Their greed has them unable to look past the next fiscal quarter, and they really don't care if right wing Christian colleges are punished by this. Those colleges will still pump out NSGOP voters, and even fewer people will get an education.
Their ultimate goal is not to prioritize earning potential, but to eliminate education for everyone but the wealthy.
There was a time that I never thought racist, idiotic and ignorant people would trade being materially worse off, even if it gave them the perceived social power or hierarchy they were looking for. But they really will cut their nose to spite their face...
The historians will indeed speak of these days, "He started wars to profit off of death and oil, he traded on secret information, put the most incompetent people in charge of government services, there was more liquor in his Cabinet than a brewery, he tortured children and tore apart families, punished Americans for being the wrong color, admired dictators, shit himself and slept through meetings, lied, stole, and broke the law and destroyed the Constitution...
They are at least dimly aware that critical thinking and facts about reality tend to have a liberal bias. The more people who can think and understand reality, the more people that can see through their power grabbing bullshit.
Who's running the show? The wife of a man who runs an organization that is ALL ABOUT APPEARANCE and damned little about SUBSTANCE. Vince McMahon may very well be a modern day P. T. Barnum.
And his wife clearly has been taking lessons from him.
tRump is a vastly ignorant man in possession of imbecilic-level stupidity, brutal bigotry, and quite pleased with the whole lot. Someone said he is like if Dunning and Kruger made a kid together. And I truly think the MAGA faithful are in thrall to him because he is the worst of them.
Just like creationists stupidly going after a science book because it has "evolution" in the title that's not written in their favor. Case in Point: "Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth" by Andrew H. Knoll
We have an Education Secretary who does not have so much as a relevant bachelors degree in the field of education. A field she has never worked in. She does, however, have a head full of Republican bombast, and little else. This is the Republican mentality at its worst. If something isn’t making money for a big corporation, it’s worthless. They would reduce our best universities to trade schools serving narrow-minded corporate America.
Their older children to, at worst. death from easily preventable childhood diseases, at best brown and rotting teeth (from lack of flouride.) (>1M miscarriages each year is the result of mothers breathing toxic air, but that seems "acceptable". That each surviving newborn likely inhales more different toxins, chemicals & poisons in their first breath than in a LIFETIME of vaccines also seems "acceptable", at least to them. (But not to me.)
"MAGA hates the things they hate more than they love the things they love." You've just proven this, RJ. And my fear is that these poor, sad fools will be firmly attached to Trump's butt until they have nothing left to sacrifice to Trump and MAGA.
It's actually really funny (funny peculiar rather than proper funny) to observe how some parts of the MAGAverse support the decimation of social programmes because they think that 'others'* benefit without realising that they are the biggest beneficiaries.
(* others - i.e. the feckless, lazy, layabouts, non-working ... add additional adjectives to this list. Maybe even some which refer to the melanin content of people's skin)
As they say, "To a hammer, all the world is a nail."
How about...
"To a victim, EVERYONE is a superior being!"
Trump has made these poor fools WANT to be victims. And what could be easier than to constantly fail by choice? (Especially knowing that you WILL have a job over EVERY other demographic in America other than white males.)
Toward the end of World War 2, America’s richest citizens were paying a tax rate of up to 94% with historically little pushback or complaint, because that’s what America required to defeat evil, and maintain Democracy.
During the start of a new century under President “W”, people paying even as little as 1/4th of that WW2 tax rate demanded even lower tax rates…twice. During wartime.
60 years…..
From the end of America’s Civil War, and for the next 100 years, there were essentially ONLY Democrats in elected federal offices from the south due to southern hate for Republican Lincoln.
Beginning around 1960, the GOP began to implement their Southern Strategy. Following that period, in 2025 (white) American “Christians” overwhelmingly voted to replace their worship of Jesus with their worship of a man who wasn’t even able to name the Golden Rule: Donald Trump.
The new MAGA savior told them he could save their souls by altering the past, if they would be willing to abandon all sense of personal responsibility. And abandon Jesus, of course. And the 100% Democratic south became overwhelmingly GOP, as it remains.
60 years…..
In the early 1960s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. became one of the most effective and respected freedom fighters on Earth.
In 2025, virtually everything Dr. King accomplished was either driven from the American memory or weaponized in an attempt to prevent anything like Dr. King’s legacy from EVER being influential in America again.
The GOP eliminated patriotism as a positive American trait and replaced it with GREED….
