I was cringing throughout this entire post. These really are the fking mole people. And thanks to their efforts since 1980, America is now considered to be a flawed democracy.
Before St. Ronnie Raygun hit the scene we were the envy of the world; now it's just sad and pathetic. I went on a brunch cruise with Ron Reagan, Jr. many years ago and the first question asked was, "Why did your dad go from being a Democrat to a Republican?" The answer was, "Money." He said that Raygun had gotten the first million-dollar contract in Hollywood and that changed his worldview.
This was the beginning of the end of the middle-class in America and it's been going downhill ever since thanks to this evil, criminal enterprise known as the Republican party. I loathe what they have done to this country.
I agree with everything you're saying, except for your use of the term "mole people."
in NYC, there really ARE "mole people" who live under the streets, especially near Grand Central Station. and they don't bother anybody.
I know this because I once interviewed for a job involving picking them up in the morning, loading them onto a bus and bringing them to Brooklyn for medical care, showers, etc.
it's always struck me as a dicey lifestyle choice, but again, they're harmless, quite unlike the scumbags who are removing the safeguards around this child labor thing. what's even viler than the fact that these people think this is ok because of its positive effect on their bottom line is the probability that many of their parents aren't in a position to object because they need the money.
From 1972, I lived in Vancouver, Canada for ten years (two years in Toronto). It's a great place for water enthusiasts, love those ferries. But my friends tell me it has become pricey and right wing. I would still go back there.
I adore James Garner. His autobiography "The Garner Files" is a great read.
My former BFF of 36 years was apolitical, but then she met a man in the 1980s who ran a department in Reagan's administration for both terms. I'm a Democrat and always have been. She became a Republican to support her husband and we had an unspoken agreement to not discuss politics. The foyer of their large, beautiful home is filled with photos of her husband with all of the bad guys; Gingrich, GWB, KKKarl Rove, Reagan, GWHB, etc.
Decades of living in the RWNJ bullshit echo chamber have twisted her so far to the Reicht that she is 100% MAGA and dumped me because I'm not. I was hurt at first, but then decided it's okay because I prefer my friends who are not fascists.
Don't feel so badly-my own sister went Maga when she moved to Florida. I wonder how she'll fare if the REI companies come down to buy her condo and she has no other place to live?
This is one of the saddest posts you have written. What are we doing to our children? We are not educating them anymore and now we are sending them to work in slaughterhouses. We must fight the GQP on all issues concerning our children and we must protect our children. They are our future. This post turned my stomach.
There really is no bottom to the chasm of evil being dug by the Fascist wing of the “formerly Republican” party. Of course these hypocrites wouldn’t allow their precious heirs to toil in a poultry factory at the age of 14! And these are the same folks who are so worried about the survival of fetuses in the first trimester? It’s hard to choose what makes me sickest about their hateful, greedy spew (i.e., the Republican “platform”), but child labor certainly ranks near the top. Let’s fight with words--we should start calling the new Republican message the PLATFORM OF EVIL.
Your mention of Republican work to ban abortion combined with their efforts to change child labor laws makes me wonder if their opposition to abortion is because it deprives their greedy asses of a new crop of child labor. Very bad stuff.
Spoiler alert: The unconscious mind becomes dependent on the fleeting self-esteem boost from casting an unfamiliar group of people as morally inferior.
No how much hoomans disrespect other living things, it is hoomans who have proven to be the cruelest and most destructive of all. And Lucian captures just that in his article.
Our conservative friends view every last vestige of the New Deal as a nefarious conspiracy to torment the wealthy. The idea that things like child labor laws have any legitimate purpose is beyond the capacity of their reptilian brains to process.
Besides, if kids don't want to have to work, they should have chosen to be born to rich parents. It's called personal responsibility, people!
I tutor a man from Côte d’Ivoire who told me he started working in a sweatshop at age five, making shirts on a sewing machine. When I expressed shock, he shrugged and said, “C’est l’Afrique.” Apparently c’est l’Amerique aussi.
“Democrats running next year for state and federal offices should yell their heads off about the cruelty of these Republican controlled state legislatures and governors.” Yes, they SHOULD, but they won’t. The Dems seem incapable of raising their voices in outrage over anything, no matter how terrible. But the GOP knows how to make an ear-piercing, attention-getting racket over the most trivial matters!
