William F. Buckley Jr. Once famously described conservatism thus: “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” He was right back then in 1955, and he’s only more right now in 2023.
I came across this video lately: https://vimeo.com/114022336 Marshall McLuhan commenting on the electronic age, and the possible outcome of nostalgia; on top of the socioeconomic facts so well described by TC. Facts and information hardly reaches people who are going by their gut feelings with nostalgia. And this older generation is mainly influenced by television. What comes out of the "smart"phones era is yet to see. Personally I am most worried about parents not having eye contact with their children, which is necessary to develop the mirror neuron system, for developing empathy.
I think in equal part to eye contact is the verbal/communication part. Watching people everywhere stuck to their phones is like watching a sanitized version of the walking dead. But there is good news. Last weekend I was at Barnes and Noble. No one was on a phone. People were sitting around reading, standing reading and sitting in the coffee shop reading. Thrilling.
I was in the waiting room of a local medical clinic last week. I took a book with me to read during the inevitable wait. I looked around the room and saw that I was the only one there with a book, everyone else was staring at their phones, The only reading material in the room was pamphlets about various health subjects, no magazines. Either the clinic is cutting costs by not paying for magazine subscriptions, or they are being pragmatic by recognizing that most patients will now be looking at their phones instead of reading.
I use my cell phone to read substack newsletters and comments while in waiting rooms. I have so much stuff to carry (a bag of prescription bottles and a folder of medical stuff, plus my heavy purse and glasses which won't stay on my face when I wear a mask) that it's just easier to read on my cell phone!
Your response makes me feel like a creep, but in a good way! You pointed out that sometimes people have to drag a lot of stuff with them to their medical appointments and I didn't realize that until I read your comment. Mea culpa! Thank you for helping me learn to see something from another person's perspective!
P.S. It was just a slim small paperback copy of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest that I was reading. Peace.
if I don't have my own reading matter in the doctors' offices, I get panicky. but I hate to read on the tiny screen, so I bring my e-reader. but I refuse to spend time going through my e-mails when I'm out and I'll never master typing on that tiny touchscreen. when I try, it feels like my fingers have turned to hams or something.
Hi David. Have you seen "Everything Everywhere All At Once"? Your comment about your fingers feeling like hams reminded me of some parts of the movie where people have hot dogs for fingers!
I don't want you to feel like a creep! I just wanted to own being one of those glued to my phone. FWIW, when my dad passed away back in 2012 and my family gathered...for the first time in years...I have a photo of the four of us siblings all sitting together in the family living room and every one of my siblings had his or her face stuck to a phone! No talking. No sharing. No communicating with each other as we should have been. So sad.
I noticed that magazines disappeared from waiting areas during the pandemic, due to the impossibility of sanitizing them...and, of course, most people just stare at their phones. I'm often the only person with an actual book in a waiting room, now...although there may be people reading from a Kindle or a Nook tablet.
FYI - I read books on my kindle app - on my phone. Saves having another thing like a book to carry. Also, medical offices did away with magazines during COVID; they can be a vector for viral transmission.
ABSOLUTELY. I have spoken with the head of a school for children on the Asperger's spectrum, and she said that she's seen the effects of screen domination on her students. The incoming class used to have word usage of about 175 - 225 words. Now they have about 50 - 75. She ascribes it to less time with their parents talking to them, looking at them while talking to them.
This is the single best distillation of what the country is facing today. Bookmarking this for future reference. Need to circulate this beyond our merry band.
Don’t like, but agree, as an old white female, i have lived long enough to know the truth of what you say. I am appalled at the attitudes and actions of my cohort. All unnecessary and a battle destined to be lost. The lies and rewriting history have made people into the propagandized masses of pre-war Germany. Thank you Rupert and your ilk. Weaponized “Christianity” can only lead where the founders knew it would. We all know.