The GOP removed the loving words of Jesus from the hearts of white Americans, and replaced them with HATE…
The GOP eliminated Dr. King’s legacy as they removed his principles of brotherhood and personal sacrifice from the American psyche, and replaced them with FEAR…
Seemingly, this “Trifecta of mind control: greed, hate and fear” is an indication that the GOP can accomplish anything they want towards gaining control, and the DNC won’t even know until it’s just too late.
Imagine living in America your whole life, voting Republican your whole life, and not realizing that Republicans worship money and capitalism, not Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is just the adopted mascot of the corporations and Empire. Being dead or unable to speak for himself, he can really be adapted into whatever sort of mascot is needed at any given moment by those with an agenda that is definitely not "the first will be last and the last will be first."
Really, though, The Trump administration will probably exempt these programs because it's an interest group that votes for them.
Everyone else will be screwed because knowledge isn't valued in America unless one of the oligarchs can exploit you and profit off of your knowledge.
As I've presented (FAR too many times) in the form of a question:
Can you name any legislation...
1. Either proposed or even simply supported by the GOP
2. For the purpose of benefiting middle-income, working-class Americans...
3. In the past SEVENTY FIVE YEARS?
In the years I've been asking I've only been offered one accurate answer to add to the one I discovered.
But both the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) have substantially been damaged by Trump in the past year, so we're back to ZERO. (Considering how almost everything for the middle-class was actively fought by the GOP, I'm kinda surprised I could even find these two...to now forget again.)
But it doesn't even matter. Even when I present this face-to-face, they just don't care. As long as they "own the libs", they don't really care the price they pay.
As a friend puts it, "They don't mind getting shot in the foot, as long as some total stranger from a demographic they're told to hate gets shot in the knee."
And if I may, I'd like to offer a suggestion in return.
I've been reading a gifted, but almost criminally unknown (I think) Substack writer named Joe Zeigler on Burnt Ground. He has true insight, as he has proven in numerous books on contemporary politics (as well as sci-fi!)
He is a truly a gift, one that I offer to each of you.
European here. I hesitate to make pronouncements for the whole of Europe, but my gutfeel is no. Germany likes to think of itself as the land of the 'poets and thinkers', France likes its great schools such as the 'Sciences Po' and in many other countries there is a great pride in the achievements which have only been possible because people learned things and then applied their learnings by eg building those amazing ancient monuments or medieval cathedrals.
Can I however also offer a counter example to the above? About ten years ago Michael Gove said 'we have enough of experts', he said it in relation to Brexit because every economics expert on the planet pointed out that it was a daft idea, that it would damage the economy. Brexit was a case of anti-intellectualism, inasmuch as the decision was largely based on emotional factors rather than a sober, rational look at the issues.
I wish we had some similar national education/arts elements or institutions that U.S. Americans had been taught to admire and aspire to, rather than sneer at.
Instead, I remember constant references to some vague concept of "American Exceptionalism" implying that the U.S. and its citizens were somehow inherently special through no effort of their own and that just by virtue of U.S. citizenship they were already a cut above everybody else.
So, whut the hell do we need all that there fancy edicatin' fer?
Lynn, have you come across @Jess Piper ? She writes - among other things - about education in a rural (red) state. You might find her thoughts interesting.
I grew up in an environment of anti-intellectualism. I would love to read a good book exploring the pervasive anti-intellectualism and anti-education sentiment in the US, explaining why it's so prevalent,* etc. Part of it is religious poisoning, but I am sure there are other facets as well.
*I mean, of course it's so prevalent because the GOP pushes it, but why do ordinary people embrace it?
Trump has promised (and kept the promise) to change history to protect white Americans from ever being "white-hurt" again.
And since MAGA already has a place in Heaven (thanks to some "white guy" named Jesus), now they just need their sins forgiven, as Trump is doing by erasing history.
And all MAGA has to do in return is to abandon all sense of personal responsibility, and continue to hate (and to remember to breath, of course.)
Trump has created a victim class in America unlike any I can remember. And they get everything they want in return...as long as they only want to throw themselves into sewage to protect Trump's shoe soles.
"MAGA hate what they hate more than they love what they love."
Obviously there's more, Lynn. But they really seem to love being victims.
You know how the Department of Defense was renamed to the Department of War. I'm surprised the Department of Education hasn't been renamed the Department of Ignorance.
I imagine nobody in the administration thought far enough ahead to realize this would penalize Christian schools. As we've seen with most things the administration has attempted over the last couple years, this was poorly planned and meant to score culture war points, instead of address any real problem.
If any of them thought that far ahead, they thought that the collateral damage was an acceptable price to pay in order to punish the "liberal" universities.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a video statement likewise claimed Christianity defined the nation from the beginning. “With the dark storm clouds of war looming on the horizon, they did what Christians have always done across place and time for 2,000 years,” Rubio said of the Founders. “They turned their eyes to heaven and placed their faith in the hands of God.”
