Absolutely beautiful essay. Thank you, Professor Reich.
All the more reason to develop a national educational system that nurtures dialogue and autonomy in teachers and students, so that even at an early age, young people learn to recognize and value the strength of a teacher/leader willing to accept or, better yet, invite criticism.
I completely agree with this. However it is literally a pipe dream in this country. Today, as I write this the public schools in Mpls/St. Paul MN are closed due to a teachers strike, going into the 3rd week. (I have a grandson in his senior year in advanced classes, what a s___show this is for him!) These teachers have very legitimate reasons for this strike, in a nutshell, no financial support to educate our citizens. Period. Education is the GOP's new culture war. The destruction of public education started in 1980 with Reagan. Evangelical Christians have long wanted to control what is taught in schools and coveted money from taxpayers to support their religious schools. The SC is on the verge of codifying that in a case before them right now. Education is in the forefront of the new authoritarianism taking over in our states. I don't even live in a red state and you still can't get lawmakers to properly fund education due to the right wing evangelical impact now.
Exactly Claire, my sister teaches in Mpls. Public School system. She spends a large portion of her salary on her curriculum and materials for her students, because of the lack of funding.
MN has always been a great place to raise children because of the quality of education. It’s an uneasy feeling thinking how poorly states without such “high educational standards “ fare in this country!
"...the quality of education...makes it a great place to raise kids, while teachers are giving back part of their salaries to buy materials etc.??????
What's great about that situation? Perhaps it was a great place b/c of quality education, but, face it, it is no longer. Until we quit kidding ourselves by denying reality,( brought to us courtesy of the wrong "rght wingers," there can be no hope for our kids. Even the language has bee put to the service of reality-rejecting wingers. They are not "right." Standards are not high. Propaganda is not reality. The USA is not going to stay in one piece. Right about the time the gas put out by melting permafrost --from the far north and far south-- swirls around the globe, people are going to regret their destructive use of the language. Among other regretful things.
Absolutely, Claire. Having been inoculated against logic, they must do everything they can to prevent susceptibility of others to critical, analytical thought processes. This is why so many of them can tolerate Trump/Putin/etc. to further their washed brains' gospel.
Agreed. Teaching of truthful communication skills requires teachers to be inspired rather than intimidated by their students who question them. Those exhilarating exchanges are what bring us to powerful communal insights.
Oh yes Jeanne. The intimidation and treatment of educators is stunning. I'm a retired high school teacher and I can't imagine the environment teachers are expected to try and educate children in now. Piss poor wages, vigilante tattle on your teacher in Virginia thanks to Youngkin, that is likely to spread to other states. I feel I'm am literally seeing the trashing and crashing of the American educational system.
Absolutely, but the Republicans (and a few Democrats, unfortunately) would never allow that. It would be the end of the GOP (and a few Democrats). Neither their ideologies nor their behaviors would stand up to critical analysis.
Ahhhh, but now we have rapid DNA sequencing and pretty good (and getting better) AI software. I've been saying for a long time, "Tax forms, yes, but let's get full genome sequences for everyone in public office, and everyone running for office." I'll bet that we'll soon have DNA sequence patterns for traits that would be disastrous. :) [Of course, Trump probably doesn't have DNA, so we'll need a way to figure out what to do with that result...] And, the current SCOTUS would never allow such a law, but.....
Yes, dictators are in a "bubble" of their own making, but isn't this also true of millions of Americans who create their own "bubble" by selecting news and information sources that confirm their biases and discounting other different viewpoints? Isn't this a major reason why a bad decision by the voters -election of Trump to the Presidency- occurred in 2016, almost happened again in 2020, and may happen in 2024?
Yes, we all need to develop feedback systems for ourselves. I often tell my students that the best way of learning anything is to talk with people who disagree with them.
Yes, the big irony is that Americans choose stupid sources of information when they have many good sources to choose from. I refer to William L. Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” in which the author remarks on his surprise at how, shortly after the Nazis took over, sophisticated people in Germany were incapable of discerning the truth of things thanks to the government’s domination of the newspapers and the radio. That was understandable in 1933. It’s almost incomprehensible now in the USA, where we can make intelligent choices as to news outlets.
no matter how bad their decisions - none of these dictators are EVER held accountable - still waiting for the DOJ to charge tRump for his many crimes!!
Dee ; Remember his favorite line "you're fired!"? He must have telegraphed to certain people that he would fire or get rid of anyone who got in his way, or messed up his agenda. He installed many bad actors into the judiciary, and important positions, like the Post office. Many of these people are still in our government. This is at least part of the reason we are not seeing justice in our country, IMHO. He and his friends are not above threatening anyone who gets in their way. This is terrorism, and it has happened at many levels.
If we could end the Ukrainian, Yemeni and Palestinians peoples suffering. - I would vote yes on a referendum to send all surviving US presidents and senior staff to tbe Hague. They are all criminals.
I believe I’m a student of life with a open mind and I try to stay nonjudgmental and neutral. A dictatorship makes no sense to me as its the opposite of what I believe. It reflects a complete breakdown of the people . I’m not sure of the dynamics but its a reflection of the vulnerability and weakness of the human mind. We now, not only tolerate criminal behavior and we elect them. Trump did it for me. He is mentally ill on many levels. Check the DSM-5 of mental illnesses and he is in many categories. To name a few, narcissism, megalomaniac, delusions of grandeur, paranoid. I’m still in shock we would elect this despicable human being to lead our country, when in fact he should be institutionalized.
I agree, Ed ; Money corrupts so much, in government, sports, even the medicine people are prescribed, and our drinking water. How many decisions are made with the profit motive in the mix?
Hence the corptocracy under which we live . Little is ever put forth as to the blatant and utter corruption of our government by corporate citizenship. The separation of church and state . A basic tenent of the founding fathers . The churches are empty. The banks, the gambling parlors and now gambling online and advertised hand and hand with national sporting events on t.v.. The new deity is '$' . And it's influence and utter control over our government and elected officials is all but complete . Negating humanistic, peaceful, and high minded national and global goals .
Benjamin R. ;The wealthy ones anyway. Any working class or low income person who voted for tRump was lied to. He was going to get jobs back by making it unprofitable to outsource them. He lifted some of Bernie Sanders' talking points. New evidence shows that tRump was messing with election officials and possibly had some success. I never believed he got 84 million votes, or whatever number he supposedly got. I wait to see if our justice department gets to the bottom of this, and actually does its job to serve justice!
Don't forget the power of Faux -tv and decades of radio propaganda. I keep wondering: Why are the people who work to bring down the nation and help the plutocrats suck up all the wealth, why are they called "the Right."
As long as any of 45's (I never say his curse of a name)appointed top level officials are still in place, we can expect no justice--neither from Justice, nor any upper level department of govt. run by 45's appointed and anointed ppl.