Write your representative and senators, and tell them they will lose your vote if they don't yell their heads off about the cruelty. Or e-mail them, or call them, or visit them. Believe me, they will pay attention. So, yell your head off! Make them hear you!
Union workers booing Biden even after a 1.3 billion infrastructure bill from Biden. Unionized maggots has to be the greatest example of self brain washing.
They are vile, racist morons who deserve whatever ill-fortune comes their way! If they still love t-Rump it's because they hate everybody who isn't white.
This is a collaborative effort between Republicans and their corporate cronies. They don't really want all children to be able to work without papers before they turn 18, they want to be able to exploit immigrant children, especially undocumented immigrant children and use them as de facto slaves. They will pay below minimum wage, there will be no respect for working hours and safety will not be respected. And they will start by putting them to work in slaughterhouses, textile mills and oh, just for good measure, coal mines.
And the first plant manager that plays along with this game should be arrested and charged with trafficking, child abuse and whatever else they can think of.
It's part of the re-industrializing of the U.S. Demographics demand more working age people, so they are lowering the working age in the way you describe. I expect they will also expand chain gangs to work on infrastructure projects that require actual adults as well. See Peter Ziehan's videos on Youtube .
If only we staffed the re-industrialization of America the way we staffed the industrialization of America...with immigrants. The Germans, the Irish, the Italians, the Poles, etc. all came to this country and took jobs that previous generations of immigrants no longer wanted. And that's what we need today. Of course Republicans are against it because the immigrants that are coming are no longer European, they are brown people from Latin America or Asia. And their core racism can't abide welcoming those people. (Of course they don't acknowledge that Italians were not considered to be white until the 1930s and we don't want to talk about what they said about the Irish, both of those acknowledgements would require that they study the real history of the United States, not the sanitized whitewashed Rhonda Santis version).
But of course they welcome these people. If they didn't, who would do the low-wage, dangerous jobs that no one else will? Because thanks to racism, many of these immigrants don't get the opportunity to move up the way the white immigrants did and thus they're trapped in the godawful jobs at the bottom. (I suspect that if white middle-class kids were obliged to take these jobs, the conditions would improve overnight.)
The party of family values, which one would think includes everyone's children. I have to constantly remind myself people vote for the likes of these "winning" politicians because they feel exactly the same way, as they seem to be hell bent on dragging us back to the 1800s and its horrors for women and children, two of the representatives of the population that have always been treated less well.
They only value *white* children, and ideally in their own socioeconomic bracket. I'm surprised how many commenters are missing the fairly obvious racist and only slightly less obvious classist overtones of this child labor BS. Republicans make me sick.
Way worse than mere low life. She now has power. She is another of the GOP’s current bumper crop of vicious, cruel , bigoted, morally worthless EVIL monsters!
Block the essential immigrant labor pool because they will “replace us.” Well, who’s going replace your children or their wellbeing if they are killed or injured on the job?
It's interesting that it looks an awful lot like they'll sacrifice children so they don't have to let those hard-working non complaining no power immigrants in. These people are sick with stupidity.
And that because for them, cruelty is the whole point. It has a contagious addictive quality to it it seems. I've been watching an old, old TV series that addresses different topics and very often it displays the process of inequality behavior and how it spreads. It's the method Fox uses, just on a word of mouth sort of passing the hate message and exclusion along.
If not the Dark Ages, then certainly the age of Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist". This is end stage capitalism. Should a child somehow survive our slaughter houses today, more or less physically intact, then what about his mind, his spirit? His soul? His future?
Here are some things Nelson Mandela had to say about children and society:
The true character of society is revealed in how it treats its children – Nelson Mandela.. (27 September 1997)
Each of us as citizens, has a role to play in creating a better world for our children. (9 May 2002)
Our children are our future and one of the basic responsibilities is to care for them in the best and most compassionate manner possible. (7 November 2003)
Although not directed specifically at the issue LT is addressing, Heather Cox Richardson had a nice take on the overall "them" vs "us" gambit the Republithugs are pushing:
"Once you give up the principle of equality, you have given up the whole game. You have admitted the principle that people are unequal, and that some people are better than others. Once you have replaced the principle of equality with the idea that humans are unequal, you have stamped your approval on the idea of rulers and subjects. At that point, all you can do is to hope that no one in power decides that you belong in the lesser group."