_________________
No, Li'l Marco Little Feet, they did what successful revolutionaries have done since the beginning of time. They hunkered down and did the work required -- the planning, the strategizing, the marching, the starving, the freezing, the fighting, and the dying.
Individuals may have offered up quick prayers here and there, like soldiers in an older civilization might have touched an amulet to their foreheads before heading into battle. Some may have even believed victory was ordained by God. But they still realized that the war would be won with muskets and cannon fire, not prayer rallies. IOW, they had to put in the actual work to achieve that goal, whether they thought gawd blessed it or not.
Organizers and news outlets reported that thousands of people attended the "Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving" event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Rather than an exact figure, mainstream consensus and reporting estimate the crowd size in the low thousands.
I'm sure that the people who went are feeling all Jesus-ey and righteous but to only draw "low thousands" in the D.C. metro area is very revealing of the lack of interest on the part of the general public.
How about that? I actually agree with the Trump administration on something! Young adults should not be saddled with lifetime debt that they can never hope to pay off. How to fix that is where we part ways though.
I believe in socialization of many aspects of our lives that serve the public good. In the case of health care, socialization would save everyone money. It's a clear conservative issue. We pay more for health care in this country than other first world nations. Free health care for all would mean an increase in taxes, sure, but it would also eliminate health insurance premiums, co-pays and crippling lifetime debt. The only group that would lose money is the private equity, religious institutions and stockholders that take money from the system faster than it goes in.
Education, on the other hand, is a tougher sell to 'conservatives' who only worry about next quarter profits. We can't justify free college by just pointing out that college grads pay more taxes because the math doesn't work out, especially since tuition has risen faster than inflation. But I submit that socializing education is still a conservative issue. It's just that it takes a longer time to pay benefits. Today's 'conservatives' don't want an educated population because education enables people to actually do their own research and discover when they are being scammed. Trumpism is not conservative, it's a fascist regime whose only plank in their platform is 'owning the libs'.
It's getting to the point where "owning the libs" is amounting to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, or fiddling while Rome burns. The game can only go on so long before the long-term consequences come into evidence.
First this: “ It’s an existential threat to the future of religious higher education in the US—I don’t think that’s an overstatement,”
Nor is it an overstatement to note that religious higher education is a contradiction in terms. By way of comparison, you don’t go to medical school to learn all about medicine, or as an alternative, go to Joe’s college of surgery to learn all about leeches.
Then this: “Financial outcomes matter, but they don’t totally measure whether an education is worthwhile,” of course they don’t. I have 3, and I did well in all of them. But the financial outcome actually was from a career in a completely different and unrelated field: Photography. But still, my education was incredibly worthwhile…
To make me even more informed citizen of the world, to teach me about compassion, to understand when politicians or pastors are trying to put something over on me, to understand that war is a terrible method of conducting international relations, and the difference between the dismal science of economics and the hard science of physics. Education comes from the two Latin words”e duco”— to lead out of.
Religion doesn’t lead you out of anything— Except if you’re lucky, religion.
“To make me even more informed citizen of the world, to teach me about compassion, to understand when politicians or pastors are trying to put something over on me, to understand that war is a terrible method of conducting international relations, and the difference between the decimal science of economics and the hard science of physics.”
That is the problem right there. They don’t want people who can think or understand the real world.
This administration has made it clear it will only apply their own rules at their convenience. Try and apply this "earning" nonsense on Christian colleges and it will be labeled as "Christian Prosecution".
“This rule would prohibit those students from taking out loans for college if “the typical graduate of an undergraduate program does not earn as much as a high school graduate.” By extension, that prohibition would harm schools that offer those programs.”
So, instead of pressuring employers who require college degrees to pay for the college educated employees to compensate for the financial, time and effort an employee spent just to work for them, they punish the students and schools further. Sounds about white.
This also sounds like another attack on teachers, since the system has set up a program where teaching isn’t a profession despite requiring a Bachelor degree minimum and has been changing to Master degrees and doctorates, just to be employed. And yet teachers are paid well below minimum wage in nearly all places. When I went through my art teaching degree, I was specifically told why teachers aren’t professionals, and that we should not be paid more so that we do it out of passion for educating children rather than a paycheck and blah blah blah. I also know teachers that were forced to get the master’s degree just to qualify for the classroom only to be paid the same as they did before they went back to school.
