THE REVERSAL OF ROE v WADE - THE DEMOCRAT PARTY FAILED ITSELF THROUGH POLITICAL NAÏVETÉ AND BICKERING

 The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old,  from 2009 with President Obama's first term. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally summarizing the potential impact of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.                 ____

This post responds to 'Jamess's June 25, 2022, article in the DailyKos  (Simply Amazing! The "Common-law experts" that Alito relies on -- Weren't Even Americans). 

Yes, we know that Alito's twisted-history argument leading to the reversal of Row v Wade is bogus. But the Jamess title implicitly carries two lessons for Democrats  -  become grownups, both politically and sometimes personally, and stop the Democrat Party's inclination to drown itself with ego-centered bickering?’  

The lessons from the Trump debacle are: 

POLITE DISSENT, viz., A SPLINTERED BALLOT LOSES EVERYTHING; and 

STOP INTERNAL BICKERING - UNIFY ON BASIC RIGHTS (COMMON GOOD) 

To repeat: the new reality of American politics for Democrats and progressives is that loyal dissent by ballot-splintering factionalism or by abstaining from voting is just 'patio chest-pounding' and the Dem intra-Party bickering is a self-destructive privilege, so 1950s', of a less complex past when we did not lose sleep over Republican or Democrat election winners. (Dems also have their MAGA aspects, too.) 

The Dems lost the 2016 presidential election, IMO, because of their 'naive' internal splintering. 

Democrat Party Loyal Dissent as expressed in do-or-die factionalism and abstaining from voting weakened the progressive vote and helped bring on a regression in America's cultural tone. Within weeks after his inauguration, Trump veered America from Obama's mid-road tone to a hard right wing direction. 

The sudden sharpness of Trump's  right-hand turn ofAmerican governance stunned and demoralized Democrats. More stunning was the barely hidden grift and greed behind Trump's foreign policy and his regressive use of America's national resources. Under Trump, government operations were hidden behind a personal, transactional style that created and favored policies that yielded financial gains for Trump, his family members, and for his corporate supporters. 

As Trump's government operations became more personally transactional, they also became less transparent, And our foreign policy was made a shambles.

Major examples illustrating Trump's radical shifting of America's foreign policy alliances were his November 2017, approval of Phillipine dictator Rodrigo Duterte's bloody campaign to rid the Phillipines of homosexuals and criminal suspects by murdering them on-site by roving right-wing para-military execution squads . 

Then came Trump's September 2018, declaration of "love" for Kim Jong Un, dictator-for-life of North Korea, a rogue nuclear state. 

This was followed by Trump's 2018 expressing that America should withdraw from NATO ... because NATO is a concept outside America's direct interest (which we now strongly suspect really meant that America's NATO membership offended Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, thus interfering with Trump's negotiations with Putin to construct a Moscow Trump Tower... with huge financial gains for Trump and his family.

This was the cess-pit where Trump had quickly, with a near-savant's nose for money, had lowered America.

America's regression under the Trump presidency could have been avoided if Hillary Clinton had won the Electoral College. Hillary won the popular vote, but lost the election because of Democratic Party vote-splitting factionalism .... and additionally, as is now known, because of Russian intelligence's proxy operations that exploited America's addiction and vulnerability to its world of extremely profitable internet social media platforms. Facebook was front and center among Russian intelligence's social media targets leading up to the 2016 election.  (Russian interference in the 2016 election was known perhaps shortly before and then after the election...but this knowledge quickly was buried under Trump's threats and misinformation  programming.)

Dems must grow up from naive 'do-or-die' idealism ....look around at the pitchfork regressionism that followed Hillary's  2026 'loss' to the Trumpists.  

America's fall into regressionism has been recently capped by the American Supreme Court's June 24, 2022, anti-abortion reversal of its 1973 Roe v Wade decision that had legalized abortion for the past half-century.  

DEMS MUST LEAVE THEIR HIGH SCHOOLISH DREAM STATE AND BECOME ADULTS ABOUT AMERICAN POLITICS  (Yes, Dems feel outraged and disbelief about the Trump camp’s lies and disinformation...and their control of major parts of American governance, e.g., the Supreme Court, which Trump reshaped with the hypocritical support of the Mitch McConnell-led Senate and which is steadily eroding American life.  

But Dem reactions must be within Constitutional (legal) boundaries... because that is a core Dem message.  

Also, Dems can’t do a ‘progressive version of ‘Jan 6’  without becoming what is detested ..along with bloodshed. (MAGA supporters must be ‘itching’ for an excuse to use their automatic weapons on a destructive Dem protest… that is today’s reality). 

