America has a dirty secret : we’re addicted to hate.
The murder of anti – fascist martyr, Heather Heyer, by a Nazi domestic terrorist is only the most recent evidence of this drugs destructive force.
Racism was there at our birth in slavery. The author of ‘all men are created equal’ was himself a slave owner. Near the end of his life when reflecting on our greatest original sin Jefferson wrote : ” When I consider that there is a just God I tremble for my nation.”
The treason of white Southern secessionists to destroy our Union democracy to preserve slavery sparked Civil War which killed more Americans than all of our other wars combined . Current day white supremacists are rallying now to mask their own bigotry, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia behind that infamous confederate ‘Lost Cause’. They want to re-write our history. We must not let them. Losers and traitors don’t get to denigrate the valor of our patriots who died to keep us all free. We must RESIST this evil revisionism of their noble sacrifice.
But as our own Somerville Tom has correctly noted : ” There are a multitude of ways to preserve the historical record. A common practice for government is to relocate these monuments to a museum or other setting where they are rightly interpreted as historical artifacts.”
As a Gold Star family member who protested against the war in Vietnam that took my brother’s life, I appreciate Tom’s important distinction : ” A monument is, by definition, a celebration of an individual or event. There is a reason why the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. is NOT a statue, why it was so controversial, and why it is so well – loved ; it is because it evokes history and tragedy without glorifying the event. These Civil War monuments were intended to glorify their subjects when they were erected and why they should be relocated or destroyed.”
Odell Ruffin, a 58-year-old black Bostonian who showed up to peacefully protest on Saturday, said : ” Here they don’t have their torches, their shields, they don’t have cans of tear gas. They say they want to make this country theirs. They don’t own this country. Slavery is over but they want it still to continue. I guess it’s one of those situations where they feel cheated that they lost something they stole.”
Unless and until we cleanse our souls of this hate addiction, we will never find peace – as individuals, as a united nation, and as a respected leader in an increasingly troubled world.
Korematsu’s ghost would agree, I’m sure, and would go even further.
?
I believe he is referring to Fred Korematsu, the American citizen of Japanese descent who attempted to evade internment resulting from Roosevelts executive order. He was tried and his defense was that the constitutionality of the order was suspect. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, who held it as constitutional.
I’m familiar with Korematsu vs united states (1944).
I have no clue what bob-gardner’s comment means. I don’t see the relevance to this thread.
I’ve given this a bit more thought, and while I’m not sure I agree that certain structures are inherently more celebratory than others (statues vs. walls for example) I do think a key point is for the generation to tell its story to future generations, even if said future generations aren’t going to like the message. Therefore, the way we rectify or compensate for these monuments that make us uncomfortable is not by removing them, but by erecting additional statues and monuments to people and events we want to uphold so that our generation may tell our story to future generations as well.
So it sounds as though you agree with these sentiments:
False dichotomy anyone? I believe that at this point that these statues should come down, although in the past I’ve had doubts. I think there may very well be more statues to take down after these, and a lot more debates. Those debates won’t be well served by smug and facile comparisons of Christopher to Donald Trump.
DIchotomy? What “dichotomy”?
I hear Christopher saying that we should continue the display of these celebrations of oppression because of their history. I hear Mr. Trump saying the same thing.
I’m well aware that Christopher is not remotely like Donald Trump, and I’m certainly not suggesting that. I’m instead highlighting the similarity of their positions in hopes that Christopher will perhaps notice.
“NO NO NO NO NO.
A “dichotomy” is a choice between to BINARY alternatives. A switch is either ON or OFF. That’s a “true” dichotomy.
A false dichotomy is a logical fallacy that attempts to replace a continuous dimension (temperature, for example) with an arbitrary choice (“TOO COLD” versus “TOO HOT”).”
I invite you to cite my words that offer any dichotomy, false or otherwise.
Simple enough. You act as if the choice is 1) tear down all the offending statues or 2) endorse the Confederacy and Donald Trump.
