I certainly respect your right to dissent from the current administration. Here are the areas wherein I do not understand that dissent:
illegal immigrants coming here illegally. You were fine with Obama sending them home in vast numbers-- but not Trump.
crimes against Jewish people -- intimidating students? If this were any other group (black Americans, hispanic Americans, gay Americans, etc. you would be up in arms for these minorities.
Elon Musk -- the darling of the electric car maker? But only if he didn't support Trump -- and someone who is truly trying to reduce the waste and fraud in the government? How can anyone not want our tax dollars spent for those things that benefit the people of America? Yes, some foreign aid is certainly warranted in specific cases but billions and billions? Bringing astronauts home from space after nine months?
I so wish that the folks on your side of the arguments could find something or someone to fight for instead of just being against Trump -- because you truly were all for the things he espouses -- most things he espouses -- and I don't see you all winning elections based on hate and destruction and bias against anyone who doesn't share your opinions.
Take all that energy and angst and funnel it into volunteer work helping the most vulnerable amongst us. Go volunteer at low income schools to help our children to read. Go work at your local food bank to help the hungry. The opportunities are endless-- be FOR SOMETHING-- not just against Trump.
You all survived just fine during his last administration and I'm certain your survive this one.
I think the biggest difference here is about information access and your own bias against those you call folks. You automatically framed your response as us versus you. If only we liked Trump then we would understand. But I read an array of media and am a student of history and political science. What is actually happening is not normal and more importantly, many of the actions violate the Constitution. Trump is choosing to destroy America by ignoring the rule of law, and the norms of our society. Elon Musk has openly supported neo-nazi in Europe - I encourage you research what he actually believes.
Waste and fraud? You know that we had Inspectors General who oversaw our agencies and who audited agencies regularly. They were the first people fired by Trump and they were not replaced. Aren't you curious about where the tremendous amount of fraud and waste is? Where are the numbers, the actual paperwork that proves their point? What Musk has shared with the media has actually been wrong because because he has no idea what he is doing. Did you know he had over 100 investigations and violations that were being reviewed? He actually fired the people who were doing the investigations. And bringing people back from the space station? He was paid by taxpayer money to do that.
You also make a terrible assumption about "the folks on your side of the argument": that we do nothing to support the vulnerable, that we simply are Trump haters. I live in a very blue dot in a red county. My blue village of 3000 people has multiple non-profits that help our community members. We volunteer, we host fundraising events, we speak up and protest for the vulnerable...and in fact for everyone in our county and in our country.
Your response too is well laid out and what I am finding interesting is how far apart our ideals are when we live in the same country— in all the history of our country I don’t know if we’ve ever been divided as we are now— maybe the Civil War but that was basically a single issue that looks so easy from our 21st century eyes— how can the south think it’s ok to own human beings— but there again we have human traffickers who used the border to ply their reprehensible actions.
I do wonder about due process when you have come illegally into this country— I also believe that so many benefits were offered that of course people want to come here— but how can we justify that when our own citizens cannot get or possibly even afford many of those same services. My husband and I are both on social security. And I don’t think you’d be surprised to know that paying for food for two people who rarely eat out and don’t eat steak every night has gotten ridiculously expensive— I don’t think Trump caused that and I think it’s naive to believe it can be changed in a few months.
We do work at our local food bank in our community— so I see the folks who come through— it’s a tough time in our country— so maybe the anger of giving away so much to others illegals and other countries is justified— you have to take care of things at home before you can help to fix others.
The Israel/Palastine problem is an overwhelming issue— and I certainly feel for those people who are innocent in this but they’re going to have to work to get new leadership that is not Hamas.
Again— we could go back and forth on many many issues and I don’t believe you will change my mind anymore than I will change yours— so how do we come together— work together— to make our country and our world better?
The division is palpable and honestly it’s gotten scary.
I believe you’re likely as good a person as I believe I am. I want the USA to succeed— that we can all at some level— be Americans. The America that so many died for and live for today.
I don’t think Trump is out to ruin our country— the man doesn’t need the money— I will tell you honestly I wouldn’t ever want to be married to the man— I don’t have to like him, hang out with him, or even agree with him about everything. But I do have confidence that he is trying to make this country better.
Anyway— take care and may we both see eye to eye on taking care of our citizens and making our lives better for ourselves and and our children.
thank you thank you for offering this set of respectful ideas and being willing to engage with someone you clearly think is far off the mark. Let me help you understand our dissent:
in part, it's the mean spirited, divisive and sometimes cruel way this wrecking ball team is going about it. Russ Vougt even spelled it out in Project 2025 - they need to traumatize the population to get the work done. but specifics...
Illegal immigrants... action is needed, but... indiscriminate and without any due process or differentiation between the innocent and the criminals, sent to rot in el salvador prisons. Several graduate students who used their free speech to express sympathy for Palestinians and protesting the rampant murder in Gaza (the World Court calls it genocide) and such a tone-deaf statement about a Mediterranean riviera and displacing the entire population! that's the intentional knife in the hearts of people who don't agree with him.
OMG yes, crimes against jewish people is horrendous, but protest is not. Perhaps some few were threatening and abusive, but, like Antifa back in the WTO in 1999, they were less than 1% of what happened, but the destruction made the news. Look up Jewish Voice for Peace. hundreds of thousand of Jews in the USA are pro Palestine, meaning stop the genocide, this is not the teachings of Judiasm but a radical fringe that's got hold of the Israeli government. this isn't even an eye for an eye. it's an eye for 10,000. Surely you can see that. again, not the fact that some Jews have been afraid on campuses, but the overreach and the mean spiritedness/othering of all protestors and, in retaliation (I am your retribution!) pulling millions from Universities to get them to bend a knee, which will impact important research and do little to stop young people from protesting. It will probably get more people on the streets.