A solution to the Democratic Party's current stasis - Dems must first define what lessons have been learned from the 6+ years of the ‘Trump Era’ (his campaign years until Jan 20, 2021 … and in the future).  

LESSON #1: DEMS MUST STOP NAIVE INTERNAL BICKERING...while sustaining their major strengths which are INCLUSIVENESS and PROMOTING THE COMMON GOOD.  

The Dems lost sight of this in the 2016 election which they lost through their own egotistic, (childlike), internal-splintering of Dem voting power by offshoot, dissenting yet liberal Dem candidates who insisted on having their place on the November 2016 election ballot ...regardless of consequences.  

And we saw the consequence: HILLARY CLINTON’S 2016 ELECTION LOSS WAS THE RESULT OF THE DEMS’ OWN FACTIONAL CONTRARINESS ...that splintered the anti-Trump ballot from within the Dem party. 

The era of idealist sincere (but naive) LOYAL DISSENT VOTE, ‘I’ll show them, I just won’t vote’ or ‘I’ll vote for a splinter group, Ha!', ended on the morning after the 2016 national election.

A unified Dem voting bloc would have boosted Hillary’s Electoral College count beyond what was needed to win, but Dem self-centeredness prevented that.

LESSON #2: The Electoral College must be central to the DEM's future political calculus.  The Electoral College is a reality even if it is poisonous and a dinosaur CREATED FROM and sustained by entrenched structures that originate from America’s slavery past.  It seems the Electoral College will live on for a good while under America's two party system.

As stated above, Hillary’s substantial 2016 popular vote win meant nothing because Dems still lived in their own version of the MAGA dream that ‘proper’ America was or should still be life as it was in the 1950’s. 

In summary - ‘when are the Dems going to be adults about American politics and stop the Democratic Party's inclination to internal self-destruction?’ There is so much more to lose by bickering within the Dem bloc. 

THE 'JAN 6 (2021) COUP' CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS - EVEN BACK IN 2015, SHOULDNT WE HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? (SOME DID)

This blog post is 12+ years old from 2009 with President Obama's first term. Our posts focus on national affairs and culture, and occasionally technology. Sometimes our observations receive a critical eye, but our 'pen' remains unblunted as we keep a sharp eye on the ways and directions of American politics and culture.  

THE THEME.  We must take advantage of this time of plague and political danger to sit, think, reconcile and reset America's path forward.   

There must be a national reconciliation of political parties and a re-defining of our national morals, ethics, and perspectives ...and especially we must commit to our future goals for the COMMON GOOD ... and then let those seeds grow for five years until we can how to make them better.  All of these qualities and thoughts seem to have been trounced during the grab-bag, treasure hunt Trump years whose tainted air, though dissipating, stubbornly lingers! 

In retrospect, and with perhaps just a little bit of mind-stretching, we might have imagined and posted a prediction of the January 6, 2021, near-coup. But we held back on 'going there' and even sketch-posting such a  scene as too...something. And anyway, wouldn't the mechanics of our government prevent such a banana-republic thing from happening ...here? But it did nearly happen here and right before our shocked eyes (but not a surprise to the cabal of 'important' establishment figures, minor actors, and just ordinary followers of Trump ... united in their 'heil' adulation of Trump.)

Nowhere along this trail of postings since 2009, did this blogger truly expect America to have a coup set in motion ... by, and with the cooperation of (co-conspiracy, abetting?) rightist-leaning establishment individuals and institutions ... who collectively operated in the dark and who then, with their side-puppets, hid their plans from intelligence and law enforcement agencies. (When just knowing about them and not reporting such conspiracy planning is a violation of national security laws.) 

In retrospect, the co-conspirators in the nature of amateurs brayed their hubris and cultish intentions for all to hear and see... by whoever chose to hear and see. Trump's supporters heard the call clearly and a bunch showed up in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021. 

Apparently, all of that background came as a surprise to the Trump opposition.  And this could be a critical test for American democracy, i.e, even among Trump non-supporters, were there those who knew what was planned but kept quiet?  Will there have to be a national reconciliation of political parties and defining our national morals, perspectives ...and especially our future goals as a nation for the COMMON GOOD.  All of these qualities seem to have been trounced during the grab-bag tenor of the Trump years.

[The author - world citizen, educator, technologist, candidate for elected office...santiago-compostela pilgrim.]

