Several readers have written to say that they were very disappointed that I have spoken ill of the President-elect. They said they would not read the blog any more because I do not share their admiration for our next President. I hate to lose readers, but part of the point of this blog is that I write what I believe and I invite readers to do the same. I will not change my views to pander to readers.
I did not support Donald Trump for the Presidency. I thought he was unqualified to serve, had no relevant experience, and had repeatedly expressed bigotry towards many fellow Americans. I supported Hillary Clinton after she won the Democratic primaries. I would have supported Bernie Sanders with equal zeal had he won the primaries. I did not want Trump to be elected. Okay, he was elected, and I am a loyal American. I respect the office, and I watch with concern as he decides how to staff his administration and which of his campaign promises he will keep.
This is a blog devoted to “a better education for all.” Its central purpose is to support public education as a public good. I oppose privatization of public schools. That much has been clear to anyone who has read the blog on any given day. Donald Trump has pledged to direct federal funding to privately managed charter schools, to vouchers for religious schools, and to homeschooling. He has no problem with for-profit schools. Those are reasons enough for me to oppose his candidacy and to worry about his presidency. I worry that he will damage public education irreparably in the next four years, with his party in control of the Congress and equally committed to privatization of public education.
Thus, if a reader says I will stop reading your blog because you didn’t support Trump, I don’t think they understand that Trump’s promise to privatize public schools is directly in conflict with the essential purpose of this blog.
I opposed him because of the horrible things he said during the election campaign about women, immigrants, Muslims, Mexicans, and others. I opposed him because of his campaign’s use of anti-Semitic images. I opposed him because of the many years he devoted to proving that President Obama was not an American, a charge he retracted during the campaign, with little remorse. Since his election, in a very few days, there have been many incidents of hatred towards people who are nonwhite, Muslim, Hispanic, or “Other.” Just yesterday, CNN played a clip of middle-school students in the Midwest chanting “Build the wall, build the wall,” to intimidate their Hispanic schoolmates.
David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, says that Trump’s election is nothing less than “an American tragedy.”
He wrote on the day after the election:
The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.
There are, inevitably, miseries to come: an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court; an emboldened right-wing Congress; a President whose disdain for women and minorities, civil liberties and scientific fact, to say nothing of simple decency, has been repeatedly demonstrated. Trump is vulgarity unbounded, a knowledge-free national leader who will not only set markets tumbling but will strike fear into the hearts of the vulnerable, the weak, and, above all, the many varieties of Other whom he has so deeply insulted. The African-American Other. The Hispanic Other. The female Other. The Jewish and Muslim Other. The most hopeful way to look at this grievous event—and it’s a stretch—is that this election and the years to follow will be a test of the strength, or the fragility, of American institutions. It will be a test of our seriousness and resolve.
I am an Other. Probably many of you who read this are Others. I hate to hear the words he uses about women. I hate to hear what he says about women in the locker room or on the bus with the boys. I have grown up with sons and grandsons, and that is not the language they ever use. I hate what he said about Mexicans. I hate the idea that he proposed banning all people of one religion from entering our country. I am afraid that he will remove all regulations on guns, and we will all be armed and suspicious of one another. I am afraid that he will remove all regulations on drilling and fracking, and the air and water will be polluted, and oil rigs will be permitted in our national parks and everywhere else.
I will no longer engage in any arguments about which Democrat might have been a better candidate than Hillary. That’s over. Now we must deal with the fact that the man who will be our President for the next four years has been elected on a platform and promises that resurrect nativism, racism, white nationalism, and division.
He will be our President, and, as I said, I respect the Office of the Presidency. But I cannot endorse any of the appeals to bigotry and bias. I cannot endorse his rejection of the science about climate change. I do not agree that our nation should abolish all controls on guns.
I will watch and wait to see if President-elect Trump moderates his views and policies. I will hope for the best. I want America to be a land of hope and dreams, of idealism and mutual respect, of e pluribus unum, not just unum. We are a quilt of many colors and it is a beautiful quilt. We all belong here. I will wait to see if President-elect Trump is willing to speak to and for all of us and not just for his rabid movement.
I want America to be America. I want it to be a land of liberty and justice for all. I want my grandchildren to learn what I tried to teach my children: kindness, compassion, a commitment to fairness, a love of justice, and a willingness to defend the underdog. I want them to aspire to be good people. I want them to treat others with respect for their individuality and humanity.
If you have read this far, and you hate what I have written, don’t read the blog. Unsubscribe. Delete.
I have always said that I will speak as honestly as I know how, and I would write from the heart. This is written in honesty, from the heart. You don’t have to agree. This is what I wanted and needed to say.
Thank you, Diane. I have so much admiration for you and your message.
Katherine
Thank you for your inspiring words, your continued advocacy for children and public education and your excellent demonstration of the First Amendment!
I am bruised and broken right now, and to have someone like you still championing the way restores my hope that American can continue to be great, even with Trump at the helm, because of the many varied, beautiful people who live within her borders.
Thank you, Diane. You have operated your blog with integrity and have no need to change course. Many thousands of us thank you for the service you have provided in support of children, teachers, and public education.
Trump is in some trouble. He will stand trial for fraud this month, for sexual molestation next month and the day after the election he was served with a FISA warrant for his collusion with Russia. It’s conceivable he might never make it to his own inauguration because he could be incarcerated. But is Pence better or worse? IDK. I really dont. And i’m still exhausted from the Bush years.
Worse, ask the readers from Indiana what he is like and what he wants to do with public education. Hint, It’s nothing I agree with.
Lol…I am from Indiana so i know what he’s done, and his predecessor who gutted the Indiana State employees union which has caused me a lot of personal grief. And as for public education idk what’s going to happen.
Dear señor Swacker:
Have you noticed that Trump did not act and behave as he does on the stage where he accepted his presidency.
1) He is timid and guess how many years like 1, 2 or 4 or 8 he would last.
2) He did not PROPERLY introduce his trophy third wife, and his three sets of children as Mike Pence did.
3) Most of all, when mentioned “a boss” when Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz refused to endorse him.
In short, the president-elect IS NOT from Americans , but from corrupted insiders invisible power in control = “a boss”.
Educators are not in power-less position in Industrial 19th century. Educators are mostly naive, clueless with blind faith, hope and dream in CON ARTISTS = corrupted politicians = corrupted academe leadership = corrupted religious leadership.
If educators keep up with their conscience to submit to con artists (= corrupted politicians = corrupted academe leadership = corrupted religious leadership.), then please DO NOT be shock at the uneducated materialistic Americans (= nothing is related to education or degree, BUT it is all about civility, humanity, and being considerate for the welfare of all sentient beings on Earth).
I hope that “Archfriar” provides correct info about Trump’s collusion with Russia, so that according to Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3, two third of congressmen/women and Senators can impeach him on behalf of all true patriotic without gullibility Republicans in America. May.
No, I didn’t as for me it’s over and until he and Pence get sworn in and actually do something. A political junkie I am not. Also I do not watch hardly any tv, can’t afford the $100 a month to get what I would like to watch which is mainly sports.
But I completely agree with your thought of “Educators are mostly naive, clueless with blind faith, hope and dream in CON ARTISTS = corrupted politicians = corrupted academe leadership = corrupted religious leadership.
If educators keep up with their conscience to submit to con artists (= corrupted politicians = corrupted academe leadership = corrupted religious leadership.), then please DO NOT be shock at the uneducated materialistic Americans.”
Been saying that for a long time except I say it a tad more caustically calling out those who institute educational malpractices as GAGA* Good Germans. I’ve challenged those educators, which is probably 99% of them, many times over the years, needless to say quite a few times getting set upon by the authorities.
*Go Along to Get Along.
May King,
Trump is rude and aggressive when in the presence of his adoring fans. When face to face with the president of Mexico or the US, he turned timid. Typical bully.
Pence is far worse than Trump, because he truly believes he has the moral authority to impose his beliefs on others. Quick list of his dirty deeds, just as Governor of IN: did everything possible to keep Glenda Ritz, the one who took the head IN Ed spot from Tony Bennett, from doing her job by appointing a shadow Ed agency that had more power than she did; got the IN legislature to strip Ritz of her powers; shut down most Planned Parenthood clinics in rural areas resulting in an HIV epidemic in small rural counties; got the Religious Freedom (RFRA) law passed that allowed legal discrimination; set up a “state -run news bureau” that was intended to filter all state news releases to make Pence look good; allowed companies such as Carrier to leave Indiana and put hundreds out of work after they received millions in state incentive money that he refused to claw back; let the roads deteriorate so badly that a major interstate road (65) had to be rerouted while the state had an emergency fix on a bridge that was about to collapse; expanded private school vouchers to the tune of 131 million for students that have never attended a public school and putting public schools in financial peril; presided over a serious teacher shortage due to the low pay and restrictive work environment; refused an 80 million dollar federal grant for Pre-school and then two years later when preparing for a re-election run decided to take it; and one of the best- presided over an 38th ranking in the US of per capita income.
Indiana wasn’t doing well under the previous GOP governor Mitch Daniels, but Pence actually managed to make it worse. Pence makes Trump look good, and the sad thing is that I feel the GOP will do everything it can to let Trump get himself into a serious enough situation so that he will have to step down and let Pence take over. And that would truly be the worst thing that could happen to this country. No joking, no exaggerations, just fact. Pence is horrible.
I hope you are not a teacher, ms Kendall.
Pence ordered a program to be activated for needle exchange.
A syringe is pictured along West Main Street in downtown Austin, Ind., in Scott County on Tuesday, March 24, 2015. A recent outbreak of HIV infections in the county have been traced by health officials to intravenous drug use in the area.
Christopher Fryer, AP, News and Tribune
Shari Rudavsky, The Indianapolis Star
2 years ago
INDIANAPOLIS — A team of high-ranking federal officials will visit Indiana on Tuesday to get a firsthand look at the response to an HIV outbreak of more than 140 cases, one of the largest in recent years, in the hope of learning ways to prevent similar occurrences.
“This is one of the worst documented outbreaks of HIV among IV users in the past two decades,” said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. “It’s of import to the CDC as well as the people of Indiana.”
The Scott County outbreak, which was first noted in December, has yet to be controlled. Officials from the CDC and health departments from three other states have been assisting Indiana State Department of Health workers in responding to the HIV spread.
With no end date in sight, CDC officials will remain in Indiana, participating in the ongoing effort to track people who could have contracted HIV, either through sharing needles or having sexual contact with those already known to be infected.
“This is still an active investigation,” Mermin said. “We are here as long as we are needed.”
“This is one of the worst documented outbreaks of HIV among IV users in the past two decades.”
- Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Vir…
Nor is it clear how large the outbreak could be once the investigation has concluded.
The State Department of Health has alerted health care providers in other parts of Indiana to be aware of the outbreak and to do HIV testing of their patients who use intravenous drugs.
“We’re under no illusion that there’s a magic line around Scott County that’s going to prevent the spread,” said Dr. Jerome Adams, Indiana State Health commissioner.
In this instance, the outbreak came to light because of an “astute” public health nurse who noted 11 recently diagnosed HIV cases, far from the area’s norm of fewer than five a year. As the number of cases soared far beyond the normal rate, health officials declared it an epidemic.
Drug use, often of the prescription painkiller Opana, is a “multigenerational activity, with as many as three generations of a family and multiple community members injecting together,” state health officials wrote in an article published Friday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Some pregnant women have been infected, and nearly 85% of those who tested positive for HIV were positive for hepatitis C as well.
Having HIV spread through a community like this is not an everyday occurrence. Since the peak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s, health officials have seen almost a 90% decrease in the number of new infections among people who use drugs.
“It’s the population among which we have had the most success in HIV prevention in the United States,” Mermin said.
But drug users in urban areas may be more aware of the risks associated with needle sharing and other practices that can lead to infection, Adams said. In addition, they also might know that HIV these days is not necessarily a death sentence but can be controlled with medications.
Communicating these messages to the people of Scott County has been a key part of the response to the HIV outbreak, along with providing immunizations, substance abuse and job counseling and other services to area residents. Local officials also instituted a temporary needle exchange program, made legal by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s public health emergency order.
Now, state health officials will look to see whether they need additional resources in other areas at risk of an HIV outbreak. They will look to Scott County to see what worked and what did not. And they will take into account local needs and resources already in place, Adams said.
“It’s not one size fits all,” he said.
The frustrating thing with implementing such programs, Mermin said, is that failures often garner more attention than successes.
“The paradox to public health is if you do a very good job, no one knows it was done,” Mermin said.
Rudy,
in terms of public schools, Pence is among the worst governors in the nation. Despite charter scandals, he is a vigorous supporter of charters and vouchers, regardless of quality. He is contemptuous of public schools. Remember this blog is a supporter of public schools.
Pence was a talk show host. He is a true rightwing ideologue who supports privatization
I guess you did not notice the rant about his defunding of pp causing an aids epidemic?
Rudy,
He was a vindictive and mean-spirited governor. He cared not at all for the public. He despised public schools and mocked Glenda Ritz, the state superintendent who won more votes in 2012 than he did
Causes of the aids epidemic in Indiana
The first was the combination of poverty and high costs for the drugs. To cope, many people took to “shaving” their pills to get small amounts of drug — just enough to have an effect — but injecting as often as 15 times a day.
The second was the chance that someone with HIV was part of the community of drug users. Genetic analysis suggested there was a single strain of HIV that was almost identical in all the patients, he reported.
—
Nowhere is there any indication that pp had anything to do with either cause or that defunding had any impact.
Rudy,
Pence was a horrible governor. He is the best reason to pray for Trump’s health.
I thought that teachers were supposed to deal with FACTS, not make things up as they go along.
Pence had nothing to do with the aids epidemic; he may have other issues as a governor without having to go into fairy tale land.
To Teresa Kendall who says: “Pence is far worse than Trump, because he truly believes he has the moral authority to impose his beliefs on others.” I think you are right in this. But we are going to see the real Trump (not that we haven’t already) when he finds out that government is not built on the business model; and that it has centuries of laws, regulations, and time-honored protocols that reek of integrity (<–someone explain that word to him please) like against nepotism in hiring. Trump has a one-track mind governed by the business-capitalist, rather than governmental, model. And such minds presently are anathema to regulations.
So the worry is what Trump will do when he realizes that, unlike business where he can pretty-much do what he wants, the “regulations” and controls on his activities are a little more tightly wound. That’s where democracy and democratic principles, like what are embodied in that little Bill of Rights document that they attached to the Constitution, become an endangered species. He’ll want to abuse them (already has) and change them, one way or another.
Hitler was a political zealot with a past. So there’s a difference in the question “what kind of mind is that?” But it’s still the preparatory road to fascism that Trump is on, even if he doesn’t know what that means in its theoretical or historical sense. He is just a bully businessman and so, in some sense, an “accidental fascist.” It’s a wonder his hair stays so light-colored, considering where his head has been for so long. (Did I say that out loud?)
But as you say, Pence is a different animal, so to speak, and, in some sense, worse.
In response to Rudy’s comment that Pence had nothing to do with the HIV outbreak in southern Indiana a clarifying point needs to be made. Rudy found a news report that Pence set up a needle exchange to help curb the HIV epidemic that was sweeping through a small county in Indiana. This needle exchange only came about after months of resistance on the part of Pence who repeated often in the news that he would not establish a needle exchange. A public health nurse and the only doctor in the town of Austin where the epidemic started went to the CDC and they showed up with a needle exchange program. Pence reluctantly gave in and gave a big showy press conference announcing how he was taking charge of this public health issue.
This is classic Pence. He knows nothing about how to govern, or how to serve the public that elects him. He was a horrible Governor and he knew it, that’s why he bailed from Indiana.
I agree with Diane; I will pray for Trump’s health.
Teresa Kendall and Rudy Schellekens
There is a connection between Planned Parenthood ,HIV, Global warming and weather events . Being a Republican he probably does not accept , that although no particular weather event can be attributed to Climate change . The frequency and intensity of events points in that direction .
Rudy, PP is a major provider of women’s health services., a major provider of HIV testing , public health education and counseling .
It provides these service to far more than poor women.
Young women and teens who are sexually active rely on planned parenthood. for Birth control and HIV testing . A teen girl afraid to go to her parents doctor could become Typhoid Mary in a local HS.
Pense would probably say that teens should not be having sex and they got what they deserve.
No particular case of HIV can be traced to the closing of PP
but the closing of PP and the disaparance of those services is certainly responsible for an increase in HIV cases .
To unsubscribe to a viewpoint other than one’s own is one of the fundamental things wrong with our current national ethos. Much better to respond reasonably and clearly with disagreement– a debate and open expression of ideas which you clearly encourage. Thank you, Diane, for your candor and passion.
Strongly agree. This is not the time to create like minded bubbles. We need dialogues, although I must admit I can only take it so far with those who are “happy” with the election results. The level of denial can be as thick as mud.
Open minds and dialogue cannot possibly start with the attitude “The level of denial can be as thick as mud.”
Remember that those on the opposite side just may think the same about you…
How many here claim to be “happy” with the election results?
It is inspiring to have your example, Diane. Thank you for maintaining your integrity, speaking your mind, and keeping your “living room door” open to everyone despite the presence of dissent. Like many others, I actually considered removing folks from my FB friends list for their comments surrounding this election, but thought better of it. Sometimes civil discourse is as essential to progress as concourse.
And said distinctly!
I’ll continue to read each and every entry.
Thank you, Diane. Please continue to be a needed and necessary voice of calm and reason during these very disturbing times (remember central Europe, 1920’s-30’s etc.).
Beautifully said. Thank you for your thoughts, your commitment, your advocacy for what is good and right in the world. Gives me hope.
Very eloquent, Diane. I think if we could all be aware of HOW we speak our minds, we would all be better for it. Take 15 seconds and take a breath. Is THE WAY you say what you do going to help your listener understand what your opinion is or is it going to incite him or her to anger and fear? Anger and fear are powerful emotions. As I listen to many people talk about the election, I try to understand the emotion behind what they are saying. My mother, a lawyer, was very good at that and perhaps some of it rubbed off on me. She was good at not taking things personally, too. If we could just acknowledge what we feel, step back, take a breath, watch our language, see where we can come together, we may be able to find common ground. My grandfather (a democrat) was very involved in local politics, and I remember him calling his republican colleagues and speaking in a civilized way to work together. I think this is why Mr. Trump is so unnerving. He speaks about and to people in ways which hurt and disrespect them. He takes things personally and attacks. Fear and anger arise in everyone involved. I can only speak for myself, but I have really tried to control what I say and to whom. I haven’t always been successful, but I’ve tried. I often think of that prayer, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.” I’m still learning how to do that, and still make my opinion known if I choose to. I know it sounds corny, but I really think language matters.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Let’s all move on and fight the real battle, the battle to protect public education. I am honored to serve as president of Make Education a Priority, a Texas non-profit. I am committed to doing all that I can to promote the value of our public education system and to contest all arguments and actions that would adversely impact our public education system. I am pleased to join this effort with you and the countless other individuals and groups who believe in our system and the students we serve. Thank you.
Thank you, Diane. I understand that this will be your last comment on the election. I hope it won’t be your last comment on the President and his actions and statements as they relate to the subjects covered by this blog and your much-needed voice and point of view. I believe we all need to make our voices heard in these troubled times–respectful but firm, fact-based, and fearless.
I agree, how can we not talk about Trump. Almost everything he will do will impact education directly or indirectly. Not to mention our quality of life and survival on the planet. I’m still in shock that such a horrible person has become president.
Steve…are you the (NLRB) Steve Kaplan whose aunt worked for Verve and Motown???
No, sorry. (Although I LISTENED to lots of Motown. Does that count?)
Shows you have good musical taste.
Respect the Office of President. Trump is president. But transitivity doesn’t follow, we don’t have to respect Trump.
Already, Trump is tweeting that a vast media conspiracy against him is organizing the Oregon protests. Megyn Kelly is describing disturbing behavior from Trump during the debates. Trump is considering alt-right Steve Bannon for chief of staff. His transition team is lead by Jeff Sessions (Klan is “OK”) and Heritage Foundation.
It will be a long four years, but one almost certain constant in politics is the newly elected party thinks they have a clear mandate and overreaches. With Clinton winning the popular vote by almost half a million voters, the backlash against the GOP is almost a given. Let’s hope Democrats are ready.
Vale Math, most respected colleague…and Diane, friend and mentor….and all the wonderful educators I have met here over the last four years.
I am mobilizing my Joining Forces for Education retired teachers group (who are now all over the US) to do public talks on the Electoral College and why it must be ended.
Twice, in only the last 16 years, America has been tricked by this deceptive (based on slavery) law into losing the popular vote (please read you history on this). As a result, we got two know-nothing Repubs, Bush and Trump, instead of two knowledgeable Dems, Gore and Clinton, as our Prez. This has brought the world endless war and poverty.
This law is like wisdom teeth are in our mouths, useless and often causing painful infection, and it has influenced our history four times. We cannot let it continue to plague our elections. It puts the value of the vote of California with over 36,000,000 million people, on a par with the Dakotas which have tiny populations, but their few voters have far more than equal status in the Electoral College, and they have too much influence on how our Presidents are chosen. California is the most populace and diverse state in the Union, and has the 6th largest economy in the world. It voted overwhelmingly for Hillary, but California votes DO NOT COUNT. This is all complex, and if Diane allows it, I will follow up with more detail as I flesh it all out.
Last night Lawrence O’Donnell spoke about the Electoral College for an entire segment of his show, and he instructed why it became law, and why it MUST be shut down as a failed and dangerous law. Today the LA Times did a similar report. Finally, the country is awakening to the fact that this moribund law has given us a true demagogue as our new President.
Yes, it requires a change in the Constitution, but we have that legal process available. It is mainly Repubs who have been fighting this shut down of the Electoral College for many decades for it favors their candidates. I hope Trump is a wake up call to America and we get this settled…but now with a Repub Prez, House, and Senate, Due solely to the Electoral College, it will be a huge battle.
In the late 1990s, I constructed and taught a college course titled A Constitutional Convention for the 21st Century that emphasized this outdated law. I am now resurrecting this academic course of study. I plan to volunteer to present an abbreviated form of the 4 part 8 hour course to all agencies (just as we have been doing with fighting PRev and charterizing) who wish to learn this history, and to encourage their members to become activists to overturn it.
I am hoping my Joining Forces members here will now be active in this new area toward preserving democracy and I will soon be writing to you with the plan outline. Please let send me your input at
joiningforces4ed@aol.com
My many Latino/Chicano contacts in So. Calif. , friends, colleagues, etc. are in a panic about the portent of rapid deportation of their family members, and in LAUSD Steve Zimmer and the LAUSD BoE did an important thing this week, and arranged to have counselors available at schools for the Latino students who are truly terrified. Little kids are verging on hysteria that their parents could disappear. It is one of the most shameful things I can remember, and brought on by this maniac who is now the Prez.
I started registering voters in 1960 (my first vote was for Prez Kennedy) when I matriculated from the university to the permanent workforce. I joined the League of Women Voters, and chose to work with their Voters Service and still do. Since 1977, I have registered voters in mainly Latino/Chicano areas, and have done so in this election season in Oxnard and on local community college campuses.. Almost all citizens whom I registered told me they were voting for Hillary. So much for Democracy. The Electoral College MUST GO.
I think what is left of my long academic life is best spent focused now on educating on ridding us of the Electoral College…so will be less active in the public school battle. Thank you Diane for this venue and your wisdom. I do plan to stay connected here on a daily basis…as always.
Teachers of Social Studies and of Government, this site was just sent to me by a middle school teacher. It is educationally lauded material to instruct on the election process and the Electoral College. She has used it and suggests we check it out. Please see the links below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact and watch
(the 30 minute educational version of Electoral Dysfunction and an excellent curriculum guide are available on their website,
://electoraldysfunction.org/classroom/ ) and please share in your educational circles.
Sorry but it disappeared…will try again.
Here we go….
http://electoraldysfunction.org/classroom/
We can thank Ms. Milletta for this…
Thank you, Diane. I have a very heavy heart for our country. Please continue to “fight the good fight” for the sake of our children and grandchildren.
Michelle
Thank you, Diane and amen!
Beautiful. Perfection. You spoke my heart!
Diane, you have been an inspiration and a voice for those of us on the front lines. Thank you. Our hearts are heavy now. On Wednesday, we devoted class time to let our high school students react to the election. It was poignant to hear some of our young people’s voices. One young man said that racism has always been there; now it’s just out in the open. The resignation in is demeanor was heart-breaking. Some students worry about their domestic stability. Will I still be here in April? Will I have food? What will happen to my parents? Some are just angry. To my surprise, many of our students are taking a wait and see attitude. We heard time and time again statements like, “He’s our president now. We will give him a chance and see what he does.” From my deep despair, I saw hope in our young people. It reminded me of what it is to be young and untouched by the cynicism that develops with age. On a personal level, I fear for my children’s health care. As young adults, they are able to stay on my plan until 26. Without the National Health Insurance legislation, they would not have health care. I also fear for our union. The attacks on what is left of them will be relentless, as well as the attacks to silence our voices via tenure laws. I wish I had the hope of many of my students, but I don’t. Keep blogging. There are days when your words keep me going.
“To my surprise, many of our students are taking a wait and see attitude. We heard time and time again statements like, “He’s our president now. We will give him a chance and see what he does.” From my deep despair, I saw hope in our young people.”
RL: Maybe at least one bright side is that the experience will spark in these young people an interest in and sense of significance for their own political situation. In my experience, we’ve really been in a generation that has benefited from, but never really understood, that significance or how it can change.
And our educational establishments, in way too many cases, have taken it for granted that just living in a democracy is enough to understand and to keep it.
Yes, It’s plain to see that our work here and in all the other sites, pages, etc. . . of the sanity in teaching and learning process, not the let’s make buck shysters, is now dug that much deeper. We have to redouble our efforts, yesterday!
Here’s my take. We have a president-elect many people despise for a panoply of reasons. So be it. I’m trying to recall the last president-elect who WASN’T despised by many Americans. I can’t. Many Gerald R. Ford, had he won in ’76, would have not been widely despised, if not universally respected.
The hatred many on the right spewed forth towards Obama before he took the oath of office and forever thereafter was insane and unAmerican. GWB is a different animal because he was “elected” under such a shadow of doubt, mendacity, bullying, etc., that he never felt like the legitimate POTUS to many people.
Nonetheless, GWB got his way on many things, particularly during his first term, and few of them were good. And the Democratic Party was not just cooperative, it was irresponsible. They should be ashamed for how easily they were manipulated into supporting endless war in Iraq, etc.
Then the GOP decided to make Obama a one-term POTUS (failed) and to block virtually anything he wanted (mostly succeeded). The kept bringing the government to a grinding halt. That was wrong, as were the stream of unfounded slurs their supporters in their party and in the “independent” Tea Party kept making on Obama and his family. That was truly shameful, ugly, and unAmerican. It won’t end even after Trump is inaugurated. We know that. It’s repulsive.
