A dinner conversation that's still bothering me.

[TygrBright]

We were dining out with friends tonight. One of them has been paying attention to media coverage focused on the "why" of white, low-income people who voted for >redacted<.

She told the story of a Louisiana >redacted< voter who was spending time in Yerp, where they don't have "real" news, like, yanno, Faux. And most of what they have is in furrin' language, so her only choice for teevee news was, apparently, the Yerpeen CNN service.

The >redacted< voter had just never seen anything like it. That Christiane Amanpour woman was doing a segment on the famine in Africa. She had a little African kid, rake-skinny, bloat-bellied, dull-eyed, sitting next to her while she recounted the terrible conditions in the famine zones and how many Africans were affected.

The >redacted< voter's take on this?

That Christiane Amanpour was trying to make HER, the >redacted< voter, FEEL GUILTY about the famine. Like the famine was somehow on HER, the >redacted< voter, and it was somehow up to HER, the >redacted< voter, to feel bad and do something about it, with HER hard-earned money that she needed to help HER family and HER relatives who were terribly victimized by the bad unfair system in America that only helps undeserving welfare people and not people like her and her family.

And this friend, the one who was recounting this to me, said that the coverage she'd seen of people like this woman, and the terrible economic conditions in Louisiana, and their 'unique' culture, and the generational poverty they struggle with, and the devastation of their environment and everything, well... it doesn't EXCUSE their woolhat assholery, but it kinda made it, yanno, understandable.

And that just pushed my button.

"Look," I said, "my Dad's family were 'Cadian. Sure, Minnesota French Canuck, but that's 'Cadian, we had oyster stew for Christmas dinner and frog leg fries for 4th of July, and my Dad's Gran'mere spoke 'Becoise more than English. Don't tell me it's the culture.

And we were poor. After he got out of the Marines my Dad had a hard time holding a good job. We scraped. My Mom had to work, in an era when women didn't do that much.

We wore hand-me-downs. We had "cowboy hash" for dinner all too often (Mom used to call leftovers baked in a casserole with lima beans and tomato soup "cowboy hash" to get us to eat it.) We got socks and coloring books for Christmas some years, not the cool toys. We brought sack lunches of baloney or peanut butter, or went home to eat canned soup for lunch.

But here's the thing. Each one of us kids was given a piggy bank. And there was a bigger piggy bank on the sideboard. The 'rents put their spare change in that one. We were supposed to put at least a nickel from every allowance in ours, plus "found" pennies and any other money we could.

And a couple of times a year, we'd empty those piggy banks, and send the money to help kids who were... wait for it... yep, starving in Africa.

So, no. It's not understandable to me."

And it's still not.

But it makes me wonder: When did that stuff change? And how? At what level, did it stop being important for good parents to teach their kids about compassion, empathy, and connection with other parts of the world?

WTF?

uncomprehendingly,
Bright

[elleng]

1. Very difficult cross-currents in this culture.

[TygrBright]

2. 'Cadian? It's no more idiosyncratic than many others.

I think most cultures that hang on teeth and toenails to the language, music, food, etc. of their immigrant forebears end up over-emphasizing the importance of in-groupery to some extent.

confusedly,
Bright

[elleng]

3. U.S. 'culture' was what I meant.

You're right, 'in-groupery' is over-emphasized, and encouraged by repugs who profit from us vs. them, and IGNORANCE.

[TygrBright]

4. ah, okay. Thanks.

Well, the GOP would dead without scapegoating and othering, so of course they try to exploit the milder forms, too.

And succeed all too often.

sadly,
Bright

[Warpy]

8. I grew up eating frog legs in summer

and watching my Irish Catholic mother Kosher her meats, so go figure. No cultural confusion in my house.

I was the most popular kid in the neighborhood when I was six and my Xmas present was the big box the new fridge came in because it took most of the money to replace the dead one. I also got a box of Crayons so I could decorate it. My cardboard playhouse lasted for months and I can still remember drawing the furniture inside it.

