My Artwork

These first 4 are from my “Fractured Glass” Series

“The Color of Fractured Glass” / Watercolor on photograph

“Falling Light Through Fractured Glass / Photograph

“The Matrix of Fractured Glass” / Photograph

The Sky in Fractured Glass / Photograph

“Weird Geometry” / Photograph

“Which Direction?” / Photograph

“The View From the Dining Room” / Photograph

“Never Had That Dream Twice / Microsoft Word file

The Schoolyard / Existing vintage photograph with watercolor

Color Cups / Original Photograph / Framed

User comments

“She Stares / Photograph with Microsoft Word

“A Love Letter, Really?” / Existing image altered

21st Century Jan van Eyck / Altered Web image

Photographic Self-Portrait – 2016 / Photograph

Everything here is my intellectual property, folks, so please don’t steal it! Thanks!

How Long Will We Allow This To Be Our ‘Normal?’

Apalachee High School.  I was going to list several others, but what would be the point?  Seriously, what would be the point?  The list would go on and on, and every school name you would read would bring back a momentary thought of how tragic it was, and then you would go on to the next one.

Then the next.

Then the next.

Then the next.

Until what?  Until you finally finish the list as the feelings of tragic consequences quickly fade, and you then either read on, or stop?  Yes, that’s exactly what would happen, and if you decided to read on, you might finish reading my comments and say to yourself, “This guy is right, we cannot let this continue unabated like this.”

But we will.  We will, because it is now, as the saying goes, “the new normal” in the United States.  The issue is no longer that we cannot allow this to become normal for our society, because it is.  It’s expected…weekly.  The issue now is, how deeply will we allow this normalcy to embed itself into our society.

It is expected so much that the republican party now takes the stand that people just need to get over it.  When your eight year-old daughter is almost cut in half by an assault rifle in her classroom, get over it.  Why do I say this? because Donald Trump said, after the first school shooting in America this year, at Perry High School in Iowa on January 3rd, that people should “move on,” and that the parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, and friends who survived the horror “have to get over it.”  

Seriously, he said that.

How may people reading this piece know what a round shot from an AR-15 does to a human body?  A lot of you, I’m sure, think that it’s like some old western in which the person shot, grabs themselves where they think the bullet might have entered them, sort of winces in pain, perhaps they’ll move their hand just a bit to see a bit of a blood stain on their shirt, and then fall to the side.  If they’re a hero, they survive.  If they’re a villain, they don’t.

No, I’m sorry, but nothing could be further from the truth.  An assault rifle is a weapon of 21st century warfare, and is designed to deliver a bullet that will tear a full grown, adult human apart.  It is designed to create a wound that will not heal.  It is a weapon designed to kill soldiers dressed in full 21st century battle gear.  Imagine, then, if you will, what and AR-15 will do to an eight year-old girl, especially if she’s hit twice.  Believe me, it will be ‘closed casket.’

We also have to remember, that you cannot separate what Donald Trump says from official republican party policy, because his every utterance becomes that party’s policy.  That’s what ownership is all about.  So, if you’re a member of the republican party, and the remains of your daughter have to be mopped up off of the floor of her classroom after she was gunned down right after proudly showing off her finger painting to her best friend and then her teacher, remember what your lord and savior says, and get over it.  Move on and GET OVER IT!

The rest of us are not required to “get over it,” but you are.  As republican, MAGA parents, just hook up again and make another one that looks just like her, that’s all you have to do; right after you get over it and move on.

And then we have republican solutions to all of this: arm the teachers, chain the doors, stop and frisk every student, put more cops everywhere, and get over it.  Soon, our children will be completely prepared for life in the fascist police state the republican party envisions for us.  Chain the doors, stop and frisk, cops everywhere.  Eventually, if we allow them, they will make this normal, too.

If all of that weren’t enough, we have JD Vance, Mr. Personality himself, saying the following: “I don’t like that this is a fact of life.”  Which he prefaced with your basic republican lie, that Kamala Harris’ answer to this is to take away every law-abiding American citizen’s guns.  I have almost no response to that.  Almost.  I’m not going to deal with the ‘take your guns’ lie, because that’s for Ms. Harris to address.  What I will take issue with is the attempt, through JD Vance, to even further ingrain the normalcy of our children being murdered in their classrooms into American society.

Mr. Vance, I don’t think you actually care that death at school is now a fact of life.  In the cult of selfishness and cruelty that has, under Trump’s dominion, become the character of the republican party of which you are a high priest, there is no room for caring about anyone outside of your personal circle.  So, when you say that you “don’t like” our children being cut to pieces as they huddle behind furniture, crying and holding each other, as a single teacher does their best to shield twenty children from certain death, I don’t believe you.  I don’t believe you because you follow that half of your statement by immersing yourself in your dream of the inevitability of the scenario above: it’s a fact of life.

No, Mr. Vance, you sold your soul to Donald Trump, the NRA, and the Church of the Perpetual Lie, and now you have to bear the costs of that.  You no longer have the right to try to tell people that you care.  You no longer have the right to try to convince people that their suffering means anything to you, because we all know that it doesn’t.  The ultimate cost, of course, for you, is that your massive mansion, on “Paved with Gold” Street in the Pearly Gates Country Club in the imaginary heaven you have created, and in which you only feign to believe, is forfeit.

Your heaven is sealed off to the MAGA movement.  Nobody who tries to sell the idea that eight year-old girls in pretty dresses being ripped to shreds in their schools by assault rifles is a fact of life has any place there.  Nobody who tries to tell the families of these girls and boys that they need to ‘move on,” and “get over it.” has any business even hoping for whatever salvation they imagine in this world.

Lastly, a brief word on Governor Kemp, who, in the face of more gun deaths in his state, (only twelve states have higher gun death rates per capita than Georgia) stated flatly on the afternoon of this tragedy, that people’s untethered right to bear any form of arms, and his sworn allegiance to the NRA, mean more to him than the lives of children and teachers.  This should be obvious, though.  Georgia, like all states run by republicans, ranks well into the bottom half of spending per child on education.  Georgia is well into the bottom half of the states of this country in caring about the lives anyone, especially the born.

I saw a post on a social media platform on Thursday, the day after the shooting, by a woman who was completely distraught.  She was walking home after escorting her seven year-old daughter to the school bus stop. She greeted the driver when the bus arrived then watched her daughter climb the tall stairs in a cloud of happiness and look for a seat among her friends.

As she walked home she was almost in tears.  Because since she lives in the United States there is a chance (a small chance, I grant you, but still a much greater chance than in any other western democracy) that her daughter will be murdered at school that day and won’t come home.  There’s that thought that lurks horribly in every parent’s mind that they will receive a call and then frantically rush to her little girl’s school, in tears and a panic, wondering if her little one survived.

The thought just occurred to me that maybe your refusal to not only ban assault weapons, but to then suggest arming teachers with guns, chaining all of the doors, and infesting our schools with limitless cops, like roaches in the cafeteria, is really just part of your greater plan to destroy public education in America.

Let me ask you, Mr. Trump, Mr. Vance, and Mr. Kemp, how can you sleep well at night, knowing that because of your efforts to flood our country with guns, and the influence you have over ignorant people who follow you and worship at the alter of the Second Amendment, that millions upon millions of parents in our country fear sending their children to school each day.  Let me paraphrase that last part again.  Because of you, millions upon millions of parents in this country are frightened to send their kids to school each day.  Parents of elementary school children are scared enough, but that fear and panic is multiplied one hundredfold for parents of high school students.

Does that not sound somewhat ridiculous?  It does to me, but it’s now normal life in America.  Yes, finding yourself in tears because your happy and healthy eight year-old daughter, or sixteen year-old daughter might not come home from school because republican politicians refuse to take even the smallest steps to insure that their schools are safe places to be, without resembling concentration camps, is now normal.

Should I list statistics on support of gun safety measures in America?  I don’t need to.  If you’re reading this piece, then you already know the American population’s attitude on this issue; ban assault weapons, make background checks mandatory, enact effective red flag laws, and the list goes on, but none of this will happen any time soon.  The murder of our children in their schools will continue to become an ever more accepted and normal occurrence as long as the republican party and the NRA hold sway in our government, allowing billions upon billions of private, dark money dollars to flow anonymously to elected and appointed officials.

As long as these people can persist in creating a more dangerous America for everyone but the ultra wealthy, then, well, just prepare yourselves for the new normal America.  It is, after all, what you want, unless you, at the very least, use your right to vote to try to stop it.  Unless you do this, then your silence gives consent.

© 2024, all rights reserved

Citizen X

J’Accuse!

This declaration, French for “I accuse” or “I accuse you,” became a familiar declaration in the days, weeks and months after France was liberated from Nazi occupation in 1945, and was directed at persons accused of collaboration with German occupation forces.  Although many men were the subject of “J’accuse!,” most of the people at whom it was directed were women who were accused of such collaboration.

Many of them were guilty to varying degrees of this crime against the national pride of the temporarily conquered French, and most of them did so for the prospect of making their lives easier in a time of great peril.  They took German lovers, or assisted the Germans in other ways, and for this, once the Gestapo was gone, their neighbors would brand them.  Many of the women were placed in chairs and had their heads shaved in public as their fellow citizens hurled insults, accusations, and spittle at them.  They then had to live as outcasts for a long time.

Many people thought that J’accuse dissolved into the dustbin of history, but it never did.  In twenty-first century America, the act of “J’Accuse!” is used by the republican party to hide what they do.  They accuse others; democrats, liberals, et cetera, of supporting the unAmerican policies they actually pursue as a means to somehow cover themselves.  The list is pretty long, but I’m only going to write on a few subjects.

Education

First and most importantly, education. Republican politicians, party operatives, and especially the mass of slaves to fox news, newsmax, and infowars, all the way down to the crack-heads of Truth Social that make up their cadres, continually accuse the left (or the radical left, as they call anyone who disagrees with them) of using the public schools to indoctrinate our children.

NOTE:  This act of labeling even moderate centrists in this country “the radical left” is yet another example of the right’s attempt to hide their position through accusation.

I suppose this is actually true, the left in this country seeks to indoctrinate our children into one of the most dangerous cults in the history of the world: knowledge born of intellectual curiosity.  This indoctrination into knowledge includes, but is in no way limited to, the evils of a holistic and egalitarian view of the world and its peoples, and science as an actual ‘real thing’ that can actually explain various realities we see in the universe around us.