Of course, there is a lot of middle ground. People have been arguing that it makes more sense to contextualize the statues rather than to erase history. I used to agree with them, but at this point I am more inclined to go with option 1.
But there is a continuum which you choose to ignore.
I think the dichotomy you describe is your own, I haven’t offered it.
You asserted this dichotomy in response to my observation that the opinion offered by Christopher was very similar to the opinion offered by Mr. Trump.
That’s an observation. Disagree if you like, but it’s not a “dichotomy”.
I’m not sure I would have put it quite that way, especially if I had dug myself a hole as deep as he has, but I am chagrined as a historian by the knee-jerk iconoclasm.
I partially agree; in general I’d remove the old ones. Maybe not directly, whenever a new statue goes up (Sorry Mayor Curley!), but more often than we do now.
So the statues erected during the civil rights era, in order to celebrate opposition to civil rights legislation, are preferable to those that celebrate the false “lost cause” narrative erected while the Jim Crow laws were being passed?
I think these statues are as offensive as the Confederate flag, and belong in the same museums. I think they do NOT belong in public places where they send their unmistakable message to new generations of Americans.
I don’t want young people attending “J.E.B. Stuart High School”, and I don’t want them walking past statues of Robert E. Lee on their way to school.
I think Christopher was talking more generally, not Confederate statues in particular.
Nobody is proposing the removal of statues or monuments in general.
We are discussing whether or not monuments to the Confederacy should be removed.
Among the statues removed was one of Roger Taney, who wrote one of the worst, most racist decisions of the Supreme Court, but who stayed loyal to the Union.
That decision showed he sided with white supremacy over the Union. He also persistently sided with Confederate sympathizers like in ex parte Merryman.
I am saying we need to treat the Confederacy the way Germany treats Nazi Germany. With zero commemoration or reverence and maximum condemnation. It’s a uniquely evil part of our history that is distinct from other injustices.
Columbus Day is a mixed bad since it’s history was one of honoring Southern European and Catholic contributions to this country at the height of prejudice against those immigrants. Of course the holiday name should be changed, but it should be done in a way that affirms the population that created it with noble aims as well as removing offense to the population he butchered.
There is no similar both sides dichotomy to the South. Stonewall Jacksons great great great grandsons condemned their ancestor and his monuments in the starkest terms. If they can recognize their direct lineage was wrong-so can the rest of us. The only white southerner on our pages is Tom and he’s appalled at how this history was abused and misinterpreted in his own lifetime to keep blacks separate and unequal. We should remember that always.
I agree with your characterization of Taney, I think it’s fine to take away his statue. I only mentioned it because his statue doesn’t fit Tom’s definition.
We shouldn’t honor those whose decisions, like the Dred Scott decision, or the Korematsu decision, or Plessy v Fergueson set back the cause of human freedom.
I would include in that category the judges who gave us Buck b Bell.
The New Deal and winning WWII make up for FDRs lousy record on internment. Using that standard nobody but Mr. Rogers, St Francis, or Christ himself should get a statue. FDR was easily our best or second best president and it’s doubtful any leader would’ve made a different decision at that time. You’d also have to declare Justice Douglas, Jackson, Black anathema along with future Justice Warren who authored that directive as Governor and later led the most liberal court in the country.
This is like saying we should blow up the Lincoln Memorial since he used the n and favored colonization and a soft reconstruction. All terrible and racist ideas-but the man freed the slave son when no one else was capable of leading the war to do so.
It’s doubtful FDR interns Americans if WWII never happened, it’s doubtful Lee or Jackson, or any other traitor, would have ever given up slave owning were it not for the Civil War.
If it was your family that was interned in a concentration camp you might not be so cavalier.
“Your experience is not universal.”
That’s a fair point, and the Memorial should mention that shameful episode, which it did not when I visited it ten years ago. I do think the contexts of the decisions are different.
