Chris Hayes & Rachel Maddow Tell It As It Was, And Still Is

THE USA WILL BE A DICTATORSHIP UNDER TRUMP

"We just wrapped up our fall 2023 national tour. We’ve so enjoyed taking WITHpod on the road and it’s been so good to hear feedback from so many of you. We couldn’t think of a better person to have for our tour culmination than the one and only Rachel Maddow. It was a fascinating conversation all about what we can do to save American democracy, how we got to this particular political moment and her amazing New York Times bestselling book, “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.” We’re thrilled to share the full recording of the event with you."

Click on the link below for 90 minutes of American history and current events that everyone needs to know:

WITHpod Live with Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow

Israel: There Is No Excuse For USA Support Of Apartheid

"Israel's politics have been upended by the return of Netanyahu as Prime Minister, put in office with the help of extremely far-right factions who have now pushed through reforms to the Israeli Supreme Court that fundamentally undermine their democracy. All this while they were already a farce of a democracy due to the maintenance of an apartheid-like system of differing rules applying to different residents based on ethnicity."

Click on the link below for a podcast exposing a country that should not be allowed to hoodwink the USA with its religious bigotry (heads up, Evangelical ideologues). 

Israel's Political Upheavals (and more)

The Attitude Of Cultural Superiority: A Harmful Result

"Today, we take a look at the long, global history of invading peoples stealing the children of native families to be acculturated into the population of the invading force. Reasons can range from a tactic of war and an intention to commit genocide, usually based on an ideology of racial superiority, to concerns over shifting national demographics, simple economic dispossession, or all of the above."

Click on the link below for the grim details of a universal cultural tendency that must be directly attacked by science-based thinkers: 

Stolen Children is Stolen History, Heritage, and Culture 

Parental Rights And Responsibilities

There is a great deal of discussion, and disagreement, regarding parental rights and responsibilities in the political environment of the USA presently. While most legal sources agree that the parents are the prime sources of proper nurturing and protection of the child, they also agree that outside resources are necessary to aid in achieving the goal of a happy, healthy, and well-educated child. After all, the parent is not the "owner" of the child (and neither is the state). 

With that said, what happens when parents do not meet their responsibilities in child-rearing? There is little societal disagreement regarding not tolerating physical (exception: corporal punishment) or emotional abuse, and/or failure to provide food, clothing, and shelter. However, the areas of health and education can present situations ripe for disagreement, especially if one's ideology is based on claims unsupported by evidence:

• Health: circumcision? vaccinations? birth-control? hormone replacement therapy? gender reassignment surgery? abortion? alternatives to medicine?
• Education: religious indoctrination? secular morality? evolution, and other sciences? history (of racism, inequality,  colonialism, genocide, wars, greed, authoritarianism, individualism, communism, socialism, democracy, republicanism, tribalism, capitalism)?

What to do with all of this?

Caste Systems And Race

"Isabel Wilkerson is a journalist and author who in 1994 became the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in Journalism. Preet spoke with Wilkerson in August 2020 about her bestselling book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Wilkerson discussed the difference between caste and race, the ways that Nazi Germany drew inspiration from American racism, and the need for radical empathy as we deal with our own enduring caste system."

Click on the link below for a podcast taking an in-depth look at the USA's caste system:

America's Caste System

The 2nd Amendment Is Bogus

"What are the origins of the Second Amendment? And what can America’s painful racial history illuminate about our national relationship to guns?

"On this special Live Taping of Now & Then, Heather and Joanne talk to Carol Anderson, professor of African American Studies at Emory University and author of The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.

"The trio discuss how the recent spate of mass shootings — and Supreme Court decisions striking down gun control measures in liberal-leaning cities and states — echo the longstanding inequalities embedded in American gun ownership."

Click on the link below for the true history of the 2nd Amendment:

Racism and the Second Amendment

Is THIS At The Root Of The Evil?

