On Saturday, September 7, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump predicted that his plan to deport 15 to 20 million people currently living in the United States would be “bloody.” He also promised to prosecute his political opponents, including, he wrote, lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, and election officials.
On MSNBC Today, in the 'Joy Reid Show', Joy pointed-out that both Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel are Immigrants from Countries without a Deep Democratic Tradition... Neither believes in Democratic Discourse, but rather in a $$$ defined Autocracy... They both believe that they have SuperHuman Intelligence... I suspect that in the Event of a DJT Victory, they expect 'Multiples' on their $$$ Investments in a DJT/Vance Victory...
Both of them are products of Apartheid South Africa, which is why they are fascists and racists. I'd be fine with cancelling their citizenship papers and deporting them.
TC, I was living in the Cape and not yet 9 years old in June 1948 when Malan and his Herstigte Nasionale Party came to power. I left South Africa with my parents over a year later.
I have often wondered what would have become of me if I had grown up there. The more so as my love of the land went deep -- it took me six years to accept that I would not be returning.
Simple. Either acceptance of the conditioning a white kid could expect there, even if his parents and schooling were unconnected with Afrikaner nationalism; or jail... or worse.
Even at age 8, I was thinking for myself, questioning, questioning, but skeptical about many of the answers I was receiving from adults. The most important teaching I had received from my mother, and even if I found it hard to understand the religious aspect of what she told, I took the message to heart:
We are all the children of the one God, so we human beings are all brothers and sisters; regardless of our differences, we are family, and so we must behave towards one another as brothers and sisters. The worst crime possible is to harm or kill others because they look different or have different beliefs.
My mother called this "the crime against God".
I know now what caused her to say these things to me in a darkened room. My parents had just received from my Dad's first cousin, a senior officer in the British medical corps who opened two Nazi concentration camps in 1945, documents and photographs of the second camp: Bergen-Belsen.
Given this message, my skepticism and my feelings about what I saw all around me, I came away deeply opposed to what I saw as the petty tyranny of Apartheid, and the conviction of all humans' deep underlying equality has stayed with me ever since.
I'm not sure that Apartheid conditioning is responsible for Thiel's and Musk's belief in their own superiority, but the combination of intellectual and material wealth makes for the most potent of delusions. These men are titans who take themselves for gods.
ADDENDUM: Christ's warnings about the inherent dangers of wealth apply to ALL acquisitions that are less than essential. These include intellectual wealth, social status and all forms of power in this world, including spiritual power. The problem is not with wealth in itself but with its effect upon us, how we relate to it, for attachment to all the things "added unto" us can so gum us up that we're no longer free to become what we really are. Things, money, status, power come to possess us, not we them...
Uneducated white men are the bulk of Trump's supporters. They believe Trump, Musk, Thiel and the other billionaires who blast their Fascism uninterrupted throughout much of the media.
CNN, the Washington Post and even The NY Times are beginning to report on Trump's mental instability and his Fascist comments, but is it too late to affect the election?
Gary, I thought all the white guys sitting behind death star in Latrobe thought his remarks about Palmer were funny as they all had locker room talk grins. So many have his same views about the world and that include female MAGAs as well. Peter reminds us too of why these people have no idea of what Jesus taught. I have reported here that quote of the week, maybe year, from a MAGA. "Jesus is wrong". The need for carte blanche (provided by death star) for expressing hatred is truly strong.
I give these media no credit. I feel they are reacting to reader blow back, plus the level of ugly crazy getting so high they simply have been embarrassed (not shamed) into reporting, along with a soupcon of hedging bets although that's an uneven game since one side will extract retribution for criticism if they win and the other won't.
DJT's Minions can Receive Information, but are they capable of assimilating it, and changing their Minds? I am Skeptical... I would Venture that they 'Feel', not 'Reason' thru Life... They 'Follow' rather then Question...
The Melting Pumpkin says.."I like the uneducated"...and does the "accordian hands rapist" routine.....Heritage 2025 Cult plans want to eliminate the Department of Education..
The set up for dictataorship is up front and centre.
Yes. It's too late. Brainwashed humans simply cannot mentally any process information that doesn't match their programming. We in the USA promote this conversion of human minds with our liberal definition of free speech and the invention of technology that makes speech with negligible cost. Then we add a a legal system that is unsuited for modern life due to it's archaic "due process".
The stones hanging around our necks chokes our breath and then breaks our backs.
And these pompous media "giants"? The high windows are waiting. Their one dollar sales pitches will soon be gone.
I find difficult to find reliable numbers, but most likely a small plurality of white women voted for Trump. Pretty close to an even split compared to the proportion of white men who voted for Trump, but enough white women voted for him that they don't get to be absolved of responsibility.
Jennifer, so did I. We could not go to South Africa during the summer break while we were in the Peace Corps because of apartheid. We went to Egypt instead and were actually at that time able to go into Tut's tomb. Much later we won a trip to South Africa from all classical radio in Portland. We saw lots of black people living in poverty still and I thought the white South Africans were lucky to have Nelson Mandela as the first president after apartheid ceased to be official policy. We went past a large multistoried building where people had been put into various racial categories.
Peter: What differentiates Musk and Thiel from Mark Cuban? Cuban's background is not South African but Romanian Jewish and Lithuanian, but the wealth is there. I think Heather's article that includes the description by Dorothy Thompson about the characteristics of those who turn Nazi hits the nail on the head. However, the issue is that you can't prevent people from having those characteristics unless there is a long-term plan to revamp the educational system to include critical thinking skills and civics info. I am just hoping the election will turn out positively.
I think what you wrote may have the answer. Cuban's background is Lithuanian, Romanian (talk about Ceausescu being a deterrent to being fascist!), and Jewish. His wonder Cost Plus company is (literally) saving my daughter close to $4,200 for one of her medications! God bless Mark Cuban!
I believe & think that your analysis & prescription for mitigating the vast numbers of people likely to “turn Nazi” is spot on.
