Voting rights have a long and sordid history in our country. There have always been people who try to maintain political and economic power by keeping others from voting — landowners over renters, men over women and whites over black. As a result, a fraction of Americans has been more powerful in deciding who our lawmakers are and what laws govern us.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the 10 pillars of fascism. What are they?
JASON STANLEY: The 10 pillars of fascism are, number one, a mythic past, a great mythic past which the leader harkens back.
The cold-blooded, most corporate-indentured Republicans dominate our political process today. Mitch McConnell (see Kentucky Values), led by the election-buying Koch brothers, drove Kavanaugh's nomination through the Senate, excluding important witnesses who wished to testify. To shore up claims of legitimacy, McConnell allowed the FBI to conduct a sham investigation that was shaped by Trump's White House lawyer Don McGahn and the FBI head, Christopher Wray. Wray had previously worked with his friend Kavanaugh on the Starr investigation of Bill Clinton's sexual misconduct.
Resilience and action are required. The Supreme Court is deeply political – forget about the claims of judicial independence by the five Justices in the majority. Their votes on issues of class, race, presidential and corporate power, peoples' rights, and remedies and access to justice (day in court with trial by jury) against corporations are quite predictable.
The country’s head is clearing. The country’s vision is coming back into focus and it can see for the first time the length and breadth of the damage it has done to itself. The country is hearing the voices that the cacophony of fear and anger had drowned out for almost three years. The spell, such as it was, and in most places, may be wearing off at last. The hallucinatory effect of a reality-show presidency* is dispersing like a foul, smoky mist over a muddy battlefield.https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21775485/migrant-child-crisis-trump-presidency/
No one who's studied business as long as I have — more than 40 years now — should be shocked by the headline above. In fact, I've believed for years that luck is a better determinant of success than smarts (or effort). It's why I adopted a motto soon after my journalism career kicked off that tried to capture the perception: "There is no big-time." That is, it's remarkable how many at the top are, well, unremarkable. So I figured luck had to play a lead role in their ascension. I've never had occasion to change my mind.
Solman's Sense and Sensibility
But of course, this was a subjective judgment. Now, however, comes support for the cynicism: a study that claims the predominance of luck over talent in the distribution of wealth has been mathematically confirmed. Two Italian physicists — Alessandro Pluchino and Andrea Rapisarda — and one economist — A. E. Biondo —make the case, and they've got a computer model to back it up.
While some ads focused on topics as banal as business promotion or Pokémon, the company consistently promoted ads designed to inflame race-related tensions. Some dealt with race directly; others dealt with issues fraught with racial and religious baggage such as ads focused on protests over policing, the debate over a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico and relationships with the Muslim community.