And why are we comparing apples and oranges? It makes sense that specialized trades with plenty of experience get high salaries, while an entry level position that requires college but is in an office might be a bit less. But let’s also consider that nursing requires college and is back breaking physically demanding but is not that well paying compared to construction or other trades. You know why.
This is a direct attack on women and minorities because they are outstripping white men for college admissions and graduation, despite the end of affirmative action or DEI or whatever the right is getting rid of.
Also, the wall of unpaid-internship-before-salaried-position that stands between inexperienced recent graduates and careers in their fields of study. I know a bunch of people, STEM majors in particular, who wound up in dead end retail or food service jobs because there wasn't any path into their field that wouldn't lead them through homelessness and destitution first.
Fair warning, I haven't read the comment section at all yet.
Seems to me this might also be an attempt to keep women from getting as much education as well. Sure, many women go to college and go on to have successful careers, but women are still suffering under the glass ceiling effect in addition to being somewhat more likely to become stay-at-home mothers at some point. That is going to skew the numbers, and make colleges less interested in female students despite the social benefits of having well-educated mothers raising healthier, more successful kids.
This strikes me as religious conservatives being so interested in 'owning the libs!!' that they fail to realize (or maybe just don't care?) just how much their actions will hurt them, too. I'd be happier about this whole thing, but we're clearly all going to pay dearly for it in the coming years, possibly decades.
𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑠𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑙𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑢𝑚𝑝 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑎𝑟𝑚𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑣𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑚𝑎𝑦 𝑏𝑒 𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑦 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑑𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑒𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑. 𝑅𝑒𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙𝑠 𝑠𝑜 𝑏𝑎𝑑𝑙𝑦, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑚 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑓 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑔𝑒𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑑𝑎𝑚𝑎𝑔𝑒.
Their greed has them unable to look past the next fiscal quarter, and they really don't care if right wing Christian colleges are punished by this. Those colleges will still pump out NSGOP voters, and even fewer people will get an education.
Their ultimate goal is not to prioritize earning potential, but to eliminate education for everyone but the wealthy.
There was a time that I never thought racist, idiotic and ignorant people would trade being materially worse off, even if it gave them the perceived social power or hierarchy they were looking for. But they really will cut their nose to spite their face...
“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. 𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘭, 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘰𝘯, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘦'𝘭𝘭 𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘵𝘺 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘰𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶.” - Lyndon B. Johnson
LBJ was literally right then and even 60 years later. The more things change, the more they stay the same smh...
Very sadly true.
Real issue is that they are stabbing us regular folk in the back as they cut their noses off.
They'll just blame the democrats anyway.
Tan suit.
The historians will indeed speak of these days, "He started wars to profit off of death and oil, he traded on secret information, put the most incompetent people in charge of government services, there was more liquor in his Cabinet than a brewery, he tortured children and tore apart families, punished Americans for being the wrong color, admired dictators, shit himself and slept through meetings, lied, stole, and broke the law and destroyed the Constitution...
But he never wore a tan suit."
Crime of the century.
https://youtu.be/GpAUDOI24Oo?si=6xWGioj5PL6EVX6B
Once the regime realizes this, we might reasonably assume they’ll make a carve out for White nationalist institutions.
From our Dear Leader at Trump University Commencemnt (c):
https://youtube.com/shorts/QNRN1sGsF6E?si=M8kcyhm2gamOAisT
This Aussie YouTuber nails the historical problems inherent in the US education system.
https://youtu.be/j9MubNsh3rs?si=cfnjGzswahIMl53s
Anyone really surprised? This is far and away the most anti-public education administration ever.
Just look who's running the show.
American conservatives tend to view education like a dreaded disease. They live in fear of well-educated people.
They are at least dimly aware that critical thinking and facts about reality tend to have a liberal bias. The more people who can think and understand reality, the more people that can see through their power grabbing bullshit.
Who's running the show? The wife of a man who runs an organization that is ALL ABOUT APPEARANCE and damned little about SUBSTANCE. Vince McMahon may very well be a modern day P. T. Barnum.
And his wife clearly has been taking lessons from him.
FWIW, when I said "Just look who's running the show," I was referring to Trump. An incredibly ignorant man who despises educated people.
tRump is a vastly ignorant man in possession of imbecilic-level stupidity, brutal bigotry, and quite pleased with the whole lot. Someone said he is like if Dunning and Kruger made a kid together. And I truly think the MAGA faithful are in thrall to him because he is the worst of them.
Trump is, indeed, the poster child-man for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Until now, I really just thought tRumpstein was a one-dimensional creature: greed. But now you've opened my mind to seeing another dimension of him.
Like attracts like ... 😝
Stupid, ill- or uninformed, indoctrinated, unwilling to learn, unobservant, unskilled at critical thought, incurious...
