Our country has been poisoned, and if we don’t remove the poison and start using the antidote, America may soon be completely unrecognizable as a “free” nation: tag, you’re it!
Biden is already putting the blame on himself for not being able to come to a budget agreement! Like you said Thom, the Reagan, Bush and Trump tax cuts, along with the right wing Iraqi war cost us over 40 trillion dollars, which is more than the national debt. Why is Biden apologizing? Biden needs to be attacking the Republicans for destroying the nation the last 50 years, instead he lets them get away with insurrection by not firing Garland. And the news outlets keeps calling Biden a radical leftist? The progressive Democrats in Congress are about all that's left of the old Democrat party. The rest of the Democrats and the GOP have gone far right into fascist land. The right wants Americans to serve them, not them serve America. The right doesn't even have a clue what the purpose of government is for. They are just a bunch of thieves and criminals looting. It wasn't very hard for the rich to get the lemmings to drink the Kool-Aid! Phony religious teachings can sure raise a lot of narcissists, hypocrites, lunatics and angry sadists. It is easy to be destructive and very hard to be constructive. Working towards a Utopia is a dangerous idea and must be banned once the thugs seize control.
The roots of the current madness come from the Evangelical pulpits all over the south and Midwest, preaching division, misogyny, theocracy and barely veiled hatreds. It is a Confederate revival masquerading as religion.
And yes, Garland should have been fired long ago. He does not appear to intend to indict, nor does he appear to have a spine. Trump's lawyers have demanded a meeting with Garland and I suspect he will cave once they start threatening him.
The left needs to start bring crystal clear in who our enemy is. And that enemy is as likely to be a Democratic Law maker as a GOP law maker. The Freedom Caucus/ formerly Tea Party spend more time tearing down moderate GOP than attacking the left. And as a result they are taking over the GOP
The more we obsess on the GOP the less power we are getting from the Democratic party.. It is time we start calling out the Clinton's, Obama's, Biden's for what they are which is NOT progressives or liberal... No, the GOP are not the enemy the NeoLiberal wing of the Dem party is the true enemy in my view.
All the current GOP is the enemy and about half the Democrats don't like progressives, in my humble opinion. "The GOP is the party of death". If you would Google that you will find a lot of facts. Thanks to Thom Hartman.
BJ - But you are not going to win any GOP voters or law makers over to your way of thinking. You can win Dem Voters and law makers to your way of thinking if you focus on them on the not the GOP... That is my point.
The Tea Party did not obsess with the Dems to take power they focused on getting rid of moderate GOP leaders.
That is what us Liberals should be focused on. Getting rid of Bidens and Pelosi's.
So true... It is time that the left in this country focus on taking out the leadership and funders of the Democratic party. The same way the Tea Party did to the moderates in the GOP... The voter support is there. The donor class wont like it but the voters will..
A good friend of mine described my son's estrangement of me which is generated by my daughter-in-law as the 'drip, drip, drip of the poison' that my daughter-in-law feeds my son about me. Same thing. I love both my son and my daughter-in-law (she has issues and is insecure in the relationship). I pray for them every day that they may feel God's love and peace - just like my mom taught me to pray for loved ones. But fear is at the heart of my daughter-in-law's poison; just like fear is in the heart of these manipulative oligarchs and their politician pawns. They are afraid of losing, of being humbled. False Evidence Appearing Real. William James wrote a great book on The Sermon on the Mount; it's all about humbling yourself. Check it out!
I believe you're correctly interpreting what's happening on a smaller scale in your family with what's happening on a larger scale in society in general. Sounds like a good book; published in 1882, so should be available in the public domain, or at least at a reasonable price.
There is something productive one can do RIGHT NOW to begin to roll back the Bellotti decision and its voluminous bretheren. And that is to encourage your member of the House to co-sign House Joint Resolution 54 and to encourage one or both of your senators to introduce its companion in the Senate. HJ Res 54 is a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn Bellotti and the other SCOTUS decisions that have poisoned what democracy we ever did have. If your state has the initiative process, you can create a citizens' group to write an initiative/referendum, get the wording approved by the state and begin to gather signatures to put it on the ballot or send it to the legislature in your state. The best language for an initiative would be either HJ Res 54 or the Washington State Initiative 735, which passed statewide in 2016 with a 62.8% majority. Nothing less is functional. Nothing less will take the club out of the hands of the corrupt politicians on the Supreme Court. Nothing less will put us on a path to turn our corporate dominated govt. into a reasonable semblance of a humanly democratic republic.
Riiight, sure. Shoot for the stars - let's just snap fingers and get 3/4 of the states to pass a constitutional amendment. Easy Peasy, and a much better strategy than pursuing a mere majority vote in congress to change labor laws, voting laws, and the size and term of Supreme Court seats.
All of which is subject to rulings by this and future Supreme Courts. Term of service for SCOTUS justices? -- Great! But you're right back where you started; that requires a constitutional amendment. And all of that is subject to the domination of the official political structure by BIG MONEY. IMO, we need fundamental change. And that means getting at the root causes of this country's long standing slide away from democracy and toward top-down control.
I never said that I didn't like the idea of term limits. But as the author of the article you posted acknowledges, lifetime tenure is written into the Constitution. Changing that will require a Constitutional Amendment.
Thoughtful and thought - provoking. So much so that it inspired me to read the ballotti case again. It's a very interesting decision, especially in terms of how the justices stack up. The liberal side's dissent is written by whizzer white, who on so many other issues showed a much more conservative side. And then there's this additional dissent by Rehnquist - fascinating in that he goes directly against this whole concept that non-media companies enjoy any kind of first amendment protection that seriously jeopardizes a states ability to regulate its political donations. So here you have the godfather of the modern right wing view of constitutional law saying the entire premise for citizens United is bunk.
