Excellent ideas here. Let me add another. Two years of required public service would give young people an opportunity to learn civic responsibility by serving the common good directly. It would help instill in all young people a sense of their obligations to society, regardless of their family’s wealth or status. It would allow young Americans to connect with other Americans who differ from them by race, social class, and politics. It would provide a common experience in the common good.
Public service could take many forms in addition to military service. The Peace Corps could be revived and expanded. Projects like “Teach for America” could be enlarged and extended to other service professions, like “Social Work for America.” Nonprofits could offer a range of public service work. All such recruits would be paid a modest stipend, at least living expenses plus interest payments on any student loans. (That would be less than the current pay of “all-volunteer” army recruits.)
You’re spot on. Several fixes are possible but political will to do them is practically nonexistent currently.
1. Get the money out (citizens United, lobbyists, the revolving door)
2. Faster Accountability for insurrectionists both in and out of the branches of government. By dragging it out (thoroughness is important, I know) people get numb and tired of it and lose their passion about it.
3. Kick out, recall, impeach the wannabe fascists and obstructionists in the house and senate. This requires money, we’ll coordinated grassroots effort in the states/communities where these cretins came from.
4. Consider some level of ethical and professional competency requirements for holding office. We have too many batshit crazy conspiracists in govt already (Rand, Margarie T green, etc) Just like any job there should be some minimum qualification requirements to be met to even get in. They NEVER should have been even able to get on the ticket.
How to reverse the rightward trend? Some necessary and insufficient tactics: 1. Make daily videos on Tiktok. See the trendlines on Tiktok. 2. Join and support https://www.workingamerica.org/. 3. Disenfranchise Fox News, which is possibly operating in violation of its rules - at the minimum, require constant banner bottom of screen This program is for entertainment purposes only. It is not news and should not be taken as factual." 4. Administer attitude adjustment to reporters at NYT, WaPo for endless negative and hostile coverage of the Biden administration. What's up with that? 5. Civil and criminal litigation funders of the right wing outfits.
Until Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News is liable for its constant Russian propaganda, disinformation, anti vaccination hysteria, probably not.
For millions of Americans, this is their news source, functioning in a fact free medium.
How many of them don’t even believe Biden is our elected president?.
I also find this silence from the DOJ, AG Garland ominous, this lack of accountability soul destroying as the 1/6 participants just laugh in our face, selling merchandise to celebrate their crimes.
I’m not sure at this can be reversed, sorry Robert.
Lots of good thoughts here. We still have far too many guns (lethal weapons) in the hands of adults with the mentality of a six year old. If we can’t get rid of the guns, which we can’t, then we need working law and order.
To have working law and order we need a swift and equitable justice system. Threats with weapons of any kind must take priority for timely trials and punishment. And weapons must include more than guns. Weapons include vehicles, flag poles, tasers, chemical sprays and more.
The left needs to be able to get our free speech rights back. I recently had a visitor remove her “coexist” sticker from her car due to real fears her car (possibly with her in it) could be damaged by the “empowered by guns” intimidation people unleashed by the likes of Trump and Giuliani.
Swift justice needs to include being tried and convicted or found not guilty within three months of apprehension and arraignment.
The only way to enact sanity is to find a way to get a super majority of Democrats in the Senate while maintaining a majority in the House and also maintaining the Presidency. We need a few extras because all Democrats will never vote in a military fashion like the fascist republicans of today act.
Professor, I write both to question your premise about what’s happening to the “center” and, also, to register my fear that, for some time, the country has become increasingly polarized. I further maintain that this polarization largely is abetted by the Senate filibuster, a minority veto over the will of the majority, which, in my view, is the cause for much that is disfunctional in our politics.
