Immigration At The Turn Of The Century Fill In The Blanks (Form: Fill & Download for Free

This is Cote d’Ivoire.You can think of the northern half as savanna and the southern half as forest. At least, such was the case before deforestation. This land, slightly bigger than New York State, was peopled by very different ethno-linguistic groups. It is not what anyone seeking to forge a nation would have drawn on the map. Rather, it is an artificial administrative unit that exists because this is where it was convenient for the French colonizers to draw boundaries. It came into being as a colony in 1893. The result is that even though the country is an artificial edifice, it is all anyone currently alive has ever known.For the purpose of simplification, you can think of the country as being culturally divided along a North-South axis. The North is Muslim, and the dominant cultural group is Mandinka.This is the same ethnic group that was the dominant force in the Mali Empire and the myriad petty kingdoms that succeeded it in the centuries after its collapse. In Ivory Coast, these people were primarily engaged in Trade when they first moved in. And so, they are known by the Mandinka word for trader or merchant: Jula/Dyula/Dioula. Alassane Ouattara (wa.ta.RAH) is the most prominent politician of this group. Alpha Blondy is probably the most renowned Ivorian of this group, internationally speaking.In the South, following the pattern established in many other West African nations, Christianity took root. The dominant cultural group is the Akan group. They are related to the dominant group in Ghana. The dominant subgroup in Cote d’Ivoire are the Baoule (bah.oo.LAY).The first president of Ivory Coast was of this group. He reigned until his death in 1993, after which power passed into another Baoule politician, Henri Konan Bédié, who had been the President of the National Assembly, the Ivorian legislature.There is a third group that needs to be introduced. They are the Bété group and come from South-Central Ivory Coast. They have been there for longer, but have a smaller population than the other two. Laurent Gbagbo is the most prominent politician of this group. Didier Drogba is also of this group.The country had been seen as an economic miracle for more than 15 years after independence. Even before then, it was by far the most prosperous French colony in French West Africa. But with the replacement of White faces by Black ones at the top of the political hierarchy, there came a new set of priorities. Dictators need large bases of support. One of the best ways to ensure a large base of support is to use corruption as a tool of governance.Political office becomes primarily a means of enriching oneself. Each high office comes with a vast system of patronage, where political allies and kinsmen can be nominated. With this, the allegiance of entire ethnic groups can be cemented. You can achieve quite a high degree of political stability with patronage politics. After all, what’s the point of fighting when everyone can eat to their heart’s content?The problem with this system is that it only works as long as there is massive economic growth. Unfortunately, this system also tends to reward loyalty rather than competence, making it likely that sooner or later, the economic mismanagement will take its toll. For as long as commodity prices remained high, Cote d’Ivoire appeared to be well governed. But commodity prices, from the high levels they had enjoyed, came crashing earthwards in the late 70s, accompanied first by an economic downturn, and them by a prolonged period of stagnation.This happened during a period of rapid population growth, so that there was less wealth to share.In such situations, ambitious politicians can always be counted on to find an identitarian scapegoat, and this was the road Ivory Coast eventually took. At first, while Boigny, the first president, still ruled, such divisions were kept under the lid. But after he died in 1993, his party fractured along ethnic lines.Alassane Ouattara obtained his PhD in economics at the University of Pennsylvania before working for the IMF, where he developed a reputation for integrity. Cote d’Ivoire, in 1990, like many other African nations that had run their economies into the ground, turned to the IMF for financing. As part of a Structural adjustment Program imposed by the IMF, Ouattara became prime minister from 1990 to 1993. This made him one of the most powerful men in the country. Northerners were thrilled. But to many in the ruling party, he was nothing but an interloper. He hadn’t come up through the ranks. He hadn’t even been chosen by Boigny. He’d been imposed from outside. And his program, which limited opportunities for kickbacks and imposed efficiency in government, was decidedly unpopular with those who had benefited from the system as it was.Boigny died in October 1993. Ouattara had been Prime Minister for almost 3 years. The constitution was clear: the President of the National Assembly was to be the successor if the president died. That meant Bédié should become president. Ouattara’s appetite had been whetted, however, and he tried to make himself president. He lost the brief power struggle that ensued and was forced to resign.But there were only two years left on Bédié’s term. There would have to be elections in 1995. Bédié knew that he wasn’t particularly popular. And Northerners were very excited at the prospect of voting for one of their own. It was by no means a given that the election could be won if it was free and fair. What to do?What to do was to change the rules of the game. If you’re not sure whether you can beat your opponent, the easiest way to get rid of him is to have him disqualified on some pretense. Now, let’s play African President! How can we disqualify an opponent with a reputation for integrity? What’s that? We can put pressure on the National Assembly to pass a law to target him? Brilliant! Still, we must actually give some plausible justification. What’s that? His father is rumored to be from Burkina Faso? Excellent! And he once accepted a scholarship reserved for students from Burkina Faso? Great! We can disseminate the idea that he is not Ivorian! He will be ineligible for the presidency because he is from Burkina Faso!The actual law as drafted, stated that candidates had to have parents that were both Ivorian, and had to have resided in the country for 5 years preceding the election. Given that Ouattara had lived abroad, thanks to his years working as an IMF official, this law would have made him ineligible, even if his citizenship were accepted.But this idea, born of electoral necessity, would prove to be one of the most divisive acts ever taken in Ivorian politics. Bédié could not know it at the time, but he was sowing the seeds of civil war.Burkina Faso, formerly called Upper Volta, is a landlocked country to the northeast of Cote d’Ivoire. Ouattara was actually born in Dimbokro, but his family has roots in Northern Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso. He spent a fair amount of his youth in Burkina Faso and does not speak French with an Ivorian accent. It was very easy for the charge that he was a foreigner to stick.The story of