Especially back in 70s we can view rhenquists's most cherished concerns as being anchored in states rights, which includes abilities of states to regulate as they see fit.
Very fascinating issues raised in the decisions tie to a necessity under the 14th amendment of dealing at base with the exercise of "liberty"..... of course speaking freely is an essential part of tge exercise and liberty, but there is this recognition that with an association of people (like a corporation) that if its corporate purposes don't include saying or publishing news or informing the public / acting as a media outlet or acting as the press... that the association itself doesn't really bring people together to speak. The association brings people together to make money.... not to speak, other than speaking only as a profit-making enterprise.
Fascinating to find this embedded not only in the liberal justices views but also strongly within Rehnquist's dissent.
It's just the opinion itself but breaks down and highlights some statements and has links.
It's hard to argue that it's not a clear well-written opinion. It also seems to speak mostly in non-legalese terms, emphasizing reason and experience and drawing important distinctions affecting how far corporate personhood could really go.
It is on our doorsteps and in the back and the front and the middle of our thoughts and our lives.
It is incredibly distressing and unnerving to know how far this poison has come into our society. You’ve listed a number of its favorite catalysts people who have a toxic and caustic effect on our planet our health and yes our morale.
These are the ones who cause the most concern and have an ability to make people feel badly and question good and positive choices they might have made or are making.
Take Biden , his exposure to the toxicity of the liars for McCarthy group.
The strain is taking its toll on the President .
Who went from feeling sure that the Debt ceiling was a separate issue from the budget making the crooked Magas wanted to impose on us.
He now has been needled into questioning his own beliefs .
Tell them what Robert Reich told us this morning. Just do your job Mr President and pay whats due .
No legislative add ons .
created by hostage taking Republicans. Mc Carthy:
Retrieve the tax money you allow the wealthiest Americans .
Love you Thom but you depress me And you can't help it that's how things are. I don't have much hope for this country unless President Biden can persuade Republicans to vote for him to save democracy.. I am much afraid. that the ballot box. will not be available? for millions of Democrats. And thereby goes the democracy.
I also experienced this litany of "The Takeover," as accomplished, as overwhelming. It seems like there's a fascist backstop for every possible escape.
American fascists have cleverly sucked in American leftists and progressives, under the guise of anti militarism, anti corporatism, anti colonialism witness their "calls for peace and abandoning Ukraine"
It's a clever ploy, Hitler used it, find issues that you can exploit amongst the population, especially among the opposition, then bait and switch. People don't seem to have critical reasoning skills, and instead of eating just a slice of a pie, gobble down the whole think,toxins and all.
In fact that is how Kristen Sinema wound up in the Senate. Her "pro environment" stance gave her the facade of being an environmentalist, which she abandoned upon getting elected. Hopeful progressives and leftists are so easily fooled, they see what they want to see. Unwilling to draw aside the curtain.
How is it that the left is do poorly organized. I mean getting hollywood to write scripts that glorify cops and villianize labor, getting most of the evangelical movement to push a pro Rich people agenda over the teachings of Christ and getting their own people in the courts... And liberals can't even get Universal Health Care passed despite 75% approval with voters. Seriously, do we even have an organized left in this country?
We had a gilded age where Rockefeller and JP Morgan effectively controlled both parties. We have another gilded age, and Democratic Party money has been focused on technology and financial sectors at national level. There are a million poor in the rio grande valley and no party wants them even though this could mean capturing the state of Texas. The problem with the dems and 2 party system is well-known and well-documented but not on outlets like msnbc.
I said this before here I live in New York - 17, which is the Ground Zero of democratic party failure where we traded a gay, green new deal, black man for the head fundraiser of the republican state campaign committee in the last election. A massive disaster that mainstream media tells you was a successful outcome.
And it was a successful outcome, but only for the media, which gets all the profits from all the donations, and all the money flowing into the Democratic Party as well as GOP.
Marc S... What a night mare... We need organize.. I love posting on the Hartmann report but if it does not lead to organizing activity it will continue this way.
Poison it is. Reagan kicked it off in 1980, then came FOX in '86, and Limbaugh and his ilk did the rest starting in 1988. That's 43 years of non-stop "hate the government" with no mention that WE are the government. They tried and convicted our democracy. They will execute it if we let them.
I still hope that it's their party that dies. Any decent conservative out there should know they need a fresh start with a new image and platform.
Every time I hear someone start to abuse the word government, I remind them WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT. I talk about the politicians I have interacted with from my community and state. They are us. Our current county clerk is inviting everyone to come see how she receives ballots and counts the elections. Bless her for trying to counteract the poison.
“The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.”
But the primary channel of public information is not the TV station, radio station, newspaper, or social media. The primary and most influential channel is the channel which predisposes the minds of children to let a teacher/leader/authority direct their thinking and influence their beliefs about their world. The subliminal message comes through loud and clear for most; do not rely on your own perceptions, processes, or observations; pay attention to the people appointed or officially approved by the state. Be good followers and compliant, obedient, and passive citizens who select the single correct choice on the multiple-choice questions and who do not question authority.
When that conditioning is completed, no more force or coercion is necessary. The happy graduates will take the prescribed path and buy the products, party line, and propaganda of the people who exhibit the most strength, power, control, and influence. They have been the willing and even enthusiastic subjects of Fascism 101 and Authoritarianism 101. We must all learn how to think, and the way to think is to sit quietly while we receive facts, information, and most importantly commands on how to behave, conform, follow instructions, maintain order, compete for favor, and punish those who disrupt. We must become “educated”, rather than to develop as individuals and scholars and scientists in search of our own personal knowledge and truth. Educated people receive rewards and recognition and they do not rock the boat or question the legitimacy of the people or institutions who gave them their diplomas and degrees. That poison was with us for a full century before the things listed and that is what enabled these many subsequent lethal items.
