There's one specific one that applies when it comes to Trump's Republican Party---it's "identity fusion". This has made the jobs you described easy beyond the dreams of the rotten, rich bastards that set out to kill the truth.
He has become the party and they have become him. That leaves us the task of being the keepers of the Truth. Thank you to all the keepers. See you in the streets
Cult of Personality: The state uses mass media, propaganda, and public spectacles to deify the leader, often presenting them as infallible or superhuman.
Mandatory Adoration: Public life is frequently restructured so that artistic, religious, and sporting events serve as celebrations of the leader.
The "Leader Principle" (Führerprinzip): As seen in Nazi Germany, this principle mandates that the leader's command overrides the rule of law, and subordinates owe the leader absolute personal loyalty.
Political Religion: Totalitarianism can function as a "political religion," where faith in the leader and state doctrine replaces traditional religious beliefs, inspiring self-abnegation and unquestioning obedience.
Omnipresent Symbolism: The leader's image is often ubiquitous, serving as a constant reminder of the state’s total control and surveillance, such as the figure of "Big Brother" in George Orwell's 1984.
Daniel,thanks,but we have known about the Trump cult for 13 months,just like we've know about the cult that follows Musk. Since we know all that,where are the very bright americans who know how to fight back. Do you think the american psyche can endure ,another 3 yrs of this "Nazi". This entire 13 months has proven that most americans have no ability to discern what is happening and no idea of how to fight back. Again I reference for the 33rd time,75 million dems voted for Harris. In all the rallies,8 million have had the balls to get out there. Where are the other 67 million Democrats
Billionaires have used democracy to crush democracy. They funded and disseminated their own "truth", a self-serving fairy tale to render us helpless, apathetic, and divided. They got SCOTUS to declare money to be speech, not bribery, thereby making corruption patriotic. Now that they feel democracy is vanquished, they don't bother to hide their hate any more.
Jeffrey,do you think maybe itis time to identify by name these billionaires so we can all find a way to go after them and I mean go after them. Nothing is off limits,no strategy should e overlooked. They are not invincible.
Many of them have been named already, in many venues: Musk, Bezos, Singer, Koch, Uihlein, Zuckerberg, Murdoch, Thiel, the Waltons, and the Bradleys are among the most prominent.
How do you defeat an elephant? One vote at a time…and once we take Congress, we don’t impeach tRUMP. We impeach each cabinet member one by one. Every seasoned law enforcement officer understands this. You take down the mob one lieutenant at a time. Going after the boss rarely works.
“Impeaching each cabinet member will take years”, you say! Yep! Let the hearings define the last two years of this regime for what it is. Let the hearings educate and help Americans understand the GOP is no longer an American civic enterprise. My god, let this be heard loudly and clearly so that we never repeat this hideous era.
Jodi, the only way to take back the government if for every Democrat and pro Democracy independent to turn out and vote.. The Republican party and the regime have put in place laws,policies and procedures that will suppress and steal the vote, such as voter ID laws (and I am not talking the SAVE act, each state is sovereign and manages its own voting, voter caging (scrubbing voter rolls, for example what Trump is doing with the Fulton and Maricopa voting rolls, and why they want the Minnesota voting rolls.
Restricting and/or moving ballot boxes and voting locations and not notifying Democrats,, restrictions on mail in voting, MAGA election commissions (driving out independents as that did in San Bernardino co, CA., armed poll watchers (RNC has allocated resources to train 10,000 poll watchers, and a Republican operative, has bought Dominion Voting Machines.
William,great ost. Who is the Republican operative who bough Dominon Voting Machines? It would be nice if a media source other than these substacks told people what is going on. I guess that is not something they will do,they are complicit .
Scott Leiendecker, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Vote. Boulder County Elections has used Dominion voting equipment since 2017.
Leinendecker is also close friends with Ed Millerwho served as Acting US Attorney for the Capitol.
Martin has stirred up a chorus of critics during his brief but tumultuous tenure in office. He fired and demoted subordinates who worked on politically sensitive cases. He posted on social media about potential targets of investigations. And he forced the chief of the office's criminal division to resign after directing her to scrutinize the awarding of a government contract during Democratic President Joe Biden's administration.
