What a pleasure it was to invite Tim Walz into our living rooms via TV screens and see how refreshingly decent and normal he truly is. As a parent of a special needs kid who knows how challenging and life changing this can be, I appreciate his awesomeness even more now. You made perfect sense of what the man and the party are stirring up in us. I’m so glad I signed up properly for your smart, insightful essays.
I have a special needs kid also who’s an adult now. Her life has been filled with challenges and too much cruelty from the trumps of the world. She is an amazing person who wears her heart on her sleeve. I was so touched by Walz’s son and his authentic love and emotion for his dad. He reminds me of my Sara, who I love more than life itself.
I found Mayor Pete’s description of family time at the dinner table with his three-year-olds endearing. So many in this country would deny Pete and Chasen’s loving family the right to exist and condemn them out of hand.
Thank you for re-posting these very important words.
I'm sorry Anand didn't get the "Palestinian American" they wanted, but I understand why. 1) Gaza is not our war. 2) There are two really bad people involved and we have no control over either - they aren't our people - Netanyahu and the Ayatollah.
I am so enthusiastic about Harris and Walz. We will win.
Part of me would like to hear a Palestinian speaker, or at least a speaker on behalf of Palestine. But since I'm involved in my local Israel-Palestine group, I know a few speakers who would be exactly wrong for this setting, whether because they're overtly antisemitic or because they are so focused on Gaza that they see nothing of the larger picture. There's also the way that AIPAC in particular has been targeting (and defeating) progressive Dems of color. So I understand the caution of the convention organizers. There are other issues that have been barely addressed, if at all, like the way SCOTUS has been elevating Big Money to be, in effect, the 4th branch of government. We USians really don't like to talk economics -- not least because as soon as you DO talk critically about economics you're branded a commie pinko socialist.
Thank you Susanna. You are so very correct. I wish more people had your undertanding and I really wish more people had a fundamental understanding of economics. I only had two classes in economics in college, but that at least gave me a basic understanding. I have never agreed with supply-side (trickle down theory) and I've certainly been proven right over the past 40+ years. Money NEVER trickles down it only gushes up, like an oil well. I don't think even Reagan understood it. I think more of us with a rudimentary understanding (like yourself) do need to keep talking about it . When I'm accused of being a communist I just ask how could I be - there has never been a communist country on Earth - that shuts them up, they don't want to hear my lecture on communism and dictatorships (:-)
Will Rogers knew, in 1932. “The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.” Mr. Hoover may not have known but I would bet my booty that Reagan and the greedy bastards knew/know how money trickles.
Well, Reagan's handlers and backers certainly knew that money trickles UP. Reagan himself was famously shallow minded and likely didn't have a clue. As one California legislator said of Reagan (when he was Governor of CA) "you could wade through a pond of Reagan's deepest thoughts and not get your ankles wet." Another article, written by William Leuchtenburg and published in Salon in December 2015, claimed that "...no one had ever entered the White House so grossly ill-informed." (until the advent of Trump, that is).
During the past 50 years, I have heard the voice of, was it, David Stockman saying, "The hogs are really feeding." The really did and they're still at it.
The David Stockman who came up with rebirthing trickle down for repubs and then reformed. And I thought the junk bond feeding frenzy was the worst of it. That was just a hint of what was germinating
I took a couple of economics courses in college, along with a seminar on U.S. labor history. I also hung out with lefties of various stripes (who tended to be well read and who loved to argue *incessantly* about ideology). What really woke me up, though, was living in the UK in the mid-70s. To this politically minded young woman, the glaring difference between the UK and the US was that the US had no labor party -- and that in the UK politicians actually said the word "socialism" out loud. I already knew about Joe McCarthy, and something about the Palmer Raids that followed WWI, but that was when I really began to understand why the U.S. labor movement was so economically conservative -- the bright lights, like Eugene V. Debs and the Wobblies (the Industrial Workers of the World), were consistently marginalized. Republicans and some conservative Democrats still attack calls for "economic justice" etc. as socialist, but red-baiting has lost a lot of its power, and thank heavens for that.
A good part of our problem is Americans, beginning in the 1950's "learned" about political "philosophies" from TV ads and promos. Since too many Americans read very little except picture books and 'fan magazines', unlike you Susanna, they haven't a clue about 'communism' or socialism.
