John Merrow looks at the deeply partisan divide in our country and thinks about ways that we can communicate with each other.
Three Big Questions: 1) How many of the nearly 73 million Americans who voted for President Donald J. Trump can be persuaded to support President Joe Biden? 2) How can we connect with them? 3) Can we fix our schools so they don’t keep turning out angry and disaffected graduates who eagerly support demagogues?
I suspect that the racists, the white nationalists, the misogynists, and other close-minded bigots who voted for Trump aren’t persuadable, nor are greedy, selfish voters who care only about their finances.
But, as I see it, that leaves many millions of Trump voters who might be open to change. Let’s not scorn or mock them but rather try to understand their position.
To change the minds of adults who voted for Trump, we have to persuade them that their government works for them. Because actions speak louder than words, I think we need drastic action, a modern-day GI Bill that includes action on at least these four fronts:
Open the link to see what those “four fronts” are.
Do you agree?
The Trump voters in my family are beyond persuasion, but I agree with John that we must do a better job of arming everyone against racism, misogyny, and demagoguery. I once had a conversation with George Lakoff about how to persuade people. We spoke for two hours. He told me that liberals make rational appeals, and conservatives tell stories. The latter works better, he said. Not because they are true but because they persuade on an emotional level.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Can we fix our schools so they don’t keep turning out angry and disaffected graduates who eagerly support demagogues?”
Yes, by all means, let’s blame it on our schools.
Hell, we blame everything else on them. Why not this too?
Maybe we should blame some of the extreme polarization on folks like Michelle Rhee and former cheerleaders who push extremist BS down the throats of teachers and parents and thereby poison the public sphere and make rational discussion impossible.
Or perhaps the blame also lies with the GAGA Good German teachers and administrators who have implemented with nary a peep of resistance the standards and testing malpractice regime.
I blame the Democrats’ obsessive focus on identity politics, which have had little to no parity with labor, wealth, and public commons politics in this country. Of course, the GOP has jumped on this bandwagon as well, but not quite as much. So too has the corporate media big time. Yeah, it’s significant that we have a woman VP as a woman of color and a trans elected to Congress . . . But if these values don’t have equality with labor and wealth issues, we will cement into office a far more effective Trump in 2020. This is why it is so important to understand and even dialogue with Trump supporters about COMMON issues and how to solve them rather than attack each other’s perceived labels.
The key is to convince all those working class people that their needs like healthcare, SS Medicare, VHS, public schools etc. are critical and that there are better ways to design them, execute them, and finance them through progressive taxation. Most Trump supporters are in favor of SS, but they don’t realize that either party is not very interested in structurally changing the programs for the better to expand them and get them and paid for by everyone equitably. And I cannot think of one Trump supporter who would want to be hit up with a surprise bill from a hospital post surgery or deal with impossibly high deductibles or premiums, something the ACA did not really solve.
Keep your allies close; keep your “enemies” closer when you want to unite people and overcome a major war . . .
Hear, hear!
Spot on analysis, Robert. Common ground is difficult to reach when the narrative is dressed as social equality bared out for those who don’t experience social inequality themselves. Voters who are singularly interested in themselves are put off by anyone else advocating for others if they believe it is going to change the systems to which they have access.
One of the biggest complaints I heard from 2016 Trump voters was that “illegals were coming to take their jobs “ or “to take government hand-outs.” It was not that they don’t want to help people—they just don’t want “those people” here taking the help that they believe they themselves should be getting.
I find very little difference between those who shout “blame the schools” and those who shout “blame Black Lives Matters” or “Blame trans people” or “blame identity politics” (whatever “identity politics” means).
I notice that neither AOC nor Bernie Sanders attack “political correctness” or “Black Lives Matters”, nor do they use demeaning buzzwords invented by the far right like “identity politics”. That is because one can support progressive economic policies AND racial justice, even though the far right wants to use dog whistles to make democrats run away from anything that sounds too much like “identity politics” (like Black Lives Matters). I am so glad that AOC and Bernie know better.
It reminds me about how the right wing made “liberal” and the ACLU into something evil in 1988. And then we had decades of supposedly smart people blaming “liberals” as the reason democrats lost. They made “liberal” into something that should never be mentioned, despite the fact that liberalism INCLUDED progressive economic policies!
It’s better when the democrats don’t go running away from supporting what is right because the right wing has demonized that with buzzwords.
^^To be fair, I also object whenever people try to blame democrats’ losses on supporting “socialism”.
Just because the right wing propaganda is so successful in demonizing good things like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal as “socialism” does not mean that supporting those policies are to blame.
I don’t know the answer — I wish there was some way to counter the successful Republican propaganda effort to turn good policies into something that voters are afraid of.
NYC public I think one of the problems is that neo-liberals don’t like to lose elections, and after they lost a few, have been at it for a very long time . . . securing their Orwellian doublespeak and spaghetti on the wall in layer after layer over time; and right under the noses of (what can I say?) naive teachers and democrats and people who, though of course have faults of our own, but who have assumed and expected honesty and integrity that has not been forthcoming as a regular event, again, for a very long time. It’s no compliment that they’re better at the propaganda machine; and have been doing it so long, for some, not all, their soul is so dried up one wonders if it will ever live well again.
Need I recall Charlie Brown trusting Lucy, over and over again, not to pull the ball away just as he is about to kick it. CBK
NYC public school parent
It will not be with a kumbaya moment . Glad to see your new found appreciation of the Socialist AOC / Sanders wing of the Democratic party . Of course neither is a Socialist . Social insurance being adopted by Bismark to defeat Socialism. And I don’t recall them calling for Nationalizing the means of production any more so than has been done in the past with Public Utilities or calling for the Defense Production act in a Pandemic. .
Robert is ignoring 65 years of history where Republicans played the working class. Appealing to racial hate and fears of social change. Starting with Goldwater who not only opposed the Civil Rights act but portrayed America in social decline losing “American Values”. While they blocked progress on labor reform, minimum wage, reversed progressive taxation, protective regulation and would love to reverse the New Deal and Great Society safety net programs as well. .
Not that I am giving a pass to the NDC / DLC Democrats but historical context is necessary before you toss out terms like identity politics. The politics invented by the right while they fleeced the working classes in service to their oligarch puppet masters.
“It was all a Lie” even the Moral Majorities ranting on abortion was a more PC way to oppose Carter for his attack on racially segregated Christian Academies. .
Andrew Sullivan who I genuinely dislike has called Sanders a Demagogue. Perhaps he is right . A little demagoguery aimed at the the puppet masters of Republican Politicians might be a good thing.
Joel,
Katherine Stewart in her book THE POWER WORSHIPPERS demonstrates that the “new right” and the evangelicals didn’t care about abortion until years after Roe was decided. Their big issue, as you wrote, was protecting the tax exempt status of racially segregated schools and colleges. They chose abortion as a big tent issue.
I don’t know about “wings”, but I’ve been a big fan of AOC since she came on the scene. I like her politics, but even more I admire how smart and quick she is — she thinks on her feet faster than any politician I’ve seen. Not only can she present and defend her views brilliantly, but and I love that she is far too smart to let herself be used by the right wing to demonize Democrats. (I’ve seen her respond to soft pitches thrown to her by news anchors just begging her to say something mean about Pelosi or Biden and AOC pushes back. Without giving up any of her integrity, she presents her own better narrative instead of helping them amplify the narrative that the right wing wants to push to help Republicans.) Bernie is also good at that. He stands up for progressive ideas and criticizes politicians on policy without demonizing the democrats. I don’t think of Bernie as a “demagogue” and if Andrew Sullivan calls him one, I’d like to see his evidence. I find Sullivan could use some humility and wisdom – I don’t think the very high opinion he has of his own brilliance is quite warranted.
NYC public school parent
Let us agree to agree . As for Sullivan he found that Sanders attacks on the 1% really the 0.1% were demagoguery . To that I say Demagoguery in the pursuit of democracy and economic justice is no vice .
Perhaps one of the writers can tell me if that needs an attribution.
Time to stop “fighting with pillows.”
Joel, NYCPSP, et al:
Yes, fighting with pillows is no long going to cut it. Playing hardball and coming back with political tanks is not, any more, an unhealthy way to conduct Washington. The GOP have been doing it for years, and even with great division within their own party, they ultimately know how to execute to band together, muster, and sustain power. Their complicity (for those truly “conservative” and who oppose him) for Trump is appalling. Their unity is a force to be reckoned with.
That said, The Democrats need to become lean, mean, and agree on a common platform and use fire to fight fire. No more bland, boring, feckless governance (which actually used to be a sign of peace and functionality). Instead, the Democrats need to unify and fight like their party’s existence depends on it . . . because it DOES. Otherwise, it will give rise to more Trumps or to possibly third, fourth, and fifth parties. I’d like to see something major and structural happen in my lifetime if possible. I am 56. And I have not at all ignored 65 years of the GOP playing the labor class. For many years again, they have sold “morality” and “threat to freedom” as ways to keep the public off topic to labor and wealth distribution for the back breaking work most people produce in making their organizations either successful, very rich, or both.
Nope! Time to whip out he political tanks and bombs and educate people in both camps how important labor and wealth are because that’s what we 95% to 98% percenters have strongly and acutely in common. That commonality is still maybe not a sleeping giant, but a giant who is not fully roused. I personally and politically am licking my chops when it comes to those 70+ million Trump supporters with this lens in mind. It’s important to understand their psychologies big time. Most of them are not in a good place, and one needs to even, with enough safe distance, empathize with them and their life story, focusing on that instead of the shallow branding and typecasting that comes with the MAGA hat. To better understand this segment of the population is to better guard, protect, and expand democracy and equity.
NYCPSP, yes, I support AOC and Bernie, Boxer, and Porter even if they are all a mixed bag because the bad part of each bag is minuscule compared to the proportions in other officials’ bags. The youth movement and progressive movement ain’t going away at all . . . The stale and arthritic Pelosian and Feinsteinian governance of the DNC has had its day and will have to at least allow some significant and substantial, transformative balance into the mix from progressives.
Robert Rendo, Educator
I wish I was as optimistic as you. You are assuming that for large swaths of the Trump base there is an economic basis for their discontent. I am
here to tell you that from my perspective as a member of the “labor elite “blue collar collar working class, there is not . Awful Trumpian of me to assume that my personnel experiences extend beyond my relatively small circle of contacts.
But NYC and its suburbs are not West Virginia. The NYC building Trades are not workers in the Mid West who have seen their futures devastated by policy from Trade to Right to Work . It may be true that these workers have seen a loss of market share in the last 2 decades. Yet those that are affected the least I find are the most attracted to the demagoguery of Trump. Tough talking to workers in the construction trades earning 100-200k a year, plus lucrative benefits from healthcare to pensions Then hearing them dismiss the threat of Trumps assault on the Unions that empowered those earnings. While they attack a Democrat like Cuomo(no fan) who has tossed tens of billions in high paying public works at them, to buy their vote.
The leadership of the Building Trades both on a Local and National basis tends to be the most conservative in the Union Movement. Yet they have almost uniformly rejected Trump and Republicans in general since Nixon. The membership according to internal polling in the last election went for Trump by a margin of 70%. I don’t think that changed much since 16.
The response that I get when I press these workers about the real dangers of Trump’s (Republican’s ) anti Union policy is revealing and it is almost universal among the cult members.
“My Job my pension … don’t matter if I don’t have a country, this is about American values”
I have yet to be able to figure out what about those values are American other than Whiteness. Even when the person I am speaking to is Hispanic . Sadly he sees himself as white as those around him don’t .
