Well, I see that Trump’s effort to remake America into a gulag has claimed another victim: Americorps.
If you are unfamiliar with Americorps, a recent description from the Brennan Center might be helpful.
The 1994 launch of AmeriCorps—the nation’s premier public service program, a sort of domestic Peace Corps—was one of former President Bill Clinton’s signature achievements. The program aimed to harness the idealism and spirit of service of thousands of Americans eager to contribute time and energy to addressing pressing national and community problems in a hands-on fashion.
That basic vision continues today in the efforts of some 80,000 mostly young AmeriCorps members, who receive minimal living expenses and a modest education stipend (currently $5,815) in exchange for an intense year of work. They perform tasks like tutoring struggling schoolchildren and helping out with after-school activities at under-performing schools; cleaning up parks and other public lands; providing help to veterans and their families; and responding to hurricanes, floods, tornados, and other emergencies. No program, especially one so large and challenging, is perfect. But for most participants, it’s a life-changing experience, one that can help open doors to post-AmeriCorps jobs and careers. The current funding level is $386 million, the same as for fiscal 2016. The agency’s overall allocation is a little more than $1 billion.
I can confirm that reference to “life changing”–my youngest grandson took his gap year as an Americorps volunteer. He was always a good kid–did well in school, didn’t get into trouble, and displayed the sort of empathy currently missing from our federal government–but that year saw enormous maturation. He worked (hard!) with an assortment of young Americans who came from a wide variety of backgrounds, and became newly appreciative of his own privilege.
That grandson is graduating from college next month. He had initially hoped to work in government, but Trump’s election took that option off the table. He will join an entire cohort of young people graduating into a newly chaotic economic environment, and a threatening political and civic one.
Frank Bruni recently addressed the dilemma of these graduates in a column for the New York Times. I think he spoke for millions of us when he wrote,
It’s a hell of a thing to be surrounded by college seniors a month away from heading out into this new America, a land of malice and madness. My fellow professors and I are supposed to have nuggets of optimism at the ready, gauzy and gooey encomiums about infinite possibilities, the march of progress and that apocryphal arc, the one that bends toward justice. But all I’ve got is the metastasizing pit of fear in my own gut.
In his conversation with students, BruniI recalled the anxiety and uncertainty he’d experienced at their age, what he described as “the gnawing suspense of being on the threshold of adulthood with no clue what it had in store for me.” He confessed an inability to imagine that flux of emotions in a political moment like this one.
College students throughout the country made all sorts of decisions and nurtured all kinds of expectations based on one version of America only to encounter, less than three furious months into Trump’s second presidency, a much, much different one. It’s a situation suffused with bitter ironies: Those students have often been caricatured and vilified for not seeing enough good in America — for focusing on its betrayals rather than its ideals — and now they’re watching its leader betray those ideals daily, hourly, with a shrug or a smirk or, at least metaphorically, a cackle.
Bruni enumerates just a few of Trump’s betrayals: his calculated abandonment of a man consigned to a hellhole in El Salvador because of an administrative error, his “morally perverse assertions that Ukraine is evil and Russia rightly aggrieved, and his pardoning of the savages who smashed their way into the Capitol and bloodied police officers on Jan. 6, 2021.”
How do we counsel these young people who are encountering, as Bruni says, not merely a change in the rules but the collapse of decency and dignity? What do I tell my own grandchildren, who were raised by a bunch of lawyers and educators and are painfully aware of the severity of the current assault on American values?
What– Bruni asks-is the fallback for a teetering democracy?
The only answer I can muster is to redouble our fidelity to the values exemplified by Americorps and the thousands of other government agencies and nonprofit organizations working to make life better for those who are less fortunate.
Refuse to submit. Be one of the good Germans.
Some encouraging signs
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/no-kings-protesters-across-country-march-against-trump-musk/
Let’s face it. We have a national cancer with only challenging roads to choose from to restore the healthy nation that we remember from last year. We have all known safe and comfortable, so we see the goal, but each day we wait is more time for the cancer to replace healthy cells with diseased ones.
See, there were so many folks out there reading and recognize the signs of what was coming down the pike. Some said it here, some said it in editorials, opinion pages, historical publications, and the like.