But now we have a maverick Republican president-elect, and there are already major protests across the nation, some of them unconscionably violent. Over what? He’s not yet the POTUS. He hasn’t done ANYTHING as POTUS. The slurs against him and his family are ugly, vicious, and in specific cases of questionable veracity. And I have read calls http://bit.ly/2fqtyni for the Democrats and progressives to block anything and everything Trump proposes. In other words, let’s spend the next 4 to 8 years switching roles with the Republican obstructionists. I find that unacceptable. It hurts the American people and is grounded in presumptions and vengeance. We can afford neither.
Bernie Sanders got it right. He said he was prepared to work with Trump to the extent that Trump’s outreach for unity on election night was sincere. And he said that he would do everything in his power to thwart and block any movement towards rolling back the rights of or attacks upon women, GLBTQ, Muslim Americans, other ethnic/racial minorities, etc. But he didn’t call for blocking every Trump policy proposal before it was launched. That’s why Sanders isn’t despised in the Senate and gets a lot done. He won’t roll over to any POTUS (he’s proved that) but he won’t be the Democrat version of Mitch McConnell. We are lucky to have him. He should be the head of the new Democratic Party, with Ellison from Minnesota as national party chair, and people like Liz Warren, Tulsi Gabbard, Tammy Duckworth, and Nina Turner working closely with those two men to craft a progressive strategy for the near and long-term future.
I’m not sure who else belongs in that group. I no longer trust Howard Dean, Al Franken, and basically anyone who was gung-ho for Hillary Clinton. The party needs to cut ties with those people at the national “big player” level. Bernie and those others get it. They know why Hillary and much of the rest of the Democratic ticket lost so badly in so many places. They should now get a clean shot in 2018 & 2020 to do better, unfettered by the failed centrist and neoliberal weights that have pulled the party towards “Republican Lite” since the late 1980s. Clintonism is dead. I won’t mourn its demise. Let’s move forward.
And part of that means not making attacks on Donald Trump until there is material basis to do so. Attacking his character, complaining about his crassness, his alleged high crimes and misdemeanors is, on my view, both sore-losing and a sure-fire way to lose any chance of recapturing the broad support the Sanders revolution was generating going into the primaries. It’s not worth it to me to work my guts out just to get the D on the government’s team jersey if all that means is that insiders from Team D get cushy jobs and the working and lower-middle classes get shat upon. In my opinion, that was life under Obama for many. Sure, blame it all on Bush. But he wasn’t POTUS after 2008. Blame it on the GOP obstructionists. But they didn’t stop Obama from taking his case to the American people a la FDR. And he rarely if ever did so. He was ultimately too aloof, to much of a neoliberal, and perhaps too much of a coward to really go for it from Day 1. He had a huge mandate in 2009. And he had both houses of congress. He failed to use the momentum from the election, the organizations that got him elected, and instead played footsie with GOP and Democratic pols who made clear they weren’t going to cooperate. He showed zero guts in dealing with the banks and billionaires on Wall Street. He kow-towed to the big corporate executives. He jailed essentially no one for the financial crimes they committed under Bush. And of course, he refused to go after any of the Bushies for their war crimes. Eight years later, loads of skilled and educated people found themselves working multiple jobs at WalMart, etc. to stay barely afloat, if that.
Trump got it. Hillary and the DNC? Not so much. So do we spend the next 4 to 8 dragging our heels, or do we take what’s possible from a Trump administration and resist what’s unacceptable?
Don’t mourn, organize.
Diane’s post is very eloquent and thoughtful, but you made a good counter point. It is time for all of us to make the best out of what we are dealt with.
Be aware, and when things happen do not be angry, make your ideas, feelings known to your elected representatives, talk to your friends, or in other words get involved. Do not wait for the next election to make changes.
Remember Trump was elected by a the oldest and most vibrant democracy in the word. Almost as many people who voted for Clinton voted for Trump.
Let us all not keep fearing the dark days ahead, but do our part to change it.
Thank you, Raj. An important statement. Look to the future and work with others to make it better.
The U.S. is a vibrant oligarchy, as described in the research of Princeton Prof. Gillens.
One caveat. Hillary got MORE votes, popular votes, than Trump who got more electoral votes.
If anyone is interested there is a movement afoot which can be implemented by the states and 11 states have already done that. To do away with the winner take all vote and apportion the delegates to the statistical vote in that state. Remember that both Hillary and Al Gore won the popular vote because of this anachronism in our voting system. If interested get involved.
Something very similar is what Bernie Sanders talked also.
Actually, only Maine and Nebraska have done that.
Gordon “To do away with the winner take all vote and apportion the delegates to the statistical vote in that state. Remember that both Hillary and Al Gore won the popular vote because of this anachronism in our voting system.”
If the votes are counted the way you suggest above, it would be still possible for a candidate to win the popular vote but lose the election. So the Bush-Gore situation can still happen because then both the electoral and popular votes were close. This year wouldn’t have happened, though: the electoral vote counts were very far apart, while the popular ones were close.
If it’s ok with you, I’m going to go on attacking Trump’s character and complaining about his crassness when the mood strikes me, without worrying about the consequences to the Sanders revolution. If I were a U.S. Senator, I would take a more nuanced and strategic approach, though.
What outcome do you expect from doing so?
As for it being okay with me, clearly that’s rhetorical.
I expect anyone within earshot to know what I think of Trump.
I’m with FLERP. Protests should not be violent, but Democrats have a history of drawing a line and stepping backward to draw another.
Trump is already tweeting out about a vast media conspiracy. His 100 day contract is fair fodder for alt-righters and is fair game to protest. Trump will not be able to keep his composure and will resort to his old behavior soon enough.
Democrats should regroup, put the Clintons et al out to pasture, and start rebuilding a party that reaches out to white, working class non-deplorables in the Rust Belt.
I’m with FLERP and Vale Math.
You can look at it several ways when making a case to abolish the electoral college. Yes Hillary won the popular vote but she only won 20 States compared to Trump’s 30.
Number of states won is irrelevant to everything
Michael…agree (your history is correct), and disagree.
Trump, although not yet sworn in, has done irreparable damage to the fabric of American society. His out-of-control bigotry and his demeaning of so many has led to a flood gate opened for the worst sort of hatred I have seen proclaimed OPENLY in our nation.
In my community, little Latino and black and Muslim and Jewish children are now being openly pummeled with disgusting names by classmates, and are so frightened that trained counselors are being put in schools to reassure them. Hate words are spray painted along our freeways and on cars and homes. The Latino community is terrified that families will be decimated as Trump rounds up parents and grandparents and dumps them over the border.
If you ask us to wait and see what Bannon/Trump will do in January, you are wearing blinders. Trump sent us a clear message in his hiring of the virulent bigot, Bannon, to be his Chief, that his administration is the MOST dangerous we have ever encountered in America.
Irreparable? Guess we should all give up, leave the country?
If the number of States is irrelevant to everything then the number of total votes is also irrelevant to everything. See how that works? You are contradicting yourself Mrs. Ravitch. So the numbers of States won don’t matter yet the popular vote largely decided by ONE State does matter when its the State that yields the result you so very much desired. I get it now. The results of one State trumps the result of the other thirty. No pun intended.The truth is the Democrats ran a seriously flawed candidate instead of the candidate that most individuals wanted and they paid a severe price for trying to force the undesired candidate down the throats of the voters.
The Real One says responding to Diane’s note: “If the number of States is irrelevant to everything then the number of total votes is also irrelevant to everything. See how that works? You are contradicting yourself Mrs. Ravitch. So the numbers of States won don’t matter yet the popular vote largely decided by ONE State does matter when its the State that yields the result you so very much desired. I get it now. The results of one State trumps the result of the other thirty.”
Not really (pun intended). But you are right that It’s “not relevant to everything.” On the other hand, the total number of Individual votes is relevant to the specific question, in this case: “who won the most votes by individual persons?” . . . and here “winning” means “majority numbers of persons.”
The states refer not to individual votes, but to geographical abstractions albeit with their own individual governmental structures. Such abstractions are useful in some situations (which is, as you know, why Congress is divided up as it is); but when states’ numbers “trump” individual votes on principle, they intrude on the integrity of the relationship between the individual voter and, generally, the whole of the specific operative question (who won the most votes?); and specifically, the person vying to win the election.
Though it might have an intelligent use in some situations, in today’s world of open communications and fluid movements of individual people between states, the question, “Who won the most states?” is an untenable hybrid between the abstract and the concrete–it’s putting power where it doesn’t belong.
Also, I don’t want to confuse things here, and some differences apply, but it shares the same breach of integrity of that relationship (between person and “majority votes”) as does “Citizens’ United,” which gives concrete power to monetary abstractions (dollars) and diminishes the power of some individuals, while increasing the power of others (nothing more anti-democratic than that). But again, with voting, though the principle, rooted in the tensions inherent in working out a federation of states, might be appropriate in some situations, my view is: not this one. And how we implement either principle will create for us our reality (ahem).
Trump got nothing right. What happened is the media and the polling people were wrong. Trump pandered to people that wanted to hear the things he said, and they went out and voted, but by no means does he have anything wright. He is mentally ill, he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder and we as a country will be suffering because of it for the next few years. Some Democrats have stated they want to obstruct, but the majority will not have anything to do with it. Don’t make broad general statements about a particular group unless you know it to be true.
I’m having fun here!
You said, “Don’t make broad general statements about a particular group unless you know it to be true…”
That has been happening the last three days on this site time and again.
That also applies to people who make a psychological diagnose about someone they have never met or examined.
Rudy, I can tell you that Trump is a Narcissist. I have been dealing with a family member for my entire life with this personality disorder and this guy has it. I suggest you read this definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) taken from the DSM 5 on Mayo Clinic’s website.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder/basics/symptoms/con-20025568
And your assumption that I am diagnosing without having met the person is true, but NPD is not hard to identify and is often made through observations of public behavior since the person with NPD would never submit to seeing a Psychologist or therapist. Practicing psychologists won’t make a public statement about someone’s mental health; it is unprofessional and unethical. But even though I have a degree in psychology, I am not a practicing psychologist so I have no problem warning people of the looming peril that comes with a leader that has NPD. No amount of advisers or staffers will be able to keep a lid on the amount of crazy that Trump will bring to his term in office.
If someone offered a similar diagnosis to “prove” that Hillary Clinton suffered from, say, borderline personality disorder, we’d hear screams from her supporters from here to eternity. I haven’t the foggiest what’s wrong with her, but I suspect that DSM 5 could be used to “prove” that she’s, ahem, got issues.
The problem with diagnoses by amatuers is that when they find a label for someone they dislike that fits enough of what they don’t like about him/her, they believe they now “know” that person. Except that labels have a funny habit of not being quite adequate to explain the complexity of individuals living in the real world. Things change. People change. The nature of existence is predicated on change. Professional therapists know this. You, apparently, do not. I regret your difficulties with the family member in question, but I don’t think it quite suffices in this context to “explain” Trump or how he will act as POTUS. And if it does, then what? You’re going to think or act differently in reaction to or anticipation of his bad policies than you would have otherwise? We might just be pleasantly surprised ( certainly HOPE so), but if not, I don’t think citing DSM 5 will help.
So you have an opinion of the man. Good.
What do you call someone who refuses to accept responsibility for personal actions and find others to blame?
Rudy,
I call him Trump, the guy who said 10,000 times the election was rigged, making excuses for the loss he expected
Rudy–Theresa didn’t merely offer a “good opinion,” she gave you good reasons rooted in field standards and gave you a link to those standards. But you don’t even need that technical definition to know in a common sense way that Trump is a narcissist–if that’s not obvious to all, then, at the very least, we are lacking in common discernment. And about your method of discourse–resorting to relativism (“just your opinion”) is a common ploy to use when you’re beaten in an argument. I thought you were above that.
Not speaking as a specialist, but as a citizen, I believe Trump is a highly narcissistic person. He has the biggest ego I have ever seen. All his blather about a “rigged election” was preparing the ground to lose because he was cheated. He was probably more surprised about winning than anyone else. Now he actually has to do the job. He is like the dog that caught the car: what do I do now?
Diane: Yes–Trump is a walking stream of narcissistic consciousness, governed by the ideological “ME.”
BTW, I posted a note yesterday that didn’t show up on the blog–but have done that before and was answered by someone, so I assumed it was posted. This time, no one has answered yet. It was relatively long and about “teacher-blaming.” Should I repost, or do you know if it was posted? Thanks.
Catherine,
It must be posted as nothing is in moderation i.e., held for review) nor deleted.
Diane: Okay–thanks.
The problem is that when I were to give a psychological review of Clinton, without ever having met her, but with a background of a licensed counselor (granted, not valid in this country, but valid in the Netherlands) I would be booed off this list.
Teresa’s “diagnosis” is based, not on diagnostics, but behavior. When I would compare the “me, me, me” of Clinton with trump, I come up with the same diagnosis.
Added to that her proclivity to dumping responsibility for her own failings on her staff, I have just as much reason for my diagnosis.
It’s not too difficult to make a list of comparisons on the “me-scale” between the two candidates.
Add to that the dishonesty scale between the two, and we have trouble. A choice between the lesser of two evils, as some have referred to this election, still leaves me with an evil one… be it more or less evil.
Rudy,
One candidate said, “I alone can save you.”
The other said, “Stronger together” and emphasized the importance of collaboration.
Move on.
Rudy–more diversionary ploy–the point was about Trump and his narcissism, and your relativistic comments. Jumping to another issue or person is a ploy of avoiding the issue raised. Watch Kelly Ann–wow. She’s really good at it. It’s one of the basics of the Republican slime machine. And I don’t remember anyone here excusing any one ELSE for their supposed narcissism by claiming that Trump is a narcissist. Doesn’t work either way.
And if you want to compare–I think you will find the difference is in degree-a very high degree of difference where one is a textbook case, repetitive in its expression, and the other not. On that score, your comparison reeks of a not-so-hidden double-standard. Hillary needed to be absolutely perfect to be considered suitable for the presidency. Whereas Trump . . . .
But of course “behavior” is how we nail the narcissist. And “blow back” is history’s payback. We’ll see, won’t we?
Rudy, on the one hand, I agree that armchair psych diagnosis is a low-info, manipulable game, & anybody can play. On the other hand, it’s darned tempting, as by now everybody has a near relative so-labelled (& probably had pills described), & DSM is out there for all to read. So FWIW, I was once married to a narcissicist, & believe me, Trump hits every one of those traces, & a fair number in the borderline-personality disorder as well (which my gf had). I have to add that Hillary scores pretty normal, as regards observed behavior [at one time, compulsive high-achievers were thought to be neurotic, but today’s psych says not unless accompanied by anxiety, envy, guilt, anger, depression].
But bottom-line, psychology is a reductive ‘science’ which aims to establish [non-existent] baseline-normal, & categorize/ label all who fall outside of its fictional norm. It is only useful insofar as it helps those who feel their ingrained behavioral habits place them so far outside the norm that it significantly interferes with living the life they want to live. Clearly, anyone who participates in national politics possesses non-normal personality features which help them achieve their goals.
The one thread of value I get from all your posts is corrective: if a thinking conservative reflects a mirror image of my [progressive] opinion– i.e., just substitute the opposite pronoun– there’s something wrong with the way the question is framed, & probably grounds for at least partial consensus.
Thank you. I concur with your assessment. Keep on speaking out for public education and against injustice.
Thank you,Diane. You have spoken words that are in their most simplistic terms the truth. I often read some of your blogs to my two kids. It is always so hopeful and inspirational. It is always about education for the children.
Please keep up the great work. I am sure you have heard already that he is claiming to take away the Department of Education. This is an amazing plan. (No plan yet, just a stance.) So how would you get rid of an institution that had a $74 billion budget. In truth I have no idea but I would bet that our new president has no idea either.
Thank you for your thoughtfulness, your advocacy and your just plain common sense. I feel the same way. Never have I had or seen such a reaction to a election. I’ve thought about why my students are crying in the classrooms and people are marching in the street. It’s not about losing an election; I’ve certainly voted for the loser before. It’s not about a woman being rejected; that too has happened all too frequently. It’s about losing the soul of our nation..the reason for our being a nation. But I am still hopeful that this will not defeat us but rather energize us to fight harder. I was reminded of the quote by Admiral Yamamoto after Pear Harbor..”I am afraid we have awakened a sleeping giant”..let that be so…
Well written and thoughtfully organized. I too am an American with respect for our flag, the constitution and all it stands. We are in for a test of all the wholesome values we espouse as Americans. But I also respect yo office of the presidency. I hope Trump has a strong sense of the responsibility of his office and lead the country honorably. God bless America.
Does Trump respect the office of the presidency? I guess he does now that he is the president.
Thank you, Diane (and son).
This is part of an ongoing saga of the will to control and the vast irresponsibility of some of the wealthiest people in the country and the world. Michael Moore could do a doc on each one of these tycoons. The disenfranchisement I’m sure has been more overwhelming than many people understood.
Despite everything to the contrary, I don’t think Trump is actually evil. I think he has been in a bubble all his life, and will die in it, too. Travolta could play him. A child bumbling and rumbling in a bubble. Ironic that Thiel hates bubbles.
The times are very interesting. Never lose hope. There is opportunity and possibility in turmoil, though there is usually more loss. All things can eventually be addressed; most can be set right in some way. We’re off course for now, but the new territory could bring new ideas and outcomes.
The issue of bullying generalized to abuse of power must be addressed. We can see what it does here, in Russia, the Philippines, North Korea, and all terrorist/extremist states. It starts with words and ideas.
Akademos…is it not bullying when the Repub leader of the opposition party, Mitch McConnell, says on day one to the Dem Prez Obama, “we will not allow anything you or the Dems propose, to pass and become law”???
To me, that is the ultimate in bullying and acrimony, and it behooves educators to show students how legislative bullying can destroy democracy. Soft peddling history and political actions has brought us to this election of infamy. IMO, it is best to teach from a basis for reality and truth.
Ellen,
Mitch McConnell has already told Trump that he can forget about a constitutional amendment for term limits for Congress. I think Trump will learn some lessons that he skipped in school about how our government works. The president is not a dictator. He works within a system of checks and balances. The only unfettered power he has is the power to issue pardons. Christie must be counting on that.
I agree with you. Yesterday, I said similar words to my students – to respect the elections and the outcome of it, and to hope that our checks and balances in our government will work to keep America respectful of all our citizens and those who live here.
What is sad is that children repeat what they hear at home.
Cheryl…don’t know what grade level you teach, but students who study the Constitution should also study the Electoral College and it is now a moment for deep conversation in the classroom about what makes for a fair and democratic election.
There is NO chance the electoral college is going away. You would need another 36 states to ratify the amendment, In most state legislatures the citizens of those states have made it clear that they do not support progressive Democrat ideas. You are wasting your time,
If you think the rest of us are going to be lorded over by a strong federal government dominated by Californians, New Yorkers and the other city dwellers, and government moochers, you have lost your mind. You and any other uberleftists should stick to spreading your progressive utopia in your own neighborhoods.
Take a look at this map and see what you are up against:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/11/daily-chart-7
Geography does matter!
Right on Diane. People who don’t understand democracy turn away when someone doesn’t espouse their worldview or challenges them. How sad. The free exchange of ideas is what this country was built on.
Diane,
Your blog is the best fact-based common sense available. I read every post every day. Only the advice column “Ask Amy,” approaches it with quality and quantity of common sense. I often find myself thinking or saying out loud, “Amy for President,” after reading her column. I wish that you could be in charge of public education. Keep doing what you’re doing.
Absolutely the best comments I have read. We will not surrender our country’s beliefs and values to this regime. We must heed the words of Hillary Clinton. Do not give in and do not give up!
Thank you.
One of the things I learned, working for two national education non-profits and one state teachers’ union, was that keeping your mouth shut was critical to keeping your job. In all three cases, the go-along argument was “we have to make nice with our enemies to do business” (with Beltway policy makers, statehouse legislators, deep-pockets funders and other questionable organizations who could “move the agenda”). In internal meetings, we were free to talk about our de facto Secretary of Ed, Bill Gates–but in public, and in grant applications, we were sweet as pie. We talked as if genuine democracy existed, rather than money-driven power games.
Teachers have absorbed that lesson. The number of teachers who dropped out of the 2016 political conversation, thinking it “inappropriate” or merely distasteful, in an attempt to avoid conflict and not lose “friends,” was startling to me. If we educators (and I’m including schools leaders here) want control over our own work, the job has just become immeasurably more difficult. In middle schools in my own state, boys are now linking arms in school hallways, shouting “Build that wall!” That’s not inappropriate. It’s racist. And we allowed it to happen, by remaining apolitical and polite.
Please. Never apologize. Never concede, or go along to get along. Thanks for this message.
Excellent comment, Nflanagan…and right on. This is how democracy is stolen and replaced with fascism.
I totally agree with you. Thank you.
I am hopeful and find strength from
Your reasonable, informative voice.
There you go again, trying to explain and convince :-). When I “rediscovered” you after a 15 year hiatus about six years ago (we had a peripheral connection through civic education), you articulated things I was unable to untangle in a coherent way. When I found out about your blog about three years ago, I was thrilled. This is the only blog I follow and thanks to you I’ve found kindred spirits in people like Peter Greene, Mercedes Schneider, John Thompson, Jersey Jazzman, and so many of the individual commentators. Sometimes I disagree with them and you, but even in the times we get overheated, I have never questioned everyone’s sincere motives. When people question yours, then they don’t, as you so eloquently explained today, understand why this blog exists and why we are so passionate. We are a small group, unfortunately, who understand a–I would say THE–fundamental issue of our times with respect to the continued health and life of our democracy. This election, more than anything else, underscored why the community you are creating is so important. We are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine.
My students weep.
That is enough reason for me to dislike the election of Trump. My seven year olds are scared.
Racism is rampant.
http://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2016/nov/10/police-student-says-man-wearing-trump-hat-attacked/
Angie: kids weep only because they sense danger. Why would they sense that now? Maybe they have done careful listening to Trump and sussed out his evil. Or more likely, they’ve channelled their parents’ views. If you tell a child repeatedly that Trump is Satan, Hitler, etc., or you simply react as if he is, most kids will pick that up and react accordingly. My cousin, who was never bitten by a dog, had a morbid fear of them since childhood. Her daughter, who never was bitten by a dog, “inherited” that fear of dogs. It wasn’t a genetic inheritance.
My best advice is to stop terrifying children needlessly. If things emerge from a Trump administration that are objectionable, object . Fight back. Organize.
But few children under the age of 10 or so are in a position to make decisions about “big picture” issues like religion and politics. They shouldn’t have to. It’s far more important to help the think for themselves (as in “not to become your clone”), than to teach them to hate Trump, love Clinton, or just the reverse. Not just more important: more ethical. Transmitting our fears and hatreds to our children just helps grow more fear and hatred.
Michael..you continue to generalize from your own perspective.
When one lives in a barrio community and all around everyone is frightened and terribly anxious about the future, and all are talking of when and where so many relatives and friends will be picked up by the INS and taken to the border and dumped, then all the real life behavior affects even the littlest children.
You speak in theory, but in So. Calif. we who are in daily contact with the Latino/Chicano community see the palpable fear with which they live. Most people I know are making plans as to how to hide, to run, to take carry their savings with them, to find surrogate parents for their American born children.
I don’t see you as heartless, but you are far from an informed realist.
Not sure how you get “racism is rampant” from that video. A bunch of kids beating up a guy because they say he voted for Trump. The kids appear to be black; the guy is white. I don’t hear them making anything of his whiteness. He can’t be heard mentioning their being black.
Where’s the racism, exactly?
Or are you suggesting white racists faked this? Doesn’t appear to be the case, but I’m open to evidence.
Else, what’s your point in mentioning racism OR in linking to that video?
Thanks for your heartfelt comments, Angie.
My mistake. I misread your link and thought you were, oddly, referring to THIS incident:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/teens-beats-chicago-man-street-voting-donald-trump-article-1.2867997
All of this behavior is deplorable and, sadly, predictable. But if you think that this just sprang up since Trump entered the arena last year, or that it’s restricted to Trump supporters, you’re looking through too narrow a lens.
For more attacks and crap from the racist right wing: http://samuel-warde.com/2016/11/donald-trumps-deplorable-already-started-terrorize-america/
But his piece, too, is utterly one-sided.
My kid wept, too.
We teach our children to respect one another. We teach our children not to bully. We teach our children not to lie. We teach our children not to call names, not slur others. We teach our children that racism is wrong, that scapegoating is wrong. That you should work hard and study and think. We teach our children that you shouldn’t cheat others.
And then they watch a man who does everything we have taught them is wrong become President of the United States.
That’s why some children wept. That’s why parents wept as they tried to figure out how to explain what happened.
Some people believe kids only weep because of danger. Kids weep when they see the class bully — who has publicly done all the despicable things that most bullies have sneak around to do — being celebrated and elevated to a position of power. Sometimes kids weep when they see what seems to be injustice.
(the above was somewhat plagiarized from various commentary I have read that struck a chord)
NYC: And Trump’s arrogance (and all) goes along, it seems, with impunity–right up to “winning” the presidency. The alt-right people are walking around appraising the grounds of the White House. I cannot wash it off.
Angie…I just reread your heartfelt article posted here only last month on Nevada and the Sheldon Adelson stadium, with the link to the media report.
I teared up when I first read it, and again just now, and am so angry that this gambling oligarch and Trump supporter could have so much power.
Thanks for your dedicated teaching and protecting your small students (my grandson is their age). I assume many of your second graders are Chicano, so you must be seeing so much angst in them. They are lucky to have a teacher who has real insight into their needs. Be well, hang in.
Ellen
Thank you, Diane, from an old retired soldier that spent his career trying to protect the civil liberties of ALL Americans. I only hope that before I leave this world this country will move back in the direction of what our Founding Fathers, Abe Lincoln, JFK and other stood for in their lifetimes. It is very clear that Trump and his followers do not hold the same values of those that have served this country as he is about to do.
I look forward to the day, and it will not be in the next four years, when America is again the shining light of freedom for all and respect for all.
Moeone2015,
Thank you for your service to our country.
moeone2015 Your comment echoes the sentiments of many who have loved ones who have served, or now serve, in the military and who understand the core values that need to be defended. Your comments are especially appropriate for Veteran’s day. Last month, a member of my family was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
To moeone2015
I sincerely salute you for the great honor to fight, to protect and to set an example to the world regarding the priceless in humanity, civility and freedom to live with peace.
Every year, on the Eleventh hour, of Eleventh day and Eleventh month, I have had a consistent habit of pray for all “soldiers” with and without arms who are willing to fight and to die for “humanity” and belief in goodness in all sentient beings on Earth.
If you enjoy reading war poetry, please open this link and join me to pray for many young lives that lost in the war(s) and aspire peace, loving and caring to our surrounding through our own words and actions. Back2basic.
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html
or, my favorite Canadian poem “In Flanderfield”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/remembrance-day-poems/
In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae, May 1915
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Thanx for this response! It is what I feel in my heart but have not been able to put into words!! YOU make a difference. ~Dayna
Thank you, Diana for this post that has reflected similar thoughts going through my mind all this week. We are not being disrespectful or resentful when we state the person elected as president does not represent us as Americans. We are stating that we will not stand for all the hate and violence on the “others.” Nor will we further perpetuate and retaliate with violence and hate on our end.
