The list of 500 banned Americans that Russian president Vladimir Putin released on Friday makes it clear that Putin is openly aligning himself with Trump and today’s MAGA Republicans. The people on the list are not necessarily involved with U.S. policy toward Russia; they are Americans who are standing in the way of the Trump movement’s takeover of our country.
We have difficulty seeing reality when it's beyond our experience and coming into view ever so slowly. But what's happening to our country is clearer tonight thanks to Heather. It's a slow-moving government takeover — governments of all size and type.
Republicans have been nibbling away for so long but now are taking bigger and bigger bites, gobbling up democracy. Is anyone at this point doubting they indeed seek to kill the federal government and create conditions ripe for authoritarian rule?
This list reveals the enemy's face at last. I don't of course mean that the names on the list are the enemy, it's the fact that the list is trump-generated and being employed by Putin. With whom, of course, there has never been any collusion. Thank heaven for the steadiness of President Biden. Amazing man. He's strong because he draws his strength from truth. Close ranks around him, everyone.
Most of the residents of the small community I reside in are republicans, rural and from several old families. I expect their views to be powered by Fox and a lot of the increasingly right-wing news sources. Yesterday I was called a Goddamn Democrat by one of them because I asked him what was so bad about Obama, whom he had been blaming for something or other. I was not insulted, I laughed and provoked him a bit more. These folks support the policies that injure them the most, and last fall, 64% of them voted for Republican candidates. I work the elections and I pay attention to the ballot machine numbers. Even when they realize those policies don't benefit them, they are so locked in they have no "safe space" of their own to retreat to.
A moderate Republican candidate will get chewed up and spit out in these times. I used to be a far-left Dem, in the 70s, and thought of being a moderate as one positioned in the middle of the road politically. However these days, I am beginning to see that quality as trying to exist between the guard rails, so as not to waste time backing the wrong horse so to speak.
HCR points out what has been creeping in on our democracy for a longer time than we know. Why now? Because now those forces are manifesting in more explicit policies, which means they feel the momentum is great enough to withstand dismissal.
Some commenters here have expressed concern that these fresh (not new) attacks from the right have not been obvious since recently. I would like to bring into the discussion the Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity movements which became the Tea Party, the Contract With America, 1994, the Contract From America 2010, the 1985 Reagan SOTU speech in which he wanted attacks on normal peoples' relationship with gov't, and obviously the Freedom Caucus 2015. Some of the players, like Michele Bachmann, are gone now, but what they accomplished is still with us. If a plumber is working on your house, and leaves because of a falling out say, he doesn't take the plumbing with him. These organizations may rotate personnel and members, but the org mutates like a virus with the pressures on it.
So it should not be surprising that what HCR is writing about has been bubbling all along. Folks were attracted to the salesmanship of you-know-who, and didn't care what he actually did because he made the promises his supporters wanted to hear.
These developments will not be reversed with one election, or two; they will be with us for a generation or more. It takes time as we see to infiltrate the government we think we have to make changes to undo the changes we are hearing about.
Biden has to work to fend off these attacks while trying to implement policies that will move us forward, for the betterment of you and me and not the oil companies. Does he have the backing, the staff, the tools to accomplish all this? I fervently hope so. We can vote of course, and we can also pressure our representatives to listen and heed our concerns. We don't have to wait to do that. We can start today. I already get a word in locally, regionally, and ststewide when I can. You can do it too.
Ashley Babbit was an airheaded bimbo moron too stupid to make it past E-3 in an 18-year Air Force career, which is why they finally got rid of her on grounds of professional incompetence.
The House Republicans have revealed themselves as traitors intent on "making war" against the United States, and should be treated as such. Round up the Taliban 20 and the leaders of MAGA Inc and stick them in solitary confinement in the DC jail awaiting trial for treason.
Sumner County, TN is not alone in pushing and/or making official state policy of the myth of "Judeo-Christian values inherent in the Nation's founding". I have long been puzzled by the use of the hyphenate employing two of the three desert monotheistic religions as somehow being part and parcel of our founding. This is wholly untrue.