"After all, American democracy stopped Trump from doing even more damage than he did."
Yes, but it also elected him in the first place. Democracies can fail when ordinary people vote against their economic interests. We have borne witness to a 40 year trajectory of this, starting with Reagan and culminating in Trump.
But yes, as Churchill observed, "Democracy is the worst system, except for all the others." And it tends to work best when voters vote their wallets. Does anyone doubt Boris Johnson would dissolve the British National Health Service if he could, thereby greatly enriching his already rich friends? But the NHS, with all its flaws, is regarded as a national treasure. Johnson would be out of office in a heartbeat if he so much as tried.
This is where Marx made a big mistake, the tragic results of which are being played out in Ukraine. Marx assumed that the proletariat would remain powerless unless it rose up against its bourgeois oppressor in violent revolution. The results of such revolution over a century ago are in plain sight: Putin on the one hand, Ayn Rand (with her progeny Reagan, Friedman, and Trump) on the other.
While it is true that dictators (and CEOs! - I have also witnessed terrible CEO decision-making) often act on limited information, democracies can also falter because of limited information. About two weeks before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Senator Sanders gave an excellent account of US complicity, going all the way back to Secretary of Defense William Perry in 1997. Perry was a staunch supporter of NATO, and strongly advocated giving NATO membership to East European countries, including Ukraine. He succeeded with Hungary and Poland. So, the US reneged on the solemn promise it made to Gorbachev in 1989 that, if the USSR pulled out of Germany, and Germans were given NATO membership, NATO would not expand one inch further east.
What is this NATO membership for, exactly? Finland (which actually borders on Russia), Switzerland, and Austria are all prosperous democracies which are not part of NATO.
As for Ukrainian membership of NATO, this always has been regarded as an absolute red line by the Russian elite - not just Putin. And who can blame them? After all, the concept of spheres of influence was practically invented by the US in the form of the Monroe doctrine. As Sanders put it, can anyone believe that if Mexico went communist the US would just say "Oh, Mexico is a sovereign nation with the right to do whatever they want"?
Was this wonderful speech reported in the major news outlets in this country? Of course not, that would amount to information in a democracy. So democracies are far from perfect.
As for Russia, realpolitik demands that you don't poke a bear in the eye.
I understand the frustration of President Zelensky, but, to quote again Winston Churchill, in a conversation with President Eisenhower in 1953, "Don't worry about Russia, it will collapse under its own economic weight within 50 years." Well, in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell peacefully. Is it too much to ask for a patient approach to Russia? Eventually, the grim economics of Karl Marx will give way to the enlightened view of Adam Smith, but it will take time.
Meanwhile, we must pay attention to our own democracy.
The "solemn promise" regarding NATO was one person's statement at the beginning of negotiations. It was never written into a treaty or any other agreement.
As for the argument about how the U.S. would react if Mexico went Communist, well, during the Cuban missile crisis, we didn't bomb Cuba to smithereens. And we wouldn't bomb Mexico, either.
There is no justification whatsoever for Putin's brutality. None.
Agreed. And I would ask this: if Russia weren’t deemed to have hostile intent, why would there be a need for NATO in the first place? When you make agreements not to join with other countries you’re negotiating with a bully. How can anyone negotiate with a bully?
I agree that the promise was never written into a treaty, but it was a promise, nonetheless. Reneging on that promise paved the way to Putin. I also agree that there is no justification for Putin's brutality. The point is, it needn't have happened.
Remember Russia also promised not to invade Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons. That promise was written into the Minsk accords. Despite Ukraine's desire to join NATO, it was nowhere close to being permitted to do so. Why the urgency to invade? I think it's pretty clear Russia's full scale invasion was not primarily about NATO. That's Russian propaganda trying to portray itself as the victim. The question then and now is how do we find a path to peace?
This is one reason why the last person one wants as president in a (more or less) democratic political system is a corporate CEO. A corporation is not a democracy. It is an authoritarian system and is the economic version of a political dictatorship. Its function is to maximize shareholder value: A health insurance company's function, for example, is to maximize profits, not provide health care. A government is a service "industry", not a "for profit" enterprise. Milton Friedman was one of the biggest economic quacks of the 20th century with his ideas about the abdication of any responsibility of business enterprise toward the greater society including the environment. A quack with Nobel Prize is still a quack but his ideas worked fine for the "rentier" class in American society but not so much for the rest of us except maybe for pension plans (which are sometimes major stockholders). And Ronald Reagan, the "great communicator" was Friedman's acolyte, a union buster; Donald Trump in sheep's clothing.
In so many cases, it seems, once a Democrat or a socialist starts to make a lot of money, he/she becomes a Republican. I guess it comes with the territory--at least in American society where "noblesse oblige" has historically been mostly a foreign concept.
I have seen many veterans of the US armed forces live under de facto socialism for 20 years, gain a pension and health care at taxpayer expense — and then retire from the military and transform into Reptilians.
In my limited experience, the overwhelming proletarians I have known, aspire to being middle class. It seems to me that hoping for a revolution based on equality of income is futile thanks to the upwardly striving nature of most people.
Then let me ask - let's forget the labels - if you are lower down the on the socioeconomic scale, then how on earth do you advance yourself, materialistically, by voting against you economic interests?
Voting for race, above wallet, is an American tragedy.
While I agree with your thought about autocrats and dictators getting accurate information. I disagree that Trump is not stupid. Anyone who suggests, as he did, that people consume bleach is stupid.
I agree to a point, Jean, but on amassing wealth by bypassing rules and law; he appears to be bright to a point. At that point, his personality and un-subtle-ness become a roadblock.
He wants to be on the top of the mountain.
Unfortunately for us all, he has not the wisdom to cooperate with others, while he always appears to be a "climber." And the people who own everything, won't tolerate an obvious, and clumsy, climber. They seem to prefer to work with ppl who have the sense to judiciously give, along with their "take."
Seems to me that China and Russia have every incentive - geopolitically to challenge US power. Ukraine is just a first step. Look at the groundwork done in Saudi Arabia and UAE - who weren't returning Biden's calls. Countries like those don't just ignore the POTUS. Russia - and to a lesser extent China are being economically, socially and militarily targetted by the US government.
We are desperately trying to hold onto our place in a world with a single super-power. Russia has just shoen how hollow that title and position is. While we xontinue to sell arms to Saudi Arabia who has been responsible for the deaths of over 300000 Yemeni's from all walks of life. We continue to shield the Israeli government while they continue the aparteid project of a Jewish nation - having killed so many Palestinians - we dont even have decent estimates.
As our economy is sent into a massive inflation due to energy price increases. This will further degrade our governments ability to legislate - which it can all ready barely do.
This invasion is in line with larger Russian geopolitical interests and stems in part with the inability of the US to truly bring the Russia givernment and people into the capitalist block after the socialist / solviet block fell. And what has started and is coming is in part the blowback.
