Thom, America has been transmogrified into a society divided by the very people that were supposed to work to bring us together--politicians. The right has used every conceivable tool to wield their power over the message, and I have to ask, "When will Dems wake up?" Like the case of Snow White, I believe the answer is 'never' without help.
For years, the Democrats have not only refused to listen to their own voters, but also have refused to listen to what you show so clearly here: Americans are being led away to the slaughter and don't even know it.
"Ignorance is the power of the wealthy over the oblivious," cannot be revoked unless those who see the truth clearly--like you, Bob Reich, Heather Cox Richardson, and others--help the Democrats understand the psychological messaging of the GOP, and guide them in combating it with consistently clear truths about our world.
As brilliant as all the smart people are on the "D" side, I have yet to see a 'brain council' formed to fight the pollution coming from the right and poured directly into the subconscious minds of the weak.
The Dems don't get it, and without scholarly assistance from those of you who do, this nation will soon be nothing but a fleeting memory. The time for us to expect anything different from the Dems is over; WE must now insist they listen to those of you who have the wisdom to save us all.
Great article. I'd add a couple of things. First, these foreign brown folks come from a different culture and speak a different language. That is ABSOLUTELY changing America. I could write 20 pages about why this is exactly what makes America great. I'll relate a real incident I experienced. First, let's remember that "foreign folks invading and changing America" has been true in white man history since 1400, when the Spanish showed up. My neighbor is a REAL local. Their history tells of 4 different Native American tribes taking over their valley and changing their culture, then the Spanish, then Americans, and he says it's a positive, not a negative, they long ago embraced change.
OK, real story that explains the USA. In 1990, I was made 2nd in charge of an international complex industrial facility. Our American company had been sold to a French company. The French company commanded us all to increase diversity. I remember their exact words, "whenever possible, hire the qualified individual who is most different than your team".
Most supervisors groused about it. I fully embraced it. The first guy I hired, I introduced the opposite of normal. I didn't say "This man doesn't know our operation, everyone help him". Instead, I said "This man comes from a totally different operation, let's all learn from him what they did better".
Soon, I was worried. Our facility was stable so the company began robbing my good hands for new start-ups. As I added new staff, the fighting began. Within 2 years, meetings became shouting matches and pandemonium. Nobody got alone. Everyone hated the "increase diversity" order, but I knew something they didn't, which I began sharing. Since I'd begun increasing diversity, our profits went up 10% a year and our maintenance budget dropped 10% and our downtime had dropped to 2 hours a YEAR. I told the team our results, and please scream and fight and shout more, call me at 2 AM if you are ready to get physical, and rest assured that bonuses will be proportional to our diversity, however painful it is. My fully diverse team changed that day. They still shouted at each other, but it was no longer negative, it was like a sports team ribbing each other, and they worked even tighter and profits soared.
So, I say bring on all these goofy foreign people, the more the better. The only change I'd make is please, rather than just let them in, can't we insist the donor country take a few NaziREpublican Party cultists in trade? We could pay them.
Their warped beliefs because of religion will fade. Religion can't survive in a well educated society.
Remember the anthem of the sixties “The Times are Changin’ ’”? The truth is the times are constantly “changin’ “; however, perhaps, not always for the better. Are we victims of the assumption that change is by definition progress? The forces within a society are in constant struggle for dominance, some by consensus and some by coercion and force. Democracy has the potential to be more user-friendly, but it can only prevail through constant vigilance. This “Report” illustrates the current threats and the need for that vigilance.
With regards to the issue of diversity, in-breeding, whether biological or social, has not proven to be healthy. Boiled water is rather bland, but when broth, vegetables and spices are added, the water is transformed into something not only tasty but also healthy and life sustaining for the body as a
While the culture war is real, and doesn’t require any outside influence.
It has been weaponized by the upper class, not just the millionaires and billionaires,
But the upper class.
The existence of a strong middle class is perceived as a threat to the upper class, it is the transit through which pass, going up and going down.
Thom nailed it when he said that Henry VII changed everything. My family was wooler in Yorkshire, their industry was raw and dyed wool, which they then exported. Henry VII’s tariff’s forced them to redo their business model and they became textile manufactures, buying land, building fulling mills, and textile mills, which eventually cost two of them their lives as they built dams that impeded others.