I don't know why parents are determined to raise such selfish children, but I do know that it started to happen in the 70s when wages were in free fall as far as purchasing power went and mothers no longer had a choice about going out to work. That's when the resentment of poor people on welfare started, they got to sit around all day and raise the kids while suburban women had to hold down jobs. Never mind how badly one lived on AFDC, there was jealousy and resentment toward anybody getting something they couldn't have any more, like time to do housework and laundry and help the kids with homework and all the other stuff that had to be ignored.

So that made them suckers for Reagan and his "welfare queen" cracks and that simply got transferred to anybody they thought was eligible for something they didn't have, whether or not they needed it, like free ESL classes for immigrants.

It's really ugly and it's still building and it's going to make this country a rotten place to live in at least in the short term.

I'm glad I wasn't at that dinner. "Ignorant" and "provincial" would have been my kindest words of the evening.

[TygrBright]

9. Wow... you just reminded me...

THE best Christmas present I ever got was the year my Dad was working at the department store and he salvaged three big boxes, and painted them carefully: a 'refrigerator', a 'stove' and a 'cabinet' with doors and a 'sink' top.

On Christmas morning I was looking under the tree- my older sisters had more packages than me! Then my Mom and Dad told me Santa had left MY presents in the basement! I ran down to find the play kitchen, complete with a set of plastic dishes.

Damn'.... I haven't thought of that for years.

Thanks.

reminiscently,
Bright

[sharedvalues]

42. Interesting to link it to women needing to work

It's an interesting angle.

[Warpy]

45. It's what I saw. It's sort of the original wedge issue

If you had a little money, you had to go out to work to keep even. Men were also inconvenienced by having to do an occasional sink full of dishes or eat off paper plates that night and they didn't like it any better.

If you were destitute, you got AFDC. Yeah, you had plenty of time home with the kids, but you didn't have anything else, at all.

People who didn't have a choice in becoming a 2 worker household in which no one was around to deal with all the maintenance of daily life were deeply resentful, "wish somebody would pay me to sit on my butt all day." They didn't realize it was close to house arrest, enforced by the kind of poverty that wouldn't allow anything else.

[sharedvalues]

47. Europe gets child care and maternity leave right. HRC wanted to improve it too.

America needs a full year of maternity leave.

And subsidized child care.

Both would help working families a lot.

[Warpy]

48. Expect men to fight it tooth and nail

Damn women already get 12 weeks unpaid leave. Shit, they'd love to take 12 weeks unpaid leave every few years, just get a damn rest like them damn women.

Thinking about women's health and early infant development? Hell, they never think about those things, that's womeh's work. They just don't want to see them damn women get anything they can't get.

[sharedvalues]

49. I'm a man and I'm on-board - and I think you'll be surprised by this generation

A big thing I've noticed is that the present generation of fathers tends to be much more involved in childrearing, and much more conscious of childcare needs.

That's a big deal. We're going to see a big attitude change. I hope we get the big political change to create better maternity leave and better child care.

[Warpy]

50. DU men are reasonably enlightened

but most of your brothers are not. I'm also aware that 40 years down the line, most men are pitching in with the housework without having to be told what to do and them praised to the skies when they've done it. Some progress has been made.

I don't expect to see any new policies covering maternity leave. Most women wouldn't take advantage of it because it would hurt their careers, if they had them, and the rest couldn't afford to be on half wages for a year because their wages are low.

[sharedvalues]

53. I see it really strongly in childcare and splitting duties

So many of my male friends and colleagues get together and talk about the same thing - how to split duties and support each other so we can both get our jobs done.

And you see it in childcare too -- there's an ENORMOUS demand for childcare in cities now. So big that a private equity firm bought the biggest player in childcare (Bright Horizons), raised prices sky high to take advantage of long waiting lists, and continues to operate the firm.

We are in a new generation of working families, at least in cities and in any place where women hold professional jobs.

It's a tragedy HRC had the election stolen away, as she was talking about better childcare and maternity leave. Now we get Ivanka's plans to reduce taxes on nannies. Blech.

[Stonepounder]

7. I beg to differ somewhat.

Typically, when a 'immigrant' or 'immigrants' arrive they do hang on to the language and culture. They speak their native language, although the do learn at least enough English to get by. The second generation tends to be bi-lingual, speaking the 'native' language at home and English everywhere else. By the third generation, they are English only speakers, totally comfortable and at home with American culture and cuisine. Although, they may still have a fondness for certain dishes from the 'old country'. (I still love pork and sauerkraut, and sauerbraten.)

