I am just coming up on 90, and even I don’t remember Hitler. I was only 10 years old when the “great war” ended. My knowledge of the late 30’s and early 40’s comes from the media, not from personal memory;
I am quite sure your knowledge of that shameful time is at least as sketchy, and probably more so.
There always is a “good” reason for hatred.
So, this post is a reminder to my Jewish family and friends, as well as to blacks, browns, yellows, reds, Muslims, gays, women, and every immigrant family from everywhere: Bigotry has no boundaries.
America is, and always has been, loaded with haters — as has every nation on earth.
It is a sad feature of humanity to hate, especially to hate groups different from yours (of which there are infinite).
There was a time in America when most hatred was directed at Native Americans, then at Catholics, especially Irish and Italian immigrants, and, as always, the blacks and Jews. But you may have felt safe because you aren’t Native American, Catholic Irish, Italian, gay, black, or Jewish.
Today, the hatred comes in much broader strokes, and there hardly is a group that is not subject to some ignorant vitriol from some ignorant bigots.
Children aren’t born to hate, but humanity is a “follow-the-leader” species. I attribute this greater bigotry to more bigoted leaders whose family and friends taught them to hate.
You, of course, are not a bigot. You support a bigot only because he/she (pick one):
–Is good for the economy or your wallet
–Opposes Israel or opposes Palestinians
–Opposes gays
–Is pro-life or pro-choice
–Is a conservative or a liberal
–Denies the election results, vaccination, global warming, Jan 6 coup attempt
–Is “tough” on crime, immigration, “free lunch” for the poor
Or any other limitless number of reasons to hate.
You may believe that this time is different.
Hatred has no boundaries.
But again, I wish to remind you, and especially my Jewish family and friends, that hatred has no boundaries. Hatred is a contagious disease. It is transmitted from parent to child.
It is promulgated in schools, bars, clubs, classrooms, and family meetings.
It is communicated to friends, relatives, and strangers via jokes, stories, and conspiracy theories.
A hater doesn’t need a reason. A hater will create a reason.
Hatred is a grenade. It doesn’t care where it is dropped. If you happen to be in the way, it’s your fault.
You may pull the pin, planning to throw it, but it just as well may explode in your hand.
Over two thousand years of history should have taught you, my friends and family, that hatred and bigotry, wherever initially directed, eventually will focus on the Jews.
You may have “good reasons” to support bigotry today, but tomorrow, it will send you to the cattle cars or the morgue.
If you are a good person who feels you must hold your nose and vote for someone you know is a hater, remember: This time is not different.It’s the same old, same old movie. Just the cast of characters is different.
Let your morality guide you, or your hatred will return to get you.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary SovereigntyTwitter: @rodgermitchellSearch #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell;MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell; https://www.academia.edu/
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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
The book outlines how Germany’s political and financial leaders paid dearly for believing they could control a man they knew to be a psychopath.
The parallels with today’s Republican party and Trump’s wealthy backers are astounding. You repeatedly will be reminded, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”–George Santayana,
The Life of Reason, 1905. The MAGA movement allows for no memory of Hitler’s rise to power and his disastrous use of it.
Hitler created a world in which women were transported with their children for days in closed train cars and then had to watch those children die alongside them, naked, gasping for breath in a gas chamber.
Timothy W. Ryback’s choice to make his new book, “Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power” (Knopf), an aggressively specific chronicle of a single year, 1932, seems a wise, even an inspired one.
Ryback details, week by week, day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, how a country with a functional, if flawed, democratic machinery handed absolute power over to someone who could never claim a majority in an actual election and whom the entire conservative political class regarded as a chaotic clown with a violent following.
Ryback shows how major players thought they could find some ulterior advantage in managing him.
Each was sure that, after the passing of a brief storm cloud, so obviously overloaded that it had to expend itself, they would emerge in possession of power.
The corporate bosses thought that, if you looked past the strutting and the performative antisemitism, you had someone who would protect your money.
This is what really matters.
Hello, today’s wealthy people, Elon Musk, Kenny Troutt, Woody Johnson, Geoffrey Harrison, Saul Fox, Howard Lutnick, John Paulson, Mike Hodges, John Blanchard, Scott Bessent, David Frecka, George Bishop, Steven Witkoff, Tim Dunn, Diane Hendricks, Linda and Vince McMahon.
