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Making America Whole Again

1/12/2021

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By Mary Ellen Brooks

​Mary Ellen is an adjunct professor of sociology and anthropology at Palomar College in San Marcos, CA.

Making America Whole Again
All morning I’ve been hearing liberal media figures assert that the terrorist attack on the Capitol was all about racism. Pointing to the disturbing discrepancy between the aggressive police treatment of peaceful BLM demonstrators and the tolerant, if not encouraging, treatment of violent white, male Trump supporters, the media on the left are underscoring the breadth and depth of racism in the United States.
 
But is the fact that America has a serious race problem really the “breaking news” here? I think not. 
 
The truth is that the social dynamics behind the attack on the Capitol are far more complex than we are being told. The terrorists who attacked the Capitol are indeed white racists, but they are only the outward face of the problem. Behind them and largely behind the scenes are powerful individuals and groups who have seized on American racism and are using it as an effective tool to achieve their own goal of maintaining and increasing wealth and power. 

Winning Control 
As threatening as they were with their bombs and firearms, the thugs who stormed the Capitol are not the most dangerous people in America. They were useful idiots doing the work of some very smart, obscenely wealthy people who knew that in a democratic system, they would never be able to win over the average American voter by telling the truth— by saying “vote for us, because we are the candidates who will take even more of the Nation’s wealth out of your pocket and put it into mine.” No, that message would never sell. To win ultimate control over U.S. and, indeed, global wealth, they had to find a wedge issue that would induce a large enough segment of the American population to vote against their own best interests and endow the upper echelon with enough power to overthrow our democratic republic. 
 
Because let’s face it, not everybody in the US wants to uphold and protect our form of government, a government endowed with the ideological right and justification to redistribute wealth from the bloated rich to the starving poor. The democratic system of government that the founders and framers of the Constitution bequeathed us rests on the belief that all people, having been created equal, deserve the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but intrinsic to this foundational belief is the need to redirect money and resources from the highest echelons of wealth and privilege to the middle and lower classes when excessive wealth is concentrated at the top, and the gap between the wealthy and the rest of society is too great. The rich could never get behind the idea of Robin Hood running the government. 
 
Despite their words to the contrary, the wealthy deplore a “trickle down” economic system if the taxing of the rich is the means whereby wealth flows to the middle and lower classes. They much prefer a system that cuts their taxes, claiming— quite falsely—that the added money in their pockets will fuel the economy and “trickle down” to others. 

Of, By, and For the Rich
What the wealthy much prefer is not a democracy of, by, and for the people, but rather a plutocracy— a government of, by and for the rich, and Donald Trump, though flawed in many respects, promised to give them what they wanted and almost achieved. 
While Trump identified as being one of them in terms of class, wealth and power, he looked to them like he might just be the right man for the job they wanted done. Sure, he lacked the polish and sophistication of the upper class, and sure, he probably wasn’t really all that wealthy (at least not until he used the Presidency to accumulate wealth), but Trump brought to the battle some important assets that the rich and powerful thought they could use to their advantage. ​

​Importantly, Trump was both a genuine racist and an actual reality tv star who knew how to dupe average white Americans into believing that he was a successful businessman with a sincere populist message. While crossing his fingers and winking at his rich supporters, he told out-of-work miners in West Virginia that he’d bring back coal mining, and he promised unemployed factory workers in Illinois and Michigan that he’d bring manufacturing back to the country and to their states. Sure, he was lying to them—promising them the impossible— but while his wealthy benefactors saw through his deceit, his working class supporters believed his lies and loved him all the more for telling them what they most wanted to hear.
 
Trump managed, then, to win support both from the ultra-wealthy who expected him to do their bidding, and from the much larger population of average, white, working-class Americans who have been watching their own economic strength erode increasingly over the past 50 years and who genuinely believed that Trump was going to restore their notion of the American Dream. He was going to give them back their jobs, their pay raises, their new cars, their nice homes in the suburbs. He was going to “make America great again.” 
 
Cowardice or Avarice?

Meanwhile the richest of the rich knew what Trump was really doing. If you wonder why Republican Senators and Representatives stood by and did nothing to stop Trump from overturning our democratic system, the reason was not cowardice. It was avarice. Most of them had immense wealth to protect, and those few who weren’t wealthy believed they’d secure wealth and power by swearing loyalty to Trump and to the people who represent his REAL base—the ultra-rich in the US and abroad (including people like Vladimir Putin). 
 
So yes, we have a race problem in the US, but what we’ve been seeing is not a return to Jim Crow racism. It’s worse than that. What Trump has been doing is to harness racism as a tool to seize ultimate power, and that, I would propose, is slavery re-envisioned, slavery reinstated.
 
