Save our Souls, Senators

How can any American, especially a US Senator, not support convicting a traitor? Donald Trump tried to conspired with right wing extremists to overthrow our Government. You need to make sure thast he loses his pulpit, that can never hold office in this country again. That he goes to jail. There is a growing sense that Republican Senators are resisting this logical course of convicting the traitor Trump because they are receiving pushback from voters. Their voters. Those voters belong to two camps. Each needs to be treated differently if our country is to be saved. The first camp is those right wing extremists, formerly known as fascists. Though they have seen fit to prostitute the term 'Patriots' to mean the people who want to destroy the Constitution, they are not true Patriots. They are terrorists. That is what Homeland Security calls them. And it's not Biden's Homeland Security that first named them as such. It was Trump's Homeland Security. The same one that identified QAnon as another threat to the country's security. Yet these are the people our Senators our empowering by denying the country the justice of convicting traitors. And this threat is growing and needs to be suppressed by going after them with all the law enforcement at our disposal. Let the DOJ, the FBI and the police handle them. It is with the other camp that you Senators need to focus your efforts. The people who believe in the Constitution but also believe in their heart of hearts all of Trump's lies. They believe his lie that he is a great businessman, not the truth that he inherited hundreds of millions in asets before avoiding hundreds of millions of dollars in debts from the failed busineses he started. They truly believe the lie that this man understands working people but not the truth that he has never worked a day in his life. The lie that he cares more for them instead of the truth that he is using them to make money for himself. The lie that he shares a sincere belief in Christian values not the truth that he only worships the number of zeroes at the rear end of his asset total. They truly believe the QAnon nonsense that he is going to save this country by ridding it of the pedophiles in Congress. (Meaning you?) They truly believe the lie that he loves this country not the truth that he has pissed on the Constitution since the day he was inaugurated, up to and including the traitorous act of collaborating the first camp mentioned above to invade the Capital with the purpose of hanging Mike Pence, his own Vice President, tearing House Speaker Pelosi apart, and the murder of other legislators. Senators, you have the opportunity, right now, to rip the fangs out of the serpent's mouth. Trump is a traitor. Say that. That the Mueller Reoprt did find his campaign colluded with the Russians. Say that. That he illegally hid the agendae of his meetings with Putin and Xi. Say that. That he accepted a $500 million investment from one company owned by high ranking Chinese government officials in return for lifting the suspension on another company owned by high ranking Chinese government officials that sold electronic compenents in America that can spy on Americans. Say that. The election wasn't stolen. Say that. Every state in the union said that. The FBI said that. The Department of Justice said that. Mike Pence said that. So say that. Or risk that some of the truly deceived Americans will succumb to the recruitment lies and swell the ranks of the terrorist camp. Do you really want the history books to lump you in with the terrorist faction right wing extremists? Or perhaps you fancy being aligned with Q? Maybe even the inane dribblings of Rudy Giuliani? Or can you find the courage to be American Patriots and say all of that?

We Can Move on ... But First

Just today I saw three news stories that encapsulated the last four years so well. One spoke about the Trump campaign giving money and people to plan the rally that preceded the invasion of Congress by Trump supporters. Next was an article about Trump's declaration he's starting a Patriot's Party making Republican office holders worried. And then how Republican Senators are starting to speak out against convicting Trump "... so we can move on and unite as one nation." Odd that. That true Americans actually believe that we can unite when most agree that Trump tried to overthrow our government. So I ask these questions of the Republican Senators: Am I to understand that a traitor to our country shouldn't be held accountable? That their belief in the lies about a stolen election still has your voters threatening you? Or, perhaps, you are really worried that your four-year complicity may implicate you? The ironic part is that the truth can set you free. The clearer you make Trump out to be the criminal he truly is the less teeth hath his bite. He loses more and more supporters. But maybe there is something else complicatinfg this? Like you knew. > That his campaign really did collude with the Russians in July 2016. > That the Mueller Report actually confirmed this. > That Trump's campaign was illegally conferring with the Russian Ambassador in Dec. 2016. > That the Administration was pushing foreign dignitaries to stay at Trump hotels. > That Trump illegally failed to report the agenda of meetings and calls with Putin. > That he did the same thing with Xi. > That the Trump Organization accepted a $500 million investment from a company owned by high-ranking members of the Chinese government. > That right after this investment Trump ordered Mnuchin to lift ZTE's suspension to sell their electronic components in America even though they can spy on Americans. > That Trump told the Ukraine it would not get any weapons unless they announced an invetsigation of the Bidens - his mostly likely opponent in the next election. > That Trump orchestrated a months long plot to overthrow our governemnt which included a violent invasion of the Capitol, and ignored it as "Trump just being Trump." Do your voters who are pressing you not to convict the Traitor Trump know about all of these things? How many would support his ouster if they did? No patriotic American would stand for the overthrow of the Constitution. Because in truth, all of these actions listed above do just that. All of these listed actions are impeachable. Yet you stood by and said nothing. You voted his acquittal in 2020. Now all of this is coming at you hot and heavy and you are trapped in the lies and they are an anchor that will surely drag you to your political doom. And all you had to do, all along, was tell your constiuents the truth. A coward truly does die a thousand deaths. So, how is history going to remember you?