And those are just the adjectives that quickly come to mind.
He didn't realize he was also referring to himself.
I wish they'd take a lesson From ol' P.T....
And "egress" from the building immediately!.
This way, please...
https://ibb.co/wrYrfhNy
Cool!
Thank you, T!
Well, if I could walk that way...
Daddy was rich enough that he could buy him the degrees he holds.
I wonder if their whole idea is to punish liberal arts because it has "liberal" in the name.
A very good chance of that.
Just like creationists stupidly going after a science book because it has "evolution" in the title that's not written in their favor. Case in Point: "Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth" by Andrew H. Knoll
Remember that 'arabic numerals' make them cry.
I used to trigger our workplace conservative literally by saying "liberal arts."
I wouldn't doubt it. They ARE that stupid.
We have an Education Secretary who does not have so much as a relevant bachelors degree in the field of education. A field she has never worked in. She does, however, have a head full of Republican bombast, and little else. This is the Republican mentality at its worst. If something isn’t making money for a big corporation, it’s worthless. They would reduce our best universities to trade schools serving narrow-minded corporate America.
They may lose their gub'mint handouts, but at least they got to own the Libs.
They've already lost their parents and grandparents to the Trump/Covid Sacrificial Pyre.
Their newborns to the lack of a necessary vitamin K shot at birth.
https://www.propublica.org/article/more-parents-decline-vitamin-k-shot-newborns?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=river
Their older children to, at worst. death from easily preventable childhood diseases, at best brown and rotting teeth (from lack of flouride.) (>1M miscarriages each year is the result of mothers breathing toxic air, but that seems "acceptable". That each surviving newborn likely inhales more different toxins, chemicals & poisons in their first breath than in a LIFETIME of vaccines also seems "acceptable", at least to them. (But not to me.)
"MAGA hates the things they hate more than they love the things they love." You've just proven this, RJ. And my fear is that these poor, sad fools will be firmly attached to Trump's butt until they have nothing left to sacrifice to Trump and MAGA.
Sorry, RJ. I've been angry.
I've been angry too. I've been enraged, I've been furious. And I'm exhausted by all of it.
It's actually really funny (funny peculiar rather than proper funny) to observe how some parts of the MAGAverse support the decimation of social programmes because they think that 'others'* benefit without realising that they are the biggest beneficiaries.
(* others - i.e. the feckless, lazy, layabouts, non-working ... add additional adjectives to this list. Maybe even some which refer to the melanin content of people's skin)
As they say, "To a hammer, all the world is a nail."
How about...
"To a victim, EVERYONE is a superior being!"
Trump has made these poor fools WANT to be victims. And what could be easier than to constantly fail by choice? (Especially knowing that you WILL have a job over EVERY other demographic in America other than white males.)
The repukelican party has been working on that since st. ronnie raygun. Remember:
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
I fear that it's even worse than that.....
60 years….
Toward the end of World War 2, America’s richest citizens were paying a tax rate of up to 94% with historically little pushback or complaint, because that’s what America required to defeat evil, and maintain Democracy.
During the start of a new century under President “W”, people paying even as little as 1/4th of that WW2 tax rate demanded even lower tax rates…twice. During wartime.
60 years…..
From the end of America’s Civil War, and for the next 100 years, there were essentially ONLY Democrats in elected federal offices from the south due to southern hate for Republican Lincoln.
Beginning around 1960, the GOP began to implement their Southern Strategy. Following that period, in 2025 (white) American “Christians” overwhelmingly voted to replace their worship of Jesus with their worship of a man who wasn’t even able to name the Golden Rule: Donald Trump.
The new MAGA savior told them he could save their souls by altering the past, if they would be willing to abandon all sense of personal responsibility. And abandon Jesus, of course. And the 100% Democratic south became overwhelmingly GOP, as it remains.
60 years…..
In the early 1960s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. became one of the most effective and respected freedom fighters on Earth.
In 2025, virtually everything Dr. King accomplished was either driven from the American memory or weaponized in an attempt to prevent anything like Dr. King’s legacy from EVER being influential in America again.
The GOP eliminated patriotism as a positive American trait and replaced it with GREED….
The GOP removed the loving words of Jesus from the hearts of white Americans, and replaced them with HATE…
The GOP eliminated Dr. King’s legacy as they removed his principles of brotherhood and personal sacrifice from the American psyche, and replaced them with FEAR…
Seemingly, this “Trifecta of mind control: greed, hate and fear” is an indication that the GOP can accomplish anything they want towards gaining control, and the DNC won’t even know until it’s just too late.
They just need 60 years….
