We won’t know the final results of our national election for days. The volume of mail-in ballots will slow the counting in several states. What we do know is that Trump was not repudiated, despite his lies, despite his crude behavior, despite his poor handling of the pandemic.
Reader GregB said this about the election:
Conventional wisdom has informed us that when high voter turnout occurs Democrats win. Conventional wisdom can now stick it up its ass. This country is a majority bigot, racist, xenophobe, and ignorant nation. Let’s come to term with this fact. As Kurt Tucholsky wrote in one of his final diary entries before he committed suicide, Sprechen (Speak), Schreiben (Write), Schweigen (Silence). It’s time for silence. The nation is no more. It’s a rigged game. And we lose. Even if, by some miracle, Biden gets 271 electoral votes, his administration will get nothing done, get all the blame, and is doomed because the American people are too stupid to comprehend reality. The Senate will continue to obstruct (or bend over and take it if the Idiot remains). The Supreme Court is a rubber stamp (and Louisiana and its “Democratic” governor will lead the way for its first coup). The House will be a shrill, useless entity. Gleichschaltung is here, get used to it. We will have no international allies except for Brazi, Israel, Poland, Hungary, the Philippines, North Korea, and our new masters, Russia. The so-called confederacy won the long game.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am horrified by our nation, our lack of values, our embrace of bigotry and xenophobia. I wrote about it this morning., http://nyceducator.com/2020/11/who-are-we.html
Beautifully stated. Thanks. I’m sending it on to people who are feeling the same way we do.
What Carol said.
Thank you both.
Arthur Goldstein: I read most of what you wrote to a friend in Miami. {I live in Indiana.] She agrees with what you said and thought it was well written.
Much better than a stress-filled tirade written in a sleep-deprived state in early hours!
I love the self-reflective critique, GregB. Would that it were half as contagious as the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Then maybe T***p and others of his ilk would be forced to live with a little humility.
I’m feeling a bit better now, but last night, I felt the poet’s sense of silence.
I thought one of the best early comments from one of the talking heads was that he thought there must be a huge watershed of resentment out there that “we” haven’t picked up on. Misguided resentment or not, I think he’s probably right, both about the presence of resentment and about not catching on to it.
If you are a Trump supporter, however, I have some stock in a poling company I can sell you. CBK
I think that “we” picked up on the reservoir of resentment a lot more than we did four years ago. This reservoir is too large ever to be drained, and remains too polluted not to be toxic to the body politic.
Bill Rosenthal Yes, I think you are right about the uncharted “reservoir of resentment.” (I also heard that term this morning on one of the talk shows.)
I think that Trumpists, at some point in time . . . for many when they grow up . . . will palm-hit their heads as they burn with embarrassment. CBK
Thank you, CBK. Via my GOTV activity the past few months, I’ve learned that there is both commonality and substantial variety among T***pists. To many, all that matters is abortion. To others, what matters most are the peanuts by which their federal income taxes decreased when Betsy DeVos’s were reduced by enough to buy a few more yachts. Many are immovable Republicans by upbringing and tribe. Some are ethically and educationally deplorable (adjective, not noun).
Your comment leads me to bemoan a trait that all Tpists share: The inability or unwillingness to understand that failing to repudiate Tp entails countenancing the sexually assault of women, the mocking of persons with disabilities, nonstop mendacity, the shirking of all responsibility, and a thousand more actions that no responsible parent would accept in a 6-year-old old, including the falsification of a weather map to avoid admitting a mistake.
Bill, my “source” [daily CSPAN call-in show] doesn’t compare to your on-the-ground experience, but I often hear another factor. Many found the economy improved under it45, by which they usually mean more jobs available, or more customers for their smallbiz. They attribute all fin hardship to O presidency. Did they really not notice the fin crisis started in ’07 [construction/ housing], & stock market collapsed before he was elected? & that we were fully recovered & beginning to roll before Twerp came along? [My little free-lance PreK-special biz took a big hit in ’09-‘10, was almost back to normal by ’12-’13, then added a new client annually starting in the year before tRump was elected.]
The tRumpistas who talk economy are analysts compared to the rest, who all fit in the categories you’ve defined. I attribute their faulty conclusions to the barrage of rw media sources who e.g. cite O for ballooning the debt [tho’ TARP was set up by Bush & paid back handsomely under O] et al agenda-based cherry-picked data.
The one that gets me laughing every time, mostly from old ladies preaching “let’s come together”: the “hate” and divisiveness in politics “started under Obama” [DUH wonder why] & just sort of escalated [handed over from Reps to Dems—just cuz?] under it45.
I disagree with this. I don’t think most Americans I meet are racists or bigots.
FLERP! : There is always my brother, a Trump supporter, who says that I will be going to hell for an eternity and am being influenced by Satan.
I don’t know if he is a racist, however…
Hi carolmalaysia. 🙂 Outside of the Bible and faith, can your brother prove God, Jesus, Satan, Heaven and Hell exist? 😐
I never heard a Jewish person discuss Heaven and Hell. 😐
Eddie: Outside of the Bible and faith, can your brother prove God, Jesus, Satan, Heaven and Hell exist?
My brother once put Obama down because he most likely wouldn’t be able to recite from memory as many bible verses as he could. He gets all of his information from the bible, Fox, Rush L ,Hannity and possibly some ministers and some weird online sites.
I seriously doubt that Trump even knows what the bible is except for something to use as a photo op.
Reciting bible verses doesn’t help in making intelligent decisions. Knowledge about a wide range of subjects and understanding people would most likely be a better judge of how to vote intelligently.
Liberals kill people. Obama was the anti-Christ who would destroy the U.S. Obama had people killed in FEMA camps. The army is saving up canned goods and any day will come out and begin killing people. [That is why he keeps a gun so that he can protect his home and family.] MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, Washington Post, NYT are all fake news. I was told that if I wanted to learn something I had to listen to Rush L and Hannity. God controls the weather so there is no global warming. God is angry at us so we humans are being punished for our sins. Jesus’s second coming will mean that people like my brother will go to heaven and people like me will burn in hell for an eternity.
I can’t imagine two people who are more different than my brother and me.
carolmalaysia, I agree with you. 😁
These days, I believe in God as God and Jesus as Messiah. 🙂
Those who enable behavior and policies that are racist and bigoted, whether they will admit it or not, are racist and bigoted.
Seems a bit simplistic to me.
Some argue that the college acceptance of SAT scores is racist, because it produces racially disproportionate results (e.g. black test takers not performing as well as Asian or white test takers). Assuming one agreed with that premise (I do not), does it then follow that anyone who supports the use of the SAT in college admissions is racist? I would say no.
Some say Louis Farrakhan is racist and bigoted. He probably voted for Biden. 😐
Exactly, Greg
FLERP!
Perfect example , although there are significant racist elements . Example: The dismissal of the virus was easy when it was seen as attacking more minorities and in Blue states. Easy to make not wearing a mask a badge of honor when the victims are minorities.
