The greater threat if Facebook doesn’t ban Trump permanently

“Those who stand for nothing fall for everything” -  Alexander Hamilton


After Facebook’s Independent Oversight Committee‘s ban on Donald Trump expires within the next six months, will Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to extend or end it be motivated primarily by financial concerns rather than issues of truth and preserving our democratic-republic?

Facebook and Twitter took the correct action they did to muzzle the treasonous rantings of a loser who never takes responsibilities for his failed performances.  Trump’s delusional bombasts on January 6th presented a clear and present danger to our democracy by undermining our electoral process.  Until he is willing to denounce his unfounded claims of massive voter fraud, the ban should remain in place.

The virtuous idiom - “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”  - is familiar to us all yet not one that social media platforms are apparently guided by to offset many posts on their platforms.  Posts, that if not evil in and of themselves, are at least horrendously ugly in ways that threatens personal security and the socio-political fabric of our country.

The notion expressed by Trump cult adherents that freedom of speech is at issue here is a straw man argument.  Consider their own efforts to silence Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney along with a few other Republicans wanting only to speak truth about the former President’s role that incited the January 6th insurrection on the nation’s Capitol.

Free speech concerns shouldn’t prevent social media platforms from banning those who deliberately spread malicious rumors and outright lies.  It’s a standard practice for most blog sites or social media pages who reserve that right when people sign up for them.  For those who avidly crave Trump’s every mutterings, there are ample media sources like FOX, Newsmax and the more current right-wing conspiratorial OAN, who are more than willing to feed their need.

We can’t always control seeing and hearing evil.  But speaking it arises from one’s own volition to do so.  The least that responsible adults can do is to inhibit those who would use public platforms to broadcast it.

The greater threat comes not from a few obscure voices in the blogosphere but from someone who convinced 74 million voters that his loss last November was a conspiracy that involved multiple GOP election personnel, courts and judges across the country.  A notion that defies all sense of reality and sanity.

Totalitarian regimes, once they get a foothold into government, become insidious.  They mask their violent and discriminatory natures through populace rhetoric that claims some nebulous patriotic ethos to the fatherland that actually narrows rather than broadens legitimate political participation.

Our current, divided political state is ripe for some authoritarian to project themselves as  one who’ll restore a bygone era that many feel has been lost as a result of our expanding, diverse culture.  It is this not-so-subtle intent that plays “us” against “them” that mandates a continuing ban from social media sources by those who attract the darkest elements within our society, preventing an honest reconciling of what divides us.

A Tribute to Our Daughter Eileen

 

 

 

This Wednesday, February 24th, would have been our daughter’s 39 birthday.  That proverbial age memorialized by the "ageless" comedian Jack Benny.   For Eileen however, she will be 38 forevermore.

Eileen would've been a fan of Jack Benny because she loved all the old sitcoms and comics of that past era that her Mom and I grew up with during the 1950’s and early 60’s, especially the hilarious skits of the I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners series.  

And there was no end to her admiration for the ill-fated Marilyn Monroe.  Her apartment walls had more than one photo of the glamorous Hollywood star, like this one.

She kept uplifting quotes for herself, especially those of social psychologist Dr. Bo Bennett.  For example:  “For every good reason there is to lie, there is a better reason to tell the truth.”  She was also apparently aware of how people stereo-type others, negatively impacting one’s self-esteem.  Several quotes from her papers show this:

“The  more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you”

and

“If people talk about you behind your back, it’s because you’re ahead of them”

She had a fondness for writing poetry and from some of hers that she left, not realizing that her Mom and I would read these after her short life ended, we found this one, dated January 17th, 1998, rather prescient and reflective of who she really was inside.

Before It’s Too Late by Eileen Beck    

I’d like to say all that needs to be said, before it’s too late;
Tell you everything I’ve always wanted to say.
Realism doesn’t click in until something real happens,
but why did you have to prove it to him?

