These are the evil and dangerous to democracy MAGA Republicans Joe warned about.
I go to work. I work hard. I go to the gym. I hunt. I fish. I spend time with friends and family. I pay my taxes and don’t break the law. I play disc golf.
I’m a gay man. I have a black husband. I drop my kids off at school every morning. I play cards with my senior mom. I go to church every Sunday. I have always paid my taxes and work everyday. I vote Republican. I am pro-life. Am I a threat to the soul of this nation?
I'm a registered nurse nearing retirement. I like taking walks and reading mystery novels. I adopted a baby and she's now an engineering student with a scholarship. I pay my taxes. I don't break the law.
I work hard, garden, cook, bake, spin, knit weave and throw pots. I've been married 33 years and have two grown kids. I've owned businesses and pay taxes.
I am a threat to the very soul of this nation.
— Rani, Last of The Red Hot Boomers (@ShadesOfRani) September 4, 2022
I’m retired LE. I own my home. I believe in God. I believe life begins at conception. I enjoy the outdoors, going to the gym and riding my road bicycle. I also teach people to use firearms safely and responsibly.
We work. We pay our taxes. We gave sons to the US military. We grow and harvest most of our food. On Sunday, we go to church. We pray to God, bow to Jesus Christ.
We are a threat to the very soul of this nation.
— Dixie Red Rocket MAGA Independent Voter (@DixieRedRocket) September 3, 2022
Same. Except instead of playing disc golf I scrapbook and do puzzles and bake. I am everything the left hates and wants to destroy. Being targeted for loving my country and cherishing my freedom is one of the craziest things I’ve ever experienced.
I'm a mom, I take care of my sick mother, who can't live on her own. I love my dogs and I cook "real food" for them twice a day, everyday. I just bought my first house, and I love to decorate and bake goodies for my neighbors.
I work hard, often for long hours. I've raised a family and provided a good home for them. I've put two children through college and one through medical school, without loans. I pay my bills on time, pay my taxes, and obey the law.
I’m a retired RN who takes care of my husband who has dementia. We both worked hard to pay off our student loans.We paid for our kid’s college. We pay taxes and give to charity. We adopted an orphan. We love all people gay straight trans black white etc.. Threat to nation, Biden?
I work, moving goods from people who have to people who need and want. I like apple pie. I like baseball. I go shooting for fun. I hunt and fish. I pay my bills and raised my family.
I go to work and work hard. I will retire at the end of this year. I follow my Lord Jesus Christ. I spend time with my kids and grandkids. I pay my taxes and don’t break the law. I vote in every election, in person, on election day.
I go to work. I work two jobs in the school system. I have two dogs and rescue cats. I spend my time with my two granddaughters. I pay my taxes and don't break the law.
I am a threat to the very soul of this nation
— 🇺🇸Whitney A. Threat2Democracy🐈🐈⬛🐸 (@west_ultra_maga) September 2, 2022
I’m a middle aged mom. I raised two children whom I taught to love Christ and be kind to others. I bake casseroles. I listen to 80’s pop music. I pay my taxes and don’t break the law. I’m also now considered a threat to the soul of the nation.
— Ultra MAGA Silicon Valley Southerner (@Bayareasouthern) September 2, 2022
I work 40 hrs per week. Watch my grandsons after work while my daughter goes to trade school. Pay taxes. Work part time for a charity. Cook and clean for my grandkids and love my dogs! I am a threat to the very soul if this nation.
I'm an RN in a NICU. I help save little lives. I'm raising my teen grandson. I go to the gym to try and keep myself healthy. I play music and sing in my church choir. I like to garden. I, apparently, am a threat to the very soul of this nation.
Joe always projects his fascist leanings unto others.
Following are examples of measures employed by the same people that wish to label patriotic Americans as extremists because they dare dissent to Progressive narratives. These are the people that redefine fascism, recessions, prior immunity, etc.
