Author Glennon Doyle has said there's "no such thing as other people's children." America First is a selfish, bigoted way of saying our children deserve more than the others who are starving or broken or different or distant. I call caring for them compassion; they call it woke. May we all wake up before it's too late.
Indeed. As a Canadian traveler for 3+ decades, I can vouch for what you say and I might add that the selfishness and bigoted attitudes is one of the main reasons that the US has made baby steps toward universal healthcare and all other government expenditures that provide services that support personal, social and emotional well-being. Until caring for your compatriots is firmly ingrained in the American psyche, I see no way out of this dilemma. Even with Biden’s inroads to rectify this pervasive attitude, trump is wiping it clean with a stroke of his famous pen.
John, I don't think you are as naive as you claim to be here. Jim Crow? Enslavement? Genocide? The history of the USA and its colonial predecessors is a history of cruelty, prejudice, and hatred directed at "other people's children." All in the name of Jesus, I might add. This current administration dominated by felons, predators, drunkards, and drug-addled psychopaths is simply returning to the "status quo ante"--the way it was before. Before what? Before people started feeling a tiny bit guilty about how they were treating the neighbors SOME of their pastors told them they really should "love". Since yesterday was the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I would suggest also before people were confronted with the level of evil and derangement humans are capable of. The BBC took a poll of the populace in the UK and discovered that more than 40% of those polled didn't know the significance of the word "Auschwitz." Humanity is really good at wearing blinders so that they can ignore what they don't want to see. When the institutions that are supposed to educate and advise promote those blinders, they can do anything they want.
I have doubts about those who think that the administrations interference in education is alright for their children, banning books, changing the curriculum to fit the MAGA mold, well just all of their changes that goes against true education, are helping their kids to be educated adults. So those who believe that the standard education was alright for their children are going to be cheated. I then wonder with the restrictions being put on how many teachers are just going to say I have better things to do other than play politics in the classroom.
I don’t know about the rest of the country, but in Michigan we have a teacher shortage right now. Teachers are leaving the profession and young people are talking to current teachers, and they don’t want to sign up for this profession. I spent a decade and a half very involved in my children’s schools. I saw more money, more resources, more benefits, being taken away from teachers. They’re expected to do so much with so little and then Covid hit along with the crazy parent wing, which had been slowly growing. Who would sign up for that? I have a sister who’s been teaching for 20 years and she said in the last five or six years she is appalled at the way parents treat teachers and principles, and the complete lack of respect shown. What is that teaching your children when they see you treating others with such disrespect? Not a very good lesson.
Yes, yes. The attack on education is part of the Republican plan and has been in progress for a few decades. They look at a service or product needed by most and do their best to privatize it so they can profit. They want to dumb down the country and have had some success. We need high quality public school teachers and the way to do this is to show them respect on all levels. Thank you for your comments. This is so important.
MO has a teacher shortage as well. I know of at least one sub who quit because it just wasn't worth it anymore. This is a deep red evangelical state, and there's a lot of resentment and suspicion of the well-educated. This is especially true outside of the cities.
Thank you for this posting, John. It speaks deeply to me. Didn't all this 'me-and-mine first and only' thinking start with Regan's now famous campaign question: Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago? I believe the question every Presidential candidate should be judged by is not are YOU (and yours) better off now than you were before, but rather, Is our country more compassionate and extending of opportunity to all? Do all of our children receive quality education regardless of the zip code they live in? Are immigrants and all human beings treated with the dignity and respect? Does our foreign policy promote democracy and human rights throughout the world? These questions are the ones that truly matter. We started down this path of selfishness with Regan. Let us now see that for what it was and finally turn the corner on selfish Me-First-ism for our selves and our country!
Reagan tapped into the ethos of what became the “me generation,” on the heels of Jimmy Carter’s (unwelcome) candor about the need to pull together in the service of energy conservation and human rights. Reagan was a big old dopy lovable cowboy, well meaning and simple—and he gave us what we wanted to hear. Social programs that cared for the poor and the marginalized were gutted.
