Thom, I find your newsletters insightful and your historic perspective enlightening. Today's reference to Brazil - comparing its constitutional democracy to Turkey and suggesting that it is "a newly liberated democracy turning into an authoritarian state" - is factually incorrect and gives me pause. I was born and raised in Brasil. I came to the US in 1977 to go to graduate school in No. California. I have a lot of family in Brasil and I go back often to visit. Brasil is a multiparty, federal presidential democracy with elections every 4 years. There are 3 branches of government - executive, legislative and judicial. From 1964 - 1985 Brasil was a military dictatorship, so hardly a newly liberated democracy. President Lula da Silva is a socialist and part of the Worker's party. He has stood up to trump on several occasions. Brasil has a free press and universal suffrage. Sadly, economic and social inequality persists, made worse by US tariffs imposed on exports.
Thom has a rare talent for writing in a way that is easy to understand regardless of personal experience and educational achievement.
Alas, few MAGAs are likely to ever read what he has written. That is because the ruthless billionaires have provided an alternative-reality right-wing media bubble for them to get all the fascist-censored news (FoxNews, Newsmax, 4chan, One America News, Breitbart, Alex Jones, etc) to facilitate turning them into Elois.
Imagine if your brain was so full of "alternative facts" that you really did think we are crushing Iran to avoid a nuclear bomb attack from a poor nation 6,000 miles away with no long-range missiles or nuke bombs. Imagine believing that our support for genocide is rescuing the Jews from the evil and hateful Arabs. Imagine thinking that the economy is great and we are all rich, even though almost half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and they are paying twice as much for gas at the pump as when Biden was president.
Thnks for naming the MAGA greatest hits—even though it’s social media, “x” is slanted to right-wing comments and attitudes and so many stay there and babble with each other.
I'm wondering if allowing this to become a holy war, good against evil, with the oligarchs framing it with themselves as the righteous and good people fighting against permissive liberal beliefs is a bad idea. Maybe, instead of trying to establish ordinary people and working people as the good guys, we should shift the argument back to one more about FDR's additional rights and the idea that all property, assets, and resources must be shared (on a temporary basis - no one or no one family lives forever) as the benefits of a generous and rich land where we all happen to reside and where all should be given maximum opportunities to survive and thrive. The idea of democracy is in distributing everything, including power and natural resources with a sense of equal shares based less on merit and more on membership, I think.
I also believe we should look forward to a time when the "American dream" concept can be dispensed with entirely as anachronistic. Here is what I have written in an early draft of a new article:
Perhaps we could start using phrases such as ‘A Fair Shake for All’, or ‘Enough to Go Around’, or ‘No Excuses for Poverty Now’. Is it not offensive to Americans to aim for a middle-class, an upper-middle-class, or an Epstein-level higher privileged class which only exclude several million souls because they failed somehow to reach high enough or to pray loudly enough to achieve the status and wealth of more fortunate Americans who obtained their ambitions and dreams? The American dream assumes that those who are not dreamers, schemers, and movers and shakers are not true Americans or that they, incidentally, are dispensable and disposable. No. That is certainly not what I envision for America, and it should not be what anyone in a democracy should want. Ruthless competition and dog-eat-dog should be limited to sports and games. Does anyone remember just what the social contract entails?
Robert B. Elliott: In my mind, democracy and socialism stand for two distinct ideas. Democracy means that every person has a say in every decision that affects him. Socialism means that each person shares in the material prosperity of his society. The two ideas are of course intertwined and codependent and mutually supportive, but not the same thing. You can have one without the other. You have conflated the two of them into one idea. Different people preferentially support one or the other or maybe both. Or, of course, neither. Our founding fathers and many current Republicans especially hate(d) democracy.
Yes, Paul, you can have one (capitalism or socialism) without the other, but neither would be very successful. Without capitalism , America could never have achieved the epitome of of wealth and prosperity (even for average citizens) that it had up until the Reagan Era (1980,) and without socialism to regulate and control the capitalism, and distribute its benefits to all Americans, the economy would be in free fall for the public and stratospheric for the capitalists - as it is now.
Our unmatched prosperity prior to that time was due to the flexible balance of regulated capitalism, which didn't give ALL of its profits to corporations and the wealthy, and the socialism (by taxpayers) that helped when needed to assist the capitalists by providing fiduciary advantages like incorporation, subsidies, and special tax breaks. Barack Obama was almost right when he said that corporations didn't really earn all that wealth, because they owe a lot of it to federal programs - paid for by taxpayers who did not have all of those advantages.
