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actualrealnews · 3 days ago

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Saturday news roundup: This is the shit that went down in the Trump Admin's first week

Certainly, here's the information organized with supporting articles for each statement:

1. Economic Warfare Through Tariffs

*resident Trump imposes 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and 10% on China, citing national security while impacting the economy.

President Donald Trump announced new tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China — signing them at his Mar-a-Lago club on Saturday.* - CNN: Trump announces new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China

*Supply chains collapse overnight. Food, medicine, and electronics prices skyrocket. Inflation surges, affecting the working class.

Experts warn that the tariffs could significantly heighten inflation, reduce US household income, and impede economic growth.* - AP News: Trump imposes tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, spurring prospect of inflation and trade conflict

*Eldon Musk calls it necessary for sovereignty while preparing to replace workers with AI-driven automation in his factories.

Elong Musk's associates have infiltrated the General Services Administration, aiming to implement AI tools for federal workers.* - Wired: Elon Musk's Friends Have Infiltrated Another Government Agency

*. Seizing Control of Media & Infrastructure

*Truth Social merges with X, formerly Twitter, creating a right-wing propaganda machine where dissent is algorithmically suppressed.

Rumors have started circulating following President-elect Donald Trump's election victory that billionaire Elon Musk may merge X (formerly Twitter) with Truth Social.* - Newsweek: Will Donald Trump's Truth Social Merge With Elon Musk's X?

*Starlink deprioritizes independent news sources, ensuring only pro-Trump, pro-coup narratives reach the public.

Starlink's deprioritized plan assigns an unlimited amount of deprioritized data each month to customers.* - Starlink: Fair Use Policy

*Tesla police drones patrol Republican-led states under private security contracts, enforcing new laws against domestic terrorism, which now includes anyone protesting.

With the increasing presence of drones, many businesses and local law-enforcement agencies are seeking authority to take them down, citing potential threats.* - WSJ: As Mystery Drones Fill Skies, Police and Businesses Want Authority to Take Them Down

*. Federal Collapse & State Secession Threats

*Texas, Florida, and other red states reject federal authority, forming billionaire-backed Patriot Leadership Committees to govern independently.

Twenty-five Republican governors have lent their support to GOP Gov. Greg Abbott as he defies a U.S. Supreme Court order.* - Common Dreams: 25 GOP Governors 'Stand With Texas' in Defying Supreme Court at Border

*Right-wing militias mobilize, seizing government buildings in key cities while Trump calls for the people to reclaim America.

Law enforcement conducts an investigation in connection with the New Orleans terrorist attack.* - CNN: New Orleans truck attack, at least 14 killed on Bourbon Street

*The federal government, weakened by inflation and mass unrest, hesitates to intervene.

*. Dismantling DEI and Social Programs

*Trump bans DEI programs in all federal agencies, eliminating diversity initiatives, forcing employees to remove pronouns, and rolling back workplace protections.

President Trump has initiated a campaign to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs from the federal government and the US military.* - The Times: Trump has declared war on DEI. What will change?

*After a mid-air airline crash, Trump blames DEI despite no evidence, using the incident to justify purging diversity policies further.

In his second week of the second term, President Trump has focused his efforts on eliminating DEI programs, linking them to a tragic airplane crash in the Potomac River that claimed the lives of 67 people, although no evidence was presented to support this claim.* - WSJ: Fight Against DEI Dominates Start of Trump's Second Term

*Elon Musk calls DEI a failed experiment and pushes for its removal across Silicon Valley companies.

Elon Musk's associates have infiltrated the General Services Administration, aiming to implement AI tools for federal workers.* - Wired: Elon Musk's Friends Have Infiltrated Another Government Agency

*Supporting Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing

President Trump halts all foreign aid to Gaza, exacerbating famine and medical shortages.

The Trump administration has suspended all U.S. foreign aid, including critical assistance to regions like Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan, intensifying existing humanitarian crises.

Cadena SER: Trump congela toda la ayuda internacional de Estados Unidos y pone en riesgo la asistencia a Gaza, Ucrania o Sudán

#trump #trump administration #gaza #dei #elongated muskrat #fuck elon #further news of the stupid #america #usa #usa news

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grits-galraisedinthesouth · 16 days ago

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Vivek Ramaswamy Expected to Step Down from Trump's Government Efficiency Task Force DOGE Co-Led by Elon Musk: 'Vivek Has Worn Out His Welcome' | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hᴏft

By Jim Hᴏft Jan. 19, 2025 5:26 pm

Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur appointed by President-elect Donald Trump to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) alongside Elon Musk, is anticipated to step down from his role in the task force.

In November, President Trump announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would head the Department of Government Efficiency.

“I am pleased to announced that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”). Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the “Save America” Movement,” Trump said in a statement.

Trump added, “I look forward to Elon and Vivek making changes to the Federal Bureaucracy with an eye on efficiency and, at the same time, making life better for all Americans. Importantly, we will drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 Trillion Dollars of Government Spending. They will work together to liberate our Economy, and make the US Government accountable to “WE THE PEOPLE.” Their work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026 – A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence. I am confident they will succeed!”

According to Politico, his departure comes amid discussions about Ramaswamy potentially filling the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Vice President-elect JD Vance.

However, multiple sources have confirmed to CBS News that friction within DOGE may have expedited Ramaswamy’s departure.

Sources familiar with the internal workings of the task force claim that Musk’s inner circle has grown increasingly frustrated with Ramaswamy’s alleged lack of hands-on involvement.

“Vivek has worn out his welcome,” a source close to Trump revealed.

CBS reported:

People close to Musk have privately undercut Ramaswamy for weeks, frustrated with his lack of participation in the heavy lifting, according to sources familiar with the internal dynamics. There has been friction between the incoming rank and file DOGE staff and Ramaswamy, the sources said, and Ramaswamy has been subtly encouraged to exit.

Ramaswamy recently met with the Ohio’s sitting governor, Mike DeWine, about the state’s Senate seat left vacant by Vice President-elect JD Vance. But on Friday, DeWine announced he is appointing his lieutenant governor to the post.

Ramaswamy, who sought the GOP nomination in 2024, was at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s West Palm Beach, Florida, estate during the transition. Sources said he was spotted at the bar with Musk one day, scratching out plans for DOGE on a napkin. But the pair haven’t worked closely for a while, sources said.

Politico first reported that Ramaswamy could depart DOGE.

Ramaswamy has made culture issues central to his political brand, railing against what he views as “woke” policies being imposed on corporate, academic and government institutions. Even as Trump’s primary opponent, Ramaswamy was reluctant to cross him and quick to offer praise.

Despite its name, the Department of Government Efficiency is not expected to be a full-fledged federal agency. Trump has said it “will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government” and partner with the White House and Office of Management and Budget."

#vivek ramaswamy #elon musk #DOGE

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pluralsword · 7 months ago

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Even if that is the case it is still really, really stupid even from their own point of view to do this because at this point the opposition wants the centrists dead too. there's been a shift in american politics that has been in swing since the Southern Strategy and Barry Goldwater's coup of the old Republican party. Forty years ago, the idea of a Republican ex-President staging an insurrection among many other things and not dropping out after when exposed would have been considered preposterous what with Nixon having resigned after the Watergate scandal only a decade before. Fast forward to 2004 where the uncertainty of what to do with capitalism as it stumbled through making a mess in the 90s is replaced with all the awfulness of the Middle Eastern conflicts and the Patriot Act underway and you have a much higher uptick in irreverent nationalism among the Republican Party. There's significant concern about the Florida recount in Gore vs. Bush. The neoliberalism of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and the corporations behind them yars before has changed both parties for the worse, realigning a lot of political goals around the rot economy, and having long created a strong opposition towards the USA (and many other countries) becoming a social democracy (and in the case of many other countries as well, the atomization of their public institutions and community practices) as it was on course to be back in the 70s. Things are very bad. Moderate Republicans are starting to become frustrated with partisan gridlock.