The word AIDS was never spoken out loud. We nestled into our little “me-time.
I watched that unfold as a Social Worker in the 80s.
It still haunts me, but, in
my old age, I’m seeing the this nightmare as a challenge to remember the voices of Carter and others who knew that America can only be as great as the soul of her people. I’m grieving the loss of youthful idealism, but glad to be getting free of the exhausting outrage that has held me captive for so long.
Very sorry to hear that Maria. Actually, unless one is an indigenous person whose ancestors were the first to populate this continent 14,000 (approx) years ago, we are ALL immigrants. The white people who pretend to be "native" are in fact more or less the most recent--and the most predatory--of those immigrants.
We used to say, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Why can’t these hate filled people realize that they are harming themselves and their families by harming schools, healthcare, trade, etc.
I became embarrassed about singing "God Bless America" a long time ago and suggested we change it to "God Bless Humanity". Chances of that happening now are getting worse by the minute.
I have been writing about climate change and the threats on all life for many years. I thought that appealing to adults about what this means for future generations would be a way to activate people to change. I’ve been fully disappointed that most choose to ignore this global threat and many - including the science illiterate orange man - even deny what the vast majority of scientists know and communicate. I’m not sure that all parents are wired to passionately care for their children.
I think even a cursory look at human history will show that tribalism leads to tribal wars of aggression and individual acts of aggression. It's important to also note a rising tide of a wider sense of self, more inclusive, and more compassionate. IMO this is one of the signature achievement of the modern age and democratic norms. As something relatively new, it is fragile and we need each to take stock of our thoughts and feelings about brotherhood. Jesus seems to have been centuries ahead of his peers, recognizing Gentile as well as Jew as fully human and deserving of equal respect. He also recognized that there are reprobates among us (the Phairasees?) who need to be called out. Sometimes we learn by example what raises us up and what casts us down Selfishness is the latter.
When I was younger I used to wonder about the thing people called, "The great falling away". How could anyone leave Jesus who loves us so greatly? Then I ended up involved in a church conflict. We chose to try to work that out as God wanted us to, and I learned that some people will only follow God as long as it is comfortable. When it pushes them into a place where they might have to change their actions or thoughts, a place where perhaps they might have to admit flaws or errors, they simply refuse. As one lady said, "I realized I don't like to be wrong". And so she decided her ideas were the right ideas. We were forced to leave there after much damage to our family. I wouldn't do that again. I would just leave.
But then came this political S-storm. At first it was my father and a few friends who watched Fox and started spouting the racist clap-trap that somehow they had been convinced was truth. Somehow many were convinced Fox was the only source of truth. Then I watched as whole churches went down that road, believing that the only real issue was Abortion and abandoning all semblance of loving their neighbors. I watched as students, with whom I worked, started to see Christianity as only judgmental, closed-minded people who hate. I saw pastors leading the throng in mask protests and screaming in megaphones in the ears of children going to school, staging on campus protests. I watched those same leaders verbally attack a school nurse for teaching sex Ed, calling her a pedophile. I heard supposed Christian students spout conspiracy theories like the idea that the vaccine would put a chip in you that would separate you from God.
I've come to realize that those who are falling away sincerely believe they are the ones with the truth because the new version of Christianity is one that says what they want to hear. Abortion is out and hating immigrants is in and that is good because immigrants are breaking the law. And they justify their hate with phrases they pull from the Bible and they write books about people who disagree with them being non-human and therefore worthy of death. They have abandoned God and don't even know it. Because those around them have done the same they are certain they are righteous.
And it causes me to go before God and ask that I be aided by Him to stand true, have courage, and ask for His grace to keep my mind from straying into that seductive abyss. I want to be a genuine God seeker who loves all and allows God to work in other persons' hearts in his time, not demand conformity to my version of God or allegiance to a supposed "righteous" political party.