I supported Sanders in 16,Warren in 20 . I am an economic populist who ranted against the Democrats shift toward neo liberal right wing policies from Trade through Education. Which is how a construction worker wound up on Diane’s blog. The assault on K-U education being part of a broader assault on the working class .. But if Democrats have to appeal on Social issues so be it, because there is little about the attraction to Trumpism that is economic.
Joel,
Yes! I agree we agree! And I second your reply to Robert.
It’s why I get so annoyed when I hear people saying “oh the reason Democrats lost is focusing on identity politics” or the reason Democrats lost is that they were too socialist”. Both are wrong, and focusing on that — giving power and legitimacy to that right wing narrative about how it’s all about the democrats being too progressive or too conservative — is self-defeating. It helps reinforce the false narrative that those are ideas should be demonized, and it makes voters feel good about voting for Republicans. After all, the one thing that Republicans and Democrats can agree on is how truly awful the Democrats are!
We bend over backward to legitimize the people who voted for Trump, as if Trump wasn’t spewing hate and lies. We normalize their vote for Trump, and say it’s not their fault, it is all the fault of the democrats for being (insert favorite reason here: “too socialist” “too concerned with identity politics” “too anti-police”).
This is entirely about the ability of the far right to re-define every single good democratic/progressive policy into something to be afraid of. Supporting Black Lives Matters is “identity politics” or “supporting violence against police”. Medicare for All (and even Medicare for all who want it!) or the Green New Deal is “evil socialism”. The right wing has been very successful in re-defining democrat/progressive policies as evil while their amplification of that message drowns out the criticism of what Republicans are offering voters. The ONLY message they hear is that they are voting for the Republican party that is fighting against that evil identity politics and socialism that will destroy America. And even if they are voting for Republicans because they like their racism and xenophobia, they can pretend it is because the Democrats are so evil.
AOC and Pete Buttigeig represent different “wings” of the democratic party, but they are both models for how to quash the right wing narrative and replace it with a much better democratic narrative. They don’t try to demonize the democrats with whom they disagree on some policy; instead they talk about what the democrats have in common — the policies that voters like — and how they are fighting together to prevent the Republicans from ending those policies.
Ya beat me to the punch on that one SDP. My thoughts exactly. Does Merrow have any idea of the assumptions he is making with that question? I doubt it.
It’s not the schools that indoctrinate children with absurd, fantastical, mythological thinking. It is the faith belief institutions that instill and demand obeisance to that type of thinking. Since the vast majority of Trump voters self-identify as religious, it’s no wonder that they are immune to logical argument and respond to stories (see Lakoff as mentioned by Diane), stories that are on the face of them ludicrous and risible-heaven, hell, a sky-daddy god who demands utter fealty, virgin birth, Jesus rising from the dead and ascending corporally whole into that heaven in the sky and. . . and. . . and. . . how many more do I need to cite?
We have ingrained into people to accept the patently illogical, irrational, preposterousness of faith beliefs without question. Why wouldn’t they believe the patently illogical, irrational, preposterousness of Trumps bloviations???
Merrow’s pointing the finger of blame at the schools for not vaccinating students against absurdities is expected as he has accepted the idiotic “blame the schools” schtick with the same blind obedience as those faith-believers and tRump cultistas do with their beliefs.
Blame the teachers is precisely what Michelle Rhee and her former cheerleader Merrow were doing.
How quickly some people forget (or want to forget).
Everyone’s to blame
Except the ones who are
Finger pointing game
Will Rheelly get you far
We should all listen to Dwayne. He has it all figured out. Done Deal. CBK
Knock knock!
Who’s there?
Dwayne!
Dwayne who?
Dwain the bathtub I’m dwowning!
Speaking of rheelly, I rheelly miss KrazyTA, who rheelly had a way with words and with old Greek wisdom.
How is belief in God any different than believing man came from a monkey, a planet from something, etc.? We don’t have authenticated paintings of these events. 😐
Partly blame neoliberals who deregulated telecom and allowed hate to be spread through mass media sites. Also, blame billionaires for avoiding taxes and making life miserable for millions of people. Do not blame teachers. Do not blame teachers. Do not blame teachers.
It’s not the schools that indoctrinate children with absurd, fantastical, mythological thinking.
Unless, that is, we are talking about right-wing private schools supported by vouchers–the new American fundamentalist madrasas
Eddie, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming and comes from a number of different sources. One is controlled evolution, or breeding, in which we take the role of the environment, selecting those plants or animals that will successfully mate (by this means, a Russian scientist turned foxes into domesticated doglike animals in a few generations). Another is the geological and paleontological record, the record of the changing forms of organisms,which we see in fossils over time, in response to environmental changes, also recorded in the rocks, in fossilized animals and plants, and in ice. With the advent of modern genetics and gene sequencing, we have an entirely new set of evidence that confirms the record pieced together from fossils–the changes, in response to the environment, of the genetic codes of organisms over time. We can now tell pretty closely exactly when organisms diverged from a common ancestor based on the number of differences in their genetic sequences and the known rates of mutation. And, finally, we have the evidence of observed evolution of some species that evolve very rapidly in response to artificial environmental conditions that we create. So, that’s four separate lines of evidence. As with anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change, there is no genuine scientific dispute about evolution.
Bob Shepherd
Having graduated in the stone age with a degree in Anthropology. I appreciate the defense of science . I am just not sure it is necessary to convince the unconvinced with alternative facts to their beliefs.
The reality is although the theory of evolution is sound. The search for lineal evolutionary links in what is a large tree with thousands of branches many of which are tangled together , is a fools errand . Everyone has a Lucy and they are certain theirs is the one. This uncertainty even with genetic data and these minor disputes in the scientific community are used by those with magical beliefs to deny the science .
Besides I concluded Eddie was being sarcastic .
Eddie
The evidence for evolution is overwhelming.
And he is Bob Shepherd
Yes, it is ridiculous to blame schools!
The YOUNGER voters — the ones who were educated with Common Core — who are the ones who don’t support Trump.
It is middle aged and OLDER voters whose education from 40 – 80 years ago whose schools from 40 – 80 years ago must be blamed.
As much as I dislike Common Core, maybe it did something right! Look at how young people are much more progressive!
You are linking CCSS to a growth of progressives? Really?
Robert Rendo,
No, I’m not “really” linking CCSS to a growth of progressives.
I am just pointing out that if there is to be any scapegoating of schools, it should be scapegoating the schools attended by people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, since they are the ones who supported Trump in very large numbers.
Apparently, the education that today’s 18 – 30 year olds received must have been pretty good! At least they learned to know the difference between a lying con man and a person who actually wants to govern to help people.
Are you not leaving out the factor that older people have been able to capture their piece of the pie while younger people are inheriting bad climate, bad college debt, low wages, a gig economy, high college costs to attend, and a shrinkage of labor unions?
CCSS did not do anything to young people; politics and the power structure of distribution of wealth is the culprit. CCSS is coincidental, unless you consider young people’s rebellion and rejection of CCSS (was there one?) as something as part and parcel of their progressivism . . .
Robert,
I’m sorry that my reply didn’t capture my joking tone. I truly wasn’t crediting Common Core. That’s not why young people aren’t getting fooled in the high percentages than their elders are.
But I was kind of serious by saying that their schools – despite the horror that is Common Core – can’t be that bad if the majority of young voters between 18-29 are progressive and recognize the fraud that Trump is. I wish the older generation — who were educated long before anyone heard of Common Core — were as wise as them! (Clearly, many of us are or we wouldn’t be reading this blog!)
I like to think that voting isn’t just a reflection of whether people have personally captured a big enough piece of the pie or not. If that is the case, it’s going to be hard to change minds!
NYCPSP,
You have now made this very clear. I genuinely appreciate your clarification. I had no idea you had a public sense of humor or if you did, I have never detected it on this blog.
Now I get it. (Chuckle).
Robert,
I try to keep my sense of humor deeply buried for fear it may reveal itself in one of my replies, but sadly, on very rare occasions that sense of humor manages to escape. Usually in the form of sarcasm! So I can’t blame you for not recognizing it when it appears!
; )
My kids aged 29 & 31 are staunch liberals bordering on progressive, as are their older & younger friends. CCSS was barely drafted when the younger one graduated high school. My only other point of reference is a kid I tutored in French (along with his mom) for many years: he’s 18 & of the same ilk. The common thread here is politically-liberal parents, & to a large extent, community. CCSS has nothing to do with it.
Oops, read the intervening posts & realize you were kidding. Robert Rendo captured the factors that influence my kids & their cohort [tho it didn’t hurt having lib parents]
Trump is not even charismatic, he’s so obviously a jabbering, bloviating clown. Where’s the appeal? It’s not as if Trump is a JFK; Trump’s appearance, the weird hair and orange complexion is off-putting and laughable. And yet there are wide swaths of the population that worship this abomination. The phony baloney televangelist$$$$$ put Trump on an altar, a president sent by God, they claim. Trumps’s spiritual advisor, Paula White, lives a posh lifestyle on the backs of her dupes. Paula White: quote During the service, which was streamed on Facebook Live, White-Cain called on “angelic reinforcement” from the continents of Africa and South America.
“I hear a sound of victory, the Lord says it is done,” she said. “For angels have even been dispatched from Africa right now… In the name of Jesus from South America, they’re coming here.”
In her prayer, White-Cain is also heard speaking in tongues — an occurrence in which a speaker talks in a language they do not know, usually during an intense religious experience. Speaking in tongues has been practiced in multiple Christian denominations, as well as other religions. end quote from USA Today.
Enough people were not stupid enough to vote for Trump, Biden won by a very substantial margin.
If God wanted us to support Trump, somehow He’d tell us, instead of Paula White and Jim Bakker. ☹️
Irvin Baxter died recently. He linked premarital sex to covid-19. I can understand an AIDS link, but not covid.
😐
That’s called precovidal sex.
Sometimes referred to as precoronal sex (not to be confused with precolonal sex)
Yes, with your wonderful way with words. 😁
I agree because not all of Trump’s voters are obsessive Trumpsters. The GOP/Trump’s presidential campaign was built on repeatedly spreading lies to scare conservative voters to vote.
I think many voted for Trump out of fear of Biden turning the U.S. into a Socialist country (if those changes were modeled on socialist democracies in the EU, that would probably be a really good thing), banning Christmas, having their AR-15s taken away, crime escalating, liberals having sex with cows (I think it was DT Jr. that was spreading that one), and not stopping those murdering libturd baby killers because abortions are still legal in many states.
Running a political campaign to stir up fear among conservative voters works because of their brain structure. Studies have revealed that conservatives are easier to manipulate by playing on their fear of some issues.
Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences
“On the whole, the research shows, conservatives desire security, predictability and authority more than liberals do, and liberals are more comfortable with novelty, nuance and complexity.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/conservative-and-liberal-brains-might-have-some-real-differences/
“Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/
Well-said, Lloyd, backed up by interesting scientifically-based articles.
“Please, sir, may I have some more?” (Science, that is. I hope students are getting enough science education in these times.)
Can we fix our schools? Does Merrow understand how difficult it is to teach students the point of view of an author when the student doesn’t share that author’s ideas?
He admits his family can’t be changed. Can they change his voting preference? No. And he thinks a teacher wants to wade into changing students. All I could do was present a variety of peoples’ experience through fiction and non-fiction literature. How that, coupled with their own experience, might have shaped the students’ opinions I sometimes learned when I met them as full adults later.
Its easy to give simple solutions to complex problems when one is not the one implementing the solutions.
How true, SDP! I taught in a Chicago metro area that was very integrated & multi-cultural (it was like a mashup of Chicago neighborhoods, all in one school district). Interestingly enough, there were a number of “skinheads” living in at least two of the suburbs.
