comity civility
Sometime after Jefferson arrived in the City of Brotherly Love,…
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an
During a three-hour interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan some months ago, Elon Musk revealed the core of the ideology animating the richest person in the world.
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is
,” Musk said, adding that liberals and progressives are “exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
Musk pointed to California’s move to provide medical insurance even to undocumented people who qualify for its low-income Medi-Cal program.
“We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on,” Musk continued. Empathy has been “weaponized.”
Musk is now officially out of Trump world but his DOGE lives on. It has already destroyed almost every empathic part of the U.S. government.
Musk disdains social insurance such as Social Security, which he calls a “Ponzi scheme.”
Musk’s former buddy Donald Trump presumably agrees with him. As do many Republicans, including Joni (“Well, we all are going to die”) Ernst and Mitch (“They’ll get over it”) McConnell.
Trump’s Republicans are now raiding Medicaid and food stamps to make way for a giant tax cut mostly for the rich. No empathy bug there.
Trump’s Department of Homeland Security is grabbing people off the streets and from courthouses without warrants and putting them in detention centers.
The number of immigrants detained in Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities across the country has reached a record high of more than 56,000. The result is overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and enormous pain for affected families and communities.
It’s the opposite of empathy — treating people as if they aren’t human, as if they’re the “other.”
Both Musk and Trump are experts in taking selfish advantage of everything, anything, and anybody. Both have altered government programs and regulations to reap personal financial gain. Both have been quick to fire people. Both demand loyalty to themselves but have no loyalty to anything or anyone besides themselves.
They’ve got it all wrong. Empathy is a necessary precondition for a society.
Without empathy, we’d be living in a social Darwinist jungle animated only by selfish individuals pursuing selfish needs, like Musk and Trump.
If everyone behaved like Musk and Trump, we’d have to assume everyone else was out to exploit us if they could. Much of our time and attention would be devoted to outwitting or protecting ourselves from other Musks and Trumps.
Without a shared sense of empathy and responsibility, we would have to assume that everyone — including legislators, judges, regulators, and police — was acting selfishly, making and enforcing laws for their own benefit.
In a world populated by people like Musk and Trump, we couldn’t trust anyone to be truthful if they could do better for themselves by lying. We couldn’t count on any claim by sellers of any product or service. Internet-based “reputational ratings” would be of little value because raters would be easily bribed.
Journalists would shade their reports for their own selfish advantage, taking bribes from advertisers or currying favor with politicians. Teachers would offer lessons to satisfy wealthy or powerful patrons. Historians would alter history if by doing so they gained wealth or power. Scientists would doctor evidence for similar selfish motives. The truth would degenerate into a cacophony of competing factual claims, as, in part, it has.
We couldn’t trust doctors or pharmacists to give us the right medications. We couldn’t trust bankers and accountants not to fleece us, restaurants not to feed us tainted food, lawyers not to hoodwink us.
A society depends on people trusting that most others in society will have a modicum of empathy for others rather than take advantage of them. In this way, civic trust is self-enforcing and self-perpetuating, while civic distrust can corrode the very foundations of a society.
Polls tell us that many of today’s Americans worry that the nation is losing its national identity. Yet the core of that identity has never been the whiteness of our skin, the uniformity of our ethnicity, or the commonality of our birthplace.
Our core identity as Americans — the most precious legacy we have been given by the generations who came before us — consists of the ideals we share and the obligations we hold in common. We are tied together by these empathic meanings and duties. Our loyalties and attachments, guided by empathy, define who we are.
If we are losing our national identity, it is not because we are becoming blacker or browner or speak in more languages than we once did. It is because we are losing the ties that bind us together, our collective empathy.
Musk and Trump typify what has gone wrong. Their most damaging legacies may be the erosion of the trust and empathy on which our society — any society — depends.
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an 1 25
Bruce Fischer, husband of third-term GOP Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska, dodged Harris' outstretched hand during Friday's swearing-in at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., offering a mere nod and curt "thank you" in return after his wife took the oath of office.
an 12 24
no lnx
https://www.alternet.org/americas-story/
alternet
Trump has offered extreme versions of America's four basic stories
Robert Reich December 12, 2024
Democrats are finally waking up to the fact that Trump Republicans have succeeded in framing issues to their advantage. While it’s true that Kamala Harris lost by a small margin, the overriding reality is that through many elections, Democrats have failed to speak to America in ways that most Americans understand.
