The GOP has become the party of Putin, bin Salman, and Orbán, rejecting George Washington’s warning about partisanship replacing patriotism and, increasingly, rejecting the very idea of democracy...
The world is turning to fascism because of global corporations. They own the lion's share of everything and are, essentially, buying governments to cement their profit-making privilege via fascist policies. The also use their money to buy-off any regulation to keep the air, water and ground clean as they make their profane profits. It isn't just here; it's all over. These global oligarchs understand and pay dearly for the propaganda that convinces the gullible that blame should be heaped upon each other - their fellow citizens - not to those who have caused the messes. It's the black and brown ones, the uppity women, the gays and trans that are causing all the trouble. It is those history books that tell the truth about our history that cause problems. A Capitalist isn't particularly racist or sexist (they are both so within the structures of their communities), but use these surface differences to pit us against one another. There will be another global conflagration, mostly a result of global climate change and its impact on crops and weather. I hope there's something left of humanity afterwards. If China goes supernova, so goes the world.
Excellent comment. There is some succor to be found in the coming extinction of mammalian life, it will include these greedy, murderous, sociopathic psychopaths, their billions will not rescue them, not on their floating cities, nor high up on a mountain in the Alps or Rocky Mountains. They will go down with the ship that they built, and whose captain and crew they have bought,
Spot on. The current lack of unity among unions striking and supporting each other for and effective shut it all down which I would be willing to suffer is not happening and it’s effectiveness is undermined by globalism.
Thank you Thom again for reminding us all of the dangerous Grand Old Party of Putin and their deranged support for obstructing democratic norms. The vast number of tRumper cult believers are in a group psychosis that we have never experienced before. Brought on by years of stoking racism, blaming POC for anything and everything they don’t like, misogyny and hysteria over LGBTQ, the right has collectively lost their ability to think rationally and participate in good governance. Sorry, but only one party actively attacked our capital and tried to overturn a legitimate election just because they didn’t like the results. Only one party is blocking and embracing something something called “woke” ( here’s looking at you, Tubberville- one of the questionable moronic members of Republican) and disrupting our service members lives and families for stupid reasons. Only one party consistently votes against helping veterans and seniors as well as low income citizens. Only one party has embraced authoritarian rule and gives legitimacy to a leaders who murder their detractors. The both siderism just doesn’t wash with me, there is no equivalence and facts matter to rational people. Are Democrats perfect? No ,of course not, but so far the majority of our Democrats are trying to improve the lives of Americans and need our awareness of the forces on the right that want to block legitimate democracy.
Tuberville is not up for election until 2026, and is banking on the Republican party controlling all of the government from Congress, Executive to SCOTUS. If so then he is safe,but he is reaping havoc on Alabama and it's economy. And I doubt that he can get re elected on his track record, his cultural war record, but not his economic record.
The south is where sentience goes to die. (also the midwest, also part of the bible belt.
I vote for Biden to support saving democracy and socialism. But Biden is doing a poor job at defending this nation from all enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC! He and his attorney general and all of the Trump appointees still in office,included.
Biden is forced to wisely walk the thin line between being too activist and scaring off the on the fence voters that he needs to win, so his second 4 years can be no holds barred effective, and doing what he wants to and believes in and stands for. When the tortoise raced the hare, he did not get everything done right away, but he got it done before the hare, because he actually did it.
Biden ensured that Trump humpers made civil servants by EO 13957 (Schedule F) and embedded on DOJ, DHS,NSA, DOD and other vital cabinets, by reclassifying political appointees as protected civil servants, and reclassifying those that they replaced as at will employees,
That EO gave Biden the perfect opportunity to do the same, create his own Schedule F, and replace the Trump appoints, but bipartisan, conservative Biden unilaterally disarmed himself by publishing on his first day in office EO14003, which revoked Trumps EO 13957
Leaving me to ask, whose side is Joe really on, He caves to the carbon cabal, he doesn't fight back aggressively against Trump and Republican ,lies. And he obviously believes he Democratic mantra, that it is the economy stupid. While all the evidence is that the economy is a given for those that are doing well, and an unachievalbe goal, for those that aren't.
The real fight is the culture war, which is what has tuned up the Trumpian Id, and apparently a growing stack of independents, and that is how the Democrats are going to lose, besides having as their candidate a man who falls off bicycles, stumbles on airplane ramps and trips over sand bags, and is known for making gaffs. While Trump is guilty of the same and more (worse) his cult and those that were so called "independent" choose to ignore, because of the culture war..which they are winning. Chattel slavery has been replaced with wage slavery and unemployment. Unemployment results in crime, because people need to eat wear clothing and sleep under a roof. Starve or steal. Les Miserable, American style.
Where will the Republicans be in 10 years? Still worshiping an old, frail psychopath? Will they be finally waking-up to the demographic changes that are coming?
I've had some cordial disagreements with friends about whether this country needs them. Your spot-on description makes me think I was right to say no. If their party ends-up in the dust-bin of history, it won't be because we put them there.
The Democratic Party has a platform and a plan to make our lives better. They want to work on the climate crisis in every way possible, and they want to do that with the rest of humanity.
Republicans are moving backward. The rest of America is a diverse group, and they are NOT going with them. We don't have all the answers, but we sure as hell are looking forward and trying to find them.
The Republican party has the full support of corporations, boards of directors and billionaires and have bought themselves the best government money can buy
Money can buy anything and anyone. Look at all of the right wing minorities that have been bought as Quislings, from Asians, Indians, Chinese, Hispanics, ADOS and LGBT, Who did Bruce Jenner support? Trump. I refuse to use his new name, because he is a turncoat, an autogynephiliac who took it too far, that has turned on his own, trans community,like Clarence Thomas, Candace Owens, Kanye,
The Indians especially 2nd generation are of the privileged caste e Brahmins (priests, teachers), Kshatriyas (rulers, warriors), Vaishyas (landowners,, and are by birth and instinct conservative, misogynist and racists. Look at Modi's India, it is run by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BPJ) a fascist, racist, religious extremist Hindu party, which has attacked and murdered innocent Muslims without consequence , they are called communal riots the worst was in 2013 in Gujarat which killed 2,000 people with many being burned alive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Muslims_in_independent_India
And that is what the right wing has in store, for those that don't submit , and those who don't accept wage slavery.