Elon Musk, yes, yay Tesla, yay Starlink, yay astronauts! Even apologists for the necessity of reducing government bloat (remember Al Gore supposedly tried that) say he's swinging to wide with too blunt an axe and recklessly putting lives in danger and shutting down departments that are crucial to research, to health monitoring, and yes, if they try to hire back people some will come because they need the $$, but europe russia china and canada will welcome our best and brightest into their labs and universities. think of how the exodus from Germany robbed them of their most accomplished thinkers and scientists and inventors. A blunt instrument may be ok for X (which is now like a sewer and people are fleeing to bluesky), but not for a government built to protect the vulnerable, build infrastructure, promote the common good. As well as build world class research labs and advanced medical technology. You must understand that the suffering is more than a few people in Africa not getting dinner! Farmers in the USA grow for USAID, we've woven a global interdependent web and you can't just cut it indiscriminately.
And that's a bit of a low blow that we aren't working for something!!! When what you have worked for your whole life is getting disassembled, often brutishly, it's hard. My community efforts are to create local/regional resilience in response to this hatchet job. I've worked for decades on local food, social cohesion, financial independence, integrity and intelligence, written books, blogs, hosted a podcast... and I'm just one of millions rowing society towards ecological safety.
Let me add what may be the long term worst of this wrecking ball. Erasing any information about climate disruptions as the world burns. Do you not know that we are in the 6th great extinction, that we have crossed 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries and, that we are nearing very dangerous tipping points, I wonder if you know what the AMOC is and what it's collapse might do to the temperatures, or that coastal cities might be flooded as glaciers melt and the ocean expands as it heats? As they say, nature bats last.
People are taking their fury out on Tesla because so much else in this admin is teflon. We will stand on streets in the rain with our cardboard signs saying hand's off veteran benefits and such and that's not trump derangement syndrome, that's people trying to warn this administration about the unintended (or intended) consequences of their rapid disassembly of the foundation of our way of life.
As for surviving fine in the last administration, you may note that we were not happy with Biden's foreign policy nor obama's nor bush's nor clinton's. we were not happy with climate policies (there were some but way to weak to make the necessary difference). We loved Bernie and Elizabeth for giving voice to the working class against the tone deaf Dems and for justice, which is part of the meme of america... liberty and justice for all.
no, this unraveling has been going on a long time. Perhaps trump is doing us a service by making it so explicit it's waking up a greater swath of the population.
Here's an idea. you stop the schoolyard taunts and trash talk from MAGA and their champion, and I'll buy a Tesla. Deal?
Thanks for your excellent response, but please no promises to buy a Tesla! P.S. I understand that many earlier owners of Teslas were trying to do a good thing for our climate. Hopefully people understand and treat them well.
Oh wow. I used to be a fan way back when Vicky taught how to reach financial independence! That takes me back! :-)
Turns out she's gone woke. Bummer.
"No one is illegal"? Really? Why don't you try throwing the front door of your house open to all comers, saying that "no one is not part of this family" and see what happens. Nuts.
I'd love the opportunity to explore this with you respectfully. Was it just the comment that "no one is illegal?" I think about the Christ story and "no room at the inn", and about "the least of these...", and on and on. A **person** is not illegal, but a person can violate laws. I can respect others, but keep my door locked. Two different dimensions of law - spiritual and material.
Your Money of Your Life always ran on both tracks - read it again and you'll see. Joe and I and our community was devoted to, as we said, putting love out into the world. We didn't lead with our personal philosophy in YMOYL because we wanted the door to be open to anyone, no matter their religion or politics. We used to say, We're not talking about WHAT you want to do, just showing you a way to do what you love for less and know how much is enough. I know many people simply thought the book was about financial independence, and skipped all the rest of the stuff.
I know immigration is a hot button issue. It's been a mess. R and D Presidents. What I find with the current President and his followers is that it's no only about policy, it's about resentment and that comes out in name calling. Like woke.
If you want to talk on zoom on our differing views, I'll listen with respect, and seek to understand your point of view. Are you game?
This thread is fascinating. I particularly like to see two articulate people discussing their differences. It brightens my day.
Recently I was introduced to the idea of neurodiversity and it has rocked my world. If you, Vicki and Erin, get a chance if you haven’t, check out neurodiversity and what it means for how we all process information in our own way. Media has impact, no doubt, but its effect is much less deterministic than I first thought. When I looked at the diversity of how media lands through a lens of neurodiversity, ding, ding, ding. Of course.
Here is the breakdown (side bar: I am profoundly gifted and an info dumper. Communication has been my, hmm, nemesis for much of my life. I tend to wear people out with my long explanations of what goes on in my head… ha, you’ve been warned. Much of what I write is derived from logical progressions from what I sense is logical fact. It is not always aligned with what I’m told is fact but it always adds to my construction of what’s logical:
Neurodiversity in a nutshell is the observation that everyone thinks differently. Hence neuro (thinking) diversity. Consequently a person can’t know how what they say is heard. So, they look for clues in the response. Sounds like feedback loops. Social media has opened up two way conversations between information providers, as in the old main stream media and the, um, targets of the information they’re providing. This process has made media feedback loops possible in a way that has never been possible before. An unintended and unforeseen consequence of technology.
Each of us, learns through feedback loops. It is how we use our senses to understand external reality.
I believe there is a concept that is central to how we individually process information. One is to understand the world as a set of discrete transactions. The other is to see the world as a continuum of interconnected interactions. And all the shades of grey in between. Neurodiversity model here.
Right about now you’re coming to the limits of what can be digested at one go so I’ll stop (my dealing with my info dumping ways).
Oooh, I am glad I dropped back in. A welcome addition from Michael! I find much of the new "neurodiversity craze" annoying. :-) We've known everybody thinks differently like forever. But tell me, why do you like framing things that way?
I was introduced to the idea of neurodiversity by my daughter who noticed essentially all of her friends were neurodivergent, primarily ADHD or thereabouts. She asked me if maybe she was ADHD. Now, my daughter has the highest concentration capacity of anyone I’ve known. As a 3 year old she could play with one musical variation toy for… hours. She was in tears because the summer day camp she went to didn’t allow enough time before shifting to a new activity.