And really if we’re truthful about it, there’s a lot of things you can blame for this predicament but the main one is, ignorance, is front and center. The language JB Pritzker used in his address of the assembly, he literally stole from an editorial writing myself and others had created I actually doing the work. Big boy Pritzker, took the toilets out of his mansion so he didn’t have to pay taxes! That can never be forgiven or forgotten!
Why is this power so alluring? The very wealthy claim they won’t take any pay for being in the position of making decisions for every, but there they are! Telling everyone else, to get out there and make some noise. I can’t trust any of them.
What is being done today, is even worse than what was done in world war II in the United States. Where, the Japanese were locked up and concentration camps here. Not so much, the Germans or the Russians, or even the Italians, because they looked like they belonged in charge. They looked like they belonged in their own mind!
You see, also, things were taken way too far! I mean when you’re talking about God, or you’re talking about hope, or you’re talking about faith that’s something that can restrain moral turpitude. Men had hijacked religion to bring about hatred, and those who chimed in, never researched the actuality and the authenticity of what was going on! They just forced their opinions on others, no matter how convoluted they are, those opinions that is, made some folks who were geniuses or thought they were, heart and parcel to this situation we are in now. Because everyone has decided what to be told on how to believe. No one wants to put in the work, no one wants to research, they follow that slow moving sludge packed flood of ignorance, and then freak out when everyone is swept away by it.
There isn’t going to be concentration camps in other countries for American citizens, there already are! El Salvador uses American currency as their own. It’s easy to pad the politicians hands with an arrangement like this. What you see, are individuals searching for power and authority and being granted that power and authority by their own misogynistic, their own moral turpitude, unquenched thirst for control and authority.
A lot of folks saw this coming, and in essence we’re flying through the streets in this country like Paul Revere explaining what terrible things are going to happen. And, here we are, one step away from total annihilation.
Don’t look up!
Well, Todd has given us our daily dose of “we’re all to blame”, but the irony of a recent event is more pertinent:
Shortly after giving an audience to J. D. Vance, the Pope passed away. Is Vance really the devil’s disciple, or just a bad case of idiocy?
patmcc. Thanks for the link. In scanning through it, I noticed:
1.the diversity among the protesters including lots of young people;
2. intersectionality meaning more people are waking up to the fact that all their concerns are related to the rule of law and Trump’s contempt for it;
3. the presence of protest groups in deep red parts of the country.
Vern may have meant a “bad case of coincidence” with Vance visiting the Pope before his death. However, I am sure plenty of people will speculate today about that coincidence since Vance and Pope Francis recently exchanged words.
Pritzker had many mob connections, which isn’t surprising. Bill Clinton wasn’t just mobbed up himself; does anybody remember #ChinaGate and Mark Middleton? Clinton’s background in Arkansas is intriguing since Little Rock was a hub for the international drug trade for years. Governor Clinton? While president, Bill accepted campaign monies from China, which were funneled through shell companies to avoid detection.
And speaking of coincidence, Epstein was close to Bill Clinton and Trump. 😉
As the world turns…
I hope young people graduating from college have built some programming skills while in college, because tech is our future. You’ll need more than a basic understanding to succeed in our fast-changing environment. I hate to hear about Americorps because leadership skills will also be a priority, but aren’t taught in undergrad. And I’m not talking about management skills, but leadership.
Watching the unipolar world collapse is ugly, but it’s not the end of the world. Had Biden had any sense of his own, he would have initiated it himself. Now we have crude, immature narcissists running the show who aren’t very bright. We are dividing the global order into a multipolar world, but we haven’t done anything toward our military bases worldwide, including those in Europe. I believe NATO is a dead end.
First, we have to eliminate capitalism’s mentality of competition. MBA programs have been taught about profits first (and only profits), but that needs to change. Collaboration will be our future. Make friends with China, not war!
#MondayMusings
Is it proper to offer my condolences to the Vatican?
