I wonder how many present-day Republicans are even remotely familiar with this history? Or, if they've conveniently forgotten? My hunch is, a bit of both. Anyway, this is exactly the kind of history they'd like to not be taught because it might make their little angels feel bad about themselves. As the saying goes, if you're not made uncomfortable by some elements of history, you're not getting the whole story. A lot of lessons for today from our past...
I am not only uncomfortable, I am shamed and angry. And glad to know things that have escaped my notice. As Albert Schweitzer wrote “Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.” He knew that we all go to great lengths to gloss over past suffering, trauma, and injustice without any acknowledgment or effort to atone. And this fact leads us to more of the same.
Yes, I think it is in our nature both to selfishly avoid pain and discomfort and to rise to the care of the common welfare. At our best, crises often push us to join together, but we are not always at our best as Dr. Richardson's essay today demonstrates. Adding to the knee-jerk reaction to pull up the drawbridge against "the other," is our wretched press that treats every event as a one-time-only, slides by it or hammers it to death, and helps us to stay locked in our worlds where fear and selfishness fester and rot. I believe this kind of toxic American "individualism" is precisely the problem Biden is trying to solve.
We all have an individual and a social nature. Baby sea turtles hatch on the beach never to know they had a mother, but like wolves and whales, we are social creatures. Even more so, as we are more diverse of interests and talent, yet find ways to collaborate. "Pure" "individualism" is ethically like a bird with a broken wing. "Pure" "individualism" is extreme narcissism.
Thanks, J L, Narcissism is exactly it. I look around our world today and I admit I am frightened by it. We elected one of these mentally and ethically crippled people to our highest office and, although we were fortunate that he was, personally, too much of a coward for violence, he was in love with it. My fear is that this American dream of a poisonous and violent masculinity once unleashed (into Walmart, for god's sake) won't be easy to push back. It's not something we've ever been without--cowboys and gangsters are our heroes--but there's a sense in which the alien landscape of the last few years feels like the old frontier. The best--possibly the only--depiction of this, in all its complexity (also one of the finest pieces of film making you'll ever see) is on Netflix, "Power of the Dog"
Bruce As an historian I have difficulty establishing time periods for Republican pronouncements and priorities:
1) The focus of the poor (and even middle class) to ‘redistribute the wealth’ is a communist attempt to take hard-earned (or inherited) money from the natural ruling class;
2) The folks who fill most of the jobs on farms and factories are lazy [oh the glory of 70-hour work weeks], grasping, and deserve no human rights;
3) Women and none whites are inferior to white males;
4) Unionization is unAmerican and impedes the capitalist system.
Do these apply to the 19th century, today, or both?
Both, of course. Elements of the 19th century mentality of dark-skinned people as a "threat" are still an undercurrent in this country. It occasionally rears its ugly head into the spotlight, but it mainly stays in the background. Tragically, the modern Republican party seems to have allowed itself to be co-opted by people who still possess elements of this mentality as a driving force in their psyche, something they would of course NEVER acknowledge. I mean, "We're running a Black man as our Senate candidate in Georgia! That right there proves we're not racist!!" Uh-huh...
And put a "Black man" on the Supreme Court (of course "birthers" were cover for pure racism. Saint Reagan get little flack for having said of the Tanzanian UN delegation:
“To watch that thing on television, as I did, to see those, those monkeys from those African countries – damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!”
Still I'm pretty fuzzy about which of our political party's to cheer for and when, with my patchy grasp of American History. HCR mentions Republican argument for SES fairness in instituting a graduated income tax to pay for the Civil War, and Democrats were the home of George Wallace types in my youth. Pretty much the advocates of plutocracy, and/or authoritarianism of whatever variety, seem consistently to be historical "bad guys".
For one: women got the vote in America because “the powers that be” were convinced that the women would vote as their husbands instructed, so I’ve heard.
3 And Anti-corporal punishment laws. Still working on that because of holdout States. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1234/text?r=1&s=1 Q RELIGION has a lot of power. (I know, I said that!) Worry that the traditional family will suffer or worse disappear. White Male Power. Of course not all and a woman sabotaged the last vote for ERA. But that was only possible because of the close vote. We lift up our votes and voices but the suits are loud and powerful. And there’s a difference by states. Women’s Reproductive Rights? Keep on keeping on. We need more equal representation in our government. Change is possible.
Patricia, I hope my post does not sound like I’m criticizing Womens Lib! To the contrary our organizing and our voices are the only way to truly make progress. To be heard and to act. To be the action. To be representative of women and women’s issues and legislation. To legislate.
No, not at all. Any frustration suggested by my words is generated by the endless history of women at worst as chattel, and at best as ornamental objects incapable of having serious thoughts. And worse than all of that are the omen who accept that definition of themselves either as surrender or because of social pressure.
And then today, as if on cue, Alabama's Republican Senator said this in a speech:
“They’re not soft on crime,” Tuberville said of Democrats. “They’re pro-crime. They want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.” He then closed with, "Bullshit!!". They don't even try to hide their racism now. It's out there front and center.
HCR even tweeted Tuberville's remarks earlier today, but as I said, they illustrate my point.
Citizen60: Try refreshing the page-go to the top of the page then look to the left of the search bar. You'll see an incomplete circle w/an arrow @ the end. click on it. That refreshes the page and will go back to the page you were on. You should be able to "heart" the entry. It may not last long and you'd need to repeat the process.
Wasn’t the recent Supreme Court arguments by conservatives about the “intent” of the 14th amendment (that somehow it was intended as race neutral), so brilliantly countered by KBJ, emblematic of how familiar Republicans are with history—or choose to be.
Exactly so...and "or choose to be" is truer than I'd like to admit. It's part of their collective willful ignorance of historical facts, only remembering what they want to remember, or what they were taught by a system that gave inaccurate, distorted views of history. Justice Jackson probably made some of their heads explode--that is, if they bothered to listen to her, figuring she'd be giving a biased view of history, since she's Black and all...
The history of the Republican Party, in the north, post-Civil War until TR took over after McKinley’s assassination, is confusing at best. While Republicans then were pro-federal government, it was because the monied class needed a strong government to tame the west & build & support their fortunes--leading us into the Gilded Age.
Obviously, Lincoln was a proponent of a strong central government, even before his presidency. He backed the continuation of our canal systems & the transcontinental railroad. But as these federal govt projects became completed, the republicans became less & less enamored of a strong federal government now that they had reaped its benefits.
It’s interesting, to me, that the Plessy v Ferguson scotus (composed of both democrat & republican president appointees), was decided 7-1 (one abstention), & that it was a Republican appointee, Justice Harlan, a former slaveholder from KY who fought for the union, who was the sole dissenting voice--the last of the Lincolnesque republicans, despite two Lincoln-appointed justices still serving. A confusing time for discerning party differences, outside of the already solid South.
another time of huge political realignment in this country. things don't all shift at once... like real life. snapshot out of context is usually confusing.
Thank you for your first sentence, Linda. "Confusing at best." I've read this newsletter twice now and I still don't really understand who the "good guys" and "bad guys" are. Maybe that's only possible in the old cowboy movies? Maybe I need to read it a third time? I would like to be able to distill it down for folks like me who don't have a strong history background.
If you get a chance, please read The 1619 Project. It is a big book but such detail about our REAL American history. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans.
Bruce, one thing present-day Republicans haven't forgotten is how to vilify the people they want to disparage and brand them as dangerous socialist radicals. Between Truman and Reagan, the benefits of the New Deal seemed to take the bite out of that tactic, so those of us who grew up during that period simply thought the political world we knew was normal. If I remember correctly, the 2000 election was a wakeup call to a lot of liberals, and I noticed during the Bush II administration that people were talking about how the Republicans seemed to want to take the country backward. By the time of the rise of the Tea Party, it still looked to us like they were interested in a return to some pre-Watergate halcyon era. But by the arrival of MAGA I was fairly convinced the target looked more like the 1800s or earlier. Reflecting on the advent of Originalism, it looked like, um, 1776 or so. But in reading Heather's posts on our history, it looks like the closest thing we've had to a halcyon-like era was between the end of WWII and the King/Kennedy assassinations. Those were the formative years for baby boom liberals. So taking the long view of the supply side vision--read "dark side vision" if you must--that assumes it is the proper one for America, those who hold this vision are right. From this perspective, anyone who advocates for social justice and equity is radically out of step with American norms and presents an existential threat to them. And if this is how you see things, you can't let the expectation of social justice and equity gain enough traction over a couple of decades to feel like normal.
But still, partly what can aid in their vilification and even increase its virulence is their perception that so many of these "dangerous socialist radicals" are dark-skinned. That is at least the case around here as I see it. The two main political races here in GA are the Senate race and the gubernatorial race. Both feature prominent Black candidates. In both cases, the Democrat candidates are ALWAYS branded as "radical, socialist, woke, etc." in every ad. That they are Black only seems to increase the virulence. The words are spat out with a sneering, vituperative, dismissive tone of voice. I will always believe that since they are Black does add an extra layer of resentment of these candidates.
I believe, as many historians have asserted, that our nation lost its innocence and naiveté when JFK was assassinated in '63. That was when the cold hard reality of the world came bursting into American homes big time.
Decades?? How about BEFORE 1776? Please go back farther in time than 1776. If you get a chance, please read The 1619 Project (Republicans want it banned). It is a big book but there is so much documented detail about our REAL American history beginnings. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans. And it shows WHY there is such a disparity between the rich and powerful (white males) and the rest of us, including women.
Originalism? Please go back farther in time than 1776. If you get a chance, please read The 1619 Project (Republicans want it banned). It is a big book but there is such documented detail about our REAL American history beginnings. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans. This book shows WHY there is such a disparity between the rich (white males) and the rest of us, including women.
I share these history lessons daily, but responses to me are not repeatable. I'm "crazy", "spending too much time with conspiracy," etc. The crazies can't be reached as Heather has stated. I'm trying to reach those who still might listen to truth.
Try reading and sharing THIS book: The 1619 Project (Republicans want it banned). It is a big book but there is so much documented detail about our REAL American history beginnings. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans. And it shows WHY there is such a disparity between the rich and powerful (white males) and the rest of us, including women.
Try this one: Please read The 1619 Project (Republicans want it banned). It is a big book but there is so much documented detail about our REAL American history beginnings. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans. And it shows WHY there is such a disparity between the rich and powerful (white males) and the rest of us, including women.
Thank you Heather for the history lesson on the African American effects on the history of the labor movement in America. So enlightening. I had never had anyone put together for me, how the suppression of the Blacks in the South, was tied into the anti labor position of the US Government years ago, and how much that helped change the nature of the Republican Party into what it is today.
I am glad you also got a mention in about the Pestigo Fire. My mother's family was involved in the lumber industry in the Upper Peninsula. This fire was legendary up there for generations. Horrible!!!
My reaction was the same, Louise. In the end, it's all about control and keeping workers who make wealth possible from getting an adequate share. Fanning hate and division was a key tactic then as it is now.
Another "tactic": Please read The 1619 Project (Republicans want it banned). It is a big book but there is so much documented detail about our REAL American history beginnings. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans. And it shows WHY there is such a disparity between the rich and powerful (white males) and the rest of us, including women.
Source? Please read The 1619 Project (Republicans want it banned). It is a big book but there is so much documented detail about our REAL American history beginnings. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans. And it shows WHY there is such a disparity between the rich and powerful (white males) and the rest of us, including women.
My grandfather was once a logger in central Wisconsin, too! And my parents took us as children Peshtigo Fire museum on the way from an aunt's house to our home in Illinois, where any mention of fire was followed by a mention of the Chicago Fire and, in my family, Peshtigo. Small world.
Thank you, Heather for the History lesson tonight. I had never heard of the Peshtigo Fire! Now I know. And know more about the Great Chicago Fire! I hope you had a "Happy Birthday".
More real American history?? Please go back farther in time than 1776. If you get a chance, please read The 1619 Project (Republicans want it banned). It is a big book but there is so much documented detail about our REAL American history beginnings. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans. And it shows WHY there is such a disparity between the rich and powerful (white males) and the rest of us, including women.
