Without belaboring with lots of math, just do the numbers. Republicans do not have enough bodies. Without gerrymandering, ridiculous opinions from the Supremes to keep their 'base' riled up, they have nothing. it'a all motivated by fear; fear of 'the other'. White men have been afraid of Black men since 1619 and farther back, globally. Then there's the vadose zone between legitimate, conservative views and serious homophobic, alcoholic thinking. These guys, at the end of the day, are really sick and twisted. NY Times has an article today about 'cage fighting, MMA' between old farts who want to show off - many of whom are Republican. Really Dude? REALLY?!
The capitalists want all the money. All the power. All the control. The idea of sharing the pie with inferiors, when you could be torturing them and starving them and watching them suffer for fun, is not an option. The only way the fascists can be stopped is to take their MONEY", and they know it. Everyone who wants to stop human suffering is then called a communist, like it is a bad thing to share. The blue states share more with the red States than the red states share with the blue States. The Trump supporting base are just a bunch of entitled and ungrateful capitalist wannabes. Once they get old or disabled, they will be thrown into the extermination camps also. I can see open borders in the future, chewing up healthy poor people, like a wood chipper chews up a tree. Contraception will be banned, abortions will be illegal, just so the rich will have an unlimited supply of slaves to grovel at their feet and to mock! ANYONE who votes for this, is certifiably insane.
Here is the thinking, and it is as old as Kings and Emperors. What is the reason to acquire wealth and power, and thus status, when every Tom, Dick and Jane can be upper class.
It is the same motive that Henry VIII used to impose Sumptuary Laws. Laws that forbade non nobility from dressing like nobles, including banning silk, furs and fine linen.
His fathers excise tax on raw wool exports, and imports of sliverware, swords, art and fine clothes forced the English to become self reliant, develop skills and industry. My family, for instance, started as wool dyers, and through a fortuitous circumstance was gifted enough land to start his own raw wool business, but with the edict of Henry VII, the family was forced into more than just fulling wool, it became expert in the textile industry and wealthy, owning much land and messauges, which gained them rents, over the length and breadth of England.
H8 and his nobles did not like the idea that they did not stand out from the rabble, be they landed gentry or yeomen. So he passed the law.
There is no social value in being wealthy and powerful, if you are being threatened by your "lessers" coming up the ladder, owning planes, boats, luxury cars, designer clothes, second resort homes.
A classist stratifed society, is the only way, the plutocrats can live.
Racism is a subset of classism, it enables the ordinary person, to look down the ladder and see below him, the "unworthy", the ne'er do well, the dredge that is not part of the lucky sperm club.
And among subordinate groups, there exists their own heirarchy. Hispanics distinguish themselves by origin, and I know, because I've seen it in Panama, that "white" hispanics look down on cholo's and mestizos. Chileans and Argentians and Venezuelans, and Uruguaylook down on Puerto Ricans and Cubans, calling them chumbos, and Puerto Ricans look down on Mexicans because of the sing song nature of their accent..
Great article and important history. I would make one addition. In the roaring twenties, before the Great Depression, and though many were not in extreme poverty, about 70% of workers were under the official poverty level. The National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act, with the right to join a union and Collective Bargaining, was the greatest anti-poverty program in history. It also paved the way for Social Security, the GI Bill, and later, Medicare, to put the majority solidly in the middle class. Your mention of Labor Unions later in the article are right on point.
The targeting of women is based on nothing but hate. Women will be the largest group to suffer the most under this attempted fall back to 1900. When the robber barons and their toadies were ruthless. Anything to hold the masses in check.
No one is born to serve another. The Republicans plan is to destroy the middle class. Now with the SCOTUS full of corruption, they’re doing everything they can to stop women from having any say over their futures. Instead of seeing women as an asset, we’re being view as an uneducated servant beholden to our masters in every possible way.
I hope more see through these recent rulings of the SCOTUS for what they are. Unconstitutional for the reason to tear away at the fabric of society. The Republican Party is a disaster for Americans.
I presage the following with a disclaimer. I am using "scare quotes" because these are not my thoughts or words, but what I have heard from society, books, the media and other men (locker room talk, which is the unfiltered truth, when it comes to what they believe).
The targeting of women is not based on hate. It comes from an image of women as inferiors, not even quite human. In their mind the only function of a female, is to serve the male.
Serve as a sex object, a domestic, and the medium through which he can produce mini me's (Incidentally the source of inheritance laws, psychologically it is man's way of cheating the grave, passing on his accumulations to his mini me's..
It is the same idea of women as inferior that led to homophobia, because they believe that since women are inferior, that men who act like women, sexually are like women, not men.
Of course Christians, Muslims and Jews use circular reasoning (Bible, Qui'an, and Torah) as
an excuse.
It goes back in time to at least ancient Egypt. In the Book of the Dead, the mummy had to testify that he never received the seed of a man. Giving the seed was not considered a "sin", only receiving it.
In the same way in Leviticus 18:23, a woman who had sex with an animal was consider committing incest (Ferrar Fenton Bible, translated from the Hebrew, Chaldaic and Greek)
Point is that misogyny is not born out of hate, but of despise. Women, because they are the recipients of a man's member, "something a "real" man, would never let happen.