So, when she asked about ADHD I said, no, dear, Attention deficit you don’t have. Let me explore what else might be your specialty.
I looked and discovered the world of neurodiversity. Looking for her, I found myself. For if my daughter is neurodiverse than so I must be and so must her mother.
Talk about epiphanies! One after another for months to this day, to this moment as I write this.
This discovery of myself has consumed me. Imagine the mythological beast who consumes its own tail.
I am 70 years old and for the first time in my life I’ve begun to understand my difference, my unique gifts, and I’ve begun to lean into them not away.
I am unbounded.
I am a profoundly gifted info dumper. I discovered early that logic is superior to science. That what value science gives is based on logic. But for science logic perversely is not enough. There must be evidence. Evidence that can only be understood through logic. What a tremendous waste of time and effort. All that apparatus for evidence gathering and evaluation based on… logic, which was available all along.
Anyway, although we’ve known everybody thinks differently like forever. Science can’t prove it.
Oh and a few other thoughts. No, of course no person is illegal, technically. But I am sure you are aware that those slogans deliver a broader payload. Just like "love is love" is not about love but about (dep. on context) normalizing sex with minors, and "love trumps hate" is about vituperation against Trump supporters, so "no person is illegal" sends the message, IMO, that anybody who crosses the border illegally is more important than you, neighbor chump.
So much nastiness. So many lies. So much bias! Take the rallies yesterday. Hands off? Hands off what? Hands off Venezuelan gang members? Hands off fraudulent government subsidies to grifters? Hands off trying to make peace in Ukraine? Hands off Big Pharma and its corruption and gain-of-function research? Hands off USAID and its money laundry? -- See what I mean? All fairness lost.
somehow there’s a tenor of “WTF don’t you get it” in BOTH of our narratives, which is characteristic of this time and the degree of polarization. You might think, “what planet do I live on?” which is a bit what I think. Oh, you think, Planet NPR and PBS and NYT? Or Planet FOX and Rogan? What we share is a frustration that it’s all going so far off the rails and no amount of shouting or point making actually seems to get through to “the other side.” So I’m listening, and fascinated with how you see things. For eg, the Hands Off rallies yesterday. Yes, it seems weird that I might defend institutions that I’ve questioned - like the FBI or the CIA?? Or USAID which his a soft power arm of the US intelligence operation. Yet… millions of people’s lives are hanging off the web that the US Agencies have built - and it’s harming a LOT of people who are losing jobs, losing crops, losing research data overnight… it’s a blunt baby with the bath wrecking ball, and is not only cruel, it is, IMHO, making America untenable. It’s interesting what you think “love is love” means! I hear it as the right of gay people to love eachother, marry and have families. love is love. Not normalizing sex with minors, which is horrifying. Who told you that’s what that phrase mean? Do you think Hilary ran a pedophile operation out of a pizza parlor? Said with real curiosity. I also hear, in the term neighbor chump, that you might agree with Arlie Hochschild observations, having lived in KY for 5 years doing research, that what’s eating people who played by the rules is that people who didn’t work as hard for advantages are getting them anyway. She calls them “line cutters” - like you’ve been waiting your turn, and suddenly brown people or immigrants (legal or illegal) are taking what should be yours. You paint my/liberal point of view in a way that is totally foreign to me. We are using similar words but making them mean different things. I find that fascinating. I was at a rally of 1500 people up at the Naval Air Station, with support from the Navy, sheriff and police, and people were concerned about due process, vet benefits, medicare and medicaid and the SS they’ve worked their lives for, about what looks like a rising autocracy rather than the people having a voice. There is no mandate for what this administration is doing, it’s a totally split country and half of us do not agree what this administration is doing. As for the tariffs, well, when the Smoot Hawley act was passed in 1930, it sent us into a decade long deep depression. Just know some of us are watching this in horror, expecting the worst, and feeling protective for our neighbor chumps that they are going to get chewed up in this shredder event. Long story not at all short, I can tell you are intelligent and care, and I think you think as much of me (or at least someone with my name who was very smart at one time) - so next step, would you enjoy taking one issue and showing one another what it looks like from each of our point of view rather than dumping the whole load at once?
PS: woke is not what liberals call ourselves. Woke is what Ron DeSantis calls liberals to justify taking away hard won rights. We call it liberal democracy. Justice. Rule of law. We call woman's right to choose, and people's right to express their sexuality however they choose without the state controlling them, and that climate change is real and human caused, and that critical race theory doesn't mean white kids should feel bad about themselves but that this country needs to at least say sorry and own up to how black, brown and indigenous people are still feeling the trauma of their way of life being taken away. Critical theory is highly academic and mostly opaque to me, but i think it means looking beyond individual behavior to sociological influences. .
A better term than woke for this? how about fairness. respect for differences. control over one's own body and self expression. life, liberty and pursuit of happiness?
i understand how it might feel that values you don't share were being shoved down your throat (like DEI), but consider that's just how we feel about Gulf of America and only two genders and book banning and even words banning, and wiping the climate data at NOAA off the US website, and punishing the Gov of Maine by withdrawing as much funding as possible because she challenged him in public, said, "I'll see you in court." And sending an innocent man (maybe more than one) to a prison in El Salvador, against a judge's orders, and washing your hands of it. And grabbing green card students off the streets by plain clothed masked people, and other orders that violate rights and punish enemies through impoundment. I wonder how this looks through your eyes.
There are days when I think we urgently need to relearn to talk to one another, and there are days when I think that we have split into two different subspecies and the window has closed. We live in a time of epistemic crisis. Something like what happened when Christianity began to flourish (while being bitterly opposed) in the Roman empire, or later, when Protestantism could no longer be stomped into silence through heretic hunts.