Richard Kiefer: I can well imagine that the level of rapacious, uncaring, profit driven capitalism can indeed be cited as the engine of immense prosperity up to now. However we have paid a tremendous price for that success. We have ravaged the earth in many ways. We have exhausted some of the richest sources of earth's wealth frittering away the outputs until we hardly have any left to show for the exploitation. We have destroyed a huge part of the forests. And the worst is the loss of mineral resources. But it is the signature destruction of the earth as climate change, which is 100% driven by blind profit seeking and which bids fair to destroy many parts of the earth's surface as temperatures rise to 120 deg. F which we cannot tolerate. It is time to stop. As they say, if you are stuck in a hole, stop digging. Capitalism is no longer a tolerable economic system. In the search for private profit at any cost, we will destroy ecosystems, species and perhaps ourselves. If we are not just aimless ignoramuses, we must be able to say stop, this isn't working anymore - we need new arrangements. We can see how capitalism is failing in the US. We must be smart now.
I will have to think more carefully about your statements when I am less distracted by personal exigencies. I did say, "I think" after my supposition indicating that I had not settled on a firm conclusion. However, I do have to wonder if the inclination to see the two ideas as distinct is part of the problem or a cause of the problem. Social(ism) as a formal system or 'ism', and social responsibility in furtherance of the democratic ideal are indeed two separate concepts. But I tend to think that democracy without a very tangible and intentional attempt to institute wealth and resource sharing and fair distribution under some durable strategy or philosophy ceases to be democracy. Having established and well-funded social programs and looking for ways to assure a high degree of equality in more than just a symbolic or rhetorical sense seems to be the essence of democracy, since voting and decision-making inevitably probably always involve material things and economic value or property. In any case, I'm obviously engaged in wishful thinking. Capitalism is the 'ism' which has a stranglehold and no one is talking seriously about significant changes in that domain.
Since we have identified the problem,which should have been obvious for the last 30 months,maybe it time to redirect some of our opposition from Trump to those who back him and have funded his reelection campaign,the ballroom,ete. Why not a little offense against Musk,Tim Cook(Apple),Bezos,Sundar Pichal(Google) and especially Jensen Huang( Nvidia) a buddy of Trumps. They have all committed massive amounts of money supporting him,his derugulation of the entire marketplace. They love him,they support him 100%, Why are we not talking about the tech objective of totally destroying democracy in favor of a technocracy.Are we afraid to criticize the Tech oligarchs,if so,why?
For many of us, the problem has been obvious for decades, and especially obvious under Bush II. Trump is not doing this alone. He is the useful idiot, providing the distractions so Project 2025 can move along in the background. Fortunately, it does seem that people are starting to wake up, mainly because Trump's distractions are backfiring, on him and on Project 2025. Unfortunately, with the current corrupt SCOTUS, the wake-up call might just be too late.
Rosie O’Donnell subbing for Jimmy Kimmel Live did a musical parody on the Orange Cheeto that hit all the recent highlights of his disastrous presidency. bit.ly/4xfLZSn
The final nail in the coffin of the great American experiment in democracy was put their on 12/12/00 when 5 highly partisan, unelected republican SCOTUS judges stopped the legal Florida vote count and rubberstamped the Bush brothers all-out assault on American democracy by taking away Florida's constitutional right to conduct an election and count all of the uncounted votes as Florida election law clearly required. There would be no Trump today without this crucial step. The Bush brothers all-out assault on American democracy in Florida in 2000 created the election stealing road map that Trump is now using for his election stealing activities.
Thanks for a succint and painful recap! Recently I've been wondering how the damage done to our civic community, norms, sense of shared values and goals has affected people--emltionally, ethically, behaviorally?
It seems that the excitement and emotional rush of performative politics, and the very real harm caused by ideology and greed has done damage to our abiity to maintain effective governance . Are we able to see people realistically-- the good, the flaws, the who.e person, rather than a ftwo dimensional label?
Can people institutions cope with the boring, tedious, hard tasks of policy making, standard setting, rule enforcement and all of the stabilizing efforts needed to make and implement policy? This stuff takes a lot of time and work. And a 3 or 4 word made-for social-media post is quick,rewarding, and makes answers look simple.
Have we so damaged ourselves that we won't be collectively capable of rebuilding and maintraining a democracy?
Thom, Al great points you made so long ago. Sorry, I will, not be part of your up coming book read. I, believe I, will keep myself safe and out of trouble. Thanks, Thom. Sure it will be fascinating.
