Trumps Indictment: Historical and Future Implications II
If we haven't learned by now we never will.
February 19, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
FEB 19, 2024
Today is the anniversary of the day in 1942, during World War II, that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 enabling military authorities to designate military areas from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” That order also permitted the secretary of war to provide transportation, food, and shelter “to accomplish the purpose of this order.”
Four days later a Japanese submarine off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, shelled the Ellwood Oil Field, and the Office of Naval Intelligence warned that the Japanese would attack California in the next ten hours. On February 25 a meteorological balloon near Los Angeles set off a panic, and troops fired 1,400 rounds of antiaircraft ammunition at supposed Japanese attackers.
On March 2, 1942, General John DeWitt put Executive Order 9066 into effect. He signed Public Proclamation No. 1, dividing the country into military zones and, “as a matter of military necessity,” excluding from certain of those zones “[a]ny Japanese, German, or Italian alien, or any person of Japanese Ancestry.” Under DeWitt’s orders, about 125,000 children, women, and men of Japanese ancestry were forced out of their homes and imprisoned in camps around the country. Two thirds of those incarcerated were U.S. citizens.
DeWitt’s order did not come from nowhere. After almost a century of shaping laws to discriminate against Asian newcomers, West Coast inhabitants and lawmakers were primed to see their Japanese and Japanese-American neighbors as dangerous.
Those laws reached back to the 1849 arrival of Chinese miners in California and reached forward into the twentieth century. Indeed, on another February 19—that of 1923—the Supreme Court decided the case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind. It said that Thind, an Indian Sikh man who identified himself as Indo-European, could not become a U.S. citizen. Thind claimed the right to United States citizenship under the terms of the Naturalization Act of 1906, which had put the federal government instead of states in charge of who got to be a citizen and had very specific requirements for citizenship that he believed he had met.
But, the court said, Thind was not a “white person” under U.S. law, and only “free white persons” could become citizens.
What were they talking about? In the Thind decision, the Supreme Court reached back to the case of Japan-born Takao Ozawa, decided a year before, in 1922. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that Ozawa could not become a citizen under the 1906 Naturalization Act because that law had not overridden the 1790 naturalization law limiting citizenship to “free white persons.” The court decided that “white person” meant “persons of the Caucasian Race.” “A Japanese, born in Japan, being clearly not a Caucasian, cannot be made a citizen of the United States,” it said.
As the 1922 case indicated, Asian Americans could not rely on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868, to permit them to become citizens, because a law from 1790 knocked a hole in that amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment provided that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” But as soon as that amendment went into effect, the new states and territories of the West reached back to the 1790 naturalization law to exclude Asian immigrants from citizenship on the basis of the argument that they were not “free, white persons.”
That 1790 restriction, based in early lawmakers’ determination to guarantee that enslaved Africans could not claim citizenship, enabled lawmakers after the Civil War to exclude Asian immigrants from citizenship.
From that exclusion grew laws discriminating against Chinese immigrants, including the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act that prohibited Chinese workers from migrating to the United States. Then, when Chinese immigration slowed and Japanese immigration took its place, the U.S. backed the so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 under which Japanese officials promised to stop emigration to the United States. The United States, in turn, promised not to restrict the rights of Japanese immigrants already in the United States, although laws prohibiting “aliens” from owning land meant Japanese settlers either lost their land or had to put it in the names of their American-born children, who were citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment.
After the 1923 Thind decision, the United States stripped the citizenship of about 50 South Asian Americans who had already become American citizens. One of them was Vaishno Das Bagai, an immigrant from what is now Pakistan who came from wealth and who settled in San Francisco in 1915 with his wife and three sons to start a business. Less than three weeks after arriving in the United States, Bagai began the process of naturalization. He became a citizen in 1920.
The Thind decision took that citizenship away from Bagai, making him fall under California’s alien land laws that said he could not own land. He lost his home and his business. In 1928, explicitly telling the San Francisco Examiner that he was taking his life in protest of racial discrimination, Bagai committed suicide. His widow, Kala Bagai, became a community activist.
World War II changed U.S. calculations of who could be a citizen as global alliances shifted and Americans of all backgrounds turned out to save democracy. From Japanese-American concentration camps, young men joined the army to fight for the nation. In 1943 the War Department authorized the formation of Japanese-American combat units. One of those units, the 442d Regimental Combat Team, became the most decorated unit for its size in U.S. military history. Their motto was “Go for Broke.”
Congress overturned the Chinese exclusion laws in 1943 and, in 1946, made natives of India eligible for U.S. citizenship. The last Japanese internment camp closed in March 1946, and Japanese immigrants gained the right to become U.S. citizens in 1952.
In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford officially repealed Executive Order 9066 and noted that it was a “setback to fundamental American principles.” “We now know what we should have known then,” he said. “[N]ot only was that evacuation wrong, but Japanese Americans were and are loyal Americans…. I call upon the American people to affirm with me this American Promise—that we have learned from the tragedy of that long-ago experience forever to treasure liberty and justice for each individual American, and resolve that this kind of action shall never again be repeated.”
But now so-called “internment camps” are back in the news.
Trump has promised his supporters that in a second term he would launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” To deport as many as ten million of what he called “foreign national invaders,” Trump advisor Stephen Miller explained on a November podcast, the administration would federalize National Guard troops from Republican-dominated states and send them around the country to round people up, moving them to “large-scale staging grounds near the border, most likely in Texas,” that would serve as internment camps.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-19-2024
February 19, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
FEB 19, 2024
Today is the anniversary of the day in 1942, during World War II, that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 enabling military authorities to designate military areas from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” That order also permitted the secretary of war to provide transportation, food, and shelter “to accomplish the purpose of this order.”
Four days later a Japanese submarine off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, shelled the Ellwood Oil Field, and the Office of Naval Intelligence warned that the Japanese would attack California in the next ten hours. On February 25 a meteorological balloon near Los Angeles set off a panic, and troops fired 1,400 rounds of antiaircraft ammunition at supposed Japanese attackers.
On March 2, 1942, General John DeWitt put Executive Order 9066 into effect. He signed Public Proclamation No. 1, dividing the country into military zones and, “as a matter of military necessity,” excluding from certain of those zones “[a]ny Japanese, German, or Italian alien, or any person of Japanese Ancestry.” Under DeWitt’s orders, about 125,000 children, women, and men of Japanese ancestry were forced out of their homes and imprisoned in camps around the country. Two thirds of those incarcerated were U.S. citizens.