how he got to have a scholarship reserved for Burkinabe students is a murky one. Reportedly, the quota of scholarship for Ivorian students had been filled, and his name was put forward thanks to the connections he had in Burkina Faso. An alternative version of this story is that his father was, in fact, Burkinabe, so that it was not at all surprising that he should have been able to qualify for that scholarship.Regardless, in 1995, there was nothing he could do. The judiciary was not truly independent. And he was forced to watch the elections from the sidelines. The result was that Bédié was elected with 96% of the vote. He had had only one challenger, the leader of the very insignificant Ivorian Worker’s Party. There was another contender who had decided to sit out the elections, having judged the rules unfair. His name was Laurent Gbagbo.Gbagbo, though he had been somewhat sidelined since 1990, was the third big name in Ivorian politics. It had been he who had contested the 1990 election, the first multiparty election since independence. This had been the price to pay for Western financial assistance, and Boigny had consented.Gbagbo, a talented politician from a small ethnic group, managed to get a respectable 18% of the vote. He had not come out of nowhere. He was a historian by training, having obtained his doctorate from Paris-Diderot University. During the years of single-party rule, he had organized underground and built a following among university students.In 1982, he went into exile in France after organizing a teacher’s strike. It wasn’t until 1988, after political parties were legalized, that he was able to return. After losing the presidential election in 1990, he ran in the legislative elections and was elected to a seat in the National Assembly.In 1995, he boycotted the elections. Was it out of solidarity with Ouattara? Was it because he feared he would suffer another defeat? No one knows. But it is notable that at this stage in his career, he was unwilling to participate in an election that was not free and fair.The country had been known as a land of immigration since indepencence in 1960. It had attracted large numbers of immigrants, many of them from Burkina Faso, during the years of the economic “miracle.” Culturally, these newcomers tended to associate with the Jula. And so, over time, links were established between Ouattara and foreigners, and between foreigners and Julas.It did not help that the country had no jus soli. This meant that people whose grandparents had moved to Cote d’Ivoire were still considered foreigners. In the 1998 Census, 26% of the population was counted as foreign. As the year 2000 approached, it became apparent that Ouattara would once again not be allowed to run.In December 1999, a mutiny by troops who wanted increased pay morphed into a coup. Much of the population was ecstatic. Once they heard others tell them that coups were usually the beginning of political instability, they were dismissive. That may have been true elsewhere in the world, but Ivorians were by nature a peace-loving people. Even the coup had occurred without any bloodshed! Surely, there would never be instability in Cote d’Ivoire.At first, the military junta promised free and fair elections. The military leader, Robert Guei, was a retired general who was generally well liked. He was not ambitious for power, he said. He would organize elections and fade from the scene. He had only come to sweep the house. But, having swept the house, the Sweeper, as he came to be known, found that its palatial structure was to his liking. What was the point of spending all this time and energy sweeping such a palace clean so that someone else could enjoy its use?A new constitution was drafted. Guei sought to eliminate his main competitors. A provision was included stating that candidates had to have 4 Ivorian grandparents and never to have taken another nationality. These provisions targeting Ouattara were submitted to a referendum. Ouattara was in a bind. If he called for his supporters to vote no, he would be tacitly admitting that he did not meet the qualifications. Besides, there was the added risk of losing, which would be devastating for his prospects. So, he declared himself targeted by unconcerned, and called for a yes vote. The referendum was adopted.But before he could run, he had to be declared eligible by the Constitutional Council. One by one, on national TV, 14 would-be candidates were eliminated, Ouattara for not being Ivorian enough, Bédié for immorality. In the end, among leading politicians, only Ggagbo, the man Guei thought he could beat, was allowed to run. It would prove to be a mistake.Gbagbo won the October 2000 election with more than 60% of the vote, getting the support of those who would have preferred to vote for the eliminated candidates. Guei tried to state that he had, in fact, won the elections, but the population took to the streets. The armed forces were ordered to fire on the demonstrators, but most of them sided with the civilians, and Guei was forced to step down.The very next day, Ouattara’s supporters took to the streets again to demand new elections. They were met by Gbagbo’s supporters, who also had the support of the armed forces that had sided with him the day before. In the clashes that ensued, civilians were killed. 57 bodies were later found in what was dubbed the charnel-house of Yopougon.It was an inauspicious start to a presidency.The new president knew how shallow his support was. Most of the country had seen the election as a farce. Only 37% of registered voters had bothered to participate, and among those fully 11% returned blank ballots. He himself stated that he had become president amid calamitous circumstances. Yet there he was, president, baffling all the naysayers who had called him an eternal opponent. He had been treated as something of a joke, and now the joke was on his detractors.Much of the North was opposed to him, finding him illegitimate. Part of that was the fact that their candidate of choice hadn’t been allowed to run. But the other part was this business of the charnel-house. Investigations seemed to be going nowhere. And when finally a trial did come, witnesses were intimidated. To this day, many of his supporters feel that the story of the charnel-house was made up. Of such events are the seeds of division sowed.Nevertheless, Gbagbo knew that he had to enlarge his base of support. The easiest way to do this was to use the vast patronage system at his disposal to buy himself some support, as it were. Thus the corruption he had railed against as long as he had been out of power was embraced. The new regime, it turned out, would not be so different from what it had replaced.Then in 2002, a rebellion struck. Northern troops mutinied and attacked major cities in the country. In the Northern half of territory, they were successful. But they were repulsed in Abidjan. During these attacks, ex-president Guei was murdered. Ouattara’s house was also attacked, but he himself escaped, having found refuge in the French embassy.Who murdered Guei? It appears that it was partisans of the president. He was accused of having been found attempting to lead a rebellion, but in actually he