On this day in 1974, President Gerald Ford granted “a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.” Ford said he was issuing the pardon to keep from roiling the “tranquility” the nation had begun to enjoy since Nixon stepped down.
Thank you, Heather, for reminding your readers about the historical thread of political lies, conspiratorial deception and treachery. I have always felt it unfair and dishonest to pardon crimes against the state, while we shrug and forget the millions of mostly low-income folk who are incarcerated for being caught with a few ounces of marijuana.
Sadly, in so many instances throughout my many years, I’ve witnessed what strikes me as two distinctly different systems of justice in this country. A boldly generous one for the rich, powerful and well connected and a more exacting and visible one for the rest of the country. Gotta keep those mud sills in their places.
Until we have, as we recited every morning at the start of school, "...liberty and justice for all." we will not have achieved the promise of this nation. Anything less makes the whole enterprise a sham.
Dave, you are so right. It is insidious and devaluing of our stated American values NOT to hold inciters of every stripe to account; it undermines our democracy.
Then you have people like Mike Huckabee, a Baptist Preacher backing TFG and so many others like Huckabee.Sickening ! Saw him on the Tube the other day.
Mike Huckabee pardoned a mentally unstable criminal, and sent him back to Seattle. Later, he shot and killed 4 police officers in a nearby town as they were getting ready for their morning shift. My friend, who is a relative of the unstable one, got his house tear gassed by the police after surrounding the house for 13 hours. He wasn't there, though it took about 10 years to get that house back in shape.
Every time I hear the Hucksters name, I spit on the ground.
As I stated earlier about having learned so much here, it never occurred to me when I was younger, still wet behind the ears, that anyone who was jailed or convicted was ever "wrongfully" so. I saw the death penalty as reasonable because we knew the people were guilty and it made no sense to house them at great expense for the rest of their lives. I share this horrible truth about myself and my younger self person (raised as Republican) because I know that the way I saw things is still the way many, many people see things. However, now I also know that there have always been plenty of people who knew the people (mostly people of color) they were convicting and jailing and killing were not guilty. And they, too, had been raised to see what they were doing as right, smart, the way it is and should be. So our conundrum today as we choose how to make a positive difference is this: if people who don't agree with us already do believe in something else, how can we reach them to open a new view to them? Well, how many of you have had such "interrupters" happen that caused or led to you finding a new view, a new path. What were those things? Can we assemble them and put them to use here today?
Well, Deborah, it hurts to say that my “interrupters” were my father and a few “close” friends.
They revealed deep-seated bias and prejudices that were unfounded or based in flimsy evidence or flagrant lies.
And they became more strident in their intolerance and righteousness. Fact-finding and and related truth-telling proved pointless and just fell on deaf ears. Sad to say, it just got worse over the years.
It sounds, though, as if you were already aware that the things they were saying were wrong and unfair and racist. I was exposed repeatedly to the same sorts of things from others around me, and I thought they were unfair and wrong, but I still didn't see what I didn't know and wasn't aware of myself. The real changes in me began when a book club group I was in had us read this book, Waking Up White:https://smile.amazon.com/Waking-White-Finding-Myself-Story/dp/B01EINQC3I/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=waking+up+white&qid=1631367986&sr=8-1. I did not expect to learn anything because I wasn't "racist." I was so very wrong. I recommend it and many others, Dave. And I know you are open to learning so you already aren't like those people we are both talking about.
Has anyone caught with a dime bag gone to jail recently? When a person can't afford a lawyer, one is provided. Hopefully, the lawyer is astute. When a rich person is caught doing something illegal, gathering an airtight case takes time, but even Jerry Epstein went to jail.
I'm guessing you mean Jeffrey? Is this your defense of our system of justice for all? Our jails and other assorted confinements are full of young men [mainly of color] who were living while black or brown. That, Dale, is why our system is badly broken. And what just happened in Texas is a perfect example. Vigilante justice!
Yes Heather, exactly. I served in the U.S. Army for 24.5 years. It galled and shamed me that we still, 1) have so many installations named after notorious, official traitors to our nation and 2) still cater--so openly, overtly, and inappropriately to Southern attitudes of "the Lost Cause," "states rights," etc. (a good friend/mentor, African-American, denied purchase of the official print commemorating his Command and General Staff Class years ago. Why? It was a painting of a conference of Confederate Generals. This is typical symbolism in our Army, a large number of whom are from what is called the North Georgia Military College-Texas Axis. It simply never occurred to his mostly-white fellow officers that such a thing might be deeply offensive. True story) Only now, in the year 2021, have we decided to change that (the Army can be, alternately, amazing progressive and mind-numbingly regressive, depending on the issue). But hey, at least we're doing it.
But to your larger point: this is exactly correct. God willing, if we get past this crisis without bloodshed or further dismantling of our institutions, we MUST purge this--this incredibly-resilient shard of our most-shameful heritage--from our existence, forever. All of its lies (the Lost Cause is a whopper lie, AKA myth. If anyone reads history NOT written by Confederate sympathizers, this is readily apparent), law-breaking and other efforts that threaten--for the second time--to destroy our country. Not on my watch.
Let me make one clarification: I do not mean purge as in utterly censor, pretend never happened, or never bring up again--quite the contrary. I mean purge it as it has existed for the past 155 years--as "alternative history" that is (still) widely considered viable, factual, true-to-our principles and proud part of our history. No, it's not any of those. We can't force people to change their minds, but we can factually, deeply, and doggedly assert FACTs, make cogent arguments, and yes, in specific cases discredit views that are discreditable. So yes, it absolutely SHOULD be talked about...but Confederate Battle Flags belong in museums, not on flag poles. To me, it's barely more tolerable as a public symbol than a swastika.
The ‘Why ‘ they don’t want Critical Race Theory taught.It has been said many times how surprised Ppl would be to have a DNA done and find out some of your past Relatives were Black Americans . I would be just fine learning that.
Just like the term "defunding the police" is scary to the vast majority of Americans, "Critical Race Theory" has become a scary thing. It needs to be renamed as to truth and justice curriculum or something.
It just needs to be taught Authentically.I can’t be held responsible for what ever evil my past descendent’s did. But that doesn’t allow me or make it right if I still perpetuate that evil. The Class in School should be History.We’ve danced around our “Not So Great Times “in America for way to long on so many Injustices. Some we have come clean about.You hear the phrase all the time coming from AA or NA. First you have to admit you have a problem. Our Country is in a Coma on Life Support .I think we took to big of a dose of ‘Greatness ‘ ?
Perhaps it should be required to learn about your historical DNA. I think what my my white Euro ancestors did to my Cherokee ancestors has always kept me humble and not subject to being patriotic because I know our deep shadow of genocide in the roots of this country. When I hear those say we are the "greatest country," I know they deny, or do not know, our real history. One must be carefully taught to not know the Truth. And we are in process to repeat the worst of that by dumbing down of our schools even further from Truth. We have so much work to undo this mind-bending suspension of reality and equality.
Thank you for 24.5 years of service to our country, Mr. McTague! Yes, I feel like we have been in 1930's Germany and the scourge of racists are comfortable with all the trappings of lies and swastikas. Shooting someone one 5th Ave. was TFG's test and 30% of American's failed it miserably to he and Putins' immense pleasure.
I love hearing the views from our military people. One national guard member in my neighborhood is a total former guy supporter, and rumors are he and family are more radicalized now. They supported two Proud Boys parade here in small village.
Many neighbors felt terrorized by seeing the flagrance of Tr**P & confederacy flying on those trucks. We no longer feel the small number of POC neighbors and their children are safe.
However, the outcry and some rage from the community has impacted the lives of the national guard member and his family and their business immensely. They shut it down. My fear is, had he been called up to protect our Capital and elected officials on Jan. 6th, I am not confident he would have helped save them from the gallows. I am just not sure. I am concerned about some who are in the military these days and are cut from southern cloth. I hope we never have to find out...
"we MUST purge this--this incredibly-resilient shard of our most-shameful heritage--from our existence"
Aye, but the playbook, first used by southern confederates to get Jim Crow laws passed, state by state, is so very effective it is still being used today and very effectively.
Folks down south and west and in rural areas HATE Joe Biden. An honest man that has attended church every day of his life and is, mostly, an honest guy T
Why? The constant, shrill, noisy propaganda from Fox News, sponsored by Rupert Murdoch with the intent of making him richer, has a HUGE impact on many people.
The fact that fake blonde's may also be offering fake news from the Fox Network? Does NOT occur to all the fake blonde women down south. In fact, it makes the propaganda from Fox more believable. Fake blonde is the uniform of southern, Republican women. They wear it proudly not realizing that a culture of fake might not be just blonde.
We are not going to rid the landscape of the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump. They have spent their lives with lawyers stealing money, lying, and conniving to become fantastically rich in an America that, to be frank approximates a kleptocracy. Trump ran a bunch of for profit schools that shafted thousands and he is not in jail. That, by the way, is illegal.
Murdoch and Trump, and, many like them, know how easy it is too fool the ignorant folks of the USA like I used to be. How easy it is to make them vote AGAINST their own best interest.
To fight back we need to make Fox News illegal and shut it down. This sounds drastic, but, if we don't?
I don't think there is much future here if we don't.
I agree. Spouting disinformation as true up to the minute news reporting should be illegal. Why isn’t it? It’s like putting ‘Drink This’ on a bottle of bleach! Oh yeah, that’s effectually already been done!
This is a organization supporting these horse pills
The doctor, Fred Wagshul, a cardiovascular and pulmonary disease specialist in Dayton, is listed as a founding member of the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, or FLCCCA, a nonprofit organization formed during the pandemic made up of physicians who don’t agree with some of the state and federal government's Covid guidance.
In a statement in March and republished in August, Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the FLCCC, promoted ivermectin’s safety record and called FDA guidance misleading.
Bonnie, my comment is directed toward leadership getting involved in medicine and stirring up a fervor that promotes crazy and insane behaviors. Nothing against ivermectin for humans, other than I would want a great deal more info before taking it myself. I am against everybody and their brother running to the feed store to get medication formulated for horses. The world has gone mad.
Lately, I've been quoting the King from Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The King and I." When he sings "Is a Puzzlement," he agrees with your last sentence and sings, "Sometimes I think that people going mad!" But he retreats a bit as we should by adding, "Sometimes I think that people not so bad!"
Having used the ivermectin paste on my horse for years as a treatment for parasites(worms) - wonder if the pills (for humans) were meant for the same medical treatment (worms)! If so, it doesnt seem to me that would be a practical treatment for a virus. Just saying......
In today's New York Times, David Leonhardt discusses the varying medical and epidemological opinions regarding the Delta variant of Covid19. Unfortunately, the column leaves the reader up in the air as to what conclusions to draw in view of the varying opinions within the scientific community. And it opens the door a bit for opinions of groups like FLCCA, which may, or may not, have credibility. This can result in fewer people wearing masks and being vaccinated, resulting in the possible spread and possible mutation of the virus. We need opinions in which we can place our full trust, and we don't have them, even among the scientific community and the government. To be on the save side, my view is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but I don't really know if that is absolutely true in regard to the Delta variant. Who knows. Here's the Leonhardt column:
I understand your anger, Mike, but taking away Fox's freedom of speech is un-American. It's a Pandora's box. One would hope that the notion of American individualism where we all use common sense and think for ourselves would prevail, but the internet age of misinformation has co-opted our minds. Trump proved that the bigger the lie you tell will become true to those who lack independent thought. Trump supporters became mindless marionettes by the Republican elite. The U.S. is no longer the land of the free; it has become the land of the gullible, the controlled. And history teaches us that national movements (Nazism) are fueled by emotional extremism lighted by falsehoods. Jan. 6th proves this to be a correct thesis. And the right wing extremist trajectory clearly points to an eventual fracturing of our country or even a Civil War, not based on geography, ignited by the masses who have been duped.
One wsybto get rid moles is to chew up a couple of mint chicklets for a few seconds, then drop it down the mole hole … they eat it but cant digest it and die. Now, you can draw out the analogy…
The problem arises when Fox, and other media outlets, take advantage and present their content as legitimate news. The bad actors rarely make the distinction thus there are millions upon millions who consume their content and believe they are consuming legitimate news. The distinction between news and opinion must be clearly defined so that those who are unable to discern the difference are informed of the difference up front and constantly.
I do hope the massive lawsuits from Dominion and others will curb some of these lies. Losing money seems to be the only thing the junk networks respond to.
Reminds me of the Seth Rich conspiracy that Fox mainstreamed from outer space. As I recall the grieving family sued , and settled, with of course no apology /mention of the settlement on FOX.
The NYT did cover the story but this should have been on every major news network ! That poor family will never be the same…
Fox should be forced to put s disclaimer on before snd after every announcement, that they are not news reporters. Like Andy Borowitz does. He gets his point across, but is honest about his fiction. Fisclaimers on Cigarette ads
Free speech has been mythologized to the point that attacking it is a vice not to be given even a hearing.
We have in our minds, consciously or not, the Rockwell painting where the courageous and lonely man voices an unpopular opinion, from which we all infer that he is standing up bravely for What Is Right in the face of powerful and universal disagreement.
That is far from the reality. We live in the world of the hive mind and we choose our hives carefully. Because it is a hive, free speech within it does not exist. Contrarians are mocked, denigrated viciously, and/or blocked.
There becomes one “correct” opinion for each event, from which to dissent is to be a troll.
People absorb this and then inflict it on others outside the hive. Their ears are stopped to dissent. Those who disagree are evil, or at least have suspicious motives.
Free speech in democratic countries is now mostly “Facebook speech”.
It is a sham, a parody of what it was intended to be.
The Florida (and other state) school board meetings are perfectly illustrative. The decibel level is intolerable. One can almost see the spittle forming on the lips as speakers scream “their truth”. One tribe claps and chants in support. The other screams back. Physical force is threatened.
Free speech now is performative theatre and bullying. It is disgusting. The fact that we sanctify it as a virtue is another turn of the screw in societies run amok.