It’s a knowledge that places religion in its proper place, and that place is inside an individual’s heart, and not in our public schools, our statutory laws, nor any governmental policy.  It’s a knowledge that honors every tradition of faith that the people of this world have ever produced.  It’s a knowledge that speaks against bigotry in all its forms, especially religious bigotry.  It’s a knowledge that speaks against racism and hatred, instead of embracing them within a grotesque bubble of nationalistic xenophobia born of hollow, venomous, false patriotism. 

If those aspects of knowledge weren’t bad enough, this ‘knowledge’ which the radical left is trying to force upon our children also includes a healthy understanding of both the positive and negative aspects of American history.  It’s a knowledge that, without even trying, destroys the republican fantasy shroud of “American Exceptionalism,” whatever that really is.

Their race to conceal uncomfortable truths about our own history from our children has become so all-encompassing that they have passed laws in the states that they control which actually make it illegal for our teachers to inform our children about the function of racism in our history.  Remember always that 2 + 2 = 4, but only if both twos are white.  If they’re not, then it should be illegal for them to be in the same equation.

God forbid that our children should know things other than the juiciest parts of the Old Testament; a set of documents that try to teach us that God made mistakes in creating certain people; that the people that god created as homosexuals, or who don’t identify their gender or sexuality within the narrow confines of ‘conservative’ social norms, are not actually children of god.  It also teaches us that a warmongering, murdering, rapist drunkard was, as they say, “a man after god’s own heart.”  Yeah, sure thing, Dave.

The bible, in the hands of republicans, has become no more than a collection of stories in which we are to believe that homosexuality is an abomination before this god, but that the practice of slavery, of holding another child of god as your personal property, of beating them without mercy or recourse on the slightest whim, of raping them whenever you wish without any accountability for your violence, and of actually working them to death in the name of your personal wealth is, for lack of a better term, the shit.

In their righteous opposition to this evil world of knowledge and intellectual curiosity into which the left is trying to indoctrinate our children, republicans have become the gleeful destroyers of knowledge.  Their “anti-indoctrination” efforts, from history, to civics, to science and beyond, amount to a decades-long, coordinated effort to indoctrinate our children into the prison of white-centered history, and bible-centered science.  After all, science must be taught with the caveat that god can do anything.  Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared only until god comes around and decides that it’s not, and then, well, it’s not, and so much for the treachery of your evil science. 

Believe me, if the Pharisees of 4 A.D. didn’t know that there is a massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, then there isn’t one.  If the closet homosexuals who wrote Deuteronomy need to cover their tracks by telling you that homosexuality is frowned upon by god, believe it.  Believe it without question, because we all know, first and foremost, that republicans have a direct line to the divine will that the godless libs, with their love of knowledge and intellectual curiosity, will never have.  Remember this, too; Eve took a bite of an apple from the tree of knowledge, not stupidity.  What does that tell you?

Weaponization of the Government

This particular republican ploy would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous to the very existence of our republic.  As I write, the House Oversight Committee (HOC), under the ‘leadership’ of the troll-under-the-bridge in charge, Representative Roy Comer, is engaged in a bogus attempt to impeach President Biden.

The problem here, is that the entire ‘weaponization’ issue only exists because the vast majority of elected republican officials have the intellects of home-schooled twelve year-olds, and we have twelve year-olds in congress because the mass of racist, christian nationalist republican voters, who have the intellects of unschooled eight year olds are enraptured by the very concept of making America white again.  

This weaponization practice really entered the public eye in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the US Embassy in Benghazi in 2012.  The republicans tore after Secretary of State Clinton for weeks, to no real end, except that that they were eventually able to assess that mistakes in reading the intelligence coming forward occurred.  The United States Government made mistakes in interpreting intelligence?  That’s a first.  Oh, yeah, and Hillary’s emails.

It’s difficult to calculate exactly how much money the American taxpayer shelled out for that farcical aquatic ceremony, but I guarantee you that the republicans in Congress didn’t care how much it cost.  All they cared about was dragging a high-ranking member of the Obama administration through the mud, which they did, ad nauseum.

Now, the republicans, in a blatant act of vengeance against democrats for having defended our republic from the vicious and unceasing onslaught on the very principles upon which this our country was founded by donald trump, have launched an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden.  To this day, February of 2024, we still don’t know what the charges against Joe Biden are, or for what exactly, they think he should be removed from office.  It’s like one of these trolls said on fox news in early 2023 (and I paraphrase): “There is no evidence out there.  All we have are accusations, but we know that accusations are out there.”  Really?  Is that it?  I think I’m safe in saying “Is this all you can muster, Saruman?” because believe me, the republicans have no bomb shoved into the only weak spot of the defenses of Helm’s Deep, and no methed-up orc with a torch willing to sacrifice his lame ass to set it off.  In fact, they have nothing at all; nothing but hatred and the childishness with which their twelve year-old intellects have defiled the formerly hallowed halls of Congress.

Roy Comer, the republican chair of the HOC, is humiliating himself, his party, and to some extent, the entire United States of America with his dog and pony show.  Earth to republican boot lickers: not a single witness called before HOC has divulged any evidence against Joe Biden for any wrongdoing, let alone the high crimes and misdemeanors of which his predecessor is accused, and, given the evidence known to date, for which he will hopefully go to prison.  Every witness, when asked bluntly “Do you have any evidence, or any direct knowledge to support the claims of the republicans on this committee that President Biden acted in any manner contrary to the law,” has answered “no.”

The republicans scream that the Biden Administration is weaponizing our government, in a vain effort to try to erase from people’s minds the blatant attempts by donald trump to do so.  trump, being the idiot that he is, not only bragged about this when he was president, but he continues to do so now.  He has stated over and over throughout 2023 and into 2024 that he will use the government as a weapon against those he considers to be his enemies if elected president again.  He has been quite clear that he holds the opinion that as president, he should be able to use the entire executive branch, especially the United States Department of Justice, to pursue and persecute his political enemies.

donald trump, from even before his first day in office, tried to turn this government of the people, by the people, and for the people into a weapon that he could place at his disposal.  Now, the republican party, in its complete and total surrender to this threat to our republic, endorses this idea, while it points and shouts “J’accuse!” at others blindly in the dark to try to mask their rejection of democracy in favor of dictatorship.  The worst part of this is that they don’t engage in these childish antics for the American people, they do it for trump, which means that they do it for Putin.

Like I said, it would be funny, if it wasn’t so dangerous.  It’s dangerous for many reasons, but the worst is that this weaponization brings with it both a low level of violence and a general loss of faith in the integrity of our electoral processes.  It is the goal of the republican party to insure that both of these dangers to our republic become normalized.  

The War on Christianity

The republicans are right about this one.  There is a war against Christianity in America, and the people waging it are the white christian nationalist evangelical republicans who try to claim the birthright of the Christ while serving darkness in all its forms.  They claim that the left is promoting moral decay in this country because the left stands for letting people live the life they want to live, as long as they don’t actually hurt someone else.

The bare truth of the matter is this: someone privately living the life they want to live is not moral decay.  Two consenting adults being in love, no matter who they are, is not moral decay.  Practicing your faith in pursuit of salvation and inner peace, no matter what it is, as long as it doesn’t harm others, is not moral decay.  Moral decay is trying to force your faith and your lifestyle onto someone else, because you think you are somehow morally superior to them.  That is moral bigotry and decadence.  Being who you really are, openly, with pride and no regrets is moral purity.

A man by the name of John Fugelsang wrote the following, and I think republicans need to digest the information, if only because it will make them puke.

“Jesus was a radical, non-violent revolutionary who hung around with lepers, hookers, and crooks: wasn’t American, never spoke english; was anti-wealth, anti-death penalty, anti-public prayer; but was never anti-gay, never mentioned abortion or birth control, never called the poor lazy, never justified torture, never fought for tax cuts for the wealthiest Nazarines, never asked a leper for a co-pay; and was a hong-haired, brown-skinned homeless community-organizing anti-slut-shaming Middle Eastern Jew.”

That being said, I have a few bullet points of my own for you christian republicans to digest after you’re finished puking your guts out from having just read Mr. Fugelsang’s short piece.  Here you go:

  • Jesus was not a ripped action hero with a machine gun, and an American flag and bald eagle tattooed across his chest, as you like to portray him.
  • Jesus would destroy the offices of all evangelical “leaders” who support and lay their hands upon people like donald trump.  He did this once before in the temple in Jerusalem, clearing the place of those who had turned it into a den of thieves.
    • You have turned Christianity into a den of thieves.
      • Related to this, Abraham Lincoln would slap the shit out of each and every one  of you for claiming that your cruel, racist cabal is “The party of Lincoln.”
  • God did not send donald trump as some savior of unchallenged white rule in America.
    • In fact, god did not send donald trump at all, unless it did so as a warning to everyone as to what can happen if:
      • christians place their faith in antichrist preachers who are wealthier than Caesar, sit on golden thrones in TV studios, hire professional telemarketers to divest elderly people of deep and simple faith of as much of their fixed income as possible, and live the gospel of greed as they proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ!
      • It’s also a warning as to what can happen to your country if people don’t vote.
  • Listening to right-wing christians say “I’m not even allowed to practice my religion anymore” is an absolute joke.  Seriously, the rest of us look around when we hear that from you and think; “Really? Because the last time I checked, there was one of your damned fire and brimstone churches on almost every street corner.”
    • At least there used to be, before the marijuana dispensaries started taking over.
    • No one in America is preventing you from practicing your faith.  You’re just pissed off because when you run around telling everyone else how their lives are full of sin, most people rightfully tell you to take your bible and your religion and stick both of them straight up your ass.
      • You are, however, trying to prevent other religions from freely practicing their faith in America.  Your bigoted goal is to rid what you see as your white, christian country of Islam and other religions.

While I’m here, let’s talk about your jewel of a free-market theocracy issue you like to tie to Jesus; limited government.  After years of observation, I can put into words for you exactly what you want out of this.  You want limited government when the subject is the wealthy and powerful of this world exploiting the poor and powerless.  That’s when you want government to stay out.  However, as soon as we start talking about what consenting adults do in their private lives, especially their bedrooms, then, what you want more than anything, is for government to rush in there like a bunch of storm troopers and control things based upon your own, narrow imperial religious dogma. Oh, yes, I almost forgot, you definitely want unlimited governmental intervention and control when the subject is women’s uteruses.

