David, while you make a valid point in your first paragraph, I cannot agree with what you say in the second paragraph, that "the public feels things are business as usual to a large degree". So much of the public is sickened by the present "administration" that is administering to nothing but its own wants and needs. No, this is not business as usual and it's quite sickening to read Ruth's essay.
Dang - I love Margaret Atwood and hate she’s been clairvoyant on all this! What a war on women looks like with the absolutely heinous addition of targeting minorities - Anti-DEI hooks up with Anti-Female to create the truth - the War on Women’s rights and autonomy!
In 2009 I was declared 100% disabled by the Supreme Court of Georgia, USA. My quest was against CIGNA who denied me what hey owed. I think, at the time it was the largest judgement against CIGNA for my problem. At the time, I was Snr. Partner for High Tech Industry clients, globally for a major Strategic Consulting company. I found out my own partners (I was the 2. largest shareholder of a $1.6 Billion Enterprise and what one calls a "Rain Maker"). My Memory took a 40% knock, but the rest of my ability to thrive in my environment remained strong. Which I showed by founding my charity "Childrens Artwalk" which taught 100's of inner city kids across the US how to succeed through painting in Oil, which I financed through my second career : Oil Painting Landscapes.
I am reminded constantly today in THIS AMERICA of Hitler's Aktion "T4" which called for the mass murder by involuntary euthanasia which targeted people with disabilities in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-war trials against doctors who had been involved in the killings.[4] The name T4 is an abbreviation of Tiergartenstraße 4, a street address of the Chancellery department in Berlin set up in early 1940, in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, which recruited and paid personnel associated with Aktion T4. This while my mother had joined the Gestapo in Lodz, Poland next to the Chelmo Kill camp, where my Grandfather was the XO and murdered 250000 "Vermin" as Trump calls them along with 300 innocent children.
Is that fucked up or what? Breathe deep. There is inherently right and wrong, evil and good. Believe that. Those that commit inherently wrong will answer for it now (for sure) but also in the hereafter, so sorry Mum, but I can't atone for you. Some call it Karma, and she is supposed to be a bitch.
I say all this to hopefully give you some context of the real situation. The Melonis, Orbans, Erdogans, Putins, and yes Trumps (et al) would happily feed me into the ovens, because I can no longer contribute to the white hegemony. The MAGAs, like my daughter would do so in amoment, because I stand in the way of their "Rapture". Believe it and fight it, to the death. We will win
Yours is a stunning story, Bruce. Yes, it's well known that people with disabilities were targeted in Nazi, Germany. Others who were of Jewish heritage were just hated because of who they were. My father-in-law, who I never knew, lost 22 first cousins during the Holocaust. Unspeakable horrors. We can see the injustices coming full circle.
At age 67 I finally hired a German Holocaust investigator. During that time I also communicated with Professor Christopher Browning "ordinary men". He helped me to understand my Mother a bit better. We were going to write a book, but I can't. It is all just too horrible to rehash, although we owe it, in some way.
I appreciate what you are saying. It is like many of the people who experienced the horrors first hand but are silent when their families ask about what they experienced. It is too painful for them to recount the horrors. We have lived in Skokie, Illinois for the past 47 years. It was the home to many Holocaust survivors and now their children and grandchildren, but it is also a very diverse community, which I appreciate. We have seen the Holocaust memorial statue in front of our library defaced constantly over the years. The year we moved to Skokie, Neo-Nazis wanted to march and the court agreed it was their First Amendment right, but in the end, they did not march in Skokie trying to intimidate Holocaust survivors, they went to Chicago. We have the Illinois Holocaust Museum close by, funded by our governor, J.B. Pritzker ,before he became governor, and they have ongoing programs to educate the public. I am sorry for what you have experienced in your life and I wish you peace.
My immediate family did not experience the horrors, because they got out of Hungary in 1913. But it was still not okay to be Jewish in America, based on my father's experience growing up. My parents did not think it was important to tell their kids about their Jewish heritage until my sister experienced bigotry at the hands of her boyfriend's parents. Joanna, I'm glad you live in a very diverse community. That is good. My community is not diverse, because 85% of the population is Hispanic (I'm in El Paso, TX). It is the only place I've lived where what you look like does not generally result in discrimination. I have never experienced any, and a Black nurse I talked to several years ago had never experienced it, either. Unfortunately there is a part of our population that is bigoted, though I think you would find that anywhere.
