I am reminded of a remark by Paul Krugman that Americans don’t know other countries exist. The assumption is that America is number one in everything and nowhere else matters or has anything to teach us.
I agree but it goes far beyond that. Most Americans are willfully ignorant, meaning that `not only do they not know, they don't even want to know. One sees eyes glaze over when trying to relate experiences or simple facts.
Most Americans do not have a college education, according to American Historian Jefferson Cowie about 2/3 don't, but around 51% have passports, so that shows an interest in the world. Still that is 49% who do not have them, and may not be interested in leaving the country. I imagine that many people in other countries are like that too. I am living in Germany and Germans love to travel. It is well situated to visit many other countries which are nearby, but many people I know here travel to more distant lands too.
I knew people in Chicago who had never been 20 miles beyond downtown in their lives even in the late 80s. But the basic problem is not college, it's public education, which has deteriorated enormously in the last few decades. History and geography are rolled into social studies and watered down. No one learns to memorize any more. Young people are even losing basic writing and arithmetic skills, depending on their phones to do it all for them. I even see that phenomenon in Ukraine (which was not an early adopter and has a pretty decent public school system) where someone in their early 30s can still do easy math in their head quickly, while those in their early 20s cannot do the same problem quickly even on paper. It's not looking good.
Yes, a few weeks ago we were discussing having to memorize the Gettysburg Address (in the fifth grade). A page of math and word problems every night for homework. Have you seen recent social studies books? Pictures, pictures, and (!) more pictures. A paragraph here and there.
I worked as a teacher in the public and private school systems. I found that superior funding and services were provided for students with learning and behaviour difficulties in public education.
I never worked in private schools, but I worked in regular ed and special ed in public schools. In my experience, it varies, some public regular ed schoolteachers are terrific and some are not. When you see teachers let their classes stay 1/2 hr longer for recess, you start to wonder, since those teachers are standing around talking to each other. The same with special ed teachers. Some just babysit, and some have detailed ISPs for every student, no matter how handicapped they are, they have an individualized program and we worked on it every day. My son's RSP teacher carefully picked his regular ed teacher the entire time he was in elementary school. My sister-in-law complained when my niece was suspended for talking too much in class. Some parents are feel entitled too...
I agree, except that I suspect that pictures are easier for some intrinsic learning styles. I would guess that we need both (and others)— music, poetry, arts and crafts, dance…
No, I gained the impression that reading was not important. I understand the argument about learning styles. My son didn't learn to read until the fourth grade, when his RSP teacher took a seminar in the Irlen Method, and tested him and found that he has difficulty reading black print on white paper. Ever since his computer is set at a gray screen, not a bright one, and for books or magazines he uses a peach colored transparency. He went from reading at a first grade level to grade level in three weeks.
Learning happens in a variety of ways that are better or worse for a given individual: visual (seeing), aural (hearing), kinesthetic (touching), and so on. For instance, when I was a kid, I remembered phone numbers forever once I had dialed the number several times, especially if it was several times in a row. To this day, I remembered them better if I write them down (visual+kinesthetic) bu with cellphones I doubt most of us memorize any numbers at all, even our own! Another example of kinesthetic learning: when I was in grade 9, I was a bit bored one day and spent the class filling in all the Os (in pencil) in my history book, just for the heck of it while the lesson went on. When we had a test in history a week or so later, my teacher afterwards said, "If I didn't know you well, I would have thought you cheated because your answer was word-for-word from the book!" Apparemtly, in searching it for Os over and over again, I had unconsciously memorized the entire page and the exam happened to have a question that pertained to it.
In the U.S. we have most of the social support system on our individual shoulders. Whether it’s reasonable or not, our ‘you’re on your own’ attitude probably makes us feel miserly.
You're probably on your own works when nothing goes wrong. But when disaster strikes (Helene in NC, SC, TN, and VA), people are quick to complain (loudly) about how they're being ignored and/or abandoned.
I’m going to bet $100 that many of that 51% who have passports only have them so that they can go on a cruise ship with mostly other people who look just like themselves. They probably never travel to an actual country on their own other than those cruises.
StephenSchiff, true. I would add from my experience people from other countries learn more than one language while the majority of Americans don’t really care in learning languages. My experience in my job( retired recently) is having the privilege of meeting children from other countries that have learned more than their own language, they are multilingual, while majority of Americans are monolinguals.
I’ve had seven and eight year olds that speak 3-4 languages, and also learn English, and at a very good pace and want to learn it, I might add.
Like you said: in America they don’t care to learn.
Exactly. On both of my trips to Japan I was repeatedly accosted by groups of school children (3rd graders even) eager to practice their ego-ga. We had lots of fun with them speaking to me in English while I did my best to reply in my awful Japanese.
Also I have friends in Germany who speak no English though their French is far better than mine.
in fairness, our country dwarfs European countries in its population and geography; it's also bordered by two oceans, and we've been a very successful imperial country in the 20th century. Those variables factor into our lack of interest in learning languages: yes, a real pity for us.
It's actually an English trait, handed down from the imperial motherland lol. The English never ever bothered to learn the native languages where they arrived: India, African countries, Australia, you name it. The natives were expected to pick up English, which the more ambitious generally did. Yet studies have confirmed that bilingual children do much better at learning. Maybe this is what's gone wrong with the US more than anything. Ukraine started teaching English in Grade 1 about 15 years ago (as opposed to grade 5, which is when language acquisition begins to decline in humans) and it's been remarkable (although personally I think Grade 1 may be a bit too soon, especially as Ukrainian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, so it's a lot of learning for little kids).
Around 78 mil voted for Trump, about 75 mil voted for Kamala, and around 93 mil eligible voters did not vote at all. Now, that does not add up to the majority voted for him twice. Just the majority of those who actually voted.
When was that? He failed to win the popular vote in '16 and '20 by huge amounts (3 million and 7 million) and this time the share that voted for him was still less than the share that voted against him: 31.2% vs 31.9% (if I remember correctly).
They voted and elected the walking disaster, Trump. No sane person, with a little knowledge of 20th century history would vote for the deformed creature.
How about this: Based on circa 55 years’ experience and circa 100 trips abroad, …
So you are correct in the sense that I wasn't rigorous in developing the statistics and can only relate my results qualitatively. Moreover my sample is biased in that most of the people I know are college graduates.
BTW what's your evidence to the contrary? Just asking.
Trump won the election. That's it. He won it by the rules set out in your constitution, and in the system you have. If Harris had won by the same margin, you wouldn't be arguing this. Just shut up already on this tired, exhausting excuse.
There has been substantial evidence that a lot of tinkering went on (to put it diplomatically) even before Election Day, and then there's Trump's own recent comment, literally, that the election was "rigged." It's just not clear why the Democrats have done nothing, not even asked for an audit of swing states, where most of the unorthodox activity took place.
Of course it's possible the election, like 2016, was fixed. But absent even an attempt to get it investigated, absent any proof, absent any Democrat push, then it's the result we have. It's a waste of time to make such an argument. It's done; Harris et al conceded. Trump has been inaugurated. Not a peep of dissent from the Senate or House Democrats, esp. on the validity of the result.
Am I right in discerning from your comment -- and you do make a valid point in my view -- that you are not an American citizen (since you say "your constitution" and "the system you have")? May I ask which system and/or country is your own, if it is not too personal a question?
Hello Kate. I'm Canadian. The main reason I'm so angry, and 40 million other Canadians, is because my home and my country has been threatened by an unpredictable psychopath. We don't know where, or how, this will end, but we have Ukraine as a warning. Thank you for your comment.
In China, the 15th Century Ming emperor took the same view. The great exploration fleets of the admiral Zheng He were recalled, and all Chinese foreign outposts were closed. The emperor felt that everything of any importance was already in China, and that the barbaric world outside had no value. Sound familiar?
If Zheng He had been allowed to continue, I think it would be reasonable to think that the American settlers would have come across lands possessed by people speaking Mandarin, which we would speak today.
Wonder what all of these rankings will look like in a year. Just as Germany will infuse a lot of money to upgrade their system, at least is planning to, I assume the US will drop on the health care ranking as it shutters the two biggest health care insurances in the country, Medicare and Medicaid. Hospitals will shut down, doctors offices, there will be fewer treatment options and child mortality rate will climb as well as deaths of moms. The US will have more people on the streets, more people ill because they will not have shelter, care or jobs, or health insurance. The next contagious pandemic will be uncontrollable because of the breakdown in systems.