The challenge facing Democrats is deeper than simply finding the right words and phrases. To win back the heart and soul of America, Democrats must retell the four basic stories that have defined and animated the United States since its founding.
For most of the 20th century, Democrats did this instinctively. But in this century, they have tended to speak in technocratic terms, giving Republicans — culminating in Trump — the dominant political narrative.
I want to tell you about how the four basic American stories have been told and explain why it’s urgent that the real story of our era be told: that wealth and power concentrated at the top are corrupting American democracy and shafting most working people.
There are four essential American stories. The first two are about hope; the second two are about fear.
The Triumphant Individual. This is the tale of the little guy who works hard, takes risks, believes in himself, and eventually gains wealth, fame, and honor.
It’s the story of self-made people who buck the odds, spurn the naysayers, and show what can be done with enough gumption and guts. They’re plainspoken, self-reliant, and uncompromising in their ideals — underdogs who make it through hard work and faith in themselves.
Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography is the first in a long line of U.S. self-help manuals about how to make it through self-sacrifice and diligence. The same story is epitomized in the life of Abe Lincoln, born in a log cabin, who believed that “the value of life is to improve one’s condition.”
The identical theme was captured in Horatio Alger’s hundred or so novellas, whose heroes all rise promptly and predictably from rags to riches. It’s celebrated in the tales of immigrant peddlers who become millionaire tycoons. And it’s found in the manifold stories of downtrodden fighters who undertake dangerous quests and find money and glory. Think Rocky Balboa, Norma Rae, and Erin Brockovich. The moral: With enough effort and courage, anyone can make it in the United States.
Trump wants Americans to think of him as the Triumphant Individual, and he has extolled others, such as JD Vance and Elon Musk, as similarly triumphant.
The Benevolent Community. This is the story of neighbors and friends who roll up their sleeves and pitch in for the common good.
Its earliest formulation was John Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity,” delivered on board a ship in Salem Harbor just before the Puritans landed in 1630 — a version of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, in which the new settlers would be “as a City upon a Hill,” “delight in each other,” and be “of the same body.”
Similar communitarian and religious images were used by the abolitionists, suffragettes, and civil rights activists of the 1950s and 1960s. “I have a dream that every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low,” said Martin Luther King Jr., extolling the ideal of the national community.
The story is captured in the iconic New England town meeting, in frontier settlers erecting one another’s barns, in neighbors volunteering as firefighters and librarians, and in small towns sending their high school achievers to college and their boys off to fight foreign wars. It suffuses Norman Rockwell’s paintings and Frank Capra’s movies. Consider the last scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” when George learns he can count on his neighbors’ generosity and goodness, just as they had always counted on him.
Trump Republicans have distorted the story of the Benevolent Community to show what America would be without “woke”ism, Critical Race Theory, transgender kids using bathrooms or being on high school sports teams inconsistent with their sex assigned at birth, “cat ladies” who choose not to have children, and other cultural bogeymen.
The Mob at the Gates. In this story, the United States is a beacon light of virtue in a world of darkness, uniquely blessed but continuously endangered by foreign menaces. Hence our endless efforts to contain the barbarism and tyranny beyond our borders.
Daniel Boone fought Native Americans — white America’s first evil empire. Davy Crockett battled Mexicans. The same story is found in the Whigs’ anti-English and pro-tariff histories of the United States, in the anti-immigration harangues of the late 19th century, and in World War II accounts of Nazi and Japanese barbarism.
It animates modern epics about space explorers (often sporting the stars and stripes) battling alien creatures bent on destroying the world. The narrative gave special force to Cold War tales during the 1950s of an international communist plot to undermine U.S. democracy, and subsequently of “evil” empires and axes.
The underlying lesson: We must maintain vigilance, lest diabolical forces overwhelm us.
Trump and his Republican enablers have emphasized this story to scare Americans into believing we’re being overridden by undocumented immigrants and taken advantage of by foreign nations who are allied with us and major trading partners.
The Rot at the Top. The last story concerns the malevolence of powerful elites. It’s a tale of corruption, decadence, and irresponsibility in high places — of conspiracy against the common citizen.