All political media right now is focused on debt ceiling negotiations - something presumably not taught in any schools, but on people's minds because of pervasive media dominating what's on people's minds.
The problem with education being more of the fact that curricula has been shifted dramatically to take account of vocational interests and corporate interests, and lacks the kind of emphasis on traditional learning, the classics, humanism and critical thinking. But even elementary schools in my district, teach more of that than you're gonna find in any mainstream media outlet that is absorbed constantly into adult minds. Even the well-educated (well-schooled) today come off as bumbling fools only partially because they have no training in logic, reasoning or critical thinking. The other critical component is how they take all these media narratives as factual when so much of it is comically wrong.
Having had the opportunity to sit and watch all of the impeachment hearings and having seen what actually goes on in many of the congressional committees.... is it obvious that Republicans aren't there to do anything legislative - they're only there to make Fox News clips. So they come in with a media apparatus, and they create media that's really all they're doing in congress while Democrats seem to have no media strategy. And so while Trump is called out by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard ans "the first media created pres" the democrats seem to have no viable media strategy, spend money on media foolishly, and try to play politics the way it was played 30 years ago .
1. I have not attacked the “public education system”. We do not have an education system. We have controlled chaos. The idea of an “education system” is an oxymoron and a fantasy. Systemized education is something much different from anything that can legitimately be called education within a democratic system, regardless of one’s definition for education. We have many school “systems”, which are anti-democratic by design. They are top-down hierarchies with arbitrary authority as their most prominent feature. The compulsion to study, learn, attend school, or think about what some authority has presented as essential information or knowledge is as undemocratic and fascistic as it gets.
2. Critical thinking, reasoning, and logic are better learned through practice and trial and error. They involve skills, orientations, and attitudes and they cannot be taught as subject matter or identified facts and information. One learns critical thinking skills by thinking, ruminating, contemplating, experiencing conflict and controversy, living with other people in the real world, and observing behavior or reading literature. Traditional schools select and provide the material they have distilled down into Pabulum which is an abstraction for most students and of little personal interest or meaningless most of the time.
3. The Education Week article perfectly illustrates my point. People with a destructive agenda who know squat about education and who wish to undermine or destroy public schools have been able to take over curricula solely because laws requiring attendance insert state government into what should be a matter for scholars, parents, students, and teachers to decide. And no, I have not said that the state has no role or that there should not be oversight, public funding, and federal protections for the civil rights of children who are fully citizens at birth. The state must have a limited role just as it has with religious institutions.
4. A dissertation by Philip Kovacs (2006) asks the question, ”Are Public Schools Worth Saving? If so, By Whom?” His answer is yes, and I agree, although I have a much different take on the question and on how they can be saved. The fact that the questions are being asked is extremely revealing. A book edited by Sandra Mathison & E. Wayne Ross entitled, “Battleground Schools” deals with the same issues, with many highly critical essays which catalogue many profoundly serious chronic problems that have plagued traditional schools for generations. There is a boatload of data and research which school insiders would prefer that you not discover and which is quickly deep-sixed.
5. Your careless use of the word “absurd” brings to mind a couple of books you might want to look for. One is “Growing Up Absurd”, by Goodman. He also wrote “Miseducation and the Community of Scholars”. The other book may be hard to find. The title is, “The Great School Legend”, by Colin Greer. That legend, along with innumerable myths lives on. Schools have created their own mythology to persuade everyone that they provide education and benefit children and society. They have a captive audience which they can drill endlessly with their self-serving message for 12 years and a highly gullible and complicit media which relays their propaganda regularly. You might want to do some research before you pontificate.
I think John Taylor Gatto is (was) a very interesting, thinker and writer, and I think everything you're saying has really been covered by Gotto.
It's not the first time and it's not the only example, but I will point out here... which is that Mr. Gatto's one-sided perspective led him to become a huge Trump supporter and I see one-sided narratives like yours as very similar to those bandied about in right wing misinformation.
In order to attack the schools, you should support people like Trump, Betsy Devoss and other trump associates.
Narratives like this involve faulty generalizations, unrepresentative samples, and a failure to understand or acknowledge much of the great results of our public education system for many decades before neoliberalism took its toll, but even now those of us with family members in excellent public schools or who know excellent public school teachers will find it easy to characterize much of your critique as one-sided to the point of absurdity.
Greer and Goodman preceded Gatto by a few decades and Tolstoy’s “Essays on Education” were ahead of him by nearly a century. I read two of Gattos books and agreed with much of what he said about schooling, which as a two-time NY State teacher of the year, gave him considerable credibility. I discovered his right-wing associations about 20 years ago and no longer followed his writing or activities. I reject libertarianism, anti-government ideology, and anything that is not based on validated, verified, peer-reviewed science. But anyone who is honest with him or herself and knows anything about our schools knows that most children can learn in about two weeks what schools take several months or years to get across.
The books I referred you to are the work of numerous highly respected accomplished authors, scholars, educators, and professionals in fields which directly deal with educational, psychological, sociological, neurological, philosophical, and other disciplines. I could refer you to dozens more. They are among the titans who have excoriated the apologists and cheerleaders for schools who consistently acknowledge the major problems in one breath and then in the next breath gleefully resume their silly happy talk, false promises, and denials of reality. I have an entire chapter in one of my books (unpublished) which details the extensive treatment of authoritarian influences in schools by Professor Bruce Romanish (Authority, Authoritarianism, and Education, 1995), with dozens of documented reasons those influences are inimical and destructive.
I am astounded that people who otherwise appear to be highly intelligent are so prone to a knee-jerk assumption or reaction when I am open and truthful about the overwhelming evidence of school failures that that somehow means I share a sinister desire to destroy the schools and some kind of extremist right-wing ideology. If people such as yourself and Thom Hartmann would face up to the reality that traditional schools are petri dishes for authoritarian attitudes and beliefs, as ample studies have shown for decades, perhaps we could start to address the very real problems instead of pretending they do not exist.