One day, I was working w/a group of 5 students (7th Grade L.D. pull-out), & one otherwise, perfectly polite young man said something derogatory about Jews. Without having to even open my mouth, another young man (who was, as it turned out, a member of Rabbi Funnye Capers’ {a relative of Michelle Obama} synagogue–he is an Ethiopian Jew, one of only 2 Jewish students I’d had)–admonished the naysayer, “Don’t you know, Mrs. RbMtK is JEWISH?! (He really emphasized the word!) Budding Skinhead Junior (his father was a well-known S.H., but he was never anything but polite & respectful to me–?!) turned bright red, & apologized immediately.
Yet another instance in which I learned more from my students than they learned from me…
Anyway, it would appear that both of these 13-year-olds had belief systems that started–& were built–at home. From their families.
I meant to refer to Diane’s family. See how easy it is to recall and draw poor conclusions when emotional!!
I do think if we have learned anything by Trump and his Trumpists, it’s that slow but consistent changes in the curriculum and the culture since the 50’s have left our now-grown-ups bereft of the political insights that were so solidly fixed in those who experienced World War II. If democracy is an experiment, and I think it is, then it has to be experimented with anew through the curriculum by each new generation who will be responsible for its continued life. Insofar as we have lost that thread of political education for our students, we definitely need to recover it . . . consistently and systematically starting with teacher education.
Also, I am NOT suggesting just another kind of propaganda. Rather, to teach to an AWARENESS of the different kinds of political systems and to show what happens to people under each kind. If done well, that reality is enough to scare the pants off of anyone. It also can show just how totally spoiled and selfish many Americans presently are, not to mention devoid of patience when our satisfactions are delayed. CBK
I hear what both you and Lloyd are saying above. I’m also concerned at the lack of nuance in the comments above those. As you well know, CBK, the very core of fascism is an intense anti-intellectualism, which also has a long and storied tradition in American life since the founding of the nation. We all engage in it from time to time, even if we don’t want to admit it.
The difference is when public figures and wide swaths of the population uses it at the heart of their word views. It’s even more sinister when it deepens its tentacles into public policy. We just had 73 million votes of confirmation of this thesis. And they’re not going anywhere anytime soon. So, how, as Merrow poses the question, do we reach them? Some propose throwing policies at them to, in effect, “buy” their allegiance. This is temporary, because they will revert to form once something “goes wrong.”
Many of the educators above are indignant that “schools and teachers get the blame.” But let’s take a step back before we rush to accept this. Most teachers I have known enter the profession because of a higher life goal. They feel driven by some indescribable force to make the world a better place by educating students; it’s their way of “paying it forward” to make a better world. But many of them harbor anti-intellectual sentiments. I would say that those teachers do get some of the blame–not all, but some.
So the answer is to create conditions that allows teachers to teach. That is the only long-term solution I can see. But we’ve got this blog to inform us of all the obstacles being put in the way. Americans are “devoid of patience” when it comes to this. Many parents wary of this learnin’ stuff. My solution would be to focus on the majority of people who aren’t fascist, who do not let anti-intellectualism drive their lives and opinions. Grow that coalition, as slow as the process may be, bring some from the other side along through rational and successful ideas, and keep on that path. Too much focusing on the irrationalities the 73 million represent is a fool’s errand, much like those damned “[the Idiot] voters panels the news media latches on to. Let’s see some Biden voter panels, I bet there are some good ideas among them to address this issue.
GregB I was made aware of my own anti-intellectualism in several philosophy courses; and made it my job to put a section at the beginning of all of my teacher-courses to be sure “my teachers” were at least aware of it in themselves and others–the worst of it manifested when they had teacher-parent conferences and came off as arrogant and all-knowing to people who, in many cases, ONLY hailed from a different specialist tradition.
Also, about blaming teachers . . . it goes up the line to handed-down frameworks and curricula for specific specialties and courses, then to curriculum in general, and the school boards, and on and on. All of this while the colleges and universities are under attack merely for being scientific and open-to-progress, and the sciences (human and otherwise) are changing as is normal. I liked that quote about plumbers and philosophers.
Another inherent problem with teaching is also its reason for being: As a problem, students often go home with ideas that conflict with parents’ ignorance and biases. But then the good thing is that: students often go home having reached beyond their parents’ horizon, both educationally and in terms of passed-down biases.
Plato, who BTW was pre-Christian, thought teaching was a divine profession. I think he was right insofar as we ARE driven by forces that have nothing to do with common-fare motivations, but that we hardly understand ourselves. CBK
Merrow has a history of blaming teachers. Although he later changed his tune (after it appeared that Rhee was ignoring testing fraud) , he was an early cheerleader for Michelle Rhee — and benefitted financially from his reporting on her — whose entire schtick was built on blaming teachers and principals.
It’s actually absurd to lay the blame for the Trump phenomenon on teachers and schools. Despite what a lot of people want to believe, teachers actually have very little (if any) control over most of the factors that influence children and young adults.
There’s plenty of blame to go around and explanations of Trump’s appeal. But, that does not tell us what to do. Unless folks with commitment to decency, democracy, and equity find ways to break the fear appeal of Republicans to people, we are all screwed. That racist appeal precedes Trump, going back at least to Nixon’s southern strategy. Republicans were ascendant in local, state, and national elections before Trump. Moderate Democrats were losing elections before AOC, before BLM, before the Green New Deal, and before Bernie Sanders rose to prominence as a Democratic Socialist.
We need resonant language to persuade people. We need language that conveys, “I get you. I’m on your side.”
A few more thoughts on that here: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/14/1995786/-Getting-to-Gets-me-and-is-on-my-side
I am late to the party: sure hope others have read your article, Arthur.
A key insight: “too many Americans have come to accept that since inequity is inevitable, others’ gains come at their expense.”
We need to be able to show and explain how inequity [whether in housing, health care, global warming, education] * “impacts people of color the most, but creates challenge and insecurity for us all.” * Democrats must “strategically select issues locally and nationally that make a difference to people’s lives across racial differences…”
If we are able to find that path, it’s one where we’re all on the same side. Democrat pols no longer talking down to, being PC, coming across as the privileged but kindly lord of the manor. (And of course it presupposes abandoning neoliberal policies.)
My Trump supporter acquaintances refer to “urban rioting” “defund the police” “BLM”ANTIFA and AOC “kidnapping” the nation ..
Race, gender and class are the subtext of every conversation.. “anti-bias training” begins w/ “you are the beneficiary of White privilege,” essentially driving folks deeper into their biases.
The “left,” AOC and other “progressives” attract some and also mobilize Trump leaning voters.
Racism is generational and deeply rooted. Yes, the best response are jobs.
A key datapoint is inter-racial partnerships.. the tanning of America..
Love is the answer
If love were the answer, my married friends would not have had to institute a no political discussion to save their marriage.
Someone who loves me prays for me to change my views. He sees Trump as obnoxious but a true American who takes care of his family and business, basic American “original“ values that “socialism” undermines.
We discuss issues to find areas of agreement.
Although I already posted one comment, I am adding another thought. Why was Merrow suggesting schools need to address the issue when the Conservatives are already blaming teachers for having created liberal, socialist nonbelievers?
One thing I avoided as a teacher was inculcating students with my philosophical ideas, as godly and wise I believe them to be. Instead, I tried to share literature and logic and cultural values. Political gand religious choices were up to their drawing their own conclusions. (Another skill I “taught.”)
As teachers know, words mean something. It is very easy to “lead” students when presenting ideas emotionally. Teaching them to divorce ideas from emotion when reading is hard.
Being Left or Right is a freewill choice. No school, no teacher, no anyone can force or “brainwash” a student, anyone to follow a political ideology. 🤔😮
Generally, Trump supporters aren’t going to support Biden. Again, it’s freewill. 😐
Sorry, but racism is freewill too. ☹️
Racism isn’t always White hating Black. Being Black, I could join Louis Farrakhan in hating Whites. I choose not to, which is again, freewill. 😐
I approve this message — and I am not even running for office.
Very interesting suggestions, Eddie. How often it seems to us that we have a choice. But often, human behavior makes it look less like a choice and more like the nature of man and the influence of stories.
I really like you comments. Thanks.
You’re welcome, Roy. 😁
Great points, Eddie! LIKE!! (I would put thumbs up Emojis here, but I don’t know how to put them in.) Since you always have Emojis, perhaps you could school me?
This is great, Eddie! I’m with you–one of those believers in free will. The fact of free will cannot be denied simply because of our inability to explain it given the limitations of our science and understanding.
Free will??
No doubt we all make choices. How “free” those choices are is very much up for discussion. And that is where a philosophical attitude comes into play. I use Comte-Sponville’s definition of that attitude “Thinking and discussing without the benefit of proofs [as is possible in mathematics and the hard sciences]”. You are correct that our abilities to understand a concept such as free will and/or other brain/nervous system functioning “given the limitations of our science and understanding” is limited. Hence the need for philosophical thinking.
Indeed, one can rationo-logically deny “the fact of free will”. It has and will continued to be denied.
Perhaps we are not as “free” to think/act as we purport ourselves to be.
Well, I would love to have a beer with you and discuss this matter, Duane. I’ll choose to have a Hefeweizen please.
Loved it when Free Will jumped over that kid’s head.
lmao!
I don’t think I know how to talk to anyone who looks at Donald Trump (not to mention his unscrupulous, unspeakable family) and says, essentially, “Why yes, yes, this incompetent, whiney, self-pitying narcissist is most definitely presidential timber.”
But to paraphrase Tom Waits, I’ve been drinking cleaning products all morning, and I’m open to suggestion.
markstext That’s VERY funny.
But back to reality, I think what is consistent in the life of any conspiracy theory is that what may have bits of plausibility, but no evidence, is automatically considered REALITY merely because it’s possible (like voter fraud), especially if it supports our felt biases of the day. VOILA! it must be true!
Thanks for the laugh. CBK
Glad I could bring a little mirth into your day, CBK.
“what may have bits of plausibility, but no evidence, is automatically considered REALITY merely because it’s possible [especially if it supports our felt biases of the day].”
That is very interesting, CBK. You teased out a key ingredient: it’s real simply because it’s possible – and conforms to our biases. Do not pass PROBABILITY, do not collect $200. Gauging what’s probable means collecting all available evidence regardless of whether it supports one’s assumptions– then weighing it, drawing conclusions. Even though I was raised by parents who thought that way, and was introduced to it more formally in high school, it was college that really inculcated those thought processes through constant discussion and exposition.
Hmm, so I find myself coming around a bit to see at least a grain of truth in Merrow’s proposition.
Presidential Timber
Timber can be fiber
Of Presidential tree
Or timber can be “tim-berrr”
When tree is falling free
In the latter case, best to just run like hell and hope it does not fall in your direction.
Excellent.
As someone who has felled many trees for our wood stove over the years, i am speaking from experience.
Sometimes trees don’t fall the way you had planned and hoped.
The last thing I would want is to have a falling Trump land on me.
Falling Trump
Falling Trump
Leaves just a stump
That Forest Gump
Is bound to bump
SomeDAM That reminds me of a similar saying we had when we were kids. I would say to Trump: Make like a tree and leave. CBK
Ha ha ha
Make like a Don and be gone.
I must always acknowledge with approval any Tom Waits quote.
I have no idea how many Trump voters are “redeemable.” I do think that not all Trump voters are racists. Many of them where I live are believers in “small government,” which I think are vestiges of ‘Tea Party’ credo. These Trumpers mistrust that government can do anything effective. They flock to Trump because they believe he will blow up the system that has left them behind. What Trump has mostly tried to blow up is democracy itself instead of helping struggling workers.
Education cannot solve all of society’s ills. I do not think that educational tracking alone is responsible for disaffected voters. I think a lot of disaffection comes from huge income inequality, the decline of labor in our country and generational disaffection of white working class families. The working class which had good jobs in the fifties now finds itself expendable. Gloalization and NAFTA and the decline of unions have taken a toll on them. They are susceptible to demagoguery because they are grasping at straws for survival. Blaming schools for Trumpism, in my opinion, is a simplistic explanation for a complex issue.