I keep repeating there is not now and never has been a communist government on Earth, regardless of what they call themselves. Every nation, including, China, Cuba, North Korea, Russian are, or were, authoritarian dictatorships. They are not and never were classless societies. The "revered" workers are and were little above serfs. The oligarchs rule instead of the aristocracy but that too, is merely a change in name.
Socialism in some degree exists in most citizen centered 'democracies' today. But the closest thing to pure socialism we have are the 'Nordic' Countries, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.
In the USA, today, those who receive the largest amounts of 'welfare' meaning unearned taxpayer dollars are not the poor and neediest - they are the wealthiest among us. The oil depletion allowances, the bonuses paid to industrial agriculture (NOT the family owned farms) for not growing certain crops like wheat, corn, etc - which they never intended to grow anyway. The huge tax giveaways starting in the 1980's which actually redistributed the wealth from what used to be the middle class to the top 10% of the population, who were already swimming in money.
"Socialism for the rich, the 'free' market for everyone else" (along with variations thereof) has been a slogan since I was a young person. ;-) As I understand it, "classless society" was always an endgame. Has any country ever claimed to have achieved it? I don't think so, but I'm not sure. What's obvious to me is that any "revolution" has to build on what was already there, even though revolutionaries (overwhelmingly male) invariably claim that they're starting anew. The Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions all arose from extremely hierarchical societies, and -- surprise, surprise -- what resulted was also extremely hierarchical. (I know very little about Korea/North Korea, but I suspect similar conditions prevailed there too.)
As to what we USians have learned -- my take is that since the mid/late 19th century press and politicians have been vilifying anything that threatens capitalist hegemony. Look at how any attempts of workers to organize were met with brute force, by the Pinkertons etc. That was long before the 1950s. Also look at how, once FDR and the New Deal had somewhat rescued the economy, the capitalist class started to attack it in earnest in the late '30s.
Yes Susanna, actually the oligarchs attacks began in 1933 as soon as FDR was inaugurated. They attacked him as being a "traitor to his class". Which he was.
With wealth seems to come insatiable greed. And FDR, like the Kennedy's came from wealthy families. And like Franklin Roosevelt, Jack and Bobby Kennedy came from wealth and yet all three could see that the nation did well when the majority of people Working, Middle, and Wealthy all did well, That doesn't imply there was no distribution of wealth, there was. It just wasn't obscene. Working, middle and wealthy all had decent housing, sufficient food and clothing and good health care for the time.
Things started to dismantle with Reagan - although the plans for the redistribution of wealth to the top echelon started i the early70's.
That is a very fair assessment. You're right. Both Netanyahu and the Ayatollah are really bad people. And right now our war is here in America where we must defeat MAGA by a landslide.
Excellent analysis as usual..... I saw Tim Walz's speech and the reaction of his family - hard to fake that stuff. It is nice, so very nice, to be running FOR something instead of circling the wagons in panic..... It's the other side's turn to be circling the wagons, and I believe they have in fact started.....Yay us!
56 years of hell. Division, propaganda, Nazi cult tactics, greed is good mantra, our free press being bought, hatred for immigrants who could be ancestors of any of us, and the deliberate rewriting of the Gospels to make Jesus a republican hater…. Repubs have become traitors to our founding hopes, dreams, and the hard work of the first Americans, who were not subject to a monarch. Time for a reset…
Brilliant. Thank you so much for cross-posting the piece by Anand Ghiridharadas, and your excellent commentary following it. If you had not, I would not have seen it. Your post today goes a long way toward explaining, why, in addition to the feeling that *we can actually win this*, I have also been feeling so much better in general about everything the past several weeks.
Harris and Walz have not only led the Democrats in reclaiming those five words:
You are so correct about Viet Nam. We must put its damage away in the same way so many GIs returning from WWII did by turning their full attention to doing the right thing, building and rebuilding while whistling happy tunes all along the way. Our nation and middle class may actually have been built as an unconscious method of national atonement and a way to productively use the adrenalin of victory. That radical pivot allowed many of the combat-damaged to heal. We didn't get that after Nam, but we can be better late than never by inviting in all the homeless vets and volunteer vets to build those millions of affordable housing units Harris/Walz want to do. Let HUD lead and let the magas and assorted wingers vote against it. When we fight the good fights, we bygod win.
