At age 5, an American man asked me where my family was from and then my nationality. I very proudly said: “Swedish, Saami and Jewish”. He told me I “should never say I was Jewish because no one wants to be a kike or yid. He said I didn’t look Jewish. I said, “Don’t worry, I cut my knee and all my Jewish blood came out”.
Well I was trying to not be hated.
Later that summer a Swedish man asked me about my heritage (now I should tell you that I have squinty eyes and very high prominent cheekbones from my Saami ancestors). I told him that I was Swedish and Saami (not risking the Jewish heritage).
He nearly had a fit. He swore and told me “it would be better to be a yid or an “N word” than be a f’ing Saami”. I was terrified. I was hated for being who I am. I had no understanding of their prejudice, but they scared me. I told no one. I felt dirty and disgusting.
Bigotry and racism is so bizarre. You hate someone for something they have no control of. Why do you hate them? What did they do?
What is wrong with you that you hate?
Edit: My dad fought as an Army Ranger in WWII and Korea. He had horrible PTSD. In despair he took his own life. He had told me for years that he felt so guilty for killing men he didn’t hate, he didn’t even know. He could not justify to his conscience killing someone he didn’t know. He would tell me no philosophy or religion says that is OK. He told me of crying because he killed a conscripted German man in the German army. My dad was a conscript or draftee. The mans letters to his wife were about going home. This is what hate and fear do. Then we send our young people to fight, kill and die. I am an old retired ICU nurse who tried to save lives. Life is so precious, no time for prejudice or hate. Peace.
Molly, I am so sorry that happened to you and appreciate your telling your story. That you felt dirty and disgusting is an example of how perpetrators of hate transfer their own feelings onto their victims. It was actually the haters who were the dirty and disgusting ones, not you.
I was 14 when President Roosevelt died and seeing headlines about his death I began to cry. A woman came over to me and asked why I was crying, her response was “go back where you come from you dirty Jew”. I was so frightened because just 7 years before this incident I was living under Nazi control in Europe. As my late husband used to say, that kind of hatred came with mother’s milk, meaning that it was in the hater’s life from a very early age.
Dear Lydia, How terrible that that happened to you. I will never understand what is going on with humans that people think like that, no less talk like that to a child. Thank goodness you left Europe in time. I fear that there will be no place to go if more of this fascism takes root here. Wishing you well, Donna
To "Power Corrupts." I'll be quite brief, your post is questionable, at best.
I have a degree in Psychology, specialized in Social Psychology and Human Development, and find your discussion senseless, and off-point ... at best.
Mr Reichs' subject is about standing-against extremist, baseless, social forces and bullying people, as is revisited today within so many social platforms.
Free speech is guaranteed by The Constitution though your bilge, slippery-slope rhetoric, with such an interesting need to make fetishes with excrement, truly wastes perfectly good neurotransmitters that I'll invest outside of you odd post(s0.
Hearing these stories makes me so sad. My mother’s side of the family was Jewish but they converted to Catholicism at some point and never talked about it. Taking a DNA test as an adult confirmed it. I feel deprived of a rich and beautiful heritage and am proud of my small connection to it. I’ve never understood bigotry and racism. How stupid and shortsighted it is to hate an entire group of people because of their physical characteristics, culture, or religion! I hope the world can grow out of its ignorance some day soon.
I approached one of my professors in college whom I knew to be Jewish and he told me that if I wasn’t raised in the faith I wasn’t Jewish, so I dropped it. All I have is a little bit of DNA, no traditions or connections. I would like to know why my family left. No one seems to know. But I don’t want to get too off-topic here. Anti-Semitism is ugly and stupid, and I’m glad Ed Reich stood up to the bigots.
Jody, you and I have similar feelings. My father's mother was Jewish; his father, English. My father hid is semitic heritage as he became of age during an antisemitic era. I learned from my grandmother that she was Jewish when I was 15. My mother accepted my father's Jewish heritage, but apparently was somewhat antisemitic, but I was proud of our heritage. Ironically, after my parents' deaths, I had a DNA test done, and discovered that my mother's father's family were Sephardic Jewish. I have no idea if they knew or not, though they were Canadian and may have fled there decades earlier. I too wish for greater kindness, compassion, and acceptance on our planet as we all have the same color blood!
To my knowledge, that's true, Jody. But it makes you no less Jewish. Sephardic Jews can be from Spain or Portugal. Not everyone with Spanish or Portuguese blood is a Sephardic Jew anymore than everyone with German blood is Ashkenazi.
Maybe yes, maybe not. Don't blame "mother's milk" automatically. The more likely culprit is a bad or absent father. Hatemongers are frustrated, angry, fearful individuals. They need a scapegoat. We have lots of people like that at the moment, and that s why Republicans have adopted scapegoating as a strategy.
Thanks for telling us your story Lydia. It is quite sad, but please do know, deep in your heart, that a great many Americans, most, I do believe, find the behaviour of that woman to be absolutely disgusting, the result of a small mind, unable to learn, to think for herself, or perhaps unable to think very much at all. Count on the fact that most of we Americans, including myself, would have stepped in to spare you from that idiocy, if only we could have been there to do so...
The wife and I, now old and keeping our heads down because of all this trumpism nonsense moved to the mountains decades ago, to a house that was and is secluded from any neighbors. Our nearest is two miles away. None the less, at some point we became aware of some, and quickly became aware of hundreds. Around here, if you meet someone, they just autmatically want to introduce you to everyone they know, so they drive you around, for hours. It is a charming part of life here in the South.
These people are mostly hard core republicans, but surprisingly, we did make some fast friends, despite our admission that we vote as Independants.
I knew, ya HAd to know, that the vast majority of them were racists, to some degree, and one day, the one closest to me simply asked me, "You hate (n-word), don't ya?" I replied that with all of the probelms the wife and I face simlpy from aging, " I don't have the strength to hate, ANYbody Dale.. And besides, my family came here from Switzerland long after the civil war.. So we had no dog in that fight.. " He said, "Well, EVErybody around here hates (n-word"). I said "Why ? Exactly.", and then the Mothers Milk theory was proven to me, without any doubt. He said, " I dunno. Daddy hated (n-word), so did Mom and our entire families; Aunts and Uncles, cousins, EVerybody hates (n-word ) 'round here, so be careful what you say to some people.."
We've since then gradually pared back any interactions with most of our neighbors, we came here wanting solitude to begin with, but this was all just very distressing, to know that in this day and age, in the USA, the general population in our county, and probably far and wide around it, have learned to NOT, admit their racism easlily, but absolutely, still hold their racism as a simple part of their culture .
But they don't think of it as most people think they do. They don't even speak of it until they see an actual Black person, and then they call that person, a (n-word), but not to their faces. Only among themselves, and then its just a descriptor, as in, "Not the white dude, the n-word right behind him. We went to school together didn't we?" So yes. They've come to understand that a lot of people don't find any of that amusing any more, so they now hide it, but make no mistake, it is here, still, to this day. That said, I've been unable to detect any actual hatred, in their thought process. Its mostly just a word that they use, and mostly, just among themselves.
Despite all of that, I have to admit, if I pull their racism out of the equation, and this may shock you, these are the finest human beings I've ever encountered, and this from a retired long haul trucker who spent more time out and about in America than at home, and by far, throughout my life. These racists took us in as FAMily, despite our admission that "We don't hate ANYbody", and are Independants at the voting booths. To this day, even after we stopped interacting with them very much, they often stop by, "Just checkin' in with ya, makin' sure ya'all are Ok." They bring us food, and fix our cars. They bring us firewood, which is no easy, or small task. And more.
So I saw all of this as a puzzling situation for quite a while. Clearly, for the most part, my neighbors were raised to be truly fine human beings, kind and compassionate, caring of their fellow man, until it comes to the "n-word". Then, its just a knee jerk reaction, a tradition, its seen sort of, as "cool", as in, if you use the n-word, then you are of no threat to us, you are ok, a part of their culture. But we found that we were fine and dandy with them, even if we never use that awful word..
In other words, to them, here, its just a word. I never heard any of them speaking of doing violence to Black people, if I had that would have ended any interaction with them at all. But there is really very little about them, that is actually, racist, much less violent, aside from using that despicable word. For them, when they say "hate", it is akin to saying, "I hate brussel sprouts, so I never eat them." So there is very little, unlike their parents, actual motivation behind their "hatred", to actually do, anything, about it. They smile and speak to the very few Black people who live among us, shake their hands ; they'll do business with them, they'll share a beer at the end of the week, they are just fine with their kids playing with African American kids, and have no problem at all, with that.
So anyway, my main point here, is that racism, in America, is dying of its own accord.
This is clearly apparent, at least in my neck of the woods, and I think, probably, it is dying everywhere, in this country, which again, I have traveled extensively. Dale's father was far more racist than Dale is. His grandfather, as a card carrying KKK member, was far more racist than his father was, and extremely, violent towards Black people. HIS father, participated, in LYNChings.
Dale's own son, otoh, is not a racist, at all. He tells me that he tolerates his father's racism, simply because "Well hey! He's my Dad, and I will always love him."
So while your story Lydia broke my heart, I want to tell you and the rest of this country, that as a country, we are -healing-. It won't go away over night, but our grandchildren, or perhaps great grandchildren, will not suffer from racism in this country. At least that is what I now believe. As MLK said, they should not be "judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.", and I think that they will. Wiser words were never spoken, and I believe that that beautiful wish, will one day, come true here in the USA.
So my conclusion is that its pointless to try to "end" racism when it is indeed dying, all by itself. I don't think that that is even possible to begin with. It is, taught, from birth, as in "Mother's Milk", and people need to be enlightened at their own speed. When we see violent racism, of course, we must act. When we see racist politicians, we must do our damndest to remove them from office, but when to comes to my neighors, I've decided to nudge them a bit now and then, but otherwise, I cut them some slack. I know now that I will never change them, as far as their rather benign form racism goes, and otherwise, they have a great deal of good in them, and yes, dare I say, most of them are far better people than a great deal of northern folk among whom I was born, and lived with until my adulthood.
