War in Eastern Europe.
N Davies, Europe
_____, Vanished Kingdoms
Lewis Namier, numerous mid-20C essays
D Reynolds The Long Shadow
The problem I have with your scenario is that I'm too old to last through the transition, but young enough to experience plenty of the coasting to starvation (with all the violence, upheaval, and endless meetings about possible solutions that are never acted upon). Selfish thoughts...
I'm having one of those days when the worst of the science fiction projections for Planet Earth seem the most likely. I live on a lake which is being treated with alum for the next week and am trying to figure out where I stand on the struggle between two groups over how the lake will be managed. Right now, it looks like one group is composed of rich, white male boat owners who want the lake stripped of vegetation to make it better for ski-boats, and the other group is a very loose bunch of property owners still trying to decide whether their goal is cleaning up the water, not paying the taxes raised to pay the bond for the alum treatment, protecting the lives of lake fish and the eagles that feed on them, or keeping the ski-boats from eroding their lakefronts. I've offered to build a website for the second group, but their scatter-shot approach is making my head spin. This is why my political efforts have mostly been voting, marching, and postcard writing. I hate meetings and endless discussion of goals. And to think that in my youth I thought diplomacy would be an interesting career path!
If Poe were here now, it would be the 3 am smoke alarm beep in place of the pendulum. Quite sure of it.
Or the telltale heart that will not stop beating
My senses are numb after drinking a whole Cask of Amontillado.
After that, you must be saying to yourself, "Nevermore!"
Oh my, you are "on" tonight, Lanita. I am speechless.
Good ideas. Regional coalitions. One of the great ones in the midwest in the Great Lakes Compact (I thinks that's its name) that also includes some Canadian provinces that regulates water quality and water draw downs from the Great Lakes and, in so doing, provides means for protecting vital resources, build climate change practices, binds cities together for other common purposes. In you suggestions I see potential for achieving multiple objectives and serve as models for collaboration on national and regional goals and legislation. National and regional initiatives might be more important than federal-state partnerships if we want initiatives designed to address needs identified for the nation at large to be effective and sustainable beyond one administration or one party's reign. Guess I am also suggesting the importance of interdependence of states, as regional entities might bring validity to working solutions to say an infrastructure issue like broadband or a societal need for quality public higher education or an economic need such as living wage and labor protections.
A friend of mine is involved in some way with that coalition. It's very impressive. There are many of this kind of thing on various cross-border issues. All technically require approval from federal govt. There are even more informal collaborations both between states and even local governments along borders to deal with practical matters. VT and NH have at least one shared school district, for instance (I think another one is being launched). Bridges on river borders are common: WA and OR are in a joint committee to work out the details on expanding the I-5 bridge and possibly others crossing the Columbia River. WA and Idaho share a highly vulnerable aquifer and have a joint groundwater protection program (this one is interesting because of the very different political philosophies of the two states). VT and northern NY are looking at a possible broadband coalition, much needed.
These kind of cooperative projects and programs are simply a standard way of getting things done across state borders. Some involve fed regulation, espec if commerce is involved (as Bonneville Power Admin in the NW). Others are as simple as an interstate MOU. And yeah, Texas screwed up when they tried to bypass fed regulation by keeping their electrical grid within their borders. They will pay big time for that at several levels.
But what I think may be beginning to happen are regions choosing to work together on common issues across borders in ways not limited to a single issue. This has always happened, and it is often informal. But there are regions with formalized relationship with agreed upon general goals, and I see those relationships being used more than in the past, obviously for pandemic planning, but also anticipating economic recovery and coordination. That covers a lot of territory and more complex agreements.
I don't do forecasts: I don't know how this will play out. States will continue to coordinate specific projects with specific goals as they always have since we first agreed as a nascent nation to use the same money throughout. But this is a bit different, and I wonder if there is a possibility that we will start relying more on our regional collaborations than depending on the central government to initiate regional efforts. I have wonderings about the various shapes that could take. It might not happen at all, if our federal government proves capable of assuming the role of coordination, enabling, providing the grounding for those kinds of needs. Or it could lead to a blended federation, something more like Canada. There are so many directions we could go in. And whatever direction we go in, it will happen organically, I think. We Americans are really not very good at planning, and tend to respond to things as they develop, ad hoc. I kind of wish I were younger so I could watch: this will take a while, even if we end up resuming the pattern we started with in the mid-20th century. I'm pretty sure we won't go back further than that (speaking in terms of structure and fed/state relationship), and I think that there's a chance we could end up being an entirely different kind of nation.