The Source

How many times have we recently heard the term 'these unprecedneted times'? What makes them so unprecedented? To me, the factor that is most responsible for our 'unpredcedented times' is the sudden propensity for millions of Americans to vehemently advocate for something that they know is a lie. How did this happen? The first necessary ingredient for this is fear. Fear that grows into hatred which grows into anger so that people lose all connection to rational conclusions about things. They have become too emotional. And the onset was Barak Obama's election as President. I have nothing against the man. In fact he did a pretty good job. But the country experienced two vivid emotional responses to his ascension to the White House. First, a large segment of our population who had previously felt ostarcized in their own country were now in. They could now share power. But a large percentage of those who had that power weren't in the mood for sharing. They saw that as power being stolen. From 'Us.' 'Our' country was now under threat. Both side started to take steps to manifest these counter realities with each side describing the eforts of the other side with rhetorical exaggeration 'as pure evil'. So now the fear/hatred/anger dynamic escalated into beliefs. Irreconcilable beliefs that excited more enthusiasm to participate. This would normally be a good thing in a democracy but under this unprecedented emotional content, things that normally are considered acceptable activities became acts of war to the other side. Up until this point both sides are equally culpable. But those afraid of their power being stolen decided to intensify the conflict to bring about violence. And coincidently (perhaps) a leader arose to give them permission: Donald J. Trump. History has taught us that the type of actions the radical right wing was planning needed to contol the message that was ciculating among their followers. Or, what has been called in the past, The Big Lie. This needed a strategy if it was to foster the replacement of our governemnt for one that would cater to their fear/anger/hatred priorities. In a democracy the majority rules. In a Democratic Republic, as we have here in the U.S., the majority mostly wins but never outright. The majority leads. The majority can set the agenda. And since the anti-government radicals were then extremists of a minimal minority, those with the plan had to make the goal more palatable. This required one of those historic Big Lies. They needed a way to ensure that middle Americans wouldn't suspect what was happening or they would fail. The whole thing was way too un-American. Following the Big Lie strategy requires an number of factors. One, it needed to be repeated often, repeated and repeated incessantly until it was ultimately accepted as truth. Next, it needed to become the mainstream. It needed a forum that could ease the populace into the Big Lie by pushing a lot of little lies, like my crowd was bigger than his crowd. People whose focus is guided by the fear/anger/hatred priority would be susceptible to a message that not only reinforced the emotion, but allowed for these citizens to contemplate acting on it when the time came. That time would require a mass of zealots to ignite the conflagration. I believe the source of the lies can be traced to three people, Vladmir Putin, Rupert Murdoch, and Steve Bannon. Puton's intelligence forces plastered our internet with lies and memes to exacerbate the emotional disputes. Hundreds, thousands of Facebook posts, Twitter memes, etc. and ect. kept the tempers running high. More and more of those little lies that piled on top of each other building an edifice of language, concepts, and conspiracies. Murdoch resources were used to legitamatize them. First tier media powerhouses like Fox News could focus on what was being shared across the internet and bring them to mainstream American living rooms. Millions and millions of them. And Bannon? Via Breitbart he could disseminate the language, concepts, and conspiracies down to the deep, dark places where the zealots communicate. Trump's White House could create talking points based on the codes used by the zealots' reactions to the Puton content which then could find their way onto prime-time talk shows on Fox. A Big Lie that failed. Now a new President steps up. Now the question becomes how do we protect ourselves from the next Big Lie no matter where it comes from?

Why is it so Hard to Unify and Heal?

