Is there something in the GOP’s core beliefs and strategies that just inevitably leads to hating on their citizens and worshiping poverty, death, and disease?
The irony is that red-staters view themselves as virtuous independent-living non-takers who have contempt for whiners and snowflakes. Personally, I’m absolutely happy to have my commie pinko liberal whining blue state tax dollars stay in New York City.
The right can't connect the dots. A lack of caring about almost everything, is the root of all evil. The right would rather work towards a dystopia than a Utopia. Until they get their dystopia. Then they will blame the groups they don't like, instead of their greedy leaders. The right hates truth, reality, rational thinking, freedom, and the Constitution. Children are groomed in Sunday School to think instinctually and emotionally, but seldom rationally. Religious indoctrination is what the dictators of old and the present are using to get rich off of. Instead of working to end human suffering, they exploit it. A lot of jobs and a lot of money is spent on hospitals, prisons and wars. It is more about class warfare than it is about racism. It will only get worse if we do not have a maximum wage about 10 times the minimum wage.
To your sentence "Children are groomed ...." I'd add - not just in Sunday school for religious reasons, but by many minority movements over the years. These minority movements have seen the potential to further their cause by "grooming" children. I can think of many examples of this, but I'd be accused of prejudice if I were to name some of them.
Like ACB's People of Prayer, or Mom's for Liberty, but I suspect you are referring to LGBT, or movements by POC.
Go Ahead, name them, but support your charge with facts.BTW DRAG Queen Story Hour is not a movement.
However who can blame people who want to be normalized and enjoy the benefits of a society into which they contribute, by taxes and spending, and not be demonized, mischaracterized and accused of shit that is a lie.
First the came for the Sociealist, as I was not a Socialist..MARTIN NIEMÖLLER
I know as a California native I don’t understand the Red state mentality. Even though California isn’t perfect, I am grateful I live in a state with progressive leanings and not regressive policies. Punishment and cruelty is the point with Republican led states. Denying their citizens access to Medicaid alone increases the chance of a shortened lifespan. I feel Republicans govern for their corporate and Christofascist donors only and to hell with the rest of their citizens.
She interviewed a redneck, living in a falling down single wide, wearing bib overalls and missing teeth. He was dead set against food stamps and other social services, cause they helped the "coloreds".
She pointed out that he was on food stamps as well. "That's different, said he, I deserve them"
I would expand their hatred beyond 'racism'. Remember, the KKK went after Jews and LGBTQ+ folks back in the day. Last person lynched and hung in Marietta Square, GA was a Jew. It's all fear-based. They are afraid of minorities (especially black people), they are afraid of Jews, they are afraid of the LGBTQ+ community because ...guess what? They have questions about their sexual orientation too. As for anti-abortion? Bubba does not want it publicly known that his daughter had to abort the fetus with which Bubba impregnated her in a drunken blackout. Incest is rampant in the South and other Red States. Yuck.
I've been thinking that the end of Roe put daddy or babysitting granddad MORE at risk of exposure. When "the ladies" could discreetly "take care of it" it would seem easier to keep the secret. Now I wonder? States that give aid to born but destitute children generally require the mother to name somebody, but I guess this set of States are the same ones that turn their backs on the born child anyway. One thing is sadly sure: our underlying culture of fear and loathing of the female will blame the poor little mothers. "She made him do it" is still the unwritten law.
Today’s column combined with the previous 2 days’ writings provide much to think about.
Perhaps over the next few days there could be some discussions of action items that we could work toward to alleviate the issues raised in these columns.
As I don’t think taxes are stealing, it’s problematic to see this re-redistribution (from Blue to Red) as stealing. Using that term doesn’t defang the right/libertarian/gospel of greed bumper sticker “All Taxes are Theft.”
The essence of the problem is that the block grants are a fixed amounts, the states can use the $ to reduce own taxes, and the chaotic ways these are administered makes accountability all but impossible.
If federal funding for X was not legally used to reduce tax burden that would help a lot. Then we’d need consistent program reporting, and data collection programs.
