“To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.” - James Baldwin
Up to 60% of anxious people are cured by placebo. But a placebo can be anything. Thus about 60% of Americans believe bull.
North Vietnam will attack America as soon as they beat the South.
58,000 dead Americans.
Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. About a million Iraqis dead.
10 or 20 million undocumented Americans will totally ruin their life by trying to vote for a Democrat.
About half of Americans read and write at the level of a 10 year old?
The evolutionary origins of the pumping of the sex act is to pump my ejaculate into the uterus (not true: the pumping is to remove the last males ejaculate, thus the neural pathways activated by human sexuality involve the joy of sabotage and thus the spirit of "owning the libs" will live on for eternity!)
Note: I find our flaws and misconceptions enormously funny! I truly pity anyone without a sense of humor! We should celebrate our god-given blind spots such as a total eclipse of the Sun by recognizing our god-given ego blindness is blindness to our own faults!
I think we were making some progress on racism, even electing our first black President. We have regressed since 2016 due to, I believe, a backlash to President Obama’s election, as one element. The election of Trump set a permission structure for overt racism, much worse in his second term.
I believe the hatred/racism we see now, will recede with time. I have hope that the next generations are and will be more accepting of others unlike them.
Given that since our founding there has been no shortage of discrimination against “the other,” such as the “Know Nothing” movement, and racism has existed from the time blacks from Africa were enslaved here, there will be a sector of the population that will be racist and endorse racism
Can we? The possibility is always there. The question is, do enough Americans have the determination to persist in driving these vile notions out of acceptance?
I think we do. The folks out in the streets protesting are fighting for that day. The folks boycotting Target, Chick-Fil-A, Amazon, and the like are fighting the elimination of DEI programs through the power of the purse. But it takes all of us. As CSNY once sang,
"Teach your children well. Their father's hell did slowly go by. And feed them on your dreams..."
Oscar and Hammerstein got into all kinds of controversy over this entire play, but especially for "Carefully Taught." As they say, the truth is hard to swallow...
Steven: please emphasize that the disgusting trope was filed on his personal website on Truth Social at about midnight. He was forced by public opinion to remove it but not until about 12 hours later without any apology! Hours after he posted it his personal press secretary defended it after obviously consulting him personally but she did not claim it was a mistake by a fictional staff person! Nor did they remove it then? So lie after lie again stains this disgusting individual who happens to be President! But not for long after we rise up and vote in massive numbers.
Can we overcome this racism scourge? Yes. Will we eliminate it anytime soon? No.
We were naive to think it was all but gone in America. But, now that we know for sure it is still here, we can (and must) subdue it and eliminate from the body politic those who continue to display it.
Scott's comment was a dead giveaway -- he framed it by acknowledging that Trump did OTHER racist things, but this was the most egregious, to him, so far.
George Floyd was murdered in the summer of 2020. Like so many others across the U.S. and around the world, my gut response was disbelief, outrage, and anger overwhelmed me as the news repeatedly showed his death. Eventually, I couldn't watch anymore. I grieved for his family and lost sleep and appetite, mourning deeply for our country. ANOTHER Black man had been killed at the hands of our police. There is a malevolent tragedy playing out in our country, and now – finally – spectators are recording these murders - a means that may lead to justice.
I grew up in a Republican family where both parents worked undercover for the CIA, and they freely expressed their dislike of “Blacks” without providing any justification for these feelings. Those were the days of Martin Luther King Jr., John Robert Lewis, and Black Panthers. A period in U.S. history where Marches were televised on old-boxed Sylvania televisions. My father's face turned beet-red as he watched the demonstrations in Selma and elsewhere. He saw demonstrations as signs of unrest and disrespect for the democracy he defended in World War II, where he was a prisoner of war in Germany. I never understood his anger, and he and I would heatedly discuss racial inequality at the dinner table. I was a product of 60’s and 70’s, and at the same time a reflection of my father who I loved dearly.
Despite our younger generation displaying far less race consciousness, our government has continued the venomous chant of bigotry. What does this say about our democracy, about WE THE PEOPLE, and about us as a society? The first word that comes to mind is “uncivilized.” Racial disparity has been endlessly deliberated in Congress, in national media, and especially in Black homes where parents feel the desperate need to protect their innocent children from this atrocity. The truth is
The constant bigotry seen by our current sitting President reflects hundreds of years of American discrimination. And as our country sways from one party to another over the years, one generation elects our first Black President who is ranked among the top seven Presidents of all times to a man who is last on this list – a bigot who is convicted of being a sexual predator, a fraud, and a man convicted of 34 felony counts. His one and only best friend for fifteen years was Jeffrey Epstein – a convicted sexual offender and predator of young girls. This man said of Mr. Trump – “I have known bad people in my life, but Donald Trump does not have a single decent cell in his entire body.”
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was a significant, continuing part of U.S. history. Martin Luther King Jr. was the voice of this battle for justice. John Robert Lews, who died of pancreatic cancer in July 2020, was a magnificent pillar of peaceful demonstrations to fight racial injustice despite suffering a broken skull, bloody beatings, and incarceration. Lewis went on to affectionately become the ‘conscience’ of our Congress.