The end of racism will come as part of an evolution, and not the revolution that so many now desire. Further, I consider the loud call for a revolution to end racism to be counterproductive. It won't work that way and as we are now seeing from tfg's radical and violent racists, it only results in more violence. I encourage my Dem friends to not react to hate, with more hate. Today's racists, (aside from the goose-stepping idiots who've been energized by tfg), in large part, are FAR more benign than those of the past.
And that kind of anti-racist hatred that we see now, is just as hard to stop as a radical racist's hate is, and it is just as problematic. It is hate itself, that needs to be stopped, in America, but that will only occur in the way that we would desire when we are all dead and gone, and only when people see that their own version of hatred is a burden that effects every other aspect of their lives, in a very bad way. Only then, will they become determined , to lose it.
Thanks again for telling us your story Lydia, and I hope this comment might ease the pain inflicted upon you by a very simple minded human being, in some small way. As a country, we have made some progress, and as the decades go by, we'll become more and more safe from the perils of racism, and, hate. Right now though, you do need to protect yourself, and by any means necessary, including moving to a different place. We looked at it as an adventure, and it surely has been, just that, and one with a very happy ending.
My grandfather (mom's side) was racist 26/7/400....
He would constantly yell about the "n....rs", even tho none were around.
He was also definitely a Joe McCarthy fan and would constantly be calling police on people in his neighborhood.
I can still remember the day he found out a Black family had outbid him on a house he really, REALLY wanted. Wowsers! He lifted the roof off that day.
I was so grateful my dad taught me and my sister they is no correct "color" of people. I grew up with Black friends, Mexican friends (who all knew NEVER to go past my grandfather's house lol), Jewish, Catholic, etc.
Hated like these are taught from a very very young age. That's my belief, although there may be truth to the tale of prejudice & hatred coming thru mothers' milk.
I can relate. I had relatives who were filled with hate, while in the same immediate family there were voices of reason. Hoping that the "haters" are phasing out.
Well, this is my experience with phasing that crap out:
I had 5 kids (lost 2nd oldest in 2012😢). I raised ALL of them to NOT see skin color, ethnicity, sexuality. All of them had friends that I helped raise who were different colors, ethnicities and security.
HOWEVER, once my kids grew up and moved out.... they chose different friends. It was THOSE friends who taught them to hate different skin colors🤬.
My youngest, now 27(😳), moved down to a tiny spot in TN, with Mom of his first child(they now have 3) and he started hanging around with the only people down there, i.e. rednecks.
I'm so sorry. I hope they continue to spend time with you where they are exposed to other ways of thinking. My children are of different ethnicities (first husband was black American; second husband Egyptian), so they witnessed for themselves issues with intolerance. Peer pressure is quite strong even for those in their 29s and early 30s. (My youngest is 33.) Do not give up hope.
You were LIVING under nazi control? how amazing....You must be a magician. How did you manage to avoid those craaaazy "death camps" with hospitals and daycares?
Absolutely! Molly, be proud of who you are!! Never let anyone make you feel dirty or disgusting because of your heritage. Just know, these people have such issues themselves, they don't know anything but hate and bullying in order to make themselves feel better. The problem is, it does not make them feel better. They continue to spiral down into that cesspool and become angrier and angrier.
Peggy and Molly, it seems to me the kind of hatred that lets one stop someone and ask where they are from or what they are is a hate that can't be extinguished without help. There are always groups ready to welcome the haters because that kind of hate is powerful. It brings up the violent emotions that can be used by others for their own purposes. Trump with the help of Cohn and others learned how to manipulate people's hate and use it to get what they want by scaring vulnerable people, threatening people in power with removal of their position or power, or causing those manipulated folks to do actual harm to the targets they have been given. If you can tie the hater's actions to their personal values or beliefs, the damage can be enormous. We got a civil war out of it here when certain politicians just couldn't imagine a life without being able to force other human beings to do their will for the financial and political benefit of the enslavers. Then when that cause isn't strong enough, poor white people were manipulated into hating Black people including slaves for keeping them from getting the money and lifestyle they wanted. Then, when they lost the war, the myth of the great cause was born to manipulate all of us into believing that the war was about something as stupid as states' rights or some other BS, and it was and is BS. The Confederacy wanted to keep slaves and make it possible to force slavery into every place they decided to go, no matter what the enslaved people wanted. Well, those enslaved people were already portrayed as being little better than animals, so no one was supposed to care what they thought. Pretending the civil war was anything else is a travesty, but a whole lot of folks are trying hard to reinstate some of the practices of those days like rewriting history, taking away voting rights, enslaving people in prisons for minor offenses, keeping Black people and other people of color from positions of power, even removing them if they get too uppety, and so much of it is fueled by hate which breeds anger and fear. People like DeSantis, Greene, Jordan, Gates, Boebart, and of course, Trump, are quite good at it because the media have given them a platform, even the words for shaping the hate fest that is going on now through the Republican Party. IT's disgusting, but Democrats have not yet figured out how to break through to reach people who have caught themselves up in the hatred, if there is a way to reach them.
Actually, I think that the haters hate and fear what might be inside themselves, so instead they "project" those disavowed characteristics onto others. When the fear is inflamed, as it is by politicians who appeal to the worst in people, the "ugliness" gets worse and the spewing toward others becomes increasingly vile. Because targeting others, instead of acknowledging what's a part of themselves, doesn't fix the self-loathing, they feel compelled to keep up the hateful behavior. Bigots are really fearful, ignorant people with no insight. That's what makes them so dangerous.
You have stated precisely the point: How do you hate someone who has absolutely no control over what they're born into? I have never comprehended such blind judgement and hatred of "other."
Some hatred comes from beliefs of past alleged/perceived injustices and are passed from generation to generation. Other hatreds came come from failing to see those who appear/act/believe different than others are worthy of respect.
Molly, thank you for sharing, the craziness and the trauma of hate. It is amazing that you remember this so vividly. Not amazing, really, as it was probably out of the ordinary for you, and also, to a child "irrational," which, I suspect, is why you remember it. As others answered here, we do know what's wrong with people that hate with such an occupation. What the solutions are to dissolve hate and bullying in individuals and groups and dogma, are other questions, eh? Thank you also for piquing my interest in Saami heritage. I just found this site which I have enjoyed and I hope it is accurate. It's from 2000. https://www.laits.utexas.edu/sami/dieda/hist/genetic.htm#:~:text=Though%20the%20S%C3%A1mi%20do%20have,closer%20to%20their%20current%20home.
Those people have something in them you will NEVER have: an evil little brainslug telling them to irrationally hate certain things. I'd take being Jewish or ANYTHING over THAT anyday!
In medieval times that little 'brainslug' would have been called a demon desperately in need of an exorcism. Not to say that exorcism wasn't an old form of bullying. It just allowed the morbidly curious a temporary release from their fear and anger. In our day, laws are another form of exorcism that moves along so sluggishly as to make it ineffective in vanishing the plague of brainslugs that have infected much of humanity.
What they have is evil for sure, but no is born with hate in their heart, it is taught. Show me a child who is a bully, and I will show you a parent or another adult in his/her family that is a bully and spouts hate very time they open their mouth.
I contend that blind faith in some (most) religions have caused more death, destruction, hatred and mayhem than any other cause or influence. "I hope someday they will join us" in realizing this. How long ago was your experience?
Isn’t weird to be hated because you have chosen to not believe in a religion. Atheists and agnostics don’t go around attacking and killing people who don’t become like them.
Having been 'born' (( what I call - an 'accident of birth = random joining of sperm and egg cells, for better or worse, that became - ME ! )) into a Christiany family with representives from most all sects within - the faith - AND having participated in several forms of Paganism for many years AND being a 'student' of Ancient Cultures and their many forms of - spirituality - and finding that NONE of them have the final word on - much of - anything - in the human spiritual realm. And most of them participaing in some form of - hatred, bigotry, bullying - of "lesser populations" (indiginous).
None of - US - start out being bullies or becoming bullies. We're 'trained' into this behaviour by our parents, relatives, redesessors, out of a sense of self preservation from these - elder bullies behaviours. But once - grown and gone from that environment, one
does NOT have to maintain that behaviour and can un-learn it all to become a decent, caring person.
I too was bullied as a kid, let most of it slide 'water off a ducks back' until the final provocation gone too far AND fought back. Once friends then became frenemies, then avoided altogether. Luckily my famikly relocated to another state, WA, after that.
To return to Robert's comments about "communism" = Here in Seattle, in the next community over from where I live, there is a large bronze statue brought back from East
Germany post collapse of the old Soviet Union, in the 1990's. A statue of Lenin that was
acquired by a local businessman, salvaged from destruction and set up here in the Fremont community. Each summer there is a Solstice Parade and craft fair & someone
paints the hands of Lenin - blood red - to denote his bloody participation in the 1st Russian revolution...[[[ I hope I've gotten this info correct - memory fails me at times ]]]
Molly, thanks for your story. So many of my students could have told similar stories of their lack of welcome and appreciation for being who they are. I think hate gives people a kind of power over that raises themselves in their own eyes and in the view of others who hate the same folks. I think it also gives them an excuse to do harm to others. If one can justify acts of unkindness or even cruelty as a result of the other person being different, one can permit themselves to do terrible things without accepting any personal responsibility. The group needs to be targeted so many people will know, then things need to be attributed to them that are seen as really bad, or just really weird or different. If you can convince yourself those people are after something important you have or your rights, or something else, the violence you can do could be catastrophic. The holocaust, the witch hunts and trials, the inquisition, public lynchings, massacres of large parts of whole communities as in Wilmington, NC, Greenwood in Tulsa, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and starvation of the people of Ukraine by the Soviet Union are powerful examples. One can't outlaw hate and powermongering, but through media, we could perhaps, make it less palatable. Our recent emphasis on main characters in movies and TV being crooked, unsavory, even murderers seems problematic to me. When the shows nominated for the highest awards often have such main characters, some people will see acting as those characters do as a plus. We as human beings often do what we see. The question, what are we seeing right now. How can we get more positive views of humanity out here for all to see, and maybe emulate, model for our children and others?
