So, why do people like this give a damn about whether a trans girl wants to compete in high school sports? Or whether a 10-year-old in Ohio, raped by her uncle, can get an abortion?
Black American folk singer-songwriter Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly, used the phrase "stay woke" as part of a spoken afterward to a 1938 recording of his song "Scottsboro Boys", which tells the story of nine black teenagers and young men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. Has anything changed? Best defense is an offense.
Yes, this is an old, old story and is particularly dangerous when both sides want a war to bolster their status. The Falklands conflict (Argentinian fatalities were listed as 649, incidentally) began when the ruling junta in Buenos Aires decided that enforcing their nation's claim to the islands would bolster their legitimacy. (They also considered starting a war with Chile.) And Napoleon III thought he would win a short war against Prussia, thus improving his standing with the French people. Bismarck, who engineered the 1870 fight, expected that it would unify Germany, which it did, and never mind that 180,000 people died.
One can think of many other cases in terms of armed conflict, whipping up the mob against a supposed domestic "enemy” or telling people to economically “sacrifice for the common good” while the rich get richer. And none of these distractions help the ordinary citizen one whit. In fact, they pander to the worst instincts in people. As a fellow college geography professor told me, "I laid out to my students that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Their reply was that it didn't matter. Somebody had to pay."
Diversion. A tactic known to every pickpocket, ever.... Here's a true tale of LBJ:
We were in Tennessee. During the motorcade, he spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs. Late that night in the hotel, when the local dignitaries had finished the last bottles of bourbon and branch water and departed, he started talking about those signs. "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Seems to me that one course of action is to try to change the narrative that the republicans are promoting, to instead of who is really your true enemy. Who is responsible for your eviction,your minimum wage, funneling of much of your tax dollar to the military, congressional, industrial complex etc.etc,. In our Oligarchy, the villains are the obscenely rich and their corporations. Let’s turn the spotlight on them and expose their dirty tricks for all to see. They have no shame or integrity.
Thank you for the way you bring history to life in the form of a scholarly rant! I would love to see we you factor in the historical trauma the nation felt and is still feeling. These wounds are multi generational. 💙
Wow, thank you Thom for writing this - really great points!! I believe from what I've seen in my life, that ultimately some billionaires want slaves. My opinion is that they are trying to eliminate the middle class to keep their narcissism & greed going. They really want to keep Americans uneducated, divided, and voting against their own interests to control us. If we are able to express ourselves and live authentically we are believing in our freedom. If we have self worth we are more likely to demand a livable wage and other rights which cuts into their profit and they are less likely to feel special.
At least you're awake Thom; won't hear this message on the corporate-owned MSM. While I agree with what you've said about the GOP, isn't the same true for the Democrats, just the issues vary? Democrats focus on different issues, but they're after the same dollars as the GOP. This has been clearly seen lately as the Biden administration approved the sale?lease? of Gulf waters for drilling purposes, and then there's Alaska, where environmentalists and indigenous alike are furious over Biden catering to the fossil fuel interests. And the Ukraine war is the perfect scenario for Biden, since he isn't responsible for putting American boots on the ground, yet can spend record amounts of taxpayer dollars supplying weaponry. What's needed is new politics, but your two-party system allows the same old s**t to happen, over and over, no matter who ends up in power. Anyone with a new vision of leadership is put up with, like some kind of novelty, but is never accepted by the majority, because the majority is brainwashed by corporate dollars. That's what it comes down to -- the majority of Americans have been brainwashed. As Ginger said, the best defense is an offense, and the majority are in defensive mode.
RE: "But even without America turning fully fascist — a goal that’s already been partly achieved in multiple Red states, but is still out of reach for all of America without another Republican presidency — big business and the morbidly rich benefit tremendously when Americans are at each other’s throats."
Speaking of goals, the oligarchs and their GQP lackeys share a common goal - ending our form of democracy. Their methods, as you describe are division and distraction through hate and fear, keep us from acknowledging and resisting this goal. Democracy limits their wealth and power. Both groups hate democracy becuase it limits their abuse of the majority through wage theft and forced slavery. The want democracy replaced with an authoritarian form of government like fascism to maintain their minority control of all things political and economic.