What is impossible to determine is if our current chapter in history is near the beginning or end of racism or whether American society will ever be able to eradicate this evil, irrational behavior? Is racism just a fear of the unknown and ignorance; is it inexcusable hatred; or is it brainwashing handed down from generation to generation of Americans. Is it a universal global human defect or a failed rationalization of slavery? The fact is no race is better or superior to another. Great strides were made in the U.S. from the Kennedy leadership up through Barak Obama.
This lie of American equality has set a country-wide standard of dishonesty and deceitfulness for generations of Americans. From Thomas Jefferson, who rpaed his slaves and who is the author of the famous saying, “all men are created equal,” – to Donald Trump – a bigoted, degenerate, illiterate who (1) closed all DEI programs, (2) started a genocide in Africa by shutting down USAID – an estimated 15 million Black lives will be lost, to his discrimination against immigrants – mostly Brown-skinned people – and the murderous actions of ICE - who has even arrested native Americans in Tucson, AZ.
The deaths of Renee Good, and Alex Pretti are examples of Trump’s ICE-instigated violence. It resulted in protest demonstrations in every major city across the U.S. The message was loud and clear that American citizens do not agree with Trump’s corrupt presidency and his form of distorted democracy whereby people are murdered by ICE or our own police. His election is an example of decline of our society - in one year under Trump we have digressed to the 1950s. Rebuilding after his departure may take decades.
I think alot of the racism is handed down generation to generation. Children are taught by their parents or their parents' actions. It's not as simple as that because each individual has outside influences (good or bad) or maybe just born with a special soul knowing innately good from bad/right from wrong and having empathy. I do think each generation seems a little better than the one before in my lifetime, but as we see, mistreatment and murder by racists in law enforcement happens all too often. I agree that with trump, we have digressed and he seems to have pardoned and hired all of the worst to be in ICE. Joyce Vance new book is titled Giving Up is Unforgivable. I think we have to forever fight for what is right.
For man's been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud
And we know for certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off
And we will all be blown away
They're rioting in Africa
There's strife in Iran
What nature doesn't do to us
Will be done by our fellow man
I post this to show that racism (which is a myth, actually) is and always has been a 'human' problem since the Dawn of Man. Not just limited to the US, people of one nation have conjured up fictitious reasons to dehumanize people from others since we all left the Cradle of Civilization in Africa thousands of years ago. It's a collective problem that will require a watershed moment across the species to resolve, in my opinion. That hasn't happened yet for these past thousands of years in spite of the fact that we've gone 'round and 'round on this wheel endlessly.
I would be pleasantly surprised if humans were able to overcome that childish and false belief, but I'm not holding my breath, as it were.
"Childish & false belief" .. you totally missed the actual biology & evolutionary significance of the 'fear of the other'.
Fear of the other is hard wired into humans just as fear of lions is hard wired into numerous prey species, bc other humans have always been the most important predator on the planet: other humans, beyond the few we knew from our tribe, were an unknown quantity, & bc we knew our own capacity for deceit & violence we knew theirs as well.
Hence, like all good conspiracy theories, there's a kernel of truth in this fear, which politicians exploit.
And projection, which is useful as a method to think through your opponents potential plans, is limited & exploitable, bc it allows a politician to blame the other for what they themself are doing or intending to do.
Ignorance of biology & evolution causes ppl to believe that all human behaviour is reducible to modern environmental factors.
Actually, I didn't. Nowhere did I specify that environmental factors were the SOLE reason for this atrocious human behavior. I do, in fact, agree that there are archaic human hardwirings that came in handy 100,000 years ago, but really don't so much good today. What this fear does is start wars, cause vulnerable people to be brutalized and so on.
I would also note that failure to recognize environmental influence is a common flaw among the hard science purists.
Both environmental factors as well as genetics play a role. Here's the key, though: Humans have the ability to override both, if they so choose.
In closing you refute your own claims, disguising the clear inference: "humans have the ability to override both, genetic & environmental factors".
That is a simple claim that biology & evolution are nought in the face of a well meaning polity.
That is a factually false claim, an ideological position, which misleads ppl to misallocate resources.
I know that certain facts of biology & evolution are unpleasantly persistently negative, & that to address their consequences is difficult.
Also that we should not concede to deterministic fatalism, BUT: pretending you can politically erase these factors from policy development is naive & ultimately counter productive.
Like sex & drug education & policy, the best approach is to acknowledge human reality as it is found right now & invest in harm mitigation & education.
Ideology only dilutes those efforts, & it creates a fatal backlash, bc real ppl respond to recognition of their lived reality, not to underlying theory that negates it.
Not an easy path to tread, I know, but declaring biological & evolutionary forces dead (bc we now know better!) is simply absurd.
The hubris of the statement "we modern urbanised technocratic humans know better than millions of years of biological & evolutionary selection" is breathtaking.
Watch the great apes, from which we diverged 6 - 8 Mya: see how much like us they are; now go tell them how easy it is to alter their behaviour.
