It is important to recall HOW the current base of the party came into being. The suffering wage-earner got shafted by an emphasis on corporations and their ability to provide millions for campaign spending. The Murdoch family is a good example. It understood that mass media could deeply influence people. If you twisted the truth away from truth and toward a conservatism that benefited itself.
For instance, ordinary people bought into racism by fear their jobs would be threatened by non-white folks climbing out of poverty and immigrants taking the poorest jobs.
Meanwhile, corporations were looking at every possible way to shovel the fruits of capitalism into the hands of likeminded people who were concerned only for their bank accounts AND the ability to buy the government that benefited them, e. g., the banking disaster under Bush2.
It is Robert Reich who showed how this worked. Money is powerful, to lie to people and to bend nearly everything to the desires of a few excessively rich. Let’s remember that Trump was a useful tool until he was a disaster. The GOP was perfected happy with his destructiveness until it blew up in their faces.
Nope. Sorry, but you've swallowed a false story line. Look back in 1969, when Pete Hammill wrote about the resentments of the New York City white working class toward aristocratic Republican Mayor Lindsay and the recipients of government handouts, black people. https://nymag.com/news/features/46801/ And here is the pull quote just so you'll know:
“Look around,” another guy told me, in a place called Mister Kelly’s on Eighth Avenue and 13th Street in Brooklyn. “Look in the papers. Look on TV. What the hell does Lindsay care about me? He don’t care whether my kid has shoes, whether my boy gets a new suit at Easter, whether I got any money in the bank. None of them politicians gives a good goddam. All they worry about is the niggers. And everything is for the niggers. The niggers get the schools. The niggers go to summer camp. The niggers get the new playgrounds. The niggers get nursery schools. And they get it all without workin’. I’m an ironworker, a connector; when I go to work in the mornin’, I don’t even know if I’m gonna make it back. My wife is scared to death, every mornin’, all day. Up on the iron, if the wind blows hard or the steel gets icy or I make a wrong step, bango, forget it, I’m dead. Who feeds my wife and kid if I’m dead? Lindsay? The poverty program? You know the answer: nobody."
Is it that most humans have no moral rudder? Are most of us just hard wired to put blinders on and narrow our perspectives to our own interests regardless of the big picture? No one has depicted this more eloquently than Shakespeare, as the crowd swings from devoted loyalty to Brutus one minute, to enraged revenge against him a moment later hearing Mark Antony's few well-crafted words.
Actually, you'll find that many species, up to and including humans, have an innate sense of fair play, of norms and when the norms are violated. Shakespeare is dramatic, but you might also want to read Stanford brain neuroanatomist Robert Sapolsky's books on primate behavior. Critics of Euroamerican behavior include native American writers, who observe that we as a culture have a sociopathological, psychopathological disease called Wetiko disease. In its Native American meaning, wetiko is an evil cannibalistic spirit that can take over people’s minds, leading to selfshness, insatiable greed, and consumption as an end in itself, destructively turning our intrinsic creative genius against our own humanity.
I am a white middle class person who has been listening to Black people, leaders, writers, organizations in a heightened, more intentional way since the George Floyd murder lead to the massive public response. I have not seen any white privileged (middle class) Americans change their lives in any significant way. They saw what happened and what keeps happening. There has been more coverage of Black mothers who live minute to minute never knowing whether their family members who go out will be brutalized and never come home. I refer you to Eddie Glaude's book, Begin Again. He documents how every time there has been an opportunity for white America to progress, white America chose regression and racism.
It's sickening, right? I grew up in Lackawana, New York where *I* was the minority and I still carry that with me even though The Town of Tonawanda is mainly white.
I would love to hear your thoughts on how Wetiko came to infect US, and not so much African or Asian cultures (or, it seems to me, older European ones).
Check out the "Lucifer Effect" by Phillip Zimbardo. It starts with the Stanford Experiment where subjects were randomly assigned to be police guards or prisoners... Even the most progressive kind students became a members of a vicious brutal gang after being in a group where the norm was cruelty. He goes on from there to describe many other situations like that in history. It is a life-changing read.
I think our "leadership" and media messages today empowers the absolute worst part of human nature.
It has infected all those cultures as well, especially European. Ever hear of the colonial period? The simple fact is that American culture is so crass and unsophisticated that we have no skill in masking it behind a facade of gentility and refinement
I think the Wetiko perspective does not stand up to scrutiny. It presumes that Native American cultures prior to European contact did not make war over resources, did not make war for glory, did not capture and torture prisoners. This, of course, is nonsense.
Destructive attitudes and behavior are not directly attributable to a for-profit economic system; people have been torturing one another since time immemorial — way before the birth of international banking.
Donna, I think some folks are so easily swayed as Shakespear describes, but mostly when a person's or group's views have not yet been solidified. A lot of white people already have a resentment of people of color and white men, a resentment of anyone who is getting something they want. That is part of what privilege does to people, particularly when those people don't acknowledge they have any privilege because they work hard and believe they work harder, struggle more, and contribute more of their money to society than any of THOSE people. They don't need to be nudged too much to resent/hate the new Black boss or those immigrants daring to cross into THEIR nation (white nation). They don't have to be coaxed too much to gloat when women are put in their place with abortion restrictions. Conspiracy theories feed their need to be part of something important and special. The propagandists don't want those folks thinking or holes might form that would be difficult to close. Keep giving folks, people and situations to resent and those pathetic white folks and the white wannabees will be cowed indefinitely. Now, if something happens to them personally, like having an LGBTQ child, a slight change might happen and they may be encouraged to think. I believe that the major reason white guys like DeSantis don't want anything about race taught to their privileged fragile white kiddies is that they don't want the brainwashing they have been doing with their kids since birth about their superiority and everyone else's inferiority challenged by the truth. That is why so many Republican politicians send their kids to mostly white schools and exclusive universities where their precious kiddies will be able to demonstrate their superiority over the few people of color accepted to those institutions. Sadly, most of those white kids never realize they are being shaped to be a racist powerhouse in their family's tradition.
We must now recognize the rugged individualist, where his activities destroy resources, as the Enemy of the People he has become. We can no longer believe valid our assumption that we live in independence. The idea of Gross Domestic Product as the holy measurement of wellbeing is nonsense. Every thing these GOPsters have said on the floor today has been a flagrant lie. They all need to be questioned by someone who can hold them to account. They believe in an infinite planet. Let's send them to one and leave this one to us - we can't resolve the ecology of earth and atmosphere without solving inequality and that means ending the idea of capital as unconnected to environmental or social constraints.
Malek, you chose the perfect example of that. Bush Jr. never even thought of the people of Iraq when he and Cheyney made up the WMD crap. That's how racism and xenophobia work and Bush Jr. was steeped in both through his family.
DMC, thank you so much. I only wish we could help people of privilege understand first that they have it, then, that they don't need to use it. The challenge is that with privilege comes power in forms the privileged often don't notice. I know, I'm dreaming.
Mass mentality is very different than individual mentality. I truly believe most people are caring... But the entertainment value of whipping up a mob sells more products.
It's 'rump and his minions who apparently have no moral rudder.I'd like to think we have a nation full of caring,God fearing folks who do what they can,when they can for their fellow man.
They somehow forget that even though these black people were citizens, they were shunned from housing, red-lined, asked to use separate facilities as if they were toxic, beaten, killed based on suspicion not facts. Black singers couldn’t stay at the hotels where they entertained. An endless list of abuses, denial of rights as citizens etc. Land of the free and home of the brave. 🤦🏻
Seeking Reason, you are so right. The problem for most of those white folks who whine about what Black people have but shouldn't is that they don't know what Black people have been through and continue to experience. The media show Black people as criminals of all kinds. That is supposed to be the norm. Despite winning election twice, President Obama is not recognized as president by a bunch of the Trump cult. For those folks, Black people can't hold positions of power and if they have them, they stole them. I am sure Mommy and Daddy passed that on to their kids while forgetting to teach that lying is wrong, paying taxes supports our nation and all the things we need, and people of color women and LGBTQ persons are as good as you are. The reason those latter messages didn't get through is that the parents didn't believe them or even know that they should. Republicans in Georgia thought voting for Herschel Walker proved they weren't racist. Until reading a couple of books about it this summer, I never heard of "The Green Book," the travel guide for Black travelers so they would know where they could get a room, gas, and food in as much safety as Black Americans could hope for in the mid-20th Century. The Republican Party does not want its members to know what life has been like for Black Americans or any other group of non-white citizens. It might breed empathy or thinking, and they just can't have that!
I have come to disagree with what you said that "most of those white folks". . ."don't know what Black people have been through and continue to experience." White people let us know that they know myriad ways. They do not shop or eat out in Black neighborhoods. When their friends come to town, they don't show them around the Black neighborhoods. They choose houses in what they call "good neighborhoods" and send their children to "good schools." And on and on and on. They know.
Donna, I think white people are scared of Black people and often don't want to go to their neighborhoods because, they/we are told it is dangerous and there is the hint that if you do, you will be the victim of crime. Fearing someone is not the same as knowing them and what they and their families have been through. I didn't know until I started teaching in a school district of mostly students of color. Living in the community and walking the same streets, and listening to the parents and children describing their lives has been powerful. I learned the city is the friendliest place I have ever lived and worked in, yet the people don't really know that because they are so busy surviving. Most white people I have known don't put sufficient time into knowing more than the surface and what they are told by the media what that surface is and how they should respond to it.
They know. They don't change their behavior. Read Eddie Glaude's 2022 book, Begin Again. Every time white America had a chance to do the right thing, we chose racism.
The facts had nothing to do with it, though. Lindsay had very little to do with where Federal funds were distributed - he was a Republican mayor during a Democratic Congress, and since 1968, the entire nation was in an uproar over the war in Viet Nam, the murders of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F. Kennedy, the Chicago Democratic Party police riot, etc.
Martha, thanks for the reminder. It seems the message Republicans are doling out today is only slightly different from that of 50 years ago. I guess when you have a message that works, it never gets old. Getting working-class white people to hate people they don't even know, but can imagine (as shaped by the Republican/conservative propaganda) is powerful. You'd think those guys and it was nearly always men, would want to find out if any of what they were told were true, but it was easier to wallow in their resentment. The resentment is centuries old and rich white people have learned to use and manipulate it. It works and will keep the Republican party alive and destroying indefinitely.
Actually this is an excellent example. He works for a private corporation that doesn’t care about its employees (“dime a dozen”) despite things not being built without them. It was Dems that have pushed for benefits when companies won’t cover their people. That’s why we have labor laws and Obamacare. This what I mean by misdirection. The company pays out millions to shareholders but doesn’t cover their own people. Then the working dude feels shafted by the government instead of forming a unuion to fight back
That is the same story, different example. Corporate greed being supported by trickle down economics and political protection is the beginning of the Now.
Unfortunately, the current working poor hold no such fear or anger of their 1% masters. Look at FAUX news: any mention of the 99% being "shafted" by the 1%? NOPE! It's the "immigrants," or "the woke leftists," or "the trans community."
Your quote has aged poorly, much to us AMERICANS fear and anger.
Not news, actually. Ever hear of Cotton Mather? Andrew Jackson? Andrew Johnson? Senator Bilbo? Senator Tailgunner Joe McCarthy? Pat Buchanan? The history of the United States has a chorus line from the colonial days of misdirection. Demagoguery - Cicero wrote about it - we didn't invent it. https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/demagoguery-in-america
So what exactly is your point? That no matter what action one takes, someone will benefit and someone will hate/resent it? I think that's generally true no matter how much good one attempts, and it is certainly true of leadership and therefore politics. Slamming those who attempt to create more just policy isn't to excuse others whose needs aren't addressed. Politics is a messy thing and requires legislation, monitoring of results, then reevaluation and corrections to make it better. That's exactly what has happened with the creation of Medicare, for instance. The challenge of the last 40 years has been in gathering enough consensus to be able to make needed policy changes that haven't been watered down by lack of sufficient support to write/implement the legislation the right way in the first place. But this doesn't mean much incremental good can't (and hasn't been) be accomplished.
THE STAFORD STUDY IS A FAKE. SO IS THE LORD OF THE FLIES. WE SEE EVIL WHERE THERE IS NONE. PEOPLE NEED TO FEEL MIGHTY BECUZ FOR THE MOST PART WE ARE FRAIL BEINGS WHO DIE WITHOUT HELP FROM OTHERS.
WE TEND TO OVERSTATE THE EVIL CUZ IT MAY KILL US AND TO IGNORE THE GOOD BECUZ IT WONT. WE SEE THREATS WHERE THERE ARENT ANY.
Who came up with the way votes are counted in the house? Please shoot them if they're still around. Idea. In the right armrest of each chair install a keyed switch that engages a voting panel. Candidates' names are called off one at a time by the chair. The seats occupied by duly elected officials have the key switch in the "on" position giving the occupant of the chain one and only one vote. The votes are tabulated only after all votes have been cast. The results would be seen on a big board positioned directly behind the speaker's chair. This would speed up the process tremendously. Like in a court of law after the jury reaches its verdict a verbal pole can be taken to verify the results. There is far too much time wasted using methods that in the chamber that were adopted before electricity and computers were invented. It's time for progress to come to Washington.
Clinton’s financial deregulation started the devastating ball rolling towards 2008. W made things worse. Obama, with Biden’s urging, bailed out the banks that screwed people and did next to nothing to help the people they screwed.
It's been wrong for a long time, what about the $3 trillion Reagan and Bush illegally took from the American people when the drained that money from our social security coffers. If we are going to get through this time in our country's history we have to stop dwelling in the past, what is done is done. We need to concentrate on the "now" and it affects on our immediate future.
The current Republican party can be compared to a standard canoe. A basic means of transportation meant to move people from one location to another. There is a flaw in it's design however. The canoe is easily over turned. With that in mind the operators with the paddles have to work together in order to keep the craft moving in a true direction. The way things stand today the two paddlers are seated in the canoe facing each other. Anyone who knows anything about this means of travel can clearly see the efforts put forth by the two canoeists has no future. The sum total of their combined efforts will yield no headway. Team work associated with the understanding of how things work is a necessary component for success. Republicans are fighting each other in an effort to obtain power not competency. Their position is precarious, and instead of trying to fix their predicament they keep smashing the bigger pieces into ever smaller ones. Team work coupled with the intent to find a solution that appeals to their constituent's basic needs would be a good starting point. Instead of trying to glorify the "I" they should be looking for the best path to find the "WE." As in "We the people."
Consider, instead of a canoe, an Adirondack guideboat: the person doing the work is always looking backwards, while the other person sits at leisure and doesn’t contribute anything to forward progress. That sounds like a much more realistic metaphor for capitalism.
Donald, I love thie picture you have created here ! ! ! My twisted "Theater of the Absured" sees this as the most appropriate vision of polo tics in general in these trying times. Thanks for your delightful mental cartoon ! ! !
I am here to but serve, LOL. I'm glad you find relevance in an old man's effort to find some sort of meaning in all this. It's Robert's fault, he got the ball rolling.
Consider also a deranged eagle, its right wing relentless in bashing its left. The right is all puffed up, muscular, and proud of it. The left is mangled and atrophied, while still trying to keep the bird aloft. The pathetic creature flops about in futile circles. At some point we hope some of the fibers in the right wing realize the imbalance and quit attacking its own other side and those of the left coordinate to rescue the main bird. Eagles soar best when both wings skillfully cooperate in a balanced way. Will our eagle recover from its fall before it crashes and dies? A few "Present" votes could help here.
Brad, I didn't realize there was a "left wing" in the Republican Party. No wonder that bird is struggling. It isn't flying, in fact, it is barely sitting on the perch, and I am in no way encouraging it to move because it is pretty destructive when it does.
Destructive at times, however the problem in hand is paralyzing a branch of our government and the whole can't function with the cooperation of the sum total of its parts. There has to be a speaker in order for the House to function, and we as a country need that to happen. The speaker position is looking more like the lesser of two evils.
Oh dear! Brad, are you insinuating that the reason the "eagle" isn't flying is due to the Democrats? I certainly hope that is not the case because it would mean you are just not looking at the bird very clearly. The Democrats are trying really hard to keep flying, but Republican toddlers just keep pulling it down. We need better Republicans to step up or the analogy of the injured eagle just won't work at all because our nation won't be working. It won't be Dems who do the damage. A bunch of Republicans are trying to elect a fool, Kevin McCarthy to the lauded position of Speaker of the House. He has nothing to offer anyone except his huge ego and no one except him needs that. Republicans are against everything the American people are for. The speaker nominating Jeffries for the 8th round of voting laid it all out and it was pretty stark.