In the name of deficit reduction all that was done away with & states got carte blanch to do what they wanted with Federal funds nominally aimed at poverty reduction, job training & child care ... and cash assistance.
I enjoy these columns where your lengthy journalistic experience shows through. You give great summaries of your experiences, and often tie it in with America's long history (long in American standards, not by European standards). I was left wondering how someone like Rupert Murdoch felt that moving his enterprise to the U.S. was such an inviting opportunity - almost like he saw the Red states inviting him to set up a propaganda machine like Fox, that would serve to galvanize all these Red state characteristics into the kind of potent force that led to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
I'll say what everyone else is thinking, I'm sure - that Rupert Murdoch shares the blame with Trump for the Jan. 6 insurrection. As William points out, Putin is aligned with them.
Raw Story has an article today from History News Network which is of a piece with what Thom is saying Republicans are about and beautifully describes the concealed fascist methodology and ideology behind their actions and "philosophy". It is titled, "A warning the US Army issued troops in 1945 rings true today". It as if the author of the warning had time travelled to read Thom's recent descriptions of fascism, or vice versa. The wording is only slightly different but the message and the pernicious reality are the same.
The "religious" right has many parallels to Indian policy in the mid to late 1800's. Grant fully supported using church appointed people as Indian agents. The proponents of the Dawes Act clearly supported the government being involved in christianizing Indian people. Read AMERICANIZING THE AMERICAN INDIAN edited by Francis Paul Prucha.
I agree with the assertion that GOP ideology is toxic, but I think this is off the mark:
"Using racism as a political strategy while promoting and defending the greed of oligarchs always leads to massive inequality: that, in turn, causes widespread poverty, pollution, illiteracy, and early death regardless of the nation it’s done in."
If people are feeling secure economically and are less stressed in general it is far more difficult for the contagion of racism and fascism to take hold. America's wealth inequality and the loss of manufacturing jobs have combined to create a frustration that has people not knowing where to turn. Add to that with unfettered militarism and global hegemony supported by Republicans and Democrats alike and we have the perfect storm for anger to be directed at easy scapegoats. On the right it's the LGTBQ community, liberals, and pretty much anyone who is not white and Christian. On the left it's Putin, Trump and Republicans. But the real villains are the politicians who are so cowardly that they refuse to stand up to the special interests, and that would include Biden and his cabal, and tell the American people one thing while doing another, The next layer of villains are those who would have us believe that those like Biden or Trump are actively working in our collective interests, because they are all putting on theatrics while enacting mostly counterproductive public policy in the interest of political expediency. Until both sides look in the mirror, and at the pundit class who misleads them while hawking their sponsors' crap, we are an empire in decline that is ultimately doomed.
I would add that supporting and defending the greed of the oligarchs is not a partisan practice.
Here you go again. You kavetch about Biden and his Cabal, yet say noting, of any import, about Trump and the Republicans.
The contagion of racism and fascism, does not lie in America's wealth and inequality, it has been with us from the beginning,first with indentured servants then after 1661 when Virginia legalized slavery.
Racism is a subset of classism . Classism has been with us for as long as one man could intimidate other men with bodily injury or death.
Most pronounced in Europe with its nobility and royals.
It came to America in the ships that brought English gentry and indentured servants to Jamestown in 1607.
The gentry, soon as established themselves as planters, building forts with the labor of indentured servants, and some specialist freemen, like coopers, carpenters, smiths (which accounts for the prominence of those Surnames in America.
Overtime the fortunes of these planter families declined, and the indentured servants worked off their indenture, received a bag of seed corn (only in America is maize called corn, in England it was grain), a firearm, a mule and the right to patent his own land.
One of the 20 Africans brought to Jamestown in 1619 was an Africa warrior, named Edward Mozingo, Sr., (c. 1649 – 1712), kidnapped from Africa when about 10 years old, sold into indentury in Jamestown, Virginia. After his owner died, he sued for his freedom and won it. He married an impoverished white woman, Margaret Pierce Bayley (1645–1711) and together they, essentially, founded the Mozingo family line in North America., there is a book, Fiddler on Pantico Run, about him and his white descendants, he also has black descendants, a notable white is Judge Tony Mozingo of Alabama., and a lot of proud KKK, and Trump humping whites.