Imagine living in America your whole life, voting Republican your whole life, and not realizing that Republicans worship money and capitalism, not Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is just the adopted mascot of the corporations and Empire. Being dead or unable to speak for himself, he can really be adapted into whatever sort of mascot is needed at any given moment by those with an agenda that is definitely not "the first will be last and the last will be first."
Really, though, The Trump administration will probably exempt these programs because it's an interest group that votes for them.
Everyone else will be screwed because knowledge isn't valued in America unless one of the oligarchs can exploit you and profit off of your knowledge.
OMS,
As I've presented (FAR too many times) in the form of a question:
Can you name any legislation...
1. Either proposed or even simply supported by the GOP
2. For the purpose of benefiting middle-income, working-class Americans...
3. In the past SEVENTY FIVE YEARS?
In the years I've been asking I've only been offered one accurate answer to add to the one I discovered.
But both the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) have substantially been damaged by Trump in the past year, so we're back to ZERO. (Considering how almost everything for the middle-class was actively fought by the GOP, I'm kinda surprised I could even find these two...to now forget again.)
But it doesn't even matter. Even when I present this face-to-face, they just don't care. As long as they "own the libs", they don't really care the price they pay.
As a friend puts it, "They don't mind getting shot in the foot, as long as some total stranger from a demographic they're told to hate gets shot in the knee."
"Owning the Libs" while having their pockets empted y those who they support.
If you'e interested in this, can I suggest that you read the pieces by Thom Hartmann? https://substack.com/@thomhartmann
He often writes very interesting articles about this.
Thank you, Claudia!
I agree 100%, and try to read him most days.
Claudia,
And if I may, I'd like to offer a suggestion in return.
I've been reading a gifted, but almost criminally unknown (I think) Substack writer named Joe Zeigler on Burnt Ground. He has true insight, as he has proven in numerous books on contemporary politics (as well as sci-fi!)
He is a truly a gift, one that I offer to each of you.
https://josephzeigler.substack.com/
or
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#search/burnt+/FMfcgzQgLrzdrTSLgHvrMgGVxSgjLpDt
Thank you, I'll have a look his Substack.
European here. I hesitate to make pronouncements for the whole of Europe, but my gutfeel is no. Germany likes to think of itself as the land of the 'poets and thinkers', France likes its great schools such as the 'Sciences Po' and in many other countries there is a great pride in the achievements which have only been possible because people learned things and then applied their learnings by eg building those amazing ancient monuments or medieval cathedrals.
Can I however also offer a counter example to the above? About ten years ago Michael Gove said 'we have enough of experts', he said it in relation to Brexit because every economics expert on the planet pointed out that it was a daft idea, that it would damage the economy. Brexit was a case of anti-intellectualism, inasmuch as the decision was largely based on emotional factors rather than a sober, rational look at the issues.
I wish we had some similar national education/arts elements or institutions that U.S. Americans had been taught to admire and aspire to, rather than sneer at.
Instead, I remember constant references to some vague concept of "American Exceptionalism" implying that the U.S. and its citizens were somehow inherently special through no effort of their own and that just by virtue of U.S. citizenship they were already a cut above everybody else.
So, whut the hell do we need all that there fancy edicatin' fer?
A kind of national hubris, I suppose.
Lynn, have you come across @Jess Piper ? She writes - among other things - about education in a rural (red) state. You might find her thoughts interesting.
I’ll check it out. Thanks!
I grew up in an environment of anti-intellectualism. I would love to read a good book exploring the pervasive anti-intellectualism and anti-education sentiment in the US, explaining why it's so prevalent,* etc. Part of it is religious poisoning, but I am sure there are other facets as well.
*I mean, of course it's so prevalent because the GOP pushes it, but why do ordinary people embrace it?
Trump has promised (and kept the promise) to change history to protect white Americans from ever being "white-hurt" again.
And since MAGA already has a place in Heaven (thanks to some "white guy" named Jesus), now they just need their sins forgiven, as Trump is doing by erasing history.
And all MAGA has to do in return is to abandon all sense of personal responsibility, and continue to hate (and to remember to breath, of course.)
Trump has created a victim class in America unlike any I can remember. And they get everything they want in return...as long as they only want to throw themselves into sewage to protect Trump's shoe soles.
"MAGA hate what they hate more than they love what they love."
Obviously there's more, Lynn. But they really seem to love being victims.
The RWNJ don't like to think. They never have.
You know how the Department of Defense was renamed to the Department of War. I'm surprised the Department of Education hasn't been renamed the Department of Ignorance.
I thought I read recently that the FBI will be renamed the Federal Bureau of Intoxication.