Sorry you experienced that. You might appreciate reading Robert Fulton‘s story of his motorcycle trip through the Middle East in 1932 in what was then called “Irak”. He arrived in a small town and was treated with great hospitality. When it came time for him to leave, the locals asked him where he was headed next, and he told them he was headed over to the next town. They said “you should never go there, the people are horrible.” He went there anyway, and was treated with great hospitality there as well. Lesson? Ignorance breeds contempt.
Good point! This is why commerce has played a leading role in the development of civilization. It fosters the recognition of "the other" as human, as well as the exchange of goods and ideas.
Sometimes I feel that this happens to people who didn't explore and find the purpose of their life. Joining in hatred with other people makes them feel elevated and belong to the common cause... A terrible and harmful waste of human energy...
I resent the question about nationality on so many forms. I am of several bloodlines: Ukrainian, German, Italian, French and I will not check the race box for White. We are all of the human species of animal. We just need to embrace that fact.
And each group of humans has it s own talents, skills and wonderful diverse sense of being. And blending those groups of humans only makes it stronger, more interesting, and more vibrant.
Next time just don't answer or tell them you are human. I even say I am a mutt like my dog who is beautiful, smart, and sweet as can be.
The only thing that should matter is your character.
A person's religion, culture, personality, heritage, age, looks etc. is what gives each individual a unique purpose to do good during their journey on earth. What strengths we bring to this diverse world is so important. Hatred of evil practices and action is understandable, but hatred of innocence which always lacks the ability to empathize, walk a mile in someone else's shoes (perspective) and see value in each person is an abomination. Hate is the opposite of love. Hate is an evil emotion built upon ignorance, bigotry, racism, etc and has no redeeming quality whatsoever.
For an adult to do this to any child is unthinkable. There are incredibly cruel people in this world. My hope for you and many who have gone through similar things is that you are surrounded by good people who value you for the character and person you are. Imagine a world where there is no evil, hatred, greed, bullies, murder, war, suffering, persecution, corruption etc. This is the type of world all good people deserve. Please try to focus on what so ever is good.
Molly: there is redemption in generational healing. You CHOSE to be an ICU nurse. I suspect that there are very few jobs that test what a human being is “made of” than that one? In your own way you were offering generational redemption to your father. He raised you. He taught you well. And in the end ... he heard you and knew that he had redeemed himself through you. And that is a good parent’s most fervent wish. Well Done.
Thank you. My dad was a moral person thrust into an amoral situation. It saddens me that our country does this to our service people and still don’t adequately help those who come home damaged.
In a job interview in 1979 the interviewer asked about the origin of my name, which is Saenz. I told him it was Spanish and that my grandparents were Mexican immigrants.
He then told me I spoke English well for one of "my people" but he was looking for someone who would be good at business. I was a college freshman thinking about going into engineering, which I did. The job was driving a truck delivering office supplies.
I was barely able to read when my great aunt gave me a book, Children of Foreign Lands, which I still have. I was born in ‘52, it was published in the 1930s, so it was used when she bought it. I would have given anything to know someone who was part reindeer herder. My best friend in first grade was Jewish, probably the only Jewish student in the entire school. I loved learning the Hanukkah song, spinning a tiny dreidel and eating the chocolate money, and the story of the miracle of the oil lamp. I gravitate toward unusual people; the sameness of the ordinary, people I call “herd animals,” bore me. I was dubbed a free spirit years ago, am often on the outside of things, but boy you have an interesting combination, and I have never, knowingly, met a Laplander, although I have a friend, a renowned photographer, who did a series of photographs of them for his series, Social Studies. He’s traveled everywhere making portraits of indigenous people.
Karen, Lap or Laplander is a derogatory term for Saami. It is like the N word. It is a name given to Saami by other people. Saami or Sàmi or Sampi are some of the spellings. It is my pleasure to meet you🤝
You were blessed with a strong role model in your father. It shows. You sometimes comment about your physical height. I see your father inspired his son to be a man of great stature. You have made him very proud.
Thank you for sharing this story about your father. Would that Trump had been raised by such a man.
Your father sounds like my father, who was a life-long liberal, who occasionally voted for Republicans he thought were decent enough. He went to Spain in 1937 to fight for the Republic and it was something that affected my childhood and continues to serve as an example of what doing the right thing consists of. He always said he went to Spain to fight for democracy, and not for any other reason. Anyway, good for Ed Reich and for you.
Where I live, Baghdad By the Sea, they and their allies, the Proud Boys have infiltrated the Republican Party.
An ADL report found this year that 2022 had the most recorded antisemitic incidents since the group began tracking them in 1979: 3,697 incidents were reported last year, compared with 2,717 in 2021 — an increase of 36%. Most incidents — nearly 2,300 — were characterized as harassment, more than 1,200 were acts of vandalism, and 111 were assaults.
In my community, north of Austin, TX, baggies with antisemitic messages and then filled with small pebbles to weigh it down were randomly thrown onto people's driveways. I contacted the city demanding they make a statement saying that garbage does not belong in our community. We are a beautifully diverse city. It's no place for hate.
Texas is a state that is filled with hate. It is a scary, misogynistic place with an autocratic governor. Very, very scary. Baggies are the least of that state's worries.
The problem is that Austin is outnumbered. When Texas was freezing because the state is unwilling to connect to the grids that connect other states throughout the nation, Austin had no protection. Just as Austin has no protection against the 13th century decisions of its governor and state legislature. A woman I admire greatly lives (I believe) in Austin. I'm speaking of Brené Brown. It must drive her crazy to see the clown car driving the bus. And I, too, have the misfortune to live in a backward, misogynistic state with an autocratic governor. I live here to be near family. But it is a scary place to live. The only good thing is that the Trump-worshipping over 55 community in which I live prohibits yard signs and banners, so at least I don't have to see reminders of a criminal up and down the street.
Barbara, it's all part of the same war. The baggies are one weapon. Fascist groups here are hard at work to take our freedoms, civil rights, and civil liberties. Texas is becoming more like communist China every day.
One of my sons lives just outside Austin, and he enjoys the diversity in this region. When I, and some of his friends, ask about the general atmosphere in the larger region, he always says that he and other like-minded people need to stay and make a difference!
Antisemites are like poison ivy. You have to wonder: Why do they exist? What good do they do themselves or anyone else? What"s the point of their destructive existence?
Behavior analysis works. Hit them up the side of the head with a metaphorical 2 by 4 and they have an attitude adjustment.
DOJ has the capacity to enforce the law but Garland is a wuss.
Every state has statutes that make threats a crime. Also criminal conspiracy. E.G. if two MAGATs agree to give aid and comfort to insurrection, that's a crime.
They aren't making threats. They are seeding the idea that Jews are to blame for all our problems. This is the first step. Someone threw baggies onto our driveways with literature stating this.
They are not only making threats, they have been actively attacking. 11 dead Jews in Pittsburgh. Many physical assaults. Even more crimes like defacing graves, etc. Multiply this by racial assaults. .
To be a crime, need to prove 1. agreement to do something illegal, 2. an act, such as defacing property.
Daniel, I would hope that anyone threatening any other person on Substack would be refused permission to enter any posts. There is no room for bullies in this forum.
Last week in Jacksonville, a shooter killed three black people. He had engraved a swastika onto the gun he used. Fascists hate blacks and Jews with equal venom.
Some (most??) of these Nazi scum consider Jews to be 'beneath' those of African descent on their evil, racist, genocidal, Aryan supremacist racial hierarchy.
I live in a small town in a red state. These last few years, actually since cyber spaces have grown, I am afraid to voice my real political or (anti) religious opinions. Anywhere. It's not fun not feeling safe anymore. It's a really scary time. I wish more people realized it.
Daniel, I am ashamed you would receive threats on this platform. I have tried to stay out of the juvenile hate filled language when I discuss Trump et al because it feeds hatred, instead I follow reasoning and factual history, which guides my intellect and emotions rather than pure loyalty to a politician or political party.
I appreciate how many of you feel empathy for the individuals whose stories you have read about bullies in other’s lives.
I can’t tell you how many times I have reported the bullying of me and my family for 2 decades of 24/7 in my community first where I tried to be kind and gracious as I explained the bullying and events that were happening in our lives like stalking and lack of our civil rights in our home 24/7.
But when it continued, unrestrained, I began calling out to people who were elected officials (I came across as Ed Reich’s sonofabitch thunder) for help. To this day I have received no help and people like my congressman, Scott Peters, whom I asked in his office for help, tacitly indicated his acknowledge of it but deflected responsibility. There are many others who have perpetrated this act of prejudice. Now because I have dared to roar I am accused of being unbalance or drinking too much; otherwise why would she respond that way to 2 decades of 24/7 surveillance that has resulted in an industry of sheer hate with public humiliation and shaming visible in the hundreds of cars that follow me because they know when I pick up my keys I am going out and then when I go to my intended destination the staff and owners physically and verbally pick up the thread and harass me even while I am paying them like a manager at Solare Restaurant did two days ago ,Pauola and the other waiter.
My mentally disabled son whom I have cared for 8 years now has been made to disappear and I don’t know where he is. I had been fighting to care for him as each day he went out into the public where they are alerted to go manipulate him and when he returns home he creates havoc. I could go on and on but the bottom line is he is manipulated and he manipulated them (50 years old). Everyone listening in daily could have made a difference in our caring for him (financially, emotionally and physically) by coming over and asking what can they do to help. Now I get the message, oh well get on with your life. All the years I argued with my husband about the surveillance reality they could have made a difference. But he was told on the outside she must be paranoid - the same people who had knowledge of it denied him the truth. What IF I HAD THE SAME ACCESS TO RVERY MOMENT OF THEIR LIVES? Correct they would howl In protest.
I totally agree with you and also thank Dr. Reich. Dr. Reich has bridged the past to the present that shows the the rotten foundation and horrible path upon which Donald Trump and the Republican Party have steered our country.
Thank you for this explanation of many things I had never quite put together before. My late husband told the story of knocking on doors in Berkeley, at the age of about 8, accompanying his mother, campaigning for Helen Gahagen Douglas. They were called communists and doors were slammed in their faces. (We had a big party celebrating Nixon's resignation; very satisfying.) The connections between Roy Cohn, Nixon, Trump, etc - it's all of a piece. Again, thank you.
p.s. My daughter & I often say how grateful we are that he didn't have to see what's happened in our country over the past 20 year. SonofaBITCH would have sounded mild!