May God have mercy on us all because we all have to go through the hell that has been pressed upon us by the Nationalistic christian right who believe themselves so righteous they cannot fathom that they could possibly be wrong.
“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
I always am a little impatient with stories about people who hate queer people until they discover someone in their family is queer. Then they all of a sudden discover their humanity. I think you only get half credit if you only come to this compassionate position because of someone that you thought you loved already
The most basic “mind-shift” needed right now is to realize that WE are not entitled to Democracy. I am done with operating from that naive premise. I WANT to live in a Democracy. So I must WORK to make that happen, to make that birth into existence. The New-Deal-American Era we grew up in is over. It has died from power-mongering, Planter-Class Supremacists out maneuverings engaged voters who felt entitled to democracy, and a whole bunch of eligible voters who lost their faith in America a long time ago, and were content to watch porn and cat videos while the barricades are breached. We are left needing to craft in-real-time fighting responses to a firehose of shit. For many of us now, We either prove we are capable of crafting a democracy to wrench away from the grip of the oligarchs, or we die trying. We are not the first group of humans to need to fight like hell to preserve the Light of Democracy. If we are strong-hearted, we won’t be the last.
These words are like an arrrow straight to my heart! I always seem to have a never-ending question mark in my mind of “how can people ignore the children?” “Why is there no compassion toward our fellow man?”
Author Glennon Doyle has said there's "no such thing as other people's children." America First is a selfish, bigoted way of saying our children deserve more than the others who are starving or broken or different or distant. I call caring for them compassion; they call it woke. May we all wake up before it's too late.
Indeed. As a Canadian traveler for 3+ decades, I can vouch for what you say and I might add that the selfishness and bigoted attitudes is one of the main reasons that the US has made baby steps toward universal healthcare and all other government expenditures that provide services that support personal, social and emotional well-being. Until caring for your compatriots is firmly ingrained in the American psyche, I see no way out of this dilemma. Even with Biden’s inroads to rectify this pervasive attitude, trump is wiping it clean with a stroke of his famous pen.
Well said, Cam! Exactly what the happy-healthy-educated people of the Scandinavian countries are saying about us.
I couldn't have said it better!
John, I don't think you are as naive as you claim to be here. Jim Crow? Enslavement? Genocide? The history of the USA and its colonial predecessors is a history of cruelty, prejudice, and hatred directed at "other people's children." All in the name of Jesus, I might add. This current administration dominated by felons, predators, drunkards, and drug-addled psychopaths is simply returning to the "status quo ante"--the way it was before. Before what? Before people started feeling a tiny bit guilty about how they were treating the neighbors SOME of their pastors told them they really should "love". Since yesterday was the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I would suggest also before people were confronted with the level of evil and derangement humans are capable of. The BBC took a poll of the populace in the UK and discovered that more than 40% of those polled didn't know the significance of the word "Auschwitz." Humanity is really good at wearing blinders so that they can ignore what they don't want to see. When the institutions that are supposed to educate and advise promote those blinders, they can do anything they want.
I have doubts about those who think that the administrations interference in education is alright for their children, banning books, changing the curriculum to fit the MAGA mold, well just all of their changes that goes against true education, are helping their kids to be educated adults. So those who believe that the standard education was alright for their children are going to be cheated. I then wonder with the restrictions being put on how many teachers are just going to say I have better things to do other than play politics in the classroom.
I don’t know about the rest of the country, but in Michigan we have a teacher shortage right now. Teachers are leaving the profession and young people are talking to current teachers, and they don’t want to sign up for this profession. I spent a decade and a half very involved in my children’s schools. I saw more money, more resources, more benefits, being taken away from teachers. They’re expected to do so much with so little and then Covid hit along with the crazy parent wing, which had been slowly growing. Who would sign up for that? I have a sister who’s been teaching for 20 years and she said in the last five or six years she is appalled at the way parents treat teachers and principles, and the complete lack of respect shown. What is that teaching your children when they see you treating others with such disrespect? Not a very good lesson.
