These old photos of our family home and me arrived from my sister, setting off a chain of ruminations and reactions on New Year's Eve,…
Missing the Point
The only ones not shocked and worried at Trump’s reelection should be. A vile, lying con man has retaken the presidency, despite who he blatantly is. Those who are full of glee now will soon regret their historic blunder. Americans have been duped by a party whose philosophy is that ‘government is bad for us,’ which they’re already enacting. It’ll get worse.
I’m sour and chagrinned. Just when the world should be uniting to cooperatively meet and master this long-term, self-induced climate chaos, this ecosystem emergency, we’re teaming up with the world’s oil producers and taunting wars. Crude, cruel people are wielding rapid power. Billionaires shout their freedom of secret speech, stealthily buying elections. Piety protects the power it plies.
Between Netanyahu and Trump, I’ve had it with the Judeo/Christian Heritage. They exemplify the shadow of each tradition.
A naked pied piper king bragged and bullied us off a cliff. The same sorts of media manipulation that launched the rise of fascism in Italy, Germany, and Spain (and lately, Argentina) have been used on us. Trump even strikes a Mousolinni-like pose.
What could go wrong? What could fall into chaos and ruin?
Putin smirks. Some basic tenants of well-funded Russian psyop actions include:
Exerting constant info-psychological influence on the enemy’s personnel and population.
Conducting psycho-energetic warfare and other types of nontraditional influence on the
consciousness and the mental state of the enemy.
Carrying out info-psychological and special operations to lower the morale and the
psychological state of the enemy’s forces and population, and to demoralize and
disinform them.
We know it as MAGA as told by Fox News and worse. What they missed was the nearly ten million dollars shunted into Tennessee by Russian agents, all designed to rile the riled, increase the paranoia, and taunt tensions. As reported by CBS and others:
“Federal prosecutors said RT [Russia Today] oversaw a series of “covert projects” that included funneling $10 million through a series of shell entities to a Tennessee-based company launched in 2023 that publishes videos on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Many of the videos published by U.S. Company-1 contain commentary on events and issues in the United States, such as immigration, inflation, and other topics related to domestic and foreign policy,” the indictment said. “While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the Government of Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine.
“Its website lists six right-wing personalities, including Dave Rubin, who has more than 2.4 million YouTube subscribers; Tim Pool, a podcast host with more than 1.3 million YouTube followers; and Benny Johnson, whose YouTube channel has nearly 2.4 million subscribers.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-tenet-media-right-wing-influencers-justice-department
This is only one paid effort to craft our news. Who knows what else they did and still do? An army of willing trolls, loyal to their tribe and golden-crowned leader, magnify their hyper-conservative nature to accuse and divide us further. How vicious they’ll get we don’t know yet.
We’ll see the expertise and best intentions of thousands working in the EPA, FBI, DOJ, etc. be disempowered, fired from their posts. Their knowledge, skills, and dedication will be mocked and wasted. Their functions in protecting us will fall apart. Kleptocrats, stealers of the public good, (much as Putin’s crew did to Russia) will cash in on their spoils.
Our respect for the law will deteriorate. He lives by rich-white-guy law. If he can disobey, defy, and elude the law, why should we follow it? Our Supreme (ly corrupt) Court, and scores of other judges groomed and installed by the Heritage Foundation, will keep donors secret, corporations unregulated, and personal freedoms restricted. As is, the epitome of a slippery law-evader, an utter egotist, a flippant iconoclast, an increasingly demented sociopathic power monger, will represent and lead our government.
He claims a landslide victory and a mandate to rule his and his Republican sycophants’ way. The country maps show mostly Red. But such graphics are misleading. I’m lucky to live in Blue Oregon, but lots of Red sorts of people live here too. I wouldn’t deny or exclude them. Nor should a narrow win in the national vote (or perhaps the Democrats slightly won?) mean half the country are losers. We’re far more mixed and interconnected than those clunky, misleading graphics show.
Like the cartoon at the top, there’s lots of finger-pointing going on. I could add to it. I don’t fault Kamala or the comedians or the annoying fund-raisers. She was charming, intelligent, and humane. I liked her laugh.
Yet the national neurosis, a widespread brain imbalance, mocked her laugh. It resents jokes and can’t seem to tell funny ones. Instead, they’re just plain mean.
I hardly ever liked any Republicans. I liked Ike in many ways and Mark Hatfield. I liked my dad and uncle. They were anti-union Republicans. I like some Republican principles, like self-initiative, a balanced budget, and guarding against government power. But all in all, I’ve been leery of Republicans even before Trump. They seem to assume a win/lose approach, not the win/win I see Democrats as mostly assuming.
As a clergyperson, I can make political statements and even recommend some candidates. That’s because it is a function of religion to evaluate and favor. The separation of church and state was to assure freedom of religion and freedom from it. The tax-exempt status of most religions as 501-C-3 bars them from promoting a candidate. Yet, they did. I excuse myself because I don’t operate under that category. I’m non-profit but not tax-exempt. When I spoke for the UUs, I tempered my critiques.
Meanwhile, somehow, Christian Evangelicals showed how little they know or respect of our founding principles and ostensible laws. They portrayed him as a god-ordained savior, saving us from Modernity’s intelligence, kindness, pluralism, and mutuality.
Wealthy conservatives resent liberal lifestyles. They want to tell a fabricated American history. They don’t want tolerance of diversity. They vault “family values,” yet pick crooks and engage in “drug-fueled sex orgies.” If the Democrats were to host such orgies, then they’d object. If the Democrats were to start arming up to the level of weaponry Republicans already have, then we’d have gun control.
