Last night, Trump’s disgraced former national security advisor Michael Flynn spoke at the “Reawaken America” conference in San Antonio, Texas, designed to whip up supporters to believe the 2020 election was stolen and that coronavirus vaccines are an infringement on their liberty. Flynn told the audience: “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God.”
A favorite quote from “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life” by Anne Lamott
“…my priest friend Tom […] said you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
What religion could they possibly espouse? They aren’t interested in healing the sick, housing the homeless or feeding the hungry. It seems their religion is bound by guns…
Democrat Beto O’Rourke, onetime presidential candidate, announces bid for governor in Texas
The 49-year-old O’Rourke, who nearly ousted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in 2018, made the announcement in a video. The Democrat is hoping to capture the governorship held by Republican Greg Abbott in the GOP-leaning state.
This atheist thinks we’re headed into territory never seen before. These Republican traitors are poisoning the well all of us depend on for health and well-being.
The last section of this letter explains the essential difference between us and them. We support successful efforts of a president of any party if those efforts sincerely lead to human betterment. When 45 announced "Operation Warpspeed" to find a vaccine for Covid I applauded. When 45 announced the withdrawal from Afghanistan, I applauded. Not the timing or the manner...but the idea.
I hated and condemned almost every other utterance from him (it). But when a leader leads properly, we are apt to support him.
Republicans are anti-anything that a Democrat might get credit for - even if it was an idea that they had created themselves. Obamacare was modeled on Romneycare in our state. It worked. Highly popular. Add Obama's name and it became bad. Infrastructure was a pitch from 45 and now it is a bad thing because...
The hypocrisy is almost as stunning as the obvious stupidity of it all.
Is it too much to ask Democrats to raise hell and launch a media blitz about the danger posed by Republicans blocking what should be routine confirmations of NATO and EU ambassadors? After all, Putin's last intrusion into Ukraine was likely a warmup for something bigger and more perilous. Then again, would the media pay attention?
At least the House and Senate are in session this week after leaving town last week. And then it's another vacation next week. Not that there's any other important business at hand, like stopping an ongoing coup and saving democracy.
Real leaders would look at the never-break-a-sweat Congressional Calendar and make some adjustments, holidays be damned.
I prevail upon all of us to view every effort, as of late, to upend our cherished American experiment, its flaws notwithstanding, as an initiative driven by a relatively small minority that has become very vocal. Surely, our Founders never intended the creation of congressional or county district gerrymandering wherein an entire voting bloc could be of one opinion and not have to compromise on their candidate nor even have to participate. Neither could they imagine a 50-50 Senate wherein 50 Republican Senators would represent 41 million fewer Americans than the 50 Democratic Senators or an electoral college wherein Republicans would win the popular vote only once in the past 32 years, despite having won 4 presidential elections since 1988.
As a final point, it’s worth noting that celebrated radio show host and activist Joe Madison is entering his 6th day of a fast that will not end until Congress passes either the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act or the Freedom to Vote Act. In Madison’s own words: “When history is written 50 years from now, or 25 years from now, I don’t want my children…and our children shouldn’t have to say, ‘What did you all do to protect our voting rights’”?
I love reading your pieces. There is such a depth of knowledge that reading you becomes an education for me, trying to understand the United States. Please keep writing, and having the odd rest day, too!
Basta! Enough already. We are losing our democracy and it’s past time for everyone, not just us on this forum, to start defending it. As David Pepper says in his great book, “Laboratories of Autocracy, a Wake Up Call from Behind the Lines”, Madison and the founders created a firewall, a commitment to “guarantee to every state in the Union a Republican form of government “ (Republican meaning government by the people, not a few powerful). It’s time for Congress to pass the 2 voting rights bills. It’s time for all media…..newspapers, TV, even 60 Minutes to start telling everyone how dangerous these people are and warn their viewers of what’s really happening. Its time to stop saying the sky is falling because of inflation and the shortages in the stores and start saying the sky is falling because the autocrats are taking over the country. It’s time for lots of news stories reminding everyone of what happened in Nazi Germany, and now Hungary and Belarus and warning everyone that it’s happening here. It’s time to invoke that “Guarantee Clause” that the founders gave us.
