I am old enough to recall pre-syndacation of RW hate-talkers and local radio shows. But the hate came cheap an anyone who was feeling pressured to thinking they might have to examine their racism ect. were immediately told not to, that they were right all the time, everyong else was wrong. Then Fox came along.

Limpballs started it.....and Gingrich.

Unfortunately, he found fertile ground for the seeds he was sowing.

They have remade America in their image.

No more drinks after work to try and find common ground. All the Rs were told to go home on weekends and not stay in DC so no more social interaction with the other side. (Don’t touch them, they have cooties!). True unbridled tribalism was unleashed when they handed him that gavel.

I know I have told this story before but a few years back a (liberal) friend of mine attended a holiday
party at the home of some other neighbors who appeared to be normal nice people.

During the party these hosts and other guests where laughing and whooping it about the recent
event where Paul Pelosi had been almost killed by a man attacking him with a hammer, a very brutal
attack. My friend was totally shocked and in disbelief, no matter your party affiliation this was
nothing to laugh about and enjoy.

I had not been able to attend the party which was a good thing, because I would have had something
to say to these monsters.

This incident made me realize that the American character had changed dramatically.
Many Americans have become cruel, nasty, sadistic sociopaths.

I grew up with nothing but a basketball, and a brother, We were outside everyday, playing, talking to neighbors. Now, I'm 64 years old, wife and daughter, both gone, but, I still step outside every day, lay my phone down, talk, to a neighbor, who is prolly an R, but we talk about food, weather, and gossip a bit about new neighbors.
Get off the internet, get outside, while you walk and pass another walker, say Hi, don't.just nod your head.
We are all humans, HUMANS, the only.tag we have, is M or F

The rest is on you, as my.days, are on me, off the internet.

Koz

She would watch Trump and say, "he is so 'mean' in the way he speaks."
She never watched Fox or listened to a.m. radio.
So you may be correct that for years the right wing media conditioned its' listeners to accept him and his brand of fascist cruelty.

She did not understand what people saw in him as a person. He was just indecent and mean to her, and that is why she did not vote for him in 16 or 20. She passed a few weeks shy of 95 in 22. It wasn't covid, she had heart failure working on her for 4-5 years.

She also worried how we would live our lives in the future because of all this meanness.

I used to say the repubs were just mean. It was always there and it came out full blast when Obama was elected. I could see it clearly then.
It has gotten worse.

A bunch of lazy English "gentlemen" trying to start a colony in the Americas without bothering to learn how to work, is another. They decided to enslave some African people, bring them over here, and make them work for no pay. So, life is good if you're a rich white person. For everyone else: not so much.

More people need to read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" to find out what really happened in our beginning

I have that on Audio book and it is really difficult to listen to for me for more than an hour at a time, as it gets so depressing.

I have Zinn's book on Audio as well, though I need to get both in Hardcover just to add to my modest library.

The book is interspersed with first hand accounts and stories which makes the audio book fascinating because these various stories are told by different voice actors, so there will be the narrative of the text and then will come a story from an individuals perspective.

But as I said, it can get tough to listen to. White people were just horribly, despicably cruel to the enslaved and the aboriginals.

. Starting with the arrival of of the Roundheads kicked out of England by king Chareles . ..Basically a nation born in violence. … wipe out the ingenious tribes, then having. Lynch parties against each other, culminating in in a Civil War. The hatred carries on.believe me there more decent people than there are Roundheads donkey:

the same thing in much of what is now the u.s. south and Mexico, about thirty or so years before the english set foot on what became the u.s.

We had a lovely hiatus for a while in the late 60s and 70s when idealism rose in popularity.

I think what has changed is the pride and joy in being cruel. They are outwardly bragging and joking about it.

It has become a source of fulfillment to far too many people.

Alligator Alcatraz is the latest installment. There have always been pop-up prisons in places like Texas and Arizona. The difference is that they just sort of happened without fan-fare. But now they are a source of bragging, photo-ops, t-shirts and joking. And far too many people are eating it up.

It's weird and dangerous.

