"Families aren't the only things being separated, she shows us. Americans, too, are being divided from their consciences." (Photo: Beppesabatini/Flickr/cc)
Jun 22, 2018
After a few weeks overseas, away from the daily drip of US news, I'm home and horrified and thinking about Karl Polanyi.
One of the 20th century's great economic historians, Polanyi wrote about economics, but he started with humanity. What does it take to create a willing worker, a follower, a servant? What makes a person pliant?
To explain it, Polanyi looked at colonizers who cut down fruit trees and olive groves and uprooted relationships to break apart autonomous social networks. Smash society and you create craven people. Craven, from the early English word meaning crushed, defeated, overwhelmed.
You can probably see where I'm going.
What does it take to break apart social beings and turn them into fearful atomized ones -- the ones I feel us becoming as we scurry about in our endless days, trying to make ends meet and digesting the news while the news we get becomes ever more shocking and more dire?
Is this what this is? This sadness that I'm feeling? Smashing society is what authoritarians do, and Donald Trump is great at it.
Award-winning cartoonist Jen Sorenson put her finger on it in an insightful strip about what's been happening at the border. Families aren't the only things being separated, she shows us. Americans, too, are being divided from their consciences.
Forced separation from our consciences, she warns, can lead to national trauma, and even national suicide.
Is this what this is? This sadness that I'm feeling? Smashing society is what authoritarians do, and Donald Trump is great at it.
In a pep rally for his troops - I mean voters - Trump announced a change from family separation to family incarceration. Indefinitely. Will we stomach that? He also insulted a protestor, disparaged the press and boasted about how well he got along with the dictator of North Korea.
Images and sound bites of kids in cages hit a nerve that rescinding DACA for 800,000 dreamers did not - that ending temporary protection for 248,000 refugees did not, and that denying asylum to thousands of victims of war and violence has so far failed to do.
Breaking us apart from one another, insult by insult, threat by threat, is how Trump seized the presidency in the first place, but it's important to understand that we were already pretty broken. Without even delving into the nation's history of genocide and slavery, the statistics are disheartening. On any given day in the US, half a million kids are in foster care. They stay there, on average, for a couple of years, and some for 5 years or more. More than half are children of color, and their average age is 9. Another 60,000 children, under 18 years of age, are incarcerated in prisons and jails.
This state of affairs is normal, but only in a broken society.
However, we're not done for yet. As I write, protestors are occupying Immigration authority offices around the country with their children, and women are preparing for mass arrests. Images and sound bites of kids in cages hit a nerve that rescinding DACA for 800,000 dreamers did not - that ending temporary protection for 248,000 refugees did not, and that denying asylum to thousands of victims of war and violence has so far failed to do. We're not at national suicide point yet, but only time will tell.
Join Us: News for people demanding a better world
Common Dreams is powered by optimists who believe in the power of informed and engaged citizens to ignite and enact change to make the world a better place. We're hundreds of thousands strong, but every single supporter makes the difference. Your contribution supports this bold media model—free, independent, and dedicated to reporting the facts every day. Stand with us in the fight for economic equality, social justice, human rights, and a more sustainable future. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover the issues the corporate media never will. |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Laura Flanders
Laura Flanders interviews forward-thinking people about the key questions of our time on The Laura Flanders Show, a nationally syndicated radio and television program also available as a podcast. A contributing writer to The Nation, Flanders is also the author of six books, including "Bushwomen: How They Won the White House for Their Man" (2005). She is the recipient of a 2019 Izzy Award for excellence in independent journalism, the Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award for advancing women's and girls' visibility in media, and a 2020 Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship for her reporting and advocacy for public media. lauraflanders.org
After a few weeks overseas, away from the daily drip of US news, I'm home and horrified and thinking about Karl Polanyi.
One of the 20th century's great economic historians, Polanyi wrote about economics, but he started with humanity. What does it take to create a willing worker, a follower, a servant? What makes a person pliant?
To explain it, Polanyi looked at colonizers who cut down fruit trees and olive groves and uprooted relationships to break apart autonomous social networks. Smash society and you create craven people. Craven, from the early English word meaning crushed, defeated, overwhelmed.
You can probably see where I'm going.
What does it take to break apart social beings and turn them into fearful atomized ones -- the ones I feel us becoming as we scurry about in our endless days, trying to make ends meet and digesting the news while the news we get becomes ever more shocking and more dire?
Is this what this is? This sadness that I'm feeling? Smashing society is what authoritarians do, and Donald Trump is great at it.
Award-winning cartoonist Jen Sorenson put her finger on it in an insightful strip about what's been happening at the border. Families aren't the only things being separated, she shows us. Americans, too, are being divided from their consciences.