But the more accurate description of what we are witnessing is “White Grievance ” And your example of the SATs can be seen as one of the resented affirmative actions .
As the white working class saw declines in their standard of living in spite of increases in family hours worked . The Oligarchy /Plutocracy went to work utilizing the party they controlled .
Nothing new as the landed gentry of the South had done the same from the Civil War to the Civil Rights acts.
First Dylan, than Lofgren
“A South politician preaches to the poor white man
You got more than the blacks, don’t complain
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain.
And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game”
Lofgren
“The reader may think that I am attributing Svengali-like powers to GOP operatives able to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. It is more complicated than that. Historical circumstances produced the raw material: the deindustrialization and financialization of America since about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class – without job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. Their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking.
What do the Democrats offer these people? Essentially nothing. Democratic Leadership Council-style “centrist” Democrats were among the biggest promoters of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA, World Trade Organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for China. At the same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the Democratic Party was seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced whites.[3]
While Democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing of the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations’ bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let’s build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it’s evil Muslims. Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.”
In 2011 he nailed it . Predicting Trump.
Racism can be considered systemic rather than an individual trait. Enculturation into a society in which racism is prevalent makes us all susceptible to racist beliefs,attitudes, and actions
Oh come on, FLERP, you live in Manhattan. In NYC. I lived there myself for 20 yrs, & encountered very little racism among the people I met. This varied w/family backgrounds. I met perhaps 2 or 3 racists among the extended Italo-American clan of the man I married. Perhaps a few more in the workplace [secretaries from Queens]. OTOH, I can count on fingers of one hand the number of blacks or Hispanics who worked at the tech level in the corp biz I worked in, in those yrs [institutional racism]. But nbhd-wise, I encountered pretty-much zero racism in Bklyn [after 5 yrs in MH’s lily-white upper E Side —institutional racism]: it was an area which had gone to the dogs w/ ‘50’s white flight, resettled & improved by Haitians in ‘50’s-‘60’s.
The racists I’ve known over the yrs were primarily white working class who felt invaded & were displaced by blockbusting, looking back with nostalgia and resentment on the slum that became of their childhood home area. With absolutely zero acknowledgment that when their poor parents/ grandparents arrived in early 20thC, they too bought property abandoned by finally-thriving, previously-poor immigrants, & formed a poverty-stricken slum which they had to work their way out of. There are tRumpistas today who reflect the same dynamic: white working-class people thrown out of jobs due to mfg decline, looking for culprits among immigrants, & resenting taxes on their lower-pd jobs as going to ‘lazy blacks.’
I think there is another kind of racism reflected in tRump voters, also based on residential patterns. It’s a bubble thing. NYC has its bubbles, but it’s still essentially a melting pot. You cannot get to work or go out to eat (much less, teach there) w/o being exposed to many ethnic groups. But there remain many areas of the country where– just as in the early ’70’s when I worked in the Midwest– there are rural folks who never in their lives met, let alone got to know anyone different from themselves. It is easy to convince such folk that their problems can be sourced to urbs where ‘others’ live
I’ve lived in four boroughs, and I’ve lived in the Midwest and the Southwest. I don’t think racism is anywhere near the top of the issues that America faces. But I’m afraid it will forever be the thing that divides us. I wonder what the Senate and House balances would look like now, and what the prospects would be for desperately needed federal aid to states and cities, if we hadn’t spent the summer being lectured by corporations about anti-blackness and “the myth of meritocracy” and whiteness” and “white adjacency.”
Furious broadsides are necessary, and this one rings largely true. I take issue with the assertion that the U.S. House of Representatives is useless. Should T***p be re-elected or appointed by SCOTUS, there will be no horrific legislation enacted as long as the House remains in Democratic hands. Prime example: No further federal income-, capital-gains-, and corporate-tax cuts redistributing income and assets upward to the fabulous 0.1%. Amend or correct me if I’m wrong, please.
Longer game: Democrats have now won the popular vote in four consecutive elections and seven of the past eight. If T***p manages to keep the White House White nationalist, it will make two consecutive and three out of the past six elections in which the popular-vote winner lost. Can we the peeps allow this minority rule to stand?
I propose a motto or slogan or rallying cry for Democrats, progressives, and anyone else who wants to join us: We’re pro-life for the already born.
Enough preaching to the well-informed, rational, compassionate, and worldly choir. I’m late for my good-cry time. Everyone please monitor Protect the Results and hit the streets when we’re summoned. Wear a mask. I’ll see you out there.
Hitting the streets won’t accomplish much. 🙂
I disagree with the unwarranted definitiveness of your statement. If we stay in the streets, we might accomplish something — perhaps much.
What is certain that not hitting the streets will accomplish nothing.
As a Black man in America, I speak from experience from my family’s and my days on Chicago’s West Side (1955-2010), when it was White, Integrated and Black. 😐
If people really want governmental change, then maybe it’s time to switch to another form of government or start a brand new one. 😁
Bill, I don’t know why you switched mid-topic from minority rule to the abortion issue. Anti-abortionists are ever with us, but when economy booms they keep their mouths shut, so why make it a Dem bumper-sticker issue? I think Dems need to stick to the economy & simplify the nuances: make the failure of trickle-down economy clear, emphasize the resulting outsize & still-spiraling rich-poor dichotomy, how it’s lowered all boats except those of the 1%, & most of all throw their weight behind real GDP increase/ plentiful working-class jobs.
That’s going to mean abandoning neoliberalism/ privatization. [We’d have to do that anyway just to have reasonably priced universal healthcare.] It means finding some kind of workable balance, so we participate in global trade w/o lowering wkg-class wages to that of developing nations. These are issues that both parties have utterly failed on, hence Trump. Dems are headed in the right direction, i.e., more equitable wealth distribution, but they haven’t taken on the shrinking pie issue. It won’t do just to raise min wage & plump up bennies. People want decent jobs.
I just went through a similar discussion with my husband and disillusioned daughter whose conclusion was that America is not what it promises. No doubt, there remains much work to do, particularly for Democrats. They need to work on generating more enthusiasm and better messaging.
As for Trump, I cannot understand the appeal of this lying, dishonest robber baron.
Reps have just as much work to do as Dems. I would think they’ve been doing a little soul-searching, given how they’ve had to struggle so, & increasingly, in every post-Reagan election. All fallout, IMHO, from the right turn taken w/Reagan & his neocon advisors. WHBush did OK in his term cleaning up after Reagan’s excesses, but GWBush brought the neocons back in.
The Tea Party backlash to Obama can be seen as part of the Reagan fallout—purists not just determined to block dreaded Dem liberalism, but also motivated by a sense of betrayal at GWBush’s debt-spending response to the 2008 fin crisis. They [arguably] roped Evangelists into the fold, & established an outsize voice for fringe libertarianism. And have become a millstone around the party’s neck, which finds itself unable to get support for any legislation other than tax cuts.