In the first instance, Constantine prevented a real solution by superimposing his authority over the various disagreements and schools of thought. Later, with Protestantism ascendant, everybody went to war for 30 years, causing untold devastation, eventually splitting into areas where the peasants were told to shut up and be what their betters were, Catholic or otherwise. Another non-solution. Perhaps it can be said that eventually it was science ascendant that provided once again broad unification of worldviews for a time. But trust in science has unraveled now, religion has largely been abandoned, and the internet has amplified doubt, disagreement, and even long-harbored ideas and suspicions within smaller sub-communities and schools of thought that could once be ignored because they had no outlet. What now? Wild scramble for censorship has ensured in some quarters, but it won’t work. Perhaps we have a chance at a real solution this time? :-)
--
Yes, by all means.
I haven’t got what it takes to engage very well regarding economic matters. My brain isn’t suited. I remain uneasy about tariffs, but also know that they have been used all over the world. My big issue is money, its creation and flows, and how it’s been used to impoverish us. I have a feeling it should be a utility, not what it is today. Just my hunch.
Well, how about we take up the trans issue? It’s one of those where I go... oh crap, this can’t be happening, this is totally insane, more than some other areas. And when we are done, you suggest the next issue, so I don’t get to hog the agenda.
Here, I’ll start. How could the left go so off the rails that men in drag have been allowed (and encouraged!) to barge into our private spaces, destroy women’s music festivals, steal women’s sports trophies and ruin girls’ teams, twerk in front of little kids in libraries, and be admired and promoted for systematically mocking us? How could it be that people on the left have encouraged the chemical and surgical mutilation of children in the name of the trans ideology? I find this absolutely ghastly. I am a second wave feminist, (or thought I was), and I ask myself how I got to live in this trans nightmare. The people who once laughed at those who think evolution does not exist, now cannot say what a woman is, and think that a human being can change sex? Bizarro.
Well Erin, you said a mouthful in this response. Science. Religion. Money. The pendulum of human history between revolution and oppression, freedom and control. .
Is there something we can agree on now? Perhaps the human mind's demand for certainty is being tested beyond its/our limits. Can we agree on oxygen? gravity? chlorophyll? symbiosis? I'm not kidding. Which brings me to my issue I toss over to you (I"ll get to the trans issue in a bit).
We talk about climate disruptions as if there is one tweak and we'll be ok, but really it's that human systems have taxed living systems so thoroughly that the natural world (biology, physics, geology, water cycles, etc) that we depend on utterly for our existence is reconfiguring to find a new balance - that may not include us.
Burning fossil fuels has loaded the atmosphere with CO2, creating the greenhouse effect, heating the planet, and we are close to the point of no return (not sure which side of the line we are on). Drill baby drill, reauthorizing coal, authorizing cutting in national forests, even mining the ocean floor, just about every policy concerning nature will accelerate sea level rise, temperature rise, catastrophes worthy of Revelations. I've worked on sustainability as soon as there was a word for the need to live in balance with the earth's systems - or pay the piper. we are blindly destroying the basis of life; it feels like a knife in my chest. No leader has done anything even close to enough in response. Biden at least had it on his radar. Trump is clear cutting all laws and regulations that might limit the harm.
Call it science, call it compassion, call it respect, call it woke, call it whatever. Nature bats last, after all the other generous adaptations have failed. You're a YMOYL fan. You know that we can spend far less and have an even better life. YOu know this carnage is not necessary. I'm in grief about it.
As for trans issues, societies are always negotiating where to put boundaries on freedom in service to safety, cohesion, and whatever higher values prevail at the moment. As a feminist you know that women were chattel, and we've been gaining freedoms since then. The battle is long. Men thought women wearing pants was the end of civilization. That women were too soft headed to vote. Women, along with people of color, people with disabilities, and people with different gender expressions have been clamoring for an equal playing field in this society. basic respect. at least live and let live. I see trans issues this way. We are finding out that there are more views on gender than we knew. Non binary for me is good in all intelligent inquiry - there;s nuance everywhere, and complexity. Just like a woman's right to choose, I believe in a person's right to choose how they dress/talk/and love. As for bathrooms, just have gender neutral bathrooms on every floor of a building and let people choose the one they prefer. As for surgery, I personally think children need protection. from the draft. from making rash decisions while they are minors. who does that? parents? state? churches? beats me. And if people are lewd in public, well, we limit that. Public nudity. No. So there are nude beaches and nudist camps. This country figures out how to tolerate difference when politicians don't get in there to turn us against one another so they gain power.
OK, gotta go. I didn't edit so i'm open for all sorts of challenges but so be it. You're smart. And you don't seem inclined to nit pick.
Hi Vicki. It's a pleasure to meet you in person. :-)
I don't do zoom but I would be happy to explore here or in emails.
As for woke, it's a designation chosen by the woke. Not an insult invented by the other side. Seems like a handy shortcut to what is happening nowadays.. .If you would prefer another term, let me know.
Love the loom image, and your look at the in-betweens, the interstitials.
Living on a long dirt road where residents have interacted over potholes, fallen trees, and a clear-cut threat, we're up-leveling to who needs what, who has what resources. Staying private is the norm, connecting is the future. As in, it just hit me--I don't have to drive to the march this Saturday. I'm gonna ask for a lift. SOMEbody on the road must be going.
This is so inspiring as you are! I am a Canadian but we feel like we are having the fight of our lives as US policies dismantle our economy as well and our upcoming election has huge stakes. Thankyou for the ideas and the work you do.
Thank you for describing our work so beautifully and sharing it so widely so others may find their part in this "big work". I am grateful to be walking alongside you, dreaming and building alternatives, together on Whidbey. ❤️
I certainly respect your right to dissent from the current administration. Here are the areas wherein I do not understand that dissent:
illegal immigrants coming here illegally. You were fine with Obama sending them home in vast numbers-- but not Trump.
crimes against Jewish people -- intimidating students? If this were any other group (black Americans, hispanic Americans, gay Americans, etc. you would be up in arms for these minorities.
