The bottom line is that we — voluntarily or involuntarily — have now had the full GOP experience. We're no longer listening to the GOP politicians who are continuing to sell us this bullshit…
Wow. Well said. I lived through all that you described and still remember the before times. May those times return, made even better because of the wisdom gained from what we almost lost. May we be smarter and more compassionate. If you were a woman, person of color, LGBTQ, those times were not quite as good as they were for the straight white men. We know better now. Let us make it so.
There’s a lightness in the darkness, and a little bit of darkness in the light. (Butch Hancock)
"We’re over it, Republicans. A new America is being birthed from the ashes of the Reagan Revolution and you can’t stop it much longer."
Wish it were true. Hard to believe when the speaker of the house of the people supports insurrection, supports the leading candidate who channels Adolph Hitler, and when apparent criminals legally "investigate" the Justice Department.
The only hope for redemption is that the younger generation trend 70% Democratic. Need to motivate and empower them.
I have two young voters in my family. They are both Democrats and will vote in the next election. They will vote democrat. They're smart enough to have learned exactly what Thom is saying. It was no longer the Republican Party it has become the Republi-Con Party. To my kids they are better known as the party of lies.
I agree stupid, stupid Tik Tok generation. Obsessed with peer approval and "likes", brain dead followers of "influencers", from stupid ice bucket challenges to mental captives of Islamists, and the morons know jack shit about Palestinians or Islam, or life under Islam. They all would be crushed
They have no idea that life in Islam is life in a theocracy, yes even the Palestinians, and the life in pre Netanyahu was a democracy, where even Arabs had a vote, not so in Muslim countries, definitely not so in Gaza.
Yeh Khomeini issued a death fatwa and all he did was write book called the Satanic Verses.
The Quran has a sahih (passage) that mentions Muhammad and the three daughters of al Liah (the moon god, Allah is simple a contract of al Lihah). The pre Islamic Arabs, worshipped the moon and three stars, the called al Uzza, Allat and Manat. Al Uzza is Venus, you can see that on many Islamic flags, especially Turkey's. Uzza was known to other cultures, including the Roman and Greek as Esther, Eoster, Astarte, Asherah, Astar, we know her as Venus.
Venus was a goddess of fertility (hence Easter with its rabbit (hare) and eggs. She was also a fierce, no quarter given warrior goddess.
Constantine at the battle of the Milvian Bridge, defeated his co Emperor Maxentius, through employment of psychlogical warfare. He had his soldiers paint the signet of Astar on their shields, the overlapped Chi Rho the Papal Seal., not the cross as is the lie of the Cult of Rome.
Thank you for recommending this book. I will definitely add to my book list. It isn’t a surprise that young people would lean left, because they have no opportunities under our present economy.
I’m concerned that some of the current administration’s policies will discourage young voters and they may decline to turn out for 2024. They have yet to learn that one should never make the perfect the enemy of the good.
The border policies, and the failure to adequately fund public education. I know President Biden tried student loan cancellation, but the right wing justices were able to smack this down.
Kathy. What do you think about opening the flood gates to patriarchal, misognist, LGBT phobic religious conservatives who will wind up voting Republican because they are on that side of the culture war?
I've just described those Latin Americans, piled up at our border. We have seen what those asshats have done in Florida. I am talking of the Cubanos who vote straight Republican.
People from Spanish speaking countries have different historical experiences and different outlooks. The Cubans who fled Castro were the wealthy and middle class Cubans who lost their property. People from Venezuela are fleeing the collapse of their country. Central Americans have fled political violence and now gang culture (which many learned in the U.S.) and climate change that prevents them from growing subsistence crops. In the 1980s, they were fleeing political violence and civil war. Not all Spanish speaking voters will vote the same way or for identical candidates.
Lo entiendo, el esposo de mi nieta es de ascendencia mexicana, le mando mis libros bisnieto español ingles, Soy bilingüe
mi yerno tiene un doctorado en análisis de sistemas.
I lived in Panama for three years, married a Panamanian. I know full well that Latinos are not homogenuous. I also know that Panamanians look down upon Puerto Ricans as chumbo, the equivalent of the N word in Panama., that Puerto Ricans laugh at Mexicans because of the sing song cadence.
But I know this they are either Catholic, Pentecostal or Evangelical and as such very conservative, meaning patriarchal, misogynisic and LGBT phobic.
Also the Venezuelans that show up at the border, flew in from Veneuzuela and ride to the border, in nice clean designer clothes, with the kids carrying soccer balls and dolls.
They represent the middle class (upper and middle middle class) who find that they can no longer exploit the peons.
The problem with Venezuela is that Hugo Chavez had the bright idea that Venezuelan Oil, actually belong to Venezuela, Exxon Mobil disagreed, and pressured the U.S, Government, via the State Department to overthrow Chavez, and they, using the CIA tried and tried, and failed so they resorted to sanctions, thus attacking the economy and the result is tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of spoiled middle class parasites flying into Mexico and claiming that they walked through Columbia, the Darien Gap,through Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica. El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico wearing the same shoes and clothes that they showed up at Martha's Vineyard wearing as they stepped off the plane that Rhonda Santis used.
Dumb ass Americans so easily fall for a sob story, Like the Sob stories that HAMAS is spinning.
And one wonders why Trump has his cult, well they are brainwashed and follow their Pied Piper just as the Left is brainwashed and follow theirs.
You're kidding, right? That you aren't referring to the "full-throated" obligatory, knee-jerk Israel "uber alles" policy that actually has riven apart "young voters" and everybody? Don't have that on your mind?
I hate that phrase, Rahm Emanuel coined it to deflect criticism from the ACA, when we could have had Bernies single payer by altering the enabling Medicare legislation by a few word, changing eligibility from 67 to at birth. The AHIP donors would not be so happy with such a change but the ACA was in their wheel house, more customers and money for AHIP
These Asshats keep dragging out the same old trope, when something truly reformative is laid on the table.
It's bullshit, and bullshit to settle for a crumb when you could have the cake.
I am not a Rahm Emanuel fan, and I would prefer a more robust public option, but no one was willing to do it. I wish we hadn’t settled for crumbs, and I am entirely in favor of banning the private insurance called “Medicare Advantage” due to George W. Bush’s permission of false advertising.
It is going to have to be young whites, because from the news on TV, young black and Hispanic males are either drifting to MAGA or sitting out the election.
You are correct that we tried it the Republicans’ way, and it doesn’t work.
My concerns are that the Republicans’ damage is irreparable, and there are enough discouraged and disillusioned voters who may decline to vote and in refusing to turn out, will hand the government to sociopathic Donald Trump and make him dictator for life. Trump is definitely a compulsive liar, but I think he is telling the truth about what he will do if he gets into the Oval Office. We must save ourselves, no one else will do it.
1. We want discouraged and disillusioned Republicans.
2. There are myriad reasons to reject Republicans at all levels. All politics is local. Where I live, Baghdad By the Sea, the DNC wrote us off in 2022 and we have three Batistiano MAGATs representing three Democratic majority districts. We have outright Fascism curtesy of our governor and state legislature. Our governor and my mayor have accepted Russian and Chinese money, while China and Russia have installations 90 miles from Key West. More than 100,000 Cuban refugees are waiting on the border while the governor says he'd shoot to kill anyone who comes across. The White House could stand up for Cubans, and flip this state.
3. I can go through several other states and perform the same analysis. Note what happened in Ohio when abortion was on the ballot. Add legalization of marijuana.
4. From my perspective, we can take advantage of small, non political issues. IMHO the theme "Trump hates dogs" works. 66% of U.S. households (86.9 million homes) own a pet. 99% of them probably love them. In Facebook, Tic toc, Instagram, thousands of pet lover groups. millions of pet owners. Channeling Taylor Swift, post that meme every time a picture of a pet is posted!
IMHO if that is done daily, it will sink in.
The best target market is probably 17 year olds who will be able to vote next year. Statistics show that 70% trend Democratic. I bet the percentage of 17 year old pet owners is higher.
I know we want disillusioned and discouraged Republicans, and I am not sure how many of them exist. Jared Yates Sexton writes in his Substack column that he doesn’t trust the Never Trumpers. I know the younger voters trend Democratic, and that is great. We were expecting issues 1 & 2 to pass, and they did. We also expected the General Assembly to ignore voters’ wishes, which they have done. The Ohio General Assembly, Senate and congressional districts are extremely gerrymandered to favor Republicans, which is a big reason we have the Trump fluffer Gym Jordan in the House.
I don’t envy you having DeSatan as your governor. He and Greg Abbott are the two worst governors in the country. The only positive thing I saw was that DeSatan had limited appeal to Republicans outside of Florida.
Absolutely true. I lived this and watched it all unfold. I remember seeing our business based economy devolve into being one which is totally financial. Businesses are now oriented only to Wall Street. Hedge funds have bought up all our newspapers so we no longer are even told how all this affects us.
As the daughter of die-hard authoritarian Repub's, I have a gut-level experience of the pre-disposition that, so to speak, "greased the wheels" of the devolution. They voted against themselves all down the line: consolidation (monopoly) would lower their rates because of "efficiency," yadayada. I am not sure that the stirring-up of indifference going on now is a bad thing. Fear of "woke" may be a good sign. Hints leaking into the Zeitgeist that Elon Musk is a "paper tiger?" And if he is just a random jerk, a crack in the Trump fairytale? Maybe the contrariness of "the kids" will save America yet. Just sharing speculative glimmer of hope....
Where else this rundown, category by category, of the cranking-down of the "American Experiment?" The bottom line is, have the minority cranked down voting rights enough to "win?"