If more proof is needed, consider that the greatest insult that can be levied against a man, in war at least, is male rape, a very frequent occurrence in the mid east and even the Balkans
"Hate" is shorthand for 1) biological imperative to control incubator of male's "posterity," and 2) fear and loathing of that which makes men "weak," as in tempts them to succumb to lust.
(Set aside for time being male illusions/pretentions that human race is supposed to have risen above status of animals.) #2 is particularly the paranoia that drove Anthony Comstock, the new role model of Judge Kacsmaryk, enemy of Mifepristone. Here is one pretty good article about Comstock: https://daily.jstor.org/zombie-anthony-comstock-walks-among-us-again/ Rolling Stone has something on the "zombie" Comstock Act, but I can't get past their online roadblocks. Just before Kacsmaryk's ruling, I coincidentally had read the book: "Other Powers" by Barbara Goldsmith, which concerns the "Spiritualism" fad of the late 1800's, but turns out to be an in-depth history of the intertwined Abolitionist and Women's Suffrage movements and personalities; the general legal powerlessness of women, and Anthony Comstock. Comstock had a masturbation problem, from which flowed (sorry) a widespread pollution of male power structure already perturbed by the Abolitionists and (overlapping) Suffragettes. Voila! Mass book burning, government-licensed jackboots, and: The Comstock Act. Welcome to the 1880's ladies. If only more than a few hundred of us knew what we are in for....
The Comstock Act is what I base this women despising/hatred on in the first place. It’s ludicrous and disgusting that a man with his “problems” blame innocent women for his inabilities. That it was part of legislation is even more shamefully ridiculous.
But, keep digging that hole, Federalist Society and 13 years of legally bought and paid for Senators, Congress, Judges, who are beholden to their donors, stock holders, lobbyists. Certainly not the Constitution or their oaths of office, and most definitely NOT the citizens of the U.S.A.
The awareness has been piqued. People are catching on to the scam.
The corrupt U.S. Supreme Court halted the presidential vote recount taking place in Florida and in so doing handed the presidency to GW Bush. The court had no basis in law for its actions but the court led by Scalia and Sandra Day O'Connor ignored that as they hated Al Gore.
GW Bush appointed far less progressive judges as president and so the right wing radical extremists added to their numbers. The same happened when Obama rolled over and let the Republicans deny him his right to appoint a justice while he was president and so the appointment was someone Trump wanted.
There is an illusion that the United States is a democracy and that laws exist when actually it is as always the golden rule with those having the gold making the rules and enacting laws or choosing to ignore them as we see taking place. With the attacks on workers unions going back to 1947 with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act over the veto by Truman, both parties now must appease the finance and energy industries to have campaign financing to run for office.
Our foreign policies and support for dictators and opposition to democracies and rush to invade other nations is all driven by the military industrial and financial complex. We give more than half the discretionary dollars spent by the federal government to the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction from atomic bombs to wipe out entire cities to cluster bombs to maim and murder the new generation of children.
... just wondering why the LEGISLATIVE STRATEGY arm of the DNC has not followed up on arranging music concerts in the college towns of the six states mentioned by Tom in an earlier maga attempt to block student registration and student vote--I even gave them a couple of concert booking sites
... hi tagged them... but they are not it ... they are out
While I can't disagree regarding Republicans or The Supreme Court, I feel it's necessary to fully understand the dynamic at play here in regards to Zoomers and the damage being done to them on both sides of the aisle. If you haven't heard, the Biden administration has been greenlighting the most heinous of pipeline projects, and baked in to the Inflation Reduction Act is a tit-for-tat requiring the permitting for new fossil fuel exploration and drilling for every green energy project initiated (among other more complex incentives for oil and gas drilling). As for student debt relief, if Biden would have done what Bernie Sanders would have and excused all of it, the checks would have been out before any legal challenges could have been initiated AND that action would have been far more difficult to challenge in the courts. But Biden's neoliberal means-tested, bureaucracy-laden policy, which would excuse less than 20% of all student debt, and applications weren't even available until 7 weeks after the program was approved, just in time for the legal challenges to stop it cold. As for healthcare and Big Pharma, last I checked the Biden administration is going full steam ahead allowing the privatization of Medicare and insurance premiums and drug prices continue to skyrocket. Remember as Biden tells us he's a "capitalist" and he "beat the socialist" so anything like a national health care system is anathema to him and Democratic Party leadership. Obviously Republicans are gaming the system but so do the Democrats, it's a battle for power with Democrats instituting their brand of imperialist oligarchy and Republicans fighting for theocratic fascism. Take your pick Thom but we can at least be honest about it in hopes of actually solving problems instead of fronting for a judgment-addled, rudderless and dangerous leader like Biden. DISCLAIMER: To avoid accusations of "Putin troll" like Thom called me on his radio show, I will proclaim Biden to be better than Trump. Just remember that better than Trump leaves little room below but an awful lot above.
Barry, your disclaimer that " I will proclaim Biden to be better than Trump. Just remember that better than Trump leaves little room below but an awful lot above.." Doesn't hack it. While I agree 100% with your depiction of Biden, to which I could add and have added more examples.
I can't help but notice that you led with the "both sides" argument. So typical of the right.
You may be against Trump, but so many Republicans and independents are,including the Bulwark and the Lincoln Project.
