This proposition in the House Republicans' proposed “American Confidence in Elections” Act says everything about the moral state of the R party: "Prohibits taking food and water to those waiting in line to vote."
This proposition in the House Republicans' proposed “American Confidence in Elections” Act says everything about the moral state of the R party: "Prohibits taking food and water to those waiting in line to vote."
Reminds one of the lines formed by fresh arrivals at Auschwitz.
"Freedom" has all too often been taken to mean in America the right to visit onto others -- native Americans, black slaves and their descendants -- the savagery suffered by countless generations of oppressed Europeans.
A process that can -- and will -- go on for ever and ever, until today's carriers of this deadly disease awaken to the evil that possesses them, and turn away, and are healed.
At root, "Woke" is not a blowback black reaction to ingrown racism but white America's all-too-gradual awakening to the vile reality of their own vast shadow: endemic white savagery.
Peter, evil is the word. There is a deep vein of sadism in human beings that I don't think we've fully confronted. It's been there throughout history and tffg has tapped straight into it. He's emboldened people with that tendency to drop even their thin mask of decency.
Alexandra, you describe the ugly reality of how one human being can give voice to the repressed hatreds, rage and resentments of many millions. Hitler had this ability and used it, Putin too has tried to harness this power for his own mean purposes.
As when cancer ceases to be hidden and becomes visible, spreading its metastases everywhere, as when a hidden abscess breaks surface, there can no longer be any hiding from the blood-and-pus reality of that suppurating wound. The ever-present reality of our death is here, staring us in the face... and, in so doing, this ugliness is forcibly reminding us of Life, spurring us to rejoice in the treasure we still have as long as we breathe.
No longer can we die our lives, now we live intensely this fragile, marvelous moment we've been given.
So, crisis is a time for taking courage, a time for overcoming fear and despair.
Nor shall I forget how, as a teenager in a boarding school where patterns of bullying and abuse had been handed down for over three decades, my own generation simply cast all that off once and for all. It was so simple, turning our backs on all that crap. Gone like smoke...
We must take care to accept the reality of our shadow side without according too much importance to "the powers of darkness". They can place a lid on the light, they can't shine darkness into it.
“We must take care to accept the reality of our shadow side without according too much importance to "the powers of darkness". They can place a lid on the light, they can't shine darkness into it.” I deeply wish this beautiful idea would see more light.
Rose, "this" is in the nature of things, I cannot see it as a mere idea, even a beautiful one -- we have far too many of those, far more than our gut could ever digest. Our ideological constipation has rendered us quite unable to perceive what simply is and to adjust to our perceptions. We are beings of day and daylight, we are not scorpions, lice or creepie-crawlies from under a stone.... And yet we've grown so divorced from the natural world and from our own true nature that there's often little left of humanity beyond our human appearance.
A true smile tells more of reality than all the toothy fixed grimaces we and politicians force upon one another, more of what really matters than all the endless mind pollution, the ersatz round-the-clock imitations of politics, philosophy and religion force-fed to us by cheap salesmen via telescreen and smartphone.
You are absolutely correct, Peter. But rather than a commonplace natural state, it currently is more an ideal, a sought-after alternative to a distorted, inhumane and surreal reality where the darker elements and figures of society dominate social and mass media. I wish that tfg’s protagonist role could be sidelined. Alas, thanks especially to network TV and his clan of supporters, he keeps dropping into our consciousness like a recurring nightmare. How can his darkness be avoided and/or illuminated?
Wow! Peter and Rose, right on target! I fear, however, that the stakes for this battle with our shadow side have risen to planetary significance for now we must deal with so much more than nastiness and evil, we must help so many of our fellow citizens let go of their self-interests in the many ways they have grown accustomed to take advantage of our "blue dot" in the galaxy by continuing to buy and use devices which spew CO2 and add to the earth's burdens of pollution by chemicals, plastics and poisons. We are not evil because we pursue our comforts and pleasures, we become so when we do this despite harming our children, grandchildren and ultimately the very planet upon which we live and depend...and it is all happening right now, in plain view!