I've started reading "Friendly Fascism" by Bertram Gross. It's a 1985 copyright but the preface seems to be pointing to how corporations (& the internet) are creating a mindless society.
I'm concerned that the introductions are written by conspiracy theory advocates.
Right. When there is scientific evidence that a vaccine, e.g., is safe and effective, free speech against it has to be stopped, imo, for the common good. The common good must take precedence over an individual's rights unless (s)he has a good reason such as health or religious objection, perhaps.
Why is it so hard for us to draw a line in the sand as to what should be freedom of speech versus freedom of the mind. Progressives are intent on using the rule of law to achieve their goals while the fascists want to bully and use violence. Are we seriously unable to discern between the two and have a government of true majority rule? Or have we become a world full of moral rot, where the majority cannot see themselves in others. Perhaps the $grabbers have purposely destroyed organized religion so as to plow the Golden Rule into the ground? 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
We are seriously unable to discern between the two. We shout across the divide, endlessly opposing, sometimes veiling heard, sometimes not.
In an unimaginably non-existent world, free speech would be earned through the process of becoming educated or skilled in a serious area of life. Free speech would be the right of those with a serious education, or equivalent life experience. A serious education would be one which was attuned to the needs and skills of those being educated - no one-size fits all schooling as we have now.
Birth citizenship would be recognized for the fundamental rights of the individual under a government interested in the welfare.
Advanced citizenship would go to those with advanced education or life experience.
The first level of advanced citizenship would give its recipients the right to speak freely in serious forums on the areas of their expertise from life experience. Thus prison reform could be debated by prisoners, wardens and those with serious education. From this group decisions would flow.
The pinnacle of advanced citizenship would give people the right to speak on all issues. They would have this right based on their level of scholarship which has fostered in them the ability to see both sides of an issue.
In a decision-making forum, everyone’s speech would be judged on its logic and good faith. Speeches that failed to meet that bar would be excluded from the record that would be used to produce a division.
Thus speech would become an “earned freedom”.
There are, I recognize, a googol of flaws in the above. I’m winging it, as my dog is impatient to have his daily run.
I disagree. What distinguishes your suggestions from a caste system. It's the same argument used in not allowing people of color to vote. If we truly mean, "All the people this time," we must mean all the people; even idiots can participate. There should be a line drawn at violence. There should be consequences for people who are violent or threaten violence. Violence and threats are not free speech. They are unconscionable and should not be tolerated in a civil society.
I wasn’t thinking in those terms but your “caste system” point is one I must seriously consider.
I’m not sure I can put my finger on a counterpoint. But I think that all people have capacity and even potential for genius.
Most can get an education of some worth if the education system is broadly reformed. Others will get some of that and then have a host of life experiences to which they employ their full vigour, skill, and passion.
I am not for censoring speech. I just believe that we should reach a level where meaningful decisions are made by people capable of opining on them. And that the furnace of “free speech” whose flames have leapt into the public arena and now dominate public discourse should be tamped down so that the irrational consequences of the past few years which border on the demented are abated.
A baseball player can speak in forums of anti-trust or whatever the current hot topic relating to professional sports is.
A plumber has any number of areas in which (s)he may be expert and can offer valuable opinion.
An educated person *in a reformed education system* should be able to speak with influence on most subjects that (s)he has thought about.
Stay at home mothers and fathers should be involved in fruitful discussions about Universal Basic Income.
But what we have now is vice and spite and an entire host of irrational emotions hiding behind the pristine shield of “free speech”. The consequences are going to be catastrophic, as a wide variety of informed opinion is intimidated or refuses to scream back.
I would use a different standard then education, surely all these evil Harvard grads support my hypothesis. Free speech that is broadcast to wide audiences and supposedly coming from an authority figure should NEVER promote violence against others and should ALWAYS be held to a standard of truth. I too am winging it just to take a strong stand to education being a litmus test for the Golden rule
Totally totally agree. Education must be reformed hugely. It exists in its worst forms in the Ivy League. I read the book Excellent Sheep and never thought of education at the Ivies in the same way again. Of course one can have a sublime learning experience there. But Harvard et al are preposterously conscious of their institutions as being gatekeepers to the best in society - dispensers of the golden tickets, as it were. Naturally rogues and dimwits with money glide into such environments.
Education cannot be a ticket to the free speech utopia i proposed until it is reformed, root and branch.
Exactly, in our freedom of speech allowed country. How would we enforce the idea of lies being lies, entertainment not the same as actual news, pointing out truth and how to distinguish it from dishonesty and so on?
Is it really so hard to determine a lie? TFG stands in front of the tv audience and says one thing then the very next day says just the opposite. How can you not know that one or the other is a lie?
I agree. Forcing people or shutting down freedom of speech is a slippery slope I dont want to go down any more than we already have. Twitter and FB, for instance, block people with differing views. It may feel good to some people but it feels like the end of freedom to me.
I'm not on either Twitter or Facebook, but I thought that they were monitoring only disinformation, not doing anything about different opinions. Even if my premise is incorrect, they're not making much progress in banning outright lies.
FOX's approach has been to have a mix of separate News and Opinion programs that are not actually separate.
8:00 am. Opinion show interviews a blogger who calls Biden a cannibal.
9:00 am. News "reports" that allegations have surfaced that Biden is a cannibal. Which is (technically) true, though only Fox came out with this drivel, and it is not actually newsworthy (which is an editorial opinion).
10:00 am. Panel discussion "debates" the idea that Biden is a cannibal, and the conclusion says it's unlikely, but (leaves question open)...
11:00 am. Interview with an unsavory-looking, ill-spoken "expert" who claims Biden is NOT a cannibal, and interviewer treats him poorly.
12:00 pm. News "reports" the "growing firestorm" surrounding Biden's cannibalism, and claims White House is not answering their calls.
1:00 pm. White House issues a statement, "Biden is not a cannibal."
2:00 pm. News "reports" White House statement. Ad at the end of the News show says, "Coming up: What is Biden Hiding in his Freezer?"
3:00 pm. Conspiracy theorist has a fit on live television about body parts found in a freezer in the White House, expands on "Cannibal-gate" with diagrams and charts and "eyewitness accounts."
4:00 pm. Ad nauseam.....
They've been doing this for decades. They are breaking no actual laws, and legislators have been swift to move the guardrails when they get too close.
I just read a piece by Thomas Frank in the August Monde Diplomatique in which the author lambasted what he describes as progressives’ hysteria in the United States—https://mondediplo.com/2021/08/06usa. Frank seems to be a historian. While there are many valid points in the article, I can’t help feeling there are times when he’s coming full circle, where far-left prejudices mingle with those of far right, with the same blinding, confusing effect. Perhaps it would be useful to have fellow historians’ views on this…
I’ve no objection whatever to Frank’s criticism of silliness, dumb, brutal prejudice and herd mentality among those who like to call themselves progressives—those are so obviously counterproductive. What’s more, I’d be delighted if I (and Timothy Snyder and many of us) should prove to be mistakenly alarmist and his own apparent complacency, justified; but I fear he gravely underrates the real dangers.
Frank criticizes as absurd descriptions of the former President as the worst world leader since Hitler. Fair enough, yet the relationship between DT and his mass following bears uncomfortable resemblances with that between Hitler, Mussolini and the German and Italian masses in their day. And the threat is of a one-party oligarchic state, a lid well screwed down… Above all, such is the vast material power of the United States that an idiot in office—even a brainless human battering ram backed by conspirators with billions and one-track minds—could prove more dangerous than any mass killer in history.
This doesn’t even call for nukes or invasions.
For starters, consider the deliberate environmental damage inflicted by the DT presidency at a critical moment. Consider the impact on… our children, our grandchildren, and theirs.
Consider the effects on... THE UNBORN…
Yes. Think of that one.
Our responsibility, yours and mine, too.
Even if tens of thousands of us would be hard-put to compete with the Koch brothers.
Read the article, and was largely unimpressed. How to express this...?
The whole article strikes me as criticizing the table manners of a vegetarian at a feast for cannibals, aboard the Titanic.
The progressives are, by turns, inspiring, pathetic, and terrifying. They are well-deserving of criticism. But when you put them up against the modern conservatives, we enter an entirely different order of criticism. Table manners versus cannibalism. On a doomed voyage.
There is a false-equivalence built into all competitive games, which includes politics. It presumes that players have accepted the ground rules of the game. Imagine a game of soccer where one team decides it's okay to carry baseball bats onto the field, and uses them to injure players of other teams. If this is permitted, they will win all their games. OR, the other teams will catch on, and will begin arming themselves as well, and then soccer becomes a blood-sport that has nothing to do with the ball, except at the end of the massacre, where the one standing player limps the ball across the field and nudges it into the undefended net.
I’ll just add that my comment on Frank’s piece was a superficial reaction and far from carefully thought out. My attitude is that I—all of us—need constantly to check motivation, assumptions, beliefs. Everyone’s, beginning with our own. Groupthink is reassuring, at best we resonate, at worst it’s herdthink—worthless, no thought at all. Moo.
Frank has the virtue of scrutinizing “liberal/progressive” herdthink. I’d feel more at ease with his writing if some of his own assumptions did not seem too facile.
Maybe this is pure coincidence, but I note that highly perceptive friends never spoke to me again after I predicted a likely DT victory in 2016 and their pooh-poohing turned out to be wrong.
I’m sorry, too, for the hellbent misleaders, the bellwether Gadarene swine…
But that's exactly what they say when they're challenged. I worked with a woman who relied on Fox constantly for her political information, and often referred to CNN as Communist News Network. When I pointed out her bias, and that she was treating lies as gospel, her answer was that Fox was entertainment and opinion, and couldn't be held to fact-based standards.
I agree, but we're "reasonable," and that's the difference between folks like us and those who are ignorant and biased enough to watch Fox without becoming bilious.
And she's oblivious to her own self-contradiction. Either Fox is fact-based 'news' or it's 'entertainment and opinion and couldn't be held to fact-based standards'.
Something must be done about social media, like Facebook, too. I don't know what can be done about the fine line between insisting on truth, and censorship, but we need to find it.
I heard on Nicole Wallace today while I was waiting for the President's address that FOX News has a vaccine mandate in all of their facilities. Ostensibly to protect their stars, who lie about vaccines!
If as they were saying on the news they are starting federal regulations on telecommunications companies, why not cable? I understand the extinct Fairness Doctrine regulated only the airwaves. But please where do I find a list of foxes major advertisers so I can stop buying from them. I have a fireball distain for all those people!
Fox gets most of its income from cable fees. It is bundled with most cable packages. A successful movement to unbundle Fox, so those who want it pay for it as an add-on, would put a serious dent in their finances.
Mike, please don’t overlook the hearty, blue tides of passionate, active, Faux-News-Free “folks down south,” many here in the herd. Numbers of us believe and actively multiply the ripple effect of these blue waves.
That is why we need brilliant historians - to tease the threads of consequence out of the multifaceted, overwhelming detail of political and social life as it flows forward. Heather, you are superb at this: incisive, articulate, relevant. A searchlight cutting through the mists of the centuries to illuminate the shape of current occurrence.
Not just the historical logic, but the political disparity of footsoldier and leader that bedevils every era of history, and is destorying civility in our current age.
Let's also recall Nixon's treasonous behavior in 1968, when he used Anna Chennault to get to Nguyen Van Thieu, president of South Vietnam, to scupper the peace talks that Nixon was afraid were about to produce an agreement just before the elections. LBJ had the goods on Nixon and let him know he had the intercepted phone calls, but he decided it would be seen as him being "partisan" in the election if he had exposed Nixon. Then there was Reagan's similar treason with the Iranian ayatollahs during the election campaign, when he had William Casey his future CIA chief go and tell them not to release the embassy hostages before the election and he would "do business" with them.
Republicans have been traitors on foreign policy since Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. sank the League of Nations in the Senate in 1919.
And all of Nixon's small gargoyles, like a college freshman dropout named Karl Rove who was a junior "ratfucker" under Donald Segretti, grew up to be big gargoyles.
Excellent addition to this Letter, TC! And please don't forget that Reagan’s CIA helped finance its covert war against Nicaragua's leftist government through sales of cocaine to South Central L.A. drug dealer, Ricky Ross, among others. They flew cocaine into Andrews Air Force base in Air Force planes. In early 1986, freshman senator John Kerry stood almost alone in the U.S. Senate demanding answers about the emerging evidence that CIA-backed Contras were filling their coffers by collaborating with drug traffickers then flooding U.S. borders with cocaine from South America.
I wonder if that trend follows through to heroin from Afghanistan. A couple of years into that mess, I was talking with a fellow in the street who had served in the troops there, and chosen not to reenlist, since he had gotten housing, and realized his life and health were worth more than a heavy game being played there ... street people who enlisted did so on the promise of free heroin and ample follow up medications from the VA ... a slick hustle if ever there was one ... I wonder how many of the graduates from that class were storming the Capitol on January 6th ....
A junkie probably wouldn't make it through boot camp. It seems more likely that an enlistee, once in Afghanistan, would try heroin, like it and get hooked - not join the military to have "easy access" to heroin.
"Then there was Reagan's similar treason with the Iranian ayatollahs during the election campaign, when he had William Casey his future CIA chief go and tell them not to release the embassy hostages before the election and he would 'do business' with them." As apolitical as I was back then, I smelled a rat!
Please read Lynell's post above about Casey's death. He died in hospital, had been treated for months for prostate cancer. It also discusses "''The immediate cause of death was aspiration pneumonia as a result of a central nervous system lymphoma.'' and "A central nervous system lymphoma is a rare tumor of the brain and central nervous system, evidently the brain tumor for which Mr. Casey had surgery late last year at Georgetown Hospital in Washington. Difficulty in Swallowing
The physician said the brain tumor, and the damage it caused, might have led Mr. Casey to have difficulty in swallowing properly." Having worked in nursing homes for over 35 years as a RN, aspiration pneumonia is commonly seen in dementia cases-the brain literally forgets how to swallow, which could certainly happen in this scenario of a brain tumor.