Betraying the Union to keep people in bondage is on a vastly different scale than unlawfully interning American citizens and confiscating their property as a lesser evil during a time of war hysteria against legitimately evil foes. And the rationale FDR uses was to protect Japanese Americans from reprisals, a wrong rational, but on a vastly different scale than killing your fellow Americans to own your fellow Americans.
Lastly, unlike slavery, there have been official presidential apologies and even a system of reparations and compensation.
And given the length of his tenure, hardly the only decision he authored. Yes, Dred Scott was terrible even by contemporary standards, but let’s look at the whole record.
Can you point to a single decision that is worthy? That decision was unconstitutional even by the standards of that time.
Not off hand, just pointing out that when you are CJ for almost 30 years you’re bound to write lots of opinions, probably a fair number of good ones.
See and I fail to share the umbrage at having to walk past a statue of Lee. Is he like Medusa or the basilisk in Harry Potter that makes anyone who lays eyes on it turn to stone? If anything, if I saw what looked like a historic statue, I’m likely to cross the street or enter the park to get a closer look. I guess that’s just the kind of thing that catches my eye.
You are not an oppressed black living Baltimore, New Orleans, or Charlottesville. Your experience is not universal.
Of COURSE you “fail to share the umbrage …” — you’ve spent your entire life as a middle-class white male.
If you want to understand the “umbrage”, then you have to actually LISTEN to the voices of those whom these monuments were created to oppress.
They get the message of these monuments loud and clear, even after 120 years — even if you don’t.
I’m enough of a historian to understand the message and context. I would prefer to allow previous generations to present their message even if it makes people uncomfortable and supplement it with additional monuments to tell our generation’s story and convey our values. Statues themselves do not hurt or oppress anyone. We need to focus on things that actually do that like too often the criminal justice system. I’ve heard and read the arguments for removal, but I am entitled to my opinion as well.
I strongly dispute that and it terrifies me you might be teaching children, especially black children, the nonsense you learned as a kid. You wouldn’t pass the MTELs today with your quasi endorsement of the Lost Cause narrative. You can’t be objective about something objectively evil.
It’s obvious you have zero familiarity with the last 35 years of Civil War historiography. You have zero black friends or family members who have educated you on their pain, and have read no first person primary sources from black witnesses to the conflict, or grappled with any secondary or tertiary sources from black authors. This is ok, a lot of people learn bad history in elementary and high schools. A lot of people carry that bad history to college-that doesn’t make it real or accurate.
Even Ken Burns token good old boy Shelby Foote argued against monuments to these men. Even Robert Penn Warren. And so did Moon Landreiu in a beautiful speech you didn’t bother to read or engage with when I linked to it. You’re just as gullible and closed minded as the President on this issue. You’re certainly shaming your heroes the Clinton’s with this flawed history.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong again! I took AP US history and college history courses where we studied several primary sources. You are wrong about what I have read, wrong about whom I have heard from, and wrong about my ability to discern what is believable and accurate. I’m fairly certain I have yet to make a factual error in these discussions.
I passed the MTELs a few years ago in part by REJECTING the premise that the Civil War was really about anything other than slavery, thank you very much! What nonsense do you think I learned as a kid – that the South was justified in secession or that slavery was OK? HOGWASH! Slavery and secession were never presented as anything other than treason for all the wrong reasons. I have NEVER argued that either was morally acceptable, just that it happened and we would do well not to try to erase it.
The “message” I’m talking about is not a dry historical treatise that you learn in school, take tests about, and then teach to others.
The message of these monuments is precisely the same as the message of the nooses left on a playground, in a firehouse in FL, or outside an Alabama church.
It is the same message that white supremacists sent when they carry torches in Charlottesville. It is the message communicated by the swastika in America of 2017. Do you also regret that the “cute” little “lawn-boys” have been removed from most homes?
Your argument that “statues themselves do not hurt or oppress anyone” is a vacuous as the exactly parallel argument that “guns don’t kill, people do”.
It is the same tone-deaf stance that sees no harm in flying the Confederate flag from government buildings.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion. Nevertheless, it is an opinion that many find frankly repulsive.