Christ!  How bluntly does someone have to spell it out for you that you people are the ones attacking Christianity!?  You’re the ones defiling the teachings of Jesus!  It’s you, and each and every one of you needs to be careful that you don’t place the eternal fate of your soul in jeopardy.  Seriously, take a big step back and unpack the bag of what is inside of your heart.  I guarantee you that the actual teachings and example of Jesus are probably not going to be part of what you pull out, but the imperial bigotry of TBN will be. “The Lord put it on my heart to be a nazi jackass.” Probably not, actually, you did that yourself.

Election Integrity

This one is the biggest joke.  For almost twenty-five years now, republicans have been screaming about election integrity.  They have been making false allegation after false allegation that the American democratic process has been tainted and destroyed by the left.  Their claim, if I have this correct (and I do), is that the radical left and its mindless minions who live off of the free money that democratic politicians hand out in exchange for votes, have devised a nationwide scheme in which millions upon millions of both living and dead people vote multiple times in every election.  

Well, okay then.  Never mind that our entire electoral system is so decentralized that it would not only be absolutely impossible to set up and coordinate such a system, but it would be even more impossible to actually operate such a scheme.  These multiple impossibilities notwithstanding, the republican party claims that the left has figured it out, and is stealing elections through this impossible system.

Let me say this now, just so my opinion is completely transparent.  This superhuman ability to do the impossible is proof that we intellectual elites on the left are so smart that we really do need to be running things.  I mean, I’m sorry, but if we’re smart enough to figure out how to dupe a system that, by its very nature, is designed to defeat any large scale attempt to tamper with its results, then we need to hold every political office in this country, from the local dog catcher to the president, because we’re obviously the only ones smart enough to fix America’s most pressing problems.  So, either we on the left are using our superhuman abilities to steal elections, or god is on our side and is doing it for us.

Earlier in this section I stated that the republicans’ claims that the left is stealing elections are “false allegations.”  I say this because like the adults they have to emulate (no matter how painful it is), they know that this concerted effort by the godless libs about which they rant and rave does not exist.  Either that, or the entire planet, especially the US judiciary system, is not only against them, but is trying to keep the truth hidden from us all.

Now, there are anecdotal examples in every election of mistakes being made by voters on both the left and the right, so I’m going to throw in a couple.  Let us consider a couple of examples from the great states of Florida and Nevada.  In 2018 a 79 year-old Florida woman, was arrested for voting illegally after she received a notice on how to register to vote from a private firm.  She mistook the form for one coming from her county election board, because these companies do their best to create forms the look ‘official.’  So, she registered, and cast her ballot.  However, Florida law states she was actually not allowed to vote while she was still on probation.  Though she was initially arrested, the District Attorney recognized the “innocent mistake” and dropped the charges.

In the 2020 election in the state of Nevada, a ballot was received and votes thereon were registered in the name of Dorothy Hartle, who died in 2017 of breast cancer. Kirk Hartle, her grieving husband, contacted the local news outlets, screaming that this was proof of voter fraud by the left.  Fox News picked up the story, and zoom, off it went.  Kirk Hartle became the poster boy for the right’s claims that the left was steeling elections through voter fraud.  Mr. Hartle claimed during his several featured interviews on Fox News that he never received the ballot, and that he was “sickened” by the possibility that someone would do such a thing.  However, in October of 2021, Mr. Hartle, a registered republican, was arrested and charged with voting twice in an election, a class D felony.  Mr. Hartle voted and also did so in the name of his dead wife…for donald trump.

The Attorney General of Nevada wrote the following when a plea agreement was announced on November 16, 2021: “Though rare, voter fraud can undercut trust in our election system.  This particular case of voter fraud was particularly egregious because the offender continually spread inaccurate information about our elections despite being the source of the fraud himself…” Fox News dropped the story.  Whoops.  J’accuse!

Of course, these are just simple examples of individuals making mistakes, whether the intent was innocent as with our 79 year-old woman who had found herself in trouble with the law some years earlier and was not yet eligible to vote, or, not so innocent, as in the case of Mr. Hartle.  Certainly, there are examples of the godless libs trying to steal elections in the 21st century in which the scheme was much larger and more organized.  Ah, I have some juicy tidbits for you!  Let us look at the case of the 9th congressional district in North Carolina in both the 2016 and 2018 elections.

What happened here is that a long-time political operative in this district, and a high ranking member of the campaign staff of congressional candidate Mark Harris obtained a list of all of the absentee ballots mailed in the district.  He and his army of zombie warriors went house to house, claiming to be officers of the election commission with orders to collect and mail all absentee ballots for the voters.  They then took these ballots and fraudulently completed that ballot for their preferred candidate, forged the signature of the voter, and turned them in to the proper election board.  Ten people were eventually indicted in this case, and the state ordered the entire election redone.  As I’m sure you have surmised, all of the people indicted in this scheme to steal an election, as well as the candidate, Mr. Harris, for whom they cast these fraudulent ballots were republicans, and in 2016 they also cast fraudulent votes for trump.

Since they first started screaming about election integrity, republicans have not only refused to take steps to make the voting process more secure, but they have blocked efforts by the godless libs to do so.  Instead, they have decided that effectively disenfranchising voters who they think will not vote for republican candidates is the best answer to a problem they dreamt up in order to cover their crimes in polluting or democratic processes. To wit, they have done the following in two different states; Georgia and Kansas.

The Georgia case is most famous, but only, I suppose, because Georgia’s minority populations are more numerous, and, of course, because Kansas is the very essence of ‘fly over’ country.  The process for the republican-controlled government in Georgia was simple.  First, you reduce the number of polling stations in heavily populated, urban areas where democrats seem to congregate.  This causes immense lines and hours upon hours of waiting in line to engage in the most basic of constitutionally guaranteed rights: the right to vote.  Second, you make it illegal to offer refreshment to anyone waiting in line to vote.  The purpose is to make voting as difficult as possible.

Kansas, although less famous, is an even more extreme example of republicans’ attempt to steal elections through the effective, if not legal, disenfranchisement of large sections of the electorate.  Take the case of Dodge City.  Yes, the famous Dodge City from all of those westerns.  Over the years, Dodge City became more and more populated by voters who were members of racial and ethnic minorities.  Therefore, the republican controlled government; the legislature and the republican Secretary of State specifically, banded together and did the following.

First, the Secretary of State, the person who runs elections in each state, removed all poling stations from Dodge City.  You read correctly, they removed ALL polling stations from Dodge City, which required any citizen living within Dodge City who wanted to cast a ballot to drive to a surrounding town to do so.  The legislature then passed a law, which was signed by the republican governor, making illegal to give another person a ride to cast a vote.  Yeah, J’accuse.

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Republicans…just stop!  Your efforts to defile our political system so that you can establish some sort of christian untethered, unregulated, free-market theocracy dedicated to the proposition that donald trump should be able to reign over this country as some sort of white power dictator is a sham, and the rest of us won’t let it happen!  The rest of us actually outnumber you by about 30-1, so your chances of doing this are just a little bit less than zero.  Seriously, your horrendous and painful-to-watch existence of falsehood upon falsehood, screaming like banshees that the left is doing what you are actually doing is becoming old hat.  You really do need a new schtick, but we all know that there isn’t one.  You’re stuck with being the childish liars you are, and love being.

Actually, I have a great idea for a new schtick for you.  It’s called honesty.  You really should try it, but be very careful, because the second you start being honest with the rest of the world and, more importantly, with yourselves, you’re going have to come out of the closet.  Now, we on the left know that a lot of you will come out of the closet as homosexuals, transgender men and women, or other variants of the LGBTQ+ community.  That’s fine.  It’s about time.  We accept you and will help you adjust to your new life of pride in who you really are, who god made you to be.  On the other hand, the vast majority of the rest of you, when you come out of the closet, are going to stand up proudly and declare that you are racists, neo-nazis, white supremacists, etcetera.  I’m sorry, but we will not be so kind to, or accepting of you.

I read a wonderful science fiction series. years ago titled “The Lensman Series” by E. E. “Doc” Smith.  In this tale, one of our heroes, who was, of course, fighting to save civilizations throughout multiple galaxies from enslavement, openly declared one of his tactics.  It was to, as he said: “Conceal himself by his own obviousness.”  This is the tactic the republican party is using today to undermine our democratic institutions, principles, and processes, and their success to date can largely be traced to the fact that they are doing it right out in the open, concealing themselves by their own obviousness, while accusing others of the same, or worse actions.

J’accuse.

The Lure of Dictatorship

To be a citizen of a republic really is a hassle.  Seriously, I’m not joking.  So much is expected of you.  I mean, think of it.  First, you are expected to stay informed about various issues that affect you, your fellow citizens, and your country as a whole.  Not only are you expected to do this, but you are expected to make time for it on your own, and unless you’re one of those people who ‘works well without direct supervision,’ then it’s not going to happen.

Most people would not only have to be led to the water of staying informed, but they’s also have to be made to drink it, and republics that function on a set of democratic processes aren’t really set up to force people drink information.  Republics of this nature are set up to make the water available for people to drink, but the decision to either drink the water of information and knowledge, or to sit, thirsty, in the parched dryness of ignorance is theirs to make.

Second, not only are you expected to stay informed, but you’re also expected to stay informed with the truth.  That means that you’re expected to pull your face out of your algorithm directed social media apps for a few seconds (yeah, good luck), and look something up.  Never mind that the pervasive internet and the evolving G networks everywhere make that the easiest task, ever.  Forget it.  People don’t care about the truth, because the truth sucks.  The truth means they have to be truly awake in some manner, other than just walking through life with a fake smile on their faces, and see the world as it really is.  If people do that, then, well, there go all of the smiles, fake or not.

Third, and this is the worst part, ever.  Not only are citizens of a republic expected to stay informed with the truth, but they’re also expected to vote.  I know, I feel like screaming and crying when I thank about that, too.  “Voting?  Are you serious?  Nah, that’s not happening.  Vote?  Are you crazy?  Don’t you know that Jesus died on the cross so that we could just hand all that shit over to god?  Damned atheists and your voting!”

“Look, can’t we just get somebody in office that’ll just take care of all of this, so that I don’t have to worry about it?  I mean, I don’t want to use the term ‘benevolent dictator,’ but… Well, hell, let’s just call a spade a spade and go there; say it out loud.  Can’t we just get some benevolent dictator in the White House who will make it all happen, so I don’t have to worry about it?”

That short monologue, unfortunately, is all too common within the American electorate, and it is that attitude which may pose the greatest threat to this republic.  Humans have a love of republicanism that functions on the democratic process, but don’t want to accept responsibility for their own governance.  They don’t want to stay informed with the truth.  They don’t want to maintain anything even resembling a meaningful understanding of the issues confronting their country and the world.  They don’t even want to vote.

