Tag Archives: Center for American Progress

Myth America review: superb group history of the lies that built a nation | Books | The Guardian

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A statue of George Washington beneath The Apotheosis of Washington, an 1865 painting, in the US Capitol.

Another foundation of the disinformation crisis was the deregulation of broadcast by the Reagan administration, which eliminated the fairness doctrine in 1987. That simple change insured the pollution of the radio airwaves by Rush Limbaugh and his imitators, creating the first echo chamber.Of course, the internet allowed these waves of lies to reach warp speed, more destructive than anything humanity has experienced. In the understated description of this volume, “the conservative media ecosystem was augmented by … Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, where the tendency to find like-minded partisans and the freedom from fact-checkers took disinformation to new depths.”These venues have given “far-right lies unprecedented access to significant numbers of Americans” and allowed “ordinary Americans to spread lies to one another”, instantly. “As a result, misinformation and disinformation have infused our debates about almost every pertinent political problem.”The vastness of the problem is underscored by the fact that Fox News Digital ended 2022 as “the top-performing news brand” with more than 18bn multi-platform views and an average of 82.7m monthly multi-platform unique visitors. Not to mention 3.4bn Fox News views on YouTube. It was the first time Fox had surpassed CNN in these categories since 2019.The essays in Myth America attack rightwing myths about everything from immigration to Reagan. The authors were chosen in part because they are already “actively engaging the general public through the short forms of modern media”.In one of the very best chapters, Ari Kelman, a professor at the University of California Davis, tackles the foundational American myth: “Vanishing Indians.” He begins with the former Republican senator Rick Santorum’s assertion in 2021 that colonists arrived with a “blank slate” because there was “nothing here”. (Santorum said he had been misunderstood but was booted off CNN nonetheless.)

Kelman documents how such remarks can be traced back to myths started by the New England colonists, who “systematically erased evidence of long-standing Indigenous cultures … as a way of legitimating Euro-American land claims”. Portraying native Americans as hopelessly primitive, they “turned imperial violence into innocent virtue”.The alliance of some native tribes with the British during the War of 1812 made it even easier to marginalize them. “That Indigenous peoples might disappear” began to “look like just deserts”.

A counter-narrative began in the 1880s, when Helen Hunt Jackson published A Century of Dishonor, which described “robbery” and “cruelty … done under the cloak” of 100 years “of treaty-making and treaty breaking”. Hunt described the culpability of white settlers in what we now realize was genocide: “This history of the United States government’s repeated violations of faith with the Indians … convicts us, as a nation” of “having outraged the principles of justice, which are the basis of international law.”Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, the 1970 book by Dee Brown which sold millions, did more than any other modern work to explain how the conquering of the west was only possible because Americans assumed “treaties could be shredded” and the slaughter of Native Americans was just part of the natural order of things.The book described a vanished Native American culture, at a moment when Native Americans had experienced enough of a resurgence to become “the nation’s fastest growing minority”. As a result, “a book written to debunk one pernicious myth unwittingly reifies another, hammering home the message that by the start of the 20th century, Indians had vanished”.Another compelling chapter, The Southern Strategy, dismantles the assertion of the conservative political scientist Carol Swain “that this story of the two parties switching identities is a myth … fabricated by left-leaning academic elites and journalists”.Karl Mundt, right, sits next to Roy Cohn, special counsel to the McCarthy Senate investigations subcommittee, during a hearing in Washington in 1954. Photograph: Henry Burroughs/APWritten by Kruse, the chapter traces the Republican party’s decision to embrace racism to a cross-country tour in 1951 by a South Dakota senator, Karl Mundt, who was the first to propose a merger of Republicans and southern “Dixiecrat” Democrats committed to segregation. In 1952, the Republican platform endorsed every state’s right “to order and control its own domestic institutions”.The election of the Republican John Tower to fill Lyndon Johnson’s Senate seat in 1961 made him the first Republican to enter the Senate from the south since the end of Reconstruction – and showed “the segregationist vote was up for grabs”.Republican strategy shifted so quickly that by the time the party gathered in 1964 to nominate Barry Goldwater for president, for the first time in 50 years there were no Black delegates in any southern delegation. One of the few Black delegates who did attend “had his suit set on fire”. The B . . .

Karl Mundt, right, sits next to Roy Cohn, special counsel to the McCarthy Senate investigations subcommittee, during a hearing in Washington in 1954.

Karl Mundt, right, sits next to Roy Cohn, special counsel to the McCarthy Senate investigations subcommittee, during a hearing in Washington in 1954. Photograph: Henry Burroughs/AP

And we avoid the trap that befalls much US media – the tendency, born of a desire to please all sides, to engage in false equivalence in the name of neutrality. While fairness guides everything we do, we know there is a right and a wrong position in the fight against racism and for reproductive justice. When we report on issues like the climate crisis, we’re not afraid to name who is responsible. And as a global news organization, we’re able to provide a fresh, outsider perspective on US politics – one so often missing from the insular American media bubble.