I need to add that my father's family did lose 38 members to the concentration camps.
I’m glad your family was able to leave Germany but I do the know discrimination at that time. My father-in-law was fired after taking off on Yom Kippur. He changed his last name, although I’m not sure if that was before or after the firing. Devastating that your father’s family lost 38 members in the concentration camps. I’m glad you are in a community where you feel comfortable. So important to your mental health and emotional well-being. I do fear the current anti-Semitic atmosphere in the country.
Thank you, Joanna. I need to let you know that my father's family was in Hungary. And they did change their name from something obviously Jewish to something obviously Hungarian. You've brought back the memory of when I heard a knock on my apartment door, just after I graduated college, and a man who had been reading names on mailboxes wanted to know if my family had just come over from Hungary. When I said no, he said, "Most people with such an obviously Hungarian name, change it." I do also fear the current anti-Semitic atmosphere here. I've always wondered how the Jews became scapegoats for everything and everyone, and the only thing I can figure is that because the Old Testament describes them as God's chosen people, that people have been eternally offended by that.
Oh no, I did not write this for you to feel sorry for me. Be angry and upset for those that are now being oppressed, and fight it, no matter how young you are. Use it to fuel your resistance.
It isn’t a matter of feeling sorry for you as much as feeling regret for anyone who has had to suffer any kind of discrimination or being, “the other”. I actually have a few years on you but very young in spirit. I’ve been to several demonstrations this spring and will continue once I’m back home. One thing I have noticed in listening to both Ruth and Timothy Snyder. They remain calm in the face of everything presently going on. I can no longer afford to be angry because it is detrimental to my health at this point and the felon rapist continues to do the outrageous, which can make one’s blood boil. So I’m hoping my cooler head will prevail.
These people are pure evil. Soon they'll be making arguments to euthanize the developmentally disabled. The living memory of the Holocaust is nearly gone, and these 21st Century fascists are using this. We can't let these monsters succeed.
Very enlightening and thank you for the historical accounts and data on the United States and our racist eugenics cruelty. We as a people have never fully faced this ugly past, I fear if we never do, we will suffer the consequences which are happening now.
I agree with you Janet, but it concerns me that while many Americans are willing to face this country's ugly past, there are so many others, like in this current "administration" that wants to whitewash everything, including destroying our own history by eliminating it digitally or by other means.
The "problem" with facing our real history is that it is difficult to read about (it's never taught in schools that I know of), and too much of our population has no interest in doing, or dealing with, anything that difficult. Too many want the easy way out.
Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat: But for an insistent wife and Daughter, I would leave this Country . . . for . . . where?! . . . I used to think the Rheinpfalz . . . But the Pfalz, even my little second-home, the Pfalz voted 20% AfD!
So where?
Portugal?
Spain?
Quebec?
Ottawa?
If JD Vance would look at me, he would see a 77-year-old White, Catholic with one beautiful wife (54 years together, 52 married -- the LOVE of my life) with two daughters and six grandkids, fulfilling the mythical command to "Adam" and "Eve" -- "Go forth and multiply!"
But my look at JD Vance does not return the favor.
Afraid of an aging population, Mr. Vance? BRING IN THE IMMIGRANTS IN DROVES.
Bring in immigrants from Asia.
Bring them in from Africa.
Bring them in from Meso- and South America!
Bring in the young children.
Bring in their loving mothers.
Bring in their protective fathers.
Bring in immigrants from everywhere.
"Replacement"?!?!
What does that even MEAN?
Oh, replace "white" people?
Franz Boas EXPLODED the theory of race in the 1930s.
The destruction of the Third Reich should have EXPLODED aryanism forever.
The victory of the Civil Rights Movement should have DONE IN any theory of aryanism.
The First-Nation Rights victories should stand robustly against the attempted genocide of these beautiful peoples during our first centuries!
All Peoples are One.
The only "replacement" is that in the Natural Order.
The old LOVINGLY care for their youth and for descendants to the second, third, fourth generation.
We LOVE "replacement" in the Natural Order.
Multiple languages!
What a wealth of beauty in multiple cultures.
