It’s the Id and Ego, Stupid!

What the hell is going on?

What has happened to civility? Compromise? Common sense, discussion? Listening? I have come to the conclusion that this craziness is not based on policy. Rather it is based on our emotional connections to policies and policy makers. We simply cannot admit we are wrong, we haven’t done our homework, the other side has some valid points, or that we have been conned by one of the most successful celebrity con men in our history.

If we stop to take a breath and look at ourselves in the mirror, what might we find? Our egos will not let us admit the errors of our ways. Ego prevents us from listening. It stokes our anger. It enrages rather than calms. It allows our Id to run amok.

What has happened to our individual and collective Super-ego. It is supposed to internalize cultural rules and organize our thoughts rationally. It works in contradiction to the Id. The Super-ego wants us to act in a socially appropriate manner. The Super-ego controls our sense of right and wrong and guilt. It helps us fit into society by getting us to act in socially acceptable ways. That is what we have lost.

According to David Brooks, “The chief struggle of the day is sociological and psychological, not ideological or economic. The substrate layer of American society — the network of relationships and connection and trust that everything else relies upon — is failing. And the results are as bloody as any war. And here’s the hard part of the war: It’s not between one group of good people and another group of bad people. The war runs down the middle of every heart. It is the battle between Id/Ego and Superego. Most of us are part of the problem we complain about.”

Most of us live in insular media and social bubbles that affirm our own moral superiority, thus congratulating our Id. Our Ego is pleased.

The good news is that most of us are part of the solution as well. Most of us can balance the battle between Id and Superego. All we have to do is convince our Ego.

Let your Super-ego determine how you vote November 6^thand in 2020.

Let it make you join groups like http://www.better-angels.org

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SOCIAL CLASS AND SCHOOLS

What does available evidence tell us about the relationship between social class and schools in The US of A?

Sean Reardon of Stanford showed a widening class gap in both math and reading test scores. “The achievement gap between children from high and low income families is roughly 30-40 percent larger among students born in 2001 than among those born 25 years earlier.”

 

He also found that schools themselves ARE NOT THE CULPRITS! The opportunity gap is already large by the time they enter kindergarten and does not grow appreciably through school. James Heckman expands that by saying that the gaps in cognitive achievement are most predicted by the level of maternal educationas early at the age of six, and that schooling… as unequal as it is in the US… plays only a minor role in alleviating or crating test score gaps.

 

What’s the real culprit? Residential sorting! Americans are increasing living in separate neighborhoods, unintegrated by class, income, or race, especially over the past 30- 40 years. Regardless of their own family background, kids do better where the other kids come from affluent, educated homes. This is universal, not just in the US.

 

 

DONALD NETANYAHU

The Donald doesn’t want to be a dictator. He doesn’t want us to become a dictatorship as we know them. He tells us how he adores Kim and Putin, but they are not his real hero. His real love is Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. Supported by the Christian right even though he is far from a religious person, The Donald admires Bibi’s power and strength. He and his followers want the US to become a Christian version of Israel.

Take for example the “we are always under attack” and “we must do whatever we can to defend ourselves” philosophies. Don’t trust anyone who isn’t “our kind”? Build a wall? Israel had one first.

We all know Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. We support it wholeheartedly, sometimes even when its policies don’t agree with ours. We always have. Now something new has been added: the idea that Israel is a model for a Trumpian version of a “Demotheocracy”.

The Donald admires that although Netanyahu has now been under investigation for more than a year, he seems to be more popular than ever even while running the government with a coalition of parties and not a real majority. He admires the Knesset’s (Israeli Congress) coalition of conservative religious folk who have turned Israel into a Theocratic Democracy devoted to only those who are “chosen”. He admires the power to take a very split populous politically to make the power of the government speak ONLY for approximately half of the population. Israeli political polls show this approximate 40/40/10 split on most issues.

Consider this current situation. In January, Israel blacklisted 20 organizations, including a Jewish group in the US, whose leaders it has barred from entering the country for supporting an economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel.The list was drawn up under a nearly year-old law enacted to combat the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

“We have shifted from defense to offense,” said Gilad Erdan, the minister of strategic affairs, whose office drew up the list, according to an article in Ha’aretz, an Israeli newspaper. “The boycott organizations need to know that the State of Israel will act against them” and not allow them to “enter its territory to harm its citizens.” “These people are trying to exploit the law and our hospitality to act against Israel and to defame the country,” Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, who is responsible for enforcing the ban.

In March the Knesset passed another law barring entry to foreigners who have publicly supported the boycott Israel movement. The vote came as the Israeli government’s conservative majority been emboldened by President Trump and his love forPrime Minister Netanyahu.

Dov Hanin, who voted against the legislation, said that at a time when boycotts against settlements are being promoted around the world, the law “is really a law to boycott the world.” “A country that boycotts the world is basically isolating and boycotting itself,” he continued.

What can we say about a nation which aims to portray itself to the world as liberal and democratic, blacklists activists dedicated to nonviolent organizing and dissent? Isn’t that what we fear will happen under the Donald?

As RabbiRick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest Jewish movement in North America, said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem: “It’s going to be a giant sign up by the door of the Jewish state: ‘Don’t come unless you agree with everything we’re doing here.’ I don’t know what kind of democracy makes that statement.” Most US Jews are reform, as am I.

And now this: An American was barred from entering Israel after she was accepted for study for a master’s in human rights law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She landed on the night of Oct. 2 with a one-year student visa issued by the Israeli Consulate in Miami. Why? Because she was one of 19 University of Florida Students to launch a boycott an Israeli brand of hummus.

Does all of this sound familiar? Aren’t these the types of laws limiting freedom of speech we are afraid may be passed here?

Is this The Donald’s and the Conservative Religious Right’s real goal, to model the new US Democracy after Israel’s? We all know how much The Donald and the Bibi love each other.