#donald trump legacy treasures

[blog405095]

🚫 TRUMP LEGACY TREASURE 2024 REVIEW IT IS WORTH IT?

[librewolf]

[Photo: "Trump Buddies". Pat Bagley. The Salt Lake City Tribune, UT. 10/15/2018.] By: Henry A. Giroux Source: Truthout If recent swing-state polls are to be believed, Donald Trump could be on his way to potentially being reelected president. He embodies the overt, brutal, punishing symptoms of the racism, class warfare, and attacks on youth and women that have marred the United States since its inception. Beneath these not-so-hidden authoritarian undercurrents lies neoliberalism’s erosion of and attacks on critical and civic education. This ideology is characterized by a staggering indifference to human needs, systemic racism, intensified class warfare, the fear of living with difference, and a profound obsession with instrumentalist methods, such as racially discriminatory and class-based “zero tolerance” policies, and teaching that focuses on standardized testing outcomes. These issues have been exacerbated by a culture of “disimagination machines,” in which the ruling financial elite control all major media apparatuses. These tools of indoctrination relentlessly churn out manufactured ignorance and a shallow notion of self-interest, promoting a depoliticized notion of individualism. Additionally, these machineries of misinformation undermine the moral imagination’s power to empathize with the claims of others while undercutting the courage of individuals to see beyond the socially induced fog of a culture of immediacy. In this context, critical inquiry and thinking are divorced from the public imagination as sources of resistance. One consequence is that individuals and the larger public are thwarted from envisioning a future that advances democratic values of social and economic justice. The educational force of U.S. society is now dominated by cultural and political institutions such as Fox News and conservative talk shows that erode any sense of shared citizenship, historical consciousness and common vision. No longer part of a moral, civic and ethical project, cultural politics has increasingly degenerated into a repressive corporate-controlled pedagogical apparatus. Functioning as a right-wing war machine, far right cultural platforms battle critical ideas, language, social relations and values that highlight the promise of radical democracy. Under such circumstances, cultural politics are dominated by observation posts of pedagogical repression, transforming what historian Robin D.G. Kelley labels “freedom dreams” into freedom’s nightmares. Propaganda has become the political weapon of the 21st century, corrupting every form of education and every institution associated with the production of ideas, values and knowledge. This has undermined both the capacity for critical thinking and the concept of truth itself. The past does not simply live in the present; it is now being used to cancel out reason and justice as harbingers of a more democratic future. Furthermore, imagining a better world is no longer related to learning from the past. On the contrary, historical knowledge is now being erased as far right legislators ban ideas and subjects that reveal the legacy of slavery, Indigenous genocide, and repression. What Ralph Ellison once called “the shadows of our historical knowledge” are now being purged from public and higher education. No longer a crucial archive and “treasure trove of resources” that “gives shape and contour to present imaginings,” history and remembrance are being suppressed by the new McCarthyite assassins of memory, who engage in censorship, misinformation and political repression. What far right politicians and right-wing media make clear and want to suppress, as historian Tiya Miles observes, is that “U.S. history would not make sense without the study of slavery. Period.” The powerful influence of manufactured ignorance isn’t confined to the morally and politically vacuous right. The liberal mainstream media rarely summon up the truth or journalistic integrity by attacking gangster capitalism or inviting truly informed commentators who have addressed the roots of U.

S. fascism, criticized Israel’s war on Palestinians, addressed the plague of global neoliberalism, or analyzed the war on higher education. Nor do they uplift voices of those critical of the onslaught against reproductive rights, the attacks on oppositional journalists, the threat of nuclear war, the war on the ecological system, the far right war on democracy, the rise of the carceral state, and racial capitalism and systemic racism. The punishing state now wraps itself in mindless entertainment and cruel invective parading as political theater. Americans are bombarded with the babble of liberals who are too cowardly to name Trump as a fascist or as a racist, treating him as either a normal candidate or a bullying clown rather than as a symptom of a deeper malaise of fascism, echoing a pernicious and frightening past. The culture of Google, Instagram, Facebook and X is the enemy of historical consciousness. It is a place where history as a repository of resistance and record of violence dies, along with the power to learn from the past. Historical consciousness, civic courage, and historic movements of resistance are diluted, if not erased, in a culture awash in misinformation and the cult of the self — a culture of willed and commodified ignorance. In such an environment, informed thinking vanishes amid a relentless image-based tsunami of advertisements, reality TV, game shows, and a regressive tide of commodification, atomization and privatization. The spectacle swallows any viable notion of critical agency, turning out zombies consumed with the emotional release and satisfaction that comes with the embrace of bigotry. MAGA hats are the new symbols of a death culture. While there has been a historical tradition in the U.S. of civil rights advocates making education central to politics — especially with the emergence of Freedom Schools and the Highlander Folk School, among other popular cultural pedagogical institutions — too many on the left have neglected the importance of acknowledging the centrality of education to politics for years. In doing so, they have underestimated the pedagogical dimensions of struggle, the power of persuasion, and the pedagogical strategies necessary for challenging forms of domination and for shaping mass consciousness. The recognition that forms of domination are not merely structural but also intellectual and educational has once again emerged within the movements for Black lives, reproductive justice, LGBTQ rights and planetary justice. However, we must make the pedagogical more political and the political more pedagogical at all levels of society and in a wide range of institutions. With the exception of the vast work done in the field of cultural studies and critical pedagogy, many on the left have for too long downplayed matters of culture while focusing on structural analysis, often using jargon that sabotages their politics by functioning as a firewall of obscurity. I am not suggesting that the broad left use language and modes of analysis that are overly simplistic. On the contrary, it is crucial for us to hold the bar of analysis high while still being rigorous and accessible, so that people can recognize themselves in the rhetoric of persuasion and calls for economic and social justice. The U.S. is now home to a significant number of utterly reactionary, ignorant people who are complicit with a politics and social order that will ultimately destroy their dignity, welfare and agency — not to mention democracy itself. Authors George Orwell and Aldous Huxley could not have imagined a scenario where the merging of power and culture today works so insidiously to usher in fascism under the guise of electoral integrity. Trump and his followers have run the authoritarian gambit, supporting election fraud, aligning themselves with dictators, such as Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán, calling for racial cleansing, threatening violence against Muslims and immigrants, embracing antisemitism,

expressing a contempt for dissent, endorsing white Christian nationalism, calling for the jailing of alleged “enemies,” and expressing a contempt for democracy. Novelist Sinclair Lewis’s purported statement made 80 years ago, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross,” speaks presciently to a current brand of U.S. fascism that blends white Christian religious fundamentalism, ultranationalism, and a culture of lies and ignorance. This observation challenges the claim that fascism is limited to a specific historical period, suggesting that it offers no insights into the present. In The Black Hole of Auschwitz, Italian writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi rejects that view, asserting that the seeds of fascism are not only present in every society but are spread in a variety of ways, including through the use of a repressive culture and educational system. He writes: Every age has its own fascism, and we see the warning signs wherever the concentration of power denies citizens the possibility and the means of expressing and acting on their own free will. There are many ways of reaching this point, and not just through the terror of police intimidation, but by denying and distorting information, by undermining systems of justice, by paralyzing the education system, and by spreading in a myriad subtle ways nostalgia for a world where order reigned, and where the security of a privileged few depends on the forced labor and the forced silence of the many. The forces of fascism at work in the U.S. have grown from an endless series of assaults on democracy. The memory of fascism and its consequences are disappearing with the erosion of historical memory and a politics of erasure, most evident in the GOP’s banning of books, repression of dissent and whitewashing of history. Racism, nativism and a culture of cruelty now shape the mission of schools at various levels while broadcasting an insidious pedagogy of bigotry, hatred and white nationalism through various circuits, platforms and channels of culture. Equally insidious is the presence of Vichy-like politicians and celebrities condemning young people in the U.S. fighting for Palestinian freedom while facing police violence. These same individuals ignore (if not perpetuate) some of the most serious problems facing the globe. As the blood flows and tens of thousands die in Gaza, with reports of mass graves of Palestinian civilians becoming more public, the mainstream media dismiss and disparage campus protesters as uninformed and antisemitic. These accusations often serve to cover up the genocide in Gaza while highlighting the alleged moral indignation of far right antisemites in the GOP, such as the bullying New York Rep. Elise Stefanik. Attacks on campus protesters have also come from Trump, who claimed in a speech to wealthy donors that if elected in 2024, he would expel student demonstrators from the United States, asserting that many of them are foreign students. He also praised the New York City Police Department for forcibly removing the protesters from Columbia University. Instead of condemning Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians, Trump stated that he supports Israel’s “war on terror,” while boasting of his support for Netanyahu’s Israel. Trump’s rhetoric of punishment and deportation is especially dangerous given his relentless admiration for dictators, support for authoritarian governance, and repeated calls for using state violence against his enemies, including Black people, immigrants and the dissident media. Moreover, Trump and his billionaire enablers despise democracy, aligning perfectly with Trump’s vision, as presented in a recent video, of a “unified Reich.” Those who attack higher education institutions as bastions of radical leftists are often the same ones who believe that Trump won the 2020 election and remain silent about his indictments, his lying, his endless threats of violence and his embrace of the language of dictators.

They’re also the same people who support the violent and racist rhetoric embraced by Trump and who claim, with no irony intended, that the people who ransacked the Capitol and carried out violence on January 6 are hostages instead of violent perpetrators. Individuals and groups who support this politically and morally bankrupt view of politics and education, including the indoctrination factories being produced in Florida and elsewhere, have nothing to be proud of. As enemies of democracy, they are either complicit in or willing to implement a counterrevolution in the U.S. against what they have rightly labeled (albeit for the wrong reasons) as the radical spirit of democracy embraced by various social movements in the 1960s. The moral and political degeneracy depicted in the film The Zone of Interest is no longer merely a subject of entertainment or far right distortion. It is a stark reality that no longer hides in the shadows of history. The film focuses on the horror of Auschwitz, which takes place removed from the suffocating cocoon of moral and political indifference defining everyday life. It prompts the viewer to analyze the brutality of the concentration camps through conditions not readily seen or visible. Death and massive suffering are explored through the lens of invisibility. The film makes clear that those who remain silent, look away, or find solace in comforting lies have become akin to the “good Germans” who looked the other way in the 1930s. The brutality of a fascist past is with us once again, bolstered by a merging of manufactured ignorance, the collapse of civic consciousness, and a plague of historical and social memory loss that invites a future too horrible to contemplate. Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include The Terror of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles Review of Books, 2019), On Critical Pedagogy, 2nd edition (Bloomsbury, 2020);  Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis (Bloomsbury 2021); Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance (Bloomsbury 2022) and Insurrections: Education in the Age of Counter-revolutionary Politics (Bloomsbury 2023). Giroux is also a member of Truthout’s Board of Directors.  His website is www.henryagiroux.com

[trumpinatorbobblehead]

Trumpinator Bobblehead - Proud Patriots Trump Collectibles Reply to client

Have you ever wondered what makes the Trumpinator Bobblehead not just a collector’s item but a piece of political history? You’re holding a figurine that’s more than its nods and wobbles. With 711 glowing reviews, its charm and the craftsmanship behind it are undeniable. As you explore further, you’ll find that this bobblehead stands at the gateway to an array of Trump-themed merchandise, each with its own story and legacy. Dare to journey beyond, and you’ll uncover treasures that are not only investments but also rare glimpses into the Trump era. What will you discover next?

Product Overview

Among the plethora of Trump-themed merchandise, the Trumpinator Bobblehead stands out not only for its unique design but also for its high-quality resin construction, making it a must-have for collectors and enthusiasts alike. You’ll immediately notice the exceptional attention to detail that went into crafting this piece. The resin material not only adds a premium feel but also ensures durability, meaning this bobblehead can stand the test of time as a prominent display item or a cherished collectible.

What sets the Trumpinator Bobblehead apart is its limited availability. With only a finite number produced, owning one becomes a symbol of exclusivity. This aspect appeals to collectors who are always on the lookout for rare finds that could potentially increase in value over time. Plus, the regular price of $29.99 makes it an accessible yet valuable addition to any collection.

The bobblehead’s popularity is evidenced by its 711 reviews, a testament to its appeal among Trump supporters and memorabilia collectors. Each review highlights the bobblehead’s quality and the satisfaction of purchasers, indicating a high level of customer satisfaction.

Bestselling Trump Merchandise

Diving into the world of best-selling Trump merchandise, you’ll find that the Trumpinator Bobblehead leads the pack, boasting an impressive 711 reviews that underscore its popularity among fans and collectors alike. Crafted from high-quality resin material and priced at a consistent $29.99, its appeal lies not just in its craftsmanship but in its representation of a political icon in a playful, yet respectful manner.