In the short term, individuals like trump come and go and their influence on this republic rises, then fades.  Over the long term, though, it is dictatorship itself that draws people into its web, where it waits, like the venomous spider it is.  The lure of dictatorship lies in the apparent ease of existence it offers the individual.  Yet we all know that this apparent ease is merely an illusion; it is the veil of lies that conceals the evil that lies within.  Fortunately, this veil is not opaque, and in fact, its transparency is its greatest flaw.  Dictatorships have this lure within them, and yet its transparency of what it really entails for the individual and the nation, even those within the dominant racial/ethnic/religious/sexually oriented, and gender identifying group (dominant group), is what makes it so abhorrent.

To be the minion of a dictatorship is easy, it really is, provided, of course, that you are a member of the dominant group in your country.  If you are, then all you have to do is nothing.  Consciously and actively do nothing, even when you see injustice meted out to people of minority or marginalized ethnic, racial, sexually oriented, or gender identifying groups, do nothing.  The state will take care to insure that you are cared for and protected against what it sees as anything infringing on your quiet, non-political life.  For many people, this ‘doing nothing’ is easy, but for the rest of us it is incredibly difficult, and this difficulty is one of the factors that first lead to the rise of republicanism as a form of government in the first place.

Over time, all governments develop institutions that help propel their existence.  This is especially true of both monarchies and republics, much more so than civil and military dictatorships.  Monarchies develop institutions based around the blood line of a particular set of people, and if it is what is known as a ‘constitutional monarchy,’ then two parallel sets of institutions develop; one protects the privileges of the noble class, and the other protects the rights of the monarchy’s subjects.  Republics, on the other hand, develop institutions based upon their body of laws, their nation’s constitutional rights, and the liberties and responsibilities of the individual.

The self-propelling institutions developed by civil and military dictatorships are based upon and centered around a single, charismatic figure, and are designed to keep that person and their inner circle in power for as long as possible.  Since these persons are rarely in power more than twenty years, thirty years at the most, the institutions designed to propel their rule find it difficult to take root in the national psyche.  This is what makes North Korea such an anomaly; the institutionalization of the rule of the Kim family over the decades has come to resemble an absolute monarchy more than a dictatorship.

So there is this constant, dual, opposing, pull on the individual.  There is the desire for republicanism and democracy, but a republic that functions on the democratic process requires constant attention of the citizens to maintain it in a healthy state.  Dictatorship, on the other hand possesses its lure because of its myth of the easy life in which the individual doesn’t have to maintain the political system that governs them.  The system, the myth says, is self sustaining.  All the citizen has to do is nothing.  Consciously, actively, and intentionally do nothing, because if any citizen attempts to intervene with the state on behalf of others, that person will find themselves to be a target of the state, and that will not end well for the individual.

The vast, vast, vast majority of those people who secretly long for the establishment of a dictatorship in the United States understand that such a dream neither can, nor should, ever become a reality, because they know that it would mean the destruction of everything they hold dear in this world in terms of their country and what it has tried to stand for in this world.  They have these fleeting desires for the benevolent dictator when they see inefficiency and ineffectiveness in their government’s efforts to right wrongs.  They dream, periodically, of the dictator because they see unintentional, yet unfixed, waste of the people’s tax revenue.  They dream of the dictator because someone once told them that “Well, at least under Hitler, the trains ran on time,” and they believed it without trying to find out if it was true.  They believed it and purposely hid from their own minds their internal knowledge of the suffering dictators bring with them wherever they go.

Then there are those people for whom dreams of a dictatorship in America are not fleeting, because creating a dictatorship in the United States of America is their dream.  They are the people who actively seek ways to subvert our democratic institutions on a daily basis in an attempt to sweep our republic into the thrash can of history.  They are the people who live within the realms of white supremacy, white nationalism, and white christian nationalism.  They are the people who hoard assault rifles and study how to bring down large areas of our electrical power grid as they wait for the start of their “shootin’ war.”  They have always been among us, but have decided, since the political rise of donald trump, that their time to come out of the shadows is now.  They actively attempt to recruit our young people into their ranks through their right-wing media outlets, the algorithms of YouTube and other social media platforms, the right’s decades-long decimation of our educational system, and, yes, their sheer visibility.

These people are the greatest threat to our republic since King George III of England, and if you cannot see this, then you are purposefully blind.  If you are purposefully blind to this threat of dictatorship, then you are, whether you realize it or not, within their ranks.  You are, more than likely, a “Who, me?” racist, and an “I’m the one who’s going to heaven” bigot, and you represent an even greater threat to this republic than the people described in the paragraph above this one.  You are the greater threat, because you will walk out of a republic and into a dictatorship secretly thinking that you will be the one who will benefit from it as you proclaim your innocence for its occurrence.

One day you will wake up to find this republic and its democratic processes gone and say “What?  I didn’t do it!”  Yes, you did, because you saw it happening and purposefully closed your eyes and looked the other way.  Then again, it is not just you who will bear responsibility for the destruction of this beloved republic and its democratic institutions, but the rest of us as well, because really, we all see it coming, and if we all do nothing, we will all bear responsibility.

Peace to All

Niemand

Trump’s Further Reductionism: It Really Is Strange

One might think that having alienated the vast majority of the American electorate during his first term, Donald Trump would figure out the basic math of democracies: the person with the most votes wins. Unless you’re talking about the election of the President of the United States, and then it’s the person with the most electoral college votes wins. That’s very weird, and needs to end.

This essay is a revision and an evolution of a previous essay on this site titled “Reductionism, and the Strange Politics of Donald Trump.” It is updated from the original essay published in 2020 to account for events that have occurred since then. You know, indictments, insurrections, convictions and a host of strange actions and decisions made by a politician who wishes to succeed.

One of the most basic tenets of politics in the age of democracies is that politicians will generally try, as best they can, to appeal to as broad a base as possible.  This is not to say that all politicians do this at the expense of the things in which they believe, but that they moderate their stance on these beliefs, realizing that compromise is the hallmark of a functioning democracy…and adulthood.

Donald Trump is evidently trying a different approach.  Mr. Trump seems determined to reduce his constituency to the absolute smallest number possible, and hope that this will win him a victory in November, 2024.  Over the space of his entire political existence, Donald Trump has sought to insult, degrade, and alienate every group of people in this country not solidly behind his political aspirations.  It does not matter whether that group is identified by their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, political views, or any other characteristic.  If they are not within his base, his hatred and complete contempt for them is proudly brandished every day.

Who are these people who make up Trump’s political base?  They are primarily members of three basic groups: conservative christian evangelicals, white nationalists, and gun toters.  Make no mistake, together, they make up a significant portion of the electorate, but they also overlap to a great extent, sharing several common characteristics which limits their percentage of the overall electorate. Many, if not most of them, are actually gun toting white nationalist christian evangelicals.

Specifically, they are politically unsophisticated, with little or no perception of what comprises a republic and its mechanisms of operation through the democratic process.  They have little or no concept of the art of compromise, and how this purely adult form of conflict resolution serves to preserve and perpetuate any republic that functions on said democratic processes.

For the most part, they are poorly or under-educated and rarely have any college experience.  Those who do lack a unified, holistic, and egalitarian view of the world outside of what is told to them by the governors of the Southern Baptist Convention (the religious teachings of which are essentially bigoted, exclusionary, nationalistic, and imperial), Fox News, Newsmax, and various other right wing mass media propaganda outlets.

They do not seek the truth. Rather, they are willing slaves to the algorithms that take them farther and farther down the rabbit hole of their racist comfort. If they sought truth, they would be in a different place altogether, and really, different people.

Encompassing the three groups mentioned above, Trump’s base consists almost solely of white people who live in a continuous cycle of fear, perpetuated by the propaganda outlets above, of non-white, non-heterosexual, non-conforming people.  This fear cycle peaks when these groups demand equal justice under the law, and equal legal rights and treatment within society as a whole. When a member of the neoconservative right wing in this country argues against the ‘gay agenda,” remind them that this agenda consists of being treated with love, compassion, and basic respect afforded cis-gender, heterosexual white males in this country. Everybody should have this agenda…everybody.

The inherent problem with Trump’s strategy in 2020, and resumed unabated in 2024, is that people either on the fringes of this base, or who simply, for whatever reason, did not want to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 are gone.  They had four years of the carnival show that was the Trump presidency to completely alienate them from Trump and his personal brand of American fascism.  Added to his time in the white house, they now see his flagrant threats to elected officials (“Mitch McConnell must have a death wish.”), multiple indictments for blatant criminal activity whether in office or out, vows to pardon insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow the will of the American people on January 6, 2021, and more to come.

His purposeful alienation of the portion of our electorate that looks critically at candidates for public office with little preference for party affiliation reflects the true manner in which Trump has decided to practice this strange reductionism.  He has enthusiastically and horrifically driven from him every rational and truly patriotic American who does not worship him, as does his base, but who may have considered supporting him in previous elections.

What, then, could his overall strategy be?  It must be this: Donald Trump previously banked on the chaos and destruction that his core base would bring upon America when he lost the election in 2020.  He promised, and to some extent delivered on January 6, 2021, the chaos he promised when asked what his strategy for reelection would be earlier in the cycle. His candidacy in 2024 looks to be more of the same.

When he rightfully lost the 2020 presidential election he issued his call to arms, claiming that the liberals had stolen the election, that they are out to destroy America, and that he would save them if only they would go out and kill, maim, and burn America to the ground in his name and for his sole benefit. He has said many times: “I am the only person who can save America,” and I will tell you this right now; when someone says something like that, and you don’t immediately flush your support for them straight down the toilet, you have no business living outside of a facility for the criminally insane, let alone voting. If you continue to support them, you have no business calling yourself an American.

The bloody and murderous insurrection of January 6, 2021 — which, if you’ll pardon the colloquial speech, really was some pathetic punk-ass bullshit. I mean, if you pin your hopes for revolution on a couple of thousand stupid, hillbilly jackasses with some pepper spray and no plan, you’re just an amateur, stupid jerk-off — is testament to what a person like Donald Trump can do to people who are intellectually akin to rudderless vessels drifting through space and heading for a black hole. As he said in an interview in the 1990s “If I ever go into politics, I’ll probably do so as a republican. Those people will believe anything you tell them.” He was right. Those people who make up his ever shrinking base will believe anything he tells them. But that’s okay, he had a television show.

