Rock Bottom
Rock bottom. Alcoholics and addicts sometimes hit rock bottom, realize they’ve hit rock bottom, say Enough Is Enough, do what they have to do, and end up way ahead of where they started.
It doesn’t only happen with addiction. Sometimes it happens with other kinds of adversity. Many years ago, when I lived in Indiana because my wife taught at Purdue, a friend of my wife’s and mine lived across the street. She was married with a few kids and working on her Ph.D. Back then the Lafayette area was inundated with trains. Tracks were everywhere. Anywhere you tried to go you ran the risk of being late because your street was temporarily closed while a freight train crossed your path. A lot of people lost patience and decided to race them. Roughly twice every three years someone lost that race, often for the most trivial of reasons.
Our friend was not one of these. In her case it was different. She was a passenger in the front seat with her seatbelt on. The driver, I forget who she was, crept up to a train track to try to see if a train was coming. Unfortunately, it was, and it clipped the front of her car, sending the car into such a violent spin that our friend was thrown backward, her seat back collapsed, she slid under her seatbelt and was thrown about twenty feet out a back window. And survived without life-threatening injury.
So she had to start physical therapy. It worked, she was a hard worker, and she improved. But when she hit normal, where she was before, now she had new habits and didn’t stop and so she ended up as a triathlete.
Next time the Olympics come around, watch the backstories. You’d be amazed at how many of them sound like our friend. They had injuries, they got sick, they had to work at recovery and then – Miraculously! – they became world-class athletes. Well, no, it’s not a miracle, and I first understood that when I watched it happen.
This is what our country is going through at the moment. Between Trump, COVID-19, the awful economic/business consequences of COVID-19, bad environmental decisions with bad consequences, rampant racism with unarmed Black males (usually males) getting shot by police, horrific income and wealth polarization, a very costly loss of faith in expertise, an equally costly loss of faith in government at all levels, rampant privatization of things that should not be privatized, an absurd lack of firearm regulations, an insane disregard for truth in reporting, a flagrant disregard for the rights of citizens and non-citizens, a demonizing of immigrants, a lack of respect for separation of Church and State, a deep failure to accept collective responsibility for anything, a nearly inexplicable disregard for interference in American elections, a devaluing of public education, an infrastructure that is falling apart, and a completely inexplicable disregard for American military lives abroad that could easily and accurately be characterized as treason, the United States is hitting Rock Bottom.
An awful lot of Americans are sick of it. YouTube is full of Republicans announcing they’ve had it and intend to vote for Biden. In the aftermath of the George Floyd killing, a majority of White Americans believes that Black people don’t enjoy the same treatment on average from the police that White people do. More and more Americans are in dire financial trouble.
We lost the 2016 election because we hadn’t yet hit rock bottom, or at least it wasn’t widely enough accepted that we had. We didn’t trust Hillary to understand just how bad the polarization of wealth had become and so some of us voted in the primaries for the curmudgeon who would not have made a good leader because we believed at least he’d work on the problem and take it seriously.
Biden in 2016 would have been the same way as Hillary. He has credit card banks in Delaware. He looked at economics in Wall Street terms. But now he can’t. COVID-19 won’t let him. Too many Americans are taking too big hits. So now he has to be FDR – his words, not mine. A crisis is frankly what forced FDR to become an FDR.
COVID-19 and the Trump phenomenon have told us that the country has to change way more fundamentally than these Democrats would have been willing to over the last several years. And Joe Biden gets that.
What happens after an alcoholic or addict reaches bottom is they start to develop new habits and priorities that will help them remain clean and get prosperous. That’s exactly what I expect to happen to the United States. All these miserable problems that have been largely ignored over the past several years are about to be addressed at the same time. New priorities, new habits, new electoral participation, new inclusiveness. What happens when we give up all our bad habits?
We become a sort of triathlete nation. In short, we perform.
And that, in a nutshell, is why I think the United States in the mid and late 2020’s will be in a way better position than anyone I’ve spoken to or read anticipates. I’m not hearing this from anyone else.
Perhaps I’m not hearing this from anyone else because I’m wrong. I don’t think so, though. I think I have a pretty clear conception of how we’ve gotten here. I once wrote a post called How The Angry White Guys Got That Way. As analysis, that post surprised my audience more than anything I’ve written before or since. I’m not a bad analyst. I understand what happens when certain dominoes fall and what knocks them over. So I am making a prediction.
The US will come out of the other end of this COVID-19/Trump collective mess far more prosperous, far more powerful, and far more egalitarian than anyone I know of sees coming. And I don’t write this as an optimist, I write it as an analyst. That’s just how I see the dominoes falling.
09/15/2020 @ 2:28 am
All of this really does assume a Biden win. He may well win. If no, the nation will have come nowhere near some rock- bottom and for some time. When we realise that losing ‘20 meant there will be no ‘24 rock- bottom is on the cards.
09/15/2020 @ 7:56 am
If Biden loses my analysis doesn’t work. If he doesn’t outright win and we don’t win the Senate, we aren’t at rock bottom. Where we are now we can recover from. If the election is successfully contested we have a major crisis between us and improvement.
09/15/2020 @ 5:41 am
I have a great deal of respect for your analyses. I look forward to seeing them, and have learned a great deal. Sometimes it pains me to disagree, and this is a perfect example. This does seem to be optimistic to me, although I accept that optimism per se is not your goal here. Nevertheless, it is a bit brighter than I expect for a variety of reasons.