As a social worker in a public elementary school, I worry about the proposed policies and the administration that will direct our education system. And across all systems relating to services for our most vulnerable populations. You ar right. It is not about going back to the past and wondering “what if.” It is about what we need to do now to make sure all the progress we have made does not go away in vain. As I read you post, I am validated about the advocacy I need to take part in and my own work within my community.
I am reminded from Reign of Error when you emphasized and reminded us the basis of public education. It is the importance of providing a well-rounded education to students to critically think and analyze their society as citizens who will have influence in this country. As I reflect about the role of public education and how we still need to protect the original values of public education, I know that I will not stand idly by. It is now more important than ever that we model to future generations how we stand together during times of adversity.
As a Canadian we sometimes look in wonderment as USA. How can we be so similar yet sp different. Canadians were polled as to who they would vote for if they were voting in the American election. 77% Clinton 20% Trump. We have our own rust belt but not so severe because our auto industry is shielded by the state. Canadians seldom pay a single cent for non cosmetic health care. Our own conservative have adjusted and know better than to even criticize it. Privatization of education cannot get a real foothold since there is almost no demand. Their are charter schools in Alberta- maybe 10 of them and that movement has run out of gas. 5% of Canadians attend private schools, usually elite or Evangelical. We have strong unions and like to keep it that way. We will soon pass a severe carbon tax just because it is the right thing to do
People deeply believe in the public school system.
We admire much of America. I love to visit particularly New York for its cosmopolitan vibrance and San Francisco for its unique complexity. Thousands of Easter Canadians winter in Florida and western Canadians flock to California Hawaii and Arizona due to our Minnesota style winters.
Trump has us scratching our heads.
The Democrats talk the talk of liberalism, but they often fail in execution. Under Clinton union membership was 22%, and it is now at 12% and falling. Democrats have remained distant and silent when unions are attacked, In the case of privatization of schools, Obama did nothing when Scott Walker gutted the teachers’ union in Wisconsin. In fact, privatization of education has been an anti-labor and pro-corporation movement. Privatization has displaced many, mostly professional women, from middle class jobs with benefits and pensions, and tossed them to the wind without any regard for their careers. Democrats have pandered to Wall St. and Silicon Valley. I hope this loss is a wake-up call.
It won’t be a wake up call. They will have to be driven from the party as we saw in the Republican party this year.
I have so much respect and affection for you, retired teacher, for your comments which are always accurate, and love you for being a truth teller, no matter where the chips fall. Wish we lived in closer proximity so we could have a cup of coffee and go for a walk.
Catherine…agree with most you say, but what happens when all we are offered to vote on is more of the same? How can Warren and Sanders defeat a system brought about by the Electoral College? Surely in 2020 it will be Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz who are again vying for the Presidency…and the Electoral College will again defeat the Dem candidate.
And the Dems, once again following their hacks on the DNC, will probably offer a Right leaning candidate, perhaps like Schumer…one who is far more like Clinton than like Sanders.
Ellen,
Democrats have won election with the Electoral College. I think it tilts towards Republicans, but in the future Democratic candidates have to offer a stark choice. After four years of a Trump administration, when he has failed to fulfill most or any of his promises, cynicism will set in, and the electorate will be ready for change. From him and his merry band of same-old, same-old Alt-right. Guiliani a fresh face? Christie? Give me a break.
Thanks, Ellen,
I always enjoy your insights to the inner workings of the big money trying to destroy public education in California. Keep telling the truth!
Doug: Yes, the unionization rate in Canada is about 27%, in the US it’s about 11.2%. There is a war against unions in the US and now with Trump in office, the war against unions goes into high gear. Especially the war against teachers’ unions. Once Trump stacks the SCOTUS with anti-union judges, that case regarding union fees will be reintroduced by the billionaires boys club. The Canadian Medicare always gets high approval ratings in Canada, (high 80% to 90%). The best we could do was the ACA and now the GOP will try to destroy it. We still do have Medicare and Medicaid, who knows what nasty tricks the GOP will try to do to those programs.
Ryan has proposed tax credits for health care and a voucher of a finite amount for Medicare. The voucher would run out fast and leave most seniors on the hook for most medical bills. These are useless non-solutions as they do nothing to reign in the corporate greed of the healthcare industry and Big Pharma.
Obstruct , obstruct , obstruct , If you thought a year with a vacancy on the court was bad,, how does four years sound . Beware what you sow .
The most compelling reason for not having voted Green , turned out to be the popular vote count and what it says about any mandate. Will the Democrats stand up to the Right I doubt it.
Hello Joel about obstruct/obstruct/obstruct. I’d like to head off a potential false equivalence, but still expect it to be stated and/or assumed by many:
The difference between the last 8 years of Republican obstruction and that planned in the future by Democrats is that, as Elizabeth Warren stated, it’s about the issues–we will support those that, for instance, are for infrastructure; but we will “obstruct” those that foster racism or other forms of bias.
On the other hand, Republican obstructionism was often about shutting down Obama, regardless of the issue, and even when the issue was originally their own. Such obstructionism doesn’t pass the “equivalence” smell test. Issue by issue, and not person by person.
Catherine Blanche King
Watch the poison pills that come with any seemingly acceptable Legislation
Here’s a few possible proposals .
A significant increase in funding for education(30% +-) to the states . Tied to accepting a voucher program. Or elimination of tenure . How can you abandon the children.? LOL
A trillion dollars to rebuild roads , bridges schools airports all sorts of. infrastructure .
Ah tied to at a minimum Repeal of Prevailing wage . The elimination of Project Labor agreements . The death knell of the Construction trades Unions .
What you don’t want the people of Flint to have clean drinking water.
The normally fiscally conservative (when not in power) Republicans would give their first born sons for either
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts .
He wont have to pass a national , Right to Work Law . His court will do that for him
Obstruct, Obstruct , Obstruct …. …. ….
And the CIA conspired with the mob and Castro to have Kennedy killed.
How about at least wait before you start with the scenaria?
As a republican I am sure I can think up some horrible stuff Clinton would have done had she been the winner. And you know? I can even think up my own doomsday stuff for trump.
But I prefer to live in the present, and not to borrow trouble for tomorrow. Apart from that, 2 years from now the balance can be changed.
Some said that trump does not have a “mandate,”. But the election did give him both chambers. And the electoral college had nothing to do with that.
Rudy Schellekens
Nothing to think about it is in the Republican Platform . Guess what nothing goes into a platform that the fearless leader has not approved of . Pages 5 and 8
The question is will he proceed with those positions once elected.
So the union busting anti pubic school Governor Bridge-gate has dropped down to the number 2 position on the transition team . To be replace by the even more virulent Union busting anti public school Mike Pence
You can live in the present. I prefer to study the past and be concerned about the future. The past of this man right up to the election, is cause for concern.
A great part of the decline of the unions has been self-inflicted. One of those self-inflicted wounds has been the automatic and enthusiastic support for the Democrat Party.
Right to work laws are designed to be anti-union, but if the unions offered a product that workers felt was worth the dues, union membership would rise.
It is NOT just Canadians. People in Europe and around the world look at us in wonderment. “How could …. people be so dumb”? BUT, the news one gets in these countries is far different than that in our commercial “news” organizations. If you have ever traveled abroad you know this.
I have lived in other countries , and I have traveled extensively. I am always grateful to return to the USA. Honestly, why do people who admire European perspectives and love European style governments not emigrate?
I love that question!!!!
First in line would be the Clinton and Obama families!!!!
They adore the “single payor system” in use in the European countries. To such an extent they want to import it here.
They seem to support the euthanasia laws in Europe. Let doctors decide who lives or dies.
I’ll make a donation to the travel fund.
Rudy, I, too, support single-payer models of health care. I believe having a strong social safety net is ethically incumbent in any humane society that doesn’t put a cap on individual wealth or a bottom on minimum income.
I do not support euthanasia. I worry about the slippery slope of physician-assisted suicide. I do see it as a complex issue, however. But as long as doctors/states can’t mandate “suicide,” my concern is on economic pressures on individuals to kill themselves to save their family from financial ruin or on families to want to see their relatives/loved ones killed for financial gain or relief from responsibility of any sort to sick or elderly people.
“Death Panels” are, however, utter b.s. If you don’t know that and acknowledge it, I really am not eager to try to convince you. Maybe you come from somewhere where they push the elderly, sick, etc., out on an ice floe.
As mentioned before, I spoke out loudly and often against the death panel invention by republicans.
In regular presentations against the ACA, I made it clear that I was against it, but also made it clear that false interpretation of what was in it does not do anyone any good.
As mentioned before, a single payer system leads to national bankruptcy, handing out health care based on economic results rather than medical needs. It’s already happening in Western Europe.
A whole new form of tourism is developing now: medical tourism, where people to to India etc, because the waiting list for certain procedures is too long – because of cost.
From friend in Canada I hear they are making trips to the US for medical treatment – for the same reasons.
Taxes in the European countries are skyrocketing because the money has to come from somewhere.
Rich people can get any treatment they want at any time, at any institution.
There are reasons why I argue against the system.
Rudy, I don’t feel motivated to argue health care policy today, and I have a date at 7 I’m really looking forward to. Tomorrow, online meditation workshop until 1 PM, and then I’m going to watch some football. So I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
America: Love It or Leave It! Right?
How about: America: Love It and Improve It? Too radical?
Looking at and admiring good things in other countries isn’t seditious. It’s intelligence.
No MPG it is not a love it or leave it decision. However, the USA is not going to look like Europe and still be a great place to live. The more limited the federal government’s role the better. A government run single payer system sounds horrific to me. When a government bureaucrat can deny health care, that can lead to pain, suffering, and even death. The time it would take to undo a bad decision could easily be fatal, and certainly unreasonably cumbersome. I have had cancer, and i have plenty of experience with dirt bag insurance bureaucrats, but I have ZERO faith that I could deal with a government bureaucrat.
Islam is a totalitarian system governing political, economic, social and RELIGIOUS aspects of the followers lives. More radical eliminate of that system have made it clear they do not approve of western ways of living. Islam has, in the past, aligned itself with Hitler AIDING in the death and destruction of millions of people. Today they more closely align with Communist ideals. It is those that want our destruction that need to be kept out. Vetting is a long process, made longer because the record keeping needed to complete such a task is non-existent. People have ALWAYS had to wait to enter this country. They used to wait at ELLIS ISLAND.
To simplify … you hear on the radio there is an escaped murderer on the loose in your area. There is no way to identify this murderer, even to tell what sex the person is. Suddenly there is a knock on your door with someone asking to come in from the cold. How eager would you be to let them into your home? Your children are sleeping in their beds. It is cold, but how do you know if this person is safe for your family to be around? If you know there is a chance this could be the murderer, would you risk it before exercising due diligence for your family?
Refugees that have come here often want to be able to return to their homeland … They just don’t want the fighting. It would certainly be more cost effective to allow them to stay closer to “home” yet be safe.
RE: The Constitution and Trump. His website has posted Article 10 of the Constitution that addresses the areas of Federal control outlined by our Founding Fathers. As you know the Department of Education is not one of those areas of governance. Education should be in the hands of the states. There is nothing preventing the states from coordinating with each other to make sure they do the best they can for their children. Parents, as they should be, are the watchdogs of their children’s education. The larger an entity grows the more prone it is to becoming corrupt and irrelevant in providing for the needs of the citizenry. These are the reasons this country has laws against “monopolies”. A monopoly in education is no less dangerous for our children’s future.
You realize of course that almost all governmental services for the public are now being characterized as “monopolistic” by corporations who want to make profits. Underfunding public education has become a way to create discontent with “performance” and open that “sector” of the economy to market forces.
On the matter of immigration, the stock the major for profit prison companies, Correction Corporation of America, has enjoyed a big boost in value in anticipation of a round up of “undocumented” people. The fear factor you describe will expand the market for “security” while doing little to affirm that mutual trust and compassion are the basis of authentic security.
I teach in a 100% immigrant school, so needless to say my colleagues and I are very worried about what a Trump candidacy portends for our students. They are for the most part not responding with the fear that so many teachers on this blog are reporting, but that might just be because of the bubble that is NYC and our school.
The reports of group bullying in middle schools are very upsetting, and resonate with my reasons for voting for Hillary, despite not caring for her as a candidate, and despite living in a state she won easily, allowing me to vote third party if I’d chosen: I was less concerned about what Trump himself would do, than with the license his election would grant to the uglier forces that support him.
On the other hand, while fears of what Trump may do are justified, keep in mind that immigration is supported by a very broad coalition of forces in this country, some of them immensely powerful and wealthy. The US Chamber of Commerce is a supporter of immigration, as well as Silicon Valley. Whenever restrictive anti-immigration laws have emerged, these powerful interests and others ally with immigrant groups and their supporters.
Inspiring and redemptive as immigrant success stories are, they’re also an overlay on the foundational reality that the primary mover is access to cheap, mobile labor. The election did not change that reality, so, while I expect little good to come of a Trump presidency, it may be overblown to expect an anti-immigration legislative apocalypse under him.
The caveat to the previous paragraph is whether Trump really does push against globalist trade policies that favor (the misnomered) free trade and immigration. If he does, and is successful, then we’ll have to see. But that’s a tough row to hoe, assuming he even wants to.
“Inspiring and redemptive as immigrant success stories are, they’re also an overlay on the foundational reality that the primary mover is access to cheap, mobile labor. The election did not change that reality, so, while I expect little good to come of a Trump presidency, it may be overblown to expect an anti-immigration legislative apocalypse under him.”
Exactly right, Michael. Thanks for pointing that out. And I suspect there are similar little gotchas underlying any number of Trump’s hot-ticket rhetorical campaign promises. Not to mention that it remains to be seen how much of it is pure bluster, malarkey, posturing, or the like.
I give very little chance of any wall being built. Unless the Canadians do it, as in last year’s opening episode of SOUTH PARK (brilliant stuff).
It’s pathetic how much ethnic hatred is out there. Seems like our color-blind, post-racial country is shifting back. Except that no one who isn’t a complete fool believed that we ever were color-blind or post-racial. I’ve read too much Tim Wise to fall for that nonsense if I hadn’t already sussed it out for the bilge it is. Just another reason Jim Sleeper, whose LIBERAL RACISM I’m rereading and trying not to collapse with laughter therefrom, gets it wrong.
The thirst for cheaper labor by the Chamber of Commerce and Silicon Valley serve to increase anti-immigrant sentiment. The H1B visa system is a prime example of government corruption.
The confluence of anti illegal immigration with all immigration is a disingenuous liberal ploy. You can point to that semantic slight of hand as one of the big reasons why Clinton is not the President Elect today.
You clearly conflate “liberal” and “neoliberal,” and are conveniently blind to the reality that it’s the ruling classes of both parties who want cheap, “illegal immigrant” labor. Pinning the blame on “liberals” is yet another blind GOP/Right Wing position that falls apart under careful examination.
That there are liberal people who have empathy for undocumented immigrants is a different issue. Social welfare groups from both various religions and progressive social organizations aren’t promoting a political party or philosophy: they’re just trying to do the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or humanitarian thing. Once in a while, a right-winger shakes off his/her dominant story of the strict, punishing father and does the right thing. It’s so refreshing. But the typical viewpoint of the Right is grounded in blaming and punishing the less fortunate. I could never be that self-serving, smug, or heartless.
You’re so funny MPG 🙂
I don’t really care about distinctions between liberals and neo-liberals. I was referring to the campaign tactic supported by the lying media of calling Trump’s position anti immigrant instead of anti illegal immigrant. Nor did Trump say he wanted to ban all Muslims forever, but he is still branded an Islamaphobe.
I assumed that when I identified the Chamber of Commerce as an exploitative entity everyone would know that I was criticizing the “right wing.”
Your assumption that my lack of explicit criticism of the “right wing” meant that I was blind to or supportive of their positions suggests that you are overly fastidious and prone to make smug assumptions.
To Linda Giffin
Foods for thought is to cultivate an opened mind that be compassionate within your INTELLIGENCE, EXPERIENCES AND ABILITY to protect your well-being, NOT GULLIBILITY or blind faith with taking a chance as recommended by CON ARTISTS
1) My female VN friend has her black belt karate and so does her husband. Her family has two sons and one daughter. They are average in wealth. They have made their commitment to take one homeless stranger to have dinner in her family for the past 30 years. She let the stranger have a warm bath and a good meal with new winter coat, clothes, small amount of money, and sincere hugs from all of her family members in Christmas season. NO SLEEP OVER!
I admire her, BUT I simply cannot afford to do it.
However, democratically, my husband and my son need to solidly agree and happily spend OUR ANNUAL SAVING to do certain charity that we admire its causes for local and international works.
2) Corrupted organizations will NOT respect for Constitutions, EXCEPT to abuse for have a mercy on them if they fail to succeed their goal.
Please take a look on all war criminals and all recent exiled dictators of corrupted leaders. They execute people who fight for democracy in their countries. In the end of their career, either they kill themselves, or beg for mercy from GULLIBLE citizens and leaders in democratic countries.
My solution for this specific situation is that I would let them to live isolated on island with the beast and wild animals like character Tom Hank and his “Mr. Wilson = the soccer ball” in a movie “Cast Away”. Hopefully, they will die with a hope to treasure humanity in their mind for their next better re-incarnated life. Back2basic
Thank you Diane. I trust that you will keep being you, and I love you just the way you are. That is what brought me to your blog years ago, and that’s what keeps me coming back.
Jack Stansbury
Frederick, MD
Diane – I’m not clear how you as a historian can say: I will no longer engage in any arguments about which Democrat might have been a better candidate than Hillary. That’s over.” How can we move forward if we don’t analyze the past? Otherwise we will be doomed to make a similar mistake in 2020 and beyond – if we want to change the Democratic Party we need to understand what happened. Also we cannot let off the UFT and NEA leaders who never gave teachers a fair shot at making an alt choice for the candidate. They played a role in this.
To norm:
I hope that you read the blog “A few Words to Readers of This Blog” yesterday,on November 10, 2016.
We need to take an action in a strategy and philosophy as outlined.
There is no theoretic analysis, but real action is to set example through words and good deeds which will effectively defeat corrupted leadership. Back2basic
I’m back again. If you want to celebrate an election, just look at Kansas. We are hopeful. Many educators stepped to the plate and will make a difference for the kids of Kansas in our legislature. The people of Kansas have spoken!! #KansansCan http://www.kasb.org/wcm/_NB/16/NB111116c.aspx
I’m thinking we must focus on the states to defeat privatization/vouchers, etc. Our new legislators will be opposed. Our gov may be leaded to Washington to work with the new president. He has totally failed in Kansas and now on to DC. What a tragedy!
Keeping the faith! ~Dayna
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/14/politics/newt-gingrich-house-un-american-activities-committee/index.html
Un-American Activities Committee
On Gingrich’s Un-American activities committee–hmmmm. . . .what will they do with Trump and his supporters who collaborate with Russia?
Thank you. I keep wonder how long it will be before I wake up in the middle of the night without being sick to my stomach about what we have done. You are nicer than I would be. He is a pig. He represents the worst of humanity.
That’s what I call objective and fair-minded. The two worst presidents in my lifetime (in my opinion) were Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, with a special nod to Richard M. Nixon). Trump hasn’t taken the oath of office and you’re calling him a pig. No chance on earth that it doesn’t play out that way over the next four years? Zero?
I think Donald Trump can objectively and fairly be referred to as a pig.
Trump spent 5 years telling his followers that he had absolute proof that President Obama was a Kenyan and that Obama was not a citizen.
Trump spent the Republican campaign hinting that Ted Cruz’ dad conspired to kill JFK.
Trump publicly mocked a disabled reporter to entertain his crowds.
Trump’s comments toward women his entire life — including toward the wives he got tired of — goes without saying. We didn’t even need to hear the audio to know that he talks that way about women all the time.
I think “pig” is a pretty good descriptive word. (Perhaps too mean to pigs).
If Trump chooses to govern in a way that is not as reprehensible as all the promises he made — if, in fact, he was lying about almost everything he intends to do — that will be a good thing. But that won’t stop him from being a pig.
Changing his piggish behavior is the only thing that would stop him from being a pig. How odd to say you shouldn’t call a current bully a bully because in the future he might choose not to bully.
I should know better. But I’ll simply ask you the same question I’ve asked others: what do you expect to GAIN in your fight against Trump’s negative qualities/policies by carping about them for two+ months before he takes office and is able to do a single thing as POTUS?
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. But preparation doesn’t entail non-stop whining and name calling. Or is that all you’ve got? I believe it is. In which case, it’s just pointless noise. You have a PLAN? That would be a breath of fresh air.
MPG,
Change the subject. You are too good at insulting people and it introduces too much acrimony into discussions.
Diane, I already determined to go back to ignoring her. But let’s be fair: you never seem to have a problem with her taking my statements which are not directed to her and rewriting them to suit her delusions. Why isn’t that a problem? She insults me with impunity. Also not a problem.
It’s not too different from the echo chamber this blog has become: insult Trump? No problem. Criticize Hillary and the rest of the DNC insiders? Sin of sins.
You know in your heart that things have shifted here from fairminded conversation to partisan attacks on anyone who won’t say, “Trump is going to destroy everything we value” and “Hillary really won.”
The latter is clearly false. It wasn’t fixed and she lost in the sense of blowing it, not simply being outperformed. The former is still speculation. He might be the worst person ever to hold the office in my lifetime. But he’s got some pretty stiff competition starting with Richard Nixon. And George W. Bush set a nadir that I don’t believe will soon be out-bottomed.
Regardless, I’m not reading much in the way of intelligent analysis that goes beyond the screaming about Trump’s character that Hillary ran and lost with. What makes that an effective political strategy NOW? I fail to get it, but I gather that it makes some people feel better. Doesn’t work for me. Again: hope for the best, plan for the worst. I see neither hope nor planning being put forth here. Did I miss something?
Michael,
The vitriol has to end. Now.
I disagree with your analysis. I think Hillary would have been a great president and I am truly sorry she lost. I am also truly sorry that there won’t be a female president anytime soon, probably not in my lifetime.
This is the time to build and plan for the future, not to keep trading blows with other readers of the blog.
I don’t think that Hillary won, any more than Al Gore won when he got a majority of votes. I do think that Comey’s totally inappropriate intervention 11 days before the election cost her millions of votes (millions of people voted after his first statement and before he withdrew it).
I do believe that Trump threatens everything we hold dear. He is a clear and present danger to civil liberties, civil rights, civil discourse. He is a coarse and ignorant man who is in the 1% but fooled blue-collar voters to think he cared about them. His tax plan has lavish benefits for the 1%, not much for the working stiffs who elected him.
I will ask you now to stop attacking other readers. There is no gain in that and it only creates acrimony.
And it is pointless. The election is over. I wrote that this morning. Now look ahead to think about how we can rebuild for the future. It can’t be done by infighting.
I made a comment that was impersonal and carefully thought out this morning. In due course, my fan club attacked me, personally, dismissively, and as they so often do, without either making accurate representations of what I wrote or offering some better idea.
You would have me bite my tongue, yet you never chastise anyone for such conduct. Indeed, you make some of them heroes. That is unfortunate.
MPG,
I asked very simply to stop the battling with fellow readers. Say whatever you want, but don’t attack other readers.
But you will not acknowledge their attacks or ask them to stop. Got it. Maybe review the first thing I wrote today and explain what was there that attacked anyone here.
On my view, there’s one person here who is completely out of line, who is obsessed with attacking everything I post, even when I don’t post, who is unprincipled and dishonest, and whom you give complete autonomy to do so as far as I’ve noticed. If I’m wrong, my apologies, But when in the presence of that sort of person, I fight back.
MPG,
Please stop fighting. Do it offline.
How do you propose I take it offline with people who don’t post under their real names? As Rudy pointed out, I think, we have some very brave cowards here. I’ve posted my email address a couple of times, in hopes of being able to do just that: take it off-line. The response from the antagonists in question? Crickets.
MPG, There’s a lot he can do in these next two months, including who he chooses to be in his cabinet and what he says. But I agree with Sanders–work with him on areas of agreement, and vigorously oppose him when he goes against our values.
Calling Trump a pig is a compliment to Trump but an insult to pigs. For pity’s sake, Trump has made it very clear what kind of person he is over the course of decades and especially with his campaign. He has made it clear that he will stack the courts with right wingers who will gut the teachers’ unions. Trump thinks climate change is a hoax and wants to deregulate the energy industry and allow for more digging and drilling. Whoopee, the fossil fuel industry has a big ally with Trump.
As I tried to imagine this scenario last week, I convinced myself it wouldn’t be so bad – except for the Supreme Court. As each day has passed since this horrific event (it seems like an eternity and it has only been 2 plus days!), the reality of the horrors become more and more evident, as evidenced by each new news story. I am sad, mad, depressed, and as a child of the 60’s waiting for a national movement to take hold and call to action. While I wish he would reject the bigotry already rearing its ugly head, I know in my heart that will not happen. He is who he is. He has no respect for anyone or anything. Shame on us for allowing this darkness to take over our country.
It astonishes me how much MPG will bend over to give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt here.
I mean, that’s something he absolutely refused to do with Hillary Clinton. He couldn’t give her the benefit of the doubt to stop a man like Trump from being elected. She was entirely without redeeming qualities. But he wants us to give Trump a chance because he might not be too bad and we shouldn’t assume based on how he has acted publicly his entire life.
Unbelievable.
Thank for this post. I appreciate your openness. And, believe or not, I share your sentiments about our president elect.
The current reality, however, is what it is. As a republican who was openly opposed to trump, I too have to respect the office. And that is what it’s all about in the end.
Rudy–I only wish Trump “respected the office.”
The next year will tell us
I wish more Republicans had the courage to oppenly oppose Trump. It remains to be seen whether Trump and his followeers will undermine or sustain support for the office.
Hi Dr. Chapman:
Devious and corrupted puppet masters are not JUST BORN YESTERDAY, but they have accumulated many traps to all intelligent, but poor and addicted to fame, fortune, and sexual fulfillment, like we know who(S) in political careers.
In history of WWII, all intelligent Germany commanders are under Hitler’s thumb and threat for the welfare of their own family members.
I admire Paul Ryan to refuse endorse President-elect more than Ted Cruz, because he is much younger with his Republican career in jeopardized. But there is “an invisible boss” whom we cannot see according to Trump’s declaration in the news with his winked eyes.
I sincerely hope that all conscientious people and voters in Republican, Democrat, Independent, and Third Party will unify and show their words and deeds as outlined and suggested by Dr. Ravitch’s son’s letter on a thread of “A few Words to Readers of This Blog” yesterday, on November 10, 2016.
Respectfully yours,
May
Anyone who is surprised that you’ve spoken ill of the president-elect hasn’t been reading your column very carefully. What they don’t seem to understand is that we who stand for love, equality, and justice for all cannot in good conscience speak well of him, regardless of the title he holds. I have been stunned by some of the comments “shouted” at me via social media. Those who supported him believe that we’re “whiners” and “sore losers.” They do not understand that we are grieving for the loss of ideals — for the loss of our vision of what is supposed to be the greatest country in the world.