Before Henry VII there was no middle class as such, by the time his son came to the throne there was such a well to do and numerous middle class, that freemen were able to dress like nobility, prompting Henry VIII to pass Sumptuary Laws, forbidding commoners from wearing furs, silks, dressing and adorning themselves like nobility.
The middle class is what Marx called the bourgeoisie, by and large in that era shop owners, small business men, dolts whose only concern was and is, what is good for me in the short term.
The culture war will and has been always there. In Germany it was Aryans vs Jews in Rwanda Houtsi vs Toutsi. There will never be a color blind society, we are biologically evolved to be wary of the other.
Nor will there be a gender neutral society, we are biologically evolved to procreate.
But race, gender, sex, etc are not a problem, until made one but our corporate puppet masters and their puppets in the press and pulpit.
Were it not for the press and pulpit there would have been no civil war. The puppet masters, the planters and upper middle class whose income and social status depended on slaves, used their influence (economic and social) to whip the masses into a froth to embark on an endeavor from which they would gain not benefit, but only pay loss. It is always thus.
Racism, genderism, ableism are subsets of claccism. Methinks Bernie knew that and tried to express it, but either couldn’t find the bumper sticker, or was inhibited by his basic Marxist inclinations.
(Marx was not a leftist, nor a socialist, he was a proto libertarian. He advocated for a gold standard, free trade, abolition of tariffs, and tried vainly to tell S.C. editors and readers to free the slaves and hire them back at market wages. His partner Frederick Engels, owned a textile mill, and because southern cotton was too expensive , bought cheaper and inferior Egyptian Cotton, to make a profit.
However the Comintern and Bolsheviks picked up on Marx and Adam Smith, proclaiming them the “fountainhead” of their ideology/system
Bernie did not know how, or possibly even understood, that racism is a subset of classism, even then how does one convey that idea to the masses? It doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker, and if it does, it would require a lengthy explanation.
The upper class knows, for it has invested billions in educating advocates, that the mass of the people are preoccupied with day to day issues, which to them are of paramount importance, and are easily motivated by fear. Look no further than Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, Orban , Russia or the ruling political party in Poland. The political leadership of Russia has been controlling the populace by keeping alive the fear of NAZI’s, which happens every year with their Great Patriotic War parade in Red Square.
The corporate media is controlled by various, interlocking, boards of directoros, who hire, fire and reward the CEO’s and CFO’s, and these boards are interlocked not only with other media, but with (Bill Clintons beloved) financial institutions, the MIC, PhRMA, AHIP, Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures association, and these days with the companies that own social media.
The boards hand down instructions to CEO’s who then pass them on to editors, who pass them on to pundits, anchors and reporters.
This in turn drives the pulpit, which without a fear laden, clientele would have no leverage or money, for what is the tool of religions.. fear. The carrot and the stick, and the stick is much more weighty than the carrot. Satan and hell or rather eternal punishment are the water of life to organized religion.
It all boils down to the amygdale and the prefrontal cortex. The Republicans are, or know how to excite and control the amygdale, the Democrats (big and small d),know nothing but the pre frontal cortex.
The amygdale responds to bumper stickers, short catchy phrases, the pre frontal cortex, lengthy diatribes like this one.
In a contest the amygdale wins every time. That is what has enabled the species to survive.
I'll say it again: Citizens United can be eliminated in blue state legislatures quickly and easily. In this era of independent state legislatures let's use it to our advantage. Getting rid of ALEC, gerrymandering, and dark money from blue states will lead to responsive state leaders. Eventually those in red states will tire of the corruption and anti-majoritarian bent of primary-winning crazies.
Marx and the middle class. Marx was indigent, he had no source of income and was supported by the League of Just Men, financiers and industrialists, who feared the middle class, the bourgeoisie, the goal was to eliminate the transit zone (middle class) through which the unwashed mass of peasants could transit, to arrive at the upper class, and also the upper class transit on their way down.
What benefit then to being nobility, when everyone is a noble, to being rich, when everyone is rich.
To be a lord, one has to have someone to lord it over. The tidewater aristocracy joined the revolution, not because of taxes, or the expense of fine china and silver, which they could easily afford, but because they had dreams of being the new nobility in the new country. Their need to get the farmer and blacksmith on board the revolution, scotched that idea (unforeseen consequence)
The real trick was convincing the middle class, the bourgeoisie, to become the means of their own destruction and that is where control of the press and pulpit to inculcate fear of non believers, feminists, immigrants, American descendants of slaves, gays, transpeople has come into play.