I had a grandmother who was a teacher, an aunt who was a teacher and principal, and an uncle who was a college professor. I have nothing but respect for those many teachers who are self-sacrificing and dedicated. The problem is not the teachers, although the current paradigm creates a haven for some awful individuals. The problem is the power given inappropriately to people who have no business being anywhere near schools or children in satisfying the ludicrous mandates imposed by laws which make conscripts out of children in a war against the natural proclivities and inclinations of those same children. Your Polly Anna view of schools is simply badly distorted and unrealistic. You are not aware because you have chosen not to be aware. If that were just your problem, I would be silent. However, it is a problem for millions of people and for my beloved country. Remove the rose colored glasses and take a look at the semi-literate, inept, and miseducated people your sorry schools are mass producing in numbers greater than they produce citizens who are up to the challenges of democracy. Over 70 million of them voted for Mr. Trump – twice. I attended in the 1940's and 1950's and things were no better, which is also documented in many studies.
"The goal is to try to privatize it – that’s just part of the general neoliberal ideology, to get rid of the public services. It has a kind of ideological background to it, which I think is pathological but pretty widespread: it is called libertarian, which in my view has nothing to do with libertarianism. Take me, for example: I don’t have kids in school. I don’t have grandchildren in school. Why should I pay taxes so that the kid across the street can go to school? It is a way to create a kind of sociopathic society in which there’s subordination to concentrated power: I think that is what lies behind the attack on the public schools and also the attack on social security, which has no economic basis. It is a way to concentrate power and authority, to impose subordination on the population in the name of liberty: it kind of reminds me of Stalin’s proclaiming that we have to defend democracy against the fascists and so on. A way to privatize the system is, first of all, make it non-functional: underfunded, so it is not functional, and then people don’t like it so it is handed over to what are called charter schools, which, actually, are publicly funded and don’t do any better than public schools, even though they have a lot of advantages. That way you get rid of the general commitment of the public to solidarity and mutual support: the thinking that I ought to care whether the kid across the street can go to school, or whether the disabled widow across town should have food."
You are talking in circles, or maybe speaking in tongues. I am adamantly opposed to privatizing schooling. I have stated that in no uncertain terms. I believe strongly that government should fund schooling, that it should fund educational opportunities even if they happen to be in schools, and that it should fund essential social services for those in need. Traditional schools are dysfunctional, primarily because of coercion and bureaucratic control. They contribute to the high incidence of followers and authoritarian leaders because of their behavioral modification and conditioning. These negative influences are endemic to compulsory attendance laws. Children suffer humiliation, anguish, psychological abuse and neglect, miseducation, high anxiety, and low self-confidence as a consequence. You and others have chosen to ignore those influences and minimize their damage or to regard them as collateral damage or deserved by the victims. I have a conscience and will not ignore those perennial and unavoidable harms. You do not wish to hear it. Too bad. You are not my responsibility and obviously not open to change. End of discussion.
The nation of America symbolized freedom for many years. The only problem is that it was supposed to be the freedom to love. Imagine (to use John Lennon's song title) a nation where people focused on love, as we were meant to do with such freedom. Looking at it this way, it's obvious there's a battle between good and evil forces taking place behind the "curtains"; we try to put on a brave face for the audience, but the truth is exactly what Thom has said - we've been poisoned, and continue to be poisoned, by evil forces. Poison eats us up from within ourselves. Again, as Lennon said, "love is all we need". Love is a worthy goal; love is an antidote to the poison. Get yourselves some love, before it's too late.
"Today CNN is moving to the hard right, purging itself of voices willing to call out the GOP’s embrace of fascism."
WaPo is moving in the same direction since being purchased by Bezos; I no longer go to either CNN OR WaPo. I cancelled my WaPo subscription and asked for a refund. I have been ignored. They won't even grace me with a "No." Very disappointing because WaPo was once a hallowed source of truth and honest journalism.
Term limits means that the term is limited by something other than the judge's life. While the article quotes Roberts saying one thing it also quotes him as supporting 15 year term limits.
People who think this is problematic are unfamiliar with the importance of money and guns in exercising political power. The founding fathers expected the Supreme Court to be a secondary power to the other branches because it has no guns, no money, and no means of enforcing its decisions without assistance from other branches.
People who think practically understand that if congress defined all prospective Supreme Court terms as being 15 years, it could also require that any judge ruling on his own term would have to recuse himself. Congress can also require codes of ethics, congress can defund, congress can strip jurisdiction over these issues.
There was once this guy named Lincoln who came to public attention by giving speeches about how corrupt the Supreme Court became and how certain of it's decisions don't deserve to be followed.
Kind of like a guy named Jefferson who saw no place in the constitution that authorized spending money to buy territories. History was made by presidents and congresses having the will to interpret the constitution themselves, and democracy is thwarted when congress (or certain law professors) try to claim that the court is all-powerful. It's just not, and it's only because of a weak congress that people are led to believe these things.
Wrong, the whole concept of term limits means that lifetime tenure is not a requirement. And it's not, at least in my constitution or in the one they are reading in congress these days.
Biden is already putting the blame on himself for not being able to come to a budget agreement! Like you said Thom, the Reagan, Bush and Trump tax cuts, along with the right wing Iraqi war cost us over 40 trillion dollars, which is more than the national debt. Why is Biden apologizing? Biden needs to be attacking the Republicans for destroying the nation the last 50 years, instead he lets them get away with insurrection by not firing Garland. And the news outlets keeps calling Biden a radical leftist? The progressive Democrats in Congress are about all that's left of the old Democrat party. The rest of the Democrats and the GOP have gone far right into fascist land. The right wants Americans to serve them, not them serve America. The right doesn't even have a clue what the purpose of government is for. They are just a bunch of thieves and criminals looting. It wasn't very hard for the rich to get the lemmings to drink the Kool-Aid! Phony religious teachings can sure raise a lot of narcissists, hypocrites, lunatics and angry sadists. It is easy to be destructive and very hard to be constructive. Working towards a Utopia is a dangerous idea and must be banned once the thugs seize control.
