Militia attacks on weather radars aren’t just crimes: they’re symptoms of a deeper sickness that rightwing media, foreign trolls, and the GOP are using to devastate our democracy via lies and hate...
Bill Nye was interviewed about the Texas flood, and he took his copy of The Constitution from his pocket and read: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries....". It is Article I Section 8 Clause 8 and it concerns intellectual property.
The founders knew invention and intellect are valuable. This is just one more argument we can use: science---it's in The Constitution.
America has stepped through the looking-glass. My plan is to talk to the sane people I know, and maybe some on the fringe. I like that you are a science guy too, Thom. Let's circulate this Report!
See you in the streets on the 17th! John Lewis worked with Al Gore on the Environmental Justice Act.
But how do you argue with people who have no ability to reason? It’s like 40% of the population has been infected with a brain freezing drug the effects of which are impossible to reverse. We will be stuck with these people well into the future. The best that we can hope it that we can whittle away at this idiocracy by better education and a safety net so that financial pressure is eased.
The "brain freezing" is the suffocation of normal emotional development in children by parents engaged in obedience training. Emotional self-mastery is the foundation of intelligence -- al the systems of your body are connected neurologically. Parents do this by threatening force or neglect, and persistent "fight or flight" interrupts normal functioning -- which in children is the continuous development of capabilities.
Well said. Thank you. It is so sad when people (like my kids) do not realize they are pawns in this game. These lies have had a profound effect on basic social civility.
2. Systematically targeting weather radar is a crime. Lock them up. A pending jail sentence will probably cause an epiphany. If they are punished, it's an object lesson.
Then there are a whole lot of fools. What happens when the fools outnumber us?
If members of a cult are punished they are viewed as martyrs; the faithful will become even more convinced that their beliefs are being validated and it will "prove" that the Deep State is behind it all.
Or maybe it's the flying saucers arising from inside Mt Shasta...
Stephen Colbert says that the truth has a liberal bias. It is not "far left" to seek and discover truth; it is progress, the normal and natural thing to do. We are the bearers and bringers of civilization to everyone; they are threatened by that most democratic ideal.
Actually, truth has a centrist bias. It only appears "left" to people prevented from acquiring it and made to cower in fear and anxiety. "Conservative" personality is marked by insecurity, rigidity, fearfulness, and hostility. "Liberal" means normal development of empathy, perceptiveness, ability to navigate complexity (the normal world).
This article spotlights the root of this distortion of reality and fantastical conspiracy theories--flat-out ignorance. An ignorance that does not elude billionaires or people in power. And in order for their warped ideologies to stick, they must dumb-down the rest of us. We fight back back, one bozo at a time. Start by going down to their level and nicely let them realize the irony of their beliefs. I've been met with speechlessness, jaws dropping, and eyes blinking wildly...so at least you know they're processing....
1. My neighbor, Alex, was the only trumpster on our block (he moved to Austin to work for SpaceX). Another neighbor, Oscar, is a contractor from Columbia. I told Alex how lucky he was to be able to do all the work in his house by himself and that we had to rely on Oscar, and that I was concerned about his workers being deported. His reply, "Oh, they're only deporting the criminals!" I then told him three first hand accounts of deportations from people I know. His jaw literally dropped and he started blinking. He never said a word. He was processing....
2. My husband and I were at a well-attended protest with about a paltry dozen trumpsters waving flags. We went over to them with my sign and my husband said something to this older woman. She yelled, "Anyone who didn't vote for trump is deplorable." I said to her, "You must be filthy rich and not need Medicare," and turned around and left. She yelled, "What do you mean by that?" I should have engaged her in a conversation since I had her attention, but that's OK, she was processing....
Lest you doubt that Thomas is not making this stuff up....
I was managing an FAA lab in Oklahoma City that was also supporting JCS and the White House at the time. Even back in the 90s you could not walk 3 paces in OK without "steppin in stupit."