LABOR NEWS HEADLINES & REASONS WORKERS HAVE BEEN VOTING FOR REPUBLICANS
'Where Are All the “Pro-Worker” Republicans Now?'
'While employees at Amazon and Starbucks win historic unionization campaigns, the “populist” wing of the GOP has been noticeably silent.'
'Howard Schultz’s fight to stop a Starbucks barista uprising'
'Amazon loses key step in its attempt to reverse its workers' historic union vote'
'Workers file for union vote at another Amazon facility'
LABOR FEB. 9, 2022
‘Pro-Worker Conservatives’ Are Just Union Busters in Thin Disguise'
'Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Americans with college degrees were more likely to vote Republican than those who lacked them. Today, the opposite is true.'
‘Meanwhile, in every presidential election from 1948 to 2012, white voters in the bottom third of America’s income distribution were more Democratic than those in the top third. Now, low-income whites vote to the right of wealthy ones.’
‘… a major, pro-labor shift in the Republican Party’s economic philosophy is not one of them. In 2016, Donald Trump did disavow his party’s most toxic fiscal ambitions (slashing Medicare and Social Security spending). But he also argued that America’s minimum wage was probably too high and that corporations paid too much in taxes. Once in office, Trump sought to gut public health insurance from the poor, cut taxes on the wealthy, deny guaranteed overtime pay to 12.5 million workers, undermine workplace-safety standards, … the Republican coalition grew more working class over the course of Trump’s first term. In 2020, a large number of blue-collar Hispanic voters flipped to the GOP, while the exodus of college-educated whites from red America continued apace.'
‘…Republicans will eventually need to align their agenda with their rank-and-file’s material interests. ‘… In 2020, (Oren Cass, a former Mitt Romney adviser and founder of the think tank American Compass) called on conservatives to recognize that “strong worker representation can make America stronger” — a sentiment that has now found expression in the Teamwork for Employees and Managers Act, the GOP’s most tangible legislative effort yet to win the hearts and minds of the working class.’
‘Cass did not ask his fellow Republicans to drop their opposition to the existing labor movement. On the contrary, he denounced Big Labor as an egregiously leftwing, overly political bureaucracy that did not serve workers’ best interests. ‘…his think tank’s surveys consistently showed that workers do not want unions engaging in politics and prefer forms of workplace organization that are not adversarial to management.’
'Of course, a union’s fundamental purpose is to secure workers’ leverage over bosses. The balance of power between an employer and individual employees is profoundly unequal. Most Americans have scant personal savings, enjoy meager unemployment benefits, and can be fired at will. Thus, individual workers generally have far more to lose from pushing back against an employer’s demand than an employer does from ignoring a worker’s request. For the worker, the termination of an employment contract can threaten their basic material security; for the employer, it mostly threatens a small, temporary disruption to business until a replacement can be hired. When workers organize into adversarial unions, however, they can credibly threaten to disrupt business massively by withdrawing their labor en masse, through a strike or work stoppage. This capacity to materially harm management is the wellspring of organized labor’s power. Every major concession that workers have won from capital in American history — from health-care benefits to the weekend — was won through adversarial labor relations.’ (NYMAGIntelligencer) Sorry no gifting possibility.
Fern McBride, thank you for your history lesson which along with HCR’s, match up to my “research” today about JD Vance, of “Hillbilly Elegy” fame and Repub candidate for Ohio Senate Seat. Endorsed by TFG
I watched the movie today, curious how and why someone growing up poor and with some government assistance ended up a conservative repub. The fact that he’s a former marine, Yale Law School graduate and that his law school fellow student wife clerked with conservative Supreme Court justices may be part of the answer. And this: “Profoundly conservative, Mr Vance put the blame of the hillbillies' failure to thrive on culture and a lack of personal responsibility, rather than systemic issues of economics and policy.” Not much compassion or empathy for someone who survived and thrived with a lot of help.
Earlier he was antiTrump but being a true politician and wealthy, he apologized for his unkind words and now has TFG’s endorsement. And $$$ connections to Peter Thiel of Silicon Valley who helped recruit Vance to succeed retiring Senator Rob Portman.
I have not seen the movie but I did read the Book "Hillbilly Elegy".
Honestly, I was surprised. I had expected an amazing book, well written, with a riveting story about the challenges in Appalachia based on reading reviews.
Vance's book was thin and shallow, and, not especially well written, and, did not really address some significant challenges associated with poverty in Appalachia.
John Grisham's book "Gray Mountain" is a MUCH better look at the real Appalachia and some of its real problems. Vastly better written than Vance's.
At any rate, having read Vance's book, and seen into his mind through his writing, I still cannot understand the hooha about the book OR Vance.
Maybe because he went to Yale folks thought the book was good? I don't know.
I agree Mike. Neither the book nor the movie was particularly good. Even reading the book it was clear he had no compassion or empathy. And he blamed the condition on everyone else rather than failed policies. Not a person I liked after reading the book. And as you said, thin and shallow.
I have long been interested in Appalachia and recommend "The Scotch-Irish: A Social History" as, by far, the best, most detailed historical background of that region. By Leyburn. Amazing book.
Also, the fiction book "Gray Mountain" by John Grisham details the modern challenges of folks in Appalachia, West Virginia in particular. The book is so much better than Vance's book that I am very surprised that was not noted in reviews of Vance's book.
But, I figure, he was a white dude who went to Yale, so, he got the American special treatment.
Grisham is just some awesome writer from down south.
Lastly, the book "The Tall Woman" is another fiction book that fantastically captures the essence of Appalachia.
All three of the above books shine like the sun compared to Vance's remote twinkling star of a book.
Thanks, Mike. I will have to go look those up. Having recently moved to Western North Carolina, I am interested in the history of the region. I like Grisham and I hadn’t heard of that one. I think for anyone to truly understand some of the issues of Appalachia, another great book is Dopesick by Beth Macy. A real eye opener. Details the rise of the opioid crisis, particularly in small town Appalachia. Way better in helping to get an understanding of the economics in the region than what Vance dished up.
Dianna, I was born and raised in the Western Carolinas, in a small town called Lenoir. Twenty minutes to get to Appalachian State University. I know all about the Appalachian environment as I was born in 1951. We were always told they were “poor, ignorant, and uneducated”. When I was young, I would go with our county librarian in her bookmobile (a bus filled with books) to very rural areas in our county. Kids would get so excited about getting to pick up to 3 books to read. My job was to stamp the book card inside up to 30 days. The librarian’s name was Miss Nora McGee and I loved her because of her compassion and dedication.
Also check out The Giver of Stars, by Jo Jo Moyes. Historical fiction about Elenore Roosevelt's depression-era travelling library program. Industrious women in the Kentucky mountains deliver books with the assistance of a pack mule. And resistance from the Maga crowd of their time. Both excellent reads.
I just read a synopsis of the plot, complex and eye-opening. Never heard of the Blue people of Kentucky, whose skin is blue due to a genetic blood condition.
"W" went to Yale, then all the way to Iraq with false intelligence! Seriously, the "Ivy" universities have been deeply flawed by big R donors who tweak the departments' professors and subject matter as a prerequisite to sponsorship. The Ivy schools can no longer claim scholarship, impartiality or excellence. They can claim a student's admission based on a parent's attendance along with a hearty donation.
I have to jump in here just to say that "Hillbilly Elegy" is, in my opinion, just one example of the whole enormous problem of a decline in the standards for these blockbuster, best-selling books that inspire rave reviews. It has honestly not been very long since a good review in, say, the NYTimes Book Review meant something. It didn't mean you would like the book; it might very well not be your cup of tea. But you would know you were getting good writing.
Long before he decided to become a TFG-loving sycophant, I heard Vance speak at a breakfast for a local nonprofit that runs shelters and finds permanent housing for their clients, a very worthy organization. I had read the book and felt its conclusion lacking. I was hoping Vance would provide more depth in his speech. He did. My take away about JD Vance: he’s as deep as a pie tin.
Thanks, Mike, after reading you, we can either forget what I just wrote or, maybe better, read it through the filter of your remarks on the book and its writer... and see if anything worthwhile comes through.
I am very wary indeed of men with energy, ambition, a good appearance... and skewed motivation. Hyped-up, they make useful tools... while truth and the real man are buried alive.
But I shouldn't write too freely about Identikit villains and heroes...
Vanity. King of the sidewalk now, pushing weaker spirits into the gutter.
Unless soundly defeated, sooner rather than later, such a one could become very, very dangerous.
Defeated, humiliated, forced to make a long desert crossing and, in so doing, question himself, question stock beliefs and standardized answers, the hardest of hard experience could... just could... make a man of such a one.
But if resentment trumps understanding, an even greater monster may emerge. A Mein Kampf case, an ultra-Trump.
All the conditions are stacked stacked in favor of him remaining a misled misleader, just one more cheap bought-and-soldier. But keep a close watch over this one, now and in years to come. Never trust him unless or until he has shown himself worthy of trust.
Now he's a young dog that must have its muzzle shoved close to its shit. His treason must be punished.
All fealty to the Lie and the Liar must be punished. Failure to put these people in their place -- them and their like -- means hell for us all.
It was heartbreaking to me that Vance, after writing about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and their impact on adult health in “Hillbilly Elegy” could turn on the public health lessons of how toxic childhood stress is tied to the increased likelihood of addiction, obesity, violence, incarceration, becoming a victim of or a perpetrator of crime. He understood it and explained it well, and then pffff! Some Trump
love made him disown that direct tie to lack of safety, nurture and stability for children leads to perpetuating cycles of poor outcomes. I thought he was going to be the best kind of advocate for maternal health, family supports, early childhood education and nutrition. But he flipped. Literally. God forbid he gets into rhe
My reading of Vance’s book was that the people that raised him (grandparents, mostly) were as awful people as he is now. How the book garnered so much good press mystifies me.
I see the words compassion and empathy over and over and I just don't get where so-called "Christian Republicans" come from. To me, "Christian Republicans" is an oxymoron because there is NO compassion and empathy in the Republican party for anyone who is not a wealthy white male - not even white women (when you consider both abortion rights and religious rights). What gives?? How do they justify Trump and Trumper actions as in The Big Lie (that Trump won) and in the violence that happened at the January 6th Insurrection?? And what about the Christian's motto WWJD?? Really!??? What WOULD Jesus feel and do about the lack of compassion and empathy (not to mention justice) in the Republican party??
Hard to believe that Hispanic workers or any “workers” of any stripe buy the republican bull Schitt. They have NEVER been your friends, MAGAt morons. Use you to screw you, oh yeah, all day, every day.
I was taken aback when I learned that one of the terms of the settlement of the narrowly averted railroad strike last month was the workers were now entitled to one paid day of sick leave PER YEAR. Apparently, there were NO paid sick days prior to that. WTF? Deregulation at its finest.
I see, too, the always confounding fact of this kind of loyalty of the voting poor whites in the South (and elsewhere) to right-wing Republicans who represent the wealthy and never come through for, say, the miners in West Virginia. Old English teacher that I am, I believe it is in large part the self-defeating tendency to believe well-crafted words over actions. Trump blanketed and numbed everyone with a constant barrage of words. Republican politicians promise everything. The desire to believe them is great.
Thank you Dean, certainly repeated words something similar to the way an algorithm targets a specific "market". Do we have a Speech Therapist in the Community?
Inhuman Labor exploitation began shortly shortly after Jamestown. HCR picked up the history circa August1866. Continuous & ongoing battles through Sunday October 9, 2022. We need more than a "New Deal".
Steve, are you taking their word that Trump is now the president? (wink, smirk, roll your eyes)? 'Watch what they do, not what they say'. Many election denier candidates in federal and state midterm elections look as though they will be winners. It's called rigging the elections. Top priority -- protect the elections and VOTE.
