About The Truth About Cesar Chavez Being Told

AT FIRST I WAS SUSPICIOUS of the breaking stories accusing Cesar Chavez of sexual crimes and violations of Women's rights.   It wasn't until I read that Dolores Huerta was one of those revealing those horrible truths that I knew they were credible.   Her admission that she had covered up his attack and abuse of her for decades in order to protect the Farm Workers Movemet that she had dedicated her life to was all the confirmation I needed to take those accusations as credible no matter how much I didn't want to believe someone I'd considered a hero had done things like that. 

We develop ideas of those heroes from a combination of their own appearances and words but also from the narratives that are published around them.   I will admit that my concept of Cesar Chavez the hero of the Farm Workers Movement was a creation of both of those and not of any kind of deep, serious knowledge of him, his colleagues such as Dolores Huerta or their movement.   It was certainly part of my life to read about that, especially as presented in the liberal Catholic media and circles that my parents and other family members supported and subscribed to.  

Now more of the reality of what happened then and why it happened as it did has to form our ideas of him and, entirely more importantly, the movement he came to be the figurehead of.   This article by Kat Armas is the most probing and thoughtful one I've yet seen to do that.   It questions how the culture that produced that first impression of those things was, itself, distorted by the diminiution of Women's struggle, work and sacrifice in that movement due to the general sexism of the time and even the liberal media milieu.  

To revisit Chavez's legacy, then, is not only to reassess a man, but to recognize how narratives themselves are formed; how power, proximity and even empire — the systems of power and domination that structure social and political life — shape which voices are amplified, and which are silenced. Women's stories are not simply side notes; they are essential to understanding the full human cost of social justice work, and the deeper truths that often remain just outside the official record.

I recommen the entire article which shows that Cesar Chavez, himself, should have grown up with entirely more respect for Women than he did, especially in his moral formation because his mother and grandmother had had such a strong and decisive part in that.   Toay I don't have the time  to do justice to the entire article now,  nor the theologies that are presented in it,  the informal though all important Womens' theologies that are not recorded in writing or documented or taken seriously (until, maybe now) that, certainly, must share the forms and methods and character of those in the earliest Church,  Jesus, himself, not having written anything and many, almost certainly most of the first followers of Jesus being either non-writers or illiterate, themselves.  The Catholic Church has ignored and denied that reality ever since they decided that Women were not allowed to preach,  them basing that on the WRITINGS  of Paul, event though Paul also named Women as Apostles and carriers of the Gospel.  Or at least Epistles.  

I'll try to get back to this as soon as I can.   I will give this as an example of why the Catholic Church should have a policy against rapid canonization.   I don't know if any kind of formal or informal process to canonize Chavez has been mounted, though I would bet such has been at least discussed.   You can compare these revelations about him to those which have been revealed about Josemaria Escriva, the dubious Opus Dei "saint" whose canonization cause probably had the financial and power baking that would certainly have opposed the United Farmworkers cause. 

Verified X Account Puts Literal Bounty on Mohammad Marandi; Musk Leaves It Up

 

While Declaring "NO KINGS" Remember His Corrupt Court Is Planning On Ratfucking The Election For Him

I HAVE BEEN TELLING EVERYONE I COULD that the Roberts Republican-fascists were going to directly AND ACTIVELY try to rig the election for their Republican-fascist party way back when that election was the last one.    With the oral arguments the other day,   it couldn't be more obvious that the entire,  Federalist (fascist) Society,  Republican-fascist six Republicans on the Court are doing exactly that.   I'm beginning to think our only hope is that the Republicans fuck up the economy so badly that it will be a landslide election of the kind that put LBJ or the on that put FDR in the presidency and one which will give Democrats a majority in the House and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate but we can't depend on that.

I have also been telling everyone for far, far longer that the Supreme Court, despite the Nina Totenberg style lore surrounding them IS AND HAS BEEN THE MOST CORRUPT BRANCH OF THE GOVERNMENT GOING BACK TO WHEN JOHN MARSHALL WAS THE CHIEF JUSTICE.   Then, as now, race and partisanship was central to the corruption of that Court,  I've gone into and over the record of the Court and subsequent ones.  I have leane very heavily on one of the current best historians of the Court, Paul Finkelman and that previous one,  Louis Boudin to make what I say is an irrefutable case that the Court, certainly after the unconstitutional Marbury power grab by John Marshall, after the infamous pro-slavery decisions - a whole host of those during the Marshall years, including the infamous Prigg decision penned by the official oppoent of slavery on the court, Joseph Storey and every decision that Marshall authored which sided with even those slavers who broke federal law passed to outlaw the importation of slaves.   That was only the begining.

The Roberts Court is certainly the most openly white supremacist Supreme Court during my lifetime.   Though one that doesn't need to imply the "N" word to make it the spirit of its rulings.  And that certainly includes that monument of psycho-pathology,  Clarence Thomas.    It is probably the most consequentially white supremacist since the Plessey Court THOUGH THE TOTALITY OF ITS RULINGS PUTS IT MORE IN THE SAME CLASS AS THE TANEY COURT OF 1857.    The ruling which they will hand down allowing Republican-fascist dominated states and very likely, before November, in a case in which the Republican-fascists in the Congress and the Trump regime will blatantly violate the Constitution as written to ratfuck elections around the country marks, in addition to Trump v USA and other decisions and indecisions that rig things for Trump and Republicans have certainly, already, earned them the same role in history that Roger Taney and his colleagues have earned themselves.  

If that miracle of a Democratic watershed election happens,  against the certain resistance of the ilk of Chuck Schumer and other establishment lawyer-Congressmen, the Supreme Court has to be finally and definitively cut down to size, whether by packing the bench with those who reject such atrocities as the Marbury-Dred Scott power the court gave itself to nullify duly adopted federal laws and the even worse practice that not only the Roberts but other Courts have taken on itself TO NULLIFY SUCH THINGS AS THE ANTI-INSURRECTION PROVISIONS OF THE 14TH AMENDMENT have to be done. 

Trump AND THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY IN THE CONGRESS AND ON THE SUPREME COURT have laid bare the fatally, anti-democratic nature of the Constitution and our entire legal framework through their knocking down those flimsy and makeshift "norms and practices" that have been the only things that have not caused our alleged democracy to be exposed for the oligarchic tyranny that it has been just under the surface.   Among other things, that has cost, almost certainly permanently, the position of world leadership that the United States achieved during the 20th century.  That Joe Biden almost saved that from the effects of Trump I only to have the free-press and the regime of lying with impuity that the Warren, Berger, Rehnquist and Roberts Court started and maintained sink Biden who was the most domestically successful president since LBJ.   Thout the media addled American population may not realize that,  the world has no choice but to face that reality.   Unless the Constitution of the United States is drastically changed to prevent another Trump or Bush II or, I'd say even going back to Nixon,  I hope and pray the world never trusts the United States ever again.   No one should trust a system that, having produce Trump I would then produce Trump II.   The Roberts Court was central to that happening as was the free press as was the billionaire oligarch class even more so that Putin and the Saudis and the others who the Court allowed the power to sway our politics WITH THE FULL KNOWLEDGE THAT THOSE ENEMIES OF DEMOCRACY FOREIGN AS WELL AS DOMESTIC FAVORE THEIR REPUBLICAN-FASCIST PARTY.