Note that late last fall, U.S. Senate’s rules expert Martin Paone met with the Senate Democratic Caucus and, as I understand, save Manchin and Sinema, all were eager to explore resuscitating some version of the talking filibuster that, once exhausted, would have concluded with an up or down Senate majority vote. The thinking was that voter protection legislation would have been the first to benefit from this modest rule change followed by legislation (e.g., the PRO Act and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act) that already had passed in the House but, because of a handful of Democrats plus all 50 Republicans, has remained stalled in the Senate.
I, further, would note, but for Manchin and Sinema, that both House and Senate Democrats and the public-at-large support the President’s Build Back Better agenda, including the child tax credit, affordable child care, universal Pre-K, investments in housing, in health care, in home and community-based care, in climate, and more.
As for a possible remedy, just as representative government by popular consent likely will founder without an informed public, I would submit, as I have done elsewhere, that absent a highly effective Explainer-in-Chief to educate the public about what they’re losing, while we tolerate a minority veto over the will of the majority, large swaths of the population will continue living precariously from paycheck to paycheck, oftentimes sustaining the family income by more people working longer hours and still being weighted down by mortgage debt, credit card debt….Seriously, I could go on.
If the present legal events move forward and people who are subpoenaed are actually indicted and brought to justice, it may slow or even reverse the rightward trend. It is exciting to see 6 people receiving subpoenas just on the fake electors case. I would like to see these offenders forced to appear as most of us lowly citizens certainly would be.
I prefer not to discuss this in terms of left-right because that in itself is polarizing and may turn some people off. That said, what is called the right wing has long existed -- right wing extremist Barry Goldwater was the Republican nominee for president in 1964 -- but it has risen from minority status to prominence over the past 50+ years.
But also consider that in 1972, abortion was still illegal in many states, LGBTQ equality was not even on the radar, and there were almost no Black, Hispanic, or Asian members of Congress. Women were a tiny minority who could not even dream of becoming Speaker. Access to healthcare for those who were not very poor or elderly was dependent upon employment or paying out-of-pocket.
I think what has moved dramatically, thanks to Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and their accomplices, is the Overton Window, what is considered politically acceptable. "Freedom" generally and "freedom of religion" are used as justification for the most egregious behavior. A substantial portion of the population tells pollsters that violence is a justifiable means of achieving political ends. A substantial number of elected officials and candidates claim entitlement to prevent those who might oppose them from voting, and to unilaterally overturn election results that don't go their way. Many parents and elected officials want to turn public schools into propaganda machines for their own personal views. Corporations are people, but actual human beings are not. The wealthy are imbued with great competence and high moral character merely by virtue of their possession of wealth.
The intent of the Newt Gingrich types is to create sufficient chaos that people will grasp at anything to restore order, to allow an autocrat to emerge. I am far more concerned that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former vice president Mike Pence would become that autocrat than I am about Trump.
I think one action that is absolutely essential is to rein in the federal courts. Right now, they can dictate anything they want, with zero accountability; there are no checks and balances. The 1803 case Marbury v. Madison, which effectively amended the Constitution by judicial fiat to allow unelected judges to overturn Acts of Congress, thereby usurping Congress' primary Article I power to legislate, must be affirmatively rejected. I think a second action must be to rein in slash-and-burn media, which is acting to sabotage our government and society. (I would love to see Rupert Murdoch denaturalized and sent back to Australia.) Thirdly, there is an organization called Run for Something that recruits and supports young progressives to run for elective offices at all levels to counteract the malign forces infecting our society. Efforts like this should be encouraged.
I'd love to show this to my college classes, but the video uses the 'F'-word in connection with Trump and I wouldn't want to trigger an ugly incident. I suspect some of my students are very conservative : / and I wouldn't want them to disconnect before I have a chance to help them develop some critical thinking skills.
@David. I appreciate your list of 4 factors. I'd add that we need to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, and to tackle today's unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, we must address the Federal Reserve. Please see Leonard, Christopher. "The Lords of Easy Monday." The Supreme Court is another pressing issue that needs to be addressed. Hopefully, if we did all the above, people's lack of trust in the government would be restored.