I happened to read an Eisenhower quote just the other day:
"More than half a century ago, President Eisenhower, who had been the Supreme Allied Commander of the forces that won the Second World War, gave a remarkable address. Speaking just before he left office, Eisenhower, the world’s most respected military man, spoke out against the madness and unchecked growth of the defense industry worldwide. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
President Eisenhower spoke of the immense cost of the military industrial complex which, like the prison industrial complex and the foreign policy power complex, chooses power and profit instead of compassion. We must learn that this will not make us safe. Collective wellbeing arises when we govern by wisdom and loving-kindness instead of fear.
Eisenhower had seen it up close and personal as president. The Air Force started with the "bomber gap" we were losing, which turned out to be the opposite after the firt five U-2 spyplane missions failed to find this vast Soviet bomber fleet. So the generals immediately switched to the "missile gap" that JFK would campaign on in 1960, also "vaporware." When the Laos Crisis started to break in 1958, the Air Force response was they could put a squadron of B-47s in Clark AFB in the Philippines and threaten to nuke the commies if they didn't stop.
Are you suggesting that we might be getting distracted by attending to religious zealots when the root might (still) be the staggering size and power of our military, industrial, and safety and security industry?
Well???? Look at how much is spent currently on the "defense" budget & then the fights involved to protect social security & medicaid. Or just a "for instance" - watched once again Jon Stewart's reaction to Congress regarding the Pact Act that has/had to be "renewed" every so often. A fight to help first responders & veterans - but how quickly every defense budget is passed - even added to by Congress!!!!! Money for weapons & killing machines, but then no concern for the human tragedies - much less for the people in the countries where we "make war"!
Holy cow, you hit so many nails on the head that you've gone and built a house..... As mentioned, this is the best distillation of what we face today in the corrupted mess that is the current Republican Party. It is truly sad to see that so many have no true idea of how the country works, and who are so afraid of the future (one that will in fact be a wonder for the United States).
The best news I can state is that in large measure, this is a generational problem and time will work to reduce the numbers of the reactionaries. Yes, there are plenty of young racists but they are far outnumbered by those in the center and on the left. There is so much rotten plaster that has been laid on the Constitution and must be chipped off, and that is a job I hope to see started in my lifetime. Any law, rule or regulation that discriminates against any member of a minority is inherently unconstitutional and must be removed as soon as possible - and many young people understand that.
“[O]ne of the most striking aspects of modern Evangelical political thinking is its projection of inevitable decline.” This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy as millions of young people have stopped going to church because of the bigoted and hateful teachings of the fundamentalist Christian churches. The decline is among most Christian churches but is most pronounced in the Evangelical branch. Time and the grave will bring us a population younger and more open, and they will take us to the mountain top Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of - not in my lifetime perhaps, but it is coming.
This essay needs to be disseminated as far as we can - permission to post it on my FB page?
This is what I want. Everything they do not want. And every attack against what I want to end. Pronto and decisively. An example? DeSantis attempt of takeover of New College of Florida, a leading liberal arts college in America. By appointing 6 Hillsdale College scholars, Claremont Institute intellectual ruffians, and white Christian nationalist scholars to its Board of Trustees all in the name of “woke to die” with the real attempt to indoctrinate young people to their cause. It will not work but a price is always paid because of willful destruction. DeSantis is the chosen Lucifer of the majority of slavering Republican voters who command legislators because of their dwindling white only discontent against any gender or color or religion difference. It is a beast. Cut it off at the head and testicles.
I send TC’s sizzlin’ essay far and wide today. We must barrel through distraction with a scythe in one hand and a torch in the other.
I, for one, will focus with the Light. With laser precision.
Salud to all compatriots. I hear the trumpet clearly.
I was appalled to read of this yesterday in The Miami Herald. One of the comments noted faculty leaving higher education in Florida in droves, and the economic impact it will have on state coffers. This in addition to parents dissuading their kids from attending schools where abortion is limited.
I speak to teachers every day in PreK-12 public education who, for first time ever, are thinking of career change. The pressure on these professionals to “toe the line” so to speak, is appalling. A profession that has always been underpaid and under appreciated is being attacked and scrutinized harshly for any sign of “wokeness”. What a travesty and tragedy.