The Biden admin used junk science by the CDC to claim they had the authority to suspend all evictions in the United States. Joe Biden even admitted Constitutional scholars doubted their authority. They did it anyhow.
SCOTUS ruled, that indeed, they had no such authority. 4/
Biden's latest debt forgiveness plan is by executive fiat through authority he doesn't have. Their own legal team is citing an irrelevant 2003 statute that applies to former military members. Even Slate acknowledges this will be shot down by courts.
Biden's USDA threatened to withhold funding from the school lunch program to schools who didn't enforce such policies as boys competing in girls sports and boys using girls' bathrooms.
Biden and the Democrats have weaponized the IRS with 87,000 new agents to target American middle and lower income citizens. These people are already 5x more likely to be audited than wealthy Americans.
The Department of Education rewarded rogue school boards that flaunted state law by reimbursing their districts who had funding withheld for their non-compliance. The Feds encouraged districts to violate state law.
If you disagree, you're an extremist, fascist, authoritarian, terrorist, racist, misogynist, bigot, conspiracy theorist or some other ad hominem label they use to deflect from policy.
Currently, in addition to the Supreme Court rulings, Biden agency orders from the CDC were stopped by Federal courts preventing the no-sail cruise order and the mask transportation mandate.
Remember this? His "outrageous claims" turned out to be 100% accurate.
The "priceless reaction" of the German 🇩🇪 delegation should be played over and over again, as they have started using coal (purchased from Russia) out of desperation. https://t.co/GUUwfjfVwU
“Russia has been playing this game for months and now it seems to have reached its inevitable outcome. The gas supply flowing through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline has been completely shut off. Russia claimed this week that it was shutting the gas supply off temporarily in order to do maintenance on the line. Then it claimed it had discovered a problem which prevented it from resuming the supply. No one is being fooled by any of this anymore. Even the German company that built the machines used to pump gas through the pipeline has said Russia’s explanation makes no sense.
The Russian-owned energy giant had been expected to resume the flow of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Saturday after three days of maintenance. But hours before the pipeline was set to reopen, Gazprom said that problems had been found during inspections, and that the pipeline would be closed until they were eliminated. It did not give a timeline for restarting…
In its statement Friday, Gazprom said it found oil leaks around a turbine used to pressurize the pipeline, forcing it to call off the restart. The German company Siemens Energy, the maker of the turbine, cast doubt on that account. “As the manufacturer of the turbines, we can only state that such a finding is not a technical reason for stopping operation,” the company said late Friday. Siemens also said there were additional turbines available that could be used to keep the pipeline operating.”
“Here’s a tip: If you have some radical political views and an acquaintance reaches out, encourages you to act on your convictions, and maybe offers to introduce you to a guy who can sell you some bomb parts, don’t take him up on it. That guy’s almost definitely working for the feds.
For the past two decades, the FBI and federal prosecutors have brought case after case against would-be radicals who were ratted out by informants. They have been enormously successful in obtaining convictions in these cases, despite persistent criticisms that the FBI uses unscrupulous informants, conjures up the very plots it disrupts, and entraps defendants who have little to no ability to actually carry out a terror attack.
It looked like the case against the Michigan militia members who allegedly plotted to kidnap Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in October 2020 was going to be another data point in that trend: an extremist group riddled with FBI informants set up to take the fall for all their big talk. An unusual thing happened, though. The jury didn’t buy it. When the verdicts were read a year and a half later in March, two of the militia members were acquitted, and the jury deadlocked on the other two.
In June, a federal judge ordered the two remaining defendants to stand again for a retrial, but the collapse of the prosecution of the Whitmer defendants is one of the biggest public embarrassments for the FBI’s counterterrorism and informant programs since 9/11. The Whitmer case is more than just a high-profile embarrassment. It’s a window into the FBI’s decadeslong strategy, born of powers granted to fight the war on terror, of pursuing criminal investigations against hypothetical criminal acts that may never be committed based on evidence that amounts to little more than fringe political or ideological speech.