I reject the premise that statues designed to tell a historical story are the same as nooses that clearly say we would like to lynch you. The latter is a direct threat of physical harm. I’m not completely sure of what the lawn boys are, but I think they are racist characatures with no historical relevance. Yes, I am in fact trying to stick to what you call dry history while making it a bit more visible than just to those who will open a textbook.
@ “designed to tell a historical story”: I don’t understand your attachment to this canard.
The “historical story” these statues were designed to tell is a racist lie. There is nothing “historical” about it, other than as another manifestation of brutal racism.
The “historical story” of the Robert E. Lee statues is EXACTLY the same as the message of the nooses and of the Nazi flags held high. That is WHY American Nazis and KKK so passionately oppose the removal of these statues.
I’m serious about this — did your academic courses teach you about the ACTUAL history of these monuments? Did they convey the specific details of when and where they were erected and by whom? Did they include the commemoration speeches now being published?
Because unless you are a closet racist —: and I am quite certain that you are not — then either you seriously misunderstand this history or, more likely, it was never taught.
I encourage you to read this account, by high school teacher in Charlottesville, of how his stance towards this changed (emphasis mine, and I apologize for its length):
I linked to the same piece above and it’s really good. He definitely uses a lot of the same language Christopher is, but realizes why that approach was wrong. Effective historians and history teachers change their historiography as new facts and perspectives shape it. I can’t emphasize that enough-it isn’t personal but your pedagogy needs updating.
I’m just interested in teaching facts and making sure there are ways for the public at large to know some very basic history. There is a place for historiography of course, but when I see surveys with cringeworthy numbers regarding how many people can date the Civil War to the correct half century, I’ll take all the help I can get. I’m also leary about how much we impose our values on past eras. I was taught, and agree, that history is best understood through the eyes of those who lived it. This doesn’t mean we can’t say that something is wrong as slavery obviously was, but for us to presume we share values and assumptions is always risky.
I do think each community must take into account the context of the statue in deciding what to do with it, but if there is a course specifically on this history of monuments, no I did not take that. What I did take were plenty of instruction, not to mention lots of my own reading, about the people and events they were designed to spotlight in the first place. In other words, if there is a statue of Robert E. Lee, for me the point is to talk about the Civil War, and I have said that reinterpretation may be appropriate. By all means say in the materials or on the plaque why it was erected, but also say who he was and what he did, especially if there is a lesser-known local connection. I see statues erected before our time in a sense as time capsules, a window into the thoughts of those who came before us, yes, at the risk of us not liking what those thoughts were. Empty pedestals aren’t nearly as aesthetically pleasing either. There is a West Wing clip I was trying to find when Abbey responds to a historical controversy regarding the vermeil by basically saying for better or worse, it’s our history.
That’s like saying I fail to take umbrage at these neo-Nazis cause I’m not a Jew. Which is exactly what the President is saying. Tom is not unfair to make the comparison.
That’s actually exactly my point. I’m not a Jew either, but I do get more upset my Nazism because it was so much worse and Godwin has gotten quite the workout this week. Repeat after me:
Slavery was not the Holocaust
Davis and Lee were not Hitler
The Southern Cross is not a Swastika
The CSA was not the Third Reich, and most importantly…
PLANATIONS WERE NOT OVENS AND GAS CHAMBERS
If we insist on making this personal then I am Welsh on my father’s side and Scottish on my mother’s side. By my count that’s two historic reasons I should hate the English. In fact, one of my own ancestors has the dubious distinction of being the last person to lose his head in the Tower of London, on account of his role in the Jacobite Risings. Yet as you know I tend to be a bit of an Anglophile and I’m not going to recoil at statues of either Edward, the Black Prince or Edward I Longshanks who as you may know did quite a number on the Welsh and Scots respectively.
FWIW, African-American opinion on this is not unanimous either.
I strongly recommend reading Moon Landrieu’s speech and engaging with it, and reading this history teacher who thought like you and changed his mind after visiting ex-communist states.