Underlined & highlighted by the Summer/ Fall inability of Reps to agree on further covid-aid spending, despite economists’/ Wall St’s/ President’s urging. Had they been able to manage it, they probably would have been on the plus side of the current razor-thin vote-count– & they knew it, but could do nothing.
Gleichschaltung is here.
Yup
Greg: your suggestions for solutions? I think you nailed it. We are in for dark times.
All my suggestions would be utopian. First of all, I’d break up the country; it’s too large to govern and its politics becomes a game of lowest common denominator distraction and deception. But I’d say the most important thing is what draws to this blog–the only one with which I engage–education. I worked for a national civic education organization in the mid-90s and I was inspired by the middle and high school students who engaged in its programs. They came out of the programs with their conservative-to-liberal viewpoints intact, but respectful and understanding of constitutional principles.
The ignorance of adults is also depressing. The next time I hear someone rail about socialists and socialism my head might pop off. They literally have no idea what they’re talking about. Like a recipient of VA health care spewing about socialized medicine or a parent who enjoys parks and playgrounds and has not idea that these are socialist ideas. I really don’t know any solutions. I do know that I feared the Idiot would be reelected from the day he was inaugurated through yesterday and I may well be proven wrong. I hope I am. But the losses in the Senate–the new Republicans will be as neanderthal as it gets–and the stagnancy in the House, are going to set up Biden’s administration for failure and I predict the American people will be too stupid and bigoted to get it.
I think the House will be fine. The Senate underMcConnell will preclude the possibility of appointing progressives to Cabinet posts. And the Senate will block progressive legislation.
Greg, I really don’t think we’re too big to govern. Allowing each state to evolve [culturally] at its own speed is a good thing, I think. There are naturally occurring, regular changes, mostly as a result of trade/ immigration/ emigration which require each state to step up its game: they do digest the changes and catch up, albeit slowly. The ticket is, the federal govt has to avoid delusions of grandeur, i.e., overreach. There are few times when fed really has to interfere/ override. Segregation laws in the South, one example, & we did a good job. OTOH, we’ve seen fed overreaches w/ negative, divisive results, e.g. 2001 Patriot Act which resulted in NSA surveillance, gave rise to conspiracy theories, armed local police w/military eqpt— not to mention NCLB which set us on a road that has warped & dumbed-down national pubsch ed.
We progressives become too impatient, I think, & imagine solutions that would quickly solve all regional issues if only we could impose them at the national level. We look to W & N Europe and envy their social democracies, where policy seems to grow out of national support. But we are nothing like them. Each European nation has its own ethnic, cultural traditions developed over centuries. They have fought many wars among themselves; WWI & WWII were common experiences that brought them to a similar level of awareness, setting them on an anti-fascist path toward social democracy.
Our divisions cannot be parsed out by ethnic tradition: we are a mix—how would you divide us into separate nations? Unlike W/N Euro nations, we had centuries of African slaves onboard—right in our country, not somewhere else in colonies, gradually making a path toward citizenship/ membership in the nation. We’ve had two centuries of Euro immigrants, plus Asians admitted 150 yrs ago, admitted in great numbers for 70 yrs—all dispersed throughout the nation.
Our divisions are the usual ones observed in any country [professional/ working class, urban/ rural, white/ non-white, north/south], & each state has a govt equipped to deal with that. Dividing us into nations would not change that. We are parallel, I think, to a trading compact like the EU. We need to govern the whole more carefully, with more tact toward the differences, à la Brussels. IMHO the Constitution provides for it: our current political issues have more to do with Congress having given away too much power to the Executive over a number of decades.
So disappointed in my fellow citizens. Or, rather, sickened and dismayed by them. My stomach is literally churning this morning. This is bad. It’s very, very bad. Darkness ahead
Bob Shepherd: I just finished talking with a friend in Miami. We are both appalled at what is happening in this country. It has to be a cult mentality. Herds who vote without thinking of the consequences.
She says that poor Cubans vote for Biden. She has spoken with 10 poor Cubans.
Wealthy ones vote for Trump and if they have businesses they make their employees vote for Trump. They intimidate their employees who are afraid they will lose their jobs or they offer bonuses such as a free grocery card.
yikes
They have to cheat to win. Imagine how this election would have turned out without the onerous voter ID laws and others of wildly disparate impact on voters of color. Imagine if the Florida Legislature had not overturned the 60+% will of the people by instituting a post-hoc poll tax on persons who have served a felony sentence and seek to return to full citizenship.
Thank you for articulating my thoughts, exactly. It’s distressing to live in a country with these people.
See also, Jimmy Kimmel from 11/4: I overestimated my fellow Americans.
At this moment, Biden can still win narrowly. He underperformed. Polls (again) overstated appeal of Dem ticket. Trump smartly if immorally incited his base with nonstop infectious rallies and charismatic ridicule which identify him with the satiric discourse of mainstream America.(Still, Trump will lose the popular vote). Electoral college hangs around our necks. The status quo is structured to sustain the status quo, not to change it. Extra-parliamentary mass opposition remains the most potent tool to compel change. Trump will now use parliamentary and legal tools to attempt to nullify votes against him. Racists, homophobes, anti-socialist zealots, evangelical extremists, misogynists, gun-nuts, etc., are considerable but not the majority even though this large minority thrives in a system skewed towards it. Progressive whites and folks of color have yet to consolidate effectively to see what our numbers and policies can do. The war for social justice and equality has been on for decades and will continue because aggrieved peoples have destabilized toxic status quo’s; how to mobilize the democratic majority we live among so as to turn the tide?, the question in our hands.
Amen, Ira. Great to hear your voice.
Until chips are put in us, picture IDs are the “only” way to identify people. 😁
These IDs are required for banking, school, driving, home purchases, apartments and ???? 😐
Your emojis do not befit a serious discussion among adults.
What qualifies you to so decide?
Bill, there is nothing wrong with emojis, even among us serious adults (including me). Have a happy day. 🙂 😁
Thanks, Bill. Trump successfully consolidated his base which had be previously mobilized by evangelical churches, the Catholic Church, Second-Amendment acolytes, white identity racist org’s, and other such fractions of the Trump coalition. They are not a majority of the electorate but are a well-organized minority thriving b/c of electoral college and dispersed powers granted to state legislatures, governors, and county govt. Progressive America is very large but ineffectively consolidated and organized mostly as a wing of the Dem Party which is a weak compromised org unable to use or win power. Remains for us to consolidate the many fractions left of center in the coming decade. As I write, Biden is closing in on 270 but Trump is declaring “victory” and sending in his lawyers to start a process which ends with the Supreme court stepping in like in 2000. Very hard to accumulate power inside the system(Dems had White House, both chambers, and SCOTUS in 77 and did very little “progressive” with it–no investment in solar power or in community control of failing corporate industrial assets in that “rustbelt” era). We have a very large field of progressive Americans to work with and among despite the clown with so much institutional power in his ominous hands.