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

15. You have nailed it.

I'm that second generation American born, and although my grandparents arrived here from Ireland already speaking English, I heard enough stories from my own parents about their own schoolmates who spoke English at school and another language at home.

[nadine_mn]

20. Depends on the era - my grandpa was first generation born in the US

And his name was changed to a more Americanized name (Pedro to Peter) and while yes Spanish was spoken in his home, it was clear that they were "Americans now, we speak and do American things" and gradually Spanish was basically banned from the house unless to communicate with his parents.

He raised his family (2nd generation) and there were no traditional Mexican holiday observations, no Spanish at all spoken, nothing at all to show that his family had any Mexican background. In fact my uncles (so 1/2 Mexican) consider themselves white, my mom even considers her dad to be white (but he is 100 % of Mexican heritage, yet since he was born in America he is white?)

It wasn't until I was in my late teens (late 80's) that he felt comfortable embracing his roots. So I think a lot has to do with where and when each generation is born.

[Luz]

22. My Grandma wasn't actually an immigrant, she was a

Cajun from Louisiana. She only spoke the cajun dialect, my dad was bi-lingual and I don't know any of it. They had moved from LA to TX, and had to fit in with English, although Grandma never did. She maintained her own circle of other cajun "immigrants" to the area.

[Hekate]

5. I simply do not know, Bright. Any 19th-early 20th century American novel, just about...

...has American kids in Sunday schools collecting small change and old clothes "for the missions at home and overseas." Laura Ingalls Wilder and her sister Mary were the recipients of clothes and, one year, Christmas gifts, from missions back East. These actions were, needless to say, specifically Christian.

Christians in this country started settlement houses for immigrants and many other socially conscious movements in the US. It's actually a proud part of our shared history.

America was always proud of being generous to other countries in need, and not just after WW II.

I think the rise of "prosperity consciousness" in mega-churches may have had something to do with the change. The idea that God is transactional and will reward you with prosperity and punish you with poverty -- so clearly poor people are being punished by God for something they've done wrong. Ick.

We've (and by "we" I mean all human cultures) always had selfish people among us. But turning away from the rest of the world and celebrating our selfishness? Like electing the Mad King, that's just sad.

I'm so glad you spoke up.

[treestar]

31. My grandmother was loved by the Italian immigrants in her town

because she helped them adjust and so forth.

Our state even has to this date an office for the foreign born - now it is down to like one person, but it still is a state office that helps new immigrants.

The nativism was always there, but most people recall some of their immigrant roots.

[sharedvalues]

43. Interesting to link it to churches who say poverty is deserved

[wryter2000]

6. You captured it perfectly

Wish I could rec this more than once

[PatrickforO]

10. I will tell you how this happened. An entire generation of Americans

has been brainwashed with the very finest and most insidious techniques. How?

Begin with the memo future Supreme Court justice Powell wrote to the US Chamber of Commerce in 1971, which lays out a strategy for 'conservatives' to get the corporate message out through a broad array of coordinated efforts. This is when we began to see right-wing AM talk radio springing up.

Then, fast forward to 1981, when Ronald Reagan slithered into the White House and began busting unions. His systematic destruction of the Air Traffic Controller's union is considered one of the biggest blows to American labor in the twentieth century.

In 1987, the snake Reagan committed a further great crime against freedom; he vetoed the reauthorization of the Fairness Doctrine.

This had far reaching consequences in that it allowed big corporations and billionaires like the Koch Brothers, Rupert Murdoch, the Mercers, and more, to put their Ayn Randian ideas into a systematic propaganda organ and have those ideas echoed through the cars and work trucks of millions of American middle class workers.

Instead of truth, these people now were subjected to a steady bombardment of corporate propaganda designed to make them good, docile consumers, haters of government, and 'rugged individualists' who are ever watchful, and ever fearful, that our government might 'give' away something to people who 'didn't earn it,' because, dang-nab-it, we pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps here in 'Murika, and we're ignorant and proud of it!