Perhaps my writing is unclear, Ruth. For most of my life I have watched our beloved eagle (country) mangled by its right wing. The only real threat to our country comes from within, from the fascist, mean-minded conservatives. The Democrats, from FDR to Carter to Harry Reed to Nancy Pelosi, have done their best to resist the constant belittling, obstructing, and gerrymandering of the highly organized and deliberate warfare of the right.
Hopefully, most are fed up with the Speaker of the House delay and circus enough for enough decent, patriotic Republicans to vote "present" or for some fair-minded and pragmatic option. I'd like to see Adam Kinzinger in that role. He hasn't renounced his Republican affiliation even as he seeks to redeem his party from history's scorn.
John James surprised me with the quality of his speech. I had no idea that was within him. I fear McCarthy is a stumbling block not easily over turned. He won't go away and either will they. ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I keep banging-on that ol' Tweety's only symptomatic of mental illness in the party, whose slogan I clearly remember was once: "Keep government out of the bedroom."
I'm less concerned about ol' Tweety in my comment than I am about his political context. See my other post elsewhere in my response to Mr Brown's comment that recommends consideration of a link I include. The focus being on the MAGAs in the party that are still MAGAs, who are clearly susceptible to authoritarian leadership.
What Trump did better than anyone in recent history is tap into the racist collective subconscious.
:"The Republican Party will continue in some form. It takes more than nihilistic mindlessness to destroy a party in a winner-take-all system such as we have in the United States."
When I was a kid in Pennsyltucky we had two kinds of Republicans: Hamiltonians (the blue Brahamans) and Lincolnians (morphed into Reaganites). I estimate that none of those Hamitonians supported Trump. Some switched parties, some are now independents, but most remain registered Republicans who don't vote for people like Mastriano and Oz.
We had a GOP that waived the bloody flag of Civil War, schools named by the GOP for the abolitionist Thaddeus Stephens, father of reconstruction, a GOP that openly opposed Catholicism, but believed in conservation, modesty and restraint.
In looking at the Pa. delegation in the House, there are no Hamiltonians. Democrats should have reached out to those Hamiltonians sitting home alone.
But careful with such terms. There is no such thing as the cultural unconscious of the Volk, but merely some execrable childish aggression expressed in the garb of a confused greater concept. There is no great Aryan people’s mind driving us forward; merely a confederacy of selfish nonsense.
Don't forget the money is speech reality using the cudgel of "divide and conquer". It does not always work, because mixed race schools. From preschool to college and workplaces show that people can accept each other. The elites are the ones who learn about only accepting and trusting the "right people". Remember the former guy's attitude about $#it hole places: cities and countries with POC. And poor whites.
Did they ever unpack that thought? Like...safe from what, exactly? And what was it that gave them that safety? I wonder about the Trump-unleashed aggressive drivers of huge white trucks gunning their motors and flipping us off if we need to merge in front of them...I really do. Safety? Seems often like it's more permission to act like badly-raised 12-year-old boys.
Daniel, Pennsyltucky, I was raised in this area. We always laughed when our aunt and uncle from D.C. called it that. I agree wholeheartedly Dems are dropping this unprecedented opportunity to create a new dialogue with Republicans. Instead of considering these voters useless to them, they (we) should be reaching out to dispel the socialist/communist/ideological facade created by Republicans to discredit our values of rights and inclusions. I don’t expect a full embrace of liberalism, obviously, but I do know we want a lot of the same things. Better education, better jobs with opportunities and benefits. Healthcare, elder care, safety in public.
There is a large number of people in PA who embrace this version of the Republican party. There’s much larger segment of the population who awoke on June 24th 2022 to find themselves deeper into second class citizenship than they were the day before. Their fought for and granted Constitutional right to choose their future, health care, their financial needs and family decisions under attack by Republicans. The shockwave this created cost republicans seats here in PA. It blasted people from their long reverie of apathetic behavior toward voting into using the the ballot box to communicate their extreme displeasure with this development.
The Republicans you speak of don’t want this current version of the GOP, but just can’t bring themselves to vote for all the “scary” things liberals want.
We need to show them patience and empathy to being cut off from their lifelong belief in their institutions. ‘We want the a lot of the same things’ is where we need to start opening ways to include voters who’s party left them behind.
Agreed. This is why progressive capitalism is a more-likely cure for the USA than socialism, which sounds scary to the guns-and-football crowd. During our lifetimes we have seen the New Deal gradually stripped away. It’s time to restore Roosevelt-style policies under the Democratic banner.
Stan, I think we need to stop letting republicans define words for us. They’ve redefined the words liberal & conservative. We need to stop repeating their misrepresentations or kowtowing to it.
I’ll bet that the Dems need to re-imagine what the USA is supposed to be about: an economic entity as well as a geographical and political unit. The Republican vision consists of seeing the USA as a giant market with everyone competing against everyone as typified in countless cowboy and noir movies and excellently in the Coen brothers’ film “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.” Our version looks like “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Gavin Newsom seems like the most-likely candidate to lead the way — just as JFK did in 1960.
"Liberal" is dead center. Let's not forget that our constitutional form of government is called a "liberal democracy." The label began with the Spanish civil war, about a generation after our 1776-'89 revolution. A Spanish political party calling themselves the "liberales" embraced and modeled themselves according to the new American Constitution, and named the new global democratic movement "liberalism." The term has a long history all the way back to the Enlightenment. Find the book by Salwyn Shapiro.
Karen, As an east coast Pennsylvanian, I lived for years in a county or rather 2 counties that always, and I mean ALWAYS voted Republican. Republicans didn't do much for the counties, but didn't hurt them much either, so there was a kind of equilibrium. Then, under Reagan, things changed. Jobs went south or overseas, unemployment rose significantly, and Republicans did little to help. Unions were blamed as were Black people in the area (I never understood that because they were suffering far more than the white people). Gradually, Democrats began to gain ground and now, both counties are fully Democratic, have low unemployment rates, are working to deal with the challenges of a significant unhoused population, and more. It's not perfect, but a big improvement. The messages Dems used were as you describe, discussing what the people have in common. Rural Pennsylvanians have been misused, having hospitals they depend on closed or bought out by a corporation that does not care about the traditions and needs of the communities. Internet is either not available or not adequate. Farms need support as do other small businesses, but their needs are often ignored, even by the Republicans they vote into office. Maybe if Dems could go to those areas and talk about the various bills passed last year that could help them and show them how to apply for the aid, they could cut through the R bubble.
Greg, Ah, no. Oz didn't live anywhere in PA east or west. I think when he glanced across the Delaware, he saw a bunch of rubes "ripe for the pickin'" and just had to hike into the wilderness where people don't know the names of their grocery stores and think crudités is just veggies and dips. Thank goodness the folks of both the east and west coast of PA voted to send Oz back across the river, although it wasn't clogged with ice floes as it was when George Washington's army headed to NJ 246 years ago, and he won't be remembered for it as Washington was.
Ruth, I remember Republicans of old behaving in a respectable and bipartisan manner (mostly feigned for appearance sake) would throw the public a bone every now and then. Then Reagan happened. Slash and burn businesses, as you successfully point out the disastrous outcome of corporations and politicians disregarding and abusing their patrons/constituents. I hope we’ve found a message with which to reach more of PA residents.
I’m excited for Gov-elect Shapiro to take over from Gov Wolfe. I wish to thank Gov Wolfe for working with a hostile state house and senate while continuing to protect Pennsylvanians from outlandish and inappropriate laws, criticism and goldbricking representatives. We’ve clean up the house, senators take note.
A great watch on YouTube is Jordan Klepper’s podcast where he interviews Shapiro. Made me like him even more. Thanks, Ruth.
Karen, I agree that Wolf did an amazing job of holding Republican grandstanding to a minimum and did his best to encourage the legislature to get things done anyway. Republicans are obsessed with women's bodies and until the midnight vote to ban abortions in PA last summer, things were mostly kept from entirely going off the rails. Now that 3 Democratic victors have moved on to other jobs or died, Republicans want to ignore their victories and claim the Assembly leadership when they know perfectly well they are not entitled to it. They want to push elections off until May so they can do their destruction or as much as possible before a majority of Democrats actually get to take their seats. Those Republicans are just not good people. I can't understand why anyone votes for them. They will do nothing to help anyone but themselves. They want to quickly vote on the abortion ban so it can be on the ballot in May during a primary, another cheat, but again, what can one expect from not very good people! I too like Shapiro and expect him to keep pushing for positive change in our state. He has a lot of ideas for improving life here and I hope he will be able to see some of it to success.
Karen, I don't want to offend you but those Hamiltonians don't vote for someone with a vowel at the end of their name. They are cultural Hamiltonians.
2 kinds of Hamiltonians: Blue and light blues. The light blues think they can buy their was into the club. Clubs like he Pennsylvania Conservancy, Pennsylvania Manufacturing Association. Where I lived mostly "high" Presbyterian, High Anglicans. Methodists trend Lincolnian. Their hero was Joe Pew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_N._Pew_Jr.
Many of the Republican families of my childhood now vote Democratic -- some reman registered Republicans. On the other hand many former Democrats switched parties with the implementation of the southern strategy. Forced busing. White flight. Shipping jobs overseas.
Understand and you are so correct in that institutions they do badly wish to be in their good graces are not about to budge, yet.
A vowel at the end of a name is good description of how embedded they are in the past GOP party that used this to justify the desire to be better than...
My father, an engineer for US Steel was furious with Reagan. I’m sure he voted for him and became angry and disillusioned as we watched Pittsburgh fall into financial ruin when really well run companies like Kopper’s, Gulf Oil and Westinghouse were torn apart and liquidated to feed the Wall Street lust for money. By the way lest we forget tens of thousands of people with and without vowels at the end of their names lost their jobs. Pittsburgh at one time was fifth on the list of cities with the number of corporate headquarters. Now the largest employers are hospital chains. The afore mentioned companies were torn apart because they had strong balance sheets and well funded pension funds. Obviously those in power without a vowel at the end of their name do not care about others without a vowel if there is money to be taken.
Before that my dad ran into Edgar Speer, the president of US Steel at the time. They were in process of shutting down the Ellwood works, and Speer grew up, went to school in Ellwood City.
Naively, my dad asked his why they would close that mill since he knew most of the people who would suffer
Response: "I always hated those people.".
I blame Richard Mellon Scaife, Elsie Hillman, etc for the demise of Pittsburgh.
Daniel, I agree that Dems need to reach out more to those folks who are on the edge of the Republican Party, sitting home alone, and stop avoiding red states. I think things are getting a bit better, but even when a candidate does reach out to every county in a state, for example as Beto O'Rourke did in Texas and Mandela Barnes did in Wisconsin, there is no sense that it will get people to see the candidate more positively or the opponent who does not do the heavy work as less. Dems need to rethink how to connect effectively with voters of all kinds all the time and get better people for messaging. That would be a start.
I am thinking again about how we do that for each other.... the “do that” meaning how to pull us together and not apart.
First: watch Bernie Sander’s last video Happy New Years. Here’s What’s on my mind for 2023.
Then digest and think how do we show people things can change. We do that first by dissolving two major “Big Business ” take overs.
Number 1: Healthcare
Nothing about it is about health of a person. Nothing about it is health for a country. It is simply another way that a few greedy companies can massacre an entire purpose.
Number 2: Housing
We’ve closed our eyes to the rampant development of corporate housing take over. They buy up whole neighborhoods and then “rent” back to people who will never be able to own a home again.
There is no neighborhood, no constant where neighbors can know one another and build communities. No conformity as to what works for those neighbors who might want to build their community into a beautiful and safe place.
“Slum Lords” made up of a group of greedy unaccountable “business men/women.
This is just a view of two powerful rights people of all descriptions own. The right to be well and the right to own a home. Everyone can relate to those two rights. Everyone!!!!
Jean, Republicans don't want anything done about health care or housing. They are going to be taken care of for life through the health care We the People give them as "public servants." Therefore, they don't have to care about anyone else. If they had to be on Medicare and Social Security, they would not be so cavalier. There are a couple of Republicans in Congress who are not millionaires. They might care just a teeny bit more for others. Then, the housing "investors" care nothing for the actual buildings, just the money they can make from them. They care even less about neighborhoods. We the People have tools to stop this insanity and destruction, but somehow, we just can't get around to doing anything about it because it has passed under the radar as they say. I don't know how we fix this now that Republicans have the House with all their lying, cheating, insurrectioning, and vengeance-seeking.
Thank you for this. As usual, there's so much noise when the Republicans are in charge now that we rarely face the issues. (Let's not forget the biggie: climate change.) They're fighting like a bunch of spoiled kids while people go without good healthcare, housing and a solid education.
This fragmented divide that separates Mexico from our own country has been a source of political controversy for decades. President after president has had this problem dumped in their laps with no real solution to the problem. One obstacle that hasn't been addressed lies in the territory's history. At one point back in the early 1800s the country of Mexico owned in part or in total the following: California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and portions of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. At one time this area was the homeland of the Mexican people. Mexico ceded these territories to the United States at the end of the Mexican-American war that culminated on February 2nd, 1848. That date is when our border problems began. It's almost as if we don't want to find an answer to the problem. There wouldn't be an issue if the Mexican Government would patrol their side and keep immigrants from attempting to enter the United States. Even today the thought line in the Mexican mindset still sees the state of Texas as being a territory of Mexico. As a result of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded 55% of its territory to the United States. Just look at the names given to the cities in the area, San Francisco, Los Angles, Sacramento, San Diego, Fresno, San Bruno, and many others. The Southwestern United States is really old Mexico, so to speak. No wonder these people want to enter this country, they have a deep-seated desire to go home. The western United States has a deep Mexican heritage that should be embraced not ignored. Since 2015 this country has absorbed a total of 1,481,000 immigrants, that we know of, who have crossed into the United States from the Mexican side of the border, and half that number again, made up of Indian and Chinese immigrants who have entered via alternative ports. Trump had this issue and he did little to nothing in an effort to stop the flow of people crossing our Southern border. Yet even today, on the floor of the House in front of the entire country, accusations were hurled at President Biden accusing him of incompetency with regard to the way he has handled the border problem. At times I wonder why Republicans even bother to flush, they seem to like the stuff so much. The blame game only goes as far as intelligence will allow it to travel. The line drawn in the sand runs right down the center walkway in the House of Representatives and it distinguishes the Democrats from the stone throwers. Glass Houses?
Let's hope that, for the time being at least, Trump is allowed to run as an independent against Desantis.....then the GOP, with all of its accumulated mendacity, racism, misogyny and xenophobia, will finally implode, and we can reach the sunlit uplands of progressive taxation, fair wages, free markets, infrastructure, and healthcare for all.
While I like what you wrote, and wish it were true, the GOP remnants still control congress perhaps because they have incoherent policies. A majority of people, before the last election, wanted a higher minimum wage, wanted a fairer health care system, wanted college debt reduction, wanted improved infrastructure, and more. Even so too many voted for Republicans. Why? They have a better propaganda system. They are better at translating their ephemeral agenda to a society that wants an enemy to hate. The agenda does not matter, just the existence of a target, which they are good at creating along with Fox and other instruments of propaganda. They won't die as long as the propaganda arm makes a profit. From my vantage point the corporate world that manufactures its own "truth" is doing rather well, so I doubt the propaganda party will die a rapid death. Instead it seems that they will take they rest of the ship of state down with them.
It's easier to hate than tryin' to learn to understand something you don't know about - Republicans are profiting from this for decades and turn people to vote against their wants, needs and will and to even support their own suppressors.
Do you happen to recall which political party had their Jim Crow boot on the throats of black people in the South for an entire century? Yep, that was us, the Democratic Party. It was still going on when I was a kid. Thank you LBJ for liberating we Dems from our own evil.
Very true! Prior to the 1970s, the Virginian Republican Party was a small group of moderate to liberal Republicans who were powerless against the "Dixiecrat" Byrd Machine who ran the state. After LBJ and the civil rights legislation, the Dixiecrats moved to the Republican Party and took it over, turning Virginia into a Republican "red" state until just recently.
"I knew that however bad the Republican party was, the Democratic party was much worse. The elements of which the Republican party was composed gave better ground for the ultimate hope of the success of the colored man's cause than those of the Democratic party." (Frederick Douglass)
Phil, yes, it was the Democrats who were into Jim Crow and the rest of the harms done to Black Americans. It is interesting how quickly the Republican party jumped right in to take over where the Democrats left off. It was already starting in the 1940s with their anti-union positions and fearmongering over Communism, and denigrating of civil rights leaders. Eisenhower did a few things to help out during the early Civil Rights movement, but Democrats took up the cause with a few politicians like LBJ taking up the mantle. He helped Dr. King, Rosa Parks, and a whole lot of people to be heard in the white world and gave white people something important they could stand for. Republicans tried to make their racism and misogyny look like just what America needed to be strong militarily and economically. It didn't make sense, but a whole lot of people bought it.
