My call to action came when I got notice that one of the Capitol policemen is running for office— I signed up to send him a small sum every month and so hope he wins!— his name is Harry Dunn.
I kicked in a one-time $25 to Dunn's campaign, added to my monthly support for Senator, (and future president!) Chris Murphy, and the CT. Democratic Party. As the election nears, I'll start a small monthly give to the Biden campaign.
On Jan 20, 2021, I watched the inauguration of Joe Biden and as I watched, I wrote this song titled, "Broken Roads and Broken Trails -- Inauguration Day." It was a cloudy day but when the Poet Laurate came up to recite her song, the clouds parted for just a few moments and the blue sky shown through. I noted that in my song. Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf7KHm3nLzA
Nice try. The Express is a British scandal sheet that lives to publish sensational articles. When they can't find enough real scandals to fill page one, they make stuff up.
Read the page that contains this article and you'll find out all you need to know about them, and about the likely (in)accuracy of this headline.
Looks like you didn't read very far. That article was quoting Michael Cemblast, the Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset Management:
The fact that Cemblast would publicly float such a thought suggests that there have been back-room discussions regarding the career trajectory of "Corporate Joe" Biden.
I read the article. It's a story about ten "surprise" predictions for 2024, made by someone who has nothing to do with the campaign or the party at all. He is a strategist - a financial strategist, not a political one. and in spite of all those conditionals, the headline of the article is "Joe Biden 'will pull out' of 2024 election on health grounds as approval rating plummets".
Clickbait, pure and simple. Speculation presented as fact, both by the Express and, now, by you.
I suspect that, if the rioters had succeeded in disrupting the electoral vote certification in the House (as in the Senate), Trump would have declared martial law.
The point, of course, is that the counts in BOTH Houses had to be disrupted.
Trump couldn't have reasonably planned his presumed following move without solid support from both the military and the Supreme Court, which leads to further inferences...
Did you follow the Jan.6 Committee hearings? If so, you would surely know how obvious it is that Trump was behind the insurrection. Even Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell laid the blame on Trump in the hours immediately following the insurrection. Why would Liz Cheney throw away her standing in the Republican Party unless she were convinced that Trump needed to be resisted?
I feel that the only thing I can do, in addition to standing up to people in my community, is donate funds. I hope that seeing grassroots fund support from Democrats will get media attention.
Thanks for the info Ralph. I too just donated to Dunn's campaign. I distinctly remember him while I watched on TV that day. That's the type of person we need in Congress!
"In the just released 5th edition of 'Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout' by Donald Green and Alan Gerber, the authorities on voter turnout tactics, they conclude: "handwritten postcards generate an average of one vote per 71 postcards."" Copy & paste from an email from Postcards4VA.com. I'm looking forward to writing LOTS of postcards in the coming months.
I can’t afford much, but I sent him SOMETHING…He has been such a mensch through all of this. He has shown himself to be exactly the kind of person we need in Washington. We do what we can …
Just sent 25usd to Dunn. I have not donated to a political candidate since Liz Warren because they got my info. and I got constant pleas from Dem. candidates. My policy has been to gift bucks to every journalistic outlet on our side. But, I forgot about actblue....
Act Blue takes a percentage of my donation. If I send a check, the recipient gets the whole thing. Act Blue participants dun me all year long. I'm pretty sure that I stopped using them more than four years ago since the credit card that they claimed to have on file for me expired longer ago than that. It makes me uneasy when a company has my card on file.
I've used Act Blue in the past & now, like you, they dun me constantly, And they sent my information to candidates I don't know, so now I get texts from them, too.
I take it you're an ex-pat American who has retained your citizenship. Good. I was afraid you were a citizen of a foreign country who is forbidden from contributing to US campaigns. Carry on ;-)
Well said and done, Liz. As I read Prof. Richardson's report about Valley Forge I couldn't help but feel a sense of immense gratitude to those who suffered, endured and who ultimately won for us the freedom, the democracy, that we enjoy today. It is very humbling. I have no doubt that each of us can do more, donate more, than we do presently. Now really is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country.
...Made up of " a remarkably diverse set of soldiers from all 13 colonies, including Black and Indigenous men" ..........Nearly brought me to tears.........We have to join those patriots in any way we can..........We are Heather's army.
Yes Judith, we are Heather’s Army, diverse, good-hearted, and strong. Some of us can send money; many of us can call and send postcards to our representatives, telling them what we care about. And most of us can talk to our neighbors and friends in a quiet and respectful way. We won’t have our way with everyone--that wouldn’t be democracy--but every vote counts and we can to our best to make sure every vote is well considered, well educated, and fairly counted.
I’d like to see the secretaries of state come out with lots of material about how voting works in their state, the safeguards in place, how they prevent fraud, how the electoral college works etc, and publish it far and wide.
We need to realize that we're now at war and that this upcoming election is our 'Yorktown." We need this win to save our democracy. Had Washington and Rochambeau not defeated Cornwallis, the cause may have been lost. Washington marched his troops from New York to Yorktown, knowing that Cornwallis was in a vulnerable spot and needed to seize that advantage. Some of the troops had to wrap their feet in cloth for they had no shoes. The November election is our Yorktown. I need say no more.
Last night I started rewatching "John Adams" and was on the verge of tears several times thinking of how today's so-called "patriots" have totally subverted the meaning of the word. It took eight years of a bloody, costly war to win our freedom, another bloody, costly civil war to win our unity. Now we have a con man, his "henchmen" and his cultish followers trying to undo it all.
I've observed over the years that the Supreme Court has a habit of not enforcing the US Constitution if it gets in the way of a political objective. For example, its decisions regarding guns completely ignore the comma in the 2nd Amendment and have become increasingly unhinged. In other decisions it insists on "originalism," despite the framers including a method for amending the COTUS, in anticipation of things changing over time. Now the SCOTUS is subverting the Constitution even further by making decisions based on hypothetical situations and downright lies (303 Creative LLC v. Elenis).
Thank you Liz. I will do the same! I just wish WAPO and the NYT felt the same about truth and the urgency declared by our remarkable President to defend our democracy. Maureen Dowd and David Brooks proved the arrogance of their paper yesterday. Making matters worse the times felt the need to counter the article about Biden’s speech with one which shows that he is in trouble with the youth vote. I urge everyone to support the Guardian and write the times expressing your dismay.
Yes, I’m gonna too. Great idea. Joe Biden’s getting 10 bucks a month from me.... I wanna join friends of the Pod, too. So psyched that HCR cited Emptywheel in her notes. That is my go to website for the straight deal. Marcy Wheeler is excellent.
doesn't anyone care that Joe Biden is bypassing Congress to send stuff to Israel?? What do folk think about the influence of AIPAC in our government?? When will we get a true CEASEFIRE??
I do care. I object to some of Bidens policies and decision. But the house is on fire, and one firetruck is pumping water and rescuing people. The other truck is pumping gasoline and pushing people back into the flames.
I thoroughly object to what Israel is doing and I don’t want my tax dollars supporting Netanyahu! I don’t like AIPAC either. But consider the alternative. What do you think Trump would do? He would never support a ceasefire or the mitigation of harm to Palestinians. You might not like it but we live in a two party system and either Biden or Trump will win the election. And one of those alternatives will burn it all down. So withhold your vote from Biden and see what happens.
I find it nauseating that you don't demand Hamas surrender today so we can quit shipping weapons to Israel. The war continues until Hamas said "no more."
I fear we'll ONLY see that "true CEASEFIRE" after the government of Israel, assisted by the government of the United States, either kills or removes all the Palestinians from the state of Israel. It appears the government of Israel will never be able to admit the Palestinians as equal citizens of Israel or settle for a two-state solution from territory that once was Israeli. And, yes, it aggravates me to no end that the Israeli tail still wags the US dog. We should divert all weapons destined for Israel to Ukraine. They are the ones fighting for freedom.
Palestinians are not equal citizens of Israel unless they choose to become Israeli citizens.
I hope that Palis and Israel can negotiate a two-state solution that will benefit both indigenous people of former Palestine. Palis need their own state to take care of their own citizens, but they won't get it by rewarding the vipers that are Hamas with governmental status, or cheering Hamas baking Jewish babies in ovens.
That's my Maryland district. John Sarbanes is not running again. There are 10 other dems competing to replace him, so it will be interesting. There are 8 house districts in MD. Only 1 is R (Andy Harris) and he is one of the Rs who voted to overturn the election. Sadly, his district loves him.
Check Steve Brodner's illustrations in Washington Post (gifted):
This is excellent. The illustrations are perfect and I like the way they divided it up by region making it easier reading. Sadly, a lot of these people will be re-elected. Ugh.
It might be hard to see in the online version, but the paper, which we get only on Sunday, really shows the regional divide. The Southern states take up 1/2 the page and the Northeast, Midwest, and West are lumped onto the other half. Quite revealing.
That dominance of the Southern states comes across loud and clear online. I’m in NC; just kept (and kept) scrolling & seeing Southern states‘ initials noted. Rep for my district (cannot write that as “my rep”; he is not), Hudson (NC) is there; for 2024, he’s being redistricted to a spot deemed more GOP-friendly. And Foxx: Have known her a long time. She’s always been this way but, man, she’s shed all of the disguises now. Thanks for posting this link; I subscribe to WashPost but might not have found this on my own.
Virginia Foxx is the reason I can never live in my ancestral home. She'll not live forever, that's for sure, but the fact that the people in NC-05 keep sending her back to Congress proves I just don't belong there. Well, that and the hyper-religiosity.
Their (R insurrectionists) constituents can challenge their application for the ballot using Art. 14, Sec. 3 of the US Constitution. All 121 traitors still in Congress should have their candidacy challenged!
Yes, we need to replace Senator Kyrsten Sinema with Ruben Gallego and try to get rid of "our" members of the Sedition Caucus: Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, Debbie Lesko and now Eli Crane.
While I wish Harry Dunn well, there’s a whole bunch of Democrats running in his safe blue district. I generally don’t take sides in Democratic primaries. (Adam Schiff and Colin Allred are exceptions this year.).
Perhaps it's time we ask the Biden Administration and Congress to erect a Memorial to those Capitol officers and staff who defended Congress from the Jan 6 attack on our Democratic Republic. Let them vote on the funding before the November election so we can see who supports our Democracy v. those who seek to overthrow our government (Boebert, MTG, Biggs to name a few). In fact, that is precisely what I'm going to do next: write my representative, Salud Carbajal.
Thank you Heather. Another important, informative, and inspiring LFAA.
I continue to worry that the violence committed on January 6th, 2021, this attack on the ideals of the United States, was just the surface of the horrific attack.
It is continuing to unfold, led by those GOP Members of Congress, a corrupt SCOTUS, and has infected State and Local government from sea to shining sea.
We are constantly reminded that the US Constitution is sacrosanct (although the vigor to defend it seems to only be related to the misinterpretation of one of its Amendments). Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment is clear in language and context. While there is no question that Trump should never be allowed to hold any public office, it clearly extends to all those who actively participated in the planning, and more importantly, all those who have continued to obstruct and impede a complete investigation as accessories after the fact.
Until all are held accountable and expelled from office, the thought of “and justice for all” will continue to be aspirational.
Agreed, George, We should not rest until all those who participated, either as a plotter or cheerleader are also charged and convicted. We need them out of office forever
Fay, I note that we seem constantly to be ignoring the financing of subversion, retracing both the original financiers and their modes of transmission, channeling money to political, social and especially judicial action.
In recent decades, organized crime has given ever greater priority to laundering its gains and maximizing material influence by investing in areas like real estate through the corruption of public officials.
There are signs of close alliances between foreign powers, domestic political string pullers and those who constitute their means of transmission, and mafias both on and offshore.
Show me a problem and what are the chances money is at the root. Humans are too easily corrupted. Pay their way and they will support the devil. When politicians know the truth and behave in opposition that is the definition of corruption, i.e. zero integrity. To justify supporting all the lies requires a talent that humans have perfected, i.e. the ability to rationalize anything!!
"Money is human happiness in the abstract; and so the man who is no longer capable of satisfying such happiness in the concrete, sets his whole heart on money."
I'd add that since the abstract cannot satisfy, regardless of the quantity of zeros accumulated, dissatisfaction is guaranteed and, in its train, resentment, envy, hatred and other mind poisons.
The wealthy think themselves envied for their possessions. Surely, but that is because envy is often so active in them. The real problem is how wealth, both material and immaterial, can isolate us from others, from what's essential.
Sadly, I have to agree with a good deal of what you've said. A relative of mine stated once, that he knew many people who were friends, who were far wealthier than he was. He suggested overall, they were not a happy bunch.
One cause of my lifelong (and excessive) stand-offishness in relation to material wealth was seeing, as a child, the deep unhappiness that sometimes came with it for other children.
And how much worse that corruption has become since Himself told us, and also DEMONstrated, it was not only ok but admirable. He said people who cheated on their taxes were the smart ones. He’s the demon on your other shoulder whispering in your ear.
Trump identifies his personhood and success with the amount of money he has (real and imagined). It therefore gives me great smug satisfaction that Letitia James, a Black WOMAN increased his penalty for business misconduct from 250 to 370 mil. Psychologically, for him this is worse than going to prison, it's a death sentence. Having to pay E. Jean Carroll even one $ is the same. I consider the idea that this genetically deformed rapist narcissistic psychopath to again be president a death sentence....
Nice to remember. I have never forgotten Cassidy Hutchinson's portrait of him holed up in a White House dining room watching on television as the food splattered everywhere. Had we had a more vital Congress, the members who supported him would no longer serve.
Millions of TFFG followers never read a newspaper, book or even the crawler at the bottom of Faux News.
We need to display images of the 1/6 rioters beating policies officers.
We need to display pictures of TFFG's poorly designed and constructed wall with holes in it and patched and repatched.
We need to show Josh Hawley giving a fist pump to the rioters.
We need to show TFFG struggling to drink with both hands wrapped around the bottle.
We need to show TFFG's bathroom at Mara-Lago with boxes of Top Secret documents.
We need to show Federal agents in Lafayette Square shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at innocent people and TFFG hold the Bible upside down.
We need to show TFFG standing in church looking baffled and bewildered while everyone else is singing a well known him.
We need to show them Putin and TFFG standing together in solidarity and bombed out Ukranian cities.
We need to show....
MAGANAZIs and white faux-Christian nationalists are not readers. Sure, many of them don't believe their own eyes, but images are more likely to have an impact on most TFFG sycophants.
Correct, Trump himself is a well known coward where violence is relevant. He will incite all his self described "losers and suckers" to do his dirty work for him.
Nothing bothers TFFG more than being called a loser. He knows it's true and so do many of his devoted brain dead followers.
Your comment reminds me of one of my favorite political quotes from Adlai Stevenson.
When Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson was running for president in the 1950s, a supporter purportedly said to him: "Every thinking person in America will be voting for you." Stevenson replied, "I'm afraid that won't do — I need a majority."
Stevenson would have been a great choice for president. If you remember he was labeled "an egghead". A derogatory term for intellectuals. Ike would be hard to beat personality wise and his record as a winning general of the war just passed.
Here is the kicker for me, Fankom: The local law enforcement response was woefully inadequate and understaffed. I suspect there were machinations at the levels above the agency heads that made it so, but I cannot conceive of the situation where they did not have at least the same information that was "out there" that there would be trouble magnitudes of order higher than what they were prepared for.
In no way do I fault those who were on duty that day; Capitol Police, Metro PD, Park Police (the three jurisdictions around the Capitol and grounds); who I fault is those who did not give their agencies riot gear or have tactical units available for response.
That is what I am referring to when I refer to an utter command and control failure. As far as the units that I saw defending the Capitol, I think they did an excellent job with what they had. There may have been a handful of “sympathizers” (I recall one uniformed cop moving a portable barricade) but when the stuff hit the fan, I didn’t see anyone engaging in less that total commitment.
I remain to this day impressed with the bike cops from the Park Police who held the line (bike cops have substantially less protective gear than regular uniformed police) and Eugene Goodman, who by himself kept a group of rioters from achieving the upper offices where (I think it was Pence) were just a door away.
I had the opportunity to consider where my opinions/beliefs and duty stood several times during my career (policing the Occupy Movement, Planned Parenthood protesters, and taking reports from rabidly anti-gay people). Duty always won.
TFG is a clear and dangerous wacko and needs to be silenced. Does he remind you of the worst tyrants in history? Trying to scare people into submission with threats of violence. Those in Congress who fear for their safety are afraid not to support the wannabe dictator. WHERE ARE WE???? This has got to stop!!!
Dangerous wacko? That description really has the ring of truth. Their side has a lot of people backing him. But they have a weak foundation. It’s hard to fight or commit violence against your fellow man for a lie. We have much bigger numbers, a rock solid foundation, and the truth to guide us.
The only possible explanation about his approval rating going up commensurate to his rising indictments and monetary penalties is that he made a deal with the devil...and there's not much we can do about that but pray....
I noticed that was the headline. However the quote was actually “Our country is in big trouble”. I hate click bait headlines wherever they come from. Plus, many don’t read the news but scan only the headlines.
I read the whole article, in several different sites.
What is Trump--"will be wild" mean with his full statement? Trump is deliberately not using legally-actionable words. He's again signaling "stand back and stand by."
My deepest concern is that he will pull out all the stops for violence if he wins... his favorite statement of recent is that he will be a dictator on his first day in office...
We can’t act like his republican enablers who respond to his threats of violence and cower and just go along with him. If there is violence we are going to deal with it. We will not let his threats determine our actions. We will resist him all the way to victory.
Texas voter turnout fell from 2018. It was still higher than other midterms.
In Texas, 45.7% of the 17.7 million registered voters cast ballots in the 2022 midterm election. That’s 7.3 percentage points lower than the state’s total turnout in 2018 but higher than in every other midterm election in the last 20 years.
I agree. I am worried too that the electoral college slants to republicans. It’s gonna get ugly. I hope the democrats have their lawyers ready to go when the sh*t hits the fan.
For those of us "of a certain age", the Warren Court was what we knew as the SCOTUS. That court gave us Brown v. BoE in 1954, and throughout the 1960's made a ton of rulings that bolstered the rights of individuals. His term ended in 1969, and the Court swung back away from the more progressive rulings. What we have today is an abomination of what SCOTUS should be.
The indicted 45th president will lose again if our U.S. Supreme Court allows him to run. He ran twice. Each time he faced voters, his tally came up smaller than before. Those runs for President were before he was indicted for crimes against our Constitution.
I hope and expect SCOTUS will enforce the Constitution. If it doesn’t, resorting to another act of crime and violence by the 45th and his clique would be a another mistake with far more serious consequences. I offer for your consideration what happened in NYC, during the War of Rebellion (i.e. ‘civil’ war) when federal government troops put an end to the Draft Riots.
The indicted 45th will not be given the Constitutional right to run again by SCOTUS. There is no original language in our Constitution which would allow it.
In fact, there is original, self-executing language which prohibits him from running.
Read Section 3, XIV Amendment.
SCOTUS has no alternative but to enforce the U.S. Constitution. We all ought to get our heads around that fact.
“Congress does not need to pass impending legislation for Section Three’s disqualification provision to attach, and Section Three is, in that sense, self-executing.”