Beautifully stated.
IMHO, the place for any new Dem admin to start is in reform to campaign funding/ lobbying/ revolving-door ex-legislators to big-$ticket industry/ thinktank jobs, especially legislative workaround to Cit-United decision, Much of that addressed in HR-101, first legislation out of the box when Dems took the House. Will be stymied again by Rep Senate, but we have to keep harping on it. Trickle-down policy since Reagan resulting in trickle-up $ to the 1% means our legislators are bought out at every level by big $.
As a black American, to many of us, this is just par for the course in the US. This country was built on bigotry and continures to thrive on it. Social media introduced white America to a reality that we as black folks always lived and still do but no one listened or believe us when we talk. While dissapointed, us black folks will perservere because we always have and always will depsite white America wanton ignorage hatred and intolerance. This is a shock more to white America than it is to us.
I agree. I’ll add, as Black Americans (or African Heritage People), we are still here. 😐
Racial bigotry is intertwined with classism: blacks are poor/ lesser than “because”… enter rationalizations about why black people are poor/ lesser than [poorer/ lesser than… me (poor white guy)] and trailer-trash white guy is poor/ lesser than [poorer/ lesser than me (middle-class white guy)] & on up the line. All of it is bigotry/ tribalism. It’s all fighting over the scraps left to working-poor, working-class, now middle-class—encroaching today on the children of the upper-middle class. All a result of unregulated capitalism which captures whatever profits poor/wkg poor/ lower-mid-class & on up the line can deliver to the 1%.
So you’ve been living it: for you, it has been there forever. From my perch in white, now-upper-middle class corporate life, it wasn’t there in young adulthood, but I’ve seen this rapacious vulture capitalism coming since my 30’s [in the ‘80’s]: healthcare dwindled while college tuitions skyrocketed, & housing costs went so crazy you could barely buy an apt if you were younger than me [which meant immediate start to two-career families—cramped by skyrocketing cost of childcare]. Since then I observed the dwindling of support depts/ staff in corporations. Receptionists/ secretaries went first [automation]. My job went next [overhead depts: sorry, no $!] My engr hubby is still at it— for many yrs he’s had to do his own typing/ copying et al– & he’s well beyond retirement age because, who can afford to retire?
And meanwhile you don’t even want to know the struggles our sons are going through to even get a toe-hold on financial security.
Not to diminish the obvious injustice you’ve experienced lifelong. Just saying: how long will it take until the movers & shakers—the so-called ‘upper-middle-class’ whites who’ve been experiencing steadily decreasing QOL for 4 decades—to rise up against govt policies that diminish the GDP/ public goods for all of us? A healthy economy (which we haven’t experienced In decades) could actually raise all boats [unlike “trickle-down economy.”]
That racists loudly walk among us is undeniable. But let’s also take into account voter suppression, gerrymandering and court packing. Without those, election outcomes would be different. Which party supports those? The one which does not want representational governance.
Would the support for Biden be far high than for Trump if there had been no effort at voter suppression? We’ll probably never be able to quantify that accurately.
I just read that a Republican Party spokesman complained of Democrats suppressing the votes! Talk of projection!
Diane Mirroring your opponent’s claims is a major tenet of the fascist playbook. (Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism)
DARVO; deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.
“Definition of DARVO
“DARVO refers to a reaction perpetrators of wrong doing, particularly sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior. DARVO stands for ‘Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.’ The perpetrator or offender may Deny the behavior, Attack the individual doing the confronting, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender such that the perpetrator assumes the victim role and turns the true victim — or the whistle blower — into an alleged offender. This occurs, for instance, when an actually guilty perpetrator assumes the role of ‘falsely accused’ and attacks the accuser’s credibility and blames the accuser of being the perpetrator of a false accusation.
“Institutional DARVO occurs when the DARVO is committed by an institution (or with institutional complicity) as when police charge rape victims with lying. Institutional DARVO is a pernicious form of institutional betrayal.”
https://dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/defineDARVO.html
Look up the dictionary definition of FUD.
Well, there’s FUBAR, too.
HI Christine. 🙂 Usually, it’s the Republican Party, but Chicago Democrats have done the same to Black and Hispanic Democrats here, historically, with ward maps, Harold Washington’s mayoral election and election day snafus. ☹️
Oh, I’m under no illusions that the Democrats are innocent of this, not in the least. Divide and conquer.
A smiley for you. 🙂
Very good points, Christine.
Greg-
On a personal note-
When, in a thread to a different post, the tribe’s tactic of isolating the dissenter, telling me to shut up, while praising you, was employed, you knew what an honest and honorable man does. Thank you.
You’re right that the nation’s compass has changed.
The unwillingness of so many to examine a distinguishing, salient factor that separates the U.S. from democratic Western European nations, foretells a bleak future.
I may have missed that one. I understand your accurate critiques and we are generally on the same page, only with a difference of certain nuances, not the fundamental issues. The post-mortem of this election will, I’m confident of this, verify what we’ve been arguing.
“missed that one”- the expectation was that the reward would silence you.
The post-mortem info. if it identifies evangelicals will be heard. Otherwise, it will be dismissed- just like the past 4 years.
Our enemies have been waiting, patiently, for us to implode.
We are well on our way for the reasons, and more, of the top post, the Confederacy ….
When lies become the norm hatred supplants if not even love, concern for others we are in deep doo doo.
We might not know the results, but we can predict the results.
In NV, Democratic voters turned in twice as many mail-in ballots as Republicans and those are being counted now. Once counted, Biden will add NV’s six Electoral Votes to his total and hit 270 to win the election.
Then there is PA, where Democratic voters turned in three times as many mail in ballots as Republican’s and once they are counted, Biden will win that state by more than a half million votes and his Electoral Collage total will jump to 290.
I’ve read that the same thing is going to happen in Georgia. After all the ballots are counted, Biden will have more than 300 Electoral College votes and he already has more popular votes than Hillary Clinton had in 201t. Biden will end up with about 5-million more votes than Trump when the counting is done.
This election is over before the counting is done. All Trump has left is going to court where he has lost most of the challenges, and his endless lies that Biden cheated.
I didn’t see this one coming.
from “It’s Always Gettysburg”
For the South wants the North, and though
Marse Robert was driven back
and driven down, still they come
forevermore. “Vengeance!” they shout,
pouring up through the green meadows
of Maryland, ghosts, powered by their revenge.
But this is not a mere romance.
If they win, these Rebels,
They crank back the universe
to their time, the time of the lash.
Get out your long skirts, women,
to hide your shame, and my brown brothers,
stay where you are, this is the end of the line.
It is the day of the living dead,
with their muskets and AK47’s,
Patton and Calley leading the charge.
So put down the book, grip the rifle,
we will need it for the next attack,
and the next.
It’s always Gettysburg.
This war is in me, it’s in you. Didn’t your
mother pick cotton in the deep South?