Despite the Republican establishment fomenting hate and doing nothing for ordinary people, more and more Black people and Hispanic people are moving from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. A significant number of Black people, for example, voted for Brian Kemp over Stacey Abrams in Georgia. I think this is in large part due to Republicans' propaganda, as you say, and also to a perception that Democrats aren't doing anything for ordinary people.
The Biden administration's touring the country to promote the policies enacted over the past two years that will improve Americans' lives is a smart move.
This is, by the way, not a uniquely American problem. Many Social Democrats in European countries make (made) the same mistake as they ignore the needs of their voter base - like the Democrats do in the US. The result is the same - people changing alliances and not being afraid to move extremely to the right to join populist movements - be it MAGA in the US, AfD in Germany, Sverige Democrat in Sweden, Fratelli d'Italia with Georgia Meloni in Italy or even (thanks he's out) Bolsenaro in Brazil.
Back to the US - after two years in a majority position, why was the minimum wage not changed to the better, why aren't there any new tax laws, closing loop-holes and going after the first one-percent on top. Why aren't there any tax reliefs for the working class?
It is fine and dandy to promote whatever freedoms need to be promoted, but first it should be made sure, that people actually have enough to eat, can heat/cool their homes and that in sickness can count on a healthcare system that delivers and doesn't shine in the background not accessabile by the working poor.
Contrary to appearances, the Democrats were not in a majority position, especially when written legislature favored poor to middle (income) class people. Manchin and Sinema voted against almost all legislation that raised even by the slightest amount of taxes on the "filthy rich"; or even forced a little decency on corporate America. So in actuality, Biden had a negative majority (48 to 52 conservative and nut cases) Even in the House, where Nancy Pelosi was a far better manager than Chuck Schumer, we could not muster all Democrats to support liberal/progressive bills. There is some truth to the humor "Getting Democrats to agree on anything is like herding cats". We are getting better.
Carolyn, I think another piece to the Black and Latinx movement to the Republican party is the desire to be big fish in a small pond. There are still very few Black and Latinx Republicans, so the ones now moving into the party are hoping they will get to have some power and make some decisions since Republicans claim to want to reach out to their communities. They really only want the votes, not the input of anyone who is not white and male, with a few female contributors. It makes no sense that Black people would have voted for Kemp, a man who cares nothing for them and has done quite a lot to keep many of that community from voting. I know Republican propaganda is powerful, but I don't think that totally explains it. How sad that Black Americans would turn against Black people who could actually help them. The other elephant in the room is that Abrams is a woman. Misogyny is huge in the Black community as friends have informed me. There are many in the Black and Latinx communities who either despise women in power or have bought the BS that women's place is at home with bunches of kids. Really pathetic! I think Democrats could do some important work with this group, at least with the women.
Agreed, Wayne. Here’s a quote from Umberto Eco’s essay “How to Spot a Fascist” on the topic of abuse of language: “Ur-Fascism uses newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell in 1984, as the official language of Ingsoc, the English Socialist movement, but elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi and Fascist scholastic texts were based on poor vocabulary and elementary syntax, the aim being to limit the instruments available to complex and critical reasoning. But we must be prepared to identify other types of newspeak, even when they take the innocent form of a popular talk show.”
Not that you sought my affirmation, I completely agree with your assessment. Indeed, I've insisted for the last six or seven years, they won't voluntarily relinquish government control no matter how much they vilify government. But I'm now tending to believe the republican party actually expired with the installation of Reagan (the actor who POSED as a repub president), and devolved into 'the Capitalist party' - - which is privately funded via 'campaign finance' and lobby corruption, gerrymandered to the max as their ONLY means of ever justifying their purchase of offices and legislation favoring the top 1%, and appears to be wholly owned by billionaires, illusionary-opposition party included.
Unless we commit to STOP sitting around talking and rehashing the horrors, and actually DOING something (i.e. national organizing and mobilizing at levels not seen since Vietnam, civil rights, and gender equality protest-movements), I fear democracy is already dead, & the fascist undertakers are waiting until the stench is so unbearable they are being begged to remove the carcass. Best of luck to us all in the troubling times ahead.
I agree with you, but personally I think it started stinking two Republican Presidents earlier, when Ricky-Dick tried to see how far, he could push the limit and had to resign with a slap on his wrist. After seeing that democracy can be played with with almost no consequences, the playbooks started to change.
My bewilderment is with the people who still support such shenanigans.
I wish I didn't agree with you Susan, but I do agree. I wish I was young enough to march again and attend endless rallies, but I'm not. I hope there are enough younger stronger people, who care enough about America to get out there now and for the next 5 or so years to protest, and demand change. We did end the war in Vietnam (eventually) and we did get good Civil Rights legislation passed, even though the Supreme Court since 2010 has done as much as they could to reverse all our wins. I was only in my 30's and early 40's back then and just as much of a Liberal/Progressive bitch as I am now - but then I had the energy of youth, damn. (:-)
Solidarity Faye. I'm a few years from retirement myself, but still got some fight left in this ol' dog. And maybe we can keep you busy on phone duty in the near future. United we stand, divided we fall......
Susan I do admire your fighting spirit, but I'm not nearing retirement, I passed it. I retired two years ago and now at 90 my body is telling me it no longer intends to support me. (:-)
The real enemy that each side of the GOP fights against is change. Not just bandaid change but significant and from the ground up change in the way our society is governed both economically and morally. I use the word morally here because much of the change that I speak of involves letting go of the old worn out judgements and stereotypes about those you have not been brought up with and these who you may have been taught to disdain and suspect they want something from you that they somehow don’t deserve.
We have a polarity here not only in this country but everywhere of those who believe it’s ok to hoard wealth and those in abject poverty. This is a huge gap. And believe it or not each side is supported by our society as a whole in some way. Both sides are not only a physical reality but a mind set. Why hasn’t society as a whole seen this over the centuries upon centuries for what it is? Morally reprehensible.
We don’t need a tidal wave to correct this mindset. We need a consensus. Neither of these dichotomies of thought can be sustained much longer. Our inability to change--to bring about this basic change in thinking over our long history is downright pathetic. We all have allowed this to be the norm, year after year; century after century. All of our revolutions and our constant battles have only served to sustain the status quo of this ridiculous polarity.
The question is when does it become merely a memory?
Great points! Yes, I also think the pace of change is a very important factor, not just in America, but globally. It's the pace of change which draws some to the MAGA slogan, because change is going too fast for a lot of people to keep up.
So the post from Wayne suggests the problem is structural - but that leads to a different conclusion than making the propaganda unprofitable, i.e. educating the public so that the propaganda - no matter how profitable - doesn't have an effect.
(Simple example: if one knows that the legacy of chattel slavery is the "power center", i.e. the thing being guarded, then it can be exposed e.g. by policies which promote social justice and defend democracy; given the fact of gerrymandering there is little else that can be done!)
NPR, that band of woke liberals, just reported that Qevin failed to get his 218 votes on the first ballot. This is the world’s smallest violin 🎻 playing for him.
Greg, I have no sympathy either. McCarthy wants the position so badly, it's going to be interesting to see how much he is willing to sell his soul for so he can get it. My guess is that he will give it away to the lowest bidder.
Wayne, yep, Republicans would rather bring down the whole ship of state than in any way admit they might be on a wrong track or off the track completely. The thing is that we don't have to let them.
Stan, they do say history repeats itself. I do wish some of the good stuff would repeat like the times when people work together for an important goal. What we get instead is all the crap one person or group does to another, over and over.
Excellent analysis of the Republican Party, as, at this juncture, it is nothing more than a cult of anger, resentment and backwardness, ironically fueled by wealthy autocrats, who care nothing for average Americans (including Republican voters), and incapable of sound governance for this country.
I am also encouraged that Biden has chosen a more inclusive socioeconomic path than both Clinton and Obama, though I'm still upset that he caved to the railroad robber barons.
One last bone to pick: the New York State "democratic" party cost us control of the House; they really need to clean up their, and fast.
Where did Mr. Reich obtain the elephant image? Is this an official Republican Party image? The reason I ask is that it depicts "3 hooded KKK persons" between the legs of the elephant!!!
Are you aware that the Republican Party includes many millions of people all across the country, and that you and I don't know even the tiniest fraction of all these people?
Trump received more than 73 million votes when he ran unsuccessfully for a second term; ten million more votes than in 2016 when he won the presidency.
This amount of support despite Trump's malignant racism and incompetence, amongst other morbid problems.
And while I may not personally know these 73 million Republican voters, I definitely know something is extremely troubling when this many people vote for a proto-fascist, who cares nothing for any of them, except what he can con out of them.
@Phil. What you are doing is called historicism. That party, of the same name, was by no means the same in policy terms as the Democratic Party of today. All of those who are alive today are Republicans.
My family were Republicans until the 50's. I was in the Army of the Occupation of the South, before and after I went to Vietnam in the mid sixties. There was still segregation ongoing and open hostility to federal intervention. In Vietnam we were told there was a race war at home. Confederates were stealing selector switches to turn their weapons into machine guns to use on people like me when we got home. Cities burned after my discharge in 1968.
Nixon devised a southern strategy to split the Democratic coalition. It worked. You are Exhibit A.
I worked with this stuff for almost 50 years. Busing. White flight. Riots.
And we Dems are working against our own self interest by relentlessly insulting those whose partnership we will need if we ever want to see our priorities dominate the culture. There's plenty of stupidity to go around.
Big difference between the interests of the political class and the voters. Most voters are cowed by propaganda. Most Republican voters get disinformation 24/7.
The Republican' Party is a wolf in sheep's clothing. The wolf is big money, big oil, big pharma, etc.
@Phil. The insulting should stop. But as a Democrat, how do you attract a voter who is committed to a wedge issue? Let's take one, xenophobia. Do we make Democratic policy MORE anti-immigration in order to bring over this voter? Then if you do that for each of those wedge issues, the Democrats start to look just like the Republicans from a policy platform perspective. Avoiding that outcome does not make the Democrats stupid. I'm just saying - its a two party system...
You raise good questions for which I obviously do not have all the answers.
I would first attempt to address your good questions by agreeing that there is a segment of the MAGA movement that will never be persuaded to our point of view no matter what we do. I don't think we should worry about this, as we don't need total victory, just a sustainable majority. We do need to peel off some Republicans. But we don't need them all.
We can ignore the MAGAs who are hopeless, and show some respect to those who aren't. For example, we can stop assuming that every Republican who is concerned about immigration is xenophobic. Some are, some aren't. Some just have very reasonable concerns about an out of control border situation. Some just realize honestly that America can not embrace every distressed person in the world, because that numbers in the billions. We can stop lumping all these different people in to one pot and then demonizing the pot.
We're never going to get everything we want, so we can stop pretending that is possible, which will lower our frustration levels when we inevitably have to compromise.
I'm not blind to the fact that whipping up the faithful in to a frenzy is one method of getting folks out to the polls. The danger I see is that if we get too carried away with the ego feeding demonizing we start looking more and more like MAGA people ourselves.
Michele Obama said that when they take the low road, we take the high road. That seems like good advice. And this is not a moral point, for I am not a priest. It's a tactical point. We need to hold on tight to our attempt to be, and be seen as, the somewhat reasonable people. Not the perfect people. Just the party that's less insane than the other one. :-). If we can maintain that position, then enough of the reasonable Republicans will gradually move our way.
Dems should address the immigration issue by re-casting it as “let’s stabilize the labor market.” I use this phrase when talking with my Republican neighbors about the southern border. If employers must deal only with American-citizen workers, then wages will rise. In contrast, when there’s an plenteous supply of undocumented workers at hand, wages will stagnate at unlivable levels that will approach slavery.
How about this? Perhaps we could work admitting that we're wrong sometimes in to our pitch? Imho, we're wrong on abortion to a degree, we might start there. We might for example, simply admit out loud that a great deal of abortion is really nothing more than a baby killing service we provide as a convenience to those too lazy to use contraception. We don't have to be anti-abortion, we just need to speak the truth out loud. We just need to say, you know, we've given this more thought, and it's more complicated than we previously realized.
And the biggest problem is that the Republican dogma includes fear of 'those others' taking away rights & prosperity which completely takes away from any recognition that the Republicans are actually NOT on the side of ANY normal working person. they are fooled every time by their own hatreds & fears to vote for their own oppressors ! Advances made by Democrats to better equality (KBJ!) just confirm in working Repubs brains that their fears are well founded ! That world is scary to them !
Let's try this. Forget about the national news and the Washington circus. Let's take a long break from that. Instead...
Dear reader, do you actually know any Republicans in real life?
In our life here, I'm thinking of a couple we know. They vote Republican. They're rural. They hunt. Sounds like the enemy, right? Sorry, no.
These are very decent people. As example, they take in any stray animal anybody brings them and take care of it for years. Their ten acres is literally covered with every kind of animal enclosure you can imagine, and it takes them hours a day to feed and care for all these neglected creatures. Nobody pays them, nobody thanks them. Hardly anybody even knows they're doing this. And they've been doing this for YEARS.
Every time we visit this couple or they visit us, they ALWAYS have a gift for us. It never fails, they never forget, and they never expect anything in return.
The husband used to be a detective who worked for the police department. When we had a serial killer on the loose here years back, he was one of the guys who would risk his life entering structures to see if the killer was hiding there. In doing this, he came upon one of his fellow employees who had been beheaded in her apartment. Yea, he looked at that so you and I don't have to. Here's a brave soul who was risking his life to watch our back, but because he's rural and votes Republican, we Dems are going to look down our noses and call him snotty names.
Forget about the crackpots in Washington. Find a Republican in your real life, and start making friends. You don't have to agree with them about everything. Just find the things you do agree on, and pore fuel on that.
There are tons and tons of very decent Republicans all across the country. Ok, maybe not in Washington, but it's a big country, ya know?
Find these people. Reach out. Make friends. Be the change you wish to see.
What you have to ask them is WHY they are Republicans - what is it that is so specific to their mindset that they refuse to even consider voting Democrat ? Nobody could fault those beautiful people you are describing, but what they think Republican means is not what I think it means, so there must be ways to talk to these folks to get at the underlying beliefs that keep them Republican & could POSSIBLY make them vote Democrat. I am still trying to understand - I have one son who is a non-trump Republican ! Thanks for your comment - beautifully put !
Thanks for your reply. We wisely don't talk politics with these Republican friends of ours, so I can't tell you exactly why they vote Republican. I can't speak for them in that regard, I can only share some of my own experience with some alienation from the Left. Here's an example or two. Maybe some Republicans are experiencing this?
ABORTION: I listen to a lot of National Public Radio, which as you probably know is quite left leaning. During all the MANY discussions of abortion, I never heard a single host or interview subject make ANY reference to the fact that what abortion really is in many or most cases is a baby killing convenience service we provide to those who are too lazy to use contraception. Yea, I'm pro-choice. But this kind of one sided analysis does nothing for me. It doesn't make me want to be Republican. But sometimes it makes me wish I wasn't a Democrat. The endless victim tripping finger pointing turns me off.
IMMIGRATION: In all the endless talk about immigration when do we ever get around to asking how many people do we want to have in America? The population of the United States has doubled in my lifetime. Over the same period the population of the state where I live is 7 times larger than it was when I was born. 7 times larger.
How are we supposed to craft intelligent immigration policies when we don't know what our goal is, and don't even want to talk about it?? Given that neither party ever discusses this, on this issue at least, I do sometimes wonder why being a Democrat is superior to the alternative.
If you could see my photo you might think I've just come from an LSD orgy at Woodstock. :-). If I'm alienated by aspects of Leftist culture, it's not hard to imagine why some people might vote Republican.
On ABORTION - I agree that this is a very touchy subject if you talk about what is actually happening - but whereas I do not like 'baby killing' of course, I do not wish any woman to be stuck with an unwanted extra burden simply because somebody else decides that her cluster of cells cannot be purged. IOW if it's not yet a 'baby' it is not a problem to me. The conversation used to be about that particular point in time, and most people agreed with the principle, now the religious types have taken it to the level of God being in charge of said cluster of cells, therefore nobody has a right to interfere.
