U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border, throwing their citizenship into question - Washington Post

“In some cases, passport applicants WITH OFFICIAL U.S. BIRTH CERTIFICATES are being jailed in immigration detention centers and entered into deportation proceedings.”

The full article is available here

Our Modern Minds Are Coarsened, Yet There Is Reason For Hope - Kirk J Schneider

Too many of us have become calculative and consumerist giants but emotional and imaginative dwarfs, steely and impenetrable, but bereft of nuance, attunement, and depth;  and this is precisely our dilemma.

Lots of caring, thoughtful people are looking at the current state of the world, wringing their hands asking “how in the world we got here?”

Perhaps the more accurate question is “Why, given our mercantile-materialist past, shouldn’t we have gotten here?” 

In his 1978 book The Illusion of Technique, public philosopher William Barrett forewarned of the damage being done through our reliance on devices - rather than people - to solve our moral predicaments; and we should have paid more attention.

Today we are stained with the legacy of our civilization falling under the spell of a “machine model for living.”  This model emphasized efficiency (or what many called efficiency): speed, instant results, appearance and packaging; and it lured millions to the marketplace–or killing fields.

The result however was anything but “efficient” in the larger sense.

We created ease and convenience, to be sure.  But the advances were largely external - relegated to how fast we drove, how quickly we ate, how many gadgets we owned or people we manipulated; but our interior life, our capacity to feel and reflect and communicate was left bereft.

The result is that, today, too many of us have become calculative and consumerist giants but emotional and imaginative dwarfs, steely and impenetrable, but bereft of nuance, attunement, and depth; and this is precisely our dilemma.
                                                                                                                      ...

From my standpoint as a psychologist, there are two likely outcomes issuing from this dilemma: 

1. our citizenry will devolve into drone-like functionaries, programmed for elemental self-interest, or ...
   
2. we will confront the moral crisis of our time - the quick fix/instant results society - and engage our abilities to be more fully present, both to ourselves and those about us. 

The type of engagement in the latter will take time–more like what we see consistently in psychotherapeutic settings, but it will help us see each other as complex human beings; persons both unique and yet alike.

The full article is available here

What's Driving The Migration Crisis At Our Southern Border? WBUR

“As long as the root causes - including the major role the U.S. has and continues to play in the region’s pervasive violence, terror and systemic poverty - are not addressed, Central Americans will continue to flee and make the perilous trek north.”

Relatively little reporting has focused on the reasons why thousands of Central Americans are fleeing their homes in the first place.

As long as the root causes - including the major role the U.S. has and continues to play in the region’s pervasive violence, terror and systemic poverty - are not addressed, Central Americans will continue to flee and make the perilous trek north.

Legacy of U.S. intervention
The factors causing this migration are both historical and recent, but a persistent thread is the legacy of U.S. intervention. The U.S. was heavily involved in supporting the military, right-wing government and death squads in the civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador during the 1980’s and 1990’s, which killed 200,000 and 75,000 respectively.

The Rise of Gangs
The legacy of the civil conflicts in Central America and the massive displacement they caused have contributed to the rise of criminal gangs.  Today, high murder rates in the Northern Triangle are blamed on a war between two rival gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18, both of which have their roots in the U.S. Because of government corruption, severe poverty and lack of opportunities, conditions were ripe for this exported gang culture to proliferate.

Political, social, and economic volatility
While home invasions, sexual assault, kidnapping, drug trafficking and petty crime levels are high, police forces are inadequately funded, trained and equipped. Government corruption and collusion means that the vast majority of crimes are not prosecuted.

Damaging trade agreements

Another factor driving the high rates of migration is the presence of transnational corporations and the trade agreements that facilitate their activities, include sweatshop economies which deny living wages to their workers.

To make matters worse, U.S. immigration policies continue to exacerbate all the factors driving people to leave the region.  As U.S. citizens, we need to be better informed about our own country's contribution to this ongoing exodus and demand that their elected officials end the U.S. role in unfair trade practices, repressive regimes and border policies.

The full article is available here

Reporting on "Medicare for All" Makes Media Forget How Math Works - Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting

Missing from neagtive headlines about the "Medicare For All" plan was the fact that it's projected to cost $2.1 trillion less than projections of spending under the current US healthcare system.

“Medicare for All,” a federally funded universal healthcare plan championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vermont–Ind.), has quickly become a key issue for progressive voters evaluating Democratic Party candidates for the 2018 midterm elections and the 2020 presidential race.

A study projected that Sanders’ Medicare for All system, assuming it was enacted in 2022, would cost the federal government a whopping $32.6 trillion in excess spending over the course of 10 years.

Missing from the negative headlines about this plan was an important point in Blahous’ study: In terms of total (federal, state and private) spending on healthcare, Sanders’ Medicare for All plan is actually projected to cost $2.1 trillion less than projections of spending under the current US healthcare system.

And, of course, the media chorus complaining about how much a program like Medicare for All adds to the federal debt fades to a whimper when it comes to enacting trillion-dollar tax cuts for the rich, providing billions in corporate welfare, or for continuing to fight endless and fruitless overseas wars with America’s $700 billion–a–year military budget.

The full article is available here

Dinesh D’Souza’s Fraudulent 'Death Of A Nation' - AV Club Review

To thoroughly unpack the falsehoods, rhetorical sleights of hand, goalpost shifting, and general bad-faith arguments would require a monograph. 

Fresh off his presidential pardon from Trump for a campaign-finance violation, D’Souza is angrier than ever - but still up to his usual practice of rearranging standard right-wing talking points into startlingly illogical new configurations in his film Death Of A Nation.

To thoroughly unpack the falsehoods, rhetorical sleights of hand, goalpost shifting, and general bad-faith arguments would require a monograph.

One example will suffice: To prove that Hitler wasn’t a “right-winger” but truly belongs to the left, D’Souza notes that the dictator is often deemed right-wing because he’s perceived as homophobic. (Well, yes.)

But in fact, that’s incorrect, because Hitler tolerated homosexuals in the brownshirts as long as they were good fighters; ergo, he wasn’t homophobic, and by extension he’s not right-wing.

Beyond the ridiculousness of the claim, D’Souza either missed the logical conclusion of his own argument—that to be right-wing is to be homophobic—or hopes the audience doesn’t clock the trap he’s set for himself.

That’s typical of D’Souza’s whirlwind barrage of assertions: One minute we’re learning that FDR thought of Mussolini as a kindred spirit, the next that the Nazi party program sounds like it was jointly written by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders because it has a healthcare plank.

The full article is available here