Following closely, the Trumpinator Teddy Bear, with 446 reviews, captures hearts with its unique blend of softness and political statement, making it a favorite among both young supporters and those young at heart. Its popularity speaks volumes about the diverse audience that finds common ground in Trump-themed memorabilia.

The Trump 2024 Black and Gold Coin, though holding a lower review count of 110, shines in its own right. This piece taps into the collector’s spirit of those who appreciate the blend of political fervor and the timeless value of collectible coins. Its aesthetic appeal and symbolic gesture towards a future campaign make it a must-have.

Not to be overlooked, the Trump Mugshot Collector Trading Card, with 212 reviews, and the Donald Trump 2024 Bobblehead, featuring Trump hugging the American flag and gathering 312 reviews, round out the top selections. These items, with their detailed craftsmanship and emotional resonance, underline the fervent support and the nostalgic hope many hold for Trump’s political journey.

Analyzing these bestsellers, you’ll notice a trend that goes beyond mere collectibility. Each item, in its own way, tells a story, captures an ethos, and holds a promise of belonging to something greater than oneself. The enthusiasm surrounding these items isn’t just about owning a piece of memorabilia; it’s about making a statement and holding onto a piece of political history.

Limited Edition Finds

Moving beyond the realm of popular collectibles, let’s explore the unique allure of limited edition finds that cater to the most discerning of Trump merchandise collectors. These rarities, often marked by their limited quantities and distinctive features, beckon enthusiasts into a world of exclusivity and prestige. Imagine owning a piece of history, like the Trump Physical Trading Cards - Collection #2, with a mere 2,500 units in existence. Each card isn’t just a collectible; it’s a testament to the fervent support and the cultural phenomenon surrounding Trump’s persona and presidency.

Diving deeper, the Trump Mugshot Golden Proof Coin, featuring a MAGA Privy Mark, is not merely a collector’s item; it’s a bold statement piece. Its limited availability, coupled with its intricate design, makes it a must-have for those who value rarity and craftsmanship. This isn’t just about collecting; it’s about investing in a piece of the legacy that will only appreciate over time.

Moreover, the allure of the Trump Triple Image GOLD Hologram Trading Card, numbered from 1 to 2,024, cannot be overstated. Graded Gem Mint 10, these cards offer not just visual appeal but also the thrill of owning a piece of a very limited series. It’s these elements of scarcity, quality, and uniqueness that transform them from mere objects into coveted treasures.

For collectors, it’s not just about the item itself, but the story it tells and the exclusivity it represents. Limited edition finds like these aren’t just purchases; they’re investments in a piece of political and cultural history.

Exclusive Trump Items

For the aficionado of Trump memorabilia, exclusive items like The Talking Trumpinator, which voices 10 distinctive phrases, represent not just unique collectibles but a deeper engagement with the political and cultural impact of Donald Trump’s persona. These aren’t mere trinkets; they’re artifacts of a tumultuous era, embodying the fervor and divisive spirit of Trump’s tenure. Each piece, from the whimsical Donald Trump Elf to the more solemn Trump 2024 items, serves as a testament to the indelible mark left by Trump on American politics and society.

Diving into the specifics, The Talking Trumpinator stands out not only for its novelty but for the craftsmanship involved. Made with high-quality resin, it’s durable, meticulously detailed, and designed to last, making it a centerpiece of any collection. The inclusion of phrases known to rally supporters or provoke conversation encapsulates Trump’s unique communication style, offering owners a slice of presidential history.

Beyond the bobblehead, exclusive items like the Proud Patriots VIP Club benefits and automatic entry into giveaways add an experiential layer to the collection. They’re not just purchases; they’re passports to a community, a shared identity among those who cherish Trump’s legacy. This exclusivity heightens the allure, making each item not just a collector’s dream but a symbol of belonging.

These exclusive Trump items aren’t merely memorabilia; they’re milestones, capturing the essence of a political phenomenon. Their uniqueness lies not in rarity alone but in their ability to evoke discussion, nostalgia, and even controversy—hallmarks of Trump’s era. As collectors invest in these pieces, they’re securing a part of history, a tangible connection to a presidency that, regardless of one’s political leanings, changed America.

Customer Reviews

Customer reviews serve as the lifeblood of the Trump merchandise world, offering you a firsthand glimpse into the quality and appeal of each collectible. The Trumpinator Bobblehead, with its 711 reviews, stands out not just for its quantity but for the glowing sentiment shared by its buyers. You’ll find an overwhelming number of these reviews highlight the high-quality resin material, a detail that isn’t just about durability but also the finesse in its craftsmanship. This isn’t just another piece of memorabilia; it’s a collector’s gem, cherished for its detail and precision.

Diving deeper, enthusiasts have pointed out the meticulous attention to detail in the design. From the caricature’s expression to its stance, every element has been crafted to evoke a sense of both humor and admiration. The consistency in positive feedback about the product’s aesthetic and build quality suggests a level of satisfaction that exceeds mere ownership—it borders on pride.

What’s equally fascinating is the comparison to other items in the Trump merchandise universe. While the Trumpinator Teddy Bear and the Trump 2024 Black and Gold Coin have their share of admirers, the Bobblehead’s appeal transcends. It isn’t just seen as a collectible but a statement piece, a conversation starter, and for some, a symbol of political allegiance.

Moreover, the enthusiasm in these reviews often mentions the fair pricing. Despite its popularity, the Bobblehead’s price has remained accessible, a factor that likely contributes to its best-selling status. In sum, the customer reviews don’t just endorse the Trumpinator Bobblehead; they celebrate it, highlighting its unique position in the pantheon of political memorabilia.

Conclusion

In wrapping up, it’s clear that the Trumpinator Bobblehead isn’t just a collectible; it’s the gateway to an unparalleled array of Trump-themed merchandise. Each item, from the beloved Teddy Bear to the regal 2024 Black and Gold Coin, not only celebrates a unique aspect of the Trump legacy but also offers fans a tangible piece of political history. Whether you’re drawn to limited edition treasures or exclusive finds, customer reviews attest to their undeniable appeal, making each purchase a worthy investment for enthusiasts and collectors alike.

Visit 2024patriotsforpresident.com for more knowledge about Trumpinator Bobblehead.

[mariacallous]

In the clubby world of Washington, D.C., trade lawyers, Robert Lighthizer was always an outsider. He became wealthy representing the steel industry in its decadeslong battles to block imports, while Republican and Democratic administrations alike pursued free-trade deals. “It was like he was in the Galapagos,” away from the action in Washington, D.C., where trade pacts were being hammered out, another trade lawyer told me.

But in Donald Trump, Lighthizer found a president who shared his protectionist ideas. Together they shifted U.S. economic policy away from engagement with China toward confrontation. While the shift had been gathering speed for some years before 2016, none of Trump’s predecessors had been willing to bludgeon China with massive tariffs to pursue U.S. goals. Reversing U.S. policy toward China is probably the Trump administration’s most important economic legacy.

In No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers, Lighthizer recounts how he fought China as Trump’s U.S. trade representative—essentially the top general in a three-year trade war—and recommends policies to finish the job. No challenge is more important, he argues. “China remains the largest geopolitical threat the United States has faced, perhaps since the American Revolution,” he writes, elevating China over Nazi Germany or Civil War secessionists.

Lighthizer has produced an important book, though a wildly uneven one. No Trade Is Free is sure to be a handbook for Republican presidential candidates searching for a China policy and economic nationalists across the board. During the Trump administration, Lighthizer was always in the running for White House chief of staff, and in our age-is-just-a-number political era, the 75-year-old Lighthizer is a likely candidate for that office or another senior post should Trump regain the White House.

No Trade Is Free is a kludge of two different books. The main part is an informative and provocative account of how he fought the China trade war and other trade battles. While he oversells his and Trump’s accomplishments and doesn’t acknowledge any of the failures, his efforts have important lessons for dealing with Beijing.

But he tacks on a shorter book in which he proposes truly radical policy recommendations to delink the U.S. and China. He would hike tariffs to towering levels, end the benefits China has received from the United States for joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), cut off investment between the nations, block Chinese social media companies, halt cooperation on technology—and keep the measures in place until China’s trade surplus, now nearly $400 billion, disappears. In other words, for decades if not forever.

He calls his proposals “strategic decoupling,” but there is nothing strategic about it. He would fully sever ties between the world’s two most important economies—with likely disastrous results.

Lighthizer and I have a long and complicated relationship. As a Wall Street Journal reporter, I began covering him in 1996 when he was the treasurer and unofficial idea man for Sen. Bob Dole’s ill-fated presidential run.

Back then, his swagger and protectionism were a novelty. He raced a red Porsche 911 Targa at a track in West Virginia. For his 40th birthday, he installed a big oil portrait of himself in the parlor of his suburban Maryland home. “I think everyone should have one,” he joked with guests. “I don’t mean a painting of yourself; I mean a painting of me.” When he moved to Florida, he kept the painting but moved it to a less prominent location.

When he was Trump’s trade representative, I covered him intensively, sometimes flying with him to Beijing in the hopes of getting a hint of his next move in the trade war. That rarely worked; he would sleep nearly the entire 13-hour flight. I co-wrote a book about the trade war where he played a major role.

Sometimes he took sharp exception to what I wrote and once even denounced me and my co-author, Lingling Wei, by name in a press release for a story he thought was false. He stopped answering emails after we wrote a piece arguing the U.S. didn’t win the trade war. But in my exit interview with him two days after the storming of the U.S. Capitol, he said this: “I don’t always agree with you, as you know, but I—you know, you’re a hardcore, old-school journalist in a—in a—I mean, you’re like a goddamned, you know, dinosaur.” (I took that as a compliment.)

It wasn’t obvious that Lighthizer, a big, showy personality, would thrive under Trump. But his work with Dole taught him how to get along with a boss who has no interest in sharing the limelight, a crucial skill for working with Trump. In an administration filled with leakers and bumblers, Lighthizer was close-mouthed and competent. He didn’t call attention to himself like advisor Steve Bannon or fight Trump decisions like Defense Secretary James Mattis. Lighthizer was one of the few Trump aides whose reputation was enhanced through his service.

Lighthizer used Air Force One flights to Florida, where his home was just a few miles from Mar-a-Lago, to get to know his boss better. He made friends with Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and counted on the latter to help sew up some trade deals. In his book, Lighthizer is unfailingly complimentary of Trump and doesn’t say a word about Trump’s efforts to reverse the 2020 election or the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021—the events that caused another prominent China hawk in the administration, Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, to finally resign.

The book recalls when Trump upbraided Lighthizer during a televised meeting with Chinese negotiators because Lighthizer was pushing for what’s called a “memorandum of understanding” with Beijing. In the trade world, an MOU is a deal that doesn’t require congressional approval, but in Trump’s real estate world it means a preliminary agreement. After making a brief effort to try to difference to Trump, Lighthizer recounts how he promised never to use the term MOU again. But he doesn’t say how his top aides later lobbied reporters to downplay any disagreement with Trump.

While he was trade representative, Lighthizer used unconventional means—tariffs on a scale not used since the 1930s—to produce a conventional outcome, a trade deal incorporating numerous U.S. compromises. Rather than decouple from China, strategically or otherwise, his Phase One accord envisioned increased trade between the two nations and had detailed procedures to work out disputes. Ironically, Lighthizer provided a roadmap for continued engagement, not decoupling.

The Biden administration hasn’t had the political will yet to try to build on his work. And irony upon irony, Lighthizer praises the Biden team for continuing the tariffs, but not the deal. “Fortunately, the Biden administration so far hasn’t taken the bait” of cutting tariffs in the hopes of getting China to import more U.S. goods, he writes.

Lighthizer’s own opposition to China is rooted in his disdain for free trade and the rapid pace of globalization since the 1990s. As a young official in the Reagan administration, he helped negotiate deals to limit imports of Japanese cars and computer chips. After Japan’s economy cratered, China became the next target for economic nationalists like Lighthizer.

He criticizes what he calls China’s mercantilist policies, although his definition of mercantilism describes his own policy preferences. “Mercantilism is a school of nationalistic political economy that emphasizes the role of government intervention, trade barriers, and export promotion in building a wealthy, powerful state,” he writes. Exactly the direction he wants the United States to head.

Yet he doesn’t explain why he thinks the radical decoupling he proposes is necessary only three years after he left office. He repeats the usual complaints about Chinese economic and military predation, threats to Taiwan, and violation of human rights—all of which were clear when he was in the government and none of which got in the way of him doing business with Beijing. In his book, he recalls how he ignored Beijing’s takeover of Hong Kong and demolition of democratic rights there because that would get in the way of finishing his trade deal. “I quickly responded [to Chinese negotiator Liu He] that the Hong Kong issue was not related to our discussions and that we needed to stay in our own lane,” he writes.