had been hiding, fearful for his life.The rebels quickly gained control of the Northern half of the country. French troops intervened to separate the two belligerent sides and were quickly denounced. To rebel partisans, the French had prevented their total victory. To partisans of the president, the French were preventing them from reasserting national territorial integrity.In 2003, a peace agreement was signed:Ggagbo was to remain president until the next electionsA new government of national reconciliation was to be formed, with rebel leaders accorded cabinet positions.Gbagbo agreed only reluctantly. And some in the rebel forces were still trying to topple him. Gradually, the two sides grew apart and the unity government collapsed. The president’s rule became more authoritarian. Militia and death squads were unleashed to beat the opposition into submission. Reforms supposed to be adopted to make an election possible were blocked.In November 2004, a presidential bomber attacked a French position, killing 9 peacekeepers and wounding 31. The government claims the attack was a mistake. The French reject this explanation and retaliate, destroying the entire Ivorian air force in the process. Gbagbo has been taught a lesson, it seems.But the French do not realize how vulnerable they are. There are at this time 8,000 French expatriates living in Ivory Coast. The president unleashes his supporters. These French civilians are harassed by youth militia groups calling themselves Young Patriots. Huge riots occur, targeting French schools and the French military base in Abidjan. The president’s supporters clash with French troops, who spend days trying to put down the riots and airlift its citizens. Most of the large French community in the country is evacuated. On the international stage, the optics of French troops putting down rioters in an ostensibly independent country are not very pretty. Many in Africa come to see Gbagbo as a courageous leader standing up to imperialists, a mantle the president is wily enough to embrace.Where did the rebellion come from? For some, it was a spontaneous uprising of marginalized Northern troops. But this, of course, does not explain where the funding and training for such a massive uprising came from. For others, it is clear that Burkina Faso’s fingerprints were all over the operation. What’s more, the biggest beneficiary of this rebellion would be Ouattara. Everyone knew that. Could it really be that he was entirely innocent? That also seems implausible.Opinions are hardened on both sides of this debate. There doesn’t seem to be any innocent side. In the end, holding political power in an African nation is a very attractive proposition. And people will cut what deals they must in order to make it happen. There is a long history of African leaders funding rebellions in one another’s countries, going as far back as Nkrumah and Boigny.Political power in many of those countries remains the surest path to wealth. As long as this remain the case, acquiring it by any means necessary will be a very attractive proposition. Much of the time, many ethnic groups out of power can point to a long list of injustices they have faced at the hand of the authorities. So, when rebellions arise, they are duly supported. It’s a cynical game that is possible because in such young nations, attachment to one’s ethnic group is often stronger than attachment to one’s country.Amid mutual recriminations and the breakdown of trust between all parties, the status quo remains. The rebels are happy to keep control of half the country, together with the wealth flowing from its agricultural and mineral resources. Gbagbo is happy to preside over the richer half of the country. 2005 comes and goes without an election. Gbagbo remains president, claiming that the refusals of the rebels to disarm proves that the conditions do not exist for a credible country-wide election.Between 2003 and 2010, there were a long list of broken agreements that need not detain us here. But elections are finally agreed to in 2010. All major candidates are allowed to participate. In the first round, the top two contenders are Gbagbo and Ouattara, respectively with 38 and 32% of the vote. Since no one got over 50%, there is a runoff election. Both sides heavily court Bédié, who garnered 25% of the vote.The question for the second round will be this: whom do Bédié’s supporters hate more? Bédié himself has made an alliance with Ouattara. Each man agreed before the election to support the other, should one or the other fail to qualify for the second round. Bédié calls on his supporters to vote for Ouattara. But his supporters are Christian. It is unclear how willing some of them will be to vote for the Muslim Ouattara.The second round, monitored by the UN, happens. And, as results are tabulated, it is apparent that Ouattara won, thanks to massive support in the northern half of the country. Voting behaviour is very tribalistic in Africa. The same had happened in the first round. What made the difference was that the alliance between Bédié and Ouattara held.Before the results can be released, the president's supporters try to raise objections they did not raise at the time the elections were taking place. On National TV, one of the president supporters rips the papers out of the hands of the president of the National Electoral Commission while the latter is trying to announce them. It becomes clear that the president will refuse to accept the results.Nevertheless, over the objections of Gbagbo, and under the protection of the UN, the president of the Electoral Commission announces the results on TV. Now the UN is added to the list of the president's enemies. There is talk of conspiracy. the announcement of the results took place at the hotel where Ouattara had been staying under UN protection. To the president’s supporters, this looks like evidence of a plot. To everyone else, it looks like the logical thing to do for a man who feared for his safety and he wanted protection from the UN troops assuring Ouattara's protection.Gbagbo refuses to acknowledge defeat. He declares results null and void in one after another northern enclave, claiming irregularities. He has to keep invalidating results in order to be able to declare himself the winner. This he does, to the dismay of all outside observers.The Civil War resumes. The Rebels sweep down from the north and capture city after city. For the first time it appears that the war will reach Abidjan, the capital city. But though his forces have been swept out of most of the country, Gbagbo's hold on Abidjan is really strong. The rebels are unable to dislodge him from the fortified presidential compound.By this time four months have passed since the election. The French again make the fateful decision to intervene militarily. They bombard key positions to allow the rebel forces to breach the walls of the presidential compound and to capture the besieged president. The war is over.That is my take on the story. As you might imagine, a supporter of Gbagbo would tell a very different story. Such is the nature of politics. Even today, in much of Africa outside Ivory Coast, Gbagbo's fall is seen as the work of a neocolonialist France.There