Also, I note how you always go to "imperialism" either inferred or directly, forcing me to "suss" out your real motives and ideology. If not a Putin troll, then you have to be an old line "leftists" who casts all evils in the world as products of capitalism and imperialism.
Subscribing to a leftist world view, does not make one a Marxist, and Marxist was not a communist or leftist, he was a proto Libertarian, a free trader, who believed , like our founding fathers, that the country should be run by an elite upper class, and who was a gold bug (100 percent gold standard) where every bit of currency would be redeemable in gold, which means of course that government would set the standard. Which the USSR when it valued the ruble at .9861 grams fine gold, and the number of rubles in existence had to be equaled by the amount of gold. The citizen couldn't redeem rubles at the GoSBank, but a foreigner could throw the USSR's window to the west, the NordBnak in Paris.
Much as I don't trust Biden I know that a vote for a third party, or a no vote, is a vote for Trump.
Zoomers in this country are caught in the cross-hairs literally and figuratively. They have to deal with pollution and dilution of information. When Boomers were their age, they had to seek information and entertainment and now their generation cannot escape it.
They need EXAMPLES in order to cut through the crap, so in this one-off, I will thank Trump and the GOP members that let him hijack their party. Best bad examples, EVER!
That pre-frontal cortex maturity has kicked in for Zoomers, and just in time, so has everything terrible about conservatism come out into the OPEN. Little "d" democracy and the fight for equality that Boomers sought will not maintain itself. Zoomers are learning this the hard way.
At this turning, computers, information, and the ability to organize are in almost every Zoomer pocket, Boomers too. It's a noisy, messy, beautiful thing. We have and will move onward and upward.
Suggested bumper stickers/memes: BLACK VOTES MATTER – Vote True Blue – Vote for Freedom, Equality, Democracy. I tried to call but didn’t get through.
In terms of economics and politics, and to some extent social dynamics, this history and analysis are spot-on. I hope the Zoomers are tuned in. However, one important element seems to me to be missing here. While we all were benefitting from and enjoying the fruits from expansion and “liberal” social programs, and while there was a large middle class, there were people at all stratagems who were not ready for changes in how society was structured and especially not ready to turn their backs on faith and ultra-conservative thinking.
When I went back to rural N.Y. State in the mid-1970’s with my three kids after my wife died, it was like going back in time after only a little more than a decade away. My family and most others there looked at anyone who had attended college as a foolish fish out of water who was deluded by modern ideas and “ivory tower” navel gazing. Many didn’t go to church often, but they clung to the idea that the simple life, religious beliefs, and hard work throughout a hard life were what was most important. They were not well-informed, they didn’t trust eggheads and professors, and they were ripe for the reactionary ideas, proposals, and propaganda of a Lewis Powell, Reagan, Limbaugh, and the others.
The “public” was not ignored or fooled in the ‘60’s, 70’s, and 80’s so much by the Republican conservatives as they were reminded of their deepest roots and their most basic beliefs and fears, while liberals were looked at with great suspicion. The workers, teachers, students, parents, consumers, and the majority of the middle class were never comfortable with too much progress or science. It was still mother, apple pie, the flag, guns, and God, for the most part.
My escape was mostly accidental. I got snared by an Air Force recruiter and ended up after training in a job with a prototype million-dollar flight simulator which the grunts were not allowed to touch. Therefore, I spent the next three years reading anything I could get my hands on several hours a day. That was the beginning of my education.
Now, we need to have a talk about using language more carefully and accurately. We may not agree on certain terms and matters for discussion, and we may do our best to talk about real controversies and issues, rather than splitting hairs or engaging in semantic word games. However, definitions and meanings and symbols or symbolism when not used with a degree of agreement and mutual understanding can cause enormous confusion and miscommunication. Clarification and precision are essential to avoid error or unnecessary conflict.
I have registered this complaint previously, with no acknowledgement. It matters. The term “public school” represents an institution devoted to a range of activities oriented around transmitting and teaching various skills, abilities, values, attitudes, and data or information, generally considered as “knowledge”, but only in the broadest sense.
Those activities presumably contribute to the education of the individual participants. They may also detract from, interfere with, inhibit, delay, or become a substitute for the individual’s education. Regardless of particular circumstances, school, whether public, private, or at home, or tutored, should never be automatically equated with, or conflated with, education.
Furthermore, it must be understood that education is not a matter of teaching and learning as much as it is a process of observing, analyzing, searching, exploring, thinking, intuiting, and ruminating. Education originates with cognition, curiosity, questioning, initiative, intrinsic reward, testing hypotheses, and real life experience. School is a box. School is a series of organized activities which may or may not engage or interest the captive students at any given moment, or ever, and they may or may not be psychologically present for any significant period during their incarceration. I must ask again that everyone PLEASE stop using these terms interchangeably!
The term “education” must be narrowed down to fit within some sensible and agreed-upon parameters in order to even begin this discussion. Education is a highly personal attribute. It is holistic in that it encompasses every acquired or learned behavior, fact, pattern, concept, image, impression, belief, or characteristic (as opposed to genetically encoded) over the entire lifespan, including pre-birth.