THE TRUMP YEARS: AN OVERVIEW (2/3) - LOOKING BACK TO 2016's PREDICTIONS IN PREPARATION TO DROP BOMBS IN 2021

GREEK CHORUS:      ("THINGS FELL APART AS ANTICIPATED ... to the base, you got what you bought: the pandemic, economic distress, 'royal' negligence, drama, grift, treason, lying, pandemic! The only missing element is the 'Oxy' - but wait! Hark! More's to come, Anon and Alas.  Cometh Majestic Biden with Seneschal Warrior Maid Harris accompanied by Warrior Chatelain-Seer Pelosi, Knights Schiff and stalwart companions, with ever in the wings the eyes of the 'Hall of Sir Roberts' and his fellow monks including the baneful orbs of Thomas and Alito with the darting glances from Gorsuch and Kavanaugh."). 

Note:  Perched Eye's Sept 28, 2016, operatic view of the coming Trump disaster: 

Election 2016: Trump as Performance: Operas Buffa and Tragedy ... Starring Villains and Buffoons, and Wolves and Lambs, and Despots and Martyrs.....

---------------------------

It's now February 2021, and for twelve years (since 2009's Obama election), 'PerchedEye' has posted about American life, society, and politics.  

And now, in the midst of Trump's second impeachment trial (after a second House impeachment), ... for what appears to be many impeachable acts and precipitated events, it seems appropriate to repost our November 9, 2016, warning of dire consequences from Trump's presidency ( (Trump #2: Post Election Reaction - Recap, Views, and Predictions On A Trump Presidency).  

A Reminder:  PerchedEye's blog began with the 2009 first term of President Barack Obama who was followed in 2016 by Donald Trump ((single term, two popular vote losses, and two impeachments.) In 2020, Joseph Biden, Obama's Vice President,  defeated Trump by a broad popular vote margin of more than seven million and an electoral college win by 306-232.  Right after Trump's 2016 election win, PerchedEye started out trying to be unbiased but with the 'warning' to Trump's supporters that they bore the weight of a possible disaster that could harm themselves (Election 2016: Trump #1, A "COMMON GOOD" Plan - A Proposed Domestic Priority Plan for Trump's Presidency, November 9, 2016 ).  

Note addendum:   Including Hillary Clinton's 2016 popular vote 'win' over Trump, Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections since 1992 ... but by electoral college count wound up President in only 6. In other words, Republicans LOST the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 elections since 1992! (Get it?)

GREEK CHORUS:      "THINGS FELL APART AS ANTICIPATED ... to the base, you got what you bought: the pandemic, economic distress, 'royal' negligence, drama, grift, treason, lying, pandemic! The only missing element is the 'Oxy' - but wait! Hark! More's to come, Anon and Alas)"

-----    PERCHED EYE'S  NOVEMBER 9, 2016 WARNING ABOUT TRUMP DISASTER ---

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Trump #2: Post Election Reaction - Recap, Views and Predictions On A Trump Presidency

"A FUTURE SOMETIME: America will eventually cross the thresh hold and become a post-racial, economic egalitarian democracy upholding the original theme of the Common Good. Maybe not for a generation but eventually.

This Blog, "The Perched Eye", was begun in 2009 when President Barack Obama was about to be inaugurated. With apologies, 2009 was the first time this author paid close attention to the intricacies of American national politics... although in the 70's and 80's and 90's, it was impossible not to be swept into the political dramas around Vietnam, Watergate, the Reagen-Air Controller battle, and the opening of the Mid-East conflicts in Iran and Iraq.

Now, America's political arena has opened with a new production, the Trump presidency. 

Here are some views from 'The Perched Eye' about last night's election of Donald Trump to be the 45th president of the United States (and may God bless us all):

1. THE NEXT 4 YEARS?. ??? Who knows. Let's hope something is done for the COMMON GOOD.

2. 'CODED LANGUAGE' - appears to work (the Base seems to have arisen by sub-liminal code words and images).

3. ENERGY will draw tears. The Base's kids will drown in petro-pollution and suffer generations of genetic damage.

4. CLIMATE CHANGE. Ignored by both candidates and will continue to be swept under the rug by the petro lobby.

5. IT'S ALL A SHOW, so grab a large supply of popcorn, buy a wide-screen and settle in for 4 years of TV carnival.

6. REMORSE. Coulda', mighta', O-me-o-mya'. Move on!  

7. HILLARY DID WIN, goals were largely met...except the other side, unexpectedly even by them, met theirs more.

8. TRUMP BOUGHT A RIDE ON A WILD BRONCO - he did not sweep the election', more the truth he was 'swept in' by a rogue tidal wave. Big difference - 'to do' or 'be done to'...who's in control?

9. MIGHTA'S. 'Bernie and Warren', or 'Warren and Biden' or any pairing not including Hillary mighta' won, maybe.

10. "BEWARE THE TIDAL WAVE EBBING" should be posted as a banner over President Trump's Oval Office desk.      'What goes around, comes around'.

