I posted the message below on ShowMeProgress.com last evening. I think it's time for those of us who support sound science and rational thought to push back against those who bully us into tip-toeing around their beliefs. The reason they are called "beliefs" is because they are something no one can "know" in the modern sense (i.e., having some semblance of proof using scientific methods.) It seems that all the right-wing radio hosts and Faux News puppets have to do is say something enough times to make it "the truth." I've been reading too many letters in the Post Dispatch in praise of Glenn Beck and how he's the only one who is telling "the truth" about our government. Yikes. I'm sure all of you support good causes like the Environmental Defense Fund, Missourians for Lifesaving Cures, etc. And you probably rely for information on neutral sources that use rational analysis. I'm trying to think of a way to organize a public voice in support of science and scientists, especially climate change scientists and stem cell researchers who are currently under attack. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Any other comments are also welcome. On to 2010. Let's hope we're entering a more enlightened decade than the one we are leaving behind (pun intended.) http://showmeprogress.com/diary/3953/just-say-no-to-religious-bullies Susan

Why aren't windmills being made in America? Look no further.

After I choked on my coffee while reading the PD letters on 12/14, I had to answer one of them. (See below.)

I have one question for Ann Ludlow of St. Louis County ("American jobs first" 12/14): Where have you been hiding for the past 10 years? Do you not know that most of the progress Americans had made in the renewable energy industry came to a screeching halt during the Bush administration? Maybe you haven't heard how Dick Cheney invited the oil company executives for lunch and asked them to write America's energy policy. And what happened to the environmentalists who rang the alarm about other countries getting a jump start on wind turbine and solar energy technology? They were ridiculed as "tree huggers" and worse.You ask why our government doesn't have a "campaign to promote renewable energy?" That's what progressives have been screaming about for 30 years. If you don't know who has blocked and fought against every effort to invest in future technologies, just follow the money. The same fossil fuel companies that are spreading disinformation about the human component in climate change are pouring billions of dollars into ad campaigns to convince us that coal isn't really dirty anymore and all we have to do is "drill, baby, drill" our way to cheap energy again.If the Obama administration recommends some serious money be invested in renewable energy, you can bet there will be a hue and cry of "socialism" and "deficits destroying our grandchildren's future." If you've been voting Republican in recent years, you can find the answer to all your questions by looking in the mirror.

I STILL SUPPORT MY PRESIDENT

Maybe I'm just easy, but I'm convinced by President Obama's speech last night that we should give him a chance to salvage something worthwhile from the mess in Afghanistan. I had been one of those signing online petitions protesting the escalation of that conflict. In fact, I've been saying for at least five years that we should have spent at least half of the budget for that war on schools and hospitals. Now we've learned, yet again, that killing people's relatives makes them really mad at us. Those of you old enough will remember "Where have all the flowers gone?" But today is today and it is what it is. The President was as honest and forthcoming as he can be given that no one really knows what will happen in the future. The generals can make plans, but, as anyone who has been in a war zone will tell you, often the best plans are OBE (overcome by events.) Ramping up the civilian component makes the most sense to me. Paying men who say they are Taliban to stop being Taliban anymore sounds like flushing $100 bills down the toilet. Who wouldn't get in line for free money? I'm glad the President reviewed how we got to where we are today and emphasized that the war in Iraq was a mistake. And he did it without naming names or being snide and hateful, unlike that SOB Dick who is still making outrageous comments on TV about our President and getting away with it. His behavior has become almost demonic, and he is being consumed by his own hatred for President Obama. Good riddance. What a contrast when President Obama says he has not given up on the possibility of Americans uniting together again as we did after 9/11. His hope theme continues. He inspires us to pay attention to and live by those values we claim to hold dear. The audience broke into applause when he said that. We should too. I'm glad the President was brave enough to mention that he ordered an end to torturing prisoners and is closing Guantanamo. There will continue to be lots of criticism of the decision to try suspected terrorists in a NYC courtroom. We can balance that rubbish by reminding people that America was strong enough to survive a Civil War and the attack on Pearl Harbor. Surely we'll make it through a few months of public statements by people who hate us. My neighbor's son is a marine in Afghanistan. He was recruited into the ROTC program at Pacific HS because he was just an average student, unhappy at home and wanting attention. He was promised great job training and world travel with a bunch of neat guys just like him. He was supposed to be in the reserves, but that's a death sentence now just like active duty is. I hope he can manage to survive and get home to his new bride. He's finally matured enough to know he was naive to join the Marines at age 17. I don't think teenagers have matured enough intellectually and emotionally to make such life-changing decisions, and, if I could, I'd outlaw recruiting in high schools. If someone over 21 wants to volunteer, that's a different can of worms. I was glad to hear President Obama say that the nation he wants to build is right here in America, not in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else. Lord knows we need rebuilding. We all have talents to share. We can draw way down into that resevoir of optimism that kept our ancestors trudging along through much worse horrors than what we are dealing with now. The enemies that will kill our spirit are not in terrorist training camps. They are right here on hate radio and TV. If we let their hatred for our President and their grotesque message of defeatism win, we will have lost much more than a war in a faraway country.