Value judgments, such as good or bad, right or wrong, worthy or unworthy, sane or insane, cognitive or emotional, are relevant within both domains or contexts, school and education. But to confuse one with the other is profoundly dangerous and careless. No two people can articulate a satisfactory identical definition for education, which speaks to the fact that, unlike school, it is ineffable, highly personal, and not a service or good that can be purchased at a cost, mandated, or given as a reward.
The design, environment, or “climate”, and purpose of school all depend on myriad factors and conditions, subject to disruptions, whims, and planned or unplanned change. However, the students’ experience depends as much on each student’s own perception, past experience and development, capabilities, and temperament and mood at any given moment. It depends, likewise, on their personality and physical characteristics, and feelings and beliefs relative to self, others, and to many varied indeterminate things, etc., etc. Cookie cutters are for making cookies.
Most learn something useful in a decade. Some would thrive and excel in almost any environment. And some have been deprived of that opportunity because the place is there for the group and the nation, rather than for the individual.
To say or assume that school is education is to make a quantum leap of unimagined proportions. It is an absurdity and a formula for perpetual misdirection.
The following two excerpts illustrate how badly things are going currently. Nothing has changed substantially in the last one-hundred years. Keep in mind that these authors are academic professionals committed to preserving and improving public schools. They are probably NOT Republicans and are probably hostile to privatization, but they are most certainly NOT trying to destroy schools or undermine education.
The first is from The Atlantic, (June 2011) by Joel Kline, “The Failure of American Schools”:
“…the gains we have made in improving our schools are negligible—even though we have doubled our spending (in inflation-adjusted dollars) on K–12 public education. On America’s latest exams (the National Assessment of Educational Progress), one-third or fewer of eighth-grade students were proficient in math, science, or reading. Our high-school graduation rate continues to hover just shy of 70 percent, according to a 2010 report by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, and many of those students who do graduate aren’t prepared for college. ACT, the respected national organization that administers college-admissions tests, recently found that 76 percent of our high-school graduates “were not adequately prepared academically for first-year college courses.”
The second is from, Pediatric Education (July 2018), entitled, “What Causes School Failure?”
"School failure is defined as grade retention (i.e. repeating a grade, 10% of Kindergarten-8th grade students), expulsion (0.2% of students) and dropping out of school (i.e. 16-24 year old not enrolled and do not have a general equivalency degree, 9% which is a decline but total number of students is increasing because of increased enrollment). Even students that graduate from high school may not be sufficiently literate in the broader sense. Some studies cite, 80% of high school students graduating but only 50% are ready for the world and only 50% are proficient in math and reading."
One can locate innumerable accurate and objective statistics and research reports with dismal and depressing facts such as these easily with access to journals, which now are all behind a pay wall. I found these in one quick search. The truly depressing reality, however, is that they are measuring progress and academic success by test results, grades, behavioral indices, attendance, and graduation rates, none of which begin to reflect education or readiness for tackling the vicissitudes of life.
Zoomers may have inherited a more cosmopolitan worldview by dint of circumstances. But only by changing the school milieu and changing how we think about education will we transform this society.
Don't forget the dumbing down of America and its effects on the populace. How can teachers teach when they also have to be social workers and are afraid to discuss any issue of importance? My parents supported teachers completely, my husband and I supported them with reservation, and now we have lawnmower parents on the one hand and completely uninvolved parents on the other. And private school vouchers promise to leave only developmentally challenged and behavior-disordered kids in public schools. Sometimes I'm embarrassed for the things my country has done to education. (and too many other things to enumerate here).
Interesting article. Explains a lot about the power tactics used by the lucky sperm club. The minions reasons to support this callous selfishness still eludes me. Why does support for faux patriotism grow stronger as one lives from a town square? Do they believe the rich and powerful landlords have their back? Or are they angry about their own life crises that makes them so susceptible to destructful rhetoric? I just don't understand why my neighbor believes this malarkey.
Turning to the other side of the spectrum, we have treasury secretary yellen in China to complain about how bad China is to American companies. Not talking about military bases, or currency controls, payment systems or technology standards. No not those things. Or free trade either - there's plenty of that.
No, it's just controls on foreign investment. That's why blinken and yellen both needed to go to China - because the "American" companies (which on average get close to 45 percent of revenue from outside USA) which have driven wealth inequality in USA want to invest their profits in China rather than in USA.
Is that good for America? Do any of these things help Americans?
You can't help noticing a lot of the murmuring about restoring industry to USA, "re-onshoring", bringing critical supply chains back here to a country that long ago decided it didn't need to produce anything for the rest of the world other than weapons.
Is this just talk?
Why is it that our highest level democratic officials see their core job as complaining about how China treats our multinational corporations, many of which are donating to republicans and are devoid of any responsibility to address climate or any other current crisis?
Seriously, is this what Biden's / democrats care most about? The ability of American companies to invest MORE in China?
How does that play as a political strategy? Democratic elites want to invest more in China! Sounds like another winner!
Hey did that virus thing escape from a lab or what? Read the Intercept for more Tom cotton narratives.