Elon Musk -- the darling of the electric car maker? But only if he didn't support Trump -- and someone who is truly trying to reduce the waste and fraud in the government? How can anyone not want our tax dollars spent for those things that benefit the people of America? Yes, some foreign aid is certainly warranted in specific cases but billions and billions? Bringing astronauts home from space after nine months?
I so wish that the folks on your side of the arguments could find something or someone to fight for instead of just being against Trump -- because you truly were all for the things he espouses -- most things he espouses -- and I don't see you all winning elections based on hate and destruction and bias against anyone who doesn't share your opinions.
Take all that energy and angst and funnel it into volunteer work helping the most vulnerable amongst us. Go volunteer at low income schools to help our children to read. Go work at your local food bank to help the hungry. The opportunities are endless-- be FOR SOMETHING-- not just against Trump.
You all survived just fine during his last administration and I'm certain your survive this one.
I think the biggest difference here is about information access and your own bias against those you call folks. You automatically framed your response as us versus you. If only we liked Trump then we would understand. But I read an array of media and am a student of history and political science. What is actually happening is not normal and more importantly, many of the actions violate the Constitution. Trump is choosing to destroy America by ignoring the rule of law, and the norms of our society. Elon Musk has openly supported neo-nazi in Europe - I encourage you research what he actually believes.
Waste and fraud? You know that we had Inspectors General who oversaw our agencies and who audited agencies regularly. They were the first people fired by Trump and they were not replaced. Aren't you curious about where the tremendous amount of fraud and waste is? Where are the numbers, the actual paperwork that proves their point? What Musk has shared with the media has actually been wrong because because he has no idea what he is doing. Did you know he had over 100 investigations and violations that were being reviewed? He actually fired the people who were doing the investigations. And bringing people back from the space station? He was paid by taxpayer money to do that.
You also make a terrible assumption about "the folks on your side of the argument": that we do nothing to support the vulnerable, that we simply are Trump haters. I live in a very blue dot in a red county. My blue village of 3000 people has multiple non-profits that help our community members. We volunteer, we host fundraising events, we speak up and protest for the vulnerable...and in fact for everyone in our county and in our country.
Your response too is well laid out and what I am finding interesting is how far apart our ideals are when we live in the same country— in all the history of our country I don’t know if we’ve ever been divided as we are now— maybe the Civil War but that was basically a single issue that looks so easy from our 21st century eyes— how can the south think it’s ok to own human beings— but there again we have human traffickers who used the border to ply their reprehensible actions.
I do wonder about due process when you have come illegally into this country— I also believe that so many benefits were offered that of course people want to come here— but how can we justify that when our own citizens cannot get or possibly even afford many of those same services. My husband and I are both on social security. And I don’t think you’d be surprised to know that paying for food for two people who rarely eat out and don’t eat steak every night has gotten ridiculously expensive— I don’t think Trump caused that and I think it’s naive to believe it can be changed in a few months.
We do work at our local food bank in our community— so I see the folks who come through— it’s a tough time in our country— so maybe the anger of giving away so much to others illegals and other countries is justified— you have to take care of things at home before you can help to fix others.
The Israel/Palastine problem is an overwhelming issue— and I certainly feel for those people who are innocent in this but they’re going to have to work to get new leadership that is not Hamas.
Again— we could go back and forth on many many issues and I don’t believe you will change my mind anymore than I will change yours— so how do we come together— work together— to make our country and our world better?
The division is palpable and honestly it’s gotten scary.
I believe you’re likely as good a person as I believe I am. I want the USA to succeed— that we can all at some level— be Americans. The America that so many died for and live for today.
I don’t think Trump is out to ruin our country— the man doesn’t need the money— I will tell you honestly I wouldn’t ever want to be married to the man— I don’t have to like him, hang out with him, or even agree with him about everything. But I do have confidence that he is trying to make this country better.
Anyway— take care and may we both see eye to eye on taking care of our citizens and making our lives better for ourselves and and our children.
A stimulating response. I'm doing too many things at the moment so will reply later; for now, just thank you for staying with the conversation.
thank you thank you for offering this set of respectful ideas and being willing to engage with someone you clearly think is far off the mark. Let me help you understand our dissent:
in part, it's the mean spirited, divisive and sometimes cruel way this wrecking ball team is going about it. Russ Vougt even spelled it out in Project 2025 - they need to traumatize the population to get the work done. but specifics...
Illegal immigrants... action is needed, but... indiscriminate and without any due process or differentiation between the innocent and the criminals, sent to rot in el salvador prisons. Several graduate students who used their free speech to express sympathy for Palestinians and protesting the rampant murder in Gaza (the World Court calls it genocide) and such a tone-deaf statement about a Mediterranean riviera and displacing the entire population! that's the intentional knife in the hearts of people who don't agree with him.
OMG yes, crimes against jewish people is horrendous, but protest is not. Perhaps some few were threatening and abusive, but, like Antifa back in the WTO in 1999, they were less than 1% of what happened, but the destruction made the news. Look up Jewish Voice for Peace. hundreds of thousand of Jews in the USA are pro Palestine, meaning stop the genocide, this is not the teachings of Judiasm but a radical fringe that's got hold of the Israeli government. this isn't even an eye for an eye. it's an eye for 10,000. Surely you can see that. again, not the fact that some Jews have been afraid on campuses, but the overreach and the mean spiritedness/othering of all protestors and, in retaliation (I am your retribution!) pulling millions from Universities to get them to bend a knee, which will impact important research and do little to stop young people from protesting. It will probably get more people on the streets.