All I can do i register Democrats and help make sure they vote. I live in the Fascist state of Florida, where our voter rolls were hacked by the Russians, purged by the Republicans and the governor and state legislature are engaged in voter suppression.
I see ideal solutions -- muzzle Fox, impeach Fascists, etc.-- but with the filibuster, GOP SC, and now GOP focusing on infiltrating at the local levels, I don't see how Dem ideals will happen.
That seems a key problem, as your drawing suggests: Democrat = ideals (equality, help people); GOP = self-serving (stop govt so I can do what I want).
That principle hasn't changed. What's expanded on the right are tactics. Dems: pretty much same tactics (peaceful protest, talking nicely among themselves, voting, etc.); GOP: much more involvement from foreign dictators, domestic terrorists, guns, violence, lies, vote suppression efforts, etc.
Specifics of what the GOP want hardly matter. Whatever they want now, their tactics create a major imbalance in "fire power."
So the question is "how do we stop GOP evil force. " Similar to "how do we stop Russia from invading Ukraine." Biden seems to be standing up to Putin more forcefully than to Trump's GOP. But which is the greater threat? Fall of one country or fall of Democracy and its future abilities to stand up for any and all countries?
So is the answer re GOP to threaten sanction? If no help, then enact sanctionm If war on a world-level ensues, then fight? The Dems have politely threatened. Not much success. How do they enact economic sanction with GOP controlling most business? What, if any, kind of sanction would work?
Or are we already at war? War won't work so well after Putin has settled into Ukraine--or after Trump is back in the White House. The time for war is when the enemy fires the first shot?
I don't know exactly what comprises domestic political war, but usually, war means fighting fire with fire. For a party that represents ethics, shooting is hard, especially when shackled by apathy. Is that how evil triumphs? If we don't stop talking and start use some effective type of force, maybe Fascism will win?
If so, what force? And are those with the red button more concerned about elect-ability and popularity polls than with saving Democracy?
I don't know answers, but I see scary questions apparently not being answered.
Thanks for this question. A way to reverse it is viscerally clear to me although the exact path much less so. THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY GETS BETTER, especially better at loving many if not all people by appreciating their worth and seeking their perspectives even while not of course acting on all of them. Better policy and more success at the polls would follow. Personally, I do not feel loved and accepted by this party even though I vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and have been in small-scale leadership in our local party. I UNDERSTAND why many people are mad at the Democratic Party. although I remain in an uncomfortable coalition with it. Let's control what we can most control, ourselves! I'm still an optimist.
Lots of the kinds of changes discussed here make a lot of sense—but will be tough slogs politically. I think we need to think as well about what has made people so angry and distrustful of government and corporations and how we can address that in ways that can actually get somewhere.
A lot of why people feel the way they do is that they perceive the economy to be essentially unfair (because it is!). Real median wages gave stagnated over the last decades, but consumption needs (especially health care have soared) have grown steadily. But returns to ownership have grown at a rapid pace. Fifty-percent of the private sector workforce does not participate in a retirement plan, and the numbers are worse for women and people of color. The only way we can fix this massive wealth insecurity Is reforming ownership.
That may sound like some left-wing fantasy but it isn’t. Employee ownership plans have proven very effective—participants have three times the retirement assets as employees in companies without these plans—and have been pushed by Republicans and Democrats in equal numbers (and with no opposition). The Alaska Permanent Fund is beloved by both parties. Ideas like platform cooperatives, data ownership, and limiting tax incentives for executive pay unless companies share the wealth are also supported on all sides. There is much we can do to make this happen, but the first step is just to stop treating these ideas with a pat on the head and start making them a priority.
Excellent ideas here. Let me add another. Two years of required public service would give young people an opportunity to learn civic responsibility by serving the common good directly. It would help instill in all young people a sense of their obligations to society, regardless of their family’s wealth or status. It would allow young Americans to connect with other Americans who differ from them by race, social class, and politics. It would provide a common experience in the common good.