It’s hard to believe, John, isn’t it? At least some of us acknowledge it is not right and we should do something to preserve our world for our children and their future wellbeing. I have friends and relatives on “the other (far Right) side” who fervently believe our climate is not in crisis but experiencing a natural cycle and that we are exaggerating the situation to promote Liberal agendas. Argh!!! Worse yet is my friend who is so religious (Christian) she believes God will save her from all harm if she prays hard enough. She embodies the “perfect-storm”Kool-aid recipe!
... so, faced with the inevitable dilemma of being swallowed by 'the darkness', our call is to shine our light into that darkness ... how else will it ever be dispelled ...?!
Hi Peter, and Mike - and Fern ... I am not able to keep up with the conversation these days - peace and love to all of you!!! ka
Kathleen, it is so good to hear your voice, JohnM speaks for me. I hope you are well, above all that your wise, probing conversation with yourself is bringing you strength and serenity.
Thank you Peter. This life and these times spin like a whirlwind of epic proportions - makes tornadoes look like pretzels!! It is all I can do to seek the eye of the storm, and stitch together scattered fragments as able - one breath at a time ... thank you so much for your kind words and wishes ...
Kathleen Allen, so good to see you. Yes, it has been a while. At, this moment, the feeling of seeing you has reached my skin, which is radiating the goodness of your greeting to us.
In a somewhat sorrowful mood, I returned to the forum this afternoon. I had been to The March on Washington in 1963; feeling that experience, a sense of history, America and democracy today and Climate Change -- it feels like a miracle to have met your light at this moment. Thank you for coming to us.
When I read the ancient words below for the first time, they sent a course of energy through me from head to toe. I'm honored to be able to share them with you.
This prayer was written by Shantideva, a Buddhist monk of the Mahayana tradition who lived around 700 AD. He was a devoted practitioner who authored the Bodhicaryavatara or Bodhisattva Way of Life.
It is said that His Holiness the Dalai Lama considers this text to be THE source for developing altruism in your character and the "Spirit of Awakening." It is also said that His Holiness the Dalai Lama recites this prayer every morning as part of his waking rituals. So, if you give it a try, you are in good company!
*****
Bodhisattva Prayer for Humanity
"May I be a guard for those who need protection
A guide for those on the path
A boat, a raft, a bridge for those who wish to cross the flood
May I be a lamp in the darkness
A resting place for the weary
A healing medicine for all who are sick
A vase of plenty, a tree of miracles
And for the boundless multitudes of living beings
May I bring sustenance and awakening
Enduring like the earth and sky
Until all beings are freed from sorrow
And all are awakened."
*****
Now, take a deep breath and be still for a brief moment.
What did you feel when reading those words?
The transmission I got is that our highest purpose in this life is to be a source of love and light for others. We're all in this together.
Thank you, Alexandra. But it was all so simple and uncomplicated. We were anything but ideal, we were just the usual mixed bunch. We preferred to do our own thing and let the dead bury their dead.
Nor have I forgotten some of the last sad examples of what we left behind, those boys of 17 or 18 who looked and behaved just like their grandfathers aged 71 or 81....
There's that verse from Auden's September 1st 1939 (four weeks before my birth...):
"I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return."
I am very taken with the razor-sharp irony of a great Frenchman, Montesquieu, commenting on the slave trade in 1748...
"It is impossible for us to take those people for men; because, if we were to take them for men, we'd begin to think that we ourselves are not Christians..."
"If I had to justify our right to enslave negroes, here is what I'd say:
' The peoples of Europe having exterminated those of America, had to enslave those of Africa, using them to develop such vast tracts of land... Sugar would be too dear if we did not use slaves to cultivate the plant that produces it...'"
..." It is so natural to think that skin color is the essence of humanity..."
Alexandra Sokoloff. I agree! Everytime a politician says. "being cruel is not who we are", I understand their positivity and desire to inspire us, but
I disagree with their part truth. As you say we need to face the truth. As human beings, we are ruthless and relentless cruelty and genuine and gentle compassion to each other and to every other species on earth.
M Tree, I don't actually believe ALL human beings are sadistic. That's not what history shows us. There were always plenty of people "back in those times" who didn't act monstrously toward other people.