Not at all. With everything stabilizing prices will go down again, and that is contrary to Putin's interest. Besides Putin has been supplying Iran with intelligence and targeting info, and Trump's response was "so what".
Things are not as they appear to be. Putin and Bibi have been BFF's, even as Putin has voice criticism,and that is all, about Gaza.
Bibi started the war to decapitate the leadership in Iran.. Bibi told Trump, and Trump jumped in to save Bibi the reckoning to come.
This whole affair was in the planning before the carrier U.S. Gerald Ford was told to remove itself from its station in the Caribbean and move to the Mediterranean.
If you want to know where the action is, follow the carriers.
First the Gerald Ford was sent to the Caribbean to attack Venezuela,a then to the Mediterranean to attack Iran.
The USS Abraham Lincoln was sent to the Gulf in January this year. This has been a long time in planning.
Bibi has achieved his goal, as has Trump detraction from their problems, Bibi's is legal, unlike the U.S. Israel can try a sitting leader and Bibi is charged with corruption.
Trump got some breathing space from TrumpEpstein, but he isn't worried because nothing will ever happen to him, he just want some breathing room.
Putin got some needed breathing room to, allowing him to further increase his attacks on the civilians in Ukraine.
The attacks on Iran have not ceased, despite Trump and neither have the counter attacks.
Things are not as they appear. Take nothing at face value.
Trump stated that the war against Iran is "very complete, pretty much". Speaking on March 9 and 10, 2026, he claimed that the U.S. and Israel have achieved major strides... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2jxe382pwo
This weekend, President T-word made me think of a scene . . .
Robert Downey Jr.’s character in "Tropic Thunder" is Kirk Lazarus — a 5-time Oscar-winning Australian ultra‑method actor who undergoes an extreme (and intentionally satirical, albeit offensive) transformation for his role as a Black grunt in the American (as the Vietnamese call it) War.
Ben Stiller’s character in Tropic Thunder is Tugg Speedman, the fading action‑movie superstar who’s desperate to revive his career.
Here they are talking about actors acting r-worded.
The issue now is how our democratic governors, state legislators, house members and representatives understand what you are stating and with backbone do everything they can to overturn the oligarchs control. They need to continue to expose the lies as we all do. Thom is an example we can emulate with our own spheres of influence. The blight of sociopathic morbidly rich has been with us since the rise of civilization. And it’s always been countered by every day people saying NO MORE! The time is upon us again.
Saving democracy requires a strong "brand". A logo, an image, a phrase , color-coded and easy to copy ( remember ban the bomb... aka the "peace" symbol?) . Bringing folks back together so they can IDENTIFY each other at a glance and know there is strength in numbers. That is why the MAGA brand works, NO KINGS is a start... now let's get the brand designed, produced, and distributed asap.
Right Ari. A few months ago I suggested here that everyone opposed to the regime consider wearing an inverted red triangle. The Nazis had a complex system of symbols for not just Jews and gays, but for drug addicts, foreign workers, dissidents and so on. This red one was used for (according to AI) imprisoned "communists, socialists, trade unionists, anarchists, liberals, and Freemasons". Why not proudly say that we are standing up to this fascist regime, and show our unity?
Did Louise write this? I love this article: one of the clearest, most succinct, and most profound explanations of how we got to our current situation and what we are really facing. This clearly explains the great obstacles we are dealing with...lack of means to discern facts and lack of faith in our ability to act. And the article is clear that we are what we are facing is the result of a class decision by the rich to deprive working people of agency...a conscious strategy that has been pursued year over year as we gradually lose any economic or political strength.
It tok me 70 years for God to find me in the form of Greek Orthodoxy (I'm a white male of Southern ancestry on both sides, with Confederate soldiers and slave owners in the old family tree). Part of that was my utter contempt for our species, honed over decades of reading history and watching it happen. And perhaps the greatest truth in the New Testament is what St. Paul says in first Timothy, that "the love of money is the root of all evil."
That love is what got us here. Not what money buys, though the morbidly rich certainly enjoy that. But inevitably, it bores them, and the greed for money itself becomes the be all and end all. To be the king on top of the gold mountain. Not realizing that when they get there, nothing else will remain, no one else will care, and they will become worm food like everyone else.