It started with King George III, and, to this day, it shapes the way we view government — mostly with distrust.
The great bullies of American fiction have often symbolized Rot at the Top: William Faulkner’s Flem Snopes, Willie Stark as the Huey Long-like character in All the King’s Men, Lionel Barrymore’s demonic Mr. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and the antagonists who hound the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath.
Suspicions about Rot at the Top have inspired what historian Richard Hofstadter called the paranoid style in U.S. politics — from the pre-Civil War Know-Nothings and Anti-Masonic movements through the Ku Klux Klan and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts.
The myth has also given force to the great populist movements of U.S. history, from Andrew Jackson’s attack on the Bank of the United States in the 1830s through William Jennings Bryan’s prairie populism of the 1890s.
Trump and his Republicans have used this story against government workers, civil servants, independent agencies, the FBI, and other examples of a so-called “deep state.”
Speak to these four stories and you resonate with the tales Americans have been telling each other since our founding — the two hopeful stories rendered more vivid by contrast to the two fearful ones.
These four mental boxes are always going to be filled somehow, because people don’t think in terms of isolated policies or issues. If they’re to be understandable, policies and issues must fit into these larger stories about where we have been as a nation, what we are up against, and where we should be going.
Major shifts in governance — in party alignments and political views — have been precipitated by one party or the other becoming better at telling these four stories.
In the early decades of the 20th century, progressives and Democrats filled all four boxes.
They accused leaders of big business of being the Rot at the Top. They argued that the large industrial concentrations of the era, the trusts, were stifling the upward mobility of millions of potential Triumphant Individuals and poisoning democracy.
During his 1912 campaign, Woodrow Wilson (who also promoted racism) promised to wage
“a crusade against powers that have governed us ... that have limited our development, that have determined our lives, that have set us in a straitjacket to do as they please.”
The struggle to break up the trusts would be nothing less than “a second struggle for emancipation,” by a national Benevolent Community intent on restoring freedom and democracy.
Wilson’s Mob at the Gates was composed of the large, bellicose states of prewar Europe who posed similar challenges to democratic freedoms. Wilson grimly rallied Americans to “defeat once and for all ... the sinister forces” that rendered peace impossible.
Theodore Roosevelt shared Wilson’s antipathy toward trusts, but by the 1920s, Republicans were mostly apologists for big business and Wall Street. That was okay with Americans as long as the economy roared, but it left the Grand Old Party vulnerable in harder times, which soon came.
Like today’s Trump Republicans, the GOP’s approach to foreign policy through most of the 20th century was mainly to avoid the Mob at the Gates — close the doors to immigrants, erect tariff walls, and isolate the nation.
They celebrated the wealth of Triumphant Individuals but didn’t champion upward mobility or equal opportunity, and they offered no particular view of the United States as a Benevolent Community. As such, they stayed firmly in the minority most of the first half of the 20th century.
The Great Depression and World War II presented the United States with palpable illustrations of the Democratic stories.
By the 1930s, the Rot at the Top included Wall Street as well as big business. In the 1936 presidential campaign, Franklin D. Roosevelt warned against “economic royalists” who had impressed the whole of society into service. “The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor ... these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship,” he warned. What was at stake, he concluded, was nothing less than the “survival of democracy.”
To cope with the Depression, Americans needed a national Benevolent Community. “I see one third of our nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished,” FDR told a nation whose citizens clearly understood they were all in this together. He described the purpose of the New Deal as “extending to our national life the old principle of the local community.” “We are determined,” Roosevelt said, “to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern.”
The Social Security Act was not just a social insurance scheme but the very symbol of national solidarity. Henceforth, all American families would share the risk of becoming unemployed or losing the family’s breadwinner or retiring without adequate savings.
Then came Adolf Hitler’s war, which cemented this national unity as FDR led the country — over the objections of Republican isolationists — into battle with the most fearsome Mob at the Gates it had ever encountered.
Democrats managed the transition from Depression and world war to postwar prosperity and the Cold War with only slight alterations in story line. The Benevolent Community remained at the core of Harry S Truman’s Fair Deal, John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier, and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.
The upwardly mobile Triumphant Individual depended on federal provisions — the GI Bill, government-backed mortgages, a guarantee of equal civil rights.