It's pretty easy to identify sadistic tendencies. We don't do it enough. Children with psychopathic tendencies do respond to loving boundaries and can be brought up to do much less damage. The ones beyond redemption need to be isolated from the rest of humanity to contain their damage. Instead, they're way too often glorified.
Alexandra Sokoloff, I took your original comment to mean that human behavior varies in its destructiveness and that we need to look more closely, face ourselves, and speak and tell the truth about the underbelly of human beings. I agreed with you. Perhaps, I misinterpreted your comment.
Peter, I think you are absolutely correct when you state, "'Freedom' has all too often been taken to mean in America the right to visit onto others -- native Americans, black slaves and their descendants -- the savagery suffered by countless generations of oppressed Europeans." When one looks at how power, and the money to stay in power, are wielded with respect to the environment, voting rights, abortion/reproductive healthcare, and the economy generally, by the wealthy, it appears almost as if they and QWing of the former republican party are trying (sadly, with some success) to create a feudal state out of our representative democracy - the feudalism the original white people left behind on the European continent when they came here. The other motives of those “colonizers” (read, “invaders”) - to force their religious views on everyone (except for good old Roger Williams), to commit genocide against the indigenous populations, to obtain an ACTUAL serf class by force (chattel slavery is functionally the same as serfdom while the enslaved people remain on their masters' land, although profoundly and horrifyingly different in that they could be sold off it, unlike the medieval serfs) - are more obvious, but unlike the deeply held beliefs of the founders of our republic, there is that dreadful undercurrent masked as religion, economic conservatism, human rights for fetuses, etc. At least now it is out in the light, courtesy of the useful idiot Tramp and his minions.
WE of Western European ancestry were the chosen ones to find and conquer the New World. WE freed these lands and mastered the indigenous inferiors who ran uncontrolled and without purpose or use across its plains and mountains. It is OUR birthright to retain OUR position in a world made right by OUR traditions, OUR religion, OUR rule and dominion over America's bounties and American's exceptionalism. IMHO this is the tribal problem for our democracy to realize it's promise. Religious zeal, White nationalism, bonding together in today's Republican tribe, and all the concerns we focus upon (e.g., concentrated wealth, wokeness, ethocentrism, etc) are all manifestations of the WEness being defended by 50+ percent of adults in our country. The remaining 50+ percent of us who believe in a diverse, intelligent, and progressive agenda probably need to disabuse ourselves of for what and where the fight, the war for American Democracy lies. Until that WEness changes, our battle will remain intergenerational. WEness has cripple more than one European empire and been justification to keep the strain pure and beliefs in tribal superiority a useful reason to invade, conquer, and pillage neighbors whose behaviors violated any number of the criteria by which the conquerors distinguished themselves for their WEness. The war for our democracy will not be won be examining the public reasons, the shadowing dancing before us or left there for us to debate. It will come, IMHO, only when our national attitudes are aligned with the fervent goals proposed in OUR Declaration of Independents among at least three generations of the young and enlighted. Just saying.
“Royalty pollutes people’s minds, boy. Honest men start bowing and bobbing just because someone’s granddad was a bigger murdering bastard than theirs was.” Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
This is the only part your message left out - it isn't just "WE" are better, it's also "OUR leader is bigger/stronger/more powerful/BETTER than anyone else's, and that's why we follow him" (it's always a him). Hence the rise of the horrors of Trampism.
Go back to when Reagan went after the unions. Why? They funded the liberals, but nothing was said about the republican funding from businesses. Then SCOTUS made bribery legal.
Alexandra, when pastors preaching the Sermon on the Mount are told that Jesus was too weak, there is definitely a lack of true Christianity in some of the churches.
Mary, I was "happy" (not really, but you get me) to see this. I know there are many non-believers in the forum but most are respectful of others views. While I became a lapsed Catholic with the pandemic, I've never lost the belief in Jesus (or any other name for a higher power, I respect all religions) I told someone that I am a Democrat BECAUSE I am a Christian--the hate that I see in the religious right is just wrong. When people argue that I can't be Christian and support abortion (apparently in some minds the only thing that matters) I say that I will support the Anti-abortion faction WHEN there is free contraceptives, affordable housing, JOBS, and safe, inexpensive childcare, and all people in this bounteous land are FED. Then IF the pregnancy was not a product of rape AND the mother or fetus does not have any life threatening conditions, and the abortion is clearly a matter of convenience due to lack of responsibly (lots of "ands" there, sorry) then I will not attempt to stop the abortion but I will look at the action with disgust. But also question what fell short such that it happened and attempt change so it will not happen again.