Retired There is a contradiction there also. That is, “small government” usually means NOT more freedom, but an increase in corporate power which then has more economic and political power and so the potential to limit freedoms those beloved freedoms. They’ve thrown that “drown the government” spaghetti-schtick against the wall so much, some of it HAD to “schtick.”
It’s good government working for all that keeps regulatory power over in-country multi-national corporations; and its corrupt government that has allowed itself to become corrupted by corporations who have no interest in the good of all.
I’ve seen some changes going on in corporate thought, so I guess we’ll see where that’ll end up. . . . so says my eternal optimist. CBK
I totally agree. It makes no sense that many Trump supporters favor “small government” that benefits the 1%. Liberatarians have been preaching small government for years, and lots of Trump followers have been duped. Small government is a repeated theme in many right wing posts on social media.
Retired Yes, government can go bad; but the right and the neo-liberals have been demonizing it for decades now–for their own purposes. But when it’s working, it really is about PUBLIC SERVICE.
Of course, narrative is not everything, but at least shallow-thinkers should understand WHAT they are talking about when they use terms like “the government;” and if changing the narrative helps, then we should know to do so. CBKs
I’m 70 and have been an educator and defender of public education for my entire working life. So, I understand that educators take umbrage when people suggests that schools are to blame for society’s ills. That said, if I didn’t believe can make a difference in how kids think and what and who they value, I would have never entered teaching. And, saying we can do better, is not a condemnation. It’s a basic principle of change. A few more thoughts (previously posted) here: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1980904
“He told me that liberals make rational appeals, and conservatives tell stories. The latter works better, he said. Not because they are true but because they persuade on an emotional level.”
One can debate the meaning of the term “liberals,” but I don’t think this distinction really applies much anymore. I think we are living in an postmodern age of narratives.
Obama was on public radio this morning talking about his new book. He said that Republicans do a much better job in messaging than Democrats. For example, Democrats actually do a better job on the economy, but prevailing perception is that Republicans are better for economic growth.
retired teacher,
I find it so aggravating that the public still believes the Republicans do a better job on the economy. How many Republican administrations have to destroy the economy with “trickle down” before it gets discredited?
“postmodern age of narratives.”
Please explain what you mean by that statement. “Postmodern can mean many things in different contexts.” Help me understand.
Unfortunately the Trump voters who are not cult extremists would never support utilizing government funds to help the populace. They are simply against the idea of the government helping anyone whether it be for a public health crisis or crippling student debt. I don’t think Dems and Progressives are going to see eye-to-eye with Republicans on a lot of issues because the conservative platform goes against just about everything Merrow is proposing in this new GI bill idea.
Without the Senate Democrats will have to curtail most of their plans.
LG The narrative has something to do with it . . . for instance, Franklin Roosevelt made the verbal distinction that the new deal wasn’t a government giveaway, but rather a moral duty. CBK
Stories are more powerful than logical reasons. Stories, narratives about the human condition, are the way we have defined ourselves over the years. As Duane points out above (glad to see your commentary here again) some of our most important stories are utterly fantastic. Other stories are more based in a sense of immediate realty, like the narrative associated with the George Floyd incident that sparked reaction all over the world.
The stories Trump’s followers use to define their realities are very real to them. I have a good friend whose zealous defense of Trump seems contradictory to his statement that To Kill a Mockingbird was the world’s best novel. He sees no contradiction. He thinks the election was stolen. He sees his opponents as pernicious purveyors of licsence and disorder.
No matter what your stories are, you will use them to support what you want to continue to believe, especially if there are people producing stories they know will support your addiction to a particular story line.
Last year, I woman of my acquaintance told me, on one occasion, that she had “no prejudices against homosexuals.” At another time, she told me that she hadn’t spoken to her sister in years. When I asked why, she said that her sister had come out as a lesbian, and she couldn’t put up with THAT, with emphasis on the THAT, as though she were discussing something abominable. Oddly enough, this woman was a theatre director. I was in the cast of one of her plays. A fellow cast member said to me, “Yeah. _____ hates LGBTQ people and would be surprised to learn that 80 percent of theatre people are gays or lesbians. If she rooted them out of her life, there would be no one to perform for her or build her sets or do her costumes and makeup.” An anti-gay theatre director. In my experience, one has to step deep into the Deep South to find such a bizarre creature.
Now guess who this woman voted for.
Should I engage this person in dialogue about her anti-LGBTQX prejudice? Well, actually, I tried to do so. I was immediately shot down.
But this is a core principle with me. If you are anti-lesbian, anti-gay, anti-bi, anti-trans, anti-queer, or opposed to people expressing other sexual or gender orientations or identities involving adult humans, you are not my friend. You are not fit, in my opinion, for interaction with decent people. Same if you are a racist or sexist. I don’t want such people in my home or in my life. And I’ll be quite clear about that. You, get out.
Jon is right that fascism is always lurking in the shadows, awaiting its opening. And what keeps it at bay, to a large extent, is social sanction. Making nice-nice with fascists and prejudiced persons isn’t going to move us forward. It will accomplish precisely the opposite. It’s validation.
Yeah. Trump lifted the social sanction through the power of his position. People said, “He says what other people think.” I’d prefer to keep it under a rock. Needing to keep prejudices to yourself indicates the presence of social sanction.
Exactly, Arthur.
Arthur Yes: “Needing to keep prejudices to yourself indicates the presence of social sanction.” Exterior and then interior sanctions enable us to keep the worst of ourselves in check, and to choose to be the best of ourselves in the presence of others–and to enjoy the dynamic peace we can find in community with others. Pretty soon, habit takes over . . .but is never completely in charge.
Of course pursuing the extreme in either case sends us off the cliff. And the worst of it is to regress to thoughtlessness. At the end of The Republic, Plato uses the metaphor of a big man (raw power) and a little man (conscience) who live in our souls. When we allow the big man to take over, he drags the little man, who loses strength by the minute, around by the hair until there is hardly anything left of him.
Over the last four years, I have often thought that Plato knew about the Trump in all of us. CBK
Arthur, right. As we get older and wiser, we learn that insulting others is best mumbled to yourself, not spoken out loud.
Listen and understand … the Nazi Party never dies, it simply changes its name, its base of operations, and its chosen scapegoats from time to time. It has had other names in the past and it will have other names in the future. But the psychopathic social dynamics is always the same. Hitler suffered from a sickness of the soul, but from his sickness he knew a secret about human beings, it let him speak to the Inner Nazi in every other soul. Folks resist, of course, life gives them natural and acquired immunities, but a few succumb, and then a few more, and eventually enough fall prey to begin a campaign of fear against the resistors.
Everyone likes to have someone to blame for their problems.
That’s just human nature.
Authoritarians just exploit that and direct the popular anger at a particular group or groups (and always away from the reasons and/or policies and people that are actually responsible)
Jon: This sounds remarkably like an argument for original sin.
I may have stated that a bit too clumsily. Best I recall original sin was disobedience and eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But felix culpa being what it is some people use what they learn from suffering to heal others and some people use it to exploit others.
Racism in America is not an Original Sin, though it was there originally. It’s an ongoing sin, and it must be, can most effectively be, fought by teaching young people, both formally, in the classroom, and informally, in life generally. Engage young people. Teach them real history and science. Racism is a distillation of a solution made up of ignorance and fear.
Bob As a coincidence, this in The New York Review from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.:
“Clearly (Frederick) Douglass was worried as early as May 10, 1865 (a month and a day after Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox) when in an address to the American Anti-Slavery Society he mused that slavery ‘had been called by a great many names, and it will call itself by yet another name; and you and I and all of us had better wait and see what new form this old monster will assume, in what new skin this old snake will come forth next.’
“Ten years later, in a prescient and dark address, he asked, ‘If war among the whites brought peace and liberty to the blacks, what will peace among the whites bring’?” CBK
Racism might not have been Original Sin (TM), but it was the Original Intent (TM) of Fondling Fathers like Jefferson.
One might say racism was the Original Spin that Jefferson and others gave to the claim that “All men are created equal” (and you thought Fox News was a much more recent phenomenon)
All men are equal, but some men are more equal then others. At least two fifths more, to be precise.
Constitutional Math (a proof that 3/5 = 1)
All men are created equal
But some men are only 3/5ths of others
Therefore 3/5 = 1
QED
I was actually thinking of this on the way to work. We can do a better job of teaching kids about:
what’s wrong with authoritarianism
What a democracy is
the flaws with nationalism
how the Nazi’s found success
how propaganda influences people
how racism grows
about bias in the news
Thinking critically
debating appropriately
etc.
This is our job.
This does not mean we are to blame. This does mean, however, that we can and must do more.
Amen to this!
Seventy Six Trumpbones (after Willson Meredith. From
The Music Man)
Seventy six Trumpbones led the big parade,
With a hundred & ten Jared twits close at hand.
They were followed by rows and rows,
Of the finest “yes-men” hos
The dream of every conning man
Seventy six Trumpbones caught the morning sun,
With a hundred & ten Jared twits right behind.
There were over a million tweets
Srpinging up like weeds,
There were cons of every shape & size.
There was copper bottom Rudy and his horse platoons,
Thundering, thundering, all along the way.
Double bell baloniums and big buffoons
Each buffoon having its big fat say.
There were fifty crazy Bannons in the battery,
Thundering, thundering, louder than before.
Betsy Ds of every size,
And Trumpets who’d improvise
A full octave higher than the score!
Seventy six Trumpbones hit the counterpoint,
While a hundred and ten Jared twits blazed away.
To the rhythm of Trump! Trump! Trump!
All Repubs began to march,
And they’re marching still right today!
Seventy axis Trumpbones (first and last take)
On Google drive
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11l1YfQPpdiSD6xYPcDZFqIlU_Wff3Kvg/view?usp=drivesdk
In case anyone is wondering.
73 made me think of 76 — and then, naturally, of 76 Trombones.
I can’t help it.
My mind works in strange ways.
Lol. Marvelous, SomeDAM!
I also think, we as Democrats, need to learn to talk with Republican voters. When I was growing up most of the farmers were Democrats. Now most of the farmers are Republicans. What happened? We need to find out what they and other republicans want and need and find ways to help meet their needs.
Looks like this one got trapped in the lint filter … trying again …
I have way too many old, old friends from the same cohort who had the same education and comparable religious backgrounds to think it’s all about education and upbringing. Something has happened to them in the mean, mean time to warp their common sense, their horse sense, and their basic sense of decency into something purt’ near the opposite of what I remember. And that is the propaganda industry which washes their brains in swamp gas morning, noon, and night. All the seeds of racism, sexism, xenophobia, et cetera have always been there, but something has been fertilizing them and mutating them into monstrous overgrowths.
Jon Awbrey I’ve seen it happen in my own family and friends and even professionals, like the person who did some blood work for me last week:
“Something has happened to them in the mean, mean time to warp their common sense, their horse sense, and their basic sense of decency into something purt’ near the opposite of what I remember.”
But at least in part, it still could be NOT WHAT IS PRESENT, but what IS MISSING from their early education and experience. In my reference to undergoing WWII, political awareness was a part of their experience. But that experience doesn’t come forward “in the air” for the next generation. They have to be taught; and the projection of experiences falls off a cliff before it ever can get to the new generation.
It’s false Polyanna-thinking to expect the younger generation to understand it the way those who experienced it understand it. Some got it . . . I did . . . from seeing trailers of Nazi camps attached to films before they checked that practice. But many did not; and it got washed away as generation after generation overlapped.