In the meantime, beginning in the early 1950s big tobacco hired a PR firm called Hill & Knowlton to cast doubt on scientific findings showing smoking to be a causal factor in lung cancer. These firms, now known as Merchants of Doubt, are hired by industrial clients such as Conoco and Monsanto to put out pseudo-scientific 'studies' that 'refute' the findings of the actual scientific community.

The result of all this: George Carlin can tell you better than I...

.

If you want to know more, here are some very good book titles:
Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States
Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky - Manufactured Consent
Naomi Klien - The Shock Doctrine AND This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate

Good luck to us all. It will take years of resistance to turn this around and dig ourselves out of the big capitalist shit-hole we've been buried in. Why do you think Trump won? BILLIONS of dollars were behind him along with decades of systematic and sophisticated corporate propaganda.

Believe these things, or you are NOT a good American:
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!
Don't give anybody anything they didn't earn!
Helping the poor just promotes their dependency!
Climate change is a hoax!
The earth is 6,000 years old.
We need to teach creationism side by side with evolution.
Women should earn less and stay at home to bear and raise children...
Privatize! Deregulate! Gut social programs!
The private sector can ALWAYS do it better, faster and cheaper...

And many, many others. How many of these corporate memes have touched you? How many have tempted you to believe? How many trolls on this site have been successful in driving a wedge between those who supported Bernie and those who supported Hillary?

[elleng]

12. Right. It will take years of resistance to turn this around and dig ourselves out.

[world wide wally]

14. Excellent post

After I posted my thoughts (below) I scrolled back up and watched your George Carlin video. I was surprised to see he had made some of the same points as I had. if 2 people think of the same thing independently of each other, there may be something to it.

I suggested that billionaires could be the solution because they are the only ones that can afford to do it. There are NO mom and pop media outlets.

Stop hero worshipping Buffet, et. al. and push them to fucking DO SOMETHING!

[annabanana]

33. This is one of the best synopis that I have ever read of "how we got here".

Clinton's "vast right wing conspiracy" was grossly understated.

[Hekate]

51. Remember how thoroughly she was excoriated for saying it? But it was thr truth.

[drray23]

34. thank you for this well written expose.

maybe you should consider making it an OP.

[PatrickforO]

35. I did. You know, the better we can articulate this stuff, the more people

may listen and maybe, just maybe, begin to ask why we can't use our tax dollars for stuff that actually benefits us and makes our lives better instead of being made to feel guilty about any government benefit (with the unspoken but clear corporate intent that that money SHOULD best go to the military industrial complex, because hey, according to the Tea party, the ONLY legitimate function of the federal government is to provide for the common defense).

As I said, I believe we CAN turn this around, provided we can educate enough Americans to it. It's an uphill climb, though.

[Hekate]

52. Excellent, Patrick. I went for just one small slice.

[sharedvalues]

54. Well-put. Piketty "Capital in the 21st Century" is another good addition

[IndianaDave]

11. I believe everything changed with the presidency of Ronald Reagan -

We began to hear about "welfare queens," about unfair taxes on the wealthy, about the reclassification of ketchup as a "vegetable," so that we could use less of our "precious tax dollars" to the poor, and so forth. The overriding message was that poor people in general were just taking advantage of the system. Our well-established disposition to help those in need was challenged, and eventually found expression in legislation. In often indirect and subtle ways, Americans were told that poor people were lazy, had figured out a way to game the system, and had a propensity to "steal" from the rest of us. It was emphasized that those who were struggling COULD support themselves, but they just didn't WANT to. We were told that we had created a welfare state, which encouraged people to be lazy and unproductive. This message only slowly crept into our general way of thinking as a nation, but it did affect many people. And it has been strongly and repeatedly reinforced by almost all Republicans ever since.

I realize that I'm omitting a lot of detail, but this is my perception of the origins of this profound cultural change. Although Republicans generally regard Reagan as a saint, I'm convinced that he created a hateful and judgmental atmosphere in our country, and, effectively set us on a course that would diminish -and even destroy - America's sense of compassion. I apologize for the lack of greater detail, and for the generalizations, but I believe my assessment is accurate.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

17. Yes. It was with Ronald Reagan that things to a sharp turn to the worse.

One of the very first things he did was to fire the air traffic controllers who were among the most overworked people on the planet.