James Madison continues to be our touchstone and a guide as we sort out how America moves in and out of the Constitution and away from Democracy
'The U.S. Constitution was an exercise in intelligent design. The Founding Fathers knew that most previous democracies had been unstable and short-lived. But they were excellent psychologists, and they strove to create institutions and procedures that would work with human nature to resist the forces that had torn apart so many other attempts at self-governance.'
'For example, in “Federalist No. 10,” James Madison wrote about his fear of the power of “faction,” by which he meant strong partisanship or group interest that “inflamed [men] with mutual animosity” and made them forget about the common good. He thought that the vastness of the United States might offer some protection from the ravages of factionalism, because it would be hard for anyone to spread outrage over such a large distance. Madison presumed that factious or divisive leaders “may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.” The Constitution included mechanisms to slow things down, let passions cool, and encourage reflection and deliberation.'
'Madison’s design has proved durable. But what would happen to American democracy if, one day in the early 21st century, a technology appeared that—over the course of a decade—changed several fundamental parameters of social and political life? What if this technology greatly increased the amount of “mutual animosity” and the speed at which outrage spread? Might we witness the political equivalent of buildings collapsing, birds falling from the sky, and the Earth moving closer to the sun?'
'America may be going through such a time right now.'
'In other words, social media turns many of our most politically engaged citizens into Madison’s nightmare: arsonists who compete to create the most inflammatory posts and images, which they can distribute across the country in an instant while their public sociometer displays how far their creations have traveled.'
“If you actually want to find the truth—if you’re a scientist or if you’re working at, say, the Defense Intelligence Agency, where your job is really to find the truth—you have to overcome each person’s preferred way of thinking, which is, find evidence for why I am right,” he replied. “You have to overcome that, and the only known way to overcome confirmation bias is with other people. There’s been research trying to train people to question their assumptions. Nobody’s found a way. It’s very hard to train people to do that. The only way to do it is to have someone who doesn’t share your confirmation bias engage with you. That’s why the Catholic Church created the devil’s advocate. They literally said, ‘Your job is to find reasons why we’re wrong.’”
“The relationship matters more than the message. That’s why a university, especially one that includes a diversity of viewpoints, can be so powerful—because you cultivate these relationships within a community that says our job is not to win, our job is to learn. That’s why the internet.... the worst places for this, because you don’t have relationships and people are trying to show how smart they are. They’re trying to show how devoted they are to their team. So the kind of political engagement, the kind of public square that we get from social media, is generally terrible.'
“Does anyone really think we are going to win people over by insulting them and spouting hatred toward them?” he added. “Or are we going to win them over by listening, one on one, as individuals, human to human, American to American?”
The thoughts expressed are those of Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the New York University Stern School of Business. He is the author of The Righteous Mind and the co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. His main areas of study are the psychology of morality and moral emotions.
As we examine the divisions in America and the county's shaky relationship with Democracy on the forum, I will sometimes bring Jonathan Haidt with me. These subjects have been at the forefront of his learning, writing and teaching
Flynn, the lying weasel that he is, attempted to deny that he made such as statement about an all-Christian nationalist nation, but of course, his ugly statement was recorded.
Traitor Flynn's attempt to dehuminize and delegitimize millions of Americans who don't practice Christianity, or, in this case, Christian triumphalism, is not a new phenomenon in this country, and fits in perfectly with Trump's various schemes to accomplish the same smoke and mirrors act during his presidency and his Big Lie afterwards; in fact, I see a pattern between Trump's increasing legal jeopardy and the rising extremism and violence in much of the country (thanks to your newsletter), from religion to school boards, to name but a few.
A quote that is attributed to Ghandi sticks with me: "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
While I don't practice any religion, I am acquainted with wonderful people who are, and their fight for social justice is ongoing and transformative.