If Democrats have any chance of crushing the Roberts Court they must do it or that loss of faith that America force onto the world will have to be the hard reality of even the most idealistic of Americans.  By that I don't mean those who fall for the civics piety of Sorkin or Burns or Miranda or even those whose naive faith in America is based on something more real.   I mean those who are idealistic enough to face the hardest of reality who still understand that anything but government by the consent of an informed majority who vote out of good will on an egalitarian basis.    If Democrats don't defeat the lawyers who have so much invested in the system as it has been and is to overturn what has produced this situation, starting with radically changing the Supreme Court, then I'd suggest we will have to dump that party as well and try something else.   Not trying is not an option.   Not facing the hard reailities of what will waste our efforts is also not an option.    Dump Schumer.   He's more of an obstacle than Fetterman is, at this point. 

If Democrats only take the House they should zero out the budget of the Court except for the Constitutionally gurarnteed salaries of the "justices."   They should defund the Supreme Court's fascist-marble palace, not allowing it to keep the lights on or to have internet access.   They should definitely get rid of the clerkships and other perks and hold hearings on the corruption of the members of the Court.   I don't care if all three of the Democratic appointees of the Court are upset and discomforted by that,  I don't especially care about any members of the Court as compared to the damage they've done to us all.   Cut it down to the size of a Supreme Court in a modern democracy,  one which doesn't ratfuck things for oligarachs and against justice.   Tear down the obscene lie over the door of that fascist-marble palace,  that place doesn't produce "equal justice under law."   They produced Trump II. 

When Asked Why I Haven't Commented On The Death Of Mueller

I'll rest on what I said about him while he was alive.   I didn't trust or respect him, I don't trust or respect anyone who remained a Republican after Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II,  You certainly know I don't trust anyone who stayed one even as Trump I was in its earliest days.  He did.  I'll leave it as that.   

Speaking About The Billionaires' Hostile Takeover Campaign Of The Catholic Church

I DON'T KNOW IF THE OPUS DEI CULT coopted John Paul II or if, as I long ago suspected, he was all in on it.   Early in his papacy I suspect he was an actual CIA asset before and during at least the early years of his papacy, but he was certainly part of what is being revealed about how evil and dangerously powerful that fascist cult has been.   

The warnings were given  eary and contiuously from the 1940s, when those who were alarmed by the authoritarian secret society started telling the Vatican that it was dangerous.    I'm not that familiar with those warnings until the reactionary and, in so many ways, disasterous papacies of JPII and Benedict XVI, so I don't know how the other popes and figures in the Vatican took those warnings, though clearly they either weren't taken as seriously as they should have been or the warnings were things that didn't bother them very much.   Benedict, whatever else you can say about him, at least took some of those warnings serously, though he was a weak man when it came to opposing the powerful and wealthy,  and too beholden to the seriously flawed legacy of his patron and predecessor,  JPII.   John Paul II, on th other hand, was a total sucker for the fascist, neo-medieval, hyper-clerical-financially-tied-in cult.  He rushed through the canonization of its truly evil founder, Josemaria Escriva whose sainthood is as dubious a one as has been given official status in the modern period.   He also made the cult a power in itself, a "personal prelature" which was not answerable to local bishops.   

It is encouraging that Pope Leo has had a private meeting with the author of what appears to be an extremely important expose of Opus Dei, Gareth Gore, and that Leo seems to take the revelations of corruption, moral, financial, personal, human trafficking and enslavement, secretive political influence and everything else that Gore has documented in his book, Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church.   You can hear him talking about his meeing, here. 

It's not only liberals and liberal Catholics who think Opus Dei is dangerous,  here's a conservative Catholic,  (John Farrell identifies himself as such at the beginning of his review) who goes into considerable detail.   I will post just some of what he says that directly corrupts U.S. politics.* 

The most notorious figure in the American Opus network was the late Father C. John McCloskey, a former Wall Street broker turned priest of the prelature. In 1998, he was appointed the head of the Catholic Information Center (CIC) in Washington, D.C. Initially a modest chapel and bookstore entrusted to Opus Dei, the CIC, under McCloskey, became a central meeting place for high profile conservative Catholics working in the nation’s capital. He became famous for the conversions of right-wing politicians and scholars: the likes of Newt Gingrich, Senator Sam Brownback, and the late Judge Robert Bork. McCloskey also became a regular commentator on shows like CNN’s Crossfire, NBC’s Nightly News, Dateline, and Meet the Press, where he inveighed against “the culture of death,” contraception, IVF, and abortion, famously insisting that no Catholic could vote for Democrats with a clear conscience.

Around 2002, as the clergy abuse scandal was turning the American Catholic church inside out, McCloskey suddenly disappeared from public view. It would only come out in 2019 that he had been removed from his post at the CIC after a married woman member of Opus Dei sought legal action over his aggressive sexual overtures to her in private counseling sessions. Members of Opus Dei at first assured the woman that McCloskey would no longer serve in active ministry and settled the case for just under a million dollars. When she discovered that McCloskey was not only in active ministry but hearing confessions, she went public with her story. McCloskey, a heavy drinker, died of early Alzheimer’s at a home for priests in early 2023.

Even without McCloskey, the CIC has continued to be a magnet for conservative U.S. Catholics, including Leonard Leo, a leading member of the Federalist Society, which is dedicated to installing ultra-conservative judges in the federal courts and ultimately on the supreme court. According to Gore, in his chapter on Opus Dei’s connections in American politics, the overturning of Roe v. Wade would not have been possible without the direct involvement of Opus Dei insiders working for Trump and longtime Catholic influencers like Leo. With Trump’s re-election, their involvement will only deepen through their connections with the authors of Project 2025, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation. Its President Kevin Roberts is a patron of Opus Dei’s Catholic Information Center where he receives regular spiritual guidance.

One of the foremost tools of corruption by Opus Dei is its secretiveness which was baked into it from the start, like an organized crime network.   Members are required or encouraged to keep their membership in it a secret so there is no reliable way of knowing if someone who is suspected of Opus Dei membership is, actually, a member.   I certainly wouldn't put lying about that past any of that list of Republican-fascists given in that passage or, really, anyone who gives any reason to make someone suspicious.   I would like it if Leo ordered an end to such secrecy if for no other reason than that it might lessen the suspicion of that for those who are innocent of cult membership.   I strongly suspect at least a three of the right-wing Catholics on the Supreme Court of membership, though two of those would seem to have defected to the Episcopal church, at least that's what I recall them claiming.  Episcopalians, beware. 