The Great Recession forces some sort of reckoning between the Democrats and Republicans to have some sort of socioeconomic response, but it is not as broadly radical as the New Deal, thanks to neoliberalism/neoconservatism. American exceptionalism continues. The country is on it's way to recovery economically, and it turns out there's a small segment of the country who unsurprisingly cannot handle having a black man in office for President and they spout all sorts of conspiracy theories about him and his policies - and it is during his second term that most moderate Republicans in Congress who haven't switched to the Democrats do so, because they're so fed up with their party careening further to the far right.

I don't think we can give the DNC credit for trying to hold the country hostage with fascism that would kill them too. That's too many dimensions of chess (and certainly not go). The centrists still think the 'old rules' are in play when it comes to political losses. Even some people who vote for the neofascist candidate don't actually believe that he will obviously attempt to destroy democracy during his second term. If the DNC truly believed they were at risk, they would have had far more to say about the attacks on the democratic process much sooner than all the weird angles they chose far after worse things happened. We're not sure the centrists in it have really accepted reality. They're too insulated by their wealth and power for all the good it does them with how they use it.

There are veteran political operators for the Democrats who helped them win Presidencies such as e.g. for Bill Clinton in the past who are in shock at the Presidential debate the other week. Some think Biden should drop out.

What is going on with the ex-President since 2015 onwards is not how politics used to work. Even President Bush Jr., who as mentioned above, won on terms that are deeply contested because of how the recount was mishandled, did not have the same bombastic attitude that Trump does. Not even Teddy Roosevelt, the progressive conservative imperialist who was very much at the furthest extreme of the national level of the Republican Party over 100 years ago and tried and lost a third term bid as an independent, known for his bombastic demeanor and speeches including that infamous one about the American empire (in support of it) to the Navy, was not such a flagrantly sexually harassive misogynist and so openly corrupt as to leave boxes of classified documents everywhere.

What comes to mind is the racist Horton ad during the 1988 election by George H.W. Bush vs Michael Dukakis. The ex-Pres constantly spits out the level of awfulness that ad involved. Even H. W. Bush would have been a bit embarrassed for his own racism to go on and on like that openly instead of unsaid or only quietly said, simply done and carried out.

Honestly, this last eight years have felt like the re-emergence of the volatile era of early American politics in the first years after the Constitution when Congressional representatives would get into brawls in Congress. And we pity the fact that the DNC centrists can't grip that this is where we are.

Post that will get me labelled a psyop but honestly the moment that a party realizes that "you might not like us but you have no choice but to vote for us because otherwise the fascists win" is an effective way to rake in votes it practically ensures that they'll never take any actual meaningful action against the fascism problem. They gotta keep the fascists around bro they're their electoral strategy.

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anthonybialy · 9 days ago

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A DeSantis Do-Over

A governor who is proficient at his defined roles during a disaster created the best campaign ad possible. Wait: Republicans nominated Donald Trump again. Wearing out gold crayons is not much of a consolation prize for avoiding a leader who would actually reverse Joe Biden’s anciently dreadful policies instead of merely ranting how much they suck.

Being over three decades younger doesn’t change how Ron DeSantis is the grownup. The professional hurricane effect reverser almost makes me violate my rule of loathing everyone who’s ever run for office. He’s distinct from Trump in that he gets productive things done without running off his mouth. Other than being the exact opposite, he’s the same. Florida’s executive is a different sort of Republican in that he doesn’t deserve to be demonized.

Being responsible for about 105 percent of jobs created during the inflation era sounds mathematically impossible. But the numbers make way more sense than trying to get rich by printing money faster than prices rise. Tag teaming with Texas to create prosperity pockets shows why Democrats loathe the free market competition of federalism.

The meddlers only break inventory with their clumsy gestures. By contrast, governors who are successful beyond winning elections notably don’t do much unless yielding counts. Letting people set up shop requires respecting others to make rational choices, which rules out all of one party and one notable member of the other.

Contemporary Republican theory involves Trump planning the economy while standing in front of an American flag. Another term is bound to be less underwhelming, what with all the practice he had in the first. Loving the country and its government is the new style of red-capped patriotism. The joy of no longer having to make decisions means all worries have been taken from you. There will again be no money to worry about spending. You’ll lose it through tariffs and not inflation, so remain grateful.

Primary voters went in a different direction, namely the same one. The lunatic screaming on the corner has undoubtedly improved his case. The bum has name recognition. All participants recognized the panhandling displaced carnival barker even though getting canned was detrimental to his grasp on reality.

The establishment sets up shop in the most surprising locations. Trump primary and general election voters settled for comfort, which is ironic for someone who was supposed to be the ultimate disruptor. The Boomer mentality leads to those infected being so frightened of change that they went with the one person who had already attempted to manage. Very adaptable geezers who are scared to use a tablet with its lack of a number touchpad still choose heads of state. It’s the ultimate Trump generation move to stick with their raging messiah. Johnny Carson didn’t offer as much familiarity.

Politics is always evolving. Take how conservatism is now classified as crudely restating some sort of description Trump vaguely remembers hearing. A different Republican could calmly explain why, say, the same government that efficiently nuked two cities might not be the best option for providing nurturing patient care. The figurative healthy choice might even feature a better system that doesn’t involve presidents declaring how much medicine should cost. Buying your own from companies begging for your business is way less costly than free.

Liberals can relax about their precious agencies. Government will still ruin your insurance just like it will your retirement. Ranting without effect doesn’t even feel cathartic.

Letting you live as you wish overcomes 473-degree Saint Patrick’s Days. Florida offers a natural disadvantage for those who think humidity is the foe of humanity. The only thing that can survive a state hotter than the Sun that heats it is mosquitos that can take down drones. Yet escaping to a swamp with borders is appealing to those who prefer four seasons over not being able to afford garments for any of them.

The Cold War has turned civil. Its losers are uncivil. The Tax Stasi has inspired oppressed comrades to flee from New York like they’re hopping the Berlin Wall. Maybe building a copy would help. General Secretary Kathy Hochul dreams of confiscating even more taxpayer money, and she can’t do so while state lines are figurative. The border fence would be about the only building project in the erstwhile Empire State. You don’t oppose construction work, do you?

The adult’s future cleanup task just gets harder. Spending heedlessly was the election’s winner platform no matter which person got the most electoral votes. Choosing a party these days comes down to which style of unfathomable debt you prefer.

There are better final pairings than a Republican who acts like a Democrat versus a Democrat who does the same. Common interests are unhelpful when they’re shared by aspiring tyrants who want to shred more of your productivity. Bipartisan amity isn’t always welcome. An alternative to both would be someone who got into politics to minimize its impact. But he might never have hosted a game show.

Trump’s stubborn dedication to being all talk shows his fearless commitment in a way. Faking being bold conforms with pretending to be conservative. Next, you’ll tell me that the alleged baron’s empire consists of a handful of despised towers in Manhattan along with a warehouse full of board games too classy to sell to rubes.

