There have been neo-Nazis in American society, their numbers ebbing and rising, ever since the Third Reich was put down in 1945.  They are a scourge to civilization, because they remind us of everything that is wrong with the human race, in particular its capacity for hatred and its inability to reason and to exhibit empathy for others.

Last week, however, the United States saw its first sign of official acceptance of racism and anti-Semitism: a former president inviting it into his home for dinner.

Worse, this abomination has not been condemned by many high-ranking congressional Republicans. There are no depths beneath which the GOP will not sink, and drag our nation down along with it.

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Common wisdom suggests that the “rich” in the sense presented at the left have wrested control of our country’s lawmaking processes so completely that the rest of us are powerless to regain even the tiniest bit.

I’m not so sure.  It’s possible that the abject stupidity on the part of the common American that was released and given wings by Donald Trump may be at least partially replaced by some semblance of intelligence once the former president goes down.

Keep in mind that the Salem witch trials of 1692 were a short-lived fad that was gone soon after it came into being; a year or two later, many people had forgotten that they had ever happened.

We may be in the process of learning that being ruled by the billionaires and corporations while the middle class evaporates completely is simply a miserable way to live, and we will demand a change in a major election cycle.  I hope I’m still on this planet long enough to see it.

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The answer to Liz Cheney’s question here, of course, is yes.

Principle, like honor and truth, is as irrelevant in Republican politics as shoe size or hair color.

And Kevin McCarthy in particular is our present-day standard-bearer for moral squalor.

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How are they different?  Glad you asked.

The only difference is that they are relatively few in number, and have no power to burn heretics at the stake.

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All this is true.

But let’s never forget that he narrowly defeated one of the scummiest people imaginable.  The Republicans came within a gnat’s a** of installing a pathological liar and complete moron into one of the most important positions in the U.S. government.

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The meme here is from an anti-vaxxer reader, who seems concerned about the health and safety of my children, both of whom have been vaccinated against COVID-19, btw.

Of course, none of us can undo any of the decisions we’ve made that have permanent implications.  The best any of us can do is to make our choices based on what makes most sense to us at the time. Speaking strictly for myself, any applicable science informs my choices in cases like these; at the very least it trumps whatever’s trending among those who belch their baseless ideas onto social media.

A good example of this is the claim that vaccinations are routinely presented as “experimental.”  To date, 12.7 billion doses have been administered, about 1.5 for every man, woman, and child on Earth.

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The meme here, featuring convicted conspiracy seditionist Elmer Stuart Rhodes, may be topical today.

Yet I guarantee that, when Trump is found guilty of the same crime, Rhodes will be quickly all but forgotten.

 

 

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Other than the pace at which it’s happening, it’s hard to complain about the criminal proceedings against Donald Trump.

Even the guilty findings against the Trump Organization on a massive tax fraud scheme, while the former president was not indicted personally, puts him in grave legal jeopardy insofar as testimony revealed that he was aware of the criminal behavior, and thus may lay the groundwork for future charges to be brought.

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From this piece in the New York Times:

The Earthshot Prize, an independent charity that was recently broken off from William and Catherine’s Royal Foundation, awards 1 million British pounds, or about $1.2 million, to each of five winners, one in each of the prize categories: nature conservation and protection, air quality, ocean revival, waste-free living and climate action.

The categories seem well-chosen to me, though any of a couple of different frameworks would have been equally valid: clean energy, clean transportation, sustainable agriculture, etc.

 

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As suggested here, Fox News serves a cause that it almost completely political.  To a lesser degree, one could make the same point about MSNBC, but the only reason you’re going to run across a story on Fox is that it’s calculated to make white people meaner and angrier.

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