While the conservatives used to tout "WWJD" I don't see it that much anymore, and yet, it's something I think of all the time. It seems a good guideline to me. Apparently they Evangelicals don't think so anymore.
Miselle, when US citizens are forced by law to donate blood, stem cells, and organs to save the lives of cancer victims, then I will accept the argument that it is good to put a mother’s life at risk to save an unborn baby’s life. Otherwise, the laws are forcing women (and young girls) to sacrifice their health while giving men a free pass.
Update in GA Alexandra , on 8/18/23, a Federal Judge sitting in Georgia STRUCK DOWN a Georgia Election Law that barred giving water to Voters sweltering in line. ( Hat Tip to Diane Gallagher at CNN.)
This proposition in the House Republicans' proposed “American Confidence in Elections” Act says everything about the moral state of the R party: "Prohibits taking food and water to those waiting in line to vote."
There are no words.
Reminds one of the lines formed by fresh arrivals at Auschwitz.
"Freedom" has all too often been taken to mean in America the right to visit onto others -- native Americans, black slaves and their descendants -- the savagery suffered by countless generations of oppressed Europeans.
A process that can -- and will -- go on for ever and ever, until today's carriers of this deadly disease awaken to the evil that possesses them, and turn away, and are healed.
At root, "Woke" is not a blowback black reaction to ingrown racism but white America's all-too-gradual awakening to the vile reality of their own vast shadow: endemic white savagery.
Peter, evil is the word. There is a deep vein of sadism in human beings that I don't think we've fully confronted. It's been there throughout history and tffg has tapped straight into it. He's emboldened people with that tendency to drop even their thin mask of decency.
Alexandra, you describe the ugly reality of how one human being can give voice to the repressed hatreds, rage and resentments of many millions. Hitler had this ability and used it, Putin too has tried to harness this power for his own mean purposes.
As when cancer ceases to be hidden and becomes visible, spreading its metastases everywhere, as when a hidden abscess breaks surface, there can no longer be any hiding from the blood-and-pus reality of that suppurating wound. The ever-present reality of our death is here, staring us in the face... and, in so doing, this ugliness is forcibly reminding us of Life, spurring us to rejoice in the treasure we still have as long as we breathe.
No longer can we die our lives, now we live intensely this fragile, marvelous moment we've been given.
So, crisis is a time for taking courage, a time for overcoming fear and despair.
Nor shall I forget how, as a teenager in a boarding school where patterns of bullying and abuse had been handed down for over three decades, my own generation simply cast all that off once and for all. It was so simple, turning our backs on all that crap. Gone like smoke...
We must take care to accept the reality of our shadow side without according too much importance to "the powers of darkness". They can place a lid on the light, they can't shine darkness into it.
“We must take care to accept the reality of our shadow side without according too much importance to "the powers of darkness". They can place a lid on the light, they can't shine darkness into it.” I deeply wish this beautiful idea would see more light.
"This beautiful idea..."
Rose, "this" is in the nature of things, I cannot see it as a mere idea, even a beautiful one -- we have far too many of those, far more than our gut could ever digest. Our ideological constipation has rendered us quite unable to perceive what simply is and to adjust to our perceptions. We are beings of day and daylight, we are not scorpions, lice or creepie-crawlies from under a stone.... And yet we've grown so divorced from the natural world and from our own true nature that there's often little left of humanity beyond our human appearance.
A true smile tells more of reality than all the toothy fixed grimaces we and politicians force upon one another, more of what really matters than all the endless mind pollution, the ersatz round-the-clock imitations of politics, philosophy and religion force-fed to us by cheap salesmen via telescreen and smartphone.
You are absolutely correct, Peter. But rather than a commonplace natural state, it currently is more an ideal, a sought-after alternative to a distorted, inhumane and surreal reality where the darker elements and figures of society dominate social and mass media. I wish that tfg’s protagonist role could be sidelined. Alas, thanks especially to network TV and his clan of supporters, he keeps dropping into our consciousness like a recurring nightmare. How can his darkness be avoided and/or illuminated?
