Thank you for rationally telling the story of tonight’s absolutely disgusting rally. I had to stop listening to the speeches but wanted to see the words. I appreciate the Calmness this brings to my brain, even while absolutely terrified. Please know how much we appreciate you. And thanks to Buddy too for loaning you to us.
Thanks for sharing, Lin. At first, I thought it might be grainy footage from the Trump rally. Then I realized it wasn't, however, there really isn't much difference in the end, is there?
Yeah, not much difference in the rallies. But hopefully 'in the end' we will prevail.
As Robert Hubbell wrote this morning:
"Let’s all say it together: The race is within the margin of error—and the margin of effort! It feels like we are caught in a time warp in which the election season will drag on forever. But we can see the end in sight—and we have reasons to be hopeful. Kamala Harris has stayed on message (for which she has been criticized by the media), while Trump uses each rally to insult or demean a new bloc of voters in the US. On Sunday, those two arcs intersected—to Kamala Harris’s advantage."
If it wasn’t for Heather’s Letter, and her intelligent responders, I’d feel isolated in an ocean of anxiety. Taking action in any way possible has helped me find a way to sleep without serial nightmares echoing Nazis storm troopers and much more in WW11.
Yes we are indeed ‘woke’ those of us who know history, and might have friends whose parents were survivors of the camps and on and on.
Thank G at least the NYTimes is outing him. Better late than never!
Sorry to admit it but history was not my favorite subject. HCR has enlightened me as do many of her followers. This is why I read many of the comments. More education.
I requested tickets for the facist rally just so I could not go and leave two seats empty. My intention was to go and protest outside but my bronchitis prevented me. However, I wouldn’t miss Steve Bannon’s release tomorrow from Danbury Federal prison in a million years. Come join us. I’ll be ringing my bell. 7AM to be sure.
Contempt of court sentences aren't very long. Typically 3 to 6 months. Bannon got 4 months. As noted above or below he was pardoned for his federal crimes just before Trump left office in 2020 so no trial for those things is possible. Presidential pardons are pretty much "golden" parachutes. Still hoping New York will put him in prison for a long time. President can't pardon you for a state crime.
Maybe this is the October 2024 Not-So-Surprising-Surprise... DJT completely Melting Down as he is Staring RUIN IN THE FACE IF HE LOSES THE ELECTION... DJT could also be prepping his INSANITY DEFENSE... Imagine what the History Books will say in 50+ Years...
Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat has been predicting that all Trump can do is escalate. It gets him the press he wants and inflames his followers. Will it inflame swing voters? I don't understand being undecided because I am in general a very decisive person. If I don't know enough about something I read, read, read, watch, watch, watch, ask, ask, ask, discuss, discuss, discuss.
Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a very smart Person... I find the Key in this Missive was that DJT, who is a World-Class Cheater & a Mediocre Person, hasn't tried finding New Voters, instead like everything he does, DJT always tries to Cheat His Way To Success.... Political Power, Business, his Wives, and Golf... DJT even had someone take his SATs for him.... DJT is a Paragon of Corruption...
Here is Ben-Ghiat talking with Journalist Kara Swisher last Friday. They reaffirm my concern since JD Vance was announced that he is the one to worry about, as he vies to take over power and then be a proxy president for Peter Thiel, a brilliant, twisted, Bad Boy Billionaire Tech Bro.
Listen to what they are saying as they discuss Bezos, Musk, JD Vance and Peter Thiel. It is scary stuff.
If DJT does not need to find new voters, because enough Americans think like he does, then America is not the country I thought it was, because that would be too many awful or uninformed people making up our country. I would like to believe that is not the case.
I don't think that (perhaps due to our obsession with commercialism) most of us are trained to think in whole systems. Irrational ideologies are built to fend off any discordant information. They isolate in a endless loops of circular arguments. The punish doubt, sometimes violently. I thing that the spin can be broken, at least for some, but it isn't easy. Germany largely recovered from such a state, but it took defeat of their aggression.
Massive defeat, and remember the Allies' campaign of deNazification ultimately failed, there were just too many German nazi members around, so they were co-opted, mostly to rebuild a saner Germany, and the few Nazi comeback hopefuls failed in their efforts. As you know many wanted Germany more or less left flattened, and thanks to a godless Communists in this case the USSR with its takeover of eastern Europe, Germany did super well, now a heartland nation for the EU.
The “awful” people are real, and all around. They think they will rule. The America I thought it was has more enemies within than chump thinks he has. Always accuse of what you do.
I fear your fears are well founded. There's enough of them, and whoever, to take the tolls to "dead heat" though I'm hopeful that's partly a red poll flood distorting things, just the same, this election is won at the margins, in the latest case, how many Puerto Ricans in terms of vote changing, actually turning out. Yes, "turnout" is a critical margin. 66% a record turned out in 2020. I have no idea what the poll models are using, but it things like "garbaging" Puerto Rico, and more esp women's reproductive rights, turn the dial, that may well be decisive. MSG may well have just turned that dial up a notch, hopefully more.
Thanks, Linda, for the link to Ben-Ghiat-Swisher conversation. They laid out the Thiel uber-game plan brilliantly. It has grieved me that Rene Girard's revelatory theories about human mimetic desire and scapegoating have been used by Thiel as weapons in his arsenal for his insane vainglory of conquering the world with his male brilliance.
Linda, I think the comment meant to say that Trump knows he is in a minority. He is focused on creating havoc and legal finagling to steal the presidency.
Well believe it after we get election results. This is truly a time to fasten your seatbelt and ride to a Harris-Walz win. Whew! Truly unbelievable. Given that he is not doing or saying anything to get new voters, he and his sycophants surely are planning to repeat 2020 chaos.
Hello Linda.... I agree, DJT will be replaced if he wins thru the Electoral College, or other Nefarious Means... JD is much Smarter, and more Dangerous... He has no 'Center'... Changed his Name three times... Hmm?... I tend to agree that JD will just be a Puppet for the 'Dark Siths'.... DJT's Minions? You do not know U.S. History like the First-Nations do...
I agree. I have a German mom, and had a Black dad who was part Native American, so when I was an undergrad I studied these histories because they interested me but would have anyway because they are interesting, when I was an undergrad. I am always learning. One of the guys in my Democrats Abroad book club group is from a reservation in Oklahoma, now he works in tech and does biodynamic farming in Germany.
America is Americans and there are plenty of Courageous ones, like the people who are standing up to Trump in the Republican party and endorsing Harris. She is the bravest of all, standing up to a bully with all his bully boys, and his bully Party.
Let us hope in his escalation he peels off likely voters. But then, there are those who secretly agree with him and that will show at the ballot box too.
Let us say, respond to it. We should be thinking ahead though. We could be having DT, but according to many, it will be JDV. He or his Bad Boy Tech Billionaire Bro overlords will try to place him in as their proxy in the Presidency. I see a battle between the 3 factions, but they may align. That is Heritage Foundation who has been advising conservative presidents since Reagan, The America First Foundation who is advising Trump in this election under the rug so to speak, with the same agenda as in Project 2025, but not made public, and then there is the JD Vance faction, even though JD V is presenting like a Christian Nationalist, but he is a shapeshifter and we don't know which shape he will take in the end, but it presumes to be bad for all of us. A less known or unknown bad. So, we need to be thinking about Trump, Project 2025, America First Policy Institute https://americafirstpolicy.com/, and JD V and the Billionaire Tech Bros who want to run our country too and think their monetary success entitles them to as superior people. So, I am not sure, but it will certainly influence the rest of the world too.
Thiel has a political and economic partnership via Epstein’s UK friend, the Labour Party peer, Peter Mandelson. They have successfully teamed up to privatise the data system of England’s National Health system via Palantir.
The Heritage Foundation folk also fund many at 55 Tufton Street, a London based research unit which informed and aided UK politicians to successfully expidite an extreme severance with the postwar Peace Project EU via Brexit. The Boys involved seem to be moving toward a full corporate takeover of democratic governance in the UK and US. It could be argued that they have already succeeded in delivering this global oligarch’s dream in the Murdoch controlled UK. See: https://europeanpowell.substack.com/p/zone-fever-means-the-uk-is-no-longer
Monnina, thanks for sharing the link. It is frightening stuff, that reminds me of times in history that were really bad. I do see Putin as a key player because his war on Ukraine triggered off a lot of things in Europe that has disrupted the status quo.
I am not saying Trump would do this. I am saying JD Vance will remove Trump using Article 25, which I read had been planned since Peter Thiel bought his place as VP. Listen to a discussion of Thiel by Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Journalist Kara Swisher as they discuss Bezos's capitulation to fascism first. https://youtu.be/yBSAveg-fzg?si=cbkcvJuof89JKQZD
Yet Trump operatives Stephen Miller and Jill Stein (who are Jewish) are working to elect Trump and institute a ChristoFascist state - proponents of which promote Jews and other others being allowed residency but not civil rights.
Go figure. Serving Trump is never a safe berth.
"During the Nazis' ascent to power, some Jewish organizations, such as the Association of German National Jews and The German Vanguard supported nazism *until being outlawed in late 1935.*"
"Stephen Miller’s claim that “America is for Americans and Americans only” directly echoed the statement of Adolf Hitler that "Germany is for Germans and Germans only.” "
Stein splitting off American leftish voters from the Democratic party to elect Trump, is using the same tactic Stalin did to elect Hitler by splitting off German Communists from the German center left.
Again, it won't be better under JD Vance, but I think we should be prepared for him to take over as president, using Article 25, which I have heard he was going to use, as planned by Peter Thiel since he was first announced.
MAGA’s don’t read the NYTimes or any other source and only watch or listen to vitriol on Fox or other right wing podcasts, X, or whatever. Never-the-less, the NYTimes, the WaPo and other former “trusted” sources have normalized trump’s behavior for way too long. Anything they write now (after voting has started) is way too little, way too late. The damage done to those former reliable resources could be the final nail in the coffin for their business model and incentive for the reputable journalists to carve out new ventures.
Newspapers have come and gone for hundreds of years but the more recent decades of steady decline is more of an industry demise. For a few years In my “former” life, I successfully managed the pension investment account of a well known newspaper and heard a lot of the difficulties the industry was facing. Survivorship in a digital world was an open challenge and that was before competition from podcasts and independent sources was on the radar.
Not so ironic, the industry consolidation has made a valuable market for very old newspapers! Ironically, the investment management business where I spent my career also no longer exists! Algorithms rule and AI and crypto currency are other relatively new players changing that landscape.
I have a story to tell. I was raised by two victims of the Holocaust in rural NC in the 50’s & 60’s. The town was made up of mostly Southern Baptists and the races were black and white. In 1964, we integrated schools for the first time in history. It was decreed by LBJ that the South comply with those orders. In my English class, all of the students were required to read “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “A Tale of Two Cities”. We were also to see enrichment films at our town’s theater that went along with the books we were reading.
For years, my mother turned the tv off if she knew the Anne Frank movie was playing on a channel. She never wanted my sister and I to know the horrors of Nazi Germany. When it came time for the film to be shown at the theater, I lied to her and said it was another movie. I went with friends and then I saw what my mom and dad had tried to shield us from. After the show, my friends wanted to go out to our hangout but I asked them to drive me home. I walked into my house and collapsed in my mother’s arms, sobbing. She too, cried. We were up until 2am talking. I am tearful just remembering the pain she and my dad felt having to leave their country, their family and friends.
When the Wall came down, that’s when my mother found out how her parents died…gassed in 1942 at the camp called Chelmno.
How hard that must have been for your mother! Do you think she was relieved to know, or would not knowing have been better? My daughter's father is Jewish, and I took her to Ann Frank's house just over a decade ago. We also visited the Museum of the Dutch Resistance (or that's what I recall of the name). I thought it was important for her to know that some people did push back.
I went to the Holocaust Museum in DC with two of my first cousins as I had never been there. I think we were there for 4 hours. When we got to the area where they have the camps area and where candles are lit, that’s where I lost it. My poor mama…
Not everyone is like that. Some just don’t engage with politics or are too busy working three jobs to pay attention to it. Or don’t think and inquire until the last few days.
That being too busy is the reason so many of my friends in the US do not pay attention, and several have had their therapists tell them to not pay attention to the news since it is so depressing. That is what he fascists are counting on.
Professor Ben Ghiat’s prediction that Trump’s only tool is escalation. Last night’s rally showed us what escalated rhetoric sounds like. Should he. E re-elected, the escalation won’t be just talk! Let’s hope Trump’s hateful rally escalated him to defeat!
In Ben-Ghiat's book Strongmen, there is always an end to a fascist, be it being overthrown, the people uprising, or death, or defeat. Perhaps it could be a McDonald's burger and fries. It would be poetic justice.
A recent article in The New Yorker posited that the people who actually came to the capital on January 6th were activated by racism. Would not racist rhetoric then be the most effective way to repeat the attempted coup?
It was decided at least amongst the White Power Movement, that as they chose to enter the government instead of always trying to blow it up, see Oklahoma City Bombing, that immigration would be the code word for race going forward. We see how it has spread so widely that even those who are being referred to by the term are anti immigrants, and thus anti themselves. So, this racism in code "immigrants" is being repeated.
I think we must face the fact that a significant proportion of our U.S. population would quite happily, given permission by Trump and chance, deport or eliminate or execute or imprison every citizen and legal or illegal resident belonging to minority groups including, Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, Jews, Muslims ….. of course these folks screaming for mass deportations, executions, etc., are the same people claiming they are prolife, anti-abortion.
Shirley Jackson’s famous short story The Lottery suggests that people enjoy killing, especially in the name of preserving a way of life they have been convinced is necessary to maintaining their supposed tradition, even if that tradition is completely false.
Linda, that's because you are a sentient being. capable of deductive reasoning.
"George Washington ... flanked by Swastikas"? No one can "sane'splain" that MSG Nazi Rally. You need the a forensic psychiatrist to decode his wistful desire to tan " ... my beautiful, white, white body."
That's his closing argument: " ... my beautiful, white, white body".
I think he still wants to believe he can get away with anything. His money and his ability to lie no matter what let him pretty much do that all his life, though he seems now to pushing his luck.
Well, if you will see my link above in the chat to Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Kara Swisher, you might think that JD Vance is the one to watch and worry about as a more unknown fascist with his authoritarian billionaire backers.
This was not a rally to gain more votes. It was a way to keep his base angry enough to rebel when he loses. The "secret" he shares with Mike Johnson is the warning shot.
Harris will win. Trump will claim the election was stolen. Johnson and team will assist.
Bill, I hope we are both wrong, that this MSG rally is not a harbinger of evils to come. But the T**** signs are still up at a couple houses even here. We'll have a lot of work to do getting them back to normalcy.
I assume there are plans for that. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
I imagine that Trump is being treated like an enemy agent in some circles, and no leakage of these plans is a good thing. Our media is not to be trusted with our national security. Look at Bezos and Musk. So, assume that it is not going to be gotcha, on their parts, but on the part of our government.
Unhinged is a bit different from uncontrollable (though said before needs said again).
It’s Vance ‘they’re after ‘, the divisive techniques set the tone , successful again. Echos of Bernie from however long ago ….”oligarchs , we are a nation of oligarchs” …and at their mercy , whether it’s corporate America hiking prices, insurance companies/Big Pharma they led the slow demise , we missed the slight of hand …far too late likely ..as the subtle ‘slight’ success swallowed us up …the rest of the story…?
Harris is (as Emily so very well wrote) , the first woman President -best qualified -having served in all three houses of our Government and a woman of color to take us forward into our future …bring on the BLUE TSUNAMI 💙💙💙💙💙💙💙, UNITE …let’s clean up (NOT back up) and clear out the MAGA Mob, and shine sisters SHINE! 🇺🇸🫶💙💙
Apache. I wonder if we will have history books in 50+ years, mostly because we will have probably destroyed the livability of the planet by then. I see continuing chaos created by climate change as people scramble and struggle to survive. Once again, even though I am visited by problems caused by age, I am glad to be in my early 80s.
I am not far behind you Michelle but I have young grand daughters and I so want them to have a habitable and benign world. So much is wrong but we must keep trying…… we must !
I have no direct descendants, but i do want a livable world for young people. I do not mean to imply that we don't do anything. We do have solar panels and a Prius Prime. We recycle where we can. We try to buy local and do not go to chains unless necessary. I got in trouble with someone here because I loathe Amazon, but that does not include Amazon workers because they need a job. However, I am not interested in enriching the awful Bezos in any way.
When I was growing up, climate and most all other problems were out of view. For example, I never saw a black person in school until high school. Gas was 25 cents a gallon. My town, Elkhart, Indiana, had many factories, not all of them polluting, but some were very industrial. The rich people living along the river dumped their sewage into as pipes were revealed when the river level was down for some reason. I have no idea where the rest of ours went, probably somehow into the river as well. You could see sewage floating in it. We were "progressing" because our lives had more and more conveniences and we pay a high price now for convenience. Recycling was unheard of. I did have teacher couple friends who kept their large lot wild and basically had no lawn. They are dead now and last time I was in Elkhart, someone had cleared the lot although the trees were still there. I don't see things getting much better because most of us are not willing really to sacrifice for the change to happen. And we have all the violence around the world blowing up things. Here in Oregon we now have terrible forest fires. But every time the legislature tried to do something, Rs walked out. Once we were inundated with loud tractors and trucks to protest as well. I live in Salem, the capital.
What is also disgusting is the Republicans’ reaction. This proves to me that they are absolutely spineless weasels, who, when the chance was given them to stop fascism in its tracks, did NOTHING. Or even worse, most of them even fully embraced authoritarianism….
