You Don't Have To Be Catholic To Like A Juicy Excommunication Story

MICHAEL SEAN WINTERS, with whom I sometimes strongly disagree about American politics but seldom on Catholic politics has an interesting and informative article about the so called "Society of Saint Pius X."   Winters really knows his church history so it's some good background into how reactionary and fascistic that "trad-catholic" entity is,  Jew hating and neo-medieval in all its dangerous absurdity. 

Since I've been struck at how many non-Catholics seem to find this saga fascinating,  I'm going to post a bit from his very informative piece. 

None of this is unclear. There are no asterisks noting exceptions to the rule, no "sometimes" or "in certain cases" or "usually." The rejection of this teaching evidences the myopia of the group: They and they alone know the truth. Ironically, the Society of St. Pius X also evidences an acute case of cafeteria Catholicism.

These teachings of Vatican I only confirmed what had been long standing practice in the church: No bishop could be lawfully consecrated without an apostolic mandate from the pope. This was one of the principal issues upon which the Emperor Napoleon broke with Pope Pius VII, so it is not like Rome hasn't been to this Gallican party before. Still, the roots of the current schism lie not with the Bonapartists of French history, but with the Royalists, those who opposed everything in republican France and demanded a return to the status quo ante 1789.

These Royalists opposed the 1801 Concordat between the French empire and the Holy See. They rejected Pope Leo XIII's call for a "Ralliement" in the 1890s, that is, Leo's call to rally to the Third Republic and for French people to abandon devotion to monarchy. And, in the 1920s, the Royalists resisted Pope Pius XI's condemnation of the Action Française, a proto-fascist group urging the restoration of the monarchy. This is the ideological lineage of the Society of St. Pius X.

A key part of each rejection was the tolerance of Jews by the French Republic. Antisemitism has been one of the defining characteristics of the Society of St. Pius X since its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre rejected the Second Vatican Council's historic decree condemning antisemitism, Nostra Aetate.

Lefebvre and his followers also rejected Vatican II's decree on religious liberty, Dignitatis Humanae. Although the church understands the source of religious freedom differently from the way liberalism does, the Society of St. Pius X rejects both understandings. They are the first post-liberals, unwilling or unable to see that respect for the conscience rights of all is the mark of a humane, decent culture and, importantly, a precursor of genuine evangelization.

More than the old rite is at stake. It appears the Vatican has finally lost patience with these antisemitic, post-liberal, cafeteria and now former Catholics. The decree from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith was called an "explanatory note," but it should be given a formal title: Ave atque Vale. Hail and Farewell.

That last one is exactly in line with my own view of it.  The Vatican, bishops, cardinals, popes, have been a lot more lenient with them than they have other groups.    Benedict XVI positively bent backwards to try to lure them back when he overturned the excommunication that that arch-conservative,   JPII had issued against them, only to have the Holocaust denial of a couple of their, then, illicit bishops become a public issue.   Leo is clearly trying to convince some of the trad-cath laity that has been associated with the "SSPX" back by being more lenient with the Latin mass cult than Francis was, we will see to what extent that works.  Maybe it will with some of them.  But I have to wonder if their motives wasn't that they liked the Latin.*

Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan has a piece that contrasts the treatment of the "SSPX" to the Roman Catholic Women Priests movement by the vatican, during reactionary or "liberal" papacies.

Instead, the Vatican has responded almost exclusively through canonical sanctions. Women who attempt to receive ordination, together with those who attempt to ordain them, incur automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See under Canon 1379 §3.³ Unlike the Vatican’s decades-long engagement with the SSPX, no comparable process of theological dialogue, canonical negotiation, or pastoral reconciliation has been extended to RCWP.

This contrast raises an important ecclesiological question. Why has the institutional Church devoted decades to dialogue with a movement that rejects significant teachings of the Second Vatican Council while declining even a single official dialogue with women who seek to serve the Church through ordained ministry? RCWP does not seek separation from the Catholic Church. Rather, it seeks recognition that the Holy Spirit continues to call women to priestly ministry and that the gifts of women belong at the heart of the Church’s sacramental life.

These points are very good ones.  I know which of the two is in the line of Vatican II and which one isn't, which one is based on the Gospel of Jesus and which is based on late medieval and 19th century neo-medieval garbage.   And so must Pope Leo.  I don't know how long JPII's definitive though in no way "infallible" declaration that the question of Women's ordination was closed will be allowed to stop his successors from admitting that the question is in now way closed,  that kind of reversal in the Church can take centuries or it can take one conclave.   But as the ever decreasing numbers of supposedly celebate male priests dwindles - and that rate is increasing steadily - the Catholic Church is going to have to do something or it will find that, as happened in my town, with a church closing they lose a lot more People than they gain in the paltry increase of conversions that they're always touting.   That has not come close to the rate of conversions at the time of Vatican II.   They keep telling the faithful to pray to the Holy Spirit for vocations while ignoring the Women who say they are being called by the Holy Spirit and Men who either want to be ordained or those who are ordained finding that they are also called to be married.   That can't keep up.  Apparently the Holy Spirit has been answering all along and the answer to what the Vatican wants is "You can't have what you want but you can have what you don't like."   In short, "Don't be a bunch of selfish pricks." 

*  I'm unclear if, in their use of the 1962 liturgy,  if they will want to overturn such reforms of previous conservatives.  Pius XII was the one who said they could have a deacon read the Gospel in the vernacular as the priest whispered it in Latin.  Or, indeed, the extensive reforms to the liturgy that their hero and namesake, Pius X,  that definitive anti-modernist, made to the liturgy that PXII AND GOOD POPE JOHN XXIII built on.   The "trad-caths" who ask me things like what was wrong with worshiping like St. Francis did have no idea of the real and complex history of the Catholic liturgy which changed over and over and over again.   Most of them have no idea that using Latin was, itself, a reform in the early centuries because all of the earliest liturgy in Rome was in Greek.  It is one of the ironies that the author of the most popular of the several  veey long used Eucharistic Prayers was by the Greek speaking Anti-Pope, St. Hyppolytus, who holds the distinction of being the only anti-pope who is also considered a saint.   It is certain that he originally wrote it in Greek, not Latin.   

The first schism in Rome occurred early in the third century, after Pope Callistus I translated the liturgy from Greek into vulgar Latin — the informal, popular version of the language at the time — so that the common people could better understand the celebration of the Eucharist. Hippolytus, the first antipope and author of Eucharistic Prayer II, led a revolt to keep the Greek liturgy. The dispute became so bitter and violent that pagan soldiers arrested both men and sent them to the tin mines of Sardinia.

I've had to tell a number of devotees of the Latin Mass that the Kyrie is not in Latin but in Greek, a hold over from the earliest liturgy of the Western church. 

The Fifth Of July 2026 - We Need A New Birth Of REAL DEMOCRACY, Not Libertarian "Liberty"

HERE IS MY REACTION to seeing the millions of mourners in the  footage from Meidas Touch of the assassinated leader of Iran's public funeral and hearing them talk about how freaked out Trump is at seeing how beloved he was when Trump was told by Netanyahu that he was about to fall because he was so hated. 