Trump doesn’t care about protecting your money. He cares only about protecting his money.
Many of you are billionaires who’ve supported Trump because he promises to eliminate regulations that protect customers.
Some of you gave to him in return for his political and/or financial support for their schemes.
If you notice any Jewish-sounding names in the bunch, you are right, which I, as a Jew, find particularly ironic and loathsome.
Trump is an undisguised bigot, and history shows that when a group supports bigotry, eventually, they themselves become targets of bigotry.
When a government supports bigotry, no one is spared, but the victims learn their lesson too late.
Communist ideologues thought that, if you peered deeply enough into the strutting and the performative antisemitism, you could spy the pattern of a popular revolution.
The decent right thought that he was too obviously deranged to remain in power long.
The decent left, tempered by earlier fights against different enemies, thought that, if they forcibly stuck to the rule of law, then the law would somehow by itself entrap a lawless leader.
In a now familiar paradox, the rational forces stuck to magical thinking, while the irrational ones were more logical, parsing the brute equations of power. And so the storm never passed. In a way, it still has not.
National Socialist German Workers’ Party (its German initials were N.S.D.A.P.) had been in existence since right after the Great War, as one of many völkisch, or populist, groups; its label, by including “national” and “socialist,” was intended to appeal to both right-wing nationalists and left-wing socialists, who were thought to share a common enemy: the élite class of Jewish bankers who, they said, manipulated Germany behind the scenes and had been responsible for the German surrender.
Those American Jews who support Hitleresque Trump have conveniently forgotten that right-wingers blamed Jews Germany’s loss in WWI.
The lure of money then and now overcomes morals and sense.
The Nazis, as they were called—a put-down made into a popular label, like “Impressionists”—began as one of many fringe and populist antisemitic groups in Germany, including the Thule Society, which was filled with bizarre pre-QAnon conspiracy adepts.
Hitler’s plans were deliberately ambiguous, but his purposes were not. Ever since his unsuccessful putsch in Munich, he had, Ryback writes, “been driven by a single ambition: to destroy the political system that he held responsible for the myriad ills plaguing the German people.”
Trump’s efforts to destroy American democracy and to install himself as dictator are clouded by his frequent changes in publicly stated goals.
Example: His repeated flip-flops about ending or not ending ACA (“Obamacare”).
These changes require his followers repeatedly to go into “What he really meant was” mode to homogenize his extremism for the voting public.
Most recently, many of his acolytes explained that “he really doesn’t intend to deport millions of men, women, and children. He just wants to strengthen the border.” (Then why did he instruct his GOP minions to vote against the bipartisan border-strengthening law created by a Republican?)
Ryback skips past the underlying mechanics of the July, 1932, election on the way to his real subject—Hitler’s manipulation of the conservative politicians and tycoons who thought that they were manipulating him—but there’s a notable academic literature on what actually happened when Germans voted that summer.
The political scientists and historians who study it tell us that the election was a “normal” one, in the sense that the behavior of groups and subgroups proceeded in the usual way, responding more to the perception of political interests than to some convulsions of apocalyptic feeling.
The popular picture of the decline of the Weimar Republic—in which hyperinflation produced mass unemployment, which produced an unstoppable wave of fascism—is far from the truth. The hyperinflation had ended in 1923, and the period right afterward, in the mid-twenties, was, in Germany as elsewhere, golden.
Still, the results of the July, 1932, election weren’t obviously catastrophic. Both Hitler and Goebbels were bitterly disappointed by their standing.
As was Trump following the 2020 election– so disappointed he denied the results.
The unemployed actually opposed Hitler and voted en masse for the parties of the left.
What was once called the petite bourgeoisie, then, was key to his support—not people feeling the brunt of economic precarity but people feeling the possibility of it.
Having nothing to fear but fear itself is having something significant to fear.
Trump, like Hitler before him, is a fear-monger.
He sows fear of “marauding immigrant gangs and rapists.”
Trump also promulgates the lies that immigrants don’t pay taxes and that they take jobs from native-born American workers.
Claiming that immigrants are making things worse for U.S.-born workers is often used as an intentional distraction from dynamics that are actually hurting working people—such as weak labor standards and enforcement, anti-worker deregulation, weak labor law that fails to protect workers’ rights to unions and collective bargaining in the face of coordinated and well-funded attacks, and other dynamics that result in too much power in the hands of corporations and employers.