I don’t believe that any American, no matter what party they supported, would for any amount of money or promised political appointment want the hostages held by the iranians to be imprisoned even one second longer. Our entire nation wanted them released. So speaking of smell tests the idea that Casey would ask them to hold them a little longer makes no sense to me. If you are confused about that idea just look at what the goddamn iatollas did to William Buckley, we still owe those bastards big time, taking out their satanic general was just a down payment.
That was an interesting read, as usual when governments talk with each other a lot of things are said that we the public have no idea of. I am aware that the hostages were released just after Reagan was sworn into office, did the Iranians do that to curry favors, I have no doubt. I have a very hard time believing that any American would ask to have their confinement extended for any reason whatsoever.
Even after TFG??? I strongly disagree with that Dick. I’m really really glad you are not as disillusioned as I am about what these people are capable of.
The clown is a very different story, I thought he was an outlier but he seemed to attract others like him like flies are attracted to shit, to put it bluntly. I still feel that the people that have served our nation, certainly since FDR have done so, so that the nation would benefit from their service. That’s why I served in VN, it was hugely unpopular among my generation, but some of my brothers in arms would not have survived it had I not been there. It’s my fervent hope that the flies that were attracted to the clown will be held to account along with the clown himself. Think back to the first impeachment hearings, the civil servants that testified did so clear eyed about what it meant for their jobs,and with a dignity that I found humbling. I want to hang on to that version of Americans who serve, those people were steadfast and not about to be blown about by the maelstrom that had the flies desperate for their meal. Thanks for your reply Christy
The US, at the behest of big oil executives, replaced the elected leader of Iran with a monarch. Lacking a competitive military force, Iranians retaliated with more modest actions. The US doesn’t a complaint against Iran comparable to our replacing their government with one to our liking.
Too often the Dems don’t act out of fear of being seen as partisan. And the despicable other party ONLY acts out of partisanship (making up crap where there is none).
Sizzlin, TC, sizzlin’. Love the deep dive always on your “That’s Another Fine Mess” Substack column. There’s no shortage of messy in the past or now. What’s a broom to do? The dustbin needs emptying. I put the removal of concrete Gen Lee yesterday in that category.
My realization from this remarkable essay this early morning is this - From decades before the pardon of Nixon by President Gerald Ford in 1974, to the removal of the Lee statute this week, I am reminded of the conservative ideology's righteous indignation against the basic and core tenant of America, expressed in the Pledge of Allegiance, "Liberty and Justice for All." Today, as in 1871, progressives act to ensure justice is served against violations of Americans' liberties, as codified by the Ku Klux Klan Act 150 years ago.
As is often stated, we are a nation of laws. Should the highest ranking government employees such as Nixon and Trump and their minions intentionally violate these laws, then there will be no liberty and no justice for all Americans, until justice is served against these perpetrators. Conservatives believe in "freedom from" regulations, taxes and responsibilities, due to their warped notion of libertarianism, the belief that oneself stands above and removed from all others. In reality, we are all inextricably linked in a web of humanity, best summarized by our Pledge of Allegiance.
"The Pledge of Allegiance was written in August 1892 by the socialist minister Francis Bellamy (1855-1931). It was originally published in The Youth's Companion on September 8, 1892. Bellamy had hoped that the pledge would be used by citizens in any country.
In its original form it read:
"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Dear HCR -- I am daily in awe of your ability to link historical events providing details to events that I lived through, but never comprehended so clearly as you have presented them. Although I understand the sentiment to just "move on" (after the Civil War, after Watergate, after Iran-Contra), you have made a compelling case that Presidential pardons never let us reckon with history that ought to be reckoned with.
During much of the Watergate Trial, I had the great good fortune to be taking a high-school civics class taught by a gifted teacher who insisted we make up our own minds about what was going on (thanks Mr Falcione!) My parents were Goldwater Republicans. I lived in a red town in a very red state (now its kind of purple). I could simply have been fed a party line by that teacher. Instead, he forced me to think about the larger picture. My response was to become a life-long Democrat (that led to some lively dinner-time discussions I can tell you!).
Now, most high schools don't even offer civics. I recently read a quote that essentially said "The most effective way to destroy a nation is to destroy its education system". This has been happening in an uneven way across this nation for decades, and has provided fertile ground for the gross manipulations of public opinion we have seen come out of trumpism. Thanks Heather, and thanks fellow readers, for reminding me what a powerful thing an educated, well informed public can be.
While I was a few years older at the time of the Watergate hearings, I watched them. It was only then I realized the government lies. I do understand how Americans have lost faith in government. In the 50 years since, there has been no effort to restore integrity. My parents were serious repubs too. I often wonder what they’d think about today’s current crop. But I’m afraid they, too, might have become like today’s party. Glad I’ll never know.
That's what the Founding Fathers thought would comprise the electorate, so they limited it in various ways, usually via the States, to property and business owners, males and white people. The rural and urban working classes, regardless of skin color, and women, were assumed not to be educated nor well informed. When the electorate was expanded, making it more democratic, a good thing, we also included many without any assurance that they were educated or well informed. We had counted on a broad public education system and an honest media, both of which came under attack and still are today, to give us that educated, well informed public. It didn't happen that way. And that's how we got the victory of the South in the Civil War through an aborted Reconstruction, a business-protecting, anti-immigrant government and this century's "movement conservatives."
Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America: How The North/South Won The Civil War, 2020, by Heather Cox Richardson. After reading the Letter, I had to go to the book, and I will read it this weekend.
America's choice: Democracy/Equality vs. Autocracy/Subordination.
As much as I have felt the terror of the last five years, reading the Letter this morning put it in black and white, neither calming nor inflaming, just the facts. I believed this abysses could happen even in my preteen years, as I didn't buy into the nation's mythology. America's expansionism, treatment of Native Americans and racism made me a wary and politically active citizen.
Imagining, however, is different than living through the cruelty, the lies, the collapsing values, the immorality and the menace of neighbors, even, for some, with family members. The country is like a grenade or a bomb.
I cannot dwell in the dark for long time, at least, so far. Heather ended the Letter with the statue of Robert E. Lee coming down. I will end this comment with, in my opinion, the most important thing to do -- getting national voting rights legislation passed. Work with voting rights organizations; call and write the President Biden often to let him know how important it is to pass the For the People Act of 2021 and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act now. NOW!
"Imagining, however, is different than living through the cruelty, the lies, the collapsing values, the immorality and the menace of neighbors, even, for some, with family members. The country is like a grenade or a bomb."
In the 60s, we collectively saw it coming. Tried our best to change the trajectory. Sought alternatives. Were scared of the future looming but hopeful change could come. Couldn't mobilize enough Americans to steer to a better America.
Yes, we did see it coming. Tried our best. Until we became so disillusioned, and most of the people in the movement that I knew in my small circle seemed to give up, including me. Watergate and Kent State broke me. Didn’t even vote for many cycles. Later on, by way of my involvement with civil rights, I realized that the system could be changed for the better, by ‘the people.’ Yeah, right....
Yes, but the wrong Right — the Right (movement conservatives) through their corporate overlords learned how to change public opinion through the media instead of the free press. Corporate armies of advertising psychologists and test audiences became experts in making people think they needed a product instead of just wanting it. We bought anything an actor in a lab coat told us we had to have, on the boob tube and in the homemaker magazines. Our consumer insecurities were easy picking for Detroit chrome and horsepower. A lie to sell a car or a “new and improved” or “safe” washing powder was just good business. Ralph Nader fought back, until he partially melted down and tried running for office himself. But he woke us up, and passed the baton to people like Elizabeth Warren. And to a lesser extent, people like me....
Meanwhile, the politicians were watching and learning, joined at the hip with Big Business and their lying ad experts. The nascent internet was (and is) unregulated and becoming becoming social as pc’s became affordable and a little more user friendly. Then smart phones, where everything about us can be known and manipulated. Even us so-called ‘smart people’ occasionally— if not frequently, can be manipulated! (Come on, look around your house and admit it.....).
And here we are. The internet has become the Biggest Business, the devious, fascist, racist right knows how to use it expertly in their never ending quest to return to the ‘Original’ days, when only the landed white males dominated and ruled.
I came back to the ugly business because of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Inspired with true hope by this new Black guy, and a man of true integrity that I had been following for many years. Hope, and Change! I donated, campaigned, and wept on election night. And even before the inauguration, the repetrolicans met and vowed to crush these people who were defiling the White House. And they answered with Him, eight years later. The Perfect Tool, the Perfect Idiot. The Pefect Patsy. The Perfect lightning rod, Lying Machine.
And they did it with the INTERNET.
So. Now, Hope is back. And we are fighting to save this perfect idea: By the People. Liberty and Justice FOR ALL. Anathema to the movement conservatives. And all we got is Hope, and each other, and the people who count on us, and our minds.
Thanks Daniel. Your comment jolted me into a reply as if I was to finish your thoughts, and I tried to use several of your phrases, to tie to your comment as I offered very few of the highlights of the past 60 years as I saw them. I feel the uncertain doom of the grenade thing too, and I displace it with hope because of all the really good people I see who are rallying into action.
I am confident (again) in the future. People are waking up. Acting. To repeat an earlier quote: "Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end".
source: Descended from an old Indian proverb, made popular in the delightful film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Its first contemporary use was by Fernando Sabino, a Portuguese author.
I agree with you. The darkness you describe is on our very doorsteps now. The only way we can regain some semblance of sanity is to restore our voting rights through those two acts. Once obtained, we can then replace some of these very, very bad "leaders" with people who have a conscience and who value democracy. Perhaps then, we can undo some of the very, very bad laws they have put in place.
Yesterday, I had the good fortune to spend some time with old friends from Austin - I had not been in actual proximity with them for over two years. At first, we were a little nervous, but we sat in my kitchen, a good six feet apart, masked, and played catch up. They are a bit older, and very depressed at the state of our country and especially our state. One of the stories they shared was the murder of a woman two days ago in Austin. She had evidently inadvertently driven her car in a way that made some armed road rager think he had been "cut off" and his "rights" somehow abridged. So, he pulled out his open carry (and no doubt unlicensed) gun and shot her dead. She had the grace, mercifully, to pull to the side of the street to die. But. She's dead. And he's within his "rights" I guess to kill, since our awful governor thinks being armed and dangerous is more important than life itself.
Hard to "heart" that one. The wild, raging, west. If I had a lot of money, I would sue that man and the state for that homicide. Hopefully, the current POTUS and Merrick Garland are on top of this immediately.
Ellen, that is a horrible story. I want to disbelieve it, but a friend of mine, who lives in Maryland, told me starting more than a year ago, how dangerous it can be to drive. Male drivers, she said give her the evil eye, assuming she's cut them off or done something else that warrants their rage. The hatred is at hand and it's terrifying.
I only used the term because it's overused by the right. Our country has done many exceptional things but they are paired with many horrendous things as well.
Exceptionalism, like the "more perfect" union, is a goal we can never achieve but should still never stop trying to get to. It helps to keep the riff-raff out of power. We veered off course and wound up with Trump, somebody grab the wheel.
Thanks to the prior administration we lost our standing as the #1 Super Power of the world. Personally I don't care if we are or not, what's important is having political, educational, social and economic systems that are as equitable as possible where no one is above the law.
Thanks, Heather, it's good of you to remind us that all this GOP disloyalty and illegality did not begin with McConnell and Trump. Even the -- relatively -- clean Bush senior was in it up to his ears. Reagan should have been impeached over the Iran-Contra illegality, and his underlings should have all gone to jail, and Nixon should have ended up behind bars as well. Republicans think nothing of breaking laws if it will further their political and personal ambitions, and they stick it to entire classes of Americans without guilt.
We Democrats have been generally too forgiving and thick headed about all this.
I've been thinking for quite a while now -- more seriously since Jan. 6th -- that continuing to allow the GOP to drag us down into Fascism is far more dangerous than calling for a Constitutional Convention would be. First, we really need to eliminate the Electoral College and begin electing Presidents by popular vote at the national level. Then we need to either eliminate the Senate or make sure there are proportionally more Senators in the more populous states. Then we need to take responsibility for running elections to national office away from the states. Even the Bill of Rights could use a bit of modernizing and greater clarity and specificity. And, of course, the Second Amendment needs clarification, so we can finally get assault rifles and all other semiautomatic weapons out of civilian hands. I'm sure there is plenty more I have not thought of.
First win a majority of State elections then you're heading in the right direction and for that you need to get the people out to vote...and a little help from our friends in DC on pressing matters of voting rights, gerrymandering and getting money out of politics.
Well yes, Stuart, a Constitutional convention would be quite a can of worms, and getting currently proposed legislation passed definitely takes priority.
Can someone tell me why presidents and governors are given pardon power? As far as I'm concerned, all it does is give them free reign to lie, cheat and break the law.
JUST FYI EVERYBODY! "Free rein, meaning 'unrestricted liberty of action or decision,' is often misinterpreted as free reign. The expression free rein originated from horseback riding and refers to the act of holding the reins that control the horse loosely so as to allow the horse to freely move along at its own pace and in its desired direction."
Hi Pam. I hear where you're coming from, but I believe the pardon power is a check (or a balance?) on the power of the courts, where mistakes are sometimes made, more often if defendants happen not to be White men.
Unfortunately, the pardon has often been used to free politically connected white-collar criminals. Better Presidents and governors would use it more... judiciously, but we have to elect them first. I'm not sure I would want to jettison the pardon power just now, given our current semi-legitimate Supreme Court and the Democrats clinging to power by their fingernails.
“Reign” is indeed the appropriate word for men “who would be King” and possess the ultimate power of Presidency or Governorship. Washington rejected this in favor of the American ideal of a republic. Alas many of these individuals who rise to the office of President or Governor lack the qualities of Washington. As described by Jefferson: “ "His integrity was pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision."
Yes, I believe he had the chance to sign environmental legislation that would have acknowledged human-caused climate change and put the issue front and center many years ago, but he didn't, giving the oil and coal industries another 20 or more years to disseminate their propaganda. He did sign legislation ending the emission of ozone-hole-causing gasses, and he was keen on wetland conservation and a few other environmental issues, but he was definitely in too much thrall to big oil to make the kind of difference Al Gore would have. And let's remember it was Reagan who removed Jimmy Carter's solar panels from the White House roof.