On the subject of IMMIGRATION I totally agree with your point on the numbers of hysterical people refusing to say where the end point lies. I am always pointing out that the SOL 'Give me your tired, poor...' etc is no longer valid policy so that needs to be removed from the discussion completely. They are NOT all welcomed now & have to somehow prove (often with enough lying) that they actually somehow were persecuted in their home countries - most of them were not. I'm a (legal) immigrant myself, but had no real need to come here from UK, we had a great life in UK, but we came for potential opportunities for our 4 kids, altho now that we have been here 35 years & seen the downward spiral recently that may be mute ! One grandson has gone back to the UK & is staying he says ! Honesty is the best policy - the anti-immigration stance is mainly a pro-white stance, as we hear very little anti-European immigration discussion - so the whole thing is rigged against those from non-white or non-Christian countries. A lot of contrarian policies happening. America needs to be honest & stop trying to hide its' bigotry in altruistic memes ! You don't want more non-white immigration, but your industries want more cheap labour - how to truthfully reconcile that conundrum ?
I'm pro-choice because I don't want children brought into a society that doesn't care for them AFTER they are born. Consider who, in the panoply of humanity, is more likely to become a disturbed person and a criminal? Those who weren't raised in loving, prosperous families, that's who.
A Republican might say, and I might agree to a significant degree....
If a couple is going to have a baby, it's their job to care for that child, it's their job to create that loving prosperous family.
Some Republicans become alienated from the Democratic Party when we talk about it being somebody else's job. I'm not saying this is simple and they are right and we are wrong, only that the Republicans sometimes have reasonable points which can be labeled as such.
I'm pro-choice because it makes no sense to me to try to force people to have children they don't want. That said, I would prefer we Democrats speak more honestly about abortion.
Who's going to clean your hotel (and hospital!) room? Pick your crops? Pick your crabs or shuck your oysters? Pick up your trash? Clear land mines in front of US troops in Afghanistan?
There’s no consensus on the optimal population of the USA because the USA isn’t an economic entity; it’s only a political entity whose real religion is 19th century capitalism based on the notion of infinite growth.
Ok, no consensus is normal. But we could at least talk about it. I don't know myself what I think the right number is. I'm only clear that immigration debates make no sense without some attempt to find such a number. What's interesting and revealing is that we'll invest 10 trillion hours in to debating immigration, and never get around to asking what our bottom line goal is.
I did hear one story on NPR from a fellow who suggested we should aim for a billion Americans by the end of this century. At least that guy had a number, whatever one might think of it.
I used to BE a Republican. As a high school senior, I volunteered in my first campaign for 3 Independent Republicans running for school board in the primary against 3 racist machine Republicans (Delaware Co., PA, was controlled by a vicious all-white Republican machine during my youth.).
My Dad was a John Anderson Republican, and my Mom shocked me one evening when she revealed she was pro-choice.
I forgot to mention that we WON that election! And our 3 plus the 1 Dem already on the board gave the “good guys” (pardon the expression, the Dem was a woman; Pretty rare for 1969) control.
Decent people don't support a party that demonizes, deligitamizes and criminalizes non-whites, non-males, non-xtians and the non-rich at every possible opportunity and in every possible way. That is not decent. They may act and speak decently *to your face* and in public view, but they are not decent. We have to stop making excuses or desperately believing that they are redeemable in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
People who *are* Republican - or *voted* Republican? (You're sure Professor Reich isn't hinting at that very point, i.e. in light of the party's choice of standard-bearer & lack of salient policy priorities...?)
Do you want to actually have our priorities prevail? Or do you just enjoying demonizing "the enemy"?
If the former, then the job is to win over some of those who don't currently vote with us. Getting off our jollies by relentlessly poking our finger in their eye doesn't seem like a very smart strategy for accomplishing that. Speaking of the Krishnas....
The cult phenomena is what's happening to BOTH political parties these days. Almost everybody, on ALL sides, just sits around endlessly chanting the same old mindless ego pleasing junk all day long. The Krishnas would probably be a step up.
Time has come for our country to realize some of our VALUES had serious cracks from the beginning of our country. The true concept of Democracy does not exist here, but we think we can tell the rest of the world how to act “ democratically “ , we have double standards when it involves $$$; we are a racist society and don’t even know it, we are a Military Empire that needs to sell ARMS around the world. Organizations such as the NRA have turned a RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS into a mystical “Fanatical” concept that it is destroying our image as a CIVIL society and opens the doors for fanatic misguided behaviors that have become part of our image around the world. The Electoral College is perhaps the biggest THREAT to our democratic system. The election of members of the Supreme Court is nothing more than a “ Political” driven concept that got away from the reason for its existence. Our Economic Capitalistic System stopped helping middle class and it is now basically controlling our economy, only to serve the most powerful richest persons. When the Supreme Court allowed Corporations to invest moneys in the elections of elected officials, they basically “SOLD “ our last hope for true Democracy and The GOP party was behind that. Robert Reich analysis of the GOP party is correct but it goes deeper than that...perhaps we ought to thank the Pandemic and Trump for making us aware of what’s wrong with ourselves and maybe start acknowledging the dramatic weakness of our political and economical systems and start thinking how change our values and laws to really be the leaders in this Global Society.
Read "The Many-Headed Hydra" by Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh. It does a good job of explaining most of how we got here (starting before the English Revolution) and why the American Revolution failed.
The biggest challenge that I see is the fact that so many MAGAts are still holding office and even sit on the 'Supreme' court. The 'enemy within' is allowed to stay and fester, and will poison even the best efforts at bipartisan governing and any attempt to form 'a more perfect union'. It is anyone's guess how many seditionists are in the military and our police forces. Our best hope is that Justice will do its work. this would stem the tide of ruin.
The party may be over, but the stores that started selling “Trump 2024” flags in 2020 -- along with hunting licenses, guns & ammo, liquor, gas, and ice cream all in one convenient location will still be doing a thriving business.
Thank you so much Dr. Reich, for so eloquently articulating the disintegration of the Republican Party. I hope its death throws will not last too long and cause more violence. At the same time I applaud the end of Retrumplicanism, I would hate to see it replaced by a one party system - even if that surviving party is the Democratic Party. We need different approaches and theories for a healthy, prosperous, and yes, even happy society. My dream would be to have 3 or 4 parties with distinctive platforms to create the good checks and balances advocated in the late 18th early 19th centuries. We need the idealism of Liberal Progressives, the even-handedness of moderates, and the Fiscal Conservatives to instill realistic, achievable legislation with sources of finance. Together we need to return to a united country of laws and reasonable regulations. A well regulated capitalism, social safety nets for all, a concern for the health and well being of every resident in the country, an education system that teaches social responsibility, analytical thinking, fact based history, art, music, science, math, and language skills. We desperately need to change the course of the warming, polluted air, water, land. We need to leave a healthy, livable planet for all life (well maybe not for viruses, but we may not have a choice there) We also need to live in harmony, not just with ourselves, but with all democratic countries and communities in the world. We need to empower the United Nations to maintain peace, to step in with all democracies to stop the spread of authoritarianism and subjugation of any other nation.
Fay, amending my previous comment…I know your dream is to have…but realistically, there aren’t any “moderates” nor are there “fiscal conservatives” in the RepubliCon party. Their support of fascism and sedition makes them ineligible for checks and balances. This is not the party of 40 years ago and I think those comments are are dream of the past. The republican party today has separated from reality. How do you think we got to where we are today? The Democrats constantly bent over backwards to appease the so-called moderates. The politicians cater to the money needed to stay in office.
Fay I agree with what you have written with the exception of 3 party option. This has NEVER worked here. I think we need 5. The giant powerhouses must be shut down and they can shut down the third. (And they have)
And I fully agree that the ONLY way we should keep capitalism is with tight regulation. Without that, it really is a system of greed. And we must stop being the only so-called advanced nation without social safety nets of health-care and well funded higher education. Our planet is in need of serious new regulations.
By the way, the republicans always want a big war machine but don’t fund higher education. Do they think low IQ people make our systems?
We just (disgracefully) put through a budget of $858 BILLION!!! Yet the Rs claim that there is no money to help our citizens when it comes to health care etc.
@Fay. Nothing scares me more than a United Nations organization with the military power to enforce its decisions. What kind of immoral dictator would rise to the top of THAT organization!
Fay, "FOUR STARS" for the most provocative rational post I've seen in a very long time. Thanks for your wisdom. I am a notorious Arizonzan Purple Voter.
In 1972, the left was finally able to nominate a Democratic candidate, amidst an unpopular Vietnam War, burning cities, and a generational divide never seen in America. The centrists of the party bolted, and withheld their support from the hapless Senator McGovern, portrayed as a flaming pacifist radical, despite his history as a genuine war hero. Four years earlier, the party had split over Vietnam, and leftists had deserted Humphrey. The Republicans of today are nowhere as divided as the Dems of 1968-72. They will regroup in some form, either as the proto-fascists or the conservatives.
Wallace had a resentful, anti-establishment, populist message that neatly masked his underlying racism and xenophobia. He made the point that if you looked at Democrats and Republicans you couldn't see a dime's worth of difference between them. Fooled a lot of people, and I hate to say a young person with my name was among those fooled.... Still sad about that.
Not that it mattered, because McGovern lost 49 states, but voting for Gus Hall was almost the same as voting for Nixon, in my opinion. I not only voted for McGovern, I knocked on doors for him.
McGovern was a sacrificial 🐑 lamb thrown to the wolves by the corrupt establishment Dems because they knew they couldn’t beat Nixon in the rabidly pro-war climate. Nixon took PA by a landslide.
And in 1980 I voted for Commoner. In 2000 I voted for Nader. So sue me.
You’re entitled to your opinion. And given the history of Nixon and Bush and Reagan, you’re surely aware of mine. You probably voted for people other than Democrats in 2016 and 2020, I’m guessing. I have no interest in suing you, but I have no interest in hearing your complaints about the country either. Congratulations on your principled stands. They’ve obviously made quite a difference in the lives of people all over the world, from Cambodia to Iraq to Nicaragua.
Very odd to find you in this forum, given your insistence on useless token self-inflation, by your own admission. Not making any difference is pretty far from what Reich is all about.
There's one critical difference, i.e. '68-'72 Democrats couldn't unite despite the dominance (and dominant criminality) of Nixon; this time around the need to coalesce is on *their* side of the fence (though the criminal is, perhaps unsurprisingly, still one of theirs).
Trump: con artist, exploiter. But let's not forget the sad reality that a segment of our own citizens are members of a white working-class which harbors bitterness, xenophobia, racism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-science paranoia. I'm afraid they are out there, a minority to be sure, but in numbers that drive the primary process. No Republican candidate can get selected for the general election without getting support from this group. Even Trump couldn't exploit this unless it was already there. Trump did exploit people with those sentiments - but so will the next guy that the Republicans put up. It's all they've got now. Many citizens of both parties feel that all politicians are crooks. We believe the system is rigged. We worry that too much of our taxes go to feather the nests of elected officials and their donors. To combat this perhaps all too true perspective, Democrats need to be hyper vigilant and discipline their elected members to be true servants of their constituents, to avoid being bribed by moneyed interests, and to hew the line on rule of law, honesty and fairness in government. Katie Porter is one of 73 Democrats who are already there; If we are ever to restore faith in good government we need all elected officials to clean up their acts!
The Republican party is definitely at war with America and the American people in all their diversity.
It certainly is no longer a party advocating for "small government", as it intrudes not only on the management of our physical bodies, but our minds, as in the learning of history and science, and our very spirits in our religious or non- religious beliefs. They would control us completely.
Control (power) is precisely their point and their essence. And they are cheap in the worst sense of that word. No money for safety net, but a trillion a year for the mili-industrial complex. So-called "neoliberal" capitalism stinks and, moreover, it controls our government. See Senator Whitehouse's book, CAPTURED.
While the Republican Party eats their young in a futile effort to prove that each groups favored candidate is The true Republican, the rest of the country watches and waits. Congress is a co-equal branch of government and now it is a like a bird attempting to fly with one wing, while pecking away at the damaged wing. This isn't good for the country or for either party. It seems pointless for the never Trumpers to aspire to reform their party. It is time for all Americans to support a 3 party which can embody some of the positions the GOP espoused without the rancor and the anger.
Angela - I think ranked choice voting would accomplish what you envision without creating an opportunity for the least desirable candidate to prevail due to the vote split. Ranked choice voting moves the most pragmatic candidates to the front - and these people will work hard together to find solutions to our country's problems.
Thank you. Putting your finger on the pulse of culture being at the heart of this madness opens the discussion for all of us about what we really care about, what we truly believe and also what we fear and to ask, 'is any of this rational?' And if not rational, does it matter to us? I sense within this discussion of culture there is a deep, perhaps even rational fear of the mob, the cruel madness of thugs rushing to stage centre with the noose and the guillotine, leaving us to accept authoritarianism over chaos, although the actuality of the chaos may not be realistic (although last Dec 7th makes many of us wonder). I know I just described an apparent circle; what I don't know is how deep is the resentment, hatred, madness caused by neoliberal policies, to unleash chaos. Is the circle unbroken? Thank you again for sharing your knowledge and steadying opinions.
"Enter Donald Trump, the con-artist with a monstrous talent for exploiting resentment in service of his ego."
That paragraph is dead on and says it all.
It is important to recall HOW the current base of the party came into being. The suffering wage-earner got shafted by an emphasis on corporations and their ability to provide millions for campaign spending. The Murdoch family is a good example. It understood that mass media could deeply influence people. If you twisted the truth away from truth and toward a conservatism that benefited itself.
For instance, ordinary people bought into racism by fear their jobs would be threatened by non-white folks climbing out of poverty and immigrants taking the poorest jobs.
Meanwhile, corporations were looking at every possible way to shovel the fruits of capitalism into the hands of likeminded people who were concerned only for their bank accounts AND the ability to buy the government that benefited them, e. g., the banking disaster under Bush2.
It is Robert Reich who showed how this worked. Money is powerful, to lie to people and to bend nearly everything to the desires of a few excessively rich. Let’s remember that Trump was a useful tool until he was a disaster. The GOP was perfected happy with his destructiveness until it blew up in their faces.
Nope. Sorry, but you've swallowed a false story line. Look back in 1969, when Pete Hammill wrote about the resentments of the New York City white working class toward aristocratic Republican Mayor Lindsay and the recipients of government handouts, black people. https://nymag.com/news/features/46801/ And here is the pull quote just so you'll know:
“Look around,” another guy told me, in a place called Mister Kelly’s on Eighth Avenue and 13th Street in Brooklyn. “Look in the papers. Look on TV. What the hell does Lindsay care about me? He don’t care whether my kid has shoes, whether my boy gets a new suit at Easter, whether I got any money in the bank. None of them politicians gives a good goddam. All they worry about is the niggers. And everything is for the niggers. The niggers get the schools. The niggers go to summer camp. The niggers get the new playgrounds. The niggers get nursery schools. And they get it all without workin’. I’m an ironworker, a connector; when I go to work in the mornin’, I don’t even know if I’m gonna make it back. My wife is scared to death, every mornin’, all day. Up on the iron, if the wind blows hard or the steel gets icy or I make a wrong step, bango, forget it, I’m dead. Who feeds my wife and kid if I’m dead? Lindsay? The poverty program? You know the answer: nobody."
Is it that most humans have no moral rudder? Are most of us just hard wired to put blinders on and narrow our perspectives to our own interests regardless of the big picture? No one has depicted this more eloquently than Shakespeare, as the crowd swings from devoted loyalty to Brutus one minute, to enraged revenge against him a moment later hearing Mark Antony's few well-crafted words.
Actually, you'll find that many species, up to and including humans, have an innate sense of fair play, of norms and when the norms are violated. Shakespeare is dramatic, but you might also want to read Stanford brain neuroanatomist Robert Sapolsky's books on primate behavior. Critics of Euroamerican behavior include native American writers, who observe that we as a culture have a sociopathological, psychopathological disease called Wetiko disease. In its Native American meaning, wetiko is an evil cannibalistic spirit that can take over people’s minds, leading to selfshness, insatiable greed, and consumption as an end in itself, destructively turning our intrinsic creative genius against our own humanity.
I am a white middle class person who has been listening to Black people, leaders, writers, organizations in a heightened, more intentional way since the George Floyd murder lead to the massive public response. I have not seen any white privileged (middle class) Americans change their lives in any significant way. They saw what happened and what keeps happening. There has been more coverage of Black mothers who live minute to minute never knowing whether their family members who go out will be brutalized and never come home. I refer you to Eddie Glaude's book, Begin Again. He documents how every time there has been an opportunity for white America to progress, white America chose regression and racism.
where are all the videos of police mistreating, illegally detaining, or killing white people?
It's sickening, right? I grew up in Lackawana, New York where *I* was the minority and I still carry that with me even though The Town of Tonawanda is mainly white.