The ADL came out against the statues as have the SPLC and the NAACP. Three groups people of decency shouldn’t be on the opposite side of.
My former boss lost a side of his family in anti-Jewish pogroms and made the direct link between Nazis and the Confederacy in his editorial in the Forward denouncing Jewish supporters of Trump for their silence.
Lastly, the hate groups themselves frequently fly both flags side by side. Many of the monuments explicitly say they were erected to uphold white supremacy and many of them are in Northern or Western states that didn’t secede, but did have variations of Jim Crow laws.
My wife and I saw a yahoo with a Confederate flag flying off his truck driving through downtown Naperville. A community outside of Chicago that despite its proud abolitionist past had segregated schools, pools and water fountains until the Civil Rights era. I treated it like a noose on a tree because it’s a threat to my mixed race family.
I get that there are many who disagree with me whom I respect. There are lots of groups I generally favor, but do not agree with on every detail of every stance. As for the “yahoo” flying the flag, I assume you didn’t engage in dialogue with him about why he flies it? I also get the flags now have been co-opted together, but I refuse to concede to that, which in my mind is basically saying that side’s interpretation is right.
I generally don’t engage in dialogue with people who believe my marriage should have stayed illegal and people my wife’s shade should have stayed slaves. He had a cut off T and a gun rack-I’m not that courageous.
Yeah, the cutoff T and gun rack might have made me reconsider too, but my point is there’s always a chance of a personal backstory or something and he may think your marriage is just fine and dandy, but you’ll never know for sure if you don’t ask. I doubt you’ll find much actual support for continued slavery even if you limited your sample to people displaying that flag.
Why do you think I have not read Landreiu’s speech? I did earlier this week and respectfully disagree. I believe the teacher’s account is the one Tom quoted above at length, and that’s all well and good – a valid perspective and certainly understandable while people still living remember the time.
On those terms, then, they can keep their statues of Lee, Jackson, etc…. just so long as they also take the pains to find every tree… or the location where a tree once stood… from which a black body was once hung… and tell those stories also. Every auction house and slave trading warehouse, too…
And they can stop defacing memorials to Emmett Till.
And you, Christopher, can stop giving them permission to have it both ways…
I absolutely think there can and should be memorials to the victims of lynchings and slavery, and yes, people should stop defacing memorials to Emmitt Till.
A monument to Lee is an afront to Till and every other black men who died at the hand of people clutching Lees memory.
The monument Montana (nowhere near the South!) just removed said “to the glory of the men who defended white supremacy”. Their own words give their intention away.
Since you value the words of Robert E Lee over the perspective of any living or dead African American here is what the traitor thought about the Lost Cause:
numents, writing in 1869 that it would be wiser “not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife.”
Yeah, sounds like the MT one you describe should come down. Ironically, Lee’s quote seems a point in favor of at least honoring HIM.
As someone recently said, there is a reason there are no monuments to Hitler in Germany. (But there are plenty of such in historical museums in Germany.)
Of course monuments are different. They are an expression of those persons and ideologies that any society reveres.
And as I have repeatedly said, Hitler is in a class by himself, though a small marker at his birthplace as a matter of historical interest would be fine.
It’s not just Hitler.
I don’t think you understand how many minor Confederate “heroes” are celebrated, and how few of these statues (as in NONE) exist in Germany and Austria.
” There are no good Nazis, white supremacists, anti-Semites.” James Murdoch, CEO FOX
after donating $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League
Excise me. Murdoch? One billion would be a start.
LBJ said : ” I’d rather have ’em inside the tent pissin’ out than outside the tent pissin’ in”. 🙂 It’s a start.
He seems a lot more liberal than the old man, unplugging Fox News would be a far more meaningful gesture though. His family has made billions off of 24/7 racist propaganda on Fox News.
Jefferson speaks to us from his grave : ” What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance.”
He might want to explain that to some of his on-air talent.
Yes, but you are echoing their arguments!