Published by St. Louis Post Dispatch Nov. 2, 2009

Letter to editor: What was the point of the article saying that Yum Brands, Hersheys and Yahoo made more money last year than health insurance companies? Is there really a moral equivalency between selling tacos and saving someone's life with cancer treatments? Medical care is a vital necessity. Having a Yahoo account is not. There is no comparison, and the article leads readers to think there is. Medical care, just like basic education, should be a public service. Providing public health care and public education does not prohibit those with extra money from paying for private insurance or private schooling. I, for one, don't want my stock portfolio fattened because one of my neighbors was denied lifesaving treatment. What kind of soulless creature would want that kind of blood money?

Smoke Gets in your Eyes

In college, I had a girlfriend who was too vain to wear her glasses. I asked if she didn’t feel like she was missing something by not being able to see beyond her limited sight of about 15 feet in front of her. She asked me if I felt cheated because I couldn’t see around corners. No, of course not. Her point was well taken, and she went on to become a very successful lawyer in Washington, DC.

On Saturday, I went to see Michael Moore’s new movie, “Capitalism: A Love Story.” This morning I read the St. Louis Post Dispatch, including the weekly list of critical votes in the U.S. Congress. One of the notes read “Senators refused, 34-64, to strip the 2010 defense budget of $2.5 billion for buying 10 C-17 cargo planes unwanted by the Pentagon. This killed a bid to shift the money to accounts that more directly support troops and their families.” All four senators from Missouri and Illnois voted with the majority. Why? Because capitalism is about profit, not people.

That is not news to anyone who has paid the least bit of attention to the dismantling of the American middle class over the last three decades. But, as with a new eyeglass prescription, the flaws in our economic system are more blatantly obvious when seen through the lens of a documentarian like Moore.

I knew that the military-industrial complex had a stranglehold on Congress. I knew that the prison-industrial complex created a captive workforce for corporations looking for ways to escape paying minimum wage to their workers. I knew that there has always been a hidden force hypnotizing Americans into believing that capitalism and “free enterprise” are as close to God as any economic system could ever get.

But I wasn’t prepared to learn that corporations take out life insurance policies on their workers with the corporation as the beneficiary. In the trade, these are called “dead peasant” policies, and the tax code is structured to benefit the employer whether the workers die or not. One very difficult-to-believe story in Moore’s movie involved a young husband who buried his wife and was left with over $100,000 in hospital bills. Her employer collected more than that from the life insurance policy on her (which she and her husband never knew about) and KEPT THE MONEY.

We all know that scavenge/hauling companies make pretty good money clearing out foreclosed houses and apartments. Even scavengers have to make a living. But, in Moore’s movie, we meet an older couple who lost the farm that had been in the wife’s family for three generations. The bank/mortgage company paid the couple $1,000 to clean out their own house. With no place to go with their furniture, they burned it all in the front yard.

The movie received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that the title of the movie is never explained. He wonders, “Maybe it’s that capitalism means never having to say you’re sorry.”

Ebert and several other reviewers zero in on the film footage of Franklin Roosevelt reading what he called his “Second Bill of Rights” into a camera. The occasion was Roosevelt’s last State of the Union Address, and, being too ill to give the speech before Congress, he read it for his radio audience. When the speech ended, he invited newsreel cameramen to film him reading the list of rights that he believed all Americans deserved. These included a decent-paying job, a good education, health care and other basic necessities such as housing.

The strange and depressing part of the story is that the victorious Allies after the war wrote benefits and rights into the constitutions of the vanquished countries of Japan, German and Italy that Americans never got. And still don’t have.

Roger Ebert and I are both amazed at how the current economic meltdown is not being blamed on the capitalists who gambled with their investors’ wealth and lost, but on President Obama’s “government takeover of health care.” Ebert says, “That corporations and financial institutions continue to exploit the majority of Americans, including the tea baggers and Town Hall demonstrators, is a story that hasn’t been told.”

I came out of Michael Moore’s movie ready to join a revolt of the people with as much anger and desperation as voiced by the baggers. They have been raped, pillaged and plundered by greedy corporations left to their own devices because of deregulation. They’ve lost their jobs and pensions along with the destruction of the labor unions. And now they are being led as if in a trance to rallies such as the one led by Carl Bearden of Americans for Prosperity in Washington, DC, over the weekend.

The capitalist propaganda machine can convince us that up is down, yes is no and that the wolf at the door is the 70% of American physicians who support a public health insurance option. Is this crazy or what?

Moore, of course, will once again be vilified as the great Satan even though he’s absolutely right that Jesus didn’t ask the sick people he cured whether they had health insurance or a pre-existing condition.
Unregulated capitalism is fundamentally immoral. Allowing 1% of the population to suck up 90% of the wealth in our society and then preach their anti-tax mantra to us is obscene. We don’t stand a chance of recovering anything approaching the safe, secure lives the American middle class used to enjoy until enough of us realize we’ve been drugged into believing we really are “dead peasants” to the corporations that run our country.