You can compare the apparent organization of them with the bizarre chaos of Trumpzi white supremacist idiots as the Secret Service was trying to herd them to safety at Trump's Nazi rally last night. 

My comment at Youtube was: 

The greatest tragedy of America's terrible record in the Middle East,  Latin America, Africa,  Southeast Asia etc   Is that it discredits democracy.   That's a product of America's democracy being an anti-egalitarian democracy, one which, being a product of late 18th century white aristocrats and slave owners favors rich, white men.

I'll add, one that's made worse by the Supreme Court overturning every reform ever won against the Constitution by decades of sacrifice of work, of imprisonment, of blood, BY THE FRICKIN' CIVIL WAR! Only to have those aristocratic thugs in black robes nullify the laws and even CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS by fiat. 

I hope the modern, egalitarian democracies can salvage the reputation of democracy.  The conduct of the Israeli-American war against Iran showed, over and over again that it was the Iranian dictatorship that was targeted and restrained in their bombing, lessening or trying to minimize civilian casualties and destroying a larger percentage of MILITARY assets, going after civilian infrastructure only after Israel and the US destroyed their civilian infrastructure.   

It absolutely infuriates  me and disgusts me that American democracy is so degenerated that a violent, theocratic dictatorship displayed less immorality and depravity than two so-called democracies.  One of those my own discredited democracy of a government. 

THAT IS A RESULT OF THE RACISM OF BOTH THE REPUBLICAN-FASCIST REGIME HERE AND THE ZIONIST REGIME IN ISRAEL.   I would hope that that fact is emphasized as well as the fact that racism is entirely compatible with an 18th century style "liberal democracy" such as was set up in the slavery including US Constitution, the post-Civil War Jim crow American apartheid and the new apartheid John (Roberts) crow regime we have had imposed on us by the Supreme Court.   You can have an apartheid democracy which produces that,  I DOUBT YOU CAN HAVE A TRULY EGALITARIAN DEMOCRACY, A TRUE DEMOCRACY AND HAVE THAT RESULT.   For a start a true democracy would have kept the clean elections laws passed after Watergate instead of using the First Amendment to produce the ever more corrupt presidencies and congresses we have had under that First Amendment regime.  

Why Are You Asking Me About Paul Pelosi's Driving Violation?

I DON'T RECALL ANY OF YOU asking me to comment on the hammer attack made on him BY YOUR GUY in his home,  you remember, the one that you guys thought was hilarious and then lied about what happened and his sexuality.

I think after this incident of him driving into a car while parking and then, stupidly, driving off and a previous one (driving under the influence neither of which resulted in injuries), it's high time that Paul Pelosi's driving license gets cancelled and he not be allowed to drive anymore.   That's not really surprising.   He's 86, I've had relatives reaching that age and beyond who drove without any accident or incidents and I've had relatives who voluntarily gave up driving at about that age.   One of my mother's cousins was forced to give up her license at about that age even though she never had an accident or incident.   

What more is there to it?  Lots and lots and lots of younger People, many of them Republican-fascists get away with vehicular homicide or injuring other People and they don't get their licence pulled.   I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of MAGAts would be OK with them intentionally killing People of Color or those protesting your fascism.  You'd turn the murderer into a hero, start a go-fund-me and a campaign to get Trump to pardon them, even if they weren't tried on federal crimes.  You're that morally degenerate and stupid. 

There, I addressed it.  Does that make you happy? 

The goddamned system, the goddamned law is only good in so far as it produces good for The People on an equal basis.

Note:  Someone said I didn't know what I was talking about in regard to the goddamned Supreme Court.  I remembered calling the two contradictory rulings just issued, the one that gave Trump the power to fire anyone at any of the statutorily "independent" agencies EXCEPT THE FEDERAL RESERVE because the Reupublican-fascist "justices" knew that if Trump packed the Fed with his criminal cronies,  IT MIGHT END UP COSTING ROBERTS ET AL THEIR INVESTMENT MONEY.   

So I looked up the post I made that prediction in and, reading what I wrote,  I think it's as good as I can do in the conditions of 2026,  July 4.   

 

Wednesday, February 4, 2026

The Roberts Court Is The Most Corrupt Of The Many Corrupt Courts In Our History

JOHN ROBERTS STEERED THE SUPREME COURT into the infamous and disastrous 6-3,  all Republican-fascist decision that made Donald Trump the out of control despot he has been for the past year as internal memos that were leaked last year proved.   HE had the greatest role in overturning lower court rulings that didn't favor Trump and his criminality and, especially through the infamous Roberts Court shadow docket decision making by allowing corrupt lower court rulings to stand (as I recall those favored Trump in well over 80% of the cases) and in paving the way for the insane, certainly anti-"originalist" anti-"textualist"  Trump v USA decision that made the United States president into a monarch who was above the law.    The expected resistance of the Roberts Court to his attempted takeover of the Federal Reserve won't be them breaking that record,  it will just mean that the "justices" are afraid of what such a financial catastrophe will mean for what they value most THEIR OWN WEALTH.  

Roberts certainly rules over the most overtly corrupt court in modern history,  though those which sat during the period of legal slavery are the ones which may arguably endanger his Court's record as most corrupt of all time.   The scandals of Thomas, Alito and, lest anyone forget,  the Roberts combined family,  in quid-pro-quo corruption of taking gifts and payments from those with business before their Court, the scandalous cover-up of Brett Kavanaugh's sex crimes and scandals in concert with the Trump I DoJ and Senate Judiciary Committee under Grassley,  the draft decision leak in the Dobbs ruling - WHICH IT IS CERTAIN CAME FROM ONE OF THE REPUBLICANS ON THE COURT, MOST LIKELY FROM ALITO'S CAMP and many another of the known corruptions are certainly part of that.

The refusal of Roberts and his colleagues to submit themselves to any mandatory ethics rules such as the other branches are supposed to be subject to is certainly a huge, self-allowed AND OBVIOUS corruption.   As Senator Whitehouse has noted, among the judges in the federal system,  there are mandatory and binding ethics rules EXCEPT IN THE HIGHEST AND MOST POWERFUL COURT.    That alone marks it as the most corrupt part of the federal government.  

Now we find out that Roberts has demanded that all employees of the Court sign legally binding non-disclosure agreements in a attempt to make sure that the leaks and revelations that have revealed the Roberts Court as the most corrupt in modern times don't continue so the unelected and anti-democratic "justices" can carry on their grift, graft and corruptions without the public seeing what they're up to as they continue to sell their decisions to billionaires, millionaires and the members of their party,  destroying American democracy.  

If, by some miraculous intervention, Democrats have the power to reign in the Court, EXPOSE ITS PRESENT AND PAST CORRUPTIONS and reform the goddamned corrupt cesspool they have to end the Roberts Court corrupt, Republican-fascist majority AND REFORM IT TO MAKE IT ANSWERABLE TO ANTI-CORRUPTION LAWS.   They have to start by nullifying the Marbury power grab in which the Court gave itself the power to nullify duly adopted federal laws.  It was by that power that  Courts from the 1970s on have guaranteed the corruption of billionaire and millionaire money in our politics NOT LEAST IN THE STAFFING OF THE SUPREME COURT ITSELF.   Those past "justices" of an alleged librealish bent who enabled that money corruption by defining it a "speech" and such entities as the ACLU prove that lawyers, judges and "justices" are either too stupid or corrupt to understand that what they did led us here.   That is apart from the "justices" such as Rehnquist and Powell, Thomas, Roberts and Alito whose program was, exactly to lead us to this state of anti-democratic corruption.   Nina Totenberg probably wouldn't tell you that but I just did. 