Now that I think of it, the fact that Reagan was elected and re-elected by a landslide embarrasses me more (as an American) than even the election of you know who. Reagan was evil and smooth, but he was a real Dumbo.
Or maybe let some of our hearts continue to bleed, but get others of us to grab democracy by the nape and nonvoters by the shoulders and give them all a good shake-rattle-roll. No more (all) Mr. NICE GUYS!
The problem? And I've said it before: Democrats don't know how to think like criminals.
I was born in Vermont in 1957. By 1970 my eldest sister was well into activism - I, just a teenager. As the only Vermonter by birth in our family I am quite sure if I wasn’t a “bleeding heart liberal” she would call up the State of Vt and have my birth certificate REVOKED!! (notice no laughing emoji face included?)
The powerful historical events so well summarized by Dr Richardson today make it REALLY difficult not to hate any republican that is willing to overlook (or worse, embrace) the traitorous actions of their leaders.
PS. If Oliver North ever walked past me I would spit on him. I can’t wait for him to pass so that I can desecrate his grave in some way.
Pure illiberal abuse! The obvious conclusion is that they are morally and practically right, and that the protection of your self-interest dictates that you insult them to try to discredit them.
Excellent Letter that reminds us that the current BS from the GOP is not new. They have been vested in this deceit for decades.
I can remember, at the time, thinking that what Ford did in pardoning Nixon was for the good of the Nation. Little did I know that act would give the GOP a lifetime of " get/stay out of jail free" cards.
In agreement with Colbert, Lee’s horse “Traveler” was worthy of remaining standing to honor the brutal sacrifice of horses and livestock in the conflict between men.
Growing up in the late fifties/early sixties, we used to take several trips to visit my aunt and uncle who had a farm nearby to Appomattox. The entire area was replete with Robert E. Lee memorabilia along with, of course, his horse Traveller (I see his name is spelled with two L's).
Hardly a "mention" was ever made of Grant. Remembering back, I can see how easy it has been to indoctrinate young minds to have sympathy for the lost cause.
Here's a link for the list of horses who served in the war. Grant had several.
The Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) roundup of the Sand Wash Basin wild horses is currently underway. Since the roundup began on Sept. 1, a total of 501 wild horses have been captured. We are calling on the BLM to ground their helicopters because of documented abuse occurring during this roundup.
In the last few days, multiple foals have been left behind orphaned on the range after their mothers were captured during the roundup. Additional reports of injured horses — including a mare with a potentially broken leg and a foal by her side, both left on the range after the helicopters swept through — add to the concern about the conduct of this roundup.
Not only has the BLM been conducting this roundup under the guise of extreme drought when recent rains have rejuvenated range conditions in Sand Wash Basin — but these incidents of documented abuse are directly in violation of the BLM's Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program (CAWP) guidelines.
The BLM contractor conducting the roundup is in direct violation of the CAWP guidelines that require helicopters to drive the horses no faster than the weakest animal in the group.
The BLM also dismissed a CAWP guideline limiting temperatures at which horses should be run to no higher than 95º Fahrenheit as “just a suggestion.” Instead, the BLM stated that the only hard stop for chasing wild horses with helicopters in the summer heat is 105º Fahrenheit. And this statement was made on a day when helicopters were stampeding horses over a long distance of potentially 10-15 miles.
Treatment of America's wild horses like this is unacceptable. Join us in speaking up today for the Sand Wash Basin wild horses of Colorado. Please take a moment to send the letter below to the BLM & the Department of the Interior telling them to halt these roundups and leave the Sand Wash Basin wild horses at the Appropriate Management Level.
Thank you for this well written explanation with suggestions to act. Many respondents to my re-posts are sympathetic but don’t know what to do, so I'll re-post this to them.
The respondents should do what we all should be doing in regard to so many many corrupt agencies! I have posted several times on here regarding the various roundups in progress right at this moment - And I thoroughly agree with VermontGirl's description of this agency. These Wild Horses do NOT have a voice-unless people are aware and speak up. Kathleen, VermontGirls, Susan, Lynell - the more public outcry the better. Its been fifty (50) years since the The Wild Free Roaming Horses & Burros Act - which happened because of public outcry. In the years since, this Act has been "amended" enough to make it worth so much less than originally. The sad thing is that a form letter - no matter how many people sign & send it - will only count as one (1) letter to the BLM. Idiotic as that sounds - its true. A short personal email written by many individuals might - might - make a dent. But until our sainted "representatives" comprehend the true situation on our public lands & forests - they believe the BLM, the livestock operators, the mining corporations, AND the politicians who are compromised by the livestock lobbyists with the big money & influence.
I should have added - letters, emails, phone calls etc need to be sent to everyone's Senator & Representative - that's where the pressure should be put. They can do something - several have attempted to.
This little "missive" from Wild Horse Education will make you cringe but this is the BLM's latest:
Our team member Marie Milliman has spent several days exploring the new “Guidance for Euthanasia” from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This policy change applies to all wild horses from range through long term holding.
The document is what BLM calls an “Instruction Memorandum” or “IM.” IM’s outline policy for the agency. The BLM publishes two types of IMs: permanent and temporary. Permanent IMs provide lasting guidance that is short in scope. Permanent IMs remain in effect until superseded or deleted. Temporary IMs offer operational, incident-specific, project-related or one-time policy or guidance for evolving activities. Temporary IMs expire at the end of the third fiscal year following issuance.
Like most documents the BLM calls policy, specific definitions are vacant leaving such a vague description that from district-to-district, facility-to-facility, carrying out the “policy” translates into whomever is onsite making the rules.
The “new” euthanasia policy can leave any horse advocate stunned. The examples here are simply a few from our volunteer who spent days combing the directive.
Richmond born and raised here. The statue didn’t depict Traveler. Traveler was a much smaller horse and deemed unsuitable. The statue is of Lee on a larger thoroughbred. Glad all are gone.
Only in America is okay for a Republican President to plan, conspire, and perpetuate a violent coup with minions and Congress critters.
Only in America is it okay for a Republican President’s to lie, cheat, and steal.
Only in America is it okay for a President to direct minions to illegally sell weapons to our enemies, enemies that use terrorism such as suicide truck bombers to attack our Marine barracks while on a peace keeping mission.
All will be forgiven, even if Confederate. Just claim that you are playing “Cowboy”. PR your fascist power abusing tactics as “cowboyism”. The public will fall for it. Don’t say it or claim it, better to just act the part. The public will rationalize your Cowboyism. The public will admire your Cowboyism. Time and time again, the public will forgive the Cowboy.
Mafia strategy. Bottom up convictions. As the conspiracy is un layered, the crimes and sentences start going up, longer prison time incentivized turning more states witnesses, more new evidence, and the noose tightens. I hope.
Why the hell are these dumb cowboys taking ivermectin and showing up at hospitals poisoned by it? If Ivermectin could prevent viral infections, why would we still be vaccinating cows and horses? Proof our education system needs more funding and reform. Proof logic and reason isn’t working in this Public Health emergency.
Three best strategies to bring down America:
1. Maintain support for a party that claims big Government is the problem
2. Deregulate mass communications, create space for miss information, conspiracy’s,and division
Heather, this is among your VERY BEST "Letters from an American" posts. Colleges and universities would do well to create a new survey history course made-up of just reading and discussing all of your inciteful and sometimes profound posts ! Thank you; Thank you; Thank you.
"For democracies to work, politicians need to respect the difference between an enemy and an adversary. An adversary is someone you want to defeat. An enemy is someone you have to destroy. With adversaries, compromise is honorable: Today’s adversary could be tomorrow’s ally. With enemies, on the other hand, compromise is appeasement. Between adversaries, trust is possible. They will beat you if they can, but they will accept the verdict of a fair fight. This, and a willingness to play by the rules, is what good-faith democracy demands. Between enemies, trust is impossible. They do not play by the rules (or if they do, only as a means to an end) and if they win, they will try to rewrite the rules, so that they can never be beaten again."
This is something that most Republicans and those who vote for them fail to understand and about which HCR has written today. The words are those of former Canadian Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff and are from an op-ed piece published in the New York Times in October of 2013. They are true today, and understanding them is necessary "for democracies to work." (which are the first four words of the piece.) Republicans do not understand them.
If the insurrectionists are not prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law now, including the former president, will our children be forced to live with statues of “Oath Keepers” in place of confederate ones?
Thank you, Heather, for reminding your readers about the historical thread of political lies, conspiratorial deception and treachery. I have always felt it unfair and dishonest to pardon crimes against the state, while we shrug and forget the millions of mostly low-income folk who are incarcerated for being caught with a few ounces of marijuana.
Sadly, in so many instances throughout my many years, I’ve witnessed what strikes me as two distinctly different systems of justice in this country. A boldly generous one for the rich, powerful and well connected and a more exacting and visible one for the rest of the country. Gotta keep those mud sills in their places.
K Barnes, not only sad, but terribly unjust and corruptive of our system!
Burger?
Until we have, as we recited every morning at the start of school, "...liberty and justice for all." we will not have achieved the promise of this nation. Anything less makes the whole enterprise a sham.
Dave, you are so right. It is insidious and devaluing of our stated American values NOT to hold inciters of every stripe to account; it undermines our democracy.
That is what was going through my mind as I was reading this.
Same here. It's truly appalling and even frightening when you see it laid out so plainly like this.
Then you have people like Mike Huckabee, a Baptist Preacher backing TFG and so many others like Huckabee.Sickening ! Saw him on the Tube the other day.
Ugh. I hope you washed your eyes out!
😂
"Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd." ~Bertrand Russell
(Book: Unpopular Essays
just thought i'd leave this here
Mike Huckabee pardoned a mentally unstable criminal, and sent him back to Seattle. Later, he shot and killed 4 police officers in a nearby town as they were getting ready for their morning shift. My friend, who is a relative of the unstable one, got his house tear gassed by the police after surrounding the house for 13 hours. He wasn't there, though it took about 10 years to get that house back in shape.
Every time I hear the Hucksters name, I spit on the ground.
As I stated earlier about having learned so much here, it never occurred to me when I was younger, still wet behind the ears, that anyone who was jailed or convicted was ever "wrongfully" so. I saw the death penalty as reasonable because we knew the people were guilty and it made no sense to house them at great expense for the rest of their lives. I share this horrible truth about myself and my younger self person (raised as Republican) because I know that the way I saw things is still the way many, many people see things. However, now I also know that there have always been plenty of people who knew the people (mostly people of color) they were convicting and jailing and killing were not guilty. And they, too, had been raised to see what they were doing as right, smart, the way it is and should be. So our conundrum today as we choose how to make a positive difference is this: if people who don't agree with us already do believe in something else, how can we reach them to open a new view to them? Well, how many of you have had such "interrupters" happen that caused or led to you finding a new view, a new path. What were those things? Can we assemble them and put them to use here today?
Well, Deborah, it hurts to say that my “interrupters” were my father and a few “close” friends.
They revealed deep-seated bias and prejudices that were unfounded or based in flimsy evidence or flagrant lies.
And they became more strident in their intolerance and righteousness. Fact-finding and and related truth-telling proved pointless and just fell on deaf ears. Sad to say, it just got worse over the years.
It sounds, though, as if you were already aware that the things they were saying were wrong and unfair and racist. I was exposed repeatedly to the same sorts of things from others around me, and I thought they were unfair and wrong, but I still didn't see what I didn't know and wasn't aware of myself. The real changes in me began when a book club group I was in had us read this book, Waking Up White:https://smile.amazon.com/Waking-White-Finding-Myself-Story/dp/B01EINQC3I/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=waking+up+white&qid=1631367986&sr=8-1. I did not expect to learn anything because I wasn't "racist." I was so very wrong. I recommend it and many others, Dave. And I know you are open to learning so you already aren't like those people we are both talking about.
Has anyone caught with a dime bag gone to jail recently? When a person can't afford a lawyer, one is provided. Hopefully, the lawyer is astute. When a rich person is caught doing something illegal, gathering an airtight case takes time, but even Jerry Epstein went to jail.
I'm guessing you mean Jeffrey? Is this your defense of our system of justice for all? Our jails and other assorted confinements are full of young men [mainly of color] who were living while black or brown. That, Dale, is why our system is badly broken. And what just happened in Texas is a perfect example. Vigilante justice!
Yes Heather, exactly. I served in the U.S. Army for 24.5 years. It galled and shamed me that we still, 1) have so many installations named after notorious, official traitors to our nation and 2) still cater--so openly, overtly, and inappropriately to Southern attitudes of "the Lost Cause," "states rights," etc. (a good friend/mentor, African-American, denied purchase of the official print commemorating his Command and General Staff Class years ago. Why? It was a painting of a conference of Confederate Generals. This is typical symbolism in our Army, a large number of whom are from what is called the North Georgia Military College-Texas Axis. It simply never occurred to his mostly-white fellow officers that such a thing might be deeply offensive. True story) Only now, in the year 2021, have we decided to change that (the Army can be, alternately, amazing progressive and mind-numbingly regressive, depending on the issue). But hey, at least we're doing it.
But to your larger point: this is exactly correct. God willing, if we get past this crisis without bloodshed or further dismantling of our institutions, we MUST purge this--this incredibly-resilient shard of our most-shameful heritage--from our existence, forever. All of its lies (the Lost Cause is a whopper lie, AKA myth. If anyone reads history NOT written by Confederate sympathizers, this is readily apparent), law-breaking and other efforts that threaten--for the second time--to destroy our country. Not on my watch.
Let me make one clarification: I do not mean purge as in utterly censor, pretend never happened, or never bring up again--quite the contrary. I mean purge it as it has existed for the past 155 years--as "alternative history" that is (still) widely considered viable, factual, true-to-our principles and proud part of our history. No, it's not any of those. We can't force people to change their minds, but we can factually, deeply, and doggedly assert FACTs, make cogent arguments, and yes, in specific cases discredit views that are discreditable. So yes, it absolutely SHOULD be talked about...but Confederate Battle Flags belong in museums, not on flag poles. To me, it's barely more tolerable as a public symbol than a swastika.