The FBI has typically portrayed these investigations as efforts to thwart domestic terror, but all too often, the result has been to encourage or invent plots that were unlikely to succeed. In the Whitmer case and others, the feds weren’t stopping terror: They were helping bumbling defendants plan and enact it.
Michael German, a former FBI special agent and currently a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice who worked undercover in the 1990s infiltrating white nationalist organizations and eventually resigned after filing whistleblower complaints, argues the change has been detrimental to the bureau’s mission. “The targeting is based on what people say and think and who they associate with rather than evidence of criminality,” he says. “It alters the focus of the investigation away from the individuals who are involved in criminal activity.”
“I should have guessed, because I’ve blogged about Meacham’s input into Biden rhetoric a few times, but I needed this Politico article to jog my memory: “The seeds of Biden’s democracy speech sprouted long before the Mar-a-Lago search/But the actions of Trump and his supporters, along with threats of violence, sped up Biden’s need to address the nation.”
“Democracy speech”? Is that what they want it called? The speech where he demonized half of American voters?
President Joe Biden’s speech warning about an assault against American democracy — by Donald Trump and his core followers — was an election-season call to arms unlike anything in modern American history.
Ugh! Warning us about our fellow citizens. Accusing us of “assault.” Claiming to represent “democracy.” I hope that was “unlike anything in modern American history,” because it was horrible.
It also was months in the making….
So they didn’t just brainstorm and jumble everything into a first draft and decide it was fine as is? Hmph. They really worked hard on it? Plied literary and editing skills and all? They meant it. Or they’re bullshitting now, trying to shore up the President’s reputation.
The actual writing of the speech started about three weeks ago, with Jon Meacham, the historian who has had a hand in a number of Biden’s most sweeping speeches, helping the framing….
He was one of the framers. Who knows how much he did — whether he envisioned the entire arc of the rhetoric or whether talentless hacks rifled through his “Soul of America” book for phrases to upgrade their drivel?
The Politico article goes on and on with mindless assertions like “the belief inside the White House is that the address was simply unavoidable.”
There’s nothing more about Meacham, so let me go back into my archive and pull out the 3 old posts where I’d discussed Meacham’s contribution to Biden’s rhetoric:
November 10, 2020: We learned that Meacham contributed to the writing of Biden’s victory speech (and also went on MSNBC praising the speech and not disclosing that he’d worked on it). I quoted a NYT article:
In [his victory speech], Mr. Biden spoke of a mission “to rebuild the soul of America, to rebuild the backbone of this nation, the middle class, and to make America respected around the world again” and was widely credited with striking the right tone about bringing the country back together. The language echoed the title of Mr. Meacham’s 2018 book, “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels,” which has long served as a touchstone for Mr. Biden, who has reached out to Mr. Meacham in the past to discuss passages he liked…. Mr. Biden’s reliance on a historian stands in contrast with President Trump’s lack of interest in the past….
November 11, 2020: I said Biden’s victory speech, with its Meacham material reminded me of “The Grapes of Wrath,” the part where Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) expresses the belief that there’s just one big soul: “A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody.” My comment (ad libbed during a podcast in which I read the text of my November 10th post):
What do you think of the idea that a country has a soul?… I like to think of the idea that individual human beings have a soul, and when I hear of this composite soul of an entire country, I’m skeptical…. That’s what makes me think of fascism…. especially if you’re not acknowledging the soul of individual people, and so often, from the Democratic side, I get the sense that they view their opponents as being soulless… and I feel that they’re also antagonistic to individualism. Everyone needs to think the same thing, and people should be cancelled if they don’t all say the same thing…. I read that as a rejection of the sense that individual people have a soul, and then you come at this with the idea that America has a soul. There’s just an Oversoul to America….
This idea of the nation’s soul has bothered me for a long time. It purports to express what America is, but it’s out of line with the American values of individualism and also freedom of religion and the separation of religion and government. It’s latched onto by shallow politicians trying to sound deep. Or… I hope that’s all it is. If he’s serious and actually believes deeply in this deep-appearing notion, then we need to worry that he’s stumbling down the road to fascism.”