I have come to believe that it is the lawyers among the lawmakers who are the weak link in Democratic politics because that profession, trained in the art of lying and deception, rewarded for being the most effective liars and deceivers and being, by and large, damned cowards and ass-coverers probably will get the fantods about any proposal to clean up the stinking cesspool and protecting democracy.   
I'd go so far as to think that having lawyers, with only a few exceptions, as leaders in the House or Senate or as president is probably a mistake.   Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and even Joe Biden (who I would put in a class far higher than the other two) were all lawyers.   I think Biden's biggest mistake in domestic policy was his appointment of Merrick Garland - one of the most disastrously cowardly of lawyers of significance to American history.   I want a hard-eyed, realistic and angry, reforming cynic about "the law" and, especially "The Court" as president and leading the Democrats in Congress.   We have yet another corrupt and cynical president who has staffed the entire government with other corrupt cynics, certainly the lawyers among them as well as shit like Patel.  Every Republican president since Nixon would count as that.   Democrats going all Ken Burns and Aaron Sorkin about such things is chicken shit.   

I admired Michelle Obama a lot more than her husband but I disagree with her.  It's not a question of when,  THEY WILL GO LOW, THAT IS A GUARANTEE,  AND LOWER THAN YOU THINK POSSIBLE.   SO WE HAVE TO BURY THEM AND DESTROY THEM AND WE HAVE TO DESTROY THE SYSTEM THAT NOT ONLY ALLOWED THEM TO GAIN POWER IT GREASED THE WAY FOR IT.    To hell with that "going high" STUFF.  Merrick Garland would,  I'm sure, sell his term as Attorney General as "going high."  It might get him a pat on his back, by himself or by other lawyers,  it got us Trump II and all the horrors of AND THE MOST CORRUPT DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE IN OUR HISTORY.    

The goddamned system, the goddamned law is only good in so far as it produces good for The People on an equal basis.   Measured in those terms,  ours is a complete flop.  It is the long established custom of the academic, legal and cultural gatekeepers to lie that the little sparks of light that occasionally appear in the mire are proof that "the system works."  No, that's just a transitory gleam on the surface of the shit that it is under which all hard won progress against it is turned back by the Court, by the media.  EVERYTHING THAT TRUMP II DOES, EVERYTHING THAT TRUMP I DID THAT WAS NOT STOPPED, WHETHER BY THE COURTS OR BY THE CONGRESS IS THE DEFINITION OF WHAT IS ALLOWED UNDER THE CONSTITUTION, THE LAW AND THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.   Everything else is just civics textbook bullshit.    If ours worked it's not the occasional spark that would be held up like a penlight in interstellar space,  it would be so blazing light that you'd have to look for the crap to study that as an anomaly. 

Thanks For The Laugh

I WAS TEMPED to post the "photo" of the four living first ladies, showing that Jill Biden was an educator and the other educational accomplishments of the first four comparing them to . . . .  But that photo of Melania pole dancing is an "AI" fake and I won't post one that isn't an obvious, over the top "AI" fake like that "AI" Trump in curlers and vinyl nails.   Why they went with that image of AI when they could have put in one from her confirmed porn career, I don't know.   I'd probably have posted it if it wasn't an "AI" image or was one that was obviously a satirical fake.   

I did get a chuckle and a laugh out of it, though. 

I'll go with the great Landon Reid reproducing her makeup look.

This passage is what that "AI" Melania image reminded me of.

So many MAGA conservatives say Melania Trump is the classiest first lady we've ever had, which is very funny because, you know, if another first lady did softcore lesbian porn, they would not call her classy. I just want to say I respect the hustle. But can you imagine conservatives if this was Michelle Obama oodling and canoodling with another woman with their hoo-has and tatas sticking out? They would lose their minds. But for whatever reason, the Family First Morality police don't see this as a problem. It's barely an inconvenience. With the chrome bronzer, we're going to hit the outsides of our face. Melania Trump really knows what makes her look good, and that is to be soft and glowy, like in this picture. I just want to reiterate that I believe sex work is real work. Get your bag, Melania, just like you do every time you make a public appearance with Donald.  The Trump campaign pays Melania $250,000.
 
[sings to the tune of a Sinatra song that will now go through my head all day tomorrow, the sacrifices I do for you.] 
 
Love and grifting. Love and grifting 

goes together like a . . . 
 
 Melania Trump is one of those people that just proves how absolutely stupid racism is. 

Melania is what I like to call gentleman's agreement white. Melania is white because she's from Europe, but we all know if this complexion came from another country, she'd be considered an ethnic and worthy of being discriminated against. I do love her pinky nude lips. . . . 

I will not apologize for posting this.  

Maybe I'll feature a lot of LGBTQ+ content this month, since I didn't post much of it in June.  Every month should be pride month, for all members of all minority groups that are targeted by the facists. 

I'm Not Going To Apologize For Posting This

 

Congressman Jared Huffman Tells How Trump Hijacked America's 250th And Turned It Into A Corrupt Money Grab And Political Operation

 

Just Remembered Something I Wanted To Say

GENERALLY THE MUSICIANS in the military bands in the US are very good if not excellent performers.   

I can't see the video of them giving what are certainly command performances at Trump's 250 fiasco IN FULL DRESS UNIFORM without knowing what performing under those hellish conditions must be like.   Torture, torture that should be banned by international law. 

They have my fullest sympathy and I hope they realize how badly they are being used by King Trump and Pete Kegbreath. 

The Constitution Has No Fixed Meaning, That Being Whatever The Whim Of A Supreme Court Majority Says It Does - An Answer

I would not marry a lawyer man, he tells too many lies. 

Jean Ritchie: A Farmers Wife*

IF YOU WANT TO MAKE MY BLOOD BOIL,  you can use that stupidest of all widely babbled formulations in the American language,  "That's unconstitutional!" because the document is just words on paper.   There isn't any reality to it except WHAT IS PERMITTED TO HAPPEN IN ANY PLACE IN WHICH THAT BUNDLE OF PAPER IS HELD TO HAVE JURISDICTION.  What is permitted to happen with actual impunity for the one doing it.   And far beyond that as the history of American military power has shown,  it can mean whatever is allowed to happen by Americans, especially those with great power and great wealth, without there being any legal consequences for them.   

That has always been the case but it has especially been the case since the earliest years when the Supreme Court usurped the power to overturn duly elected federal laws in the Marbury decision.   The objection to me pointing out that that denies that it was, perhaps, the earliest but certainly most decisive overturning of the actual form of government set up in the pieces of paper, John Adams' formulation of "balanced powers," was permitted to take root by the other two branches acquiescing to that power grab only for it to find its first and poisonous fruit in the Dred Scott decision in which, to extend slavery IN FACT to all free territories and states.  Dred Scott is beyond doubt the model of the John Roberts Court in its re-imposition of American apartheid.  