Wow. I had to stop for a few moments after I read todays letter. I looked at the bottom of the letter where I find all the citations. I scanned the letter again then put my phone down and walked away. My husband and I have been basking in the warm glow of the Post Season success of our favorite baseball team (the Mariners, if you must know) but, I can’t shake the images of the letter from my mind.
I think anymore when I look at the stated policies and promises of the Democrats or the Republicans at any given point, past or present, and try to figure out who the guys in the white hats are in this round, I have to shrug my shoulders and say sometimes I can’t tell the players without the scorecard.
Who gets to be the standard bearer for the Everyman? When Lincoln was alive, and into the first decade after the Civil War, the Republicans spoke for the downtrodden. But, how long did it take for the fear of the Great Unwashed having greater influence in public policy and politics to have their hair standing on end? It wasn’t until FDR that the Democrats tried on the white hat for fit.
I’m weary. I’m weary and tired and afraid. Col. Alexander Vindeman’s words, “Here right matters” that I firmly believed, were dashed on the rocks, mocked and derided by the CORRECTLY described Deplorables. I’m sitting in my comfortably blue state that hasn’t elected a Republican as governor since 1980 that now may be facing the possibility of a MAGA governor! The Republican who may win is a mere shell of a suit compared to most of the gubernatorial candidates who were not elected in the past 40 years. Hershel Walker! Oh, my! How have we, as humanity, gotten to this place???
I am weary, I am tired, I am disappointed. I am afraid. I want to believe that our better Angels will prevail in the battle of goodness and right over the darkness of meanness and spite. I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.
Samuel Gompers told me as a young student, I hang on to his words “The man who has millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his hands against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.” And now the “poor devil” watches Fox.
That’s a chilling quote from Gompers, but it says it all. I was raised in a railroad town in the 50’s and 60”s, my dad worked for Southern Pacific. He was a staunch union man, believed fervently that only good things came from that representation. Somehow he became right-wing (thankfully he died before the age of Rush Limbaugh) and anti-Democrat. He was appalled when my sister wanted to go to Berkeley...you can just imagine those conversations!
HI Betsy... Seems as though our process of realignment is dynamic and has been for a long time. We were just lucky to not live through any of the previous ones? I do try to study and learn as much as possible to view our current mess through a wider lens where things have been just as awful (even worse) as today.
Hubs and I read a book called "The Next Realignment" a couple years ago. Maybe when pandemic first happened? It really opened our eyes to how many times this necessarily painful part of evolving our democratic republic has actually happened. We were shocked to read this version of history that neither of us knew. We majored in history and poli sci in college... and have continued to learn ever since. Yet, the accounts of many of these eruptions were news to us.
That our country survived these things was miraculous to us... and gave us some hope and encouragement for what's happening now. No guarantees, of course.
It’s a relief, albeit sad, to learn that the details of Lincoln’s loss were not even taught to history and poly sci students. It seems on a par with CRT and banned books. If HRC is the first to put this together, she deserves another prize.
Thank you for furthering my understanding of what led to Reagan and the two Bushes.
"and try to figure out who the guys in the white hats are in this round, I have to shrug my shoulders and say sometimes I can’t tell the players without the scorecard"
Betsy, join the crowd of us who are old enough to have seen both parties be ugly. Most recently I was horrified to learn of Democrat Kathy Hochul's absconding with $337 million dollars in a NY "pay to play" deal.
Most of the time, Betsy, I don't think there are ANY white hats on any politician's heads.
I think most of the time, their hand is in my pocket trying to steal my wallet OR their hand is in the hand of some big corporation so that they can dump toxic waste in my yard.
And that is a truly sad situation when most of us feel this way. More, i do believe it's the 'system' that's faulty... and brings out the worst of normal human traits in many of those entrusted with representing and leading us. Since it happens on such a broad scale - the rule and not the exception - it's hard not to look at the system (economic/political/social) that brings us here. We, especially in the USA, are so culturally conditioned to blame, shame and judge individuals without stepping back to look at the bigger picture, too ...
Betsy, I feel the same way. I took my coffee with me and walked round my little garden this morning at sunrise to commune with the growing plants. They are all flowering, even the ones I've only just put in, and the one daffodil that didn't bloom has changed its mind and produced a fat bud while its companions wither.
Thanks! Your daffodil helped the corner of my mouth turn up a bit. I have been pretty morose for a while and feeling crummy physically in general for a while. It’s hard to keep a sunny disposition when you’re not feeling well. I recently have been diagnosed with a legitimate reason to feel crummy and cranky, but that doesn’t really make the awfulness of the state of the world any less worthy of being cranky and pissy over. I will always welcome defiantly optimistic daffodils and their radiant faces! May there be enough defiant daffy dillies to lift our world from its mud!
I see to my dismay that I've missed a fabulous discussion. Rats. Betsy, I have ranted about our loss of vocabulary hurling us at least as far back as the middle ages but maybe there's a bright side to that. Your comment brings to mind what once was an instinctive understanding of the connection between body and spirit. Maybe we'll even start to believe in the harmony of the spheres again
A MAGA possibility in WA? Sorry, you must be shuddering all the time. I guess I need to go back and look at that race. On a baseball note, we did watch the Seattle game, wonderful ending! (we’re originally from Northern CA, SF Giants fans)
Carol, to clarify: Washington's governor is still progressive Dem Insley, who has announced that he will run again in 2024, when his current term ends. Betsy may be a Mariners fan, but she refers to the blue state she live in , which would be Georgia if she is talking about Hershel Walker running for office. But not for governor- he is after the Senate seat now held by the very fine incumbant Senator Warnock. I agree 100% with Betsy's take on Walker. He's the worst excuse for a candidate I've seen. One of Trump's "jokes". I just sent a sixzable (for me) donation to Warnock. We need him in the Senate, no matter what state we live in.
Isn't it though.....the same old mantra. I am reading a book on the British Empire called Legacy of Violence and some of the same nonsense went on as the Brits excused their violence and suppression and were as we say, tone deaf, to the Irish, the Indians, the people of the Arab mideast. And they lied about they were doing and suppressed reports that told the truth about Ireland...the burning of Cork for example. It wasn't the Brits; it was the IRA.
The more we learn about real history, the more we can see that history does repeat. And it's usually about different human conflicts based on lack of compassion, understanding, cruelty, greed... and ineffective (if any) honest communication with one another to sort it out. Violence never solves anything... yet we never learn that.
Or is there maybe an escalating level of human aggressiveness with each wave of migration / immigration? - Something to consider in relation to migration from climate change.
Time to mention overpopulation and the psychologists’ research about too many rats in a trap. How do we start thinking the opposite of “be fruitful and multiply”?
I am proposing international adoption rules with UN and national signatories to enforce them. In conjunction would be reduction in production of anything that furthers climate change.
Science has answers to many of our problems. Can we accept that or are we stuck in the Dark Ages? The only way we can reduce population “gently” without major pandemics and wars is to start being thoughtful about preserving humans on the planet. Can we rethink where we are and how to reverse course to the two billion (from more than eight billion) science says can be sustained on this planet? Can we imagine shrinking production instead of expanding?
What we do will show whether humans have the rationality that the eighteenth century (and our founding fathers) hoped for. Sadly, it may be too late for most, if not all, as we cannot eat money and Mother Nature rules.
Agreed. many indigenous cultures around the world actually had ways of not having their populations exceed the carrying capacity of their territory "baked in" to their cultures. For our part, the single most effective way to stabilize and reduce human populations is to educate and empower young women. Such measures reduced average family size in Kenya from about 7 children a few decades ago to about 4 children now.
Thank you for that information. Cecily Williams, Dame of the British Empire, MD 1919, sent to Africa by the British Health Service (what do you do with a female MD in 1919?) discovered that women there, if they could be assured of care in there declining years, wanted no more than two children - the number proposed by the UN in 1977!
No one is violent for no reason, and human groups have not somehow become inherently more violent over time. In the 17th and 18th centuries, when Europeans first started coming to the Americas in large numbers, so many Native Americans died it has been called a "demographic catastrophe" by many historians. The waves of German, Irish, Italian, Chinese, etc, immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries are pretty tame by comparison. Tamer still are the waves coming from the Mideast, Africa, and Central America in the 21st century.
I read Diamond's book "Collapse" years ago, but I seem to remember the takeaway about Iceland was one of soil and flora mismanagement (which Icelanders have been addressing for the past few decades - with good result), not violent immigration or emigration.
Individual people are violent to get what they want or keep what they have. Groups of people are pretty much the same. Sometimes that reason is a real, existential threat, sometimes it is a lie. Fenris may still come for us. Will we be ready with effective measures, or will our response fail because it was based on lies?
At the end of the chapters on Iceland, after the soil mismanagement, after the destruction of the trees, Diamond notes the apparent extinction of the Europeans and the takeover by the Inuits. He further notes archeological signs of violence and suggests that the Inuits were the origin of the European extinction.
Not that that bothered me, since, they were also the native people.
What you're describing actually was about Greenland. Not really a tale about soil mismanagement, but more about the "little ice age" that began c 1450. The general cooling kept the seals too far from shore for the Scandinavians to hunt, and the harbors started to remain frozen all year. There may have been conflict between the Scandinavians and the Inuit, but records show that the last couple to be married in Greenland turned up in Iceland several years later. Also, no personal artifacts were found at any of the Greenland settlement sites, suggesting the people there moved away, rather than being slaughtered, or starving to death as some theories posit.
What are the options Olof ___those fleeing oppression, over-flowing refugee camps, overwhelming/uncontrolled crime, climate collapse, no work, extreme poverty, no water...let them die, the faster the better?
The Nordic myth of how the gods of war put the Fenris wolf in chains on a distant island, also tells the story of one day Fenris will be free, and that will be the end of the old regime. Supposedly this was the story of suppression of indigenous people, and the insight that one day it will be over, maybe a late addition.
Yes, it is. I am not too far in it, but it is truly eye opening on how bad keeping the empire going was. I was in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone in 1965-68. The only paved roads out of Freetown and upcountry were where the Queen went. The railroad was narrow gauge, so the trains could not go very fast. Next door in Guinea, the gauge was different. All this was deliberate, so they couldn't mesh. I have just started the part where Bomber Harris is flying over the Arabian desert and dropping bombs on innocents.
Faulkner somehow understood that in his bones and managed to make it real in his prose. I don't know of another writer who quite has it. Thanks for the reminder.
One slight correction. “India” and “Egypt” had nothing to do with the cotton trade as independent actors. They were totally controlled by the British and Anglo-French imperial overseers. If India had had a chance to control its own industrial development the world would be different today. The British glutted the market for cotton, and the competition between the South and the British Empire over cotton was part of the equation of 19th c. global politics.
This letter simply demonstrates that there were no “good” actors in the 19th century: not in Britain or Europe or the USA. We all have a lot to answer for. And that people like the Owenites, who tried to develop a humane industrial revolution—and were suppressed and destroyed because they showed that it could be done—were right all along.
Thank you for this reference to the Owenites, Linda. I've heard of these movements. Didn't remember the name. Had look it up. More to learn for connecting all the dots and networks. Like why did their efforts fail? (We can guess...) Much appreciated!
Linda Your focus on the British imperial influence on the Civil War cotton imbroglio and the sharp expansion of Egyptian cotton production is spot on. However, your lauding of the “Owen movement’ I find more gut-emotional than factual. An Israeli published an assessment of many American communal endeavors. He noted that all failed, except for the Shakers [whose fatal flaw was eschewing marriage] and,I recall, a German Mennonite group.
I observed some successful communes (kibbutzs) in Israel in the early 1950s. I believe that their driving communality, which began in the late 19th, has greatly diminished over the past 70 years.
The Owenites were not successful in the long term because Robert Owen was hounded out of England (I think Manchester area--somewhere in Lancashire). He and his sons settled in New Harmony, Indiana, and established a model factory there. They were again deliberately sabotaged by other factory owners in the region (SW Indiana) but not before Robert Owen's son founded the US Geological Survey. New Harmony has preserved the Owenite legacy. So I disagree with you. Owen was paternalistic but he did recognize that feeding, paying, and housing people--and educating them as well as their children--produced more committed workers. It was not a commune.