Lighthizer doesn’t mention his inaction on Taiwan. He discontinued low-level talks on trade and investment common in previous administrations and opposed deeper economic integration. Trump national security officials regarded Lighthizer as the biggest impediment in their push for a free-trade pact with Taiwan, which they believed would give Taiwan a political boost.

To Lighthizer, Taiwan was just another Asian export-hungry nation subsidizing its goods and stealing U.S. jobs, and one that could distract from a trade deal with Beijing. He called himself “a business guy” when I would ask about his policy toward the self-governing island. Foreign policy was for others.

As a trade negotiator, Lighthizer could be fierce. In Trump’s first meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, Lighthizer bluntly lectured Xi about Chinese cybertheft, pressure on U.S. companies, and the impact of big trade deficits on American workers. The Chinese side was stunned. “It was not exactly a setting known for open, critical speech directed at the highest authorities” of the Chinese Communist Party, he writes.

At a dinner afterward, the Chinese seated two of the seven members of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee on either side of Lighthizer to try to figure out how much influence he had on China policy.

In confronting China, Lighthizer calculated that the United States alone still had enough economic heft to force Beijing to change. For years the U.S. had largely worked out trade disagreements through the WTO, which takes years to reach decisions and whose rules don’t cover many U.S. complaints about China, such as unfair subsidization of domestic companies or the actions of state-owned companies.

Instead, Lighthizer dusted off Section 301 of U.S. trade law that sometimes authorizes the president to impose tariffs in response to unfair trade practices without turning to the WTO. Lighthizer found plenty of Chinese actions that met that definition, including theft of intellectual property, pressure on American companies to turn over technology, and regulations that disadvantaged American agricultural and other exporters. By the end of the three-year trade war, Trump imposed tariffs of as high as 25 percent on three-fourths of everything China sold to the U.S.

Lighthizer recounts in detail round after round of negotiations that produced a deal where, on paper, the U.S. came out ahead. China agreed to strengthen cooperation on intellectual property protection, end discriminatory regulations, vastly increase purchases of U.S. goods, and work out disagreements. The U.S. also kept in place nearly all its tariffs and said it would only roll them back when China carried out its pledges. He pats himself on the back for a “historic success” and says China has largely met its obligations, aside from purchases, though he now opposes any tariff rollback. But he doesn’t discuss any of the deal’s shortcomings or failures, or the times Trump backed off from tough actions when the stock market started to tank because of the trade war.

A fuller account of the trade war makes it clear that the U.S. wasn’t the winner—nor was China. Both the U.S. and Chinese economies suffered, though China’s more than America’s because it is more dependent on trade. China fell 40 percent short of its commitments to buy U.S. goods. The Office of the United States Trade Representative continues to complain about Chinese coercion, technology theft, and other misdeeds.

Trade is one of the many battles the two sides continue to fight in their deepening conflict. The Biden administration has picked up on Trump complaints about the shortfall in purchases and continued pressure by China on U.S. companies to hand over technology. Chinese negotiators still press the U.S. to lift tariffs as a sign of goodwill.

As for helping factory workers, tariffs did the opposite. Prior to the pandemic-induced recession of 2020, the United States was adding factory jobs, but 75 percent of the gain occurred before the first tariffs took effect against China in July 2018. Then growth in manufacturing jobs began to decline and stalled out before the pandemic reached U.S. shores.

The clearest winner from the trade war is Vietnam. According to calculations by Kearney, a management consulting firm, China shipped $50 billion less in manufactured goods to the U.S. in 2021 than it did in 2018, as tariffs on China increased. During that same time, Vietnam—free from those U.S. tariffs—increased its factory goods shipments to the U.S. by $50 billion. The additional export revenue helped Vietnam to build up its industrial parks, ports, and roads and attract higher-paying industries like electronics. In yet another trade war irony, many of those new Vietnamese export companies are Chinese-owned.

In one of the book’s biggest omissions, Lighthizer fails to detail the concessions Chinese negotiators agreed to make concerning industrial subsidies and the behavior of state-owned firms but then dropped in May 2019 when they were overruled by the Politburo Standing Committee. These areas were top U.S. priorities. Disclosing the text would have been enormously useful in understanding China’s economic red lines and helping future American negotiators push for change.

There is precedence for publishing preliminary text.  In 1999, Clinton’s trade representative, Charlene Barshefsky, published China’s offer to sharply remake its economic policy to get Clinton’s backing to join the WTO, even though Clinton at that point hadn’t approved the deal. Barshefsky wanted to make sure the Chinese didn’t back off from its pledges, infuriating the Chinese. Her tactic largely worked.

Lighthizer doesn’t explain this omission. In earlier conversations, he said he wanted to act in good faith with Liu, China’s top negotiator, whom he had come to admire. In the trade world, gentlemen don’t reveal texts that aren’t included in a final deal.

Even if it wasn’t a U.S. victory, there are important lessons to learn from the trade war. Tariffs, even on the scale Lighthizer used them, won’t tank the global economy, as S&P Global and many on Wall Street had worried. Eliminating the China tariffs now could reduce inflation by roughly 1 percentage point, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a free-trade think tank that views tariffs the same way the Catholic Church views Satan. With inflation running around 4 percent or so, that isn’t an insignificant number, but it’s not economy-shaking, either.

Importers paid the tariffs and only sometimes passed them on to consumers, keeping the inflationary bite lower than expected. Trade with China has now reached pre-pandemic highs, although imports of tariffed goods lag behind, as customers shifted to producers outside of China.

Lighthizer, who considers himself a conservative Republican, also showed that tariffs and trade policy could be used to further some progressive goals.

During talks with Mexico and Canada, he negotiated a provision in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement requiring automakers to pay hourly wages of $16 for much of the work done on cars shipped to the U.S.—besting by $1 an hour Bernie Sanders’s dream for a new minimum wage. Another provision enables the trade representative to sue Mexico for labor violations at Mexican factories.

He also demonstrated that tariffs can sometimes preserve jobs. The 25 percent tariff he placed on Chinese auto imports helped blunt an automobile import surge from China that had swamped Europe. He now supports using tariffs to help fight climate change by raising the cost of imports made by carbon-intensive methods.

But Lighthizer takes his infatuation with tariffs too far. He proposes using them to eliminate the enormous U.S. trade deficit with China altogether. To do that would require a level of protectionism much greater than anything he advocated while in office.

The trade war showed that 25 percent tariffs reduced the trade deficit with China somewhat, but the overall trade deficit continued to rise. While he doesn’t name a number in the book, the tariffs he envisions would need to be much higher than 25 percent—probably more like 100 percent or higher—and they would have to be imposed widely to stop countries like Vietnam coming in to pick up the lost trade.

Levies of that scale could devastate the broad swaths of the U.S. economy—from importers of toys and clothing to makers of machinery and electronics that use imported parts from China. While Lighthizer argues that the income from the tariffs would be a boon to the U.S. Treasury, the trade war shows that wouldn’t be the case. The additional income the U.S. collected on 25 percent tariffs went to subsidize farmers whose sales cratered after China responded with its own levies. Tariffs high enough to fully block imports do just that—meaning there is no tariff revenue to collect.

And what if the Chinese retaliate with their own tariffs in the new trade war he proposes? Lighthizer is sanguine about the loss of U.S. exports to China. “To the extent that they [retaliate],” he writes, “that would also contribute to the strategic decoupling.”

Lighthizer doesn’t weigh the likelihood that China would retaliate in sectors where the U.S. needs imports to meet environmental and other goals. China gave a hint of the sort of pressure it could apply recently when it said it would restrict exports of gallium and germanium used to make advanced microelectronics. China dominates the markets for solar and wind power equipment, automobile electric batteries, and minerals used in electronics, among other industries.

Throughout his book, Lighthizer argues that eliminating the trade deficit is crucial to help workers and restore American power, but he provides little evidence to make his case. Right now, the U.S. unemployment rate, for instance, has fallen nearly to 50-year lows despite a mushrooming trade deficit.

Chinese imports certainly have hurt big swaths of the Southeast and upper Midwest where factory towns lost out to Chinese imports. Import competition is also one reason median incomes have been stuck for years. But other factors are important there, too, including automation and the falling level of unionization.

There have been enormous gains from globalization, too, which Lighthizer largely ignores. Imports have lowered costs for American businesses and consumers across the board, increased the range of goods available to consumers, and put pressure on U.S. industry to innovate. Foreign investors employ millions of Americans and have brought new technology to the U.S. Lighthizer isn’t alone in downplaying the traditional gains from trade. That’s been one of the impacts of the current swing to economic nationalism.

Lighthizer sees the trade deficit as enabling China’s rise. “It is no exaggeration to say that the biggest navy and biggest army in the world has been built with U.S. dollars and it is not in America,” he writes.

It’s also no exaggeration to say that the roughly $1 trillion Beijing invested in U.S. government securities is essentially held hostage in the U.S., giving the U.S. significant political leverage. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown, in a pinch, the U.S. can freeze assets held by foreigners. Despite China’s efforts to make the yuan a global currency, world trade is still dominated by the dollar.

It’s true that expanded trade means the U.S. sends hundreds of billions of dollars to China, which China has used to grow and prosper. That’s what was intended. That trade has helped transform China and lifted tens of millions of Chinese out of poverty.

He doesn’t consider what might have happened if the U.S. had kept China outside the global trading system. It’s not hard to imagine a still-poverty-wracked China, embittered at the U.S., looking to foment revolution and arming American adversaries with weapons, including nuclear ones, as it did for countries like Vietnam and North Korea before the rapprochement between the two nations in the 1970s.

Lighthizer’s view that the U.S. depends too heavily on China is now widely shared. The trade war followed by the pandemic showed that the U.S. relies too much on global supply chains for medicine, technology, and other critical goods. American companies also were late in realizing the need to diversify their manufacturing away from China. A correction is underway. But how to manage that correction? The Lighthizer of No Trade Is Free would undo the remaining ties between the world’s two largest economies. The Lighthizer who negotiated a trade deal with China held out hope that the two countries could continue to work together and sort out their differences.

[pashterlengkap]

GOP governor candidate called LGBTQ+ people “filth” & “demonic”

North Carolina’s viciously anti-LGBTQ+ Lieutenant Governor has announced he is running for governor of the state. In his campaign announcement video, Republican Mark Robinson said he didn’t care “about the zip code you live in, the size of your paycheck, whether you’re Black, white, straight, or gay,” but everything he has ever said about LGBTQ+ people contradicts that claim. --- Related Stories North Carolina senate passes “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would out trans kids to their families The bill would also ban books and potentially cost the state a multi-billion dollar backlash. --- Just this past March, Robinson declared that God created him to battle against LGBTQ+ rights and added, “Makes me sick every time I see it — a church that flies that Rainbow flag, which is a direct spit in the face of God almighty.” In 2017, he wrote on Facebook, “You CAN NOT love God and support the homosexual agenda.” In 2021, Robinson compared LGBTQ+ people to cow dung and claimed straight people are superior to gay people due to their ability to procreate. In the same sermon, he declared there are only two genders and disparaged trans people’s bodies: “I don’t care how much you cut yourself up, drug yourself up and dress yourself up, you still either one of two things — you either a man or a woman.” He also said people who support events like Drag Queen Story Hour do so because they desire to molest children. He has previously proclaimed that being gay is a step before pedophilia, that former First Lady Michelle Obama is secretly a trans woman, and referred to trans-affirming people as “devil-worshipping child molesters.” He also condemned gay people as an “abominable sin” in response to the 2016 Pulse massacre. Robinson also created an education task force to investigate and pull LGBTQ+ literature from public schools, as well as report instances of LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools. Teachers’ names, employers, and information were released unredacted by the report, yet many of the complaints weren’t verified or even authenticated. Also in 2021, he refused to heed calls for his resignation after he declared that homosexuality and “transgenderism” are “filth.” He has also called the trans equality movement “demonic” and “full of the spirit of Antichrist.” In November of that year, he allegedly wagged his finger in the face of a state lawmaker who made a speech about supporting LGBTQ+ people. In 2022, he said climate change is “junk science” and called for eliminating science and social studies education from elementary schools. The list goes on. Robinson also has a history of anti-Semitic comments & conduct, loathing Black people who went to see Marvel’s Black Panther due to it being created by a person whom he described as an “Agnostic Jew” and a “Satanic Marxist.” He also stated his belief in the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was created by a cabal of globalists to try to ruin Donald Trump’s re-election. According to WRAL News, he announced his run for governor at Ace Speedway, a venue known for intentionally violating shutdown orders at the beginning of the pandemic. “Mark Robinson is an extremist who has built a legacy of division by spewing hate toward the LGBTQ community, disrespecting women, putting culture wars ahead of classrooms, and pushing to ban abortion with no exceptions,” said a statement from state Democratic Party chair Anderson Clayton. “We need a governor who will expand opportunities for working families and uphold our fundamental rights — not a dangerous politician whose reckless policies would kill jobs and threaten North Carolinians’ future.” Robinson will face off against the state’s current Treasurer, Dale Folwell, in the Republican primary. The winner will then take on the Democrat nominee, who will likely be current attorney general Josh Stein. The state’s current governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, cannot run again due to term limits. http://dlvr.it/Sn7yR7

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Happy Public Domain Day!