Pound them daily, and many times a day via the press and pulpit and now social media, and the middle class willingly becomes the tool of their own destruction.
The lower and middle middle class, know that they have no chance of ascending to the upper class, but they can dream, so give them a scapegoat that they fear imperils their own local supremacy.
Man is king of his own personal castle, at least by Augustus Caesars's law of Pater Familia, where the man had life and death authority over his wife and children, resurfaced in the 20th Century as Dominionism, aka Christian Reconstruction, founded by Rushdoony and Ted Cruz father, Rafeael.
Accurate portrait of where the Republicans intend to take this nation, but will they get away with it?
What will the Republican Party look like 10 years from now? How about 20 years? I just don't see the younger generations and minorities letting whatever they get away with in this decade stand beyond that time. Truth be told, it may take further Republican attempts or success at election rigging to bring the youth to the streets. They do believe in democracy and human rights. Most of all they know time is running out when it comes to climate chaos.
There is a gun control measure on my 2022 ballot. My neighbor has a sign up about "out of my cold dead hands". I am thinking that's how this is going to go, even if it takes another 20 years.
We may not be here to see it, but let's keep giving them the values and the tools they need to fight repression from the right. That's what Thom does.
In a telling confirmation of how dark money is behind much of these societal disruptions we're seeing, there's a story this morning from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism about email accounts of people who were wanting to expose some of the wrongdoings done by Qatar as they prepare to host FIFA. Financial interests in London hired private investigators, who in turned hired Indian hacker groups to hack private email accounts. Shows us what an intertwined mess we're dealing with, and it always traces back to the dark money you mention in today's article Thom. In Canada we have a security organization called C.S.I.S., a mysterious organization not many of us know much about, but who are watching out for the interests of the wealthy and the powerful.
I would take issue with this fine point: "...with the blessing of 5 corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court."
What recent evidence is there that Chief Justice John Roberts differs from the others, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanagh, Judge Amy, in kind and not merely in degree?
Thom, America has been transmogrified into a society divided by the very people that were supposed to work to bring us together--politicians. The right has used every conceivable tool to wield their power over the message, and I have to ask, "When will Dems wake up?" Like the case of Snow White, I believe the answer is 'never' without help.
For years, the Democrats have not only refused to listen to their own voters, but also have refused to listen to what you show so clearly here: Americans are being led away to the slaughter and don't even know it.
"Ignorance is the power of the wealthy over the oblivious," cannot be revoked unless those who see the truth clearly--like you, Bob Reich, Heather Cox Richardson, and others--help the Democrats understand the psychological messaging of the GOP, and guide them in combating it with consistently clear truths about our world.
As brilliant as all the smart people are on the "D" side, I have yet to see a 'brain council' formed to fight the pollution coming from the right and poured directly into the subconscious minds of the weak.
The Dems don't get it, and without scholarly assistance from those of you who do, this nation will soon be nothing but a fleeting memory. The time for us to expect anything different from the Dems is over; WE must now insist they listen to those of you who have the wisdom to save us all.
Great article. I'd add a couple of things. First, these foreign brown folks come from a different culture and speak a different language. That is ABSOLUTELY changing America. I could write 20 pages about why this is exactly what makes America great. I'll relate a real incident I experienced. First, let's remember that "foreign folks invading and changing America" has been true in white man history since 1400, when the Spanish showed up. My neighbor is a REAL local. Their history tells of 4 different Native American tribes taking over their valley and changing their culture, then the Spanish, then Americans, and he says it's a positive, not a negative, they long ago embraced change.
OK, real story that explains the USA. In 1990, I was made 2nd in charge of an international complex industrial facility. Our American company had been sold to a French company. The French company commanded us all to increase diversity. I remember their exact words, "whenever possible, hire the qualified individual who is most different than your team".
Most supervisors groused about it. I fully embraced it. The first guy I hired, I introduced the opposite of normal. I didn't say "This man doesn't know our operation, everyone help him". Instead, I said "This man comes from a totally different operation, let's all learn from him what they did better".