It is no secret that the Republican party has gone full bore into nationalism, unsupported Christian dogma, attacking non-binary sexuality, misogyny, racism, libertarianism, autocracy, anti-education, anti-US Constitution, and general magical thinking over science-based thinking. Is there one ideology at the base of it all? Click on the link below for a short podcast presenting a provocative point of view on the matter:

It's Always the Season For Male Supremacy

How To Change The Discomfort Of Talking About Injustice

" - - - The only way to avoid the discomfort is to avoid the issues. If we can avoid talking about and reading about problematic matters, issues that might require us to rethink values and assumptions, then we won’t feel the discomfort that such difficult thought might entail.

 
"If we banish from our minds, our libraries, and our classrooms any examination of politics, religion, race, environment, sex, justice, and the like, we might protect ourselves from the possible discomfort we might experience. All we have to do is trivialize the curriculum to the point that few will be bothered by anything.

"If we can make instruction completely insignificant, utterly irrelevant to anyone’s emotional and intellectual life, then absolutely no one should rise up to protest the threat we pose to treasured beliefs, valued affiliations, or well-established habits of thought and action. We can teach kids how viruses are different from bacteria but avoid discussing why the health care system better serves the wealthy than the poor. We can teach what events led up to World War II and which countries fought on which sides and the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps but fail to mention our own concentration camps for American citizens of Japanese ancestry or consider why the 761st Tank Battalion or the 555th Parachute Battalion consisted solely of African American soldiers. We can give the facts of Brown v. Board of Education but never read what happened to the Little Rock Nine, never discuss how the integration of schools caused thousands of well-qualified Black teachers to lose their jobs because white parents refused to let their children be taught by a Black teacher.

"We can teach the definitions of “preposition” and “conjunction.” That will raise few hackles. “Onomatopoeia” and “zeugma” are unlikely to drive marchers into the streets, even if we require students to learn both definition and spelling. Better yet, we can teach penmanship—that will threaten the values of neither the conservatives nor the progressives, neither Republicans nor Democrats, neither those drilling for oil nor the sailors on one of the Greenpeace ships. Total irrelevancy, absolute insignificance, and unwavering stasis are effective strategies for avoiding the discomfort of thought and change.
***
"We cannot, dear teachers, ever give in to the demands of irrelevancy. So, Mr. Principal, you must be brave. You must steer the ship into tomorrow. Your teachers will be there with you. And students, they may shudder at past injustices - long past and recent past - and I hope they do. If they don't, we are in more trouble than I thought.

"I wish you all bravery. Stamina. And the knowledge that your hard work is the good work; the best work; the needed work. We need you.

"Kylene Beers"

(link)

Systemic Racism: Structural And Environmental

"Today we take a look at the legacy of red-lining, the building and subsequent destruction of Black communities, and the health and environmental impacts of segregation. The concept of “Structural Racism” is often a metaphor, not something physical that you can touch, but that is not the case when it comes to environmental racism."

Click on the link below for an in-depth look at major factors of systemic racism that Republicans easily overlook in their blaming of the poor for their economic, educational, family, and criminal status:

The Physical Structures of Structural Racism and the Fight for Environmental Justice

Place The Blame For The Plight Of Afghanistan Allies Where It Belongs

"Olivia Troye, a former homeland security adviser to then-VP Mike Pence, reveals that racist and xenophobic ideologies inside the Trump Administration prevented Afghan allies from being granted Special Immigration Visas during the former president’s term. Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller was the tip of the spear." (link)

Science-Based US Demographics

"The narrative that nonwhite people will soon outnumber white people is not only divisive, but also false."

Click on the click below for an enlightening article on the future demographics in the USA.

The Myth of a Majority-Minority America

Questions About Slavery Answered

"Why were most slaves in America from West Africa? Slavery has existed throughout history in various forms across the globe, but who became enslaved was almost always based on military conquest. So why did Europeans travel thousands of miles to enslave people from a particular geographic region?"