- QANONSENSE: During a big Sstaff party at my house, an old guy came up to me asking: "I hear yer a Navy Capt'n." Then he asked if there was any truth to what his pastor said Sundee; "that they were building a secret prison under the airport and that Clinton's Trilateral Commission would use it to put him all the other gun-owning Okies in prison unless they handed over their guns?"
- FACTS: Oklahoma City was the DOJ prisoner transfer hub. The FAA was expanding the holding jails under the terminal to add 2 more cells where convicts were held between flights due to an increase in badguys.
Can you believe that there was time when this was the standard of middle school education. The civics portion alone is significant, not to mention the other categories.
Regarding the content of todays blog. It is disheartening (no pun intended) to witness the dismantling of our democratic institutions. The institutions that have been build up over decades but can literally be wiped out by the stroke of a pen. And now we see that this dismantling of the federal government is going to accelerate.
I am just envsioning how history will describe the fall of our country and then, the likely spread of this global contagion with its inevitable conflagration. There is an element of inevitablility and this, coming from an idealist.
I hold out faint hope that the mid term elections may halt the slide, but already in Texas a proposal has come up in the legislature to redistrict voting blocks to insure republican victories.
I am not sure there will even be midterm elections if they don't look favorable to republicans. But, it is astounding that republican lawmakers are willing participants with this destruction.
I repeat myself. The goal is to create chaos and rebellion to "allow" von trump and his corrupt goons to invoke state of emergency suspend constitution, send the army and cancel elections... for a while! 🥴😂
It't already true - the ignorant decide the elections - not their fault - their education failed them - Now they cannot tell lies from the truth - our daily news has failed us by submitting to the elected crackpots
With respect, one small disagreement. The ignorant choose to be ignorant. I grew up in the bible belt. My dad was Eisenhower R, like most of my families. Dad was prez/sec. of the school board for 20 years. Little village, 460 total students. Great education, good library, books, teachers, support staff. The redneck element was NOT failed by anyone in public responsibility. You want to learn, it is there. You eschew intelligence, you are dumb. I agree with you that the news is NOT news, it is obfuscation of information. Iwas a journalist/editor for 8 years.
The first six years of my life were in Arkansa Texas and Virginia, I spent my 17th year in Louisiana. At that time the standard in my school was progressive education, and to be truthful it was superior to that in Philadelphia where I spent 11 years of my life.
I can't speak for today, nor can I speak for Texas,which I suspect is very Christian and right wing.
I can speak to the influence of the local press and pulpit (I lived with my grandparents in a shotgun cabin owned by my pastor uncle, next door. Red neckery is cultural, an artifact of the region, and traditional. The civil war is spoken of as that war of northern aggression, and my uncle called Catholics, the spawn of Satan, from the pulpit. So one Sunday, I delighted in bringing my Catholic Cajun friends to services and we sat in the front pew, including my girl friend and her brothers. Well that did it, he canceled the sermon he had prepared and lit into them with hell fire and brimstone, had us laughing.
When you meet someone for the first time, the first question they ask is "What church do you go to" answer that and they know everything that they want to know about you.
I find there are pockets of "concurrent majority" Dems, especially in cities, like Hotlanta and New OPrleans but also in places like the "hardwood" areas of Mississippi and Alabama.
I held hearings in every state except Hawaii. Gov. Andy Beshear carried counties that supported Trump. Replicate him and Dems have a chance in several states.
Bashear wins because he carries a populist message. The people are tired of the same old shit.populism can win, populism has won, the wrong kind of Populism, the populism of right wing demagogues
We on the left have to learn, stop being so cerebral. I haven't seen a Democratic message that will fit on a bumper sticker, a pamphlet yes, but Republicans message with bullet points that fit on bumper stickers,and they are always on the offensive, they never back off and apologize for that is a sign of weakness,and thus politics is a zero sum game, in their favor.
You have told me time and again, that the party is a big tent party, but so is the Republican party, they have rural Christian farmers who have never seen a black person except on TV, that are patently racists, they have self hating Jews, gays, blacks, Hispanics, male supremacists, NAZI's,KKK and funded by a billionaire, millionaire class who sees them as nothing more than tools, useful idiots. and yet they rally around the flag and unite as a single force.