Alexandra, Peter, Rose,.....And yet, how little humanity has changed.....
Wow! Peter and Rose, right on target! I fear, however, that the stakes for this battle with our shadow side have risen to planetary significance for now we must deal with so much more than nastiness and evil, we must help so many of our fellow citizens let go of their self-interests in the many ways they have grown accustomed to take advantage of our "blue dot" in the galaxy by continuing to buy and use devices which spew CO2 and add to the earth's burdens of pollution by chemicals, plastics and poisons. We are not evil because we pursue our comforts and pleasures, we become so when we do this despite harming our children, grandchildren and ultimately the very planet upon which we live and depend...and it is all happening right now, in plain view!
It’s hard to believe, John, isn’t it? At least some of us acknowledge it is not right and we should do something to preserve our world for our children and their future wellbeing. I have friends and relatives on “the other (far Right) side” who fervently believe our climate is not in crisis but experiencing a natural cycle and that we are exaggerating the situation to promote Liberal agendas. Argh!!! Worse yet is my friend who is so religious (Christian) she believes God will save her from all harm if she prays hard enough. She embodies the “perfect-storm”Kool-aid recipe!
... so, faced with the inevitable dilemma of being swallowed by 'the darkness', our call is to shine our light into that darkness ... how else will it ever be dispelled ...?!
Hi Peter, and Mike - and Fern ... I am not able to keep up with the conversation these days - peace and love to all of you!!! ka
Kathleen, shine a light indeed!! Shine a beacon! Shine a galaxy of lights into all the dark places in our lives!
Indeed, JohnM ... light of truth ... light of love ... lights of conscience ... integrity ... compassion ... patience ...
forgiveness ... peace ... heaven, earth, breath of life ...
sunrise everywhere ... we are the horizon ...
I so appreciate your voice in this forum JohnM ... I can't keep up right now ...
hopefully, I will catch up with myself and my own healing process and rejoin the conversation next year.
By some miraculous twist of fate and fortune, I have entered a new post about cleanup (not!) at Hanford nuclear waste dump in Washington State.
I invite you and all to check it out at the ENERGY MATTERS Substack page:
https://kathleenallen.substack.com/p/of-all-the-many-issues-hitting-the?sort=top
... peace in one breath ... one breath at a time ...
Kathleen, it is so good to hear your voice, JohnM speaks for me. I hope you are well, above all that your wise, probing conversation with yourself is bringing you strength and serenity.
May you be happy and free, come what may!
Thank you Peter. This life and these times spin like a whirlwind of epic proportions - makes tornadoes look like pretzels!! It is all I can do to seek the eye of the storm, and stitch together scattered fragments as able - one breath at a time ... thank you so much for your kind words and wishes ...
same to you, and more of it!!
Kathleen Allen, so good to see you. Yes, it has been a while. At, this moment, the feeling of seeing you has reached my skin, which is radiating the goodness of your greeting to us.
In a somewhat sorrowful mood, I returned to the forum this afternoon. I had been to The March on Washington in 1963; feeling that experience, a sense of history, America and democracy today and Climate Change -- it feels like a miracle to have met your light at this moment. Thank you for coming to us.
Love and light, dear friend.
Dear Kathleen Allen, I feel your touch and share Peter's care for you. 🌳🕊️
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0qAYq1GVec
From Nick Polizzi at The Sacred Science
https://www.thesacredscience.com/
When I read the ancient words below for the first time, they sent a course of energy through me from head to toe. I'm honored to be able to share them with you.
This prayer was written by Shantideva, a Buddhist monk of the Mahayana tradition who lived around 700 AD. He was a devoted practitioner who authored the Bodhicaryavatara or Bodhisattva Way of Life.
It is said that His Holiness the Dalai Lama considers this text to be THE source for developing altruism in your character and the "Spirit of Awakening." It is also said that His Holiness the Dalai Lama recites this prayer every morning as part of his waking rituals. So, if you give it a try, you are in good company!