Meanwhile, the Democrats continued their assault on the Mob at the Gates, but now the Mob was the dangerous and expansive Soviet Union. Truman stopped the communists in Korea. Kennedy stopped them in Berlin and during the Cuban missile crisis. And he tried to stop them in Vietnam, which he saw as “the finger in the dike” holding back the Soviets.
Johnson, of course, tragically tried and failed to erect a dam against the North Vietnamese and their patrons.
While Republicans continued to wrestle with the isolationists and nervous Nellies — such as Senator Robert Taft of Ohio — Democrats spoke of paying any price and bearing any burden to protect the United States.
In the 1960s, the Rot at the Top gradually dropped out of the Democratic message. Gone were tales of greedy businessmen and unscrupulous financiers.
This was partly because the economy had changed profoundly. Postwar prosperity allowed the middle class to explode in size and the gap between rich and poor to shrink. White-collar workers were now abundant, and blue-collar workers got generous wage increases that could be absorbed by the huge postwar market.
Rot at the Top rhetoric was also a casualty of the Vietnam War, which spawned an anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian New Left and split Democrats down the middle.
For many liberals, the Rot came to be personified by Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and even the federal government itself. (Ironically, Richard Nixon’s White House and the Watergate scandal would hurt the Democrats, too, by confirming that the Rot at the Top was to be found in government rather than among business elites.)
The Vietnam War also undermined Democrats’ confidence about the Mob at the Gates. Soviet communism remained dangerous, to be sure, but the McGovern wing of the party had no clear plan of action. Indeed, its approach seemed redolent of the Republican isolationists of the earlier part of the century, who wanted the United States simply to turn its back on the Mob.
After President Carter and the hostage crisis, even when Democrats did try to tell this story, they seemed uncertain of themselves.
In short, Democrats and progressives came off as confused and conflicted about the dangers the United States faced. They stopped talking about both the Rot at the Top and the Mob at the Gates and thus ceased giving Americans convincing stories about what the nation was up against.
Tomorrow, in Part 2, I discuss why the Democrats left Trump to tell his fake version of the Rot at the Top, not the real one.
NOW READ: A reckoning is coming for the people who didn't care about their country
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
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--> violence?
an 2 23
A new analysis suggests Republican lawmakers' behavior during President Joe Biden's State of the Union speech is a disturbing look into the new norm in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In a new piece published by The New York Times, Karoun Demirjian pointed out some of the most egregious aspects of lawmakers' antics as she noted that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) even warned them from partaking in "childish games."
"The catcallers heckled with impunity, despite a private warning from McCarthy before the speech to be on good behavior and his public promises that the House would avoid 'childish games' during the address," Demirjian wrote. "It was the latest example of the speaker’s struggles to control his unruly rank and file. A vocal subset of ultraconservative Republicans has exacted steep concessions from McCarthy in exchange for supporting his bid for the speakership — and he has demonstrated repeatedly that he is willing to cater to their whims to placate his party’s base."
According to Demirjian, the chaos that erupted might be a clue of what's to come as Republicans take over the House of Representatives.
"The display — captured in images of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) her mouth wide-open as she booed and gave a thumbs-down to the president — reflected the ethos that has come to define the Republican-led House, where an emboldened right-wing that styles itself after former President Donald Trump is unapologetic about its antipathy for Biden and eager to show it in attention-grabbing ways," she wrote.
Offering more context into what transpired, Demirjian pointed out a pivotal moment in the night when Greene yelled "liar" at the president.
“If the American people had been on that House floor listening to that speech, it would have been a lot worse names than I called him,” said Greene.
READ MORE: Watch: Proof of Republicans repeatedly calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare
Although lawmakers have not been reprimanded for their actions, experts warn of how lack of accountability could be problematic in the very near future as it may send a conflicting message.
"Experts worry that ignoring Tuesday night’s heckling could make it difficult to return to an era of more polite dealings — especially given how much more indecorous behavior has graced the halls of Congress in the past," she wrote. "One famous example of how bad things can get comes from 1856, when a House member beat a senator with a cane."
Joanne Freeman, an American history professor for Yale University, also expressed her concerns about Greene's outbursts and what transpired.
“It’s not as though there has never been this kind of violation of behavior,” said Freeman. “This one was extreme, it was repeated, and it was coming from people who have already disrespected the government and the office of the presidency.”