is some measure of truth to this. Ouattara has been very friendly to French business interests. And yet, much as I deplore neocolonialism, I cannot be blind to the fact that the French decision to intervene validated the result of the elections.And the country has done well since then, economically speaking, though the high rates of growth have not allowed most of the population to keep up with the pace of inflation.As for the new president, in spite of his erstwhile reputation as a man of probity, by the time he reached power, he had accumulated too many political debts that needed to be repayed. Those of us who had expectantly waited for a new regime of governmental honesty and efficiency were sorely disappointed. In the end, one team of thieves replaced another. Corruption as a tool of governance is much too useful, and the judiciary is much too impotent to do anything about it.It would be tempting to conclude that the rule of law triumphed over tyranny in Cote d'Ivoire. But that is not what happened. It was arms that triumphed, French arms no less. This lesson was lost on no one. Political power still comes out of the barrel of a gun. The French were criticised so heavily for their actions that it is not at all certain that they will intervene the next time one faction with more guns decides to impose its will.The other takeaway is that it pays to be on the winning side. Though war crimes were committed by both sides, the overwhelming majority of those who have been punished have been on Gbagbo's side. I was not one of his supporters, but I have to acknowledge that what we got in the end was not an impartial justice.That is my admittedly biased take on the affair, as all such takes must be. And as soon as it became clear to me that the new president would not be the anti-corruption reformer I expected, I lost interest in Ivorian politics. I have not looked back. When family members try to send me news about Ivorian politics, I no longer ever read any of it. I will never vote in any Ivorian election. I am now an American who just happens to have lived the first half of his life in Cote d'Ivoire.If I have perchance misrepresented any of the events I related above, I hope you will have the indulgence to attribute it to an honest mistake rather than to willful deception. And now my tale is done.

Childhood is a social construct.The Age of Innocence, Joshua Reynolds, 1788Our western conception of childhood remains broadly Aristotelian, having to do with his ideas of causality, of final form and function. Without going into detail, we basically understand children to be immature forms of the human organism type with the predisposition to develop into a mature form, a human adult, at which point it will go about human adult functions.With the revival of study of the classics in the Renaissance, by the 17th century childhood began to be seen as a thing in itself, a separate stage of life. As liberalism was fostered by the Enlightenment, and particularly after John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, we added the strong notion that knowledge is not innate; our minds are tabula rasa, blank slates, and we add knowledge through perception and experience during childhood. Locke was rejecting not only René Descartes but Plato and his concept of pre-existing forms.At a time when infant mortality meant that more than one in three children would die without reaching adulthood, when education was only starting to be seen as important in the lives of anyone, much less children, and when 96 percent of all people were in poverty, it was amazing we accorded childhood as much thought as we began to.Then in 1762 in his novel, Emile: or, On Education, Jean-Jacques Rousseau asked, “Why rob these innocents of the joys which pass so quickly? Why fill with bitterness the fleeting early days of childhood, days which will no more return for them than for you?” This introduced our continuing concept of childhood as a time of Romantic sanctuary. It also introduced our concept as childhood consisting of multiple stages.That was also at the point Capitalism began to succeed in England and Holland, producing the rudiments of a Middle Class and a raft of new social dynamics. By the later reign of Queen Victoria, this had led to legal reforms in poor law and labor law and to an attitude among those prospering that it was vulgar to use one’s wife or children as economic units.That conceit was picked up by prosperous Anglophile Americans. Well-to-do Americans were appalled that Jews, Italians and others would arrive on our shores and immediately put their wives and children to work. Less well-to-do Americans trying to make a living here during the Progressive Era instead found the “new” immigrants of the 1870s and 80s to be ruthlessly competitive. Working longer hours with more family members, immigrants’ new businesses were hard to beat. It was this, and not concerns about child welfare, that led to laws to curb the hours and ages of labor. Yet, the Supreme Court was still in the hands of Radical Republicans, who did not believe it was the law’s place to set such limits, and those minimum-wage, maximum-hour and child-age were largely shot down.Another progressive notion that caught on was the pre-Darwinian concept that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, that is, that earliest development of the individual (ontogeny) passes through stages that resemble the development of the being’s remote ancestors. Naturally, this is claptrap, but it got mixed in with Darwinism, which is not claptrap, and popularlized by the man who mangled Darwinian thought in the late 19th century, Herbert Spencer.If there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order. ... Education is a repetition of civilization in little.— Herbert SpencerBefore you know it Jean Piaget was finding that Swiss babies’ earliest thought structures resembled the animism of our most primitive ancestors while Margaret Mead was discovering that the first thought structures of South Sea Islander babies did not resemble their parents’ animism.From here the floodgates opened and from Freud to Spock, from Skinner to Kohlberg, we have had a few hundred more experts march through offering their contribution to What is the nature of kids? and How should that guide us?The Tyranny of Expert OpinionWhen does the shit hit the fan? When you have kids and it becomes your place to get them through to adulthood. Then you are faced with the half-baked melange of competing fashion statements dressed up as theories, some elevated to the level of law, that says what must be their passage or ought to be.Thanks to progressives, we are in the Age of Expert Opinion. Only I look at the end result—You want me to prepare my children for the real world by isolating them in a socially and mentally stifling experience hermetically sealed from the real world?