That’s not the whole picture, . . . we also had Superman for courage and Cinderella for empathy, and both for hope; but I think it probably is a good part of it. Somehow, however, a sense of security and certainty has been lost to them, And they saw Trump as retrieving it for them, regardless of all the other. And the big difference is, again, BIG engines of too-quick communication. Who has time to really think about anything? CBK
But wasn’t it the youngest voters who rejected the lies of Trump?
It was the older voters who embraced Trump in greater majorities.
Shouldn’t the question be how to change the minds of voters over 40?
NYC Everyone I’m talking about IS over 40. But that’s just my own experience. I haven’t been around young people for awhile. CBK
NYCSP
You are right.
The young people are actually the smart ones who see through the lies.
It is members of older generations — particularly the baby boomers– who are generally too stupid to know the difference between a lie and a pie and have really screwed things up quite badly for the young people of today.
The fact that Trump lost can be attributed directly to the young voters, many of whom actually backed Sanders to begin with.
I find that reason to be optimistic, but I fear it may be too late to turn the ship around at this point. The iceberg is right in front of us and the ship has huge inertia on account of the fact that it is filled with gold that the boomers have been hoarding and would never throw overboard if their lives depended on it (which they do)
Well stated. I wonder what will happen on the propaganda front now that the right wing has its own social media website, Parler. Will they foment insurrection?
I think Trumpsters are not all of a single kind. Not everyone engages in critical thinking all of the time and our slogan filled instant messaging environment with “going viral” a form of praise may stand in the way of seeking consensus on key issues.
I join with others in thinking Merrow likes to target teachers while leaving policy-makers off the hook. I took some time to look at Merrow’s four strategies.
Strategy 1 calls for a version of FDR’s CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps). Back then the CCC was for unmarried healthy males, ages 18 to 26, for a minimum of six months at $30 a month. Many participants re-enlisted and received basic and vocational education while they served. This strategy is underdeveloped compared to his other ideas.
2) Strategy 2. Merrow directs readers to a Brooking’s infrastructure stimulus plan for the COVID-19 recession. That plan is heavily focused on “treating infrastructure as a basic human right” with
–direct payments to households based on income with subsidies analogous to SNAP to cover transportation, broadband, and basic utilities.
–grants to states and local government for repair and maintain publicly owned fixed assets, including transportation, water, energy, and broadband infrastructure.
–grants managed by the Department of Labor to help states and local “workforce development programs” increase vocational training and workplace apprenticeships in skilled trades, along with $15 an hour minimum pay for full time infrastructure workers.
–challenge grants for long-term infrastructure programs, plus research and development subsidies to private firms in exchange for “federal federally owned stock.”
All of these programs would be not be paid for by raising taxes but by increasing the federal debt or “finding other resources” My take: Merrow and the Brookings do not seem to count health and social services as worthy “infrastructure” investments, even in the midst of this pandemic. The US Department of Labor lists the following skilled trades as “apprenticeship-able, not requiring a college degree: Construction Laborers, Carpenters, Electricians, Operating Engineers and Equipment Operators, Plumbers.
In 2020, approximately 10 percent women have these jobs.
Strategy 3 overlaps the Brookings report. It seeks federal grants for free or low-cost vocational training in community colleges and vocational schools. There are already many federal grant programs with this aim. See https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/grants/apply/find-opportunities
Strategy 4 calls for an increase in service programs that allow college students to forgive any federal loans. This might be a matter of tweaking the current AmeriCorps program where participants receive a small living stipend and an education award to pay back qualified student loans or attend an institution of higher education. Full-time participants are also eligible for health care and, if income eligible, child care benefits.
Not finished with his four part exercise, Merrow then chooses to blame public schools as if they were exclusively responsible for “producing adults who will follow candidates like Donald Trump!” That is nonsense, and he should know better. I think he does not see the sexism latent in his “Jobs come first” strategies.
I looked at Merrow’s strategies as well. They are meaningful changes that would help blue collar workers. Without a Democratic Senate, it remains to be seen what the Biden administration would be able to accomplish without funding unless Biden can make a deal with McConnell.
I don’t understand how anyone could blame the schools when the youth vote was why Biden won. A vast majority of young people are embracing progressive ideas.
The question is why older folks are not.
From Inside Higher Ed, November 5, 2020:
“Young Voters Preferred Biden — With 1 Exception
Analysis finds voters under age 30 preferred Biden over all, with young people of color voting for him by the largest margins. Young white men preferred Trump.”
By Elizabeth Redden
“Over all, young voters chose Biden at higher rates than did individuals of any other age group. Young people voted for Biden over Trump at higher rates in 33 of the 39 states for which CIRCLE had data on Tuesday. A map of what the presidential map would look like if only young people had voted can be seen above: in such a scenario, all the major battleground states, plus Texas, would be blue, while only the heavily Republican states of Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee would be red.”
What Robert Rendo said at 1:59 PM.
Sorry, but I have very little interest in trying to engage Trumpeteers in dialogue. Been there. Done that. Wasted my precious time and energy. One cannot successfully deprogram cultists until they are ready.
So, followers of Don the Con. I could care less about talking further with you. I am interested in educating your children. You aren’t going to like what I teach them. Not one bit.
And, Democrats, you better start actually delivering for working people. Until you do, many of them are going to be easy prey for demagogues. Example: Economists disagree on a lot, but this they know: immigrants do not take the jobs of US citizens. That’s a racist lie, and even the idiots in the Trump maladministration, for the most part, probably know that it is.
In fact, immigration leads to a NET INCREASE in jobs for US citizens of about 1 percent, or so I have read in pieces from Forbes, Brookings, and Wharton. Why? Well, immigrants, like everyone else, consume goods and services. They buy gasoline and get haircuts. So, they create demand, which creates jobs. And, immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, are 80 PERCENT MORE LIKELY than native workers to become entrepreneurs and create businesses that employ BOTH other immigrants and native workers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/artcarden/2015/08/28/how-do-illegal-immigrants-affect-american-workers-the-answer-might-surprise-you/?sh=63e9acf3771a
And we don’t have a lot of time, Dems, to make significant changes, for the next Trump is coming, and he (or she!) is going to be a lot brighter and more articulate while still being a racist, wannabe fascist.
The word miasma comes from the Greek. Etymologically, it refers to a pollution, a defilement of the kind that obtains at the beginning of the play Oedipus Rex. There is a curse upon the land because the person in charge has committed grave sins. This archetype of the accursed land is found in other literatures and oratures of the world as well–in the medieval legend of the Fisher King and the Waste Land, for example, appropriated by Eliot for his great poem. All are memories of times of extreme trouble–the time of the plague or of the flood or the drought or the fires or the pestilence that destroyed all the crops.
And here’s how those stories end: the curse is lifted from the land.
That’s how we on the winning side of this election are feeling, isn’t it?
Bye, bye Barr and Miller, Ivanka and Jared, Donnie and Eric. Ding, dong, the wicked witch. . . .
But this we must remember: after the utter incompetence and ignorance and racism and sexism and environmental destruction and scientific illiteracy and wannabe fascism of the Trump maladministration, almost half (47.7 percent as of Saturday) of the voting population of the country STILL looked upon Trump and said, “Ooooo. Give me more of that.”
So, there is a sickness in the land that has not been healed. And doubtless, the NEXT Trump will not be as incompetent or inarticulate or ignorant, will not be JUST an opportunist who saw playing Super Repugnican on TV as a viable brand strategy.
We must address this sickness in the land, or it will destroy us. The next Trump will have a honeyed tongue and good looks and charisma and youth and actually believe in the horrific precepts that Trump trumpeted and came, sort of, to believe. The next Trump will not be the man with no plan and the tan in the can.
Hamlet says,
My tables—meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain
That’s what the next Trump will look like.
The Second Wave of Trumpism will be worse. We need some pandemic preparedness there.
Okay. I agree with all that you say, and a great analogy to the word “miasma”!!!
But thus from you:
“And, Democrats, you better start actually delivering for working people. Until you do, many of them are going to be easy prey for demagogues.”
How exactly, mechanically and structurally do you propose the Democrats should do this? Or at least pitch it in the rhetoric and “messaging”? Can you give at least 3 other hard core, meat and potato examples?
NYCPSP, are you listening?
Robert, I have long advocated for Democrats to spend money on PSAs to educate working people on issues (rather than just on campaign commercials). Consider Medicare for All. We have the existence proofs of the systems in every other technologically advanced Democracy that such a system cost half what our system does and delivers better care, but people are ignorant of this. Or consider the signature racist Trump claim that “immigrants are taking your jobs.” Economists know this to be false, but working class Americans don’t. Again, this is ignorance. We have to attack the ignorance.
Robert,
Here is my suggestion:
Every person who speaks publicly as a representative of the Democrats needs to be trained by AOC, Pete Buttigeig and Stacey Abrams in how to speak without demonizing other democrats and how to set a NEW narrative instead of reinforcing whatever narrative helps the right wing.
Voices like Andrew Sullivan (from the right) and Chris Hedges (from the left ) that specialize in pushing narratives that demonize Democrats and help the Republicans should be marginalized. Anyone who sees more evil in a moderate democrat or a progressive than in the right wing Republican party is simply helping reinforce the very far right narrative that causes Democrats to lose. Which is why smart people like AOC don’t do that. Being critical and noting policy differences is different than demonizing the democratic party and pushing the favorite narrative of both the far right and far left — that it is the democrats who are the source of all evil in this country. (Chris Hedges is already blaming Biden for the rise of what he calls “Christianized fascism”! Hello Chris? Maybe you should have been more concerned about that when you told us that having Trump appointing 3 far right Supreme Court justices was A-OK with you as long as the evil female democrat didn’t get to appoint horrible justices like Ruth Bader Ginsburg).
Marginalize those people like Sullivan and Hedges whose self-regard is over the top (always a bad sign). Until those writers get a little perspective – which may be impossible unless they start spending time with AOC/Buttigeig/Abrams to see what real integrity is – they should be identified as propagandists, not legitimized as having “something very important to say to democrats that democrats need to listen to if they ever want to win”.
The big lesson for me from Trumpism and its bringing the ultra-nationalist fascists and racists out of the woodwork in such numbers is that we are at war for the hearts and minds of young people. And we need to stop being namby pamby about that. There is far, far too much at stake.
And, btw, check out where young people stand on the ssues, and check out the changing demographics of the country, in those places like South Carolina and Georgia and Florida and Texas that are now SO SO CLOSE. The Repugnicans are on the wrong side of history, but we need to ensure that they remain that way. The future is written in the minds of the young.
An interesting graphic:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-venn-diagram/
Merrow raises some important issues. One we need to think about, and this isn’t a matter of blaming teachers but, rather, of blaming a SYSTEM that alienates a lot of poor, white boys. The Trump vote is a vote of resentment. And a lot of this resentment goes back to poor, white boys not getting the gold stars in middle school and high school, to them sitting in class, waiting as the graded tests were being handed out, and knowing that what they were going to see was further humiliation. We have a lot of angry young white men in this country, and schools can do something about that by changing the ways in which they operate and giving these young men alternatives to the academic track.
Those young men grow up to be proud boys and Trump voters.
Bob Sure. But also, OFTEN, NOT ALL, it’s a case of white boys (and men) understanding the rise in equality of others (like women, people of color, etc.) as a threat to their deeply felt centuries-old across-the-board hegemony . . . which they didn’t care to understand until it was “threatened” by that ensuing equality of others.
Listening to a radio interview the other day, with a middle-aged man originally from Mexico, I heard him say he voted for Trump because “they” were pandering too much to women and black people. That’s just one example, but it kind of “rung” with the above sense of threat to the macho-men among us. This is not a new story. CBK
Note that supporting civil rights = “pandering” now. Caring about institutional racism in police is “pandering”. Supporting affirmative action is “pandering”. Sad that this country got to this place. The far right demonization has become acceptable and normal, and apparently it is all up to the Democrats to “change” to reassure those voters that they won’t “pander” by supporting those things anymore.