Yes: guns and football.
Yes Stan! 👍🏼
Yes.
I would love to hear your thoughts on how Wetiko came to infect US, and not so much African or Asian cultures (or, it seems to me, older European ones).
Check out the "Lucifer Effect" by Phillip Zimbardo. It starts with the Stanford Experiment where subjects were randomly assigned to be police guards or prisoners... Even the most progressive kind students became a members of a vicious brutal gang after being in a group where the norm was cruelty. He goes on from there to describe many other situations like that in history. It is a life-changing read.
I think our "leadership" and media messages today empowers the absolute worst part of human nature.
It has infected all those cultures as well, especially European. Ever hear of the colonial period? The simple fact is that American culture is so crass and unsophisticated that we have no skill in masking it behind a facade of gentility and refinement
I think the Wetiko perspective does not stand up to scrutiny. It presumes that Native American cultures prior to European contact did not make war over resources, did not make war for glory, did not capture and torture prisoners. This, of course, is nonsense.
Destructive attitudes and behavior are not directly attributable to a for-profit economic system; people have been torturing one another since time immemorial — way before the birth of international banking.
Donna, I think some folks are so easily swayed as Shakespear describes, but mostly when a person's or group's views have not yet been solidified. A lot of white people already have a resentment of people of color and white men, a resentment of anyone who is getting something they want. That is part of what privilege does to people, particularly when those people don't acknowledge they have any privilege because they work hard and believe they work harder, struggle more, and contribute more of their money to society than any of THOSE people. They don't need to be nudged too much to resent/hate the new Black boss or those immigrants daring to cross into THEIR nation (white nation). They don't have to be coaxed too much to gloat when women are put in their place with abortion restrictions. Conspiracy theories feed their need to be part of something important and special. The propagandists don't want those folks thinking or holes might form that would be difficult to close. Keep giving folks, people and situations to resent and those pathetic white folks and the white wannabees will be cowed indefinitely. Now, if something happens to them personally, like having an LGBTQ child, a slight change might happen and they may be encouraged to think. I believe that the major reason white guys like DeSantis don't want anything about race taught to their privileged fragile white kiddies is that they don't want the brainwashing they have been doing with their kids since birth about their superiority and everyone else's inferiority challenged by the truth. That is why so many Republican politicians send their kids to mostly white schools and exclusive universities where their precious kiddies will be able to demonstrate their superiority over the few people of color accepted to those institutions. Sadly, most of those white kids never realize they are being shaped to be a racist powerhouse in their family's tradition.
We must now recognize the rugged individualist, where his activities destroy resources, as the Enemy of the People he has become. We can no longer believe valid our assumption that we live in independence. The idea of Gross Domestic Product as the holy measurement of wellbeing is nonsense. Every thing these GOPsters have said on the floor today has been a flagrant lie. They all need to be questioned by someone who can hold them to account. They believe in an infinite planet. Let's send them to one and leave this one to us - we can't resolve the ecology of earth and atmosphere without solving inequality and that means ending the idea of capital as unconnected to environmental or social constraints.
“ Sadly, most of those white kids never realize they are being shaped to be a racist powerhouse in their family's tradition.”
Enter George W. Bush, a war monger with no reasoning…
Malek, you chose the perfect example of that. Bush Jr. never even thought of the people of Iraq when he and Cheyney made up the WMD crap. That's how racism and xenophobia work and Bush Jr. was steeped in both through his family.
Ruth, your post here is supremely well said.
DMC, thank you so much. I only wish we could help people of privilege understand first that they have it, then, that they don't need to use it. The challenge is that with privilege comes power in forms the privileged often don't notice. I know, I'm dreaming.
Immorality is quietly seductive.
Only to the immature mind.
Mass mentality is very different than individual mentality. I truly believe most people are caring... But the entertainment value of whipping up a mob sells more products.
As for example, lynchings. Civilized people avoid mass mentality.
It's 'rump and his minions who apparently have no moral rudder.I'd like to think we have a nation full of caring,God fearing folks who do what they can,when they can for their fellow man.
Ruin hath taught us, RedElisa, that the population of humanists in the USA lacks the megaphones.
They somehow forget that even though these black people were citizens, they were shunned from housing, red-lined, asked to use separate facilities as if they were toxic, beaten, killed based on suspicion not facts. Black singers couldn’t stay at the hotels where they entertained. An endless list of abuses, denial of rights as citizens etc. Land of the free and home of the brave. 🤦🏻
Seeking Reason, you are so right. The problem for most of those white folks who whine about what Black people have but shouldn't is that they don't know what Black people have been through and continue to experience. The media show Black people as criminals of all kinds. That is supposed to be the norm. Despite winning election twice, President Obama is not recognized as president by a bunch of the Trump cult. For those folks, Black people can't hold positions of power and if they have them, they stole them. I am sure Mommy and Daddy passed that on to their kids while forgetting to teach that lying is wrong, paying taxes supports our nation and all the things we need, and people of color women and LGBTQ persons are as good as you are. The reason those latter messages didn't get through is that the parents didn't believe them or even know that they should. Republicans in Georgia thought voting for Herschel Walker proved they weren't racist. Until reading a couple of books about it this summer, I never heard of "The Green Book," the travel guide for Black travelers so they would know where they could get a room, gas, and food in as much safety as Black Americans could hope for in the mid-20th Century. The Republican Party does not want its members to know what life has been like for Black Americans or any other group of non-white citizens. It might breed empathy or thinking, and they just can't have that!
I have come to disagree with what you said that "most of those white folks". . ."don't know what Black people have been through and continue to experience." White people let us know that they know myriad ways. They do not shop or eat out in Black neighborhoods. When their friends come to town, they don't show them around the Black neighborhoods. They choose houses in what they call "good neighborhoods" and send their children to "good schools." And on and on and on. They know.
Donna, I think white people are scared of Black people and often don't want to go to their neighborhoods because, they/we are told it is dangerous and there is the hint that if you do, you will be the victim of crime. Fearing someone is not the same as knowing them and what they and their families have been through. I didn't know until I started teaching in a school district of mostly students of color. Living in the community and walking the same streets, and listening to the parents and children describing their lives has been powerful. I learned the city is the friendliest place I have ever lived and worked in, yet the people don't really know that because they are so busy surviving. Most white people I have known don't put sufficient time into knowing more than the surface and what they are told by the media what that surface is and how they should respond to it.
So, do you think that if white people only knew, then they would change their behavior?
They know. They don't change their behavior. Read Eddie Glaude's 2022 book, Begin Again. Every time white America had a chance to do the right thing, we chose racism.
The facts had nothing to do with it, though. Lindsay had very little to do with where Federal funds were distributed - he was a Republican mayor during a Democratic Congress, and since 1968, the entire nation was in an uproar over the war in Viet Nam, the murders of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F. Kennedy, the Chicago Democratic Party police riot, etc.
Martha, thanks for the reminder. It seems the message Republicans are doling out today is only slightly different from that of 50 years ago. I guess when you have a message that works, it never gets old. Getting working-class white people to hate people they don't even know, but can imagine (as shaped by the Republican/conservative propaganda) is powerful. You'd think those guys and it was nearly always men, would want to find out if any of what they were told were true, but it was easier to wallow in their resentment. The resentment is centuries old and rich white people have learned to use and manipulate it. It works and will keep the Republican party alive and destroying indefinitely.
Actually this is an excellent example. He works for a private corporation that doesn’t care about its employees (“dime a dozen”) despite things not being built without them. It was Dems that have pushed for benefits when companies won’t cover their people. That’s why we have labor laws and Obamacare. This what I mean by misdirection. The company pays out millions to shareholders but doesn’t cover their own people. Then the working dude feels shafted by the government instead of forming a unuion to fight back
That is the same story, different example. Corporate greed being supported by trickle down economics and political protection is the beginning of the Now.
Unfortunately, the current working poor hold no such fear or anger of their 1% masters. Look at FAUX news: any mention of the 99% being "shafted" by the 1%? NOPE! It's the "immigrants," or "the woke leftists," or "the trans community."
Your quote has aged poorly, much to us AMERICANS fear and anger.
Not news, actually. Ever hear of Cotton Mather? Andrew Jackson? Andrew Johnson? Senator Bilbo? Senator Tailgunner Joe McCarthy? Pat Buchanan? The history of the United States has a chorus line from the colonial days of misdirection. Demagoguery - Cicero wrote about it - we didn't invent it. https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/demagoguery-in-america
(That final sentence of mine look weird to me, but I assume you all see what I mean.)
So what exactly is your point? That no matter what action one takes, someone will benefit and someone will hate/resent it? I think that's generally true no matter how much good one attempts, and it is certainly true of leadership and therefore politics. Slamming those who attempt to create more just policy isn't to excuse others whose needs aren't addressed. Politics is a messy thing and requires legislation, monitoring of results, then reevaluation and corrections to make it better. That's exactly what has happened with the creation of Medicare, for instance. The challenge of the last 40 years has been in gathering enough consensus to be able to make needed policy changes that haven't been watered down by lack of sufficient support to write/implement the legislation the right way in the first place. But this doesn't mean much incremental good can't (and hasn't been) be accomplished.
THE STAFORD STUDY IS A FAKE. SO IS THE LORD OF THE FLIES. WE SEE EVIL WHERE THERE IS NONE. PEOPLE NEED TO FEEL MIGHTY BECUZ FOR THE MOST PART WE ARE FRAIL BEINGS WHO DIE WITHOUT HELP FROM OTHERS.
WE TEND TO OVERSTATE THE EVIL CUZ IT MAY KILL US AND TO IGNORE THE GOOD BECUZ IT WONT. WE SEE THREATS WHERE THERE ARENT ANY.
In your mind, what does this quote show/prove?
fear mongering at its best..... and worst.
The House vote.
Donald Hodgins <silencenotbad@gmail.com>
3:33 PM (4 minutes ago)
to
Who came up with the way votes are counted in the house? Please shoot them if they're still around. Idea. In the right armrest of each chair install a keyed switch that engages a voting panel. Candidates' names are called off one at a time by the chair. The seats occupied by duly elected officials have the key switch in the "on" position giving the occupant of the chain one and only one vote. The votes are tabulated only after all votes have been cast. The results would be seen on a big board positioned directly behind the speaker's chair. This would speed up the process tremendously. Like in a court of law after the jury reaches its verdict a verbal pole can be taken to verify the results. There is far too much time wasted using methods that in the chamber that were adopted before electricity and computers were invented. It's time for progress to come to Washington.
Donald
Agree. This was like watching paint dry. Excruciatingly slow.
Ah!! A fellow painter. LOL
Clinton’s financial deregulation started the devastating ball rolling towards 2008. W made things worse. Obama, with Biden’s urging, bailed out the banks that screwed people and did next to nothing to help the people they screwed.
It's been wrong for a long time, what about the $3 trillion Reagan and Bush illegally took from the American people when the drained that money from our social security coffers. If we are going to get through this time in our country's history we have to stop dwelling in the past, what is done is done. We need to concentrate on the "now" and it affects on our immediate future.
Thanks
Donald Hodgins
2 min ago
The current Republican party can be compared to a standard canoe. A basic means of transportation meant to move people from one location to another. There is a flaw in it's design however. The canoe is easily over turned. With that in mind the operators with the paddles have to work together in order to keep the craft moving in a true direction. The way things stand today the two paddlers are seated in the canoe facing each other. Anyone who knows anything about this means of travel can clearly see the efforts put forth by the two canoeists has no future. The sum total of their combined efforts will yield no headway. Team work associated with the understanding of how things work is a necessary component for success. Republicans are fighting each other in an effort to obtain power not competency. Their position is precarious, and instead of trying to fix their predicament they keep smashing the bigger pieces into ever smaller ones. Team work coupled with the intent to find a solution that appeals to their constituent's basic needs would be a good starting point. Instead of trying to glorify the "I" they should be looking for the best path to find the "WE." As in "We the people."
Donald, Well-said! Alas, for Republicans, I think the "I" is just too powerful for the "we" to ever break in.
Sadly, I concur.
Consider, instead of a canoe, an Adirondack guideboat: the person doing the work is always looking backwards, while the other person sits at leisure and doesn’t contribute anything to forward progress. That sounds like a much more realistic metaphor for capitalism.
Duly noted, I failed to consider that approach. Thanks.
Donald, I love thie picture you have created here ! ! ! My twisted "Theater of the Absured" sees this as the most appropriate vision of polo tics in general in these trying times. Thanks for your delightful mental cartoon ! ! !
I am here to but serve, LOL. I'm glad you find relevance in an old man's effort to find some sort of meaning in all this. It's Robert's fault, he got the ball rolling.
Consider also a deranged eagle, its right wing relentless in bashing its left. The right is all puffed up, muscular, and proud of it. The left is mangled and atrophied, while still trying to keep the bird aloft. The pathetic creature flops about in futile circles. At some point we hope some of the fibers in the right wing realize the imbalance and quit attacking its own other side and those of the left coordinate to rescue the main bird. Eagles soar best when both wings skillfully cooperate in a balanced way. Will our eagle recover from its fall before it crashes and dies? A few "Present" votes could help here.
Brad, I didn't realize there was a "left wing" in the Republican Party. No wonder that bird is struggling. It isn't flying, in fact, it is barely sitting on the perch, and I am in no way encouraging it to move because it is pretty destructive when it does.
Ruth, I get your apprehension. I was referring to our country as the eagle. There is no left wing in the Republican Party.
Destructive at times, however the problem in hand is paralyzing a branch of our government and the whole can't function with the cooperation of the sum total of its parts. There has to be a speaker in order for the House to function, and we as a country need that to happen. The speaker position is looking more like the lesser of two evils.
Oh dear! Brad, are you insinuating that the reason the "eagle" isn't flying is due to the Democrats? I certainly hope that is not the case because it would mean you are just not looking at the bird very clearly. The Democrats are trying really hard to keep flying, but Republican toddlers just keep pulling it down. We need better Republicans to step up or the analogy of the injured eagle just won't work at all because our nation won't be working. It won't be Dems who do the damage. A bunch of Republicans are trying to elect a fool, Kevin McCarthy to the lauded position of Speaker of the House. He has nothing to offer anyone except his huge ego and no one except him needs that. Republicans are against everything the American people are for. The speaker nominating Jeffries for the 8th round of voting laid it all out and it was pretty stark.
Perhaps my writing is unclear, Ruth. For most of my life I have watched our beloved eagle (country) mangled by its right wing. The only real threat to our country comes from within, from the fascist, mean-minded conservatives. The Democrats, from FDR to Carter to Harry Reed to Nancy Pelosi, have done their best to resist the constant belittling, obstructing, and gerrymandering of the highly organized and deliberate warfare of the right.
Hopefully, most are fed up with the Speaker of the House delay and circus enough for enough decent, patriotic Republicans to vote "present" or for some fair-minded and pragmatic option. I'd like to see Adam Kinzinger in that role. He hasn't renounced his Republican affiliation even as he seeks to redeem his party from history's scorn.
John James surprised me with the quality of his speech. I had no idea that was within him. I fear McCarthy is a stumbling block not easily over turned. He won't go away and either will they. ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Melt the snow, it time to mow the lawn.
You mean the golf course?
Of course I meant that course what other course would I be referring to?
I keep banging-on that ol' Tweety's only symptomatic of mental illness in the party, whose slogan I clearly remember was once: "Keep government out of the bedroom."
DZK 👍🏼 If only we could keep THEM out of the multitude of bedrooms they try to get into.
Eh, I understand where you are going, but Bunkerboy CLEARLY has worsening "demenSHAH."
I'm less concerned about ol' Tweety in my comment than I am about his political context. See my other post elsewhere in my response to Mr Brown's comment that recommends consideration of a link I include. The focus being on the MAGAs in the party that are still MAGAs, who are clearly susceptible to authoritarian leadership.
What Trump did better than anyone in recent history is tap into the racist collective subconscious.
:"The Republican Party will continue in some form. It takes more than nihilistic mindlessness to destroy a party in a winner-take-all system such as we have in the United States."
When I was a kid in Pennsyltucky we had two kinds of Republicans: Hamiltonians (the blue Brahamans) and Lincolnians (morphed into Reaganites). I estimate that none of those Hamitonians supported Trump. Some switched parties, some are now independents, but most remain registered Republicans who don't vote for people like Mastriano and Oz.
We had a GOP that waived the bloody flag of Civil War, schools named by the GOP for the abolitionist Thaddeus Stephens, father of reconstruction, a GOP that openly opposed Catholicism, but believed in conservation, modesty and restraint.