Granting that the morbidly rich are to blame for all of this, we can't change the reality that we are where we are. And that this country is now the disease. The cure is likely to be bloody, cruel, and self-destructive. I only hope as many can leave before that happens as possible, especially our adored grandson. In the meantime, all we can do is fight, know that everything MAGA is a lie and call it out, regardless of the odds of our prevailing. To do anything less is craven, un-American, spineless, ignoble. I repeat--even if it proves futile. Better to die fighting than to live MAGA.
I would suggest it is not the love of money as much as it is the love of power. However, with enough power, money is not a problem. Nor sure what the Greek Orthodox Church has to do with all of this. I find it understandable that the right wing, MAGA, etc. quickly aligned itself with religion, specifically evangelical Christianity. Those churches teach obedience. You obey, you follow the church leaders, you do as you are told. These people are the very people you want in your authoritarian movement. They are already trained to obey and when you link God to your cause, you have them. They will oppose education that seeks to promote critical thinking, they will oppose empiricism and science, the separation of church and state, etc. They are ready to accept what you are selling. Any movement that seeks to support and elevate the common man, any group that encourages questioning and reasoning while telling the masses that anyone who holds power and wealth does so because he is your better, he has been given wealth and power because God favors him, he knows more and is smarter than you are. Now, you bow down and hope he will let some of the crumbs drop on you. What is so surprising to me is that people like Thom, and some of his readers, could see this clearly years and years ago. We knew they tried to crush teachers' unions and public education because they actively discourage an educated middle class with both knowledge and time to make trouble for them.
Julie,great post. You are 100%right,one of the greatest threats to our democracy is "White Christian Nationalism" the Hegseth type who believe that we should be a white society, no hispanics,no blacks,no muslims,noone other than white god fearing believers. I would like to remind you that 57%of Catholics and 37% of Jews voted for what we have now. They are complicit as well.
I did not want to write a book, though I always tend to logorrhea, I admit.
Simply put, attacks on religion per se are misguided. Religion isn't the problem; the people, almost always men, who twist and distort it are.
The first encyclical issued by the Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church of America when he took office was about climate change. Our Patriarch, simply the leading bishop in our church organizational pattern, has been an environmental advocate since he assumed office, and is the longest serving Patriarch in our 2000 years of existence. That is just one example of what makes the Greek Orthodox Church here in this country different.
To be Christian, whatever kind you claim to be, your primary obligation aside from faith in God is loving your neighbor. I will say, unequivocally, that "Chistian nationalism" is an oxymoron, and "White Christian Nationalism" is an obscenity. It is not just my opinion, but that o fly priests and any real Christian, that you cannot be truly Christian and MAGA. Period. No dispute, no debate. The use of the term by this malodorous maladministration is just another lie, used to lure in the deluded deplorables as they continue being the least Christian administration in our history. Only the willfully blind cannot see that.
Roy,thanks for your response.I was not aware that the Greek Orthodox Church took such a strong position on climate change. I commend you for bringing this up. It is pretty obvious that White Christian Nationlists have no interest in loving thy neighbor if that person is not a WCN.
I have also noticed that aside from the pope,a month or so ago,the cathlolic priests have made no effort to to inform their parishoners what is going on. Neither have any of the Jewish Rabbi's who almost 100% support Trump. Its all about Trump's support for the Genocide in Gaza and the money.
People believe any lie that confirms their biases. But it was way over the top when his base bought into “they’re eating the dogs and cats.” We need critical thinking to be taught in our educational system. And soon.
Another problem adding fuel to the fire is social media feeds that are generated by algorithms that learn what you like and give you more of the same.
"We need critical thinking to be taught in our educational system." Thom answered that and I seconded it in my reply to Roy Schults. I can assure you they are destroying the separation of church and state very deliberately. I earned an M.Ed. in Reading in the mid-70s. I can assure you our professors and researchers supported teaching children, right from the get-go, to question and evaluate, to be critical readers. I will go out on a limb and argue that the "phonics" movement has been c0-opted (by some) as a tool to destroy approaches and methods that emphasize decoding and reading decodable text over reading for meaning. This not to say we should not teach children to use phonics to decode words, but the issue is in what you promote and how you do it. I taught children to read for 36 years, and while I consistently taught decoding, I always subordinated it to thinking and meaning making. But, I make noise here and this is only one piece of how they are hijacking our public schools.