Besides the flawed psychological makeup of Putin, Russia has an economy the size of Texas and lacks the former Soviet size and power. More likely it will exhaust itself, and implode like the Soviet Union. It can't afford to compete. The Saudis have been undermining our economy since 1973. The Saudis control OPEC, the "market maker" for the price of oil internationally by fixing output. The Saudis own the largest oil refineries in the US and control a number of US oil producers.
Were WERE energy independent during the Obama administration, but Big Oil and oil states were able to pass permission to sell US oil on the world market. This should be a matter of national security.
On April 12, 2020, under pressure from Trump, the world’s biggest oil-producing nations outside the United States agreed to the largest production cut ever negotiated.
OPEC, Russia and other allied producers slashed production by 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd), or about 10% of global output. Half that volume came from cuts of 2.5 million bpd each by Saudi Arabia and Russia, whose budgets depend on high oil-and-gas revenues.
This was done because the dramatic reduction in demand caused by the pandemic reduced gasoline prices to the point where it was hurting American Oil company profits.
To protect those oil companies, the failed former president essentially extorted the Saudis to cut production.
I believe (I need to be fact checked on this point) that the deal does not expire until next month.
In the meantime American Oil companies have achieved record, multi-billion profits. While no president is responsible for the price of gasoline at the pump, largely a function of supply, demand and corporate greed, the disgraced former guy went to enormous length to cut supply.
Once demand was restored, we were stuck with that schmuck’s short-sightedness.
Today, the price of oil dropped by over 12% and the stock market began its recovery, with the Dow rising 631 points.
NYT headline “World shares rise, oil falls 13% on diplomacy, OPEC nation's pledge” is consistent with my understanding that Trump’s deal is expiring and OPEC will ramp up production.
Neither are the people who electrocute or use drugs to kill ppl. The USA is certainly not a nice place with nice people. If Prez 45 had had the power of the Saudi leader, just imagine the tractor-load problems the US wld have..
I >really< appreciate the term "agitprop" - it's so appropriately Orwellian. Presumably, it means "agitation propaganda," or propaganda intended to stir agitation. Provocative utter BS: "Fake news," "Stop the steal," "the radical left," "the socialists," "murderers, rapists, & drug dealers," etc.
I think I'd have to tweak that slightly: Trump is stupid AND ignorant. Putin is ignorant, but I'd say the jury is still out on "stupid." Trump is incapable of learning. Putin is often unwilling to learn.
You forgot "the rest of the story." Putin trained as a sycophant. That's how he became President. He kissed Boris Yeltsin's butt. Putin was the best ass-kisser in the Kremlin. The obsequious one is always the dangerous one. Be sure that he was talked about around the water cooler in the office. People usually don't confront the obsequious one, they just talk about him/her. I suppose a leader can convince themself of their lies but not without becomingHomer paranoid in the process. Maybe we outta ask Homer or Dante or our founding fathers what they think about Trump or Putin. No! The story to be told is the story St Augustine told. Didn't he talk about "original sin." Something got left behind with the coming of science and statistics, something basic to survival, something evolution gave us long before Augustine or any religion, something the hunter-gatherer practiced, and we forgot with the coming of a surplus. Dr Reich is killing himself trying to show us mathematically how we have become less egalitarian, not egalitarian, more unequal. He is doing one hell of a job. I haven't been inside a church in thirty years save for a wedding or a funeral. Yet reading and listening to Dr Reich has made me think of Augustine and "original sin." Go figure? Homer, Dante, Augustine, Mr. Hunter-gatherer, Dr Reich, will we survive? Help!
Speaking of missing feedback, no one is comparing Putin’s attack on Ukraine with the Bush 2 administration’s attack on Iraq. Both have been unwise “shock and awe” bullying of less powerful countries with the intention of regime change. In both cases the attacking countries media were fed a diet of manufactured lies which they did little to fact check or contest. In our self-satisfied demonizing of Putin we neglect to note that our “war” on Iraq resulted in the death of well over 500,000 men, women and children, WASTED over 2 TRILLION dollars, and completely destabilized a relatively advanced nation which is now in ruins and abandoned to infighting between ethnic factions. Whatever their many sins, Saddam Hussein and the Bath Party were managing to hold in check the deadly ethnic rivalries (which experts had known about for decades) and had evolved the most advanced Arab nation in the middle east. We need to realize that a supposedly civilized nation like ours can be whipped into a war frenzy and then reach half way around the world to beat up a nation which never was a threat to the US.
But it certainly enriched the military arms corporations. And the USA is probably going to be reduced to political --and sometimes complicated by ethnic--factions warring from Maine to Alaska.
The saving grace? The melting Arctic will wipe us all out about the time the next Civil War gets serious. . If you haven't see the films and photos....you are missing the real BIG story. Makes Ukraine look like a mosquito bite.
When I was in school, college, and (to a lesser degree) graduate school, I learned to question everything I heard, saw, read. I did not have access to television and there was no internet, nothing like it. However, college faculty insisted that we keep informed about current events and discuss them inside class and out. We were also required to take a solid battery of courses in literature, the arts, humanities, philosophy and ethics, and history and political science. It was a solid liberal arts college with a solid program in humanities and history...and that was true irrespective of a student's major. The motto of the college (Willamette Univ, Salem, Oregon) was "Non nobis solum nati sumus" (Not unto ourselves alone are we born) and we lived it. There was no fudging and, if you discovered you didn't want a liberal arts education but were aiming for a glorified technical computer training institute, why, you transferred. (There were not such things as personal computers but they were on the horizon.) None (or very few of us) became rich or powerful or famous but that was not the aim of the school. My graduate school experience (UCLA) was very different because the individual faculty members were in the game for self-advancement and positions of wealth and power and they were not shy about sacrificing students to their own cause. My point is that many of the problems we are facing now are due to serious defects in the educational system. Under the newer system, the objective of education is not so much to learn about the world and each other and how to improve the situation for everyone, that is, to assess what is true and seek the truth in order to make the best possible (and most beneficial) decisions for oneself--and for others, but, rather, to seek advancement and gain, everyone else being conceived not as a worthy individual by birth but as a competitor to be beaten down and deprived of the smallest measure of a worthy and decent life. The humanities as I knew them are essentially dead as the race to the top has replaced concern for others or for the environment or for the beauty of playing the French horn or cello or the skill in painting a new and wondrous seascape or singing an aria from La BOheme. Life for all of us has gotten poorer, much poorer, and we end up either trying to hang on to what we remember of the past and write it down for some future generation who cares and gives a damn or going with the flow and burying concerns about who we were and who we are now. We care little or anything for the world and the state of its people at any given moment. Once in a while a crisis raises our attention for a brief time but, well, we don't have the interest in focusing on anything long term or seeing it through to a better posting. The artists and writers and musicians among us have weathered storms better than we have and will continue to do so but not all of them have relinquished the competitive spirit to seek something better and more fulfilling. I believe this all traces back to parents and schools which have generally lacked the will to make a solid liberal arts background the foundation of any program for any student at any level. And of course this applies to students not aiming for college but preparing for a full and rich life that includes more than work and a bond with a computer instead of with other people.