A brilliant summary of the Republican policies that have created the financial insecurity that is the grounds for today’s fascism.
Another insight is to replace the GDP as a sign of a healthy economy with the Gini coefficient that maps the sharing of the GDP with the salaried classes. As you point out once a single wage earner could afford a house and a comfortable lifestyle. That began with the FDR reforms and improved substantially with a high taxation rate during and after World War II.
Have a look at the pattern in the Gini coefficient, link below. You will see that from the time of the reforms after 1933 the economic inequality curve dips until the 1970s (Powell memo) when it begins its climb upwards. From 1933 to the 1970’s, the Gini Coefficient shows there was a fairer sharing of the GDP (at least for the white community).
The Gini coefficient also proves that tax cuts do not result in a trickle down benefit. And for that, and other reasons, the media never publish the Gini coefficient when speaking of the state of the economy.
Ah: see "Piketty" in the link. A good source. Problem is, not only how does the evidence get out, but how are people who do not have ears to hear going to hear it anyway? "Conservatives Without Conscience" (book title) are going to hew to their knee-jerk prejudices no matter what flies in their metaphorical faces. The "American Experiment" is hanging by a thread on voter suppression by gerrymandered (minority) crackpots. All the evidence in the world is, sorry, fruitless.
I also am a scared cynic, born and bred in a quintessential white southern patriarchal family. But not without hope of the current turmoil. Maybe Thom will go into more detail about that prognostication! But if the myth of Elon Musk is wearing thin, maybe even the Trump magic spell....?
"t the 1970s was a pivotal decade, and not just because it saw the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Nixon, and the death of both the psychedelic hippie movement and the very political (and sometimes violent) SDS. Most consequentially, the 1970s were when the modern-day Republican Party was birthed."
It was also a decade when that Catholic bishops of America declared war against women and American democracy. That is when the bishops bribed , to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, many of the leaders of the Evangelical and televangelical movements in the United States to become anti-abortion anti women and anti-American - all by the way while they were sexually assaulting or blowing priest to sexually assault young Catholic boys.
You may say well but the Republicans... The Republicans that's true. But the Republicans were being fully supported both financially and in the way of votes by the evangelicals who were bribed by Catholic bishops. Approximately half of a Catholics were also voting republican. Where is the problem? Someone please tell me.
Churches are alternate governments run by people pretending to have a direct link to the Almighty. Mostly they’re just human conmen wanting to keep power and riches for themselves & their families.
It’s particularly sad because many people could use the community a church could provide not to mention advice on how to be more spiritual individually.
It appears the evangelicals and Catholics and FBI and CIA and police and Congress and the Senate and the supreme Court and the White House will almost all sell out for money. They're currently trying to steal all of our stuff and make us into their slaves.
I am Catholic. Not all us are Republicans, right wing, and many of us want to get rid of legalized campaign finance bribery. Many of us do not agree with the right wing bishops, and we do not support forcing others to live by our rules. There is also a significant gap in public opinion and priorities between most lay Catholics and the USCCB leadership and the more vocal bishops.
Not all evangelicals agree with the Republicans’ agenda either. The ones that do are whites who have adopted Christian Nationalist and Dominionist beliefs. African-American and Latino evangelicals do not share the same priorities as the Christian Nationalists.
I'm a former Catholic. I became agnostic when I was 14. The reason was that I disagreed with the Catholic bishops of America. The Vatican just cut one of the bishops loose in Texas. The Catholic bishops of America are rogue Catholic organization. Now, knowing that I quit, I wonder why the nearly 50% of Catholics who you say are against all of this stuff have not left the church. I sent it a letter to the Pope when I was 15 telling him that I was leaving the church and why. Maybe the Catholics who are not pro all this right-wingy dingy stuff coming from the Catholic bishops of America including the anti women's rights anti-abortion nonsense have not resigned from the church. As a Catholic please please tell us why these people, including yourself stay.
Kathy you say that Black and Hispanic evangelicals do not share the same priorities as Christian Nationalist. I beg to differ, the males do, Female sovereignty in the form of feminism and choice are a threat to these males and they find themselves on the same side as Clarence Thomas, the raging hypocrite that was going to outlaw gay marriage, and still might, despite the fact that basically the same mentality or legislation made interracial marriage illegal. Good for thee but not for me.
BTW I was a traditional Latin Mass member of the Catholic Truth and a Knight of Columbus, so I have insight what goes on inside the Catholic mind, especially when the "Knights" are sitting around drinking whiskey, beer and playing poker,with the Priest of the parish.,So don't agree, thedissenters are few and far between, are silent, afraid of ostracization and ex communication.
By the way, an old gray haired retired priest who handed out wafers and wine, excommunicated me when I stepped forward, very perceptive he knew ,he could tell that I was a potential apostate.
Churches are alternate governments run by people pretending to have a direct link to the Almighty. Mostly they’re just human conmen wanting to keep power and riches for themselves & their families.
It’s particularly sad because many people could use the community a church could provide not to mention advice on how to be more spiritual individually.
Kathy, the Catholic church is pushing the privatization of public schools and they would love a theocracy as well as the evangelicals! I forgot to mention the department of Justice, corporations and Homeland security would also enjoy a dictatorship!
I know about the charter school in Oklahoma. I don’t think these schools should get our tax dollars, but a majority on the Supreme Court don’t agree with me, and I attended Catholic school from 1st to 10th grades.
Because Howard, money is politics and politics is money. Without money you are just joe six pack taking out the garbage, or picking up some one else garbage.
Thom Hartmann - 2 pieces in as many days - surgically peeling back layer upon layer of the GOP's cracking and flaking facade of chalky patriotic colors.
Paint on paint on paint on paint - 50 years of paint on paint. That's it. That's what the GOP has done for America. They have relentlessly slapped a cheap coat of paint on American society to spruce up the rotting and crumbling structure within designed exclusively of, by, and for their own.
Behind the GOP's crumbling mess of a million worthless Norman Rockwell ripoffs lies the very tangible and untenable reality of their making - one far more akin to the writings of George Orwell. The GOP have shamelessly pulverized and sold off America, piece by piece for half a century. It's well beyond time for all of us to stop buying from their platter of bullshittery:
I wholeheartedly agree Thom. Unfortunately, what the Democratic Party is selling--oligarchy, imperialism, nationalism, Zionism and their brand of geopolitical and economic xenophobia--is not working either. And we've tried that for 50 years now which is one major reason a fascist like Trump is able to rise to power. Fronting for party leaders who are guided by the likes of AIPAC and the war industry ultimately brings us to the same void of humanity and moral integrity practiced and preached by the Republicans. The dark cloud of perpetual war looms over us all as liberal and conservative media sources do their best to point their finger at the other without ever looking in the mirror. No good end will come of the trajectory set by either political party.
Both parties are not the same, but neither is working. The only thing that will work now is unconditional universal basic income and single-payer universal healthcare. The economic pump needs to be primed. An economic system that relies on consumer spending stops working when consumers have nothing to spend.
Our owners have to agree on UBI and single-payer universal healthcare because it won't happen even if we 98 percent want it. Only the oligarchs can make it happen when they believe society is on the verge of collapse and after using war has failed to revive the economy.
This is unfortunately true, but I can’t see it happening. I think they would prefer that we lose any vestige we have left of government of, for, and by the people. The Republicans have already shown they no longer believe in self-government and would rather have someone like Trump become a dictator.
I love/hate your post. Never in history have the "owners" let up short of the guillotine. Then astonished, oblivious. There's an old Star Trek episode about the privileged living in orbit, with nary a clue that their lifestyle depends on subjugation and death below.
Gloria : Consumer, consumption, the holy meme of business
In the 19th and early 20th century TB was called consumption.
To consume something is to use them and then defecate or discard what is left or what is no longer useful
We the lowly, the pawns that are moved on the board, are considered no more than a resource.
A resource is something that is CONSUMED, in production, oil, iron, chemicals are a resource, so are humans. Check in with your local Human Resource Department.
I agree. They are not because Trump Republicans want a dictatorship under a criminally former President who has serious personality disorders and who wants to govern by misusing his office to take vengeance on anyone he believes has offended him. Democrats still believe in self government. While Trump is a compulsive liar in many respects, I believe he’s telling the public the truth about exactly what he intends to do and how he will do it. One lesson I hope we have learned from history is to take the dictator or wannabe dictator at his word.
Great post! Operation Phoenix begins . . . not like the phony one during the Vietnam war, but a new legitimate effort that drives the rise of Democracy from the ashes of neoliberalism and the restoration of American politics to sanity. Viva La Revolution!
I am cynical enough to wonder about "tongue in cheek," here, but there is a lot of Zeitgeist disruption (ashes?) ("blowin' in the wind"...?) If Elon Musk's mask of invincibility can be cracked, and the AI guy can be fired and rehired and what the heck is going on, maybe there is a sane way out of the information chaos. Maybe.
All those hippies telling people to "let your freak flag fly" have prevailed. No one is going back into a closet or hiding their true gender to please the Republicans. BIPOC folks are going to keep demanding their seat at the table. Women, with the help of men, will state by state restore their reproductive rights. In fact, women are the majority in college now. They will make their own opportunities.
The conservatives and religious zealots have not gotten the memo. It says "F-OFF". It's exactly what we told them in the sixties, even the ones in our own age group. This is one thing that did trickle down. It led to this new generation that knows what is RIGHT, and they don't need the 2020's version of Republicans telling them WHO they are!