A newstudy from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that undocumented immigrants actually contributed almost $100 billion in taxes during 2022 while not being able to use many of the programs they thought their tax dollars funded.
It is Trump and his wealthy backers who favor laws that weaken American workers while benefiting the rich.
The Germans were voting, in the absent-minded way of democratic voters everywhere, for easy reassurances, for stability, with classes siding against their historical enemies.
They weren’t wild-eyed nationalists voting for a millennial authoritarian regime that would rule forever and restore Germany to glory, and, certainly, they weren’t voting for an apocalyptic nightmare that would leave tens of millions of people dead and the cities of Germany destroyed.
This is how we cast our vote.
They were voting for specific programs that they thought would benefit them, and for a year’s insurance against the people they feared.
The rich give their money and votes to Trump because they believe he will make them even richer.
The not-rich vote for Trump because they fear the imaginary dangers Trump claims immigrants and liberals pose.
Ryback, focussing on the self-entrapped German conservatives, generally avoids the question that seems most obvious to a contemporary reader: Given that Hitler had repeatedly vowed to use the democratic process in order to destroy democracy, why did the people committed to democracy let him do it?
That is the key question even today.
Given that Trump attempted to overturn an election he lost in both the electoral college and by 7 million popular votes, why would people committed to democracy now vote for him?
Many historians have jousted with this question, but perhaps the most piercing account remains an early one, written less than a decade after the war by the émigré German scholar Lewis Edinger, who had known the leaders of the Social Democrats well and consulted them directly—the ones who had survived, that is—for his study.
His conclusion was that they simply “trusted that constitutional processes and the return of reason and fair play would assure the survival of the Weimar Republic and its chief supporters.”
Trump’s followers burn “woke” books to avoid discussing bigotry
Most Americans understand Trump’s faults and ambitions.
Still, they cannot believe that he actually could do what he repeatedly says he will do: Destroy the legal system that protects democracy (He calls it “draining the swamp.”) and install himself as dictator.
Most Americans have a deep faith that democracy will always survive here and that we’re not like those foreign countries.
Yet, democracy constantly teeters on the edge, and we have been remarkably fortunate so far despite our individual foolishness. Today, the election is predicted to be a close call even though:
Trump disparages blacks as coming from “shithole countries” and being criminals
He disparages browns as being “rapists and criminals.”
He is supported by right-wing Christian nationalists who believe in the virtual enslavement of women and who oppose women even having voting or abortion rights.
He openly expresses his bigotry toward all religions other than Christian nationalism.
His followers engage in book burning and other anti-free-speech efforts.
He disparages gays.
He disparages women.
He opposes unions and worker’s rights while supporting rich business owners.
He repeatedly has tried to end ACA (Obamacare), even going so far as repeatedly to reach out to the Supreme Court.
He admires dictators like Putin and Kim and has admitted he would be a dictator if elected.
He has committed and been convicted by juries of many crimes, including tax fraud and other forms of fraud (for instance, Trump U., cheating his foreign workers, etc.)
He made repeated attempts to overthrow the U.S. government and continues to claim the election was tainted despite his loss of 60+ lawsuits proving otherwise.
His endless lying has become crazier and crazier, indicating his mental deterioration.
By any rational measure, Trump would not receive a single vote other than from the greedy rich and the Christian nationalists, none of whom seem to worry about democracy.
But these are not rational times, and sadly, history is filled with horrifying examples of what happens to a population that departs from rationality.
Much has been written about Donald Trump’s dictatorial proclivity. He has not been secretive about his desire to rule with an iron hand and to destroy those who disagree with him. His similarities to Hitler have been documented by many sources.
Though America has had strong leaders, we have been fortunate in avoiding the most repressive, undemocratic forms of government. Even with a former leader who insisted he had won a lost vote and recruited followers to overturn an election, there have been no successful coups, the closest being the Civil War.
Until now.
Dictatorships generally begin with hatred. Hatred breeds fear, our single most powerful emotion. Strong emotions can stir a formerly passive population to follow a dictatorial leader. In fact, hate-mongering is the usual prelude to a dictatorship.
One hate-mongering method is to control the sources of information, particularly the standard media and the schools.
Donald Trump repeatedly calls the media “Fake,” especially when they say anything that is not worshipful of him. That, too, is well documented.
