Why are we (and I’m not an American but the same is true in many places) choosing to live in hatred, bitterness, ignorance and misery when we could choose the opposite?
It’s surreal. A really strange world. For example I listen to all the reasons thrown out on why I should fear and hate Muslims: treat women badly, anti-science, want a theocracy, no freedom, intolerance and so on. Frankly among the Muslims I know that description doesn’t register, but there you go. The problem, though, is that the people putting out those reasons appear to want exactly what they are railing against.
In the same vein, why are dystopian novels and films so popular? If one is going to engage in an act of imagination why imagine the worst and not the best? If Buddhists are right and we create the world with our thoughts and actions then we’re in for some tough times.
I love dystopian, as well as many other genres. Yes it’s a dystopia, but at the end of the day, whether it’s Hunger Games or Indiana Jones or The Wizard of Oz, it’s still ultimately a story of good v evil, “the little guy” against someone/something that appears bigger, stronger, more powerful. A tale as old as time that is appealing because it is reassuring. No matter how bad it gets, there is always hope, always a chance to prevail.
I saw part of Trump's long-winded, divisive July 4th speech. He attacked Democrats saying America is under threat from radical left-wing "communists." Socialism/Communism is a system with no private property and means of production are owned + controlled by the state. Something Dr. Krugman wrote this week resonated with me.
Democrats need to lose the ID Democratic Socialist and re-brand as "Social Democrats." It might work in areas like NYC but if that's what Democrats want voters to think, they will not win a national election and Republicans will hammer them. Identifying as 'Social Democrats' along with a coherent message to voters can be a big winner.
Mr. McIntyre. You say "Socialism/communism is a system with no private property and means of production are owned + controlled by the state."
This is incorrect. No doubt you read Dr. Krugman's essay in which he incorrectly made this claim.
Communism is a school of philosophy which holds that the well being of the entire community of citizens must be emphasized, not the well being of an individual. Socialism is an economic system in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the workers who labor to produce the goods and services. Also, it is not correct that there is no private property in a socialist system. An economic system in which the means of production are owned by the state is a form of state capitalism which has historically been referred to as fascism.
Here in the US academicians and other
"influencers" have almost completely distorted the meaning of those terms. Dr. Krugman was formally educated in elite, Ivy League schools. These are places where socialism, communism and marxism are not treated like subjects to be rationally considered and analyzed. But instead they are treated almost like diseases to be irrationally, hysterically denounced, if they are even mentioned at all.
This state of affairs is sad but not surprising. After all, we live in a country which has divided the world into a manichean system of cowboys vs. indians, cops vs. robbers, good guys vs. bad guys, Detroit Lions vs. Green Bay Packers, Republicans vs. Democrats, etc.
Again, not surprising as this is the colonial/settler country in which tens of millions of indigenous people in ages-old nations were viciously eliminated in systematic genocide committed by European/christian invaders. This is the country in which the white christian overlords created the biggest, most brutal system of slavery in history. This is that same country in which the majority of founding fathers owned slaves; an unfortunate fact which we conveniently ignore as we habitually praise those founding fathers as demigods.
It is not surprising we have educated our best and brightest young scholars in elite schools which fail to understand simple concepts like communism and socialism. Sad but not surprising.
You decry "elite, Ivy League schools" as "places where socialism, communism and marxism are not treated like subjects to be rationally considered and analyzed." On what do you base this assertion?
Back in the day, I was a graduate student at one of those places. I was assigned as a TA to a visiting professor who had been a high-ranking official in Yugoslavia's communist party. I also took a seminar with a visiting professor from the LSE who had written THE book on the development of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Both men stood at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, and both were superb at "rationally considering and analyzing" socialism, communism and Marxism quite objectively.
So I ask again: what is the evidentiary basis for your condemnation of "elite Ivy League schools" for their "irrational" treatment of radical political movements?
You need to read the DSoc platform, and not what others ascribe to the Democratic Socialists. I know you are capable of googling "Democratic Socialists" and thus finding that party's platform. Go ahead, do it. It's better than having somebody else type in the link for you.
Sorry dystopian/sci fi fan here. Those novels were warnings about what can happen when we don’t pay attention to threats to democracy. It’s not negative. It’s hopeful because it means we can imagine better and we must fight to keep it. The hunger games was about triumph of the spirit of unity and humanity. Gilead ended. I think these books are about the best in us.
I agree, but I think they also reflect a fear that it's all inevitably running down the drain. We're drowning in success and dystopia is a way to theorize about how we'll know when it's all gone.
I think a more accurate picture of what happens is actually Umberto Eco's 'Foucaults Pendulum' wherein Jacopo Belbo creates the myth that inevitably results in his own martyrdom at the hands of the people he wanted to save.
I don't know, Musk read and was named for stuff by Heinlien.
Heinlien was, in my opinion, a third rate writer. His father's doing, not Heinlien's.
I had a sci fi collection in Jr high with early writers of sci fi. Heinlien had a short in it that was as stupid as it was dull, while JW Campbell was in it too. And way before DNA was discovered.
Starship Troopers wasn't in it but that was about fascism, so he wasn't an idiot but the movies go both ways, glorifying fascism as well as showing excesses. Though I think too much glorification, not enough excesses.
I was a fan of Heinlein’s in my younger days, but in recent years I’ve reread a couple of his novels and was vastly disappointed. One I couldn’t even finish and the other, Stranger In A Strange Land, left me wondering why it’s considered a classic.
@Theodora30 said: "Younger adults grew up on a diet of dystopian sci fi."
More to the point: younger adults have grown up LIVING in a dystopian reality. Many have them have not known American government that was not infested with trumpian corruption.
The trend seems to have started after WWII and escalated over the decades. Which brings me to another reason the spirit was different in 1976: there were still a lot of people around who had survived the Great Depression and WWII. Based on listening to my grandparents and parents, they knew the 1970s weren’t the worst of times and things can get better if you work for it.
That’s ironic to be sure (i was going to say “funny” but that seems too disengaged), that the fear-mongering aimed at Muslims is a pot-and-kettle phenomenon. It does, though,seem to be the case that Muslim political leaders are less than enlightened. We in America can now commiserate with our Muslim friends on that basis.
I think JD Vance’s recent comment that Watergate would quickly vanish from today’s news cycle merits A LOT more news cycle attention. For once, he’s right about something, but, of course, for all the wrong reasons.
There isn’t just one Muslim leader and they don’t all agree on things. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the word is Indonesia but most of us couldn’t even name its leader Prabowo Subianto. It’s the same for Christians. Franklin Graham and the Pope Leo are both influential Christian leaders and they have nothing in common.
I think the Pope and Franklin Graham have quite a bit in common: misogyny and the idea women have no right to bodily autonomy. That alone is despicable. I have zero respect for either of them.
When the Pope accused Trump (rightly) for having blood on his hands for the Iran war, I immediately thought you, too, have blood on your hands, Pope!
How many women have your Catholic hospitals killed or maimed by withholding life-saving healthcare (abortion) for women with suffering miscarriages or experiencing ectopic, molar or otherwise life-threatening pregnancies?! Pure barbarism.
I don’t think that’s what Pope Leo really thinks. Unfortunately, liberals in the church are afraid of the conservatives. They don’t want a schism. I went to a Jesuit university in the 1970’s and all the Jesuits I studied with believed in birth control and wanted their female students to excel. They also had very liberal ideas about LGBT people. There is a wide area of beliefs in the church.
Maybe, I sure don’t know what the Pope thinks. But having been denied a life-saving abortion in the Catholic hospital that discovered my ectopic pregnancy, I’m really afraid for pregnant women who have only a Catholic hospital available to them. If he doesn’t support withholding medical treatment, I sure wish he would say and do something. Otherwise, I can only see him as complicit.
And there are a lot of places with only a Catholic hospital. My hometown, for example. It has a reputation as a pinko communist city among rural right wingers in my state, but through its quiet obstinacy that Catholic hospital determines what kind of health care the community receives.
I don’t like religion in our public schools and I sure don’t like spending tax dollars on religious schools, which is unconstitutional. I believe in the separation of Church and State and look forward to the re-establishment of that. If Jesuits feel that way, I would love to hear it.