My niece attended a wedding in a Catholic Church in Omaha on Saturday as many of us have over the years.
Inside the church were several Trump signs prominently displayed. The following regarding the Johnson amendment -
"The Johnson Amendment is a provision in the U.S. tax code, since 1954, that prohibits all 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Section 501(c)(3) organizations are the most common type of nonprofit organization in the United States, ranging from charitable foundations to universities and churches. The amendment is named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who introduced it in a preliminary draft of the law in July 1954.
In the early 21st century, some politicians, including former President Donald Trump, have sought to repeal the provision, arguing that it restricts the free speech rights of churches and other religious groups. These efforts have been criticized because churches have fewer reporting requirements than other non-profit organizations, and because it would effectively make political contributions tax-deductible.[1] On May 4, 2017, Trump signed an executive order "to defend the freedom of religion and speech" for the purpose of easing the Johnson Amendment's restrictions."
I have made it clear on multiple occasions that I loathe the Catholic Church for many reasons. It is clearly a cult that extends the teachings of the Bible through it's world-wide patriarchy.
Does the Catholic Church perform acts of charity? Sure they do. But they are greedy, hateful and spiteful. They refused to endorse Kamala Harris and Tim Walz another cowardly move to keep their patriarchy happy. They refuse to ordain women as priests and likely always will. They look the other way when hundreds of priests have sodomized children.
While Trump and his MAGAs have their NAZI rallies, the Catholic Church supports his words and actions.
I know these words are offensive to many life long Catholics, but the Catholic Church does way more harm than good in my opinion.
Yes, Gary, your words are offensive to many Catholics, but we defend your right to say them, even if we think them wrong. We also recognize that many of our clergy members, as well as certain Church institutions, have wrought much harm, even in our own time, for which we need to atone. But the single most shocking thing I read in your post was your second sentence. I cannot imagine that any Roman Catholic church would permit the presence of any political sign in a consecrated structure. I have no reason to doubt your words, I just find the situation appalling. The bishop of our own Diocese of Honolulu last week issued a letter calling upon us to search our consciences before we vote, but did not suggest for whom or for which party, only that we should exercise our rights and perform our duties as citizens to vote. All I can say for now is that if those Omaha signs encouraged any members of that congregation to vote for that candidate, my Catholic wife and I have cancelled two of their votes.
Our local archbishop does not allow political candidate signs and candidate endorsements in the parishes or in homilies. The pastors at my parish only got political about Issue 1 in 2023, and I ignored them. I am a Catholic who is not a single issue voter and has never voted for a Republican presidential candidate. Many lay Catholics feel this way and don’t like the way some bishops, priests or former priests like Frank Pavone act as ward heelers for Trump. We don’t feel inclined to butt into the personal lives of others or to presume the right to make decisions for them. We too are heartbroken at the sexual abuse of children and young people, and we hate that the bishops don’t seem to care enough about it. To me, the bishops’ behavior in protecting the bad apples has forfeited their credibility to presume to speak to lay Catholics about pelvic issues. I get something out of the worship, as opposed to issues that are not part of worship at all.
You acknowledge being 'heartbroken' about the sexual abuse of children and young people by priests whose bishops didn't seem to care about it. You also say said bishops have lost credibility. So tell me, what is it you get out of 'the worship' in the places these guys control that you couldn't get in a place less tarnished by the actions of protected predators? So please, I's be interested to know what's so good about 'the worship' that it's worth compromising your own beliefs? This is the same question I'd ask of republicans who think Trump is awful, but rationalize supporting him and his predations.
Interesting because generally Omaha is thought to be a blue dot in Nebraska…nevertheless, I too am shocked to think of Trump signs inside a Catholic church. Even our former bishop, who declared himself to me an R more than once, wouldn’t have go e that far.
James, I was taken back by that too. However, for some nothing is sacred. As I reported here some friends of ours saw a clip about Jesus being love and the MAGA answered, "Jesus is wrong." So these people often are shoving their religion into others' lives, but are total hypocrites because the son of God they purport to believe in, is wrong. It's called hubris.
It seems to me that extreme hubris, malignant narcissism to the point of exclusionary self-supremacy and cruel behavior is identical with evil, and and even more disturbing than evil individuals are the throngs of passionate people who worship them and call their folly "religious". How does one square that with "The Sermon on the Mount" or tenets of other religions that prescribe humility and compassion. There are inspiring and also heinous people and episodes said to motivated by religion, yet historically the contrast between the two could not be more stark. And there are both inspiring and heinous persons and actions that are not religious in any conventional sense. We weirdly seem to lump a lot of that together, at least in speaking, though they be opposites in terms of character and outcomes. We all, of necessity pursue self-interest; but when self-interest and self-congratulation push conscience, social responsibility, and compassion out of the nest, isn't that a malignant sociopath? MLK illustrates an inspiring and liberating religious figure. Trump claims to be religious and have God on his side. What's that?
Thank you for your customarily thoughtful post, J.L. You note how people conflate the philosophy or faith with the institutions and individuals who represent that faith or philosophy. From the perspective of a believer, we need to keep the two separate. Human beings are fallible creatures. The institutions they establish, being established by fallible creatures, are themselves dependent on the character of the people who run them. Catholics believe that their faith and their Church were instituted by Jesus himself. However, as you correctly note, many self-styled (or ordained, alas) practitioners of that faith have been malignant narcissists, and acted in accordance with that narcissism rather than with the tenets of the faith . Even worse, there are those who have twisted those tenets to serve their own narcissistic ends. A couple of years ago I was able to travel to The Mount, and hear that sermon preached there, a truly moving experience. Those words, that viewpoint, lie at the heart of Christianity. Your contrast between MLK and Agent Orange could not be more pertinent. Mr. Trump's religion is Trumpism, not Christianity. His religiosity is a means to keep up the grift (Trump Bible, anyone?). I can't speak for God, but I'm pretty sure he's not on Trump's side.
I remind myself that Justice Sotomayor, President Biden and former Speaker Pelosi are Catholic, too. It did not rob them of compassion, as it seems to have affected others. Not even Ethel Kennedy, who died recently, was able to prevent one of her eleven children from wandering far from the fold. In America, we value free will, and I think our emphasis on individuality and excessive competitiveness in a hyped up capitalist economy has robbed many of their moral development. The Southern Baptist tradition in which I was raised and the Mormon tradition with which I have more recently become familiar have difficulties with the wanton ways of Trumpism as well.
I think you’re right about the influence of our “hyped-up” capitalism. Human groups and individuals are naturally competitive or protective of their own resources. Capitalism provides us with opportunities to increase those resources, but unregulated capitalism feeds those competitive aspects of our wired-in natures, making our lives worse than they need be.
"We" people of faith should be defusing and de-fanging 45's plans to finish the January 6 insurrection. He brought the anti-government militia movement into the GOP tent and kicked out "real" Republicans. They are all MAGA-cult now. It should be renamed "The Limbo Party" - there is no bottom to "how low can you go?" As of Saturday, they might as well admit, they are the NAZI party, like Mark Robinson of North Carolina dubbed himself, a Black Nazi.
I agree -- the harm done behind the cloak of religion is endless. If a church wants to endorse a political candidate, let it renounce its 501c3 status and pay taxes. My grandmother left the Catholic church when they wanted her to let a toxic pregnancy situation continue - which would have killed her and meant my mother never would have been born. I know there are kind and good Catholics too -- and I mean no offense to them - but this is my view.
My Eastern European great-grandma left the Catholic Church when the local priest was too drunk to show up and give my great-grandfather his last rites. Boy was she mad! And when Grandma Haluska got angry, look out! She walked away and never looked back. My grandma left the church also and became a Presbyterian which made my mother and her brother the only grandkids in the family who were Protestant. To be fair great-grandma celebrated as many religious holidays she could, including Jewish ones. Mom remembers she and her brother carrying loaves of bread to the Greek Orthodox priest for Easter blessing. Grandma Haluska said, “May as well, just to be sure.”
Gary, I am astounded to read your comment about the sign in the church! As James below comments, I believe you, but I have never witnessed anything like that, ever. Admittedly, I haven't been to mass in a year or two, so I can't say for sure.
I am a lifelong Catholic, who NEVER would have imagined not attending weekly mass--up until COVID stopped me. When restrictions were lifted, and I tried to attend, my husband and me were among the perhaps 5 people out out 100 in attendance wearing mass. And there were attitudes there I didn't like.
I never attended Catholic schools due to my parents finances more than any other reason. What I grew up with--so it didn't seem odd--was my Dad took us to church, while Mom stayed home. My mother was Lutheran and attempted to convert twice, but never went through with baptism. The story is that her Pastor would come and scare her by telling her she'd go to hell. And yet, the Catholic church did not embrace her. My parents were forced to marry in the rectory, and they had to sign a document (or so I was told this by my mother) that if in my mother's 5 labors, if it was a choice between mother and child, the child would be saved and raised Catholic. This knowledge always gave me a sort of....edge. They'd been married 17 years by the time I arrived, and I never asked them how religion impacted their marriage. When I married, we chose a church close to our college campus whose congregants were diverse, as I knew my friend who I asked to sing at the ceremony would cause a stir in my parish: she is black. And several of my guests were, as well. And one of the groomsmen is Jewish.
The Chicago Archdiocese changes the assignment of the pastor every 8 years, or so. We had a dearly loved pastor who truly understood people and sometimes took to the pulpit to say he would refuse to condemn the attire in church, as he was happy we attended. He told us any anonymous letters sent to him would be immediately tossed. Twice I had serious concerns that drove me to the rectory door and each time he dropped whatever to console and advise me. Then he was transferred to another church.
He made news, I think even national news perhaps? when early in Trump's presidency he spoke out AGAINST him from the pulpit. Apparently, some people even walked out of mass, which any Catholic knows is unheard of! I wrote him a letter thanking him.
What I find odd, and perhaps the smart readers can explain to me is why/how Evangelicals are embracing Catholics? I was fully into my 60s before I experienced prejudice against Catholics! I have two good friends who treat me like one of the "good ones" (alluding to the many racists who will claim otherwise, having ONE black/Muslim/whatever friend who "isn't like THEM"). One told me that in her church, Catholics are right next to Satanists! Perhaps Catholics should consider that they are being USED by the GOP?
Your post did not offend me. I have struggled with guilt over leaving the church. I miss it, really I do. I rarely heard politics and never heard candidates in mass, but maybe I was just fortunate. I miss the rituals of mass and the feeling of re-enacting rites that have been handed down, generation to generation, from Jesus and the disciples to me. I miss the feeling of peace that I found sitting in the church. Yes, there are awful priests in the church--there have been awful people using religion throughout history.! The Catholic Church in in upheaval itself, as there are many old time parishioners who consider the Pope too liberal.
These ARE the times that try our souls. I say that I can't wait for this election to be over, but WHEN will this mess all be over? In my lifetime?
When I read news these days, two phrases often pop in my mind: "Jesus weeps" and "WWJD". Sigh. Sorry for the long answer. You obviously hit a nerve in me.
Ruth, the kindred souls on this forum sustain me. (And my wonderful husband as well. Keep him in your thoughts and prayers. He is going to be a first time election judge on election day.)
That is unreal. Churches need to be taxed. Karl Rove made many churches arms of the Repub party in 2006. They have spouted political lies since. Agree about Catholics. More harm than good.
I think you're right. I think the Catholic Church is more an institution than a religion. It's more concerned with power, politics and money than with (true) religion and spirituality.
As one who exhaustively studied organized religions as a sophomore in high school, I came to the conclusion that all organized religions have a fatal flaw: they all have the concept of 'the other' as part of their foundation. And that leads to division and inhumanity. All of them.
That there was a Trump sign inside a Catholic Church doesn't surprise me in the least. Let's be clear: The Catholic hierarchy in the U.S. is deeply entwined with right wing republicans, and they are master predators who protect their own at any cost.
Vance has become a darling of theirs and their own quest to make their church great again. It no longer has anything to do with Jesus, if it ever did.
I've speculated and read about the connections between Opus Dei (shudder) and a whole bunch of monsters in the right wing Catholic cabal, especially SCOTUS. See:
We also have the Pope's “pick the lesser of two evils” statement regarding Trump and Harris….and you know where that misogynistic hypocrite comes down on what constitutes the greater 'evil.'
So let's not be shocked by little things like Trump signs in a Catholic Church. It's just an indication that the hierarchy of that organization is no longer afraid of losing members, because the members who remain have already been politically converted.
Gary, I would like to join you by adding more offensive words.
I grew up in the U.S. Evangelical culture. In my youth, I detected something wrong with this belief system, although, without the necessary experience outside the culture, I couldn't identify the problem.
As a young adult, I avoided church and tried to recover from the psycho-emotional damage done by evangelicalism. Years later, a close friend persuaded me to attend a mainstream Protestant church. I got very involved and took some comfort there, but was still troubled by the "gaps" in logic that must be embraced to make religion work. I found it problematic that an entire denomination would would divide itself into white churches and Black churches; a denomination that preached "love of God and neighbor," while officially treating LGBTQ members as less than human. The denomination split over this issue.
I have abandoned religion of any kind. Here is why: I finally realized that ALL deities, whether Judaic, Muslim, or of any other ancient culture, were/are figments of the imaginations of illiterate MEN who sought to explain the inexplicable to their families and neighbors. As literacy developed, writers recorded oral myths and legends that had been created to reinforce the cultures that had been built around these imaginary deities.
As these cultures became systems, they were used to control the thoughts and actions of their followers. Ideas became beliefs; fiction became fact. People were killed because they didn't adhere to the right beliefs. Wars were fought over the differences in beliefs.
Indeed the Roman Catholic Church is responsible for more harm than good – as is every religion ever concocted by patriarchs over millennia.
Agree. Deprogrammed Catholic here who joined UU church for a while, thinking I owed my daughter something in the way of religious experience. Fortunately, she made up her own mind about all religion .. even took religion classes in college to help sort it out. She concluded, after attending Catholic and UU services as a comparative exercise for a class project, that Catholics seemed to like rituals and rules while UUs liked social gatherings. She isn't interested in either, having decided she was not a rituals and rules kind of person and UU social gatherings never seemed to have any good food. I thought her 20 year old conclusion was just as sophisticated an assessment as I'd heard about the matter.
Dale, I suggest that the myths and legends were created to reinforce the cultures, not the deities. More likely the deities were developed to support the cultures.
Jesus was likely also a creation representing the people pushing back against empire, but empire won, and Jesus became the Christ which was all about correct belief instead of correct action that Jesus taught.
The RCC is the most visible remnant of the empire that overwhelmed the Jesus movement. The evangelical movement is a U.S. invention that was born out of racism and has overwhelmed even the RCC in the U.S..
There remain a few members of the Jesus Movement, but we don't get much press.
Mary Ellen, your suggestion is actually what I wrote. I surmise that you may be putting a fine point on it. I think it's likely a chicken-and-egg situation. The stories couldn't be told without an all-powerful deity or deities, so supreme beings were invented to make the stories work. As cultures developed around the stories and their deities, more stories were created to reinforce the culture.
As for Jesus, I don't doubt that there was a prominent Jewish renegade whose name has been lost in the mists of time. But I am certain that the biblical red-letter quotations are neither accurate nor complete. Also, accounts of his "miracles" are fictitious or exaggerated.
I think a person who follows the few of Jesus' teachings presented in the "Gospels" is going to be a good friend and neighbor, but assuming that his teachings are comprehensive is misguided, and would lead a follower to be unprepared to live in the real world.
My abandonment of the Episcopal Church came early, when I heard that Cain and Abel married. My child's literal interpretation said, "But Adam and Eve were the first two people, and they had two sons. Where did the wives come from?" When I asked my mother, she brushed it off with "Oh, it's metaphorical" (not that I knew what that meant at the time). But that was it. The Bible had lied to me. And by the time I understood metaphor, it was too late.
When my age was in the single digits, I asked my Sunday school teacher hard questions. Her standard response, uttered as a multi-syllable single word was: "It's-a-fire-from-hell-don't-ask-so-many-questions!"
I was born and raised Catholic. I went Catholic schools for 11 1/4 years. I raised our sons Catholic and encouraged my husband to convert. Needless to say, I contributed a lot of money to the Catholic Church too.
That all changed as I entered my 40s. I had always questioned some of the doctrine. But I loved the services and the communities I belonged to. When the sexual abuses became public, my first thought it was a few bad apples. I never excused or condoned the Bishops response to the abuses. I was working full-time and raising a family. I didn't have much time for in depth study of any of what was reported at the time.
The final straw happened suddenly. A teenage girl was killed by a gunshot to her head. She and her, female classmates were taken hostage by a single gunman, at a Colorado high school. Sadly even though law enforcement responded quickly, she was the only casualty. About a week later another gunman took 13 Amish school girls hostage in a copycat move. Because the crime took place in an Amish community, the police response was much slower. He molested and shot all the girls, seven died. The Sunday after those horrific crimes were committed, we went to church as usual. A side alter was set up with a beautiful array of candles, one for each child victim of gunshots in those two weeks. 14 girls and two boys. For a week or so, all I could think of were those burning candles. My church, forbids birth control and abortion. My church is quite vocal about "The Right To Life." But they were and remain silent on the subject of gun ownership among Catholics. If it is wrong to take a pill or to use something to prevent a pregnancy, why isn't just as wrong to own a handgun and ammunition???
When the alarm went off on a Sunday morning a week or two later, my husband got up and started getting ready for church. I rolled over and went back to sleep. That was 19 years ago.