Giving away my age: Helen Reddy, "I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar." There is so much to know to support understanding of what we are not going back to, though. My favorite reminder is, females only human enough to vote, 1920. With due respect to terrible social obstacles, African-descended with testicles human enough to vote 50 years earlier, by law. Fifty years prior.
Historians are less likely to see the world too exclusively in terms of their own personal experience. Yet I believe it is difficult to think in terms of the experience of those who came before us. The idea of every child wanted and every marriage happy, a chicken in every pot, and that in the forty years before Reagan the right-wing, the uber-wealthy, and the religious fanatics held no sway is a wee bit glorified.
Unfortunately, an amorphous and hopeful faith can likewise deceive us. Like Garrison Keillor, we also sometimes tend to think of the past as a place like Lake Wobegon, where “…all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all of the children are above average.” He might have added something about the golden age of schooling, when all the teachers were wonderful and extraordinary and all the schools were havens for innocent children.
Liberal/progressives and those who value science and the scientific method all pride ourselves, I believe, in being agnostic if not atheists. If we carve out any great faith and optimism, it is in human potential or in some manifestation of the natural universe. Therefore, it seems incongruous and disturbing to me at least when some of us or most of us put inordinate faith in one person, one philosophical approach, or one institution.
A week or so ago, when reminiscing with some fondness and gratitude about the special enrichment programs for gifted students which were available when you were in elementary school, you noted how much you benefitted and how those extraordinary programs of which you were a part contributed to your generation and to the entire nation. We should all be grateful for the experiences, insights, and educational advances which gave us your talents and the talents of others whose excellence and intellectual acumen have made this a measurably better country.
It is a shame when the potential of students who are so very bright, or in cases such as yours who function at the level of genius, is squandered and diminished. That is certainly happening now much too often. However, as always, it falls to me to ask the difficult questions about causation and to look beyond the obvious.
I had entertained suspicions that your school experience was very atypical and that you may have been insulated from, and somewhat oblivious to, the daily existence of students whose IQ’s were far below 140 and who were not singled out for such advanced study and instruction previously. This appears to me to finally adequately explain how you must have come to have such a distorted idyllic or glorified view of traditional schools and a total blindness to the common glaring negative experiences of and effects on millions of less gifted students (such as I was). I do not use the word “millions” rhetorically or carelessly.
Thom Hartmann and his best friend with an IQ score of 142 probably did learn a great deal about civics, history, national and international affairs, etc., etc. either in school or as a consequence of attending and having inspirational and brilliant teachers and relatives. However, I would bet dollars to donut holes that 92% of the other students in your classes who were not so gifted did not leave there knowing anything of real substance about ANY of those things whether they graduated or not. Many, in fact, knew precious little about the three branches of government. And if you could test their knowledge today, I guarantee they would still not be able to cite accurate facts or answer essential questions on those topics. Many of them are likely Trump supporters. You must know this.
I recall attending a meeting once when my kids were in school in a crowded room at a school board or similar meeting where the topic of inadequate programs for gifted students was being discussed. Although I have always been extremely shy and awkward in public groups and situations, I uncharacteristically spontaneously blurted out from the back of the room when a complaint had been registered about the neglect of gifted students, something to the effect of a question asking if ALL students are not gifted or special in some way. I got a response that I remember as akin to a standing ovation. Yet I do not remember any acknowledgement beyond that moment that there might be undesirable effects of such special programs, such as depriving average students of the influence and brainpower of exceptionally bright students, as the over-emphasizing or over-valuing of academics, as harming the self-concept of those who are not selected for elevated classes, and risking conceit or a sense of privilege of the high performers, etc.
To believe that traditional schools were pure as the driven snow before the Koch brothers started their aggressive and malicious campaign against what they portrayed as mediocre schools promoting a liberal and secular orientation is incredibly naïve and unrealistic. To believe that, until Reagan and Bill Bennett eviscerated the civics and current events curriculum, teachers were fully autonomous and highly respected or that students were sufficiently learning about how governments are structured and the fine points of politics is to ignore or depreciate decades of statistics and studies and to dismiss hundreds of highly credible liberal/progressive critics who slammed the schools as being oppressive and bastions of conservative doctrine and dogma. I can name names, many of which you know.
While you were in the clouds with advanced and more independent or self-directed programs steering you toward highly stimulating intellectual pursuits, ordinary students were being religiously rewarded for blind obedience and routinely punished for the slightest deviation from the prescribed course and behavioral protocols. Unfinished homework or assignments well-known as meaningless drudgery and memory work meant degradation and insults, along with low or failing grades and a heavy diet of demoralization and cynicism. You were lifted out of the humdrum boredom and never looked back. Your perspective is elitist and your refusal to be honest about the literature and science reflects an indifference that tarnishes your otherwise shining excellence.
It is astonishing to me that someone who demands scrutiny and honesty from everyone in every other field is willing to keep accepting and falling for the endlessly repeating cycle of failure and promised reform in schools! The record is not just broken; it is shattered into pieces on the floor.
Still, I have just looked at an ostensibly new formula for fixing schooling posted on a relatively new website with the same tired old BS gobbledygook and academic lingo, absent the slightest relevance or meaning to the real world. My inbox today has a forward-looking article reframing traditional schooling for the six-millionth time (“Why have NCLB and High-Stakes Reforms Failed? Reframing the Discourse with a Post-colonialization Lens”.) Someone with an IQ of 141 has to know how irresponsible all this foolishness and recycling of false hope is and how completely it undermines democracy and progress toward peace, justice, love, and true enlightenment.
When we separate our honored traditions of appreciating education, intellectual rigor, and knowledge acquisition from our pedestrian traditions of schooling and training we see a wide disparity. The thing that distinguishes liberal/progressives from reactionaries is precisely our willingness and ability to face that kind of disparity openly and with courage. The conflation of education with school is mistake and illogical mythology. Our schools do not and cannot transform society as imagined. Forcing attendance magnifies that issue exponentially. Facts do not lie. Reality sometimes bites. Repent and sin no more.
Robert, I couldn't help but notice that children that came from stable families without poverty could remember much better than those that were stressed out constantly. The stress factor has a lot to do with being able to retain knowledge. So I want to raise all the children in agnostic communes from conception in order to end drug babies. Then we can meet all of their needs and end racism, crime, hatred, gluttony.... There shall be no grooming of children until they are 27 years of age, by the religious groups and the military or the gays. We shall end all child abuse, mental, physical and sexual! We will save trillions and trillions of dollars and end much loneliness and human suffering by serving good!
You are describing a Utopian vision with a designated or prescribed plan for achieving it. Humans and Utopia are not likely to ever share the same space. Someone else will have a different formula for getting to the end result you hope for and expect, and things will inevitably fall apart.
Why not start with trying to end the pain, humiliation, hubris, coercion, and privileging of certain groups and individuals? Why not stop shooting ourselves in the foot and our kids in the head? Why not stand up for democracy and autonomy in schools? Compulsory attendance is the fly in the ointment and the sand in the gears. We took a wrong turn. We could make a U-turn at virtually no cost and create hospitable environments for children. Wouldn’t that be a good start toward the future you envision? I don't want miracles, magic, and manipulation. I want sanity, consistency, and common sense. Utopian visions have a way of leading straight to authoritarian institutions and governments.
I attended public school from 1945 to 1956, and remember it as boring, so boring that I stopped day dreaming in class, and started to be truant. I spent three years in 9th grade, because I played "hookie" and in three years only had a 90 day attendance record for the whole year. I caused two guidance counselors to get fired.
and the principal was under pressure, for in a HS of over 3,000 I had the second highest IQ in the school and the worst academic record. The day before my 17th birthday I was called to the Principals office and told that If I showed up at school the next day, they would arrest me and send me to Daniel Boone in South Phillie.
Daniel Boone was the next step to Shalcross, a juvenile "correction" facility
We want a book about your "hookie" years! Here's my claim to infamy: midway thru pretty prestigious Law School, was told by counselor, I shouldn't be having these problems, maybe I should rethink about being a lawyer? I got my highest and my lowest score for "creativity" in finals. (High score for making it up: low score on the subject I was actually interested in.) No problem with the Bar Exam. Majored in Bar Pool. Bar with a pool table.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Anyone opposed to working towards the heaven on Earth supports a hell on Earth. Everything we do is right or wrong, even doing nothing. To double down on the family unit and unlimited greed and phony religions is to commit suicide. It would be like building a giant mansion at low tide in the sand.
Here's another cliche. Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. Or, don't cut off your nose to spite your face. Working towards what is possible within one's scope and towards what is most practical and realistic typically gets one closer to the ideal than being idealistic and shooting for the stars. I think the family unit is probably going to be with us for a very long time and trying other modes will always be fads and experiments which have their pluses and minuses, like most everything else. There are many things I dislike and many I would change and some I'm trying to change, but it isn't my role to tell others how to live or to restructure society and I don't usually cotton to those who assign such roles to themselves. As I have stated many times, I would be happy to see less pain, abuse, grief, miseducation, indoctrination by the right-wing fanatics and a bit more respect, dignity, and autonomy for students and teachers in schools. When we eradicate the primary cause of those negatives and facilitate the positives, then I will ask for grandiose new ideas for changing the world.
"The conflation of education with school..." Opens up a sociological "Pandoras's Box" about the core upbringing, aspirations at home and resources. The existential quandary is, shall society "level the playing field" with resources for all, or shall we make the eternal assumption that the underclass are born lesser humans?