The very thing that bonds all teachers is the goal of creating community in any classroom under a teacher’s tenure. For any public official or parent to demand the structure of that community to bow to the demands of the resurrection of the “Whites only” signs is beyond any sanity.
Diversity has and will be the strength of any population on this earth.
Salud, Gail. Florida is increasingly rotting outward from its core.
I know how popular Hillsdale College is among the right wing. It is a small school in a VERY small village in the boonies of southern Michigan. I can't figure out how a person can be a "conservative scholar." How much study does one need to figure out how to be greedy? Or is study needed to figure out how to dress up greed?
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” - John Kenneth Galbraith
Tonight Dan Rather posted the following on his Substack - a conversation he hd with Dr. martin Luther King in 1964 about the future of the Republican Party:
In 2023, most people of color and women in Congress are Democrats. Making note of this political divide echoed the exchange I had with Dr. King way back in 1964. At that time, I was curious what he thought of the direction the Republican Party (the so-called “Party of Lincoln”) had taken on race relations.
“Do you think there’s a real danger of the Republican Party becoming the ‘white man’s’ party in this country?” I asked.
“I think this is a real danger,” he answered in his measured voice. “I’ve talked with some Negro Republicans who are very concerned about this. I see trends and developments which will reveal that unless the liberals of the Republican Party take a much more … decisive role in leadership positions, this will become a white man’s party. And I think this will be tragic for that Republican Party as well as tragic for the nation.”
The one thing about reality is that it doesn’t matter what you think or long for, it is there for you to deal with and in the grand scheme of things, either one adapts or one dies out by not adapting. By choosing to stand still or to retrench to return to a mythical, non-existent past, the GOP has chosen to die. So be it…extinction is their only alternative now. And good riddance, but it’s just a pity that it’s going to take years for it to end and the sane part of the country will have to suffer for their idiocy.
Great analysis TC. You mentioned Gov. DeSantis. As a Floridian I see up close his remarkably “successful” efforts to turn our state into a laboratory for reactionary, conservative governing. The latest outrage is his attempt to turn our colleges into conservative reeducation camps. It began with threatening elementary and high school teachers with loosing their certification if they mention LBGT or racial issues. Then appointing Ben Sasse (former US House Rep) president of the University of Florida. His outspoken anti gay history made him a piranha immediately, but, his appointment was forced through anyway. Now he’s gunning for a storied liberal arts state college in Sarasota, New College. NPR and NYTimes have covered this and now the Tampa Bay Times ran a front page article. Read it and weep:
AND Mr. Rufo is the origin of the whole "critical race theory" turmoil - right on Faux News. Where DJT picked it up - remember? What a great addition to what up to now seems to have been a very good welcoming school - for everyone!
New College’s mission page, which says the school is committed to creating a more “inclusive community” and “ensuring that historically marginalized and oppressed groups are not experiencing trauma and harm.”
Griffin said the passage illustrates the college has been “completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning.”
These folks believe inclusive and welcoming are actually bad things.
Yup -- I likely wouldnt have recognized the name but for seeing the UTube video last night when Stewart & first responders showed up in the hearing room with half the chairs of Congress empty! Then remember the latest mess the Rs created? Was it the PAST (!) Act (burn pits) and the crap from Cruz about discriminatory/mandatory differences? Untrue, of course - but he got his 15 minutes of tv for it.
The US is not a "Christian" nation and never has been. The country was developed by explorers and settlers for business opportunities for the patrons who furnished the money for the expedition. Those patrons expected a return on investment. Some, like the Pilgrims, did come to America to be able to worship as they wanted. They expected those in their midst to worship like the Pilgrims did. They expelled people they deemed to have "incorrect" ideas. A " Christian" nation would follow the teachings of Jesus to care for the vulnerable and welcome the stranger. Christ taught love of God and love of others as ourselves. That is NOT what I see happening in America. The small percentage of people who operate charities that care for others cannot begin to address our systematic social ills. What I see coming out of Congress and state legislatures is "what's in for me?