Roger Ailes worked for President Nixon and told him “we need Republicans news.” They couldn’t do it. It was illegal. There were protections against such propaganda. There was The Fairness Doctrine and other protections. Then, President Reagan killed The Fairness Doctrine. Then, Republican Soeaker Newt Gingrich was paid a $2 million “book advance” to allow Rupert Murdoch then a foreigner) to buy US media. Then Murdock launched Fox News and put ROGER AILES in charge of it. Roger finally got his “Republican News.”
I so agree. Trump is a symptom of the US becoming a corporatocracy. I write and speak about this a lot. Climate change, entrenched poverty, species-loss all are symptoms of a flawed economic system. If democracy survives the next few years we must find ways to utilize anti-monopoly laws to break up the media mega-corps. Beyond that, how do we begin to undo the excessive power of the billionaire class?
There are many definitions.....
There's one specific one that applies when it comes to Trump's Republican Party---it's "identity fusion". This has made the jobs you described easy beyond the dreams of the rotten, rich bastards that set out to kill the truth.
He has become the party and they have become him. That leaves us the task of being the keepers of the Truth. Thank you to all the keepers. See you in the streets
Cult of personality.
Key Characteristics of Leader Reverence
Cult of Personality: The state uses mass media, propaganda, and public spectacles to deify the leader, often presenting them as infallible or superhuman.
Mandatory Adoration: Public life is frequently restructured so that artistic, religious, and sporting events serve as celebrations of the leader.
The "Leader Principle" (Führerprinzip): As seen in Nazi Germany, this principle mandates that the leader's command overrides the rule of law, and subordinates owe the leader absolute personal loyalty.
Political Religion: Totalitarianism can function as a "political religion," where faith in the leader and state doctrine replaces traditional religious beliefs, inspiring self-abnegation and unquestioning obedience.
Omnipresent Symbolism: The leader's image is often ubiquitous, serving as a constant reminder of the state’s total control and surveillance, such as the figure of "Big Brother" in George Orwell's 1984.
Daniel,thanks,but we have known about the Trump cult for 13 months,just like we've know about the cult that follows Musk. Since we know all that,where are the very bright americans who know how to fight back. Do you think the american psyche can endure ,another 3 yrs of this "Nazi". This entire 13 months has proven that most americans have no ability to discern what is happening and no idea of how to fight back. Again I reference for the 33rd time,75 million dems voted for Harris. In all the rallies,8 million have had the balls to get out there. Where are the other 67 million Democrats
Where are the other 67million Democrats?
Billionaires have used democracy to crush democracy. They funded and disseminated their own "truth", a self-serving fairy tale to render us helpless, apathetic, and divided. They got SCOTUS to declare money to be speech, not bribery, thereby making corruption patriotic. Now that they feel democracy is vanquished, they don't bother to hide their hate any more.
The same method that COVID and other viruses use to hijack healthy cells to replicate themselves, ultimately at the host's expense.
Figuratively mask up, then.
Jeffrey,do you think maybe itis time to identify by name these billionaires so we can all find a way to go after them and I mean go after them. Nothing is off limits,no strategy should e overlooked. They are not invincible.
Many of them have been named already, in many venues: Musk, Bezos, Singer, Koch, Uihlein, Zuckerberg, Murdoch, Thiel, the Waltons, and the Bradleys are among the most prominent.
How do you defeat an elephant? One vote at a time…and once we take Congress, we don’t impeach tRUMP. We impeach each cabinet member one by one. Every seasoned law enforcement officer understands this. You take down the mob one lieutenant at a time. Going after the boss rarely works.
“Impeaching each cabinet member will take years”, you say! Yep! Let the hearings define the last two years of this regime for what it is. Let the hearings educate and help Americans understand the GOP is no longer an American civic enterprise. My god, let this be heard loudly and clearly so that we never repeat this hideous era.