You may have exposed a couple of the real problems here. The first being the paternalism you seem to espouse. Are you actually saying in 2023 on Thom Hartmann’s site of all places that “we” the better educated, more intelligent, or superior people representing the state or represented by the state must force the “underclass”, the poor or those with less resources or less desirable upbringing, via laws and regulations which compel through an involuntary process those unfortunate and uncultured people, to become “educated” in our schools and in our image? Have I misunderstood your insinuations or intimations? I had thought better of you.
The second problem is that you assume, apparently, that the playing field is somehow leveled by this oppressive involuntary “system” or that removing the coercive element will somehow deprive those poor people of the underclass of resources or of the benefits of our brand of schooling. So, if we do not force “those people” to better themselves or to require their deprived children to avail themselves of our gracious gift of “education” as we define it in our marvelous schools, they will suffer and society will suffer? Is this honestly what you are implying? Seriously? Is this what Thom Hartmann believes? Have I tuned into the wrong channel?
Where in the US have compulsory attendance laws ever resulted in the balancing or equal distribution of resources between districts, areas, or locations? How far do efforts go which are directed at levelling the playing field when poor people demand higher paid teachers, better textbooks, better facilities, or more equitable and just policies for students? Stop deluding yourself! Better textbooks??? Textbooks are an abomination emanating from this twisted system and its twisted logic.
I will say it one more time. School is NOT education. You CANNOT force education on anyone. The Pandora’s box is the illusory attempt to use schools, which are a necessity and have the potential to be hugely beneficial, as the means to engineer society and to impose values, beliefs, and something the appointed or anointed “experts” have deemed education. Build it and they will come. Provide a welcoming and hospitable milieu for students with their welfare in mind rather than their betterment, and you won’t be able to keep them away. It isn’t rocket science. Examine your assumptions and your unconscious beliefs and take a look at the wealth of literature on the topic. Please.
I am sincerely confused. You describe schools as " a necessity (with) potential to be hugely beneficial," yet denounce a general public policy of schooling as oppression. Of course any general public schooling is going to express prejudices and indoctrination of the contemporary milieu. I got the full treatment of Evil Empire USSR, capitalism good, commies bad in High School "Civics." I also got Relativity theory in German, and "basic" Algebra (never understood a hint of that) and phonetics and cursive writing to start with, and never saw a government jackboot. I also wish the "playing field" could be more "leveled," but the failure of that idea isn't due to "coercing" the "underclass" into more schooling. The "playing field" has been sabotaged by Reagonomics, etc., as plentifully explicated by Thom. Are you espousing some specific system of education you are not sharing? Please tell us what you envision.
You are by no means alone in your confusion. No amount of explication and explanation seems to break through the propagandizing and conditioning of schooling.
I am not opposed to schooling per se. Schools can and sometimes do provide valuable socialization, training, safety and babysitting services, health or hygiene modelling, and obviously indoctrination which matches the traditions, customs, and beliefs of the parents. Schools do in fact also contribute to education, of which academics are a part. All of the above do in fact play some part in education. However, education should be thought of as the private and personal endeavor of the individual at any age and as an integral part of experiencing a full and diversified life.
Schooling as a public policy is, again, essential in the modern age. I fully support the provision of schools with public funds, and the more the better in terms of adequate staffing and facilities, teacher training, teacher pay, social services, free meals, libraries, resources, etc., etc.
All of that is compromised and perverted by one single action, however. When laws are passed which state unequivocally that all students must attend (with only approved exceptions and exemptions) the way everyone thinks about schooling and education changes imperceptibly but unavoidably and the experience is profoundly altered by the top-down structure and relationships which inescapably come with enforcement of the law. What was and should be a benefit and a privilege is transformed into an obligation, an induction into the service of the state, nation, society, and authority, and a rigorous process of validating the requirements and the existence of the institution.
Under a legal requirement, and because of physical and resource limitations, and because a hierarchy is endemic to an institution established by law, the theoretical and educational purposes of schooling are quickly overshadowed by institutional goals and objectives, school realities and politics (control is an absolute necessity) become priorities regardless of attempts to give student needs priority, and behavioral modification, discipline, and obedience training take up all the oxygen and become oppressive. As I have stated a million times, coercion and education are antithetical. Coercion and amelioration are likewise antithetical. There is no such thing as "mass" education. It is a mirage, a fantasy, and an impossible goal.
Everyone always insists that I give my vision for a different “system”. I feel no obligation to spell out what I see as a superior way and a wonderful formula for others to follow. I am not a guru or a savior. There are two options: freedom and autonomy for teachers and students without laws hanging over their heads dictating every detail of schooling, or turning the whole enterprise over to the state and allowing officials and authorities, such as DeSantis and Abbott to decide what the curriculum should be and how the schools must be operated.
In the absence of compulsory attendance laws we would have schools which would operate much more organically and logically. They would certainly look a lot like the free schools which exist in various locations in the US and elsewhere. Use your imagination. Read the literature. Find the Self-Directed Education (SDE) website or Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO) site. I’ve done my homework. I cannot do yours for you. It is absurd to expect citizens who have been denied democratic experiences in school to become the protectors and defenders of democracy in adulthood.
The playing field is not level, in part, because of the generations of miseducation and gross inequality which is part and parcel of our perverted schooling paradigm. Inequality is baked into this cake by evaluations from day one in school which sort children as much by their compliance and demeanor as by the phony and artificial measures used for grading and establishing the “cumulative record”. It is a competitive game and a political system. None of it has much at all to do with anything that can legitimately be called education or sanity.
I am feeling a need to elaborate a bit on my earlier comments while waiting to go stuff myself with turkey, casserole, pie, etc., since I didn’t have time to get to fundamentals this morning.
It is a given that parents must exercise authority over children to protect them and to teach them restraint, “emotional regulation”, manners, respect for self and others, etc. As a (single) parent, despite a relatively permissive philosophy, I used my adult authority on many occasions for my own sanity and because I recognized that a degree of order and consistency is essential in a family. I disliked the idea of arbitrariness however, and tried to make clear my motives and intentions and usually did my utmost not to respond in anger or merely to “teach a lesson” (of their subjugation).
When laws require school attendance, authority is likewise a given (in loco parentis). However, the tumor almost always metastasizes. Authority in an institutional setting, particularly with children, immediately morphs into the arbitrary form. Managing a group of anxious, squirming, curious kids is a huge challenge. When they are not in attendance of their own volition for purposes which they have thoroughly internalized as their own purposes, they are often typically reticent and distractible and inclined to find ways, however subtle and covert, to resist. Children have special talents in this regard. The top-down model necessitates arbitrary authority for these and other reasons.
Arbitrary authority is the cancer which precious few schools have found an effective way to excise for any time or on any scale. Teachers are human. Children are human. Kids want and deserve freedom, dignity, and respect just as much as adults. They chafe under a condition of subservience and they will undermine the whole damned charade given half-a-chance.
Laws are not just words on a page. Laws are meant to have practical effects, psychological effects, social effects, and prescriptive or proscriptive purposes. They are nearly always accompanied by rewards and punishments, intimidation and threats, and unequal application. Laws are necessary in many instances and domains. They are not only unnecessary in schooling, however; they are inimical and destructive. What is so hard to understand about that? Do you want kids to learn, or do you want them to be molded in your own image and socialized to live in a restrictive, narrow, and conservative environment? It is hardly a difficult choice, if you ask me.
Thom, I wrote a book, you may like it and use it. I'm writing another at this point and time. Hint, an individual should have 5 issues I call the big 5, honesty, truth, compassion, love, and responsibility. Hope this helps. If you do not possess the big 5, then you aren't an adult. Our Constitution does not say adult. I feel your 18 or older (I'm certainly older) you are an adult regardless of gender, religion, etc. My newer book also deals with "We the People", along with the big 5.
Yes, the first problem is to get the correct information out. I’m writing a book on the various methods that the wealth class uses for the upward transfer of wealth that are little understood by the average voter. I put up the draft chapters on my blogs on medium.com and sub stack. I need to find 10,000 followers so a literary agent will represent me to a publisher. So if you know people of a like mind, please pass on the reference. Here is an earlier one relevant to our discussion.https://medium.com/@janweirlaw/where-have-all-the-rational-voters-gone-e3ab0f98ca54
I see some reason for optimism in that there are swing voters who once voted for Obama, were disappointed (Obama’s reforms did nothing to reduce the Gini coefficient) and are looking for a savior. The key point is their financial precarity. That can be removed by returning to some of the reforms that FDR put in after the great depression, which included a higher tax rate after World War II, with some policies re the financial system that can be taken from the Canadian banking experience.
Wow. Well said. I lived through all that you described and still remember the before times. May those times return, made even better because of the wisdom gained from what we almost lost. May we be smarter and more compassionate. If you were a woman, person of color, LGBTQ, those times were not quite as good as they were for the straight white men. We know better now. Let us make it so.
There’s a lightness in the darkness, and a little bit of darkness in the light. (Butch Hancock)
"We’re over it, Republicans. A new America is being birthed from the ashes of the Reagan Revolution and you can’t stop it much longer."
Wish it were true. Hard to believe when the speaker of the house of the people supports insurrection, supports the leading candidate who channels Adolph Hitler, and when apparent criminals legally "investigate" the Justice Department.
The only hope for redemption is that the younger generation trend 70% Democratic. Need to motivate and empower them.
The GOP is well aware of the demographic catastrophe they face.
For a well researched and concise analysis of the issue, read 'The Kids Are All Left' by David Faris.
The results of every election since the book was published bear out the author's assertions.
Let’s hope that holds as a lot of young, naive voters are willing to burn our own democracy down over the Israel/Palestine conflict.