Well, well, Judas Flynn, which ones of the over 200 Christian denominations that exist in the US alone will you find acceptable and which will you eliminate at the altar of your man-made God? Surely, knowing you and your bigoted consiglieri, you will not find all of them acceptable, especially those who welcome the inclusion of our BIPOC and LGBTQIA kin in their congregations and to positions of leadership. So, will some be more "Christian" than others?
General Flynn has gone completely off the deep end. Between his assertion of the vaccine requirements being an "infringement" of liberty and the "one nation under God under one religion" he is the poster child for this abhorrent idea of "government".
What scares me most is this:
"But, as Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) pointed out this morning, “Senate Republicans are blocking the confirmation of our NATO and EU Ambassadors so as to deliberately hamper global security…because they believe global instability will hurt Biden, and hurting Biden is all that matters.”"
We have one elected party that is motivated simply to confound the duly elected President and is completely abdicating its responsibility. We have a substantial percentage of our country that sees nothing wrong with this. This is terrifying.
There isn't much good news politically these days, is there? And meanwhile, I saw over the weekend that Pastor John Hagee's megachurch was heartily screeching out "Let's go, Brandon" on Sunday...........and the chants were being led from the pulpit.
How can such a blatant TRAITOR, such as a 3-star general still be walking free in the United States to foment attacks on established tenets of our Constitution? How can he be free to consort with enemies of the United States? IDK how officers are governed. I know they are different than us enlisted ranks, but when I left the U.S. Air Force as an E-4 in 1967, I had worked with Top Secret information at NSA and had travel restrictions for that. I assume Ex-General Flynn had access to more useful classified information for his dinner buddy (and possible patron) Vladimir Putin. Benedict Arnold escaped to Canada & England. If the U.S. government can’t reign in this Qanon conspiracy theorist, Russian Television propaganda whore, I at least hope to see Michael Flynn become a fugitive living in infamy in Russia.
A favorite quote from “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life” by Anne Lamott
“…my priest friend Tom […] said you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
What religion could they possibly espouse? They aren’t interested in healing the sick, housing the homeless or feeding the hungry. It seems their religion is bound by guns…
VERY GOOD BREAKING NEWS in the Washington Post:
Democrat Beto O’Rourke, onetime presidential candidate, announces bid for governor in Texas
The 49-year-old O’Rourke, who nearly ousted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in 2018, made the announcement in a video. The Democrat is hoping to capture the governorship held by Republican Greg Abbott in the GOP-leaning state.
This atheist thinks we’re headed into territory never seen before. These Republican traitors are poisoning the well all of us depend on for health and well-being.
The last section of this letter explains the essential difference between us and them. We support successful efforts of a president of any party if those efforts sincerely lead to human betterment. When 45 announced "Operation Warpspeed" to find a vaccine for Covid I applauded. When 45 announced the withdrawal from Afghanistan, I applauded. Not the timing or the manner...but the idea.
I hated and condemned almost every other utterance from him (it). But when a leader leads properly, we are apt to support him.
Republicans are anti-anything that a Democrat might get credit for - even if it was an idea that they had created themselves. Obamacare was modeled on Romneycare in our state. It worked. Highly popular. Add Obama's name and it became bad. Infrastructure was a pitch from 45 and now it is a bad thing because...
The hypocrisy is almost as stunning as the obvious stupidity of it all.
Is it too much to ask Democrats to raise hell and launch a media blitz about the danger posed by Republicans blocking what should be routine confirmations of NATO and EU ambassadors? After all, Putin's last intrusion into Ukraine was likely a warmup for something bigger and more perilous. Then again, would the media pay attention?
At least the House and Senate are in session this week after leaving town last week. And then it's another vacation next week. Not that there's any other important business at hand, like stopping an ongoing coup and saving democracy.
Real leaders would look at the never-break-a-sweat Congressional Calendar and make some adjustments, holidays be damned.