The Republicans have used the Catholic Church, with its code of silence, second-class status of women unless idolizing their birth- giving function, and mandated Sunday meetings, for organizing- for years. All in the service of the GOO under cloak of Right to Life. All untaxed. Meanwhile Dems have to pay rent for halls, beg people to come instead of being able to threaten eternal damnation if people refuse, and deal with social issues here on earth as if all people were sacred. I’ve warned my friends about this superior organizing infrastructure for years. Tax the churches’ real estate- equitably. All of them. Including Scientology and the One-Man-Show idolatry mega- churches. Freedom of religion but not free to undermine the government at taxpayers’ cost!!!!
I'm not Catholic, but have several in my extended family. I am a Methodist, so some of your concerns come my way.
I defend your right to express yourself. I would counsel that it might be more accurate to say some Catholics and some congregations.
I will point out that seven of the current nine of SCOTUS are either practicing or raised in the Catholic church. The Federalist Society was looking for conservatives to promote and found an excellent source.
Do all the good you can. BY all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can. John Wesley
I recall that the Vatican was all in with fascism during WW2. Being complicit and even active in mass murder does not seem to go against their principles.
Ryan, I think it is a touch of weasel and thinking they can continue playing their role and all will be fine - for them. The Republicans in Congress have been enabling DJT since before he reached the White House. Moreover, when you read Heather Cox-Richardson and take in the history of the party it is clear they have been enabling a lot of anti-democracy pro deregulation capitalism for some time.
>>“I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact, he and I have a secret, we will tell you what it is when the race is over,” Trump said. <<
"It seems possible—probable, even—that Trump was alluding to putting in play the plan his people tried in 2020. That plan was to create enough chaos over the certification of electoral votes in the states to throw the election into the House of Representatives. There, each state delegation gets a single vote, so if the Republicans have control of more states than the Democrats, Trump could pull out a victory even if he had dramatically lost the popular vote."
This insanity won't over until President Harris is inaugurated in January so buckle up.
It won't be over for far longer than that! Electing a President Harris is only the beginning. We need a Democratic Congress and an Attorney General who will investigate and prosecute the insurrectionists within and outside Congress, and finally prosecute Trump for his crimes.
We need to cleanse the corrupt judges from our courts as well via impeachment and/or prosecution for such crimes as bribery.
I cried, no wept, when I read this Letter. I hear and accept the wide range of descriptions detailing the feelings of people going into the last weeks preceding the election. Just as Mary describes as “calmness yet terrified”. This opposition of feeling in so many reflects the diametrical opposing stances of the two candidates and their support.
For me? I read Prof Richardson’s letter and wept. In this moment, it matters not to me how such a perverse rally can be held in Madison Square Garden that mirrors the showing of Nazi support so many decades ago in another rally held there. How we got here has been made clear to anyone ready to accept the reasons.
But the sadness of it, that so many spit on our freedom in favor of tyranny by a few, just takes me to a place and a stance, of sorts, that I will always defend with all that I know. The phrase, “my fellow Americans” has redefined itself. Just like at so many points in history when freedom does not come freely. When we have to fight for our rights. When We the People must “take it to the woodshed” and give such a whuppin’ to those that threaten to rule us instead of govern us.
I wipe the salty tears off my face but keep my focus on whatever symbol stands true to me as representing the freedom I will fiercely fight for.
I am pretty sure Buddy or anybody does not loan the professor to anyone. One of the reasons I admire HCR is she walks to her own beat wherever she travels.
I endorse your sentiment 100%, but I think it is Heather who loans Buddy to us when times get super-stressful. Not to quibble though. Together they make a wonderful team, and the country is the better for it!
What? Mary do you see what a proprietary and sexist comment that is? Buddy isn't loaning her to us - she's doing what she loves. Buddy supports her. That's how healthy relationships work.
Oh I’m glad you said that. I reacted to that first comment about Buddy “lending” Heather to us as if his beneficence makes that possible. She is a professional woman, period. How reductive.
Kind of a bizarre rebuke for “a long time lefty”. Suggesting that her husband controls her schedule and we should be grateful he allows her to write these letters is a prime example of implicit bias rooted in sexism. Pointing that out in no way strengthens anyone but the person being made aware of their bias.
It was revealed that Elon Musk has been having Conversations with Putin... Is Putin our Friend? Is Elon? Elon has a Security Clearance... I wonder who signed for that.... I wonder what they talk about? Elon has definitely turned to the 'Dark Side'...
Donald Trump’s Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden was a spectacle that may go down in history as the self-inflicted end of his political career. What was touted as a return to his “king of New York” days instead showcased an unfiltered display of racism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism that many Americans will likely find chilling. This event served as a stark reminder of Trump’s intent for vengeance and retribution rather than uniting the country.
The rally was marred by vitriolic speeches that bordered on neo-fascism, with a lineup of speakers who slung slurs and promoted conspiracy theories. Tony Hinchcliffe, one of Trump’s warm-up acts, tossed out vile, baseless slurs, calling Puerto Rico “an island of floating garbage”—an egregious comment in a city home to nearly 600,000 Puerto Ricans. He went on with “jokes” about Black and Latino communities that were both appalling and strategically alienating to millions of American voters. It was as if Trump and his surrogates were intent on making the rally as offensive and exclusionary as possible.
One speaker described Vice President Kamala Harris as managed by “pimp handlers” and called for “slaughtering” Democrats, while Stephen Miller offered comments that echoed the darkest eras in American history: “America is for Americans and Americans only.” Trump, for his part, spoke in a long, winding monologue filled with conspiracy theories and insults, particularly targeting journalists and Democrats. He called his opponents “enemies of the people” and promised to use the military to exact retribution, chilling echoes of authoritarianism that leave no doubt about his agenda.
The rally's atmosphere was dominated by a sense of racial hostility and a fervent call for a return to an “America” that only Trump’s base seems to envision. Trump called the U.S. an “occupied country” and attacked Harris as a “low IQ individual,” adding layers to his ongoing personal vendetta against her and others. His message is clear: his campaign is driven by resentment, exclusion, and punishment.
Trump’s attack on the media also highlighted his disdain for accountability. Journalists in the crowd faced boos, with Trump egging his followers on to mistrust the press. It was a deliberate move to create an environment where truth is disregarded, and anyone opposed to his rhetoric is treated as a traitor. By repeatedly labeling his opponents as “the most sinister and corrupt forces on earth,” Trump showed his intention to govern not as a leader of all Americans but as a ruler over his most fervent supporters.
Notably, Elon Musk made an appearance, adding another layer of irony by condemning illegal immigration despite his own questionable immigration history. Musk’s alignment with Trump is a stark reminder of the billionaire class’s interest in Trump’s promise to “slash the size of government”—especially the parts that scrutinize corporate giants.
While Trump’s supporters cheered on calls for punishment and retribution, the rally might be the final blow to his dwindling electoral chances. In a country where the majority of voters oppose the hateful, divisive rhetoric on display, Trump’s rally may have only served to solidify his opposition. Political analysts might see this as Trump’s swan song, a performance that drove voters away rather than inspired new support.
The extremism on display at Madison Square Garden won’t be forgotten anytime soon. Trump’s attempt to revive his political career by stirring anger and fear may have instead shown Americans exactly why he should not return to the White House. As November 5 approaches, the rally serves as a potent reminder of what’s at stake: the choice between democracy and a leader who sees dissent as an enemy to crush. Trump may have intended to galvanize his base, but the result is likely to be a historic mobilization of voters against him.
Totally with you until that last sentence which implies that HCR needs Buddy's permission to pursue her profession. I have to believe that theirs is an equal partnership.
I agree very much with the content of your comment.
However, I am uncomfortable with Buddy ‘loaning’ her to us. She is not his shovel to loan out. HRC is a person (an amazing brilliant person) and as such her husband does not, or should not ‘loan’ her out.
I guess you’re right about the damage Trump did to his campaign with this rally, Heather.
Here in Stroud, Oklahoma (small town I retired to 3 1/2 years ago), people are so polite they never talk about politics in public. But I now have a way to talk about Trump… because the “hate of literally all people” he put on display is an exact match for the “hate of all people” beliefs my father had. Yes, my father was a lot like Trump; but until now Trump (believe it or not) wasn’t using language that was racist enough to match what my father used to say. But that has now changed. I’ll be able to tell my friends about the damage my racist father caused to my personal development (even as an adult when he forbid me to date a co-worker I was in love with … because she came from Puerto Rico). And I’ll be able to share what Trump and the others said about Puerto Ricans.
Thanks, DonOld, for helping me make the case against you to my small town Oklahoma friends.
I wish I could figure out a way to have this conversation with my next door neighbor in our small, East Tennessee town. The man is of Cherokee descent, and yet somehow doesn't manage to hear or grasp that they're coming for him and everyone with skin less white than theirs. The MAGA supporters of color all think they'll be the exception, because they voted for the bigot.
Once again, you write a line that is brilliant! And once again, I have jotted it down and ask permission to use it in a manuscript. Your "A Rorschach card for our society" line is on a post-it on my desk.
Good morning to you, btw. Always good to see you here!
Feel free Miselle. I see and hear history screaming much of the time, but so many don’t seem to notice. I see so many lines on here, I try to save them because if they touch me, they may touch others.
My daughter has written a blurb for her FB and T about her dad, who was the total opposite of chump. When he died, many expressed feelings that he was so respected and valued as a trusted and honest friend. And he was the best man I ever knew. Many said the same. Her question to friends and family is how can a man who is the polar opposite of him garner so much adoration from some of the same people who valued her Daddy. Since I have been banned from both, I hope to hear any comments second hand.
I have never created accounts on social media, but the fact that you are banned and that apparently, ELON MUSK FOLLOWS YOU, makes my admiration even greater.
You make my day often. Yep, got banned from T a couple of days before 2020 election for posting Goebbels rules for propaganda that I felt chump was using on there and everywhere. About a week later, banned from FB for the same. I violated “community standards.” Chump violates standards for being a human every day. As for being followed by Elon, that has got to be a joke of some sort. I hope so, because I’d like to stay under his radar. May be too late for that…. Get on with your books. You have so much to say…
Do they think DonOLD is kidding about all of the hate and anger flowing from his mouth?
Are they not listening or are they not paying attention?
If Trump wins, even if he is unable to deport a single person, he will do plenty of damage given carte blanche by SCOTUS that he is immune from all laws while he is POTUS.
Trump performed federal executions, despite a myriad number of reasons they had been halted. He killed thirteen people in six months, and FIVE of those were AFTER HE LOST the 2020 Election. He was NEVER "pro-life." He never apologized for the full-page ads and calls to execute The (now) Exonerated Five, and is being sued for falsely claiming 1) they pled guilty and 2) that they killed someone. He wants to shoot refugees and peaceful protesters. He plans to order the military against civilians. He watched the riot on January 6, 2021 and said, "So what?" He should be in prison.
Donald is a sadist who wants others to do the dirty work while he keeps his own tiny hands clean. I think regardless of the outcome of the election, he will encourage his followers to get violent with his opponents.
You might mention to your friend that at a 1993 Congressional hearing Trump said the Mashantucket Pequot were not “real”Native Americans because “They don’t look like Indians to me,” and said their reservation was rife with organized crime because an “Indian Chief,” couldn’t stand up to the mob.
Trump was testifying because he felt that the tax status of Native American casinos was “unfair” competition to his failing Atlantic City casino.
Be aware, though, that some Native Americans without tribal status will agree that it provides “unfair” advantages.
There were some German Jews who voted against themselves in the early days of Hitler, thinking a show of loyalty would protect them. They were probably the first to be rounded up.
Shows of loyalty will not be honored. We must continue to stand up to T and his followers hateful rhetoric.
I hope Biden has a plan on how to use his presidential immunity to stop Ts high jinx with election results.
I go to a very liberal UCC Church. I was talking to an elderly gentleman I have worked with many times on Justice issues, he said he" couldn't decide" who to vote for!!! I practically howled out loud with dismay and disbelief. I asked him why and he really didn't have an answer and he was kind of laughing in an embarrassed way. I finally had to walk away telling him that he was not the man I thought he was and I was going to leave before I said something hateful.
When I shared this, working in the kitchen after a church meal, the women in the kitchen about had fits because they could not believe this well respected man was saying these things. Yet all we could do was shake our heads and go on. He's not alone in standing there, unable to make up his mind between two polar opposites. Lord help us!
I agree 100%. Trump literally said " I don't care about you I just want your vote". They don't realize that he really doesn't care about anyone else, just himself. Their vote is not going to protect them.
I'm in east tennessee also. I was so upset this year at our 4th of July weekend party, over the supreme court decision on absolute immunity. Not one person there had even heard about it.
Hey there Steve! Nice to see another Okie on Heather's newsletter. Here's hoping more of our fellow citizens here in the state will see the light and take us back to 1912! (Election when Oklahoma went for the Socialist ticket.)
Most of us know now that all this hatred we are hearing and is undoubtedly supported by so many in this country was always with us. It didn’t die after the civil rights movement it just festered and went underground.
But like a boil that needs lancing all the pus that’s been under the skin of our country is coming to a head and in many ways that’s for the best. The gloves are off and we can see clearly who we are as a whole and what still needs to get done.
This election is definitely a significant turning point for all of us as Americans. We know now that we can no longer be complacent about who we are and talk of liberty for all when our own backyard is such a mess.
If it sounds like I’m ashamed I guess the crescendo will be upon seeing the millions of voters who cast their ballots for a convicted felon who still hasn’t been sentenced and still has so much to answer for in court.
I just hope the shock wave from the results in Nov 5th of the number of individuals who obviously don’t care about what this country stands for will resonate in the minds and hearts of those who truly believe in our Constitution and our Bill if Rights so that we can protect our country in the months and years to come while still preserving the rights and freedoms we all enjoy.
I think I have no more gasps left for Trump but then the sun rises in a new day.
Holy Mother of God! I am stunned that this unspeakably evil man has electoral support. I am stunned that congressmen and senators and governors publicly support him and will even be seen on stage with him. How is it that THEY aren’t losing their own supporters? The depravity is beyond my comprehension!
I want to go to bed and pull the covers over my head until the dust settles. Except, I can’t and I won’t allow our country to be eaten alive by this malignancy! I must do everything I can to keep our country free from becoming a nation where we have to be afraid to speak up.
— Even Crazier Alert! Famous MAGA pastor says American women are “pigs with gold nose rings,” wants to overturn the 19th Amendment right of women to vote, and says women who accuse men of rape but can’t absolutely prove it should be put to death. Say what?! Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon is a rising star in the GOP, and recently had some interesting things to say about American women. First, he claimed they’re far too pampered: “Pigs with gold nose rings.” Then he claimed it’s time to overturn the 19th Amendment and revoke women’s right to vote because that’s “the Christian thing to do.” Finally, to top it all off, the GOP’s top Christian guru argued women who claim rape but can’t prove it should be publicly executed to put an end to the Me Too movement. “If you perjure yourself by bearing false witness accusing somebody else,” the minister told his followers, “whatever the penalty would have been for that person had they been found guilty, then that penalty should fall on your head for falsely accusing them. … If that were to occur and the just penalties were to be enforced, you, the false accuser, is now put to death. And that’s a public death. It’s a public sentence, publicly carried out, then the citizens of these United States of America, you know what they would do? #MeToo would end real fast. False accusing, playing the victim when you’re actually not; you know how to end that real fast? All you have to do is publicly execute a few women who have lied.” This guy isn’t an outlier; this is the direction the entire GOP has been going for years, and now, with Trump and Vance within a hair’s breadth of seizing the federal government, they feel empowered to be open and public about their positions. What would Jesus say? Nothing like Joel Webbon’s spouting off, I can guarantee you that…
Webbon is just another misogynistic pastor. He worships Trump, not God. These guys have all accepted the offer Satan made to Jesus in the Gospel of St. Luke. Jesus of course refused to bow to Satan in the Gospel, and basically tells Satan to get lost. These guys decide to accept the temptation to control the lives of others, and then recreate God and Jesus in their own personal image.
He has no bottom in his depravity because he’s satanic. Evil exists in opposition to all that is good, he has been a lifelong practitioner and is an example of evil wearing an American flag. Many of us see it quite clearly, yesterday’s MSG rally lifted the veil for a lot of people, who at heart are decent people. BLUE TSUNAMI 🙏
Let’s be clear. John Kelly has reported that his former boss praised Hitler as having done “some good things”. What those good things are he doesn’t make clear, but the notion that any good could remotely redeem the scale of evil Hitler visited on the world is risible and utterly lacking in moral scruple. And lest we think Trump’s denial worthy of consideration, consider Kelly appears to have some shred of integrity as opposed to Trump who is a pathological liar. Then, of course, there is the venue in Madison Square Garden this weekend, evocative of the American Nazi Party’s rally there in support of Hitler – history means something, and in this case the venue seems intended to send a message. Then there is his remark, also reported by the more credible Kelly, that he needed generals like Hitler’s generals. Beyond that, his former wife Ivana reported that he kept a copy of Mein Kampf by his bed, and from time to time read a series of collected speeches of Hitler, in a volume entitled My New Order. Whether that was the volume he used to read, or Mein Kampf matters little (and I appreciate the notion of Trump ever having read anything seems a stretch), since linguistic analysis of his speeches shows clear echoes of the rhetorical method employed. Beyond that there is his open racism, to the point of calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, his association with David Duke, and of course his notorious failure to denounce the Charlottesville demonstration intended to recall a Nazi rally in which participants chanted “Jews will not replace us!”