I’m in Minnesota. We have several elected officials who are Muslim and are progressive and inclusive. I’m wondering whom you are referring to that are less than enlightened? Or maybe what you mean by that? Gosh, I sound confrontative, but I don’t mean to. Are there Muslim political leaders elsewhere who are less enlightened? Or you’re referring to other countries, maybe? I wonder if those countries are influenced by a power structure itself and they’re using religion to justify it? Sort of like JD Vance is trying to do here?
Most of these anti-Muslim folks have never met a Muslim. I was in IT and worked with many wonderful Muslim men & women. In fact the first guy to take paternity leave, in my company, was a Muslim guy. He took off work so his wife could keep her job as a HS physics teacher.
Trump sure can push the rhetoric! He knows where the buttons to our emotions are—our sense of fairness and common sense. (I pushed enter by accident, but I’m actually not sure how to complete my thought process, so I’ll leave it here. Except to add that he’s succeeding against transpeople in the same way.)
Addendum: which is not to say that George, whose comment I replied to, has bought into any of that. He may very simply have been referring to something different than what I took it to mean.
I assumed he was referring to Afghanistan and Iran, the two bogeymen countries media and Republicans have consistently used while they moved the Overton window.
Yes! When Ted Turner recently passed, one of his achievements was CNN and the 24 hour access to news. It would have come to pass anyway, so I’m certainly not blaming him, but I also don’t know that it is anything that has benefitted society. Instead, and especially now with phones (notifications) and social media, it seems to have desensitized and fatigued many to a damaging degree. And that happens before we even get into the issue of tabloidism, misinformation, and outright disinformation, lies, and conspiracies all peddled as “news”.
I completely agree. If you watch old CNN pieces, back when Turner still ran it on a daily basis, there was a lot of hard-hitting journalism and real news reporting. Turner was a hard-working guy (he literally lived at CNN HQ for a while) and he was very demanding of his employees.
Absolutely. I just meant that it was the first. But it wouldn’t have mattered. Someone was going to open that flood gate. And even that is somewhat irrelevant after the flood gates of the internet and personal devices.
I appreciate both your question and Paul's reflections. They resonate with me, but they also leave me asking a different question: What kind of future do we want to create from here?
History reminds us that societies move through difficult periods, but they also renew themselves. That doesn't happen on its own. It happens when enough people choose curiosity over certainty, relationship over division, and the common good over winning.
I don't know exactly what comes next, but I still have hope. Not because the challenges aren't real, but because I've also seen what people are capable of when they remember our shared humanity.
"History reminds us that societies move through difficult periods, but they also renew themselves. That doesn't happen on its own. It happens when enough people choose curiosity over certainty, relationship over division, and the common good over winning."
And this is what gives me hope for peace in our homes, our neighborhoods, and our country.
“We” haven’t chosen to live in hatred, etc. but a large minority of people both here and abroad has chosen that aided and abetted by far right media/social media. I recently watched the powerful “Brainwashing of My Father” documentary. It shows just how effective right wing radio and TV has been in sucking people into that world of hatred.
I also just watched the Netflix documentary about Ed Sullivan “Sunday Best”. Growing up I had no idea that Sullivan had pushed so hard to showcase African American performers. It just seemed normal to me to see black artists on his show — which is evidence of the power of the media to do good. The fact that his ratings were astronomical showed that the loud mouthed bigots who tried to stop him were not the majority of Americans.
That documentary is well worth watching not only to get a real sense of the civil rights struggle but to see all those wonderful performers making their debut on national TV. Little Stevie Wonder, the Jackson Five, Elvis, the Beatles, the Supremes, and many more. Now the once great CBS has shamefully allowed Bari Weiss to desecrate the Ed Sullivan theatre.
I saw that documentary, and remember The Ed Sullivan Show very well. I was never brought up to think whites were better than anyone else, so enjoying Black performers didn't register as different to me.
Loved the documentary, and that Mr. Sullivan had the character to stand up for equality. I have a profound respect for him that I never even thought about before.
Bari Weiss is a....never mind. I'll watch CBS again sometime never.
Yeah, I watched the Sullivan doc a few months ago. I agree. i had no idea that he had contributed so much that went well beyond the pure entertainment value. He took risks and eventually ran out of road. But he was a true humanitarian in a time when openness to all people, especially non white performers was not a given. He had a strong backbone and stood up for performers like Harry Belafonte when there was the issue of racism that did not welcome him.
The Ed Sullivan documentary was a flashback, if you will. Fifty years on and its place in our civil rights history is not lost, and we sure could use a few more Sullivans now. It's interesting that Jimmie Kimmel and Stephen Colbert have riled the same ugliness.
A big part of it, especially in the US, is people swallowing the propaganda spoon fed to them by the super rich oligarchy, mostly in the form of Faux Newspeak but other reichwing media outlets as well.
"Why are we choosing to live in hatred, bitterness, ignorance and misery when we could choose the opposite?"
For the super wealthy and powerful to succeed in their ambitions to have everything, except accountability, it is necessary for the rest of us to be bitterly divided. And their tools are Facebook, Google, controlled news media like Fox and now CBS, and destruction or ownership of any governmental institution that might think to stand in their way.
What you are describing is a human failing - we don't do well with success. The America Dr. Krugman describes is one that was on the cusp of the greatest revolution in human history - the personal computer and all of the benefits of trade that it wrought.
Dystopia is nothing more than people who have so much fearing it will inevitably run down the drain. Because that is usually what happens. In our case, it didn't run down, it was reassigned upward to Jeff Bezos bank account & Elon Musks attempt Oligopolize everything.
We're like the basketball team with 20 game win streak - we wonder more about when it will inevitably end than we do about winning the next game. Democracy is a team sport. We wonder "which of you, my team mates, is going to screw up and cause us to fail?" And it's because very, very, very, very few of us know how to fail, get up, and keep going. In fact, while art may celebrate the Rocky Balbao, our society in practice looks down on you if you fail. Even if you get back up.
Especially in Gen X, and in this society, where it is an anathema to get your butt kicked and get back to work. You want to know how we get to choosing the positive? We need to lose first.
Now, everyone reading this, it's zig zags, windsprints, and pushups for the rest of practice.
For your question,"Why are we (and I’m not an American but the same is true in many places) choosing to live in hatred, bitterness, ignorance and misery when we could choose the opposite?" - the answer is as simple as it seems; algorithms controlled by the super wealthy. Nothing more, nothing less - good old positive re-enforcement scheduling done by the best science $ can buy. If you were able to kick smoking cigarettes then you overcame the best science (of addiction) that money can buy. We the people are stronger than all of the money arrayed against us, if only we remember who we are.
I had the same struggle in understanding. Demagogues invent bogeymen and appeal to basic emotions of insecurity, resentment, rage, and hatred which they focus on convenient targets such as immigrants of color or Muslims in Western countries, India, and Myanmar. All human beings could potentially feel such emotions. Whether we do or not probably depends on how secure we are in ourselves and our lives, how open we are to other cultures and people who don't look or speak or pray like us, how much exposure we have had to them. The world today is interconnected in a lot of ways; people have always moved around and tried to find better, more secure lives. That's hard to accept by people who feel they are threatened in their stable societies and traditional ways of relating; especially if they are taught that their problems are because of others.
The achievement in recent decades of equal rights and opportunities for women or minorities of color was resented by men (or white people in the case of race) who felt their dominant positions in society, in their own self-image, were threatened. Science, in particular, modern cosmology and evolutionary biology and psychology are threats to ancient beliefs in creation by a divine source who is also personal and the fount of morality and ethics. It is hard to accept that this earth is but a speck in the universe and human lives are finite. There is a lot of childhood conditioning, loyalty to the group in which we were born and socialized in churches and temples, where ceremonies and rites gave meaning at turning points in life and shared joy or consolation.
Belief in science (especially the teaching of evolution) is not encouraged by Islamic or Hindu fundamentalists any more than by Christian or Jewish orthodox literal believers in scriptures. Myths and stories could be more comforting and also help set one set of believers apart from others, make them special, a badge of identity and belonging. Freedom of thought, expression, and tolerance of dissent are dangerous to authority and to group cohesion. That is why they have always been resisted and punished historically by authorities in organized religions. Spinoza was expelled by the Jewish community in Amsterdam; Galileo had to recant his support for Copernicus and the finding that the earth moves around the sun; death was prescribed for a Muslim believer who became an apostate.