I was looking at some of the signs held up on the Rachel Maddow split screen of the protests.
Such bullshit, like the Green Black and Red sign that said Equal rights for blacks, and then as an afterthought at the bottom Immigrants.
Feminists and gays for Palestine,when neither would last 1 hour in Palestine or any Islamic country.
Then there were the people on bikes and motorcycles driving around with Mexican flags, and people in the crowd waving Mexican flags.
Stupid, grist for the mill. such behavior enables Miller and Trump to prove an invasion.
And Mexicans are not the only victims of Miller and Trump.
The right wing will at least give up their demand for primacy, and rally, so to speak, around the flag, when I hear Unite the Right, they are successful, but try to united the left.
He's a Disciples of Christ lay preacher. The. same people who vote for Trump in, say East Tennessee, mostly work for TVA, a government entity, belong to unions. Dolly Parton, most popular person regionally, is also a major employer.
As between Trump's "Christian" identity and Beshear's, there's no contest.
I write postcards. I march. I donate. I walk the streets canvasing for Democrats, but it is time for us to recognize, and admit, that we are no longer living in a democracy.
We have been living in a dictatorship since our Supreme Court placed our dictator above the law. We are living in a dictatorship where our dictator writes laws (he calls them executive orders), and our Supreme Court enacts them. We are living in a dictatorship where our Congress has abdicated its position as a co-equal branch of our government. A dictatorship where our military has been deployed into our streets to detain American citizens, where our Congress has financed an internal army (ICE) with a budget $30 billion larger than what Russian spends on its army, where this new army does not wear badges but does wear masks, and where it will be used by our dictator to intimidate, arrest and send political opponents into concentration camps, and control access to voting booths. Under these conditions it will be very difficult to get our democracy back.
Words matter, and we will not get our democracy back if we cannot, or will not, admit that it is already gone.
Where is the frank and uncompromising truth here that the one consistent and persistent fact is that lurking behind all of the crackpot notions and delusions (they are not theories) are the inevitable invocations of god vs. satan or some iteration of those two mythological beings at odds with each other and with us as mere mortals responsible to join on the side of good against evil? This is the common thread and the ubiquitous delusion. It drives every justification for violence and repression and powers everyone from Putin to Middle Eastern terrorists to right-wing Christian fanatics killing abortion providers and blowing up buildings. The irrational dependence on the ultimate authority and all lesser authority comes from this one insistence on believing in and relying on some supernatural deity and blaming demons, spirits, or a super bad bad guy pulling our strings and making some of us do the "wrong" things, such as enabling sinners and stealing the hard-earned dollars of billionaires to support the "undeserving" poor people and "inferior" minorities. The real delusion is believing that we can co-exist with such fanatic and lunatic nonsense purveyors and merely humor and indulge them while they plot our destruction to save the world from scientific truth and reality which is in competition with god's miraculous wonders. Where is the acknowledgement that children are being deluged with false morality, guilt, shame, punishment, capitalism as pure good, and arbitrary authority to replace individual conscience disguised as training and education? Self-deception is the new religion and it is not being faced head-on or called out for what it is. This is a choice and every one of us has a decision to make.
A lot of it has to do with maturation. Some people (especially males) have an emotional age stuck in puberty. We've talked about this many times. Most men don't mature until about 7 years after most women. The amygdala is not fully developed. Many cannot process fear adequately. That's why the military can send people to their death on the basis that the mission is more important than the men. That's why not many criminals act out after age 30 or so.
Systematically targeting weather radar is like the Man of La Mancha tilting windmills. Not a question of myopia. It meets nutsy koo koo criteria. .
Our president is obviously deranged, but to Verterans on Patrol he evokes a juvenile locker room mentality that substantiates a suspension of disbelief from reality.
I agree. Males are immature into their mid-twenties at least and fantasize about physical confrontations and rebellious acts. However, delusion as a tool, which Thom has described is effective because people are predisposed to believing and acting on ludicrous themes and ideas which have no basis in reality and which satisfy certain impulses or needs for salvation, greatness, superiority, or association with power and glory. Delusion is not something to conceal or deny and is not seen now as pathological or weird. If the president openly cites insane nonsense and repeats it as truth and appears to believe it, there is no reason to think about doubts and requiring evidence. Everything can be explained as the work of god or the devil. I can demonize you and that ends the discussion.