DeWitt’s order did not come from nowhere. After almost a century of shaping laws to discriminate against Asian newcomers, West Coast inhabitants and lawmakers were primed to see their Japanese and Japanese-American neighbors as dangerous.
Those laws reached back to the 1849 arrival of Chinese miners in California and reached forward into the twentieth century. Indeed, on another February 19—that of 1923—the Supreme Court decided the case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind. It said that Thind, an Indian Sikh man who identified himself as Indo-European, could not become a U.S. citizen. Thind claimed the right to United States citizenship under the terms of the Naturalization Act of 1906, which had put the federal government instead of states in charge of who got to be a citizen and had very specific requirements for citizenship that he believed he had met.
But, the court said, Thind was not a “white person” under U.S. law, and only “free white persons” could become citizens.
What were they talking about? In the Thind decision, the Supreme Court reached back to the case of Japan-born Takao Ozawa, decided a year before, in 1922. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that Ozawa could not become a citizen under the 1906 Naturalization Act because that law had not overridden the 1790 naturalization law limiting citizenship to “free white persons.” The court decided that “white person” meant “persons of the Caucasian Race.” “A Japanese, born in Japan, being clearly not a Caucasian, cannot be made a citizen of the United States,” it said.
As the 1922 case indicated, Asian Americans could not rely on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868, to permit them to become citizens, because a law from 1790 knocked a hole in that amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment provided that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” But as soon as that amendment went into effect, the new states and territories of the West reached back to the 1790 naturalization law to exclude Asian immigrants from citizenship on the basis of the argument that they were not “free, white persons.”
That 1790 restriction, based in early lawmakers’ determination to guarantee that enslaved Africans could not claim citizenship, enabled lawmakers after the Civil War to exclude Asian immigrants from citizenship.
From that exclusion grew laws discriminating against Chinese immigrants, including the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act that prohibited Chinese workers from migrating to the United States. Then, when Chinese immigration slowed and Japanese immigration took its place, the U.S. backed the so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 under which Japanese officials promised to stop emigration to the United States. The United States, in turn, promised not to restrict the rights of Japanese immigrants already in the United States, although laws prohibiting “aliens” from owning land meant Japanese settlers either lost their land or had to put it in the names of their American-born children, who were citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment.
After the 1923 Thind decision, the United States stripped the citizenship of about 50 South Asian Americans who had already become American citizens. One of them was Vaishno Das Bagai, an immigrant from what is now Pakistan who came from wealth and who settled in San Francisco in 1915 with his wife and three sons to start a business. Less than three weeks after arriving in the United States, Bagai began the process of naturalization. He became a citizen in 1920.
The Thind decision took that citizenship away from Bagai, making him fall under California’s alien land laws that said he could not own land. He lost his home and his business. In 1928, explicitly telling the San Francisco Examiner that he was taking his life in protest of racial discrimination, Bagai committed suicide. His widow, Kala Bagai, became a community activist.
World War II changed U.S. calculations of who could be a citizen as global alliances shifted and Americans of all backgrounds turned out to save democracy. From Japanese-American concentration camps, young men joined the army to fight for the nation. In 1943 the War Department authorized the formation of Japanese-American combat units. One of those units, the 442d Regimental Combat Team, became the most decorated unit for its size in U.S. military history. Their motto was “Go for Broke.”
Congress overturned the Chinese exclusion laws in 1943 and, in 1946, made natives of India eligible for U.S. citizenship. The last Japanese internment camp closed in March 1946, and Japanese immigrants gained the right to become U.S. citizens in 1952.
In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford officially repealed Executive Order 9066 and noted that it was a “setback to fundamental American principles.” “We now know what we should have known then,” he said. “[N]ot only was that evacuation wrong, but Japanese Americans were and are loyal Americans…. I call upon the American people to affirm with me this American Promise—that we have learned from the tragedy of that long-ago experience forever to treasure liberty and justice for each individual American, and resolve that this kind of action shall never again be repeated.”
But now so-called “internment camps” are back in the news.
Trump has promised his supporters that in a second term he would launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” To deport as many as ten million of what he called “foreign national invaders,” Trump advisor Stephen Miller explained on a November podcast, the administration would federalize National Guard troops from Republican-dominated states and send them around the country to round people up, moving them to “large-scale staging grounds near the border, most likely in Texas,” that would serve as internment camps.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-19-2024
"Trash talking", or showing off a "smashmouth" attitude reached its zenith long ago and now only serves to prove to the rest of us that the practitioner really only has a preference for conflict in all its ugly forms. It is always counterproductive to universal prosperity, save perhaps for the occasionally hilarious one liner that the process will produce. Yet even the well intentioned "yo mama" contest can break into sudden fisticuffs whenever a participant has had their fill.
But go ahead. I very much recommend to all of those folks who are afflicted with double down syndrome to give it a whirl toward the bench the next time (and in smashmouth world there's always a next time) that they find themselves before a judge.
Because that's working out so well for Vinnie Mac of WWE fame, as well as others in the headlines.
But go ahead. I very much recommend to all of those folks who are afflicted with double down syndrome to give it a whirl toward the bench the next time (and in smashmouth world there's always a next time) that they find themselves before a judge.
Because that's working out so well for Vinnie Mac of WWE fame, as well as others in the headlines.
Ahavati said:
This is why I haven't been able to continue a conversation with you. You resort to personal insults, and I am not above ignoring anyone who does.
retard
verb
/rɪˈtɑːd/
delay or hold back in terms of progress or development.
"our progress was retarded by unforeseen difficulties"
Is that an insult now is it.
Showing those true colours for all to see ahavati.
Instead of possibly admitting you could be wrong here. Rather you double down and cry foul. Claiming the personal insult card.
Being wilfully ignorant makes you quite the malicious individual actually. The exact opposite of the virtuous ("high vibrational") individual you portray yourself out to be.
Had I just called you a fuckin idiot for example. That would be an insult. Instead asking if you are being wilfully ignorant or rather is your intellectual capacity regarding the subject of dictators stunted is not a personal insult.
YOU the individual chose to take it as personal affront .
This is why I haven't been able to continue a conversation with you. You resort to personal insults, and I am not above ignoring anyone who does.
retard
verb
/rɪˈtɑːd/
delay or hold back in terms of progress or development.