The infamous Taney Court nullified the Missouri Compromise, which was a duly enacted federal law in which the Congress and president banned slavery in certain territories.   The Taney Court weren't content to do just that, though, they said it was legal for slave holders to bring slaves into any state IN WHICH THEY WOULD REMAIN SLAVES.   I have no doubt that if they had been given the chance,  they would have nullified, formally and officially all state bans on slavery in that way.    Something which I have no confidence in the proposition that the Republican-fascist majority on the Roberts Court OR ONE THAT WOULD BE PACKED WITH EVEN BOLDER PARTISAN REPUBLICAN FASCISTS THEY CLEARLY HOPE TO CEMENT INTO THE FUTURE, would not complete the work of Taney and his corrupt majority in that case.  

They have reimposed much of the worst of Jim Crow and American apartheid in order to cement into place a permanent minority Republican-fascist regime, overturned huge swaths of the Civil War Amendments and turned any Republican-fascist president into an impune monarch with, in fact, more power than George III had when the founders fomented their revolution.   The Roberts Majority, including that most depraved of degenerates, Clarence Thomas,  has done exactly that. 

Whatever curbs that Roberts and one or two of his Republican-fascist colleagues may attempt to put on the monster they intentionally created - after the unitary executive theory they imbibed from fascist law profs at the Ivy League level schools - will not do a goddamned thing to stop that.   It's impossible, though they are stupid enough to believe they are clever enough to be able to, FROM THEIR LAW OFFICES AND THEIR BENCH, be able to do that.  They ARE that stupid. 

The only thing that would nullify the Roberts Court's Republican-partisan, oligarchy, bought and paid for corruption of the Constitution would be for them to nullify it which won't happen under a Republican-fascist majority (and I would be surprised if a Democratic majority would, entirely or effectively enough) or a blue-wave of tsunami strength overturning those corruptions through very quickly passed Constitutional amendments.  

BUT WITHOUT ONE THAT OVERTURNS THE MARBURY POWER GRAB ANY FUTURE SUPREME COURT COULD OVERTURN OR "INTERPRET" THOSE CORRECTIVE AMENDMENTS TO GET US RIGHT BACK TO THE STATUS QUO 2026 or 1897 or 1857 or 1845.   

You also didn't like me pointing out that the problem of that is embedded into the very structure of government set up in the Constitution.   One of the more interesting pieces of evidence that that has always been a danger to us is given by the son of John Adams,  when he was facing the very slave power on whose behalf the Dred Scott decision was rendered and which,  in a de facto fashion, the Roberts Court is in the early stages of reviving.  And not just within the confines of the United States and its territories, the grabbing of Texas which was the motive in what he said, was the US Constitution as practiced by the government outside of the borders of the United States as certainly as Trump is extending the reality of that in Venezuela and Iran. 

The Constitution is a menstruous rag, and the Union is sinking into a military monarchy to be rent asunder like the Empire of Alexander or the kingdoms of Ephraim and Judah

John Quincy Adams:  Diary February 19, 1845

If you think that was overwrought,  it is exactly what happened fifteen years later, after he was dead.   It is exactly what I regretfully hope will be the effect if drastic action isn't taken to cut the Court down to the size of a supreme court under the modern democracies which had, among other things, the very bad example of the U.S. Constitution over scores of decades to inform them on how bad it could go.   The Dred Scott decision, that first significant use of the Marbury power was about the strongest of reasons that the traitor states seceded, the Civil War was fought and, the Congress foolishly not overturning the Marbury power grab, their great Civil War Amendment repairs to American aspirations of democracy were at first gradually and then with accelerating power,  nullified by the Supreme Court.  Only they called that "interpretation" and "judicial review." 

I'm rather struck that you, you champion of the quaint notion of the fixed reality of the U.S. Constitution are opposed to the one thing that could give it that meaning,  getting rid of the status quo in which such corrupt lawyers as now comprise a majority of "justices"  have, through that Marbury power, made a mockery of it in the way that John Quincy Adams noted was always a potential threat under the Constitution.   Trump v USA should have been the last straw that broke that asses back but it hasn't so durable is the phony,  As Seen Singing And Dancing On Broadway bullshit lies about the entire thing.  

Maybe my biggest point is that when you hear the MS-Now or Democratic lawyer-congress lawyers claim that something that the courts and, especially and ultimately the goddamned Supreme Court OR WHATEVER CORRUPT OR MERELY COWARDLY DEPARTMENT OF "JUSTICE" has allowed is what the Constitution is "unconstitutional,"  that is absurd.

WHAT ACTION IS ALLOWED BY THE ACTUAL FACT OF THE LEGAL PROCESS, NO MATTER HOW CLEARLY IN CONTRADICTION OF THE LETTER OF THE GODDAMNED CONSTITUTION IT IS, IS WHAT THE CONSTITUTION IS IN REALITY.   The rest is just lawyers lying, which they are trained to do and which they hold to be the included in the ethics of their profession.  

And, as can be seen in the Roberts Court, Roberts gang's lying pretense of "textualism" or Amy Coney Barrett's lying  originalism THEY WILL BE THE ONES THAT MAKE THE BIGGEST LIE EVER OUT OF THE THING.   

Centennial was right, the thing is fatally flawed but even he didn't realize how true that the Marshall Court would make that, and that was only the original corruption of it which has been allowed to stand for centuries, now. 

* Listen to the question and Jean Ritchie's husband, George Pickow's answer after she sings the song.  

He wasn't a lawyer, in case you're wondering.  He was a lefty photographer and film maker. 

 Major Jason Watson is an American hero. 

Suppose a government could be formed and supported on such principles, would it answer the great purposes of civil society; if the administrators of every government are actuated by views of private interest and ambition, how is the welfare and happiness of the community to be the result of such jarring adverse interests?

I THINK IT WAS maybe as long ago as 45 years or more ago, that I heard someone on the radio, certainly on an NPR program, talking about a video they made of a woman looking into the camera talking, leaving pauses, that you could show someone with advanced dementia.   As I recall, they said you could show them the video over and over again and they'd have a conversation with the video without ever recalling they've seen it before.   I think, among other things, it was meant to give care givers some respite from the terrible work of keeping an eye on a seriously demented person all the time.  

Watching the footage of Trump talking to the "AI" Teddy Roosevelt and him seeming to think he was talking to the real PERSON instead of a machine image,  it reminded me of that.  I think he really believed he was talking to Teddy, he sounded like that's what he thought later on.  Maybe that's what comes from him watching TV like Teevee Mike.    

That we could have Trump in his florid, corrupt, perverted, criminal dementia STILL IN THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENCY on July 2, 2026 is absolute proof that our Constitution has failed, totally and that the very structure of government that has created this situation is a clear and present danger to all of us and the world.    The "balanced powers" of John Adams was addressed so relevantly in "Centennial 1."