Claiming so makes it so. At least, it better. Otherwise, the second Trump era will brought nothing but hollow victories, and surely there’s no precedent for that. The sunken cost fallacy must be the only unwise financial decision by the person who

the most overtly political candidate of our times. Speaking of which, when do said times roll over?

Letting the craziest state continue to thrive will continue to be better than ad time. DeSantis will still buy it as a formality, as we can’t imagine a world where political ad producers must seek useful employment. But doing his job allows others to do theirs. The example should be taken nationally. A president who does instead of saying will sound like a dream soon.

#Ron DeSantis #Donald Trump #Republicans #RINOs #economy #debt #conservatism #2028 #2024 presidential election #Florida

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alexesguerra · 2 months ago

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The Courage to Be Free: Florida's Blueprint for America's Revival The Courage to Be Free: Florida's Blueprint for America's Revival Hardcover – February 28, 2023 by Ron DeSantis (Author) ---Brand New--- No American leader has accomplished more for his state than Governor Ron DeSantis. Now he reveals how he did it. He played baseball for Yale, graduated with honors from Harvard Law School, and served in Iraq and in the halls of Congress. But in all these places, Ron DeSantis learned the same lesson: He didn’t want to be part of the leftist elite. His heart was always for the people of Florida, one of the most diverse and culturally rich states in the union. Since becoming governor of the Sunshine State, he has fought—and won—battle after battle, defeating not just opposition from the political left, but a barrage of hostile media coverage proclaiming the end of the world. When he implemented COVID-19 policies based on evidence and focused on freedoms, the press launched a smear campaign against him, yet Florida’s economy thrived, its education system outperformed the nation, and Florida’s COVID mortality rate for seniors was lower than that in thirty-eight states. When he enacted policies to keep leftist political concepts like critical race theory and woke gender ideology out of Florida’s classrooms, the media demagogued his actions, but parents across Florida rallied to his cause. Dishonest attacks from the media don’t deter him. In fact, DeSantis keeps racking up wins for Floridians. In 2022, the governor delivered a historic, record-setting victory, winning by nearly 20 points and more than 1.5 million votes. A firsthand account from the blue-collar boy who grew up to take on Disney and Dr. Fauci, The Courage to Be Free delivers something rare from an elected leader: stories of victory. This book is a winning blueprint for patriots across the country. And it is a rallying cry for every American who wishes to preserve our liberties. About the Author Ron DeSantis is Florida’s forty-sixth governor and one of the few American statesmen to receive bipartisan praise for his leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. An honors graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, he served as an officer in the U.S. Navy and an adviser to a SEAL commander in Iraq, earning the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal and the Bronze Star. In 2012 he was elected to Congress, where he served on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He is married to Emmy Award–winning anchor Casey DeSantis, and they live in Tallahassee with their three children, Madison, Mason, and Mamie. Publisher ‏ : ‎ Broadside Books (February 28, 2023) Language ‏ : ‎ English Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0063276003 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 9780063276000 Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.42 pounds Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.97 x 9 inches

#Courage to Be Free #Ron DeSantis

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gatekeeper-watchman · 7 months ago

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Stop listening to the fearmongers! Rep. Comer said once said, “The Democratic Party is trying to lead this country on a Socialist agenda”. What is Socialism? You may know what it really is; or, when you really stop to ask yourself and think about it, you may not. Frankly, most people don’t. They couldn’t sit down and write a paragraph about it to save their lives. I know one thing for sure. Over the years, the word has become a pejorative. The minute it is spoken and heard, people become angry, caused by its poor and incompetent governance and abuse in the past. We get mad, we argue, we fight, and the discussion ends. All is lost. So, let’s not use this word. We can gain nothing.

We are a nation of three hundred plus million people, each have their own opinion, thus three hundred million ideas. Also, there are always those who go off in their own directions; but, given responsible knowledgeable leadership with integrity and reliable information, we can usually arrive at reasonable decisions and get things done. With that in mind, let’s start from there.

First, as indicated above, there may be some exceptions, but Democrats are not “trying to lead this country on a Socialist agenda”. In our nation, the very rich and powerful have been plundering the income and wealth of we the people, slowly reducing the standard of living of the common citizen over the past forty years. Look it up. Google it. The Democrats are just trying to get back our country for the people to whom it belongs and provide them their fair share of the economy. Every able-bodied citizen is entitled to the value of his (or her) productivity. Livable wages in accordance with the worth of their productivity are the right of everyone. Those who for reasons beyond their control are unable to produce should be provided appropriate aid or relief. So also, are equal opportunity, quality healthcare, education, and the right to vote the right of everyone. These should be inscribed in our Constitution. A healthy, educated, and prosperous people make for a strong and prosperous nation—call it what you will.

Lastly, our nation is in the condition we find it because of neglect, neglect of the people, and neglect of those who govern us. A democracy by its very definition must have the participation of the people to survive. First, they must vote, in support of which, they must be and stay informed. Mental laziness is the plague of all of us—just some more than others. Also, those who govern us must be honest and govern with integrity, putting the country ahead of party, patriotism, and service ahead of self. Without both of these on an overall basis, a democracy will ultimately fail. Dictatorship will inevitably take its place. Failure of loyalty is a prescription for failure. Do not forget those famous words, “United we stand, divided we fall”. From: Steven P. Miller @ParkermillerQ, gatekeeperwatchman.org Founder and Administrator of Gatekeeper-Watchman International Group, Friday, July 12, 2024, Jacksonville, Florida., Duval County, USA., X … @ParkermillerQ

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miamigotv · 7 months ago

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OPENING Ceremony - TO HIALEAH 4TH OF JULY FIREWORKS SHOW 2024

The opening ceremony for the Hialeah 4th of July Fireworks Show 2024 was a vibrant and exciting event! There was a variety of entertainment, including live music, food stalls, and of course, a spectacular laser light show, fireworks display, on the Apex 5040 GEN3 stage to celebrate Independence Day. The ceremony includes speeches from local dignitaries, patriotic performances, and other festive activities designed to bring the community together. The City of Hialeah is located in Miami-Dade County, Florida. It's the sixth-largest city in Florida and is part of the Miami metropolitan area. Known for its strong Cuban and Hispanic influence, Hialeah has a rich cultural fabric that's reflected in its vibrant community, cuisine, and annual events. Hialeah operates under a strong mayor-council government system, where the mayor has significant administrative powers. The city council consists of members elected from individual districts within the city. This municipal structure enables both centralized decision-making and representation that reflects the diverse interests of its residents. The city's economy is robust, with a good mix of retail, manufacturing, and healthcare industries. It's well-known for its parks, recreational facilities, and has a history tied to horse racing, most notably at the Hialeah Park Race Track, a historic site. Education is also a priority in Hialeah, with numerous public and private schools as well as higher education institutions like Miami Dade College's Hialeah Campus contributing to the community's educational landscape.

#youtube

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genevalentino · 1 year ago

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#AmericaFirstPolicy #CentralizationofPowerintheBidenAdministration.EconomicGrowth #PaycheckProtectionProgram #theCARESAct #TrumpAdministrationeconomist

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joomma · 2 years ago

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Florida Gators 2022 SEC Volleyball Regular Season Champions Shirt

Read more here:

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/black-women-best-economy/amp?__twitter_impression=true

3. The Future

A conversation about Black history would not be complete without a conversation about our present and future.