OK, I downrated you before realizing you uprated me, so maybe I could have held back, but please take some breaths before accusing me of actually defending these folks. I would of course do nothing of the sort which certainly you know from our discussions regarding Trump voters. I guess I’m doing a horrible job making myself clear- maybe it’s the limitations of the blog medium – but I am defending monuments from an entirely different angle and want absolutely nothing to do with the haters.
I am saying I think they have killed that arguments validity. Read the Atlantic piece I linked to and an argument that made sense back in 2005 doesn’t make sense now that these folks are shooting up churches and killing pedestrians. Any validity my side could concede to your insistence on neutrality went out the window when these folks appropriated these symbols.
The Cambridge YMCA once had swasitikas in its pool tiles since it was built in 1910 back when that was a symbol of good luck, and they removed it. That symbol is not intrinsically a symbol of hatred, but the Nazis co-opted it and ruined it forever.
Same with the Stars and Bars and Confederate imagery. I have no problem honoring the foot soldiers who died, for instance I would maintain the George’s Island marker to the dead, but I would return the existing marker back to the Daughters of the Confederacy and replace it with an MHS marker without any dated language or Lost Cause iconography, including the flag they fought for. German WWII veterans are entitled to burial with full military honors like ours, but they are buried with the modern German flag-NOT the Nazi flag.
Russian WW2 soldiers are buried with the Russian tricolor and not the communist flag. When regimes die their imagery and symbolism dies with them. Keep them in a museum-but do not dignify them with public displays.
And see, I think we distract ourselves when we get all worked up over symbolism, especially when we concede to the interpretation of the haters. The co-opting of the statues as rallying points is if anything further reason to push back and say we will not let you do that to a significant historical narrative. I have no patience for Lost Causers and until recent years rolled my eyes and cringed at what I thought was THEIR attempt to refight the Civil War, but now there’s a lot of winners rubbing it in too. I could have taken or left the Cambridge Y decision I think.
We’re not addicted to hate. We’re just too easily fooled as to who to hate.
As LBJ said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Republicans use this strategy to fill their coffers.
Democrats take a slightly different approach, but both parties at too many levels, refuse to tell the voters that the reason they can’t have health care, a sustainable wage, a comfortable retirement is but the wealthy class. Both parties are deeply dependent on the wealthy class. Citizens hate their surroundings and are angered. They do not know who to blame, who to hate.
Republicans tell their underpaid citizen voters that their plight is the result of Mexicans stealing their jobs and lazy blacks taking all the welfare and health care. So, underpaid Republican citizen voters lash out against the aforementioned and vote Republican.
Democrats tell a different tale, one of “technology change” and “global economies” with a nebulous enemy that offers no clear target to hate and even self hate for not being smart enough of skilled enough….
I would agree with you that the Democrats are reluctant class warriors, but both parties don’t stoke the same kind of cultural hatred. I’d rather vote against my class for a Booker than with my class for a racist like so many socially liberal Republicans do. A totally untenable bargain now that Trump crosses the Rubicon.
There is a cultural hatred in the Democratic Party. It’s not as obvious, but it’s there. There is the assumption, for example, among feminists in the party that any woman who wants to stay home, raise a family, and let her husband do the “career” thing is simply an uninformed, uneducated, unenlightened rube. While not quite “hate”, the condescension yields the feelings of those targeted.
There is the same condescension felt by the working class who are told over and over by the party that they are simply not bright enough of skilled enough as the professional class that runs the party, and as such, do not deserve a respectful and sustainable wage.
I will never forget a Democratic Party Christmas Party I was at two years ago where I asked about a dozen people at a table if the woman working at the drive up window at the donut shop or the guy working as a cashier at the convenience store deserved a sustaining wage, and NO ONE said yes. They all said that “those people” need to improve their education, their skills “and work as hard as I have”….in order to make a sustainable wage.
Expecting anyone in the USA to work 40 hours a week and not receive a sustainable wage is not a demonstration of love, it is a example of indifference, equally damning as hate.