I only speak two languages. Two, cousin, Germanic languages: English and German.
But even these cousin languages bring a diversity of culture, each heavily enriching the other.
I have experienced bilingual Mass and even Mass entirely in Spanish, and I love the joy, the reverence, the deep spirituality of the Mexican that I experienced in the "Virgen de Guadelupe" Parish church in Puerta Vallarta in Mexico.
Other languages are worthy of learning and preserving, because each language preserves a vital part of the culture of our common humanity.
We are ENRICHED by each other. The insights I get from Black writers: Just to name three -- James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Jesmyn Ward. (I have read several or many more.) These beautiful persons gave me insights I could get nowhere else, and they are lovable, and write some of the best, most deeply insightful of books that this bibliophile and multi-cultural man has ever read.
I want to be replaced, because I am old -- 77.
I WELCOME replacement through Latinos, Blacks, Asians, First-Nation, Africans, Muslims from the Middle East -- each person is beautiful, and I welcome replacement by them, because the gods won't give me many more days or years on this earth, and the more variety in culture (there is only ONE race -- the HUMAN race) the BETTER.
Replace you? I don't think so. But I am all for adding all the people you mention. The vast majority of my city is Hispanic, and they make it a better place. I get much better medical care here than I did when I lived in Richmond VA. You remind me of the physical anthropology class I took in the 1960s, called The Concept of Race. The thing I will never forget is the picture that if you line up everybody in the world, according to their dominant characteristics, you will get a line with peaks where those characteristics are most concentrated, and valleys between, with all people on the hills and valleys having a contiguous set of characteristics. In other words, as you have said, there is only one race, the human race.
Susan Stone: Thank you as a friend, whose common core values are clear by your Substack motto:
I am one who is very upset by the hate that has taken hold in our country. I have learned that when you ignore things like religion and culture and get to know people, that we are all the same.
Ruth, I had not previously thought about the large Italian families into which my mother was born. While my mom was born in New York, her mother was a native from Elena, before it became part of Gaeta in Lazio, Italy. I had not considered what Mussolini was pushing, for Italians to have large families to grow the Italian population. I learned in a subsequent program on PBS that there was such poverty in southern Italy, the women sometimes scraped paint from the walls and mixed it with flour to feed their families. Italians, like the Irish, were the "other" when they came to America. No matter how hard they worked, no matter that they built bridges and tunnels and so much of the infrastructure in New York and elsewhere. I was just in Italy and there is no question the population is older. The young cousins, 15 of whom were in one area south of Naples, close to the ages of my daughters, had to leave Italy in order to find work. And wherever they landed, is where they started to have their families. Some of them are economists, all well-educated, no matter. The Italian government has not made it possible for them to stay because of the lack of work and the fact that northern Italy is far better funded than the south, which is still looked down upon. I was with my family in Puglia at the time Meloni was with Trump in the White House and the Italians made fun of both of them. Everywhere we went, it was thumbs down for Trump, as has been the case here in Germany. People are utterly flabbergasted at Trump's destruction of America. Your article is the type of narrative that makes my blood boil. There is no compassion for people who are different, be they immigrants, who we sorely need in America, or LGBTQ+, the poor, people of color and different cultures. It's beyond sickening, it's revolting.
Joanna, see my comment to Armand. These people who are supposedly different, are really not. We are all descended from immigrants, some recent, some distant. I find it sickening that people of different cultures are looked down upon, as if their culture has no value. The mixing of cultures is what has made our country great, although we have, from the start, had difficulty realizing that. World travel will teach you that (I know that not everybody wants to do that or can afford to); it will show you that deep down, where it counts, we really are all the same. We all need and want the same things from life. The kind of things we are enduring in our country now make me sick.
Children will not save the world if they are abused. I seriously doubt that Hungary has any kind of treatment program for the abused children from that children's home. Plus, many of us who were abused as children are better off not having children, and so are the children that would have been. What does JDVance think of women whose bodies won't let them have children. There are a lot of women who can't get pregnant. I guess I, along with all of them should just be discarded for having no value? It's sad that men feel a need to control women so that they can achieve their sick objectives.