I just mourn for the eternal religious hatred that seems to be endemic to humans. Was a time Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel prize, yet now is associated with horrible oppression of Burmese Muslims. Self-identified "Christians" here in America seem to want to kill everybody..... What can be done about religion itself being the poison?
As I see it, and I am not gospel, religion is simply a tool. The root is trbalism and patriarchy, they have been with us since our ancestors lived in caves.
John Harlan wrote a book, Word Controlled Humans. It is about how words have been used, through the ages, first orally then in writing to manipulate and control humans, primarily by tyrants and bullies (Kings and Priest, shaman, rabbi's and Pastors)
If you watched the Gangs of New York, then the nativists vs the Irisih.
"Irish Need Not Apply." DD Lewis is amazing in that movie. Today I was reminded (sorry, can't find long opinion piece about why black people "hate" Clarence Thomas: re-capped quite a biography, including throwing his sister under the bus as a welfare queen back in Reagan days and ending with punchline: Thomas is the real welfare queen!) But: got reminded that thomas was raised "a strict Catholic" by grandparents. Didn't the Pope come out just this week with a pretty severe reprimand of American Catholics? I can't keep up with it all, but one would wonder whether Thomas would pay any mind to the Pope anymore....
Also Thomas is an affirmative action beneficiary, and voted against affirmative action, a real Quisling, maybe he thinks he is protected class (I got mine, eff you)
I sat with a nurse at my doctor’s office this morning before the crowds got there, and. Listened as she told me that had she known what things were going to be like today in Florida and the rest of our nation, she never would have had a single one of her three children. She said she just cannot figure a way to say to the pre-teens, “ you have to be careful when you walk out that door. Because there are people out there who hate you and will kill you just because of the color of your skin.” She does not want that to be a lesson if hate, it she wants to help keep her children alive when going to the Dollar Store, grocery store, school , church or just jogging through the neighborhood.” This is the America, or more properly, the ‘Mercia” we have allowed to be created while we I fight over age or emails while giving election after election to the reprobates who would destroy this democracy. More than enough Floridians opted to stay home and let DeSantis get re-elected because they didn’t like “the traitor Charlie Crist.” I cannot help but wonder how happy they are with the totalitarian regime in the Florida capitol today.
There have been terrible times in human history. This is one of them. I have no "happy face" to put on it. Florida has a double-curse of retirees who always think (completely bamboozled by propaganda) that Democrats are hell-bent on TAXING their damn Laz-Y-Boys, and Cubans still pissed-off that COMMIES stole their plantations and country-clubs. It's looking like they may be getting a reality check that the ILLEGALS who used to help rebuild after hurricanes are no-show.
Excellent account of the daily Travesty’s that the alleged “GOP” BS party
aligns itself with .
The ‘criminal wealthy ‘ are in charge of this country, having stopped all interest in Democracy with cash .
They are in fact the buyers of the Supreme Courts conservative appointees , aided by Mitch McConnell and his loathsome defection to Leonard Leo and the like.
Money is their power. Greed and a total lack of integrity their hallmark
" Rich Lowry argued in Politico that GOP voters simply can’t accept that Trump is “poisonously stupid” and “will say anything without regard for the truth and that he is profoundly selfish, easily distracted and vengeful.”
Her response to Lowry is "I disagree. I think most Trump voters know that. The problem is they like it. Shameless and malevolent is what they crave in their leaders. "
While true, she doesn't get to the root of MAGA. Trump is their avatar, He is the living personification of their Id, and as such, when it comes to politics and culture only one part of the brain lights up, the amygdala aka lizard brain, that responds to what it perceives as threats, by fight or flight.
In other words they look at Trump and see themselves. He is a mirror to who they really are.
To abandon Trump is to nullify themselves.
Only when it comes to fight, they lack the cajones for a real fight. My Dad was a Marine (WWII and Korea) he was a kind, gentle, sensitive man, his retired Marine friends and poker players were of the same cut, maybe not as sensitive. You would never believe these gentleman were hard charging soldiers (yet I know soldiers are Army), when in a group.
MAGGOTs are no different, loud mouth misogynists, rigors, racists, Dominionists, but full of b.s. and bravado when in a crowd, like the ones who pester Planned Parenthood clinics, marched in Charlotte, attacked the Capitol on Jan 6th and otherwise make lots of noise on FB, Xitter (pronounced shitter, GAB and social media.
There ya go. How do you admit you are an a'hole, and probably yer daddy before ya? My Mom worshipped her father, who fled his N. Carolina plantation (slave-owning) family at age 14, and rejected any contact with his brother decades later. In my Mom's generation, brother hated sisters, at same time they were united in judging and hating The List: Jews, Lazy welfare-sucking blacks, gays, and, by the way, my dad and me, too smart for red-blooded folks. They are all dead now, but you said a mouthful when you said :"To abandon Trump is to nullify themselves."
I bookmarked your link, took a glance; thanks. I think I posted in Hartmannreport recently a bit from M. Scott Peck's "People of the Lie" about how Satan cannot comprehend human science. Science recognizes the fallability of human prejudice and confronts it with observed phenomena. To evil, only the lie is real.
Orwell is more gruesomely prescient as we go on. Perversion of the basic concept of "patriotism" and how about "pro-life?" (news today about nervous Repub's trying to modify to even more bizarre "pro-baby") "Freedom" means freedom to kill: with any kind of gun, or with your child's measles or polio, for heaven's sake! It's a whole new catechism of words turned into curses. Not even getting started on, where did Jesus teach indifference to harm to others and pure hatred and judgement?