Bernie Sanders knows that racism is a subclass of classism, but was pilloried for not elevating it to the greatest "sin", though he was an old civil rights warrior,
While the Democratic party's hands are stained. that stain fled from the Democratic Party to the Republican party with the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid and the Great Society.
I am not at all happy with Biden, I deem him either complicit, corrupt or a coward, as is the leadership of the DNC. It is known that Nancy Pelosi has a visceral hatred of progressives, as I assume Hakeen Jeffries does as well, (he would not be in office were it not for AIPAC, and Corporate donors.
The only other choice is Trump, Putins butt buddy, and not voting or voting for a third party is a vote for Trump. And I gather that is your agenda.
A not so disguised Putinist.
Not so clever ploy, critiquing both Republicans and Democrats, but firing your real bullets at Democrats and Biden, and blanks at Republicans and Trump..
Just letting you know that there is one reader, that has critical reasoning skills, and can ferret out intent from comments
My own discontent with the Democrats and Biden is well known, but I want them to act in the manner in which they present themselves, as progressives, and I intend to light a fire under their feet to motivate them.
On the other hand their is no redemption for the Republicans and Trump.
And as much as I do not like it, I will, once again, hold my nose and vote Democratic.
Otherwise tis the end of a political experiment, and the beginning of a toxic alliance and dictatorship, been an unremediated USSR and the USA.
Putin is hell bent on reviving the USSR, seems to me that you are as well.
It is not the "Republicans" but both parties that are controlled by the nation's oligarchs. It was Bill Clinton that ended Glass-Steagal and it was Clinton that deregulated the commodities market and it was Bill Cllinton that pushed for NAFTA that has resulted in ghost towns in what was once the industrial heartland of the USA. It was Clinton that doubled the prison population which now provides a great deal of slave labor for American businesses and depresses the wages of all workers. It was Obama that refused to push for universal health care and introduced legislation that doubled the profits of big pharma. It was Obama that initiated the murder without due process for any American citizen he deemed a possible threat to his security. It was Biden who initiated legislation that made it impossible for workers to declare bankrupty and eliminate credit card debt when more than half the bankruptcies are the result of people being unable to pay medical bills even when most have medical insurance.
The same players like Larry Summers or the convicted war criminal Henry Kissenger are advisors and decision makers regardless of which party controls the White House. Both parties, with Reagan and Clinton killing off the unions, now depend on the bankers and energy companies for funding for the campaigns of their members when they are chosen by party bosses to be allowed on the ballot.
We have people like Jeff Besos that spend hundreds of millions of dollars for a yacht and yet refuse to provide their workers with a living wage. What has changed over post Reagn years is the abillity of workers to form unions so that they have some measure of control over decisions like moving a factory out of the country.
The elites have successfully re-written the history books and control teachers and even which books children are allowed to read. Most Americans lack the ability to think in a critical manner for themselves and depend on corrupt social media businesses and radical right wing media outlets to tell them how and what to think. Truly embarrassing to travel overseas - so much so that I tell people I am from Canada.
Religion is built layer by layer. One layer that many religions have chosen to elevate is suffering as a means to salvation. It's twisted, and I think it plays a part in the results you have listed. It's about the church's higher authority and submission of the masses. There is also a price for admission. The congregation must give part of what their hard work earned to prop-up the rule makers. The layers and rules are piled-on century after century, and a recent one is to dictate who the congregation shall vote for.
The right did a good job obscuring much of the racism until they literally GAVE their party and power to one of the most overt racists of all time. Like any religious cult leader, Trump expects to get their homage and hard earned money. HE doesn't suffer under Republican policies, but others do, especially the red states.
We have to take back the House and have a large enough majority in the Senate to be filibuster proof or vote the filibuster out of existence, if we want to pass this legislation. We can do this! We cannot give up fighting.
The irony is that red-staters view themselves as virtuous independent-living non-takers who have contempt for whiners and snowflakes. Personally, I’m absolutely happy to have my commie pinko liberal whining blue state tax dollars stay in New York City.
