Tom Rinaldo
Tom Rinaldo's JournalWhen I was 5 years old we didn't play "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a Tiger by the Toe"
We said "catch a (N-Word) by the toe" instead, all of us white kids did, and we never gave it a thought. We weren't aware of our racism at the moment, we were just playing a game. This was back around 1955 in Queens County NYC in my case, but my partner who is two years younger has the same memory from her growing up in Orange County California.
Racism too often saturates cultures when it isn't being consciously countered and opposed. I don't remember how the change happened for me but at some point as a kid I began counting out with Tigers instead. I wasn't aware that I was not being racist by using Tiger instead of the N word, it wasn't making a political statement to revise the word used. It just "became" the new standard. Or at least that's how my limited memory of that part of my childhood has it, but in retrospect it's obvious to me that somewhere somehow some people effected that change without me being aware of any "controversy." I still knew absolutely nothing about race relations in America, the change just seemed to happen. The change didn't just happen.
Overt racism became less socially acceptable because some people fought to make it so, and because of that, one small but insidious self perpetuating piece of the unconscious indoctrination of young white children into the mindset of racism was defused for me during my childhood.That is where the war is really won or lost. The front lines today are being fought over "All men (sic) are created equal" vs "The Great Replacement Theory", over "We are a nation of immigrants" vs "our cherished threatened white identity."
And there are always children paying attention.
Lots of brave cops have confronted shooters and saved lives. Some have died trying to
Some cops are also racist sadists, and some are cowards. The average cop is neither a sadist nor a coward. The average cop moves toward danger even though some over react (with potentially lethal consequences to others) while doing so. Cops are a part of many problems, but except in isolated instances, school shootings aren't usually one of them. Much more often than not, when it comes to mass shootings, cops are "the good guys with guns." "Good guys with guns" have a key role to play in confronting those who attempt mass murder. As sickening and horrifying as the failings of the Uvalde police force has been, that can't be allowed to become the central focus of current outrage.The problem is the almost childish expectation too many have bought into that usually " good guys with guns" can save us from ourselves.
Cops rarely protect the public against mass shooters, not before numerous casualties occur. AR 15s with large capacity ammo magazines kill far too many, far too quickly, far too effectively, for a few more blue uniform wearing officers with pistols to provide the answer. Decades of a rampant gun fetish, fortified by decades of logic defying public policy decisions made by rabid state legislatures across the country, sanctioned by a ideologically captive right wing Supreme Court, can not be countered by adding better trained, better led cops to local police forces and school districts, or by stationing them inside every supermarket.
We must not be thrown off the trail. Cowardly cops are not the issue here.
Every 4 years those "young voters" we've so often been dismissive of here in the past
...move 4 years closer to becoming middle aged. The very same youth who, not infrequently, were criticized by many on DU for being "apolitical" and/or "disengaged" and/or "unreliable", are inexorably moving toward becoming the center of gravity of our society. Though the march of time is obvious, it's repercussions, especially politically, can evade those in prior generations who had grown accustomed to "being in charge." Looking back on my own youth I think that was the case. Most established leaders of that time (the 60's/70's) were hard pressed to imagine the approaching "changing of the guard" that would disrupt their accustomed ways of "doing business" in all realms. Most of those who could visualize a possible sea change coming saw it as a threatening prospect, one to fight against.
The Democratic Party is the major political coalition in America that is most open to change. I take it for granted that Republicans resist it, but we have blind spots too. I think it's human nature to project the present onto the future, even for those whose basic instinct isn't to reach back into the past. So called, at the time, conservative Democrats were a powerful force back when I was young. Our party was much more dominated by straight white males then than it is today. Often they gave lip service to inclusiveness, for example, but those words were seldom fully backed up by their own staffing decisions, or the composition of leadership ranks. Today, though no battle is ever fully won, the Democratic Party has embraced and is implementing inclusiveness, as reflected by President Biden's Cabinet and Federal Court appointments. That was yesteryear's frontier. What will be different, in tone or nature, about the Democratic Party of tomorrow? To what extent are we driving using a rear view mirror? What changes, what shifting priorities, now are in the wind?
If there is a generation gap effecting the Democratic Party, I am part of a former wave. From that perspective it is hard to see the contours of the future, much as I might want to embrace it. But it is clear to me that there are major generational "divisions", if not quite "divides" , playing out right below the surface of the status quo. All kinds of polling show that Americans are increasingly divided in their beliefs by age as much as they are by any other demographic, including the differences between rural vs urban attitudes that are getting so much notice now. I think those differences may ultimately prove to be as consequential as the changes that were breaking between the late 50's and the early 70's. Generational shifts are among the most difficult for any established leadership to get a handle on. They too often get written off as reflective of the fleeting passions of youth, and overall naivety.
Democratic Underground, with notable exceptions, tilts toward older activists in its demographics. The national leadership of the Democratic Party does the same. Hopefully we are keeping enough ears to the ground to pick up on ongoing seismic shifts, because "The times, they are (again) changing."
A slim majority of a Court w/ 3 members appointed by twice impeached POTUS who lost the popular vote
is reversing a 7-2 majority ruling in Roe V. Wade that stood for 49 years and which was reaffirmed when the question was revisited by the Supreme Court decades after the first ruling. Roe not only established precedent, it established it twice. In the 49 years since, yes, times have changed. The public has gone from being closely divided over safe and legal abortions, to favoring them by a two to one margin. This stands in stark contrast to another famous Supreme Court reversal Republicans are always quick to cite, that of the Dred Scott ruling. The SC reversing the Scott precedent was fully in line with how public thinking had evolved during the intervening decades. The public understood that the Dread Scott case was wrongly decided, the Supreme Court was catching up to the public. Now though it is fighting the public, taking away a legal right that is overwhelmingly supported .
There is nothing more "Supreme" about the current Supreme Court Justices than those who sat on the Court 49 years ago. There is nothing more learned about them, nothing that makes them less susceptible to a faulty analysis than those who were part of the 7 to 2 "bipartisan" majority that established Roe V Wade. Alito now writes that "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start" That's called his opinion. Opinions differ.They almost always do, unanimity is rare on the Suprrme Court. The current Conservative SC majority subscribes to a different belief system than that of previous courts. Their minority view is now being imposed on America simply because they (because of the naked power plays of Mitch McConnell) now control enough votes to do so.In doing so they are making a mockery of the role the Supreme Court plays in America There is no such thing as "settled law" anymore when it differs from what the far right wants, whenever they have sufficient votes to impose their own view instead.
It really is no different from how the Republican Party currently views elections; when they win all is legal and proper, when they lose they will use any tactic they can employ to reverse those results, up to and including decertifying elections they can't legitimately win, and substituting the will of state legislators or their congressional majorities for the will of the voters.
Only one major party believes in the democracy that generations of Americans fought and died for to establish and protect.
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Member since: Mon Oct 20, 2003, 06:39 PMNumber of posts: 22,912