We attended yesterday's protest in our sleepy college town. Many more people showed up than I was expecting—it was bigger than our big Halloween parade—and the organizers were outstanding. I suspect MOST protests were like ours: peaceful, inspiring, non-confrontational.
2/ Protest like this is critical to democracy. It's important to see how many of our fellow Americans are willing to sacrifice personal safety to take to the streets in solidarity. My son was astonished at how one man's murder could affect so many people in so many places.
3/ "Taking to the streets," as so many have demanded we do for 3+ years, is going to be messy. There will be bad actors—among the protesters AND the police—and the press will dedicate far more coverage to them than the rest of us. Innocent people will get hurt.
4/ I also worry about protests spreading the virus, even though we all wore masks and tried to stay ten feet apart. But we have to save our country. It is nothing less than our patriotic duty. One thing's for sure: the virus is NOT gonna keep anyone from the ballot box.
"No justice / no peace / no racist / police!"
WE SHALL PREVAIL!
[END]
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On January 19, 2021, in the last hours of his presidency, Donald Trump wrote a memo in which he announced that the “binder of materials” received from the FBI via the DOJ a month prior was “declassified to the maximum extent possible.”
This was less than a week after Trump’s second impeachment—just 13 days after his MAGA horde besieged the Capitol in a failed attempt to thwart the peaceful transition of power.
Trump’s presidential Sharpie was busy that morning. On January 19, 2021, he issued pardons for, among many others: Steve Bannon, Elliott Broidy, Jeanine Pirro’s ex-husband Alex, and the disgraced art dealer Helly Nahmad, who had run an illegal gambling operation at Trump Tower.
Elaborating on #DebateNight thoughts that I shared on last night's Five 8 show.
[THREAD]
1/ Why the Dem freakout after the debate? We are all traumatized by 2016, and Biden's performance in the debate triggered our collective trauma. "No! Not again!" Hence the panic.
2/ Where does the panic come from? Is it fear that Joe can't do the job? No. Because we know he can. He's done it for 3.5 years at the highest possible level. The government is in good hands with Joe/Kamala. No worries there. None.
Alito's comments here are similar to remarks made by Rev. C. John McCloskey, Opus Dei priest and spiritual godfather to the Catholic extremist Leonard Leo cabal, to Charles Pierce 21 years ago. He, too, regarded the so-called culture wars as a Manichean struggle.
"Do I think it’s possible for someone who believes in the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of life...to choose to survive w/ people who think it’s OK to kill women & children or for—quote—homosexual cpls to exist and be recognized? No, I don’t think that’s possible,” he said.
"But, unfortunately, in the past, these types of things have tended to end this way. If American Catholics feel that’s troubling, let them. I don’t feel it’s troubling at all.”
Like many leaders of the reactionary right—Mike Johnson, Mike Davis, Stephen Miller, and so on—the current head of the Heritage Foundation has a dull, forgettable name: Kevin Roberts.
[THREAD]
2/ Roberts has a winsome smile, a PhD in U.S. history, a background in academia, & a well-earned reputation as a nice guy. Who could have imagined that this bright, friendly Gen Xer would be leading a Christian conservative counter-reformation—a crusade to end American democracy?
3/ In 2013, Roberts, who is Catholic, became the second president of Wyoming Catholic College, a strict, almost monastic institution est. in 2007 that provides “a rigorous immersion in...the spiritual heritage of the Catholic Church”—and that will throw you out if you hook up.
If action is character, as F. Scott Fitzgerald proposed, then it is instructive to look at the life of Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson in reverse, Benjamin Button style. . .
[THREAD]
1/ It is the night before Veteran’s Day, 2021. On his primetime Fox News program, Tucker Carlson argues that the U.S. should back Russia, and not Ukraine, in the escalating conflict between the two countries. “Why would we take Ukraine’s side and not Russia’s side?”
2/ He insists that choosing Putin’s dictatorship over Zelensky’s democracy is a no-brainer because of “energy reserves.” This is either breathtaking ignorance of the region’s history or straight-up Kremlin propaganda. Or, I suppose, both.