I have spent the day rereading the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the news of the day has heightened its relevance. During the Trump administration, after an extensive investigation, the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that “the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election…by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin.”
We truly do not know how the midterms will shake out, and we can’t use any of the normal methods of prediction because there is nothing normal about any of this.
But we have had a few wins this week. And it is important to recognize that even if just for the morale boost.
More than a morale boost Anabel; many hours of of diligent work by folks on the ground in Kansas. Over 900,000 voters in an August Primary including about 150,000 voters who only voted for abortion rights & reproductive health care decisions under their personal control a remarkable political victory. WAPO Has a great photo of Kansan Gail Rowland. Looks like Gail can carry a dozen yard signs ( VOTE NO ) in two (2] hands. Thank you Gail.
Kansas replicated the 2020 presidential election. But from day 1 the victorious Democratic coalition has splintered under the inertial forces of division.
What is remarkable is that progressive members of Congress have been the ones to make self disciplined compromise to get *the best possible* legislation through the House - while so called moderates in the Senate have sabotaged everything to their own purity test self indulgence.
And oddly, this is the opposite of how it seems most noticeably to operate in the electorate, where progressives often are tempted to be self indulgently uncompromising and moderates discipline themselves to accept what is possible.
I have for some time been very wary of words like "moderate" or "center" (I've mistrusted the label "progressive" for decades, as every kind of progress comes at a cost, very rarely perceived, let alone taken into account).
The media calls people like Sinema and Manchin "moderates"... thus making moderation into yet another disguise for dishonesty.
Some hate the word “moderate”, I hate the words DINO and RINO. People can identify with a platform and have other ideas about things, especially if they don’t live in Boston or LA. I do label myself Progressive (proud ex Wisconsinite, land of Fighting Bob LaFollette and his progressive party!!!), as well as liberal, feminist, tree hugger, and all the ones that are supposed to be bad for you. Republicans here in Mass call Gov Charlie Baker a RINO, which he absolutely is not — he is a pro choice Republican — and it works. It makes him seem more palatable to the average uninformed voter. But he’s ruined the T and robbed our public school systems of funding for transportation, etc. And now he wants to give desperately needed money (schools, T, environmental management, homeless, drug programs)back to the taxpayers. He’s not a RINO, he’s a damn Republican through and through.
Even here in Georgia, Kemp is tolerated by liberals because he's not a Trumper. However, he and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who has been lauded for not having caved to the Orange Menace's pleas to find just enough votes to overturn the 2020 election, have both authored voter suppression laws, vote nullification laws, and other Republican dirty tricks to skew future elections in their favor. Kemp isn't truthful about the fact that our budget surplus is largely the result of Biden's Rescue Plan, and his use of the surplus serves only his purposes, not the needs of Georgians. Kemp's "heartbeat law" is right in line with SCOTUS's plans to wipe Roe off the books. Like Charlie Baker, Kemp (and Raffensperger) are no RINOS.
As a fellow MA resident, I applaud your assessment of Charlie Baker. There is a big budget surplus here that when handed back to the people will be used for consumption. It COULD be used for transportation - I'd go with an east-west bullet train. And education? Pay for after school programs so folks (women) can work. JMO. Lot's of good applications for our tax dollars.
I am looking forward to a Maura Healey future!!! Listening to her speak is just mind blowing. So articulate, passionate and IMO, right on the issues.
Susan Collins is also referred to as a "moderate"...but the general impression here in Maine is that she is in McConnell's (and Leonard Leo's) wallet pocket.
When she was the junior Senator under senior Senator Olympia Snowe (who really was a moderate), Collins had a moderate's voting record. After Snowe retired, Collins was set adrift and since she is a follower--never much of an independent thinker--she latched onto the Republican leadership in the Senate. Since then, her voting record reveals that she is definitely NOT a "moderate".
Oh, she knew it was a lie. Collins has been in Washington, D.C. for many, many years. She absolutely had to have known Kavanaugh was groomed and vetted by Leonard Leo's Federalist Society. The entire country knew it from the get go. Collins is quite experienced at talking out of both sides of her mouth.
Because many Mainers: #1...dislike change and often will simply stick with what they know; #2...she has a brilliant re-election staff and they harp on her seniority, and the 'bacon' that she has brought--or says she has brought--back to the state.
They are not moderates. Manchin is self serving and loving the limelight; Sinema is just nuts. Political labels are hard to define these days. I have given up on liberal and conservative for many years. The people who call themselves progressive in terms of a Facebook page, are far left. They have suddenly gone silent about dissing Joe and other Ds. I think maybe the Supremes gave them a wake up call.
Sinema is not nuts. She also is not a Democrat. That’s as much a convenient label as the label on her designer skirts. She is a puppet in the authoritarian mode. Bought by corporate and serving corporate. Be wary. She loves the spotlight more than Manchin. I’d use another term to describe her, but decline to do so on this forum.
Yes, she is a puppet, but she was masquerading as something else when she ran. Sometimes to me she seems a little off. I do realize she does love money and so she is prime to be a corporate bought puppet. Whenever I see her, I always see sacks of lucre dangling around her. I can guess what you would like to call her and I concur. Maybe she lets Manchin get a deal and then slides in to ruin it. Both of them are certainly not Ds.
Her clothing might be designer, but she should look in the mirror more often. Yes, I know, MEOW, so fire away at my cattiness. I agree with your observation that she loves the spotlight. The only time she smiles is when she's refusing to answer the gaggle of reporters chasing her.
I suppose I could say radical left with a mindset much like the radical right; maybe true believers would work. I am speaking of the people here in Salem who have constantly dissed Joe and anyone that they see as an "establishment" D which means often people who understand the political process because they have been in office. They are purists who want people who check all their boxes and sometimes in the world of political reality that does not work. I did laugh at your last sentence. I am trying to imagine maybe a cockeyed optimist to borrow from a song.
It’s hard to say what devout centrists are now, Peter. I have maintained for some time now that the entire political spectrum has been wrenched so far to the right that all we have left to hold onto are center and right of center, to varying degrees. In practicality, there is no ‘left’ left.
Why would they dis Joe and other Ds? That just doesn't make sense. Perhaps we needed the Supremes to wake them up. We are either in this together moving towards a more inclusive democracy and a healthier environment and society or we will just run around like chickens pecking at one another.
At the risk of offending some here, they are followers of Bernie and still see him as their idol. I made a post that was polite, but contrary and was rewarded with the label "toxic". They have a description on this particular page that is intolerant. They want people who check all the boxes rather than sometimes someone who can actually prevail in the general. They don't seem to understand that we have arrived where we are in hard steps, sometimes small steps. So, no voting for HRC and then bam....death star and the awful Supreme Court. We do have a person running on the D side who beat Schrader (asshat) in the primary. I hope she can win and maybe with the ire about abortion, that will be a little bit easier. It's an odd district that stretches all the way from the Portland area to Bend. Maybe the abortion decision woke them up that what we have can be taken away fairly easily. This week I saw one of these types wondering why there is a shortage of substitute teachers and threw a dart at the teacher's union implying that they have are too powerful politically. We even have problems hiring and keeping regular staff and that is not the fault of the union, but of the stressful times. This is also the person who was so awful at a D meeting that one of my friends, who has been a stalwart for land use here in Oregon for years, became physically ill. This is what really fries me, here in Marion County, we have several Ds, who have worked hard al their lives to make a better life for people and yet, they are regarded as "establishment" Ds. On the other hand, I do worry about the safety of some of the true believers as they always show up at various radical regressive events and film for example. I do think the abortion issue is unifying people.
Similarly, there is NOTHING conservative about the GOP yet everyone still uses this term, esp the media. Nothing "conservative" in supporting fascism and dictatorships, white supremacy, tax grift for the uber rich,...the list goes on. We need to replace this term with something that more accurately describes the actual Anti-Democracy, Anti-Americans they have become and endlessly pound it into the media,....to coin a phrase, "Flood the Zone" with it because, "conservatives" they are Not.
Excellent! Liz Cheney is conservative and I imagine there may be others too cowardly to speak up. GOP is divided in more than 2 parts and at present it doesn’t actually exist as a major party in a democracy, but instead it is a continuing effort to create autocracy.
Robin, you're correct about Liz Cheney. The only caveat I would place on being thankful for her unwavering support of demanding accountability of the cast of criminals under investigation is that, being a member of Republican royalty, she knows that Trump fever will eventually abate, and she plans to be at the head of the line when the survivors are looking for untainted presidential contenders. I'm okay with that, although I can't envision myself ever voting for a Republican after what we've been through from Reagan to the present time.
Indeed. The "Republican" Party purged itself quite effectively of any actual conservatives. Also moderates or anyone with any shred of self-respect or ethics. It is now nothing but a mix of performative nitwits, attention whores, cynical opportunists, mindless True Believers and, of course, racists and bigots.
Exactly. I consider myself left of center, but neither I nor any of the other left of center folks I know regard Sinema and Manchin and anything other than cynical opportunists trying to make the most of their positions for purely personal gain and glory.
I think it is really, really important right now to disregard labels and think for ourselves. Labels get in the way and are distracting. Way too much advertising and money involved in politics right now. People simply aren't just one way or another, but I think most of us want to find a civil way to co-exist. The greed factor is like a disease. Now to write some postcards to stay sane.
Oh! Dear Peter, I dislike labels to but think it better to recognize the sound bite mentality of people who toss around such labels rather than demeaning those who might conveniently or not fit those often vaguely defined terms. Let’s move on to talk, debate about and agree upon actions that make for s better tomorrow.
Thank you. And I hope with all my heart that we can act for a better tomorrow.
In the letter that...
*
Ah, I see why my reply to you disappeared while I was writing it.
As I said, I have expressed my thoughts elsewhere. But thank you, and thanks, too, to everyone here for helping one another at a time when we all need that moral support.
They are not moderates -- they are obstructionists. Their fate should be for their votes in Congress to be rendered moot by flipping a GOP seat or, preferably, two. As voting members of the Democratic Party they are irredeemable, despite Manchin's recent flip flop.
As with Peter, I ask that we spare the demeaning accusations such as “obstructionist” and work to find common ground to advance to solutions listening to ideas and positions held. Would that be more productive?
John D. Cooper, I was trying to answer you elsewhere, but gremlins intervened.
I wanted to thank you and to express my certainty that all of us here are deeply concerned to act for a better present and a better future.
I am with you all the way when it comes to avoiding judgmental attitudes that cast aspersions on persons rather than the evil that persons do.
However, our deeper concern is with truth and in the Letter that prompted this discussion, HCR draws attention to a key expression of extreme hubris by one who claimed to be making the "facts" that govern our lives.
"The truth will make you free."
This we sense, this we know in our hearts, it is this inner certainty, however vague still, that is guiding us.
We are aware, too, of the immensity of the damage to human society that has resulted from the aggressive delusion contained in those words of Karl Rove (or whoever). Continuing damage.
As for moving together towards the truth -- the truth that we intrinsically ARE -- and away from the Lie and all that we are not, this must call for care in our choice of words.
My professional background as a wordsmith, a translator, strongly influences concern for the use of words, precisely as a means of action.
I know that when my own dear sister utters the words "left-wing" we are entering thick fog, that of the smokescreen spread by media that play on prejudices, themselves spawned by deep and justified anxiety.
I don't expect to overcome that confusion, yet hope that love and repeated attempts to address the causes of anxiety may, in time, make for more awareness -- the quality we must all somehow develop if we are to find our way through the mental minefields of our time.
A hard enough uphill struggle for the individual, dealing every day with stormy weather, without, within.
May we who are contributing to this comments thread somehow help one another to address life's great challenges today -- with positivity.
I’m not sure about all the other states, but it may be the last time Pennsylvania has the chance to break the gerrymander. Our state legislative map is the most representative of each district without making those insane shapes. If we can’t take back at least one house, the R-lead legislature will pass an amendment to the PA constitution that will outlaw abortion, tighten vote-by-mail laws, and change the electoral process, because they cannot pass a veto-proof law. So, in PA, it’s not enough to elect a Democrat governor, but also elect the down-ballad reps as well.
Except that the legislature can only vote to put the amendments on the ballot but they cannot pass them. Only the voters themselves can pass the amendments. So we would have the same opportunity as Kansans had to vote them down. And yes, they will try all the same chicanery - putting it on a primary ballot, obtuse wording, outright lies - but we can still vote them down. And each issue must be voted on separately. They cannot be lumped into one.
Yes, but again, the vote comes at an odd-year primary - A VOTE THAT IS ATTENDED BY LESS THAN 1/4 OF PA VOTERS. I would count on this November before counting on next May.
I hope your PA voters are as moved as the Kansas voters were. The turnout for the election was way above the predicted and usual turnout for a midterm. I hope the GQP has underestimated how angry voters actually are.
The odds of flipping the PA legislature to D are minuscule. Kansas was successful because they worked hard to hit turnout numbers that looked more like a gubernatorial general election. I believe they had 53% turnout. One of the keys to their success was getting “unaffiliated” (in PA those are our independent) voters to vote in a primary against the amendment where they couldn’t vote for any actual candidates. That’s the realistic challenge we should be gearing up for. Figuring out how to communicate the urgency of voting against the amendments. Because of gerrymandering, flipping the House just isn’t at all likely. Not that we shouldn’t try.
But doesn't the Secretary of State have the power to help or hinder election results? SCOTUS is set to hear arguments in October on a case related to the independent state legislature theory. As HCR states in her letter here, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada have all advanced candidates for Secretary of State in their primaries who were endorsed by DJT. If they prevail in November, the Big Lie will be a permanent fixture of our elections. They will mean "nothing and everything."
As I pointed out and as Heather has since corrected, Pennsylvania does NOT elect its Secretary of State. That position is appointed by the governor so it’s more important for Pennsylvanians that we elect a Democratic governor. As to elected Secretaries of State and the independent state legislature theory, you’re mixing apples and oranges. Secretaries of State are part of the executive branch of government, not the legislative, so if SCOTUS would rule in favor of the independent state legislature theory it would not affect the Secretary of State except to the extent that the legislature would become the final arbiter of election procedure which is, yes, terrifying and stupid but not related to the Sec of State.
The problem with the election of election-denying Sec of State right now is that, yes, they do make the rules for elections at the state level but they are at present still constrained by the courts. If the state courts are aligned with their shenanigans (see: Wisconsin) that can create havoc,
Also in regards to Moore v. Harper (independent state legislatures theory) that theory will prevent ANY intervention by the state's judiciary. If SCOTUS does allow that to go forward (given the ultra RW majority, I think it will grant that imprimatur) SCOTUS is undercutting their own legitimacy.
Thank you for your clarification. I was reasserting what I read here in today's letter about the referenced states and their primary results for SofS. I reread HCRs paragraph above and understand that in some of these states that position is an appointment made by the governor.
That is incorrect. The Attorney General is an elected position. In fact, Josh Shapiro is our current elected Attorney General. Perhaps you are thinking of the Secretary of State. That position is appointed by the governor, not elected.
Pennsylvania is one of the critically winnable states whose Dem. legislature candidates are being support by The States Project's host of Giving Circles. This is a way for people to maximize the impact of their donor dollars:
No if’s ands and buts about it. And more than a morale boost. The Kansas outcome set pollsters on their keisters. When it comes to the rubber hitting the road, We the People hold outcomes in our hands. As defined and designed.
Wish I had Soros’ money. When I give, it just unleashes a torrent of emails begging for more. I’ve had to unsubscribe to many to keep my sanity. That said, I have a list that I will financially support with my retirement “largesse.”
Share list please. My wife and I have done nothing this cycle and plan to join a letter writing campaign and send $$$ as best we can afford. In 2020 while living Virginia we made phone calls in a very red area and discovered that was a waste of time. My belief is motivating a dem voter to vote is the most productive use of energy.
I use vote forward to influence registered Democrats who rarely vote. Votefwd.org.
Here’s where my money goes this year.
Marcus Flowers (opposing MTG),
Raphael Warnock (Hershel Walker),
Bee Nguyen (Secretary of State, Georgia),
Josh Shapiro (Doug Mastriano, Election denier, no abortion even to save the life of the mother, promises to overturn elections that aren’t right) for Governor of PA - Shapiro’s election is life or death for PA women and POC,
Charlie Crist running against Desantis for FL Governor.
Katie Porter, CA-45, Because she’s been redistricted and because she’s brilliant and bold.
And Ashley Ehasz, running against incumbent Brian Fitzpatrick in my own PA-1.
I NEVER give to the DNC or any of its spawn - I don't trust them to represent my interests. I send money to candidates I trust to do so.
I live in a small retirement community and enlist a couple of others to help. I print them out and supply the stamps and envelopes and we have 100 done already. I hope to have 500 or more by the time they go in the mail in late October.
I am spending mostly my own money on my campaign. I can't afford to give to those that want my money too! I am sure they have more personal $$s than I do! I am just running for Treasurer of the county I live in and I am making the local printers and advertising companies income for the year.
Thank you! I am taking a few days off before I start knocking on doors! The gal running against me complained to the Clerks office that I had 3 signs up and I was ask to remove them. One was in my front yard. So, I have signs on my vehicle and I live near traffic for the Middle and High School. They start next week. My vehicle will be parked out in my driveway beginning next Sunday night! As the traffic is backed up in the morning in front of my house.....hopefully they will remember my name when they go to vote!