This is the kind of stuff that drives me crazy about your commentary.
The “condescension” you cite, when it exists, has nothing to do with Democrats. Some women who work look down on women who don’t. Some women who have babies look down on women who don’t. Some Christians look down on people who aren’t Christian.
You are once again smearing the entire party based on your personal life history. A personal life history, I might add, that by your own telling includes LONG periods when you affiliated with other parties.
Anyone who thinks they can spend a lifetime working as a cashier at Dunkin Donuts and also own a house and car and live a middle-class life is delusional.
Like it or not, there ARE “transitional” jobs that people do for short periods while figuring out something else to do. Men and women who want to make a career in places like Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, and whatever are well-advised to take advantage of the training programs those companies offer so that they be promoted — to roles like “shift supervisor”, “manager”, and so on. Even Walmart offers “Walmart Academy.
I invite you to share what you think that sustainable wage should be for the Dunkin Donuts cashier. Then tell us where you suggest that man or woman attempt to live.
Comments like this convey a greatly exaggerated sense of entitlement.
One could also argue defending poverty wages for those working in those jobs is a similar sense of entitlement-one very common to your responses.
I happen to like you both personally and think you frequently bring out the worst aspects of your respective camps within our party when you engage with one another. The smug Clinton supporter safe in a job that can’t be automated or outsourced and the leftist who’s so far left on class he begins to start sounding right on cultural issues which are at their core-civil rights issues that can’t be negotiated away.
I’ll have a bigger piece on this in its own thread, but I think those of us on the left of the party have to recognize that racism and sexism played a much bigger role in Trumps support than we want to admit. I think those of us closer to the center also have to recognize that running the stale Clinton playbook in a second time will only serve re-elect the most overtly racist President since Wilson.
No doubt she, or a candidate like her, would win the popular vote in a walk. Maybe by a bigger margin. But the electoral college overvalues the very lily white pockets of deindustrialized despair Trump stole from their historic political home.
Anyone making the drive I did from Chicago to Boston would encounter almost zero cities or regions thriving due to the global economy on that route. Pit stops in Toledo, Buffalo and Utica showed a parade of closed out factories, openly addicted opioid users begging for cash in the middle of the day, and working class white businesses and workers competing with immigrants and refugees for the scraps. If that’s your only world-of course your gonna believe the fuck the system candidates no matter what they are saying. And only those places made the racist Trump President and only those places can replace him with a Democrat committed to working people and racial harmony alike.
@jconway: I said nothing about Ms. Clinton or the 2016 campaign. I am a 65 year old programmer. I am most certainly NOT “safe in a job”, never have been. I am a gray-beard in a field dominated by 20-something men.
I am responding to words like this:
This is absolute, Rush Limbaugh-style rubbish. I don’t know the author of these words, I can only respond to what he writes here. THESE are the words of a uptight sexist white male who demonstrates ZERO actual experience with actual feminists or working women.
This comment repeats for the umpteenth time the Rush Limbaugh LIE that the Democratic Party tells ANYBODY that they “are simply not bright enough of skilled enough as the professional class that runs the party, and as such, do not deserve a respectful and sustainable wage.” That is an absolute lie, and this commentator repeats it over and over again.
I frankly do not believe that the “Christmas party” vignette happened as described. I strongly suspect that those “dozen people at a table” have a VERY different view of what they said and of what the commentator said.
I do not and have not ever defended “poverty wages for those working in those jobs”. The $15/hour wage promised in MA years from now is $30K/year for someone able to work 50 weeks at 40 hrs per week. Even Ms. Warren’s $22/hr wage translates to $44K/year.
Those wages are NOT going to provide a middle-class lifestyle anywhere in eastern MA for any significant number of people.
We are lying to ourselves and our children if we tell them that they can live middle-class lifestyles without education and skills. The problem we face right now is that young people WITH education and skills can’t earn a living — the answer to that most certainly is NOT to oppose education and training.