Agree! We have citizens who have benefited from our country and it's people and its government and the opportunities our country offers many (but not all) of our citizens.
Yet it is some of these powerful people, here and others in the world, who are breathing life and financial support into DT and his "gang".
I continue to be confounded with "church going" citizens who support this godless self-centered person.
I live in a red town that doesn't even have a stop light. But we have 8 churches, 4 bars and a gun range. These church members are aging and fighting spiritual warfare on the front lines. They love Agent Orange because he validated their hate. He said it's ok to abuse people. They are racists. They are misogynistic and homophobic. But they love Jesus. The guy that plows our driveway shows up and starts in on immigrants. He's an Elder in his church. We tried talking to him to no avail. I pointed out his hypocrisy but I just got the deer in the headlight look as usual. They hang hate flags on their properties. One guy has a 40 ft lighted cross with a Trump flag on it. Another has a fucking video screen in his yard flashing Trump. These are the community church members.
It’s also unfortunate the MAGA movement has co-opted the American flag. I used to proudly display it on appropriate major holidays and after 9/11 to show American unity. No more.
They CANNOT take my flag. I used to fly it along side a flag that was a black field with a blue stripe (not the thin blue line flag after I saw how it was corrupted) to honor fallen cops. It now flies all year with a pride flag to its right.
Me too Dave. The day after the insurrection my town had flags flying everywhere. It was creepy. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The KKK are now called Patriots for Liberty.
They do not own the American flag, any more than the word “patriot”, or religious symbols. They don’t decide what the words and symbols mean for the rest of us.
Do you have any ideas how we might redeem & save our flag from the desecrations of the maga-wave-wear -magnify gang? Thinking that HCR readers being smart-creative- & much more might have some brilliant ideas.
I love my 150 yr old farmhouse. We live on 10 acres and we got it cheap 14 yrs ago. We have put a ton of work it. I really didn't know that this town would be a better fit in Arkansas. I saw an article a few years ago where they did a study of the most drunk counties in the country. Mine was number 1 in Minnesota. I keep to myself. However, it's difficult when the crap comes out of their mouths it's hard for me to stay silent. Real hard. I don't like bullies.
Hello from a fellow Minnesotan (who happily lives in a liberal St Paul neighborhood)!
My family is mostly in Ohio and they are almost all Republicans. I still dislike Thanksgiving because of the years of racist table talk. As soon as I graduated to the “adult table” I started arguing with my Nazi uncle (truly a Nazi - as was confirmed by the Nazi magazines and newspapers in his home when he died). Years later my mother said “why are you arguing with him? That’s what he wants.”
That changed everything. I can’t/won’t give even tacit approval to racist talk. But now, I walk away - not angrily but clearly not willing to listen to such talk. It has resulted in family at least being alerted to my feelings. And by withholding reinforcement (yes, I did study behavior modification many years ago), that conversation has been extinguished in my presence. It’s all I can do but I think it helps!
I just finished my DBT therapy and moving on to my complex trauma therapy as a result of 64 years of narcissist abuse by numerous family members. I know better than to engage with them. But when I see injustice or bullying I don't back down. My therapist is trying to soften my edges. Good luck with that. I'm incapable of small talk. I tried. It breaks my heart in a million pieces when I see someone being abused. When they try to bully me it's game over. Narcissist abuse is in our faces everyday. Agent Orange normalized it. I'm always learning and I try to do better. Thank you for your comment.
Very true Emily. I think many (not all) churches sold their soul for George W. Bush’s faith-based initiatives which accelerated the erosion of separation of church and state. The flow of wealth has subverted the American experiment in many ways.
There are many evangelicals who are hoping for the end of the world, as they believe they will either be spared by being taken up in a "rapture" and/or that it is the fulfillment of biblical prophesy. They are fervently hoping this will be the case. They support Trump because they believe he is the one who is going to bring this about. He just might. Though it will reveal not Heaven but Hell.
The "church going" are in demographic decline. Abortion, gender diversity, trans, "god" removed from schools, "corrupted" libraries. This stuff is liquid nitro to them. "Better the devil we know". And this is not just the baptists. Add catholics of the right persuasion.
'How the GOP’s rewriting of Jan. 6 paved the way for Trump’s comeback' (Washington Post, excerpts)
'Pressure from family members and advocates for accused rioters was amplified by online influencers and right-wing media figures, leading lawmakers to minimize, excuse and deny the violence and rehabilitate Trump'
'Attempts to minimize, excuse or deny the violence of that day began with people returning home from the mob and intensified with family members of rioters, including the mother of a woman killed at the Capitol. Their cause became championed by pro-Trump writers Julie Kelly and Darren Beattie, and amplified by prominent right-wing media figures. The grass-roots and media pressure then spread from far-right lawmakers such as Reps. Paul A. Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene to take over the Republican mainstream.'
'Now, on the third anniversary of the nation’s first interruption to the peaceful transfer of power since the Civil War era, Republicans’ attitudes about Jan. 6 are increasingly unmoored from other Americans, and Trump holds a commanding lead in the race for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.'
'The share of Republicans who said the Jan. 6 protesters who entered the Capitol were “mostly violent” dipped to 18 percent from 26 percent in December 2021, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. More than half of independents and about three-quarters of Democrats, on the other hand, believe the protesters were “mostly violent,” numbers that have remained largely unchanged over time, the poll found.'
'The percentage of Republicans who hold Trump responsible for the attack dropped from 27 percent to 14 percent, compared with 56 percent of independents and 86 percent of Democrats. More than a third of Republicans said they believe the FBI definitely or probably organized and encouraged the attack — a conclusion contradicted by an extensive congressional investigation and more than 725 completed federal prosecutions.'
'At that time, even Trump was still denouncing the violence. In a Feb. 28 Fox News interview, he defended his rally before the riot as' “a love fest,” but as for the siege of the Capitol, he said, “I hate to see it. I think it’s terrible.”
'The biggest exception was Tucker Carlson, then the host of the nation’s most-watched cable news show, on Fox News. In March, he invited Kelly on to question what caused the death of Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who died the day after fighting the mob, including being attacked with pepper spray. (The D.C. medical examiner later concluded that Sicknick died of natural causes after two strokes, but that “all that transpired on that day played a role in his condition.” Sicknick’s assailant, Julian Khater, pleaded guilty in 2022.)'
“The details of that day matter,” Carlson said, “because they’re being used as a pretext for changing this country.” Carlson did not respond to requests for comment.'
'Carlson also took an interest in another fatality connected to the attack: that of Ashli Babbitt, the Trump supporter who was shot trying to enter the lobby of the House chamber while lawmakers were evacuating. In the months after the riot, far-right communities online started portraying her as a martyr and trying to identify and harass the officer who shot her, according to Holt’s research for the Atlantic Council.'
'In June, Carlson brought on Babbitt’s widower, who repeated the call to identify the officer who killed her. “The silence is deafening,” he said.'
In early 2023, Trump allies began producing a track of the inmates singing the national anthem, mixed with a recording of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. He played the finished song — “Justice for All,” featuring the “J6 Prison Choir” — to open the first campaign rally of his 2024 campaign, in Waco, Tex., in March 2023. The song jumped to No. 1 on iTunes.
The next month, Trump dropped into a diner while campaigning in Manchester, N.H. The crowd inside started calling out that there was a “J6er” present. She was Micki Larson-Olson, who had been recently released after serving a 180-day sentence for unlawful entry onto public property. Trump called her over, hugged her and signed the backpack she said she was wearing that day.
By May, Trump expanded his pardon pledge, now promising to “most likely” grant clemency to “a large portion” of Jan. 6 defendants. “And it’ll be very early on,” he said in a CNN town hall.
At a rally in Durham, N.H., last month, he went further than Kelly’s phrase for the Jan. 6 defendants.
“I don’t call them prisoners,” he said. “I call them hostages. They’re hostages.” (WAPO) See gifted link for entire article.
Great detail Fern. And the mainstream media is complicit, fueling the flames of “both-siderism” instead of continuing to deliver facts, evidence, and calling Trump, his co-conspirators, and accessories out for their crimes, obstruction, and blatant lies.
George, understanding why a large number of Americans are unmoored from reality -- the transfer of wealth; loss of communities; unions and local newspapers; the effects of technology -- there were major aspects of daily life that led to social cohesion, which are no longer part of our foundation.
These losses and others have led to our vulnerability to propaganda, conspiracy theories, mistrust in government. The lack of local journalistic sources and frequent exchanges with one another ups the challenge of bridging our differences.
If the figures are correct, that approximately 54% of American adults ( age 16- 74) read at a 6th grade level or best, think about how that impacts comprehension & critical thinking skills. How are most 6th graders respect to critical thinking? I would suggest, those are to a minimum. I was told my son, who's an adult now, in 3rd grade was reading & comprehending at an 11th grade level. He was always able to drill down to the facts, separating them from the fluff. Sadly, I couldn't say that about a good many of his friends. Seemed they were lost in the weeds, sadly. And those, would in all likelihood, be voting for a trump & subscribing to maga propaganda & conspiracy figures.
There are moments I am in despair, as to where we are going as a nation. I continue donating to worthy dem candidates, to President Biden's campaign, thinking in that there is a glimmer of hope. Yet still i think, thank God I am on the other side of 50.
Your point is well taken Bonnie. Can't always judge intellect on reading abilties though.
As a volunteer literacy tutor I am reminded of Tim a 60-ish year old big burly teddy bear like man. I tutored him weekly for a few years.
There was nothing dumb about Tim. He was never diagnosed with Dyslexia as a child. He was told he was stupid his entire life.
Tim was a life-long heavy equipment operator for the same large local company until a few months before his retirement date. He was let go with no pension. He could not read so he could not fill out job applications. It was at this point Tim decided to learn to read.
Like I say Tim was not stupid. He mistrusted the banking system so he bought houses instead. He owned 10 properties.
Agreed. And I don't mean to paint all with the same brush. But I am suggesting that a large swath of trump followers ( not the ones who are wealthy & hoping to benefit financially via a trump presidency) tend to be poorly educated & not inclined to fact check.
I recommend Timothy Snider’s book “On Tyranny”. He presents 20 ways to recognize tyranny and how to inoculate ourselves against it, using examples from the 20th century.
Fern, when you say "...there were major aspects of daily life that led to social cohesion, which ar no longer part of our foundation." you have said something profound, and on so many levels.
As a kid (b. 1958) we all watched the same cartoons. Our folks all watched the same news, albeit on one of 2 (later 3) channels. We all followed the same TV shows. As a young adult, we still watched the same shows, and had "water cooler conversations" at work/school about those shows (MASH, Mork and Mindy, Seinfeld, Dallas, Star Trek TNG) which led to a cohesion. There were times you knew not to call your friends because "their" show was on. We still watched the same news. With the advent of cable tv, we got to watch reruns of shows we'd seen as children (Gilligan's Island, Beverly Hillbillies). We all went to the same movies, at the same one-screen theaters.
Far, far different from today. I think that the unfettered propaganda spewed out by various sources, and the absolute lack of local journalistic sources has, as you state, makes bridging our differences hard, because we don't have a that social cohesion of shared experiences when it comes to viewing/movie watching/news perusal.
Ally, I had the chills, while reading your breakdown of our sharing in the past. It is about speaking the same language. We had our differences, preferences and arguments, but we knew what each other was talking about.
Fern and Ally, I appreciate your thoughts today especially. The idea of speaking a common language, and having a foundation of shared experiences. We are seeing the loss of real connection to others in the rise of addiction, anxiety, depression and premature death.
Building community and connecting ourselves to others is how we will make the positive changes we want. I’ve heard HCR say this very thing.
Fern, I wonder if we really knew what people different from ourselves were talking about. I never saw a Black person until high school (where one young man briefly attended). I never knew a LGBTQ person (at least one who was out) until I started working in human services. I never had conversations with people living in poverty or homelessness until after college. You and Ally really made me think: was my assumption that we had a shared experience a fantasy?
But much of our lives have been dominated by American propaganda. We’re the ‘good guys’. Really?
As to trust, do you trust the government? No one should.
Our milieu, imo, comes back, inevitably, to capital vs. labor, with race being an integral component of capital’s divide and conquer approach to keeping labor on the losing side of the ledger. When people are constantly economically stressed, they are ripe for all sorts of fallacious thinking to make it past the good sense firewall.
We’re in a dark place.
But not the darkest, at present. Not even close to the unspeakable horror taking place in Gaza.
Here's a quote worth thinking about as we hope for more light in the darkness:
"I painfully regret that in almost every political controversy of the last fifty years the leisured classes, the educated classes, the wealthy classes, the titled classes have been in the wrong. The common people-the responsible toilers, the men of uncommon sense-these have been responsible for nearly all of the social reform measures which the world accepts today". -William Gladstone (1884)
Gladstone was the Prime Minister of UK from 1808-1894. His father was one of the largest slaveholders in the British Empire (2,508 slaves, 9 plantations in the Caribbean). He was known as "The People's William".
Google him-he was an interesting guy who believed in equal opportunity and limited government.
We'll see which group of "common people" rise up to help us mend fences between laborers. Some recent union actions shined a spotlight on some of the issues. There's at least some hope...
Yes, Fern. I believe the marketing and advertising industry had a lot to do with normalizing being lied to. They made their public believe they lacked something and that they could provide the product to fill that lack. Their dishonesty became something we were beaten over the head with daily, for life. Most everyone bought it.
I’ve dropped my NYT subscription, but still get a page of headlines as I access the crossword puzzle. President Biden’s remarkable speech on January 5th seems to have been relegated to page 11. Trump sells, decency doesn’t. It’s disgusting.
Very true. I continue to write that any meaningful attempt at any form of democracy requires an informed, educated, and engaged society. All three pillars have been assailed since Reagan (who also accelerated the concentration of wealth and thus, power). The apathetic lack of engagement is disturbing to witness (and why I continue to build https://civ.works).
FDR: “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education…to prepare each citizen to choose wisely and to enable him to choose freely are paramount functions of the schools in a democracy.”
There are highly educated people backing Trump. They don’t trust anything they read from MSM or government backed info sources. Their doubt has only grown as Influence peddling has been uncovered or existed or even made up. They distrust Biden, who one points out has two wars during his campaign, while Dt had ‘none.’ Their disgust with the current system is strong. Dt sowed seeds of distrust— can’t trust anyone— and far right media plus internet posts amplify. There is deep distrust and even paranoia there. This isn’t going to be easy to heal.
There should be deep distrust of government, by everyone, regardless of political affiliation. The main purpose of the Founder’s ‘checks and balances’ paradigm was to prevent the concentration of power in government, because it wasn’t to be trusted.
America was sleepwalking through the past fifty years as a slow-moving corporate coup took place, with monied interests buying both political parties, and all of the checks and balances. We… are… owned.
We need our revolution, the one Jefferson referenced that is necessary when government ceases responding to the interests of the people. For all the hysteria about 1/6, some justified, some not, the fact remains that frustration over governing dysfunction leads, inexorably to rebellion. Ask those who threw the tea into Boston Harbor.
The men who threw the tea overboard had the right target, the East India Company, not King George. The failure of the people on 1/6 was targeting a government building owned by monied interests, instead of the corporate headquarters of Amazon, Raytheon, Boeing, ADM, etc. Wrong target, same frustration.
Until laser focus comes to ‘why Trump’ instead of’GOP sucks’, we’ll continue to circle the drain.
Tom, the "being owned" points right to oligarchs, billionaires, the KOCH and ALEK factions, the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation, and others all pulling strings so their puppets will dance.
But that is not all that is going on. We have (at least at present) an EPA that makes a valiant effort to regulate environmental degradation. We have Social Security and Medicare and, at least in some states (I live in Minnesota), learned, inquisitive, compassionate, and excellent Senators whose vision is trained in the direction of greater freedom and ethical responsibility.
So I ask you: Will you only trust government if it achieves 100% of what you want? I do not think of trusting government at all. I expect people to act in ways that do damage to themselves and others. It's a fact of human life.
But I also see that I live in a country where in Florida the people who care about women's health care could work hard and get a measure on the ballot to ensure abortion when needed. That's just one example of what people do to re-balance the odds and right the wrong. The Florida Supreme Court might disallow the proposed law. . . but maybe not. Nothing is guaranteed. Still, they tried.
Sometimes I think the posture of "both sides are corrupt" results from wanting to be pissed off and veiling it with a mask of self-righteousness. Am I wrong? Is it really reasonable to see only what you don't like and not see what is encouraging and hopeful?
Yes-but King George legitimized the East India Company...and remember according to SCOTUS (a branch of government) corporations are people and "United Citizens" in America can make all the donations they want to buy politicians in the land of the free. Government has the power to sanction/regulate corporations, but we've gone down a dark hole as wealthy people play their games to maintain power and control.
That is the thesis of Al Gore’s book “The Assault on Reason.” The book cover: “Al Gore’s larger goal in this book is to explain how the public sphere itself has evolved into a place hospitable to reason’s enemies; to make us more aware of the forces at work on our own minds; and to lead us to an understanding of what we can do, individually and collectively, to restore the rule of reason and safeguard our future.”
Publication 2007, lots about GWB. I can imagine what he would say about DJT!
Yes, I totally agree with you. Trump is ineligible to hold public office for life due to his participation in an insurrection according to the letters of our Constitution. Likewise, those members of Congress who aided Trump are equally as ineligible to serve. These people have gotten away with a whole lot of bad sh*t. They are still being paid salaries that are taxpayer-funded. They are working against the American people whose livelihoods they vowed to protect. I resent this injustice very much. These people, along with Trump, need to be 14th Amendmented out of their jobs.
My favorite part of today's missive was about the three siblings who participated in the riot whose family owns the 'Rapture Guns and Knives, described on its Facebook page as a “christian owned Gun and Knife store” ' You can just picture Jesus rolling his eyes around....
I would hope that this time around, the court wil not consider ankle bracelets as part of the sentencing of those three fugitive criminal insurrectionists arrested in Florida, as reported by HCR. I note that they were connected with a knife and gun store that was 'christian-owned' according to its Facebook posting. I am suspicious of any business that uses the religion of its owners to solicit business from the general public. In an upcoming posting on my blog, I touch upon such subtle antisemitism, and racism as well, that can be found among too many of Donald Trump's right wing supporters.
Ally: I usually go a bit further on my blog than I do on here ... but here is a draft of how I will be posting this on my blog (Jackspotpourri) later this week.
"When Donald Trump talks about mass deportation of immigrants, some of whom he recently referred to as ‘vermin,’ retribution against those who have not shown loyalty to him, and using the military and the Department of Justice to carry out his punishment of them and those behind any civil or criminal charges against him, you get a picture of who he really is. And it is not a nice picture. It is that of a tin pot dictator.
But that picture appeals to a significant number of Americans who, although they will not readily admit it, includes those who feel that our government spends a disproportionate amount of its tax-funded resources to benefit people of color who number only between 13% and 14% of our population, and that too many of its decision-makers are Jews who number only a little more than 2% of our population.