11. TRUMP WAS (IS) A TOOL (the 'Trumpet') - of grass roots disaffection, disappointment, with the status quo in DC.

12. A TOOL OF HIS BASE, Trump should be careful to watch his step - he's in a cage full of 'angry'.

13. POSITIVES - several of his prior negatives: 

Nobody's 'Boy'. Nobody's, Base;

'Cowboy', 'Gunslinger': his actions may be erratic, impromptu, "off-script". You bought it, Base;

Internationally (Russia, China) - now America has a despot just like them. Good or bad, who knows, Putin?

14. PREDICTIONS. 

SURPRISES!!;

DISAPPOINTMENTS (Roll-backs - Roe, HealthCare, Education, Social Security, Energy, climate change...lot's of stuff the Base didn't understand...);

'RUSTY NAIL'- not good for anyone, it scrapes and infects;

COMMON GOOD - if he follows this path, he doesn't have to favor any group, race, nationality or religion - he might be enough of a maverick to carry this off;

'TRUMP THE OPERA'. (Seriously), comedy or tragedy, or both (my bet) give it 10-18 months.

15. AMERICA WILL GO ONWARD...but it will not be smooth.  

A FUTURE SOMETIME: America will eventually cross the thresh hold of post-racial, economic egality, and the Common Good. Maybe not for a generation but eventually.

--------------- --------- -----------------     FINIS ACT 1!   (departing Chorus chants over shoulders)-----                                                                                   

"THINGS FELL APART AS FORESEEN! ... to the base, you got what you bought: the pandemic, economic distress, 'royal' negligence, drama, grift, treason, lying, pandemic! The only missing element is the 'Oxy' - but wait! Hark! More's to come, Anon and Alas.  Cometh the purge, the scourge, ...the bailiff?"

----------------------------------------      MORE TO COME.    -------

Election 2016: More On Trump - Who, What And Why (And Trump's Angry White Males Who Don't Need to Remain Angry)

Trump...Trump..trump...trump (clumsy, callous, 'mow em down' brutality of words, Asp-quick and cobra-venom of wit)...here he comes...run for your lives just about everyone who is not of a certain demographic - white male working class/blue collar/tea party...(but including Sarah Palin who is her own personal demographic).

Point by Pericles21 to be made further down:

it is likely that Trump is not leading a movement but is 'surfing' a socio-economic swell of disaffection that already existed for decades but just needed a channel (demagogue) to curl and break. Trump is that demagogue. But Trump just might wake up one morning (like the English Labour Party's quick backing away from it's 'Leaving' support only 4 days after the Brexit referendum) and realize that he is not really in control of his 'own' movement and that he could be run over and shoveled aside like road-kill when he becomes a known factor and, consequently, boring. Further, Trump's main constituency - disaffected, white male, working class, self entitled but job-threatened - have reasonably and with savviness found mutual, real sharing of self-interest in Bernie Sanders (thus refuting the lie about their lack of intelligence) Hopefully. Trump's base will find their new home in Elisabeth Warren, who Pericles21 champions as someone whose integrity and message are what America needs.

To be blunt,'Trumpism'is an American phenomenon - a pornography of the ego, typical American 'candy' - that appeals to the very large American population sector that has for several decades suffered serious ego-damage by loss of jobs through outsourcing, loss of real wages and a fair share of income and wealth ('inequality')and just being ignored. America has for decades abandoned the founding principle of the Common Good and turned the Constitution upside down from the rule of law, 'Lex Regis', to become in Trump, 'Rex Legis', the king is law. -

This post was drafted a week ago but things are happening fast in the world, beginning in Europe with the June 23 UK referendum vote for the UK to leave the European Union. This is not a total surprise, but it is unexpected because economically the expectation is that Great Britain will suffer. Also, 'Leaving' doesn't appear to be in the best interests of the constituency most strongly supporting 'Leaving - the working class, the older and the less well-off who live outside the major urban hub of London - the statistics show the radically different degree of support between 'town and country', 'heeled and working' and of course the old 'them and us' racial divide. All of this was barely under the surface, with occasional outbreaks but constantly seething emotions regarded as just the hardly-quaint inability of certain neighborhoods (e.g., Brixton) to adapt to modern multi-culture, multi-nation cooperatives all based on supposedly mutual economic advantages. But, of course, as we have been jolted awake to recognize in the past several years, the vast bulk of economic advantages have gone to the top 5% of every population on the planet. In summary, the referendum paints a picture of Great Britain as a divided union that has been divided since the end of the second world war around 1945.

