[Note: There is a discussion of rape in paragraph 8.] Today a former U.S. president and the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination turned himself in to be arrested in Georgia. He had to because a grand jury of ordinary Americans indicted him, along with 18 other defendants, for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Seeing Trump's rides to surrender to Georgia for booking on 13 felony counts and return to his home Bedminster, NJ, reverberated with the Trump years.
It was strongest to watch in silence, without the chatter of on-air reporters/analysts/hosts/commentators.
It was during his ride through streets of Atlanta on the way to jail that I sat up. It felt as a communion with fellow citizens.
There was also the relative quiet of his cult. A silence that spoke with possibility of hope down the road.
Below is a gifted link to The Washington Post’s article, ‘Trump’s mug shot was released by Georgia officials. He is the first former president to take one.’
The article includes his mug shot. Look at Trump’s eyes. Those eyes give him away, and they are hard to look at, just as living in The Trump Years have been hell. This shot is our memento for The Trump Years in America, thanks to The Fulton County Jail in Georgia. See the sheriff’s badge on the top right.
WHAT A MUG SHOT! THE TRUMP YEARS! MAY THEY END! IT CANNOT BE SOON ENOUGH!
Some days it feels like the world around me is crumbling. I guess it is. I’ve lived through assassinations and more, but never did I think I’d witness the ongoing premeditated murder of a political party and our democracy.
Remember John Dean, “We have a cancer within-close to the presidency, that's growing. It's growing daily. It's compounding. It grows geometrically now, because it compounds itself.”
Now it has metastasized to the nation and our democracy. There are Americans actually considering a president serving from prison. As the Professor explains, it comes from a dystopian racist past that we are subjected to daily. And we have little mini-Trump hopefuls popping out of the woodwork. Plus we're greeted with the notion that everyman is an island. I don’t think so. Remember our revolution? How would it have gone without the French fleet and all sorts of other French support?
I could not watch the debate and chose to watch tennis and the Yankees. I did listen to various commentaries about the debate and thought Ari Melbers comment was intuitive. He said something like, all the candidates on the stage were akin to Trump's little children and were carrying on Daddy's fight even if he wasn't there. The image of the motorcade escorting him to the station for his arrest and mug shot and his plane on the tarmac waiting to take him back to NJ are shocking. Its surreal and sad. He is a horrible destructive evil strain of a virus.
Thank you Heather. And let’s not forget the members of the Senate and the House who remain active, seemingly as accessories after the fact, who voted against certification of the 2020 election results.
Thank you Professor, the marking of a sad day for our country. I hope all those involved including congressman will be held to the letter of the law and made examples for the traitors they are
Early again! I hope this means you are having a restful rest of your summer. Just caught up with your political chat. I’m so grateful you do those in addition to your letters, your podcast with Joanne and your books. But your chats are priceless. I don’t know why but I get such a sense of community there. 🤓
Let's turn to the dictionary for synonyms for authoritarianism to drive home how chilling Heather's closing paragraph is:
- tyranny
- dictatorship
- fascism
- autocracy
- totalitarianism
Those are the first five. Lower on the Merriam-Webster page are antonyms as well. They further paint a can't-look-away picture of the fight we're locked in. They include freedom, democracy, and self-rule — all now under dire, out-in-the-open threat.
The surprising thing is that it took 236 years for someone to try this. There is a coup sized hole in the constitution and it was there from the start.
My Republican parents, moderates that they were who both became Democrats after the vitriolic 1992 GOP Convention, are rolling over somewhere in the spirit world, astonished that in the 20 plus years after their deaths our nation elected a failed real estate salesman turned reality TV personality.
"Reagan tied government defense of civil rights to socialism, insisting that the government was using tax dollars from hardworking Americans to give handouts to lazy people, often using code words to mean "Black.' "
One of Reagan's "codewords" was captured on tape prior to his presidency:
“To watch that thing on television, as I did, to see those, those monkeys from those African countries – damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!”
"At last night’s Republican primary debate, all the candidates except former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson pledged they would support Trump as the 2024 Republican nominee even if he’s convicted." (Huh. The *former* officeholders. Interesting coincidence.)
Or, to put in another way, Republicans would rather support a *convicted crimminal* than a Democrat. Considering the crimes involved, clearly they would rather support a *traitor* than a Democrat. In their eyes, being a Democrat - a fellow American of a different political persuasion - is lower than being a crimminal, an even worse form of treason, and this seems so self-evident to them that they have no qualms making it known in the most public fashion.
These people claim they are ready to lead a nation of 350 million, yet have no hesitation pledging fealty to someone else who is not even in the room. Someone who - simultaneously - is referring to all opposed to him, a group that includes me and my family, as "animals."
I'm known for being prone to lean toward the lugubrious, but there really is nothing else to be said here.
To the members on this forum who are true conservatives or former Republicans, I am very grateful for you. We may not agree on everything, but we both have chosen to stand with truth, integrity, and empathy over lies, cowardice, and hatefulness. To those still in the cult, I don't like you either, and I'll continue to see you at the ballot box.
Glimpses of light from a distance are finally revealing the truth - about our country, those four awful years, about the grift from the tax cuts to the pandemic relief, and about the man who tried to steal it all away from the American people. Yet, we are still so far away from the light of truth, and the correctness that only Justice brings. We must March on and demand it, without favor or even forgiveness, if we are ever to heal together.
Seeing Trump's rides to surrender to Georgia for booking on 13 felony counts and return to his home Bedminster, NJ, reverberated with the Trump years.