So, the next time someone accuses you of trying to shut down the conversation by comparing Trump to Hitler, remind them it is Trump, not you, who has done the associating. And, to quote Emine Yücel from Talking Points Memo this weekend, “If someone praising Hitler isn’t making you reconsider your support for them, you need to take a long, hard look at yourself. And maybe ask yourself, what does that say about me?”
The only good thing Hitler did was kill himself. But that unfortunately did not bring him to justice for the millions of lives lost to his evil machinations.
For those who want to fact check - the dog's name was Blondi. She was an Alsatian (a German Shepherd) and had five puppies. The puppies were reportedly shot.
That’s where karma with it’s flawless memory will come into play, can you imagine crossing to the other side and finding satan waiting for your arrival, 🙏
Some people on X refuse to believe Trump actually said those things about Hitler, and think John Kelly is not credible because he disliked Trump. I beg to differ with them. I believe John Kelly heard Trump make those remarks, and probably even worse remarks. They never stop to think that it was Trump’s disordered thinking and illusions that caused Kelly to believe Trump was an unsuitable president, and that that we don’t believe the consummate liar Trump.
My favorite John Kelley quote about Donald Trump is: " Donald Trump is the most flawed person I have ever known." Now think about letting that "flawed person" have access to our nuclear codes!
You want Anti-Christ Trump supporters ? Here, have some . . . .
Jesus and his family were political refugees – that is the Christmas story; the former president rejected refugees. Jesus stood for helping the stranger; the former president rejected them. Jesus was about challenging the power structure; the GOP nominee lusts after it. Jesus stood for the disenfranchised and deviant; the GOP hates them. Jesus told his followers to put down their swords; the GOP says pick up your guns. Jesus stood for helping the poor and disabled; the GOP is about mocking and making life even more difficult for them. Jesus called on us to sacrifice; Trump is all about consumption instead. Jesus fed the hungry; Trump would starve them. The former president covets the kingdoms of the earth; Jesus, tempted by Satan, rejected them. Trump and his party are all about conformity; Jesus, who consorted with tax-collectors and prostitutes, is all about the disenfranchised and the deviant. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees as hungry for gain and as hypocrites; Trump embodies the same hypocrisy and selling of religion. Trump says “pick up your guns”; Jesus says put away your sword. Trump and his party persecute the sexually different; his apostles welcomed them into the fold, as in the case of Philip and the eunuch.
Is the former GOP president the Anti-Christ? Maybe, maybe not. But he and is party are as anti-Christian as anything that can be imagined.
Because if Caesar is right, then Jesus is wrong. If guns are right, then Jesus is wrong. If supporting power and laying the weak by the heal is right, then Satan and Trump are right, and Jesus is wrong. I have no idea what scripture the GOP reads. I’ve had the good fortune to pour over it in Greek and publish books on Jesus’ radicalism. Jesus was a wildly radical Jewish heretic. The GOP? Intellectually and morally sloven and shabby.
Unfortunately, while espousing their devotion to God, they are really doing it for power. The white Christian nationalist movement is entirely about instilling a theocracy via Trump. Why have so many church leaders fervently prayed over Trump (literally) and for his win? This tune has played out many times in the past and present where religious leaders give the authoritarian the moral justification for their many, many atrocities. Putin too has the backing of churches. The biggest irony of all is: most of these self professed “Christians” barely know the Bible or its many passages of love and humanity. Trump corrupts everyone and encourages them to be their worst selves. This just plain evil.
This is true, and it’s also a direct descendant of the slaveholder “Christianity” slaveholders developed to exonerate themselves from the sin of holding other human beings as their personal chattel.
Yes, we did and we do often treat others "less than". Too often it is from our own lack of self assurance....or fear from our real observations.....that someone deemed "less than" is actually greater than and has earned respect and dignity or honor far above our own self proclaimed greatness .....so we try to find within that someone something to put down or worse......feed our own insecurities and hatred toward others.
This could be one reason a former president feels so uncomfortable in the presence of the sacred souls honored by the sea of white crosses at Arlington Cemetery.
It could also be why he fears Kamala Harris. He cannot match her in any way. Kamala honors the LAW. She has made it her life's work. She has battled against evil forces and WON and she is ready to lead the United States of America!!! With wisdom...with joy, she will gather our better angels!!! ......and when we fight the good fight...WE WILL WIN!!!!!
He hasn’t filed personal bankruptcy at this point, but that may happen if he loses. All his bankruptcy cases so far have been filed on behalf of his various businesses. His American creditors took significant losses, so they won’t loan him money any more.
Very well articulated. That being said, if you REALLY want to piss people off, post somewhere that Jesus was a liberal. Or mention that He had brown skin!
Once again, I recommend the book "American Savior" by Roland Merullo. The rpemise is Jesus has returned to Earth and decides to run for POTUS. Published in 2008, this satiric novel is amazingly MORE timely than when he published it.
I really hope that the people "in the middle" can be convinced now to NOT vote for the Convicted Orange Felon. I really, really hope that the US will not become a fascist technocracy run by Musk, Thiel et al with Vance as their puppet. The damage that will be done by them to democracy worldwide and the environment will be apocalyptical.
Dutch Mike--I voted on the second day of early voting in my Chicago suburb. A friend, who is black, voted at the same site about 30 people in back of me. She told me that she heard "lots of nasty remarks about Harris". IF yesterdays rally would sway them to vote against Trump, I fear that they may have already voted. Let's hope the massive early voting turnout is in our favor.
I haven’t had an asthma attack for a while, but my inhaler is now by my side.
Good god! My undergrad BA is in History. I never thought I’d be reliving my parents’ adolescence and young adulthood. They thought they’d never see fascism again. Live and learn.
Exactly. I'm in the same boat, and totally disgusted at the profound ignorance. Fascism. This time a Caligula WITH nuclear weapons. Yeah, that's a plan for survival . . .
They’d not intended to grow fascism, they who enacted 1971’s Powell memo.
They intended – ultimate goal – to enshrine U.S. business. They wanted the money, corporate people more free of government, and also that finance, mergers, marketing, and commodification managers all have wider berth.
Who was hemming in, crimping the business world by 1971? Intellectuals. Especially in universities, but also to serious extent across U.S. K-12. Too many instructors and youth were quoting J.D. Salinger, The Greening of America, Herman Hesse, and Ursula K. Le Guin as alternative to business norms. Too many were referencing Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, and others of the New Journalism. Too many were reading and citing Sylvia Plath, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan, and other uppity women. Rock-&-roll and much of Hollywood were subversive of, hostile to the older, staid, priorities.
The far-right foundations that would enact the latter parts of the Powell memo spent most of the 1970s gutting humanities from schools – at all levels, in many ways. New stress on standardized testing was coup de grace for individuality and the human, replaced hence by the neutered conceits of life as logical categories, groups, abstractions, and units in linear march.
Turned out the war on the human indeed neutered, dehumanized, blinded most of America. The final assaults by Powell memo foundations easily offshored the tens of millions of working-class jobs. And no one in any schools availed themselves of any of the humanities keyed to this mass self-mutilation.
America didn’t just become dehumanized, but ripe for fascism.
The Powell Memorandum ultimately came to be a blueprint for the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as the Business Roundtable, The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Never forget that Powell defended the tobacco industry knowing what they were doing. He knew and still worked to support their targeting of young people and making their product more addictive. He was also an adversary of Nader for his relentless pursuit of accountability for corporations knowingly selling dangerous products. He even listed him in the Memo.
Your note reminds me, Peter, of Pasternak's "Forest Brotherhood" chapter in "Dr. Zhivago."
This is where forcibly drafted doctor must endure all the slogans, catch-words, hackneyed phrases, and other banalities which all keyed what you call the "Conditioning in place of thought."
That’s the accurate term she used to describe Pat Buchanan’s 1992 RNC speech. It does not remotely surprise me that both Pat and Newt Gingrich endorsed Trump.
Exactly! I remember watching when she made that comment the next morning on the news. Also remember watching Buchanan the night before thinking “He’s nuts!”
Well, it certainly was a wonderful evening for news.
Just to complete the evening, once the rally ended and as the participants left The Garden, they discovered the campaign hadn't bothered to arrange for port-a-potties outside the venue. (Trimp wouldn't pay for it, so nothing was done.) So there they all were in New York City and couldn't find a convenient public bathroom! When there are a few thousand ahead of you it's an awkward situation.
That's one big distinction between a Progressive event and the ones Trump puts on. Not only do Progressives pay as they go, they *always* make arrangements to keep their crowd comfortable. As one wag observed, "Conservatives are all for being bootstrappy until they encounter a pay toilet, and then they suddenly become socialists."
That's priceless, Gary! And so predictable. Also, I am assuming that, in true CFDT fashion, he is going to stiff the management at MSG unless they demanded payment in advance.
Just as a followup, today on Oct 29, I'm watching Kamala addressing the crowd in Washington DC, and as the camera pans over the vast crowd cheering her what do I see on the edges? Rows and rows of portable toilets! She also timed her speech to end before the first pitch of tonight's Series game.
From lofty policy to simple issues - Kamala & TIm GET IT.
I watched most of the rally in real time and I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
In America. My country.
What I ALSO could not believe was that some pundits live-streaming the event casually opined that Trump indeed "had momentum" and was likely going to win the election.
These were individuals whom I'd previously followed for their election insights. HOW? HOW could any decent, sane, moral American watch this debacle and think "Yup - this guy's going to be elected to the most powerful position in the world. He is going to command the most advanced and well-equipped military on the planet and hold the nuclear codes. He'll set climate policy, health care policy and foreign policy."
The ONLY reason Trump appears to have "momentum" is due to 80+ and counting "red wave" polls that have been put into the averages to suggest a close race in which Trump is ahead. It seems most of our mainstream media is complict in this by analyzing the polls as if they are absolute gospel. ALL THE BETTER for Trump to claim (after Harris wins) that the election was stolen - - LOOK AT THE POLLS! THE PREDICTION MARKETS (also being manipulated) said it was all Trump, all the way.
In any normal world, this rally tonight would end Trump's campaign and end the Republican party. But god help us, there will still be apologists tomorrow.
I will say this - EVERYONE is underestimating the effect of Dobbs on the electorate. And I do believe, the lingering effects of January 6th.
Good point SF. First the bogus polls,then the House STEAL with proof of fraud being the bogus polls differed form results. At least Biden has immunity to do whatever he needs to do to protect the results.
The tv commenters also lack any knowledge of the 1939 German American Bund rally held at the very same locale, Madison Square Garden. Believe me, Trump and his advisers know the significance of what they did.
I'm with you: there seems to be underestimating of the fear and anger of women, people of color, LGBTQ community, etc translating into votes. Reminder that Jan 2017 Women's March was the largest single day protest in the US eclipsed by George Floyd protests.
If you are not canvassing or making calls into swing states yet, find your way to do one or the other asap. WE MUST DEFEAT HIM. SIGN UP FOR SOMETHING NOW. WE HAVE 8 days, the most crucial 8 days in any election in the lives of all of us here. Please, everyone, take action. We must win convincingly!!! Get on the frontlines of this fight to save our democracy. Your individual vote is critical, but it is not enough! We must each do all we can to help others to understand the risk and to urge them, and support them, and help them, to get out and vote in the seven critical swing states. Personally, I have been calling voters in swing states for 2 hours a day every day for the past 3 weeks and I will keep doing this, or more, until election day. Find what works for you and do it! Let's meet up on the frontlines!! A place to start: https://go.kamalaharris.com/
Yes, this volume of emails and texts asking for more money—after we have donated—is very annoying. I’ve come to think of it as part of my civic duty to not get mad, but just delete them. After we have a Democratic president and Congress, we can press for campaign reform to end “Citizens United” and pass voter protection laws.
But the emailers want money more than my vote it seems. I just donated more than I should have and the deluge quadrupled. Wish it were a dozen. Wish Dems had an Elon sometimes because people like me just can’t compete.
Thank you for your reminder call to action. Action is the antidote to anxiety. And hope is an action verb. So says Jessica Craven with her daily lists of actions we can easily do--for example:
Hopefully this will indeed be the October surprise. We need one. I also love that Elon Musk is once again denigrating what he calls illegal aliens. That's like the pot calling the kettle black.
Thank you for rationally telling the story of tonight’s absolutely disgusting rally. I had to stop listening to the speeches but wanted to see the words. I appreciate the Calmness this brings to my brain, even while absolutely terrified. Please know how much we appreciate you. And thanks to Buddy too for loaning you to us.
Nice reminder to thank Buddy who I believe is a major supporter of our Letters from An American!
And a reminder of why - with HCR and Buddy - we are all working so hard to elect Harris.
Lincoln Project rally ad: Quotes.
https://youtu.be/fMjhl9jxrug?si=u-RztWDHuk5YAtdj
What a chilling ad. Thank you, Lincoln Project, and thank you, Lincoln, for sharing this.
My postcards to swing states are ready—and I’m headed to the Post Office this morning!
Thanks for sharing, Lin. At first, I thought it might be grainy footage from the Trump rally. Then I realized it wasn't, however, there really isn't much difference in the end, is there?
Ha.
Yeah, not much difference in the rallies. But hopefully 'in the end' we will prevail.
As Robert Hubbell wrote this morning:
"Let’s all say it together: The race is within the margin of error—and the margin of effort! It feels like we are caught in a time warp in which the election season will drag on forever. But we can see the end in sight—and we have reasons to be hopeful. Kamala Harris has stayed on message (for which she has been criticized by the media), while Trump uses each rally to insult or demean a new bloc of voters in the US. On Sunday, those two arcs intersected—to Kamala Harris’s advantage."
No difference. He did read and learn his playbook🤬
Wow lin, sounds way too familiar. Totally left me in disgust!
Totally agree Jeanne, and company.
If it wasn’t for Heather’s Letter, and her intelligent responders, I’d feel isolated in an ocean of anxiety. Taking action in any way possible has helped me find a way to sleep without serial nightmares echoing Nazis storm troopers and much more in WW11.
Yes we are indeed ‘woke’ those of us who know history, and might have friends whose parents were survivors of the camps and on and on.
Thank G at least the NYTimes is outing him. Better late than never!
Samani. I feel the same way.
Sorry to admit it but history was not my favorite subject. HCR has enlightened me as do many of her followers. This is why I read many of the comments. More education.
Yes Samani, I too take some small comfort from the readers of HCR's letters. Thank you (almost) all.
They sure know how to hit where it hurts. Learn Dems.
Lin. Thank you.
Good ad... terrifying but effective
Thank you!
This is a must see! Thank you for sharing!
WOW!!! GO, LP!!!
I requested tickets for the facist rally just so I could not go and leave two seats empty. My intention was to go and protest outside but my bronchitis prevented me. However, I wouldn’t miss Steve Bannon’s release tomorrow from Danbury Federal prison in a million years. Come join us. I’ll be ringing my bell. 7AM to be sure.
Bannon is already getting out of prison?!
Contempt of court sentences aren't very long. Typically 3 to 6 months. Bannon got 4 months. As noted above or below he was pardoned for his federal crimes just before Trump left office in 2020 so no trial for those things is possible. Presidential pardons are pretty much "golden" parachutes. Still hoping New York will put him in prison for a long time. President can't pardon you for a state crime.
Trump gave him a pardon on some charges. Short sentence on contempt. But - still state charges for fraud.
"Bannon border-wall fraud trial to begin in December after contempt term ends
Trump ally, in prison for defying congressional subpoena, accused of conning donors who gave money for border wall"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/23/bannon-border-fraud-trial
Yes, only a 3 or 4 months sentence.
And I will have my Hiel Hitler sign.
Activism at its best!
Maybe this is the October 2024 Not-So-Surprising-Surprise... DJT completely Melting Down as he is Staring RUIN IN THE FACE IF HE LOSES THE ELECTION... DJT could also be prepping his INSANITY DEFENSE... Imagine what the History Books will say in 50+ Years...
Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat has been predicting that all Trump can do is escalate. It gets him the press he wants and inflames his followers. Will it inflame swing voters? I don't understand being undecided because I am in general a very decisive person. If I don't know enough about something I read, read, read, watch, watch, watch, ask, ask, ask, discuss, discuss, discuss.
Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a very smart Person... I find the Key in this Missive was that DJT, who is a World-Class Cheater & a Mediocre Person, hasn't tried finding New Voters, instead like everything he does, DJT always tries to Cheat His Way To Success.... Political Power, Business, his Wives, and Golf... DJT even had someone take his SATs for him.... DJT is a Paragon of Corruption...
Here is Ben-Ghiat talking with Journalist Kara Swisher last Friday. They reaffirm my concern since JD Vance was announced that he is the one to worry about, as he vies to take over power and then be a proxy president for Peter Thiel, a brilliant, twisted, Bad Boy Billionaire Tech Bro.
https://youtu.be/yBSAveg-fzg?si=Z3D8zeDaU3Wohgx3
Listen to what they are saying as they discuss Bezos, Musk, JD Vance and Peter Thiel. It is scary stuff.
If DJT does not need to find new voters, because enough Americans think like he does, then America is not the country I thought it was, because that would be too many awful or uninformed people making up our country. I would like to believe that is not the case.
I don't think that (perhaps due to our obsession with commercialism) most of us are trained to think in whole systems. Irrational ideologies are built to fend off any discordant information. They isolate in a endless loops of circular arguments. The punish doubt, sometimes violently. I thing that the spin can be broken, at least for some, but it isn't easy. Germany largely recovered from such a state, but it took defeat of their aggression.
Who is there to defeat the US, except its own citizens?