Alas, the extreme right wing (God Bless them, for aren’t they our wayward brothers & sisters?)MAGA-Nazis are too thin-skinned to allow “critical thinking & civics info” to pierce the grievance filled racist bubbles in which they live, and their psyches dwell, fester, and mutate.
They don’t want their kids to learn civics info and critical thinking skills that will set them free, and alienate their kids from their cherished White Supremacist & unapologetic cultural traditions.
If a miracle were to happen and thereby standardize “critical thinking skills & civics,” the Nazi incubator parents would homeschool their kids or find/found a parochial school.
“The issue is that you can't prevent people from having those characteristics unless there is a long-term plan to revamp the educational system to include critical thinking skills and civics info.”
Yes. Although perhaps rather than writing "spiritual power", would a better way to express it be "religious power"? Jesus certainly had spiritual power, as does H.H. the Dalai Lama, as did Mahatma Gandhi, and countless other great spiritual leaders past and present, women and men.
kdsherpa, I do see what you're getting at but, first, distinctions between the two aren't always obvious and, more to the point, what could be more grave than the abuse of spiritual power?
This does happen, as with all forms of power.
Maybe, Saying no. 44 in the Gospel of Thomas addresses this.
Jesus said:
"Whoever blasphemes against the Father will be forgiven, and whoever blasphemes against the Son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven either on earth or in heaven."
Hi Peter, knowing you originated in South Africa, I’ll tell you a story. Before I settled in Florence, Italy in 1977, while traveling on my student Euro pass one hot day as many passengers often stood by opened windows on the trains fro catch a breeze, I began chatting with a man standing next to me. By his accent, I knew he was from South Africa. We were just shooting the breeze when he asked me why not move to South Africa. I asked him why and he to,d me the labor was cheap. After a brief pause, I quietly returned to my seat without answering him and reflected on his natural racism.
After spending days in a pensioni in Florence having gotten the lay of the land and I knew where the cheap places to eat were, I invited two dorm mates out to the university of Florence cafeteria dinner being about 40 cents American. One boy was Dutch and the other Rhodesian. When we took our trays, it was crowded and no tables were available. I saw one in the distance with a Nigerian boy eating by himself and walked over and asked him if we could join him. Yes he said I I sat down, the Dutch boy sat down but when the Rhodesian neared he paused, looked around and suggest we sit at another table already occupied. I resisted but he went over to another table. I k ew what was happening. I never knew if the Nigerian picked up on it but after a short few minutes, the African boy finished eating and left and at that moment, the Rhodesian came over to sit down. I immediately told him he wasn’t welcomed at our table. The Dutch boy asked to forgive but I refused and told him he had insulted my hosting them. The next morning I arose early to pee and I noticed the bunk bed where the Rhodesian boy slept was carefully made up and he left.
I recall feeling sad that day because I had this notion that us young generation were going to resist the biases of the older generation and the reality was that it wasn’t going to happen. At least it didn’t for me that day. And I wondered if that Rhodesian boy finally learned right from wrong all these years later.
I could tell you quite a few, but no, I wasn't born in South Africa, I spent three years there with my parents -- Dad, a naval officer -- as a kid, from late 1946 to late 1949. Those years marked my life.
I find myself agreeing with much of what you say, but I'm not sure what you mean by intellectual wealth. If you mean gifted with intelligence, then while Musk for instance seems perhaps average or a bit above average (which is pretty low apparently), he has not achieved his wealth by powering himself up there through sheer intellectual ability. He began with advantages of funding and blew past obstacles others might have been slowed down by like laws and morals and ethics while amassing to himself wealth which eventually itself begat wealth. Just looking at Xitter, one sees that past a certain point of wealth one no longer needs to be smart or choose wisely because the margin for error and stupidity is just so large.
If by intellectual wealth you mean access to formal education and the real absorption of education's gifts, or a wealth of high quality information through informal channels, then I would propose that it is a dearth of these types of personal wealth that produces petty men with petty (yet grandiose) goals of power.
If you mean these guys were sent to the best schools to acquire the mechanical tools for gathering wealth while skipping classes that might have enriched their spirits and given them a broader education, then okay... I think I'd call that access to opportunities others are restricted from accessing. I'd have to think hard to come up with a succinct way of saying that phrase. Entitlement comes close but isn't specific enough.
I'd like to come back to you on this, but it is very late here in Europe and I'm tired.
Maybe "intellectual wealth" is not an ideal term for what I'm referring to, but isn't it obvious that there is something vain and beside the point about the accumulation of knowledge for its own sake, especially when no wisdom accrues to the inveterate collector? Typically, some people accumulate knowledge as a means to power. Again, power for its own sake, at best to free oneself so that one can do whatever one likes without let or hindrance. At worst, to manipulate others.
Because of the information work I did as a young man, I developed a magpie's instincts. But... did I, do I really need to carry so much junk around with me?
The main point is surely to avoid accumulating what is not useful to anyone and, rather, to accumulate only what will help free oneself of conditioning and make for inner freedom.
Plainly, there's nothing wrong with being knowledgeable, nothing wrong with expertise, but the current popular rejection of experts is not entirely a matter of violent ignorance on the part of those who rubbish them, it is also -- more important -- a response to those who shut themselves up in ivory towers and allow their professional mask to take over from their human face.
It's not so much what we do as how we relate to our actions and whether they free us to find our true selves or simply feed bad habits.
Usually, I feel happy when one or two people for whom I have special respect express a liking for something I have written, or add a perceptive comment of their own.
I want to say I am rather surprised, and most gratified, that something like the considerations in this Addendum, which may seem abstruse to people today, should apparently touch quite a few members of this community, where we are concerned primarily with current events in historical context.
But is this not a time that compels us all to get back down to basics?