It was strongest to watch in silence, without the chatter of on-air reporters/analysts/hosts/commentators.
It was during his ride through streets of Atlanta on the way to jail that I sat up. It felt as a communion with fellow citizens.
There was also the relative quiet of his cult. A silence that spoke with possibility of hope down the road.
Below is a gifted link to The Washington Post’s article, ‘Trump’s mug shot was released by Georgia officials. He is the first former president to take one.’
The article includes his mug shot. Look at Trump’s eyes. Those eyes give him away, and they are hard to look at, just as living in The Trump Years have been hell. This shot is our memento for The Trump Years in America, thanks to The Fulton County Jail in Georgia. See the sheriff’s badge on the top right.
WHAT A MUG SHOT! THE TRUMP YEARS! MAY THEY END! IT CANNOT BE SOON ENOUGH!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/24/donald-trump-mugshot-georgia/
Some days it feels like the world around me is crumbling. I guess it is. I’ve lived through assassinations and more, but never did I think I’d witness the ongoing premeditated murder of a political party and our democracy.
Remember John Dean, “We have a cancer within-close to the presidency, that's growing. It's growing daily. It's compounding. It grows geometrically now, because it compounds itself.”
Now it has metastasized to the nation and our democracy. There are Americans actually considering a president serving from prison. As the Professor explains, it comes from a dystopian racist past that we are subjected to daily. And we have little mini-Trump hopefuls popping out of the woodwork. Plus we're greeted with the notion that everyman is an island. I don’t think so. Remember our revolution? How would it have gone without the French fleet and all sorts of other French support?
I could not watch the debate and chose to watch tennis and the Yankees. I did listen to various commentaries about the debate and thought Ari Melbers comment was intuitive. He said something like, all the candidates on the stage were akin to Trump's little children and were carrying on Daddy's fight even if he wasn't there. The image of the motorcade escorting him to the station for his arrest and mug shot and his plane on the tarmac waiting to take him back to NJ are shocking. Its surreal and sad. He is a horrible destructive evil strain of a virus.
Thank you Heather. And let’s not forget the members of the Senate and the House who remain active, seemingly as accessories after the fact, who voted against certification of the 2020 election results.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/07/us/elections/electoral-college-biden-objectors.html
He is no longer president #45.
He is inmate #P01135809.
Thank you Professor, the marking of a sad day for our country. I hope all those involved including congressman will be held to the letter of the law and made examples for the traitors they are
215# 6'3"? Oh look.....lie #2313827
Early again! I hope this means you are having a restful rest of your summer. Just caught up with your political chat. I’m so grateful you do those in addition to your letters, your podcast with Joanne and your books. But your chats are priceless. I don’t know why but I get such a sense of community there. 🤓
Let's turn to the dictionary for synonyms for authoritarianism to drive home how chilling Heather's closing paragraph is:
- tyranny
- dictatorship
- fascism
- autocracy
- totalitarianism
Those are the first five. Lower on the Merriam-Webster page are antonyms as well. They further paint a can't-look-away picture of the fight we're locked in. They include freedom, democracy, and self-rule — all now under dire, out-in-the-open threat.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/authoritarianism
The surprising thing is that it took 236 years for someone to try this. There is a coup sized hole in the constitution and it was there from the start.
My Republican parents, moderates that they were who both became Democrats after the vitriolic 1992 GOP Convention, are rolling over somewhere in the spirit world, astonished that in the 20 plus years after their deaths our nation elected a failed real estate salesman turned reality TV personality.
"Reagan tied government defense of civil rights to socialism, insisting that the government was using tax dollars from hardworking Americans to give handouts to lazy people, often using code words to mean "Black.' "
One of Reagan's "codewords" was captured on tape prior to his presidency:
“To watch that thing on television, as I did, to see those, those monkeys from those African countries – damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!”
"At last night’s Republican primary debate, all the candidates except former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson pledged they would support Trump as the 2024 Republican nominee even if he’s convicted." (Huh. The *former* officeholders. Interesting coincidence.)
Or, to put in another way, Republicans would rather support a *convicted crimminal* than a Democrat. Considering the crimes involved, clearly they would rather support a *traitor* than a Democrat. In their eyes, being a Democrat - a fellow American of a different political persuasion - is lower than being a crimminal, an even worse form of treason, and this seems so self-evident to them that they have no qualms making it known in the most public fashion.
These people claim they are ready to lead a nation of 350 million, yet have no hesitation pledging fealty to someone else who is not even in the room. Someone who - simultaneously - is referring to all opposed to him, a group that includes me and my family, as "animals."
I'm known for being prone to lean toward the lugubrious, but there really is nothing else to be said here.
To the members on this forum who are true conservatives or former Republicans, I am very grateful for you. We may not agree on everything, but we both have chosen to stand with truth, integrity, and empathy over lies, cowardice, and hatefulness. To those still in the cult, I don't like you either, and I'll continue to see you at the ballot box.
Glimpses of light from a distance are finally revealing the truth - about our country, those four awful years, about the grift from the tax cuts to the pandemic relief, and about the man who tried to steal it all away from the American people. Yet, we are still so far away from the light of truth, and the correctness that only Justice brings. We must March on and demand it, without favor or even forgiveness, if we are ever to heal together.
AND he (seems to have) lied in his statement of height and weight. The absurdity won't lel me alone.
See Also: https://mas.to/@mickeleh/110947601041026665