What’s the real problem?

 

The U.S. is supposedly the wealthiest nation on earth… renowned for its institutions of higher learning, has the most prolific innovators of medical and other technologies, a true beacon of freedom and democracy, and yada, yada, yada.  Such is what we tell ourselves, though I don’t know how much of that is actually true.  But the majority of us believe it, have been indoctrinated to believe it, boast about it, etc., and etc.  But can we prove it?

But that’s not what this OP is about.  However, for the sake of argument, let’s assume it’s all true.  We are the greatest (GOAT)! 😉

Q: What I’m wondering is, if we are so great, why can’t we work together toward common goals? 

Goals such as sustainable clean energies (good for the earth, good for us); universal health care, cradle to grave; free higher education for all its citizens… you know, the kinds of stuff that lifts all boats.  What really is our problem?  Why all the discord?  Left hand constantly fighting with the right hand (political pun intended).

What is at the heart of this problem?  Explain it to me, like I’m a five-year-old (a la Denzel Washington in “Philadelphia”).  Great movie, btw.

Thanks for posting and recommending.

Book Review: Thieves of State

Sarah Chayes

Former NPR correspondent Sarah Chayes wrote Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (2015), largely based on her years of experience in Afghanistan working with average Afhgani people as they struggled to build normal lives in the wake of years of war and systemic kleptocracy. Chayes, now at the Carnegie Endowment, has spent years surrounded by and trying to work within the systemic kleptocracy that is the government of Afghanistan. She came to Afghanistan as an NPR correspondent and shortly thereafter abandoned journalism to work as a free agent trying to rebuild civilization.

Chayes observes that over the centuries, many commentators on government, e.g., from Nizam al-Mulk in the 11th century to Erasmus and Machiavelli in the 16th century, repeatedly pointed to corruption and the injustice it inflicts on the innocent is the single most potent threat to stable governance and peace. al-Mulk, an influential 11th century administrator wrote The Book of Politics (Book of Government), which, among other things, (1) argued the need for a racially integrated army, and (2) proposed confiscating property of corrupt officials who take too much and repay those who were stolen from. Chayes: “Now there was an anti-corruption measure that would make an impact.”

Coming to see just how pervasive Afghan government corruption actually was took time. For example, Chayes co-founded a charity “of unclear mission,” that was run by President Hamid Karzai's brother, Qayum. Chayes had no idea that he was corrupt to the core: “At first I believed Qayum’s description of himself as constituting a ‘loyal opposition’ to his younger brother the president. . . . . Not for years would I begin systematically comparing his seductively incisive words with his deeds.” A chagrined Chayes finally came to understand that “I had, in other words, been an accessory to fraud.”

It turns out that kleptocrats like Qayum and his kleptocrat brother, president Hamid Karzai and the rest of the entire Afghan government know two things very, very well. First, they present themselves as a safe, rational, sincere refuge in the face of a vicious throat-cutting population. Chayes was terrified for a long time and another Afghani kleptocrat Chayes worked with did that number on her to keep her on a short leash. Kleptocrats need to keep outsiders like Chayes from directly interacting with average Afghanis as much as possible. Outsider and even leaders speaking directly to the people that non-leader kleptocrats have feared for centuries.

Second, all high level kleptocrats learned to speak English. They work hard to learn the jargon and acronyms that Western minds want to hear. On other words, they tell us exactly what we wanted to hear. The poison sounded so true and rational because it sounded so much like us.

The money pit bridge – finding the shallowest place to cross the river: Referring to a bridge outside Kandahar that foreign aid kept rebuilding “That bridge kept springing holes. And the foreigners kept paying more money for more repairs. And no one, as far as we knew, was called to account.” It’s not the case that ordinary Afghanis were blind to the corruption. One person ‘from the orchards north of town once told me’: “We all know this money is coming in. We just don’t know which hole it is spilling out through.”

The way it worked was simple. Foreign aid to fix the bridge would be awarded to an Afghani contractor. That contractor would then award the job to a subcontractor, but take a cut, and the sub would take another cut and award to job to another sub who took another cut and so on until there was little left of the money to fix the bridge. What repairs that were done was temporary band-aid. People got used to driving their cars and trucks off the road and through the river to get to the other side. The holes in the bridge afforded good, unobstructed views of the river below.