Recent stories continue to not just display police violence against Black people, but specifically against Black children. Below are some stories--trigger warning being police brutality...

Rochester police handcuffing and pepper-spraying a nine year old girl:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/nyregion/rochester-police-pepper-spray-child.html#click=https://t.co/8QHKTC4agx

Last week sixteen year old Taylor Bracey was horrifically body slammed by a school resource officer; the article does have video of the officer slamming Taylor, as a warning:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-teen-body-slammed-school-resource-officer-traumatized/story?id=75582344

According to her mother she is suffering from memory loss, headaches, blurry vision, and sleep deprivation.

The family is being represented by civil rights attorney Ben Crump who really sums it up well:

"He's supposed to be trained," he said. "It's foreseeable that children may get in altercations at school. You're not supposed to knock them unconscious. You're supposed to be the person who knows how to de-escalate the situation. It's just mind-boggling."

"This is the adultification of Black children -- that our children are seen as adults," he added. "No, no, this was a child."

Ben Crump has a petition that you can sign below:

https://act.bencrump.com/a/taylor-bracey?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=social_organic&utm_content=013121

And it’s never a bad time to remember Tamir Rice (twelve) and Trayvon Martin (seventeen) and even recent incidents like Miya Ponsetto (aka “SoHo Karen”) who attacked fourteen year old black child because she accused him of stealing her iphone (and, infamously, looked like a whole mess trying to defend herself during a Gayle King interview by claiming that she was “only twenty-two”--of course Gayle snatched her up gracefully). I say all of this as a reminder that there has always been a pernicious “imagining” of the Black body and the adultification (seeing Black kids as older than what they are) of Black Youth is but one of the many very dangerous forms this form of racism takes shape today. Protecting Black women, protecting Black trans-women, protecting Black youth is important--and seeing these folks victimized by the law in every form needs to be fought against.

In short; defund the police (let’s have no resource officers in schools and more social workers/counselors!), challenge whatever prejudices and assumptions you may have, center Black women and Black female voices, and read up on your history kids.

#black history #BLM #1619 project #silentaugur #defund the police

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newstfionline · 3 years ago

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Monday, September 20, 2021

Biden’s Entire Presidential Agenda Rests on Expansive Spending Bill (NYT) Biden’s entire presidential agenda is riding on the reconciliation bill being crafted in Congress right now. No president has ever packed as much of his agenda, domestic and foreign, into a single piece of legislation as President Biden has with the $3.5 trillion spending plan that Democrats are trying to wrangle through Congress over the next six weeks,” Tankersley writes. “It is almost as if President Franklin D. Roosevelt had stuffed his entire New Deal into one piece of legislation, or if President Lyndon B. Johnson had done the same with his Great Society, instead of pushing through individual components over several years. If he succeeds, Biden’s far-reaching attempt could result in a presidency-defining victory that delivers on a decades-long campaign by Democrats to expand the federal government to combat social problems and spread the gains of a growing economy to workers. If he fails, he could end up with nothing. As Democrats are increasingly seeing, the sheer weight of Mr. Biden’s progressive push could cause it to collapse, leaving the party empty-handed, with the president’s top priorities going unfulfilled. … If Mr. Biden’s party cannot find consensus on those issues and the bill dies, the president will have little immediate recourse to advance almost any of those priorities.

Child care in the US is a ‘broken market,’ Treasury report finds (Yahoo Money) A Treasury Department report this week characterized the U.S. child care system as “unworkable” as Democrats push reform that experts say is an “overdue and critical investment.” The average American family with at least one child under age 5 uses 13% of their income to pay for child care, according to the report, nearly double the 7% that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services considers affordable. Additionally, less than 20% of the children eligible for the Child Care and Development Fund—a federal assistance program for low-income families—are getting that funding. “Child care is a textbook example of a broken market, and one reason is that when you pay for it, the price does not account for all the positive things it confers on our society,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement on Wednesday. “When we underinvest in child care, we forgo that; we give up a happier, healthier, more prosperous labor force in the future.”

Inspiration4 Astronauts Beam After Return From 3-Day Journey to Orbit (NYT) After three days in orbit, a physician assistant, a community college professor, a data engineer and the billionaire who financed their trip arrived back on Earth, heralding a new era of space travel with a dramatic and successful Saturday evening landing in the Atlantic Ocean. The mission, which is known as Inspiration4, splashed down off the Florida coast at 7:06 p.m. on Saturday. Each step of the return unfolded on schedule, without problems. Within an hour, all four crew members walked out of the spacecraft, one at a time, each beaming with excitement as recovery crews assisted them.

Haitians on Texas border undeterred by US plan to expel them (AP) Haitian migrants seeking to escape poverty, hunger and a feeling of hopelessness in their home country said they will not be deterred by U.S. plans to speedily send them back, as thousands of people remained encamped on the Texas border Saturday after crossing from Mexico. Scores of people waded back and forth across the Rio Grande on Saturday afternoon, re-entering Mexico to purchase water, food and diapers in Ciudad Acuña before returning to the Texas encampment under and near a bridge in the border city of Del Rio. Junior Jean, a 32-year-old man from Haiti, watched as people cautiously carried cases of water or bags of food through the knee-high river water. Jean said he lived on the streets in Chile the past four years, resigned to searching for food in garbage cans. “We are all looking for a better life,” he said.

Three Weeks After Hurricane Ida, Parts of Southeast Louisiana Are Still Dark (NYT) For Tiffany Brown, the drive home from New Orleans begins as usual: She can see the lights on in the city’s central business district and people gathering in bars and restaurants. But as she drives west along Interstate 10, signs of Hurricane Ida’s destruction emerge. Trees with missing limbs fill the swamp on either side of the highway. With each passing mile, more blue tarps appear on rooftops, and more electric poles lay fallen by the road, some snapped in half. By the time Ms. Brown gets to her exit in Destrehan 30 minutes later, the lights illuminating the highway have disappeared, and another night of total darkness has fallen on her suburban subdivision. For Ms. Brown, who works as an office manager at a pediatric clinic, life at work can feel nearly normal. But at home, with no electricity, it is anything but. “I keep hoping every day that I’m going to go home and it’ll be on,” she said. Three weeks have passed since Hurricane Ida knocked down electric wires, poles and transmission towers serving more than one million people in southeast Louisiana. In New Orleans, power was almost entirely restored by Sept. 10, and businesses and schools have reopened. But outside the city, more than 100,000 customers were without lights through Sept. 13. As of Friday evening there were still about 38,000 customers without power, and many people remained displaced from damaged homes.

Favela centennial shows Brazil communities’ endurance (AP) Dozens of children lined up at a community center in Sao Paulo for a slice of creamy, blue cake. None was celebrating a birthday; their poor neighborhood, the favela of Paraisopolis, was commemorating 100 years of existence. “People started coming (to the city) for construction jobs and settled in,” community leader Gilson Rodrigues said. “There was no planning, not even streets. People started growing crops. It was all disorganized. Authorities didn’t do much, so we learned to organize ourselves.” The favela’s centennial, which was marked on Thursday, underscores the permanence of its roots and of other communities like it, even as Brazilians in wealthier parts of town often view them as temporary and precarious. Favelas struggle to shed that stigma as they defy simple definition, not least because they evolved over decades. Paraisopolis is Sao Paulo’s second-biggest favela, home to 43,000 people, according to the most-recent census, in 2010. Recent, unofficial counts put its population around 100,000.