We just needed someone to lead the cruelty.

when the first episode of "Survivor" premiered that it was the end of human decency. It wasn't the only thing, but it was a symbol of how we were being taught to see other humans as competition rather than being in it together.

At the time, I thought I was making a joke.

Is it simplistic? Yes, but I stand by it. We live in a country where we have been trained to work against each other, not together. Where we look at the worst aspects of humanity and are supposed to laugh or be entertained. It used to be that terrible people were the villains, now they are the heroes.

Not all of us have taken this as our new model of morality, but enough have to damage our society severely.

the comeback is encouraging, but I still think too many people buy into the bullshit. And unions were so often their own worst enemies but when we see solidarity we see better outcomes.

"Every man for himself, screw over others to get ahead!"

Unions are, by their nature, supposed to be collective, everyone standing together to ensure a better outcome for everyone.

Solidarity is virtually impossible, but, I see it in the protests and among the left more often than the right.

We have to drive the county Democratic party float in the 4th of July parade in our town. Not looking forward to it, because 1. It's a red town and 2. I hate parades, have since I was a child, too noisy, too crowded. I ride in the truck to keep an eye out for kids running in front of the truck.

I’m sure you will hold your head high as you should. You are on the side of truth and justice.

The over arching drive of the American experience has been the search to find and remedy the excess cruelties of our past.

Unfortunately, we find ourselves in an era of retrenchment, when populist movements are thriving based on selfishness and greed and other deadly sins. The middle of the 20th Century brought us some of the most enlightened ideas in modern politics, never fully or properly implemented of course because of RW foot dragging and stubborness. Since Reagan, the efforts to repeal the New Deal have grown and are now dismantling all of that.

One of his cruelest actions was closing the facilities for the mentally ill and dumping all those folks onto the streets.

support ripped away, right? Plus signing the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and the clearly racist “War on Drugs” mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine. F*ck that cowboy and his woo-woo wife, too. 😡🤬

so many in this country.

of human beings that comprise a country. We are just as capable of cruelty as any other. We've done it before - the taking of land and the genocide of Native people, the abduction and enslavement of African people, Jim Crow laws, all manner of terrible behavior throughout our relatively short history. Our big mistake was gaslighting ourselves into thinking we were above and better than all the other countries who had committed such atrocities. Behold the Manifest Destiny doctrine by which we persuaded ourselves that we had the God-given right to take all that land that belonged to other people and inhabit and develop and farm it and profit from it. During our early years wealth was also derived from the stolen labor of others - not just the wealth of the Southern states, but that of the North, which bought the slave-harvested cotton and turned it into textiles and sold it in Northern cities. Our railroads were built by Asian laborers, not slaves but almost, until we decided we weren't going to allow those people to immigrate any more. We welcomed some immigrants but exploited and discriminated against others. Former slaves were just barely "liberated," but remained oppressed and poor.

All the while, we told ourselves that we were the exceptional country, the good guys, the country that won wars against evil empires. We patted ourselves on the back for defeating the Nazis, but we were so convinced of our superiority and indestructibility that we got sucked into fruitless, pointless, protracted wars in southeast Asia and the Middle East, from which we eventually slunk away while trying to pretend we hadn't been defeated. Have we become a cruel country? Trump made it socially acceptable to be cruel in public, but people will be cruel unless reminded that cruelty is ultimately destructive. Trump just let us take the mask off so we, collectively, could stop pretending to be better than the rest of the world.

With that in mind, those of us who don't think it's cool to be cruel should stop pretending the US was ever all that morally superior in the first place. Our job now is to shove the cruelty back into the closet, and expose the error of people who think being horrible to their fellow citizens and even more horrible to our immigrants will somehow prove the myth of American exceptionalism. We certainly can become better than we are now; Germany recovered from the Nazi regime that caused its near-destruction and became a prosperous democracy. I don't think I'll ever understand what motivates some people to take such pleasure in punching down, but we have to acknowledge the existence of that tendency in others (and maybe sometimes in ourselves) and resist it and keep resisting it. And call out the cruelty, every time.

If anything made the USA exceptional to some extent, it is the highest ideals expressed in our Declaration of Independence which was codified in the US Constitution to create a nation governed by the rule of law, not by rulers.