There is a new book out on the subject. It is called "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by one Neil Postman. It is about the dumbing down of social and political discourse in America. I hear according to some survey about half of all Americans do not know what event the 4th of July commemorates.
It’s because a big segment of the voters, perhaps more than half, want to burn it all down. They chose a president who would do that. The core of it is economic stress and fear of imminent failure. This dooms marriages too. There is also a large FOX News propaganda element. The racism, truth denial and tribalism is just circling the wagons. They’re not good behaviors, but divisive behaviors are not the core of it either. They are symptoms. Americans after 50 years of wage stagnation are not thriving, and with AI, things may go substantially worse. They see their doom and are looking to rip apart the bars of the cage herding them toward it.
At the end of the day, the real problem is your boss, his boss, and all the other collaborators scheming to keep wages down in the name of shareholder primacy. It piles on the misery. At the core, the desperation feeds the flames of fear. Republicans are not the same as the rest of us. They are fear driven and it has hit them most strongly. Trump knows this. He uses it to manipulate them. He said as much. They’ve lost their minds to fear.
I only wish Republicans could see the forest for the trees. Trump doesn’t have it in him to lead to a better place. He’s like a bomb. He destroys stuff, entirely negative return on investment. The way forward is not to turn to the billionaires for leadership, but their antithesis, legitimate progressive worker affirming candidates who understand the wage issue and will do something about it — not “woke” politicians promising sex changes for everyone, rather socially agnostic, *economic* progressives more like FDR.
We all saw this coming during Biden's last year in office but instead of doing something about it, people naively believed the system would somehow resolve itself.
The flaws in our pretend democracy have been evident since Bush Jr was assigned the presidency back in 2000.
The Biden administration will go down in history as not doing nearly enough to prevent the corpocracy from finishing our democracy off. But it's pretty clear there's no coming back from a corpocracy that controls ever facet of our lives.
Hate, anger and fear are powerful emotions. They enabled us to compete for scarce natural resources, however we now live in a world where cooperation is a better strategy. We have the technology to destroy our enemies and ourselves. But we still enjoy those emotions. Thrillers! They drive engagement and advertising revenue.
that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-
That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed,
that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
“…from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
I just read an article on the NPR website reporting that 46% of Americans polled don't know what America's 250th commemorates. For 18-29-year-olds, it's 61%. Relatedly, when Jay Leno hosted The Tonight Show, he had a segment called "Jay Walking," in which he would go out into a public place and ask random people simple civics questions. They mostly did not know the answers. I recall him asking a young man, who looked to be in his 20's, why we celebrate the Fourth of July. He could not answer. I was astonished and concerned then, but it appears the ignorance has gotten worse.
We need leaders who focus on making knowledge great again.
We should keep in mind that we didn't manage to actually kick the British out for five more years. It may take us that long or longer to restore some semblance of the old United States.
...But only if you were a white, landed male. People forget that part. The words sound noble and majestic eleven years ago, and up until then society made progress incrementally. But today, the words are meaningful only if you're a white male. The rest of us are worried.
Except in this case, though the Constitution needs amending, the majority of the issue lies not with the documents but with the people implementing them. As Franklin is quoted, "You have a republic, if you can keep it". No piece of paper can prevent the corruption of the voters nor their leaders.
Instead of the hoopla that we're seeing in Washington DC right now, I had thought it would the most patriotic for the President to read the Declaration of Independence, but then I read this:
"...governments are created to protect these rights, and if a government becomes tyrannical, the people have the right to alter or abolish it."
Yeah, that's not happening. Wouldn't be surprised if Trump puts out his own declaration! With his image and signature.
He understood the modesty of his role. Greatness was not his goal.
Our nation's first and only unelected president, Ford did not have the striving narcissism that compels pretty much all presidential candidates to distort their lives to run for national office.
Ford was a successful working politician who Nixon tapped to be vice president to replace Spiro Agnew, presumably because Ford was so popular among his colleagues in the House of Representatives.
He stepped into the role the way Trump's pathetic supporting cast wore their Florsheims--with feet two small for their shoes. Anyone who walks into the Oval Office is too small for their role. It is too big a job for any single person.
The difference with Ford was he didn't try to be bigger than he was. History had relegated him to a role to bind the nation and he did a very good job.
I cannot rate Ford great. I even have trouble with good. His pardon of Nixon layed the foundation for every presidential impunity that followed…Reagan for Iran-Contra, W. Bush for the lies leading to the Iraq War, and now, when we have an immunized criminal with virtually zero accountability. Ford was a decent man, but the pardon blunted the positive effects of GOP Senators telling Nixon he was done.
I think it is debatable whether the Nixon pardon was a mistake. Without the pardon the spectacle of impeachment and conviction would have prolonged the focus on Watergate to the exclusion of all else. If one does not agree with the pardon it is certainly understandable why Ford took that action.
After reading about (in the Washington Post) in painstaking detail, how Nixon had orchestrated the break-in of the Democratic National headquarters and the subsequent coverup including the Saturday Night Massacre and watching the impeachment proceedings featuring the missing tape, everyone I knew wanted to find Nixon guilty and press charges. We believed no man was above the law. We would be a different country today if Ford had not pardoned Nixon.
This does not add anything new. While I’m inclined to agree that Nixon should have suffered legal consequences, there’s no knowing how that situation might have played out over the following months (years?), or what kind of lasting effect it would’ve had on our future.
A pardon implies Nixon was a criminal. Ford's application of a pardon was granted in the context of binding national wounds, of which Watergate was central, but certainly not the only one. It was in the tradition of the national move toward clemency after the Civil War.
The Republican Party and the Supreme Court bear the responsibility for immunizing presidential criminality. They are the ones who have stepped out of the interests of national unity in favor of partisan and elitist interests.
Did Ford's pardon soften the ground for that? It's a good, or rather great, question.
The move towards clemency after the Civil War led us to this moment in our national history. The Confederacy should have been excoriated, not welcomed back with open arms.
I was there. The country was tired from the tragedies of riots, assassinations and the deaths of so many for the lost war, further demeaned by the ignominious withdrawal. We were tired and needed to pick up the pieces and go on, and Nixon's shameful taped revelations and forced resignation were enough punishment for me at that time. There was such joy and celebration July 4, 1976. He truly was persona non grata. Everywhere.
I don’t think Ford was a bad guy, but pardoning Nixon was the great mistake; a decision likely colored by partisanship. We are paying now for the false notion that prosecuting Nixon was “for our own good” with a president who has no fear of the law. And it cost Ford his reelection. Americans wanted liberty and justice for all, and most of us still do, in spite of the rapidly disintegrating maga cult and the “all is lost” online hysteria that desperately wants us to give up.
Don’t give up! We owe it to all those who came before us, who fought and sacrificed for the United States and our highest ideals, and even more so to those who come after us.
They have tied themselves together, so , yes. I think they sink together; the lies and hatred is their lead weight. Being honest and caring will lift us, we rise together. We owe that to ourselves, too.
Neither Christian nationalists nor biker gangs are going away. There is something in the American society that funnels lost men to find glory in becoming rebels with a broken cause. At least, they aren’t going postal.
In my remembered youth, when they came up in conversation as snake-handlers speaking in tongues or the Klan they were referred to as the lunatic fringe - I just want Christian Nationalists back in 'fringe' status, not destroying my nation..
Probably the best athlete of any president, and yet mainly highlighted in our great press for being clumsy. I guess basic human decency is boring. At least his successor was also a stellar character.
You hit the nail on the head. There’s a cohort of voters who just want to be entertained, and the media wants someone who will generate the most clicks/ audience to get advertising dollars.
Recently read this interesting tidbit about Ford: he was actually one of our more intelligent Presidents, having graduated in the top 1/3 of his class at Harvard – even helped many schoolmates study for their exams.
Yes Yes Yes. “Real Men” aren’t afraid of strong women and thanks for that comment. On the broader subject, I visited the historic sites of Herbert Hoover, in Iowa, many years ago with my sweet first husband. He (Hoover) too had a strong and proud wife who made their achievements possible. So glad that I got to experience the USA in those years, before the collapse of climate and national purpose.