While I think the Danish legacy of treatment of Greenlanders is akin to the US and Canada of Native Americans, I would say that Greenlanders should gain autonomy and that does not mean Trump coming in and occupying their country and colonizing them too. Because Trump is such a stone, cold racist in the vein of George Wallace and the southern idea of dominion, he will probably believe that indigenous Greenlanders cannot think for themselves, and Trump has no respect for the PM of Denmark because she is a woman. However, we will look to the EU to back up Greenland as a colony of Denmark, and King Charles III is still the sovereign over the Commonwealth of Canada.
I did not know the history of Greenland and that Denmark colonized it. I thought it was always inhabited by Erik the Red and his Viking descendants. I now know that that population declined and the Inuit arrived, and were treated the same as the US and Canada indingenous when the Danes arrived.
Does the Danish government acknowledge this? Are the Inuit today integrated with the Danes or are they segregated?
Not segregated - but this UN report from 2023 is very illuminating. The only potentially positive result of the current interest in Greenland, is that the Danish government is acknowledging the ills of its colonial past and hastily trying to undo its effects.
Viking settlers lasted only a few hunded years originally because the later settlers brought over sheep that overgrazed what little greenery there was and the Europeans refused to learn fishing techniques (harpooning) from the native peoples. Vikings lasted only a decade in North America before the native people drove them out! There are books out there about all this, such as Jared DIamond's "Collapse," which has a chapter on the Vikings in Greenland. (The book's a bit tough going, unfortunately.)
You don’t have to be an economist to know that Krugman’s remark about Americans is true of many of us. It’s certainly true of Americans (including my own family) who don’t travel or have any desire to. Almost half of Americans don’t even have a passport. Travel is the great educator.
Today it was reported in LeMonde that the American embassy sent out an email to French companies saying if they wish to continue to do business with the American government must certify they do not have DEI programs or else. They have five days to comply. The arrogance! I hope they all stand down. The regime wishes to divide Europeans.
I hope that the French government will tell the Americans that they have 5 days to rescind their ridiculous demand or whatever diplomat runs the Trade Relations desk at the embassy will be declared PNG (persona non grata) and deported if not out of the country in 48 hours. (I believe this is the diplomatic equivalent to saying "Fuck off!")
I'm pretty sure that, no matter how the message were conveyed, the Trump/JD response would have bold & arrogant notes, with a whiney aftertaste and nuance of childish petulance.
Thx for this, Sara. "What surprised Trump is that Canadians don't take kindly to being treated as the chump who gets thrown into the turnbuckle. We are fighting back hard, and Trump didn't see it coming."
If I knew how to create an image with AI, the prompt would be "Donald Trump standing at the Canadian border with a deer in the headlights look."
LOVE the Canadians! I'm proud to have ancestors buried there.
The last time we talked you told me you were doing some things in your garden. I'll have you know that you inspired me to get back into my front garden to start working again. Like you, I'm going to need bags and bags of mulch. There's a cheap 40-lb. bag of mulch I used to buy that I felt had not been composted enough to use in the garden. So I had them hauled to the composters in the back garden. I started off with 3 bags in one composter. Then I added leaves, small twigs, kitchen waste, etc., and used my pitchfork to turn it until it was full and ready. Then I shut that one down and started using its mature compost, then started the same with the other. That way I had a never-ending supply of good compost. I need to start that again.
Before I forget, and because you and I seem to have the same tastes in reading, there's a book I forgot to tell you about that is very important in understanding the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin of Aug. 1939. It is Roger Moorehouse's The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941. Prof. Snyder cites it in his Black Earth. It helped to fill in a lot of details for me, such as the period from Nov. 1940 through the Wehrmacht's invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Also, Poland plays a big role in this book. I learned a lot from it.
I will get a copy Rose thank you. Jan Gross Revolution From Abroad also discusses this period and my favorite-he is very readable, garden proceeds. Your composting sounds amazing. Last year I was exploring Baron Hirsch farmers who benefited from his programs. I located a farm which is still in operation and has beautiful organic compost by the yard amongst other materials. The family came here from Rohaytn. I am looking forward to heading their way to catch up on this past winter. I haven’t done composting myself. I have so many critters about. Yesterday I was heading out and stopped for a beautiful fox with a bird in its mouth. It was surprised I waited for it to cross the road Kindred spirits here. Marvelous
Jan Gross's Revolution From Abroad has been sitting on my shelf for a few years and I know I need to read it because it's cited in several of the books I've read.
Rose I thank you You have inspired me to go dig some furrows in the yard for the onions and potatoes I had gotten sidetracked with my little greenhouses
Do you grow from seed, Sara? I've tried growing decorative onion from seed, but no luck. But I grow almost everything else from seed, including flowers. The easiest are the ones you just throw out in the autumn—at least in my part of the country—like larkspur, poppy, and nigella. They start to sprout late in the year after the cold weather sets in, and the seedlings stay about 1" tall while their roots are developing, then in the spring they suddenly start growing fast. Their seeds need to go through a cold/wet period before sprouting. But of course you already know this.
Talking of which, years ago I bought a book on seeds by the late chemistry professor Norman Deno, who died in 2017 at the age of 96. He had a keen interest in growing from seed, and he and his volunteer doctoral students spent years trying to learn the chemical processes that all seeds must go through in order to sprout. From Wikipedia: "He was a professor of chemistry at Penn State University and is known as one of the foremost researchers in seed germination theory. He researched the biochemical reactions that underlie the germination of all seeds, performing germination research on plant species from 150 families, 800 genera, and 2500 species over the course of his career." The book I have was self-published, and doesn't have an index. The research is so important that it needs to be edited and republished, so it can be more useful.
There are lots of vegetables that are very easy to grow from seed, like lettuce, though now it's too late where I live because lettuce needs cool temps. Okra is also easy from seed, and its flowers are quite attractive.
I have a weed problem, though, but don't want to use anything like Round Up. A year or so ago I bought a Propane Vapor Torch Kit but haven't used it yet because I haven't gotten the tank filled. I understand that it kills weeds at the root, which is the key to getting rid of them. If you miss even one little bit of a root, the weed will come back.
This is an evolving question. I have seeds and I think I am truly end up using them for late planting fall early winter harvesting. So the temp is high enough for the seeds to sprout and plants to grow . I have a good supply of fabric planters large enough to support ex- eggplant. Otherwise I will purchase plants. For several ++ years I purchase vegetables from the farmers. It’s cost effective. I do like watching Mr Hedgehog and his compadre chomping on squash and other goodies. For the onions potatoes and strawberries I have ordered plants from burpees. I am a hardy perennial gardener I will have to admit I start out strong but then fade out particularly with the ticks here. So my gardens are now cleaned etc. but after the peonies have their show I go off to other projects. I am in NW CT it’s still cool here
I heard that the US has the audacity to require contractors to state they will not embrace the fact that the world is full of diverse people and ideas (DEI). It is inexcusable, as is threatening to take over other nations. We have never acknowledged our own imperialistic, genocidal past, and now the US is trying reactivate that.
Dear embassy: thank you for your letter. We are happy to certify but our notary who does such things is out sick. You should know in any event that “dei” is an American concoction and doesn’t exist in Europe. In fact the opposite has been true and sometimes excessively.
Please be assured that the notary will quickly carry out the certification upon his return. Your request and letter will be forwarded to him through facilitated channels. Truly, for the company.
I haven't seen a report of this communication before. If true the arrogance is unbelievable. Once again, I have to "cry the beloved country" (thank you, Alan Paton).
Just another thing the Mumps don't know: just exactly how the average Frenchman is likely to take dictation of that sort. Hahahahaha... the LEAST likely people in the world to 'comply' with the Mump's demands. "Embrasse mon cul!"
It is a firestorm. They want to demoralize us and that can not be. Do not think for a minute that the move against Greenland or the Panama Canal or Canada has anything to do with the desire of Americans. It is the twisted, greedy little hands of musk and tRump. Everyone, that means all of us must fight this monster of this government.
Here's to Greenland, Panama, Canada and also Ukraine!!!
I’m with you there. Who are Trump and Vance to be arrogantly threatening Canada and Greenland with annexation, or turning toward Putin and his destructive foreign policies? We are not Russia, which has been under the domination of authoritarianism since the time of Ivan Groznyi.
He certainly does not have my permission, as an American voter, to turn us into the best ally Moscow's ever had. I loved us 50 years ago as a child, now I'm moving to Maine, just to be closer to Canada. Also because Bruce moved there. This is not the America I've known all my life.
Sherry thank you for your support. I’m not a Panamanian but many in my family are. I was born in Atlanta in 1947 and I have family roots going back over 100 years before the American Revolution. We moved to Panama in 1954 and we’re still here. It’s home. My dad was a paratrooper in the Pacific in WWII and I’m glad he’s no longer here to witness the destruction of the country he so bravely fought for and his friends died for.