They don’t come out and say these things. They don’t boast about their racism and antisemitism in public, but that’s what they mean when they talk of ‘welfare queens’ and disparage ‘Critical Race Theory’ and ‘Diversity-Equity-Inclusion’ ideas without even attempting to understand them, and repeatedly refer to our country’s ‘Christian’ founding, exemplified by the current House Speaker who puts his evangelical religious beliefs ahead of the Constitution that he is sworn to uphold. And of course, these folks always vote Republican."
Jack-I think a lot of the subtly is lost-racists are loud and proud now. People of color are actually about 41% of the U.S. population now. The Census category "White only non-Hispanic" is 58.9%. Trump's supporters are overwhelmingly in the White only category-and yes-the majority of them vote Republican because they've bought into racism. They're alarmed and their responses to our changing demographics are cruel. They "fear for their lives".
I'm keeping the faith that in 2024 enough people of goodwill will crush these folks who want to keep us divided.
Hear, hear. Indeed, the GOP or its MAGA frontispiece, has wrapped itself around the Big Lie, fronted by Trump and all too many astute operators and gullible citizens. It looks like a group of Jan 6 insurrections are reviving their efforts as part of the 2024 campaign, verbally reneging on their confessions.
You wrote: "While there is no question that Trump should never be allowed to hold any public office, it clearly extends to all those who actively participated in the planning, and more importantly, all those who have continued to obstruct and impede a complete investigation as accessories after the fact." I suspect that this is the primary motivation for those in Congress who clearly know they committed acts of treason before, during and after J6; talk about cleaning out the swamp!
Indeed Ellen. And they know since Nixon was not held accountable for his crimes, they feel they have license to act without recourse. Furthermore, the Trump/MAGA party (no longer the GOP) will just scream “look what America does to political opponents!”. The consistent response from the DOJ, the AG’s, and the DA’s working to prosecute the offenders should be: “No. This is what we do to criminals who betray their oath of office and act to undermine the very system they are supposed to be committed to defending.” And then they should all sign “Yours in Service”.
I love that "yours in service"! Plus, the reminder that the rule of law is applied to CRIMINALS who betray their oath of office. If these folk do not like the consequences of their actions, they have choices to make. Whining is not a very effective choice, as I see it.
If delusional hypocrisy was a crime, Heather just proved the guilt of the insurrectionists and their millions of followers.
And, FWIW, yesterday I saw five pickup trucks in convoy flying American flags and displaying Trump propaganda on I-5 in Oregon between Eugene and Portland. I guess for them Jan. 6 is a day to celebrate treason.
With the rise of AI, we need to be careful about our future. I've been using ChatGPT, and when you pose it precise questions regarding a programming problem, it can solve your problem in any programming language. Often this takes an extended conversation to get what you are after, but this is usually just the process of you formulating your thoughts.
ChatGPT insists it is not conscious or thinking, but how then does it know how to program really well and also respond as a very polite human?! Just a sample of one of many programming conversations is below:
Able-minded citizens concerned for ordinary Americans' freedoms will have to be most attentive to the potential of generative AI for political and mass electoral use and, above all, abuse... doctoring both images and verbiage...
Much thought must be accorded to how citizens' ability to distinguish genuine from fake has already been gravely compromised during the past half century and how stereotyped behavior, both verbal and body language, leach from TV and Internet imagery into our own behavior patterns, both unconscious and conscious.
I'm not sure you have it right in your comment. Certainly there is AI for malicious political purposes. My points have been rather regarding the apparent intelligence that ChatGPT has shown. I've used ChatGPT to tell me how to use various Linux command-line tools to accomplish things like automatic text replacement using the very old and venerable sed command. How does ChatGPT know how to use *every* Linux command line tool?! How does it know how to program in C++ with good programming practices, comments, and how to adapt the program to your needs?
No, I think everyone here is missing the point. AI is here, with intelligence.
TCinLA answered your query correctly. Automatic code generation for text input has been around for a while now. Since writing code is fairly well structured, you can set up subroutines that consume text with specific keywords and generate a set of instructions to do what you ask for.
Extending that to voice commands is trivial.
As TC said: You "train" the code to recognize a series of characters to do a specific thing.
That seems amazing to folks who are not working in the programming field, but, it is not really all that hard to do. Time consuming, yes, but not hard. Chat GPT has automated the training part so it has shrunk the time to outcome.
And, yes, AI is here with "intelligence". As you state. But, "intelligence" is a very broad and ill defined term of use.
An IF statement is intelligent yes? If you want a then d,e,f occurs. Right? Extending that with the ability to change the code in the face of new information is also not hard, just time consuming.
ChatGPT is a cool and useful tool, no doubt, but, Matt, you are missing the point.
Lots of things have intelligence born out of the passage of time and evolution. Now, we have code that can evolve based on new information as JL has pointed out to you correctly.
It was not hard to create that. Just time consuming. Like evolution.
Matt, I am always aware of the hidden costs and losses that come with what's gained by technical innovation, yet it was and is far from my intention to focus exclusively on abuses, both potential and real. Thanks for reminding me that I did not make that clear.
You speak for what's to be gained, and it speaks for itself.
Maybe useful to bear in mind Alfred North Whitehead's words:
"Intelligence is quickness to apprehend, as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended."
Not a lot of difference from doing a web search for programming examples. If I assume that's what ChatGPT is doing, amassing results of web searches into databases, I'm probably not far from right. I guess I can't see how your example shows intelligence.
Matt, is there anything currently preventing AI from becoming just as effective and “sentient” in developing propaganda? I got your point about AI intelligence (though I know nothing about coding!) but it does seem like right now that intelligence could be directed to misinform, mislead and manipulate, among other things I right? The other side of the coin.....
Perhaps yes, and that is where I would hope something like watermarking be required, to identify AI- produced video and audio, etc., along the lines of how U.S. paper money is watermarked.
Fine. But are you completely ignoring the correctness of the code it spits out, amazingly? How does it do this? And Open AI is only publishing publicly Chat GPT.
Didn’t I just see an AI advertisement on YouTube that was DJT warning us of the future dangers? Did anyone else see it? I turned it off in the middle but was struck by its message and delivery. I failed to find the source.
"Yes, there was a starship named USS Valley Forge in Star Trek! It was an Excelsior-class starship operated by Starfleet in the 24th century. The Valley Forge fought in the Dominion War and was involved in the Battle of Chin'toka in 2374. It's one of many iconic ships in the Star Trek universe that have made their mark on Federation history. 😊"
Great historic reference, thank you, Dr. Richardson. The difference between true patriots as seen during those difficult months in Valley Forge and the smirk exhibition of entitlement on those fighting against a democratically processed election is clear as glass. In the words of Winston Churchill, "Never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense." No matter how entitled Trump's followers think they are, Democracy is worth fighting for. If they admire fascism so much they should emigrate to Hungary.
Biden began the speech by outlining what the soldiers in the Continental Army quartered at Valley Forge had fought for. “America made a vow,” Biden said. “Never again would we bow down to a king.”
"staffers who delayed their evacuation of the Capitol to save the endangered electoral ballots"
Over the past three years I have wondered who these people were, as they were essential to seeing that democracy survived on January 6th. What would have happened if the ballots had been stolen or destroyed? Maybe the staffers don't want their names publicly known but perhaps they could be acknowledged in some other way. I'd love to know the whole. story behind their actions, the risks they took, their presence of mind and sense of duty that saved the 2020 presidential electoral ballots.
Story says, "Update: These are two of the women as they carried the electoral votes to chambers earlier on in the day before the riots. One of them - a sophomore at Emory University, who with her colleagues had to flee as the rioters broke down the barricades- clarified that it was members of Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough's staff who safeguarded the electoral votes from the insurrectionists."
Agreed, would love to hear their story, sons and daughters of law abiding American Citizens, they’re calls to loved ones, which I am sure was anything but a “normal tourist visit”. Fact that the Capitol was closed like most buildings in America due to both Covid and the congressional business and only those with passes from the congress and senate could attend, no one else. Why is this not repeated and repeated. The continual lie that this was “Antifa” or an FBI plot when the FBI was controlled by Trump appointees could not be more absurd. As Heather points out the continual effort to rewrite history is not only wrong it’s horrifying. It’s like trying to say 911 did not happen.
Heather's insight rings true(as always!). Commemorating January 6th insurrectionists as heroes distorts history. Let's honor the genuine patriots: the Capitol defenders, like officers Goodman, Dunn, Edwards, Gonell, and Fanone, who risked everything. Recognizing their sacrifice safeguards our democracy. Let's unite in celebrating those who protected our Capitol, reinforcing the values that truly define us as a nation.
As much as I enjoyed today's LFAA, I was disappointed that she didn't mention Officer Brian Sicknick in her list of Jan 6 heroes. He died that day, and he deserves recognition as a hero.
Listening to NPR yesterday and found it disheartening that one caller said that the media was making to much of Jan. 6th. People were just having a peaceful protest which was the right. Two guesses who he supports.
I just hope Mr. Teflon finally gets what he deserves.
NPR used to be largely subsidized by our taxes. However, republicans didn't agree with the "left wing ideology" (truth) they would report on their airwaves and in response mounted a campaign towards "defunding" NPR. If I recall correctly, they allowed NPR to keep a portion of their funding with some "concessions". Those concessions amount to a dramatic increase in right wing guests, talking points, and ideology. NPR is not now what it once was.
Hillary Clinton was right, they really are Deplorables. The lifetime losers from Flyover Loserville convinced their right to be successful as a result of the accident of their white birth is being stolen from them by the libs.
Hillary was and remains correct. However, saying half the country was "deplorable" on a hot mike with a camera trained on her face was an IQ test she failed.
Sometimes, perhaps even often, among the human race, saying what is accurate is NOT the same thing as saying the appropriate words for the moment.
It is deplorable that The United States of America tolerates, even promotes, condiitions that CREATE "deplorables." As a good old public health nurse, I have seen the worst. Until we fully invest in our people, with respect and support, our democracy is at great risk.
She said what I thought, and I have loved some of the deplorables. She should have been “politically correct” but I don’t fault her because she had been the victim of “Goebbels-style” vitriol. It was clear and in your face. Some don’t have mirrors.
Go fuck yourself, you worthless piece of shit. Asswipes like you are why Trump won in 2016. You're as despicable as your fellow traitors of January 6. Drop dead.
Aw, TC, you’re so sweet! Were I as thin skinned as many of your travelers here, I’d threaten to report you to the Heather comments police.
Since, unlike many liberals these days, such as the equally deplorable Wasserman-Schultz, friend of the aforementioned deplorable Clinton, I’m not a fan of censorship, I’ll just let you continue with your civilized discourse, on what is defined here as a civilized community.
And I thought her “Beetlejuice” groping was an offense. .... Lauren Boebert (R-CO) wrote on January 5, 2021: “Remember these next 48 hours. These are some of the most important days in American history.” On January 6, she wrote: “Today is 1776.”
The product of drunken night involving a third rate "professional wrestler" and a 19 year old groupie. And she's continued the tradition, with her 17 year old son having impregnated his 15 year old girlfriend, and now Lauren's a 34 year old "grandmother." A portrait of what is traditionally called "white trash."
BoBo was possibly “discovered” by the Republican Party on the Explore Talent website like Rudy Giuliani’s fake voter fraud witness Melissa Carone and crisis actors they’ve used.
Why does million see the Jan. 6 rioters as patriots?
The short answer is that they want to rid America of all the complexities of having to see and live with diversity. They pine for a simpler world, one overthrowing government of the people, by the people, and for the people, instead for the cult of one overly-cosmetic-made-up, elaborately hair-permanented, obese diaper boy.
Longer answer is that they never got any education with sufficient humanities that any of them might have literacy for diversity, for complication and complexity. Thus (with the aid of billionaire social media algorithms for simpler hate) they clamor for the slogans, fantasyland lies, and racist formulas delivered by their orange fat guy and his mimics.
I live in Japan, where a recent survey shows more than a third of all adults under 50 have never had a date in their lives. This in a country where the schools, having removed humanities, also remove the personal -- and all its nuances. So large numbers are humanly crippled -- a third of Japan humanly neutered, the same proportion of Americans lunatic for their cult.
Jack Smith is trying hard to do just that. Sec. 2 of his lawsuit on our behalf, begs as part of relief that 'all that gave aid and comfort to the attempted insurrection, be disqualified' (paraphrased, but on mark). That takes aim with a wrecking ball, all the guilty congress critters, and others appointed, elected, etc. ! It's also one more reason that the SCrOTUS denied to consider the more timely plea of Jack Smith, yet accepted to consider OiD's attorney's far less timely pleading ! Get it ?
For now, Victoria, we have the judicial undertakings D4N in part cites below.
We could have, too, Dems abroad the land uniting for the November elections. Various good Dems at local, state, and federal levels could meet in public forums, sitting together in guest panels of two, three, and four to celebrate their efforts at all levels for public programs passed and yet needing to be passed.
Also please from these possible participants -- citations of their best-loved humanities as to the human needs for these programs.
Your explanation is quite clear about lack of exposure by education and training to the realities of a democracy and what each citizen's part can be and hopefully is. We have a message problem and a media problem. With President Biden's talk to open his campaign it is essential to hear his words widely used in ads and other public exposures. Inspiration information.
Dems have to start creating coordinated talking points
across the country with a far less technocratic approach to 'explaining' things that they have done, moving on to ways that illustrate what those accomplishments actually mean to everyday people, many of whom do not literally understand how government works for us, how it functions for the general good, and how taking it down hurts the cheap 'patriots' themselves.
I.E. soften the hard edges of the Republicans resister-
destroyer mentality with too much counter story, as the President just did. Thus making room for more in-
betweens/independents/non-voters to see more clearly how voting for real democracy is in their interests.
Dems should use TicToc, etc.
Take a hint from Madam Secretary's press secretary Daisy on using social media aggressively. It's not about why not, it's about must do.
If Dems still have any smirkiness, do-gooder attitude lingering, Get Over It.
Democrats have NEVER been able to create coordinated talking points--too many coalitions in The Big Tent.--almost never are they all happy enough in the tent to want to coordinate. The only certainty in the Democratic Party is chronic unhappiness by 1 or more coalitions at all times, which is really sad.
Clinton & Gore did it pretty well. Years of defeat, a new generation ,and better message discipline were tried--Ross Perot got them over the line.
The Republicans have done a great job of taking over AM radio and cable TV.
Every 20 Khz on the AM dial is another well funded right wing nut ranting all day and all night about the evils of socialism, Democrats, Biden, and baying at the moon when they run out of nasty talk.
The Democrats slept while all of this happened.
AM radio is still a main information source for farmers working in fields with radios inside the tractors blaring away.
Or that they simply found it convenient to go along with the various post-Powell memo plans for all to dehumanize, become silo-set, neutered, all in order to steroid the rich, as Jane Mayer documents in "Dark Money" and Sheldon Whitehouse in "The Scheme."
Phil, I think it is some of both. Some agree with the Powell memo, and some are just asleep, believing the tooth fairy will come and put their results under their pillow.
If you have Sirius XM radio, have you tuned in to channel 127? It's Sirius XM Progress. Talking heads are Tom Hartmann and John Huegelsen plus many others. John Huegelsen is very smart and a great spokesperson for progressives.
Bingo. And note how stupid Joe Scarborough is at the end, as are most of the political establishment operatives/pundits in DC, when he says about a potential ‘Democratic movement’, … “like Barack Obama did”.
No, Joe, you idiot, Obama created a moment, not a movement. Moments are killed all the time. Obama killed his when he filled his economic team with Wall Street bloodsuckers. Movements have staying power.
Gutless political ‘expediency’. Reminded me of Bill Clinton disgustingly throwing Lani Guinier under the bus. There’s a reason the GOP accusations of weakness/cowardice towards Dems have resonance; it’s not all about the commies/socialists.
I remember a Clint Eastwood interview not long after the ‘72 election when he talked about a conversation he had sitting next to George McGovern on a cross-country flight after Nixon’s landslide. Eastwood had no idea McGovern was on a B-17 crew in WWII, and after spending just a bit of time getting to know him, said he wished he’d have voted for him instead of Nixon.
I have no problem talking with Trump voters, and actually making progress in finding common ground about what the impediments to the solutions to our problems actually are. We have to stop lumping every Trump voter into the KKK/deplorable bucket.
I think what you call "smirkiness," Robin, comes from the fall of humanities in U.S. schools.
For years I attributed this to the far-right programs following the 1971 Powell memo -- programs to marginalize and outright kill humanities. But then, too, even before that Dems were guilty of numbering, abstracting, packaging all life, as David Halberstam explored in "The Best and the Brightest."
Yes, the whole education system has to be re-evaluated in terms of actual learning and how it's done and what it's for, and that of course is also up for questioning In a society run by ever greater greed - to which whole generations are so accustomed they no little else. Community Colleges, state colleges, have become good options mostly. Elitism reflects that stupid reliance on a class or caste system whose main assumption lies in ages old beliefs in higher orders of being that magically translate to human form for the convenience of elitism,
i.e. the gods, in whatever religious cultures. And religion is a culture, and runs cultures in lots of places. NB: Judaism is an exception in that we don’t rely on that hierarchal structure, instead using a rabbinic scholarly one, as a peoplehood.
Ask Dems nationwide -- in local, state, and federal office -- to appear together in public forums. In sets of two, three, and four, have them address the public programs already implemented and those yet needed.
Ask them, too, to point to favorite humanities of theirs (writings, music, film) which underscore the human side of these programs.
God bless Ari Melber, Jamie Raskin, and so many more great Jews we have today.
Also the director of my own Ph.D. thesis at the U of Michigan a half-century ago, Marvin Felheim. He, a Harvard grad, had come from a very small town in northeast Kentucky, where his dad was the town tailor or hardware store owner (sorry, don't remember exactly which). I visited that town when Marvin was already very old, and found people who recalled its first and only Jewish family.
The subject of education as a foundation of democracy will always in this country and many others involve the contributions of the Jewish peoplehood for the last 1,800 yrs at least. This is so little understood in the general culture for myriad reasons not the least a sense that jews are only born not made, stereotyping being such a handy way of dismissing everyone's personal responsibility for their own growth.
Our necessarily acquired, created ongoing transition from priests to rabbis highlights possibilities for any cultural group to enrich its own real learning; the kind unafraid of asking unending questions for ever more lighting up of both heart and mind, our major calling card. Which makes us dangerous :-) .
Yes, Robin -- anyone who asks questions verges on the dangerous.
Long time ago I picked off of a drugstore rack a paperback book called "Jews, God, and History," by Max Dimont. It was a romp through the history of western civilization, through the perspectives of prominent Jews ever contributing to it. Jews were always a bit of outsiders, which perhaps gave good impetus for questioning things, imagining things differently, helping make things different.
So I, a non-Jew, have since then appreciated all that. Though I regret what the far-right settlers have been doing on the West Bank, so provoking deep ill feelings among the earlier inhabitants there. Regret the constant damages done by these settlers, for which the U.S. has ever felt obliged to pay.
Stereotypes? Schools over there could teach all to see "others" with respect as individuals. The U.S., however, much more prefers building up not understanding, but weaponry.
