Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Time To Take A Stand

 


As it is axiomatic that there can be no followers of Jesus’ teachings who support Trump, so it is that there are no conservatives. And whereas there are plenty of Trumpists claiming to be one or the other or both, it’s no more true than if they professed to live on Mars.

Americans of every background and belief – excepting those who have no beliefs other than self-pity and selfishness and the certainty that they’re safe forever from Trump’s tidal wave of tyranny – ought to be sickened by what we’re witnessing from him and his cadre of sycophantic, Constitution-ignoring oppressors. Not just sickened: Taking to the streets. Figuratively, if not literally. Writing a column into the wind, even.

What Christian who accepts what Jesus actually said can countenance the spectacle we just saw in the Oval Office, where two despots congratulated each other for their lawless cruelty? Laughed and joked over the fate of an illegally deported man, incarcerated in a Salvadorian torture chamber. Only an unreachable Foxophile would believe that, had Trump told Bekele to bring the man back, he wouldn’t.

What conservative can accept scooping up people by masked goons and, ignoring due process, the most foundational American law, sending them to a brutal, foreign prison, forever? Or enjoy seeing the gloating pictures of the cruelty the White House produces? 

What law-respecting American, anywhere, would not be outraged by Trump’s plans to send “homegrown” – i.e., American citizens -- to the gulag, without (or despite) adjudication? With only Trump’s or Bondi’s or Patel’s or Rubio’s attestation to their criminality, all of whom lie prolifically in the face of all evidence to the contrary. 

It’s deliberate state-sponsored terror, meant to frighten potential critics into silence. In the US. By the US. It should be unconscionable to every American. For unrepentant MAGAs, it’s an existential disconnect.

If Trump and his confederates can decide who’s a criminal and who isn’t, no American should feel safe. Not Chris Krebs, who, for the crime of telling the truth about a non-stolen election, is subjected to Trump’s weaponized order for a DOJ “investigation.” Under Trump, truth is treason. About another retributive target, he said exactly that. To literal deathly silence from the wrong right.

Remember when “weaponization” was House Republicans’ favorite word? Evidently, it no longer applies, even as Trump attacks Democrats in Congress who’ve stood for justice? Suddenly, as Trump peels away Constitutional protections from us all, House Republicans are three-monkeyed

Nor can we yet ignore Trump’s idiotic tariffs. The ones, you know, based on the brilliance of King Arthur of the Deal; permanent not permanent, economy-growing destroying, paused by a genius chess-master as planned all along because people got “yippy” which was planned all along.

Remember the old saw of someone peeing on your leg and claiming it’s raining? It’s what Trump and his excusers have been doing since day zero. Not just about the price of eggs or shower-flow. Or “beautiful, clean coal.” For anthropomoistened lower extremities, nothing beats Marco Rubio, once considered within a standard deviation of reasonable, who offloaded this: “The alliance between POTUS and President Bukele has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere.” Then he stood and removed his knee pads.

Trump’s abrogation of the First Amendment, facing no resistance from Republican leaders and their enabling media, makes those tariffs seem almost trivial. They’re only about money and food and livelihoods and the ability to retire. Trump’s flouting of the Constitution threatens the persistence of America as the Land of the Free. It hasn’t been the Home of the Brave for a decade: Cowardice has become the unifying characteristic of Congressional Republicans. Among Trump’s voters, though, it’s less about cowardice than the inability to process information in a way that leads to wisdom. Which is the nicest way it can be put.

“Big Law continues to bend the knee to President Trump because they know they were wrong,” announced Trump’s pressbot Karoline Leavitt. About what? Providing constitutionally-protected counsel to people resisting a lawless government? What’s wrong is that, like several media organizations, those lawyers agreed to government bribery, which Pam Bondi will never prosecute.

Addressing Trump’s tariffs, but equally applicable to the mindset of relentless Trumpists, conservative writer David Brooks wrote, “... Producing something this stupid is not the work of a day; it is the achievement of a lifetime — relying on decades of incuriosity, decades of not cracking a book, decades of being impervious to evidence...” 

Here, it doesn’t much matter how MAGAs vote. But they might have friends or relatives where it does. Or children or grandchildren who, as they seek to survive the wreckage of what once was, will wonder why their progenitors did nothing. They should internalize Sun Tzu’s warning, presaging Trump, "An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes." Then, recognizing their complicity in this evil and remembering what it means to be American, do something.