"our progress was retarded by unforeseen difficulties"
Is that an insult now is it.
Showing those true colours for all to see ahavati.
Instead of possibly admitting you could be wrong here. Rather you double down and cry foul. Claiming the personal insult card.
Being wilfully ignorant makes you quite the malicious individual actually. The exact opposite of the virtuous ("high vibrational") individual you portray yourself out to be.
Had I just called you a fuckin idiot for example. That would be an insult. Instead asking if you are being wilfully ignorant or rather is your intellectual capacity regarding the subject of dictators stunted is not a personal insult.
YOU the individual chose to take it as personal affront .
February 20, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
FEB 20, 2024
Both global and national affairs appeared to shift over the holiday weekend. Events of the past week or so highlighted the global stakes of not stopping the aggression of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. In turn, those global stakes highlighted that Trump’s MAGA Republicans are strengthening Putin’s hand.
Since October, MAGA Republicans have managed to delay a national security supplemental bill that would provide additional aid to Ukraine. Although a bipartisan majority of Congress supports the measure, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) recessed the House on Thursday without taking it up, just days after former president Trump attacked the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and suggested he would urge Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to U.S. allies if they didn’t meet a guideline of spending 2% of their gross domestic product on their own military forces.
On Friday, February 16, Russian authorities murdered opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison, where he was being held on trumped-up charges, and on Saturday, Russian forces advanced into the front-line city of Avdiivka.
The Munich Security Conference, the world’s largest gathering on international security policy, met this year in the midst of these events, from Friday, February 16, to Sunday, February 18. At Saturday’s lunch, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark made a surprise announcement. Denmark, she said, will donate all its artillery to Ukraine. She suggested other countries, too, could do more than they already have.
According to Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer of Foreign Policy, Frederiksen’s announcement “left attendees grappling with some existential questions: Are they prepared not just to help Ukraine but also to defend Europe from a possible Russian attack on a NATO country? Are democracies capable of standing up against the threat of territory-grabbing dictatorships like Russian President Vladimir Putin’s?”
Sweden today announced it will donate about $682 million in equipment and cash to Ukraine, its 15th aid package to Ukraine since the 2022 Russian invasion. The European Union today announced it is committing 83 million euros, or about $89 million, in humanitarian aid for those in Ukraine and Moldova affected by the war. Three weeks ago it approved $54 billion in military aid.
There is increasing pressure, as well, to transfer Russia’s frozen assets to Ukraine. On Saturday, February 17, the U.S. Justice Department, which is in charge of a task force called “KleptoCapture,” transferred $500,000 in forfeited Russian funds to Estonia for fixing Ukraine’s electrical transmission and distribution systems. Biden promised more sanctions against Russia on Friday and has again called for House Republicans to pass the national security supplemental bill.
Indeed, the real elephant in the room is the fact that MAGA Republicans in the House are refusing to commit more U.S. aid. The Institute for the Study of War, a nonprofit research organization, assessed on Sunday that “delays in Western security assistance to Ukraine are likely helping Russia launch…offensive operations along several sectors of the frontline in order to place pressure on Ukrainian forces along multiple axes.”
MAGA Republicans are refusing that aid although it is popular both in Congress and among Americans at large. A Pew study released Friday, before news of Navalny’s murder broke, showed that 74% of Americans believe the war in Ukraine is important to U.S. interests; 59% say it’s important to them personally.
House speaker Johnson condemned Putin as “a vicious dictator” over the weekend and said he was “likely directly responsible” for Navalny’s death. But on Monday he posted to Twitter a photograph of him standing alongside Trump, apparently at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club, flashing a smile and a thumbs-up sign. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has vowed to try to throw Johnson out of the speaker’s chair if he even brings Ukraine funding to the floor. Trump himself referred to Navalny’s murder on Sunday simply by calling it a “sudden death” before launching into an attack on the United States.
On Sunday, former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) came out and said it: the Republican Party has a “Putin wing.” She said: “The issue of this election cycle is making sure the Putin wing of the Republican Party does not take over the West Wing of the White House.” Conservative pundit Bill Kristol agreed, in italics: “The likely nominee of one of our two major political parties is pro–Vladimir Putin. This is an astonishing fact. It is an appalling fact. It has to be a central fact of the 2024 campaign.”
Russian authorities have cracked down on those expressing sorrow for the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and are refusing to hand over his body to his mother and lawyer, who flew to the penal colony north of the Arctic Circle to reclaim it, saying they need to keep the body for “chemical analysis.”
Meanwhile, a Russian who defected to Ukraine last year has been killed in Spain, and Russian authorities have arrested for “treason” a dual Russia-U.S. citizen who lives in Los Angeles as she traveled in Russia after having participated in pro-Ukraine rallies.
Putin is facing an election next month, and he may have intended the murder of Navalny to frighten other opponents and intimidate Russian voters. But it is possible it had the opposite effect.
Yesterday, Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, stepped into his place, saying: “Putin didn’t only kill Alexei Navalny as a person. He wanted to kill our hope, our freedom, our future. But the most important thing we can do for Alexei and for ourselves is to go on fighting. I will continue Alexei Navalny’s work. Continue to fight for our country. I call on you to stand alongside me. To share not only the grief and unending pain that has enveloped us and won't let go. I also ask you to share the fury and hate for those who dared to kill our future. I speak to you in the words of Alexei, in which I believe truly: There is no shame in doing little. There is shame in doing nothing. In allowing them to scare you…. By killing Alexei, Putin has killed half of me. Half of my heart and my soul. But I have another half and it tells me that I don’t have the right to give in.”
Today she urged the European Union not to recognize the results of Russia’s March election, saying that “a president who assassinated his main political opponent cannot be legitimate by definition.”
In the U.S., there has not been any apparent move from House Republicans to come back into session to approve the national security package. Indeed, Trump appears to be strengthening his hand over the mechanics of the Republican Party, with the state parties he salted with loyalists lining up behind him, supporters in Congress killing legislation at his demand, and lawmakers who are interested in actually making laws exiting Congress out of fear or frustration.
But the apparent support of MAGA Republicans for Putin is unlikely to play well in the U.S. Today, Republican candidate for president Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, tricked the Fox News Channel into covering live what she said was a major speech, likely leading producers to think she was withdrawing. Rather than doing so, she came out swinging with an attack on Trump.