Your tax dollars at work shilling for the merchants of death….
“NPR Cheerleads for New ‘All-Trimester Abortion Clinic’ in DC Area”
“I still come to work and I do this job because it's too important to not do it,” says ob-gyn Diane Horvath. “The whole point of terrorism is to make you afraid. And what the anti-abortion folks are doing is terrorism."
“National Public Radio takes your tax dollars and puts on completely one-sided propaganda. On Friday’s Morning Edition, former NPR morning anchor Melissa Block narrated a completely one-sided seven-minute story they titled “An all-trimester abortion clinic prepares to open in Maryland, one of few nationally”.
This is, for NPR, a good-news story. For the clinic, it’s basically a fundraising tool.
MELISSA BLOCK: When it opens, this clinic will be one of only a handful in the country that offer abortions into the third trimester – in their case, says Horvath, up to 34 weeks gestation.
DIANE HORVATH: Every time we draw a line and we say, no more abortions after this point, someone’s going to fall on the other side of that line. And they’re going to be harmed.
This sounds a little dense. Someone isn’t just harmed, but killed in an abortion. Abortion advocates like our taxpayer-funded radio liberals don’t care. They insist that late-term abortions are always justifiable, it “could be” a tragedy. But a “right to choose” means you don’t need a good reason.
BLOCK: The clinic expects to treat an influx of people coming north from states with new abortion bans. It could be someone whose fetus has serious anomalies that are often only discovered later in pregnancy, or a patient whose continued pregnancy threatens their health. Along with those cases, says Dr. Horvath…
HORVATH: We’re definitely also going to be seeing people who wanted an abortion two or three months ago and could not navigate the web of restrictions or could not come up with the funding, or could not get transportation or childcare or time off of work. And that’s a really common story.
The next step in propaganda is to play up anti-abortion violence (and pretend that an abortion itself isn’t a violent murder):
BLOCK: Because theirs will be an all-trimester clinic, the owners believe it’s more likely to be the target of violence. So it’s being fortified with layers of extra security – cameras, panic buttons. On this day, the front windows are getting coated with thick, tinted film.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It will give you some time to prepare in the event of — or at least hold the glass together if somebody breaks the glass or something along those lines. So…
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: OK. That’s great.
BLOCK: According to the National Abortion Federation, there has been a steady rise in harassment and violence against abortion providers in recent years. Burglaries, clinic invasions and the threat of murder looms constantly. Eleven people have been killed in attacks on clinics and providers since 1993.”
—
“NPR didn’t explain this number hasn’t budged since 2015. Eleven people killed in anti-abortion violence in about thirty years. Meanwhile, they can’t note there were almost a million abortions in 2020. “
Biden was referring to those who deny voting results with threats of violence, break into legislatures and disrupt governance, threaten to run over school board trustees, etc etc. He was not referring to those who simply vote Republican. And when he mentioned F-15s its a reference to a popular meme which ridicules those who think their guns are enough to overthrow a US gov’t they don’t like.
Graham warns of violence in the streets if Trump is arrested. Was he threatening or just telling a fact? Was he endorsing? Depends mostly on your viewpoint. Quotes and actions without context are an easy means to spout propaganda and call names.
DeSantis is establishing civic academies which will train students for work in the public sector. On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with this – many countries do similar things. France has a university where many of its federal employees are educated. However, DeSantis wants to start at grade nine and make sure they learn “foundational American values”. Starting early and using such an ambiguous phrase has many on the left believing he wants to brainwash the next generation — facscism. Personally I want them to start the schools and then two years later elect a Democratic gov’t and then see if DeSantis still approves.
It is interesting to call Biden a fascist for restoring school board funding when states cut their funding for non compliance. Wouldn’t the state gov’t be the original fascist forcing an elected body to pursue policies they were not elected to pursue?
