As a non-religious person, I don’t take this literally, though I certainly agree that Trump, as a person, is composed exclusively of the most disgusting characteristics known to humankind. (more…)
A reader asks: So this is interesting: could Jewish women in Red states claim that restrictions on pregnancy termination violate their 1st Amendment right to religious freedom?
I doubt it. I’m 100% pro-choice, but I think this will fail.
Similar cases have been raised by a number of religious groups, most notably the Christian Scientists, who claim it’s their right to withhold medicine from their sick–even dying–children. I’m happy to report that this doesn’t hold up in court.
I doubt it, and here’s why.
In the 1970s, I went to Trinity College, one of the many liberal arts schools in New England. A few years ago, when Trump was in office, I had a conversation with one of its spokespeople.
Naively, I asked why the college has essentially had nothing to say about the (then) U.S. president, while it’s so plain that he stands against every one of the college’s values: honor, truth, fairness, racial equality, respect for science, and so forth.
The guy quickly straightened me out: many of the parents of these kids are rich beyond belief, and making a statement against Trump would alienate the hell out of a great number of them.
Now, as this article in The Intercept lays out, Corporate America actually has broken away from the Sackler family for deliberately and criminally addicting many millions of people to opiates, so couldn’t it do the same with the Murdochs?
It’s not impossible, but again, I’m betting against it. There are essentially zero Sackler fans, but almost half the country is Republican, i.e., adherents to a party that is led, to this day, by Donald Trump.
It’s disgusting, but it’s the truth.
Starbucks on Unionization
The recent rise of organized labor is a bright spot in America’s otherwise dismal workplace environment.
Sadly, not much has changed over the last 100 years, including threats against the courageous union organizers.
An old friend from my home state of Pennsylvania writes:
At age six, Ruby Bridges (see photo below) became the first African-American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana in 1960.
The meme here is, of course, a reference to whites’ objections to our schools’ teaching kids that our country actually does have a racist past, present, and future.
FWIW, I side with Aldous Huxley, who said, “Facts don’t cease to exist because they are ignored.”
FILE – U.S. Deputy Marshals escort 6-year-old Ruby Bridges from William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, in this November 1960, file photo. On Friday, Nov. 14, 2014, 54 years later to the day when she first walked up the steps to the school, Bridges is scheduled to commemorate the event with the unveiling of a statue in her likeness on the campus. (AP Photo/File)
Who among us hasn’t thought about what we would do if we lived in Russia and had a) access to the truth about the invasion of Ukraine, and b) the means to escape?
Not to take anything away from this guy, but he did what any decent person in his position would have done.
From this piece on climate change: “If we act together, the renewable energy transformation can be the peace project of the 21st century,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.
I would simply say that we are a very, very long way from “acting together.”
I spoke with an old friend the other day who expressed her concern about environmentalism in terms of her own recycling habits. “I put a lot of effort into this,” she said, “determining exactly what materials are acceptable, and making sure they’re clean–and now, I hear, dry. How clean? How dry? Am I harming the environment more by recycling than I would be simply landfilling this stuff? Making it even more absurd is the fact that most people couldn’t care less about any of this.”
I hear you. Yet giving up is no solution.
These people know they’re playing to a huge audience of hateful morons, and, I have to admit, they’re damn good at it.
I’m reminded of the scene in the 1974 film “Blazing Saddles” where African-American actor Cleavon Little is assigned to become the new sheriff in a rural, and thoroughly racist western town. As he begins a speech, addressing the all-white townspeople for the first time, he hears the clicking of numerous guns being cocked, and he realizes that he’s about to be shot.
In response, he pulls out his own gun, pushes it hard, up under his jaw, grabs his shirt with his free hand, and says in a deep, menacing voice, “Don’t anybody move or the n***** gets it.” The people are flummoxed, enabling him to escape back into his office, where he says to himself, “You are so talented. And these people are sooooo dumb.”
In the real world here, we face a tough problem: this will only get worse as time passes. There will always be news items that politicians can use to whip angry fools into a frenzy. As the levels of ignorance grows, so do the skill of the demagogues.
Here’s a short video that addresses that very issue, in which Trump-endorsed state rep. candidate Jacky Eubanks says that if it came to a vote in the MI legislature, she would vote to make birth control illegal.
“You can’t have a successful society in the absence of the Christian moral order,” she says, expressing her contempt for the United States Constitution and the many explicit statements from the Founding Fathers.
As I’m fond of saying, there must be a limit to this insanity, but I’ll be the first to admit that I have precisely zero evidence that this is correct.