Didn’t your pappy make guns in the North?
No wonder for this madness,
where I charge up the hill,
only to drive myself back,
O nation, O world, O human kind!
At the end of three holy days,
when the red moon rises,
and the stars are born again,
Rustam will weep
as he leaves cold Sohrab for the things of prey
and the hungry earth,
here in this ancient land
of brotherly love.
by Jack Burgess
To my dear online friends whom I have never met, the faithful readers of Diane Ravitch’s blog. Like you, I felt sick all last night and much of today. I am hoping Biden will win, of course. But I am sickened that even ONE person would vote for Trump, after all that he has done.
What I am writing about to you today is this: I am sitting in the middle of a bunch of RED STATES right now. In fact, Montana went completely red after years of a Democratic governorship and other Democratic officials. It is a sad, sad day for us. Our beautiful public lands will be desecrated and potentially sold off. We don’t have charter schools yet, but we will. A sad, sad day.
But here is the deal: Not all Republicans are racist. And by calling them that, we stop all conversation with them. To understand why they vote the way they do, we must listen. To win in the elections, as Democrats, we must understand our opponents who, actually, are our neighbors.
Many Republicans certainly are racist. But if you analyze the U.S. voting map, the main difference between blue and red states is the URBAN/ RURAL difference. So when people say Republicans are racist, they are indirectly saying that RURAL people are racist. That is a generalization.
We need to understand why there is such a major difference between urban and rural voters. Here are my theories:
Have you ever visited Jordan, Montana? It’s in the middle of nowhere. It feels like you’re on a different planet. It’s just sky and grass and cows. To live there, you have to be fiercely independent, and you need a gun, for food (hunting) and for protection (you might be the only one around for miles). There are no black people, there are no Latinos, there are no people from India or Korea or China, but there are Native Americans on the adjacent reservation.
You go to church on Sunday. Your kids are in 4-H. You say the Pledge of Allegiance. You have traditional values. This doesn’t mean you are racist. These people rely on themselves and on each other, and they don’t like to be told what to do, like “don’t shoot prairie dogs in order to save black-footed ferrets.” I don’t agree with that; it’s just we need to understand them more.
Many rural people feel THREATENED that their way of life is being taken away from them. They like their traditional values. Now, in my opinion, Trump does not support those values (church, family, community, agriculture, independence, freedom). But somehow, he has convinced them that he supports them. He has reached out to them in ways that the Democratic Party has not.
These folks LOVE their post offices! They love their local, public schools with locally elected school boards! They love their community hospitals and nursing homes! They want their Medicare and Social Security. They want their agriculture trade deals with foreign countries. Democrats need to show them who actually supports them. But, of course, guns, flags, and abortion get in the way. And they are worried about their towns drying up and blowing away, so the economy is a big deal for them.
Anyway, my point is this. We need to listen, observe, understand, think about, analyze, and reach out to these citizens if we’re ever going to win over the rural states of America. I think this is possible. For example, climate change will ruin their livelihoods. How can we help them understand this?
I’m writing a lot today because I’m desperate to figure out how we save Montana and other rural states and the country. But think about it–cowboys in Texas, Mormons in Utah and Idaho, pioneer stock in North and South Dakota, farmers in Iowa, etc. Somehow, these people think that Trump represents their values more than Biden. I don’t think that’s true. But how do we talk to them?
Picture of the cemetery near Jordan, Montana:
http://www.graves-r-us.com/Greenridge-old%20jordan.html
Thank you, Montana Teacher. That’s a valuable comment. You remind me that public school advocates beat vouchers, with the help of Pastors for Texas Children, by assembling a coalition of rural Republicans and urban Democrats.
OK, I’m trying to be open minded. I can even generally accept your first five paragraphs; don’t necessarily agree, but I can accept it. But the rest just raised my blood pressure back to where it was 24 hours ago. I could write a thesis on being “fiercely independent” in the West and what a myth it is, but I’ll leave that be. I’ll even leave the end of that paragraph, of how those people don’t inhabit their world, for now.
Let’s start with the last sentence of your seventh paragraph. Please explain to me why “we need to understand them more.” Why do I have a greater obligation–using your logic–to understand them than they do to understand me and others around the country? I do this odd thing called reading, informing myself by films, the news, music, travel (in pre-COVID times), talking to people, etc., you know, engaging in and with the world. Oddly, by doing some of these things, I actually try to understand other people, cultures, historical eras, how they interact, how the govern, you know, learn. Do these idyllic people in the paradise of Montana have an obligation to do the same, or does their “fierce independence” give them the right of cultural and political arrogance of isolation? I could go on, but let’s move to the next paragraph.
Just what, in their isolated, fiercely independent world, makes them feel THREATENED? It is the stark poverty in Detroit? Is it the largest Nepali and Bhutanese immigrant population in Akron, OH? Is it the ingrained racism that has defined the Mississippi Delta? Is it the public health catastrophes of Cancer Alley between Baton Rouge in New Orleans? Is it the neglect of Native Americans on reservations in New Mexico or Arizona? Is it the Chinese immigrants in Flushing, NY? Just what exactly is threatening them and do, for example, the people living in the circumstances above have a greater obligation to understand those fiercely independent people in Montana than the fiercely independent people in Montana do to understand them? And has “he” convinced them or were they predisposed to think that way anyway since they are THREATENED?
It so nice that they love their institutions and trade. Odd, since they are so fiercely independent. One would think they wouldn’t care so much about socialist ideas like Medicare and Social Security. But, of course, guns, flags, and abortion!
Do they try “to listen, observe, understand, think about, analyze, and reach out to these citizens” around the nation? Or do they know better? You know how they can learn about how climate change affects them? They could read, they could pay attention, they could try to see the world beyond their reach. That’s what the rest of us do. And we don’t feel offended or entitled when some nebulous entities don’t “reach out” to us.
This Leave It to Beaver nostalgia has to end. The golden days never existed. While those folks in Montana and other parts of the country miss the good old days, they conveniently forget that things like the killing of Emmitt Till, the radiation poisoning of people in the Southwest and West, and internment of Americans of Japanese descent were happening then too.
How do we talk to them? How about they talk to us–the American people in all walks of life and in every part of the nation. How about (when COVID once again allows) they take a trip to LaGuardia and then take the bus and subway into Manhattan, Brooklyn or the Bronx and listen to the voices, see and smell the people of endless varieties around them, and note how fiercely independent and vibrant they are?
And picture inner city Detroit and remind yourself that this is America too. Do people in Montana (or anywhere in the U.S.) have an obligation to reach out and understand the people here? Do they have an obligation to reach out and understand that parents are fearful that their children may be killed just because they decide to go to the store to buy some candy?
Rural (now GOP) people largely don’t like “different”. It’s been an accurate characterization of much of the population since the late 1800’s. Recently, I heard it expressed by an art historian describing Indiana in the early 1900’s and, last week by a voter in Ohio. Republican messaging is effective at convincing the rural population that circling their wagons will make them feel better.