While the vast majority of the American population at the time the shot heard round the world was fired was indeed Christian, the government instituted in the wake of the long revolutionary war against the British was not based upon either Christian or Judaic principles. It was based upon principles of both the ancient Greeks and the Roman Republic, and the more recent Enlightenment. The term "God" is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, while the very first amendment thereto clearly sets forth a clear prohibition against the "establishment of religion" by the federal government.
The values inherent in our founding were those familiar to Messrs. Locke, Rousseau and Montesquieu, while significantly less so to the likes of Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather.
The artificial construct of "Judeo-Christian" has always been redolent of an unpleasant exclusionism, as if those who may be practitioners of the other desert monotheistic religion (Islam) or certain Eastern religions such as Buddhism, or for that matter, no religion at all were somewhat lesser in their Americanism or even their humanity. Such is certainly not the case.
The genius of the First Amendment's establishment and free exercise clauses is that they demonstrate that a higher and freer nature of humanity respects the concept of a mystery and cosmology beyond our rational powers, but refuses to allow any particular group of religious practitioners to claim ownership over the ways in which we organize and govern ourselves here in the temporal plain.
Can somebody explain to me why the President even appeared to negotiate with people committed to nullifying the Constitution of the United States -- except for those First and Second Amendments which their movement's placemen on the Supreme Court have succeeded in doctoring to suit paymasters' desires?
Having succeeded in transforming Christ's Gospel into everything that he preached against, turning Truth upside down and inside out wherever it is to be found should be well within the abilities of these people.
Will Americans at last wake up and save the Republic from the rule of mobsters -- or at least salvage what can be salvaged?
You have to be blind, deaf and mentally defective not to get the point of Putin's blacklist at a time when his rockets and artillery are destroying Ukraine's cities villages and human inhabitants.
Heather, you showcase the grandstanding of these terrible groups and horrible people-to perfection. You manage to do this while calling on all of us to the task of perfecting our very imperfect democracy. i owe you a great debt of gratitude for helping to keep my hope alive.
Sadly the right wing ascendancy we now experience was as you say already begin by Nixon. And not incidentally he, guided by Kissinger, enable one of the most significant fascist leaders, Pinochet, to execute Chiles elected leader Allende and institute a regime of terror. The methods of torture and killing Pinochet used are now exalted by right wing Proud Boys militias. For instance they celebrate how Pinochets police threw Allende supporters out of helicopters. Now they want to bring their methods home to us.
Thanks to Heather for another summary of (sadly) depressing news!
While almost everything is beyond belief, the many ways tfg and his cohorts are continuing unabatedly to work on the dismantling of democracy and the United States, I am more than shocked reading about (and watching) Jason Graber. "Nonetheless, the rhetoric of demonization is working: Brian Tyler Cohen reports (with video) that “Christian” pastor Jason Graber recently called for the execution of all LGBTQ people as well as the parents of transgender people: “They just need to be shot in the back of the head and then we can string them up above a bridge.”
Words fail me. Per Newsweek it goes on: "Graber also called on the federal government to "invade" Washington and arrest state senators and representatives and convict them in a Nuremberg-style trial over their support for transgender people. He then said they should be stoned to death by people in Washington state." How can so-called 'Christians' listen to a so-called 'Christian Pastor' without firing him and send him to Hell? How can this kind of un-Christian blasphemy not be punished?
It is difficult to accept my lifelong naivete with regard to a fascism which appears to have always had a foothold within what increasingly appears to be our slowly receding democracy. It may be that money is not the root of all evil so much as society's misguided belief in the supernatural.
Religious belief, with obvious exception, has since its inception been used as a less destructive means of social control than armed conflict. The reward of a peaceful afterlife allows the majority of believers to overlook the way in which they are manipulated. Even advocates of peace often join the ranks of the military thanks to being convinced it is their god's will.
We are seeing this today in our own nation with religious leaders who while not passing the plate are preaching the gospel of their favored politicians. This isn't to say that all religious leaders are exploiting their congregants, but it is to say that all religious leaders of any sort are not only accepting the never provable philosophy of an afterlife, but also denying observable reality. In this way religious leaders, regardless the belief they espouse, are wittingly or not giving a pass to political leaders who mouth the platitudes of the sermons in an effort to gain or maintain support.
