Elections 2023-2024

Politics
1756

Yes and…improving/supplementing the public K-12 education kids are receiving now should also be part of the program. Expose the attack on school funding, and how taxpayer money flows from districts that need it to those that do not. That is widening the gap between wealthy and working class or poor households, because it affects the education that children receive. It not only leaves too many less qualified to compete for jobs, but also creates masses of people who are more likely to be conned by leaders who love the uneducated.

Undoing the damage already created by the GOP influence machine is going to take time, effort, and money. Since the Democratic Party also has to fight mainstream media outlets to get any lesson across to the public, that makes the cost higher than it should be. Still, it is worthwhile to reset ideas about what government can do for the people vs. what corporations (and “very successful businessmen”) tend to do to the people.

Here’s Robert Reich in 1994, warning about policies and public perception - basically, how we got here (minus the GOP political strategy):

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1757
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1758

Do we suppose that Justice Roberts will insert a “…or not” following “…preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” or is oath taking now completely understood as purely performative for any trump administration?

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1759

Absolutely not helping, whatever the motivation.

But the motivation may still be of secondary interest - was it naked political bias or out of genuine fear that FEMA workers would be attacked by Trump supporters riled up by all the GQP lies about what FEMA was allegedly doing, for example?

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1760

Wow, that was eloquent and oh so powerful! Needs to be seen more widely.

But ultimately, to have any effect, its the sort of thing that relies on the possibility that some of those people have some sense of shame - one of the things most missing from US politics for a while now.
Most of those people are selfish fuckers with zero sense of shame. it has become beyond ok to flaunt one’s shamelessness - it has become some sort of perverted badge of honour. I have no idea how that genie is put back in the bottle.

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1761

This. This bugs the fuck out of me.

I’m not discounting history, but Metro Detroit is no longer the arsenal of democracy. And “two world wars”? No one is alive who had anything to do with WWI and do people even CARE about it? As for WWII, it seems irrelevant nowadays.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

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1762

World war II! Isn’t that the one where we fought the nazi commies in Russia!!! /s

grrrrrrr indeed.

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1763

Well, the first Wonder Woman movie is probably a basis for many people’s knowledge of WWI.

Is it just me, or are reputable and trustworthy historians treated like Cassandra at Troy? Or Laertes, getting killed by snakes?! (beautiful sculpture, though)

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1764

So: What if/when Trump dies in office, will Vance be a puppet POTUS?

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1765

These days? Yeah, sadly.

Well, we are not a well-respected profession these days, that’s for sure… at least when we do our jobs properly and tell the closest thing to the truth as we can, rather than pushing comforting narratives that makes the majority feel good about their country and not worry about the impacts of our past into the present…

I’ve always loved this Khrushchev quote:

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Pretty much. That is, if they (he, Thiel, etc) aren’t already planning a coup to get rid of him (meaning Trump) sooner rather than later via 25th amendment…

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1766

This topic…

I had an interaction that I’m still trying to figure out. IDK but basically the context is some one running for/serving in an elected office who is trying very very hard and also very sincerely to lead metrics driven civil engineering projects for the safety of the people who live in the city. So this is 100% a good faith story about a decent human being doing the right thing.

My being there was an accident. After the discussion about $1000 dollar suits being cheap and practical, gucci/prada/LV handbags the wife had to have at the duty-free etc. had finished the topic turned towards idiotic things people believe.

At some point I found myself talking more than I usually would. With all the grace, humility, and charm I could muster I told a few lighthearted stories about some of the ways I’ve seen information get processed and distorted in communities that, quite frankly, shouldn’t really be written off just as idiots.

Like I know everyone wants to vent but at the “solutions” table I want to hear people who have solutions/strategies?

This gem was uttered at one point:

It’s easier to train a scientist to talk to the common people than to bring in some English major and get them up to speed on science.

And i thought…

we are doomed.

This was nights before the election.

I couldn’t place it, because in context it is kind of true. But also… the “academic” rivalry, the absolute lack of understanding of what English majors do evidenced by the hamfisted proclamation…

How can anyone deny it at this point?