I prevail upon all of us to view every effort, as of late, to upend our cherished American experiment, its flaws notwithstanding, as an initiative driven by a relatively small minority that has become very vocal. Surely, our Founders never intended the creation of congressional or county district gerrymandering wherein an entire voting bloc could be of one opinion and not have to compromise on their candidate nor even have to participate. Neither could they imagine a 50-50 Senate wherein 50 Republican Senators would represent 41 million fewer Americans than the 50 Democratic Senators or an electoral college wherein Republicans would win the popular vote only once in the past 32 years, despite having won 4 presidential elections since 1988.
As a final point, it’s worth noting that celebrated radio show host and activist Joe Madison is entering his 6th day of a fast that will not end until Congress passes either the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act or the Freedom to Vote Act. In Madison’s own words: “When history is written 50 years from now, or 25 years from now, I don’t want my children…and our children shouldn’t have to say, ‘What did you all do to protect our voting rights’”?
I love reading your pieces. There is such a depth of knowledge that reading you becomes an education for me, trying to understand the United States. Please keep writing, and having the odd rest day, too!
Basta! Enough already. We are losing our democracy and it’s past time for everyone, not just us on this forum, to start defending it. As David Pepper says in his great book, “Laboratories of Autocracy, a Wake Up Call from Behind the Lines”, Madison and the founders created a firewall, a commitment to “guarantee to every state in the Union a Republican form of government “ (Republican meaning government by the people, not a few powerful). It’s time for Congress to pass the 2 voting rights bills. It’s time for all media…..newspapers, TV, even 60 Minutes to start telling everyone how dangerous these people are and warn their viewers of what’s really happening. Its time to stop saying the sky is falling because of inflation and the shortages in the stores and start saying the sky is falling because the autocrats are taking over the country. It’s time for lots of news stories reminding everyone of what happened in Nazi Germany, and now Hungary and Belarus and warning everyone that it’s happening here. It’s time to invoke that “Guarantee Clause” that the founders gave us.
James Madison continues to be our touchstone and a guide as we sort out how America moves in and out of the Constitution and away from Democracy
'The U.S. Constitution was an exercise in intelligent design. The Founding Fathers knew that most previous democracies had been unstable and short-lived. But they were excellent psychologists, and they strove to create institutions and procedures that would work with human nature to resist the forces that had torn apart so many other attempts at self-governance.'
'For example, in “Federalist No. 10,” James Madison wrote about his fear of the power of “faction,” by which he meant strong partisanship or group interest that “inflamed [men] with mutual animosity” and made them forget about the common good. He thought that the vastness of the United States might offer some protection from the ravages of factionalism, because it would be hard for anyone to spread outrage over such a large distance. Madison presumed that factious or divisive leaders “may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.” The Constitution included mechanisms to slow things down, let passions cool, and encourage reflection and deliberation.'
'Madison’s design has proved durable. But what would happen to American democracy if, one day in the early 21st century, a technology appeared that—over the course of a decade—changed several fundamental parameters of social and political life? What if this technology greatly increased the amount of “mutual animosity” and the speed at which outrage spread? Might we witness the political equivalent of buildings collapsing, birds falling from the sky, and the Earth moving closer to the sun?'
'America may be going through such a time right now.'
'In other words, social media turns many of our most politically engaged citizens into Madison’s nightmare: arsonists who compete to create the most inflammatory posts and images, which they can distribute across the country in an instant while their public sociometer displays how far their creations have traveled.'
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-media-democracy/600763/
“If you actually want to find the truth—if you’re a scientist or if you’re working at, say, the Defense Intelligence Agency, where your job is really to find the truth—you have to overcome each person’s preferred way of thinking, which is, find evidence for why I am right,” he replied. “You have to overcome that, and the only known way to overcome confirmation bias is with other people. There’s been research trying to train people to question their assumptions. Nobody’s found a way. It’s very hard to train people to do that. The only way to do it is to have someone who doesn’t share your confirmation bias engage with you. That’s why the Catholic Church created the devil’s advocate. They literally said, ‘Your job is to find reasons why we’re wrong.’”