The ‘Why ‘ they don’t want Critical Race Theory taught.It has been said many times how surprised Ppl would be to have a DNA done and find out some of your past Relatives were Black Americans . I would be just fine learning that.
Just like the term "defunding the police" is scary to the vast majority of Americans, "Critical Race Theory" has become a scary thing. It needs to be renamed as to truth and justice curriculum or something.
It just needs to be taught Authentically.I can’t be held responsible for what ever evil my past descendent’s did. But that doesn’t allow me or make it right if I still perpetuate that evil. The Class in School should be History.We’ve danced around our “Not So Great Times “in America for way to long on so many Injustices. Some we have come clean about.You hear the phrase all the time coming from AA or NA. First you have to admit you have a problem. Our Country is in a Coma on Life Support .I think we took to big of a dose of ‘Greatness ‘ ?
Perhaps it should be required to learn about your historical DNA. I think what my my white Euro ancestors did to my Cherokee ancestors has always kept me humble and not subject to being patriotic because I know our deep shadow of genocide in the roots of this country. When I hear those say we are the "greatest country," I know they deny, or do not know, our real history. One must be carefully taught to not know the Truth. And we are in process to repeat the worst of that by dumbing down of our schools even further from Truth. We have so much work to undo this mind-bending suspension of reality and equality.
Thank you for 24.5 years of service to our country, Mr. McTague! Yes, I feel like we have been in 1930's Germany and the scourge of racists are comfortable with all the trappings of lies and swastikas. Shooting someone one 5th Ave. was TFG's test and 30% of American's failed it miserably to he and Putins' immense pleasure.
I love hearing the views from our military people. One national guard member in my neighborhood is a total former guy supporter, and rumors are he and family are more radicalized now. They supported two Proud Boys parade here in small village.
Many neighbors felt terrorized by seeing the flagrance of Tr**P & confederacy flying on those trucks. We no longer feel the small number of POC neighbors and their children are safe.
However, the outcry and some rage from the community has impacted the lives of the national guard member and his family and their business immensely. They shut it down. My fear is, had he been called up to protect our Capital and elected officials on Jan. 6th, I am not confident he would have helped save them from the gallows. I am just not sure. I am concerned about some who are in the military these days and are cut from southern cloth. I hope we never have to find out...
Well-said, well-said! Thank you, Robert.
"we MUST purge this--this incredibly-resilient shard of our most-shameful heritage--from our existence"
Aye, but the playbook, first used by southern confederates to get Jim Crow laws passed, state by state, is so very effective it is still being used today and very effectively.
Folks down south and west and in rural areas HATE Joe Biden. An honest man that has attended church every day of his life and is, mostly, an honest guy T
Why? The constant, shrill, noisy propaganda from Fox News, sponsored by Rupert Murdoch with the intent of making him richer, has a HUGE impact on many people.
The fact that fake blonde's may also be offering fake news from the Fox Network? Does NOT occur to all the fake blonde women down south. In fact, it makes the propaganda from Fox more believable. Fake blonde is the uniform of southern, Republican women. They wear it proudly not realizing that a culture of fake might not be just blonde.
We are not going to rid the landscape of the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump. They have spent their lives with lawyers stealing money, lying, and conniving to become fantastically rich in an America that, to be frank approximates a kleptocracy. Trump ran a bunch of for profit schools that shafted thousands and he is not in jail. That, by the way, is illegal.
Murdoch and Trump, and, many like them, know how easy it is too fool the ignorant folks of the USA like I used to be. How easy it is to make them vote AGAINST their own best interest.
To fight back we need to make Fox News illegal and shut it down. This sounds drastic, but, if we don't?
I don't think there is much future here if we don't.
I agree. Spouting disinformation as true up to the minute news reporting should be illegal. Why isn’t it? It’s like putting ‘Drink This’ on a bottle of bleach! Oh yeah, that’s effectually already been done!
Or using your leadership position to promote horse pills for humans because you own stock in the horse pills??? 😳
This is a organization supporting these horse pills
The doctor, Fred Wagshul, a cardiovascular and pulmonary disease specialist in Dayton, is listed as a founding member of the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, or FLCCCA, a nonprofit organization formed during the pandemic made up of physicians who don’t agree with some of the state and federal government's Covid guidance.
In a statement in March and republished in August, Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the FLCCC, promoted ivermectin’s safety record and called FDA guidance misleading.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ohio-doctor-who-prescribed-deworming-drug-covid-founded-pro-ivermectin-n1278430
Bonnie, my comment is directed toward leadership getting involved in medicine and stirring up a fervor that promotes crazy and insane behaviors. Nothing against ivermectin for humans, other than I would want a great deal more info before taking it myself. I am against everybody and their brother running to the feed store to get medication formulated for horses. The world has gone mad.
Lately, I've been quoting the King from Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The King and I." When he sings "Is a Puzzlement," he agrees with your last sentence and sings, "Sometimes I think that people going mad!" But he retreats a bit as we should by adding, "Sometimes I think that people not so bad!"
Having used the ivermectin paste on my horse for years as a treatment for parasites(worms) - wonder if the pills (for humans) were meant for the same medical treatment (worms)! If so, it doesnt seem to me that would be a practical treatment for a virus. Just saying......
In today's New York Times, David Leonhardt discusses the varying medical and epidemological opinions regarding the Delta variant of Covid19. Unfortunately, the column leaves the reader up in the air as to what conclusions to draw in view of the varying opinions within the scientific community. And it opens the door a bit for opinions of groups like FLCCA, which may, or may not, have credibility. This can result in fewer people wearing masks and being vaccinated, resulting in the possible spread and possible mutation of the virus. We need opinions in which we can place our full trust, and we don't have them, even among the scientific community and the government. To be on the save side, my view is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but I don't really know if that is absolutely true in regard to the Delta variant. Who knows. Here's the Leonhardt column:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/briefing/delta-variant-cases-severity.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/briefing/delta-variant-cases-severity.html
Jack, we do have good scientific conclusions that we can trust. Joe Knows, and he ain't pushing ivermectin....
Did you see his address today? His administration's best efforts yet.
Here's a Snopes piece about invermectin and purported sterility: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ivermectin-sterility-in-men/
Darwin theory in process. Poor buggers!
Maybe he's a liberal in disguise, plotting the death of tRumpers ; ~}
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-should-not-use-ivermectin-treat-or-prevent-covid-19
Fairness Doctrine. Reinstate it.
I understand your anger, Mike, but taking away Fox's freedom of speech is un-American. It's a Pandora's box. One would hope that the notion of American individualism where we all use common sense and think for ourselves would prevail, but the internet age of misinformation has co-opted our minds. Trump proved that the bigger the lie you tell will become true to those who lack independent thought. Trump supporters became mindless marionettes by the Republican elite. The U.S. is no longer the land of the free; it has become the land of the gullible, the controlled. And history teaches us that national movements (Nazism) are fueled by emotional extremism lighted by falsehoods. Jan. 6th proves this to be a correct thesis. And the right wing extremist trajectory clearly points to an eventual fracturing of our country or even a Civil War, not based on geography, ignited by the masses who have been duped.
Yes. But speech is NOT free when you yell "fire" in crowded living rooms across the country. Fox needs to be doused.
The answer is not that simple. It’s like whack a mole game. You hit one and three more will come up. It just makes it bigger and louder.
One wsybto get rid moles is to chew up a couple of mint chicklets for a few seconds, then drop it down the mole hole … they eat it but cant digest it and die. Now, you can draw out the analogy…
The problem arises when Fox, and other media outlets, take advantage and present their content as legitimate news. The bad actors rarely make the distinction thus there are millions upon millions who consume their content and believe they are consuming legitimate news. The distinction between news and opinion must be clearly defined so that those who are unable to discern the difference are informed of the difference up front and constantly.
I do hope the massive lawsuits from Dominion and others will curb some of these lies. Losing money seems to be the only thing the junk networks respond to.
Yes, they have no honor or concern for the democracy. Money is their only god.
Me too.
Reminds me of the Seth Rich conspiracy that Fox mainstreamed from outer space. As I recall the grieving family sued , and settled, with of course no apology /mention of the settlement on FOX.
The NYT did cover the story but this should have been on every major news network ! That poor family will never be the same…
Fox should be forced to put s disclaimer on before snd after every announcement, that they are not news reporters. Like Andy Borowitz does. He gets his point across, but is honest about his fiction. Fisclaimers on Cigarette ads
(Idy-bidy letters plus fat fingers equals typos)
Free speech has been mythologized to the point that attacking it is a vice not to be given even a hearing.
We have in our minds, consciously or not, the Rockwell painting where the courageous and lonely man voices an unpopular opinion, from which we all infer that he is standing up bravely for What Is Right in the face of powerful and universal disagreement.
That is far from the reality. We live in the world of the hive mind and we choose our hives carefully. Because it is a hive, free speech within it does not exist. Contrarians are mocked, denigrated viciously, and/or blocked.
There becomes one “correct” opinion for each event, from which to dissent is to be a troll.
People absorb this and then inflict it on others outside the hive. Their ears are stopped to dissent. Those who disagree are evil, or at least have suspicious motives.
Free speech in democratic countries is now mostly “Facebook speech”.
It is a sham, a parody of what it was intended to be.
The Florida (and other state) school board meetings are perfectly illustrative. The decibel level is intolerable. One can almost see the spittle forming on the lips as speakers scream “their truth”. One tribe claps and chants in support. The other screams back. Physical force is threatened.
Free speech now is performative theatre and bullying. It is disgusting. The fact that we sanctify it as a virtue is another turn of the screw in societies run amok.
"Free speech has been mythologized to the point that attacking it is a vice not to be given even a hearing" Love this!! 100%!!
I've started reading "Friendly Fascism" by Bertram Gross. It's a 1985 copyright but the preface seems to be pointing to how corporations (& the internet) are creating a mindless society.
I'm concerned that the introductions are written by conspiracy theory advocates.
Right. When there is scientific evidence that a vaccine, e.g., is safe and effective, free speech against it has to be stopped, imo, for the common good. The common good must take precedence over an individual's rights unless (s)he has a good reason such as health or religious objection, perhaps.
Why is it so hard for us to draw a line in the sand as to what should be freedom of speech versus freedom of the mind. Progressives are intent on using the rule of law to achieve their goals while the fascists want to bully and use violence. Are we seriously unable to discern between the two and have a government of true majority rule? Or have we become a world full of moral rot, where the majority cannot see themselves in others. Perhaps the $grabbers have purposely destroyed organized religion so as to plow the Golden Rule into the ground? 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
The $grabbers took the gold (literally in those huge evangelical churches) out of golden, so they can rule.
We are seriously unable to discern between the two. We shout across the divide, endlessly opposing, sometimes veiling heard, sometimes not.
In an unimaginably non-existent world, free speech would be earned through the process of becoming educated or skilled in a serious area of life. Free speech would be the right of those with a serious education, or equivalent life experience. A serious education would be one which was attuned to the needs and skills of those being educated - no one-size fits all schooling as we have now.
Birth citizenship would be recognized for the fundamental rights of the individual under a government interested in the welfare.
Advanced citizenship would go to those with advanced education or life experience.
The first level of advanced citizenship would give its recipients the right to speak freely in serious forums on the areas of their expertise from life experience. Thus prison reform could be debated by prisoners, wardens and those with serious education. From this group decisions would flow.
The pinnacle of advanced citizenship would give people the right to speak on all issues. They would have this right based on their level of scholarship which has fostered in them the ability to see both sides of an issue.
In a decision-making forum, everyone’s speech would be judged on its logic and good faith. Speeches that failed to meet that bar would be excluded from the record that would be used to produce a division.
Thus speech would become an “earned freedom”.
There are, I recognize, a googol of flaws in the above. I’m winging it, as my dog is impatient to have his daily run.
I disagree. What distinguishes your suggestions from a caste system. It's the same argument used in not allowing people of color to vote. If we truly mean, "All the people this time," we must mean all the people; even idiots can participate. There should be a line drawn at violence. There should be consequences for people who are violent or threaten violence. Violence and threats are not free speech. They are unconscionable and should not be tolerated in a civil society.
I wasn’t thinking in those terms but your “caste system” point is one I must seriously consider.
I’m not sure I can put my finger on a counterpoint. But I think that all people have capacity and even potential for genius.
Most can get an education of some worth if the education system is broadly reformed. Others will get some of that and then have a host of life experiences to which they employ their full vigour, skill, and passion.
I am not for censoring speech. I just believe that we should reach a level where meaningful decisions are made by people capable of opining on them. And that the furnace of “free speech” whose flames have leapt into the public arena and now dominate public discourse should be tamped down so that the irrational consequences of the past few years which border on the demented are abated.
A baseball player can speak in forums of anti-trust or whatever the current hot topic relating to professional sports is.
A plumber has any number of areas in which (s)he may be expert and can offer valuable opinion.
An educated person *in a reformed education system* should be able to speak with influence on most subjects that (s)he has thought about.
Stay at home mothers and fathers should be involved in fruitful discussions about Universal Basic Income.
But what we have now is vice and spite and an entire host of irrational emotions hiding behind the pristine shield of “free speech”. The consequences are going to be catastrophic, as a wide variety of informed opinion is intimidated or refuses to scream back.
Something’s got to give.
I would use a different standard then education, surely all these evil Harvard grads support my hypothesis. Free speech that is broadcast to wide audiences and supposedly coming from an authority figure should NEVER promote violence against others and should ALWAYS be held to a standard of truth. I too am winging it just to take a strong stand to education being a litmus test for the Golden rule
Totally totally agree. Education must be reformed hugely. It exists in its worst forms in the Ivy League. I read the book Excellent Sheep and never thought of education at the Ivies in the same way again. Of course one can have a sublime learning experience there. But Harvard et al are preposterously conscious of their institutions as being gatekeepers to the best in society - dispensers of the golden tickets, as it were. Naturally rogues and dimwits with money glide into such environments.