Without belaboring with lots of math, just do the numbers. Republicans do not have enough bodies. Without gerrymandering, ridiculous opinions from the Supremes to keep their 'base' riled up, they have nothing. it'a all motivated by fear; fear of 'the other'. White men have been afraid of Black men since 1619 and farther back, globally. Then there's the vadose zone between legitimate, conservative views and serious homophobic, alcoholic thinking. These guys, at the end of the day, are really sick and twisted. NY Times has an article today about 'cage fighting, MMA' between old farts who want to show off - many of whom are Republican. Really Dude? REALLY?!
As a proud Zoomer, I'm ready to go!
Well-reasoned snapshot of where we are today and why. Let's keep the faith...
The capitalists want all the money. All the power. All the control. The idea of sharing the pie with inferiors, when you could be torturing them and starving them and watching them suffer for fun, is not an option. The only way the fascists can be stopped is to take their MONEY", and they know it. Everyone who wants to stop human suffering is then called a communist, like it is a bad thing to share. The blue states share more with the red States than the red states share with the blue States. The Trump supporting base are just a bunch of entitled and ungrateful capitalist wannabes. Once they get old or disabled, they will be thrown into the extermination camps also. I can see open borders in the future, chewing up healthy poor people, like a wood chipper chews up a tree. Contraception will be banned, abortions will be illegal, just so the rich will have an unlimited supply of slaves to grovel at their feet and to mock! ANYONE who votes for this, is certifiably insane.
Here is the thinking, and it is as old as Kings and Emperors. What is the reason to acquire wealth and power, and thus status, when every Tom, Dick and Jane can be upper class.
It is the same motive that Henry VIII used to impose Sumptuary Laws. Laws that forbade non nobility from dressing like nobles, including banning silk, furs and fine linen.
His fathers excise tax on raw wool exports, and imports of sliverware, swords, art and fine clothes forced the English to become self reliant, develop skills and industry. My family, for instance, started as wool dyers, and through a fortuitous circumstance was gifted enough land to start his own raw wool business, but with the edict of Henry VII, the family was forced into more than just fulling wool, it became expert in the textile industry and wealthy, owning much land and messauges, which gained them rents, over the length and breadth of England.
H8 and his nobles did not like the idea that they did not stand out from the rabble, be they landed gentry or yeomen. So he passed the law.
There is no social value in being wealthy and powerful, if you are being threatened by your "lessers" coming up the ladder, owning planes, boats, luxury cars, designer clothes, second resort homes.
A classist stratifed society, is the only way, the plutocrats can live.
Racism is a subset of classism, it enables the ordinary person, to look down the ladder and see below him, the "unworthy", the ne'er do well, the dredge that is not part of the lucky sperm club.
And among subordinate groups, there exists their own heirarchy. Hispanics distinguish themselves by origin, and I know, because I've seen it in Panama, that "white" hispanics look down on cholo's and mestizos. Chileans and Argentians and Venezuelans, and Uruguaylook down on Puerto Ricans and Cubans, calling them chumbos, and Puerto Ricans look down on Mexicans because of the sing song nature of their accent..
We will know we are in big trouble when we can't even buy fake bling!
LOL.
Great article and important history. I would make one addition. In the roaring twenties, before the Great Depression, and though many were not in extreme poverty, about 70% of workers were under the official poverty level. The National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act, with the right to join a union and Collective Bargaining, was the greatest anti-poverty program in history. It also paved the way for Social Security, the GI Bill, and later, Medicare, to put the majority solidly in the middle class. Your mention of Labor Unions later in the article are right on point.
The targeting of women is based on nothing but hate. Women will be the largest group to suffer the most under this attempted fall back to 1900. When the robber barons and their toadies were ruthless. Anything to hold the masses in check.
No one is born to serve another. The Republicans plan is to destroy the middle class. Now with the SCOTUS full of corruption, they’re doing everything they can to stop women from having any say over their futures. Instead of seeing women as an asset, we’re being view as an uneducated servant beholden to our masters in every possible way.
I hope more see through these recent rulings of the SCOTUS for what they are. Unconstitutional for the reason to tear away at the fabric of society. The Republican Party is a disaster for Americans.
I presage the following with a disclaimer. I am using "scare quotes" because these are not my thoughts or words, but what I have heard from society, books, the media and other men (locker room talk, which is the unfiltered truth, when it comes to what they believe).
The targeting of women is not based on hate. It comes from an image of women as inferiors, not even quite human. In their mind the only function of a female, is to serve the male.
Serve as a sex object, a domestic, and the medium through which he can produce mini me's (Incidentally the source of inheritance laws, psychologically it is man's way of cheating the grave, passing on his accumulations to his mini me's..
It is the same idea of women as inferior that led to homophobia, because they believe that since women are inferior, that men who act like women, sexually are like women, not men.
Of course Christians, Muslims and Jews use circular reasoning (Bible, Qui'an, and Torah) as
an excuse.
It goes back in time to at least ancient Egypt. In the Book of the Dead, the mummy had to testify that he never received the seed of a man. Giving the seed was not considered a "sin", only receiving it.
In the same way in Leviticus 18:23, a woman who had sex with an animal was consider committing incest (Ferrar Fenton Bible, translated from the Hebrew, Chaldaic and Greek)
Point is that misogyny is not born out of hate, but of despise. Women, because they are the recipients of a man's member, "something a "real" man, would never let happen.