[HIC!!!] BURN! 🔥🔥🔥
Patel hates to be called J. Edgar Boozer. Sure hope no one decides to take that and run with it. 😉
Awww, does that hurt his widdle fee-fees?
If he doesn't like the heat, the door to the kitchen is THAT way! ===>
With those eyes of his, he'd probably run into the door.
I just went into gales of hysterical laughter. And I really needed that, too. Thankyou!
i couldn't resist saying it. :)
Please keep saying it as often as possible. I'm already sharing it with my friends. XD
I imagine nobody in the administration thought far enough ahead to realize this would penalize Christian schools. As we've seen with most things the administration has attempted over the last couple years, this was poorly planned and meant to score culture war points, instead of address any real problem.
If any of them thought that far ahead, they thought that the collateral damage was an acceptable price to pay in order to punish the "liberal" universities.
When your political imperative is "owning the libs," it doesn't matter where the overspray ends up.
Overwhelmingly, it seems, on RED states.
As long as it doesn't land on the red 𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘳𝘴, they won't care.
Big if...
OT:
Trump-backed Christian nationalist rally falls flat on National Mall
https://ffrf.org/news/releases/trump-backed-christian-nationalist-rally-falls-flat-on-national-mall/
Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a video statement likewise claimed Christianity defined the nation from the beginning. “With the dark storm clouds of war looming on the horizon, they did what Christians have always done across place and time for 2,000 years,” Rubio said of the Founders. “They turned their eyes to heaven and placed their faith in the hands of God.”
_________________
No, Li'l Marco Little Feet, they did what successful revolutionaries have done since the beginning of time. They hunkered down and did the work required -- the planning, the strategizing, the marching, the starving, the freezing, the fighting, and the dying.
Individuals may have offered up quick prayers here and there, like soldiers in an older civilization might have touched an amulet to their foreheads before heading into battle. Some may have even believed victory was ordained by God. But they still realized that the war would be won with muskets and cannon fire, not prayer rallies. IOW, they had to put in the actual work to achieve that goal, whether they thought gawd blessed it or not.
Didn't we call it? Didn't we say attendance at this bund rally would fall far below expectations?
NatCs aren't quite as powerful or as popular as they believe themselves to be. Gladdens the heart, it does.
Google AI says:
Organizers and news outlets reported that thousands of people attended the "Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving" event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Rather than an exact figure, mainstream consensus and reporting estimate the crowd size in the low thousands.
I'm sure that the people who went are feeling all Jesus-ey and righteous but to only draw "low thousands" in the D.C. metro area is very revealing of the lack of interest on the part of the general public.
Low thousands? Sounds like a Jets game.
It 𝘪𝘴 somewhat gratifying when the Nat-Cs pull out all the stops, but their best (worst?) efforts still land with a wet plop.
They ain't such hot stuff as they think they are ... and sometime or other, their presumption and hubris are going to catch up with them.
OT -- I was wondering if anyone has heard anything from BH & DM mourner?
I've missed a few days here and there, but I keep looking for her in the comments....miss her special brand of snark.
Not a peep from her or dammit barry.
They both had major health issues. Sorry to say, but I think both are gone.
😢
Agreed. I MISS HER!!!
Seems we lose a couple more regulars every year...
I emailed her for a couple of months. I never received a response. 😭
How about that? I actually agree with the Trump administration on something! Young adults should not be saddled with lifetime debt that they can never hope to pay off. How to fix that is where we part ways though.
I believe in socialization of many aspects of our lives that serve the public good. In the case of health care, socialization would save everyone money. It's a clear conservative issue. We pay more for health care in this country than other first world nations. Free health care for all would mean an increase in taxes, sure, but it would also eliminate health insurance premiums, co-pays and crippling lifetime debt. The only group that would lose money is the private equity, religious institutions and stockholders that take money from the system faster than it goes in.
Education, on the other hand, is a tougher sell to 'conservatives' who only worry about next quarter profits. We can't justify free college by just pointing out that college grads pay more taxes because the math doesn't work out, especially since tuition has risen faster than inflation. But I submit that socializing education is still a conservative issue. It's just that it takes a longer time to pay benefits. Today's 'conservatives' don't want an educated population because education enables people to actually do their own research and discover when they are being scammed. Trumpism is not conservative, it's a fascist regime whose only plank in their platform is 'owning the libs'.
It's getting to the point where "owning the libs" is amounting to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, or fiddling while Rome burns. The game can only go on so long before the long-term consequences come into evidence.
Would that you could tell them that.
They'll figure it out when they're looking up at the business end of a guillotine blade, and not a moment before.
First cuppa.