I stand with you, Diane, and thank you for always speaking your truth.
. . . and Rudy Giuliani said the protesters were all “crybabies.”
Totally agree. It was the loss of ideals. Trump being just the vacuous vehicle.
Thank you, Diane! Love your blog. Keep doing what you’re doing!
I’m still in. I look forward to getting back to the business of defeating education reform and the privatizers.
I agree with you, Diane. Liberty and justice for all. We need to remember that the majority of voters did NOT support this guy and his bigotry and meanness. That he should be President despite the will of the majority reflects a weakness in our democracy that is being exploited by forces of evil in their greed and lust for power. Thank you for standing up for us and for decency. May you live long and continue to speak the truth. Hopefully before too long you will be speaking truth to power.
Thank you for your honesty, clarity and persistence! We are not meant to chafe under the -isms of our President Elect. We are meant to speak out, to act up and always seek honesty. We are meant to do this because that is what will make this democracy stronger. Too long have the white liberal faces been complacent. We must take on the schism that is this country. We must patiently and deliberately set about changing it. And this change must start with good public education for all our people.
Love this. Love you.
Thank you, Diane, for your sane voice and clarity. We are educators and our job is to educate. Let us all continue to educate young people on what a democracy is all about and why we have free, local and public education in the United States.
To quote Monty Python “always look on the bright side of life.” John King is finished as Secretary of Education. Federal control over curriculum will likely take a hit local control is more in line with the neo-Confederate view of state’s rights. Sure, testing and privatization will continue because there’s money to be made, but maybe a few small positives?
The people of the northeast and the west coast are striving to make a democracy, as indicated by their votes on Mass. Question 2 and, the defeat of Bill Gates’ preferred judges, in Wash. How long those people will be willing to subsidize the cost of the south, while the south guarantees them oligarchy in the nation’s capitol, remains to be seen.
Another excellent point, Linda. The Blue is only on the West and East Coasts, and much thinner than ever before. At some point the rest of the Red in the country, who gave us Trump and destruction crew, will become the enemy….we are ripe for Civil War.
I strongly hope you are wrong and that you’ll rethink that analysis/strategy. They have all the guns. And there’s nothing less civil than a civil war.
Step 1: stop thinking of everyone who voted for Trump as a monster; we’re not mind-readers, but there is evidence that many voted for him for quite different and understandable reasons
Step 2: stop playing the identical game “the bad guys” play. They’re better at it than you are, because it comes naturally to them. Progressives ostensibly have scruples. I know I do. To take a line from Danny Glover in SILVERADO, “I don’t want to shoot you, and you don’t want to die.” And vice versa. Except that some of them are ITCHING to shoot us.
William C. C. Chen, my former t’ai chi master in NYC, was asked by a young Latino student (who had been bragging to the rest of us before class about how he’d been walking down a street in Spanish Harlem when he saw a group of four or five tough-looking kids blocking the sidewalk. He walked up to them (at least according to his story) ascertained that they wouldn’t let him pass, and cold-cocked the biggest one, then went on his way), “How would you handle that situation?”
William, the thinnest looking, wispiest, palest, least prepossessing martial arts master I’ve known paused and then said, “I walk down other block.”
Polling data from the election shows that many white rural voters in Pennslyvania who went for Obama in ’08 and ’12 voted for Trump this week.
That sort of complicates the “they’re all racist yahoos” argument, doesn’t it?
I personally think Donnie is a pig, but so what? Not only does that do nothing to prevent the worst of what he might do, it continues to reinforce the views of the people who voted for him, people who need to be reached, not mocked and insulted.
Just think of what the election results would have been if Hillary Clinton and her band of meritocrats had spent her years out of government visiting and lobbying for hollowed-out, de-industrialized regions of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and elsewhere, rather than making those speeches at Goldman Sachs, or having face-to-faces with contributors to the Clinton Foundation… but I guess that’s just too counterintuitive…
Keep in mind, it was the decades-long, relentless ignoring-verging-on-contempt of the urban, cosmopolitan meritocratic class (personified in this case by Hillary) for the white working class that gave us Trump. To continue bleating that same horn of what a barbarian he and his supporters are is counterproductive and a waste of time.
If there was ever a time to become strategic and tactical, it’s now.
And, if nothing else, why give your opponents the satisfaction of watching you melt down? In the comments sections of some right-wing/libertarian blogs I glance at, people are absolutely glorying in your misery. I voted for Hillary, but still get some perverse satisfaction watching these fatuous, privileged celebrities throw tantrums, even while knowing these people will be insulated from the worst to come.
Focused stoicism and resolve is what’s called for now.
Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are employing the right strategy by offering to work with Trump on areas of mutual agreement, such as infrastructure (and, dare I say it, maybe an accommodation with Russia?) and fighting him when he pursues a revanchist agenda.
Michael,
All you say may be true, but we can’t stop condemning his open appeals to bigotry. Why the sudden upsurge in acts of bias towards Muslims, Hispanics, women, etc?
Indeed, Diane, and that’s the main reason I voted for Hillary and urged others to do likewise, despite my misgivings about her. My primary point is that our response must be based at least in part on listening to people outside our own orbits, and not the reflexive, often class-tinged contempt I so often see and hear.
Michael Fiorello, your comments in this sub-thread are balanced & right-on. You are teasing out one of the factors for Trump’s win that is least understood, acknowledged, analyzed– the strike-back of folks who have long felt their opinions dismissed as uneducated, uninformed, & worse code-words for low-class. Raised in a liberal collegetown surrounded by rural conservatives– & by an 8th-grade-grad son of poor midwestern farmers married to an Ivy League BA– I hear & relate to their voices. Progressives have their work cut out for them. Bernie Sanders is on the right track.
Just a warning:
If you don’t think Elizabeth Warren can be painted as the same out of touch east coast liberal as Hillary Clinton by the alt right, you are liable to be blindsided. Same with Al Franken (Hollywood) or any other candidate whose name has been mentioned. Would Bernie have been immune? It is incredibly naive to think so just because the alt right enjoyed laughing at the Hillary-hating Bernie supporters who helped them do their dirty work on Clinton. Would their smears about Bernie been successful? It depends whether half the Hillary supporters had helped it along echoed those same smears non-stop. Then the media could say “even the Democrats” know how (corrupt, Communist, terrorist-loving) Bernie is.
Blaming Hillary for that is tantamount to blaming an African-American candidate for losing because of a racist campaign against him because “he didn’t visit those white communities enough so they stopped having their racist beliefs”.
When Obama made his “they cling to their guns and religion” comment about voters and the alt right tried to make it into a scandal, the Hillary supporters in the country didn’t jump on the bandwagon to say “look how bad Obama is, he hates those people, yada yada yada”. That’s why that controversy had no long lasting traction.
Yet I still see references here to Hillary’s deplorable remark showing how out of touch she was. It’s so ironic because that remark came in the context of her explaining to a group of funders NOT to demonize all Trump’s supporters — that the rest were those people left behind looking for something that the Democrats had ignored. She understood all of that and wanted to work for those people. She has never been her husband. I suspect if she had won the election 8 years ago she would have been far more liberal than Obama and the DOE would not have done their level best to undermine public education for the last 8 years.
What’s done is done. I don’t want to rehash the election. But I do hope the lesson learned is for disaffected progressives to stop helping the alt right do their dirty work for them. None of the candidates you offer will be unblemished. If your favorite loses to a slightly less progressive one or a slightly more progressive one, criticize the winning candidate like you criticized Obama – on policy. Let’s not have a repeat where the losing candidates’ supporters demonize the winning one and jump on the faux scandal bandwagon where the policy differences are because of corruption or greed or whatever meme the alt-right wants to promote. Because if the supporters of Sen. Warren’s or Al Franken’s primary opponent start helping the alt right with their demonizations — characterizing the winner as “corrupt-Hillary” instead of like “we have a disagreement about policy Obama” — we could have a rehash of the disaster we just had. And if the only lesson learned is: “blame Hillary because she was an awful candidate” then history will just repeat itself endlessly. Hubert Humphrey was an awful candidate. Dukakis was an awful candidate. McGovern was especially awful. Carter was awful. Mondale was nearly as terrible as McGovern. Al Gore was truly terrible and a serial exaggerator. John Kerry – if only we didn’t have candidate that lied about his military service. Hillary — lied even more than Kerry and crooked as well. Democrats are so good at blaming their own terrible, awful, no good candidates who are almost always running against much more terrible, awful and no good Republicans. Who keep beating them because voters don’t believe the Republican candidates are as crooked or lying as the Democrats. And we need to make sure that doesn’t keep happening.
Smartest comment in an endless thread. Thanks. I guess there has to be a certain amount of blood-letting, but hey–the future calls us. Not just 2020–but 2018.
I think “local control” in this context means: unregulated corporate control.
I would not assume this. I “like” a Facebook page on Opt-Out California. Many of those on the blog are conservatives who are opposed to centralized control of education and excessive testing which damages their kids. it is the same tension that exists between the followers of Jeb Bush and those who nominated and elected Donald Trump. There is some common ground there (and yes admittedly it is not easy to resist the temptation to react to conspiracy theories about Agenda 21 and such). Ultimately parents want what is best for their very human kids.
Ray: . . . . however, the charter/privatization movement opens the door wide for every kind of corporate abuse. And if history has anything to do with it, we can know that when corporate “owners” are unregulated by an outside skin-involved source, in this case, parents and local people, they tend to see themselves as “masters of the universe” who can, and so will, consistently dismiss attempts at power-involvement from those they disagree with but are in a position to control from afar.
I don’t deny that the pressure will be strong. However there has been a shift in this election, at least at the voter level, away from the top-down neoliberal approach. The question is, twofold – will those holding the levers of power take any heed, and how long can the propaganda that permeates our daily lives permit those who support demagogues to deny what is clearly happening all around them, as the pillars of fairness and justice in our society (social programs, education) and indeed the very planet that gives us sustenance continue to be eaten away and degraded? Much ground may be lost in the next four years. But there is common ground for resisting these changes- nobody on the popular level wants them. The voters are lashing out at their corporate masters in the only way they know how. Hillary spent a majority of the money in this election and she still lost. Oppressive Communist regimes once seemed invincible, but they melted away when it became too much for people to tolerate.
Yes, Catherine…this is how the economy crashed due to no oversight of the greed and mendacity of the banksters. It amazes me how quickly people forget, and/or overlook, history. Thanks for you consistent educated comments.
Agree with you Catherine that ‘local control’ is code for deregulation of not only corporations, but of all agencies of government. No oversight. Anarchy would follow.
Thank you for your passionate and thoughtful response to those who claim that they will stop reading your blog as you have not shown support for Trump? What blog have they been reading prior to the election! Not yours, obviously. Keep up your powerful and important messages, Diane!
I agree with you 100%. (I’d agree with you 1000%, if that were mathematically possible.) You keep fighting the good fight, Diane. Don’t ever stop!! Much of what you have said is what I’ve already written and said to others. And what I’ve heard back FROM others. There are MANY of us “others”. I hope America takes a big breath, pulls up its socks, and decides to work WITH each other and CARE about each other. I pray that the day comes when there no longer will be “others” in this country – just a huge sea of the possibilities of “us”. How ironic and sad that a country with the name of “US” hasn’t yet managed to achieved “us”.
Wonderful! Ryan Collay Education by Design 541-343-2399 ryan@createug.com
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Thank you for being there. I admire and respect you and appreciate your much needed advocacy for public education.
Beautifully written. I respect your position about the President-elect and share it.
Echoes …
Just for the record, though I abhorred Hillary and Trump in equal measure, you can always count on my support, this is too important. Letting opinions get in the way of good work, as some of your readers have, is largely the issue we are having currently. I respect the heck out of you, Diane, and I will continue to spread the message and do what I can.
Sincerely,
James
I am an avid reader of this blog, though not active with comments. Thank you, Diane, for your clear-eyed, passionate commitment to the children and teachers of the US.
It’s hard to find comfort in the aftermath of this election, but your words bring comfort, thought, and have been forwarded to many friends not in our field.
I’m recently retired (July 1) after a lifetime in education. I’ve been to the protests against Common Core and spoken out. I learned about teaching for a democracy from the world’s oldest culture, with the oldest, most successful field tested curriculum (if tens of thousands of years counts), the Ju/’hoansi of Namibia. Here is a quote from !Xoma Na’aan of the Kalahari which tells you what their culture is based on: “Our children are the first things in our eyes and hearts.” They do not have a representative democracy: it’s one person, one vote. They believe all families must be supported and given equal opportunities to succeed. They are the culture that teaches and practices “It takes a Village to raise a child.” And culture. I know, I’ve worked with them for 26 years during my summers. The elders in their are everything that Donald Trump is not. Donald Trump and his gang of thugs is about to take away our democracy and we must not let it happen. Once we’ve recovered, we must find a way forward. And yes, a successful democracy is based on education. It is hard to think coherently in the aftermath of this reactionary think bath–but you have done so, and for this—and all your other sterling qualities—I thank you. For whomever thinks that education is not about politics, they have a LOT to learn. It’s too bad they will cut themselves off from the learning you provide.
Yours, a devoted reader,
Melissa
Melissa…welcomed your comments. This is new info to me, as to Namibia, and although I have studied cultural anthropology, overlooked this. Please contact me and recommend some books and study guides you find helpful.
Ellen
joiningforces4ed@aol.com
Dr. Ravitch could do no less. We all have the responsibility to speak out against tyranny, especially when it is directed at the vulnerable.
I wonder if the new President Trump will continue to mock those with disabilities as he did during the campaign.
Diane: One lesson for children that bothers me is that, in this case, the bully won..
Unless you see both campaigns as entailing a lot of bullying, in which case you knew in advance that “the bully won” regardless. The DNC and HRC’s team were clear bullies (unless you believe that not only did the Russians hack her emails but also that they invented them) in the primaries and in their attempts to promote Trump and other “pied piper” candidates they believed she’d beat with ease. So not only did they want to rig the Democratic Party’s nomination, but the other party’s as well. I don’t know that that is unprecedented in American politics, but it’s the first time I’ve heard of it.
But some people only see bullying when it falls into their preconceptions of what a bully looks like. A woman like Sec. Clinton could never be a BULLY! Democrats don’t bully. We play fair, even if we play hard. (Howard Dean, Bill Bradley, Ed Muskie, and heaven knows how many others might have a slightly different take).
A lot of dirty hands in this election, and they weren’t all Republican.
Michael Paul: I’ve pretty much signed off from here on out, from even reading your responses. Others may be reading, but I’m not. I don’t mean to be rude–just informative and truthful. Just know I’m not reading your posts any longer. I wish you well.
Catherine,
Don’t leave us. We need your voice.
Diane–thank you for your kind comment. I wasn’t saying I was leaving the blog–just that I won’t read Michael Paul Goldenberg’s posts any more. I’m hooked on the ongoing arguments, however, from thoughtful people; and with others appreciate greatly your work; and that there are so many others here who share insightful ideas. It makes me feel less alone. In times like this (everyone I know is in a constant state of OMG!), civility is most needed and hardest to maintain?
Catherine,
We have maintained a good discussion here for more than four years. The election has caused disruption and dissonance. We will get back in time to the main focus of the blog, which is to build a movement to protect the commons against the marauders. Now that the marauders are in charge of the federal government, the task is more important than ever.
Shorter MPG:
The DNC and HRC were “bullies” because in private e-mails they talked about things – none of which they actually did — probably because someone PREVENTED them from doing that. But it was mentioned so that’s all that MPG needs. Because he knows that if every e-mail of Bernie’s top campaign officials with other people were read, they would come off like angels because not a disparaging word ever crossed their lips about anyone. I’m sure no member of his staff ever said a single disparaging word about any woman or any person ever.
And just because Donald Trump publicly told the American people that Obama lied about being an American, that Ted Cruz dad killed JFK, that Mexico sends its rapists here, and so on and so on and so on, it’s really no different than a private e-mail conversation that leads to not a single negative action.
No difference. We should explain that to our children. If you say something disparaging about Donald Trump’s racist or sexist remarks, you are the one being the bully! He’s not so bad — he’s just like those terrible bullies at the DNC and if they had won, it would be exactly the same kind of celebration of bully culture.
Unbelievable.
What is unbelievable to me is that some on this list rant and rave against bullies, use of language and such are the same who used similar language on this list when someone happens to have a different opinion. I have been on the receiving end of that a number of times, so I know of what I speak.
Why is it that when people post anonymously they forget all civil behavior, using words and references they would never use in a face to face conversation (or when your actual name appears!)?
I use my name in every posting, no matter where. You can disagree with me, no problem (HDTMYF).
But when start slinging I believe you to be the loser, no matter how just your cause may be.
Shorter NYCpsp – don’t read what my dissenters say: just read my version of it which is nonsense, fraught with bilge, and designed to preserve the solipsistic world of my brain and apartment.
No intelligent person wants to read YOUR take on what other people say, without looking at what those people say. Except for a couple of members of your club.
For what it’s worth: you make this a truly repulsive venue. Instead of actually citing facts, you just take the facts and deny them. Things that are documented that Team Clinton did, you just say were things they considered but never did. Really? Strange, but the emails tell a different tale, and no one on the Clinton team denies it. But let’s believe you, because you’re not only utterly objective and honest, but you never lie and you’re always right. In your dreams.
Rudy,
Please don’t use the Lee Atwood “how dare you call out our reprehensible behavior, you bully” language here.
Recognizing when someone is a bully and calling it out is important. Guess what? That doesn’t happen under fascism. No one gets to call out when Putin or Hitler did something bad.
Or if they did, they were then called the “bully” and attacked.
It’s so ugly when people who call out reprehensible and bullying behavior are attacked themselves as bullies because how dare we do so! Our critical words calling out such behavior are just as bad as the behavior itself!
Can you possibly imagine teaching that to your children?
NYC: Funny . . . sounds just like what Trump does. So that now we know that Hillary has a terrible temperament.
What I taught my children was that it is their responsibility to treat people respectful, no matter what.
You can argue your case – but ad hominem will not be a part of that argument.
That is what I teach all my students, in any class I teach, be they teenagers or adults.
And by the way, calling out the bully is not the issue. It is the use of the same language and mannerisms of the bully that I object to.
FYI – I meant Lee Atwater! My sincere apologies to Lee Atwood.
well, I just learned two new names. Thanks
As a Monty Python fan, I’m reminded of the scene with the peasant farmer screaming at “King Arthur,” ‘Oh, now we see the violence inherent in the system!’ People committing violent protests (as opposed to peaceful ones) are going to reap what they so, and then they’ll blame it on Trump, who isn’t POTUS until January and has zero power to unleash police or troops against anyone until then. Will people here buy into the idea that police action against violent protests are both unwarranted and Trump’s fault?
As for Jeannie Kaplan’s post: that’s a quotation from a Rorty book I’ve not yet read. But like most predictions, it’s not quite dead-on. At least not yet. I believe Rorty would have noted key differences. Nuance. And I doubt that he’d have been calling for violent protests against the mere election of someone, no matter how much he might have feared and loathed that president-elect. Sanders still has it right: be prepared to work with the new administration when it’s up to good; be prepared to fight it when it’s up to no good. And try to have a clue what the difference is.
What I see here and elsewhere is a lot of blind assumptions. For me, there’s a world of difference between strategy and tactics in the face of potential evil, and strategy and tactics in the face of actual evil. Presuming the worst is a waste of energy, since it saps everything from the system and leaves nothing for the “working with them when they’re doing good” part of the equation.
Again, Donald Trump most definitely is not Adolf Hitler. But, to quote Hemingway, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
No one is asking for anyone to be silent. Only to think first, then speak. What do you (anyone) hope to accomplish by non-stop Trump bashing before he’s taken office? If he’s as evil as you believe, you will accomplish nothing that you couldn’t do just as well – if not more effectively – by taking Sanders’ position? No one is saying, “Don’t prepare. Don’t talk to others to organize in prepartion.” What I am saying is that that isn’t the same as actually causing some of the things you claim to fear and loathe.
Donald Trump is NOT Hitler.
But Hillary Clinton IS as bad as Trump.
Got it.
NYC public school parent
“The DNC and HRC were “bullies” because in private e-mails they talked about things – none of which they actually did ”
Ask Jaun Cole about the Daily News editorial, he was there. . Dona Brazile was fired from CNN because CNN does not like Black Women .
31 Cabinet officials in the Obama first term were on a list provided by Michael Froman a Citicorp exec . While the bank was about to be bailed out to the tune of 366 Billion dollars . almost every one of them .
were appointed to those positions . Froman becomes the Trade representative . Perhaps you remember this :
“I have heard the argument that transparency would undermine the Trade Representative’s policy to complete the trade agreement because public opposition would be significant. In other words, if people knew what was going on, they would stop it. This argument is exactly backwards. If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States.” Elizabeth Warren.
Now it is a shame that we did not have the same or any level of transparency
provided to us by the Russians and Wiki about the Republicans and the Trump campaign . A shame (partisan) Comey did not come clean about his investigation of Russian contacts in the Trump Campaign . Which I believed their foreign minister just mentioned .
But please stop already. You didn’t have to convince MPG or even me who held my nose and voted for Clinton . You had to convince the American people. Because the founding fathers didn’t trust them to elect a President. You had to convince them in Ohio, Pennsylvania , Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana that Hillary had their interests at heart.
But that is the way corruption in Government works . There is seldom a demonstrable quid pro quo . It is when issues come up , “which side are you on boys” You would not for a second doubt that the Republicans could see a thousand Sandy Hooks and not push gun legislation, so deeply influenced by the Gun lobby. Not for a second doubt that Oligarchs and Corporations are in a full frontal assault on
American education the children be damned , purchasing one legislature and Governor after the next .
Some how the team that you support just got their butts kicked in counties and States they should have won ,places they have won overwhelmingly in the past . Somehow it is everyone elses fault but your team.
My perspective is a little different than yours we voted for the same team, I always do . The Team is rotten to the core. In addition to the pain of the last twenty five years that our team has participated in creating. They now have delivered us Trump.
Thank you, Joel. Michael Froman was a big initial clue to how the Obama administration would govern. And Orszag,and Spelling, and Pitizker, and Immelt, and Rubin, and Summers…ad nauseum. At least Obama has a marvelous and an speaks in dulcet Patrician tones…and has a highly educated wife and a fine family.
Your request to “please stop already” does not slow down either NYC nor MPG…who both have diarrhea of the keyboard. I have disciplined myself to just skip over their redundant diatribes.
Have agreed with all you comments the last few days…but what else is new?
Left out that Obama has a marvelous SMILE…
“The team is rotten to the core”. You think that’s why they got their butts kicked? Because the Democrats are so rotten that voters preferred the Republicans because they aren’t rotten?
That does not explain why progressives like Russ Feingold lost. Especially when Ron Johnson, who ran against him, got MORE votes than Donald Trump did running against the corrupt Hillary. That isn’t a coattail effect (unless you think Johnson’s support helped Trump). If you merely want to make Hillary a scapegoat, I certainly can’t stop you, but since I happen to want the same outcome that you do, I’m not going to remain silent if you do. There is something bigger going on and some of the things that influenced this election are 1. the over the top anti-Hillary hatred that the far left somehow adopted as their own and that the alt-right coopted to convince ALL of America how bad she was. “She had so much baggage”, the revisionists keep saying. Only she really didn’t. She was an incredibly popular Senator and an incredibly popular Secretary of State. Her “baggage” came when she decided to run for President and perfectly reasonable actions that all former politicians do — like making speeches for as much money as someone would pay her — somehow became cast in this evil light. 2. the ability of the Republicans to co-opt the Senate and the FBI to have endless investigations full of innuendo and no facts. For Hillary, her guilt is always about “appearances”. And the right and the left joined together to make sure the public knew how ethically compromised, money-hungry, and dishonest she was. All based on appearances.
For all that you and Ellen Lubic keep attacking me, the bottom line is that I agree with Diane Ravitch’s perspective on Hillary and on this election. And I’m shocked when I see people like MPG and sometimes you and Ellen characterizing Diane’s view as if she thought Hillary was perfect. Diane never said that. She just pointed out that the flaws were flaws that we give a pass to with other politicians but somehow treat as crimes when it is Hillary.
What’s truly odd is that you just attacked Hillary by offering up a diatribe about how corrupt Obama was. You provided far more evidence of Obama’s extreme corruption than Hillary’s. Is that what you believe? Because there certainly seems a difference between the way that Obama’s “character” is criticized from the left and Hillary is. Obama takes actions because he is a neoconservative. Hillary’s are because she is corrupt. She lost. And it was close. And if some voters had not been entirely convinced of her corruption, she may have been able to win. Blaming her for the fact that there are left wing haters who supported the right wing propaganda of her to the extent that it became the constant drumbeat of the media is dangerous. Will you blame Senator Warren when that same constant drumbeat starts being directed toward her? We have to stop demonizing other Democrats. Criticize them all you want, but don’t demonize them. Obama got criticized. Hillary got demonized. And the alt right laughed all the way to a victory. I don’t want it to happen again.
I don’t want to keep fighting about the election. It’s over. We have the least qualified President in history.
I admire Hillary for standing up to 30 years of nonstop vilification and smears. She’s a damn sight tougher than all of us. Not many people–male or female–could withstand the hatred directed at her. Unfairly.
Bernie was right about the emails. It was a pile of stinking nothing. Trump and Guiliani used the issue to call her a criminal and to incite Trump groupies to call for jailing her or stringing her up. This was one of the meanest, lowest, dirtiest campaigns I have ever seen.
The attacks on her by the right were disgraceful. So were the attacks from the left.
She is a good person. She had the experience, the judgment, the temperament, and the wisdom to be a great president.
I wish I could have done more to help her.
So now we have a president who was willing to stir the basest instincts of the mob, say anything, do anything, to get elected. He won.
The entire nation will suffer while political purists gloat, preferring the perfect to the good.
News flash: there is no perfect politician. None. There is no perfect person.
We should all learn something from this dreadful experience.
Humility, for one.
“Bernie was right about the emails. It was a pile of stinking nothing. ”
I agree and have stated that many times . But the emails Bernie was talking about are not the same emails that really hurt Hillary .
The wiki leaks killed her not the server although I am sure that in the minds of low information voters the two were conflated .
Diane I have voted Democratic or WF in every election since 1970 . My criticism of Clinton / NDC Dems / and i hate this ,Neo liberals (which is really a right wing economic philosophy) . Is just that , I cant give Clinton a pass no more than you could give Rahm a pass.
I don’t blame the Republican slime machine for her failure . Certainly not where it counted, in the mid west . This was the failure of the Democratic party since 92 to present a clear believable vision for America . That told these voters they have their back. In fact they did just the opposite right down to Obama pushing TPP. this fall.
Nothing illustrates it more than DEFR. Try telling teachers your on their side . Well it is the same with those voters who voted for Obama twice and didn’t show up or worse yet voted for Trump . They were not all Republicans or Racists. Though they may have been delusional .
It is time to move on . But the potential harm to this Nation is massive .