As some one who “loves” South Africa I want to comment. How could I not “love” South Africa ? Posh resorts, magnificent animals, fantastic scenery, great food and wine ! Rolling and scheduled power outages, crumbling townships and infrastructure and the malaise of a Mandelian promise gone frighteningly wrong. I had a high school friend who met and married a South African Boer she met at UCLA in the 60s. She was an orphan and we all paid for her 6 week tramp steamer sea voyage to Durban so she could meet his family and get married. She went on to have 6 children and a very interesting life- sending the amah out to search the yard for poisonous snakes before the children went out, being robbed one New Years Eve while in Formal dress by a gang in their driveway, and being widowed in a foreign land. My husband and I were in the wine country and met her youngest son who was a student at the University in Stellenbosch for a drink. It was chilling. He was a very handsome, half American ………. nazi. Our friend was still alive but very ill so I could never ask her” how” ? I have been alive and have seen it all - the great promises and the thudding reality. Maybe, one more time, I can live in a time of great promise.
Seems to me that I find a steady correlation between some god lovers who handily interpret their supposed love for the supreme aspect of it that they translate into being one on earth i.e. if Jesus could be half god why not them?
And then be godlike because of their dominance with money.
The problem's with people's acquired IDEA of God, which they confuse with the object of their belief. Only, the very idea of God as an object of anything or anyone makes no sense. Some may, of course, take your last two phrases literally -- which I've just said in another way. Delusion.
I don't call myself "Christian", yet I take exception to the very idea of "half god", both in general and in relation to Christ. Having flesh, blood and a human form doesn't make one half anything. It is we who make ourselves into caricatures of what we are.
This is no place in which to develop discussion of man's limitless greed, for which, as Seneca remarked, all Nature is too small. But it may be useful to challenge the shards of an idea that some like to present as "Great"; too often the ultimate pretext for crime.
As a little girl, we used to sing this song each week in Sunday School: "God is Love, God is Love". Ever since then, that is how I have perceived "God". (Although prior to that, at age 3 and learning to read, I ran to my mother shouting excitedly, "Mommy! I know who God is!!" "Who?" she asked. "God is a dog!! G-O-D, D-O-G!" She was not impressed. Having said that, I sometimes wonder...
"the combination of intellectual and material wealth makes for the most potent of delusions." Wow. Thank you for that truth, Peter. Your words ring of so much authenticity. I had a similar, though less intensely consequential journey in losing my (Catholic) religion. And at the time, I knew nothing of their covering up of crimes against children.
Hiro, she was Jewish, not Christian. She was a good and wise woman who practiced love and kindness and avoided harmful actions, and what else is religion if not that? For my part, I am not formally Christian, but revere Christ.
Barbara, Bill Adair, founder, or one of them, of Politifact, has a new book, "Beyond the Big Lie", which I'm currently reading. He talks about Murdock, how he bought up the Aussie papers, then the tabloid press in the UK and we know what he did here. According to an examination by the Times, "his influence has given him influence over world affairs, in a way few private citizens have ever had" I'll say!
Yeah, another rich guy know-it-all. Didn’t the UK give him a drubbing some years back over some of his tabloid “news” tactics? Like TFFFG & Elon, if he didn’t have lots & lots of money, he’d be selling timeshares in Boca Roton.
Musk has made himself virtually indispensable to NASA and the Pentagon with Space X and Starlink. We simply have no viable alternatives. He’s actually a Canadian citizen who apparently prefers our tax structure and hopes to “improve” it further with Trump’s election.
Agreed. We haven't even begun to fully explore what is at the bottom of the sea. The expense of space exploration is hard to justify when so many issues need to be addressed on terra firma.
Defund NASA and shift the money to alternate sources of sustainable energy. With enough money, geothermal and fusion can help us with the self-inflicted Climate Catastrophe.
And why is "Starlink" a private company when millions rely on it for all manner of communications including defense and national security?
Tesla - well, I know people who back in the day would never buy a Ford because Henry Ford was an antisemite fascist....
Ah, I seem to agree with you 99.9% of the time, but I do support our funding NASA. We have, in fact, privatized too much of our space presence and thus we get Starlink which has put too much power in Musk's hands. Look at what he (did or didn't) do over the Black Sea. Toss aside whether he did or didn't - consider how trustworthy he would be if Putin were ever to request data from satellites over the US or were ever to threaten the next European nation. Could we be sure we'd be favored in any cold or hot conflict? We need to direct some funding to get more of our own communication satellites up there.
I take comfort from the fact that Luddites have been trying to quash spaceflight and other technologies since the 1960s. In the first place, freeing up that money would in no way guarantee its wise use elsewhere, and in the second place, the work of those building technologies for space exploration has delivered enormous benefits in medicine, communications, and weather forecasting.
I knew someone would say that. OK - "freeing up that money would in no way guarantee its wise use elsewhere, " maybe not, but if the guy using the money is a threat to America, why give it to HIM? Use it wisely OR unwisely on something that isn't.
And if "the work of those building technologies for space exploration has delivered enormous benefits in medicine, communications, and weather forecasting." how much of the sum total of the cost of building those technologies went on just the space side? Do you think if there had been no space side, and the money had been available for alternative research, that the "enormous benefits in medicine, communications, and weather forecasting." wouldn't have been found? After every war people remark on the enormous beneficial discoveries in medicine etc - but the war still costs an unnecessary fortune. And it all comes out of the taxpayers pocket.
Being the richest man in the world is not enough. Maybe we should rethink our priorities. Do we really have to suck up to evil, now that he has removed his mask. This applies to more than Elon.
Thank you for saying that. I would think that the Telsa is doomed since most climate change-minded people, ie, democrats would be his market not republicans. Written with a prayer.
I agree, Linda, especially since he interfered with Ukraine's communication system on at least one occasion. Like many oligarchs, he seems to aspire to power, including that of other nations' dictators.
I agree. That was when I first noticed what a right wing danger he was. Then he started supporting Putin's goals as a means to ending the war. Traitor, traitor, traitor.
I disagree. According to Matt Stoller of the Substack Big, one of the reasons planes are falling apart is because of outsourcing of maintenance, another is that they no longer have engineers in their management. Maybe 1 or 2 still.