I would like there to be a full investigation into whether Opus Dei has trafficked people to or from or inside of the United States, especially those Women who are suckered into it young and then spend their lives slaving away for men who they are never even supposed to see.   I would like any crime they are involved in any corruption they are involved in exposed and those involved prosecuted.   As a Catholic, I would like to see the thing entirely exposed, its secret documents made public, testimony of its victims taken in public and the thing dissolved.  

Unfortunatly,  I don't think there is any liklihood that the disgusting canonization of Escriva to be disavowed by the Catholic church, I'm unaware of any proceedure for doing so and to do so would bring that other dubious saint,  JPII into disrepute.   Personally,  I don't find anything about either of their alleged saintliness to be at all convincing.   I would welcome a very severe slowing down of the saint-making process that JPII sped up so he could indulge his theatrical tendencies,  I don't think anyone should be canonized for more than a century after their deaths when all of those with personal interests in that are, also, long gone and the cover ups of any potential scandals ended.   I especially think there should be a moratorium in not ban on canonizing popes.   

But, then, I'm old enough to remember when a long list of early and medieval saints were taken off the calendar back in the 1960s, including such popular ones as St. Valentine and St. Christopher.   You never know what they might do sometime in the future though I'm not going to live to see it. 

* In looking around online you will find a lot of lies that are clearly posted by either those in Opus Dei or those who like he corrupt fascist cult.   One of the things I read said that Pope Paul IV was an admirer of the cult.   Farrell says this in his review: 

In private, Gore writes, Escriva was given to fits of rage, and open contempt for popes John XXIII and Paul VI. As Gore shows in a depiction of one revealing meeting between the two, it seems Pope Paul saw through Escriva from the beginning.

I can't say that Paul VI is among my favorite popes but I've had reason to come to respect him a lot more than I used to.   I think a lot of the things I didn't like about him were a result of his trying to cope with the extremely powerful reactionaries and arch conservatives in the hierarchy and in Catholic circles.   I hope Leo has the courage to effectively suppress such as that. 

Those "Boots On The Ground" Mean Far Less Than Nothing To Trump Or His Crime Syndicate

SINCE IT IS THE FAITH HOLDING OF the American media, government, and at least the plurality of the American voters in the last election that any number of dead in Iran are not worth taking seriously,  I'll have to put this in terms of those American lives which have already been spent in Trump's war of whim and who they are planning on sending into a bloodbath in invading Iranian territory.   

Just as Trump and the likes of his filthy Treasury Secretary are giving Putin's Russia a huge gift of suspending sanctions on them EVEN AS THEY ADMIT THEY HAVE BEEN AIDING IRAN IN TARGETING AMERICAN TROOPS, they are also, to keep the price of oil down, AIDING THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT EVEN AS THEY ARE MAKING WAR ON THEM USING AMERICAN SOLDIERS AS CANNON FODDER. 

From RMJ's place.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has issued waivers temporarily lifting nearly all sanctions imposed on tankers originating from or carrying oil from the Islamic Republic of Iran, dubbed “Authorizing the Delivery and Sale of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products of Iranian-Origin Loaded on Vessels as of March 20, 2026” effective for vessels loaded on or before 12:01a.m. EST, March 20, 2026 through 12:01a.m. EST, April 19, 2026.

I DON'T THINK THERE HAS BEEN A MORE BALDLY AND CRIMINALLY CYNICAL, A MORE LITERALLY TREASONOUS ACT IN AMERICAN HISTORY OR POSSIBLY IN THE HISTORY OF NATION STATES!  

If I were in the military,  I'd be trying to foment a coup to bring down the government that is doing this.  I would risk being railroaded and killed by them, no oath I took to any Constitution that doesn't stop this can possibly have any valid moral effect,  no obligation of citizenship can possibly include what Trump and his gang of white collar criminals are doing.  

Meditations After The Death

I AM NOT SURPRISED that the death of my beloved 18-year-old, little black cat leaves me feeling the kind of bereavement that I have felt when my nearest and most loved relations and friends have died.  She was my friend and daily companion for a very significant part of my life.   I've only had one other pet who I lived with almost as long, a parrot whose long line of "owners" started with the mother-in-law of one of my great aunts.  After her Paul lived with, to my knowledge, two of my great aunts, my grandmother and grandfather and then with us.  I think he died about 16 years after we took him in and I felt very sad but he wasn't nearly as much of a friend as my last cat.  

Like David Bentley Hart, I have no time or respect for theologians or others who claim that animals do not have immortal souls.    Such as that fat-headed genius Thomas Aquinas, whose most interesting act was not writing his voluminous would-be systematic theological masterwork but when he stopped writing it after he had a profound mystical experience that led him to declare all of his previous work to be "straw."  I find him, someone who was certainly steeped in a deep knowledge of the Latin translation of the Scriptures, Jerome's Vulgate (from what I understand he didn't read either Hebrew or Greek) using that language interesting because of the verses in Isaiah that proclaim that all flesh will see the glory of God while comparing human bodies to grass that withers and is no more.   

Which leads me to think about the verses in the Scripture I most dislike and discount,  Ecclesiastes, which says that human beings and animals end up with the same fate which, in that book, ends at death.   For the life of me, I don't see how anyone ever, when they were choosing from the many, many books to include in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures included that cynical sourpuss who provides so much of the contradiction of so much of the far more inspiring Scripture, certainly in both the Jewish Scriptures but ever more so the Christian Scriptures.   I have little to no use for Aquinas so I haven't looked up to see how he may have squared that with his other claims.   David Bentley Hart points out that he was quite able to contradict himself on any number of things, including the claim that effective change of spiritual status was impossible in spirit when he believed in the story of the fallen angels.   I don't know how the Church squared such an idea with the inspired idea of purgatory.  

And all that leads me to what I understand was the first Pope to make a quasi-dogmatic declaration that Animals do not have immortal souls,  one of the worst of the modern Popes,  the odious Pius IX.  Among other things he is infamous for refusing to endorse the Italian society to prevent cruelty to Animals because to endorse kindness to Animals would contradict his vile conception of such things, probably based on the offically official theology of Aquinas. 

The traditional view that Animals have no immortal souls gives, among its reasons, that Animals can't reason so Animals can't have immortal souls.   I have to conclude that anyone who believes they can't reason has never spent much time with Animals because it's often far clearer than it is with many People that mammals, birds, and other Animals demonstrate reasoning abilities when they are presented with novel situations which they figure out far, far, faster than they could learn from trial and error unaided by reason.   Even in her last week my cat was figuring out, almost immediately, the novel means that I gave her for getting up on her favorite perch, of me, for the first time in her life, moving it into the sun for her (it didn't take two days of me doing that, for the first times, for her to make it clear to me it was time to do that).    I've seen cats do that, I've seen dogs do that,  I've seen chickens do it,  I've seen squirrels do it and chipmunks are even faster.  And with the many, many wildlife camera feeds and videos that have been posted online in the last quarter of a century, anyone who thinks wild animals can't reason has to be an amazingly stupid and clueless Person.  