Oligarchs and their lackeys (white supremacists and evangelical Christianists) are, as John Dean has effectively documented, right-wing authoritarians (RWA). They want to maximize inequality and democracy is contrary to that goal. The oligarchs are authoritarian social dominators or "double highs." Their lackeys are blindly obedient RWA followers. As RWAs, they represent a minority, about 22% of the population based on the 2020 voter participation.
Since democracy isn't effective in maintaining their worldview of social hierarchy, dominance and freedom to abuse, it must be ended and ending it requires division and distraction.
Barre Seid, an Orthodox Jew left 1.6 billion to the Federalist Society
Many ultra right wing religious billionaires sponsor culture war issues and candidates, surprising how many of them are Catholics, like Tom Monaghan, deceased, who with his brother founded Domino’ pizza. Ave Maria is a catholic community, with it’s own cathedral. Look what your pizza money has bought.
Wealthy and powerful people clearly do sometimes consciously devise schemes and start conflicts of all kinds to divert and distract attention and to pit the “little people” against each other. But I don’t think their tendencies to rationalize and distract their own attention or to be overwhelmed by their own grandiosity, power, and influence should be overlooked. Howard Schultz and Andrew Carnegie are good examples. Both came from humble beginnings and were supporters of working (and woke) people during their rise to power, but both fought unionization and enjoyed the trappings of their wealth, sometimes finding it hard to be humble or reasonable.
George Bush the lesser apparently did see war as his sure ticket to political advantage. But his belief in the superiority of the Christian faith and in his own superiority along with his usefulness as a tool of warmongers such as Cheney and the oil and arms industries were probably significant factors in his decision to invade in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sadly, many of the ideas in the right-wing sphere do also appeal to the wealthy elites and many have become true believers of much of that propaganda and self-promoting sanctimony.
If we follow the money, we can see that ego and a sort of messianic complex or wish for hero status are powerful motives. Some sincerely wish to solve problems and help people. Zuckerberg’s and Gate’s wives (or ex-wife) are both much more progressive and have become involved in great educational initiatives which promote progressive values and policies and Gates himself has shown a degree of humility and a desire to respect others. Unfortunately, they have overlooked the fact that those values and policies in schooling cannot proliferate and reach the general public. They must always remain as “experimental” or as models and test examples.
Everyone believes the rags-to-riches mythology. No one has the slightest doubt that the poor immigrants came to our shores, were well-educated in our schools, and had great success as a result. There were a precious few who did indeed have that experience. In reality, however, for the great masses and for ordinary people the story was very different. The schools were there to keep the poor and minorities in their proper place. They still are. If that were not true, there would not still be laws which mandate attendance and that put officials and authorities in charge of administering schooling. There would not be curricula which come down from on high sanitizing history and elevating the chosen movers and shakers who make certain people and attitudes look good and others as suspect or undesirable.
If someone could just educate Ms. Chan and Ms. Gates. Someone like Thom Hartmann. Then, some of those big bucks might go toward real change, instead of toward privatizing schools. But, I’ve seen no indication that anyone in the progressive community has given up on the childish mythology delivered by schools or on the paternalism and fascism of forcing attendance, thereby undermining education.
Off topic Thom, but geeky science. It looks like Gaia has found a cure for the pests. Start at the bottom of the food chain. There is a virus that has spread throughout the worlds oceans and is killing off plankton https://phys.org/news/2023-04-viruses-infect-plankton-world-oceans.html
It all comes down to undue influence where the governed cannot see the deal making process. People who think they rule the world are the problem. We are getting past worship of the rich. A solid resentment is starting to take hold.
I do believe the collective will of the young activists can push through and take back what belongs to them. They know they shouldn't have to do all the work for just a few peanuts and a boat-load of debt from trying to get an education. Other countries are succeeding with agendas that are woke and then some.
We have to keep asking our fellow Americans if these woke nations are smarter, more inventive, or kinder than we are. The answer is OH HELL NO!
And speaking of oh hell, Mercury is in retrograde. Tucker-fired, Lemon-fired, and Biden-announced; there is still 3 weeks left for Mercury to do its thing. Pop some corn and have a beverage handy for the "show".