On January 1, 2019 something extraordinary happened. For the first time since 1998, the American public domain got bigger.

What happened in 1998? Congress — led by Rep Sonny Bono — extended the copyright on all works by 20 years. Works that had already been in the public domain went back into copyright. Works that were in copyright got an extra 20 years. The public domain…froze.

This was a wanton, destructive act. The vast majority of works that the Sonny Bono Act covered were out-of-print and orphaned, with no known owner. Putting them back into copyright for 20 years prevented their reproduction, guaranteeing that many would vanish from the historical record altogether.

As to the minuscule fraction of works covered by the Act that were still commercially viable: the creators of those works had accepted the copyright bargain of life plus 50 years. Giving them more copyright on works they’d already produced could not provide an incentive to make anything more. All it did was transfer value from the public domain into a vanishing number of largely ultra-wealthy corporate private hands.

As to living, working creators: those who’d made new works based on public domain materials that went back into copyright found themselves suddenly on the wrong side of copyright. Their creative labor was now illegal. Any working, living creator that contemplated making a new work based on material from the once-public-domain was now faced with tracking down an elusive (or possibly nonexistent) rightsholder, paying lawyers to negotiate a license, and subjecting their work to the editorial judgments of the heirs of long-dead creators.

The Sonny Bono Act is often called the Mickey Mouse Act, a recognition of the extraordinary blood and treasure that Disney spilled to attain retroactive copyright extension. This extension ensured that Steamboat Willie — and subsequent Mickey Mouse cartoons, followed by other Disney products — would remain Disney’s for another two decades.

(Actually, there are a lot of copyright historians who believe that Steamboat Willie was already in the public domain due to technical defects in its copyright registration, but no one could afford to fund a lawsuit to find out for sure.)

(What’s more: Steamboat Willie is a mashup of Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr, relying heavily on the kind of fair use permissiveness that the company would later devote its legal might to extinguishing.)

As the years ticked by towards January 1, 2019 — the day that the public domain would reopen, welcoming in the tattered remains of the creative treasures of 1923 — the people who cared about this stuff grew increasingly anxious. Would Disney stage another full court press to extend copyright again, putting even more of our shared cultural legacy in harm’s way to preserve its privilege?

But January 1, 2019 arrived without any further copyright extensions (in the US, anyway — Justin Trudeau let Donald Trump con him into a 20-year retrospective copyright extension in Canada). And on January 25, 2019, hundreds of us gathered at the Internet Archive in San Francisco to ring in the new, old year. I gave the keynote. I think it’s one of my best-ever talks, despite a little bobble in the middle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAUneJpB2vo

Jan 1, 2019 was just the beginning. Every year since, there’s been a fresh crop of works entering the public domain, and each year’s harvest is larger than the previous one’s, as the achingly slow advance of the public domain crawls toward the modern era and its superior preservation practices.

January 1, 2022, was the best-ever day for the public domain since Sonny Bono put it on ice in the previous millennium! As ever, this year’s crop has been lovingly catalogued and contexualized by Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle from the Duke Center for the Public Domain.

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2022/

Jenkins and Boyle have been doing these January 1 roundups for more than a decade, long before the public domain came back in 2019, cataloging what we would have gotten, save for the Disney/Sonny Bono conspiracy of 1998. These older reports were necessarily melancholic, a requiem for our stolen commons.

But since 2019, the Public Domain Day reports have been triumphant, a summing up of the vast storehouses that materials that anyone may access, enjoy, remix and republish. For example, this year, a whopping 400,000 sound recordings from 1926 entered the public domain!

1926 was also a fine year for films, with performances from Harold Lloyd, Greta Garbo, and Buster “Steamboat Bill, Jr” Keaton — the man whose movie Disney took in 1923 for Steamboat Willie, and whose oeuvre Disney put behind a paywall for 20 years in 1998.

On the literary side, we see the public domain debuts of Hemingway’s “Sun Also Rises,” Langston Hughes’s “Weary Blues,” Dorothy Parker’s “Enough Rope,” Felix Salten’s “Bambi” and — wait for it — AA Milne’s “Winnie the Pooh”!

The liberation of the Poohverse is quite a watershed. Pooh’s lifetime earnings are $80.3B, most of which accrued to Disney, its corporate acquirer (Pooh is tied with Mickey Mouse for total historical earnings). Disney has already showed a willingness to play dirty when comes to Pooh. In 2002, the company was fined for illegally destroying 40 boxes of evidence that showed it had shortchanged the Milne estate:

https://www.foxnews.com/story/walt-disney-co-fined-for-destroying-evidence-in-winnie-the-pooh-case

If Disney wants to retain its control over Pooh, it has options. Copyright trolls claiming to own the rights to Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Buck Rogers and Zorro have pioneered a legal playbook to lay claim over the public domain.

This copyfraud depends on a mix of trademark claims:

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/712/353/1475694/

Obscure copyright hair-splitting:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/22/lawsuit-copyright-warmer-sherlock-holmes-dismissed-enola-holmes

And out-and-out lies:

https://www.sffaudio.com/conan-and-new-zealands-new-copyright-law-vs-broken-sea/

These tactics are primarily effective at scaring off commercial rivals. Dedicated fans — especially dedicated fans with law degrees and free time on their hands — can defeat them:

https://blog.jipel.law.nyu.edu/2020/12/sherlock-holmes-and-the-case-of-the-copyrightable-character/

When that happens, beautiful things follow:

http://pegasusbooks.com/books/echoes-of-sherlock-holmes-9781681772257-hardcover

But Disney is no ordinary adversary — its a monopolist whose access to the capital markets has allowed it to buy up an appreciable fraction of our contemporary culture. In three years, Steamboat Willie will enter the public domain. As Jenkins wrote to me, how Disney handles Pooh might be a clue to what they’ll do about Mickey.

It’s all kind of messy. Pooh’s entered the public domain, as have E. H. Shepard’s classic illustrations — but Tigger will stay in copyright for two more years. Meanwhile, Disney has trademark rights for “Winnie the Pooh” on every conceivable product or service — but, bizarrely, Disney also let the trademarks lapse for all the original drawings of the Pooh characters!

Which is all to say: there’s never been a better time for someone (else) to edit an anthology of unauthorized Winnie the Pooh stories.

Of course, Pooh’s not the only Disney acquisition that entered the public domain on Jan 1: you may have noted Bambi’s presence on the list. The Bambi that’s entering the PD comes to us from Felix Salten’s novel which was banned by the Nazis as an allegory for Europe’s treatment of Jews. That Bambi is a bizarre, dark novel for adults, and it’s long overdue for an excellent English translation.

The well-known works now in the PD aren’t limited to stuff that Disney plundered. There’s songs like “Bye, Bye Blackbird” and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” and many, many more. They’re catalogued here:

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/to1949.html#y1926

As is their tradition, Jenkins and Boyle also give us a look at the parallel universe in which Sonny Bono hadn’t locked up the public domain. In that universe, we’d be getting quite a crop of amazing new public domain works, from Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” to Herbert’s “Dune.”

Meanwhile, our European cousins’ public domain just accepted the works of every author who died in 1951, from William Randolf Hearst to Sinclair Lewis to Ludwig Wittgenstein. Canadians are getting Dianne Arbus, Louis Armstrong, Coco Chanel, Ub Iwerks, Ogden Nash, Bill “AA” W and other creators who died in 1971.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

What drove this country crazy after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11? Was it how vulnerable we had been shown to be, that a group of 19 men armed with nothing more than box-cutters could bring the entire country to a halt? Was it that the attack was aimed primarily against innocent civilians, with nearly 3,000 killed at the Twin Towers alone? Was it that with the 19 hijackers dead in the suicidal attacks, we didn't seem to have anyone to retaliate against?  Was it that we had no grasp whatsoever on understanding why our country, the freest and most democratic ever, was hated so much that they would attack us?

I remember how disconnected things felt for days, even weeks, after the attacks. Travelers outside the country didn't have a way to get home because flights had been canceled. People stranded in cities they were visiting within the country couldn't find cars to rent, there were so many trying to get home. Everyone seemed to feel a need to gather with families and friends and hunker down, as if another attack could come at any moment.

The country's leadership was frozen, stunned. Remember the photos of George W. Bush as an aide leaned over his shoulder and whispered the news into his ear? He was the president of the United States, and he looked scared to death. In fact, he was rushed from the school he was visiting in Florida to Air Force One, and his plane took off on what amounted to a flight to nowhere as his administration tried to pull itself together and decide how they would respond. It wasn't until hours later that Air Force One landed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and Bush hurriedly addressed the press in a windowless conference room, vowing to "hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts." Three days would pass before the president was flown to New York to appear atop the rubble of the World Trade Center at what became known as Ground Zero to take a bullhorn and make the pledge that would launch the country on a trajectory that has yet to change: "I can hear you!" he shouted to the workers at the site, "The rest of the world hears you! And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!"

A collective madness ensued. A great scrambling began to protect us against … well, against what? Box-cutters first and foremost, it seemed, as a new regime of inspections began at airports everywhere. The initial panic over the hijacked flights would lead to the establishment of the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, a kind of domestic department of defense which proceeded to put us on what amounted to a wartime footing within our own country that persists even today. How many times have you had to throw a set of fingernail clippers into a bin at airport security because a TSA agent was defending us from terrorism? How about removing your shoes because a lone lunatic made an unsuccessful attempt to blow up an airplane with a "shoe bomb"?

The entire paranoid regimen under which we still live 20 years later grew out of a supposed "war on terror" begun after 9/11 that has never ended. It took a decade to find and kill the actual terrorist who ordered the attacks on 9/11, but in the meantime two shooting wars were launched, only one of which had even the slightest connection to the terrorists who attacked us. There was an elemental problem: The war on terror wasn't against an enemy, it was against an idea, and ideas don't die when you hit them with bombs and bullets.

And so, without a readily definable enemy who could be seen and shot and killed and defeated, which is what wars are usually for, lies were substituted. We were buried with lies, and not just any lies. They had to justify the movement of hundreds of thousands of troops and the expenditure of trillions of dollars in treasure and the loss of thousands more American lives than died on 9/11 and countless more lives — enemies, civilians and, my goodness gracious, even a few real flesh and blood terrorists.

Sept. 11, 2001, was when the Big Lie was born. Or should we say, Big Lies, because they came fast and furious. By now they are known to be so completely without any basis in reality, so wholly bogus, that they hardly bear recounting. Weapons of mass destruction? Connections between Iraq and its government and leaders and the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11? Ha!

And then came new Big Lies to support the earlier Big Lies: that we were "winning" the war on terror. How many times were we reassured that all those lives and all those dollars were not being pissed away for nothing? How many times were we reassured that we were rebuilding the countries that hadn't needed rebuilding until we attacked them? How many times were we told of the miraculous training of the Iraqi and Afghan armies? They even invented a new word that I never learned in the classes I took in military history at West Point, a word to describe the magic bullet that was going to win both wars: the surge. If only we sent 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 or 50,000 more troops, we could  win the mythical war on terror.

"Shock and awe" was a lie. "Taking Baghdad was a lie. The army of Iraq just went away. The "surge," each and every one of them, was a lie. "Winning" was a lie, every single time the word was used. Every. Single. Time. The Afghan army was a lie. It didn't even bother surrendering to the Taliban. It just went … poof. The Afghan "government" was a lie. It too went poof. The Iraqi government is a lie. Everything we have done to win the war on terror for two decades, 20 long years, has been a lie. We wasted trillions of dollars that could have been spent to, I don't know, feed hungry children in Arkansas? Pay for health care for poor families? Send kids to college? Reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and save our planet?

We wasted all those lives, American and Afghan and Iraqi and German and Australian and Polish and every other soldier from every other NATO country who died fighting "terror." And we killed hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi people for nothing.

For nothing.

The biggest Big Lie of them all was that it had meaning, that we accomplished something, that we somehow won the war on terror. Terror hasn't gone away. Hell, we're growing it ourselves now, right here at home.