We also can't have nice things w/o a stable home life for all kids, with a parent at home to give day by day guidance. Notice how the degradation of civil society has occurred since many women found social approval for leaving the kids and going to work for "fulfillment" or the yearly trip to theme parks or grand vacations. Or whatever. B/c there was money to be made. While some moms always have been forced to leave the kids at home in order to keep body and soul together, now many now do it for "self-fulfillment" or "more stuff."
Children who grow up alone, or tended by paid caretakers,-- many working while their own kids fend for themselves, and who deal mostly with surface issues of safety and feeding--are at a great disadvantage in life. Latchkey kids were once a scandal. Now they are the norm.
Stay w/ me here.......
My dad, who would be 114 this year, worked a day job 9-5, 5 days a week, and spent Saturday earning the grocery $ at another job. My mother didn't want kids, so we raised ourselves, which is how I know what a curse that can be on children who have minimal or no home support, and often, must care for their younger siblings. Talk about the blind, leading the blind. We understand 45. He is ignorant, uneducated, and really smart at activities most of us would not go near.
Survivors learn to survive, but I know few who thrived. There's always an empty place. HOW EMPTY WAS PUTIN'S PLACE. OR 45's? OR THE LIVES OF ANY WHO FIGHT FOR FIRST PLACE, ON TOP OF THE HEAP.
Who raised Prez45, when his dad was out cheating on contracts & collecting rents with a gun, and his mother was too busy socializing to be a mom?
How damaged are this nation's standards? How selfish do we have to become before the over-armed shooters are roaming around murdering people b/c our standards allow war weapons on the streets, and at the same time have no public supported and run mental hospitals or helping facilities for those who have grown up with brittle/inadequate/non-existent lessons in simply being a fully realized human being?
Now, today, when winger governors decide to make every woman have a baby she might not want--for whatever reason she might have--we are going to a sad place.
It's easier, I guess, to criminalize abortions now, than it is to declare every bride has to show blood on the sheets the morning after the wedding. Which might just be the next step, as the US becomes no better than the countries it has declared war on & fought --and cultures it has tried to destroy, on the other side of the world.
Women thought they had "made it." But no, they are given total responsibility for pleasure/accidents/ miscalculation/wanting.
A crew of Repug men in govt. finally figure a way to spoil it for women--and for their men. And to create more lost people, who grow up in poverty, or provide income to people who take them in-- and often that's al l about the money, not the child. Some of these forced birth children are murdered in their cribs, neglected, unfed, unloved. Forced birth has to be a sin against humanity. If it's not, it should be.
The world goes to hell in a handbasket, and too few are taught to give a damn about the things that really matter. Teaching & training the next generations. Giving them the vision to demand a good education in real life. Having the next generations expect and demand a good secondary education. And allowing them to have it w/o going into a lifetime of debt. I would bet millions of students would not have such great debts if a parent had been at home to teach them about money, value, need, obligations, planning for the future. IOW, civilization and culture.
Science already knows how to give them the right and ability not to have children they don't want to train up. And , also, how to have children nature doesn't intend to produce.
Why are children not taught what it means to produce another human being who will need love, attention and teaching. And how important it is to not have them if they are won't have 2 parents and/or someone willing to give almost 2 decades to bring them up properly.
Don't punish the parent(s)--and the child--by forcing women to have babies they don't want--no matter how they come to be conceived.
We thought we had barbarism when our people took heavy duty war weapons onto the streets, but this is barbarism on another scale. The first, the ability to kill multiple innocents in public.The second, to insist on forced births, to produce more grist for the killing mill.
You identified a problem that can afflict anyone who attains a position of power, not only presidents and CEOs, but also governors and legislators. Suddenly, the newly powerful person has all sorts of "friends" coming out of the woodwork, flattering the person and often showering the person with the maximum gifts allowed by law, not because they truly admire him/her, but because they are seeking personal gain. It can go to the person's head, such that he/she starts believing the flattery, believing that he/she is a superior subspecies of human, entitled to special deference. It takes strength of character to resist this, to remain grounded in reality.
As an armchair psychologist, I think this is the case with Kyrsten Sinema. Her Big Money corporate campaign contributors have convinced her that she is a knight in shining armor, Savior of the People, and that by pursuing the policies they propose, she can be a national hero.
When we choose a president, we should examine the way candidates have used the power of positions they already have held.
The reinforcing cycle of decision making within a vacuum isn't new but history does show good and bad precedents for pursuing 'destiny' in the absence of hard information or independent advice eg George Washington had some low points fighting an ultimately successful guerilla war against the British, but Hitler fired his generals in the face of mounting troop losses and died in his bunker.Putin has created his own personality cult but it is based upon much earlier imperial glories under Catherine the Great that still stir Russian national identity.His circle of allies are ex KGB associates, not exactly friends,who have engaged in the asset stripping of the Russian state so there isn't any genuinely independent source of advice available to Putin. Trying to compare the process of democratic checks and balances prevalent in the Western world isn't applicable in countries where personality cults are embedded within the national psyche eg North Korea but as the body count of conscripts rises and living standards plummet in Russia then some sort of strategic retreat based upon consolidating territorial gains for Putin is still a preferable option over nuclear war for the West.
Absolutely beautiful essay. Thank you, Professor Reich.
All the more reason to develop a national educational system that nurtures dialogue and autonomy in teachers and students, so that even at an early age, young people learn to recognize and value the strength of a teacher/leader willing to accept or, better yet, invite criticism.
Critical thinking skills, and truthful communication skills, should be taught -- as part of civic education.
I completely agree with this. However it is literally a pipe dream in this country. Today, as I write this the public schools in Mpls/St. Paul MN are closed due to a teachers strike, going into the 3rd week. (I have a grandson in his senior year in advanced classes, what a s___show this is for him!) These teachers have very legitimate reasons for this strike, in a nutshell, no financial support to educate our citizens. Period. Education is the GOP's new culture war. The destruction of public education started in 1980 with Reagan. Evangelical Christians have long wanted to control what is taught in schools and coveted money from taxpayers to support their religious schools. The SC is on the verge of codifying that in a case before them right now. Education is in the forefront of the new authoritarianism taking over in our states. I don't even live in a red state and you still can't get lawmakers to properly fund education due to the right wing evangelical impact now.
Under capitalism, the education system serves to create good consumers, not good citizens.