Aaron Rupar of Public Notice recorded her comments, spoken with the backdrop of the past week in everyone’s mind. Americans “deserve a real choice,” she said, “not a Soviet-style election where there's only one candidate and he gets 99 percent of the vote.”
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-20-2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
FEB 20, 2024
Both global and national affairs appeared to shift over the holiday weekend. Events of the past week or so highlighted the global stakes of not stopping the aggression of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. In turn, those global stakes highlighted that Trump’s MAGA Republicans are strengthening Putin’s hand.
Since October, MAGA Republicans have managed to delay a national security supplemental bill that would provide additional aid to Ukraine. Although a bipartisan majority of Congress supports the measure, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) recessed the House on Thursday without taking it up, just days after former president Trump attacked the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and suggested he would urge Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to U.S. allies if they didn’t meet a guideline of spending 2% of their gross domestic product on their own military forces.
On Friday, February 16, Russian authorities murdered opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison, where he was being held on trumped-up charges, and on Saturday, Russian forces advanced into the front-line city of Avdiivka.
The Munich Security Conference, the world’s largest gathering on international security policy, met this year in the midst of these events, from Friday, February 16, to Sunday, February 18. At Saturday’s lunch, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark made a surprise announcement. Denmark, she said, will donate all its artillery to Ukraine. She suggested other countries, too, could do more than they already have.
According to Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer of Foreign Policy, Frederiksen’s announcement “left attendees grappling with some existential questions: Are they prepared not just to help Ukraine but also to defend Europe from a possible Russian attack on a NATO country? Are democracies capable of standing up against the threat of territory-grabbing dictatorships like Russian President Vladimir Putin’s?”
Sweden today announced it will donate about $682 million in equipment and cash to Ukraine, its 15th aid package to Ukraine since the 2022 Russian invasion. The European Union today announced it is committing 83 million euros, or about $89 million, in humanitarian aid for those in Ukraine and Moldova affected by the war. Three weeks ago it approved $54 billion in military aid.
There is increasing pressure, as well, to transfer Russia’s frozen assets to Ukraine. On Saturday, February 17, the U.S. Justice Department, which is in charge of a task force called “KleptoCapture,” transferred $500,000 in forfeited Russian funds to Estonia for fixing Ukraine’s electrical transmission and distribution systems. Biden promised more sanctions against Russia on Friday and has again called for House Republicans to pass the national security supplemental bill.
Indeed, the real elephant in the room is the fact that MAGA Republicans in the House are refusing to commit more U.S. aid. The Institute for the Study of War, a nonprofit research organization, assessed on Sunday that “delays in Western security assistance to Ukraine are likely helping Russia launch…offensive operations along several sectors of the frontline in order to place pressure on Ukrainian forces along multiple axes.”
MAGA Republicans are refusing that aid although it is popular both in Congress and among Americans at large. A Pew study released Friday, before news of Navalny’s murder broke, showed that 74% of Americans believe the war in Ukraine is important to U.S. interests; 59% say it’s important to them personally.
House speaker Johnson condemned Putin as “a vicious dictator” over the weekend and said he was “likely directly responsible” for Navalny’s death. But on Monday he posted to Twitter a photograph of him standing alongside Trump, apparently at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club, flashing a smile and a thumbs-up sign. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has vowed to try to throw Johnson out of the speaker’s chair if he even brings Ukraine funding to the floor. Trump himself referred to Navalny’s murder on Sunday simply by calling it a “sudden death” before launching into an attack on the United States.
On Sunday, former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) came out and said it: the Republican Party has a “Putin wing.” She said: “The issue of this election cycle is making sure the Putin wing of the Republican Party does not take over the West Wing of the White House.” Conservative pundit Bill Kristol agreed, in italics: “The likely nominee of one of our two major political parties is pro–Vladimir Putin. This is an astonishing fact. It is an appalling fact. It has to be a central fact of the 2024 campaign.”
Russian authorities have cracked down on those expressing sorrow for the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and are refusing to hand over his body to his mother and lawyer, who flew to the penal colony north of the Arctic Circle to reclaim it, saying they need to keep the body for “chemical analysis.”
Meanwhile, a Russian who defected to Ukraine last year has been killed in Spain, and Russian authorities have arrested for “treason” a dual Russia-U.S. citizen who lives in Los Angeles as she traveled in Russia after having participated in pro-Ukraine rallies.
Putin is facing an election next month, and he may have intended the murder of Navalny to frighten other opponents and intimidate Russian voters. But it is possible it had the opposite effect.
Yesterday, Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, stepped into his place, saying: “Putin didn’t only kill Alexei Navalny as a person. He wanted to kill our hope, our freedom, our future. But the most important thing we can do for Alexei and for ourselves is to go on fighting. I will continue Alexei Navalny’s work. Continue to fight for our country. I call on you to stand alongside me. To share not only the grief and unending pain that has enveloped us and won't let go. I also ask you to share the fury and hate for those who dared to kill our future. I speak to you in the words of Alexei, in which I believe truly: There is no shame in doing little. There is shame in doing nothing. In allowing them to scare you…. By killing Alexei, Putin has killed half of me. Half of my heart and my soul. But I have another half and it tells me that I don’t have the right to give in.”
Today she urged the European Union not to recognize the results of Russia’s March election, saying that “a president who assassinated his main political opponent cannot be legitimate by definition.”
In the U.S., there has not been any apparent move from House Republicans to come back into session to approve the national security package. Indeed, Trump appears to be strengthening his hand over the mechanics of the Republican Party, with the state parties he salted with loyalists lining up behind him, supporters in Congress killing legislation at his demand, and lawmakers who are interested in actually making laws exiting Congress out of fear or frustration.
But the apparent support of MAGA Republicans for Putin is unlikely to play well in the U.S. Today, Republican candidate for president Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, tricked the Fox News Channel into covering live what she said was a major speech, likely leading producers to think she was withdrawing. Rather than doing so, she came out swinging with an attack on Trump.
Aaron Rupar of Public Notice recorded her comments, spoken with the backdrop of the past week in everyone’s mind. Americans “deserve a real choice,” she said, “not a Soviet-style election where there's only one candidate and he gets 99 percent of the vote.”
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-20-2024
Carpe_Noctem said:
retard
verb
/rɪˈtɑːd/
delay or hold back in terms of progress or development.