When we lived in West Germany in the 80s , we watched CNN international which gave up to date news from around the world. Europeans are open to hearing world news, in the US, we see very limited coverage of the world. No surprise that we think the US is the center of the universe
While people often decry Americans' tendency to flock to Fox News -- maybe it makes those devoted viewers feel 'special' -- I think it is a very useful way to denote their overall level of political naivete'.
Very useful intel for targeted marketing designed to persuade people it's not worth their time or trouble to actually go out and vote.
One has to work hard to get international news here. Even BBC on PBS is a scant 30 minutes and then repeats itself for the second half hour of the broadcast
Deutsche Welle is excellent , is online in English and Le Monde also worth reading. We have to really work at finding good international coverage outside of earthquakes and disasters. There’s a whole continent of africa which we know little about.
Almost every country is like that -- except for the United States.
There are statistical studies out there that use a metric of whether people have passports as a gauge for measuring Trump's base of support. The statistical correlation is highly significant, if not downright causal. Overwhelmingly, Trumpazoids have never traveled outside American borders.
I have never traveled outside of this country since I was 15 years old and lived two months in Belgium. I do not have a passport, as I have had no opportunity to travel abroad. I would have liked to, always thought I would, but my husband's work never gave me a chance. Still, I keep in touch with the news and no at least the primary issues of the day. It is outrageous that a stupid poll equates me to those who voted for Trump. I'm not nearly that stupid.
Certainly the English language is the lingua franca of the developed world, and the US led both NATO and the Pax Americana. That has something to do with it, I think.
Dear Dr. Snyder. Hans Christian Anderson was prophetic regarding the Trump/Musk administration. The emperors profess their refinery, and in reality, they are without clothes or morality. Lewis G. Carroll was also a prophet - the United States is through the looking glass, where up is down, fat is thin, and short is tall. It is becoming a struggle to process the chaos we face every day with a new fresh Hell awaiting. We talk about when this will end; unfortunately, I think the chickens have come home to roost. Resist and live each day with dignity. Survive another day.
Ah, yes, Lewis' through the looking glass, where up is down, fat is thin, and short is tall. Forgot about that. I usually refer to Orwell's Doublethink from "1984": “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” I will use "through the looking glass" to describe Trumpworld. It's more poetic than Doublethink.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see Denmark cancel the status of forces agreement that allows the Americans to have the base in Greenland. At some point the insults will reach a point that a response will be required.
Wow, it would be great if Denmark would kick us out, my visceral reaction. But who knows what reaction the dumb bunnies in the government might do. I feel so helpless sometimes, watching one after another stupid and malevolent moves chump & company make. Sigh !
All of this for a man whose inattention (and likely untreated ADHD) from childhood to the Presidency (informing his disastrous decision making), whose inability to experience empathy for “the other”, and who in speaking to a celebration of MAGA women (only) in the WH 2 days ago began using babytalk to tell those women “I have a gift for you”…”It’s called “infertility”. This man unbelievably has suckered millions of people into his trance. I will NEVER get use to it.
Donald Trump’s father Fred Sr. helped to make Donald into a sociopath, and Donald’s own experiences made him an insecure narcissist. Roy Cohn simply helped to put the finishing touches on Donald’s sociopathy. With Donald’s usual commitment to “loyalty,” he dropped Cohn like a hot potato once Cohn fell ill with what Cohn claimed was liver cancer, but was actually AIDS. Cohn, like Trump, secretly hated himself. Roy Cohn’s final verdict on Trump was that “Donald Trump pisses ice water.”
I read Mary Trump and Michael Cohen's 1st books right after they were published. Clearly this family was the dark version of the Addam’s Family. And, even if Baby Hannibal wasn’t hyper and inattentive, the outcome might be a different kind of malignant adult. But, from everything I’ve read and everything we’ve observed and witnessed, Hannibal Lecter cannot hold a thought, is clearly inattentive (we see it and it’s been reported AdNauseum), he lived a ‘fast’ life, and is an inpatient bully. I think Sr. put him in military school because he couldn’t handle him. That is the root and center of his origin story, layered with narcissistic, sociopathic and cruel purpose. Much of what I’ve learned is from the psychiatrists, like Dr. Bandy Lee and her colleagues substack.com/@bandyxlee who continue to warn us and prepare us for this world disaster.
Just two things to add to your description of this disordered man. He has undiagnosed dyslexia too. Poor spelling is a sign of it. And inability to experience empathy is the hallmark of narcissistic personality disorder, which is incurable.
Something else you might say Carl, is to question just why we are spending so much money to transport these clowns and their wives around the world for photo ops. The SoD was in Hawaii for a beach vacation, the plane he flew on could have carried hundreds, my bet is that it was mostly empty. This is a colossal waste of tax payer dollars, not that any of them care, they are entitled after all. They were planning on sending the VP’s wife to watch a dog sled race for her photo op, until it became apparent that she was as welcome there as cancer.
Vance has to be the slimiest little bitch I have ever seen stain the face of American politics in my 70 years. To wriggle up Trump's fat ass like that without a speck of shame, to tell a silent press that "we cannot ignore the President's wishes" as though the Manchurian Cantaloupe weren't a deranged, psychotic moron with the impulse control of a 3-year-old -- it just boggles the mind.
Let's remind ourselves who's responsible for this unfolding clusterfuck -- Mitch McConnell. Kentucky Fried Voldemort refused to convict a criminal scumbag when he had two chances to do so. One man, virtually alone, stands as the sorry architect of this ridiculous situation.
We Americans have refused to see other than our goodness, our exceptionalism. Now the curtain has parted, and with enormous sadness and growing embarrassment, we reveal what we have allowed to fester and grow here. To many the face of America is Donald Trump, and until we successfully push back, we will live (or perish) with this.
Your belief in your exceptionalism has always been a part of the problem, if not THE problem. The rest of the world always saw how preposterous and unwarranted it was.
I agree with this. We are not exceptional or perfect in any way, shape or form, and we are not immune to political disaster. We have just met up with it again.
The exceptionalism has two sides depending on the sentiments in people and leadership that roughly have divided us since our beginning- or at least the Civil War. Those who believed in our essential goodness were/are aspirational in that claim, that we were going to try an experiment and show the way to organize and live together. There is a lot and a lot of greatness to prove it too. But we had and have this other dark side which has grown. We are after all humanity. We were never the "united" states except in the world wars. There is too much to say about this but exceptionalism can be aspirational. The "rest of the world" has had its problems as well... to put it simply.
2 comments, Potter. [1] The nation has been divided from the start, even before the Constitution was ratified, beginning with the Anti-Federalists. They were the first illiberalists. See Robert Kagan's account of their role throughout our history in his "Rebellion: HOW ANTILIBERALISM IS TEARING AMERICA APART–AGAIN." Agree we were the most united in the world wars
[2] Our exceptionalism was claimed as fact, not aspiration, by right-wing media. Funny, they don't talk about it much anymore.
I am not sure the nation was divided as it became when it led to the Civil War. That deep division due to how we developed, North vs South economically and culturally was profound and led to the Civil War. Many feel it never ended. I am so inclined to believe this on a basic level. I will check Kagan. Thanks.
Regarding your no. 2- Before right-wing media (which I don't listen to and don't know what or when this was claimed by them) is perhaps mindlessly parroting a version of exceptionalism started prior to what we know as right-wing media. The "City upon a Hill" idea began with the Puritans: Gov. Winthrop sermon preached that: "their new colony would become a "City upon a Hill", meaning that they would be a model to all the nations of Europe as to what a properly reformed Christian commonwealth should look like"
Nixon or Reagan may have taken up the idea, originally Christian and there the trouble with the idea begins I think.
According to Wikipedia on American exceptionalism, this (also)started as a description of us more by others and from abroad.
From our beginnings therefore this was used in a good sense, the US as an example. This was aspirational as well as deserved in many ways and helped with cohesion, pride.
That is not saying anything like we therefore deserve to be judged by different standards ( especially now) or be excused for what others consider egregious/ bad behavior as a nation.
As it turns out, we have escaped a lot of what other countries has gone through politically, upheavals, because of our system and how it's been respected as our culture mainly of multiculturalism: all are created equal, give me our tired your poor, etc. That is until now.
Yes, his awful face now represents the US across the NATO nations. I love our liberal democracy, flaws and all, and the Constitution that gave it to us. But when I read about the Canadians' response, I applauded them. I welcome their alliance with pro-democracy Americans.