Massive defeat, and remember the Allies' campaign of deNazification ultimately failed, there were just too many German nazi members around, so they were co-opted, mostly to rebuild a saner Germany, and the few Nazi comeback hopefuls failed in their efforts. As you know many wanted Germany more or less left flattened, and thanks to a godless Communists in this case the USSR with its takeover of eastern Europe, Germany did super well, now a heartland nation for the EU.
The “awful” people are real, and all around. They think they will rule. The America I thought it was has more enemies within than chump thinks he has. Always accuse of what you do.
Thank you so much for posting this. I hadn't seen it. Two brilliant women.
Yes they are!
Same. Lately I listen to Kara Swisher and who she talks to a lot.
I fear your fears are well founded. There's enough of them, and whoever, to take the tolls to "dead heat" though I'm hopeful that's partly a red poll flood distorting things, just the same, this election is won at the margins, in the latest case, how many Puerto Ricans in terms of vote changing, actually turning out. Yes, "turnout" is a critical margin. 66% a record turned out in 2020. I have no idea what the poll models are using, but it things like "garbaging" Puerto Rico, and more esp women's reproductive rights, turn the dial, that may well be decisive. MSG may well have just turned that dial up a notch, hopefully more.
Reading HCR today I wondered how many defamed people are even aware of this last rally and the comedian's comments.
Thanks, Linda, for the link to Ben-Ghiat-Swisher conversation. They laid out the Thiel uber-game plan brilliantly. It has grieved me that Rene Girard's revelatory theories about human mimetic desire and scapegoating have been used by Thiel as weapons in his arsenal for his insane vainglory of conquering the world with his male brilliance.
Linda, I think the comment meant to say that Trump knows he is in a minority. He is focused on creating havoc and legal finagling to steal the presidency.
Well believe it after we get election results. This is truly a time to fasten your seatbelt and ride to a Harris-Walz win. Whew! Truly unbelievable. Given that he is not doing or saying anything to get new voters, he and his sycophants surely are planning to repeat 2020 chaos.
You better believe it.
What we are witnessing is collective suicide.
Hello Linda.... I agree, DJT will be replaced if he wins thru the Electoral College, or other Nefarious Means... JD is much Smarter, and more Dangerous... He has no 'Center'... Changed his Name three times... Hmm?... I tend to agree that JD will just be a Puppet for the 'Dark Siths'.... DJT's Minions? You do not know U.S. History like the First-Nations do...
I agree. I have a German mom, and had a Black dad who was part Native American, so when I was an undergrad I studied these histories because they interested me but would have anyway because they are interesting, when I was an undergrad. I am always learning. One of the guys in my Democrats Abroad book club group is from a reservation in Oklahoma, now he works in tech and does biodynamic farming in Germany.
Very interesting discussion. I learned a lot.
Undecided is cowardly at this point. Choosing between a monster and a competent woman. Oh, I see the problem.
Make America Courageous Again.
America is Americans and there are plenty of Courageous ones, like the people who are standing up to Trump in the Republican party and endorsing Harris. She is the bravest of all, standing up to a bully with all his bully boys, and his bully Party.
Where’s my hat.
'All he can do is escalate.' Perfect summary of the situation and what HCR has been telling us about the MAGA desperation.
Let us hope in his escalation he peels off likely voters. But then, there are those who secretly agree with him and that will show at the ballot box too.
And I assume you THINK, THINK, THINK!!! Let’s all THINK about what SURPRISE tfffg is planning and be prepared to stop it. 🎃💩🤡
Let us say, respond to it. We should be thinking ahead though. We could be having DT, but according to many, it will be JDV. He or his Bad Boy Tech Billionaire Bro overlords will try to place him in as their proxy in the Presidency. I see a battle between the 3 factions, but they may align. That is Heritage Foundation who has been advising conservative presidents since Reagan, The America First Foundation who is advising Trump in this election under the rug so to speak, with the same agenda as in Project 2025, but not made public, and then there is the JD Vance faction, even though JD V is presenting like a Christian Nationalist, but he is a shapeshifter and we don't know which shape he will take in the end, but it presumes to be bad for all of us. A less known or unknown bad. So, we need to be thinking about Trump, Project 2025, America First Policy Institute https://americafirstpolicy.com/, and JD V and the Billionaire Tech Bros who want to run our country too and think their monetary success entitles them to as superior people. So, I am not sure, but it will certainly influence the rest of the world too.
Thiel has a political and economic partnership via Epstein’s UK friend, the Labour Party peer, Peter Mandelson. They have successfully teamed up to privatise the data system of England’s National Health system via Palantir.
The Heritage Foundation folk also fund many at 55 Tufton Street, a London based research unit which informed and aided UK politicians to successfully expidite an extreme severance with the postwar Peace Project EU via Brexit. The Boys involved seem to be moving toward a full corporate takeover of democratic governance in the UK and US. It could be argued that they have already succeeded in delivering this global oligarch’s dream in the Murdoch controlled UK. See: https://europeanpowell.substack.com/p/zone-fever-means-the-uk-is-no-longer
Monnina, thanks for sharing the link. It is frightening stuff, that reminds me of times in history that were really bad. I do see Putin as a key player because his war on Ukraine triggered off a lot of things in Europe that has disrupted the status quo.
I thought Rupert was kicked out of the UK?
Linda, I can well imagine Trump posing for the cameras at the resolute desk, proudly signing legislation arranged by J. D. Vance (or Miller, etc.).
I am not saying Trump would do this. I am saying JD Vance will remove Trump using Article 25, which I read had been planned since Peter Thiel bought his place as VP. Listen to a discussion of Thiel by Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Journalist Kara Swisher as they discuss Bezos's capitulation to fascism first. https://youtu.be/yBSAveg-fzg?si=cbkcvJuof89JKQZD
Forewarned is forearmed.
"Forewarned is forearmed."
You would think.
Yet Trump operatives Stephen Miller and Jill Stein (who are Jewish) are working to elect Trump and institute a ChristoFascist state - proponents of which promote Jews and other others being allowed residency but not civil rights.
Go figure. Serving Trump is never a safe berth.
"During the Nazis' ascent to power, some Jewish organizations, such as the Association of German National Jews and The German Vanguard supported nazism *until being outlawed in late 1935.*"
"Stephen Miller’s claim that “America is for Americans and Americans only” directly echoed the statement of Adolf Hitler that "Germany is for Germans and Germans only.” "
Stein splitting off American leftish voters from the Democratic party to elect Trump, is using the same tactic Stalin did to elect Hitler by splitting off German Communists from the German center left.
Does anybody really believe Stein is anything but a Putin pup
Again, it won't be better under JD Vance, but I think we should be prepared for him to take over as president, using Article 25, which I have heard he was going to use, as planned by Peter Thiel since he was first announced.
MAGA’s don’t read the NYTimes or any other source and only watch or listen to vitriol on Fox or other right wing podcasts, X, or whatever. Never-the-less, the NYTimes, the WaPo and other former “trusted” sources have normalized trump’s behavior for way too long. Anything they write now (after voting has started) is way too little, way too late. The damage done to those former reliable resources could be the final nail in the coffin for their business model and incentive for the reputable journalists to carve out new ventures.
Newspapers have come and gone for hundreds of years but the more recent decades of steady decline is more of an industry demise. For a few years In my “former” life, I successfully managed the pension investment account of a well known newspaper and heard a lot of the difficulties the industry was facing. Survivorship in a digital world was an open challenge and that was before competition from podcasts and independent sources was on the radar.
Not so ironic, the industry consolidation has made a valuable market for very old newspapers! Ironically, the investment management business where I spent my career also no longer exists! Algorithms rule and AI and crypto currency are other relatively new players changing that landscape.
I have a story to tell. I was raised by two victims of the Holocaust in rural NC in the 50’s & 60’s. The town was made up of mostly Southern Baptists and the races were black and white. In 1964, we integrated schools for the first time in history. It was decreed by LBJ that the South comply with those orders. In my English class, all of the students were required to read “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “A Tale of Two Cities”. We were also to see enrichment films at our town’s theater that went along with the books we were reading.
For years, my mother turned the tv off if she knew the Anne Frank movie was playing on a channel. She never wanted my sister and I to know the horrors of Nazi Germany. When it came time for the film to be shown at the theater, I lied to her and said it was another movie. I went with friends and then I saw what my mom and dad had tried to shield us from. After the show, my friends wanted to go out to our hangout but I asked them to drive me home. I walked into my house and collapsed in my mother’s arms, sobbing. She too, cried. We were up until 2am talking. I am tearful just remembering the pain she and my dad felt having to leave their country, their family and friends.
When the Wall came down, that’s when my mother found out how her parents died…gassed in 1942 at the camp called Chelmno.
Marlene I am so sorry.
It hurt me to press the heart/like "button" because your story hurt my heart.
How hard that must have been for your mother! Do you think she was relieved to know, or would not knowing have been better? My daughter's father is Jewish, and I took her to Ann Frank's house just over a decade ago. We also visited the Museum of the Dutch Resistance (or that's what I recall of the name). I thought it was important for her to know that some people did push back.
I went to the Holocaust Museum in DC with two of my first cousins as I had never been there. I think we were there for 4 hours. When we got to the area where they have the camps area and where candles are lit, that’s where I lost it. My poor mama…
Marlene, your parent's story is gut-wrenching. I am so very sorry☮️💟
Not everyone is like that. Some just don’t engage with politics or are too busy working three jobs to pay attention to it. Or don’t think and inquire until the last few days.
That being too busy is the reason so many of my friends in the US do not pay attention, and several have had their therapists tell them to not pay attention to the news since it is so depressing. That is what he fascists are counting on.
I know many who choose to just tune out all politics. But self-government is DIY by definition.
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics, doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you," -- Pericles
That's proactive. Top-down media tends to make us passive.
Professor Ben Ghiat’s prediction that Trump’s only tool is escalation. Last night’s rally showed us what escalated rhetoric sounds like. Should he. E re-elected, the escalation won’t be just talk! Let’s hope Trump’s hateful rally escalated him to defeat!
In Ben-Ghiat's book Strongmen, there is always an end to a fascist, be it being overthrown, the people uprising, or death, or defeat. Perhaps it could be a McDonald's burger and fries. It would be poetic justice.
Nothing like poetic justice!
A recent article in The New Yorker posited that the people who actually came to the capital on January 6th were activated by racism. Would not racist rhetoric then be the most effective way to repeat the attempted coup?
It was decided at least amongst the White Power Movement, that as they chose to enter the government instead of always trying to blow it up, see Oklahoma City Bombing, that immigration would be the code word for race going forward. We see how it has spread so widely that even those who are being referred to by the term are anti immigrants, and thus anti themselves. So, this racism in code "immigrants" is being repeated.
I think we must face the fact that a significant proportion of our U.S. population would quite happily, given permission by Trump and chance, deport or eliminate or execute or imprison every citizen and legal or illegal resident belonging to minority groups including, Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, Jews, Muslims ….. of course these folks screaming for mass deportations, executions, etc., are the same people claiming they are prolife, anti-abortion.
Shirley Jackson’s famous short story The Lottery suggests that people enjoy killing, especially in the name of preserving a way of life they have been convinced is necessary to maintaining their supposed tradition, even if that tradition is completely false.
Re: "read watch ask discuss" but you are not a Trump followers. They don't do any of those things.
Linda, that's because you are a sentient being. capable of deductive reasoning.
"George Washington ... flanked by Swastikas"? No one can "sane'splain" that MSG Nazi Rally. You need the a forensic psychiatrist to decode his wistful desire to tan " ... my beautiful, white, white body."
That's his closing argument: " ... my beautiful, white, white body".
Must be educated… critical thinking in action!
I think he still wants to believe he can get away with anything. His money and his ability to lie no matter what let him pretty much do that all his life, though he seems now to pushing his luck.
Well, if you will see my link above in the chat to Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Kara Swisher, you might think that JD Vance is the one to watch and worry about as a more unknown fascist with his authoritarian billionaire backers.
Here is the link again.
https://youtu.be/yBSAveg-fzg?si=Z3D8zeDaU3Wohgx3
They see JD V as being more dangerous than Trump. So, some insights we should be paying attention to.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Kara Swisher are correct to be concerned about Vance.
But there would be no Vance without Trump.
Absolutely!
This was not a rally to gain more votes. It was a way to keep his base angry enough to rebel when he loses. The "secret" he shares with Mike Johnson is the warning shot.
Harris will win. Trump will claim the election was stolen. Johnson and team will assist.
It is going to be a bloody mess.
Bill, I hope we are both wrong, that this MSG rally is not a harbinger of evils to come. But the T**** signs are still up at a couple houses even here. We'll have a lot of work to do getting them back to normalcy.
That "bloody mess" is what worries me. Are we going to have a repeat of January 6th?
I assume there are plans for that. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
I imagine that Trump is being treated like an enemy agent in some circles, and no leakage of these plans is a good thing. Our media is not to be trusted with our national security. Look at Bezos and Musk. So, assume that it is not going to be gotcha, on their parts, but on the part of our government.
This is certainly my hope.
He HAS gotten away with everything.
Unhinged is a bit different from uncontrollable (though said before needs said again).
It’s Vance ‘they’re after ‘, the divisive techniques set the tone , successful again. Echos of Bernie from however long ago ….”oligarchs , we are a nation of oligarchs” …and at their mercy , whether it’s corporate America hiking prices, insurance companies/Big Pharma they led the slow demise , we missed the slight of hand …far too late likely ..as the subtle ‘slight’ success swallowed us up …the rest of the story…?
Harris is (as Emily so very well wrote) , the first woman President -best qualified -having served in all three houses of our Government and a woman of color to take us forward into our future …bring on the BLUE TSUNAMI 💙💙💙💙💙💙💙, UNITE …let’s clean up (NOT back up) and clear out the MAGA Mob, and shine sisters SHINE! 🇺🇸🫶💙💙
It has always worked for him in the past, goes his tiny, racist brain…It worked in 2016, it assures him.
It did not work in 2020. We have gotten over the covid scare, and now it is the Fascism scare, which was always there.
Apache. I wonder if we will have history books in 50+ years, mostly because we will have probably destroyed the livability of the planet by then. I see continuing chaos created by climate change as people scramble and struggle to survive. Once again, even though I am visited by problems caused by age, I am glad to be in my early 80s.
I am not far behind you Michelle but I have young grand daughters and I so want them to have a habitable and benign world. So much is wrong but we must keep trying…… we must !
I have no direct descendants, but i do want a livable world for young people. I do not mean to imply that we don't do anything. We do have solar panels and a Prius Prime. We recycle where we can. We try to buy local and do not go to chains unless necessary. I got in trouble with someone here because I loathe Amazon, but that does not include Amazon workers because they need a job. However, I am not interested in enriching the awful Bezos in any way.
Join you with this… and some regret not to have worked harder, longer… on climate…
When I was growing up, climate and most all other problems were out of view. For example, I never saw a black person in school until high school. Gas was 25 cents a gallon. My town, Elkhart, Indiana, had many factories, not all of them polluting, but some were very industrial. The rich people living along the river dumped their sewage into as pipes were revealed when the river level was down for some reason. I have no idea where the rest of ours went, probably somehow into the river as well. You could see sewage floating in it. We were "progressing" because our lives had more and more conveniences and we pay a high price now for convenience. Recycling was unheard of. I did have teacher couple friends who kept their large lot wild and basically had no lawn. They are dead now and last time I was in Elkhart, someone had cleared the lot although the trees were still there. I don't see things getting much better because most of us are not willing really to sacrifice for the change to happen. And we have all the violence around the world blowing up things. Here in Oregon we now have terrible forest fires. But every time the legislature tried to do something, Rs walked out. Once we were inundated with loud tractors and trucks to protest as well. I live in Salem, the capital.
Well he took a crap on the table for sure…what will his minions doo?! Take one too?
What is also disgusting is the Republicans’ reaction. This proves to me that they are absolutely spineless weasels, who, when the chance was given them to stop fascism in its tracks, did NOTHING. Or even worse, most of them even fully embraced authoritarianism….
My niece attended a wedding in a Catholic Church in Omaha on Saturday as many of us have over the years.
Inside the church were several Trump signs prominently displayed. The following regarding the Johnson amendment -
"The Johnson Amendment is a provision in the U.S. tax code, since 1954, that prohibits all 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Section 501(c)(3) organizations are the most common type of nonprofit organization in the United States, ranging from charitable foundations to universities and churches. The amendment is named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who introduced it in a preliminary draft of the law in July 1954.
In the early 21st century, some politicians, including former President Donald Trump, have sought to repeal the provision, arguing that it restricts the free speech rights of churches and other religious groups. These efforts have been criticized because churches have fewer reporting requirements than other non-profit organizations, and because it would effectively make political contributions tax-deductible.[1] On May 4, 2017, Trump signed an executive order "to defend the freedom of religion and speech" for the purpose of easing the Johnson Amendment's restrictions."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_Amendment
I have made it clear on multiple occasions that I loathe the Catholic Church for many reasons. It is clearly a cult that extends the teachings of the Bible through it's world-wide patriarchy.
Does the Catholic Church perform acts of charity? Sure they do. But they are greedy, hateful and spiteful. They refused to endorse Kamala Harris and Tim Walz another cowardly move to keep their patriarchy happy. They refuse to ordain women as priests and likely always will. They look the other way when hundreds of priests have sodomized children.
While Trump and his MAGAs have their NAZI rallies, the Catholic Church supports his words and actions.
I know these words are offensive to many life long Catholics, but the Catholic Church does way more harm than good in my opinion.