"our progress was retarded by unforeseen difficulties"
Grammar lesson: Let's begin with the actual term you used:
Carpe_Noctem said: [ . . . ]
Are you intentionally being willfully ignorant here, or are you seriously that intellectually retarded?
retarded
adjective
re·tard·ed ri-ˈtär-dəd
1
dated, now offensive : affected by intellectual disability : INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED
2
informal + offensive : very stupid or foolish
I am not angry nor bothered by your perception of me. It's actually none of my business. I have learned from our history of attempted discourse that you cannot maintain a respectful conversation without personal attacks if I refuse to agree with you. That's not side-stepping, that's fact. And it will be ignored.
EDIT: Anyone who desires my time and attention in this thread WILL be respectful or ignored. It's that simple. If those boundaries are considered "bullying" then so be it.
retard
verb
/rɪˈtɑːd/
delay or hold back in terms of progress or development.
"our progress was retarded by unforeseen difficulties"
Grammar lesson: Let's begin with the actual term you used:
Carpe_Noctem said: [ . . . ]
Are you intentionally being willfully ignorant here, or are you seriously that intellectually retarded?
retarded
adjective
re·tard·ed ri-ˈtär-dəd
1
dated, now offensive : affected by intellectual disability : INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED
2
informal + offensive : very stupid or foolish
I am not angry nor bothered by your perception of me. It's actually none of my business. I have learned from our history of attempted discourse that you cannot maintain a respectful conversation without personal attacks if I refuse to agree with you. That's not side-stepping, that's fact. And it will be ignored.
EDIT: Anyone who desires my time and attention in this thread WILL be respectful or ignored. It's that simple. If those boundaries are considered "bullying" then so be it.
This is why I haven't been able to continue a conversation with you. You resort to personal insults, and I am not above ignoring anyone who does.
Hilarious again
What have you done to better our American situation BESIDES the copying and pasting of a liberal "retard"
Are you opening your home to any of these migrants our head idiot in charge that cant speak is letting in? No. You are not. Are you doing anything proactive in real life or you too busy with the copying and pasting? Or are you just a keyboard bully?
You dont like Trump for the reasons of others. And because youre a liberal woman thats a I can chose which man to hate, man hater...The man had affairs, who cares? All those broads were willing, and many times. Just like at the Playboy mansion. Because money, ass and tits talk, and your bullshit walks. Our head idiot in charge is a pedophile sniffing little girls that clearly swipe away his hands when he touches them. But thats ok? What if that was your daughter, getting the old Big Creepy, Sleepy Joe grab, held forcefully, and sniffed very disgustingly?
Hilarious again
What have you done to better our American situation BESIDES the copying and pasting of a liberal "retard"
Are you opening your home to any of these migrants our head idiot in charge that cant speak is letting in? No. You are not. Are you doing anything proactive in real life or you too busy with the copying and pasting? Or are you just a keyboard bully?
You dont like Trump for the reasons of others. And because youre a liberal woman thats a I can chose which man to hate, man hater...The man had affairs, who cares? All those broads were willing, and many times. Just like at the Playboy mansion. Because money, ass and tits talk, and your bullshit walks. Our head idiot in charge is a pedophile sniffing little girls that clearly swipe away his hands when he touches them. But thats ok? What if that was your daughter, getting the old Big Creepy, Sleepy Joe grab, held forcefully, and sniffed very disgustingly?
Ahavati said:
retarded
adjective
re·tard·ed ri-ˈtär-dəd
1
dated, now offensive : affected by intellectual disability : INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED
2
informal + offensive : very stupid or foolish
I am not angry nor bothered by your perception of me. It's actually none of my business. I have learned from our history of attempted discourse that you cannot maintain a respectful conversation without personal attacks if I refuse to agree with you. That's not side-stepping, that's fact. And it will be ignored.
EDIT: Anyone who desires my time and attention in this thread WILL be respectful or ignored. It's that simple. If those boundaries are considered "bullying" then so be it.
Hi Ahavati,
Thank you for your contributions, I've learnt so much about American history and politics and its place within the world because of you. It's nice to read something on the internet that is well written, well researched, entirely factual and actually pleasant to read.
Also thank you for introducing me to Heather Cox Richardson, I found her videos very interesting and insightful. I can't believe they are freely available on YouTube.
You are not a bully, the very idea is laughable!
retarded
adjective
re·tard·ed ri-ˈtär-dəd
1
dated, now offensive : affected by intellectual disability : INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED
2
informal + offensive : very stupid or foolish
I am not angry nor bothered by your perception of me. It's actually none of my business. I have learned from our history of attempted discourse that you cannot maintain a respectful conversation without personal attacks if I refuse to agree with you. That's not side-stepping, that's fact. And it will be ignored.
EDIT: Anyone who desires my time and attention in this thread WILL be respectful or ignored. It's that simple. If those boundaries are considered "bullying" then so be it.
Hi Ahavati,
Thank you for your contributions, I've learnt so much about American history and politics and its place within the world because of you. It's nice to read something on the internet that is well written, well researched, entirely factual and actually pleasant to read.
Also thank you for introducing me to Heather Cox Richardson, I found her videos very interesting and insightful. I can't believe they are freely available on YouTube.
You are not a bully, the very idea is laughable!
Noble_Incubus said:
Hi Ahavati,
Thank you for your contributions, I've learnt so much about American history and politics and its place within the world because of you. It's nice to read something on the internet that is well written, well researched, entirely factual and actually pleasant to read.
Also thank you for introducing me to Heather Cox Richardson, I found her videos very interesting and insightful. I can't believe they are freely available on YouTube.
You are not a bully, the very idea is laughable!
You can also watch Sesame Street on Youtube and if your a Swiftie too even!
Hi Ahavati,
Thank you for your contributions, I've learnt so much about American history and politics and its place within the world because of you. It's nice to read something on the internet that is well written, well researched, entirely factual and actually pleasant to read.
Also thank you for introducing me to Heather Cox Richardson, I found her videos very interesting and insightful. I can't believe they are freely available on YouTube.
You are not a bully, the very idea is laughable!
You can also watch Sesame Street on Youtube and if your a Swiftie too even!
February 21, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
FEB 21, 2024
The centerpiece of Republicans’ case for impeaching Democratic president Joe Biden is the allegation that he and his son Hunter each accepted a $5 million bribe from Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma when Biden Sr. was vice president. But in the last week, that accusation has revealed quite a different problem, one that implicates Republicans.