I’m remember that Vietnam-era icky, shameful feeling around patriotism, when our government was lying to us and my soldier brothers came home so angry and damaged and conflicted. You nailed it, TC. Beautiful, thoughtful, insightful essay. Thank you. And yeah, let’s have that 1968 election and do it up right. I’m ready to fly an American flag and plant a “Proud Patriotic Democrat” sign in my yard in a ruby red county. I loved it when one of the Republicans at the convention exhorted his compatriots to vote for Harris and said it won’t make you a Democrat, it will make you a patriot.
Last night was the only full night of the convention I saw live. Thinking about it makes me want to laugh, and cry, and dance all over again. During the dark times of the Civil Rights Movement, the assassinations the Viet Nam War, America seemed often like a dark place. Now that I understand, both the extremes of right and left feed on the dark side, the gloom, the imperfect. It takes a lot of maturity to achieve balance, patience, understanding of, and appreciation for the imperfect. We Americans are not looking for someone with a magic wand. I think we are looking for someone to empower us to be our better selves. Deep down, I believe folks want to be challenged. The race for the bottom ends up with a nation of bottom feeders, and that is someplace most of us don't want to go.
This! I think we Democrats really are finally ready to win the election of 1968.
When I got to that last line from Tom, I burst out laughing. It's a great line!
Yes, exactly!
What a pleasure it was to invite Tim Walz into our living rooms via TV screens and see how refreshingly decent and normal he truly is. As a parent of a special needs kid who knows how challenging and life changing this can be, I appreciate his awesomeness even more now. You made perfect sense of what the man and the party are stirring up in us. I’m so glad I signed up properly for your smart, insightful essays.
I have a special needs kid also who’s an adult now. Her life has been filled with challenges and too much cruelty from the trumps of the world. She is an amazing person who wears her heart on her sleeve. I was so touched by Walz’s son and his authentic love and emotion for his dad. He reminds me of my Sara, who I love more than life itself.
Thank you Krystyna.
I found Mayor Pete’s description of family time at the dinner table with his three-year-olds endearing. So many in this country would deny Pete and Chasen’s loving family the right to exist and condemn them out of hand.
Phenomenal newsletter, as always, the framing and the repost both. Tonic. Thank you.
Katherine, I could not have said it better with just 13 words. Perfect 🤩
Wish I had a laugh
emoji! Daily challenge:
my friend writes haiku.
:-)
Thank you, Samani!
Brevity rare for Kathie.
Grateful for your words.
:-)
Agreed! Excellent writing Tom, great job, Katherine!
🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊
Thank you for re-posting these very important words.
I'm sorry Anand didn't get the "Palestinian American" they wanted, but I understand why. 1) Gaza is not our war. 2) There are two really bad people involved and we have no control over either - they aren't our people - Netanyahu and the Ayatollah.
I am so enthusiastic about Harris and Walz. We will win.
Part of me would like to hear a Palestinian speaker, or at least a speaker on behalf of Palestine. But since I'm involved in my local Israel-Palestine group, I know a few speakers who would be exactly wrong for this setting, whether because they're overtly antisemitic or because they are so focused on Gaza that they see nothing of the larger picture. There's also the way that AIPAC in particular has been targeting (and defeating) progressive Dems of color. So I understand the caution of the convention organizers. There are other issues that have been barely addressed, if at all, like the way SCOTUS has been elevating Big Money to be, in effect, the 4th branch of government. We USians really don't like to talk economics -- not least because as soon as you DO talk critically about economics you're branded a commie pinko socialist.
Thank you Susanna. You are so very correct. I wish more people had your undertanding and I really wish more people had a fundamental understanding of economics. I only had two classes in economics in college, but that at least gave me a basic understanding. I have never agreed with supply-side (trickle down theory) and I've certainly been proven right over the past 40+ years. Money NEVER trickles down it only gushes up, like an oil well. I don't think even Reagan understood it. I think more of us with a rudimentary understanding (like yourself) do need to keep talking about it . When I'm accused of being a communist I just ask how could I be - there has never been a communist country on Earth - that shuts them up, they don't want to hear my lecture on communism and dictatorships (:-)
Will Rogers knew, in 1932. “The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.” Mr. Hoover may not have known but I would bet my booty that Reagan and the greedy bastards knew/know how money trickles.