As has become very clear in all three branches of our government, as well as increasing number of both European and Asian nations, there is good reason for the separation of church and state.
Doubtless the Peoples Republic of China is not favorably received by the majority of our citizenry but one aspect of their constitution should be considered as enlightened and that is their professed atheism, which in itself removes the fictions of religion from the reality of governance.
The battle lines: ethno-diverse liberal democracy versus white Christo-fascists are terrifyingly clear. Gun violence figures into the rise of fascists, I feel. SCOTUS is aiding and abetting fascism, too because our rights are under attack and because some on the court are corrupted; that’s what I believe. It feels overwhelming.
We are currently staying across the street from the Consulate of Turkey in Edinburgh. For the last 3 days we have seen lines of Turkish citizens coming to cast their vote in the run-off election. In our travels we have had conversation with several Turkish citizens who travelled to the consulate to vote for Erdogan’s opponents in hope of removing another leader destroying democracy. Such dangerous leadership is recognized by many around the world with the hope of retaining freedom democracy provides.
"Since Trump’s attempt to overthrow the will of the voters on January 6, 2021, his supporters have imitated the language and the laws that enabled Putin to destroy representative democracy in Russia and Viktor Orbán to undermine liberal democracy in Hungary."
Way before that and the other way around. Modern European racists, from Hitler on, imitated the language of American racism. And imitated American racist strategies of turning the law on its head to drain it of justice. Before Orban and Putin converted, American movement conservatives had jumped in bed with American militant christians. To spawn today's GOP. Trump repackaged himself before putting his brand on the party.
One ought not write about modern clerical fascism without spotlighting Leonard Leo, the American plutocrats' useful man who has not only packed the courts to corrupt the judiciary, but has funneled dark money through a myriad of shell corporations to grow a myriad of antidemocratic initiatives.
How modest of Dr. HCR to not mention that she was also on Putin's list of banned Americans. Congratulations on being deemed an enemy of autocracy.
We have difficulty seeing reality when it's beyond our experience and coming into view ever so slowly. But what's happening to our country is clearer tonight thanks to Heather. It's a slow-moving government takeover — governments of all size and type.
Republicans have been nibbling away for so long but now are taking bigger and bigger bites, gobbling up democracy. Is anyone at this point doubting they indeed seek to kill the federal government and create conditions ripe for authoritarian rule?
This list reveals the enemy's face at last. I don't of course mean that the names on the list are the enemy, it's the fact that the list is trump-generated and being employed by Putin. With whom, of course, there has never been any collusion. Thank heaven for the steadiness of President Biden. Amazing man. He's strong because he draws his strength from truth. Close ranks around him, everyone.
Most of the residents of the small community I reside in are republicans, rural and from several old families. I expect their views to be powered by Fox and a lot of the increasingly right-wing news sources. Yesterday I was called a Goddamn Democrat by one of them because I asked him what was so bad about Obama, whom he had been blaming for something or other. I was not insulted, I laughed and provoked him a bit more. These folks support the policies that injure them the most, and last fall, 64% of them voted for Republican candidates. I work the elections and I pay attention to the ballot machine numbers. Even when they realize those policies don't benefit them, they are so locked in they have no "safe space" of their own to retreat to.
A moderate Republican candidate will get chewed up and spit out in these times. I used to be a far-left Dem, in the 70s, and thought of being a moderate as one positioned in the middle of the road politically. However these days, I am beginning to see that quality as trying to exist between the guard rails, so as not to waste time backing the wrong horse so to speak.
HCR points out what has been creeping in on our democracy for a longer time than we know. Why now? Because now those forces are manifesting in more explicit policies, which means they feel the momentum is great enough to withstand dismissal.