You wrote “over 60 percent of Republican voters want to see the United States declared a Christian nation. This is despite the fact that Pew Research Center polls consistently show the share of Americans who identify as Christian dropping” ... That’s not quite right. Republicans want to declare this country a Christian nation BECAUSE the share of Christian Americans is dropping. They want to make it mandatory to be a Christian - and the Right Kind of Christian - in order to be fully an American. Oh sure, they’ll tolerate a few Jews and maybe a Muslim or two, but they’ll never accept them as being Real Americans(TM). Even Catholics are suspect. As for Mormons, well, you know they’re not really Christians anyway.
If you can't convince them with your logic or facts, rewrite the laws and reframe the constitution and your get to round up all the usual suspects and teach them right. The New mantra, a Church on Every Corner. Oh, I digress. And to think that in the 1960s it was the WASPs and Catholic who were the enemy by running all of government with their loose ways and inherited wealth and of real (fundamentalist) Christians.
Great writing today TC. Reminds me of convincing my mom to buy a PC for our business in the early 90’s. She hated it and refused to learn to use it. Of course that refusal meant she was less and less involved in the business. Her resentment was fierce.
Had she lived I have hopes she, like so many in our mutual online communities, would have come to embrace the technology in her later years rather than bemoan the past as so many on the right have embraced.
I’m saving this post for the future. I think it’s one of your best, military and kitty posts aside.
Your best writing yet, T.C. Thank you. I think our country’s best hope is that the old reactionary white men are dying off and will hopefully be replaced with a younger more clear-eyed generation that values all people.
In reading this post, I remembered back to when Bill Clinton's campaign slogan was something to the effect of "Building a bridge to the 21st Century". Progress means moving forward, no? Why is the GOP, in particular the HFC, so afraid of the future? My late Dad, who was politically conservative, always urged us kids to look to the future, and he embraced it (with the exception of cell phones late in his life). Changes that affect our lives are being made every day, all over the world. Nothing can stop those changes. Back when my husband was teaching, he used to tell his trainees that we were all at a bus stop. The bus pulls up and some choose to get aboard and get to wherever they want to go. The ones that didn't choose to board? They got left behind....
I came across this video lately: https://vimeo.com/114022336 Marshall McLuhan commenting on the electronic age, and the possible outcome of nostalgia; on top of the socioeconomic facts so well described by TC. Facts and information hardly reaches people who are going by their gut feelings with nostalgia. And this older generation is mainly influenced by television. What comes out of the "smart"phones era is yet to see. Personally I am most worried about parents not having eye contact with their children, which is necessary to develop the mirror neuron system, for developing empathy.
A meme I saw recently. “Is anybody going anywhere special this weekend to stare at their phones.” I see that everywhere.
I think in equal part to eye contact is the verbal/communication part. Watching people everywhere stuck to their phones is like watching a sanitized version of the walking dead. But there is good news. Last weekend I was at Barnes and Noble. No one was on a phone. People were sitting around reading, standing reading and sitting in the coffee shop reading. Thrilling.
I was in the waiting room of a local medical clinic last week. I took a book with me to read during the inevitable wait. I looked around the room and saw that I was the only one there with a book, everyone else was staring at their phones, The only reading material in the room was pamphlets about various health subjects, no magazines. Either the clinic is cutting costs by not paying for magazine subscriptions, or they are being pragmatic by recognizing that most patients will now be looking at their phones instead of reading.
I use my cell phone to read substack newsletters and comments while in waiting rooms. I have so much stuff to carry (a bag of prescription bottles and a folder of medical stuff, plus my heavy purse and glasses which won't stay on my face when I wear a mask) that it's just easier to read on my cell phone!
Your response makes me feel like a creep, but in a good way! You pointed out that sometimes people have to drag a lot of stuff with them to their medical appointments and I didn't realize that until I read your comment. Mea culpa! Thank you for helping me learn to see something from another person's perspective!