The breadth and depth of your lucidity is amazing and I always look forward to reading your next post as well as rereading many past posts. ...please correct the spelling of Families in the headline
Fashits see human relationships and reproduction through the lenses of capitalism (profit), industrialism (maximum output for minimal cost), and nationalism (purity/brand recognition). Higher population represents human capital that oligarchs and their dictators can use for labor and cannon fodder. Bodies, especially women's bodies, are means of production, bio-factories. And the illusion of purity/brand recognotion contributes a smug justification of noble purpose in nationalistic edification, as it were. In short, fashitism is exploitative, dehumanizing, and lethal.
At this moment, felon47 is doing nothing but taking a big sh.. on all of us. felon47 does not own or define me.
Exhausting
I am making an effort to talk to people and smile. We are all in this and that is what I can do. Instead of wondering, I am trying to engage with all my fellow humans.
Oh, to live in MAGA Trumplandia where science, facts & law don’t matter. For the convicted fraudster in chief & his capos the presidency is a side hustle & the grifting never ends.
Yes, and I wish more white liberals and moderates would catch on. Too many of them just can't seem to understand why a majority of white USians, including white women, have voted for Trump *three times*. Those who are old enough almost certainly voted for Reagan twice. Others among us recognized Nixon's "southern strategy" for what it was -- a backlash to the civil rights movement -- and the rise of the Christian right (both white evangelical and Catholic) in response to Roe v. Wade for what *it* was, a backlash against the autonomy of women. The white right has been on a roll since the Reagan administration, and the rise of Trump gave them the faux-populist figurehead they hadn't had since Reagan passed. And now, as the saying goes, here we are.
Does this mean the government will be sure every mother will have a roof over her head, food, cash for clothing of their children? We are the only industrial country who does not subsidize families. Let's change that.
David, while you make a valid point in your first paragraph, I cannot agree with what you say in the second paragraph, that "the public feels things are business as usual to a large degree". So much of the public is sickened by the present "administration" that is administering to nothing but its own wants and needs. No, this is not business as usual and it's quite sickening to read Ruth's essay.
Oh that is scary AF. And it makes sense of all the weird things Rump has been doing with universities, non-profits, etc.
Dang - I love Margaret Atwood and hate she’s been clairvoyant on all this! What a war on women looks like with the absolutely heinous addition of targeting minorities - Anti-DEI hooks up with Anti-Female to create the truth - the War on Women’s rights and autonomy!
In 2009 I was declared 100% disabled by the Supreme Court of Georgia, USA. My quest was against CIGNA who denied me what hey owed. I think, at the time it was the largest judgement against CIGNA for my problem. At the time, I was Snr. Partner for High Tech Industry clients, globally for a major Strategic Consulting company. I found out my own partners (I was the 2. largest shareholder of a $1.6 Billion Enterprise and what one calls a "Rain Maker"). My Memory took a 40% knock, but the rest of my ability to thrive in my environment remained strong. Which I showed by founding my charity "Childrens Artwalk" which taught 100's of inner city kids across the US how to succeed through painting in Oil, which I financed through my second career : Oil Painting Landscapes.
I am reminded constantly today in THIS AMERICA of Hitler's Aktion "T4" which called for the mass murder by involuntary euthanasia which targeted people with disabilities in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-war trials against doctors who had been involved in the killings.[4] The name T4 is an abbreviation of Tiergartenstraße 4, a street address of the Chancellery department in Berlin set up in early 1940, in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, which recruited and paid personnel associated with Aktion T4. This while my mother had joined the Gestapo in Lodz, Poland next to the Chelmo Kill camp, where my Grandfather was the XO and murdered 250000 "Vermin" as Trump calls them along with 300 innocent children.
Is that fucked up or what? Breathe deep. There is inherently right and wrong, evil and good. Believe that. Those that commit inherently wrong will answer for it now (for sure) but also in the hereafter, so sorry Mum, but I can't atone for you. Some call it Karma, and she is supposed to be a bitch.
I say all this to hopefully give you some context of the real situation. The Melonis, Orbans, Erdogans, Putins, and yes Trumps (et al) would happily feed me into the ovens, because I can no longer contribute to the white hegemony. The MAGAs, like my daughter would do so in amoment, because I stand in the way of their "Rapture". Believe it and fight it, to the death. We will win
Yours is a stunning story, Bruce. Yes, it's well known that people with disabilities were targeted in Nazi, Germany. Others who were of Jewish heritage were just hated because of who they were. My father-in-law, who I never knew, lost 22 first cousins during the Holocaust. Unspeakable horrors. We can see the injustices coming full circle.