The human brain is an impressive thing, but it's key weakness is it's propensity to get high on it's own supply!
Christopher, you're arguing against a position I never took. I didn't declare biological and evolutionary forces "dead" — I said humans have the ability to override them. Those are fundamentally different claims.
The ability to override something is not the same as erasing it. Every recovering addict on the planet is proof that humans can override powerful biological drives — not easily, not perfectly, and not without tremendous effort. Nobody would call that "declaring biology dead." It's acknowledging that biology is not destiny.
You mention the great apes. Interesting example. You know what separates us from them? Precisely the capacity for reflective override that I'm describing. We build institutions, legal systems, ethical frameworks, and educational structures specifically because we recognized that our base impulses needed to be managed. That's not hubris — that's literally the foundation of civilization.
Your point about harm mitigation and education? I agree with it entirely. But harm mitigation IS the override in action. You can't simultaneously argue that we should "invest in harm mitigation and education" while also telling me it's absurd to suggest humans can override their biology. That's the same thing.
I think where we actually differ is on degree, not kind. You seem to hear "humans can choose differently" and interpret it as naive utopianism. I hear your emphasis on biological constraints and see a framework that risks becoming a sophisticated excuse for inaction. The productive middle ground — which I believe we're both closer to than this exchange suggests — is acknowledging the biological reality while refusing to treat it as an immovable ceiling.
Yep, you've got it: I'm essentially arguing with the perhaps extreme left view that biology is irrelevant & that all ills can be attributed to the patriarchy & corrected by well meaning women who judge all masculinity to be predatory.
Now that's perhaps unfair to you, but it is rhetorically reasonable in that this idea has underpinned much policy development that has produced actual bad outcomes - ie systemically bad.
One result is the twisted logic that those critical institutions aren't required bc its all just common sense.
Attempting to correct or constrain bad male behaviours has led to a broad discounting of what men do & of their importance, so much so that it is culturally acceptable these days to casually demean men for fun.
That, exactly, is what produces the allure of the new fake men like Andrew Tate: young men demeaned, discouraged & disheartened to the extent they buy in to his crap.
I'm 69, hence readily dismissed as a boomer griping about lost power, but that is just another absurd ad hominem: I've watched it happen over the last 45 years - it's an over reaction to the patriarchy; it's produced serious harm & it produced this idea that biology & evolution got it wrong.
There is no doubt that H. sapiens is a poor fit for the modern world, most significantly in that we are not evolved for global scale co-operation, but, just as you can't force an alcoholic to change course until they are ready to do so, you can't simply write biology out of culture & not expect a major kick back, which could be called Trump.
My opposition is to the feminisation of everything: it diminishes us all.
To minimise harm one must recognise the true risks of that harm, which must at times require incarceration.
To address the root causes one must look far deeper, including into the human soul, which in truly harmful ppl is usually injured.
To ignore biology & evolution is to tie ones hands behind ones back in that deeper pursuit of longer term solutions.
And to label, criminalise & incarcerate as the go to fix just adds insult to injury.
Regrettably, pessimism emerges in response to the orange one. Now is the time for all good Members of House and Senate to step up the conscience, in service of the Constitution, and begin shutting doors on this heinous fellow. Don't fund cruelty. Don't bend to his renaming of historical structures and truths. Put an immediate end to the "SAVE Act" and his chain of actions designed to lead agents at voting places. Hold his Cabinet in contempt when they don't show or lie. Pass a meaningful War Powers Act. Publish Both of Jack Smith's volumes on his crimes.
I have 4 younger siblings. They all voted and still actively support Donald Trump. They have routinely spouted racist tropes against the Obamas.
Trump has accomplished one thing in his presidency. He has revealed who his followers are and what they stand for. Sickeningly so.
I don’t know how any of them can look in the mirror. You’d think the hatred staring back at them would give them pause.
Trump has derailed America’s journey toward a more equal union. It may take generations to undo the damage. Just look at the young white men Kirk was helping to brainwash.
I just read through most of these comments and found myself nodding a lot. What I didn't see was much if anything about the lamentable fact that too many Americans grow up in what amount to red-lined communities in which the various (defined) 'races' are separated and do not come to know each other as friends, teammates, coworkers. I was fortunate that, even though my parents were southerners steeped in both conscious and unconscious racist assumptions, I grew up in the Bay Area of California where I had kids of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, African-American and Latino heritage in my classes at school. I had friends in all of those groups, friends I saw as more like me than unlike me, as Maya Angelou advised us to understand. As an adult I worked in a city with much the same mix, and my colleagues and friends were diverse. No one who grew up in this country could ever be 'colorblind' and who would want to be? But we can come to appreciate our differences as well as our similarities. It's not hard. But first we must become so well acquainted that we are unable to 'other' diverse groups in order to exploit or exclude them in order to enrich ourselves. And therein lies the stubbornest problem.
There is an organization called Sojourners, which was founded to fight for social justice. It can be found at sojo.net Please check it out and support it if you can.
