I remember when being called "woke" was a compliment.

Have our values really changed that much?

February 1, 2025

I am one of those readers that always has a few books going at the same time, the current reading picked up depending on my mood. I just finished psychiatrist / philosopher Victor Frankel’s autobiographical “Man’s Search for Meaning”, originally penned in 1946. That inspirational look at how we can deal with whatever life throws at us is told from the setting of Frankel’s three-year stint in a Nazi concentration camp. That read prompted me to reopen Doris Kearns Goodwin’s latest best seller: An unfinished Love Story, A Personal History of the 1960’s. I do love reading books where you already know who all of the characters are; you just need to be reminded of how important they were—and are— in our lives. It does seem that many of the values they taught us are under attack.

I came of age in the 60’s. The first president that I remember caring about was John F. Kennedy, who was revered in my parents’ house, something I attribute more to his Catholicism than his politics. I was too young to pay much attention to his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower. Kennedy’s tenure in the White House ushered in a wave of initiatives that define his legacy to this day: establishing the Peace Corp, launching the effort to put an American on the moon by the end of the decade, advocating for civil rights, negotiating a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty after successfully resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis.

***MAGA vs. The Great Society***

Arguably, Kennedy’s greatest progressive initiatives were completed after his assassination, by his successor, Lyndon Johnson. LBJ’s new “Great Society” programs included Medicare, providing health insurance for retirees, and Medicaid, providing basic care for low-income families. Working closely with activists like Martin Luther King and John Lewis, he fought for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited racial segregation in public places, workplaces, and schools. In 1965 he championed the Voting Rights Act, ensuring that minorities could vote (and also ensured that the Democratic Party would lose the southern state vote for the foreseeable future). He did not stop there. Johnson championed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished all quotas based upon an immigrant’s county of origin. The Food Stamp Act provided low-income families with assistance purchasing food. Remnants of that program still survive today through SNAP benefits—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The progressive programs and initiatives championed by Kennedy and Johnson reflected the nation’s growing recognition that the nation’s founding principle, “All Men Are Created Equal”, should not just protect and empower the white, male, landowners that James Madison had in mind in 1787. Times had changed.

In her book Doris Kearns Goodwin references the initiatives that Lyndon Johnson introduced in his inaugural speech. (Doris Kearns’ husband, Richard Goodwin, was LBJ’s speechwriter.) I was struck by President Johnson’s introduction of his proposed initiatives, and how they contrasted—each and every one of them— with the priorities of the current Trump administration. I had to go back and re-read the passage:

From “An Unfinished Love Story, A Personal History of the 1960’s”

LBJ proposed federal aid for education to ensure that every child, from pre-school to college achieved the fullest development of his or her skills, a medical care program for the elderly and the underprivileged, a national effort to make the city a better place to live, an environmental program to end the poisoning of rivers and the air we breathe, a national foundation to support the arts, an initiative to eliminate barriers to the right to vote and major reform to restrictive immigration laws.

It almost looks like the Trump transition team used this list of LBJ’s initiatives as targets for destruction, using the Heritage Foundation’s Project 25 as a playbook. Trump continues to claim no fidelity to the provisions of Project 25, all evidence to the contrary. The document seems to be serving more as an owner’s manual (pun intended) than a think-tank’s manifesto. Project 2025 incudes, among other treasures, the elimination of Head Start, a pre-school education program initiated by LBJ as part of his “War on Poverty” in 1965.

Trump issued Executive Orders on his first day in office seeking to reverse Biden initiatives to lower prescription drug costs and expand health care insurance coverage. His first Executive Orders included initiatives that cancel federal subsidies for electric vehicle purchases, promising to fully utilize our own “liquid gold” (read oil & gas) which of course will exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions. But why would Trump care about greenhouse gases? He also canceled our participation in the Paris Climate Agreement, on Day 1. Republican efforts to gerrymander election districts to curtail voting rights – particularly in minority communities - are well known and well documented, and again, are initiatives meant to blunt the protections of LBJ’s original voting rights legislation. Whereas LBJ championed the creation of a national fund to support the arts, Republicans have been trying to defund the National Endowment for the Arts, along with NPR, for years. On Thursday, Trump’s new FCC chair, Brendan Carr, launched an investigation into the sponsorship revenue of National Public Radio and PBS. (Full disclosure: I serve on the Executive Council of North Country Pubic Radio.)