So, no engineering considerations in their decision making. Also, tendency to shut them up if their pointing out problems costs money.
You can search through his articles on Boeing if you like. Here are some.
When it comes to national security, outsourcing so much to people like Musk, who is a fascist, is a big problem and other than forcing him to sell it to some other fascist oligarch I see no other way around his ownership of these and access to highly sensitive information I would not share with my high schooler, let alone anyone else whose frontal cortex is not fully developed, usually between 24-30.
Boeing was run from the beginning by engineers. Boeing was moved out of Seattle, into Chicago by the financial people who were getting out of the constant oversight of retired Boeing engineers, that ruined the company.
In 1950, Truman nationalized railroads, in anticipation of a strike that he said would reduce America's ability to maintain it's security, in particular with the impeding Korean War looming into full out conflict. Truman used the army to keep the railroads running. I'm not saying the situation is the same with Musk and his control over vital space access machinery, don't know about Thiel other than he's Vance's puppet master, but the incident illustrates the fact that thinking out of the box and standing up to bullies who endanger the security of our nation shouldn't be tolerated and there are things we can do as a nation, with a good leader (like Kamala Harris) to see the truth and do the right thing for the good of the country.
Truman didnt nationalize the railroads, he just put the military in temporary control of their operations. In a year or so the unions and the companies settled under terms put down by Truman.
I can only Hope that Kamala can stand up to the big boys. Her history as a prosecutor gives credibility, but God, what a list of greedy guys she's up against.
Very true. Boeing Aircraft has become a second rate company unfortunately. It needs to be run by engineers not super high paid bonus administrators who probably don’t work inside the very plants that manufacture planes and rockets.
i think his Canadian side was a relatively brief passage, before emigrating to the US. He sounds like an Ayn Rand enthusiast. Eg Greenspan. Many others, I'm sure, and male.
Diane, probably the war on the regulatory state is also more attractive here. Not to mention the corruption of sufficient numbers of elected representatives who can be bought and lobbied by those oligarchs.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began a series of informal radio chats to the American public during a turbulent time in the 1930s. The radio back then was to communicating as Twitter is today. Here is an excerpt:
“My fellow Americans, it is whispered by some that only by abandoning our freedom, our ideals, our way of life, can we rebuild our defenses adequately, can we match the strength of the aggressors. …I do not share these fears.”
Trump demands a quaint, televised, fireside chat to compete with FDR. Here is a sneak preview:
“My friends, Hillary Clinton will never see the inside of the White House again as long as I live.
“You people love me so much that I know you want to keep me as your president for life. The Constitution now allows this extended appointment of the executive branch. Our blessed homeland needs me to lead it. I have authorized The Enabling Act, borrowed from German Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s proposal to restrict powers of the Reichstag in 1933. His SS troops made legislators give up their civil liberties and transfer state powers to the Reich government. I’m pleased to tell you that the Democrats will sign away their legislative powers while my ICE agents surround the House of Representatives. I have the power to dissolve Congress and allow my Cabinet to pass much needed laws to Make America Great Again. And I pledge to you that all fake impeachment activity to convict me has ended.
“I also pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country. And we will remove all undocumented immigrants that are poisoning the blood of our country. And we will remove the portrait of African-born Barack Hussein Obama from the White House wall.
“My first act tomorrow will be to have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Shiftless Adam Schiff picked up for questioning to ascertain their patriotism for the United States.
“I know I’ve been accused of a quid pro quo with Ukraine. There is nothing wrong with finding the truth about liars and cheats like Slow Joe Biden. And there’s nothing wrong asking a nation to help with uncovering wrongdoing by a corrupt man. As your President for Life, I will always tell you the truth. When I make a promise to you, I keep it.
“This concludes the first of my fireside chats. I can’t wait to tell you what I have in store for other scum Trump haters.”
(I don't dispute anything of what Heather has written. Nor the quotes from Dorothy Thompson. What I do find myself apparently in conflict here with other opinions is how we got to this place and time. I tend on the contrarian and I sense the divisions in our society, the blame game mixed with the sins of our past, The iconic Supreme Court 2010 decision Citizens United opening up unlimited corporate campaign financing where "We, the People' are no longer competitive, the corrupting influencer on all who partake of this poison wine, and now we have AI distorting reality. There is now a difficult path ahead to extend American Democracy as we have known it. Only the Good Witches of the North can save us now.)
Incredibly chilling and well written history lesson.
On MSNBC Today, in the 'Joy Reid Show', Joy pointed-out that both Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel are Immigrants from Countries without a Deep Democratic Tradition... Neither believes in Democratic Discourse, but rather in a $$$ defined Autocracy... They both believe that they have SuperHuman Intelligence... I suspect that in the Event of a DJT Victory, they expect 'Multiples' on their $$$ Investments in a DJT/Vance Victory...
Both of them are products of Apartheid South Africa, which is why they are fascists and racists. I'd be fine with cancelling their citizenship papers and deporting them.
TC, I was living in the Cape and not yet 9 years old in June 1948 when Malan and his Herstigte Nasionale Party came to power. I left South Africa with my parents over a year later.
I have often wondered what would have become of me if I had grown up there. The more so as my love of the land went deep -- it took me six years to accept that I would not be returning.
Simple. Either acceptance of the conditioning a white kid could expect there, even if his parents and schooling were unconnected with Afrikaner nationalism; or jail... or worse.
Even at age 8, I was thinking for myself, questioning, questioning, but skeptical about many of the answers I was receiving from adults. The most important teaching I had received from my mother, and even if I found it hard to understand the religious aspect of what she told, I took the message to heart:
We are all the children of the one God, so we human beings are all brothers and sisters; regardless of our differences, we are family, and so we must behave towards one another as brothers and sisters. The worst crime possible is to harm or kill others because they look different or have different beliefs.
My mother called this "the crime against God".
I know now what caused her to say these things to me in a darkened room. My parents had just received from my Dad's first cousin, a senior officer in the British medical corps who opened two Nazi concentration camps in 1945, documents and photographs of the second camp: Bergen-Belsen.