I like the way the French express equality as part of their national motto: "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" . They are saying that Equality is a core value for them, a sine qua non.
We here in the USA are as unequal a society now as we have been in about a hundred years. When Inequality is this bad, democracies usually fail too. And we do see that happening here. With Trump we elected a proto fascist President. And when we voted him out of office after four years, a bunch of anti-democracy fascist tried to overthrow the government.
My friends in Denmark say they doubt that we will continue as a functioning democracy.
Sadly, I have the same fears. DeSantis is already behaving like a dictator - legislatively punishing those who dare to oppose him and demonizing the chosen "enemy de jour". And he has plenty of helpers and compatriots. We may out number the rwnjs but they're "gaming" the system in their favor daily. It's very scary.
Just when you think we can't rush headlong back to the early 19th century, we go even faster. Is that when America was great again? The glory days of workhouses, child labor, and indentured servants, if not slaves?
My mind is constantly boggled at the speed at which today's Repubs are seeking to undo every positive social and political gain made since the Civil War (at least).
By the by, those "help wanted" signs are all over Madison, WI, too. And there has been increased agitation by low-wage service sector employees in particular to unionize. Of course, unionization is fought fiercely by almost all owners and managers, even local small businesses who you might expect to be more enlightened. Working people have finally had enough of being treated like expendable cogs and paid non-living wages.
Naturally, the boss caste turns to automation and children.
Oh, and at this same time, they're (you all know who I mean by "they") working overtime to criminalize abortion. Not just ban it, but prosecute women for homicide for it. Anyone want to start a betting pool for when we see the first bill to take away women's right to vote? And then non-property-owning males?
I was going to say, "there seems to be no bottom" to the mess that has befallen us, but that was said by the first post that caught my eye. So I will just say that some elected officials are beneath contempt and are soiling society at a pretty fast clip. When I read that the walleyed Weight Watcher dropout and dim bulb Sarah Sanders made it open season on under 16-year-old people in her state, I thought: But she has pre-teen children! How could she? Something awful has unleashed cruel governance in this country, and its name is Donald Trump, with an assist from his Russian friends and the loathsome MAGAts who gave us the worst criminal presidency in US history.
I was cringing throughout this entire post. These really are the fking mole people. And thanks to their efforts since 1980, America is now considered to be a flawed democracy.
Before St. Ronnie Raygun hit the scene we were the envy of the world; now it's just sad and pathetic. I went on a brunch cruise with Ron Reagan, Jr. many years ago and the first question asked was, "Why did your dad go from being a Democrat to a Republican?" The answer was, "Money." He said that Raygun had gotten the first million-dollar contract in Hollywood and that changed his worldview.
This was the beginning of the end of the middle-class in America and it's been going downhill ever since thanks to this evil, criminal enterprise known as the Republican party. I loathe what they have done to this country.
I agree with everything you're saying, except for your use of the term "mole people."
in NYC, there really ARE "mole people" who live under the streets, especially near Grand Central Station. and they don't bother anybody.
I know this because I once interviewed for a job involving picking them up in the morning, loading them onto a bus and bringing them to Brooklyn for medical care, showers, etc.
it's always struck me as a dicey lifestyle choice, but again, they're harmless, quite unlike the scumbags who are removing the safeguards around this child labor thing. what's even viler than the fact that these people think this is ok because of its positive effect on their bottom line is the probability that many of their parents aren't in a position to object because they need the money.
Thanks for educating me on that point. I was referring to the horrible creatures from the1950s sci-fi movie.
I sorta knew that, but figured it'd also be interesting to mention the ACTUAL mole people.
I think that was an excellent teachable moment and I'm glad you responded.
I left the USA during Reagan's presidency.
I was seriously considering it. I probably should have.
From 1972, I lived in Vancouver, Canada for ten years (two years in Toronto). It's a great place for water enthusiasts, love those ferries. But my friends tell me it has become pricey and right wing. I would still go back there.
BC has a left wing government after years of worker hating right wing government. Housing is pricy
I adore James Garner. His autobiography "The Garner Files" is a great read.