I have two young voters in my family. They are both Democrats and will vote in the next election. They will vote democrat. They're smart enough to have learned exactly what Thom is saying. It was no longer the Republican Party it has become the Republi-Con Party. To my kids they are better known as the party of lies.
I agree stupid, stupid Tik Tok generation. Obsessed with peer approval and "likes", brain dead followers of "influencers", from stupid ice bucket challenges to mental captives of Islamists, and the morons know jack shit about Palestinians or Islam, or life under Islam. They all would be crushed
They have no idea that life in Islam is life in a theocracy, yes even the Palestinians, and the life in pre Netanyahu was a democracy, where even Arabs had a vote, not so in Muslim countries, definitely not so in Gaza.
I think of Salman Rushdie often.
Yeh Khomeini issued a death fatwa and all he did was write book called the Satanic Verses.
The Quran has a sahih (passage) that mentions Muhammad and the three daughters of al Liah (the moon god, Allah is simple a contract of al Lihah). The pre Islamic Arabs, worshipped the moon and three stars, the called al Uzza, Allat and Manat. Al Uzza is Venus, you can see that on many Islamic flags, especially Turkey's. Uzza was known to other cultures, including the Roman and Greek as Esther, Eoster, Astarte, Asherah, Astar, we know her as Venus.
Venus was a goddess of fertility (hence Easter with its rabbit (hare) and eggs. She was also a fierce, no quarter given warrior goddess.
Constantine at the battle of the Milvian Bridge, defeated his co Emperor Maxentius, through employment of psychlogical warfare. He had his soldiers paint the signet of Astar on their shields, the overlapped Chi Rho the Papal Seal., not the cross as is the lie of the Cult of Rome.
Ms. Daniels-Keene. I taught population and demography for 4 decades at the collegiate level. You are correct in your claim.
Demography is composed, basically of three variables and all demographic conclusions flow from them.
1) Fertility
2) Mortality
3) Migration
Republicans attend the best colleges in the world. They understand how important these variables are.
Thank you for recommending this book. I will definitely add to my book list. It isn’t a surprise that young people would lean left, because they have no opportunities under our present economy.
I’m concerned that some of the current administration’s policies will discourage young voters and they may decline to turn out for 2024. They have yet to learn that one should never make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Which policies?
The border policies, and the failure to adequately fund public education. I know President Biden tried student loan cancellation, but the right wing justices were able to smack this down.
Kathy. What do you think about opening the flood gates to patriarchal, misognist, LGBT phobic religious conservatives who will wind up voting Republican because they are on that side of the culture war?
I've just described those Latin Americans, piled up at our border. We have seen what those asshats have done in Florida. I am talking of the Cubanos who vote straight Republican.
People from Spanish speaking countries have different historical experiences and different outlooks. The Cubans who fled Castro were the wealthy and middle class Cubans who lost their property. People from Venezuela are fleeing the collapse of their country. Central Americans have fled political violence and now gang culture (which many learned in the U.S.) and climate change that prevents them from growing subsistence crops. In the 1980s, they were fleeing political violence and civil war. Not all Spanish speaking voters will vote the same way or for identical candidates.
Kathy,
Lo entiendo, el esposo de mi nieta es de ascendencia mexicana, le mando mis libros bisnieto español ingles, Soy bilingüe
mi yerno tiene un doctorado en análisis de sistemas.
I lived in Panama for three years, married a Panamanian. I know full well that Latinos are not homogenuous. I also know that Panamanians look down upon Puerto Ricans as chumbo, the equivalent of the N word in Panama., that Puerto Ricans laugh at Mexicans because of the sing song cadence.
But I know this they are either Catholic, Pentecostal or Evangelical and as such very conservative, meaning patriarchal, misogynisic and LGBT phobic.
Also the Venezuelans that show up at the border, flew in from Veneuzuela and ride to the border, in nice clean designer clothes, with the kids carrying soccer balls and dolls.
They represent the middle class (upper and middle middle class) who find that they can no longer exploit the peons.
The problem with Venezuela is that Hugo Chavez had the bright idea that Venezuelan Oil, actually belong to Venezuela, Exxon Mobil disagreed, and pressured the U.S, Government, via the State Department to overthrow Chavez, and they, using the CIA tried and tried, and failed so they resorted to sanctions, thus attacking the economy and the result is tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of spoiled middle class parasites flying into Mexico and claiming that they walked through Columbia, the Darien Gap,through Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica. El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico wearing the same shoes and clothes that they showed up at Martha's Vineyard wearing as they stepped off the plane that Rhonda Santis used.
Dumb ass Americans so easily fall for a sob story, Like the Sob stories that HAMAS is spinning.
And one wonders why Trump has his cult, well they are brainwashed and follow their Pied Piper just as the Left is brainwashed and follow theirs.
You're kidding, right? That you aren't referring to the "full-throated" obligatory, knee-jerk Israel "uber alles" policy that actually has riven apart "young voters" and everybody? Don't have that on your mind?
I hate that phrase, Rahm Emanuel coined it to deflect criticism from the ACA, when we could have had Bernies single payer by altering the enabling Medicare legislation by a few word, changing eligibility from 67 to at birth. The AHIP donors would not be so happy with such a change but the ACA was in their wheel house, more customers and money for AHIP
These Asshats keep dragging out the same old trope, when something truly reformative is laid on the table.
It's bullshit, and bullshit to settle for a crumb when you could have the cake.
I am not a Rahm Emanuel fan, and I would prefer a more robust public option, but no one was willing to do it. I wish we hadn’t settled for crumbs, and I am entirely in favor of banning the private insurance called “Medicare Advantage” due to George W. Bush’s permission of false advertising.
It is going to have to be young whites, because from the news on TV, young black and Hispanic males are either drifting to MAGA or sitting out the election.
Not necessarily. TV is showing a small group of people who would vote for Trump, but I think a lot more would oppose him.
You are correct that we tried it the Republicans’ way, and it doesn’t work.
My concerns are that the Republicans’ damage is irreparable, and there are enough discouraged and disillusioned voters who may decline to vote and in refusing to turn out, will hand the government to sociopathic Donald Trump and make him dictator for life. Trump is definitely a compulsive liar, but I think he is telling the truth about what he will do if he gets into the Oval Office. We must save ourselves, no one else will do it.
"Discouraged and disillusioned voters...."
1. We want discouraged and disillusioned Republicans.
2. There are myriad reasons to reject Republicans at all levels. All politics is local. Where I live, Baghdad By the Sea, the DNC wrote us off in 2022 and we have three Batistiano MAGATs representing three Democratic majority districts. We have outright Fascism curtesy of our governor and state legislature. Our governor and my mayor have accepted Russian and Chinese money, while China and Russia have installations 90 miles from Key West. More than 100,000 Cuban refugees are waiting on the border while the governor says he'd shoot to kill anyone who comes across. The White House could stand up for Cubans, and flip this state.
3. I can go through several other states and perform the same analysis. Note what happened in Ohio when abortion was on the ballot. Add legalization of marijuana.
4. From my perspective, we can take advantage of small, non political issues. IMHO the theme "Trump hates dogs" works. 66% of U.S. households (86.9 million homes) own a pet. 99% of them probably love them. In Facebook, Tic toc, Instagram, thousands of pet lover groups. millions of pet owners. Channeling Taylor Swift, post that meme every time a picture of a pet is posted!
IMHO if that is done daily, it will sink in.
The best target market is probably 17 year olds who will be able to vote next year. Statistics show that 70% trend Democratic. I bet the percentage of 17 year old pet owners is higher.
Consider referral to groups like field team six. https://www.fieldteam6.org/
I know we want disillusioned and discouraged Republicans, and I am not sure how many of them exist. Jared Yates Sexton writes in his Substack column that he doesn’t trust the Never Trumpers. I know the younger voters trend Democratic, and that is great. We were expecting issues 1 & 2 to pass, and they did. We also expected the General Assembly to ignore voters’ wishes, which they have done. The Ohio General Assembly, Senate and congressional districts are extremely gerrymandered to favor Republicans, which is a big reason we have the Trump fluffer Gym Jordan in the House.
I don’t envy you having DeSatan as your governor. He and Greg Abbott are the two worst governors in the country. The only positive thing I saw was that DeSatan had limited appeal to Republicans outside of Florida.
Why would anyone else do it.....YOU voted for these scumbags.
Absolutely true. I lived this and watched it all unfold. I remember seeing our business based economy devolve into being one which is totally financial. Businesses are now oriented only to Wall Street. Hedge funds have bought up all our newspapers so we no longer are even told how all this affects us.
As the daughter of die-hard authoritarian Repub's, I have a gut-level experience of the pre-disposition that, so to speak, "greased the wheels" of the devolution. They voted against themselves all down the line: consolidation (monopoly) would lower their rates because of "efficiency," yadayada. I am not sure that the stirring-up of indifference going on now is a bad thing. Fear of "woke" may be a good sign. Hints leaking into the Zeitgeist that Elon Musk is a "paper tiger?" And if he is just a random jerk, a crack in the Trump fairytale? Maybe the contrariness of "the kids" will save America yet. Just sharing speculative glimmer of hope....
Thom, love your insights. I try to share far and wide!
Where else this rundown, category by category, of the cranking-down of the "American Experiment?" The bottom line is, have the minority cranked down voting rights enough to "win?"
A brilliant summary of the Republican policies that have created the financial insecurity that is the grounds for today’s fascism.
Another insight is to replace the GDP as a sign of a healthy economy with the Gini coefficient that maps the sharing of the GDP with the salaried classes. As you point out once a single wage earner could afford a house and a comfortable lifestyle. That began with the FDR reforms and improved substantially with a high taxation rate during and after World War II.