Why did the referendum turn out the way it did? The better question might be, 'Why did it take this long for the truth about England's ill-at-ease attitude to ward joining the European Union to come to a head? The answer is the referendum outcome is the culmination of a long-recognized drift towards a new global nationalism (Economic Jihadism) that threatens to break apart the European Union - additionally 5 to 7 other Eu countries might be expected to join England's exodus - along with similar disaffections in other treaty arrangement, and return that the planet to a kind of neo-colonial assemblage of distrusting trans-continental princedoms.

'Brexit' has happened. Ostensibly, England (and the rest of the United Kingdom) will proceed to implement June 23'rds referendum mandate to unlink from the European Union and go search for the holy grail of recovering Great Britain's (or at least working class England's) national virginity. This is not too much of an exaggeration and so is the resemblance to America's 'Trumpism' as revealed by the personal-declared alliance between Donald Trump and the assumed next Prime Minister - the right wing, super nationalist, Boris Johnson. Trump has also declared that part of his mission is to recover America's 'Greatness'.

Why is Brexit addended to this post? Because a possible Trump Presidency may mirror what will happen in the UK now that the 'voice of the people' has voted and prevailed.

So let us all pay careful attention to what will happen over the next few weeks in Great Britain. Will there be an 'exit contagion' of a copy-cat sort that will lead Scotland and Northern Ireland (who overall favored remaining in the EU) to leave Great Britain (i.e., leave formal ties with England who is now revealed as having a distinctly different national outlook on being a member of the EU)? Or will Scotland and Northern Ireland cast their lot with independence from the UK and remain with the EU?

What does this 'New Nationalism' movement have to do with Trumpism? The path of nationalism in England, and the potential break-up of te United Kingdom, may foretell the disruption that may occur in America resulting from a totally self-focused, self-centered Trump foreign policy and domestic primitiveness, a new Isolationism.

But back to Donald Trump.
'Trump' is a kind of anti-heroic villain. He is the natural spawn of an un-natural, sinful, evil, inhumane culmination of a century of rabid, run-wild, limitless greed and exploitation put upon the American people by Big Bucks interests and their puppets - bought and sold Washington politicians and leeches of both political parties.

A century of ripping off America - and principally America's working citizens - has resulted in a huge socio-economic imbalance of wealth and income. Currently 5% of American's population owns or earns as much as the other 95%. We have experienced three decades of declining real wages for working Americans. There has been a steady loss of sustaining manufacturing jobs because of off-shore outsourcing to cheap labor markets. Overall, with the rush to greater profits and no countervailing resistance to abandonment of common Americans in the 'lower'95%, there has been an overt, undisguised neglect of the Common Weal. This neglect is reflected in the erosion and abandonment of common weal principles - substantive work, access to education and health ('Obamacare' the only bright exception to this trend)...it goes on in sad, embarrassing sameness, example after example of rampant, capitalist greed and the raping of America - it's resources and people.

But here comes a hero, it seems, of the down-trodden. Trump the billionaire capitalist. 'What?' Billionaire? Isn't he the epitome of who and what has killed the American spirit and social contract? Yes, he is the epitome but he is still the hero of his class's antithesis.

But perhaps the most striking aspect of Trump is he doesn't hide anything but the truth. In other words Trump lies, or rather he 'mis-states' but without apology or offering self-corrections - and somehow, this sits pretty well with his constituency, the mostly male, white and working class American. Trump's message seems to be a 20016 version of McCluhanism where the medium is a given venue of the message but now the 'message' is not the words but how they are spoken. Trump's 'message' is not his words but the emotion and volume of his presentation...and his presentation and anger - even if his anger is mostly off-the-mark and (underneath it all) not serving the best interests of his white male, working class constituency - appears to be unscripted and genuine.

'Unscripted and Genuine' Are these tow attributes of Trump so rare in current America that what Trump's words say or not is just not that critical? Look at the picture. There is a billionaire, trust fund baby, having (apparently) made it bigger, leading a working class movement, although admittedly racist-driven in part. Why do Trump's supporters follow his lead so eagerly and strongly?

The answer is likely that Trump is not leading but is 'surfing' the swell that already existed but just needed a reason (demagogue) to break. Trump just might wake up one morning (like the English Labour Party's quick backing away from it's 'Leaving' support only 4 days after the referendum) and realize that he is not really in control of his 'own' movement and he is about to be run over and shoveled aside like road-kill.

In this respect, Trump has declared 'war' with the American media sector - and has offered them no quarter but to see it his way or get out of the way. Every lie, mis-statement and twisted curve of his psyche is laid open for all to see. And the Media and Democrats and alarmed Republicans indeed see it all. But wtf, it hasn't mattered one bit, Trump's aura protects him from harm and every arrow shot his way seems to look good leaving the bow but turns to dust as it nears his thick skin or is merely deflected straight back to the shooter.

