To the (apparently undocumented) worker shown here, I grant that you do all these, and that the American economy would turn into a shambles if you and your peers were removed from our country.
The problem is that you do one more thing: you inspire hateful morons to elect and support a presidential administration that wants you gone, and is summoning vast resources to make that happen.
When I heard that the soldiers at Fort Bragg cheered so loudly for Trump, I wondered how this could possibly be. Maybe they don’t choose to follow the news. Perhaps they are content to take orders from a man who so clearly despises them and disrespects the Constitution on which this country (formerly) functioned.
It all came to an “aha moment” just now when I learned that the folks in the audience had been hand-picked.
As Trump continues his quest to refashion the United States into an authoritarian state, several major possibilities loom large in front of us. Although I’ve not seen it discussed, one is that the nation’s top military has decided it’s seen enough, and orders its troop not to follow the grossly illegal and clearly unconstitutional directions of the president.
Unprecedented? To be sure. Improbable? Not sure.
It seems even more unlikely that the dozens of top military generals and admirals are going to stand around and watch this country descend into the darkness of totalitarianism.
We can only imagine the conversations that are happening in the offices of many congressional Republicans. They must go something like this:
“Bob, I hope you understand that by enabling Trump, you’re helping doom American’s experiment with democracy. I know you like being on The Hill, but your grandchildren will remember you as one of the traitors who turned this nation into a totalitarian state. Please don’t tell me that you’re OK with that.”
Chick-fil-A’s attack on LGBTQ rights began in 2012, according to this article.
It would be interesting to know how the organization has survived, given the enormous boycott against it.
In addition to pressure from individuals, what about franchisees? Imagine that you had laid out somewhere between $585,500 to $3.33 million (depending on factors like location and specific setup expenses), only to have the folks in your region regard you as if you had leprosy.
They must make a damn good chicken sandwich. I wouldn’t know personally, since I don’t patronize hate groups.
“We could have imagined a fascist taking control of some historically poor banana republic, but we never thought this could happen to the United States.”
That’s what virtually every European I’ve met in the last decade has told me.
“We’re shocked. And we feel sorry for you.”
If five slices of bacon give you 28% of the thiamin (vitamin B1) you need, 18 slices will give you 100%. Three things to consider, however:
1) Bacon, as a processed meat, is generally considered unhealthy due to its high salt and fat content, along with potential health risks like cancer and heart disease. I’m not a dietary scientist, but 18 slices of bacon per day doesn’t sound like a good idea (ignoring the fact that the concept itself is disgusting).
2) Salmon, black beans, lentils, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and certain vegetables like green peas are also high in thiamin.
3) Pigs are highly intelligent and sensitive animals. Most decent people would much rather kill a salmon than a pig.
From former Defense Secretary and retired Marine Corps General James Mattis, this statement about Trump’s military coup entitled “IN UNION THERE IS STRENGTH”
I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.
When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.
Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.
Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.
We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.
Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.
To this I can only add two things:
1) Though Mattis is too refined to put this clearly, Trump’s “divide and conquer” approach is obviously calculated to enable him to amass more money and power; he couldn’t care less about the well-being of our country.
2) It’s amazing that today’s Republicans have such little respect for the words of our country’s most highly decorated military heroes. How could this flip-flop have possibly happened?
Disgusting. It’s one thing that “news” in the United States has largely been replaced by incendiary opinions. But it’s even worse that so many of these opinions are so grossly ill-informed.
In its quest to move to the middle of the political spectrum, CNN has integrated a few hard-right commentators, like Jennings. Fine; I get that. But do they have to be morons?
In particular, can’t CNN do better than to refer to California as a “failed state?” If California were a nation it would be the fourth largest economy on the planet, having recently overtaken Japan.
The answer to Dr. Goodall seems to be that intelligence is only one of the characteristics that makes humankind unique on this planet. Into the soup, we need to add extra ingredients: especially greed and cruelty.
From there, we can sprinkle on a bit of cognitive bias. We like to think we’re completely rational agents, but that’s far from the truth.