Black American folk singer-songwriter Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly, used the phrase "stay woke" as part of a spoken afterward to a 1938 recording of his song "Scottsboro Boys", which tells the story of nine black teenagers and young men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. Has anything changed? Best defense is an offense.
Yes, this is an old, old story and is particularly dangerous when both sides want a war to bolster their status. The Falklands conflict (Argentinian fatalities were listed as 649, incidentally) began when the ruling junta in Buenos Aires decided that enforcing their nation's claim to the islands would bolster their legitimacy. (They also considered starting a war with Chile.) And Napoleon III thought he would win a short war against Prussia, thus improving his standing with the French people. Bismarck, who engineered the 1870 fight, expected that it would unify Germany, which it did, and never mind that 180,000 people died.
One can think of many other cases in terms of armed conflict, whipping up the mob against a supposed domestic "enemy” or telling people to economically “sacrifice for the common good” while the rich get richer. And none of these distractions help the ordinary citizen one whit. In fact, they pander to the worst instincts in people. As a fellow college geography professor told me, "I laid out to my students that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Their reply was that it didn't matter. Somebody had to pay."
Diversion. A tactic known to every pickpocket, ever.... Here's a true tale of LBJ:
We were in Tennessee. During the motorcade, he spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs. Late that night in the hotel, when the local dignitaries had finished the last bottles of bourbon and branch water and departed, he started talking about those signs. "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Seems to me that one course of action is to try to change the narrative that the republicans are promoting, to instead of who is really your true enemy. Who is responsible for your eviction,your minimum wage, funneling of much of your tax dollar to the military, congressional, industrial complex etc.etc,. In our Oligarchy, the villains are the obscenely rich and their corporations. Let’s turn the spotlight on them and expose their dirty tricks for all to see. They have no shame or integrity.
Thank you for the way you bring history to life in the form of a scholarly rant! I would love to see we you factor in the historical trauma the nation felt and is still feeling. These wounds are multi generational. 💙
Wow, thank you Thom for writing this - really great points!! I believe from what I've seen in my life, that ultimately some billionaires want slaves. My opinion is that they are trying to eliminate the middle class to keep their narcissism & greed going. They really want to keep Americans uneducated, divided, and voting against their own interests to control us. If we are able to express ourselves and live authentically we are believing in our freedom. If we have self worth we are more likely to demand a livable wage and other rights which cuts into their profit and they are less likely to feel special.
At least you're awake Thom; won't hear this message on the corporate-owned MSM. While I agree with what you've said about the GOP, isn't the same true for the Democrats, just the issues vary? Democrats focus on different issues, but they're after the same dollars as the GOP. This has been clearly seen lately as the Biden administration approved the sale?lease? of Gulf waters for drilling purposes, and then there's Alaska, where environmentalists and indigenous alike are furious over Biden catering to the fossil fuel interests. And the Ukraine war is the perfect scenario for Biden, since he isn't responsible for putting American boots on the ground, yet can spend record amounts of taxpayer dollars supplying weaponry. What's needed is new politics, but your two-party system allows the same old s**t to happen, over and over, no matter who ends up in power. Anyone with a new vision of leadership is put up with, like some kind of novelty, but is never accepted by the majority, because the majority is brainwashed by corporate dollars. That's what it comes down to -- the majority of Americans have been brainwashed. As Ginger said, the best defense is an offense, and the majority are in defensive mode.
RE: "But even without America turning fully fascist — a goal that’s already been partly achieved in multiple Red states, but is still out of reach for all of America without another Republican presidency — big business and the morbidly rich benefit tremendously when Americans are at each other’s throats."
Speaking of goals, the oligarchs and their GQP lackeys share a common goal - ending our form of democracy. Their methods, as you describe are division and distraction through hate and fear, keep us from acknowledging and resisting this goal. Democracy limits their wealth and power. Both groups hate democracy becuase it limits their abuse of the majority through wage theft and forced slavery. The want democracy replaced with an authoritarian form of government like fascism to maintain their minority control of all things political and economic.