P.S. It was just a slim small paperback copy of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest that I was reading. Peace.
if I don't have my own reading matter in the doctors' offices, I get panicky. but I hate to read on the tiny screen, so I bring my e-reader. but I refuse to spend time going through my e-mails when I'm out and I'll never master typing on that tiny touchscreen. when I try, it feels like my fingers have turned to hams or something.
Hi David. Have you seen "Everything Everywhere All At Once"? Your comment about your fingers feeling like hams reminded me of some parts of the movie where people have hot dogs for fingers!
I don't want you to feel like a creep! I just wanted to own being one of those glued to my phone. FWIW, when my dad passed away back in 2012 and my family gathered...for the first time in years...I have a photo of the four of us siblings all sitting together in the family living room and every one of my siblings had his or her face stuck to a phone! No talking. No sharing. No communicating with each other as we should have been. So sad.
❤️ I know I use my phone to dodge away from tough situations. I sometimes have to leave it in another room to force myself to be present.
I, too, read on my phone. I'm just too lazy to cart around a backpack...
As long as you're reading TAFM... :-)
But of course!!
I've seen that too. I have even gotten sidelong glances for reading.
I've gotten those for a looonnnngggg time, for committing such a subversive act.
Yeah. 'Cause we are probably reading that woke stuff.
I Laughed Out Loud.
I was told that magazines are handled by multiple people, and that germs pass from one person to the next. Not COVID so much as cold and flu.
As the simplest explanation, that makes sense to me.
I noticed that magazines disappeared from waiting areas during the pandemic, due to the impossibility of sanitizing them...and, of course, most people just stare at their phones. I'm often the only person with an actual book in a waiting room, now...although there may be people reading from a Kindle or a Nook tablet.
FYI - I read books on my kindle app - on my phone. Saves having another thing like a book to carry. Also, medical offices did away with magazines during COVID; they can be a vector for viral transmission.
ABSOLUTELY. I have spoken with the head of a school for children on the Asperger's spectrum, and she said that she's seen the effects of screen domination on her students. The incoming class used to have word usage of about 175 - 225 words. Now they have about 50 - 75. She ascribes it to less time with their parents talking to them, looking at them while talking to them.
That would be so easy for those kids to do that.
And I suppose it could be to the children's increased screen time on video games and TikTok, et al....
This is the single best distillation of what the country is facing today. Bookmarking this for future reference. Need to circulate this beyond our merry band.
Circulate away!
Respectfully, I suggest you turn this into a “polite” article for print publication somewhere.
It went straight to my FB page!
Agreed. Gary, maybe it is time for the merry band to get TC's writings to go viral.
athwart
across the course, direction, or center line of a ship
'She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men’s noses as they lie'
__Romeo and Juliet.
What is another word for athwart?
perversely; awry; wrongly
What is a meaning of athwart in English?
1.: across especially in an oblique direction. : in opposition to the right or expected course.
Good stuff again, Fern.
I just can't help myself when in the midst of a TCInLA upsurge!
Had no idea…
Don’t like, but agree, as an old white female, i have lived long enough to know the truth of what you say. I am appalled at the attitudes and actions of my cohort. All unnecessary and a battle destined to be lost. The lies and rewriting history have made people into the propagandized masses of pre-war Germany. Thank you Rupert and your ilk. Weaponized “Christianity” can only lead where the founders knew it would. We all know.
That and military industrial complex. I would like to know the corporate take on House Republicans breaking the economy.
I happened to read an Eisenhower quote just the other day:
"More than half a century ago, President Eisenhower, who had been the Supreme Allied Commander of the forces that won the Second World War, gave a remarkable address. Speaking just before he left office, Eisenhower, the world’s most respected military man, spoke out against the madness and unchecked growth of the defense industry worldwide. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
President Eisenhower spoke of the immense cost of the military industrial complex which, like the prison industrial complex and the foreign policy power complex, chooses power and profit instead of compassion. We must learn that this will not make us safe. Collective wellbeing arises when we govern by wisdom and loving-kindness instead of fear.