The roots of the current madness come from the Evangelical pulpits all over the south and Midwest, preaching division, misogyny, theocracy and barely veiled hatreds. It is a Confederate revival masquerading as religion.
And yes, Garland should have been fired long ago. He does not appear to intend to indict, nor does he appear to have a spine. Trump's lawyers have demanded a meeting with Garland and I suspect he will cave once they start threatening him.
Sad times.
SZ
Agreed, Garland is a politician not a leader focused on justice.. He is playing the game Biden wants him to play...
The left needs to start bring crystal clear in who our enemy is. And that enemy is as likely to be a Democratic Law maker as a GOP law maker. The Freedom Caucus/ formerly Tea Party spend more time tearing down moderate GOP than attacking the left. And as a result they are taking over the GOP
The more we obsess on the GOP the less power we are getting from the Democratic party.. It is time we start calling out the Clinton's, Obama's, Biden's for what they are which is NOT progressives or liberal... No, the GOP are not the enemy the NeoLiberal wing of the Dem party is the true enemy in my view.
All the current GOP is the enemy and about half the Democrats don't like progressives, in my humble opinion. "The GOP is the party of death". If you would Google that you will find a lot of facts. Thanks to Thom Hartman.
BJ - But you are not going to win any GOP voters or law makers over to your way of thinking. You can win Dem Voters and law makers to your way of thinking if you focus on them on the not the GOP... That is my point.
The Tea Party did not obsess with the Dems to take power they focused on getting rid of moderate GOP leaders.
That is what us Liberals should be focused on. Getting rid of Bidens and Pelosi's.
That is my point
In any other developed country in the world, our "left" would be considered far right, while our far right would be considered fascist.
SZ
So true... It is time that the left in this country focus on taking out the leadership and funders of the Democratic party. The same way the Tea Party did to the moderates in the GOP... The voter support is there. The donor class wont like it but the voters will..
A good friend of mine described my son's estrangement of me which is generated by my daughter-in-law as the 'drip, drip, drip of the poison' that my daughter-in-law feeds my son about me. Same thing. I love both my son and my daughter-in-law (she has issues and is insecure in the relationship). I pray for them every day that they may feel God's love and peace - just like my mom taught me to pray for loved ones. But fear is at the heart of my daughter-in-law's poison; just like fear is in the heart of these manipulative oligarchs and their politician pawns. They are afraid of losing, of being humbled. False Evidence Appearing Real. William James wrote a great book on The Sermon on the Mount; it's all about humbling yourself. Check it out!
I believe you're correctly interpreting what's happening on a smaller scale in your family with what's happening on a larger scale in society in general. Sounds like a good book; published in 1882, so should be available in the public domain, or at least at a reasonable price.
Great history on the decline of our democracy.
There is something productive one can do RIGHT NOW to begin to roll back the Bellotti decision and its voluminous bretheren. And that is to encourage your member of the House to co-sign House Joint Resolution 54 and to encourage one or both of your senators to introduce its companion in the Senate. HJ Res 54 is a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn Bellotti and the other SCOTUS decisions that have poisoned what democracy we ever did have. If your state has the initiative process, you can create a citizens' group to write an initiative/referendum, get the wording approved by the state and begin to gather signatures to put it on the ballot or send it to the legislature in your state. The best language for an initiative would be either HJ Res 54 or the Washington State Initiative 735, which passed statewide in 2016 with a 62.8% majority. Nothing less is functional. Nothing less will take the club out of the hands of the corrupt politicians on the Supreme Court. Nothing less will put us on a path to turn our corporate dominated govt. into a reasonable semblance of a humanly democratic republic.
Riiight, sure. Shoot for the stars - let's just snap fingers and get 3/4 of the states to pass a constitutional amendment. Easy Peasy, and a much better strategy than pursuing a mere majority vote in congress to change labor laws, voting laws, and the size and term of Supreme Court seats.
All of which is subject to rulings by this and future Supreme Courts. Term of service for SCOTUS justices? -- Great! But you're right back where you started; that requires a constitutional amendment. And all of that is subject to the domination of the official political structure by BIG MONEY. IMO, we need fundamental change. And that means getting at the root causes of this country's long standing slide away from democracy and toward top-down control.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/CAP-Appendix.pdf
I never said that I didn't like the idea of term limits. But as the author of the article you posted acknowledges, lifetime tenure is written into the Constitution. Changing that will require a Constitutional Amendment.
I guess this is where it matters, that my Senator is Feinstein....
Indeed.
Thoughtful and thought - provoking. So much so that it inspired me to read the ballotti case again. It's a very interesting decision, especially in terms of how the justices stack up. The liberal side's dissent is written by whizzer white, who on so many other issues showed a much more conservative side. And then there's this additional dissent by Rehnquist - fascinating in that he goes directly against this whole concept that non-media companies enjoy any kind of first amendment protection that seriously jeopardizes a states ability to regulate its political donations. So here you have the godfather of the modern right wing view of constitutional law saying the entire premise for citizens United is bunk.
Especially back in 70s we can view rhenquists's most cherished concerns as being anchored in states rights, which includes abilities of states to regulate as they see fit.
Very fascinating issues raised in the decisions tie to a necessity under the 14th amendment of dealing at base with the exercise of "liberty"..... of course speaking freely is an essential part of tge exercise and liberty, but there is this recognition that with an association of people (like a corporation) that if its corporate purposes don't include saying or publishing news or informing the public / acting as a media outlet or acting as the press... that the association itself doesn't really bring people together to speak. The association brings people together to make money.... not to speak, other than speaking only as a profit-making enterprise.