Jodi, the only way to take back the government if for every Democrat and pro Democracy independent to turn out and vote.. The Republican party and the regime have put in place laws,policies and procedures that will suppress and steal the vote, such as voter ID laws (and I am not talking the SAVE act, each state is sovereign and manages its own voting, voter caging (scrubbing voter rolls, for example what Trump is doing with the Fulton and Maricopa voting rolls, and why they want the Minnesota voting rolls.
Restricting and/or moving ballot boxes and voting locations and not notifying Democrats,, restrictions on mail in voting, MAGA election commissions (driving out independents as that did in San Bernardino co, CA., armed poll watchers (RNC has allocated resources to train 10,000 poll watchers, and a Republican operative, has bought Dominion Voting Machines.
William,great ost. Who is the Republican operative who bough Dominon Voting Machines? It would be nice if a media source other than these substacks told people what is going on. I guess that is not something they will do,they are complicit .
Scott Leiendecker, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Vote. Boulder County Elections has used Dominion voting equipment since 2017.
Leinendecker is also close friends with Ed Millerwho served as Acting US Attorney for the Capitol.
Martin has stirred up a chorus of critics during his brief but tumultuous tenure in office. He fired and demoted subordinates who worked on politically sensitive cases. He posted on social media about potential targets of investigations. And he forced the chief of the office's criminal division to resign after directing her to scrutinize the awarding of a government contract during Democratic President Joe Biden's administration.
Thanks William,time to find out who Leinendecker really is as well as Ed Martin,through wikipedia. Looks like Scott is part of Liberty Vote.
How do you defeat an elephant? Ans: Jujitsu.
FLASH. Krasnov was told by Putin to end the war, now that oil prices make Russia great again.
Not at all. With everything stabilizing prices will go down again, and that is contrary to Putin's interest. Besides Putin has been supplying Iran with intelligence and targeting info, and Trump's response was "so what".
Things are not as they appear to be. Putin and Bibi have been BFF's, even as Putin has voice criticism,and that is all, about Gaza.
Bibi started the war to decapitate the leadership in Iran.. Bibi told Trump, and Trump jumped in to save Bibi the reckoning to come.
This whole affair was in the planning before the carrier U.S. Gerald Ford was told to remove itself from its station in the Caribbean and move to the Mediterranean.
If you want to know where the action is, follow the carriers.
First the Gerald Ford was sent to the Caribbean to attack Venezuela,a then to the Mediterranean to attack Iran.
The USS Abraham Lincoln was sent to the Gulf in January this year. This has been a long time in planning.
Bibi has achieved his goal, as has Trump detraction from their problems, Bibi's is legal, unlike the U.S. Israel can try a sitting leader and Bibi is charged with corruption.
Trump got some breathing space from TrumpEpstein, but he isn't worried because nothing will ever happen to him, he just want some breathing room.
Putin got some needed breathing room to, allowing him to further increase his attacks on the civilians in Ukraine.
The attacks on Iran have not ceased, despite Trump and neither have the counter attacks.
Things are not as they appear. Take nothing at face value.
https://united24media.com/latest-news/putin-would-be-more-useful-if-he-ended-the-war-in-ukraine-trump-says-16686
Trump stated that the war against Iran is "very complete, pretty much". Speaking on March 9 and 10, 2026, he claimed that the U.S. and Israel have achieved major strides... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2jxe382pwo
Trump iis being prressured by the UAE, Bahrain, Wall Street,. The damage is done, Iran has hit oil refineries and that is where the money is.
The planned Trump hotels in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, etc and the Trump golf course in Abu Dhabi are dead if you have an hour chck out this https://malcolmnance.substack.com/p/us-iran-war-cast-day-11-with-malcolm
A no bulllshit assessment of the war.
William,thanks interesting converstion with Malcome Nance.
On the money, Mr. H.
Full R-word:
This weekend, President T-word made me think of a scene . . .
Robert Downey Jr.’s character in "Tropic Thunder" is Kirk Lazarus — a 5-time Oscar-winning Australian ultra‑method actor who undergoes an extreme (and intentionally satirical, albeit offensive) transformation for his role as a Black grunt in the American (as the Vietnamese call it) War.