I'll tell you another war we lost, maybe even a bigger and more important war than the war on terror. We lost the war on truth. And we were warned. Oh yes, we were warned. Take Donald Trump's first Big Lie right after 9/11 as just one example. He claimed — I hope you're sitting down for this — that he could see from his office window in Trump Tower crowds of Muslims across the Hudson River, several miles away, on the roofs of buildings in Jersey City, cheering as the World Trade Center fell.

Remember that one? It was such a patently outrageous lie that it zoomed right past without anyone noticing as the rest of the Big Lies hit one after another.

But Trump got away with it, and he learned from it. Oh, yes. He learned how the Big Lie worked. He learned from watching Bush get away with lying about WMDs, and he learned from the Big Lies that we were winning in Iraq and Afghanistan. So he started trying out other Big Lies of his own, like the one about how Barack Obama wasn't a citizen of the United States, that he had a fake birth certificate, that he was a "secret Muslim." Remember when Trump was all over the TV for days and days claiming that he had sent detectives to Hawaii? All we had to do was wait and he was going to reveal the "truth" about Obama.

He got away with his "birther" Big Lie, and he learned something that he has used ever since, something that helped him drive us into the ditch of the pandemic he lied about for a year, something that has helped him transform an entire political party, the Republican Party, from one of two normal political parties in this country into an authoritarian cult.

He learned that if he told Big Lies that were big enough, and if he repeated them enough times, that he could get away with it, just like Bush got away with lying about WMDs to get us into Iraq. And his party, the Republican Party, learned right along with him. Look at what they are doing right this minute about the insurrection he incited against the Congress of the United States in his naked attempt to overturn the election he lost. Donald Trump and the Republican Party are on a campaign to deny that it happened. They are trying to make a case that it wasn't Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol, it was somebody else, and those who were arrested are political prisoners facing false charges … and on and on and on.

The legacy 9/11 has left us is that there is no common set of facts we can agree on about anything: Not about the COVID pandemic and masks and vaccines; not about the climate change that has killed hundreds and left town after town burned to the ground or under water and destroyed by tornadoes and hurricanes. We cannot agree that votes counted amount to elections won or lost.  We cannot even agree on the common good of vaccines that will save us, that science is worth studying, that learned experts are worth listening to.

The lies that followed 9/11 have torn us apart as a nation and put our democracy in peril. That's our legacy: Lies are now considered by an entire political party to be legitimate political currency. A man who has told so many lies we have lost count of them is now a legitimate political figure supported for the highest office of the land by one of our two political parties.

Lies began tearing us apart after the attacks on 9/11, and we have not regained our footing as a nation. The question hanging over us now is whether we ever will.

Lucian Truscott

[pamphletstoinspire]

Proclamation on 850th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket  

Issued on: December 28, 2020

Today is the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket on December 29, 1170. Thomas Becket was a statesman, a scholar, a chancellor, a priest, an archbishop, and a lion of religious liberty.

Before the Magna Carta was drafted, before the right to free exercise of religion was enshrined as America’s first freedom in our glorious Constitution, Thomas gave his life so that, as he said, “the Church will attain liberty and peace.”

The son of a London sheriff and once described as “a low‑born clerk” by the King who had him killed, Thomas Becket rose to become the leader of the church in England. When the crown attempted to encroach upon the affairs of the house of God through the Constitutions of Clarendon, Thomas refused to sign the offending document. When the furious King Henry II threatened to hold him in contempt of royal authority and questioned why this “poor and humble” priest would dare defy him, Archbishop Becket responded “God is the supreme ruler, above Kings” and “we ought to obey God rather than men.”

Because Thomas would not assent to rendering the church subservient to the state, he was forced to forfeit all his property and flee his own country. Years later, after the intervention of the Pope, Becket was allowed to return — and continued to resist the King’s oppressive interferences into the life of the church. Finally, the King had enough of Thomas Becket’s stalwart defense of religious faith and reportedly exclaimed in consternation: “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

The King’s knights responded and rode to Canterbury Cathedral to deliver Thomas Becket an ultimatum: give in to the King’s demands or die. Thomas’s reply echoes around the world and across the ages. His last words on this earth were these: “For the name of Jesus and the protection of the Church, I am ready to embrace death.” Dressed in holy robes, Thomas was cut down where he stood inside the walls of his own church.

Thomas Becket’s martyrdom changed the course of history. It eventually brought about numerous constitutional limitations on the power of the state over the Church across the West. In England, Becket’s murder led to the Magna Carta’s declaration 45 years later that: “[T]he English church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired.”

When the Archbishop refused to allow the King to interfere in the affairs of the Church, Thomas Becket stood at the intersection of church and state. That stand, after centuries of state-sponsored religious oppression and religious wars throughout Europe, eventually led to the establishment of religious liberty in the New World. It is because of great men like Thomas Becket that the first American President George Washington could proclaim more than 600 years later that, in the United States, “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship” and that “it is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”

Thomas Becket’s death serves as a powerful and timeless reminder to every American that our freedom from religious persecution is not a mere luxury or accident of history, but rather an essential element of our liberty. It is our priceless treasure and inheritance. And it was bought with the blood of martyrs.

As Americans, we were first united by our belief that “rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God” and that defending liberty is more important than life itself. If we are to continue to be the land of the free, no government official, no governor, no bureaucrat, no judge, and no legislator must be allowed to decree what is orthodox in matters of religion or to require religious believers to violate their consciences. No right is more fundamental to a peaceful, prosperous, and virtuous society than the right to follow one’s religious convictions. As I declared in Krasiński Square in Warsaw, Poland on July 6, 2017, the people of America and the people of the world still cry out: “We want God.”

On this day, we celebrate and revere Thomas Becket’s courageous stand for religious liberty and we reaffirm our call to end religious persecution worldwide. In my historic address to the United Nations last year, I made clear that America stands with believers in every country who ask only for the freedom to live according to the faith that is within their own hearts. I also stated that global bureaucrats have absolutely no business attacking the sovereignty of nations that wish to protect innocent life, reflecting the belief held by the United States and many other countries that every child — born and unborn — is a sacred gift from God. Earlier this year, I signed an Executive Order to prioritize religious freedom as a core dimension of United States foreign policy. We have directed every Ambassador — and the over 13,000 United States Foreign Service officers and specialists — in more than 195 countries to promote, defend, and support religious freedom as a central pillar of American diplomacy.

We pray for religious believers everywhere who suffer persecution for their faith. We especially pray for their brave and inspiring shepherds — like Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong and Pastor Wang Yi of Chengdu — who are tireless witnesses to hope.

To honor Thomas Becket’s memory, the crimes against people of faith must stop, prisoners of conscience must be released, laws restricting freedom of religion and belief must be repealed, and the vulnerable, the defenseless, and the oppressed must be protected. The tyranny and murder that shocked the conscience of the Middle Ages must never be allowed to happen again. As long as America stands, we will always defend religious liberty.

A society without religion cannot prosper. A nation without faith cannot endure — because justice, goodness, and peace cannot prevail without the grace of God.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim December 29, 2020, as the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket. I invite the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches and customary places of meeting with appropriate ceremonies in commemoration of the life and legacy of Thomas Becket.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-eighth day of December, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.

DONALD J. TRUMP

[thepatriotplace-blog]

The Patriot Warrior Class

Its been awhile since I’ve posted on Tumblr. In fact I actually kind of forgot I had the account. I created this account a few years ago and I named it “the patriot place”. Pretty self explanatory.

Let me tell you about me. I am first and foremost a patriotic American. I have always called myself a patriot. I’ve been a libertarian party member for many years. I’ve voted in many POTUS general elections for the libertarian candidate (with the exception of 2x). I’ve always had a deep love for the US constitution have spoken out about the blatant corruption of the constitution that has been going on in America my whole life.

I also consider myself a warrior. Although I have never served in the military I was a police officer for 25 years and have since retired. My duties as a police officer included SWAT and emergency tactical medicine. I have been trained by the best warriors America has to offer.

Since the election of Donald Trump (who I didn’t vote for) I have seen the rapid decay of the Libertarian Party. It has become polluted with progressives, pedophiles and people suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. My interactions with the neo-libertarians has been sad. Justin Amash has completely flipped in my view and I align more with Rand Paul than I do with Ron Paul. Jo Jorgesen who is the Libertarian’s Party POTUS candidate is and her public support of a Marxist organization was the last straw for me. I am no longer a member of the libertarian party.

I now consider myself a member of the patriot warrior class. I am prepared to fight and die for the Republic and its constitution. I took an oath to uphold the constitution of the United States and that doesn’t end when there is  (Ret.) at the end of my name. There are many like me. Men and women who served and are currently serving to protect our Republic who believe in what I believe in are what will save this country from the Marxist insurrection, which is back politically by the Democrat Party and financed by the CCP and George Soros that is taking place within the US’s borders.

The neo-libertarians wont fight for the Republic. They are feckless and nothing more than internet bottle throwers and trolls. Their mentality is the same as the progressives, ‘Burn it down at all costs to get Trump out.”

The single most important event that turned the page in this chapter in my life had to be Trump’s speech at the National Archives Museum on Constitution Day. I have never heard a politician since Reagan deliver a speech more patriotic than this speech. I’ve included the transcript of that speech. So I will end this post with this.... In 2020 I will vote Vote Trump.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you, Mike. A great Vice President. I am truly honored to be here at the very first White House Conference on American History. So important.

Our mission is to defend the legacy of America’s founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of the American character. We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country. We want our sons and daughters to know that they are the citizens of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world. (Applause.)

To grow up in America is to live in a land where anything is possible, where anyone can rise, and where any dream can come true — all because of the immortal principles our nation’s founders inscribed nearly two and a half centuries ago.

That’s why we have come to the National Archives, the sacred home of our national memory. In this great chamber, we preserve our glorious inheritance: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

On this very day in 1787, our Founding Fathers signed the Constitution at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It was the fulfillment of a thousand years of Western civilization. Our Constitution was the product of centuries of tradition, wisdom, and experience. No political document has done more to advance the human condition or propel the engine of progress.

Yet, as we gather this afternoon, a radical movement is attempting to demolish this treasured and precious inheritance. We can’t let that happen. (Applause.) Left-wing mobs have torn down statues of our founders, desecrated our memorials, and carried out a campaign of violence and anarchy. Far-left demonstrators have chanted the words “America was never great.” The left has launched a vicious and violent assault on law enforcement — the universal symbol of the rule of law in America. These radicals have been aided and abetted by liberal politicians, establishment media, and even large corporations.

Whether it is the mob on the street, or the cancel culture in the boardroom, the goal is the same: to silence dissent, to scare you out of speaking the truth, and to bully Americans into abandoning their values, their heritage, and their very way of life.

We are here today to declare that we will never submit to tyranny. We will reclaim our history and our country for citizens of every race, color, religion, and creed.

The radicals burning American flags want to burn down the principles enshrined in our founding documents, including the bedrock principle of equal justice under law. In order to radically transform America, they must first cause Americans to lose confidence in who we are, where we came from, and what we believe. As I said at Mount Rushmore — which they would love to rip down and it rip it down fast, and that’s never going to happen — two months ago, the left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.

As many of you testified today, the left-wing rioting and mayhem are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools. It’s gone on far too long. Our children are instructed from propaganda tracts, like those of Howard Zinn, that try to make students ashamed of their own history.

The left has warped, distorted, and defiled the American story with deceptions, falsehoods, and lies. There is no better example than the New York Times’ totally discredited 1619 Project. This project rewrites American history to teach our children that we were founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom.

Nothing could be further from the truth. America’s founding set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism, and built the most fair, equal, and prosperous nation in human history. (Applause.)

The narratives about America being pushed by the far-left and being chanted in the streets bear a striking resemblance to the anti-American propaganda of our adversaries — because both groups want to see America weakened, derided, and totally diminished.

Students in our universities are inundated with critical race theory. This is a Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation, that even young children are complicit in oppression, and that our entire society must be radically transformed. Critical race theory is being forced into our children’s schools, it’s being imposed into workplace trainings, and it’s being deployed to rip apart friends, neighbors, and families.

A perfect example of critical race theory was recently published by the Smithsonian Institution. This document alleged that concepts such as hard work, rational thinking, the nuclear family, and belief in God were not values that unite all Americans, but were instead aspects of “whiteness.” This is offensive and outrageous to Americans of every ethnicity, and it is especially harmful to children of minority backgrounds who should be uplifted, not disparaged.

Teaching this horrible doctrine to our children is a form of child abuse in the truest sense of those words. For many years now, the radicals have mistaken Americans’ silence for weakness. But they’re wrong.