How can we not be unified in the belief that a sitting American President who tries to violently overthrow the government should be removed from office immediately? Even after the months of lies that the election was rigged and the insurrection fomenting comments to a crowd of loyalists that announced their intention to invade the Capital to take Congress hostage, Donald Trump retains the support of some Americans. About which I am astounded. This energizes me to reflect on how this can be to try and understand. Let’s start with Republicans in Congress. The obvious two, Cruz and Hawley, have blatantly shown their avarice for the title of Dauphin to the Trump Base. They held to the lie that there were “voting irregularities” to perpetuate the possibility that Trump would stay in office. Their greed and egotism blurred their vision to the true nature of this base. Peopled by enough domestic terrorists that this myth they were bent on sustaining would lead to an invasion that even threatened their own safety. Yet, even after being exposed to this fact, they still insisted on feeding this un-American band of hooligans the justification that what they did was “Patriotic.” Let’s ignore them as now extinct politically. But what of Lindsey Graham and Kevin McCarthy who advise against removing Trump so we can unite and heal and then concentrate on the issues. What a load of crap! They don't want to look at Trump because then we will see that both of these men are guilty of the enabling of a President who showed every intention of eliminating the Constitution. The document that created our government and whose founding was prioritized to prevent a sitting President from violently usurping our Republic to make himself monarch. All of which they and their cohorts understand fully. So much for an Oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. How can any American not support the immediate expulsion a President who clearly committed the crime that so concerned the founders that they formed a government to prevent exactly that? Especially individuals who swore an oath to defend the Constitution and were personally threatened by the mob with zip ties and nooses to hang them and the rest of our legislators? That’s my question.

Back to Normal?

I woke up today and was confronted with a seemingly natural comment attributed to the President. Something about the cure being worse than the disease. Let's get America back to work. Ease the social distancing restrictions because we are not a country built for this.

But I was struck by how heinous this might actually be. The deeper you dig in on this, the more evil it becomes.

The obvious: right smack dab in the middle of the worst possible moment for us to protect our medical resources, Trump wants everybody to just go out and expose everybody else by unrestricted interactions. So much for flattening the curve to ensure that there is enough doctors, nurses, beds, ventilators, masks, gowns, gloves, etc to treat the people who could die from the virus. Trump is only concerned about Trump.

Or is he?

There are also those that have basked in the glow of this administration's funneling of excessive wealth to the wealthy. They need Trump to distract the public from this process. His blather and deceits keep the focus on him. A role he excels in. The false reality of a Reality TV star. He is the only person I have ever seen speak seven seconds after his own Director of Infectious Disease control and contradict him. Blatantly. And do we talk about the vital information from the doctor? No we talk about Trump.

But now, it seems, that a greater share of Americans are actually paying closer attention. The public now has other political figures who are showing leadership and empathy in direct contrast to Trump. Finally, all America can see. They are no longer insulated from inconvenient facts that are labelled as "False News." Now more and more people are seeing more than the propaganda side of the stories.

Why is that? Why are they suddenly exposed to all these 'out of control' facts and reports? Time. With all the people being restricted to staying home from work they are now able to watch more and more news reports. Now so many more people are hearing reports from television reporters who don't spend any of their time taste-testing the President's abundant toilet paper. They are actually asking questions that might uncover facts and truth.

So what's a despotic thief to do? Get them back to work. Fast. Who cares how many of them die. Who cares that the country is in a dire emergency of having enough medical resources available to actually treat those afflicted. I need to make sure that people don't have time to ask questions. Questions lead to truths. And truths lead to not getting re-elected. So that will cut off the bastards from those extraneous pennies that will be buried in Scrooge McDuck, subterranean vaults with the piles and piles of extraneous pennies already there. And none of those pennies were earned. The were inherited, stolen, finagled, co-opted, siphoned out of our economy while we were distracted by our own 9 to 5, Monday through Friday lives.

Could this be why it is so important to Trumpites to get us back to work as soon as possible?

The Greatest Sentence Ever

I truly believe that so much of what we suffer through in our current society is due to a great majority of us allowing our emotions to do our thinking. We are not entirely at fault for this, though. Power hungry, greedy bastards would destroy all life on this planet just to protect a certain number of pennies buried in a subterranean vault that they would never spend anyway. They have co-opted our main source of information to incite fear and anger and suppress questions. They do not want too much thinking.

For time immemorial that was the rule of the day. Monarchs and religious leaders restricted the people who provided them their power and wealth to ignorance and servitude. No education. No prospects. No real life. For thousands of years people were made to believe that their own body, their own life, they themselves, belonged to someone else.

And then came that sentence. The single greatest sentence ever put forth by any person in our history.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

Instantly, a new world emerged. One in which one's beliefs were one's own to consider and refine. That's one's government belonged to those governed NOT those governing. That my God, and my truth, and my destiny, was mine to make of whatever I deemed most appropriate.

But that was merely the beginning of the impact this sentence had on our world. It meant that the slave was the equal of the master. The foreigner was the equal of the citizen. That the woman was the equal of the man. Each individual human life was just as precious as the next. Each person was just as worthy of respect as any other.