I went to work at National Airport in Washington, DC in early 1969. I soon got to know the air traffic controllers who worked at that airport. Nice guys, every single one of them. But within three years I noticed how rapidly they were aging. It was possibly the most stressful job on the planet. But they stuck with it, because they really loved what they did.

Not all was good in paradise, however. There was the slowdown in 1968, then the strike in 1981 which resulted in Reagan firing the PATCO employees, which disrupted air traffic in this country for more than a year, although that has been largely hidden. And that was the real start of the end of unions in this country. Unions, which brought us the 40 hour work week, paid vacations, and sick time. Notice how those things have been eroded in recent years.

And it did start with Ronald Reagan and his firing of the air traffic controllers.

I am so sick of the "St Ronnie" bullshit out there, the glorification of the third worst president in this country. He's third after George W Bush and Donald Trump, but being third doesn't make him at all benign.

[PatrickforO]

37. Nice post concerning PATCO.

For the permanent weakening of unions, I go back to 1947, when the Taft-Hartley Act (Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 29 U.S.C. § 141-197) was foisted off by the anti-New-Dealers, or as FDR called them, 'economic royalists.' These people HATED the New Deal and worked steadily, over generations, to get rid of it.

But the Taft-Hartley Act destroyed the power of unions in many ways. Here's an excerpt from Wiki:

Taft–Hartley was one of more than 250 union-related bills pending in both houses of Congress in 1947. After World War II, 25 percent of the workforce was unionized (around 14.8 million workers had union contracts, 10 million of them being union security agreements), and with the war now over, their promise not to strike so as not to impede the war effort had expired.
As a response to the rising union movement and Cold War hostilities, the bill could be seen as a response by business to the post–World War II labor upsurge of 1946. During the year after V-J Day, more than five million American workers were involved in strikes, which lasted on average four times longer than those during the war.

The Taft–Hartley Act was seen as a means of demobilizing the labor movement by imposing limits on labor's ability to strike and by prohibiting radicals from their leadership. The law was promoted by large business lobbies including the National Association of Manufacturers.

So, with the T-H Act, we said goodbye to:
1. Wildcat strikes
2. General strikes
3. Mass picketing
4. Closed shops

In addition, it allowed states to pass the so-called 'right to work' laws, which basically give corporations the 'right' to systematically bust unions, compromise working conditions and workplace safety, and drive wages down. So, as we have seen, middle class incomes have nominally gone up, but purchasing power has gone down. Our incomes have, in fact, stagnated for years.

In the meantime, we had the rise of the fiduciary responsibility of CEOs in publicly held companies to increase value to shareholders, without regard to workers, consumers, the communities where the corporations are located and the environment itself. Couple this with the business concept of 'externality' (meaning that if we foul the river but don't have to pay for it, this is considered an 'externality' to our business and we can keep doing that), and we have this capitalist utopia in which we current live, breathe and have our being. Not good.

My grandfather was a union organizer back in the mid-1920s through 1940. The workers ALMOST won then, but have been routed over the last decades.

[treestar]

32. +1

the hateful and judgmental who sit up in their supposed superiority to others and who depend on that for their self worth.

[sharedvalues]

44. Reagan was a traitor who should have been jailed on Iran hostages

Reagan paid Iran to imprison Americans for political advantage. He was a snake and a traitor.

[world wide wally]

13. Ive been thinking about stuff like this lately and can only come to one conslusion

The American people are brainwashed (past tense). They believe whatevr shot Fox and Limbaugh feed them. They have lost the skill of critical thinking and the prospect of doing anything is overwhelming. Most of us are helpless against it and I don;t see any Democratic billionaires stepping up to combat it with media. (don;t even bring up "Air America" who lived on a budget tighter than mine)

We need investment. and we NEED it very soon or we can kiss this idea of America goodbye.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Reagan did this and Bush did that BUT it is the American people that put them into office. It accomplishes NOTHING to point fingers of blame without solutions. What's done is done and we can't change it.