So if one is "anticatholic" and "antimuslim" one is a fellow traveler to these nut jobs.
Be careful of reverse psychology. For instance Trump said that the media was the enemy of the people, Yet it was the media that made him and it is because of the media he was elected twice.
Trump said that the FBI is the enemy of the people, yet it is. It persecuted MLK, BLM, the antifa movement, and leftists, while ignoring right wing terrorists, and it is worse now under Patel and Bongino. Peter Thiel, J D Vance, Mike Pence,
the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). , have been in the forefront of the anti woman movement, covering up for pedophile priests, and making America a Christian theocracy. So yeh I am anti Catholic, rightfully so.But also a progressive..The Catholic Church is regressive and anti progressive.
The Supreme court is staffed by six rad trad Catholics, who are slaughtering our Constitution and our democracy and way of life. I am no friend or fan of Islam, because I have studied it, and am too familiar with this male supremacist, misognistic, triumphalist, homophobic, and intolerant ideology., but I do not not wish Muslims ill, and will donate to Zohran Mamdani.
Where does human delusion begin? Pre-literate, humans had to conjecture on their own what the core realities were that either threatened or enhanced their lives. Then some psychopath began the legend of gods. gods turned into forced compliance/worship via the strongman syndrome in primitive societies. Lies are contagious, and they are insecure when placed next to factual realizations. So to keep control of the objects of the first lie, another and another and another, ad infinitum, are generated in a production line that Ford would have admired. Each lie must be, in some fashion, more phantasmagoric than the last one, and as lies grow exponentially, soon the entire sphere of communication is taken over my an invasive species, crowding out or drugging its consumers enough to have them kill off any remaining factoid, truism or deductively proven conclusion. Religion and religion alone is the DELUSION that grinds this planet to bits, one ridiculous lie at a time, repeated continuously by the Elmer Gantrys of seduction/delusion/grifting/guilting. Humans now only feel shame when they are shamed by the prestidigitators of delusion. Now religion and personal, one-on-one spiritual reckonings are on opposite sides of the galaxy from each other. Cults are religious delusion, and the maga-t cult is rife with delirium and fanaticism. Walk softly, carry a big stick, use it wisely. These whack jobs cannot tell a grapefruit from a ping pong ball.
My mother, who was also a refined person, found herself stuck in the middle of redneck country USA - small potato farm country in the California high desert near Riverside, CA miles from nowhere. Due to family circumstances, as she did not drive, she raised her six children in the Missionary Alliance Church and found solace in the Bible and televangelists.
Soon she was watching TV programs tailored for these same ignorant people and allowed herself to be convinced of all sorts of ridiculous stuff - like the rays coming from the microwave could invade your body and eventually kill you; there was something sinister in computers. Granted, I almost believe that, but I continue to use the technology of my PC daily. On one hand, she could be rational; however, due to the long-term abuse she suffered, her mind found solace in the belief that if she sent $10.00 to Jimmy and Tammy Faye Baker's ministry, she too would be saved.
If anyone runs across someone steeped in illusion that might be open to help, here is a helpful reference to share. It’s called Leaving MAGA. The founder also has an interview on Substack with Kinsinger you can search for.
The Science Guy
Bill Nye was interviewed about the Texas flood, and he took his copy of The Constitution from his pocket and read: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries....". It is Article I Section 8 Clause 8 and it concerns intellectual property.
The founders knew invention and intellect are valuable. This is just one more argument we can use: science---it's in The Constitution.
America has stepped through the looking-glass. My plan is to talk to the sane people I know, and maybe some on the fringe. I like that you are a science guy too, Thom. Let's circulate this Report!
See you in the streets on the 17th! John Lewis worked with Al Gore on the Environmental Justice Act.
Doesn't take a rocket scientist.