The accusation that the Bidens accepted bribes broke into public channels on May 3, 2023, when Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Representative James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray saying they had received “highly credible…whistleblower disclosures” that said the Department of Justice and the FBI appeared to have “valuable, verifiable information that you have failed to disclose to the American people.”
Grassley and Comer claimed there was “growing concern about the DOJ and the FBI’s track record of allowing political bias to infect their decision-making process,” and so Congress would be conducting its own “independent and objective review of this matter.”
Comer then issued a subpoena for the document containing the information, a so-called FD-1023, which is the form used by FBI agents to record “raw, unverified” information from confidential informants. In it, informant Alexander Smirnov made a number of allegations about the Bidens, including that they had accepted bribes.
In July, Grassley and Comer got the document and showed it to others in a secure facility. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) saw it there, took pictures of it, and posted them on social media. She claimed that “Joe Biden is a criminal and is compromised” and that he was backing Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion because Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky “has proof of more Biden crimes.” “IMPEACH BIDEN,” she wrote.
Grassley also released it, suggesting that the Justice Department and the FBI were trying to cover up a “criminal bribery scheme” implicating the Bidens. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) jumped in, saying: “Every day, the evidence keeps mounting and the evidence that is coming in is number one, of a widespread bribery scheme of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and the entire Biden family, to extract bribes from foreign nationals.”
The idea that Biden had accepted bribes was central to the House impeachment effort that then–House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced in September 2023.
That story fell apart a week ago, on February 14, 2024, when a federal grand jury indicted Smirnov for lying and “creating a false and fictitious record.”
And the story became even more troubling yesterday, when Trump-appointed Special Counsel David Weiss of the Justice Department filed a document establishing that the informant, Alexander Smirnov, has “extensive and extremely recent” ties with “Russian intelligence agencies.”
The filing revealed other, more recent, false allegations Smirnov had made, and concluded that “Smirnov’s efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States continues…. What this shows is that the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020. He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.”
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, told reporters today that “the impeachment investigation essentially ended yesterday, in substance if not in form, with the explosive revelation that Mr. Smirnov’s allegations about Ukrainian Burisma payments to Joe Biden were concocted along with Russian intelligence agents. And it appears like the whole thing was not only obviously false and fraudulent but a product of Russian disinformation and propaganda. And that’s been the motor force behind this investigation for more than a year.”
The Republican release of Smirnov’s allegations in July 2023 did not happen in a vacuum: they came right after the Republican-led House censured Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) for “misleading the American public and for conduct unbecoming of an elected Member of the House of Representatives,” including “spread[ing] false accusations that the [2016] Trump campaign colluded with Russia.”
But the Mueller Report concluded that “[t]he Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion” and that “the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.” The Senate Intelligence Committee Report found that “the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence…the outcome of the 2016 presidential election” and that Trump campaign advisor Paul Manafort worked directly with Konstantin Kilimnik, “a Russian intelligence officer.”
That effort continued in 2020, with the U.S. intelligence community assessing in March 2021 that “Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US.”
That foreign countries try to influence elections is far less a surprise than that one of the two major U.S. political parties now appears to be, wittingly or not, working on their behalf.
That willingness to do anything to win—even working with a foreign dictator—seems a logical outgrowth of the process begun during the administration of President Richard Nixon, when his people deliberately appealed to voters’ emotions with a picture of traditional America under siege by antiwar student activists, people of color, and feminist women.
To rally voters to their party in the 1970s midterms, Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew engaged in what they called “positive polarization.” Nixon’s speechwriter Pat Buchanan wrote a memo to Nixon warning: “We are in a contest over the soul of the country now and the decision will not be some middle compromise…. It will be their kind of society or ours.”
The theme that the Republicans' opponents were dangerous socialists out to destroy the country became the centerpiece of Republican rhetoric. From President Ronald Reagan’s welfare queen, who was scamming the system and thus taxpayers, through talk radio host Rush Limbaugh’s “feminazis,” to Trump’s claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” the party has defined itself as “true America” standing against enemies.
And if you believe you are fighting for the right, it only makes sense to do whatever it takes to win.
Cont below
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
FEB 21, 2024
The centerpiece of Republicans’ case for impeaching Democratic president Joe Biden is the allegation that he and his son Hunter each accepted a $5 million bribe from Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma when Biden Sr. was vice president. But in the last week, that accusation has revealed quite a different problem, one that implicates Republicans.
The accusation that the Bidens accepted bribes broke into public channels on May 3, 2023, when Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Representative James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray saying they had received “highly credible…whistleblower disclosures” that said the Department of Justice and the FBI appeared to have “valuable, verifiable information that you have failed to disclose to the American people.”
Grassley and Comer claimed there was “growing concern about the DOJ and the FBI’s track record of allowing political bias to infect their decision-making process,” and so Congress would be conducting its own “independent and objective review of this matter.”
Comer then issued a subpoena for the document containing the information, a so-called FD-1023, which is the form used by FBI agents to record “raw, unverified” information from confidential informants. In it, informant Alexander Smirnov made a number of allegations about the Bidens, including that they had accepted bribes.
In July, Grassley and Comer got the document and showed it to others in a secure facility. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) saw it there, took pictures of it, and posted them on social media. She claimed that “Joe Biden is a criminal and is compromised” and that he was backing Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion because Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky “has proof of more Biden crimes.” “IMPEACH BIDEN,” she wrote.
Grassley also released it, suggesting that the Justice Department and the FBI were trying to cover up a “criminal bribery scheme” implicating the Bidens. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) jumped in, saying: “Every day, the evidence keeps mounting and the evidence that is coming in is number one, of a widespread bribery scheme of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and the entire Biden family, to extract bribes from foreign nationals.”
The idea that Biden had accepted bribes was central to the House impeachment effort that then–House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced in September 2023.
That story fell apart a week ago, on February 14, 2024, when a federal grand jury indicted Smirnov for lying and “creating a false and fictitious record.”
And the story became even more troubling yesterday, when Trump-appointed Special Counsel David Weiss of the Justice Department filed a document establishing that the informant, Alexander Smirnov, has “extensive and extremely recent” ties with “Russian intelligence agencies.”