Have a look at the pattern in the Gini coefficient, link below. You will see that from the time of the reforms after 1933 the economic inequality curve dips until the 1970s (Powell memo) when it begins its climb upwards. From 1933 to the 1970’s, the Gini Coefficient shows there was a fairer sharing of the GDP (at least for the white community).
The Gini coefficient also proves that tax cuts do not result in a trickle down benefit. And for that, and other reasons, the media never publish the Gini coefficient when speaking of the state of the economy.
http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014FiguresTables.pdf
Ah: see "Piketty" in the link. A good source. Problem is, not only how does the evidence get out, but how are people who do not have ears to hear going to hear it anyway? "Conservatives Without Conscience" (book title) are going to hew to their knee-jerk prejudices no matter what flies in their metaphorical faces. The "American Experiment" is hanging by a thread on voter suppression by gerrymandered (minority) crackpots. All the evidence in the world is, sorry, fruitless.
"A new America is being birthed from the ashes of the Reagan Revolution and you can’t stop it much longer."
I hope you are correct, though I tend to think the die has been cast and was...long ago.
I also am a scared cynic, born and bred in a quintessential white southern patriarchal family. But not without hope of the current turmoil. Maybe Thom will go into more detail about that prognostication! But if the myth of Elon Musk is wearing thin, maybe even the Trump magic spell....?
Again we agree Rohn, and again I am blocked from liking your comment. Is that something you did?
"t the 1970s was a pivotal decade, and not just because it saw the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Nixon, and the death of both the psychedelic hippie movement and the very political (and sometimes violent) SDS. Most consequentially, the 1970s were when the modern-day Republican Party was birthed."
It was also a decade when that Catholic bishops of America declared war against women and American democracy. That is when the bishops bribed , to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, many of the leaders of the Evangelical and televangelical movements in the United States to become anti-abortion anti women and anti-American - all by the way while they were sexually assaulting or blowing priest to sexually assault young Catholic boys.
You may say well but the Republicans... The Republicans that's true. But the Republicans were being fully supported both financially and in the way of votes by the evangelicals who were bribed by Catholic bishops. Approximately half of a Catholics were also voting republican. Where is the problem? Someone please tell me.
Churches are alternate governments run by people pretending to have a direct link to the Almighty. Mostly they’re just human conmen wanting to keep power and riches for themselves & their families.
It’s particularly sad because many people could use the community a church could provide not to mention advice on how to be more spiritual individually.
It appears the evangelicals and Catholics and FBI and CIA and police and Congress and the Senate and the supreme Court and the White House will almost all sell out for money. They're currently trying to steal all of our stuff and make us into their slaves.
I am Catholic. Not all us are Republicans, right wing, and many of us want to get rid of legalized campaign finance bribery. Many of us do not agree with the right wing bishops, and we do not support forcing others to live by our rules. There is also a significant gap in public opinion and priorities between most lay Catholics and the USCCB leadership and the more vocal bishops.
Not all evangelicals agree with the Republicans’ agenda either. The ones that do are whites who have adopted Christian Nationalist and Dominionist beliefs. African-American and Latino evangelicals do not share the same priorities as the Christian Nationalists.
I'm a former Catholic. I became agnostic when I was 14. The reason was that I disagreed with the Catholic bishops of America. The Vatican just cut one of the bishops loose in Texas. The Catholic bishops of America are rogue Catholic organization. Now, knowing that I quit, I wonder why the nearly 50% of Catholics who you say are against all of this stuff have not left the church. I sent it a letter to the Pope when I was 15 telling him that I was leaving the church and why. Maybe the Catholics who are not pro all this right-wingy dingy stuff coming from the Catholic bishops of America including the anti women's rights anti-abortion nonsense have not resigned from the church. As a Catholic please please tell us why these people, including yourself stay.
I appreciate the worship, but use my own conscience. Someone has
to let them know they are wrong, and I refuse to let them win.
But they are winning because you remain, Kathy.
Not necessarily.
Kathy you say that Black and Hispanic evangelicals do not share the same priorities as Christian Nationalist. I beg to differ, the males do, Female sovereignty in the form of feminism and choice are a threat to these males and they find themselves on the same side as Clarence Thomas, the raging hypocrite that was going to outlaw gay marriage, and still might, despite the fact that basically the same mentality or legislation made interracial marriage illegal. Good for thee but not for me.
BTW I was a traditional Latin Mass member of the Catholic Truth and a Knight of Columbus, so I have insight what goes on inside the Catholic mind, especially when the "Knights" are sitting around drinking whiskey, beer and playing poker,with the Priest of the parish.,So don't agree, thedissenters are few and far between, are silent, afraid of ostracization and ex communication.
By the way, an old gray haired retired priest who handed out wafers and wine, excommunicated me when I stepped forward, very perceptive he knew ,he could tell that I was a potential apostate.
Churches are alternate governments run by people pretending to have a direct link to the Almighty. Mostly they’re just human conmen wanting to keep power and riches for themselves & their families.
It’s particularly sad because many people could use the community a church could provide not to mention advice on how to be more spiritual individually.
Kathy, the Catholic church is pushing the privatization of public schools and they would love a theocracy as well as the evangelicals! I forgot to mention the department of Justice, corporations and Homeland security would also enjoy a dictatorship!
I know about the charter school in Oklahoma. I don’t think these schools should get our tax dollars, but a majority on the Supreme Court don’t agree with me, and I attended Catholic school from 1st to 10th grades.
Why would the White House sell us out for money?
Because Howard, money is politics and politics is money. Without money you are just joe six pack taking out the garbage, or picking up some one else garbage.
Ask Reagan in the bushes and Trump!
Heads of any group want to keep themselves in the control position and enjoy the wealth & privileges of belonging to The Club.
boy that's trollish. About "whataboutism" are we? Just axin.
Thom Hartmann - 2 pieces in as many days - surgically peeling back layer upon layer of the GOP's cracking and flaking facade of chalky patriotic colors.
Paint on paint on paint on paint - 50 years of paint on paint. That's it. That's what the GOP has done for America. They have relentlessly slapped a cheap coat of paint on American society to spruce up the rotting and crumbling structure within designed exclusively of, by, and for their own.
Behind the GOP's crumbling mess of a million worthless Norman Rockwell ripoffs lies the very tangible and untenable reality of their making - one far more akin to the writings of George Orwell. The GOP have shamelessly pulverized and sold off America, piece by piece for half a century. It's well beyond time for all of us to stop buying from their platter of bullshittery:
I wholeheartedly agree Thom. Unfortunately, what the Democratic Party is selling--oligarchy, imperialism, nationalism, Zionism and their brand of geopolitical and economic xenophobia--is not working either. And we've tried that for 50 years now which is one major reason a fascist like Trump is able to rise to power. Fronting for party leaders who are guided by the likes of AIPAC and the war industry ultimately brings us to the same void of humanity and moral integrity practiced and preached by the Republicans. The dark cloud of perpetual war looms over us all as liberal and conservative media sources do their best to point their finger at the other without ever looking in the mirror. No good end will come of the trajectory set by either political party.
Let's not even try to pretend that both sides are the same here.
Both parties are not the same, but neither is working. The only thing that will work now is unconditional universal basic income and single-payer universal healthcare. The economic pump needs to be primed. An economic system that relies on consumer spending stops working when consumers have nothing to spend.
Our owners have to agree on UBI and single-payer universal healthcare because it won't happen even if we 98 percent want it. Only the oligarchs can make it happen when they believe society is on the verge of collapse and after using war has failed to revive the economy.
This is unfortunately true, but I can’t see it happening. I think they would prefer that we lose any vestige we have left of government of, for, and by the people. The Republicans have already shown they no longer believe in self-government and would rather have someone like Trump become a dictator.
I love/hate your post. Never in history have the "owners" let up short of the guillotine. Then astonished, oblivious. There's an old Star Trek episode about the privileged living in orbit, with nary a clue that their lifestyle depends on subjugation and death below.
Gloria : Consumer, consumption, the holy meme of business
In the 19th and early 20th century TB was called consumption.
To consume something is to use them and then defecate or discard what is left or what is no longer useful
We the lowly, the pawns that are moved on the board, are considered no more than a resource.
A resource is something that is CONSUMED, in production, oil, iron, chemicals are a resource, so are humans. Check in with your local Human Resource Department.
I agree. They are not because Trump Republicans want a dictatorship under a criminally former President who has serious personality disorders and who wants to govern by misusing his office to take vengeance on anyone he believes has offended him. Democrats still believe in self government. While Trump is a compulsive liar in many respects, I believe he’s telling the public the truth about exactly what he intends to do and how he will do it. One lesson I hope we have learned from history is to take the dictator or wannabe dictator at his word.
Barry is a broken record "whataboutist." Basically a troll. If you intended a serious plea to rationality, never mind.
Barry is a fraud, he tunes into liberal sentiments and then uses them for Putin's advantage.
Wow, another antisemitic Jew, but not so much when it comes to Putin.
What do you think is the life expectancy of a man named Barry Kaufman, dropped into Gaza?
Great post! Operation Phoenix begins . . . not like the phony one during the Vietnam war, but a new legitimate effort that drives the rise of Democracy from the ashes of neoliberalism and the restoration of American politics to sanity. Viva La Revolution!
Yes Stewart, we shall jam so many television commercials down their small brains, they will explode with the "TRUTH"!