Neither our Constitution, nor our nation's Founders, were without flaws. Men and their works can seldom if ever be. But we can learn and grow, and our Constitution was provisioned with tools for Amendment to facilitate such growth.

Some of our Founders were slave holders. Compromises were necessary to unite the colonies as One Nation, such as counting slaves as 3/5 of a person for the apportionment of seats in Congress. Nevertheless, as men of the Enlightenment they were ahead of their time in structuring a government by the people, not a tyrant.

But human nature always asserts itself. If we are to be judged by how well we embody the highest ideals of our nation's Founding, our worst impulses have only partially been constrained by the Rule of Law.

And now, 199 years since our Declaration of Independence, we are by the volition of a voting citizenry in their elected representatives and president, becoming a nation ruled by a tyrant.

For the great American experiment in democracy to survive we need an Enlightenment of the 21st century.

Or at least a citizenry up to the task of saving us from ourselves.

I'm convinced that Obama's win, brought out all the nasty out.of the closet, I including Mierda47.

Because expressing their bigoted hatred was inhibited during decades of progress for women, people of color, non-Christians, and LGBTQ folks.

Then Cheeto Jesus came along and LIBERATED the inherent CRUELTY that was already there, ready to be unleashed.

Trumpism didn’t CHANGE human nature; it EXPOSED it among a big chunk of the American people already predisposed towards it.

Many of them call themselves Christians.

Conservative “humor” is very telling. It’s inseparable from hate content. The punchline of their jokes is always a targeted group of people.

They’re bullies who want their bullying to be acceptable. Their world view is highly structured in classes, with them at the top of the class structure.

Trump is everything they want to be.

If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket.

Hate has always existed in people. His openly talking about it normalized it. They didn't have to hide it. They revel in it and gloat and mock others. They enjoy performative cruelty with little to no benefit for anyone.

For a while now, there has been extremists on hate radio/podcasts/RW media associating kindness with weakness and stupidity. While cruelty is associated with making people feel superior to whoever they are screwing. Anyone who doesn't like it is called weak and stupid. Look at Trump's insults for anyone who opposes him or even mildly inconveniences him.

I get insulted by MAGAts online when I ask them for photo proof of them paying less than $2 a gallon for gas. No MAGAt can show proof because it doesn't exist anywhere in the USA. So they tell me to leave this country before Trump sends me to the alligator prison.

and used their superior weaponry of firearms to subjugate and destroy the natives and their cultures.

The second sin was the assumption that only certain white Europeans had rights, and that people of color were non-humans who existed for no other reason than to serve them and labor on their behalf without compensation.

These sins have poisoned the thinking and beliefs of far too many people of white European descent up to the present day.

I do believe this nation's karmic debt cannot be resolved until there is a massive change in our collective consciousness, a vast admission of responsibility and guilt, and an ongoing effort to make amends to the greatest extent possible.

I view this matter as a descendant of an indigenous people (Estonians) who were dispossessed of their lands and subjected to 700 years of serfdom and slavery by foreigners (Germans, Russians, Danes and Swedes) under the auspices of Christianity.

was derived almost entirely from stolen land and stolen labor. The real sin is that we forgot this fact.

by his actions and words, has allowed or given permission to hateful people to come out of the shadows into the light to spread their hatred.

Before Trump’s time.. But he definitely seems to be bringing th maggots out of and into the open.o

The civil rights bill is 60 years old now?
That gives us 190 years roughly of ingrained and almost literally inbred racism.
The Tea Party movement had more than their share of racists and nationalists that came out of the woodwork when President Obama was elected and especially, when he was reelected.
The finishing touch is the literal permission that president Trump has given to all of them to have at it as it were.

And greed.

But mostly racism.

From behind her, he tugged it so forcefully that she is lucky if she did not receive a neck injury.

...& it's ability to handle complexity without triggering a primitive "fight or flight" response.

In a nutshell, the complexity of our world has increased far far faster than the human brain could evolve to deal with it, so primitive responses (as opposed to intellectual ones) are being triggered much more frequently. Add to that a massive right-wing propaganda machine that's built upon triggering the primitive "fight" (fear) response, & here we are.