Please check out THE STATES PROJECT formerly Future Now. Their research into what races and candidates need support in Stste Legislative races is superb . They made a huge difference in the 2017 Virginia state races. Their model for organization and giving is GIVING CIRCLES which works very well. Especially in that you meet and work with other like minded folks and your efforts will be maximized. They are a great organization.
I agree. I don’t ever answer my phone to numbers I don’t recognize. I’ve probably been getting 10-20 calls a day. If they are from Dem campaign workers, they’ve been wasted on me. I do go through my mail, so postcards would be seen.
One of the best moments of the day in our recent primary was when two mothers brought their teenage sons in to the precinct we were working and declared "First time voters here!"
I'm participating in Postcards to Swing States. In their mailing lists, they include whether the name is a repeat voter or a first time one. I plan to include a congratulatory sentence for the first timers. I am doing Vote Forward letters as well.
Ellie posted this earlier. She has a couple places that will "maximize the impact" of that retirement largesse.
Ellie Kona
6 hr ago
Pennsylvania is one of the critically winnable states whose Dem. legislature candidates are being support by The States Project's host of Giving Circles. This is a way for people to maximize the impact of their donor dollars:
I've decided to contribute on my limited budget to entities like Chef Andres' World Central Kitchen rather than to the political end of the spectrum this cycle.
We have been donating to get out the vote organizations and are now donating to individuals. I just ignore the emails. Now every night we have ads from Machine Gun Betsy and now the R candidate for governor, both claiming that they will clean up the homeless mess. Last night there was one from the D, Tina Kotek, showing exactly what she is working on for the homeless. In WA's third district, it looks the D and the incumbent R who voted to impeach will be the top two in November. Although you wouldn't know it from the news last night, the Trump endorsed candidate was third and is now out. Yes, the election deniers that won some primaries need to go down in November, but some death star candidates also lost yesterday.
Please check out THE STATES PROJECT formerly Future Now. Your efforts will be maximized and you will be working with folks whose research into specific candidates and state races will make the most difference. They are solid, and trustworthy. All administrative costs are covered by a group of large donors. You can join a giving circle and be part of decisions about which state or states to support or donate as an individual.
My neighbors and I have worked with them since 2018 and we contributed substantially to Maine state races and were able to help flip Maine from a red state to BLUE. A trifecta ! Maine has been able to pass much needed legislation for healthcare among other important issues.
Joan, what about Cory Booker, Jason Crowe, Joe Neguse, Beto O’Rourke (although not in D.C. he has capture national attention), Tracy Abrams, Alexandra Ocasio/Cortez, Conor Lamb. This short list offers many new leadership to embrace going forward.
I definitely agree with you on the leadership skills of each person you listed. I was referring to the National Democratic Party leadership as needing stronger leadership to influence party direction across the country and in the state parties.
Joan, that leadership comes out of the kind of people that John D Cooper mentioned- and there are many more. We get the national leadership we need by recognizing, supporting, and voting for those people. I would add at the least Stacey Abrams, because she has created a movement that is influencing how politics is done across the nation, and a number of other dynamic women and men. One of our weaknesses as a constituency is a tendency to expect national leaders to emerge somehow full-blown. That doesn't happen without an awful lot of hard work before they get to the national level. That means we need to pay attention to the folks who show promise as they gain that experience.
Yes, but take note of Annie D. Stratton's comments. "One of our weaknesses as a constituency is a tendency to expect national leaders to emerge somehow full-blown. That doesn't happen without an awful lot of hard work before they get to the national level."
I have to and want to believe that D.C. leaders don't have their head in the sand and have some grasp of the issues we believe need better messaging.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It is great to see so many folks paying attention.
I lived in VT for two years before I realized that Dean was not a Republican. He himself has never called himself anything but a conservative Dem. I don't know what that is, given the shift to the right that both parties have made over the past few decades. Dean is a decent person, but not a leader, though he played one for a while. Folks here in VT were waiting for him to stick his foot in his mouth. And he did, no surprise. The media weren't fair in their coverage, but that's no surprise either.
Let the democrats be democrats and we have seen some signs of that recently. For forty years , the radical right has bullied everyone into their direction and now it is coming to a reckoning, just look at Kansas.
Florida is in real danger this midterms. We need to clip DeSantis’s wings quickly. He is growing more dangerous by the day. He is actively going after the LBGT community and abortions. Here is the latest in the Tampa Bay Times:
DeSantis suspends Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren
Gov. Ron DeSantis said today that he was suspending Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren for not prosecuting certain crimes.
At a news conference in front of Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office deputies, DeSantis said Warren has “put himself publicly above the law” by signing letters saying he would not enforce laws prohibiting sex changes for minors or laws limiting abortion.
“Our government is a government of laws, not a government of men,” DeSantis said.
What an idiot signing idiot legislation into law. Your comment, Diane, about wing clipping is so accurate. He is giving teacher certification to veterans and spouses and claims them more qualified than teachers with a college degree. Geez, wonder why he wants vets in schools when he daily encourages teacher carry legislation?
He supports a one party police state and is well on the way of making Florida that example.
I still say his countenance is doughy and sweaty and he says “Uh” 20 times in each run-on paragraph from the prompt.
Ewwww. Plus, his political experience is immature and self serving.
Did not anticipate ever supporting Crist again but I sure hope Dems are smart enough to make the ticket Crist-Fried.
You are so correct on all points. I feel revulsion every time I hear or see DeSantis. If Crist and Val Demings win, they will be lonely warriors who will need all our support.
Yes, and DeSantis says no need to be concerned about Monkeypox.
Our “Constitutional” sheriff has bribed, so far, three candidates including two Repubs running for county commis/school board and assistant state attorney running for county judge. County Commissioners (all Repubs) discussed this week extending their term limits. You can almost smell the fear…oddly reassuring. All NOT sustainable. Keep fighting the good fight! It’s a wild ride in the “Freedom” state…
For the last 3 months i have been quietly preparing for fascism if we lose or the heating up of the civil war if we win. Because preparing for the worst is prudent. And, because even if fascism comes or war comes we must keep fighting.
But there is still a third possibility. We win, and by such a large margin that the rule of law prevails and both Trumpism and Christo-fascism are utterly repudiated.
Reading “We truly don’t know how the midterms will turn out” is most refreshing. Only a few weeks ago did I read or hear anybody claiming that the Senate was a possibility.
And the House? The House? When I would suggest I thought it was eminently winnable, I got the sort of looks a flat-Earther would get.
I have thought for a long time that both are up for grabs. Trump’s hold is waning and the Republican Party is leaderless. The gorillas who pretend to believe in the Big Lie and try to out-Trump their rivals are winning at least some of the primaries. And I say good on the Democrats who have helped them. Progressives have been slapped around and taken for weaklings for years now. It’s good to see them take the fight to Republicans. And, no, I don’t think it will backfire. Not in a wave anyway. And if they lose to a clown, they would have lost to an opposition figure attached to the real world.
After an appalling winter and early spring, there has been a stream of pretty decent news lately. 3 months is a long time in politics and the momentum could still change against the Democratic Party.
But I think it’s a 50/50 bet right now on either House. And it may get better. Those buried deep enough in the manure the Trump goons have spread will still flock to the polls no doubt to vote for whatever opportunist has grabbed the brass ring of Trump’s endorsement. But I’m betting that more and more are climbing out of that manure daily and realizing that there’s a world out there that isn’t apocalyptically against them, as Trump would have you believe.
I keep coming back mentally to the words of Churchill: “The Americans always do the right thing, but only after they’ve exhausted all other alternatives”. I think America might be at that point.
By way of illustration, I’d pay money to watch Herschel Walker “debate” Raphael Warnock. He is, in my mind, Exhibit 1 in where the Republicans are going.
Because you are such an important truth teller in this incredibly lie-filled country, your letters should be read by every American, Professor. Thanks so much for this work and for bringing light to the shadowy areas that truly threaten to destroy the very fabric of our nation. I fear the brainwashing of the cult-followers is so complete that even when confronted with truth they will never accept it. The normalization of ugly behavior, disregard for truth on every level, acceptance of complete selfishness in behavior by “public servants” is intolerable-but can it be reversed? Can we ever come back from this? I truly fear for our nation if enough people who represent we the people do not put a stop to it. Will our votes be enough? I hope so, but I just don’t know...😞. Your telling of the truth brings some hope-thank you for that. Really, thank you.
Rupert and clones are still spewing the tripe. The cult is devoted as cults tend to be. The Republican leaders stoke the fires all day, every day, yet they are considered a legitimate political party. Warps my brain as I see formerly decent people buy the obvious bull Schitt.
You have just described the “nutshell” of Republican policy. Blame it on us (before or) after they’ve already done it. You can trace the behavior back for years.
The fact that our Country has been successfully infiltrated by 'agents' has been born out right here in the data HCR has presented! The seeds of hate, dissension, and confusion are being planted and vitalized 24/7. We have evicted a few, arrested some, and have identified a few more holding influential positions in the Republican party leadership. I'm not talking about 'Reds under the bed' here, hohoho. No. We have 'Guests' of the Trump administration...a fungus among us.
Agree that Heather's piece on "reality" is fabulous and important. The Jan6 Hearings, and an increasing flow of REAL indictments and convictions and sentences are a solid foundation of reality emerging.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the end game for Russia was to cause discord among the people. A very good way to weaken the United States.
Also John Eastman really is living in a different world. Expecting Trump to pay a bill.! Not sure where he has been. Had to laugh at that.
How many lickspittle Victorians did Dickens create that mirror what you describe. These guys go from Uriah Heep to Tolkien’s Wormtongue — characters we can all recognize in fiction, but fail to see when they are literally standing in front of us. My apologies if you’ve never been introduced to these characters, but their type shows up everywhere in stories from the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood to — you name it. Don’t know why they are so hard to detect in the real world! 🐲
Russia..., and China, are governed by Fear. kept in place by peoples distrust of one another. People like Eastman are oblivious to the Fear Factor thinking they are on the winning team...until they're thrown under the bus.
The well has been poisoned, and once this happens, it is a monumental task to exhort the toxin.
Today we live in a post truth world, where the Alex Joneses can and will attempt to create an alternative reality. Have you tried using facts and evidence to convince those who believe in the Big Lie that it doesn’t exist? Good luck with that.
“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.”
And remember the words of fifty years ago from Pogo:
It is often disappointingly hard to persuade others with evidence alone, but perhaps the J6th Committee is making progress with evidence, as well as high visibility and persistence. Trump and his ilk ride on high visibility and persistence as well, and gain a certain edge by appealing to lazy, narcissistic prejudices, while the high-road folks are burdened by painstaking efforts of discovery, the constraints of integrity, and weight of bearing some inconvenient truths. Nevertheless, persistence can and has penetrated acceptance of slavery, subjugation of women, worker's rights and gay rights have progressed, and likely would have progressed further without well-funded and organized reactionary resistance. The easy way to get people pulling for something is with lies and intimidation, which is part of why it never goes out of style, but the hard way is better..
If you look at each of those lies, they all seem to stoke fear that something you cherish will disappear: compliant black slaves, compliant women (willing to stay at home and let you make all the important decisions), compliant workers (willing to endure horrible working conditions and paltry wages) and compliant gay people (willing to deny their genuine self and feel guilty when they are true to themselves). In all cases, the status quo means that those who qualify have reduced competition for the winnings. Listen to Fox News warning that the hordes are rushing over the southern (not the northern) border to take jobs, steal from social programs, rob/rape/enslave with drugs and other terrible acts. When they’re not whipping up the masses with those lies, they switch to the story that the “liberals” are giving your tax dollars away to the lazy, cheating “others” (people who don’t look like you, talk like you, etc.)
It's a reminder that you cannot take rights earned for granted, no matter how hard is was to earn them in the first place. Obama's election in 2008 awakened a hatred in this country that had been suppressed for many years. We fought and spilled blood to end slavery, and to defeat Fascism. The fight for civil and women's rights too was a difficult long struggle. I saw today that this SCOTUS is the most pro-business in history. And that's barely into the Roberts court's most radically conservative tenure. It's going to be a long slog. I hope are youth of America are up to the task because this old boomer is growing weary of the fight.
I just want to add that hoping youth will solve the "the problem" is an old pattern, and while it makes sense that one generation tries to build on the legacy of the last (good and bad) we all have to stay engaged. Admittedly, in my mid '70s. I am not as adventurous as I once was, but hope to see much better communication and cooperation between generations as key to real E Pluribus Unum.
Yes!! Jane Goodall says one thing that makes her blood boil is when those of us who created 'the mess' say that we should just leave it to the younger generations to fix... I agree with you, JL... we need to continue to share and cooperate as that key.
I think that while the press has always had a outsized influence on culture, the passive audience structure TV and similar media induces exaggerated passivity on the part of the public. We see clips and sound bites of climate change, rather that long-chain discussion. Contrast Lincoln-Douglas to the game-show like presentation of modern candidate debates? J6th hearings are almost unique in modern media for holding and drilling down into a unified focus. Moreover, "and now for something completely different" broadcasts are understandably evoke muted reponses in contrast to repetitive Big Lie promotion media, and pointed commercial messages. How can you actually maintain government of the people, by the people, for the people without a robust, interactive national conversation? Hopefully this one contributes.
I don’t like that one Ally. Do people who use that slogan work toward making the country more democratic? What did the former president say about Baltimore, our cities, Muslim and Mexican people…!
Thank you, Heather! What still does not make sense to me is how obvious and open Trump was about his alliance with Russia and yet we continued down that road in 2016..
Apropos the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in 2016: Where are Senators Burr and Warner with all that's transpired since their committee heard what I suspect was explosive testimony behind closed doors???
I remember reading in their entirety, the Mueller reports, his testimony and about prosecutible tranches, and then Barr's "nothing here folks" response and going "What?" Then, repeating that exercise. For certain, we are in alternate universes. There is a virus out there that we (you, your kids) must continue be prepared for.
Yes, indeed only masks can't help with this virus, only intelligence, education and historical knowledge can demolish this non- sense, for that's what it is no- sense indeed.
“That’s not the way the world really works anymore…. We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality” Did anyone else wonder at the time where this was going?  I remember being quite stuck by it.
I remember W Bush saying the gist of which was 'I am a moderate, if you only knew what more radical Conservatives wanted...'. Silly me. I thought lying about and invading a country and bending reality to say we found WMD (that never existed), legalizing torture...ah I thought that was sort of radical.
W is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Mr Nice guy clearing brush and painting portraits. He and his con man VP should have been prosecuted for war crimes. One of the most brutally destructive Presidents in our history. It was as if he was trying to beat the records of LBJ and Nixon in a genocide contest.
Nope...I think Dubya is very nearly as vicious as tfg...but covered with the false persona of a "nice guy". Darth Cheney--never thought of as being "nice"--brought out the very worst in Dubya.
She still voted in lock step with almost every T💩p proposal and whatever. She’s a patriot only in that she is committed to the rule of law and the Constitution. All else be damned.
I hear you Derek. I don’t agree with her view on policy or her voting record but the fact that she disagrees with you or me does not make her unpatriotic. She is and has kept her Oath to protect our democracy and the Constitution knowing full well it might end her political career. That’s what I consider a Patriot.
in 2005, a year after Reagan's death, a poll of 2.4 million Americans organized by the Discovery Channel and AOL rated Reagan as ""greatest American' of all time'". Lincoln came in 2nd and W came om 6th. from time to time I still read liberals, some of them prominent, harking back to Reagan as the last responsible "GOP" president; yet I think it Reagan was the rough beast (along with a decidedly more corrupt "Republican" Party, who openly stabbed Lincoln and democracy in the back, and hawked the glories of plutocracy to an adoring media. The outrages we observe today come after 40 years of persistent conquest, think SCOTUS as an example.
JJ, the US has behaved as an empire for a very, very long time. I can’t recount every instance, but the Spanish American War, the destruction of Cuba and the Philippines, consorting with every bloody dictator in all the hemispheres, including Viet Nam. Haiti, Nicaragua (thanks to Ronny Reagan), El Salvador, Brazil, Argentina and on and on. That aide spoke the truth, but look at the damage the Bushes, both of them, did to the world. And Dick Cheney, don’t get me started. The profiteering of the war makers has always been stunning. And sickening. If we don’t learn now from our past blood letting and the widespread misery our policies have created (and are still creating), the Russians will successfully disrupt what we still have left of a democracy.
Our history can make doing the right thing harder to do because our motives and actions are suspect. IMO, that makes our imperative to do right in all instances going forward so necessary. Heather and this baand of truth seekers do have an important purpose; being honest and focused on what needs to be done with honor.
You left out the systematic removal of civilizations on the North American continent in order to create the American Empire. With a full sense of entitlement, clothed in "Manifest Destiny". I once told one of my history professors that a big reason for the rest was that they ran out of original indigenous nations to pillage and coopt. He thought a moment and agreed.
This quote was attributed to Karl Rove, and it has distinctly echoed over the past year as we have seen disinformation ratcheted up in service of Repub power grab.
That's all they have, to grab with: disinformation. And they know the gullibility of their targets. That reminds me, Marjorie Three-Names is unusually quiet.