I am cynical enough to wonder about "tongue in cheek," here, but there is a lot of Zeitgeist disruption (ashes?) ("blowin' in the wind"...?) If Elon Musk's mask of invincibility can be cracked, and the AI guy can be fired and rehired and what the heck is going on, maybe there is a sane way out of the information chaos. Maybe.
All those hippies telling people to "let your freak flag fly" have prevailed. No one is going back into a closet or hiding their true gender to please the Republicans. BIPOC folks are going to keep demanding their seat at the table. Women, with the help of men, will state by state restore their reproductive rights. In fact, women are the majority in college now. They will make their own opportunities.
The conservatives and religious zealots have not gotten the memo. It says "F-OFF". It's exactly what we told them in the sixties, even the ones in our own age group. This is one thing that did trickle down. It led to this new generation that knows what is RIGHT, and they don't need the 2020's version of Republicans telling them WHO they are!
Giving away my age: Helen Reddy, "I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar." There is so much to know to support understanding of what we are not going back to, though. My favorite reminder is, females only human enough to vote, 1920. With due respect to terrible social obstacles, African-descended with testicles human enough to vote 50 years earlier, by law. Fifty years prior.
Thom,
Historians are less likely to see the world too exclusively in terms of their own personal experience. Yet I believe it is difficult to think in terms of the experience of those who came before us. The idea of every child wanted and every marriage happy, a chicken in every pot, and that in the forty years before Reagan the right-wing, the uber-wealthy, and the religious fanatics held no sway is a wee bit glorified.
Unfortunately, an amorphous and hopeful faith can likewise deceive us. Like Garrison Keillor, we also sometimes tend to think of the past as a place like Lake Wobegon, where “…all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all of the children are above average.” He might have added something about the golden age of schooling, when all the teachers were wonderful and extraordinary and all the schools were havens for innocent children.
Liberal/progressives and those who value science and the scientific method all pride ourselves, I believe, in being agnostic if not atheists. If we carve out any great faith and optimism, it is in human potential or in some manifestation of the natural universe. Therefore, it seems incongruous and disturbing to me at least when some of us or most of us put inordinate faith in one person, one philosophical approach, or one institution.
A week or so ago, when reminiscing with some fondness and gratitude about the special enrichment programs for gifted students which were available when you were in elementary school, you noted how much you benefitted and how those extraordinary programs of which you were a part contributed to your generation and to the entire nation. We should all be grateful for the experiences, insights, and educational advances which gave us your talents and the talents of others whose excellence and intellectual acumen have made this a measurably better country.
It is a shame when the potential of students who are so very bright, or in cases such as yours who function at the level of genius, is squandered and diminished. That is certainly happening now much too often. However, as always, it falls to me to ask the difficult questions about causation and to look beyond the obvious.
I had entertained suspicions that your school experience was very atypical and that you may have been insulated from, and somewhat oblivious to, the daily existence of students whose IQ’s were far below 140 and who were not singled out for such advanced study and instruction previously. This appears to me to finally adequately explain how you must have come to have such a distorted idyllic or glorified view of traditional schools and a total blindness to the common glaring negative experiences of and effects on millions of less gifted students (such as I was). I do not use the word “millions” rhetorically or carelessly.
Thom Hartmann and his best friend with an IQ score of 142 probably did learn a great deal about civics, history, national and international affairs, etc., etc. either in school or as a consequence of attending and having inspirational and brilliant teachers and relatives. However, I would bet dollars to donut holes that 92% of the other students in your classes who were not so gifted did not leave there knowing anything of real substance about ANY of those things whether they graduated or not. Many, in fact, knew precious little about the three branches of government. And if you could test their knowledge today, I guarantee they would still not be able to cite accurate facts or answer essential questions on those topics. Many of them are likely Trump supporters. You must know this.
I recall attending a meeting once when my kids were in school in a crowded room at a school board or similar meeting where the topic of inadequate programs for gifted students was being discussed. Although I have always been extremely shy and awkward in public groups and situations, I uncharacteristically spontaneously blurted out from the back of the room when a complaint had been registered about the neglect of gifted students, something to the effect of a question asking if ALL students are not gifted or special in some way. I got a response that I remember as akin to a standing ovation. Yet I do not remember any acknowledgement beyond that moment that there might be undesirable effects of such special programs, such as depriving average students of the influence and brainpower of exceptionally bright students, as the over-emphasizing or over-valuing of academics, as harming the self-concept of those who are not selected for elevated classes, and risking conceit or a sense of privilege of the high performers, etc.
To believe that traditional schools were pure as the driven snow before the Koch brothers started their aggressive and malicious campaign against what they portrayed as mediocre schools promoting a liberal and secular orientation is incredibly naïve and unrealistic. To believe that, until Reagan and Bill Bennett eviscerated the civics and current events curriculum, teachers were fully autonomous and highly respected or that students were sufficiently learning about how governments are structured and the fine points of politics is to ignore or depreciate decades of statistics and studies and to dismiss hundreds of highly credible liberal/progressive critics who slammed the schools as being oppressive and bastions of conservative doctrine and dogma. I can name names, many of which you know.
While you were in the clouds with advanced and more independent or self-directed programs steering you toward highly stimulating intellectual pursuits, ordinary students were being religiously rewarded for blind obedience and routinely punished for the slightest deviation from the prescribed course and behavioral protocols. Unfinished homework or assignments well-known as meaningless drudgery and memory work meant degradation and insults, along with low or failing grades and a heavy diet of demoralization and cynicism. You were lifted out of the humdrum boredom and never looked back. Your perspective is elitist and your refusal to be honest about the literature and science reflects an indifference that tarnishes your otherwise shining excellence.
It is astonishing to me that someone who demands scrutiny and honesty from everyone in every other field is willing to keep accepting and falling for the endlessly repeating cycle of failure and promised reform in schools! The record is not just broken; it is shattered into pieces on the floor.
Still, I have just looked at an ostensibly new formula for fixing schooling posted on a relatively new website with the same tired old BS gobbledygook and academic lingo, absent the slightest relevance or meaning to the real world. My inbox today has a forward-looking article reframing traditional schooling for the six-millionth time (“Why have NCLB and High-Stakes Reforms Failed? Reframing the Discourse with a Post-colonialization Lens”.) Someone with an IQ of 141 has to know how irresponsible all this foolishness and recycling of false hope is and how completely it undermines democracy and progress toward peace, justice, love, and true enlightenment.
When we separate our honored traditions of appreciating education, intellectual rigor, and knowledge acquisition from our pedestrian traditions of schooling and training we see a wide disparity. The thing that distinguishes liberal/progressives from reactionaries is precisely our willingness and ability to face that kind of disparity openly and with courage. The conflation of education with school is mistake and illogical mythology. Our schools do not and cannot transform society as imagined. Forcing attendance magnifies that issue exponentially. Facts do not lie. Reality sometimes bites. Repent and sin no more.
Robert, I couldn't help but notice that children that came from stable families without poverty could remember much better than those that were stressed out constantly. The stress factor has a lot to do with being able to retain knowledge. So I want to raise all the children in agnostic communes from conception in order to end drug babies. Then we can meet all of their needs and end racism, crime, hatred, gluttony.... There shall be no grooming of children until they are 27 years of age, by the religious groups and the military or the gays. We shall end all child abuse, mental, physical and sexual! We will save trillions and trillions of dollars and end much loneliness and human suffering by serving good!
Mr. Johnson,
You are describing a Utopian vision with a designated or prescribed plan for achieving it. Humans and Utopia are not likely to ever share the same space. Someone else will have a different formula for getting to the end result you hope for and expect, and things will inevitably fall apart.
Why not start with trying to end the pain, humiliation, hubris, coercion, and privileging of certain groups and individuals? Why not stop shooting ourselves in the foot and our kids in the head? Why not stand up for democracy and autonomy in schools? Compulsory attendance is the fly in the ointment and the sand in the gears. We took a wrong turn. We could make a U-turn at virtually no cost and create hospitable environments for children. Wouldn’t that be a good start toward the future you envision? I don't want miracles, magic, and manipulation. I want sanity, consistency, and common sense. Utopian visions have a way of leading straight to authoritarian institutions and governments.
I attended public school from 1945 to 1956, and remember it as boring, so boring that I stopped day dreaming in class, and started to be truant. I spent three years in 9th grade, because I played "hookie" and in three years only had a 90 day attendance record for the whole year. I caused two guidance counselors to get fired.
and the principal was under pressure, for in a HS of over 3,000 I had the second highest IQ in the school and the worst academic record. The day before my 17th birthday I was called to the Principals office and told that If I showed up at school the next day, they would arrest me and send me to Daniel Boone in South Phillie.
Daniel Boone was the next step to Shalcross, a juvenile "correction" facility
William that sounds like me?
Of course. We in general agree, but diverge on conceptual things like maximum wage., however UBI, I am all for it, rent control I am all for it.
We want a book about your "hookie" years! Here's my claim to infamy: midway thru pretty prestigious Law School, was told by counselor, I shouldn't be having these problems, maybe I should rethink about being a lawyer? I got my highest and my lowest score for "creativity" in finals. (High score for making it up: low score on the subject I was actually interested in.) No problem with the Bar Exam. Majored in Bar Pool. Bar with a pool table.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Anyone opposed to working towards the heaven on Earth supports a hell on Earth. Everything we do is right or wrong, even doing nothing. To double down on the family unit and unlimited greed and phony religions is to commit suicide. It would be like building a giant mansion at low tide in the sand.