Letter to editor of St. Louis Post Dispatch in response to story in Sept. 26 issue about a federal census worker murdered in Kentucky.

Although I am outraged to learn of the murder of a federal census worker in Kentucky, I am not surprised. There has always been a certain undercurrent of anti-government feeling in America, but that feeling is no longer limited to radical groups who hide in rural areas waiting for some imaginary end times scenario. Hatred for anything to do with the work of "we, the people," is front and center on hate radio talk shows and at corporate-sponsored protest rallies all over the country. When radical Republicans like Rep. Michele Bachmann tell people not to fill out the census forms because of some scary government takeover conspiracy, it is only a matter of time before mindless thugs take action. The sad part is that Bill Sparkman was the kind of American we need the most in this country. He loved kids and teaching so much that he went back to college in his 40's to get a teaching degree. His friends describe him as responsible, patriotic, exceptionally kind and the kind of friend who would give you the shirt off his back. But he won't be able to help others anymore. In fact, his shirt was ripped from his back and he was brutally murdered for the crime of working for the federal government. I keep hoping that the rational, responsible Republicans will reappear from their hiding places and condemn the extremists within their ranks. The death of one federal worker may well be the beginning of a horrible chapter in American history. How bad does it have to get before the right wing terrorists in our communities are called to account? Haven't we learned anything from the Red Scare of the 1920's or the McCarthy Era of the 1950's? Until the silent majority wakes up and speaks up, the situation is only going to get worse.

Insidious Mind Control

In the 1950's, my husband's Kansas high school Constitution teacher disappeared. The students showed up one morning and the teacher was gone. The only explanation was that he had been "indoctrinating" the students. The topic had been rural co-ops used for distributing electricity and managing the storage of grain. These are very common in rural America, but they are (or were) also very common in Russia. And there's the rub. The teacher was accused of teaching "communism" to the students. In Springfield, MO, the high school science teacher refused to take a loyalty oath that included the belief in God, or what the local vigilante group defined as God. He wasn't even allowed back in his classroom to pack up his personal belongings. Anyone too young to have experienced the McCarthy era of the 1950's can just look around and watch what's happening to our country today. The irony is that in the 1950's there really was a large, powerful communist Soviet Union whose power reached across most of Eastern Europe.Today, the "enemy" is within our own borders and it's not communists but corporatists. It's almost eerie to watch what's going on today because the movies produced by the anti-communists in the U.S. back in the 50's warned us to watch for friends and neighbors who wanted to destroy America. We were told to be careful because they wouldn't be wearing Russian uniforms or talk with an accent. The "enemy of America" might be living next door or down the block. And we were to report any suspicious persons or activities to the local authorities. Yes, this really happened in the good old U.S. of A. The other night I watched a video of a woman in a wheelchair at a town hall meeting in New Jersey explaining that she is afraid she will lose her home because of her medical bills. During her short comment, members of the audience were heckling her with insulting "boo-hoo" noises. The man who shouted the loudest and who, after the event, asked why she had "more rights" than he did, looked like the kind of guy I'd have a friendly chat with at church or in the grocery store. But something has taken over this man's soul. Just as we were warned in the 1950's that the "enemy" might enter our bodies and control our behavior, something is poisoning the minds of perfectly nice Americans today. Maybe, after the man saw the video with his face full of hatred, he regretted saying what he did. Maybe not. Maybe he's a hero to the anarchists who want to destroy America today. Another young woman at a town hall meeting in Kansas explained that she has no health insurance for herself or her two-year old son even though she works full time. The Congress woman hosting the meeting was not the least bit sympathetic and told the young lady she should buy insurance. What planet do these corporate puppets live on? They obviously don't have to worry about paying for rent, utilities, food, car payments and medicine for themselves or their families. When interviewed by the host of a show on MSNBC, the young mother was asked if she was surprised by the response she got from the member of Congress. She said she wasn't surprised because "The people on the other side of the line have a problem with empathy." Do ya think???Historians love to analyze why some societies are successful and others are not, why some countries win wars while others don't and what part ideology plays in these successes or failures.One popular line of inquiry is called the "weakness within" theory, and it seems obvious to me that it applies to us today. The "American Century" is over. That term is used to describe post-World War II America when we were at our peak of power. We had helped to defeat two major military powers and had the economic advantage for almost 40 years. We invested in our human capital by passing the GI Bill and other programs in support of public education. The "space race" motivated huge investments in science and technology. We recognized the need for full participation of citizens by passing civil rights legislation, and we cared enough about our grandparents to guarantee them some basic health insurance.It was only a matter of time, of course, before other major economies developed enough to offer us some competition. We are not the economic engine of the world anymore. Whole blocks of countries are setting up their own trade agreements without fear of retaliation from us, and we are now the ones beholden to other countries who prop up our materialistic lifestyle by lending us money to buy their goods. It hurts to watch multinational corporations do what they are intended to do which is to maximize their profits. We love capitalism but hate the capitalists. I'm not a psychologist and won't pretend to understand everything that is going on right now. Maybe the people who hate President Obama and everything liberal are wrestling with the reality that the system that supported them for so long in a superior economic position has moved on to greener (or more "golden") pastures. They've sworn allegiance to unregulated capitalism and "free" enterprise and hate to admit that their loyalty was worth nothing more than a pink slip. Although their frustration and anger are understandable, we can't let bullies make decisions for us, especially when the bullies are using hate speech, lies and intimidation to get their way. Children are taught in school to not let bullies push them around. Too bad local school administrators don't have the courage of their convictions when they are presented with an opportunity for a pep talk from President Obama to our school children. He wants to encourage them to do all the things their parents and teachers want them to do - stay in school, do their homework, join community efforts to help others, etc. But a handful of insanely hateful people can make a few phone calls and the school administrators run for cover. I agree that lunch time is not an ideal time to interrupt the school schedule, but where there's a will there's a way. Sadly, the "will of the people" (according to a recent poll on the President's talk to students) has been replaced with the terrorism of the bully. And we thought the communists were going to destroy our country !! The enemy within is much more insidious.