Elon Musk, yes, yay Tesla, yay Starlink, yay astronauts! Even apologists for the necessity of reducing government bloat (remember Al Gore supposedly tried that) say he's swinging to wide with too blunt an axe and recklessly putting lives in danger and shutting down departments that are crucial to research, to health monitoring, and yes, if they try to hire back people some will come because they need the $$, but europe russia china and canada will welcome our best and brightest into their labs and universities. think of how the exodus from Germany robbed them of their most accomplished thinkers and scientists and inventors. A blunt instrument may be ok for X (which is now like a sewer and people are fleeing to bluesky), but not for a government built to protect the vulnerable, build infrastructure, promote the common good. As well as build world class research labs and advanced medical technology. You must understand that the suffering is more than a few people in Africa not getting dinner! Farmers in the USA grow for USAID, we've woven a global interdependent web and you can't just cut it indiscriminately.
And that's a bit of a low blow that we aren't working for something!!! When what you have worked for your whole life is getting disassembled, often brutishly, it's hard. My community efforts are to create local/regional resilience in response to this hatchet job. I've worked for decades on local food, social cohesion, financial independence, integrity and intelligence, written books, blogs, hosted a podcast... and I'm just one of millions rowing society towards ecological safety.
Let me add what may be the long term worst of this wrecking ball. Erasing any information about climate disruptions as the world burns. Do you not know that we are in the 6th great extinction, that we have crossed 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries and, that we are nearing very dangerous tipping points, I wonder if you know what the AMOC is and what it's collapse might do to the temperatures, or that coastal cities might be flooded as glaciers melt and the ocean expands as it heats? As they say, nature bats last.
People are taking their fury out on Tesla because so much else in this admin is teflon. We will stand on streets in the rain with our cardboard signs saying hand's off veteran benefits and such and that's not trump derangement syndrome, that's people trying to warn this administration about the unintended (or intended) consequences of their rapid disassembly of the foundation of our way of life.
As for surviving fine in the last administration, you may note that we were not happy with Biden's foreign policy nor obama's nor bush's nor clinton's. we were not happy with climate policies (there were some but way to weak to make the necessary difference). We loved Bernie and Elizabeth for giving voice to the working class against the tone deaf Dems and for justice, which is part of the meme of america... liberty and justice for all.
no, this unraveling has been going on a long time. Perhaps trump is doing us a service by making it so explicit it's waking up a greater swath of the population.
Here's an idea. you stop the schoolyard taunts and trash talk from MAGA and their champion, and I'll buy a Tesla. Deal?
Thanks for your excellent response, but please no promises to buy a Tesla! P.S. I understand that many earlier owners of Teslas were trying to do a good thing for our climate. Hopefully people understand and treat them well.
So many ghosts in that Transition Whidbey video…I was wondering if someone might take up the PWAP framework and connect people again. Great turnout!
I'm on the opposite side of the table from you, but you are still inspiring.
Oh wow. I used to be a fan way back when Vicky taught how to reach financial independence! That takes me back! :-)
Turns out she's gone woke. Bummer.
"No one is illegal"? Really? Why don't you try throwing the front door of your house open to all comers, saying that "no one is not part of this family" and see what happens. Nuts.
I'd love the opportunity to explore this with you respectfully. Was it just the comment that "no one is illegal?" I think about the Christ story and "no room at the inn", and about "the least of these...", and on and on. A **person** is not illegal, but a person can violate laws. I can respect others, but keep my door locked. Two different dimensions of law - spiritual and material.
Your Money of Your Life always ran on both tracks - read it again and you'll see. Joe and I and our community was devoted to, as we said, putting love out into the world. We didn't lead with our personal philosophy in YMOYL because we wanted the door to be open to anyone, no matter their religion or politics. We used to say, We're not talking about WHAT you want to do, just showing you a way to do what you love for less and know how much is enough. I know many people simply thought the book was about financial independence, and skipped all the rest of the stuff.
I know immigration is a hot button issue. It's been a mess. R and D Presidents. What I find with the current President and his followers is that it's no only about policy, it's about resentment and that comes out in name calling. Like woke.
If you want to talk on zoom on our differing views, I'll listen with respect, and seek to understand your point of view. Are you game?
This thread is fascinating. I particularly like to see two articulate people discussing their differences. It brightens my day.
Recently I was introduced to the idea of neurodiversity and it has rocked my world. If you, Vicki and Erin, get a chance if you haven’t, check out neurodiversity and what it means for how we all process information in our own way. Media has impact, no doubt, but its effect is much less deterministic than I first thought. When I looked at the diversity of how media lands through a lens of neurodiversity, ding, ding, ding. Of course.
Here is the breakdown (side bar: I am profoundly gifted and an info dumper. Communication has been my, hmm, nemesis for much of my life. I tend to wear people out with my long explanations of what goes on in my head… ha, you’ve been warned. Much of what I write is derived from logical progressions from what I sense is logical fact. It is not always aligned with what I’m told is fact but it always adds to my construction of what’s logical:
Neurodiversity in a nutshell is the observation that everyone thinks differently. Hence neuro (thinking) diversity. Consequently a person can’t know how what they say is heard. So, they look for clues in the response. Sounds like feedback loops. Social media has opened up two way conversations between information providers, as in the old main stream media and the, um, targets of the information they’re providing. This process has made media feedback loops possible in a way that has never been possible before. An unintended and unforeseen consequence of technology.
Each of us, learns through feedback loops. It is how we use our senses to understand external reality.
I believe there is a concept that is central to how we individually process information. One is to understand the world as a set of discrete transactions. The other is to see the world as a continuum of interconnected interactions. And all the shades of grey in between. Neurodiversity model here.
Right about now you’re coming to the limits of what can be digested at one go so I’ll stop (my dealing with my info dumping ways).
I’m happy to answer questions.
Oooh, I am glad I dropped back in. A welcome addition from Michael! I find much of the new "neurodiversity craze" annoying. :-) We've known everybody thinks differently like forever. But tell me, why do you like framing things that way?
I was introduced to the idea of neurodiversity by my daughter who noticed essentially all of her friends were neurodivergent, primarily ADHD or thereabouts. She asked me if maybe she was ADHD. Now, my daughter has the highest concentration capacity of anyone I’ve known. As a 3 year old she could play with one musical variation toy for… hours. She was in tears because the summer day camp she went to didn’t allow enough time before shifting to a new activity.