Ben Stiller’s character in Tropic Thunder is Tugg Speedman, the fading action‑movie superstar who’s desperate to revive his career.
Here they are talking about actors acting r-worded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6WHBO_Qc-Q
The problem is the D-word (i.e., Putin's Krasnov) in the WH isn't acting that way.
He was born that way.
VOTE
This is a well thought conspiracy and should be treated as such—by people and the Courts.
The issue now is how our democratic governors, state legislators, house members and representatives understand what you are stating and with backbone do everything they can to overturn the oligarchs control. They need to continue to expose the lies as we all do. Thom is an example we can emulate with our own spheres of influence. The blight of sociopathic morbidly rich has been with us since the rise of civilization. And it’s always been countered by every day people saying NO MORE! The time is upon us again.
Saving democracy requires a strong "brand". A logo, an image, a phrase , color-coded and easy to copy ( remember ban the bomb... aka the "peace" symbol?) . Bringing folks back together so they can IDENTIFY each other at a glance and know there is strength in numbers. That is why the MAGA brand works, NO KINGS is a start... now let's get the brand designed, produced, and distributed asap.
Right Ari. A few months ago I suggested here that everyone opposed to the regime consider wearing an inverted red triangle. The Nazis had a complex system of symbols for not just Jews and gays, but for drug addicts, foreign workers, dissidents and so on. This red one was used for (according to AI) imprisoned "communists, socialists, trade unionists, anarchists, liberals, and Freemasons". Why not proudly say that we are standing up to this fascist regime, and show our unity?
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge
I'm wearing a button right now. It has a green frog holding a resist sign
Good idea. Unfortunately, a gimmick is needed.
Did Louise write this? I love this article: one of the clearest, most succinct, and most profound explanations of how we got to our current situation and what we are really facing. This clearly explains the great obstacles we are dealing with...lack of means to discern facts and lack of faith in our ability to act. And the article is clear that we are what we are facing is the result of a class decision by the rich to deprive working people of agency...a conscious strategy that has been pursued year over year as we gradually lose any economic or political strength.
It tok me 70 years for God to find me in the form of Greek Orthodoxy (I'm a white male of Southern ancestry on both sides, with Confederate soldiers and slave owners in the old family tree). Part of that was my utter contempt for our species, honed over decades of reading history and watching it happen. And perhaps the greatest truth in the New Testament is what St. Paul says in first Timothy, that "the love of money is the root of all evil."
That love is what got us here. Not what money buys, though the morbidly rich certainly enjoy that. But inevitably, it bores them, and the greed for money itself becomes the be all and end all. To be the king on top of the gold mountain. Not realizing that when they get there, nothing else will remain, no one else will care, and they will become worm food like everyone else.
Granting that the morbidly rich are to blame for all of this, we can't change the reality that we are where we are. And that this country is now the disease. The cure is likely to be bloody, cruel, and self-destructive. I only hope as many can leave before that happens as possible, especially our adored grandson. In the meantime, all we can do is fight, know that everything MAGA is a lie and call it out, regardless of the odds of our prevailing. To do anything less is craven, un-American, spineless, ignoble. I repeat--even if it proves futile. Better to die fighting than to live MAGA.
I would suggest it is not the love of money as much as it is the love of power. However, with enough power, money is not a problem. Nor sure what the Greek Orthodox Church has to do with all of this. I find it understandable that the right wing, MAGA, etc. quickly aligned itself with religion, specifically evangelical Christianity. Those churches teach obedience. You obey, you follow the church leaders, you do as you are told. These people are the very people you want in your authoritarian movement. They are already trained to obey and when you link God to your cause, you have them. They will oppose education that seeks to promote critical thinking, they will oppose empiricism and science, the separation of church and state, etc. They are ready to accept what you are selling. Any movement that seeks to support and elevate the common man, any group that encourages questioning and reasoning while telling the masses that anyone who holds power and wealth does so because he is your better, he has been given wealth and power because God favors him, he knows more and is smarter than you are. Now, you bow down and hope he will let some of the crumbs drop on you. What is so surprising to me is that people like Thom, and some of his readers, could see this clearly years and years ago. We knew they tried to crush teachers' unions and public education because they actively discourage an educated middle class with both knowledge and time to make trouble for them.