Linda I agree that Robert Owen was outstanding in establishing a model factory in New Harmony. I believe that he was the most enlightened of manufacturers in the 19th century.
"They elected to office leaders who promised to confiscate wealth through taxation and give it to Black citizens in the form of roads, schools, and hospitals. "
God forbid taxes should be used to build roads, schools and hospitals! Heavens! What is the world coming to!
And certainly not to forgive any student loan debt! Good Lord! Many of them are poor and (horror of horrors) black!
I hadn’t heard about the Peshtigo fire before tonight’s LFAA. Not surprising, given the circumstances outlined in the Letter. The moneyed class’s panic about worker’s rights, the black vote, and “socialists” has a long history in this country. Capital has ridden the current of fearful ignorance for a long time, rather successfully.
While liberal democracies, broadly speaking, regard capitalism as a reasonably productive system, virtually all but the U.S., in my view, largely have come to recognize that capitalism is not very good at distribution unless wedded to social democratic institutions that contain its excesses and moderate its self serving impulses. For me, the Professor’s history lesson has provided added insight into why Americans today are far too easily duped by Republican rhetoric that aims to conflate socialism based on the idea of social ownership of the means of production typically controlled by the state or government with democratic socialism based simply on a more equitable distribution of a nation’s wealth. Moreover, I think that same history also reveals why it’s so difficult for far too many Americans to appreciate that the security of our nation and its people depend on a far more cooperative environment in which there is a modicum of social and economic justice for large numbers of people today who feel oppressed and marginalized by a runaway wild capitalism.
Yes. Capitalism with little or no 'safety net' ... aka consumer/public 'protections' is a deadly and dangerous practice. Ironically, most rhetoric purposely calls these much-needed policies 'regulations' because nobody likes rules and regs. Every time i see or hear about 'regulations,' i automatically substitute the word 'protections.' (Thank you, George Lakoff, author of "Don't Think of an Elephant" and other enlightening writings.)
Our love affair with 'individualism' mixed in with this makes a volatile cocktail...
Other democracies seem to have figured out what you're talking about, Barbara. Not us. We're slower... and may never resemble theirs.
Suz-an, Having studied Lakoff, I, too, whenever the opportunity presents itself, encourage dropping the term regulations and replacing it with protections. Regrettably, well-intentioned Democrats rhetorically relate reforms with the need for more regulations.
As for the ethos that distinguishes the States from other liberal democracies, our flawed, specifically Republican, ideology appears to go something like the government’s role is not to undo all harms, nor to secure an equitable distribution of its resources; rather its role is to secure equal rights. What one makes of those rights, what status one obtains as a result of his or her efforts is not a subject of public concern; it is entirely up to each individual.
Beth, While I appreciate your reply, I also would note, because words matter, that permanently replacing the term “regulations” with “protections” would reframe our discussions on a host of issues in a way that greatly would benefit Democratic messaging.
Does seem to shift peoples' attention when we say it that way. It's why Rs claim that rules and regulations... strangle us. No one likes those words. So they use them... a LOT.
Suz-an, Ironically, it’s the restraining democratic protections at the center of civil society and the rule of law that, in my view, provide some sense of normalcy and security in one’s life.
Interesting take on each party, Barbara. Thank you! More of us need to learn Lakoff's invaluable lessons.
Re: R ideology ... if it's as you describe, then it fails. Far as i can tell, it doesn't actually aim to secure equal rights ... it simply tries to CLAIM we all have them. And then, yeah... laissez-faire. Except that we don't all have equal rights. So false premise?
Suz-an, I believe the false premise is only part of the problem. I remain concerned about an ideology that views the government’s role exclusively as securing equal rights. I would contend that what its people are able to make of those rights is a subject of public concern.
Rupert Murdoch helps us not understand, 24-7 at 90 decibels. Aided and abetted by chicanery and an unbelievable war chest, not to mention republicans with zip integrity
"virtually all but the U.S., in my view, largely have come to recognize that capitalism is not very good at distribution unless wedded to social democratic institutions that contain its excesses and moderate its self serving impulses."
This, is a brilliantly written sentence. Thank you.
Mike, Because I consider anything I post an Substack as fair use, no attribution is necessary. I leave it to you, but I would be fine if you simply identified the statement as an LFAA posting. I would note, as with every Substack exchange, I am driven solely by a desire to learn as much as we can from one another and to spread the word.
But just stop and observe how, in Britain, a so-called "Conservative" government is bent on ripping a wider hole under the waterline of the ship of State than any wild leftist revolutionaries, any foreign enemy could ever have dreamed of making.
Watch, and learn the lesson while there's still time.
Peter, For some context, since the nearly unprecedented drop in Labour’s vote share in 2019 resulting in Corbyn standing down as Labour leader, the Party, under Keir Starmer’s stewardship, appears to be rebounding, most notably since Liz Truss became Prime Minister. I understand the Labour Party currently is enjoying a huge opinion poll lead, which, regrettably contrary to the States, I view as a positive countermeasure to “Conservative” UK policy.
I'd started out by calling the lady Liz Dross when she was competing for the leadership... and worried that the nickname was unfair; but oh how she lived down to it...
Several days ago I lunched with two ‘late middle agers’and my NYU pre-med grandson. We got on to the subject of ‘patriotism.’
The 90-year-old, who immigrated from Germany in 1971, spoke of how Germans were surprised, visiting America in the 60s & 70s, by the abundance of American flags. They were puzzled by this display of patriotism. [He said that after WW II displays of German flags were avoided until about a generation and more later.]
We were appalled at how Trumpists seem to have taken the American flag as their own. I recalled how, after returning from my Congo experiences, when I went to a football game with my daughter, I would bawl during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner.
We agreed that the image of American ‘patriotism’ is extremely obscured these days. As Heather underscores, the Republicans don’t give a damn about what’s good for the United States. It’s Republican political slime, including supporting such scum balls as Trump, McConnell, and Cruz.
By contrast, President Biden is the personification of a proud and patriotic American. He is dedicated to pursue the interests of the United States and the great majority of the American people.
An overwhelming number of Democrats, many Independents, and some ‘RINOS’ share Biden’s dedication to American patriotism. How can we restore this selfless, patriotic pride in the face of all these despicable Trumpublicans?
I hypothesize that if there is a God, there would be no rational reason why he would bless any one country more than another. Or, bless any country at all.
Presumably, God would be in favor of his entire creation being "blessed" (the fact that 70% of that creation is living in squalor and poverty notwhithstanding).
Second, it is far more important to do what Dr. Richardson does and take a cold look at the past without emotion.
For example, since WW II, no other country on earth, except America, has invaded FOUR contries with massive military might and killed civilians during those invasions with wanton abandon. Not one.
All of us can easily google
"Civilian Deaths in Korea",
or "Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan".
Or Vietnam.
Or Iraq.
If you do that, you will learn more about America.
Looking at America and seeing America for what it actually is?? Vastly more important than flying a meaningless flag on one's garage a couple times a year or ALL of the time.
Understanding what the flag REALLY stands for is FAR more important than using one's emotion and imagination to "believe" that flying a flag is "patriotic".
Mike I agree that flying a flag simply as a symbol is vacuous. Also, my reference to ‘God’ is ecumenical, as, I believe, was Kate Smith’s. Whether Jewish, Christian, Moslem, Hindu, or simply a ‘supreme being,’ faith in something beyond one’s self I believe has merit.
I agree in having faith in serving someting beyond one's on self. I have, in fact, sung in an all Greek Orthodox choir, in four part harmony, as a tenor, for 32 years, in Greek! Not knowing how to read music or read Greek?
that just made the time in church fly by that much faster. I have it all memorized now and can sing with my eyes closed. it is beautiful Keith. And it transformed me from an angry, pissed off young man who was headed for some real trouble to a calm(ish) adult focussed on others (most of the time).
Thank you for putting our present political issues into an historical context. I have to take issue with your analysis of the reason for the fame of the Great Chicago Fire over the Peshtigo Fire that took many more lives. Chicago was linked by telegraph to the world and the Western Associated Press shared details of the fire with the world in real time. In the words of historian Carl Smith in his recent book, Chicago's Great Fire: "... the Great Chicago Fire was the first instantaneously reported international news event, details of which reached an audience in the tens of millions while it was happening." There was no one in Peshtigo with the resources to spread the news and it became a forgotten footnote. It is evidence, however, of the tinder dry conditions that existed throughout the midwest that autumn.
How politicians play the narrative often counts for more than the method of transmission. Combine Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda machine and Republican bull Schitt narrative and you see the current problem, which overwhelms reality and common sense.
“The difference is in part because Chicago was a city, of course, easy for newspapers to cover, while the Pestigo fire killed people in lumber camps and small towns.”
I wonder how many present-day Republicans are even remotely familiar with this history? Or, if they've conveniently forgotten? My hunch is, a bit of both. Anyway, this is exactly the kind of history they'd like to not be taught because it might make their little angels feel bad about themselves. As the saying goes, if you're not made uncomfortable by some elements of history, you're not getting the whole story. A lot of lessons for today from our past...
I am not only uncomfortable, I am shamed and angry. And glad to know things that have escaped my notice. As Albert Schweitzer wrote “Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.” He knew that we all go to great lengths to gloss over past suffering, trauma, and injustice without any acknowledgment or effort to atone. And this fact leads us to more of the same.
Yes, I think it is in our nature both to selfishly avoid pain and discomfort and to rise to the care of the common welfare. At our best, crises often push us to join together, but we are not always at our best as Dr. Richardson's essay today demonstrates. Adding to the knee-jerk reaction to pull up the drawbridge against "the other," is our wretched press that treats every event as a one-time-only, slides by it or hammers it to death, and helps us to stay locked in our worlds where fear and selfishness fester and rot. I believe this kind of toxic American "individualism" is precisely the problem Biden is trying to solve.
Good morning, Jeri, and thank you, Dr. Richardson
We all have an individual and a social nature. Baby sea turtles hatch on the beach never to know they had a mother, but like wolves and whales, we are social creatures. Even more so, as we are more diverse of interests and talent, yet find ways to collaborate. "Pure" "individualism" is ethically like a bird with a broken wing. "Pure" "individualism" is extreme narcissism.
Thanks, J L, Narcissism is exactly it. I look around our world today and I admit I am frightened by it. We elected one of these mentally and ethically crippled people to our highest office and, although we were fortunate that he was, personally, too much of a coward for violence, he was in love with it. My fear is that this American dream of a poisonous and violent masculinity once unleashed (into Walmart, for god's sake) won't be easy to push back. It's not something we've ever been without--cowboys and gangsters are our heroes--but there's a sense in which the alien landscape of the last few years feels like the old frontier. The best--possibly the only--depiction of this, in all its complexity (also one of the finest pieces of film making you'll ever see) is on Netflix, "Power of the Dog"
Thank you for your post!
Thank you, Jeri, for the Albert Schweitzer quote. It’s new to me and important especially now.
Sadly, many present-day republicans will see nothing wrong with their predecessors’ views.
Bruce As an historian I have difficulty establishing time periods for Republican pronouncements and priorities:
1) The focus of the poor (and even middle class) to ‘redistribute the wealth’ is a communist attempt to take hard-earned (or inherited) money from the natural ruling class;
2) The folks who fill most of the jobs on farms and factories are lazy [oh the glory of 70-hour work weeks], grasping, and deserve no human rights;
3) Women and none whites are inferior to white males;
4) Unionization is unAmerican and impedes the capitalist system.
Do these apply to the 19th century, today, or both?
Both, of course. Elements of the 19th century mentality of dark-skinned people as a "threat" are still an undercurrent in this country. It occasionally rears its ugly head into the spotlight, but it mainly stays in the background. Tragically, the modern Republican party seems to have allowed itself to be co-opted by people who still possess elements of this mentality as a driving force in their psyche, something they would of course NEVER acknowledge. I mean, "We're running a Black man as our Senate candidate in Georgia! That right there proves we're not racist!!" Uh-huh...
