When the Dems get full control again, hopefully next January, the very first thing they should do is fix the SCOTUS by impeaching Thomas and Alito. Then after expanding the court to its prescribed 13 members, they should work on getting Kavanaugh and Barrett removed for lying in their confirmation hearings.
See article: never any "prescription" for 13 justices. Most ever allowed 10. Congress has full, constitutional ability to change that number and it has, several times.
That said, I am totally in favor of seeing 1) Alito and Thomas impeached for supporting the overthrow of the republic, and 2) increasing the number of justices to at least 11.
I was under the impression that there was supposed to be one Supreme Court judge for every Federal court district and we currently have 13. I’d also be happy with 11 though— as long as we can remove the scumbags.
A few months ago I read an online post, possibly on the Slate website, that offered some constructive proposals along these lines. Among them were to increase, as suggested above, the number of justices to 13, to match the number of District courts. Another was to establish a required retirement age for a justice (as opposed to a term limit), possibly 80 years of age. The latter proposal would be sweetened by establishing an emeritus/a status for retired justices, in which they would be allowed to present opinions to their former colleagues but not take an active part in the arguments or voting. These made sense to me. I'd be interested to hear other ideas.
Look at Sen Whitehouse SCERT bill S359 - includes mandatory code of ethics, recusal, procedures so that those who file amicus brief must disclose any gifts, income or reimbursement to justices. It does not include increase of # of justices but I remember seeing a proposal to require limit of 18 yrs of ‘active’ status then placement in emerita status that could be rotated back to fill in for recusal in particular cases.
I was very interested in this because Alito & Thomas would automatically
Thank you. I was not aware of this really good bill. The rotating back tweak is an improvement over what I had been thinking. I still think we need to increase the number of justices, but this would be a vast improvement over the present situation. Sen Whitehouse (from my native state of RI) is one of the good guys.
Sen Whitehouse’ presentations on ‘The Scheme’ of the Fed Soc project of takeover of the court & its corporate/RW skewed decions is very revealing. Can be found on Youtube
… be inactivated! I think there was s framework to have every president get 2 appointments per term also to fix that McConnell ploy of holding off Garland’s nom hearings.
Public Law 94-344 is the Federal Flag Code and contains rules for handling and displaying the flag. Turning the flag upside down, reversing the union is considered disrespectful and in some states can be considered illegal. The Veterans Administration adheres to this code, the one Samuel Alito defied to desecrate the flag.
Alito and Thomas have not only desecrated our flag, they and the rest of the religious and fascist jurists, have been desecrating our Constitution since 2000.
Sadly, we experiencing a nation in disrepair, as our republic dies a death by a thousand judicial cuts…:)
Ito and the court and what it has become is one of our America’s greatest illnesses. The danger the court poses to our children’s future, freedom and choice is serious and must be confronted at every level. It’s is a disgrace and I am still flabbergasted that this continues. The normalization of all this sickness and hate will be our downfall. To see the flag upside down like that for Jan 6 traitors truly pisses me off. I don’t have more eloquent words to describe it…
I flew my flag upside down the last year of the insipid bastard's time in office and returned it to its proper position after Biden was elected. I truly did believe that we were in a state of distress. I have flown my flag every day for over 50 years, I left my blood in a foreign land in its honor and nobody can make me take it down. We all make mistakes Steve, I have a litany of them way too long to post here, it's all about we address them after we acknowledge that we have made them. You may have been partially responsible for Alito, but you were not by any means alone, and what really matters is who you are today. I'm proud to stand beside you in the trenches, we will defeat this vermin, or die trying, I prefer the former.
The flag is flown from our front porch every day. At one point I was afraid people would think we were Republicans because of it and almost took it down. They cannot steal our flag from us.
Same. Except for my wonderful neighbors. Who have a bigass truck with an American flag flapping AND a huge Biden/Harris flag flapping right next to it.