If more proof is needed, consider that the greatest insult that can be levied against a man, in war at least, is male rape, a very frequent occurrence in the mid east and even the Balkans
"Hate" is shorthand for 1) biological imperative to control incubator of male's "posterity," and 2) fear and loathing of that which makes men "weak," as in tempts them to succumb to lust.
(Set aside for time being male illusions/pretentions that human race is supposed to have risen above status of animals.) #2 is particularly the paranoia that drove Anthony Comstock, the new role model of Judge Kacsmaryk, enemy of Mifepristone. Here is one pretty good article about Comstock: https://daily.jstor.org/zombie-anthony-comstock-walks-among-us-again/ Rolling Stone has something on the "zombie" Comstock Act, but I can't get past their online roadblocks. Just before Kacsmaryk's ruling, I coincidentally had read the book: "Other Powers" by Barbara Goldsmith, which concerns the "Spiritualism" fad of the late 1800's, but turns out to be an in-depth history of the intertwined Abolitionist and Women's Suffrage movements and personalities; the general legal powerlessness of women, and Anthony Comstock. Comstock had a masturbation problem, from which flowed (sorry) a widespread pollution of male power structure already perturbed by the Abolitionists and (overlapping) Suffragettes. Voila! Mass book burning, government-licensed jackboots, and: The Comstock Act. Welcome to the 1880's ladies. If only more than a few hundred of us knew what we are in for....
The Comstock Act is what I base this women despising/hatred on in the first place. It’s ludicrous and disgusting that a man with his “problems” blame innocent women for his inabilities. That it was part of legislation is even more shamefully ridiculous.
But, keep digging that hole, Federalist Society and 13 years of legally bought and paid for Senators, Congress, Judges, who are beholden to their donors, stock holders, lobbyists. Certainly not the Constitution or their oaths of office, and most definitely NOT the citizens of the U.S.A.
The awareness has been piqued. People are catching on to the scam.
The corrupt U.S. Supreme Court halted the presidential vote recount taking place in Florida and in so doing handed the presidency to GW Bush. The court had no basis in law for its actions but the court led by Scalia and Sandra Day O'Connor ignored that as they hated Al Gore.
GW Bush appointed far less progressive judges as president and so the right wing radical extremists added to their numbers. The same happened when Obama rolled over and let the Republicans deny him his right to appoint a justice while he was president and so the appointment was someone Trump wanted.
There is an illusion that the United States is a democracy and that laws exist when actually it is as always the golden rule with those having the gold making the rules and enacting laws or choosing to ignore them as we see taking place. With the attacks on workers unions going back to 1947 with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act over the veto by Truman, both parties now must appease the finance and energy industries to have campaign financing to run for office.
Our foreign policies and support for dictators and opposition to democracies and rush to invade other nations is all driven by the military industrial and financial complex. We give more than half the discretionary dollars spent by the federal government to the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction from atomic bombs to wipe out entire cities to cluster bombs to maim and murder the new generation of children.
... just wondering why the LEGISLATIVE STRATEGY arm of the DNC has not followed up on arranging music concerts in the college towns of the six states mentioned by Tom in an earlier maga attempt to block student registration and student vote--I even gave them a couple of concert booking sites
... hi tagged them... but they are not it ... they are out
While I can't disagree regarding Republicans or The Supreme Court, I feel it's necessary to fully understand the dynamic at play here in regards to Zoomers and the damage being done to them on both sides of the aisle. If you haven't heard, the Biden administration has been greenlighting the most heinous of pipeline projects, and baked in to the Inflation Reduction Act is a tit-for-tat requiring the permitting for new fossil fuel exploration and drilling for every green energy project initiated (among other more complex incentives for oil and gas drilling). As for student debt relief, if Biden would have done what Bernie Sanders would have and excused all of it, the checks would have been out before any legal challenges could have been initiated AND that action would have been far more difficult to challenge in the courts. But Biden's neoliberal means-tested, bureaucracy-laden policy, which would excuse less than 20% of all student debt, and applications weren't even available until 7 weeks after the program was approved, just in time for the legal challenges to stop it cold. As for healthcare and Big Pharma, last I checked the Biden administration is going full steam ahead allowing the privatization of Medicare and insurance premiums and drug prices continue to skyrocket. Remember as Biden tells us he's a "capitalist" and he "beat the socialist" so anything like a national health care system is anathema to him and Democratic Party leadership. Obviously Republicans are gaming the system but so do the Democrats, it's a battle for power with Democrats instituting their brand of imperialist oligarchy and Republicans fighting for theocratic fascism. Take your pick Thom but we can at least be honest about it in hopes of actually solving problems instead of fronting for a judgment-addled, rudderless and dangerous leader like Biden. DISCLAIMER: To avoid accusations of "Putin troll" like Thom called me on his radio show, I will proclaim Biden to be better than Trump. Just remember that better than Trump leaves little room below but an awful lot above.
Barry, your disclaimer that " I will proclaim Biden to be better than Trump. Just remember that better than Trump leaves little room below but an awful lot above.." Doesn't hack it. While I agree 100% with your depiction of Biden, to which I could add and have added more examples.
I can't help but notice that you led with the "both sides" argument. So typical of the right.
You may be against Trump, but so many Republicans and independents are,including the Bulwark and the Lincoln Project.