Chayes came to see the entire Afghanistan government as a vertically integrated criminal organization. Later, she came to see about the same thing in other countries, including Russia, Nigeria, Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia and so forth. If fact, if one looks at Transparency International’s transparency map, most countries are kleptocracies of some form or another.

So what? Where’s the security threat?: The central point that Thieves of State makes is that at some point, systemic corruption isn’t just a by-product of the war, but it morphs into a force that fosters and maintains global conflict. Corruption simply cannot be ignored as a serious source of international instability and conflict. The injustice and economic inequality of it enrages people. Chayes comments: “Abusive government corruption prompts extreme responses and thus represents a mortal threat to security.” She watched NGOs, NATO, and U.S. Army anti-corruption programs repeatedly fail.

The security threat comes from the rage and hate that grows in the soil of corruption. Citing cognitive science research on the point and her direct observations, Chayes points out that people who feel abused or cheated often do not always react rationally. Sometimes otherwise normal people moved into the arms of the hated Taliban because the government was so outrageous and the Taliban, speaking like normal Afghanis, began to sound rational and comforting enough. Screw democracy, Afghanis wanted justice. And, America and Western countries were seen by average Afghanis as complicit in and accepting of massive corruption because they allowed it to go unchecked, the thieves going unchecked. Chayes’ book is full of examples of how utterly inept and clueless American and Western diplomats, military, NGOs, aid groups and just about everyone else really was for a long time.

Chayes efforts as an official US military advisor finally began to sink in. Admiral Mullen (chairman, joint chiefs of staff) wasn’t stupid enough to let personal arrogance get in the way of seeing reality for what it was. But to finally get to that point, Chayes had to fight tooth and claw to get past the smug, clueless arrogance of US (and Afghani) military and diplomatic officials who fought her every step of the way. The CIA was a special sort of hell for Chayes – always quietly trying to undermine her to protect their ‘assets’. Some years after the US military woke up, the US State Department also started waking up. Everyone was now beginning to see just how serious and counterproductive US lives, efforts and money really had been. Systemic, pervasive corruption, not Islam or Afghani culture, was what made nation-building impossible. American efforts were doomed from the get go due to cluelessness.

Bin Ladn and 9/11: Just to make this strike home a bit more, Chayes argues that a significant driver of Bin Laden’s hate of the US and the West generally had nothing to do with religion. It was Bin Ladn’s white hot rage and hate flowing from decades of kleptocracy and what appeared to be, and often in fact was, decades of Western support and complicity in the moral outrage called corruption.

Although it’s not a full-blooded kleptocracy (yet), Chayes sees cause for concern even in America, pointing to the causes of the 2006-2007 financial meltdown and president Obama’s failure to see it for what it was and his failure to prosecute the responsible criminals. Of course, these days, there’s more than just Obama’s unfixable failures to be concerned about.

Solutions: Chayes isn’t naïve. Fighting corruption is hard and complex. There can be directly competing goals and priorities. Nonetheless, she does give a list of practical things that governments, multinational companies, Western militaries, diplomats even average citizens can do to fight global corruption.

In the overall scheme of things, corruption arguably ranks with the threat of nuclear war, catastrophic climate change, wealth inequality (significantly a function of corruption) and global overpopulation among serious threats to civilization and the fate of the human species.

For people wanting to learn about some reasons to reject isolationism and embrace proactive international engagement, this book is an excellent place to start.

B&B orig: 11/30/17; DP: 11/3/17

What about us? Fear in Afghanistan is rising

Mawoud Academy in Kabul, Afghanistan -- the planned US troop withdrawal 

and the Taliban’s likely return to power raises fears about the 

future of rights and education for women and girls

The war in Afghanistan was sold to the American people as short, low cost and nothing like Vietnam. Unfortunately, it was clear at least 15 years ago it was going to be long, high cost and a lot like Vietnam in at least one way. One aspect of sameness is the ultimate futility of the American effort to build a stable democracy and transform Afghan society. That failed. The Taliban is likely to come back to power and those folks are not democrats. They in a society transforming mood, but the mood is harsh, sour and it points to some version of the Dark Ages, but with cell phones and AK-47s. These people are in no mood to be "civilized" as we see the concept.