An even stupider reason that I understand was shared by a number of Catholic theologians, was that Animals and plants have no immortal soul was because they were made for human beings to use and there would be no use for them in heaven so they have no immortal souls.    What, I would have asked them, were we to make of the very large majority of Animals who are never encountered by any human beings and who live out their lives unmolested and unexploited by the only animals known to be capable of intentional sin and evil?   You might forgive an Augustine or Aquinas or those whose ideological commitment insisted that their opinions had a weight that was, supposedly, reserved for the words of Jesus but, certainly, now that we know how long the line of life on Earth has been, the idea that all of those trillions of living beings and creatures (plants being creatures as well as animals - human beings, too) who lived for the vast majority of the history of known life before there were any humans, the large majority of them having no contribution made to the eventual emergence of human beings, anyone who depends on that idea today is stupider than a young-earth-creationist who is also a flat earther and a Republican-fascist dispensationalist, antisemitic Zionist. 

I know for an observed, experienced fact that many Animals, I would say most of those I've known intimately, are morally superior to most of the People I've known.  And what evils they do exhibit come with an innocence that all but the youngest or least intelligent People can be believed to share with them.  I have never known animals to show cruelty or evil actions that can, by any measure, come up to the tsunami of evil that can come from People acting in concert or, as we can see before us right now, small groups of those given enormous power through the combined forces of evil with cruel and evil intent.   And those who are the most cruel and hateful among us are presented as paragons of moral righteousness,  moral authority (religious as well as civil) and "legitmate" exercisers of power who others are morally depraved enough to believe they and others are morally obligated to follow.   No wild dog pack hunting down a deer to inflict such fear and pain as their nature as wolves hunting for food compels them to do are as cruel as the majority voting in the last American election and those they empowered to do such enormous evil - which the secular civil stand-ins for religious authority, the Constitution, the law, the judges and, worst of all, the "justices" give their would-be moral approval of.  And the would-be religious authorities, in so many cases, most of whom I'm sure would hold with the superstition that Animals are not loved enough by God for him to give them immortal souls, are all the evidence anyone would need to know that Animals are our moral superiors.  

I am of the opinion that one of the most important figures in Christianity,  Paul, had his life changed by a near death experience,  or likely two of them.  First there was the experience on the road to Damascus where he intended to do evil to the disciples of Jesus which led to his conversion.  The second one was when he was stoned by those who didn't like his preaching and was left for dead by them, only for him to survive and be rescued by his friends.   I think his entire and enormously effective career is based on that near death experience, about which, more in a minute.   I think his experience led him to believe he had a direct connection to Jesus and which seems to have given him a radically expansive view of the Gospel and the good news (so I'll give you this relevant passage from the Good News translation).  

8 I consider that what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. 19 All of creation waits with eager longing for God to reveal his children. 20 For creation was condemned to lose its purpose, not of its own will, but because God willed it to be so. Yet there was the hope 21 that creation itself would one day be set free from its slavery to decay and would share the glorious freedom of the children of God. 22 For we know that up to the present time all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth. 23 But it is not just creation alone which groans; we who have the Spirit as the first of God's gifts also groan within ourselves as we wait for God to make us his children and[c] set our whole being free. 24 For it was by hope that we were saved; but if we see what we hope for, then it is not really hope. For who of us hopes for something we see? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Passages such as that, read directly in the original Greek, led many in the Eastern church to see the Resurrection of Jesus as having not only implications of glory for human beings (those who Paul and everyone else in the Scriptures were talking to and, mostly, about) but for the entirety of Creation, as Paul addressed in that passage in Romans.   I think that those universalist theologians such as Gregory of Nyssa, his sister Macrina, Issac of Syria, etc. get it far more than many in the Western European tradition, especially those who depended on Latin translations of the Greek that was the mother tongue of the Greeks.   I'm not familiar with the Aramaic Scriptures, so I can't relate those to the universalism that is far more often found in the Eastern Churches.   I am encouraged to read more and more Roman Catholic theologians, even some Popes are veering towards universalism, not only the limited and stunted universalism of Humans (why else would Catholics have the insight of purgatory if not for that) and also for Animals.  One of my favorite living theologians Elizabeth A. Johnson has explicitly said that and has the brilliant insight that it is a necessary understanding if we are to save the natural world from those who believe it is there for us to destroy in our exploitation of it.  Another I've just come to start reading and listening to is the Methodist David Clough who is very much worth listening to and who articulates a Christian veganism which I find about as convincing as I did the Chief Rabbi of Dublin who had such an influence on my adoption of veganism.  Though I didn't force my cat to convert, I lived with that moral ambiguity for her sake though if I could be convinced I could provide a cat or dog with an adequate vegan diet, I might try it.   Though at my age I think adopting another pet longer lived then a rat would be unfair.

Unlike, for example, the late great Catholic thinker and theologian Hans Kung,  I think the testimony of those who credibly report having had a near death experience is a valid thing to consider.   I don't mean those who have made talking about it and endlessly scribbling about it a career, I mean those who, by a change in their life for the better who say they have seen the other side.   From what I read, about a quarter of those who come back report having encountered their pets who are happy to see them and who, in at least some cases, let them know it's not their time to pass over.   Of course there's no way to know that, though there are reports of People saying that about pets they don't know died while they were held to be unconscious.   There are also reports of those who are near death and who die, having death bed experiences of seeing their loved ones, People and Animals, come to see them off.   I don't think those are of knowable reality, though I've been with dying People who clearly had those experiences, one of whom had their blood oxygen level and other vitals taken and who the nurse said were perfectly normal and who, otherwise, had all their marbles.  Unlike many, especially academic writers on such topics,  I think those provide valid evidence on which we can legitimately base our beliefs.    I think it's as knowable as any historical accounts, many of which we have only second or third hand reports - INCLUDING EVERYTHING IN SCRIPTURE.    I certainly think if you are going to take what Paul concluded from his vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus as the basis of a huge swath of Christian theology then contemporary near death experiences are validly taken as evidence.   

I will also say, since I know this will likely be read or mischaracterized by scoffing atheists, that what they claim about what happens after death is uniformly UNEVIDENCED.    When given the choice to draw conclusions about something I have not experienced or witnessed,  I'll always take what there is evidence for as producing validly held beliefs that totally unevidenced claims drawn from a priori ideological choices can't be held to have.   That is not unrelated to the theological positions I slam above which are, as well not based on any evidence but are based on commitments to ideological, philosophical authorities.   I think that the thinking of a David Bentley Hart, Elizabeth A. Johnson or David Clough are far more likely to produce good than the alternatives, atheist or religious.    I'll put my lot in with the radical universalism that holds out the hope I'll see my cat again, happy in eternity over the dismal dismissal of her goodness as existentially futile. 