"Trump hates dogs" should have been Harris' campaign motto....proselytize them one dog park at a time.
But how do you argue with people who have no ability to reason? It’s like 40% of the population has been infected with a brain freezing drug the effects of which are impossible to reverse. We will be stuck with these people well into the future. The best that we can hope it that we can whittle away at this idiocracy by better education and a safety net so that financial pressure is eased.
The "brain freezing" is the suffocation of normal emotional development in children by parents engaged in obedience training. Emotional self-mastery is the foundation of intelligence -- al the systems of your body are connected neurologically. Parents do this by threatening force or neglect, and persistent "fight or flight" interrupts normal functioning -- which in children is the continuous development of capabilities.
Well said. Thank you. It is so sad when people (like my kids) do not realize they are pawns in this game. These lies have had a profound effect on basic social civility.
1. Only a fool would believe such BS.
2. Systematically targeting weather radar is a crime. Lock them up. A pending jail sentence will probably cause an epiphany. If they are punished, it's an object lesson.
Then there are a whole lot of fools. What happens when the fools outnumber us?
If members of a cult are punished they are viewed as martyrs; the faithful will become even more convinced that their beliefs are being validated and it will "prove" that the Deep State is behind it all.
Or maybe it's the flying saucers arising from inside Mt Shasta...
Lol! Whatevsies. Troll.
Stephen Colbert says that the truth has a liberal bias. It is not "far left" to seek and discover truth; it is progress, the normal and natural thing to do. We are the bearers and bringers of civilization to everyone; they are threatened by that most democratic ideal.
Actually, truth has a centrist bias. It only appears "left" to people prevented from acquiring it and made to cower in fear and anxiety. "Conservative" personality is marked by insecurity, rigidity, fearfulness, and hostility. "Liberal" means normal development of empathy, perceptiveness, ability to navigate complexity (the normal world).
This article spotlights the root of this distortion of reality and fantastical conspiracy theories--flat-out ignorance. An ignorance that does not elude billionaires or people in power. And in order for their warped ideologies to stick, they must dumb-down the rest of us. We fight back back, one bozo at a time. Start by going down to their level and nicely let them realize the irony of their beliefs. I've been met with speechlessness, jaws dropping, and eyes blinking wildly...so at least you know they're processing....
Suspension of disbelief.
Sophia please give us an example of what you might say to such a delusional person. Thanks.
Here's two of my experiences:
1. My neighbor, Alex, was the only trumpster on our block (he moved to Austin to work for SpaceX). Another neighbor, Oscar, is a contractor from Columbia. I told Alex how lucky he was to be able to do all the work in his house by himself and that we had to rely on Oscar, and that I was concerned about his workers being deported. His reply, "Oh, they're only deporting the criminals!" I then told him three first hand accounts of deportations from people I know. His jaw literally dropped and he started blinking. He never said a word. He was processing....
2. My husband and I were at a well-attended protest with about a paltry dozen trumpsters waving flags. We went over to them with my sign and my husband said something to this older woman. She yelled, "Anyone who didn't vote for trump is deplorable." I said to her, "You must be filthy rich and not need Medicare," and turned around and left. She yelled, "What do you mean by that?" I should have engaged her in a conversation since I had her attention, but that's OK, she was processing....
Lest you doubt that Thomas is not making this stuff up....
I was managing an FAA lab in Oklahoma City that was also supporting JCS and the White House at the time. Even back in the 90s you could not walk 3 paces in OK without "steppin in stupit."
- QANONSENSE: During a big Sstaff party at my house, an old guy came up to me asking: "I hear yer a Navy Capt'n." Then he asked if there was any truth to what his pastor said Sundee; "that they were building a secret prison under the airport and that Clinton's Trilateral Commission would use it to put him all the other gun-owning Okies in prison unless they handed over their guns?"
- FACTS: Oklahoma City was the DOJ prisoner transfer hub. The FAA was expanding the holding jails under the terminal to add 2 more cells where convicts were held between flights due to an increase in badguys.
I hope you watch I Hip News and I''ve Had it.