Moore may have a point ,mass movements turn public opinion. This man who lost the popular vote , has to be boxed in from the start. A million woman march on inauguration day ,may be too small a scale.
But at the same time. The American people have to be given a real choice between the parties. Just as we clearly see the problem in education .The same problem is rampant through the economy .
Democrats for too long have talked the talk but not waked the walk .They love teachers and other workers on election day than pursue policy that is a slow drip to disaster for these voters . The next election cycle comes along and they rely on these workers having nowhere to go .
They have counted on social issues and the fact that minorities and union workers had nowhere to turn to win elections.
Guess what that Angry white working class has a lot more in common with the Black working class than they do with Republicans . When Democrats start acting like the Party of FDR-LBJ they will start winning elections . God help us till then.
Joel,
Your “blame the democrats” would be more believable if those very same midwestern voters didn’t keep reelecting right wing Republican Governors and Senators who are offering them nothing.
Is your point that those Republicans offering exactly those blue collar white voters even less than Democrats are so popular with them because at least they are racist and not “favoring” non-whites or immigrants over them? Because that completely negates everything you just wrote about how those voters aren’t racist.
They are so angry they keep re-electing Republicans.
They are so angry they handily re-elected the Republican offering them less than nothing who was running against Russ Feingold.
Didn’t they also vote for Bush/Cheney?
I think you are right that Democrats need to offer those communities more than talk, but I think you are wrong about why the Democrats who WANT to offer them more than talk rarely seem to get elected these days if they run against right wing Republicans offering nothing.
Why?
Clinton won with 55% of the vote in Illinois. Tammy Duckworth received about 70,000 fewer votes. Clinton wasn’t holding her down.
But Russ Feingold’s opponent won more votes than Trump while he won about the same as Clinton (although about 2,000 votes fewer).
You can’t just blame “offering the wrong candidates” or “the party is corrupt to the core” when the voters are happily voting in far wronger candidates running as long as they are Republicans.
Correction: you can blame Hillary and offering the wrong candidates all you want. But it doesn’t explain why Feingold got fewer votes than Hillary. And why his right wing opponent who had offered NOTHING to those workers got more votes than Trump did.
Thank you for continuing to stand up for what you believe to be right, not just by you and yours but for the collective us. I was having trouble coming up with words powerful enough to describe the emotions I have been feeling since Tuesday. David Remnick has supplied them for me. I am an American, a mother, an educator, and am petrified of the power this man wields to negatively effect generations. I am sickened by the fact that while change was wanted by our fellow Americans ignorance is what elected this man. In a world of overwhelming information it is unconscionable that people have not educated themselves to the facts as they stand nor considered the ramifications. Or even if they couldn’t avail themselves to the facts that they could not make a decision based on good vs evil. This man, our president elect, is a vile human being and no matter what misinformation was spread about either candidate that fact was abundantly clear on a daily basis. It is interesting to me however that one of the most repeated thoughts and or feelings that have been shared by people throughout the country has been that they will be praying. Perhaps the the prayers of the collective Other and everyone else will in the end be answered, the evil will be defeated and our America will once again be a United States.
We must be the resistance in order to “be keepers of the future,” in the words of California’s leaders. Their words in the wake of this devastating election can serve as a guide.
Here is a joint statement by California’s Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León and California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon.
Today, we woke up feeling like strangers in a foreign land, because yesterday Americans expressed their views on a pluralistic and democratic society that are clearly inconsistent with the values of the people of California.
We have never been more proud to be Californians.
By a margin in the millions, Californians overwhelmingly rejected politics fueled by resentment, bigotry, and misogyny.
The largest state of the union and the strongest driver of our nation’s economy has shown it has its surest conscience as well.
California is – and must always be – a refuge of justice and opportunity for people of all walks, talks, ages and aspirations – regardless of how you look, where you live, what language you speak, or who you love.
California has long set an example for other states to follow. And California will defend its people and our progress. We are not going to allow one election to reverse generations of progress at the height of our historic diversity, scientific advancement, economic output, and sense of global responsibility.
We will be reaching out to federal, state and local officials to evaluate how a Trump Presidency will potentially impact federal funding of ongoing state programs, job-creating investments reliant on foreign trade, and federal enforcement of laws affecting the rights of people living in our state. We will maximize the time during the presidential transition to defend our accomplishments using every tool at our disposal.
While Donald Trump may have won the presidency, he hasn’t changed our values. America is greater than any one man or party. We will not be dragged back into the past. We will lead the resistance to any effort that would shred our social fabric or our Constitution.
California was not a part of this nation when its history began, but we are clearly now the keeper of its future.
http://asmdc.org/speaker/news-room/press-releases/joint-statement-from-california-legislative-leaders-on-result-of-presidential-election
In California we also passed Proposition 55 to continue increased taxes on our wealthiest citizens in order to fund public education, and Proposition 58 to restore and protect multilingual education in California, both by substantial margins. The rest of the Country will come around eventually. Oh, and sorry for Nixon and Reagan – but that was long ago ;).
Thanks Karen for posting this.
We are proud of California DEM leaders who did well in this weird debilitating election.
Kevin, who is Latino, and Anthony, reflect the majority opinion and the good will of most Californians who believe in a true democratic diversity. Our new Senator, Kamala Harris, who is so highly regarded, is female and black. Our other long time Senators Feinstein and Boxer, are both Jewish women.
What is it about California voters that we seem to comfortably choose leaders who reflect diversity? Is it what we learned in our public schools?
So, how come our votes for the Presidency don’t count and are diluted by the Electoral College???
I California votes to succeed . Perhaps you could sponsor my Family for asylum.
Ellen
if and
That was secede not succeed edit button
Joel, baby, seceding does not look so bad lately.
I’ve paid my dues
Time after time
I’ve done my sentence
But committed no crime
And bad mistakes
I’ve made a few
I’ve had my share of sand kicked in my face
But I’ve come through
I’ve taken my bows
And my curtain calls
You brought me fame and fortune and everything that
goes with it
I thank you all
But it’s been no bed of roses
No pleasure cruise
I consider it a challenge before the whole human race
And I ain’t gonna lose
Queen
Diane…I so appreciate your comments and your self-respect. I cannot support Trump for the same reasons. I can barely bring myself to call him President. I can’t believe he will go down in history as one of the leaders of this country. I thought America was great before he ran for President…he encouraged and brought division to this country. Maybe he will rise to the occasion but it does not seem right that someone who professed many of the ideas he has and expressed them as he did publicly is fit to serve as President. I can only hope he has a bunch of people around him controlling his Twitter impulses and encouraging him to act Presidential.
Thank you…
Liz, I won’t presume your age, but I’ve lived through the war in Vietnam under 3 presidents (Kennedy, Nixon, and Johnson), through Nixon and Watergate, through Reagan, GHW Bush, Bill Clinton, and last and least, George W. Bush. I’ll leave Obama’s neoliberalism and love affair with drones aside. You’re seeing the mere election of Donald Trump, before he’s taken office or made an appointment, proposed a policy as POTUS, or had any power at all as the nadir? Damn, if he actually does something bad, you’ve gone pretty far out on the ledge already.
A friend, making her errands, the day after the election–in Stockton Ca.–
said the mood was somber like 9/11 just reversed to 11/9–stunned and
saddened…in Fremont, where I teach some of the teachers were
hurt beyond the words to express our hurt…thanks to Diane for expressions
of true emotions leavened by her passion and rationality and her pursuit of decent education for
all and as Mr.Dylan, our Nobel laureate, wrote “the only thing to do/
is to keep on keeping on.”
Very nice statement. I find your education writings to be top-notch. I don’t agree with your political views, but so be it. Those who unsubscribe will be worse off for it.
A growing problem with the online world is that people can tailor their sources and block/delete those they disagree with. What you end with then is a massive confirmation bias – how can I be wrong when all these websites/followers think the same as I?
Real dialogue involves considering different points of view – not deleting them.
Thanks, Matt.
I have voted both for Republicans and Democrats in my life. I served in the sub-cabinet of President George Herbert Walker Bush.
For those who think we should be silent and hope for the best, I recommend reading this excerpt. I personally wish I had the skill set to organize an anti-election movement. After all, it is clear to me this was a rigged election. There is talk of electors NOT voting for trump. That will not happen. But for those of us who are afraid for the future, standing by and hoping is not acceptable. I am at a loss for what to do. Smarter people than I will lead us out of the darkness, I hope.
Below is an excerpt from Richard Rorty’s 1998 book “Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-century America”
>
To Jeannie Kaplan: The text is prophetic. So is Alexis de Tocqueville in his “Democracy in America” (circa 1835) where he accounts for the tri-part tear at the basis of America (White, Black, Hispanic, though he regards Native Americans in other parts of the book) that will always be there. That “tear” is a potent flaw (as we are seeing now), but also harbors the potential for great creativity. He also suggests (as other do) that democracy’s greatest danger is not without, but within. Prophetic.
“Within” is the greatest danger for ever nation, no matter what they are.
Arabic spring
Tearing down the wall
Any dictatorship.
But there are dangers to be remembered. For the past 40+ years, a slogan has spoken: “revolution allows the oppressed become the oppressors…”
The value of the American system is that every two years, the voters can make changes (without having to resort to violence).
The problem with the American system is that divisiveness is built into a two party system. There is really no other place to go…
Rudy says: “The problem with the American system is that divisiveness is built into a two party system. There is really no other place to go…”
Yes it is. However, essential too is that such divisiveness is also the ground for dialectic–and so for those listeners among us to raise new questions and move forward in having those often-surprising insights we all are aware of. Dialectical thought is a part of our spontaneous consciousness–we do it automatically and it’s how we are creative and move to higher levels of thought. By that I mean that even if we aren’t aware of the presence of dialectic in our thinking, it’s there working for us anyway–it’s the source of our experience of being obsessive about working out some idea.
It’s also why the assault on discourse (e.g., lies, breaches of trust, double-speak and conceptual absolutism) is so dangerous; and why a qualitative education in a democracy is so important–freedom of speech, press, and assembly are foundational to having that process actually work so that we are not merely polemical but also can move beyond ourselves through it. What we have MUST be preserved–and better if our children are aware of its significance. In that sense, I think American is already great.
AMEN!!!!!
Hello Diane! As a teacher of 6 years in traditional public schools and public charters in Philadelphia, I love reading your blog. I currently work at a large public charter in Philadelphia (Mastery Charter Schools). I am resigning from my post there because I don’t believe in treating students and staff as numbers and standardizing everyone and everything. Teachers at my school also had to undergo a training entitled “white privilege.” I found this to be very offensive and somewhat discriminatory to whites. I wanted to know your thoughts on this. I believe that there are privileged people of all ethnicities and some are privileged for various reasons. My dad was a small business owner and when my parents separated, my mom raised 5 kids while working 2 jobs (social worker by day and taxi driver by night). I was also brought up to embrace all people regardless or religion, ethnicity, creed, sexual orientation, etc. To assume that all white people are privileged is ignorant and arguably racist. I think when we start pigeon-holing entire groups of people (as Trump does), we begin demonize those peoples. I don’t believe these “white privilege” trainings should be imposed onto the workforce simple because they are not only offensive but they label all white people as being “privileged” when this is certainly not the case. I do agree that we need sensitivity training and diversity training in all workplaces and that we should be cognizant of how we interact with each other, and work to understand and listen to another, but I believe that “white privileged” training is inherently wrong. Please share this and perhaps you can delve into this topic in one of your blogs. I’d love to hear your opinion. Thank you again! Lastly, I’ll end with something an uncle used to say, “Strong public schools are the backbone of democracy.”
Thank you for having the wit and courage to move on. Schools should stick to their mission of developing each child’s talents, skills, and character to the fullest and teaching them to be responsible citizens. No brainwashing for teachers unless they have dirty minds that need washing.
priceless, beyond measure. Why we are all here
No brainwashing for teachers unless they have dirty minds that need washing.
As long as there are teachers who teach kids incorrect information, I prefer to keep the raising of my children as responsible citizens in my own hands.
As long as teachers teach that only Democrats are responsible citizens, I prefer to keep the responsibility in my own hands.
If what has been posted in the past few days by teachers is an indication what they consider responsible citizenship, I worry deeply about the future of this country.
And no, I did not vote for trump, nor do I support his discriminatory language and behavior. I am, however, a troubled Republican.
Rudy,
Maybe you can cite exactly where anyone has said “only Democrats are responsible citizens”. It’s funny that certain people defend your attacks on others as so intelligent and well-intentioned.
No one ever said that. Nor did they say that you can’t be a Republican and be a good citizen.
They said that the Republican candidate offered this time was very bad and also gave specific examples of the bad things he had already done. They didn’t just talk about what he would do in the future, although if he was telling the truth, it would be pretty terrible. They talked about the actual things he did and said during this campaign. That is what is being criticized.
If you believe someone is saying “something incorrect”, then quote it and explain why it is incorrect. I, for one, will read it and decide if you are right. But I don’t believe you when all you can do is keep repeating things that aren’t true based on any fact that I know that seem to exist only in your head.
“As long as teachers teach that only Democrats are responsible citizens…” Please show us where that was said.
We are at about the 600 mark I would guess for this chain. I can honestly say that I have read all of the. (Lot of free time in my hand this week).
As I read through these, the statements about Republicans have been generalizations, negative and derogatory. Since the majority of the writers are teachers and lean democrat, socialist and progressive, the opinions expressed are fairly representative.
And the overall outcome is as I have stated.
Rudy says: “Since the majority of the writers are teachers and lean democrat, socialist and progressive, the opinions expressed are fairly representative. And the overall outcome is as I have stated.”
Rudy: and what of the truth of the arguments given? More relativism and diversion on your part? You might want to Google “logical fallacies” and see how many you use every time you write.
I should say “sometimes, not all”–I like what you say sometimes, but then you come up with something like that. It’s beneath you.
Rudy,
I asked you to cite someone saying “only Democrats can be responsible citizens”. You slimed and insulted teachers and educators on this board by claiming that’s what you kept hearing. I challenged you because I am not reading that at all.
And in all these posts, you couldn’t find anything to support your claim that you keep reading so many teachers posting on here that “only Democrats can be responsible citizens.”
So you lied. I hope you will apologize.
I lied… interesting. Look at the post to which that was written. Look at about every fourth or fifth post in this current chain: Republicans have no brains, have no honor, have nothing to offer, are only out for the money, lie cheat and deceive.
This blog is mainly populated by democrats, many of whom are teachers.
In the end, not many conclusions are left open, are there?
On November 7th an elementary teacher explained to her class that “you are lucky to live in the US, and not in England because they have a monarchy and cannot vote…”.
Now, you can call that a lie all you want. But that’s your problem, not mine.
Hard to have meaningful conversation with people whose definition of every word is straight from Humpty Dumpty.
I re-read the post that you responded to and I STILL see no one implying that “only Democrats are responsible citizens” nor that is what they are teaching students.
If you keep seeing this, please direct me to a specific post and please quote what you believe implies that.
I doubt you can, but it’s possible I missed something. However, what I’m sure of is that your implication that’s what you keep reading teachers on this blog keep saying is not true. No doubt you believe it, but if you are unable to show me a quote where someone is saying that, then it’s just that — a false belief that demonstrates your own prejudice against Democrats.
Seeing things that aren’t there. Reporting that someone has said things that s/he never said. Using biases and prejudices as lenses and filters to that only “favorable” versions of the reality of other people’s thoughts, words, and deeds reach your consciousness, and then feeding them back as if your versions are objectively true.
Those are definitely problems.
Now where have I seen someone doing that relentlessly on this blog?
MPG,
Any comment you make that insults, attacks or belittles other readers of this blog will be deleted. otherwise say anything you want.
Diane, if you have rules, that’s your prerogative. But they only seem to apply to a few. Now I’m on the “moderated” list. You seem to have made clear that some folks have carte blanche to lie, distort, misrepresent, and insult. Others don’t. That those in the latter category are critics of HRC and those in the former are gung-ho supporters of same is, no doubt, an utter coincidence.
But I’m not the only person who noticed. You’re missing some regular contributors here who’ve withdrawn because of the above. As we all know, it’s your blog. But creating a very tilted playing field with rules that only apply to an disfavored few will result in your perfecting an echo chamber, something you profess not to want.
I don’t “insult” people for fun. I do defend myself as I see fit. When it comes to the repeated egregious attacks on my character for not singing the Hallelujah chorus, for posting thoughtful analyses of our current situation (that named no names and insulted no one), and particularly for saying and believing things that I’ve neither said nor believe, I feel that I’m allowed to point out what’s going on, to not like it, and to criticize those who do it. When I can’t manage to get such people to stop distorting my words or acknowledge that they’ve done so, for some odd reason, I get aggravated.
If you want me to leave, which I believe that fundamentally you do, you’ll get it. I don’t enjoy spending significant time responding to someone’s baiting of me and then realizing you blocked it. The echo chamber wants me gone and has for years. So you’ll have lost me, Dienne, and a few others whose posts I’ve always found worthwhile, and secured the voices of some folks who, for now, are agreeing with you and using unfair tactics (that you generally decry) to silence dissent and drive it out. You’ve read more than one poster here telling me to leave. Why? Because I wouldn’t drink the HRC Kool-Aid? Because like a lot of folks I’m reading on the left, I ask for patience + vigilance over the next two months? Not silence. Not cowardice. Just thoughtful, strategic responses that aren’t based almost entirely on fear and other less productive emotions.
If Trump is as horrid as POTUS as people here are certain he will be, the name-calling going on here won’t stop him. It will take smart political organizing and action. I keep asking critics here for their plan. And so far, all I hear is more of the same, with rage directed at me, at Rudy, and of course at Trump. Little or nothing on an objective analysis of why the Democrats lost so badly to someone who “had no chance” and many reprehensible down-ballot candidates. More of that sort of thing will guarantee continued losses in 2018 and 2020. If you want 8 years of Trump, keep ignoring why he won, blaming Comey, Sanders, Stein, Johnson, their supporters, racism, homophobia, sexism, ad nauseam. That wasn’t it.
MPG,
Just watching Fareed Zakaria on CNN. Trump won because of overwhelming support among whites, especially uneducated white men. A 39-point difference there between the candidates.
I like Fareed and respect his thinking even when I don’t agree with it. NEWSWEEK and CNN, not so much. But if that’s his ultimate take on why Trump won and HRC lost, he’s slipping. It’s so much more complex than an analysis of sex or color. Panel discussion on local Fox this morning among a white businessman, a black Detroit community organizer, and a Muslim cleric from Dearborn was eye-opening. None were Trump voters, but they seemed to know a lot about why HRC did far less well in Detroit and the large Muslim community in and around Dearborn. But if one needs to hear that it was all about white male racist homophobic misogynists, then that sort of analysis would create cognitive dissonance. OBVIOUSLY, a lot of folks came out of the woodwork to support Trump. But a black woman analyst on NBC said this morning that getting out the Obama vote was presumed to be getting out the HRC vote, only that clearly isn’t how it went. A lot of two-time Obama voters voted for Trump, according to her. She wasn’t happy about it. But she wasn’t in denial.
I didn’t realize I was reading MPG’s note that was embedded in Diane’s. But it sounds like Wikileaks to me.
Damn it, you caught me. I’m Julian Chelsea Snowden-Putin. Curses, foiled again.
“A lot of two-time Obama voters voted for Trump, according to her.”
And that’s exactly what happens when they hear the endless drumbeat of how corrupt Hillary Clinton is. Please explain how Bernie’s platform was so different than the one Hillary had?
It wasn’t. Hillary offered the kind of platform the Bernie supporters should have been thrilled out. But they were not. Because they despised her because she wasn’t Bernie. So they decided to jump on the alt right bandwagon to talk about her corruption and that’s all the media needed to make it true. There was barely a single pro-Hillary article that didn’t reinforce that alt right meme. I was shocked at the NY Times headlines both in August and October when the FBI decided to do their darn best to thwart the election. Corey’s first report should have completely exonerated her and instead it smeared her. And the second — that they got away with it when Hillary had momentum is going to harm this country terribly.
Those two-time Obama voters ALSO voted for right wing Republicans who already proved they didn’t a darn about any of them . They voted for them against progressive Dems. Those republican governors got more votes than Hillary. Where were those blue-collar workers when those Republicans were undermining unions? Oh, I guess it just wasn’t important enough for them to care.
At least be consistent in your argument. If your claim is true, you better start disbanding unions because those same voters keep re-electing Republicans who hate them. Who do what Democrats do x 1,000. Why would you think Bernie could have won when Russ Feingold got FEWER votes than Hillary and Ron Johnson got MORE than Trump?
It’s beyond incredible (yet somehow to be expected) that charter schools, which are helping to re-institute educational segregation and frequently impose the worst kind of patronizing behavior modification upon their students, would be imposing bullying/mind control seminars about white privilege on their teachers. You did well to flee; if only the students would do the same.
But, charters are still not public schools.
Diane I agree! Write on! J. Hausman >
Gains can be eroded or erased, but not history and identity.
The Germans believed in Hitler (and misread Brand). We cannot utter Trump’s name without a poignant smirk, inward and/or outward; we cannot consider his positions without negative psychoanalysis and profound contempt.
Yet we will move on. We will continue to challenge our fake media, fallacious pols and wealthy but imbecilic ideologues.
Diane, Thank you so much for your words. You have helped me more than you will ever know just getting through this time we are in. I agree with every thing you said here…it is so important that we have your voice and that we stay united in our efforts to protect a quality free public education for every child.
Thank you, Diane, for staying true to your beliefs! I will never leave your blog and am deeply concerned about the next 4 years. We will need your voice, and we will need to stick together!
Sincerely, Lisa Lohmann
From: Diane Ravitch’s blog To: golisa@yahoo.com Sent: Friday, November 11, 2016 8:02 AM Subject: [New post] My Last Thoughts About the Election #yiv8609103802 a:hover {color:red;}#yiv8609103802 a {text-decoration:none;color:#0088cc;}#yiv8609103802 a.yiv8609103802primaryactionlink:link, #yiv8609103802 a.yiv8609103802primaryactionlink:visited {background-color:#2585B2;color:#fff;}#yiv8609103802 a.yiv8609103802primaryactionlink:hover, #yiv8609103802 a.yiv8609103802primaryactionlink:active {background-color:#11729E;color:#fff;}#yiv8609103802 WordPress.com | dianeravitch posted: “Several readers have written to say that they were very disappointed that I have spoken ill of the President-elect. They said they would not read the blog any more because I do not share their admiration for our next President. I hate to lose readers, but” | |
I think Rorty must be taken seriously. So must Bernie and his response to the election.
Likewise Diane, your inspirational American Reader, which I often use in my Language and
Comp class. A collection that includes both Reagan’s speech in Moscow and Woody Guthrie’s This Land is your land. American lit and history is not liberal or conservative
but at its best has empathy for the hurting among us.
It’s not over til its over as Yogi said and our dissent from Trump is not
un-American but the opposite.Trump must be confronted in a logical, non violent manner…He lost the popular vote and we still live in a democracy where Dems like
Bernie and Eliz. Warren have a say…we must make sure Rorty’s scenerio will not happen. And 4 years from now, may we elect a president who repudiates
Trumps’ basic unAmerican viewpoint.
Sure thing, Marek, as long as our protest is against what Trump actually does, rather than our hysterical fantasies of what he may do. I can’t believe more people don’t recognize that they are acting exactly like Teabaggers and Republicans after the election (but not inaugurations) of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Also, the violent protests in the last couple of days do smell just a bit too much like the violent protests the far right lunatic fringe threatened if Trump lost, and which all good Americans decried as an attempt at destroying the democratic process and thwarting the will of the people (when, of course, Hillary won, as was ordained).
Pardon me if I refuse to jump on either this protest bandwagon or the one that never formed. Obama didn’t take their guns. Don’t be so sure that Trump will take away gay rights, same-sex marriage, abortion, etc. Maybe he’ll be willing to sign off on the end of Obamacare, but I would only object if it weren’t replaced with something that was actually better and more affordable, or at least one of those two. Right now, I’m lucky to be on medicare and, with my new full-time job (who wants retirement at 66 anyway?) I can afford vision and dental, which I haven’t had for several years.
Let Trump do something protest-worthy and I’ll be there. Not before.
Shorter MPG,
Please do not protest because the President-elect ran on a platform of hatred, racism, xenophobia, and bullying. Please don’t protest about the fact that the American people elected a President who WAS a bully and liar and ran a campaign saying some of the most hateful things a Presidential candidate has ever said and enabled the alt-right and their racism.
None of THOSE actions are protest-worthy. It’s not like they were Hillary-awful or anything.
Let’s give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt of how he has acted his entire life and wait to see what he DOES in the future.
What a shame that MPG could not do the same for Hillary.
Why is that too bad? Would Hillary have won?
^More MPG: and by the way, the people who are protesting Trump based on his own statements and actions and platform during this campaign are no different than the people who hated Obama because Fox News told them he was a Muslim Communist who wanted to take away their guns and private property and establish Sharia law.
Unbelievable.
MPG
Trump has already done things “protest ready “. His entire campaign was just that . Everybody he surrounds himself with makes him “protest ready “. I doubt we will be disappointed in what he delivers .
However if he ejects the small basket of deplorable’s from his digs on the top 3 floor of Trump Tower . i might be tempted to hear what he had to say. In the absence of that I know where this country is headed.
I suspect so do you.
If the racist and anti-Semite Steve Bannon is selected as his chief of staff, no Senate confirmation needed, that will be a signal to us and to the KKK of where we are heading.
Let Trump do something protest-worthy and I’ll be there. Not before.
If you don’t think trump has already done a thousand things over which to protest, you have totally missed the point of all these posts and of Diane’s essay. If we wait till he is actually inaugurated, we have waited too long. His being, actions and affect – genuine or not – is so offensive he must be held accountable. He has produced so much hatred already. He has done a lot that is protest worthy. If you can’t see that, I’m not sure what else to say.
Marek…so glad you are still teaching from a positive stance. All who heard/saw Elizabeth Warren be interviewed by Rachel Maddow yesterday, can take heart that we live in a land where a passionate legislator like Warren can call out the clear faults of a President-elect and swear to the people that she/we will fight him to the mat if he fails to be fair and democratic…and she is still not jailed today. Love her, and Rachel did ask her if she will run 2020…she looked annoyed and just shrugged.
On another note, Marek, since you teach in one of the few cities in America that went bankrupt due to the bankster bandits, do you still have a pension and health insurance? Hope so.
Thank you for expressing my thoughts and fears so eloquently!
i would just add this.
Dr. Ravitch said something previously about the postings on this blog to which I would add this.
Do not gripe here. Make your views known, and in spades, to those politicians who have the power to do something about it.
Make America great again. I concur 100% but the America of ALL Americans not just the top 1% or even .1%.
https://www.google.com/amp/www.nydailynews.com/amp/news/national/king-not-wait-trump-administration-article-1.2869073?client=safari
The reason why Trump and Sanders were so popular is because, although Trump was running on the Republican ticket and Sanders was running on the Democratic ticket, We the Little People knew that Trump wasn’t a Republican and that Sanders wasn’t a Democrat. Both of these candidates were our thumbs in the eyes of the party leaders, The Establishment.