I have been anxiously expecting that some enlightened patriot would, ere this, have taken up the pen to expose the futility, and counteract the baneful tendency of such principles. Mr. Adams's sine qua non of a good government is three balancing powers, whose repelling qualities are to produce an equilibrium of interests, and thereby promote the happiness of the whole community. He asserts that the administrators of every government, will ever be actuated by views of private interest and ambition, to the prejudice of the public good; that therefore the only effectual method to secure the rights of the people and promote their welfare, is to create an opposition of interests between the members of two distinct bodies, in the exercise of the powers of government, and balanced by those of a third. This hypothesis supposes human wisdom competent to the task of instituting three co-equal orders in government, and a corresponding weight in the community to enable them respectively to exercise their several parts, and whose views and interests should be so distinct as to prevent a coalition of any two of them for the destruction of the third. Mr. Adams, although he has traced the constitution of every form of government that ever existed, as far as history affords materials, has not been able to adduce a single instance of such a government; he indeed says that the British constitution is such in theory, but this is rather a confirmation that his principles are chimerical and not to be reduced to practice. If such an organization of power were practicable, how long would it continue? not a day--for there is so great a disparity in the talents, wisdom and industry of mankind, that the scale would presently preponderate to one or the other body, and with every accession of power the means of further increase would be greatly extended. The state of society in England is much more favorable to such a scheme of government than that of America. There they have a powerful hereditary nobility, and real distinctions of rank and interests; but even there, for want of that perfect equality of power and distinction of interests, in the three orders of government, they exist but in name; the only operative and efficient check, upon the conduct of administration, is the sense of the people at large.

Suppose a government could be formed and supported on such principles, would it answer the great purposes of civil society; if the administrators of every government are actuated by views of private interest and ambition, how is the welfare and happiness of the community to be the result of such jarring adverse interests?

That last sentence certainly addresses the situation of the United States in 2026, it has for most of the periods of most of the history of the country to some extent, BUT IT NEVER HAS SO MUCH AS IT DOES TODAY.   And that isn't only relevant to the most corrupt presidency in American history which we are living through today, it is certainly as relevant for the New Taney Supreme Court and the Congress.   All under the corrupt Republican Party of 2026.   Of course, if you read me much at all you will know I have believed for decades that the most florid of that corruption has always resided in the UN-ELECTED Supreme Court,  having noted that was certainly true from the beginning of the term of the idolized John Marshall who repeatedly and consistently voted in his own financial interest as a holder of hundreds of human beings in slavery,  the man who imposed the first and most serious of unbalancings of John Adams' imaginary balance in the Marbury power grab of 1803.  

While I would not endorse everything in the collected Anti-Federalist papers, not even everything "Centennial" says there is a lot in them that shows that the government we are about to hold up as if it were the coming of the Millennial order, was more correctly predicted to have serious problems which that very idolizing prevents us from addressing.  That failure to fix the thing isn't done just for that reason, though.  THE VERY CULT OF THE CONSTITUTION AND THE FETISH OF THE FOUNDERS IS IN THE FINANCIAL AND POWER INTERESTS OF THE WEALTHY OR THOSE WOULD NEVER HAVE PERSISTED AND GROWN INTO A STATE RELIGION AS THEY HAVE.   

He goes on from that passage to say this:

Therefore, as different orders in government will not produce the good of the whole, we must recur to other principles. I believe it will be found that the form of government, which holds those entrusted with power, in the greatest responsibility to their constituents, the best calculated for freemen. A republican, or free government, can only exist where the body of the people are virtuous, and where property is pretty equally divided[;] in such a government the people are the sovereign and their sense or opinion is the criterion of every public measure; for when this ceases to be the case, the nature of the government is changed, and an aristocracy, monarchy or despotism will rise on its ruin. The highest responsibility is to be attained, in a simple structure of government, for the great body of the people never steadily attend to the operations of government, and for want of due information are liable to be imposed on--If you complicate the plan by various orders, the people will be perplexed and divided in their sentiments about the source of abuses or misconduct, some will impute it to the senate, others to the house of representatives, and so on, that the interposition of the people may be rendered imperfect or perhaps wholly abortive. But if, imitating the constitution of Pennsylvania, you vest all the legislative power in one body of men (separating the executive and judicial) elected for a short period, and necessarily excluded by rotation from permanency, and guarded from precipitancy and surprise by delays imposed on its proceedings, you will create the most perfect responsibility for then, whenever the people feel a grievance they cannot mistake the authors, and will apply the remedy with certainty and effect, discarding them at the next election. This tie of responsibility will obviate all the dangers apprehended from a single legislature, and will the best secure the rights of the people.

I hold with most of that, on the basis of being a close student of the corruption of American politics, especially under the prevention of reform by the Supreme Court beginning in 1976, the very year of the Buycentennial, in Buckley v Valeo, and watching it destroy the bipartisan attempt to correct the flagrant corruption of Nixon and his campaign - the thing that J. D. Vance is trying to rehabilitate into a virtue a half a century later. 

The Court is clearly and plainly and, for decades, been at the service of the oligarchs, as the corrupt Louis Powell planned it to be in his memo to the wealthy and oligarchic  in his infamous memo that laid out the plan to capture the Court and so the entire government.   That scheme has worked beyond that corrupt white supremacist tobacco industry lawyer better than I can think he'd have believed it would. 

I'll leave you with this paragraph from Centennial. 

The wealthy and ambitious, who in every community think they have a right to lord it over their fellow creatures, have availed themselves, very successfully, of this favorable disposition; for the people thus unsettled in their sentiments, have been prepared to accede to any extreme of government; all the distresses and difficulties they experience, proceeding from various causes, have been ascribed to the impotency of the present Confederation, and thence they have been led to expect full relief from the adoption of the proposed system of government; and in the other event, immediate ruin and annihilation as a nation. These characters flatter themselves that they have lulled all distrust and jealousy of their new plan, by gaining the concurrence of the two men in whom America has the highest confidence, and now triumphantly exult in the completion of their long meditated schemes of power and aggrandizement. I would be very far from insinuating that the two illustrious personages alluded to, have not the welfare of their country at heart; but that the unsuspecting goodness and zeal of the one, has been imposed on, in a subject of which he must be necessarily inexperienced, from his other arduous engagements; and that the weakness and indecision attendant on old age, has been practiced on in the other.

I think it's pretty clear the first personage was George Washington, "a subject of which he must be necessarily inexperienced, from his other arduous engagements"  and the second was clearly Benjamin Franklin, "the weakness and indecision attendant on old age" whose original opposition to a two-house legislative, he would have had only a House of Representatives, led to what I hold is the second most corrupt feature of our governmental structure, the anti-democratically constituted Senate with the greatly greater powers given it than the more democratically constituted House.    

If Democrats do not win the mid-term election decisively AND ACT IN WAYS TO THWART THE ROBERTS COURT AND THE TRUMP REGIME,  we'd better start thinking about these things because the Republic that Franklin was asked about will have been lost, as Centennial seems to have foreseen. 

