Tag Archives: education

And So It Goes

Today is Tuesday, April 22, 2025, Earth Day. (Of course, there was no formal recognition of this day by the Chump administration at all today.) If you inwardly thought that the country of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” was veering toward authoritarianism in the second term of Dump, you were right, since there is an online NPR article by Frank Langfitt entitled “Hundreds of scholars say U.S. is swiftly heading toward authoritarianism” that corroborates your dark suspicions.

Thus a survey of more than 500 political scientists finds that the vast majority believe the United States is moving swiftly from liberal democracy toward some form of autocracy.

“In the benchmark survey, known as Bright Line Watch, U.S.-based professors rate the performance of American democracy on a scale from zero to (complete dictatorship) to 100 (perfect democracy).” This is quite telling: “After President Trump’s election in November, scholars gave American democracy a rating of 67. Several weeks into Trump’s second term, that figure plummeted to 55.”

One of those professors, John Carey, a professor of government at Dartmouth and codirector of Bright Line Watch, said, “That’s a precipitous drop. There’s certainly consensus: We’re moving in the wrong direction.”

Carey said the decline between November and February was the biggest since Bright Line Watch began surveying scholars on threats to American democracy in 2017. In the survey, respondents consider 30 indicators of democratic performance, including whether the government interferes with the press, punishes political opponents, and whether the legislature and the judiciary can check executive authority.

Many scholars like Carey are deeply troubled by Dump’s attempts to expand executive power over his first several months in office. Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, and coauthor of How Democracies Die said, “We’ve slid into some form of authoritarianism. It is relatively mild compared to some others. It is certainly reversible, but we are no longer living in a liberal democracy.”

When these scholars use the term “authoritarianism,” they aren’t referring to a system like China’s, a one-party state with no meaningful elections. Instead, they are referring to something called “competitive authoritarianism,” the kind scholars see in countries like Turkey and Hungary.

In such a system, a leader [like Chump] comes to power democratically and then erodes the system of checks and balances [like Dump]. Typically, the executive fills the civil service and key appointments – including the prosecutor’s office and judiciary – with loyalists [like Dump has]. He or she then attacks the media, universities, and nongovernmental organizations to blunt public criticism and tilt the electoral playing field in the ruling party’s favor.

Trump is using such autocratic tactics as having the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigate all of the major broadcast outlets, except for fucking Rupert Murdock’s Fox “Nonnews” network, which is decidedly pro-Dump in their Fox News Channel. In these fascistic cases, the FCC can revoke local broadcast licenses, which could damage the networks financially.

Princeton’s Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton sociologist who has spent years tracking Hungary, says this activity is eerily reminiscent of Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orban [a pal of this dear leader]. Orban took aim at the business model of Hungarian media, which heavily relied on state advertising.

One little hopeful sign here in the United States, despite its being led by a would-be autocrat right now, the scholars say, is the sagging popularity enjoyed by the Orange Turd which was not the case with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele who enjoyed overwhelming popular support among the populace which allowed them to change their countries’ political system.

For instance, Bukele, who met with Dump at the White House last week, has seen approval ratings over 90 percent and won reelection by a landslide last year. By contrast, a recent poll showed Dump’s approval rating falling to 43 percent, and he was reelected [sadly] with just under half of the popular vote. Also, millions of people – including myself – have risen up in massive protests across the country to oppose his illiberal policies.

Bright Line Watch, which conducted its survey in early February, said it plans to put out another in the field soon. Considering how unpopular Dump is right now, I’m sure that new survey will trend even further downward in Dump’s overall popularity rating.

So even though the situation appears dire right now in this country, there is a ray of hope contained in this reporting.

So I’ll be off for Los Angeles tomorrow. I’ll see you in early May.

And so it went!

Coronavirus Diary

Today is Sunday, December 10, 2023. In a new disturbing poll, one in five young Americans believes the Holocaust is a myth, which dovetails with the shocking rise of anti-Semitism unleashed in this country and abroad following the Israeli-Hamas conflict on October 7. The results of this poll are revealed in an online The Telegraph article written by Susie Coen and James Crisp. These findings are particularly sensitive amid growing accusations of anti-Semitism on U.S. university campuses since the start of the Middle East conflict.

With the poll, it was older Americans who were far more likely to believe the historical fact of the Holocaust, the failed attempt by Hitler and his cohorts to exterminate the Jewish people. A reason for this stance taken by young people is fake news propagated on social media that is watched by these young Americans, which found the proportion of Americans who believe the Holocaust is a myth was similar across all levels of education. The findings are found in a YouGov/The Economist poll.

According to the poll, about 20 percent of people aged 18 to 29 believe the murder of six million Jews is a falsehood. An additional 30 percent said they did not know whether the Holocaust was a myth or not.

That suggests only half of Americans aged 18 to 29 are convinced the Holocaust happened.

Another disturbing fact from the survey is that young people were also nearly five times more likely to think that Jews have too much power in the nation than those aged 65 or over. Some 28 percent of young respondents agreed with this well-worn anti-Semitic trope, compared to just 6 percent of older Americans.

These disturbing findings have emerged as concerned parents are overhauling their children’s applications to Ivy League universities in response to some university leaders refusing to condemn calling for the genocide of Jews as hate speech.

All of this anti-Jewish sentiment has coincided with congressional hearings being held this past Tuesday, in which the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), Harvard, and Massachusetts of Technology (MIT) have offered testimony to House representatives. One of those Ivy League presidents, Liz Magill, the president of UPenn, has since resigned over her unwillingness to portray hate speech against Jews as hate speech. In her testimony, McGill inscrutably told Elise Stafanik, House GOP Conference Chair, no person of high ethics herself, that context was required to assess whether calling for a genocide against Jews constituted “harassment.” Thus McGill couldn’t easily have condemned anyone calling for genocide against the Jews as anti-Semitic. She initially released an apology video after her testimony was given, but it wasn’t enough to stem the backlash against her and she stepped down as of yesterday.

Harvard and UPenn are among the schools being investigated by the U.S. Department of Education over complaints of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic discrimination.

In trying to blame a ubiquitous social media platform for this shocking view on the Holocaust held by young people, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley claimed during the disastrous repugnican debate last Wednesday that young people become “17 percent more anti-Semitic” every time they spend 30 minutes or more on TikTok per day. Whether this is true or not is hard to say; however, the former South Carolina governor has made banning TikTok one of the main pledges of her presidential campaign. The findings of the poll do suggest that social media is the villain here which ensnares young people with lies and misinformation. Where are our schools here in teaching students the facts behind the Holocaust?

The results of this poll should perturb all of us in their conclusions about what young people believe – or not believe – about the Holocaust. We must make it our mission to get the truth out about the Shoah to our young people who will be tomorrow’s leaders. They cannot be allowed to hold onto false views about this cataclysmic event for the Jewish people.

Have a good week.

Stay safe and be well.