Even more trenchant is Mitchell’s research showing that Joseph P. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy donated to Nixon’s campaign. Even John F. Kennedy had spurned the liberal Douglas to offer support to his future opponent.”
The bogeyman of “Communist” to tarnish progressive policies is still with us.
Well... I would thing the Saturday Evening Post should be a good source. Collaboration from additional reliable sources would be nice. A deep history of NY Times stories, maybe?
Democratic Massachusetts Congressman John F. Kennedy, a political opponent of Nixon's, came to Nixon's office and gave him a donation of $1,000 on behalf of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., his father.[62] John Kennedy indicated that he could not endorse Nixon, but that he would not be heartbroken if Douglas was returned to her acting career.[63] Joseph Kennedy later stated that he gave Nixon the money because Douglas was a communist.[62]
Their dad Joseph was an avowed rightwinger, and both he and his brother could not have had any political careers whatsoever back in the general attitudes of that era (or even today it seems?) if they were seen as being sympathetic/empathetic AT ALL, to anyone labeled (correctly OR incorrectly) as a 'commie pinko'. :(
I am NOT justifying their actions (IF true), just explaining the reality of those times.
I do believe that JFK did see the Soviets (whether they were actually pure/'real' communists as they claimed to be or not) as a major geopolitical threat to this nation though, and he was tough enough to stand up to them.
"In December 1946, at the founding convention of the Progressive Citizens of America, FDR’s former vice president Henry Wallace called the red scare a tool used by the most powerful economic forces in America and warned America not to give in to it."
McCarthyism was never actually about rooting out Communists in American society, it was about one party's declaring a "crisis" and then claiming that it, and only it, could solve it, a ploy as old as politics, as old as time -- "Just give us the power," they always say. Give us the power and we will make national safe and whole and moral and pure."
But when given the power they always wield it for two purposes: one, to keep themselves in power and on the public payroll as long as they care to stay in office and, two, to tirelessly serve the interests of the wealthy and corporations with which they are aligned, in exchange for campaign cash in the short term and, in the long term, when they retire from public "service," lucrative consultancies, lobbying jobs, seats on corporate boards and, nowadays, deals with conservative publishers to write books that they know no one will ever read.
The real reason that Republicans fight tooth-and-nail against all Democratic initiatives is because they see them as sanding between each of them and their long-term paydays when the moneyed interests they served so loyally return the favor. They want to be rich, come hell or high water, and neither elected Democrats nor the will of the majority of the people are going to stop them.
As a side note, Bob, I grew up in Peekskill, NY. What was the name of your father's store there, and how long did it operate (we moved to Peekskill in 1962).
Also, South Salem, also in Westchester County, is only about 20 miles north of the New York City line, not 60.
No, it's opportunism in the exact same sense that Rupert Murdoch has said that if he thought Fox News would make more money pandering to liberals than conservatives, he'd make it a liberal-oriented channel (which would be at odds with his own politics, but making money always takes precedence with his kind). The Trumps have merely adopted the ideology that they think can be monetized maximally. Like all lower forms of life, they believe in nothing but their own survival and profit.
Guess when you have a bully showing you the ropes it goes to show you learn from the best....between Donald Trump's father and Cohen Trump had the foundation laid for a life of "I never did anything wrong and I'm always right" no matter who gets destroyed along the way ...and now we're dealing with that creep and all his partners in crime.... I wish I had known your Father...he was a smart man and could see those scumbags for what they were....long live "SonsofBitches" for our government is full of them!!!
Or maybe he did so to instill an abject love and respect for authoritarianism in his progeny.
Fredrich was a Nazi (as well as a KKK member abject racist), who attended the MSG BUND meeting organized by the operative which (S)Hitler's sent here to stir up fascist sentiment in the U.S. at that time (Fritz Kuhn).
It is amazing that he accepted either Roy Cohn, or Allen Weisselberg AT ALL, given their religion, but I guess that they were considered lowly 'useful pawns' by the abject ANTI-SEMITE, and that justified their employ.
Fred was a horrible human being, but if you're accusing him of being a Nazi sympathizer you really should cite reliable sources. Dr. Mary Trump excoriated her grandfather and his hateful ways in her first book. Had she any proof of Nazi ties, she probably would have mentioned them.
Thank you. Following this thread of history, by way of your father and you, fills in some missing pieces for me and brings it to life. Now, when i hear Trump burbling his lies, and i shout SonofaBITCH, i'll know i'm in the best of company.
Dear Robert and father of Robert. Thank you for your values and for taking time to tell the stories that help bring these values to life. We can learn, again and again.
Too many people believe that wealth indicates financial and public success. It is an indication of VALUE, the value of achievement. Poverty is seen as failure.
In some indigenous cultures being rich is quitte different.
The richest peson is the one who contributes most value to the society.
So I see both of you as rich leaders and thank you for the time and the action you take, to try and stop bullying leaders taking control.
Western society needs to get back to basics. Great to see all the union-action in the US. It may help restore balance.
I call Republicans cash junkies Until we change how we look at wealth & selfish, hoarders who keep demanding they need more money. We will never find healthy, happy citizens
My dream is that we go to a Well Being Index rather than GNP to measure ourselves and our government. Money doesn't buy happiness. If you want to feel good, then do something meaningful, something larger than your self. Even small acts of kindness toward others will make you feel well being - happiness that lasts. Countries like Great Britain are already using WBI to measure all government policy and legislation. Each must show how it increases the well being of ALL the people. I also love the Native American philosophy that one's wealth is measured by one's generosity to others. See Dr. Martin Seligman's theory of well being at https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/ We need to overturn Citizens United by passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act as a good starting point.
The playwright Edwin Sanchez has just finished writing a play called Lottery Boy which deals with the emotional and psychological effects of having and not having money. The theme may sound intellectual and abstract, but the characters he creates bring the theme to a vivid and electrifying life. It's not published yet , but keep it in mind if the subject interests you. It should interest all of us since we live in a virulently capitalist society.
Use it, spread it around, explain it. Lets do some good work fixing what R Reagan did too America. Trickle-down economics, what a load of pollution he left us with. Maybe they will see themselves & feel shame then fix what they have done
I appreciate the story of your father's integrity and courage, Professor Reich. It took me right back to the front seat of my parents' heavy, small-windowed black Oldsmobile. My mother and I were driving into town from our house about a mile away. I remember it as if it just happened. It must have been May of 1957; I was 7 1/2. A news bulletin came over the radio: Senator Joseph McCarthy is dead. My mother hit the wheel and shouted out, "Good. He's dead. That lousy bastard should rot in hell!" Like you, I never had heard that word or expression and didn't know what it meant, but my mother's sudden angry outburst scared me. I already knew that McCarthy was a demon. I have vague memories of sitting on an overstuffed chair in our living room when I was about 4. My mother would hover over our huge wooden console, shaking her finger and screaming at the tiny glass television screen as she watched in horror at McCarthy's ravings and viciousness. I read your story and I tighten up, sad that the circle has come full around and that the same unwelcome feelings are here, now, challenging me to action, fueled by these experiences that aimed me in this direction long before I understood more than the scary feelings.
At age 5, an American man asked me where my family was from and then my nationality. I very proudly said: “Swedish, Saami and Jewish”. He told me I “should never say I was Jewish because no one wants to be a kike or yid. He said I didn’t look Jewish. I said, “Don’t worry, I cut my knee and all my Jewish blood came out”.
Well I was trying to not be hated.
Later that summer a Swedish man asked me about my heritage (now I should tell you that I have squinty eyes and very high prominent cheekbones from my Saami ancestors). I told him that I was Swedish and Saami (not risking the Jewish heritage).
He nearly had a fit. He swore and told me “it would be better to be a yid or an “N word” than be a f’ing Saami”. I was terrified. I was hated for being who I am. I had no understanding of their prejudice, but they scared me. I told no one. I felt dirty and disgusting.
Bigotry and racism is so bizarre. You hate someone for something they have no control of. Why do you hate them? What did they do?
What is wrong with you that you hate?
Edit: My dad fought as an Army Ranger in WWII and Korea. He had horrible PTSD. In despair he took his own life. He had told me for years that he felt so guilty for killing men he didn’t hate, he didn’t even know. He could not justify to his conscience killing someone he didn’t know. He would tell me no philosophy or religion says that is OK. He told me of crying because he killed a conscripted German man in the German army. My dad was a conscript or draftee. The mans letters to his wife were about going home. This is what hate and fear do. Then we send our young people to fight, kill and die. I am an old retired ICU nurse who tried to save lives. Life is so precious, no time for prejudice or hate. Peace.
Molly, I am so sorry that happened to you and appreciate your telling your story. That you felt dirty and disgusting is an example of how perpetrators of hate transfer their own feelings onto their victims. It was actually the haters who were the dirty and disgusting ones, not you.
I was 14 when President Roosevelt died and seeing headlines about his death I began to cry. A woman came over to me and asked why I was crying, her response was “go back where you come from you dirty Jew”. I was so frightened because just 7 years before this incident I was living under Nazi control in Europe. As my late husband used to say, that kind of hatred came with mother’s milk, meaning that it was in the hater’s life from a very early age.
Dear Lydia, How terrible that that happened to you. I will never understand what is going on with humans that people think like that, no less talk like that to a child. Thank goodness you left Europe in time. I fear that there will be no place to go if more of this fascism takes root here. Wishing you well, Donna
Wowzer
Have you talked to your mental health counselor about these things?
My thoughts exactly…
Yes. This one should have been flagged.
To "Power Corrupts." I'll be quite brief, your post is questionable, at best.
I have a degree in Psychology, specialized in Social Psychology and Human Development, and find your discussion senseless, and off-point ... at best.
Mr Reichs' subject is about standing-against extremist, baseless, social forces and bullying people, as is revisited today within so many social platforms.