I was not familiar with the Davis headnote until I looked it up and realized that it represents the weak leg of scotus cases that underpin the clearly unconstitutional Buckley v Valejo & Citizens United decisions conferring personhood on corporations. https://uscentrist.org/2021/12/14/can-we-break-the-legs-of-corruptions-grip-on-american-politics/
Thom, I find your newsletters insightful and your historic perspective enlightening. Today's reference to Brazil - comparing its constitutional democracy to Turkey and suggesting that it is "a newly liberated democracy turning into an authoritarian state" - is factually incorrect and gives me pause. I was born and raised in Brasil. I came to the US in 1977 to go to graduate school in No. California. I have a lot of family in Brasil and I go back often to visit. Brasil is a multiparty, federal presidential democracy with elections every 4 years. There are 3 branches of government - executive, legislative and judicial. From 1964 - 1985 Brasil was a military dictatorship, so hardly a newly liberated democracy. President Lula da Silva is a socialist and part of the Worker's party. He has stood up to trump on several occasions. Brasil has a free press and universal suffrage. Sadly, economic and social inequality persists, made worse by US tariffs imposed on exports.
Thom has a rare talent for writing in a way that is easy to understand regardless of personal experience and educational achievement.
Alas, few MAGAs are likely to ever read what he has written. That is because the ruthless billionaires have provided an alternative-reality right-wing media bubble for them to get all the fascist-censored news (FoxNews, Newsmax, 4chan, One America News, Breitbart, Alex Jones, etc) to facilitate turning them into Elois.
Imagine if your brain was so full of "alternative facts" that you really did think we are crushing Iran to avoid a nuclear bomb attack from a poor nation 6,000 miles away with no long-range missiles or nuke bombs. Imagine believing that our support for genocide is rescuing the Jews from the evil and hateful Arabs. Imagine thinking that the economy is great and we are all rich, even though almost half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and they are paying twice as much for gas at the pump as when Biden was president.
Thnks for naming the MAGA greatest hits—even though it’s social media, “x” is slanted to right-wing comments and attitudes and so many stay there and babble with each other.
My bad. I forgot about Muskaganda. I stopped visiting once he took it over.
Thank you.😊
I'm wondering if allowing this to become a holy war, good against evil, with the oligarchs framing it with themselves as the righteous and good people fighting against permissive liberal beliefs is a bad idea. Maybe, instead of trying to establish ordinary people and working people as the good guys, we should shift the argument back to one more about FDR's additional rights and the idea that all property, assets, and resources must be shared (on a temporary basis - no one or no one family lives forever) as the benefits of a generous and rich land where we all happen to reside and where all should be given maximum opportunities to survive and thrive. The idea of democracy is in distributing everything, including power and natural resources with a sense of equal shares based less on merit and more on membership, I think.
I also believe we should look forward to a time when the "American dream" concept can be dispensed with entirely as anachronistic. Here is what I have written in an early draft of a new article:
Perhaps we could start using phrases such as ‘A Fair Shake for All’, or ‘Enough to Go Around’, or ‘No Excuses for Poverty Now’. Is it not offensive to Americans to aim for a middle-class, an upper-middle-class, or an Epstein-level higher privileged class which only exclude several million souls because they failed somehow to reach high enough or to pray loudly enough to achieve the status and wealth of more fortunate Americans who obtained their ambitions and dreams? The American dream assumes that those who are not dreamers, schemers, and movers and shakers are not true Americans or that they, incidentally, are dispensable and disposable. No. That is certainly not what I envision for America, and it should not be what anyone in a democracy should want. Ruthless competition and dog-eat-dog should be limited to sports and games. Does anyone remember just what the social contract entails?
Robert B. Elliott: In my mind, democracy and socialism stand for two distinct ideas. Democracy means that every person has a say in every decision that affects him. Socialism means that each person shares in the material prosperity of his society. The two ideas are of course intertwined and codependent and mutually supportive, but not the same thing. You can have one without the other. You have conflated the two of them into one idea. Different people preferentially support one or the other or maybe both. Or, of course, neither. Our founding fathers and many current Republicans especially hate(d) democracy.
Yes, Paul, you can have one (capitalism or socialism) without the other, but neither would be very successful. Without capitalism , America could never have achieved the epitome of of wealth and prosperity (even for average citizens) that it had up until the Reagan Era (1980,) and without socialism to regulate and control the capitalism, and distribute its benefits to all Americans, the economy would be in free fall for the public and stratospheric for the capitalists - as it is now.
Our unmatched prosperity prior to that time was due to the flexible balance of regulated capitalism, which didn't give ALL of its profits to corporations and the wealthy, and the socialism (by taxpayers) that helped when needed to assist the capitalists by providing fiduciary advantages like incorporation, subsidies, and special tax breaks. Barack Obama was almost right when he said that corporations didn't really earn all that wealth, because they owe a lot of it to federal programs - paid for by taxpayers who did not have all of those advantages.