Given this message, my skepticism and my feelings about what I saw all around me, I came away deeply opposed to what I saw as the petty tyranny of Apartheid, and the conviction of all humans' deep underlying equality has stayed with me ever since.
I'm not sure that Apartheid conditioning is responsible for Thiel's and Musk's belief in their own superiority, but the combination of intellectual and material wealth makes for the most potent of delusions. These men are titans who take themselves for gods.
ADDENDUM: Christ's warnings about the inherent dangers of wealth apply to ALL acquisitions that are less than essential. These include intellectual wealth, social status and all forms of power in this world, including spiritual power. The problem is not with wealth in itself but with its effect upon us, how we relate to it, for attachment to all the things "added unto" us can so gum us up that we're no longer free to become what we really are. Things, money, status, power come to possess us, not we them...
Uneducated white men are the bulk of Trump's supporters. They believe Trump, Musk, Thiel and the other billionaires who blast their Fascism uninterrupted throughout much of the media.
CNN, the Washington Post and even The NY Times are beginning to report on Trump's mental instability and his Fascist comments, but is it too late to affect the election?
You mentioned what the problem is....."beginning to report".....
Gary, I thought all the white guys sitting behind death star in Latrobe thought his remarks about Palmer were funny as they all had locker room talk grins. So many have his same views about the world and that include female MAGAs as well. Peter reminds us too of why these people have no idea of what Jesus taught. I have reported here that quote of the week, maybe year, from a MAGA. "Jesus is wrong". The need for carte blanche (provided by death star) for expressing hatred is truly strong.
Many many people have already voted. I doubt there are that many undecided who could sway the election. They are reporting on Trump too late.
I give these media no credit. I feel they are reacting to reader blow back, plus the level of ugly crazy getting so high they simply have been embarrassed (not shamed) into reporting, along with a soupcon of hedging bets although that's an uneven game since one side will extract retribution for criticism if they win and the other won't.
DJT's Minions can Receive Information, but are they capable of assimilating it, and changing their Minds? I am Skeptical... I would Venture that they 'Feel', not 'Reason' thru Life... They 'Follow' rather then Question...
The Melting Pumpkin says.."I like the uneducated"...and does the "accordian hands rapist" routine.....Heritage 2025 Cult plans want to eliminate the Department of Education..
The set up for dictataorship is up front and centre.
Why not deport the Magat enimies of America?
Yes. Too little, too late.
NO!!! Many have not voted yet, so we still have time! Never give up!
Yes. It's too late. Brainwashed humans simply cannot mentally any process information that doesn't match their programming. We in the USA promote this conversion of human minds with our liberal definition of free speech and the invention of technology that makes speech with negligible cost. Then we add a a legal system that is unsuited for modern life due to it's archaic "due process".
The stones hanging around our necks chokes our breath and then breaks our backs.
And these pompous media "giants"? The high windows are waiting. Their one dollar sales pitches will soon be gone.
I find difficult to find reliable numbers, but most likely a small plurality of white women voted for Trump. Pretty close to an even split compared to the proportion of white men who voted for Trump, but enough white women voted for him that they don't get to be absolved of responsibility.
Finally, right?
Peter, I appreciate your powerful personal story including and not limited to you being raised to embody inclusion.
Jennifer, so did I. We could not go to South Africa during the summer break while we were in the Peace Corps because of apartheid. We went to Egypt instead and were actually at that time able to go into Tut's tomb. Much later we won a trip to South Africa from all classical radio in Portland. We saw lots of black people living in poverty still and I thought the white South Africans were lucky to have Nelson Mandela as the first president after apartheid ceased to be official policy. We went past a large multistoried building where people had been put into various racial categories.
Likewise
Peter: What differentiates Musk and Thiel from Mark Cuban? Cuban's background is not South African but Romanian Jewish and Lithuanian, but the wealth is there. I think Heather's article that includes the description by Dorothy Thompson about the characteristics of those who turn Nazi hits the nail on the head. However, the issue is that you can't prevent people from having those characteristics unless there is a long-term plan to revamp the educational system to include critical thinking skills and civics info. I am just hoping the election will turn out positively.
Dorothy Thompson saw Nazis up close and personal and her account of who "goes Nazi" seems to me to be spot on. HCR's article is powerful.
I think what you wrote may have the answer. Cuban's background is Lithuanian, Romanian (talk about Ceausescu being a deterrent to being fascist!), and Jewish. His wonder Cost Plus company is (literally) saving my daughter close to $4,200 for one of her medications! God bless Mark Cuban!
Musk, Thiel and Cuban are Randians. It’s a truly destructive philosophy.
Re: Critical Thinking Skills & Civics Info
Janan
I believe & think that your analysis & prescription for mitigating the vast numbers of people likely to “turn Nazi” is spot on.
Alas, the extreme right wing (God Bless them, for aren’t they our wayward brothers & sisters?)MAGA-Nazis are too thin-skinned to allow “critical thinking & civics info” to pierce the grievance filled racist bubbles in which they live, and their psyches dwell, fester, and mutate.
They don’t want their kids to learn civics info and critical thinking skills that will set them free, and alienate their kids from their cherished White Supremacist & unapologetic cultural traditions.
If a miracle were to happen and thereby standardize “critical thinking skills & civics,” the Nazi incubator parents would homeschool their kids or find/found a parochial school.
“The issue is that you can't prevent people from having those characteristics unless there is a long-term plan to revamp the educational system to include critical thinking skills and civics info.”
Yes. Although perhaps rather than writing "spiritual power", would a better way to express it be "religious power"? Jesus certainly had spiritual power, as does H.H. the Dalai Lama, as did Mahatma Gandhi, and countless other great spiritual leaders past and present, women and men.
kdsherpa, I do see what you're getting at but, first, distinctions between the two aren't always obvious and, more to the point, what could be more grave than the abuse of spiritual power?
This does happen, as with all forms of power.
Maybe, Saying no. 44 in the Gospel of Thomas addresses this.