Connect to below: ... that allows the individual states and counties within to overcome provincial traditions? Might these enable the rural and urban communities to break the downward spiraling of the quality of life and economic security of the citizens? Might this make these same state more competitive in ways beyond lowest wages and educational level? Imagine what labor organizing could look like if the challenge and solutions derive across these states? But, I do fantasize some days.
I wish I could be around as well. As you point to, there are many good examples of how-to-get-things-done around to learn from and immulate. As you note, the federal government has to power to enable collaboration through initiative and taxation. Getting needs widely addressed successfully means making the solutions fit the size of need and capacity to accept the solution that makes sense at a more micro-level. My point, but seems it might fit into your vision. I sometimes wonder what a welface/poverty solution look like were it to come from a regional view of several of the most impoverished southern states. Would they or could they achieve a vision and series of policies and a strategies that follow from such and a standards and timeline
The smoke alarm sending intermittent "beeps" when a new battery is needed in the middle of the night is the reason I bought ear plugs. : )
Alas, janjamm, I am one of those unfortunate people whose ears are unable to hold earplugs. And it is darn hard to sleep with industrial level ear protectors on (I have two pair). The pillow worked well enough and this morning the battery indicator light says all is well. Right now I just don't want to try to figure that out. I have a hunch it means that I need to simply replace the whole set of smoke alarms. It's probably time.
Earplugs can be more distracting than the noise they block out.
Glad the pillow solution worked for you! I did try several different styles until I found the right fit. I have had my smoke alarms since 2007 and live in a 600 sf 2-story, row house in Baltimore. The alarms are tied into one system and I haven't replaced an alarm, but I have had to replace 9V batteries. Sleep well.
Thank you for sharing your middle of the night musings! I don't know about the breaking into regions part, but I really do like the collaboration and coordination part. We here in my state just endured a terrible winter storm with no power and no water because of NO collaboration and coordination in the sphere of energy. Whether any lessons were learned is doubtful. But aside from energy, I am thinking that when our WATER wars commence in a few years, we'll either have to work together or lose large portions of our country to famine and drought. This makes no sense, when we have water aplenty in various places at various times...harnessing and sharing (collaborating and coordinating) could be the solution. Perhaps the Biden/Harris infrastructure bill will be one way to initiate some of this across-state-lines sharing, much like the work of the CCC back in Depression days.
Thanks for sounding the alarm, Ellen. The water wars have already begun, with the prominent Standing Rock and other pipeline battles. Also in Bolivia, Darfur, South Sudan, and in Chile on last night's news.
"Even the Rain" is a memorable film about the Cochabama Water War of 2000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Even_the_Rain
There is always water conservation education, you know, something the kooky hippies implored back in the day. It makes too much sense for entitled Americans.
I believe envisioning a better future is important history making:
You mention the coming "waterwars"; I think the Senate should represent water sheds. The lower 48 states would have about 13 regions. The citizens who voted for the "Science Senate" would elect 3 senators each, representing two senators with Masters degrees in the physical sciences and one senator with a Masters degree in the social sciences. Of course college education would be required to be free in these subject areas. Citizens already experience different geographies between Representatives and senators, so the Science Senate would cross state boundaries to represent policies focused on water sheds.
Thank you HCR! You have clarified the state of the union. You have made clear the agenda of President Biden and his cabinet. You have outlined obstructions to the President's efforts to reclaim the government for the American people. We must not get caught up in an argument about Red states and Blue states. Red or Blue citizens. All states, All citizens are American. President Biden understands that.
I am continually amazed at the stark contrast and growing gulf between our two major political parties. It is not exaggerating to say that the near-term future of democracy in America hangs in the balance. Ever since the founding of our country, the electorate has, slowly but surely ben expanded (with some obvious backsliding along the way). We can't afford to lose the momentum of this moment in history. Biden has many important policy initiatives deserving of consideration, but kiss them goodbye if HR 1 does not pas when it gets to the Senate.
“be absolutely devastating for Republicans in this country.”
There's another option. Republicans can shift their agenda to be closer to aligning with the majority of Americans. Hell, they "shift" anything and everything else that suits their sponsors... uh, I mean purpose.
One key thing for the benefit of the nation would be for the Republicans to collectively pull their heads out of their ass, the way they are operating now is like a headless chicken, with zero policy ideas that benefit the nation as a whole, with one half of the elected “public servants” MIA, the half that has the nation’s interest at heart is trying to engage with a void. The Republicans are either going to become a party that contributes to the evolution of the nation or they are going to disappear, from the appearance of things, I as a 40 year Republican think it will be the latter.