The use of the word “soul” of a nation has its originals in the Romantic movement in the 19th century in reaction to liberal enlightenment values. It essentially sparked the 19th and 20th century nationalism. Biden’s speech maker is simply saying the US has a national culture – foundational American values if you will. In that way, both Republicans and Democrats are similar, they see the US as a European nation state. Now the use of the soul of a nation can of course be used to justify a fascist state but that’s simply a demonstration of where fascism belongs on the political spectrum. Its an easy move from national symbols, America First, etc to fascism.
The FBI is fascist?? Thanks for the information -I thought I was delusional for the last 4 decades. We’re talking about an organization that tried to entrap MLK. Its never had any credibility among the left.
Its hard to complain about Biden’s abuse of presidential power when Trump claims he can declassify documents at will, store them as he wishes and ignore the Archives department – all after he was no longer president. Now that’s a stretch
The world didn’t take anything Trump said seriously. He was a massive joke in Europe. Even those who supported his gov’t made fun of him. The notion that Germany was overly dependent on Russia for energy was not unique to Trump; almost everyone no matter where on the political spectrum knew it.
One tweet stated they are using coal from Russia to generate electricity. From what I know, Russian coal is usually used in homes and apartments, because it’s finer and mined in smaller bits. There is currently a run on Russian coal in Poland as Poles fear a shortage this winter and about 50% of Polish homes/apartments still use coal. Polish coal is of a rougher grade and is normally used to generate electricity. It’s highly doubtful Germany is using Russian coal. The electrical grid in Europe is quite interconnected and it is possible for some countries to share excess electricity — Ukraine and France use nuclear energy and both produce excessive electricity. The use of coal should prove temporary until other supply lines can be established.
Janice – basically one of my points. We tend to interpret events etc according to our prevailing mindset. For some, banning abortion, DeSantis civic academy, banning books in Texas, firing a teacher in Oklahoma, covering for Trump, etc are all signs of fascist behaviour. Meanwhile others will argue the opposite. The basic truth is there are some authoritarian instincts demonstrated by mostly republicans, some wild accusations/exaggeration by both sides, and a democratic party that never has a coherent message or strategy.
Wandering Views 
These are the evil and dangerous to democracy MAGA Republicans Joe warned about.
As you can see, they are an enemy of Joe Biden and Democrats, not to America.
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This is how every Republican should deal with a hostile, biased press and their set-up questions…..
And just another reminder….
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Joe always projects his fascist leanings unto others.
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I wonder how the Germans are feeling about Trump’s statement now?
I’m willing to bet they won’t find it amusing at all when winter comes.
—-
“Russia has shut off the gas supply to Germany indefinitely”
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2022/09/03/russia-has-shut-off-the-gas-supply-to-germany-indefinitely-n494366
“Russia has been playing this game for months and now it seems to have reached its inevitable outcome. The gas supply flowing through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline has been completely shut off. Russia claimed this week that it was shutting the gas supply off temporarily in order to do maintenance on the line. Then it claimed it had discovered a problem which prevented it from resuming the supply. No one is being fooled by any of this anymore. Even the German company that built the machines used to pump gas through the pipeline has said Russia’s explanation makes no sense.
The Russian-owned energy giant had been expected to resume the flow of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Saturday after three days of maintenance. But hours before the pipeline was set to reopen, Gazprom said that problems had been found during inspections, and that the pipeline would be closed until they were eliminated. It did not give a timeline for restarting…
In its statement Friday, Gazprom said it found oil leaks around a turbine used to pressurize the pipeline, forcing it to call off the restart. The German company Siemens Energy, the maker of the turbine, cast doubt on that account. “As the manufacturer of the turbines, we can only state that such a finding is not a technical reason for stopping operation,” the company said late Friday. Siemens also said there were additional turbines available that could be used to keep the pipeline operating.”
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This is what fascists do.