Before it’s too late I just want you to know just how much I care,
because this has made me realize we won’t always be here

Before it’s too late put my hand in yours
Assure me that you’ll hold me dear until we live no more
Because nothings worse than knowing that you ran out of time

This is but a small sample of who Eileen was   I could fill a volume of these memories.  She was brave on so many fronts but being human she also had her fears and worries.  There were those times when she would want to be around her family lovingly and at other times wanted more keeping to herself.

Those who knew her well I’m sure will recognize this glimpse of Eileen and who perhaps have even deeper, ebullient remembrances of her.  Her mom, brother and I would love to have you share them with us.

I feel certain that Eileen would want you all to love and hold those close to you everyday so you won’t have to regret that you waited too late.  Extend acts of kindness to strangers.  I’m sure she would feel that in doing so you would lift those up who perhaps never heard or felt the love and concern from those they wanted to receive it from the most.

We love you Scooter

 

 

 

A Day of Infamy - January 6th, 2021

 

 

police officer Michael Fanone

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/16/capitol-police-speak-out-over-trump-mobs-medieval-style-combat-13913921/?ito=cbshare

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

police officer Michael Fanone

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/16/capitol-police-speak-out-over-trump-mobs-medieval-style-combat-13913921/?ito=cbshare

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

police officer Michael Fanone

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/16/capitol-police-speak-out-over-trump-mobs-medieval-style-combat-13913921/?ito=cbshare

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

Police officer Michael Fanone's body lies near motionless as some terrorist thugs pummel his body

“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” - Samuel Johnson, 1775

The mob action and violence that forced its way into the halls of Congress on January 6th should be remembered by most as yet another attempt to overthrow our government, not unlike what took place on December 7th, 1941 and September 11th, 2001.  But unlike those two dates, this threat came from within, not from foreign adversaries, and was orchestrated by the man who was in denial about his defeat in last November’s presidential election.

It should also stand out as the date when Joe Biden showed his presidential gravitas as opposed to Donald Trump who abdicated his role as the leader of our Constitutional government when he threw his lot in with the thugs and patriotic pretenders who humiliated and shamed us all to the rest of the world with their unchecked anarchy.

To all of those Trump enablers - who even as rioters stormed the halls of Congress were still prepared to speak in support of the conspiracies that generated the riots - as well those who  are now saying “enough is enough”,  there is blood on your hands for your failure to stop this coup attempt in the months and years that preceded it.

Though people like Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley served as the most recent and conspicuous flame throwers for this insurrection along side the lame duck president, it was the silence and inaction of every elected Republican official over the last four years at most given times that provided a path and open door for this sociopath to carry out his autocratic maneuvers.

Trump’s most avid support comes from armed white supremacists who even before Charlottesville, the El Paso massacre and the kidnap attempt of the Michigan governor have vainly compared themselves to colonial patriots to validate such insurrection as some imagined noble cause in today’s polarized culture. 

It’s ironic however that what the real American colonials sought to achieve is the polar opposite of what these domestic terrorists are attempting.  The American Revolution was fought to separate themselves from an autocratic rule by a foreign British monarchy, unlike today’s revolutionary pretenders who used violence in the hopes of creating an autocratic rule by a domestic, deranged demagogue.

I concur with Dalton Gregory’s assessment expressed in his December 18th commentary in the Denton Record-Chronicle of the Trump power grab that’s being played out here.  But in just that short period of time we’ve come from thinking that it will soon be over to watching a hostile takeover attempt posing an ongoing threat.  

None of us can remain silent any longer and allow threats to our democratic republic to be passed off as patriotic expressions of discontent.  There are players in place determined to replace a government of, by and for the people with an autocracy.  For those who have, intentionally or not, aided and abetted this ignoble cause, it falls on us to hold them accountable under the laws that were designed to prevent this unthinkable act.

Not many options left to save the Party of Lincoln

 

“If fascism comes [to America] … it will probably be ‘wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution’.”  - James Waterman Wise, Jr

Following November’s presidential election, GOP voters seemed to send a mixed message.  While eager to hang on to their congressional candidates - many who supported Trumpism -  they seem to be ready to show Trump himself the exit door.  Were they hoping for a return to something that would come close to reflecting traditional conservative values and allegiance to the Constitution?