She added, “It isn’t just a few random people yelling something at the president. It’s part of an ongoing attack against national institutions of government and the national political process.”
an 2 23 no vid? twt
Ex-GOP congressman: 'Awful' Marjorie Taylor Greene should face 'censure' for heckling the State of the Union
David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement February 08, 2023
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) numerous times heckled President Joe Biden as he delivered the State of the Union Address, including repeatedly calling him a “liar.”
Not in modern history has anyone so clearly disturbed the decorum of the nationally-televised event watched live by 40 million Americans. Not even U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), who infamously also called the President a liar – “You lie!” – during another nationally-televised event, that one by President Barack Obama in September of 2009.
OBAMA YOU LIE
youtu.be]
Tuesday night Congresswoman Greene repeatedly yelled, “You lie!” and, “Liar!” at President Biden, who, ironically, was sitting one seat back from his current position the last time it happened.
Here is that moment:
\u201cRep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) yells "you lie, you lie" and "liar" after President Biden says Republicans are proposing to sunset Medicare and Social Security.\u201d
— The Recount (@The Recount) 1675824479
Greene also heckled President Biden at other times throughout his speech – something she and Rep. Lauren Boebert did one year ago, also during the State of the Union.
Republican former U.S. Congressman Adam Kinzinger Tuesday night tweeted, “Did @RepMTG just yell ‘liar’?! Awful. Yet she will not be punished in response.”
READ MORE: ‘Salute Their Flags’: Sarah Huckabee Sanders Appears to Attack LGBTQ Americans and BLM During Angry GOP SOTU Response
He then called for Greene’s censure – and called for her fellow Republicans to do it.
“The GOP should lead the censure of @RepMTG for her behavior,” Kinzinger tweeted.
He wasn’t done.
Posting a screenshot of Greene standing during the State of the Union heckling President Biden, with her thumb pointing down, Kinzinger asked, “My fellow Republicans… you really want this as a role model for your kids? Do you really think the next generation will want to be part of this? I don’t.”
Kinzinger went one step further, reposting a tweet likening Congresswoman Greene to the fictional Disney villain Cruella de Vil – a comparison many on social media had been making during the evening’s event.
“Representative Joe Wilson was formally rebuked by the House on Tuesday for his outburst during President Obama’s health care address,” The New York Times reported, less than a week after what was at the time an unthinkable act. “The vote came after a Congressional clash over civility that showcased the deep partisan divisions in the House.”
Congressman Wilson also apologized for calling President Obama a “liar,” barely hours after his outburst.
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“This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the President’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill,” he said in a statement. “While I disagree with the President’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the President for this lack of civility.”
Congresswoman Greene likely will not apologize, and likely will not face any formal rebuke.
see civil virtue/ responsibility
aha2 bowling alone (globalization/ outsourcing, corporatization walmarting of rural rust belt] led to kids leaving, all sorts of other problems, rw talk radio proposed enemy/scapegoat solution ol time religion --> echo/escalator polarization that just made problems worse which called for trump i lone can fix it --> nazis on florida overpass /cda truckers....
aha: echo is isolation from Earth1, legit press info (ie ideas/info you do not want b/c does not fit your POV) and escalator= AMPLIFY/ BOOST/ PROPAGATE TO MORE PPL AND MORE INFLUENTIAL/INFECTIOUS PPL/ SOURCES; boost is boosted by algorithm and hype hate anger fear is monetized which is both an incentive and an extra further boost --> runaway mode
an 2 22 edit bd
On February 15, Bloomberg ran a story about the “freedom convoy” that seemed to illustrate Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity.
Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister who was part of the German resistance to the Nazi Party and to Adolf Hitler’s rise. His book, The Cost of Discipleship, is a meditation on “The Sermon on the Mount” in which Bonhoeffer splits the Christian concept of grace in two.
On the one hand is “cheap grace,” which is “without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
On the other hand, Bonhoeffer said, is “costly grace.” It “confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him.”
Indeed, resisting fascism by submitting “to the yoke of Christ” and following him cost him dearly. At age 39, the Nazis hanged him.
His theory of stupidity is featured in a letter written to friends a few years earlier. The letter, which is now known as “After Ten Years,” argues that evil like the Nazis isn’t the worst thing. Stupidity is.