The barbecue king: British royals praise Philip’s deft touch (AP) When Prince Philip died nearly six months ago at 99, the tributes poured in from far and wide, praising him for his supportive role at the side of Queen Elizabeth II over her near 70-year reign. Now, it has emerged that Philip had another crucial role within the royal family. He was the family’s barbecue king—perhaps testament to his Greek heritage. “He adored barbecuing and he turned that into an interesting art form,” his oldest son Prince Charles said in a BBC tribute program that will be broadcast on Wednesday. “And if I ever tried to do it he ... I could never get the fire to light or something ghastly, so (he’d say): ‘Go away!’” In excerpts of ‘Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers’ released late Saturday, members of the royal family spoke admiringly of the late Duke of Edinburgh’s barbecuing skills. “Every barbecue that I’ve ever been on, the Duke of Edinburgh has been there cooking,” said Prince William, Philip’s oldest grandson. “He’s definitely a dab hand at the barbecue ... I can safely say there’s never been a case of food poisoning in the family that’s attributed to the Duke of Edinburgh.” The program, which was filmed before and after Philip’s death on April 9, was originally conceived to mark his 100th birthday in June.

Relations between France and the U.S. have sunk to their lowest level in decades. (NYT) The U.S. and Australia went to extraordinary lengths to keep Paris in the dark as they secretly negotiated a plan to build nuclear submarines, scuttling a defense contract worth at least $60 billion. President Emmanuel Macron of France was so enraged that he recalled the country’s ambassadors to both nations. Australia approached the new administration soon after President Biden’s inauguration. The conventionally powered French subs, the Australians feared, would be obsolete by the time they were delivered. The Biden administration, bent on containing China, saw the deal as a way to cement ties with a Pacific ally. But the unlikely winner is Britain, who played an early role in brokering the alliance. For its prime minister, Boris Johnson, who will meet this coming week with Biden at the White House and speak at the U.N., it is his first tangible victory in a campaign to make post-Brexit Britain a player on the global stage.

Hong Kong’s first ‘patriots-only’ election kicks off (Reuters) Fewer than 5,000 Hong Kong people from mostly pro-establishment circles began voting on Sunday for candidates to an election committee, vetted as loyal to Beijing, who will pick the city’s next China-backed leader and some of its legislature. Pro-democracy candidates are nearly absent from Hong Kong’s first election since Beijing overhauled the city’s electoral system to ensure that “only patriots” rule China’s freest city. The election committee will select 40 seats in the revamped Legislative Council in December, and choose a chief executive in March. Changes to the political system are the latest in a string of moves—including a national security law that punishes anything Beijing deems as subversion, secession, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces—that have placed the international financial hub on an authoritarian path. Most prominent democratic activists and politicians are now in jail or have fled abroad.

The Remote-Control Killing Machine (Politico/NYT) For 14 years, Israel wanted to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist. Then they came up with a way to do it while using a trained sniper who was more than 1,000 miles away—and fired remotely. It was also the debut test of a high-tech, computerized sharpshooter kitted out with artificial intelligence and multiple-camera eyes, operated via satellite and capable of firing 600 rounds a minute. The souped-up, remote-controlled machine gun now joins the combat drone in the arsenal of high-tech weapons for remote targeted killing. But unlike a drone, the robotic machine gun draws no attention in the sky, where a drone could be shot down, and can be situated anywhere, qualities likely to reshape the worlds of security and espionage.

Israeli army arrests last 2 of 6 Palestinian prison escapees (AP) Israeli forces on Sunday arrested the last two of six Palestinian prisoners who escaped a maximum-security Israeli prison two weeks ago, closing an intense, embarrassing episode that exposed deep security flaws in Israel and turned the fugitives into Palestinian heroes. The Israeli military said the two men surrendered in Jenin, their hometown in the occupied West Bank, after they were surrounded at a hideout that had been located with the help of “accurate intelligence.” The prisoners all managed to tunnel out of a maximum-security prison in northern Israel on Sept. 6. The bold escape dominated newscasts for days and sparked heavy criticism of Israel’s prison service. According to various reports, the men dug a hole in the floor of their shared cell undetected over several months and managed to slip past a sleeping prison guard after emerging through a hole outside the facility. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have celebrated the escape and held demonstrations in support of the prisoners. Taking part in attacks against the Israeli military or even civilians is a source of pride for many Palestinians, who view it as legitimate resistance to military occupation.

Jaw-dropping moments in WSJ's bombshell Facebook investigation (CNN Business) This week the Wall Street Journal released a series of scathing articles about Facebook, citing leaked internal documents that detail in remarkably frank terms how the company is not only well aware of its platforms’ negative effects on users but also how it has repeatedly failed to address them. Here are some of the more jaw-dropping moments from the Journal’s series. In the Journal’s report on Instagram’s impact on teens, it cites Facebook’s own researchers’ slide deck, stating the app harms mental health. “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from 2019, according to the WSJ. Another reads: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression ... This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.” In 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said a change in Facebook’s algorithm was intended to improve interactions among friends and family and reduce the amount of professionally produced content in their feeds. But according to the documents published by the Journal, staffers warned the change was having the opposite effect: Facebook was becoming an angrier place. A team of data scientists put it bluntly: “Misinformation, toxicity and violent content are inordinately prevalent among reshares,” they said, according to the Journal’s report.

#headlines #news

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not-immune-to-propaganda · 4 years ago

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So many posts on here telling us to "Listen to actual Cubans"

Bestie Florida isn't Cuba and Cubans are not a monolith. I have met Cubans in Cuba and abroad who were supportive, neutral or critical of their government. Some in Cuba idolize Fidel and don't like the current president, didn't even like Raùl very much. Some appreciate the opportunities the Revolution has brought but still want more direct democracy. Hell, a lot of them long for the good old days before the Special Period (collapse of the Soviet Union), before the touristic sector split the country's economy in two.

"Patriotic Cubans standing up against Communism" has literally been US Propaganda 101 since Bay of Pigs and you are falling for it. Even if you don't agree with state socialism, the only way to better life for Cubans is to stand up to US imperialism and end the Blockade N O W.

#soscuba #cubacontraelbloqueo #unblock cuba #cuba #imperialism

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reading-writing-revolution · 4 years ago

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December 30, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

Dec 31

And so, we are at the end of a year that has brought a presidential impeachment trial, a deadly pandemic that has killed more than 338,000 of us, a huge social movement for racial justice, a presidential election, and a president who has refused to accept the results of that election and is now trying to split his own political party.

It’s been quite a year.

But I had a chance to talk with history podcaster Bob Crawford of the Avett Brothers yesterday, and he asked a more interesting question. He pointed out that we are now twenty years into this century, and asked what I thought were the key changes of those twenty years. I chewed on this question for awhile and also asked readers what they thought. Pulling everything together, here is where I’ve come out.

In America, the twenty years since 2000 have seen the end game of the Reagan Revolution, begun in 1980.

In that era, political leaders on the right turned against the principles that had guided the country since the 1930s, when Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt guided the nation out of the Great Depression by using the government to stabilize the economy. During the Depression and World War Two, Americans of all parties had come to believe the government had a role to play in regulating the economy, providing a basic social safety net and promoting infrastructure.