I remember first noticing how this false message was successfully amplified when I saw Mike Dukakis being characterized as the guy who wanted to let rapists and murderers run free to murder innocent white women. I really thought that the 1992 election saw the end of this, but by 2000, that picked up strength and the left was helping the far right demonize democratic candidates without even recognizing the harm they were doing.
No matter what, we always blame the democrat/progressive candidate for not being good enough at appealing to that middle aged man who voted for Trump “because ‘they’ were pandering too much to women and black people.” I wish I knew how to change it — I do think it would help if that propaganda wasn’t reinforced by some self-described democrats and progressives,which gives it legitimacy it wouldn’t have if they were just hearing it on Infowars.
NYC I often think that . . . “if Hillary weren’t ‘a woman in 2016.” Of course, it wasn’t Hillary, nor were many of Obama’s problems his. We should also remember Karl Rove in early 2000 Texas politics. But . . rather, the problem is pervasive still, and resides in the electorate . . . enter the need for a consistent and long-term political education.
Also, there are two exceptions to the “lost learning” from WWII: The Jewish people and their remembering of their experience there as Jews . . . .and again for Germany who now keeps that same experience painfully close. There are also the truth and reconciliation movements . . . all do not come with a guarantee but are important for keeping ourselves in a right relationship with the politics of our own times. CBK
CBK,
Thank you for those good points. I feel discouraged because it seems like “truth” is whatever someone says it is. And the democrats suffer because they get attacked from both the right and left with cherry picked “truths” that basically support the same false narrative: Democrats are evil, corrupt and can’t be trusted. If anything, that comes much closer to describing the Republican party which even now is trying to overturn an election with lies!
But someone posted about how Trump voters (and even Biden voters) still believe that Republicans are “better on the economy”! How does that happen? It is as if those voters have no memory at all.
NYC I know. It’s those old “internal tapes” that we get used to thinking and don’t want to let go. We are strange birds, humans are. CBK
Bob
I think you are into something here
More gold stars for PWBs in middle school.
But lots of white women also voted for Trump.
So let’s not leave the PWGs behind.
Make America Gold Stars Again (MAGSA)
That’s my campaign motto for 2024.
We’re all familiar with the Man in the Street interview variety of comedy. The comedian stops people at random and asks them questions from the elementary or middle-school curriculum. How important was George Washington’s role in the Civil War? What did Lincoln think of the Internet? Why do we have seasons? If plants are male and female, where is the penis on corn? What part of the United States is the state of Canada located in? And then we laugh at the crazy answers. And four the past four years, we’ve had the Trump supporter version of this. The only change is that the questions have to do with politics or current events, and they are asked of Trump supporters at his rallies. They are asked questions like “Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security just resigned under pressure from the President. Does this mean you should change your locks or get a dog?” or “Trump just said that we should send astronauts to the sun. Would you support such a program? What value would it have?” or “Trump recently congratulated the members of the Continental Army for capturing the British airports. How important do you think it is for a President to know this history the way President Trump does?” And we laugh and shake our heads about these people’s ignorance of science and civics and history. But there are MILLIONS of such people, and every one of them supposedly got a K-12 education. Clearly, a lot of people tuned their educations out and didn’t continue them after they left school. Of course, in the land where we are all taught as toddlers that “All men are created equal,” in response to millions of people voting for a racist, sexist, xenophobic, fascist ultranationalist like Trump, well-meaning pundits write moralizing articles about how all those Trump supporters aren’t actually racists or sexists or xenophobes or fascists, but when you actually go out and survey those Trump supporters you find that yes, they support the border wall, that yes, they support the Muslim ban, that yes, they think that immigrants steal their jobs, that yes, they agree with Trump that the squad should be sent back to their s–thole countries,” that yes, they think that BLM is a gang of looters, that yes, they are worried about blacks moving into the suburbs–that they in fact have all these racist ideas and that Trump has made it OK again for them to say the abominable things that they think. So, we have this pundit-class idiocy denialism instead of asking ourselves, where does all this idiocy come from? Well, I’ve posited a mechanism, but just as with climate change denialism, it’s unlikely for people even to consider the mechanism if they don’t think that the phenomenon is real.
I say to myself, well, thousands and thousands of people, in places around the country, turn out for The Idiot’s rallies, and they seem very, very angry. They have a LOT of resentment. And then I ask myself, where does all that resentment come from? And why do they think that Trump is the solution to their resentments? Well, one thing that Trump does is thumb his nose at authorities. The experts, the journalists, the pundits–they are all fake news. Where does this eagerness to reject experts and latch onto a know-nothing who continually spews invective against them come from?
And it doesn’t surprise me because I’ve seen the same phenomenon in school–large, large numbers of kids who are disaffected and tuned out and resentful of authority and seething because they are in a place that doesn’t value–that continually shows that it doesn’t value–people like them.
And it’s not about teachers. It’s about a system that isn’t addressing this issue of the wear on the disaffection and alienation of the academically challenged. Trump support and lack of education are strongly correlated.
And I think that young people are much less likely to support Trump, especially young girls, than their elders are because schools have gotten a lot better at not being punitive toward the academically challenged. Their elders grew up in a time when there was less compassion toward such students.
Bob I remember a comedy show, with a hugely white audience, where Flip Wilson did a skit (remember him?), when the issue of race conflict came up in a veiled way (as what occurred at that time). There was this priceless moment where Wilson came right up to the camera and said: “Don’t worry . . . I’m going to take care of you.” The audience went wild.
I had a relative (the same one I’ve written about here before) who actually told me circa 1980 that she was afraid that black people were going to “take over.” She was fearful in a most existential way.
I think such thinking, though changed, has not gone away . . . along with the perceived threat to across-the-board white hegemony. Flip Wilson’s remark was genius insofar as it poked a stick in the eye of what many feared but didn’t want to admit even to themselves at the time.
Look at what happened yesterday where, for a county elections board it was okay, in the moment, to disenfranchise a huge number of black voters. Just like that. CBK
I thought that we were so much further along than we are, CBK. I am extremely disappointed. But the young people give me hope. Clearly, we have not come to grips with racism, not yet, but I was greatly encouraged to find that my high-school students in deepest, reddest Flor-uh-duh, unlike most of their parents, weren’t racists–that they made friends and socialized and dated freely across racial lines. Racism depends intimately on people of different supposed races being ignorant of one another and of our history and of the science of supposed race. One thing we need to do is to make explaining the scientific inaccuracy of the very concept of race part of our curriculum. Our students need to learn that this is almost entirely a cultural phenomenon–a learned and unexamined concept that doesn’t hold up to examination.
Bob Me too. However, you and I both can remember that, as we grew up in the 50’s there were NO black people in authority, on television (commercials, news, and shows), or in our white neighborhoods. In the south, it was even worse where signs openly said “white only.” And such habits of mind, when set so early in a young person’s experience, die hard.
I became particularly aware of such divisions first, even in my own mind, where women were concerned. We could look at a picture of a company board of directors and not even notice that they were all white, and that there were no women, no black people, no anything save white men. It was “just the way things were.” How quickly we forget.
But look at young people today. All of their lives they have been experiencing a kind of diversity all over the culture that WE never experienced early-on in our lives . . . in schools, on television, in the services, in the law, in the public arena, everywhere. So such diversity, though certainly not yet what it should be, is already written-in, so to speak, to young people’s experience in a way that it wasn’t for us–just the opposite–and probably to some degree those who are a bit younger than me (I’m 74, born in 1946 in California). Some people change anyway, but some do not.
Culture is not like a bunch of mailboxes, but I think such differences in early experiences share in being the source of the differences we are seeing in the electorate today. Also, voting age is younger now than it was before . . . big difference. CBK
Things to do other than think about Trump: Making Your Own Sourdough Starter
I’ve spoken openly with Trump supporters. Some are racist, xenophobic, etc. Some are not. Communication is about listening and then speaking. Not about winning. We try to keep it civil.
There is one constant that is always there (racist and not):
“The New World Order” (proclaimed during the selling of GATT and NAFTA) took a serious toll on our manufacturing base. Jobs and security were lost for so many people. Training for the jobs of the future was promised and never delivered. Doesn’t matter that the change was a bipartisan effort. Trump promised he’d bring the jobs back and that’s what the people who’d been directly impacted wanted to hear. One reason why the Rust Belt turned red.
No doubt there are many other factors at play (a disconnect between the needs of city vs rural and, to a lesser extent, suburban voters is there), but that sense of betrayal is the common theme and one that’s seen all over the globe. Big business/money, through governments, forced huge changes on societies throughout the World in what was, historically, the blink of an eye.
How come they never feel betrayed by Republicans?
Even before Trump, I was astonished at how many people were complaining about the Democrats not supporting the manufacturing base enough who then voted for anti-union Republicans who supported the manufacturing base even less! And then those voters re-elected those Republicans who supported the manufacturing base even less by saying that they are still mad that the democrats years ago didn’t support the manufacturing base enough. Union members voted in large percentages for Republicans, despite their policies being very anti-union. And then re-electing those anti-union Republicans, because democrats weren’t union friendly enough.
It’s more than policy, and that’s what I feel is missing. If “betrayal” mattered, they would have voted for Republicans and then hated Republicans even more than unions. They would feel betrayed by Trump.
I remember being shocked that Russ Feingold lost and the voters re-elected the anti-union pro-business Sen. Ron Johnson to pass more anti-worker pro-business legislation.
“ I remember being shocked that Russ Feingold lost and the voters re-elected the anti-union pro-business Sen. Ron Johnson to pass more anti-worker pro-business legislation.”
Totally with you, NYC. Why do people vote against there best interests?
I think a big part of it is that these are more an emotional than rational, well thought out decisions. And emotions are more easily swayed by propaganda and “personality” than is rational thinking.
NYC “How come they never feel betrayed by Republicans?”
(1) because they still think “conservative” and “republican” mean the same thing as they once did; and
(2) because they have trusted and listen to a well-honed aforementioned propaganda machine. The first lie is the one they believed the most. CBK
gitapik
First as a lefty populist and a retired blue collar union member who spent from 2012 to 16 fighting against TPP. Who had many debates on this blog that automation was not responsible for the decline of manufacturing in the 21st century( although it may yet be). That decisions were made to place manufacturing workers in competition with lowest paid workers in the world. You would be hard pressed to find a Trump supporter who did not have an F150 and a Nissan in the driveway. I’m not buying it. .
Good points, Joel. I’ll not debate them. I’m aware of the impact of automation vs outsourcing and I know of the legitimacy of the former.
Fact is, though, that Carter, Bush Sr, and Clinton did make that appearance on national TV, announcing the end of the days of the made in USA factory down the road and the beginning of the New World Order. You don’t get much more in your face than that.
Optics drive public opinion and discourse in a very big way…especially nowadays with 24/7 news being so front and center. While I agree that automation was and continues to be the prime culprit, I think it took second fiddle in the public discourse to the outsourcing of jobs and manufacturing. And I think that Trump took that ball and ran with it in a very big way.
Sorry, but I meant to say, “…that automation was “A” prime culprit”. Not “The”. Bad typo.
I think the main idea was (and still is) to drive down the cost of labor. Gut the unions. Automation is definitely a big determiner of lost jobs, but not the only one. It actually can go hand in hand with driving down labor costs.