Generally, with regard to “rock bottom”, I think this psychological response to one’s own actions differs when it comes to a sociological question. An individual can find that he is choosing survival over self destruction, but when it comes to two or more individuals, negative actions can ping-pong back and forth where one person does not perceive self destruction as much as inspiration, and go further into destruction than he would alone. And while we have lived through an increase in instability in our society, I think it can get much worse. Now, it has been theorized for at least several years that we are living in a failed state. There is a substantive argument for this. However, if we have achieved that status, it is still academic at this point. I do not think it is the general perception of the average citizen. If it ever does become the perception of the average citizen, things will change dramatically. Compliance with laws that we take for granted will disappear. Right now, you can observe faith and compliance by simple things like behavior at signal controlled intersections, or stop signs. Once people lose faith in basic rules, that will noticably change.
Another thing that I think is an unsolved challenge is that different groups within our society define certain basic concepts very differently. I think that for a variety of reasons, we are proceeding toward clashes based upon those differences rather than resolutions. I think the infrastructure, and practices with which we must find agreement in definitions, and become one nation, do not currently exist. This is a difficult theory to explain, but I’ll try in this way.
We have always existed in this country with separate ideas about very basic concepts. One of my favorite examples is Black churches versus White churches. Ostensibly similar denominations differ so dramatically in practice. As those people leave their houses of worship, there is less to bring them together, or contain conflict than there once was. 3 networks have exploded into countless cable outlets. Social media has created diversity of opinion more than it has informed consensus. Things like denying science, and the science of medicine used to be far out fringe positions. Today it is quite common to see denial of the science that supports the fighting of our current pandemic. That is a deeper retreat from reason than I have ever witnessed in my lifetime. And I don’t think a society reaches rock bottom while the trains are still running, and power grid is still functioning, when a rift as wide as we have currently has manifested. I think society bounces, if it does, off of some sort of cataclysm. The Great Depression took cataclysm, the Civil War did as well. WWII Germany did not bounce until it tore itself to shreds. I think rock bottom will look like one of those scenarios, if not a combination.
09/15/2020 @ 9:43 am
First of all, never be pained to disagree with me.
To answer this depends on the assumption that Jon pointed out. Yes, a lot of the country disagrees on basics, but one of the reasons we do is that the Bully Pulpit is in the hands of someone who doesn’t believe in standards. The White House has made it OK to resent viscerally in public at the expense of our country without evaluating if that resentment makes any sense. The White House has done what it could to kill truth as a national value. The White House, while trying to claim law and order, only cares about order and actually has no respect whatsoever for law. The White House has treated the whole concept of science, of evidence, of seeking useful objective truth as nothing but a political speed bump. The White House has treated the idea of any kind of sacrifice for one’s country as the behavior of suckers.
These are not ideological stands. They are power grabs and nothing more, and they have reached the point where they are sickening a whole lot of Republicans because, unlike the Nazis in Charlottesville, there have been Republicans who are good people. This is something you know personally from your own family.
This is not a standard political divide. It’s a moral divide. Trump has done what he could to turn Id into the primary national value. (Damn, that’s not bad.) Trump has set the example that it’s OK to react without thought. And we have seen that millions have followed him straight into this. When we see race-motivated vandalism and other hate crimes, the criminals often write Trump’s name on their work or cite him in other ways. Kyle Rittenhouse cited him.
A White House that is occupied by an obvious adult changes things. Biden is a good person for the role because he doesn’t trigger the visceral resentment that Hillary does. He’s a likable adult. But even past this, if the White House is addressing all the states and saying For the good of the country, this is what we all need to do about COVID-19, that carries weight, because it’s the kind of crisis leadership Americans have generally expected from the White House. There’s a big difference between the country’s biggest authority figure suggesting we ingest bleach and wearing a mask. Yes, we’ll still see division, but not like we are now. Certain behaviors that have become mainstream because of White House sanction will become more peripheral again as they don’t have the support of anyone with any gravitas. Trump’s gravitas is strictly from his office.
Again, maybe I’m an optimist but I don’t think so. I’m not claiming that all this crap will go away, I’m just predicting that it will become a lot less severe. I say this not because of the actions of politicians but because of the actions of the majority of the population. That most White Americans see police treatment of Black citizens as a problem is new and absolutely not engendered by Trump. More people in the military now support Biden than Trump, and that is an enormous reversal; in 2016, those serving voted for Trump over Hillary two to one. Yes, we’re worried about the election, but what really worries us most about the election is fraud. We worry that votes won’t be counted. We worry that voters will be disenfranchised. We worry about this far more than we worry about whether the majority of Americans would choose Trump over Biden. The problem in the last election was who would vote. The problem in this one is who can vote.
The last Presidential election couldn’t really be contested because the votes that were placed were counted. The process was horrifying but legally legitimate. What we will see if the process is not legitimate in 2020 and the Republicans win by those means will be a national explosion. People stay on the streets for weeks over single killings. What they’ll do if their country is stolen will be orders of magnitude larger.
And then my prediction will have to wait until that resolves, however it resolves. It is not likely to resolve by leaving Republicans in power because if it does the country will have a government that a substantial majority of Americans do not view as legitimate, and in this country in particular that isn’t sustainable, certainly not with a majority of the military being on the opposite side than the government.
09/15/2020 @ 10:04 am
After the Civil War which led to almost 620,000 deaths, was followed by 14 years of Reconstruction. After that the US went into almost another century of Jim Crow. The US functioned with and was defined by the people that it oppressed. It was a feature, not a glitch, in other words. The failure that we see today is from people unwilling to allow it to be a feature, not necessarily the lack of morality in the processes.
