BEYOND THE RED CARPET - 'Manchester by the Sea'

"‘Manchester by the Sea' is a study in loss and love" PBS NewsHour 1/23/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  “Manchester by the Sea” is the story of what happens after an uncle is asked to take care of his nephew after the death of the boy's father.  The film deals with loss, grief, and the idea of closure, but director Kenneth Lonergan tells Jeffrey Brown it's really a story about love.

ANTONIO MORA (NewsHour):  It's award season in Hollywood, and one of the most highly praised films of the year, “Manchester by the Sea,” was nominated for six Academy Awards this week.

Its director, Kenneth Lonergan was nominated for two of them.

Jeffrey Brown spoke with him recently at the Atlantic Theater in New York.

This report is part of our ongoing coverage of awards for the 2016 movie season, Beyond the Red Carpet.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  In an early scene in the film, “Manchester by the Sea,” Lee Chandler learns that his recently deceased brother has named him as his nephew's guardian, and the weight of the world comes crashing down again.

CASEY AFFLECK, Actor:  He can't live with me.  I live in one room.

ACTOR:  Well, but Joe has provided for Patrick's upkeep, food, clothes, et cetera.  And the house the boat are owned outright.

CASEY AFFLECK:  I can't commute from Boston every day until he turns 18.

ACTOR:  I think the idea was that you would relocate.

CASEY AFFLECK:  Relocate to where?  Here?

JEFFREY BROWN:  As played by Casey Affleck, Lee is a lost, mostly silent man at sea over some hidden grief.

But, says director Kenneth Lonergan, it's more than that.

KENNETH LONERGAN, Director, “Manchester by the Sea”:  I don't see it as a film about grief.  I see it as a film about love, and about people trying to help each other and take care of each other, as much as it's a film about grief.  It is about grief, obviously, but it's really about someone who's trying to do right by his family, even though he's ready to quit.

THE RESISTANCE - Via In These Times

"HOW CORPORATE MEDIA THREATENS OUR DEMOCRACY" by Bernie Sanders, In These Times 1/26/2017

MEDIA SHAPES OUR VERY LIVES.  It tells us what products we need to buy and, by the quantity and nature of coverage, what is “important” and what is “unimportant.”  Media informs us as to the scope of what is “realistic” and “possible.”

When we see constant coverage of murders and brutality on television, corporate media is telling us that crime and violence are important issues that we should be concerned about.  When there is round-the-clock coverage of the Super Bowl, we are being informed that football and the NFL deserve our rapt attention.  When there is very little coverage of the suffering of the 43 million Americans living in poverty, or the thousands of Americans without health insurance who die each year because they can't get to a doctor when they should, corporately owned media is telling us that these are not issues of major concern.  For years, major crises like climate change, the impact of trade agreements on our economy, the role of big money in politics and youth unemployment have received scant media coverage.  Trade union leaders, environmentalists, low-income activists, people prepared to challenge the corporate ideology, rarely appear on our TV screens.

Media is not just about what is covered and how.  It is about what is not covered.  And those decisions, of what is and is not covered, are not made in the heavens.  They are made by human beings who often have major conflicts of interest.

As a general rule of thumb, the more important the issue is to large numbers of working people, the less interesting it is to corporate media.  The less significant it is to ordinary people, the more attention the media pays.  Further, issues being pushed by the top 1 percent get a lot of attention.  Issues advocated by representatives of working families, not so much.

For the corporate media, the real issues facing the American people— poverty, the decline of the middle class, income and wealth inequality, trade, healthcare, climate change, etc.—are fairly irrelevant.  For them, politics is largely presented as entertainment.  With some notable exceptions, reporters are trained to see a campaign as if it were a game show, a baseball game, a soap opera, or a series of conflicts.

I saw this time and time again.

Turn on CNN or other networks covering politics and what you will find is that the overwhelming amount of coverage is dedicated to personality, gossip, campaign strategy, scandals, conflicts, polls and who appears to be winning or losing, fundraising, the ups and downs of the campaign trail, and the dumb things a candidate may say or do.  It has very little to do with the needs of the American people and the ideas or programs a candidate offers to address the problems facing the country.

According to a study of media coverage of the 2016 primaries by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, only 11 percent of coverage focused on candidates' policy positions, leadership abilities and professional histories.  My personal sense is that number is much too high.

The “politics as entertainment” approach works very well for someone like Donald Trump, an experienced entertainer.  That kind of media approach didn't work so well for a campaign like ours, which was determined to focus on the real problems facing our country and what the solutions might be.  For the corporate media, name-calling and personal attacks are easy to cover, and what it prefers to cover.

While I was still considering whether or not to run, I did a long interview with a very prominent national newspaper writer.  Over and over I stressed that I wanted to talk about my assessment of the major problems facing the country, and how I proposed to address them.  And for 45 minutes, that's what the discussion was about.  The reporter appeared interested in what I had to say, and I thought we had a good conversation.  At the very end, as he was leaving, he said: “Oh, by the way, Hillary Clinton said such and such.  What's your comment?”  I fell for it.  Needless to say, that one-minute response became the major part of his story.  And that occurred time after time after time.

On a CNN show, an interviewer became visibly angry because I chose not to respond to her questions with personal attacks against Secretary Clinton.  The interviewer opined that I didn't have “sharp enough elbows” to become a serious candidate, that I wasn't tough enough.  Identifying the major problems facing our country, and providing ideas as to how we could address them, was just not good enough.

In fact, I was gently faulted by some for having excessive “message discipline,” for spending too much time discussing real issues.  Boring.  The result of all of these factors is that while I was getting coverage, it was far less than what other candidates were getting.

In a Dec.  11, 2015, blog post for Media Matters for America, Eric Boehlert wrote:

ABC World News Tonight has de voted less than one minute to Bernie Sanders' campaign this year.

In his article, Boehlert also reported that:

Trump has received more network coverage than all the Democratic candidates combined.  ?

Republican Jeb Bush received 56 minutes of coverage.

"With Donald Trump as President, Americans Are Flocking to Socialism" by Kate Aronoff, In These Times 1/23/2017

One evening the week before Christmas, about 100 people squeezed into a room in the Brooklyn Free School, located on one of central Brooklyn's posher streets.  The private school's chair collection exhausted itself within minutes as attendees packed the room for the monthly meeting of the Brooklyn chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—which, just a month earlier, had fit easily into the same space.

Since Nov 8, 2016, thousands have joined DSA.  The organization has ballooned to over 14,000 members, more than doubling in size from 6,500 members in May 2016.  DSA National Director Maria Svart says of new sign-ups, “You could literally see the moment when Trump was declared the winner.”

Organizations such as the ACLU and Planned Parenthood are reporting a similar spike in new members and donations in the wake of Trump's election.  But interest in socialist groups, grown accustomed to being small and isolated in U.S. politics, appears to be surging in a way it hasn't in decades.  Many of those joining are young people who don't have their parents' Cold War hangups about socialism.  Politicians like Bernie Sanders—an avowed socialist whom many supporters are looking to for an effective counter to Trump—have further sparked their interest in a politics outside mainstream Democrats and Republicans.

That puts DSA in a promising, if uncertain, position in the wake of Trump's election.  “People … are looking to DSA as an organization that full throatedly supported Bernie Sanders in the primary and has the potential to be a serious part of the fightback, both to Trump and to the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party,” says Svart.