The filing revealed other, more recent, false allegations Smirnov had made, and concluded that “Smirnov’s efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States continues…. What this shows is that the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020. He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.”
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, told reporters today that “the impeachment investigation essentially ended yesterday, in substance if not in form, with the explosive revelation that Mr. Smirnov’s allegations about Ukrainian Burisma payments to Joe Biden were concocted along with Russian intelligence agents. And it appears like the whole thing was not only obviously false and fraudulent but a product of Russian disinformation and propaganda. And that’s been the motor force behind this investigation for more than a year.”
The Republican release of Smirnov’s allegations in July 2023 did not happen in a vacuum: they came right after the Republican-led House censured Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) for “misleading the American public and for conduct unbecoming of an elected Member of the House of Representatives,” including “spread[ing] false accusations that the [2016] Trump campaign colluded with Russia.”
But the Mueller Report concluded that “[t]he Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion” and that “the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.” The Senate Intelligence Committee Report found that “the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence…the outcome of the 2016 presidential election” and that Trump campaign advisor Paul Manafort worked directly with Konstantin Kilimnik, “a Russian intelligence officer.”
That effort continued in 2020, with the U.S. intelligence community assessing in March 2021 that “Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US.”
That foreign countries try to influence elections is far less a surprise than that one of the two major U.S. political parties now appears to be, wittingly or not, working on their behalf.
That willingness to do anything to win—even working with a foreign dictator—seems a logical outgrowth of the process begun during the administration of President Richard Nixon, when his people deliberately appealed to voters’ emotions with a picture of traditional America under siege by antiwar student activists, people of color, and feminist women.
To rally voters to their party in the 1970s midterms, Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew engaged in what they called “positive polarization.” Nixon’s speechwriter Pat Buchanan wrote a memo to Nixon warning: “We are in a contest over the soul of the country now and the decision will not be some middle compromise…. It will be their kind of society or ours.”
The theme that the Republicans' opponents were dangerous socialists out to destroy the country became the centerpiece of Republican rhetoric. From President Ronald Reagan’s welfare queen, who was scamming the system and thus taxpayers, through talk radio host Rush Limbaugh’s “feminazis,” to Trump’s claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” the party has defined itself as “true America” standing against enemies.
And if you believe you are fighting for the right, it only makes sense to do whatever it takes to win.
Cont below
cont from above
Meanwhile, that belief has now overlapped with the evangelical base that supports what it considers traditional values so that, as Alexander Ward and Heidi Przybyla outlined in Politico yesterday, the party is now advancing plans to impose Christian nationalism on the country. Leaders of the Christian nationalist movement incorrectly believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, so they intend to rest the government and public life on what they consider to be Christian values.
In December, Trump promised: “Upon taking office, I will create a new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian bias to be led by a fully reformed Department of Justice.”
What that might look like became clear this week when the Alabama Supreme Court decided in a wrongful death suit resulting from the accidental destruction of embryos that were part of an in vitro fertilization (IVF) process, in which doctors artificially fertilize eggs outside the womb and then transfer them into a person, that fertilized human eggs have the same status as children. Chief Justice Tom Parker declared in a concurring opinion that the people of Alabama have adopted the “theologically based view” that “life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.”
About 2% of U.S. births are a product of IVF. Today the largest healthcare system in Alabama has announced it is halting its IVF program out of fear of prosecution.
Reworking the nation to impose Christian nationalism requires minority rule, which aligns with the ideology of authoritarianism, enabling Trump and those who share his views to praise someone like Vladimir Putin. And, it seems, to accept his help winning elections.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-21-2024?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Meanwhile, that belief has now overlapped with the evangelical base that supports what it considers traditional values so that, as Alexander Ward and Heidi Przybyla outlined in Politico yesterday, the party is now advancing plans to impose Christian nationalism on the country. Leaders of the Christian nationalist movement incorrectly believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, so they intend to rest the government and public life on what they consider to be Christian values.
In December, Trump promised: “Upon taking office, I will create a new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian bias to be led by a fully reformed Department of Justice.”
What that might look like became clear this week when the Alabama Supreme Court decided in a wrongful death suit resulting from the accidental destruction of embryos that were part of an in vitro fertilization (IVF) process, in which doctors artificially fertilize eggs outside the womb and then transfer them into a person, that fertilized human eggs have the same status as children. Chief Justice Tom Parker declared in a concurring opinion that the people of Alabama have adopted the “theologically based view” that “life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.”
About 2% of U.S. births are a product of IVF. Today the largest healthcare system in Alabama has announced it is halting its IVF program out of fear of prosecution.
Reworking the nation to impose Christian nationalism requires minority rule, which aligns with the ideology of authoritarianism, enabling Trump and those who share his views to praise someone like Vladimir Putin. And, it seems, to accept his help winning elections.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-21-2024?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Noble_Incubus said:
Hi Ahavati,
Thank you for your contributions, I've learnt so much about American history and politics and its place within the world because of you. It's nice to read something on the internet that is well written, well researched, entirely factual and actually pleasant to read.
Also thank you for introducing me to Heather Cox Richardson, I found her videos very interesting and insightful. I can't believe they are freely available on YouTube.
You are not a bully, the very idea is laughable!
You're very welcome, Noble_Incubus. For those who may be ignorant of who Heather Cox Richardson is:
She is an American academic historian, author, and educator. She is a professor of history at Boston College, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and the Plains Indians. She previously taught history at MIT and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Richardson has authored seven books on history and politics. In 2014, she founded a history website, werehistory.org. Between 2017 and 2018, she co-hosted the NPR podcast Freak Out and Carry On.
In 2019, Richardson started publishing Letters from an American, a nightly newsletter that chronicles current events in the larger context of American history. The newsletter accrued over one million subscribers, making her one of the most successful individual authors of a paid publication on Substack.
Richardson also co-hosts the podcast Now & Then with fellow historian Joanne B. Freeman.
That someone hiding behind a false persona on the internet would call her "retarded" is laughable.
I post her letters for two reasons: Firstly, because I run two businesses plus help raise a grandson and actually write/support fellow poets here whenever I can create the time. When I first began reading her, I would double/fact-check her posts and references - I never once, in almost a year, found anything she had posted untrue.
Secondly, to put the truth out there and allow those who read it to make up their own minds.
I know I'm not a bully because I don't care what others believe, and certainly don't personally attack them when they don't agree with me. As evidenced in this thread, everyone is welcome and free to post whatever they want. I know I don't play the victim because I would have to feel like a victim first, and I don't.