Yes, Gary, your words are offensive to many Catholics, but we defend your right to say them, even if we think them wrong. We also recognize that many of our clergy members, as well as certain Church institutions, have wrought much harm, even in our own time, for which we need to atone. But the single most shocking thing I read in your post was your second sentence. I cannot imagine that any Roman Catholic church would permit the presence of any political sign in a consecrated structure. I have no reason to doubt your words, I just find the situation appalling. The bishop of our own Diocese of Honolulu last week issued a letter calling upon us to search our consciences before we vote, but did not suggest for whom or for which party, only that we should exercise our rights and perform our duties as citizens to vote. All I can say for now is that if those Omaha signs encouraged any members of that congregation to vote for that candidate, my Catholic wife and I have cancelled two of their votes.
Our local archbishop does not allow political candidate signs and candidate endorsements in the parishes or in homilies. The pastors at my parish only got political about Issue 1 in 2023, and I ignored them. I am a Catholic who is not a single issue voter and has never voted for a Republican presidential candidate. Many lay Catholics feel this way and don’t like the way some bishops, priests or former priests like Frank Pavone act as ward heelers for Trump. We don’t feel inclined to butt into the personal lives of others or to presume the right to make decisions for them. We too are heartbroken at the sexual abuse of children and young people, and we hate that the bishops don’t seem to care enough about it. To me, the bishops’ behavior in protecting the bad apples has forfeited their credibility to presume to speak to lay Catholics about pelvic issues. I get something out of the worship, as opposed to issues that are not part of worship at all.
You acknowledge being 'heartbroken' about the sexual abuse of children and young people by priests whose bishops didn't seem to care about it. You also say said bishops have lost credibility. So tell me, what is it you get out of 'the worship' in the places these guys control that you couldn't get in a place less tarnished by the actions of protected predators? So please, I's be interested to know what's so good about 'the worship' that it's worth compromising your own beliefs? This is the same question I'd ask of republicans who think Trump is awful, but rationalize supporting him and his predations.
Facts and reality should never be offensive. If uncomfortable, they should serve as a spur to right the wrongs they illuminate.
Interesting because generally Omaha is thought to be a blue dot in Nebraska…nevertheless, I too am shocked to think of Trump signs inside a Catholic church. Even our former bishop, who declared himself to me an R more than once, wouldn’t have go e that far.
James, I was taken back by that too. However, for some nothing is sacred. As I reported here some friends of ours saw a clip about Jesus being love and the MAGA answered, "Jesus is wrong." So these people often are shoving their religion into others' lives, but are total hypocrites because the son of God they purport to believe in, is wrong. It's called hubris.
It seems to me that extreme hubris, malignant narcissism to the point of exclusionary self-supremacy and cruel behavior is identical with evil, and and even more disturbing than evil individuals are the throngs of passionate people who worship them and call their folly "religious". How does one square that with "The Sermon on the Mount" or tenets of other religions that prescribe humility and compassion. There are inspiring and also heinous people and episodes said to motivated by religion, yet historically the contrast between the two could not be more stark. And there are both inspiring and heinous persons and actions that are not religious in any conventional sense. We weirdly seem to lump a lot of that together, at least in speaking, though they be opposites in terms of character and outcomes. We all, of necessity pursue self-interest; but when self-interest and self-congratulation push conscience, social responsibility, and compassion out of the nest, isn't that a malignant sociopath? MLK illustrates an inspiring and liberating religious figure. Trump claims to be religious and have God on his side. What's that?
Thank you for your customarily thoughtful post, J.L. You note how people conflate the philosophy or faith with the institutions and individuals who represent that faith or philosophy. From the perspective of a believer, we need to keep the two separate. Human beings are fallible creatures. The institutions they establish, being established by fallible creatures, are themselves dependent on the character of the people who run them. Catholics believe that their faith and their Church were instituted by Jesus himself. However, as you correctly note, many self-styled (or ordained, alas) practitioners of that faith have been malignant narcissists, and acted in accordance with that narcissism rather than with the tenets of the faith . Even worse, there are those who have twisted those tenets to serve their own narcissistic ends. A couple of years ago I was able to travel to The Mount, and hear that sermon preached there, a truly moving experience. Those words, that viewpoint, lie at the heart of Christianity. Your contrast between MLK and Agent Orange could not be more pertinent. Mr. Trump's religion is Trumpism, not Christianity. His religiosity is a means to keep up the grift (Trump Bible, anyone?). I can't speak for God, but I'm pretty sure he's not on Trump's side.
I remind myself that Justice Sotomayor, President Biden and former Speaker Pelosi are Catholic, too. It did not rob them of compassion, as it seems to have affected others. Not even Ethel Kennedy, who died recently, was able to prevent one of her eleven children from wandering far from the fold. In America, we value free will, and I think our emphasis on individuality and excessive competitiveness in a hyped up capitalist economy has robbed many of their moral development. The Southern Baptist tradition in which I was raised and the Mormon tradition with which I have more recently become familiar have difficulties with the wanton ways of Trumpism as well.
I think you’re right about the influence of our “hyped-up” capitalism. Human groups and individuals are naturally competitive or protective of their own resources. Capitalism provides us with opportunities to increase those resources, but unregulated capitalism feeds those competitive aspects of our wired-in natures, making our lives worse than they need be.
that church is disgusting
"We" people of faith should be defusing and de-fanging 45's plans to finish the January 6 insurrection. He brought the anti-government militia movement into the GOP tent and kicked out "real" Republicans. They are all MAGA-cult now. It should be renamed "The Limbo Party" - there is no bottom to "how low can you go?" As of Saturday, they might as well admit, they are the NAZI party, like Mark Robinson of North Carolina dubbed himself, a Black Nazi.
Great ideas, especially the Limbo Party
They ARE the Nazi Party.
I call them Trumpublicans.
I agree -- the harm done behind the cloak of religion is endless. If a church wants to endorse a political candidate, let it renounce its 501c3 status and pay taxes. My grandmother left the Catholic church when they wanted her to let a toxic pregnancy situation continue - which would have killed her and meant my mother never would have been born. I know there are kind and good Catholics too -- and I mean no offense to them - but this is my view.
My Eastern European great-grandma left the Catholic Church when the local priest was too drunk to show up and give my great-grandfather his last rites. Boy was she mad! And when Grandma Haluska got angry, look out! She walked away and never looked back. My grandma left the church also and became a Presbyterian which made my mother and her brother the only grandkids in the family who were Protestant. To be fair great-grandma celebrated as many religious holidays she could, including Jewish ones. Mom remembers she and her brother carrying loaves of bread to the Greek Orthodox priest for Easter blessing. Grandma Haluska said, “May as well, just to be sure.”
Grandma’s last sentence made me chuckle!
I wish I could have met your Grandma Haluska!
Gary, I am astounded to read your comment about the sign in the church! As James below comments, I believe you, but I have never witnessed anything like that, ever. Admittedly, I haven't been to mass in a year or two, so I can't say for sure.
I am a lifelong Catholic, who NEVER would have imagined not attending weekly mass--up until COVID stopped me. When restrictions were lifted, and I tried to attend, my husband and me were among the perhaps 5 people out out 100 in attendance wearing mass. And there were attitudes there I didn't like.
I never attended Catholic schools due to my parents finances more than any other reason. What I grew up with--so it didn't seem odd--was my Dad took us to church, while Mom stayed home. My mother was Lutheran and attempted to convert twice, but never went through with baptism. The story is that her Pastor would come and scare her by telling her she'd go to hell. And yet, the Catholic church did not embrace her. My parents were forced to marry in the rectory, and they had to sign a document (or so I was told this by my mother) that if in my mother's 5 labors, if it was a choice between mother and child, the child would be saved and raised Catholic. This knowledge always gave me a sort of....edge. They'd been married 17 years by the time I arrived, and I never asked them how religion impacted their marriage. When I married, we chose a church close to our college campus whose congregants were diverse, as I knew my friend who I asked to sing at the ceremony would cause a stir in my parish: she is black. And several of my guests were, as well. And one of the groomsmen is Jewish.
The Chicago Archdiocese changes the assignment of the pastor every 8 years, or so. We had a dearly loved pastor who truly understood people and sometimes took to the pulpit to say he would refuse to condemn the attire in church, as he was happy we attended. He told us any anonymous letters sent to him would be immediately tossed. Twice I had serious concerns that drove me to the rectory door and each time he dropped whatever to console and advise me. Then he was transferred to another church.
He made news, I think even national news perhaps? when early in Trump's presidency he spoke out AGAINST him from the pulpit. Apparently, some people even walked out of mass, which any Catholic knows is unheard of! I wrote him a letter thanking him.
What I find odd, and perhaps the smart readers can explain to me is why/how Evangelicals are embracing Catholics? I was fully into my 60s before I experienced prejudice against Catholics! I have two good friends who treat me like one of the "good ones" (alluding to the many racists who will claim otherwise, having ONE black/Muslim/whatever friend who "isn't like THEM"). One told me that in her church, Catholics are right next to Satanists! Perhaps Catholics should consider that they are being USED by the GOP?
Your post did not offend me. I have struggled with guilt over leaving the church. I miss it, really I do. I rarely heard politics and never heard candidates in mass, but maybe I was just fortunate. I miss the rituals of mass and the feeling of re-enacting rites that have been handed down, generation to generation, from Jesus and the disciples to me. I miss the feeling of peace that I found sitting in the church. Yes, there are awful priests in the church--there have been awful people using religion throughout history.! The Catholic Church in in upheaval itself, as there are many old time parishioners who consider the Pope too liberal.
These ARE the times that try our souls. I say that I can't wait for this election to be over, but WHEN will this mess all be over? In my lifetime?
When I read news these days, two phrases often pop in my mind: "Jesus weeps" and "WWJD". Sigh. Sorry for the long answer. You obviously hit a nerve in me.
Miselle, I was moved by your post. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Ruth, the kindred souls on this forum sustain me. (And my wonderful husband as well. Keep him in your thoughts and prayers. He is going to be a first time election judge on election day.)
That is unreal. Churches need to be taxed. Karl Rove made many churches arms of the Repub party in 2006. They have spouted political lies since. Agree about Catholics. More harm than good.
I think you're right. I think the Catholic Church is more an institution than a religion. It's more concerned with power, politics and money than with (true) religion and spirituality.
As one who exhaustively studied organized religions as a sophomore in high school, I came to the conclusion that all organized religions have a fatal flaw: they all have the concept of 'the other' as part of their foundation. And that leads to division and inhumanity. All of them.
Rationality and logic have always been “the other.”
And that there may be the root for our western dualistic (and reductionist) thinking...
James, what did your research indicate that suggests Christ’s concept of “the other”?
All?
That there was a Trump sign inside a Catholic Church doesn't surprise me in the least. Let's be clear: The Catholic hierarchy in the U.S. is deeply entwined with right wing republicans, and they are master predators who protect their own at any cost.
Vance has become a darling of theirs and their own quest to make their church great again. It no longer has anything to do with Jesus, if it ever did.
I've speculated and read about the connections between Opus Dei (shudder) and a whole bunch of monsters in the right wing Catholic cabal, especially SCOTUS. See:
https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/niallodowd/right-wing-catholics-control-us-supreme-court
And
https://indietheology.substack.com/p/is-jd-vance-opus-dei
We also have the Pope's “pick the lesser of two evils” statement regarding Trump and Harris….and you know where that misogynistic hypocrite comes down on what constitutes the greater 'evil.'
So let's not be shocked by little things like Trump signs in a Catholic Church. It's just an indication that the hierarchy of that organization is no longer afraid of losing members, because the members who remain have already been politically converted.
Gary, I would like to join you by adding more offensive words.
I grew up in the U.S. Evangelical culture. In my youth, I detected something wrong with this belief system, although, without the necessary experience outside the culture, I couldn't identify the problem.
As a young adult, I avoided church and tried to recover from the psycho-emotional damage done by evangelicalism. Years later, a close friend persuaded me to attend a mainstream Protestant church. I got very involved and took some comfort there, but was still troubled by the "gaps" in logic that must be embraced to make religion work. I found it problematic that an entire denomination would would divide itself into white churches and Black churches; a denomination that preached "love of God and neighbor," while officially treating LGBTQ members as less than human. The denomination split over this issue.
I have abandoned religion of any kind. Here is why: I finally realized that ALL deities, whether Judaic, Muslim, or of any other ancient culture, were/are figments of the imaginations of illiterate MEN who sought to explain the inexplicable to their families and neighbors. As literacy developed, writers recorded oral myths and legends that had been created to reinforce the cultures that had been built around these imaginary deities.
As these cultures became systems, they were used to control the thoughts and actions of their followers. Ideas became beliefs; fiction became fact. People were killed because they didn't adhere to the right beliefs. Wars were fought over the differences in beliefs.
Indeed the Roman Catholic Church is responsible for more harm than good – as is every religion ever concocted by patriarchs over millennia.
Agree. Deprogrammed Catholic here who joined UU church for a while, thinking I owed my daughter something in the way of religious experience. Fortunately, she made up her own mind about all religion .. even took religion classes in college to help sort it out. She concluded, after attending Catholic and UU services as a comparative exercise for a class project, that Catholics seemed to like rituals and rules while UUs liked social gatherings. She isn't interested in either, having decided she was not a rituals and rules kind of person and UU social gatherings never seemed to have any good food. I thought her 20 year old conclusion was just as sophisticated an assessment as I'd heard about the matter.
"... UU social gatherings never seemed to have any good food." 😂
Dale, I suggest that the myths and legends were created to reinforce the cultures, not the deities. More likely the deities were developed to support the cultures.
Jesus was likely also a creation representing the people pushing back against empire, but empire won, and Jesus became the Christ which was all about correct belief instead of correct action that Jesus taught.
The RCC is the most visible remnant of the empire that overwhelmed the Jesus movement. The evangelical movement is a U.S. invention that was born out of racism and has overwhelmed even the RCC in the U.S..
There remain a few members of the Jesus Movement, but we don't get much press.
Mary Ellen, your suggestion is actually what I wrote. I surmise that you may be putting a fine point on it. I think it's likely a chicken-and-egg situation. The stories couldn't be told without an all-powerful deity or deities, so supreme beings were invented to make the stories work. As cultures developed around the stories and their deities, more stories were created to reinforce the culture.
As for Jesus, I don't doubt that there was a prominent Jewish renegade whose name has been lost in the mists of time. But I am certain that the biblical red-letter quotations are neither accurate nor complete. Also, accounts of his "miracles" are fictitious or exaggerated.
I think a person who follows the few of Jesus' teachings presented in the "Gospels" is going to be a good friend and neighbor, but assuming that his teachings are comprehensive is misguided, and would lead a follower to be unprepared to live in the real world.
My abandonment of the Episcopal Church came early, when I heard that Cain and Abel married. My child's literal interpretation said, "But Adam and Eve were the first two people, and they had two sons. Where did the wives come from?" When I asked my mother, she brushed it off with "Oh, it's metaphorical" (not that I knew what that meant at the time). But that was it. The Bible had lied to me. And by the time I understood metaphor, it was too late.
When my age was in the single digits, I asked my Sunday school teacher hard questions. Her standard response, uttered as a multi-syllable single word was: "It's-a-fire-from-hell-don't-ask-so-many-questions!"
As a former Catholic who left that religion more than 50 years ago, I agree with you.
I was born and raised Catholic. I went Catholic schools for 11 1/4 years. I raised our sons Catholic and encouraged my husband to convert. Needless to say, I contributed a lot of money to the Catholic Church too.
That all changed as I entered my 40s. I had always questioned some of the doctrine. But I loved the services and the communities I belonged to. When the sexual abuses became public, my first thought it was a few bad apples. I never excused or condoned the Bishops response to the abuses. I was working full-time and raising a family. I didn't have much time for in depth study of any of what was reported at the time.
The final straw happened suddenly. A teenage girl was killed by a gunshot to her head. She and her, female classmates were taken hostage by a single gunman, at a Colorado high school. Sadly even though law enforcement responded quickly, she was the only casualty. About a week later another gunman took 13 Amish school girls hostage in a copycat move. Because the crime took place in an Amish community, the police response was much slower. He molested and shot all the girls, seven died. The Sunday after those horrific crimes were committed, we went to church as usual. A side alter was set up with a beautiful array of candles, one for each child victim of gunshots in those two weeks. 14 girls and two boys. For a week or so, all I could think of were those burning candles. My church, forbids birth control and abortion. My church is quite vocal about "The Right To Life." But they were and remain silent on the subject of gun ownership among Catholics. If it is wrong to take a pill or to use something to prevent a pregnancy, why isn't just as wrong to own a handgun and ammunition???
When the alarm went off on a Sunday morning a week or two later, my husband got up and started getting ready for church. I rolled over and went back to sleep. That was 19 years ago.
The Republicans have used the Catholic Church, with its code of silence, second-class status of women unless idolizing their birth- giving function, and mandated Sunday meetings, for organizing- for years. All in the service of the GOO under cloak of Right to Life. All untaxed. Meanwhile Dems have to pay rent for halls, beg people to come instead of being able to threaten eternal damnation if people refuse, and deal with social issues here on earth as if all people were sacred. I’ve warned my friends about this superior organizing infrastructure for years. Tax the churches’ real estate- equitably. All of them. Including Scientology and the One-Man-Show idolatry mega- churches. Freedom of religion but not free to undermine the government at taxpayers’ cost!!!!
I'm not Catholic, but have several in my extended family. I am a Methodist, so some of your concerns come my way.
I defend your right to express yourself. I would counsel that it might be more accurate to say some Catholics and some congregations.