—and I say, no thank you. I can do it better my way.But the law, laws fashioned on heaps of (often conflicting) expert opinion, say no.Who’re the parents of my children? My wife and I or the state? Oh, the state? We’ll see about that.ParentingMy father started working ten- and eleven-hour days for a dime a day at age 11 doing heavy construction. My mother started working long days chopping and picking cotton at age 11 for the right to a garden plot where her family could grow food. I started working at age 11 clearing lots of houses and debris. I had advanced to a dime an hour.I am supposed to be in fear of my children working?My priorities for my children were:Anthropologist Marcia Herndon, a native American, told me of her first post-doc consulting gig when she was hired by an Arizona school district that had been required to take children from the local reservation to find out what was “wrong” with them. Her summary? “The Indian kids are fine, but you had better figure out fast what you are doing to the white children.”Can’t tell you how many horrors from my youth that reframed in a new light.Play theorist Brian Sutton-Smith convinced me that the cardinal use of children’s time was free play, play that they themselves add the structure to. Climbing is simply problem solving and risk taking in real time. Bullying does not exist where children play freely. And so on.Optimum-personality psychologists Janet Spence and Robert Helmreich concluded in their study that we are not judged by IQ, not by grades—only by the skills we master and exhibit. The wider the range of skills mastered, the better, especially when many of those skills cross gender perceptions.A biologist I enjoy reading convinced me of the primacy of hands-on projects over theory. His grad and post-grad project was cataloging snails in Bermuda. Only as you need to start making sense of the emerging big picture can you appreciate the value of theory. All true education comes hands-first. We learn hands and brain together. If you learn brain only, it is swiftly forgotten.Lab director Marshall Jecker was my boss the summer before 7th grade and the one before 8th grade. He paid me 25 cents an hour to wash slides and test tubes, but that chore took not even an hour a day. On day one, he started teaching me how to do urinalyses. Week two, I started doing venereal disease serologies. By the second summer he was giving me hematology, chemistry and lab procedure textbooks to read. I was working with microscopes, mass spectrometers, the whole range of lab equipment. He even let me draw blood from him when we needed a blood culture.In all of high school, I did nothing that was input into the real world.The Real WorldI was intent on putting my sons to school in the real world.That put me at odds with a progressive school system intent on parking their butts passively at a desk wholly removed from the real world.Should anyone have the ability to pass laws that tell me how I can or cannot educate my own children?I will say this. My youngest just before turning 14 accompanied his best friend to his mother’s homeland of Bolivia. Because her father was the Governor of La Paz state and her sister the minister of mines, he was able to go down in the tin, zinc, copper and silver mines. There he found that more than half the workers were his age or younger. When a miner died, average age 33, the son took over. They could not eat during a shift as the mine gases would spoil the food, so they chewed coca leaves. They saw the sun one day a week.As his party left, the mine manager, seeing a young red-head and assuming he was American approached him repeating in a hollow voice, “ayúdanos. Ayudanos.”That experience I call a real-world education. His classmates back in the states were not getting that education. They would have had to break the law to do so.

What is a liberal!All this bickering over liberal vs conservative argument was ushered out of the conversation when Trump took office. This is no longer a mere disagreement on policy. No longer a “let’s agree to disagree”, laissez-faire attitude towards each other. The GOP is no longer Republicans but Trumpublicans. But the erosion of the conservative party began way before Trump.“Neoconservatives blame the “adversarial” counterculture of the 1960s, which dismissed traditional values and religion as old-fashioned, irrelevant, or even reactionary”. They maintain that liberal degeneration represents a real and present danger to Western civilization”. So, folks like Newt Gingrich, Mitch McConnell, Carl Rove, Roger Ailes, Chris Jankowski, (the guy behind the Republican RedMap, gerrymandering scheme), emerged as a new breed of Republicans that relegated the sense of fair play to a winner takes all no matter what, attitude. A relatively small sect (about 1%) including The Koch Brothers, the Mercers, the Mellon family, The Heritage Foundation, John M. Olin, the De Vos’, and the Coors family are part of a cabal of financial elites that joined with the neo-conservatives and together financed a well-crafted message of an ideology, which has simmered below the surface of conservative thought for half a century and has now boiled to the top and become the new “alt-right” politics, economics, and culture.One of the benefits of a democratic society are institutions that constrain any abuse of one group over another. In theory, the federal government is the only power the collective people have against such abuse. The government has been hijacked and corrupted beyond its purest intention. Why? Because we have made money and ideology the king of power over the rule of law and representation. Yet, one can understand why ideologues and corporations try to demolish the power that constrains them. If they can’t do what they want, the next best thing is to buy and control the restrainer. The neo-cons and corporate elite realized that the only way to gain control is to initiate a unified campaign to manipulate public opinion. They propagate the belief that liberal society, has become amoral, adrift, and degenerate. The corporate elite bought politicians, litigators, educators, talk radio, cable television, social media, and paid entertainers to arouse the disenfranchised population.The elite don’t have a party. They play party politics. They hedge their bets by financially contributing to both candidates. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves. But when Liberals encourage people to question established authority, criticize religion, and reject traditional beliefs, the corporate elites realized that aligning themselves with neo-con and extreme religious ideology could really work. They spin a pernicious and deceitful new narrative that intellectuals are ‘a privileged liberal elite’ out of touch with ‘the real people.’ Although, the neo-liberals are a part of the corporate elite and in many ways just as guilty of buying politicians. The alt-right have deliberately made the word ‘liberal’ a sinister epithet. The dark-money funded message use phrases like ‘free enterprise,’ vs socialism/communism, ‘individual rights,’ vs government intrusion, ‘patriots,’ Nationalists and ‘America first’ to describe themselves as the opponents of liberalism.This covert clan pull off a clever yet devastating coup by diverting public anger away from financial and corporate power and turning it on experts, journalists, and intellectuals. They also, allege that taxing the rich to aid the poor is enabling, creates dependency, undermines individual initiative, ambition, and responsibility. In their eyes, the liberals want to turn America into communists where the poor largely consists of 'looters and moochers' stealing from society's hardworking productive class. Massive government abuse and corruption adds fuel to the anti-liberal-government message, which helps to infect the minds and hearts of people who were already becoming disillusioned by the dismantling of the American dream.The final straw was when a black man became the president of the United States. The elite/neocons created a political action group known as the Tea Party, which started a rapid shift in the political landscape. They spent fortunes on focus groups and propaganda techniques. It’s all about slogans and catchy titles. “Big bad government is out to get you.” “Drain the Swamp”, “Make America Great Again.” They don’t need to define what that means; they just need to repeat it enough times where it sticks in the psyche of enough people. The followers don’t ask for a definition; they will fill in the blanks themselves.Trumpublicans are not the cause -- they are the effect. And Trump is just the cherry on top. The real ruling class creates a culture war and replaces the fight against inequality with anti-intellectualism, (dubbing them, communists, socialists, snowflakes, fake news and the enemy of the people). And now we have the interesting twist of Putin and the anti-democracy movement. So, what does a catchy title like the Tea Party represent to any of us?How ‘bout Revolution against tyranny? No taxation without representation?That’s what most people think the Boston Tea Party was about—the colonial Americans protesting high taxes on imported British tea, without a say in the matter. This is just a bullshit myth. The truth is—it was a revolt against tax exemptions, specifically, one to give a monopoly to the East India Trading Company. This tax break allowed the East India Company to sell tea for half the old price and cheaper than the price of tea in England, so they could easily undercut the prices offered by the mom-and-pop tea merchants. Today it’s called, Amazon, Home Depot, Wallmart, etc, there is nothing “free enterprise” about these huge corporations, the little guy can never compete with these giants. Colonists resented this favored treatment of a major company. ‘Taxation without representation’ meant hitting the average person and small business with taxes while letting the richest and most powerful corporation in the world off the hook. It was government sponsorship of one corporation over all competitors. Sound familiar? And most Americans fight for this distorted form of capitalism. The new Tea Party named themselves after a revolt against the very type of government they elected today.It’s all about crafting the message around survival. Make your livelihood, and safety, appear to be in danger or difficult to afford because of outsiders. Make education, which gives you opportunities to compete too expensive and unattainable, and eventually, fear begets primal thinking… Blame and violence are inevitable. The well-crafted narrative is designed to stoke the flames of fear and confusion. Blame the government, blame the minorities, blame the liberals…blame the conservatives. It’s like a card trick. A classic sleight of hand. Distract you over here while the trick is being played with the other hand. History has shown us that great empires always fall from within. Keep the message confusing—polish and reinforce beliefs in the churches and media. And so, it becomes…blame turns into violence and chaos, and eventually control, authoritarianism and oppression ensue. All while Putin plays his fiddle.I think the biggest challenge society faces is not immigration but technology. We are advancing faster than society can keep up with, and our government institutions are as antiquated as the rotary dial phone. The older generation was brought up on the idea that every U.S. citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity if they worked hard and followed the rules. But when that hard work at the factory or in the coal mine goes away, either because technological advances or globalization has made it obsolete, what happens? The people get pushed aside. And many Americans are feeling abandoned. We, as a society, have not figured out how to compensate for that dilemma.Originally, it was industrialists who were the real power in the American economy — men and women who actually made things. America made a dramatic shift in the '80s when we started to transform ourselves from a manufacturing economy to a financial economy. That’s when Wall Street turned America upside down. They call it financialization, where, instead of making products, they made transactions — financial products, like credit default swaps and collateralize debt obligations. So, a new generation of corporate owners began to rear its ugly head in America. This is when old established companies that actually cared about their company, the integrity of their products, and their employees, either sold out for big profits or were forced to. This was the beginning of the fall of our working class. Companies such as Bain Capital, Romney’s Company, and others like the Carlyle Group made their fortunes by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back.Romney, for example, is known as the leverage buyout king of America. Companies like Bain would put a small percentage down and borrow the rest to take over a company. But here’s the trick, they don’t have to pay it back. The company they take over is responsible for the debt. Once Bain takes over, they force it into what’s called, ‘dividend recapitalization,’ which essentially means that the company has to cash in a bunch of shares and pay Bain and its investors a huge sum of money. In other words, they take over a struggling company, faced with threatening changes in the industry, and they force them to cash out entirely and pay all their money to the new owners. In essence, these fine, upstanding, vulture capitalists pile up more debt onto unsuspecting companies, write enormous checks that other people have to cover, and eventually drive the company out of business.Thanks to deregulating Wall Street when the already struggling company now goes into massive debt, they are forced to cut salaries and benefits and, lay off employees or outsource to countries like China and Mexico. The new owners, like Bain, don’t give a shit about people, or the company for that matter. They only care about profit. Workers are irrelevant in this scam. In many cases, they have the audacity to make the employees go to Mexico, India, China, or wherever they outsource and make them train the new foreign employees before they’re laid off.Oh, but here is the best part. When the company pays the monthly debt service, that service is deductible, which makes these schemes economically feasible. Those deductions are your government handouts. Talk about corporate welfare. And to add insult to injury, because it’s an investment and not considered income, assholes like Romney don’t pay income tax; they pay capital gains tax at 15%. And with all the tax loopholes, he ends up paying less than 14%. Romney’s worth about $250 million and pays less than 14% in taxes. While lazy moochers like