The new leadership, it's not like the old incompetent kleptocrat leadership

So one question is what about women, their rights and the people who collaborated to help the US effort to nation build? It's pretty clear what the Taliban will do once they chase the incompetent US-backed  kleptocratic government out of the country. Women will be enslaved and shut up. The collaborators we leave behind will be chased down and slaughtered. Again, one can hear echoes of Vietnam and its bogus Peace with Honor.

The new York Times writes:

As American troops prepare to leave and fractures form in the Afghan government, militias controlled by powerful local warlords are once more rising to prominence and attacking government forces.

The American withdrawal will undoubtedly be a massive blow to morale for the Afghan security forces, spread across the country at hundreds of checkpoints, inside bases and along violent front lines. For years, the U.S. presence has meant that American air power, if needed, was nearby. But since the Trump administration’s deal with the Taliban, those airstrikes have become much less frequent, occurring only in the most dire of situations.

Without American military support, Afghan government troops are up against a Taliban enemy who is frequently more experienced and better equipped than the average foot soldier.  

“It is not the right time to withdraw their troops,” said Major Saifuddin Azizi, a commando commander in the southeastern province of Ghazni, where fighting has been especially brutal in recent days. “It is unreasonable, hasty and a betrayal to us. It pushes Afghanistan into another civil war. Afghanistan’s destiny will look like it did two decades ago.”  

An Afghan Army official recently said the Taliban would have overtaken the city if not for U.S. air support.

Credit...

Once again, America betrays its allies and leaves them to be slaughtered. How many will we leave behind? The republicans will fight tooth and claw to severely limit the number of Afghan refugees into the US. After all, most republicans appear to see Muslims as terrorists, drug dealers, Sharia law spreaders and so forth. We will probably never know the scope of the brutality once we leave because journalists will also be targeted and slaughtered if they get caught there.

Bush, Obama and T**** all failed to get us out of an obviously hopeless situation with obviously hopeless nation building goals. Now Biden is going to get us out. One can already hear the republicans, Fox News, Breitbart, etc., inhaling deep so that they can commence loud and long screaming at President Joe for his failures. Biden will be the one the GOP falsely portrays as the reason for the US failure.  

A 14-year old Afghan bride sets eyes on her new 65-year old 

husband for the first time

This 8-year old Afghan bride is too young to be scared, unlike the 14-year old

She thinks this is going to be fun

The Second Amendment Protects Gun Ownership...and Gun Regulation

Since this issue is bound to be deranged to the point of imbecility in the coming "debate" about gun control [ see this unreasonable "Reason" content ], I thought it would be fruitful to establish up front what informed citizens should expect of their right to bear arms, which to wit:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

That the 2A itself is incorporated in terms of national self-defense is obvious, what is apparently less obvious to modern audiences is that the "right of the people" which is subordinated to necessary upkeep of militia, is not a newly invented right being outlined by the 2A itself. Rather, it refers to existing rights held by Americans, making the question of the context of the right ( that is, in terms of militia and national defense ) moot.

So the question of regulation is not appropriately derived from military service, but from pre-existing laws. There are two major forms of these laws: the first and oldest is English Common Law, of which all Americans were and are inheritors, and the second ( and which was premised on the former ) is state constitutional law, as written at the time of the adoption of the Amendment.

As to the former, while the foundation of our present laws was laid by Common Law, it was not itself nearly so well formalized and, being subject to change through context and interpretation, was encoded in official law in different ways by different states. Nevertheless by the Colonial era the right of citizens to own firearms was well established, if not always equally applied - neither slaves nor minors, for example, nor "habitual drunkards" could own or carry weapons or types of weapons [ 1 ]. And among those legally entitled to own firearms there were general prohibitions against types and consequences [ 2 ]:

In some cases, there may be affray, where there is no actual violence; as when a man arms himself with dangerous and unusual weapons, in such a manner, as will naturally diffuse a terrour among the people.

Pistols were a primary target of prohibition, as well as concealed weapons, and even Thomas Jefferson was concerned about citizens carrying shotguns off the farm ( IIRC - I need to find the letter Jefferson described his concerns in ). So by the Revolutionary era, state constitutions both declared the ownership and use of firearms to be an inalienable right, and also prohibited concealed carry in some cases or banned types of firearms outright. It is objectively the case, then - with actual state constitutions being the objective proof - that the premise of inalienable right to self defense, a well regulated militia, and various forms of "gun control" are not contrary to the 2A, but are legally mandated by it.