I’ve never really “gotten” why we HAVE to have automation in the first place. It might serve well in the area of tireless production and repetitive “perfection”, but it removes employment opportunities. Might reduce the cost to the consumer (might)…but who’s going to buy when the job market dries up?
gitapik
The automation that destroyed most manufacturing jobs came before our trade agreements . . Just go to the pop culture . “My Home Town ” and “Allentown ” written in the early eighties . “Roger and Me” 1988. . Long before most favored nation status with China, long before NAFTA and other new trade agreements . Mountain top removal killed coal jobs. Right to work in 1947 drove a move Southward for American industry and through the 70s Companies moved jobs to non union states with the bonus of new post war factories that were highly automated . As the population and economy grew the number of employees in Manufacturing stayed the same even as the percentage of population in manufacturing dropped . From the late 90s we lost 3 million Jobs to Trade.
Trade made foriegn labor so cheep there was no need to invest in Robotics/ Automation. The US has invested less as a percentage of GDP than Germany, Japan and China. No doubt we will catch up if labor costs rise.
Both are the case. We outsourced to cheaper workers elsewhere, and we automated jobs out of existence. I read an MIT study that blamed the fact that wages have been basically flat since 1975 (rising in real dollars by about 2 percent) primarily on automation. But I didn’t delve into it deeply enough to see whether the authors were missing the actual impact of the other phenomenon–the outsourcing. I’m with you, Joel, in having contempt for economic flat-Earthers like Tom Friedman and the rest of his DINO neoliberal ilk.
Almost no one says, “Yes. I am a racist.” Trump, our racist in chief, strongly, vehemently denies that he is a racist. As in, I kept black people from buying my apartments, as in I took out ads calling for the executions of the Central Park Five and STILL think I was right to do that, as in Obama was not born in America, as in there were good people on both sides, as in these slave-owning Confederates are our heroes, as in immigrants are rapists and murderers, as in blacks are coming for your suburbs, but I’m not a racist.
But ask the Trump supporters whether they agree with him on these issues. If it quacks like a duck, . . .
There’s no question that racism is involved here, Bob. And as a long time resident of NYC, there is nothing that I’ve seen of Trump in the last four years that has surprised me.
But to make that an automatic assumption regarding any and all who voted for him is what’s at issue here. It creates a divide before the discussion even begins.
One example is in the area of abortion. I know people who voted for Trump based specifically and only because of this issue. Their religious convictions overrode all other considerations. The ones who I’m friends with are not racist. Or xenophobic. They’re decent human beings.
Understood, but check out the surveys of Trump supporters (not the exit polls) on the issues. These show that while most of them don’t THINK OF THEMSELVES as racists, most of them hold extremely racist beliefs. The portrait of the average Trump voter that emerges from consideration of surveys of his supporters is not flattering.
Got it.
And I’m no Pollyanna on this issue. I grew up; (does this semi-colon belong there?) surrounded by racism. I was fortunate in that my parents would have none of it and I was raised to recognize and reject it.
It’s a question of whether we want to establish any kind of meaningful dialogue or not. So many discussions get derailed by one of both of the participants’ desire to be “right”. To “win” the debate. People don’t listen in that scenario…they’re too busy thinking of what they’re going to say next.
As you’ve stated: many (though not all, by any means) people who are racist don’t want to think of themselves that way. It carries too many negative connotations. They’ll become defensive and, as a result, antagonistic when confronted with the idea.
I think it’s more effective to begin a discussion on an equal footing and let the evolution of the dialogue eventually point to the simple fact, if it is, indeed, in the mix.
Telling someone that they’re racist does nothing. Similar to teaching basic writing skills: “Show. Not tell”.
For some reason, my poor, white, rural Southern mother was virulently anti-racist. Her horror at racism was a constant topic with her, and she got in a lot of trouble as a Woolworths lunch counter waiter (waitress, people said back then) for telling blacks that they could sit and be served at her counter.
gitapik Racists of every sort are “nice decent people” as long as they are with their “kind.” That rule manifests in all races of people, btw, and not only white people. Same with misogyny. The macho good ol’ boys are decent and nice to one another as long as no women are involved. CBK
No argument to any of that Catherine. My point is that not all of the people who voted for Trump are racist. Or xenophobic. Or misogynistic. There are definitely too many who check all those boxes, which is a serious problem. I grew up in the ‘50s, too…I’ve been reading your posts and they’re spot on. But I know people who are not in any of those categories. And they did vote for Trump.
gitapik I know . . . “culture” is a big tree with lots of branches, leaves, and seeds in bird droppings springing up elsewhere.
Do you think those “others” may be just more cult-like? True deplorables? . . . I’ve often thought that there is that holdover, basically-good group of people who work hard, come home to several children, and hardly have time to breathe, much less pay attention to politics. They were not raised by politically-aware parents and didn’t go to college. I think many still don’t know about double-speak or other forms of propaganda and still think anything a politician or someone on TV says is true–and they have no means or time for comparison–they project their own honesty onto all others especially when listening to television or radio, or Facebook, Trump tweets, and, up to recently, Fox News.
If they do vote, perhaps, then, they only paid attention to politics in the last month or so before the election. But (see my note on the other thread) snippets is all they get and so it’s a mish-mash of information that, if they pay any attention at all, is just confusing to them. I’ve seen this scenario for real, but do not know how comprehensive it is.
I also think we need better driving-home radio programs that offer some real civil discourse instead of that right-wing stuff that’s out there smothering the air waves. CBK
“ For some reason, my poor, white, rural Southern mother was virulently anti-racist. Her horror at racism was a constant topic with her, and she got in a lot of trouble as a Woolworths lunch counter waiter (waitress, people said back then) for telling blacks that they could sit and be served at her counter.”
Sounds like a wonderful human being. 🙂
She is!
Racists TYPICALLY deny being racists. I’m getting sick of the coddling of Trumpeteers. I’m sorry. If you believe, with Trump, that we need a border wall to protect ourselves from vast numbers of invading rapists and murderers, then you think that Latin American asylum seekers are commonly rapists and murderers, and whether you know it or not, that makes you a racist. If you believe, with Trump, that BLM protestors are mostly looters and terrorists, then you haven’t enough fellow feeling for black people and other people of color to bother to educate yourself about historical and present systemic racism, and whether you know it or not, that makes you a racist. George Wallace, who proclaimed, “Segregation yesterday. Segregation today. Segregation forever,” vehemently argued that he wasn’t a racist. I grew up hearing people say, “I’ve got nothing against black folks [e.g., I’m not a racist], I just don’t want one moving in next door or marrying my sister.”) Sorry, again, if you have such notions, you are a racist. Support for Trump is a racist act. If it quacks like a duck, . . .
And these people are completely inflexible, these Trumpeteers. They are ignorant cultists. Might as well talk to Trump’s wall. That’s why I have exactly ZERO interest in entering into dialogue with them. My interest is in educating their children, for what’s going to keep the next instantiation of fascism in this country from gaining power are a) the changed attitudes of young people and b) dramatic growth in the sizes of the populations here of people of color. Look at the last election. Young women went for Trump, and they made up most of the young voters. And POC made dramatic differences in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania and Georgia and almost flipped Texas and Florida.
Forget trying to dialogue with Trumpers. Been there. Done that. Have the stained T-shirt they spat upon. Teach their children to loathe them for their ignorance and, yes, for their racism, sexism, xenophobia, and fascism.
NYC public school parent
Had I checked my internet News feed . I could have saved a bit of typing .
Here is a different opinion of how to deal with the Trump base. The 73 million Americans who could vote for an authoritarian demagogue lying delusional narcissist who could give a crap less if the suckers dropped dead.
Yes , it does confirm my personal experience that I have detailed many times over the last 4 years .
https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump-supporters-2648952215/
Re: Their religious convictions overrode all other considerations.
Their religious convictions overrode all other considerations, including other people’s religious convictions.
Ay, there’s the rub …
Jon Aubrey Not to endorse such thinking about abortion AT ALL, but I think sometimes that’s the excuse for lazy thinking. It’s just easier to follow one principle and the rest be damned. I don’t know anything in the New Testament (at least) that endorses duplicity or political stupidity. CBK
Re: Telling someone that they’re racist does nothing.
On Speaking Truth To Racism
Damn…that’s powerful. And refreshing to say the least. As much so as FOX News not cooperating with Donnie.
Obviously my “philosophy” is disproved, here. Truth speaks to power and prevails.
Not so sure how this high profile situation translates to one on one discussions, though. It’s a different animal. But it definitely did the trick. No hard and fast rules, I suppose, other than to be true to your convictions.
Re: Not so sure how this high profile situation translates to one on one discussions, though. It’s a different animal.
Yes, that’s a horse sense of another hue …
Mostly what it means 1 on 1 is some of my kin post their memes on FB and I post mine and we pass by in silence about anything but pics of kids and cats. I worry about their health, physical and mental. and I wish I could say, “When it comes to your health and safety, at least, I hope you will listen to people who know what they’re talking about and stop listening to people who don’t”, but I can’t cuz I know they’d take affront &hellip: but what the heck, maybe I will anyway …
Jon:
Yep
Telling people that they are racist definitely helps, even if this infuriates them. People are creatures of social sanction, positive and negative. WE MUST, WE MUST CALL IT OUT WHEREVER WE SEE IT. We must give it no quarter. We must shame them and ignore them.
And teach their kids better.
Telling someone who doesn’t think themselves racist that they actually do fit that description isn’t going to shame them. It’s going to be seen as an unjustified insult and will close any potential for further dialogue. People need to see for themselves how their actions define them. The potential for change is increased when, through conversation, you’re able to show someone that what he or she is doing is crossing into that territory.
I guess I needed to be more thorough in my description of the mechanism I see at work. Of course, racists generally will not find being labeled a racist in itself shameful, and they are more likely to react with anger than with personal shame. That’s obvious. However, all racists are people, and almost all people want acceptance generally and not rejection generally from those around them. If a racist finds that every time he or she makes a racist remark, people around him or her react with repulsion and horror, and if this becomes widespread enough in his or her experience, then he or she is likely to start changing his or her behavior, and belief often follows behavior. Even if his or her belief remains unchanged, the modification in behavior creates a different environment for OTHERS, for example, a different environment for kids to grow up in, in which racist thinking just isn’t acceptable or conceivable–it becomes the default mode, the cultural norm. So, that’s how negative social sanction often works, not by creating shame in the person being sanctioned but by discomfort with widespread rejection by others.
There aren’t any hard and fast rules, of course. In my experience, though, bludgeoning someone only works if you’re in a position of power. As in, a boss in an employment situation. Otherwise; the person you’re attempting to persuade won’t see you as having any right to infringe on their belief systems.
Educating the young ones is key, of course.
I understand your position and intent, Bob. My main area of concern with that approach is that either creates or maintains/fortifies the battle lines. I don’t think a Trumpite has any stakes in the game if the rules are being set by liberals or, God forbid; PROGRESSIVES!! (gasp).
I could be more thorough in my description if I add that, if after you’ve shown someone that their actions are furthering racist or other negative ideas (that it’s understood between the two of you); the person involved shows no remorse or indication of changing; then the job has been done, in terms of establishing the “first step”. You can always refer back to it along the lines of:
“We’ve talked about this before. You might not care; but we’ve established that this is, actually, racist behavior, which is something that we’re working hard to eliminate, here in the U.S.A.”.
My idea is to establish a baseline of understanding, to begin with. Something to refer back to as a common and accepted starting point. A “toehold”.
Go back to the 1960s. At the time, it was common for whites to make offhand racist remarks and get away with this. National broadcasting networks still ran extremely racists programs like the one featuring the Step ‘n Fetchit character. What happened? Social sanction. Increasingly, whenever people made racist comments or took racist actions, people called them out on it. I’ve seen this first-hand teaching in the Deep South–a kid with racist parents making a racist comment and the other kids piling onto him (usually, it would be a guy), and over time, the person changing because he didn’t want to be considered weird or sick by others around him.