the working class are strapped with the tax burden. Yet the conservatives call things like Social Security and Medicare, “entitlements”.That’s the craft of the messaging. They aren’t entitlements in the derogatory sense—they are not government handouts. But actually, you are—in fact—entitled to these benefits. Everyone who has paid taxes since their first job have been paying for their Social Security and Medicare their whole life. But there’s an example of deliberate wordsmithing. The alt-right uses that word ‘entitlement’ because, out of context, it sounds pejorative. You think those words are used by accident? No word is used by accident by the spin doctors. Think tanks and focus groups are paid handsomely to craft the best words to manipulate the minds of the public. Then they repeat them over and over again, until they become part of the psyche. This is psychological warfare, and they are winning.” repeat a short, clever slogan over and over, and it will be accepted by many as truth, without question. This is a classic propaganda technique. Edward Bernays called it ‘engineering consent.’”Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, father of public relations and Madison Avenue. He pioneered the scientific technique of shaping and manipulating public opinion. His writings on these techniques were used by the Nazis in World War II. Ironically, Bernays was a Jew. One technique is the use of language and other forms of communication in order to influence brain behavior. Once, he was quoted as saying, “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”One may say -- Well, people’s hardships are not my problem. I’m not my brother’s keeper. Survival of the fittest and all that. First of all, out of 320 million Americans: seventy-three million are children. Forty-six million are elderly. And fifty-three million are disabled—3.8 million are vets. That’s 175.8 million right there. The rest, according to the latest 3.8% employment statistics, over 96.2 percent of the entire population, are working. Yet even though they are working, forty-five million people live below the poverty line. Now, one still may ask why should I be responsible for everybody else? It is proven that when a society feels safe, and all of its members are thriving there is less crime, less violence, less illness and drug abuse and much more productivity; which in turn creates a much healthier economy as a whole, not just for the 1%.Here are 16 simple things that Lori Gallagher Witt wrote, which I added further discussion on several points in italics and included citations, that describe what I have also come to espouse as a liberal:1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. Period. Trump, his cabinet, Mitch McConnell and his Trumpublican cabal disagree : Trump Budget Deeply Cuts Health, Housing, Other Assistance for Low- and Moderate-Income Families2. I believe that in a civil society that healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that's interpreted as "I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all." This is not the case. I'm fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it's impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes "let people die or go bankrupt because they can't afford healthcare" a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And I don’t have a problem raising taxes on people who make over $10 million a year. Trumpublicans have made it their mission to take this away. Trump’s new health insurance rules expected to hurt ObamacareI am for some kind of Universal Healthcare. And don’t say we can’t afford it. If you’re married with at least one child, you pay in premiums alone about $1,200-$1,400 per month. If you’re single, it’s probably closer to $300. That’s before any deductibles you have to pay on any health care services you receive or medications you are prescribed. With all of that, the average American spends about $10,345 a year on health care. Despite paying into my social security and Medicare my entire adult life, I personally pay $132.19 for Medicare plus my supplement of $104. Totaling $236.19 a month.Here's how much the average American spends on health careLet’s take a look at Canada’s health care system. Canada spends about $230 billion per year on their universal health care system. That money ensures that all 36 million Canadian citizens are covered by health care. This means that the system costs Canada $7,666 per citizen per year. Based on that number, a similar system would cost the United States a little less than $2.2 trillion per year, in order to cover the 289 million US citizens living in the US.We currently spend:$672 billion on Medicare$565 billion on MedicaidAnd $79 billion of the VA’s Budget is for Veteran’s Medical Care.All three of these programs are now unnecessary because the new system covers everyone.So, The first $1.3 trillion is already covered.That leaves 915 billionNow. There are 142 million taxpayers in the United States.The average salary is $56,516, 1.45% of which goes to Medicare through payroll tax, $819 per year. Consider, instead of paying private for-profit insurance companies their premiums and paying all of your deductibles, paying $5,629 per year more into a Medicare for All System.The average American saves $3,897 per year, and the entire system is deficit neutral.There are other things in the $4 trillion budget that can be cut to cover more of that cost and make it even easier on the average American taxpayer, but the numbers are the numbers, and even if the average taxpayer is covering the entire additional cost, they are still ahead an average of $324 per month. Meanwhile, you don’t have to worry about what happens if you get laid off and your wife has cancer. How Much Does Breast Cancer Treatment Cost in the U.S? You don’t have to worry about the rising cost of insulin to treat your diabetes. https://health.usnews.com/health... You don’t have to consider taking an Uber to the hospital while you’re having a stroke, or you’ve been bitten by a rattlesnake because you’re worried about how much the ambulance bill’s going to be. https://www.washingtonpost.com/n... Vets don’t have to wait on the VA anymore; they’re citizens too. All you have to worry about now is keeping lawmakers in charge who won’t spend all their time cutting the system to make it crappy. It’s a common myth/criticism that liberals want “Free stuff from the Government.” Wrong. There are certain services, education, for example, public safety, roads, etc., that we all expect the government to provide, and we pay taxes to cover those costs. What’s wrong with adding health care to that list if it saves you money?3. I believe education should be affordable and accessible to everyone. It doesn't necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries today, and in America in the 60s, so I'm mystified as to why it can't work in the US today), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt. The Trumpublican cabinet has no interest. DeVos escalates fight with states over student loan companies4. I don't believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don't want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. Every society will have bad actors. A lot of people who are out there on the streets are, mentally ill, and or drug addicts. Now, many of those drug addicts are on opioids prescribed by the medical doctors who are on the take. I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth, while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can't afford to go to the doctor. Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this. Somehow believing that makes me a communist. The Trumpublican rich get richer on the backs of the middle class and stick them with the bill. CHARTS: Here's How GOP's Tax Breaks Would Shift Money To Rich, Poor Americans5. I don't throw around "I'm willing to pay higher taxes" lightly. If I'm suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it's because I'm fine with paying my share as long as it's actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die of poverty and neglect. How the Tax Act Embodies the Republican Culture of Corruption6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live. Millions of low-wage workers in the US are struggling to survive7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is - and should be - illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I'm not "offended by Christianity" -- I'm offended that you're trying to force me to live by your religion's rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That's how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don't force it on me or mine. And stop being a hypocrite! BTW, if you think Trump is a Christian, I’d like to sell you some underwater land in Florida. Under Trump, America's religious right is rewriting its code of ethics8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you. Trump administration dismantles LGBT-friendly policies9. I do not believe in “open boarders”, I don't believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're "stealing" your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally or you’ve got the crappiest job in the world and you should consider bettering yourself. I'm not opposed to deporting people who are here illegally, but I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children in cages, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc). Many immigrants have literally walked over 1000 miles with nothing but the clothes on their back to escape, being raped, murdered, or enslaved. Do I want them here? The honest answer is NO! But there are a lot of Americans I don’t want here either. Who am I to say they can’t be? What did I do to get here? I slipped out of my immigrant mother’s vagina. Impressive! America is better than Trump's cruel immigration policiesFACTS:Illegal immigrants increase the national GDP by around $1.6 trillion per year. Over half of farm workers are illegal immigrants, not to mention construction workers and maintenance and domestic workers. All the shit you white guys will never do. Undocumented workers are a major driving force in the economy. Sadly, because employers can get away with paying them below minimum wage with no benefits, you and everyone else can purchase low-cost food and other goods and services while corporations make outrageous profits. Besides the fact that immigrants pay taxes, including sales and excise, personal income, and property taxes. In addition, they contribute as much as $1.5 billion to the Medicare system and $7 billion to the Social Security system even though they will never be able to collect those benefits when they retire. https://www.americanprogress.org...Most welfare programs require proof of legal immigration status, and under the 1996 Welfare Law, even legal immigrants cannot receive these benefits until they have been in the United States for more than five years. Undocumented workers cannot apply for welfare, unemployment, disability, Medicare, or food stamps due to their immigration status. https://www.nilc.org/issues/econ...10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, and bank and corporate fraud and abuse etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation. The aforementioned cabal of corporate oligarchs have a vested interest in deregulating all of their interests. Oil, coal, Wall street, Big Pharma, Big Agra, Big Chemical, etc. for obvious reasons. Tracking deregulation in the Trump era11. I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about fascist characteristics to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past. Opinion | Noah Berlatsky: Is the U.S. government fascist? Signs suggest we're headed in that direction12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege -- white, straight, male, economic, etc. -- need to start listening, even if you don't like what you're hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that's causing people to be marginalized. How the Republican Party Became The Party of Racism13. I am not interested in coming after your blessed guns, nor is anyone serving in government. What I am interested in is sensible policies, including background checks, that just MIGHT save one person’s, perhaps a toddler’s life by the hand of someone who should not have a gun. Opinion | How to Reduce Shootings14. I believe in so-called political correctness to a degree. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. The Trump era has brought out the worst in our society and given permission to expose our darkest side as acceptable and even encouraged. Unfiltered Voices From Donald Trump’s Crowds Insult Politics: Donald Trump, Right-Wing Populism, and Incendiary ...15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. The evidence that man does in fact contribute to climate change is overwhelming. But even if climate was not a concern, toxicity and pollution are. Clean air, water and soil is imperative for sustaining the health of the planet and its inhabitants. And it is our right over your profit. I am a health care specialist, specializing in detoxification so if you want to argue this any further, hold my beer. Benefits of Renewable Energy Use16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. And the right to control their own body. Why on earth shouldn’t they be? What do men get that women don't? Here are a few thingsI don’t like to be pigeon-holed into any ideology. The truth is I'm not a Democrat or a Republican, a Libertarian or a Socialist. I am a female, conscious, sovereign human being. I believe in civil rights. I believe in women's rights, and Gay rights, I believe in a "living wage", (for God sake!) and equal pay, I believe in the division of church and state, I believe in pro-choice and pro-life, in other words, I believe in the right to bodily integrity, what I -- as a sovereign human being-- do with my own body is MY business, not the governments, yet I believe you cannot say you're a "pro-lifer" and be pro-gun, pro war and pro capital punishment. I believe in being a good steward to my planet and my fellow beings, all-be-it, human, animal or plant. I believe that serving the whole will benefit the individual (that's been mathematically proven by the way, see John Nash's economic theory). I believe that love is more powerful than hate and that somehow love shall prevail.If you share these principles, then surprise – you’re a liberal.