09/15/2020 @ 10:29 am
The lack of morality in the processes to which I was referring mainly hasn’t happened yet. There are two separate phenomena here: oppression and majority disenfranchisement. The majority is finally figuring out that we consider oppression to be unacceptable American behavior, which is a change of feature as you put it. If an election is determined by mass disenfranchisement of voters, not as built into the system by the Electoral College but by manipulation of the system in ways it was clearly not designed to function, we then reach a moral issue as agreed on by the majority of the population. Apartheid worked because it had either the active support or tacit acceptance of the majority of the population. If millions of American voters are deliberately disenfranchised to swing an election, the result will not be supported or accepted by the majority of the population. You can ask Americans from all different ideologies and damned near all of them will tell you that democracy is an American value.
09/15/2020 @ 10:41 am
I pray that you are right about the reaction to “majority disenfranchisement.” You may well be. My limitation in being able to perceive that is a sort of PTSD. I can’t tell if dominant culture values and will sacrifice for freedom and justice in the way I conceive of it, whether that be because of a different concept, or a preference for dominance. This is what I am waiting to see. Evangelicals love Trump. It is clearly not the evangelizing. It is all about cultural dominance.
09/15/2020 @ 1:11 pm
Trump’s evangelical support isn’t as unanimous as it was.
09/15/2020 @ 8:16 am
“The key to understanding the concept of rock-bottom is acknowledging that it’s a unique process. Rock-bottom means something different for everyone. For you, rock-bottom could be the loss of a marriage; for me, it might be the loss of a job.
It’s nearly impossible to know what anyone else’s rock-bottom is. There’s not a tried-and-true method of predicting what your personal rock-bottom moment will be or how it will feel. The important thing is not what rock-bottom looks like, but what it represents.
Rock-bottom means something different for everyone. For you, rock-bottom could be the loss of a marriage; for me, it might be the loss of a job.
Simply put, rock-bottom moments have the power to make someone feel so incredibly uncomfortable that they actively seek out change.”
https://drugabuse.com/7-rock-bottom-myths-and-the-truths-behind-them/
Several times I have stated that this country must reach the point of a collective epiphany…
You describe a revelation precipitated by a national. “rock bottom” experience and exercise of sorts.
However, as discussed, “rock bottom” implies or suggests no where else to go in a downward trajectory or spiral.
Your description of “rock bottom” doesn’t come close to the
“rock bottom” of a return to the American Apartheid that was the African American experience not much more than than 60 years ago…
My lifetime….
A few short decades further back and you’re in the existential hell that was the daily life of most black people in this country…
Your “rock bottom” doesn’t incorporate the black experience because it can’t….You have no idea what “rock bottom” would be like for black people in this country…
Frankly and thankfully , neither do I….
Your analogy while apt, is not a fully comprehensive analysis.
At best, it is a partial description of what can happen if we don’t learn from what Trump and the COVID19 pandemic have revealed to those among us who have been heretofore ignorant, oblivious, or indifferent to the condition and circumstances of those who have been increasingly marginalized, demonized, and criminalized in this country.
Revelation:
the act of making something known that was secret, or a fact that is made known:
Epiphany:
a moment when you suddenly feel that you understand, or suddenly become conscious of, something that is very important to you
—–Cambridge Dictionary
In my view,
“Rock bottom” is slavery…
“Rock bottom” is the Holocaust
“Rock bottom” is rampant amoral despotism run amuck….
Our task isn’t to recover from hitting “rock bottom”.
The moral imperative and our job and our duty is to avoid getting there by achieving social, racial, environmental and political justice without destroying ourselves and the planet before we realize that there is no other way out…
09/15/2020 @ 9:43 am
Here is an important distinction. I don’t think the Holocaust and slavery are rock bottom at all. They are as far down as a society can go morally, but as far as function, a society can advance and prosper with slavery…perhaps less so with the Holocaust. The point is, American slavery was an intended part of its construction. It was absolutely wrong, but it is also wrong when a coyote eats your favorite pet. It just isn’t wrong tot he coyote. The stress on American society now is because those who had been excluded by law, (everyone but white men), are defining freedom within society as being inclusive. America’s tension is that that is not generally held. The case still needs to be fully made. Gender, racial, religious oppression are part of how America works, it just doesn’t admit it. America would work better if it remained fully oppressive, or sincerely pursued a “more perfect union.” The trouble is that it is trying to do both at the same time, while only claiming one. America fails if democracy fails, no matter what the state of the economy, or public health are.
As for the Holocaust specifically, genocide is obviously wrong, but I do not think it will necessarily cause the failure of a society. Civilizations can prosper while acting like predatory animals. We believe that they should not, but not primarily because it is ineffective. We believe that based upon being willing to make sacrifices for a humane result.
09/15/2020 @ 10:36 am
@Bigey;
“I don’t think the Holocaust and slavery are rock bottom at all.”
Is your opinion…
The fact that
“Rock-bottom means something different for everyone….”
leaves room for a variety of contexts and interpretations of which yours is but one and mine is but another….
Interestingly our opinions are neither diametrically opposed nor inconsistent…
If this nation were to hit an absolute “rock bottom” it would cease to be its as we know it, and rise from the ashes as the “Phoenix” of a newly formed or newly found America barely recognizable as a remnant of its former self…
09/15/2020 @ 10:43 am
I think that a definition of national rock bottom, even though highly subjective except insofar as it triggers an observable response, should probably entail a significant effect on the majority of the population in question. In Nazi Germany that was non-Jewish Germans and in the US it was White Americans, keeping in mind that it was the South that started the Civil War. The danger here is different. In this scenario, the victims would blatantly Be the majority.