We the Little People have long known that the Republican and Democratic parties are just different brands of Wall Street, like Chevrolet and Buick are different brands of General Motors. Like Chevy and Buick, the Republican and Democratic parties wear different-looking skins on emotional “hot button” issues like abortion, but beneath that skin they are the same on key economic issues like trade agreements, just like beneath their skin all the key components of Chevrolets and Buicks such as engines, transmissions, brakes, A/C systems, computers, etc. are the same.
The trouble now for Trump, as it would also have been for Sanders, is how to deliver on promises when Congress is filled to the brim with Wall Street brands of Republicans and Democrats. The only possible way that Trump can be successful in accomplishing a major overhaul of NAFTA is if he resorts to a direct appeal to voters to move Congress on the issue…but Wall Street also controls the major broadcast and print media, and any appeal directly to We the People would be filtered through that media. And TPP is not about to die, either, because it’s not only favored by the Republican Party’s Wall Street handlers, but also because it’s a strategic necessity to prevent China from gaining a grip on all the China Sea nations and shutting us out. Nevertheless, in its current form, TPP would significantly diminish our national sovereignty and needs revision. And neither party is going to allow the building of the kind of border wall between us and Mexico that Trump talked about because the parties know that the Latino vote is only going to grow ever-more important in future elections, and neither party wants to be labeled as “wall builders” by that growing bloc of voters.
The Republicans in Congress are also aware that Trump lost the popular vote, and that the results of the election most clearly represent the last angry surge of a shrinking segment of the voting public. The Republicans in Congress know that the 2018 mid-term elections could be quite different if they antogonize the growing majority of voters who voted for Clinton.
In fact, there’s nothing that’s going to prevent the United States from relatively soon having a non-white majority population. Nothing. The high birth rate of non-white citizens dictates that non-whites will sooner rather than later outnumber white citizens; and the bulk of white people who voted for Trump are beyond their child-bearing years. So, those who voted for Trump because they read “make America great again” as “make America white again” can only be disappointed with what the future will inevitably bring.
The incestuous, contemptuous “leadership” of the Democratic party deserves all the blame for their brand losing the election. The behind-the-scenes back-stabbing of Senator Sanders is disgusting and a clear indication of how morally corrupt Democratic Party leadership is. The Party’s taking-for-granted of voters in key states like Wisconsin and Michigan reveals the Party leadership’s contempt for voters in general. And the Party’s creation of “superdelegates” to assure that average Democrats could never prevail in a rigged system of Party candidate nomination shows the Party’s utter disregard for and betrayal of basic democracy. It’s the UnDemocratic Party, and it needs a complete housecleaning and fumigation, as well as spinning itself off from Wall Street.
From a historical perspective, I see our nation at this moment in much the same position as it was after the 1857 Dred Scott decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that was the match that lit the fuse of the Civil War. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision lit a match, too, allowing Wall Street and billionaires to basically take over our governmental system. This year’s presidential election upheaval was likely only the beginning of what lies ahead.
To Scisne:
Foods for thought are that your well written expression is half truth and half racism.
IMHO, you should not worry about “skin color”, BUT you should care for the balanced CURRICULUM in PUBLIC EDUCATION from K-12 and Post Secondary Education.
If American education can not instill the spirit in humanity, civility and mutual respect for multicultural citizens in America in all young learners’ mindset, then the Civil War will inevitably break out by all CORRUPTED, SOULLESS, and power driven leaders.
I hope that you are the conscientious educator, and NOT political strategist or professor in college. Back2basic
Thank you for your words. I am having a hard time keeping it together as I try to wrap my head around this election. As I write, he is making plans to privatize social security and take away health care for many. Keep writing, Diane, and we must all keep up the fight for what is right in this world of ours.
I’m so sorry you had feedback from Trump supporters. I wasn’t aware that they could read.
It’s not reading that’s the problem, it’s seeing; they see only what they want to. And hear only what they want to. And let only those speak that they want to. And it’s all evil. Just had to string that together.
I could have made this response to any of dozens of comments here since Tuesday night, so this isn’t personal at all, Greg: I just wonder if you notice that everything you’ve said could readily be said of the echo chamber going on here. People see ONLY what they want to see, won’t consider any other viewpoint, and worse, are vehemently dismissive of dissent. See responses to Rudy, a non-Trump backing member of the GOP. I haven’t read much from him that I would take gigantic issue with, but he’s getting stoned and pilloried here with impunity.
And when you’re in an echo chamber, you notice that the rules are completely different for those who take the majority view than for the dissenters.
My dissent, by the way, is primarily grounded in by pragmatism (you only get to work with the people who actually have the jobs; you can choose how those relationships go, including screaming at them before they take office, and then complain that they’re just as horrible as you knew they’d be. I prefer to see if they are, while trying to unite with people who are actually developing strategies and tactics to employ if they’re at least as bad as we fear. That list starts with Sanders, Gabbard, Turner, Warren (maybe), and some other non-hysterical folks. People who have enough political and emotional experience and maturity to realize that “burning the mother down” preemptively is a losing approach. It may NEVER be a winning approach, but having “been there, done that” at 19, I get why it’s appealing. Just not to adults. Bill Ayers regrets that he couldn’t do more to stop the war in Vietnam. Idiots have insisted that he meant that he wished he could have blown up more people, buildings, or similar actions. I believe he meant that he was frustrated at the relative lack of impact everything he did in SDS had on saving lives at home and abroad. And I share that sentiment. Many of us did a lot of extreme things c. 1968-71, yet the war dragged on. And on. And on. So many stupid, pointless, needless deaths and worse.
So 47 years later, I have a slightly different perspective. I don’t make pointless gestures if there are better options.
Apparently, that’s heretical here. Instead, we have our “Daily Hate” of Donald Trump, as I was accused by some of having towards Hillary Clinton. The difference, if there is one, is that I was trying to expose someone as being non-progressive, neoliberal, not a feminist, not pro-labor, etc. Before she was elected. Yelling about the glaringly obvious (Trump is crude, rude, and perhaps entirely clueless about everything that matters) about the guy who will be the leader of the most powerful nation in history for at least four years).
When pressed to explain the hoped for outcome of this screaming and tearing of hair, I got one response: Flerp! said that people will know what he thinks of Trump. Well, that’s true. I’m not quite sure how that moves anything forward, prevents a single evil deed by Trump and his minions, etc., but it’s certainly honest. I might keep Flerp! from ulcers or a brain bleed, so I can’t say it’s useless. But I think we have options. As I keep saying, don’t mourn, organize. I’ve said it for a long time in the last 18 months or so.
And once again, let me state: the ends never justify the means. The means define both the ends and the actors pursuing them. You don’t beat hate by out hating it. You don’t win hearts and minds of people who voted for Trump with some reasons that to me make sense even if they weren’t sufficient to get ME to do so. My son is grown, my cats don’t need me to make more than I’m making. I’ll live, despite being retirement age, by working another 10-15 years if I can and then hoping to either expire instantly or be living in a fundamentally more humane country. Not leaving unless some fabulous opportunity arises. And certainly won’t be driven away by Trump or the Trump haters who find me insufficiently acceptable from their lights. BFD.
I have to agree with Fed Up Teacher’s comment, “Hillary would have been a horrible president. I disagreed with your support of her. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when a candidate’s slogan is ‘Vote for me because the other guy is even worse.’
I realize that’s sacrilege, but it’s an honest opinion. I couldn’t vote for Trump as FUT did, however. And I have every intention of working to block anything he and his team try that is wrong-headed. I’ll support candidates who oppose him as long as they don’t offer a plan that is horrid in its own way. I’m not going to embrace neoliberalism to fight whatever it is that Trump is supposed to be and maybe really is. Clearly, labeling it doesn’t fight it or make it go away. If it is, in fact, wrongheaded.
Well, I should apologize for my unworthiness, my refusal or inability to be one of the cool kids. Not strangely, I’ve almost always been one of the uncool kids, and when I occasionally got to be one of the cool kids (or was seen as one) I didn’t like it much.
Amazing the amount of blind hatred dissent stirs up here, though. And explains to no small degree while I prefer to be suspicious of monolithic thinkers.
MPG, don’t worry, you are very much part of the cool kids.
The Bernie bros who hate Hillary as much as you did were absolutely the cool kids.
The old fogies like Diane Ravitch who knew Hillary wasn’t as bad as all of you kept insisting that she was were not.
(Sorry, Diane, for calling you an old fogey. I’m an old fogey too, these days — at least I feel like one when I read the Bernie bros Hillary-hating on other websites — these is much less of it here beyond MPG.)
NYC psp,
Old fogey is not such a bad thing. I’ve been called worse.
I fear that we may have elected the man destined to be at least our worst president in history who will be more corrupt that Warren G Harding, more ineffectual than James Buchanan, and thinner skinned than Andrew Jackson! I am praying that we didn’t just elect our last president who will maneuver the nation into a crisis that he will claim will require that he assume dictatorial powers and suspend all future elections. That is what Hitler did after he assumed power! We have been warned by his advisor Rudy Giuliani, who told the Republican National Convention that the Nov 8 election would be our last election.
Kenneth Earl Kolk: I always wonder why some complain about allusions to Hitler’s Germany–so many similar threads in our time. It’s not hyperbole; the similarities to pre-fascist German history are difficult to ignore.
It gets more frightening if you are a 20th Century Military Historian as I am, Look at the newsreel and documentary films from the early Third Reich and you will see the same screaming mobs, who also thought that “He cannot really believe what he wrote in his book or what he is saying.” But, Hitler did! I fear for my country. If we ever get to have another election, we should scream “I want my country back!”
Pence as VP and minister without portfolio, Giuliani as AG, Gingrich at State, Dimon at Treasury, Lucas at Interior (look under your chairs, you get some fracking and you get some fracking, especially in national parks), Bolton at UN again, a Gates DFER at Ed (throw the Dems a bone), a Koch drone at Ag, an Inhofe crony at EPA, a Right-to-Life committee approved head of HHS, Mitch’s wife back at Labor, Fallon at Commerce, a Bannon-bound fascist as press secretary, a Gazprom friendly shill at Energy, plus equal parts of Sessions, Blackburn, Lewandowski, and Biondi thrown into the mix. I may not emerge from my fetal position for some time to come.
Ditto. Greg…and did you see that Gingrich is insisting that they bring back HUAC?
What I find strange is that, in the background of it all, lingers Jared Kushner who Trump said today, would be in the administration.
Seems as though the entire Trump family will work in his administration at the same time they run his business empire
Diane says: “Seems as though the entire Trump family will work in his administration at the same time they run his business empire.”
And that’s what tyrant-kingships have done since before Plato.reflected on them through Socrates– power follows family/bloodline on principle rather than intelligence and excellence, again, as guiding principle. Notice the reversion to tribe–but here, without the relation to the divine-beyond. In other words: fascism, as Michael Moore says, the next stage has a smiling face.
KEK: just what the Teabaggers and GOP “worried” about re: Barack Obama, twice. Yet they still have their guns. They worried about it re: Hillary (the guns part), but they should have worried about the nukes part. Maybe some actually got that and her predilection for a return to the Cold War, maybe with a little “hot sauce” on top.
We’ve been hearing at least since the Watergate hearings about how the current POTUS will suspend elections, invoke martial law (or marital law) and we’ll be in a fascist or communist state. Hasn’t happened or come close to happening as far as we know. Unless we take Eisenhower’s viewpoint: the military-industrial complex has been running the country for decades. In which case, Trump-haters, Obama-haters, et al., are looking in the wrong place.
Jimmy Kimmel had the five stages of Donald Trump election grief. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4o1jrzuPi0
Pretty funny.
Good job, Diane. We all have to come together and protect our American heritage from this monster – there have been other US presidents this bad but not in our lifetime. Fortunately, he will only be around for four years (God forbid eight) and since he’s such a narcissist he could do something to get impeached. In the meantime we have to use this time to teach empathy and decency to our kids and we must keep fighting to keep for-profit out of public education. Anyway, thanks – your voice is needed now more than ever to stand united against this “something wicked that comes our way way.”
My lessons from the election cycle thus far are the discoveries of profound undercurrents of racism and bigotry in our society. Many of our citizens suffer deeply from a perception of disenfranchisement. The rest of us inhabit a bubble universe where we interact only in passing with those so aggrieved. My education has granted me access to privileges not universally shared. Though I would like to view myself as a champion of the underdog, there is a large swath of the underdog community with whom I share no common ground. Hillary Clinton might be considered more out of touch with the real America than I am if her residence in the guilded cage is taken into consideration. We stand at a fork in the road in our history as we commence our journey down the “road less traveled.”
Diane: You are my hero. Thank you for your thoughtful words.
Bravo.
Thank you Diane. Eloquent and heartfelt. Thank you.
Diane: I respect your right to call ’em as you see ’em. I have been a teacher in a public school district in Huntington, LI, NY for 33 years and I voted for Trump. Is he an embarrassment? Yes. But, I consider Hillary to be much worse. She has been a charter school cheerleader for decades, voted for many pieces of legislation that proved to be terrible for teachers, students and parents, failed to convince me that she has learned any lessons when it comes to the issues important to all of us and she wouldn’t even meet with you for a substantive discussion about matters near and dear to all of us.
Hillary would have been a horrible president. I disagreed with your support of her. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when a candidate’s slogan is “Vote for me because the other guy is even worse.”
But, while I voted for Trump, I voted against my own Republican state Senator, who also happens to be the Senate Majority Leader. His father was a public school science teacher, his three kids all graduated from the local public high school, his wife currently works at that same high school, but he’s an avowed enemy of public school teachers, supports the Endless Testing Regime, is a shameless charter school promoter, was the floor manager of the punitive teacher evaluation bill, weakened the pensions of new hires, supported lengthening a teacher’s probationary period to an absurdly long four years and rakes in literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in charter school campaign monies and then uses them to pay for his car, food, phone, etc. – even “holiday gifts” according to his campaign finance disclosure forms.
I would never think of quitting the blog. You are one of my heroes, Diane. While we may disagree on some political matters, we also agree on an awful lot and we are of one mind when it comes the educational issues of the times we now find ourselves in.
To Fed Up Teacher:
How vulnerable and contradict you feel!
Maybe, educator like you, the “NO” public education’s policy from tRump is much better than to HAVE A CHANCE to stop all FAKE “public” Charter schools which is almost gone up to smoke.
Thank you for your confession which MPG keeps glorifying “giving a chance to WIPE OUT democracy!
I am too old and too sick to type as much as my free spirit to allow me. However, Dr. Ravitch’s heartfelt expression is a profound wisdom and her eloquent written motivates me to read every reply in this thread.
Good luck on NO ELECTION in the future that you are proud to vote. Also, best wishes to all of your children and grand children to be in 21st century Civil War if the suppression will be too much to suffer. Back2basic
It’s The End Of The World As We Know It
That’s great! It starts with an earthquake
Birds and snakes, an aeroplane, and Lenny Bruce is not afraid
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn
World serves its own needs, don’t misserve your own needs
Feed it up a knock, speed, grunt, no, strength
The ladder starts to clatter with a fear of height, down, height
Wire in a fire, represent the seven games
And a government for hire and a combat site
Left her, wasn’t coming in a hurry with the Furies breathing down your neck
Team by team, reporters baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped
Look at that low plane, fine, then
Uh-oh, overflow, population, common group
But it’ll do, save yourself, serve yourself
World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed
Tell me with the Rapture and the reverent in the right, right
You vitriolic, patriotic, slam fight, bright light
Feeling pretty psyched
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine
Six o’clock, TV hour, don’t get caught in foreign tower
Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn
Lock him in uniform, book burning, bloodletting
Every motive escalate, automotive incinerate
Light a candle, light a motive, step down, step down
Watch your heel crush, crush, uh-oh
This means no fear, cavalier, renegade and steering clear
A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies
Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives, and I decline
It’s the end of the world as we know it (I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine (It’s time I had some time alone)
I feel fine (I feel fine)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine (It’s time I had some time alone)
The other night I dreamt a nice continental drift divide
Mountains sit in a line, Leonard Bernstein
Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce, and Lester Bangs
Birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, boom
You symbiotic, patriotic, slam but neck, right? Right
It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine (It’s time I had some time alone)
I appreciate your honesty, Fed UP, and would not insult you for being a Trump voter. I hope you offer us ongoing input as to how you see the world, politics, and education.
It is only with open conversation between people of good will, IMO and as a mediator, can problems be aired, and perhaps come to a mutual resolution. I am glad we can look forward to your voice here in the future.
I learned in yet another mediation training years ago from a team from Israel, that there is no such thing as conflict resolution, but there can be growth toward peace by conflict management.
this did not post the first time…so I rewrote it and tried again…sorry that there are two…oh well….
Fed UP…I am glad you will be here to input to your views on the new administration, and would never chide you for your current vote despite how differently I see the current political scenario.
As a mediator of long duration, I learned long ago in a Continuing Education training course taught by two Israeli mediators, that it is generally impossible to reach Conflict Resolution, but rather to aim for Conflict Management.
I welcome your views ongoing, and look forward to seeing where we agree and where we differ. People of good will, without malice, can effect conflict management….particularly educators who work as collaborators.
Fed Up Teacher,
I appreciate your candor. You are aware that Trump wants to abandon public education?
Diane, your views on education and doing what’s right for children and public schools have been well-documented for years. It should come as no surprise to readers of your blog that you can not support the president-elect. his lack of knowledge and attention to details is one of the many disqualifiers for the highest position in the land. Again his desire to privatize education and take money away from public schools is a nonstarter. It will be up to teachers and their representatives to continue to oppose him and anyone who is willing to compromise the education and futures of our children for profit.
Thank you. Germany found out the hard way from 1933-1945.
When I compared trump’s behavior in this blog, I was told that I did not know what I was talking about. That I should go back and read my history books. I was even given a reading list!
Obviously I am not the only one who has heard the similarities. And I’m not even a Democrat or Sanders supporter!!
And check out what Stephen Colbert said to tell the children about Trump – priceless!
Colbert Don’t Move to Canada Just yet –
Thank you for a giggling from Gtephen Colbert. Back2basic
Sorry, Stephen, not Gtephen
To Michael Paul Goldenberg on your writing on November 11, 2016 at 6:17 pm;
You are obviously an educator in political subject and fall for Gingrich’s advice which is “take a chance on the bully and the addict”. According to the “new president-elect”, he has GLEEFULLY admitted that he bullied blacks, women, and illegal immigrants throughout his career in business. Also, he has addicted to all beautiful women by his indecent behaviors.
I admit that I am an immigrant with degree in Sociology and minor in Psychology. I am also an electrician who worked with many different cultural and educational males and females. Through 50+ years working years in both VN and Canada, I have solidly learned that there is NO HOPE and NO CHANCE to see the bully, the addict will truly have a decency or a remorse for damages that they impose upon the innocent.
The bully and the addict will go to the extent that the power they have on the victim. They are coward and ONLY intimidated by LAWS or by PUPPET MASTER.
If you keep defending to give a chance to the new president-elect and his administrative staff, then you do not have a conscience and a belief in humanity by nature. Yes, you have been DUPE as you confess. Back2basic
Sure, but that’s just another rhetorical question as far as I can see. What could I say that hasn’t been said so much better by the echo chamber here? I have no crystal ball, but I’ve read enough dystopian fiction (I love Philip K. Dick, for example) and “alternative history” that I could cook up all sorts of awful scenarios. To what purpose? I can’t amplify on the paranoia in the room. And you know that. So is this another shibboleth? Sorry. Not playing. You’ll just have to trust me or kill me.
A rather different take on the anti-Trump protesters from someone who might be further left that most here: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/11/11/the-anti-trump-protesters-are-tools-of-the-oligarchy-paul-craig-roberts/
Thank you for the link, MPG.
I was not born yesterday, and I am lucky enough that my long term memory is still intact after a MILD stroke (= short term memory is not sharp enough to retain all new info).
Have you known that I overuse the word “GULLIBILITY”?
All theoretical knowledge is manipulated for the individual gain. We need to have a critical analysis in each theory.
For example:
You recommend the link that you blindly follow without a question.
Why cannot you pose a question that why the power prefers have tRump over Hillary? You are professor by career.
You might not want to control ANY HARD HEADED WOMAN as in Cat Steven’s song. This is the reason for us to see male offspring in all wealthy families are lusty and druggy from model mother(s) who use lust to have wealth and power, and vice-versa in case of intelligent girl who is in love with gangster to have notorious female children. Of course, you can cite some special case to counteract my reason. Please examine the background of all male and female terrorists or corrupted entrepreneurs to figure out their parental background.
According to the aphorism: “good deed returns good deed, evil follows evil” or “apple does not fall far from its tree” or “fruits are from its trees,” and I hope that you agree with me about the universal law of cause and effect. Would you set bad example in daily working and expect to have children with kindness and intelligence? NO, it would never happen, but the reversed cases can happen (In this strange case, I can explain that the fabricated and faked to be good parents in lip-service might have bad children from their true bad spirit)
You can blindly trust some political expert without examining his/her PERSONAL background = living lifestyle, habit, and his/her working condition… Not me, I do not blindly follow people for their fame, or fortune, or popularity, BUT their GOOD DEEDS through their kind words, their sincere charity, and their pleasant humane manners.
I hope that you consider my idea as the old school idea where is solidly educated by Confucius and Buddha in the Oriental civilization.
Back2basic
To all readers in this particular thread:
I have read every expression with my reply to some writers.
I miss seeing some familiar writers like, Susan Lee Schwartz, Lloyd Lofthouse, KrazyTA, Dienne and many more…
From Dr. Ravitch’s mind, soul, experience and wisdom, I would like to repeat one sentence and one paragraph that all conscientious people should reconsider to pass around and to cultivate all young learners
[start quote]
1) “The most hopeful way to look at this grievous event—and it’s a stretch—is that this election and the years to follow will be a test of the strength, or the fragility, of American institutions. It will be a test of our seriousness and resolve.”
2) “I want America to be America.
I want it to be a land of liberty and justice for all.
I want my grandchildren to learn what I tried to teach my children: kindness, compassion, a commitment to fairness, a love of justice, and a willingness to defend the underdog.
I want them to aspire to be good people. I want them to treat others with respect for their individuality and humanity.”
[end quote]
I hope that million of readers will begin to donate their minimum or what ever they could afford to NPE’s fund so that Dr. Ravitch can sponsor
1) more experts to the seminar in annual NPE conference, or
2) to deliver some specific BASIC AMERICAN legal seminars to all readers for self-educating in this website. Back2basic
I don’t agree with everything on this blog, but I really respect that you allow readers to comment. I’ve learned a lot from this blog and the many readers.
I agree with all Diane. Well put and thank you.
People with compassion and love for their fellow human beings will continue to read and enjoy your blog. Those now in control are dividers and demonizers, and many of those middle and working class who voted for them will soon come to realize their mistake. There will be pain.
http://usuncut.com/politics/bernie-sanders-would-have-crushed-trump/
Oh, and regarding the oppo and red-baiting: would have enjoyed seeing how that would have played out in the general as people got a chance to see Sanders in contrast to Trump. But the red-baiting had already been tried: by Team Clinton and Hillary’s most fanatical supporters.
So Team Clinton, wanting to represent the DEMOCRATIC PARTY, ran on the notion that Bernie was an insane, cranky old Socialist and that Trump was a tool of Russia. Hmm. Red-baiting, red-baiting, where have I seen that in the last 18 months? Oh, right. From the DNC and its chosen savior. Who proceeded to fail and to help bring down a lot of excellent down-ballot folks. I got your red-baiting right heeyah.
Was/Is Bernie also a tool of Putin? Tulsi Gabbard? Nina? Zephyr? It’s hard to keep track of all the tools of Putin here in the USA. Why, I bet Sec. Clinton has a list of 52 KNOWN Tools of Putin working in Washington right now!
MPG,
If Putin declared in public that Russian intelligence agencies hacked into DNC files and gave them to Wikileaks, would you believe him? Or would you accuse him of Red-baiting?
Silly rhetorical questions are becoming rife here, And that one begs the key relevant point, if the leaked material is authentic, why do I care who got it or how?
MPG,
You may not care, but many people including me think it would be outrageous if a foreign power hacked into and manipulated our election.
I find it interesting that some people are furious at the DNC for rigging the primaries, but seem nonplussed that the general election may have also been rigged by foreign actors. And I don’t think the authenticity of the emails matters, any more than if a thief broke into your house and computer and dumped all your private affairs, documents and embarrassing photos on the desk of your potential boss. Who among us would look 100% pure under such scrutiny? (I’m assuming that Trump might not have fared so well under the same scrutiny.)
Agreed, Steve.
I was surprised that the FBI did not investigate the hacking of the DNC files. Maybe they are, and they are keeping it a secret. That was exactly what started Watergate and led to Nixon’s impeachment. Yet the Russians steal campaign files, and that’s no big deals. At least the head of the CIA said they did, which was assume is an informed source.
Bernie Sanders was asked about the gossip about his, and he said if they hacked his campaign files, there would be the same gossip about Hillary.
There was a lot of rigging and dirty tricks.
And we end up with a buffoon as president.
Several years ago, hacking took place in some government computers, and a lot of personal information of government employees was grabbed.
Nothing was announced until quite a while after the event, because of the ongoing investigation.
Saying The Russians Did It is fun – but not necessarily accurate.
Being partially responsible for network security, finding out who is REALLY responsible is not as easy as shown on tv.
Even for the head of the CIA it is not easy or accurate. And the language used was vague…
Rudy, it was not only the director of the CIA. It was the heads of 17 different government.
Since the director of the CIA was mentioned, I used him in my response.
But none of the 17 would make an outright statement that indeed the Russians were definitely responsible.
New York Times
““We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the statement said..”
In the same article the reference is to “high confidence…”
So, the 17 are NOT sure that indeed it was a Russian hack. Not only that, but according to the same article, Obama was very careful in picking his time to make the statement – just before the second debate.
“Two days ahead of the second presidential debate, the announcement also puts the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, more on the defensive over his assertion last month that Mr. Putin is a better leader than Mr. Obama.”
It was a political move, to help Clinton and hinder trump.
Nonsense, Rudy.
Who are the “some people” of whom you speak, Steve? I’m still trying to figure out a conspiracy among Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and the FBI (and where is the NSA and the CIA, for starters, while all this chicanery is going on?) Why is Wikileaks suddenly so irresponsible and credulous, after years of vetting the hell out of what they leak? Is it only because it helped reveal that Team Clinton was just as vile and repugnant as many progressives suspected from early in the pre-primary season? Why didn’t the FBI launch an investigation into who was posting links to child pornography on Sanders-supporting Facebook groups, causing them to be shut down? And it isn’t like the identity of the perpetrator was hard to discover, yet he faces no charges.
