There's one point here where I disagree with Secretary Clinton, not in substance but in form. She champions a focus on "families." And while I think that is a necessary thing, I think it equally necessary that we use different words. A lot of people come from incredibly toxic families; they shouldn't have to tie themselves to that toxicity in order to receive the benefits of an effort at social connection. Moreover, we have already seen how eager conservatives are to define a "family" as a white, Christian, heteronormative, patriarchal nuclear family featuring religiously-married parents and their biological children, where everybody's healthy and relatively well-off. This conveniently lets them exclude everybody else, including non-Christians, single-parent households, multi-generational households, households with non-heteronormative parents -- basically they use it as a way to exclude the BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, and immigrant communities, along with non-Christian religious communities, from the benefits extended to "families."
So, let's make this an investment in *people,* with a focus on *communities.* Help people build the villages that support them and which they will support in turn. Be inclusive of our fantastic diversity, and don't give conservatives another cudgel to wield against all the people they love to hate. It's like rectangles and squares. Every biological family is a community, but not every community is a biological nuclear family, and that's okay.
Point well taken. How many of us have become or created a family without a genetic connection. I would say many more than we imagine. And those families have the capacity to be as strong and rewarding as any other.
Exactly. There are also adoptive families, foster families, blended families with co-parenting arrangements, families formed via surrogacy, families where children are being raised by relatives who aren't their parents, and families that don't include any minor children, but whose adults are part of "the village."
Aug 21, 2023·edited Aug 21, 2023Liked by Steven Beschloss
Steven, thank you for sharing your meritorious wise words for us to reflect on. The terms Right and Left wing conjure up a belief in the Republican-leaning public, that their program and doctrine is correct (or right), compared to the Democrats on the Left. Consider Trump's crafted media platform, named Truth Social. Hardly a whisper of anything remotely accurate or truthful, is posted in his often ALL CAPS rants. Societal norms have changed, and along with loneliness, discord and disagreement, Trump has prevailed as a virtual gladiator of ill-will.
I see a decline in many aspects of society, with people in business, and behaviour in community settings. A Printer promised to provide a template for my business cards, and assured me they would be printed by my August 28 deadline. That was 3 weeks ago, and I haven't heard back from them. I would have preferred to be told on July 31st that they were backed up with work orders, and unable to guarantee my delivery within 4 weeks. What happened to keeping one's word, and caring about quality products and customer service? Did people adopt a laissez-faire attitude with the restrictions and isolation imposed by Covid? Or did complacency settle in gradually, and become the norm?
Donald Trump is a dangerous pariah to anyone who values honesty, integrity and the rule of law. Yet he commands a following of disjointed and aggrieved individuals, who still see him as their Saviour, despite 90+ felony indictments. His 'alternative facts' Universe, which disassociates from truth and reality, should never have been accepted. But most members of the GOP didn't call him out. Even worse, some piggy-backed on his disingenuous statements, and rode his train of lies, right to the Bank. The ones that did take a stand, like Liz Cheney, paid with the loss of their political career.
TFG shredded social and moral norms, and compromised people his whole life, while never being reined in. That Trump can be the leading Republican nominee, tells me how out of balance a strata of American society has devolved. Crazy sells, when politics is demonised by a man who would be King.
Clinton and Murthy are wise to emphasize loneliness and its consequences for individuals and the body politic. I am grateful to HRC and Steven for raising the alarm over the strategies and consequences of the extreme right. But we also have to look for similarly divisive movement on the left: politics that put personal identity over universal values, liberty over justice and nihilism over a sustaining belief in the possibility of progress. If we are all going to be in this together we have to drive dialogue around our shared hopes for systems and relationships that encourage participation, security and the well-being of future generations.
Things happen for a reason, they say, but why has that reason turned out to be turmoil? Although Hillary Clinton won the majority of votes, the general feeling was that people did not like her. After all, she showed aggressiveness, speaking ability, knowledge, confidence-qualities acceptable for men but for women, arrogance conceit, haughtiness. Women are supposed to express an opinion, then say, Isn't that right, dear, or don't you agree, what do you think. Yet, who better knows government than a Hillary Clinton (or a Nancy Pelosi)? She maintained a positive outlook through her husband's scandal, angry, hurt but willing to work through it. Could we expect her to do less when it comes to our nation?