And Trump did exceedingly well in the election with Black men, voting in the racist due to Trump's misogyny and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Every group who Trump abhors - which includes blue collar Republicans - finds a different hatred to vote for Trump.
It has been described as the county’s great sin. However, that doesn’t quite do justice to the damage it causes. One country, under God, with liberty and justice for all? No, I don’t think so. Racism, is not something a white person is born with, but rather a brain worm which is nourished by family and friends. A person’s lacking self-respect, needing to demine others, who look different, so that they can feel good about themselves. It has been used by the oligarchs, to make more profit and political leaders to gain more power. And it appears that the Christian religion is mostly helpless in its eradication effort. I doubt that we will ever see the dream that Martin had.
Slavery was the one thing that allowed poor uneducated white ppl to feel superior: it was a deliberate strategy, the southern strategy, & Trump has simply recycled these age old feelings to give permission to those same ppl.
His great success is in giving permission to such a broad swathe of inadequates, enough to win elections: that almost never happened, keeping the angry ones at the margins.
Trump weaponised that anger, which is why he now has to persist with the obvious deceit that this anger defines truth: hence the constant denial of the actual truth.
It is trump’s first instinct to demean, to demonize, to assert his own superiority. Hate runs through him like poison and he has found millions of followers who share that hatred of the other. That hatred is born of fear and people who are dissatisfied with their life will always be afraid, and thanks to America’s shameful history of slavery and the subsequent discrimination fostered by the Southern states, have picked black and brown people as scapegoats. There will always be fear, so the question is, will these bigots find another scapegoat? I’m not so sure.
We should acknowledge that slavery, racism and discrimination were not merely Southern issues. They were and are national issues. There were slave owners throughout the colonies. Some colonies abolished slavery before 1800. Others like NY moved gradually. Ironically, when the New Mexico Territory was under MX slavery was abolished. As a territory of the US it was revived.
The Klan marketed itself as an organization for important men of the community & businessmen. During its “2nd Rise” it dominated politics & politicians in several states. Indiana was controlled by the Klan. Its leader, D C Stephenson bragged he was “the law”. A tragic scandal unraveled the Klan’s hold. He went to prison & his dreams of being a US Senator or dictator ended. The governor refused to pardon him. Stephenson released documents about the him and others he’d bribed, unraveling the political power structure. This map shows that during this period the klan movement divided the country by East & West, not North and South. https://labs.library.vcu.edu/klan/learn
Discrimination and racism was institutionalized by non-slave states and the federal government as well. Segregation in the military; property deeds restricting ownership to ‘Caucasians’ only, lending practices, indentured servitude and so on.
It's broader even than that: these are human issues; politicians simply exploit these universal human weaknesses.
Trump is revealing that ignoring the unwritten rules works, bc those rules are based on concern for the whole ppl, in the present & in the future.
He is a corporate raider, an asset stripper, worse than a mob boss - bc they were concerned about long term survival: his MO is pure power - take as much as you can for as long as you're allowed to do so.
Putin is his inspiration: he has shown how to use democracy against itself, to exploit its deliberative processes, to discombobulate it by doing what is not supposed to be done.
I agree. In the big picture it is a human weakness exploited much more easily when lives feel uncertain, chaotic, stressed. People become disillusioned and frustrated - they want a disruptor or a strongman and a place to put blame. We are seeing it more after Covid in places like Europe where the extreme right is growing. The AfD which Elon and the WH are supporting became the party with the most support. https://pluralia.com/en/news/germany-afd-again-becomes-leading-party-with-26/ It is a precarious situation. Some of its members are tied to the coups - 2022 and November 2024.
Good governing is based on concern for the whole. But he is ignoring the laws & norms for 2 big reasons. First, he has a lot of immunity from SCOTUS. Second, because he learned the first time around he could be stymied by people around him and the Civil Service. This time he arrived with a detailed plan and people to implemented. No one in his inner circle & few legislators, institutions or other nations will “just say no” to that power.
We must.
“To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.” - James Baldwin
Another fine quote, Al.
There is a treasure trove of them. We do not learn from history.
I think Steve, Mr. Historian, knows that.
Indeed he does.
🤢😢💔
Tribalism diminishes rationality.
Up to 60% of anxious people are cured by placebo. But a placebo can be anything. Thus about 60% of Americans believe bull.
North Vietnam will attack America as soon as they beat the South.
58,000 dead Americans.
Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. About a million Iraqis dead.
10 or 20 million undocumented Americans will totally ruin their life by trying to vote for a Democrat.
About half of Americans read and write at the level of a 10 year old?
The evolutionary origins of the pumping of the sex act is to pump my ejaculate into the uterus (not true: the pumping is to remove the last males ejaculate, thus the neural pathways activated by human sexuality involve the joy of sabotage and thus the spirit of "owning the libs" will live on for eternity!)
Note: I find our flaws and misconceptions enormously funny! I truly pity anyone without a sense of humor! We should celebrate our god-given blind spots such as a total eclipse of the Sun by recognizing our god-given ego blindness is blindness to our own faults!