Ford and Carter, both humble decent people, do not get the credit they deserve. If our system survives the current effort at authoritarian takeover I expect history will treat both of them well.
Well, you see, that is part of the fascist playbook. It helps ensure the wealthy are good party loyalists. Reduced to absurdity, communism is about the people or the state as their proxy. Fascism is about the fascist party.
If you are wealthy and living off the labor of others through corporate ownership, communism will always be the enemy. It most directly threatens to deprive you of your unearned privilege and exorbitant way of life. Their job is to convince you that what threatens the 0.1% threatens everyone.
The Tall Ships are already in the New York area. They will parade up the Hudson today. Here's a video of them parading yesterday down the East River -https://www.youtube.com/live/sfTytdAFuoo.
Next week, they will sail into Boston.
Sail250 was organized by the US Navy, but since Trump isn't interested in such things and since there was no grift for himself and his buddies, Sail250 WAS NOT well publicized.
Thanks Cheryl. Oddly, my source saying they were still here (Baltimore) was WYPR radio. But after I posted I turned on the news and they were talking about them being in NY. So: Whoops! (Sounds like we are more or less neighbors!)
Not so sure it’s much of a “big change”. Ask Chinese folks banned from entering the U.S. decades ago. Ask Jewish people banned from entering the U.S during WWII. Ask Mexican and other ‘brown’ people hiding now from Trump’s ICE goons.
I remember the bicentennial well. The country was in really bad shape, but I remember the general attitude being "yeah, we're having tough times now, but we've had bad times before and come out well because we're better than that." That was the undercurrent of society, and that was the tone and outlook of our leadership.
Contrast that with today's leadership that spends all of its time and energy trying to convince the world that it's the greatest there has ever been while working very openly and directly to make life worse for every American--and sending its representatives on to TV to tell Americans "you've had it too good for too long, and now it's time for you to suffer," as Kevin Hassett said last summer.
That time is now. And the new young people that have been and are winning primaries or have already been elected are showing the way. It’s up to us! We the people are taking back our power. NOW is the time to continue to pushback more than ever. We will prevail.
I was working in London during the summer and fall of 1976. My family and I attended many museums that had displays commemorating Britain's loss of the American colonies. They even noted the mistakes and miscalculations made by the British generals that lost them the war. When I look back on that now, I am amazed at their honesty and candor...
We wait anxiously for the USA to regain its senses.
I remember in 1976, as a 14 year old , reading about the bicentennial in "National Geographic "- my Dad had got us a subscription that year. It seemed such an optimistic time, and I was keen to visit (I didn't get there until 1989).
I will not be doing that. While I detest Trump and would prefer anyone else, the DNC keeps putting up milquetoast candidates that do not prosecute and do not roll back Trumpian policies. This sets up a ratchet of two steps back republicans; no steps forward Centrist do-nothing. We can’t afford that anymore. Since centrist Democrats are not good enough to win every time, it is a losing strategy. Vote blue no matter who is a Hobson’s choice. It is worse than that. It is justice delayed; justice denied.
I will only contribute to and vote for progressive candidates. If they are also democrats, that is fine. If this means we have to have 5 Trumps in a row for MAGA to finally learn to stop wanting insane things, then maybe they need to learn that the hard way. Sitting on our hands does not solve the problem, and it won’t be solved until a progressive steps into power. It is the only way forward, and I will keep voting for that until it happens.
Ian, I don’t know how to tell you how disappointing that is to me. I admit that not every Democratic candidate is my preference either, but at this point in our nation’s history, every Democrat is better than any Republican. We need everyone rowing together here. We have got to win the House, which looks pretty likely but we need the greatest margin we possibly can, and we need to do everything to elect every Democratic senator that we possibly can. We need to control the Senate, or we’ll have a Supreme Court like this…forever, I guess.
I don’t buy what’s really just a false equivalent argument that there’s no difference between the parties. There’s a HUGE difference, and this time it isn’t just fair taxation, or decent health care, or taking care of the least advantaged; this time it’s democracy itself that’s at stake. I don’t suspect you’ll change your mind, but I hope there aren’t too many who go along with you.
I was sitting on my porch steps on July fourth, 1776. Greater Grand Crossing in Chicago was terrible. That day was quiet. Ten young men from my Cull De Sack had returned from Vietnam. Several had wounds from shrapnel. Reminders of my “third world” status as a sixteen year old black were everywhere. Now, at sixty six, most of my life has come and gone. I am very aware of that Roman phrase “Memento Mori” and I know these times shall soon pass us bye.
Mark Shields used to joke about the only Communists to be found were located in an Albanian theme park. Now, according to Trump, Communism is the greatest threat to the country. Alright everyone, before you go to sleep tonight, check under your bed for those “commies.” They’re lurking everywhere!
You know what’s kind of cool? Hitler used the same communist fear ploy during his Fascist takeover of Germany in the 30s. But, and here is the important difference from Trump, there actually was an active communist party in Germany during the 30s. Here, in the US in 2026, communists? Perhaps a few Marxists in academia. Trump just invents this stuff and the MAGA faithful believe him. And that is one reason why Trump is very dangerous.
One of them sleeps with his head on your very pillow, next to your wife. You just don’t know it yet! Won’t you be surprised when you find out that man has been you all along, and you start thinking that maybe you *should* get a vote at work about what goes on and whether there should be layoffs, or maybe if the elderly were so militant about *their* Medicare, maybe it is good enough for you too.
I'm spending this fourth in London. My shirt depicts our flag turned upside down. A sign of distress. The only way the American flag should be displayed at this time in our history.
Why are we (and I’m not an American but the same is true in many places) choosing to live in hatred, bitterness, ignorance and misery when we could choose the opposite?
It’s surreal. A really strange world. For example I listen to all the reasons thrown out on why I should fear and hate Muslims: treat women badly, anti-science, want a theocracy, no freedom, intolerance and so on. Frankly among the Muslims I know that description doesn’t register, but there you go. The problem, though, is that the people putting out those reasons appear to want exactly what they are railing against.
It’s a real struggle to try to grasp any of this.
In the same vein, why are dystopian novels and films so popular? If one is going to engage in an act of imagination why imagine the worst and not the best? If Buddhists are right and we create the world with our thoughts and actions then we’re in for some tough times.
I love dystopian, as well as many other genres. Yes it’s a dystopia, but at the end of the day, whether it’s Hunger Games or Indiana Jones or The Wizard of Oz, it’s still ultimately a story of good v evil, “the little guy” against someone/something that appears bigger, stronger, more powerful. A tale as old as time that is appealing because it is reassuring. No matter how bad it gets, there is always hope, always a chance to prevail.
Did you read "The Road"? Unrelenting despair, the saddest book I have read.
But the boy does find a protector and a family after his father’s death, no?
Our World: GOOD Vs EVIL, I CHOOSE GOOD! PASS IT ON..
GODeep. Simplistic thinking and a dualistic mindset is problematic, if not boring and silly, filled with denial and ignorance.
I gather you're not a Star Trek fan...it gives me imaginary hope which is good enough for today.
Probably because they more closely resemble the reality we're actually living in.
I saw part of Trump's long-winded, divisive July 4th speech. He attacked Democrats saying America is under threat from radical left-wing "communists." Socialism/Communism is a system with no private property and means of production are owned + controlled by the state. Something Dr. Krugman wrote this week resonated with me.
Democrats need to lose the ID Democratic Socialist and re-brand as "Social Democrats." It might work in areas like NYC but if that's what Democrats want voters to think, they will not win a national election and Republicans will hammer them. Identifying as 'Social Democrats' along with a coherent message to voters can be a big winner.
Mr. McIntyre. You say "Socialism/communism is a system with no private property and means of production are owned + controlled by the state."
This is incorrect. No doubt you read Dr. Krugman's essay in which he incorrectly made this claim.
Communism is a school of philosophy which holds that the well being of the entire community of citizens must be emphasized, not the well being of an individual. Socialism is an economic system in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the workers who labor to produce the goods and services. Also, it is not correct that there is no private property in a socialist system. An economic system in which the means of production are owned by the state is a form of state capitalism which has historically been referred to as fascism.