Founded in 1982 out of the remnants of the '60s New Left, DSA also has roots in Eugene Debs' Socialist Party of America, which at its height in 1912 boasted 113,000 dues-paying members.  Eager to avoid the pitfalls of insular ideological squabbles, DSA strives to work with community organizations and social movements.  Following the election, DSA chapters have mobilized to support organizing by communities threatened by Trump and his supporters, including local mosques and immigrant rights organizations.  DSA is also working on building a multiracial membership—its current members are predominantly white—while supporting existing organizing by communities of color.  Brooklyn DSA's Racial Justice working group, for example, is partnering with the New York-based group Communities United for Police Reform to help pass the Right to Know Act, aimed at increasing transparency and accountability on the part of the NYPD.

Ultimately, says Svart, there's agreement within the organization about “the need for a multi-racial, anti-capitalist movement that is in touch with the grassroots.”

For now, DSA is proving an on-ramp for those frustrated with Trump and the Democratic establishment alike.  The Brooklyn meeting on Dec 22, 2016, was the first for Hannah Silverman, a New York native who worked on local Democratic campaigns in high school but grew disillusioned with politics before heading off to Brown University, where she graduated in 2015.

“I was afraid [the meeting] would feel futile,” she said as chairs were being collected toward the end.  Instead, she was pleasantly surprised by the tailored facilitation—after a discussion of the importance of organizing “openly as socialists” at the local level, the meeting broke out into smaller committees on everything from affordable housing fights to climate justice—and the high attendance.  “Looking at Trump's election, the only way to spin it positively is that it compelled a lot of people to become politically active,” she noted.  “It created a sense of urgency that was missing.”  She plans to attend next month's meeting.  In New York City alone, DSA now has 1,000 members.

But deep-blue Brooklyn isn't the only place where democratic socialism is undergoing a resurgence.  Local organizers are in the process of getting six new chapters off the ground in Florida and four in Ohio, both of which went for Trump in November.  DSA's tiny national staff, funded entirely by dues and small donations, has been overwhelmed by requests to create new chapters around the country and is looking for ways to expand accordingly.

Tom Tilden, 59, is among those DSA members setting up shop for socialism deep in Trump country.  Tilden is a DSA veteran, having joined when he lived in Chicago in the late '80s.  But when he moved to Nebraska in 1993, Tilden says, he didn't consider starting a new chapter there, though he remained a member of the national organization.  When people talk about “the Left” in conservative Nebraska, Tilden explains, they're referring to “people in the middle of the Democratic Party leftward.  ‘The Left' is progressive.  People don't usually think in terms of socialist.”

But that may be changing after Sanders' primary run, which “changed the nature of the Democratic Party in the state” while stripping away some of the taboos that plague socialist politics, says Tilden.  In Nebraska's March 2016 caucus, Clinton won just 10 of the state's pledged delegates to Sanders' 15, and he successfully won over some of the state's most rural counties.  Since the caucuses, Tilden has been working to get a new chapter off the ground in Omaha, and another has sprung up in nearby Lincoln.  About 30 people attended the first meeting in December 2016.

Like many other DSA members around the country, Tilden sees potential in building institutions outside the Democratic Party, but is also a firm believer in trying to stage a takeover from the inside.  This fall, he joined Keystone XL pipeline opponent Jane Kleeb on the ticket to run Nebraska's Democratic Party.  She's now the party's state chair.  Tilden is second associate chair, and has similar goals for his work in this position as he does as a local DSA organizer; Reaching working-class voters, especially those who went for Trump but might yet be won over to the kind of anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement that DSA hopes to build.

“People in rural Nebraska are more progressive than they realize,” Tilden reasons.  While door-knocking during the Sanders campaign, he and other volunteers found that many rural voters took firm stands against corporate agriculture and attacks on public education.  “I think once we work with them on their issue, they'll see that the people on their side are not the Republicans.”

Instead, Tilden hopes, they just might embrace an entirely different shade of red.

OPINION - A Mean Wind is Blowing

"The Politics of Cowardice" by David Brooks, New York Times 1/27/2017

This is a column directed at high school and college students.  I'm going to try to convey to you how astoundingly different the Republican Party felt when I was your age.

The big guy then was Ronald Reagan.  Temperamentally, though not politically, Reagan was heir to the two Roosevelts.  He inherited a love of audacity from T.R. and optimism and charm from F.D.R.

He had a sunny faith in America's destiny and in America's ability to bend global history toward freedom.  He had a sunny faith in the free market to deliver prosperity to all.  He had a sunny faith in the power of technology to deliver bounty and even protect us from nuclear missiles.

He could be very hard on big government or the Soviet Union, but he generally saw the world as a welcoming place; he looked for the good news in others and saw the arc of history bending toward progress.

When he erred it was often on the utopian side of things, believing that tax cuts could pay for themselves, believing that he and Mikhail Gorbachev could shed history and eliminate all nuclear weapons.

The mood of the party is so different today.  Donald Trump expressed the party's new mood to David Muir of ABC, when asked about his decision to suspend immigration from some Muslim countries: “The world is a mess.  The world is as angry as it gets.  What, you think this is going to cause a little more anger?  The world is an angry place.”

Consider the tenor of Trump's first week in office.  It's all about threat perception.  He has made moves to build a wall against the Mexican threat, to build barriers against the Muslim threat, to end a trade deal with Asia to fight the foreign economic threat, to build black site torture chambers against the terrorist threat.

Trump is on his political honeymoon, which should be a moment of joy and promise.  But he seems to suffer from an angry form of anhedonia, the inability to experience happiness.  Instead of savoring the moment, he's spent the week in a series of nasty squabbles about his ratings and crowd sizes.

If Reagan's dominant emotional note was optimism, Trump's is fear.  If Reagan's optimism was expansive, Trump's fear propels him to close in: Pull in from Asian entanglements through rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.  Pull in from European entanglements by disparaging NATO.  It's not a cowering, timid fear; it's more a dark, resentful porcupine fear.

We have a word for people who are dominated by fear.  We call them cowards.  Trump was not a coward in the business or campaign worlds.  He could take on enormous debt and had the audacity to appear at televised national debates with no clue what he was talking about.  But as President his is a policy of cowardice.  On every front, he wants to shrink the country into a shell.

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a shortcut to meet it.”

Desperate to be liked, Trump adopts a combative attitude that makes him unlikable.  Terrified of Mexican criminals, he wants to build a wall that will actually lock in more undocumented aliens than it will keep out.  Terrified of Muslim terrorists, he embraces the torture policies guaranteed to mobilize terrorists.  Terrified that American business can't compete with Asian business, he closes off a trade deal that would have boosted annual real incomes in the United States by $131 billion, or 0.5 percent of G.D.P.  Terrified of Mexican competition, he considers slapping a 20 percent tariff on Mexican goods, even though U.S. exports to Mexico have increased 97 percent since 2005.

Trump has changed the way the Republican Party sees the world.  Republicans used to have a basic faith in the dynamism and openness of the free market.  Now the party fears openness and competition.

In the summer of 2015, according to a Pew Research Center poll, Republicans said free trade deals had been good for the country by 51 to 39 percent.  By the summer of 2016, Republicans said those deals had been bad for America by 61 percent to 32 percent.

It's not that the deals had changed, or reality.  It was that Donald Trump became the Republican nominee and his dark fearfulness became the party's dark fearfulness.  In this case fear is not a reaction to the world.  It is a way of seeing the world.  It propels your reactions to the world.