In looking at the Pa. delegation in the House, there are no Hamiltonians. Democrats should have reached out to those Hamiltonians sitting home alone.
In four words, you summed it up, Daniel: "the racist collective subconscious."
But careful with such terms. There is no such thing as the cultural unconscious of the Volk, but merely some execrable childish aggression expressed in the garb of a confused greater concept. There is no great Aryan people’s mind driving us forward; merely a confederacy of selfish nonsense.
I know some of them "up close and personal".
As recently as this weekend people told me they felt "safe" under Trump. Code for racism.
Don't forget the money is speech reality using the cudgel of "divide and conquer". It does not always work, because mixed race schools. From preschool to college and workplaces show that people can accept each other. The elites are the ones who learn about only accepting and trusting the "right people". Remember the former guy's attitude about $#it hole places: cities and countries with POC. And poor whites.
Did they ever unpack that thought? Like...safe from what, exactly? And what was it that gave them that safety? I wonder about the Trump-unleashed aggressive drivers of huge white trucks gunning their motors and flipping us off if we need to merge in front of them...I really do. Safety? Seems often like it's more permission to act like badly-raised 12-year-old boys.
Daniel; At least 30 percent or so do, it seems.
Daniel, Pennsyltucky, I was raised in this area. We always laughed when our aunt and uncle from D.C. called it that. I agree wholeheartedly Dems are dropping this unprecedented opportunity to create a new dialogue with Republicans. Instead of considering these voters useless to them, they (we) should be reaching out to dispel the socialist/communist/ideological facade created by Republicans to discredit our values of rights and inclusions. I don’t expect a full embrace of liberalism, obviously, but I do know we want a lot of the same things. Better education, better jobs with opportunities and benefits. Healthcare, elder care, safety in public.
There is a large number of people in PA who embrace this version of the Republican party. There’s much larger segment of the population who awoke on June 24th 2022 to find themselves deeper into second class citizenship than they were the day before. Their fought for and granted Constitutional right to choose their future, health care, their financial needs and family decisions under attack by Republicans. The shockwave this created cost republicans seats here in PA. It blasted people from their long reverie of apathetic behavior toward voting into using the the ballot box to communicate their extreme displeasure with this development.
The Republicans you speak of don’t want this current version of the GOP, but just can’t bring themselves to vote for all the “scary” things liberals want.
We need to show them patience and empathy to being cut off from their lifelong belief in their institutions. ‘We want the a lot of the same things’ is where we need to start opening ways to include voters who’s party left them behind.
Agreed. This is why progressive capitalism is a more-likely cure for the USA than socialism, which sounds scary to the guns-and-football crowd. During our lifetimes we have seen the New Deal gradually stripped away. It’s time to restore Roosevelt-style policies under the Democratic banner.
Stan, I think we need to stop letting republicans define words for us. They’ve redefined the words liberal & conservative. We need to stop repeating their misrepresentations or kowtowing to it.
I’ll bet that the Dems need to re-imagine what the USA is supposed to be about: an economic entity as well as a geographical and political unit. The Republican vision consists of seeing the USA as a giant market with everyone competing against everyone as typified in countless cowboy and noir movies and excellently in the Coen brothers’ film “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.” Our version looks like “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Gavin Newsom seems like the most-likely candidate to lead the way — just as JFK did in 1960.
"Liberal" is dead center. Let's not forget that our constitutional form of government is called a "liberal democracy." The label began with the Spanish civil war, about a generation after our 1776-'89 revolution. A Spanish political party calling themselves the "liberales" embraced and modeled themselves according to the new American Constitution, and named the new global democratic movement "liberalism." The term has a long history all the way back to the Enlightenment. Find the book by Salwyn Shapiro.
We went from FDR's Social Security to Republican Antisocial Insecurity.
Karen, As an east coast Pennsylvanian, I lived for years in a county or rather 2 counties that always, and I mean ALWAYS voted Republican. Republicans didn't do much for the counties, but didn't hurt them much either, so there was a kind of equilibrium. Then, under Reagan, things changed. Jobs went south or overseas, unemployment rose significantly, and Republicans did little to help. Unions were blamed as were Black people in the area (I never understood that because they were suffering far more than the white people). Gradually, Democrats began to gain ground and now, both counties are fully Democratic, have low unemployment rates, are working to deal with the challenges of a significant unhoused population, and more. It's not perfect, but a big improvement. The messages Dems used were as you describe, discussing what the people have in common. Rural Pennsylvanians have been misused, having hospitals they depend on closed or bought out by a corporation that does not care about the traditions and needs of the communities. Internet is either not available or not adequate. Farms need support as do other small businesses, but their needs are often ignored, even by the Republicans they vote into office. Maybe if Dems could go to those areas and talk about the various bills passed last year that could help them and show them how to apply for the aid, they could cut through the R bubble.
Biden and Harris are doing just that today.
Did you live near Dr. Ooze on the East Coast of PA? I hear the crudités are better there.
Greg, Ah, no. Oz didn't live anywhere in PA east or west. I think when he glanced across the Delaware, he saw a bunch of rubes "ripe for the pickin'" and just had to hike into the wilderness where people don't know the names of their grocery stores and think crudités is just veggies and dips. Thank goodness the folks of both the east and west coast of PA voted to send Oz back across the river, although it wasn't clogged with ice floes as it was when George Washington's army headed to NJ 246 years ago, and he won't be remembered for it as Washington was.
You know Washington would have been totally lost if his scouts hadn’t seen the signs for Washington Crossing State Park.
Ruth, I remember Republicans of old behaving in a respectable and bipartisan manner (mostly feigned for appearance sake) would throw the public a bone every now and then. Then Reagan happened. Slash and burn businesses, as you successfully point out the disastrous outcome of corporations and politicians disregarding and abusing their patrons/constituents. I hope we’ve found a message with which to reach more of PA residents.
I’m excited for Gov-elect Shapiro to take over from Gov Wolfe. I wish to thank Gov Wolfe for working with a hostile state house and senate while continuing to protect Pennsylvanians from outlandish and inappropriate laws, criticism and goldbricking representatives. We’ve clean up the house, senators take note.
A great watch on YouTube is Jordan Klepper’s podcast where he interviews Shapiro. Made me like him even more. Thanks, Ruth.
Karen, I agree that Wolf did an amazing job of holding Republican grandstanding to a minimum and did his best to encourage the legislature to get things done anyway. Republicans are obsessed with women's bodies and until the midnight vote to ban abortions in PA last summer, things were mostly kept from entirely going off the rails. Now that 3 Democratic victors have moved on to other jobs or died, Republicans want to ignore their victories and claim the Assembly leadership when they know perfectly well they are not entitled to it. They want to push elections off until May so they can do their destruction or as much as possible before a majority of Democrats actually get to take their seats. Those Republicans are just not good people. I can't understand why anyone votes for them. They will do nothing to help anyone but themselves. They want to quickly vote on the abortion ban so it can be on the ballot in May during a primary, another cheat, but again, what can one expect from not very good people! I too like Shapiro and expect him to keep pushing for positive change in our state. He has a lot of ideas for improving life here and I hope he will be able to see some of it to success.
Karen, I don't want to offend you but those Hamiltonians don't vote for someone with a vowel at the end of their name. They are cultural Hamiltonians.
2 kinds of Hamiltonians: Blue and light blues. The light blues think they can buy their was into the club. Clubs like he Pennsylvania Conservancy, Pennsylvania Manufacturing Association. Where I lived mostly "high" Presbyterian, High Anglicans. Methodists trend Lincolnian. Their hero was Joe Pew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_N._Pew_Jr.
Many of the Republican families of my childhood now vote Democratic -- some reman registered Republicans. On the other hand many former Democrats switched parties with the implementation of the southern strategy. Forced busing. White flight. Shipping jobs overseas.
Aha! The Pew Charitable Trust funds National Public Radio. No wonder NPR seems to represent Wall Street rather than Main Street.
Understand and you are so correct in that institutions they do badly wish to be in their good graces are not about to budge, yet.
A vowel at the end of a name is good description of how embedded they are in the past GOP party that used this to justify the desire to be better than...
My father, an engineer for US Steel was furious with Reagan. I’m sure he voted for him and became angry and disillusioned as we watched Pittsburgh fall into financial ruin when really well run companies like Kopper’s, Gulf Oil and Westinghouse were torn apart and liquidated to feed the Wall Street lust for money. By the way lest we forget tens of thousands of people with and without vowels at the end of their names lost their jobs. Pittsburgh at one time was fifth on the list of cities with the number of corporate headquarters. Now the largest employers are hospital chains. The afore mentioned companies were torn apart because they had strong balance sheets and well funded pension funds. Obviously those in power without a vowel at the end of their name do not care about others without a vowel if there is money to be taken.
Before that my dad ran into Edgar Speer, the president of US Steel at the time. They were in process of shutting down the Ellwood works, and Speer grew up, went to school in Ellwood City.
Naively, my dad asked his why they would close that mill since he knew most of the people who would suffer
Response: "I always hated those people.".
I blame Richard Mellon Scaife, Elsie Hillman, etc for the demise of Pittsburgh.
Wow!
Daniel, I agree that Dems need to reach out more to those folks who are on the edge of the Republican Party, sitting home alone, and stop avoiding red states. I think things are getting a bit better, but even when a candidate does reach out to every county in a state, for example as Beto O'Rourke did in Texas and Mandela Barnes did in Wisconsin, there is no sense that it will get people to see the candidate more positively or the opponent who does not do the heavy work as less. Dems need to rethink how to connect effectively with voters of all kinds all the time and get better people for messaging. That would be a start.
I am thinking again about how we do that for each other.... the “do that” meaning how to pull us together and not apart.
First: watch Bernie Sander’s last video Happy New Years. Here’s What’s on my mind for 2023.
Then digest and think how do we show people things can change. We do that first by dissolving two major “Big Business ” take overs.
Number 1: Healthcare
Nothing about it is about health of a person. Nothing about it is health for a country. It is simply another way that a few greedy companies can massacre an entire purpose.
Number 2: Housing
We’ve closed our eyes to the rampant development of corporate housing take over. They buy up whole neighborhoods and then “rent” back to people who will never be able to own a home again.
There is no neighborhood, no constant where neighbors can know one another and build communities. No conformity as to what works for those neighbors who might want to build their community into a beautiful and safe place.
“Slum Lords” made up of a group of greedy unaccountable “business men/women.
This is just a view of two powerful rights people of all descriptions own. The right to be well and the right to own a home. Everyone can relate to those two rights. Everyone!!!!
Jean, Republicans don't want anything done about health care or housing. They are going to be taken care of for life through the health care We the People give them as "public servants." Therefore, they don't have to care about anyone else. If they had to be on Medicare and Social Security, they would not be so cavalier. There are a couple of Republicans in Congress who are not millionaires. They might care just a teeny bit more for others. Then, the housing "investors" care nothing for the actual buildings, just the money they can make from them. They care even less about neighborhoods. We the People have tools to stop this insanity and destruction, but somehow, we just can't get around to doing anything about it because it has passed under the radar as they say. I don't know how we fix this now that Republicans have the House with all their lying, cheating, insurrectioning, and vengeance-seeking.
Thank you for this. As usual, there's so much noise when the Republicans are in charge now that we rarely face the issues. (Let's not forget the biggie: climate change.) They're fighting like a bunch of spoiled kids while people go without good healthcare, housing and a solid education.
It means spending money which is what east and west coast Dems have avoided for the heartland.
The every-county strategy seemed to work for John Fetterman. IIRC he won all 67 counties in PA.
Greg, Awesome right? And, Fetterman's opponent tried to play up his post-stroke disability, and Oz a doctor from a far-off place.
The border with Mexico.
Donald Hodgins <silencenotbad@gmail.com>
5:33 PM (7 minutes ago)
to
This fragmented divide that separates Mexico from our own country has been a source of political controversy for decades. President after president has had this problem dumped in their laps with no real solution to the problem. One obstacle that hasn't been addressed lies in the territory's history. At one point back in the early 1800s the country of Mexico owned in part or in total the following: California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and portions of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. At one time this area was the homeland of the Mexican people. Mexico ceded these territories to the United States at the end of the Mexican-American war that culminated on February 2nd, 1848. That date is when our border problems began. It's almost as if we don't want to find an answer to the problem. There wouldn't be an issue if the Mexican Government would patrol their side and keep immigrants from attempting to enter the United States. Even today the thought line in the Mexican mindset still sees the state of Texas as being a territory of Mexico. As a result of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded 55% of its territory to the United States. Just look at the names given to the cities in the area, San Francisco, Los Angles, Sacramento, San Diego, Fresno, San Bruno, and many others. The Southwestern United States is really old Mexico, so to speak. No wonder these people want to enter this country, they have a deep-seated desire to go home. The western United States has a deep Mexican heritage that should be embraced not ignored. Since 2015 this country has absorbed a total of 1,481,000 immigrants, that we know of, who have crossed into the United States from the Mexican side of the border, and half that number again, made up of Indian and Chinese immigrants who have entered via alternative ports. Trump had this issue and he did little to nothing in an effort to stop the flow of people crossing our Southern border. Yet even today, on the floor of the House in front of the entire country, accusations were hurled at President Biden accusing him of incompetency with regard to the way he has handled the border problem. At times I wonder why Republicans even bother to flush, they seem to like the stuff so much. The blame game only goes as far as intelligence will allow it to travel. The line drawn in the sand runs right down the center walkway in the House of Representatives and it distinguishes the Democrats from the stone throwers. Glass Houses?
Donald Hodgins <silencenotbad@gmail.com>
5:36 PM (4 minutes ago)
to Thomas, carol, Barbara, Marilyn
I realize the composition of the nationalities making up the immigrant population varies greatly.
Let's hope that, for the time being at least, Trump is allowed to run as an independent against Desantis.....then the GOP, with all of its accumulated mendacity, racism, misogyny and xenophobia, will finally implode, and we can reach the sunlit uplands of progressive taxation, fair wages, free markets, infrastructure, and healthcare for all.
Michael, wouldn't a Republican implosion be a blessing!
A good comment about keepin' an eye on ol' Tweety's in the future is worth the 5 minutes consideration: https://youtu.be/a-VlzYtEVqQ
Let's hope he doesn't even get your 5 minutes.
While I like what you wrote, and wish it were true, the GOP remnants still control congress perhaps because they have incoherent policies. A majority of people, before the last election, wanted a higher minimum wage, wanted a fairer health care system, wanted college debt reduction, wanted improved infrastructure, and more. Even so too many voted for Republicans. Why? They have a better propaganda system. They are better at translating their ephemeral agenda to a society that wants an enemy to hate. The agenda does not matter, just the existence of a target, which they are good at creating along with Fox and other instruments of propaganda. They won't die as long as the propaganda arm makes a profit. From my vantage point the corporate world that manufactures its own "truth" is doing rather well, so I doubt the propaganda party will die a rapid death. Instead it seems that they will take they rest of the ship of state down with them.
It's easier to hate than tryin' to learn to understand something you don't know about - Republicans are profiting from this for decades and turn people to vote against their wants, needs and will and to even support their own suppressors.
Do you happen to recall which political party had their Jim Crow boot on the throats of black people in the South for an entire century? Yep, that was us, the Democratic Party. It was still going on when I was a kid. Thank you LBJ for liberating we Dems from our own evil.
They are Republican today.
Very true! Prior to the 1970s, the Virginian Republican Party was a small group of moderate to liberal Republicans who were powerless against the "Dixiecrat" Byrd Machine who ran the state. After LBJ and the civil rights legislation, the Dixiecrats moved to the Republican Party and took it over, turning Virginia into a Republican "red" state until just recently.
Exactly! 👍🏼
Look up the Ripon Party- Republicans with conscience.
Yes, I knew Black people who only voted Republican because of Lincoln. At least in my hometown they could vote because they were in the minority.
Yep.
"I knew that however bad the Republican party was, the Democratic party was much worse. The elements of which the Republican party was composed gave better ground for the ultimate hope of the success of the colored man's cause than those of the Democratic party." (Frederick Douglass)
Phil, yes, it was the Democrats who were into Jim Crow and the rest of the harms done to Black Americans. It is interesting how quickly the Republican party jumped right in to take over where the Democrats left off. It was already starting in the 1940s with their anti-union positions and fearmongering over Communism, and denigrating of civil rights leaders. Eisenhower did a few things to help out during the early Civil Rights movement, but Democrats took up the cause with a few politicians like LBJ taking up the mantle. He helped Dr. King, Rosa Parks, and a whole lot of people to be heard in the white world and gave white people something important they could stand for. Republicans tried to make their racism and misogyny look like just what America needed to be strong militarily and economically. It didn't make sense, but a whole lot of people bought it.