Letter to editor: I was very disappointed to see that the Missourian is revisiting that nonsense about President Obama's birthplace. This is not about a birth certificate. It's about a black man in a big white house. Anyone who thinks racism is a thing of the past in this country must be living under a rock. I am especially upset about the current attempts to sabotage President Obama because there's a good chance my husband is related to him through his Kansas roots. When the President went to the 65th anniversary of the D Day landing in France, he took with him his great-uncle, Charlie Payne. Mr. Payne had been with the U.S. forces that landed in Normandy in 1944, and so it was a powerful experience for him to attend the memorial service for his slain comrades. Mr. Payne is Obama's grandmother's brother. My husband's maternal ancestors include many Paynes which is a common name in SE Kansas. The President's grandfather, Stanley Dunham, and his grandmother, Madelyn Payne, were married just before Pearl Harbor. Mr. Dunham joined the Army and his wife worked at a bomber factory in Kansas. They named their daughter Stanley Ann because Mr. Dunham had wanted a son. After the war, the family moved several times including to Texas where Mr. Dunham worked on an oil rig. When a friend offered him a job at a furniture store in Seattle, the family settled there long enough for Ann to graduate from high school. Old Army buddies told stories of how business was booming in Hawaii which was about to attain statehood, so Mr. Dunham moved the family one last time to Honolulu. Ann enrolled at the University of Hawaii where she met a brilliant, charming student from Africa. In "Dreams from My Father," the autobiographical account of President Obama's early years, he mentions finding an article from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin focusing on the U of H graduates and his father in particular. It was during his high school years, long after his father had left his mother to return to Africa, that Obama discovered the article "...folded away among my birth certificate and old vaccination forms...." (p. 26) The article quoted the President's father as saying that one thing other nations can learn from Hawaii is "the willingness of races to work together toward common development." That was one of the "Dreams" Obama learned from both sides of his family. How sad that the cancer of racism still infects our ability as a nation to "...form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense." The very people who hate Obama for being mixed race are the ones who would benefit the most from his vision of affordable health care, economic opportunity and protection from the ravages of climate change. My mother had a rather gruesome way to describe what these people are doing. She'd say they are cutting off their nose to spite their face. How sad that we are allowing old hatreds to keep us from working together to build a better future for our children and grandchildren. And to think that the powerful corporations are funding the anti-Obama hysteria for their own financial gain is even more disheartening. We are being played for fools and willingly giving up our cherished right to think for ourselves. As the song says, "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn." Susan Cunningham 3730 Sunset Dr.Pacific, MO 63069(314) 550-0866