Patriotism is a dangerous notion, as today it's liberals making the authoritarian judgment that anyone who mentions historical context or diplomacy in the context of Ukraine is somehow working for Putin. Patriotism is dehumanizing and an essential ingredient of American Exceptionalism, used by both political parties to justify the wrongdoings of their respective leaders in the interest of American imperialism. Patriotism is the "you're either with us or against us" of the War on Terror or the sacrificing of personal freedoms and privacy for the Patriot Act. And please don't say the Republicans have become the party of Bin Salman as it was Barack Obama who voluntarily aided and abetted his starvation and slaughter of the people of Yemen, continued by Joe Biden despite his lies about ending "offensive military aid" (get it?) and making him a pariah. Biden is the guy fiistbumping him with your making excuses because, well, we need the oil right? And if he didn't fistbump him then gas prices could go up more and that would politically be bad for Biden yes? Anything in the name of political expediency and "patriotism," even nuclear war. As for Putin he's not the reason 100 million Americans have inadequate or no access to health care, our life expectancy is decreasing, wealth inequality continues to skyrocket, ICE and CBP commit human rights violations on a daily basis, refugees are being denied their Constitutional rights by the tens of thousands and so on. I'll stick with humanism, you can pound your chest and ride your moral high horse with your right-center nationalism and tell me its progressive while Biden turns the other cheek as "pariah" Bin Salman summarily slaughters refugees at his borders. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/us/politics/saudi-arabia-migrant-killings.html
Now that you have been exposed as a Putinist, you blame liberals for making an authoritarian judgement on you. So typical of authoritarians to try and turn the tables, by deflecting and changing the subject. Accuse the victim. "Jury: It is the victims fault for being raped, for wearing provacative clothing, It is the victims fall for being robbed, because he or she has too much money. It is the victims fault for being hit, because they were driving a car, no one forced him or her to drive a car.
Now I do agree about the PATRIOT Act, drafted during Clinton's administration,sitting in a drawer awaiting an excuse provided by 9/11 and signed into law by Dubya.
However you definitely expose yourself as a Putinist, when you flip the scrip by saying Putin is not responsible for our problems. Apples and oranges. Two different things. Putin is a threat to Democracy, and a war criminal, an aggressor bombing pregnant women and children, not to mention torturing civilians and military prisoners, and abducting children to brainwash them into being Russia drones.
It is always about Putin isn't it. You are not much different than Trump, you can't help exposing yourself in public.
Who are these Republicans and how did they get here? Did they spring forth spontaneously from the head of Hydra or something? Who invited them to the party? How did patriotism become so perverted in the minds of so many people? Has the “destruction of public schools” by Republicans and conservatives already enabled them to undermine democracy and our way of life by dumbing down the population and setting them up for their relentless indoctrination by right-wing media?
Why are students not properly taught about our democracy and its high principles in civics classes anymore? Should politics not be a part of the curriculum?
In the same way, and for essentially the same reasons, that church and state are separated in our democratic republic, the rule for public schools is that politics should not be permitted to intrude into the curricular program. As a function of government, schooling must remain neutral.
The schools which are “public” in that they are funded with taxpayer dollars and in that attendance is mandatory under penalty of law must take great care not to promote one political viewpoint, party, or philosophy over another. Partiality would mean that the official governmental policy would favor one select group and one political orientation over others, creating an imbalance and an unfair circumstance.
The government represents inordinate power and influence, and in a democracy, it must not use its overpowering weight or resources to discriminate against a particular interest or political position or on behalf of a particular interest or position. Everyone knows this.
Two separate dilemmas should immediately come to mind for anyone who is familiar with educational issues, however. The first is that schools are expected to teach students about all things political as part of their training for citizenship. They need to know how government works, what the issues are which divide and unite various groups, the history of our country and related international affairs, and the various political organizations and relationships which have power and influence or a set of circumstances that require public attention. But teaching these things without being accused of taking a side or revealing personal opinions and biases which might be adopted by students because of their susceptibility to the influence of an adult authority figure is a very tricky business.
The second dilemma is that teachers are human. Teachers do come to the school with certain feelings, attitudes, and opinions, whether or not those are clear and well-defined in their conscious thinking and speaking. They cannot avoid a degree of subjectivity in their own thinking when controversial or sensitive topics of a political nature must be faced in a discussion of any subject matter.
Also, the teacher whose experience or development has resulted, for whatever reasons, in a more liberal orientation will have an approach to a variety of situations and a personal style which differs in noticeable ways from the teacher who has identified with and tracked more toward a conservative philosophy, approach, belief system, or mindset. In spur of the moment decisions or interpersonal actions involving students, teachers may be more patient, tolerant, or permissive, or they may lean more toward the strict enforcement of rules, rigidity in policies, and a tendency to use admonitions, warnings, shame or guilt and negative reprimands to elicit the behavior which they expect.
One should not underestimate how consequential those two dilemmas are for teachers and students. There is no reason to believe that they will be diminished or resolved with any degree of satisfaction in the foreseeable future. However, there is an even more significant and consequential dilemma which faces school personnel, students, parents, and the society as a whole with respect to education and politics. That dilemma is more of a question of an impossible conflict and contradiction for which there is no easy or visible resolution.
The dilemma which has confounded educators for generations is the simple fact that education is inherently political. The need to strip politics out of the process of education changes the process irreparably.
Learning to read (literacy) and learning numerical concepts or math (numeracy) are merely the bare bones and foundational beginnings of an education. To be educated is to have substantial knowledge and skills relative to how people fit into families, civilized society, institutions, organizations, economies, communities, and nations.
The requirement for teachers to skirt “politics” or risk losing their jobs places them in an impossible situation. All of those things which students need to know, understand, and apply in their personal lives and in participating in a democracy when they reach adulthood are off limits unless they are stripped of their most essential, meaningful, sanguine, robust, and controversial characteristics. What is left in that void is mush and useless abstraction.