And thanks for your sad note about Japan. It's disturbing that young people should be deprived of such a rich culture. Here in the US, I suspect that a lot of our students suffer at the hands of teachers who were shallowly educated themselves (or are coaches stuck with social studies).
Finland totally turned around its own earlier situation with teachers, "progwoman."
Now -- and for some years -- it has the best schools in the world. Hires only the best as teachers -- and gives them total autonomy, discretion, control of courses.
First thing the new batches of Finnish teachers did? Threw out the standardized testers.
If you'd like more on Japanese education, you can read "The Fall of Language in the Age of English," by Minae Mizumura (English edition by Columbia U Press, 2016). One sad, sad fact of Japan's slavery to standardized testing: not a school in Japan anymore asks any students to read any novel from beginning to end. Everything is broken into humanly meaningless fragments for rote memorization feeding the rule of machine-graded, standardized tests.
Japan excels in math and science, otherwise fails in everything human.
And also many writers of manga, who, to my great surprise, carry on the profound heritage of Junichiro Tanizaki, Yasunari Kawabata, Akiko Yosano, Masuji Ibuse, and several great women writers of Japan alive and working yet today.
Living outside of one’s native culture can be threatening or an invitation to reflect on what really matters. Trump, Lincoln’s very opposite, is inured to dissing and inflicting harm on others, seeking validation. Ever unworthy, he like his pal Roger Stone and their mentor Roy Cohn, require habitats in which cruelty and disdain for others reign. Lincoln and a majority of Americans gambled that we could outgrow a propensity for vice dressed up as virtue. In this community we have an opportunity to examine our own values and actions. Calling out others as "white trash" and worse is not the way of Lincoln and it should not be ours. Stating what we value and why is HCR’s way, a lesson for all. There’s plenty of room for use of humor, parody, satire and use of words like treason, vice and unpatriotic. Let’s take that approach and let Tucker Carlson and Paul Gosar worry about what the reflective members of their families really think about them.
I'll try to respect and take to heart your good words on decency, and the example Lincoln set.
Thus I'll also work to limit any temptation I may have for the purple prose befitting the 315-pound cult leader who parades about in layers orange facial cosmetics and coiffure permanents emulating our greatest drag queens -- who waddles onstage to the Village People, and whose soiled diapers even while on him give those closest to him a whiff of the need for most alarmist purple prose.
I've no doubt at least 'like'ed some comments that used derogatory terms for the foes of a democratic America. So, I am not going to throw the first stone.
I grew up in Los Angeles but have in lived in Japan since 1980 and have seen a lot of changes. When I first came here, everyone considered themselves middle class, students went to school 6 days a week, company employees usually had lifelong employment. One needed to know 2000 kanji to read the newspaper and the literacy rate was close to 100%. The craftsmanship was exquisite, but now the old craftsmen are dying out and young people aren’t following in their footsteps. When Japan’s economic bubble burst, Japanese companies downsized and jobs were no longer readily available. Many kids dropped out of school and work in the ’80s and ’90s. They became social recluses, living at home. The term for them is “Hikikomori.” They’ve failed to develop necessary social skills and are unable to adjust in a society that is very structured and sensitive to social stigma. These are most likely the ones who have never been on a date in their lives. But I’m always impressed by the Japanese appreciation of beauty and culture. The culture is so rich, even though the society is full of contradictions.
1. Would the removal of humanities from public education be a direct consequence of postwar US influence, or does it go back further to the prewar militarist regime's attempts to format and instrumentalize society?
2. The info you provide about the sclerotic aspects of this society helps me see why I have always been so impressed by the free Japanese men and women I have met, mostly elsewhere in the world, including one of my closest friends, now no longer with us.
I am also interested in goings-on in other Asian societies in which rootlessness and uprooting have had powerful effects, including the inculcation of simplified pseudo-traditions.
1. Both. Even prior to "the prewar militarist regime's attempts to format and instrumentalize society," for hundreds of years shoguns did the same. We may also add in how the U.S. set the tone around the world for fads and fashions in many areas, education included, as the Powell memo from 1971 on pushed neutering, siloing, and depersonalization in higher ed as well as K-12. All as cover for the commercialization Japan joined.
2. Love your caveat as to "the free Japanese men and women" you "have met, mostly elsewhere in the world." Yes, those who picked up and left Japan differ so much from all who stayed.
3. I think you know well, too, of Wendell Berry's writings on "rootlessness and uprooting," also highly "including the inculcation of simplified pseudo-traditions." In 1977 one classic of his called this "The Unsettling of America," though same obtained in Asia, as well as societies wherever the dollar culture reached.
Yes. You must know Japanese history far better than I. I am above all aware of the Tokugawa shogunate and the period leading up to it. Looking back, I see how ignorant I still am of so much about the country despite loving it. But perhaps “despite” is a key word here. (Mind you, the more I think about it, the more I feel ignorant about even the countries I know best, like Britain or Italy.)
I have been in Japan only twice, spending less than two months there. On both occasions the contact was brief but intense. Both times, I didn’t want to leave.
In 1973, a mission to attend the UNCTAD meeting in Tokyo, when I got to see plenty of things in the capital yet never roamed further than Yokohama. Travel arrangements for the week following the meeting did not work out and I was unable to spend more time in the country, visiting Hongkong and Thailand instead. I’d been unusually happy and at ease in Tokyo and said to myself on leaving that I would return once I’d found Japanese friends familiar with the country’s traditions who could take me to places I wanted to see, like Shii – Kumano. That came to pass in 1997, when I spent most of three weeks in the mountains not far from Kyoto, visiting that city and Nara and afterwards driving with a friend over 500 km through the mountains to Gunma-ken. Met artists, craftsmen, architects.
Most meetings with Japanese people who’d lived abroad for any length of time were brief; for instance a man I met in Manila who’d just spent a couple of years living in a poor fishing village where he’d shown the locals how to improve their catch… Those with whom I’ve had most to do spent years in Europe, eventually settling down in Japan and returning for months every year. Whenever I mentioned a place in Europe to my friend, he’d been there.
And no, you’ve shown me something. I did not know of Wendell Berry, and I’ll mention him to my stepdaughter’s family in Mississippi. Seems to have views very close to my own but to have been far bolder expressing them—and rightly so. I shall order The Unsettling of America now.
My own political influences include Mario P. Chanco, a Filipino journalist from a conservative background who did all he could to help small farmers, forming a seed bank for traditional rice and other varietals at a time when hybrid “miracle rice” demanding massive inputs was planted everywhere. He also helped Manila slum dwellers set up plots of land to produce vegetables. Mao Chanco’s philosophy was based on wartime experience, when ordinary villagers could expect nothing but trouble from above—whether the Japanese occupiers or local authorities and were forced to survive by their own very limited means. He saw this as a worldwide problem, with peasant farmers under attack everywhere and felt they needed to band together to defend themselves and survive. Yes, but as we have seen more recently, the poor have no means of defending themselves from brutal capitalists and their heavily armed police and death squads, let alone investors in distant cities buying up vast tracts of land to be “developed” to death using machinery, heavy inputs and minimum labor.
I have been more influenced by the ideas of Simone Weil and although these may currently seem unrealistic, there will have to be radical changes in agricultural practice this century both for the sake of sustainable development and feeding the world population.
You'll love Wendell Berry, Peter, as you start reading him. You may like to know, too, that his essays are also available in a two-volume edition from the Library of America.
I see, too, by your attention to fishing, and food production from small farmers, you'll appreciate Aya Hirata Kimura, a Japanese young woman long resident now in Hawaii. Her first book, "Hidden Hunger: Gender and the Politics of Smarter Foods." Her newest, "Food and Power in Hawaii: Visions of Food Democracy."
Thank you for your notes on Mao or Mario Chanco and Simone Weil. We've so many good people internationally among us.
Thank you, Peter, for noting others you value as occasion may rise here on Heather's site.
“This world, in which reason is more and more at home, is not habitable. It is hard and cold like those warehouses filled with goods that cannot satisfy: neither clothe the naked, nor feed the hungry; it is as impersonal as those factory sheds and industrial zones where manufactured things remain abstract, their only truth, statistical, borne on the anonymous circuit of the economy, the outcome of skilful planning decisions that cannot prevent disasters, but prepare them. There we have it, the mind in its masculine essence, living outside, exposed to the violent, blinding sun, to the trade winds that batter and beat it down, in a land without folds, rootless, solitary, wandering and already alienated by the very things it has produced, things that remain untameable and hostile.”
Emmanuel Levinas: Difficile Liberté
“When that which cannot feel, does not feel itself and is devoid of desire or love, is enshrined as a universal organizing principle, that signals the advent of madness, because madness lacks everything but reason.”
I feel I am expanding my education today by reading your comments. Wendell Barry also wrote about the machination of agriculture and how it changed our society. I had that great book but maybe I have lost it.
Peter, you've taught me two new words today (not that I'll remember them until I see them again, which might well be the 12th of Never, but I digress). Thank you.
"Siblings Jonathan and Olivia Pollock, whose family owns Rapture Guns and Knives, described on its Facebook page as a 'christian owned Gun and Knife store'...” "Family members of the fugitives and of other Lakeland residents arrested for their involvement in the January 6 attack on the Capitol insist their relatives are innocent, framed by a government eager to undermine their way of life."
That way of life, one supposes, is what? Making a living on the unrestricted sale of guns and knives? With a gun-loving god backing them up all the way? Gods are handy that way.
Side note; I think it was Lauren Boebert who said that Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms should be the name of a chain of convenience stores, not a government agency.
I totally agree, Mr. Wilkins, and i would like to add one more poor example of a human being, MTG, aka, Maggot Traitor Goon. I have never seen anyone more hateful and arrogant than she is. Someone, somewhere, is going to take her down if she doesn't watch her big mouth.
We have a chance. To be the people in our generation(s) to beat back tyranny once again. To develop a system of finance and government that provides real opportunities for all. To be the very first generation of humans on this planet since we developed metallurgy to live sustainably. To eventually fly to the stars in a spaceship called The Valley Forge.
I do not plan to "pre-obey" (thank-you Tim Snyder for that term) the would-be dictators by fretting over how strong they are, or how well they are doing in some very flawed poll. I plan to move forward with my life's plans and work. I will obnoxiously and unapologetic-ally call out fascism when I see it, and explain to anyone in earshot how a DT dictatorship will make this country weak and venal. I will care for my family and neighbors. I will care for my patients. I will NOT sit down.
As always, Heather, you put today and past history in perspective. Keep reminding us that justice will prevail in a Democracy! It takes folks like you and those at Valley Forge to stand firm. Thank you!
My call to action came when I got notice that one of the Capitol policemen is running for office— I signed up to send him a small sum every month and so hope he wins!— his name is Harry Dunn.
I kicked in a one-time $25 to Dunn's campaign, added to my monthly support for Senator, (and future president!) Chris Murphy, and the CT. Democratic Party. As the election nears, I'll start a small monthly give to the Biden campaign.
Go to Act Blue at https://secure.actblue.com to channel support to any Democrat in the country.
A Connecticut Nutmegger says thank you.
On Jan 20, 2021, I watched the inauguration of Joe Biden and as I watched, I wrote this song titled, "Broken Roads and Broken Trails -- Inauguration Day." It was a cloudy day but when the Poet Laurate came up to recite her song, the clouds parted for just a few moments and the blue sky shown through. I noted that in my song. Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf7KHm3nLzA
Out of total sight, Bill. A great song, well sung. ...and Ms Cat gave an excellent bow for you.
Thank you. I recorded it a bit too slow but Babe won’t cooperate again so it stays.
Thank you for sharing, Bill. I loved it!
Thank you for your kind thoughts.
Is Biden already planning to drop out after Super Tuesday?
https://www.express.co.uk/news/us/1852946/joe-biden-pull-out-2024-election-health-democrats-1852946
Nice try. The Express is a British scandal sheet that lives to publish sensational articles. When they can't find enough real scandals to fill page one, they make stuff up.
Read the page that contains this article and you'll find out all you need to know about them, and about the likely (in)accuracy of this headline.
Looks like you didn't read very far. That article was quoting Michael Cemblast, the Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset Management:
https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/institutional/bios/michael-cembalest/
The fact that Cemblast would publicly float such a thought suggests that there have been back-room discussions regarding the career trajectory of "Corporate Joe" Biden.
I read the article. It's a story about ten "surprise" predictions for 2024, made by someone who has nothing to do with the campaign or the party at all. He is a strategist - a financial strategist, not a political one. and in spite of all those conditionals, the headline of the article is "Joe Biden 'will pull out' of 2024 election on health grounds as approval rating plummets".
Clickbait, pure and simple. Speculation presented as fact, both by the Express and, now, by you.
Troll be trolling.
False information. I wouldn't try to spread it.
You might want to check my reply to mobiguy above.
You might wanna give it up ..
Y’all might wanna check MY reply to Treacle-Schmeeckle above …
Um, no.
What is your opinion of the events of Jan. 6, 2021 at the nation's Capitol?
I suspect that, if the rioters had succeeded in disrupting the electoral vote certification in the House (as in the Senate), Trump would have declared martial law.
The point, of course, is that the counts in BOTH Houses had to be disrupted.
Trump couldn't have reasonably planned his presumed following move without solid support from both the military and the Supreme Court, which leads to further inferences...
Did you follow the Jan.6 Committee hearings? If so, you would surely know how obvious it is that Trump was behind the insurrection. Even Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell laid the blame on Trump in the hours immediately following the insurrection. Why would Liz Cheney throw away her standing in the Republican Party unless she were convinced that Trump needed to be resisted?
I feel that the only thing I can do, in addition to standing up to people in my community, is donate funds. I hope that seeing grassroots fund support from Democrats will get media attention.
Thanks for the info Ralph. I too just donated to Dunn's campaign. I distinctly remember him while I watched on TV that day. That's the type of person we need in Congress!
I will as soon as I move to a Cheaper apartment
I tell myself, “You’re retired, living on a fixed income. Cool it!”
Should I win the Lottery, however, my intent is to become a Democratic fat cat.
Have you considered writing postcards for your preferred candidate? It’s an inexpensive way to show your support.
"In the just released 5th edition of 'Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout' by Donald Green and Alan Gerber, the authorities on voter turnout tactics, they conclude: "handwritten postcards generate an average of one vote per 71 postcards."" Copy & paste from an email from Postcards4VA.com. I'm looking forward to writing LOTS of postcards in the coming months.
Don't stress yourself if things are tight. plenty of us who can afford it are donating. And what TLH says below.
I’ve done the same.
Thank you for that nudge. I just sent a donation to Harry Dunn’s campaign.
I can’t afford much, but I sent him SOMETHING…He has been such a mensch through all of this. He has shown himself to be exactly the kind of person we need in Washington. We do what we can …
Done
Done!
For anyone who's not familiar with him, here's his website: https://harrydunnforcongress.com/
Legendary defender of the Capital.
Just sent 25usd to Dunn. I have not donated to a political candidate since Liz Warren because they got my info. and I got constant pleas from Dem. candidates. My policy has been to gift bucks to every journalistic outlet on our side. But, I forgot about actblue....
I send checks rather than use Act Blue.
But Act Blue is a a reliable and responsible institution for people to use, Betsy. I have been doing it since they started 4 years ago.
Act Blue takes a percentage of my donation. If I send a check, the recipient gets the whole thing. Act Blue participants dun me all year long. I'm pretty sure that I stopped using them more than four years ago since the credit card that they claimed to have on file for me expired longer ago than that. It makes me uneasy when a company has my card on file.
Betsy, here is Act Blue’s website. They do not take a percentage. https://support.actblue.com/donors/contributions/what-happens-to-my-money-when-i-donate/
Yes, I prefer to do that too. I set it up in my bill pay at the bank so it goes out automatically on a set schedule.
I've used Act Blue in the past & now, like you, they dun me constantly, And they sent my information to candidates I don't know, so now I get texts from them, too.
If I mail checks from Mexico ... they might make it by 2025.
I hope that saying 25usd instead of $25 is just a habit from travels or work with international currencies.
25usd is the same as $25. Sometimes I write 25$ But, that could still be pesos. I live in Mexico, where $25 is pesos.
I take it you're an ex-pat American who has retained your citizenship. Good. I was afraid you were a citizen of a foreign country who is forbidden from contributing to US campaigns. Carry on ;-)
Haha! What a joke....Putin contributes, why not anyone???
We donated to Dunn yesterday. Yes, monthly donation.
Well said and done, Liz. As I read Prof. Richardson's report about Valley Forge I couldn't help but feel a sense of immense gratitude to those who suffered, endured and who ultimately won for us the freedom, the democracy, that we enjoy today. It is very humbling. I have no doubt that each of us can do more, donate more, than we do presently. Now really is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country.
...Made up of " a remarkably diverse set of soldiers from all 13 colonies, including Black and Indigenous men" ..........Nearly brought me to tears.........We have to join those patriots in any way we can..........We are Heather's army.
Yes Judith, we are Heather’s Army, diverse, good-hearted, and strong. Some of us can send money; many of us can call and send postcards to our representatives, telling them what we care about. And most of us can talk to our neighbors and friends in a quiet and respectful way. We won’t have our way with everyone--that wouldn’t be democracy--but every vote counts and we can to our best to make sure every vote is well considered, well educated, and fairly counted.
I’d like to see the secretaries of state come out with lots of material about how voting works in their state, the safeguards in place, how they prevent fraud, how the electoral college works etc, and publish it far and wide.
Love it! 'Heather's Army' should be a t-shirt with proceeds going to Dems.!
We need to realize that we're now at war and that this upcoming election is our 'Yorktown." We need this win to save our democracy. Had Washington and Rochambeau not defeated Cornwallis, the cause may have been lost. Washington marched his troops from New York to Yorktown, knowing that Cornwallis was in a vulnerable spot and needed to seize that advantage. Some of the troops had to wrap their feet in cloth for they had no shoes. The November election is our Yorktown. I need say no more.
I'm wondering if there's other choices than "army"....I am going to embroider it on a shirt. It has to a be a strong word. ....... nothing airy fairy.
Thank you Richard—I totally agree!
Last night I started rewatching "John Adams" and was on the verge of tears several times thinking of how today's so-called "patriots" have totally subverted the meaning of the word. It took eight years of a bloody, costly war to win our freedom, another bloody, costly civil war to win our unity. Now we have a con man, his "henchmen" and his cultish followers trying to undo it all.
At least now, we have an American Constitution which the Supreme Court must enforce.
I've observed over the years that the Supreme Court has a habit of not enforcing the US Constitution if it gets in the way of a political objective. For example, its decisions regarding guns completely ignore the comma in the 2nd Amendment and have become increasingly unhinged. In other decisions it insists on "originalism," despite the framers including a method for amending the COTUS, in anticipation of things changing over time. Now the SCOTUS is subverting the Constitution even further by making decisions based on hypothetical situations and downright lies (303 Creative LLC v. Elenis).
Maryland Third Congressional District.
I too made a one time donation to Harry Dunn for Congress. We need to get the vile do nothings out of our government.
maybe the best way is to donate/contribute to those races where the money will do the most good. Check out the States Project or Run for Something.
https://statesproject.org/
https://runforsomething.net/
I'm with you!