Soon, I was worried. Our facility was stable so the company began robbing my good hands for new start-ups. As I added new staff, the fighting began. Within 2 years, meetings became shouting matches and pandemonium. Nobody got alone. Everyone hated the "increase diversity" order, but I knew something they didn't, which I began sharing. Since I'd begun increasing diversity, our profits went up 10% a year and our maintenance budget dropped 10% and our downtime had dropped to 2 hours a YEAR. I told the team our results, and please scream and fight and shout more, call me at 2 AM if you are ready to get physical, and rest assured that bonuses will be proportional to our diversity, however painful it is. My fully diverse team changed that day. They still shouted at each other, but it was no longer negative, it was like a sports team ribbing each other, and they worked even tighter and profits soared.
So, I say bring on all these goofy foreign people, the more the better. The only change I'd make is please, rather than just let them in, can't we insist the donor country take a few NaziREpublican Party cultists in trade? We could pay them.
Their warped beliefs because of religion will fade. Religion can't survive in a well educated society.
Remember the anthem of the sixties “The Times are Changin’ ’”? The truth is the times are constantly “changin’ “; however, perhaps, not always for the better. Are we victims of the assumption that change is by definition progress? The forces within a society are in constant struggle for dominance, some by consensus and some by coercion and force. Democracy has the potential to be more user-friendly, but it can only prevail through constant vigilance. This “Report” illustrates the current threats and the need for that vigilance.
With regards to the issue of diversity, in-breeding, whether biological or social, has not proven to be healthy. Boiled water is rather bland, but when broth, vegetables and spices are added, the water is transformed into something not only tasty but also healthy and life sustaining for the body as a
whole.
While the culture war is real, and doesn’t require any outside influence.
It has been weaponized by the upper class, not just the millionaires and billionaires,
But the upper class.
The existence of a strong middle class is perceived as a threat to the upper class, it is the transit through which pass, going up and going down.
Thom nailed it when he said that Henry VII changed everything. My family was wooler in Yorkshire, their industry was raw and dyed wool, which they then exported. Henry VII’s tariff’s forced them to redo their business model and they became textile manufactures, buying land, building fulling mills, and textile mills, which eventually cost two of them their lives as they built dams that impeded others.
Before Henry VII there was no middle class as such, by the time his son came to the throne there was such a well to do and numerous middle class, that freemen were able to dress like nobility, prompting Henry VIII to pass Sumptuary Laws, forbidding commoners from wearing furs, silks, dressing and adorning themselves like nobility.
The middle class is what Marx called the bourgeoisie, by and large in that era shop owners, small business men, dolts whose only concern was and is, what is good for me in the short term.
The culture war will and has been always there. In Germany it was Aryans vs Jews in Rwanda Houtsi vs Toutsi. There will never be a color blind society, we are biologically evolved to be wary of the other.
Nor will there be a gender neutral society, we are biologically evolved to procreate.
But race, gender, sex, etc are not a problem, until made one but our corporate puppet masters and their puppets in the press and pulpit.
Were it not for the press and pulpit there would have been no civil war. The puppet masters, the planters and upper middle class whose income and social status depended on slaves, used their influence (economic and social) to whip the masses into a froth to embark on an endeavor from which they would gain not benefit, but only pay loss. It is always thus.
Racism, genderism, ableism are subsets of claccism. Methinks Bernie knew that and tried to express it, but either couldn’t find the bumper sticker, or was inhibited by his basic Marxist inclinations.
(Marx was not a leftist, nor a socialist, he was a proto libertarian. He advocated for a gold standard, free trade, abolition of tariffs, and tried vainly to tell S.C. editors and readers to free the slaves and hire them back at market wages. His partner Frederick Engels, owned a textile mill, and because southern cotton was too expensive , bought cheaper and inferior Egyptian Cotton, to make a profit.
However the Comintern and Bolsheviks picked up on Marx and Adam Smith, proclaiming them the “fountainhead” of their ideology/system
Bernie did not know how, or possibly even understood, that racism is a subset of classism, even then how does one convey that idea to the masses? It doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker, and if it does, it would require a lengthy explanation.
The upper class knows, for it has invested billions in educating advocates, that the mass of the people are preoccupied with day to day issues, which to them are of paramount importance, and are easily motivated by fear. Look no further than Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, Orban , Russia or the ruling political party in Poland. The political leadership of Russia has been controlling the populace by keeping alive the fear of NAZI’s, which happens every year with their Great Patriotic War parade in Red Square.