But reactionary businessmen hated regulations and the taxes that leveled the playing field between employers and workers. They called for a return to the pro-business government of the 1920s, but got no traction until the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, when the Supreme Court, under the former Republican governor of California, Earl Warren, unanimously declared racial segregation unconstitutional. That decision, and others that promoted civil rights, enabled opponents of the New Deal government to attract supporters by insisting that the country’s postwar government was simply redistributing tax dollars from hardworking white men to people of color.

That argument echoed the political language of the Reconstruction years, when white southerners insisted that federal efforts to enable formerly enslaved men to participate in the economy on terms equal to white men were simply a redistribution of wealth, because the agents and policies required to achieve equality would cost tax dollars and, after the Civil War, most people with property were white. This, they insisted, was “socialism.”

To oppose the socialism they insisted was taking over the East, opponents of black rights looked to the American West. They called themselves Movement Conservatives, and they celebrated the cowboy who, in their inaccurate vision, was a hardworking white man who wanted nothing of the government but to be left alone to work out his own future. In this myth, the cowboys lived in a male-dominated world, where women were either wives and mothers or sexual playthings, and people of color were savage or subordinate.

With his cowboy hat and western ranch, Reagan deliberately tapped into this mythology, as well as the racism and sexism in it, when he promised to slash taxes and regulations to free individuals from a grasping government. He promised that cutting taxes and regulations would expand the economy. As wealthy people—the “supply side” of the economy-- regained control of their capital, they would invest in their businesses and provide more jobs. Everyone would make more money.

From the start, though, his economic system didn’t work. Money moved upward, dramatically, and voters began to think the cutting was going too far. To keep control of the government, Movement Conservatives at the end of the twentieth century ramped up their celebration of the individualist white American man, insisting that America was sliding into socialism even as they cut more and more domestic programs, insisting that the people of color and women who wanted the government to address inequities in the country simply wanted “free stuff.” They courted social conservatives and evangelicals, promising to stop the “secularization” they saw as a partner to communism.

After the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, talk radio spread the message that Black and Brown Americans and “feminazis” were trying to usher in socialism. In 1996, that narrative got a television channel that personified the idea of the strong man with subordinate women. The Fox News Channel told a story that reinforced the Movement Conservative narrative daily until it took over the Republican Party entirely.

The idea that people of color and women were trying to undermine society was enough of a rationale to justify keeping them from the vote, especially after Democrats passed the Motor Voter law in 1993, making it easier for poor people to register to vote. In 1997, Florida began the process of purging voter rolls of Black voters.

And so, 2000 came.

In that year, the presidential election came down to the electoral votes in Florida. Democratic candidate Al Gore won the popular vote by more than 540,000 votes over Republican candidate George W. Bush, but Florida would decide the election. During the required recount, Republican political operatives led by Roger Stone descended on the election canvassers in Miami-Dade County to stop the process. It worked, and the Supreme Court upheld the end of the recount. Bush won Florida by 537 votes and, thanks to its electoral votes, became president. Voter suppression was a success, and Republicans would use it, and after 2010, gerrymandering, to keep control of the government even as they lost popular support.

Bush had promised to unite the country, but his installation in the White House gave new power to the ideology of the Movement Conservative leaders of the Reagan Revolution. He inherited a budget surplus from his predecessor Democrat Bill Clinton, but immediately set out to get rid of it by cutting taxes. A balanced budget meant money for regulation and social programs, so it had to go. From his term onward, Republicans would continue to cut taxes even as budgets operated in the red, the debt climbed, and money moved upward.

The themes of Republican dominance and tax cuts were the backdrop of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. That attack gave the country’s leaders a sense of mission after the end of the Cold War and, after launching a war in Afghanistan to stop al-Qaeda, they set out to export democracy to Iraq. This had been a goal for Republican leaders since the Clinton administration, in the belief that the United States needed to spread capitalism and democracy in its role as a world leader. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq strengthened the president and the federal government, creating the powerful Department of Homeland Security, for example, and leading Bush to assert the power of the presidency to interpret laws through signing statements.

The association of the Republican Party with patriotism enabled Republicans in this era to call for increased spending for the military and continued tax cuts, while attacking Democratic calls for domestic programs as wasteful. Increasingly, Republican media personalities derided those who called for such programs as dangerous, or anti-American.

But while Republicans increasingly looked inward to their party as the only real Americans and asserted power internationally, changes in technology were making the world larger. The Internet put the world at our fingertips and enabled researchers to decode the human genome, revolutionizing medical science. Smartphones both made communication easy. Online gaming created communities and empathy. And as many Americans were increasingly embracing rap music and tattoos and LGBTQ rights, as well as recognizing increasing inequality, books were pointing to the dangers of the power concentrating at the top of societies. In 1997, J.K. Rowling began her exploration of the rise of authoritarianism in her wildly popular Harry Potter books, but her series was only the most famous of a number of books in which young people conquered a dystopia created by adults.

In Bush’s second term, his ideology created a perfect storm. His administration's disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people and caused $125 billion in damage in and around New Orleans in 2005, revealed how badly the new economy had treated Black and Brown people, and how badly the destruction of domestic programs had affected our ability to respond to disasters. Computers permitted the overuse of credit default swaps that precipitated the 2008 crash, which then precipitated the housing crisis, as people who had bet on the individualist American dream lost their homes. Meanwhile, the ongoing wars, plagued with financial and moral scandals, made it clear that the Republicans optimistic vision of spreading democracy through military conflict was unrealistic.

In 2008, voters put Black American Barack Obama, a Democrat, into the White House. To Republicans, primed by now to believe that Democrats and Black people were socialists, this was an undermining of the nation itself, and they set out to hamper him. While many Americans saw Obama as the symbol of a new, fairer government with America embracing a multilateral world, reactionaries built a backlash based in racism and sexism. They vocally opposed a federal government they insisted was pushing socialism on hardworking white men, and insisted that America must show its strength by exerting its power unilaterally in the world. Increasingly, the Internet and cell phones enabled people to have their news cater to their worldview, moving Republicans into a world characterized by what a Republican spokesperson would later call "alternative facts."

And so, in 2016, we faced a clash between a relentlessly changing nation and the individualist ideology of the Movement Conservatives who had taken over the Republican Party. By then, that ideology had become openly radical extremism in the hands of Donald Trump, who referred to immigrants as criminals, boasted of sexually assaulting women, and promised to destroy the New Deal government once and for all.

In the 2016 election, the themes of the past 36 years came together. Embracing Movement Conservative individualist ideology taken to an extreme, Trump was eager enough to make sure a Democrat didn't win that, according to American intelligence services, he was willing to accept the help of Russian operatives. They, in turn, influenced the election through the manipulation of new social media, amplified by what had become by then a Republican echo chamber in which Democrats were dangerous socialists and the Democratic candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was a criminal. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision which permitted corporate money to flow into election campaigns, Trump also had the help of a wave of money from big business; financial institutions spent $2 billion to influence the election. He also had the support of evangelicals, who believed he would finally give them the anti-abortion laws they wanted.

Trump lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes but, as George W. Bush before him, won in the Electoral College. Once in office, this president set out to destroy the New Deal state, as Movement Conservatives had called for, returning the country to the control of a small group of elite businessmen who, theoretically, would know how to move the country forward best by leveraging private sector networks and innovation. He also set out to put minorities and women back into subordinate positions, recreating a leadership structure that was almost entirely white and male.

As Trump tried to destroy an activist government once and for all, Americans woke up to how close we have come to turning our democracy over to a small group of oligarchs.

