Lessons
POST 1170
Good News First
I subscribe to the posts of some very insightful people and I’ve noticed something recently: their posts are getting longer. They have a lot to say, now that the shock of the last election has worn off and there is some good news happening.
Two weeks ago we had the April 5 demonstrations and over 5 million people showed up loud, strong, demanding and defiant. Roughly 1.5% of all Americans were in the streets that day. And yesterday a whole lot of people clogged the streets and sidewalks again in 700 “No Kings” rallies across the country.
After the election most heads were hung in despair and the question being asked was, “What can we do?” No answers were offered, other than pleadings from politicians to send them money. Now people are up and out and even some Republicans are making noises as though they have re-discovered that they have spines (gasp!).
Bernie and AOC are all over America with their “Fighting Oligarchy!” tour and drawing huge crowds – 12,000 in shocking red Idaho! 30,000 in ruby red Folsom, CA! 36,000 in LA! Tens of thousands in Utah – UTAH! Thousands stood in the rain to get into the venue in 95% White Iowa. 34,000 showed up in Detroit. It turns out that Bernie is right:
People are sick and tired of being sick and tired!
.
Change for the better is in the air, even in the presence of the stink of Trump’s grab for a crown.
Trump is doing us all a favor by being the very worst version of himself, lying, breaking laws, violating the Constitution and, most helpfully, doing things that impact We The People negatively so that even his voters are starting to feel the pain. Stealing money from granny and our veterans is enough to enrage anyone, so pray that he does ever-worse things. Then it won’t be 5 million people in the streets. It will be 50 million of us declaring that there is no American king, that America keeps its promises to its citizens and to the world and that the rule of law is supreme.
So, get out and do your part so that you’ll never be ruled by a brainless, Trump appointed, ass kissing tyrant; never be renditioned by Trump’s Brown Shirts wearing ski masks and sending you to a “shit-hole country;” so that you’ll never be smeared by his Eichmann, Stephen Miller; and never be attacked by his IRS.
Even President Obama is speaking out. Have a look/listen to his presentation at Hamilton College via Meidastouch network. For the full 1:14 conversation, click here. I so very much miss that man.
Lessons
From Hold Tight by Harlan Coben:
Why do humans never really learn the lessons we are supposed to? What is in our makeup, in fact, that draws us to that which should sicken us?
From Ron Fournier’s Substack post, Yes, Senator: In Trump’s America, We Are All Afraid
We feel for you, Senator Murkowski.
It must be scary to serve under a party leader capable of turning the full power of the presidency against you and unleashing waves of angry, potentially violent, supporters upon you.
“We are all afraid,” you told a conference in Anchorage. “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”
You’re right, senator. It’s not right. If you are scared — a member of President Trump’s own party with a family legacy in Alaska politics — can you imagine what it’s like to be a Democrat?
Or a reporter?
Or an immigrant?
Or a child of an immigrant?
Or a non-white person?
Or a woman?
Or a married gay couple?
Or a transgender man or woman?
Or a person on the autism spectrum?
Or a small business person dependent on imports?
Or a starving child dependent on U.S. assistance?
Or a Ukrainian?
Or a federal employee?
Or a college president?
Or a judge?
Or a lawyer?
Or anybody else whose lives and livelihoods our president threatens at a whim?
Yes, Senator. We should all be afraid.
Senator, you signed up for the brainless, violent threats you’re receiving and your failure to stand firm against the evil of extremists for so many years has allowed and encouraged the very threats you fear. You know right from wrong. Try doing right more often. That’s a lesson you should have learned a long time ago.
From my Jeez Puleeze! Journal:
As Harry Truman (sort of) said, “If you can’t stand the heat, Senator Murkowski, get out of the kitchen.”
From Steve Schmidt, also singling out Murkowski:
[America’s Republican elites] are worthless in a fight over principle because the only principle that they truly care about is self-interest.
The thing is, we’ve seen this before in Stalin’s and Putin’s Russia, in Hitler’s Germany, in Orban’s Hungary and in so many more places where people failed to stand up to bad guys. Then the bad guys, the homegrown terrorists, turned their violence on We The People.
We’ve seen the hatred and violence in our own country in the Civil War, the American Bund, the KKK, in today’s White supremacists and the creeps who have threatened Sen. Murkowski and Georgia poll worker Ruby Freeman. And don’t forget the American Nazis, who are proclaiming that Hitler should have finished the job. That’s the kind of people we’ll get if we fail to stand up to the bad guys today.
We must remember the lessons.
Trump is building his authoritarianism one airplane renditioning of legal – legal! – immigrants at a time. So far most of the courts (but not those in Texas) are following the law. The Supreme Court, except for (guess who?) Thomas and Alito, seems to be able to locate the Constitution on a clear day.* We knew this hateful attack on our values (the ones we proclaim but sometimes ignore) was coming because Trump slimed us with his promises of cruelty. We were shown the lessons repeatedly and, as Coben said, “humans never really learn the lessons we are supposed to . . . “
. . . until it’s so late that the price to restore our country is enormous. Trump told us what he was going to do, the cruelty, the meanness, the lawlessness, the violations of our Constitution, and still nearly half the voters, the people Trump fools some of the time and those he fools all of the time, voluntarily forgot the lessons. And now he’s SOLD Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia and about 230 more legal immigrants to an El Salvador tyrant who stuffed them into his concentration and extermination camp.
We are all afraid. We’re monstrously pissed off, too. We know what to do to solve the problem. There are millions of us in the streets, almost ready to bring pitchforks and torches.
Yet again.
There is a major election coming up in 564 days. If you aren’t working on the solution, you’re part of the problem.
Courage – It’s Contagious!
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* And yet the Court recently agreed to hear a Trump case seeking to end birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment begins,
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
Is there anything unclear about that?
Yet the Court is willing to hear arguments against it!
Do you remember your civics class where you were taught that the only way to change the Constitution is through a new amendment? Yet these justices are willing to hear a case based on just an executive order that would change the Constitution with only a cockamamie extremist law, not an amendment. What lesson have these justices forgotten?
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