As Reagan came to office he faced refugee crises, with suffering families coming in from Cuba, Vietnam and Cambodia.  Filled with optimism and confidence, Reagan vowed, “We shall seek new ways to integrate refugees into our society,” and he delivered on that promise.

Trump faces a refugee crisis from Syria.  And though no Syrian-American has ever committed an act of terrorism on American soil, Trump's response is fear.  Shut them out.

Students, the party didn't used to be this way.  A mean wind is blowing.

HUMOR TIMES - Faux News Jan 2017

"Kellyanne Conway: ‘Alternative Words' in Bill of Rights Allow Trump ‘Lots of Latitude'" by Michael Egan, Humor Times 1/24/2017

“Restricting extraneous Freedoms of Press, Religion and Speech, and establishing Christianity as the State Religion are also ‘Alt-Word' permitted,” said Kellyanne Conway, “as is, of course, the quartering of soldiers in your home.”

NYC – Motormouth propagandist Kellyanne Conway, Trump's ministress of misinformation, said today that “alternative words” in the Bill of Rights “clearly permit Congress to impose legal restrictions on an unpatriotic and out-of-control lugenpresse.”

Asked to cite the actual language allowing Congress to restrict press and religious liberty, Ms Conway laughed merrily.

“Freedom is in the eye of the beholder,” she said, adding that “citing actual words is what liberals do.”

The First Amendment's “Alt-Word” meanings, she noted, “are as clear as the photographs of Mr Trump's million-person inauguration.

“Just take a look, and you'll see for yourself.”

The misinformation ministress went on: “The trick is to view the First Amendment in a shady light.  If you squint your eyes and hold it at the right angle, and I do mean the Right angle, you'll see that its Alt-Words reveal numerous restrictions.”

“It's like that blue dress/gold dress thing.  You see it one way but Mr Trump sees it another — gold, of course.”

Kellyanne listed some of the First Amendments' alt-word limits.  “For example, you can't shout ‘Donald Trump is lying, racist, fascist bastard!' in a crowded election,” she said.  “Even if it's true.”

Finally, Ms Conway noted that the inability of some Americans to view the Bill of Rights in the proper light was a “tragic disability” comparable to color blindness or muscular degeneration.

The White House would shortly be issuing government “Alt-Read” spectacles to help disadvantaged citizens who stubbornly continue to see things in the old way.

"Trump Announces Official White House News Outlet" by Diane de Anda, Humor Times 1/23/2017

Press secretary proclaims new era for ‘free press,' thanks to the White House.

Amid all the controversy over Trump's war against the media, he made a stunning announcement today: “To stop the fake news that the lying liberal press like the New York Times is feeding to the American public, I have decided to funnel all White House news through an 'Official White House News Outlet.'  From this day forward, all White House News will be reported through the only reputable newspaper in the country, The National Enquirer.”

Trump then left the podium and press secretary Sean Spicer remained to answer questions from White House staffers who had just been hired on as reporters by the National Enquirer.  Reading from the 3 X 5 cards with assigned questions from the press secretary, a novice reporter asked how this was going to improve communication with the public.

“I'm glad you asked that,” he responded.  “Now every citizen will be able to know what the President is thinking or doing without paying a hefty subscription fee.  They can just pick it up at their local grocery or liquor store.”

“Were any other newspapers considered?” read another.

“The Star was a close second, so as a consolation, they will be given a front row seat at any future press conference.”  The press secretary smiled and added as he left the podium, “It will be great to have a truly free press again.”

An interview with the editor of The National Enquirer revealed that due to a huge influx of cash from an anonymous investor, they will be tripling their output, having purchased a new fleet of delivery trucks and three times their present printing equipment, all to be housed for free in the Trump Tower, which he called a “magnanimous gesture” by the President.  They are expecting a surge in sales, particularly in the Rust Belt.

A dark expression then came over the editor's face.  “We have just one problem,” he continued.  “Now that we're giving the White House so much space, we haven't figured out where to put the news on Bigfoot and alien abductions.”

THE RESISTANCE - Plea to Trump Fans

"KEITH OLBERMANN:  IT’S TIME FOR TRUMP TO GO BEFORE HE STARTS A NUCLEAR WAR" by Darragh Roche, Contemptor 1/24/2017

Keith Olbermann

Excerpt

What Trump does not believe, cannot be true.  And that way lies madness,” Olbermann said.  “And lies every evil imaginable and including the end of this country, in a literal sense, perhaps even the end of civilization.”

Olbermann argued that Trump’s ability to convince himself of his own lies showed he was mentally unfit to be President and a danger to the country and its people.  Olbermann appealed to those still supporting Trump to think again, because Trump could start a nuclear war.

OPINION - Brooks and Shields + 1/20/2017

"How did President Trump fare in his first day on the job?" PBS NewsHour 1/20/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  It's Day One of the Trump presidency.  After the pomp of the day's ceremony, what should we take away from the actions and rhetoric of the new President?  Judy Woodruff gets reaction to President Trump's unorthodox Inauguration Day speech and the broader outlook for his administration from syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks and others.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  So, what to make of this day one of the Trump presidency?

Here with me now are NewsHour regulars syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks, and from our politics Monday team, Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report.  Also joining us, Barry Bennett.  He was campaign manager for Ben Carson in the Republican primaries.  He then served as an adviser to the Trump campaign.

From George Washington University, politics scientist Lara Brown.  Karine Jean-Pierre, she was a senior adviser to MoveOn.org during the 2016 elections.  And Matt Schlapp, he is chair of the American Conservative Union.  He joins us from downtown Washington.

We can see the Capitol behind you, Matt.

So, let me start with the NewsHour regulars, Mark Shields and David Brooks.

David, I will start with you.

What is the main takeaway from this day?

DAVID BROOKS, New York Times:  I feel underdressed.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist:  You have got that blue-collar Republican look.

DAVID BROOKS:  It's the new populist moment.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS:  The story of the day was the really unabashed populism and nationalism of the Trump speech.

And so I'm left with two big questions:  How big is this nationalist moment?  It's been spread around the world.  Theresa May just gave an anti — how they're going to withdraw from Brexit, the U.K.  Le Pen is looking good in France.  Putin is riding high.

There's an international movement.  A lot of sort of dismiss as sort of a product of a receding bit of history, but maybe it's the 21st century.  And maybe Trump is riding something, and he will be able to marshal a left-right populist movement.  That's a possibility we should be open to, especially because the anti-populists, people who believe in global trade and global movements, have no guts, no articulation, and really no opposition.

And then the second thing, how is he going to turn this into policy?  How does an outsider who runs against Washington actually rally Washington to launch his agenda?  That's just a gigantic challenge.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Mark Shields?

MARK SHIELDS:  In 1940, there were 137 million people in the United States of America and — 132 million — and there were 600,000 more factory jobs than there are today.

There were eight million more factory jobs in this country than when Jimmy Carter was President of the United States.  So, Donald Trump represents a real grievance, a real constituency.

But what I could not get over in the speech today — and I don't know what the global impact or meaning is, but I do know that it was unlike any inaugural address I have ever heard.  It was a call to arms to those already enlisted in his army.  There was no attempt to reach across the divide.  There was no attempt to heal wounds.  There was no attempt to reassure or allay fears of those who were apprehensive and not supported him.

So, in that sense, it was almost unique, at least in the speeches I have heard.  And it was an unbridled attack upon those Presidents spoke of who were — in William's piece — who were sitting on the dais with him, having praised the Obamas in one sentence for being magnificent, and then saying that this small group who have profited in Washington have been indifferent, and almost cruelly so, to the rest of the country.