The idea maintained by certain factions in the US today that the 2A bars any regulation is founded on an ahistorical, ungrammatical reading of its text. Ahistorical for the reasons listed, and ungrammatical not only because "the right of the people" is erroneously read by them as a new, rather than existing, right ( which is easily discernible by reading Madison's comments on it ), but also because "shall not be infringed" is read as a general rule meaning "shall not be limited". This is not the case. Rather the meaning of infringement, as understood by seventeenth and eighteenth century audiences, was a violation, as of a contract or promise.

Hence the language here cannot be read as a bar against limitation, which would in any case present an outright contradiction against the need for a "well regulated militia", but rather as enforcing the contemporary rights held informally ( as in common law ) or formally ( as in state constitutional law ). These rights are federalized and, as the Constitution was then written, the 2A barred federal laws from violating those prior rights.

The tendency on other factions of the American public to repudiate the ownership of guns entirely as unconstitutionally is so manifestly stupid that I won't bother to defend it here - I would rather just cite Scalia's majority decision in the Heller case, and the controversy at the time over an Emory University professor's fraudulent book denying firearms were commonly owned by colonial Americans.

Rather in today's fractious politics, it's far more important to point out that those proposing to defend the 2A against supposedly unconstitutional restrictions against AR-15s or assault weapons generally are objectively opposed to the actual 2A, and therefore to the protection of our rights outlined in it.

[ 1 ] FIREARM REGULATION, John Brabner-Smith, p. 404

[ 2 ] THE COMMON LAW AND THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO BEAR ARMS: CARRYING FIREARMS AT THE FOUNDING AND IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC, Stephen P. Halbrook, p. 51

Gigantic GOP hypocrisy

McConnell speaking in 2013 defending free speech rights for

all corporations and businesses

“For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process. With today’s monumental decision, the Supreme Court took an important step in the direction of restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups by ruling that the Constitution protects their right to express themselves about political candidates and issues up until Election Day. By previously denying this right, the government was picking winners and losers. Our democracy depends upon free speech, not just for some but for all.” -- Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, January 2010, praising the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that gave a lot more “free speech” rights to corporations, by gutting campaign finance restrictions

Jaw dropping, breath-taking, mega-hypocrisy of ginormous proportions

That was 2010. Today, in 2021, McConnell is threatening businesses who go against GOP policy to get the hell out of participation in the political process, because it's not what they are designed to do.

MSNBC writes: 

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell lashed out at corporate America on Monday, warning CEOs to stay out of the debate over a new voting law in Georgia that has been criticized as restricting votes among minorities and the poor. In a sign of a growing rift in the decades-old alliance between the conservative party and U.S. corporations, McConnell said: “My advice to the corporate CEOs of America is to stay out of politics. Don't pick sides in these big fights.”

The Kentuckian added that corporations “will invite serious consequences” if they continue down this road, though the GOP leader did not elaborate as to the nature of his threat.  

Republicans have been increasingly bold of late in trying to stifle dissent, threatening major corporations with retaliatory policy measures if they dare to criticize -- not take sweeping actions, just criticize -- the GOP's voter-suppression. McConnell's rhetoric yesterday served as a reminder that this style of punitive pushback is likely to intensify.

For example, the GOP is angry at the baseball industry and the party wants to retaliate:

Of even greater interest was an announcement from Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), who said he and his aide are in the process of “drafting legislation to remove Major League Baseball's federal antitrust exception.” The South Carolina Republican added that entities that oppose his party's election efforts “deserve increased scrutiny under the law.”

In other words, if business speaks or acts in dissent of voter suppression, the GOP will punish its free speech and participation in the political process. The New York Times writes:

Lawmakers in Georgia threatened to rescind a tax break that saves Delta Air Lines, which is based in Atlanta, millions of dollars a year. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida posted a video in which he called Delta and Coca-Cola, another Atlanta company, “woke corporate hypocrites” for criticizing the Georgia law. Mr. Trump joined the calls for a boycott of companies speaking out against the voting laws. And last week, Mr. McConnell said companies should “stay out of politics.”[1]

There you have it, GOP hypocrites calling political opposition from the business community woke corporate hypocrites. One can only wonder what names they call non-business community opposition. Socialist Satanist deep state pedophile drug dealers?

In my opinion, the hypocrite GOP should stay out of politics.