I think we were making some progress on racism, even electing our first black President. We have regressed since 2016 due to, I believe, a backlash to President Obama’s election, as one element. The election of Trump set a permission structure for overt racism, much worse in his second term.
I believe the hatred/racism we see now, will recede with time. I have hope that the next generations are and will be more accepting of others unlike them.
Given that since our founding there has been no shortage of discrimination against “the other,” such as the “Know Nothing” movement, and racism has existed from the time blacks from Africa were enslaved here, there will be a sector of the population that will be racist and endorse racism
Maybe in some areas it was dormant, but I remain skeptical that progress has really been made.
Can we? The possibility is always there. The question is, do enough Americans have the determination to persist in driving these vile notions out of acceptance?
I think we do. The folks out in the streets protesting are fighting for that day. The folks boycotting Target, Chick-Fil-A, Amazon, and the like are fighting the elimination of DEI programs through the power of the purse. But it takes all of us. As CSNY once sang,
"Teach your children well. Their father's hell did slowly go by. And feed them on your dreams..."
I was cheated before
And I’m cheated again
By a mean little world
Of mean little men.
And the one chance for me
Is the life I know best.
To be on an island
And to hell with the rest.
I will cling to this island
Like a tree or a stone,
I will cling to this island
And be free—and alone.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate—
You’ve got to be carefully taught!
R & H, South Pacific
You've got to be taught to hate and fear
You've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
Oscar and Hammerstein got into all kinds of controversy over this entire play, but especially for "Carefully Taught." As they say, the truth is hard to swallow...
Scott Galloway offers a solution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ohgrpmOa-g
This has punch.
Watching...!
“One homeland, one people, one heritage. Remember who you are…”
I think this may have sounded better in the original German.
Exactly.
Steven: please emphasize that the disgusting trope was filed on his personal website on Truth Social at about midnight. He was forced by public opinion to remove it but not until about 12 hours later without any apology! Hours after he posted it his personal press secretary defended it after obviously consulting him personally but she did not claim it was a mistake by a fictional staff person! Nor did they remove it then? So lie after lie again stains this disgusting individual who happens to be President! But not for long after we rise up and vote in massive numbers.
I'll believe in the fictional staff person when someone gets fired over this.
I’m channeling my inner Molly Ivins this morning.
I have 6 of Molly's books, 3 of them autographed. She and Gov. Ann Richards are my heroes.
Or maybe Spanish, is the Sec Labor is a Proud Latina.
Can we overcome this racism scourge? Yes. Will we eliminate it anytime soon? No.
We were naive to think it was all but gone in America. But, now that we know for sure it is still here, we can (and must) subdue it and eliminate from the body politic those who continue to display it.
We shall overcome…
We MUST overcome...
Gotta ask: What is the SECOND most racist thing Tim Scott has heard from this White House?
Bet it’s a CLOSE second, ya think?
Good question.
Scott's comment was a dead giveaway -- he framed it by acknowledging that Trump did OTHER racist things, but this was the most egregious, to him, so far.
George Floyd was murdered in the summer of 2020. Like so many others across the U.S. and around the world, my gut response was disbelief, outrage, and anger overwhelmed me as the news repeatedly showed his death. Eventually, I couldn't watch anymore. I grieved for his family and lost sleep and appetite, mourning deeply for our country. ANOTHER Black man had been killed at the hands of our police. There is a malevolent tragedy playing out in our country, and now – finally – spectators are recording these murders - a means that may lead to justice.
I grew up in a Republican family where both parents worked undercover for the CIA, and they freely expressed their dislike of “Blacks” without providing any justification for these feelings. Those were the days of Martin Luther King Jr., John Robert Lewis, and Black Panthers. A period in U.S. history where Marches were televised on old-boxed Sylvania televisions. My father's face turned beet-red as he watched the demonstrations in Selma and elsewhere. He saw demonstrations as signs of unrest and disrespect for the democracy he defended in World War II, where he was a prisoner of war in Germany. I never understood his anger, and he and I would heatedly discuss racial inequality at the dinner table. I was a product of 60’s and 70’s, and at the same time a reflection of my father who I loved dearly.
Despite our younger generation displaying far less race consciousness, our government has continued the venomous chant of bigotry. What does this say about our democracy, about WE THE PEOPLE, and about us as a society? The first word that comes to mind is “uncivilized.” Racial disparity has been endlessly deliberated in Congress, in national media, and especially in Black homes where parents feel the desperate need to protect their innocent children from this atrocity. The truth is
The constant bigotry seen by our current sitting President reflects hundreds of years of American discrimination. And as our country sways from one party to another over the years, one generation elects our first Black President who is ranked among the top seven Presidents of all times to a man who is last on this list – a bigot who is convicted of being a sexual predator, a fraud, and a man convicted of 34 felony counts. His one and only best friend for fifteen years was Jeffrey Epstein – a convicted sexual offender and predator of young girls. This man said of Mr. Trump – “I have known bad people in my life, but Donald Trump does not have a single decent cell in his entire body.”