Exactly Claire, my sister teaches in Mpls. Public School system. She spends a large portion of her salary on her curriculum and materials for her students, because of the lack of funding.
MN has always been a great place to raise children because of the quality of education. It’s an uneasy feeling thinking how poorly states without such “high educational standards “ fare in this country!
"...the quality of education...makes it a great place to raise kids, while teachers are giving back part of their salaries to buy materials etc.??????
What's great about that situation? Perhaps it was a great place b/c of quality education, but, face it, it is no longer. Until we quit kidding ourselves by denying reality,( brought to us courtesy of the wrong "rght wingers," there can be no hope for our kids. Even the language has bee put to the service of reality-rejecting wingers. They are not "right." Standards are not high. Propaganda is not reality. The USA is not going to stay in one piece. Right about the time the gas put out by melting permafrost --from the far north and far south-- swirls around the globe, people are going to regret their destructive use of the language. Among other regretful things.
Absolutely, Claire. Having been inoculated against logic, they must do everything they can to prevent susceptibility of others to critical, analytical thought processes. This is why so many of them can tolerate Trump/Putin/etc. to further their washed brains' gospel.
Agreed. Teaching of truthful communication skills requires teachers to be inspired rather than intimidated by their students who question them. Those exhilarating exchanges are what bring us to powerful communal insights.
Oh yes Jeanne. The intimidation and treatment of educators is stunning. I'm a retired high school teacher and I can't imagine the environment teachers are expected to try and educate children in now. Piss poor wages, vigilante tattle on your teacher in Virginia thanks to Youngkin, that is likely to spread to other states. I feel I'm am literally seeing the trashing and crashing of the American educational system.
Absolutely, but the Republicans (and a few Democrats, unfortunately) would never allow that. It would be the end of the GOP (and a few Democrats). Neither their ideologies nor their behaviors would stand up to critical analysis.
We need to retrace our steps to the beginning stages of character development.
Quality education necessary for the building of thoughtful, humane, articulate, thoroughly informed, responsible people starts early.
After parents, teachers perform the most important work on the planet.
Ahhhh, but now we have rapid DNA sequencing and pretty good (and getting better) AI software. I've been saying for a long time, "Tax forms, yes, but let's get full genome sequences for everyone in public office, and everyone running for office." I'll bet that we'll soon have DNA sequence patterns for traits that would be disastrous. :) [Of course, Trump probably doesn't have DNA, so we'll need a way to figure out what to do with that result...] And, the current SCOTUS would never allow such a law, but.....
Yes! I like to say we need to teach people to recognize 'gas-lighting' or just 'crazy'.
Yes, dictators are in a "bubble" of their own making, but isn't this also true of millions of Americans who create their own "bubble" by selecting news and information sources that confirm their biases and discounting other different viewpoints? Isn't this a major reason why a bad decision by the voters -election of Trump to the Presidency- occurred in 2016, almost happened again in 2020, and may happen in 2024?
Yes, we all need to develop feedback systems for ourselves. I often tell my students that the best way of learning anything is to talk with people who disagree with them.
Yes, even speaking to Trumpers... that's how we better hone our arguments against their beliefs.
Yes, the big irony is that Americans choose stupid sources of information when they have many good sources to choose from. I refer to William L. Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” in which the author remarks on his surprise at how, shortly after the Nazis took over, sophisticated people in Germany were incapable of discerning the truth of things thanks to the government’s domination of the newspapers and the radio. That was understandable in 1933. It’s almost incomprehensible now in the USA, where we can make intelligent choices as to news outlets.
But loo how unintelligent so many are in their choice of propaganda over news.
yes.
no matter how bad their decisions - none of these dictators are EVER held accountable - still waiting for the DOJ to charge tRump for his many crimes!!
Dee ; Remember his favorite line "you're fired!"? He must have telegraphed to certain people that he would fire or get rid of anyone who got in his way, or messed up his agenda. He installed many bad actors into the judiciary, and important positions, like the Post office. Many of these people are still in our government. This is at least part of the reason we are not seeing justice in our country, IMHO. He and his friends are not above threatening anyone who gets in their way. This is terrorism, and it has happened at many levels.
If we could end the Ukrainian, Yemeni and Palestinians peoples suffering. - I would vote yes on a referendum to send all surviving US presidents and senior staff to tbe Hague. They are all criminals.
Patients dear, history has proven none of these prior leaders have met an end that we would find enjoyable
Perhaps Dr Reich's best offering to date. (Or at least it speaks powerfully to me.) I'll be taking some time to cogitate a bit on this one!
I believe I’m a student of life with a open mind and I try to stay nonjudgmental and neutral. A dictatorship makes no sense to me as its the opposite of what I believe. It reflects a complete breakdown of the people . I’m not sure of the dynamics but its a reflection of the vulnerability and weakness of the human mind. We now, not only tolerate criminal behavior and we elect them. Trump did it for me. He is mentally ill on many levels. Check the DSM-5 of mental illnesses and he is in many categories. To name a few, narcissism, megalomaniac, delusions of grandeur, paranoid. I’m still in shock we would elect this despicable human being to lead our country, when in fact he should be institutionalized.
Money got him into power, because certain people knew he would raid our treasury for them.
Isn’t that sad? Actually criminal
If it isn't it should be, It should be punished as well.
I agree, Ed ; Money corrupts so much, in government, sports, even the medicine people are prescribed, and our drinking water. How many decisions are made with the profit motive in the mix?
Hence the corptocracy under which we live . Little is ever put forth as to the blatant and utter corruption of our government by corporate citizenship. The separation of church and state . A basic tenent of the founding fathers . The churches are empty. The banks, the gambling parlors and now gambling online and advertised hand and hand with national sporting events on t.v.. The new deity is '$' . And it's influence and utter control over our government and elected officials is all but complete . Negating humanistic, peaceful, and high minded national and global goals .
Much like USA in the 1920s, before the last big depression. Robt. would know: wasn't Prohibition one of the lead-ins to that depression?
@Laurie. All of them?
Benjamin R. ;The wealthy ones anyway. Any working class or low income person who voted for tRump was lied to. He was going to get jobs back by making it unprofitable to outsource them. He lifted some of Bernie Sanders' talking points. New evidence shows that tRump was messing with election officials and possibly had some success. I never believed he got 84 million votes, or whatever number he supposedly got. I wait to see if our justice department gets to the bottom of this, and actually does its job to serve justice!
Don't forget the power of Faux -tv and decades of radio propaganda. I keep wondering: Why are the people who work to bring down the nation and help the plutocrats suck up all the wealth, why are they called "the Right."
As long as any of 45's (I never say his curse of a name)appointed top level officials are still in place, we can expect no justice--neither from Justice, nor any upper level department of govt. run by 45's appointed and anointed ppl.