I know who I am.
A political thread on a poetry site is not baiting. It's inviting an intelligent and respectful discourse on local and world events in a forum that disallows the topics of poetry and writing ( or so says its guidelines ).
All I ask is that participants be respectful of one another. Which is obviously impossible for some unless you, 1) agree with them, and 2) post what THEY want you to post. Both of which clearly reveals deep-seated issues of insecurity to the point they must control the actions of others to feel safe in the environment.
The above letter has 19+ references that have been double-checked and validated by a historian before being compiled for the public. I certainly don't have time to read that many in a day. And I certainly don't have time to fact-check them. Nor could I succinctly nor eloquently convey current events entwined with the historical FACTS she presents.
Bottom line: I trust her. I will continue to post her letters. I don't have to be in control, but conversely, I cannot be controlled. And therein lies the rub for some.
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and validate that these posts are making a difference.
Hi Ahavati,
Thank you for your contributions, I've learnt so much about American history and politics and its place within the world because of you. It's nice to read something on the internet that is well written, well researched, entirely factual and actually pleasant to read.
Also thank you for introducing me to Heather Cox Richardson, I found her videos very interesting and insightful. I can't believe they are freely available on YouTube.
You are not a bully, the very idea is laughable!
You're very welcome, Noble_Incubus. For those who may be ignorant of who Heather Cox Richardson is:
She is an American academic historian, author, and educator. She is a professor of history at Boston College, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and the Plains Indians. She previously taught history at MIT and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Richardson has authored seven books on history and politics. In 2014, she founded a history website, werehistory.org. Between 2017 and 2018, she co-hosted the NPR podcast Freak Out and Carry On.
In 2019, Richardson started publishing Letters from an American, a nightly newsletter that chronicles current events in the larger context of American history. The newsletter accrued over one million subscribers, making her one of the most successful individual authors of a paid publication on Substack.
Richardson also co-hosts the podcast Now & Then with fellow historian Joanne B. Freeman.
That someone hiding behind a false persona on the internet would call her "retarded" is laughable.
I post her letters for two reasons: Firstly, because I run two businesses plus help raise a grandson and actually write/support fellow poets here whenever I can create the time. When I first began reading her, I would double/fact-check her posts and references - I never once, in almost a year, found anything she had posted untrue.
Secondly, to put the truth out there and allow those who read it to make up their own minds.
I know I'm not a bully because I don't care what others believe, and certainly don't personally attack them when they don't agree with me. As evidenced in this thread, everyone is welcome and free to post whatever they want. I know I don't play the victim because I would have to feel like a victim first, and I don't.
I know who I am.
A political thread on a poetry site is not baiting. It's inviting an intelligent and respectful discourse on local and world events in a forum that disallows the topics of poetry and writing ( or so says its guidelines ).
All I ask is that participants be respectful of one another. Which is obviously impossible for some unless you, 1) agree with them, and 2) post what THEY want you to post. Both of which clearly reveals deep-seated issues of insecurity to the point they must control the actions of others to feel safe in the environment.
The above letter has 19+ references that have been double-checked and validated by a historian before being compiled for the public. I certainly don't have time to read that many in a day. And I certainly don't have time to fact-check them. Nor could I succinctly nor eloquently convey current events entwined with the historical FACTS she presents.
Bottom line: I trust her. I will continue to post her letters. I don't have to be in control, but conversely, I cannot be controlled. And therein lies the rub for some.
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and validate that these posts are making a difference.
Vocabular banality is the only significant result from the desperately blimpish partisan overutilization of "libtard", "commie", or "pedo".
And due to this Facebook induced national rhetorical degradation, one can't help but wonder if the native born trailer park paleface doesn't possess a command of their Yankee lingo birthright any better than a Hispanic immigrant's secondary language capability.
Furthermore; the chest thumping troglodytic characteristics of the primitive MAGA animus serve to make it plain that Hillary Clinton's use of the word "deplorable" was psychologically accurate, and therefore justified.
She paid a political price for her emotional mutilation of the tender bro-flake ego done by her comment, and so, end of story.
Or is it?
I'm wondering if we will see some constituent deplorability social side effects pertain to certain issues, such as immigration.
Specifically, why should U.S. citizens give a shit about the allegedly evil foreign hordes boiling over borders when MAGA behavior is every bit as atrocious? It's not only an issue nullified by alleged foreign deplorability replacing observably certain, and therefore confirmed, domestic deplorability, but we also get an upgrade to our national culinary flavorings...which were heretofore as bland as a Nazarene family picnic.
Perhaps the third world has something to offer after all.
Macho for macho...undone by the taco:)
And due to this Facebook induced national rhetorical degradation, one can't help but wonder if the native born trailer park paleface doesn't possess a command of their Yankee lingo birthright any better than a Hispanic immigrant's secondary language capability.
Furthermore; the chest thumping troglodytic characteristics of the primitive MAGA animus serve to make it plain that Hillary Clinton's use of the word "deplorable" was psychologically accurate, and therefore justified.
She paid a political price for her emotional mutilation of the tender bro-flake ego done by her comment, and so, end of story.
Or is it?
I'm wondering if we will see some constituent deplorability social side effects pertain to certain issues, such as immigration.
Specifically, why should U.S. citizens give a shit about the allegedly evil foreign hordes boiling over borders when MAGA behavior is every bit as atrocious? It's not only an issue nullified by alleged foreign deplorability replacing observably certain, and therefore confirmed, domestic deplorability, but we also get an upgrade to our national culinary flavorings...which were heretofore as bland as a Nazarene family picnic.
Perhaps the third world has something to offer after all.
Macho for macho...undone by the taco:)
(1).Biden "impeachment":-- With a name like "Alexander Smirnov", well, you couldn't make it up, could you?
(2).Christian Nationalism:-- ref: Russia's Tsar Nicolas II and Girgori Rasputin, Political Ideology married to Religious Ideology; ref: Emperor Constantine & The Holy Roman Empire, ditto; and now coming American style to a place near you. Wow.
(2).Christian Nationalism:-- ref: Russia's Tsar Nicolas II and Girgori Rasputin, Political Ideology married to Religious Ideology; ref: Emperor Constantine & The Holy Roman Empire, ditto; and now coming American style to a place near you. Wow.