Same here except it BA dodges with trump, blue lives and other corrupted american flag styles.. also golf carts unlicensed for the road but, hey, “ im a trump supporter, see my flags? “ law enforcement looks the other way as they too, are trumpsters..
Beth, during Trump's time, I told my husband that we needed to fly the flag every day. I could tell when Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones or Steve Bannon would tell people to raise the flag, because obediently the Fox viewer neighbors would raise the flag for a day. I told my husband we were not going to let MAGA take the flag away from us. We also, at the same time, had the banner about all people being equal flying. Confused the hell out of people.
I feel the same way. I don’t display the flag everyday but I do on important days of remembrance and celebration. I have neighbors who never kept their flags up continually as they do now and they are Trumpeteers. I don’t want to be confused with any of them but I WILL NOT let them claim our sacred flag and what it truly represents as their own. What they are doing is truly disgraceful and shameful.
I cannot understand how he blamed his WIFE. The whole point of the reversal of Roe vs Wade that he authored is that men have control over women, husbands over wives so how is it that Martha ran up the flag without HIS permission? Do as I say not as I do? This is troubling on so many levels. As an aside, an older article on the internet shows his son Philip Alito as working for the Republicans on Capital Hill. One muses...and Judge Merchan's daughter is accused of working with...Democrats?
It’s because he is a feckless asshole. And he knows his wife is all in for the corruption and the grifting and the lies, she won’t object to being blamed and thrown under the bus.
I just feel quite hopeless about our future. Thinking of how many seemingly thinking and intelligent people support the nationalistic, racist, misogynistic, White Christian, anti democratic ideas that are presently in the ascendancy all over the so-called Western world worries me to the point of distraction. I fear that we cannot at this point defeat this stupidity and selfishness such that it seems inevitable that we will land up with a second Trump presidency. And the worst part of this is that it may be decades before we are able to return to some normalcy with the election of a rational, democratic president again.
It is a sad state of affairs, and very discouraging. What is worse are the masses of our fellow citizens who do not pay attention. They are too busy. They are tired. They just don't care. They have no interest in current affairs and no knowledge of how the government is supposed to work. Blame it on the demise of high school civics, or poor teaching of history, but the apathy is what will kill us as a democracy. Add to the mix the demise of the MSM, specifically local newspapers that at least carried a headline of what is going on nationally. Now far to many Americans get their news from Fox, Facebook, X, etc. Taking as gospel what they read and not bothering to use the tools right at their disposal to check on what they read.
Ignorance is curable by education, stupidity is terminal.
As I read other more optimistic framing of the recent times that we have and are living, I observe a stark disconnect to what is actually happening. The more of what I read in The Warning essays seems to become a factual harbinger of what is going to happen. It feels fitting to share my recent remarks to Today’s Edition Newsletter here.
Quote from the newsletter:
“We will win. It is only a matter of time.”
Me:
I would argue, only if we were on a level playing field with our adversary, which we are not. This newsletter as all optimistic leaning others do, is pitching strategies based on a rules based society that our adversaries do not subscribe to. Hence the lack of a level playing field.
I’ve been hearing your newsletter for a long while. I’ve wanted to comment yet had not become a paid subscriber, until now.
Since January 6th 2021 I have observed a feckless and timid effort to properly stop and crush the existential threat facing the country. While there is much good writing being proffered about this moment, replete with solid advice on ways to make a difference in a normal time, which this is by far not, our adversaries are moving ahead unabated.
We are facing a Fascist takeover of our way of life, an overwhelming show at the polls is insufficient to combat this. This movement, will not go away. All of the efforts being taken by these extremist fanatical actors are not being met with anywhere near the pushback that is required. We must deliver a significant message with decisive unmistakable action, that this will not be tolerated.
A Substack colleague of ours has often said, “You can’t love your country if you hate half the people in it.” I believe that, I don’t hate half the people in the country. But I have a great animosity for those who are gaslighting many of our fellow citizens and enabling the effort to overthrow the country.
