1/10. The claim that Trump won the election is a big lie.
2/10. A big lie changes reality. To believe it, people must disbelieve their senses, distrust their fellow citizens, and live in a world of faith.
3/10. A big lie demands conspiracy thinking, since all who doubt it are seen as traitors.
4/10. A big lie undoes a society, since it divides citizens into believers and unbelievers.
5/10. A big lie destroys democracy, since people who are convinced that nothing is true but the utterances of their leader ignore voting and its results.
6/10. A big lie must bring violence, as it has.
7/10. A big lie can never be told just by one person. Trump is the originator of this big lie, but it could never have flourished without his allies on Capitol Hill.
8/10. Political futures now depend on this big lie. Senators Hawley and Cruz are running for president on the basis of this big lie.
9/10. There is a cure for the big lie. Our elected representatives should tell the truth, without dissimulation, about the results of the 2020 election.
10/10. Politicians who do not tell the simple truth perpetuate the big lie, further an alternative reality, support conspiracy theories, weaken democracy, and foment violence far worse than that of January 6, 2021.
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1/5 If Trump wanted Russia to negotiate, he would make the war harder for the Kremlin, not create the conditions for Russian victory. I wish reporters would point this out. cnn.com/2024/12/12/pol…
2/5 Putin has made clear over and over that his goal is to destroy Ukraine as a nation and a state and that he has no interest in peace talks.
3/5 Trump’s proposed policy is to force Ukraine to negotiate by denying it weapons otherwise. But the Ukrainians are not the problem! The problem is Russia, the aggressor.
1/6 Dr. Helen Ouyang in @nytimes: “The country is not heading toward a single-payer system, but that doesn’t mean we have to continue leaving patients and their doctors in the dark.”
Yes, it does in fact mean that, absent some other drastic reform.
2/6 It doesn’t help to write and publish essays like this, which present doctors and patients as good people facing tragic choices in an unchangeable system. How the system works to kill Americans for profit has to be front and center.
3/6 Only the US among comparable countries enables useless middlemen to profit hugely by placing themselves between doctor and patient. We have to be reminded that we are uniquely choosing a senseless system that takes both our wealth and our lives.
1/4. Important work here: Trump is violent rather than strong, and using US troops on protesters would break America. nytimes.com/2024/08/17/us/…
2/4. Crucial point in the reporting: the most radical plans, such as the use of US troops against Americans, actually go beyond Project 2025. nytimes.com/2024/08/17/us/…
3/4. A point not raised here is the effect that orders to suppress American protesters would have on the military itself. Either it resists or it becomes a tool of fascist power.