On an individual level it will be our collective wills pulling together. On a larger scale The Coalition of the Willing and all countries standing up for Democracy. This regime is no longer tearing the world apart it is trying to shred it. I believe our Allies will save us. Standing strong together against the tyrant maggots. The Power of the Powerless. By Vaclav Havel our small individual spirits must find a way to adhere to fight from within. I heard on a podcast yesterday that some part of the U S delegation was knocking on doors in Greenland asking people if they would be interested in meeting Usha Vance. The response by all was NO
I wish we had someone with the political courage of Václav Havel as president now. We have an insecure narcissist and sociopath in office with his equally narcissistic and sociopathic BFF as his unofficial co-president; and a remarkably clueless and arrogant Ivy Leaguer who upholds his president’s stupid and uninformed policies.
Perhaps someone like Václav Havel WILL emerge out of this tyranny. Those who believe in and fight for equal opportunity for all, the obligation of fully informed citizen participation in government, and remaining bonded to our allies, are born out of despotic rule and crimes committed against humanity that we are seeing now.
How did Havel become president? Yugoslavia's Velvet Revolution, so called because it was non-violent. I think we can learn some things from that movement.
You forget, Tim, that during Denmark's deployment of NATO combat troops to Afghanistan under Article Five, 43 Danish soldiers died, with 37 killed in action and 6 in non-combat related incidents, making it the highest loss per capita among coalition forces. Denmark has never been a better ally or a more fearsome one given its size!
Why are people so baffled at the incompetence of this administration at running a country?
It is because most people are finding it impossible to imagine the administration is actually trying to gut their own country as fast as it can.
Listen to Ross Douthat’s (NYT: Matter of Opinion, Mar 7) stunning interview with Chris Rufo, a Project 2025 core author. Rufo says this quiet part out loud. The objective is to completely break US institutions, then rebuild them from zero (with compliant X-AI? Definitely without the left!).
Rufo is both ‘clever’, if also entirely un-American, in his appeal to T about how to effect deep culture change as a minority (eliminate both democracy & liberals, “the enemy”, in gov) and enormously stupid about national security and synergistic power through international alliance & cooperation with others.
(Does not have a clue about what makes America great.)
He forgets power’s nature abhors a power vacuum. He forgets (or worse, knows) that his boss is owned by P, who is ALSO trying to destroy US institutions… But with a completely different culture change in mind!
Chris Rufo should be completely without influence, unfortunately he has too much. He also is allergic to educating students about the more unsavory aspects of our history, which is a big mistake.
It is difficult to listen to Ross Douthat and Chris Rufo, as a liberal American, but so important!! Cicero a lawyer, once said, “he who knows only his own case, knows little of that”.
Every democrat needs to listen in on what the Project 2025 right says to the religious right.
Almost wrote 'It may be difficult' in passive voice. But decided to speak for myself.
Listening to Rufo was so reminiscent of listening to an intelligent psychopath discuss their crime in clinical detail (which I did, 40 years ago as a prison doc, fresh out of training), that it was difficult for ME. He sounded logical, reasonable, and civil. Yet he is totally insane in his internally consistent world view of liberals as 'the enemy', who must be extirpated down to the root.
OMG, Mark!!! You actually know psychopaths. Logical, reasonable, civil and obsessed with his enemy. We are in the hands of human beings with personality disorders that are incurable. 😱😱
Lots of good points here. Why are people baffled? Agree it's because they can't imagine it.
I just want to add a little to this, particularly what to do about thus failure of imagination. Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg discussed this at the NOLA Book Festival two days ago. Goldberg said, "We’re just not used to this. I mean, if we lived in Poland or Russia or across most of the world, actually, we would have experienced things like this." Then he asked her, "[W]hat do people and institutions have to do to expand their thinking or to not have a failure of imagination about what might be coming?"
She said, "It helps to know history. It helps to know some American history. I mean, you know, we can find incidents and reflections in our own history, including right here in Louisiana. There was a governor of Louisiana who, some of you might know his name, pushed the limits—Huey Long. And so there’s a tradition of it and you can study the tradition and learn what people did before . . . So study our own history, study foreign history, pay attention and make new friends. I mean, build coalitions."
That's what we need to do, build coalitions. In fact, the building of the pro-democracy coalition has already started. It began when Snyder published his piece on Trump's lie that the election was stolen as The Big Lie, three days after Jan 6th. Soon after that, the Bulwark expanded its identity from NeverTrump to pro-democracy.
And learn about how previous illiberal movements in the US were defeated.
As to foreign history, two movements we need to study: Yugoslavia's peaceful, nonviolent Velvet Revolution, and Poland's defeat of the authoritarian party that ruled them for 8 years in 2O23.
Thanks, for this SandyG. Wow, you got to interview JG hot off his hot war gig!
I just received a copy of Anne Applebaum's "Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends" two days ago, looking forward to reading it.
(And Lech Welesa, as well, for Poland. 'An electrician by trade, Wałęsa became the leader of the Solidarity movement and led a successful pro-democratic effort, which in 1989 ended Communist rule in Poland and ushered in the end of the Cold War.' Wiki)
I didn't interview him! Maybe you left out the words "see an" in between "to" and "interview"? I heard Applebaum talking about the book when it came out. She said she wrote it to explain people like Tucker Carlson who she calls a political entrepreneur. I immediately got the book. Not too long. You'll enjoy it.
Yes, Welesa. I'll have to search YouTube for a good account of how he became the leader, how the movement developed.
We need an updated Profiles in Courage for all the people who have stood up to tyranny.
Like with Musk-Trump, every accusation is projection. Every insult is really envy. Every bullying move is insecurity. On the international stage it is pure fear that what advanced Democracies have to offer is far more attractive than what the US offers. Be Canada. Be Mark Carney. Elbows up!
My first ancestors on the American continent were Danes. My grandmother, nee Dorothy Westman, died in 2007 age 101. Though I miss her terribly I'm thankful that she died before seeing all this. Good God, we're sorry.
I am reminded of a remark by Paul Krugman that Americans don’t know other countries exist. The assumption is that America is number one in everything and nowhere else matters or has anything to teach us.
I agree but it goes far beyond that. Most Americans are willfully ignorant, meaning that `not only do they not know, they don't even want to know. One sees eyes glaze over when trying to relate experiences or simple facts.
Very few know any history at any level. They just don’t care.
Americans do not want to know their own history, why would they be interested in world history unless it was for self congratulation.
Most Americans do not have a college education, according to American Historian Jefferson Cowie about 2/3 don't, but around 51% have passports, so that shows an interest in the world. Still that is 49% who do not have them, and may not be interested in leaving the country. I imagine that many people in other countries are like that too. I am living in Germany and Germans love to travel. It is well situated to visit many other countries which are nearby, but many people I know here travel to more distant lands too.
I knew people in Chicago who had never been 20 miles beyond downtown in their lives even in the late 80s. But the basic problem is not college, it's public education, which has deteriorated enormously in the last few decades. History and geography are rolled into social studies and watered down. No one learns to memorize any more. Young people are even losing basic writing and arithmetic skills, depending on their phones to do it all for them. I even see that phenomenon in Ukraine (which was not an early adopter and has a pretty decent public school system) where someone in their early 30s can still do easy math in their head quickly, while those in their early 20s cannot do the same problem quickly even on paper. It's not looking good.
Yes, a few weeks ago we were discussing having to memorize the Gettysburg Address (in the fifth grade). A page of math and word problems every night for homework. Have you seen recent social studies books? Pictures, pictures, and (!) more pictures. A paragraph here and there.
I worked as a teacher in the public and private school systems. I found that superior funding and services were provided for students with learning and behaviour difficulties in public education.
I never worked in private schools, but I worked in regular ed and special ed in public schools. In my experience, it varies, some public regular ed schoolteachers are terrific and some are not. When you see teachers let their classes stay 1/2 hr longer for recess, you start to wonder, since those teachers are standing around talking to each other. The same with special ed teachers. Some just babysit, and some have detailed ISPs for every student, no matter how handicapped they are, they have an individualized program and we worked on it every day. My son's RSP teacher carefully picked his regular ed teacher the entire time he was in elementary school. My sister-in-law complained when my niece was suspended for talking too much in class. Some parents are feel entitled too...
I agree, except that I suspect that pictures are easier for some intrinsic learning styles. I would guess that we need both (and others)— music, poetry, arts and crafts, dance…
No, I gained the impression that reading was not important. I understand the argument about learning styles. My son didn't learn to read until the fourth grade, when his RSP teacher took a seminar in the Irlen Method, and tested him and found that he has difficulty reading black print on white paper. Ever since his computer is set at a gray screen, not a bright one, and for books or magazines he uses a peach colored transparency. He went from reading at a first grade level to grade level in three weeks.