“One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force,” he wrote. “Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.”
Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.
Bloomberg reporters Jen Skerritt and Robert Tuttle were covering protests of the Canadian government’s requirement that truck drivers delivering freight across the US-Canadian border must be vaccinated.
Protests in Alberta and Manitoba, dubbed the “freedom convoy,” took the form of blockades of bridges and trucking routes, at odds with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s declaration of emergency powers.
Skerritt and Tuttle interviewed one trucker. His name is Jake Klassen. His two campers and semi were in the blockade. He said Trudeau’s emergency powers were an attempt to “take everything from us.”
Then there is this part:
Klassen saidhe hasn’t been able to visit his nine-year-old daughter in months. She is receiving palliative care at St. Amant, a care residence in Winnipeg, but due to restrictions that require visitors to be fully vaccinated, Klassen and his wife can’t see her.
“Yes, that's absolutely stunning and sad,” said Victoria Barnett.
Barnett was director of programs on ethics, religion and the Holocaust at the National Holocaust Museum. She’s the author of many books on interfaith history. She edited a 2017 translation of “After Ten Years.” I asked if Jake Klassen exemplifies Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity.
Maybe, but as part of a bigger phenomenon. “After Ten Years” was his attempt to understand the first 10 years of National Socialism and what had happened to his compatriots, his church, his country.
He's trying to figure out why most Germans caved to Nazi ideology and why they became integral to what happened. The historian Klemens von Klemperer (himself a refugee) called the Third Reich a "consensual dictatorship" -- which is a pretty good description.
Go into that a bit more please. How was it consensual?
His main point is that stupidity is a moral failure, not an intellectual one. He's reflecting on the process by which people willfully become part of a larger movement or political group, etc. As they become increasingly involved, two things tend to happen:
- They become isolated(or they isolate themselves) from those who disagree with them or challenge them (and I would say also from news sources that would challenge their worldview) and
- They get a lot of reinforcement. One of the things that happened in 1933 after Hitler came to power was that Nazi Party organizations were founded for every demographic group – teachers, housewives, kids, etc. Everyone suddenly had a badge, a uniform, meetings to go to, new friends to meet etc. — and that was a big factor in creating a new sense of a larger German community serving a "grander" purpose (in the Nazi mindset).
A big part of that, of course, was identifying enemies and those who needed to be excluded -- Jewish citizens, political opponents, critical journalists, etc. But that early formation of consensus made life much harder, even by the end of 1933, for people who didn't agree with it.
What you're describing is collectivism, no?
The self-understanding of the German Volk was a collective concept personified by the "Fuhrer.” That's a big part of authoritarian or fascist regimes. Authoritarian leaders can do things without parliamentary approval, because they represent the "true" will of "the people."
But that also created a dynamic in Nazi Germany in which there was this mass adoration – almost a mass hysteria – for the person of Adolf Hitler. There are paintings portraying him as a messianic figure.
Bonhoeffer said there is no defense against stupidity. But if it's a moral failing, wouldn't a defense be private and public morality?
Ideally, yes.
Bonhoeffer's essay is an exploration of why that didn't happen. (Elsewhere, he explores the lack of civil courage) But Nazi Germany is a disturbing case study in the failure of leaders, institutions (such as the church), etc., to stand up in an effective way to National Socialism.
The best and bravest people were either arrested early on or got out. But he's pondering (and I think this is autobiographical) the failure of good decent people critical of the regime to be more effective.
That didn't happen. (Along the way, one must acknowledge that many of them became complicit). But by staying in and working from inside the regime, they also failed to offer a clearer example of resistance.
That's why by 1942 Bonhoeffer believes (as he writes here) that "only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity."
The trucker above says he's seeking liberation, too. Liberation from responsibility. How would Bonhoeffer persuade a man that he has agency and can visit his dying daughter by making the right choice?
One thing DB ignores is the psychology of all this. (He describes stupidity as a sociological problem). In Nazi Germany, we're also looking at the pressures and dynamics within a fascist police state.
In other circumstances, however (eg, the truckers' protests), this gets back to the peer pressures within a group that’s getting its information only from certain sources, in which there is a lot of pressure to conform to the will of the group (and a reward for doing so).