We are at war with a fascist domestic threat and by all accounts, with everything going on, exampled by the items in this newsletter we are not deploying the actions necessary to stop it. Due to the shear lack of proper leadership to address this moment, we are loosing big!
P. S. “On Tyranny” by Timothy Snyder. All of the right people have not been reading it.
It's fitting, in a perverse sort of way. The flag flown upside down, is a symbol of distress. The nation is in distress, in no small part, thanks to Samuel Alito.
Steve, Thank you for speaking so clearly and honestly, very appreciated! Those of us who want to be surrounded by people with integrity and responsibility for their own actions have respect for you every day, even if I don’t always agree with your viewpoint. Any disagreement I have had with you is small in comparison to how grateful I am for your efforts to save our democracy.
This is excellent and needs to be said. Thank you for putting this out. Samuel Alito is the result of the decades long push by the rich and Christian Nationalists WITH the GOP, especially MicConnell, to steal the United States from their citizens. The Powell Memo, and Powell's ascension to the Supreme Court, further entrenched fascist authoritarian policies. The anchoring of our federal government into a minority rule country may well be our undoing. It is critical that whatever media we have left to foster democracy get past this damn Trump trial and the minutiae of insignificant details and start informing the country of the take-over by the plutocratic class's bond with the Christian Nationalists. They are in our Congress, 157 strong, they're on our Supreme Court, they're EVERYWHERE in our governments across the country. Two documentaries are out on it, Bad Faith and God and Country but this needs to be in the NEWS, on television and newspapers everywhere. Otherwise, this country may well go the way of the UK, led blindly by propaganda into Brexit by corrupt leaders who made money corrupting the country. The British deeply regret Brexit. They were totally screwed and they know it now with great regret. Wake up.
Chief Justice Robert’s needs to do something about Alito and Thomas. Can we the people of this country do something like a petition to get them off the court?
Lifetime appointments are bullshit and we all know it.
These fools want to let the idiots run the asylum!
The legacy of the Roberts court is already irretrievably stained by Bush vs. Gore and Citizens United. We still talk about the shameful legacies of the Taney (Dred Scott) and Fuller (Plessy vs. Ferguson) courts. The Roberts court is now in that dismal category. The Dobbs case just sealed it.
Were Alito and Thomas capable of shame, they would have already retired. I'm not yet in favor of impeachment for these creatures. I do think we should increase the size of the court to 13 and place them into a semi-permanent (nothing lasts forever) minority.
Maybe this has something to do with the yacht trips, fishing trips, college educations, etc. that wealthy donors give to members of SCOTUS? How arrogant and rotten these people are. Seeing that flag upside down in front of the Alito residence was shocking and sickening. Thank you Steve for hammering down on this. Our only course right now is to fight hard for our Democracy -Freedom.
You hit on a lot of good points. People are too busy and too tired from just treading water in an economy that wants to let them sink if they stop. So they want to be entertained, rather than spend time on things that don’t provide short term gratification.
As you note, poor education is the problem. However, we are obtaining the results we mistakenly strive for. We reward teachers and students based on the results of standardized testing. So rather than teach subjects like history or civics and the methods necessary to evaluate materials learned, that is, how to gain knowledge, our system emphasizes the accumulation of facts that can be reproduced as test answers.
The lack of critical thinking skills leaves people unable to find worthwhile information in the gushing sewer that our media environment has become. This makes creatures like Trump possible.
If you weren't able to become a former educator by retirement, I hope you found something to do that was worthy of your abilities and interests. I got lucky, stumbling into a great career while still in graduate school, that is, before I became an educator.
Samuel: you’ve got lifetime tenure at the highest court in the land. You have achieved the pinnacle of law in the greatest nation on earth. Is it too much to ask that you avoid the appearance of bias? Why can’t you (and your wife) wake up every morning and think: we have only on thing to do today, and that is to not appear biased. Is that asking too much? And finally: your neighbor? Really? You’re that petty?