Also, I note how you always go to "imperialism" either inferred or directly, forcing me to "suss" out your real motives and ideology. If not a Putin troll, then you have to be an old line "leftists" who casts all evils in the world as products of capitalism and imperialism.
A very simplistic view, but one that is apparently onanistic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onan
Subscribing to a leftist world view, does not make one a Marxist, and Marxist was not a communist or leftist, he was a proto Libertarian, a free trader, who believed , like our founding fathers, that the country should be run by an elite upper class, and who was a gold bug (100 percent gold standard) where every bit of currency would be redeemable in gold, which means of course that government would set the standard. Which the USSR when it valued the ruble at .9861 grams fine gold, and the number of rubles in existence had to be equaled by the amount of gold. The citizen couldn't redeem rubles at the GoSBank, but a foreigner could throw the USSR's window to the west, the NordBnak in Paris.
Much as I don't trust Biden I know that a vote for a third party, or a no vote, is a vote for Trump.
I’m hoping for some Zoomer votes! I just jumped into California’s jungle primary for the Senate!
https://rose4us.com/2023/07/06/running-for-senate/
Zoomers in this country are caught in the cross-hairs literally and figuratively. They have to deal with pollution and dilution of information. When Boomers were their age, they had to seek information and entertainment and now their generation cannot escape it.
They need EXAMPLES in order to cut through the crap, so in this one-off, I will thank Trump and the GOP members that let him hijack their party. Best bad examples, EVER!
That pre-frontal cortex maturity has kicked in for Zoomers, and just in time, so has everything terrible about conservatism come out into the OPEN. Little "d" democracy and the fight for equality that Boomers sought will not maintain itself. Zoomers are learning this the hard way.
At this turning, computers, information, and the ability to organize are in almost every Zoomer pocket, Boomers too. It's a noisy, messy, beautiful thing. We have and will move onward and upward.
Damn! I wish Boomers had the tech back then!
Suggested bumper stickers/memes: BLACK VOTES MATTER – Vote True Blue – Vote for Freedom, Equality, Democracy. I tried to call but didn’t get through.
In terms of economics and politics, and to some extent social dynamics, this history and analysis are spot-on. I hope the Zoomers are tuned in. However, one important element seems to me to be missing here. While we all were benefitting from and enjoying the fruits from expansion and “liberal” social programs, and while there was a large middle class, there were people at all stratagems who were not ready for changes in how society was structured and especially not ready to turn their backs on faith and ultra-conservative thinking.
When I went back to rural N.Y. State in the mid-1970’s with my three kids after my wife died, it was like going back in time after only a little more than a decade away. My family and most others there looked at anyone who had attended college as a foolish fish out of water who was deluded by modern ideas and “ivory tower” navel gazing. Many didn’t go to church often, but they clung to the idea that the simple life, religious beliefs, and hard work throughout a hard life were what was most important. They were not well-informed, they didn’t trust eggheads and professors, and they were ripe for the reactionary ideas, proposals, and propaganda of a Lewis Powell, Reagan, Limbaugh, and the others.
The “public” was not ignored or fooled in the ‘60’s, 70’s, and 80’s so much by the Republican conservatives as they were reminded of their deepest roots and their most basic beliefs and fears, while liberals were looked at with great suspicion. The workers, teachers, students, parents, consumers, and the majority of the middle class were never comfortable with too much progress or science. It was still mother, apple pie, the flag, guns, and God, for the most part.
My escape was mostly accidental. I got snared by an Air Force recruiter and ended up after training in a job with a prototype million-dollar flight simulator which the grunts were not allowed to touch. Therefore, I spent the next three years reading anything I could get my hands on several hours a day. That was the beginning of my education.
Now, we need to have a talk about using language more carefully and accurately. We may not agree on certain terms and matters for discussion, and we may do our best to talk about real controversies and issues, rather than splitting hairs or engaging in semantic word games. However, definitions and meanings and symbols or symbolism when not used with a degree of agreement and mutual understanding can cause enormous confusion and miscommunication. Clarification and precision are essential to avoid error or unnecessary conflict.
I have registered this complaint previously, with no acknowledgement. It matters. The term “public school” represents an institution devoted to a range of activities oriented around transmitting and teaching various skills, abilities, values, attitudes, and data or information, generally considered as “knowledge”, but only in the broadest sense.
Those activities presumably contribute to the education of the individual participants. They may also detract from, interfere with, inhibit, delay, or become a substitute for the individual’s education. Regardless of particular circumstances, school, whether public, private, or at home, or tutored, should never be automatically equated with, or conflated with, education.
Furthermore, it must be understood that education is not a matter of teaching and learning as much as it is a process of observing, analyzing, searching, exploring, thinking, intuiting, and ruminating. Education originates with cognition, curiosity, questioning, initiative, intrinsic reward, testing hypotheses, and real life experience. School is a box. School is a series of organized activities which may or may not engage or interest the captive students at any given moment, or ever, and they may or may not be psychologically present for any significant period during their incarceration. I must ask again that everyone PLEASE stop using these terms interchangeably!
The term “education” must be narrowed down to fit within some sensible and agreed-upon parameters in order to even begin this discussion. Education is a highly personal attribute. It is holistic in that it encompasses every acquired or learned behavior, fact, pattern, concept, image, impression, belief, or characteristic (as opposed to genetically encoded) over the entire lifespan, including pre-birth.