Yes. She was the only person running the year she was elected. She would have won with only one vote! People I know in GA despise her…love trump…but not her. They won’t vote for a Democrat but they won’t vote for her either. I believe he has a very good chance of winning!
"Reality-based community is a derisive term for people who base judgments on facts. It was first attributed to a senior official working for U.S. president George W. Bush by the reporter Ron Suskind in 2004. Many American liberals adopted the label for themselves, using it to portray themselves as adhering to facts in contradiction to conservatives presumed to be disregarding professional and scientific expertise."
If you Google it you will find other sources too. Suskind refused to reveal the name of the Aide but speculation is Karl Rove.
Great job sourcing this data! Spot on! Seems like at every wrong turn in our history it is the most religious that are driving the bus. I always thought of separation of church and state' as a means to protect religions...but maybe it was also to protect the state? E.g. Prohibition, anti-abortion, slave holders cited passages in the Bible as justification for their horrendous deeds, our recent Supreme Court clowns like Thomas coming for our individual rights are all religiously driven.
Separation of church and state was created because of ((to the founding fathers (the recent)) memories of the battles of the Reformation, particularly in England. There, the marriage of politics and religion resulted in bloody war and death. It could do that now as well, if we don’t protect the Constitution.
And have we learned nothing about "banning"? First prohibition , then drugs, now abortion? Rulings from those with so-called moral superiority never work. People will find ways around the bans, thus becoming law-breakers, and contribute to the further decline in society. Moderation in all things.
Thanks Jan. That's a long, and really fascinating, article.
I was raising two little ones during this time. I wasn't a NY Times subscriber back then. So I often think about younger people who may be raising their families now...no time to pay attention?, no excess dollars to subscribe?
I had to chuckle at this part of Suskind's article because as an east coaster I thought GWB sounded like an idiot.
"And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. "You think he's an idiot, don't you?" I said, no, I didn't. "No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!" In this instance, the final "you," of course, meant the entire reality-based community."
Yet, many of us would have taken him back in a heart beat instead of Trump!
Yes! I often remind myself how disengaged I was when raising my family and working full time. Politics? I had no time for something that people already had a handle on. Our democracy was intact and always would be.
GW Bush, Dick Cheney, etc knew the WMD allegations were lies. The US representatives to the international UN inspection teams reported back. So did the various spies for the CIA. The US also had a good idea how much of those illegal chemical weapons were left: start with the receipts for the US and UK selling them to Saddam, subtract what he used in the Iraq-Iran war and against the Kurds.
“The ideal subject” for such a dictator, Arendt wrote, was not those who were committed to an ideology, but rather “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…and the distinction between true and false…no longer exist.”
I have family and friends who are squarely in this camp. With them, there’s nothing to discuss. :’-(
And then there’s this horrifying premise…
“We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality...”
Will the outing of Alex Jones change the state of our union? Would convicting tfg or defeating Putin?
Jean-Pierre, don’t forget: there was deep hatred of Jews and many others in Germany BEFORE Hitler arrived to galvanize the haters into a steam rolling army of violence and lawlessness. The same in the US. There has been hatred deep in the American earth, growing the KKK, the Nazi party in the US, the misogynists and racists who have lived on this soil for over four hundred years. The Pilgrims and others got busy with genocide against the Native Peoples starting in the 1600’s. It’s been a long time coming, and like the serpent’s egg, which waits to hatch, Trump waited and now he and his vile minions have slithered out to wreak havoc and destruction on every level in this country. The Russians are like vultures who feed on the death from gun violence and through disinformation and the stuff of spy stories, have helped the far right in the US. Why was Overstock Guy “f….g” a Russian agent who was courting the NRA? Connect THOSE dots. And Overstock was in the OVAL OFFICE on January 5, with the inner circle of Dictator-in-Chief 45. Nothing is an accident. Yes, outing Alex Jones is a start. Convicting tfg will help to defeat Putin. Absolutely.
Maybe, just maybe, as Heather says: “I wonder if reality is starting to reassert itself.”
“The Pilgrims and others got busy with genocide against Native Peoples starting in the 1600’s.”
Good point.
The Pilgrims didn’t come to North America to escape religious intolerance, they came here to institutionalize religious intolerance, which has been woven into our body politic since then.
The Pilgrims were a drop in the bucket of European colonizers, most of whom were venture capitalists funded by the Christo-monarchs both to exploit indigenous resources for profit, and to convert the indigenous peoples to Christianity, most prominently manifested by the French and their mission for the Catholic church.
I am about 1/4 way into Barkskins and am finding it a somewhat boring read. I put it down and started another book. Perhaps I will start it again (using a different lense) now that you have pointed to it. Thx.
"It’s been quite a week here at Pine Ridge. Last Tuesday, our Tribal Council temporarily suspended Christian missionary work within the Oglala Nation’s boundaries after the distribution of an offensive brochure which labeled Tunkasila, our Creator, as a “demon idol.” "
"((This hideous brochure was handed out to Oglala youth at the Pine Ridge Nation. Once our Tribal Council was alerted, it took emergency action by passing an ordinance (since rescinded) banning all missionary work on our reservation.))"
Christian Mission Ousted from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation after Distribution of Hate Materials
"The ordinance was rescinded a few days later, mainly because folks had events — such as weddings and funerals — scheduled. Still, previous law requiring review and registration of religious entities will now be enforced with greater vigor, and my community is once again reckoning with the living history of colonization, particularly by western faith organizations.
"As you probably know, our relationship as Native People to the Catholic Church is long and, for the most part, horrific. To this day, Federal Indian Law still cites the Doctrine of Discovery — which originated in the Catholic Church in the 1490s — as a justification for our subjugation.
For five centuries, European powers “discovered” and colonized Indigenous lands using the legal argument that, because Christians didn’t yet inhabit them, those lands were fair game."
"Of course, we all know what happened in the wake of this colonization: forced migrations, broken treaties, the Indian boarding school era, and the continued taking of our children by state agencies. And last week, while Pine Ridge was confronting yet another manifestation of the colonial mindset, Pope Francis took a trip to Canada to apologize for the Church’s role in the boarding school era — later even acknowledging it as genocide."
"I, for one, am happy to see progress; but I’ll be happier when he rescinds the Doctrine of Discovery.
"Obviously, we still have a long way to go and many truths to tell before we, as Native peoples, can heal from the generational trauma inflicted by centuries of colonization. It’s going to have to be one step at a time. In the meantime, I’m proud of my friends — the activists who brought their concerns to the attention of our Tribal Council at Pine Ridge. I actually helped to establish the Oglala Lakota chapter of the International Indigenous Youth Council, which spearheaded that organizIng."
"I'm hopeful that we can move forward with better understanding. Churches will now have to register with the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and existing religious establishments will have until Oct. 24 to clear their activities with the Tribal Council. It’s a start."
Wopila tanka — thank you for your understanding and solidarity.
It is so clear that some people are so blinded by their beliefs, they do not recognize divinity, though it surrounds us everywhere - in, around and through the whole body of life, and the cosmos that sustains it. See how we project onto others what we fail to perceive in ourselves:
[["WARNING: TRUTH REVEALS EVIL HEARTS. PLEASE SUPPRESS ANY HATRED OR VIOLENCE YOU MAY FEEL ... BE KIND"]]
... as we decimate sacred lands and waters, rape and murder women and children, and suppress ancient elemental truths with superficial, cosmetic ideation ...
Another "do as I say, not what I do" scenario ...?!
I remember hearing one of those “teachers” telling everyone that he had worked with the Navaho. He blamed their situation on the fact that they were a matrilineal family, therefore deserved their fate. Those types are the scum of the earth. I am sorry for what you describe.
I am so fed up with that brand of ignorance - domain of the little head ... so full of their own petty glory ... I give thanks for good men of conscience - wherever they may be found ....
Well, in this case, they came to avoid persecution for their beliefs that were outside the norms for their society. Oddly enough, when you see their beliefs shaping their behavior in the New World, you can realize why they were being persecuted in the Old World. Our only means of survival must be “Live, and let live”.
Well said! I recommend Bernard Bailyns "The Barbarous Years" for a picture of how we acted in the earliest days of colonization. The roots of fascism and genocide are deep within our soil.
My wife, who is a Sephardic Jew, can tell tales of how her ancestors were booted around Europe (the world actually) because they had the wrong religion.
Hate of the other is in our DNA. It takes teaching empathy and love for our fellow humans to break the chain of horrors.
I would suggest that it is the other way round. People are born with the capacity to express compassion and empathy. They have to be taught hate through example. It's not a pretty process, and it's no wonder the people who are taught this way are so damaged in other ways too.
Upon reflection, perhaps fear is a natural survival technique of all living beings. Fight or flight impulse. The hate? "Cultural psyche"...yes, indeed. Me thinks that is cultivated - by parents and peers. It's a human tradition that some spiritual leaders have fought forever. Of course, then some followers of the leader claim that this leader is the only one or the best one and all others should be shunned - flipping the poor leaders whole point on its head.
Sadly, there are many tributaries feeding the rivers of hate. I try not to drink from those waters. But clean water is hard to find now, eh?
On a different subject, what do you think about changing the name of the White House to something else like '' The People,s House" ? I am sure with beautiful thoughts, we can come up with something more inclusive.
The name has just really been bothering me lately.
I would love to see the White House painted in a colonial palette of federal blues and greys, with a little white trim and maybe a pop of burgundy here and there. That possibly would trigger a new name. We’d get a twofer!
As Freud famously said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. The White House is called that because it is painted white. Anybody with a big house knows it takes a long time to paint, so the easiest thing to do is paint one side each year in white so you don't have to worry about matching, and just keep going. Old tradition. It doesn't have any other meaning. It's just the President's home and working quarters. "The People's House" is what the State House is called informally: where our representatives meet and do the people's business. Well, sort of. At least some of the time.
Annie, I understand the obvious historical name but it “paints” a tragic history of white supremacy. Will we ever overcome our prejudices? “The “White House” is such a horrible reminder of who we are…pushing native peoples out if their homes, kidnapping people of color from their homes in Africa, breaking up their families, raping, beating, keeping peoples of color in poverty, denying the right to vote etc., etc.
Jean-Pierre, You've asked the questions that many of us have been asking -- whether anything can lift our country out of the lies, which seem now to be embedded in the minds of many Americans? I thought the Letter today addressed them.
HCR’s punchline for the remarkable digest of revelations in today’s Letter was, ‘I wonder if reality is starting to reassert itself.’ I wondered the very same thing when Kansas’ support for abortion rights came from all over the state, including at least 20% of Republican voters. ‘Right-wing media outlets are still figuring out how to spin this.’ (MediaMatters)
That punchline, ‘, ‘I wonder if reality is starting to reassert itself.’ Had a great deal behind it.
‘..after an extensive investigation, the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that “the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election…by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin.”
‘It was “part of a broader, sophisticated, and ongoing information warfare campaign designed to sow discord in American politics and society…a vastly more complex and strategic assault on the United States than was initially understood.’
‘…the latest installment in an increasingly brazen interference by the Kremlin on the citizens and democratic institutions of the United States.” aimed at influencing how this nation’s citizens think about themselves, their government, and their fellow Americans.”
‘This week, Alex Jones, a purveyor of conspiracy theories and false information on his InfoWars network—the tagline is “There’s a War on For Your Mind!”—is part of a civil trial to determine damages in his defamation of the parents of one of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre in which 26 people, 20 of them small children, were murdered.’
‘Jones claimed that the massacre wasn’t real, and his listeners harassed the grieving families.’
‘Jones refused for years to comply with orders to hand over documents and evidence, so finally, in September, District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County Texas, issued a default judgment holding him responsible for all damages. This material includes both texts and financial reports that Jones apparently said didn’t exist.’
‘This is a big deal for the trial, of course—perjury is a crime—and it is a bigger deal for those who have believed InfoWars, since it reveals how profitable the lies have been.’
‘People calculating the math will note that if indeed there are two years of records on that phone, the messages will include the weeks around the events of January 6, 2021.’
‘… the January 6th committee will request the text messages and emails, which should cover the period around January 6. Jones, who has already spoken with the committee, played a role in the events of that day, whipping up supporters and speaking at a rally on January 5.’
‘The January 6 insurrection relied on the Big Lie that Donald Trump had won the 2020 election, a lie that has dramatically destabilized our country. Republicans have only deepened their commitment to that lie since January 6. After yesterday’s Republican primaries, in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, all key states for 2024, election deniers have clinched the Republican nomination for secretary of state—the person in charge of elections—or the governor who would appoint that officer.’
‘If indeed Jones’s phone turns out to have key texts that go to the January 6 committee, it might provide more facts that will help to diminish the Big Lie.’
‘The construction of a world based on lies is a key component of authoritarians’ takeover of democratic societies’
‘Part of why the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol has been so effective is that it has carefully built a story out of verifiable facts.’
‘Because House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) withdrew the pro-Trump Republicans from the committee, we have not had to deal with the muddying of the water by people like Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), who specializes in bullying and hectoring …’ that mischaracterizes what actually happened.’
‘The January 6 insurrection relied on the Big Lie that Donald Trump had won the 2020 election, a lie that has dramatically destabilized our country. Republicans have only deepened their commitment to that lie since January 6. After yesterday’s Republican primaries, in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, all key states for 2024, election deniers have clinched the Republican nomination for secretary of state—the person in charge of elections—or the governor who would appoint that officer.’
‘If indeed Jones’s phone turns out to have key texts that go to the January 6 committee, it might provide more facts that will help to diminish the Big Lie.’ (Letter)
HCR’s punchline deserves repeating, ‘I wonder if reality is starting to reassert itself.’
I would like the Alex Jones style folks to all be punished for their selfish acts. Confiscate their fortune and jail time. Ludicrous that Alex Jones would be fined while blue collar Jan 6 guys go to prison. To be certain I would like all Jan 6 folks to be given prison.
"I wonder if reality is starting to reassert itself."
What a sentence! This letter is masterful, tying together so many related things: Putin's sweeping efforts to maim the U.S. with Trump and through wave after wave of misinformation, the iconic double speak of "1984" that seems more plausible with every passing day, the perpetuation of the Big Lie, the evil and cruel buffoon Alex Jones, and Karl Rove (unnamed) boasting in essence about creating false realities for the George W. Bush administration.
Truth creates reality. Perhaps the most shocking development of my long life is the diminution of truth. In other words, the decline of basic honesty. Not just in government but is so many aspects of everyday life. Lying has become like breathing for an astounding number of people. Not the occasional white lie, but blatant dishonesty — with never a penalty.
I hope "reality starting to reassert itself" means few liars will lead our nation and states.
'Donald Trump’s allies in Georgia are mounting a campaign to recall Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over her investigation into the then president’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and are seeking to recruit high-dollar donors to fund it, according to sources familiar with the effort.'
'The organizers of the campaign concede that the obstacles to a successful recall in Georgia are high, making the chances of getting a recall vote on the ballot before Willis makes her decision on whether to indict Trump and his associates remote at best.'
'But a source involved in the effort told Yahoo News that the aim is to use the recall campaign as a way to politically damage the Democratic district attorney, portraying her as a partisan actor who is ignoring soaring crime rates in Atlanta in order to target high-profile Republicans. A side benefit of that game plan, another source familiar with the campaign said, is to potentially influence a jury pool down the road should a case against Trump go to trial.'
How much irony is there in Trump's allies relying on crime rates the smear anyone?
“The purpose is to politicize it,” said one high-ranking Georgia Republican involved in the recall effort, who asked not to be publicly identified discussing a politically sensitive matter. “The message here is, ‘OK, you [Willis] want to play this [political] game, we’ll make this about politics.’”
'That source, who is helping to raise money for the effort, said Trump and his associates at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida are “aware” of the recall campaign and that among those actively involved in the effort are David Shafer, the Georgia Republican Party chairman, and Brad Carver, a prominent GOP lawyer in the state. Both men are among the 16 so-called fake electors in Georgia who recently received target letters from Willis informing them they were facing potential indictments in her probe.' (YahooNews) See link below.
It never ends. Imagine if they actually tried governing for a change rather than politicizing everything? Of course that too would be a debacle.
As for the attempt to influence potential future jurors, my biggest concern of all the investigations of Trump and his minions is not that charges won't be filed but they will try to pay off jurors. It only takes one in each case to prevent conviction.
Michael, I think the level of corruption far surpasses what most knowledgeable and attentive people in the legal profession, government service and, perhaps journalism suspected. That's just a guess. Some large number has been feeding off it. We still don't know the dimensions of the corruption. With a large number of Americans having been captured by the propaganda (that spurred the racism/white supremacy always bubbling on the surface) and the Rule of Law bent to favor the wealthy and propertied class as has the economy we are facing a MONSTER.
I don't open up to myself about how bad I believe this is because that would be paralyzing. TC frequently says you cannot predict the future. Several points are obvious, however, such as many more Americans have to wakeup, and we need to be more organized and strategic. Social media is a tremendous problem in several ways and a paucity of leadership is another weakness. The situation is far from static; we've had a few good bumps recently.