09/15/2020 @ 10:48 am
You’re right that I think our opinions are aligned. However, I think you are wrong about my analysis as being “opinion” based. My point was explained more clearly. The Holocaust was a moral low point, but not what caused that society to fail. Western democracies knew of the Holocaust in Germany since the 30s, yet were not opposed until Germany actually attacked other countries. Germany’s aggression caused it to fail, not its internal politics, no matter how immoral. Do you get the distinction I am making?
I will accept your analysis that the Holocaust was the low point functionally, but you need to make the point. You haven’t. You just said…’disagree.’
09/15/2020 @ 11:36 am
@Bitey;
“The Holocaust was a moral low point, but not what caused that society to fail.”
For the millions of Holocaust victims and survivors society had hit rock bottom and failed abjectly with the most horrendous of consequences…
Same with the 4pp year enslavement of Africans….
Society, as such, doesn’t get much worse than slavery and genocide when viewed from the perspective of the victims….
Waiting for the perpetrator of atrocities against humanity to hit a functional ‘rock bottom’ before seeking and securing change would, in my view, require the exstinguishing and recreation of civilization itself…
09/15/2020 @ 12:06 pm
Ron, as bad as slavery and the Holocaust were, you’re missing the point. No one disputes how bad either of those historical periods were…no one here anyway. Morals matter. Morality is important. But, morality does not challenge function. I am not stating a preference, or saying how it should be. I am saying how it is. Nazis thought they had the power of morality in their side. They had “Gott Mit Uns” carved on their belt buckles. Their perception of morality did not prevent them from functionally destroying their society. The two ideas are not the same. They can impact one another, but they don’t necessarily. Like you said, there was 400 years of slavery in the Americas, and the Bible endorsed it. Slavery did not cause America to fail. To the contrary, it made America rich. The institution does not exist here anymore, but we do business where it does. The moral weakness is not causing functional weakness. It wont help to fix the problem by not being able to see the distinction, and standing on a demagogic tactic rather than actual reason. They are two separate concepts.
09/15/2020 @ 1:04 pm
Bitey,
This point is why I talked about the majority of the population. One has to define “function” somehow in terms of answering “functioning for whom?” I agree that the Holocaust didn’t kill Germany, Soviet soldiers and American equipment did. I’m obviously oversimplifying here. Whether Germany functioned for Jews is beside the point because Germany not functioning for Jews didn’t result in a change of government. But here that’s not what we face. Here the majority is unhappy with the administration.
09/15/2020 @ 9:58 am
My term was used out of convenience but really is inaccurate. As Bitey has also pointed out, we can go one Hell of a lot lower. However, I think we are reaching the point where enough Americans are so incredibly uncomfortable that we actively seek out change, to paraphrase your quote.
09/15/2020 @ 10:59 am
@Koshersalaami,
“I think we are reaching the point where enough Americans are so incredibly uncomfortable that we actively seek out change, to paraphrase your quote.”
Your “rock bottom”
is “what can happen if we don’t learn from what Trump and the COVID19 pandemic have revealed to those among us who have been heretofore ignorant, oblivious, or indifferent….”
If Biden doesn’t win by a 10/20 point margin, the needle won’t move at all…
There will be no ‘mandate’ to seek out and implement change.
The problem is that with all that has been revealed and made available for all to see, there are still far too many people in this country who remain ignorant, oblivious, and indifferent….
Margins that are “too close to call” or within “the statistical margin of error” will result in a political shit show the likes of which have never been seen….
In such a context, minor adjustments like police reform would be difficult, and systemic or institutional change would be virtually impossible….
09/15/2020 @ 12:59 pm
Ron,
I don’t think the problem is a 10/20 point margin, I think it will be making sure the 10/20 point margin is actually counted. In terms of change, that’s not defined by the margin so much as it’s defined by who occupies the White House and has the Senate majority.
09/15/2020 @ 10:25 am
There is a saying for t-shirts that says, “when it comes to being chased by a bear, I don’t need to be able to outrun the bear, I just need to be able to outrun you.” Something like that. And it is a funny idea, and great for t-shirts, but the joke works because there is some truth to it. It points to a certain selfishness in our society in general. It celebrates it a little. To test the theory of failure of civilization, consider the willingness to wear a t-shirt that celebrated incest or infanticide. I’d call those several orders of magnitude greater with regard to YUCK. Selfishness brings finger wagging, but will be ultimately condoned. As long as it is, we will continue to see “trickle down” scams, red-lining, even presidents who call Covid a “flu” while knowing that it isn’t. America, in large part will forgive it…unlike the other two.
09/15/2020 @ 10:37 am
It would depend on where such T-shirts were worn. I wouldn’t guarantee those shirts would be accepted. The bear is funny and with a certain amount of truth.
(As sheer coincidence, a week ago Thursday night while I was on my driveway about to walk my dog, a bear ran full tilt between my neighbor’s house and mine, then across the street and through someone else’s backyard. It took me a bit to realize it was a bear as it wasn’t that easy to see, and my neighbor yesterday said he’d seen bear tracks near his garbage can. I now have a very good idea of how fast a bear can move. And no, we can’t outrun one.)
Selfishness in America has become ideological, a right-wing virtue, much more than it used to be. I’m curious how that will evolve, particularly if we don’t have such blatantly selfish leadership.
09/15/2020 @ 11:15 am
@Koshersalaami;
“Selfishness in America has become ideological, a right-wing virtue, much more than it used to be.”
Selfishness is baked in to the American cultural myth of the “rugged individual” and “the self made man”…
So-called “free-market capitalism” contains strains of this rudimentary cultural tenet which may be characterized as an ideological influence…
09/15/2020 @ 1:09 pm
Ron,
Strains, yes. Reducto ad absurdum like we see now, no. “Self-made” men formerly understood that they lived in a country to which they had responsibilities. The rejection of collective responsibility by a significant portion of the population is true to a greater extent than it used to be. If you looked at politics fifty years ago, the biggest disagreements were about How. There were agreed-upon givens. That’s how Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy could be close friends. That’s gone now. No Democrat is befriending Mitch McConnell.