All we have left to do is to fight against it and keep our senses. It's time for blllionaires like Buffet, Cuban and that other guy Obama was hanging out with to step up and make a TV station and media empire to counter-brainwash the public and not just pay lip service.
The medium IS the message.

[raccoon]

21. The American people didn't put Bush into office; the Supreme Court

selected him.

[vlyons]

16. You have exactly identified the problem

as I see it, the problem is a person's lack of virtue and compassion. By virtue, I mean in the classical Greek ideas of virtue being wisdom, moderation, courage, and justice. And by compassion, I mean in the sense of the Golden Rule to "Do unto others, as you would have others do unto you." That doesn't seem to be instilled much in kids these days. In their place, kids get a steady stream of commercial advertising to buy more stuff, buy more stuff, get more money, get more money. Greed is an all-consuming passion, to be followed by anger, when it becomes impossible to make enough money to get all that stuff. Followed by hatred at those others "over there" that are the frustrating cause of not being able to get enough money to buy all that stuff. In Buddhism, we see greed, ignorance, and hatred as the 3 poisons of negative emotions. But try explaining that to those that are caught up in the endless strong emotion of greed. Fat chance. I have found for the most part that they aren't ready to hear it, much less do the work necessary to begin to get free of it.

But I have found that a small reminder to follow the Golden Rule is in everyone's self interest. Because who knows when you'll need a kind person to help you? Who knows when you'll get a flat tire on a lonely road at night, or when your company will lay you off, or when you'll spend the rent money taking a sick child to the doctor, or when you'll slip on an icey step and fall? Those are the times when it would be a god-send to have a kind person to help you out a bit. Just so, it's in everyone's self interest to be kind and practice fhe Golden Rule to be kind to others. Kindness and generosity go hand in hand. Not just generosity of the wallet, but generosity of the spirit. So far, everyone that I've told this tale to has perfectly understood my meaning. I usually end by asking them to think about the Golden Rule a little bit. Because who knows when they might have the chance to play the role of great hero by giving a little kindness and generosity towards someone else.

[DFW]

18. Here in Yerp

We still have some restrictions on what passes back home for "freedom of speech."

Here in Germany, Nazi propaganda or anything that gets too uncomfortably close to it is not allowed. Fox Noise does not have a German language operation. There is a reason for that. Openly denying the Holocaust is actually on the books as a crime (in Austria, too). There is a reason for that, too. Raise a generation of kids who believe it never happened, and you give the mind-set that let it happen the first time a chance at a repeat performance. Today's Germany is a bastion of pacifism, and is as reluctant to get involved in a war as the generation of 1939 was eager to. Neo-Nazis exist here, but are a tiny minority looked down upon by society. We see video clips of Trump supporters in Berkeley beating up women, identified and not arrested. That is NOT what we want here. One Kristallnacht was enough, thank you very much.

Don't get me wrong, it's not paradise here as some choose to believe. The bureaucracy is crushing, and you need ever-increasing paperwork by an overbearing, corrupt state apparatus that thinks it has to know everything about you while enriching its "officials" at the expense of overburdened taxpayers. Stalin meets high tech.

But in between all that, the do manage to teach compassion and internationalism here. High school kids are encouraged to take a year abroad. Anywhere, as long as it's a different country. Neighboring France or far off New Zealand, it doesn't matter. Just get OUT of here and meet people who speak another language and think differently. Live with them, learn from them. No one nation is alone here. "Making America great again" is just as much a fantasy as "Juche" is.

The USA is not devoid of people who think like this. At age 16, I had the chance to get out of my stifling high school and participate in a (then-experimental) program to send a couple dozen high school kids for a year abroad to either France or "Spain (actually Catalunya)." Catalan was still forbidden in schools when I went, so there was no danger of us getting linguistically distracted in school. Outside, of course, everyone still spoke Catalan, and we all learned it to some degree. I soaked it up like a sponge, and still run down to Barcelona maybe once a month even today.