Teachers must check their values, their ideals, and their personalities at the gate before they enter the school. If they have beliefs, passions, or a desire to impart principles and values to students, they should keep them hidden and unarticulated. Everything must be generalized and neutralized to be certain that students will not become indoctrinated or oriented in one specific direction. They talk incessantly about “good behavior”, “obedience to authority”, paying attention, working hard, social skills, etc., and they echo every platitude known to man, yet they cannot take a position or state a fact without worrying that they are engaging in forbidden political speech or indoctrination.
In designing a curriculum, only the most banal, superficial, and dispassionate language or framework is possible. Issues must be couched in vague or unstimulating terms. No chance that someone, somewhere will be offended or disturbed can be taken. Did people die? We must be cautious about assigning blame or casting someone as a bad actor lest there are people who see them as the honorable defenders of freedom or equally righteous or evil pawns in a chess game.
How could anyone be surprised that Republicans are insisting that the “positive benefits” of slavery for the enslaved be taught along with the negatives? School materials must not be politicized. Judgments cannot be made for fear of violating the rules and allowing a government agent to criticize someone such as Hitler or white supremacists who share values with Republicans.
I regret to inform everyone that this is the only possible outcome of turning schooling over to the government by passing attendance laws and codifying every possible aspect of the enterprise. We did this to ourselves. We invited these people. There is only one way to restore education to the public and wise them up to the duplicity of the Republicans. It cannot be government’s function to teach civics and political science while simultaneously remaining indifferent to the life and death significance of political issues. Schools must be severed from government and the only way to make that a reality is to strike down attendance laws along with about 80% of the control measures which accompany them as statutes. Stop pretending otherwise.
In response to your opening question: "Conservatives Without Conscience." Howard Dean, co-conceived with Barry Goldwater. I was born and raised by a mother (and the unloving arms of her family) who was born too soon to be a Bircher, but sure was, and died a "Birther." I tried to get the gist of your diatribe, but certainly "attendance laws" hardly seem to be the existential culprit when crackpots are homeschooling anyway. I was totally catechised in the high school honors program from a cold-war "civics" textbook that was all about evil communism etc. I was also immersed in a home environment of eclectic learning of world history and literature. Fortunately (I believe) my Mom didn't realise the insidious mind-expansion of "Star Trek" being beamed into our living room along with Shakespeare and Khruschev recruited the Beatles to corrupt Western Civilization because of the sinister rabbis in the "Protocols..." Like that.
Somehow your response didn’t appear or I failed to notice it in my inbox until today. I cannot retrace my thinking very clearly at this point without a great deal of review and reflection and I am not understanding what you are saying in your comment except very dimly. I will try, however, to answer your query about the “existential” danger outlined in my diatribe (thank you for the complimentary categorization!) from compulsory attendance laws. BTW, my remarks were taken from an early draft of a piece I have since published on Substack which should be available under my name (Robert B. Elliott) or the title: “A Major Dilemma: Keeping Politics Out of School”.
It appears that you miraculously managed to see some light and reason in your environs, despite people, such as your mom who were not so fortunate. You identify some things to which you attribute your ability to sort through the reactionary input and stimuli to arrive at a more science-based view of the world. I too can identify some of the influences that helped me overcome having been raised in a very devout evangelical family in a very conservative rural area. We may have a rebellious spirit in common but there had to be voices and sources of a liberating nature which allowed us to look at reality, presumably from a more enlightened perspective.
Laws have consequences. They are enacted for specific purposes; however, those purposes are not always clear or stated truthfully, and more importantly, no one can necessarily predict or control how people will be affected. Children are vulnerable and defenseless against manipulation and forms of mind-control. The mere fact that children are aware that they are being forced to attend school means that they will, in many cases, perceive it as something negative, undesirable, punitive, onerous, or limiting. One could say that they are getting started off from the wrong foot on day one. Sometimes, various people and influences are able to overcome those impressions with enough determination and effort. But the authoritarian bureaucracy which is unavoidable with compulsory attendance is especially designed to stymie those efforts. It is inflexible and misanthropic by design.
I suspect you don’t see the point yet. Maybe my article will help. I am unable to spend any more time with this now. Suffice it to say that millions of people who attended and graduated from those schools under those conditions are ignorant, inept, and susceptible to the right-wing spin. You can find lots of things to blame. However, that has been tried for generations and every imaginable reform has been trotted out in hundreds of iterations with zero success. I do not think beating one’s head against the wall is smart or productive.
Wait. Haven't we been over all this before? I seem to be repeating myself.
What an excellent job of connecting all of the dots Thom. It is pretty obvious the right wingers don't know or can't comprehend what patriotism is, after all it is a word with more than two syllables, so what should we expect? Patriotism goes with Communism and socialism and capitalism in their book. They do not understand those big words either and rational thought as well. Even though the word virtue has two syllables, the GOP voters cannot understand its meaning.
Someday pretty soon, when the stores are empty and there are no more jobs and China is the world reserve currency, the GOP voters May figure out, what goes around, comes around.
How is it we find the Gavel Of Putin bludgeoning our democracy with impunity?
Preemptively sending "thoughts and prayers" to the entire world should no official and decisive action be taken to corral these insurgents in patriot's clothing.
These are politics no longer. Make no mistake, democracy is being wheeled to the gallows.
The problem is that the fascist authoritarians won the right to our flag as a symbol of their patriotism. We democracy loving citizens reject nationalism as a symbol of our unity despite the obvious fact that we share the same nation. I embrace our Stars and Stripes and use their symbolism to show how our nation always emerges from its dark periods by renewing our constitution with amendments. I invite you to join Democracy Awareness and show your support for our democratic experiment by wearing a star spangled Möbius strip. Together we can achieve anything.
