guillaumeb
guillaumeb's JournalThere are only two types of Trump voters.
The first, the racists, voted for him because he is an open and unapologetic racist. And these people, the racists, see Trump's open and proud racism as a validation of their own racism. Perhaps these racist Trump voters would like to be openly racist, but fear of the consequences might be stopping them.
Often, these racists call criticism of their own racism "political correctness" because that makes them, in their eyes, the victims.
The other class of Trump voters, the tinier fraction, are 1% types who know that Trump will serve their own narrow financial interests.
The only real question is, what percent of Trump voters are racists?
The GOP supports Trump with their words, and with their silence.
At this point in the disastrous Trump Presidency, it is rare to see even one GOP politician or spokesperson criticize Trump for his thousands of lies or his open racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia.
And if that rare GOP politician or spokesperson dares to criticize Trump, that person quickly becomes a target for Trump and his red hatted loyalists.
But consider the words that Elie Wiesel spoke after receiving the Nobel Prize. He said:
http://eliewieselfoundation.org/elie-wiesel/nobelprizespeech/
To all of these GOP politicians, to every GOP spokesperson, to every member of the US corporate media, your silence in the face of Trump's hate is deafening.
When we see racism, or hear hate speech, it is our civic and moral obligation to speak up, to confront the speaker, and to attempt to shame them, or at least shut them up.
March, write letters to the local media, demonstrate at the offices of your local and national politicians.
We must all do what we can to show these hate speakers that their speech will not be met with the silence that the hate speakers often take as agreement.
When is Trump going to start calling them untermenschen?
In English, untermenschen means sub-humans.
He has not used the English equivalent yet, but it seems inevitable that the GOP will decide on a term similar.
Trump has reduced the GOP message to its essence.
The GOP loves to promote the message that anyone can succeed in America if they work hard.
And this message allows GOP voters to ignore the many poor Americans, because obviously these poor Americans did not work hard or they too would be rich.
But whenever Trump speaks about the poor, the faces are always non-white, the places are always inner city.
And that is the essence of the GOP message, and the essence of its appeal to millions, perhaps 35% of GOP voters.
And that essence is racism.
Trump has reduced the GOP message to its essence.
The GOP loves to promote the message that anyone can succeed in America if they work hard.
And this message allows GOP voters to ignore the many poor Americans, because obviously these poor Americans did not work hard or they too would be rich.
But whenever Trump speaks about the poor, the faces are always non-white, the places are always inner city.
And that is the essence of the GOP message, and the essence of its appeal to millions, perhaps 35% of GOP voters.
And that essence is racism.
The US healthcare system is designed to maximize profits, not health.
And that fact is why the US is ranked 37th in the world, and below countries with a single payer system.
Healthcare expenses cause millions of bankruptcies every year, and many of those filing actually have health insurance.
But Big Pharma is massively profitable, and contributes massively to politicians. Plus, Big Pharma spends more on advertising that research. And this advertising, and these so-called free speech contributions allow the healthcare industries to control and frame the debate.
Single payer is not inventing the wheel, it already exists.
Mueller was not up to the task?
Utter nonsense.
1) Mueller did not write the entire Mueller Report. He oversaw the task force.
2) The report is 448 pages in length. No one could know every detail of every sentence.
3) Robert Mueller's testimony was too dry, to lacking in "optics" for the US corporate media, and many voters. Or so we are told. But this depends on the viewer expecting a reality television spectacle, wherein Mueller reveals some incredibly damaging information, and does it while dancing with the stars and also engaging in a comedy act.
But reality is not like that. The important thing, often overlooked, is that Mueller stated that because of a DOJ opinion, he could not indict a sitting President.
Robert Mueller's testimony was too dry, to lacking in "optics" for the US corporate media,
and many voters.
For this I blame
1) the very nature of the broadcast media, and
2) the fact that the US media is corporate controlled and conservative, and
3) the existence of propaganda outlets such as FOX and right wing radio, and
4) the fact that many people confuse what is called "reality television" with actual reality.
In spite of the right wing talking point, a point promoted since the 1960s, the US media generally promotes a right wing narrative that limits what can be presented to its audience. Noam Chomsky describes this as the limits of acceptable dialogue.
Next, as many well know, FOX was literally established to promote a conservative world view, not to serve as an impartial presenter of fact. Right wing, racist hate radio serves the same purpose. And these outlets can lose money and still exist because the billionaires that fund them do so to control the dialogue in the US.
Last, again as informed voters know, Donald Trump himself is a product of the reality television culture. Even though his actual history is one of repeated failures in every area, because of reality television many see him as a business genius.
SO when we see the example of Robert Mueller testifying, even though his testimony exposed Trump's various lies, he never called Trump a liar.
And that is why, in my opinion, House investigations into impeachment related matters can convince the mass of voters who generally do not follow politics that Trump is guilty of many high crimes and misdemeanors.
My hope.
Scribes tried to blot her out. Now a scholar is trying to recover the real Mary Magdalene.
From the article:
On Monday (July 22), the feast day of Mary Magdalene, Elizabeth Schrader will hike up a mountain in the south of France to the cave where, legend has it, the saint lived out her remaining days after the crucifixion of Jesus....
Schrader, a doctoral student at Duke University, has her own way of honoring the woman who witnessed Jesus’ death and resurrection. Schrader’s academic work, like that of others, attempts to liberate Magdalene from the patriarchal overlays of ancient Christian scribes who recorded the New Testament’s four Gospels.
To read more:
https://religionnews.com/2019/07/19/scribes-tried-to-blot-her-out-now-a-scholar-is-trying-to-recover-the-real-mary-magdalene/
There is much more, but the point Ms. Schrader makes is that patriarchy seems to have motivated the actions of early Church leaders and scribes as they eliminated the significance of Mary Magdalene to the work of Jesus.
Israeli archaeologists discover signs of religion in 9,000-year-old city near Jerusalem
From the article:
Those practices might date back to the Stone Age.
The people who lived in a recently discovered 9,000-year-old city just outside present-day Jerusalem were likely people of faith, according to an archaeologist who co-led the excavation....
Vardi said the residents carefully buried their dead in designated burial locations and placed “either useful or precious objects, believed to serve the deceased” after they died, inside the graves.
“We have decorated burial sites, with offerings, and we also found statuettes and figurines, which indicate they had some sort of belief, faith, rituals,” Vardi said. “We also found certain installations, special niches that might have played a role in ritual.”
To read more:
https://religionnews.com/2019/07/19/israeli-archaeologists-discover-signs-of-religion-in-9000-year-old-city-near-jerusalem/
Religion has very deep roots.
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