At age 67 I finally hired a German Holocaust investigator. During that time I also communicated with Professor Christopher Browning "ordinary men". He helped me to understand my Mother a bit better. We were going to write a book, but I can't. It is all just too horrible to rehash, although we owe it, in some way.
I appreciate what you are saying. It is like many of the people who experienced the horrors first hand but are silent when their families ask about what they experienced. It is too painful for them to recount the horrors. We have lived in Skokie, Illinois for the past 47 years. It was the home to many Holocaust survivors and now their children and grandchildren, but it is also a very diverse community, which I appreciate. We have seen the Holocaust memorial statue in front of our library defaced constantly over the years. The year we moved to Skokie, Neo-Nazis wanted to march and the court agreed it was their First Amendment right, but in the end, they did not march in Skokie trying to intimidate Holocaust survivors, they went to Chicago. We have the Illinois Holocaust Museum close by, funded by our governor, J.B. Pritzker ,before he became governor, and they have ongoing programs to educate the public. I am sorry for what you have experienced in your life and I wish you peace.
My immediate family did not experience the horrors, because they got out of Hungary in 1913. But it was still not okay to be Jewish in America, based on my father's experience growing up. My parents did not think it was important to tell their kids about their Jewish heritage until my sister experienced bigotry at the hands of her boyfriend's parents. Joanna, I'm glad you live in a very diverse community. That is good. My community is not diverse, because 85% of the population is Hispanic (I'm in El Paso, TX). It is the only place I've lived where what you look like does not generally result in discrimination. I have never experienced any, and a Black nurse I talked to several years ago had never experienced it, either. Unfortunately there is a part of our population that is bigoted, though I think you would find that anywhere.
I need to add that my father's family did lose 38 members to the concentration camps.
Please make sure you tell your diverse neighbors what is coming next! You know!
I would be surprised if they didn't know.
I’m glad your family was able to leave Germany but I do the know discrimination at that time. My father-in-law was fired after taking off on Yom Kippur. He changed his last name, although I’m not sure if that was before or after the firing. Devastating that your father’s family lost 38 members in the concentration camps. I’m glad you are in a community where you feel comfortable. So important to your mental health and emotional well-being. I do fear the current anti-Semitic atmosphere in the country.
Thank you, Joanna. I need to let you know that my father's family was in Hungary. And they did change their name from something obviously Jewish to something obviously Hungarian. You've brought back the memory of when I heard a knock on my apartment door, just after I graduated college, and a man who had been reading names on mailboxes wanted to know if my family had just come over from Hungary. When I said no, he said, "Most people with such an obviously Hungarian name, change it." I do also fear the current anti-Semitic atmosphere here. I've always wondered how the Jews became scapegoats for everything and everyone, and the only thing I can figure is that because the Old Testament describes them as God's chosen people, that people have been eternally offended by that.
Oh no, I did not write this for you to feel sorry for me. Be angry and upset for those that are now being oppressed, and fight it, no matter how young you are. Use it to fuel your resistance.
It isn’t a matter of feeling sorry for you as much as feeling regret for anyone who has had to suffer any kind of discrimination or being, “the other”. I actually have a few years on you but very young in spirit. I’ve been to several demonstrations this spring and will continue once I’m back home. One thing I have noticed in listening to both Ruth and Timothy Snyder. They remain calm in the face of everything presently going on. I can no longer afford to be angry because it is detrimental to my health at this point and the felon rapist continues to do the outrageous, which can make one’s blood boil. So I’m hoping my cooler head will prevail.
You are right Joanna. Anger is useless. A plan is better. Action even better
These people are pure evil. Soon they'll be making arguments to euthanize the developmentally disabled. The living memory of the Holocaust is nearly gone, and these 21st Century fascists are using this. We can't let these monsters succeed.
Very enlightening and thank you for the historical accounts and data on the United States and our racist eugenics cruelty. We as a people have never fully faced this ugly past, I fear if we never do, we will suffer the consequences which are happening now.