First off, whatever Sen. Claire McCaskill's salary is, she earned every penny yesterday.She kept her cool and politely listened and interacted with people who came to the Jefferson College Field House in Hillsboro with closed minds, open mouths and the combined nervous energy of about 5.0 on the Richter scale. The Senator bent over backwards to be "fair," so much so that 95% of the question cards pulled from the fishbowl were from her opponents. (Note to self: Fill out LOTS of cards next time to increase chances of being called on.) Those of us who have studied the issue of health care/insurance reform with empathy for our fellow Americans made up less than one-half of the thousand or so bodies in the arena and were pretty much left out of the discussion. So, while I watched, listened and wondered if the hecklers were missing a major organ (brain? heart?) I was reminded of my daughter's very progressive child raising techniques. When one of my grandchildren couldn't have something he or she wanted, my daughter would say, "I know it's frustrating, but you can't have that new toy." She sympathized with the kid's feeling of helplessness but did the right thing anyway. Sometimes it's useless to negotiate, especially when people want something that can never be. I keep hearing a plea for "our country to go back to the way it was." Sincerely frightened average Americans see the world changing around them and feel threatened by it. They want us to return to the country "our Founding Fathers created and the Constitution they wrote," but that's impossible. Do they really want to deny women the right to vote? Do they really think it's okay for human beings to own other human beings and beat them? Do they really want to abolish public education, destroy the National Parks and wait two months for a piece of mail to arrive? I doubt it. Those who stand to gain the most from blocking health care/insurance reform understand the anxiety of reactionaries and play these folks like a cheap violin. Do they really not know WHY the insurance companies make huge profits and CEO's rake in millions? They call it free enterprise, but do they not understand that 20,000 Americans die every year from illnesses that could have been treated if they had health insurance? Or don't they care? Even when Sen. McCaskill explained that people without health insurance cost each Missourian a hidden tax of between $900 and $1200 a year, the anti-taxers didn't get it. The cost of NOT changing how we pay for health care and what the insurance companies can and cannot do to us seems to be lost on these people. The average cost of health insurance for Missouri families is now $12,500 per year. At the current rate of increase, according to Sen. McCaskill, by 2016, the average will be $25,000 per year. What part of "bankrupt" don't these people understand? Fear of the unknown is an all-too-common human trait. Psychologists have even published "anxiety scales" which rate how the changes in our lives can stress us out. Even the good changes like a job promotion or new home carry a certain level of anxiety just because of the need to adjust. So I can sympathize with those who are frightened by what they see as the destruction of our country as it once seemed to them. I felt the same way during the Bush administration when I saw how the media repeated manipulated information in the run up to the Iraq war. I knew that thousands of Americans and perhaps millions of Iraqis were going to die because a few misguided and heartless men in Washington refused to listen to reason. I was one of about 50 protesters on a freezing cold day in South St. Louis when President Bush visited a factory there. We were kept two blocks away from the event and told by police not to block the sidewalk. How different things are today! The president's detractors are invited by Congress members to town hall meetings so they can vent their frustration and be as rude as they want. I keep hearing that there is huge support for real reform, but the silent majority had better start making noise because that's the only thing that gets the attention of the media. And, like it or not, our decision-makers will bow to what the media creates as the "popular will." And please pray for President Obama. The historical record shows that reformers are always villified and threatened with violence. Many of them have paid the ultimate price, but the reforms they brought about made us safer, stronger and better people. If we want health care/insurance reform, we have to demand it. As one health care activist said last night during a conference call, we have to believe that our stories and our individual efforts matter. The alternative is too awful to contemplate.

Dixie Stampede

Thu Aug 6, 2009 5:51 am (PDT)
Yesterday my husband and I attended a show in Branson called Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede.I expected some singing, maybe a comedy act and a horse show, but it was really a well-organized variety show featuring amazingly beautiful horses, cute little pigs, chickens and some really talented humans. I suppose to someone who can ride a horse, the experience wouldn't be quite as impessive, but I give credit where credit is due. Those riders, singers and actors must practice hours and hours to put on such an entertaining show. Most of them, of course, are young so I naturally want them to succeed. The boy who gave us our free Magnolia Blossom drink (cherry juice and fizz) in our souvenir Boot Mug (cheap plastic made in China) had just graduated from high school and will start college in a few weeks. I gave him a tip and wished him well.I've avoided Branson like the plague since it began to gobble up the natural environment 20 years ago and mutate into a grotesque caricature of everything that's destroying America as I knew it back in the early 70's. The first time we took our kids to Branson in 1972, there was just one traffic light in town and a handful of attractions. Life was slow and relaxed. The hills were still covered with trees instead of billboards.But my husband likes horses and I'm just easily impressed, so we decided to escape the 100 degree heat and go to a show. For two hours, we forgot how dangerously close our country is to becoming a fascist state, and we floated the river of make-believe like a junkie on a high. The settling of the West was a perfectly happy adventure with white-only jamborees and square dances. Beautiful Southern Belles moved daintily around the plantation gazebo singing about their carefree life. No mention of who was doing all the work so these "ladies" could pamper themselves.Seating in the arena is divided into North and South. I seriously did not know they were referring to the Civil War. I thought those were just different sides of the building. Having watched on TV recently all the bad behavior at town hall meetings, I was prepared to be outnumbered by Southerners who hate Obama, but "our side" was full of visitors from Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, and Missouri. And "the North" won the pig race, the buckboard race and carried the day in the "pass the flag" contest. So my Yankee blood settled down to enjoy winning the war once more. The final act is a deafening blast with Dolly singing about how much she loves America on a 40 foot high movie screen and about 20 horses and riders decked out in stars and stripes carrying huge flags prancing around the arena. For a few brief moments, I understood the need to believe the fairy tale that everything is good and noble about our history and our place in the world. As my eyes filled with tears, I was carried back to my childhood when I was one of those believers too. I realize now how naive I was back then but also have to face the fact that I've probably not completely exorcised that core of optimism instilled in me by my parents. I used to tell my history students that every generation finds solutions to the problems they confront. I'd like to believe that now, but there seems to be a poison spreading throughout the body politic from which we may never recover.Charles Pierce in "Idiot America" explains that people just don't want to be bothered studying issues and using their brains to make an informed decision. I agree, but I think what's spreading throughout our society goes deeper than that. Being from "the North," I have never been in a position to know how much people in "the South" resent the federal government in general and the election of a black president in particular. In his biography, "Dreams from My Father," Obama tells about a conversation he had as a teenager with an older black man in Honolulu. He told him that whites will let blacks get only so far and then they will "yank the chain back." That may help explain the visceral reaction of so many white Americans to everything Obama is and stands for. We're seeing a convergence of two polluted streams of American culture merging to form a raging torrent. The Republicans and their corporate sponsors will do anything and pay any price to destroy a Democratic administration and Congress. At the same time, the whites who have no one else to call inferior except blacks are blinded by their own hatred and can't abide the fact that this mixed race president sincerely wants to help them. If you notice who rides around with the Confederate flag on their pick up trucks, it's not the middle class, successful whites. If you listen to which governors resent and want to turn down federal stimulus money, they are all below the Mason-Dixon line. Texas governor Rick Perry threatens secession and is cheered by people who don't realize how well off they are as Americans.Of course, entrenched and sometimes unrecognized racism isn't found only in the South. I lived in Cleveland shortly after the riots of the 60's, and hatred ran like a wall between black and white communities. But the fear of blacks and distrust of the federal government has a more visceral component in the South because of their unique history. I'm watching and learning as this chapter of American history unfolds. I won't be around to read what historians write 30 years from now, but I hope the chapter is headed "Barack Obama and the Restoration of Middle Class America."