I'm Looking Forward To

some used copies of Molly Crabapple's new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund, to start showing up in the used bookstores because I can't afford to buy new books.   I've been reading about the Labour Bund since I started reading the lefty media in the 1960s and have found very appealing,  apart from the Marxism and anti-religion of some of its figures.   I've never been sold on Marxism, though I think as a critical thinker he was among the finest of the 19th century.   As I've pointed out before, apparently Marx wasn't that big on Marxism himself, he famously declared,  "Je ne suis pas marxiste." 

Until I can find that used copy, here's an interview of Ms. Crabapple (love that name) by Owen Jones. 

Considering how the Republican-fascists are trying to revive 1920s racist anti-immigrant laws,  notice what she says about the consequences of the infamous, racist, Darwinist 1924 law that stopped Jewish emigration to the United States just as that was becoming vitally important.   Her presentation of how the right wingers and fascists grasped onto racism as a means of them getting and increasing their power is as timely as ever. 

She says that Haymarket has a collection of Bundist writing coming out next year, another one I'll be looking for in the used book stores.  

As I've also pointed out, there are survivals of the Jewish Bund movement, such as The Workers Circle.  They say that their classes and promotion of Yiddish is the largest in the world.   And they still are fighting the good fight for equality and the rights of workers. 

About Erika's Neues Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft Get Together

I HEARD THE MULTI-MILLIONAIRESS griting as grief, widder, Erika Kirk and an number of other, lesser professional women trad gal grifters who have successfully turned fascism into a business telling the WHITE women of TP 

to "have more babies than you can afford."  The message was, LITERALLY, "Kinder, Küche, Kirche."  I expect any day now they'll start awarding Ehrenkreuz der Trumpchen Mutter medals to the champion breeders among them.   I wonder how many of them, like the breeding stock of the Trad Mormons will be on welfare, though that'll be different, it always is when its right wing white Volk. 

How many babies can someone with Erika's wealth afford and how many does she have?   When will someone bring that up with her?   

She'd better get breeding, she's already fallen way, way behind what she's advocating for the working class or poorer suckers among the TP breeders.  Maybe by the time they've sobered up and realized that their hubby has dumped them for someone twenty years younger who doesn't have the kind of figure that having that many kids gave them,  they'll realize they were had, big time.   

I heard a woman online recently,  I can't remember who, who pointed out all these trad wife podcasters were young women who hadn't had their husbands to do them what Trump and so many other men they want to rule them have,  cheated on them with some little chippie and dumped them with the kids.  Not yet, that is. 

Seeing The Mock Up Of Trump's Fascist Arch Reminded Me That Albert Speer Designed One Too

 

I'm hoping Trump's comes to the same end, though if it is built any Democratic candidate for the presidency could probably win votes if they vow to tear down the Trumpzi kitsch that Trump puts up.   They could put up the junk in a display warning what happens when People elect a neo-fascist toddler with the taste of a 6-year-old who's watched too many Disney princess movies or brought his daughter on too many dates to watch Evita again.  

"whatever happened to just being against racism?"

I HOLD THAT REESE WATERS does what Stephen Colbert is held to have done,  far better and far more extensively and far funnier.  Maybe part of that is, unlike a short monologue where Colbert couldn't develop the ideas behind the comedy,  due to the format of the shows he did,  Reese Waters has his own video production where he does that for a half hour or more every day most weeks.   

This one is beyond just brilliant, showing the hypocrisy of the media, big tech, the government, etc.  on the topics of racism and discrimination.  And Reese Waters goes places I doubt Colbert would dare to go or where, really, just about any white comedian would go - and I don't mean in a white shock-jock comedian way.  He's the real thing, not the George Carlin, Lenny Bruce kind of phony.   Maybe Colbert will do something similar, now that he's rich and has free time on his hands.   Though I doubt even he will do it better than this. 

Here's how he frames the issue:

And just in case you want to update on what happened, a 19-year-old college student quietly turns down a job interview, stupidly telling the company it's because he doesn't want to work for a Jew. Within two days, the billionaire founder of one of the world's most powerful corporations, Palantir, demands that the company release the students name to the world. The company instantly complies. National media trumpet the incident and spread the student's name and face all over the place. A senior Trump DOJ official repeatedly urges the public to notify him if that student is ever hired anywhere in the future, promising to use his office to keep the student permanently unemployable.

I say, "Hold up, wait a minute. Something ain't right." Adults with large influential platforms, pundits, media types, even elected officials right here on X, routinely say things as bad as and often much worse than pretty much every other group you can think of without facing a single consequence, let alone a completely unhinged, coordinated campaign of very powerful people to ruin their lives forever. 

Now, whatever happened to just being against racism?

I will note that Palantir is in the business of destroying everyone's privacy in as many ways as possible and turning the information they dig up about you - and who knows how much of that  ABOUT YOU is not in any way true - and selling it to corporations and governments and who knows who else.  THAT ALONE SHOULD BRING THIS RIGHT ON HOME TO EVERYONE OF ANY IDENTITY.   THIEL IS DOING NOW WHAT IBM WAS DOING IN GERMANY  IN THE 1930s.  And today they can collect a lot more than census information about you.  How's that for irony, given the spark that set this off?   And, notice, they're also recapitulating what the Nazis did in trying to do things like make sure this kid never works again in his life. 

It's so full of good points that it's impossible to do justice to it without editing the entire transcript but here's a bit of it. 

And while we're on the topic of of discrimination, because this struck me as this struck me as amazing, right, as I'm preparing for this and I'm talk and I'm looking into Elon Musk and uh the class action lawsuits that have been brought against uh Tesla. Oh, wait. Trump was sued for discriminating against black folk now, wasn't he?

And here we go again.

So, we are going to the mattresses to make sure this kid never sees the light of day again for not wanting to work for a Jew.  But it wasn't disqualifying for the president to discriminate against black folk.

Reese rejected the original statement by the kid early in the video but then he went on to dissect the reaction of the billionaires, the millionaires,  FOX Lies and other media, the Trump regime to that one statement which was made by a 19-year-old turning down a job,  the guy he turned down exposing him,  a billionaire demanding that he be doxxed and then the national news and the Trump regime vowing to destroy the kid's life for that one thing.   

You have to wonder why the guy he turned down didn't try to change his mind instead of just posting what he said, then bowing to a request by Palantir that he identify the kid and destroy his life.   The kid concluded that they'd confirmed his prejudice by doing that.   Which one of those two do you think is what has to be done to defeat prejudice?  

IF THE GOAL ISN'T TO CONVERT PEOPLE TO GIVE UP THEIR PREJUDICES THEN THIS SHTICK IS WORSE THAN USELESS, IT IS GRATUITOUS IN THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY.  

Here's more from Mr. Waters to show the total hypocrisy of the whole thing, from FOX Lies down.

This is egregious work. This is nasty, egregious work. If you want to get real nasty, Darren Bey finished his senior role within the State Department in May. Not pushed out, not fired. He was allowed to rock. And who is this, you might ask? 

Flashback.  Former Trump speech writer who was fired for attending a conference with white nationalists appointed to top State Department role. There you see him right there on the left next to Kash Patel.

Darren Bey, a former Donald Trump speech writer who was fired in 2018 after CNN revealed he spoke at a conference attending by white nationalists, has been elevated to a top job at the State Department. Multiple sources familiar with the move told CNN,

"According to Fox News and all the people weighing in on X, this kid should never work again for saying he doesn't want to work for a Jew. He should never work again."