So, I just stand in the midnight in America, American carnage, which is, — I think, soon-to-be canceled TV series — but I just have never heard language quite like it or a tone quite like it in an inaugural address.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE - Women's March 2017!

"Women's March leaders aim for ‘solidarity against misogyny'" PBS NewsHour 1/20/2017

NOTE:  "The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States consisting of two chambers: the Senate and the House of Representatives."

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  On Saturday, another crowd will gather on the National Mall -- not to celebrate, but to advocate.  William Brangham talks with Bob Bland and Carmen Perez, co-chairs of the Women's March On Washington, about the organization's mission to protect women's rights, creating a safe space for difficult conversations on sensitive issues and remembering that “we're all people first.”

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  So, in addition to the protests today, there are plans for much more to come tomorrow.

Women from around the country are making their way to the nation's capital, with others preparing for events in cities around the globe.  The crowds on the National Mall on Saturday are expected to be in the hundreds of thousands.

William Brangham recently sat down at the Newseum with two organizers of tomorrow's march, Bob Bland and Carmen Perez.

William began by asking what they hope to accomplish.

BOB BLAND, Co-Chair, Women's March on Washington:  We are bringing together women, men and allies from all different types of communities from all over the country to say that we're standing in solidarity together to say that women's rights are human rights.

CARMEN PEREZ, Co-Chair, Women's March on Washington:  We are coming here so that we could show this new administration that we're not going anywhere, right?

And there are so many more of us that are actually united than we are divided.  This March on Washington is to ensure that Congress (House), our new President and the Senate know that we're going to continue to fight for our rights, that we're going to protect the most marginalized communities.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  What are you marching for, and what are you marching against?

CARMEN PEREZ:  So, we are marching to continue to allow women to make decisions about their bodies and ensure we have reproductive justice rights, immigration reform, criminal justice reform, as well as indigenous rights.

So, there are so many things.  We have been extremely intentional about allowing organizations to get involved, Planned Parenthood, as well as Define American.

BOB BLAND:  And every woman has their own reason for marching.  So, that's the really beautiful thing about this.

We have seen, through the last 18 months and everything that's happened, that we can be complacent no longer.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  There are so many specifics in your guiding principles, everything from minimum wage, to reproductive rights, to environmental concerns, to indigenous people's concerns.

Why was it important to you to be so specific in the things that you're marching for?

CARMEN PEREZ:  We wanted to make sure that there was a mission, there was a vision, that we started organizing for something, not against something, right?  So, this is not a march against Trump.  This is a march on Washington, Congress, the Senate, our President.

"People across the world rally for women's rights" PBS NewsHour 1/21/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  One day after President Donald Trump was inaugurated, thousands of people joined the Women's March in Washington, D.C., and other demonstrations around the world; to advocate for reproductive, immigration, racial equality and worker's rights.  The NewsHour Weekend's Ivette Feliciano reports from the main event in D.C.

BRIEF BUT SPECTACULAR - High-Tech Future

"Why we need to ask questions now about our high-tech future" PBS NewsHour 1/19/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Your phone probably knows more about the intimate details of your life you than your lover, says futurist Amy Webb.  And you better get used to it -- we'll be spending the rest of our lifetimes in a world shaped by artificial intelligence.  Webb gives her 'Brief But Spectacular' take on the future.

MAKING SEN$E - "Faking Normal"

"55, unemployed and faking normal: One woman's story of barely scraping by" PBS NewsHour 1/19/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Elizabeth White has been on the edge of the financial cliff for years, but you'd never know it from outside appearances.  "Everybody is pretending," she says.  In her self-published book Fifty-Five, Unemployed, and Faking Normal she painfully chronicles the crash of a flourishing career and upper-middle class lifestyle -- and she's not alone.  Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports.

ELIZABETH WHITE, Author, “Fifty-Five, Unemployed and Faking Normal”:  Everybody is pretending.

PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour):  And that's why you call the book Faking Normal?

ELIZABETH WHITE:  Right, because there's a lot of pressure to seem like you are doing well.

PAUL SOLMAN:  Elizabeth White is not doing terribly well, as she painfully chronicles in the book she's just self-published, Fifty-Five Unemployed and Faking Normal.

White's been on the edge of the financial cliff for years, even though you would never know it from how she looks or the Washington, D.C. townhouse she bought years ago, one she couldn't even dream of renting today.

But you haven't been in a situation where you literally couldn't afford whatever it is, the condo fee, or?

ELIZABETH WHITE:  Oh, absolutely, I have.  I right now have to park outside because I'm in arrears on the condo fee, right now.

PAUL SOLMAN:  And she's refinanced to the hilt, taken in a boarder.

Well, you haven't used food stamps.

ELIZABETH WHITE:  But I have.  I have had to.

PAUL SOLMAN:  It's been quite a comeuppance for someone with her background.

ELIZABETH WHITE:  I have a bachelor's from Oberlin.  I have a master's in international studies from Johns Hopkins.  I have a Harvard MBA, worked at the World Bank, came in through a program where they recruited 5,000 people.  They took two Americans out of that 25.  I was one of the Americans.

PAUL SOLMAN:  But, ultimately, White decided to leave the bank to start her own business.

ELIZABETH WHITE:  I had a chain of stores, of decorative home stores.

PAUL SOLMAN:  Really?

ELIZABETH WHITE:  Yes.

I sold some of the things you see here, African-inspired products.  I realized that there was an African-American market that wanted things in their home that reflected heritage and culture.  If you wanted to give your little girl a black Raggedy Ann doll, you couldn't easily find it.

So I just curated that from all over.  So, I then bet the ranch that I could get this going.  So, I took a lot of my — not all of it, but I took a big chunk of my World Bank money to sort of fund this.

HEALTH CARE - Doctor's Orders

"Reassessing the value of care for chronic health conditions" PBS NewsHour 1/18/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Surgeon Atul Gawande says we need to reconsider healthcare's focus on generously rewarding physicians who practice heroic interventions, rather than those who practice incremental medicine for chronic conditions.  Gawande talks with William Brangham about the value of that kind of care, and the potential effects of a Republican repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

DR. ATUL GAWANDE, The New Yorker:  When you think about the future of health care and where we're going at this moment of debate, there's a transformation going on that involves a recognition that our focus in medicine has been on heroic interventions, like the kind that I do now as a surgeon.

But the biggest gains are coming right now from incremental medicine, from a commitment to the kind of steady, overtime management of complex problems like chronic illnesses that can add years to people's lives.  But that's work done by some of the people with the least resources in our health care system.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  So, who practices incremental medicine in our health care system today?

DR. ATUL GAWANDE:  Well, good examples, just look at the list of who the lowest-paid people are.

Pediatricians are at the bottom.  You would also look at internists.  You would look at psychiatrists.  You would look at family physicians, HIV specialists.  People who take care of chronic illnesses by seeing people carefully over time, those are the people who get the least money.

The people who have the most [pay] are people like orthopedic surgeons, interventional cardiologists.  And my point isn't that — you know, that we're — that there is something wrong with heroism.

My own son has a congenital heart condition, where his life was saved by a cardiac surgeon stepping in at 11 days of life to save his life.  But he is now 21 years old because of constant monitoring and working with him with a primary care physician and people who controlled his blood pressure, recognized problems before they arose, dealt with learning issues that were related to his condition.