Learning happens in a variety of ways that are better or worse for a given individual: visual (seeing), aural (hearing), kinesthetic (touching), and so on. For instance, when I was a kid, I remembered phone numbers forever once I had dialed the number several times, especially if it was several times in a row. To this day, I remembered them better if I write them down (visual+kinesthetic) bu with cellphones I doubt most of us memorize any numbers at all, even our own! Another example of kinesthetic learning: when I was in grade 9, I was a bit bored one day and spent the class filling in all the Os (in pencil) in my history book, just for the heck of it while the lesson went on. When we had a test in history a week or so later, my teacher afterwards said, "If I didn't know you well, I would have thought you cheated because your answer was word-for-word from the book!" Apparemtly, in searching it for Os over and over again, I had unconsciously memorized the entire page and the exam happened to have a question that pertained to it.
I think it is ineffective education that has put Trump in power.
That has something to do with the red states, which are not interested in education.
In the U.S. we have most of the social support system on our individual shoulders. Whether it’s reasonable or not, our ‘you’re on your own’ attitude probably makes us feel miserly.
You're probably on your own works when nothing goes wrong. But when disaster strikes (Helene in NC, SC, TN, and VA), people are quick to complain (loudly) about how they're being ignored and/or abandoned.
I’m going to bet $100 that many of that 51% who have passports only have them so that they can go on a cruise ship with mostly other people who look just like themselves. They probably never travel to an actual country on their own other than those cruises.
StephenSchiff, true. I would add from my experience people from other countries learn more than one language while the majority of Americans don’t really care in learning languages. My experience in my job( retired recently) is having the privilege of meeting children from other countries that have learned more than their own language, they are multilingual, while majority of Americans are monolinguals.
I’ve had seven and eight year olds that speak 3-4 languages, and also learn English, and at a very good pace and want to learn it, I might add.
Like you said: in America they don’t care to learn.
Exactly. On both of my trips to Japan I was repeatedly accosted by groups of school children (3rd graders even) eager to practice their ego-ga. We had lots of fun with them speaking to me in English while I did my best to reply in my awful Japanese.
Also I have friends in Germany who speak no English though their French is far better than mine.
in fairness, our country dwarfs European countries in its population and geography; it's also bordered by two oceans, and we've been a very successful imperial country in the 20th century. Those variables factor into our lack of interest in learning languages: yes, a real pity for us.
It's actually an English trait, handed down from the imperial motherland lol. The English never ever bothered to learn the native languages where they arrived: India, African countries, Australia, you name it. The natives were expected to pick up English, which the more ambitious generally did. Yet studies have confirmed that bilingual children do much better at learning. Maybe this is what's gone wrong with the US more than anything. Ukraine started teaching English in Grade 1 about 15 years ago (as opposed to grade 5, which is when language acquisition begins to decline in humans) and it's been remarkable (although personally I think Grade 1 may be a bit too soon, especially as Ukrainian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, so it's a lot of learning for little kids).
Stephen, Please try to be more factual and less dramatic in your comments. Where are the facts proving that MOST Americans are willfully ignorant?
The fact that they elected Trump twice should be ample proof.
Around 78 mil voted for Trump, about 75 mil voted for Kamala, and around 93 mil eligible voters did not vote at all. Now, that does not add up to the majority voted for him twice. Just the majority of those who actually voted.
Thx for these facts. And he got the majority of those who actually voted only once.
Voting more than once (while dead) is a trope most often believed by willfully ignorant Americans who want to keep on a low-fact news diet.
When was that? He failed to win the popular vote in '16 and '20 by huge amounts (3 million and 7 million) and this time the share that voted for him was still less than the share that voted against him: 31.2% vs 31.9% (if I remember correctly).
If you don't vote, your vote can't be counted. It's not even an abstention. You're tying yourself up in knots.
They voted and elected the walking disaster, Trump. No sane person, with a little knowledge of 20th century history would vote for the deformed creature.
Some voters feel kinship with the perpetually aggrieved trump.And he takes advantage of that.
Maybe it's hard to prove that they're "willfully" ignorant, but here are some stats on their actual ignorance of the world: https://www.cfr.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/NatGeo_CFR_US%20Knoweldge.pdf
This is great. Thx for posting.
How about this: Based on circa 55 years’ experience and circa 100 trips abroad, …
So you are correct in the sense that I wasn't rigorous in developing the statistics and can only relate my results qualitatively. Moreover my sample is biased in that most of the people I know are college graduates.
BTW what's your evidence to the contrary? Just asking.
I only have to talk to neighbors, friends, fellow citizens who “roll their eyes “ at anything they deem political and who say “ i am really care!”
Could it be said that, if 51 percent of Americans who voted, voted to install this incredible moron in the highest office, that constitutes "most" ?
Trump won the election. That's it. He won it by the rules set out in your constitution, and in the system you have. If Harris had won by the same margin, you wouldn't be arguing this. Just shut up already on this tired, exhausting excuse.
There has been substantial evidence that a lot of tinkering went on (to put it diplomatically) even before Election Day, and then there's Trump's own recent comment, literally, that the election was "rigged." It's just not clear why the Democrats have done nothing, not even asked for an audit of swing states, where most of the unorthodox activity took place.
Of course it's possible the election, like 2016, was fixed. But absent even an attempt to get it investigated, absent any proof, absent any Democrat push, then it's the result we have. It's a waste of time to make such an argument. It's done; Harris et al conceded. Trump has been inaugurated. Not a peep of dissent from the Senate or House Democrats, esp. on the validity of the result.
Am I right in discerning from your comment -- and you do make a valid point in my view -- that you are not an American citizen (since you say "your constitution" and "the system you have")? May I ask which system and/or country is your own, if it is not too personal a question?
Hello Kate. I'm Canadian. The main reason I'm so angry, and 40 million other Canadians, is because my home and my country has been threatened by an unpredictable psychopath. We don't know where, or how, this will end, but we have Ukraine as a warning. Thank you for your comment.
I think it’s supportable that most American adults are overburdened.
Of course we also have people living in luxury, but not most of us.
Note key fact, Stephen: "learning" in U.S. schools is nothing more than test prep.
Forrest Gump's mother had it right: "Stupid is as stupid does."
In China, the 15th Century Ming emperor took the same view. The great exploration fleets of the admiral Zheng He were recalled, and all Chinese foreign outposts were closed. The emperor felt that everything of any importance was already in China, and that the barbaric world outside had no value. Sound familiar?
If Zheng He had been allowed to continue, I think it would be reasonable to think that the American settlers would have come across lands possessed by people speaking Mandarin, which we would speak today.
Also, in comparing the numbers, I see that the US is #132 on the world safety ranking, https://www.visionofhumanity.org/maps/#/whereas Denmark is #8.
I am in Germany which is #20, but for that I get a lower cost of living.
Germany is #23, while the US is #13. Denmark is #10, Us #13 and Germany #23.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp
The Danish health care index is #5, Germany#24 and Us #38.
https://www.numbeo.com/health-care/rankings_by_country.jsp
Wonder what all of these rankings will look like in a year. Just as Germany will infuse a lot of money to upgrade their system, at least is planning to, I assume the US will drop on the health care ranking as it shutters the two biggest health care insurances in the country, Medicare and Medicaid. Hospitals will shut down, doctors offices, there will be fewer treatment options and child mortality rate will climb as well as deaths of moms. The US will have more people on the streets, more people ill because they will not have shelter, care or jobs, or health insurance. The next contagious pandemic will be uncontrollable because of the breakdown in systems.
While I think the Danish legacy of treatment of Greenlanders is akin to the US and Canada of Native Americans, I would say that Greenlanders should gain autonomy and that does not mean Trump coming in and occupying their country and colonizing them too. Because Trump is such a stone, cold racist in the vein of George Wallace and the southern idea of dominion, he will probably believe that indigenous Greenlanders cannot think for themselves, and Trump has no respect for the PM of Denmark because she is a woman. However, we will look to the EU to back up Greenland as a colony of Denmark, and King Charles III is still the sovereign over the Commonwealth of Canada.
I dare say America will plunge in health measures. 🙁
Lots of anti-vaccers making sure their kids are exposed to measles etc. Thanks RFK, Jr. Thanks Utah. Let’s see how that will turn out…
I did not know the history of Greenland and that Denmark colonized it. I thought it was always inhabited by Erik the Red and his Viking descendants. I now know that that population declined and the Inuit arrived, and were treated the same as the US and Canada indingenous when the Danes arrived.
Does the Danish government acknowledge this? Are the Inuit today integrated with the Danes or are they segregated?
Not segregated - but this UN report from 2023 is very illuminating. The only potentially positive result of the current interest in Greenland, is that the Danish government is acknowledging the ills of its colonial past and hastily trying to undo its effects.
https://un.arizona.edu/search-database/report-special-rapporteur-rights-indigenous-peoples-his-visit-denmark-and-greenland
Thx!