My former BFF of 36 years was apolitical, but then she met a man in the 1980s who ran a department in Reagan's administration for both terms. I'm a Democrat and always have been. She became a Republican to support her husband and we had an unspoken agreement to not discuss politics. The foyer of their large, beautiful home is filled with photos of her husband with all of the bad guys; Gingrich, GWB, KKKarl Rove, Reagan, GWHB, etc.
Decades of living in the RWNJ bullshit echo chamber have twisted her so far to the Reicht that she is 100% MAGA and dumped me because I'm not. I was hurt at first, but then decided it's okay because I prefer my friends who are not fascists.
It happened to me as well. A friend of 50 years went right off the cliff. The friendship is over.
Don't feel so badly-my own sister went Maga when she moved to Florida. I wonder how she'll fare if the REI companies come down to buy her condo and she has no other place to live?
Oh, well. Not my problem.
Even if she had a change of heart, I don't want her back. MAGAts are cruel and stupid people.
This is one of the saddest posts you have written. What are we doing to our children? We are not educating them anymore and now we are sending them to work in slaughterhouses. We must fight the GQP on all issues concerning our children and we must protect our children. They are our future. This post turned my stomach.
There really is no bottom to the chasm of evil being dug by the Fascist wing of the “formerly Republican” party. Of course these hypocrites wouldn’t allow their precious heirs to toil in a poultry factory at the age of 14! And these are the same folks who are so worried about the survival of fetuses in the first trimester? It’s hard to choose what makes me sickest about their hateful, greedy spew (i.e., the Republican “platform”), but child labor certainly ranks near the top. Let’s fight with words--we should start calling the new Republican message the PLATFORM OF EVIL.
Your mention of Republican work to ban abortion combined with their efforts to change child labor laws makes me wonder if their opposition to abortion is because it deprives their greedy asses of a new crop of child labor. Very bad stuff.
"Conservatives want live children to train to become dead soldiers." -George Carlin
Plus, maimed and dead workers.
Don't forget: the prisons need bodies to feed the prison complex. You don't want to know how many Republicans have stock in those, do you?
It's too depressing to consider. Going down a very dark path, Soylent Green comes to mind.
And the contracts they get are ridiculous. They get paid for a minimum number of beds even if there aren't bodies in them.
George was an extremely astute observer and commentator.
Operative words "...no bottom" Well-played
I just call them the Pro-Rape Party.
Spoiler alert: The unconscious mind becomes dependent on the fleeting self-esteem boost from casting an unfamiliar group of people as morally inferior.
You know what's great about your little comments from what I'm sure you consider a conservative POV? They don't seem to have any effect at all.
Speaking of Poe, a group of ravens is called an unkindness.
The terms "murder of crows" and "unkindness of ravens" does not do these very intelligent birds justice.
Respect.
No how much hoomans disrespect other living things, it is hoomans who have proven to be the cruelest and most destructive of all. And Lucian captures just that in his article.
Crows are far more intelligent than many members of the GQP.
I'll drink to that!
Our conservative friends view every last vestige of the New Deal as a nefarious conspiracy to torment the wealthy. The idea that things like child labor laws have any legitimate purpose is beyond the capacity of their reptilian brains to process.
Besides, if kids don't want to have to work, they should have chosen to be born to rich parents. It's called personal responsibility, people!
I tutor a man from Côte d’Ivoire who told me he started working in a sweatshop at age five, making shirts on a sewing machine. When I expressed shock, he shrugged and said, “C’est l’Afrique.” Apparently c’est l’Amerique aussi.
“Democrats running next year for state and federal offices should yell their heads off about the cruelty of these Republican controlled state legislatures and governors.” Yes, they SHOULD, but they won’t. The Dems seem incapable of raising their voices in outrage over anything, no matter how terrible. But the GOP knows how to make an ear-piercing, attention-getting racket over the most trivial matters!
Won't do any good in the red states. Fox is right. They want this stuff so that's what they'll get come hell or high water.