There is no more powerful force than a parent’s love for their children. And patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country. American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools, cancel culture at our work, or the repression of traditional faith, culture, and values in the public square. Not anymore. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

We embrace the vision of Martin Luther King, where children are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

The left is attempting to destroy that beautiful vision and divide Americans by race in the service of political power. By viewing every issue through the lens of race, they want to impose a new segregation, and we must not allow that to happen.

Critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda, ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together. It will destroy our country.

That is why I recently banned trainings in this prejudiced ideology from the federal government and banned it in the strongest manner possible. (Applause.)

The only path to national unity is through our shared identity as Americans. That is why it is so urgent that we finally restore patriotic education to our schools.

Under our leadership, the National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a grant to support the development of a pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history. (Applause.)

We are joined by some of the respected scholars involved in this project, including Professor Wilfred McClay. Wilfred, please. Thank you very much. Welcome. (Applause.) Thank you. Dr. Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars. Dr. Peter. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. And Ted Rebarber. Thank you, Ted. (Applause.) Thank you very much, Ted.

Today, I am also pleased to announce that I will soon sign an Executive Order establishing a national commission to promote patriotic education. It will be called the “1776 Commission.” (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. It will encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and make plans to honor the 250th anniversary of our founding. Think of that — 250 years.

Recently, I also signed an executive order to establish the National Garden of American Heroes, a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans who have ever lived.

Today, I am announcing a new name for inclusion. One of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence was a patriot from Delaware. In July of 1776, the Continental Congress was deadlocked during the debate over independence. The delegation from Delaware was divided. Caesar Rodney was called upon to break the tie.

Even though he was suffering from very advanced cancer — he was deathly ill — Rodney rode 80 miles through the night, through a severe thunderstorm, from Dover to Philadelphia to cast his vote for independence.

For nearly a century, a statue of one of Delaware’s most beloved citizens stood in Rodney Square, right in the heart of Wilmington.

But this past June, Caesar Rodney’s statue was ordered removed by the mayor and local politicians as part of a radical purge of America’s founding generation.

Today, because of an order I signed, if you demolish a statue without permission, you immediately get 10 years in prison. (Applause.) And there have been no statues demolished for the last four months, incredibly, since the time I signed that act.

Joe Biden said nothing as to his home state’s history and the fact that it was dismantled and dismembered. And a Founding Father’s statue was removed.

Today, America will give this Founding Father, this very brave man, who was so horribly treated, the place of honor he deserves. I am announcing that a statue of Caesar Rodney will be added to the National Garden of American Heroes. (Applause.)

From Washington to Lincoln, from Jefferson to King, America has been home to some of the most incredible people who have ever lived. With the help of everyone here today, the legacy of 1776 will never be erased. Our heroes will never be forgotten. Our youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their soul.

We will save this cherished inheritance for our children, for their children, and for every generation to come. This is a very important day.

Thank you all once again for being here. Now I will sign the Constitution Day Proclamation. God Bless You. And God Bless America. Thank you very much.

[bountyofbeads]

Four Million Indians in One State Risk Being Denied Citizenship. Most Are Muslims. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/world/asia/india-muslims-narendra-modi.html

Donald Trump’s and Stephen Miller’s "nativist" policies are reverberating around the the world. 😢😢😭😭

Four Million Indians Risk Being Denied Citizenship. Most Are Muslims.

By Jeffrey Gettleman and Hari Kumar

Aug. 17, 2019

NEW DELHI — More than four million people in India, mostly Muslims, are at risk of being declared foreign migrants as the government pushes a hard-line Hindu nationalist agenda that has challenged the country’s pluralist traditions and aims to redefine what it means to be Indian.

The hunt for migrants is unfolding in Assam, a poor, hilly state near the borders with Myanmar and Bangladesh. Many of the people whose citizenship is now being questioned were born in India and have enjoyed all the rights of citizens, such as voting in elections.

State authorities are rapidly expanding foreigner tribunals and planning to build huge new detention camps. Hundreds of people have been arrested on suspicion of being a foreign migrant — including a Muslim veteran of the Indian Army. Local activists and lawyers say the pain of being left off a preliminary list of citizens and the prospect of being thrown into jail have driven dozens to suicide.

But the governing party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not backing down.

Instead, it is vowing to bring this campaign to force people to prove they are citizens to other parts of India, part of a far-reaching Hindu nationalist program fueled by Mr. Modi’s sweeping re-election victory in May and his stratospheric popularity.

Members of India’s Muslim minority are growing more fearful by the day. Assam’s anxiously watched documentation of citizenship — a drive that began years ago and is scheduled to wrap up on Aug. 31 — coincides with another setback for Muslims, this one transpiring more than a thousand miles away.

Less than two weeks ago, Mr. Modi unilaterally wiped out the statehood of India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, removing its special autonomy and turning it into a federal territory without any consultation with local leaders — many of whom have since been arrested.

Among Mr. Modi’s critics, events in Assam and Kashmir are Exhibits A and B in their conviction that the prime minister is using the early months of his second term to push the most forceful and divisive Hindu nationalist agenda  ever attempted in India and to fundamentally reconfigure the concept of Indian identity to be synonymous with being Hindu. Many Indians, on both sides of the political divide, see Assam and Kashmir as harbingers of the direction Mr. Modi will take this nation of 1.3 billion people in the coming years.

The stated purpose of the citizenship dragnet in Assam is to find undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh — a predominantly Muslim country to its south. Amit Shah, India’s powerful home minister, has repeatedly referred to those immigrants as “termites.’’

All of the 33 million residents of Assam have had to prove, with documentary evidence, that they or their ancestors were Indian citizens before early 1971, when Bangladesh was established after breaking away from Pakistan. That is not easy. Many families are racing to get their hands on a decades-old property deed or fraying birth certificate with an ancestor’s name on it.

Beyond this, Mr. Modi’s government has tried to pass a bill in Parliament that carves out exemptions for Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and people from other religions — but leaves out Muslims.

Mr. Modi’s critics say he is playing a dangerous game and pulling apart the diverse, delicate social fabric that has existed in India for centuries.

The prime minister’s political roots lie in a Hindu nationalist movement that emphasizes the religion’s supremacy. This worldview has a long history of sowing division between the country’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority, at times exploding in violence.

Assam has been hit by its own troubles and ethnic bloodshed. But the violence being reported now is self-inflicted.

Noor Begum, who lived in a small hamlet in a flood-soaked district, spiraled into depression after finding out that she and her mother had been excluded from the citizenship lists. Her father and seven siblings had made it.

It didn’t make any sense to the family: Why, if they all lived together and were born in the same place, would some be considered Indian while others illegal foreigners?

“Of course she was Indian,” said her father, Abdul Kalam, a retired laborer. “She used to sing Indian national songs at school. She felt very Indian.”

On a bright morning in June, Noor hanged herself from a rafter. She was 14.

Many Muslims in Kashmir are despondent as well. After Mr. Modi’s government erased Kashmir’s autonomy, thousands of outraged Kashmiris took to the streets, only to be locked down by a heavy deployment of security forces and a smothering communications blackout.

Kashmir has long been a flash point. Both India and Pakistan control different parts of it and several times, the tensions have driven the two nuclear armed rivals to war or dangerously close to it.

Though the Indian government has eased some of the communication restrictions in the past few days, hundreds of Kashmiri intellectuals are still under arrest and Pakistan is seething.

The tension with Pakistan tends to lift Mr. Modi’s political fortunes. His forceful stand against India’s No. 1 enemy just adds to his image as an unswerving patriot and one of the most decisive and powerful prime ministers India has produced in decades.

Many in India’s Hindu majority don’t object to Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist policies or even seem to think too much about them. They praise what they see as the strides he has made in fighting poverty and projecting a more muscular image of India on the world stage.

But critics say his Hindu nationalist beliefs are central to who he is and intentionally divisive, engineered to win votes from the Hindu majority. India is about 80 percent Hindu and 14 percent Muslim. (Christians, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists make up most of the rest of the population.)

A small but vocal minority of left-leaning intellectuals, Muslim leaders and opposition politicians has tried to turn public opinion against Mr. Modi’s policies without much success.

What is happening in Assam and Kashmir “is an assault on the very imagination of India, of the freedom struggle, of the Constitution, of the idea of a country in which everyone belongs equally,” said Harsh Mander, a former civil servant turned human rights activist.

“Muslims are the enemy,” he said. “It’s a war on the Indian Constitution.”

Ashutosh Varshney, the head of Brown University’s South Asia program, said that India “in all probability and unless checked is headed toward a Hindu nationalist, majoritarian state.”

With the political opposition in total disarray and all government agencies — especially the bureaucracy and the security apparatus — firmly in Mr. Modi’s hands, Mr. Varshney said the only hope for India’s secular democracy is in the courts.

But, he cautioned, “The judiciary might well surrender.”

Even a streak of alarming headlines in recent weeks, including big job losses in the auto sector, deadly flooding across the country and a new outbreak of violence by Hindu mobs against Muslims, hasn’t dented Mr. Modi’s popularity.

Outsiders may wonder how any political movement in India could question Muslims’ contribution to society. India is a thoroughly multicultural place, and Muslims have contributed for centuries, even ruling the country at times. Muslim emperors built some of India’s brightest cultural treasures, including the Taj Mahal.

But since Mr. Modi took office in 2014, government bodies have rewritten history books, lopping out sections on Muslim rulers, and changed official place names to Hindu from Muslim. Hindu mobs have lynched dozens of Muslims; participants are rarely punished.

Mr. Modi and allies in his Bharatiya Janata Party, known as the B.J.P., have denied any anti-Muslim bias and rejected criticism that the way they have handled the mass citizenship check in Assam has been harsh or discriminatory. State level officials in Assam said this was purely an administrative exercise to ferret out people who have no legal right to stay in India.

Rupam Goswami, a spokesman for the state B.J.P. party, said the registry “is only a process of documentation.”

Like much of India, Assam has reflected a tapestry of different ethnic groups and religions for as long as anyone can remember. Its beautiful tea estates have attracted flocks of migrant workers.

But many indigenous Assamese, who are mostly Hindu, have resented immigrants from Bangladesh, saying that the ethnic Bengalis were coming into their state and taking away their jobs and their land. In 1983, this locals-versus-outsider enmity blew up.

Assamese villagers slaughtered more than 1,000 ethnic Bengalis, many of them Muslim — scholars say that most ethnic Bengalis in Assam are Muslim. In 2012, another smaller wave of violence erupted.

The next year, India’s Supreme Court set in motion a process for a large-scale registration of citizens to be updated in Assam. This would determine who was an Indian and who was not. The deadline for residents to provide documentary proof that they or their ancestors have a legacy as Indian citizens, going back to March 1971 or earlier, has been extended several times.

Though this issue predates Mr. Modi’s taking India’s reins in 2014, the B.J.P. has aggressively backed the process, with Mr. Shah vowing to clear out all the “termites.’’

When a preliminary Assam citizenship list was published in 2018, leaving off four million people, scholars said the majority were Muslim but large numbers of Bengali-speaking Hindus were also excluded.

The B.J.P. then had to regroup. Its response was to push a new citizenship bill that said migrants from neighboring countries who were Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsees or Jains would be eligible for Indian citizenship. One of South Asia’s biggest religious groups was conspicuously left off: Muslims.

The government said it was trying to help religious minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. To critics, it looked like another anti-Muslim campaign, plain and simple.

The bill sailed through the lower house of Parliament but stalled after many Assamese politicians said they didn’t like the religious dimension the B.J.P. was injecting — or the possibility that the large number of Hindu Bengalis would be given an exception. Some B.J.P. politicians say they want to revive it.

Many of the people whose names were left off the list were born in India, lived here all their lives and were considered citizens in every right.

One of them was Mohammed Sanaullah, a retired army captain. In May, he was picked up on suspicion of being an illegal migrant and jailed for nearly two weeks.

Mr. Sanaullah said he was totally demoralized.

“I am an Indian, my father is an Indian, my grandfather was an Indian, my forefathers were Indian. They were all born in India. We will be Indian forever,” he said.

The Assam state government sends suspected foreign migrants to foreigner tribunals, a growing network of more than 100 small courts where the onus is on the suspects to provide the proof that the government is demanding. Human rights observers have complained that the proceedings often discriminate against Muslims and are the equivalent of sham trials.

The B.J.P. doesn’t want to stop at Assam.

Mr. Shah and other party leaders have promised their supporters that they will bring mass citizenship reviews across the country. Human rights activists fear these could be used to discriminate against minorities and this will be made easier because, under Supreme Court rules, individuals are allowed to legally challenge another’s citizenship.

More than 3.5 million people who have so far been left off the Assam citizenship list have filed challenges to their exclusion, and state-level officials are reviewing these claims.