Fascinating to find this embedded not only in the liberal justices views but also strongly within Rehnquist's dissent.
That is fascinating. Thank you.
I've enjoyed some of the material on "reclaim democracy" site before, and found they published this piece on the topic I was discussing today. https://reclaimdemocracy.org/rehnquist_dissent_bellotti/
It's just the opinion itself but breaks down and highlights some statements and has links.
It's hard to argue that it's not a clear well-written opinion. It also seems to speak mostly in non-legalese terms, emphasizing reason and experience and drawing important distinctions affecting how far corporate personhood could really go.
It is on our doorsteps and in the back and the front and the middle of our thoughts and our lives.
It is incredibly distressing and unnerving to know how far this poison has come into our society. You’ve listed a number of its favorite catalysts people who have a toxic and caustic effect on our planet our health and yes our morale.
These are the ones who cause the most concern and have an ability to make people feel badly and question good and positive choices they might have made or are making.
Take Biden , his exposure to the toxicity of the liars for McCarthy group.
The strain is taking its toll on the President .
Who went from feeling sure that the Debt ceiling was a separate issue from the budget making the crooked Magas wanted to impose on us.
He now has been needled into questioning his own beliefs .
Tell them what Robert Reich told us this morning. Just do your job Mr President and pay whats due .
No legislative add ons .
created by hostage taking Republicans. Mc Carthy:
Retrieve the tax money you allow the wealthiest Americans .
Now there is some revenue.
Love you Thom but you depress me And you can't help it that's how things are. I don't have much hope for this country unless President Biden can persuade Republicans to vote for him to save democracy.. I am much afraid. that the ballot box. will not be available? for millions of Democrats. And thereby goes the democracy.
I also experienced this litany of "The Takeover," as accomplished, as overwhelming. It seems like there's a fascist backstop for every possible escape.
American fascists have cleverly sucked in American leftists and progressives, under the guise of anti militarism, anti corporatism, anti colonialism witness their "calls for peace and abandoning Ukraine"
It's a clever ploy, Hitler used it, find issues that you can exploit amongst the population, especially among the opposition, then bait and switch. People don't seem to have critical reasoning skills, and instead of eating just a slice of a pie, gobble down the whole think,toxins and all.
In fact that is how Kristen Sinema wound up in the Senate. Her "pro environment" stance gave her the facade of being an environmentalist, which she abandoned upon getting elected. Hopeful progressives and leftists are so easily fooled, they see what they want to see. Unwilling to draw aside the curtain.
Here is an example from the LBJ school of public policy https://sites.utexas.edu/bainesreport/2021/11/19/corporate-rights-are-human-rights/
Read the essay by Adrian Saholli. It is text book neo fascist, corporatist (corporations are persons)
They laud corporations, and then finally towards the end they claim to be progressive, how many people have the likes of this fraud sucked in.
How is it that the left is do poorly organized. I mean getting hollywood to write scripts that glorify cops and villianize labor, getting most of the evangelical movement to push a pro Rich people agenda over the teachings of Christ and getting their own people in the courts... And liberals can't even get Universal Health Care passed despite 75% approval with voters. Seriously, do we even have an organized left in this country?
We had a gilded age where Rockefeller and JP Morgan effectively controlled both parties. We have another gilded age, and Democratic Party money has been focused on technology and financial sectors at national level. There are a million poor in the rio grande valley and no party wants them even though this could mean capturing the state of Texas. The problem with the dems and 2 party system is well-known and well-documented but not on outlets like msnbc.
I said this before here I live in New York - 17, which is the Ground Zero of democratic party failure where we traded a gay, green new deal, black man for the head fundraiser of the republican state campaign committee in the last election. A massive disaster that mainstream media tells you was a successful outcome.
And it was a successful outcome, but only for the media, which gets all the profits from all the donations, and all the money flowing into the Democratic Party as well as GOP.
Marc S... What a night mare... We need organize.. I love posting on the Hartmann report but if it does not lead to organizing activity it will continue this way.
Poison it is. Reagan kicked it off in 1980, then came FOX in '86, and Limbaugh and his ilk did the rest starting in 1988. That's 43 years of non-stop "hate the government" with no mention that WE are the government. They tried and convicted our democracy. They will execute it if we let them.
I still hope that it's their party that dies. Any decent conservative out there should know they need a fresh start with a new image and platform.
Every time I hear someone start to abuse the word government, I remind them WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT. I talk about the politicians I have interacted with from my community and state. They are us. Our current county clerk is inviting everyone to come see how she receives ballots and counts the elections. Bless her for trying to counteract the poison.
Thom quotes VP Henry Wallace, 1944:
“The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.”
But the primary channel of public information is not the TV station, radio station, newspaper, or social media. The primary and most influential channel is the channel which predisposes the minds of children to let a teacher/leader/authority direct their thinking and influence their beliefs about their world. The subliminal message comes through loud and clear for most; do not rely on your own perceptions, processes, or observations; pay attention to the people appointed or officially approved by the state. Be good followers and compliant, obedient, and passive citizens who select the single correct choice on the multiple-choice questions and who do not question authority.
When that conditioning is completed, no more force or coercion is necessary. The happy graduates will take the prescribed path and buy the products, party line, and propaganda of the people who exhibit the most strength, power, control, and influence. They have been the willing and even enthusiastic subjects of Fascism 101 and Authoritarianism 101. We must all learn how to think, and the way to think is to sit quietly while we receive facts, information, and most importantly commands on how to behave, conform, follow instructions, maintain order, compete for favor, and punish those who disrupt. We must become “educated”, rather than to develop as individuals and scholars and scientists in search of our own personal knowledge and truth. Educated people receive rewards and recognition and they do not rock the boat or question the legitimacy of the people or institutions who gave them their diplomas and degrees. That poison was with us for a full century before the things listed and that is what enabled these many subsequent lethal items.