The right can't connect the dots. A lack of caring about almost everything, is the root of all evil. The right would rather work towards a dystopia than a Utopia. Until they get their dystopia. Then they will blame the groups they don't like, instead of their greedy leaders. The right hates truth, reality, rational thinking, freedom, and the Constitution. Children are groomed in Sunday School to think instinctually and emotionally, but seldom rationally. Religious indoctrination is what the dictators of old and the present are using to get rich off of. Instead of working to end human suffering, they exploit it. A lot of jobs and a lot of money is spent on hospitals, prisons and wars. It is more about class warfare than it is about racism. It will only get worse if we do not have a maximum wage about 10 times the minimum wage.
To your sentence "Children are groomed ...." I'd add - not just in Sunday school for religious reasons, but by many minority movements over the years. These minority movements have seen the potential to further their cause by "grooming" children. I can think of many examples of this, but I'd be accused of prejudice if I were to name some of them.
Like ACB's People of Prayer, or Mom's for Liberty, but I suspect you are referring to LGBT, or movements by POC.
Go Ahead, name them, but support your charge with facts.BTW DRAG Queen Story Hour is not a movement.
However who can blame people who want to be normalized and enjoy the benefits of a society into which they contribute, by taxes and spending, and not be demonized, mischaracterized and accused of shit that is a lie.
First the came for the Sociealist, as I was not a Socialist..MARTIN NIEMÖLLER
I know as a California native I don’t understand the Red state mentality. Even though California isn’t perfect, I am grateful I live in a state with progressive leanings and not regressive policies. Punishment and cruelty is the point with Republican led states. Denying their citizens access to Medicaid alone increases the chance of a shortened lifespan. I feel Republicans govern for their corporate and Christofascist donors only and to hell with the rest of their citizens.
The reason they are against social programs like Medicaid and SNP, is because they believe that the recipients are people of color. Nancy Pelosi's daughter, Alexandria is a documentarian, in 2009 she made a documentary touring the south https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_America:_Feeling_Wronged_%E2%80%93_Some_Voices_from_the_Campaign_Trail
She interviewed a redneck, living in a falling down single wide, wearing bib overalls and missing teeth. He was dead set against food stamps and other social services, cause they helped the "coloreds".
She pointed out that he was on food stamps as well. "That's different, said he, I deserve them"
I would expand their hatred beyond 'racism'. Remember, the KKK went after Jews and LGBTQ+ folks back in the day. Last person lynched and hung in Marietta Square, GA was a Jew. It's all fear-based. They are afraid of minorities (especially black people), they are afraid of Jews, they are afraid of the LGBTQ+ community because ...guess what? They have questions about their sexual orientation too. As for anti-abortion? Bubba does not want it publicly known that his daughter had to abort the fetus with which Bubba impregnated her in a drunken blackout. Incest is rampant in the South and other Red States. Yuck.
I've been thinking that the end of Roe put daddy or babysitting granddad MORE at risk of exposure. When "the ladies" could discreetly "take care of it" it would seem easier to keep the secret. Now I wonder? States that give aid to born but destitute children generally require the mother to name somebody, but I guess this set of States are the same ones that turn their backs on the born child anyway. One thing is sadly sure: our underlying culture of fear and loathing of the female will blame the poor little mothers. "She made him do it" is still the unwritten law.
Today’s column combined with the previous 2 days’ writings provide much to think about.
Perhaps over the next few days there could be some discussions of action items that we could work toward to alleviate the issues raised in these columns.
As I don’t think taxes are stealing, it’s problematic to see this re-redistribution (from Blue to Red) as stealing. Using that term doesn’t defang the right/libertarian/gospel of greed bumper sticker “All Taxes are Theft.”
The essence of the problem is that the block grants are a fixed amounts, the states can use the $ to reduce own taxes, and the chaotic ways these are administered makes accountability all but impossible.
If federal funding for X was not legally used to reduce tax burden that would help a lot. Then we’d need consistent program reporting, and data collection programs.
In the name of deficit reduction all that was done away with & states got carte blanch to do what they wanted with Federal funds nominally aimed at poverty reduction, job training & child care ... and cash assistance.