Donald Trump is on the scene. The tension, the tension - it's 'Friday the 13th' every day now, but Trump is nastier, bigger and badder than Freddy ever was. And it will get nastier because the Republican party controllers who lost control are emerging from their cloudy confusion and weak-spined whining and are salivating in anticipation of the skullduggery tricks and dirty tactics they plan to dump on Trump at the Convention. 'Just wait' they are thinking, the GOP Convention will be the 'show of shows' for sure,...a shot-in-the-eye, kick-in-the-pants spectacle. But Pericles21 is betting that Trump and his thugs will turn the tables and complete the destruction of the Party. The Convention will be a debacle of violent emotions and violent retributions. And the worst of it will be a descent into Hell at the Convention will be what Trump's supporters want and will be proud of. The Trumpists need that kind of outlet for the rabid emotions Trump will generate as only he can.

But who, what and why is Trump?

A book review of Michael Kimmel's, 'Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era' (2013, Nation Books)

This review is from Hanna Rosin's NYTimes review of Michael Kimmels Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era (Nation Books, 2013)
Kimmel's 'AWM' doesn't offer solutions but it very adequately explains the 'why's' of angry white men and this brings a kind of relief - at with understanding assisted by Kimmel, least there might be a beginning to a solution and resolution. Personally, from reading between the lines written by the author, there seems to be a 'forgotten' segment of American society, i.e., white men and specifically working class and under-employed (economically poor) white men. I say 'forgotten' because while virtually everyone else (minorities and women of all races) was being 'freed' and brought into equality, white men as a collective profile were regarded as the reference point against which new freedoms were and still are) measured. But we forgot to 'release'(reprogram with understanding and support) white men from the social programming that had entrapped them into their self-entitled (and too often self destructive) corner to begin with. Instead, our media messages from film to television continue to reinforce the idea of privileged, all-powerful, king-of-the-hill, American white males as the only white male worthy of respect - this is almost a criminal misleading of younger white males who must grow up and function in a very different world from the simplistic ones portrayed in the media. This continuing media image leads to dysfunctional self-expectations and acting out from frustration and confusion that the media profiles and formulae for masculine 'success' don't work. We can hope that books like 'AWM' will lead to educating younger generations of white males how to exist (happily) as co-inhabitants in a new America.

World Affairs and American Public Education: Why We All Should Be Concerned (Charleston, South Carolina, is 'Proof')

June 25, 2015. Post Script. In the Shadow of Charleston, SC shootings. [ref., Perched Eye, June 25, 2015]
This postscript deals with a recent terrible shooting murders in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015. That event that is not something to be proud of as a human, but it bears out this writer's warning..in a sad, gothic-surreal way.

It seems that much of the sentiment in this original post was made real by the mass shootings (and killings) of 9 African -American church goers on June 17, 2015, at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Pericles21 emphasizes his shock (and concern) that 'anyone' with an ounce of analytical ability and common sense should not have seen 'Charleston' coming and should not have been surprised by the identity and profile of the shooter, a recently-turned 21, white 'man-child'- poor, a school drop-out and societal castoff, an abandoned and innocent soul set adrift by defunded public services (notably, public education) in a sea of right-wing media sharks without the mental acuity equipment to swim away from danger, falsehood and the deliberate distortions voiced by the extremist media stars (Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter,the Fox News crews, the KKK, the Conservative Citizens Councils, etc.).

Finally, Pericles21 sees the Charleston shootings as 10 innocent persons (the 9 murdered church goers and the shooter) caught up in the modern american whirlpool of ignorance, profiteering and loss of a regard for the 'Common Weal' which could have prevented the mental erosion and vulnerability of the shooter, Dylann Roof.

Dylann's story and Charleston's tragedy is a modern American tragedy that could have been prevented but wasn't because a trail of persons (politicians, profiteers, extortionists, etc) chose the easy 'Way of the 7 Deadly Sins: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

The 'shooter' was/is Dylann Roof, a recently-turned-21 white youth, by looks a 'man-child',...poor, very much undereducated, ...then abandoned by 'society' to be netted by the fact-distorting, extreme right-wing hate mongers one finds freely wandering the radio and TV airwaves...claiming the wondrous ability to make complicated issues (especially race in America)'simple'. What makes this event surreal (in the true American tradition of gory surrealness, ala Natural Born Killers) is that the shot-at victims invited the shooter to first sit with them at Bible study, not knowing his intent to shoot them. To add to this Hollywood-like script, the shooter described to police later that this act of open kindness almost convinced him not to carry out his macabre plan...but his 'resolve' won out. So, no modern 'Amazing Grace' to bring down the curtain.