09/15/2020 @ 2:56 pm
I can’t find where to replay to your ‘majority’ response, so I’ll just start at the top. The question is still compelling.
As for the majority being fed up, again, I hope that is true. By all appearances, it does seem so.
Back when BLM became a subject of conversation, I remember saying that I did not see how anyone could have an issue with it. As you know, it spawned all sorts of rebuttal statements. It was deflating seeing that happen. “Black Lives Matter” seems like a perfectly gentle/meek rallying cry to me. I guess what can’t be seen are the millions who dont register on social media or on asphalt, but do agree that BLM is not aggressive or offensive. I think the closest I will see data which gives an indication of how non-Black people in America feel will be the election.
I requested a mail-in ballot, and I plan to use it. I also plan to drop it off at the board of elections on the first day possible. I have never felt such low confidence in the Postal Service, and the state government. I also worry about unrest on Election Day, to say nothing of Covid-19. We all need everyone to care about this country and its institutions.
09/15/2020 @ 3:18 pm
I’m voting in person because we have so many early voting days that we can go without crowding.
The thread is getting convoluted. I think I liked the old OS format of everything in order and you just reference what you’re replying to in the comment. At least sometimes.
Yeah, you’d think BLM wouldn’t be offensive. The easiest way to avoid this crap would have been to call it BLAM, standing for Black Lives Also Matter. That would have short circuited almost all of this crap. No one would be able to say “All Lives Matter.” The problem, of course, is that they don’t, or there would be no BLM.
09/15/2020 @ 4:05 pm
“BLAM” is also derivative. If a society wont allow a person/people to say that they matter without qualification, it does not deserve support.
09/15/2020 @ 5:44 pm
“If a society won’t allow a person to say that they matter without qualification, it does not deserve support.” True, but that’s not how the other side Interprets BLM. They look at BLM as an expectation of exceptional support, support that other groups inexplicably don’t deserve. Their blind spot, and it’s huge, is that they don’t assume that the Black population needs more support. They think the way around racism is to take race as completely off the table as possible and that the biggest opponents of racism ought to be struggling to do just that. There are a lot of reasons that doesn’t work but that’s what these people think. They think the ultimate goal is colorblindness. Unfortunately, they’re way more tolerant of racism than of counter-racism.
09/15/2020 @ 5:48 pm
In a way this is parallel to the class argument. Upper class people would rather poorer people were more class-blind (when it suits them only). If someone not upper class complains about class differences, that’s “class warfare” which in reality is waged 100% by upper classes against lower classes. Acknowledging class differences is like acknowledging racial differences. Both are there and there are populations in whose vested interest it is to see those differences ignored so they can keep their dominant positions unopposed.
09/15/2020 @ 8:27 pm
I think we are in exactly that type of split currently. I think the growth of the self is making America much more turbulent than previous moments of change in America. Kids like me who grew up in the 70s don’t see ourselves as hyphenated as previous generations do, and it has helped and hurt in various ways.
09/16/2020 @ 1:11 am
Two of my grandparents kept kosher and English wasn’t their native language. Aside from going to Hebrew School for a religious education (after public school on some days), I knew where I came from. As time went on, there was less of that with the earlier immigrant groups’ descendants.
09/15/2020 @ 3:27 pm
@Bitey
“We all need everyone to care about this country and its institutions.”
Agreed….
People must understand that the “all hands on deck” alarm is being soubded loud and clear….
People5 must be made aware of the simple fact that:
THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!
09/16/2020 @ 3:59 am
Would someone care to describe or define “functional rock bottom” within the context or framework of this statement?:
“The key to understanding the concept of rock-bottom is acknowledging that it’s a unique process. Rock-bottom means something different for everyone.”
09/16/2020 @ 8:51 am
I took your definition. Rock bottom is how low you are when you decide to change.
09/16/2020 @ 4:43 pm
@Koshersalaami;
In your estimation, can or does this apply to society writ large?
Your post suggests that it does…
If that’s the case, what is “societal rock bottom” supposed to look or feel like where the rubber meets the road?
Especially to those among us who might argue that they’ve been experiencing “societal rock bottom” for decades, if not generations…
How do propose to communicate to such people that American society is only just now experiencing, or approaching, ‘rock bottom’?
Can ‘rock bottom’ occur at a point where there OUGHT to be a decision to change, or only when the decision to change has been made, or when the change has occurred in fact?
In 1954, Brown v Board of Ed required that schools be integrated “with all deliberate speed”.
That was about 65 years ago.
There are places in this country where “rock bottom” hasn’t and won’t occur…
Society’s ‘rock bottom’ decision to change isn’t being reflected in the behaviors of countless schools and school systems across the country.
The law that governs such behaviors has been changed, evolved, and morphed…
But in too many places, and in so many ways, the attitudes and behaviors haven’t changed at all…..With or without the benefit of reaching, or achieving, ‘rock bottom’….
09/16/2020 @ 10:51 pm
Ron,
I answered this exact question earlier in the thread. 9/15, 1:04 PM. Twelfth comment from the top currently.