If he somehow wins the republican nomination, and afterwards, of course, loses the general election in November, 2024, I think he will be surprised at how few people will actually be willing to go out and destroy America on his behalf.  It will happen in small, sporadic events, make no mistake, but we must be willing to absorb this spasm of violence of his core base and continue, as one nation, dedicated to the propositions laid out in our Declaration of Independence, and codified in our ever evolving Constitution. 

Eventually, Donald Trump will fade into history as a sickening footnote of what can happen to any nation when the people do not actively participate in its democratic procedures and allow religious fanatics to gut their education system.

When asked what type of government he and the other framers of the Constitution had designed, Benjamin Franklin is rumored to have said the following: “A republic, if you can keep it.”  Today, Donald Trump is the greatest testament since Adolf Hitler, that we must rededicate ourselves to keeping it.

Related to Mr. Franklin’s attributed statement above is the following: “All it takes for evil to prevail, is for good people to do nothing.” We must, as a nation, in every peaceful and constitutionally protected manner possible, repudiate in the strongest possible terms, the toxic, racist politics of Donald Trump and make certain that his political aspirations die in 2024. We must then rededicate ourselves to keeping the republic that Franklin warned us would be constantly under attack from enemies both outside and within our own country.  If we do not, then believe me, evil people like Donald Trump and his white nationalist, gun toting evangelical followers will prevail.

Peace and Love to All

Christoph Niemand, Citizen X

The Rendezvous

There is a place

A place far, far from us, but closer than our fears would ever want

In this place there walks a creature indistinguishable from any human man

But he is distinguished from us, for he lives an immortal life

Our time, in our place, from birth to old age and death, is but a breath for him.

He walks through this place; so far, but too close, never knowing what we call love

And he loves

Or he wishes to, but knows not how

He longs, but knows that his longing is in vain

Time passed not for this immortal creature, and as our time passed he became more and more that which we all fear

He became fear itself

Then

Then he saw her

And he knew he was slain

She looked frail, and yet he saw through her veil of frailty to the strength that slept within her

The shrouded giant that would crush his world

And in that moment he knew love for the first time in all of his centuries upon centuries of existence

He fell to his knees and wept uncontrollably as this unknown feeling swept through his very essence

Like a tsunami sweeping over a lonely atoll

Her voice: “Mister, are you okay?”

A song never before heard in his universe of darkness

He hid his face, shrank from her and managed only a timid “Yes, now please go away”

She did not move

She did not speak

As time did not pass, he eventually looked up at her.  When he did so, she smiled at him

And extended her delicate hand to help him to his feet

He accepted her hand

And he rose

And for the first time in his immortal life, he did not know what to say, or do

He looked away and down, and spied a single flower

He reached away and down and robbed it from the plant that gave it life

When he did so, he assured it of its rapid death

And, in a way, his own

He presented it to her

The smile that beset her face at this simple gift was so pure and so beautiful that his face, struggling as it was to resist, bore a smile too

He accidentally spoke aloud: “I cannot recall that I have ever smiled before.”

He thought of his centuries without love, torn to shreds by her simple smile, and began to cry again 

But gently this time

He stood before her, wishing with everything he had ever known, that she would leave

And yet his entire life was begging her to stay with him forever

Forever

She could never know the forever in which he lives

This immortal existence, which he had cherished for so long, now became a burden unbearable

As he gently wept, she placed her free hand which held her flower and his death upon his cheek

For she was still holding his hand with her other

This was too much

He needed to flee

Flee to the caressing safety of the fear and darkness he had become

But he couldn’t

He couldn’t

He didn’t want to

His life was no longer his, but hers

He had just not formally presented it to her yet

She looked at him and said

“There’s something strange about you.  Can you tell me what it is?”

“Over time.  Over time, my beautiful flower, if you will allow me”

“Yes, I think I will.  I want to”

He gently removed her hand from his face and placed a gentle kiss upon it

She smiled ever more

He smiled

“I am Heinrich.  I am at you service.  Whatever you wish in this world I shall be honored to make it happen”

“I am Alexandra.  I am honored to make your acquaintance, Heinrich, but for now I must go.  May I meet you here tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow at this same time?  I shall be here”

“I, too.  Until then.”

She gently placed one finger over his lips, took a deep breath of her flower, and gazed deeply into his eyes

After a few moments of love and curiosity growing between them, she slowly turned from him

He stood there, unable to speak or even move as she walked away

As she walked away, she turned once and smiled at him

Then she turned away and continued walking, leaving him standing there, in love

As she walked, she gave an almost inaudible hiss, opened her mouth and grew two long, razor sharp fangs

She ran her tongue gently and sensually over them as if in anticipation of a feast yet to come, then retracted them

She strode purposefully away from him.  She would wait until tomorrow

© 2020, Christopher A. Hollrah

A Pillar of Republicanism: Secularism

“The government of the United States is in no way founded on the Christian religion.  The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of the clergy.”

~ George Washington

In order to speak about secularism as a foundational principle of modern liberal republicanism, I need to talk about the historical relationship between the church and the state, and how that relationship affects and relates to the nation and the individual.  I must also offer a few definitions:

The church: An institutional entity that seeks to exercise control of people’s visions of the nature and will of god.

The state: An institutional entity that exercises civil governance over the people within a single society and also within a specific geographic area.

The nation: That group of people over which both the church and the state seek control within any one society and within their prescribed sphere of influence.

The individual: Any person who is a member of any nation within what is referred to as a ‘nation state.’

I believe, in large measure, that the interests and power of the state and the nation are always at odds and are thereby, in most respects, inversely proportional to one another.  This means that as the power of one increases, the power of the other must decrease proportionally.  Power between these two actors is a zero-sum game, and yet this does not mean that the two cannot both flourish within a society.  If we find the proper balance between the two, both the nation, and thereby the individual, and the state can exist in a healthy symbiosis; each supporting the other and possessing an appropriate and manageable amount of power.

Also, under this scenario, the power of the state includes other institutional actors who seek control over the nation and the individual.  For our purposes here, this other actor can be broadly defined as “the church.”  More specifically, it means any society’s dominant religious sect, and in the United States, this group encompasses the multiplicity of denominations which broadly comprise the fundamentalist evangelical protestant church.

The power playing field between these actors has never been level, because it has always been two against one: the church and the state verses the nation, and within the nation, the individual.  For centuries, the church and the state, in close collusion with one another, were able to completely subjugate the nation.  The rise of modern, liberal republicanism changed that equation and may have actually leveled the playing field, because the nation, under the principles of republicanism, is generally able to resist the ambitions of both the church and the state.

From the formation of the most primitive human governments, to the kingdoms of  post-Medieval Europe, the church and the state made war against each other over absolute control of the population.  The conflict was bitter and physical, with kings finding themselves condemned to hell by the church, and the lands and assets of the church being seized by the state.  A number of high-ranking officials on both sides lost their lives in this centuries-long war.  All of this was for control of the mass of peasants, artisans, and all others outside of the nobility who comprised the nation; the ‘mass of folk,’ as it were.

Eventually, during the early Renaissance period in Europe, the church and the state came to terms, made peace, and split the spoils of social control.  Instead of fighting one another for absolute, unlimited control, they joined forces and supported each other’s control over a more limited segment of the individual’s existence.

The peace they forged, as durable as it has been, has always been marked by an intense distrust and dislike of one for the other.  The church and the state despise each other, and each covets what the other has.  This, of course, begs the question “what, exactly, does each of them have?”  The division was, and continues to be marked out in the following manner: the state has control of the individual’s life, and the church has control over the individual’s death.  In colloquial terms, the state owns your ass, and the church owns your soul.

Unfortunately, for both the church and the state, this peace, and the division of power over spheres of social control which came from it (as unforeseen as it may have been at the time) led to the birth of secularism as a sine qua non of modern republicanism.

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Amendment 1 to the Constitution of the United States

“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”

The First Amendment to the Constitution begins with the prohibition of collaboration between the church and the state.  It separates them, placing a wall between them.  The church is not allowed to meddle in the affairs of the state, and the state is not allowed to meddle in the affairs of the church.  In order to solidify this division, the state does not tax the church.  The purpose of this practice is to remove the church from any interest in the the affairs of the state.  Since the church pays no taxes to the state, it has no right to even attempt to influence the politics or policies of the state.  

I understand that in the United States of America in the early twenty-first century, this separation is, at the very least, blurred, if not erased altogether, but that theory/practice dichotomy is not yet a subject of this essay.

The political philosophers of the Enlightenment to which modern republicanism owes it origins had an awareness of history and current events that seems to have been lost in the United States of America in the twenty-first century.  Because of this awareness on their part, secular republicanism is meant to limit the effect that both the church and the state have on each other, and more importantly, the effect and amount of control each has over the nation and the individual.  Secular republicanism is, in some ways, the practical expression of the victory of the individual over the state and freedom of the individual from the church.

What, then, are some of the practical applications of secularism as a pillar of republicanism?  I have identified three very important aspects, or rules, regarding the relationship between the church and the state in a secular republic on which I will elaborate below

Rule number one: The state cannot favor one religious sect over another.  It cannot favor Islam over Judaism, just as it cannot favor any sort of polytheistic, or animistic religions over Christianity.   The religions chosen by human cultures to help people weave their way toward salvation and some form of personal nirvana are as numerous as the cultures themselves, and the state cannot discriminate between them.

This is not to say that the state cannot place limits on how religions practice their belief systems, but these limits must be very, very circumspect.  The state has the right and the responsibility to protect people from abuse by others, whether the abusers be secular thieves, religious leaders, or other devotees of the individual’s faith, but it must always cast a wary eye on creating and enforcing various limits on religious practice.  

Consenting adults have the right to voluntarily subject themselves to all sorts of strange and bizarre acts in the pursuit of almost anything.  It doesn’t matter whether the goal is to bring them closer to god, or to orgasm, the state must stand afar and not intervene.  However, when the circumstances move from consent to coercion, then the state may, and should, step in to protect the individual from such abuse by anyone, especially the church.  This is because any religious sect can and will, if allowed, exercise incredibly intense forms of control over the individual.

Rule number two: The state cannot use the nation’s tax dollars to support the endeavors of any religious sect.  This act immediately violates rule number one, as the state cannot afford, unless it seeks to tax the nation into absolute poverty, to support the religious endeavors of every church and/or religious sect operating within the society over which it has governance.  If the state uses the nation’s tax revenue to support the endeavors of the church, it will inevitably favor one sect over all others, and this favoritism will then, inevitably, lead to collusion between that particular religious sect and the state, which will then, inevitably foster animosity between religious sects, which will then, inevitably lead to people hating one another.