Quote and comment courtesy Jack Kornfield
Eisenhower had seen it up close and personal as president. The Air Force started with the "bomber gap" we were losing, which turned out to be the opposite after the firt five U-2 spyplane missions failed to find this vast Soviet bomber fleet. So the generals immediately switched to the "missile gap" that JFK would campaign on in 1960, also "vaporware." When the Laos Crisis started to break in 1958, the Air Force response was they could put a squadron of B-47s in Clark AFB in the Philippines and threaten to nuke the commies if they didn't stop.
Are you suggesting that we might be getting distracted by attending to religious zealots when the root might (still) be the staggering size and power of our military, industrial, and safety and security industry?
Well???? Look at how much is spent currently on the "defense" budget & then the fights involved to protect social security & medicaid. Or just a "for instance" - watched once again Jon Stewart's reaction to Congress regarding the Pact Act that has/had to be "renewed" every so often. A fight to help first responders & veterans - but how quickly every defense budget is passed - even added to by Congress!!!!! Money for weapons & killing machines, but then no concern for the human tragedies - much less for the people in the countries where we "make war"!
Huh? I'm not suggesting anything Fred.
OK. My extrapolating as I thought while reading the comments. Attribution mistargeted.
Ok. I just really didn't have an intent. Just a casual post responding to the Eisenhower information.
Holy cow, you hit so many nails on the head that you've gone and built a house..... As mentioned, this is the best distillation of what we face today in the corrupted mess that is the current Republican Party. It is truly sad to see that so many have no true idea of how the country works, and who are so afraid of the future (one that will in fact be a wonder for the United States).
The best news I can state is that in large measure, this is a generational problem and time will work to reduce the numbers of the reactionaries. Yes, there are plenty of young racists but they are far outnumbered by those in the center and on the left. There is so much rotten plaster that has been laid on the Constitution and must be chipped off, and that is a job I hope to see started in my lifetime. Any law, rule or regulation that discriminates against any member of a minority is inherently unconstitutional and must be removed as soon as possible - and many young people understand that.
“[O]ne of the most striking aspects of modern Evangelical political thinking is its projection of inevitable decline.” This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy as millions of young people have stopped going to church because of the bigoted and hateful teachings of the fundamentalist Christian churches. The decline is among most Christian churches but is most pronounced in the Evangelical branch. Time and the grave will bring us a population younger and more open, and they will take us to the mountain top Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of - not in my lifetime perhaps, but it is coming.
This essay needs to be disseminated as far as we can - permission to post it on my FB page?
Post away!
This old whitey ran for my life too. Not evangelical, but sane Methodist, with a tea party nut on board/
Same here.
This is what I want. Everything they do not want. And every attack against what I want to end. Pronto and decisively. An example? DeSantis attempt of takeover of New College of Florida, a leading liberal arts college in America. By appointing 6 Hillsdale College scholars, Claremont Institute intellectual ruffians, and white Christian nationalist scholars to its Board of Trustees all in the name of “woke to die” with the real attempt to indoctrinate young people to their cause. It will not work but a price is always paid because of willful destruction. DeSantis is the chosen Lucifer of the majority of slavering Republican voters who command legislators because of their dwindling white only discontent against any gender or color or religion difference. It is a beast. Cut it off at the head and testicles.
I send TC’s sizzlin’ essay far and wide today. We must barrel through distraction with a scythe in one hand and a torch in the other.
I, for one, will focus with the Light. With laser precision.
Salud to all compatriots. I hear the trumpet clearly.
🗽💜✨
I was appalled to read of this yesterday in The Miami Herald. One of the comments noted faculty leaving higher education in Florida in droves, and the economic impact it will have on state coffers. This in addition to parents dissuading their kids from attending schools where abortion is limited.