If we want to prevent the history of the past four years from repeating itself, the way to begin is by doing what we can (and what we must) to fight racism. The way to begin, I believe, is by taking on institutional racism. The choices of people that President-elect Biden has made to join his leadership team are right on the mark in terms of diversity, and philosophically they appear to be fully prepared to lead us by policy and by example toward a country where people are judged by “the content of their character”— not by the color of their skin or the size of their portfolio. Though we are a nation deeply divided, if we can begin to remove that which divides us, racism, then we can reunite as a people and be made whole again.
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Ethics, Integrity, Self-Interest, and Hypocrisy

10/5/2020

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By Jerry Franklin

Jerry is a retired high-school Government teacher residing in San Diego County, California. A major goal of his teaching was 
"to install in students a special inner ear capable of detecting either nonsense or unsubstantiated claims.

​Ethics, Integrity, Self-Interest, and Hypocrisy
​
The chief support of American middle-class morality is, and always has been hypocrisy! To aver one thing and yet do the exact opposite is a proven characteristic within the social fabric of American life. It is as American as sour apple pie. We like to think of ourselves as good and decent folks and, as Winston Churchill pointed out, “In the long run the Americans will almost always do the right thing.” Still!
​
In private circumstance hypocrisy is generally punishable in one way or another. As a defensive option it is most often and effectively employed in the world of commerce and politics. In those arenas the substantive issue at question is twisted and distorted by so many voices that in the long run questions of deceit and fault are submerged in a contradictory river of verbiage. Eventually the party or parties injured become not ethical victims but rather merely names within a topical issue in an ocean of many others: an issue du jour, quickly lost to the next day’s headlines. When it comes to the behavior of politicos it is so common as to be hardly worthy of mention.

Polite society dictates that we never sully or denigrate social order with salacious details of our “private” lives. To do so would be to contradict the rules of the American middle-class ethic. We merely cite this behavior as either discretion or a matter of privacy. It is good that this is so, for without such an ethic social order would be somewhere between difficult and impossible. The old radio program, “The Shadow,” used to begin with the portent laden words “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”

Chico Marx having once been discovered flagrante delicto by his wife, turned to her and said “I wasn’t kissing her, I was whispering in her mouth.” Most are not as quick witted as he; nevertheless, we all manage to closet our indiscretions both petty and large. One is capable of lying both by omission and commission. “That’s fine, just don’t mention it” is the largely unspoken mantra for a successful social life in America.

The Grand Old Party is currently busy explaining why they intend to rush through the replacement nominee for the Supreme Court despite the passionate argument issued by them to justify their denial of a fair hearing for Merrick Garland during the waning months of the Obama Administration. With nary a flicker of guile in their voices and facing the waning weeks of the current Trump Administration the current GOP leadership argues that “We should quickly name a replacement in order to guarantee a full court.” 
Like an old man slowly twisting his moustache while ogling a sweet young thing, they leer to the side and say, “Hypocrisy, us? . . . never!”

“We can, and so we shall” is the order of the day. Which is to say, we have the power and we will use it to serve our purpose. If EVER there was a better illustration of hypocrisy I cannot recall it!
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The Essence of Free Government                                                                  _______________________________________________________________

7/6/2019

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By Jerry Franklin

Jerry is a retired high-school Government teacher residing in San Diego County, California.

The Essence of Free Government
Our granddaughter Amelia just received her Masters in Education in Portland and we were proudly there to watch. I chose to give her historian Jon Meacham’s latest publication Songs of America, a splendid little tome reflecting the role of music and songs of either praise or protest in our history. He wrote the book in concert with country music’s Tim McGraw. In the contextual introductory chapter I discovered the following quote from our second—and notably prickly—President, John Adams.
 
The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries. The executive and the legislative powers are natural rivals; and if each has not an effectual control over the other, the weaker will ever be the lamb in the paws of the wolf. The nation which will not adopt an equilibrium of power must adopt a despotism. There is no other alternative. Rivalries must be controlled, or they will throw all things into confusion; and there is nothing but despotism or a balance of power which can control them.
 
For those familiar with Meacham there can be little doubt that he chose to include this prescient insight of Adams with anything save dyspeptic regard for its application to our current political circumstance.
 
1) Am I the only one who finds the dominant Five Supremes teetering on the edge of fantasy—more likely hypocrisy--when they suggest that they won’t involve the court in the gerrymandering of North Carolina because it is a “political issue” and the court cannot involve itself in “political issues”? 

“Double, Double, Toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble;
 Filet of Alito snake; stroke of Thomas,
 Hand of Gorsuch; gall of Kavenaugh
Cool it all with Robert’s blood;
Then the ruling is firm and good.”
 