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Source: Myth America review: superb group history of the lies that built a nation | Books | The Guardian

Why Race Matters in the Government Shutdown

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COLORLINES NEWS FOR ACTION

Why Race Matters in the Government Shutdown

 

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) arrives for a Republican Conference meeting at the U.S. Capitol September 30, 2013. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

by Imara Jones

Tuesday, October 1 2013

The shutdown of the federal government which began at midnight today is a body blow to our economy that could prove difficult to bear. Coming on the heels of the automatic budget cuts of sequestration, which are already forecast to cost 750,000 jobs this year, and three years of an anemic economic recovery, the furlough of almost a million federal workers is just not what the economy needs right now. The shutdown was touched off by a Senate vote yesterday to turn down a measure that would have kept the government operating for 10 weeks in exchange for a one year delay in Obamacare.

Given that the federal government contributes one out of seven dollars to annual economic output by making critical investments in key areas such as health, education, food security and housing, it will be hard to find an American who won’t be touched by this freeze in government activities, especially if it lasts for more than a few short days.

As the parts of the government affected by the shutdown disproportionately impact economic opportunity programs for the working poor, historically marginalized communities are likely to the feel the effects of a shutdown acutely as time goes on.

What’s particularly distressing about the shuttering of the government is that it comes at a time when unemployment remains in the double digits for blacks and Latinos. As the Center for American Progress points out, federal, state and local governments since 2008 have eliminated 750,000 public sector jobs. Given unionization and strong anti-discriminatory hiring practices, people of color are more likely to have jobs in the public sector. This is particularly true for African-Americans, and it’s why joblessness remains so stubborn in communities of color.

The truth is that people of color represent a larger proportion of the federal workforce than the workforce overall. According to the Washington Post, 35 percent of federal workers are non-White versus 30 percent of all workers.  This means that a shutdown will only add to the economic woes and employment worries in communities of color.

To be clear, not all of the more than four million federal workers will be told to stay home. Men and women in the armed forces make up close to half of all those on the federal payroll. Given special legislation to exempt them from the shutdown passed by Congress yesterday, they will be on the job and receive pay.

But over 800,000 of the remaining two million civilian workers will be barred from work. Those deemed “essential” to maintain the “safety of human life or protection of property” in critical positions will work but not receive pay. Either way, the bottom line is that two million Americans and the families that rely on them will not receive a paycheck during the period of the shutdown.

The key question though is “how much of this will really hurt?” The answer depends on how long it goes on.

If the federal government is up and running by the end of next week, the impact will be minimal. But should it last for more than 10 days or so, it will begin to bite.  Economic forecasts underscore the point.

As Bloomberg reports, Mark Zandi, former economic advisor to John McCain and chief economist at Moody’s, calculates that a shutdown of a few days would be negligible, but one of two weeks would cut economic growth for the last three months of this year by 10 percent. Any longer than that and the economy would be on its way back to recession.

Adding to the potential pain and uncertainty of it all is the sheer scale of government activities that will be curtailed, each touching on vital areas of economic life necessary for the country to function. With guidance from agency submissions to the White House, here’s a sampling of the way things could look if the shutdown persists into next week.

Health needs delayed: The 110 million Americans already in Medicare—the government health program for the elderly—and Medicaid—the federal and state partnership to provide health insurance to the working poor and their children—will continue to receive the services and treatment that they need. However new applications to these programs will be delayed until the government reopens.

Impaired ability to fight disease: The Centers for Disease Control will scale back the monitoring of the spread of infectious diseases and the National Institutes of Health will do the same for critical research into life-saving treatments until the lights come back on.

More people hungry:  The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly referred to as food stamps, will continue to provide its $33 of weekly assistance to the 48 million Americans who currently receive it. However, the Women Infants and Children Program (WIC)—which covers seven million children and infants, and their mothers—will temporarily end. The program will restart once the government reopens.

Poor kids set back: Funds for the one million children in Head Start will technically expire today, but only a smattering of locations will be forced to immediately close their doors. However, more programs will run out of money and come under pressure the longer this goes on. The same is true for Title I education grants, which provide badly needed assistance to 20 million children in the nation’s poorest school districts. Also, review of new student loan and federal grant applications will be delayed.

Housing at risk:  The Federal Housing Administration, which underwrites four out of every 10 mortgages in the United States and is crucial for working families entering the housing market, will not process new home loans during an extended shutdown. Housing vouchers for the working poor and the homeless will also be at risk the longer this goes on.

More immigration delays:  Border patrols and enforcement will continue during the shutdown, but new visa and citizenship applications will be stalled until the government is back to work.

The essential point is that the partial closing of the government is potentially a huge setback for both the broader economy and economic justice at a crucial moment.

Though Congressional Republicans and their allied tea party organizations don’t see it that way.

Former Republican vice chairman and head of the American Conservative Union, Al Cardenas, told the Center for American Progress’ Thinkprogress blog this past weekend that he was “convinced” that there “would not be” any negative economic fallout from the shutdown. If the government is closed for a just a few days, he might very well be right.

But as I argued last week, the GOP and tea party outlook on a government shutdown is not about economic evidence, it’s about advancing an overall ideology. Until that changes, millions of Americans might very well have reason to worry.

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