Education cannot be a ticket to the free speech utopia i proposed until it is reformed, root and branch.
Exactly, in our freedom of speech allowed country. How would we enforce the idea of lies being lies, entertainment not the same as actual news, pointing out truth and how to distinguish it from dishonesty and so on?
Is it really so hard to determine a lie? TFG stands in front of the tv audience and says one thing then the very next day says just the opposite. How can you not know that one or the other is a lie?
"One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts." C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia
thought i'd leave this here
Freedom of speech applies to public spaces for individuals.
However. It does not mean it is legal for fake blondes to lie all day and misinform all day on the airwaves.
That is illegal.
I would have no problem shutting down Fox.
I agree. Forcing people or shutting down freedom of speech is a slippery slope I dont want to go down any more than we already have. Twitter and FB, for instance, block people with differing views. It may feel good to some people but it feels like the end of freedom to me.
Not differing views but blocking documentably fake "information".
I'm not on either Twitter or Facebook, but I thought that they were monitoring only disinformation, not doing anything about different opinions. Even if my premise is incorrect, they're not making much progress in banning outright lies.
If we can’t “silence” them, we should, at the very least be able to make them stop calling themselves News. They are commentary and opinion NOT news.
FOX's approach has been to have a mix of separate News and Opinion programs that are not actually separate.
8:00 am. Opinion show interviews a blogger who calls Biden a cannibal.
9:00 am. News "reports" that allegations have surfaced that Biden is a cannibal. Which is (technically) true, though only Fox came out with this drivel, and it is not actually newsworthy (which is an editorial opinion).
10:00 am. Panel discussion "debates" the idea that Biden is a cannibal, and the conclusion says it's unlikely, but (leaves question open)...
11:00 am. Interview with an unsavory-looking, ill-spoken "expert" who claims Biden is NOT a cannibal, and interviewer treats him poorly.
12:00 pm. News "reports" the "growing firestorm" surrounding Biden's cannibalism, and claims White House is not answering their calls.
1:00 pm. White House issues a statement, "Biden is not a cannibal."
2:00 pm. News "reports" White House statement. Ad at the end of the News show says, "Coming up: What is Biden Hiding in his Freezer?"
3:00 pm. Conspiracy theorist has a fit on live television about body parts found in a freezer in the White House, expands on "Cannibal-gate" with diagrams and charts and "eyewitness accounts."
4:00 pm. Ad nauseam.....
They've been doing this for decades. They are breaking no actual laws, and legislators have been swift to move the guardrails when they get too close.
Maybe not just Rupert Moloch and his ilk…?
I just read a piece by Thomas Frank in the August Monde Diplomatique in which the author lambasted what he describes as progressives’ hysteria in the United States—https://mondediplo.com/2021/08/06usa. Frank seems to be a historian. While there are many valid points in the article, I can’t help feeling there are times when he’s coming full circle, where far-left prejudices mingle with those of far right, with the same blinding, confusing effect. Perhaps it would be useful to have fellow historians’ views on this…
I’ve no objection whatever to Frank’s criticism of silliness, dumb, brutal prejudice and herd mentality among those who like to call themselves progressives—those are so obviously counterproductive. What’s more, I’d be delighted if I (and Timothy Snyder and many of us) should prove to be mistakenly alarmist and his own apparent complacency, justified; but I fear he gravely underrates the real dangers.
Frank criticizes as absurd descriptions of the former President as the worst world leader since Hitler. Fair enough, yet the relationship between DT and his mass following bears uncomfortable resemblances with that between Hitler, Mussolini and the German and Italian masses in their day. And the threat is of a one-party oligarchic state, a lid well screwed down… Above all, such is the vast material power of the United States that an idiot in office—even a brainless human battering ram backed by conspirators with billions and one-track minds—could prove more dangerous than any mass killer in history.
This doesn’t even call for nukes or invasions.
For starters, consider the deliberate environmental damage inflicted by the DT presidency at a critical moment. Consider the impact on… our children, our grandchildren, and theirs.
Consider the effects on... THE UNBORN…
Yes. Think of that one.
Our responsibility, yours and mine, too.
Even if tens of thousands of us would be hard-put to compete with the Koch brothers.
Read the article, and was largely unimpressed. How to express this...?
The whole article strikes me as criticizing the table manners of a vegetarian at a feast for cannibals, aboard the Titanic.
The progressives are, by turns, inspiring, pathetic, and terrifying. They are well-deserving of criticism. But when you put them up against the modern conservatives, we enter an entirely different order of criticism. Table manners versus cannibalism. On a doomed voyage.
There is a false-equivalence built into all competitive games, which includes politics. It presumes that players have accepted the ground rules of the game. Imagine a game of soccer where one team decides it's okay to carry baseball bats onto the field, and uses them to injure players of other teams. If this is permitted, they will win all their games. OR, the other teams will catch on, and will begin arming themselves as well, and then soccer becomes a blood-sport that has nothing to do with the ball, except at the end of the massacre, where the one standing player limps the ball across the field and nudges it into the undefended net.
Great comment!
This is almost as good as Swift or Henry Fielding!
Setting the scene of the cannibal banquet on the Titanic, the unsinkable ship that never stopped sinking, makes it even better…
Peter, I'm going to read the piece right now. Thanks.
Thank you, too, Daria.
I’ll just add that my comment on Frank’s piece was a superficial reaction and far from carefully thought out. My attitude is that I—all of us—need constantly to check motivation, assumptions, beliefs. Everyone’s, beginning with our own. Groupthink is reassuring, at best we resonate, at worst it’s herdthink—worthless, no thought at all. Moo.
Frank has the virtue of scrutinizing “liberal/progressive” herdthink. I’d feel more at ease with his writing if some of his own assumptions did not seem too facile.
Maybe this is pure coincidence, but I note that highly perceptive friends never spoke to me again after I predicted a likely DT victory in 2016 and their pooh-poohing turned out to be wrong.
I’m sorry, too, for the hellbent misleaders, the bellwether Gadarene swine…
But that's exactly what they say when they're challenged. I worked with a woman who relied on Fox constantly for her political information, and often referred to CNN as Communist News Network. When I pointed out her bias, and that she was treating lies as gospel, her answer was that Fox was entertainment and opinion, and couldn't be held to fact-based standards.
"Beliefs don't change facts. Facts, if you're reasonable, should change your beliefs". Ricky Gervais
I agree, but we're "reasonable," and that's the difference between folks like us and those who are ignorant and biased enough to watch Fox without becoming bilious.
Ah, yes, bilious!
Some people must die ignorant.
And she's oblivious to her own self-contradiction. Either Fox is fact-based 'news' or it's 'entertainment and opinion and couldn't be held to fact-based standards'.
She's oblivious to most things. We are no longer friends. There just can't be any meeting of the minds with her, so I gave up.
Something must be done about social media, like Facebook, too. I don't know what can be done about the fine line between insisting on truth, and censorship, but we need to find it.
Freedom with responsibility. We need it.
I heard on Nicole Wallace today while I was waiting for the President's address that FOX News has a vaccine mandate in all of their facilities. Ostensibly to protect their stars, who lie about vaccines!
Now that beats all....
Just dandy....
If as they were saying on the news they are starting federal regulations on telecommunications companies, why not cable? I understand the extinct Fairness Doctrine regulated only the airwaves. But please where do I find a list of foxes major advertisers so I can stop buying from them. I have a fireball distain for all those people!
Fox gets most of its income from cable fees. It is bundled with most cable packages. A successful movement to unbundle Fox, so those who want it pay for it as an add-on, would put a serious dent in their finances.
Google is my friend! Answered my own question!
The biggest advertisers on Fox News by TV ad impressions, from Jan. 1 through July 29, 2021, per iSpot:
1. Fox News (8.5 million)
2. Balance of Nature (4.6 million)
3. Liberty Mutual (3.9 million)
4. Fox Nation (3.8 million)
5. NewDay USA (3.7 million)
6. MyPillow (2.3 million)
7. Relief Factor (2.2 million)
8. USAA (2.0 million)
9. Indeed (1.8 million)
10. Nutrisystem (1.6 million)
11. Fox (1.3 million)
12. Progressive (1.3 million)
13. Safelite Auto Glass (1.3 million)
14. Applebee’s (1.0 million)
15. ADT (1.0 million)
https://adage.com/article/media/beyond-mypillow-other-biggest-brand-advertisers-fox-news-revealed/2354321
Thank you Bonnie for this list-- let my boycotting begin!!
Me too. thanks, Bonnie.
Mike, please don’t overlook the hearty, blue tides of passionate, active, Faux-News-Free “folks down south,” many here in the herd. Numbers of us believe and actively multiply the ripple effect of these blue waves.
Thank you Robert McTague - I love it when people say that and mean it - gives me hope!!
Heard, Understood,, Acknowledged: HUA!
Thank you for your service, Sir.
Beautifully said, Robert !
That is why we need brilliant historians - to tease the threads of consequence out of the multifaceted, overwhelming detail of political and social life as it flows forward. Heather, you are superb at this: incisive, articulate, relevant. A searchlight cutting through the mists of the centuries to illuminate the shape of current occurrence.
Not just the historical logic, but the political disparity of footsoldier and leader that bedevils every era of history, and is destorying civility in our current age.
So beautifully stated, Bob!
Now if only we can get more and more people to value the gift of insight that comes with consuming what she gives us
Hear here!!
You Sir are a veritable wordsmith 🎖🥇👏🏻
Well said!
Yes, Heather!!! What Bob Phillips said!! And so eloquently! Thank You!
Hear Hear Bob !
Let's also recall Nixon's treasonous behavior in 1968, when he used Anna Chennault to get to Nguyen Van Thieu, president of South Vietnam, to scupper the peace talks that Nixon was afraid were about to produce an agreement just before the elections. LBJ had the goods on Nixon and let him know he had the intercepted phone calls, but he decided it would be seen as him being "partisan" in the election if he had exposed Nixon. Then there was Reagan's similar treason with the Iranian ayatollahs during the election campaign, when he had William Casey his future CIA chief go and tell them not to release the embassy hostages before the election and he would "do business" with them.
Republicans have been traitors on foreign policy since Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. sank the League of Nations in the Senate in 1919.
And all of Nixon's small gargoyles, like a college freshman dropout named Karl Rove who was a junior "ratfucker" under Donald Segretti, grew up to be big gargoyles.
Excellent addition to this Letter, TC! And please don't forget that Reagan’s CIA helped finance its covert war against Nicaragua's leftist government through sales of cocaine to South Central L.A. drug dealer, Ricky Ross, among others. They flew cocaine into Andrews Air Force base in Air Force planes. In early 1986, freshman senator John Kerry stood almost alone in the U.S. Senate demanding answers about the emerging evidence that CIA-backed Contras were filling their coffers by collaborating with drug traffickers then flooding U.S. borders with cocaine from South America.
https://ips-dc.org/the_cia_contras_gangs_and_crack/
https://www.salon.com/2004/10/25/contra/
https://smile.amazon.com/Whiteout-Drugs-Press-Alexander-Cockburn/dp/1859842585/ref=smi_www_rco2_go_smi_g4368549507?_encoding=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&%2Aentries%2A=0&ie=UTF8
A most incisive reporting on the scandalous CIA - Contra operations is the book, Out of Control by Leslie Cockburn. Here’s a review from the NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/03/books/the-continuation-of-politics-by-other-means.html
And General Richard Secord.
I wonder if that trend follows through to heroin from Afghanistan. A couple of years into that mess, I was talking with a fellow in the street who had served in the troops there, and chosen not to reenlist, since he had gotten housing, and realized his life and health were worth more than a heavy game being played there ... street people who enlisted did so on the promise of free heroin and ample follow up medications from the VA ... a slick hustle if ever there was one ... I wonder how many of the graduates from that class were storming the Capitol on January 6th ....
A junkie probably wouldn't make it through boot camp. It seems more likely that an enlistee, once in Afghanistan, would try heroin, like it and get hooked - not join the military to have "easy access" to heroin.
Not heard about this! Are there any articles/resources about this?
I did a cursory search and nothing popped up.
Lynell, greetings! I think your response inadvertently ended up under the wrong comment.
Deleted it!
Morning, Daria!! I don't understand what you mean. Would you clarify, please?
Yikes. Ugh.
😣
"Then there was Reagan's similar treason with the Iranian ayatollahs during the election campaign, when he had William Casey his future CIA chief go and tell them not to release the embassy hostages before the election and he would 'do business' with them." As apolitical as I was back then, I smelled a rat!
...and then Casey died in his limo on his way to the Iran Contra hearings.
Please read Lynell's post above about Casey's death. He died in hospital, had been treated for months for prostate cancer. It also discusses "''The immediate cause of death was aspiration pneumonia as a result of a central nervous system lymphoma.'' and "A central nervous system lymphoma is a rare tumor of the brain and central nervous system, evidently the brain tumor for which Mr. Casey had surgery late last year at Georgetown Hospital in Washington. Difficulty in Swallowing
The physician said the brain tumor, and the damage it caused, might have led Mr. Casey to have difficulty in swallowing properly." Having worked in nursing homes for over 35 years as a RN, aspiration pneumonia is commonly seen in dementia cases-the brain literally forgets how to swallow, which could certainly happen in this scenario of a brain tumor.
Oops.
Oh?!
I don’t believe that any American, no matter what party they supported, would for any amount of money or promised political appointment want the hostages held by the iranians to be imprisoned even one second longer. Our entire nation wanted them released. So speaking of smell tests the idea that Casey would ask them to hold them a little longer makes no sense to me. If you are confused about that idea just look at what the goddamn iatollas did to William Buckley, we still owe those bastards big time, taking out their satanic general was just a down payment.