But here’s my view: the election wasn’t interfered with by “foreign actors.” Leaks came from inside the DNC and/or the Clinton Team. And regardless, no one in the DNC or Clinton staff has denied the authenticity of the leaked emails. And that means the issue remains what they said and did, not who revealed it. At least for me. I don’t care that “Deep Throat” led Woodward and Bernstein to the truth about Nixon and Watergate. I am eternally grateful to him for doing so. But wasn’t he a “traitor”? Shouldn’t we all have been outraged at his betrayal of the President of the United States? Ditto Daniel Ellsberg, that monster spy/criminal, for leaking the Pentagon Papers to the Times, laying bare much of the evil that went into the needless, pointless war on Vietnam. Hang Deep Throat and Ellsberg by their toes in the public square! Not this Billy Clyde Puckett; to me they are heroes, as are Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden.
“But here’s my view: the election wasn’t interfered with by “foreign actors.” Leaks came from inside the DNC and/or the Clinton Team.”
Your’re doing what you’ve been belittling others of: substituting your opinion for fact. The fact is that 14 intelligence agencies on October 7 put out a statement implicating Russians and the Russian government. Not my opinion. Fact. You might not like it. You might distrust it. But you can’t refute it, other than with your own non-fact-based opinion.
And you deflect the central argument, which is that a thief broke into one of two houses to tar one of two opponents. And the big difference between this and the Pentagon Papers is that there was transparency. We know it was Daniel Ellsburg, and we can judge him and his motives accordingly.
Publishing embarrassing tax documents was ok? Embarrassing video footage?
Who sent Trump’s tax documents? They weren’t stolen. Some think it was second wife Marla Maples, who got a really awful divorce settlement. $1 million from a billionaire. Trump alone is responsible for comments he made with a live mic on his collar. Sometimes the truth hurts..in his case, it didn’t. Apparently lots of guys thought his crude talk admirable.
Once again, goose gander stuff. If it was wrong to leak clintons email and such, it was wrong to use stuff on trump.
What bothers me more than anything? That politics in general have come to a level where throwing mud is acceptable and has become the norm.
Some are better at it than others – like with everything else.
Guess they weren’t embarrassing enough, Rudy.
Not really equivalent, though, and not unearthed by a foreign government, as far as we know.
But I thought that conservatives were against foreign influences in our country? Or is the whole UAAC and McCarthy and “he’s a socialist!” just a fever dream on my part?
Steve,
Joe McCarthy must be spinning in his grave
Hopefully as outrageous as when America messes with the internal politics of other countries?
What matters is whether the material leaked is real or fraudulent. No one on Team Clinton ever said or hinted at it’s being faked.
I have asked before and not seen an answer: Daniel Rosenberg is a hero or a villain to you? How about “Deep Throat”? I don’t think you can condemn Wikileaks without addressing others who have leaked information in the cause of exposing true evil on the part of this country and its government.
If Putin invented the content that Wikileaks released, then they are stupid and he is a genius of propaganda and manipulation. However, as I’ve posted here, one of the greatest experts in cyber-espionage this country has thinks that the Russians had nothing to do with the leaks, but rather one or more disgruntled people inside the DNC and the Clinton staff. Ockham’s razor. All this cloak and dagger stuff and the relentless blaming of Russia and Putin smells. And it smells wrong, retro (back to the ’50s), and of a woman and campaign team that can’t own their own short-sightedness, arrogance, and sense of inevitability. Why didn’t she go to Wisconsin after the primaries? How did she manage to lose PENNSYLVANIA? Until Democrats take an honest look at those losses and the loss of Michigan, they’ll be back in the 1980s and 2000s, unable to have any influence to speak of in American government and politics. I won’t back that sort of blind stupidity and willful ignorance.
As for why there are outbreaks of racism and ethnic hatred, that’s not really a mystery. It’s the same stuff that we have been carrying for centuries, just rearing its ugly head at a time when economic issues dovetailed with the usual blaming of “the Other.” Will it be open season on minorities, women, GLBTQ? No more than usual. We’re just suddenly super sensitive to “proof” that Trump is leading us to hate-filled, racist, narrow-minded fascism. Maybe he is, and we must fight that – intelligently and successfully with full fierceness. As long as we actually distinguish with accuracy what’s going on. I don’t think Trump’s election was primarily about race, etc., nor did he create the people who are doing these attacks. Or did he also create the group of kids in Chicago who viciously and mercilessly beat the stuffing out of a white man because “he voted Trump”? If I were attacked in Detroit for having Sanders’ stickers in my car and/or being white, would that be Trump’s fault, or an indication that some people think they have the right to brutalize those who are not (apparently) the same as they are, not human, not deserving of the right to be different or to hold different views. This isn’t about Trump. It’s about 400+ years of rule and conquest by fear and violence upon which white people and their non-white accomplices and slaves built this country on stolen land and the corpses of its indigenous people. Trump didn’t start it. And Hillary wasn’t going to stop it any more than Obama did or seemed all that interested in doing. He ignored Detroit. He abandoned Flint to its fate. The whole country has much to answer for.
Maybe Hillary could have stopped it. Maybe we needed someone like her to try. I sure would have liked to see if she could make things better.
You act like the wikileaks gave you some incriminating evidence of Hillary’s guilt. It didn’t. Not the DNC’s. Not Hillary’s. The only people who believed that hated her so much — like you they were consumed with hatred for her — that they could do nothing but insist they had evidence of evil. There were no actions. There were only e-mails. And not the emails that said “we can’t do that, we need to be fair”. Nope, those e-mails weren’t released. Only the ones designed to make Hillary look bad. Anyone with any perspective understands that.
As Bernie said, if you had hacked his campaign’s e-mails you might have found e-mails that – taken out of context – looked just as bad. Talk of how they knew of debate questions in advance. Some stupid minion’s talk about how they could “get” Hillary that never happened. Some slur that seemed racial by some minion that was used as proof that Bernie was a racist. The same people who thought Bernie was great also thought he was co-opted by the Hillary campaign. They refuse to believe that he wasn’t. They refuse to believe that he was just smart and not blinded by the same extreme Hillary-hatred that you have.
Some day – and that day may never come – someone may call upon you to get your head out of the ground. But until that day, accept this reality on the day of my first day off of the week:
I don’t hate Hillary Clinton. I hate her politics. I hate neoliberalism. I hate her privileged exploitation of poor and disadvantaged people in foreign countries (start with Haiti), her callous disregard for the citizens of Libya, Syria, etc., her smug reaction to the death of Khaddafi (regardless of my opinion of him!): we came, we saw, he died [smirk], her dismissal of those supporting Trump with the election-losing word “Deplorables, and her rejection of the progressives who backed Sanders. She didn’t need us.
So stop pointing the finger for her loss at Russian, Putin, Wikileaks, Assange, progressives, Sanders, men (because, of course, there were no women for Bernie, and if there were they were self-hating), the position of the stars, and whatever other nonsensical scapegoats you use to keep yourself from looking how and why she lost.
Ask about those two words/phrases I cited. Ask about “pied piper” candidates. Ask about dirty tricks and tactics in the primaries. Ask about why millions believe she stole or rigged or unfairly slanted the primary process (dates, order of states, debate number and timing to minimize news impact and viewership, etc.).
And in the end, she still couldn’t win. In the popular vote at last count, she is up by slightly less than .48 % or less than one-half of one percent of the counted votes. Not all that prepossessing, particularly when you note that she lost 60% of the states.
But then, democracy is not fair. That is to say, voting schemes are not fair and NEVER CAN BE. Any democratic system of voting will always be unfair to some people or at least potentially so. Read about Arrow’s Theorem as a starting place for election theory. Read about theories/methods of apportionment, also just about impossible to “get right.”
It’s a tough world, but my refusal to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, but rather for Sanders didn’t make her lose. Sorry, but it’s not exactly my fault. Most people I know who said that they backed Sanders voted for her.
MPG,
You either hate Hillary, or you were fooled by the alt right. Two things you wrote are truly shocking to me — they could have been written by the alt right themselves:
her dismissal of those supporting Trump with the election-losing word “Deplorables, and her rejection of the progressives who backed Sanders…”
In fact, Hillary’s deplorables remark was specifically telling her funders that only some of the people voting for Trump were deplorable (which is absolutely true unless you want to start doing you usual “well the ku klux klan isn’t really so bad” nonsense.)
She said exactly what everyone here keeps claiming that she just didn’t understand. But she did. She pointed out that there were lots of people voting for Trump who were feeling abandoned because nothing had been done for them and they were hurting and not racist or xenophobic. She WANTED to address their issues. And they are going to lose out because people who hated her so much couldn’t grab onto the “deplorable” fast enough to pretend she was saying the opposite of what her speech was.
And in terms of Hillary’s “rejection of those who backed Sanders”. Hello? Did you actually READ the platform? Did you actually see that unlike every other Democrat who you claim you voted for who pivoted RIGHT after the primary, Hillary pivoted left. She pivoted TO Sanders. The fact that the Bernie Bros somehow decided she “rejected THEM” and took it all personally is all about hate. And everything you just wrote tells me how much you despised her.
How did she “reject” progressives when she adopted so much of Bernie’s platform? I challenge you to name another Democratic primary winner who incorporated as much of the loser’s ideas into her did as Hillary did. But I guess the Bernie Bros took it all so personally because it was never about the ideas — it was about them being pandered to in the manner that they decided they deserved.
Do you know what is the most sad? My kid and my kid’s friends worked for Bernie. They were truly disillusioned when he lost. But then they looked at the bigger picture and started to read. And pay attention. Without the Hillary-hatred of their elders. Believe me when I tell you that these kids are not going to support Hillary because their parents tell them she is okay — that’s more likely to make them suspicious. But they all started paying attention and realized for themselves that the Hillary -haters were lying as much as Trump was. How sad that these kids who weren’t even old enough to vote were not as blinded by hatred as people who should have known better. It wasn’t just criticism as Obama got. It was something far beyond that. Because when I see you repeating that alt right meme about deplorables, I just give up. I should never have wasted my time trying to get you to stop posting your nasty non-stop anti-Hillary posts before the election. You needed to do it for your own reasons. I really do not understand why.
The difference between remarks – only a matter of numbers.
Trump made a remark about immigrants from Mexico that was the first reason I could not vote for him.
Mexico sends us their rapists, murderers, drug dealers… o, I’m sure some of them are good people…
Clintons remark was. “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables..”
The context of the remarks makes no difference unless you want to make the case that it’s okay to have speeches for different audiences where one can be disparaging remarks like that (in private) and the public speeches where such things are only thought and not spoken.
At least trump did not hide his feelings in private speeches…:-((
Rudy wrote: “At least trump did not hide his feelings in private speeches”
As far as we know. Which will never be enough regardless of who is in, barring a POTUS who dedicates her/his presidency to maximizing transparency. Sanders would have been more transparent than any POTUS in a very, very long time, but not 100%, for obvious limitations of the office itself (see Andrew Bacevich’s work in this regard).
HRC, on the other hand, was the model of opacity as a politician and even before that. Your stated reason for not being able to vote for Trump is like my #1 reason not voting for HRC: quiet service on the board of Walmart. Never criticized that demon corporations myriad crimes and sins. What sort of progressive or even slightly liberal person could do that? What kind of human being could?
Trump has been a horse’s ass more often than not. And yet he might fool everyone, at least a lot more frequently than people imagine. I have this feeling that a lot of GOP folks who now think they’ve got it made are about to receive multiple surprises from the guy they openly reviled and attacked and abandoned publicly.
Rudy: About comparing comments: (1) Clinton’s deplorables and (2) Trump’s Mexican rapists crossing the border. There is a general equivalence, but not a particular one in this instance of these two people. In this instance, a raft of other evidence–a history of it–points to that comparison being just another false equivalence. And most of the evidence comes from Trump’s own mouth and not as “press bias” or a democratic-now slime machine.
I don’t think you are ignorant–far from it; but rather willfully involved in a gross oversight, in this case, of how intelligence and history actually work. We’ve been watching Trump do his low-life and now fascist-thing for a very long time, which came through, as example, loud and clear in a certain bus interview, not to mention every time he speaks. It’s not mistakes and a few oversights made into a tempest in a teapot or without reason, but rather it’s constant examples of the Trump way of life. Though I still believe in the potential for moral conversion in anyone, it would be stupid of me or anyone else, I suggest, to think of him otherwise. Clinton really did mean the KKK and extremists ready for fitting for their Brown Shirts, and not all of his followers. I don’t think you are stupid, but I do think claiming these people’s statements are equivalent is.
Clinton funders conclusion
“Mrs. Clinton lost narrowly in several battleground states, and by the time all ballots are counted, she appears poised to win the popular vote by more than two million votes.
Still, Mrs. Clinton’s instinct to shun any personal responsibility angered some Democrats. Several donors on the call, while deeply bitter about Mr. Comey’s actions, said they believed that Mrs. Clinton and her campaign had suffered avoidable missteps that handed the election to an unacceptable opponent. They pointed to the campaign’s lack of a compelling message for white working-class voters and to decisions years ago by Mrs. Clinton to use a private email address at the State Department and to accept millions of dollars for speeches to Wall Street.”
Rudy,
I think Comey gave the election to Trump.
Double-standard at work again.
I totally agree with you, Diane and wish more then anything right now that the Washington Post would connect the dots among call me Giuliani Fannin and FOXNews to name a few. It is very obvious to me that something has been going on. Where are Woodward and Bernstein when you really need them?
Rudy: about the e-mails, I think we all forget that ever since Carl Rove came on the scene in Texas (at least that’s a singular starting point), the RSM (Republican Slime Machine) has been at work, and is notoriously careless about what it sets about to slime. If so (and it’s so), then it doesn’t matter–if it weren’t the e-mails, it would have been something else. The rule of selection is not based in intelligence and moral comportment. Rather, it’s “whatever sticks” in the consciousness of the American people, in this case, about Hillary.
Remember that most of those in Congress were similarly unconcerned and worked their communications similarly; and if I remember correctly, so did Colin Powell who gave Hillary advice about it (privately–HAH!). and, as only briefly reported a couple of months ago, the Bush administration deleted 22 million e-mail communications that took place over his 8 years, concerning Iraq.
Remember Swift-boating: Who thought that John Kerry could be criticized for having received a Purple Heart.
He was not in trouble because if the Purple Heart, but because of his inconsistent behavior. While in uniform, protesting against the war.
Rudy,
As I said, there will always be some Democrats who blame the candidate. Many Bernie bros did it BEFORE the election. They blamed Gore, Dukakis, Kerry, Carter, Mondale, and that nasty Hubert Humphrey. And they ignore how much their opponents were able to turn those losing candidates into caricatures of themselves. Sometimes with help from the left (Humphrey, Gore, Hillary Clinton) and sometimes without. And those losses led to great harm, but the left is very content because they KNOW it was just a “bad candidate” and their perfect one is just around the corner to save us all.
I am dismayed that the FBI seems to be getting away with the smearing of the candidate. The Republicans convened a dozen plus committee “investigations” to smear her which didn’t work — but then they got the FBI involved to investigate the non-crime that was also committed by Rice, Cheney, Powell, Rove, and dozens of high ranking Republican and Democrat staffers.
Every time I hear a DEMOCRAT repeat nonstop about Hillary’s “bad judgement” in using her own server, I think: “Wow, I guess she should have had the good judgement to use the AOL server like Powell. Or the gmail server like some other Republicans. Or the truly good judgement to use the DNC server like Rove! If only she had simply said “nope, go away, I refuse to give you a darn e-mail and I deleted them all anyway” like Powell, Cheney, Rove, etc. Then maybe Hillary wouldn’t be accused of that corrupt cover-up due to her crooked nature that Powell and Rice always get a pass on. So many Democrats got played and the alt right laughed right to near complete power. And they can’t wait to do the Warren investigation of how she got ahead by lying about being a Native American and every other non-scandalous thing they can trump up, or a Bernie investigation for his wife’s stealing a college assets to benefit Bernie or some other trumped up crime that isn’t a “crime” until Democrats do it.
It could just as easily be argued that Hillary showed good judgement by using her own server and not AOL like Powell. and I guarantee that if the situation had been reversed — Hillary using AOL and Powell being concerned enough with National Security that he made sure his e-mails were unhackable — Hillary would have been “investigated” for using AOL. Those of you attacking her do not get it. And that’s what scares me. You gave Republicans and the FBI complete power to criminalize Democrats behavior to subvert and election and they are barely getting called on it. Where are the investigations? Obama has 6 weeks to demand it and he should be doing it.
Somehow Republicans do outrageously illegal things in office and get a pass. Bush/Cheney met with big energy donors and DID play. Those donors re-wrote the legislation that became LAW. Meanwhile certain Bernie bots join with the alt right to convince the media to repeat the mantra that Hillary’s not really “appearance” of impropriety is all the evidence we need to know she is crooked through and through.
MPG,
I pointed you to an article written by an Arkansas reporter who is no friend to the Clintons and is a long-time critic. But unlike you and the rest of the Bernie cool kids who hated Hillary, this writer cared about the truth. Hillary’s wal mart service was not how you characterize it and he knew it. But when you hate Hillary, everything she does is evil. When you love Bernie, you overlook how his wife took a salary that put her in the 1% to run a private college into the ground and she misled banks and government backed loans by asserting she had private pledges that never materialized in order to get a huge loan that the college should not have gotten. In Vermont. Where I’m sure her connection to Bernie was completely irrelevant.
Do I think Bernie and his wife were crooked and lied about the donors to get huge bank loans which they should not have gotten? Of course not. You refused to read about how Hillary was on the Wal Mart board before its most reprehensible practices started (before Sam died) and how she tried to change it. Is she perfect? no. Is this corrupt? No more than Sanders’ wife was. Some people might even compare a woman trying to make the Wal Mart board better with a couple who got rich while shutting down a college serving lots of low-income students and say “hmmm.”
Just because Bernie was temporarily immune to the alt-right smears does not mean he will be in the future. But maybe the rest of us won’t be as consumed by complete and utter hatred as you are and we won’t help them do it. You and your cool kids constant mantra that Hillary was NO BETTER than Trump will lead to the following:
A Supreme Court that had a chance to turn left and instead will probably be even more extreme right that in the past.
All kinds of anti-union legislation, all kinds of anti-environmental legislation, all kinds of gutting of regulations.
And you will continue to console yourself that what Hillary would do would be just as bad. Because “wal mart”.
The left helped the alt right do their dirty work in this election. Maybe their dirty work would have succeeded by itself, but I doubt it. This election was very close. And all it took was a little left wing Hillary hated to get the media to tell those blue collar voters that Hillary was bad. Not bad like the Republicans they keep re-electing of course! Because those Republicans are not so bad and they love those white folks so much and that’s why those white folks feel so good about re-electing them all the time. Nope, Hillary was corrupt and “even the Bernie voters” will tell them over and over how corrupt and awful she is. Nothing to do but vote Trump. and of course, those right wing Republicans who love them so much that they keep trying to make unions illegal. It all makes so much sense until it doesn’t. The only thing that makes sense is the pure and utter hatred of Hillary that those white voters had. They didn’t care one whit that the Republican senators and governors who they handily re-elected were destroying their jobs. Ask yourself why.
“A Supreme Court that had a chance to turn left and instead will probably be even more extreme right that in the past.”
Forgive for being ignorant. But I thought the Supreme Court was supposed to be above both left and right?
Their job is to interpret the law, no matter what the politicians want?
Rudy,
You are not ignorant, you are naive. I learned in civics class in high school or junior high school that the Supreme Court follows the election returns
Well, since I had to make due without the civics classes and had to learn about these things in order to take a test whether or not I was citizen worthy, I guess I will have to work from the description in the constitution.
Seems like the Supreme Court really got away from what the intent was.
Rudy, I don’t know when you got here, but the far-right bias of the SCOTUS until Scalia died has been a major bone of contention in the news for about 3 decades, give or take a couple of years. Doesn’t take a civics class. Part of it is pure hypocrisy on the part of the furtherest right judges: they call themselves “originalists” when it suits them – they want every decision to follow the so-called intentions of the Founding Fathers. But that’s always a matter of perspective and in part relies on mind-reading (and part on which writing you look at and how you interpret it). But even if we could agree that they have the right to be those kinds of judges, it’s highly doubtful that it’s what they do, other than when they want to set aside or prevent implementation of progressive decisions and laws.
When it has suited their purposes, they’ve been precisely the sort of activist judges that they decry when less conservative courts and justices have held sway. In other words, they’re full of it.
The worst was Scalia and his lapdog, Thomas. One is dead, the other merely brain-dead. But brain-dead judges do continue to serve. So we have a deadlock until the open position is filled. It’s doubtful that Judge Garland would have been much help to progressives. I have my doubts about how progressive any Clinton appointees would have been, but now we have to see who Trump appoints, how the confirmation hearings go, and how the ones who are confirmed actually serve. Once in a while, appointed members of the SCOTUS fool their appointer or simply evolve/devolve depening on one’s point of view. That said, the GOP has been very effective at appointing people who serve the interests and views of the elite and of social conservatives. Many people fear that we’ll soon see the rolling back of a host of progressive decisions and laws. Hard to think that it CAN’T happen, based on recent history. Remains to be seen that it will or that even if it does, that it’s possible to sweep the sea back with a broom. Hard to put genies back in bottles or keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree.
The Founders could not have foreseen the issues that confront the Supreme Court today. Drugs? Hacking? Abortion?
I understand they could not foresee. However, it takes a lot of twisting and turning to come up with how abortion can become a civil right, how a corporation can become a person, and how burning a flag can become protected speech.
“I understand they could not foresee. However, it takes a lot of twisting and turning to come up with how abortion can become a civil right, how a corporation can become a person, and how burning a flag can become protected speech.”
A civil right? How about simply legal? Like if you are born male, you have the right to decide whether to be circumcised when you reach, say, 13. Unfortunately, Jewish tradition has now merged with “standard” medical procedure and a good deal of propaganda and ignorance to make it automatic on birth. I fought tooth and nail to prevent my son’s non-Jewish mother from having him circumcised against my will. That was the one major argument I had with her that I won, and only after getting our midwife and her brother’s mother-in-law, an obstetrics nurse, to back me.
Adult women would, one might think, have the right to control their bodies and their future. If they become pregnant against their wishes or under any other circumstances, it would seem to me to be their right to decide not to carry the pregnancy to term. It’s a medical procedure. Explain to me how the US government or any state government has the right to interfere between a citizen and her/his physician. Again, religious law doesn’t trump civil law. And never should be allowed to. But if someone opposes abortion, I trust s/he favors realistic sexual education and free access to effective birth control for ANYONE who wants it. Otherwise, might as well forget getting rid of abortion. And hence, unless you relish a return to the days of women dying in droves from unsafe back-alley abortions, you need to “get over it” and stay out of it. If men got pregnant, it would NEVER have been illegal.
Corporations became persons when that so-called originalist court played Commander Riker and “made it so.” But it’s insane.
As for burning a flag being protected speech, explain to me how it’s NOT. How is a piece of cloth with pretty colors and patterns anything more than that? If someone chooses to fly it upside down as a signal that the country is in danger (see General Walker, d. 1963), that was protected. He was a right-wing nut case, but he had the right to publicly use the flag in a disrespectful way to indicate his concerns. But when anti-war protesters burned flags to indicate their anger and frustration with the US government over the escalating war in Vietnam, that was a problem for whom? I believe the court had to provide equal protection under the law. The did. They also ruled that school-led or officially sanctioned and/or mandated prayer was unconstitutional. And a very good thing they did, too.
R is Rudy with a new name
Seriously? Not that lame ploy.
See my reply. Big fingers. Small keyboard.
Kind of strange to start using alias now, don’t you think?
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_roe.html
In a 7-2 decision written by Justice Harry Blackmun (who was chosen because of his prior experience as counsel to the Mayo Clinic), the Court ruled that the Texas statute violated Jane Roe’s constitutional right to privacy. The Court argued that the Constitution’s First, Fourth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s “zone of privacy” against state laws and cited past cases ruling that marriage, contraception, and child rearing are activities covered in this “zone of privacy.” The Court then argued that the “zone of privacy” was “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” This decision involved myriad physical, psychological, and economic stresses a pregnant woman must face.
Because abortions lie within a pregnant woman’s “zone of privacy,” the abortion decision “and its effectuation” are fundamental rights that are protected by the Constitution from regulation by the states, so laws regulating abortion must be sufficiently “important.” Was Texas’s law sufficiently important to pass constitutional muster? The Court reviewed the history of abortion laws, from ancient Greece to contemporary America, and therein found three justifications for banning abortions: “a Victorian social concern to discourage illicit sexual conduct”; protecting the health of women; and protecting prenatal life. The Court rejected the first two justifications as irrelevant given modern gender roles and medical technology. As for the third justification, the Court argued that prenatal life was not within the definition of “persons” as used and protected in the U.S. Constitution and that America’s criminal and civil laws only sometimes regard fetuses as persons deserving protection. Culturally, while some groups regard fetuses as people deserving full rights, no consensus exists. The Court ruled that Texas was thus taking one “view” of many. Protecting all fetuses under this contentious “view” of prenatal life was not sufficiently important to justify the state’s banning of almost all abortions.
However, the Court ruled that narrower state laws regulating abortion might be sufficiently important to be constitutional. For example, because the medical community finds that the human fetus might be “viable” (“capable of meaningful life”) outside the mother’s womb after six months of growth, a state might constitutionally protect a fetus from abortions in the third trimester of pregnancy, as long as it permitted an exception to save the life of the mother. Additionally, because second- and third-trimester abortions present more health risks to the mother, the state might regulate certain aspects of abortions related to maternal health after three months of pregnancy. In the first trimester, however, a state’s interests in regulating abortions can never be found “important” enough. Such abortions are thus exclusively for the patient and her doctor to govern.
Roe v. Wade, controversial when released in January 1973, remains one of the most intensely debated Supreme Court decision today. In no other case has the Court entertained so many disputes around ethics, religion, and biology, and then so definitively ruled on them all. To the political Right, critics accuse the Court in Roe of legalizing the murder of human life with flimsy constitutional justifications. To the Left, critics maintain that Roe was poorly reasoned and caused an unnecessary political backlash against abortion rights. Defenders of the decision, however, argue that Roe v. Wade was a disinterested, pragmatic, and ultimately principled decision defending the most basic rights of personal liberty and privacy.
And given the impossibility of a ruling that was going to placate the religious right, I’d say they did a bang-up job of saving the lives of countless women.
Actually, it’s still the same guy. I use my phone quite a bit for messages, and have it set to automatically fill in my name when I just type Rs – and sometimes it does not take. Big hands, small phone.
Email is the same
I’m not an originalist. Did I somehow give the impression that I was? Moreover, not a single member of the SCOTUS who claims to be one acts that way except when it gives them a cover/excuse for reactionary decisions.
Were I a religious Christian, I wouldn’t be a literalist, a la Mel Gibson’s father. The “Word of God,” too, has to adjust with the times.
Best book on the Constitution and Articles of Confederation I’ve read: The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution (The Johns Hopkins Series in Constitutional Thought) by Sheldon Wolin. Very challenging essays that utterly revised my understanding of the Constitution, what went before, and how the struggle over such matters affects us now.