Mary Trump is on Substack. Hear her podcast;
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdWRpb2Jvb20uY29tL2NoYW5uZWxzLzUwNjI5ODAucnNz/episode/dGFnOmF1ZGlvYm9vbS5jb20sMjAyMy0wMy0wNzovcG9zdHMvODI1OTQ5MQ?ep=14
Write your representative and senators, and tell them they will lose your vote if they don't yell their heads off about the cruelty. Or e-mail them, or call them, or visit them. Believe me, they will pay attention. So, yell your head off! Make them hear you!
Because dems are convinced that the working class is maga.
It is Democrat timidity which makes the working class maggots.
All the more reason to shout louder, and often.
It is surely one of the things that drives working class people away!
Union workers booing Biden even after a 1.3 billion infrastructure bill from Biden. Unionized maggots has to be the greatest example of self brain washing.
They are vile, racist morons who deserve whatever ill-fortune comes their way! If they still love t-Rump it's because they hate everybody who isn't white.
This is a collaborative effort between Republicans and their corporate cronies. They don't really want all children to be able to work without papers before they turn 18, they want to be able to exploit immigrant children, especially undocumented immigrant children and use them as de facto slaves. They will pay below minimum wage, there will be no respect for working hours and safety will not be respected. And they will start by putting them to work in slaughterhouses, textile mills and oh, just for good measure, coal mines.
And the first plant manager that plays along with this game should be arrested and charged with trafficking, child abuse and whatever else they can think of.
It's part of the re-industrializing of the U.S. Demographics demand more working age people, so they are lowering the working age in the way you describe. I expect they will also expand chain gangs to work on infrastructure projects that require actual adults as well. See Peter Ziehan's videos on Youtube .
If only we staffed the re-industrialization of America the way we staffed the industrialization of America...with immigrants. The Germans, the Irish, the Italians, the Poles, etc. all came to this country and took jobs that previous generations of immigrants no longer wanted. And that's what we need today. Of course Republicans are against it because the immigrants that are coming are no longer European, they are brown people from Latin America or Asia. And their core racism can't abide welcoming those people. (Of course they don't acknowledge that Italians were not considered to be white until the 1930s and we don't want to talk about what they said about the Irish, both of those acknowledgements would require that they study the real history of the United States, not the sanitized whitewashed Rhonda Santis version).
But of course they welcome these people. If they didn't, who would do the low-wage, dangerous jobs that no one else will? Because thanks to racism, many of these immigrants don't get the opportunity to move up the way the white immigrants did and thus they're trapped in the godawful jobs at the bottom. (I suspect that if white middle-class kids were obliged to take these jobs, the conditions would improve overnight.)
“Rhonda Santis” - LOVE IT!
The party of family values, which one would think includes everyone's children. I have to constantly remind myself people vote for the likes of these "winning" politicians because they feel exactly the same way, as they seem to be hell bent on dragging us back to the 1800s and its horrors for women and children, two of the representatives of the population that have always been treated less well.
They only value *white* children, and ideally in their own socioeconomic bracket. I'm surprised how many commenters are missing the fairly obvious racist and only slightly less obvious classist overtones of this child labor BS. Republicans make me sick.
Sarah Huckster Sanders. What a low life.
Way worse than mere low life. She now has power. She is another of the GOP’s current bumper crop of vicious, cruel , bigoted, morally worthless EVIL monsters!
She has children...how could that possibly happen?
Because racism is a thing. All children are not created equal as far as the racists are concerned.
Newt suggested legalizing child labor around 2008. Republicans are always planting evil seeds to see if they take root.
Its the old Boot Strap bs.
Another myth like trickle down economy.
BUT
I come from that world.
First job at 5 helping dad paint houses for food.
Around the town square paper route at 9.
Free breakfast at the cafe.
Picking lettuce and grapes in the Sonoran desert at 14.
Back to iowa farming for a couple of years. Back to Arizona.
Running the Carrol Arthur Sweet Potato sheds in Glendale Arizona. At 21 start my business.
At 82 i have logged 66 jobs.
Thats all folks.
Lets boot strap them kids,
Particilary the 20 plus Musk kids
A solid wealthy middle-class is the sign of a healthy society.Children working in slaughterhouses is not.
"Civilized societies don’t do this kind of stuff.". The United States hasn't been "civilized" in many years.
~veritas~
I agree. Never civilized.