But the guy with ties to white nationalists got a job at the State Department.

Reese Waters goes extensively into the online and other publicly available expression of blantant, vicious racism POSTED UNDER BEY'S OWN NAME AND IDENTITY but which has cost him not so much as an attack at FOX Lies or other influential media or has even cost him work with the Trump regime. 

You really owe it to yourself to listen to the entire video.  It is surpassingly good. 

If I were in a position to do it,  I'd nominate Reese Waters for every journalism award there is for this one video, it is one of the most brilliant dissections of how racism against Black People, against other People of Color is still, in 2026 ENTIRELY ACCEPTABLE EVERYWHERE IN POLITE SOCIETY, IN POLITICS, IN JOURNALISM, ETC.  John Roberts' lie that the election of Barack Obama proved America was a post-racist society was a lie told so he could reimpose Jim Crow and American apartheid.   But that prejudice against one group, generally perceived to be white, is the one and only one that is really held to be beyond the pale.  That is unless it's a Republican-fascist who says it.   Trump has said worse things about Jews than what got this dumb kid in so much hot water. 

In The Face Of The "Free Press" Ratfucking The Mid-terms For The Republican-Fascists With Those Scary Socialists

DEMOCRATS SHOULD POINT OUT, at every possible turn that now it's the Democratic Socialists who want:

YOU TO OWN YOUR HOME, 

YOU TO KEEP YOUR HOME,

YOU TO KEEP YOUR FARM,

YOU TO KEEP YOUR RETIREMENT SAVINGS,

YOU TO KEEP YOUR MONEY,

YOU TO EDUCATE YOUR CHILDREN,

YOU TO KEEP OWNERSHIP OF YOUR BODY,

YOU TO KEEP YOUR HEALTH AS LONG AS POSSIBLE, ETC.

AND IT'S THE REPUBLICAN-FASCISTS WHO ARE TAKING ALL OF THOSE AWAY FROM YOU. 

They should say that since that's socialism NOW, that's what voters really want. 

That's how scary those Democratic Socialists really are, that they want to do that FOR YOU and it's the Republicans who are DOING THE OPPOSITE TO YOU RIGHT NOW.   The very things we were always told was a consequence of socialism, losing your property, turns out to be a consequence of capitalism American 2026 style. 

“I do not regret that vote,” Susan Collins On Her Decisive Vote To Put Brett "Racial profiling is AOK" Kavanaugh on the Court

A QUICK REMINDER OF WHY having Susan Collins in the Senate is a really, really bad thing.   In one of the rare instances when she deigns to answer a question, she said that she didn't regret her vote to put Brett Kavanaugh on the court.   Most will recall that she claimed she believed him* when he said he wouldn't vote to overturn Roe v Wade,  but, and the irony in this case just spills over the top, he also wrote the ruling that made racial profiling by ICE entirely Constitutional.   

Here is someone that Markwayne Mullin's goons picked up as she was walking to mass a while back.

I'll bet you a hundred bucks I don't have that some ICESTAPO or their allies saw her and hated her for being a nun while Black and that was the entire basis of her arrest.  I'll bet you ten times that hundred I don't have that was it. 

That is Sr. Leticia Ugboaja who is a registered nurse at South Texas Health System and worked previously for 10 years as a certified nursing assistant at DHR Health in Edinburg, so the ICESTAPO arrested not only a NUN WEARING A FULL HABIT but ALSO A NURSE working to comfort and aid the sick.   The nun is part of the Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy and volunteered as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion at Our Lady of Sorrows Church, according to Brenda Riojas, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Brownsville.

And to top it off, she is also an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion at Our Lady of Sorrows Church.  For those who don't know, an Extraordiary Minister of Communion, is a person who brings communion to those who can't get to mass due to illness, disability or other problems.   THE ICESTAPO MIGHT HAVE ARRESTED HER AS SHE WAS CARRYING COMMUNION WHILE FULFILLING ONE OF THE MATTHEWS 25 OBLIGATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN.  

Imagine if she hadn't had the outrage of many, many religious leaders who got her released.  She'd be in some hell hole of a Trump concentration camp or worse. 

And all because of the guy Susan Collins doesn't regret putting on the Supreme Court. 

I first saw this at RMJ's.  

* No, she didn't believe him.  I've watched Susan Collins from before the fraud ever got elected to Congress, her playing dumb act is as much a part of her act as her patented As Seen On Sunday Morning TV "concern."  She's always playing as if she got played when she knew exactly what she was doing, supporting Republican-fascism. 

"Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow." As Dangerous A Use Of "AI" Generated Imagery As I've Seen

IN THE AFTERNOON HEAT YESTERDAY, as it was too hot to work in the garden and I needed to rest my eyes, I clicked on an image of the great philosopher who warned against totalitarian propaganda and its potency, Hannah Arendt.   Only it wasn't a film clip of her, it was an "AI" generated image of her and an "AI" generated voice that could have been mistaken for her speaking lines that, I suspect, were not her exact words.   And when it is someone as precise as she was, exactness is a major issue.   The sentiments of the video weren't particularly objectionable, though in the "AI" phenomenon as it means to most Americans nearly 100% of the time, the generation of fake images, videos, voices and information, it most certainly could have presented information that was 100% the opposite of what she did say or any percentage between that number and 0.   And Americans and certainly most other People in the English speaking world or somewhat understanding who could understand what was presented, almost the same percentage would have believed whatever that "AI" video presented because, like most, they've never read anything by her or bother themselves to fact check it.

What struck me, as soon as I realized it was "AI" and not Hannah Arendt, was that of all the philosophers and political thinkers of the 20th century, that use of her is probably the most ironic.   Of all of them she was one of the earliest and most insightful as to the use of false information as producing fascism, Nazism and totalitarian governance and regimes.  

The creation of false "quotes" from famous and not so famous People has always been a thing and with the invention of the internet and search engines that mine words in combination to present "top" search results, based on clicks, such quotes, often invented for ideological reasons, to appeal to the prejudices and hates and fears of large numbers of People, will become what most People believe was said by those People.   

You might think that's generally innocuous though that would necessarily lead to the complication of trying to determine which are harmless and which are dangerous and that's something that the laziness and insouciance of modern culture, academia and, most of all, the legal profession isn't going to get done.   

I will point out in passing that that is, at least to some extent, a product of the poorly drafted First Amendment which didn't specify that the only right of free speech and, especially, "press" that was a necessity for democratic rule WAS THE RIGHT TO TELL THE TRUTH and that any daffy idea that there could be such a thing as a "right to lie" was guaranteed to destroy democracy.   I'm not sure Hannah Arendt ever got to that point,  I'm only a casual reader of her, not a specialist. 

If you want to get what she actually said, the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Culture at Bard College published a far more than excellent article by Roger Berkowitz on Fake Hannah Arendt Quotations,  two years ago. 

The closest in spirit and content [to the fake quote], and also the most easily available, is from an interview with Roger Errera in 1973, what turned out to be Hannah Arendt’s last public interview. Arendt spoke about the importance of a free press in an era of mass manipulation of truth and public lying: She said:

 

"The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please."