Jesus said:
"Whoever blasphemes against the Father will be forgiven, and whoever blasphemes against the Son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven either on earth or in heaven."
Mammon comes in many forms.
Hi Peter, knowing you originated in South Africa, I’ll tell you a story. Before I settled in Florence, Italy in 1977, while traveling on my student Euro pass one hot day as many passengers often stood by opened windows on the trains fro catch a breeze, I began chatting with a man standing next to me. By his accent, I knew he was from South Africa. We were just shooting the breeze when he asked me why not move to South Africa. I asked him why and he to,d me the labor was cheap. After a brief pause, I quietly returned to my seat without answering him and reflected on his natural racism.
After spending days in a pensioni in Florence having gotten the lay of the land and I knew where the cheap places to eat were, I invited two dorm mates out to the university of Florence cafeteria dinner being about 40 cents American. One boy was Dutch and the other Rhodesian. When we took our trays, it was crowded and no tables were available. I saw one in the distance with a Nigerian boy eating by himself and walked over and asked him if we could join him. Yes he said I I sat down, the Dutch boy sat down but when the Rhodesian neared he paused, looked around and suggest we sit at another table already occupied. I resisted but he went over to another table. I k ew what was happening. I never knew if the Nigerian picked up on it but after a short few minutes, the African boy finished eating and left and at that moment, the Rhodesian came over to sit down. I immediately told him he wasn’t welcomed at our table. The Dutch boy asked to forgive but I refused and told him he had insulted my hosting them. The next morning I arose early to pee and I noticed the bunk bed where the Rhodesian boy slept was carefully made up and he left.
I recall feeling sad that day because I had this notion that us young generation were going to resist the biases of the older generation and the reality was that it wasn’t going to happen. At least it didn’t for me that day. And I wondered if that Rhodesian boy finally learned right from wrong all these years later.
I could tell you quite a few, but no, I wasn't born in South Africa, I spent three years there with my parents -- Dad, a naval officer -- as a kid, from late 1946 to late 1949. Those years marked my life.
I find myself agreeing with much of what you say, but I'm not sure what you mean by intellectual wealth. If you mean gifted with intelligence, then while Musk for instance seems perhaps average or a bit above average (which is pretty low apparently), he has not achieved his wealth by powering himself up there through sheer intellectual ability. He began with advantages of funding and blew past obstacles others might have been slowed down by like laws and morals and ethics while amassing to himself wealth which eventually itself begat wealth. Just looking at Xitter, one sees that past a certain point of wealth one no longer needs to be smart or choose wisely because the margin for error and stupidity is just so large.
If by intellectual wealth you mean access to formal education and the real absorption of education's gifts, or a wealth of high quality information through informal channels, then I would propose that it is a dearth of these types of personal wealth that produces petty men with petty (yet grandiose) goals of power.
If you mean these guys were sent to the best schools to acquire the mechanical tools for gathering wealth while skipping classes that might have enriched their spirits and given them a broader education, then okay... I think I'd call that access to opportunities others are restricted from accessing. I'd have to think hard to come up with a succinct way of saying that phrase. Entitlement comes close but isn't specific enough.
I'd like to come back to you on this, but it is very late here in Europe and I'm tired.
Maybe "intellectual wealth" is not an ideal term for what I'm referring to, but isn't it obvious that there is something vain and beside the point about the accumulation of knowledge for its own sake, especially when no wisdom accrues to the inveterate collector? Typically, some people accumulate knowledge as a means to power. Again, power for its own sake, at best to free oneself so that one can do whatever one likes without let or hindrance. At worst, to manipulate others.
Because of the information work I did as a young man, I developed a magpie's instincts. But... did I, do I really need to carry so much junk around with me?
The main point is surely to avoid accumulating what is not useful to anyone and, rather, to accumulate only what will help free oneself of conditioning and make for inner freedom.
Plainly, there's nothing wrong with being knowledgeable, nothing wrong with expertise, but the current popular rejection of experts is not entirely a matter of violent ignorance on the part of those who rubbish them, it is also -- more important -- a response to those who shut themselves up in ivory towers and allow their professional mask to take over from their human face.
It's not so much what we do as how we relate to our actions and whether they free us to find our true selves or simply feed bad habits.
Usually, I feel happy when one or two people for whom I have special respect express a liking for something I have written, or add a perceptive comment of their own.
I want to say I am rather surprised, and most gratified, that something like the considerations in this Addendum, which may seem abstruse to people today, should apparently touch quite a few members of this community, where we are concerned primarily with current events in historical context.
But is this not a time that compels us all to get back down to basics?
Yes, indeed! Very much so.
Absolutely Peter.
I would argue that the first 3 of the Ten Commandments tell us the same thing, and Jesus just spelled out what false Gods were.
I shared your post to Facebook. It was too good not to share with my friends.
Once again thank you
Tevye of "Fiddler on the Roof" “If I Were a Rich Man,” including this exquisite line: “When you’re rich, they think you really know.”
As some one who “loves” South Africa I want to comment. How could I not “love” South Africa ? Posh resorts, magnificent animals, fantastic scenery, great food and wine ! Rolling and scheduled power outages, crumbling townships and infrastructure and the malaise of a Mandelian promise gone frighteningly wrong. I had a high school friend who met and married a South African Boer she met at UCLA in the 60s. She was an orphan and we all paid for her 6 week tramp steamer sea voyage to Durban so she could meet his family and get married. She went on to have 6 children and a very interesting life- sending the amah out to search the yard for poisonous snakes before the children went out, being robbed one New Years Eve while in Formal dress by a gang in their driveway, and being widowed in a foreign land. My husband and I were in the wine country and met her youngest son who was a student at the University in Stellenbosch for a drink. It was chilling. He was a very handsome, half American ………. nazi. Our friend was still alive but very ill so I could never ask her” how” ? I have been alive and have seen it all - the great promises and the thudding reality. Maybe, one more time, I can live in a time of great promise.