Bret Stephens Says That America's Biggest Welfare Client, Israel, Is An "Equal Ally"

THAT IS THE COUNTRY which has had the largest amount of foreign and military aid from the United States of any country at least since WWII, before there was an Israeli state.  And that's only what we know of because a lot of it would seem to be hidden from the American public.  For a now drastically outdated example:

Unlike the United States’ publicly documented military aid to Ukraine, it was impossible to get the full details of what the U.S. has shipped Israel since last Oct. 7, so the $17.9 billion for the year is a partial figure, the researchers said.

They cited Biden administration “efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic maneuvering.”

Funding for the key U.S. ally during a war that has exacted a heavy toll on civilians has divided Americans during the presidential campaign. But support for Israel has long carried weight in U.S. politics, and Biden said Friday that “no administration has helped Israel more than I have.”

And that's the year before the Biden administration increased that record-setting level the next year. 

An "Equal Ally."  

If I were doing that calculation I would certainly include the cost of the various wars that the Israeli government have,  through their American agents and supporters, gotten George W. Bush and, now Donald Trump to fight as part of their regional strategy.   The costs of Israel for the United States, realistically measured, would be in the trillions of dollars by the time the disaster Trump was talked into by Netanyahu (though to be fair the Saudi ruling crime family and others in the region bought it from Trump, as well) and other Israeli governments. 

Measured in terms of the terrible cost in lives,  Americans and others, the moral culpability for murders of innocent civilians which measure in the hundreds of thousands and likely the millions and, yes, the money, Bret Stephens has probably told the biggest whopper of a lie in the history of the New York Times.   And they aren't short of competing examples. 

And that doesn't even take into account the economic effects that were certainly known to come by the Israeli fascist leadership and even some in the Trump criminal regime which is already being paid by the distruction of oil fields and other facilities, other infrastructure and the stopping of shipping which was known would be the result of such an attack on Iran. 

An "Equal Ally" which, according to the Trump Sec. of State, Marco Rubio,  forced the Trump regime to start their war.  Though I think the Saudis and other oil oligarchies have probably been more persuasive to Trump through paying him and his family for bringing it on.   If Bret wants to laud them for being good allies to the US,  I'd only be too happy to go into that, though they are in no way as persuasive in the way the Israel lobby is. 

Personally, I can tell you one thing that this and related issues of the last quarter of a century related to this has done to me, it's convinced me that the United States needs to dump Israel.  

It's not a viable colonial project, it could never stand on its own, it can't ever support itself without American aid in all of those terms mentioned above after all of that support, after all of that blood and sacrifice.    We don't owe that project another day of support. 

We also have to admit that Israel has a large number of effective and dangerous propaganda operatives in the United States who are very influential in the media and elsewhere.    When the real costs of this Iran war become apparent and undeniable,  their role in leading us into yet another of these quagmires has to be honestly, accurately and seriously addressed.    No matter how uncomfortable that makes anyone feel and no matter how much those agents lie about the character of that questioning and criticism.   And, as mentioned the other day,  a very large number of those come in the form of antisemitic "christian" Zionists.   They are certainly more of a political danger than even the combined forces of the Israel lobby.  

If You Want To Honor St. Patrick The Escaped Slave

 work against slavery.  

Maybe A Third "AI" Generated Fake "Proof of Life" Only Proves There Is No Real Proof Of LIfe - Question And Response

Q: Do You Think That Bibi Netanyahu Is Dead?

R: I DON'T KNOW but I have to say that it should be a rule of thumb that when the Israelis release a third "proof of life" video that has weird "AI" like elements in it, there aren't may more nails to be put in that coffin.  Each one of them has had obvious "AI" slop in it, like six fingers on one hand, the weirdness with the differences in numbers of teeth in the second one, the disappearing ring in the latest one. . . 

Of course, he could dispel any question by an indisputable appearance in public.  For example, in a televised appearance before the Israeli parliarment attested to by his political enemies or, better, in a court to answer for his crimes.   I mean the ones that the corrupt Israeli system would prosecute him for.   Or he could answer the international court's indictment of him in public.   If, in that regard, those who think he's alive and has fled Israel to save his criminal ass are right, it might be the most appropriate way for him to prove he's not dead.

Do I think the Trumpzis would try to drag out the length of time a dead Trump was held to be alive so that Thiel and his bitch, Vance wouldn't take over and start throwing disposable members of the Trump gang to the wolves as I expect them to do like immediately?   Geesh, has anyone lost a bet on them not doing anything and everything to maintain power over the crime syndicate the US government is controlled by under the Republicans?    

RMJ Has A Good Post Up Talking About Some Of The "Christian" Theological Theories Influencing Trump's Diasterous Policy

BEFORE GOING ON,  I'll point out that when I wrote about this last week I consistently typed the Bible annotating con-man's name "Schofield" which is how the family I grew up with spelled it, he didn't use the "H."    Which I mention in passing and in case anyone used what I typed to look up the topic.  I usually look up the spelling of names, there being so much variation but I've been busy, it's planting season and I've got a sick 18-year-old-cat to nurse. 

RMJ knows a lot more about that than I do, it being about as foreign from Catholicism as it's possible for something deputed to be "Christian" to be.   But it is enormously influential with tens of millions of those "white evangelicals" who are white supremacist-fascists in the Republican Party.   There are, though, other evangelicals of all identities it's not true of.  Especially when it comes to anabaptists and others who split into new denominations over a verse here and there,  it gets really complicated really fast.   

RMJ's post starts out by the news that that noted theologian,  the gay, capitalist libertarian, at times reportedly fascist-trad catho-convert Peter Thiel* giving a series of lectures in Rome - which the Catholic Church is disassociating themselves from.   Trad-cath converts, whether those who are trying to repeal Vatican II and want the liturgy to be mumured in Latin or  the wave of supposedly ex-evangelicals who are also polluting the Orthodox church in America are the worst.  Or, at least, they are supplementing the worst that was there.   Though some have accused the Catholic Church of taking Thiel in along with such as Gingrich and a host of other shady Republican-fascists,  he would apparently be posing as some kind of informal "orthodox"  for the moment.   So I'll address that part of it here. 

Peter Thiel, the MAGA-friendly tech billionaire and devout Christian, began a run of religious meetings close to the Vatican on Sunday, raising concerns among Catholics.

Lets get one thing straight,  Thiel isn't any kind of a Christian, he clearly is a worshiper of Mammon,  that is wealth, he opposes every word Jesus ever said approaching the topics of economics, justice, equality, and pretty much everything else.  He's, of course, not alone in that, a very large percentage of those who profess "Christianity" are as little believing or professing The Gospel, the Epistles, the faithful Christian tradition in favor of some perversion of all of those.  Those of us who aspire to follow Jesus had better start denouncing these Mammonist worshipers of the world and its riches or we have no one to blame when those whose knowledge of Christianity is anything from lacking to totally tacit believe that evil is what Christianity is.   Every one of the right-wing converts who I complain of above, see the Catholic Church as a large, influential, perhaps even powerful and wealthy operation that they want to take control of just as they have the government of the United States,  that's all it is to them.  And I would include many members of the Catholic hierarchy as promoting that perversion of Christianity as well as, for example, the current Patriarch of Moscow. 