So, when she asked about ADHD I said, no, dear, Attention deficit you don’t have. Let me explore what else might be your specialty.
I looked and discovered the world of neurodiversity. Looking for her, I found myself. For if my daughter is neurodiverse than so I must be and so must her mother.
Talk about epiphanies! One after another for months to this day, to this moment as I write this.
This discovery of myself has consumed me. Imagine the mythological beast who consumes its own tail.
I am 70 years old and for the first time in my life I’ve begun to understand my difference, my unique gifts, and I’ve begun to lean into them not away.
I am unbounded.
I am a profoundly gifted info dumper. I discovered early that logic is superior to science. That what value science gives is based on logic. But for science logic perversely is not enough. There must be evidence. Evidence that can only be understood through logic. What a tremendous waste of time and effort. All that apparatus for evidence gathering and evaluation based on… logic, which was available all along.
Anyway, although we’ve known everybody thinks differently like forever. Science can’t prove it.
Thank you for the notes from the heart. :-)
Oh and a few other thoughts. No, of course no person is illegal, technically. But I am sure you are aware that those slogans deliver a broader payload. Just like "love is love" is not about love but about (dep. on context) normalizing sex with minors, and "love trumps hate" is about vituperation against Trump supporters, so "no person is illegal" sends the message, IMO, that anybody who crosses the border illegally is more important than you, neighbor chump.
So much nastiness. So many lies. So much bias! Take the rallies yesterday. Hands off? Hands off what? Hands off Venezuelan gang members? Hands off fraudulent government subsidies to grifters? Hands off trying to make peace in Ukraine? Hands off Big Pharma and its corruption and gain-of-function research? Hands off USAID and its money laundry? -- See what I mean? All fairness lost.
somehow there’s a tenor of “WTF don’t you get it” in BOTH of our narratives, which is characteristic of this time and the degree of polarization. You might think, “what planet do I live on?” which is a bit what I think. Oh, you think, Planet NPR and PBS and NYT? Or Planet FOX and Rogan? What we share is a frustration that it’s all going so far off the rails and no amount of shouting or point making actually seems to get through to “the other side.” So I’m listening, and fascinated with how you see things. For eg, the Hands Off rallies yesterday. Yes, it seems weird that I might defend institutions that I’ve questioned - like the FBI or the CIA?? Or USAID which his a soft power arm of the US intelligence operation. Yet… millions of people’s lives are hanging off the web that the US Agencies have built - and it’s harming a LOT of people who are losing jobs, losing crops, losing research data overnight… it’s a blunt baby with the bath wrecking ball, and is not only cruel, it is, IMHO, making America untenable. It’s interesting what you think “love is love” means! I hear it as the right of gay people to love eachother, marry and have families. love is love. Not normalizing sex with minors, which is horrifying. Who told you that’s what that phrase mean? Do you think Hilary ran a pedophile operation out of a pizza parlor? Said with real curiosity. I also hear, in the term neighbor chump, that you might agree with Arlie Hochschild observations, having lived in KY for 5 years doing research, that what’s eating people who played by the rules is that people who didn’t work as hard for advantages are getting them anyway. She calls them “line cutters” - like you’ve been waiting your turn, and suddenly brown people or immigrants (legal or illegal) are taking what should be yours. You paint my/liberal point of view in a way that is totally foreign to me. We are using similar words but making them mean different things. I find that fascinating. I was at a rally of 1500 people up at the Naval Air Station, with support from the Navy, sheriff and police, and people were concerned about due process, vet benefits, medicare and medicaid and the SS they’ve worked their lives for, about what looks like a rising autocracy rather than the people having a voice. There is no mandate for what this administration is doing, it’s a totally split country and half of us do not agree what this administration is doing. As for the tariffs, well, when the Smoot Hawley act was passed in 1930, it sent us into a decade long deep depression. Just know some of us are watching this in horror, expecting the worst, and feeling protective for our neighbor chumps that they are going to get chewed up in this shredder event. Long story not at all short, I can tell you are intelligent and care, and I think you think as much of me (or at least someone with my name who was very smart at one time) - so next step, would you enjoy taking one issue and showing one another what it looks like from each of our point of view rather than dumping the whole load at once?
PS: woke is not what liberals call ourselves. Woke is what Ron DeSantis calls liberals to justify taking away hard won rights. We call it liberal democracy. Justice. Rule of law. We call woman's right to choose, and people's right to express their sexuality however they choose without the state controlling them, and that climate change is real and human caused, and that critical race theory doesn't mean white kids should feel bad about themselves but that this country needs to at least say sorry and own up to how black, brown and indigenous people are still feeling the trauma of their way of life being taken away. Critical theory is highly academic and mostly opaque to me, but i think it means looking beyond individual behavior to sociological influences. .
A better term than woke for this? how about fairness. respect for differences. control over one's own body and self expression. life, liberty and pursuit of happiness?
i understand how it might feel that values you don't share were being shoved down your throat (like DEI), but consider that's just how we feel about Gulf of America and only two genders and book banning and even words banning, and wiping the climate data at NOAA off the US website, and punishing the Gov of Maine by withdrawing as much funding as possible because she challenged him in public, said, "I'll see you in court." And sending an innocent man (maybe more than one) to a prison in El Salvador, against a judge's orders, and washing your hands of it. And grabbing green card students off the streets by plain clothed masked people, and other orders that violate rights and punish enemies through impoundment. I wonder how this looks through your eyes.
There are days when I think we urgently need to relearn to talk to one another, and there are days when I think that we have split into two different subspecies and the window has closed. We live in a time of epistemic crisis. Something like what happened when Christianity began to flourish (while being bitterly opposed) in the Roman empire, or later, when Protestantism could no longer be stomped into silence through heretic hunts.