I enjoy these columns where your lengthy journalistic experience shows through. You give great summaries of your experiences, and often tie it in with America's long history (long in American standards, not by European standards). I was left wondering how someone like Rupert Murdoch felt that moving his enterprise to the U.S. was such an inviting opportunity - almost like he saw the Red states inviting him to set up a propaganda machine like Fox, that would serve to galvanize all these Red state characteristics into the kind of potent force that led to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
I'll say what everyone else is thinking, I'm sure - that Rupert Murdoch shares the blame with Trump for the Jan. 6 insurrection. As William points out, Putin is aligned with them.
There is a relationship between Murdoch and Putin. One that the media and pundit class shy away from. https://observer.com/2016/03/algemeiner-celebrates-power-jews-at-packed-manhattan-gala/
Very interesting. Thanks William.
Raw Story has an article today from History News Network which is of a piece with what Thom is saying Republicans are about and beautifully describes the concealed fascist methodology and ideology behind their actions and "philosophy". It is titled, "A warning the US Army issued troops in 1945 rings true today". It as if the author of the warning had time travelled to read Thom's recent descriptions of fascism, or vice versa. The wording is only slightly different but the message and the pernicious reality are the same.
The "religious" right has many parallels to Indian policy in the mid to late 1800's. Grant fully supported using church appointed people as Indian agents. The proponents of the Dawes Act clearly supported the government being involved in christianizing Indian people. Read AMERICANIZING THE AMERICAN INDIAN edited by Francis Paul Prucha.
I agree with the assertion that GOP ideology is toxic, but I think this is off the mark:
"Using racism as a political strategy while promoting and defending the greed of oligarchs always leads to massive inequality: that, in turn, causes widespread poverty, pollution, illiteracy, and early death regardless of the nation it’s done in."
If people are feeling secure economically and are less stressed in general it is far more difficult for the contagion of racism and fascism to take hold. America's wealth inequality and the loss of manufacturing jobs have combined to create a frustration that has people not knowing where to turn. Add to that with unfettered militarism and global hegemony supported by Republicans and Democrats alike and we have the perfect storm for anger to be directed at easy scapegoats. On the right it's the LGTBQ community, liberals, and pretty much anyone who is not white and Christian. On the left it's Putin, Trump and Republicans. But the real villains are the politicians who are so cowardly that they refuse to stand up to the special interests, and that would include Biden and his cabal, and tell the American people one thing while doing another, The next layer of villains are those who would have us believe that those like Biden or Trump are actively working in our collective interests, because they are all putting on theatrics while enacting mostly counterproductive public policy in the interest of political expediency. Until both sides look in the mirror, and at the pundit class who misleads them while hawking their sponsors' crap, we are an empire in decline that is ultimately doomed.
I would add that supporting and defending the greed of the oligarchs is not a partisan practice.
Here you go again. You kavetch about Biden and his Cabal, yet say noting, of any import, about Trump and the Republicans.
The contagion of racism and fascism, does not lie in America's wealth and inequality, it has been with us from the beginning,first with indentured servants then after 1661 when Virginia legalized slavery.
Racism is a subset of classism . Classism has been with us for as long as one man could intimidate other men with bodily injury or death.
Most pronounced in Europe with its nobility and royals.
It came to America in the ships that brought English gentry and indentured servants to Jamestown in 1607.
The gentry, soon as established themselves as planters, building forts with the labor of indentured servants, and some specialist freemen, like coopers, carpenters, smiths (which accounts for the prominence of those Surnames in America.
Overtime the fortunes of these planter families declined, and the indentured servants worked off their indenture, received a bag of seed corn (only in America is maize called corn, in England it was grain), a firearm, a mule and the right to patent his own land.
One of the 20 Africans brought to Jamestown in 1619 was an Africa warrior, named Edward Mozingo, Sr., (c. 1649 – 1712), kidnapped from Africa when about 10 years old, sold into indentury in Jamestown, Virginia. After his owner died, he sued for his freedom and won it. He married an impoverished white woman, Margaret Pierce Bayley (1645–1711) and together they, essentially, founded the Mozingo family line in North America., there is a book, Fiddler on Pantico Run, about him and his white descendants, he also has black descendants, a notable white is Judge Tony Mozingo of Alabama., and a lot of proud KKK, and Trump humping whites.