Can you believe that there was time when this was the standard of middle school education. The civics portion alone is significant, not to mention the other categories.
https://www.bullittcountyhistory.com/bchistory/schoolexam1912.html
Regarding the content of todays blog. It is disheartening (no pun intended) to witness the dismantling of our democratic institutions. The institutions that have been build up over decades but can literally be wiped out by the stroke of a pen. And now we see that this dismantling of the federal government is going to accelerate.
I am just envsioning how history will describe the fall of our country and then, the likely spread of this global contagion with its inevitable conflagration. There is an element of inevitablility and this, coming from an idealist.
I hold out faint hope that the mid term elections may halt the slide, but already in Texas a proposal has come up in the legislature to redistrict voting blocks to insure republican victories.
I am not sure there will even be midterm elections if they don't look favorable to republicans. But, it is astounding that republican lawmakers are willing participants with this destruction.
I repeat myself. The goal is to create chaos and rebellion to "allow" von trump and his corrupt goons to invoke state of emergency suspend constitution, send the army and cancel elections... for a while! 🥴😂
Thanks for all your hard work and dedication. We shall overcome.
It't already true - the ignorant decide the elections - not their fault - their education failed them - Now they cannot tell lies from the truth - our daily news has failed us by submitting to the elected crackpots
With respect, one small disagreement. The ignorant choose to be ignorant. I grew up in the bible belt. My dad was Eisenhower R, like most of my families. Dad was prez/sec. of the school board for 20 years. Little village, 460 total students. Great education, good library, books, teachers, support staff. The redneck element was NOT failed by anyone in public responsibility. You want to learn, it is there. You eschew intelligence, you are dumb. I agree with you that the news is NOT news, it is obfuscation of information. Iwas a journalist/editor for 8 years.
The first six years of my life were in Arkansa Texas and Virginia, I spent my 17th year in Louisiana. At that time the standard in my school was progressive education, and to be truthful it was superior to that in Philadelphia where I spent 11 years of my life.
I can't speak for today, nor can I speak for Texas,which I suspect is very Christian and right wing.
I can speak to the influence of the local press and pulpit (I lived with my grandparents in a shotgun cabin owned by my pastor uncle, next door. Red neckery is cultural, an artifact of the region, and traditional. The civil war is spoken of as that war of northern aggression, and my uncle called Catholics, the spawn of Satan, from the pulpit. So one Sunday, I delighted in bringing my Catholic Cajun friends to services and we sat in the front pew, including my girl friend and her brothers. Well that did it, he canceled the sermon he had prepared and lit into them with hell fire and brimstone, had us laughing.
When you meet someone for the first time, the first question they ask is "What church do you go to" answer that and they know everything that they want to know about you.
I don't think it's as cut and dried anymore.
I find there are pockets of "concurrent majority" Dems, especially in cities, like Hotlanta and New OPrleans but also in places like the "hardwood" areas of Mississippi and Alabama.
I held hearings in every state except Hawaii. Gov. Andy Beshear carried counties that supported Trump. Replicate him and Dems have a chance in several states.
Georgia has 2 Dem senators.
So there are possibilities
Bashear wins because he carries a populist message. The people are tired of the same old shit.populism can win, populism has won, the wrong kind of Populism, the populism of right wing demagogues
We on the left have to learn, stop being so cerebral. I haven't seen a Democratic message that will fit on a bumper sticker, a pamphlet yes, but Republicans message with bullet points that fit on bumper stickers,and they are always on the offensive, they never back off and apologize for that is a sign of weakness,and thus politics is a zero sum game, in their favor.
You have told me time and again, that the party is a big tent party, but so is the Republican party, they have rural Christian farmers who have never seen a black person except on TV, that are patently racists, they have self hating Jews, gays, blacks, Hispanics, male supremacists, NAZI's,KKK and funded by a billionaire, millionaire class who sees them as nothing more than tools, useful idiots. and yet they rally around the flag and unite as a single force.
I was looking at some of the signs held up on the Rachel Maddow split screen of the protests.