Public service could take many forms in addition to military service. The Peace Corps could be revived and expanded. Projects like “Teach for America” could be enlarged and extended to other service professions, like “Social Work for America.” Nonprofits could offer a range of public service work. All such recruits would be paid a modest stipend, at least living expenses plus interest payments on any student loans. (That would be less than the current pay of “all-volunteer” army recruits.)
You’re spot on. Several fixes are possible but political will to do them is practically nonexistent currently.
1. Get the money out (citizens United, lobbyists, the revolving door)
2. Faster Accountability for insurrectionists both in and out of the branches of government. By dragging it out (thoroughness is important, I know) people get numb and tired of it and lose their passion about it.
3. Kick out, recall, impeach the wannabe fascists and obstructionists in the house and senate. This requires money, we’ll coordinated grassroots effort in the states/communities where these cretins came from.
4. Consider some level of ethical and professional competency requirements for holding office. We have too many batshit crazy conspiracists in govt already (Rand, Margarie T green, etc) Just like any job there should be some minimum qualification requirements to be met to even get in. They NEVER should have been even able to get on the ticket.
How to reverse the rightward trend? Some necessary and insufficient tactics: 1. Make daily videos on Tiktok. See the trendlines on Tiktok. 2. Join and support https://www.workingamerica.org/. 3. Disenfranchise Fox News, which is possibly operating in violation of its rules - at the minimum, require constant banner bottom of screen This program is for entertainment purposes only. It is not news and should not be taken as factual." 4. Administer attitude adjustment to reporters at NYT, WaPo for endless negative and hostile coverage of the Biden administration. What's up with that? 5. Civil and criminal litigation funders of the right wing outfits.
Until Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News is liable for its constant Russian propaganda, disinformation, anti vaccination hysteria, probably not.
For millions of Americans, this is their news source, functioning in a fact free medium.
How many of them don’t even believe Biden is our elected president?.
I also find this silence from the DOJ, AG Garland ominous, this lack of accountability soul destroying as the 1/6 participants just laugh in our face, selling merchandise to celebrate their crimes.
I’m not sure at this can be reversed, sorry Robert.
Lots of good thoughts here. We still have far too many guns (lethal weapons) in the hands of adults with the mentality of a six year old. If we can’t get rid of the guns, which we can’t, then we need working law and order.
To have working law and order we need a swift and equitable justice system. Threats with weapons of any kind must take priority for timely trials and punishment. And weapons must include more than guns. Weapons include vehicles, flag poles, tasers, chemical sprays and more.
The left needs to be able to get our free speech rights back. I recently had a visitor remove her “coexist” sticker from her car due to real fears her car (possibly with her in it) could be damaged by the “empowered by guns” intimidation people unleashed by the likes of Trump and Giuliani.
Swift justice needs to include being tried and convicted or found not guilty within three months of apprehension and arraignment.
The only way to enact sanity is to find a way to get a super majority of Democrats in the Senate while maintaining a majority in the House and also maintaining the Presidency. We need a few extras because all Democrats will never vote in a military fashion like the fascist republicans of today act.
Professor, I write both to question your premise about what’s happening to the “center” and, also, to register my fear that, for some time, the country has become increasingly polarized. I further maintain that this polarization largely is abetted by the Senate filibuster, a minority veto over the will of the majority, which, in my view, is the cause for much that is disfunctional in our politics.
Note that late last fall, U.S. Senate’s rules expert Martin Paone met with the Senate Democratic Caucus and, as I understand, save Manchin and Sinema, all were eager to explore resuscitating some version of the talking filibuster that, once exhausted, would have concluded with an up or down Senate majority vote. The thinking was that voter protection legislation would have been the first to benefit from this modest rule change followed by legislation (e.g., the PRO Act and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act) that already had passed in the House but, because of a handful of Democrats plus all 50 Republicans, has remained stalled in the Senate.