Viking settlers lasted only a few hunded years originally because the later settlers brought over sheep that overgrazed what little greenery there was and the Europeans refused to learn fishing techniques (harpooning) from the native peoples. Vikings lasted only a decade in North America before the native people drove them out! There are books out there about all this, such as Jared DIamond's "Collapse," which has a chapter on the Vikings in Greenland. (The book's a bit tough going, unfortunately.)
Russians are like that, too.
Paul Krugman should stick to his specialty, Economics.
You don’t have to be an economist to know that Krugman’s remark about Americans is true of many of us. It’s certainly true of Americans (including my own family) who don’t travel or have any desire to. Almost half of Americans don’t even have a passport. Travel is the great educator.
Amen.
Today it was reported in LeMonde that the American embassy sent out an email to French companies saying if they wish to continue to do business with the American government must certify they do not have DEI programs or else. They have five days to comply. The arrogance! I hope they all stand down. The regime wishes to divide Europeans.
I hope that the French government will tell the Americans that they have 5 days to rescind their ridiculous demand or whatever diplomat runs the Trade Relations desk at the embassy will be declared PNG (persona non grata) and deported if not out of the country in 48 hours. (I believe this is the diplomatic equivalent to saying "Fuck off!")
I agree, but Trump/Musk/Vance may not understand a diplomatic telling-off—they may need to hear the direct command.
I'm pretty sure that, no matter how the message were conveyed, the Trump/JD response would have bold & arrogant notes, with a whiney aftertaste and nuance of childish petulance.
Arrogant bullies MP Charlie Angus today https://open.substack.com/pub/charlieangus/p/trumps-theatre-of-cruelty?r=fa5ey&utm_medium=ios
Thx for this, Sara. "What surprised Trump is that Canadians don't take kindly to being treated as the chump who gets thrown into the turnbuckle. We are fighting back hard, and Trump didn't see it coming."
If I knew how to create an image with AI, the prompt would be "Donald Trump standing at the Canadian border with a deer in the headlights look."
LOVE the Canadians! I'm proud to have ancestors buried there.
Many thanks for the link to that post, Sara.
The last time we talked you told me you were doing some things in your garden. I'll have you know that you inspired me to get back into my front garden to start working again. Like you, I'm going to need bags and bags of mulch. There's a cheap 40-lb. bag of mulch I used to buy that I felt had not been composted enough to use in the garden. So I had them hauled to the composters in the back garden. I started off with 3 bags in one composter. Then I added leaves, small twigs, kitchen waste, etc., and used my pitchfork to turn it until it was full and ready. Then I shut that one down and started using its mature compost, then started the same with the other. That way I had a never-ending supply of good compost. I need to start that again.
Before I forget, and because you and I seem to have the same tastes in reading, there's a book I forgot to tell you about that is very important in understanding the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin of Aug. 1939. It is Roger Moorehouse's The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941. Prof. Snyder cites it in his Black Earth. It helped to fill in a lot of details for me, such as the period from Nov. 1940 through the Wehrmacht's invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Also, Poland plays a big role in this book. I learned a lot from it.
I will get a copy Rose thank you. Jan Gross Revolution From Abroad also discusses this period and my favorite-he is very readable, garden proceeds. Your composting sounds amazing. Last year I was exploring Baron Hirsch farmers who benefited from his programs. I located a farm which is still in operation and has beautiful organic compost by the yard amongst other materials. The family came here from Rohaytn. I am looking forward to heading their way to catch up on this past winter. I haven’t done composting myself. I have so many critters about. Yesterday I was heading out and stopped for a beautiful fox with a bird in its mouth. It was surprised I waited for it to cross the road Kindred spirits here. Marvelous
Jan Gross's Revolution From Abroad has been sitting on my shelf for a few years and I know I need to read it because it's cited in several of the books I've read.
Rose I thank you You have inspired me to go dig some furrows in the yard for the onions and potatoes I had gotten sidetracked with my little greenhouses
Ah! So we inspire each other. I like that.
❤️
Do you grow from seed, Sara? I've tried growing decorative onion from seed, but no luck. But I grow almost everything else from seed, including flowers. The easiest are the ones you just throw out in the autumn—at least in my part of the country—like larkspur, poppy, and nigella. They start to sprout late in the year after the cold weather sets in, and the seedlings stay about 1" tall while their roots are developing, then in the spring they suddenly start growing fast. Their seeds need to go through a cold/wet period before sprouting. But of course you already know this.
Talking of which, years ago I bought a book on seeds by the late chemistry professor Norman Deno, who died in 2017 at the age of 96. He had a keen interest in growing from seed, and he and his volunteer doctoral students spent years trying to learn the chemical processes that all seeds must go through in order to sprout. From Wikipedia: "He was a professor of chemistry at Penn State University and is known as one of the foremost researchers in seed germination theory. He researched the biochemical reactions that underlie the germination of all seeds, performing germination research on plant species from 150 families, 800 genera, and 2500 species over the course of his career." The book I have was self-published, and doesn't have an index. The research is so important that it needs to be edited and republished, so it can be more useful.
There are lots of vegetables that are very easy to grow from seed, like lettuce, though now it's too late where I live because lettuce needs cool temps. Okra is also easy from seed, and its flowers are quite attractive.
I have a weed problem, though, but don't want to use anything like Round Up. A year or so ago I bought a Propane Vapor Torch Kit but haven't used it yet because I haven't gotten the tank filled. I understand that it kills weeds at the root, which is the key to getting rid of them. If you miss even one little bit of a root, the weed will come back.
This is an evolving question. I have seeds and I think I am truly end up using them for late planting fall early winter harvesting. So the temp is high enough for the seeds to sprout and plants to grow . I have a good supply of fabric planters large enough to support ex- eggplant. Otherwise I will purchase plants. For several ++ years I purchase vegetables from the farmers. It’s cost effective. I do like watching Mr Hedgehog and his compadre chomping on squash and other goodies. For the onions potatoes and strawberries I have ordered plants from burpees. I am a hardy perennial gardener I will have to admit I start out strong but then fade out particularly with the ticks here. So my gardens are now cleaned etc. but after the peonies have their show I go off to other projects. I am in NW CT it’s still cool here
Thank you for sharing that. Awful! The worst.
absolutely shocking
I heard that the US has the audacity to require contractors to state they will not embrace the fact that the world is full of diverse people and ideas (DEI). It is inexcusable, as is threatening to take over other nations. We have never acknowledged our own imperialistic, genocidal past, and now the US is trying reactivate that.
Dear embassy: thank you for your letter. We are happy to certify but our notary who does such things is out sick. You should know in any event that “dei” is an American concoction and doesn’t exist in Europe. In fact the opposite has been true and sometimes excessively.
Please be assured that the notary will quickly carry out the certification upon his return. Your request and letter will be forwarded to him through facilitated channels. Truly, for the company.
I am disgusted by these demands from the American embassy.
I haven't seen a report of this communication before. If true the arrogance is unbelievable. Once again, I have to "cry the beloved country" (thank you, Alan Paton).
Oh, THAT'S what that title means. Thx.
I never read the book, but always loved that title.
sickening and embarrassing!
Just another thing the Mumps don't know: just exactly how the average Frenchman is likely to take dictation of that sort. Hahahahaha... the LEAST likely people in the world to 'comply' with the Mump's demands. "Embrasse mon cul!"
WTF
It is a firestorm. They want to demoralize us and that can not be. Do not think for a minute that the move against Greenland or the Panama Canal or Canada has anything to do with the desire of Americans. It is the twisted, greedy little hands of musk and tRump. Everyone, that means all of us must fight this monster of this government.
Here's to Greenland, Panama, Canada and also Ukraine!!!
Hands Off protest April 5th all over the US. Indivisible has the locations listed.
Hands off everything including Greenland, Panama, and Canada!
I’m with you there. Who are Trump and Vance to be arrogantly threatening Canada and Greenland with annexation, or turning toward Putin and his destructive foreign policies? We are not Russia, which has been under the domination of authoritarianism since the time of Ivan Groznyi.
He certainly does not have my permission, as an American voter, to turn us into the best ally Moscow's ever had. I loved us 50 years ago as a child, now I'm moving to Maine, just to be closer to Canada. Also because Bruce moved there. This is not the America I've known all my life.
And now the Snyders as well as Jason Stanley (How Democracies Die) will be living in Canada.
Has Snyder written about this?
Sherry thank you for your support. I’m not a Panamanian but many in my family are. I was born in Atlanta in 1947 and I have family roots going back over 100 years before the American Revolution. We moved to Panama in 1954 and we’re still here. It’s home. My dad was a paratrooper in the Pacific in WWII and I’m glad he’s no longer here to witness the destruction of the country he so bravely fought for and his friends died for.