Given the garbage strewn world of the U.S. this graduating cohort, and who knows how many more, will have to face, I offer this bit of hopefully encouraging wisdom:
By way of Adam Nicolson’s, “Life Between the Tides,” from Iris Murdoch’s “The Sovereignty of Goodness” :
“The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unselfish, to see and respond to the real world in the light of virtuous consciousness. This is the non-metaphorical meaning of the idea of transcendence…Virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfishness and join the world as it really is.” Oh, it’s soooo “woke!” I love it.
I can only tell the children that nothing is forever. That means that even they will change over times. I look at my own generation. We earned a reputation as antiwar activists. It was hoped the boomers would change the world. We did. We changed it for the worse. We got greedy. We got bored and boring. Don’t be like us!
Cling tightly to your values. As you take your place in the hierarchy, make it better.. Do the things that make life better. Improve the rail system. Feed the hungry. Welcome the stranger. Build with the environment in mind.
Sorry, I think I posted my comment when I was sleeping, lol! But I suppose you get the gist. Kids look at things through the lens of what they’re told. Kids figure they’ve been lied to, they just look at Christmas, Santa Claus, they look at Easter and the Easter Bunny, they look at Halloween but don’t have a clue as to its meaning. It’s all good, just have fun! Until it’s not all good, and it’s not fun. If everything we deal with is based on a lie, how is that going to be conducive for a good and honest society. The Pope died today, do you think he was afraid to die? Sure he was, he was hanging on for whatever few seconds he could gain. Now we’ll find out, how much power he had, they believe he’s in heaven with God and Jesus Christ. Except the Pope and the church never taught the law of Christ. The Eucharist and transfiguration, that’s something grotesque, that the blood and flesh of Christ actually appear in your mouth when you’re eating the wafers! It’s always lies, everything is based on men’s and women’s opinions. Everything is based on the lies of the clergy, the lies of the politicians which from what I understand is actually legal, the lies of your parents, so on and so forth. Deceit brings its own trouble. The entire planet revolves around sex, so how do you explain that to your kids. The cartoons, Disney, in the schools, in the books, in the commercials, in the fashion, it’s all about sex. Someone wants to change their sex, someone wants to have more sex, someone needs a pill, someone needs a potion, procreation is important, but, really? You can’t have moral acuity when is drowned out by moral turpitude.
Like I said, sorry about the earlier post, I was still asleep. Fell out about 3:30/a, and must have woke up talking. 🙈🙉🙊
The nature of homo sapiens is a neuronal system that is prone to be both opinionated and knowledgable.
Those two pathways of cognition are almost completely opposite and we all possess, employ and enjoy their guidance.
Opinions are memories of interactions that stick with us because they confirm a reality that helps us understand our reality, like gossip. What is behind the behavior of others that affects us?
Knowledge is memories of interactions set down by others that we expect to be always true both for ourselves and others. We expect them to be fundamental and eternal.
Sharing a Gen X quote—Life’s a Bitch (adding Bastard to make it more PC) and then you die.
IQ45 has ordered flags lowered in honor of the Pope but complained and had a tantrum about our former POTUS Jimmy Carter being honored with the same during his inauguration! Hypocrite! The Pope isn’t a US leader so why do this? Where is the damn separation between church and state? TAX THE CHURCHES!
Please no more of the rot that Todd dishes daily.
As for the Pope, judge not lest you be judged.
I believe today’s discussion focused on encouraging current generation of college graduates. (1) In search of first employer following graduation … have a Plan A and a Plan B career vision. (2) Prepare a clear succinctly articulated resume. (3) Write down the ten toughest questions that could be asked during an interview and ask a senior mentor to practice an interview with you. The first question will be “tell me about who you are and why you are here?” Rehearse Answer with vivid eye contact in 25 words or less. (4) Study the employer culture and show up ready to go to work (dress and groomed appropriate for success). (5). Be prepared to pivot to Plan B. Listen. Initiate discussion at least a couple of times. Be poised and genuinely motivated. At the end of the interview, thank the employer for the generosity of their time. After departure, demonstrate your follow-up skill with a sharp letter with all the proper protocol briefly stating why you feel you are a good fit to work for the enterprise to achieve its mission. And above all … do not fall for the bait to waste time ranting about politics. 😇