Bernie Sanders knows that racism is a subclass of classism, but was pilloried for not elevating it to the greatest "sin", though he was an old civil rights warrior,
While the Democratic party's hands are stained. that stain fled from the Democratic Party to the Republican party with the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid and the Great Society.
I am not at all happy with Biden, I deem him either complicit, corrupt or a coward, as is the leadership of the DNC. It is known that Nancy Pelosi has a visceral hatred of progressives, as I assume Hakeen Jeffries does as well, (he would not be in office were it not for AIPAC, and Corporate donors.
The only other choice is Trump, Putins butt buddy, and not voting or voting for a third party is a vote for Trump. And I gather that is your agenda.
A not so disguised Putinist.
Not so clever ploy, critiquing both Republicans and Democrats, but firing your real bullets at Democrats and Biden, and blanks at Republicans and Trump..
Just letting you know that there is one reader, that has critical reasoning skills, and can ferret out intent from comments
My own discontent with the Democrats and Biden is well known, but I want them to act in the manner in which they present themselves, as progressives, and I intend to light a fire under their feet to motivate them.
On the other hand their is no redemption for the Republicans and Trump.
And as much as I do not like it, I will, once again, hold my nose and vote Democratic.
Otherwise tis the end of a political experiment, and the beginning of a toxic alliance and dictatorship, been an unremediated USSR and the USA.
Putin is hell bent on reviving the USSR, seems to me that you are as well.
It is not the "Republicans" but both parties that are controlled by the nation's oligarchs. It was Bill Clinton that ended Glass-Steagal and it was Clinton that deregulated the commodities market and it was Bill Cllinton that pushed for NAFTA that has resulted in ghost towns in what was once the industrial heartland of the USA. It was Clinton that doubled the prison population which now provides a great deal of slave labor for American businesses and depresses the wages of all workers. It was Obama that refused to push for universal health care and introduced legislation that doubled the profits of big pharma. It was Obama that initiated the murder without due process for any American citizen he deemed a possible threat to his security. It was Biden who initiated legislation that made it impossible for workers to declare bankrupty and eliminate credit card debt when more than half the bankruptcies are the result of people being unable to pay medical bills even when most have medical insurance.
The same players like Larry Summers or the convicted war criminal Henry Kissenger are advisors and decision makers regardless of which party controls the White House. Both parties, with Reagan and Clinton killing off the unions, now depend on the bankers and energy companies for funding for the campaigns of their members when they are chosen by party bosses to be allowed on the ballot.
We have people like Jeff Besos that spend hundreds of millions of dollars for a yacht and yet refuse to provide their workers with a living wage. What has changed over post Reagn years is the abillity of workers to form unions so that they have some measure of control over decisions like moving a factory out of the country.
The elites have successfully re-written the history books and control teachers and even which books children are allowed to read. Most Americans lack the ability to think in a critical manner for themselves and depend on corrupt social media businesses and radical right wing media outlets to tell them how and what to think. Truly embarrassing to travel overseas - so much so that I tell people I am from Canada.
YES! Your through-line is spot on as usual, Thom.
Religion is built layer by layer. One layer that many religions have chosen to elevate is suffering as a means to salvation. It's twisted, and I think it plays a part in the results you have listed. It's about the church's higher authority and submission of the masses. There is also a price for admission. The congregation must give part of what their hard work earned to prop-up the rule makers. The layers and rules are piled-on century after century, and a recent one is to dictate who the congregation shall vote for.
The right did a good job obscuring much of the racism until they literally GAVE their party and power to one of the most overt racists of all time. Like any religious cult leader, Trump expects to get their homage and hard earned money. HE doesn't suffer under Republican policies, but others do, especially the red states.
We have to take back the House and have a large enough majority in the Senate to be filibuster proof or vote the filibuster out of existence, if we want to pass this legislation. We can do this! We cannot give up fighting.