thucythucy
thucythucy's JournalOne reason why the election is so close, assuming that it is.
I was at a family gathering this past weekend. One of my nieces--an otherwise intelligent and thoughtful person--expressed some outrage at the so-called $750.00 limit for FEMA assistance to people devastated by the hurricanes.
She's not a Trump supporter, neither is anyone else in the family, who were quick to correct this bit of Trump humper disinformation.
My point is that the campaign of lies has reached so far that even reasonable people are being exposed in ways they find credible. In short, our world is being swamped with bullshit.
I'm at the moment re-reading William Shirer's Berlin Diary. In it he remarks again and again at the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda. Those Germans who didn't believe it outright were at the very least confused and disheartened by the constant stream of hate and anger and lies.
I think it's imperative we find a way to confront the people--foreign and domestic--ultimately responsible for this state of the media landscape. Specifically, that "loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires"--to quote a Paul Simon song--who have been allowed to control so much media.
My own quick solution: a stark increase of the taxes on the accumulated wealth that enables such control, followed by anti-trust action to pull apart the largest media conglomerates.
All of this is of course dependent on the election of Vice President Harris.
Which means: GOTV!!
Sorry for ranting, but I've been obsessing about this since I heard her comment and felt the need to vent.
Out of respect for you I'll include a trigger warning up top, but hope you will read my post.
I understand how distasteful and even how triggering the topic might be.
In a better world or in better times I might agree that bringing this up has served its purpose, and then some.
However, there are two factors to consider.
First, the GOP candidates for president and vice president continue to bring this up, and evidently there are millions of their followers who are willing to believe it. To point out the absurdity, with or without humor, is relevant to a national campaign in which we are fighting for the very existence of our democratic institutions. This story is intensely racist, demonizing an entire community, and some folks deep in the MAGA cult may well end up targeting entirely innocent people because of this vicious lie. For this reason alone it's crucial that the point be debunked at every turn.
Second, as has been said many times, with Republicans every accusation is a confession.
Trump has announced he is willing to place on his cabinet an individual who at the very least has a disturbing relationship with animals. There's the dead bear in the trunk dumped in Central Park. There's the beached whale that he decapitated with a chain saw in front of his six year old daughter. There's a video of him actually eating a dog--which may have brought about the infamous brain worm infection.
So clearly this sort of behavior is not a problem for Trump and his minions.
Just as the accusations of pedophilia and sex trafficking they make against Democrats warrant a closer look at Trump's own behavior, I think both the accusation of animal cruelty and the acceptance of RFK Jr. make me wonder what might be under the GOP hood.
There is, after all, the photo of one of Trump's spawn holding with evident glee the severed tail of a dead elephant.
The media won't go there, but I think we should.
As a rape survivor I know something about being triggered. I also know that sometimes being triggered is what needs to happen in order to confront the ugliness around us.
Edited to add: the fallout from this vicious lie has already begun: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143305531
The left became identified with college activism
during the Vietnam War.
A good deal of the antiwar activism was centered on college and university campuses, and Reagan in particular targeted university students and faculties as hotbeds of progressive organizing and the kind of critical thinking that is so antithetical to the right. Many working class Americans, particularly whites, had fought in or otherwise participated in World War II, and saw Vietnam in the same terms of good--us--versus evil--the Commies. When the left questioned that framework there was a visceral reaction among working class whites, especially men, who equated opposition to the war with a lack of patriotism. The right eagerly picked up on this and milked it for all it was worth.
Add to that the Democratic Party's embrace of civil rights--sometimes reluctant, often half-hearted--but LBJ and Hubert Humphrey and the Kennedys went far beyond what southern whites were willing to do in acknowledging the need to fight systemic racism. LBJ, signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, talked about how this one act alone would lose Democrats the support of southern whites--and not only southern whites--for several generations. Follow that with the evolving acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, which lots of people--working class and otherwise--can't abide, and here we are.
Add to all this the right's decades long campaign to co-opt the media--print, broadcast, and now social--which means the left is often shut out of any chance to reach people and make its actual point of view heard. It was clear to conservatives in the 1960s that the media--like college campuses--had to be made to toe the line, or else demonized so that they lost all credibility. The concentration of media in the hands of a few large corporations has meant the end of the ability of the left to reach tens of millions of people.
Finally, the left, and labor in particular, has been the victim of its own success. Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, safety regulations for the workplace, a forty hour work week, the exponential growth of the middle class under the post war GI Bill, all have blunted the perceived need for organized labor. It's only now, when all these are under increasing attack from the right, that many people are finally waking up to the reality of American politics.
My opinion, for what it's worth, on how we got to where we are today.
The nature and purpose of conspiracy theories are obviously on our minds
these days, for obvious reasons.
And so I've been thinking about the history and purposes of conspiracy theories in American politics. There's obviously much to explore, to learn, and to analyze.
One particular conspiracy theory I haven't seen discussed at much length is the whole MIA movement that began after the end of the Vietnam War. You can still see those black MIA flags flying from post offices and elsewhere, long after the theory should have been put to rest.
This occurs to me while reading Doug Anderson's "Keep Your Head Down: Vietnam, the Sixties, and a Journey of Self Discovery."
The bulk of the book concerns his tour of duty as a combat medic in Vietnam in 1967-68. It's an amazing and brutal story.
Years later he revisits Vietnam with other veterans. His description of PTSD, and his compassion for the Vietnamese are striking.