“It’s (Almost) Always the Feds: How the FBI Fabricates Schemes To Entrap Would-Be Radicals
The FBI’s long history of using informants and manufactured plots to prosecute extremists”
https://reason.com/2022/09/04/its-almost-always-the-feds/
“Here’s a tip: If you have some radical political views and an acquaintance reaches out, encourages you to act on your convictions, and maybe offers to introduce you to a guy who can sell you some bomb parts, don’t take him up on it. That guy’s almost definitely working for the feds.
For the past two decades, the FBI and federal prosecutors have brought case after case against would-be radicals who were ratted out by informants. They have been enormously successful in obtaining convictions in these cases, despite persistent criticisms that the FBI uses unscrupulous informants, conjures up the very plots it disrupts, and entraps defendants who have little to no ability to actually carry out a terror attack.
It looked like the case against the Michigan militia members who allegedly plotted to kidnap Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in October 2020 was going to be another data point in that trend: an extremist group riddled with FBI informants set up to take the fall for all their big talk. An unusual thing happened, though. The jury didn’t buy it. When the verdicts were read a year and a half later in March, two of the militia members were acquitted, and the jury deadlocked on the other two.
In June, a federal judge ordered the two remaining defendants to stand again for a retrial, but the collapse of the prosecution of the Whitmer defendants is one of the biggest public embarrassments for the FBI’s counterterrorism and informant programs since 9/11. The Whitmer case is more than just a high-profile embarrassment. It’s a window into the FBI’s decadeslong strategy, born of powers granted to fight the war on terror, of pursuing criminal investigations against hypothetical criminal acts that may never be committed based on evidence that amounts to little more than fringe political or ideological speech.
The FBI has typically portrayed these investigations as efforts to thwart domestic terror, but all too often, the result has been to encourage or invent plots that were unlikely to succeed. In the Whitmer case and others, the feds weren’t stopping terror: They were helping bumbling defendants plan and enact it.
Michael German, a former FBI special agent and currently a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice who worked undercover in the 1990s infiltrating white nationalist organizations and eventually resigned after filing whistleblower complaints, argues the change has been detrimental to the bureau’s mission. “The targeting is based on what people say and think and who they associate with rather than evidence of criminality,” he says. “It alters the focus of the investigation away from the individuals who are involved in criminal activity.”
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“Who wrote Joe Biden’s blood-red “soul of America” speech? Jon “Soul of America” Meacham?”
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2022/09/who-wrote-joe-bidens-blood-red-soul-of.html
“I should have guessed, because I’ve blogged about Meacham’s input into Biden rhetoric a few times, but I needed this Politico article to jog my memory: “The seeds of Biden’s democracy speech sprouted long before the Mar-a-Lago search/But the actions of Trump and his supporters, along with threats of violence, sped up Biden’s need to address the nation.”
“Democracy speech”? Is that what they want it called? The speech where he demonized half of American voters?
President Joe Biden’s speech warning about an assault against American democracy — by Donald Trump and his core followers — was an election-season call to arms unlike anything in modern American history.
Ugh! Warning us about our fellow citizens. Accusing us of “assault.” Claiming to represent “democracy.” I hope that was “unlike anything in modern American history,” because it was horrible.
It also was months in the making….
So they didn’t just brainstorm and jumble everything into a first draft and decide it was fine as is? Hmph. They really worked hard on it? Plied literary and editing skills and all? They meant it. Or they’re bullshitting now, trying to shore up the President’s reputation.
The actual writing of the speech started about three weeks ago, with Jon Meacham, the historian who has had a hand in a number of Biden’s most sweeping speeches, helping the framing….
He was one of the framers. Who knows how much he did — whether he envisioned the entire arc of the rhetoric or whether talentless hacks rifled through his “Soul of America” book for phrases to upgrade their drivel?
The Politico article goes on and on with mindless assertions like “the belief inside the White House is that the address was simply unavoidable.”