See Tim’s comment below.
A. Michael, Precisely
Despite the Republican establishment fomenting hate and doing nothing for ordinary people, more and more Black people and Hispanic people are moving from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. A significant number of Black people, for example, voted for Brian Kemp over Stacey Abrams in Georgia. I think this is in large part due to Republicans' propaganda, as you say, and also to a perception that Democrats aren't doing anything for ordinary people.
The Biden administration's touring the country to promote the policies enacted over the past two years that will improve Americans' lives is a smart move.
This is, by the way, not a uniquely American problem. Many Social Democrats in European countries make (made) the same mistake as they ignore the needs of their voter base - like the Democrats do in the US. The result is the same - people changing alliances and not being afraid to move extremely to the right to join populist movements - be it MAGA in the US, AfD in Germany, Sverige Democrat in Sweden, Fratelli d'Italia with Georgia Meloni in Italy or even (thanks he's out) Bolsenaro in Brazil.
Back to the US - after two years in a majority position, why was the minimum wage not changed to the better, why aren't there any new tax laws, closing loop-holes and going after the first one-percent on top. Why aren't there any tax reliefs for the working class?
It is fine and dandy to promote whatever freedoms need to be promoted, but first it should be made sure, that people actually have enough to eat, can heat/cool their homes and that in sickness can count on a healthcare system that delivers and doesn't shine in the background not accessabile by the working poor.
Contrary to appearances, the Democrats were not in a majority position, especially when written legislature favored poor to middle (income) class people. Manchin and Sinema voted against almost all legislation that raised even by the slightest amount of taxes on the "filthy rich"; or even forced a little decency on corporate America. So in actuality, Biden had a negative majority (48 to 52 conservative and nut cases) Even in the House, where Nancy Pelosi was a far better manager than Chuck Schumer, we could not muster all Democrats to support liberal/progressive bills. There is some truth to the humor "Getting Democrats to agree on anything is like herding cats". We are getting better.
Not funny and time for new slogan
How about the one about the “circular firing squad”?
Yeah drop that one too. Use it to describe the Republicans though,
Carolyn, I think another piece to the Black and Latinx movement to the Republican party is the desire to be big fish in a small pond. There are still very few Black and Latinx Republicans, so the ones now moving into the party are hoping they will get to have some power and make some decisions since Republicans claim to want to reach out to their communities. They really only want the votes, not the input of anyone who is not white and male, with a few female contributors. It makes no sense that Black people would have voted for Kemp, a man who cares nothing for them and has done quite a lot to keep many of that community from voting. I know Republican propaganda is powerful, but I don't think that totally explains it. How sad that Black Americans would turn against Black people who could actually help them. The other elephant in the room is that Abrams is a woman. Misogyny is huge in the Black community as friends have informed me. There are many in the Black and Latinx communities who either despise women in power or have bought the BS that women's place is at home with bunches of kids. Really pathetic! I think Democrats could do some important work with this group, at least with the women.
Misogynoir is a huge factor. Too many men, including male PoCs, would vote for a feckless white man over a brilliant black woman.
OTOH, a large number of pale people voted for Herschel Wanker.
Agreed, Wayne. Here’s a quote from Umberto Eco’s essay “How to Spot a Fascist” on the topic of abuse of language: “Ur-Fascism uses newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell in 1984, as the official language of Ingsoc, the English Socialist movement, but elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi and Fascist scholastic texts were based on poor vocabulary and elementary syntax, the aim being to limit the instruments available to complex and critical reasoning. But we must be prepared to identify other types of newspeak, even when they take the innocent form of a popular talk show.”
The Republicans want an enemy to hate? Boy, that sounds really familiar somehow...
Yes, for fascists there’s no ‘struggle for life’ but rather a ‘life for struggle’ according to Umberto Eco.
Yes it does.
Not that you sought my affirmation, I completely agree with your assessment. Indeed, I've insisted for the last six or seven years, they won't voluntarily relinquish government control no matter how much they vilify government. But I'm now tending to believe the republican party actually expired with the installation of Reagan (the actor who POSED as a repub president), and devolved into 'the Capitalist party' - - which is privately funded via 'campaign finance' and lobby corruption, gerrymandered to the max as their ONLY means of ever justifying their purchase of offices and legislation favoring the top 1%, and appears to be wholly owned by billionaires, illusionary-opposition party included.
Unless we commit to STOP sitting around talking and rehashing the horrors, and actually DOING something (i.e. national organizing and mobilizing at levels not seen since Vietnam, civil rights, and gender equality protest-movements), I fear democracy is already dead, & the fascist undertakers are waiting until the stench is so unbearable they are being begged to remove the carcass. Best of luck to us all in the troubling times ahead.
I agree with you, but personally I think it started stinking two Republican Presidents earlier, when Ricky-Dick tried to see how far, he could push the limit and had to resign with a slap on his wrist. After seeing that democracy can be played with with almost no consequences, the playbooks started to change.
My bewilderment is with the people who still support such shenanigans.
You exactly nailed the gate to hell in a handbasket......ZERO accountability for billionaires (and their bought & paid for puppet-politicians)
Agreed
I wish I didn't agree with you Susan, but I do agree. I wish I was young enough to march again and attend endless rallies, but I'm not. I hope there are enough younger stronger people, who care enough about America to get out there now and for the next 5 or so years to protest, and demand change. We did end the war in Vietnam (eventually) and we did get good Civil Rights legislation passed, even though the Supreme Court since 2010 has done as much as they could to reverse all our wins. I was only in my 30's and early 40's back then and just as much of a Liberal/Progressive bitch as I am now - but then I had the energy of youth, damn. (:-)
Solidarity Faye. I'm a few years from retirement myself, but still got some fight left in this ol' dog. And maybe we can keep you busy on phone duty in the near future. United we stand, divided we fall......
Susan I do admire your fighting spirit, but I'm not nearing retirement, I passed it. I retired two years ago and now at 90 my body is telling me it no longer intends to support me. (:-)
The real enemy that each side of the GOP fights against is change. Not just bandaid change but significant and from the ground up change in the way our society is governed both economically and morally. I use the word morally here because much of the change that I speak of involves letting go of the old worn out judgements and stereotypes about those you have not been brought up with and these who you may have been taught to disdain and suspect they want something from you that they somehow don’t deserve.
We have a polarity here not only in this country but everywhere of those who believe it’s ok to hoard wealth and those in abject poverty. This is a huge gap. And believe it or not each side is supported by our society as a whole in some way. Both sides are not only a physical reality but a mind set. Why hasn’t society as a whole seen this over the centuries upon centuries for what it is? Morally reprehensible.
We don’t need a tidal wave to correct this mindset. We need a consensus. Neither of these dichotomies of thought can be sustained much longer. Our inability to change--to bring about this basic change in thinking over our long history is downright pathetic. We all have allowed this to be the norm, year after year; century after century. All of our revolutions and our constant battles have only served to sustain the status quo of this ridiculous polarity.
The question is when does it become merely a memory?
Great points! Yes, I also think the pace of change is a very important factor, not just in America, but globally. It's the pace of change which draws some to the MAGA slogan, because change is going too fast for a lot of people to keep up.
Well said Wayne. I agree. We’re going to seat seditionists supporters in our Congress. I see success for them, not failure.
CNN: nothing yet. Biggs still running his mouth, the scumbag.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/new-congress-sworn-in-2023/index.html
Spot on, Wayne. I do hope your last sentence does not turn out to be true. We must be very diligent to prevent the ship of state from foundering.
Isn't propaganda just a fancy word for marketing...?
And vice versa... I've worked in both propaganda and marketing. It's all of a piece.
Indeed ! ! !
So the post from Wayne suggests the problem is structural - but that leads to a different conclusion than making the propaganda unprofitable, i.e. educating the public so that the propaganda - no matter how profitable - doesn't have an effect.
(Simple example: if one knows that the legacy of chattel slavery is the "power center", i.e. the thing being guarded, then it can be exposed e.g. by policies which promote social justice and defend democracy; given the fact of gerrymandering there is little else that can be done!)
@Rishi. Or vice versy ;-D
Hear Hear ! ! ! Exyremely insiteful Well written Post. Breif, consise and very pointed. Thanks for your observations.
NPR, that band of woke liberals, just reported that Qevin failed to get his 218 votes on the first ballot. This is the world’s smallest violin 🎻 playing for him.
Greg, I have no sympathy either. McCarthy wants the position so badly, it's going to be interesting to see how much he is willing to sell his soul for so he can get it. My guess is that he will give it away to the lowest bidder.
Wayne, yep, Republicans would rather bring down the whole ship of state than in any way admit they might be on a wrong track or off the track completely. The thing is that we don't have to let them.
The USA’s corporations treat our workers like those of what we used to call third world countries — just like the 19th century all over again.
Stan, they do say history repeats itself. I do wish some of the good stuff would repeat like the times when people work together for an important goal. What we get instead is all the crap one person or group does to another, over and over.
Excellent analysis of the Republican Party, as, at this juncture, it is nothing more than a cult of anger, resentment and backwardness, ironically fueled by wealthy autocrats, who care nothing for average Americans (including Republican voters), and incapable of sound governance for this country.
I am also encouraged that Biden has chosen a more inclusive socioeconomic path than both Clinton and Obama, though I'm still upset that he caved to the railroad robber barons.
One last bone to pick: the New York State "democratic" party cost us control of the House; they really need to clean up their, and fast.
Happy New Year to all.
Where did Mr. Reich obtain the elephant image? Is this an official Republican Party image? The reason I ask is that it depicts "3 hooded KKK persons" between the legs of the elephant!!!
Wow, I did not notice that! Thank you for pointing it out (haha, see what I did there?) --truly brilliant graphic design.
I speak subject to correction, but IIRC that image was created by a Republican - on purpose.
I wonder who else noticed the eyeholes?
Sheep in sheets?
It's been around for a while on the Web. Very astute image. You know that the KKK minted coins once with "America First" on them.
Are you aware that the Republican Party includes many millions of people all across the country, and that you and I don't know even the tiniest fraction of all these people?
Trump received more than 73 million votes when he ran unsuccessfully for a second term; ten million more votes than in 2016 when he won the presidency.
This amount of support despite Trump's malignant racism and incompetence, amongst other morbid problems.
And while I may not personally know these 73 million Republican voters, I definitely know something is extremely troubling when this many people vote for a proto-fascist, who cares nothing for any of them, except what he can con out of them.
Which party ran Jim Crow in the South for a full century?
@Phil. What you are doing is called historicism. That party, of the same name, was by no means the same in policy terms as the Democratic Party of today. All of those who are alive today are Republicans.
Ancient history. Dixiecrats walked in 1948. Strom Thurmond et al switched parties en mass.
Lincoln freed the slaves. And Democrats, that would be us, re-enslaved them.
So maybe we could stop pretending that we are always right, the holy, the perfect, the experts on morality etc.
Not me. Not us.
My family were Republicans until the 50's. I was in the Army of the Occupation of the South, before and after I went to Vietnam in the mid sixties. There was still segregation ongoing and open hostility to federal intervention. In Vietnam we were told there was a race war at home. Confederates were stealing selector switches to turn their weapons into machine guns to use on people like me when we got home. Cities burned after my discharge in 1968.
Nixon devised a southern strategy to split the Democratic coalition. It worked. You are Exhibit A.
I worked with this stuff for almost 50 years. Busing. White flight. Riots.
Virtually no Republicans are concerned.
Phil Tanney: 99% of Republicans vote against their own economic and physical health. Driven by wedge issues.
And we Dems are working against our own self interest by relentlessly insulting those whose partnership we will need if we ever want to see our priorities dominate the culture. There's plenty of stupidity to go around.
Big difference between the interests of the political class and the voters. Most voters are cowed by propaganda. Most Republican voters get disinformation 24/7.
The Republican' Party is a wolf in sheep's clothing. The wolf is big money, big oil, big pharma, etc.
@Phil. The insulting should stop. But as a Democrat, how do you attract a voter who is committed to a wedge issue? Let's take one, xenophobia. Do we make Democratic policy MORE anti-immigration in order to bring over this voter? Then if you do that for each of those wedge issues, the Democrats start to look just like the Republicans from a policy platform perspective. Avoiding that outcome does not make the Democrats stupid. I'm just saying - its a two party system...
Hi there Benjamin,
You raise good questions for which I obviously do not have all the answers.
I would first attempt to address your good questions by agreeing that there is a segment of the MAGA movement that will never be persuaded to our point of view no matter what we do. I don't think we should worry about this, as we don't need total victory, just a sustainable majority. We do need to peel off some Republicans. But we don't need them all.
We can ignore the MAGAs who are hopeless, and show some respect to those who aren't. For example, we can stop assuming that every Republican who is concerned about immigration is xenophobic. Some are, some aren't. Some just have very reasonable concerns about an out of control border situation. Some just realize honestly that America can not embrace every distressed person in the world, because that numbers in the billions. We can stop lumping all these different people in to one pot and then demonizing the pot.
We're never going to get everything we want, so we can stop pretending that is possible, which will lower our frustration levels when we inevitably have to compromise.
I'm not blind to the fact that whipping up the faithful in to a frenzy is one method of getting folks out to the polls. The danger I see is that if we get too carried away with the ego feeding demonizing we start looking more and more like MAGA people ourselves.
Michele Obama said that when they take the low road, we take the high road. That seems like good advice. And this is not a moral point, for I am not a priest. It's a tactical point. We need to hold on tight to our attempt to be, and be seen as, the somewhat reasonable people. Not the perfect people. Just the party that's less insane than the other one. :-). If we can maintain that position, then enough of the reasonable Republicans will gradually move our way.
Dems should address the immigration issue by re-casting it as “let’s stabilize the labor market.” I use this phrase when talking with my Republican neighbors about the southern border. If employers must deal only with American-citizen workers, then wages will rise. In contrast, when there’s an plenteous supply of undocumented workers at hand, wages will stagnate at unlivable levels that will approach slavery.
How about this? Perhaps we could work admitting that we're wrong sometimes in to our pitch? Imho, we're wrong on abortion to a degree, we might start there. We might for example, simply admit out loud that a great deal of abortion is really nothing more than a baby killing service we provide as a convenience to those too lazy to use contraception. We don't have to be anti-abortion, we just need to speak the truth out loud. We just need to say, you know, we've given this more thought, and it's more complicated than we previously realized.
And the biggest problem is that the Republican dogma includes fear of 'those others' taking away rights & prosperity which completely takes away from any recognition that the Republicans are actually NOT on the side of ANY normal working person. they are fooled every time by their own hatreds & fears to vote for their own oppressors ! Advances made by Democrats to better equality (KBJ!) just confirm in working Repubs brains that their fears are well founded ! That world is scary to them !
Let's try this. Forget about the national news and the Washington circus. Let's take a long break from that. Instead...
Dear reader, do you actually know any Republicans in real life?
In our life here, I'm thinking of a couple we know. They vote Republican. They're rural. They hunt. Sounds like the enemy, right? Sorry, no.
These are very decent people. As example, they take in any stray animal anybody brings them and take care of it for years. Their ten acres is literally covered with every kind of animal enclosure you can imagine, and it takes them hours a day to feed and care for all these neglected creatures. Nobody pays them, nobody thanks them. Hardly anybody even knows they're doing this. And they've been doing this for YEARS.
Every time we visit this couple or they visit us, they ALWAYS have a gift for us. It never fails, they never forget, and they never expect anything in return.
The husband used to be a detective who worked for the police department. When we had a serial killer on the loose here years back, he was one of the guys who would risk his life entering structures to see if the killer was hiding there. In doing this, he came upon one of his fellow employees who had been beheaded in her apartment. Yea, he looked at that so you and I don't have to. Here's a brave soul who was risking his life to watch our back, but because he's rural and votes Republican, we Dems are going to look down our noses and call him snotty names.
Forget about the crackpots in Washington. Find a Republican in your real life, and start making friends. You don't have to agree with them about everything. Just find the things you do agree on, and pore fuel on that.
There are tons and tons of very decent Republicans all across the country. Ok, maybe not in Washington, but it's a big country, ya know?
Find these people. Reach out. Make friends. Be the change you wish to see.
What you have to ask them is WHY they are Republicans - what is it that is so specific to their mindset that they refuse to even consider voting Democrat ? Nobody could fault those beautiful people you are describing, but what they think Republican means is not what I think it means, so there must be ways to talk to these folks to get at the underlying beliefs that keep them Republican & could POSSIBLY make them vote Democrat. I am still trying to understand - I have one son who is a non-trump Republican ! Thanks for your comment - beautifully put !