I can’t respect Americans living in the hinterlands or in high population cities who vote for Putin to govern the United States, who open their gates to the barbarians of Wall Street, who embrace discrimination against people of color and women and, who tolerate grifting in the nation’s capitol.
The common thread in the individuals governing from the GOP, when they talk about their religion, is that they omit country from a listing of their priorities. Those people include the gamut from globalist Bill Gates to Louisiana’s school privatizers to bishops of the protected religion.
Finian O’Toole summed up my rant quite well in an excellent commentary I copied onto another post on Kuttner today: “It vindicates the self-pity that he has encouraged among his supporters, the belief that everything is rigged against them, that the world is a plot to steal from them their natural due as Americans.”
On NPR this morning.
A contrast: Trump supporters chanting “STOP THE VOTE” in Pennsylvania
Trump supporters in Arizona chanting, COUNT THE VOTE.”
Whatever favors Trump.
Hi, GregB.
Of course rural Montanans have an obligation to understand other types of people in other cities, states, and countries! In fact, I’ve dedicated my life to that pursuit. I teach about the issues you wrote about above.
You have made so many assumptions here and false equivalencies that I cannot address them all. But I will say that “independent” does not equal “idyllic.” Rural people have many, many problems that you apparently don’t want to hear about–little money, no jobs, lack of healthcare, closing schools and more.
I would also like to say that the news we get every day in Montana is very biased toward the east and west coasts. We in the middle are forgotten. So, while you claim that we don’t know about you, the truth is that you don’t know about us.
It’s too bad that you chose to be snarky instead of engaging in real, caring conversation about how to improve our country. This kind of close-minded attitude is a major reason that rural voters vote Republican–because they think the urban people are telling them what to do.
Are you aware that you sound as intimidating to me as a Trump supporter?
Hi Montana Teacher,
I don’t question your motives, I do, however, vehemently question your conclusions.
Working backwards, while you may feel intimidated by my arguments, I hope you will understand why I feel your comments are condescending. I am not “telling” anyone what to do. I AM asking people like you to understand my frustration just as you ask me to understand your frustration. Please let me know any one of my comments that you consider to be “snarky.” I am, by nature, very snarky, but I wasn’t in my comment to you.
As for fly-over country, I live in the eastern version, you live in the western version. I did, before answering yesterday, check out Jordan on Wikipedia (our friend Lloyd is likely doubled over and gasping for breath through his laughs). We both live in fly-over country. Both of our communities were incorporated in the 1890s. Mine is small, but significantly larger than yours. Yours is 98.63% white, mine is 88.91% white. You seem to be a part of the majority of your community. I am not. The median income of your community is about $22k less than mine. That would make me assume–I may well be wrong–that your community relies much more on federal support than mine does. In other words, your community, per-capita, benefits much more from so-called socialist programs and funding transfer than mine does. Therefore I accept your assertion that we know little of each other’s communities, but I do not accept your assertion that I know nothing about yours.
Finally, I did not use the words “fiercely independent” or “THREATENED”, you did. It seems to me that those words came from you. The implication was, as you call it, an imposed impression of “idyllic” onto me. I disagree. When you write that I, “apparently don’t want to hear about” the issues your community deals with, I would ask you to reread the selective examples I chose. I do not live in any of the communities I cited, but I know them as well as I can. They have made an impression on me. When I lived in California and drove by and stopped for gas and meals in rural communities between and including Los Angeles and Barstow, although the geography and culture is different from Montana, I think I can get it. Pretty much like I get it when I have a pig’s ear sandwich in Jackson, MS and carnitas in a Mexican-American neighborhood in Chicago that once was a Czech immigrant hub. You never did address why people in Jordan feel THREATENED. If you feel THREATENED by my words, someone who lives thousands of miles from you, perhaps we really do need to reconsider if we belong to the same nation (for honesty’s sake, my unrealistic wish would be to break up this ungovernable nation and assert more local control).
In closing, I hope you watched the video on Detroit I attached. I don’t live there, but I grew to love it a couple of years ago when I was in those neighborhoods. I grew to love it even more when I realized that the people I met in the surrounding suburbs might as well have been in Montana as they described the neighborhoods and wonderful, resilient people I met (who are much poorer and much more THREATENED than anyone in Jordan could ever fear to be).
If these comments intimidate you as much or more as those from a supporter of the Idiot, so be it. I consider myself to be a discerning (certainly not patriotic) American citizen who happens to be a first-generation immigrant and who reveres our nation’s history–warts and all–and a living (not “originalist), breathing Constitution that grows and adjusts according to its times. If you can’t relate or talk to me, then it confirms to me that his nation is ungovernable and needs to be broken up.
GregB I was glad to read the last part of your note to Montana Teacher where you referred to the U.S. Constitution. . . . because your earlier points speaks of social, home-cultural, maybe even religious differences; whereas it’s the political framing that is the U.S. Constitution, freedom of thought, rule of law, due process, etc., and as thin as it seems sometimes, that holds us all together. I think that, without that, we are headed back to warring tribes. CBK
And please, point out one of my many “false equivalencies”! Just one.
Greg, I think your post just comes across as “envy.” it is arrogant of you to imagine Montanans have no idea of how others live. Montana teacher is saying that folks there want to be themselves & continue their way of life. What, you want to take that away from them? She didn’t say they want do it at others’ expense. Perhaps these Montanans would be perfectly happy to contribute a big chunk of their income to helping others in the country less fortunate, via taxes. (Perhaps they already do). A Trump admin would tell them they needn’t fork anything over to anybody, they’re on their own for better or worse. An enlightened Dem admin would value their culture, while helping them understand how fortunate they are & help them be proud to contribute to those less fortunate [in exchange for some tangible benefit!]
bethree5 Another anecdote: When I was teaching a course on diversity in a teachers’ masters program here in California, I had a summer student who came to California from a mid-western state (cannot remember which one) just to get her masters, and was to return home later.
She related to the class that she taught in a small town where none of her students were racist, nor anyone else that she could see–a nice community . . .all very nice people. Nor were there any Black or Spanish kids in her classes and (apparently) few or none in her town.
I hoped she left the class with two insights: (1) neither her students nor their parents were ever tested in their social attitudes and relations; (2) she was doing her students NO service by ignoring what was, most probably, a serious underlying problem that would surely emerge later in their lives.
The third thing I don’t remember saying, but remember thinking: with those two insights, I wondered how long her teaching job would last. CBK
Ginny,
“Envy,” “arrogant”? Moi?
Please cite where I “imagine Montanans have no idea of how others live.” Please. What I originally wrote was, “Why do I have a greater obligation–using your logic–to understand them than they do to understand me and others around the country?” I just reread my response to Montana Teacher and still can’t find any citation of where I “imagine Montanans have no idea of how others live.”
My criticisms are, specifically, the terms “fiercely independent”, which I consider to be “arrogant”, to use your word, and “THREATENED”, which I’m still trying to figure out what “we” are threatening.