“The relationship matters more than the message. That’s why a university, especially one that includes a diversity of viewpoints, can be so powerful—because you cultivate these relationships within a community that says our job is not to win, our job is to learn. That’s why the internet.... the worst places for this, because you don’t have relationships and people are trying to show how smart they are. They’re trying to show how devoted they are to their team. So the kind of political engagement, the kind of public square that we get from social media, is generally terrible.'
“Does anyone really think we are going to win people over by insulting them and spouting hatred toward them?” he added. “Or are we going to win them over by listening, one on one, as individuals, human to human, American to American?”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/jonathan-haidt-pandemic-and-americas-polarization/612025/
The thoughts expressed are those of Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the New York University Stern School of Business. He is the author of The Righteous Mind and the co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. His main areas of study are the psychology of morality and moral emotions.
As we examine the divisions in America and the county's shaky relationship with Democracy on the forum, I will sometimes bring Jonathan Haidt with me. These subjects have been at the forefront of his learning, writing and teaching
Flynn, the lying weasel that he is, attempted to deny that he made such as statement about an all-Christian nationalist nation, but of course, his ugly statement was recorded.
Traitor Flynn's attempt to dehuminize and delegitimize millions of Americans who don't practice Christianity, or, in this case, Christian triumphalism, is not a new phenomenon in this country, and fits in perfectly with Trump's various schemes to accomplish the same smoke and mirrors act during his presidency and his Big Lie afterwards; in fact, I see a pattern between Trump's increasing legal jeopardy and the rising extremism and violence in much of the country (thanks to your newsletter), from religion to school boards, to name but a few.
A quote that is attributed to Ghandi sticks with me: "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
While I don't practice any religion, I am acquainted with wonderful people who are, and their fight for social justice is ongoing and transformative.
Thank you for this wonderful testament to truth.
Well, well, Judas Flynn, which ones of the over 200 Christian denominations that exist in the US alone will you find acceptable and which will you eliminate at the altar of your man-made God? Surely, knowing you and your bigoted consiglieri, you will not find all of them acceptable, especially those who welcome the inclusion of our BIPOC and LGBTQIA kin in their congregations and to positions of leadership. So, will some be more "Christian" than others?
General Flynn has gone completely off the deep end. Between his assertion of the vaccine requirements being an "infringement" of liberty and the "one nation under God under one religion" he is the poster child for this abhorrent idea of "government".
What scares me most is this:
"But, as Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) pointed out this morning, “Senate Republicans are blocking the confirmation of our NATO and EU Ambassadors so as to deliberately hamper global security…because they believe global instability will hurt Biden, and hurting Biden is all that matters.”"
We have one elected party that is motivated simply to confound the duly elected President and is completely abdicating its responsibility. We have a substantial percentage of our country that sees nothing wrong with this. This is terrifying.
Flynn is quoted as saying "One nation under God, and one religion under God.”
That immediately triggered my memory to recall the slogan of a German political party from nearly a century ago.
“Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.”
For those who don't read German, it means
"One nation, one empire, one leader."
There isn't much good news politically these days, is there? And meanwhile, I saw over the weekend that Pastor John Hagee's megachurch was heartily screeching out "Let's go, Brandon" on Sunday...........and the chants were being led from the pulpit.
If churches are going to be political, tax them.
FORGET GEN. BENEDICT ARNOLD
GEN. MICHAEL FLYNN IS THE NEW
TRAITOR TO THE UNITED STATES.
How can such a blatant TRAITOR, such as a 3-star general still be walking free in the United States to foment attacks on established tenets of our Constitution? How can he be free to consort with enemies of the United States? IDK how officers are governed. I know they are different than us enlisted ranks, but when I left the U.S. Air Force as an E-4 in 1967, I had worked with Top Secret information at NSA and had travel restrictions for that. I assume Ex-General Flynn had access to more useful classified information for his dinner buddy (and possible patron) Vladimir Putin. Benedict Arnold escaped to Canada & England. If the U.S. government can’t reign in this Qanon conspiracy theorist, Russian Television propaganda whore, I at least hope to see Michael Flynn become a fugitive living in infamy in Russia.