In the past four years, the Women’s March on Washington and the MeToo Movement has enabled women to articulate their demand for equality. The travel ban, child separation policy for Latin American refugees, and Trump’s attacks on Muslims, Latin American immigrants, and Chinese immigrants, has sparked a defense of America’s history of immigration. The Black Lives Matter Movement, begun in July 2013 after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering teenager Trayvon Martin, has gained power as Black Americans have been murdered at the hands of law enforcement officers and white vigilantes, and as Black Americans have borne witness to those murders with cellphone videos.

The increasing voice of democracy clashed most dramatically with Trump’s ideology in summer 2020 when, with the support of his Attorney General William Barr, Trump used the law enforcement officers of the Executive Branch to attack peaceful protesters in Washington, D.C. and in Portland, Oregon. In June, on the heels of the assault on the protesters at Lafayette Square, military officers from all branches made it clear that they would not support any effort to use them against civilians. They reiterated that they would support the Constitution. The refusal of the military to support a further extension of Trump's power was no small thing.

And now, here we are. Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes and by an Electoral College split of 306 to 232. Although the result was not close, Trump refuses to acknowledge the loss and is doing all he can to hamper Biden’s assumption of office. Many members of the Republican Party are joining him in his attempt to overturn the election, taking the final, logical step of Movement Conservatism: denying the legitimacy of anyone who does not share their ideology. This is unprecedented. It is a profound attack on our democracy. But it will not succeed.

And in this moment, we have, disastrously, discovered the final answer to whether or not it is a good idea to destroy the activist government that has protected us since 1933. In their zeal for reducing government, the Trump team undercut our ability to respond to a pandemic, and tried to deal with the deadly coronavirus through private enterprise or by ignoring it and calling for people to go back to work in service to the economy, willing to accept huge numbers of dead. They have carried individualism to an extreme, insisting that simple public health measures designed to save lives infringe on their liberty.

The result has been what is on track to be the greatest catastrophe in American history, with more than 338,000 of us dead and the disease continuing to spread like wildfire. It is for this that the Trump administration will be remembered, but it is more than that. It is a fitting end to the attempt to destroy our government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

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gravitascivics · 4 years ago

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A GENERAL INABILITY

Funny how national events – or events that capture the national attention – stir one’s memory. To this writer, the attack on the national Capitol last January 6th was such an event. He recalled something he read some years ago. That being the late Christopher Lasch’s book, The Culture of Narcissism.[1] When Lasch wrote that book, he seemed to be motivated in part to explain the prevalence of leftist, anti-war demonstrators and of the then popular cultist movements. It seems that what he had to say then, in the late seventies, has relevance today.

His basic area of concern is how bourgeois society has lost its ability to meet challenges. Not only was the Western world unable to think of big solutions, but there also seems to be a lack of willingness to even try. And that state is not a reaction to a lack of such challenges; they are out there and threaten to overwhelm those societies, including the US. One can say that even though Lasch wrote this work some thirty years ago, his concerns are still affecting those nations today.

It is as if classical liberalism,[2] a central strain of belief in the West, has lost its ability to account for multinational corporations or be able to sustain a welfare state. More targeted in his comments is that that liberalism’s approach, that of science, has not developed effective policies to address the ongoing human/social problems that keep afflicting the West.

For example, while the loss of manufacturing jobs in the West to developing, low wage countries – mostly in Asia – has left behind segments of those western countries in dire economic straits, none of the western countries seem to devise the policies that would meet that challenge. Here is one account of this lack of development:

Even if the loss of manufacturing jobs in advance economies may have contributed relatively little to aggregate inequality in advance economies, the negative consequences appear to have been sizable and persistent for some groups of workers and their communities. Expanding access to programmes that facilitate the reskilling of displace workers and reduce the costs of their reallocation, as well as strengthening safety nets and targeted redistribution policies, can help soften the blow imposed by structural transformation and help ensure that the gains of productivity growth are shared more broadly.[3]

While this transformation has been going on since the seventies, this cited account was written in 2018. In all that time no meaningful program has been developed to provide the reforms that would reestablish those workers’ prior standing. They, the dispossessed, instead have become prime candidates for radicalization.

Lasch writes, “The natural sciences, having made exaggerated claims for themselves, now hasten to announce that science offer no miracle cures for social problems.”[4] Why this interruption to a history of ongoing successes and advancements? According to Lasch, one change has been significantly less reliance on the study of history.

And he not only points out that there is a lack of objectified history (which scientific bias would prefer), but a history soaked in “moral dignity, patriotism, and political optimism.” That is a history that not only tells of the past but does it with a dose of encouragement, praise, or castigation when a historical tale merits such an account.

The assumption was that before the post-World War II period, the people were able and disposed to learn from the past, but now the message is that the past is irrelevant. It stems from the notion that now is modern and then was, well, then and irrelevant to modern challenges. And this sense for contemporary conditions and their qualitative qualities seems to have affected those in power up and down the political power grid. And when problems are not fixed or are not even meaningfully addressed, distrust by those in harm’s way follows.

Recently, after giving conservatives a healthy dose of criticism, this writer pointed out that liberals have their own shortcomings as well. He then stated that that criticism waited for another venue to express some of that message. Here it is. Yes, over reliance on government has led to the diminution of local governance. This nation, in many areas, has experienced over-governance by empowered, far-off bureaucracies with dehumanizing regulations about how local things should be done. Please do not interpret this with a non-nuanced eye.

It is not an either/or issue, but one of degree. In a world of multinational corporations with enormous power, it is often the case that only central governments can meet the challenges they, the corporations, create or ignore. The trick – as it is with most of life – is to hit the right combination. But there is more to this general problem area than merely not reading history. And addressing that other area or areas will be done at some later posting.

But for now, this posting leaves the reader with this quote from Lasch:

The inadequacy of solutions dictated from above now forces people to invent solutions dictated from below. Disenchantment with governmental bureaucracies has begun to extend to corporate bureaucracies as well – the real centers of power in contemporary society. In small towns and crowded urban neighborhoods, even in suburbs, men and women have initiated modest experiments in cooperation, designed to defend their rights against the corporations and the state. The “flight from politics,” as it appears to the managerial political elite, may signify citizen’s growing unwillingness to take part in the political system as a consumer of prefabricated spectacles … not a retreat from politics at all but the beginnings of a general political revolt.[5]

Well, now thirty plus years later, as events in Texas this last week indicate – and while the problems with the power there is due to the mismanagement of a state, not a national entity – that revolt still has a way to go.

Perhaps if the states’ civics curricula were guided not by a natural rights point of view – one that blends in with Lasch’s observation for a preference of objectified studies – but one guided by federation theory, then, at least, how young people are taught about government and politics might help.[6] It has come to this writer’s attention that the state of Florida is going to consider in its legislature’s next session a mandated change in its public schools’ civics curriculum to offer a more local emphasis. Hopefully, that comes about, and the resulting change will be effective.

If change along the lines that Lasch suggests does not take place, what then? He goes on to address the way this whole current situation creates the conditions that generates a generation of radicals such as those who took it upon themselves to attack the US Capitol. As hinted to above and reflecting the reason this writer presently took up this topic, when this blog again addresses it, it will share Lasch’s attempt at predicting in more detail.

[1] Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 1979).

[2] One can see classical liberalism as a main element of the natural rights view, that his blog claims has taken prevalence since World War II.

