“Harvard’s got to behave themselves,” he told reporters gathered in the Oval Office. “Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they’re doing is getting in deeper and deeper and deeper.”
Years ago, someone on Tumblr had a comment on respect, which very much applies to Trump and his fascists:
Sometimes people use ‘respect’ to mean “treating someone like a person”, and sometimes they use ‘respect’ to mean “treating someone like an authority”.
And sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say, “If you won’t respect me, I won’t respect you”; and they mean, “If you won’t treat me like an authority, I won’t treat you like a person.”
And they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.
Also remember that whenever Trump talks about things being good or bad for ‘America’, he means himself.
Also remember that whenever Trump talks about things being good or bad for ‘America’, he means himself.
Yeah, I disagree with the saying “respect is earned, not given”. But that’s because I define respect as treating others like a person and with dignity.
Therefore, I believe respect should be given, and not earned.
I think that aphorism is about authority-respect rather than basic-human-decency-respect.
This thread makes me wonder how much contemporary American English is to blame for people being able to exploit ambiguities surreptitiously. Dog whistles have to start somewhere, they don’t seem to be prearranged.
Words don’t have meaning any more, or they mean whatever you want them to mean as long as you can use them to pummel the opposition, because that’s all that really matters. It’s the style of the time.
It’s weird to hear Harvard being labeled a “stronghold of the left.” I suppose it could be true given just how close-minded the right is. I also don’t know much of what all Harvard does.
The thing is you can’t deny they are a center of science, research, innovation. Harvard is one institution that makes US stand out globally, and drives so much of what we think of as our exceptionalism. This truly is an attack on our future.
When my son was little, he had a very aggressive form of cancer. He came through it with treatment developed by Harvard research. In the couple decades before, Harvard directed research had driven mortality down from 90% to 10%. Now Trump wants to punish Harvard out of personal spite and one of the first things he does is cut research at Children’s hospital? How can you still call yourself human?
I’ve said it several times. Harvard runs shit in the Boston area more than people outside the New England area realize.
Harvard runs shit, in broad daylight secrecy, from within a democratic stronghold.
The fallout in general. The USA will not rekindle the trust and respect it had in my lifetime I imagine.
It lost mine in the Reagan era, so it’s nothing new. Trump is a point on a curve that you’ve been following for decades. That also means that the Republicans can do even worse than Trump, and probably will.
We very well may not recover the science and technology lead we had. Or medical - we may have a horrible system of healthcare but top notch development of treatments and technologies.
Or more importantly, we’re squandering the possibility of developing manufacturing for the next few decades on the attempt to develop manufacturing of the past.
And yes, immigrants. So much of what has made the us great has come from immigrants coming here to build a better life for themselves. So much of our economy, our innovation, our research, and yes our culture. If we succeed in driving away that flow, then we’re just another aging has been, with too many old people, not able to afford to maintain everything we built in the past
Which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. The US never deserved that trust and respect.
WW2 says wut?
Good point, actually.
Canada declared war on Germany in 1939, because it was the right thing to do.
The USA declared war on Japan two years later, the day after Pearl Harbor. Soon after, Germany and Italy declared war on the USA.