I agree with you Janet, but it concerns me that while many Americans are willing to face this country's ugly past, there are so many others, like in this current "administration" that wants to whitewash everything, including destroying our own history by eliminating it digitally or by other means.
yes, agreed very scary
The "problem" with facing our real history is that it is difficult to read about (it's never taught in schools that I know of), and too much of our population has no interest in doing, or dealing with, anything that difficult. Too many want the easy way out.
Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat: But for an insistent wife and Daughter, I would leave this Country . . . for . . . where?! . . . I used to think the Rheinpfalz . . . But the Pfalz, even my little second-home, the Pfalz voted 20% AfD!
So where?
Portugal?
Spain?
Quebec?
Ottawa?
If JD Vance would look at me, he would see a 77-year-old White, Catholic with one beautiful wife (54 years together, 52 married -- the LOVE of my life) with two daughters and six grandkids, fulfilling the mythical command to "Adam" and "Eve" -- "Go forth and multiply!"
But my look at JD Vance does not return the favor.
Afraid of an aging population, Mr. Vance? BRING IN THE IMMIGRANTS IN DROVES.
Bring in immigrants from Asia.
Bring them in from Africa.
Bring them in from Meso- and South America!
Bring in the young children.
Bring in their loving mothers.
Bring in their protective fathers.
Bring in immigrants from everywhere.
"Replacement"?!?!
What does that even MEAN?
Oh, replace "white" people?
Franz Boas EXPLODED the theory of race in the 1930s.
The destruction of the Third Reich should have EXPLODED aryanism forever.
The victory of the Civil Rights Movement should have DONE IN any theory of aryanism.
The First-Nation Rights victories should stand robustly against the attempted genocide of these beautiful peoples during our first centuries!
All Peoples are One.
The only "replacement" is that in the Natural Order.
The old LOVINGLY care for their youth and for descendants to the second, third, fourth generation.
We LOVE "replacement" in the Natural Order.
Multiple languages!
What a wealth of beauty in multiple cultures.
I only speak two languages. Two, cousin, Germanic languages: English and German.
But even these cousin languages bring a diversity of culture, each heavily enriching the other.
I have experienced bilingual Mass and even Mass entirely in Spanish, and I love the joy, the reverence, the deep spirituality of the Mexican that I experienced in the "Virgen de Guadelupe" Parish church in Puerta Vallarta in Mexico.
Other languages are worthy of learning and preserving, because each language preserves a vital part of the culture of our common humanity.
We are ENRICHED by each other. The insights I get from Black writers: Just to name three -- James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Jesmyn Ward. (I have read several or many more.) These beautiful persons gave me insights I could get nowhere else, and they are lovable, and write some of the best, most deeply insightful of books that this bibliophile and multi-cultural man has ever read.
I want to be replaced, because I am old -- 77.
I WELCOME replacement through Latinos, Blacks, Asians, First-Nation, Africans, Muslims from the Middle East -- each person is beautiful, and I welcome replacement by them, because the gods won't give me many more days or years on this earth, and the more variety in culture (there is only ONE race -- the HUMAN race) the BETTER.
So, please: REPLACE ME!
Beautiful
Replace you? I don't think so. But I am all for adding all the people you mention. The vast majority of my city is Hispanic, and they make it a better place. I get much better medical care here than I did when I lived in Richmond VA. You remind me of the physical anthropology class I took in the 1960s, called The Concept of Race. The thing I will never forget is the picture that if you line up everybody in the world, according to their dominant characteristics, you will get a line with peaks where those characteristics are most concentrated, and valleys between, with all people on the hills and valleys having a contiguous set of characteristics. In other words, as you have said, there is only one race, the human race.
Susan Stone: Thank you as a friend, whose common core values are clear by your Substack motto:
I am one who is very upset by the hate that has taken hold in our country. I have learned that when you ignore things like religion and culture and get to know people, that we are all the same.