Thank you Liz. I will do the same! I just wish WAPO and the NYT felt the same about truth and the urgency declared by our remarkable President to defend our democracy. Maureen Dowd and David Brooks proved the arrogance of their paper yesterday. Making matters worse the times felt the need to counter the article about Biden’s speech with one which shows that he is in trouble with the youth vote. I urge everyone to support the Guardian and write the times expressing your dismay.
Yes, I’m gonna too. Great idea. Joe Biden’s getting 10 bucks a month from me.... I wanna join friends of the Pod, too. So psyched that HCR cited Emptywheel in her notes. That is my go to website for the straight deal. Marcy Wheeler is excellent.
That’s the spirit— we’re putting some money where our mouths and pens are👏🏻
doesn't anyone care that Joe Biden is bypassing Congress to send stuff to Israel?? What do folk think about the influence of AIPAC in our government?? When will we get a true CEASEFIRE??
I do care. I object to some of Bidens policies and decision. But the house is on fire, and one firetruck is pumping water and rescuing people. The other truck is pumping gasoline and pushing people back into the flames.
Right. But. Many Dems might just stay home due to this "support for Israel".
Can Biden do that for Ukraine?
I thoroughly object to what Israel is doing and I don’t want my tax dollars supporting Netanyahu! I don’t like AIPAC either. But consider the alternative. What do you think Trump would do? He would never support a ceasefire or the mitigation of harm to Palestinians. You might not like it but we live in a two party system and either Biden or Trump will win the election. And one of those alternatives will burn it all down. So withhold your vote from Biden and see what happens.
Withhold your vote for Biden if you want tfg to win! I vote for Biden....!!!!
I find it nauseating that any money or weapons are being sent to Israel. I really hope Biden doesn't lose votes due to this and lose to tffg!
I find it nauseating that you don't demand Hamas surrender today so we can quit shipping weapons to Israel. The war continues until Hamas said "no more."
I fear we'll ONLY see that "true CEASEFIRE" after the government of Israel, assisted by the government of the United States, either kills or removes all the Palestinians from the state of Israel. It appears the government of Israel will never be able to admit the Palestinians as equal citizens of Israel or settle for a two-state solution from territory that once was Israeli. And, yes, it aggravates me to no end that the Israeli tail still wags the US dog. We should divert all weapons destined for Israel to Ukraine. They are the ones fighting for freedom.
Palestinians are not equal citizens of Israel unless they choose to become Israeli citizens.
I hope that Palis and Israel can negotiate a two-state solution that will benefit both indigenous people of former Palestine. Palis need their own state to take care of their own citizens, but they won't get it by rewarding the vipers that are Hamas with governmental status, or cheering Hamas baking Jewish babies in ovens.
Right...from your lips to Biden's ears.
No. I couldn't care less. Biden's the commander in chief and can send old weapons to Israel if he wants. He should do the same for Ukraine.
As for AIPAC, what influence? It's not even in the 50 highest-spending lobbyists, as most of those spots go to Republican business bribers.
We will get a ceasefire the moment Hamas says "We surrender." Until then, the war continues, and properly.
fellow MA resident 👋 hello!
That's my Maryland district. John Sarbanes is not running again. There are 10 other dems competing to replace him, so it will be interesting. There are 8 house districts in MD. Only 1 is R (Andy Harris) and he is one of the Rs who voted to overturn the election. Sadly, his district loves him.
Check Steve Brodner's illustrations in Washington Post (gifted):
https://wapo.st/3RRkmeU
This is excellent. The illustrations are perfect and I like the way they divided it up by region making it easier reading. Sadly, a lot of these people will be re-elected. Ugh.
It might be hard to see in the online version, but the paper, which we get only on Sunday, really shows the regional divide. The Southern states take up 1/2 the page and the Northeast, Midwest, and West are lumped onto the other half. Quite revealing.
That dominance of the Southern states comes across loud and clear online. I’m in NC; just kept (and kept) scrolling & seeing Southern states‘ initials noted. Rep for my district (cannot write that as “my rep”; he is not), Hudson (NC) is there; for 2024, he’s being redistricted to a spot deemed more GOP-friendly. And Foxx: Have known her a long time. She’s always been this way but, man, she’s shed all of the disguises now. Thanks for posting this link; I subscribe to WashPost but might not have found this on my own.
See my post about challenging ballot eligibility for all of these insurrectionists ... ❣️
Virginia Foxx is the reason I can never live in my ancestral home. She'll not live forever, that's for sure, but the fact that the people in NC-05 keep sending her back to Congress proves I just don't belong there. Well, that and the hyper-religiosity.
Their (R insurrectionists) constituents can challenge their application for the ballot using Art. 14, Sec. 3 of the US Constitution. All 121 traitors still in Congress should have their candidacy challenged!
This not just a gift,MK. It's priceless, each expression revealing the soul. Sobering to see how many people need to be voted out.
Phenomenal artwork, design. Creates so much clarity.
Please also consider donating to D candidates here in Arizona. Your donations can make such a huge impact in this purple state.
Yes, we need to replace Senator Kyrsten Sinema with Ruben Gallego and try to get rid of "our" members of the Sedition Caucus: Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, Debbie Lesko and now Eli Crane.
I live in (comfortably blue) California, so I donate monthly to Ruben Gallego. I believe he is running against Kari Lake, who is a Trump follower.
I will send Dunn a donation. I heard him give testimony to the J6 Committee. He's good!
Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn is a native of Maryland #harrydunn.
Donated, Done. Twice ✔️✔️ not done.
While I wish Harry Dunn well, there’s a whole bunch of Democrats running in his safe blue district. I generally don’t take sides in Democratic primaries. (Adam Schiff and Colin Allred are exceptions this year.).
Heard same, in Maryland i think?
Maryland's Third Congressional District, per TC.
I, too, am supporting Harry Dunn. https://secure.actblue.com/donate/loc_hd_ad_q12024?refcode=LOC_Ad_Search_20240105_GS_Name_HDlaunch&gclid=Cj0KCQiAtOmsBhCnARIsAGPa5yYpal8NmG0rMPVdlJxxmgNOYul1pgCLJZx7fYCr-oU_NQMycsj7VqQaAkfwEALw_wcB
Perhaps it's time we ask the Biden Administration and Congress to erect a Memorial to those Capitol officers and staff who defended Congress from the Jan 6 attack on our Democratic Republic. Let them vote on the funding before the November election so we can see who supports our Democracy v. those who seek to overthrow our government (Boebert, MTG, Biggs to name a few). In fact, that is precisely what I'm going to do next: write my representative, Salud Carbajal.
That's a terrific idea, pushing for a memorial and forcing a vote in mid-October!
I did that as well!! Harry Dunn is worthy of my thanks and support
Amen! Great news! Hope he wins. We need more patriot leaders such as him leading us. May he endure!
Read pages 9-10 of the Colorado Supreme Court Decision here:
https://johnadamsingram.substack.com/p/colorado-supreme-court-decision
Thank you Heather. Another important, informative, and inspiring LFAA.
I continue to worry that the violence committed on January 6th, 2021, this attack on the ideals of the United States, was just the surface of the horrific attack.
It is continuing to unfold, led by those GOP Members of Congress, a corrupt SCOTUS, and has infected State and Local government from sea to shining sea.
We are constantly reminded that the US Constitution is sacrosanct (although the vigor to defend it seems to only be related to the misinterpretation of one of its Amendments). Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment is clear in language and context. While there is no question that Trump should never be allowed to hold any public office, it clearly extends to all those who actively participated in the planning, and more importantly, all those who have continued to obstruct and impede a complete investigation as accessories after the fact.
Until all are held accountable and expelled from office, the thought of “and justice for all” will continue to be aspirational.
Agreed, George, We should not rest until all those who participated, either as a plotter or cheerleader are also charged and convicted. We need them out of office forever
Fay, I note that we seem constantly to be ignoring the financing of subversion, retracing both the original financiers and their modes of transmission, channeling money to political, social and especially judicial action.
In recent decades, organized crime has given ever greater priority to laundering its gains and maximizing material influence by investing in areas like real estate through the corruption of public officials.
There are signs of close alliances between foreign powers, domestic political string pullers and those who constitute their means of transmission, and mafias both on and offshore.
Show me a problem and what are the chances money is at the root. Humans are too easily corrupted. Pay their way and they will support the devil. When politicians know the truth and behave in opposition that is the definition of corruption, i.e. zero integrity. To justify supporting all the lies requires a talent that humans have perfected, i.e. the ability to rationalize anything!!
Boy, have I seen my smart friends and family turn into pretzels to choke down chump’s hate speech
Jeri, those people who I THOUGHT were friends have shocked me with their refusal to believe that Trump is a criminal.
Pam I am curious if you still have the patience to engage with these people you describe.
Some people report they just don't discuss politics with the supporters of the tfg.
I feel I want nothing to do with these racist, hateful, and unsmart people - so I detach.
Moral blindness.
Refusal to see what's staring us all in the face.
Yet good people are sometimes blind to forms of evil from which they themselves are free.
And not just evil. It seems that Queen Victoria, being so besotted with her Albert, was quite unable to imagine female homosexuality.
Maybe it's as well not to have too much insight into minds corrupted by the likes of Roy Cohn.
Schopenhauer:
"Money is human happiness in the abstract; and so the man who is no longer capable of satisfying such happiness in the concrete, sets his whole heart on money."
I'd add that since the abstract cannot satisfy, regardless of the quantity of zeros accumulated, dissatisfaction is guaranteed and, in its train, resentment, envy, hatred and other mind poisons.
The wealthy think themselves envied for their possessions. Surely, but that is because envy is often so active in them. The real problem is how wealth, both material and immaterial, can isolate us from others, from what's essential.
Separation, divisions.
Sadly, I have to agree with a good deal of what you've said. A relative of mine stated once, that he knew many people who were friends, who were far wealthier than he was. He suggested overall, they were not a happy bunch.
One cause of my lifelong (and excessive) stand-offishness in relation to material wealth was seeing, as a child, the deep unhappiness that sometimes came with it for other children.
And how much worse that corruption has become since Himself told us, and also DEMONstrated, it was not only ok but admirable. He said people who cheated on their taxes were the smart ones. He’s the demon on your other shoulder whispering in your ear.
Trump identifies his personhood and success with the amount of money he has (real and imagined). It therefore gives me great smug satisfaction that Letitia James, a Black WOMAN increased his penalty for business misconduct from 250 to 370 mil. Psychologically, for him this is worse than going to prison, it's a death sentence. Having to pay E. Jean Carroll even one $ is the same. I consider the idea that this genetically deformed rapist narcissistic psychopath to again be president a death sentence....
So my republican friend told me that those whose seem to rationalize are not really doing that. They know the lies from the truth and dont care.
100% and not a new thing
If Trump loses the 2024 election, I believe he will pull out all the stops for violence.
He won’t. He will incite others. The “fine people” on the other side of both sides.
He'll cheer them on from a safe distance.
Exactly. In spite of all his bravado, he’s a real coward.
Nice to remember. I have never forgotten Cassidy Hutchinson's portrait of him holed up in a White House dining room watching on television as the food splattered everywhere. Had we had a more vital Congress, the members who supported him would no longer serve.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Millions of TFFG followers never read a newspaper, book or even the crawler at the bottom of Faux News.
We need to display images of the 1/6 rioters beating policies officers.
We need to display pictures of TFFG's poorly designed and constructed wall with holes in it and patched and repatched.
We need to show Josh Hawley giving a fist pump to the rioters.
We need to show TFFG struggling to drink with both hands wrapped around the bottle.
We need to show TFFG's bathroom at Mara-Lago with boxes of Top Secret documents.
We need to show Federal agents in Lafayette Square shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at innocent people and TFFG hold the Bible upside down.
We need to show TFFG standing in church looking baffled and bewildered while everyone else is singing a well known him.
We need to show them Putin and TFFG standing together in solidarity and bombed out Ukranian cities.
We need to show....
MAGANAZIs and white faux-Christian nationalists are not readers. Sure, many of them don't believe their own eyes, but images are more likely to have an impact on most TFFG sycophants.
George,
Correct, Trump himself is a well known coward where violence is relevant. He will incite all his self described "losers and suckers" to do his dirty work for him.
His support of Giuliani show the kind of "friend" he is
That’s called pulling out all the stops, the cowardly way.
I don't care if he does. He and his crew are all losers. I have faith in the good guys on our side, that they will squash the Trumpers.
Nothing bothers TFFG more than being called a loser. He knows it's true and so do many of his devoted brain dead followers.
Your comment reminds me of one of my favorite political quotes from Adlai Stevenson.
When Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson was running for president in the 1950s, a supporter purportedly said to him: "Every thinking person in America will be voting for you." Stevenson replied, "I'm afraid that won't do — I need a majority."
https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/letters/ct-a-call-to-every-thinking-person-20170804-story.html
Love that quote, fits today.
By the way, do you listen to GasslitNation?
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9nYXNsaXRuYXRpb24ubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M/episode/NmRhZWZlZWQtODdhZS00ODc1LWIzMDktY2E0MTI5OTgyZTc5?ep=14
I don't, haven't had time for podcasts in a while. Gasslit is what we are. Will give it a shot. Thanks
Stevenson would have been a great choice for president. If you remember he was labeled "an egghead". A derogatory term for intellectuals. Ike would be hard to beat personality wise and his record as a winning general of the war just passed.
I loved Ike but he was the war hero. Stevenson unlucky but better choice.
By the way, do you listen to GasslitNation?
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9nYXNsaXRuYXRpb24ubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M/episode/NmRhZWZlZWQtODdhZS00ODc1LWIzMDktY2E0MTI5OTgyZTc5?ep=14
By the way, do you listen to GasslitNation?
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9nYXNsaXRuYXRpb24ubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M/episode/NmRhZWZlZWQtODdhZS00ODc1LWIzMDktY2E0MTI5OTgyZTc5?ep=14
No, I have it on now. I like the lead-in with Ali Velshi.
Thanks for the link.
January 6 tide turned when well equipped solders arrived. If law enforcement does their job there is no need to fear.
Here is the kicker for me, Fankom: The local law enforcement response was woefully inadequate and understaffed. I suspect there were machinations at the levels above the agency heads that made it so, but I cannot conceive of the situation where they did not have at least the same information that was "out there" that there would be trouble magnitudes of order higher than what they were prepared for.
In no way do I fault those who were on duty that day; Capitol Police, Metro PD, Park Police (the three jurisdictions around the Capitol and grounds); who I fault is those who did not give their agencies riot gear or have tactical units available for response.
I agree. That was criminal and should be punished. If Capital Police had been allowed to prepare January 6 would not have gotten out of hand.
There needs to be a crackdown on anonymous threats as they are poisonous to society.
Biden will do a better job of preparing.
The big baby Donald was ensconced atop it all on Jan 6, so inadequate preparation was his play that day.
Sadly others went along with his bad guidance.
By the way, do you listen to GasslitNation?
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9nYXNsaXRuYXRpb24ubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M/episode/NmRhZWZlZWQtODdhZS00ODc1LWIzMDktY2E0MTI5OTgyZTc5?ep=14
By the way, do you listen to GasslitNation? I'd really like to know what you think of this.
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9nYXNsaXRuYXRpb24ubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M/episode/NmRhZWZlZWQtODdhZS00ODc1LWIzMDktY2E0MTI5OTgyZTc5?ep=14
Basically I agree, but I think there were insider insurrectionists in the police force that caused the delay.
That is what I am referring to when I refer to an utter command and control failure. As far as the units that I saw defending the Capitol, I think they did an excellent job with what they had. There may have been a handful of “sympathizers” (I recall one uniformed cop moving a portable barricade) but when the stuff hit the fan, I didn’t see anyone engaging in less that total commitment.
I remain to this day impressed with the bike cops from the Park Police who held the line (bike cops have substantially less protective gear than regular uniformed police) and Eugene Goodman, who by himself kept a group of rioters from achieving the upper offices where (I think it was Pence) were just a door away.
I had the opportunity to consider where my opinions/beliefs and duty stood several times during my career (policing the Occupy Movement, Planned Parenthood protesters, and taking reports from rabidly anti-gay people). Duty always won.
Amen
By the way, do you listen to GasslitNation?
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9nYXNsaXRuYXRpb24ubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M/episode/NmRhZWZlZWQtODdhZS00ODc1LWIzMDktY2E0MTI5OTgyZTc5?ep=14
Trump is already issuing public warnings about "big trouble" if the SCOTUS does not find for him in the Colorado ballot case.
TFG is a clear and dangerous wacko and needs to be silenced. Does he remind you of the worst tyrants in history? Trying to scare people into submission with threats of violence. Those in Congress who fear for their safety are afraid not to support the wannabe dictator. WHERE ARE WE???? This has got to stop!!!
And as Biden questioned, “Who are we?”.
Dangerous wacko? That description really has the ring of truth. Their side has a lot of people backing him. But they have a weak foundation. It’s hard to fight or commit violence against your fellow man for a lie. We have much bigger numbers, a rock solid foundation, and the truth to guide us.
The only possible explanation about his approval rating going up commensurate to his rising indictments and monetary penalties is that he made a deal with the devil...and there's not much we can do about that but pray....
The polls are like most MSM, intentionally biased.
No surprise, threats and intimidations, lies, lies, lies wrapped in bombast
I noticed that was the headline. However the quote was actually “Our country is in big trouble”. I hate click bait headlines wherever they come from. Plus, many don’t read the news but scan only the headlines.
I read the whole article, in several different sites.
What is Trump--"will be wild" mean with his full statement? Trump is deliberately not using legally-actionable words. He's again signaling "stand back and stand by."
Mobster behavior, I've been told.
My deepest concern is that he will pull out all the stops for violence if he wins... his favorite statement of recent is that he will be a dictator on his first day in office...
We can’t act like his republican enablers who respond to his threats of violence and cower and just go along with him. If there is violence we are going to deal with it. We will not let his threats determine our actions. We will resist him all the way to victory.
That’s all it takes
I have seen a few "promises of violence" on the WH fb page. I reported them for what ever good it will do.
Actually, this will happen during the election, Anthony.
There will be guns at the polling stations. Why would there not be?
We will be prepared to stop the Trumper guns. VOTE!
Texas voter turnout fell from 2018. It was still higher than other midterms.
In Texas, 45.7% of the 17.7 million registered voters cast ballots in the 2022 midterm election. That’s 7.3 percentage points lower than the state’s total turnout in 2018 but higher than in every other midterm election in the last 20 years.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/11/10/texas-voter-turnout-2022/
Tell that to Texas. It's obviously not the MAGANAZI's in TX that aren't voting.
I did, but MAGAts never stay home
I agree. I am worried too that the electoral college slants to republicans. It’s gonna get ugly. I hope the democrats have their lawyers ready to go when the sh*t hits the fan.
I never, never thought SCOTUS would become politicized. For most of my adult life I thought of it as the place right would prevail. Not anymore.
For those of us "of a certain age", the Warren Court was what we knew as the SCOTUS. That court gave us Brown v. BoE in 1954, and throughout the 1960's made a ton of rulings that bolstered the rights of individuals. His term ended in 1969, and the Court swung back away from the more progressive rulings. What we have today is an abomination of what SCOTUS should be.