First this: “ It’s an existential threat to the future of religious higher education in the US—I don’t think that’s an overstatement,”
Nor is it an overstatement to note that religious higher education is a contradiction in terms. By way of comparison, you don’t go to medical school to learn all about medicine, or as an alternative, go to Joe’s college of surgery to learn all about leeches.
Then this: “Financial outcomes matter, but they don’t totally measure whether an education is worthwhile,” of course they don’t. I have 3, and I did well in all of them. But the financial outcome actually was from a career in a completely different and unrelated field: Photography. But still, my education was incredibly worthwhile…
To make me even more informed citizen of the world, to teach me about compassion, to understand when politicians or pastors are trying to put something over on me, to understand that war is a terrible method of conducting international relations, and the difference between the dismal science of economics and the hard science of physics. Education comes from the two Latin words”e duco”— to lead out of.
Religion doesn’t lead you out of anything— Except if you’re lucky, religion.
“To make me even more informed citizen of the world, to teach me about compassion, to understand when politicians or pastors are trying to put something over on me, to understand that war is a terrible method of conducting international relations, and the difference between the decimal science of economics and the hard science of physics.”
That is the problem right there. They don’t want people who can think or understand the real world.
This administration has made it clear it will only apply their own rules at their convenience. Try and apply this "earning" nonsense on Christian colleges and it will be labeled as "Christian Prosecution".
And people will never catch on.
“This rule would prohibit those students from taking out loans for college if “the typical graduate of an undergraduate program does not earn as much as a high school graduate.” By extension, that prohibition would harm schools that offer those programs.”
So, instead of pressuring employers who require college degrees to pay for the college educated employees to compensate for the financial, time and effort an employee spent just to work for them, they punish the students and schools further. Sounds about white.
This also sounds like another attack on teachers, since the system has set up a program where teaching isn’t a profession despite requiring a Bachelor degree minimum and has been changing to Master degrees and doctorates, just to be employed. And yet teachers are paid well below minimum wage in nearly all places. When I went through my art teaching degree, I was specifically told why teachers aren’t professionals, and that we should not be paid more so that we do it out of passion for educating children rather than a paycheck and blah blah blah. I also know teachers that were forced to get the master’s degree just to qualify for the classroom only to be paid the same as they did before they went back to school.
And why are we comparing apples and oranges? It makes sense that specialized trades with plenty of experience get high salaries, while an entry level position that requires college but is in an office might be a bit less. But let’s also consider that nursing requires college and is back breaking physically demanding but is not that well paying compared to construction or other trades. You know why.
This is a direct attack on women and minorities because they are outstripping white men for college admissions and graduation, despite the end of affirmative action or DEI or whatever the right is getting rid of.
Glad it’s hurting the pedos with crosses too.
Teaching ... let's just have a look at the gender profile of teachers.
Exactly.
Case closed.
Jobs that should only require a High school diploma and demand a College degree instead need to be dealt with as well.
Also, the wall of unpaid-internship-before-salaried-position that stands between inexperienced recent graduates and careers in their fields of study. I know a bunch of people, STEM majors in particular, who wound up in dead end retail or food service jobs because there wasn't any path into their field that wouldn't lead them through homelessness and destitution first.
https://www.zenpencils.com/comic/124-taylor-mali-what-teachers-make/
“Those Who Can, Do; Those Who Can’t, Teach”
Me: And those that can do neither criticize the other two.
Fair warning, I haven't read the comment section at all yet.
Seems to me this might also be an attempt to keep women from getting as much education as well. Sure, many women go to college and go on to have successful careers, but women are still suffering under the glass ceiling effect in addition to being somewhat more likely to become stay-at-home mothers at some point. That is going to skew the numbers, and make colleges less interested in female students despite the social benefits of having well-educated mothers raising healthier, more successful kids.
This strikes me as religious conservatives being so interested in 'owning the libs!!' that they fail to realize (or maybe just don't care?) just how much their actions will hurt them, too. I'd be happier about this whole thing, but we're clearly all going to pay dearly for it in the coming years, possibly decades.
Oh, it's okay.
Or, at least, it will be once they achieve their ultimate objective of not having any schools at all.
School's out for summer
School's out forever
School's been blown to pieces
OT:
Not a drag queen
Not transgender
Not an immigrant
Not a protestor
A trump humper and a christian.
https://ibb.co/0NkFP84
https://krcgtv.com/news/local/boonville-man-federally-charged-with-possessing-csam
Day ending in Y, it's always the people you most suspect, overhead projector meme goes here, etc...
Here we go again. Again.
Going down the only road I've ever known
NotAgain