Well, Reagan's handlers and backers certainly knew that money trickles UP. Reagan himself was famously shallow minded and likely didn't have a clue. As one California legislator said of Reagan (when he was Governor of CA) "you could wade through a pond of Reagan's deepest thoughts and not get your ankles wet." Another article, written by William Leuchtenburg and published in Salon in December 2015, claimed that "...no one had ever entered the White House so grossly ill-informed." (until the advent of Trump, that is).
Or as James Garner, who worked with Ray-Gun in SAG said: "Amiable dunce."
My dad was a moderate Republican who referred to Reagan as "An amiable dolt."
Betcha Nancy was one that knew
During the past 50 years, I have heard the voice of, was it, David Stockman saying, "The hogs are really feeding." The really did and they're still at it.
The David Stockman who came up with rebirthing trickle down for repubs and then reformed. And I thought the junk bond feeding frenzy was the worst of it. That was just a hint of what was germinating
I took a couple of economics courses in college, along with a seminar on U.S. labor history. I also hung out with lefties of various stripes (who tended to be well read and who loved to argue *incessantly* about ideology). What really woke me up, though, was living in the UK in the mid-70s. To this politically minded young woman, the glaring difference between the UK and the US was that the US had no labor party -- and that in the UK politicians actually said the word "socialism" out loud. I already knew about Joe McCarthy, and something about the Palmer Raids that followed WWI, but that was when I really began to understand why the U.S. labor movement was so economically conservative -- the bright lights, like Eugene V. Debs and the Wobblies (the Industrial Workers of the World), were consistently marginalized. Republicans and some conservative Democrats still attack calls for "economic justice" etc. as socialist, but red-baiting has lost a lot of its power, and thank heavens for that.
A good part of our problem is Americans, beginning in the 1950's "learned" about political "philosophies" from TV ads and promos. Since too many Americans read very little except picture books and 'fan magazines', unlike you Susanna, they haven't a clue about 'communism' or socialism.
I keep repeating there is not now and never has been a communist government on Earth, regardless of what they call themselves. Every nation, including, China, Cuba, North Korea, Russian are, or were, authoritarian dictatorships. They are not and never were classless societies. The "revered" workers are and were little above serfs. The oligarchs rule instead of the aristocracy but that too, is merely a change in name.
Socialism in some degree exists in most citizen centered 'democracies' today. But the closest thing to pure socialism we have are the 'Nordic' Countries, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.
In the USA, today, those who receive the largest amounts of 'welfare' meaning unearned taxpayer dollars are not the poor and neediest - they are the wealthiest among us. The oil depletion allowances, the bonuses paid to industrial agriculture (NOT the family owned farms) for not growing certain crops like wheat, corn, etc - which they never intended to grow anyway. The huge tax giveaways starting in the 1980's which actually redistributed the wealth from what used to be the middle class to the top 10% of the population, who were already swimming in money.
"Socialism for the rich, the 'free' market for everyone else" (along with variations thereof) has been a slogan since I was a young person. ;-) As I understand it, "classless society" was always an endgame. Has any country ever claimed to have achieved it? I don't think so, but I'm not sure. What's obvious to me is that any "revolution" has to build on what was already there, even though revolutionaries (overwhelmingly male) invariably claim that they're starting anew. The Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions all arose from extremely hierarchical societies, and -- surprise, surprise -- what resulted was also extremely hierarchical. (I know very little about Korea/North Korea, but I suspect similar conditions prevailed there too.)
As to what we USians have learned -- my take is that since the mid/late 19th century press and politicians have been vilifying anything that threatens capitalist hegemony. Look at how any attempts of workers to organize were met with brute force, by the Pinkertons etc. That was long before the 1950s. Also look at how, once FDR and the New Deal had somewhat rescued the economy, the capitalist class started to attack it in earnest in the late '30s.
Yes Susanna, actually the oligarchs attacks began in 1933 as soon as FDR was inaugurated. They attacked him as being a "traitor to his class". Which he was.