Richard Kiefer: I can well imagine that the level of rapacious, uncaring, profit driven capitalism can indeed be cited as the engine of immense prosperity up to now. However we have paid a tremendous price for that success. We have ravaged the earth in many ways. We have exhausted some of the richest sources of earth's wealth frittering away the outputs until we hardly have any left to show for the exploitation. We have destroyed a huge part of the forests. And the worst is the loss of mineral resources. But it is the signature destruction of the earth as climate change, which is 100% driven by blind profit seeking and which bids fair to destroy many parts of the earth's surface as temperatures rise to 120 deg. F which we cannot tolerate. It is time to stop. As they say, if you are stuck in a hole, stop digging. Capitalism is no longer a tolerable economic system. In the search for private profit at any cost, we will destroy ecosystems, species and perhaps ourselves. If we are not just aimless ignoramuses, we must be able to say stop, this isn't working anymore - we need new arrangements. We can see how capitalism is failing in the US. We must be smart now.
I will have to think more carefully about your statements when I am less distracted by personal exigencies. I did say, "I think" after my supposition indicating that I had not settled on a firm conclusion. However, I do have to wonder if the inclination to see the two ideas as distinct is part of the problem or a cause of the problem. Social(ism) as a formal system or 'ism', and social responsibility in furtherance of the democratic ideal are indeed two separate concepts. But I tend to think that democracy without a very tangible and intentional attempt to institute wealth and resource sharing and fair distribution under some durable strategy or philosophy ceases to be democracy. Having established and well-funded social programs and looking for ways to assure a high degree of equality in more than just a symbolic or rhetorical sense seems to be the essence of democracy, since voting and decision-making inevitably probably always involve material things and economic value or property. In any case, I'm obviously engaged in wishful thinking. Capitalism is the 'ism' which has a stranglehold and no one is talking seriously about significant changes in that domain.
Yes, a more positive message is better than only negativity.
Since we have identified the problem,which should have been obvious for the last 30 months,maybe it time to redirect some of our opposition from Trump to those who back him and have funded his reelection campaign,the ballroom,ete. Why not a little offense against Musk,Tim Cook(Apple),Bezos,Sundar Pichal(Google) and especially Jensen Huang( Nvidia) a buddy of Trumps. They have all committed massive amounts of money supporting him,his derugulation of the entire marketplace. They love him,they support him 100%, Why are we not talking about the tech objective of totally destroying democracy in favor of a technocracy.Are we afraid to criticize the Tech oligarchs,if so,why?
For many of us, the problem has been obvious for decades, and especially obvious under Bush II. Trump is not doing this alone. He is the useful idiot, providing the distractions so Project 2025 can move along in the background. Fortunately, it does seem that people are starting to wake up, mainly because Trump's distractions are backfiring, on him and on Project 2025. Unfortunately, with the current corrupt SCOTUS, the wake-up call might just be too late.
Best Laugh Of The Summer
Rosie O’Donnell subbing for Jimmy Kimmel Live did a musical parody on the Orange Cheeto that hit all the recent highlights of his disastrous presidency. bit.ly/4xfLZSn
A must see!!
Yep. I'm old enough to remember all of this. It's disgraceful. 🤮
The final nail in the coffin of the great American experiment in democracy was put their on 12/12/00 when 5 highly partisan, unelected republican SCOTUS judges stopped the legal Florida vote count and rubberstamped the Bush brothers all-out assault on American democracy by taking away Florida's constitutional right to conduct an election and count all of the uncounted votes as Florida election law clearly required. There would be no Trump today without this crucial step. The Bush brothers all-out assault on American democracy in Florida in 2000 created the election stealing road map that Trump is now using for his election stealing activities.
Excellent essay, as usual, Thom,
We have to remind establishment Democrats to follow the spirit and actions of FDR.
Hopefully enough voters get this message and elect a majority of Progressives into Congress this November.
Thanks for a succint and painful recap! Recently I've been wondering how the damage done to our civic community, norms, sense of shared values and goals has affected people--emltionally, ethically, behaviorally?
It seems that the excitement and emotional rush of performative politics, and the very real harm caused by ideology and greed has done damage to our abiity to maintain effective governance . Are we able to see people realistically-- the good, the flaws, the who.e person, rather than a ftwo dimensional label?
Can people institutions cope with the boring, tedious, hard tasks of policy making, standard setting, rule enforcement and all of the stabilizing efforts needed to make and implement policy? This stuff takes a lot of time and work. And a 3 or 4 word made-for social-media post is quick,rewarding, and makes answers look simple.
Have we so damaged ourselves that we won't be collectively capable of rebuilding and maintraining a democracy?
History will say whatever the person/A.I. writes down and the A.I. allows to print.
Thom, Al great points you made so long ago. Sorry, I will, not be part of your up coming book read. I, believe I, will keep myself safe and out of trouble. Thanks, Thom. Sure it will be fascinating.