I will point out that seven of the current nine of SCOTUS are either practicing or raised in the Catholic church. The Federalist Society was looking for conservatives to promote and found an excellent source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States#The_shift_to_a_Catholic_majority,_and_non-Protestant_court
Do all the good you can. BY all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can. John Wesley
I recall that the Vatican was all in with fascism during WW2. Being complicit and even active in mass murder does not seem to go against their principles.
Dictators like dictators. Cults will be cults.
Ryan, I think it is a touch of weasel and thinking they can continue playing their role and all will be fine - for them. The Republicans in Congress have been enabling DJT since before he reached the White House. Moreover, when you read Heather Cox-Richardson and take in the history of the party it is clear they have been enabling a lot of anti-democracy pro deregulation capitalism for some time.
>>“I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact, he and I have a secret, we will tell you what it is when the race is over,” Trump said. <<
"It seems possible—probable, even—that Trump was alluding to putting in play the plan his people tried in 2020. That plan was to create enough chaos over the certification of electoral votes in the states to throw the election into the House of Representatives. There, each state delegation gets a single vote, so if the Republicans have control of more states than the Democrats, Trump could pull out a victory even if he had dramatically lost the popular vote."
This insanity won't over until President Harris is inaugurated in January so buckle up.
It won't be over for far longer than that! Electing a President Harris is only the beginning. We need a Democratic Congress and an Attorney General who will investigate and prosecute the insurrectionists within and outside Congress, and finally prosecute Trump for his crimes.
We need to cleanse the corrupt judges from our courts as well via impeachment and/or prosecution for such crimes as bribery.
👍🏼👍🏼
I cried, no wept, when I read this Letter. I hear and accept the wide range of descriptions detailing the feelings of people going into the last weeks preceding the election. Just as Mary describes as “calmness yet terrified”. This opposition of feeling in so many reflects the diametrical opposing stances of the two candidates and their support.
For me? I read Prof Richardson’s letter and wept. In this moment, it matters not to me how such a perverse rally can be held in Madison Square Garden that mirrors the showing of Nazi support so many decades ago in another rally held there. How we got here has been made clear to anyone ready to accept the reasons.
But the sadness of it, that so many spit on our freedom in favor of tyranny by a few, just takes me to a place and a stance, of sorts, that I will always defend with all that I know. The phrase, “my fellow Americans” has redefined itself. Just like at so many points in history when freedom does not come freely. When we have to fight for our rights. When We the People must “take it to the woodshed” and give such a whuppin’ to those that threaten to rule us instead of govern us.
I wipe the salty tears off my face but keep my focus on whatever symbol stands true to me as representing the freedom I will fiercely fight for.
Salud, my sisters and brothers.
🗽💜
I am pretty sure Buddy or anybody does not loan the professor to anyone. One of the reasons I admire HCR is she walks to her own beat wherever she travels.
I endorse your sentiment 100%, but I think it is Heather who loans Buddy to us when times get super-stressful. Not to quibble though. Together they make a wonderful team, and the country is the better for it!
What? Mary do you see what a proprietary and sexist comment that is? Buddy isn't loaning her to us - she's doing what she loves. Buddy supports her. That's how healthy relationships work.
Oh I’m glad you said that. I reacted to that first comment about Buddy “lending” Heather to us as if his beneficence makes that possible. She is a professional woman, period. How reductive.
Oh, lay off Mary! This kind of stupid infighting among overly-PC liberals only makes the other side stronger.
Kind of a bizarre rebuke for “a long time lefty”. Suggesting that her husband controls her schedule and we should be grateful he allows her to write these letters is a prime example of implicit bias rooted in sexism. Pointing that out in no way strengthens anyone but the person being made aware of their bias.
Heather & Buddy 🇺🇸.
And, thank you Professor for the list of black & gold seditious co-conspirators.
It was revealed that Elon Musk has been having Conversations with Putin... Is Putin our Friend? Is Elon? Elon has a Security Clearance... I wonder who signed for that.... I wonder what they talk about? Elon has definitely turned to the 'Dark Side'...
" A Political Death in Garden Square"
Donald Trump’s Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden was a spectacle that may go down in history as the self-inflicted end of his political career. What was touted as a return to his “king of New York” days instead showcased an unfiltered display of racism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism that many Americans will likely find chilling. This event served as a stark reminder of Trump’s intent for vengeance and retribution rather than uniting the country.
The rally was marred by vitriolic speeches that bordered on neo-fascism, with a lineup of speakers who slung slurs and promoted conspiracy theories. Tony Hinchcliffe, one of Trump’s warm-up acts, tossed out vile, baseless slurs, calling Puerto Rico “an island of floating garbage”—an egregious comment in a city home to nearly 600,000 Puerto Ricans. He went on with “jokes” about Black and Latino communities that were both appalling and strategically alienating to millions of American voters. It was as if Trump and his surrogates were intent on making the rally as offensive and exclusionary as possible.
One speaker described Vice President Kamala Harris as managed by “pimp handlers” and called for “slaughtering” Democrats, while Stephen Miller offered comments that echoed the darkest eras in American history: “America is for Americans and Americans only.” Trump, for his part, spoke in a long, winding monologue filled with conspiracy theories and insults, particularly targeting journalists and Democrats. He called his opponents “enemies of the people” and promised to use the military to exact retribution, chilling echoes of authoritarianism that leave no doubt about his agenda.
The rally's atmosphere was dominated by a sense of racial hostility and a fervent call for a return to an “America” that only Trump’s base seems to envision. Trump called the U.S. an “occupied country” and attacked Harris as a “low IQ individual,” adding layers to his ongoing personal vendetta against her and others. His message is clear: his campaign is driven by resentment, exclusion, and punishment.
Trump’s attack on the media also highlighted his disdain for accountability. Journalists in the crowd faced boos, with Trump egging his followers on to mistrust the press. It was a deliberate move to create an environment where truth is disregarded, and anyone opposed to his rhetoric is treated as a traitor. By repeatedly labeling his opponents as “the most sinister and corrupt forces on earth,” Trump showed his intention to govern not as a leader of all Americans but as a ruler over his most fervent supporters.
Notably, Elon Musk made an appearance, adding another layer of irony by condemning illegal immigration despite his own questionable immigration history. Musk’s alignment with Trump is a stark reminder of the billionaire class’s interest in Trump’s promise to “slash the size of government”—especially the parts that scrutinize corporate giants.
While Trump’s supporters cheered on calls for punishment and retribution, the rally might be the final blow to his dwindling electoral chances. In a country where the majority of voters oppose the hateful, divisive rhetoric on display, Trump’s rally may have only served to solidify his opposition. Political analysts might see this as Trump’s swan song, a performance that drove voters away rather than inspired new support.
The extremism on display at Madison Square Garden won’t be forgotten anytime soon. Trump’s attempt to revive his political career by stirring anger and fear may have instead shown Americans exactly why he should not return to the White House. As November 5 approaches, the rally serves as a potent reminder of what’s at stake: the choice between democracy and a leader who sees dissent as an enemy to crush. Trump may have intended to galvanize his base, but the result is likely to be a historic mobilization of voters against him.
Form your lips to God’s ears. Harris must win!!
Totally with you until that last sentence which implies that HCR needs Buddy's permission to pursue her profession. I have to believe that theirs is an equal partnership.
Well said for many of us. Thank you Mary💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙
Thanks to Buddy for “loaning” HCR to us? Please rethink that statement. I trust that you meant well, but women are not “owned” or “loaned” by men.
It’s worked since he was a toddler…
I agree very much with the content of your comment.
However, I am uncomfortable with Buddy ‘loaning’ her to us. She is not his shovel to loan out. HRC is a person (an amazing brilliant person) and as such her husband does not, or should not ‘loan’ her out.
I guess you’re right about the damage Trump did to his campaign with this rally, Heather.
Here in Stroud, Oklahoma (small town I retired to 3 1/2 years ago), people are so polite they never talk about politics in public. But I now have a way to talk about Trump… because the “hate of literally all people” he put on display is an exact match for the “hate of all people” beliefs my father had. Yes, my father was a lot like Trump; but until now Trump (believe it or not) wasn’t using language that was racist enough to match what my father used to say. But that has now changed. I’ll be able to tell my friends about the damage my racist father caused to my personal development (even as an adult when he forbid me to date a co-worker I was in love with … because she came from Puerto Rico). And I’ll be able to share what Trump and the others said about Puerto Ricans.
Thanks, DonOld, for helping me make the case against you to my small town Oklahoma friends.
I wish I could figure out a way to have this conversation with my next door neighbor in our small, East Tennessee town. The man is of Cherokee descent, and yet somehow doesn't manage to hear or grasp that they're coming for him and everyone with skin less white than theirs. The MAGA supporters of color all think they'll be the exception, because they voted for the bigot.
History screams, but where are the ears
Jeri,
Once again, you write a line that is brilliant! And once again, I have jotted it down and ask permission to use it in a manuscript. Your "A Rorschach card for our society" line is on a post-it on my desk.
Good morning to you, btw. Always good to see you here!
Feel free Miselle. I see and hear history screaming much of the time, but so many don’t seem to notice. I see so many lines on here, I try to save them because if they touch me, they may touch others.
My daughter has written a blurb for her FB and T about her dad, who was the total opposite of chump. When he died, many expressed feelings that he was so respected and valued as a trusted and honest friend. And he was the best man I ever knew. Many said the same. Her question to friends and family is how can a man who is the polar opposite of him garner so much adoration from some of the same people who valued her Daddy. Since I have been banned from both, I hope to hear any comments second hand.
I have never created accounts on social media, but the fact that you are banned and that apparently, ELON MUSK FOLLOWS YOU, makes my admiration even greater.
You make my day often. Yep, got banned from T a couple of days before 2020 election for posting Goebbels rules for propaganda that I felt chump was using on there and everywhere. About a week later, banned from FB for the same. I violated “community standards.” Chump violates standards for being a human every day. As for being followed by Elon, that has got to be a joke of some sort. I hope so, because I’d like to stay under his radar. May be too late for that…. Get on with your books. You have so much to say…
Do they think DonOLD is kidding about all of the hate and anger flowing from his mouth?
Are they not listening or are they not paying attention?
If Trump wins, even if he is unable to deport a single person, he will do plenty of damage given carte blanche by SCOTUS that he is immune from all laws while he is POTUS.
Trump performed federal executions, despite a myriad number of reasons they had been halted. He killed thirteen people in six months, and FIVE of those were AFTER HE LOST the 2020 Election. He was NEVER "pro-life." He never apologized for the full-page ads and calls to execute The (now) Exonerated Five, and is being sued for falsely claiming 1) they pled guilty and 2) that they killed someone. He wants to shoot refugees and peaceful protesters. He plans to order the military against civilians. He watched the riot on January 6, 2021 and said, "So what?" He should be in prison.
Donald is a sadist who wants others to do the dirty work while he keeps his own tiny hands clean. I think regardless of the outcome of the election, he will encourage his followers to get violent with his opponents.
tragically, yes!
As the NYT and many others have said, “BELUEVE HIM”
Correct. They believe he doesn't mean it, that's he's saying it for effect and as a bargaining tool.
“BELIEVE HIM!”
You might mention to your friend that at a 1993 Congressional hearing Trump said the Mashantucket Pequot were not “real”Native Americans because “They don’t look like Indians to me,” and said their reservation was rife with organized crime because an “Indian Chief,” couldn’t stand up to the mob.
Trump was testifying because he felt that the tax status of Native American casinos was “unfair” competition to his failing Atlantic City casino.
Be aware, though, that some Native Americans without tribal status will agree that it provides “unfair” advantages.
Good luck.
https://time.com/4246080/tribal-warrior/
Print out a sheet with Donny Demento's most racist comments. The exact quotes, with dates and locations, then post it through his door when he's out.
Seth Abramson posted an excellent list on Proof a few days ago:
https://open.substack.com/pub/sethabramson/p/the-meme-to-end-all-memes-the-top?r=7jhrp&utm_medium=ios
There were some German Jews who voted against themselves in the early days of Hitler, thinking a show of loyalty would protect them. They were probably the first to be rounded up.
Shows of loyalty will not be honored. We must continue to stand up to T and his followers hateful rhetoric.
I hope Biden has a plan on how to use his presidential immunity to stop Ts high jinx with election results.
I go to a very liberal UCC Church. I was talking to an elderly gentleman I have worked with many times on Justice issues, he said he" couldn't decide" who to vote for!!! I practically howled out loud with dismay and disbelief. I asked him why and he really didn't have an answer and he was kind of laughing in an embarrassed way. I finally had to walk away telling him that he was not the man I thought he was and I was going to leave before I said something hateful.
When I shared this, working in the kitchen after a church meal, the women in the kitchen about had fits because they could not believe this well respected man was saying these things. Yet all we could do was shake our heads and go on. He's not alone in standing there, unable to make up his mind between two polar opposites. Lord help us!
I agree 100%. Trump literally said " I don't care about you I just want your vote". They don't realize that he really doesn't care about anyone else, just himself. Their vote is not going to protect them.
Abby, May I suggest first asking your neighbor what he values…
Correct. It's a human cognitive failing. To think that somehow "they" are different and it won't apply to them. Very frustrating.
I live in ET also. I wonder how much people support tfg out of reflex against the evil of Ds. Oh, and the influence of their churches.
I'm in east tennessee also. I was so upset this year at our 4th of July weekend party, over the supreme court decision on absolute immunity. Not one person there had even heard about it.
I can’t say I’m surprised.
Yes. The entire MAGA movement from the beginning is based on racism.
I so strongly hope your words will make a difference in their minds.
Hey Steve! Good to see another Okie on Heather's newsletter. Maybe a bunch of our fellow citizens here in the state will be inspired to join us!
Thanks, Carolyn!
Hey there Steve! Nice to see another Okie on Heather's newsletter. Here's hoping more of our fellow citizens here in the state will see the light and take us back to 1912! (Election when Oklahoma went for the Socialist ticket.)
Most of us know now that all this hatred we are hearing and is undoubtedly supported by so many in this country was always with us. It didn’t die after the civil rights movement it just festered and went underground.
But like a boil that needs lancing all the pus that’s been under the skin of our country is coming to a head and in many ways that’s for the best. The gloves are off and we can see clearly who we are as a whole and what still needs to get done.
This election is definitely a significant turning point for all of us as Americans. We know now that we can no longer be complacent about who we are and talk of liberty for all when our own backyard is such a mess.
If it sounds like I’m ashamed I guess the crescendo will be upon seeing the millions of voters who cast their ballots for a convicted felon who still hasn’t been sentenced and still has so much to answer for in court.
I just hope the shock wave from the results in Nov 5th of the number of individuals who obviously don’t care about what this country stands for will resonate in the minds and hearts of those who truly believe in our Constitution and our Bill if Rights so that we can protect our country in the months and years to come while still preserving the rights and freedoms we all enjoy.
I think I have no more gasps left for Trump but then the sun rises in a new day.
Holy Mother of God! I am stunned that this unspeakably evil man has electoral support. I am stunned that congressmen and senators and governors publicly support him and will even be seen on stage with him. How is it that THEY aren’t losing their own supporters? The depravity is beyond my comprehension!
I want to go to bed and pull the covers over my head until the dust settles. Except, I can’t and I won’t allow our country to be eaten alive by this malignancy! I must do everything I can to keep our country free from becoming a nation where we have to be afraid to speak up.
Lord have mercy!
Speaking of Holy Mother of God Betsy-
From the Thom Hartmann newsletter-
— Even Crazier Alert! Famous MAGA pastor says American women are “pigs with gold nose rings,” wants to overturn the 19th Amendment right of women to vote, and says women who accuse men of rape but can’t absolutely prove it should be put to death. Say what?! Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon is a rising star in the GOP, and recently had some interesting things to say about American women. First, he claimed they’re far too pampered: “Pigs with gold nose rings.” Then he claimed it’s time to overturn the 19th Amendment and revoke women’s right to vote because that’s “the Christian thing to do.” Finally, to top it all off, the GOP’s top Christian guru argued women who claim rape but can’t prove it should be publicly executed to put an end to the Me Too movement. “If you perjure yourself by bearing false witness accusing somebody else,” the minister told his followers, “whatever the penalty would have been for that person had they been found guilty, then that penalty should fall on your head for falsely accusing them. … If that were to occur and the just penalties were to be enforced, you, the false accuser, is now put to death. And that’s a public death. It’s a public sentence, publicly carried out, then the citizens of these United States of America, you know what they would do? #MeToo would end real fast. False accusing, playing the victim when you’re actually not; you know how to end that real fast? All you have to do is publicly execute a few women who have lied.” This guy isn’t an outlier; this is the direction the entire GOP has been going for years, and now, with Trump and Vance within a hair’s breadth of seizing the federal government, they feel empowered to be open and public about their positions. What would Jesus say? Nothing like Joel Webbon’s spouting off, I can guarantee you that…
Holy Shit. At base these guys are all terrified of women and just want to control them. Thank goodness for the guys who celebrate strong women.
Are the picnic lunches after church at the site of lynchings going to be a thing in our near future. Yes, it was a thing in our past.
This is a “pastor”? OTOH, why am I not surprised.
Share this powerful 1 minute Seneca Project ad where “Christian” pastor Webon and others say the silent part out loud.📣
https://x.com/senecaprojectus/status/1810372496878874790
Here’s some additional information about this execrable rotting meat-sack: https://www.peoplefor.org/search?keys=Webbon
Gary Loft ME......CA, YIKES!!!!
Webbon is just another misogynistic pastor. He worships Trump, not God. These guys have all accepted the offer Satan made to Jesus in the Gospel of St. Luke. Jesus of course refused to bow to Satan in the Gospel, and basically tells Satan to get lost. These guys decide to accept the temptation to control the lives of others, and then recreate God and Jesus in their own personal image.