The tea party, Sarah Palin stirred up a lot of anger and people. Remember when McCain had to tamper her down.

A portion of America has always been this way but she and Trump made it ok to let it out in public. All of a sudden everyone with anger about money, jobs, their life, anything felt free to rant online either in writing or video or podcast.

when they came up with derogatory words to dehumanize liberal Democrats.

History has proven its only a short step from dehumanization to cruelty and then actual violence.

Slavery opens the bidding….

The Nazi Hydra - Ratlines:The CIA &The Nazis

RoadsEnd
22 September 2002

Up until now we have only looked at the use of the German scientists in chemical and biological warfare. But in 1949 the work at Edgewood shifted focus and began looking at psychochemicals beginning with LSD in an effort to find the perfect truth serum. The key sources of information were from those that had worked at I.G. Farben. Some were imprisoned but they were released temporary to work for the Army Chemical Corps. This was the very birth of a much larger CIA operation that became known as MK Ultra. The original operation was Bluebird, which then evolved first into Artichoke before becoming MK-Ultra. Unfortunately CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the CIA records of MK-Ultra destroyed in 1973. Remaining records suggest hundreds if not thousands of people were used as test subjects and involved the collaboration with several universities, mental hospitals, prisons and drug rehab centers.106 The experiments were conducted without the test subjects knowledge and resulted in several deaths including that of Frank Olsen.

Others have reported being continuing problems from being test subjects. Others attempted suicide of which some were successful. The army's and CIA's response was to cover up the project. But the operation evolved beyond just the military-intelligence community. The CIA enlisted help with MK-Ultra with a host of university collaborators including the Universities of Delaware, Maryland and a host of others.105

Just as the immigration of Nazis and war criminals into the US involved the use of several projects of which Paperclip is the most widely known such is the case of MK-Ultra. There were 149 sub projects under MK-Ultra. The use of drugs for truth serum and for mind control were conducted under a bewildering list of Project or Operations. Below is a short synopsis of some of those projects.

"MKDELTA: This was apparently the first project established by the CIA in October, 1952, for the use of biochemicals in clandestine operations. It may never have been implemented operationally.

MKULTRA: This was a successor project to MKDELTA established in April, 1953, and terminating some time in the late 1960's probably after 1966. This program considered various means of controlling human behavior. Drugs were only one aspect of this activity.

MKNAOMI: This project began in the 1950's and was terminated at least with respect biological projects, in 1969. This may have been a successor to MKDELTA. Its purpose was to stockpile severely incapacitating and lethal materials, and to develop gadgetry for the dissemination of these materials.

MKSEARCH: This was apparently a successor project to MKULTRA, which began in 1965 and was terminated in 1973. The objective of the project was to develop a capability to manipulate human behavior in a predictable manner through the use of drugs.

MKCHICKWIT: This was apparently a part of the MKSEARCH program. Its objective was to identify new drug developments in Europe and Asia and to obtain information and samples.

MKOFTEN: This was also apparently a part of the MKSEARCH project. Its objective was to test the behavioral and toxicological effects of certain drugs on animals and humans."107

STARGATE: Investigated the use of ESP, paranormal, remote viewing military uses of telekinesis type research that was done from an uncertain start date up until 1984.116

Continues...

https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg96291.html

We've made progress overall, but it's definitely not linear because progress never is. The way to fix it is within ourselves.

But I worry as we continue to create a society of haves and have nots we are going to have more because people feel competition for resources. Our planet is overpopulated and has finite resources so if you can convince one group it's another group's fault, that's a great way to get power. Whether it's blaming immigrants "stealing your job" or trans people ""taking girls' sports" or minorities "getting affirmative action", or women being blamed for the male loneliness epidemic, it's easy. But it's not just an American story. It's England convincing themselves that the Irish Catholics were villains, Hitler (among many others) convincing Germans it was the fault of Jewish people, the rise of ethno-nationalist parties in Europe, etc. Until such time as we realize that we've got more in common with each other than we don't, we will likely always struggle with this.