Then there's this:
"...the price paid [by the people of Vietnam to drive the US out] was staggering. Three million Vietnamese, military and civilian, died during the war. I don't know the statistics on Vietnamese wounded, but the number of wounded is often triple the number of dead. Four hundred thousand are still missing in the North alone. When I think now of the black POW flags I've seen flying from police and fire stations mourning the two thousand missing Americans, a number that is much smaller compared to other wars, especially in a jungle war where the retrieval of bodies was more difficult, I wonder what the POW issue is really about. I don't believe that Communist Vietnam held back some POWs for political reasons, or for perverse 'Oriental' reasons. I think simply that they are dead, and that keeping hope alive for their families is perverse."
I too have often wondered what that whole movement was about. My impression is that the POW issue was mainly a right wing Republican thing, and fed into the whole "liberal government is holding back the truth" BS we see so much of today. The POW myth became the basis for the Rambo movies with their revisionist history of the war, at the same time Reagan was declaring it "a noble effort." The line in Rambo where the hyper-masculine hero asks some sinister government character, "This time are you going to let us win?" or words to that effect, is a perfect example of the papering over of the realities of that war. Then too, as I recall there were quite a few scams connected to the issue, with sleazy characters milking families desperate to believe their loved ones were still alive.
Anyway, I highly recommend anything by Doug Anderson. He's an especially amazing poet. I started with his book "The Moon Reflected Fire" and went on from there.
Best wishes.
I wish a Democratic pundit would focus on this issue
Yesterday I saw a long discussion on Meet the Press Daily about Democratic changes for retaking the House.
It was mentioned several times that Democrats need to poll at least seven percent more than Republicans on average in order to have even a shot on picking up enough seats to regain the House. In other words, Democrats have to poll something like 53% of the vote, at the very least, in order to garner 50% of House seats.
This is a disconnect built into the system that is inherently unfair and small "d" undemocratic. I wish someone would at least mention this at some time during these various discussions. It is, of course, the result of Republican gerrymandering and gaming the system, and Democrats IMHO ought to bring this up whenever possible.
Maybe if enough of us stress this point it might actually start to happen.
Thanks.
On opening college education for all who can benefit
I don't understand why Secretary Clinton's campaign is being so obtuse about Senator Sander's proposal to offer (as I understand it) free college tuition to all those who can pass the various entrance requirements.
First of all--it's an entirely realistic goal. Several western European nations (I'm most familiar with Germany) enable their citizens, and even foreign visitors, tuition free college education, as long as students pass the exams and do the work required. This isn't some impossible, unattainable dream. It's something other nations have done, and like the idea of universal health insurance, it's something that our nation would do well to try to emulate.
Secondly--the argument that "I don't want the taxpayers to foot the bill for Donald Trump's kids" is beside the point. That's like saying you want to means test Social Security, since, after all, Donald Trump probably qualifies for benefits. The whole idea of an entitlement (and I hate that phraseology, but it's what we're stuck with for the present) is that EVERYONE has a chance to reap the benefits. This enormously simplifies the system. To qualify for Social Security pension benefits once one reaches the appropriate age, all one needs is a Social Security card and evidence that you've paid into the system for the required number of quarters. To add some sort of income eligibility limit vastly increases the paperwork--and thus the frustration--of people trying to apply. Frustration with any government program almost inevitably leads to lower public support for said program. Not to mention--the more people qualify, the wider the base of political support.
Thirdly--a university system open to the middle and working classes has historically been an incubator for liberal and progressive change. Let's take a quick look at the history. The GI Bill of Rights, passed in 1944 under FDR, vastly increased not only those able to go to college (basically anyone who had been in the service, more than twelve million people) but it also vastly increased funds available to public colleges and universities. It's basically what created the public college system as we've known it since the 1950s. It was out of that system that tens if not hundreds of thousands of middle and working class students became politically educated--resulting in groups like SNCC, the SDS, and myriad others at the forefront of the civil rights, antiwar movements. Labor history, feminism, and LGBT rights groups also benefited.
All this was not lost on the right. Ronald Reagan ran for governor of California largely on a platform of hostility to the University of California. Among his first actions as governor was to begin to do all her could to dismantle that system. His election to president coincided with the pullback from the commitment to an affordable college education to all who could benefit. More than that--by allowing tuition costs and fees to skyrocket--thereby either putting college out of reach, or requiring students to assume crushing debt--meant both a less educated electorate (which has generally hurt Democrats and progressives) and young people less able to engage in social activism. This means political activism has become, more and more, the province of the well to do, or at any rate more difficult for people to try. It's tough to do volunteer work for the environment, reproductive rights, anti-domestic violence work, or whatever your focus might be--if you have to slave away to pay off some humungous debt, as soon as you leave college.
For all these reasons, Senator Sanders' proposal makes sense, not only to younger people in or entering college, but to liberals, progressives, and the Democratic Party as an institution. Like labor unions, college students used to be among our most stalwart activists and supporters. That both of these have been under unremitting attack from the right is no coincidence, nor is it any accident.
There's nothing wrong with having a goal beyond our reach at the moment. Like a moon landing, a polio vaccine, or health insurance for all, there are certain aspirational goals that have a huge range of side benefits, even before the prize is eventually attained.
I try not to be cynical, and I don't buy the notion that everything the Clintons do is to benefit the one percent. But the tone-deafness of how the Clinton campaign has treated this issue really has me stumped. I'm hoping, therefore, that someone in the campaign might read this, and that it might make some sort of political, social, and ethical sense.
BTW, and for what it's worth, I voted for Bernie in my primary, but will absolutely support Hillary in the general if she turns out to be the nominee. All the more reason for me to want to see the campaign change its tone and direction on this issue.
Thank you all for your patience. I have to get going for a while, but will be back to engage with folks who might have various response to this OP.
Best wishes to all.
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