Questions: Should the hypocrite GOP should stay out of politics, or are they doing just fine? Is the GOP not being hypocritical? Is hypocrisy and double standards in politics something important or is it just annoying to some (but not all) and of little substance?

Footnote:

1. But staying out of politics does not include making campaign contributions:

“For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process,” he said in a statement at the time [January of 2010]. He hailed the decision, Citizens United, as “an important step” in “restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups.”

 
But just over a decade later, McConnell has a different message for companies: Unless it involves money, they had better stay quiet.

“My warning to corporate America is to stay out of politics,” McConnell said at a news conference in Kentucky on Tuesday, before adding: “I’m not talking about political contributions.”

Well there it is, plain and simple. Stay out of politics, but keep the cash rolling in. The GOP isn’t a bunch of principled patriots, that’s for sure. 

Some history about American policing, racial prejudice and White fear

 

Throughline is an NPR program that dives into history to argue for certain connections between the past and current events and situations. The program, Policing in America, goes through some of the history of policing from colonial days until now. A lot of it is unpleasant, to say the least. 

I recall learning none of this in my public school education. That is probably because none of this was taught back then. Faulty memory probably isn't the main cause. 

The program is ~1 h 8 min.

Some of the topics touched on are summarized below.

9:30 some early police forces or militias in the 1600s called slave patrols were formed to control Black slaves' lives and movements, while other informal forces existed for policing of the rest of the population in the colonies; by law White males between 21 and 45 were required to serve in slave patrols

10:20 in the South the slave patrols enforce slave laws, which controlled essentially all aspects of slave life; more broadly, the law gave the entire White population with police power and required all White adult men to police slave activities

11:40 in the South, slave patrol duties were written into the law and White people who did not show up for duty were fined; slaves caught doing things they were not allowed to do were subject to beatings ('corporal punishment'); the underlying concern among Whites was to prevent an uprising; punishment was required on the spot when a slave broke a rule; slaves attempting to flee could be shot dead

14:05 since most White men in the South were required to be on slave patrols, the law required them to work to protect the interests of the slave owners, who were directly competing with poor whites; what poor whites got was a feeling of superiority over Blacks; by the time the constitution was ratified, slavery had served as a form of social insurance for about 200 years -- that insurance protected Whites and it baked inequality into American law and society; the sense of White superiority was needed to maintain the solidarity of poor whites who did not own slaves, keeping them under the thumbs of rich slave owners

16:30 slave patrols lasted until the end of the Civil War, but within several months after the war, Southern states passed laws called Black Codes (that's a double entendre for sure) that allowed Whites to continue to control many aspects of Black lives; a loophole in the 13th Amendment abolished slavery except as punishment for crime; in essence, the law in Southern states found ways to turn Black people into criminals and return them to a slave status; the Black Codes criminalized essentially all forms of Black freedom, mobility, economic activity and political power, but the laws did not criminalize the right of Blacks to work for White men on the White man's terms - it was about as close to slavery as one could get 

19:00 formal professional police forces did not exist in the South; the old slave patrols morphed into armed and vigilante groups with police power to enforce Black Codes; in 1866 the KKK was born in Pulaski TN, and it was popular and dominant and composed of the same people the slave patrols were composed of; there was no constitutional justice and instead, clan courts controlled the South; federal troops were required to crush KKK power and insure safety of Blacks

21:20 the situation was so bad that Congress passed the 14th and 15th Amendments to insure equal protection and due process, including voting rights for Blacks; that created a generation of peace and prosperity, but Southern states adjusted and changed tactics by creating Jim Crow laws by the early 20th century; the KKK emerged again and re-exerted control over Black American citizens (does anyone see a staunch modern resistance here in some Southern attitudes to Black people and their voting rights?); Jim Crow triggered the great migration of Blacks from the South to the North as legal constraints on their ability to flee fell away; the problem: the formal police forces in Northern cities rivaled the racism that Blacks had experienced under police and vigilante power in the South

23:50 part of the story of American policing goes back to London, England in 1829 and the Metropolitan Police Act, which created the 1st modern police force; it was new in focusing on preventing crime, community control and military structure, e.g., military style uniforms and military command and discipline; earlier US police forces were not structured that way; that model migrated to the northern US; by the late 1840s, immigrant European populations, especially the Irish, developed their own xenophobia and racism to what Blacks in the South and free Blacks in the North had experienced; early Northern police forces were composed of lower class 1st generation men, just a bit socially and economically above Black people; police in the North were critical to establishing a hierarchy among White immigrants groups (Germans vs Irish vs Poles vs Italians vs etc.) -- Blacks were always at the bottom → → police were critical to establishing a racial hierarchy among White groups and Blacks

....