With wealth seems to come insatiable greed. And FDR, like the Kennedy's came from wealthy families. And like Franklin Roosevelt, Jack and Bobby Kennedy came from wealth and yet all three could see that the nation did well when the majority of people Working, Middle, and Wealthy all did well, That doesn't imply there was no distribution of wealth, there was. It just wasn't obscene. Working, middle and wealthy all had decent housing, sufficient food and clothing and good health care for the time.
Things started to dismantle with Reagan - although the plans for the redistribution of wealth to the top echelon started i the early70's.
That is a very fair assessment. You're right. Both Netanyahu and the Ayatollah are really bad people. And right now our war is here in America where we must defeat MAGA by a landslide.
And "service." He is reinvigorating the idea of serving your community, serving your country, serving your highest ideals.
Excellent analysis as usual..... I saw Tim Walz's speech and the reaction of his family - hard to fake that stuff. It is nice, so very nice, to be running FOR something instead of circling the wagons in panic..... It's the other side's turn to be circling the wagons, and I believe they have in fact started.....Yay us!
I could have done without hearing from Bill Clinton, but his point about 51 million jobs with 50 mil created by Democrats in office was powerful.
And subsequently confirmed by the fact checkers.
56 years of hell. Division, propaganda, Nazi cult tactics, greed is good mantra, our free press being bought, hatred for immigrants who could be ancestors of any of us, and the deliberate rewriting of the Gospels to make Jesus a republican hater…. Repubs have become traitors to our founding hopes, dreams, and the hard work of the first Americans, who were not subject to a monarch. Time for a reset…
Brilliant. Thank you so much for cross-posting the piece by Anand Ghiridharadas, and your excellent commentary following it. If you had not, I would not have seen it. Your post today goes a long way toward explaining, why, in addition to the feeling that *we can actually win this*, I have also been feeling so much better in general about everything the past several weeks.
Harris and Walz have not only led the Democrats in reclaiming those five words:
Freedom. Patriotism. Family. Masculinity. Normalcy.
They have also given us back something that just a month ago, we all thought we would never get back: Hope.
You are so correct about Viet Nam. We must put its damage away in the same way so many GIs returning from WWII did by turning their full attention to doing the right thing, building and rebuilding while whistling happy tunes all along the way. Our nation and middle class may actually have been built as an unconscious method of national atonement and a way to productively use the adrenalin of victory. That radical pivot allowed many of the combat-damaged to heal. We didn't get that after Nam, but we can be better late than never by inviting in all the homeless vets and volunteer vets to build those millions of affordable housing units Harris/Walz want to do. Let HUD lead and let the magas and assorted wingers vote against it. When we fight the good fights, we bygod win.
I’m remember that Vietnam-era icky, shameful feeling around patriotism, when our government was lying to us and my soldier brothers came home so angry and damaged and conflicted. You nailed it, TC. Beautiful, thoughtful, insightful essay. Thank you. And yeah, let’s have that 1968 election and do it up right. I’m ready to fly an American flag and plant a “Proud Patriotic Democrat” sign in my yard in a ruby red county. I loved it when one of the Republicans at the convention exhorted his compatriots to vote for Harris and said it won’t make you a Democrat, it will make you a patriot.
Great essay, TC. Reclaiming those words and our flag is so important.
Last night was the only full night of the convention I saw live. Thinking about it makes me want to laugh, and cry, and dance all over again. During the dark times of the Civil Rights Movement, the assassinations the Viet Nam War, America seemed often like a dark place. Now that I understand, both the extremes of right and left feed on the dark side, the gloom, the imperfect. It takes a lot of maturity to achieve balance, patience, understanding of, and appreciation for the imperfect. We Americans are not looking for someone with a magic wand. I think we are looking for someone to empower us to be our better selves. Deep down, I believe folks want to be challenged. The race for the bottom ends up with a nation of bottom feeders, and that is someplace most of us don't want to go.
"I think we Democrats really are finally ready to win the election of 1968."
Well, if you put it that way, I'm in.
"I think we Democrats really are finally ready to win the election of 1968." And '72, '80, '88, 2000, '04, and especially fucking 2016.