Sorry for this bleak whine. It’s late a night, near the deadline time for me. I won’t go on with more first-draft writing. We’re (or, at least, I am) in shock and grief, cringing at the tragedy of this dark election and worried about the typical fascist agenda of punitive judgmentalism and cruel division. We have an American heritage of overcoming kings and their clergy apologists. We have other sorts of lives to live. We have ourselves, each other, and a fragile but ultimately resilient environment to care for.
What’s the point of having a two-hundred-year-old self-run pluralistic democracy founded in liberal, humanistic, Enlightenment-based values and hopes anyway?
Related Posts
But how, how, how does the average American distinguish fake news from truth? We now know that the Russian influence on the 2016 election was a hoax created by the Hillary campaign. We now know that the Hunter Biden laptop story wasn’t a Russian ploy. Joe Biden has now pardoned Hunter for any and all crimes covering Hunter’s time as a lavishly paid board member of Ukraine’s largest energy and gas company. Can we really assume that this unusual pardon was merely about the love of a father for his son? Is the below linked article fake news or truth?… Read more »
The 2016 election interference was not a “hoax”. Don’t confuse collusion with influence or interference. Although, collusion is quite probable as well. Wikipedia outlines most of it all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections 12 Russians wanted by the FBI for 2016 election interference: “…with a computer hacking conspiracy involving gaining unauthorized access into the computers of U.S. persons and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, stealing documents from those computers, and staging releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. “ https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/russian-interference-in-2016-u-s-elections And now, we see it happened again. Just yesterday, the last day of 2024, the… Read more »
An intelligent and fair reply. Social media algorithms magnify our divisions to the bemusement of our adversaries. Even Jimmy Carter voiced his skepticism about the 2016 election. From Cambridge Analytica on, we’re being played.
I especially appreciate your closing paragraphs.
A postscript to my earlier post. I share your concern for planet Earth and I share your concern about the USA moving toward fascism. There are eerie similarities between the USA and pre-fascist Germany and Italy. But I sense characteristics of fascism in both the right and the left. Doesn’t Woke culture embody the characteristics of fascism? How is the US supplying billions of dollars in bombs and missiles to Israel and Ukraine slowing green house gases? If Seymour Hersh was accurate (see below link), how was the US engineered destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline (under the Biden/Harris WH)… Read more »
Sensible questions, Vernon. As to news, a line from my song “So Wrong,” “You call it fake news but just make it faker. You’ve shown us the clues; you’re just a taker.” The millionaires running the usual news are paid by the billionaires who stand to continue profiting from business as usual – as they are poised to get even more. (The combined wealth of the Biden Cabinet was about $20 million; that of the impending Trump cabinet is over $1 billion – fifty times more!) But, hard to present the truth while all sides gripe. I watch Democracy Now!… Read more »
Here is an overview of how the mainstream press is evaluating the hopes that outlier Robert F Kennedy has handled, and might handle, our health regulations: https://fair.org/home/pundits-try-to-make-progressive-case-for-kennedy/
Again, yes, it needs fixing. But by who? To what effect?
Sorry, Byrd, but your assertion that “The Deep State keeps supplying arms to Israel” is entirely wrong. What’s often called “The Deep State” always refers to the career civil service federal employees, whose agencies establish rules and regulations that aren’t directly guided by Congress. No, “The Deep State” does not supply arms to anybody, except as ordered by executive order or congressional policy. Israel’s “obvious racial genocide” has not been acknowledged by our executive branch, and thus has not been recognized by those charged with carrying out the dictates of government. It’s Biden’s bromance with Netanyahu (and the powerful Zionist… Read more »
Thanks for the clarification on the Deep State not being the career federal employees but the actual policy of those in power, Trump, then Biden, then Trump, both backed by those who wage wars, not by our voiced opposition to the wars we wage or supply.
He’s draining the swamp of ordinary critters who know how to live there and have some loyalty to their function, replacing them with obedient sycophants.
I see that the comments were posted weeks ago, which indicates to me that somebody isn’t waiting for the monthly digest — congratulations! But I’m sorry to see that most of this post reflects a buy-in to the us-versus-them paradigm — a sad reversion from the primary tenets of Earthly Religion, and a clear victimization by the force of the “divide and conquer” tactics imposed by the Dominators. Instead of hating the collective stupidity of electing an authoritarian, and instead of despising the vicious attacks on democracy we can expect, and instead of suffering the loss of integrity of the… Read more »
Fair enough, Jim-el. I like your proposed non-divisive statement at the end, and note you don’t want me to hate or despise the “collective stupidity” or “vicious attacks,” and instead simply suffer the “loss of integrity” of our country. I agree with your descriptors here. I do not want to dominate, divide, or conquer, but I need to object. If there are dominators here, it’s the angry and belligerent ones with the guns and the billionaires who buy their way to power.
Your closing paragraph is eloquent.
the president-elect only received 49.9% of the popular vote — more than 50% of us voted for someone else — so he did *not* win in a landslide, like he falsely claims….. I’m praying that the Senators and Representatives will have courage, strength, integrity, and intelligence, to do the right things….
And, for the first time in my life I have incredible respect for a Republican: Liz Cheney.
I bow to her integrity and bravery.
Hang in there Byron Bradley, there will be good people standing up against racism, fascism, and violence.
“The American People have spoken,” or so they claim as if everyone wanted Trump, when, as you note, more than half didn’t want Trump. The Red/Blue maps are misleading graphics, self-magnifying lies, ignoring the actual mix of such voters in every case. His handing out ambassadorship and heads of agencies to mere Fox News hosts and football personalities shows his flippant regard for what he’s doing. He’s an iconoclast, smashing every icon of our formerly revered country. Having violated and evaded so many laws, precedents, and policies, he epitomizes the view of politicians as lying and corrupt. This fits the… Read more »