I know of NO Democrats who “embrace the trickle-down Kool Aid” — I certainly do not.
I’ll tell you point blank that a $22/hr minimum wage will do absolutely NOTHING to address the wealth concentration disease that is destroying our culture. The ONLY thing that will do that is strong and effective government intervention to tax extreme wealth (such as generation transfer taxes) and distribute that wealth back to the rest of the economy.
And speaking of “discredited economic theories we were taught in undergrad” — surely it is time to stop talking about the “new new middle”.
There IS NO “middle”. Well over half of American families are one paycheck away from the poverty line — there is NO security in that. The halcyon days of “Father Knows Best” were fictional creations of night-time television, and the reality middle-class life in the 1950s through 1970s is ABSOLUTELY out of reach for all but the wealthiest 5%.
We must make college as accessible to our young people as high school is today. We must make top-notch post-HS vocational schools as accessible to our young people as secondary-school vocational education is today.
That’s not “trickled-down” or some “discredited economic theory”, that’s a factual observation of what has to happen.
Johntmay opposes that (I strongly suspect that such a proposal is the conversation that actually took place at the Christmas party). I strongly support it.
This nihilistic tear-it-all-down rejection of rationality, facts, honesty, courtesy, intellectual discipline, and logical analysis is NEVER going to solve the issues we face, no matter what party its proponents claim to affiliate with.
Fair enough-I’m with you on wealth concentration and the insanity of Eastern MA housing costs. I think my Marshall Plan post is exactly the kind of thinking our party needs to adopt since it unites our side, wins over swing voters, and does so without giving an inch in the fight against bigotry. It will also work within the system we have, and quickly, something you can’t say about some
of the other proposals I’ve seen to solve these issues.
$22 an hour according to Sen. Warren. $15 an hour according to the people of Seattle and so far the machines haven’t replaced the people, the people are just making more money. Democrats have to stop embracing the trickle down Kool Aid if we want to differentiate ourselves from the GOP on the issues that matter to the new middle. The urgency of depriving a racist of the White House should get us to agree that beating him matters more than the discredited economic theories we were taught in undergrad.
I’ll add a corollary that even that wage is not enough, we need to connect dislocated communities to jobs and thriving communities to cheaper housing. And the way we connect them with modern green infrastructure will create far more good jobs than anything coming out of this White House.
I think we have to sever the connection between labor and the ability for family to have food and shelter. Things are already bad for unskilled and uneducated workers and will only get worse.
Automation targets these current jobs in particular — the more rote and repetitive the task the more suited it is for automation. The money employers currently spend training cashiers, baristas, carwash attendants, and so on can alternatively be spent on creating machines that do the same work.
A robot does not need a minimum wage, paid time off, health insurance, and so on. The robot can work 24 hours a day without overtime. The robot can work in subfreezing temperatures and in heat well above 80 deg f.
Among our most urgent tasks as a civilization is to find an alternative to the wages-for-labor paradigm that dominates virtually every economic discussion and policy proposal from either party. Such “wage slavery” is the backbone of the wealthy-vs-everyone-else mentality that has dominated our society since at least the industrial era.
We MUST find a more equitable way to distribute the wealth that we — and especially our automated factories — create.
I think you mean sever “work” from “the ability to have food and shelter,” not labor.
Well, I mean “work” or “labor” or anything else that couples hours spent performing tasks in exchange for compensation.
I think that in today’s America, a nation that creates more wealth than any society in human history, we can and must find a way to redistribute that wealth so that every American receives a part of it.
That’s a lot easier that trying to sever the connection between labor and the ability for family to have food and shelter.
A
That’s a lot easier that trying to sever the connection between labor and the ability for family to have food and shelter.
All we need to do is enact a tax code and a labor laws that “encourage” employee owned enterprises and severely “discourages” shareholder and privately owned companies that rely on “employees at will”.
Not that hard and rooted in the DNA of this nation, from George Washington and John Adams through George Eastman and most recently Bob’s Red Mill.