Julie,great post. You are 100%right,one of the greatest threats to our democracy is "White Christian Nationalism" the Hegseth type who believe that we should be a white society, no hispanics,no blacks,no muslims,noone other than white god fearing believers. I would like to remind you that 57%of Catholics and 37% of Jews voted for what we have now. They are complicit as well.
I did not want to write a book, though I always tend to logorrhea, I admit.
Simply put, attacks on religion per se are misguided. Religion isn't the problem; the people, almost always men, who twist and distort it are.
The first encyclical issued by the Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church of America when he took office was about climate change. Our Patriarch, simply the leading bishop in our church organizational pattern, has been an environmental advocate since he assumed office, and is the longest serving Patriarch in our 2000 years of existence. That is just one example of what makes the Greek Orthodox Church here in this country different.
To be Christian, whatever kind you claim to be, your primary obligation aside from faith in God is loving your neighbor. I will say, unequivocally, that "Chistian nationalism" is an oxymoron, and "White Christian Nationalism" is an obscenity. It is not just my opinion, but that o fly priests and any real Christian, that you cannot be truly Christian and MAGA. Period. No dispute, no debate. The use of the term by this malodorous maladministration is just another lie, used to lure in the deluded deplorables as they continue being the least Christian administration in our history. Only the willfully blind cannot see that.
Roy,thanks for your response.I was not aware that the Greek Orthodox Church took such a strong position on climate change. I commend you for bringing this up. It is pretty obvious that White Christian Nationlists have no interest in loving thy neighbor if that person is not a WCN.
I have also noticed that aside from the pope,a month or so ago,the cathlolic priests have made no effort to to inform their parishoners what is going on. Neither have any of the Jewish Rabbi's who almost 100% support Trump. Its all about Trump's support for the Genocide in Gaza and the money.
People believe any lie that confirms their biases. But it was way over the top when his base bought into “they’re eating the dogs and cats.” We need critical thinking to be taught in our educational system. And soon.
Another problem adding fuel to the fire is social media feeds that are generated by algorithms that learn what you like and give you more of the same.
"We need critical thinking to be taught in our educational system." Thom answered that and I seconded it in my reply to Roy Schults. I can assure you they are destroying the separation of church and state very deliberately. I earned an M.Ed. in Reading in the mid-70s. I can assure you our professors and researchers supported teaching children, right from the get-go, to question and evaluate, to be critical readers. I will go out on a limb and argue that the "phonics" movement has been c0-opted (by some) as a tool to destroy approaches and methods that emphasize decoding and reading decodable text over reading for meaning. This not to say we should not teach children to use phonics to decode words, but the issue is in what you promote and how you do it. I taught children to read for 36 years, and while I consistently taught decoding, I always subordinated it to thinking and meaning making. But, I make noise here and this is only one piece of how they are hijacking our public schools.
So sad but too true. People, people, people do your research. Embrace the Truth or we will be gone.
Roger Ailes worked for President Nixon and told him “we need Republicans news.” They couldn’t do it. It was illegal. There were protections against such propaganda. There was The Fairness Doctrine and other protections. Then, President Reagan killed The Fairness Doctrine. Then, Republican Soeaker Newt Gingrich was paid a $2 million “book advance” to allow Rupert Murdoch then a foreigner) to buy US media. Then Murdock launched Fox News and put ROGER AILES in charge of it. Roger finally got his “Republican News.”
MOFA…Make Orwell Fiction Again!
I so agree. Trump is a symptom of the US becoming a corporatocracy. I write and speak about this a lot. Climate change, entrenched poverty, species-loss all are symptoms of a flawed economic system. If democracy survives the next few years we must find ways to utilize anti-monopoly laws to break up the media mega-corps. Beyond that, how do we begin to undo the excessive power of the billionaire class?
Here’s a view from the other side.
https://ryandawson.substack.com/p/iran-is-fighting-demons?r=5a5n7z&utm_medium=ios