Spiritually this meant that God did not have a Chosen people. That concept was put into affect only to ensconce certain persons into positions of power and wealth. Power and wealth they never earned - meaning it was stolen. Now we started to believe that there was no "Stairway to Heaven." You got there by following scripture. By making sure you lived an honorable life. In Christian terms, you followed the Gospels. The teachings of Jesus. "Love God with your whole heart, your whole souls, your whole mind, and love your neighbors as yourself." As I previously averred, this sentiment is as universal among humanity as any other concept, but only if we rely on these Scripture to guide human behavior in every corner of our existence.

The more we thought about this sentence, the more people started to establish institutions to implement this self-evident truth. The Constitution of the United States. Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" defining a capitalist economy. Marx' and Engels' "Communist Manifest" offering another economic viewpoint. And many other theories on how humans can best live together as equals. Unfortunately, we have not succeeded in settling on a system immune to manipulation by greedy and avaricious bastards who preferred the old ways.

Our feelings about this new truth have been slower to evolve into the magnanimous society it portends. We are still susceptible to hatreds founded on trivial differences, such as skin, heritage, language, homestead, etc. Now the bastards seek to stoke fears of everybody for anybody. Just make sure you are paying close enough attention to notice that today's lie about the threat you face happens to completely contradict yesterday's lie about that same threat.

We can defeat them. And now is our greatest chance. So many of us have been forced out the cadence of our regular lives. We now can sit and spend time on coordinating what we feel with what we think based on what we believe.

The weapon that will defeat them is questions. Question everything. Especially those thing that you believe are true. The truth can withstand any and all questions. That which is a lie masquerading as the truth cannot.

Questioning is the method that will ensure that this self-evident truth becomes true.

Guru Time

So much of this world has been paused.

Billions and billions of humans have had their Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, regular lives tossed into pause mode. Waiting for a response. Nowhere to go. Nothing to see. So little to do, so much time to do it.

What does a reasonable human do under such circumstances? Binge watch everything that's on every streaming service out there! Of course.

Or perhaps not. What if we humans take a step back in time each day and actually forget life's distraction technologies and actually use our most human capability of thought and think about our world, our lives, and, heaven forbid, ourselves? Let's Mull things.

Try to take an hour a day. Half hour? Maybe three times a week. Take some of the time you suddenly have to make the rest of time better.

Let's make it Guru Time!

Let's take the time to contemplate life. While not relegated to a mountaintop, we can interpret our quarantine quarters as a cave. You won't need to wrap up in a sheet, sweats will do. Yoga positions? Save that for exercise time, if that's your gig. You can even do this while drinking coffee or tea.

But let's all seek a silver lining to this storm cloud of a pandemic. Let's ask ourselves what kind of world do we want when we come out the other side of all this. But remember, we are only empowered to change ourselves. If you go into this exercise pointing fingers at THEM, we will surely fall back into the morass of conflict, confusion, and contempt. We cannot change the world without first changing ourselves. And I put myself at the front of this line.

Today I am focused on the most important of the ten commandments, as defined by Jesus. I am starting here because I am currently a non-practicing Roman Catholic who maybe threw out some baby with the bathwater when I stopped practicing. Being turned off by the power trips (and worse) of those entrusted with spreading Christ's lessons, I may have thrown out some of those lessons. In the years since, I have come to realize that the lessons of Jesus are almost identical to the lessons of Abraham. Of Buddha. Of Zoroaster. Of Confucius. Of every other major religion on Earth. Yes, including Mohammad's lessons to Islam.

The single most basic of those shared lessons is Christ's most important commandment: Love God with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind, and love you neighbors as yourself.

First off, please note that this is not one of the Moses ten commandments! And the Pharisee that was trying to trip up the obnoxious know-it-all in that synagogue a few thousand years ago in Nazareth knew this - but he couldn't argue with the simple truth it communicates. Your faith should have an emotional value to it, it should be important to you. It should also influence your decisions and your behaviors, especially when dealing with other humans. You need to contemplate it, think about it, make sense of it, be intelligent about it, UNDERSTAND it. And then do it. Put it into action in your everyday life with ALL the people you come across.

There are so many portions of our lives that we could put under the microscope of this most important of commandments. Politics, education, social mores, economics, etc. I plan to offer my emotional, spiritual, and intellectual reflections on each of these categories in a series of posts, daily I hope, while I am Mulling things as I sit in my Quarantine Quarters. Not to influence you to adopt my thoughts as yours, but to offer my thoughts for you to Mull over. Then after we emerge we can start collaborating in how we act out what we separately concluded to make our world, Humanity, better.

That strengths and weaknesses, we need each other to be Excellent, thing again.