@ljoc7455
Americans have decided that success equals money. The success of a nation however should not be determined by how many billionaires a country has, but rather by how few poor they have.
@bryinthe619
"The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them." - Turkish proverb
@jan-erikjones9376
Thank you Dr. Sandel for sharing your insights. Renewing our respect for labor and working families and their needs is SO overdue. Investing into local public schools and institutions is also needed. Thank you.
@heronimousbrapson863
Society may be broken, but you don't fix anything by electing leaders who will break it even more.
@davidrink1291
I’m 78 years old , a working man who never got a college degree , and a lifelong democrat. Because of my parents , who were educated , and some really good teachers in the public school system I grew up with a love of learning , both by reading and experience and eventually learned a trade that required me to work with both my hands and my mind . Because of a love of knowledge instilled in me at an early age I learned many trades and became sucessfull. One thing. i never quite understood about what I heard from so many of the men I worked with was the attitude of “I don’t need no book leaning”. To blame this on liberals is too simplistic and the roots of his attitude go way back and run deep.
@stuvo1977
I am a working person without a college degree. I voted for Kamala Harris. She was a better choice. Trump won't do a damn thing for working people.
@bernardgunter6057
As a fan of Dr Sandel, I am hugely disappointed in this commentary. He spent 15 minutes discussing why Trump voters vote Trump. But in my opinion his reasoning only explains a minority of Trump voters. Maybe in a Cambridge microcosm, you look around at your friends and neighbors and you know they are not bad people, so you try to understand why. Why would they vote for someone they acknowledge is a liar, a cheater, and a crook. If you are a Harvard professor, the subtle reasoning in this interview may indeed explain why your friends and neighbors held their noses and voted for a convicted felon. However, you can’t extrapolate these reasons to explain the 77 million votes he received. To explain that, just look at what Trump campaigned on, mass deportations, and stopping LGBT “lunacy”. Yeah, he also said drill baby drill, and that he would lower food prices. However, US oil output is as high as it has ever been, and the economy by all the traditional indicators is the best in the world. The base on Trump’s support are people who are not comfortable with the growing inclusivity in America, and he feeds them. I know professional pundits would never blame the electorate. It’s the candidate’s messaging, or failure to connect with the voters. That just doesn’t explain it. Historically the country isn’t looking for change when the economy is this good. Unemployment is low, wages are growing, the stock market is setting records, the GDP is up, and interest rates are coming down. Yes, things can always be better, but why are we willing to bet that the lying, cheater, who sucks up to Putin, and promises retribution is going to do better. How much better would he have to do in order to make his downsides worth the risks. Because no one else will say it, I will. There is a lot of pent-up hate in America. Still. The first words out Trump’s mouth as he threw his hat in the ring in 2016 were hateful words about immigrants bringing drugs and crime to America, and the racists dog whistles from his and his surrogates have never stopped since. Remember the New York Rally late in this last campaign. If Dr Sandel had listened to right wing talk shows on AM radio, instead of speculating over a cup of coffee in Harvard Square, he would hear it from the Trump base in their own words. They hate hearing, “press “1” for English, “2” for Spanish”, in calling trees. They hate when people say, “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. They hate people announcing their preferred pronouns. The next time you hear someone railing against wokism, replace wokism with inclusivity and then you’ll understand. Until Trump, conservative politicians on the national level were too dignified to go straight racist. Think of John McCain correcting his bigoted supporter on national television when she attacked Obama. Where McCain demurred, Trump leaned in. He told America, you are okay. I feel the way you feel. I like Merry Christmas too. And you are not a bad person for feeling this way. Ever since Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, Democrats have been asking people to be better. Sensing an opening, the party of Lincoln started courting the displaced bigots. Reagan went to Mississippi and said he believes in state’s rights, wink. George Bush is tough on crime, nod. Trump just took the next step of saying the quiet part out loud. “We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” “Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries… you know, like Denmark, Switzerland.” “I’m a negotiator, like you folks,” to the Republican Jewish Coalition. This is what drives the Trump love. His base of support comes from people who share his grievances. The issues that Dr Sandel addressed may explain the portion of the coalition that put Trump over the top, but without his base, the race wouldn’t be close. My disappointment with Dr Sandel is that by overlooking the obvious racial component to his wins, you legitimize him. Pundits inadvertently, or maybe willingly become tools of the Trump campaign by pretending not to see it. You make what sound like reasonable arguments for why Trump beat Harris but try to do the same with Trump and his primary challengers. You get the same policies that address economic anxiety that Trump pushes from any of the Republican challengers. What you don’t get is the hate. His base wants the hate. His base rants “Let’s go Brandon”, “Jews will not replace us”, and “F your pronouns”, and Trump cheers them on. It is disappointing that an expert in philosophy and ethics would talk for 15 minutes about Trump and none of this factors into his reasoning. He actually bends over backwards to pretend it's not a factor. My question is why?