Why are the Republicans winning?

The Democrats have control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives and yet the Repubs are winning the public discussion on health care reform. I'm watching Wolf Blitzer right now and the next story will be about "Why the White House has cause to worry in their effort toward health care reform." Polls show a drop in support for Obama's vision of affordable health care for virtually all Americans. WHY? Because money talks. It talks on TV, not just in the ads paid for by obstructionists, but also on "news" shows that are supposedly neutral on public policies.

Frank Luntz knows that Americans can be easily hoodwinked by using catch phrases such as "rationed health care" and "government takeover." How can the Dems NOT know this by now?

If Obama, OFA and the Dems in Congress can't come up with persuasive language, let's give it a try ourselves. STARTING NOW !

A healthy workforce is a productive workforce

How many cancer treatments could we have paid for with the money wasted in Iraq on corrupt contractors?

If health insurance companies really care whether you live or die, how come their CEO's make millions of dollars a year? Their take home pay is based on denying your insurance claim.

How can millionaires know what it's like to be terrified of going bankrupt because of medical bills?

Republicans are willing to sacrifice the American people to get back into power. They owe their jobs to insuance company lobbyists and don't give a damn what the rest of us think.

Do you really believe the Robber Barons who bankrupted our country are going to "fix" our health care payment system? Grow up ~!

Republicans want to kill health care reform even if it kills YOU in the process.


(your ideas here)

Notes from and about Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles Pierce. (2009)

What Pierce has done in this book is to confirm that everything Neil Postman predicted over 20 years ago about our society has come true. In Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in an Age of Show Business,
1985, Postman saw how entertainment values were taking over our society and warping everything in the process. He predicted that the transition from the written word to visual images would change how we think and what is important to us.
For most of our history, public discourse was rooted in the printed or spoken word which inclined us to use rational argument and put content in context. Decoding the written word and comprehending it encourages sequential thought, arrangement of facts in a meaningful order and conclusions based on factual information or well-argued opinions. Now we live in what Postman calls a “peek-a-boo” world where an image pops into view for a moment and leaves a visceral impression without explanation or context to provide meaning.
TV is made for entertainment. We watch several minutes of news about murder and mayhem, then a commercial about enjoying a beer and then “tune in tomorrow” as if nothing that was reported mattered.
Postman wrote his observations in 1985. Imagine what he’d say today about the lack of public outrage over an unnecessary and costly war and the shredding of our international agreements banning torture. All that has been done to us and in our name during the last 20 years has been easier than the perpetrators ever imagined because we’ve ceded our right to think critically.
As Postman noted, we don’t need a “Ministry of Truth” to banish inconvenient facts and distort our history because most Americans don’t WANT to know the facts.

Enter Charles Pierce with Idiot America. (IA) Pierce reminds us that we’ve always had cranks and snake oil salesmen in America, and we need people like that to expand the national imagination and force us to see new possibilities. But cranks and pitchmen used to be a tiny fringe element and easily incorporated into our culture. They were amusing and harmless.

Now the irrational fringe has become mainstream. “America has always been a great place to be crazy. But it’s never been this easy to make a living at it.” (p. 127) The rise of IA is a war on expertise, a breakdown of the consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is good. Now everyone has the right to be an “expert” on any topic, and real experts are ridiculed. Al Gore was beaten in 2000 by nonsense (and some clever stagecraft in Florida.) He was accused of things he never did or said, like inventing the internet, but it didn’t matter. Enough people said those things in an entertaining enough way that they became “true” by virtue of repetition. “His depth of knowledge was a millstone.” (p. 29)

John Kerry, likewise, was too educated, too smart and that was enough to smear him even before the “swiftboating” began. Idiot America wants to be entertained. For God’s sake, don’t be boring ! Anyone who speaks to the GUT instead of the BRAIN becomes an expert to be reckoned with. “The GUT is a roiling depository of dark and ancient fears. It knows what it knows because it knows how it feels.” (p. 34)

Aside: Have you noticed how all TV interviews start with “How does it feel to be……?” And how all newspaper articles start with a personal story instead of who, what, where, when and how?