Money talks and trump, being the quintessential shill that he most definitely is, I can believe such accusations.
We are living in an anarchic political system.
"After all, American democracy stopped Trump from doing even more damage than he did."
Yes, but it also elected him in the first place. Democracies can fail when ordinary people vote against their economic interests. We have borne witness to a 40 year trajectory of this, starting with Reagan and culminating in Trump.
But yes, as Churchill observed, "Democracy is the worst system, except for all the others." And it tends to work best when voters vote their wallets. Does anyone doubt Boris Johnson would dissolve the British National Health Service if he could, thereby greatly enriching his already rich friends? But the NHS, with all its flaws, is regarded as a national treasure. Johnson would be out of office in a heartbeat if he so much as tried.
This is where Marx made a big mistake, the tragic results of which are being played out in Ukraine. Marx assumed that the proletariat would remain powerless unless it rose up against its bourgeois oppressor in violent revolution. The results of such revolution over a century ago are in plain sight: Putin on the one hand, Ayn Rand (with her progeny Reagan, Friedman, and Trump) on the other.
While it is true that dictators (and CEOs! - I have also witnessed terrible CEO decision-making) often act on limited information, democracies can also falter because of limited information. About two weeks before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Senator Sanders gave an excellent account of US complicity, going all the way back to Secretary of Defense William Perry in 1997. Perry was a staunch supporter of NATO, and strongly advocated giving NATO membership to East European countries, including Ukraine. He succeeded with Hungary and Poland. So, the US reneged on the solemn promise it made to Gorbachev in 1989 that, if the USSR pulled out of Germany, and Germans were given NATO membership, NATO would not expand one inch further east.
What is this NATO membership for, exactly? Finland (which actually borders on Russia), Switzerland, and Austria are all prosperous democracies which are not part of NATO.
As for Ukrainian membership of NATO, this always has been regarded as an absolute red line by the Russian elite - not just Putin. And who can blame them? After all, the concept of spheres of influence was practically invented by the US in the form of the Monroe doctrine. As Sanders put it, can anyone believe that if Mexico went communist the US would just say "Oh, Mexico is a sovereign nation with the right to do whatever they want"?
Was this wonderful speech reported in the major news outlets in this country? Of course not, that would amount to information in a democracy. So democracies are far from perfect.
As for Russia, realpolitik demands that you don't poke a bear in the eye.
I understand the frustration of President Zelensky, but, to quote again Winston Churchill, in a conversation with President Eisenhower in 1953, "Don't worry about Russia, it will collapse under its own economic weight within 50 years." Well, in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell peacefully. Is it too much to ask for a patient approach to Russia? Eventually, the grim economics of Karl Marx will give way to the enlightened view of Adam Smith, but it will take time.
Meanwhile, we must pay attention to our own democracy.
The "solemn promise" regarding NATO was one person's statement at the beginning of negotiations. It was never written into a treaty or any other agreement.
As for the argument about how the U.S. would react if Mexico went Communist, well, during the Cuban missile crisis, we didn't bomb Cuba to smithereens. And we wouldn't bomb Mexico, either.
There is no justification whatsoever for Putin's brutality. None.
Agreed. And I would ask this: if Russia weren’t deemed to have hostile intent, why would there be a need for NATO in the first place? When you make agreements not to join with other countries you’re negotiating with a bully. How can anyone negotiate with a bully?
I agree that the promise was never written into a treaty, but it was a promise, nonetheless. Reneging on that promise paved the way to Putin. I also agree that there is no justification for Putin's brutality. The point is, it needn't have happened.
Remember Russia also promised not to invade Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons. That promise was written into the Minsk accords. Despite Ukraine's desire to join NATO, it was nowhere close to being permitted to do so. Why the urgency to invade? I think it's pretty clear Russia's full scale invasion was not primarily about NATO. That's Russian propaganda trying to portray itself as the victim. The question then and now is how do we find a path to peace?
Absolutely agree.
Amen
I remain convinced the Russian invasion of Ukraine is about China's desired Taiwan annexation
No, we did not elect Trump. Remember?
Thank you, Martha. That needs to be said over and over.
This is one reason why the last person one wants as president in a (more or less) democratic political system is a corporate CEO. A corporation is not a democracy. It is an authoritarian system and is the economic version of a political dictatorship. Its function is to maximize shareholder value: A health insurance company's function, for example, is to maximize profits, not provide health care. A government is a service "industry", not a "for profit" enterprise. Milton Friedman was one of the biggest economic quacks of the 20th century with his ideas about the abdication of any responsibility of business enterprise toward the greater society including the environment. A quack with Nobel Prize is still a quack but his ideas worked fine for the "rentier" class in American society but not so much for the rest of us except maybe for pension plans (which are sometimes major stockholders). And Ronald Reagan, the "great communicator" was Friedman's acolyte, a union buster; Donald Trump in sheep's clothing.
In so many cases, it seems, once a Democrat or a socialist starts to make a lot of money, he/she becomes a Republican. I guess it comes with the territory--at least in American society where "noblesse oblige" has historically been mostly a foreign concept.
I have seen many veterans of the US armed forces live under de facto socialism for 20 years, gain a pension and health care at taxpayer expense — and then retire from the military and transform into Reptilians.
Here’s a question for us all to ponder, Michael: is the electoral college democratic?
Not in the least!
In my limited experience, the overwhelming proletarians I have known, aspire to being middle class. It seems to me that hoping for a revolution based on equality of income is futile thanks to the upwardly striving nature of most people.
Then let me ask - let's forget the labels - if you are lower down the on the socioeconomic scale, then how on earth do you advance yourself, materialistically, by voting against you economic interests?
Voting for race, above wallet, is an American tragedy.
Football Kultur is the answer. Competition is prized over creativity in the USA.
Yes: We must pay attention to our democracy and voting access. The QOP may still accomplish much more damage to our nation in the mid-terms
While I agree with your thought about autocrats and dictators getting accurate information. I disagree that Trump is not stupid. Anyone who suggests, as he did, that people consume bleach is stupid.
I agree to a point, Jean, but on amassing wealth by bypassing rules and law; he appears to be bright to a point. At that point, his personality and un-subtle-ness become a roadblock.
He wants to be on the top of the mountain.
Unfortunately for us all, he has not the wisdom to cooperate with others, while he always appears to be a "climber." And the people who own everything, won't tolerate an obvious, and clumsy, climber. They seem to prefer to work with ppl who have the sense to judiciously give, along with their "take."
Seems to me that China and Russia have every incentive - geopolitically to challenge US power. Ukraine is just a first step. Look at the groundwork done in Saudi Arabia and UAE - who weren't returning Biden's calls. Countries like those don't just ignore the POTUS. Russia - and to a lesser extent China are being economically, socially and militarily targetted by the US government.