Here in the US academicians and other
"influencers" have almost completely distorted the meaning of those terms. Dr. Krugman was formally educated in elite, Ivy League schools. These are places where socialism, communism and marxism are not treated like subjects to be rationally considered and analyzed. But instead they are treated almost like diseases to be irrationally, hysterically denounced, if they are even mentioned at all.
This state of affairs is sad but not surprising. After all, we live in a country which has divided the world into a manichean system of cowboys vs. indians, cops vs. robbers, good guys vs. bad guys, Detroit Lions vs. Green Bay Packers, Republicans vs. Democrats, etc.
Again, not surprising as this is the colonial/settler country in which tens of millions of indigenous people in ages-old nations were viciously eliminated in systematic genocide committed by European/christian invaders. This is the country in which the white christian overlords created the biggest, most brutal system of slavery in history. This is that same country in which the majority of founding fathers owned slaves; an unfortunate fact which we conveniently ignore as we habitually praise those founding fathers as demigods.
It is not surprising we have educated our best and brightest young scholars in elite schools which fail to understand simple concepts like communism and socialism. Sad but not surprising.
You decry "elite, Ivy League schools" as "places where socialism, communism and marxism are not treated like subjects to be rationally considered and analyzed." On what do you base this assertion?
Back in the day, I was a graduate student at one of those places. I was assigned as a TA to a visiting professor who had been a high-ranking official in Yugoslavia's communist party. I also took a seminar with a visiting professor from the LSE who had written THE book on the development of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Both men stood at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, and both were superb at "rationally considering and analyzing" socialism, communism and Marxism quite objectively.
So I ask again: what is the evidentiary basis for your condemnation of "elite Ivy League schools" for their "irrational" treatment of radical political movements?
My evidence, Mr. canadensis, today, is Dr. Krugman. How evident must it be?
You need to read the DSoc platform, and not what others ascribe to the Democratic Socialists. I know you are capable of googling "Democratic Socialists" and thus finding that party's platform. Go ahead, do it. It's better than having somebody else type in the link for you.
Younger adults grew up on a diet of dystopian sci fi. I really believe that has had a negative affect on many of them — especially Musk.
Sorry dystopian/sci fi fan here. Those novels were warnings about what can happen when we don’t pay attention to threats to democracy. It’s not negative. It’s hopeful because it means we can imagine better and we must fight to keep it. The hunger games was about triumph of the spirit of unity and humanity. Gilead ended. I think these books are about the best in us.
The problem with dystopian sci-fi is it has become a road map for the Right.
I agree, but I think they also reflect a fear that it's all inevitably running down the drain. We're drowning in success and dystopia is a way to theorize about how we'll know when it's all gone.
I think a more accurate picture of what happens is actually Umberto Eco's 'Foucaults Pendulum' wherein Jacopo Belbo creates the myth that inevitably results in his own martyrdom at the hands of the people he wanted to save.
I don't know, Musk read and was named for stuff by Heinlien.
Heinlien was, in my opinion, a third rate writer. His father's doing, not Heinlien's.
I had a sci fi collection in Jr high with early writers of sci fi. Heinlien had a short in it that was as stupid as it was dull, while JW Campbell was in it too. And way before DNA was discovered.
Starship Troopers wasn't in it but that was about fascism, so he wasn't an idiot but the movies go both ways, glorifying fascism as well as showing excesses. Though I think too much glorification, not enough excesses.
Let's send Elon to Mars! One way.
Asimov? Loved his stuff and am not scarred by it!
I was a fan of Heinlein’s in my younger days, but in recent years I’ve reread a couple of his novels and was vastly disappointed. One I couldn’t even finish and the other, Stranger In A Strange Land, left me wondering why it’s considered a classic.
@Theodora30 said: "Younger adults grew up on a diet of dystopian sci fi."
More to the point: younger adults have grown up LIVING in a dystopian reality. Many have them have not known American government that was not infested with trumpian corruption.
The trend seems to have started after WWII and escalated over the decades. Which brings me to another reason the spirit was different in 1976: there were still a lot of people around who had survived the Great Depression and WWII. Based on listening to my grandparents and parents, they knew the 1970s weren’t the worst of times and things can get better if you work for it.
A compelling narrative really requires a protagonist and an antagonist or some type of strife to be interesting.
That’s ironic to be sure (i was going to say “funny” but that seems too disengaged), that the fear-mongering aimed at Muslims is a pot-and-kettle phenomenon. It does, though,seem to be the case that Muslim political leaders are less than enlightened. We in America can now commiserate with our Muslim friends on that basis.
I think JD Vance’s recent comment that Watergate would quickly vanish from today’s news cycle merits A LOT more news cycle attention. For once, he’s right about something, but, of course, for all the wrong reasons.
There isn’t just one Muslim leader and they don’t all agree on things. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the word is Indonesia but most of us couldn’t even name its leader Prabowo Subianto. It’s the same for Christians. Franklin Graham and the Pope Leo are both influential Christian leaders and they have nothing in common.
I think the Pope and Franklin Graham have quite a bit in common: misogyny and the idea women have no right to bodily autonomy. That alone is despicable. I have zero respect for either of them.
When the Pope accused Trump (rightly) for having blood on his hands for the Iran war, I immediately thought you, too, have blood on your hands, Pope!
How many women have your Catholic hospitals killed or maimed by withholding life-saving healthcare (abortion) for women with suffering miscarriages or experiencing ectopic, molar or otherwise life-threatening pregnancies?! Pure barbarism.
I don’t think that’s what Pope Leo really thinks. Unfortunately, liberals in the church are afraid of the conservatives. They don’t want a schism. I went to a Jesuit university in the 1970’s and all the Jesuits I studied with believed in birth control and wanted their female students to excel. They also had very liberal ideas about LGBT people. There is a wide area of beliefs in the church.
Maybe, I sure don’t know what the Pope thinks. But having been denied a life-saving abortion in the Catholic hospital that discovered my ectopic pregnancy, I’m really afraid for pregnant women who have only a Catholic hospital available to them. If he doesn’t support withholding medical treatment, I sure wish he would say and do something. Otherwise, I can only see him as complicit.
And there are a lot of places with only a Catholic hospital. My hometown, for example. It has a reputation as a pinko communist city among rural right wingers in my state, but through its quiet obstinacy that Catholic hospital determines what kind of health care the community receives.
I'm generally pretty anti organized religion, but the world would be a better place if more people in power were educated by the Jesuits.
I don’t like religion in our public schools and I sure don’t like spending tax dollars on religious schools, which is unconstitutional. I believe in the separation of Church and State and look forward to the re-establishment of that. If Jesuits feel that way, I would love to hear it.
I’m in Minnesota. We have several elected officials who are Muslim and are progressive and inclusive. I’m wondering whom you are referring to that are less than enlightened? Or maybe what you mean by that? Gosh, I sound confrontative, but I don’t mean to. Are there Muslim political leaders elsewhere who are less enlightened? Or you’re referring to other countries, maybe? I wonder if those countries are influenced by a power structure itself and they’re using religion to justify it? Sort of like JD Vance is trying to do here?
Most of these anti-Muslim folks have never met a Muslim. I was in IT and worked with many wonderful Muslim men & women. In fact the first guy to take paternity leave, in my company, was a Muslim guy. He took off work so his wife could keep her job as a HS physics teacher.
No one would argue that Trump has not been and never will be enlightened.
Trump sure can push the rhetoric! He knows where the buttons to our emotions are—our sense of fairness and common sense. (I pushed enter by accident, but I’m actually not sure how to complete my thought process, so I’ll leave it here. Except to add that he’s succeeding against transpeople in the same way.)
Addendum: which is not to say that George, whose comment I replied to, has bought into any of that. He may very simply have been referring to something different than what I took it to mean.
I assumed he was referring to Afghanistan and Iran, the two bogeymen countries media and Republicans have consistently used while they moved the Overton window.
This really highlights how the news cycle itself is at the heart of the problem.
Yes! When Ted Turner recently passed, one of his achievements was CNN and the 24 hour access to news. It would have come to pass anyway, so I’m certainly not blaming him, but I also don’t know that it is anything that has benefitted society. Instead, and especially now with phones (notifications) and social media, it seems to have desensitized and fatigued many to a damaging degree. And that happens before we even get into the issue of tabloidism, misinformation, and outright disinformation, lies, and conspiracies all peddled as “news”.