Betsy: “I think I have no more gasps left for Trump but then the sun rises in a new day.”
Isn’t it the truth. You’ve put it so well.
Yes, I thought my daily question "what fresh Hell is this" would end when Biden was elected--Nope!
He literally has no bottom.
He has no bottom in his depravity because he’s satanic. Evil exists in opposition to all that is good, he has been a lifelong practitioner and is an example of evil wearing an American flag. Many of us see it quite clearly, yesterday’s MSG rally lifted the veil for a lot of people, who at heart are decent people. BLUE TSUNAMI 🙏
Let’s be clear. John Kelly has reported that his former boss praised Hitler as having done “some good things”. What those good things are he doesn’t make clear, but the notion that any good could remotely redeem the scale of evil Hitler visited on the world is risible and utterly lacking in moral scruple. And lest we think Trump’s denial worthy of consideration, consider Kelly appears to have some shred of integrity as opposed to Trump who is a pathological liar. Then, of course, there is the venue in Madison Square Garden this weekend, evocative of the American Nazi Party’s rally there in support of Hitler – history means something, and in this case the venue seems intended to send a message. Then there is his remark, also reported by the more credible Kelly, that he needed generals like Hitler’s generals. Beyond that, his former wife Ivana reported that he kept a copy of Mein Kampf by his bed, and from time to time read a series of collected speeches of Hitler, in a volume entitled My New Order. Whether that was the volume he used to read, or Mein Kampf matters little (and I appreciate the notion of Trump ever having read anything seems a stretch), since linguistic analysis of his speeches shows clear echoes of the rhetorical method employed. Beyond that there is his open racism, to the point of calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, his association with David Duke, and of course his notorious failure to denounce the Charlottesville demonstration intended to recall a Nazi rally in which participants chanted “Jews will not replace us!”
So, the next time someone accuses you of trying to shut down the conversation by comparing Trump to Hitler, remind them it is Trump, not you, who has done the associating. And, to quote Emine Yücel from Talking Points Memo this weekend, “If someone praising Hitler isn’t making you reconsider your support for them, you need to take a long, hard look at yourself. And maybe ask yourself, what does that say about me?”
The only good thing Hitler did was kill himself. But that unfortunately did not bring him to justice for the millions of lives lost to his evil machinations.
Just an additional note: Hitler poisoned his dog and her puppies, trying to figure out the dose for his and Eva's suicides. Another dog killer.
For those who want to fact check - the dog's name was Blondi. She was an Alsatian (a German Shepherd) and had five puppies. The puppies were reportedly shot.
Really ? I'd not read that one...
Hitler took the cowards way out.
And so did Trump's buddy Jeffrey Epstein.
If DonOLD loses will he do the same thing?
No, he will never, nor did Epstein in my view.
That’s where karma with it’s flawless memory will come into play, can you imagine crossing to the other side and finding satan waiting for your arrival, 🙏
Some people on X refuse to believe Trump actually said those things about Hitler, and think John Kelly is not credible because he disliked Trump. I beg to differ with them. I believe John Kelly heard Trump make those remarks, and probably even worse remarks. They never stop to think that it was Trump’s disordered thinking and illusions that caused Kelly to believe Trump was an unsuitable president, and that that we don’t believe the consummate liar Trump.
My favorite John Kelley quote about Donald Trump is: " Donald Trump is the most flawed person I have ever known." Now think about letting that "flawed person" have access to our nuclear codes!
Kelly was all in on shutting borders, breaking up families, and deporting brown people. He WAS part of the inner circle.
Don't forget his buddy Epstein
This has got to be stopped. November 5th people, get out and vote.
Okay, the Anti-Christ comment. I can't resist:
You want Anti-Christ Trump supporters ? Here, have some . . . .
Jesus and his family were political refugees – that is the Christmas story; the former president rejected refugees. Jesus stood for helping the stranger; the former president rejected them. Jesus was about challenging the power structure; the GOP nominee lusts after it. Jesus stood for the disenfranchised and deviant; the GOP hates them. Jesus told his followers to put down their swords; the GOP says pick up your guns. Jesus stood for helping the poor and disabled; the GOP is about mocking and making life even more difficult for them. Jesus called on us to sacrifice; Trump is all about consumption instead. Jesus fed the hungry; Trump would starve them. The former president covets the kingdoms of the earth; Jesus, tempted by Satan, rejected them. Trump and his party are all about conformity; Jesus, who consorted with tax-collectors and prostitutes, is all about the disenfranchised and the deviant. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees as hungry for gain and as hypocrites; Trump embodies the same hypocrisy and selling of religion. Trump says “pick up your guns”; Jesus says put away your sword. Trump and his party persecute the sexually different; his apostles welcomed them into the fold, as in the case of Philip and the eunuch.
Is the former GOP president the Anti-Christ? Maybe, maybe not. But he and is party are as anti-Christian as anything that can be imagined.
Because if Caesar is right, then Jesus is wrong. If guns are right, then Jesus is wrong. If supporting power and laying the weak by the heal is right, then Satan and Trump are right, and Jesus is wrong. I have no idea what scripture the GOP reads. I’ve had the good fortune to pour over it in Greek and publish books on Jesus’ radicalism. Jesus was a wildly radical Jewish heretic. The GOP? Intellectually and morally sloven and shabby.
Unfortunately, while espousing their devotion to God, they are really doing it for power. The white Christian nationalist movement is entirely about instilling a theocracy via Trump. Why have so many church leaders fervently prayed over Trump (literally) and for his win? This tune has played out many times in the past and present where religious leaders give the authoritarian the moral justification for their many, many atrocities. Putin too has the backing of churches. The biggest irony of all is: most of these self professed “Christians” barely know the Bible or its many passages of love and humanity. Trump corrupts everyone and encourages them to be their worst selves. This just plain evil.
This is true, and it’s also a direct descendant of the slaveholder “Christianity” slaveholders developed to exonerate themselves from the sin of holding other human beings as their personal chattel.
Kathy Hughes,
Yes, we did and we do often treat others "less than". Too often it is from our own lack of self assurance....or fear from our real observations.....that someone deemed "less than" is actually greater than and has earned respect and dignity or honor far above our own self proclaimed greatness .....so we try to find within that someone something to put down or worse......feed our own insecurities and hatred toward others.
This could be one reason a former president feels so uncomfortable in the presence of the sacred souls honored by the sea of white crosses at Arlington Cemetery.
It could also be why he fears Kamala Harris. He cannot match her in any way. Kamala honors the LAW. She has made it her life's work. She has battled against evil forces and WON and she is ready to lead the United States of America!!! With wisdom...with joy, she will gather our better angels!!! ......and when we fight the good fight...WE WILL WIN!!!!!
This doesn’t sound unfortunate.
45 lives by "this" "Golden Rule" - he who has the gold, rules.
He is a grifter who has gone bankrupt six times and counting.
He should have been in prison long ago.
He hasn’t filed personal bankruptcy at this point, but that may happen if he loses. All his bankruptcy cases so far have been filed on behalf of his various businesses. His American creditors took significant losses, so they won’t loan him money any more.
Very well articulated. That being said, if you REALLY want to piss people off, post somewhere that Jesus was a liberal. Or mention that He had brown skin!
Once again, I recommend the book "American Savior" by Roland Merullo. The rpemise is Jesus has returned to Earth and decides to run for POTUS. Published in 2008, this satiric novel is amazingly MORE timely than when he published it.
I second your recommendation, Miselle, it had both substance and humor!
I just call them evil.
Thank you Steve!
I really hope that the people "in the middle" can be convinced now to NOT vote for the Convicted Orange Felon. I really, really hope that the US will not become a fascist technocracy run by Musk, Thiel et al with Vance as their puppet. The damage that will be done by them to democracy worldwide and the environment will be apocalyptical.
Dutch Mike--I voted on the second day of early voting in my Chicago suburb. A friend, who is black, voted at the same site about 30 people in back of me. She told me that she heard "lots of nasty remarks about Harris". IF yesterdays rally would sway them to vote against Trump, I fear that they may have already voted. Let's hope the massive early voting turnout is in our favor.
Let's hope so...
- Pulled Quote -
"Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys."
I have no words to describe last night.
I’m looking for photos of him wearing it,to post on FB
Expect him to sell off postage-stamp-sized swaths before January. Total circus hawker and grifter.
It was at Traverse city,mi…just saw the you tube video..black suit,gold tie
I haven’t had an asthma attack for a while, but my inhaler is now by my side.
Good god! My undergrad BA is in History. I never thought I’d be reliving my parents’ adolescence and young adulthood. They thought they’d never see fascism again. Live and learn.
Breathe, breathe…
Exactly. I'm in the same boat, and totally disgusted at the profound ignorance. Fascism. This time a Caligula WITH nuclear weapons. Yeah, that's a plan for survival . . .
I'm right there with you. Chronic.
They’d not intended to grow fascism, they who enacted 1971’s Powell memo.
They intended – ultimate goal – to enshrine U.S. business. They wanted the money, corporate people more free of government, and also that finance, mergers, marketing, and commodification managers all have wider berth.
Who was hemming in, crimping the business world by 1971? Intellectuals. Especially in universities, but also to serious extent across U.S. K-12. Too many instructors and youth were quoting J.D. Salinger, The Greening of America, Herman Hesse, and Ursula K. Le Guin as alternative to business norms. Too many were referencing Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, and others of the New Journalism. Too many were reading and citing Sylvia Plath, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan, and other uppity women. Rock-&-roll and much of Hollywood were subversive of, hostile to the older, staid, priorities.
The far-right foundations that would enact the latter parts of the Powell memo spent most of the 1970s gutting humanities from schools – at all levels, in many ways. New stress on standardized testing was coup de grace for individuality and the human, replaced hence by the neutered conceits of life as logical categories, groups, abstractions, and units in linear march.
Turned out the war on the human indeed neutered, dehumanized, blinded most of America. The final assaults by Powell memo foundations easily offshored the tens of millions of working-class jobs. And no one in any schools availed themselves of any of the humanities keyed to this mass self-mutilation.
America didn’t just become dehumanized, but ripe for fascism.
Needed a history lesson:
The Powell Memorandum ultimately came to be a blueprint for the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as the Business Roundtable, The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Lewis F. Powell Jr. - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.
Never forget that Powell defended the tobacco industry knowing what they were doing. He knew and still worked to support their targeting of young people and making their product more addictive. He was also an adversary of Nader for his relentless pursuit of accountability for corporations knowingly selling dangerous products. He even listed him in the Memo.
Also, thank William Bennett
Conditioning in place of thought -- as in Stalin's USSR.
Cuckoo in our nest.
Your note reminds me, Peter, of Pasternak's "Forest Brotherhood" chapter in "Dr. Zhivago."
This is where forcibly drafted doctor must endure all the slogans, catch-words, hackneyed phrases, and other banalities which all keyed what you call the "Conditioning in place of thought."
Thanks for this..lots to think about regarding the decline of our educational system as backlash against the sixties and seventies..
... especially glad you tied in the rise of standardized testing...
The kind of knowledge inculcated in laboratory rats.
Except that I'd not want to speak ill of animals with exceptional survival instincts. We humans have shown too many signs of losing those.
And, unfortunately, we are up against one variety of human with survival skills:
Criminals.
Also slashing federal finding for higher ed. All that liberal education created troublesome students like the ones at Kent State.
Um, what??
😢😢😢
Well stated..
May I copy & share? With or without attribution? Facebook?
Please, Sara -- copy, share, and attribute, any medium.
Done
I’m reminded of the late Molly Ivins - “It sounded better in the original German”
I miss her a lot. She had an acerbic way of capturing events.
Funny you should mention that!
https://youtu.be/fMjhl9jxrug
That’s the accurate term she used to describe Pat Buchanan’s 1992 RNC speech. It does not remotely surprise me that both Pat and Newt Gingrich endorsed Trump.
Exactly! I remember watching when she made that comment the next morning on the news. Also remember watching Buchanan the night before thinking “He’s nuts!”
Well, it certainly was a wonderful evening for news.
Just to complete the evening, once the rally ended and as the participants left The Garden, they discovered the campaign hadn't bothered to arrange for port-a-potties outside the venue. (Trimp wouldn't pay for it, so nothing was done.) So there they all were in New York City and couldn't find a convenient public bathroom! When there are a few thousand ahead of you it's an awkward situation.
That's one big distinction between a Progressive event and the ones Trump puts on. Not only do Progressives pay as they go, they *always* make arrangements to keep their crowd comfortable. As one wag observed, "Conservatives are all for being bootstrappy until they encounter a pay toilet, and then they suddenly become socialists."
Here is hoping they served free beer at the rally too.
Trump uses diapers. Not bathrooms or port-a-potties. So why pay for them?
That's priceless, Gary! And so predictable. Also, I am assuming that, in true CFDT fashion, he is going to stiff the management at MSG unless they demanded payment in advance.
lol Gary..
Priceless. “Where can I pee?” Response? “In the gutter. Pride has no control over a bladder”
Reducing the supremacist to the level of the homeless. Time to try empathy for a reality check
Trump has always been a cheapskate and stiffs his creditors. He is certainly not a cheapskate with his own desires though.
OMG, LMAO!! Thank you Gary!!
Just as a followup, today on Oct 29, I'm watching Kamala addressing the crowd in Washington DC, and as the camera pans over the vast crowd cheering her what do I see on the edges? Rows and rows of portable toilets! She also timed her speech to end before the first pitch of tonight's Series game.
From lofty policy to simple issues - Kamala & TIm GET IT.
VOTE BLUE, my friends!
I watched most of the rally in real time and I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
In America. My country.
What I ALSO could not believe was that some pundits live-streaming the event casually opined that Trump indeed "had momentum" and was likely going to win the election.
These were individuals whom I'd previously followed for their election insights. HOW? HOW could any decent, sane, moral American watch this debacle and think "Yup - this guy's going to be elected to the most powerful position in the world. He is going to command the most advanced and well-equipped military on the planet and hold the nuclear codes. He'll set climate policy, health care policy and foreign policy."
The ONLY reason Trump appears to have "momentum" is due to 80+ and counting "red wave" polls that have been put into the averages to suggest a close race in which Trump is ahead. It seems most of our mainstream media is complict in this by analyzing the polls as if they are absolute gospel. ALL THE BETTER for Trump to claim (after Harris wins) that the election was stolen - - LOOK AT THE POLLS! THE PREDICTION MARKETS (also being manipulated) said it was all Trump, all the way.
In any normal world, this rally tonight would end Trump's campaign and end the Republican party. But god help us, there will still be apologists tomorrow.
I will say this - EVERYONE is underestimating the effect of Dobbs on the electorate. And I do believe, the lingering effects of January 6th.
Good point SF. First the bogus polls,then the House STEAL with proof of fraud being the bogus polls differed form results. At least Biden has immunity to do whatever he needs to do to protect the results.
The tv commenters also lack any knowledge of the 1939 German American Bund rally held at the very same locale, Madison Square Garden. Believe me, Trump and his advisers know the significance of what they did.
Why was that not plastered on every media outlet.
Declining education standards for decades, remember?
I'm with you: there seems to be underestimating of the fear and anger of women, people of color, LGBTQ community, etc translating into votes. Reminder that Jan 2017 Women's March was the largest single day protest in the US eclipsed by George Floyd protests.
In any normal world… it’s been a while since I have felt that our world is normal. A long while…
If you are not canvassing or making calls into swing states yet, find your way to do one or the other asap. WE MUST DEFEAT HIM. SIGN UP FOR SOMETHING NOW. WE HAVE 8 days, the most crucial 8 days in any election in the lives of all of us here. Please, everyone, take action. We must win convincingly!!! Get on the frontlines of this fight to save our democracy. Your individual vote is critical, but it is not enough! We must each do all we can to help others to understand the risk and to urge them, and support them, and help them, to get out and vote in the seven critical swing states. Personally, I have been calling voters in swing states for 2 hours a day every day for the past 3 weeks and I will keep doing this, or more, until election day. Find what works for you and do it! Let's meet up on the frontlines!! A place to start: https://go.kamalaharris.com/
If you are in a swing state vote ASAP. GOTV canvassers will know you voted and not waste a call on you.
Wish emailers would know that.
Yes, this volume of emails and texts asking for more money—after we have donated—is very annoying. I’ve come to think of it as part of my civic duty to not get mad, but just delete them. After we have a Democratic president and Congress, we can press for campaign reform to end “Citizens United” and pass voter protection laws.
I will sign on to that with my last dime.
How about it?! LOL I must get a dozen emails a day.
But the emailers want money more than my vote it seems. I just donated more than I should have and the deluge quadrupled. Wish it were a dozen. Wish Dems had an Elon sometimes because people like me just can’t compete.
Thank you for your reminder call to action. Action is the antidote to anxiety. And hope is an action verb. So says Jessica Craven with her daily lists of actions we can easily do--for example:
https://chopwoodcarrywaterdailyactions.substack.com/p/chop-wood-carry-water-1025-7e3
Yes! Make calls. There are all kinds of ways to help! You can cure ballots by phone.
Hopefully this will indeed be the October surprise. We need one. I also love that Elon Musk is once again denigrating what he calls illegal aliens. That's like the pot calling the kettle black.
This is not about illegal aliens, this is about a covered up caste system.
I fear you are right. Redlining still a thing
Thank you, Professor. It’s just strengthened my resolve. But gosh darn it now I have to go out and find more peace doves to release into the world.