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JD Vance

Red said:
We were always taught how Americans were the good guys.
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We are the good guys. They rounded up and killed 6 million Jews. We stopped them.

JD Vance has an opinion they don't like. They have made it law to criminally prosecute those with opinions they don't like, but they cant do that to JD Vance because he is an American, so they are throwing a tantrum instead.
 
www.usatoday.com

Vance's speech shows VP's star is on the rise. I'm proud of America again. | Opinion

JD Vance, who defended free speech last week in Europe, is the kind of vice president Americans deserve.
www.usatoday.com

"Now that Kamala Harris is no longer vice president, can I say the quiet part out loud? She was embarrassing and clumsy. She made me cringe.

Watching Harris speak to a crowd or give an interview made me feel humiliation for our country. I'd think, this is our best? This is who we brought to the world stage to represent us?"
 
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Al-O-Meter said:
We are the good guys. They rounded up and killed 6 million Jews. We stopped them.
Click to expand...
This isn’t 1945. I doubt you were alive during the times I’m describing in the quoted paragraph below. For millions of young Americans, what I’m describing was the reality. It was enough to sour me, and destroy the idealism that was still alive during my junior high school days. One of my sisters identified the decline as starting earlier: the assasination of JFK. For many of my generation, it did seem like Camelot died, American idealism died, the day JFK died….

But Vietnam and Watergate drove me away from our body politic for decades. I’m sure it’s not a good thing when citizens abandon hope for their country, conclude their country has failed to live up to its ideals, so many lies used to create the “guys in white hats” bull****.

Or so it seemed for decades, to someone alienated by the death of idealism.

I remember the moment, the very moment. 1965. I had a book by Bertrand Russell. On the cover, an image of a Vietnamese girl, showing what napalm had done to her. I walked into my first college history class, showed my first history professor the photo, and said, exact words, 60 years later: “Are we doing this?! Are we doing this to innocent children?!”. She suggested I come to her office to talk about it. But I never did. I became radicalized, and marched on Washington with others of my generation.

Then something happened, late in my life, to demonstrate I still cared. Donald Trump came along. And I realized, that despite what long distant events had done to my idealism for America, for the United States, it had not died forever at all!

America needs more citizens like myself, not fewer. I may have been disillusioned for decades, radicalized politically, more in tune with counter cultural trends than our political life. Did not vote for decades. But, lo and behold, it turns out, I still cared!

And that’s why my country needs more citizens like me. People who recognize how far from our founding ideals we have fallen, yet, when our democratic institutions came under existential threat, as they are now, in our current moment, I discovered I still cared a great deal. My idealism was not dead after all.

I hope we wear the white hats again. But, with Trump parroting Kremlin lies, with Trump dissing and distancing our friends and allies, with Trump seeing the world divided up among spheres of influence, and anti-democratic Strongmen, we are on the wrong side. The side that kills any idealism we ever had for our nation. For what separated us when we established this nation. We don’t belong there. Among the Putin’s of the world.

Many of my generation reacted as I describe below, in the 60’s and 70’s. It took Trump to make me realize my idealism for my country never really died at all. I’ll say it again: we need more citizens like myself.

Red said:
I still remember my junior high History classes. We were always taught how Americans were the good guys. We were the ones wearing the white hats. The Vietnam war, and the domestic turmoil it launched; Watergate, and the idealism in America that it severely wounded, did quite a bit, for myself, and many of my generation, to soil the pure whiteness of those hats(which symbolized our “goodness”, the reason we stood out). Myself, I became apolitical for decades. But, apparently, whatever idealism in America I had once been taught, still lingered, and reacted in outrage at Trump’s selfishness, meanness, intolerance of others, cynical demagoguery, and lie after lie after lie. The Big Lie.
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Red said:
This isn’t 1945. I doubt you were alive during the times I’m describing in the quoted paragraph below. For millions of young Americans, what I’m describing was the reality. It was enough to sour me, and destroy the idealism that was still alive during my junior high school days. One of my sisters identified the decline as starting earlier: the assasination of JFK. For many of my generation, it did seem like Camelot died, American idealism died, the day JFK died….

But Vietnam and Watergate drove me away from our body politic for decades. I’m sure it’s not a good thing when citizens abandon hope for their country, conclude their country has failed to live up to its ideals, so many lies used to create the “guys in white hats” bull****.

Or so it seemed for decades, to someone alienated by the death of idealism.

I remember the moment, the very moment. 1965. I had a book by Bertrand Russell. On the cover, an image of a Vietnamese girl, showing what napalm had done to her. I walked into my first college history class, showed my first history professor the photo, and said, exact words, 60 years later: “Are we doing this?! Are we doing this to innocent children?!”. She suggested I come to her office to talk about it. But I never did. I became radicalized, and marched on Washington with others of my generation.

Then something happened, late in my life, to demonstrate I still cared. Donald Trump came along. And I realized, that despite what long distant events had done to my idealism for America, for the United States, it had not died forever at all!

America needs more citizens like myself, not fewer. I may have been disillusioned for decades, radicalized politically, more in tune with counter cultural trends than our political life. Did not vote for decades. But, lo and behold, it turns out, I still cared!

And that’s why my country needs more citizens like me. People who recognize how far from our founding ideals we have fallen, yet, when our democratic institutions came under existential threat, as they are now, in our current moment, I discovered I still cared a great deal. My idealism was not dead after all.

I hope we wear the white hats again. But, with Trump parroting Kremlin lies, with Trump dissing and distancing our friends and allies, with Trump seeing the world divided up among spheres of influence, and anti-democratic Strongmen, we are on the wrong side. The side that kills any idealism we ever had for our nation. For what separated us when we established this nation. We don’t belong there. Among the Putin’s of the world.

Many of my generation reacted as I describe below, in the 60’s and 70’s. It took Trump to make me realize my idealism for my country never really died at all. I’ll say it again: we need more citizens like myself.
Click to expand...
I'd quibble with a few points here and there, but this was an excellent post. Thank you for sharing it.
 
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