[3] Oya Ceasun and Bertrand Gruss, “The Declining Share of Manufacturing Jobs,” Vox(EU)/CEPR (May 25, 2018), accessed February 23, 2021, https://voxeu.org/article/declining-share-manufacturing-jobs . British spelling.

[4] Ibid., xiv.

[5] Ibid., xv.

[6] If the reader agrees, this writer’s book, Toward a Federated Nation, might assist educators and interested citizens to bring about such a shift. See Robert Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation: Implementing National Civics Standards (Tallahassee, FL: Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020). Available through Amazon.

#Christopher Lasch #radicalism #classical liberalism #civics education #social studies

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qqueenofhades · 5 years ago

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How did 9/11 affect the American psyche? I’ve heard people say that 9/11 is when America went insane, but I was born into the post-9/11 America, so it’s a bit hard for me to wrap my head around.

Oh man. You kids are asking the easy questions tonight, I see.

I’m not even sure I can adequately describe the effect that 9/11 had on the American psyche and the ways in which the entire world would be massively, almost unimaginably different if it had never happened, but here goes.

Basically, in the almost exactly ten-year period between the final collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the terror attacks in 2001, life for Americans was pretty damn good. They had won the Cold War, the economy was doing great, everybody was feeling rich and optimistic and like there was nothing but blue skies ahead. (Side note, I wonder if this resurgence of ‘90s nostalgia has to do with the fact that that’s the last time that we collectively felt safe.) The Columbine school shootings happened in 1999, back when that was completely still a shocking thing that nobody would expect, and not a semi-regular feature of the news every few months. I was 11 years old. Littleton was about an hour from where we lived at the time. I spent the whole morning crying about it and insisted on organizing a memorial service for the victims. The 2000 presidential election was bitterly contested between Bush and Gore, coming down to a handful of votes in Florida and the Supreme Court decision. Man, you also have to wonder how all of recent American history would have gone differently if Bush had lost.

Then…. 9/11. I was 13. It was an ordinary, sunny Tuesday, my dad came upstairs with a funny look on his face, and said that apparently the World Trade Center had been attacked. We didn’t have cable TV, so we didn’t watch any of it live, but I don’t remember that we discussed anything else for the whole day. We were at home, which was far away from the East Coast or where any of it was happening, so I don’t have any dramatic memories of seeing people freaking out or anything like that. At dinner that night, THAT NIGHT, my mom said that Osama bin Laden had probably done it. I repeat: everyone knew on the same night that it had happened that Osama was almost definitely responsible. You may note that Osama bin Laden was a Saudi national, all the hijackers were Saudi, and al-Qaeda was an organization with deep Saudi roots. (Remember the part where America attacked… Afghanistan? Yep. Seems legit. Then again, they weren’t the biggest oil producers in the region and a major US ally.)

It is impossible to overstate the shock that this caused. This had never happened. Even through both world wars and the long, dangerous 20th century and the turbulence and tension of the Cold War, there had never been an attack like this on mainland American soil. (And on that note, America got into World War II, despite all the heroic mythology about freeing the world from tyranny, because of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which in 1941 was an American territory. There were plenty of Nazi sympathizers among the establishment and government, and as soon as the war was over, America brought plenty of Nazis, including Wernher von Braun, to work in the space program. To say nothing of our problems with Nazis NOW. So yes.) The psychological effects were literally devastating for both Americans and many other people. Not to downplay the obvious horror of what happened on 9/11 and the people who were killed, but it turned America into a siege state. Everyone was terrified, and yet now we had a War on Terror, helpfully called a “crusade” by President Bush before European allies forced him to walk it back. His approval ratings hit 90%+ in the days after 9/11, and support to bomb Afghanistan – again, not in any way directly connected to this, aside from the fact that it was where Osama bin Laden had been active, and when the US government had armed him and fellow mujahadeen in the 1980s to fight against the Soviets, who had invaded in 1979, making it a Cold War proxy battlefield, and anyway – was MONUMENTAL. The whole public was behind this. International sympathy for America was incredible. Everyone was on our side and willing to say that we had been wronged. It didn’t really matter that Afghanistan was not really connected to this. Someone needed to suffer for this outrage. And boy, did they suffer.

Then came March 2003, and the infamous declaration that we were now going to invade Iraq, because Saddam Hussein (supported by the US in the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, in retaliation for Iran overthrowing their puppet shah in 1979, after CIA and MI6 staged a coup to remove Iran’s democratically elected prime minister in 1953 to protect their access to oil) apparently had weapons of mass destruction and was about to use them to kill more Americans. Everyone knew at the time that this was pretty much bullshit. But boy, did the Bush administration go hard to work selling it to us. The Department of Homeland Security was founded in 2002, after the attacks. The Patriot Act and other intrusive new surveillance methods and measures were quickly authorized. Americans became watched, spied on, mistrusted, and suspected of wrongdoing in ways never really tried on a large scale before. Any dissent was framed as taking the side of the terrorists; couldn’t you see that we needed all this to be safe? The state of national emergency that was declared after 9/11 was never actually revoked; we are all still living in it 19 years later. The culture of hyper-militarism, all these huge flags at sporting events and the visibility of these “Salute to Service” months and this aggressive fasciso-patriotism all grew up directly from the seeds of 9/11 and the sense of unforgivable affront to America, which could do what it wanted anywhere else in the world but could never forgive anyone for inflicting it in return.

It’s a mark of how badly all that public sympathy was mismanaged that by the time 2003 rolled around, the international community (except for Great Britain and Bush’s loyal compadre, Tony Blair) was… to say the least, skeptical of this Iraq adventure. It was pretty clearly a pretext to resume the Gulf War from Bush Senior’s tenure, unrelated to any actual justification or revenge for 9/11, and demonstrated the fact that far from resting on our laurels and feeling safe after winning the Cold War, America was now locked in mortal combat with an enemy that could be everywhere at any time. Nobody should feel safe, because the terrorists were out there. Despite the condemnation, Bush got re-elected in 2004, in part by painting his opponent, John Kerry, as someone who just couldn’t be trusted on national security. In short, Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, was “Swift Boated,” though he also did run a pretty wooden and uninspiring campaign. I just missed being old enough to vote in this election, though my parents and older sister all voted for Kerry, and Bush’s failings were a frequent subject of discussion in our house. He was getting more and more unpopular, was a figure of national ridicule, and yet this never actually discredited the whole War on Terror and the apparatus that sustained it. There were reports of war crimes, including Abu Ghraib, committed by the American forces. The indiscriminate torture and murder of detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba was also an object of national concern, but allowed to keep happening. Less than 5 years after 9/11, and all this sympathy for America, America had… well, lost its mind.

So… yes. There’s an entire generation now that is too young to remember 9/11 and thinks that America has always been this way, but it is, again, completely impossible to overstate how 9/11 turned this sense of comfortable complacency and national prosperity upside down. Everything was now justified in the name of freedom, and any disloyalty was suspect. Our “The Greatest!!” state had to be repeated and reissued and emphasized at every point. Many innocent Americans died on 9/11, sure. But the way that it was turned into the worst violation that any country had suffered anywhere, led to the death of thousands of Afghans, Iraqis, American servicepeople, Muslims, and everyone else involved in the wars and the system that was built to sustain them, and turned America into this paranoid, brutal, out-of-control war-machine juggernaut is, it can be well argued, its worst and most lasting tragedy.

#politics for ts #anonymous #ask

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