And that's the only reason now that he's getting to live a long and healthy life.  That's what we're not rewarding.  They don't have the kind of resources and commitment that we are giving to people like me.  I have millions of dollars of equipment available to me when I go to work every day in an operating room.

The clinicians who keep my son going are lucky if they can have a nurse.

TRUMP LAND - Protecting Trump's Phallic Symbol

"The towering challenge of protecting the Trumps in New York" PBS NewsHour 1/18/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  When Donald Trump moves into the White House, Trump Tower will still be a home of the first family.  Securing the skyscraper presents unprecedented challenges, not to mention traffic gridlock, a hardship on nearby businesses and a fight over who should be paying the sky-high costs.  The NewsHour's Rhana Natour reports.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  With just a couple days left until the inauguration, much of the nation's attention is on President-elect Trump's move into the White House.

But Midtown Manhattan residents are still focusing on the gold skyscraper of Trump Tower, which will continue to be a home for the Trump family.

Producer Rhana Natour looks at the unprecedented challenges of securing that residence and the financial fallout.

RHANA NATOUR, Producer:  This is the new reality along the storied Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, dogs, chains, and intense security.

The President-elect has used Trump Tower as a base for transition meetings since the election, and while he will relocate to the White House after the inaugural, his wife, Melania, and 10-year-old son Barron plan to stay in Trump Tower through the end of the school year.

Evy Poumpouras is a former Secret Service agent.  For 12 years, she was part of the presidential detail for Presidents Obama, Clinton and both Bushes.

We are seeing delivery truck after delivery truck being searched in and out.  What is happening here?

EVY POUMPOURAS, Former Secret Service Agent:  So, we want to control what's coming into the area of Trump Tower.

And one of the biggest issues are large vehicles that can actually have large amounts of an explosive.  And a truck would be a perfect thing, a perfect IED, a vehicle device, to use.

So, what they will do is, you will typically have the vehicle stopped.  They will search the vehicle, make sure there's nothing inside the vehicle, underneath the vehicle, make sure it's clean.

RHANA NATOUR:  Trump Tower stretches 57 stories, with 26 floors of offices, three retail stores and hundreds of tenants.  It is also surrounded by other skyscrapers, compounding the security challenge.

EVY POUMPOURAS:  Right now, planes aren't allowed to fly over Trump Tower, same thing that happens over at the White House.  But then you have that variable.  He's up top.  He's high on the floor.  Planes are a concern.

RHANA NATOUR:  And, as technology evolves, there are ever greater risks.

EVY POUMPOURAS:  Drones.  Can somebody use a drone, not just to go up there and, you know what, I want to see the future president?  You can actually strap explosives, weapons to those drones, fly them up, and then cause harm in that way.

And then also even cyber-security, radiation, contamination in the air, chemical — any type of chemical airborne attack, that's also an issue.  The tower itself, one of the things we look at is what we call the H-VAC system, which is where the air intake system is.  That's super dangerous as well.

ENERGY - The Nuclear Option

"Is alluring but elusive fusion energy possible in our lifetime?" PBS NewsHour 1/18/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Limitless power with virtually no greenhouse gases or radioactive waste.  If that sounds too good to be true, that's because it is.  For decades, researchers have looked for ways to control, confine and sustain fusion as an energy source.  But there has been a lot of progress on a small scale, building on years of physics understanding and progress.  Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  The hunt to create fusion energy.  While many people remain worried about pursuing further development of nuclear power, some researchers believe nuclear fusion could hold the key to clean and plentiful energy.

There have been many false starts before, but some scientists see real reason for hope that this path will eventually pay off.

Miles O'Brien has a report for our weekly segment 'The Leading Edge,' a co-production in this case with NOVA and his special, “The Nuclear Option.”

MILES O'BRIEN (NewsHour):  In Southern California, this complex, power-hungry machine is hard at work on a seemingly quixotic mission, akin to catching lightning in a bottle.  It is a plasma generator.  Its builders hope it's a key step in the long journey to the Holy Grail of energy production, fusion.

MICHL BINDERBAUER, Tri Alpha Energy:  Fusion is nature's preferred way of making power.

MILES O'BRIEN:  Michl Binderbauer is chief technology officer for a startup called Tri Alpha Energy that is making a $500 million bet on fusion.

MICHL BINDERBAUER:  Think of this like a mini-sun, a very hot mini-sun, and it radiates.  And it's that radiation that is intercepted on the surface of the machine, and then it becomes heat, and then you can process that into electricity.

MILES O'BRIEN:  The promise, no less than limitless power, with virtually no greenhouse gases or radioactive waste.  If that sounds too good to be true, it is.  No one knows that better than nuclear engineer Steve Dean.

STEVE DEAN, Fusion Power Associates:  Fusion is not low-tech.  It's not going to be easy to prove that it's reliable, maintainable, cost-effective, because it is complicated.

MILES O'BRIEN:  Dean is president of Fusion Power Associates, a foundation focused on research and education.  He joined the fusion industry in 1962, working for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which coordinated and funded the U.S. fusion effort.

STEVE DEAN:  To me, it seemed like it was something I could spend my career on, and we would have electricity on the grid by the time I retired.

(LAUGHTER)

STEVE DEAN:  That's what I thought.  So, it didn't happen that way.

MILES O'BRIEN:  Fusion is as old as the cosmos.  It is the nuclear reaction that takes place in our sun and all the other stars in the universe.  In a fusion reaction, hydrogen atoms collide at high speed, fusing together, forming a helium atom, releasing one neutron.

Since the mass of the helium atom is less than the combined mass of the two atoms that collided in the first place, energy is released.

The dawn of man-made fusion broke over the Pacific in 1952, with the first explosion of a hydrogen bomb.

MICHL BINDERBAUER:  The hydrogen bomb was a quick success.  And so a derivative of that was euphoria.  In a few more years, we could do civilian energy production out of fusion.  And while there were glimmers of hope along the way, we all now know, painfully, that hasn't happened.

HEALTH CARE - The 'Super-Utilizers' Issue

"A way to save money when half of all health costs is spent on a fraction of patients" PBS NewsHour 1/17/2017

IMHO:  If the Republicans had their way, these people would just be thrown out.  'They cost too much' (a nice Christian attitude).

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Health care “super-utilizers” make up just 5 percent of the U.S. population but they account for 50 percent of health care spending.  As health care costs continue to rise, providers are trying to figure out how to find these patients and get to the root of their problems.  But the looming repeal of the Affordable Care Act may disrupt those efforts.  Special correspondent Sarah Varney reports.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  How some lesser-known changes to health care might fare, given President-elect Trump's vow to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

One of those involve so-called “super utilizers” — high-cost patients who frequently turn to emergency rooms for problems better handled by primary care doctors and social workers.

Special correspondent Sarah Varney reports.

This story was produced in collaboration with our partner Kaiser Health News.

SARAH VARNEY, Special correspondent:  Protective gown.  Rubber gloves.  Face mask.  Dayna Gurley is getting dressed for work.  She's a social worker charged not with treating infectious diseases, but with figuring out why her clients all but live in Houston's hospitals.

DAYNA GURLEY, Social Worker:  What's been going on?

SARAH VARNEY:  This patient, who asked not to be identified, has chronic massive ulcers, AIDS, hears voices, and, at times, spends three weeks out of the month at multiple hospitals around Houston.

Gurley is part of a promising effort in the U.S. health care system:  Honing in on so-called “super-utilizers,” patients with complex problems who frequent emergency rooms and cost public and private insurers dearly.