Free speech is guaranteed by The Constitution though your bilge, slippery-slope rhetoric, with such an interesting need to make fetishes with excrement, truly wastes perfectly good neurotransmitters that I'll invest outside of you odd post(s0.
His own paltry substack is similarly unfocused, featuring what I can only call rants. A definite block) ignore for me.
Hearing these stories makes me so sad. My mother’s side of the family was Jewish but they converted to Catholicism at some point and never talked about it. Taking a DNA test as an adult confirmed it. I feel deprived of a rich and beautiful heritage and am proud of my small connection to it. I’ve never understood bigotry and racism. How stupid and shortsighted it is to hate an entire group of people because of their physical characteristics, culture, or religion! I hope the world can grow out of its ignorance some day soon.
It's never too late to learn! You will become proud of your rich and beautiful Jewish birthright.💕
I approached one of my professors in college whom I knew to be Jewish and he told me that if I wasn’t raised in the faith I wasn’t Jewish, so I dropped it. All I have is a little bit of DNA, no traditions or connections. I would like to know why my family left. No one seems to know. But I don’t want to get too off-topic here. Anti-Semitism is ugly and stupid, and I’m glad Ed Reich stood up to the bigots.
Your professor was incorrect. I've been a Jewish educator for over 30 years. You are warmly welcomed!
Thank you.
I suspect this happened in so very many families (my own, included.)
And, mine.
Jody, you and I have similar feelings. My father's mother was Jewish; his father, English. My father hid is semitic heritage as he became of age during an antisemitic era. I learned from my grandmother that she was Jewish when I was 15. My mother accepted my father's Jewish heritage, but apparently was somewhat antisemitic, but I was proud of our heritage. Ironically, after my parents' deaths, I had a DNA test done, and discovered that my mother's father's family were Sephardic Jewish. I have no idea if they knew or not, though they were Canadian and may have fled there decades earlier. I too wish for greater kindness, compassion, and acceptance on our planet as we all have the same color blood!
I read online that Sephardic Jews are Hispanic. My mom’s family (Fried) were apparently Ashkenazi (Germanic).
To my knowledge, that's true, Jody. But it makes you no less Jewish. Sephardic Jews can be from Spain or Portugal. Not everyone with Spanish or Portuguese blood is a Sephardic Jew anymore than everyone with German blood is Ashkenazi.
Religion cannot be identified by DNA.
I beg to differ. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/are-jews-a-nation-or-a-religion
Mary Jane, I went to your link and it supports Gayle's assertion. The lead sentence seems to support you, but if you read the entire link, not so.
Thats what I get for not finishing an article. Thanks for the heads up.
It would require people to become self-aware and have the courage to look inward. Not likely to happen any time soon.
A DNA test confirmed your family’s Jewish to catholic conversion?! Bullshit
The DNA test confirmed that I had Jewish DNA. The Catholic part I already knew. Why would that not be obvious?
Maybe yes, maybe not. Don't blame "mother's milk" automatically. The more likely culprit is a bad or absent father. Hatemongers are frustrated, angry, fearful individuals. They need a scapegoat. We have lots of people like that at the moment, and that s why Republicans have adopted scapegoating as a strategy.
Thanks for telling us your story Lydia. It is quite sad, but please do know, deep in your heart, that a great many Americans, most, I do believe, find the behaviour of that woman to be absolutely disgusting, the result of a small mind, unable to learn, to think for herself, or perhaps unable to think very much at all. Count on the fact that most of we Americans, including myself, would have stepped in to spare you from that idiocy, if only we could have been there to do so...
The wife and I, now old and keeping our heads down because of all this trumpism nonsense moved to the mountains decades ago, to a house that was and is secluded from any neighbors. Our nearest is two miles away. None the less, at some point we became aware of some, and quickly became aware of hundreds. Around here, if you meet someone, they just autmatically want to introduce you to everyone they know, so they drive you around, for hours. It is a charming part of life here in the South.
These people are mostly hard core republicans, but surprisingly, we did make some fast friends, despite our admission that we vote as Independants.
I knew, ya HAd to know, that the vast majority of them were racists, to some degree, and one day, the one closest to me simply asked me, "You hate (n-word), don't ya?" I replied that with all of the probelms the wife and I face simlpy from aging, " I don't have the strength to hate, ANYbody Dale.. And besides, my family came here from Switzerland long after the civil war.. So we had no dog in that fight.. " He said, "Well, EVErybody around here hates (n-word"). I said "Why ? Exactly.", and then the Mothers Milk theory was proven to me, without any doubt. He said, " I dunno. Daddy hated (n-word), so did Mom and our entire families; Aunts and Uncles, cousins, EVerybody hates (n-word ) 'round here, so be careful what you say to some people.."
We've since then gradually pared back any interactions with most of our neighbors, we came here wanting solitude to begin with, but this was all just very distressing, to know that in this day and age, in the USA, the general population in our county, and probably far and wide around it, have learned to NOT, admit their racism easlily, but absolutely, still hold their racism as a simple part of their culture .
But they don't think of it as most people think they do. They don't even speak of it until they see an actual Black person, and then they call that person, a (n-word), but not to their faces. Only among themselves, and then its just a descriptor, as in, "Not the white dude, the n-word right behind him. We went to school together didn't we?" So yes. They've come to understand that a lot of people don't find any of that amusing any more, so they now hide it, but make no mistake, it is here, still, to this day. That said, I've been unable to detect any actual hatred, in their thought process. Its mostly just a word that they use, and mostly, just among themselves.
Despite all of that, I have to admit, if I pull their racism out of the equation, and this may shock you, these are the finest human beings I've ever encountered, and this from a retired long haul trucker who spent more time out and about in America than at home, and by far, throughout my life. These racists took us in as FAMily, despite our admission that "We don't hate ANYbody", and are Independants at the voting booths. To this day, even after we stopped interacting with them very much, they often stop by, "Just checkin' in with ya, makin' sure ya'all are Ok." They bring us food, and fix our cars. They bring us firewood, which is no easy, or small task. And more.
So I saw all of this as a puzzling situation for quite a while. Clearly, for the most part, my neighbors were raised to be truly fine human beings, kind and compassionate, caring of their fellow man, until it comes to the "n-word". Then, its just a knee jerk reaction, a tradition, its seen sort of, as "cool", as in, if you use the n-word, then you are of no threat to us, you are ok, a part of their culture. But we found that we were fine and dandy with them, even if we never use that awful word..
In other words, to them, here, its just a word. I never heard any of them speaking of doing violence to Black people, if I had that would have ended any interaction with them at all. But there is really very little about them, that is actually, racist, much less violent, aside from using that despicable word. For them, when they say "hate", it is akin to saying, "I hate brussel sprouts, so I never eat them." So there is very little, unlike their parents, actual motivation behind their "hatred", to actually do, anything, about it. They smile and speak to the very few Black people who live among us, shake their hands ; they'll do business with them, they'll share a beer at the end of the week, they are just fine with their kids playing with African American kids, and have no problem at all, with that.
So anyway, my main point here, is that racism, in America, is dying of its own accord.
This is clearly apparent, at least in my neck of the woods, and I think, probably, it is dying everywhere, in this country, which again, I have traveled extensively. Dale's father was far more racist than Dale is. His grandfather, as a card carrying KKK member, was far more racist than his father was, and extremely, violent towards Black people. HIS father, participated, in LYNChings.
Dale's own son, otoh, is not a racist, at all. He tells me that he tolerates his father's racism, simply because "Well hey! He's my Dad, and I will always love him."
So while your story Lydia broke my heart, I want to tell you and the rest of this country, that as a country, we are -healing-. It won't go away over night, but our grandchildren, or perhaps great grandchildren, will not suffer from racism in this country. At least that is what I now believe. As MLK said, they should not be "judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.", and I think that they will. Wiser words were never spoken, and I believe that that beautiful wish, will one day, come true here in the USA.
So my conclusion is that its pointless to try to "end" racism when it is indeed dying, all by itself. I don't think that that is even possible to begin with. It is, taught, from birth, as in "Mother's Milk", and people need to be enlightened at their own speed. When we see violent racism, of course, we must act. When we see racist politicians, we must do our damndest to remove them from office, but when to comes to my neighors, I've decided to nudge them a bit now and then, but otherwise, I cut them some slack. I know now that I will never change them, as far as their rather benign form racism goes, and otherwise, they have a great deal of good in them, and yes, dare I say, most of them are far better people than a great deal of northern folk among whom I was born, and lived with until my adulthood.
The end of racism will come as part of an evolution, and not the revolution that so many now desire. Further, I consider the loud call for a revolution to end racism to be counterproductive. It won't work that way and as we are now seeing from tfg's radical and violent racists, it only results in more violence. I encourage my Dem friends to not react to hate, with more hate. Today's racists, (aside from the goose-stepping idiots who've been energized by tfg), in large part, are FAR more benign than those of the past.
And that kind of anti-racist hatred that we see now, is just as hard to stop as a radical racist's hate is, and it is just as problematic. It is hate itself, that needs to be stopped, in America, but that will only occur in the way that we would desire when we are all dead and gone, and only when people see that their own version of hatred is a burden that effects every other aspect of their lives, in a very bad way. Only then, will they become determined , to lose it.
Thanks again for telling us your story Lydia, and I hope this comment might ease the pain inflicted upon you by a very simple minded human being, in some small way. As a country, we have made some progress, and as the decades go by, we'll become more and more safe from the perils of racism, and, hate. Right now though, you do need to protect yourself, and by any means necessary, including moving to a different place. We looked at it as an adventure, and it surely has been, just that, and one with a very happy ending.
I sincerely, wish you a safe and happy life.
Nelson
I agree with your father.
My grandfather (mom's side) was racist 26/7/400....
He would constantly yell about the "n....rs", even tho none were around.
He was also definitely a Joe McCarthy fan and would constantly be calling police on people in his neighborhood.
I can still remember the day he found out a Black family had outbid him on a house he really, REALLY wanted. Wowsers! He lifted the roof off that day.
I was so grateful my dad taught me and my sister they is no correct "color" of people. I grew up with Black friends, Mexican friends (who all knew NEVER to go past my grandfather's house lol), Jewish, Catholic, etc.