The world is turning to fascism because of global corporations. They own the lion's share of everything and are, essentially, buying governments to cement their profit-making privilege via fascist policies. The also use their money to buy-off any regulation to keep the air, water and ground clean as they make their profane profits. It isn't just here; it's all over. These global oligarchs understand and pay dearly for the propaganda that convinces the gullible that blame should be heaped upon each other - their fellow citizens - not to those who have caused the messes. It's the black and brown ones, the uppity women, the gays and trans that are causing all the trouble. It is those history books that tell the truth about our history that cause problems. A Capitalist isn't particularly racist or sexist (they are both so within the structures of their communities), but use these surface differences to pit us against one another. There will be another global conflagration, mostly a result of global climate change and its impact on crops and weather. I hope there's something left of humanity afterwards. If China goes supernova, so goes the world.
Excellent comment. There is some succor to be found in the coming extinction of mammalian life, it will include these greedy, murderous, sociopathic psychopaths, their billions will not rescue them, not on their floating cities, nor high up on a mountain in the Alps or Rocky Mountains. They will go down with the ship that they built, and whose captain and crew they have bought,
Spot on. The current lack of unity among unions striking and supporting each other for and effective shut it all down which I would be willing to suffer is not happening and it’s effectiveness is undermined by globalism.
True that. My grandfather is rolling n his grave.
Thank you Thom again for reminding us all of the dangerous Grand Old Party of Putin and their deranged support for obstructing democratic norms. The vast number of tRumper cult believers are in a group psychosis that we have never experienced before. Brought on by years of stoking racism, blaming POC for anything and everything they don’t like, misogyny and hysteria over LGBTQ, the right has collectively lost their ability to think rationally and participate in good governance. Sorry, but only one party actively attacked our capital and tried to overturn a legitimate election just because they didn’t like the results. Only one party is blocking and embracing something something called “woke” ( here’s looking at you, Tubberville- one of the questionable moronic members of Republican) and disrupting our service members lives and families for stupid reasons. Only one party consistently votes against helping veterans and seniors as well as low income citizens. Only one party has embraced authoritarian rule and gives legitimacy to a leaders who murder their detractors. The both siderism just doesn’t wash with me, there is no equivalence and facts matter to rational people. Are Democrats perfect? No ,of course not, but so far the majority of our Democrats are trying to improve the lives of Americans and need our awareness of the forces on the right that want to block legitimate democracy.
Tuberville is not up for election until 2026, and is banking on the Republican party controlling all of the government from Congress, Executive to SCOTUS. If so then he is safe,but he is reaping havoc on Alabama and it's economy. And I doubt that he can get re elected on his track record, his cultural war record, but not his economic record.
The south is where sentience goes to die. (also the midwest, also part of the bible belt.
I vote for Biden to support saving democracy and socialism. But Biden is doing a poor job at defending this nation from all enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC! He and his attorney general and all of the Trump appointees still in office,included.
Biden is forced to wisely walk the thin line between being too activist and scaring off the on the fence voters that he needs to win, so his second 4 years can be no holds barred effective, and doing what he wants to and believes in and stands for. When the tortoise raced the hare, he did not get everything done right away, but he got it done before the hare, because he actually did it.
LOL
Biden ensured that Trump humpers made civil servants by EO 13957 (Schedule F) and embedded on DOJ, DHS,NSA, DOD and other vital cabinets, by reclassifying political appointees as protected civil servants, and reclassifying those that they replaced as at will employees,
That EO gave Biden the perfect opportunity to do the same, create his own Schedule F, and replace the Trump appoints, but bipartisan, conservative Biden unilaterally disarmed himself by publishing on his first day in office EO14003, which revoked Trumps EO 13957
Leaving me to ask, whose side is Joe really on, He caves to the carbon cabal, he doesn't fight back aggressively against Trump and Republican ,lies. And he obviously believes he Democratic mantra, that it is the economy stupid. While all the evidence is that the economy is a given for those that are doing well, and an unachievalbe goal, for those that aren't.
The real fight is the culture war, which is what has tuned up the Trumpian Id, and apparently a growing stack of independents, and that is how the Democrats are going to lose, besides having as their candidate a man who falls off bicycles, stumbles on airplane ramps and trips over sand bags, and is known for making gaffs. While Trump is guilty of the same and more (worse) his cult and those that were so called "independent" choose to ignore, because of the culture war..which they are winning. Chattel slavery has been replaced with wage slavery and unemployment. Unemployment results in crime, because people need to eat wear clothing and sleep under a roof. Starve or steal. Les Miserable, American style.
Where will the Republicans be in 10 years? Still worshiping an old, frail psychopath? Will they be finally waking-up to the demographic changes that are coming?
I've had some cordial disagreements with friends about whether this country needs them. Your spot-on description makes me think I was right to say no. If their party ends-up in the dust-bin of history, it won't be because we put them there.
The Democratic Party has a platform and a plan to make our lives better. They want to work on the climate crisis in every way possible, and they want to do that with the rest of humanity.
Republicans are moving backward. The rest of America is a diverse group, and they are NOT going with them. We don't have all the answers, but we sure as hell are looking forward and trying to find them.
The Republican party will probably be ran by one of Donald Trump's son's in 10 years. And if anyone complains, there will be tortured or killed.
Wish you were trying to be funny, Bob, but I get it.
The Republican party has the full support of corporations, boards of directors and billionaires and have bought themselves the best government money can buy
Money can buy anything and anyone. Look at all of the right wing minorities that have been bought as Quislings, from Asians, Indians, Chinese, Hispanics, ADOS and LGBT, Who did Bruce Jenner support? Trump. I refuse to use his new name, because he is a turncoat, an autogynephiliac who took it too far, that has turned on his own, trans community,like Clarence Thomas, Candace Owens, Kanye,
The Indians especially 2nd generation are of the privileged caste e Brahmins (priests, teachers), Kshatriyas (rulers, warriors), Vaishyas (landowners,, and are by birth and instinct conservative, misogynist and racists. Look at Modi's India, it is run by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BPJ) a fascist, racist, religious extremist Hindu party, which has attacked and murdered innocent Muslims without consequence , they are called communal riots the worst was in 2013 in Gujarat which killed 2,000 people with many being burned alive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Muslims_in_independent_India
And that is what the right wing has in store, for those that don't submit , and those who don't accept wage slavery.