This seems relevant? https://apnews.com/article/5624dd6c4e5ae082f0386426d2e3ab3d
That was an interesting read, as usual when governments talk with each other a lot of things are said that we the public have no idea of. I am aware that the hostages were released just after Reagan was sworn into office, did the Iranians do that to curry favors, I have no doubt. I have a very hard time believing that any American would ask to have their confinement extended for any reason whatsoever.
Even after TFG??? I strongly disagree with that Dick. I’m really really glad you are not as disillusioned as I am about what these people are capable of.
The clown is a very different story, I thought he was an outlier but he seemed to attract others like him like flies are attracted to shit, to put it bluntly. I still feel that the people that have served our nation, certainly since FDR have done so, so that the nation would benefit from their service. That’s why I served in VN, it was hugely unpopular among my generation, but some of my brothers in arms would not have survived it had I not been there. It’s my fervent hope that the flies that were attracted to the clown will be held to account along with the clown himself. Think back to the first impeachment hearings, the civil servants that testified did so clear eyed about what it meant for their jobs,and with a dignity that I found humbling. I want to hang on to that version of Americans who serve, those people were steadfast and not about to be blown about by the maelstrom that had the flies desperate for their meal. Thanks for your reply Christy
Christy, what you call "disillusioned", I call clear-eyed.
The US, at the behest of big oil executives, replaced the elected leader of Iran with a monarch. Lacking a competitive military force, Iranians retaliated with more modest actions. The US doesn’t a complaint against Iran comparable to our replacing their government with one to our liking.
Yup.
Too often the Dems don’t act out of fear of being seen as partisan. And the despicable other party ONLY acts out of partisanship (making up crap where there is none).
"Despicables" is even more accusatory and accurate than "deplorables." I like that.
They started out deplorable and deteriorated from there.
Treason is an accepted tactic in the overall strategy of the ultra-right who forsee it no longer being a crime if it puts them into power.
TC, you have come through yet again! Tell me, is it better to be a ratfucker or a junior ratfucker? If I ever had to choose...
TC, I tried to find corroboration for your claim about Reagan/Casey and keeping the hostages until Reagan was elected. Vox discredits this (https://www.vox.com/2016/1/25/10826056/reagan-iran-hostage-negotiation), and Wikipedia does not find much support either (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise_conspiracy_theory). Do you have a more recent or authoritative source? I am no fan of Reagan but did not want to repeat something that I am unsure of. Thanks.
Sizzlin, TC, sizzlin’. Love the deep dive always on your “That’s Another Fine Mess” Substack column. There’s no shortage of messy in the past or now. What’s a broom to do? The dustbin needs emptying. I put the removal of concrete Gen Lee yesterday in that category.
Cheers to clear horizons!
Amazed at the depth of intrigue you seem to have immersed yourself in. Thanks for adding context. Where did the LBJ/Nixon stuff come from?
Wow. Thank you for naming those traitors.
Thank you; I learned from your enlightening post (I always knew Karl Rove was a "ratfucker")
My realization from this remarkable essay this early morning is this - From decades before the pardon of Nixon by President Gerald Ford in 1974, to the removal of the Lee statute this week, I am reminded of the conservative ideology's righteous indignation against the basic and core tenant of America, expressed in the Pledge of Allegiance, "Liberty and Justice for All." Today, as in 1871, progressives act to ensure justice is served against violations of Americans' liberties, as codified by the Ku Klux Klan Act 150 years ago.
As is often stated, we are a nation of laws. Should the highest ranking government employees such as Nixon and Trump and their minions intentionally violate these laws, then there will be no liberty and no justice for all Americans, until justice is served against these perpetrators. Conservatives believe in "freedom from" regulations, taxes and responsibilities, due to their warped notion of libertarianism, the belief that oneself stands above and removed from all others. In reality, we are all inextricably linked in a web of humanity, best summarized by our Pledge of Allegiance.
Wow. Yes, Frederick. The Pledge of Allegiance.
"The Pledge of Allegiance was written in August 1892 by the socialist minister Francis Bellamy (1855-1931). It was originally published in The Youth's Companion on September 8, 1892. Bellamy had hoped that the pledge would be used by citizens in any country.
In its original form it read:
"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
"...there will be no liberty and no justice for all Americans, until justice is served against these perpetrators."
Yes, no justice.
And how about those Rights?
Thank you. Dr R, and your message actually give me some hope. We are better off now because we know. Now to act.
Thank you!!
Dear HCR -- I am daily in awe of your ability to link historical events providing details to events that I lived through, but never comprehended so clearly as you have presented them. Although I understand the sentiment to just "move on" (after the Civil War, after Watergate, after Iran-Contra), you have made a compelling case that Presidential pardons never let us reckon with history that ought to be reckoned with.
During much of the Watergate Trial, I had the great good fortune to be taking a high-school civics class taught by a gifted teacher who insisted we make up our own minds about what was going on (thanks Mr Falcione!) My parents were Goldwater Republicans. I lived in a red town in a very red state (now its kind of purple). I could simply have been fed a party line by that teacher. Instead, he forced me to think about the larger picture. My response was to become a life-long Democrat (that led to some lively dinner-time discussions I can tell you!).
Now, most high schools don't even offer civics. I recently read a quote that essentially said "The most effective way to destroy a nation is to destroy its education system". This has been happening in an uneven way across this nation for decades, and has provided fertile ground for the gross manipulations of public opinion we have seen come out of trumpism. Thanks Heather, and thanks fellow readers, for reminding me what a powerful thing an educated, well informed public can be.
While I was a few years older at the time of the Watergate hearings, I watched them. It was only then I realized the government lies. I do understand how Americans have lost faith in government. In the 50 years since, there has been no effort to restore integrity. My parents were serious repubs too. I often wonder what they’d think about today’s current crop. But I’m afraid they, too, might have become like today’s party. Glad I’ll never know.
That's what the Founding Fathers thought would comprise the electorate, so they limited it in various ways, usually via the States, to property and business owners, males and white people. The rural and urban working classes, regardless of skin color, and women, were assumed not to be educated nor well informed. When the electorate was expanded, making it more democratic, a good thing, we also included many without any assurance that they were educated or well informed. We had counted on a broad public education system and an honest media, both of which came under attack and still are today, to give us that educated, well informed public. It didn't happen that way. And that's how we got the victory of the South in the Civil War through an aborted Reconstruction, a business-protecting, anti-immigrant government and this century's "movement conservatives."
Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America: How The North/South Won The Civil War, 2020, by Heather Cox Richardson. After reading the Letter, I had to go to the book, and I will read it this weekend.
America's choice: Democracy/Equality vs. Autocracy/Subordination.
As much as I have felt the terror of the last five years, reading the Letter this morning put it in black and white, neither calming nor inflaming, just the facts. I believed this abysses could happen even in my preteen years, as I didn't buy into the nation's mythology. America's expansionism, treatment of Native Americans and racism made me a wary and politically active citizen.
Imagining, however, is different than living through the cruelty, the lies, the collapsing values, the immorality and the menace of neighbors, even, for some, with family members. The country is like a grenade or a bomb.
I cannot dwell in the dark for long time, at least, so far. Heather ended the Letter with the statue of Robert E. Lee coming down. I will end this comment with, in my opinion, the most important thing to do -- getting national voting rights legislation passed. Work with voting rights organizations; call and write the President Biden often to let him know how important it is to pass the For the People Act of 2021 and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act now. NOW!
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-july-2021
League Of Women Voters
Common Cause
Let America Vote
Spread The Vote
Asian Americans Advancing Justice/Asian Law Caucus
Rock the Vote
Fair Fight
"Imagining, however, is different than living through the cruelty, the lies, the collapsing values, the immorality and the menace of neighbors, even, for some, with family members. The country is like a grenade or a bomb."
In the 60s, we collectively saw it coming. Tried our best to change the trajectory. Sought alternatives. Were scared of the future looming but hopeful change could come. Couldn't mobilize enough Americans to steer to a better America.
So, here we are.
Yes, we did see it coming. Tried our best. Until we became so disillusioned, and most of the people in the movement that I knew in my small circle seemed to give up, including me. Watergate and Kent State broke me. Didn’t even vote for many cycles. Later on, by way of my involvement with civil rights, I realized that the system could be changed for the better, by ‘the people.’ Yeah, right....
Yes, but the wrong Right — the Right (movement conservatives) through their corporate overlords learned how to change public opinion through the media instead of the free press. Corporate armies of advertising psychologists and test audiences became experts in making people think they needed a product instead of just wanting it. We bought anything an actor in a lab coat told us we had to have, on the boob tube and in the homemaker magazines. Our consumer insecurities were easy picking for Detroit chrome and horsepower. A lie to sell a car or a “new and improved” or “safe” washing powder was just good business. Ralph Nader fought back, until he partially melted down and tried running for office himself. But he woke us up, and passed the baton to people like Elizabeth Warren. And to a lesser extent, people like me....
Meanwhile, the politicians were watching and learning, joined at the hip with Big Business and their lying ad experts. The nascent internet was (and is) unregulated and becoming becoming social as pc’s became affordable and a little more user friendly. Then smart phones, where everything about us can be known and manipulated. Even us so-called ‘smart people’ occasionally— if not frequently, can be manipulated! (Come on, look around your house and admit it.....).
And here we are. The internet has become the Biggest Business, the devious, fascist, racist right knows how to use it expertly in their never ending quest to return to the ‘Original’ days, when only the landed white males dominated and ruled.
I came back to the ugly business because of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Inspired with true hope by this new Black guy, and a man of true integrity that I had been following for many years. Hope, and Change! I donated, campaigned, and wept on election night. And even before the inauguration, the repetrolicans met and vowed to crush these people who were defiling the White House. And they answered with Him, eight years later. The Perfect Tool, the Perfect Idiot. The Pefect Patsy. The Perfect lightning rod, Lying Machine.
And they did it with the INTERNET.
So. Now, Hope is back. And we are fighting to save this perfect idea: By the People. Liberty and Justice FOR ALL. Anathema to the movement conservatives. And all we got is Hope, and each other, and the people who count on us, and our minds.
Si, se pueda.
You, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy klobuchar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jim Clyburn, Biden... and the rest of us, YES WE CAN!
Exactly the Dream Team I would pick. And you're already on it!
Thank you, Gus. It's a honor.
SI SE PUEDA, Y’ALL. Let’s Roll.
Thanks Daniel. Your comment jolted me into a reply as if I was to finish your thoughts, and I tried to use several of your phrases, to tie to your comment as I offered very few of the highlights of the past 60 years as I saw them. I feel the uncertain doom of the grenade thing too, and I displace it with hope because of all the really good people I see who are rallying into action.
I am confident (again) in the future. People are waking up. Acting. To repeat an earlier quote: "Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end".
source: Descended from an old Indian proverb, made popular in the delightful film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Its first contemporary use was by Fernando Sabino, a Portuguese author.
I agree with you. The darkness you describe is on our very doorsteps now. The only way we can regain some semblance of sanity is to restore our voting rights through those two acts. Once obtained, we can then replace some of these very, very bad "leaders" with people who have a conscience and who value democracy. Perhaps then, we can undo some of the very, very bad laws they have put in place.
Yesterday, I had the good fortune to spend some time with old friends from Austin - I had not been in actual proximity with them for over two years. At first, we were a little nervous, but we sat in my kitchen, a good six feet apart, masked, and played catch up. They are a bit older, and very depressed at the state of our country and especially our state. One of the stories they shared was the murder of a woman two days ago in Austin. She had evidently inadvertently driven her car in a way that made some armed road rager think he had been "cut off" and his "rights" somehow abridged. So, he pulled out his open carry (and no doubt unlicensed) gun and shot her dead. She had the grace, mercifully, to pull to the side of the street to die. But. She's dead. And he's within his "rights" I guess to kill, since our awful governor thinks being armed and dangerous is more important than life itself.
Hard to "heart" that one. The wild, raging, west. If I had a lot of money, I would sue that man and the state for that homicide. Hopefully, the current POTUS and Merrick Garland are on top of this immediately.
Ellen, that is a horrible story. I want to disbelieve it, but a friend of mine, who lives in Maryland, told me starting more than a year ago, how dangerous it can be to drive. Male drivers, she said give her the evil eye, assuming she's cut them off or done something else that warrants their rage. The hatred is at hand and it's terrifying.
Either a man is above the law or he isn't. America cannot truly be exceptional until this loophole of exception is resolved.
"America cannot truly be exceptional"
You could have stopped there.
Well, thank damn fine goodness he did not!
Agree, Christine. We may never get there but need to keep striving towards it.
I only used the term because it's overused by the right. Our country has done many exceptional things but they are paired with many horrendous things as well.
Exceptionalism, like the "more perfect" union, is a goal we can never achieve but should still never stop trying to get to. It helps to keep the riff-raff out of power. We veered off course and wound up with Trump, somebody grab the wheel.
Thanks to the prior administration we lost our standing as the #1 Super Power of the world. Personally I don't care if we are or not, what's important is having political, educational, social and economic systems that are as equitable as possible where no one is above the law.
This trope of American Exceptionalism is a big problem.
To understand what I am saying, just try this on: "I am exceptional among people" to see how it works.
Ouch! The truth hurts.
Thanks, Heather, it's good of you to remind us that all this GOP disloyalty and illegality did not begin with McConnell and Trump. Even the -- relatively -- clean Bush senior was in it up to his ears. Reagan should have been impeached over the Iran-Contra illegality, and his underlings should have all gone to jail, and Nixon should have ended up behind bars as well. Republicans think nothing of breaking laws if it will further their political and personal ambitions, and they stick it to entire classes of Americans without guilt.
We Democrats have been generally too forgiving and thick headed about all this.
A reminder that the right of an elected President to pardon is in sore need of revision and the imposition of strict, enforceable limits.
I've been thinking for quite a while now -- more seriously since Jan. 6th -- that continuing to allow the GOP to drag us down into Fascism is far more dangerous than calling for a Constitutional Convention would be. First, we really need to eliminate the Electoral College and begin electing Presidents by popular vote at the national level. Then we need to either eliminate the Senate or make sure there are proportionally more Senators in the more populous states. Then we need to take responsibility for running elections to national office away from the states. Even the Bill of Rights could use a bit of modernizing and greater clarity and specificity. And, of course, the Second Amendment needs clarification, so we can finally get assault rifles and all other semiautomatic weapons out of civilian hands. I'm sure there is plenty more I have not thought of.