Hated like these are taught from a very very young age. That's my belief, although there may be truth to the tale of prejudice & hatred coming thru mothers' milk.
I can relate. I had relatives who were filled with hate, while in the same immediate family there were voices of reason. Hoping that the "haters" are phasing out.
Well, this is my experience with phasing that crap out:
I had 5 kids (lost 2nd oldest in 2012😢). I raised ALL of them to NOT see skin color, ethnicity, sexuality. All of them had friends that I helped raise who were different colors, ethnicities and security.
HOWEVER, once my kids grew up and moved out.... they chose different friends. It was THOSE friends who taught them to hate different skin colors🤬.
My youngest, now 27(😳), moved down to a tiny spot in TN, with Mom of his first child(they now have 3) and he started hanging around with the only people down there, i.e. rednecks.
You can see where that went🤬😢
I'm so sorry. I hope they continue to spend time with you where they are exposed to other ways of thinking. My children are of different ethnicities (first husband was black American; second husband Egyptian), so they witnessed for themselves issues with intolerance. Peer pressure is quite strong even for those in their 29s and early 30s. (My youngest is 33.) Do not give up hope.
I marked that I liked your post, but of course I hate the truth your husband uttered about the hatred that comes with mother's milk,
With you against hate. Thanks for making me sad about this -- again.
You were LIVING under nazi control? how amazing....You must be a magician. How did you manage to avoid those craaaazy "death camps" with hospitals and daycares?
Absolutely! Molly, be proud of who you are!! Never let anyone make you feel dirty or disgusting because of your heritage. Just know, these people have such issues themselves, they don't know anything but hate and bullying in order to make themselves feel better. The problem is, it does not make them feel better. They continue to spiral down into that cesspool and become angrier and angrier.
Peggy and Molly, it seems to me the kind of hatred that lets one stop someone and ask where they are from or what they are is a hate that can't be extinguished without help. There are always groups ready to welcome the haters because that kind of hate is powerful. It brings up the violent emotions that can be used by others for their own purposes. Trump with the help of Cohn and others learned how to manipulate people's hate and use it to get what they want by scaring vulnerable people, threatening people in power with removal of their position or power, or causing those manipulated folks to do actual harm to the targets they have been given. If you can tie the hater's actions to their personal values or beliefs, the damage can be enormous. We got a civil war out of it here when certain politicians just couldn't imagine a life without being able to force other human beings to do their will for the financial and political benefit of the enslavers. Then when that cause isn't strong enough, poor white people were manipulated into hating Black people including slaves for keeping them from getting the money and lifestyle they wanted. Then, when they lost the war, the myth of the great cause was born to manipulate all of us into believing that the war was about something as stupid as states' rights or some other BS, and it was and is BS. The Confederacy wanted to keep slaves and make it possible to force slavery into every place they decided to go, no matter what the enslaved people wanted. Well, those enslaved people were already portrayed as being little better than animals, so no one was supposed to care what they thought. Pretending the civil war was anything else is a travesty, but a whole lot of folks are trying hard to reinstate some of the practices of those days like rewriting history, taking away voting rights, enslaving people in prisons for minor offenses, keeping Black people and other people of color from positions of power, even removing them if they get too uppety, and so much of it is fueled by hate which breeds anger and fear. People like DeSantis, Greene, Jordan, Gates, Boebart, and of course, Trump, are quite good at it because the media have given them a platform, even the words for shaping the hate fest that is going on now through the Republican Party. IT's disgusting, but Democrats have not yet figured out how to break through to reach people who have caught themselves up in the hatred, if there is a way to reach them.
Actually, I think that the haters hate and fear what might be inside themselves, so instead they "project" those disavowed characteristics onto others. When the fear is inflamed, as it is by politicians who appeal to the worst in people, the "ugliness" gets worse and the spewing toward others becomes increasingly vile. Because targeting others, instead of acknowledging what's a part of themselves, doesn't fix the self-loathing, they feel compelled to keep up the hateful behavior. Bigots are really fearful, ignorant people with no insight. That's what makes them so dangerous.
Dear, I hope you are now proud of who you are!
The hell with the sonofabitches!
Good one! They ARE sonuvvabitches!
So very sorry that happened to you. I am glad you grew up to know it for what it is and no longer need to hide your “identity.”
You have stated precisely the point: How do you hate someone who has absolutely no control over what they're born into? I have never comprehended such blind judgement and hatred of "other."
Some hatred comes from beliefs of past alleged/perceived injustices and are passed from generation to generation. Other hatreds came come from failing to see those who appear/act/believe different than others are worthy of respect.
Molly, thank you for sharing, the craziness and the trauma of hate. It is amazing that you remember this so vividly. Not amazing, really, as it was probably out of the ordinary for you, and also, to a child "irrational," which, I suspect, is why you remember it. As others answered here, we do know what's wrong with people that hate with such an occupation. What the solutions are to dissolve hate and bullying in individuals and groups and dogma, are other questions, eh? Thank you also for piquing my interest in Saami heritage. I just found this site which I have enjoyed and I hope it is accurate. It's from 2000. https://www.laits.utexas.edu/sami/dieda/hist/genetic.htm#:~:text=Though%20the%20S%C3%A1mi%20do%20have,closer%20to%20their%20current%20home.
Thanks for the link. I knew nothing about the Sami and now I do.
Those people have something in them you will NEVER have: an evil little brainslug telling them to irrationally hate certain things. I'd take being Jewish or ANYTHING over THAT anyday!
In medieval times that little 'brainslug' would have been called a demon desperately in need of an exorcism. Not to say that exorcism wasn't an old form of bullying. It just allowed the morbidly curious a temporary release from their fear and anger. In our day, laws are another form of exorcism that moves along so sluggishly as to make it ineffective in vanishing the plague of brainslugs that have infected much of humanity.
What they have is evil for sure, but no is born with hate in their heart, it is taught. Show me a child who is a bully, and I will show you a parent or another adult in his/her family that is a bully and spouts hate very time they open their mouth.
Today, that evil little brainslug would be their revered Goebbels Propaganda Network, or OANN, Newsmax, Daily Stormer, et al, ad nauseum. ;) :(
I was scorned by my fellow soldiers in the Army because I am an atheist.
I contend that blind faith in some (most) religions have caused more death, destruction, hatred and mayhem than any other cause or influence. "I hope someday they will join us" in realizing this. How long ago was your experience?
I am an atheist.
Isn’t weird to be hated because you have chosen to not believe in a religion. Atheists and agnostics don’t go around attacking and killing people who don’t become like them.
Having been 'born' (( what I call - an 'accident of birth = random joining of sperm and egg cells, for better or worse, that became - ME ! )) into a Christiany family with representives from most all sects within - the faith - AND having participated in several forms of Paganism for many years AND being a 'student' of Ancient Cultures and their many forms of - spirituality - and finding that NONE of them have the final word on - much of - anything - in the human spiritual realm. And most of them participaing in some form of - hatred, bigotry, bullying - of "lesser populations" (indiginous).
None of - US - start out being bullies or becoming bullies. We're 'trained' into this behaviour by our parents, relatives, redesessors, out of a sense of self preservation from these - elder bullies behaviours. But once - grown and gone from that environment, one
does NOT have to maintain that behaviour and can un-learn it all to become a decent, caring person.
I too was bullied as a kid, let most of it slide 'water off a ducks back' until the final provocation gone too far AND fought back. Once friends then became frenemies, then avoided altogether. Luckily my famikly relocated to another state, WA, after that.
To return to Robert's comments about "communism" = Here in Seattle, in the next community over from where I live, there is a large bronze statue brought back from East
Germany post collapse of the old Soviet Union, in the 1990's. A statue of Lenin that was
acquired by a local businessman, salvaged from destruction and set up here in the Fremont community. Each summer there is a Solstice Parade and craft fair & someone
paints the hands of Lenin - blood red - to denote his bloody participation in the 1st Russian revolution...[[[ I hope I've gotten this info correct - memory fails me at times ]]]
This has basically become my anthem on this whole topic;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01bMVXBadYA
Molly, thanks for your story. So many of my students could have told similar stories of their lack of welcome and appreciation for being who they are. I think hate gives people a kind of power over that raises themselves in their own eyes and in the view of others who hate the same folks. I think it also gives them an excuse to do harm to others. If one can justify acts of unkindness or even cruelty as a result of the other person being different, one can permit themselves to do terrible things without accepting any personal responsibility. The group needs to be targeted so many people will know, then things need to be attributed to them that are seen as really bad, or just really weird or different. If you can convince yourself those people are after something important you have or your rights, or something else, the violence you can do could be catastrophic. The holocaust, the witch hunts and trials, the inquisition, public lynchings, massacres of large parts of whole communities as in Wilmington, NC, Greenwood in Tulsa, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and starvation of the people of Ukraine by the Soviet Union are powerful examples. One can't outlaw hate and powermongering, but through media, we could perhaps, make it less palatable. Our recent emphasis on main characters in movies and TV being crooked, unsavory, even murderers seems problematic to me. When the shows nominated for the highest awards often have such main characters, some people will see acting as those characters do as a plus. We as human beings often do what we see. The question, what are we seeing right now. How can we get more positive views of humanity out here for all to see, and maybe emulate, model for our children and others?
Sorry you experienced that. You might appreciate reading Robert Fulton‘s story of his motorcycle trip through the Middle East in 1932 in what was then called “Irak”. He arrived in a small town and was treated with great hospitality. When it came time for him to leave, the locals asked him where he was headed next, and he told them he was headed over to the next town. They said “you should never go there, the people are horrible.” He went there anyway, and was treated with great hospitality there as well. Lesson? Ignorance breeds contempt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Edison_Fulton_Jr.
I think we need to recognize the need to be part of a tribe. That urge is possibly the origen of our hatred of the Other.
Good point! This is why commerce has played a leading role in the development of civilization. It fosters the recognition of "the other" as human, as well as the exchange of goods and ideas.
Tangently Related:
On the upside, ol' "Sleepy Joe" seem "woke" enough to catch on about messaging:
https://youtu.be/4_Pe_zxArD8?si=J_-e8zvyKMa-ZnWV
Brilliant! 👍🤣😁
I like Joe Biden ; he is a decent man.