Have our people ever "hung together" except for things like WW II or the start of the pandemic? All were for helping Ukraine..........at the beginning.Every one for himself, individualism, has more or less been the rule from the start. Self reliance. There are a multitude of nice, kind, helpful people in America who care, who give of themselves freely, but there are a whole lot who have no core values except to look after themselves and their own and want to take this country backwards. Defeat Roe, ban contraception, books, facts of history, retain racism. Hillary , after all, just wrote of villages. Trump, owner of golden palaces throughout the world, was a TV star, a business man who knew how to make deals and bring this country back to a place where white was right, NATO a waste, Putin an ally, men rule , and all the problems confronted that only he could fix. He and his sharpie pen can perform miracles, after all, he is greater than Lincoln, knows more than generals, is Jesus reincarnated.
There is some light shining -some students (but not professors) in Florida are beginning to protest, unions are beginning to find a voice once more, there are Disney and Budweiser, trump has been indicted and shown to be the mother of all felonies (but also the king of collecting money) and at least the voters of Ohio have voted pro abortion.
But MAGA people are not going to change. They will continue to fuel violence, influencing those who want to kill judges, the President, jurists, prosecutors plus their family members. Perhaps their children will see the light. Hopefully, Democrats will vote as never before.
I just finished reading The Cave Dwellers, and frankly, it makes me disillusioned about everyone in Washington, left and right.
As an aside, I am so tired of the political vocabulary now: woke, weaponize, triggered, dog whistle, dark money, kool aid drinker, radicalized. These words mean different things to different people, one more contributor to division.
The reclaiming of the America I want to live in begins with ME. I'm making a point to connect with someone in a positive and honest way every day. Put someone else first...it works and will begin the healing.
I have long championed the idea that parents need to be more involved their local schools. Meet with your children’s teachers and attend school board meetings. How many parents now a days help their children with their homework? However it appears that the wrong people are joining school boards. The Qanon’s appear to be taking control of school boards. They are decidedly anti teacher. They feel they are more qualified to decide what should be taught than professional educators.
Parents are becoming anti-teacher because they are being manipulated to believe public schools and public school teachers don’t have their child’s best interests in mind. Nothing could be further from the truth, nevertheless republican operatives keep
shoveling lies, deliberate misinterpretations and
disinformation at parents deliberately to make them angry.
Their purpose is to shut down our public school system & end the taxes that support public schools, so parents have to pay full freight for private schools out of their own pockets. If they succeed, parents will have to send their kids to whatever private school they can afford and what that will do is establish a de facto form of segregation based on parental wealth. Something we don’t need or want that will work against social unity, and create social distinctions based on parental income.
It’s very similar to what republican operatives did during the pandemic.They convinced some people that masks don’t protect them, that the vaccine wasn’t effective- but it contained nanobots that would turn them into slaves or whatever nonsense disinformation was popular at the time. They endlessly persecuted Dr. Fauci for no reason other than that he’s an expert immunologist, because fascism requires that all knowledge, the last word on what is true and what isn’t true, must come from the leader at the top of a political hierarchy. In fact, the CDC is still reeling from the deliberate, malicious lies that invaded their inner sanctum.
Republican operatives have made school board meetings unbearable by coaching parents to
speak up or even scream at Board members about
phantom menaces like teaching kids about the history of slavery in America and kids reading books
that have been in school libraries for decades, books that were read by their grandparents & great grandparents--the same people who fought in WWII.
Teachers are leaving their profession in droves because they’re being blindsided by irate, irrational parents. Our public schools are in serious trouble.
The Dept. of Education needs to step up asap and issue policies that support teachers and students in the face of these manipulated, “ginned-up” parents.
For example, a policy that parents must make an appointment to speak to their child’s teachers, and
that a member of the administration and/or a trained mediator must be present during those meetings.
Public schools are perfect for creating community
centers that get parents more involved and can be used as a way to develop trust between parents and
teachers. Perhaps a policy requiring that complaints
must be in writing or the school could create a checklist for parents--it doesn’t get any easier than that. The point of it would be to force parents to
think about their complaints, instead of allowing
themselves to be manipulated and then make mad dash to the school ready to rip a teacher’s hair out.
There are ways to counter what’s happening to public schools, but the problem has to be acknowledged and motivation has to come from
the top, namely the Dept. of Education. We can’t afford to ignore it, because it won’t go away on its own. Republicans have been planning this for 30 years. It started with the advent of Charter schools
in the 1980s. Then laws were passed in some states that allowed public money to go “with” a student transferring to a Charter school, which eventually left public schools underfunded. The answer isn’t to pretend it isn’t happening. It must be dealt with because if it isn’t, it will fundamentally change how we live our lives, and I promise, it will not be to “better” our lives.