But Assam is not waiting. The state government, which is controlled by an arm of the B.J.P., is planning to build 10 new detention camps with the capacity to hold thousands of people.

Bangladesh has not been eager to accept the ethnic Bengalis in Assam as citizens either. That could leave many languishing in a legal no-man’s land without many rights.

Critics say what is happening in both Kashmir and Assam are attempts to change the demographics in these areas in favor of Hindus. Kashmiris fear the government’s real plan in wiping out their autonomy is to pave the way to resettle large numbers of Hindu Indians in Kashmir and end its status as the one Muslim-majority territory in India.

Under the changes, Kashmiris will lose the special land rights they used to hold that made it difficult for non-Kashmiris to buy land in their state. Mr. Modi has argued that the new arrangement will bring outside investment, better governance and a “new dawn.”

But other Indian states have similar protections for local residents and Mr. Modi’s party is not trying to change those.

Critics say the difference is obvious: Those states are not Muslim.

Suhasini Raj contributed reporting from New Delhi, and Shajid Khan from Rowmari Chapari, Assam.

[blog405095]

⛔ REVIEW TRUMP LEGACY TREASURE 2024 (IS IT REALLY WORTH IT?)

[alexsmitposts]

Breaking News! Putin’s Vast Riches Hidden at Costco What if we all woke up one morning and everybody understood the Russian mentality? Just think, instead of listening to fairytales about Russia and Vladimir Putin, the world would be able to swiftly wade through mountains of negative bullshit to see the truth. This is the story of the “other” Vladimir Putin, the one whose meager salary and means were just revealed. The angry pirates that tried to rob Russians of their legacy hate Vladimir Putin. They also hate the Russia Putin and his colleagues are trying to lift up. The Bill Browders, Mikhail Khodorkovskys, George Soros, and even Russian media tycoons like Vladimir Gusinsky are the poster boys for the banking elite’s vendetta against Russia’s leader. Browder got a crooked U.S. Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, a ludicrous law to punish Russia and Putin for not knuckling under to the supra-capitalists bent on stealing their country’s vast wealth. But the larger plan grows more evident with each passing Washinton Post Russophobia story. The latest wrongful and ignorant rampage against Putin concerns his “alleged” wealth. Hours after the Kremlin released the Russian leader’s salary and net worth statistics, the ravaging liberal order wolves howled in pain about expensive wristwatches Putin owns. This Quartz story is typical. According to the “geniuses” of western economic, Putin is worth in between $70 and $200 billion dollars. He is also the 21st Century version of the Wizard of Oz for his ability to totally hide the vastest horde of wealth ever accumulated by a single person (Sarcasm a must). This mysterious wealth is complete hearsay. From the Washington Post to screwball sites like Wealthy Gorilla, the Russian leader’s bankroll is ???? just because somebody said so. Browder got the Putin wealth fantasy going when he claimed the former KGB officer hoarded $200 billion at about the same time the Hermitage Capital boss was put on Russia’s Most Wanted list. But all the speculation is just that. The propaganda takes advantage of the fact most westerners do not understand the Russians. Putin does not need money. This is the simple reality no Putin expert brings to the forefront. Think about what I am saying here. Every “expert” you read or hear discussing Vladimir Putin leaves off the simple person behind the fantasy. I’ve discussed Putin’s past and his rise to power many times, and nowhere in his character is there a glimmer of oligarch selfishness. Forget the fact that no one can find this imaginary treasure horde. Leave off all outward appearances of the Russian leader’s life. To know Putin is to study his devotion to family, to service, and to the larger plan for Russia. What if all those watches were gifted to Putin? Can you imagine Vladimir Putin having to whip out his credit card anytime he goes to dinner? What about transportation? Housing? A boat ride along the Volga? Do you think Vladimir Putin will EVER need a single rouble for the rest of his life? The man saved Russian businessmen, Russian soldiers, Russian doctors and lawyers and fishermen from the biggest robbery in human history – and the “experts” wonder from the capitalist billionaire mentality. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Putin does want to see the return of the U.S.S.R. Did Stalin maintain vast coffers of coins to fund his vacations? When Nikita Khrushchev died did they discover Italian villas and Swiss bank accounts? How about Leonid Brezhnev? Please take the time to read this declassified CIA report on Brezhnev to gain insight into the Russian mentality. Maybe Lenin’s great-grandchildren live lifestyles like Paris Hilton or Donald Trump’s kids? No, the last relative of Lenin is Dmitry Ulyanov, an Orthodox priest in the western Russian city of Ivanovo. Lenin’s niece Olga Ulyanova, a writer, passed away back in 2011 leaving no fortune. Before you accept the Vladimir Putin his vast army of adversaries claim he is, try using common objectivity in the absence of truth. Why would 10,000 newspapers, a horde of think tanks, western intelligence agencies, the globalist elites, and even Hollywood stars accuse Vladimir Putin without a shred of proof? The answer grows more evident with current events such as the incarceration of journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The “proof” of all wrongdoing does not reside in the Putin camp. Western technocrats, oligarchs, hedge funders, and elite bankers stink to high heavens and we can prove their brand of larceny – but Putin is still the criminal? It’s gotten to the point where villainizing Putin is a kind of crucifixion. I just hope Russia’s savior is not suffering for no good reason. Finally, when you get the time to research a bit, try to figure out how media like Business Insider put their retail shopping reporters on the case of Vladimir Putin. A story entitled “9 Vladimir Putin quotes that offer terrifying insights into his mind,” by Aine Cain, who usually covers Walmart, Target, and Costco, reveals the idiocy intelligent people are asked to believe. Cain’s story entitled was republished by The Independent in the UK without so much as a glance into the author’s experience. You get it, right? Even the Walmart experts have been assigned to do the criminal profile of the world’s richest man. Here, you can read about how Costco looked when it first opened back in 1983. Maybe that retail store is where Putin’s vast riches are hidden! Vladimir Putin has no need of vast fortunes. His name is all he wants or needs. I rest my “expert” case.

[go-redgirl]

President Donald J. Trump Proclaims Memorial Day, May 28, as a Day of Prayer for Permanent Peace The White House ^ | Issued on: May 25, 2018 | President Donald J. Trump

  On Memorial Day, we pause in solemn gratitude to pay tribute to the brave patriots who laid down their lives defending peace and freedom while in military service to our great Nation. We set aside this day to honor their sacrifice and to remind all Americans of the tremendous price of our precious liberty.

Throughout the history of our Republic, courageous Americans have purchased our cherished freedom with their lives. Our 151 national cemeteries serve as the final resting place for millions of people, including veterans from every war and conflict, many of whom died while serving our country. We remain duty bound to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf and to remember them with thankfulness and unwavering pride. The fallen — our treasured loved ones, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens — deserve nothing less from a grateful Nation.

We must safeguard the legacies of our service members so that our children and our grandchildren will understand the sacrifices of our Armed Forces. As a part of this effort, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is working to keep the memories of our fallen heroes from ever fading away. The National Cemetery Administration’s Veterans Legacy Program challenges our youth, from elementary school through college, to research and share the stories and sacrifice of their hometown veterans, who are forever honored at VA National, State, and tribal veterans cemeteries. To further ensure that our veterans’ legacies are remembered and celebrated, this program is developing an online memorialization platform that will amplify the voices of families, survivors, and Gold Star parents and spouses as they honor our beloved veterans and fallen service members.

Today, and every day, we revere those who have died in noble service to our country. I call upon all Americans to remember the selfless service members who have been laid to rest in flag-draped coffins and their families who have suffered the greatest loss. The sacrifices of our hallowed dead demand our Nation’s highest honor and deepest gratitude. On this day, let us also unite in prayer for lasting peace in our troubled world so that future generations will enjoy the blessings of liberty and independence.

In honor and recognition of all of our fallen heroes, the Congress, by a joint resolution approved May 11, 1950, as amended (36 U.S.C. 116), has requested the President issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe each Memorial Day as a day of prayer for permanent peace and designating a period on that day when the people of the United States might unite in prayer. The Congress, by Public Law 106-579, has also designated 3:00 p.m. local time on that day as a time for all Americans to observe, in their own way, the National Moment of Remembrance.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Memorial Day, May 28, 2018, as a day of prayer for permanent peace, and I designate the hour beginning in each locality at 11:00 a.m. of that day as a time when people might unite in prayer.

I further ask all Americans to observe the National Moment of Remembrance beginning at 3:00 p.m. local time on Memorial Day.

I also request the Governors of the United States and its Territories, and the appropriate officials of all units of government, to direct the flag be flown at half-staff until noon on this Memorial Day on all buildings, grounds, and naval vessels throughout the United States and in all areas under its jurisdiction and control. I also request the people of the United States to display the flag at half-staff from their homes for the customary forenoon period.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fifth day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand eighteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-second.

DONALD J. TRUMP

[opedguy]

Biden Calls Trump an Embarrassment

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Nov. 10, 2020.--Showing his surly side, 77-year-old President-elect Joe Biden called 74-year-old President Donald Trump and “embarrassment” for not throwing in the towel on the 2020  Election.  Trump and the Republican Party aren’t happy about the universal mail-in ballots that opened the door to unspecified voter fraud, numerically favoring Democrats who had a registration advantage to Republicans.  But Biden should be the last person hurling insults when he was shielded by the corrupt mainstream press that refused to run the Oct. 14 New York Post story about the treasure trove of emails incriminating Joe and his family on his 50-year-old Hunter’s disabled laptop found abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop.

 Hunter’s disabled laptop gave proof that Joe was involved in Hunter’s business dealings in China, Russia and Ukraine, netting Joe and the Biden family millions of dollars.  Joe says Trump is an “embarrassment” because he refuses to concede an election riddled with fraud, whether the Trump campaign can prove it or not. Biden went back on a rant today about the Affordable Care Act AKA Obamacare that the Supreme Court took up today.  “The consequences of the Trump administration’s argument are not academic or an abstraction.  For many Americans, they are a matter of life and death in the literal sense,” Biden said, saying nothing about Pfizer’s news about their new corronavirus AKA SARS Cov-2 or Covid-19 vaccine.  No, Bdien talked about old news that has zero relevance because the Supreme Court is expected to uphold Obamacare.  But not a word on Trump’s remarkable accomplishment of creating a vaccine in record time. 

 No, Biden and his 56-year-old VP-elect Kamala Harris told voters not to trust the vaccine because it was developed on Trump’s watch.             Today’s Supreme Court arguments made clearer than ever before that Obamacare would withstand the latest GOP lawsuit.  Today’s GOP arguments were a rehash of 2012 when Roberts ‘ ruled that the Obamacare mandate and penalty was a legitimate tax.  Today the GOP attorneys general argued that the whole law needed to be tossed out because the individual mandate was deemed unconstitutional by the 5th Court of Appeals in Eastern Louisiana in 2019.  Roberts and Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh disagreed with GOP arguments, saying the individual mandate was “severable” from the Affordable Care Act [ACA], hinting they’d vote with the court’s liberal minority to preserve the act.  But Biden instead chose to use his time to rehash old campaign talking points, rather than celebrate the Pfizer’s completion of the first Covid-19 vaccine, something that rocketed up the stock market.           

     Kamala Harris also got into the act, diverting attention away from Trump’s accomplishment that he talked about on the debate stage. Trump promised a vaccine sometime near the election, something Joe disputed saying a vaccine wouldn’t be ready until next summer.  Well, here’s another example of Joe and Kamala using the vaccine development to trash Trump’s handing to the Covid-19 crisis.  “Each and every vote for Joe Biden was a vote to protect and expand the Affordable Care Act, not to tear it away in the midst of a global pandemic,” Kamala said.  “And Joe Biden won the election decisively,” showing that voters believed her spin. Trump said that his new Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett wouldn’t necessarily rule against the ACA as Democrats insisted.  It’s clear from today’s Supreme Court arguments that Republicans’ challenge would eventually fail.          

   Biden and Harris were right that going after Obamacare was suicidal for Trump, trying to score points before the election.  Pushing for the Barrett nomination to the Supreme Court allowed Democrats to win the Obamacare issue with millions of potential voters.  Confirming Barrett also raised concerns, rightfully or wrongfully, about Roe v. Wade, something unlikely to change with her presence on the Court.  Yet it became a good talking point for Joe and Kamala leading up to the election--another miscalculation by Trump and Republicans.  Biden wants Trump to concede but he doesn’t want to address Trump’s concerns about Joe’s potentially criminal conduct while VP, orchestrating multimillion dollar deals for Hiunter and his brother Jim in China, Russia and Ukraine.  Trump hopes he can litigate his way back into a second term, something highly unlikely.    