We are desperately trying to hold onto our place in a world with a single super-power. Russia has just shoen how hollow that title and position is. While we xontinue to sell arms to Saudi Arabia who has been responsible for the deaths of over 300000 Yemeni's from all walks of life. We continue to shield the Israeli government while they continue the aparteid project of a Jewish nation - having killed so many Palestinians - we dont even have decent estimates.
As our economy is sent into a massive inflation due to energy price increases. This will further degrade our governments ability to legislate - which it can all ready barely do.
This invasion is in line with larger Russian geopolitical interests and stems in part with the inability of the US to truly bring the Russia givernment and people into the capitalist block after the socialist / solviet block fell. And what has started and is coming is in part the blowback.
Besides the flawed psychological makeup of Putin, Russia has an economy the size of Texas and lacks the former Soviet size and power. More likely it will exhaust itself, and implode like the Soviet Union. It can't afford to compete. The Saudis have been undermining our economy since 1973. The Saudis control OPEC, the "market maker" for the price of oil internationally by fixing output. The Saudis own the largest oil refineries in the US and control a number of US oil producers.
Another reason to become energy independent.
Were WERE energy independent during the Obama administration, but Big Oil and oil states were able to pass permission to sell US oil on the world market. This should be a matter of national security.
On April 12, 2020, under pressure from Trump, the world’s biggest oil-producing nations outside the United States agreed to the largest production cut ever negotiated.
OPEC, Russia and other allied producers slashed production by 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd), or about 10% of global output. Half that volume came from cuts of 2.5 million bpd each by Saudi Arabia and Russia, whose budgets depend on high oil-and-gas revenues.
This was done because the dramatic reduction in demand caused by the pandemic reduced gasoline prices to the point where it was hurting American Oil company profits.
To protect those oil companies, the failed former president essentially extorted the Saudis to cut production.
I believe (I need to be fact checked on this point) that the deal does not expire until next month.
In the meantime American Oil companies have achieved record, multi-billion profits. While no president is responsible for the price of gasoline at the pump, largely a function of supply, demand and corporate greed, the disgraced former guy went to enormous length to cut supply.
Once demand was restored, we were stuck with that schmuck’s short-sightedness.
Today, the price of oil dropped by over 12% and the stock market began its recovery, with the Dow rising 631 points.
NYT headline “World shares rise, oil falls 13% on diplomacy, OPEC nation's pledge” is consistent with my understanding that Trump’s deal is expiring and OPEC will ramp up production.
Send the to the editorial sections of every newspaper in the country. Please.
The Saudi leader recently had 81 people beheaded in one day. Not a nice person!
Neither are the people who electrocute or use drugs to kill ppl. The USA is certainly not a nice place with nice people. If Prez 45 had had the power of the Saudi leader, just imagine the tractor-load problems the US wld have..
September eleven has Saudi fingerprints as well. Yemeni issue alone is enough for me to want a curb to Saudi leadership.
I >really< appreciate the term "agitprop" - it's so appropriately Orwellian. Presumably, it means "agitation propaganda," or propaganda intended to stir agitation. Provocative utter BS: "Fake news," "Stop the steal," "the radical left," "the socialists," "murderers, rapists, & drug dealers," etc.
Wonderful essay... I dare to disagree on one point—Trump IS stupid!
I think I'd have to tweak that slightly: Trump is stupid AND ignorant. Putin is ignorant, but I'd say the jury is still out on "stupid." Trump is incapable of learning. Putin is often unwilling to learn.
Or am I missing something?
I agree.
You forgot "the rest of the story." Putin trained as a sycophant. That's how he became President. He kissed Boris Yeltsin's butt. Putin was the best ass-kisser in the Kremlin. The obsequious one is always the dangerous one. Be sure that he was talked about around the water cooler in the office. People usually don't confront the obsequious one, they just talk about him/her. I suppose a leader can convince themself of their lies but not without becomingHomer paranoid in the process. Maybe we outta ask Homer or Dante or our founding fathers what they think about Trump or Putin. No! The story to be told is the story St Augustine told. Didn't he talk about "original sin." Something got left behind with the coming of science and statistics, something basic to survival, something evolution gave us long before Augustine or any religion, something the hunter-gatherer practiced, and we forgot with the coming of a surplus. Dr Reich is killing himself trying to show us mathematically how we have become less egalitarian, not egalitarian, more unequal. He is doing one hell of a job. I haven't been inside a church in thirty years save for a wedding or a funeral. Yet reading and listening to Dr Reich has made me think of Augustine and "original sin." Go figure? Homer, Dante, Augustine, Mr. Hunter-gatherer, Dr Reich, will we survive? Help!
Hi Robert,
Speaking of missing feedback, no one is comparing Putin’s attack on Ukraine with the Bush 2 administration’s attack on Iraq. Both have been unwise “shock and awe” bullying of less powerful countries with the intention of regime change. In both cases the attacking countries media were fed a diet of manufactured lies which they did little to fact check or contest. In our self-satisfied demonizing of Putin we neglect to note that our “war” on Iraq resulted in the death of well over 500,000 men, women and children, WASTED over 2 TRILLION dollars, and completely destabilized a relatively advanced nation which is now in ruins and abandoned to infighting between ethnic factions. Whatever their many sins, Saddam Hussein and the Bath Party were managing to hold in check the deadly ethnic rivalries (which experts had known about for decades) and had evolved the most advanced Arab nation in the middle east. We need to realize that a supposedly civilized nation like ours can be whipped into a war frenzy and then reach half way around the world to beat up a nation which never was a threat to the US.
John Spock
But it certainly enriched the military arms corporations. And the USA is probably going to be reduced to political --and sometimes complicated by ethnic--factions warring from Maine to Alaska.
The saving grace? The melting Arctic will wipe us all out about the time the next Civil War gets serious. . If you haven't see the films and photos....you are missing the real BIG story. Makes Ukraine look like a mosquito bite.