I don’t “want to take that away from them” and don’t understand how you can draw that conclusion, one you seemingly want to unfairly infer into my comments, for whatever reason.
I admit to being angry. But I’m not being argumentative for argument’s sake. I didn’t write, “There are no black people, there are no Latinos, there are no people from India or Korea or China, but there are Native Americans on the adjacent reservation.” Just what does that mean? And what about “Native Americans on the adjacent reservation.”? Do you not see the inconsistencies in that sentence? On the one hand, some are “fiercely independent” and “THREATENED.” On the other, “Native Americans [are] on the adjacent reservation.” On the one hand, federal policy once gave those “fiercely independent” people land grants and put “Native Americans on the adjacent reservation.”
And I’m the one who has “envy” and is “arrogant?” I guess even so-called liberals love the nostalgia of the good, bad old days after all.
Are the people of Detroit, are the people who live in Cancer Alley, are the people on the Navajo reservation who are being ravaged by COVID, are the women who want control of their lives less “THREATENED”? Are they a lesser class of American?
One threat to rural, white men is the possibility of Kamala Harris as President. How many rural churches inculcate male entitlement?
It doesn’t take a genius to decode resentment at loss of privilege.
As Greg points out, it could get a loss worse for the rural in big sky country if the blue states decide that those not paying federal taxes because they are too poor (47% of the pop.) don’t deserve hand-outs from the federal income taxes residents of blue states pay.
Well Greg I guess our comments in this thread are kind of sailing past each other, sorry if I sounded insulting. As you refine, I’m beginning to get where you’re coming from. Besides you get 50 bonus points for remembering my real first name!! I reacted as I did most likely because I grew up in a rural upstate-NY hamlet with serious poverty nearby, & you could feel and smell it inside some of my friends’ houses. A great thing about a village: there’s only one school, one girl scout troop, one community center, etc – no place to silo. It seemed to me you were making assumptions triggered by a couple of phrases. Montana teacher’s suggestions seem reasonable.
I agree, Montana teacher.
“Religiosity is higher among rural residents among similar age groups”. That info was updated about 20 years later, in 2020, “Rural areas have a higher share who attend religious services more than once a week”. Older people tend toward greater religiosity and the rural areas have older populations.
The two primary religious sects in the U.S. are authoritarian. One is overtly sexist. Both rely on the Bible for codification of sexism in family conduct e.g. Amy Barrett’s People of Praise.
Personally I think Evangelicals are more sexist than Catholics, but that’s juk at how they live.t me. Don’t go by what they say or who they’ve got on the podium, just look at how they live.
cx: but that’s just me
Why doe one have to be more or less than the other? Is this not a distinction without a difference?
Greg, I observed a distinction growing up attending both Cath & Prot. services. Even some Bible-thumpers: the local community church rotated in whatever minister they could find, so it was Baptist for a couple of years. Plus there was a small group of proselytizing born-agains at my first teaching job. It struck me that Prots in general and Evangelists in particular had a lot of attitude & preachiness compared to Catholics, who didn’t spend much time telling you how to live.
Thank you for an most enlightening post, Montana Teacher. It’s both heartrending and oddly heartwarming. I find what you say to be an exemplary instance of working to understand perspectives different from — opposed to — one’s own.
“But how do we talk to them?” Once I naively expected that plain truth would do it. Acknowledge others’ plain truths, and inform them of plain truths related to what they value — truths such as “The Trump administration has begun to defund Social Security and Medicare” and “The new Postmaster General has slowed down the mails.” After the purloined presidential election of 2000, George Lakoff, Robert Reich, and other cognoscenti told us to steer clear of plain truths (a k a facts) in talking to Republicans. I want to believe that these intellectuals are wrong, and that we can present Montanans and everyone else with factual information without their feeling that their entire way of life is being challenged. Any suggestions or reflections?
Bill Rosenthal: “…we can present Montanans and everyone else with factual information without their feeling that their entire way of life is being challenged.”
I have been sending factual articles to two people…a Trump lover and by my brother. Nothing gets through. Facts always are coming from ‘fake news’ or I get a response from some far R media that, in my opinion, isn’t worth two cents for reliability. It praises Trump as the ‘chosen one’ or some such blah.
How does one fight this thinking?
Political is a left wing propaganda organization. I know you hate facts, this shows how ignorant you really are. Trump is for freedom of religion, the left does not. There are far more religious people in this country going for Trump than Bite-me. Many Christians are scared of your party getting into power, the left will try to shut down churches, it’s happening right now in California. I’m sure there are other blue states trying to do the same thing. Dr John Macarthur has been harassed by the governor of California, Newsome. Dr Macarthur is not stupid, he knows God’s word and he knows the Constitution.
So there you go again believing people that do not like this country, who hate God and would rather serve Satan than the Lord Jesus Christ!!
…………………………………………………………………………………….
Interesting fact: Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Dr. Albert Mohler kicked off a new season of the Briefing by accusing his friend, Dr. John MacArthur of Grace Community Church of “malpractice” by choosing to open up five months into the pandemic and not staying shut down for an indeterminable time.
John Fullerton MacArthur Jr. is an American pastor and author known for his internationally syndicated Christian teaching radio and television program Grace to You. He has been the pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, since February 9, 1969.Wikipedia
Thank you, Bill. I was also hoping that facts would get through to people, but I’m starting to have my doubts. I wish I had some good suggestions. I’ve done various campaign and educational work, but our state turned red when the rich folks moved in (to the Bozeman and Flathead Lake areas) and joined with the existing rural voters. I don’t know the answers, but I’ll keep searching.
Montana and Bill: When we all were just beginning to understand that a pandemic was upon us, I had a long and “let’s wash our hands, etc.” conversation with my relative . . . whom I’ve talked about here before. She was totally open to the potential and taking good steps to defer the virus.
HOWEVER, she is an avid Fox News listener. The next time I talked with her, masks were a political ploy and the virus was a fake.
Nothing has changed except that the wall between her and the truth is strengthened via Fox and Infowars. CBK
A saintly picture of a beleaguered farmer/rancher doesn’t match my experience. As example, a local farmer, relatively well-off who was 3rd or 4th generation in the farming business, was repeatedly elected to the school board. He was always in arrears in paying his property taxes which supported the local schools, not because he couldn’t pay but because he found a financial advantage in the delay. He never wanted teachers to get raises because he thought the job was for women whose husbands would support them. He didn’t like black people and looked down on Mexicans. He freely expressed his opinions expecting concurrence from his fellow farmers.
His son went to Ohio State to study agriculture. The farmer bragged at social events that his son was entrepreneurial. While in college, the son started a business that linked interested parties in poor countries with surplus products that had been banned in the U.S. for health and safety reasons.
I’ve met a number of farmers and ranchers, the man that I described above was quite similar to others I’ve met.