Super-utilizers make up just 5 percent of the U.S. population, but they account for 50 percent of health care spending.  As health care costs continue to rise, providers are trying to find these patients and get to the root of their problems.

An effort to do just that started in New Jersey's poorest city, Camden.  Family physician Dr. Jeffrey Brenner was inspired by how police departments were using crime data to detect hot spots.  To find Camden's health care hot spots, Brenner dug into ambulance records and E.R. data to show how high-cost patients were shuttling between city hospitals.

DR. JEFFREY BRENNER, Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers:  In America, we're medicalizing social problems, and we're criminalizing social problems, and we're wasting huge amounts of public resources.

SARAH VARNEY:  To steer super-utilizers away from expensive emergency care, Brenner's team, including social workers Latonya Oliver and Bill Nice, seek patients out in local neighborhoods.

BILL NICE:  There's been a few patients that I have had like that…

SARAH VARNEY:  They work intensively with people like Peter Bowser.

Bowser was once homeless, and went to the E.R. 28 times in one year.

PETER BOWSER:  Because I was telling people when I was staying in the shelter, I said, ‘When I get my place,' I said, ‘I'm going to maintain it.'

SARAH VARNEY:  But after they helped get a permanent roof over his head, Bowser's trips to the E.R. all but stopped.

BILL NICE:  And I think you would prefer to spend your time here than the hospital any day of the week…

TRUMP AGENDA - Warning From UN Ambassador Power

"UN Ambassador Power warns against ‘historical amnesia' in future Russian relations" PBS NewsHour 1/17/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power used her final speech to focus on Russia as a major threat.  Judy Woodruff sits down with Power during her last days in office to discuss troubling actions by Russia and the future of Russian relations under the Trump administration, as well as the Obama administration's complicated decision not to intervene militarily in Syria.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  President-elect Trump's nominee to be U.S.  Ambassador to the U.N., South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, plans to question why the U.S. contributes 22 percent of the U.N.'s budget.

In prepared remarks for her confirmation hearing tomorrow, we also learned that she will criticize the recent vote condemning Israeli settlements.

Earlier today, I sat down with Samantha Power.  She's the outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.  We spoke at the State Department.

And I began by asking why, in her final speech, she focused on Russia as a major threat to the U.S.

SAMANTHA POWER, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations:  There is a fair amount of competition, obviously, with ISIL and the terrorist networks around the world, China also posing a different kind of threat to the rules-based order.

But I thought it was very important before leaving to draw on my eight years, our eight years here in these jobs of privilege that we have had, to take note of the pattern that has developed, particularly in the last few years, starting with the decision by President Putin to go into Ukraine, to lie about it, to take Crimea, to try to annex it, involved with that regime, itself resorting to tactics that were outlawed 100 years ago, and then systematically, in Europe, backing these illiberal parties whose world view is closer to this kind of populist authoritarian, anti-Muslim, anti-diversity kind of line that has been pursued in Moscow.

All of that plus, of course, the most recent and most egregious example that hits close to home for us, which is interfering in our elections through hacking, through fake news, and with an eye to trying to help one candidate win.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  And so, when the President-elect speaks, as he has often, about wanting a better relationship with Russia — and, in fact, one of his advisers has just said in the last day or so, he said, the U.S. needs to find a way to get along better with Russia.  He said, we need to focus less on combating communism and more on rejecting radical Islam.

How do you react to that?

SAMANTHA POWER:  Well, let me raise my hand and say at no point have I been fighting the last war and seeking at the U.N. to combat communism.

I think we do have an interest in combating states that try to cross borders and steal parts of other people's country.  We have an interest in combating tactics in war that are abhorrent and that only fuel terrorism because they incite people on the ground.

And we, as Americans, have an interest in ensuring that the only people who get to vote for our elected leaders are our citizens, and not some foreign people who think that they have an interest in skewing our election in one direction or another.

Look, I think the point that we all agree upon is that we have to engage with Russia.  I have spent, you know, as much time with my Russian counterpart as I have probably with anybody else, including close family members, over the course of the last four years.  And we have done really important work together.

At the same time we're at each other on Aleppo, on Ukraine, we're authorizing peacekeeping missions, putting sanctions in place on North Korea for its nuclear tests.  We need to find means for cooperation.

I think the potential difference or the issue that is going to need to be adjudicated is, on what terms?  Are we going to bring historical amnesia and pretend as though history is just starting on January 21, or are we going to take into account egregious violations of the rules of the road that may have — in the first instance have predated the administration, but that are inevitably going to continue if Russia believes that there are no costs to its actions, as if all it has to do is just wait out the United States, and then eventually we will soften our positions and forget about what happened?

TRUMP AGENDA - Criticizing Allies

"EU nations react with surprise, defiance to Trump remarks" by KIRSTEN GRIESHABER and RAF CASERT (AP) PBS NewsHour 1/16/2017

European Union nations reacted with surprise and defiance Monday to comments by President-elect Donald Trump, who said in an interview that he believed NATO was “obsolete” and that more member states would leave the 28-nation EU.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, speaking ahead of an EU foreign ministers meeting, said Trump's view on NATO and criticism that allied members weren't paying their fair share has “caused astonishment.”

His French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault added that the best response to such an interview was simple — Europeans uniting.

In Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Trump's positions have been “long known” but added: “I think we Europeans have our fate in our own hands.”

“I'm personally going to wait until the American President takes office, and then we will naturally work with him on all levels,” she told reporters.

Though Trump had made similar comments during his tempestuous election campaign, a repetition of the same points still came as a bit of a surprise since his choice for Defense Secretary, retired Marine Gen.  James Mattis, stressed his support for the alliance in his U.S. congressional confirmation hearings last week.

Trump's views, in an interview with German daily Bild and The Times of London, contradict Mattis, Steinmeier said.

Trump indicated he was indifferent to whether the EU stays together or not, a sharp break from the Obama administration, which encouraged British people to vote to remain in the EU in the June referendum.

“I believe others will leave … I do think keeping it together is not gonna be as easy as a lot of people think,” Trump said in the interview.

The British exit from the EU would “end up being a great thing,” he said.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said it's “very good news that the United States of America wants to do a good free trade deal with us and wants to do it very fast.”

Trump was less kind to German industry officials, saying car manufacturers including BMW could face tariffs of up to 35 percent if they set up plants in Mexico instead of in the U.S. and try to export the cars to the U.S.

Such tariffs would make “the American auto industry worse, weaker and more expensive,” Sigmar Gabriel, Germany's economy minister, told Bild.

Gabriel suggested Europeans exhibit more self-confidence in dealing with Trump.  “We're not weak and inferior,” he said.

BMW said Monday that the company would stick to its plans to produce cars in Mexico.

“The production is aimed at the world market,” BMW said, according to the German news agency DPA.  “Therefore the plant in Mexico will complement … the production plants in Germany and China.”

"Why is Trump criticizing key allies to U.S. security?" PBS NewsHour 1/16/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  European officials are digesting new comments by President-elect Trump, who told two newspapers that NATO is obsolete, suggested the U.S. might drop sanctions on Russia and said he is indifferent about the future of the EU.  John Yang gets reaction from Heather Conley of the Center for Strategic, and International Studies and Nicholas Burns the former U.S. Ambassador to NATO.

THE RESISTANCE - Sending In the Wrecking Ball

"Peter's Choice" by Rick Perlstein, Mother Jones Jan/Feb 2017 Issue

I asked my student why he voted for Trump.  The answer was thoughtful, smart, and terrifying.