I just mourn for the eternal religious hatred that seems to be endemic to humans. Was a time Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel prize, yet now is associated with horrible oppression of Burmese Muslims. Self-identified "Christians" here in America seem to want to kill everybody..... What can be done about religion itself being the poison?
There you go : )
As I see it, and I am not gospel, religion is simply a tool. The root is trbalism and patriarchy, they have been with us since our ancestors lived in caves.
John Harlan wrote a book, Word Controlled Humans. It is about how words have been used, through the ages, first orally then in writing to manipulate and control humans, primarily by tyrants and bullies (Kings and Priest, shaman, rabbi's and Pastors)
If you watched the Gangs of New York, then the nativists vs the Irisih.
"Irish Need Not Apply." DD Lewis is amazing in that movie. Today I was reminded (sorry, can't find long opinion piece about why black people "hate" Clarence Thomas: re-capped quite a biography, including throwing his sister under the bus as a welfare queen back in Reagan days and ending with punchline: Thomas is the real welfare queen!) But: got reminded that thomas was raised "a strict Catholic" by grandparents. Didn't the Pope come out just this week with a pretty severe reprimand of American Catholics? I can't keep up with it all, but one would wonder whether Thomas would pay any mind to the Pope anymore....
Also Thomas is an affirmative action beneficiary, and voted against affirmative action, a real Quisling, maybe he thinks he is protected class (I got mine, eff you)
I sat with a nurse at my doctor’s office this morning before the crowds got there, and. Listened as she told me that had she known what things were going to be like today in Florida and the rest of our nation, she never would have had a single one of her three children. She said she just cannot figure a way to say to the pre-teens, “ you have to be careful when you walk out that door. Because there are people out there who hate you and will kill you just because of the color of your skin.” She does not want that to be a lesson if hate, it she wants to help keep her children alive when going to the Dollar Store, grocery store, school , church or just jogging through the neighborhood.” This is the America, or more properly, the ‘Mercia” we have allowed to be created while we I fight over age or emails while giving election after election to the reprobates who would destroy this democracy. More than enough Floridians opted to stay home and let DeSantis get re-elected because they didn’t like “the traitor Charlie Crist.” I cannot help but wonder how happy they are with the totalitarian regime in the Florida capitol today.
There have been terrible times in human history. This is one of them. I have no "happy face" to put on it. Florida has a double-curse of retirees who always think (completely bamboozled by propaganda) that Democrats are hell-bent on TAXING their damn Laz-Y-Boys, and Cubans still pissed-off that COMMIES stole their plantations and country-clubs. It's looking like they may be getting a reality check that the ILLEGALS who used to help rebuild after hurricanes are no-show.
Excellent account of the daily Travesty’s that the alleged “GOP” BS party
aligns itself with .
The ‘criminal wealthy ‘ are in charge of this country, having stopped all interest in Democracy with cash .
They are in fact the buyers of the Supreme Courts conservative appointees , aided by Mitch McConnell and his loathsome defection to Leonard Leo and the like.
Money is their power. Greed and a total lack of integrity their hallmark
I agree with you. The monopolies control the value of the dollar. The Fed does not and certainly not Mr. Powell.
Conservatives, non MAGA types, fancy Maggots as simply deluded:
Here is an excerpt from Amanda Marcotte's Standing Room Only https://read.letterhead.email/standing-room-only/letter/20494?lh_aid=3594739&lh_cid=7efgnzf5w4&di=4b8cbf7a8cb1beb3715ea2acb16eee6b
" Rich Lowry argued in Politico that GOP voters simply can’t accept that Trump is “poisonously stupid” and “will say anything without regard for the truth and that he is profoundly selfish, easily distracted and vengeful.”
Her response to Lowry is "I disagree. I think most Trump voters know that. The problem is they like it. Shameless and malevolent is what they crave in their leaders. "
While true, she doesn't get to the root of MAGA. Trump is their avatar, He is the living personification of their Id, and as such, when it comes to politics and culture only one part of the brain lights up, the amygdala aka lizard brain, that responds to what it perceives as threats, by fight or flight.
In other words they look at Trump and see themselves. He is a mirror to who they really are.
To abandon Trump is to nullify themselves.
Only when it comes to fight, they lack the cajones for a real fight. My Dad was a Marine (WWII and Korea) he was a kind, gentle, sensitive man, his retired Marine friends and poker players were of the same cut, maybe not as sensitive. You would never believe these gentleman were hard charging soldiers (yet I know soldiers are Army), when in a group.
MAGGOTs are no different, loud mouth misogynists, rigors, racists, Dominionists, but full of b.s. and bravado when in a crowd, like the ones who pester Planned Parenthood clinics, marched in Charlotte, attacked the Capitol on Jan 6th and otherwise make lots of noise on FB, Xitter (pronounced shitter, GAB and social media.
There ya go. How do you admit you are an a'hole, and probably yer daddy before ya? My Mom worshipped her father, who fled his N. Carolina plantation (slave-owning) family at age 14, and rejected any contact with his brother decades later. In my Mom's generation, brother hated sisters, at same time they were united in judging and hating The List: Jews, Lazy welfare-sucking blacks, gays, and, by the way, my dad and me, too smart for red-blooded folks. They are all dead now, but you said a mouthful when you said :"To abandon Trump is to nullify themselves."
Something else I hold against Republicans is their contribution to the destruction of our ability global and societal threats with their war against science. https://politicsofthelastage.blogspot.com/2023/08/paralyzing-dysfunction_27.html
I bookmarked your link, took a glance; thanks. I think I posted in Hartmannreport recently a bit from M. Scott Peck's "People of the Lie" about how Satan cannot comprehend human science. Science recognizes the fallability of human prejudice and confronts it with observed phenomena. To evil, only the lie is real.