And put a "Black man" on the Supreme Court (of course "birthers" were cover for pure racism. Saint Reagan get little flack for having said of the Tanzanian UN delegation:
“To watch that thing on television, as I did, to see those, those monkeys from those African countries – damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!”
Still I'm pretty fuzzy about which of our political party's to cheer for and when, with my patchy grasp of American History. HCR mentions Republican argument for SES fairness in instituting a graduated income tax to pay for the Civil War, and Democrats were the home of George Wallace types in my youth. Pretty much the advocates of plutocracy, and/or authoritarianism of whatever variety, seem consistently to be historical "bad guys".
For one: women got the vote in America because “the powers that be” were convinced that the women would vote as their husbands instructed, so I’ve heard.
And how are women still at the mercy of men? At the mercy of Religion? Look at 1 the ERA, Equal Rights Amendment. Not passed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment
Maybe it’s not needed because of other Amendments and laws. But why?
2 Then there’s the UN Rights of the Child Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child: Never passed even after another holdout Somalia finally ratified.
3 And Anti-corporal punishment laws. Still working on that because of holdout States. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1234/text?r=1&s=1 Q RELIGION has a lot of power. (I know, I said that!) Worry that the traditional family will suffer or worse disappear. White Male Power. Of course not all and a woman sabotaged the last vote for ERA. But that was only possible because of the close vote. We lift up our votes and voices but the suits are loud and powerful. And there’s a difference by states. Women’s Reproductive Rights? Keep on keeping on. We need more equal representation in our government. Change is possible.
See my previous answer. For all the sound and fury of “women’s lib” critics, we’ve been back-peddling now since Bush II.
Patricia, I hope my post does not sound like I’m criticizing Womens Lib! To the contrary our organizing and our voices are the only way to truly make progress. To be heard and to act. To be the action. To be representative of women and women’s issues and legislation. To legislate.
No, not at all. Any frustration suggested by my words is generated by the endless history of women at worst as chattel, and at best as ornamental objects incapable of having serious thoughts. And worse than all of that are the omen who accept that definition of themselves either as surrender or because of social pressure.
And then today, as if on cue, Alabama's Republican Senator said this in a speech:
“They’re not soft on crime,” Tuberville said of Democrats. “They’re pro-crime. They want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.” He then closed with, "Bullshit!!". They don't even try to hide their racism now. It's out there front and center.
HCR even tweeted Tuberville's remarks earlier today, but as I said, they illustrate my point.
https://twitter.com/HC_Richardson/status/1579100783941152769?cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email
"I wonder how many present-day Republicans are even remotely familiar with this history?"
Zero = 0.00
How soon the book and then the text books?
Attempted like
Citizen60: Try refreshing the page-go to the top of the page then look to the left of the search bar. You'll see an incomplete circle w/an arrow @ the end. click on it. That refreshes the page and will go back to the page you were on. You should be able to "heart" the entry. It may not last long and you'd need to repeat the process.
Wasn’t the recent Supreme Court arguments by conservatives about the “intent” of the 14th amendment (that somehow it was intended as race neutral), so brilliantly countered by KBJ, emblematic of how familiar Republicans are with history—or choose to be.
Exactly so...and "or choose to be" is truer than I'd like to admit. It's part of their collective willful ignorance of historical facts, only remembering what they want to remember, or what they were taught by a system that gave inaccurate, distorted views of history. Justice Jackson probably made some of their heads explode--that is, if they bothered to listen to her, figuring she'd be giving a biased view of history, since she's Black and all...
The history of the Republican Party, in the north, post-Civil War until TR took over after McKinley’s assassination, is confusing at best. While Republicans then were pro-federal government, it was because the monied class needed a strong government to tame the west & build & support their fortunes--leading us into the Gilded Age.
Obviously, Lincoln was a proponent of a strong central government, even before his presidency. He backed the continuation of our canal systems & the transcontinental railroad. But as these federal govt projects became completed, the republicans became less & less enamored of a strong federal government now that they had reaped its benefits.
It’s interesting, to me, that the Plessy v Ferguson scotus (composed of both democrat & republican president appointees), was decided 7-1 (one abstention), & that it was a Republican appointee, Justice Harlan, a former slaveholder from KY who fought for the union, who was the sole dissenting voice--the last of the Lincolnesque republicans, despite two Lincoln-appointed justices still serving. A confusing time for discerning party differences, outside of the already solid South.
another time of huge political realignment in this country. things don't all shift at once... like real life. snapshot out of context is usually confusing.
Thank you for your first sentence, Linda. "Confusing at best." I've read this newsletter twice now and I still don't really understand who the "good guys" and "bad guys" are. Maybe that's only possible in the old cowboy movies? Maybe I need to read it a third time? I would like to be able to distill it down for folks like me who don't have a strong history background.
If you get a chance, please read The 1619 Project. It is a big book but such detail about our REAL American history. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans.
Thank you Donna!
Bruce, one thing present-day Republicans haven't forgotten is how to vilify the people they want to disparage and brand them as dangerous socialist radicals. Between Truman and Reagan, the benefits of the New Deal seemed to take the bite out of that tactic, so those of us who grew up during that period simply thought the political world we knew was normal. If I remember correctly, the 2000 election was a wakeup call to a lot of liberals, and I noticed during the Bush II administration that people were talking about how the Republicans seemed to want to take the country backward. By the time of the rise of the Tea Party, it still looked to us like they were interested in a return to some pre-Watergate halcyon era. But by the arrival of MAGA I was fairly convinced the target looked more like the 1800s or earlier. Reflecting on the advent of Originalism, it looked like, um, 1776 or so. But in reading Heather's posts on our history, it looks like the closest thing we've had to a halcyon-like era was between the end of WWII and the King/Kennedy assassinations. Those were the formative years for baby boom liberals. So taking the long view of the supply side vision--read "dark side vision" if you must--that assumes it is the proper one for America, those who hold this vision are right. From this perspective, anyone who advocates for social justice and equity is radically out of step with American norms and presents an existential threat to them. And if this is how you see things, you can't let the expectation of social justice and equity gain enough traction over a couple of decades to feel like normal.
But still, partly what can aid in their vilification and even increase its virulence is their perception that so many of these "dangerous socialist radicals" are dark-skinned. That is at least the case around here as I see it. The two main political races here in GA are the Senate race and the gubernatorial race. Both feature prominent Black candidates. In both cases, the Democrat candidates are ALWAYS branded as "radical, socialist, woke, etc." in every ad. That they are Black only seems to increase the virulence. The words are spat out with a sneering, vituperative, dismissive tone of voice. I will always believe that since they are Black does add an extra layer of resentment of these candidates.
I believe, as many historians have asserted, that our nation lost its innocence and naiveté when JFK was assassinated in '63. That was when the cold hard reality of the world came bursting into American homes big time.
Well, apparently the universe reads both the NYT and Letters from an American, and left a comment this morning in the form of a book review:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/books/review/american-midnight-adam-hochschild.html#:~:text=Nonfiction-,When%20America%20Was%20Awash%20in%20Patriotic%20Frenzy%20and%20Political%20Repression,rarely%20rivaled%20in%20our%20history.
I’ve been sure for decades that the Rs wanted to eliminate the twentieth century at least!
Decades?? How about BEFORE 1776? Please go back farther in time than 1776. If you get a chance, please read The 1619 Project (Republicans want it banned). It is a big book but there is so much documented detail about our REAL American history beginnings. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans. And it shows WHY there is such a disparity between the rich and powerful (white males) and the rest of us, including women.
Originalism? Please go back farther in time than 1776. If you get a chance, please read The 1619 Project (Republicans want it banned). It is a big book but there is such documented detail about our REAL American history beginnings. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans. This book shows WHY there is such a disparity between the rich (white males) and the rest of us, including women.
Exactly.
I share these history lessons daily, but responses to me are not repeatable. I'm "crazy", "spending too much time with conspiracy," etc. The crazies can't be reached as Heather has stated. I'm trying to reach those who still might listen to truth.
Try reading and sharing THIS book: The 1619 Project (Republicans want it banned). It is a big book but there is so much documented detail about our REAL American history beginnings. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans. And it shows WHY there is such a disparity between the rich and powerful (white males) and the rest of us, including women.
A story only a true historian could put into context! 🙏
An amazing tour de force!
Try this one: Please read The 1619 Project (Republicans want it banned). It is a big book but there is so much documented detail about our REAL American history beginnings. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans. And it shows WHY there is such a disparity between the rich and powerful (white males) and the rest of us, including women.
Thank you Heather for the history lesson on the African American effects on the history of the labor movement in America. So enlightening. I had never had anyone put together for me, how the suppression of the Blacks in the South, was tied into the anti labor position of the US Government years ago, and how much that helped change the nature of the Republican Party into what it is today.
I am glad you also got a mention in about the Pestigo Fire. My mother's family was involved in the lumber industry in the Upper Peninsula. This fire was legendary up there for generations. Horrible!!!
My reaction was the same, Louise. In the end, it's all about control and keeping workers who make wealth possible from getting an adequate share. Fanning hate and division was a key tactic then as it is now.
So well said, Michael. And they never notice that the workers could be their allies instead.
Another "tactic": Please read The 1619 Project (Republicans want it banned). It is a big book but there is so much documented detail about our REAL American history beginnings. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans. And it shows WHY there is such a disparity between the rich and powerful (white males) and the rest of us, including women.
Yes Louise. I dont know of any other source where this kind of insight can be found.
Source? Please read The 1619 Project (Republicans want it banned). It is a big book but there is so much documented detail about our REAL American history beginnings. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans. And it shows WHY there is such a disparity between the rich and powerful (white males) and the rest of us, including women.
My grandfather too, Louise, in the logging biz in the Keweenaw. My mom born in Eagle Harbor.
My grandfather was, too, Louise, in the Manistique area.
Recommend the HBO series, “The Gilded Age.” In fact, one of the “downstairs” characters, Jack, lost his mother to the Pestigo Fire.
My grandfather was once a logger in central Wisconsin, too! And my parents took us as children Peshtigo Fire museum on the way from an aunt's house to our home in Illinois, where any mention of fire was followed by a mention of the Chicago Fire and, in my family, Peshtigo. Small world.
Thank you, Heather for the History lesson tonight. I had never heard of the Peshtigo Fire! Now I know. And know more about the Great Chicago Fire! I hope you had a "Happy Birthday".
More real American history?? Please go back farther in time than 1776. If you get a chance, please read The 1619 Project (Republicans want it banned). It is a big book but there is so much documented detail about our REAL American history beginnings. A real eye-opener that tells why we have Democrats and Republicans. And it shows WHY there is such a disparity between the rich and powerful (white males) and the rest of us, including women.
Thank you!
LABOR NEWS HEADLINES & REASONS WORKERS HAVE BEEN VOTING FOR REPUBLICANS
'Where Are All the “Pro-Worker” Republicans Now?'
'While employees at Amazon and Starbucks win historic unionization campaigns, the “populist” wing of the GOP has been noticeably silent.'
'Howard Schultz’s fight to stop a Starbucks barista uprising'
'Amazon loses key step in its attempt to reverse its workers' historic union vote'
'Workers file for union vote at another Amazon facility'
LABOR FEB. 9, 2022
‘Pro-Worker Conservatives’ Are Just Union Busters in Thin Disguise'
'Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Americans with college degrees were more likely to vote Republican than those who lacked them. Today, the opposite is true.'
‘Meanwhile, in every presidential election from 1948 to 2012, white voters in the bottom third of America’s income distribution were more Democratic than those in the top third. Now, low-income whites vote to the right of wealthy ones.’
‘… a major, pro-labor shift in the Republican Party’s economic philosophy is not one of them. In 2016, Donald Trump did disavow his party’s most toxic fiscal ambitions (slashing Medicare and Social Security spending). But he also argued that America’s minimum wage was probably too high and that corporations paid too much in taxes. Once in office, Trump sought to gut public health insurance from the poor, cut taxes on the wealthy, deny guaranteed overtime pay to 12.5 million workers, undermine workplace-safety standards, … the Republican coalition grew more working class over the course of Trump’s first term. In 2020, a large number of blue-collar Hispanic voters flipped to the GOP, while the exodus of college-educated whites from red America continued apace.'