09/17/2020 @ 2:28 am
@Koshersalaami;
You responded then but you didn’t answer the question I raise here…
A majority of the Supreme Court is not a majority of the population…
The phrase “with all deliberate speed” was inserted into the language of the 1954 decision so that the majority of the population could catch up to where the so-called liberal activist ‘Warren Court’ was leading by declaring segregation both unconstitutional and immoral…
When the court handed the decision down, the majority of the population hadn’t arrived at the conclusions reached by the Court….The majority of the population had to be goaded and coaxed into reaching “rock bottom” to be willing to accept and enforce the decision of the Court….
“All deliberate speed” was the platitudinous euphemism that gave a reluctant majority enough wiggle room to avoid good faith immediate compliance with “the law of the land”.
The impact and effect of decades of foot dragging and delay re desegregation are still being felt all across the country…”rock bottom” notwithstanding….
09/17/2020 @ 8:27 am
Ron,
In too many places and in so many ways attitudes haven’t changed at all….
But in so many places and in so many ways, they have. The shift is very real. It isn’t universal but it’s certainly there. The shift is in a whole lot of people who voted for Trump in the last election and now say Enough.
That’s in the numbers. The reaction among Republicans to the George Floyd killing was numerically unprecedented. Protests broke out all over the country, including in small towns, and the majority of damned near every major demographic supported them, even if they viewed them as violent.
Most enlisted military personnel now support Biden rather than Trump. In 2016, Trump won over Hillary in the military by a 2:1 margin.
Maybe you don’t look at all the Republican YouTube mea culpas. There are loads of them.
In 2016 we weren’t looking at someone trying to win an election by keeping millions of Americans from being able to vote. We are in 2020 and it’s screamingly public. We have a guy in the White House who is willing to damage the Post Office to keep mail-in Democratic votes from being placed on time. The biggest fear for us isn’t that we can’t get enough votes, it’s that we can’t get enough votes counted.
The question, as I stated earlier, has to do with the majority. In order for the country to say we’re changing, we need a majority of Americans to say we need change and for a majority of politically active Americans to do something about it.
09/17/2020 @ 9:40 am
@Koshersalaami;
“In order for the country to say we’re changing, we need a majority of Americans to say we need change and for a majority of politically active Americans to do something about it.”
Do you remember this:
“When, Oh When, Will You White People Put an End to this Shit?!”
YouTube is reflective of what the mavens of the platform and genre think and believe to be sure. However YouTube is not ABC, CBS, and NBC that’s still where the overwhelming majority of white folks are in terms of mass media…
The giants of mass media must take up the mantle and perform as proponents of change re the movement or shift you speak of in the same manner as Fox leads as the proponent of suppression, repression, and oppression….
As you state, “It isn’t universal but it’s certainly there”.
Inasmuch as racism and it’s impact and effects in this country have been “universal” the response and movement to eliminate or eradicate it must also be “universal”.
Reform in policing and the criminal justice system may address the tip of the iceberg so to speak but stopping the police from killing unarmed black people isn’t all there is to it…
09/17/2020 @ 11:21 am
What makes you think I believe that police reform is all there is to it? The initial corporate responses that came out after George Floyd’s murder had nothing to do with police reform, they had to do with addressing internal and external racism.
As to media taking up the mantle, the only mainstream media I’ve seen doing anything like that so far has been the Washington Post. Their tone has turned decidedly partisan. As to the rest of them, they’re mainly trying to avoid turning into the mirror image of Fox. Getting them to do anything else has mostly to do with sponsorship I think. “They must” doesn’t mean much. They don’t lead.
As to eradicating racism being universal, not likely. Being close to general, possible. We’re getting closer, among other things due to generational change. The real answer to this is that we will see it addressed more than we have but less than we want. Having a President that owes the Black community big time and knows it will certainly help.
09/17/2020 @ 2:20 pm
@Koshersalaami;
“What makes you think I believe that police reform is all there is to it?”
I’m not suggesting that you believe that police reform is all there is to it.
I’m saying that there are those who are in the streets today who see legislative and administrative remediation of racism in policing as the ‘solution’ and remain ignorant, indifferent, and oblivious to the underlying institutional and systemic racism which is manifest in police misconduct…
“As to eradicating racism being universal, not likely……The real answer to this is that we will see it addressed more than we have but less than we want.”
As you would have it, if a majority of the population doesn’t acknowledge and accept that racism is pervasive and must be address on a much broader scale, then racism will remain a permanent fixture in American society and culture…
09/17/2020 @ 3:17 pm
Ron,
A majority of the population acknowledging and accepting that racism is pervasive and must be addressed on a much broader scale does not equal the eradication of racism.
09/17/2020 @ 4:14 pm
@Koshersalaami;
Please, tell me something that I don’t already know…
Again, as you would have it racism will remain a permanent fixture in American society and culture, baked into the American psyche right alongside apple pie, the flag, and Christmas…
09/17/2020 @ 4:24 pm
“As you would have it?” You’re saying what, exactly, that I view racism as tolerable?
I would love antisemitism to be gone. I would love for there not to have been a resurgence in incidents due to Donald Trump. I would love no one to have been murdered in Squirrel Hill, PA. But I don’t expect it to be gone, any more than I expect murder to be gone. I hope both are drastically reduced. Both are facts of life – and death – that we do what we can to minimize. Racism may become rare God willing but I don’t expect it to be eradicated.
09/17/2020 @ 5:09 am
Dr. K : Though your optimism is rich, we’ve already dug a ditch, deep as a rhyme trap.Taps-taps-taps the narrative ends. Cruel, heartless disdain for our deceased veterans probably underscores the lack of empathy and preponderance of arrogance of he who lost the popular vote by three million.
Land of the FREE?
Intellectually, if indeed every rock has its bottom, each roll checked by gravity, the moat may be too deep, the waters uncharted so to speak, as political science is non-empirical.