Orwell is more gruesomely prescient as we go on. Perversion of the basic concept of "patriotism" and how about "pro-life?" (news today about nervous Repub's trying to modify to even more bizarre "pro-baby") "Freedom" means freedom to kill: with any kind of gun, or with your child's measles or polio, for heaven's sake! It's a whole new catechism of words turned into curses. Not even getting started on, where did Jesus teach indifference to harm to others and pure hatred and judgement?
Patriotism is a dangerous notion, as today it's liberals making the authoritarian judgment that anyone who mentions historical context or diplomacy in the context of Ukraine is somehow working for Putin. Patriotism is dehumanizing and an essential ingredient of American Exceptionalism, used by both political parties to justify the wrongdoings of their respective leaders in the interest of American imperialism. Patriotism is the "you're either with us or against us" of the War on Terror or the sacrificing of personal freedoms and privacy for the Patriot Act. And please don't say the Republicans have become the party of Bin Salman as it was Barack Obama who voluntarily aided and abetted his starvation and slaughter of the people of Yemen, continued by Joe Biden despite his lies about ending "offensive military aid" (get it?) and making him a pariah. Biden is the guy fiistbumping him with your making excuses because, well, we need the oil right? And if he didn't fistbump him then gas prices could go up more and that would politically be bad for Biden yes? Anything in the name of political expediency and "patriotism," even nuclear war. As for Putin he's not the reason 100 million Americans have inadequate or no access to health care, our life expectancy is decreasing, wealth inequality continues to skyrocket, ICE and CBP commit human rights violations on a daily basis, refugees are being denied their Constitutional rights by the tens of thousands and so on. I'll stick with humanism, you can pound your chest and ride your moral high horse with your right-center nationalism and tell me its progressive while Biden turns the other cheek as "pariah" Bin Salman summarily slaughters refugees at his borders. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/us/politics/saudi-arabia-migrant-killings.html
Now that you have been exposed as a Putinist, you blame liberals for making an authoritarian judgement on you. So typical of authoritarians to try and turn the tables, by deflecting and changing the subject. Accuse the victim. "Jury: It is the victims fault for being raped, for wearing provacative clothing, It is the victims fall for being robbed, because he or she has too much money. It is the victims fault for being hit, because they were driving a car, no one forced him or her to drive a car.
Now I do agree about the PATRIOT Act, drafted during Clinton's administration,sitting in a drawer awaiting an excuse provided by 9/11 and signed into law by Dubya.
However you definitely expose yourself as a Putinist, when you flip the scrip by saying Putin is not responsible for our problems. Apples and oranges. Two different things. Putin is a threat to Democracy, and a war criminal, an aggressor bombing pregnant women and children, not to mention torturing civilians and military prisoners, and abducting children to brainwash them into being Russia drones.
It is always about Putin isn't it. You are not much different than Trump, you can't help exposing yourself in public.
Who are these Republicans and how did they get here? Did they spring forth spontaneously from the head of Hydra or something? Who invited them to the party? How did patriotism become so perverted in the minds of so many people? Has the “destruction of public schools” by Republicans and conservatives already enabled them to undermine democracy and our way of life by dumbing down the population and setting them up for their relentless indoctrination by right-wing media?
Why are students not properly taught about our democracy and its high principles in civics classes anymore? Should politics not be a part of the curriculum?
In the same way, and for essentially the same reasons, that church and state are separated in our democratic republic, the rule for public schools is that politics should not be permitted to intrude into the curricular program. As a function of government, schooling must remain neutral.
The schools which are “public” in that they are funded with taxpayer dollars and in that attendance is mandatory under penalty of law must take great care not to promote one political viewpoint, party, or philosophy over another. Partiality would mean that the official governmental policy would favor one select group and one political orientation over others, creating an imbalance and an unfair circumstance.
The government represents inordinate power and influence, and in a democracy, it must not use its overpowering weight or resources to discriminate against a particular interest or political position or on behalf of a particular interest or position. Everyone knows this.
Two separate dilemmas should immediately come to mind for anyone who is familiar with educational issues, however. The first is that schools are expected to teach students about all things political as part of their training for citizenship. They need to know how government works, what the issues are which divide and unite various groups, the history of our country and related international affairs, and the various political organizations and relationships which have power and influence or a set of circumstances that require public attention. But teaching these things without being accused of taking a side or revealing personal opinions and biases which might be adopted by students because of their susceptibility to the influence of an adult authority figure is a very tricky business.
The second dilemma is that teachers are human. Teachers do come to the school with certain feelings, attitudes, and opinions, whether or not those are clear and well-defined in their conscious thinking and speaking. They cannot avoid a degree of subjectivity in their own thinking when controversial or sensitive topics of a political nature must be faced in a discussion of any subject matter.
Also, the teacher whose experience or development has resulted, for whatever reasons, in a more liberal orientation will have an approach to a variety of situations and a personal style which differs in noticeable ways from the teacher who has identified with and tracked more toward a conservative philosophy, approach, belief system, or mindset. In spur of the moment decisions or interpersonal actions involving students, teachers may be more patient, tolerant, or permissive, or they may lean more toward the strict enforcement of rules, rigidity in policies, and a tendency to use admonitions, warnings, shame or guilt and negative reprimands to elicit the behavior which they expect.
One should not underestimate how consequential those two dilemmas are for teachers and students. There is no reason to believe that they will be diminished or resolved with any degree of satisfaction in the foreseeable future. However, there is an even more significant and consequential dilemma which faces school personnel, students, parents, and the society as a whole with respect to education and politics. That dilemma is more of a question of an impossible conflict and contradiction for which there is no easy or visible resolution.
The dilemma which has confounded educators for generations is the simple fact that education is inherently political. The need to strip politics out of the process of education changes the process irreparably.
Learning to read (literacy) and learning numerical concepts or math (numeracy) are merely the bare bones and foundational beginnings of an education. To be educated is to have substantial knowledge and skills relative to how people fit into families, civilized society, institutions, organizations, economies, communities, and nations.