2) Further, I think it absurd that we are supposed to pick and choose a President from a “debate” that involves 20 people! The DNC wants to be fair to everybody, but it is either a bad idea or simply foolish to ask unwashed masses to winnow through that many aspirants by making choices between “sound bites” and “bumper stickers.”  
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What's Happening in Our Country?                                                             ________________________________________________________________

6/3/2019

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Editor's Note: Like many extended families, ours is grappling with deep political differences. Maintaining our close connections, never difficult in the past, has become a challenge. Recently, my sister sent an email to our more conservative cousins asking how she could understand what she sees happening politically in the U.S. What follows is one cousin’s reply that adds perspective to what we’re going through. 
​

​In response to your questions about the beliefs of Republicans and how to understand what’s happening in our country … 
 
Firstly, I believe that most Republicans do believe in family values, morality, the rule of law and the Constitution.  As far as "King Donald" [my sister’s term] goes, he's a loud mouth; insults people, and engages mouth before brain.  I understand why many people, including many Republicans, don't like him.  However, I do believe that he has done some pretty good things for the country in the area of lowering taxes, reducing unemployment, creating jobs, and fulfilling promises he made to the people who elected him.  If he could only keep his mouth shut, I believe he might be viewed as a pretty good President.
​
I don't have any magic answers to help you understand what's happening to our country, but I'll give you my 2-cents worth.  I believe technology has worsened human interactions. While we can get a text message to each other in seconds, it is far too easy to criticize someone, post that criticism and let the whole world see it before thinking of how the other person might receive our words.
​
When we all were growing up, the media presented news; now it seems we only have opinion channels and none of them broadcast anything that is close to balanced news. So we’re all influenced by these opinion channels who broadcast non-stop trash talk.  I believe the giants of yesteryear's TV news would roll over in their graves to see and hear what is passing for news today.


Until Clinton, the news channels pretty much let   the   personal   actions   of   the   President  

(Democrat   or   Republican)   go   unreported.
We never saw news clips of Kennedy shacking up with Marilyn Monroe.  Also, Eisenhower and FDR have since been reported to having had affairs (not of State), but those also never made the news back then.  Clinton's activities were pretty much the first Presidential personal activities that made the big news. Today, it seems anything and anyone is fair game if  deemed “newsworthy” by one whose comments are protected by the 1st Amendment.


The nightly talk shows are also different than days of yore.  None of the current ones even approach Johnny Carson's shows. While he wasn't perfect, Johnny tended to laugh with his guests, not at them. The vast majority of Hollywood is now anti-Trump; the media (except for FOX News) is all anti-Trump, so when all you hear is 24x7 how bad Trump is, it has to impact your opinion.
 

The only channels that I believe broadcast news are BBC and the Weather Channel.  It's a sad state of affairs when the Weather Channel and a foreign news channel are the only TV shows than seem to broadcast US news, rather than opinions. 
​

So, I think we’re all having our brains influenced by a number of TV talk show celebrities and a whole host of TV news anchors who are getting paid millions to spread their poison.  I don't know how to stop this other than switch them off, which will reduce their revenue.  Since I’ve stopped, or at least reduced, my listening to opinion channels, I feel a lot more positive.  I'm also getting a lot more books read, but am getting tired of watching the weather news.
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Trump Either Did or Did Not Commit Obstruction of Justice                                _______________________________________________________________

3/26/2019

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By Mary Ellen Brooks

Mary Ellen is an adjunct professor of sociology and anthropology at Palomar College, San Marcos, CA.
Trump Either Did or Did Not Commit Obstruction of Justice
From my perspective (just minutes after the release of Barr’s summary of the Mueller report), it seems that the long-awaited report only produces additional questions and sows deeper division in an already confused and divided populace.
 

Based on Barr’s brief summary, we now know that Trump either did or did not commit obstruction of justice. Is that not precisely what we knew before the report and summary were issued?
​ 

Trump’s critics have seen evidence that he did obstruct justice. Trump’s supporters claim that he did not. Barr’s summary will be used by the supporters to fortify their already strong support for their President, while the summary will only inflame Trump’s critics who know that the underlying and uncontested reality behind the Mueller investigation is that the Russians interfered with the 2016 election, thereby defeating Clinton and winning the White House for a man unqualified for the office. Trump was not legitimately elected, and the two-year Mueller investigation has done nothing to address the fact that the United States was attacked by a foreign power and a longstanding adversary. 
The Trump story of course is not over. The Southern District of New York may yet have something to say about the legality of Trump’s business dealings. 

The Congress too has work to do. Issues related to the emoluments clause— the fact that Trump and his family have profited richly off of the Presidency needs to be pursued. If Jimmy Carter had to sell his profitable peanut farm when he won the White House, then how has Trump managed to retain and profit from his real estate holdings and charge exorbitant fees to foreign dignitaries staying in his DC hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue? Clearly Trump and his family are not out of the woods. 
​

And if the legal system fails us, another Presidential election is on the horizon. If we can keep the Russians and other foreign adversaries out of our social media (or at least muzzle them), then We, the People can do what Mueller couldn’t do. A new, capable President taking over the Oval Office in 2021 would be the greatest democratic victory in history.
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
​--Thomas Jefferson--
                                                                                                                                                                               

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