Click on the link below for the rest of the story:

Why Did Europeans Enslave Africans?

Racism Education For The Young

"The children’s-book author Anastasia Higginbotham and I disagree about how to teach young Americans about police killings and racism."

Click on the link below for an intelligent and respectful interaction by two noted writers on a sensitive topic.

‘Nobody Wants White Kids to Feel Bad About Their Race’

Critical Race Theory Defended

"Critical race theories combine progressive political struggles for racial justice with critiques of the conventional legal and scholarly norms which are themselves viewed as part of the illegitimate hierarchies that need to be changed. Scholars, most of whom are themselves persons of color, challenge the ways that race and racial power are constructed by law and culture. One key focus of critical race theorists is a regime of white supremacy and privilege maintained despite the rule of law and the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws. Agreeing with critical theorists and many feminists that law itself is not a neutral tool but instead part of the problem, critical race scholars identify inadequacies of conventional civil rights litigation. Critical race theorists nonetheless fault critical legal scholars as failing to develop much to attract people of color and for neglecting the transformative potential of rights discourse in social movements, regardless of the internal incoherence or indeterminacy of rights themselves." (link)

Among the pejoratives used by conservatives and Trumpers, is "critical race theory." Below are some links defending the phrase:

They HATE Critical Race Theory, But Don't Know What It Is

A Lesson on Critical Race Theory

In the defense of Critical Race Theory

The value of Critical Race Theory

Examples Of Conservative Blindness

"It is better to be silent and to be thought a fool,

than to speak out and remove all doubt."

(multiple attributions)

Conservatives have disqualified themselves from the rest of us needing to take them seriously. The following videos are emblematic of their erroneous thinking processes:

Rick Santorum

Ben Shapiro

Dave Rubin

The Cruel History Of The USA National Parks

 "Treuer, who wrote the book The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to the Present, says that Native Americans are too often precluded from using the land in culturally significant ways that go back millennia. In his essay for The Atlantic, he makes the case that the U.S. should return control of national parks to its Native people."

Click on the link below for a podcast delving into the racism and politics of our national parks.

The Problem With America's National Parks

Immigration's History In The USA

"Once you begin to notice examples of how the past is still present, they become difficult to ignore. Trump enacted the most stringent border closure of his administration by citing the threat of disease, even though COVID‑19 outbreaks were far worse inside the United States than just outside its borders (in fact, Americans were actively deporting the virus abroad). His persistent blaming of the Chinese for outbreaks in the U.S. helped incite violence against Asian Americans that continues today, mirroring similar attacks from centuries past.

"In moving toward the more inclusive system that some elected officials now say they want, the country would be not returning to traditional American values, but establishing new ones." 

Click on the link below for a humbling expose of the hypocritical history of immigration in the USA.

U.S. Immigration Policy Has Always Been Exclusionary

A Look At "Reconstruction"

"Today we take a look at the often-overlooked decade of Reconstruction in the wake of the Civil War. After hundreds of years of slavery, Reconstruction was a brief moment of relative democracy and equality before the white power structure reasserted itself and instated the policies that would be known as "Jim Crow Laws" which would last another 80 years."

Click on the link below for an enlightening podcast regarding why we still have a racial divide in the USA.

Our Second Founding (Reconstruction)

The Beginning Of Racism

"To understand and eradicate racist thinking, start at the beginning. That's what journalist and documentarian John Biewen did, leading to a trove of surprising and thought-provoking information on the "origins" of race. He shares his findings, supplying answers to fundamental questions about racism -- and lays out an exemplary path for practicing effective allyship." 

Click on the link below for a video clarifying the roots of what we call racism:

The lie that invented racism

Systemic Racism: What Conservatives Don't Understand About It

"A deep dive into the realities of systemic racism in the United States."

One of the better looks at the issue. Click on the link below if you are swimming in that Egyptian river (de Nile).

The Truth About Systemic Racism