Thank you for a detailed comment. I share your anger and dismay at the disinformation campaign by the Republicans. I think your second paragraph and paragraph where you say that their intent is, “their purpose is to shut down…” conflict with each other. I believe your second paragraph is more accurate. They want to take tax dollars needed to maintain a good public education and use it to pay for their private and charter schools. They claim the public schools are sub-par while at the same time take money from them when we should be increasing what is spent on public education.
People fail to realize that real estate values are based in part on the quality of the school system. Couples with or planning to have children decide where to move to based on how good the school system is. So it is in home owners best interest to invest in their schools.
Hillary won the presidency but it was stolen from her by Putin’s operatives. Manafort, Stone, and Bannon played big roles in creating an evil environment for us all they were (are) Trump’s goons. Hillary didn’t get to break the glass ceiling like we wanted. Some people bypassed her and voted for Bernie, which took away votes for her. Look, as a woman who watched her husband slide from grace into a rabbit hole re: extramarital affairs, I wanted her to leave him. She didn’t and honestly, she shot herself in the foot by sticking around. That damaged her chances. Just my thoughts.
A good blog. I wonder how many read the rubrik over the CBS broadcast YouGov table: "Top answers - Among Trump Voters". It is not said how big a share of all voters that was and what was the size of the sample. Broadcasting this kind of table and like information gives wrong impressions.
It also surprises me, no, it makes me angry, that mass media devotes so much time and space to an individual who is mentally ill (but not suffering from it!). And that his supporters' mental health is also an even bigger social problem.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me much of the mass media has become corrupted by money.
I’ve been so disappointed by their obvious bias toward Trump and their penchant for sensationalism in order to appeal to magas. When I was growing up it was common knowledge that the National Enquirer was a “rag” specializing in bizarre tales of ufo’s, space aliens & periodic stories about conjoined twins or other uncommon medical conditions. But now, major media platforms publish stories very similar to the old National Enquirer content, simply because they make more money by doing that.
We used to be able to trust content from major media outlets. They published facts (truth) and interpreted them in a way that educated and elevated social discourse. Now, many of them have abdicated their traditional and important role in order to make more money. We can’t trust major media outlets anymore. They’ve become part of the problem.
I live in Florida. Who knew school boards who used to act in children's interests have now become political thanks to our Governor along with insane changes to teaching history, book bans, etc. They start early and indoctrinate. Dangerous and so sad.
Hillary's diagnosis seems correct if I judge from some young members of my own family. One personal exception to 71% support 45 number. I think they would choose 45 as telling them the truth, BUT, they are not directly listening to him. If I understand, they are in a feedback loop on the internet (being fed by whom?) on ways to be important in this war against the establishment. Their God is not 45, it is the internet (unknown) voice urging them on... making them feel important.
I am of two minds about ways to respond, both personally and as a country. Mind 1: Nephews tell me I don't know what is going on, I am indoctrinated by mainstream media. So I never argue, I simply ask if they think their source of money will continue under this new regime, or something else I know they value. I point to what they and I both want. As a country, we can stop talking about fighting against the nonsense and keep stating what we want... i.e. I would like policies that maintain a large middle class.
Mind 2: I lived in Hong Kong during the Mao riots. My interpretation of British policy was, Oh, you don't like freedom? Well, you don't have to have freedom if you don't want it. Authorities simply shut down gatherings (10 or more people) and arrested leaders and dissidents. What if we just turned off the internet for a month and dealt with the small flare up that would ensue? Radical? Too many arguments against! Back to Mind 1.
This loneliness is the inevitable underbelly of individualism that leads to America First isolationism. It’s a continuum and MAGA values propagate it. Vote every Republican out of office. Then maybe we can begin to see again in our country some of the shared concern for the welfare of others that President Biden demonstrated in Maui today. This is our chance to alter the cycle and lessen the hold of loneliness.
We need the billionaire Dems to back the Dem creatives In media to produce visually compelling actual stories of how freedoms valued by ALL of us will be lost with the election of a MAGA to the Presidency, to a lesser extent to Governorships and state governments.
A reminder of what we could have had in leadership. A sobering read this early morning.