Great question!
Sometimes I feel that this happens to people who didn't explore and find the purpose of their life. Joining in hatred with other people makes them feel elevated and belong to the common cause... A terrible and harmful waste of human energy...
Molly,
I resent the question about nationality on so many forms. I am of several bloodlines: Ukrainian, German, Italian, French and I will not check the race box for White. We are all of the human species of animal. We just need to embrace that fact.
And each group of humans has it s own talents, skills and wonderful diverse sense of being. And blending those groups of humans only makes it stronger, more interesting, and more vibrant.
Next time just don't answer or tell them you are human. I even say I am a mutt like my dog who is beautiful, smart, and sweet as can be.
The only thing that should matter is your character.
A person's religion, culture, personality, heritage, age, looks etc. is what gives each individual a unique purpose to do good during their journey on earth. What strengths we bring to this diverse world is so important. Hatred of evil practices and action is understandable, but hatred of innocence which always lacks the ability to empathize, walk a mile in someone else's shoes (perspective) and see value in each person is an abomination. Hate is the opposite of love. Hate is an evil emotion built upon ignorance, bigotry, racism, etc and has no redeeming quality whatsoever.
For an adult to do this to any child is unthinkable. There are incredibly cruel people in this world. My hope for you and many who have gone through similar things is that you are surrounded by good people who value you for the character and person you are. Imagine a world where there is no evil, hatred, greed, bullies, murder, war, suffering, persecution, corruption etc. This is the type of world all good people deserve. Please try to focus on what so ever is good.
Wendy,
Consider the idea that 'hate' is the ABSENCE of Love.
To my mind that makes it more a cognizant choice.
Molly: there is redemption in generational healing. You CHOSE to be an ICU nurse. I suspect that there are very few jobs that test what a human being is “made of” than that one? In your own way you were offering generational redemption to your father. He raised you. He taught you well. And in the end ... he heard you and knew that he had redeemed himself through you. And that is a good parent’s most fervent wish. Well Done.
Thank you. My dad was a moral person thrust into an amoral situation. It saddens me that our country does this to our service people and still don’t adequately help those who come home damaged.
In a job interview in 1979 the interviewer asked about the origin of my name, which is Saenz. I told him it was Spanish and that my grandparents were Mexican immigrants.
He then told me I spoke English well for one of "my people" but he was looking for someone who would be good at business. I was a college freshman thinking about going into engineering, which I did. The job was driving a truck delivering office supplies.
Ugh. Not even subtle.
I was barely able to read when my great aunt gave me a book, Children of Foreign Lands, which I still have. I was born in ‘52, it was published in the 1930s, so it was used when she bought it. I would have given anything to know someone who was part reindeer herder. My best friend in first grade was Jewish, probably the only Jewish student in the entire school. I loved learning the Hanukkah song, spinning a tiny dreidel and eating the chocolate money, and the story of the miracle of the oil lamp. I gravitate toward unusual people; the sameness of the ordinary, people I call “herd animals,” bore me. I was dubbed a free spirit years ago, am often on the outside of things, but boy you have an interesting combination, and I have never, knowingly, met a Laplander, although I have a friend, a renowned photographer, who did a series of photographs of them for his series, Social Studies. He’s traveled everywhere making portraits of indigenous people.
Karen, Lap or Laplander is a derogatory term for Saami. It is like the N word. It is a name given to Saami by other people. Saami or Sàmi or Sampi are some of the spellings. It is my pleasure to meet you🤝
Thank you for that important distinction Molly.
This is exactly the kind of knowledge that Ron Desantis wants to ban.
The rest of us must continue to learn even and evermore of it.
I love this. Ed Reich sounds honest and honorable, and I think he raised a good kid.
We all herein know he did in fact, raise a very good kid! Thank you Ed!
What a lovely tribute to Ed Reich, Bob. Admirable father, admirable son.
You were blessed with a strong role model in your father. It shows. You sometimes comment about your physical height. I see your father inspired his son to be a man of great stature. You have made him very proud.
Thank you for sharing this story about your father. Would that Trump had been raised by such a man.
Ed Reich was a giant, and so is his son.
Your father sounds like my father, who was a life-long liberal, who occasionally voted for Republicans he thought were decent enough. He went to Spain in 1937 to fight for the Republic and it was something that affected my childhood and continues to serve as an example of what doing the right thing consists of. He always said he went to Spain to fight for democracy, and not for any other reason. Anyway, good for Ed Reich and for you.
Ditto.
I will testify they and their progeny are still here. They openly celebrated in a park near Orlando this weekend. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/neo-nazi-groups-spew-hate-disney-world-orlando-officials-say-rcna103186
Where I live, Baghdad By the Sea, they and their allies, the Proud Boys have infiltrated the Republican Party.
An ADL report found this year that 2022 had the most recorded antisemitic incidents since the group began tracking them in 1979: 3,697 incidents were reported last year, compared with 2,717 in 2021 — an increase of 36%. Most incidents — nearly 2,300 — were characterized as harassment, more than 1,200 were acts of vandalism, and 111 were assaults.
In my community, north of Austin, TX, baggies with antisemitic messages and then filled with small pebbles to weigh it down were randomly thrown onto people's driveways. I contacted the city demanding they make a statement saying that garbage does not belong in our community. We are a beautifully diverse city. It's no place for hate.
Texas is a state that is filled with hate. It is a scary, misogynistic place with an autocratic governor. Very, very scary. Baggies are the least of that state's worries.
Austin is a wonderful city of enlightenment and great people.
The problem is that Austin is outnumbered. When Texas was freezing because the state is unwilling to connect to the grids that connect other states throughout the nation, Austin had no protection. Just as Austin has no protection against the 13th century decisions of its governor and state legislature. A woman I admire greatly lives (I believe) in Austin. I'm speaking of Brené Brown. It must drive her crazy to see the clown car driving the bus. And I, too, have the misfortune to live in a backward, misogynistic state with an autocratic governor. I live here to be near family. But it is a scary place to live. The only good thing is that the Trump-worshipping over 55 community in which I live prohibits yard signs and banners, so at least I don't have to see reminders of a criminal up and down the street.
I love the weird part of Austin and the wonderful people that I have met there and BATS!!!
Barbara, it's all part of the same war. The baggies are one weapon. Fascist groups here are hard at work to take our freedoms, civil rights, and civil liberties. Texas is becoming more like communist China every day.
One of my sons lives just outside Austin, and he enjoys the diversity in this region. When I, and some of his friends, ask about the general atmosphere in the larger region, he always says that he and other like-minded people need to stay and make a difference!
Alarming but not surprising.
Antisemites are like poison ivy. You have to wonder: Why do they exist? What good do they do themselves or anyone else? What"s the point of their destructive existence?
Did they infiltrate or were they invited in?
Behavior analysis works. Hit them up the side of the head with a metaphorical 2 by 4 and they have an attitude adjustment.
DOJ has the capacity to enforce the law but Garland is a wuss.
Every state has statutes that make threats a crime. Also criminal conspiracy. E.G. if two MAGATs agree to give aid and comfort to insurrection, that's a crime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_behavior_analysis
They aren't making threats. They are seeding the idea that Jews are to blame for all our problems. This is the first step. Someone threw baggies onto our driveways with literature stating this.
They are not only making threats, they have been actively attacking. 11 dead Jews in Pittsburgh. Many physical assaults. Even more crimes like defacing graves, etc. Multiply this by racial assaults. .
To be a crime, need to prove 1. agreement to do something illegal, 2. an act, such as defacing property.
BTW I've had threats, even on this platform.
Daniel, I would hope that anyone threatening any other person on Substack would be refused permission to enter any posts. There is no room for bullies in this forum.
Last week in Jacksonville, a shooter killed three black people. He had engraved a swastika onto the gun he used. Fascists hate blacks and Jews with equal venom.
This. :(
Some (most??) of these Nazi scum consider Jews to be 'beneath' those of African descent on their evil, racist, genocidal, Aryan supremacist racial hierarchy.
I'm not Jewish and my heart aches for Jews and what they have to put up with.
I live in a small town in a red state. These last few years, actually since cyber spaces have grown, I am afraid to voice my real political or (anti) religious opinions. Anywhere. It's not fun not feeling safe anymore. It's a really scary time. I wish more people realized it.
That's unsettling to hear.
Daniel, I am ashamed you would receive threats on this platform. I have tried to stay out of the juvenile hate filled language when I discuss Trump et al because it feeds hatred, instead I follow reasoning and factual history, which guides my intellect and emotions rather than pure loyalty to a politician or political party.
I appreciate how many of you feel empathy for the individuals whose stories you have read about bullies in other’s lives.
I can’t tell you how many times I have reported the bullying of me and my family for 2 decades of 24/7 in my community first where I tried to be kind and gracious as I explained the bullying and events that were happening in our lives like stalking and lack of our civil rights in our home 24/7.
But when it continued, unrestrained, I began calling out to people who were elected officials (I came across as Ed Reich’s sonofabitch thunder) for help. To this day I have received no help and people like my congressman, Scott Peters, whom I asked in his office for help, tacitly indicated his acknowledge of it but deflected responsibility. There are many others who have perpetrated this act of prejudice. Now because I have dared to roar I am accused of being unbalance or drinking too much; otherwise why would she respond that way to 2 decades of 24/7 surveillance that has resulted in an industry of sheer hate with public humiliation and shaming visible in the hundreds of cars that follow me because they know when I pick up my keys I am going out and then when I go to my intended destination the staff and owners physically and verbally pick up the thread and harass me even while I am paying them like a manager at Solare Restaurant did two days ago ,Pauola and the other waiter.
My mentally disabled son whom I have cared for 8 years now has been made to disappear and I don’t know where he is. I had been fighting to care for him as each day he went out into the public where they are alerted to go manipulate him and when he returns home he creates havoc. I could go on and on but the bottom line is he is manipulated and he manipulated them (50 years old). Everyone listening in daily could have made a difference in our caring for him (financially, emotionally and physically) by coming over and asking what can they do to help. Now I get the message, oh well get on with your life. All the years I argued with my husband about the surveillance reality they could have made a difference. But he was told on the outside she must be paranoid - the same people who had knowledge of it denied him the truth. What IF I HAD THE SAME ACCESS TO RVERY MOMENT OF THEIR LIVES? Correct they would howl In protest.