I speak to teachers every day in PreK-12 public education who, for first time ever, are thinking of career change. The pressure on these professionals to “toe the line” so to speak, is appalling. A profession that has always been underpaid and under appreciated is being attacked and scrutinized harshly for any sign of “wokeness”. What a travesty and tragedy.
The very thing that bonds all teachers is the goal of creating community in any classroom under a teacher’s tenure. For any public official or parent to demand the structure of that community to bow to the demands of the resurrection of the “Whites only” signs is beyond any sanity.
Diversity has and will be the strength of any population on this earth.
Salud, Gail. Florida is increasingly rotting outward from its core.
🗽
Sad commentary for education in our country.
❤️❤️❤️
Yes, and we have a shortage of 5000+ teachers!
😭
I know how popular Hillsdale College is among the right wing. It is a small school in a VERY small village in the boonies of southern Michigan. I can't figure out how a person can be a "conservative scholar." How much study does one need to figure out how to be greedy? Or is study needed to figure out how to dress up greed?
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” - John Kenneth Galbraith
Absolutely! That quote was exactly what I had in mind. It's sort of like putting lipstick on a pig.
Greed eventually gets exposed for it is.
Christopher Rufo, one of Desantis’s chosen trustees, fits the TC quote. A superior, racist, closet whore.
Salud, Jenn.
🗽
Tonight Dan Rather posted the following on his Substack - a conversation he hd with Dr. martin Luther King in 1964 about the future of the Republican Party:
In 2023, most people of color and women in Congress are Democrats. Making note of this political divide echoed the exchange I had with Dr. King way back in 1964. At that time, I was curious what he thought of the direction the Republican Party (the so-called “Party of Lincoln”) had taken on race relations.
“Do you think there’s a real danger of the Republican Party becoming the ‘white man’s’ party in this country?” I asked.
“I think this is a real danger,” he answered in his measured voice. “I’ve talked with some Negro Republicans who are very concerned about this. I see trends and developments which will reveal that unless the liberals of the Republican Party take a much more … decisive role in leadership positions, this will become a white man’s party. And I think this will be tragic for that Republican Party as well as tragic for the nation.”
The one thing about reality is that it doesn’t matter what you think or long for, it is there for you to deal with and in the grand scheme of things, either one adapts or one dies out by not adapting. By choosing to stand still or to retrench to return to a mythical, non-existent past, the GOP has chosen to die. So be it…extinction is their only alternative now. And good riddance, but it’s just a pity that it’s going to take years for it to end and the sane part of the country will have to suffer for their idiocy.
Great analysis TC. You mentioned Gov. DeSantis. As a Floridian I see up close his remarkably “successful” efforts to turn our state into a laboratory for reactionary, conservative governing. The latest outrage is his attempt to turn our colleges into conservative reeducation camps. It began with threatening elementary and high school teachers with loosing their certification if they mention LBGT or racial issues. Then appointing Ben Sasse (former US House Rep) president of the University of Florida. His outspoken anti gay history made him a piranha immediately, but, his appointment was forced through anyway. Now he’s gunning for a storied liberal arts state college in Sarasota, New College. NPR and NYTimes have covered this and now the Tampa Bay Times ran a front page article. Read it and weep:
https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?artguid=4e62977a-91cb-43e4-b628-3b1d929ba7ae&appcode=TAM751&eguid=374fe33a-08d4-4e3c-987a-dc3a2b2ba3cd&pnum=1#
I'm curious. Sasse is a freaking piece of work. But is he a pariah or a piranha? Both seem to fit.
AND Mr. Rufo is the origin of the whole "critical race theory" turmoil - right on Faux News. Where DJT picked it up - remember? What a great addition to what up to now seems to have been a very good welcoming school - for everyone!
Agreed, this excerpt encapsulates the problem:
New College’s mission page, which says the school is committed to creating a more “inclusive community” and “ensuring that historically marginalized and oppressed groups are not experiencing trauma and harm.”
Griffin said the passage illustrates the college has been “completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning.”
These folks believe inclusive and welcoming are actually bad things.