Oligarchs and their lackeys (white supremacists and evangelical Christianists) are, as John Dean has effectively documented, right-wing authoritarians (RWA). They want to maximize inequality and democracy is contrary to that goal. The oligarchs are authoritarian social dominators or "double highs." Their lackeys are blindly obedient RWA followers. As RWAs, they represent a minority, about 22% of the population based on the 2020 voter participation.
Since democracy isn't effective in maintaining their worldview of social hierarchy, dominance and freedom to abuse, it must be ended and ending it requires division and distraction.
There are two Texas billionaires who dominate Texas politics and they are ultra religious right https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/24/politics/texas-far-right-politics-invs/index.html
Barre Seid, an Orthodox Jew left 1.6 billion to the Federalist Society
Many ultra right wing religious billionaires sponsor culture war issues and candidates, surprising how many of them are Catholics, like Tom Monaghan, deceased, who with his brother founded Domino’ pizza. Ave Maria is a catholic community, with it’s own cathedral. Look what your pizza money has bought.
Wealthy and powerful people clearly do sometimes consciously devise schemes and start conflicts of all kinds to divert and distract attention and to pit the “little people” against each other. But I don’t think their tendencies to rationalize and distract their own attention or to be overwhelmed by their own grandiosity, power, and influence should be overlooked. Howard Schultz and Andrew Carnegie are good examples. Both came from humble beginnings and were supporters of working (and woke) people during their rise to power, but both fought unionization and enjoyed the trappings of their wealth, sometimes finding it hard to be humble or reasonable.
George Bush the lesser apparently did see war as his sure ticket to political advantage. But his belief in the superiority of the Christian faith and in his own superiority along with his usefulness as a tool of warmongers such as Cheney and the oil and arms industries were probably significant factors in his decision to invade in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sadly, many of the ideas in the right-wing sphere do also appeal to the wealthy elites and many have become true believers of much of that propaganda and self-promoting sanctimony.
If we follow the money, we can see that ego and a sort of messianic complex or wish for hero status are powerful motives. Some sincerely wish to solve problems and help people. Zuckerberg’s and Gate’s wives (or ex-wife) are both much more progressive and have become involved in great educational initiatives which promote progressive values and policies and Gates himself has shown a degree of humility and a desire to respect others. Unfortunately, they have overlooked the fact that those values and policies in schooling cannot proliferate and reach the general public. They must always remain as “experimental” or as models and test examples.
Everyone believes the rags-to-riches mythology. No one has the slightest doubt that the poor immigrants came to our shores, were well-educated in our schools, and had great success as a result. There were a precious few who did indeed have that experience. In reality, however, for the great masses and for ordinary people the story was very different. The schools were there to keep the poor and minorities in their proper place. They still are. If that were not true, there would not still be laws which mandate attendance and that put officials and authorities in charge of administering schooling. There would not be curricula which come down from on high sanitizing history and elevating the chosen movers and shakers who make certain people and attitudes look good and others as suspect or undesirable.
If someone could just educate Ms. Chan and Ms. Gates. Someone like Thom Hartmann. Then, some of those big bucks might go toward real change, instead of toward privatizing schools. But, I’ve seen no indication that anyone in the progressive community has given up on the childish mythology delivered by schools or on the paternalism and fascism of forcing attendance, thereby undermining education.
Off topic Thom, but geeky science. It looks like Gaia has found a cure for the pests. Start at the bottom of the food chain. There is a virus that has spread throughout the worlds oceans and is killing off plankton https://phys.org/news/2023-04-viruses-infect-plankton-world-oceans.html
A very comprehensive explanation of the knife’s edge we are on and the choices our country has been given.
It all comes down to undue influence where the governed cannot see the deal making process. People who think they rule the world are the problem. We are getting past worship of the rich. A solid resentment is starting to take hold.
I do believe the collective will of the young activists can push through and take back what belongs to them. They know they shouldn't have to do all the work for just a few peanuts and a boat-load of debt from trying to get an education. Other countries are succeeding with agendas that are woke and then some.
We have to keep asking our fellow Americans if these woke nations are smarter, more inventive, or kinder than we are. The answer is OH HELL NO!
And speaking of oh hell, Mercury is in retrograde. Tucker-fired, Lemon-fired, and Biden-announced; there is still 3 weeks left for Mercury to do its thing. Pop some corn and have a beverage handy for the "show".