There's one point here where I disagree with Secretary Clinton, not in substance but in form. She champions a focus on "families." And while I think that is a necessary thing, I think it equally necessary that we use different words. A lot of people come from incredibly toxic families; they shouldn't have to tie themselves to that toxicity in order to receive the benefits of an effort at social connection. Moreover, we have already seen how eager conservatives are to define a "family" as a white, Christian, heteronormative, patriarchal nuclear family featuring religiously-married parents and their biological children, where everybody's healthy and relatively well-off. This conveniently lets them exclude everybody else, including non-Christians, single-parent households, multi-generational households, households with non-heteronormative parents -- basically they use it as a way to exclude the BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, and immigrant communities, along with non-Christian religious communities, from the benefits extended to "families."
So, let's make this an investment in *people,* with a focus on *communities.* Help people build the villages that support them and which they will support in turn. Be inclusive of our fantastic diversity, and don't give conservatives another cudgel to wield against all the people they love to hate. It's like rectangles and squares. Every biological family is a community, but not every community is a biological nuclear family, and that's okay.
Point well taken. How many of us have become or created a family without a genetic connection. I would say many more than we imagine. And those families have the capacity to be as strong and rewarding as any other.
Exactly. There are also adoptive families, foster families, blended families with co-parenting arrangements, families formed via surrogacy, families where children are being raised by relatives who aren't their parents, and families that don't include any minor children, but whose adults are part of "the village."
You give me optimism when mine is exhausted. Thank you.
Steven, thank you for sharing your meritorious wise words for us to reflect on. The terms Right and Left wing conjure up a belief in the Republican-leaning public, that their program and doctrine is correct (or right), compared to the Democrats on the Left. Consider Trump's crafted media platform, named Truth Social. Hardly a whisper of anything remotely accurate or truthful, is posted in his often ALL CAPS rants. Societal norms have changed, and along with loneliness, discord and disagreement, Trump has prevailed as a virtual gladiator of ill-will.
I see a decline in many aspects of society, with people in business, and behaviour in community settings. A Printer promised to provide a template for my business cards, and assured me they would be printed by my August 28 deadline. That was 3 weeks ago, and I haven't heard back from them. I would have preferred to be told on July 31st that they were backed up with work orders, and unable to guarantee my delivery within 4 weeks. What happened to keeping one's word, and caring about quality products and customer service? Did people adopt a laissez-faire attitude with the restrictions and isolation imposed by Covid? Or did complacency settle in gradually, and become the norm?
Donald Trump is a dangerous pariah to anyone who values honesty, integrity and the rule of law. Yet he commands a following of disjointed and aggrieved individuals, who still see him as their Saviour, despite 90+ felony indictments. His 'alternative facts' Universe, which disassociates from truth and reality, should never have been accepted. But most members of the GOP didn't call him out. Even worse, some piggy-backed on his disingenuous statements, and rode his train of lies, right to the Bank. The ones that did take a stand, like Liz Cheney, paid with the loss of their political career.
TFG shredded social and moral norms, and compromised people his whole life, while never being reined in. That Trump can be the leading Republican nominee, tells me how out of balance a strata of American society has devolved. Crazy sells, when politics is demonised by a man who would be King.
Well said, Audrey.
The CULT are not listening -you can’t force other people to read. Once they’re in the box, they close the lid.
Clinton and Murthy are wise to emphasize loneliness and its consequences for individuals and the body politic. I am grateful to HRC and Steven for raising the alarm over the strategies and consequences of the extreme right. But we also have to look for similarly divisive movement on the left: politics that put personal identity over universal values, liberty over justice and nihilism over a sustaining belief in the possibility of progress. If we are all going to be in this together we have to drive dialogue around our shared hopes for systems and relationships that encourage participation, security and the well-being of future generations.
Well said, John.
Things happen for a reason, they say, but why has that reason turned out to be turmoil? Although Hillary Clinton won the majority of votes, the general feeling was that people did not like her. After all, she showed aggressiveness, speaking ability, knowledge, confidence-qualities acceptable for men but for women, arrogance conceit, haughtiness. Women are supposed to express an opinion, then say, Isn't that right, dear, or don't you agree, what do you think. Yet, who better knows government than a Hillary Clinton (or a Nancy Pelosi)? She maintained a positive outlook through her husband's scandal, angry, hurt but willing to work through it. Could we expect her to do less when it comes to our nation?
