Thread by @jeffblack945

#RevThread # 100
"RESOLVE"

1/ Okay. Time to snap out of it. I’m calling in the big guns: a Prophet and a Patriot. Guess what? They’re the same. Same wisdom. Same actions. Same legacy - the legacy that will get us through the b.s. of this moment. Here we go…

2/ Here’s what our two giants tell us. First, the prophet Isaiah:
Isaiah speaks of the suffering servant, who will redeem us - and of how TOUGH HE/SHE WILL BE: “I gave my back to those who strike… I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting. But the Lord God helps me...

3/ "...therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have SET MY FACE LIKE A FLINT, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.” [Isaiah 50:6-7]

4/ When, like that servant, we rightly confront the corrupt power of our day, we too will be spit on. We too will be tormented. SO WHAT?!
Our task is to be the suffering servant, who doesn’t return the violence - but PROCLAIMS TRUTH instead.

5/ Violence is for tiny minds, and tiny hands, and dead hearts. Violence is for the cruel, who gleefully roll in their own self-importance like hippos in the mud.
cnn.com/2018/07/06/pol…

6/ Violence is not for the righteous. It is not for those who will ultimately triumph over cruelty. As both Gandhi and King knew, enduring violence at the hands of the unjust - without retaliating -- awakens the conscience of a nation.

7/ This violence will continue to be aimed at us. We will be spat upon.
Our suffering brings pleasure to the violent. They love the outrage...

8/ They will keep an infant away from his mother for months - unbathed - un-cared for - and return him full of lice, just to enjoy our outrage. They are Satan’s whores.
And still, we must do what Isaiah instructs: SET OUR FACES LIKE FLINT.
pbs.org/newshour/polit…

9/ Flint is the stone that - when struck, sparks a fire. That’s its nature.
It’s very strong. It takes the blow and turns it into a flame. It can transform us.
When we’re attacked, we can set a movement blazing.

10/ So, how do we do that? How do we set our faces like flint? How do we find that strength in an absence of leadership? In the abyss? In the cruel chaos that our leaders have surrounded us with?
Well, that’s where the second giant - our great patriot - comes in...

11/ Lincoln.
Look at him. He had it.
Let me tell you the story of how he found it, and shared it, and transformed a nation.

12/ Lincoln returned to politics when a compromise in Congress threatened to fill the whole territory west of the Mississippi with slavery. Our nation’s deepest sin could now spread.

After Lincoln won the election in Nov. 1860, he had to wait until March for his inauguration...

13/ During those months, the country began to crack apart - as then-President Buchanan just dithered.

Even though Congress tried one compromise on slavery after another, states were threatening to secede...

14/ Rep Elihu Washburne warned Lincoln that Florida, South Carolina, & Mississippi had already decided to leave. Washburne penned a letter of questions for Lincoln.
He wanted to know what compromise might the new President support...

15/ Would Lincoln go with “Popular Sovereignty” - wherein each new state could choose whether to be slave or free as it entered the country?
Could they resurrect the Missouri Compromise..?

16/ Lincoln wrote back: “Let either be done... and extending slavery recommences. On that point HOLD FIRM, AS WITH A CHAIN OF STEEL.”
In his heart, Lincoln had settled the principle on which he would not compromise -- NO EXTENSION OF SLAVERY.

17/ Because Lincoln found the principle on which he would never yield, he now had RESOLVE. Resolve resides in the heart. Lincoln’s resolve made it possible for him to set his face like flint. He was not confused about the core issue.

18/ There is a rock-hard resolve required of us in this hour. A foreign adversary has successfully attacked our country, continues to operate within our democracy, intends once again to disrupt our elections, to install its preferred candidates as our leaders...

19/ ... to destroy our alliances and to degrade freedom throughout the world.

Our military is not designed to defend us from an info war; the Republican party has become a group of acolytes serving at Trump’s altar of greed...

20/ ...our President is greatly enamored with the Russian mafia state & its kleptocratic mob boss. The Supreme Court is wobbling.

That leaves just us - the people -- to defend our democracy.

21/ This is way too serious an hour for the luxury of panic. We need RESOLVE. We need to set our faces like a flint.

So, what is the “chain of steel” principle that we must grasp? What must we calmly insist and act on..?

22/ What are we willing to be scorned for? to be arrested for? to be spat upon for?That principle is this:
WE WILL NOT TOLERATE FOREIGN INTERFERENCE IN OUR DEMOCRATIC PROCESSES OF SELF-GOVERNANCE.

23/ No attack by a foreign state in our elections. And NO FOREIGN CONTROL in our self-governance -- not in our Executive, Legislative, or Judicial branches.
Not at the federal level, not at the state level.

24/ To cooperate with that interference is treason. To ignore or deny that interference is to enable treason. AMERICA IS OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE.
This is not right vs. left. This is not a policy issue up for debate. This is BEDROCK.

25/ Our wider problems (like, for example, the immense changes needed so that our planet remains hospitable to life) cannot be addressed in America until the rising power of the Russian Mafia state over our democracy is expelled.

26/ Our enemy is transnational organized crime, with its appealing promise of life without law and without conscience. Its profit centers are human misery.

Be wary of Russian-based propaganda -- they target & rile up both left and right...

https://twitter.com/LincolnsBible/status/953487417457098753

27/ ...Millions of our people, for now, are fascinated by it & held captive to it. Our media is virtually blind to it. The euphoria at Trump’s rallies is all about the allure of unchecked greed. They react as though they’ve finally won the lottery. The big “Trump Scratch Off”.

28/ We need powerful, large, CALM marches that have an unstoppable purpose AND measurable results.
First, the purpose. It cannot only be to express outrage (That feeds the other side. Our outrage produces their spittle. Wake up!)...

29/ The purpose instead must be a clear demand, a chain of steel:

NO FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN OUR DEMOCRATIC PROCESSES.

#HandsOffMyBallotMobsters
#HandsOffMyBallotYouCreeps
#HandsOffMyBallotPutinAndXi
#HandsOFFMyBallot

30/ Second, the results. Our protests MUST PRODUCE more registered voters and clean, updated, accurate data on our voter rolls. And for 2020, #PaperBallots (if we can get it. Demand it, regardless).

31/ It has been the Republican @GOP agenda for decades to suppress votes. They cheat, and gerrymander, and now line their pockets with dirty rubles to suppress votes.
Nothing is more un-American than that.
thetimes.co.uk/article/russia…

32/ Our role models for our marches are the freedom riders from the 1960’s.
They got results.
And they KEPT TRACK OF AND COMMUNICATED ON those results.

33/ There is a great failing of current @DNC leadership to communicate.
They are not reporting the way they need to on the RESULTS of our marches. Perhaps because we have not been clear about our resolve...

34/ Yes, there are events that have happened - & will continue to happen - that will rightfully outrage us & inspire us to march. That’s how it should be.
BUT, when we do march, let us have purpose. Let us communicate our purpose and fulfill our purpose with measurable results.

35/ NO FOREIGN INTERFERENCE IN OUR GOVERNING PROCESSES.
That resolve is to be grasped, in our hearts, as with a chain of steel.
Set your face like a flint.
March; register others, take them to the polls.

36/ Elect Democrats in such numbers that our depraved President’s power will be neutered, until we can - either by impeachment or by victory in 2020 - remove him from office.

37/ The @GOP & their collaboration with a foreign adversary have taken us to the brink of surrendering our democracy to the nihilism of unchecked greed.
Make this fall the hour of their reckoning.
And the moment we find our voice.
- END -