I, further, would note, but for Manchin and Sinema, that both House and Senate Democrats and the public-at-large support the President’s Build Back Better agenda, including the child tax credit, affordable child care, universal Pre-K, investments in housing, in health care, in home and community-based care, in climate, and more.
As for a possible remedy, just as representative government by popular consent likely will founder without an informed public, I would submit, as I have done elsewhere, that absent a highly effective Explainer-in-Chief to educate the public about what they’re losing, while we tolerate a minority veto over the will of the majority, large swaths of the population will continue living precariously from paycheck to paycheck, oftentimes sustaining the family income by more people working longer hours and still being weighted down by mortgage debt, credit card debt….Seriously, I could go on.
If the present legal events move forward and people who are subpoenaed are actually indicted and brought to justice, it may slow or even reverse the rightward trend. It is exciting to see 6 people receiving subpoenas just on the fake electors case. I would like to see these offenders forced to appear as most of us lowly citizens certainly would be.
SHOW SHOW SHOW - PUBLISH = THOSE 'DARK MONEY' - WEALTHY, PROMINENT $$$$$$ DONORS !!!!
I prefer not to discuss this in terms of left-right because that in itself is polarizing and may turn some people off. That said, what is called the right wing has long existed -- right wing extremist Barry Goldwater was the Republican nominee for president in 1964 -- but it has risen from minority status to prominence over the past 50+ years.
But also consider that in 1972, abortion was still illegal in many states, LGBTQ equality was not even on the radar, and there were almost no Black, Hispanic, or Asian members of Congress. Women were a tiny minority who could not even dream of becoming Speaker. Access to healthcare for those who were not very poor or elderly was dependent upon employment or paying out-of-pocket.
I think what has moved dramatically, thanks to Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and their accomplices, is the Overton Window, what is considered politically acceptable. "Freedom" generally and "freedom of religion" are used as justification for the most egregious behavior. A substantial portion of the population tells pollsters that violence is a justifiable means of achieving political ends. A substantial number of elected officials and candidates claim entitlement to prevent those who might oppose them from voting, and to unilaterally overturn election results that don't go their way. Many parents and elected officials want to turn public schools into propaganda machines for their own personal views. Corporations are people, but actual human beings are not. The wealthy are imbued with great competence and high moral character merely by virtue of their possession of wealth.
The intent of the Newt Gingrich types is to create sufficient chaos that people will grasp at anything to restore order, to allow an autocrat to emerge. I am far more concerned that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former vice president Mike Pence would become that autocrat than I am about Trump.
I think one action that is absolutely essential is to rein in the federal courts. Right now, they can dictate anything they want, with zero accountability; there are no checks and balances. The 1803 case Marbury v. Madison, which effectively amended the Constitution by judicial fiat to allow unelected judges to overturn Acts of Congress, thereby usurping Congress' primary Article I power to legislate, must be affirmatively rejected. I think a second action must be to rein in slash-and-burn media, which is acting to sabotage our government and society. (I would love to see Rupert Murdoch denaturalized and sent back to Australia.) Thirdly, there is an organization called Run for Something that recruits and supports young progressives to run for elective offices at all levels to counteract the malign forces infecting our society. Efforts like this should be encouraged.
I'd love to show this to my college classes, but the video uses the 'F'-word in connection with Trump and I wouldn't want to trigger an ugly incident. I suspect some of my students are very conservative : / and I wouldn't want them to disconnect before I have a chance to help them develop some critical thinking skills.
@David. I appreciate your list of 4 factors. I'd add that we need to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, and to tackle today's unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, we must address the Federal Reserve. Please see Leonard, Christopher. "The Lords of Easy Monday." The Supreme Court is another pressing issue that needs to be addressed. Hopefully, if we did all the above, people's lack of trust in the government would be restored.