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was a significant, continuing part of U.S. history. Martin Luther King Jr. was the voice of this battle for justice. John Robert Lews, who died of pancreatic cancer in July 2020, was a magnificent pillar of peaceful demonstrations to fight racial injustice despite suffering a broken skull, bloody beatings, and incarceration. Lewis went on to affectionately become the ‘conscience’ of our Congress.
What is impossible to determine is if our current chapter in history is near the beginning or end of racism or whether American society will ever be able to eradicate this evil, irrational behavior? Is racism just a fear of the unknown and ignorance; is it inexcusable hatred; or is it brainwashing handed down from generation to generation of Americans. Is it a universal global human defect or a failed rationalization of slavery? The fact is no race is better or superior to another. Great strides were made in the U.S. from the Kennedy leadership up through Barak Obama.
This lie of American equality has set a country-wide standard of dishonesty and deceitfulness for generations of Americans. From Thomas Jefferson, who rpaed his slaves and who is the author of the famous saying, “all men are created equal,” – to Donald Trump – a bigoted, degenerate, illiterate who (1) closed all DEI programs, (2) started a genocide in Africa by shutting down USAID – an estimated 15 million Black lives will be lost, to his discrimination against immigrants – mostly Brown-skinned people – and the murderous actions of ICE - who has even arrested native Americans in Tucson, AZ.
The deaths of Renee Good, and Alex Pretti are examples of Trump’s ICE-instigated violence. It resulted in protest demonstrations in every major city across the U.S. The message was loud and clear that American citizens do not agree with Trump’s corrupt presidency and his form of distorted democracy whereby people are murdered by ICE or our own police. His election is an example of decline of our society - in one year under Trump we have digressed to the 1950s. Rebuilding after his departure may take decades.
What a fine comment. Thank you!
I think alot of the racism is handed down generation to generation. Children are taught by their parents or their parents' actions. It's not as simple as that because each individual has outside influences (good or bad) or maybe just born with a special soul knowing innately good from bad/right from wrong and having empathy. I do think each generation seems a little better than the one before in my lifetime, but as we see, mistreatment and murder by racists in law enforcement happens all too often. I agree that with trump, we have digressed and he seems to have pardoned and hired all of the worst to be in ICE. Joyce Vance new book is titled Giving Up is Unforgivable. I think we have to forever fight for what is right.
Thank you Pam. IUf you get a chance read From Democracy to Democrazy. Warm wishes, Elizabeth
Thank you. I will.
Regressed not digressed ..
The Merry Minuet
by The Kingston Trio ‧ 1959
They're rioting in Africa
They're starving in Spain
There's hurricanes in Florida
And Texas needs rain
The whole world is festering
With unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans
The Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs
South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don't like anybody very much
But we shall be thankful and tranquil and proud
For man's been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud
And we know for certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off
And we will all be blown away
They're rioting in Africa
There's strife in Iran
What nature doesn't do to us
Will be done by our fellow man
I post this to show that racism (which is a myth, actually) is and always has been a 'human' problem since the Dawn of Man. Not just limited to the US, people of one nation have conjured up fictitious reasons to dehumanize people from others since we all left the Cradle of Civilization in Africa thousands of years ago. It's a collective problem that will require a watershed moment across the species to resolve, in my opinion. That hasn't happened yet for these past thousands of years in spite of the fact that we've gone 'round and 'round on this wheel endlessly.
I would be pleasantly surprised if humans were able to overcome that childish and false belief, but I'm not holding my breath, as it were.
"Childish & false belief" .. you totally missed the actual biology & evolutionary significance of the 'fear of the other'.
Fear of the other is hard wired into humans just as fear of lions is hard wired into numerous prey species, bc other humans have always been the most important predator on the planet: other humans, beyond the few we knew from our tribe, were an unknown quantity, & bc we knew our own capacity for deceit & violence we knew theirs as well.
Hence, like all good conspiracy theories, there's a kernel of truth in this fear, which politicians exploit.
And projection, which is useful as a method to think through your opponents potential plans, is limited & exploitable, bc it allows a politician to blame the other for what they themself are doing or intending to do.
Ignorance of biology & evolution causes ppl to believe that all human behaviour is reducible to modern environmental factors.
Actually, I didn't. Nowhere did I specify that environmental factors were the SOLE reason for this atrocious human behavior. I do, in fact, agree that there are archaic human hardwirings that came in handy 100,000 years ago, but really don't so much good today. What this fear does is start wars, cause vulnerable people to be brutalized and so on.
I would also note that failure to recognize environmental influence is a common flaw among the hard science purists.
Both environmental factors as well as genetics play a role. Here's the key, though: Humans have the ability to override both, if they so choose.
In closing you refute your own claims, disguising the clear inference: "humans have the ability to override both, genetic & environmental factors".
That is a simple claim that biology & evolution are nought in the face of a well meaning polity.
That is a factually false claim, an ideological position, which misleads ppl to misallocate resources.
I know that certain facts of biology & evolution are unpleasantly persistently negative, & that to address their consequences is difficult.