Up in the polls? So the story goes…
A teeter-totter of greed and fear as well as that ‘foreign sound in your ear’.
The insouciance of self-preservation affirms its comeuppance.
The probability of oligarch vote tally rigmarole already is that table center ice sculpture.
In a world so cold, LO;}
And that you extrapolate addiction’s end game hence resurgence of life liberty and the pursuit of hippyness and superimpose such finality with the American Experiment might be the sound of the hounds redux. Problem of the United States irrevocably skewed his ‘looney-tunes’ sleck to me years ago when he snuck up shadowing behind Madam Secretary during their debate.
I affirm urgency! All hands on deck!
O yeah!
And no rock left unturned….
A#1 Universalism~~~danke schoen!
09/17/2020 @ 9:32 am
Yes, JP, we need all hands on deck. The difference now is that we may finally have access to enough hands.
I think that a shift in power is inevitable. I don’t know what form it will take, and the nature of my optimism is what happens to the country after that shift.
I do not think that winning the election is inevitable. I think if the Democrats don’t win it will be because enough votes aren’t counted by some form of legal (meaning using the legal system) maneuvering, and I think the Democratic response to this will be seismic. The reaction to the killing of George Floyd was nothing compared to the reaction to the outright theft of a country. The reaction would probably be violent in a lot of places but it could include some unusual moves like a refusal of anyone who disapproves of what happened to engage in any commerce. I wouldn’t suggest necessarily a refusal to work, I’d suggest a refusal to buy. For a day, don’t spend anything and don’t order anything. If necessary, go for two. Let anyone with any influence know that tolerating this has an immense cost. Not that we’d even need to go there because an enormous number of Americans would take to the streets.
My thesis, as presented, starts after this. I begin with the premise that we have reached the point where a majority of Americans will refuse to be represented by people who do not represent a majority of Americans. (We actually haven’t been represented by people who represent a majority of Americans in some time, but this would be too blatant a manifestation of that.) I can’t really predict the phase of the turnover of power. I do think it’s inevitable. What I’m talking about happens after that.
The United States has been run by people who either don’t face America’s biggest problems enough or don’t face them at all. If I’m talking in terms of prosperity, I’ll approach this in terms of prosperity, which is to say in terms of money. This is not a normal liberal approach but I am not a normal liberal, though I am an ardent one.
What prevents our prosperity? Keep in mind that the standard of living of average Americans has not risen since the Nixon administration.
I may not remember all the big ones, but I’ll give it a start:
– Polarization of income/wealth. When two out of five Americans can’t afford a new car or a new home, which is essentially where we are now, that says something about the prosperity of the general population and constitutes an enormous limit on the prosperity of the business community. This is the big one that Democrats in previous elections did not take seriously enough. This is why Bernie made so much headway. COVID-19 has affected business so drastically that Biden will be forced to address this, which is why he has said he needs to be FDR.
– The existence of a large permanent underclass. Most people don’t view this as a fiscal issue but it is an enormous one. I don’t think I can outline this in a paragraph, but I’ll try to give a hint at its scope. We start with the overlap with the wealth polarization issue, meaning enormous opportunity costs. Because of poor education, add a much smaller skilled talent pool. Now look at government assistance – if this population is gainfully employed, they go from being a drain on government money to a revenue source for government as they become taxpayers, particularly as their income rises enough for those taxes to become significant. We then move to inevitable crime rates that follow urban poverty and its costs, which are enormous both in the private sector (insurance costs, property costs, medical costs including drug addiction, reduction in real estate values, reduction in tourism) and the public sector (enforcement costs, court costs, incarceration costs, probation costs). After all this time, we are finally taking racism seriously. As always happens with Democrats, we will do financially sensible things for social rather than financial reasons.
– Environmental costs. Look around the country right now if you want an idea of what global warming costs us. Start with a hurricane and an enormous belt of fires.
– Loss of jobs overseas costs. American businesses by and large did this to us and, in doing so, damaged our customer base and our taxpayer base awfully. Henry Ford understood that employees and customers are the same people. No one has since. Biden has proposed taxing goods made offshore by American companies that are brought back here to be sold here. He is right.
– Investing in the wrong energy sectors costs. The growth is in renewables. Government support currently is for fossil fuels. This is just bad business.
– Bad education costs. There is a strong correlation between education and wealth. For a wealthier country, have a more educated country. We don’t get that through Betsy DeVos
– Keeping foreign students out costs. America’s scientific advancement is coming in large part from foreign students studying here who decide to stay here because life here is better and more egalitarian. This is America’s largest intrinsic international competitive edge because no other major power can duplicate it because they can’t integrate immigrants like we can – nationality here has nothing to do with ethnicity like it does outside the Western Hemisphere and the Anzus countries. The Trump administration has been hostile to all of this.
– Infrastructure. As the tax base shrinks, so does maintenance, and that makes doing business more expensive. A President emulating FDR, particularly with a lot of unemployed, will probably come up with something like the WPA.
We already know Biden wants to address all of them. Every one of them that is addressed results in financial gain for the American population, emphatically including American businesses. I don’t think anyone is looking at what happens if we address all of them.
No one is likely to look because Democrats will not address most of these for financial reasons but for social reasons. Republicans, who tend to be more concerned with money, tend to be too worried about preserving a social status quo to really examine financial solutions like these. They also tend to believe, inexplicably, that tax revenues get dumped into a gigantic hole behind the Capital Building rather than 100% of it ultimately being spent in the private sector, which is of course where it all ends up and where it all stimulates business. The exception to this (and because it’s a reduction in taxes it isn’t part of the 100%) is tax breaks for the wealthy because the wealthy don’t have to spend their extra money, meaning it doesn’t create demand, jobs, taxpayers, expansion, all the stuff that spending creates.