Pierce’s three great premises are 1) Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units. 2) Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough. 3) FACT is that which enough people believe, and TRUTH is determined by how fervently they believe it. Pierce spends several pages using “intelligent design” as a good example of this. Another good example is the “NAFTA superhighway” that never was. But enough people believed there was actually a road under construction, so they got Lou Dobbs to lead the charge to shut it down. They shut down something that never existed and probably weren’t the least bit embarrassed about it.

The modern conservative movement (1964 to present) rode this trend toward irrational populism and were successful in selling everything from supply-side economics (“quack doctrine”) to pseudo-religious arguments as social policy. In 2007, 68% of Republicans said they “don’t believe in” evolution as if a scientific theory is something you can tuck into the fantasy part of your brain. (Aside: these are the same people who don’t “believe in” the human contribution to climate change.)

Pierce mentions how the end of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980’s has influenced the tenor of public discourse, but he doesn’t blame that one act of Congress for the headlong rush to idiocy in the media. More than being the end of a legal requirement to present differing points of view, the end of the Fairness Doctrine also gave broadcasters an excuse for not being fair at all. In today’s market, message success depends on whether the message moves ratings/units. Once a lot of people pay attention to the message and start repeating it, it becomes “the truth.”

Pierce says that talk radio was the driving force in changing America from a debating society to a shouting match. Listeners to right wing radio are not bothered by cognitive dissonance. They hear what they want to hear and are not bothered by unpleasant facts or situations. (E.g., a black city kid gets high on meth and goes to jail. Rush Limbaugh buys his narcotics from a street dealer and it’s “Poor guy. He’s so brave to come to work with all that back pain.” Talk format will eventually move to FM stations as people use other devices for listening to music.

Michael Savage is an extreme example of a popular right-wing talk radio attack dog. He’s all negative, all the time. He rants about his fear of a government takeover of the air waves. But he needn’t worry. Americans have already ceded their right to hear rational arguments and educational information.

James Madison knew that to invite religion into government was “to invite discord and to establish the tyranny of the righteous.” (p. 135) The Dover, PA, case about intelligent design serves as a warning to our generation as much as the Scopes Trial did to our grandparents in the 1920’s. Having failed to push “creationism” as science into the American education system, some folks got together and established the Discovery Institute in Seattle to find a new tactic. What they’ve done is created a “controversy” where there is none and then pressed for the “controversy” to be taught alongside evolution in biology classes. To do this would, of course, be giving intelligent design or creationism or whatever you want to call it equal billing in class. Equal billing connotes equal value.

While Judge Jones was hearing the Dover case, he had to hire bodyguards to protect him and his family. He’s written extensively about that experience, and his findings in that case run to 191 pages because he wanted to save any other judge from having to listen to days and weeks of nonsense surrounded by irrational people who had been deprived of their rationality by right wing radio. As with most “fights” over ideology, it wasn’t really about intelligent design at all. It was a fight over the schools, morals, income, class anxiety and who would control political power. A local pastor summed up how his side came to lose that fight. “We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture.” (p. 145)
And that says it all.

According to Judge Jones, an “activist judge” is one with whom you disagree. (Aside: this is why we’re hearing squeals of anxiety from white male conservatives over the appointment of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. They see the future and they’re pissed.)

It is no accident that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison founded the University of Virginia. They knew the dangers of giving people the freedom to govern themselves. They understood human nature all too well. They knew that fear and anxiety control much of our lives and that there are always opportunists who jump at a chance to profit. “It is not an accident that Mr. Madison listed religion first among sources of dangerous faction. He looked on religious activity the way most people would look on a cobra in the sock drawer.” (p. 166)

The Terri Schiavo case is illustrative here. People can literally go crazy when they are fed crazy information loudly and often enough. People can actually lose contact with reality and go into a kind of emotional trance. Charles Pierce interviewed the people who were nursing Terri Schiavo and trying to take care of their other patients while mobs outside made their job close to impossible. A nearby school had to move its students to a different location because of the crazy people protesting outside the care center. The Congress of the United States took time to try to intervene in the case, and Sen. Bill Frist ended his political career when he “diagnosed” Ms. Schiavo’s condition via a video tape. This is the madness that comes from giving up our powers of reason.

Global warming is another one of these crazy topics. There is really no debate except about whether we should feel guilty about driving our SUV’s. In 1995, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said that there is a “discernable human influence on global climate.” Republicans in Congress, led by Newt Gingrich, convened a series of hearings attacking the report. Frank Luntz, a right wing word shark, in 2002 challenged the science of global warming by damning the scientists. He encouraged people to repeat the mantra that scientists are among those “elite” folks who can’t be trusted. In essence, he set up an “us vs. them” scenario where scientists became the “them.” The Bush administration actually edited scientific reports to suit their own political goals. E.g., in 2006, Dr. Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, had one of his reports edited by a White House operative so as to downplay the human influence on climate change. Dr. James Hansen of NASA tried to speak on NPR but the interview was canceled after managers at NPR were told there would be grave consequences if Hansen was given air time. (NPR, like PBS, is dependent on government funding.)