12 comments:

  1. Excellent observations, Doctor. I feel like we're in the middle of a really awful, dehumanizing, debilitating illness, and the prognosis is grim. Here's my prescription, would love to know what you think. https://gortnation.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-four-commandments.html

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    Replies
    1. Great article. However, MAGA views all public eduction not dictated by MAGA legislators as indoctrination. And, given where we now stand, the kind of civics lessons you suggest ain't gonna happen. Maybe ever again.

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    2. I concur, but remain optimistic the wyrm will turn once again. I wrote that essay to answer only one question: why did so many people NOT vote. Natch, there are lots of ancillary issues involved, but I firmly believe the lack of civics education is the Number One reason. Too damned many 'Murricans just don't seem to give a hoot about it.

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    3. Without having read Oblio's recommended blog, I must point out that my old employer, Everett Public Schools, is on the front page of the Herald today with a piece (of work???) about religious field trips being offered to students twice weekly at Emerson Elementary. It is not district sanctioned but has found a loophole in a 1952 SCOTUS decision allowing religious education during the school day. It is one of the first in the PNW but there are over 600 Lifewise Academies across the country that take kids away from their public schools during recess or down time and then bring them back. I mean, I am shocked and ticked off and not surprised.

      I also read this morning the latest from Dr. Timothy Snyder which is about the next terrorist attack and how we must prepare and respond. Again, I have yet to read the blog, but based on Sid's reply, it has to do with education.

      It's hard to remain calm with all this going on.

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    4. Back again and I've read your blog. I also added you to my favorites, and will return to read your other pieces too.

      Sid knows a bit of my history, and as I read your piece on the 4 Commandments, I was thinking about my mom and dad. They wouldn't have distilled it quite the same way, but they wouldn't disagree much with National Lampoon either. As I think back on 18 years of dinner table discussions I have glimmers of how much civic education happened then. We were Catholics and went to private school for 9 years. Seven of us in Catholic school where the folks paid tuition--of course it was nothing like what those schools charge now--and my dad regularly talked about how it did not bother him one bit that he also paid taxes to support public school. Those kids' parents had different ideas than he and mom had, but they still deserved a good education. He wanted them to be as smart as he thought WE were!

      Anyway, my Saturday morning coffee needs replenishing, and I don't really know how I would succinctly tie all my thoughts up with a bow right now, but I wanted to chime in and compliment you on a really good blog.

      It doesn't hurt that you mentioned Devo.

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    5. TYVM... very meaningful to this Mudge.

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  2. Would that the kid hadn't missed...

    Is that Brooks quote from the May issue, Sid? I can't yet bring myself to read the article or the other two by George Packer and Anne Applebaum. Sick to my stomach I am.

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  3. Time To Take A Stand

    That is what it will take. But there's a problem.

    The opposition is intimidated. That's what people like Schumer capitulated. In the way he did it. Hoping to never have to then, SURPRISE! The house stood firm. You only need a handful to rule. Whether blackmail, greed, or just plain afraid for the safety of everyone you care about. That's all it takes to rule as a tyrant.

    Until we clean house and remove the barnacles? We'll never move forward. EVER.

    Been sayin' and sayin'. Nobody is coming to the rescue and what we got only gets worse. Once you are intimidated? You are forever. It doesn't change. A coward is always a coward.

    I don't know what's next. But I do know that the kids had zero to do with it. Any MAGA moron can spew it. Fact is? They either were not born, or, too young to vote, or, inactive young. That is a lot vs, "The Boomers" The largest, most active group for decades. But do not dare disparage them. Then it's agist. There's no blame. There's only "it wasn't me" when it starts to fail. Like the Seattle cops fighting for anonymity for 1/6. And we should trust these people?

    The problem is clear as day. But people are too wrapped up in their own lives to care.

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    Replies
    1. Here's the difference. America is no longer the land of opportunity. It exploits it's own people and those of the world for personal wealth and power.

      https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cayA3DCd2XA

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    2. We must have more people like Booker in power and this is why. He gets it because he IS it.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_BG2Pubckg

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    3. Democrat Casar in Chip Roys district.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShD5dMd8aPY

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