“In this country, because someone has a lot of money, we treat them like they have the right to tell us what to do.” Sam Jean returns for the Season 3 finale, picking up where he and Michael left off in the previous episode’s discussion about the border crisis, the latest stirrings in Congress, and of course, Donald Trump. It seems Republicans will blame non-Americans for everything. While they continue to promote division in this country by treating immigrants to the U.S. as a threat, they also blame the sending foreign aid to places like Ukraine to excuse wealth inequality, disparity of healthcare and underfunded social programs. With so many perceived injustices, it’s no wonder Trump’s voting base is so enchanted by his crude and racist remarks—they see them as his sticking it to the man, despite, of course, Trump being the man.
Conservative leaders are playing college students as pawns. They used the recent congressional hearing involving the presidents of three Ivy League universities as another means of denigrating institutions of higher education, particularly elite institutions, as indoctrination camps. Nevermind that many conservative leaders themselves are products of elite universities. They discourage students from speaking out for fear of missing opportunities and at a time and place in life where those students are meant to be exchanging ideas freely.
It’s no wonder so many unqualified people feel they are fit to run for office. Vivek Ramaswamy continues to troll his way through his campaign, modeling his approach after Trump’s. Meanwhile, a new law threatens to erode what’s left of the Voting Rights Act, affecting those citizens historically most discriminated against, but no one is really paying attention.
Quotes:
“You do hear Americans say, ‘I’m all about supporting Ukraine…’ and so forth, but the government seems to always have money to provide aid to foreign crises, but at home when the price of goods and services keep going up, and inflation—although it’s coming down–people still say, ‘What about here at home?’ So, that’s a fair critique.” (7:08 | Michael)
“What you get from Trump is the power of celebrity. That’s what you get from Trump, this idea that this is an important person. People believe that Donald Trump is an important person who tells it like it is. He’s not the most couth person. They ignore the fact that almost everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie, but they like the fact that Trump can vocalize the things that they’ve been told they aren’t allowed to say. ” (13:54 | Sam)
“There is a character–even if I disagree with you politically–there’s a certain character that we believe a person should have in order to represent us in government. That’s the myth we’ve been told.” (18:36 |Sam)
“The presidents of the universities were giving lawyerly answers in an environment where they were supposed to give social media-worthy answers, because that’s what the hearing was about.” (20:01 | Sam)
“In this society, we venerate people who make a lot of money and we treat their intelligence in making money as if it is some moral good. What people like Vivek demonstrate is you can be smart, you can make a lot of money but it doesn’t make you a good person and it also doesn’t mean that you’re smart enough to do other things.” (39:09 | Sam)
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