The message is reinforced by the terrible picture in Charleston June 17 - What has happened to America's concern for the Public Weal, most notably in the form of public education and family services?

A final comment: 'WHEN IS THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR GOING TO END?'


---------
America has its 'good' and 'faults', and the rest of the planet is critically affected by both aspects of America. America operates by a democratic election process that leads to a legislative-leadership structure that formulates national policy. Consequently, America's foreign policy - international interests, international friends and allies, willingness to militarily intervene in other countries affairs - is at its roots, dependent on the intelligence and awareness of the American public about world affairs as well as 'at-home' problems and needs.

In turn, the general intelligence and awareness of the American public is strongly shaped by the American education system which leads to the final point - can the rest of the world (and no doubt America itself) sleep easily knowing that the most powerful and influential culture on the planet has a significant number of its population who believe in a fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian 'Bible' wherein the world was 'created' only 7,000 years ago and who believe that fossil records showing dinosaurs lived millions of years ago are deliberately falsified lies perpetrated by political progressives intent on (1) destroying fundamentalist Christianity and (2) along the way to destroying Christianity, destroying America's the euro-racial (i.e., 'white' population).

This logic makes the problems within America's public education system a concern not only for America but for the entire planet.

First, education is perhaps the most important aspect of a developed nation today. Life is complex and requires insightful and trained minds to comprehend global issues and then, to resolve them.

Second, America is still the dominant nation economically and is arguably THE major influence shaping global culture ...and values.

Third, with all the above influence-factors, plus by virtue of it's armies and defense budget, America is too powerful a determining factor to the physical safety and sanity of the globe to have major issues in the education of Americans. Yet, America is failing to educate itself with the result that American beliefs are erroneous and are increasingly simplistic, isolationist, and xenophobic (race, nations, geographic regions).

Fourth, America has problems with its public education system. IMHO, America began to abandon and defund its public education system beginning with the Civil Rights movement in the late 1950s with the racial integration of public schools. America showed it could not adjust to a diverse population reality as compared with the unreality of enforced (and forced) racial segregation after the Civil War followed by the Jim Crow era which operated to unofficially but effectively restore the pre-war racial separation under slavery, especially in the 'public' service sectors that includes 'public' education. This issue has not been resolved. Moreover, in some ways, much of America has managed to re-verse itself from the Civil Rights era and resurrect old segregation patterns in the public schools. This reversing trend has been aided and made quicker by the added devices of school 'vouchers' and 'charter schools' which operate much like private schools yet receive public funding.

Along with the increase in charter and school voucher programs has come the most dangerous kind of academic 'freedom' - new opportunities for special-belief charter schools to receive funding for erroneous beliefs that would not have been taught in the days of strong, professionally rigorous public school systems with synchronization from the Department of Education in Washington, DC.

It is as if American education threw up its hands and gave up on the challenges and needs of diversity and open desegregation, and said, 'OK, you local neighborhoods, fix things yourselves. We (Wash, DC) only want some nominal bow to national education goals ..about which we don't know a solution.'

America needs to solve this. But, overall, it appears to me the biggest problem with American education is the lack of a national perspective on what is the purpose and content of its school teaching, and the interference (or local dominance) from religion and regional 'prejudice'.

The gaps and faults in our lacking a consistent national education program seems a 'down side' of the American version of democracy which opens up the formatting of school curriculums to states and cities and towns with distinctly different 'beliefs' that can over-reach into curricula taught in the classrooms of America.

An example of the consequences from the lack of a national consensus on education is the morass America currently experiences with creationism vs evolution. There are varying, and hotly debated, school philosophies in America on that subject and in some parts of Americat 'Creationism' is winning, or has won, over evolution. One fears how detrimental the supremacy of Creationism will be to the children who are receive an susch an education.

And these differences in education emphases seem to arrange around geographic 'poles' in America.

These poles are first, geo-political, i.e., 'Red (Republican Party, conservative, southern and formerly rural, rebel states that lost the Civil War)' vs 'Blue (Democratic Party, progressive, coastal and more northern, urban-industrialized winners of the Civil War)' states. Then there are divisions by race, economics, religion, gender tolerance, etc.

America suffers from a 'relativity dissonance' in that there is no national ethic or agreed-on scientific principle set that unites the country on just about any of these subjects. This is maybe the downside of a democratic society where 'laissez faire' marketism (so called 'free market') dominates almost al thinking about just about all topics, including education.