‘…Republicans will eventually need to align their agenda with their rank-and-file’s material interests. ‘… In 2020, (Oren Cass, a former Mitt Romney adviser and founder of the think tank American Compass) called on conservatives to recognize that “strong worker representation can make America stronger” — a sentiment that has now found expression in the Teamwork for Employees and Managers Act, the GOP’s most tangible legislative effort yet to win the hearts and minds of the working class.’
‘Cass did not ask his fellow Republicans to drop their opposition to the existing labor movement. On the contrary, he denounced Big Labor as an egregiously leftwing, overly political bureaucracy that did not serve workers’ best interests. ‘…his think tank’s surveys consistently showed that workers do not want unions engaging in politics and prefer forms of workplace organization that are not adversarial to management.’
'Of course, a union’s fundamental purpose is to secure workers’ leverage over bosses. The balance of power between an employer and individual employees is profoundly unequal. Most Americans have scant personal savings, enjoy meager unemployment benefits, and can be fired at will. Thus, individual workers generally have far more to lose from pushing back against an employer’s demand than an employer does from ignoring a worker’s request. For the worker, the termination of an employment contract can threaten their basic material security; for the employer, it mostly threatens a small, temporary disruption to business until a replacement can be hired. When workers organize into adversarial unions, however, they can credibly threaten to disrupt business massively by withdrawing their labor en masse, through a strike or work stoppage. This capacity to materially harm management is the wellspring of organized labor’s power. Every major concession that workers have won from capital in American history — from health-care benefits to the weekend — was won through adversarial labor relations.’ (NYMAGIntelligencer) Sorry no gifting possibility.
Fern McBride, thank you for your history lesson which along with HCR’s, match up to my “research” today about JD Vance, of “Hillbilly Elegy” fame and Repub candidate for Ohio Senate Seat. Endorsed by TFG
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56748047
I watched the movie today, curious how and why someone growing up poor and with some government assistance ended up a conservative repub. The fact that he’s a former marine, Yale Law School graduate and that his law school fellow student wife clerked with conservative Supreme Court justices may be part of the answer. And this: “Profoundly conservative, Mr Vance put the blame of the hillbillies' failure to thrive on culture and a lack of personal responsibility, rather than systemic issues of economics and policy.” Not much compassion or empathy for someone who survived and thrived with a lot of help.
Earlier he was antiTrump but being a true politician and wealthy, he apologized for his unkind words and now has TFG’s endorsement. And $$$ connections to Peter Thiel of Silicon Valley who helped recruit Vance to succeed retiring Senator Rob Portman.
I have not seen the movie but I did read the Book "Hillbilly Elegy".
Honestly, I was surprised. I had expected an amazing book, well written, with a riveting story about the challenges in Appalachia based on reading reviews.
Vance's book was thin and shallow, and, not especially well written, and, did not really address some significant challenges associated with poverty in Appalachia.
John Grisham's book "Gray Mountain" is a MUCH better look at the real Appalachia and some of its real problems. Vastly better written than Vance's.
At any rate, having read Vance's book, and seen into his mind through his writing, I still cannot understand the hooha about the book OR Vance.
Maybe because he went to Yale folks thought the book was good? I don't know.
I agree Mike. Neither the book nor the movie was particularly good. Even reading the book it was clear he had no compassion or empathy. And he blamed the condition on everyone else rather than failed policies. Not a person I liked after reading the book. And as you said, thin and shallow.
Dianna,
I have long been interested in Appalachia and recommend "The Scotch-Irish: A Social History" as, by far, the best, most detailed historical background of that region. By Leyburn. Amazing book.
Also, the fiction book "Gray Mountain" by John Grisham details the modern challenges of folks in Appalachia, West Virginia in particular. The book is so much better than Vance's book that I am very surprised that was not noted in reviews of Vance's book.
But, I figure, he was a white dude who went to Yale, so, he got the American special treatment.
Grisham is just some awesome writer from down south.
Lastly, the book "The Tall Woman" is another fiction book that fantastically captures the essence of Appalachia.
All three of the above books shine like the sun compared to Vance's remote twinkling star of a book.
https://www.amazon.com/Scotch-Irish-History-James-G-Leyburn/dp/0807842591/ref=asc_df_0807842591/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312176356508&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17373594714460974011&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9005679&hvtargid=pla-568872069799&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=60258871657&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312176356508&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17373594714460974011&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9005679&hvtargid=pla-568872069799
Thanks, Mike. I will have to go look those up. Having recently moved to Western North Carolina, I am interested in the history of the region. I like Grisham and I hadn’t heard of that one. I think for anyone to truly understand some of the issues of Appalachia, another great book is Dopesick by Beth Macy. A real eye opener. Details the rise of the opioid crisis, particularly in small town Appalachia. Way better in helping to get an understanding of the economics in the region than what Vance dished up.
Dianna, I was born and raised in the Western Carolinas, in a small town called Lenoir. Twenty minutes to get to Appalachian State University. I know all about the Appalachian environment as I was born in 1951. We were always told they were “poor, ignorant, and uneducated”. When I was young, I would go with our county librarian in her bookmobile (a bus filled with books) to very rural areas in our county. Kids would get so excited about getting to pick up to 3 books to read. My job was to stamp the book card inside up to 30 days. The librarian’s name was Miss Nora McGee and I loved her because of her compassion and dedication.
The Scotch-Irish book will give you a bit of insight into the origin Southern Accent. I won't spoil it for you. It is really cool though.
I mean, the Southern Accent came from somewhere right? That book will tell you where it came form. It is pretty cool.
And this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_Woman_of_Troublesome_Creek
Also check out The Giver of Stars, by Jo Jo Moyes. Historical fiction about Elenore Roosevelt's depression-era travelling library program. Industrious women in the Kentucky mountains deliver books with the assistance of a pack mule. And resistance from the Maga crowd of their time. Both excellent reads.
I just read a synopsis of the plot, complex and eye-opening. Never heard of the Blue people of Kentucky, whose skin is blue due to a genetic blood condition.
Thanks for these
"W" went to Yale, then all the way to Iraq with false intelligence! Seriously, the "Ivy" universities have been deeply flawed by big R donors who tweak the departments' professors and subject matter as a prerequisite to sponsorship. The Ivy schools can no longer claim scholarship, impartiality or excellence. They can claim a student's admission based on a parent's attendance along with a hearty donation.
Good morning, Mike,
I have to jump in here just to say that "Hillbilly Elegy" is, in my opinion, just one example of the whole enormous problem of a decline in the standards for these blockbuster, best-selling books that inspire rave reviews. It has honestly not been very long since a good review in, say, the NYTimes Book Review meant something. It didn't mean you would like the book; it might very well not be your cup of tea. But you would know you were getting good writing.
Thank you for saying that, Dean.
Long before he decided to become a TFG-loving sycophant, I heard Vance speak at a breakfast for a local nonprofit that runs shelters and finds permanent housing for their clients, a very worthy organization. I had read the book and felt its conclusion lacking. I was hoping Vance would provide more depth in his speech. He did. My take away about JD Vance: he’s as deep as a pie tin.
Correction: He did not.
Thanks, Mike, after reading you, we can either forget what I just wrote or, maybe better, read it through the filter of your remarks on the book and its writer... and see if anything worthwhile comes through.
I am very wary indeed of men with energy, ambition, a good appearance... and skewed motivation. Hyped-up, they make useful tools... while truth and the real man are buried alive.
But I shouldn't write too freely about Identikit villains and heroes...
Thank you, Peter, for addressing our urgent struggles for the essence, the existence of life and Democracy.
Well Grisham is a REAL writer. He knows how to tell a story. Vance is just a lyin’ sumbitch politician.
Thanks for this report; I had not heard this before.
Thanks for your tip on "Gray Mountain." I like the way it opens; just the antidote I need to this unease that's permeating my world.
You got it Irenie, of course: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$; it's just that and White Supremacy.
Yes, that and White Supremacy, likely most important. Thank you!
Vanity. King of the sidewalk now, pushing weaker spirits into the gutter.
Unless soundly defeated, sooner rather than later, such a one could become very, very dangerous.
Defeated, humiliated, forced to make a long desert crossing and, in so doing, question himself, question stock beliefs and standardized answers, the hardest of hard experience could... just could... make a man of such a one.
But if resentment trumps understanding, an even greater monster may emerge. A Mein Kampf case, an ultra-Trump.
All the conditions are stacked stacked in favor of him remaining a misled misleader, just one more cheap bought-and-soldier. But keep a close watch over this one, now and in years to come. Never trust him unless or until he has shown himself worthy of trust.
Now he's a young dog that must have its muzzle shoved close to its shit. His treason must be punished.
All fealty to the Lie and the Liar must be punished. Failure to put these people in their place -- them and their like -- means hell for us all.
👍🏼
Vance one of those who said, I’ve got mine, now screw you, who are still clawing your way up. The perfect republican…
Just like Clarence Thomas who was helped by Affirmative Action and was appointed to Supreme Court as a black man to replace Thurgood Marshall.
Well, Anita Hill was robbed when he was appointed and Justice Marshall was appalled.
It was heartbreaking to me that Vance, after writing about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and their impact on adult health in “Hillbilly Elegy” could turn on the public health lessons of how toxic childhood stress is tied to the increased likelihood of addiction, obesity, violence, incarceration, becoming a victim of or a perpetrator of crime. He understood it and explained it well, and then pffff! Some Trump
love made him disown that direct tie to lack of safety, nurture and stability for children leads to perpetuating cycles of poor outcomes. I thought he was going to be the best kind of advocate for maternal health, family supports, early childhood education and nutrition. But he flipped. Literally. God forbid he gets into rhe
Senate.
Thank you for reminding us of Peter Thiel, as great a threat to democracy as Elon Musk.
Zuckerberg’s BFF and Trump’s tech whisperer
Wow... thank you, Irenie. Great background info, too.
My reading of Vance’s book was that the people that raised him (grandparents, mostly) were as awful people as he is now. How the book garnered so much good press mystifies me.
I see the words compassion and empathy over and over and I just don't get where so-called "Christian Republicans" come from. To me, "Christian Republicans" is an oxymoron because there is NO compassion and empathy in the Republican party for anyone who is not a wealthy white male - not even white women (when you consider both abortion rights and religious rights). What gives?? How do they justify Trump and Trumper actions as in The Big Lie (that Trump won) and in the violence that happened at the January 6th Insurrection?? And what about the Christian's motto WWJD?? Really!??? What WOULD Jesus feel and do about the lack of compassion and empathy (not to mention justice) in the Republican party??
Hard to believe that Hispanic workers or any “workers” of any stripe buy the republican bull Schitt. They have NEVER been your friends, MAGAt morons. Use you to screw you, oh yeah, all day, every day.
I was taken aback when I learned that one of the terms of the settlement of the narrowly averted railroad strike last month was the workers were now entitled to one paid day of sick leave PER YEAR. Apparently, there were NO paid sick days prior to that. WTF? Deregulation at its finest.
truth... and simply appalling. part of our lovely Corporatocracy... it's how it works.
I see, too, the always confounding fact of this kind of loyalty of the voting poor whites in the South (and elsewhere) to right-wing Republicans who represent the wealthy and never come through for, say, the miners in West Virginia. Old English teacher that I am, I believe it is in large part the self-defeating tendency to believe well-crafted words over actions. Trump blanketed and numbed everyone with a constant barrage of words. Republican politicians promise everything. The desire to believe them is great.
Thank you Dean, certainly repeated words something similar to the way an algorithm targets a specific "market". Do we have a Speech Therapist in the Community?
FERN: 9 quotations with 2 headings in CAPS; impressive in form & content.
Our Document Guru, so glad I pleased you. Cheers, Bryan. Here's to the Unions and busting the Republicans. What say you?