This past October, I taught a weeklong seminar on the history of conservatism to honors students from around the state of Oklahoma.  In five long days, my nine very engaged students and I got to know each other fairly well.  Six were African American women.  Then there was a middle-aged white single mother, a white kid who looked like any other corn-fed Oklahoma boy and identified himself as "queer," and the one straight white male.  I'll call him Peter.

Peter is 21 and comes from a town of about 3,000 souls.  It's 85 percent white, according to the 2010 census, and 1.2 percent African American—which would make for about 34 black folks.  "Most people live around the poverty line," Peter told the class, and hunting is as much a sport as a way to put food on the table.

Peter was one of the brightest students in the class, and certainly the sweetest.  He liked to wear overalls to school—and on the last day, in a gentle tweak of the instructor, a red "Make America Great Again" baseball cap.  A devout evangelical, he'd preferred former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at the start of the primary season, but was now behind Donald Trump.

One day the students spent three hours drafting essays about the themes we'd talked about in class.  I invited them to continue writing that night so the next morning we could discuss one of their pieces in detail.  I picked Peter's because it was extraordinary.  In only eight hours he'd churned out eight pages, eloquent and sharp.

When I asked him if I could discuss his essay in this article, he replied, "That sounds fine with me.  If any of my work can be used to help the country with its political turmoil, I say go for it!"  Then he sent me a new version with typos corrected and a postelection postscript: "My wishful hope is that my compatriots will have their tempers settled by Trump's election, and that maybe both sides can learn from the Obama and Trump administrations in order to understand how both sides feel.  Then maybe we can start electing more moderate people, like John Kasich and Jim Webb, who can find reasonable commonality on both sides and make government work." Did I mention he was sweet?

When he read the piece aloud in class that afternoon in October, the class was riveted.  Several of the black women said it was the first time they'd heard a Trump supporter clearly set forth what he believed and why.  (Though, defying stereotypes, one of these women—an aspiring cop—was also planning to vote for Trump.)

Peter's essay took off from the main class reading, Corey Robin's The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism From Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin.  Its central argument is that conservative movements across history are united in their devotion to the maintenance of received social hierarchy.  Peter, whose essay was titled "Plight of the Redneck," had a hard time seeing how that applied to the people he knew.

"We all live out in the wilderness, either in the middle of a forest or on a farm," he wrote.  "Some people cannot leave their homes during times of unfortunate weather.  Many still dry clothes by hanging them on wires with clothespins outside.  These people are nowhere near the top, or even the middle, of any hierarchy.  These people are scraping the bottom of the barrel, and they, seemingly, have nothing to benefit from maintaining the system of order that keeps them at the bottom."  His county ended up going about 70 percent for Trump.

Concerning race, Peter wrote, "In Oklahoma, besides Native Americans, there have traditionally been very few minorities.  Few blacks have ever lived near the town that I am from...Even in my generation, despite there being a little more diversity, there was no racism, nor was there a reason for racism to exist."  His town's 34 or so black people might beg to differ, of course; white people's blindness to racism in their midst is an American tradition.  As one of the African American students in the class—I'll call her Karen—put it, whites in her town see "racism as nonexistent unless they witness it firsthand.  And then it almost has to be over the top—undeniable acts of violence like hate crimes or cross burnings on front lawns—before they would acknowledge it as such."  But it's relevant to the story I'm telling that I'm certain Peter isn't individually, deliberately racist, and that Karen agrees.

Still, Peter's thinking might help us frame a central debate on the left about what to make of Trump's victory.  Is it, in the main, a recrudescence of bigotry on American soil—a reactionary scream against a nation less white by the year?  Or is it more properly understood as an economically grounded response to the privations that neoliberalism has wracked upon the heartland?

Peter knows where he stands.  He remembers multiple factories and small businesses "shutting down or laying off.  Next thing you know, half of downtown" in the bigger city eight miles away "became vacant storefronts."  Given that experience, he has concluded, "for those people who have no political voice and come from states that do not matter, the best thing they can do is try to send in a wrecking ball to disrupt the system."

When Peter finished with that last line, there was a slight gasp from someone in the class—then silence, then applause.  They felt like they got it.

I was also riveted by Peter's account, convinced it might be useful as a counterbalance to glib liberal dismissals of the role of economic decline in building Trumpland.  Then I did some research.

According to the 2010 census, the median household income in Peter's county is a little more than $45,000.  By comparison, Detroit's is about $27,000 and Chicago's (with a higher cost of living) is just under $49,000.  The poverty rate is 17.5 percent in the county and 7.6 percent in Peter's little town, compared with Chicago's 22.7 percent.  The unemployment rate has hovered around 4 percent.

The town isn't rich, to be sure.  But it's also not on the "bottom." Oklahoma on the whole has been rather dynamic economically: Real GDP growth was 2.8 percent in 2014—down from 4.3 percent in 2013, but well above the 2.2 percent nationally.  The same was true of other Trump bastions like Texas (5.2 percent growth) and West Virginia (5.1 percent).

Peter, though, perceives the region's economic history as a simple tale of desolation and disappointment.  "Everyone around was poor, including the churches," he wrote, "and charities were nowhere near (this wasn't a city, after all), so more people had to use some sort of government assistance.  Taxes went up [as] the help became more widespread."

He was just calling it like he saw it.  But it's striking how much a bright, inquisitive, public-spirited guy can take for granted that just is not so.  Oklahoma's top marginal income tax rate was cut by a quarter point to 5 percent in 2016, the same year lawmakers hurt the working poor by slashing the earned-income tax credit.  On the "tax burden" index used by the website WalletHub, Oklahoma's is the 45th lowest, with rock-bottom property taxes and a mere 4.5 percent sales tax.  (On Election Day, Oklahomans voted down a 1-point sales tax increase meant to raise teacher pay, which is 49th in the nation.).

As for government assistance, Oklahoma spends less than 10 percent of its welfare budget on cash assistance.  The most a single-parent family of three can get is $292 a month—that's 18 percent of the federal poverty line.  Only 2,469 of the more than 370,000 Oklahomans aged 18 to 64 who live in poverty get this aid.  And the state's Medicaid eligibility is one of the stingiest in the nation, covering only adults with dependent children and incomes below 42 percent of the poverty level—around $8,500 for a family of three.

But while Peter's analysis is at odds with much of the data, his overall story does fit a national pattern.  Trump voters report experiencing greater-than-average levels of economic anxiety, even though they tend have better-than-average incomes.  And they are inclined to blame economic instability on the federal government—even, sometimes, when it flows from private corporations.  Peter wrote about the sense of salvation his neighbors felt when a Walmart came to town: "Now there were enough jobs, even part-time jobs...  But Walmart constantly got attacked by unions nationally and with federal regulations; someone lost their job, or their job became part-time."

It's worth noting that if the largest retail corporation in the world has been conspicuously harmed by unions and regulations of late, it doesn't show in its profits, which were $121 billion in 2016.  And of course, Walmart historically has had a far greater role in shuttering small-town Main Streets than in revitalizing them.  But Peter's neighbors see no reason to resent it for that.  He writes, "The majority of the people do not blame the company for their loss because they realize that businesses [are about] making money, and that if they had a business of their own, they would do the same thing."

It's not fair to beat up on a sweet 21-year-old for getting facts wrong—especially if, as is likely, these were the only facts he was told.  Indeed, teaching the class, I was amazed how even the most liberal students took for granted certain dubious narratives in which they (and much of the rest of the country) were marinated all year long, like the notion that Hillary Clinton was extravagantly corrupt.