Value judgments, such as good or bad, right or wrong, worthy or unworthy, sane or insane, cognitive or emotional, are relevant within both domains or contexts, school and education. But to confuse one with the other is profoundly dangerous and careless. No two people can articulate a satisfactory identical definition for education, which speaks to the fact that, unlike school, it is ineffable, highly personal, and not a service or good that can be purchased at a cost, mandated, or given as a reward.
The design, environment, or “climate”, and purpose of school all depend on myriad factors and conditions, subject to disruptions, whims, and planned or unplanned change. However, the students’ experience depends as much on each student’s own perception, past experience and development, capabilities, and temperament and mood at any given moment. It depends, likewise, on their personality and physical characteristics, and feelings and beliefs relative to self, others, and to many varied indeterminate things, etc., etc. Cookie cutters are for making cookies.
Most learn something useful in a decade. Some would thrive and excel in almost any environment. And some have been deprived of that opportunity because the place is there for the group and the nation, rather than for the individual.
To say or assume that school is education is to make a quantum leap of unimagined proportions. It is an absurdity and a formula for perpetual misdirection.
The following two excerpts illustrate how badly things are going currently. Nothing has changed substantially in the last one-hundred years. Keep in mind that these authors are academic professionals committed to preserving and improving public schools. They are probably NOT Republicans and are probably hostile to privatization, but they are most certainly NOT trying to destroy schools or undermine education.
The first is from The Atlantic, (June 2011) by Joel Kline, “The Failure of American Schools”:
“…the gains we have made in improving our schools are negligible—even though we have doubled our spending (in inflation-adjusted dollars) on K–12 public education. On America’s latest exams (the National Assessment of Educational Progress), one-third or fewer of eighth-grade students were proficient in math, science, or reading. Our high-school graduation rate continues to hover just shy of 70 percent, according to a 2010 report by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, and many of those students who do graduate aren’t prepared for college. ACT, the respected national organization that administers college-admissions tests, recently found that 76 percent of our high-school graduates “were not adequately prepared academically for first-year college courses.”
The second is from, Pediatric Education (July 2018), entitled, “What Causes School Failure?”
"School failure is defined as grade retention (i.e. repeating a grade, 10% of Kindergarten-8th grade students), expulsion (0.2% of students) and dropping out of school (i.e. 16-24 year old not enrolled and do not have a general equivalency degree, 9% which is a decline but total number of students is increasing because of increased enrollment). Even students that graduate from high school may not be sufficiently literate in the broader sense. Some studies cite, 80% of high school students graduating but only 50% are ready for the world and only 50% are proficient in math and reading."
One can locate innumerable accurate and objective statistics and research reports with dismal and depressing facts such as these easily with access to journals, which now are all behind a pay wall. I found these in one quick search. The truly depressing reality, however, is that they are measuring progress and academic success by test results, grades, behavioral indices, attendance, and graduation rates, none of which begin to reflect education or readiness for tackling the vicissitudes of life.
Zoomers may have inherited a more cosmopolitan worldview by dint of circumstances. But only by changing the school milieu and changing how we think about education will we transform this society.
Don't forget the dumbing down of America and its effects on the populace. How can teachers teach when they also have to be social workers and are afraid to discuss any issue of importance? My parents supported teachers completely, my husband and I supported them with reservation, and now we have lawnmower parents on the one hand and completely uninvolved parents on the other. And private school vouchers promise to leave only developmentally challenged and behavior-disordered kids in public schools. Sometimes I'm embarrassed for the things my country has done to education. (and too many other things to enumerate here).
Interesting article. Explains a lot about the power tactics used by the lucky sperm club. The minions reasons to support this callous selfishness still eludes me. Why does support for faux patriotism grow stronger as one lives from a town square? Do they believe the rich and powerful landlords have their back? Or are they angry about their own life crises that makes them so susceptible to destructful rhetoric? I just don't understand why my neighbor believes this malarkey.
Let’s do this!!
Turning to the other side of the spectrum, we have treasury secretary yellen in China to complain about how bad China is to American companies. Not talking about military bases, or currency controls, payment systems or technology standards. No not those things. Or free trade either - there's plenty of that.
No, it's just controls on foreign investment. That's why blinken and yellen both needed to go to China - because the "American" companies (which on average get close to 45 percent of revenue from outside USA) which have driven wealth inequality in USA want to invest their profits in China rather than in USA.
Is that good for America? Do any of these things help Americans?
You can't help noticing a lot of the murmuring about restoring industry to USA, "re-onshoring", bringing critical supply chains back here to a country that long ago decided it didn't need to produce anything for the rest of the world other than weapons.
Is this just talk?
Why is it that our highest level democratic officials see their core job as complaining about how China treats our multinational corporations, many of which are donating to republicans and are devoid of any responsibility to address climate or any other current crisis?
Seriously, is this what Biden's / democrats care most about? The ability of American companies to invest MORE in China?
How does that play as a political strategy? Democratic elites want to invest more in China! Sounds like another winner!
Hey did that virus thing escape from a lab or what? Read the Intercept for more Tom cotton narratives.