Some commenters here have expressed concern that these fresh (not new) attacks from the right have not been obvious since recently. I would like to bring into the discussion the Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity movements which became the Tea Party, the Contract With America, 1994, the Contract From America 2010, the 1985 Reagan SOTU speech in which he wanted attacks on normal peoples' relationship with gov't, and obviously the Freedom Caucus 2015. Some of the players, like Michele Bachmann, are gone now, but what they accomplished is still with us. If a plumber is working on your house, and leaves because of a falling out say, he doesn't take the plumbing with him. These organizations may rotate personnel and members, but the org mutates like a virus with the pressures on it.
So it should not be surprising that what HCR is writing about has been bubbling all along. Folks were attracted to the salesmanship of you-know-who, and didn't care what he actually did because he made the promises his supporters wanted to hear.
These developments will not be reversed with one election, or two; they will be with us for a generation or more. It takes time as we see to infiltrate the government we think we have to make changes to undo the changes we are hearing about.
Biden has to work to fend off these attacks while trying to implement policies that will move us forward, for the betterment of you and me and not the oil companies. Does he have the backing, the staff, the tools to accomplish all this? I fervently hope so. We can vote of course, and we can also pressure our representatives to listen and heed our concerns. We don't have to wait to do that. We can start today. I already get a word in locally, regionally, and ststewide when I can. You can do it too.
Ashley Babbit was an airheaded bimbo moron too stupid to make it past E-3 in an 18-year Air Force career, which is why they finally got rid of her on grounds of professional incompetence.
The House Republicans have revealed themselves as traitors intent on "making war" against the United States, and should be treated as such. Round up the Taliban 20 and the leaders of MAGA Inc and stick them in solitary confinement in the DC jail awaiting trial for treason.
Endless blessings and love to you, Heather, for your dedication to our democracy.
Thank you, Heather, for keeping us informed but I have never been more frightened for my country as I am now.
Evening to All-,
Sumner County, TN is not alone in pushing and/or making official state policy of the myth of "Judeo-Christian values inherent in the Nation's founding". I have long been puzzled by the use of the hyphenate employing two of the three desert monotheistic religions as somehow being part and parcel of our founding. This is wholly untrue.
While the vast majority of the American population at the time the shot heard round the world was fired was indeed Christian, the government instituted in the wake of the long revolutionary war against the British was not based upon either Christian or Judaic principles. It was based upon principles of both the ancient Greeks and the Roman Republic, and the more recent Enlightenment. The term "God" is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, while the very first amendment thereto clearly sets forth a clear prohibition against the "establishment of religion" by the federal government.
The values inherent in our founding were those familiar to Messrs. Locke, Rousseau and Montesquieu, while significantly less so to the likes of Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather.
The artificial construct of "Judeo-Christian" has always been redolent of an unpleasant exclusionism, as if those who may be practitioners of the other desert monotheistic religion (Islam) or certain Eastern religions such as Buddhism, or for that matter, no religion at all were somewhat lesser in their Americanism or even their humanity. Such is certainly not the case.
The genius of the First Amendment's establishment and free exercise clauses is that they demonstrate that a higher and freer nature of humanity respects the concept of a mystery and cosmology beyond our rational powers, but refuses to allow any particular group of religious practitioners to claim ownership over the ways in which we organize and govern ourselves here in the temporal plain.
Can somebody explain to me why the President even appeared to negotiate with people committed to nullifying the Constitution of the United States -- except for those First and Second Amendments which their movement's placemen on the Supreme Court have succeeded in doctoring to suit paymasters' desires?
Having succeeded in transforming Christ's Gospel into everything that he preached against, turning Truth upside down and inside out wherever it is to be found should be well within the abilities of these people.
Will Americans at last wake up and save the Republic from the rule of mobsters -- or at least salvage what can be salvaged?
You have to be blind, deaf and mentally defective not to get the point of Putin's blacklist at a time when his rockets and artillery are destroying Ukraine's cities villages and human inhabitants.
Heather, you showcase the grandstanding of these terrible groups and horrible people-to perfection. You manage to do this while calling on all of us to the task of perfecting our very imperfect democracy. i owe you a great debt of gratitude for helping to keep my hope alive.
Sadly the right wing ascendancy we now experience was as you say already begin by Nixon. And not incidentally he, guided by Kissinger, enable one of the most significant fascist leaders, Pinochet, to execute Chiles elected leader Allende and institute a regime of terror. The methods of torture and killing Pinochet used are now exalted by right wing Proud Boys militias. For instance they celebrate how Pinochets police threw Allende supporters out of helicopters. Now they want to bring their methods home to us.