First win a majority of State elections then you're heading in the right direction and for that you need to get the people out to vote...and a little help from our friends in DC on pressing matters of voting rights, gerrymandering and getting money out of politics.
Well yes, Stuart, a Constitutional convention would be quite a can of worms, and getting currently proposed legislation passed definitely takes priority.
Can someone tell me why presidents and governors are given pardon power? As far as I'm concerned, all it does is give them free reign to lie, cheat and break the law.
JUST FYI EVERYBODY! "Free rein, meaning 'unrestricted liberty of action or decision,' is often misinterpreted as free reign. The expression free rein originated from horseback riding and refers to the act of holding the reins that control the horse loosely so as to allow the horse to freely move along at its own pace and in its desired direction."
Good explanation, Lynell!
Hi Pam. I hear where you're coming from, but I believe the pardon power is a check (or a balance?) on the power of the courts, where mistakes are sometimes made, more often if defendants happen not to be White men.
Unfortunately, the pardon has often been used to free politically connected white-collar criminals. Better Presidents and governors would use it more... judiciously, but we have to elect them first. I'm not sure I would want to jettison the pardon power just now, given our current semi-legitimate Supreme Court and the Democrats clinging to power by their fingernails.
“Reign” is indeed the appropriate word for men “who would be King” and possess the ultimate power of Presidency or Governorship. Washington rejected this in favor of the American ideal of a republic. Alas many of these individuals who rise to the office of President or Governor lack the qualities of Washington. As described by Jefferson: “ "His integrity was pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision."
Hear here!!
Bush senior was in OIL up to his ears. The driving force of all those "cowboys" then and now.
Yes, I believe he had the chance to sign environmental legislation that would have acknowledged human-caused climate change and put the issue front and center many years ago, but he didn't, giving the oil and coal industries another 20 or more years to disseminate their propaganda. He did sign legislation ending the emission of ozone-hole-causing gasses, and he was keen on wetland conservation and a few other environmental issues, but he was definitely in too much thrall to big oil to make the kind of difference Al Gore would have. And let's remember it was Reagan who removed Jimmy Carter's solar panels from the White House roof.
Now that I think of it, the fact that Reagan was elected and re-elected by a landslide embarrasses me more (as an American) than even the election of you know who. Reagan was evil and smooth, but he was a real Dumbo.
This !
Bleeding heart liberals....
Citizen, are you disdaining or commiserating? I wear my bleeding heart on my sleeve, have for decades.
For a guy who says he is ever do much more than 20, he seems so much at a loss for words ;-)
Apologies, not knowing you, I took an expression of solidarity for abuse!
Indeed, Citizen. It's time to remedy that, hey?
Or maybe let some of our hearts continue to bleed, but get others of us to grab democracy by the nape and nonvoters by the shoulders and give them all a good shake-rattle-roll. No more (all) Mr. NICE GUYS!
The problem? And I've said it before: Democrats don't know how to think like criminals.
I truly did my best to vote absentee, but couldnt get my vote recorded! We need to streamline the voting process.
I was born in Vermont in 1957. By 1970 my eldest sister was well into activism - I, just a teenager. As the only Vermonter by birth in our family I am quite sure if I wasn’t a “bleeding heart liberal” she would call up the State of Vt and have my birth certificate REVOKED!! (notice no laughing emoji face included?)
The powerful historical events so well summarized by Dr Richardson today make it REALLY difficult not to hate any republican that is willing to overlook (or worse, embrace) the traitorous actions of their leaders.
PS. If Oliver North ever walked past me I would spit on him. I can’t wait for him to pass so that I can desecrate his grave in some way.
I guess that you won't share the equation behind your comment VernmontGirl57,
% real deal % in my dreams? Review: Very Effective! Thank you.
Pure illiberal abuse! The obvious conclusion is that they are morally and practically right, and that the protection of your self-interest dictates that you insult them to try to discredit them.
Thank you Heather.
Excellent Letter that reminds us that the current BS from the GOP is not new. They have been vested in this deceit for decades.
I can remember, at the time, thinking that what Ford did in pardoning Nixon was for the good of the Nation. Little did I know that act would give the GOP a lifetime of " get/stay out of jail free" cards.
Everything old is new again ........
Be safe, be well.
“Little did I know that act would give the GOP a lifetime of " get/stay out of jail free" cards.”
^^^^^
EXACTLY ‼️‼️
In agreement with Colbert, Lee’s horse “Traveler” was worthy of remaining standing to honor the brutal sacrifice of horses and livestock in the conflict between men.
Growing up in the late fifties/early sixties, we used to take several trips to visit my aunt and uncle who had a farm nearby to Appomattox. The entire area was replete with Robert E. Lee memorabilia along with, of course, his horse Traveller (I see his name is spelled with two L's).
Hardly a "mention" was ever made of Grant. Remembering back, I can see how easy it has been to indoctrinate young minds to have sympathy for the lost cause.
Here's a link for the list of horses who served in the war. Grant had several.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_horses_of_the_American_Civil_War#:~:text=List%20of%20horses%20of%20the%20American%20Civil%20War,%20%20%20%2038%20more%20rows%20
You’ve made my day!
Grant, back then, was considered a drunken nincompoop.
🍸🍺🍻🥃🍾
On that note ...
The Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) roundup of the Sand Wash Basin wild horses is currently underway. Since the roundup began on Sept. 1, a total of 501 wild horses have been captured. We are calling on the BLM to ground their helicopters because of documented abuse occurring during this roundup.
In the last few days, multiple foals have been left behind orphaned on the range after their mothers were captured during the roundup. Additional reports of injured horses — including a mare with a potentially broken leg and a foal by her side, both left on the range after the helicopters swept through — add to the concern about the conduct of this roundup.
Not only has the BLM been conducting this roundup under the guise of extreme drought when recent rains have rejuvenated range conditions in Sand Wash Basin — but these incidents of documented abuse are directly in violation of the BLM's Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program (CAWP) guidelines.
The BLM contractor conducting the roundup is in direct violation of the CAWP guidelines that require helicopters to drive the horses no faster than the weakest animal in the group.
The BLM also dismissed a CAWP guideline limiting temperatures at which horses should be run to no higher than 95º Fahrenheit as “just a suggestion.” Instead, the BLM stated that the only hard stop for chasing wild horses with helicopters in the summer heat is 105º Fahrenheit. And this statement was made on a day when helicopters were stampeding horses over a long distance of potentially 10-15 miles.
Treatment of America's wild horses like this is unacceptable. Join us in speaking up today for the Sand Wash Basin wild horses of Colorado. Please take a moment to send the letter below to the BLM & the Department of the Interior telling them to halt these roundups and leave the Sand Wash Basin wild horses at the Appropriate Management Level.
American Wild Horse Campaign
https://secure.everyaction.com/I01nAMCQA0uvmIDWsLRkgQ2?emci=7e46f3ed-2310-ec11-981f-501ac57ba3ed&emdi=0130586d-cf10-ec11-981f-501ac57ba3ed&ceid=8368612
Call the Interior Department and BLM and urge a halt to the roundup.
* Secretary Deb Haaland at (202) 208-3100
* Acting BLM Director Nada Culver: 202-208-3801
* BLM Colorado State Director Jamie Connell at 303-239-3700
Thank you for this well written explanation with suggestions to act. Many respondents to my re-posts are sympathetic but don’t know what to do, so I'll re-post this to them.
The respondents should do what we all should be doing in regard to so many many corrupt agencies! I have posted several times on here regarding the various roundups in progress right at this moment - And I thoroughly agree with VermontGirl's description of this agency. These Wild Horses do NOT have a voice-unless people are aware and speak up. Kathleen, VermontGirls, Susan, Lynell - the more public outcry the better. Its been fifty (50) years since the The Wild Free Roaming Horses & Burros Act - which happened because of public outcry. In the years since, this Act has been "amended" enough to make it worth so much less than originally. The sad thing is that a form letter - no matter how many people sign & send it - will only count as one (1) letter to the BLM. Idiotic as that sounds - its true. A short personal email written by many individuals might - might - make a dent. But until our sainted "representatives" comprehend the true situation on our public lands & forests - they believe the BLM, the livestock operators, the mining corporations, AND the politicians who are compromised by the livestock lobbyists with the big money & influence.
I should have added - letters, emails, phone calls etc need to be sent to everyone's Senator & Representative - that's where the pressure should be put. They can do something - several have attempted to.
Sending this information out. Acting on it. What utter barbarism.
This little "missive" from Wild Horse Education will make you cringe but this is the BLM's latest:
Our team member Marie Milliman has spent several days exploring the new “Guidance for Euthanasia” from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This policy change applies to all wild horses from range through long term holding.
The document is what BLM calls an “Instruction Memorandum” or “IM.” IM’s outline policy for the agency. The BLM publishes two types of IMs: permanent and temporary. Permanent IMs provide lasting guidance that is short in scope. Permanent IMs remain in effect until superseded or deleted. Temporary IMs offer operational, incident-specific, project-related or one-time policy or guidance for evolving activities. Temporary IMs expire at the end of the third fiscal year following issuance.
Like most documents the BLM calls policy, specific definitions are vacant leaving such a vague description that from district-to-district, facility-to-facility, carrying out the “policy” translates into whomever is onsite making the rules.
The “new” euthanasia policy can leave any horse advocate stunned. The examples here are simply a few from our volunteer who spent days combing the directive.
https://wildhorseeducation.org/2021/09/09/guidance-for-euthanasia-policy-change/
Excuse my language…
FUCKING NO GOOD PIECE OF SHIT BLM PRICKS….and their fucking contractors.
I cried for an hour last night when I read about this…..and now I’m back at it….at work.
We are only as good as our treatment of the weakest among us.
Thank you for telling this story. Sad and awful
Thank you so much, Kathleen. So important to know.
Richmond born and raised here. The statue didn’t depict Traveler. Traveler was a much smaller horse and deemed unsuitable. The statue is of Lee on a larger thoroughbred. Glad all are gone.
Thanks for this info, Gail. I wondered which of Lee's horses it really was, if indeed the sculptor went into that detail. Do you know?
Lynell scuttlebutt has it as a horse not belonging to Lee at all. I'll see if I can find some info!
THANK YOU!
Only in America is okay for a Republican President to plan, conspire, and perpetuate a violent coup with minions and Congress critters.
Only in America is it okay for a Republican President’s to lie, cheat, and steal.
Only in America is it okay for a President to direct minions to illegally sell weapons to our enemies, enemies that use terrorism such as suicide truck bombers to attack our Marine barracks while on a peace keeping mission.
All will be forgiven, even if Confederate. Just claim that you are playing “Cowboy”. PR your fascist power abusing tactics as “cowboyism”. The public will fall for it. Don’t say it or claim it, better to just act the part. The public will rationalize your Cowboyism. The public will admire your Cowboyism. Time and time again, the public will forgive the Cowboy.
NO MORE!
NO MORE!!!
What the hell is taking so long to indict & convict???
Mafia strategy. Bottom up convictions. As the conspiracy is un layered, the crimes and sentences start going up, longer prison time incentivized turning more states witnesses, more new evidence, and the noose tightens. I hope.
Not if Republicans take control of the house before this is all accomplished, I fear.
I know you are right, Ted. They will all be Al Caponed. It's just hard to keep the faith during the wait.
Just keep counting each victory and win in the courts. There are many so far.
From your lips...
🙏🙏
In real crime prosecution terms, this is pretty fast.
Why the hell are these dumb cowboys taking ivermectin and showing up at hospitals poisoned by it? If Ivermectin could prevent viral infections, why would we still be vaccinating cows and horses? Proof our education system needs more funding and reform. Proof logic and reason isn’t working in this Public Health emergency.
Three best strategies to bring down America:
1. Maintain support for a party that claims big Government is the problem
2. Deregulate mass communications, create space for miss information, conspiracy’s,and division
3. Wait for a respiratory viral pandemic
All of these crimes were excused in the name of "Freedom". Our Founding Fathers created a Nation based on the Freedom meme.
And the falsehood continues...
I hate to admit it but the more I learn the more this appears to be true.
That’s what Putin did. The Russians loved it. Now they are stuck with him until he dies .
But for banana republics, autocracies, etc. across the globe?!
Heather, this is among your VERY BEST "Letters from an American" posts. Colleges and universities would do well to create a new survey history course made-up of just reading and discussing all of your inciteful and sometimes profound posts ! Thank you; Thank you; Thank you.
I whole heartedly agree! I honestly had never connected the lines so succinctly before reading this.
Yes! And include insightful comments by readers.
I should have added..."insightful and inciteful" posts !
Is that a motion? If so, I'll second it.
"For democracies to work, politicians need to respect the difference between an enemy and an adversary. An adversary is someone you want to defeat. An enemy is someone you have to destroy. With adversaries, compromise is honorable: Today’s adversary could be tomorrow’s ally. With enemies, on the other hand, compromise is appeasement. Between adversaries, trust is possible. They will beat you if they can, but they will accept the verdict of a fair fight. This, and a willingness to play by the rules, is what good-faith democracy demands. Between enemies, trust is impossible. They do not play by the rules (or if they do, only as a means to an end) and if they win, they will try to rewrite the rules, so that they can never be beaten again."
This is something that most Republicans and those who vote for them fail to understand and about which HCR has written today. The words are those of former Canadian Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff and are from an op-ed piece published in the New York Times in October of 2013. They are true today, and understanding them is necessary "for democracies to work." (which are the first four words of the piece.) Republicans do not understand them.
If the insurrectionists are not prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law now, including the former president, will our children be forced to live with statues of “Oath Keepers” in place of confederate ones?
No, they will be struggling to survive, along with the rest of the planet.
Horrors! But you are right - we need to see the confederate "heroes" as insurrectionist "Proud Boys" and t-Rumps.