If there's one guy on the right for whom Clarence Darrow's famous statement, "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great relish" applies, it is Alex Jones. I would love to read in his obituary that he was taken by persons unknown to a remote mountain cabin, where over the course of about 30 days, he finally met an "excruciating end ." and that he was "howling in the deepest pain" as he expired. It wouldn't be a fair exchange for all the pain and hurt he has spread throughout society, but it would be a good start. And then leave the body dangling by one foot, for all the carrion eaters to dispose of.
The only person I hate worse than Alex Jones is Fatso Fatass.
I know exactly what you mean, David. I have spent the last 45 years trying to expunge the effects of the first 38; my success has been limited but some progress has been made.
Then along comes TC, and I find myself, like you, resonating to every angry and vindictive word and phrase. I think I’ve lost about two decades of emotional toil and sweat. But its so delicious to wallow in the images, imagining the victim of TC’s rage getting his just desserts.
This brings up something I have stewed over since yesterday’s letter regarding the children taken from their parents at the border and dispersed throughout the country with no records kept. With a new horror daily during that man’s term of office (can’t really use term “Presidency,”) I don’t believe it was ever determined who came up with that diabolical plan. I always suspected the despicable Stephen Miller. Do any of you have knowledge about it that I missed? I feel it still needs to be addressed.
Sue, I have no knowledge of where these children are but fear the worse. I imagine the long exhausting trip of people hoping to find a place to start over ....the money they saved just to make the trip, leaving everything , only to lose their children perhaps believing and trusting that surely in the US, they and their children would be safe.
Unfortunately, my study of history reveals these scum rarely get what they really deserve. When I think of the hell this POS has put those families through....
We don’t know about past lives or future births. They will pay at some point….and it will be as bad or worse than what they put everyone through. AND they won’t be rich mf’s in the next life.
I have relished reading Sandy Lewis's posts saying "Trump will be charged, convicted and jailed"---and watching these amazing positives unfold (like the courage of the 1/6 committee). Somehow, I want to believe that the slip-up of Jones's lawyers with texts, etc might have been an accidentally-on-purpose of someone who laid in bed at night, wrestling with their moral conscience.
I truly DO believe that Fatass will be charged and convicted. Jailed? I think that the experience of the first two will cause him to stroke out and die before the jailing ever happens.
Sometimes your most eloquent diatribes are chastised by some on this forum, that being said, I think David Herrick speaks for many!
I have to admit that though they sometimes make me feel like gritting my teeth, I love both TC and Sandy, because I know they both some from a deep sense of caring. Some other people... not so much. They just like targets and leave me feeling nauseous.
Jeri, methinks Karma is rarely immediate, and often is, indeed, too slow for our liking! In the current situations, the depth of the depravity and dangerous ramifications need to be revealed so we see it all. Isn't that what Discovery is all about? IMO.
How about the 72 million Americans who voted for him? They are the real problem, unfortunately, and one that doesn’t admit a solution, even a fantasy one.
Do Americans know what reality is? Let’s hope that reality can be based on facts. Thank goodness for the January 6 committee and their work to get to facts and let ordinary citizens know what has been happening.
I found a special gift in my inbox today. It was a newsletter written by our other “daughter”. Dr. Ruha Benjamin is a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, and was a “big sister” to our daughters and son as they were growing up.
I decided to share some extracts from the newsletter here, with the thought that something she has written might spark some fresh initiatives within our digital community.
I hope you find the reading worth the time spent.
Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within.
— Ruha Benjamin
Seeding the Future <> August Edition
“We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story,” so says cultural historian Thomas Berry. In part, I think what it means to be “between stories” is that while more people may recognize past wrongs, we struggle to live in Right Relation.
The Old Stories, in my view, are those scripted by colonialism, racial capitalism, white supremacy, nationalism, and cis-heteropatriarchy… master narratives like Manifest Destiny, “survival of the fittest,” and the Doctrine of Discovery. The latter refers to a principle of international law issued by the Catholic Church in the 15th century – a doctrine that gave Christian nations license to seize and colonize any land they found occupied by non-Christians and to convert and enslave the people already living there. Talk about a deadly story of entitlement and domination (and how different it is from Star Trek’s Prime Directive!). Nevertheless, those cast as victims in the master narrative have always resisted.
Just a few days ago, a large procession of Indigenous protestors made their way inside Canada’s national shrine in Quebec City, where Pope Francis was scheduled to hold mass as part of his nationwide tour. He was there to apologize for the role of the Catholic Church in the country’s brutal “Indian residential school” system in which an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children were stolen from their families, physically and sexually abused, with at least 4,000 dying under horrendous conditions.
Those gathered in silent protest on July 28 held aloft a giant banner that read, in bold red and black letters, “Rescind the Doctrine.”
From Latin, rescindere, “annul, cancel, abolish, remove by cutting off,” and scindere “to cut, rend, tear asunder, split, split up, part, divide, separate.”
Rescind, not simply regret.
Abolish, not simply apologize.
Tear asunder, not simply empathize. Why?
Because unless the old scripts animated by false notions of superiority and inferiority are ripped to shreds, we will be caught in an endless purgatory: forced to inhabit the same tired roles as we advance predictable and deadly plots. Instead, let us clear the way for new stories! Let’s follow the example of those Indigenous protestors who demand that we smash death-making structures and craft new ones that give us life.((O))
OUTTAKES & ARCHIVES
“Chile has a new best seller!” This is how a recent article in Nature described the final draft of Chile’s new constitution. Since it was finalized on 4 July, the document “has commanded massive numbers of online downloads and crowds waiting to buy paperback copies.”
In the Intro to Viral Justice, I briefly discuss this historic rewriting of the Chilean constitution: Consider what began with mass protests over social and environmental injustices in 2019, where Indigenous communities led the charge for a nationwide “reinvention.” Hundreds of thousands of Chileans mobilized, and in late 2021, they elected 155 representatives to completely rewrite their dictatorship-era constitution amid a “climate and ecological emergency.”
An Indigenous language and literature professor, Elisa Loncón Antileo, a representative of the Mapuche people, was elected president of the constitutional convention. She and the other participants posed fundamental questions that citizens of most nations have probably never considered:
“Should the country retain a presidential system? Should nature have rights? How about future generations?”
This is world-building on a grand scale with local communities and Indigenous values guiding every step—a process of re-worlding that doesn’t try to smother differences, one that envisions a “pluriverse” rather than a universe, welcoming heterogeneity rather than enforcing singularity. As professor of Africana studies, Greg Carr, tweeted last December,
“The fight to rewrite Chile’s national constitution should be leading global conversations & everyday talk alike. The people have forced a social structure confrontation, with structural inequities and our planetary environmental emergency at the center. We should all be watching.”
Watching, yes, and asking how we might rewrite our own constitutions; how we might even reconstitute the outworn political imagination that carved up the planet into nation-states to begin with… “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens,” the Baha’i Writings remind us.
This week, as part of a new project I’m working on, I have been looking at how artists and architects have been reimagining borders and belonging. I am reading Ronald Rael’s book Borderwall as Architecture, in which he has repurposed dozens of different walls and structures along the Mexico/U.S. border, asking the question at the heart of all world-building: “What if…?”
Rather than electrifying the border wall to kill anyone trying to cross, as presidential hopeful Hermain Cain proposed in 2011, “what if some of the funds currently used to maintain the borderwall were reallocated for the construction of energy infrastructure?”
For the same amount of money used to build an 87-mile stretch of wall between Nogales and Douglas, Arizona, $333.5 million total, solar farms producing 60 megawatts of electricity could power 40,000 households for “energy-hungry cities of the Southwest.” This and Rael’s many other designs remind us to not only critique the world as it is, but work to reimagine it as it could be. ((O))
Each month I spotlight an organization or initiative seeding justice, usually in a locale where I’m speaking, virtually or in-person. Looking ahead to the event above, I want to shout out ColorCoded LA!
ColorCoded is a space that “centers historically-excluded people in the co-teaching, co-creation, and co-ownership of new technologies.” The ColorCoded team utilizes radical imagination to envision tangible strategies for building a world where Black and Indigenous people are truly free, and where regenerative systems are in place with the intention of caring for the land, water, plants, and animals.
Their work affirms that #TechIsNotNeutral and that #EverythingIsByDesign. By facilitating workshops, participating in projects, and building tools, Color Coded is designed to help us “keep our digital bodies safe.”
Bill, I cried as I read this. Thank you for posting. I immediately did a quick search for Ruha's newsletter and subscribed. I've seen her writings quoted elsewhere and believe she is one of the people who appear on some of the panels I watch, and have been impressed. More so reading this. I hope it is ok for me to post the direct link here. https://www.ruhabenjamin.com/newsletter
It is more than alright, Annie. I greatly appreciate your reading her offering and am more than indebted to you for researching her newsletter, subscribing, and sharing the link.
I have always felt that you were among the most astute and principled readers of Dr. Richardson’s treasured “Letters…”, and you have proven me right, once again. Ruha and her parents were treasured friends and collaborators when they lived here. We miss them so much.
Thank you, Bill. I had to set this aside for a while before answering. It touched me in a way I guess I needed right now. Thank you for your sweet compliment, and for sharing your friendship with Ruha and her parents. It brings a little bit of grounding into my world to know a little bit of yours.
One way to look at it is that reality never stops asserting itself, but there are lulls, some times in terms of human's sense of time, extended lulls in which it is possible for humans to pretend that something else entirely is going on.
Reality is indifferent to our games, of course, and will go on and do whatever reality does regardless. If that involves rolling over and flattening fools, so be it. The sad thing is when fools are in charge of the ship of state, and steer into an all -too-real iceberg, a great many innocents tend to go down with them, not all of them even human.
Reality can be a robust, if temperamental, ally when when we choose to play by reality-based rules;, but sooner or later, proves to not suffer fools gladly.
Does Alex Jones have the potential to be the Rosetta Stone that unlocks a flood of indictments? His allegiance seems to be to himself, not Trump or GOP per se. Looks like he may have (a lawyer needs to compare word for word to see if he said X and -X unambiguously, we don't know until we see the materials side by side) multiple perjury counts coming both from state court in Texas and perhaps Congressional Committee, perhaps a Contempt of Court conviction for lying about Discovery materials to the judge's face...before we get to any potential but as of now unknown criminal activity related to the breach of the Capitol (but NYTimes reports that texts expose Jones to criminal liability) found on that phone. (I am surprised lawyers didn't claim privilege, though maybe a bogus claim, just to tie it up for a while). Jones is a guy who touches sooo many actors in the Big Lie and Insurrection who maybe does not have inside planning knowledge, but saw heard enough to convict those that do, if he were to cooperate. Once the conviction co-operation ball overcomes its potentially immovable initial inertia, it is hard to stop!
Thanks for the Hannah Arendt quotes. When totalitarian rulers (and wanabees) condition their followers to reject objective reality, it's a short hop to "believe only me."
In the hundred days to come we must confront these liars with the truth and point out their lies again and again and again, right to their lying faces.
"We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality...”"
That was the operating principle of the entire Republican party once Trump won the primary. They served to spin his bad impulses into worse facts on the ground. To use their populist base to serve their plutocrat paymasters.
Of course the GOP pump was earlier primed to serve Big Lier Reagan (later repackaged as a gently used 'fabulist') in the same way. It goes back to the Big Lie of racial superiority and the Big Lie of American Christianity that great wealth is a demonstration of great godly virtue. Repackaged as 'trickle down' economics. Which perpetuates the privileges of unearned wealth and the burden of undeserved poverty. Along racial divides.
We truly do not know how the midterms will shake out, and we can’t use any of the normal methods of prediction because there is nothing normal about any of this.
But we have had a few wins this week. And it is important to recognize that even if just for the morale boost.
More than a morale boost Anabel; many hours of of diligent work by folks on the ground in Kansas. Over 900,000 voters in an August Primary including about 150,000 voters who only voted for abortion rights & reproductive health care decisions under their personal control a remarkable political victory. WAPO Has a great photo of Kansan Gail Rowland. Looks like Gail can carry a dozen yard signs ( VOTE NO ) in two (2] hands. Thank you Gail.
Kansas replicated the 2020 presidential election. But from day 1 the victorious Democratic coalition has splintered under the inertial forces of division.
What is remarkable is that progressive members of Congress have been the ones to make self disciplined compromise to get *the best possible* legislation through the House - while so called moderates in the Senate have sabotaged everything to their own purity test self indulgence.
And oddly, this is the opposite of how it seems most noticeably to operate in the electorate, where progressives often are tempted to be self indulgently uncompromising and moderates discipline themselves to accept what is possible.
I have for some time been very wary of words like "moderate" or "center" (I've mistrusted the label "progressive" for decades, as every kind of progress comes at a cost, very rarely perceived, let alone taken into account).
The media calls people like Sinema and Manchin "moderates"... thus making moderation into yet another disguise for dishonesty.
Sinema and Manchin are DINOs, or rather Trojan Horses. We are not equally divided, we are skewed “right” by those who are wrong…
Some hate the word “moderate”, I hate the words DINO and RINO. People can identify with a platform and have other ideas about things, especially if they don’t live in Boston or LA. I do label myself Progressive (proud ex Wisconsinite, land of Fighting Bob LaFollette and his progressive party!!!), as well as liberal, feminist, tree hugger, and all the ones that are supposed to be bad for you. Republicans here in Mass call Gov Charlie Baker a RINO, which he absolutely is not — he is a pro choice Republican — and it works. It makes him seem more palatable to the average uninformed voter. But he’s ruined the T and robbed our public school systems of funding for transportation, etc. And now he wants to give desperately needed money (schools, T, environmental management, homeless, drug programs)back to the taxpayers. He’s not a RINO, he’s a damn Republican through and through.
Even here in Georgia, Kemp is tolerated by liberals because he's not a Trumper. However, he and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who has been lauded for not having caved to the Orange Menace's pleas to find just enough votes to overturn the 2020 election, have both authored voter suppression laws, vote nullification laws, and other Republican dirty tricks to skew future elections in their favor. Kemp isn't truthful about the fact that our budget surplus is largely the result of Biden's Rescue Plan, and his use of the surplus serves only his purposes, not the needs of Georgians. Kemp's "heartbeat law" is right in line with SCOTUS's plans to wipe Roe off the books. Like Charlie Baker, Kemp (and Raffensperger) are no RINOS.
As a fellow MA resident, I applaud your assessment of Charlie Baker. There is a big budget surplus here that when handed back to the people will be used for consumption. It COULD be used for transportation - I'd go with an east-west bullet train. And education? Pay for after school programs so folks (women) can work. JMO. Lot's of good applications for our tax dollars.
I am looking forward to a Maura Healey future!!! Listening to her speak is just mind blowing. So articulate, passionate and IMO, right on the issues.
If you think about it one moment,
RINO is a perfect label for the party that calls itself "Republican" but has used the name as a perfect cover for Nazism.
No swastikas, not yet black uniformed storm trooperts, not yet a Fuehrer, not quite yet...
And the Republic is still standing... Still...
Susan Collins is also referred to as a "moderate"...but the general impression here in Maine is that she is in McConnell's (and Leonard Leo's) wallet pocket.
When she was the junior Senator under senior Senator Olympia Snowe (who really was a moderate), Collins had a moderate's voting record. After Snowe retired, Collins was set adrift and since she is a follower--never much of an independent thinker--she latched onto the Republican leadership in the Senate. Since then, her voting record reveals that she is definitely NOT a "moderate".
Susie Q is all talk and no walk. Has she ever been much of a thinker of any kind.
Not that I've ever heard!
Her assertion that she believed Kavanaugh when he described Row as settled law is laughable! I knew better, and I'm no senator.
Oh, she knew it was a lie. Collins has been in Washington, D.C. for many, many years. She absolutely had to have known Kavanaugh was groomed and vetted by Leonard Leo's Federalist Society. The entire country knew it from the get go. Collins is quite experienced at talking out of both sides of her mouth.
Why does she keep getting reelected?
Most Mainers are quite conservative.
Because many Mainers: #1...dislike change and often will simply stick with what they know; #2...she has a brilliant re-election staff and they harp on her seniority, and the 'bacon' that she has brought--or says she has brought--back to the state.
That is very interesting. I wondered what happened to her.
attempted like
They are not moderates. Manchin is self serving and loving the limelight; Sinema is just nuts. Political labels are hard to define these days. I have given up on liberal and conservative for many years. The people who call themselves progressive in terms of a Facebook page, are far left. They have suddenly gone silent about dissing Joe and other Ds. I think maybe the Supremes gave them a wake up call.
Sinema is not nuts. She also is not a Democrat. That’s as much a convenient label as the label on her designer skirts. She is a puppet in the authoritarian mode. Bought by corporate and serving corporate. Be wary. She loves the spotlight more than Manchin. I’d use another term to describe her, but decline to do so on this forum.
🗽
Yes, she is a puppet, but she was masquerading as something else when she ran. Sometimes to me she seems a little off. I do realize she does love money and so she is prime to be a corporate bought puppet. Whenever I see her, I always see sacks of lucre dangling around her. I can guess what you would like to call her and I concur. Maybe she lets Manchin get a deal and then slides in to ruin it. Both of them are certainly not Ds.
Her clothing might be designer, but she should look in the mirror more often. Yes, I know, MEOW, so fire away at my cattiness. I agree with your observation that she loves the spotlight. The only time she smiles is when she's refusing to answer the gaggle of reporters chasing her.