But that said, we've also come a long way and that shouldn't be forgotten. Look at same sex marriage and how quickly it went from deeply unpopular to widely popular. For centuries slavery was accepted. Women have the right to vote, own property etc. Sure it would be great if we didn't have to keep fighting for progress, but nothing is linear.

When we , or our ancestors, started to believe that killing for "our country" or "our God", was virtuous.

but I think a slow dissolution of community is part of it. Less attendance at religious institutions and fewer young people getting involved in groups like scouts, etc. has kept us even more isolated from one another.
Just take a walk through the airport. How many people do you just make eye contact with? Everyone is engrossed in their devices. No opportunities to give a glancing smile, a quick hello - those small, micro connections we used to do all the time are no longer.
I knew these phones would change us forever, and not in a good way.

That cruelty didn't go away, even with all the blood sweat and tears spent on chasing it away.

It was just biding it's time, waiting for a Donald Trump.

if you’re not a straight, Christian, rich white man.

Or, the people who were held as slaves. Or, ones who were lynched. Or, the Native Americans who were deliberately given smallpox and other diseases, condemned them to poverty on reservations, and had their children and taken from them and sent to horrific residential schools...Or, all the women who have been treated as men's property. Or, ...

We can't hide from it anymore.

Scalping the native peoples whose lands we coveted?

Religious fanaticism that put people to death for nothing but rumors from hateful people, or people who coveted what others had?

SLAVERY?

Tearing up the environment for extraction of dangerous, but profitable fossil fuels?

Unrepentant greed that does not stop at impoverishing others, working them into early graves?

Gads, I could go on for hours.

Truth is, as a people, the % of us who are cruel will ebb and flow a bit from time to time, but it's always a facet of us. Sometimes it just goes further under its rock, sometimes it gets the message that it's fine to be cruel, destiny and all that. We just have better documentation and reporting of it these days. And we don't address mental illness seriously enough.

Frankly, I have come to the conclusion that we humans are a flawed and failing species. It's not just here. Maybe we are still evolving and some are just not gonna make the cut to evolving to a better version of our species.

Since we settled on "Manifest Destiny".

The question is are we going to actively and physically do something to stop them from murdering people, including us, and I sure as fuck do not mean walking around with protest signs.

And no, I don’t have the answer but I know what we’re doing is not working.

This is not normal times. This is not about politics. This is an act of war on patriotic Americans, and decent people, and we are not reacting appropriately.

the amount of of bigotry, misogyny, and cruelty constantly expressed by individuals I considered "rednecks". Now, it seems, their ignorance and intolerance has grown nearly ubiquitous.

Right wing media inflamed it and the internet put it on steroids. And normalized it. I see a lot of what i think is bots in comments everywhere. AND i agree with the person who said Reality tv. How to undermine people. Like thats normal

with a few boat loads of slaves to get the party started.

I very much doubt that there is a society, group of people anywhere where there is is not a percentage of cruelty . The best country. City or organization, no matter how high minded, have cruelty, clicks, tribes whatever.

...for people.

Republicans want to do things to people.

On one hand, we are being told to expect fewer resources at higher prices. On the other hand, we are being told we're failures if we haven't provided for ourselves or our families. The overlords always make sure the brass ring is just out of reach. So as individuals, or in tandem with our loved ones, we kill ourselves working to get resources so we look successful. If people work their tails off, with nothing to show for it, of course there is going to be anger.
rwnj encourage the anger that comes from the situation. Can't buy something? The immigrants took it. Can't get a job? The migrants took it. Food costs too much? Why do all those "others" need to eat?
There is inherent cruelty in humans. It is easy to make it show up. Just manufacture shortages and blame someone who doesn't look like you. There are very few humans who will die to save you. Some will run into a burning building to save you. A lot more will take the last handful of food, even if you are dying of hunger.

This has always been a cruel nation.
∙ Conquest of Native lands
∙ Southern slavery
∙ Systemic racial oppression
∙ Suppression of women's rights (voting, property ownership, abortion)
∙ & etc.

We are just in a new phase. 😭