Yes, yes. The attack on education is part of the Republican plan and has been in progress for a few decades. They look at a service or product needed by most and do their best to privatize it so they can profit. They want to dumb down the country and have had some success. We need high quality public school teachers and the way to do this is to show them respect on all levels. Thank you for your comments. This is so important.
MO has a teacher shortage as well. I know of at least one sub who quit because it just wasn't worth it anymore. This is a deep red evangelical state, and there's a lot of resentment and suspicion of the well-educated. This is especially true outside of the cities.
Yes. I grew up with people who felt threatened by anyone with even a HS education.
Thank you for this posting, John. It speaks deeply to me. Didn't all this 'me-and-mine first and only' thinking start with Regan's now famous campaign question: Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago? I believe the question every Presidential candidate should be judged by is not are YOU (and yours) better off now than you were before, but rather, Is our country more compassionate and extending of opportunity to all? Do all of our children receive quality education regardless of the zip code they live in? Are immigrants and all human beings treated with the dignity and respect? Does our foreign policy promote democracy and human rights throughout the world? These questions are the ones that truly matter. We started down this path of selfishness with Regan. Let us now see that for what it was and finally turn the corner on selfish Me-First-ism for our selves and our country!
What used to be called hippy and flower child thinking is now called woke. The real words are compassion and empathy.
Reagan tapped into the ethos of what became the “me generation,” on the heels of Jimmy Carter’s (unwelcome) candor about the need to pull together in the service of energy conservation and human rights. Reagan was a big old dopy lovable cowboy, well meaning and simple—and he gave us what we wanted to hear. Social programs that cared for the poor and the marginalized were gutted.
The word AIDS was never spoken out loud. We nestled into our little “me-time.
I watched that unfold as a Social Worker in the 80s.
It still haunts me, but, in
my old age, I’m seeing the this nightmare as a challenge to remember the voices of Carter and others who knew that America can only be as great as the soul of her people. I’m grieving the loss of youthful idealism, but glad to be getting free of the exhausting outrage that has held me captive for so long.
Thank you John for expressing truths! Reading your books and articles calms my soul and offers me hope in a time of grief!!
I look for you, John, every day.
I love other people. But I am an immigrant. So... quite a lot of Americans dismiss what I have to say and tell me to go back where I came from.
Very sorry to hear that Maria. Actually, unless one is an indigenous person whose ancestors were the first to populate this continent 14,000 (approx) years ago, we are ALL immigrants. The white people who pretend to be "native" are in fact more or less the most recent--and the most predatory--of those immigrants.
I know what you say is true. Too many "Americans" are infected with false pride and an arrogance that knows no bounds.
I didn't know it till just recently that my parents did it the right way 67 years ago so anything different is CRIMINAL..
THEY'RE EATING THE DOGS 😠
We were taught that in our schools, sad to say.
Immigrants are the heart of this country.
We used to say, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Why can’t these hate filled people realize that they are harming themselves and their families by harming schools, healthcare, trade, etc.
I became embarrassed about singing "God Bless America" a long time ago and suggested we change it to "God Bless Humanity". Chances of that happening now are getting worse by the minute.
I was visualizing the two tables on which there are bowls full of food. Everyone at both tables is given a very very long spoon from which to eat.
The first table finds it impossible to feed themselves as the spoon handles are longer than their arms. They starve to death.
The second table has the diners using their spoons to feed their neighbor on the other side of the table. Everyone is fed.
I have been writing about climate change and the threats on all life for many years. I thought that appealing to adults about what this means for future generations would be a way to activate people to change. I’ve been fully disappointed that most choose to ignore this global threat and many - including the science illiterate orange man - even deny what the vast majority of scientists know and communicate. I’m not sure that all parents are wired to passionately care for their children.
Julie - it seems the ubwr-wealthy care more about their profits & assets than they do their own children, much less the children of others.
Most people only want change in so far as they are comfortable.