I don’t know if the SCOTUS has ever been neutral or above politics, Rudy. But it has undeniably been very biased to the right and directly engaged in politics since the 2000 election combined with the horrid Citizens United debacle. The first situation handed the White House to the non-winner by the exact margin of Republicans on the Court. The second allowed the Koch Brothers and others to have absurd influence on our electoral process by declaring that “Corporations are people,” so to speak.
Rudy,
I guess you didn’t notice that the Republicans did not even hold hearings to confirm the middle of the road Obama appointment merrick garland because he wasn’t a right wing ideologue.
I guess you did not notice my writing that I did not vote for the senator responsible for that decision?
And that I sent him a letter asking for an explanation?
Rudy,
It was the GOP caucus not a single senator.
I didn’t recall what you wrote either
Senator grassley made the decision. GOP caucus followed his lead.
I’ve been following this thread all day, and I have a few questions for you MPG, if you don’t mind. 1.) Where did you vote? 2.) Who did you vote for? 3.) Did you want Mr. Trump elected president? 4.) What did you expect or anticipate the results to be?
If you can provide those answers, I may have some thoughts to offer re your several analyses of the election and the people posting here.
Steve: 1) I voted at my local precinct, how about you? 2) I voted for the candidate that I have repeatedly said for going on 2 years that I would vote for. It’s not a secret, but I gather you missed my unchanging statements: I will, I promised, vote for the person I believe is best suited to be POTUS. 3) again, I’ve made clear repeatedly my feelings on that score; 4) if you’re asking who I thought would win, I’ve also made that crystal clear.
Since you couldn’t suss that information from my flood of posts on this and other political threads on this blog, I am tempted to leave you with the above and let you do five minutes of work. But I’ll humor you:
1) Michigan; 2) Bernie Sanders, just like in the March primary; 3) absolutely not; 4) Hillary Clinton would win.
I await your thoughts.
Here’s what I don’t understand. You want result A and yet you chose Action B, which in some part brought about result A.
I could understand it if you thought there was no difference between Clinton and Trump, so your vote of conscience was pure.
I could understand it if you were in a state like mine (California) where many of my Bernie friends voted third party with the happy knowledge that Clinton would still win the state.
I could understand it if you wanted Trump to win so that if his term was disastrous, it would help more progressive candidates to win (The “burn down the house” strategy.)
But what I don’t understand is someone not wanting Trump but willing to vote in such a way as to do nothing to avoid it or, as it turned out in Michigan, to give the state to him. Or did you think Bernie was somehow going to win 270 electoral votes?
How did you feel later on the 8th? Seems like you’re blaming everyone but people who didn’t want Trump but voted third party or write-in or stayed home. Me? I felt terrible. Still do.
You chide people for jumping to conclusions about Trump, but to paraphrase someone, I think the lady doth protest too much. There’s a lot of blame to go around on this one. Bernie Bros can’t avoid sharing in some of it.
Finally, I wonder if you employ the same level of snark, sarcasm, and smart-aleck-ness in your classroom. Maybe in person it’s charming. But in the cold, hard world of print, it just comes off as a little obnoxious. Just sayin’, as my kids would say.
Steve K,
I answered you and at length. It was censored/blocked. Not going to even try to reconstruct the sentence-by-sentence retorts. You “win” and have clearly a much better understanding of what I think, say, and do than do I.
MPG,
I would love to read you ‘retorts.’ you can email me directly at sek9374@lausd.net. However, when you write “You “win” and have clearly a much better understanding of what I think, say, and do than do I” (c’mon, you have to admit there’s a bit of sarcasm there) it makes me think that you didn’t carefully read my post.
I wasn’t trying to tell you what you think but was expressing what I don’t understand. I was sharing my own thoughts and confusion over what I thought were contradictory actions and was hoping you could correct me where I was wrong.
I tried not to presume to tell you what you think, but simply continued to ask questions to try to better understand. As to what you say, I use your own words and answers (the reason for my questionnaire). As to what you do, like chide people or use sarcasm, again, I rely on your own posts, and give you my personal reactions. But mostly, I’m still just asking questions, not analyzing or psychoanalyzing you from afar. Because I still don’t understand the mind set and the reaction to the result of the third-party voter, or the voter who stayed home.
Do you have any idea how Donald’s education plan would work? He said this: “School choice is at the center of my plan. My proposal redirects education spending to allow every disadvantaged child in America to attend the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. School choice is the great civil rights issue of our time, and I will be the nation’s biggest cheerleader for school choice in all 50 states.”
Let’s say 2,000 disadvantage children chose The Hill School where Don Jr went and 2,000 chose Choate Rosmary Hall where Ivanka went to school. 1. Would those schools have to accept all those students? 2. Would Donald redirect Education spending to pay for boarding and tuition fees?
It could be good if Donald would actually fund school choice and fund choice schools so that every child could indeed choose and attend a choice school.
“School choice” seems to a kind of hollow mantra if it is not funded.
I think educators should demand that he make good on his commitment to allow every disadvantage child in America attend the school of their choice.
Jim May,
Trump vouchers would never be sufficient to pay for The Hill School, where Trump’s children went to school.
He wants to send $20 billion to the states, probably redirected Title 1 funds, and expects the state’s to add on their funding. It might be enough for low-tuition religious schools, not elite private schools.
So he does not mean what he says about attending the school of their choice? “My proposal redirects education spending to allow every disadvantaged child in America to attend the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. School choice is the great civil rights issue of our time, and I will be the nation’s biggest cheerleader for school choice in all 50 states.”
It seems “school choice” has always been and continues to be a straw dog because there is in fact no way “school choice” can actually happen. It might be better if Government at all levels would invest in the practices and resources necessary to create “choice schools” in every neighborhood in the country.
Trump plans to give block grants to the states to divvy up as they see fit. The total would be $20 billion. There would be no new money, but money redirected from other programs, like Title 1 for poor children.
It would be left to the states to decide whether the money would be used for vouchers, charters, home schooling, even public schools.
The amount of money involved would not be sufficient to pay for a top private school.
I agree that we would all be better off if we made every public school an excellent school.
I have not commented on this blog for a very, very long time. I have taken a break from it, truth be known. I admit it.
I am dismayed as hell about Trump and the GOP, but it is what it is, and now it is an opportunity for growth.
Yesterday, I was as at the chiropractor, and this guy “Benny”, who is as blue collar, working class, and common-man as they come, basically told me that the Trump election is a wake up call to the average person living in American that they must be aware of what goes on in politics and that they must participate in their government far more. He said he does not like Trump and that people have been apathetic and asleep at the wheel. Benny and I really got to talking for 25 minutes. He was done with the chiropractor; I was still waiting to be called in.
I mean, there was nothing sophisticated about this guy, who sprays pesticides to kill roaches for a living. His diction and use of grammar were not so great, but his thinking showed someone who was a true critical thinker – or had become one. Benny has his own business and one Mexican man as his employee. They are a two person team. He is not swimming in dollars, but for now, he can afford to go out once every two months to a family restaurant to treat this wife and grandchild to Italian-American food. Benny showed me that people can and do change when things hit rock bottom.
I despise Trump . . . sorry, but I do. But a GOP dominated Senate and Congress, given whet the GOP has become, made me lose sleep last night. This domination worries me more in one sense.
Here are the four biggest things I am concerned about:
Public education (vouchers, charters, removal of Title 1, 2, and 3 funds)
Social Security (means test here and semi-privatized, like Chile did with its citizens . . . disastrous results)
Medicare (turned into a voucher program per Paul Ryan where all of us will get $9000 a year from the feds and are to use it to go out and buy an insurance policy for our old age . . . instead an efficient system of a guaranteed comprehensive array of services from Medicare).
Supreme Court Justice picks (The Scalia position belongs to Trump and Pence, and Bader Ginsberg cannot last forever).
The lack of redistribution of wealth in this country transcends, for me, all issues about immigration, misogyny, this phobia, that phobia, and LGBT. Because the bottom line is that no matter what group(s) or persuasion you identify with, wealth is no longer trickling down from the private or public sector, and our working and middle and lower middle class – with and without education – are suffering horribly, are increasingly vulnerable, and have been ignored and abandoned for 40 years by BOTH – that is BOTH – parties.
And THAT’s why people stupidly elected Trump. The populist ire, whether you are white or not, is NOT going away, nor should it; but how foolish that the establishment ignores that fact that immigrants, Muslims, LGBT, women, etc. are part of that populist ire. These “subgroups” are the populists as well, for God’s sake! Populist ire has more to do with distribution of wealth (in our personal pockets as well as in the form of social safety nets and public infrastructure!!) than it has to do with division within people. Everyone depends on wealth building to a reasonable extent in order to live a dignified life, and it’s not happening in America any more. Trump fed upon populist ire only to trick the sheeple into thinking that he will not become part of establishment politics. At least, that’s what I surmise. He’s NOT bringing manufacturing back to America (Hello: manufacturing is dominated now by robotics); he’s not going to expand SS; he’s not lowering healthcare costs, and he’s not eliminating the Department of Education. Premises and promises. Yeah, right! HA!
But you know what? My Bessarabian father-in-law escaped the Nazis, who had a false warrant for his arrest in Paris in 1939. He was a stow-away on the last boat that left France for North America. He was not even an adult then, but he came to America and came alone. When he arrived, friends and family literally touched his sleeve to confirm that he was real because he survived such odds (often throwing up down below deck with all the stored away luggage). He was a staunch communist, but the REAL kind (not the corrupt modern morphed brands from Russia or China), and he was a man among and for the people. He spoke Russian, Romanian, French, Yiddish, and English fluently. He had no college education but could easily teach a course on government. He relocated his family from Manhattan to Queens because he insisted on living in union-built, union-negotiated, and union-created middle income public housing. It was the printers union my mother-in-law belonged to. She knew Robert Deniro’s mother well. My mother-in-law, who also was politically active, interviewed Marc Chagall for a calendar of his paintings that her company was contracted to print. My father-in-law lived, breathed, and ate politics. He had to become more covert about it during the McCarthy era.
My in-laws survived and withstood so much. We educators and parents will survive this election and survive it well. It will ONLY empower us to become stronger, smarter, more informed, more active, and more effective as people and as civic participants. When a bone breaks and it heals the right way, it regenerates to grow to become stronger than the original unbroken bone. That’s a fact . . . This is our broken bone era. I’m embracing it because it facilitates personal and societal growth.
Meantime, stay as healthy as you can and stay together!! Don’t fight with each other! We will continue to make miracles realities and be the better for it. I have Diane and her readers to thank, in part, for that . . . .
“Safety pins” and peace,
Robert Rendo
Dear Robert,
First, welcome back! We missed you!
Second, I was interested to learn that your father was from Bessarabia! My grandmother left there with my mother and aunt (all dead now) in 1914. Most people I have met never heard of Bessarabia.
Diane, it was not my father, but my father-in-law, who was from that country. Not a big deal, but just wanted to clear that up.
Robert, sorry for the error. I have met only two people who came from Bessarabia. A radiologist in a Brooklyn hospital when I was getting a scan for a blood clot. A woman who was running a restaurant in Tropic, Utah, near Bryce Canyon in Utah. Funny.
Thank you Diane for your virtual embrace! I miss you et al as well.
Alas, I am in the midst of some career shifts and changes, so it is hard to find time to write on your blog.
Bessarabia is seldom heard of because it was one of those sovereignties that stood alone, and also went back and forth between Romania and Russia in modern times.
These are very hard and horrific times in the USA. But they are also exciting times. It’s an exciting time to be us, to be participating in civics, and, well, just to be . . . .
Robert, when my mother was alive, she told stories of hiding under the floorboards of her grandpa’s bakery when the Cossacks rode into Beltsy
What our ancestors went through! What inspiration they give us to push ahead and fight for justice for all! We are the living miracles they worked and fought so hard for. We must honor their legacy in this new epoch of corruption and disconnect.
Diane, as always, you’re wonderful and motivating. Keep on keeping on.
Thank you, Dianne. Eloquently put.
Big money, big ideology, big insidious manipulation of government.
Not what the fathers of the country ever had in mind as something to deter.
A monopoly on manipulation.
Thank-you so much for such a thoughtful, from the heart post. You are one of our bright spots and right now we need all of those we can find!
Thank you.
Thank you. We must continue to speak up, speak out and remain focused We can not afford to have splinters amongst ourselves. This election is an American Tragedy and when I hear children/youth speak of their fears, it is heartbreaking. We must resist on the issues on hand for they threaten our very existence.
Well put and thorough.
Amen, Diane! You say what we feel and think so eloquently. I, too, respect the office, but I will never call him a President. Mr. maybe, but not President. He is utilizing nepotism by putting his children into administrative positions. Will this be an America run by only
Trumps? I am scared. I am scared for our diverse communities and how the children are feeling. I heard 8 year old black boys saying they fear he will send them back to Africa. And then, I see the KKK is having a Victory parade. That is the end. If I hate anything it is the KKK and anyone who has anything to do with them. Midwest and southern Americans should be ashamed of themselves for voting for this disgusting man. Speak on, Diane, because the other Americans are listening to you!
Loads of right-wing and white and racist Americans refused to acknowledge that the black man (aka, President Barack Obama) was in fact POTUS or insisted on twisting his name. I don’t do that to Trump, I don’t call Clinton “Hitlery,” and even though I never thought GWB won the 2000 election, I didn’t refuse to call him President Bush. Seems like another futile gesture. More effort than it’s worth. Of course, as with EVERYTHING I post, your mileage may vary and probably already does.
8 year-olds say a lot of things they fear that have little or no basis in reality. Any young citizen of the US who is allowed to believe that the POTUS can have him/her ‘exiled’ for for being – ahem – off-white is being abused by his caretakers and/or teachers.
Then again, the black “liberal” president, Barack Obama, has the worst record of any POTUS on immigration and “sending ’em back where they came from.” His neoliberal and pseudo-liberal backers either don’t notice or don’t care. Or fear rocking the boat. Or don’t want to be sent to Guantanamo.
And I voted for him. Twice.
Diane, I admire your commitment to education and the core values you articulated for this blog.
The cause would be served well if everyone focused on protecting, promoting, and improving public education as public good.
I will oppose every education initiative put forth by Trump, unless the proposal is to abolish the Department of Education. It doesn’t matter if I agree with what he is proposing, because I DO NOT agree that the federal government has a role in public education. It is TOO DANGEROUS! At some point in the future, an echo or amplification of President Obama will come to power, and you have witnessed the destruction the Executive can unleash. I hope Trump does not continue the Obama Administration’s policies, although it looks like he will try.
I trust that the people on this blog will be diligently working to make public education a public good which gives EVERY American an equal opportunity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Thank you, FL Teacher.
It appears Trump will double down on Obama’s privatization policies, while trying to abolish the Ed Dept.
Most of its programs will still exist, many predate the existence of the Dept
Common Core won’t exist, and it won’t be resurrected in Washington DC. The Dept of Ed was the vehicle for distributing federal dollars to privatizers.
The landscape will be messier, but without central support it will be easier to fight off the fake “reformers.”
I look forward to the day when the Tallahassee Republicans are exposed for the fraudulent crony crapitalists that they are. Now that I know they won’t be getting another $700 MILLION from DC to help their cause, they are more vulnerable.
Fl Teacher and others: I don’t mind the struggle for power between the States and the Federal government–that’s to be expected in a federation. The overriding question governing that struggle, however, is “how best work things out for the people” and, specifically, in terms of our Constitution. Its generality is essential specifically to allow that “working out” of concrete events and real human needs as history itself is “worked out.”
But “we” should mind when that tension and it struggle is used to impose an ideology or to lessen or obliterate the circularity of power needed to remain a vibrant democracy: AKA power grabbing. That circularity of power requires that there be no end-all ideology but moving and regulated oversight from outside sources involved in that circularity and who understand it’s workings and its connection with that Constitution.
Concretely, the Department of Education may be “dangerous” in its present form and in the actions that it takes–as most here agree, it is–insofar as it fosters the present oligarchic takeover of educational institutions and, thus, a strike at the heart of the whole idea of “public good.” It’s on a destructive track on a comprehensive scale. However, the emphasis and disease is in “it’s present form” and not on principle, or in having a legitimate place in the circular dynamism of power that constitutes the vibrancy of a democracy.
To get rid of the Department of Education may fit in quite well with such oligarchic and anti-democratic ideologies and intentions, and the destruction of said vibrant circularity. I say that with a sense of weariness in the present situation. I sometimes don’t have a lot of hope about the whole damn thing.
If Common Core is such a good thing, why doesn’t Gate’s, Arne or the Obama’s send their kids to a school that teaches this method? Gates refers to the rest of us as “ordinary” which displays quite a sense of superiority on his part. ALL of our children deserve a good education, not just a select few, with the rest delegated to Common Core.
Hello Linda: I understand what you are saying. However, I’m not talking about or taking a stand on Common Core. (I probably think the same as you about it.) I’m talking more generally about the presence and place of a “Department of Education” in a democracy.
I wonder if the Trump supporters realize how hypocritical they are–admiring Trump for speaking his mind, but accusing his non-supporters of “whining” when they voice their opinions.
Trump supporters here? Name them. Don’t see more than I can count on one hand. The most open Republican here doesn’t support Trump.
MPG,
There was no reference to Trump supporters here but to Trump supporters in general. You misread.
Diane, I was asking for clarification. The context of the comment did not make clear if Daina meant people supporting Trump here or elsewhere or both. I didn’t misread her remark, and the last part of it could readily have been a retort to things I’ve said about the tone of comments here and elsewhere since the morning of 11/9. I hear a lot of “whining” as no doubt I would have heard had the results of the election been reversed. I think both sides were ready to point fingers, claim cheating, and in some cases act violently. That it wound up being Trump haters and Hillary supporters rather than the reverse is proof that the country has some very immature and disturbingly dangerous people, not all of whom are Republicans, Teabaggers, racists, etc.
MPG,
Several readers have left the blog because of your personal comments about them. I ask you not to insult or demean other readers when you make your views known.
When you witness any student needing “SAFE spaces”, “cocoa”, “puppies to cuddle” etc because the person they supported did not win … whether democrat or republican … They are whiney.
The final numbers are in and Trump won BOTH THE POPULAR AND ELECTORAL VOTE. Now is the time we should pull together, not continue to divide our nation.
Linda, stop reading fake news web sites like Townhall.com. Go to Fox News (surely not in cahoots with liberals) and you’ll see that Clinton leads in the popular vote.
And students are “whiney”? On 60 Minutes tonight, Trump says that they will be deporting 2 to 3 million people “very quickly.” (Here’s the link if you haven’t seen it on one of the alt-right outlets: http://deadline.com/2016/11/donald-trump-wall-fence-2-million-deported-immigrants-quickly-60-minutes-video-1201853632/)
Linda, those students aren’t whiney–they’re scared, you heartless excuse for a teacher.
“Linda, those students aren’t whiney–they’re scared, you heartless excuse for a teacher.”
That passes muster. Intriguing.
MPG,
I AM NOT ONLINE 24/7. I don’t see every comment the minute it appears. sorry.
No one can be. But there are some who are repeatedly calling others liars and being allowed to continue to do so. Which suggests that THEY aren’t moderated. And they just happen to be those who agree that Trump’s a monster, Hillary was treated unfairly, etc. And who reject any analysis that isn’t predicated on, say, that we who either voted for Trump or didn’t vote for HRC are stupid, are duped, or just “hate Hillary.” Not a coincidence. I’ll stop pointing it out. But having my posts screened and some simply vanished into Siberia is already getting old.
On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 12:31 PM, Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch commented: “MPG, I AM NOT ONLINE 24/7. I don’t see every > comment the minute it appears. sorry.” >
Several regular readers are in moderation, all for the same reason. A one- or two-time decent into snark or vile can slip past. Consistent insults don’t. Otherwise your comments on issues, your reflections are welcome
Linda, You evidently are factually challenged and don’t mind exposing your short comings. Trump is presently some 600,000 votes behind in the popular vote total.
You should not spread your lies. Our nation is divided and I should imagine it will pull together much as it did in 2008 and 2012 when Obama actually won the popular vote and the electoral vote.
Haven’t seen any indication of a vote total where Trump leads Clinton. I’ve consistently seeing her up by about a half million votes. However, consider that that represents less than one half of one percent of the reported/counted total votes. Statistically, not significant, I suspect, given the large likelihood of errors, missed votes, etc. She may have won by more. Or by fewer. Or not. But the latter possibility hasn’t shown up.
That said, unless that difference in total votes is distributed in such a way that HRC also wins the electoral vote, I’m hard-pressed to see how anyone can seriously claim that she “won” under the rules/laws of the 2016 election for POTUS. Those who wish to change those rules are certainly welcome to work towards it becoming the case: but not for 2016. And if they succeed and then find the shoe on the other foot (which at this point I believe both parties will do), who is going to take calls for other reforms seriously?
Finally, if folks refuse/fail to read Arrow’s theorem and readily accessible material on voting systems and the impossibility of finding one that is both “democratic” and fair to all, I will find it hard to take seriously these selective calls for going to straight majority voting. There are better systems than that or what we have, but no perfect or close to perfect one exists OR CAN EXIST. Arrow proved it long ago.
Linda Griffin,
Hillary won the popular vote. Presently, she has 650,000 more votes than Trump:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/features/2016-election-results/
The electoral vote is decisive. Trump will be President in January.
I think you meant the cool kids who hated Hillary.
MPG,
Your name was not mentioned in that comment.
This is a reply to myself and all readers of the blog.
We will continue to discuss how the election of Donald Trump is likely to affect public education.
We will continue to discuss the well-being of students and educators.
We will discuss matters pertaining to public education.
We will NOT continue any discussion of Hillary vs. Bernie. The primaries ended six months ago. Recriminations are pointless. Deepening the antagonisms among allies serves no good purpose.
I am not online 24/7.
But be forewarned: any comment that rehashes old internecine battles with the Democratic Party will be deleted by me.
It is pointless. It goes round and round. No one changes his or her mind. I won’t have it.
Don’t waste your energy rehashing whether Bernie would have won or whether Hillary’s emails or Comey were worse. I will delete it.
Diane, I was the one who originally made a comment days ago about not being one of the cool kids growing up, which made me comfortable with no being part of in-crowd in the Democratic Party or what has become the majority active voice here.
Yesterday or so, NYC-Parent assured me that I was, in fact, as a “Bernie Bro” one of the “cool kids.” She has subsequently started baiting me with that phrase.
Honestly, I don’t care. I have no fear from this silly nonsense. I would like fairness, however, and it’s not happening. So when I have my every word looked at as potentially offensive, while some folks I find to be aggressively insulting and baiting of me, Rudy, and a couple of others are allowed to say what they please, I’m . . . noticing and mentioning it.
You seem to miss what’s going on. I’ve tried, more than a few times, to point it out. My efforts have gone for naught. Oh, well.
MPG,
Stop. No more. Move on. Write about the coming assault on the commons and the free press. Respond to other topics. No more retrospectives on the battle within the Dem party. It’s boring and this is not the place.
You will, of course, handle others identically. If not, . . .
Of course.
You don’t really know what’s happening to the students(especially, those who have more diversity but less privilege because of color of their skin, or gender) after the election, do you?
THEY ARE UNDER ATTACK by some bigots and racists from the other side of the camp who chant “MAKE WHITE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN”.
Your assumption that ELECTORAL VOTE winner is an automatic POPULAR VOTE winner is plain wrong. It just shows your total ignorance and lack of input in political fact.
Don’t expect unification for the new president while keeping turning blind eyes to the scourge of death threat, harassment, and hate crime upon students of color and children of immigrants.
If you think silent obedience to bigots and racists leads to national solidarity, forget it. NOT GONNA HAPPEN. ACLU already declared war against Trump.
People will unify for those who are facing unnecessary harassment and threats by a bunch of supremacists and deranged bigots and GOP leaders defending those bigots–not for president-elect Trump.
Thanks for this post, Diane. This must be one of the most thorough discussions we have had! I am only about halfway through it.
For those ready to look ahead, I recommend this morning’s discussion on CSPAN, search cspan.org for “Election Results & the Progressive Movement”, hosted by John Cavanagh of The Institute for Policy Studies, w/a panel from several organizations. “People’s Action” (peoplesaction.org) seems a good one to check out.
Thank thank you. On your next post please provide your opinion on what we all can take action on next to combat this awfulness.
Does anybody know. where I can find the most recent, hopefully offiicial vote counts by states?
Just go to the AP web site and search for election results by state.
You said: “I want America to be America. I want it to be a land of liberty and justice for all. I want my grandchildren to learn what I tried to teach my children: kindness, compassion, a commitment to fairness, a love of justice, and a willingness to defend the underdog. I want them to aspire to be good people. I want them to treat others with respect for their individuality and humanity.”
I love your words, and although you and I do not always see eye to eye on some issues, (such as the need to excoriate the unions for allowing thousands of tenured teachers like myself to be thrown to the dogs on fabricated charges) I always RESPECT your great knowledge and experience, and it is crystal clear where you are coming from! I come from the same place and time, where OBSERVABLE REALITY IS THE ARBITOR OF WHAT IS HAPPENING, and TRUTH prevents us from “FLYIN’ BLIND” )
I heard President Obama use that phrase, on the Tevor Noah show last night, when discussing Trump’s plan to let his ‘companions and advisors’ give him the low-down on what is happening, rather than being briefed by the intelligence agencies and departments that have facts at their fingertips.
If there are those our there that expected you to give that deranged child time to prove that he is not what he appears to be, then they should not be writing on this site w which is so clearly devoted to our nation’s children, and thus to our future… good bye and good luck, because the Trumpeters are about to discover what snake oil actually does.
We fight on the same team, Diane.
http://www.cc.com/full-episodes/dd2z7w/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-december-12–2016—president-barack-obama-season-22-ep-22036
The other thing is that, according to Trump, being smart means you don’t need to ask others about anything; or “I know it all already.” That’s a kind of magical thinking (is anyone surprised?)
Even the smartest, and most intelligent among us know that we DON’T know in some automatic, magical way; but we increase our knowledge through questioning and listening. What a dorfus Trump is.
This is a must read: http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Trump-s-Second-Gilded-Age-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Billionaires_Education_Experience_Presidency-161213-595.html
it begins: “In the face of Trump’s draconian assault on democracy, it is crucial to rethink mechanisms of a repressive politics. During his campaign, Trump made it clear that he liked the uneducated and that once he assumed the presidency, he would appoint a range of incompetent people to high-ranking positions that would insure that many people remain poorly educated, illiterate and impoverished.
A few examples make the point. Betsy DeVos, the nominee for sec’y of education, is a multimillionaire, has no experience in higher education, supports for-profit charter schools and is a strong advocate for private school vouchers. She has described her role in education as one way to “advance God’s kingdom.” She is anti-union, & her motto for education affirms Trump’s own educational philosophy to “defund, devalue and privatize.” Then there is Ben Carson and Andrew F. Puzder…”
read more at the link. it’s a plan!
A friend of mine suggested that we now have a Kakistrocracy. Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens. Greek kakistos, worst, superlative of kakos, bad; see caco– + –cracy.
I think she’s right. Steve Bannon is in charge of our President.
I like Joan Baez’s description of the elections. She said “We elected an empty vessel”.
She explains a bit more here