When I was in school, college, and (to a lesser degree) graduate school, I learned to question everything I heard, saw, read. I did not have access to television and there was no internet, nothing like it. However, college faculty insisted that we keep informed about current events and discuss them inside class and out. We were also required to take a solid battery of courses in literature, the arts, humanities, philosophy and ethics, and history and political science. It was a solid liberal arts college with a solid program in humanities and history...and that was true irrespective of a student's major. The motto of the college (Willamette Univ, Salem, Oregon) was "Non nobis solum nati sumus" (Not unto ourselves alone are we born) and we lived it. There was no fudging and, if you discovered you didn't want a liberal arts education but were aiming for a glorified technical computer training institute, why, you transferred. (There were not such things as personal computers but they were on the horizon.) None (or very few of us) became rich or powerful or famous but that was not the aim of the school. My graduate school experience (UCLA) was very different because the individual faculty members were in the game for self-advancement and positions of wealth and power and they were not shy about sacrificing students to their own cause. My point is that many of the problems we are facing now are due to serious defects in the educational system. Under the newer system, the objective of education is not so much to learn about the world and each other and how to improve the situation for everyone, that is, to assess what is true and seek the truth in order to make the best possible (and most beneficial) decisions for oneself--and for others, but, rather, to seek advancement and gain, everyone else being conceived not as a worthy individual by birth but as a competitor to be beaten down and deprived of the smallest measure of a worthy and decent life. The humanities as I knew them are essentially dead as the race to the top has replaced concern for others or for the environment or for the beauty of playing the French horn or cello or the skill in painting a new and wondrous seascape or singing an aria from La BOheme. Life for all of us has gotten poorer, much poorer, and we end up either trying to hang on to what we remember of the past and write it down for some future generation who cares and gives a damn or going with the flow and burying concerns about who we were and who we are now. We care little or anything for the world and the state of its people at any given moment. Once in a while a crisis raises our attention for a brief time but, well, we don't have the interest in focusing on anything long term or seeing it through to a better posting. The artists and writers and musicians among us have weathered storms better than we have and will continue to do so but not all of them have relinquished the competitive spirit to seek something better and more fulfilling. I believe this all traces back to parents and schools which have generally lacked the will to make a solid liberal arts background the foundation of any program for any student at any level. And of course this applies to students not aiming for college but preparing for a full and rich life that includes more than work and a bond with a computer instead of with other people.
👏👏👏👏👏
We also can't have nice things w/o a stable home life for all kids, with a parent at home to give day by day guidance. Notice how the degradation of civil society has occurred since many women found social approval for leaving the kids and going to work for "fulfillment" or the yearly trip to theme parks or grand vacations. Or whatever. B/c there was money to be made. While some moms always have been forced to leave the kids at home in order to keep body and soul together, now many now do it for "self-fulfillment" or "more stuff."
Children who grow up alone, or tended by paid caretakers,-- many working while their own kids fend for themselves, and who deal mostly with surface issues of safety and feeding--are at a great disadvantage in life. Latchkey kids were once a scandal. Now they are the norm.
Stay w/ me here.......
My dad, who would be 114 this year, worked a day job 9-5, 5 days a week, and spent Saturday earning the grocery $ at another job. My mother didn't want kids, so we raised ourselves, which is how I know what a curse that can be on children who have minimal or no home support, and often, must care for their younger siblings. Talk about the blind, leading the blind. We understand 45. He is ignorant, uneducated, and really smart at activities most of us would not go near.
Survivors learn to survive, but I know few who thrived. There's always an empty place. HOW EMPTY WAS PUTIN'S PLACE. OR 45's? OR THE LIVES OF ANY WHO FIGHT FOR FIRST PLACE, ON TOP OF THE HEAP.
Who raised Prez45, when his dad was out cheating on contracts & collecting rents with a gun, and his mother was too busy socializing to be a mom?
How damaged are this nation's standards? How selfish do we have to become before the over-armed shooters are roaming around murdering people b/c our standards allow war weapons on the streets, and at the same time have no public supported and run mental hospitals or helping facilities for those who have grown up with brittle/inadequate/non-existent lessons in simply being a fully realized human being?
Now, today, when winger governors decide to make every woman have a baby she might not want--for whatever reason she might have--we are going to a sad place.
It's easier, I guess, to criminalize abortions now, than it is to declare every bride has to show blood on the sheets the morning after the wedding. Which might just be the next step, as the US becomes no better than the countries it has declared war on & fought --and cultures it has tried to destroy, on the other side of the world.
Women thought they had "made it." But no, they are given total responsibility for pleasure/accidents/ miscalculation/wanting.
A crew of Repug men in govt. finally figure a way to spoil it for women--and for their men. And to create more lost people, who grow up in poverty, or provide income to people who take them in-- and often that's al l about the money, not the child. Some of these forced birth children are murdered in their cribs, neglected, unfed, unloved. Forced birth has to be a sin against humanity. If it's not, it should be.
The world goes to hell in a handbasket, and too few are taught to give a damn about the things that really matter. Teaching & training the next generations. Giving them the vision to demand a good education in real life. Having the next generations expect and demand a good secondary education. And allowing them to have it w/o going into a lifetime of debt. I would bet millions of students would not have such great debts if a parent had been at home to teach them about money, value, need, obligations, planning for the future. IOW, civilization and culture.
Science already knows how to give them the right and ability not to have children they don't want to train up. And , also, how to have children nature doesn't intend to produce.
Why are children not taught what it means to produce another human being who will need love, attention and teaching. And how important it is to not have them if they are won't have 2 parents and/or someone willing to give almost 2 decades to bring them up properly.
Don't punish the parent(s)--and the child--by forcing women to have babies they don't want--no matter how they come to be conceived.
We thought we had barbarism when our people took heavy duty war weapons onto the streets, but this is barbarism on another scale. The first, the ability to kill multiple innocents in public.The second, to insist on forced births, to produce more grist for the killing mill.
The mind boggles.
Thank you - you nailed it once again!
And Trump also had the power to blow up the world. Yet another vital reason he should never be in a position of power again.
Yesssss
You identified a problem that can afflict anyone who attains a position of power, not only presidents and CEOs, but also governors and legislators. Suddenly, the newly powerful person has all sorts of "friends" coming out of the woodwork, flattering the person and often showering the person with the maximum gifts allowed by law, not because they truly admire him/her, but because they are seeking personal gain. It can go to the person's head, such that he/she starts believing the flattery, believing that he/she is a superior subspecies of human, entitled to special deference. It takes strength of character to resist this, to remain grounded in reality.
As an armchair psychologist, I think this is the case with Kyrsten Sinema. Her Big Money corporate campaign contributors have convinced her that she is a knight in shining armor, Savior of the People, and that by pursuing the policies they propose, she can be a national hero.
When we choose a president, we should examine the way candidates have used the power of positions they already have held.
The reinforcing cycle of decision making within a vacuum isn't new but history does show good and bad precedents for pursuing 'destiny' in the absence of hard information or independent advice eg George Washington had some low points fighting an ultimately successful guerilla war against the British, but Hitler fired his generals in the face of mounting troop losses and died in his bunker.Putin has created his own personality cult but it is based upon much earlier imperial glories under Catherine the Great that still stir Russian national identity.His circle of allies are ex KGB associates, not exactly friends,who have engaged in the asset stripping of the Russian state so there isn't any genuinely independent source of advice available to Putin. Trying to compare the process of democratic checks and balances prevalent in the Western world isn't applicable in countries where personality cults are embedded within the national psyche eg North Korea but as the body count of conscripts rises and living standards plummet in Russia then some sort of strategic retreat based upon consolidating territorial gains for Putin is still a preferable option over nuclear war for the West.