Qanon Pastor Greg Locke Led His Congregation in a Book Burning of Stories like Harry Potter and Twilight.
He calls the government “the swamp,” which is ironic considering the low moral and legal level of the people he hired during his presidency.
But this post is about schools where our youngest people are indoctrinated.
Faculty group: Higher education under assault from GOP
Florida Sun-Sentinel, December 8, 2023The report cites Florida laws, policy changes, and political maneuvers over the last 2 years.By Divya Kumar Tampa Bay Times
TAMPA — The American Association of University Professors has released a blistering assessment of higher education in Florida, saying its yearlong “special investigation” revealed a system under assault from Republican leaders determined to limit academic freedom and impose their worldview on the state’s public campuses.
The report, released Wednesday, cited a string of laws, policy changes, and political maneuvers over the last two years, concluding they amounted to an “ideologically driven assault unparalleled in US history.”
The report opens with a quote from Florida A&M University professor LeRoy Pernell, a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the state’s Intellectual Freedom Act, also known as the Stop Woke Act: “What we are witnessing in Florida is an intellectual reign of terror.”
“What is unfolding in Florida is horrifying,” the report said, comparing events in the state to far-right administrations across the world. “It should serve as a cautionary tale to all in higher education, but we are mindful that this tale has yet to reach its conclusion. The time for intervention has not passed — yet.”
Jeremy Redfern, a spokesperson for Gov. Ron DeSantis, called the report “a hoax” and pointed to some of the governor’s comments Tuesday while announcing his state budget for next year.DeSantis proposed $150 million for faculty recruitment and retention and touted a new state policy on tenure as a check on quality.
The policy calls for tenured faculty to be reviewed every five years and opens the possibility of termination.
This makes it easier to fire teachers who do not toe the Republican line.
”Everyone’s been complaining for years about college professors trying to indoctrinate and stuff,” DeSantis said. “For Florida, that’s not what we want with your tax dollars. We want academic rigor. We want the pursuit of truth.”
DeSantis’s version of “pursuit of truth” is to deny racism exists, and if it exists, it isn’t important.
Henry Reichman, a professor emeritus at California State University-East Bay and co-chairperson of the investigating committee, said he was “deeply moved” by the process of developing the report.
“One of the things that struck me was the pain,” he said. “In almost every single interview we had, there were people kind of mourning.”
Afshan Jafar, another co-chairperson and a sociology professor at Connecticut College, said “What we have seen in Florida, there’s just nothing like it.
Investigators said they encountered educators in crisis over their careers, unsure whether to quit and leave or stay and push through. Some wanted to resign, but circumstances stood in their way.
“They don’t know what to do,” Jafar said. “They have nowhere to go. They’re trying to find an outlet where someone would listen to them, hoping it would have an impact.”
In his remarks on Tuesday, DeSantis acknowledged talk of professors leaving the state but said it wasn’t a concern. ”Just understand: If you have Marxist professors leaving, that is a gain for the state of Florida,” he said. “That’s not a negative.”
First, the professors are leaving not because they teach Marxism but because they aren’t allowed to teach the facts about racism and diversity (aka “woke”).
Second, the irony is that the leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, is notoriously palsy-walsy with one of the world’s leading communists, Vladimir Putin. But DeSantis claims to hate Marxists. It boggles.
He also said his administration had kept costs down by eliminating universities’ diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, which he described as divisive. ”That’s a bureaucracy that can wither and go away,” DeSantis said.
The guy who wastes millions to ship immigrants all over the country is worried about the cost of teaching diversity, equity, and inclusion?? No intelligent person is fooled.
The investigation was broken into four sections: “The Takeover of New College,” “Academic Governance in Florida Higher Education,” “Academic Freedom,” “Bias and Discrimination” and “The Human Toll.”
In a detailed and heavily footnoted chronology, the committee reviewed this year’s events at New College of Florida in Sarasota — beginning with DeSantis’ appointment of six conservative trustees and continuing with their decisions to oust the president, replace her with former education commissioner Richard Corcoran, deny tenure to some faculty, disband the school’s diversity office and remove gender studies as a major.
The above, and the banning of books DeSantis doesn’t like, describe DeSantis’s “pursuit of truth.”
“What’s happening at New College is a disgrace,” former University of Florida president Bernie Machen told the committee.