We sent our girls off to study for at least a semester in an exotic foreign land (the USA), and they profited immensely from the experience, as I did in Spain. Both ended up in college there. One stayed (she found a job in her field there), the other did not (she found a job back here in Germany and moved back). One did a summer stint with the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal in Sierra Leone for the summer instead of clerking for some judge, as law school students are expected to do. We tried to teach them there's nothing they couldn't do, and they seem to believe it. One brashly put in for partner in her big international law firm and was accepted--youngest partner ever at age 31 (figured if she could survive Sierra Leone, she could surely do this).

All this was possible, at least in part, because media as propaganda organ here was used to prop up some evil regimes in the past, and the people here do not want it again. We see Putin and Erdoğan harassing, arresting, even having thugs murder journalists. Even in the States now, the man posing as president calls any journalist critical of him "fake news." No wonder he admires Putin and Erdoğan so much. He's their wannabe. Read Göring's statement from his jail cell at Nürnberg. The people don't want war, so you have to convince them that there is an enemy out there that must be fought. To do that, you need to control the media. Whether it's done by State take-over, by intimidation or by money, it's the same goal: control what the masses think. Convince people in Louisiana (or anywhere else, for that matter) that those starving children in South Sudan are not poor helpless wretches but their enemies, and you'll have them telling you why it's in America's best interest should let them starve.

Something else Göring observed (correctly, in my opinion): when he said people don't want war, he made sure he said it was the same in any country, whether a democracy, under communism or in a fascist dictatorship. In all cases the people must be made to want it by artificially shaping their opinion, giving them an enemy they need to fight for some reason. This is why I reject arguments that need to use the words "corporate" a dozen times and blame capitalism. ANY country, ANY system can start a war if their media manipulates their opinion to the point where they think it's a good idea. The Germans were convinced that the attack on Poland was necessary in 1939. The Russians were convinced that attacks on Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 were necessary to defeat danger to "socialism." The USA, despite huge domestic opposition, got into conflicts in Vietnam and Iraq, and was even convinced to close at least one of its eyes while Reagan invaded Grenada (of all places!) and Panama. If the ruling elite want it, there's a good chance they'll get it. Like George Carlin said, they're a club, and we're not in it--at all, at all, at all.

[sharedvalues]

46. Yes, the US media is the problem. Well put.

Also, conservatives actively try to prevent their children from traveling abroad, or even going to public schools, so they can indoctrinate them with lies at home.

That's de Vos's real goal -- destroy public schools to increase indoctrination and homeschooling. 4 million American children were home schooled last year. Crazy.

And George W had never been to another country when he moved into the White House. That is a sin, that helped get thousands of Americans killed in unneeded wars abroad. Since then, he has apparently learned more about other people. Too late for those American soldiers.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

19. The white low income voters you're referencing

have no sense at all that they are part of a larger community. Their notion of community is simply those people they personally know. No one else matters. And so poverty in another part of the world, or even another part of the country, simply doesn't connect or matter to them.

I went to Catholic school for kindergarten and first grade. We collected money, pennies and nickels mostly, and when we'd collected a total of five dollars it went off to Africa to baptize some poor African child. We actually got to choose a name for that newly baptized African child. And while as an adult I'm horrified at the white colonial ignorant privilege exemplified, I will say that it made me very aware of a world totally outside my own, one that I needed to be in some part responsible for.

So my point is that such sensibilities were not universal. Not everyone grew up in a milieu that made them understand that there are others out there who are vastly less privileged, who might need support and special help. Most people grow up in a milieu that excludes the other.

Here's my best example: some years ago, in the early days of the internet, on a bulletin board a man who taught at the University of Pittsburgh posted about his experiences teaching there. He said that many of his students were the first ever in their families to attend college. Many of them had grown up in severely limited experiences. He mentioned that many of them were unwilling to venture beyond the very narrow and constricted geographical area they'd grown up in. They honestly didn't think they could find a McDonald's or a WalMart outside their area. He also talked about a young woman in one of his classes who honestly did not think that Japanese people had existed before WWII. She somehow thought that they'd come into existence right before the war.

I've since met that man and talked about these things with him, and he remains bemused, nearly a quarter of a century later, by the insularity of his students. And yet he understands them.

Similarly, a decade or so ago, on a visit to Ann Arbor, MI, my husband fell into conversation with a woman who taught high school in a community about thirty miles away. According to her, there were still many unpaved roads there, and most of her students had never left the county they'd been born in.