*****
Bodhisattva Prayer for Humanity
"May I be a guard for those who need protection
A guide for those on the path
A boat, a raft, a bridge for those who wish to cross the flood
May I be a lamp in the darkness
A resting place for the weary
A healing medicine for all who are sick
A vase of plenty, a tree of miracles
And for the boundless multitudes of living beings
May I bring sustenance and awakening
Enduring like the earth and sky
Until all beings are freed from sorrow
And all are awakened."
*****
Now, take a deep breath and be still for a brief moment.
What did you feel when reading those words?
The transmission I got is that our highest purpose in this life is to be a source of love and light for others. We're all in this together.
Stay curious,
Nick Polizzi
Host of Healing Kitchen: Let Food Be Thy Medicine
& Founder of The Sacred Science
https://www.thesacredscience.com/
Wow, Peter, have you written about your boarding school experience? If not, you really should!
Thank you, Alexandra. But it was all so simple and uncomplicated. We were anything but ideal, we were just the usual mixed bunch. We preferred to do our own thing and let the dead bury their dead.
Nor have I forgotten some of the last sad examples of what we left behind, those boys of 17 or 18 who looked and behaved just like their grandfathers aged 71 or 81....
There's that verse from Auden's September 1st 1939 (four weeks before my birth...):
"I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return."
I am very taken with the razor-sharp irony of a great Frenchman, Montesquieu, commenting on the slave trade in 1748...
"It is impossible for us to take those people for men; because, if we were to take them for men, we'd begin to think that we ourselves are not Christians..."
"If I had to justify our right to enslave negroes, here is what I'd say:
' The peoples of Europe having exterminated those of America, had to enslave those of Africa, using them to develop such vast tracts of land... Sugar would be too dear if we did not use slaves to cultivate the plant that produces it...'"
..." It is so natural to think that skin color is the essence of humanity..."
Alexandra Sokoloff. I agree! Everytime a politician says. "being cruel is not who we are", I understand their positivity and desire to inspire us, but
I disagree with their part truth. As you say we need to face the truth. As human beings, we are ruthless and relentless cruelty and genuine and gentle compassion to each other and to every other species on earth.
M Tree, I don't actually believe ALL human beings are sadistic. That's not what history shows us. There were always plenty of people "back in those times" who didn't act monstrously toward other people.
It's pretty easy to identify sadistic tendencies. We don't do it enough. Children with psychopathic tendencies do respond to loving boundaries and can be brought up to do much less damage. The ones beyond redemption need to be isolated from the rest of humanity to contain their damage. Instead, they're way too often glorified.
Alexandra Sokoloff, I took your original comment to mean that human behavior varies in its destructiveness and that we need to look more closely, face ourselves, and speak and tell the truth about the underbelly of human beings. I agreed with you. Perhaps, I misinterpreted your comment.
M Tree, I think I misinterpreted yours! We agree.
Well said Peter!
Peter, I think you are absolutely correct when you state, "'Freedom' has all too often been taken to mean in America the right to visit onto others -- native Americans, black slaves and their descendants -- the savagery suffered by countless generations of oppressed Europeans." When one looks at how power, and the money to stay in power, are wielded with respect to the environment, voting rights, abortion/reproductive healthcare, and the economy generally, by the wealthy, it appears almost as if they and QWing of the former republican party are trying (sadly, with some success) to create a feudal state out of our representative democracy - the feudalism the original white people left behind on the European continent when they came here. The other motives of those “colonizers” (read, “invaders”) - to force their religious views on everyone (except for good old Roger Williams), to commit genocide against the indigenous populations, to obtain an ACTUAL serf class by force (chattel slavery is functionally the same as serfdom while the enslaved people remain on their masters' land, although profoundly and horrifyingly different in that they could be sold off it, unlike the medieval serfs) - are more obvious, but unlike the deeply held beliefs of the founders of our republic, there is that dreadful undercurrent masked as religion, economic conservatism, human rights for fetuses, etc. At least now it is out in the light, courtesy of the useful idiot Tramp and his minions.
Wow. A powerful statement. Thank you.