Forced separation from our consciences, she warns, can lead to national trauma, and even national suicide.
Is this what this is? This sadness that I'm feeling? Smashing society is what authoritarians do, and Donald Trump is great at it.
In a pep rally for his troops - I mean voters - Trump announced a change from family separation to family incarceration. Indefinitely. Will we stomach that? He also insulted a protestor, disparaged the press and boasted about how well he got along with the dictator of North Korea.
Images and sound bites of kids in cages hit a nerve that rescinding DACA for 800,000 dreamers did not - that ending temporary protection for 248,000 refugees did not, and that denying asylum to thousands of victims of war and violence has so far failed to do.
Breaking us apart from one another, insult by insult, threat by threat, is how Trump seized the presidency in the first place, but it's important to understand that we were already pretty broken. Without even delving into the nation's history of genocide and slavery, the statistics are disheartening. On any given day in the US, half a million kids are in foster care. They stay there, on average, for a couple of years, and some for 5 years or more. More than half are children of color, and their average age is 9. Another 60,000 children, under 18 years of age, are incarcerated in prisons and jails.
This state of affairs is normal, but only in a broken society.
However, we're not done for yet. As I write, protestors are occupying Immigration authority offices around the country with their children, and women are preparing for mass arrests. Images and sound bites of kids in cages hit a nerve that rescinding DACA for 800,000 dreamers did not - that ending temporary protection for 248,000 refugees did not, and that denying asylum to thousands of victims of war and violence has so far failed to do. We're not at national suicide point yet, but only time will tell.
Laura Flanders
Laura Flanders interviews forward-thinking people about the key questions of our time on The Laura Flanders Show, a nationally syndicated radio and television program also available as a podcast. A contributing writer to The Nation, Flanders is also the author of six books, including "Bushwomen: How They Won the White House for Their Man" (2005). She is the recipient of a 2019 Izzy Award for excellence in independent journalism, the Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award for advancing women's and girls' visibility in media, and a 2020 Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship for her reporting and advocacy for public media. lauraflanders.org
After a few weeks overseas, away from the daily drip of US news, I'm home and horrified and thinking about Karl Polanyi.
One of the 20th century's great economic historians, Polanyi wrote about economics, but he started with humanity. What does it take to create a willing worker, a follower, a servant? What makes a person pliant?
To explain it, Polanyi looked at colonizers who cut down fruit trees and olive groves and uprooted relationships to break apart autonomous social networks. Smash society and you create craven people. Craven, from the early English word meaning crushed, defeated, overwhelmed.
You can probably see where I'm going.
What does it take to break apart social beings and turn them into fearful atomized ones -- the ones I feel us becoming as we scurry about in our endless days, trying to make ends meet and digesting the news while the news we get becomes ever more shocking and more dire?
Is this what this is? This sadness that I'm feeling? Smashing society is what authoritarians do, and Donald Trump is great at it.
Award-winning cartoonist Jen Sorenson put her finger on it in an insightful strip about what's been happening at the border. Families aren't the only things being separated, she shows us. Americans, too, are being divided from their consciences.
Forced separation from our consciences, she warns, can lead to national trauma, and even national suicide.
Is this what this is? This sadness that I'm feeling? Smashing society is what authoritarians do, and Donald Trump is great at it.
In a pep rally for his troops - I mean voters - Trump announced a change from family separation to family incarceration. Indefinitely. Will we stomach that? He also insulted a protestor, disparaged the press and boasted about how well he got along with the dictator of North Korea.
Images and sound bites of kids in cages hit a nerve that rescinding DACA for 800,000 dreamers did not - that ending temporary protection for 248,000 refugees did not, and that denying asylum to thousands of victims of war and violence has so far failed to do.
Breaking us apart from one another, insult by insult, threat by threat, is how Trump seized the presidency in the first place, but it's important to understand that we were already pretty broken. Without even delving into the nation's history of genocide and slavery, the statistics are disheartening. On any given day in the US, half a million kids are in foster care. They stay there, on average, for a couple of years, and some for 5 years or more. More than half are children of color, and their average age is 9. Another 60,000 children, under 18 years of age, are incarcerated in prisons and jails.
This state of affairs is normal, but only in a broken society.
However, we're not done for yet. As I write, protestors are occupying Immigration authority offices around the country with their children, and women are preparing for mass arrests. Images and sound bites of kids in cages hit a nerve that rescinding DACA for 800,000 dreamers did not - that ending temporary protection for 248,000 refugees did not, and that denying asylum to thousands of victims of war and violence has so far failed to do. We're not at national suicide point yet, but only time will tell.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.