I will interject here because a "free press" is only a good for real democracy, egalitarian democracy, WHEN IT TELLS THE TRUTH.   We have the freest of all free presses in the history of the world in the United States and it has brought us to Trump and Republican-fascism and the New Taney Roberts Court by using that freedom to lie and to appeal to exactly the kind of easily sold sensational lies that she went on to warn about as the very raw material with which totalitarians destroy democracy and the freedom to tell the truth.   They never interfere with the freedom to lie in support of THEIR totalitarianism and, as the American "free press" has proved over and over again, it is more than willing to do that on behalf of the totalitarian regime and the oligarchs who fund it. 

 

The key point in Arendt’s statement is that as lies multiply, the result is not that the lie is believed but that people lose faith in the truth and are increasingly susceptible to believe anything. When cynicism about truth reigns, lies operate not because they replace reality but because they make reality wobble–a phrase Arendt employs in her essay Truth and Politics. In that essay, Arendt argued that mass lying undermines our sense of reality by which we find our bearings in the real world: 

 

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.

The Arendtian point is that constant lying by a propaganda machine does not lead to the lie being believed but leads, instead, to cynicism. This is an argument that Arendt made, already, in her first published book The Origins of Totalitarianism. In that book, Arendt writes:

"Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."

So why, given the surfeit of similar quotations, does the anonymous influencer responsible for the viral Arendt quotation change the quotation? On one level, who can know? But there is something to be said for the simplicity of language and clarity of purpose in the fabricated quotation. Arendt herself is profoundly quotable, but her sentences tend to be long and at times follow a meandering course. The impulse to clarify, simplify, and “market” Arendt to a public trained on easy social media quotations is real. 

Which raises a second question: does the alteration matter? And here, the answer is yes. And it turns out that this is hardly the first time that Hannah Arendt’s words have been altered and simplified to ease their public consumption. One of the most notorious cases is in the documentary about Arendt Vita Activa by Ada Ushpiz. Ushpiz uses over 30 block quotations that she projects on the screen in her documentary. Shockingly, nearly every one of these quotations is altered. Some of Ushpiz’s changes were major and deeply deceptive. But many were simply stylistic, as in the fake quotation floating around social media today. In writing about this documentary, I explained why such seemingly innocuous changes matter: 

I will ask you to read the rest of the article,  I'd love to post it if it were not for reluctance to risk violating fair use because I know how few People online follow up links - though, of course, my regular readers, apart from my regular trolls, probably do that, maybe even more than I try to. 

There is far more than enough in both what Arendt and Mr. Berkowitz said to inspire a month of posts on the topic, but it's the height of summer and I will have to get back to the garden because we are in a depression.  

This Is Bad And Reese Is Having Way Too Much Fun Dragging It

Great American State Fair Draws Freedom 250 People

I'll get back to dragging John Roberts And His Fascist Five Tomorrow.    If a Democratic Congress is not elected and they don't impose drastic Court reform on that goddamned corrupt court this country is finished. 

The Media Will Use The Three Radical Candidates In NYC To Deliver The Congress To The Party of Paul Gosar, Clay Higgins, Ralph Normans, etc. etc. etc

AS I NOTED HERE THE OTHER DAY,  the IHRA corruption of the "A" word, "antisemitism" is so meaningless that it is regularly hurled at Jews,  the example I pointed out was the leader of the British Green Party, the only Jewish leader of a major political party in Britain,  Zack Polanski.   

That is being reproduced here many times over, one of those being one of the three Zoran Mamdanh supported candidates,  Brad Lander, who is Jewish and is being presented to the public as antisemitic by conservatives and Zionists as an antisemite because he has spoken out against the genocidal actions of the Israeli government.  And there is no doubt that the US media, which is, in fact, with some ineffective lefties and others exempted, trying to hand the mid-terms to Republicans.   

I haven't been following the obsession with those three candidates, which will get endless air-time and endless media distortion on behalf of the Republican-fascists AND THAT REALLY DOES MEAN FASCIST PARTY.   I have read mostly about the sometimes appalling statements of one of them,  Darializa Avila Chevalier, posted on online message boards and, or comment threads.   The ones I read are pretty stupid and, though made about six years ago, would give me pause as to whether or not she's got potential to be an effective member of Congress BUT THEY PALE IN CONTRAST TO THOSE TRUMP AND HIS FACISTS TWEET OUT EVERY DAY,  AND NOT WHILE THEY'RE DOPEY KIDS IN THEIR LATE TEENS, which these days seems to extend will into the 20s.    I have seen no political price being paid for the statements of any of those who I listed in the title of this post or, in fact, scores and scores of Republican-fascist politicians and candidates who I could list if I had the time.  And that wouldn't be anything hard to do, it would be easy as anything.   Yet that task seems to elude, not only the American free press, which will obsess over this as it does a few of the dumber statements of Graham Platner for exactly the same purpose.  

I'll say something radical,  American journalism as it is and as it long has been, most of it for most of the history of the United States is a servant of and tool of the oligarchs, the racists, the fascists, the Republican-fascists and they, like the legal profession, exists mostly to service them like the most jaded of prostitutes.   Presstitution is the second oldest profession an unlike the oldest one, it doesn't have First Amendment protection for its business practices.   Though, come to think of it, it might only be third on that list, lawyers were in the same business even before there was anything like journalism. 

And the media will, certainly, have all the conservatives and typical Democrats who get called on to wag their tongues against progressive Democrats.   That's a branch of the same media.  

Would I vote for Darializa Avila Chevalier?  For a primary election, her opponent would have to be pretty bad for me to give her that kind of confidence that she would be the better choice.  She may have grown up enough in the past six years but I'd like to see the evidence of that. 

Would I vote for her in the election that really counts, the one that will fill a seat in the Congress,  there isn't a Republican who I would vote for even if they were better than her because their just being in the Congress empowers the fascists in that party.  The Comers, Foxxes, Jordans, Johnsons, etc. etc. etc. etc.   There isn't a member of the Republican caucus who doesn't empower fascists, it is a fascist party.    Any independent who ran against her would have to convince me they had A BETTER CHANCE to beat the Republican and, frankly, when I've done that in the past it has not generally worked as I hoped it would.  The largely ineffective Angus King, who I didn't vote for when he ran and won the governorship but who I have voted for for the Senate, has been the one exception to that.   And I didn't like his governorship much at all.    So, yes, I would probably vote for her though with the same reluctance I voted for Angus King.    Voting for the least bad which the voters in the primary gave us is the most moral thing to do,  THAT IS LEAST BAD IN OUTCOME, not in some abstract sense of morality or even intellectual coherence. 

Who knows, maybe she'll prove to have grown up and do something good.  

The IHRA is not a credible organization, it is a false front that promotes lies and genocide and apartheid.   The members that came up with that definition deserve to be considered as flacks for the Israeli criminal regime as certainly as those lobbying and propagandizing on behalf of the South African Apartheid government were and, I'll say it because it's true, the German American Bund.  They and their "definition" are tools of racism and murder.