But they have power and the ability to hang on to it. How the Republican Party became about power and not service is somewhat unfathomable, even though we know its history. These two years are a temporary respite.
Did come there are many like you too. We just have to hear them
If Repugnants like McConnell were able to overcome the vacuum that has their heads firmly up their rears, the resultant effect would be like the igniting of a fusion reactor and we would have free energy forever. Both pie in the sky fantasies.
The filibuster is a relic of Jim Crow and needs to be gone. Full stop.
I agree — I want the filibuster obliterated in the interest of true democracy.
What's the point of "imposing" partisanship when all the cooperation comes from one side. This effectively nullifies the peoples vote and thus meets the Republican's objectives and not the peoples'.
Today I am mourning Boulder.
And every formerly “safe” place you might suddenly be shot because.
Me too. I adore Boulder.
I am too.
Good Heavens! Our arrogant self-righteous attitude dictating what and how other countries should act as a cover for our own imperialist materialist and power hungry interests has become utterly sickening. Our own democracy hangs by a tenuous thread because of our ever expanding allowances given corporations and the wealthy not just expand but to cement their pre-eminence over the public will. Our abominable treatment of our own people - no health care for all (the only country in the so-called 1st world), 1 in 5 children with food scarcity, structural racism hurting blacks, browns, yellows, militarized police and police thuggery, evisceration of voting rights, caging children at the border, "As of June 2020, the United States had the highest prisoner rate, with 655 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population. El Salvador, Turkmenistan, Thailand, and Palau rounded out the top five countries with the highest rate of incarceration.".......and this "48.8 million Americans , including 16.2 million children, live in households that lack the means to get enough nutritious food on a regular basis. As a result, about 1 in 5 children go hungry at some point during the year."(google), and this...."800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad"....When did we become pure as the driven snow dictating to others about the unfairness of their elections? "the U.S. performed at least 81 overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections during the period 1946–2000. Another study found that the U.S. engaged in 64 covert and six overt attempts at regime change during the Cold War." (Google). "The" imperial power IS waning. Sending more dragon breaths to singe other countries is breath better redirected toward cleaning up our own democracy.
Yes. China sucks and is demonstrating the beginnings of some serious power plays. We can criticise all we want, but the past 4-5 years have basically destroyed every bit of "cred" we had in the pantheon of nations. The "former guy" and his minions (along with Putin?) saw to it that our leadership role in the world was thoroughly trashed. We forfeited our right to criticise or say anything to other countries about human rights abuses because of serious troubles within OUR borders. The insurrection of January 6th sent shock waves through-out the world and showed WE are just as vulnerable as other countries to populism/fascism. Our power and credibility are all now suspect. It will take a long time to repair the damage done to ruin our reputation. We gave up our leadership position, so China, and Russia to a degree, were there to fill the void. We need to get our own house in order FIRST, but keep a wary eye on powers like China, AND simultaneously "keep our powder dry", as it were.
"Sending more dragon breaths to singe other countries is breath better redirected toward cleaning up our own democracy."
Sorry, China still sucks.
China sucks, we suck. Rather than trying to show that another country sucks more or harder, why don't we work at NOT sucking?
While it is worthwhile to continue a dialogue with China about their human and civil rights records, I agree with Selina that we should be looking more closely at our own egregious behavior. And it isn't the whole of China that sucks, it is the current government. Eventually, the Chinese people will have another revolution (as has regularly happened throughout their long, long, long history) and there will be changes, perhaps even for the better. Certainly, we can refuse to import and purchase products made by the hands of incarcerated Uighurs, but what about products (and tele-services) from within our own prison system made by virtually unpaid workers.
We and other nations essentially "created" China by relocating the bulk of manufacturing to them and their cheap labour force, all done out of pure capitalist greed. Now, the monster we helped create is turning around and biting us all in the ass. All through their history, China learned that the best way to deal with the West was to simply be patient. They have long seen us as highly impatient people and all they have to do is wait things out because we'll screw up eventually. It's brilliant, really. I greatly admire the Chinese many many things, but their current regime (Xi) I don't trust. But then, to be honest, we haven't recently shown ourselves to be that much more trustworthy in the eyes of the world either.