Inhuman Labor exploitation began shortly shortly after Jamestown. HCR picked up the history circa August1866. Continuous & ongoing battles through Sunday October 9, 2022. We need more than a "New Deal".
"Trump's first term"????
I see panic in your question marks, Anne-Louise.
Actually, according to Trump and his crowd, this is his second term, so, really, he can't run again :)
Steve, are you taking their word that Trump is now the president? (wink, smirk, roll your eyes)? 'Watch what they do, not what they say'. Many election denier candidates in federal and state midterm elections look as though they will be winners. It's called rigging the elections. Top priority -- protect the elections and VOTE.
Wow. I had to stop for a few moments after I read todays letter. I looked at the bottom of the letter where I find all the citations. I scanned the letter again then put my phone down and walked away. My husband and I have been basking in the warm glow of the Post Season success of our favorite baseball team (the Mariners, if you must know) but, I can’t shake the images of the letter from my mind.
I think anymore when I look at the stated policies and promises of the Democrats or the Republicans at any given point, past or present, and try to figure out who the guys in the white hats are in this round, I have to shrug my shoulders and say sometimes I can’t tell the players without the scorecard.
Who gets to be the standard bearer for the Everyman? When Lincoln was alive, and into the first decade after the Civil War, the Republicans spoke for the downtrodden. But, how long did it take for the fear of the Great Unwashed having greater influence in public policy and politics to have their hair standing on end? It wasn’t until FDR that the Democrats tried on the white hat for fit.
I’m weary. I’m weary and tired and afraid. Col. Alexander Vindeman’s words, “Here right matters” that I firmly believed, were dashed on the rocks, mocked and derided by the CORRECTLY described Deplorables. I’m sitting in my comfortably blue state that hasn’t elected a Republican as governor since 1980 that now may be facing the possibility of a MAGA governor! The Republican who may win is a mere shell of a suit compared to most of the gubernatorial candidates who were not elected in the past 40 years. Hershel Walker! Oh, my! How have we, as humanity, gotten to this place???
I am weary, I am tired, I am disappointed. I am afraid. I want to believe that our better Angels will prevail in the battle of goodness and right over the darkness of meanness and spite. I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.
Samuel Gompers told me as a young student, I hang on to his words “The man who has millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his hands against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.” And now the “poor devil” watches Fox.
That’s a chilling quote from Gompers, but it says it all. I was raised in a railroad town in the 50’s and 60”s, my dad worked for Southern Pacific. He was a staunch union man, believed fervently that only good things came from that representation. Somehow he became right-wing (thankfully he died before the age of Rush Limbaugh) and anti-Democrat. He was appalled when my sister wanted to go to Berkeley...you can just imagine those conversations!
HI Betsy... Seems as though our process of realignment is dynamic and has been for a long time. We were just lucky to not live through any of the previous ones? I do try to study and learn as much as possible to view our current mess through a wider lens where things have been just as awful (even worse) as today.
Hubs and I read a book called "The Next Realignment" a couple years ago. Maybe when pandemic first happened? It really opened our eyes to how many times this necessarily painful part of evolving our democratic republic has actually happened. We were shocked to read this version of history that neither of us knew. We majored in history and poli sci in college... and have continued to learn ever since. Yet, the accounts of many of these eruptions were news to us.
That our country survived these things was miraculous to us... and gave us some hope and encouragement for what's happening now. No guarantees, of course.
It’s a relief, albeit sad, to learn that the details of Lincoln’s loss were not even taught to history and poly sci students. It seems on a par with CRT and banned books. If HRC is the first to put this together, she deserves another prize.
Thank you for furthering my understanding of what led to Reagan and the two Bushes.
"and try to figure out who the guys in the white hats are in this round, I have to shrug my shoulders and say sometimes I can’t tell the players without the scorecard"
Betsy, join the crowd of us who are old enough to have seen both parties be ugly. Most recently I was horrified to learn of Democrat Kathy Hochul's absconding with $337 million dollars in a NY "pay to play" deal.
https://www.wxxinews.org/capitol-bureau/2022-10-04/hochul-defends-covid-test-purchases-against-pay-to-play-allegations
Most of the time, Betsy, I don't think there are ANY white hats on any politician's heads.
I think most of the time, their hand is in my pocket trying to steal my wallet OR their hand is in the hand of some big corporation so that they can dump toxic waste in my yard.
And that is a truly sad situation when most of us feel this way. More, i do believe it's the 'system' that's faulty... and brings out the worst of normal human traits in many of those entrusted with representing and leading us. Since it happens on such a broad scale - the rule and not the exception - it's hard not to look at the system (economic/political/social) that brings us here. We, especially in the USA, are so culturally conditioned to blame, shame and judge individuals without stepping back to look at the bigger picture, too ...
Betsy, I feel the same way. I took my coffee with me and walked round my little garden this morning at sunrise to commune with the growing plants. They are all flowering, even the ones I've only just put in, and the one daffodil that didn't bloom has changed its mind and produced a fat bud while its companions wither.
Thanks! Your daffodil helped the corner of my mouth turn up a bit. I have been pretty morose for a while and feeling crummy physically in general for a while. It’s hard to keep a sunny disposition when you’re not feeling well. I recently have been diagnosed with a legitimate reason to feel crummy and cranky, but that doesn’t really make the awfulness of the state of the world any less worthy of being cranky and pissy over. I will always welcome defiantly optimistic daffodils and their radiant faces! May there be enough defiant daffy dillies to lift our world from its mud!
Years ago, friends decided to expand their asphalt driveway and parking area. The following spring, the daffodils came right up through the asphalt!
When there's a will, there's a way. 🌼
Makes me smile also, as well does the autumn glow still simmering among our trees.
I see to my dismay that I've missed a fabulous discussion. Rats. Betsy, I have ranted about our loss of vocabulary hurling us at least as far back as the middle ages but maybe there's a bright side to that. Your comment brings to mind what once was an instinctive understanding of the connection between body and spirit. Maybe we'll even start to believe in the harmony of the spheres again
A MAGA possibility in WA? Sorry, you must be shuddering all the time. I guess I need to go back and look at that race. On a baseball note, we did watch the Seattle game, wonderful ending! (we’re originally from Northern CA, SF Giants fans)
Carol, to clarify: Washington's governor is still progressive Dem Insley, who has announced that he will run again in 2024, when his current term ends. Betsy may be a Mariners fan, but she refers to the blue state she live in , which would be Georgia if she is talking about Hershel Walker running for office. But not for governor- he is after the Senate seat now held by the very fine incumbant Senator Warnock. I agree 100% with Betsy's take on Walker. He's the worst excuse for a candidate I've seen. One of Trump's "jokes". I just sent a sixzable (for me) donation to Warnock. We need him in the Senate, no matter what state we live in.
The past is truly present.
'The labor movement means just this: it is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.'
___Wendell Phillips (November 29, 1811 – February 2, 1884) was an American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator, and attorney.
Isn't it though.....the same old mantra. I am reading a book on the British Empire called Legacy of Violence and some of the same nonsense went on as the Brits excused their violence and suppression and were as we say, tone deaf, to the Irish, the Indians, the people of the Arab mideast. And they lied about they were doing and suppressed reports that told the truth about Ireland...the burning of Cork for example. It wasn't the Brits; it was the IRA.
The more we learn about real history, the more we can see that history does repeat. And it's usually about different human conflicts based on lack of compassion, understanding, cruelty, greed... and ineffective (if any) honest communication with one another to sort it out. Violence never solves anything... yet we never learn that.
Or is there maybe an escalating level of human aggressiveness with each wave of migration / immigration? - Something to consider in relation to migration from climate change.
Time to mention overpopulation and the psychologists’ research about too many rats in a trap. How do we start thinking the opposite of “be fruitful and multiply”?
I am proposing international adoption rules with UN and national signatories to enforce them. In conjunction would be reduction in production of anything that furthers climate change.
Science has answers to many of our problems. Can we accept that or are we stuck in the Dark Ages? The only way we can reduce population “gently” without major pandemics and wars is to start being thoughtful about preserving humans on the planet. Can we rethink where we are and how to reverse course to the two billion (from more than eight billion) science says can be sustained on this planet? Can we imagine shrinking production instead of expanding?
What we do will show whether humans have the rationality that the eighteenth century (and our founding fathers) hoped for. Sadly, it may be too late for most, if not all, as we cannot eat money and Mother Nature rules.
Agreed. many indigenous cultures around the world actually had ways of not having their populations exceed the carrying capacity of their territory "baked in" to their cultures. For our part, the single most effective way to stabilize and reduce human populations is to educate and empower young women. Such measures reduced average family size in Kenya from about 7 children a few decades ago to about 4 children now.
Thank you for that information. Cecily Williams, Dame of the British Empire, MD 1919, sent to Africa by the British Health Service (what do you do with a female MD in 1919?) discovered that women there, if they could be assured of care in there declining years, wanted no more than two children - the number proposed by the UN in 1977!
No one is violent for no reason, and human groups have not somehow become inherently more violent over time. In the 17th and 18th centuries, when Europeans first started coming to the Americas in large numbers, so many Native Americans died it has been called a "demographic catastrophe" by many historians. The waves of German, Irish, Italian, Chinese, etc, immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries are pretty tame by comparison. Tamer still are the waves coming from the Mideast, Africa, and Central America in the 21st century.
I read Diamond's book "Collapse" years ago, but I seem to remember the takeaway about Iceland was one of soil and flora mismanagement (which Icelanders have been addressing for the past few decades - with good result), not violent immigration or emigration.
Individual people are violent to get what they want or keep what they have. Groups of people are pretty much the same. Sometimes that reason is a real, existential threat, sometimes it is a lie. Fenris may still come for us. Will we be ready with effective measures, or will our response fail because it was based on lies?
Steve,
At the end of the chapters on Iceland, after the soil mismanagement, after the destruction of the trees, Diamond notes the apparent extinction of the Europeans and the takeover by the Inuits. He further notes archeological signs of violence and suggests that the Inuits were the origin of the European extinction.
Not that that bothered me, since, they were also the native people.
What you're describing actually was about Greenland. Not really a tale about soil mismanagement, but more about the "little ice age" that began c 1450. The general cooling kept the seals too far from shore for the Scandinavians to hunt, and the harbors started to remain frozen all year. There may have been conflict between the Scandinavians and the Inuit, but records show that the last couple to be married in Greenland turned up in Iceland several years later. Also, no personal artifacts were found at any of the Greenland settlement sites, suggesting the people there moved away, rather than being slaughtered, or starving to death as some theories posit.
What are the options Olof ___those fleeing oppression, over-flowing refugee camps, overwhelming/uncontrolled crime, climate collapse, no work, extreme poverty, no water...let them die, the faster the better?
old wives' tale, mister! (look it up)
Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" is well worth reading Fern.
In particular, the story about Iceland. It will shed new light on Olof's perceptions above for you.
po-po!
The Nordic myth of how the gods of war put the Fenris wolf in chains on a distant island, also tells the story of one day Fenris will be free, and that will be the end of the old regime. Supposedly this was the story of suppression of indigenous people, and the insight that one day it will be over, maybe a late addition.
Awesome book Michele
Yes, it is. I am not too far in it, but it is truly eye opening on how bad keeping the empire going was. I was in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone in 1965-68. The only paved roads out of Freetown and upcountry were where the Queen went. The railroad was narrow gauge, so the trains could not go very fast. Next door in Guinea, the gauge was different. All this was deliberate, so they couldn't mesh. I have just started the part where Bomber Harris is flying over the Arabian desert and dropping bombs on innocents.
In fact, it isn't even past- William Faulkner
Faulkner somehow understood that in his bones and managed to make it real in his prose. I don't know of another writer who quite has it. Thanks for the reminder.
The past is never dead. It is not even past.
"The past is never dead. It's not even past." - William Faulkner
One slight correction. “India” and “Egypt” had nothing to do with the cotton trade as independent actors. They were totally controlled by the British and Anglo-French imperial overseers. If India had had a chance to control its own industrial development the world would be different today. The British glutted the market for cotton, and the competition between the South and the British Empire over cotton was part of the equation of 19th c. global politics.