I never considered CNN to be all that problematic. Faux Newspeak on the other hand is downright malignant.
I completely agree. If you watch old CNN pieces, back when Turner still ran it on a daily basis, there was a lot of hard-hitting journalism and real news reporting. Turner was a hard-working guy (he literally lived at CNN HQ for a while) and he was very demanding of his employees.
The WaPo has turned into meek regional rag. Pathetic.
Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations. George Orwell
Absolutely. I just meant that it was the first. But it wouldn’t have mattered. Someone was going to open that flood gate. And even that is somewhat irrelevant after the flood gates of the internet and personal devices.
Viktor Orban (Christian) and Modi (Hindu) are examples of other less than enlightened political leaders.
Orban and Modi are geniuses next to Trump.
I appreciate both your question and Paul's reflections. They resonate with me, but they also leave me asking a different question: What kind of future do we want to create from here?
History reminds us that societies move through difficult periods, but they also renew themselves. That doesn't happen on its own. It happens when enough people choose curiosity over certainty, relationship over division, and the common good over winning.
I don't know exactly what comes next, but I still have hope. Not because the challenges aren't real, but because I've also seen what people are capable of when they remember our shared humanity.
"History reminds us that societies move through difficult periods, but they also renew themselves. That doesn't happen on its own. It happens when enough people choose curiosity over certainty, relationship over division, and the common good over winning."
And this is what gives me hope for peace in our homes, our neighborhoods, and our country.
Cheers to a realist. And a struggling optimist.
“We” haven’t chosen to live in hatred, etc. but a large minority of people both here and abroad has chosen that aided and abetted by far right media/social media. I recently watched the powerful “Brainwashing of My Father” documentary. It shows just how effective right wing radio and TV has been in sucking people into that world of hatred.
I also just watched the Netflix documentary about Ed Sullivan “Sunday Best”. Growing up I had no idea that Sullivan had pushed so hard to showcase African American performers. It just seemed normal to me to see black artists on his show — which is evidence of the power of the media to do good. The fact that his ratings were astronomical showed that the loud mouthed bigots who tried to stop him were not the majority of Americans.
That documentary is well worth watching not only to get a real sense of the civil rights struggle but to see all those wonderful performers making their debut on national TV. Little Stevie Wonder, the Jackson Five, Elvis, the Beatles, the Supremes, and many more. Now the once great CBS has shamefully allowed Bari Weiss to desecrate the Ed Sullivan theatre.
I saw that documentary, and remember The Ed Sullivan Show very well. I was never brought up to think whites were better than anyone else, so enjoying Black performers didn't register as different to me.
Loved the documentary, and that Mr. Sullivan had the character to stand up for equality. I have a profound respect for him that I never even thought about before.
Bari Weiss is a....never mind. I'll watch CBS again sometime never.
Yeah, I watched the Sullivan doc a few months ago. I agree. i had no idea that he had contributed so much that went well beyond the pure entertainment value. He took risks and eventually ran out of road. But he was a true humanitarian in a time when openness to all people, especially non white performers was not a given. He had a strong backbone and stood up for performers like Harry Belafonte when there was the issue of racism that did not welcome him.
The Ed Sullivan documentary was a flashback, if you will. Fifty years on and its place in our civil rights history is not lost, and we sure could use a few more Sullivans now. It's interesting that Jimmie Kimmel and Stephen Colbert have riled the same ugliness.
A big part of it, especially in the US, is people swallowing the propaganda spoon fed to them by the super rich oligarchy, mostly in the form of Faux Newspeak but other reichwing media outlets as well.
My husband and I were talking just the other day about how the MAGAs, and the
farther right-wing evil don't ever read; not even recreationally - not even the Bible. I doubt they read their cereal boxes at breakfast.
Racism trumps self-interest every time in the land of "All men are created equal. "
"Why are we choosing to live in hatred, bitterness, ignorance and misery when we could choose the opposite?"
For the super wealthy and powerful to succeed in their ambitions to have everything, except accountability, it is necessary for the rest of us to be bitterly divided. And their tools are Facebook, Google, controlled news media like Fox and now CBS, and destruction or ownership of any governmental institution that might think to stand in their way.
What you are describing is a human failing - we don't do well with success. The America Dr. Krugman describes is one that was on the cusp of the greatest revolution in human history - the personal computer and all of the benefits of trade that it wrought.
Dystopia is nothing more than people who have so much fearing it will inevitably run down the drain. Because that is usually what happens. In our case, it didn't run down, it was reassigned upward to Jeff Bezos bank account & Elon Musks attempt Oligopolize everything.
We're like the basketball team with 20 game win streak - we wonder more about when it will inevitably end than we do about winning the next game. Democracy is a team sport. We wonder "which of you, my team mates, is going to screw up and cause us to fail?" And it's because very, very, very, very few of us know how to fail, get up, and keep going. In fact, while art may celebrate the Rocky Balbao, our society in practice looks down on you if you fail. Even if you get back up.
Especially in Gen X, and in this society, where it is an anathema to get your butt kicked and get back to work. You want to know how we get to choosing the positive? We need to lose first.
Now, everyone reading this, it's zig zags, windsprints, and pushups for the rest of practice.
For your question,"Why are we (and I’m not an American but the same is true in many places) choosing to live in hatred, bitterness, ignorance and misery when we could choose the opposite?" - the answer is as simple as it seems; algorithms controlled by the super wealthy. Nothing more, nothing less - good old positive re-enforcement scheduling done by the best science $ can buy. If you were able to kick smoking cigarettes then you overcame the best science (of addiction) that money can buy. We the people are stronger than all of the money arrayed against us, if only we remember who we are.
I had the same struggle in understanding. Demagogues invent bogeymen and appeal to basic emotions of insecurity, resentment, rage, and hatred which they focus on convenient targets such as immigrants of color or Muslims in Western countries, India, and Myanmar. All human beings could potentially feel such emotions. Whether we do or not probably depends on how secure we are in ourselves and our lives, how open we are to other cultures and people who don't look or speak or pray like us, how much exposure we have had to them. The world today is interconnected in a lot of ways; people have always moved around and tried to find better, more secure lives. That's hard to accept by people who feel they are threatened in their stable societies and traditional ways of relating; especially if they are taught that their problems are because of others.
The achievement in recent decades of equal rights and opportunities for women or minorities of color was resented by men (or white people in the case of race) who felt their dominant positions in society, in their own self-image, were threatened. Science, in particular, modern cosmology and evolutionary biology and psychology are threats to ancient beliefs in creation by a divine source who is also personal and the fount of morality and ethics. It is hard to accept that this earth is but a speck in the universe and human lives are finite. There is a lot of childhood conditioning, loyalty to the group in which we were born and socialized in churches and temples, where ceremonies and rites gave meaning at turning points in life and shared joy or consolation.
Belief in science (especially the teaching of evolution) is not encouraged by Islamic or Hindu fundamentalists any more than by Christian or Jewish orthodox literal believers in scriptures. Myths and stories could be more comforting and also help set one set of believers apart from others, make them special, a badge of identity and belonging. Freedom of thought, expression, and tolerance of dissent are dangerous to authority and to group cohesion. That is why they have always been resisted and punished historically by authorities in organized religions. Spinoza was expelled by the Jewish community in Amsterdam; Galileo had to recant his support for Copernicus and the finding that the earth moves around the sun; death was prescribed for a Muslim believer who became an apostate.
There is a new book out on the subject. It is called "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by one Neil Postman. It is about the dumbing down of social and political discourse in America. I hear according to some survey about half of all Americans do not know what event the 4th of July commemorates.
It’s because a big segment of the voters, perhaps more than half, want to burn it all down. They chose a president who would do that. The core of it is economic stress and fear of imminent failure. This dooms marriages too. There is also a large FOX News propaganda element. The racism, truth denial and tribalism is just circling the wagons. They’re not good behaviors, but divisive behaviors are not the core of it either. They are symptoms. Americans after 50 years of wage stagnation are not thriving, and with AI, things may go substantially worse. They see their doom and are looking to rip apart the bars of the cage herding them toward it.
At the end of the day, the real problem is your boss, his boss, and all the other collaborators scheming to keep wages down in the name of shareholder primacy. It piles on the misery. At the core, the desperation feeds the flames of fear. Republicans are not the same as the rest of us. They are fear driven and it has hit them most strongly. Trump knows this. He uses it to manipulate them. He said as much. They’ve lost their minds to fear.