If that is indeed what many GOP voters signaled for, their Party leaders failed to get the message. The conspiracy absurdities that Trump continues to promote, without any credible facts or data to support them, now reveal a political party that has detached itself from reality.  More seriously is the appearance it gives to aligning themselves with a wannabe dictator.

Failing to gain either the popular or electoral majority, Trump sycophants fell in line with him to use this country’s legal system to overturn the legitimate election that created a Biden/Harris victory.  And to the horror of many Texans along with Texas evangelical, Beth Moore, it seems that this cuckoo choo-choo is being driven by some of our own citizens.  

With Crayolas gripped angrily in his child-like fist, Texas AG Ken Paxton - who’s currently under federal indictment for securities fraud - scrawled out an absurd, unprecedented lawsuit to support the lunacy of those who signed on to this nonsense.  

Putting their name to this coup attempt was our own Michael Burgess and eleven other Texas Republican congressmen.  Senator Ted Cruz, whose wife and father were insulted in 2016 by Donald Trump, gleefully agreed to his request to represent this joke in the nation’s Supreme Court.  

To their credit, the high court firmly rebuked the laughable lawsuit, sending these infantile whiners back to face (hopefully) most of their outraged constituents.  Adding to the crazy was Texas’ GOP Party Chairman Adam West who called for acts of secession from the states whose AGs signed on to Paxton’s document.

So what’s a traditional Republican faced with as many of their members capitulate to the incompetent and power-crazed whims of a narcissistic buffoon?  

Where moderate Republicans are vying with extremists elements in their Party, progressive Independents like me could cross over in primaries to vote for such GOP moderates.  This doesn’t bind us to that candidate in the general election.  But the loss to a sensible adult Republican in the vein of a John McCain, Mitt Romney or even Susan Collins would be preferable over those Louie Gohmert types we’re getting stuck with.

Another option for that 20-30% of GOP voters who still seem to live in the real world could be to simply start voting for the Democratic candidate in traditional Republican strongholds where Trump devotees have won the GOP nomination.  Such sacrifices would hurt in the short run but should eventually reawaken the saner aspects to Lincoln’s Party - the man who championed the cause of preserving the Union. Not to do so it seems would only further drive the once mighty GOP down that rabbit hole that will forever reflect a hopeless, pathetic shadow of its former self.

A century ago Democrats, stained for decades by the actions of many in their party for their support of slavery’s brutal suppression followed by Jim Crow racism began to turn things around from this negative image.  They would lead the way in forging legislation that created the kind of equality for all men and women that many founders had originally idealized.

Is there sufficient moral clarity within the GOP to do the same today by pulling itself away from their voter suppression tactics and the autocratic abyss that Trump has led them into?

Some still riding the Trump Crazy Train

“I believe we never become our entire and honest selves until we are dead - and not then until we have been dead for years and years.  People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier” - Mark Twain

Twain’s dark humor here seems to address how cowards dwell in their own skin as they  live among those who share their unfounded fears in order to fit in.  A sort of survival instinct if you will.  The fact that humans are never fully honest is a no brainer.  It speaks to that part of us where courage is too often missing at times when it’s needed most.  

Cowardice on a grand scale can impact entire societies, threatening the stability a people need to grow and lift us past those fears that hold us back from attaining “a more perfect union”.
Though some of Trump’s supporters have begrudgingly accepted a Biden presidency, the passenger list aboard the Cuckoo Choo-choo still remains considerable.  That list consists of Rudy “Drip Dry” Giuliani, Sidney “blow up Georgia” Powell, Lindsey “two-faced” Graham, Texas’ AG Ken Paxton and a host of FOX pundits including Sean “conspiracy king” Hannity, Lou “Unhinged” Dobbs and Tucker “elitist hound” Carlson.  

Then of course there are the tens of thousands of QAnon freaks who allege “that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against” the Donald, who they divine is fighting the cabal.