Financial support of the church through use of the nation’s tax revenue not only creates tacit, if not blatant support for that religious sect’s belief system, but it alters that sect’s dogma so that the church begins to support and validate the actions of the state as an extension of the will of god.  Before too long, the nation will find itself saddled with a hybrid government that is no longer a secular republic free of religious interference, but one that is a partnership between the wealthiest secular interests in society, and a theocratic support system that subjugates the nation into obedience under a non-democratic state.

Unless you are completely unaware of twenty-first century American history, you know that this rule has already been violated by the United States government.  When President George W. Bush announced that the United States government would support humanitarian endeavors of various Christian denominations through what were called “faith-based initiatives” with the tax dollars of the American nation, I was appalled.  This was a clear violation of one of the most important foundational principles of modern republicanism; the separation of the church and the state.

Likewise, if you think that there is not clear competition between religious sects in any society, then you have not eyes to see, nor ears to hear.  Each devotee represents an increase in the profitability of that sect.  Any religion (what I have also referred to as sects) which has the financial backing of the state gains an immediate advantage in the acquisition of new devotees over other sects.  This financial association gives them not only the freedom to spend their revenue on increasing the size of their congregations, but it also allows them to advertise their sect as preferred by the state, and tie their dogma to hollow, populist patriotism.

Financial support of the state for any religious sect, will invariably affect both the dogma of that religious sect, and the politics of the state so that they move ever closer to a single unit seeking control over the nation and the individual.

Rule number three: Secularism is an essential principle of modern republicanism because it protects both the church and the state from each other.  I mentioned this earlier in this essay, but shall elaborate on it here.

Patriotism and faith are two elements of the life of any individual that should never be intertwined.  When they are, the result is a state that will begin to claim that its rule is derived from the will of god, and a church that will give ecclesiastical support to the worst imperial tendencies of the state.  When this happens, no republic can long survive.

Republics are always under pressure from non-democratic forces in this world.  The secular forces of totalitarianism, and the totalitarian forces of religion are always attempting to undermine the rights of the nation and the individual, thereby subjugating both to their will.  We must remember that in no religious sect’s vision of heaven is that place a democracy.  In fact, heaven is the most totalitarian realm ever created in the human imagination.  A god does not put its decisions before the committee.

Both the church and the state possess within themselves the worst drives of the human animal; the lust for power for its own sake, and this is true regardless of your personal opinion of either of these two institutions.  Since I have placed that statement in this essay, I feel I must remind the reader that I am not speaking about the deep and sincere faith held by any individual, but the disingenuous propaganda of any institutional church that directs the course of that faith.  When the subject is god, people are about faith, churches are about power.

Because of this, republics must be secular in nature.  This doesn’t place the state in a position above the church, it places the state in a place completely separate from the church.  It allows both the church and the state to conduct their business without interference or influence from the other.  Secularism, as a foundational principle of republicanism, is not only supposed to prevent favoritism of the state for one religious sect over another, but it is also a mechanism designed to prevent the church from favoring one political party over another.  Therefore, the state cannot offer financial support, nor even comment on the righteousness (or lack thereof) to any religious sect’s dogma for any reason.  Likewise, no church has the right to speak in favor of any candidate for public office, or allow its facilities to be used for any political purpose, even if that link is somewhat tenuous.

********************

Each of us is aware that the principle of secularism, of a strict separation of the church and the state has been under attack in this country for at least a couple of generations, and even though it is the forces of the the political right and their “conservative christian” allies that have sought to erase this separation and thereby establish their “free market theocracy,” we are all responsible for allowing it to happen.

Every time a person speaks of the good of bringing god into the political life of this nation, and another person within earshot who understands the true nature of patriotism doesn’t immediately confront this person, the wall of separation between the church and the state is torn down just a little bit.  When someone speaks of such things, it is the responsibility of each of us to remind them that their faith is their business, and since we all have the benefit of living in a secular republic, it has no place in the political life of this nation, or in the life of any other American.

Every time someone says that “we need to bring prayer back into the public schools,” a place where prayer has rightfully never been welcome, and another person doesn’t confront this assertion in the strongest possible terms, the wall is demolished a little more.  Tell me that there is a Christian who calls for prayer in our public schools who would support a multi-day regimen of prayer in which Christian prayer is observed on one day, Muslim prayer is observed on another day, Buddhist prayer on yet another, and so on down the line, until all of the world’s religions are represented in this exercise.  I tell you that if such a person exists they would be excommunicated from their church forthwith upon discovery of such a rational and blasphemous opinion.

I maintain an acceptance of the ancient dictum that money is the root of all evil; I accept that as truth.  I also maintain, perhaps even more fervently, that religion is the root of all hatred.  It is the father of all intolerance and the mother of all bigotry.  

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.  He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.  It is error alone that needs the support of the government.  Truth can stand by itself.”

~ Thomas Jefferson

There may be no more important thread upon which our republic hangs than the complete and total separation of the church and the state.  More importantly, there may be nothing more intensely tied to our daily freedoms, liberties, our constitutionally guaranteed rights, and the right to worship as we choose, free from unwanted interference than this separation. This is, of course, because both the church and the state have a propensity to overstep their boundaries in all matters of social control, and if we allow them the slightest collusion, the fate of this republic, and the principles of reasoned enlightenment upon which it was founded, may be doomed to an early grave.

© 2022 Christopher A. Hollrah

A Pillar of Republicanism: Freedom of Conscience

Some of the most important things I try to illuminate for the people who read my essays, and perhaps also watch the related videos on my YouTube channel, artlife enterprises, are the whole set of concepts that are essential to the republican form of government.  To be clear, I am not talking about government by the republican party, but modern, liberal republicanism as a form of government; what I often refer to as “a republic that functions on the democratic process.”  This piece is dedicated to what I believe is one of the most, if not the most,  important foundational principles of modern republicanism, Freedom of Conscience.

It is worth noting that the principles which form the basis of modern liberal republicanism were developed during the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries in both Europe and America. Simply stated, my definition of Freedom of Conscience is the following: 

The Individual must always, at all times, and under all circumstances be free to think whatever they want.  Likewise, the individual must also always, at all times, and under all circumstances, be free to believe whatever they want.

This is freedom of conscience, and it lies at the very center of what is known as liberal republicanism as a form of government.  It shares this central place with secularism and presumption of innocence before the law, which I shall discuss in other essays.

I know that many conservatives who are reading this essay just cringed at the mention of the word “liberal,” but just as “republican form of government” has nothing to do with the republican party, so use of the term “liberal” here has nothing to do with the democratic party.

So, freedom of conscience is what I stated above, and it is essential to the survival of any republic that these freedoms of thought and belief, no matter how righteous, divine, perverse, good or evil are never regulated or limited in any manner, at any time.  A person’s freedom of conscience must be completely unregulated, for as soon as the state assumes the right to regulate what a person thinks or believes, the republic is no more, and the individual and the nation as a whole have been rendered powerless in the face of the state.

However, freedom of conscience must be limited to thought and belief.  Freedom of Conscience can never translate directly to freedom of action.  The actions of the individual must always be regulated to some extent, for thought and belief exist solely within the vacuum of the individual, but action always exists within the world outside the individual.  Actions always have the potential to affect others, and because of this, they must always be subject to some form of regulation.

Most of our actions seem as if they are unregulated, but this is because our actions generally exist within the accepted parameters of social norms, and/or legal restraints, but the necessary regulation is there.  Whether the regulation is transparent or opaque, all actions of the individual, whether alone, or in concert with others are rightfully regulated within society.  Even those actions to which we are guaranteed the right by our Constitution are regulated in some manner.

One of the most important practical manifestations of  the concept of freedom of conscience is that the state does not have the right to tell any individual who that individual’s enemies are, whether they be foreign or domestic.  This is something that the individual must always have the right to decide within the confines of their own conscience. All of us must have the right to make the decision as to who is and is not our enemy.

The state has the right inform the individual of those groups, both foreign and domestic, that the state feels work counter to the interests of the state and/or the nation, and hence the individual, but that is all it has the right to do.  The state does not have the right to say to anyone; “These people are your enemies, or these people are your friends.”  Alas just as in other matters, the mark of the state, of caesar, so to speak, is to try and take what is not his.  So rest assured, this right of freedom of conscience will come under siege at some point in the life of this nation.

There is also a very practical manifestation to the point of this essay, which I have just laid out, and it is a discussion of the application of the separateness freedom of conscience and lack of freedom of action as it applies to the intertwined fascist, neo-nazi, and white supremacist movements in America.

The very existence of the right of freedom of conscience means, by default, that fascism and white supremacy in America have every right to exist.  Every single individual who thinks fascist and white supremacist thoughts, and holds their core beliefs has the right to do so.  They even have the right to freely and peaceably associate with each other.  Furthermore, as part of the political process, the fascist, white supremacist movement has the right to put up candidates for elected office.

I need to digress from my central focus for just a second, and tell you of what I have seen in American society.  Like all children who suffered thirteen years in the public school system in America, I was taught that America is a place where freedom of conscience exists. However, I saw in my American history classes that in America, in the Post-World War II era, people who held communist beliefs were being arrested, harassed, beaten, and if not being beaten, harassed, and arrested, they were denied, as much as possible, any opportunity to participate in the economy.  I never understood this insanely blatant application of a double standard, that Freedom of Conscience exists in America for everyone, except…

Not only that, but America had just fought the most high-intensity conflict the world had ever seen, World War II, against fascism, and five years later we were arresting communists.  To be honest, I don’t ever remember a lesson plan in school, that included images or references to any fascists being subjected to violent treatment on a society-wide level throughout the 1950s.  I don’t think it happened.  Maybe that’s because fascists and white supremacists are, in the end, corporate friendly.

I apologize for that digression, but I thought it was relevant to any discussion of American socio-political philosophy and history.  So let us return to to our focus, the current fascist / white supremacist movement in America and how it relates to the freedom of Conscience / Freedom of Action dichotomy.  As I have stated, since we live in a secular republic, in which Freedom of Conscience is rumored to exist, fascists and white supremacists have every right to exist, and fascism and white supremacy, as an allied, if not unified political belief, have the right to be part of our political system.  This is the marketplace of ideas which is essential, if we are to succeed in our march toward a more perfect union..