When the Dems get full control again, hopefully next January, the very first thing they should do is fix the SCOTUS by impeaching Thomas and Alito. Then after expanding the court to its prescribed 13 members, they should work on getting Kavanaugh and Barrett removed for lying in their confirmation hearings.
Tough list. Good luck. Vote Blue Only.
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/why-does-the-supreme-court-have-nine-justices
See article: never any "prescription" for 13 justices. Most ever allowed 10. Congress has full, constitutional ability to change that number and it has, several times.
That said, I am totally in favor of seeing 1) Alito and Thomas impeached for supporting the overthrow of the republic, and 2) increasing the number of justices to at least 11.
I was under the impression that there was supposed to be one Supreme Court judge for every Federal court district and we currently have 13. I’d also be happy with 11 though— as long as we can remove the scumbags.
A few months ago I read an online post, possibly on the Slate website, that offered some constructive proposals along these lines. Among them were to increase, as suggested above, the number of justices to 13, to match the number of District courts. Another was to establish a required retirement age for a justice (as opposed to a term limit), possibly 80 years of age. The latter proposal would be sweetened by establishing an emeritus/a status for retired justices, in which they would be allowed to present opinions to their former colleagues but not take an active part in the arguments or voting. These made sense to me. I'd be interested to hear other ideas.
Look at Sen Whitehouse SCERT bill S359 - includes mandatory code of ethics, recusal, procedures so that those who file amicus brief must disclose any gifts, income or reimbursement to justices. It does not include increase of # of justices but I remember seeing a proposal to require limit of 18 yrs of ‘active’ status then placement in emerita status that could be rotated back to fill in for recusal in particular cases.
I was very interested in this because Alito & Thomas would automatically
Thank you. I was not aware of this really good bill. The rotating back tweak is an improvement over what I had been thinking. I still think we need to increase the number of justices, but this would be a vast improvement over the present situation. Sen Whitehouse (from my native state of RI) is one of the good guys.
Sen Whitehouse’ presentations on ‘The Scheme’ of the Fed Soc project of takeover of the court & its corporate/RW skewed decions is very revealing. Can be found on Youtube
Thank you. I'll check them out.
… be inactivated! I think there was s framework to have every president get 2 appointments per term also to fix that McConnell ploy of holding off Garland’s nom hearings.
I DO NOT want to hear from Alito.
His opinions could be useful as a guide. Whatever he recommends, the opposite would be the best answer. Just as long as he no longer has a vote.
What about 13, one for each district?
Agreed. I just posted too. One correction to your post though. It's spelled SCROTUS
Lol 😆 the ‘R’ is for racist?
SCOTUS has no SCROTUS.
The acronym stands for the Supreme Court Racists of the United States
We know. it's sarcasm...SCROTUS for scrotum.
😂😂 True!!
We will need 2/3s to impeach. It’s daunting but also possible.
Public Law 94-344 is the Federal Flag Code and contains rules for handling and displaying the flag. Turning the flag upside down, reversing the union is considered disrespectful and in some states can be considered illegal. The Veterans Administration adheres to this code, the one Samuel Alito defied to desecrate the flag.
Alito and Thomas have not only desecrated our flag, they and the rest of the religious and fascist jurists, have been desecrating our Constitution since 2000.
Sadly, we experiencing a nation in disrepair, as our republic dies a death by a thousand judicial cuts…:)
Judge Thomas has to go! ASAP!
First impeachment question to kavanaugh and barrett: settled law is settled law
Correct?