Feelings can't be fact-checked, and in the end, feelings were what Peter's eloquent essay came down to ­— what it feels like to belong, and what it feels like to be culturally dispossessed.  "After continually losing on the economic side," he wrote, "one of the few things that you can retain is your identity.  What it means, to you, to be an American, your somewhat self-sufficient and isolated way of life, and your Christian faith and values.  Your identity and heritage is the very last thing you can cling to...Abortion laws and gay marriage are the two most recent upsets.  The vast majority of the state of Oklahoma has opposed both of the issues, and social values cannot be forced by the government."

On these facts he is correct: In a 2015 poll, 68 percent of Oklahomans called themselves "pro-life," and only 30 percent supported marriage equality.  Until 2016 there were only a handful of abortion providers in the entire state, and the first new clinic to open in 40 years guards its entrance with a metal detector.

Peter thinks he's not a reactionary.  Since that sounds like an insult, I'd like to think so, too.  But in writing this piece, I did notice a line in his essay that I had glided over during my first two readings, maybe because I liked him too much to want to be scared by him.  "One need only look to the Civil War and the lasting legacies of Reconstruction through to today's current racism and race issues to see what happens when the federal government forces its morals on dissenting parts of the country."

The last time I read that, I shuddered.  So I emailed Peter.  "I say the intrusions were worth it to end slavery and turn blacks into full citizens," I wrote.  "A lot of liberals, even those most disposed to having an open mind to understanding the grievances of people like you and yours, will have a hard time with [your words]."

Peter's answer was striking.  He first objected (politely!) to what he saw as the damning implication behind my observation.  Slavery and Reconstruction?  "I was using it as an example of government intrusion and how violent and negative the results can be when the government tries to tell people how to think.  I take it you saw it in terms of race in politics.  The way we look at the same thing shows how big the difference is between our two groups."

To him, focusing on race was "an attention-grabbing tool that politicians use to their advantage," one that "really just annoys and angers conservatives more than anything, because it is usually a straw man attack."  He compared it to what "has happened with this election: everyone who votes for Trump must be racist and sexist, and there's no possible way that anyone could oppose Hillary unless it's because they're sexist.  Accusing racism or sexism eliminates the possibility of an honest discussion about politics."

He asked me to imagine "being one of those rednecks under the poverty line, living in a camper trailer on your grandpa's land, eating about one full meal a day, yet being accused by Black Lives Matter that you are benefiting from white privilege and your life is somehow much better than theirs."

And that's when I wanted to meet him halfway: Maybe we could talk about the people in Chicago working for poverty wages and being told by Trump supporters that they were lazy.  Or the guy with the tamale cart in front of my grocery store—always in front of my grocery store, morning, noon, and night—who with so much as a traffic violation might find himself among the millions whom Trump intends to immediately deport.

I wanted to meet him halfway, until he started talking about history.

"The reason I used the Civil War and Reconstruction is because it isn't a secret that Reconstruction failed," Peter wrote.  "It failed and left the South in an extreme poverty that it still hasn't recovered from."  And besides, "slavery was expensive and the Industrial Revolution was about to happen.  Maybe if there had been no war, slavery would have faded peacefully."

As a historian, I found this remarkable, since it was precisely what all American schoolchildren learned about slavery and Reconstruction for much of the 20th century.  Or rather, they did until the civil rights era, when serious scholarship dismantled this narrative, piece by piece.  But not, apparently, in Peter's world.  "Until urban liberals move to the rural South and live there for probably a decade or more," he concluded, "there's no way to fully appreciate the view."

This was where he left me plumb at a loss.  Liberals must listen to and understand Trump supporters.  But what you end up understanding from even the sweetest among them still might chill you to the bone.

IMHO - Last Words

"Don't wait till your dying words to say what's most important" PBS NewsHour 1/16/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  "Should I plan out my last words?"  As a hospice chaplain, Kerry Egan hears that question sometimes.  But death isn't so easy to predict.  Instead, Egan suggests making sure you ask forgiveness or share your wisdom now.

EDUCATION - How the Deck is Stacked

"Why so many students from for-profit schools are left in debt limbo" PBS NewsHour 1/16/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Students who attend for-profit college and training programs are more likely to borrow, borrow more and struggle to repay their loans.  Not only that, but the overall graduation rate at for-profit institutions is just 27 percent.  Meanwhile, a number of schools have shuttered, leaving former attendees with debt and no way to pay it back.  Special correspondent Lizzie O'Leary reports.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Student loan debt is an issue facing many Americans, and can take years to pay off.

In particular, the problems some students face at for-profit schools are getting closer scrutiny.

Marketplace's Lizzie O'Leary has the story.  It's part of our series 'How the Deck Is Stacked.'  It's in partnership with Frontline and Marketplace, and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

LIZZIE O'LEARY, Special correspondent:  Before she became a mother, New Yorker Danielle Adorno (ph) dreamed of working as a pastry chef.  When she came across ads for the 'Art Institute of New York,' it seemed like a great fit.  And she says school administrators promised her a lot.

DANIELLE LOPEZ, Student Loan Borrower:  They were very adamant on like their job placement rates, boasting over like 90 percent job placement, boasting about their chef instructors working at Nobu and all these high-end restaurants.  You would think, oh, OK, I'm going to get the quality education that I'm looking for, because that's what it's about, quality.

You know, I figure, if I'm going to pay that much — that amount of money for such a short program, I'm going to be getting something out of it.  And that wasn't what happened.

LIZZIE O'LEARY:  She claims the school never helped her get work in her field.  And she says employers don't value the degree in the way she thought they would.  She's no longer paying her loan company her $25,000 debt.

DANIELLE LOPEZ:  They don't deserve a single penny out of me, because I didn't get the education I paid for.

LIZZIE O'LEARY:  You did sign a contract when you took out that money.

DANIELLE LOPEZ:  I did.  And I also thought if — I feel like it stopped being about education and started becoming about consumerism.  I'm paying you for a service.  I paid you for an education.  I paid you to train me.  I paid you to give me this 90 percent job placement rate that you boasted about.  You told me you were going to place me in a job.

And, instead, I got a program that was shutting down.

LIZZIE O'LEARY:  The Art Institute's parent company, Education Management Corporation, was the target of a federal investigation.  Department of Justice officials say the company acted as a recruitment mill.  It reached a $95.5 million false claims settlement.  But there was no determination of liability.

LORETTA LYNCH, U.S. Attorney General:  This kind of abuse hurts not only taxpayers, but also the students.

LIZZIE O'LEARY:  The Art Institute of New York's Web site says it is no longer accepting students.  And the campus has been put on probation by their accreditor.

In the last few years, the Obama administration put many new regulations in place to address aggressive marketing and job placement claims by several for-profit schools.

THE RESISTANCE - Politics in Pics

"The PICTURES are in. Terrifically small crowd for Donny's Inauguration" by IMissPhilly, Daily KOS 1/20/2017

One of these is a presidential inauguration in 2017 for a man named Donald Trump and the other is from 2009 for a man named Barack Obama.  Can you tell which?

Satire:

THE RESISTANCE - The Obama Foundation

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama implored Americans to contribute ideas to the Obama Foundation.

GAME OF THRONES - Questions, Season 7

DigitalSpy Recap

THE RESISTANCE - Trump's Inauguration, Truth Out