Like republicans, democrats, libertarians, democratic socialists, the green party, whomever, fascists and white supremacists have the right to function peacefully within the democratic system.  They have the right to put candidates forward for office, and they can advertise in those media outlets that will take their money and conduct business with them.  Fascists and white supremacists, like everyone else, have the right to think and believe whatever that want, but their actions to fulfill their designs to amass political power based upon those thoughts and beliefs are, and must be, regulated.  As part of that, however, they should be regulated no more and no less than any other political viewpoint.

Fascists and white supremacists have the right to function peacefully and respectfully within the democratic system.  

Peacefully and respectfully.

Peacefully and respectfully.

What they do not have the right to do, is bring violence into our political system.  Of course, neither does the left, but violence from the left is generally sporadic, impromptu, and narrowly targeted.  As such, it is not well funded, or very well organized; hence the actual ‘non-existence’ existence of AntiFa.  The violence from the right is not that.  The violence of the right, emulating in large measure, from the ultra conservative, fascist / white supremacist movement in America is constant, planned, broadly targeted, well funded, and well organized.  

Violence, in varying degrees, has been a constant theme and a characteristic property of fascism and white supremacy throughout their histories.  Today, in the United States of America, they are harassing school board members, threatening the lives of electoral system staff members and their families, threatening the lives of elected officials and their families, creating propaganda campaigns to raise doubts about the very validity of our electoral systems, and yes, staging a failed coup d’état.  Fascism, white supremacy, neo-nazism and violence all go hand in hand.  

To be sure, the actions cited in the last paragraph are an accurate description of what the far right is doing on a daily basis in America right now. This cannot be allowed.  Their introduction of violence into the American political environment poses the greatest threat to our republic to date, and these groups have used the rise of trumpism to announce their entrance into the body politic’s visible spectrum.

Violence is one of the primary tools used by fascist movements in their effort to secure power, and it is used freely by white supremacist forces to retain what they see as their power, or at least their station of white privilege.  Regardless, the neo-conservative, fascist, white supremacist movement not only employs organized violence as a political tool in our republic, but what is even more dangerous, is that they also possess a political party, the republican party, that seeks to normalize this violence, to make it so frequent, that it becomes accepted political behavior…in a republic that operates on the democratic system.

The question that must be answered is how do we stand against the forces that are bringing violence into America’s political culture?  I suggest two means.  First, of course, vote.  Vote in every election.  More importantly, vote for candidates who will stand beside the core principles of liberal republicanism, even if you disagree with them on policy.  A politician can always be swayed somewhat on policy, for compromise by adults is how republicanism works and survives.  Conversely, politicians can hopefully not be swayed to any degree on the sanctity of this republic and the liberal, foundational principles which gave it birth.

Second, engage in political discourse…like adults.  I am convinced that one of the main reasons we find ourselves in a situation in which we actually have an active and growing fascist political movement in this country stems primarily from the right’s forty-five year old war on education.  If we are to keep this republic, we must find a way to transform ourselves into a nation that talks everyday civics.

Our right to any meaningful degree of Freedom of Conscience will pass away if we allow the forces of fascism and white supremacy to gain a foothold in our political system through their methods of violence.  Not only can we not allow it, but we are the only people who can stop it.  Let fascism and white supremacy exist; they have that right.  Let them honestly place their beliefs and policy goals out in the marketplace of ideas; they have a right to that also.  However, we cannot allow anyone, regardless of what they think or believe, to sweep aside the freedoms that make republicanism as a form of government what it is and can be, in exchange for their dreams of despotism.

© 2021 all rights reserved

Niemand

To Some Clown At AMMO.Com

To: Ammo.com

Re: The Difference Between Nationalism and Patriotism, and Why It Matters, by Sam Jacobs

Before I begin this reply to your article on nationalism and patriotism, I think I should tell you a little about me.

First, I did not write the article which your email was sent to address, but I am a person who checks the Joe’s Addiction email frequently.  I saw your message to the author, and so I read both articles.

I found Mr. Zumwalt’s article exploring the elasticity “American evangelical Christianity’s” application of the title of antichrist quite satisfactory in both its content, and exploration of the issue.  I would have used different language at times, but that’s merely a stylistic preference, and has no bearing on the merits of this article.  Just please know that I read it.

Second, I identify as white, and my pronouns are he/him.  My father’s family is German (I love it when you refer to European familial bloodlines as “stock.”  That’s good stuff.) and my mother’s family is mainly Scottish with, believe it or not, some Lebanese/Syrian branches of the family tree.  What all of this makes me is a white guy with a love of Middle Eastern music.

Enough about me, Let us turn to you article.

First, who is this “we,” of whom you speak in your introductory paragraph?  Who are “we?”  Please answer that question, first.  

Once you’ve done that, we can move on.  You wrote the following paragraph:

“NGOs are largely how George Soros exercises power over the political process of countries, which has led to them being expelled from Hungary and Myanmar. They tend to have generic names like “United We Dream” or “International Rescues Committee.” Thus, they are difficult to attack on their face – are you opposed to dreams and rescues?”

This is where you begin to really sell your package: The nationalist package.

I hate to do this, but I apparently need to do so.  First, I want to thank you for your characterization of NGOs, especially Amnesty International, as part of some sinister conspiracy to promote policies with which you disagree.

Abortion rights, and gay marriage are issues of women’s health care, and equal rights, not some assault on civilization.  Unless, of course, that particular vision of a good and just civilization is one in which women do not have control over their bodies; this control having been taken by groups of elderly white men, and those of the LGBTQ+ community are forced back into some massive, invisible closet from which they are to be thankful for the scraps of human dignity you and the aforementioned elderly white men choose to give them.  Amnesty International looks to defend the basic human rights of people on a global scale, not just ‘prisoners of conscience,’ and that is a good thing.

Allow me to give you an example of the major activities of one of your ‘conservative’ NGOs.  Let us examine the case of “The Family Research Council.”  This, as I am certain your are aware, is one of America’s most prominent conservative Christian NGOs with global operations in service to Christ.  That is all well and good, but as someone much smarter than me once said, “the proof is in the pudding.”  Now I’m not sure exactly what that means, since all pudding today is perfect in five minutes, but that’s beside the point.  What it means for our purposes here, is that we need to take a close look at what The Family Research Council does with the vast amounts of money the faithful send it.  I want you to looks this up, because this is a good one.

This group spends millions upon millions of dollars trying to influence legislation in foreign countries, especially in Africa, to make homosexuality a capital offense.  That’s right, Mr. Jacobs, one of the jewels of the right’s “well organized militia” of NGOs (a christian one, at that!) spends a majority of its money and labor trying to make sure that people can be put to death for being gay.  I don’t really know if the Christ would go for that.

Regarding NGO’s financed in large part by George Soros being expelled from Hungary and Myanmar…Are you serious?  You tried to show how evil an organization is by telling people that they’ve been expelled from Hungary; a state that has assumed a place as the bastion of a white Europe?  The country in which Steve Bannon is setting up schools to train a sort of multi-national, modern-day SS to wage war against immigrants and refugees in Europe?  A state that has, for all intents and purposes, destroyed the fledgling democracy the good people of Hungary tried to build after the fall of the Warsaw Pact?  If I were George Soros, I would consider such expulsion to be an honor!

Myanmar, Really?  A state ruled by a murderous military which swept aside the democratically elected government, so that it could once again exercise complete control of the country?  Really, Mr. Jacobs, are these two places your examples of states that do not want the humanitarian work of groups associated with George Soros present in their countries?  Believe me, it is not George Soros and his money that they don’t want in their countries, it’s the humanitarian work of dedicated and courageous people who may shed light on their nefarious and corrupt operations that they don’t want ion their countries.  Humanitarian organizations tend to raise the spectre of accountability for the actions of all governments, and oppressive regimes like those of Hungary and Myanmar have no need of that, and that is what they don’t want in their countries.

Really, again, I want to know who the “we” is of which you count yourself a gear cog.

Next paragraph for rebuttal, please…thank you.

Globalism is marked by both its global orientation and hostility toward the nation state, but also its view that democracy is a means to an end. When the democratic process fails to provide the “correct” result, this is taken as prima facie something has gone wrong and needs to be corrected. This can be seen in the liberal-globalist response to the election of President Trump in 2016, but also the whole attitude of globalists toward nations like Poland and Hungary, whose democracies consistently oppose liberalism in toto at the ballot box.

Part one:

This paragraph is really the stupidest set of statements I’ve read in a long time.  See discussion of Hungary above, and count Poland as moving headlong in the same direction.  Your characterization of Poland and Hungary as states that choose their governments through the democratic process, is almost as ridiculous as stating that Russia chooses its president through a healthy, free, and fair democratic process.

I hope you understand that the politicians in Eastern European countries that are moving to their countries to the hard right work for Vladimir Putin.  You understand that, don’t you, Mr. Jacobs?

Part two (purely for your benefit):

Globalism: Globalism is the universe in which the ultra-wealthy live.  These people live without need of the nation-state in any way, shape, or form.  Their investments are global, their wealth is global, and and their political power is global.  The rest of us, even those of us on the left must, like you, live within the confines of the concept of the nation-state.  They scream nationalism at you and me, as we’re screaming at each other, they’re fucking everybody on a global scale.

Personally, I, like most of my colleagues on the left, am a globalist in the sense that I see global cooperation, and the actions and policies produced therefrom, especially between the world’s democracies, to be of immeasurable benefit to the world as a whole.  The policies borne of this cooperation are not always altruistic, or devised to insure that all people ate treated equitably, but in a broader, theoretical sense, many of these policies are of general benefit to humanity and the planet as a whole.  True and active cooperation and diplomacy can be seen as one of the great pillars of peace in this world.  Military force, on the other hand; even its use as a threat to other nation-states keeps the world a very dangerous place.

But let us move on.  You know, as in MoveOn.org.

Next, please.

“…until the left started denigrating American history.”

Ah, yes, I must confess that I loved the world most when you wrote: “until the left started denigrating American history.”  There you go, Mr. Jacobs!  Why don’t you just go ahead and strip it all away, discard the shroud of intellect you tried to use to cover your purpose, and bare everything so that the audience you seek can see what your true motive is.

Let me tell you what the left sees in American history.  We see the truth of America.  We see the intentional whitewash of our history designed to hide the crimes against humanity committed by the white race in America.

Really, this effort of ours to confront the sins of our fathers and mothers is for the benefit of all peoples, both in America and abroad.  I realize that this all seems very wrong to white supremacists, white nationalists (for people who consider the term “white supremacist” to be just a little too ‘out front), and your average boot-licking denizen of trumpism, but the truth, as painful as it may be for us all, at times, is really the only option that will allow any of us to someday enter the kingdom of heaven.  You do want to go to heaven, don’t you, Mr. Jacobs?