Welcome to UpsideDownAndBackwards World.
Yup. What a tempest in a teapot he created.
Yes and unfortunately the tempest has outgrown the teapot and threatens education across the nation.
Yup -- I likely wouldnt have recognized the name but for seeing the UTube video last night when Stewart & first responders showed up in the hearing room with half the chairs of Congress empty! Then remember the latest mess the Rs created? Was it the PAST (!) Act (burn pits) and the crap from Cruz about discriminatory/mandatory differences? Untrue, of course - but he got his 15 minutes of tv for it.
See my reply to Christine above. The Miami Herald coved it yesterday. I’m appalled.
The US is not a "Christian" nation and never has been. The country was developed by explorers and settlers for business opportunities for the patrons who furnished the money for the expedition. Those patrons expected a return on investment. Some, like the Pilgrims, did come to America to be able to worship as they wanted. They expected those in their midst to worship like the Pilgrims did. They expelled people they deemed to have "incorrect" ideas. A " Christian" nation would follow the teachings of Jesus to care for the vulnerable and welcome the stranger. Christ taught love of God and love of others as ourselves. That is NOT what I see happening in America. The small percentage of people who operate charities that care for others cannot begin to address our systematic social ills. What I see coming out of Congress and state legislatures is "what's in for me?
You wrote “over 60 percent of Republican voters want to see the United States declared a Christian nation. This is despite the fact that Pew Research Center polls consistently show the share of Americans who identify as Christian dropping” ... That’s not quite right. Republicans want to declare this country a Christian nation BECAUSE the share of Christian Americans is dropping. They want to make it mandatory to be a Christian - and the Right Kind of Christian - in order to be fully an American. Oh sure, they’ll tolerate a few Jews and maybe a Muslim or two, but they’ll never accept them as being Real Americans(TM). Even Catholics are suspect. As for Mormons, well, you know they’re not really Christians anyway.
Yes, you are right. My point was merely we are becoming less Christian.
If you can't convince them with your logic or facts, rewrite the laws and reframe the constitution and your get to round up all the usual suspects and teach them right. The New mantra, a Church on Every Corner. Oh, I digress. And to think that in the 1960s it was the WASPs and Catholic who were the enemy by running all of government with their loose ways and inherited wealth and of real (fundamentalist) Christians.
TCINLA, you have hit the nail squarely on the head.
This is precisely why I have been preaching for years, "If you want a better future, listen to someone younger than yourself."
Wooden Ships set afire by the Captain and Crew in shark infested waters
“What could go wrong?”
Or “What?, Me Worry?”
https://youtu.be/AdiuqQ7xm30
Not my ship. It’s fireproof against fools.
Salud, Dave.
🗽
https://youtu.be/zMJBA0o9NvA
Just fabulous.
🗽💜
Great writing today TC. Reminds me of convincing my mom to buy a PC for our business in the early 90’s. She hated it and refused to learn to use it. Of course that refusal meant she was less and less involved in the business. Her resentment was fierce.
Had she lived I have hopes she, like so many in our mutual online communities, would have come to embrace the technology in her later years rather than bemoan the past as so many on the right have embraced.
I’m saving this post for the future. I think it’s one of your best, military and kitty posts aside.
Your best writing yet, T.C. Thank you. I think our country’s best hope is that the old reactionary white men are dying off and will hopefully be replaced with a younger more clear-eyed generation that values all people.
In reading this post, I remembered back to when Bill Clinton's campaign slogan was something to the effect of "Building a bridge to the 21st Century". Progress means moving forward, no? Why is the GOP, in particular the HFC, so afraid of the future? My late Dad, who was politically conservative, always urged us kids to look to the future, and he embraced it (with the exception of cell phones late in his life). Changes that affect our lives are being made every day, all over the world. Nothing can stop those changes. Back when my husband was teaching, he used to tell his trainees that we were all at a bus stop. The bus pulls up and some choose to get aboard and get to wherever they want to go. The ones that didn't choose to board? They got left behind....