Why did so many Americans believe the false information we were sold about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction? Why did we choose to believe Bush instead of the people who were actually in Iraq looking for WMD’s? Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and all the rest sold us a bill of goods knowing that Saddam Hussein was a great emotional target for Americans seeking revenge after 9/11. The “reality based community” of intelligence officers, Middle East experts and others were “left behind” in the rush to war – a rush for revenge – the GUT was in control of our decision-making instead of the BRAIN.

In the period leading up to the November 2008 election, why on earth was someone like Rick Warren allowed to vet presidential candidates? That alone shows how far down the road to irrationality we’ve traveled. “While Obama merely bowed clumsily in the direction of Idiot America, John McCain set up housekeeping there.” (p. 264) “The Republican Party and the brand of movement conservatism that had fueled its rise had become the party of undigested charlatans.” (p. 265)

Sarah Palin’s nomination was an act of faith in Idiot America. The more that people were presented with her shortcomings, the more she was adored by Idiots. In the New Hampshire Republican presidential debate, the candidates were asked if they “believed” in evolution. Tancredo, Brownback and Huckabee said no and the hall broke out into cheers.

There has been much discussion about why Americans have become so blasé about torture and all the horrific things that the Bush administration did. What many of us didn’t know is that there was a TV show running during the early years of the first Bush term called “24.” It’s star, Jack Bauer, was presented with a scenario where some enemy of American was about to attack our country and bad guys were tortured to get the information needed to prevent the attack. Just a TV show? Evidently not if you look at the polls showing how many Americans still think it’s okay to torture “bad guys” and to keep prisoners locked up indefinitely without evidence of their guilt. Some say we’ve lost our moral compass, but we’ll never find it without a map to guide us. Can we ever go back to being a society made up mostly of rational people who try to make decisions in the best interest of the majority of citizens? Are we willing to read and study the issues? Not according to what’s happened in our recent elections.

My 20-year-old granddaughter is coming to visit me for my 70th birthday next month. She’s majoring in linguistics and sees the changes in our language as a good thing. Maybe she’s right, but I can’t see the changes in how we think and make decisions as being in any way helpful if we are to govern ourselves rationally. Walter Cronkite died yesterday. In one of his last interviews, he talked about how the news business had become less about intelligently informing the people and more about entertaining them. He advised us to take heed and change our ways if our democracy is to survive. The “most trusted man in America” was absolutely right.

Tune in tomorrow.

The last throes of white men like Pat Buchanan

I've always been annoyed at Pat Buchanan, esp his nasal, whiny voice which rises in pitch the more frustrated he becomes. But yesterday (July 16) I saw him finally squeal as if his you-know-what was caught in a vise. He had insulted Judge Sotomayor and Gene Robinson on Hardball the day before. He had written a nasty column about his hatred of affirmative action. So, despite my counsel to her NOT to give him more air time, Rachel Maddow invited him to spew his racist tripe on her show. She politely disagreed with him and told him he was "dated."

"Dated" as in acting like a total Neaderthal. I can understand why white men like Buchanan are feeling at a loss these days. The era of privilege for them is over. Buchanan tried to make the argument that white men built our country and created everything that's good about the world. I suppose that's why Jesus appears as a Danish prince in many iterations of God produced by white males.

What Rachel tried but failed to get across to bonehead is that of course white males did all those things - BECAUSE THEY HAD NO COMPETITION - duh. And now we've evolved to the point where we recognize that ALL humans have potential and should be given a chance to develop whatever skills they can. We can ALL make contributions to society now. So there.
Grow up and get used to it.

My own family example: The reason I'm a college graduate and fairly successful, satisfied human being is because my European ancestors came to New York State in the 19th century and immediately found good jobs in factories. They never were unemployed because those jobs were not available to black men, let along women of any color. Within two generations, my family went from penniless immigrants to sending their kids to college. And this was possible, in part, because black U.S. citizens whose families had been here for 300 years were not allowed to apply for those good jobs. Do I owe those generations of African-Americans something? You bet your ass I do. My success and comfortable retirement are possible because my grandfathers didn't have to compete with women or blacks for their livelihood. My father and his brothers all had jobs in the textile mills because their father paved the way for them.

It wasn't until 1972 that it became illegal in this country to list classified ads as "Help Wanted Male" and "Help Wanted Female." When I told my students about that, they were shocked. 1972 is not that long ago in the big scheme of things in this changing world. When I was in high school and college and needed a summer job, I looked in the "Help Wanted Female" column. It would never have occurred to me to look in the other column or that it was unfair for jobs to be separated like that. I was socialized to believe that men should be paid more and have more status than women because they were naturally superior in every way. Back then I wouldn't have gone to a woman doctor, and, if I did, I'd get a second opinion from a male doctor before I'd take make any serious decisions.

So move over, Pat Buchanan. The next generation is ready to take center stage. And they aren't really interested in your "dated" opinions.