I've studied this in terms of the psychology of group behavior in Nazi Germany, but the literature on personality cults, mob behavior, etc., shows that the longer and more deeply a person gets involved in something like this, the less individual agency they perceive they have.
For Bonhoeffer personally -- he wrote as a theologian and person of deep faith -- that faith has the capacity to make someone see more clearly. But “After Ten Years” is a rather bleak assessment.
I'm reminded of something Michael Josephson said in 1989:
Success can be defined so many different ways but right now it is defined in a kind of how high is your position, how many people work for you, how high is your salary. When you get into that kind of yuppie version of success,you’re going to sacrifice things along the way.There’s not enough commitment to the ground rules of civil virtue.
A society focused on "success" (greed, selfishness) is a society in which a man won't do the right thing to see his dying daughter and as a consequence, will make sacrifices he can’t reverse along the way.
He's making an important point about what we value publicly and how that affects the individual's ethics and sense of responsibility.
I've been very disturbed by some of the very callous reactions during the pandemic – eg, the minimization of the deaths in nursing homes, the rush to get back to normal when thousands of people are still getting sick and dying (and when large sectors of the population -- children under the age of 6 -- can't yet be vaccinated).
But as I saw somewhere, the scale of the callousness has been on display for some time now in how we've dealt with school shootings, the high level of violence in our society and the much higher levels of violence experienced by people of color and the poor.
A society is measured in part by what we are willing to live with and by whether we are willing to change to make life better. Bonhoeffer, in his text, addresses this when he writes about the responsibility we are willing to take upon ourselves for the sake of a different future.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to be doing what Bonhoeffer wished more Germans had done. He called out conservatives in the Parliament for standing with the Swastika and the Confederate flag.
I interviewed a number of Germans back in the 1980s when I was working on my first book (a collection of oral histories from people who had been in the Confessing Church) and I recall Kurt Scharf (a very brave pastor, who would later became a bishop) saying thatif Germans had held mass demonstrations and marched in 1933 in solidarity with German Jews, they might have changed things.
Impossible to know in retrospect, that’s what’s important here (and for understanding Bonhoeffer as well) -- taking a public position not only draws a line for what can be tolerated, but it also serves as a model to others that it is possible to speak out. That's what he was writing about in the section on the lack of civil courage among Germans.
vax everywhere = neg?
gw denial eroded faith in sci for decades and made us vuln to vaxxer BS --> civil war?!
fox murdochs burn down the world for money and power (vax and AGW) ; koch gopanti-gubmint erode norms,
fox briefly forgot trump TV hacks and acted like a news org and reported FACT that trump lost AZ, immediate threat from oann newsmax reb mercer soc media play
no lnx
Black flag:Understanding the Trumpists' latest threatening symbol
Chauncey DeVega and Salon October 12, 2021
It's an old truism that the "real bad men" (and bad women) "move in silence and violence." That's certainly true for the most dangerous and most effective of Donald Trump's allies, henchmen, henchwomen, and other followers. But for Donald Trump himself, and most of his political cult, that rule does not apply....
https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/trumpists/
1021 btb has 1st rw radio talk guy mostly civil joe pyne
when rt gets PO'd violence, guns, pipebombs?
https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/are-the-rules-of-polite-society-being-rewritten-questions-of-civility-in-the-trump-era/
Eric Trump says he was spit on by an employee at Aviary, a high-end Chicago cocktail bar,on Tuesday night. The employee was briefly taken into Secret Service custody and then released.
In an interview withBreitbart News,Trump said it was “a purely disgusting act by someone who clearly has emotional problems.”
“For a party that preaches tolerance, this once again demonstrates they have very little civility,” he said.
Eric Trump isn’t an elected politician, but as an executive vice president of the Trump Organization he’s a public face of the family business and by extension, President Donald Trump’s brand. And his complaint about the lack of civility isn’t the first time questions have come up about what kind of boundaries members of the public should preserve when they stumble across politicians or the politically powerful in off-duty scenarios.
In July 2018, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was heckled by a group of protestersas he was leaving a restaurant in his home city of Louisville, KY.
At the time, McConnell was in support of the Trump administration’s policy of detaining families who illegally crossed the border — though not of separating children from their families — and on the day he was confronted while eating, hundreds of people were also protesting outside Louisville’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement office just a few miles away.