If only
Ito and the court and what it has become is one of our America’s greatest illnesses. The danger the court poses to our children’s future, freedom and choice is serious and must be confronted at every level. It’s is a disgrace and I am still flabbergasted that this continues. The normalization of all this sickness and hate will be our downfall. To see the flag upside down like that for Jan 6 traitors truly pisses me off. I don’t have more eloquent words to describe it…
I flew my flag upside down the last year of the insipid bastard's time in office and returned it to its proper position after Biden was elected. I truly did believe that we were in a state of distress. I have flown my flag every day for over 50 years, I left my blood in a foreign land in its honor and nobody can make me take it down. We all make mistakes Steve, I have a litany of them way too long to post here, it's all about we address them after we acknowledge that we have made them. You may have been partially responsible for Alito, but you were not by any means alone, and what really matters is who you are today. I'm proud to stand beside you in the trenches, we will defeat this vermin, or die trying, I prefer the former.
Thank you for your service. I agree with you.
Well said, sir!
We dont lay down in front of tanks either…we will have to be more clever than that
I'm with you.👍💪
The flag is flown from our front porch every day. At one point I was afraid people would think we were Republicans because of it and almost took it down. They cannot steal our flag from us.
Yes here where i live the flag has become the symbol of trump supporters..misplaced, misguided patriots
Same. Except for my wonderful neighbors. Who have a bigass truck with an American flag flapping AND a huge Biden/Harris flag flapping right next to it.
Same here except it BA dodges with trump, blue lives and other corrupted american flag styles.. also golf carts unlicensed for the road but, hey, “ im a trump supporter, see my flags? “ law enforcement looks the other way as they too, are trumpsters..
Beth, during Trump's time, I told my husband that we needed to fly the flag every day. I could tell when Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones or Steve Bannon would tell people to raise the flag, because obediently the Fox viewer neighbors would raise the flag for a day. I told my husband we were not going to let MAGA take the flag away from us. We also, at the same time, had the banner about all people being equal flying. Confused the hell out of people.
I feel the same way. I don’t display the flag everyday but I do on important days of remembrance and celebration. I have neighbors who never kept their flags up continually as they do now and they are Trumpeteers. I don’t want to be confused with any of them but I WILL NOT let them claim our sacred flag and what it truly represents as their own. What they are doing is truly disgraceful and shameful.
I cannot understand how he blamed his WIFE. The whole point of the reversal of Roe vs Wade that he authored is that men have control over women, husbands over wives so how is it that Martha ran up the flag without HIS permission? Do as I say not as I do? This is troubling on so many levels. As an aside, an older article on the internet shows his son Philip Alito as working for the Republicans on Capital Hill. One muses...and Judge Merchan's daughter is accused of working with...Democrats?
It’s because he is a feckless asshole. And he knows his wife is all in for the corruption and the grifting and the lies, she won’t object to being blamed and thrown under the bus.
I just feel quite hopeless about our future. Thinking of how many seemingly thinking and intelligent people support the nationalistic, racist, misogynistic, White Christian, anti democratic ideas that are presently in the ascendancy all over the so-called Western world worries me to the point of distraction. I fear that we cannot at this point defeat this stupidity and selfishness such that it seems inevitable that we will land up with a second Trump presidency. And the worst part of this is that it may be decades before we are able to return to some normalcy with the election of a rational, democratic president again.
It is a sad state of affairs, and very discouraging. What is worse are the masses of our fellow citizens who do not pay attention. They are too busy. They are tired. They just don't care. They have no interest in current affairs and no knowledge of how the government is supposed to work. Blame it on the demise of high school civics, or poor teaching of history, but the apathy is what will kill us as a democracy. Add to the mix the demise of the MSM, specifically local newspapers that at least carried a headline of what is going on nationally. Now far to many Americans get their news from Fox, Facebook, X, etc. Taking as gospel what they read and not bothering to use the tools right at their disposal to check on what they read.
Ignorance is curable by education, stupidity is terminal.
As I read other more optimistic framing of the recent times that we have and are living, I observe a stark disconnect to what is actually happening. The more of what I read in The Warning essays seems to become a factual harbinger of what is going to happen. It feels fitting to share my recent remarks to Today’s Edition Newsletter here.