Also that we should not concede to deterministic fatalism, BUT: pretending you can politically erase these factors from policy development is naive & ultimately counter productive.
Like sex & drug education & policy, the best approach is to acknowledge human reality as it is found right now & invest in harm mitigation & education.
Ideology only dilutes those efforts, & it creates a fatal backlash, bc real ppl respond to recognition of their lived reality, not to underlying theory that negates it.
Not an easy path to tread, I know, but declaring biological & evolutionary forces dead (bc we now know better!) is simply absurd.
The hubris of the statement "we modern urbanised technocratic humans know better than millions of years of biological & evolutionary selection" is breathtaking.
Watch the great apes, from which we diverged 6 - 8 Mya: see how much like us they are; now go tell them how easy it is to alter their behaviour.
The human brain is an impressive thing, but it's key weakness is it's propensity to get high on it's own supply!
Christopher, you're arguing against a position I never took. I didn't declare biological and evolutionary forces "dead" — I said humans have the ability to override them. Those are fundamentally different claims.
The ability to override something is not the same as erasing it. Every recovering addict on the planet is proof that humans can override powerful biological drives — not easily, not perfectly, and not without tremendous effort. Nobody would call that "declaring biology dead." It's acknowledging that biology is not destiny.
You mention the great apes. Interesting example. You know what separates us from them? Precisely the capacity for reflective override that I'm describing. We build institutions, legal systems, ethical frameworks, and educational structures specifically because we recognized that our base impulses needed to be managed. That's not hubris — that's literally the foundation of civilization.
Your point about harm mitigation and education? I agree with it entirely. But harm mitigation IS the override in action. You can't simultaneously argue that we should "invest in harm mitigation and education" while also telling me it's absurd to suggest humans can override their biology. That's the same thing.
I think where we actually differ is on degree, not kind. You seem to hear "humans can choose differently" and interpret it as naive utopianism. I hear your emphasis on biological constraints and see a framework that risks becoming a sophisticated excuse for inaction. The productive middle ground — which I believe we're both closer to than this exchange suggests — is acknowledging the biological reality while refusing to treat it as an immovable ceiling.
Yep, you've got it: I'm essentially arguing with the perhaps extreme left view that biology is irrelevant & that all ills can be attributed to the patriarchy & corrected by well meaning women who judge all masculinity to be predatory.
Now that's perhaps unfair to you, but it is rhetorically reasonable in that this idea has underpinned much policy development that has produced actual bad outcomes - ie systemically bad.
One result is the twisted logic that those critical institutions aren't required bc its all just common sense.
Attempting to correct or constrain bad male behaviours has led to a broad discounting of what men do & of their importance, so much so that it is culturally acceptable these days to casually demean men for fun.
That, exactly, is what produces the allure of the new fake men like Andrew Tate: young men demeaned, discouraged & disheartened to the extent they buy in to his crap.
I'm 69, hence readily dismissed as a boomer griping about lost power, but that is just another absurd ad hominem: I've watched it happen over the last 45 years - it's an over reaction to the patriarchy; it's produced serious harm & it produced this idea that biology & evolution got it wrong.
There is no doubt that H. sapiens is a poor fit for the modern world, most significantly in that we are not evolved for global scale co-operation, but, just as you can't force an alcoholic to change course until they are ready to do so, you can't simply write biology out of culture & not expect a major kick back, which could be called Trump.
My opposition is to the feminisation of everything: it diminishes us all.
To minimise harm one must recognise the true risks of that harm, which must at times require incarceration.
To address the root causes one must look far deeper, including into the human soul, which in truly harmful ppl is usually injured.
To ignore biology & evolution is to tie ones hands behind ones back in that deeper pursuit of longer term solutions.
And to label, criminalise & incarcerate as the go to fix just adds insult to injury.
Regrettably, pessimism emerges in response to the orange one. Now is the time for all good Members of House and Senate to step up the conscience, in service of the Constitution, and begin shutting doors on this heinous fellow. Don't fund cruelty. Don't bend to his renaming of historical structures and truths. Put an immediate end to the "SAVE Act" and his chain of actions designed to lead agents at voting places. Hold his Cabinet in contempt when they don't show or lie. Pass a meaningful War Powers Act. Publish Both of Jack Smith's volumes on his crimes.
Now.
I have 4 younger siblings. They all voted and still actively support Donald Trump. They have routinely spouted racist tropes against the Obamas.
Trump has accomplished one thing in his presidency. He has revealed who his followers are and what they stand for. Sickeningly so.
I don’t know how any of them can look in the mirror. You’d think the hatred staring back at them would give them pause.
Trump has derailed America’s journey toward a more equal union. It may take generations to undo the damage. Just look at the young white men Kirk was helping to brainwash.
Do your family members regret it now?
Nope, not even close. Still love him.
Not without a structural change in education , banking , housing .. healthcare and food distribution .
You are spot on.