Joan, I'm thinking you have some writing skills you haven't shared before; At least to my recollection. Brava ~
WOW!!! The way you wrote this, the two extremes belong together existing together, HIT ME so hard, Thank you more than words can say.
Seems to me that I find a steady correlation between some god lovers who handily interpret their supposed love for the supreme aspect of it that they translate into being one on earth i.e. if Jesus could be half god why not them?
And then be godlike because of their dominance with money.
Dorothy Thompson summed up Trump in one fell swoop of a sentence. He "is no longer a man. He is a religion."
The problem's with people's acquired IDEA of God, which they confuse with the object of their belief. Only, the very idea of God as an object of anything or anyone makes no sense. Some may, of course, take your last two phrases literally -- which I've just said in another way. Delusion.
I don't call myself "Christian", yet I take exception to the very idea of "half god", both in general and in relation to Christ. Having flesh, blood and a human form doesn't make one half anything. It is we who make ourselves into caricatures of what we are.
This is no place in which to develop discussion of man's limitless greed, for which, as Seneca remarked, all Nature is too small. But it may be useful to challenge the shards of an idea that some like to present as "Great"; too often the ultimate pretext for crime.
John Lennon wrote "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." Song title, Yoko and Me.
As a little girl, we used to sing this song each week in Sunday School: "God is Love, God is Love". Ever since then, that is how I have perceived "God". (Although prior to that, at age 3 and learning to read, I ran to my mother shouting excitedly, "Mommy! I know who God is!!" "Who?" she asked. "God is a dog!! G-O-D, D-O-G!" She was not impressed. Having said that, I sometimes wonder...
Thank you, Peter. This is a powerful comment.
Great comment Thank you.
Thank you for this poignant statement, Peter. Simply stunning.
What a beautiful person your mother was. Such a blessing to have such a wise person for your parent.
Thank you. She was my first spiritual teacher and I wish I'd been more worthy of her; but needed to learn by trial and error.
I'm sure she was thrilled by the person she saw you grow up to be. (And we all have to learn by trial and error -- for better and for worse!)
Thank you for your moving story.
"the combination of intellectual and material wealth makes for the most potent of delusions." Wow. Thank you for that truth, Peter. Your words ring of so much authenticity. I had a similar, though less intensely consequential journey in losing my (Catholic) religion. And at the time, I knew nothing of their covering up of crimes against children.
Your mother is a true Christian. Thank you for this comment.
Hiro, she was Jewish, not Christian. She was a good and wise woman who practiced love and kindness and avoided harmful actions, and what else is religion if not that? For my part, I am not formally Christian, but revere Christ.
I hope my response did not seem unkind or ungrateful. After all, yours was a true compliment.
Let’s add Rupert and make it a trio sent to Rio!
Barbara, Bill Adair, founder, or one of them, of Politifact, has a new book, "Beyond the Big Lie", which I'm currently reading. He talks about Murdock, how he bought up the Aussie papers, then the tabloid press in the UK and we know what he did here. According to an examination by the Times, "his influence has given him influence over world affairs, in a way few private citizens have ever had" I'll say!
Yeah, another rich guy know-it-all. Didn’t the UK give him a drubbing some years back over some of his tabloid “news” tactics? Like TFFFG & Elon, if he didn’t have lots & lots of money, he’d be selling timeshares in Boca Roton.
…cute…
Musk has made himself virtually indispensable to NASA and the Pentagon with Space X and Starlink. We simply have no viable alternatives. He’s actually a Canadian citizen who apparently prefers our tax structure and hopes to “improve” it further with Trump’s election.
"Musk has made himself virtually indispensable to NASA and the Pentagon with Space X and Starlink."
Do we NEED to reach for the stars, if down here we're struggling to get out of the mud?
Priorities, people!
Agreed. We haven't even begun to fully explore what is at the bottom of the sea. The expense of space exploration is hard to justify when so many issues need to be addressed on terra firma.
Defund NASA and shift the money to alternate sources of sustainable energy. With enough money, geothermal and fusion can help us with the self-inflicted Climate Catastrophe.
And why is "Starlink" a private company when millions rely on it for all manner of communications including defense and national security?
Tesla - well, I know people who back in the day would never buy a Ford because Henry Ford was an antisemite fascist....
Ah, I seem to agree with you 99.9% of the time, but I do support our funding NASA. We have, in fact, privatized too much of our space presence and thus we get Starlink which has put too much power in Musk's hands. Look at what he (did or didn't) do over the Black Sea. Toss aside whether he did or didn't - consider how trustworthy he would be if Putin were ever to request data from satellites over the US or were ever to threaten the next European nation. Could we be sure we'd be favored in any cold or hot conflict? We need to direct some funding to get more of our own communication satellites up there.
I know of people who still won’t buy a Volkswagen.
I take comfort from the fact that Luddites have been trying to quash spaceflight and other technologies since the 1960s. In the first place, freeing up that money would in no way guarantee its wise use elsewhere, and in the second place, the work of those building technologies for space exploration has delivered enormous benefits in medicine, communications, and weather forecasting.
I knew someone would say that. OK - "freeing up that money would in no way guarantee its wise use elsewhere, " maybe not, but if the guy using the money is a threat to America, why give it to HIM? Use it wisely OR unwisely on something that isn't.
And if "the work of those building technologies for space exploration has delivered enormous benefits in medicine, communications, and weather forecasting." how much of the sum total of the cost of building those technologies went on just the space side? Do you think if there had been no space side, and the money had been available for alternative research, that the "enormous benefits in medicine, communications, and weather forecasting." wouldn't have been found? After every war people remark on the enormous beneficial discoveries in medicine etc - but the war still costs an unnecessary fortune. And it all comes out of the taxpayers pocket.
Lady Emsworth -- Some of us could say that reaching for the stars does help to pull us out of the mud!
Thank you, Charlotte Vale!
Being the richest man in the world is not enough. Maybe we should rethink our priorities. Do we really have to suck up to evil, now that he has removed his mask. This applies to more than Elon.