Yes, no more, and this adds is what adds an extra layer of scary.
This is the kind of fear that traps people in abusive relationships. No way to live, in my opinion.
The indicted 45th president will lose again if our U.S. Supreme Court allows him to run. He ran twice. Each time he faced voters, his tally came up smaller than before. Those runs for President were before he was indicted for crimes against our Constitution.
I hope and expect SCOTUS will enforce the Constitution. If it doesn’t, resorting to another act of crime and violence by the 45th and his clique would be a another mistake with far more serious consequences. I offer for your consideration what happened in NYC, during the War of Rebellion (i.e. ‘civil’ war) when federal government troops put an end to the Draft Riots.
https://johnadamsingram.substack.com/p/colorado-supreme-court-decision
hose runs for President were before he was indicted for crimes against our Constitution.
Exactly. That's why I doubt the poll numbers. I have several friends that gave up on TFFG after 1/6 and haven't gone back.
Don’t think so...tough to do from jail!
The indicted 45th will not be given the Constitutional right to run again by SCOTUS. There is no original language in our Constitution which would allow it.
In fact, there is original, self-executing language which prohibits him from running.
Read Section 3, XIV Amendment.
SCOTUS has no alternative but to enforce the U.S. Constitution. We all ought to get our heads around that fact.
“Congress does not need to pass impending legislation for Section Three’s disqualification provision to attach, and Section Three is, in that sense, self-executing.”
-- COLORADO SUPREME COURT
https://johnadamsingram.substack.com
I think you’re right and that some police and as much FBI as can are preparing for the possibilities.
George A. Polisner.
Agree! We have citizens who have benefited from our country and it's people and its government and the opportunities our country offers many (but not all) of our citizens.
Yet it is some of these powerful people, here and others in the world, who are breathing life and financial support into DT and his "gang".
I continue to be confounded with "church going" citizens who support this godless self-centered person.
I live in a red town that doesn't even have a stop light. But we have 8 churches, 4 bars and a gun range. These church members are aging and fighting spiritual warfare on the front lines. They love Agent Orange because he validated their hate. He said it's ok to abuse people. They are racists. They are misogynistic and homophobic. But they love Jesus. The guy that plows our driveway shows up and starts in on immigrants. He's an Elder in his church. We tried talking to him to no avail. I pointed out his hypocrisy but I just got the deer in the headlight look as usual. They hang hate flags on their properties. One guy has a 40 ft lighted cross with a Trump flag on it. Another has a fucking video screen in his yard flashing Trump. These are the community church members.
It’s also unfortunate the MAGA movement has co-opted the American flag. I used to proudly display it on appropriate major holidays and after 9/11 to show American unity. No more.
They CANNOT take my flag. I used to fly it along side a flag that was a black field with a blue stripe (not the thin blue line flag after I saw how it was corrupted) to honor fallen cops. It now flies all year with a pride flag to its right.
Me too Dave. The day after the insurrection my town had flags flying everywhere. It was creepy. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The KKK are now called Patriots for Liberty.
I won't let them co-opt the flag. It belongs to all of us, and I proudly fly it every day.
Same, Kathleen.
They do not own the American flag, any more than the word “patriot”, or religious symbols. They don’t decide what the words and symbols mean for the rest of us.
I think it’s telling that the fugitives’ website that Heather references capitalizes “Gun and Knives” but not “christian”.
Lisa et al,
Do you have any ideas how we might redeem & save our flag from the desecrations of the maga-wave-wear -magnify gang? Thinking that HCR readers being smart-creative- & much more might have some brilliant ideas.
I like what Ally said about hanging the Pride flag next to the American Flag.
I have a meme that says Pro America Flag anti trump
Despicable, but the rule of law depends on not averting our attention.
Tim Albert, listen to his interviews, I am waiting to read his book.
Disgusting and beyond my comprehension!
Can you move?
I love my 150 yr old farmhouse. We live on 10 acres and we got it cheap 14 yrs ago. We have put a ton of work it. I really didn't know that this town would be a better fit in Arkansas. I saw an article a few years ago where they did a study of the most drunk counties in the country. Mine was number 1 in Minnesota. I keep to myself. However, it's difficult when the crap comes out of their mouths it's hard for me to stay silent. Real hard. I don't like bullies.
Hello from a fellow Minnesotan (who happily lives in a liberal St Paul neighborhood)!
My family is mostly in Ohio and they are almost all Republicans. I still dislike Thanksgiving because of the years of racist table talk. As soon as I graduated to the “adult table” I started arguing with my Nazi uncle (truly a Nazi - as was confirmed by the Nazi magazines and newspapers in his home when he died). Years later my mother said “why are you arguing with him? That’s what he wants.”
That changed everything. I can’t/won’t give even tacit approval to racist talk. But now, I walk away - not angrily but clearly not willing to listen to such talk. It has resulted in family at least being alerted to my feelings. And by withholding reinforcement (yes, I did study behavior modification many years ago), that conversation has been extinguished in my presence. It’s all I can do but I think it helps!
I just finished my DBT therapy and moving on to my complex trauma therapy as a result of 64 years of narcissist abuse by numerous family members. I know better than to engage with them. But when I see injustice or bullying I don't back down. My therapist is trying to soften my edges. Good luck with that. I'm incapable of small talk. I tried. It breaks my heart in a million pieces when I see someone being abused. When they try to bully me it's game over. Narcissist abuse is in our faces everyday. Agent Orange normalized it. I'm always learning and I try to do better. Thank you for your comment.
Are you in AR or MN?
I'm in Minnesota. And I love Governor Walz. He's my hero these days.
Wow, that’s scary. Do you think about moving?
Very true Emily. I think many (not all) churches sold their soul for George W. Bush’s faith-based initiatives which accelerated the erosion of separation of church and state. The flow of wealth has subverted the American experiment in many ways.
Thanks to Rove in 2004
Yes. Rove, Murdoch, and Ailes.
Church-going citizens are used to hearing bull Schitt. Think Jimmy Swiggert.
Not just used to hearing, as Mike S says, programed to believe what the white guy standing up front on Sunday says, and do what he says to do.
There are many evangelicals who are hoping for the end of the world, as they believe they will either be spared by being taken up in a "rapture" and/or that it is the fulfillment of biblical prophesy. They are fervently hoping this will be the case. They support Trump because they believe he is the one who is going to bring this about. He just might. Though it will reveal not Heaven but Hell.
The "church going" are in demographic decline. Abortion, gender diversity, trans, "god" removed from schools, "corrupted" libraries. This stuff is liquid nitro to them. "Better the devil we know". And this is not just the baptists. Add catholics of the right persuasion.
TFG supports their vision of the apocalypse. They see him for what he is but he is their savior. They have their priorities.
Tim Albert gives a very clear explanation to those of us like you are scratching our heads in disbelief of anyone can be so blind
'How the GOP’s rewriting of Jan. 6 paved the way for Trump’s comeback' (Washington Post, excerpts)
'Pressure from family members and advocates for accused rioters was amplified by online influencers and right-wing media figures, leading lawmakers to minimize, excuse and deny the violence and rehabilitate Trump'
'Attempts to minimize, excuse or deny the violence of that day began with people returning home from the mob and intensified with family members of rioters, including the mother of a woman killed at the Capitol. Their cause became championed by pro-Trump writers Julie Kelly and Darren Beattie, and amplified by prominent right-wing media figures. The grass-roots and media pressure then spread from far-right lawmakers such as Reps. Paul A. Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene to take over the Republican mainstream.'
'Now, on the third anniversary of the nation’s first interruption to the peaceful transfer of power since the Civil War era, Republicans’ attitudes about Jan. 6 are increasingly unmoored from other Americans, and Trump holds a commanding lead in the race for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.'
'The share of Republicans who said the Jan. 6 protesters who entered the Capitol were “mostly violent” dipped to 18 percent from 26 percent in December 2021, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. More than half of independents and about three-quarters of Democrats, on the other hand, believe the protesters were “mostly violent,” numbers that have remained largely unchanged over time, the poll found.'
'The percentage of Republicans who hold Trump responsible for the attack dropped from 27 percent to 14 percent, compared with 56 percent of independents and 86 percent of Democrats. More than a third of Republicans said they believe the FBI definitely or probably organized and encouraged the attack — a conclusion contradicted by an extensive congressional investigation and more than 725 completed federal prosecutions.'
'At that time, even Trump was still denouncing the violence. In a Feb. 28 Fox News interview, he defended his rally before the riot as' “a love fest,” but as for the siege of the Capitol, he said, “I hate to see it. I think it’s terrible.”
'The biggest exception was Tucker Carlson, then the host of the nation’s most-watched cable news show, on Fox News. In March, he invited Kelly on to question what caused the death of Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who died the day after fighting the mob, including being attacked with pepper spray. (The D.C. medical examiner later concluded that Sicknick died of natural causes after two strokes, but that “all that transpired on that day played a role in his condition.” Sicknick’s assailant, Julian Khater, pleaded guilty in 2022.)'
“The details of that day matter,” Carlson said, “because they’re being used as a pretext for changing this country.” Carlson did not respond to requests for comment.'
'Carlson also took an interest in another fatality connected to the attack: that of Ashli Babbitt, the Trump supporter who was shot trying to enter the lobby of the House chamber while lawmakers were evacuating. In the months after the riot, far-right communities online started portraying her as a martyr and trying to identify and harass the officer who shot her, according to Holt’s research for the Atlantic Council.'
'In June, Carlson brought on Babbitt’s widower, who repeated the call to identify the officer who killed her. “The silence is deafening,” he said.'
In early 2023, Trump allies began producing a track of the inmates singing the national anthem, mixed with a recording of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. He played the finished song — “Justice for All,” featuring the “J6 Prison Choir” — to open the first campaign rally of his 2024 campaign, in Waco, Tex., in March 2023. The song jumped to No. 1 on iTunes.
The next month, Trump dropped into a diner while campaigning in Manchester, N.H. The crowd inside started calling out that there was a “J6er” present. She was Micki Larson-Olson, who had been recently released after serving a 180-day sentence for unlawful entry onto public property. Trump called her over, hugged her and signed the backpack she said she was wearing that day.
By May, Trump expanded his pardon pledge, now promising to “most likely” grant clemency to “a large portion” of Jan. 6 defendants. “And it’ll be very early on,” he said in a CNN town hall.
At a rally in Durham, N.H., last month, he went further than Kelly’s phrase for the Jan. 6 defendants.
“I don’t call them prisoners,” he said. “I call them hostages. They’re hostages.” (WAPO) See gifted link for entire article.
https://wapo.st/492hbIn
Great detail Fern. And the mainstream media is complicit, fueling the flames of “both-siderism” instead of continuing to deliver facts, evidence, and calling Trump, his co-conspirators, and accessories out for their crimes, obstruction, and blatant lies.
George, understanding why a large number of Americans are unmoored from reality -- the transfer of wealth; loss of communities; unions and local newspapers; the effects of technology -- there were major aspects of daily life that led to social cohesion, which are no longer part of our foundation.
These losses and others have led to our vulnerability to propaganda, conspiracy theories, mistrust in government. The lack of local journalistic sources and frequent exchanges with one another ups the challenge of bridging our differences.
If the figures are correct, that approximately 54% of American adults ( age 16- 74) read at a 6th grade level or best, think about how that impacts comprehension & critical thinking skills. How are most 6th graders respect to critical thinking? I would suggest, those are to a minimum. I was told my son, who's an adult now, in 3rd grade was reading & comprehending at an 11th grade level. He was always able to drill down to the facts, separating them from the fluff. Sadly, I couldn't say that about a good many of his friends. Seemed they were lost in the weeds, sadly. And those, would in all likelihood, be voting for a trump & subscribing to maga propaganda & conspiracy figures.
There are moments I am in despair, as to where we are going as a nation. I continue donating to worthy dem candidates, to President Biden's campaign, thinking in that there is a glimmer of hope. Yet still i think, thank God I am on the other side of 50.
Your point is well taken Bonnie. Can't always judge intellect on reading abilties though.
As a volunteer literacy tutor I am reminded of Tim a 60-ish year old big burly teddy bear like man. I tutored him weekly for a few years.
There was nothing dumb about Tim. He was never diagnosed with Dyslexia as a child. He was told he was stupid his entire life.
Tim was a life-long heavy equipment operator for the same large local company until a few months before his retirement date. He was let go with no pension. He could not read so he could not fill out job applications. It was at this point Tim decided to learn to read.
Like I say Tim was not stupid. He mistrusted the banking system so he bought houses instead. He owned 10 properties.
Agreed. And I don't mean to paint all with the same brush. But I am suggesting that a large swath of trump followers ( not the ones who are wealthy & hoping to benefit financially via a trump presidency) tend to be poorly educated & not inclined to fact check.
I recommend Timothy Snider’s book “On Tyranny”. He presents 20 ways to recognize tyranny and how to inoculate ourselves against it, using examples from the 20th century.
And so many things on his list are already in motion
Fern, when you say "...there were major aspects of daily life that led to social cohesion, which ar no longer part of our foundation." you have said something profound, and on so many levels.
As a kid (b. 1958) we all watched the same cartoons. Our folks all watched the same news, albeit on one of 2 (later 3) channels. We all followed the same TV shows. As a young adult, we still watched the same shows, and had "water cooler conversations" at work/school about those shows (MASH, Mork and Mindy, Seinfeld, Dallas, Star Trek TNG) which led to a cohesion. There were times you knew not to call your friends because "their" show was on. We still watched the same news. With the advent of cable tv, we got to watch reruns of shows we'd seen as children (Gilligan's Island, Beverly Hillbillies). We all went to the same movies, at the same one-screen theaters.
Far, far different from today. I think that the unfettered propaganda spewed out by various sources, and the absolute lack of local journalistic sources has, as you state, makes bridging our differences hard, because we don't have a that social cohesion of shared experiences when it comes to viewing/movie watching/news perusal.
Ally, I had the chills, while reading your breakdown of our sharing in the past. It is about speaking the same language. We had our differences, preferences and arguments, but we knew what each other was talking about.
Fern and Ally, I appreciate your thoughts today especially. The idea of speaking a common language, and having a foundation of shared experiences. We are seeing the loss of real connection to others in the rise of addiction, anxiety, depression and premature death.
Building community and connecting ourselves to others is how we will make the positive changes we want. I’ve heard HCR say this very thing.
Fern, I wonder if we really knew what people different from ourselves were talking about. I never saw a Black person until high school (where one young man briefly attended). I never knew a LGBTQ person (at least one who was out) until I started working in human services. I never had conversations with people living in poverty or homelessness until after college. You and Ally really made me think: was my assumption that we had a shared experience a fantasy?
Thank you, Fern.
So very true and eloquently stated
Agree with everything you say here, Fern.
But much of our lives have been dominated by American propaganda. We’re the ‘good guys’. Really?
As to trust, do you trust the government? No one should.
Our milieu, imo, comes back, inevitably, to capital vs. labor, with race being an integral component of capital’s divide and conquer approach to keeping labor on the losing side of the ledger. When people are constantly economically stressed, they are ripe for all sorts of fallacious thinking to make it past the good sense firewall.
We’re in a dark place.
But not the darkest, at present. Not even close to the unspeakable horror taking place in Gaza.
https://www.commondreams.org/further/all-this-for-a-myth-we-have-lost-everything-beautiful
Tom-
Here's a quote worth thinking about as we hope for more light in the darkness:
"I painfully regret that in almost every political controversy of the last fifty years the leisured classes, the educated classes, the wealthy classes, the titled classes have been in the wrong. The common people-the responsible toilers, the men of uncommon sense-these have been responsible for nearly all of the social reform measures which the world accepts today". -William Gladstone (1884)
Gladstone was the Prime Minister of UK from 1808-1894. His father was one of the largest slaveholders in the British Empire (2,508 slaves, 9 plantations in the Caribbean). He was known as "The People's William".
Google him-he was an interesting guy who believed in equal opportunity and limited government.
We'll see which group of "common people" rise up to help us mend fences between laborers. Some recent union actions shined a spotlight on some of the issues. There's at least some hope...
Yes, Fern. I believe the marketing and advertising industry had a lot to do with normalizing being lied to. They made their public believe they lacked something and that they could provide the product to fill that lack. Their dishonesty became something we were beaten over the head with daily, for life. Most everyone bought it.
So now many look for liars to follow. It sounds like what they’re used to.
I’ve dropped my NYT subscription, but still get a page of headlines as I access the crossword puzzle. President Biden’s remarkable speech on January 5th seems to have been relegated to page 11. Trump sells, decency doesn’t. It’s disgusting.
unmoored. perfect description
Thanks, Fern, I always appreciate the articles you share!
If anything, what we are seeing is how few people it takes to bring down a democracy. Democracy's worst enemy is apathy of citizens.
Very true. I continue to write that any meaningful attempt at any form of democracy requires an informed, educated, and engaged society. All three pillars have been assailed since Reagan (who also accelerated the concentration of wealth and thus, power). The apathetic lack of engagement is disturbing to witness (and why I continue to build https://civ.works).
FDR: “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education…to prepare each citizen to choose wisely and to enable him to choose freely are paramount functions of the schools in a democracy.”
There are highly educated people backing Trump. They don’t trust anything they read from MSM or government backed info sources. Their doubt has only grown as Influence peddling has been uncovered or existed or even made up. They distrust Biden, who one points out has two wars during his campaign, while Dt had ‘none.’ Their disgust with the current system is strong. Dt sowed seeds of distrust— can’t trust anyone— and far right media plus internet posts amplify. There is deep distrust and even paranoia there. This isn’t going to be easy to heal.
There should be deep distrust of government, by everyone, regardless of political affiliation. The main purpose of the Founder’s ‘checks and balances’ paradigm was to prevent the concentration of power in government, because it wasn’t to be trusted.
America was sleepwalking through the past fifty years as a slow-moving corporate coup took place, with monied interests buying both political parties, and all of the checks and balances. We… are… owned.
We need our revolution, the one Jefferson referenced that is necessary when government ceases responding to the interests of the people. For all the hysteria about 1/6, some justified, some not, the fact remains that frustration over governing dysfunction leads, inexorably to rebellion. Ask those who threw the tea into Boston Harbor.
The men who threw the tea overboard had the right target, the East India Company, not King George. The failure of the people on 1/6 was targeting a government building owned by monied interests, instead of the corporate headquarters of Amazon, Raytheon, Boeing, ADM, etc. Wrong target, same frustration.
Until laser focus comes to ‘why Trump’ instead of’GOP sucks’, we’ll continue to circle the drain.
Tom, the "being owned" points right to oligarchs, billionaires, the KOCH and ALEK factions, the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation, and others all pulling strings so their puppets will dance.
But that is not all that is going on. We have (at least at present) an EPA that makes a valiant effort to regulate environmental degradation. We have Social Security and Medicare and, at least in some states (I live in Minnesota), learned, inquisitive, compassionate, and excellent Senators whose vision is trained in the direction of greater freedom and ethical responsibility.
So I ask you: Will you only trust government if it achieves 100% of what you want? I do not think of trusting government at all. I expect people to act in ways that do damage to themselves and others. It's a fact of human life.