I just read through most of these comments and found myself nodding a lot. What I didn't see was much if anything about the lamentable fact that too many Americans grow up in what amount to red-lined communities in which the various (defined) 'races' are separated and do not come to know each other as friends, teammates, coworkers. I was fortunate that, even though my parents were southerners steeped in both conscious and unconscious racist assumptions, I grew up in the Bay Area of California where I had kids of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, African-American and Latino heritage in my classes at school. I had friends in all of those groups, friends I saw as more like me than unlike me, as Maya Angelou advised us to understand. As an adult I worked in a city with much the same mix, and my colleagues and friends were diverse. No one who grew up in this country could ever be 'colorblind' and who would want to be? But we can come to appreciate our differences as well as our similarities. It's not hard. But first we must become so well acquainted that we are unable to 'other' diverse groups in order to exploit or exclude them in order to enrich ourselves. And therein lies the stubbornest problem.
There is an organization called Sojourners, which was founded to fight for social justice. It can be found at sojo.net Please check it out and support it if you can.
And Trump did exceedingly well in the election with Black men, voting in the racist due to Trump's misogyny and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Every group who Trump abhors - which includes blue collar Republicans - finds a different hatred to vote for Trump.
It has been described as the county’s great sin. However, that doesn’t quite do justice to the damage it causes. One country, under God, with liberty and justice for all? No, I don’t think so. Racism, is not something a white person is born with, but rather a brain worm which is nourished by family and friends. A person’s lacking self-respect, needing to demine others, who look different, so that they can feel good about themselves. It has been used by the oligarchs, to make more profit and political leaders to gain more power. And it appears that the Christian religion is mostly helpless in its eradication effort. I doubt that we will ever see the dream that Martin had.
Slavery was the one thing that allowed poor uneducated white ppl to feel superior: it was a deliberate strategy, the southern strategy, & Trump has simply recycled these age old feelings to give permission to those same ppl.
His great success is in giving permission to such a broad swathe of inadequates, enough to win elections: that almost never happened, keeping the angry ones at the margins.
Trump weaponised that anger, which is why he now has to persist with the obvious deceit that this anger defines truth: hence the constant denial of the actual truth.
Though I hope and hope without reservation, I fear not.
It is trump’s first instinct to demean, to demonize, to assert his own superiority. Hate runs through him like poison and he has found millions of followers who share that hatred of the other. That hatred is born of fear and people who are dissatisfied with their life will always be afraid, and thanks to America’s shameful history of slavery and the subsequent discrimination fostered by the Southern states, have picked black and brown people as scapegoats. There will always be fear, so the question is, will these bigots find another scapegoat? I’m not so sure.
We should acknowledge that slavery, racism and discrimination were not merely Southern issues. They were and are national issues. There were slave owners throughout the colonies. Some colonies abolished slavery before 1800. Others like NY moved gradually. Ironically, when the New Mexico Territory was under MX slavery was abolished. As a territory of the US it was revived.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abolition_of_slavery_in_the_United_States_SVG_map.svg#/media/File:Abolition_of_slavery_in_the_United_States_SVG_map.svg
The Klan marketed itself as an organization for important men of the community & businessmen. During its “2nd Rise” it dominated politics & politicians in several states. Indiana was controlled by the Klan. Its leader, D C Stephenson bragged he was “the law”. A tragic scandal unraveled the Klan’s hold. He went to prison & his dreams of being a US Senator or dictator ended. The governor refused to pardon him. Stephenson released documents about the him and others he’d bribed, unraveling the political power structure. This map shows that during this period the klan movement divided the country by East & West, not North and South. https://labs.library.vcu.edu/klan/learn
Discrimination and racism was institutionalized by non-slave states and the federal government as well. Segregation in the military; property deeds restricting ownership to ‘Caucasians’ only, lending practices, indentured servitude and so on.
It's broader even than that: these are human issues; politicians simply exploit these universal human weaknesses.
Trump is revealing that ignoring the unwritten rules works, bc those rules are based on concern for the whole ppl, in the present & in the future.
He is a corporate raider, an asset stripper, worse than a mob boss - bc they were concerned about long term survival: his MO is pure power - take as much as you can for as long as you're allowed to do so.
Putin is his inspiration: he has shown how to use democracy against itself, to exploit its deliberative processes, to discombobulate it by doing what is not supposed to be done.
I agree. In the big picture it is a human weakness exploited much more easily when lives feel uncertain, chaotic, stressed. People become disillusioned and frustrated - they want a disruptor or a strongman and a place to put blame. We are seeing it more after Covid in places like Europe where the extreme right is growing. The AfD which Elon and the WH are supporting became the party with the most support. https://pluralia.com/en/news/germany-afd-again-becomes-leading-party-with-26/ It is a precarious situation. Some of its members are tied to the coups - 2022 and November 2024.
Good governing is based on concern for the whole. But he is ignoring the laws & norms for 2 big reasons. First, he has a lot of immunity from SCOTUS. Second, because he learned the first time around he could be stymied by people around him and the Civil Service. This time he arrived with a detailed plan and people to implemented. No one in his inner circle & few legislators, institutions or other nations will “just say no” to that power.
I'm not so sure he and the bigots haven't already found the next openly/vocally identified target.