Have our people ever "hung together" except for things like WW II or the start of the pandemic? All were for helping Ukraine..........at the beginning.Every one for himself, individualism, has more or less been the rule from the start. Self reliance. There are a multitude of nice, kind, helpful people in America who care, who give of themselves freely, but there are a whole lot who have no core values except to look after themselves and their own and want to take this country backwards. Defeat Roe, ban contraception, books, facts of history, retain racism. Hillary , after all, just wrote of villages. Trump, owner of golden palaces throughout the world, was a TV star, a business man who knew how to make deals and bring this country back to a place where white was right, NATO a waste, Putin an ally, men rule , and all the problems confronted that only he could fix. He and his sharpie pen can perform miracles, after all, he is greater than Lincoln, knows more than generals, is Jesus reincarnated.
There is some light shining -some students (but not professors) in Florida are beginning to protest, unions are beginning to find a voice once more, there are Disney and Budweiser, trump has been indicted and shown to be the mother of all felonies (but also the king of collecting money) and at least the voters of Ohio have voted pro abortion.
But MAGA people are not going to change. They will continue to fuel violence, influencing those who want to kill judges, the President, jurists, prosecutors plus their family members. Perhaps their children will see the light. Hopefully, Democrats will vote as never before.
I just finished reading The Cave Dwellers, and frankly, it makes me disillusioned about everyone in Washington, left and right.
As an aside, I am so tired of the political vocabulary now: woke, weaponize, triggered, dog whistle, dark money, kool aid drinker, radicalized. These words mean different things to different people, one more contributor to division.
The reclaiming of the America I want to live in begins with ME. I'm making a point to connect with someone in a positive and honest way every day. Put someone else first...it works and will begin the healing.
Steven, count me in as one of the “Hopeful”.
I have long championed the idea that parents need to be more involved their local schools. Meet with your children’s teachers and attend school board meetings. How many parents now a days help their children with their homework? However it appears that the wrong people are joining school boards. The Qanon’s appear to be taking control of school boards. They are decidedly anti teacher. They feel they are more qualified to decide what should be taught than professional educators.
Parents are becoming anti-teacher because they are being manipulated to believe public schools and public school teachers don’t have their child’s best interests in mind. Nothing could be further from the truth, nevertheless republican operatives keep
shoveling lies, deliberate misinterpretations and
disinformation at parents deliberately to make them angry.
Their purpose is to shut down our public school system & end the taxes that support public schools, so parents have to pay full freight for private schools out of their own pockets. If they succeed, parents will have to send their kids to whatever private school they can afford and what that will do is establish a de facto form of segregation based on parental wealth. Something we don’t need or want that will work against social unity, and create social distinctions based on parental income.
It’s very similar to what republican operatives did during the pandemic.They convinced some people that masks don’t protect them, that the vaccine wasn’t effective- but it contained nanobots that would turn them into slaves or whatever nonsense disinformation was popular at the time. They endlessly persecuted Dr. Fauci for no reason other than that he’s an expert immunologist, because fascism requires that all knowledge, the last word on what is true and what isn’t true, must come from the leader at the top of a political hierarchy. In fact, the CDC is still reeling from the deliberate, malicious lies that invaded their inner sanctum.
Republican operatives have made school board meetings unbearable by coaching parents to
speak up or even scream at Board members about
phantom menaces like teaching kids about the history of slavery in America and kids reading books
that have been in school libraries for decades, books that were read by their grandparents & great grandparents--the same people who fought in WWII.
Teachers are leaving their profession in droves because they’re being blindsided by irate, irrational parents. Our public schools are in serious trouble.
The Dept. of Education needs to step up asap and issue policies that support teachers and students in the face of these manipulated, “ginned-up” parents.
For example, a policy that parents must make an appointment to speak to their child’s teachers, and
that a member of the administration and/or a trained mediator must be present during those meetings.
Public schools are perfect for creating community
centers that get parents more involved and can be used as a way to develop trust between parents and
teachers. Perhaps a policy requiring that complaints
must be in writing or the school could create a checklist for parents--it doesn’t get any easier than that. The point of it would be to force parents to
think about their complaints, instead of allowing
themselves to be manipulated and then make mad dash to the school ready to rip a teacher’s hair out.
There are ways to counter what’s happening to public schools, but the problem has to be acknowledged and motivation has to come from
the top, namely the Dept. of Education. We can’t afford to ignore it, because it won’t go away on its own. Republicans have been planning this for 30 years. It started with the advent of Charter schools
in the 1980s. Then laws were passed in some states that allowed public money to go “with” a student transferring to a Charter school, which eventually left public schools underfunded. The answer isn’t to pretend it isn’t happening. It must be dealt with because if it isn’t, it will fundamentally change how we live our lives, and I promise, it will not be to “better” our lives.