Thanks for your reply. We wisely don't talk politics with these Republican friends of ours, so I can't tell you exactly why they vote Republican. I can't speak for them in that regard, I can only share some of my own experience with some alienation from the Left. Here's an example or two. Maybe some Republicans are experiencing this?
ABORTION: I listen to a lot of National Public Radio, which as you probably know is quite left leaning. During all the MANY discussions of abortion, I never heard a single host or interview subject make ANY reference to the fact that what abortion really is in many or most cases is a baby killing convenience service we provide to those who are too lazy to use contraception. Yea, I'm pro-choice. But this kind of one sided analysis does nothing for me. It doesn't make me want to be Republican. But sometimes it makes me wish I wasn't a Democrat. The endless victim tripping finger pointing turns me off.
IMMIGRATION: In all the endless talk about immigration when do we ever get around to asking how many people do we want to have in America? The population of the United States has doubled in my lifetime. Over the same period the population of the state where I live is 7 times larger than it was when I was born. 7 times larger.
How are we supposed to craft intelligent immigration policies when we don't know what our goal is, and don't even want to talk about it?? Given that neither party ever discusses this, on this issue at least, I do sometimes wonder why being a Democrat is superior to the alternative.
If you could see my photo you might think I've just come from an LSD orgy at Woodstock. :-). If I'm alienated by aspects of Leftist culture, it's not hard to imagine why some people might vote Republican.
On ABORTION - I agree that this is a very touchy subject if you talk about what is actually happening - but whereas I do not like 'baby killing' of course, I do not wish any woman to be stuck with an unwanted extra burden simply because somebody else decides that her cluster of cells cannot be purged. IOW if it's not yet a 'baby' it is not a problem to me. The conversation used to be about that particular point in time, and most people agreed with the principle, now the religious types have taken it to the level of God being in charge of said cluster of cells, therefore nobody has a right to interfere.
On the subject of IMMIGRATION I totally agree with your point on the numbers of hysterical people refusing to say where the end point lies. I am always pointing out that the SOL 'Give me your tired, poor...' etc is no longer valid policy so that needs to be removed from the discussion completely. They are NOT all welcomed now & have to somehow prove (often with enough lying) that they actually somehow were persecuted in their home countries - most of them were not. I'm a (legal) immigrant myself, but had no real need to come here from UK, we had a great life in UK, but we came for potential opportunities for our 4 kids, altho now that we have been here 35 years & seen the downward spiral recently that may be mute ! One grandson has gone back to the UK & is staying he says ! Honesty is the best policy - the anti-immigration stance is mainly a pro-white stance, as we hear very little anti-European immigration discussion - so the whole thing is rigged against those from non-white or non-Christian countries. A lot of contrarian policies happening. America needs to be honest & stop trying to hide its' bigotry in altruistic memes ! You don't want more non-white immigration, but your industries want more cheap labour - how to truthfully reconcile that conundrum ?
I'm pro-choice because I don't want children brought into a society that doesn't care for them AFTER they are born. Consider who, in the panoply of humanity, is more likely to become a disturbed person and a criminal? Those who weren't raised in loving, prosperous families, that's who.
A Republican might say, and I might agree to a significant degree....
If a couple is going to have a baby, it's their job to care for that child, it's their job to create that loving prosperous family.
Some Republicans become alienated from the Democratic Party when we talk about it being somebody else's job. I'm not saying this is simple and they are right and we are wrong, only that the Republicans sometimes have reasonable points which can be labeled as such.
I'm pro-choice because it makes no sense to me to try to force people to have children they don't want. That said, I would prefer we Democrats speak more honestly about abortion.
To further explain our status as immigrants - we applied with existing professional qualifications & as brother/family to a resident US citizen.
Our industries need to be restricted to using workers who are citizens of the USA.
Who's going to clean your hotel (and hospital!) room? Pick your crops? Pick your crabs or shuck your oysters? Pick up your trash? Clear land mines in front of US troops in Afghanistan?
Or maybe even be your primary-care doctor?
American citizens, not undocumented aliens.
Eye of the beholder. IMHO NPR sold out to the Koch brothers more than 20 years ago.
The Koch brothers, as libertarians and as employers needing cheap labor, want open borders.
NPR "left-leaning" LOL. And Faux News is "fair and balanced."
NOT.
Agreed. NPR seems to present most topics from the Chamber of Commerce point of view.
There’s no consensus on the optimal population of the USA because the USA isn’t an economic entity; it’s only a political entity whose real religion is 19th century capitalism based on the notion of infinite growth.
Ok, no consensus is normal. But we could at least talk about it. I don't know myself what I think the right number is. I'm only clear that immigration debates make no sense without some attempt to find such a number. What's interesting and revealing is that we'll invest 10 trillion hours in to debating immigration, and never get around to asking what our bottom line goal is.
I did hear one story on NPR from a fellow who suggested we should aim for a billion Americans by the end of this century. At least that guy had a number, whatever one might think of it.
I used to BE a Republican. As a high school senior, I volunteered in my first campaign for 3 Independent Republicans running for school board in the primary against 3 racist machine Republicans (Delaware Co., PA, was controlled by a vicious all-white Republican machine during my youth.).
My Dad was a John Anderson Republican, and my Mom shocked me one evening when she revealed she was pro-choice.
I forgot to mention that we WON that election! And our 3 plus the 1 Dem already on the board gave the “good guys” (pardon the expression, the Dem was a woman; Pretty rare for 1969) control.
Decent people don't support a party that demonizes, deligitamizes and criminalizes non-whites, non-males, non-xtians and the non-rich at every possible opportunity and in every possible way. That is not decent. They may act and speak decently *to your face* and in public view, but they are not decent. We have to stop making excuses or desperately believing that they are redeemable in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
People who *are* Republican - or *voted* Republican? (You're sure Professor Reich isn't hinting at that very point, i.e. in light of the party's choice of standard-bearer & lack of salient policy priorities...?)
Do you want to actually have our priorities prevail? Or do you just enjoying demonizing "the enemy"?
If the former, then the job is to win over some of those who don't currently vote with us. Getting off our jollies by relentlessly poking our finger in their eye doesn't seem like a very smart strategy for accomplishing that. Speaking of the Krishnas....
The cult phenomena is what's happening to BOTH political parties these days. Almost everybody, on ALL sides, just sits around endlessly chanting the same old mindless ego pleasing junk all day long. The Krishnas would probably be a step up.
Hey man, someone had to *not* attack the capitol! (I was cleaning my carpet!)
Time has come for our country to realize some of our VALUES had serious cracks from the beginning of our country. The true concept of Democracy does not exist here, but we think we can tell the rest of the world how to act “ democratically “ , we have double standards when it involves $$$; we are a racist society and don’t even know it, we are a Military Empire that needs to sell ARMS around the world. Organizations such as the NRA have turned a RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS into a mystical “Fanatical” concept that it is destroying our image as a CIVIL society and opens the doors for fanatic misguided behaviors that have become part of our image around the world. The Electoral College is perhaps the biggest THREAT to our democratic system. The election of members of the Supreme Court is nothing more than a “ Political” driven concept that got away from the reason for its existence. Our Economic Capitalistic System stopped helping middle class and it is now basically controlling our economy, only to serve the most powerful richest persons. When the Supreme Court allowed Corporations to invest moneys in the elections of elected officials, they basically “SOLD “ our last hope for true Democracy and The GOP party was behind that. Robert Reich analysis of the GOP party is correct but it goes deeper than that...perhaps we ought to thank the Pandemic and Trump for making us aware of what’s wrong with ourselves and maybe start acknowledging the dramatic weakness of our political and economical systems and start thinking how change our values and laws to really be the leaders in this Global Society.
Read "The Many-Headed Hydra" by Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh. It does a good job of explaining most of how we got here (starting before the English Revolution) and why the American Revolution failed.
The biggest challenge that I see is the fact that so many MAGAts are still holding office and even sit on the 'Supreme' court. The 'enemy within' is allowed to stay and fester, and will poison even the best efforts at bipartisan governing and any attempt to form 'a more perfect union'. It is anyone's guess how many seditionists are in the military and our police forces. Our best hope is that Justice will do its work. this would stem the tide of ruin.
The party may be over, but the stores that started selling “Trump 2024” flags in 2020 -- along with hunting licenses, guns & ammo, liquor, gas, and ice cream all in one convenient location will still be doing a thriving business.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Better than Wawa OR Sheetz.
Thank you so much Dr. Reich, for so eloquently articulating the disintegration of the Republican Party. I hope its death throws will not last too long and cause more violence. At the same time I applaud the end of Retrumplicanism, I would hate to see it replaced by a one party system - even if that surviving party is the Democratic Party. We need different approaches and theories for a healthy, prosperous, and yes, even happy society. My dream would be to have 3 or 4 parties with distinctive platforms to create the good checks and balances advocated in the late 18th early 19th centuries. We need the idealism of Liberal Progressives, the even-handedness of moderates, and the Fiscal Conservatives to instill realistic, achievable legislation with sources of finance. Together we need to return to a united country of laws and reasonable regulations. A well regulated capitalism, social safety nets for all, a concern for the health and well being of every resident in the country, an education system that teaches social responsibility, analytical thinking, fact based history, art, music, science, math, and language skills. We desperately need to change the course of the warming, polluted air, water, land. We need to leave a healthy, livable planet for all life (well maybe not for viruses, but we may not have a choice there) We also need to live in harmony, not just with ourselves, but with all democratic countries and communities in the world. We need to empower the United Nations to maintain peace, to step in with all democracies to stop the spread of authoritarianism and subjugation of any other nation.
Fay, amending my previous comment…I know your dream is to have…but realistically, there aren’t any “moderates” nor are there “fiscal conservatives” in the RepubliCon party. Their support of fascism and sedition makes them ineligible for checks and balances. This is not the party of 40 years ago and I think those comments are are dream of the past. The republican party today has separated from reality. How do you think we got to where we are today? The Democrats constantly bent over backwards to appease the so-called moderates. The politicians cater to the money needed to stay in office.
Fay I agree with what you have written with the exception of 3 party option. This has NEVER worked here. I think we need 5. The giant powerhouses must be shut down and they can shut down the third. (And they have)
And I fully agree that the ONLY way we should keep capitalism is with tight regulation. Without that, it really is a system of greed. And we must stop being the only so-called advanced nation without social safety nets of health-care and well funded higher education. Our planet is in need of serious new regulations.
By the way, the republicans always want a big war machine but don’t fund higher education. Do they think low IQ people make our systems?
We just (disgracefully) put through a budget of $858 BILLION!!! Yet the Rs claim that there is no money to help our citizens when it comes to health care etc.
@Fay. Nothing scares me more than a United Nations organization with the military power to enforce its decisions. What kind of immoral dictator would rise to the top of THAT organization!
You just need to watch "Star Wars" for the answer to that.
Fay, "FOUR STARS" for the most provocative rational post I've seen in a very long time. Thanks for your wisdom. I am a notorious Arizonzan Purple Voter.
In 1972, the left was finally able to nominate a Democratic candidate, amidst an unpopular Vietnam War, burning cities, and a generational divide never seen in America. The centrists of the party bolted, and withheld their support from the hapless Senator McGovern, portrayed as a flaming pacifist radical, despite his history as a genuine war hero. Four years earlier, the party had split over Vietnam, and leftists had deserted Humphrey. The Republicans of today are nowhere as divided as the Dems of 1968-72. They will regroup in some form, either as the proto-fascists or the conservatives.
George Wallace was a precursor to Trump. Split the Democratic Party.
Wallace had a resentful, anti-establishment, populist message that neatly masked his underlying racism and xenophobia. He made the point that if you looked at Democrats and Republicans you couldn't see a dime's worth of difference between them. Fooled a lot of people, and I hate to say a young person with my name was among those fooled.... Still sad about that.
And Rhonda, Rabid Abbott, Douchey, et al are vying for his old base.
1972 was my first presidential election. I voted for Gus Hall. That may have been the point at which the establishment Dems were most corrupt.
Not that it mattered, because McGovern lost 49 states, but voting for Gus Hall was almost the same as voting for Nixon, in my opinion. I not only voted for McGovern, I knocked on doors for him.
McGovern was a sacrificial 🐑 lamb thrown to the wolves by the corrupt establishment Dems because they knew they couldn’t beat Nixon in the rabidly pro-war climate. Nixon took PA by a landslide.
And in 1980 I voted for Commoner. In 2000 I voted for Nader. So sue me.
You’re entitled to your opinion. And given the history of Nixon and Bush and Reagan, you’re surely aware of mine. You probably voted for people other than Democrats in 2016 and 2020, I’m guessing. I have no interest in suing you, but I have no interest in hearing your complaints about the country either. Congratulations on your principled stands. They’ve obviously made quite a difference in the lives of people all over the world, from Cambodia to Iraq to Nicaragua.
None of those votes made any difference in the outcome. And I have no interest in your whining about my political incorrectness.
Very odd to find you in this forum, given your insistence on useless token self-inflation, by your own admission. Not making any difference is pretty far from what Reich is all about.
“If God had meant us to vote, She’d have given us candidates.” (Terry Leonino)
There's one critical difference, i.e. '68-'72 Democrats couldn't unite despite the dominance (and dominant criminality) of Nixon; this time around the need to coalesce is on *their* side of the fence (though the criminal is, perhaps unsurprisingly, still one of theirs).
Trump: con artist, exploiter. But let's not forget the sad reality that a segment of our own citizens are members of a white working-class which harbors bitterness, xenophobia, racism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-science paranoia. I'm afraid they are out there, a minority to be sure, but in numbers that drive the primary process. No Republican candidate can get selected for the general election without getting support from this group. Even Trump couldn't exploit this unless it was already there. Trump did exploit people with those sentiments - but so will the next guy that the Republicans put up. It's all they've got now. Many citizens of both parties feel that all politicians are crooks. We believe the system is rigged. We worry that too much of our taxes go to feather the nests of elected officials and their donors. To combat this perhaps all too true perspective, Democrats need to be hyper vigilant and discipline their elected members to be true servants of their constituents, to avoid being bribed by moneyed interests, and to hew the line on rule of law, honesty and fairness in government. Katie Porter is one of 73 Democrats who are already there; If we are ever to restore faith in good government we need all elected officials to clean up their acts!
Fight it out in the ring boys and girls until nobody is left standing. A policy of hate destroys from inside - a fate so well-deserved.
The Republican party is definitely at war with America and the American people in all their diversity.
It certainly is no longer a party advocating for "small government", as it intrudes not only on the management of our physical bodies, but our minds, as in the learning of history and science, and our very spirits in our religious or non- religious beliefs. They would control us completely.
Control (power) is precisely their point and their essence. And they are cheap in the worst sense of that word. No money for safety net, but a trillion a year for the mili-industrial complex. So-called "neoliberal" capitalism stinks and, moreover, it controls our government. See Senator Whitehouse's book, CAPTURED.
While the Republican Party eats their young in a futile effort to prove that each groups favored candidate is The true Republican, the rest of the country watches and waits. Congress is a co-equal branch of government and now it is a like a bird attempting to fly with one wing, while pecking away at the damaged wing. This isn't good for the country or for either party. It seems pointless for the never Trumpers to aspire to reform their party. It is time for all Americans to support a 3 party which can embody some of the positions the GOP espoused without the rancor and the anger.
Another co equal branch of our government is the Judicial branch ; May it do it's job!
Angela - I think ranked choice voting would accomplish what you envision without creating an opportunity for the least desirable candidate to prevail due to the vote split. Ranked choice voting moves the most pragmatic candidates to the front - and these people will work hard together to find solutions to our country's problems.
Ranked choice voting is most effective when coupled with open primaries...
What a lovely metafor ! ! Very concise and to the point. . . . Perhpas even a "Parable" worthy of pur attention.
Excellent piece, hopefully the next phase will be extinction.
Thank you. Putting your finger on the pulse of culture being at the heart of this madness opens the discussion for all of us about what we really care about, what we truly believe and also what we fear and to ask, 'is any of this rational?' And if not rational, does it matter to us? I sense within this discussion of culture there is a deep, perhaps even rational fear of the mob, the cruel madness of thugs rushing to stage centre with the noose and the guillotine, leaving us to accept authoritarianism over chaos, although the actuality of the chaos may not be realistic (although last Dec 7th makes many of us wonder). I know I just described an apparent circle; what I don't know is how deep is the resentment, hatred, madness caused by neoliberal policies, to unleash chaos. Is the circle unbroken? Thank you again for sharing your knowledge and steadying opinions.
accountability. now.