Video shared online showed a line of people following McConnell out of the restaurant and through the parking lot. Several chanted “Vote him out!” Another called him a “turtle head.”
McConnell didn’t reply; he got into the back of an SUV with a “Team Mitch” sticker on the rear window and left.
A few months later, in October 2018, McConnell and his wife, Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, were confronted while eating at another Louisville restaurant. A video showsa man yelling at the couple, “Why don’t you leave the entire country alone?”
Another woman joins in briefly, but while she eventually left quietly, the man snatched McConnell’s to-go box from the table, opened the restaurant door and dumped its contents into the street. ...McConnell’s incidents came on the heels of a string of similar events involving members of the Trump administration. In June 2018, Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a popular Virginia restaurant because the owner said “that many members of her LGBT staff were uncomfortable serving Sanders.”
And days before that, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was protested at a Mexican restaurant in D.C.
“Secretary Nielsen, how dare you spend your evening here eating dinner as you’re complicit in the separation and deportation of over 10,000 children,”shouted a member of the group.
They proceeded to chant “shame, shame, shame” and left after about 15 minutes. ...The Washingtonian’s Jessica Sidman wrote that the culture of D.C. — a city of politicians — is changing.
“Encountering powerful and controversial people shopping for groceries, dining at restaurants, or hitting up SoulCycle has always been a normal facet of DC life,” Sidman wrote. “And for the most part, there’s an unspoken code that we allow them to go about their daily lives uninterrupted.”
The culture change isn’t only evident in the nation’s capital, as the Chicago and Louisville incidents demonstrate. When the daily lives of the politically powerful are interrupted — whether by a lone heckler or a group of protesters — and the inevitable story makes the social media rounds, the question of “What happened to common courtesy?” quickly follows.
It’s a valid question. Does the health of a civilization depend on us maintaining polite manners in order to preserve the social fabric, or does it depend on us shedding and shredding them in order to make undeniable statements? ...Amanda Darrach detailed the night for the Columbia Journalism Review for a story in which many of the attending reporters didn’t want to actually be named.
“A White House correspondent who resembled a young William Shatner (and didn’t want to be named) took a gulp of beer and said that the night felt like ‘the end of a battle, or a decent game of rugby, where at the end of the day you shake hands,’” Darach wrote. “A colleague chimed in, ‘Everybody has their issue with Sarah Sanders, but if you can’t have a drink with somebody, then all of civilization has broken down.’”
(I can’t help but think of the line from the 1996 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma” when the titular character, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, finds out her main social rival is back in town: “I must throw a party for her! Otherwise everyone will feel at once how much I dislike her.” On the other side of the civility spectrum, we have last night’s debacle, in which a restaurant employee reportedly spits on Eric Trump. Eric is one of the lesser players in the Trump political machine when compared to his powerful siblings Donald Jr. and Ivanka, not to mention Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner. Even Eric’s wife Lara, a Trump campaign adviser and host of the
,” has a more explicitly political role in the family. Protesting McConnell or Sanders could be seen as a way of getting the attention of someone with actual political power. Spitting on Eric is purely a gesture of contempt directed at the entire Trump family; he’s just the representative.
And while in his interview with Brietbart, Eric Trump interpreted the act as a sign his father is doing something right (“When somebody is sick enough to resort to spitting on someone, it just emphasizes a sickness and desperation and the fact that we’re winning.”) there was no reflection on how or why the general level of contempt could be reaching a boiling point.
Late last week, the deplorable conditions of a detention facility in Clint, Texas, became public after investigators spoke with nearly 50 children about their time in the facility. Investigators found children were often sleeping on cold floors, were underfed, untreated for flu and lice outbreaks, and went without basic essentials like toothbrushes.
Then yesterday, a photo began circulating of a father and his two-year-old daughter who had drowned while crossing the Rio Grande river in an effort to reach Brown, Texas. Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter, Valeria, were being detained in a migrant camp on the Mexican side of the border. As conditions worsened and temperatures peaked, they attempted to cross alone to seek asylum.
So while politicians and those in political power — along with those who work to keep them in power — may want to carry on with their normal daily lives, the results of unconscionable policies under this administration have clearly moved beyond politics as usual. As members of the public grapple with this seismic shift, the rules of civility might be under revision in the process.
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