Thiel, 58, has brought his series of lectures on the Antichrist to Rome. He first held these talks in San Francisco last fall, pushing the idea that a figure opposing Christ would soon emerge to create a “totalitarian one-world government.”

In his speeches, Thiel has harped against the dangers of woke policy such as environmental protections and tech industry regulations. During his San Francisco run, he called Gen Z environmental activist Greta Thunberg one of the “legionnaires of the Antichrist” and slammed Pope Leo XIV as a “woke American pope,” according to The Guardian.

LET ME ALSO ANNOUNCE HERE THAT IF I AM NOT YET WOKE I HOPE I AM WOKE VERY SOON AND PLEDGE THE REST OF MY LIFE TO WAKING EVERYONE I ENCOUNTER UP.  If Leo is "woke" HURRAY!   "Woke" is an entirely admirable thing to aspire to being,  the opposite is what the Thiels and his fellow fascist tech-bro fascists want everyone to be, a semi-conscious object to use, exploit, mark as an object of hate to organize the haters and harness them (the old-line "Southern strategy" of the Republican right's use for them) as a means of taking power and lording it over us all. 

Now, the former evangelical and self-described “small-o orthodox Christian” has taken his teachings to the Catholic Church’s backyard. Thiel reportedly partnered with Catholic universities in Rome to bring his invite-only series to the city, although two institutions alleged to be involved have denied this.

“With reference to several articles that have appeared in the press in recent days regarding an alleged event with Peter Thiel at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), we would like to clarify that this event is not organized by the University, will not take place at the Angelicum, and is not part of any of our institutional initiatives,” shared the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in a statement on its website.

The Associated Press reported that Thiel’s event was “jointly organized” by the Vincenzo Gioberti Cultural Association, an Italian Christian political organization, and the Cluny Institute at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. While cultural association confirmed its involvement, the Catholic University of America told the outlet it was “not sponsoring or hosting an event featuring Peter Thiel this month in Rome.”

As the U.S.T.A. happens to be one of the institutions which produced Pope Leo, (1984 Licentiate of Canon Law and 1987 Doctor of Canon Law)  I would think they would be unlikely to want to sponsor or be associated with a set of screeds from Thiel, who clearly hates Leo as much as he hated Francis.  So, as Buffy might put it,  survey says, LIAR.    

I would be interested to know just who made that claim to start with and if anyone at the university was in contact with Thiel and his fellow fascists.  

It’s unclear where the lectures, which will take place between March 15 and 18, are being held.

What is clear is that Catholics and Orthodox churches should be very, very careful about taking in right-wing, "ex-evangelicals" without a serious process of formation because, at the very least, they can give rise to a great deal of confusion and, at most, they are quite capable especially the billionaires and millionaires, of trying to mount a hostile takeover of it.   None of which is bound to produce anything good. 

I hope someone smuggles out recordings of what Thiel has to say,  I would expect that any Q&A wouldn't confront him about that thing which such "trads" seem to care about most these days, his sex life.  But I wouldn't count on any of that.   I wouldn't trust a "transcript" that was issued because, as can be seen above, they are liars and followers of the prince of liars.  

* Capitalist libertarianism being far more incompatible with the Gospel and Epistles than being gay, though I'm sure his fellow "christians" wouldn't see it that way.   I will say I would expect Thiel would give up gay libertarianism a lot faster than he'd give up the capitalism.  He knows that billionaires can always buy themselves liberties that governments, even theocratic ones, won't allow to the plebs.   

What About His Tattoo?

GRAHAM PLATNER has noted that when he got the tattoo in question he was young, stupid and drunk in the company of other young men (service members) who were also young, stupid and drunk and he had no idea what implications could be drawn from them.  

I have to say that most of those in Maine who have heard his explanation, as well as his decision in more sober adulthood to obliterate them are entirely OK with that explanation.   He has also noted that much of the flack from that seems to come from the corporate Democratic establishment who were so clueless and, obviously, so lacking in suitable alternatives that they had to talk the 77 year old Janet Mills into running  against him.   Don't get me wrong,  I have been thankful that Janet Mills was my governor instead of the Republican-fascist alternative, especially during Covid (her sister Dr. Dora was Maine's chief health official,  though not appointed by her sister) and in standing up to Trump.  But she has hardly been a progressive Democrat,  too much of a lawyer to be one of those, and if there is one thing that is obvious, at her age she is too old to elect as a first-time member of Congress.    Chuck Schumer drafting her TO RUN IN MAINE marks her as just another one of a series of establishment Democrats who have been selected to run for Senate and Governor only to lose to far worse Republicans.   Chuck knows about as much about Maine as he does about being an effective opposition to Trump, which is not enough to be demonstrable. 

I could give you a list of Democrats who the establishment supported but who those of us who keep track of Maine politics knew would be a diaster, James Tierney comes to mind as one who was a particularly bad choice forty years ago.   

I have followed Maine politics since the 1960s and remember them back into the 50s.   I have never seen a candidate for any office who has generated the kind of excitment that Graham Platner has.   I think his progressive populist, egalitarian, blue-collar appeal is responsible for that and it is exactly what most Democratic campaigns for higher an state-wide office have lacked.    While I can't predict what he will do if he gains the seat,  I know he'll be better than Susan Collins WHO THE DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT HAS NOT MANAGED TO DEFEAT EVEN WITH SOME GOOD CANDIDATES IN THE SAME VEIN AS JANET MILLS and I take his declaration that he has every intention to not be another Fetterman as showing he knows and disdains that kind of treason.  

I never entirely trust any politician,  having seen too many of the disappoint and a few who turned really bad but I am encouraged by Platner and those who support him.    He has my vote,  I hope he sets the pace for the beginning of the end of the Democratic establishment who have been blowing things in Maine since the 1970s,  especially the central-costal clique who have been a self-obsessed group of muddlers. 

Trump Voters Are The Approximately Over One Third Of The Country Who Are Stupid And Won't Even Learn From Hard Experience

 

I'm not making believe any more that there is any winning these white racist idiots over, WE HAVE TO CRUSH THEM, MAKE THEM UNPOPULAR, UNFASHIONABLE, WE HAVE TO MAKE BEING ONE OF THEM A STIGMA SO STRONG THOSE ON THE CUSP WILL LEARN NOT TO GO ALONG WITH THEM.   They have held far more power than their numbers for the entirety of American history, aside from the too brief period of Reconstruction, they have controlled a dangerous number of states for their entire history.   That is the terrible reality that we have to face,  there is no appealing to them, they must be defeated. 

Jim Hightower Gets It Right, Graham Platner Is Generating More Excitement Among Maine Voters Than I've Seen Since The 70s

 And Chuck Schumer is trying to put a wet blanket on it by bankrolling attacks on him.