I think even a cursory look at human history will show that tribalism leads to tribal wars of aggression and individual acts of aggression. It's important to also note a rising tide of a wider sense of self, more inclusive, and more compassionate. IMO this is one of the signature achievement of the modern age and democratic norms. As something relatively new, it is fragile and we need each to take stock of our thoughts and feelings about brotherhood. Jesus seems to have been centuries ahead of his peers, recognizing Gentile as well as Jew as fully human and deserving of equal respect. He also recognized that there are reprobates among us (the Phairasees?) who need to be called out. Sometimes we learn by example what raises us up and what casts us down Selfishness is the latter.
When I was younger I used to wonder about the thing people called, "The great falling away". How could anyone leave Jesus who loves us so greatly? Then I ended up involved in a church conflict. We chose to try to work that out as God wanted us to, and I learned that some people will only follow God as long as it is comfortable. When it pushes them into a place where they might have to change their actions or thoughts, a place where perhaps they might have to admit flaws or errors, they simply refuse. As one lady said, "I realized I don't like to be wrong". And so she decided her ideas were the right ideas. We were forced to leave there after much damage to our family. I wouldn't do that again. I would just leave.
But then came this political S-storm. At first it was my father and a few friends who watched Fox and started spouting the racist clap-trap that somehow they had been convinced was truth. Somehow many were convinced Fox was the only source of truth. Then I watched as whole churches went down that road, believing that the only real issue was Abortion and abandoning all semblance of loving their neighbors. I watched as students, with whom I worked, started to see Christianity as only judgmental, closed-minded people who hate. I saw pastors leading the throng in mask protests and screaming in megaphones in the ears of children going to school, staging on campus protests. I watched those same leaders verbally attack a school nurse for teaching sex Ed, calling her a pedophile. I heard supposed Christian students spout conspiracy theories like the idea that the vaccine would put a chip in you that would separate you from God.
I've come to realize that those who are falling away sincerely believe they are the ones with the truth because the new version of Christianity is one that says what they want to hear. Abortion is out and hating immigrants is in and that is good because immigrants are breaking the law. And they justify their hate with phrases they pull from the Bible and they write books about people who disagree with them being non-human and therefore worthy of death. They have abandoned God and don't even know it. Because those around them have done the same they are certain they are righteous.
And it causes me to go before God and ask that I be aided by Him to stand true, have courage, and ask for His grace to keep my mind from straying into that seductive abyss. I want to be a genuine God seeker who loves all and allows God to work in other persons' hearts in his time, not demand conformity to my version of God or allegiance to a supposed "righteous" political party.
May God have mercy on us all because we all have to go through the hell that has been pressed upon us by the Nationalistic christian right who believe themselves so righteous they cannot fathom that they could possibly be wrong.
Thank you so much for writing this, Diana.
I'm glad Diana addressed this issue.
“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King
I always am a little impatient with stories about people who hate queer people until they discover someone in their family is queer. Then they all of a sudden discover their humanity. I think you only get half credit if you only come to this compassionate position because of someone that you thought you loved already
Or no credit if they toss you to the wolves
The most basic “mind-shift” needed right now is to realize that WE are not entitled to Democracy. I am done with operating from that naive premise. I WANT to live in a Democracy. So I must WORK to make that happen, to make that birth into existence. The New-Deal-American Era we grew up in is over. It has died from power-mongering, Planter-Class Supremacists out maneuverings engaged voters who felt entitled to democracy, and a whole bunch of eligible voters who lost their faith in America a long time ago, and were content to watch porn and cat videos while the barricades are breached. We are left needing to craft in-real-time fighting responses to a firehose of shit. For many of us now, We either prove we are capable of crafting a democracy to wrench away from the grip of the oligarchs, or we die trying. We are not the first group of humans to need to fight like hell to preserve the Light of Democracy. If we are strong-hearted, we won’t be the last.
These words are like an arrrow straight to my heart! I always seem to have a never-ending question mark in my mind of “how can people ignore the children?” “Why is there no compassion toward our fellow man?”