WE of Western European ancestry were the chosen ones to find and conquer the New World. WE freed these lands and mastered the indigenous inferiors who ran uncontrolled and without purpose or use across its plains and mountains. It is OUR birthright to retain OUR position in a world made right by OUR traditions, OUR religion, OUR rule and dominion over America's bounties and American's exceptionalism. IMHO this is the tribal problem for our democracy to realize it's promise. Religious zeal, White nationalism, bonding together in today's Republican tribe, and all the concerns we focus upon (e.g., concentrated wealth, wokeness, ethocentrism, etc) are all manifestations of the WEness being defended by 50+ percent of adults in our country. The remaining 50+ percent of us who believe in a diverse, intelligent, and progressive agenda probably need to disabuse ourselves of for what and where the fight, the war for American Democracy lies. Until that WEness changes, our battle will remain intergenerational. WEness has cripple more than one European empire and been justification to keep the strain pure and beliefs in tribal superiority a useful reason to invade, conquer, and pillage neighbors whose behaviors violated any number of the criteria by which the conquerors distinguished themselves for their WEness. The war for our democracy will not be won be examining the public reasons, the shadowing dancing before us or left there for us to debate. It will come, IMHO, only when our national attitudes are aligned with the fervent goals proposed in OUR Declaration of Independents among at least three generations of the young and enlighted. Just saying.
“Royalty pollutes people’s minds, boy. Honest men start bowing and bobbing just because someone’s granddad was a bigger murdering bastard than theirs was.” Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
This is the only part your message left out - it isn't just "WE" are better, it's also "OUR leader is bigger/stronger/more powerful/BETTER than anyone else's, and that's why we follow him" (it's always a him). Hence the rise of the horrors of Trampism.
Peter,
Sadly the absolute truth!
No water, but you can give money to politicians to bribe their votes.
Go back to when Reagan went after the unions. Why? They funded the liberals, but nothing was said about the republican funding from businesses. Then SCOTUS made bribery legal.
EVERY ACCUSATION IS A CONFESSION.
Every time, Rickey. Every time.
Alexandra, when pastors preaching the Sermon on the Mount are told that Jesus was too weak, there is definitely a lack of true Christianity in some of the churches.
https://www.newsweek.com/evangelicals-rejecting-jesus-teachings-liberal-talking-points-pastor-1818706?amp=1
Wow, Mary. I've always thought MAGA evangelicals are the opposite of what Christian is supposed to be, but that's still shocking.
Mary, I was "happy" (not really, but you get me) to see this. I know there are many non-believers in the forum but most are respectful of others views. While I became a lapsed Catholic with the pandemic, I've never lost the belief in Jesus (or any other name for a higher power, I respect all religions) I told someone that I am a Democrat BECAUSE I am a Christian--the hate that I see in the religious right is just wrong. When people argue that I can't be Christian and support abortion (apparently in some minds the only thing that matters) I say that I will support the Anti-abortion faction WHEN there is free contraceptives, affordable housing, JOBS, and safe, inexpensive childcare, and all people in this bounteous land are FED. Then IF the pregnancy was not a product of rape AND the mother or fetus does not have any life threatening conditions, and the abortion is clearly a matter of convenience due to lack of responsibly (lots of "ands" there, sorry) then I will not attempt to stop the abortion but I will look at the action with disgust. But also question what fell short such that it happened and attempt change so it will not happen again.
While the conservatives used to tout "WWJD" I don't see it that much anymore, and yet, it's something I think of all the time. It seems a good guideline to me. Apparently they Evangelicals don't think so anymore.
Miselle, when US citizens are forced by law to donate blood, stem cells, and organs to save the lives of cancer victims, then I will accept the argument that it is good to put a mother’s life at risk to save an unborn baby’s life. Otherwise, the laws are forcing women (and young girls) to sacrifice their health while giving men a free pass.
I read about that earlier this week. Holy Carp!!!
There's a reason for that: they decided an antichrist offered a better deal: https://www.christiantimes.com/news/trumps-offer-to-christians-is-similar-to-devils-offer-to-christ-says-eric-sapp.html
Update in GA Alexandra , on 8/18/23, a Federal Judge sitting in Georgia STRUCK DOWN a Georgia Election Law that barred giving water to Voters sweltering in line. ( Hat Tip to Diane Gallagher at CNN.)
"Prohibits taking food and water to those waiting in line to vote." Now, there’s a thought of which any white Christian nationalist can be proud.