I'd have given your comment a triple like, Michele, if it were not for my deep puzzlement about labels, including "far left"...
Once upon a time, I grew up to be far center. But what does that make me now, in a right-slanted world?
I suppose I could say radical left with a mindset much like the radical right; maybe true believers would work. I am speaking of the people here in Salem who have constantly dissed Joe and anyone that they see as an "establishment" D which means often people who understand the political process because they have been in office. They are purists who want people who check all their boxes and sometimes in the world of political reality that does not work. I did laugh at your last sentence. I am trying to imagine maybe a cockeyed optimist to borrow from a song.
It’s hard to say what devout centrists are now, Peter. I have maintained for some time now that the entire political spectrum has been wrenched so far to the right that all we have left to hold onto are center and right of center, to varying degrees. In practicality, there is no ‘left’ left.
Why would they dis Joe and other Ds? That just doesn't make sense. Perhaps we needed the Supremes to wake them up. We are either in this together moving towards a more inclusive democracy and a healthier environment and society or we will just run around like chickens pecking at one another.
At the risk of offending some here, they are followers of Bernie and still see him as their idol. I made a post that was polite, but contrary and was rewarded with the label "toxic". They have a description on this particular page that is intolerant. They want people who check all the boxes rather than sometimes someone who can actually prevail in the general. They don't seem to understand that we have arrived where we are in hard steps, sometimes small steps. So, no voting for HRC and then bam....death star and the awful Supreme Court. We do have a person running on the D side who beat Schrader (asshat) in the primary. I hope she can win and maybe with the ire about abortion, that will be a little bit easier. It's an odd district that stretches all the way from the Portland area to Bend. Maybe the abortion decision woke them up that what we have can be taken away fairly easily. This week I saw one of these types wondering why there is a shortage of substitute teachers and threw a dart at the teacher's union implying that they have are too powerful politically. We even have problems hiring and keeping regular staff and that is not the fault of the union, but of the stressful times. This is also the person who was so awful at a D meeting that one of my friends, who has been a stalwart for land use here in Oregon for years, became physically ill. This is what really fries me, here in Marion County, we have several Ds, who have worked hard al their lives to make a better life for people and yet, they are regarded as "establishment" Ds. On the other hand, I do worry about the safety of some of the true believers as they always show up at various radical regressive events and film for example. I do think the abortion issue is unifying people.
There is absolutely NOTHING moderate about either Manchin or Sinema.
Similarly, there is NOTHING conservative about the GOP yet everyone still uses this term, esp the media. Nothing "conservative" in supporting fascism and dictatorships, white supremacy, tax grift for the uber rich,...the list goes on. We need to replace this term with something that more accurately describes the actual Anti-Democracy, Anti-Americans they have become and endlessly pound it into the media,....to coin a phrase, "Flood the Zone" with it because, "conservatives" they are Not.
Excellent! Liz Cheney is conservative and I imagine there may be others too cowardly to speak up. GOP is divided in more than 2 parts and at present it doesn’t actually exist as a major party in a democracy, but instead it is a continuing effort to create autocracy.
Robin, you're correct about Liz Cheney. The only caveat I would place on being thankful for her unwavering support of demanding accountability of the cast of criminals under investigation is that, being a member of Republican royalty, she knows that Trump fever will eventually abate, and she plans to be at the head of the line when the survivors are looking for untainted presidential contenders. I'm okay with that, although I can't envision myself ever voting for a Republican after what we've been through from Reagan to the present time.
Indeed. The "Republican" Party purged itself quite effectively of any actual conservatives. Also moderates or anyone with any shred of self-respect or ethics. It is now nothing but a mix of performative nitwits, attention whores, cynical opportunists, mindless True Believers and, of course, racists and bigots.
Bravo, BK!!!
Exactly. I consider myself left of center, but neither I nor any of the other left of center folks I know regard Sinema and Manchin and anything other than cynical opportunists trying to make the most of their positions for purely personal gain and glory.
I think it is really, really important right now to disregard labels and think for ourselves. Labels get in the way and are distracting. Way too much advertising and money involved in politics right now. People simply aren't just one way or another, but I think most of us want to find a civil way to co-exist. The greed factor is like a disease. Now to write some postcards to stay sane.
❤
Oh! Dear Peter, I dislike labels to but think it better to recognize the sound bite mentality of people who toss around such labels rather than demeaning those who might conveniently or not fit those often vaguely defined terms. Let’s move on to talk, debate about and agree upon actions that make for s better tomorrow.
To John D. Cooper.
Thank you. And I hope with all my heart that we can act for a better tomorrow.
In the letter that...
*
Ah, I see why my reply to you disappeared while I was writing it.
As I said, I have expressed my thoughts elsewhere. But thank you, and thanks, too, to everyone here for helping one another at a time when we all need that moral support.
Thank you, John, and I have tried to address your concern elsewhere.
Peter, I have no concern. Saw your earlier response and was grateful. Peace & good cheer, John
So where is our best shot at getting the politically and socially healthy society so many of us want? Labels don't tell us much anymore.
They are not moderates -- they are obstructionists. Their fate should be for their votes in Congress to be rendered moot by flipping a GOP seat or, preferably, two. As voting members of the Democratic Party they are irredeemable, despite Manchin's recent flip flop.
As with Peter, I ask that we spare the demeaning accusations such as “obstructionist” and work to find common ground to advance to solutions listening to ideas and positions held. Would that be more productive?
John D. Cooper, I was trying to answer you elsewhere, but gremlins intervened.
I wanted to thank you and to express my certainty that all of us here are deeply concerned to act for a better present and a better future.
I am with you all the way when it comes to avoiding judgmental attitudes that cast aspersions on persons rather than the evil that persons do.
However, our deeper concern is with truth and in the Letter that prompted this discussion, HCR draws attention to a key expression of extreme hubris by one who claimed to be making the "facts" that govern our lives.
"The truth will make you free."
This we sense, this we know in our hearts, it is this inner certainty, however vague still, that is guiding us.
We are aware, too, of the immensity of the damage to human society that has resulted from the aggressive delusion contained in those words of Karl Rove (or whoever). Continuing damage.
As for moving together towards the truth -- the truth that we intrinsically ARE -- and away from the Lie and all that we are not, this must call for care in our choice of words.
My professional background as a wordsmith, a translator, strongly influences concern for the use of words, precisely as a means of action.
I know that when my own dear sister utters the words "left-wing" we are entering thick fog, that of the smokescreen spread by media that play on prejudices, themselves spawned by deep and justified anxiety.
I don't expect to overcome that confusion, yet hope that love and repeated attempts to address the causes of anxiety may, in time, make for more awareness -- the quality we must all somehow develop if we are to find our way through the mental minefields of our time.
A hard enough uphill struggle for the individual, dealing every day with stormy weather, without, within.
May we who are contributing to this comments thread somehow help one another to address life's great challenges today -- with positivity.
That's a really interesting comment. Thanks for that. I'd like to learn more about this.
When you say Senate moderate do you really mean Sinema? :)
I’m not sure about all the other states, but it may be the last time Pennsylvania has the chance to break the gerrymander. Our state legislative map is the most representative of each district without making those insane shapes. If we can’t take back at least one house, the R-lead legislature will pass an amendment to the PA constitution that will outlaw abortion, tighten vote-by-mail laws, and change the electoral process, because they cannot pass a veto-proof law. So, in PA, it’s not enough to elect a Democrat governor, but also elect the down-ballad reps as well.
Except that the legislature can only vote to put the amendments on the ballot but they cannot pass them. Only the voters themselves can pass the amendments. So we would have the same opportunity as Kansans had to vote them down. And yes, they will try all the same chicanery - putting it on a primary ballot, obtuse wording, outright lies - but we can still vote them down. And each issue must be voted on separately. They cannot be lumped into one.
Yes, but again, the vote comes at an odd-year primary - A VOTE THAT IS ATTENDED BY LESS THAN 1/4 OF PA VOTERS. I would count on this November before counting on next May.
I hope your PA voters are as moved as the Kansas voters were. The turnout for the election was way above the predicted and usual turnout for a midterm. I hope the GQP has underestimated how angry voters actually are.
The odds of flipping the PA legislature to D are minuscule. Kansas was successful because they worked hard to hit turnout numbers that looked more like a gubernatorial general election. I believe they had 53% turnout. One of the keys to their success was getting “unaffiliated” (in PA those are our independent) voters to vote in a primary against the amendment where they couldn’t vote for any actual candidates. That’s the realistic challenge we should be gearing up for. Figuring out how to communicate the urgency of voting against the amendments. Because of gerrymandering, flipping the House just isn’t at all likely. Not that we shouldn’t try.
But doesn't the Secretary of State have the power to help or hinder election results? SCOTUS is set to hear arguments in October on a case related to the independent state legislature theory. As HCR states in her letter here, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada have all advanced candidates for Secretary of State in their primaries who were endorsed by DJT. If they prevail in November, the Big Lie will be a permanent fixture of our elections. They will mean "nothing and everything."
As I pointed out and as Heather has since corrected, Pennsylvania does NOT elect its Secretary of State. That position is appointed by the governor so it’s more important for Pennsylvanians that we elect a Democratic governor. As to elected Secretaries of State and the independent state legislature theory, you’re mixing apples and oranges. Secretaries of State are part of the executive branch of government, not the legislative, so if SCOTUS would rule in favor of the independent state legislature theory it would not affect the Secretary of State except to the extent that the legislature would become the final arbiter of election procedure which is, yes, terrifying and stupid but not related to the Sec of State.
The problem with the election of election-denying Sec of State right now is that, yes, they do make the rules for elections at the state level but they are at present still constrained by the courts. If the state courts are aligned with their shenanigans (see: Wisconsin) that can create havoc,
Also in regards to Moore v. Harper (independent state legislatures theory) that theory will prevent ANY intervention by the state's judiciary. If SCOTUS does allow that to go forward (given the ultra RW majority, I think it will grant that imprimatur) SCOTUS is undercutting their own legitimacy.
Thank you for your clarification. I was reasserting what I read here in today's letter about the referenced states and their primary results for SofS. I reread HCRs paragraph above and understand that in some of these states that position is an appointment made by the governor.
In PA, the Governor chooses the Attorney General, so voting for Shapiro over Mastriano, who is trailing badly, will settle that issue.
That is incorrect. The Attorney General is an elected position. In fact, Josh Shapiro is our current elected Attorney General. Perhaps you are thinking of the Secretary of State. That position is appointed by the governor, not elected.
Pennsylvania is one of the critically winnable states whose Dem. legislature candidates are being support by The States Project's host of Giving Circles. This is a way for people to maximize the impact of their donor dollars:
https://statesproject.org/our-states/
https://www.grapevine.org/network/states-project
And that window will close if voters don’t come out this November.
No if’s ands and buts about it. And more than a morale boost. The Kansas outcome set pollsters on their keisters. When it comes to the rubber hitting the road, We the People hold outcomes in our hands. As defined and designed.
🗽
Wish I had Soros’ money. When I give, it just unleashes a torrent of emails begging for more. I’ve had to unsubscribe to many to keep my sanity. That said, I have a list that I will financially support with my retirement “largesse.”
Share list please. My wife and I have done nothing this cycle and plan to join a letter writing campaign and send $$$ as best we can afford. In 2020 while living Virginia we made phone calls in a very red area and discovered that was a waste of time. My belief is motivating a dem voter to vote is the most productive use of energy.
I use vote forward to influence registered Democrats who rarely vote. Votefwd.org.
Here’s where my money goes this year.
Marcus Flowers (opposing MTG),
Raphael Warnock (Hershel Walker),
Bee Nguyen (Secretary of State, Georgia),
Josh Shapiro (Doug Mastriano, Election denier, no abortion even to save the life of the mother, promises to overturn elections that aren’t right) for Governor of PA - Shapiro’s election is life or death for PA women and POC,
Charlie Crist running against Desantis for FL Governor.
Katie Porter, CA-45, Because she’s been redistricted and because she’s brilliant and bold.
And Ashley Ehasz, running against incumbent Brian Fitzpatrick in my own PA-1.
I NEVER give to the DNC or any of its spawn - I don't trust them to represent my interests. I send money to candidates I trust to do so.
Anything to support Val Demings in FL to unseat worm Rubio is a great effort. To gain a Senate seat from FL???? Amazing.
Good idea. I’ll add her to my list. Thanks.
Forgive me, but you meant Raphael Warnock (not Ralph--maybe autocorrect got overly aggressive)
Right. Thanks.
I live in a small retirement community and enlist a couple of others to help. I print them out and supply the stamps and envelopes and we have 100 done already. I hope to have 500 or more by the time they go in the mail in late October.
I am spending mostly my own money on my campaign. I can't afford to give to those that want my money too! I am sure they have more personal $$s than I do! I am just running for Treasurer of the county I live in and I am making the local printers and advertising companies income for the year.
Best of luck to you.
Thank you! I am taking a few days off before I start knocking on doors! The gal running against me complained to the Clerks office that I had 3 signs up and I was ask to remove them. One was in my front yard. So, I have signs on my vehicle and I live near traffic for the Middle and High School. They start next week. My vehicle will be parked out in my driveway beginning next Sunday night! As the traffic is backed up in the morning in front of my house.....hopefully they will remember my name when they go to vote!
Hood luck!!
Thank you!
Please check out THE STATES PROJECT formerly Future Now. Their research into what races and candidates need support in Stste Legislative races is superb . They made a huge difference in the 2017 Virginia state races. Their model for organization and giving is GIVING CIRCLES which works very well. Especially in that you meet and work with other like minded folks and your efforts will be maximized. They are a great organization.
I'm also frustrated with phone banks - prefer postcards to swing states...lit drops...
I agree. I don’t ever answer my phone to numbers I don’t recognize. I’ve probably been getting 10-20 calls a day. If they are from Dem campaign workers, they’ve been wasted on me. I do go through my mail, so postcards would be seen.
Encourage new 1st time voters too.
One of the best moments of the day in our recent primary was when two mothers brought their teenage sons in to the precinct we were working and declared "First time voters here!"
I'm participating in Postcards to Swing States. In their mailing lists, they include whether the name is a repeat voter or a first time one. I plan to include a congratulatory sentence for the first timers. I am doing Vote Forward letters as well.
Ellie posted this earlier. She has a couple places that will "maximize the impact" of that retirement largesse.
Ellie Kona
6 hr ago
Pennsylvania is one of the critically winnable states whose Dem. legislature candidates are being support by The States Project's host of Giving Circles. This is a way for people to maximize the impact of their donor dollars:
https://statesproject.org/our-states/
https://www.grapevine.org/network/states-project
I've decided to contribute on my limited budget to entities like Chef Andres' World Central Kitchen rather than to the political end of the spectrum this cycle.
That is a wonderful contribution. He has fed more hungry people in Ukraine than can be imagined. Nobel Peace Prize worthy.
We have been donating to get out the vote organizations and are now donating to individuals. I just ignore the emails. Now every night we have ads from Machine Gun Betsy and now the R candidate for governor, both claiming that they will clean up the homeless mess. Last night there was one from the D, Tina Kotek, showing exactly what she is working on for the homeless. In WA's third district, it looks the D and the incumbent R who voted to impeach will be the top two in November. Although you wouldn't know it from the news last night, the Trump endorsed candidate was third and is now out. Yes, the election deniers that won some primaries need to go down in November, but some death star candidates also lost yesterday.
Please check out THE STATES PROJECT formerly Future Now. Your efforts will be maximized and you will be working with folks whose research into specific candidates and state races will make the most difference. They are solid, and trustworthy. All administrative costs are covered by a group of large donors. You can join a giving circle and be part of decisions about which state or states to support or donate as an individual.
Thanks for the heads up.
My neighbors and I have worked with them since 2018 and we contributed substantially to Maine state races and were able to help flip Maine from a red state to BLUE. A trifecta ! Maine has been able to pass much needed legislation for healthcare among other important issues.
The dems need to get it together, grow some and have some new strategies for heaven sake.
I’ve been saying this for years. No Dem leadership at national level worth talking about since Howard Dean.
That’s because his 50 state strategy understood the beauty of the word “grassroots”.
Yes, he was talented and passionate. We need him now.
Joan, what about Cory Booker, Jason Crowe, Joe Neguse, Beto O’Rourke (although not in D.C. he has capture national attention), Tracy Abrams, Alexandra Ocasio/Cortez, Conor Lamb. This short list offers many new leadership to embrace going forward.
I definitely agree with you on the leadership skills of each person you listed. I was referring to the National Democratic Party leadership as needing stronger leadership to influence party direction across the country and in the state parties.
Joan, that leadership comes out of the kind of people that John D Cooper mentioned- and there are many more. We get the national leadership we need by recognizing, supporting, and voting for those people. I would add at the least Stacey Abrams, because she has created a movement that is influencing how politics is done across the nation, and a number of other dynamic women and men. One of our weaknesses as a constituency is a tendency to expect national leaders to emerge somehow full-blown. That doesn't happen without an awful lot of hard work before they get to the national level. That means we need to pay attention to the folks who show promise as they gain that experience.
All good points.