Thank you for a detailed comment. I share your anger and dismay at the disinformation campaign by the Republicans. I think your second paragraph and paragraph where you say that their intent is, “their purpose is to shut down…” conflict with each other. I believe your second paragraph is more accurate. They want to take tax dollars needed to maintain a good public education and use it to pay for their private and charter schools. They claim the public schools are sub-par while at the same time take money from them when we should be increasing what is spent on public education.
People fail to realize that real estate values are based in part on the quality of the school system. Couples with or planning to have children decide where to move to based on how good the school system is. So it is in home owners best interest to invest in their schools.
Mike, thank you for reading my comments. Your point about how the quality of the school system
affects the value of homes in that district is a good one that I hadn’t thought of.
Hillary won the presidency but it was stolen from her by Putin’s operatives. Manafort, Stone, and Bannon played big roles in creating an evil environment for us all they were (are) Trump’s goons. Hillary didn’t get to break the glass ceiling like we wanted. Some people bypassed her and voted for Bernie, which took away votes for her. Look, as a woman who watched her husband slide from grace into a rabbit hole re: extramarital affairs, I wanted her to leave him. She didn’t and honestly, she shot herself in the foot by sticking around. That damaged her chances. Just my thoughts.
A good blog. I wonder how many read the rubrik over the CBS broadcast YouGov table: "Top answers - Among Trump Voters". It is not said how big a share of all voters that was and what was the size of the sample. Broadcasting this kind of table and like information gives wrong impressions.
It also surprises me, no, it makes me angry, that mass media devotes so much time and space to an individual who is mentally ill (but not suffering from it!). And that his supporters' mental health is also an even bigger social problem.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me much of the mass media has become corrupted by money.
I’ve been so disappointed by their obvious bias toward Trump and their penchant for sensationalism in order to appeal to magas. When I was growing up it was common knowledge that the National Enquirer was a “rag” specializing in bizarre tales of ufo’s, space aliens & periodic stories about conjoined twins or other uncommon medical conditions. But now, major media platforms publish stories very similar to the old National Enquirer content, simply because they make more money by doing that.
We used to be able to trust content from major media outlets. They published facts (truth) and interpreted them in a way that educated and elevated social discourse. Now, many of them have abdicated their traditional and important role in order to make more money. We can’t trust major media outlets anymore. They’ve become part of the problem.
I live in Florida. Who knew school boards who used to act in children's interests have now become political thanks to our Governor along with insane changes to teaching history, book bans, etc. They start early and indoctrinate. Dangerous and so sad.
Hillary's diagnosis seems correct if I judge from some young members of my own family. One personal exception to 71% support 45 number. I think they would choose 45 as telling them the truth, BUT, they are not directly listening to him. If I understand, they are in a feedback loop on the internet (being fed by whom?) on ways to be important in this war against the establishment. Their God is not 45, it is the internet (unknown) voice urging them on... making them feel important.
I am of two minds about ways to respond, both personally and as a country. Mind 1: Nephews tell me I don't know what is going on, I am indoctrinated by mainstream media. So I never argue, I simply ask if they think their source of money will continue under this new regime, or something else I know they value. I point to what they and I both want. As a country, we can stop talking about fighting against the nonsense and keep stating what we want... i.e. I would like policies that maintain a large middle class.
Mind 2: I lived in Hong Kong during the Mao riots. My interpretation of British policy was, Oh, you don't like freedom? Well, you don't have to have freedom if you don't want it. Authorities simply shut down gatherings (10 or more people) and arrested leaders and dissidents. What if we just turned off the internet for a month and dealt with the small flare up that would ensue? Radical? Too many arguments against! Back to Mind 1.
This loneliness is the inevitable underbelly of individualism that leads to America First isolationism. It’s a continuum and MAGA values propagate it. Vote every Republican out of office. Then maybe we can begin to see again in our country some of the shared concern for the welfare of others that President Biden demonstrated in Maui today. This is our chance to alter the cycle and lessen the hold of loneliness.
We need the billionaire Dems to back the Dem creatives In media to produce visually compelling actual stories of how freedoms valued by ALL of us will be lost with the election of a MAGA to the Presidency, to a lesser extent to Governorships and state governments.