Here's another cliche. Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. Or, don't cut off your nose to spite your face. Working towards what is possible within one's scope and towards what is most practical and realistic typically gets one closer to the ideal than being idealistic and shooting for the stars. I think the family unit is probably going to be with us for a very long time and trying other modes will always be fads and experiments which have their pluses and minuses, like most everything else. There are many things I dislike and many I would change and some I'm trying to change, but it isn't my role to tell others how to live or to restructure society and I don't usually cotton to those who assign such roles to themselves. As I have stated many times, I would be happy to see less pain, abuse, grief, miseducation, indoctrination by the right-wing fanatics and a bit more respect, dignity, and autonomy for students and teachers in schools. When we eradicate the primary cause of those negatives and facilitate the positives, then I will ask for grandiose new ideas for changing the world.
"The conflation of education with school..." Opens up a sociological "Pandoras's Box" about the core upbringing, aspirations at home and resources. The existential quandary is, shall society "level the playing field" with resources for all, or shall we make the eternal assumption that the underclass are born lesser humans?
Mmerose,
You may have exposed a couple of the real problems here. The first being the paternalism you seem to espouse. Are you actually saying in 2023 on Thom Hartmann’s site of all places that “we” the better educated, more intelligent, or superior people representing the state or represented by the state must force the “underclass”, the poor or those with less resources or less desirable upbringing, via laws and regulations which compel through an involuntary process those unfortunate and uncultured people, to become “educated” in our schools and in our image? Have I misunderstood your insinuations or intimations? I had thought better of you.
The second problem is that you assume, apparently, that the playing field is somehow leveled by this oppressive involuntary “system” or that removing the coercive element will somehow deprive those poor people of the underclass of resources or of the benefits of our brand of schooling. So, if we do not force “those people” to better themselves or to require their deprived children to avail themselves of our gracious gift of “education” as we define it in our marvelous schools, they will suffer and society will suffer? Is this honestly what you are implying? Seriously? Is this what Thom Hartmann believes? Have I tuned into the wrong channel?
Where in the US have compulsory attendance laws ever resulted in the balancing or equal distribution of resources between districts, areas, or locations? How far do efforts go which are directed at levelling the playing field when poor people demand higher paid teachers, better textbooks, better facilities, or more equitable and just policies for students? Stop deluding yourself! Better textbooks??? Textbooks are an abomination emanating from this twisted system and its twisted logic.
I will say it one more time. School is NOT education. You CANNOT force education on anyone. The Pandora’s box is the illusory attempt to use schools, which are a necessity and have the potential to be hugely beneficial, as the means to engineer society and to impose values, beliefs, and something the appointed or anointed “experts” have deemed education. Build it and they will come. Provide a welcoming and hospitable milieu for students with their welfare in mind rather than their betterment, and you won’t be able to keep them away. It isn’t rocket science. Examine your assumptions and your unconscious beliefs and take a look at the wealth of literature on the topic. Please.
I am sincerely confused. You describe schools as " a necessity (with) potential to be hugely beneficial," yet denounce a general public policy of schooling as oppression. Of course any general public schooling is going to express prejudices and indoctrination of the contemporary milieu. I got the full treatment of Evil Empire USSR, capitalism good, commies bad in High School "Civics." I also got Relativity theory in German, and "basic" Algebra (never understood a hint of that) and phonetics and cursive writing to start with, and never saw a government jackboot. I also wish the "playing field" could be more "leveled," but the failure of that idea isn't due to "coercing" the "underclass" into more schooling. The "playing field" has been sabotaged by Reagonomics, etc., as plentifully explicated by Thom. Are you espousing some specific system of education you are not sharing? Please tell us what you envision.
Mmerose,
You are by no means alone in your confusion. No amount of explication and explanation seems to break through the propagandizing and conditioning of schooling.
I am not opposed to schooling per se. Schools can and sometimes do provide valuable socialization, training, safety and babysitting services, health or hygiene modelling, and obviously indoctrination which matches the traditions, customs, and beliefs of the parents. Schools do in fact also contribute to education, of which academics are a part. All of the above do in fact play some part in education. However, education should be thought of as the private and personal endeavor of the individual at any age and as an integral part of experiencing a full and diversified life.
Schooling as a public policy is, again, essential in the modern age. I fully support the provision of schools with public funds, and the more the better in terms of adequate staffing and facilities, teacher training, teacher pay, social services, free meals, libraries, resources, etc., etc.
All of that is compromised and perverted by one single action, however. When laws are passed which state unequivocally that all students must attend (with only approved exceptions and exemptions) the way everyone thinks about schooling and education changes imperceptibly but unavoidably and the experience is profoundly altered by the top-down structure and relationships which inescapably come with enforcement of the law. What was and should be a benefit and a privilege is transformed into an obligation, an induction into the service of the state, nation, society, and authority, and a rigorous process of validating the requirements and the existence of the institution.
Under a legal requirement, and because of physical and resource limitations, and because a hierarchy is endemic to an institution established by law, the theoretical and educational purposes of schooling are quickly overshadowed by institutional goals and objectives, school realities and politics (control is an absolute necessity) become priorities regardless of attempts to give student needs priority, and behavioral modification, discipline, and obedience training take up all the oxygen and become oppressive. As I have stated a million times, coercion and education are antithetical. Coercion and amelioration are likewise antithetical. There is no such thing as "mass" education. It is a mirage, a fantasy, and an impossible goal.
Everyone always insists that I give my vision for a different “system”. I feel no obligation to spell out what I see as a superior way and a wonderful formula for others to follow. I am not a guru or a savior. There are two options: freedom and autonomy for teachers and students without laws hanging over their heads dictating every detail of schooling, or turning the whole enterprise over to the state and allowing officials and authorities, such as DeSantis and Abbott to decide what the curriculum should be and how the schools must be operated.
In the absence of compulsory attendance laws we would have schools which would operate much more organically and logically. They would certainly look a lot like the free schools which exist in various locations in the US and elsewhere. Use your imagination. Read the literature. Find the Self-Directed Education (SDE) website or Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO) site. I’ve done my homework. I cannot do yours for you. It is absurd to expect citizens who have been denied democratic experiences in school to become the protectors and defenders of democracy in adulthood.
The playing field is not level, in part, because of the generations of miseducation and gross inequality which is part and parcel of our perverted schooling paradigm. Inequality is baked into this cake by evaluations from day one in school which sort children as much by their compliance and demeanor as by the phony and artificial measures used for grading and establishing the “cumulative record”. It is a competitive game and a political system. None of it has much at all to do with anything that can legitimately be called education or sanity.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Mmerose,
I am feeling a need to elaborate a bit on my earlier comments while waiting to go stuff myself with turkey, casserole, pie, etc., since I didn’t have time to get to fundamentals this morning.
It is a given that parents must exercise authority over children to protect them and to teach them restraint, “emotional regulation”, manners, respect for self and others, etc. As a (single) parent, despite a relatively permissive philosophy, I used my adult authority on many occasions for my own sanity and because I recognized that a degree of order and consistency is essential in a family. I disliked the idea of arbitrariness however, and tried to make clear my motives and intentions and usually did my utmost not to respond in anger or merely to “teach a lesson” (of their subjugation).
When laws require school attendance, authority is likewise a given (in loco parentis). However, the tumor almost always metastasizes. Authority in an institutional setting, particularly with children, immediately morphs into the arbitrary form. Managing a group of anxious, squirming, curious kids is a huge challenge. When they are not in attendance of their own volition for purposes which they have thoroughly internalized as their own purposes, they are often typically reticent and distractible and inclined to find ways, however subtle and covert, to resist. Children have special talents in this regard. The top-down model necessitates arbitrary authority for these and other reasons.
Arbitrary authority is the cancer which precious few schools have found an effective way to excise for any time or on any scale. Teachers are human. Children are human. Kids want and deserve freedom, dignity, and respect just as much as adults. They chafe under a condition of subservience and they will undermine the whole damned charade given half-a-chance.
Laws are not just words on a page. Laws are meant to have practical effects, psychological effects, social effects, and prescriptive or proscriptive purposes. They are nearly always accompanied by rewards and punishments, intimidation and threats, and unequal application. Laws are necessary in many instances and domains. They are not only unnecessary in schooling, however; they are inimical and destructive. What is so hard to understand about that? Do you want kids to learn, or do you want them to be molded in your own image and socialized to live in a restrictive, narrow, and conservative environment? It is hardly a difficult choice, if you ask me.
Thom, I wrote a book, you may like it and use it. I'm writing another at this point and time. Hint, an individual should have 5 issues I call the big 5, honesty, truth, compassion, love, and responsibility. Hope this helps. If you do not possess the big 5, then you aren't an adult. Our Constitution does not say adult. I feel your 18 or older (I'm certainly older) you are an adult regardless of gender, religion, etc. My newer book also deals with "We the People", along with the big 5.
Yes, the first problem is to get the correct information out. I’m writing a book on the various methods that the wealth class uses for the upward transfer of wealth that are little understood by the average voter. I put up the draft chapters on my blogs on medium.com and sub stack. I need to find 10,000 followers so a literary agent will represent me to a publisher. So if you know people of a like mind, please pass on the reference. Here is an earlier one relevant to our discussion.https://medium.com/@janweirlaw/where-have-all-the-rational-voters-gone-e3ab0f98ca54
I see some reason for optimism in that there are swing voters who once voted for Obama, were disappointed (Obama’s reforms did nothing to reduce the Gini coefficient) and are looking for a savior. The key point is their financial precarity. That can be removed by returning to some of the reforms that FDR put in after the great depression, which included a higher tax rate after World War II, with some policies re the financial system that can be taken from the Canadian banking experience.