Quote from the newsletter:
“We will win. It is only a matter of time.”
Me:
I would argue, only if we were on a level playing field with our adversary, which we are not. This newsletter as all optimistic leaning others do, is pitching strategies based on a rules based society that our adversaries do not subscribe to. Hence the lack of a level playing field.
I’ve been hearing your newsletter for a long while. I’ve wanted to comment yet had not become a paid subscriber, until now.
Since January 6th 2021 I have observed a feckless and timid effort to properly stop and crush the existential threat facing the country. While there is much good writing being proffered about this moment, replete with solid advice on ways to make a difference in a normal time, which this is by far not, our adversaries are moving ahead unabated.
We are facing a Fascist takeover of our way of life, an overwhelming show at the polls is insufficient to combat this. This movement, will not go away. All of the efforts being taken by these extremist fanatical actors are not being met with anywhere near the pushback that is required. We must deliver a significant message with decisive unmistakable action, that this will not be tolerated.
A Substack colleague of ours has often said, “You can’t love your country if you hate half the people in it.” I believe that, I don’t hate half the people in the country. But I have a great animosity for those who are gaslighting many of our fellow citizens and enabling the effort to overthrow the country.
We are at war with a fascist domestic threat and by all accounts, with everything going on, exampled by the items in this newsletter we are not deploying the actions necessary to stop it. Due to the shear lack of proper leadership to address this moment, we are loosing big!
P. S. “On Tyranny” by Timothy Snyder. All of the right people have not been reading it.
Shoulder to shoulder - I will stand with you and every true American - AGAINST the fascist tide.
It's fitting, in a perverse sort of way. The flag flown upside down, is a symbol of distress. The nation is in distress, in no small part, thanks to Samuel Alito.
It’s all so painful that a SCJ would do such a thing, it’s all so painful, that truth is lying deaf on the minority who revere trump;
It is so painful that trump can bring this republic to knees;
It is even more painful if you are female, black, brown, gay, etc.; what will come of our difference’s without democracy?
I can’t imagine our lives without the American flag!
Steve, Thank you for speaking so clearly and honestly, very appreciated! Those of us who want to be surrounded by people with integrity and responsibility for their own actions have respect for you every day, even if I don’t always agree with your viewpoint. Any disagreement I have had with you is small in comparison to how grateful I am for your efforts to save our democracy.
This is excellent and needs to be said. Thank you for putting this out. Samuel Alito is the result of the decades long push by the rich and Christian Nationalists WITH the GOP, especially MicConnell, to steal the United States from their citizens. The Powell Memo, and Powell's ascension to the Supreme Court, further entrenched fascist authoritarian policies. The anchoring of our federal government into a minority rule country may well be our undoing. It is critical that whatever media we have left to foster democracy get past this damn Trump trial and the minutiae of insignificant details and start informing the country of the take-over by the plutocratic class's bond with the Christian Nationalists. They are in our Congress, 157 strong, they're on our Supreme Court, they're EVERYWHERE in our governments across the country. Two documentaries are out on it, Bad Faith and God and Country but this needs to be in the NEWS, on television and newspapers everywhere. Otherwise, this country may well go the way of the UK, led blindly by propaganda into Brexit by corrupt leaders who made money corrupting the country. The British deeply regret Brexit. They were totally screwed and they know it now with great regret. Wake up.
Who Will Mend Me?
Once I was old and glorious.
Once my children held tightly together,
little stars all shiny and proud.
Each different, each honored to belong
to a greatness history had never seen.
And there was a time they were torn.
Miraculously, they held together through an unbearable time,
a horrifying shedding of brotherly blood.
A death-to-the-end fight for equality,
a noble fight, my children fought.
I have been bravely carried and planted
in places on this earth man had never seen.
I have been to the moon!