They are elitists. That’s the problem with that right there. And this one… he worked his way up to their table. But the table is still the “elitist” table and some one like me still has more path to actual influence in the world via the GOP. Then look beneath me at the class stacks and it’s pretty bleak.

They are elitists, because then who does the scientist respect enough to learn from about the common people!?

Everything hinges on that, and learning from others whom one has never respected before is one of the hardest things for any people, scientists or not, to learn.

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1767

Speaking of history, this is an encouraging take:

In 1972, the Democratic presidential nominee, George McGovern, won just 37.5 percent of the vote, carrying only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia for a total of 17 Electoral College votes. He didn’t even win his home state, South Dakota.

In 1984, Democrat Walter Mondale did carry his native Minnesota, but that was as good as it got for him. In the Electoral College, he fared even worse than McGovern, with a whopping 13 votes.

In the aftermath of these thrashings, the Democratic Party lay in smoldering ruins, and Republicans looked like indestructible conquerors.

Now, some might argue that those GOP victories, though statistically more resounding than Trump’s, weren’t nearly as alarming, because he’s a criminal and wannabe autocrat.

But Trump’s heinousness shouldn’t make us nostalgic for Nixon and Reagan. They were also criminals—albeit unindicted ones. And they were up to all manner of autocratic shit—until they got caught.

The Watergate scandal was only one small part of the sprawling criminal enterprise that Nixon directed from the Oval Office in order to subvert democracy. For his part, Reagan’s contribution to the annals of presidential crime, Iran-Contra, broke myriad laws and violated Constitutional norms.

The hubris engendered by both men’s landslides propelled them to reckless behavior in their second terms—behavior that came back to haunt them. Nixon was forced to resign the presidency; Reagan was lucky to escape impeachment.

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1768

Yeah, the sciences vs. humanities have always been a false dichotomy. It’s clear to me know what a couple of decades of attacking the humanities has brought us…

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1769

Interesting… of course, past is not prologue and the landscape seems a bit different than it was in the 70s and 80s. These previous presidencies helped break norms in the first place. Trump is in part a byproduct of their actions, I’d argue. Nixon resigned because his own party turned against him… And Reagan wasn’t impeached, so maybe he was lucky…

I do take his point about how he won by a slimmer margin than Nixon or Reagan for his second term… but he has far fewer guardrails than either of them. And a much more gerrymandered landscape…

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1770

Well yes, in some ways. But the former runs more conservative politically than the latter. I saw a faculty union establishment drive on one campus, for example, get enormous supporting votes from the humanities, but it was shot down largely by nay votes from the sciences.

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1771

I guess we’re doomed then.

Or maybe, we’ll have to fight even harder to vanquish our era’s monsters.

It certainly is a different, darker time, and I think any especially confident prognosticator is fooling themselves. Unless their only prediction is that eventually, at some point, Tromp is going to die.

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1772

Sure… even those that aren’t, though, tend to dismiss the humanities… my BFF’s dad was the chair of the chemistry department for like 20 years and he often dismissed the importance of fields like literature and history. He’s pretty liberal in his politics. :woman_shrugging: Conservatism isn’t the only factor at play, it’s a mindset that believes the only REAL form of knowledge IS science, and if it can’t be tested like a scientist would, it’s useless in accurately understanding the world. And historians are buying into this shit too… shifting from narratives to number crunching as a way to validate the field… But history is narrative and that means a certainly level of subjectivity and uncertainty…

I didn’t say that and I don’t think that.

I think so.

It seems that way… the 30s make more sense than the 70s or 80s (though those periods were darker than we often remember, I think)…

totally. That is inevitable.

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1773

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1774

My brother made an interesting comment. He thinks that rather than 1930s Germany, the better comparison might be 2004 Italy when Berlusconi was re-elected. I’m not enough of a historian to argue, and i would note that Italy has not shaken off that mindset yet. But they also did not collapse entirely. Or maybe I’m just looking for twigs to grasp onto.

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1775

They might find a way of passing the presidency on to Don jr.

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