Yes, but take note of Annie D. Stratton's comments. "One of our weaknesses as a constituency is a tendency to expect national leaders to emerge somehow full-blown. That doesn't happen without an awful lot of hard work before they get to the national level."
I have to and want to believe that D.C. leaders don't have their head in the sand and have some grasp of the issues we believe need better messaging.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It is great to see so many folks paying attention.
I lived in VT for two years before I realized that Dean was not a Republican. He himself has never called himself anything but a conservative Dem. I don't know what that is, given the shift to the right that both parties have made over the past few decades. Dean is a decent person, but not a leader, though he played one for a while. Folks here in VT were waiting for him to stick his foot in his mouth. And he did, no surprise. The media weren't fair in their coverage, but that's no surprise either.
Let the democrats be democrats and we have seen some signs of that recently. For forty years , the radical right has bullied everyone into their direction and now it is coming to a reckoning, just look at Kansas.
I respectfully agree to disagree.
Florida is in real danger this midterms. We need to clip DeSantis’s wings quickly. He is growing more dangerous by the day. He is actively going after the LBGT community and abortions. Here is the latest in the Tampa Bay Times:
DeSantis suspends Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren
Gov. Ron DeSantis said today that he was suspending Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren for not prosecuting certain crimes.
At a news conference in front of Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office deputies, DeSantis said Warren has “put himself publicly above the law” by signing letters saying he would not enforce laws prohibiting sex changes for minors or laws limiting abortion.
“Our government is a government of laws, not a government of men,” DeSantis said.
What an idiot signing idiot legislation into law. Your comment, Diane, about wing clipping is so accurate. He is giving teacher certification to veterans and spouses and claims them more qualified than teachers with a college degree. Geez, wonder why he wants vets in schools when he daily encourages teacher carry legislation?
He supports a one party police state and is well on the way of making Florida that example.
I still say his countenance is doughy and sweaty and he says “Uh” 20 times in each run-on paragraph from the prompt.
Ewwww. Plus, his political experience is immature and self serving.
Did not anticipate ever supporting Crist again but I sure hope Dems are smart enough to make the ticket Crist-Fried.
🗽
You are so correct on all points. I feel revulsion every time I hear or see DeSantis. If Crist and Val Demings win, they will be lonely warriors who will need all our support.
Warren is a hero !
Yes, and DeSantis says no need to be concerned about Monkeypox.
Our “Constitutional” sheriff has bribed, so far, three candidates including two Repubs running for county commis/school board and assistant state attorney running for county judge. County Commissioners (all Repubs) discussed this week extending their term limits. You can almost smell the fear…oddly reassuring. All NOT sustainable. Keep fighting the good fight! It’s a wild ride in the “Freedom” state…
For the last 3 months i have been quietly preparing for fascism if we lose or the heating up of the civil war if we win. Because preparing for the worst is prudent. And, because even if fascism comes or war comes we must keep fighting.
But there is still a third possibility. We win, and by such a large margin that the rule of law prevails and both Trumpism and Christo-fascism are utterly repudiated.
Let’s do that third option!
Reading “We truly don’t know how the midterms will turn out” is most refreshing. Only a few weeks ago did I read or hear anybody claiming that the Senate was a possibility.
And the House? The House? When I would suggest I thought it was eminently winnable, I got the sort of looks a flat-Earther would get.
I have thought for a long time that both are up for grabs. Trump’s hold is waning and the Republican Party is leaderless. The gorillas who pretend to believe in the Big Lie and try to out-Trump their rivals are winning at least some of the primaries. And I say good on the Democrats who have helped them. Progressives have been slapped around and taken for weaklings for years now. It’s good to see them take the fight to Republicans. And, no, I don’t think it will backfire. Not in a wave anyway. And if they lose to a clown, they would have lost to an opposition figure attached to the real world.
After an appalling winter and early spring, there has been a stream of pretty decent news lately. 3 months is a long time in politics and the momentum could still change against the Democratic Party.
But I think it’s a 50/50 bet right now on either House. And it may get better. Those buried deep enough in the manure the Trump goons have spread will still flock to the polls no doubt to vote for whatever opportunist has grabbed the brass ring of Trump’s endorsement. But I’m betting that more and more are climbing out of that manure daily and realizing that there’s a world out there that isn’t apocalyptically against them, as Trump would have you believe.
I keep coming back mentally to the words of Churchill: “The Americans always do the right thing, but only after they’ve exhausted all other alternatives”. I think America might be at that point.
By way of illustration, I’d pay money to watch Herschel Walker “debate” Raphael Warnock. He is, in my mind, Exhibit 1 in where the Republicans are going.
Another good sign!
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a40784291/gas-prices-dropping-fastest-rate-decades/
Because you are such an important truth teller in this incredibly lie-filled country, your letters should be read by every American, Professor. Thanks so much for this work and for bringing light to the shadowy areas that truly threaten to destroy the very fabric of our nation. I fear the brainwashing of the cult-followers is so complete that even when confronted with truth they will never accept it. The normalization of ugly behavior, disregard for truth on every level, acceptance of complete selfishness in behavior by “public servants” is intolerable-but can it be reversed? Can we ever come back from this? I truly fear for our nation if enough people who represent we the people do not put a stop to it. Will our votes be enough? I hope so, but I just don’t know...😞. Your telling of the truth brings some hope-thank you for that. Really, thank you.
Rupert and clones are still spewing the tripe. The cult is devoted as cults tend to be. The Republican leaders stoke the fires all day, every day, yet they are considered a legitimate political party. Warps my brain as I see formerly decent people buy the obvious bull Schitt.
Cults usually don’t end well. Look at Jim Jones in Guyana, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. There is none so blind as he who will not see.
YES!!!
And media goes along. Good grief.
Prostitutes!
Guardian excluded.
Strange that Republicans have complained about a biased press. Surprise! We are the victims.
You have just described the “nutshell” of Republican policy. Blame it on us (before or) after they’ve already done it. You can trace the behavior back for years.
Truly love your responses. You speak my heart.
The fact that our Country has been successfully infiltrated by 'agents' has been born out right here in the data HCR has presented! The seeds of hate, dissension, and confusion are being planted and vitalized 24/7. We have evicted a few, arrested some, and have identified a few more holding influential positions in the Republican party leadership. I'm not talking about 'Reds under the bed' here, hohoho. No. We have 'Guests' of the Trump administration...a fungus among us.
Always pays to alliterate the truth! 😉
Agree that Heather's piece on "reality" is fabulous and important. The Jan6 Hearings, and an increasing flow of REAL indictments and convictions and sentences are a solid foundation of reality emerging.
Hoping you are correct!!!
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the end game for Russia was to cause discord among the people. A very good way to weaken the United States.
Also John Eastman really is living in a different world. Expecting Trump to pay a bill.! Not sure where he has been. Had to laugh at that.
Christine, I laughed also. I hope they all rot in their self-created “reality”, after we the people vote them the hell out.
When I saw the quote about "self created reality", I thought shades of Kellyanne Conway and her "alternative facts"!
There are always the little nougats slipped in that give one a giggle.
Each one of the Trump lackeys thinks he or she is the one who’ll get paid or promoted, and has a special relationship with TFG.
How many lickspittle Victorians did Dickens create that mirror what you describe. These guys go from Uriah Heep to Tolkien’s Wormtongue — characters we can all recognize in fiction, but fail to see when they are literally standing in front of us. My apologies if you’ve never been introduced to these characters, but their type shows up everywhere in stories from the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood to — you name it. Don’t know why they are so hard to detect in the real world! 🐲
Eastman and Guiliani are out of the same wackadoodle cloth. They will never see 1 dime from "the boss".
Yuh.. and those POS's need to be thrown in the clink. No bracelets for them!
Eastman must not have been reading the NY papers in the '70s and '80s when the orange menace wasn't paying the workers on his "construction" sites.
And, it may be noted, TFG raised millions supposedly to pay legal fees, so he has the $$!
Hundreds of millions, closing in on half a billion, dollars.
Russia..., and China, are governed by Fear. kept in place by peoples distrust of one another. People like Eastman are oblivious to the Fear Factor thinking they are on the winning team...until they're thrown under the bus.
The well has been poisoned, and once this happens, it is a monumental task to exhort the toxin.
Today we live in a post truth world, where the Alex Joneses can and will attempt to create an alternative reality. Have you tried using facts and evidence to convince those who believe in the Big Lie that it doesn’t exist? Good luck with that.
“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.”
And remember the words of fifty years ago from Pogo:
“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Smart little possum.
It is often disappointingly hard to persuade others with evidence alone, but perhaps the J6th Committee is making progress with evidence, as well as high visibility and persistence. Trump and his ilk ride on high visibility and persistence as well, and gain a certain edge by appealing to lazy, narcissistic prejudices, while the high-road folks are burdened by painstaking efforts of discovery, the constraints of integrity, and weight of bearing some inconvenient truths. Nevertheless, persistence can and has penetrated acceptance of slavery, subjugation of women, worker's rights and gay rights have progressed, and likely would have progressed further without well-funded and organized reactionary resistance. The easy way to get people pulling for something is with lies and intimidation, which is part of why it never goes out of style, but the hard way is better..
If you look at each of those lies, they all seem to stoke fear that something you cherish will disappear: compliant black slaves, compliant women (willing to stay at home and let you make all the important decisions), compliant workers (willing to endure horrible working conditions and paltry wages) and compliant gay people (willing to deny their genuine self and feel guilty when they are true to themselves). In all cases, the status quo means that those who qualify have reduced competition for the winnings. Listen to Fox News warning that the hordes are rushing over the southern (not the northern) border to take jobs, steal from social programs, rob/rape/enslave with drugs and other terrible acts. When they’re not whipping up the masses with those lies, they switch to the story that the “liberals” are giving your tax dollars away to the lazy, cheating “others” (people who don’t look like you, talk like you, etc.)
It's a reminder that you cannot take rights earned for granted, no matter how hard is was to earn them in the first place. Obama's election in 2008 awakened a hatred in this country that had been suppressed for many years. We fought and spilled blood to end slavery, and to defeat Fascism. The fight for civil and women's rights too was a difficult long struggle. I saw today that this SCOTUS is the most pro-business in history. And that's barely into the Roberts court's most radically conservative tenure. It's going to be a long slog. I hope are youth of America are up to the task because this old boomer is growing weary of the fight.
I just want to add that hoping youth will solve the "the problem" is an old pattern, and while it makes sense that one generation tries to build on the legacy of the last (good and bad) we all have to stay engaged. Admittedly, in my mid '70s. I am not as adventurous as I once was, but hope to see much better communication and cooperation between generations as key to real E Pluribus Unum.
Yes!! Jane Goodall says one thing that makes her blood boil is when those of us who created 'the mess' say that we should just leave it to the younger generations to fix... I agree with you, JL... we need to continue to share and cooperate as that key.
I think that while the press has always had a outsized influence on culture, the passive audience structure TV and similar media induces exaggerated passivity on the part of the public. We see clips and sound bites of climate change, rather that long-chain discussion. Contrast Lincoln-Douglas to the game-show like presentation of modern candidate debates? J6th hearings are almost unique in modern media for holding and drilling down into a unified focus. Moreover, "and now for something completely different" broadcasts are understandably evoke muted reponses in contrast to repetitive Big Lie promotion media, and pointed commercial messages. How can you actually maintain government of the people, by the people, for the people without a robust, interactive national conversation? Hopefully this one contributes.
The discipline of the J6 Committee is amazing. Now, compare that to the kangaroo court Benghazi fiasco of the repugnicans...
Yep!
Agree.
Was he ever!
"The problem with America is Americans". Mike S.
I don’t like that one Ally. Do people who use that slogan work toward making the country more democratic? What did the former president say about Baltimore, our cities, Muslim and Mexican people…!
The way I read it is kinda like Pogo: We have met the enemy, and he is us.
Lord, you stated my favs from way back.
Thank you, Heather! What still does not make sense to me is how obvious and open Trump was about his alliance with Russia and yet we continued down that road in 2016..
He didn’t hide it, I remember having my gast flabbered two weeks in…
Apropos the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in 2016: Where are Senators Burr and Warner with all that's transpired since their committee heard what I suspect was explosive testimony behind closed doors???
I remember reading in their entirety, the Mueller reports, his testimony and about prosecutible tranches, and then Barr's "nothing here folks" response and going "What?" Then, repeating that exercise. For certain, we are in alternate universes. There is a virus out there that we (you, your kids) must continue be prepared for.
Yes, indeed only masks can't help with this virus, only intelligence, education and historical knowledge can demolish this non- sense, for that's what it is no- sense indeed.
“That’s not the way the world really works anymore…. We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality” Did anyone else wonder at the time where this was going?  I remember being quite stuck by it.
I remember W Bush saying the gist of which was 'I am a moderate, if you only knew what more radical Conservatives wanted...'. Silly me. I thought lying about and invading a country and bending reality to say we found WMD (that never existed), legalizing torture...ah I thought that was sort of radical.
W is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Mr Nice guy clearing brush and painting portraits. He and his con man VP should have been prosecuted for war crimes. One of the most brutally destructive Presidents in our history. It was as if he was trying to beat the records of LBJ and Nixon in a genocide contest.
“ He and his con man VP should have been prosecuted for war crimes.”
^^^^^^^^^
THIS THIS THIS‼️
Well, only "patriotic" torture, the good kind (according to some).
And now everyone but my husband thinks W is such a gentleman
Nope...I think Dubya is very nearly as vicious as tfg...but covered with the false persona of a "nice guy". Darth Cheney--never thought of as being "nice"--brought out the very worst in Dubya.
But he did create a Patriot in Liz! I’m not saying he made her patriotic but perhaps she became a patriot in spite of his DNA!
She still voted in lock step with almost every T💩p proposal and whatever. She’s a patriot only in that she is committed to the rule of law and the Constitution. All else be damned.
I hear you Derek. I don’t agree with her view on policy or her voting record but the fact that she disagrees with you or me does not make her unpatriotic. She is and has kept her Oath to protect our democracy and the Constitution knowing full well it might end her political career. That’s what I consider a Patriot.
in 2005, a year after Reagan's death, a poll of 2.4 million Americans organized by the Discovery Channel and AOL rated Reagan as ""greatest American' of all time'". Lincoln came in 2nd and W came om 6th. from time to time I still read liberals, some of them prominent, harking back to Reagan as the last responsible "GOP" president; yet I think it Reagan was the rough beast (along with a decidedly more corrupt "Republican" Party, who openly stabbed Lincoln and democracy in the back, and hawked the glories of plutocracy to an adoring media. The outrages we observe today come after 40 years of persistent conquest, think SCOTUS as an example.
JJ, the US has behaved as an empire for a very, very long time. I can’t recount every instance, but the Spanish American War, the destruction of Cuba and the Philippines, consorting with every bloody dictator in all the hemispheres, including Viet Nam. Haiti, Nicaragua (thanks to Ronny Reagan), El Salvador, Brazil, Argentina and on and on. That aide spoke the truth, but look at the damage the Bushes, both of them, did to the world. And Dick Cheney, don’t get me started. The profiteering of the war makers has always been stunning. And sickening. If we don’t learn now from our past blood letting and the widespread misery our policies have created (and are still creating), the Russians will successfully disrupt what we still have left of a democracy.
Whitewashing has always been our strong suit
Our history can make doing the right thing harder to do because our motives and actions are suspect. IMO, that makes our imperative to do right in all instances going forward so necessary. Heather and this baand of truth seekers do have an important purpose; being honest and focused on what needs to be done with honor.
You left out the systematic removal of civilizations on the North American continent in order to create the American Empire. With a full sense of entitlement, clothed in "Manifest Destiny". I once told one of my history professors that a big reason for the rest was that they ran out of original indigenous nations to pillage and coopt. He thought a moment and agreed.
So do I!
Very god points! However school boards will probably erase these facts from the curriculum if they are even there
Yes, you speak the truth, but how many actually understand that truth?
Elizabeth, what you say is true. It shocked me as much that he said it publicly as that he said it that way.
This quote was attributed to Karl Rove, and it has distinctly echoed over the past year as we have seen disinformation ratcheted up in service of Repub power grab.
That's all they have, to grab with: disinformation. And they know the gullibility of their targets. That reminds me, Marjorie Three-Names is unusually quiet.
She is up to something. She's most dangerous when she is quiet--like young children do.
Also, she is being strongly challenged by a strong Democrat in this mid-term.
Must add to my list to donate.
Marcus Flowers
Has he any chance of winning?
Yes. She was the only person running the year she was elected. She would have won with only one vote! People I know in GA despise her…love trump…but not her. They won’t vote for a Democrat but they won’t vote for her either. I believe he has a very good chance of winning!
One of the things I value about Heather's letters is she sources her info...except that last bit. I am dissappointed.
I want to know who is the aid and who is the "we" the aid refers to. She has quotes...so what's the source?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
"Reality-based community is a derisive term for people who base judgments on facts. It was first attributed to a senior official working for U.S. president George W. Bush by the reporter Ron Suskind in 2004. Many American liberals adopted the label for themselves, using it to portray themselves as adhering to facts in contradiction to conservatives presumed to be disregarding professional and scientific expertise."
If you Google it you will find other sources too. Suskind refused to reveal the name of the Aide but speculation is Karl Rove.