Such bullshit, like the Green Black and Red sign that said Equal rights for blacks, and then as an afterthought at the bottom Immigrants.
Feminists and gays for Palestine,when neither would last 1 hour in Palestine or any Islamic country.
Then there were the people on bikes and motorcycles driving around with Mexican flags, and people in the crowd waving Mexican flags.
Stupid, grist for the mill. such behavior enables Miller and Trump to prove an invasion.
And Mexicans are not the only victims of Miller and Trump.
The right wing will at least give up their demand for primacy, and rally, so to speak, around the flag, when I hear Unite the Right, they are successful, but try to united the left.
He's a Disciples of Christ lay preacher. The. same people who vote for Trump in, say East Tennessee, mostly work for TVA, a government entity, belong to unions. Dolly Parton, most popular person regionally, is also a major employer.
As between Trump's "Christian" identity and Beshear's, there's no contest.
It is all clear now. Bashear is popular because he is a proud fundie. Thanks for that
As suspected the secret in the south is to be "born again".
I just scratched Bashear off my list.
Psy ops has a lot to do with it.
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/09/nx-s1-5181965/2024-election-foreign-influence-russia-china-iran
Thom,
I write postcards. I march. I donate. I walk the streets canvasing for Democrats, but it is time for us to recognize, and admit, that we are no longer living in a democracy.
We have been living in a dictatorship since our Supreme Court placed our dictator above the law. We are living in a dictatorship where our dictator writes laws (he calls them executive orders), and our Supreme Court enacts them. We are living in a dictatorship where our Congress has abdicated its position as a co-equal branch of our government. A dictatorship where our military has been deployed into our streets to detain American citizens, where our Congress has financed an internal army (ICE) with a budget $30 billion larger than what Russian spends on its army, where this new army does not wear badges but does wear masks, and where it will be used by our dictator to intimidate, arrest and send political opponents into concentration camps, and control access to voting booths. Under these conditions it will be very difficult to get our democracy back.
Words matter, and we will not get our democracy back if we cannot, or will not, admit that it is already gone.
Why doesn't Meyer use the Jewish Space Laser to take out the Deep State Weaponized Weather Manipulator?
This isn't just that this is an attack on democracy, it's an attack on life itself.
Where is the frank and uncompromising truth here that the one consistent and persistent fact is that lurking behind all of the crackpot notions and delusions (they are not theories) are the inevitable invocations of god vs. satan or some iteration of those two mythological beings at odds with each other and with us as mere mortals responsible to join on the side of good against evil? This is the common thread and the ubiquitous delusion. It drives every justification for violence and repression and powers everyone from Putin to Middle Eastern terrorists to right-wing Christian fanatics killing abortion providers and blowing up buildings. The irrational dependence on the ultimate authority and all lesser authority comes from this one insistence on believing in and relying on some supernatural deity and blaming demons, spirits, or a super bad bad guy pulling our strings and making some of us do the "wrong" things, such as enabling sinners and stealing the hard-earned dollars of billionaires to support the "undeserving" poor people and "inferior" minorities. The real delusion is believing that we can co-exist with such fanatic and lunatic nonsense purveyors and merely humor and indulge them while they plot our destruction to save the world from scientific truth and reality which is in competition with god's miraculous wonders. Where is the acknowledgement that children are being deluged with false morality, guilt, shame, punishment, capitalism as pure good, and arbitrary authority to replace individual conscience disguised as training and education? Self-deception is the new religion and it is not being faced head-on or called out for what it is. This is a choice and every one of us has a decision to make.
You're right about the god vs satan analogy.
They have faith. We have reason.
A lot of it has to do with maturation. Some people (especially males) have an emotional age stuck in puberty. We've talked about this many times. Most men don't mature until about 7 years after most women. The amygdala is not fully developed. Many cannot process fear adequately. That's why the military can send people to their death on the basis that the mission is more important than the men. That's why not many criminals act out after age 30 or so.
Systematically targeting weather radar is like the Man of La Mancha tilting windmills. Not a question of myopia. It meets nutsy koo koo criteria. .