The report also chronicled faculty leaving for other jobs outside the state or leaving academia. It cited a survey that found 300 of the 642 Florida professors who participated planned to seek employment elsewhere.
Andrew Gothard, president of the statewide union United Faculty of Florida, told the committee he predicted some universities would lose between 20% to 30% of faculty in the next year.
Several educators spoke about their decisions to leave or retire early. Some were based on the faculty member’s fear they could no longer teach their subject, while others were made because of their kids’ education.
Others felt inclined to move because of laws surrounding transgender health care and the climate toward LGBTQ+ people.
“It has impacted so many different aspects of people’s lives,” Jafar said. “It’s not just higher ed.”
The committee also said the governor largely controls Florida’s universities through board appointments.
And what is this “woke” that has DeSantis banning books and firing teachers? It means “alert to and concerned about social injustice and discrimination.”
Beginning in the 2010s, it broadened to include racial injustice, sexism, and LGBT rights.
Unless your parents brought you up to be a raving bigot, you will welcome teaching about:
The history of the Holocaust
The history of slavery in America
The history of bigotry in America
The types of bigotry in America
The effects of bigotry in America
Fighting bigotry in America
Knowing these facts can prevent them from recurring. But DeSantis and other conservatives object to students learning the facts.
By denying that bigotry existed and still exists, or worse yet, by claiming that opposing bigotry is itself a form of bigotry, tyrants like Trump and DeSantis attract not just fellow bigots but all those who are afraid the oppressed will rise up against them.
No dictator can assume power without the backing of the people. They needn’t be a majority, just enough fearful people to make a noisy, passionate voting base.
Today’s Republican party is bifurcated mainly into the rich, who expect and receive favorable financial treatment from the right wing and the angry mob, who resent and fear those below them on the socio-economic scale.
By sowing fear of foreigners and immigrants, non-Christians, gays, the law, and “the establishment” or the “deep state,” Republicans can command loyalty even when operating outside conservative norms.
That is why lying, adultery, bigotry, nihilism, corruption, treason, and incompetence — typically vote killers, especially among upright conservatives — are overlooked and in some cases, even viewed as a strength by the self-proclaimed religious.
Fear is the most potent motivator humans experience. Using fear, the very powerful and those who view themselves as vulnerable form an unholy alliance to support a dictator who promises them protection. But it is a deal with the devil, and the hoped-for protection turns out to be a torture chamber.
Education is the enemy of bigotry and, thus, the enemy of dictators. To learn that scapegoats are humans with hope, fears, and feelings is to gain empathy, the last thing a dictator wants the masses to have.
Brainwashing students by depriving them of historical facts is a favorite and effective method for recruiting a “no-questions-asked” cadre of loyal followers who hate dictatorships like communism as concepts but love dictators as saviors.
Sadly, once dictators gain power, they are tough to dislodge. We can only pray that America doesn’t learn that lesson from actual experience.
The following 12 months should be pivotal in U.S. history.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary SovereigntyTwitter: @rodgermitchellSearch #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
In the history of the world, there never has been a government ruled by the religious right that has not devolved into a dictatorship. That is the certain endgame of religious power.
The first clause in the Bill of Rights states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison said that state support for a particular religion or for any religion was improper. They argued that compelling citizens to support through taxation a faith they did not follow violated their natural right to religious liberty.
Today’s, Catholic-dominated Supreme Court disagrees, and demonstrated their distaste for judicial precedent by allowing abortion restrictions, contrary to other religions’ beliefs.
Thus does the law, in violation of the Constitution, establish the beliefs of one religion over other religions’ beliefs.
The problem with religious power is that everything it does, from the most heinous, brutal, unthinkably cruel, to the banal and even beneficial — everything — is done in the name of God.
So nothing can be questioned and everything is excused.
I have heard the religious right phonies in America speak of their “God-given” right to own guns. Guns? God-given right? Really?
Did God speak to them and say, “Thou shall own guns and shoot them at whomever you wish”? Whose God said that?
For the religious right, everything is “God-given” so do not argue with them. God, is all the reason the right needs for atrocity and abomination.
Their God always is right, though not all other Gods are right. Their God says abortion is a sin. Never mind that your God may not agree. All that counts is their God.
And their God tells them which books to burn, which speech can get you fired, with which sex you are required to identify. Their God approves of slavery, and male domination, even what you can and cannot wear, and which young boys you are allowed to bugger.