Speculation. ( would not let me correct spelling in the edit function)
Thanks Carol.
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?ex=1255665600&en=890a96189e162076&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
Great job sourcing this data! Spot on! Seems like at every wrong turn in our history it is the most religious that are driving the bus. I always thought of separation of church and state' as a means to protect religions...but maybe it was also to protect the state? E.g. Prohibition, anti-abortion, slave holders cited passages in the Bible as justification for their horrendous deeds, our recent Supreme Court clowns like Thomas coming for our individual rights are all religiously driven.
Separation of church and state was created because of ((to the founding fathers (the recent)) memories of the battles of the Reformation, particularly in England. There, the marriage of politics and religion resulted in bloody war and death. It could do that now as well, if we don’t protect the Constitution.
And have we learned nothing about "banning"? First prohibition , then drugs, now abortion? Rulings from those with so-called moral superiority never work. People will find ways around the bans, thus becoming law-breakers, and contribute to the further decline in society. Moderation in all things.
Thanks Jan. That's a long, and really fascinating, article.
I was raising two little ones during this time. I wasn't a NY Times subscriber back then. So I often think about younger people who may be raising their families now...no time to pay attention?, no excess dollars to subscribe?
I had to chuckle at this part of Suskind's article because as an east coaster I thought GWB sounded like an idiot.
"And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. "You think he's an idiot, don't you?" I said, no, I didn't. "No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!" In this instance, the final "you," of course, meant the entire reality-based community."
Yet, many of us would have taken him back in a heart beat instead of Trump!
Yes! I often remind myself how disengaged I was when raising my family and working full time. Politics? I had no time for something that people already had a handle on. Our democracy was intact and always would be.
SURPRISE! SURPRISE!
Read Suskinds article from 2004 https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Thanks Sharon. It's the same article Jan shared. I read it and my comment is above.
I could reread these comments every day and still learn something I missed!
Just ask her.
2004. The Weapons of Mass Destruction were part of their reality. This is hard to cope with.
GW Bush, Dick Cheney, etc knew the WMD allegations were lies. The US representatives to the international UN inspection teams reported back. So did the various spies for the CIA. The US also had a good idea how much of those illegal chemical weapons were left: start with the receipts for the US and UK selling them to Saddam, subtract what he used in the Iraq-Iran war and against the Kurds.
They lied
Cheney...
The hubris of it is just astounding.
I remember every evil utterance from W/Dickie, had not heard this one though.
Thank you Heather.
“The ideal subject” for such a dictator, Arendt wrote, was not those who were committed to an ideology, but rather “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…and the distinction between true and false…no longer exist.”
I have family and friends who are squarely in this camp. With them, there’s nothing to discuss. :’-(
And then there’s this horrifying premise…
“We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality...”
Will the outing of Alex Jones change the state of our union? Would convicting tfg or defeating Putin?
Jean-Pierre, don’t forget: there was deep hatred of Jews and many others in Germany BEFORE Hitler arrived to galvanize the haters into a steam rolling army of violence and lawlessness. The same in the US. There has been hatred deep in the American earth, growing the KKK, the Nazi party in the US, the misogynists and racists who have lived on this soil for over four hundred years. The Pilgrims and others got busy with genocide against the Native Peoples starting in the 1600’s. It’s been a long time coming, and like the serpent’s egg, which waits to hatch, Trump waited and now he and his vile minions have slithered out to wreak havoc and destruction on every level in this country. The Russians are like vultures who feed on the death from gun violence and through disinformation and the stuff of spy stories, have helped the far right in the US. Why was Overstock Guy “f….g” a Russian agent who was courting the NRA? Connect THOSE dots. And Overstock was in the OVAL OFFICE on January 5, with the inner circle of Dictator-in-Chief 45. Nothing is an accident. Yes, outing Alex Jones is a start. Convicting tfg will help to defeat Putin. Absolutely.
Maybe, just maybe, as Heather says: “I wonder if reality is starting to reassert itself.”
Let’s hope so, for our very survival.
“The Pilgrims and others got busy with genocide against Native Peoples starting in the 1600’s.”
Good point.
The Pilgrims didn’t come to North America to escape religious intolerance, they came here to institutionalize religious intolerance, which has been woven into our body politic since then.
“Onward Christian soldiers…”
The Pilgrims were a drop in the bucket of European colonizers, most of whom were venture capitalists funded by the Christo-monarchs both to exploit indigenous resources for profit, and to convert the indigenous peoples to Christianity, most prominently manifested by the French and their mission for the Catholic church.
Catholics have a mountain of Schitt to atone for. Alito piles it higher with every breathe. While the Pope apologizes, Alito mocks.
I have always feared Alito and his ilk might try to assassinate Pope Francis. He is a hero, in spite of the terrible church he heads….
Read Barkskins (Proulx)
I don't want to. But I see I must.
Barkskins https://g.co/kgs/xg8AQd
It's quite a long read - but the initial chapters really set the scene.
I am about 1/4 way into Barkskins and am finding it a somewhat boring read. I put it down and started another book. Perhaps I will start it again (using a different lense) now that you have pointed to it. Thx.
Keep reading. It does start slowly, but that part is necessary to really understand where she is taking you. The book- and the insights- are worth it.
8/3/2022
From DeCora Hawk at Lakota People’s Law Project:
"It’s been quite a week here at Pine Ridge. Last Tuesday, our Tribal Council temporarily suspended Christian missionary work within the Oglala Nation’s boundaries after the distribution of an offensive brochure which labeled Tunkasila, our Creator, as a “demon idol.” "
https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/oglala-sioux-tribe-temporarily-bans-all-christian-religious-operations
"((This hideous brochure was handed out to Oglala youth at the Pine Ridge Nation. Once our Tribal Council was alerted, it took emergency action by passing an ordinance (since rescinded) banning all missionary work on our reservation.))"
Christian Mission Ousted from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation after Distribution of Hate Materials
https://www.redlakenationnews.com/story/2022/07/26/news/christian-mission-ousted-from-pine-ridge-indian-reservation-after-distribution-of-hate-materials/107468.html
"The ordinance was rescinded a few days later, mainly because folks had events — such as weddings and funerals — scheduled. Still, previous law requiring review and registration of religious entities will now be enforced with greater vigor, and my community is once again reckoning with the living history of colonization, particularly by western faith organizations.
"As you probably know, our relationship as Native People to the Catholic Church is long and, for the most part, horrific. To this day, Federal Indian Law still cites the Doctrine of Discovery — which originated in the Catholic Church in the 1490s — as a justification for our subjugation.
https://doctrineofdiscovery.net/1452-dum-diversas-issued-by-pope-nicolas-v-to-alfanso-v-of-portugal.html
For five centuries, European powers “discovered” and colonized Indigenous lands using the legal argument that, because Christians didn’t yet inhabit them, those lands were fair game."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62353811
"Of course, we all know what happened in the wake of this colonization: forced migrations, broken treaties, the Indian boarding school era, and the continued taking of our children by state agencies. And last week, while Pine Ridge was confronting yet another manifestation of the colonial mindset, Pope Francis took a trip to Canada to apologize for the Church’s role in the boarding school era — later even acknowledging it as genocide."
https://www.reuters.com/world/pope-says-genocide-took-place-church-schools-canada-indigenous-children-2022-07-30/?emci=79f1bad5-f611-ed11-b47a-281878b82c0f&emdi=edfb2468-8813-ed11-bd6e-281878b83d8a&ceid=8519112
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/pope-apologizes-canada-evil-residential-indigenous-schools-2022-07-25/
"I, for one, am happy to see progress; but I’ll be happier when he rescinds the Doctrine of Discovery.
"Obviously, we still have a long way to go and many truths to tell before we, as Native peoples, can heal from the generational trauma inflicted by centuries of colonization. It’s going to have to be one step at a time. In the meantime, I’m proud of my friends — the activists who brought their concerns to the attention of our Tribal Council at Pine Ridge. I actually helped to establish the Oglala Lakota chapter of the International Indigenous Youth Council, which spearheaded that organizIng."
https://www.facebook.com/iiyc.oglala.lakota/?emci=79f1bad5-f611-ed11-b47a-281878b82c0f&emdi=edfb2468-8813-ed11-bd6e-281878b83d8a&ceid=8519112
"I'm hopeful that we can move forward with better understanding. Churches will now have to register with the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and existing religious establishments will have until Oct. 24 to clear their activities with the Tribal Council. It’s a start."
Wopila tanka — thank you for your understanding and solidarity.
DeCora Hawk
Field Organizer
The Lakota People’s Law Project
https://action.lakotalaw.org
Lakota People's Law Project
547 South 7th Street #149
Bismarck, ND 58504-5859
The Lakota People's Law Project is part of the Romero Institute, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) law and policy center. All donations are tax-deductible.
https://action.lakotalaw.org/action/donate
*******
Lakota People's Law Project: History and Overview
https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=qDbvWAl6Xgg
*****
Jun 21, 2017 - There is no Lakota word for god by Mark Tilsen
https://lastrealindians.com/news/2017/6/21/jun-21-2017-there-is-no-lakota-word-for-god-by-mark-tilsen
*****
Red Road Warriors walking this sacred path
https://m.facebook.com/RedRoadWarriors/posts/tunkashila-grandfather-great-spiritit-is-this-way-that-we-begin-our-prayers-in-l/337208129660995/
*****
Native american teachings is on Facebook. To connect with Native american teachings, log in or create an account.
https://m.facebook.com/Indigeneousteaching.wolfeyes/
*****
Book: Tunkashila: From the Birth of Turtle Island to the Blood of Wounded Knee - by Gerald Hausman
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1678567.Tunkashila
W.o.w.
What a call to listen and learn!!
It is so clear that some people are so blinded by their beliefs, they do not recognize divinity, though it surrounds us everywhere - in, around and through the whole body of life, and the cosmos that sustains it. See how we project onto others what we fail to perceive in ourselves:
[["WARNING: TRUTH REVEALS EVIL HEARTS. PLEASE SUPPRESS ANY HATRED OR VIOLENCE YOU MAY FEEL ... BE KIND"]]
... as we decimate sacred lands and waters, rape and murder women and children, and suppress ancient elemental truths with superficial, cosmetic ideation ...
Another "do as I say, not what I do" scenario ...?!
https://tahomahome.weebly.com/prayer-for-america.html
Thank you Kathleen! (a little Irish in you? Maybe Celtic?)
Really appreciate the links, the book. Have you ever read any Richard Wagamese? I strongly suggest ‘Embers.’
I remember hearing one of those “teachers” telling everyone that he had worked with the Navaho. He blamed their situation on the fact that they were a matrilineal family, therefore deserved their fate. Those types are the scum of the earth. I am sorry for what you describe.
I am so fed up with that brand of ignorance - domain of the little head ... so full of their own petty glory ... I give thanks for good men of conscience - wherever they may be found ....
100% Ralph!
Well, in this case, they came to avoid persecution for their beliefs that were outside the norms for their society. Oddly enough, when you see their beliefs shaping their behavior in the New World, you can realize why they were being persecuted in the Old World. Our only means of survival must be “Live, and let live”.
Indeed, Ralph. Indeed....
Well said, Elisabeth. That Overstock guy seems at first blush so inconsequential; and yet, he's not. I agree 100%, that "nothing is an accident."
Well said! I recommend Bernard Bailyns "The Barbarous Years" for a picture of how we acted in the earliest days of colonization. The roots of fascism and genocide are deep within our soil.
My wife, who is a Sephardic Jew, can tell tales of how her ancestors were booted around Europe (the world actually) because they had the wrong religion.
Hate of the other is in our DNA. It takes teaching empathy and love for our fellow humans to break the chain of horrors.
I would suggest that it is the other way round. People are born with the capacity to express compassion and empathy. They have to be taught hate through example. It's not a pretty process, and it's no wonder the people who are taught this way are so damaged in other ways too.
Viz: Rogers and Hammerstein's "You've Got to be Carefully Taught" in South Pacific.
Fear and hate of the other is indeed in our DNA - or at least in our cultural psyche. :’-(
Upon reflection, perhaps fear is a natural survival technique of all living beings. Fight or flight impulse. The hate? "Cultural psyche"...yes, indeed. Me thinks that is cultivated - by parents and peers. It's a human tradition that some spiritual leaders have fought forever. Of course, then some followers of the leader claim that this leader is the only one or the best one and all others should be shunned - flipping the poor leaders whole point on its head.
Sadly, there are many tributaries feeding the rivers of hate. I try not to drink from those waters. But clean water is hard to find now, eh?
Yup. :’-(
Elizabeth, thank you. The work is never done.
On a different subject, what do you think about changing the name of the White House to something else like '' The People,s House" ? I am sure with beautiful thoughts, we can come up with something more inclusive.
The name has just really been bothering me lately.
I would love to see the White House painted in a colonial palette of federal blues and greys, with a little white trim and maybe a pop of burgundy here and there. That possibly would trigger a new name. We’d get a twofer!
As Freud famously said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. The White House is called that because it is painted white. Anybody with a big house knows it takes a long time to paint, so the easiest thing to do is paint one side each year in white so you don't have to worry about matching, and just keep going. Old tradition. It doesn't have any other meaning. It's just the President's home and working quarters. "The People's House" is what the State House is called informally: where our representatives meet and do the people's business. Well, sort of. At least some of the time.
Annie, I understand the obvious historical name but it “paints” a tragic history of white supremacy. Will we ever overcome our prejudices? “The “White House” is such a horrible reminder of who we are…pushing native peoples out if their homes, kidnapping people of color from their homes in Africa, breaking up their families, raping, beating, keeping peoples of color in poverty, denying the right to vote etc., etc.
Emily, just wondering: for whom are you speaking, and with whose voice?
Myself…my voice
Thanks, another student of our history
You are SO correct.
Jean-Pierre, You've asked the questions that many of us have been asking -- whether anything can lift our country out of the lies, which seem now to be embedded in the minds of many Americans? I thought the Letter today addressed them.
HCR’s punchline for the remarkable digest of revelations in today’s Letter was, ‘I wonder if reality is starting to reassert itself.’ I wondered the very same thing when Kansas’ support for abortion rights came from all over the state, including at least 20% of Republican voters. ‘Right-wing media outlets are still figuring out how to spin this.’ (MediaMatters)
That punchline, ‘, ‘I wonder if reality is starting to reassert itself.’ Had a great deal behind it.
‘..after an extensive investigation, the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that “the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election…by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin.”
‘It was “part of a broader, sophisticated, and ongoing information warfare campaign designed to sow discord in American politics and society…a vastly more complex and strategic assault on the United States than was initially understood.’
‘…the latest installment in an increasingly brazen interference by the Kremlin on the citizens and democratic institutions of the United States.” aimed at influencing how this nation’s citizens think about themselves, their government, and their fellow Americans.”
‘This week, Alex Jones, a purveyor of conspiracy theories and false information on his InfoWars network—the tagline is “There’s a War on For Your Mind!”—is part of a civil trial to determine damages in his defamation of the parents of one of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre in which 26 people, 20 of them small children, were murdered.’
‘Jones claimed that the massacre wasn’t real, and his listeners harassed the grieving families.’
‘Jones refused for years to comply with orders to hand over documents and evidence, so finally, in September, District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County Texas, issued a default judgment holding him responsible for all damages. This material includes both texts and financial reports that Jones apparently said didn’t exist.’
‘This is a big deal for the trial, of course—perjury is a crime—and it is a bigger deal for those who have believed InfoWars, since it reveals how profitable the lies have been.’
‘People calculating the math will note that if indeed there are two years of records on that phone, the messages will include the weeks around the events of January 6, 2021.’
‘… the January 6th committee will request the text messages and emails, which should cover the period around January 6. Jones, who has already spoken with the committee, played a role in the events of that day, whipping up supporters and speaking at a rally on January 5.’
‘The January 6 insurrection relied on the Big Lie that Donald Trump had won the 2020 election, a lie that has dramatically destabilized our country. Republicans have only deepened their commitment to that lie since January 6. After yesterday’s Republican primaries, in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, all key states for 2024, election deniers have clinched the Republican nomination for secretary of state—the person in charge of elections—or the governor who would appoint that officer.’
‘If indeed Jones’s phone turns out to have key texts that go to the January 6 committee, it might provide more facts that will help to diminish the Big Lie.’
‘The construction of a world based on lies is a key component of authoritarians’ takeover of democratic societies’
‘Part of why the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol has been so effective is that it has carefully built a story out of verifiable facts.’
‘Because House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) withdrew the pro-Trump Republicans from the committee, we have not had to deal with the muddying of the water by people like Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), who specializes in bullying and hectoring …’ that mischaracterizes what actually happened.’
‘The January 6 insurrection relied on the Big Lie that Donald Trump had won the 2020 election, a lie that has dramatically destabilized our country. Republicans have only deepened their commitment to that lie since January 6. After yesterday’s Republican primaries, in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, all key states for 2024, election deniers have clinched the Republican nomination for secretary of state—the person in charge of elections—or the governor who would appoint that officer.’
‘If indeed Jones’s phone turns out to have key texts that go to the January 6 committee, it might provide more facts that will help to diminish the Big Lie.’ (Letter)
HCR’s punchline deserves repeating, ‘I wonder if reality is starting to reassert itself.’