@artmcteagle
George Carlin summed it up best; "Ignorant people will elect ignorant leaders, it's that simple."
@kathleentrinity7367
As a retired teacher, I have always felt that public schools are at the core of shared community, democracy, the rule of law, and respect for humanity. It saddens me that the trend toward more private schools and some magnet schools often leaves neighborhood schools with fewer and fewer students and fewer resources.
@lpquagmire3621
"They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings. Steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and they make you king." -- Bob Dylan
@iMagine-Pax
The role the internet plays was overlooked. It’s been the black hole of any fact based information.
@jenniecrew6508
Dignity of work are just lofty words. The answer is simple: decent health care, good and affordable public transportation, public education (including childcare)--one that pays teachers decently. This needs not philosophy but rather, solidarity. Our tragedy is celebrated selfishness.
@renman3000
It says, Americans prefer Jerry Springer to NPR.
@cjelvado
I still don't understand how someone like Trump, who has always been supremely entitled and is the epitome of greed, has somehow become the messiah of working class people. He will say whatever he needs to to get more power. I am a working class person. I've been trying to understand this for eight years.
@Mrs.TJTaylor
I went to Pali High with Michael Sandel. He was class president, always the smartest guy in the room.
@menmykrazycat8129
I call B.S. I’m sorry, I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck most of my adult life - since my divorce, basically. It’s always rough handling all the expenses on your own. But that was my choice to live alone & not to remarry at some point. It was also my choice not to go to college, I had 50 different things I was interested in at 18, didn’t want to waste money being a student without direction. I didn’t get angry as life went on & I struggled. I figured wages were stagnant & the main problem was huge corporations & trust fund babies taking everything for themselves. People direct their anger towards politicians & government, but corporate America owns the government at this point, especially since Citizens United, but corp. interests have been buying our country for years before that. If the people are going to be angry, direct it where it belongs. Big business. They’re pissed at the “elites”, but they just voted in the wealthiest, and most corrupt, people in the world. It makes no sense. Justified grievances?? Stop electing & admiring idiots with billions who don’t give a F about you.
@terrymckenzie857
I am a daughter of the rust belt working class. For 45 years the Republican Party has stoked resentment between economic classes and directed it toward the people at the bottom of the ladder, and told them all REPEATEDLY that the "Deomocrats" (and I am not one) hated and looked down on them. The entire economy has been re-made in favor of those at the top of the pyramid. I lived through the deindustrialization of Detroit/Pontiac/Flint, MI. There were definitely people there who could have benefited from and would have loved MEANINGFUL job re-training programs but instead had to take whatever piecemeal, low paid employment to keep their families housed and fed. And the focus on "the working class" as a primarily White, male, industrial class has not been true for DECADES. The "working class" is increasingly made up of low wage workers, people of color, and women. Jobs that USED to be middle class have become "gig" jobs. Or, newer employees in the same jobs as older employees are paid at lower pay scales. Private equity has purchased entire industries all across the country, making services unaffodable. Plumbing businesses, veterinary and human group medical practices, hospitals-even cemeteries - are now owned by PE firms who have made every aspect of life beyond the reach of normal human beings. In Chicago, the two and three family homes that gave families a leg up are being purchased as tear downs so developers can build shoddily slapped together "Luxury" condos which sell for double and triple what an entire two or three flat did in the 2010s. Yes, people are furious. Trump and his lunatics are blaming immigrants for what people like those who funded his run like the venture capitalist fever dream investment it is--the Thiels and Andreassons, and Sachs of the crypto bro, billionaire fascists think is their due, was certainly not the answer, but if we are all going down, a lot of people are ready to burn it down. THAT'S what this election was about. Think Jesse Ventura as MN Governor in the late 90s. A joke. Because most people who voted for him lack the framework or the imagination to imagine the craven contempt with which our most basic govt functions are being approached, just one week in.
@lauracarstiou3505
As a woman who went to college l have always felt squeezed economically as a single parent. I somehow managed to send my son to college. He managed to send two children to college but they are living at home. My son just paid off student debts for his master's degree. Only the very rich are having the good life. None of us voted for DT because he's a menace who tried to overthrow the government. We still have all the problems and stress!
@RosilyMayer
Well spoken. Many of us need to hear this and change our attitudes and actions.
@Jesse-v7h