In the first instance, Constantine prevented a real solution by superimposing his authority over the various disagreements and schools of thought. Later, with Protestantism ascendant, everybody went to war for 30 years, causing untold devastation, eventually splitting into areas where the peasants were told to shut up and be what their betters were, Catholic or otherwise. Another non-solution. Perhaps it can be said that eventually it was science ascendant that provided once again broad unification of worldviews for a time. But trust in science has unraveled now, religion has largely been abandoned, and the internet has amplified doubt, disagreement, and even long-harbored ideas and suspicions within smaller sub-communities and schools of thought that could once be ignored because they had no outlet. What now? Wild scramble for censorship has ensured in some quarters, but it won’t work. Perhaps we have a chance at a real solution this time? :-)
--
Yes, by all means.
I haven’t got what it takes to engage very well regarding economic matters. My brain isn’t suited. I remain uneasy about tariffs, but also know that they have been used all over the world. My big issue is money, its creation and flows, and how it’s been used to impoverish us. I have a feeling it should be a utility, not what it is today. Just my hunch.
Well, how about we take up the trans issue? It’s one of those where I go... oh crap, this can’t be happening, this is totally insane, more than some other areas. And when we are done, you suggest the next issue, so I don’t get to hog the agenda.
Here, I’ll start. How could the left go so off the rails that men in drag have been allowed (and encouraged!) to barge into our private spaces, destroy women’s music festivals, steal women’s sports trophies and ruin girls’ teams, twerk in front of little kids in libraries, and be admired and promoted for systematically mocking us? How could it be that people on the left have encouraged the chemical and surgical mutilation of children in the name of the trans ideology? I find this absolutely ghastly. I am a second wave feminist, (or thought I was), and I ask myself how I got to live in this trans nightmare. The people who once laughed at those who think evolution does not exist, now cannot say what a woman is, and think that a human being can change sex? Bizarro.
Well Erin, you said a mouthful in this response. Science. Religion. Money. The pendulum of human history between revolution and oppression, freedom and control. .
Is there something we can agree on now? Perhaps the human mind's demand for certainty is being tested beyond its/our limits. Can we agree on oxygen? gravity? chlorophyll? symbiosis? I'm not kidding. Which brings me to my issue I toss over to you (I"ll get to the trans issue in a bit).
We talk about climate disruptions as if there is one tweak and we'll be ok, but really it's that human systems have taxed living systems so thoroughly that the natural world (biology, physics, geology, water cycles, etc) that we depend on utterly for our existence is reconfiguring to find a new balance - that may not include us.
Burning fossil fuels has loaded the atmosphere with CO2, creating the greenhouse effect, heating the planet, and we are close to the point of no return (not sure which side of the line we are on). Drill baby drill, reauthorizing coal, authorizing cutting in national forests, even mining the ocean floor, just about every policy concerning nature will accelerate sea level rise, temperature rise, catastrophes worthy of Revelations. I've worked on sustainability as soon as there was a word for the need to live in balance with the earth's systems - or pay the piper. we are blindly destroying the basis of life; it feels like a knife in my chest. No leader has done anything even close to enough in response. Biden at least had it on his radar. Trump is clear cutting all laws and regulations that might limit the harm.
Call it science, call it compassion, call it respect, call it woke, call it whatever. Nature bats last, after all the other generous adaptations have failed. You're a YMOYL fan. You know that we can spend far less and have an even better life. YOu know this carnage is not necessary. I'm in grief about it.
As for trans issues, societies are always negotiating where to put boundaries on freedom in service to safety, cohesion, and whatever higher values prevail at the moment. As a feminist you know that women were chattel, and we've been gaining freedoms since then. The battle is long. Men thought women wearing pants was the end of civilization. That women were too soft headed to vote. Women, along with people of color, people with disabilities, and people with different gender expressions have been clamoring for an equal playing field in this society. basic respect. at least live and let live. I see trans issues this way. We are finding out that there are more views on gender than we knew. Non binary for me is good in all intelligent inquiry - there;s nuance everywhere, and complexity. Just like a woman's right to choose, I believe in a person's right to choose how they dress/talk/and love. As for bathrooms, just have gender neutral bathrooms on every floor of a building and let people choose the one they prefer. As for surgery, I personally think children need protection. from the draft. from making rash decisions while they are minors. who does that? parents? state? churches? beats me. And if people are lewd in public, well, we limit that. Public nudity. No. So there are nude beaches and nudist camps. This country figures out how to tolerate difference when politicians don't get in there to turn us against one another so they gain power.
OK, gotta go. I didn't edit so i'm open for all sorts of challenges but so be it. You're smart. And you don't seem inclined to nit pick.
Hi Vicki. It's a pleasure to meet you in person. :-)
I don't do zoom but I would be happy to explore here or in emails.
As for woke, it's a designation chosen by the woke. Not an insult invented by the other side. Seems like a handy shortcut to what is happening nowadays.. .If you would prefer another term, let me know.
For me, this is about healthy boundaries.
Love the loom image, and your look at the in-betweens, the interstitials.
Living on a long dirt road where residents have interacted over potholes, fallen trees, and a clear-cut threat, we're up-leveling to who needs what, who has what resources. Staying private is the norm, connecting is the future. As in, it just hit me--I don't have to drive to the march this Saturday. I'm gonna ask for a lift. SOMEbody on the road must be going.
This is so inspiring as you are! I am a Canadian but we feel like we are having the fight of our lives as US policies dismantle our economy as well and our upcoming election has huge stakes. Thankyou for the ideas and the work you do.
Thank you for describing our work so beautifully and sharing it so widely so others may find their part in this "big work". I am grateful to be walking alongside you, dreaming and building alternatives, together on Whidbey. ❤️
Your closing paragraph is exactly right… plus, a lovely prayer… please keep it up (from one crone to another❣️).
thank you for all the ways you put your voice, your ideas, out there for mutual inspiration and activism. Keep on keeping on. love, cb
Powerful and useful and inspiring sharing and beautifully written. Thank you
thank you Deepa good to hear from you. Are you in India? or?