The requirement for teachers to skirt “politics” or risk losing their jobs places them in an impossible situation. All of those things which students need to know, understand, and apply in their personal lives and in participating in a democracy when they reach adulthood are off limits unless they are stripped of their most essential, meaningful, sanguine, robust, and controversial characteristics. What is left in that void is mush and useless abstraction.
Teachers must check their values, their ideals, and their personalities at the gate before they enter the school. If they have beliefs, passions, or a desire to impart principles and values to students, they should keep them hidden and unarticulated. Everything must be generalized and neutralized to be certain that students will not become indoctrinated or oriented in one specific direction. They talk incessantly about “good behavior”, “obedience to authority”, paying attention, working hard, social skills, etc., and they echo every platitude known to man, yet they cannot take a position or state a fact without worrying that they are engaging in forbidden political speech or indoctrination.
In designing a curriculum, only the most banal, superficial, and dispassionate language or framework is possible. Issues must be couched in vague or unstimulating terms. No chance that someone, somewhere will be offended or disturbed can be taken. Did people die? We must be cautious about assigning blame or casting someone as a bad actor lest there are people who see them as the honorable defenders of freedom or equally righteous or evil pawns in a chess game.
How could anyone be surprised that Republicans are insisting that the “positive benefits” of slavery for the enslaved be taught along with the negatives? School materials must not be politicized. Judgments cannot be made for fear of violating the rules and allowing a government agent to criticize someone such as Hitler or white supremacists who share values with Republicans.
I regret to inform everyone that this is the only possible outcome of turning schooling over to the government by passing attendance laws and codifying every possible aspect of the enterprise. We did this to ourselves. We invited these people. There is only one way to restore education to the public and wise them up to the duplicity of the Republicans. It cannot be government’s function to teach civics and political science while simultaneously remaining indifferent to the life and death significance of political issues. Schools must be severed from government and the only way to make that a reality is to strike down attendance laws along with about 80% of the control measures which accompany them as statutes. Stop pretending otherwise.
In response to your opening question: "Conservatives Without Conscience." Howard Dean, co-conceived with Barry Goldwater. I was born and raised by a mother (and the unloving arms of her family) who was born too soon to be a Bircher, but sure was, and died a "Birther." I tried to get the gist of your diatribe, but certainly "attendance laws" hardly seem to be the existential culprit when crackpots are homeschooling anyway. I was totally catechised in the high school honors program from a cold-war "civics" textbook that was all about evil communism etc. I was also immersed in a home environment of eclectic learning of world history and literature. Fortunately (I believe) my Mom didn't realise the insidious mind-expansion of "Star Trek" being beamed into our living room along with Shakespeare and Khruschev recruited the Beatles to corrupt Western Civilization because of the sinister rabbis in the "Protocols..." Like that.
Mmrose,
Somehow your response didn’t appear or I failed to notice it in my inbox until today. I cannot retrace my thinking very clearly at this point without a great deal of review and reflection and I am not understanding what you are saying in your comment except very dimly. I will try, however, to answer your query about the “existential” danger outlined in my diatribe (thank you for the complimentary categorization!) from compulsory attendance laws. BTW, my remarks were taken from an early draft of a piece I have since published on Substack which should be available under my name (Robert B. Elliott) or the title: “A Major Dilemma: Keeping Politics Out of School”.
It appears that you miraculously managed to see some light and reason in your environs, despite people, such as your mom who were not so fortunate. You identify some things to which you attribute your ability to sort through the reactionary input and stimuli to arrive at a more science-based view of the world. I too can identify some of the influences that helped me overcome having been raised in a very devout evangelical family in a very conservative rural area. We may have a rebellious spirit in common but there had to be voices and sources of a liberating nature which allowed us to look at reality, presumably from a more enlightened perspective.
Laws have consequences. They are enacted for specific purposes; however, those purposes are not always clear or stated truthfully, and more importantly, no one can necessarily predict or control how people will be affected. Children are vulnerable and defenseless against manipulation and forms of mind-control. The mere fact that children are aware that they are being forced to attend school means that they will, in many cases, perceive it as something negative, undesirable, punitive, onerous, or limiting. One could say that they are getting started off from the wrong foot on day one. Sometimes, various people and influences are able to overcome those impressions with enough determination and effort. But the authoritarian bureaucracy which is unavoidable with compulsory attendance is especially designed to stymie those efforts. It is inflexible and misanthropic by design.
I suspect you don’t see the point yet. Maybe my article will help. I am unable to spend any more time with this now. Suffice it to say that millions of people who attended and graduated from those schools under those conditions are ignorant, inept, and susceptible to the right-wing spin. You can find lots of things to blame. However, that has been tried for generations and every imaginable reform has been trotted out in hundreds of iterations with zero success. I do not think beating one’s head against the wall is smart or productive.
Wait. Haven't we been over all this before? I seem to be repeating myself.
What an excellent job of connecting all of the dots Thom. It is pretty obvious the right wingers don't know or can't comprehend what patriotism is, after all it is a word with more than two syllables, so what should we expect? Patriotism goes with Communism and socialism and capitalism in their book. They do not understand those big words either and rational thought as well. Even though the word virtue has two syllables, the GOP voters cannot understand its meaning.
Someday pretty soon, when the stores are empty and there are no more jobs and China is the world reserve currency, the GOP voters May figure out, what goes around, comes around.
How is it we find the Gavel Of Putin bludgeoning our democracy with impunity?
Preemptively sending "thoughts and prayers" to the entire world should no official and decisive action be taken to corral these insurgents in patriot's clothing.
These are politics no longer. Make no mistake, democracy is being wheeled to the gallows.
Now what?
The problem is that the fascist authoritarians won the right to our flag as a symbol of their patriotism. We democracy loving citizens reject nationalism as a symbol of our unity despite the obvious fact that we share the same nation. I embrace our Stars and Stripes and use their symbolism to show how our nation always emerges from its dark periods by renewing our constitution with amendments. I invite you to join Democracy Awareness and show your support for our democratic experiment by wearing a star spangled Möbius strip. Together we can achieve anything.