I only wish Republicans could see the forest for the trees. Trump doesn’t have it in him to lead to a better place. He’s like a bomb. He destroys stuff, entirely negative return on investment. The way forward is not to turn to the billionaires for leadership, but their antithesis, legitimate progressive worker affirming candidates who understand the wage issue and will do something about it — not “woke” politicians promising sex changes for everyone, rather socially agnostic, *economic* progressives more like FDR.
We all saw this coming during Biden's last year in office but instead of doing something about it, people naively believed the system would somehow resolve itself.
The flaws in our pretend democracy have been evident since Bush Jr was assigned the presidency back in 2000.
The Biden administration will go down in history as not doing nearly enough to prevent the corpocracy from finishing our democracy off. But it's pretty clear there's no coming back from a corpocracy that controls ever facet of our lives.
Because alarmism and fear mongering catch attention which is used to sell ads. In other words, because is profitable for some.
Hate, anger and fear are powerful emotions. They enabled us to compete for scarce natural resources, however we now live in a world where cooperation is a better strategy. We have the technology to destroy our enemies and ourselves. But we still enjoy those emotions. Thrillers! They drive engagement and advertising revenue.
Thank you for your articles and optimism.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident:
that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-
That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed,
that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
“…from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Hear, hear!!
I just read an article on the NPR website reporting that 46% of Americans polled don't know what America's 250th commemorates. For 18-29-year-olds, it's 61%. Relatedly, when Jay Leno hosted The Tonight Show, he had a segment called "Jay Walking," in which he would go out into a public place and ask random people simple civics questions. They mostly did not know the answers. I recall him asking a young man, who looked to be in his 20's, why we celebrate the Fourth of July. He could not answer. I was astonished and concerned then, but it appears the ignorance has gotten worse.
We need leaders who focus on making knowledge great again.
I am of a similar mind.
What’s the big deal about 250?
No different than 249 or 251 to come.
Maybe the difference is it will be remembered as an overhyped disappointment.
November elections the new Independence Day?
We should keep in mind that we didn't manage to actually kick the British out for five more years. It may take us that long or longer to restore some semblance of the old United States.
That was by design. Teach stupid.
Isn’t it actually called ‘independence day’?
Nearly everything in print calls it the "4th of July" (usually followed by the word "Sale").
We need to find ways to better educate the electorate. Many people are uninformed today, and easily seduced by billionaire propaganda and conmen.
If accurate, that percentage is stunning. I don't think you can find that level of ignorance in any other literate society.
...But only if you were a white, landed male. People forget that part. The words sound noble and majestic eleven years ago, and up until then society made progress incrementally. But today, the words are meaningful only if you're a white male. The rest of us are worried.
White “Christian” male.
I'll give the framers this: they didn't acknowledge religion, but today our government rolls in it like a dog finding a bad smell.
Except in this case, though the Constitution needs amending, the majority of the issue lies not with the documents but with the people implementing them. As Franklin is quoted, "You have a republic, if you can keep it". No piece of paper can prevent the corruption of the voters nor their leaders.
Hear, hear!!
Instead of the hoopla that we're seeing in Washington DC right now, I had thought it would the most patriotic for the President to read the Declaration of Independence, but then I read this:
"...governments are created to protect these rights, and if a government becomes tyrannical, the people have the right to alter or abolish it."
Yeah, that's not happening. Wouldn't be surprised if Trump puts out his own declaration! With his image and signature.
One should never lose hope. I will continue making phone calls, attending rallies and bridge standouts (it was hot yesterday), writing postcards, etc.
Worst case, I can look my kids in the eye and say: "I tried."
Yes. We all must do whatever we are able to do.
I will call Gerald Ford a great president.
He understood the modesty of his role. Greatness was not his goal.
Our nation's first and only unelected president, Ford did not have the striving narcissism that compels pretty much all presidential candidates to distort their lives to run for national office.
Ford was a successful working politician who Nixon tapped to be vice president to replace Spiro Agnew, presumably because Ford was so popular among his colleagues in the House of Representatives.
He stepped into the role the way Trump's pathetic supporting cast wore their Florsheims--with feet two small for their shoes. Anyone who walks into the Oval Office is too small for their role. It is too big a job for any single person.
The difference with Ford was he didn't try to be bigger than he was. History had relegated him to a role to bind the nation and he did a very good job.
If that isn't great, then I don't know what is.
I cannot rate Ford great. I even have trouble with good. His pardon of Nixon layed the foundation for every presidential impunity that followed…Reagan for Iran-Contra, W. Bush for the lies leading to the Iraq War, and now, when we have an immunized criminal with virtually zero accountability. Ford was a decent man, but the pardon blunted the positive effects of GOP Senators telling Nixon he was done.
I think it is debatable whether the Nixon pardon was a mistake. Without the pardon the spectacle of impeachment and conviction would have prolonged the focus on Watergate to the exclusion of all else. If one does not agree with the pardon it is certainly understandable why Ford took that action.
The deal Ford agreed to was self-serving: He traded a pardon for a presidency. The country wanted justice. (I was there.)
plase lucidate.
After reading about (in the Washington Post) in painstaking detail, how Nixon had orchestrated the break-in of the Democratic National headquarters and the subsequent coverup including the Saturday Night Massacre and watching the impeachment proceedings featuring the missing tape, everyone I knew wanted to find Nixon guilty and press charges. We believed no man was above the law. We would be a different country today if Ford had not pardoned Nixon.
This does not add anything new. While I’m inclined to agree that Nixon should have suffered legal consequences, there’s no knowing how that situation might have played out over the following months (years?), or what kind of lasting effect it would’ve had on our future.
PLEASE
A pardon implies Nixon was a criminal. Ford's application of a pardon was granted in the context of binding national wounds, of which Watergate was central, but certainly not the only one. It was in the tradition of the national move toward clemency after the Civil War.
The Republican Party and the Supreme Court bear the responsibility for immunizing presidential criminality. They are the ones who have stepped out of the interests of national unity in favor of partisan and elitist interests.
Did Ford's pardon soften the ground for that? It's a good, or rather great, question.
The move towards clemency after the Civil War led us to this moment in our national history. The Confederacy should have been excoriated, not welcomed back with open arms.
I was there. The country was tired from the tragedies of riots, assassinations and the deaths of so many for the lost war, further demeaned by the ignominious withdrawal. We were tired and needed to pick up the pieces and go on, and Nixon's shameful taped revelations and forced resignation were enough punishment for me at that time. There was such joy and celebration July 4, 1976. He truly was persona non grata. Everywhere.
Amen!
Agree whole heartedly. App won’t let me “like” with the ❤️
I mean I agree that Ford should NOT have set the precedent for Presidential immunity by pardoning Nixon.
I don’t think Ford was a bad guy, but pardoning Nixon was the great mistake; a decision likely colored by partisanship. We are paying now for the false notion that prosecuting Nixon was “for our own good” with a president who has no fear of the law. And it cost Ford his reelection. Americans wanted liberty and justice for all, and most of us still do, in spite of the rapidly disintegrating maga cult and the “all is lost” online hysteria that desperately wants us to give up.
Don’t give up! We owe it to all those who came before us, who fought and sacrificed for the United States and our highest ideals, and even more so to those who come after us.
"..the rapidly disintegrating maga cult.."
I sincerely hope so!!
Maybe they can take all the Christian Nationalists with them down the toilet of history?
They have tied themselves together, so , yes. I think they sink together; the lies and hatred is their lead weight. Being honest and caring will lift us, we rise together. We owe that to ourselves, too.
Neither Christian nationalists nor biker gangs are going away. There is something in the American society that funnels lost men to find glory in becoming rebels with a broken cause. At least, they aren’t going postal.
How about 95% of them?
In my remembered youth, when they came up in conversation as snake-handlers speaking in tongues or the Klan they were referred to as the lunatic fringe - I just want Christian Nationalists back in 'fringe' status, not destroying my nation..
Probably the best athlete of any president, and yet mainly highlighted in our great press for being clumsy. I guess basic human decency is boring. At least his successor was also a stellar character.