....

48:35 the lesson from prohibition was that police cannot police or lock everybody up -- the police line is just too thin to do it (maybe social norms were starting to fall away and people started having less respect for police and maybe also the rule of law); the hammer fell on Black migrants, who were fewer in number and lower in status and respect

49:00 in 1931 the fed govt did the first major study on the criminal justice system and police violence and torture; a special report in the study looked at the "3rd degree"; Black activists who read the report howled that it was a lie that police violence and brutality toward Blacks had decreased -- the issue of police violence and murder of Blacks was mostly ignored and not mentioned

50:33 prohibition and criminal justice reform led to professionalized police and consolidated prior White groups into one race, established uniform crime reports, America's main source of crime statistics, but it wrote White racial crime statistics out of the report; the story of anti-Black racism was not included and the entire notion of police professionalism had no place for any focus on anti-racism; the concept of crime reporting was improved for everyone except Black people

54:00 (this is a transition from the old past to the present -- the logic feels weaker here and later, but if the historical data is consistent with this, then that's what the evidence is and the argument is defensible) Whites use a stigma of Black criminality to justify self-defense against Blacks like White Southerners used it to justify segregation and discrimination because Blacks are criminals (presumably because the Black Codes intentionally made them criminals); Black experience engenders distrust of police; police tell Blacks how much their lives do not matter in American society

56:03 after the 1930s police science until now partly draws on crime statistics and sociology that shows the innate and cultural tendencies of Blacks to criminality; in academic research, that begins to legitimize notions of Blacks as dangerous and criminal

57:55 psychologist Kenneth Clark generated data, including doll color preferences by young Black girls -- they preferred White dolls to Black dolls - that evidence was before the Supreme Court in the 1954 Brown v. Board of education decision that overturned public school segregation and the 'separate but equal' argument to keep Black children apart from Whites; later, Clark said that he had read the official riot reports on Black riots in 1919, 1935, 1943, and 1965; the findings and recommendations in each were the same, and after each report the response was the same, i.e., no response; pointing out the problem has no impact on fixing it

1:01:45 the question in 2021 remains the same as always: do White Americans still want the police to protect their interests over the interests the rights, interests and dignity of non-White Americans and non-Americans here now; Whites who report Blacks for non-reasons is evidence of the White privilege attitude -- does it matter or not, is White fear/anger rational or not? 

Other historical context

This was not in the program, but helps with context to understand what was going on and its meaning.

• Slave owners in the South used slaves to compete with White non-slave owning farmers. That forced incomes for the poor White farmers down to the point of near subsistence level. This situation heavily influenced immigration patterns, with new immigrants settling in the North because the standard of living for most non-slave owning whites was too unattractive. Immigrants avoided the South and I presume that contributed to the prevalence of the Honor Culture in the South. 

• Congress passed the 14th and 15th Amendments to insure equal protection and due process to Blacks in the South, and everyone else. Those are two of the most bitterly hated constitutional rights by the modern American radical right, which as has been attacking them ferociously for at least the last 60 years or so. A prominent exception is when the republican radical right Supreme Court in 2000 inexplicably relied on the hated due process clause to rationalized its declaration that Bush won over Gore in Florida. That decision was so legally and rationally awful that the court itself limited the decision to that case alone and set no precedent for anything other than that single case. 
  
  
• One concept I have learned is the incredible individual and social feeling of power and self-esteem that arises for many people (~90% ?) when their group feels superior to another that is less economically privileged and/or socially esteemed. My understanding is that is the single most important factor in why many lower income people oppose government help for people less privileged than themselves. Government help brings the looked-down on groups too close for comfort for the higher group, even if it is just one small rung up the ladder. Some or probably most people just have a deep need to feel better than someone else or an out-group, anyone, even when there is no rational basis to feel that way and even if the differences are small.

There you have it --

Forced integration creates racial hatred

We appose (oppose, actually) race mixing in schools

 

A segregated separate but equal school?