I will close with the following overall review of your article.  Your sense of justice on issues of human worth is incredibly biased, and immediately strips away the veil of intellectual neutrality you seem to have tried to create.  You should know this, Mr. Jacobs, that any person with even a moderately above average IQ is not fooled by your diversions.

You move between discussing peripheral topics that have nothing to do with the point of your diatribe, and insulting what you call “the left” when defending your precious nationalism.  The language that marks the discussion of peripheral topics is all very neutral, both in meaning and connotation, and this is meant to hide your true purpose, but I think you can count this article among the rest of the “epic fails” of your life.  Your purpose is clearly to sell white supremacy, trumpism and a sick form of nationalism to an unsuspecting and witless audience.

I’m sorry,  Mr. Jacobs, but you are as transparent as a plate glass window, and you have proven yourself completely unable to conceal the purpose of your unnaturally long propaganda poster.  Believe me, I’m not the only person who was glad when it was finally over.

I await your reply.

This letter to you will be posted on my blog site, overwhelmingweirdness.com, so please reply via a comment there.  Of course, I invite you to read some of my other essays on that site, if you feel so inclined.  In fact, I think you should read them all.  You may learn something.

Peace and Love to All,

Niemand

Finding A Balance / Concession 1.0

Finding A Balance:

I have, of late, been recording and publishing short, monologue videos on my YouTube channel, Artlife Enterprises. They’ve all been political in nature, although various parts of some venture outside of that framework.

I enjoy making them, and I decided at the start of the series, that I would keep them pretty raw. I don’t really do any prep work for them, except that I speak about an issue that has been occupying my mind over the last day or so prior to sitting down to record. This insures that each monologue is, essentially, a focused stream of consciousness as I explore the issue. I don’t edit them at all. I publish them complete, as they were recorded.

I have published one video that was of me reading a piece I had written in September, 2020, titled “An Open Letter to My Fellow Progressives.” I’m not sure what I think about that endeavor. I looked at the paper more than I had initially thought I would, and that really distracted me from focusing on the camera in order to accentuate the effect of the spoken word.

There’s another piece I wrote that I’d like to place on video, primarily because I believe it lends itself more to the universe of the dramatic recitation than does An Open Letter. This other piece is titled “Conversation 1: The Evangelical Virus.” I’m not going to say any more about it, because I think It’s a damn good read. You can find it on my blog site: http://www.overwhelmingweirdness.com. Oh, yeah, if you’re reading this, then you’re already there.

The problem I’m trying to avoid is of allowing the convenience of speaking a piece and posting it, to completely marginalize my writing. This is a real issue for me and, I’m fairly certain, other writers in this crazy 21st Century. What I have to remember is that writing is an art like speaking can never be, just as speaking is an art that writing can never be. It is the same, and yet it is different, and the painting of images for a reader is an incredibly rewarding accomplishment. Writing offers the writer an immense level of freedom of influence over what the audience experiences, because there is no visual stimulus to distract from the words. The writers palette has letters and punctuation instead of a spectrum of colors, and the brush strokes of the words are as varied as those of all of the artists ever to have wielded a brush.

Long story short, I think I should write out what will inevitably be a variation on the piece I recorded and published on November 10th, 2020. The YouTube piece is titled: Monolugue 7: Concession. Here is my written interpretation of the issue:

Concession 1.0:

The point of this short essay is the very real possibility, no, probability, that donald trump will not concede this election. He will not concede it today, tomorrow, next week, or probably ever. That, my dear readers, is a very serious matter. This country has the longest history of any country on planet earth of peaceful transfers of power from one administration to the next, but donald trump plans to upset that history by throwing the aberration of his toxic presidency into the fold of this most precious tradition.

What makes this situation even worse, is that we all know why trump refuses to recognize the fact that the American people fired him. He is scrambling to hold on to the presidency, not for some higher purpose of moving this country toward the ever-elusive more perfect union, but for his own self-aggrandizement. His daughter said, when asked about contacts with Russian Security Service personnel by the trump campaign in 2016, “We trumps play to win.” It doesn’t matter to the trumps what the trumps do to other people when they “play to win,” but it matters to us.

Planet Earth to trump: when you invite the assistance of this country’s primary adversary to help you gain power in this country, and when you demonstrate such an insane level of selfishness in the face of a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of American citizens in a short six months, and when you prove yourself, every day, to be one of the most morally depraved of all human beings, we’re going to fire your ass.

Hey, trump, you’re fired.

Several weeks ago, in early October, 2020, I was engaged in a discussion about trump with one of his supporters, and I made the point that he has to know that trump doesn’t give a damn about anybody in this world, but himself. To my amazement, he replied that yes, he knew that. I was stunned, flabbergasted, and said rather loudly and quite forcefully: “We cannot have someone like that in the White House! Don’t you understand that? We cannot have someone occupying the office of president of the United States [by this time I’m yelling] that doesn’t give a shit about anybody but himself! What The Fuck!!!!!!!???????” Luckily, we were on a golf course, so anyone other than our group of four was at least a hundred yards away

So here is a pretty succinct synopsis of our situation: We have one of the most loathsome human beings ever to exist, who has been masquerading as the president of the United States for almost four years, lose an election, badly. However, he refuses to concede the election he lost, and now sets about to do the following: He fires major members of his cabinet — specifically, the one who is tied like no other to the US military — for reasons we are yet to find out, and threatens anyone working in the White House that if he finds out that they’re looking for another job, he’ll fire that person immediately, effective immediately. He also instructs his Ernst Roehm, William Barr, to issue a memo asserting federal prerogative where it does not exist; investigating assertions of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. This issue lies with the states until, and only until, such time as federal intervention is warranted, and that decision, too, lies with the states.

This may very well be the most dangerous time in the history of this country. All you have to do is reread the paragraph above to understand where we are today. The danger is not that donald trump’s fantastical attempt to hold on to the presidency will succeed, it won’t.

“Sorry, “the donald,” we know that when you were a ‘private’ citizen, you could run businesses into the ground over and over, and over again, and the American taxpayers would bail you out through the bankruptcy process, but you can only go bankrupt once as president. After that, well, we just won’t allow you to be that unbelievably selfish and incompetent and hope to not be fired at the first possible moment. Oh, yeah, and in case you didn’t get the memo, that moment came on November 3rd, 2020. Hey trump, you’re fired! Now clean out your desk and get out! Oh yeah, you’re going to have to leave that computer with all of your secret Putin shit on it. That’s probably going to be exhibit A, B, or C at your trial.”

The real danger at this point is what this situation will do to the government of this country. The only thing donald trump as left to ruin, before he is removed from the presidency, is the government…and here he goes. He has already set about doing that in any possible manner he can.

donald trump’s refusal to accept the fair and equitable results of this election means, since we are all familiar with his complete lack of character, that he will eventually result to extra-legal means to retain power. I once heard the following: “There is nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose, nothing to live for, and nothing to prove.” We are witnessing the truth of that statement in donald trump’s actions regarding his defeat by, in the end, the thing he hates the most: the ballot box.

In addition to this, I believe he is considering an “only count the votes for me” tour of rallies around the country. What can you say about something like that? Nothing. All you have to do is take a step back for a second and look at the complete disregard for the boundaries of truth trump would maintain when he was still campaigning, to imagine what he will do or say now that he has lost the election. I physically shudder when I think of the depths of moral desolation to which trump will hurry in order to hold onto power he does not own.

Folks, this is deadly serious, it really is, and how we handle it will say all that will ever need to be said about the character of this country. How will we absorb this spasm of insufferably poor governance and selfishness into the larger framework of this nation’s quest for a more perfect union? That, in the end, is the most important question which this episode in American history will ever require us to answer.

The effects of the trump administration on our republic are impossible to foresee at the moment, but they will have long-term impacts on the social and political landscape of this country for decades, if not generations, to come. Believe it or not, I believe that its effects will be, for the most part, positive. The presidency of donald trump will stand forever as a testament to the horrific things that can happen to any democracy when people do not participate in the governing process.

A break in time:

Let me mention that I started writing this piece four days ago, but my work schedule has placed a damper on the time I’ve had to my sit at the computer to finish the piece.

Within this four days, we have heard nothing from president trump…about anything. Think about that: Aside from firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper (in order, as it appears, to place his loyalists in top positions in the Department of Defense), and appearing like a god to further incite his supporters at their “Million MAGA March” in Washington, D.C. today, we have heard almost nothing from donald trump. We’ve heard nothing about the corona virus and its mounting toll of human life and labor across this country and, indeed, the world. We’ve heard nothing about the election, and the absolutely humiliating, and embarrassing rebuke he suffered at the hands of the American People. We’ve heard nothing about a hundred other news stories of both large and petty corruptions that make up both donald trump’s administration, and his character.

I have to add how insanely telling it is that these people at their Million MAGA March today were out there literally fighting for him in the streets, and he has his motorcade pass them so that he can wave at them as he rides off to a flight to play a round of golf at one of his private clubs. He didn’t stop. He didn’t even slow down. He doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself and they know it, but they don’t care, because they worship him.

That’s just weird.

My dear readers, this is very serious, and we cannot, as a nation, tolerate this level of mental instability in the president of the United States. I’m going to repeat that: “We cannot, as a nation, tolerate this level of mental instability in the president of the United States.” We can’t have it.

All of that being said, I have to admit that this silence of donald trump has become a special time of joy that we haven’t had for almost four years. Think about that, we’re almost at ten days after November 3rd, and the silence from donald trump brings a sense of elation to everyone. I’ll bet even a large number of his hard-core devotees are kind of like: “Wo, I feel like I’ve been under a spell!” This means, of course, that we’re going to hear from him soon, in order to keep the spice flowing. “The spice must flow.”

However, aside from all of the side-show joy this silence has provided us, we have to focus on the damage donald trump is trying inflict on our republic. That may be the worst part. donald trump is trying to inflict as much damage as he can upon this republic, and American society in general, before he is removed from office. We also have to remember that donald trump is plotting and planning every second he’s not sulking, so realistically, about two thirds of his waking hours are spent plotting.

To paraphrase what I stated earlier in this piece; How we absorb the effects of the plot, my fellow people who live under the constitutional protections of this republic, will say all that will ever need to be said about the character of America and Americans in general.

Prepare in peace, and with a sense of love for all people. The test is almost upon us.

Peace and love to all,

Niemand