"Viva [insert name of latest country Trump vows to "get]"
When we lived in West Germany in the 80s , we watched CNN international which gave up to date news from around the world. Europeans are open to hearing world news, in the US, we see very limited coverage of the world. No surprise that we think the US is the center of the universe
Quite a few Americans also choose to live in the Fox news bubble, and that means that they will have a very skewed view of America and the world.
While people often decry Americans' tendency to flock to Fox News -- maybe it makes those devoted viewers feel 'special' -- I think it is a very useful way to denote their overall level of political naivete'.
Very useful intel for targeted marketing designed to persuade people it's not worth their time or trouble to actually go out and vote.
One has to work hard to get international news here. Even BBC on PBS is a scant 30 minutes and then repeats itself for the second half hour of the broadcast
I read El Pais, the Madrid newspaper every day. Its international coverage is not great, but it's orders of magnitude better than any American source.
Thank you, Peter. Just went there a full set of pertinent headlines
I have read El País and also the Guardian, which pays more attention to international news and matters than the American media outlets do.
Yes, to the Guardian. It's the only English language source on Poland, who beat back their authoritarian government in 2O23.
FYI, BBC news on NPR is an hour long. I catch it at 9am ET.
On pbs it’s on at 6. It is an hour but they repeat much of the first 30 minutes in the second half hour. Thank you for the tip for npr
There is also Politico EU - https://www.politico.eu.
Deutsche Welle is excellent , is online in English and Le Monde also worth reading. We have to really work at finding good international coverage outside of earthquakes and disasters. There’s a whole continent of africa which we know little about.
Almost every country is like that -- except for the United States.
There are statistical studies out there that use a metric of whether people have passports as a gauge for measuring Trump's base of support. The statistical correlation is highly significant, if not downright causal. Overwhelmingly, Trumpazoids have never traveled outside American borders.
I have never traveled outside of this country since I was 15 years old and lived two months in Belgium. I do not have a passport, as I have had no opportunity to travel abroad. I would have liked to, always thought I would, but my husband's work never gave me a chance. Still, I keep in touch with the news and no at least the primary issues of the day. It is outrageous that a stupid poll equates me to those who voted for Trump. I'm not nearly that stupid.
While you may not fit into this pattern, a larger pattern itself does exist, and it is statistically significant.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/liberals-conservatives-even-vacation-differently-n1027161
Certainly the English language is the lingua franca of the developed world, and the US led both NATO and the Pax Americana. That has something to do with it, I think.
Dear Dr. Snyder. Hans Christian Anderson was prophetic regarding the Trump/Musk administration. The emperors profess their refinery, and in reality, they are without clothes or morality. Lewis G. Carroll was also a prophet - the United States is through the looking glass, where up is down, fat is thin, and short is tall. It is becoming a struggle to process the chaos we face every day with a new fresh Hell awaiting. We talk about when this will end; unfortunately, I think the chickens have come home to roost. Resist and live each day with dignity. Survive another day.
Ah, yes, Lewis' through the looking glass, where up is down, fat is thin, and short is tall. Forgot about that. I usually refer to Orwell's Doublethink from "1984": “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” I will use "through the looking glass" to describe Trumpworld. It's more poetic than Doublethink.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see Denmark cancel the status of forces agreement that allows the Americans to have the base in Greenland. At some point the insults will reach a point that a response will be required.
I wish they would.
Denmark would be completely within its rights to do this. Who could blame them?
can they without trouble from MuskTrump?
Wow, it would be great if Denmark would kick us out, my visceral reaction. But who knows what reaction the dumb bunnies in the government might do. I feel so helpless sometimes, watching one after another stupid and malevolent moves chump & company make. Sigh !
All of this for a man whose inattention (and likely untreated ADHD) from childhood to the Presidency (informing his disastrous decision making), whose inability to experience empathy for “the other”, and who in speaking to a celebration of MAGA women (only) in the WH 2 days ago began using babytalk to tell those women “I have a gift for you”…”It’s called “infertility”. This man unbelievably has suckered millions of people into his trance. I will NEVER get use to it.
Donald Trump’s father Fred Sr. helped to make Donald into a sociopath, and Donald’s own experiences made him an insecure narcissist. Roy Cohn simply helped to put the finishing touches on Donald’s sociopathy. With Donald’s usual commitment to “loyalty,” he dropped Cohn like a hot potato once Cohn fell ill with what Cohn claimed was liver cancer, but was actually AIDS. Cohn, like Trump, secretly hated himself. Roy Cohn’s final verdict on Trump was that “Donald Trump pisses ice water.”
I read Mary Trump and Michael Cohen's 1st books right after they were published. Clearly this family was the dark version of the Addam’s Family. And, even if Baby Hannibal wasn’t hyper and inattentive, the outcome might be a different kind of malignant adult. But, from everything I’ve read and everything we’ve observed and witnessed, Hannibal Lecter cannot hold a thought, is clearly inattentive (we see it and it’s been reported AdNauseum), he lived a ‘fast’ life, and is an inpatient bully. I think Sr. put him in military school because he couldn’t handle him. That is the root and center of his origin story, layered with narcissistic, sociopathic and cruel purpose. Much of what I’ve learned is from the psychiatrists, like Dr. Bandy Lee and her colleagues substack.com/@bandyxlee who continue to warn us and prepare us for this world disaster.
I learned a lot about both Trump and his cult members from Lee's "The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists" [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-shared-psychosis-of-donald-trump-and-his-loyalists/].
Thx for the Cohn bits. I didn't realize Trump dropped him when he got AIDS. Another example of loyalty and Trump. It only goes one way.
Just two things to add to your description of this disordered man. He has undiagnosed dyslexia too. Poor spelling is a sign of it. And inability to experience empathy is the hallmark of narcissistic personality disorder, which is incurable.
👍🏼
Pete Hegseth whisked out of town. JD Vance whisked out of town. Mike Waltz whisked out of town. Need I say more. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/conspiracy-against-us?r=3m1bs
Something else you might say Carl, is to question just why we are spending so much money to transport these clowns and their wives around the world for photo ops. The SoD was in Hawaii for a beach vacation, the plane he flew on could have carried hundreds, my bet is that it was mostly empty. This is a colossal waste of tax payer dollars, not that any of them care, they are entitled after all. They were planning on sending the VP’s wife to watch a dog sled race for her photo op, until it became apparent that she was as welcome there as cancer.
Vance has to be the slimiest little bitch I have ever seen stain the face of American politics in my 70 years. To wriggle up Trump's fat ass like that without a speck of shame, to tell a silent press that "we cannot ignore the President's wishes" as though the Manchurian Cantaloupe weren't a deranged, psychotic moron with the impulse control of a 3-year-old -- it just boggles the mind.
Let's remind ourselves who's responsible for this unfolding clusterfuck -- Mitch McConnell. Kentucky Fried Voldemort refused to convict a criminal scumbag when he had two chances to do so. One man, virtually alone, stands as the sorry architect of this ridiculous situation.
Mitch McConnell. Kentucky Fried Voldemort refused to convict a criminal scumbag when he had two chances to do so
Yuuuup! Ignored accepted norms to pollute SCOTUS as well...
Pearl Clutcher Collins, who felt trump had 'learned his lesson'.
Lindsay the Closet
Paul Ryan
Ben Sasse
Prominent members of the Not My Fault Brigade. Did-What-I Could GOP team. Yay team.
We Americans have refused to see other than our goodness, our exceptionalism. Now the curtain has parted, and with enormous sadness and growing embarrassment, we reveal what we have allowed to fester and grow here. To many the face of America is Donald Trump, and until we successfully push back, we will live (or perish) with this.
Your belief in your exceptionalism has always been a part of the problem, if not THE problem. The rest of the world always saw how preposterous and unwarranted it was.
I agree with this. We are not exceptional or perfect in any way, shape or form, and we are not immune to political disaster. We have just met up with it again.
The exceptionalism has two sides depending on the sentiments in people and leadership that roughly have divided us since our beginning- or at least the Civil War. Those who believed in our essential goodness were/are aspirational in that claim, that we were going to try an experiment and show the way to organize and live together. There is a lot and a lot of greatness to prove it too. But we had and have this other dark side which has grown. We are after all humanity. We were never the "united" states except in the world wars. There is too much to say about this but exceptionalism can be aspirational. The "rest of the world" has had its problems as well... to put it simply.
2 comments, Potter. [1] The nation has been divided from the start, even before the Constitution was ratified, beginning with the Anti-Federalists. They were the first illiberalists. See Robert Kagan's account of their role throughout our history in his "Rebellion: HOW ANTILIBERALISM IS TEARING AMERICA APART–AGAIN." Agree we were the most united in the world wars
[2] Our exceptionalism was claimed as fact, not aspiration, by right-wing media. Funny, they don't talk about it much anymore.