All I can do i register Democrats and help make sure they vote. I live in the Fascist state of Florida, where our voter rolls were hacked by the Russians, purged by the Republicans and the governor and state legislature are engaged in voter suppression.
Here is an editorial from the Miami Herald. Democracy is under attack, and voters in Miami are the targets | Editorial BY THE MIAMI HERALD EDITORIAL BOARD https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article258224973.html
Please help register Democrats. https://www.fieldteam6.org/
I see ideal solutions -- muzzle Fox, impeach Fascists, etc.-- but with the filibuster, GOP SC, and now GOP focusing on infiltrating at the local levels, I don't see how Dem ideals will happen.
That seems a key problem, as your drawing suggests: Democrat = ideals (equality, help people); GOP = self-serving (stop govt so I can do what I want).
That principle hasn't changed. What's expanded on the right are tactics. Dems: pretty much same tactics (peaceful protest, talking nicely among themselves, voting, etc.); GOP: much more involvement from foreign dictators, domestic terrorists, guns, violence, lies, vote suppression efforts, etc.
Specifics of what the GOP want hardly matter. Whatever they want now, their tactics create a major imbalance in "fire power."
So the question is "how do we stop GOP evil force. " Similar to "how do we stop Russia from invading Ukraine." Biden seems to be standing up to Putin more forcefully than to Trump's GOP. But which is the greater threat? Fall of one country or fall of Democracy and its future abilities to stand up for any and all countries?
So is the answer re GOP to threaten sanction? If no help, then enact sanctionm If war on a world-level ensues, then fight? The Dems have politely threatened. Not much success. How do they enact economic sanction with GOP controlling most business? What, if any, kind of sanction would work?
Or are we already at war? War won't work so well after Putin has settled into Ukraine--or after Trump is back in the White House. The time for war is when the enemy fires the first shot?
I don't know exactly what comprises domestic political war, but usually, war means fighting fire with fire. For a party that represents ethics, shooting is hard, especially when shackled by apathy. Is that how evil triumphs? If we don't stop talking and start use some effective type of force, maybe Fascism will win?
If so, what force? And are those with the red button more concerned about elect-ability and popularity polls than with saving Democracy?
I don't know answers, but I see scary questions apparently not being answered.
Thanks for this question. A way to reverse it is viscerally clear to me although the exact path much less so. THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY GETS BETTER, especially better at loving many if not all people by appreciating their worth and seeking their perspectives even while not of course acting on all of them. Better policy and more success at the polls would follow. Personally, I do not feel loved and accepted by this party even though I vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and have been in small-scale leadership in our local party. I UNDERSTAND why many people are mad at the Democratic Party. although I remain in an uncomfortable coalition with it. Let's control what we can most control, ourselves! I'm still an optimist.
What about those of us--seniors??--who prefer to read and not watch videos? Are we know passe?
Lots of the kinds of changes discussed here make a lot of sense—but will be tough slogs politically. I think we need to think as well about what has made people so angry and distrustful of government and corporations and how we can address that in ways that can actually get somewhere.
A lot of why people feel the way they do is that they perceive the economy to be essentially unfair (because it is!). Real median wages gave stagnated over the last decades, but consumption needs (especially health care have soared) have grown steadily. But returns to ownership have grown at a rapid pace. Fifty-percent of the private sector workforce does not participate in a retirement plan, and the numbers are worse for women and people of color. The only way we can fix this massive wealth insecurity Is reforming ownership.
That may sound like some left-wing fantasy but it isn’t. Employee ownership plans have proven very effective—participants have three times the retirement assets as employees in companies without these plans—and have been pushed by Republicans and Democrats in equal numbers (and with no opposition). The Alaska Permanent Fund is beloved by both parties. Ideas like platform cooperatives, data ownership, and limiting tax incentives for executive pay unless companies share the wealth are also supported on all sides. There is much we can do to make this happen, but the first step is just to stop treating these ideas with a pat on the head and start making them a priority.