That last was in reference to the world’s largest religious right-wing government, the Catholic Church and its absolute dictator, the Pope.
Dare I speak a criticism of him without being subject to a stream of vile hatred. Perhaps not, for his power is “God-given,” so cannot be questioned, though the history of Popes is not one to be admired.
Truth: Once established in any nation, a religious right-wing dictatorship cannot become a democracy without massive protest and bloodshed.
Israel, once the most democratic of all the mid-east nations (a low bar to hurdle), now is learning the certainty of that Truth, because to gain freedom one must overthrow God (theirs), and He (She, It) is a stubborn tyrant.
So long as Israel’s religious right has the leverage to control the engines of power, that nation will become ever more intolerant of anyone or anything not part of the clique. With the relatively young, possibly criminal, Netanyahu in power, things look dim for that tiny nation.
But at least they have some semblance of an excuse for their drift into totalitarianism. They are surrounded by large, brutal nations that would stomp Israel into the ground, the moment they feel they could do it.
People living under that threat tend to gravitate toward the authoritarian who projects a feeling of power, and who promises to protect them. In reality, he will enslave them, but they only will learn the lesson too late to save themselves.
That is the people of Israel’s excuse. What is our American excuse?
We are the most powerful nation on earth in military and economic wealth. We are capable of dealing with any foreign threat. Additionally, we are buffered east and west by mighty oceans, one of which is guarded by our own islands. North and south we are blessed by the relatively benign nations of Canada and Mexico,
As a nation, we are a safe from outsiders as has been any nation in history. So why are we drifting into religious right-wing protectionism?
Are we Americans so weak minded that we are terrorized by the poor, weak immigrant families that, falling exhausted on our shores, ask only to be allowed to work toward the American dream?
Do we Americans really fear those who, confused and embarrassed by their own sexuality, ask only to be allowed to exist as fellow human beings?
Are we so insecure about our Gods that we must set out to destroy all those who worship other Gods?
Are we Americans so ignorant about our resources that we must establish a garrison state to exclude those who have proved they can help us build America?
Are we Americans so stupidly craven that we must arm our persons beyond any rational need, and in doing so, arm every fuming, foaming-at-the-mouth nut, against whom all the guns in the world are no defense?
Israel is in the final stages of its demise. The religious right, with their claims of “God’s will,” are obliterating civil law and replacing it with religious law, and finally to one of religious despotism.
America has replaced its secular Supreme Court with a religious right Supreme Court. Additonally, we now have a docile, amoral political party that agrees cheating and lying are clever, greed is good, and the attempted coup was just a “normal visitor’s day.”
Naive children used as props. “We don’t know what “woke” is, but we are against it.”
For all this, we will pay a price.
Those beyond our shores are not the real enemy.
As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Russia and China will not enslave us and take away our freedoms.
No, that will be done by our own religious right in the name of anti “Woke” laws.
“Woke,” has become a devil in name, though the masses don’t know what it is.
It now can cost you your job, what you learn in school, who your leaders are, what you can read, where you can be. Every law against it is a vague law against free speech.
The right wing, which proudly “freed” people from the hardship of vaccination now wishes to take away the right to discuss the fact of bigotry in America.
Woke is defined by the DeSantis administration as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them,” Really? That’s a bad thing to discuss?
Ther ar no systemic injustices in America? Courts and employers treat blacks and whites, Jews, Muslims, and Christians, males and females, old and young, gay and straight all the same?
Are there people who truly believe this?
Religions, by their nature tend to be among the more bigoted groups in America, and to deny it is to accept the bigotry. The bigoted crusade against “Woke” is the latest barrage against democracy, but it won’t be the last.
The religious right never is satisfied. Success at enslavement begets further enslavement.
In religion, facts mean nothing. Proof means nothing. All that matters is who believes it and who claims it, not what it is. Lies are not challenged; rather they are defended blindly, vigorously and with acrimony.
It begins with the thoroughly dishonest and incompetent Donald Trump and continues through such unprincipled creatures as Paul Gosar, Kevin McCarthy, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, Josh Hawley, Lindsey Graham, Marsha Blackburn, Ted Cruz, John Kennedy, Tucker Carlson, the rest of the Fox News bigotry disseminators, and others too many others to name.