Block the essential immigrant labor pool because they will “replace us.” Well, who’s going replace your children or their wellbeing if they are killed or injured on the job?
It's interesting that it looks an awful lot like they'll sacrifice children so they don't have to let those hard-working non complaining no power immigrants in. These people are sick with stupidity.
Rather, sick with cruelty...
And that because for them, cruelty is the whole point. It has a contagious addictive quality to it it seems. I've been watching an old, old TV series that addresses different topics and very often it displays the process of inequality behavior and how it spreads. It's the method Fox uses, just on a word of mouth sort of passing the hate message and exclusion along.
That's likely part of the impetus behind the overturning of Roe V Wade in some states.
We're knocking on the door of a new Dark Ages.
Not knocking at the door— the Dark Ages have already begun in GOP controlled states.
Yes, going backwards full speed ahead 😔
If not the Dark Ages, then certainly the age of Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist". This is end stage capitalism. Should a child somehow survive our slaughter houses today, more or less physically intact, then what about his mind, his spirit? His soul? His future?
Here are some things Nelson Mandela had to say about children and society:
The true character of society is revealed in how it treats its children – Nelson Mandela.. (27 September 1997)
Each of us as citizens, has a role to play in creating a better world for our children. (9 May 2002)
Our children are our future and one of the basic responsibilities is to care for them in the best and most compassionate manner possible. (7 November 2003)
Although not directed specifically at the issue LT is addressing, Heather Cox Richardson had a nice take on the overall "them" vs "us" gambit the Republithugs are pushing:
"Once you give up the principle of equality, you have given up the whole game. You have admitted the principle that people are unequal, and that some people are better than others. Once you have replaced the principle of equality with the idea that humans are unequal, you have stamped your approval on the idea of rulers and subjects. At that point, all you can do is to hope that no one in power decides that you belong in the lesser group."
I like the way the French express equality as part of their national motto: "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" . They are saying that Equality is a core value for them, a sine qua non.
We here in the USA are as unequal a society now as we have been in about a hundred years. When Inequality is this bad, democracies usually fail too. And we do see that happening here. With Trump we elected a proto fascist President. And when we voted him out of office after four years, a bunch of anti-democracy fascist tried to overthrow the government.
My friends in Denmark say they doubt that we will continue as a functioning democracy.
Sadly, I have the same fears. DeSantis is already behaving like a dictator - legislatively punishing those who dare to oppose him and demonizing the chosen "enemy de jour". And he has plenty of helpers and compatriots. We may out number the rwnjs but they're "gaming" the system in their favor daily. It's very scary.
Just when you think we can't rush headlong back to the early 19th century, we go even faster. Is that when America was great again? The glory days of workhouses, child labor, and indentured servants, if not slaves?
My mind is constantly boggled at the speed at which today's Repubs are seeking to undo every positive social and political gain made since the Civil War (at least).
By the by, those "help wanted" signs are all over Madison, WI, too. And there has been increased agitation by low-wage service sector employees in particular to unionize. Of course, unionization is fought fiercely by almost all owners and managers, even local small businesses who you might expect to be more enlightened. Working people have finally had enough of being treated like expendable cogs and paid non-living wages.
Naturally, the boss caste turns to automation and children.
Oh, and at this same time, they're (you all know who I mean by "they") working overtime to criminalize abortion. Not just ban it, but prosecute women for homicide for it. Anyone want to start a betting pool for when we see the first bill to take away women's right to vote? And then non-property-owning males?
That is no joke! One of the long-term goals of Christian Dominionism is to take away women’s right to vote.
Should have clarified their intent -- "Non-property-owning WHITE males," because no one else qualifies as a citizen in their eyes.
She always was my heroine. She spat at the “norm” and did things her way.
I was going to say, "there seems to be no bottom" to the mess that has befallen us, but that was said by the first post that caught my eye. So I will just say that some elected officials are beneath contempt and are soiling society at a pretty fast clip. When I read that the walleyed Weight Watcher dropout and dim bulb Sarah Sanders made it open season on under 16-year-old people in her state, I thought: But she has pre-teen children! How could she? Something awful has unleashed cruel governance in this country, and its name is Donald Trump, with an assist from his Russian friends and the loathsome MAGAts who gave us the worst criminal presidency in US history.