Our president is obviously deranged, but to Verterans on Patrol he evokes a juvenile locker room mentality that substantiates a suspension of disbelief from reality.
I agree. Males are immature into their mid-twenties at least and fantasize about physical confrontations and rebellious acts. However, delusion as a tool, which Thom has described is effective because people are predisposed to believing and acting on ludicrous themes and ideas which have no basis in reality and which satisfy certain impulses or needs for salvation, greatness, superiority, or association with power and glory. Delusion is not something to conceal or deny and is not seen now as pathological or weird. If the president openly cites insane nonsense and repeats it as truth and appears to believe it, there is no reason to think about doubts and requiring evidence. Everything can be explained as the work of god or the devil. I can demonize you and that ends the discussion.
So if one is "anticatholic" and "antimuslim" one is a fellow traveler to these nut jobs.
Be careful of reverse psychology. For instance Trump said that the media was the enemy of the people, Yet it was the media that made him and it is because of the media he was elected twice.
Trump said that the FBI is the enemy of the people, yet it is. It persecuted MLK, BLM, the antifa movement, and leftists, while ignoring right wing terrorists, and it is worse now under Patel and Bongino. Peter Thiel, J D Vance, Mike Pence,
the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). , have been in the forefront of the anti woman movement, covering up for pedophile priests, and making America a Christian theocracy. So yeh I am anti Catholic, rightfully so.But also a progressive..The Catholic Church is regressive and anti progressive.
The Supreme court is staffed by six rad trad Catholics, who are slaughtering our Constitution and our democracy and way of life. I am no friend or fan of Islam, because I have studied it, and am too familiar with this male supremacist, misognistic, triumphalist, homophobic, and intolerant ideology., but I do not not wish Muslims ill, and will donate to Zohran Mamdani.
Where does human delusion begin? Pre-literate, humans had to conjecture on their own what the core realities were that either threatened or enhanced their lives. Then some psychopath began the legend of gods. gods turned into forced compliance/worship via the strongman syndrome in primitive societies. Lies are contagious, and they are insecure when placed next to factual realizations. So to keep control of the objects of the first lie, another and another and another, ad infinitum, are generated in a production line that Ford would have admired. Each lie must be, in some fashion, more phantasmagoric than the last one, and as lies grow exponentially, soon the entire sphere of communication is taken over my an invasive species, crowding out or drugging its consumers enough to have them kill off any remaining factoid, truism or deductively proven conclusion. Religion and religion alone is the DELUSION that grinds this planet to bits, one ridiculous lie at a time, repeated continuously by the Elmer Gantrys of seduction/delusion/grifting/guilting. Humans now only feel shame when they are shamed by the prestidigitators of delusion. Now religion and personal, one-on-one spiritual reckonings are on opposite sides of the galaxy from each other. Cults are religious delusion, and the maga-t cult is rife with delirium and fanaticism. Walk softly, carry a big stick, use it wisely. These whack jobs cannot tell a grapefruit from a ping pong ball.
My mother, who was also a refined person, found herself stuck in the middle of redneck country USA - small potato farm country in the California high desert near Riverside, CA miles from nowhere. Due to family circumstances, as she did not drive, she raised her six children in the Missionary Alliance Church and found solace in the Bible and televangelists.
Soon she was watching TV programs tailored for these same ignorant people and allowed herself to be convinced of all sorts of ridiculous stuff - like the rays coming from the microwave could invade your body and eventually kill you; there was something sinister in computers. Granted, I almost believe that, but I continue to use the technology of my PC daily. On one hand, she could be rational; however, due to the long-term abuse she suffered, her mind found solace in the belief that if she sent $10.00 to Jimmy and Tammy Faye Baker's ministry, she too would be saved.
Corporate media, corporate politicians: Money is priority #1, from which all behavior flows. Or, if you can’t monetize integrity, why bother?
Name one CEO who believes in systematically targeting weather radars.
If anyone runs across someone steeped in illusion that might be open to help, here is a helpful reference to share. It’s called Leaving MAGA. The founder also has an interview on Substack with Kinsinger you can search for.
https://leavingmaga.org