Apologies. I was only considering my area. Their violence is escalating against targeted groups. I hope you reported the threats made here.
We are glad you are here today....
Thanks for this historical history lesson that still is resonating at this moment.
I totally agree with you and also thank Dr. Reich. Dr. Reich has bridged the past to the present that shows the the rotten foundation and horrible path upon which Donald Trump and the Republican Party have steered our country.
Thank you for your comment. I agree, 100%. To Dr. Reich, thank you for the history lesson.
What a wonderful article. I so enjoyed reading it.
Thank you for this explanation of many things I had never quite put together before. My late husband told the story of knocking on doors in Berkeley, at the age of about 8, accompanying his mother, campaigning for Helen Gahagen Douglas. They were called communists and doors were slammed in their faces. (We had a big party celebrating Nixon's resignation; very satisfying.) The connections between Roy Cohn, Nixon, Trump, etc - it's all of a piece. Again, thank you.
p.s. My daughter & I often say how grateful we are that he didn't have to see what's happened in our country over the past 20 year. SonofaBITCH would have sounded mild!
I believe this to be FALSE!
From The Saturday Evening Post in 2020.
Even more trenchant is Mitchell’s research showing that Joseph P. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy donated to Nixon’s campaign. Even John F. Kennedy had spurned the liberal Douglas to offer support to his future opponent.”
The bogeyman of “Communist” to tarnish progressive policies is still with us.
Well... I would thing the Saturday Evening Post should be a good source. Collaboration from additional reliable sources would be nice. A deep history of NY Times stories, maybe?
Evidence, if you please.
From Wikipedia:
Democratic Massachusetts Congressman John F. Kennedy, a political opponent of Nixon's, came to Nixon's office and gave him a donation of $1,000 on behalf of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., his father.[62] John Kennedy indicated that he could not endorse Nixon, but that he would not be heartbroken if Douglas was returned to her acting career.[63] Joseph Kennedy later stated that he gave Nixon the money because Douglas was a communist.[62]
Wiki is very good. So I surrender.
Randy, Wiki is not always a reliable or accurate resource. It allows people with an agenda to post, edit, or “correct” information there.
He did say it was from his father, but he kinda agreed.
Their dad Joseph was an avowed rightwinger, and both he and his brother could not have had any political careers whatsoever back in the general attitudes of that era (or even today it seems?) if they were seen as being sympathetic/empathetic AT ALL, to anyone labeled (correctly OR incorrectly) as a 'commie pinko'. :(
I am NOT justifying their actions (IF true), just explaining the reality of those times.
I do believe that JFK did see the Soviets (whether they were actually pure/'real' communists as they claimed to be or not) as a major geopolitical threat to this nation though, and he was tough enough to stand up to them.
Really? Wow.
"In December 1946, at the founding convention of the Progressive Citizens of America, FDR’s former vice president Henry Wallace called the red scare a tool used by the most powerful economic forces in America and warned America not to give in to it."
McCarthyism was never actually about rooting out Communists in American society, it was about one party's declaring a "crisis" and then claiming that it, and only it, could solve it, a ploy as old as politics, as old as time -- "Just give us the power," they always say. Give us the power and we will make national safe and whole and moral and pure."
But when given the power they always wield it for two purposes: one, to keep themselves in power and on the public payroll as long as they care to stay in office and, two, to tirelessly serve the interests of the wealthy and corporations with which they are aligned, in exchange for campaign cash in the short term and, in the long term, when they retire from public "service," lucrative consultancies, lobbying jobs, seats on corporate boards and, nowadays, deals with conservative publishers to write books that they know no one will ever read.
The real reason that Republicans fight tooth-and-nail against all Democratic initiatives is because they see them as sanding between each of them and their long-term paydays when the moneyed interests they served so loyally return the favor. They want to be rich, come hell or high water, and neither elected Democrats nor the will of the majority of the people are going to stop them.
As a side note, Bob, I grew up in Peekskill, NY. What was the name of your father's store there, and how long did it operate (we moved to Peekskill in 1962).
Also, South Salem, also in Westchester County, is only about 20 miles north of the New York City line, not 60.
You make a good point, but the Trump Clan transcends opportunism. It's fascist.
No, it's opportunism in the exact same sense that Rupert Murdoch has said that if he thought Fox News would make more money pandering to liberals than conservatives, he'd make it a liberal-oriented channel (which would be at odds with his own politics, but making money always takes precedence with his kind). The Trumps have merely adopted the ideology that they think can be monetized maximally. Like all lower forms of life, they believe in nothing but their own survival and profit.
Guess when you have a bully showing you the ropes it goes to show you learn from the best....between Donald Trump's father and Cohen Trump had the foundation laid for a life of "I never did anything wrong and I'm always right" no matter who gets destroyed along the way ...and now we're dealing with that creep and all his partners in crime.... I wish I had known your Father...he was a smart man and could see those scumbags for what they were....long live "SonsofBitches" for our government is full of them!!!
Apparently Trump’s father did know there was something wrong with his kid. He was sent to military school to correct his bullying.
Maybe he just did not want to deal with him.
Or maybe he did so to instill an abject love and respect for authoritarianism in his progeny.
Fredrich was a Nazi (as well as a KKK member abject racist), who attended the MSG BUND meeting organized by the operative which (S)Hitler's sent here to stir up fascist sentiment in the U.S. at that time (Fritz Kuhn).
It is amazing that he accepted either Roy Cohn, or Allen Weisselberg AT ALL, given their religion, but I guess that they were considered lowly 'useful pawns' by the abject ANTI-SEMITE, and that justified their employ.
Fred was a horrible human being, but if you're accusing him of being a Nazi sympathizer you really should cite reliable sources. Dr. Mary Trump excoriated her grandfather and his hateful ways in her first book. Had she any proof of Nazi ties, she probably would have mentioned them.
Thank you. Following this thread of history, by way of your father and you, fills in some missing pieces for me and brings it to life. Now, when i hear Trump burbling his lies, and i shout SonofaBITCH, i'll know i'm in the best of company.
Your father was a true hero.
Why?
Because he was appalled by abuse of power and bigotry, pushed back against it in daily life, and was a role model for his son.
It just depends on what the word 'hero' means nowadays?
he·ro
/ˈhirō,ˈhērō/
noun
1.
a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.
Thank you.
He lived as a shining example of righteousness. What do you think heroism requires?
I just think that 'heroism' is used too often in the US and then the word begins to mean nothing?
He IS a hero in your eyes which is wonderful.
What does 'righteousness' mean in your way of speaking?
One can be righteous by following a set of principles: Ie he was a righteous person because he believed in religion/socialism/indoctrination etc.
Dear Robert and father of Robert. Thank you for your values and for taking time to tell the stories that help bring these values to life. We can learn, again and again.
Too many people believe that wealth indicates financial and public success. It is an indication of VALUE, the value of achievement. Poverty is seen as failure.
In some indigenous cultures being rich is quitte different.
The richest peson is the one who contributes most value to the society.
So I see both of you as rich leaders and thank you for the time and the action you take, to try and stop bullying leaders taking control.
Western society needs to get back to basics. Great to see all the union-action in the US. It may help restore balance.
: - ) Greetings from the low countries.
You could interpose the Republicans named with McConnell, McCarthy and Giuliani. Nothing really changes within the Republican party
I call Republicans cash junkies Until we change how we look at wealth & selfish, hoarders who keep demanding they need more money. We will never find healthy, happy citizens
My dream is that we go to a Well Being Index rather than GNP to measure ourselves and our government. Money doesn't buy happiness. If you want to feel good, then do something meaningful, something larger than your self. Even small acts of kindness toward others will make you feel well being - happiness that lasts. Countries like Great Britain are already using WBI to measure all government policy and legislation. Each must show how it increases the well being of ALL the people. I also love the Native American philosophy that one's wealth is measured by one's generosity to others. See Dr. Martin Seligman's theory of well being at https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/ We need to overturn Citizens United by passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act as a good starting point.
The playwright Edwin Sanchez has just finished writing a play called Lottery Boy which deals with the emotional and psychological effects of having and not having money. The theme may sound intellectual and abstract, but the characters he creates bring the theme to a vivid and electrifying life. It's not published yet , but keep it in mind if the subject interests you. It should interest all of us since we live in a virulently capitalist society.
Arlene M Hill, I love that, "cash junkies". Do you mind if I borrow it? And maybe even put some new adjectives?
Use it, spread it around, explain it. Lets do some good work fixing what R Reagan did too America. Trickle-down economics, what a load of pollution he left us with. Maybe they will see themselves & feel shame then fix what they have done
Thanks, Arlene M Hill! Will do. Though, I'm not counting on all that many breakers, just some of them to help with the fixing.
Your dad is someone I would have liked to have known.
Great article. Reminded me of a lot of things that I shouldn't forget.
I appreciate the story of your father's integrity and courage, Professor Reich. It took me right back to the front seat of my parents' heavy, small-windowed black Oldsmobile. My mother and I were driving into town from our house about a mile away. I remember it as if it just happened. It must have been May of 1957; I was 7 1/2. A news bulletin came over the radio: Senator Joseph McCarthy is dead. My mother hit the wheel and shouted out, "Good. He's dead. That lousy bastard should rot in hell!" Like you, I never had heard that word or expression and didn't know what it meant, but my mother's sudden angry outburst scared me. I already knew that McCarthy was a demon. I have vague memories of sitting on an overstuffed chair in our living room when I was about 4. My mother would hover over our huge wooden console, shaking her finger and screaming at the tiny glass television screen as she watched in horror at McCarthy's ravings and viciousness. I read your story and I tighten up, sad that the circle has come full around and that the same unwelcome feelings are here, now, challenging me to action, fueled by these experiences that aimed me in this direction long before I understood more than the scary feelings.