There’s nothing more about Meacham, so let me go back into my archive and pull out the 3 old posts where I’d discussed Meacham’s contribution to Biden’s rhetoric:
November 10, 2020: We learned that Meacham contributed to the writing of Biden’s victory speech (and also went on MSNBC praising the speech and not disclosing that he’d worked on it). I quoted a NYT article:
In [his victory speech], Mr. Biden spoke of a mission “to rebuild the soul of America, to rebuild the backbone of this nation, the middle class, and to make America respected around the world again” and was widely credited with striking the right tone about bringing the country back together. The language echoed the title of Mr. Meacham’s 2018 book, “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels,” which has long served as a touchstone for Mr. Biden, who has reached out to Mr. Meacham in the past to discuss passages he liked…. Mr. Biden’s reliance on a historian stands in contrast with President Trump’s lack of interest in the past….
November 11, 2020: I said Biden’s victory speech, with its Meacham material reminded me of “The Grapes of Wrath,” the part where Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) expresses the belief that there’s just one big soul: “A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody.” My comment (ad libbed during a podcast in which I read the text of my November 10th post):
What do you think of the idea that a country has a soul?… I like to think of the idea that individual human beings have a soul, and when I hear of this composite soul of an entire country, I’m skeptical…. That’s what makes me think of fascism…. especially if you’re not acknowledging the soul of individual people, and so often, from the Democratic side, I get the sense that they view their opponents as being soulless… and I feel that they’re also antagonistic to individualism. Everyone needs to think the same thing, and people should be cancelled if they don’t all say the same thing…. I read that as a rejection of the sense that individual people have a soul, and then you come at this with the idea that America has a soul. There’s just an Oversoul to America….
This idea of the nation’s soul has bothered me for a long time. It purports to express what America is, but it’s out of line with the American values of individualism and also freedom of religion and the separation of religion and government. It’s latched onto by shallow politicians trying to sound deep. Or… I hope that’s all it is. If he’s serious and actually believes deeply in this deep-appearing notion, then we need to worry that he’s stumbling down the road to fascism.”
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Your tax dollars at work shilling for the merchants of death….
“NPR Cheerleads for New ‘All-Trimester Abortion Clinic’ in DC Area”
—
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2022/09/04/good-news-npr-cheerleads-new-all-trimester-abortion-clinic-dc-area
“National Public Radio takes your tax dollars and puts on completely one-sided propaganda. On Friday’s Morning Edition, former NPR morning anchor Melissa Block narrated a completely one-sided seven-minute story they titled “An all-trimester abortion clinic prepares to open in Maryland, one of few nationally”.
This is, for NPR, a good-news story. For the clinic, it’s basically a fundraising tool.
MELISSA BLOCK: When it opens, this clinic will be one of only a handful in the country that offer abortions into the third trimester – in their case, says Horvath, up to 34 weeks gestation.
DIANE HORVATH: Every time we draw a line and we say, no more abortions after this point, someone’s going to fall on the other side of that line. And they’re going to be harmed.
This sounds a little dense. Someone isn’t just harmed, but killed in an abortion. Abortion advocates like our taxpayer-funded radio liberals don’t care. They insist that late-term abortions are always justifiable, it “could be” a tragedy. But a “right to choose” means you don’t need a good reason.
BLOCK: The clinic expects to treat an influx of people coming north from states with new abortion bans. It could be someone whose fetus has serious anomalies that are often only discovered later in pregnancy, or a patient whose continued pregnancy threatens their health. Along with those cases, says Dr. Horvath…
HORVATH: We’re definitely also going to be seeing people who wanted an abortion two or three months ago and could not navigate the web of restrictions or could not come up with the funding, or could not get transportation or childcare or time off of work. And that’s a really common story.
The next step in propaganda is to play up anti-abortion violence (and pretend that an abortion itself isn’t a violent murder):
BLOCK: Because theirs will be an all-trimester clinic, the owners believe it’s more likely to be the target of violence. So it’s being fortified with layers of extra security – cameras, panic buttons. On this day, the front windows are getting coated with thick, tinted film.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It will give you some time to prepare in the event of — or at least hold the glass together if somebody breaks the glass or something along those lines. So…
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: OK. That’s great.