Yeah, reality does that.
I would like the Alex Jones style folks to all be punished for their selfish acts. Confiscate their fortune and jail time. Ludicrous that Alex Jones would be fined while blue collar Jan 6 guys go to prison. To be certain I would like all Jan 6 folks to be given prison.
Will Rupert tell?
"I wonder if reality is starting to reassert itself."
What a sentence! This letter is masterful, tying together so many related things: Putin's sweeping efforts to maim the U.S. with Trump and through wave after wave of misinformation, the iconic double speak of "1984" that seems more plausible with every passing day, the perpetuation of the Big Lie, the evil and cruel buffoon Alex Jones, and Karl Rove (unnamed) boasting in essence about creating false realities for the George W. Bush administration.
Truth creates reality. Perhaps the most shocking development of my long life is the diminution of truth. In other words, the decline of basic honesty. Not just in government but is so many aspects of everyday life. Lying has become like breathing for an astounding number of people. Not the occasional white lie, but blatant dishonesty — with never a penalty.
I hope "reality starting to reassert itself" means few liars will lead our nation and states.
Lies grow like weeds here in the USA, Michael.
'Donald Trump’s allies in Georgia are mounting a campaign to recall Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over her investigation into the then president’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and are seeking to recruit high-dollar donors to fund it, according to sources familiar with the effort.'
'The organizers of the campaign concede that the obstacles to a successful recall in Georgia are high, making the chances of getting a recall vote on the ballot before Willis makes her decision on whether to indict Trump and his associates remote at best.'
'But a source involved in the effort told Yahoo News that the aim is to use the recall campaign as a way to politically damage the Democratic district attorney, portraying her as a partisan actor who is ignoring soaring crime rates in Atlanta in order to target high-profile Republicans. A side benefit of that game plan, another source familiar with the campaign said, is to potentially influence a jury pool down the road should a case against Trump go to trial.'
How much irony is there in Trump's allies relying on crime rates the smear anyone?
“The purpose is to politicize it,” said one high-ranking Georgia Republican involved in the recall effort, who asked not to be publicly identified discussing a politically sensitive matter. “The message here is, ‘OK, you [Willis] want to play this [political] game, we’ll make this about politics.’”
'That source, who is helping to raise money for the effort, said Trump and his associates at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida are “aware” of the recall campaign and that among those actively involved in the effort are David Shafer, the Georgia Republican Party chairman, and Brad Carver, a prominent GOP lawyer in the state. Both men are among the 16 so-called fake electors in Georgia who recently received target letters from Willis informing them they were facing potential indictments in her probe.' (YahooNews) See link below.
https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-trump-allies-launch-effort-to-recall-fulton-county-da-fani-willis-224315547.html
Why am I not surprised? Rhetorical, I know.
It never ends. Imagine if they actually tried governing for a change rather than politicizing everything? Of course that too would be a debacle.
As for the attempt to influence potential future jurors, my biggest concern of all the investigations of Trump and his minions is not that charges won't be filed but they will try to pay off jurors. It only takes one in each case to prevent conviction.
Michael, I think the level of corruption far surpasses what most knowledgeable and attentive people in the legal profession, government service and, perhaps journalism suspected. That's just a guess. Some large number has been feeding off it. We still don't know the dimensions of the corruption. With a large number of Americans having been captured by the propaganda (that spurred the racism/white supremacy always bubbling on the surface) and the Rule of Law bent to favor the wealthy and propertied class as has the economy we are facing a MONSTER.
Agree. A small percentage of corruption is likely discovered, much less prosecuted.
I don't open up to myself about how bad I believe this is because that would be paralyzing. TC frequently says you cannot predict the future. Several points are obvious, however, such as many more Americans have to wakeup, and we need to be more organized and strategic. Social media is a tremendous problem in several ways and a paucity of leadership is another weakness. The situation is far from static; we've had a few good bumps recently.
I heard this yesterday and am very concerned about this.
But the propaganda master still spews like Krakatoa.
If there's one guy on the right for whom Clarence Darrow's famous statement, "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great relish" applies, it is Alex Jones. I would love to read in his obituary that he was taken by persons unknown to a remote mountain cabin, where over the course of about 30 days, he finally met an "excruciating end ." and that he was "howling in the deepest pain" as he expired. It wouldn't be a fair exchange for all the pain and hurt he has spread throughout society, but it would be a good start. And then leave the body dangling by one foot, for all the carrion eaters to dispose of.
The only person I hate worse than Alex Jones is Fatso Fatass.
How is it, TC, that you can -- without fail -- so succinctly and graphicly illustrate my darkest thoughts?
I repress. You express.
Thank you.
I actually Laughed Out Loud at this. :-)
There are certain people who are so despicable that not saying something accurate about them hurts.
I feel your pain, TC.
I know exactly what you mean, David. I have spent the last 45 years trying to expunge the effects of the first 38; my success has been limited but some progress has been made.
Then along comes TC, and I find myself, like you, resonating to every angry and vindictive word and phrase. I think I’ve lost about two decades of emotional toil and sweat. But its so delicious to wallow in the images, imagining the victim of TC’s rage getting his just desserts.
Yes, David. It’s called “cleavered”, I’m told. I call it the grill is hot and sizzlin’.
🗽
TC does provide the alter ego for our otherwise filtered thoughts, doesn't he?
TC, Nothing macabre in store for Mitch McConnell, Bill Barr and Ted Cruz?
My darkest fantasies
If my thought dreams could be seen/They'd probably put my head in a guillotine. :-)
That's so like a Frenchman, who you are not.
Only TFG? But there are so many from whom to choose on this distinctly seditious Wall of Shame.
This brings up something I have stewed over since yesterday’s letter regarding the children taken from their parents at the border and dispersed throughout the country with no records kept. With a new horror daily during that man’s term of office (can’t really use term “Presidency,”) I don’t believe it was ever determined who came up with that diabolical plan. I always suspected the despicable Stephen Miller. Do any of you have knowledge about it that I missed? I feel it still needs to be addressed.
Sue, I have no knowledge of where these children are but fear the worse. I imagine the long exhausting trip of people hoping to find a place to start over ....the money they saved just to make the trip, leaving everything , only to lose their children perhaps believing and trusting that surely in the US, they and their children would be safe.
We must work to find as many as possible.
Be careful what you wish for TC….there is karma of course. Jones will get his as will Fatso Fatass. Such dregs of society!
Unfortunately, my study of history reveals these scum rarely get what they really deserve. When I think of the hell this POS has put those families through....
We don’t know about past lives or future births. They will pay at some point….and it will be as bad or worse than what they put everyone through. AND they won’t be rich mf’s in the next life.
Here here! And hear hear!
I have relished reading Sandy Lewis's posts saying "Trump will be charged, convicted and jailed"---and watching these amazing positives unfold (like the courage of the 1/6 committee). Somehow, I want to believe that the slip-up of Jones's lawyers with texts, etc might have been an accidentally-on-purpose of someone who laid in bed at night, wrestling with their moral conscience.
I truly DO believe that Fatass will be charged and convicted. Jailed? I think that the experience of the first two will cause him to stroke out and die before the jailing ever happens.
Sometimes your most eloquent diatribes are chastised by some on this forum, that being said, I think David Herrick speaks for many!
I have to admit that though they sometimes make me feel like gritting my teeth, I love both TC and Sandy, because I know they both some from a deep sense of caring. Some other people... not so much. They just like targets and leave me feeling nauseous.
He’ll be miserable enough if his money machine stops working.
Karma is damn slow
Jeri, methinks Karma is rarely immediate, and often is, indeed, too slow for our liking! In the current situations, the depth of the depravity and dangerous ramifications need to be revealed so we see it all. Isn't that what Discovery is all about? IMO.
Damn, so many candidates, but I’m with you on this one
The obituary I’d like to read: He was found guilty. He became penniless. He is now dead.
No need to waste any more words on the scumbag.
That would work.
How about the 72 million Americans who voted for him? They are the real problem, unfortunately, and one that doesn’t admit a solution, even a fantasy one.
no question... THIS is what we must heal.
I would prefer that Jones be dropped into a disused missile silo in the Midwest like Krychek in the X-Files.
Do Americans know what reality is? Let’s hope that reality can be based on facts. Thank goodness for the January 6 committee and their work to get to facts and let ordinary citizens know what has been happening.
I found a special gift in my inbox today. It was a newsletter written by our other “daughter”. Dr. Ruha Benjamin is a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, and was a “big sister” to our daughters and son as they were growing up.
I decided to share some extracts from the newsletter here, with the thought that something she has written might spark some fresh initiatives within our digital community.
I hope you find the reading worth the time spent.
Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within.
— Ruha Benjamin
Seeding the Future <> August Edition
“We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story,” so says cultural historian Thomas Berry. In part, I think what it means to be “between stories” is that while more people may recognize past wrongs, we struggle to live in Right Relation.
The Old Stories, in my view, are those scripted by colonialism, racial capitalism, white supremacy, nationalism, and cis-heteropatriarchy… master narratives like Manifest Destiny, “survival of the fittest,” and the Doctrine of Discovery. The latter refers to a principle of international law issued by the Catholic Church in the 15th century – a doctrine that gave Christian nations license to seize and colonize any land they found occupied by non-Christians and to convert and enslave the people already living there. Talk about a deadly story of entitlement and domination (and how different it is from Star Trek’s Prime Directive!). Nevertheless, those cast as victims in the master narrative have always resisted.
Just a few days ago, a large procession of Indigenous protestors made their way inside Canada’s national shrine in Quebec City, where Pope Francis was scheduled to hold mass as part of his nationwide tour. He was there to apologize for the role of the Catholic Church in the country’s brutal “Indian residential school” system in which an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children were stolen from their families, physically and sexually abused, with at least 4,000 dying under horrendous conditions.
Those gathered in silent protest on July 28 held aloft a giant banner that read, in bold red and black letters, “Rescind the Doctrine.”
From Latin, rescindere, “annul, cancel, abolish, remove by cutting off,” and scindere “to cut, rend, tear asunder, split, split up, part, divide, separate.”
Rescind, not simply regret.
Abolish, not simply apologize.
Tear asunder, not simply empathize. Why?
Because unless the old scripts animated by false notions of superiority and inferiority are ripped to shreds, we will be caught in an endless purgatory: forced to inhabit the same tired roles as we advance predictable and deadly plots. Instead, let us clear the way for new stories! Let’s follow the example of those Indigenous protestors who demand that we smash death-making structures and craft new ones that give us life.((O))
OUTTAKES & ARCHIVES
“Chile has a new best seller!” This is how a recent article in Nature described the final draft of Chile’s new constitution. Since it was finalized on 4 July, the document “has commanded massive numbers of online downloads and crowds waiting to buy paperback copies.”
In the Intro to Viral Justice, I briefly discuss this historic rewriting of the Chilean constitution: Consider what began with mass protests over social and environmental injustices in 2019, where Indigenous communities led the charge for a nationwide “reinvention.” Hundreds of thousands of Chileans mobilized, and in late 2021, they elected 155 representatives to completely rewrite their dictatorship-era constitution amid a “climate and ecological emergency.”
An Indigenous language and literature professor, Elisa Loncón Antileo, a representative of the Mapuche people, was elected president of the constitutional convention. She and the other participants posed fundamental questions that citizens of most nations have probably never considered:
“Should the country retain a presidential system? Should nature have rights? How about future generations?”
This is world-building on a grand scale with local communities and Indigenous values guiding every step—a process of re-worlding that doesn’t try to smother differences, one that envisions a “pluriverse” rather than a universe, welcoming heterogeneity rather than enforcing singularity. As professor of Africana studies, Greg Carr, tweeted last December,
“The fight to rewrite Chile’s national constitution should be leading global conversations & everyday talk alike. The people have forced a social structure confrontation, with structural inequities and our planetary environmental emergency at the center. We should all be watching.”
Watching, yes, and asking how we might rewrite our own constitutions; how we might even reconstitute the outworn political imagination that carved up the planet into nation-states to begin with… “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens,” the Baha’i Writings remind us.
This week, as part of a new project I’m working on, I have been looking at how artists and architects have been reimagining borders and belonging. I am reading Ronald Rael’s book Borderwall as Architecture, in which he has repurposed dozens of different walls and structures along the Mexico/U.S. border, asking the question at the heart of all world-building: “What if…?”
Rather than electrifying the border wall to kill anyone trying to cross, as presidential hopeful Hermain Cain proposed in 2011, “what if some of the funds currently used to maintain the borderwall were reallocated for the construction of energy infrastructure?”
For the same amount of money used to build an 87-mile stretch of wall between Nogales and Douglas, Arizona, $333.5 million total, solar farms producing 60 megawatts of electricity could power 40,000 households for “energy-hungry cities of the Southwest.” This and Rael’s many other designs remind us to not only critique the world as it is, but work to reimagine it as it could be. ((O))
Each month I spotlight an organization or initiative seeding justice, usually in a locale where I’m speaking, virtually or in-person. Looking ahead to the event above, I want to shout out ColorCoded LA!
ColorCoded is a space that “centers historically-excluded people in the co-teaching, co-creation, and co-ownership of new technologies.” The ColorCoded team utilizes radical imagination to envision tangible strategies for building a world where Black and Indigenous people are truly free, and where regenerative systems are in place with the intention of caring for the land, water, plants, and animals.
Their work affirms that #TechIsNotNeutral and that #EverythingIsByDesign. By facilitating workshops, participating in projects, and building tools, Color Coded is designed to help us “keep our digital bodies safe.”
Wow! May I copy and share? Or can you point me to the original source? Just Wow.
I googled Ruha Benjamin and found her web page. If you scroll to the bottom, you can sign up for her newsletter. An interesting and compelling voice!
https://www.ruhabenjamin.com/
Thank you for the link!
I, too, would like access to her newsletter.
Bill, I cried as I read this. Thank you for posting. I immediately did a quick search for Ruha's newsletter and subscribed. I've seen her writings quoted elsewhere and believe she is one of the people who appear on some of the panels I watch, and have been impressed. More so reading this. I hope it is ok for me to post the direct link here. https://www.ruhabenjamin.com/newsletter
It is more than alright, Annie. I greatly appreciate your reading her offering and am more than indebted to you for researching her newsletter, subscribing, and sharing the link.
I have always felt that you were among the most astute and principled readers of Dr. Richardson’s treasured “Letters…”, and you have proven me right, once again. Ruha and her parents were treasured friends and collaborators when they lived here. We miss them so much.
Thank you, Bill. I had to set this aside for a while before answering. It touched me in a way I guess I needed right now. Thank you for your sweet compliment, and for sharing your friendship with Ruha and her parents. It brings a little bit of grounding into my world to know a little bit of yours.
Beautiful! Hopeful! Only a few problems with greed, power, prejudice....etc.
One way to look at it is that reality never stops asserting itself, but there are lulls, some times in terms of human's sense of time, extended lulls in which it is possible for humans to pretend that something else entirely is going on.
Reality is indifferent to our games, of course, and will go on and do whatever reality does regardless. If that involves rolling over and flattening fools, so be it. The sad thing is when fools are in charge of the ship of state, and steer into an all -too-real iceberg, a great many innocents tend to go down with them, not all of them even human.
Reality can be a robust, if temperamental, ally when when we choose to play by reality-based rules;, but sooner or later, proves to not suffer fools gladly.
No doubt true, JL, but too late for those "innocents".
Does Alex Jones have the potential to be the Rosetta Stone that unlocks a flood of indictments? His allegiance seems to be to himself, not Trump or GOP per se. Looks like he may have (a lawyer needs to compare word for word to see if he said X and -X unambiguously, we don't know until we see the materials side by side) multiple perjury counts coming both from state court in Texas and perhaps Congressional Committee, perhaps a Contempt of Court conviction for lying about Discovery materials to the judge's face...before we get to any potential but as of now unknown criminal activity related to the breach of the Capitol (but NYTimes reports that texts expose Jones to criminal liability) found on that phone. (I am surprised lawyers didn't claim privilege, though maybe a bogus claim, just to tie it up for a while). Jones is a guy who touches sooo many actors in the Big Lie and Insurrection who maybe does not have inside planning knowledge, but saw heard enough to convict those that do, if he were to cooperate. Once the conviction co-operation ball overcomes its potentially immovable initial inertia, it is hard to stop!
Thanks for the Hannah Arendt quotes. When totalitarian rulers (and wanabees) condition their followers to reject objective reality, it's a short hop to "believe only me."
In the hundred days to come we must confront these liars with the truth and point out their lies again and again and again, right to their lying faces.
The truth will set you free...
Has a nice ring to it, yes?
It does, but you know it don't come easy.
"We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality...”"
That was the operating principle of the entire Republican party once Trump won the primary. They served to spin his bad impulses into worse facts on the ground. To use their populist base to serve their plutocrat paymasters.
Of course the GOP pump was earlier primed to serve Big Lier Reagan (later repackaged as a gently used 'fabulist') in the same way. It goes back to the Big Lie of racial superiority and the Big Lie of American Christianity that great wealth is a demonstration of great godly virtue. Repackaged as 'trickle down' economics. Which perpetuates the privileges of unearned wealth and the burden of undeserved poverty. Along racial divides.