“I guess basic human decency is boring”
You hit the nail on the head. There’s a cohort of voters who just want to be entertained, and the media wants someone who will generate the most clicks/ audience to get advertising dollars.
I read a claim that Chevy Chase was primarily responsible for Ford's election loss because of the way Chase constantly portrayed him.
Recently read this interesting tidbit about Ford: he was actually one of our more intelligent Presidents, having graduated in the top 1/3 of his class at Harvard – even helped many schoolmates study for their exams.
True? I dunno.
Agree. The ultimate “pardon president” was quite modest and decent in retrospect.
Plus, he had a great wife.
Yes Yes Yes. “Real Men” aren’t afraid of strong women and thanks for that comment. On the broader subject, I visited the historic sites of Herbert Hoover, in Iowa, many years ago with my sweet first husband. He (Hoover) too had a strong and proud wife who made their achievements possible. So glad that I got to experience the USA in those years, before the collapse of climate and national purpose.
Ford and Carter, both humble decent people, do not get the credit they deserve. If our system survives the current effort at authoritarian takeover I expect history will treat both of them well.
He pardoned Nixon. I believe we wouldn’t be in this situation had Nixon been fully prosecuted and jailed.
The pendulum is swinging back our way. Have you noticed the new "enemy?"
Same as the old McCarthy enemy - communists.
Didn't work then - won't work now.
(How can you denounce Communism when your best buddy and role model is Putin?)
How can you denounce Communism when you're having the U.S. government take partial ownership of so many corporations?
Well, you see, that is part of the fascist playbook. It helps ensure the wealthy are good party loyalists. Reduced to absurdity, communism is about the people or the state as their proxy. Fascism is about the fascist party.
That’s Socialism, not Communism.
💯🎯
…ba da bump!!
If you are wealthy and living off the labor of others through corporate ownership, communism will always be the enemy. It most directly threatens to deprive you of your unearned privilege and exorbitant way of life. Their job is to convince you that what threatens the 0.1% threatens everyone.
I recall watching the tall ships sail into New York harbor on July 4, 1976. Today the country is building walls to keep people out. What a change.
Tall ships are in Baltimore right now. I think NY is next. So they are headed your way.
The Tall Ships are already in the New York area. They will parade up the Hudson today. Here's a video of them parading yesterday down the East River -https://www.youtube.com/live/sfTytdAFuoo.
Next week, they will sail into Boston.
Sail250 was organized by the US Navy, but since Trump isn't interested in such things and since there was no grift for himself and his buddies, Sail250 WAS NOT well publicized.
Thanks Cheryl. Oddly, my source saying they were still here (Baltimore) was WYPR radio. But after I posted I turned on the news and they were talking about them being in NY. So: Whoops! (Sounds like we are more or less neighbors!)
Not so sure it’s much of a “big change”. Ask Chinese folks banned from entering the U.S. decades ago. Ask Jewish people banned from entering the U.S during WWII. Ask Mexican and other ‘brown’ people hiding now from Trump’s ICE goons.
The ships were in the roads off of Sandy Hook (NJ) yesterday.
I remember the bicentennial well. The country was in really bad shape, but I remember the general attitude being "yeah, we're having tough times now, but we've had bad times before and come out well because we're better than that." That was the undercurrent of society, and that was the tone and outlook of our leadership.
Contrast that with today's leadership that spends all of its time and energy trying to convince the world that it's the greatest there has ever been while working very openly and directly to make life worse for every American--and sending its representatives on to TV to tell Americans "you've had it too good for too long, and now it's time for you to suffer," as Kevin Hassett said last summer.
The day will come when the oligarchs are on the receiving end of “you’ve had it too good for too long, and now it’s time for you to suffer.”
That time is now. And the new young people that have been and are winning primaries or have already been elected are showing the way. It’s up to us! We the people are taking back our power. NOW is the time to continue to pushback more than ever. We will prevail.
…..ba da bump!!
🥁
I was working in London during the summer and fall of 1976. My family and I attended many museums that had displays commemorating Britain's loss of the American colonies. They even noted the mistakes and miscalculations made by the British generals that lost them the war. When I look back on that now, I am amazed at their honesty and candor...
I hate Trump and Republicans.
We wait anxiously for the USA to regain its senses.
I remember in 1976, as a 14 year old , reading about the bicentennial in "National Geographic "- my Dad had got us a subscription that year. It seemed such an optimistic time, and I was keen to visit (I didn't get there until 1989).
When Trump has gone, I hope to visit again
I hope you will.
Vote y'all... Vote!
Vote blue no matter who.
I will not be doing that. While I detest Trump and would prefer anyone else, the DNC keeps putting up milquetoast candidates that do not prosecute and do not roll back Trumpian policies. This sets up a ratchet of two steps back republicans; no steps forward Centrist do-nothing. We can’t afford that anymore. Since centrist Democrats are not good enough to win every time, it is a losing strategy. Vote blue no matter who is a Hobson’s choice. It is worse than that. It is justice delayed; justice denied.
I will only contribute to and vote for progressive candidates. If they are also democrats, that is fine. If this means we have to have 5 Trumps in a row for MAGA to finally learn to stop wanting insane things, then maybe they need to learn that the hard way. Sitting on our hands does not solve the problem, and it won’t be solved until a progressive steps into power. It is the only way forward, and I will keep voting for that until it happens.
Ian, I don’t know how to tell you how disappointing that is to me. I admit that not every Democratic candidate is my preference either, but at this point in our nation’s history, every Democrat is better than any Republican. We need everyone rowing together here. We have got to win the House, which looks pretty likely but we need the greatest margin we possibly can, and we need to do everything to elect every Democratic senator that we possibly can. We need to control the Senate, or we’ll have a Supreme Court like this…forever, I guess.
I don’t buy what’s really just a false equivalent argument that there’s no difference between the parties. There’s a HUGE difference, and this time it isn’t just fair taxation, or decent health care, or taking care of the least advantaged; this time it’s democracy itself that’s at stake. I don’t suspect you’ll change your mind, but I hope there aren’t too many who go along with you.
I was sitting on my porch steps on July fourth, 1776. Greater Grand Crossing in Chicago was terrible. That day was quiet. Ten young men from my Cull De Sack had returned from Vietnam. Several had wounds from shrapnel. Reminders of my “third world” status as a sixteen year old black were everywhere. Now, at sixty six, most of my life has come and gone. I am very aware of that Roman phrase “Memento Mori” and I know these times shall soon pass us bye.
GRIM, GLUM, and ENRAGING (thinking about Donnie’s “speech”)🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
A thoughtful reflection. Hopefully America’s next chapter brings more accountability, unity, and renewed optimism.
Mark Shields used to joke about the only Communists to be found were located in an Albanian theme park. Now, according to Trump, Communism is the greatest threat to the country. Alright everyone, before you go to sleep tonight, check under your bed for those “commies.” They’re lurking everywhere!
You know what’s kind of cool? Hitler used the same communist fear ploy during his Fascist takeover of Germany in the 30s. But, and here is the important difference from Trump, there actually was an active communist party in Germany during the 30s. Here, in the US in 2026, communists? Perhaps a few Marxists in academia. Trump just invents this stuff and the MAGA faithful believe him. And that is one reason why Trump is very dangerous.
One of them sleeps with his head on your very pillow, next to your wife. You just don’t know it yet! Won’t you be surprised when you find out that man has been you all along, and you start thinking that maybe you *should* get a vote at work about what goes on and whether there should be layoffs, or maybe if the elderly were so militant about *their* Medicare, maybe it is good enough for you too.
You mean I’m a COMMIE? Noooooo!!!
I'm spending this fourth in London. My shirt depicts our flag turned upside down. A sign of distress. The only way the American flag should be displayed at this time in our history.
Ha! I have a tee with a map of the US saying “home of the brave, land of the free*” (*void where prohibited. restrictions may apply).
Our American-made American flag is hanging upside down, outside, for all to see. I regret taking down my Harris Walz signs as well.
Mine’s hung that way outside.
I was in London for the 200th. There were lots of celebrations going on there; probably far more than will occur there today.
And I thought you were going to add to your lede……”Sargent Pepper taught the band to play”!
You’re always my first read of the day. Happy 4th to the resistance.
Haha and thanks so much for that comment. Guaranteed to raise a smile!!