Project 2025 makes their intentions clear with their proposal to eliminate the NEA. This is no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. I suspect that many people think of the National Endowment for the Arts as primarily a supporter of major urban museums and performance spaces like Lincoln Center, but the NEA also serves an important funder of state and local arts and humanities focused endowments which redistribute the federal grants throughout our local communities. Locally, the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), which reallocates federal grants that they have received from NEA, is extremely active and an integral component in the operating and capital budgets of many of our upstate New York nonprofits. Eliminating NEA funding for the arts would be devastating to our local communities.

All of these Trump initiatives would suggest to any objective observer that we, as a country, have reoriented our national values by 180 degrees during my lifetime. How—and more importantly, why, did this happen? I have a hard time understanding how and when the tide turned to expose the outright bigotry, blatant voter suppression, and the general anti-democratic behavior in our body politic today. How did diversity or academic advancement or supporting conservation efforts or fostering the arts and humanities lose their value in society? In the past I would console myself with thinking that this current environment is just a normal “two steps forward, one step back”, and the next phase should be forward, but…. it really doesn’t feel that way. I would also like to just blame Trump but I don’t want to give him too much credit. I don’t believe that he turned our neighbors into a bunch of white nationalist, xenophobic bigots. I do, however, believe that a (very) small minority of the country was already there, lurking in the shadows, and he gave them permission to come out into the daylight. Trump gave them a voice. Trump made it OK to hate—the media, the FBI and the Justice Department, your fellow citizens who were academics or “blue state liberal elites”. He even made it OK for a seditionist mob to storm the Capitol, bloodying police while trying to overturn an election. To complete the circle of his Big Lie—that he had really won the 2020 selection—he has said that the rioters were justified in their behavior. All was forgiven, and pardoned. He even celebrated his “patriots” in inauguration day speeches. And the Republican Congress celebrates his return to leadership. Help me understand this. Do they not remember that we have videos of the attack? Sorry, I know I have said that before. Last week, Trump invited Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers founder who was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in organizing the January 6th insurrection and who was serving an 18 year sentence before being pardoned by Trump, to join him at his rally in Las Vegas! He was seated on the stage, directly behind the President, next to….wait for it….Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy! (He of the Bureau of Land Management standoff.) You can’t make this stuff up. I’m sure that the families of the one hundred forty Washington DC police officers who were injured in the January 6th attack on the Capitol loved seeing those honorees on the stage with President Trump that day.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs—direct descendants of the Civil Rights Movement— are not only being cancelled, but the phrase itself has become a pejorative, and anyone attempting to foster diversity within their organization is not only criticized but are reportable and subject to prosecution! How is this possible? Again, I do not think that Trump thought these things up. I believe that people with these sentiments – the Alex Joneses and Steve Bannons and the Stephen Millers - were always there, but now he has empowered them. He has legitimatized their hateful platforms. Can you imagine Ronald Reagan or George Bush or John McCain seeking counsel from any of these people, or aligning their interests and campaigns with people like the Proud Boys?

Most of the damage to human rights and the ideals of the Great Society programs will take place right here in our every day lives. HR managers can now go back to not returning phone calls from applicants with “Black” sounding names or folks who mention their preferred pronouns in their bio, without fear of retribution. This can all be done now with Trump’s blessing. I am old enough to remember when the FBI and the Justice Department were the good guys, and being referred to as “woke” was a compliment. Seeking diversity, equity and inclusion in our communities and workplaces was considered aspirational, something to try and (finally) attain, fulfilling the ideals of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I still believe it was—and still is—a worthy goal.

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