"Families aren't the only things being separated, she shows us. Americans, too, are being divided from their consciences." (Photo: Beppesabatini/Flickr/cc)
National Suicide Point?
This state of affairs is normal, but only in a broken society.
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.
Urgent. It's never been this bad.
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission from the outset was simple. To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It’s never been this bad out there. And it’s never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed and doing some of its best and most important work, the threats we face are intensifying. Right now, with just three days to go in our Spring Campaign, we're falling short of our make-or-break goal. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Can you make a gift right now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? There is no backup plan or rainy day fund. There is only you. —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
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.
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.