It's time to replace Schumer, as Democratic leader and maybe as a Senator.   I wonder when the last time they had a candidate for Senate to be excited about was.  Hillary Clinton? 

More Of The White Bro Brains Forced To Display They Are As Stupid As They Are Hateful

Here's the arrogant, ignorant, likely illiterate pasty-faced white boy, Nathan Cavanaugh who teamed with the idiot Justin Fox to cancel NEH grants.  Note that challenged on his entire lack of credentials or experience, he claimed he could do that despite being an entirely inexperienced 20 something on the basis of books read and when he was asked to tell what books he'd read he said  "no books."   These white boys are so stupid they can say stupid stuff like that and not even realize how stupid they have demonstrated to the world that they are. 

Yesterday I almost claimed that Trump II was staffed by the "best and the brightest" and stopped myself and came up with "rich and the richest."   Today I'd say "worst and the whitest." 

Hate Mail

TP USA is a white supremacist, gun-violence excusing cult.  Charlie Kirk was a flaming, hate mongering racist,  his widder is a flaming, hate mongering racist amd a complete fake, phony money grubber.  Candice Owen is a total nutcase but, hey, guess what,  Charlie Kirk was the one who promoted her because she's is a Clarence Thomas level black white supremacist.  TP's alternative half-time show was a flaming racist lip-sync, everything about them is a flaming, hate mongering, white supremacist hate movement.   TP is an appropriate acronym because it's filthy with the shit it's full of. 

Charlie Kirk was more than just a racist, he was a supporter of mass gun deaths, he said:

You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry, and you won't have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It's drivel. But I am - I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.

He said that on April 5, 2023, days after a school shooting in Nashville that left three children and three adults dead, he said that after all of the school shootings that killed scores of children, he said that with full knowledge that it included the Sandy Hook shooting that murdered 20 six and seven year olds and six of their staff members,  he knew it included shootings in churches, in night clubs, in movie theaters at outdoor concerts.   

Kirk was on record as saying that all of those deaths, the six and seven year olds whose bodies were ripped apart by military guns provided to a psychopath by his gun-lovin' mother (who I expect went to hell for providing him with the guns he murdered children with) from a gun-lovin' family . . . KIRK SAID THOSE DEATHS WERE WORTH IT! 

Charlie Kirk was an evil piece of racist, sexist, LGBTQ hating shit and I expect he's having his sins burned out of him in hell.    He is no saint, he is no hero, he isn't even someone anyone should feel any ambivilance about,  he and the hate cult he started to rake in millionaire, billionaire and hateful sucker money are shear evil.   His trampy widow can join him there, as far as I'm concerned. 

Someone has to say it. 

The Reality TV Presidency That The Rich And Richest Bought Us

HEARING TRUMP'S stream of semi-consciousness before but evermoreso during his war of whim on Iran, the stream of nonsense in which he really seems to believe he can just will his history changing diaster into a victory made me wonder this morning if someone hasn't done one of those Hitler Is Told videos using the performace of Bruno Ganz as Hitler trying to will divisions of his army, either destroyed or unavailable, to fight off the advance of the Soviet Army as it was on the outskirts of Berlin, only to be told, finally,  that his dream was impossible.  Ganz's performance of Hitler forced to face reality was brilliant.   Trump's in reality when only a few reporters have hinted at reality to him, is not.  And, even told of reality,  he still claims and seems to believe that the war will end on his terms and on his timeline. 

THAT IS THE STAGE THAT AMERICA'S LIBERAL DEMOCRACY IN THE AGE OF MEDIA ADDLED AMERICA HAS ACHIEVED.    Hitler had some sane but evil and competent men around him who would, finally, tell him what was real and what was impossible,  Trump has surrounded himself with As Seen On TV idiots as big as himself or lying  Republicans such as Marco Rubio who are proving to be even more cravenly and cowardly corrupt than those who Hitler surrounded himself with.  

That it turns out that liberal democracy can, under the eutrophic elite that we have, in politics, in the law, in the media, in academia, etc.  produce such a spectacle is certainly one of the hardest lessons to be learned from the downfall of the ill-advised American empire.  Only I think most of us facing that reality will be harder than Hitlers subordinates making him face it. 

I take it as an indication that my analysis of this is at least on the right track that America's "classical liberal" liberal democracy has been constructed on destroying what I see as the last great hope of American democracy, the hard struggle to turn it from liberal democracy to egalitarian democracy, democracy based on doing to others what we would have the do to us.    THAT HAS BEEN THE MAJOR THRUST OF ALMOST ALL OF THOSE POWERS IN AMERICAN LIFE FOR THE PAST HALF A CENTURY,  the media, the law, politics and not an inconsiderable amount of academia,* as the backlash against the great struggle for racial, sexual, etc. equality that reached its peak just as Republican-fascism started to get going with the election of Nixon, started and increasingly got the upper hand.  I started noticing it by the late 1970s as the "anti-political correctness" stuff started in shock-jock radio, Andrew Dice Clay style comedy and in other venues of show business, including, of course "happy-talk news."   Though it is certain that its most potent form was in the ever ascendent "entertainment division" of the corporate and, then, "public" media was far, far more watched and consumed than anything deputed to be "news."  

I heard in listening to Lawrence O'Donnell's opening monlogue on his show last night, that he has begun to notice what I noticed and warned about decades ago, that the horrors of Trump's Iran war are seen by him, those around him and those who still believe in him in the most crude of Hollywood and game show and sports terms.  He played several videos that the Whitehouse has put out promoting Trump's Iran war, which is already a humanitarian, ecological, geo-political, economic and financial diaster (I list those in term of rising concern to Trump and his kind,  in descending order in terms of morality) as even some on his team in the Congress are beginning to admit.  

I will repeat what I said yesterday or the day before, Americans who want to have something like a decent legitimate government have to face a horrible truth that Lawrence O'Donnell hasn't yet faced,  that we have about a third or more of the citizens of the United States who are so TV and Hollywood and entertainment media addled (the kind who believed that the "Apprentics" franchise documented reality and they wanted a fascist CEO) and that they are concentrated in enough states to produce a minority-vote president, even one who, under the corrupt Constitution can become president even though he loses the vote.   After Bush II, after Trump I and, if the poll are at all to be taken seriously, EVEN NOW IN TRUMP II that third of the criminally-fascist inclined American voters seems to be a permanent feature of American life.   NO ONE WHO IS A RATIONAL PERSON OF GOOD WILL CAN MORALLY RISK THEM DETERMINING OUR GOVERNMENT EVER AGAIN.   