American democracy almost was lost once. Fortunately for America, the Civil War defeated slavery. Now the battle against tyranny rages, again. The rich are exalted. The poor are oppressed. The New Colossus teeters.
The RINOs (in this case, Religious In Name Only) pretend America needs to cut spending for Medicare, Social Security, ACA, and every anti-poverty, pro-poor measure one can imagine, while spending must increase for the military and tax loopholes for the rich.
If the right wing succeeds, the King and his court will prosper. The Pope and his SCOTUS priests will thrive. Israel’s democracy will fade. The rich and their minions will grow more powerful.
The religious right will enslave the left, because far too many of those most affected — the blacks, browns, yellows, reds, gays, Jews, Muslims, immigrants and pregnant women — will have voted for their own subjection or not voted at all.
They then will wonder. “What happened to us.”
They will need only to read history for that answer.
There is an endgame. It is terrible and it is certain.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary SovereigntyTwitter: @rodgermitchellSearch #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
The problem with religious power is that everything it does, from the most heinous, brutal, unthinkably cruel, to the banal and even beneficial — everything — is done in the name of God.
So nothing can be questioned and everything is excused.
I have heard the religious right phonies in America speak of their “God-given” right to own guns. Guns? God-given right? Really?
Did God speak to them and say, “Thou shall own guns and shoot them at whomever you wish”? Whose God said that?
For the religious right, everything is “God-given” so do not argue with them. God, is all the reason the right needs for atrocity and abomination.
Their God always is right, though not all other Gods are right. Their God says abortion is a sin. Never mind that your God may not agree. All that counts is their God.
And their God tells them which books to burn, which speech can get you fired, with which sex you are required to identify. Their God approves of slavery, and male domination, even what you can and cannot wear, and which young boys you are allowed to bugger.
That last was in reference to the world’s largest religious right-wing government, the Catholic Church and its absolute dictator, the Pope.
Dare I speak a criticism of him without being subject to a stream of vile hatred. Perhaps not, for his power is “God-given,” so cannot be questioned, though the history of Popes is not one to be admired.
Truth: Once established in any nation, a religious right-wing dictatorship cannot become a democracy without massive protest and bloodshed.
Israel, once the most democratic of all the mid-east nations (a low bar to hurdle), now is learning the certainty of that Truth, because to gain freedom one must overthrow God (theirs), and He (She, It) is a stubborn tyrant.
So long as Israel’s religious right has the leverage to control the engines of power, that nation will become ever more intolerant of anyone or anything not part of the clique. With the relatively young, possibly criminal, Netanyahu in power, things look dim for that tiny nation.
But at least they have some semblance of an excuse for their drift into totalitarianism. They are surrounded by large, brutal nations that would stomp Israel into the ground, the moment they feel they could do it.
People living under that threat tend to gravitate toward the authoritarian who projects a feeling of power, and who promises to protect them. In reality, he will enslave them, but they only will learn the lesson too late to save themselves.
That is the people of Israel’s excuse. What is our American excuse?
We are the most powerful nation on earth in military and economic wealth. We are capable of dealing with any foreign threat. Additionally, we are buffered east and west by mighty oceans, one of which is guarded by our own islands. North and south we are blessed by the relatively benign nations of Canada and Mexico,
As a nation, we are a safe from outsiders as has been any nation in history. So why are we drifting into religious right-wing protectionism?
Are we Americans so weak minded that we are terrorized by the poor, weak immigrant families that, falling exhausted on our shores, ask only to be allowed to work toward the American dream?
Do we Americans really fear those who, confused and embarrassed by their own sexuality, ask only to be allowed to exist as fellow human beings?
Are we so insecure about our Gods that we must set out to destroy all those who worship other Gods?
Are we Americans so ignorant about our resources that we must establish a garrison state to exclude those who have proved they can help us build America?
Are we Americans so stupidly craven that we must arm our persons beyond any rational need, and in doing so, arm every fuming, foaming-at-the-mouth nut, against whom all the guns in the world are no defense?
Israel is in the final stages of its demise. The religious right, with their claims of “God’s will,” are obliterating civil law and replacing it with religious law, and finally to one of religious despotism.
America has replaced its secular Supreme Court with a religious right Supreme Court. Additonally, we now have a docile, amoral political party that agrees cheating and lying are clever, greed is good, and the attempted coup was just a “normal visitor’s day.”
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 