I think this is similar to Jon’s example of the attempted voter disenfranchisement in Detroit. It was large scale, very public and exposed, as were our efforts in the ‘60s (which added consistency to the mix).
I’m talking about one on one or small group conversations at, say a party or small gathering. Impromptu. There are different variables at play.
establish a baseline of understanding, to begin with. No problem with that. But then the negative sanctioning of the racism must be strong and clear and unequivocal. Again, people are creatures of social sanction.
“Trump has built a movement, and the next Trump isn’t going to be as incompetent and ignorant as he is. The next one is going to be young and slick and articulate and have the same set of values and pick up the same set of voters and expand that base. So I believe that it is precisely the case that we need to draw the battle lines because the threat of the emergence of fascist rule in the US is real. We need to engage where we can actually be effective–with the young people coming up. We need to expand OUR base, not spend our time and energy and money whistling into the wind from the Trumpist blowhards.”
“”In short, we need to win over more of the young and to CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT that is hostile to racism, xenophobia, fascism.”
“I think that attempting to engage Trump voters is largely a waste of time. We should engage their children instead. However, one thing we can do is attempt to enact policies that help ignorant working and nonworking class rural whites. Reinvigorating the labor movement and creating a lot of green jobs would be a great start there.”
I’m with you 100% on all of these points. And very true that the next Trump could actually be someone with actual intelligence, PLUS the thuggish guile.
What you (and I) are calling for is another large scale, organized, well coordinated, consistent approach to eradicating this disease. One that has teeth to it. I’m all for this.
Added to this, ime, have to be the small scale, personal interactions that will make the lessons ‘stick’. That’s where I see value in the approach I’m advocating. It takes away the “liberal knee jerk” label and makes the person who’s delivering the message into more of an “adult” figure, rather than a willful “child” or overbearing “parent”.
Well said, gitapik, Are you a reader of the Gita? The chapter on selfless service. Breathtaking. Profound thinking about how people work. Great advice about maintaining equanimity to a turbulent world.
Yes…my violin teacher (best mentor I’ve ever known, turned me on to the Gita. Many moons ago… 🙂
Jazz, classical–what kind of music? I love the violin. I’m a guitarist.
I was studying classical guitar at Univ of Arizona and became totally enamored with the classical violin. One of the teachers took me on because I had a natural vibrato when he put one in my hands. Eventually he and my guitar teacher told me to decide between the two. I chose guitar. Lately I’m all about the electric (jazz, blues, rock, and country), though I’ve continued writing and playing on the solo acoustic fingerstyle and classical for decades. What style do you play? Do you have any thoughts about the modeling/mulit-effects units (Fractal/Kemper/Helix)?
I’m a jazz and classical player as a vocation. I also build guitars. I studied with Javier Calderon at Indiana University and Jon Damian of the Berklee School of Music. I don’t. I used to own one of these effects units, but that was years ago. I am the proud owner of a Gibson L-5, among other wonderful instruments. Over the years, I’ve also played sitar, mandolin, banjo, dulcimer, and just about anything else with strings on it! LOL. I LOVE Gypsy Jazz.
I’m familiar with Calderon…how wonderful that must’ve been. Were you there when James Buswell was in residence as a violin instructor? My teacher taught him and turned me on to some wonderful Bach Violin/Harpsichord works that he recorded.
Hadn’t heard of Damian, but, of course, Berklee is a fantastic school.
The L-5 is a classic. I recently picked up a Collings i35-LC as my retirement gift to myself. Never had a semi-hollow and it’s a beauty. What kind(s) of guitar do you like to build.
I promised myself, when I took my first ‘straight’ job at age 30, that I’d continue to write, play, and perform and then retire with a pension…and my technique still in place.
And here I am. A little dinged up…but intact. Regardless of Trump and the pandemic…it’s still noteworthy.
Those are some very cool stories. Ahhh…that commie, Joan. Almost as bad as Bernie (wish everyone on the stage had called out Bloomberg on that comment).
I love all those styles. Flamenco: I had fantastic seats for a Vicente Amigo concert at Town Hall a while back. Amazing. Saw some great flamenco in Mexico City a few years back…some out of the way bar/restaurant. Memorable.
Music…ahhh…sweet music.
(I asked about the modelers because I’m moving away from performance and more into the home studio world. All electric. Easier to have a modeler for amps and cabs (and effects) than setting up the mics as in a pro studio).
You will be interested in this story: I studied guitar-making with a couple people, one of whom was a Marxist who had a big collection of reel-to-reel tapes of his buddy Allan Ginsburg reading to him and his friends, from his youth back in Brooklyn. That was freaking amazing.
A friend of mine toured with Joan Baez as an intro act. Joan told her another wonderful story: Years ago, Baez took her Martin in for repairs. Years later, she did this again. The first repairperson had written in marker on the inside of her guitar, “Too bad she’s a Commie!” LMAO.
I play a bunch of old Robert Johnson tunes and love jazz and the blues, as well as classical and flamenco.
And Bossa Nova. Love me some Bossa!
Oops. Ginsberg.
sensible, gitapik
Jon and Bob I have always thought that Trump, like Hitler, was ready to do violence, or have others do it for him, when the time was right. It seems to me that in HIS thinking, the time might be right . . . anything to maintain power.
I hope those who are actually responsible to the Constitution are NOT still naive (like me) and are ready for it–Trump has a big following.
As a reflective point, the present situation makes me wonder if waiting for the violence and then responding to it is the only method available to those who want to preserve the very Constitution (rule of law, due process, etc.) that is present being abused and violated. Those spineless people . . . apparently you can drink poison over the phone. CBK
The one thing that has restrained Trump is Putin. He wouldn’t go to war with Iraq, for example, because his puppetmaster wouldn’t approve. He’ll bluster, but he won’t actually go to war.
Bob I was thinking of his in-house following . . . national rather than international. But I see what you mean. CBK
What has restrained him domestically, for the most part, is the courts. But many in the military and intelligence services also drew bright lines that they wouldn’t let Trump cross, though he certainly wanted to. He has been one FRUSTRATED little wannabe fascist. How reactionary will this conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court be? All the federal judges whom he and McConnell have dragged out of sewers and placed on the bench? Imagine a Trump with a Barr in all the key roles in the intelligence services and military. It can happen. It will happen unless we stop it. And that should be the lesson of the 2020 election. We are closer than people realized.
I heard today that Trump has invited Republican legislators from Michigan to the White House. He wants to persuade them to discard the popular vote (Biden won 150,000 votes more than Trump) and substitute Republican electors in Michigan.
Trump has almost half the country, and about 66 percent of those are hard-core Trumpers–33-34 percent of the electorate.
But we have to hold onto enough power that there can be such responses. Imagine if Barr had his way. He or someone like him might well under the next Trump.
Bob Internal chaos is Trump’s friend. CBK
“Jon and Bob I have always thought that Trump, like Hitler, was ready to do violence, or have others do it for him, when the time was right. It seems to me that in HIS thinking, the time might be right . . . anything to maintain power.”
Not much question in my mind about that, Catherine. I think FOX News’ refusal to back him, recently, has blindsided him. No more State News to propel and mobilize the masses.
This election, and Trump and Bannon’s notions about getting states to throw out mail-in ballots and appoint Trump electors and having the Supremes bless that was the failed Beer Hall Putsch. It’s just the beginning. Like Hitler, Trump is an incompetent, pathological demagogue. Like Hitler, he has built a strong and terrifying movement based on racism and nationalism and scapegoating and xenophobia. Like Hitler, he will probably do some jail time after the Putsch. And doubtless Propaganda Minister Miller or Miss-Communications McInany or some such creepy person will write Don’s My Struggle for him. And then, come the next election, there will be some young, articulate demagogue to pick up the Trumpist banner and carry it forward. Imagine Trump with the military, the justice department, and the courts entirely in his pocket. Imagine all these being run by the likes of Bill Barr.
I think that we need to draw the battle lines and draw them clearly. Racist comments and actions and systemic policies are completely unacceptable. And we need to concentrate on keeping and winning over more of the young. My experience has been that engaging in dialogue with Trump voters is like trying to engage in dialogue with Trump’s racist wall.
I’m driven by this major concern: half the country voted for Trump after he separated babies from their lactating mothers, after he tried to ban whole religious groups from entering the country, after he called on asylum seekers to be shot. Trump has built a movement, and the next Trump isn’t going to be as incompetent and ignorant as he is. The next one is going to be young and slick and articulate and have the same set of values and pick up the same set of voters and expand that base. So I believe that it is precisely the case that we need to draw the battle lines because the threat of the emergence of fascist rule in the US is real. We need to engage where we can actually be effective–with the young people coming up. We need to expand OUR base, not spend our time and energy and money whistling into the wind from the Trumpist blowhards.
People on our side of these issues make a huge mistake in thinking that most of these people can be convinced via rational discussion. That’s not what’s going to work. We need to work where we actually can win hearts and minds. Being from a Southern family and living in the South, I have a LOT of experience interacting with Trumpists. And I’ve tried lots of tacks. I think that attempting to engage Trump voters is largely a waste of time. We should engage their children instead. However, one thing we can do is attempt to enact policies that help ignorant working and nonworking class rural whites. Reinvigorating the labor movement and creating a lot of green jobs would be a great start there.
In short, we need to win over more of the young and to CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT that is hostile to racism, xenophobia, fascism.
In 1932, Hitler narrowly lost the German Presidential election to Hindenburg, but his had become the largest party in the Reischstag, and he had built a movement based on blaming the economic woes of working people on immigrants and left-wingers and Jews. Same as Trump. Now imagine someone writing, at that time, an article called, “Hitler Voters, Can We Talk?” Not an effective strategy. I almost always agree with and cheer anything written by Arthur, and there is much to cheer in this piece, but as a strategy, reaching out to Trump voters isn’t high on my list.
We must expand our base where we can–with young adult voters. It’s this and changing demographics that can keep it from happening here.
It can happen here. THAT should be the take-away from the 2020 election. It’s very, very dangerous to be in denial about this.
gitapik Especially for family . . . I just send her pictures and videos of baby animals.
In families, it’s often not “my reasons against your reasons” but rather ME against YOU . . . basically old-world tribal. CBK
Yes, Catherine. Find the right mode of communication based on cognitive level.
gitapik There IS a legitimate tension where families are concerned, however. Remember how hard it was for the brother of the unibomber to turn him in. Plato even has a dialogue about it. He would have Socrates say to the brother: “How can you turn in your brother and be right?”
The principles governing families are not the same as the principles that govern right but we live in the tension between them.
Our present problem is related: that, at the core of it, so many think of Trump under the principle of family rather than the principle of right. CBK
I don’t think the Neville Chamberlain crowd really grasps where we are today …
I honestly don’t know where they’ve been all this time, certainly not talking to Trumplodytes, or else they might have a clue …
Jon Hitler . . . and Chamberlain . . . now THERE’s an example that resounds across the ages. CBK
I don’t think the Neville Chamberlain crowd really grasps where we are today.
You nailed it, Jon.
I hope no one was so naive as to think they would give up that easily …
Michigan’s Racist Republican Election Officials Now Want To Decertify The Election Results
Those two Wayne County Republicans look ridiculous. Lacking in principle.
Jon Yes, . . . I was naive enough to think they would realize that it was the right thing to do, not that they merely caved to social pressure. Duh to me. CBK
https://abc7chicago.com/michigan-governor-gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-plot-militia/8079861/
Not going to happen because you are already equating your side as superior, when, in fact, you are just as ‘deplorable or more so‘as those you want to basically conquer.
Tom,
Can we agree that those who support the Constitution are “superior” to those who attack it?