I have been dug from the rubble,
and resurrected like a phoenix,
to inspire courage and strength to go on.
I have witnessed moments and have been proud.
I have witnessed moments and have been ashamed.
Once I was sacred.
Desecrating me for political gain would have been a thing
only an enemy would dare do.
Today, cowards falsely embrace me with sham patriotism,
and unbridled hypocrisy.
They drape themselves with me.
Bent on abolishing their freedoms, they rip my children apart.
Now I am tired, faded, and need of repair.
Who will mend me?
Who will see my agony, and take a kind loving hand to me?
I have been steadfast, I have never wavered,
I have been here for you all.
I have led you through battles with your bodies,
through battles for your souls.
And now you desert me, you use me to destroy your neighbors.
What will become of me? What is this fear I have yet to ever feel?
Will the evil in man's heart, will his insatiable worship
of power, of money, be my demise?
To fly again, new and whole, to fly with my children united,
my threads mended, my colors brilliant, to be strong and proud again.
This is my hope, this is my dream.
Who will mercifully mend me? I ask.
Lorraine Parish
published by The Vineyard Gazette
07/04/2018
Lorraine, this is truly stunning -a gift - and brings a much needed perspective right now.
Thank you. I send it out to my mailing list every July 4th. Unfortunately it
Still. holds true more every year it seems.
Beautiful! We need to take back our flag from these barbarians. 💪💪
Have to is right Charlie.
Thank you Lorraine
Chief Justice Robert’s needs to do something about Alito and Thomas. Can we the people of this country do something like a petition to get them off the court?
Lifetime appointments are bullshit and we all know it.
These fools want to let the idiots run the asylum!
The legacy of the Roberts court is already irretrievably stained by Bush vs. Gore and Citizens United. We still talk about the shameful legacies of the Taney (Dred Scott) and Fuller (Plessy vs. Ferguson) courts. The Roberts court is now in that dismal category. The Dobbs case just sealed it.
Were Alito and Thomas capable of shame, they would have already retired. I'm not yet in favor of impeachment for these creatures. I do think we should increase the size of the court to 13 and place them into a semi-permanent (nothing lasts forever) minority.
I am with you!
Maybe this has something to do with the yacht trips, fishing trips, college educations, etc. that wealthy donors give to members of SCOTUS? How arrogant and rotten these people are. Seeing that flag upside down in front of the Alito residence was shocking and sickening. Thank you Steve for hammering down on this. Our only course right now is to fight hard for our Democracy -Freedom.
You hit on a lot of good points. People are too busy and too tired from just treading water in an economy that wants to let them sink if they stop. So they want to be entertained, rather than spend time on things that don’t provide short term gratification.
As you note, poor education is the problem. However, we are obtaining the results we mistakenly strive for. We reward teachers and students based on the results of standardized testing. So rather than teach subjects like history or civics and the methods necessary to evaluate materials learned, that is, how to gain knowledge, our system emphasizes the accumulation of facts that can be reproduced as test answers.
The lack of critical thinking skills leaves people unable to find worthwhile information in the gushing sewer that our media environment has become. This makes creatures like Trump possible.
Right On, James! Let's keep speaking out about the importance of quality education!
That's why this former educator IS a former educator. I saw this coming in the 80s. Teaching to standardized tests is not education.
If you weren't able to become a former educator by retirement, I hope you found something to do that was worthy of your abilities and interests. I got lucky, stumbling into a great career while still in graduate school, that is, before I became an educator.
I'm part owner of a landscaping company. But I'm still an amateur historian.
Samuel: you’ve got lifetime tenure at the highest court in the land. You have achieved the pinnacle of law in the greatest nation on earth. Is it too much to ask that you avoid the appearance of bias? Why can’t you (and your wife) wake up every morning and think: we have only on thing to do today, and that is to not appear biased. Is that asking too much? And finally: your neighbor? Really? You’re that petty?
The answer to your question is “Yes.”