Those of us who post here are, in comparison, extremely worldly, well travelled, and sophisticated. Even with the limitations of our childhoods ("cowboy hash", socks and coloring books for Christmas) we have moved far beyond those limitations, often with the encouragement of our parents. We did not stay isolated, stuck in insular communities. But that's not true of everyone And even people who grow up or live in large cities can be isolated and insular. Quite frankly, people who live in NYC are often insular in mind-boggling ways. It can take a strong determination to break out of the restrictions of our origins, to open our minds to other ways of thinking, to embrace change.

Pretty much all of us on DU are open to new ideas, new ways of thinking, no matter how much we might disagree at times. We need to remember just how privileged we are in this respect.

[Silver Gaia]

23. What a great thread this is!

At this late hour (in California), I have no wise words to add. I just want to let you know how much I've enjoyed reading all these thoughtful posts. Thank you.

[druidity33]

24. Totally agree

a lot of great insights here.

K&R

[ProfessorPlum]

25. I know what you mean. It reminds me of the hardening

And coarsening of culture in South American countries that were taKen over by right wing juntas. Chile, Argentina, etc. I guess that is what had happened to the US now as well.

[malaise]

26. Really nice post

as usual

[kimbutgar]

27. Fox and other right wing media brainwashed people like your friend to become uncaring and cruel

I had a friend who was loving, generous and fun. She started watching fox after 9-11 and changed into a bitter person with an attitude that I got mine you're on your own. I miss my friend to this day.

[HopeAgain]

28. The Republican Anthem

Has become I,I,I...Me,Me,Me,...Mine, Mine,Mine

Our culture, through all sorts of reasons, including the mind-numbing drivel like the "Real Housewives of Whereverthefrig" has engendered a self-centered selfishness like never before. In fact the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" was one of the first of this genera that I remember and DJT was one of it's subjects -- go figure. Capitalism and success has become the only method many Americans use to try to fill their spiritual "hole" rather than through love, altruism and empathy.

Just my highly dubious curmudgeonly soap-boxed viewpoint of what is going on.

[PatrickforO]

38. There's two really awesome books about how we can better frame

our message:

The Left Hand of God - Rabbi Michael Lerner
The Righteous Mind - Jonathan Haidt

As the right wingers say, 'words matter,' and when you read these books you'll find out they indeed do.

I'm in this Noetic Sciences group in my state, and we've been talking about communicating more effectively in a polarized environment.

[HopeAgain]

40. Thanks!

I'll definitely look into them. I'm on a constant quest for readings that help add meaning to my life.

[yardwork]

29. Your post does an excellent job of illuminating contrasting values and ethics.

Some people have good, strong values. They believe in working hard, taking personal responsibility, being kind and generous to others, being honest and ethical. Sounds like you were raised that way, with good strong values and ethics.

Other people have lousy values. Yeah, I'm going to pass judgment on them. They are selfish and entitled. No matter how much they have, they believe that more is owed to them. They don't want to share. They want to get more than their share, even if it means cheating and stealing. They think that's "winning." They don't want to be reminded of people who are suffering. That harshes their buzz.

People with those lousy ethics voted for a president with those same lousy values. That's why they didn't care about all the terrible things he has said and done - they agree with that kind of behavior.

This is a problem for our country.

[jodymarie aimee]

30. Just like our family in Wisconsin circa 1951-1969

Bravo....you are brilliant. We were real Catholic , our Dad actually became a priest in his 40s.....we saved for "pagan babies" as the nuns called them. We had nothing, but we gave.

[retrowire]

36. Lmao

ALL THESE OPPRESSED PEOPLE ARE OPPRESSING ME WITH THEIR OPPRESSION!!!!

That's basically your friends friend right there.

[MicaelS]

39. I blame Ayn Rand.

Her "Objectivism" and its' bastard brother Libertarianism, and the Austrian School of Economics really started the whole mess.

Rand wrote a book "The Virtue of Selfishness". That should tell you a lot about the type of person she was.

[JudyM]

41. Also seems like a self-obsessed distortion of Christianity, or Puritanism.