Though these people can be viewed as delusional they are not necessarily cowards.  The true cowards are those who know better and yet remain silent in light of these
absurdities.  Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and most of his Republican majority lead this assault on sanity including our own John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.  They hide behind the crowds claiming Biden’s victory was illegitimate and in essence demur to the unfounded notion virulently expressed by one misguided Trump die-hard that it was the man-child who won the election by a landslide

The fraud that Trump and his lick-spittle legal team claim about debunked voter fraud conspiracies threatens our electoral process, now and in future elections, to the delight of our global adversaries, especially China and Russia.  With their operative in the White House they have to exercise little influence of their own to achieve the chaos they so desperately desire for our democratic republic.

This attack on our constitutional staples has been used previously by such brutal dictators as Spain’s Franco, Italy’s Mussolini and Germany’s Adolph Hitler who clawed power away from established democratic institutions through mob violence.  With their weakened economies and an appeal to nationalism these despots felt free to authorize monstrous behavior that resulted in millions of innocent men, women and children perishing.

Along the same lines, as this lame duck president huddles in his White House bunker, clamoring for his followers to over throw the election, his mismanagement of the pandemic crisis will contribute to as many as 400,000 plus deaths sometime this January, aided and abetted by the cowardice of GOP elected officials who stand idly by as he behaves in this unforgivable fashion.

Lincoln’s divided nation pitted pro-slavey advocates and abolitionists against each other. Today it’s those who support Trump’s autocratic maneuvers versus those of us who wish to sustain our constitutional institutions and norms.   Though the voter mail fraud conspiracy will likely become just another silly contrivance by those people who also lost touch with reality in their day, it will remain a source of division among us for years.

Edmund Burke warned civilization that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

It’s time for courage, not fear, to grip the reins of leadership in this country and lead us out of this political morass.  To those unwilling or unable to confront the ignoble, petulant loser that Trump has become I say, “grow a pair” and help move this nation forward lest what integrity you claim for yourself is massively overshadowed by your total absence of nerve.

Healing our national wounds will not be easy

 “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”   - Abraham Lincoln

In his second inaugural address, Lincoln attempted to assuage the heated emotions of a nation that had just been ripped apart by a Civil War, fought mainly over ending our national shame with slavery.  Inspiring as it was he still forfeited his life a little over a month later at the hands of a bitter opponent.  Since then, the desires for the South to rise again have echoed among white supremacists groups, emboldened early on with the release of the 1915 racist silent film, “Birth of a Nation”

The founders’ attempt at creating a united nation never really materialized fully following the ratification of our Constitution.  Race was and has been the unsettling issue that keeps us divided.  It was felt that following Obama’s election to the presidency that it would no longer be a contentious problem.  But systemic racism is perhaps as strong now as it has ever been over the last century and a half.  And there is little doubt that many of those Trump supporters chanting “make America great again” were simply anxious to remove a president they saw as an unnatural American of African-Muslim dissent.

I was recently reminded that the virtue of grace is given, not earned.  It was this attempt at promoting grace however that seemed to fall short for Lincoln.  Nonetheless, I believe grace should always be the guiding light be which we confront our adversaries.  This however doesn’t entail ignoring those people with deep-seated hates and who are bent on violence.  The specter of extremist behavior threatens stability in any society and opens the door to repressive authoritarianism.

In his recent article “A Large Portion of the Electorate Chose the Sociopath” conservative author and former Republican Tom Nichols cogently articulates what most of us have become aware of over the last four years.

“America is now a different country. Nearly half of the voters have seen Trump in all of his splendor—his infantile tirades, his disastrous and lethal policies, his contempt for democracy in all its forms—and they decided that they wanted more of it. His voters can no longer hide behind excuses about the corruption of Hillary Clinton or their willingness to take a chance on an unproven political novice. They cannot feign ignorance about how Trump would rule. They know, and they have embraced him.”

It’s not clear exactly how Trump will behave between now and January 20th when Joe Biden takes over that office but with Trump’s incompetence in handling the pandemic he claimed would disappear after the election, we’ll see it become more widespread and more detrimental to our economy.