This letter simply demonstrates that there were no “good” actors in the 19th century: not in Britain or Europe or the USA. We all have a lot to answer for. And that people like the Owenites, who tried to develop a humane industrial revolution—and were suppressed and destroyed because they showed that it could be done—were right all along.
As is China's suppression of Uigurs today a lot about cotton, and the benefits of slavery.
Thank you for this reference to the Owenites, Linda. I've heard of these movements. Didn't remember the name. Had look it up. More to learn for connecting all the dots and networks. Like why did their efforts fail? (We can guess...) Much appreciated!
Never heard of Owenites. Thank you
Linda Your focus on the British imperial influence on the Civil War cotton imbroglio and the sharp expansion of Egyptian cotton production is spot on. However, your lauding of the “Owen movement’ I find more gut-emotional than factual. An Israeli published an assessment of many American communal endeavors. He noted that all failed, except for the Shakers [whose fatal flaw was eschewing marriage] and,I recall, a German Mennonite group.
I observed some successful communes (kibbutzs) in Israel in the early 1950s. I believe that their driving communality, which began in the late 19th, has greatly diminished over the past 70 years.
The Owenites were not successful in the long term because Robert Owen was hounded out of England (I think Manchester area--somewhere in Lancashire). He and his sons settled in New Harmony, Indiana, and established a model factory there. They were again deliberately sabotaged by other factory owners in the region (SW Indiana) but not before Robert Owen's son founded the US Geological Survey. New Harmony has preserved the Owenite legacy. So I disagree with you. Owen was paternalistic but he did recognize that feeding, paying, and housing people--and educating them as well as their children--produced more committed workers. It was not a commune.
Linda I agree that Robert Owen was outstanding in establishing a model factory in New Harmony. I believe that he was the most enlightened of manufacturers in the 19th century.
"They elected to office leaders who promised to confiscate wealth through taxation and give it to Black citizens in the form of roads, schools, and hospitals. "
God forbid taxes should be used to build roads, schools and hospitals! Heavens! What is the world coming to!
And certainly not to forgive any student loan debt! Good Lord! Many of them are poor and (horror of horrors) black!
A lot hasn't changed a bit.
"Post racial society" my Great Aunt Fanny!😡
Yes, Cheryl, you’re spot on. You wrote “A lot hasn’t changed a bit.”
“The more Things Change, the more they stay the same.” A little music to make the point. Bon Jovi.
https://youtu.be/VzLXYENyJMQ
Thank you for this, my 4am wake up call…
Welp, "....I guess it's time to roll up our sleeves...."
I hadn’t heard about the Peshtigo fire before tonight’s LFAA. Not surprising, given the circumstances outlined in the Letter. The moneyed class’s panic about worker’s rights, the black vote, and “socialists” has a long history in this country. Capital has ridden the current of fearful ignorance for a long time, rather successfully.
While liberal democracies, broadly speaking, regard capitalism as a reasonably productive system, virtually all but the U.S., in my view, largely have come to recognize that capitalism is not very good at distribution unless wedded to social democratic institutions that contain its excesses and moderate its self serving impulses. For me, the Professor’s history lesson has provided added insight into why Americans today are far too easily duped by Republican rhetoric that aims to conflate socialism based on the idea of social ownership of the means of production typically controlled by the state or government with democratic socialism based simply on a more equitable distribution of a nation’s wealth. Moreover, I think that same history also reveals why it’s so difficult for far too many Americans to appreciate that the security of our nation and its people depend on a far more cooperative environment in which there is a modicum of social and economic justice for large numbers of people today who feel oppressed and marginalized by a runaway wild capitalism.
Yes. Capitalism with little or no 'safety net' ... aka consumer/public 'protections' is a deadly and dangerous practice. Ironically, most rhetoric purposely calls these much-needed policies 'regulations' because nobody likes rules and regs. Every time i see or hear about 'regulations,' i automatically substitute the word 'protections.' (Thank you, George Lakoff, author of "Don't Think of an Elephant" and other enlightening writings.)
Our love affair with 'individualism' mixed in with this makes a volatile cocktail...
Other democracies seem to have figured out what you're talking about, Barbara. Not us. We're slower... and may never resemble theirs.
Suz-an, Having studied Lakoff, I, too, whenever the opportunity presents itself, encourage dropping the term regulations and replacing it with protections. Regrettably, well-intentioned Democrats rhetorically relate reforms with the need for more regulations.
As for the ethos that distinguishes the States from other liberal democracies, our flawed, specifically Republican, ideology appears to go something like the government’s role is not to undo all harms, nor to secure an equitable distribution of its resources; rather its role is to secure equal rights. What one makes of those rights, what status one obtains as a result of his or her efforts is not a subject of public concern; it is entirely up to each individual.
"Every time i see or hear about 'regulations,' i automatically substitute the word 'protections.' "
"I, too, whenever the opportunity presents itself, encourage dropping the term regulations and replacing it with protections."
Seems pretty easy and straight-forward to me. I've always thought of regulations "protecting" us, but "protections" cuts out all the mud.
Beth, While I appreciate your reply, I also would note, because words matter, that permanently replacing the term “regulations” with “protections” would reframe our discussions on a host of issues in a way that greatly would benefit Democratic messaging.
Does seem to shift peoples' attention when we say it that way. It's why Rs claim that rules and regulations... strangle us. No one likes those words. So they use them... a LOT.
Suz-an, Ironically, it’s the restraining democratic protections at the center of civil society and the rule of law that, in my view, provide some sense of normalcy and security in one’s life.
Interesting take on each party, Barbara. Thank you! More of us need to learn Lakoff's invaluable lessons.
Re: R ideology ... if it's as you describe, then it fails. Far as i can tell, it doesn't actually aim to secure equal rights ... it simply tries to CLAIM we all have them. And then, yeah... laissez-faire. Except that we don't all have equal rights. So false premise?
Suz-an, I believe the assertion claiming equal rights is, as you stated, a false premise. Well done!
Thank you, Barbara! And therein lies our huge dilemma...
Suz-an, I believe the false premise is only part of the problem. I remain concerned about an ideology that views the government’s role exclusively as securing equal rights. I would contend that what its people are able to make of those rights is a subject of public concern.
Rupert Murdoch helps us not understand, 24-7 at 90 decibels. Aided and abetted by chicanery and an unbelievable war chest, not to mention republicans with zip integrity
"virtually all but the U.S., in my view, largely have come to recognize that capitalism is not very good at distribution unless wedded to social democratic institutions that contain its excesses and moderate its self serving impulses."
This, is a brilliantly written sentence. Thank you.
Mike, I greatly appreciate your affirming reply.
I have copied the sentence for future use (when I send it to my Republican sisters). I will attribute properly.
:-)
Mike, Because I consider anything I post an Substack as fair use, no attribution is necessary. I leave it to you, but I would be fine if you simply identified the statement as an LFAA posting. I would note, as with every Substack exchange, I am driven solely by a desire to learn as much as we can from one another and to spread the word.
Attempted like
But just stop and observe how, in Britain, a so-called "Conservative" government is bent on ripping a wider hole under the waterline of the ship of State than any wild leftist revolutionaries, any foreign enemy could ever have dreamed of making.
Watch, and learn the lesson while there's still time.
Peter, For some context, since the nearly unprecedented drop in Labour’s vote share in 2019 resulting in Corbyn standing down as Labour leader, the Party, under Keir Starmer’s stewardship, appears to be rebounding, most notably since Liz Truss became Prime Minister. I understand the Labour Party currently is enjoying a huge opinion poll lead, which, regrettably contrary to the States, I view as a positive countermeasure to “Conservative” UK policy.
I'd started out by calling the lady Liz Dross when she was competing for the leadership... and worried that the nickname was unfair; but oh how she lived down to it...
AMERICAN ‘PATRIOTISM’ THEN AND NOW
Several days ago I lunched with two ‘late middle agers’and my NYU pre-med grandson. We got on to the subject of ‘patriotism.’
The 90-year-old, who immigrated from Germany in 1971, spoke of how Germans were surprised, visiting America in the 60s & 70s, by the abundance of American flags. They were puzzled by this display of patriotism. [He said that after WW II displays of German flags were avoided until about a generation and more later.]
We were appalled at how Trumpists seem to have taken the American flag as their own. I recalled how, after returning from my Congo experiences, when I went to a football game with my daughter, I would bawl during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner.
We agreed that the image of American ‘patriotism’ is extremely obscured these days. As Heather underscores, the Republicans don’t give a damn about what’s good for the United States. It’s Republican political slime, including supporting such scum balls as Trump, McConnell, and Cruz.
By contrast, President Biden is the personification of a proud and patriotic American. He is dedicated to pursue the interests of the United States and the great majority of the American people.
An overwhelming number of Democrats, many Independents, and some ‘RINOS’ share Biden’s dedication to American patriotism. How can we restore this selfless, patriotic pride in the face of all these despicable Trumpublicans?
As Kate Smith phrased it “God Bless America.”
Keith,
I hypothesize that if there is a God, there would be no rational reason why he would bless any one country more than another. Or, bless any country at all.
Presumably, God would be in favor of his entire creation being "blessed" (the fact that 70% of that creation is living in squalor and poverty notwhithstanding).
Second, it is far more important to do what Dr. Richardson does and take a cold look at the past without emotion.
For example, since WW II, no other country on earth, except America, has invaded FOUR contries with massive military might and killed civilians during those invasions with wanton abandon. Not one.
All of us can easily google
"Civilian Deaths in Korea",
or "Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan".
Or Vietnam.
Or Iraq.
If you do that, you will learn more about America.
Looking at America and seeing America for what it actually is?? Vastly more important than flying a meaningless flag on one's garage a couple times a year or ALL of the time.
Understanding what the flag REALLY stands for is FAR more important than using one's emotion and imagination to "believe" that flying a flag is "patriotic".
Mike I agree that flying a flag simply as a symbol is vacuous. Also, my reference to ‘God’ is ecumenical, as, I believe, was Kate Smith’s. Whether Jewish, Christian, Moslem, Hindu, or simply a ‘supreme being,’ faith in something beyond one’s self I believe has merit.
Keith,
I agree in having faith in serving someting beyond one's on self. I have, in fact, sung in an all Greek Orthodox choir, in four part harmony, as a tenor, for 32 years, in Greek! Not knowing how to read music or read Greek?
that just made the time in church fly by that much faster. I have it all memorized now and can sing with my eyes closed. it is beautiful Keith. And it transformed me from an angry, pissed off young man who was headed for some real trouble to a calm(ish) adult focussed on others (most of the time).
Thank you.
:-)
Republicans made a joke of the flag, and every patriotic gesture (Reagan and Michael Deaver). We need to reclaim it.
Geez Louise, is there any difference between our “dangerous classes” and that of the caste system in India??
Thank you for putting our present political issues into an historical context. I have to take issue with your analysis of the reason for the fame of the Great Chicago Fire over the Peshtigo Fire that took many more lives. Chicago was linked by telegraph to the world and the Western Associated Press shared details of the fire with the world in real time. In the words of historian Carl Smith in his recent book, Chicago's Great Fire: "... the Great Chicago Fire was the first instantaneously reported international news event, details of which reached an audience in the tens of millions while it was happening." There was no one in Peshtigo with the resources to spread the news and it became a forgotten footnote. It is evidence, however, of the tinder dry conditions that existed throughout the midwest that autumn.
I thought she did say that, that Peshtigo was too rural for the news to get out quickly.
How politicians play the narrative often counts for more than the method of transmission. Combine Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda machine and Republican bull Schitt narrative and you see the current problem, which overwhelms reality and common sense.
“The difference is in part because Chicago was a city, of course, easy for newspapers to cover, while the Pestigo fire killed people in lumber camps and small towns.”
Agreed on the happy birthday wishes, professor. And thank you. This is another story that changes history for me, and explains so much.