         Biden rebuked Trump for not conceding the election, when it was called for him Saturday, November 7 by the Associated Press and all major networks, including Fox News.  “Tt’s an embarrassment quite frankly . . .  I think it will not help the president’s legacy,” referring to Trump’s attempts to contest the results.  There’s nothing the Supreme Court can do to reverse the outcome of the Nov. 3 election, where Biden captured a whopping 77, 055,037 popular votes, 290 Electoral votes, to Trump’s 72,088,188 popular votes, 214 Electoral votes. Unless there’s indisputable proof of voter fraud, Trump will have to send for United Van Lines to move him, Melania and Baron back to Trump Tower.  Once Trump gives yo, Congress must look into the advisability of universal mail-in ballots for future elections, knowing that it gave Democrats and unfair electoral advantage.

 About the Author

 John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.  Reply  Reply All  Forward 

[friend-clarity]

I’m an American Jew for Trump as President

Too many American Jews feel they need to support Democrat handouts. I believe in a hand-up, not a handout. Despite the battering of our economy by the China Virus, Pres. Trump’s economic stewardship has saved our economy, not only for us Americans, but for the whole world.

I’M AN AMERICAN JEW, AND I LOVE PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP by Mark Langfan, Arutz Sheva Daily Israel Report, Tuesday, Sep. 29 '20, י"א בתשרי תשפ"א

I’m a second generation Jewish-American, and I don’t just like President Donald J. Trump. I LOVE President Trump.

The self-proclaimed “Hitler-epithet-gatekeeper” MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch has taken to the TV airways and declared of American Jews supporting President Trump, “How dare you? How dare you, with what our people have gone through in history, and you see a man who is a dictator. And once you give a man absolute power, he is possible of anything. And if you are a Jew in this country and you are supporting Donald Trump, you are not looking back at our history. And you are blind and you are walking like a lemming off a cliff. It is time to wake up.!”

Dear Mr. Deutsch, just because you repeat a pathetic lie over and over, it doesn’t make that lie true. It just proves that you, Mr. Deutsch, are a liar. I love President Trump for scores of real and practical reasons, both non-Jewish and Jewish reasons.

Pres. Trump is not a 'Hitler,' and your gross misappropriation of the term “Hitler' is slander and debasement of the very Jewish history you claim you are so concerned about. Pres. Trump is attempting to free America and the world of the dystopic tyranny of leftist and Islamic fascisms that are premised on virulent anti-Semitism. Calling Trump 'Hitler' now when he is fighting anti-Semitism is Orwellian double-speak, delusional, and as evil as a Jew calling Winston Churchill 'Hitler’'during World War II.

More than a year before President Trump was elected in September 2015, I wrote in “President Trump will undo Obama’s Iran-First Policy” as to why President Trump would not only be elected President, but also would be a great President. I wrote, “In short, get ready for President Trump. But, more importantly, Trump, and only Trump, has the guts to erase Obama, and the vestiges of Obama's traitorous Iran-First policies, like Obama never existed. Just call Trump the Eraser-Man. America will elect Trump because it wants to erase Obama, and all of his domestic and national security policies.” I love President Trump because he erased as much of the putrid domestic and egregious foreign affairs policies of Obama as he could in just 4 years with almost all of the lame-stream legacy media fighting him every step of the way. Before I go into the macro concepts explaining why, as an American Jew, I love Pres. Trump. I want to be crystal clear. I am not one of those Trump supporters who says “I love Trump, but he can tweet a little less.” No, I love Trump and I want him to tweet a lot more. Pres. Trump has sustained the greatest barrage of fake malignant traitorous news in the history of our country. The founding fathers would never have believed that almost all of the “free press” they were protecting under the 1st Amendment is owned today by multinational corporations that do not have the interests of America as their beacon, but their corporate profits from foreign countries as their sole immoral compass. You, Mr. Deutsch, only have your megaphone because you act as a “useful idiot” to your corporate foreign paymasters. Your programming is actually foreign in-kind donations to the Biden campaign. But, because your network is “legacy” press, you have a patina of constitutional protection. You are actually engaged in foreign collusion in an American election. Since,almost all of the press issues the same Big Lie screeds you, Mr. Deutsch, deliver, I only wish Pres. Trump would tear more into the lot of you.

But, let’s get to the heart of the matter. I love Pres. Trump as an American Jew because he has made America energy independent, and restored the fabric of American industrial production to our country. Only through an economically strong America can all peoples, including American Jews, reach their potential and feel they are part of the American dream.

Too many American Jews feel they need to support Democrat handouts. I believe in a hand-up, not a handout. Despite the battering of our economy by the China Virus, Pres. Trump’s economic stewardship has saved our economy, not only for us Americans, but for the whole world.

As for foreign affairs, I, as an American Jew, love Pres. Trump because he has rejected the puerile neo-con never-Trumpers\ military-industrial establishment to the great strategic benefit of America. To date, over the last 4 years, we have lost 121 Americans soldiers killed in combat in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. Of course, the life of every American soldier is precious, but Trump’s first 4 years KIA count is one-twentieth the number of Killed-in-Action that Pres. Bush suffered in his first 4 years, and one-sixteenth, of the number of Killed-in-Action Pres. Obama suffered in his first four years. In other words, the world is safer for America because of Pres. Trump. A safer America means a world safer for all Jews all over the world.

I love President Trump because he obliterated the Iran nuclear deal and has given the Middle-East Arabs cover to harmonize with Israel so as to enable the Jews and Arabs of the Middle-East to fight off the twin Islamic hegemonic threats of Shiite Iran and Muslim-Brotherhood Turkey. Mr. Deutsch, you claim to know Jewish history and abuse the name of Hitler for perpetuate your Big Lie. Meanwhile, Iran (and to a lesser, more covert extent, Turkey) has publicly messaged that they want to eradicate Israel from the map and murder 6 Million Jews. Instead of you calling Iran 'Hitler,' you have lied to and misdirected your audience from the real threat to the Jews, and the world, a nuclear-armed theocratic Islamic enemy.

Domestically, I, as Jew, love President Trump because Pres. Trump has battled perhaps the greatest enemy America and American Jews face: it’s the new virulently antisemitic Woke religion that violently violates every constitutional protection Americans treasure.

In the new Woke religion, of which you, Mr. Deutsch are an example, freedom of speech is violently suppressed. Do you recall that American Jews were expected to protect the Neo-Nazi Americans’ right to peacefully protest and march through the Jew neighborhood of Skokie? Today, you and your “news” machinery cancel, or attack, any peaceful Republican protester or person who dares challenge your views on any issue from Transgenderism to the China virus.

And Pres. Trump hasn’t just issued vague cliches. Pres, Trump signed an executive order defending Jews from anti-Semitism on today’s college campuses. If you, Mr. Deutsch cared about Jews or Jewish history, you would have congratulated Pres. Trump for defending Jews and free speech on college campuses. Instead, you trade on your Jewish ancestry to engage in Big-Lies against a President who has defended American Jews and all Americans from violent Woke antisemitic tyranny.

President Trump is not a modern day 'Hitler,' Pres, Trump protects American Jews and all peaceful law-abiding Americans from foreign and domestic enemies and criminals. 

Mr. Deutsch, you are not a speaker for the Jewish people, but a representative of Woke antisemitic Fascism. How dare you? How dare you say you speak on behalf American Jews? And lecture to them?

[glittergummicandypeach]

The Wrong Man: Why Falwell’s Paying for His Indiscretion But Trump Gets a Pass | Religion Dispatches

When news broke this past Friday that a controversial Instagram photo would result in Jerry Falwell, Jr. taking an “indefinite leave of absence” as president of Liberty University, it was only the latest in a string of incidents with Falwell at the center of the public spotlight. The offending picture features Falwell holding a dark-colored drink (which he calls “black water”) and his arm around a female friend’s waist. Falwell’s pants are unzipped, with his stomach and underwear intentionally exposed in a way intended to mimic his friend’s similarly-bare pregnant belly. 

This photo may strike some as a relatively tame reason for Falwell to be ushered from the stage, at least compared to his other, more controversial statements—including everything from calling the threat of Covid-19 an overblown political hoax to posting overtly racist photos on social media—but there’s an irony here that begs to be considered. 

Since President Trump has an even more consistent history of doing such controversial things, and since many white evangelicals (including Falwell) still staunchly support him, it might seem odd that Falwell, of all people, ended up being the one to make evangelicals flinch to this degree. Was the issue really that he was a bad role model—that his clothing and mystery beverage were in violation of Liberty’s student code of conduct (as some students were quick to note)? Or was this just the final straw in an already-collapsing heap of negative attention? 

As a scholar of religion and American culture, I would argue that these aren’t the most helpful sorts of questions to ask. Rather, if we want to understand what’s going on here, then we need to think of this photo as a moment exposing a contradiction that coexists somewhat uncomfortably within evangelical political circles about how to handle male indiscretions—particularly those of a sexual kind. 

This contradiction involves telling two conflicting stories about manhood. One version of this story views men as natural leaders whose masculinity also makes them virile and sexual. In this telling of the story, male sexuality is understood as a natural, positive, god-given force, the simple outcome of “boys being boys.” It is this power that makes productive societies and productive (read: heterosexual) families. 

But all men’s sexuality isn’t equally valued, of course, and so another explanation must be available. This second tale understands the male libido as a type of distraction or weakness, a force that moral discipline cannot harness. For those familiar with evangelical subcultures, these are described as normal desires contorted by sin; descriptions reserved, for instance, for gay men, for those who create unwed mothers and broken families (read: Black men), or for those who use porn. 

Both sides of this story are necessary to sustain the political landscape; one can only claim the right to power if one can also claim to know the difference between its good and bad versions. The critical question, then, is which type of story the public wants to believe about Falwell and his legacy.

As I discuss in my recent book, Compromising Positions, on American political sex scandals and the influence of evangelical culture, this two-pronged story has been at the center of the way that many Americans have responded to their leaders’ sexual indiscretions. Even though many evangelicals have built their cultural capital on a platform of straitlaced sexual morality, there’s been extraordinary tolerance among this group for politicians who commit what are traditionally considered immoral sexual acts—so long as they meet certain conditions. 

If the politicians in question are white, straight, and come off as “tough guy” protector types (think Roy Moore, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Donald Trump), a persona more common among conservatives, then such politicians need not apologize for, nor even confess, their sexual wrongdoing, which can be read as an admission of weakness. When they break the sexual rules, this is often seen simply as a side-effect of their powerful masculinity—the same force that compels them to conquer and protect. 

On the other hand, there are plenty of politicians who are not understood in this more righteously aggressive, hypermasculine way (think of Democrats John Edwards and Anthony Wiener). Their political fate was sealed, and negatively so, not because their sexual violations were considered particularly heinous, but because neither one built their political personas around threats of an impending national enemy. As a result, there’s no other way to talk about, or justify, or translate their wayward sexuality that can redeem them as strong, national protectors. 

With this in mind, what that photo exposed is far more than Falwell’s underwear. Rather, it exposed the fact that playing political hardball involves a tricky calculus regarding which story about masculinity the public will more readily digest. More to the point, that story is only palatable to the extent that it can assure that same public that it can idolize these forms of masculinity while also convincing itself that it still has moral standards. 

To be certain, the Falwell photo hardly constitutes a sex scandal, unless one is measuring it by the Jimmy Carter scale (and here I refer to Carter’s non-scandal, or the 1976 Playboy interview when he admitted to lusting after women not his wife and thus committing “adultery in my heart.”) Nevertheless, it’s quite clear that the abandon with which Falwell put his body on display forces the question of which story the conservative public is willing to tell not so much about Falwell, but about themselves.

Even though Falwell has made plenty of brash moves that might connect him more closely with “tough guy” status, he’s not a politician who can be vicariously associated with national pride, but a university administrator at an institution known more for its extremely rigid rules than perhaps anything else. And though his family’s legacy is deeply responsible for the contemporary drumbeat of Christian nationalism that’s been so vital to the popularity of people like Donald Trump, the conservative public doesn’t read Falwell as a vicarious extension of itself in the ways that Trump commands. 

Plainly spoken, Jerry Falwell, Jr. is not understood by the broader conservative public as a type of national treasure. He doesn’t personally mean enough to conservative Americans to preserve him as an ideological leader, and thus he will go the way of many others who also couldn’t be easily understood as a symbol of national strength. Although no one knows what his future holds, at the moment it’s far more politically expedient to sacrifice Falwell than to perform the political gymnastics necessary to save him. 

Following those many politicians whose sex scandals end their careers, Falwell has already begun to submit to his fate by apologizing repeatedly and promising to be a “good boy” in the future. Politics is a power game, after all, and those who show weakness are often already dead in the water. In this sense, Falwell’s cultural situation reveals much more about the moving target of morality than any one single photo might suggest. 

This content was originally published here.