Ruth, I had not previously thought about the large Italian families into which my mother was born. While my mom was born in New York, her mother was a native from Elena, before it became part of Gaeta in Lazio, Italy. I had not considered what Mussolini was pushing, for Italians to have large families to grow the Italian population. I learned in a subsequent program on PBS that there was such poverty in southern Italy, the women sometimes scraped paint from the walls and mixed it with flour to feed their families. Italians, like the Irish, were the "other" when they came to America. No matter how hard they worked, no matter that they built bridges and tunnels and so much of the infrastructure in New York and elsewhere. I was just in Italy and there is no question the population is older. The young cousins, 15 of whom were in one area south of Naples, close to the ages of my daughters, had to leave Italy in order to find work. And wherever they landed, is where they started to have their families. Some of them are economists, all well-educated, no matter. The Italian government has not made it possible for them to stay because of the lack of work and the fact that northern Italy is far better funded than the south, which is still looked down upon. I was with my family in Puglia at the time Meloni was with Trump in the White House and the Italians made fun of both of them. Everywhere we went, it was thumbs down for Trump, as has been the case here in Germany. People are utterly flabbergasted at Trump's destruction of America. Your article is the type of narrative that makes my blood boil. There is no compassion for people who are different, be they immigrants, who we sorely need in America, or LGBTQ+, the poor, people of color and different cultures. It's beyond sickening, it's revolting.
Joanna, see my comment to Armand. These people who are supposedly different, are really not. We are all descended from immigrants, some recent, some distant. I find it sickening that people of different cultures are looked down upon, as if their culture has no value. The mixing of cultures is what has made our country great, although we have, from the start, had difficulty realizing that. World travel will teach you that (I know that not everybody wants to do that or can afford to); it will show you that deep down, where it counts, we really are all the same. We all need and want the same things from life. The kind of things we are enduring in our country now make me sick.
Children will not save the world if they are abused. I seriously doubt that Hungary has any kind of treatment program for the abused children from that children's home. Plus, many of us who were abused as children are better off not having children, and so are the children that would have been. What does JDVance think of women whose bodies won't let them have children. There are a lot of women who can't get pregnant. I guess I, along with all of them should just be discarded for having no value? It's sad that men feel a need to control women so that they can achieve their sick objectives.
The breadth and depth of your lucidity is amazing and I always look forward to reading your next post as well as rereading many past posts. ...please correct the spelling of Families in the headline
Fashits see human relationships and reproduction through the lenses of capitalism (profit), industrialism (maximum output for minimal cost), and nationalism (purity/brand recognition). Higher population represents human capital that oligarchs and their dictators can use for labor and cannon fodder. Bodies, especially women's bodies, are means of production, bio-factories. And the illusion of purity/brand recognotion contributes a smug justification of noble purpose in nationalistic edification, as it were. In short, fashitism is exploitative, dehumanizing, and lethal.
Disgusting 🤮
At this moment, felon47 is doing nothing but taking a big sh.. on all of us. felon47 does not own or define me.
Exhausting
I am making an effort to talk to people and smile. We are all in this and that is what I can do. Instead of wondering, I am trying to engage with all my fellow humans.
Why do the MAGA pro-natalist and racial purity requirements not apply to JD Vance? He only has two children and they are bi-racial.
Trump & Co demand we abandon reality & threatens prosecution/retribution for challenging fabricated evidence & propaganda.
https://youtu.be/XCxNzFfX8Z8?feature=shared
Oh, to live in MAGA Trumplandia where science, facts & law don’t matter. For the convicted fraudster in chief & his capos the presidency is a side hustle & the grifting never ends.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/us/politics/trump-crypto-world-liberty-financial.html?smid=url-share
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_LyYN-5YLk
Yes, and I wish more white liberals and moderates would catch on. Too many of them just can't seem to understand why a majority of white USians, including white women, have voted for Trump *three times*. Those who are old enough almost certainly voted for Reagan twice. Others among us recognized Nixon's "southern strategy" for what it was -- a backlash to the civil rights movement -- and the rise of the Christian right (both white evangelical and Catholic) in response to Roe v. Wade for what *it* was, a backlash against the autonomy of women. The white right has been on a roll since the Reagan administration, and the rise of Trump gave them the faux-populist figurehead they hadn't had since Reagan passed. And now, as the saying goes, here we are.
Thank you for excellent piece So much history, insight, knowledge.
Does this mean the government will be sure every mother will have a roof over her head, food, cash for clothing of their children? We are the only industrial country who does not subsidize families. Let's change that.
Shameful NBC & once again Kristen Welker!
https://open.substack.com/pub/politicususanews/p/nbc-cut-critical-part-of-meet-the?r=1kncci&utm_medium=ios