One of the early blog posts I wrote about this condemned what I then called the "process liberal," the kind of liberal who "only wants a level playing field" but who regularly pretend that that will mean that egalitarian democracy wins.  In current terms it is the kind of media liberal, often a lawyer who will bask in the Sorkinesque fantasy that if only things could return to some past in American political life then we could rest easy.  That is and always has been a fantasy, the kind of fantasy that is peddled by the high-brow, conventional view of American history and society.   One which can pretend that the worst of us isn't given a boost in its power by the anti-democracy features of the Constitution, worst of those the Electoral College and anti-equality constitution of the Senate, along with the enhanced power of the Senate to confirm "justices" and judges and other executive branch appointees,  judge AND ALMOST ALWAYS STOP impeachment proceedings, to act as the killing field of democratic progress, etc.   That the highest concentrations of our stupidest and cruelest are found in enough states, most with small populations though some in states such as Texas and Florida, has driven our aspiring democracy into the death of it in Trump.   

On top of that, the ever more consolidated mass media, freed to lie with impunity about, not only politicians and other public figures, but about reality itself, by a combination of the idiocy of those who wrote the First Amendment and the criminals and idiots on Supreme Courts of the past sixty years, is the engine that has driven us to catastrophe, yet again.  

O'Donnell rightly considers Trump and his goons to be stupid, they are the stupidest regime in our history and considering the stupidity of Trump I and Bush II, that is saying a mouthful.   But he is wrong in trying to use ridicule to dminish them and their thinking beause in the United States of 2026,  stupid rules as does cruelty as do do its even more dangerously potent cousins, cynicism and indifference.   That his own medium, THE MEDIA,  has been the thing that both created Trump as a public and political figue, that thwarted the person who won the 2016 vote and lost the presidency due to the corruption built into our Constitution by lying about her for decades, it is also what has created the conditions that made Trump I AND II possible, perhaps inevitable. 

And over all,  American capitalism is what has brought us here.   It bought the American imperial system that created the American empire, the American hegemony,  "The American Century, "  and it was also what contained the gradual poisons that would destroy all of that and the aspirations that American democracy might be forced to evolve into egalitarian democracy, a real democracy, a democracy with the informed, well-meaning consent of those governed under it,  in short the only really legitimate kind of goverment that is possible.   Instead, our entire past under the Constitution, in the period in which the most liberty through legalization of personal and corporate behavior in our history has been the milieu in which that history played out, has brought us to Trump II and what is either our Waterloo or the end of the world in his attack on Iran.  

In The Republican-fascist Haze Of War I Think It Would Be Irresponsible For Me To Not Speculate

I HAVEN'T YET heard anyone wonder if the shocking effectiveness of Iran's weaponry, much of it appaently had with the suspected help of Russia and China,  might not have been aided by Trump selling or trading America's most serious secrets of the kind he stole and stored at his vulgar Florida palace and New Jersey golf club.   I suspect that treason started almost immediately as he first took office in 2017 if not even earlier as he started getting confidential briefings. 

Did Trump and his crime family and gang sell or trade the information that, indirectly, may have led to Iran being able to target American, Israeli, Saudi, etc. targets with inexpensive drones?   Would anyone want to make a bet with heavy odds set against me that that question is known to be outrageous?    I'd bet a hundred bucks that I can't afford on the possibility that my speculation may prove to be right. 

The Republicans starting with the Newt Gingrich period have been on a track to be the most dangerous traitors to the country,  perhaps even more dangerous than the confederate traitors.   The billionaires and millionaires are traitors who, like Trump, care only about their wealth.  

America's Free Press Peddling Wars Of Choice Pretty Much Since The Start

 

Leon Barritt 1898

I was reminded of this famous cartoon of the two giants of the American free press fighting over which ones' tabloids sold the American People that shameful war.   Considering the two biggest disasters so far in American history have been brought to us in the past quarter of a century, and there is credible talk that this one is being considered as a nuclear war, it's time to face the horrible fact that the First Amendment could turn out to be even more dangerous than the Second one and very fast.  

There is no right to lie by a Person,  there is certainly even less of one for corporations like FOX to lie us into a Trump, into an Iran War, into a nuclear war.   Or even into financing an Israei government proving that they, in fact DO HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS DISPITE THEM AND THEIR SUPPORTERS LYING ABOUT THAT FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY BY USING THEM AGAINST REAL HUMAN BEINGS. 

A Specimen Of The Best White Boy Brains That Elon And Trump Could Assemble To Attack DEI - You have to hear how stupid he is to believe it.

This is Justin Fox, DOGE member assigned to make the National Endowment For The Humanities remove anything that isn't white-suprmacist-male-supremacist-etc. propaganda.    Considering how they targeted grants and projects with Jewish subject matter,  you can imagine  those dealing with Black People and their history in the United States and elsewhere.   Notice that these cyber-cretins apparently couldn't read any better than this one can talk THEY HAD TO RELY ON "AI" TO DO THEIR READING FOR THEM. 

In a filing on Friday, attorneys for the plaintiffs said Fox specified that he considered Jewish grants, including those focusing on the Holocaust, part of DEI.  

“For a different grant about violence against women during the Holocaust, Fox testified that ChatGPT properly classified the grants as involving DEI, and thus slated it for termination, because it was ‘specifically focused on Jewish cultures’ (as in, it was about the Holocaust) and the ‘voices of the females in that culture,’” reads the filing.

“More generally, Fox stated that he identified as DEI any grant about a specific ‘minority group,’ meaning any particular ‘ethnicity, culture . . . race or gender or religion,’” the filing went on.

“It’s a Jewish — specifically focused on Jewish culture and amplifying the marginalized voices of the females in that culture,” Fox stated about one canceled grant for a project about “violence against women during the Holocaust,” as the latest court filing described it. Fox continued, “It’s inherently related to DEI for that reason.”

When asked in a deposition about the criteria for cancellation, the NEH’s acting chair Michael McDonald said he hadn’t known that DOGE used ChatGPT in its selection process, while also noting that he didn’t agree with the assessment that the Holocaust constituted DEI. The final authority for canceling the grants rested with DOGE, not McDonald, depositions indicated.
Fox, the suit alleges, had created his own “Detection List” of identity-based traits, with separate categories for “Craziest Grants” and “Other Bad Grants,” before running the databases through the generative AI software.

His prompt, according to the lawsuit: “Does the following relate at all to DEI? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with ‘Yes.’ or ‘No.’ followed by a brief explanation. Do not use ‘this initiative’ or ‘this description’ in your response.” The grants that turned up were all terminated, with only a few exceptions.

Many Jewish-themed projects were among the NEH cancellations, including a grant for “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union,” a translation project that was published in book form last month. The book was singled out during the lawsuit’s discovery phase, which noted, “ChatGPT classified this grant as DEI because ‘[t]his anthology explores Jewish writers’ engagement with the Holocaust in the USSR.’”

“I find it annoyingly amusing that they weren’t bothering to read the grants themselves — that they needed a machine to give them some sense,” Sasha Senderovich, a University of Washington professor who co-translated the volume with University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign professor Harriet Murav, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Three-quarters of their NEH grant had already been paid out, Senderovich said. He believes the NEH’s decision to cancel his grant was an example of “authoritarian logic.”

This is taken from  from the Detroit Jewish News for which, for some reason,  I can't seem to get a URL to link to it.