And, just for the Hell of it, being as I am writing a damned book in this comment, I’ll tell you another big reason why tax breaks for the wealthy don’t lead to jobs:
They address the wrong problem. The overall issue is America’s wealthy not investing enough in ventures that hire Americans. Before giving them a tax break we have to establish why they aren’t investing there. There are two possibilities: not enough capital available and not enough demand to result in a decent return on investment. A tax break for the wealthy addresses the first cause but putting money into the hands of people further down the ladder addresses the second. How do we know which is the cause? Look at the capital supply. As during the Bush 43 administration, we’ve got plenty, meaning giving a tax break to the wealthy just adds to a surplus and affects nothing. That’s why we got a Jobless Recovery the last time we tried this. This is such an absurdly obvious concept that I have no idea why Republicans don’t grasp it – or why guys like Reich and Krugman don’t shout it from the rooftops.
Genug is genug. That’s Yiddish for enough is enough.
09/17/2020 @ 4:56 pm
@Koshersalaami;
“Racism may become rare God willing but I don’t expect it to be eradicated.”
End of story!!!
Rock bottom notwithstanding…
04/13/2022 @ 3:47 pm
{…} and then there was that night after the summer rain Monet and me with Ericka in her white trench coat {…} she’d lock boxed the folding green shook the rain from that lush hair of hers. Turning to the system, deftly cranks the dials, yeah once upon a time: reverberatingly: John Coltrane >BLUE TRAIN< blue note 91721{…} We'd raised our tonics at the church glass. Silently we shared the Eagle Eye's TIME. The April cover of that Vietnamese child. Her tear {…} IT'S OVER
09/17/2020 @ 5:36 pm
“…Please, tell me something that I don’t already know…
Again, as you would have it racism will remain a permanent fixture in American society and culture, baked into the American psyche right alongside apple pie, the flag, and Christmas…”
This is a common stumbling block for people, and for the discussion of what should be about public policy, and social hierarchies. “Racism” as a term is almost useless outside of these contexts, but is often the focus of the discussion. Racism is quite legal. Racism, outside of public policy and the construction of social hierarchies, is a thought. Thought is and should be free, and without restriction. In other words, you can’t make someone not be a racist. That is not really anyone’s business but the racist’s. Even as people gather together on principles and values that they share, if racism is among them, and the gathering does not involve public policy, they are fully entitled to do so. Lots and lots of people are probably going to continue to be racists, just like lots and lots will continue to like banjo music. Who is to say that they can’t?
09/17/2020 @ 7:18 pm
And then there was Charlottesville…
09/17/2020 @ 5:53 pm
@Koshersalaami
I appreciate your summation. It is replete with innate optimism. Allow me to concur and further compliment your effusive executive articulation. Thus far, here in Roosevelt’s Rustbelt, there’s
Bill Iffrig-like resilience. DNC outlets are pressed to pace demand for BIDEN+HARRIS lawn signs.
The incoming administration’s brilliant selection of Kamala Harris compelled me to the steps of
of Old St. Mary’s Parish where I cried a little bit. Whatismore, Joe Biden’s media is perfectly poignant and persuasive. Just now, a cool family with a handsome young boy battling leukemia underscores the clear and present danger of continued Federal finagling with equitable health care. Right now, Melissa and me are truckin’ to Salk City to photograph the diving eagles above the Wisconsin River afore the orange September sunset.
Please be assured there will be song.
09/17/2020 @ 6:19 pm
I knew I left out something, and there may be more. I left out union suppression.
09/18/2020 @ 2:53 pm
18 of 1~a Dozen & One-Half of Another:
Young soldiers on a yellow bus.
09/18/2020 @ 4:38 pm
Sort of. I mean the young soldiers. At this point Trump just announced he wants to change school curricula all over the country. If he doesn’t stick around this won’t be an issue.
09/18/2020 @ 8:08 pm
True Old Glory, again half-mast.
Agent orange benefits, lived six months.
Godspeed Judge Ginsburg, we are free.
09/18/2020 @ 10:29 pm
Now we have really hit rock bottom now that Ruth is gone.
09/18/2020 @ 11:18 pm
Unfortunately, I know where this has to lead. Sen. McConnell has already announced his intention to confirm her replacement before the election. If he does that, the only alternative the Democrats have is to pack the court. I’ve made my case in a new post.
10/08/2020 @ 5:18 pm
sadness that measure of peace
LIBERTY awaits the release
LIGHT in eyes
PROGRESS our pulse
remorse of course
canvass taut
snaps salute
triangular the fold
cloth to frame
eternal our flame
TAPS
salt tears
no fears
seven times three
echoes of thee
10/08/2020 @ 11:18 pm
JP,
Did you recently lose someone who served?
01/10/2021 @ 4:44 pm
Sleep is the expensive thing. Tarp or dank night. Thick feather tick. Or broken cinder glass can lids pop tops of sweet dreams. A green blanket from that unnamed war. Benches taken: she spoke with the dead, smiling as the children hop-scotched, captured high noon clouds that Palm Sunday. Predawn, the tasseled cap clown brewed coffee atop rusted barrel, red brick corner alley, that waif of gangrene. Last week’s news bundled wet, that obituary tomb, more column length, those of fortune and fame. Last clouds rolled and began to rain. Beneath a taut shared kite, rusted bucket aflame, a hubcap lid. Black eyed canned peas. Reclaimed unwrapped plastic spoons. When it bubbles, it’s hot. A maestro’s wand. Steady: scoop, gone. Here’s some on the bottom.