But I also see that I live in a country where in Florida the people who care about women's health care could work hard and get a measure on the ballot to ensure abortion when needed. That's just one example of what people do to re-balance the odds and right the wrong. The Florida Supreme Court might disallow the proposed law. . . but maybe not. Nothing is guaranteed. Still, they tried.
Sometimes I think the posture of "both sides are corrupt" results from wanting to be pissed off and veiling it with a mask of self-righteousness. Am I wrong? Is it really reasonable to see only what you don't like and not see what is encouraging and hopeful?
Yes-but King George legitimized the East India Company...and remember according to SCOTUS (a branch of government) corporations are people and "United Citizens" in America can make all the donations they want to buy politicians in the land of the free. Government has the power to sanction/regulate corporations, but we've gone down a dark hole as wealthy people play their games to maintain power and control.
Maybe a big picture would help, not bits and pieces
That is the thesis of Al Gore’s book “The Assault on Reason.” The book cover: “Al Gore’s larger goal in this book is to explain how the public sphere itself has evolved into a place hospitable to reason’s enemies; to make us more aware of the forces at work on our own minds; and to lead us to an understanding of what we can do, individually and collectively, to restore the rule of reason and safeguard our future.”
Publication 2007, lots about GWB. I can imagine what he would say about DJT!
And social media where every pinhead is given a megaphone.
Yes, I totally agree with you. Trump is ineligible to hold public office for life due to his participation in an insurrection according to the letters of our Constitution. Likewise, those members of Congress who aided Trump are equally as ineligible to serve. These people have gotten away with a whole lot of bad sh*t. They are still being paid salaries that are taxpayer-funded. They are working against the American people whose livelihoods they vowed to protect. I resent this injustice very much. These people, along with Trump, need to be 14th Amendmented out of their jobs.
My favorite part of today's missive was about the three siblings who participated in the riot whose family owns the 'Rapture Guns and Knives, described on its Facebook page as a “christian owned Gun and Knife store” ' You can just picture Jesus rolling his eyes around....
So true Sophia! While unfortunately not covered in scripture, one wonders which assault rifle Jesus would prefer.
“Yes, I like the AK-47, but do keep a glock as a backup in case I heal the sick, but they are late 30 days on their invoice.”
I would hope that this time around, the court wil not consider ankle bracelets as part of the sentencing of those three fugitive criminal insurrectionists arrested in Florida, as reported by HCR. I note that they were connected with a knife and gun store that was 'christian-owned' according to its Facebook posting. I am suspicious of any business that uses the religion of its owners to solicit business from the general public. In an upcoming posting on my blog, I touch upon such subtle antisemitism, and racism as well, that can be found among too many of Donald Trump's right wing supporters.
Jack, that "Christian owned" or the fish symbol are surefire ways to get me to avoid that business like the plague.
Ally: I usually go a bit further on my blog than I do on here ... but here is a draft of how I will be posting this on my blog (Jackspotpourri) later this week.
"When Donald Trump talks about mass deportation of immigrants, some of whom he recently referred to as ‘vermin,’ retribution against those who have not shown loyalty to him, and using the military and the Department of Justice to carry out his punishment of them and those behind any civil or criminal charges against him, you get a picture of who he really is. And it is not a nice picture. It is that of a tin pot dictator.
But that picture appeals to a significant number of Americans who, although they will not readily admit it, includes those who feel that our government spends a disproportionate amount of its tax-funded resources to benefit people of color who number only between 13% and 14% of our population, and that too many of its decision-makers are Jews who number only a little more than 2% of our population.
They don’t come out and say these things. They don’t boast about their racism and antisemitism in public, but that’s what they mean when they talk of ‘welfare queens’ and disparage ‘Critical Race Theory’ and ‘Diversity-Equity-Inclusion’ ideas without even attempting to understand them, and repeatedly refer to our country’s ‘Christian’ founding, exemplified by the current House Speaker who puts his evangelical religious beliefs ahead of the Constitution that he is sworn to uphold. And of course, these folks always vote Republican."
Jack-I think a lot of the subtly is lost-racists are loud and proud now. People of color are actually about 41% of the U.S. population now. The Census category "White only non-Hispanic" is 58.9%. Trump's supporters are overwhelmingly in the White only category-and yes-the majority of them vote Republican because they've bought into racism. They're alarmed and their responses to our changing demographics are cruel. They "fear for their lives".
I'm keeping the faith that in 2024 enough people of goodwill will crush these folks who want to keep us divided.
Hear, hear. Indeed, the GOP or its MAGA frontispiece, has wrapped itself around the Big Lie, fronted by Trump and all too many astute operators and gullible citizens. It looks like a group of Jan 6 insurrections are reviving their efforts as part of the 2024 campaign, verbally reneging on their confessions.
You wrote: "While there is no question that Trump should never be allowed to hold any public office, it clearly extends to all those who actively participated in the planning, and more importantly, all those who have continued to obstruct and impede a complete investigation as accessories after the fact." I suspect that this is the primary motivation for those in Congress who clearly know they committed acts of treason before, during and after J6; talk about cleaning out the swamp!
Indeed Ellen. And they know since Nixon was not held accountable for his crimes, they feel they have license to act without recourse. Furthermore, the Trump/MAGA party (no longer the GOP) will just scream “look what America does to political opponents!”. The consistent response from the DOJ, the AG’s, and the DA’s working to prosecute the offenders should be: “No. This is what we do to criminals who betray their oath of office and act to undermine the very system they are supposed to be committed to defending.” And then they should all sign “Yours in Service”.
I love that "yours in service"! Plus, the reminder that the rule of law is applied to CRIMINALS who betray their oath of office. If these folk do not like the consequences of their actions, they have choices to make. Whining is not a very effective choice, as I see it.
Excellent George👏
I agree! Thank you. George!
If delusional hypocrisy was a crime, Heather just proved the guilt of the insurrectionists and their millions of followers.
And, FWIW, yesterday I saw five pickup trucks in convoy flying American flags and displaying Trump propaganda on I-5 in Oregon between Eugene and Portland. I guess for them Jan. 6 is a day to celebrate treason.
Always love a good Star Trek reference! The future awaits . . .
Is there anything our dear Professor does not know about, not only past history, but future history as well!
lol Steve !
With the rise of AI, we need to be careful about our future. I've been using ChatGPT, and when you pose it precise questions regarding a programming problem, it can solve your problem in any programming language. Often this takes an extended conversation to get what you are after, but this is usually just the process of you formulating your thoughts.
ChatGPT insists it is not conscious or thinking, but how then does it know how to program really well and also respond as a very polite human?! Just a sample of one of many programming conversations is below:
https://chat.openai.com/share/689b574c-bb5b-4ad0-898c-d64bce373124
Thanks, Matt Fulkerson, for the timely reminder.
Able-minded citizens concerned for ordinary Americans' freedoms will have to be most attentive to the potential of generative AI for political and mass electoral use and, above all, abuse... doctoring both images and verbiage...
Much thought must be accorded to how citizens' ability to distinguish genuine from fake has already been gravely compromised during the past half century and how stereotyped behavior, both verbal and body language, leach from TV and Internet imagery into our own behavior patterns, both unconscious and conscious.
I'm not sure you have it right in your comment. Certainly there is AI for malicious political purposes. My points have been rather regarding the apparent intelligence that ChatGPT has shown. I've used ChatGPT to tell me how to use various Linux command-line tools to accomplish things like automatic text replacement using the very old and venerable sed command. How does ChatGPT know how to use *every* Linux command line tool?! How does it know how to program in C++ with good programming practices, comments, and how to adapt the program to your needs?
No, I think everyone here is missing the point. AI is here, with intelligence.
Matt,
TCinLA answered your query correctly. Automatic code generation for text input has been around for a while now. Since writing code is fairly well structured, you can set up subroutines that consume text with specific keywords and generate a set of instructions to do what you ask for.
Extending that to voice commands is trivial.
As TC said: You "train" the code to recognize a series of characters to do a specific thing.
That seems amazing to folks who are not working in the programming field, but, it is not really all that hard to do. Time consuming, yes, but not hard. Chat GPT has automated the training part so it has shrunk the time to outcome.
And, yes, AI is here with "intelligence". As you state. But, "intelligence" is a very broad and ill defined term of use.
An IF statement is intelligent yes? If you want a then d,e,f occurs. Right? Extending that with the ability to change the code in the face of new information is also not hard, just time consuming.
ChatGPT is a cool and useful tool, no doubt, but, Matt, you are missing the point.
Lots of things have intelligence born out of the passage of time and evolution. Now, we have code that can evolve based on new information as JL has pointed out to you correctly.
It was not hard to create that. Just time consuming. Like evolution.
Thank you for that nugget, helped a worn-out but human brain
Matt, I am always aware of the hidden costs and losses that come with what's gained by technical innovation, yet it was and is far from my intention to focus exclusively on abuses, both potential and real. Thanks for reminding me that I did not make that clear.
You speak for what's to be gained, and it speaks for itself.
Maybe useful to bear in mind Alfred North Whitehead's words:
"Intelligence is quickness to apprehend, as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended."
Wish you could talk to my husband.
Not a lot of difference from doing a web search for programming examples. If I assume that's what ChatGPT is doing, amassing results of web searches into databases, I'm probably not far from right. I guess I can't see how your example shows intelligence.
Matt, is there anything currently preventing AI from becoming just as effective and “sentient” in developing propaganda? I got your point about AI intelligence (though I know nothing about coding!) but it does seem like right now that intelligence could be directed to misinform, mislead and manipulate, among other things I right? The other side of the coin.....
Perhaps yes, and that is where I would hope something like watermarking be required, to identify AI- produced video and audio, etc., along the lines of how U.S. paper money is watermarked.
It's been trained to do that.
That is like saying we've trained our kiddos to program ... But ChatGPT does it better.
I'm saying that's why it responds to you as it does.
Fine. But are you completely ignoring the correctness of the code it spits out, amazingly? How does it do this? And Open AI is only publishing publicly Chat GPT.
Code that generates code. That's kinda like what math does.
“Not conscious or thinking”. Sounds like many humans, only better. At least in Texas
So...who is right? My Pi or your ChatGPT? I wonder if anyone has staged an AI debate.
Also, a basic Google search also is in the positive...Is Chat asleep at the coding switch?
So an AI debate ??? Interesting, could they implode the internet and cause web silence?
Wow, that’s amazing (and spooky)!
Didn’t I just see an AI advertisement on YouTube that was DJT warning us of the future dangers? Did anyone else see it? I turned it off in the middle but was struck by its message and delivery. I failed to find the source.
Didn’t I just see a YouTube add of what sounded like Trump warning us about the future which looked like AI? Did anybody else see this?
Indeed, I'll have to see is there is an episode featuring the USS Valley Forge!
Please share if you find it.☺️
Chat GPT says in the negative. See my post below.
My guy "Pi" says yes! Here ya go:
"Yes, there was a starship named USS Valley Forge in Star Trek! It was an Excelsior-class starship operated by Starfleet in the 24th century. The Valley Forge fought in the Dominion War and was involved in the Battle of Chin'toka in 2374. It's one of many iconic ships in the Star Trek universe that have made their mark on Federation history. 😊"
Right ? Especially one with so many far reaching, profound, analogous idioms.
Great historic reference, thank you, Dr. Richardson. The difference between true patriots as seen during those difficult months in Valley Forge and the smirk exhibition of entitlement on those fighting against a democratically processed election is clear as glass. In the words of Winston Churchill, "Never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense." No matter how entitled Trump's followers think they are, Democracy is worth fighting for. If they admire fascism so much they should emigrate to Hungary.
This from HCR's 1/5/23 newsletter
Biden began the speech by outlining what the soldiers in the Continental Army quartered at Valley Forge had fought for. “America made a vow,” Biden said. “Never again would we bow down to a king.”
I vow the same.
Not to kings. Just to corporations.
No honor or good sense with MAGAts. Chump has no clue what those words mean. Pass it on. Winston was right.
Where is that missing double like button ?
Yes
Well said
Washington vaccinated his troops with Smallpox and was able to have healthier troops to fight the war.
Another twist apart from today’s “true believers”*
*Eric Hoffer, “The True Believer.”
Yep, that's truth Michael.
I got the story of General Washington vaccinating his troops from Beau of the Fifth Column.
Mine: “The Indispensables”, Patrick O’Donnell
Who knew Heather was a Trekkie? One more reason to love her!
Agreed!
Heather, This is a fantastic news letter, and so timely. Enormous thanks for all that you do and all that you write!
"staffers who delayed their evacuation of the Capitol to save the endangered electoral ballots"
Over the past three years I have wondered who these people were, as they were essential to seeing that democracy survived on January 6th. What would have happened if the ballots had been stolen or destroyed? Maybe the staffers don't want their names publicly known but perhaps they could be acknowledged in some other way. I'd love to know the whole. story behind their actions, the risks they took, their presence of mind and sense of duty that saved the 2020 presidential electoral ballots.
I remember seeing a picture of them literally carrying the ballot box through the halls of the Capitol. Here's one I just found:
https://www.today.com/news/woman-pictured-carrying-electoral-votes-capitol-shares-story-behind-photo-t205329
Story says, "Update: These are two of the women as they carried the electoral votes to chambers earlier on in the day before the riots. One of them - a sophomore at Emory University, who with her colleagues had to flee as the rioters broke down the barricades- clarified that it was members of Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough's staff who safeguarded the electoral votes from the insurrectionists."
Agreed, would love to hear their story, sons and daughters of law abiding American Citizens, they’re calls to loved ones, which I am sure was anything but a “normal tourist visit”. Fact that the Capitol was closed like most buildings in America due to both Covid and the congressional business and only those with passes from the congress and senate could attend, no one else. Why is this not repeated and repeated. The continual lie that this was “Antifa” or an FBI plot when the FBI was controlled by Trump appointees could not be more absurd. As Heather points out the continual effort to rewrite history is not only wrong it’s horrifying. It’s like trying to say 911 did not happen.
Heather's insight rings true(as always!). Commemorating January 6th insurrectionists as heroes distorts history. Let's honor the genuine patriots: the Capitol defenders, like officers Goodman, Dunn, Edwards, Gonell, and Fanone, who risked everything. Recognizing their sacrifice safeguards our democracy. Let's unite in celebrating those who protected our Capitol, reinforcing the values that truly define us as a nation.
Yes, over 10O of these patriots went to the hospital!
The Nazis listed those to be prioritized for physical elimination in the countries they planned to invade.
So long as the major criminals and their American employers roam free, these patriots will be prime blacklisted targets.
As much as I enjoyed today's LFAA, I was disappointed that she didn't mention Officer Brian Sicknick in her list of Jan 6 heroes. He died that day, and he deserves recognition as a hero.
Listening to NPR yesterday and found it disheartening that one caller said that the media was making to much of Jan. 6th. People were just having a peaceful protest which was the right. Two guesses who he supports.
I just hope Mr. Teflon finally gets what he deserves.
Wonder if he saw it in real time. Hard to make too much of it.
NPR used to be largely subsidized by our taxes. However, republicans didn't agree with the "left wing ideology" (truth) they would report on their airwaves and in response mounted a campaign towards "defunding" NPR. If I recall correctly, they allowed NPR to keep a portion of their funding with some "concessions". Those concessions amount to a dramatic increase in right wing guests, talking points, and ideology. NPR is not now what it once was.
Common response among the cult
Hillary Clinton was right, they really are Deplorables. The lifetime losers from Flyover Loserville convinced their right to be successful as a result of the accident of their white birth is being stolen from them by the libs.
TC,
Hillary was and remains correct. However, saying half the country was "deplorable" on a hot mike with a camera trained on her face was an IQ test she failed.
Sometimes, perhaps even often, among the human race, saying what is accurate is NOT the same thing as saying the appropriate words for the moment.
It is deplorable that The United States of America tolerates, even promotes, condiitions that CREATE "deplorables." As a good old public health nurse, I have seen the worst. Until we fully invest in our people, with respect and support, our democracy is at great risk.
She said what I thought, and I have loved some of the deplorables. She should have been “politically correct” but I don’t fault her because she had been the victim of “Goebbels-style” vitriol. It was clear and in your face. Some don’t have mirrors.
Mike, dontcha just love the art of diplomacy? Its all about self control, huh?
She was right and smeared for it.
Hillary Clinton is deplorable. She can show you why, in her own words, in twelve seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DXDU48RHLU
Loserville personified.
Go fuck yourself, you worthless piece of shit. Asswipes like you are why Trump won in 2016. You're as despicable as your fellow traitors of January 6. Drop dead.
Aw, TC, you’re so sweet! Were I as thin skinned as many of your travelers here, I’d threaten to report you to the Heather comments police.
Since, unlike many liberals these days, such as the equally deplorable Wasserman-Schultz, friend of the aforementioned deplorable Clinton, I’m not a fan of censorship, I’ll just let you continue with your civilized discourse, on what is defined here as a civilized community.
Carry on!
And I thought her “Beetlejuice” groping was an offense. .... Lauren Boebert (R-CO) wrote on January 5, 2021: “Remember these next 48 hours. These are some of the most important days in American history.” On January 6, she wrote: “Today is 1776.”
The product of drunken night involving a third rate "professional wrestler" and a 19 year old groupie. And she's continued the tradition, with her 17 year old son having impregnated his 15 year old girlfriend, and now Lauren's a 34 year old "grandmother." A portrait of what is traditionally called "white trash."
You nailed it TC. "white trash" indeed. Have not heard that phrase in a while, but, bingo!
BoBo was possibly “discovered” by the Republican Party on the Explore Talent website like Rudy Giuliani’s fake voter fraud witness Melissa Carone and crisis actors they’ve used.
https://www.politicalflare.com/2021/09/it-appears-rep-lauren-boebert-had-an-explore-talent-modeling-actor-page-and-yikes/
That's how Reagan was picked too.
Why does million see the Jan. 6 rioters as patriots?
The short answer is that they want to rid America of all the complexities of having to see and live with diversity. They pine for a simpler world, one overthrowing government of the people, by the people, and for the people, instead for the cult of one overly-cosmetic-made-up, elaborately hair-permanented, obese diaper boy.
Longer answer is that they never got any education with sufficient humanities that any of them might have literacy for diversity, for complication and complexity. Thus (with the aid of billionaire social media algorithms for simpler hate) they clamor for the slogans, fantasyland lies, and racist formulas delivered by their orange fat guy and his mimics.
I live in Japan, where a recent survey shows more than a third of all adults under 50 have never had a date in their lives. This in a country where the schools, having removed humanities, also remove the personal -- and all its nuances. So large numbers are humanly crippled -- a third of Japan humanly neutered, the same proportion of Americans lunatic for their cult.
To think tax payer dollars pay the Freedom Caucus do-nothings, accompices to insurrection their salaries! Insanity. How do they get "thrown out"?
Jack Smith is trying hard to do just that. Sec. 2 of his lawsuit on our behalf, begs as part of relief that 'all that gave aid and comfort to the attempted insurrection, be disqualified' (paraphrased, but on mark). That takes aim with a wrecking ball, all the guilty congress critters, and others appointed, elected, etc. ! It's also one more reason that the SCrOTUS denied to consider the more timely plea of Jack Smith, yet accepted to consider OiD's attorney's far less timely pleading ! Get it ?