BLOCK: According to the National Abortion Federation, there has been a steady rise in harassment and violence against abortion providers in recent years. Burglaries, clinic invasions and the threat of murder looms constantly. Eleven people have been killed in attacks on clinics and providers since 1993.”
—
“NPR didn’t explain this number hasn’t budged since 2015. Eleven people killed in anti-abortion violence in about thirty years. Meanwhile, they can’t note there were almost a million abortions in 2020. “
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Is this the campaign ad of the year?
But Joe Biden thinks you’re the real threat to America.
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Biden was referring to those who deny voting results with threats of violence, break into legislatures and disrupt governance, threaten to run over school board trustees, etc etc. He was not referring to those who simply vote Republican. And when he mentioned F-15s its a reference to a popular meme which ridicules those who think their guns are enough to overthrow a US gov’t they don’t like.
Graham warns of violence in the streets if Trump is arrested. Was he threatening or just telling a fact? Was he endorsing? Depends mostly on your viewpoint. Quotes and actions without context are an easy means to spout propaganda and call names.
DeSantis is establishing civic academies which will train students for work in the public sector. On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with this – many countries do similar things. France has a university where many of its federal employees are educated. However, DeSantis wants to start at grade nine and make sure they learn “foundational American values”. Starting early and using such an ambiguous phrase has many on the left believing he wants to brainwash the next generation — facscism. Personally I want them to start the schools and then two years later elect a Democratic gov’t and then see if DeSantis still approves.
It is interesting to call Biden a fascist for restoring school board funding when states cut their funding for non compliance. Wouldn’t the state gov’t be the original fascist forcing an elected body to pursue policies they were not elected to pursue?
The use of the word “soul” of a nation has its originals in the Romantic movement in the 19th century in reaction to liberal enlightenment values. It essentially sparked the 19th and 20th century nationalism. Biden’s speech maker is simply saying the US has a national culture – foundational American values if you will. In that way, both Republicans and Democrats are similar, they see the US as a European nation state. Now the use of the soul of a nation can of course be used to justify a fascist state but that’s simply a demonstration of where fascism belongs on the political spectrum. Its an easy move from national symbols, America First, etc to fascism.
The FBI is fascist?? Thanks for the information -I thought I was delusional for the last 4 decades. We’re talking about an organization that tried to entrap MLK. Its never had any credibility among the left.
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Its hard to complain about Biden’s abuse of presidential power when Trump claims he can declassify documents at will, store them as he wishes and ignore the Archives department – all after he was no longer president. Now that’s a stretch
The world didn’t take anything Trump said seriously. He was a massive joke in Europe. Even those who supported his gov’t made fun of him. The notion that Germany was overly dependent on Russia for energy was not unique to Trump; almost everyone no matter where on the political spectrum knew it.
One tweet stated they are using coal from Russia to generate electricity. From what I know, Russian coal is usually used in homes and apartments, because it’s finer and mined in smaller bits. There is currently a run on Russian coal in Poland as Poles fear a shortage this winter and about 50% of Polish homes/apartments still use coal. Polish coal is of a rougher grade and is normally used to generate electricity. It’s highly doubtful Germany is using Russian coal. The electrical grid in Europe is quite interconnected and it is possible for some countries to share excess electricity — Ukraine and France use nuclear energy and both produce excessive electricity. The use of coal should prove temporary until other supply lines can be established.
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It’s amazing how people can view the world so differently. Sometimes I read something and just go, Huh?
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Janice – basically one of my points. We tend to interpret events etc according to our prevailing mindset. For some, banning abortion, DeSantis civic academy, banning books in Texas, firing a teacher in Oklahoma, covering for Trump, etc are all signs of fascist behaviour. Meanwhile others will argue the opposite. The basic truth is there are some authoritarian instincts demonstrated by mostly republicans, some wild accusations/exaggeration by both sides, and a democratic party that never has a coherent message or strategy.
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Yes, I watched Joe Biden’s speech, Janice.
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