I am not sure the nation was divided as it became when it led to the Civil War. That deep division due to how we developed, North vs South economically and culturally was profound and led to the Civil War. Many feel it never ended. I am so inclined to believe this on a basic level. I will check Kagan. Thanks.
Regarding your no. 2- Before right-wing media (which I don't listen to and don't know what or when this was claimed by them) is perhaps mindlessly parroting a version of exceptionalism started prior to what we know as right-wing media. The "City upon a Hill" idea began with the Puritans: Gov. Winthrop sermon preached that: "their new colony would become a "City upon a Hill", meaning that they would be a model to all the nations of Europe as to what a properly reformed Christian commonwealth should look like"
Nixon or Reagan may have taken up the idea, originally Christian and there the trouble with the idea begins I think.
According to Wikipedia on American exceptionalism, this (also)started as a description of us more by others and from abroad.
From our beginnings therefore this was used in a good sense, the US as an example. This was aspirational as well as deserved in many ways and helped with cohesion, pride.
That is not saying anything like we therefore deserve to be judged by different standards ( especially now) or be excused for what others consider egregious/ bad behavior as a nation.
As it turns out, we have escaped a lot of what other countries has gone through politically, upheavals, because of our system and how it's been respected as our culture mainly of multiculturalism: all are created equal, give me our tired your poor, etc. That is until now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Puritans_in_North_America
Perhaps it might be more accurate to say our supposed exceptionalism.
see my above please
Yes, his awful face now represents the US across the NATO nations. I love our liberal democracy, flaws and all, and the Constitution that gave it to us. But when I read about the Canadians' response, I applauded them. I welcome their alliance with pro-democracy Americans.
Well said!
On an individual level it will be our collective wills pulling together. On a larger scale The Coalition of the Willing and all countries standing up for Democracy. This regime is no longer tearing the world apart it is trying to shred it. I believe our Allies will save us. Standing strong together against the tyrant maggots. The Power of the Powerless. By Vaclav Havel our small individual spirits must find a way to adhere to fight from within. I heard on a podcast yesterday that some part of the U S delegation was knocking on doors in Greenland asking people if they would be interested in meeting Usha Vance. The response by all was NO
I wish we had someone with the political courage of Václav Havel as president now. We have an insecure narcissist and sociopath in office with his equally narcissistic and sociopathic BFF as his unofficial co-president; and a remarkably clueless and arrogant Ivy Leaguer who upholds his president’s stupid and uninformed policies.
Perhaps someone like Václav Havel WILL emerge out of this tyranny. Those who believe in and fight for equal opportunity for all, the obligation of fully informed citizen participation in government, and remaining bonded to our allies, are born out of despotic rule and crimes committed against humanity that we are seeing now.
How did Havel become president? Yugoslavia's Velvet Revolution, so called because it was non-violent. I think we can learn some things from that movement.
Americans seem unwilling to save themselves, and I shouldn't think too many Europeans and Canadians will be lining up for the privilege.
You forget, Tim, that during Denmark's deployment of NATO combat troops to Afghanistan under Article Five, 43 Danish soldiers died, with 37 killed in action and 6 in non-combat related incidents, making it the highest loss per capita among coalition forces. Denmark has never been a better ally or a more fearsome one given its size!
Thank you!
Why are people so baffled at the incompetence of this administration at running a country?
It is because most people are finding it impossible to imagine the administration is actually trying to gut their own country as fast as it can.
Listen to Ross Douthat’s (NYT: Matter of Opinion, Mar 7) stunning interview with Chris Rufo, a Project 2025 core author. Rufo says this quiet part out loud. The objective is to completely break US institutions, then rebuild them from zero (with compliant X-AI? Definitely without the left!).
Rufo is both ‘clever’, if also entirely un-American, in his appeal to T about how to effect deep culture change as a minority (eliminate both democracy & liberals, “the enemy”, in gov) and enormously stupid about national security and synergistic power through international alliance & cooperation with others.
(Does not have a clue about what makes America great.)
He forgets power’s nature abhors a power vacuum. He forgets (or worse, knows) that his boss is owned by P, who is ALSO trying to destroy US institutions… But with a completely different culture change in mind!
Chris Rufo should be completely without influence, unfortunately he has too much. He also is allergic to educating students about the more unsavory aspects of our history, which is a big mistake.
It is difficult to listen to Ross Douthat and Chris Rufo, as a liberal American, but so important!! Cicero a lawyer, once said, “he who knows only his own case, knows little of that”.
Every democrat needs to listen in on what the Project 2025 right says to the religious right.
https://www.nytimes.com/audio/app/2025/03/07/opinion/chris-rufo-trump-anti-dei-education.html?referringSource=sharing
Thx. I can tolerate reading them.
Hi SandyG, good to see you again.
Almost wrote 'It may be difficult' in passive voice. But decided to speak for myself.
Listening to Rufo was so reminiscent of listening to an intelligent psychopath discuss their crime in clinical detail (which I did, 40 years ago as a prison doc, fresh out of training), that it was difficult for ME. He sounded logical, reasonable, and civil. Yet he is totally insane in his internally consistent world view of liberals as 'the enemy', who must be extirpated down to the root.
OMG, Mark!!! You actually know psychopaths. Logical, reasonable, civil and obsessed with his enemy. We are in the hands of human beings with personality disorders that are incurable. 😱😱
Lots of good points here. Why are people baffled? Agree it's because they can't imagine it.
I just want to add a little to this, particularly what to do about thus failure of imagination. Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg discussed this at the NOLA Book Festival two days ago. Goldberg said, "We’re just not used to this. I mean, if we lived in Poland or Russia or across most of the world, actually, we would have experienced things like this." Then he asked her, "[W]hat do people and institutions have to do to expand their thinking or to not have a failure of imagination about what might be coming?"
She said, "It helps to know history. It helps to know some American history. I mean, you know, we can find incidents and reflections in our own history, including right here in Louisiana. There was a governor of Louisiana who, some of you might know his name, pushed the limits—Huey Long. And so there’s a tradition of it and you can study the tradition and learn what people did before . . . So study our own history, study foreign history, pay attention and make new friends. I mean, build coalitions."
That's what we need to do, build coalitions. In fact, the building of the pro-democracy coalition has already started. It began when Snyder published his piece on Trump's lie that the election was stolen as The Big Lie, three days after Jan 6th. Soon after that, the Bulwark expanded its identity from NeverTrump to pro-democracy.
And learn about how previous illiberal movements in the US were defeated.
As to foreign history, two movements we need to study: Yugoslavia's peaceful, nonviolent Velvet Revolution, and Poland's defeat of the authoritarian party that ruled them for 8 years in 2O23.
Thanks, for this SandyG. Wow, you got to interview JG hot off his hot war gig!
I just received a copy of Anne Applebaum's "Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends" two days ago, looking forward to reading it.
(And Lech Welesa, as well, for Poland. 'An electrician by trade, Wałęsa became the leader of the Solidarity movement and led a successful pro-democratic effort, which in 1989 ended Communist rule in Poland and ushered in the end of the Cold War.' Wiki)
I didn't interview him! Maybe you left out the words "see an" in between "to" and "interview"? I heard Applebaum talking about the book when it came out. She said she wrote it to explain people like Tucker Carlson who she calls a political entrepreneur. I immediately got the book. Not too long. You'll enjoy it.
Yes, Welesa. I'll have to search YouTube for a good account of how he became the leader, how the movement developed.
We need an updated Profiles in Courage for all the people who have stood up to tyranny.
It is obvious to me: The object is to destroy America. Putin is thrilled. Musk is using his money. Trump is sick mentally.
Like with Musk-Trump, every accusation is projection. Every insult is really envy. Every bullying move is insecurity. On the international stage it is pure fear that what advanced Democracies have to offer is far more attractive than what the US offers. Be Canada. Be Mark Carney. Elbows up!
Forwarded this excellent essay to my Danish son-in-law.
The Danes, like all Europeans, are dismayed by how insane and deluded America has become.
They remember WW2 when the Nazis invaded and occupied their country.
They know what's likely to happen next if Trump is not stopped.
My first ancestors on the American continent were Danes. My grandmother, nee Dorothy Westman, died in 2007 age 101. Though I miss her terribly I'm thankful that she died before seeing all this. Good God, we're sorry.
Bill Shankly, the great man who refused to alter his watch on his one and only visit to the US - saying “Liverpool time is good enough for me.”
I need assurance that we can awaken from this horrific nightmare but I fear we’re too late.
Nevertheless, we will persist.
We have no choice.
Agree. Whether we can awaken or not, we have to do what we can, regardless of the outcome.