This couldn't be more absurd, all you have to do is look at how republicans (and the Nazis before them) attack the public education system.
https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/heres-the-long-list-of-topics-republicans-want-banned-from-the-classroom/2022/02
All political media right now is focused on debt ceiling negotiations - something presumably not taught in any schools, but on people's minds because of pervasive media dominating what's on people's minds.
The problem with education being more of the fact that curricula has been shifted dramatically to take account of vocational interests and corporate interests, and lacks the kind of emphasis on traditional learning, the classics, humanism and critical thinking. But even elementary schools in my district, teach more of that than you're gonna find in any mainstream media outlet that is absorbed constantly into adult minds. Even the well-educated (well-schooled) today come off as bumbling fools only partially because they have no training in logic, reasoning or critical thinking. The other critical component is how they take all these media narratives as factual when so much of it is comically wrong.
Having had the opportunity to sit and watch all of the impeachment hearings and having seen what actually goes on in many of the congressional committees.... is it obvious that Republicans aren't there to do anything legislative - they're only there to make Fox News clips. So they come in with a media apparatus, and they create media that's really all they're doing in congress while Democrats seem to have no media strategy. And so while Trump is called out by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard ans "the first media created pres" the democrats seem to have no viable media strategy, spend money on media foolishly, and try to play politics the way it was played 30 years ago .
1. I have not attacked the “public education system”. We do not have an education system. We have controlled chaos. The idea of an “education system” is an oxymoron and a fantasy. Systemized education is something much different from anything that can legitimately be called education within a democratic system, regardless of one’s definition for education. We have many school “systems”, which are anti-democratic by design. They are top-down hierarchies with arbitrary authority as their most prominent feature. The compulsion to study, learn, attend school, or think about what some authority has presented as essential information or knowledge is as undemocratic and fascistic as it gets.
2. Critical thinking, reasoning, and logic are better learned through practice and trial and error. They involve skills, orientations, and attitudes and they cannot be taught as subject matter or identified facts and information. One learns critical thinking skills by thinking, ruminating, contemplating, experiencing conflict and controversy, living with other people in the real world, and observing behavior or reading literature. Traditional schools select and provide the material they have distilled down into Pabulum which is an abstraction for most students and of little personal interest or meaningless most of the time.
3. The Education Week article perfectly illustrates my point. People with a destructive agenda who know squat about education and who wish to undermine or destroy public schools have been able to take over curricula solely because laws requiring attendance insert state government into what should be a matter for scholars, parents, students, and teachers to decide. And no, I have not said that the state has no role or that there should not be oversight, public funding, and federal protections for the civil rights of children who are fully citizens at birth. The state must have a limited role just as it has with religious institutions.
4. A dissertation by Philip Kovacs (2006) asks the question, ”Are Public Schools Worth Saving? If so, By Whom?” His answer is yes, and I agree, although I have a much different take on the question and on how they can be saved. The fact that the questions are being asked is extremely revealing. A book edited by Sandra Mathison & E. Wayne Ross entitled, “Battleground Schools” deals with the same issues, with many highly critical essays which catalogue many profoundly serious chronic problems that have plagued traditional schools for generations. There is a boatload of data and research which school insiders would prefer that you not discover and which is quickly deep-sixed.
5. Your careless use of the word “absurd” brings to mind a couple of books you might want to look for. One is “Growing Up Absurd”, by Goodman. He also wrote “Miseducation and the Community of Scholars”. The other book may be hard to find. The title is, “The Great School Legend”, by Colin Greer. That legend, along with innumerable myths lives on. Schools have created their own mythology to persuade everyone that they provide education and benefit children and society. They have a captive audience which they can drill endlessly with their self-serving message for 12 years and a highly gullible and complicit media which relays their propaganda regularly. You might want to do some research before you pontificate.
I think John Taylor Gatto is (was) a very interesting, thinker and writer, and I think everything you're saying has really been covered by Gotto.
It's not the first time and it's not the only example, but I will point out here... which is that Mr. Gatto's one-sided perspective led him to become a huge Trump supporter and I see one-sided narratives like yours as very similar to those bandied about in right wing misinformation.
In order to attack the schools, you should support people like Trump, Betsy Devoss and other trump associates.
Narratives like this involve faulty generalizations, unrepresentative samples, and a failure to understand or acknowledge much of the great results of our public education system for many decades before neoliberalism took its toll, but even now those of us with family members in excellent public schools or who know excellent public school teachers will find it easy to characterize much of your critique as one-sided to the point of absurdity.
Greer and Goodman preceded Gatto by a few decades and Tolstoy’s “Essays on Education” were ahead of him by nearly a century. I read two of Gattos books and agreed with much of what he said about schooling, which as a two-time NY State teacher of the year, gave him considerable credibility. I discovered his right-wing associations about 20 years ago and no longer followed his writing or activities. I reject libertarianism, anti-government ideology, and anything that is not based on validated, verified, peer-reviewed science. But anyone who is honest with him or herself and knows anything about our schools knows that most children can learn in about two weeks what schools take several months or years to get across.
The books I referred you to are the work of numerous highly respected accomplished authors, scholars, educators, and professionals in fields which directly deal with educational, psychological, sociological, neurological, philosophical, and other disciplines. I could refer you to dozens more. They are among the titans who have excoriated the apologists and cheerleaders for schools who consistently acknowledge the major problems in one breath and then in the next breath gleefully resume their silly happy talk, false promises, and denials of reality. I have an entire chapter in one of my books (unpublished) which details the extensive treatment of authoritarian influences in schools by Professor Bruce Romanish (Authority, Authoritarianism, and Education, 1995), with dozens of documented reasons those influences are inimical and destructive.