If I may add to the picture. The first-generation farmer forbear likely got a federal land grant. The kind for which anyone who was not white (white as defined back then, recent immigrants need not apply) would never have been considered. Over 3-4 generations, that family could build generational wealth, something the migrant Black Americans from the South, whose forbears were slaves, could never accumulate. Something the poor white trash immigrants also couldn’t get, but we can easily distract them with “race” or “cultural issues.” Cut to the chase: the farmer’s descendants “earned” their wealth and privilege as “community leaders.” Those who didn’t accumulate wealth based on those land grants are “losers” who didn’t “work hard.” They want “government handouts.” They are “socialists” who want to profit off our “hard work” (“we are working Americans, after all!”). They are “welfare queens” who get rich while “we are over-taxed.” I think that adds the dabs of paint I wanted to add to the picture.
I was just reminded of a sentence I wrote about a novel I read a few years ago that fit my comment above: “The quintessentially deculturated American, born artless and without history into a world of opportunity…” Kind of fits, doesn’t it?
GregB that is so reductive. “There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” My dad grew up on a dirt-farm in IN in the ‘30’s, eventually divided among his siblings [tho he escaped poverty, heading for Gary steel mills as an adolescent, then joining the Navy].Definitely not some inherited land grant. And no community leaders among them, just a big clan of poor dirt-farmers who never prospered. The attitudes you ascribe prevailed among them, but not due to some govt largesse that was denied to blacks. Just plain old racism: the sort of tribalism that amounts to fighting over scraps. My point only that govt policy had nothing to do w/it.
Bethree-
WW II and the GI bill that followed which were both funded by the U.S. government, lifted many into the middle class. The discrimination in the military against black people set them back financially as did the universities that prohibited their admission based on race.
Greg-
The quote is profound and fits. I’d add, “…opportunity denied foremost to black people but, also to women.”
Dr. Sarah Taber is a good follow on Twitter on this topic.
How about thinking about what we can hope for after a Biden win? Is it unrealistic to think that the US will go back to the international agreements like the envirommental and nuclear ones?
Btw, Fox puts the senate race so far to 48-48
https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2020/general-results
Here is something to watch that shows the planet earth is much more that the ‘small minds’ that currently dominate much of our news.
…………………………………………………..
Video: The World is Beautiful (Timelapse & Hyperlapse)
The World is Beautiful is a compilation of various timelapse scenes showing us how beautiful our world is. With so much negativity in the world these days it’s always good to take a few minutes to appreciate the beauty that is around us.
Jul 8, 2014
Seiswell
Evidently, many of the religious have no interest in protecting God’s natural creation from the exploitation of the richest 0.1%.
Linda: My understanding is that many such persons go by the passage in Genesis in which G-d grants Adam (and Eve?) dominion over the Earth.
Bill Rosenthal: I remember the ‘dominion over the earth’ was exactly what I was told many years ago when I took my confirmation class for the Catholic religion. The earth was made for mankind and all of the animals and plants exist for us.
Glad I progressed far beyond that narrow thinking. Polluting and the killing off of plants and animals both on land and on the sea is not something that should be happening, but is due to the laxity of our ‘dominion’.
Bill-
Bob Shepherd has posted passages from the Bible at this site before. I’m confident he could cite more than a few that are used to keep women in second class citizenship.
An internet search of the subject also yields results.
To your two questions, in order: Yes; no. I’m hoping that if he wins, Biden’s second official act following the inaugural address will be starting to rescind T***p’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.
That’s my hope too. He should start with a program that will give him victory and this would go through rather easy (and least compared to stuff like medicare for all).
I wouldn’t equate people who support Trumpkin with Trumpkin himself. Instead, I think we should study how Trumpkin has been able to convince these people to support him. He talks their language and we apparently don’t.
Words matter. I have a good friend from Russia who voted for Trumpkin because he was told that Biden would bring socialism to the US, and she escaped exactly that when she left the USSR. Because the system there (and in Eastern Europe) was called socialism not communism. I have another, deeply Catholic friend who voted for Trumpkin since he was told that Biden would support even more liberal abortion laws.
Trumpkin knows very well what words to use. In general, conservatives are very good at choosing the right language.
So we should also learn to use the appropriate words, and we’ll win the popular vote not by 6 million but 50 million. The words bigots, racists, xenophobes, ignorant will not turn the tides.
The two examples you cite were “told” lies and chose to believe them. They were apparently too lazy to learn the facts for themselves. It’s not like it is that hard to find. So what word would you use for them. I’m thinking it’s somewhere on the scale from stupid-to-gullible.
Neither of these people are stupid or ignorant. In fact, they are smart and I like them both. According to Lakoff, people do not vote with logic but according to frames. This probably explains why all those Cuban Americans voted for Trumpkin: he managed to step into their frame.
Wish I would have known about this a long time so that I wouldn’t have wasted my time engaging in education. And please don’t tell me people don’t have time for this, especially in the case of your persecuted Russian friend.
Re: “choosing the right language,” the language you cite is about deception. What deceptive language do you suggest to recruit your friends?
I think Trump also used the well known recipe of convincing his base that there is a crisis and grave threat from the left. Some people cannot be outeducated from their frame. As for what language and frame to use, Lakoff gives a general recipe, according to which one important point is not to talk about Trump. But we did just that.
Here is an article with Lakoff.
https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml
But there are many videos with him too.
These are about Trump
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lakoff+trump
These are more general
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lakoff+education
Understanding Trump according to Lakoff https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lakoff+trump
Lakoff! Much better than keeping up with news, reading history, learning about science, etc.! Thanks for the guidance.
If the issue was about education, it would be really hard to explain Herbert von Karajan’s Nazi Party membership or Werner Heisenberg’s leading role in the Nazi nuclear program.
Mate . . . it will remain an experiment precisely because the power in a democracy resorts to the people; so it seems to be the question is: what KIND of education. CBK
If it was about how to educate people, then it would be impossible to explain the prominent roles of Herbert von Karajan or Werner Heisenberg in Germany during WWII.
Besides, quite a few people react badly when you try to educate them, and some react badly even if you simply suggest to watch a video with them about science, the science of how people think and how language may influence their thinking.
Mate . . . enter: the educational, social, political, moral value of the arts. CBK
I think we can learn from this something about campaign speech. I would have liked to hear Biden counter this “socialism” charge. But I could be wrong: I’d thought it was so ridiculous on the face of it, given Biden’s 47 yrs of policy history, that it was hardly worth answering. But I’d never considered the vulnerability of Cubans/ Venezualans on that issue. I just wonder whether speeches going into the weeds, explaining what “socialism” really is vs, say, universal healthcare in a capitalist society [there are many examples] would have resonated. Perhaps he was better off not even trying to go there.
“Not trying to go there”- how’s that worked for the Democrats relative to a SCOTUS packed with religious zealots who are defenders of predatory capitalism, of people dying in gutters like feral dogs and, who promote further concentration of wealth by barbarians?