Thanks to Heather for another summary of (sadly) depressing news!
While almost everything is beyond belief, the many ways tfg and his cohorts are continuing unabatedly to work on the dismantling of democracy and the United States, I am more than shocked reading about (and watching) Jason Graber. "Nonetheless, the rhetoric of demonization is working: Brian Tyler Cohen reports (with video) that “Christian” pastor Jason Graber recently called for the execution of all LGBTQ people as well as the parents of transgender people: “They just need to be shot in the back of the head and then we can string them up above a bridge.”
Words fail me. Per Newsweek it goes on: "Graber also called on the federal government to "invade" Washington and arrest state senators and representatives and convict them in a Nuremberg-style trial over their support for transgender people. He then said they should be stoned to death by people in Washington state." How can so-called 'Christians' listen to a so-called 'Christian Pastor' without firing him and send him to Hell? How can this kind of un-Christian blasphemy not be punished?
It is difficult to accept my lifelong naivete with regard to a fascism which appears to have always had a foothold within what increasingly appears to be our slowly receding democracy. It may be that money is not the root of all evil so much as society's misguided belief in the supernatural.
Religious belief, with obvious exception, has since its inception been used as a less destructive means of social control than armed conflict. The reward of a peaceful afterlife allows the majority of believers to overlook the way in which they are manipulated. Even advocates of peace often join the ranks of the military thanks to being convinced it is their god's will.
We are seeing this today in our own nation with religious leaders who while not passing the plate are preaching the gospel of their favored politicians. This isn't to say that all religious leaders are exploiting their congregants, but it is to say that all religious leaders of any sort are not only accepting the never provable philosophy of an afterlife, but also denying observable reality. In this way religious leaders, regardless the belief they espouse, are wittingly or not giving a pass to political leaders who mouth the platitudes of the sermons in an effort to gain or maintain support.
As has become very clear in all three branches of our government, as well as increasing number of both European and Asian nations, there is good reason for the separation of church and state.
Doubtless the Peoples Republic of China is not favorably received by the majority of our citizenry but one aspect of their constitution should be considered as enlightened and that is their professed atheism, which in itself removes the fictions of religion from the reality of governance.
The battle lines: ethno-diverse liberal democracy versus white Christo-fascists are terrifyingly clear. Gun violence figures into the rise of fascists, I feel. SCOTUS is aiding and abetting fascism, too because our rights are under attack and because some on the court are corrupted; that’s what I believe. It feels overwhelming.
We are currently staying across the street from the Consulate of Turkey in Edinburgh. For the last 3 days we have seen lines of Turkish citizens coming to cast their vote in the run-off election. In our travels we have had conversation with several Turkish citizens who travelled to the consulate to vote for Erdogan’s opponents in hope of removing another leader destroying democracy. Such dangerous leadership is recognized by many around the world with the hope of retaining freedom democracy provides.
"Since Trump’s attempt to overthrow the will of the voters on January 6, 2021, his supporters have imitated the language and the laws that enabled Putin to destroy representative democracy in Russia and Viktor Orbán to undermine liberal democracy in Hungary."
Way before that and the other way around. Modern European racists, from Hitler on, imitated the language of American racism. And imitated American racist strategies of turning the law on its head to drain it of justice. Before Orban and Putin converted, American movement conservatives had jumped in bed with American militant christians. To spawn today's GOP. Trump repackaged himself before putting his brand on the party.
One ought not write about modern clerical fascism without spotlighting Leonard Leo, the American plutocrats' useful man who has not only packed the courts to corrupt the judiciary, but has funneled dark money through a myriad of shell corporations to grow a myriad of antidemocratic initiatives.
https://truenorthresearch.org/2023/02/truthout-tax-docs-link-right-wing-parents-group-to-leonard-leos-dark-money-network/
https://www.propublica.org/article/leonard-leo-teneo-videos-documents
https://accountable.us/leonard-leo/