I for one shall not buy his cars
Thank you for saying that. I would think that the Telsa is doomed since most climate change-minded people, ie, democrats would be his market not republicans. Written with a prayer.
Nor I. .Even if a solar model comes out.
So true.
I’d do without a lot to live in a sane world
I like the suggestion that someone I read made yesterday, that the government appropriate Space X and Starlink. I am all for that.
I agree, Linda, especially since he interfered with Ukraine's communication system on at least one occasion. Like many oligarchs, he seems to aspire to power, including that of other nations' dictators.
I agree. That was when I first noticed what a right wing danger he was. Then he started supporting Putin's goals as a means to ending the war. Traitor, traitor, traitor.
Oh please, but the SC would stop such. Unless they got a slice
There ya go. Give the Supremes a cut. Better, allow Uncle Thom and Alito a free ride to outer space one direction. That auta do it. lol.
That not realistic, Linda. No, Boeing needs to be reimagined and they need to be run not by non-engineers.
I disagree. According to Matt Stoller of the Substack Big, one of the reasons planes are falling apart is because of outsourcing of maintenance, another is that they no longer have engineers in their management. Maybe 1 or 2 still.
So, no engineering considerations in their decision making. Also, tendency to shut them up if their pointing out problems costs money.
You can search through his articles on Boeing if you like. Here are some.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/its-time-to-nationalize-and-then?utm_source=publication-search
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-nationalization-of-boeing-begins?utm_source=publication-search
When it comes to national security, outsourcing so much to people like Musk, who is a fascist, is a big problem and other than forcing him to sell it to some other fascist oligarch I see no other way around his ownership of these and access to highly sensitive information I would not share with my high schooler, let alone anyone else whose frontal cortex is not fully developed, usually between 24-30.
Boeing was run from the beginning by engineers. Boeing was moved out of Seattle, into Chicago by the financial people who were getting out of the constant oversight of retired Boeing engineers, that ruined the company.
You are not alone my friend!!!
In 1950, Truman nationalized railroads, in anticipation of a strike that he said would reduce America's ability to maintain it's security, in particular with the impeding Korean War looming into full out conflict. Truman used the army to keep the railroads running. I'm not saying the situation is the same with Musk and his control over vital space access machinery, don't know about Thiel other than he's Vance's puppet master, but the incident illustrates the fact that thinking out of the box and standing up to bullies who endanger the security of our nation shouldn't be tolerated and there are things we can do as a nation, with a good leader (like Kamala Harris) to see the truth and do the right thing for the good of the country.
Truman didnt nationalize the railroads, he just put the military in temporary control of their operations. In a year or so the unions and the companies settled under terms put down by Truman.
I can only Hope that Kamala can stand up to the big boys. Her history as a prosecutor gives credibility, but God, what a list of greedy guys she's up against.
Very true. Boeing Aircraft has become a second rate company unfortunately. It needs to be run by engineers not super high paid bonus administrators who probably don’t work inside the very plants that manufacture planes and rockets.
i think his Canadian side was a relatively brief passage, before emigrating to the US. He sounds like an Ayn Rand enthusiast. Eg Greenspan. Many others, I'm sure, and male.
“Never put all of your eggs in one basket”, is how the saying goes.
Diane, probably the war on the regulatory state is also more attractive here. Not to mention the corruption of sufficient numbers of elected representatives who can be bought and lobbied by those oligarchs.
Why to take such enormous risk by depending on a such unstable and genius guy?
Agree with you there. While his mum was from Canada, it seems like the values he most internalized were those of Apartheid.
A Fireside Chat
(From "Donald's Vanity Tantrums")
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began a series of informal radio chats to the American public during a turbulent time in the 1930s. The radio back then was to communicating as Twitter is today. Here is an excerpt:
“My fellow Americans, it is whispered by some that only by abandoning our freedom, our ideals, our way of life, can we rebuild our defenses adequately, can we match the strength of the aggressors. …I do not share these fears.”
Trump demands a quaint, televised, fireside chat to compete with FDR. Here is a sneak preview:
“My friends, Hillary Clinton will never see the inside of the White House again as long as I live.
“You people love me so much that I know you want to keep me as your president for life. The Constitution now allows this extended appointment of the executive branch. Our blessed homeland needs me to lead it. I have authorized The Enabling Act, borrowed from German Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s proposal to restrict powers of the Reichstag in 1933. His SS troops made legislators give up their civil liberties and transfer state powers to the Reich government. I’m pleased to tell you that the Democrats will sign away their legislative powers while my ICE agents surround the House of Representatives. I have the power to dissolve Congress and allow my Cabinet to pass much needed laws to Make America Great Again. And I pledge to you that all fake impeachment activity to convict me has ended.
“I also pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country. And we will remove all undocumented immigrants that are poisoning the blood of our country. And we will remove the portrait of African-born Barack Hussein Obama from the White House wall.
“My first act tomorrow will be to have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Shiftless Adam Schiff picked up for questioning to ascertain their patriotism for the United States.
“I know I’ve been accused of a quid pro quo with Ukraine. There is nothing wrong with finding the truth about liars and cheats like Slow Joe Biden. And there’s nothing wrong asking a nation to help with uncovering wrongdoing by a corrupt man. As your President for Life, I will always tell you the truth. When I make a promise to you, I keep it.
“This concludes the first of my fireside chats. I can’t wait to tell you what I have in store for other scum Trump haters.”
(I don't dispute anything of what Heather has written. Nor the quotes from Dorothy Thompson. What I do find myself apparently in conflict here with other opinions is how we got to this place and time. I tend on the contrarian and I sense the divisions in our society, the blame game mixed with the sins of our past, The iconic Supreme Court 2010 decision Citizens United opening up unlimited corporate campaign financing where "We, the People' are no longer competitive, the corrupting influencer on all who partake of this poison wine, and now we have AI distorting reality. There is now a difficult path ahead to extend American Democracy as we have known it. Only the Good Witches of the North can save us now.)