17 – What Do You Think?
Mark has stated his videos are presented hoping people will watch them and become better parents for their children. That can happen on an individual basis, but it appears the number of “parent-abused people” indicates the need for overall social systems changes.
I have been posting these messages for a couple of months. I received one supporting reply from Aracelli responding to “15 – Parenting Challenge – Language.” That was appreciated. There are others that read my ideas. Instead of me rambling along with more messages, I thought it would be good to hear from those reading. So…what do you think about my ideas?
One of America’s great challenges involves our people bring polarized, there being no dialogue across the gap. So called “public discussions” usually involve a panel of four or five individuals that basically believe the same “liberal” or “conservative” points of view, expressing “like thinking.” The ancient Greeks used one-on-one dialogues involving two persons, holding directly opposing views, that were provided two slots of time to present their individual points of view. Each dialogue focused on one, agreed upon, directly stated, difference of opinion. Use of such a process today would provide communication across the politized gap.
My thinking is based on my academic and experiential background as an organizational change agent, helping people realize how they can restructure their corporation, government agency, or nonprofit. I find support for some liberal ideas and some conservative ideas. I cannot find support for some liberal and some conservatives ideas. I find some to be harmful.
I am old and will not live much longer. I can remember when our society was very different than today. The pivotal point in time came following 1964. That fall I personally listened to Lyndon Johnson discuss his wars on inequality and poverty at the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds. It was about time to do something positive about these problems.
I have never seen a candid, overall, big picture assessment of his program’s successes or continuing improvement opportunities. Assessment efforts focus on physical issues instead of abstract thinking. Some of today’s extreme problems such as drug and weapons usages did not exist before 1964 to the degree seen today. But many major improvements seem to be ignored.
So…what do you think? 8/26/2025

Hey there Mr. J Bass, well your writing or entry today is very poignant. I see so many institutions cracking under the pressure, I’ve seen the fundamentals of some of our foundational structures slipping away into the abyss, not sure they will be able to be rescued or salvaged. My parents were both from the South, born to parents who barely had high school educations yet my father and mother earned Ph.Ds, my father in poly sci from Indiana and my mother in English also from Indiana. She wrote a book you might wish to look up titled, The Treatment by Martha Stephens about a terrible Cold War experiment at General hospital in Cincinnati in the 1960s that she helped to stop along with two colleagues who blew the whistle. There’s a C-Span video recorded of her and some of the family members of the victims during a book talk, you might find it interesting. My father served in the army and was able to go to college on the GI bill, his father worked at factories mostly in Detroit, sometimes shoes, sometimes automobiles. My grandfather earned enough to buy land back in Georgia and build a couple of affordable houses on the land, he was also a moonshiner and card shark among other things. My grandmother worked as a court reporter and was able to send her three daughters to college, all on her rather small salary, the first people in her family to attend college. My father studied voting and elections in this and other countries, he traveled and lived in France, Spain, England, Mexico, Central and South America, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, he served in Germany among other places when he was in the army. He passed away close to 2 years ago, I miss him quite a lot but am lucky that he lived to be 87, he wasn’t perfect, he had many flaws like us humans do, but he was a very interesting man, a good story teller and a great conversationalist, I could see you talking with Jerone. John Stuart Mills, On Liberty and Thomas Paine, Common Sense were some of his favorites. He felt that Jefferson was a great revolutionary and thought highly of the Black Panther Party and the Cuban revolution as examples of people uniting in common cause to defend themselves from their oppressors. He lost two academic positions due to his radicalization in part to the Vietnam war, the racism he saw living in the South, the assassination of King and the fight for civil rights. He would be crestfallen to see our current situation and devastated as I am with the inhumanity taking place in Gaza. In short, my parents saw their fair share of inhumane treatment carried out in the US and abroad but there is something so cruel and depraved taking place now that I feel a deep sorrow that we are hopelessly lost and adrift. I feel it when I talk to others now too, a sadness, a melancholy, a shame. I think our systems are now only geared into making millionaires into billionaires and we are all paying the price. Our society seems to only worship money and we are seeing many suffer and using substances to find relief and escape reality. I think people know what’s happening is wrong and yet they are trying very hard to dismiss the nagging feeling that we are falling into a trap. The lack of values and community is part of the trouble, when the powers that be are working day and night to divide us and use hate, fear and paranoia to drive us apart then this is the result, division and separation and a country that seems to be almost as divided as before the civil war. I hope you can print out the pages you wrote and send them to Mark to see if they could be included in some format in future media projects. Your insights are companion pieces to many of the personalities seen here and are food for thought. Take care friend.

Happy Labor Day Mr. J Bass! This is one day of many when I do not buy anything due to people needing and deserving a break from the relentless wheels that keep capital churning day after day, my partner is out waiting to drop his semi trailer load to a mega corp I highlight later. Regarding some of the comments I made previously as a response to your inquiry I would like to elaborate on a few items. The first is the reason we the people pay the price for billionaires are many, in part due to insatiable greed and to one in particular who is the largest US private employer and has the biggest super stores that put some thousands of small businesses on Main Street and around the country out of business with cheap imports they couldn’t compete with. The second reason, is that as my sister explained to me, a labor organizer who helped plan the annual Labor Day picnic this year and for the last decade, the employees are often eligible for Medicaid and Food stamps due to their low wages, in fact millions of US workers are eligible for these programs across various industries, even those lucky enough to work full time with said industries (fast food, grocers, retail, hospitality, etc) we know of many who endeavor to keep the workers at less than full time so they don’t gain full time status in order to qualify for any company benefits even though they are not free but require premium payments, etc. These claims are backed up by stats, not just my opinion, so then the question becomes why are US taxpayers on the hook to subsidize the business models of the richest owners of these corporations? The bottom line is that the mega corps get so many tax cuts and write offs that they don’t pay their fair share into the system and hence huge budget deficits and belt tightening like this year due to cuts to many programs like Medicaid, Snap, health and science, parks and education programs to name a few. I think the tariffs that we the people will be paying for, on top of a reduction in the safety net as skimpy as it is, will mean that we may see higher unemployment and thus housing insecurity, record high car notes and now that many people rely on the stock market for their retirement a bust due to market instability. I hope we aren’t in for a repeat of 2007 when the market fell below 7,000 and many retirees had to try and find work if anyone would hire them. Now, my mother is 88 years old and if I’m unable to convince my doctor to let me have a Booster shot then I will be putting her and many others at her independent and assisted living at risk. So this is the freedom Ayn Rand spoke of, freedom to choose for our children to not be vaccinated from a disease like the measles or Covid in order to simply be free from taking it and potentially infecting and sickening them and others. Rand was a lifelong smoker and although opposed to the thin safety net we the people have paid into she accepted social security and Medicare in order to live with some dignity before heart disease led to her demise. The people united will never be defeated! that is my ultimate answer to all that plagues us in this uncertain time.