I think, D4N, we'll get a full accounting of those Republicans who so conspired against us.
Heather Cox Richardson is a historian, remember -- she has many good friends also superb at their profession.
For now, Victoria, we have the judicial undertakings D4N in part cites below.
We could have, too, Dems abroad the land uniting for the November elections. Various good Dems at local, state, and federal levels could meet in public forums, sitting together in guest panels of two, three, and four to celebrate their efforts at all levels for public programs passed and yet needing to be passed.
Also please from these possible participants -- citations of their best-loved humanities as to the human needs for these programs.
Your explanation is quite clear about lack of exposure by education and training to the realities of a democracy and what each citizen's part can be and hopefully is. We have a message problem and a media problem. With President Biden's talk to open his campaign it is essential to hear his words widely used in ads and other public exposures. Inspiration information.
Dems have to start creating coordinated talking points
across the country with a far less technocratic approach to 'explaining' things that they have done, moving on to ways that illustrate what those accomplishments actually mean to everyday people, many of whom do not literally understand how government works for us, how it functions for the general good, and how taking it down hurts the cheap 'patriots' themselves.
I.E. soften the hard edges of the Republicans resister-
destroyer mentality with too much counter story, as the President just did. Thus making room for more in-
betweens/independents/non-voters to see more clearly how voting for real democracy is in their interests.
Dems should use TicToc, etc.
Take a hint from Madam Secretary's press secretary Daisy on using social media aggressively. It's not about why not, it's about must do.
If Dems still have any smirkiness, do-gooder attitude lingering, Get Over It.
(Posted by a longtime Independent).
Democrats have NEVER been able to create coordinated talking points--too many coalitions in The Big Tent.--almost never are they all happy enough in the tent to want to coordinate. The only certainty in the Democratic Party is chronic unhappiness by 1 or more coalitions at all times, which is really sad.
Clinton & Gore did it pretty well. Years of defeat, a new generation ,and better message discipline were tried--Ross Perot got them over the line.
“I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”--humorist Will Rogers, about 90 years ago.
I use Will's quote all the time, too.
The Republicans have done a great job of taking over AM radio and cable TV.
Every 20 Khz on the AM dial is another well funded right wing nut ranting all day and all night about the evils of socialism, Democrats, Biden, and baying at the moon when they run out of nasty talk.
The Democrats slept while all of this happened.
AM radio is still a main information source for farmers working in fields with radios inside the tractors blaring away.
Farmers used to know who had their backs, a great loss
Well-put, Mike.
Yes, we could say Dems "slept."
Or that they simply found it convenient to go along with the various post-Powell memo plans for all to dehumanize, become silo-set, neutered, all in order to steroid the rich, as Jane Mayer documents in "Dark Money" and Sheldon Whitehouse in "The Scheme."
Phil, I think it is some of both. Some agree with the Powell memo, and some are just asleep, believing the tooth fairy will come and put their results under their pillow.
If you have Sirius XM radio, have you tuned in to channel 127? It's Sirius XM Progress. Talking heads are Tom Hartmann and John Huegelsen plus many others. John Huegelsen is very smart and a great spokesperson for progressives.
And truck drivers.
Dems don’t have a coordinated movement. This conversation kind of sums it up for me.
https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/anand-giridharadas-there-is-no-pro-democracy-movement-in-the-u-s-right-now-just-outrage-at-trump-199665221638
Bingo. And note how stupid Joe Scarborough is at the end, as are most of the political establishment operatives/pundits in DC, when he says about a potential ‘Democratic movement’, … “like Barack Obama did”.
No, Joe, you idiot, Obama created a moment, not a movement. Moments are killed all the time. Obama killed his when he filled his economic team with Wall Street bloodsuckers. Movements have staying power.
And, Tom, cut his roots with his great Chicago pastor, Jeremiah Wright.
Gutless political ‘expediency’. Reminded me of Bill Clinton disgustingly throwing Lani Guinier under the bus. There’s a reason the GOP accusations of weakness/cowardice towards Dems have resonance; it’s not all about the commies/socialists.
I remember a Clint Eastwood interview not long after the ‘72 election when he talked about a conversation he had sitting next to George McGovern on a cross-country flight after Nixon’s landslide. Eastwood had no idea McGovern was on a B-17 crew in WWII, and after spending just a bit of time getting to know him, said he wished he’d have voted for him instead of Nixon.
I have no problem talking with Trump voters, and actually making progress in finding common ground about what the impediments to the solutions to our problems actually are. We have to stop lumping every Trump voter into the KKK/deplorable bucket.
I think what you call "smirkiness," Robin, comes from the fall of humanities in U.S. schools.
For years I attributed this to the far-right programs following the 1971 Powell memo -- programs to marginalize and outright kill humanities. But then, too, even before that Dems were guilty of numbering, abstracting, packaging all life, as David Halberstam explored in "The Best and the Brightest."
Yes, the whole education system has to be re-evaluated in terms of actual learning and how it's done and what it's for, and that of course is also up for questioning In a society run by ever greater greed - to which whole generations are so accustomed they no little else. Community Colleges, state colleges, have become good options mostly. Elitism reflects that stupid reliance on a class or caste system whose main assumption lies in ages old beliefs in higher orders of being that magically translate to human form for the convenience of elitism,
i.e. the gods, in whatever religious cultures. And religion is a culture, and runs cultures in lots of places. NB: Judaism is an exception in that we don’t rely on that hierarchal structure, instead using a rabbinic scholarly one, as a peoplehood.
What can we do by Nov
Herd cats, Jeri.
Ask Dems nationwide -- in local, state, and federal office -- to appear together in public forums. In sets of two, three, and four, have them address the public programs already implemented and those yet needed.
Ask them, too, to point to favorite humanities of theirs (writings, music, film) which underscore the human side of these programs.
As a cat owner, I understand the challenge. Do better one on one as a life-long introvert, but not shy about politics.
Reading? Libraries?
God bless Ari Melber, Jamie Raskin, and so many more great Jews we have today.
Also the director of my own Ph.D. thesis at the U of Michigan a half-century ago, Marvin Felheim. He, a Harvard grad, had come from a very small town in northeast Kentucky, where his dad was the town tailor or hardware store owner (sorry, don't remember exactly which). I visited that town when Marvin was already very old, and found people who recalled its first and only Jewish family.
The subject of education as a foundation of democracy will always in this country and many others involve the contributions of the Jewish peoplehood for the last 1,800 yrs at least. This is so little understood in the general culture for myriad reasons not the least a sense that jews are only born not made, stereotyping being such a handy way of dismissing everyone's personal responsibility for their own growth.
Our necessarily acquired, created ongoing transition from priests to rabbis highlights possibilities for any cultural group to enrich its own real learning; the kind unafraid of asking unending questions for ever more lighting up of both heart and mind, our major calling card. Which makes us dangerous :-) .
Yes, Robin -- anyone who asks questions verges on the dangerous.
Long time ago I picked off of a drugstore rack a paperback book called "Jews, God, and History," by Max Dimont. It was a romp through the history of western civilization, through the perspectives of prominent Jews ever contributing to it. Jews were always a bit of outsiders, which perhaps gave good impetus for questioning things, imagining things differently, helping make things different.
So I, a non-Jew, have since then appreciated all that. Though I regret what the far-right settlers have been doing on the West Bank, so provoking deep ill feelings among the earlier inhabitants there. Regret the constant damages done by these settlers, for which the U.S. has ever felt obliged to pay.
Stereotypes? Schools over there could teach all to see "others" with respect as individuals. The U.S., however, much more prefers building up not understanding, but weaponry.
Robert McNamara birthed the U.S. weapons export industry in an effort to both pay for Vietnam and curb inflation. Haunted us ever since.
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This Dem agrees
Not really a reply -- just correction for opening, which ought start "Why do millions . . .."
And thanks for your sad note about Japan. It's disturbing that young people should be deprived of such a rich culture. Here in the US, I suspect that a lot of our students suffer at the hands of teachers who were shallowly educated themselves (or are coaches stuck with social studies).
Finland totally turned around its own earlier situation with teachers, "progwoman."
Now -- and for some years -- it has the best schools in the world. Hires only the best as teachers -- and gives them total autonomy, discretion, control of courses.
First thing the new batches of Finnish teachers did? Threw out the standardized testers.
If you'd like more on Japanese education, you can read "The Fall of Language in the Age of English," by Minae Mizumura (English edition by Columbia U Press, 2016). One sad, sad fact of Japan's slavery to standardized testing: not a school in Japan anymore asks any students to read any novel from beginning to end. Everything is broken into humanly meaningless fragments for rote memorization feeding the rule of machine-graded, standardized tests.
Japan excels in math and science, otherwise fails in everything human.
Hayao Miyazaki wanna word...
Amen, Bern. Amen.
And also many writers of manga, who, to my great surprise, carry on the profound heritage of Junichiro Tanizaki, Yasunari Kawabata, Akiko Yosano, Masuji Ibuse, and several great women writers of Japan alive and working yet today.
Yes. thanks for mentioning this.
Support teachers.
Living outside of one’s native culture can be threatening or an invitation to reflect on what really matters. Trump, Lincoln’s very opposite, is inured to dissing and inflicting harm on others, seeking validation. Ever unworthy, he like his pal Roger Stone and their mentor Roy Cohn, require habitats in which cruelty and disdain for others reign. Lincoln and a majority of Americans gambled that we could outgrow a propensity for vice dressed up as virtue. In this community we have an opportunity to examine our own values and actions. Calling out others as "white trash" and worse is not the way of Lincoln and it should not be ours. Stating what we value and why is HCR’s way, a lesson for all. There’s plenty of room for use of humor, parody, satire and use of words like treason, vice and unpatriotic. Let’s take that approach and let Tucker Carlson and Paul Gosar worry about what the reflective members of their families really think about them.
Thank you, Tom.
I'll try to respect and take to heart your good words on decency, and the example Lincoln set.
Thus I'll also work to limit any temptation I may have for the purple prose befitting the 315-pound cult leader who parades about in layers orange facial cosmetics and coiffure permanents emulating our greatest drag queens -- who waddles onstage to the Village People, and whose soiled diapers even while on him give those closest to him a whiff of the need for most alarmist purple prose.
Bingo!
I've no doubt at least 'like'ed some comments that used derogatory terms for the foes of a democratic America. So, I am not going to throw the first stone.
I grew up in Los Angeles but have in lived in Japan since 1980 and have seen a lot of changes. When I first came here, everyone considered themselves middle class, students went to school 6 days a week, company employees usually had lifelong employment. One needed to know 2000 kanji to read the newspaper and the literacy rate was close to 100%. The craftsmanship was exquisite, but now the old craftsmen are dying out and young people aren’t following in their footsteps. When Japan’s economic bubble burst, Japanese companies downsized and jobs were no longer readily available. Many kids dropped out of school and work in the ’80s and ’90s. They became social recluses, living at home. The term for them is “Hikikomori.” They’ve failed to develop necessary social skills and are unable to adjust in a society that is very structured and sensitive to social stigma. These are most likely the ones who have never been on a date in their lives. But I’m always impressed by the Japanese appreciation of beauty and culture. The culture is so rich, even though the society is full of contradictions.
Wow, humanly neutered, need to mull on that.
Phil Balla, re. Japan:
1. Would the removal of humanities from public education be a direct consequence of postwar US influence, or does it go back further to the prewar militarist regime's attempts to format and instrumentalize society?
2. The info you provide about the sclerotic aspects of this society helps me see why I have always been so impressed by the free Japanese men and women I have met, mostly elsewhere in the world, including one of my closest friends, now no longer with us.
I am also interested in goings-on in other Asian societies in which rootlessness and uprooting have had powerful effects, including the inculcation of simplified pseudo-traditions.
Most astute questioning on your part, Peter.
1. Both. Even prior to "the prewar militarist regime's attempts to format and instrumentalize society," for hundreds of years shoguns did the same. We may also add in how the U.S. set the tone around the world for fads and fashions in many areas, education included, as the Powell memo from 1971 on pushed neutering, siloing, and depersonalization in higher ed as well as K-12. All as cover for the commercialization Japan joined.
2. Love your caveat as to "the free Japanese men and women" you "have met, mostly elsewhere in the world." Yes, those who picked up and left Japan differ so much from all who stayed.
3. I think you know well, too, of Wendell Berry's writings on "rootlessness and uprooting," also highly "including the inculcation of simplified pseudo-traditions." In 1977 one classic of his called this "The Unsettling of America," though same obtained in Asia, as well as societies wherever the dollar culture reached.
Thank you, Peter, for your good, close attention.
Yes. You must know Japanese history far better than I. I am above all aware of the Tokugawa shogunate and the period leading up to it. Looking back, I see how ignorant I still am of so much about the country despite loving it. But perhaps “despite” is a key word here. (Mind you, the more I think about it, the more I feel ignorant about even the countries I know best, like Britain or Italy.)
I have been in Japan only twice, spending less than two months there. On both occasions the contact was brief but intense. Both times, I didn’t want to leave.
In 1973, a mission to attend the UNCTAD meeting in Tokyo, when I got to see plenty of things in the capital yet never roamed further than Yokohama. Travel arrangements for the week following the meeting did not work out and I was unable to spend more time in the country, visiting Hongkong and Thailand instead. I’d been unusually happy and at ease in Tokyo and said to myself on leaving that I would return once I’d found Japanese friends familiar with the country’s traditions who could take me to places I wanted to see, like Shii – Kumano. That came to pass in 1997, when I spent most of three weeks in the mountains not far from Kyoto, visiting that city and Nara and afterwards driving with a friend over 500 km through the mountains to Gunma-ken. Met artists, craftsmen, architects.
Most meetings with Japanese people who’d lived abroad for any length of time were brief; for instance a man I met in Manila who’d just spent a couple of years living in a poor fishing village where he’d shown the locals how to improve their catch… Those with whom I’ve had most to do spent years in Europe, eventually settling down in Japan and returning for months every year. Whenever I mentioned a place in Europe to my friend, he’d been there.
And no, you’ve shown me something. I did not know of Wendell Berry, and I’ll mention him to my stepdaughter’s family in Mississippi. Seems to have views very close to my own but to have been far bolder expressing them—and rightly so. I shall order The Unsettling of America now.
My own political influences include Mario P. Chanco, a Filipino journalist from a conservative background who did all he could to help small farmers, forming a seed bank for traditional rice and other varietals at a time when hybrid “miracle rice” demanding massive inputs was planted everywhere. He also helped Manila slum dwellers set up plots of land to produce vegetables. Mao Chanco’s philosophy was based on wartime experience, when ordinary villagers could expect nothing but trouble from above—whether the Japanese occupiers or local authorities and were forced to survive by their own very limited means. He saw this as a worldwide problem, with peasant farmers under attack everywhere and felt they needed to band together to defend themselves and survive. Yes, but as we have seen more recently, the poor have no means of defending themselves from brutal capitalists and their heavily armed police and death squads, let alone investors in distant cities buying up vast tracts of land to be “developed” to death using machinery, heavy inputs and minimum labor.
I have been more influenced by the ideas of Simone Weil and although these may currently seem unrealistic, there will have to be radical changes in agricultural practice this century both for the sake of sustainable development and feeding the world population.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/need-roots-disconnection-past-community
https://simoneweilcenter.org/publications/2021/5/9/the-great-unsettling-simone-weil-and-the-need-for-roots
You'll love Wendell Berry, Peter, as you start reading him. You may like to know, too, that his essays are also available in a two-volume edition from the Library of America.
I see, too, by your attention to fishing, and food production from small farmers, you'll appreciate Aya Hirata Kimura, a Japanese young woman long resident now in Hawaii. Her first book, "Hidden Hunger: Gender and the Politics of Smarter Foods." Her newest, "Food and Power in Hawaii: Visions of Food Democracy."
Thank you for your notes on Mao or Mario Chanco and Simone Weil. We've so many good people internationally among us.
Thank you, Peter, for noting others you value as occasion may rise here on Heather's site.
Two general texts that speak for me:
“This world, in which reason is more and more at home, is not habitable. It is hard and cold like those warehouses filled with goods that cannot satisfy: neither clothe the naked, nor feed the hungry; it is as impersonal as those factory sheds and industrial zones where manufactured things remain abstract, their only truth, statistical, borne on the anonymous circuit of the economy, the outcome of skilful planning decisions that cannot prevent disasters, but prepare them. There we have it, the mind in its masculine essence, living outside, exposed to the violent, blinding sun, to the trade winds that batter and beat it down, in a land without folds, rootless, solitary, wandering and already alienated by the very things it has produced, things that remain untameable and hostile.”
Emmanuel Levinas: Difficile Liberté
“When that which cannot feel, does not feel itself and is devoid of desire or love, is enshrined as a universal organizing principle, that signals the advent of madness, because madness lacks everything but reason.”
I feel I am expanding my education today by reading your comments. Wendell Barry also wrote about the machination of agriculture and how it changed our society. I had that great book but maybe I have lost it.
Peter, you've taught me two new words today (not that I'll remember them until I see them again, which might well be the 12th of Never, but I digress). Thank you.
"Siblings Jonathan and Olivia Pollock, whose family owns Rapture Guns and Knives, described on its Facebook page as a 'christian owned Gun and Knife store'...” "Family members of the fugitives and of other Lakeland residents arrested for their involvement in the January 6 attack on the Capitol insist their relatives are innocent, framed by a government eager to undermine their way of life."
That way of life, one supposes, is what? Making a living on the unrestricted sale of guns and knives? With a gun-loving god backing them up all the way? Gods are handy that way.
Side note; I think it was Lauren Boebert who said that Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms should be the name of a chain of convenience stores, not a government agency.
Boebert likely visits her store on the way to the theater! She’s a poor example of a human being!
I totally agree, Mr. Wilkins, and i would like to add one more poor example of a human being, MTG, aka, Maggot Traitor Goon. I have never seen anyone more hateful and arrogant than she is. Someone, somewhere, is going to take her down if she doesn't watch her big mouth.
Blame the parents – improper fetchins up explains a lot.
We have a chance. To be the people in our generation(s) to beat back tyranny once again. To develop a system of finance and government that provides real opportunities for all. To be the very first generation of humans on this planet since we developed metallurgy to live sustainably. To eventually fly to the stars in a spaceship called The Valley Forge.
I do not plan to "pre-obey" (thank-you Tim Snyder for that term) the would-be dictators by fretting over how strong they are, or how well they are doing in some very flawed poll. I plan to move forward with my life's plans and work. I will obnoxiously and unapologetic-ally call out fascism when I see it, and explain to anyone in earshot how a DT dictatorship will make this country weak and venal. I will care for my family and neighbors. I will care for my patients. I will NOT sit down.
https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/on-tyranny?r=apy04&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Sounds like you read Timothy Snyder yesterday! I’ll try to copy the link in the comments!
As always, Heather, you put today and past history in perspective. Keep reminding us that justice will prevail in a Democracy! It takes folks like you and those at Valley Forge to stand firm. Thank you!