The corporate media is controlled by various, interlocking, boards of directoros, who hire, fire and reward the CEO’s and CFO’s, and these boards are interlocked not only with other media, but with (Bill Clintons beloved) financial institutions, the MIC, PhRMA, AHIP, Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures association, and these days with the companies that own social media.
The boards hand down instructions to CEO’s who then pass them on to editors, who pass them on to pundits, anchors and reporters.
This in turn drives the pulpit, which without a fear laden, clientele would have no leverage or money, for what is the tool of religions.. fear. The carrot and the stick, and the stick is much more weighty than the carrot. Satan and hell or rather eternal punishment are the water of life to organized religion.
It all boils down to the amygdale and the prefrontal cortex. The Republicans are, or know how to excite and control the amygdale, the Democrats (big and small d),know nothing but the pre frontal cortex.
The amygdale responds to bumper stickers, short catchy phrases, the pre frontal cortex, lengthy diatribes like this one.
In a contest the amygdale wins every time. That is what has enabled the species to survive.
I'll say it again: Citizens United can be eliminated in blue state legislatures quickly and easily. In this era of independent state legislatures let's use it to our advantage. Getting rid of ALEC, gerrymandering, and dark money from blue states will lead to responsive state leaders. Eventually those in red states will tire of the corruption and anti-majoritarian bent of primary-winning crazies.
Marx and the middle class. Marx was indigent, he had no source of income and was supported by the League of Just Men, financiers and industrialists, who feared the middle class, the bourgeoisie, the goal was to eliminate the transit zone (middle class) through which the unwashed mass of peasants could transit, to arrive at the upper class, and also the upper class transit on their way down.
What benefit then to being nobility, when everyone is a noble, to being rich, when everyone is rich.
To be a lord, one has to have someone to lord it over. The tidewater aristocracy joined the revolution, not because of taxes, or the expense of fine china and silver, which they could easily afford, but because they had dreams of being the new nobility in the new country. Their need to get the farmer and blacksmith on board the revolution, scotched that idea (unforeseen consequence)
The real trick was convincing the middle class, the bourgeoisie, to become the means of their own destruction and that is where control of the press and pulpit to inculcate fear of non believers, feminists, immigrants, American descendants of slaves, gays, transpeople has come into play.
Pound them daily, and many times a day via the press and pulpit and now social media, and the middle class willingly becomes the tool of their own destruction.
The lower and middle middle class, know that they have no chance of ascending to the upper class, but they can dream, so give them a scapegoat that they fear imperils their own local supremacy.
Man is king of his own personal castle, at least by Augustus Caesars's law of Pater Familia, where the man had life and death authority over his wife and children, resurfaced in the 20th Century as Dominionism, aka Christian Reconstruction, founded by Rushdoony and Ted Cruz father, Rafeael.
“Billionaires emit a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person: Oxfam.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/08/billionaires-emit-a-million-times-more-greenhouse-gases-than-the-average-person-oxfam.html
Accurate portrait of where the Republicans intend to take this nation, but will they get away with it?
What will the Republican Party look like 10 years from now? How about 20 years? I just don't see the younger generations and minorities letting whatever they get away with in this decade stand beyond that time. Truth be told, it may take further Republican attempts or success at election rigging to bring the youth to the streets. They do believe in democracy and human rights. Most of all they know time is running out when it comes to climate chaos.
There is a gun control measure on my 2022 ballot. My neighbor has a sign up about "out of my cold dead hands". I am thinking that's how this is going to go, even if it takes another 20 years.
We may not be here to see it, but let's keep giving them the values and the tools they need to fight repression from the right. That's what Thom does.
In a telling confirmation of how dark money is behind much of these societal disruptions we're seeing, there's a story this morning from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism about email accounts of people who were wanting to expose some of the wrongdoings done by Qatar as they prepare to host FIFA. Financial interests in London hired private investigators, who in turned hired Indian hacker groups to hack private email accounts. Shows us what an intertwined mess we're dealing with, and it always traces back to the dark money you mention in today's article Thom. In Canada we have a security organization called C.S.I.S., a mysterious organization not many of us know much about, but who are watching out for the interests of the wealthy and the powerful.
I would take issue with this fine point: "...with the blessing of 5 corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court."
What recent evidence is there that Chief Justice John Roberts differs from the others, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanagh, Judge Amy, in kind and not merely in degree?