This 'laissez faire' replacement of science and logic seems to be the current substitution in America for a national ethic. Until this 'laissez faire' creed is tempered or is replaced by a more considered, real policy/ 'philosophy of state' the American education system will continue to be fragmented and drift.

MBA Follies - About the ‘Common Good’: A Battle between the Citizen and Corporate Ownership-for-profit

This post was motivated by Noam Chomsky’s recent op-ed in ’Nation of Change’ webzine, ('What Is The Common Good?’),that focuses on a seemingly increasing and critical lessening of importance, and increasing fuzziness, of being a human citizen in America. This blogger maintains this is a crisis time because it appears the requirements of traditionally defined citizens (i.e., human) are competing somewhat unsuccessfully with corporate wishes, influence and priorities that are often in conflict with, are ignorant of, or just plain unconcerned and callous about the quality of life of normal citizens. The results are persistent erosion of our natural environments, depletion of natural resources even those that are replenishable but require husbanding and planned harvesting (our fisheries) and a general rush to perdition in the interests of corporate quarterly profit reports.

Professor Chomsky summarizes this problem of citizen vs state as not new but a continued debate from even the era of Aristotle 2400 years ago. Chomsky brings the debate into ‘current’ focus at the moment of the formation of America and summarizes the thoughts of Thomas Jefferson who was the principal writer of the Declaration of Independence and served as the third president of the United States:

Thomas Jefferson, the man who drafted the United States’ Declaration of Independence, captured the essential nature of the conflict, which has far from ended. Jefferson had serious concerns about the quality and fate of the democratic experiment. He distinguished between “aristocrats and democrats.”

The aristocrats are “those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.”

The democrats, in contrast, “identify with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interest.”

Today the successors to Jefferson’s “aristocrats” might argue about who should play the guiding role: technocratic and policy-oriented intellectuals, or bankers and corporate executives.

Pericles21 has for several years posed this same broad question, 'what has happened to the notion of the citizen?' Has America lost it’s sense, along with its senses, about what is the purpose of a nation and whom does a nation exist to serve - human citizens or corporate enterprise? Where along the path so far in this nation’s history have we detoured to value ‘signs’ of wealth (not health) such as material possessions, wealth in itself beyond even expanded wants, and acted-out greed, above social needs and individual happiness, physical health, education, child nurturing and spiritual well being?

From Pericles21’s commentary added at the end of Professor Chomsky’s article:

American culture appears to be facing the ‘depletion’ of room for its human citizens (note, now, the break-out of 'citizenry' into subcategories) to co-exist with their corporate co-citizens whose sole responsibility is the quarterly financial report; and whose regard for human citizenry is focused on their usefulness as a labor pool, a flexible (disposable) pool at that. In this respect, the labor pool is respected only as long as employed by the corporation who assumes nothing about the welfare of laborers outside the corporation’s physical and fiscal boundaries, the plant or office walls and the employee list.

Question, ‘is the human citizen to accept this status? Or, more accurately, ‘can’ the human citizen accept its new status - a status defined as co-equal to a sister population that does not eat, breathe, drink, care for its children, etc., and consequently does not need healthy, safe food and water, does not need to nurture a child, support an education system, nurture a spiritual life and carelessly and without conscience tosses aside surplus labor whenever they are not needed. Note: a great many, increasingly too many, American workers are not owed more than 24 hours notice of layoff. All of these human ‘requirements’ not met by corporations seem to be leading to a ‘Crisis of Choice’ for human citizens in America - accept second-class status according to a new democracy (for humans citizens) regardless of race, creed, etc. - or, what? As yet, no optional theories for coexistence are being formulated? While the corporate ‘American’ citizen is free to roam the globe seeking the lowest-cost labor, and is often freed (by special interest lobbying) from any tax loyalties to America, yet, the human citizen labor pool, unneeded and cast aside must (?) remain in place within America, ...unless we become the next global pool of low-paid migrant labor available (forced) to work in foreign industrial zones.

Question - what is the process whereby elected, human, Americans willingly fall into place and support the corporate citizenry in this madness? WHAT QUEER, ILLOGICAL, UN-COMMONSENSICAL LOGIC MOTIVATES SCOTUS TO INTERPRET THAT CORPORATIONS MERIT EQUAL CONSIDERATION OF ‘RIGHTS’ AND PRIVILEGES (E.G., CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTING) AS HUMAN CITIZENS???

These thoughts are repeated more and more often now even by concerned (and thinking) Conservatives. and, it appears the critical point has yet to be reached. What will be the nature of that critical point - a fundamental collapse of our natural environment or resources? A serious calling of ‘time out’ by the grass roots (human)? Or, will we stand and watch with wringing of hands as it all goes down the drain?