I so appreciate the measured response, Bruce. While the current regime under Xi Jinping in China is more repressive than some previous administrations in our lifetimes, the people of China have the right to try to prosper and advance. When I lived in Beijing in the late 1990's, I had many conversations with ordinary people (taxi drivers, farmers' market merchants, small shop owners, and students) who did not support everything their government does, but who loved their country as much as any American loves this one. I fear that when a government and the people who live under that government are conflated that the result is too often one of fear and violence; vid., the current uprise in violent acts against Asian-Americans (because our former POTUS kept calling COVID-19 "the China virus").
China, Iran, African and Arab nations, Central America, Myanmar, Russia, etc -- all countries containing billions of decent, ordinary people yearning to participate fully in the modern world. They seek to enjoy the rights and opportunities long associated with democratic governance, even as they erode in the West. We must get back to setting an example that others will wish to emulate.
"... we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that [there shall be] a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
-- Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg, Nov 19, 1863
Lanita, Your appreciation for the Chinese people and care for the Uigurs, a Turkic ethnic group, provided an important dimension to our comments. It took me a little while to get there as your 'sucks and sucking' were an amusing distraction.
So what?
I wish there were a way for our comments to come out in an order that makes sense. Because I know your "So what?" needs to be at the beginning of these comments, rather than at the end, where it looks like you are dismissing whatever the last person added to the (very interesting) conversation you started.
There is much to criticize about our country, but I don't think that precludes us from working with other nations, our allies, to stand up to Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, or to call out China for their treatment of the Uighurs and their repression of free speech and democracy in Hong Kong. The last guy gave them a free pass, cozying up to Xi in return for trade deals. I'm glad this administration is being so frank and direct in its stance toward China.
Gina - This from Goodman at Counterpunch: "Maybe Biden is displaying a tough line toward both Russia and China in order to signal Moscow and Beijing that the amateurs of the Trump administration are no longer on the scene, and to convince right-wing critics at home that he is tough enough to handle both states. My concern, however, is that Biden has sanctioned a round of dueling accusations that will get out of control and kill any opportunity to find common ground with key players in the geopolitical community. Another important concern is the danger of further inciting anti-Chinese sentiment in this country, albeit unintentionally, when Asian-Americans are being assaulted in record numbers." counterpunch.org
It may well be intentional.
?
What would that accomplish?
and that feels truly dangerous
This makes sense. Yes, I think Biden is sending a strong signal to both China and Russia that his administration is going to be very different from the previous administration. In my opinion this is good and necessary. Is there a danger that matters could escalate and opportunities for cooperation when interests overlap be lost? Yes. Always. I do, however, believe that both Xi and Putin need to be approached with firmness and resolve. After the public meeting with the Chinese delegation, Blinkin said that during the private session, the conversation was less heated and more amiable. (My words, not his.) This is typical of many of these kinds of negotiations. During the public session, both sides were talking as much to their domestic audiences as to each other.
Regarding inciting further anti-Chinese sentiment, I think, thanks to T***p, that bridge has already been crossed by any individuals who are ignorant enough to confuse governments with individuals, or see Asian-Americans as anything other than Americans whose ancestors, or they, came from Asia.
Thanks for the link to Counterpunch. It looks interesting.
"This is typical of many of these kinds of negotiations. During the public session, both sides were talking as much to their domestic audiences as to each other." This was my thought when I first heard about the public session. And not only to domestic audiences in a broader sense, but particularly to bosses listening in Beijing. In graduate school, we had a visiting Chinese economist come to our China Colloquium who gave a very political talk about the future of Shanghai as the financial center of Asia planned for after Hong Kong's 1997 "hui gui" (return). On each side of him sat two "colleagues" who had come on the trip to Seattle with him. These people contributed nothing to the talk, in fact were probably not even economists, but Party minders to make sure our guest did not step out of line. You could tell by the look on the poor man's face at some of our questions that he wanted to say much more than he was allowed, but that he was very nervous of upsetting his "team".
It would be interesting to know how often our own diplomats have been under similar pressure to toe the political line.
Interesting! And yes, bosses who are listening are likely the prime audience. I may be naive, but my guess is Chinese diplomats are under more pressure than our diplomats.
Love your passion AND your research of the facts. Speak truth to power. What I get grumpy about is what I call "comparison righteousness". As if "We are not as bad as them" makes U.S. alright.
Well, thank you for that cheery feedback Jay Jordet! "comparison righteousness" - apt!
Just two comments. Infrastructure must include a regulated internet system which brings broadband to every community and possibly a community based energy grid as well. And second , no caregiving can not include care for elders, respectful and universal care.
Great points, Sandy! Respectful care for elders included! ❤️🌷