I am astounded that people who otherwise appear to be highly intelligent are so prone to a knee-jerk assumption or reaction when I am open and truthful about the overwhelming evidence of school failures that that somehow means I share a sinister desire to destroy the schools and some kind of extremist right-wing ideology. If people such as yourself and Thom Hartmann would face up to the reality that traditional schools are petri dishes for authoritarian attitudes and beliefs, as ample studies have shown for decades, perhaps we could start to address the very real problems instead of pretending they do not exist.
I had a grandmother who was a teacher, an aunt who was a teacher and principal, and an uncle who was a college professor. I have nothing but respect for those many teachers who are self-sacrificing and dedicated. The problem is not the teachers, although the current paradigm creates a haven for some awful individuals. The problem is the power given inappropriately to people who have no business being anywhere near schools or children in satisfying the ludicrous mandates imposed by laws which make conscripts out of children in a war against the natural proclivities and inclinations of those same children. Your Polly Anna view of schools is simply badly distorted and unrealistic. You are not aware because you have chosen not to be aware. If that were just your problem, I would be silent. However, it is a problem for millions of people and for my beloved country. Remove the rose colored glasses and take a look at the semi-literate, inept, and miseducated people your sorry schools are mass producing in numbers greater than they produce citizens who are up to the challenges of democracy. Over 70 million of them voted for Mr. Trump – twice. I attended in the 1940's and 1950's and things were no better, which is also documented in many studies.
Chomsky reveals the ideology behind all this.
"The goal is to try to privatize it – that’s just part of the general neoliberal ideology, to get rid of the public services. It has a kind of ideological background to it, which I think is pathological but pretty widespread: it is called libertarian, which in my view has nothing to do with libertarianism. Take me, for example: I don’t have kids in school. I don’t have grandchildren in school. Why should I pay taxes so that the kid across the street can go to school? It is a way to create a kind of sociopathic society in which there’s subordination to concentrated power: I think that is what lies behind the attack on the public schools and also the attack on social security, which has no economic basis. It is a way to concentrate power and authority, to impose subordination on the population in the name of liberty: it kind of reminds me of Stalin’s proclaiming that we have to defend democracy against the fascists and so on. A way to privatize the system is, first of all, make it non-functional: underfunded, so it is not functional, and then people don’t like it so it is handed over to what are called charter schools, which, actually, are publicly funded and don’t do any better than public schools, even though they have a lot of advantages. That way you get rid of the general commitment of the public to solidarity and mutual support: the thinking that I ought to care whether the kid across the street can go to school, or whether the disabled widow across town should have food."
https://chomsky.info/20130326/
You are talking in circles, or maybe speaking in tongues. I am adamantly opposed to privatizing schooling. I have stated that in no uncertain terms. I believe strongly that government should fund schooling, that it should fund educational opportunities even if they happen to be in schools, and that it should fund essential social services for those in need. Traditional schools are dysfunctional, primarily because of coercion and bureaucratic control. They contribute to the high incidence of followers and authoritarian leaders because of their behavioral modification and conditioning. These negative influences are endemic to compulsory attendance laws. Children suffer humiliation, anguish, psychological abuse and neglect, miseducation, high anxiety, and low self-confidence as a consequence. You and others have chosen to ignore those influences and minimize their damage or to regard them as collateral damage or deserved by the victims. I have a conscience and will not ignore those perennial and unavoidable harms. You do not wish to hear it. Too bad. You are not my responsibility and obviously not open to change. End of discussion.
Great article. I'm hoping more Democrats get involved I'm grassroots movements since we've been deplatformed and denied free speech.
The nation of America symbolized freedom for many years. The only problem is that it was supposed to be the freedom to love. Imagine (to use John Lennon's song title) a nation where people focused on love, as we were meant to do with such freedom. Looking at it this way, it's obvious there's a battle between good and evil forces taking place behind the "curtains"; we try to put on a brave face for the audience, but the truth is exactly what Thom has said - we've been poisoned, and continue to be poisoned, by evil forces. Poison eats us up from within ourselves. Again, as Lennon said, "love is all we need". Love is a worthy goal; love is an antidote to the poison. Get yourselves some love, before it's too late.
Love wins..
But if we don't organize we are not going to get the cure for this poison.
Thank you, Thom.
"Today CNN is moving to the hard right, purging itself of voices willing to call out the GOP’s embrace of fascism."
WaPo is moving in the same direction since being purchased by Bezos; I no longer go to either CNN OR WaPo. I cancelled my WaPo subscription and asked for a refund. I have been ignored. They won't even grace me with a "No." Very disappointing because WaPo was once a hallowed source of truth and honest journalism.
Term limits means that the term is limited by something other than the judge's life. While the article quotes Roberts saying one thing it also quotes him as supporting 15 year term limits.
People who think this is problematic are unfamiliar with the importance of money and guns in exercising political power. The founding fathers expected the Supreme Court to be a secondary power to the other branches because it has no guns, no money, and no means of enforcing its decisions without assistance from other branches.
People who think practically understand that if congress defined all prospective Supreme Court terms as being 15 years, it could also require that any judge ruling on his own term would have to recuse himself. Congress can also require codes of ethics, congress can defund, congress can strip jurisdiction over these issues.
There was once this guy named Lincoln who came to public attention by giving speeches about how corrupt the Supreme Court became and how certain of it's decisions don't deserve to be followed.
Kind of like a guy named Jefferson who saw no place in the constitution that authorized spending money to buy territories. History was made by presidents and congresses having the will to interpret the constitution themselves, and democracy is thwarted when congress (or certain law professors) try to claim that the court is all-powerful. It's just not, and it's only because of a weak congress that people are led to believe these things.
Wrong, the whole concept of term limits means that lifetime tenure is not a requirement. And it's not, at least in my constitution or in the one they are reading in congress these days.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5140