Not wanting to be seen as a loser either, Trump will likely go out kicking and screaming much like the spoiled child being removed from the store by his parents because he didn’t get the toy he wanted.

In an interview conducted in 2014 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Michael D’Antonio, Trump was asked to contemplate the meaning of his life. “I don’t like to analyze myself”, he said “because I might not like what I see.”   

In her tell all book about her uncle, Mary L Trump reveals how this loser demon came to possess Donald at an early age by his father Fred’s insistence that they inherit his killer instincts and a take-no-prisoners attitude.  It was this fear of failing in the eyes of his father that would have a life long impact and lead him to lash out later at John McCain as a loser along with the American WWI dead buried at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris, when he visited France in 2018

Biden will restore sanity and maturity to the oval office but Trumpism is something that will persist for decades and could become more competent.  Mutating this destructive DNA in ways that resemble civil behavior will require a resolve by all of us who plucked democracy from the ashes on November 3rd.  Hopefully through acts of grace but accompanied by a “firmness in the right as God gives us to see right”, the better angels of our nature should prevail.

American aristocrats are stealing your voting privileges

 

"The right of suffrage is certainly one of the fundamental articles of republican Government, and ought not to be left to be regulated by the Legislature. “ - James Madison

The quote above is perhaps more relevant today than when Madison wrote it back in August of 1787 as he and other commonwealth officials met in Philadelphia to form our Constitution.  The colonies had recently won their independence from the British monarchy and wanted to inscribe for posterity the rights of individuals to choose their own representatives in the newly formed republic.

There was the lingering fear back then that aristocratic powers would unduly influence our elected officials to advantage them, often to the detriment of those less powerful people who even then were negated from voting simply because they didn’t own property, were not males and were essentially not descendants of white European immigrants - conditions that wouldn’t change for nearly 150 years all totaled.

It became apparent to Thomas Jefferson as early as 1816 that the “aristocracy of our monied corporations” was already challenging our government to a trial of strength, “and [bidding] defiance to the laws of our country.”  To this day this threat is more prevalent than ever as lobbyists from various corporate interests are appointed by corporate-friendly administrations to head up those agencies that are tasked to oversee and prevent excesses that hurt all Americans, especially the poorest and least powerful amongst us.  The “swamp” that Donald Trump promised to drain is alive and thriving.

In it’s most dangerous form this monied interests has won over in almost its entirety, the Republican Party, aided in large part by a predominant news source that has violated the ethics of a free and objective press.  This arrangement now presents the gravest threat to one of the last vestiges of our representative form of government - the right of free citizens to vote.

In his Rolling Stone article, “How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich”, Tim Dickinson laid out back in 2011 how “the modern GOP has undergone a radical transformation, reorganizing itself around a grotesque proposition: that the wealthy should grow wealthier still, whatever the consequences for the rest of us.” 

It’s not that Democrats haven’t been guilty of pandering to Wall Street but they haven’t even come close to the speed and scope that the modern GOP has.  With the aid of GOP legislators, judicial appointments deliberately skirted basic rules of fairness and laws have been written to circumvent the oversight of state and federal agencies, leaving most low and middle income voters in harms way of polluting industries, paying higher tax rates than the wealthiest amongst us, and rigging elections to favor these corporate-friendly Republicans.

And if the planned chaos during the Georgia Democratic primaries earlier this year is a preview of how the Republican Party intends to steal the 2020 presidential election for Donald Trump, we can anticipate even greater social disruptions from the likes of the QAnon crowd and many white supremacist groups, opening the door for Trump to introduce “presidential emergency action documents,” or PEADs, “which are orders that authorize a broad range of mortal assaults on our civil liberties.”  An act that could find the Executive branch at odds with some military leaders.

Regardless of the outcome on November 3rd, it behooves every American to push for reinstatement of the checks and balances the framers intended for our democratic republic to survive.  If not, the autocratic maneuvers by the Trump administration and the unwilling GOP congressional leadership to stand up to this power play could well put us in line to join the ranks of Russia, China, Turkey, North Korea and Saudi Arabia.