Is this what Americans have now become? Ignorant yahoos who are prepared to give Trump full control of our nation, without a fight?
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Power is ever stealing from the many to the few." - Wendell Phillips (1811- 1884)
"A woman asked Benjamin Franklin, 'Sir, do we have a monarchy or a Republic?' Franklin replied, 'A Republic, if you can keep it."
"The demagogue is one who preaches 'facts' he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." - H.L. Mencken
"From a new poll, Americans are amazingly uninformed about the most basic facts of the Mueller probe." - Chris Hayes, 'All In', last night, responding to new poll.
In terms of Benjamin Franklin's retort to the inquiring woman, it appears we may not be able to keep our Republic, given a recent poll shows 59 percent do not believe Robert Mueller has found any evidence of crimes in his investigation of the Trump cabal, vs. 41 percent who do. The 41 percent are, of course, the true citizens given THEY have been paying attention and are not mesmerized by Trump's thousands of lies and distractions, disinfo.
Former DOJ spokeman Matt Miller on 'All In' discussed how the Trumpies are winning by "throwing things against a wall" virtually every day to see how many can stick and keep the body politic distracted, confused or on the cusp of outrage fatigue. He noted:
"They just have to keep something else (from the Mueller probe) going, and it started over a year ago with the allegation that Trump Tower was wiretapped, moving on to unmasking, moving on to allegations that Jim Baker at the FBI leaked things, moving on to Uranium one. They just have to come up with a new allegation every few weeks... It doesn't even have to be founded. You just start with allegations then move it into a process and a committee on the Hill that starts investigating. Or they put enough pressure on the deputy attorney general for an IG investigation, and now there's two separate ones... They just have to throw enough chum in the water that there's a little bit of a distraction from the constant drumbeat of negativity against Trump."
Reading Miller's sum up it appears no one can blame Americans for being inundated, mentally blitzed into acquiescence and normalizing the human virus inhabiting the Oval Office. But sorry, that doesn't cut the mustard. A true citizen puts down his or her celllphone, pays attention and fully learns - because s/he is well informed - how to separate wheat from chaff, signal from noise And if 41 percent could do it, why not the other 59 percent?
Maybe they never read of or learned the meaning of the old saying (from Wendell Phillips, not Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry, as sometimes claimed) that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty". Incredibly, some people don't even know what the hell eternal vigilance means, given I've seen questions to that effect on Quora. Simplifying, it means the citizen can never rest, can never take his attention off the seat of power - what his leaders are doing. Further, s/he can never stop reading widely.
It means the constant exercise of scrutiny over power and critically parsing it in all its aspects. It means that one has paid attention to the Mueller probe enough to KNOW it has already secured 19 - that is NINETEEN - indictments, and five guilty pleas, as well as a remarkable trail of Trump's criminal associates, such as Felix Sater, former mobster and convicted child pornographer. In other words, we can ascertain the only true citizens are the 41 percent in the recent poll who KNOW that Mueller has uncovered crimes, while the 59 percent majority are wrong in their belief Mueller has found nothing. These losers are a disgrace to the ideals of our Republic and have lost touch with reality - whatever the vehicle by which it happened. Maybe too much time on social media, maybe too much outrage fatigue or they simply have given up trying to differentiate fact from fiction. As when Trump blabbed yesterday, without a scintilla of proof, that we have a new "spygate" because the FBI "planted spies in his campaign".
However, I don't cut any slack for those who buy into such lies, given Trump is a compulsive, pathological liar and has already told over 3,000. Hence, your default position as a citizen has to be to disbelieve anything Trump claims. That started with his insane claim of Obama wiretapping him last year. See e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/03/trump-reverts-to-psychotic-blames-obama.html
Citizens have to be able to discern bullshit bollocks from truth, and who the good guys are. Hint: any president who's surrounded himself with a host of criminals isn't a good guy!
Discernment and eternal vigilance also mean being able to tell a bogus (e.g. House Intel) investigation from a real one (e.g. Mueller's and the Senate Intel Committee investigation). It also means being able to judge that Devin Nunes is a phony and bad actor, as well as traitor, whose sole object is to run interference for Trump. Further, that all this latest dust up about an "FBI informant" is more disinformational nonsense designed to confuse the ordinary person, the one without enough critical thinking skills or political -historical knowledge.
The REAL citizen, the one who is informed and eternally vigilant, ought to be absolutely apoplectic about a meeting today, between Chris Wray, Rod Rosenstein and other DOJ officials with Trumpie whores Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy. This is over the so-called FBI informant and documents pertaining to his actions. These are now being reviewed by the DOJ's Inspector General, and everyone - that is every citizen who's alert, aware and vigilant, will know in advance when his conclusion comes back the Trump enablers and defenders will squawk it's "not enough".. Of course not, because they want enough to wreck or undermine the Mueller investigation.
Lastly, the astute citizen - the real one - may wish to check out this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtT4UwW_5oY
of Leslie Stahl's interaction with Trump over his incessant media browbeating. (Trump said he bashes the press to "demean" and "discredit" reporters so that no one will believe negative stories about him.) Thus, he's given away his M.O.
See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/cody-fenwick/79347/heres-how-robert-muellers-new-court-filing-sends-trump-a-foreboding-message
You still go to Quora? The extent of my social fabric outside of my immediate family reaches an occasional e-mail. I've been banned from most fora for politics bc I usually charge into the Lion's Den instead of playing to the choir of like-minded individuals. I don't insult others (unless they are vulgar asshats to me first) and I usually counter the expected insult with "I forgive you for ..." bc a small token of Christian forgiveness drives the average right winger even crazier than he already is.
ReplyDeleteI'm not Christian but I admire the effort sometimes. Mahayana Buddhism is closer to what I do. Meaning is relational. Service to others is the foundation of that meaning. Service to others is ultimately a form of service to yourself (at least psychologically). Actions for myself are 'evil' and actions for the benefit of another are 'good' therefore good and evil are necessarily entwined in all human endeavor...it's a matter of degree. I suppose that rationalizing is just restating that everyone acts in self-interest. Minimizing the self / ego in the calculus is the important thing. While I grasp the idea of 'psychological suicide of the self', I never understood it on an experiential level.
That being said, I cannot affirm the endgame of Buddhism...exiting the Karmic Wheel forever to be extinguished in Nirvana. That's always struck me as nihilistic in the same way Christianity debases this life in favor of the Kingdom of God. Here and Now is all we have. There is no god, there is no heaven. There is no ultimate reward. Suffering and decay accompany the great things we experience. We are born to die.
Amidst the horrors and absurdity is beauty, understanding and satisfaction which all keep me engaged and hanging around. I've always liked Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence as a valid motivator: Imagine a creature whispered into your ear, "All things in your life, no matter how great or small, will be repeated unto eternity...", would you hail that creature as a devil or a god? A bit grandiose, but you get the idea. Don't waste what you have. Then again, sometimes a little waste goes a long way....whatever it is I'm saying, I mean it.
I'm sorry, this is what you get when I don't sleep. haha
I know that if I lived in the daily terror of right wing ignorance, I would want someone to give me a corrective kick in the ass. That's what you do. That's what I try to do. No matter how many times I enter the insanity of the right wing mindset, it never fails to horrify me...keeps me coming back.
Mueller's investigation for instance, I point out the obvious facts of Trump's personal character as a lifelong conman, thief, fraud, money launderer, friend to Mafioso here and abroad, bigotry, etc., and these supporters of his turn a blind eye to that and hold on to the belief that Clinton and Obama are the true subjects of the criminal probe....because of 'all the crimes they committed.' Then you ask for one crime and you get the rote recitation of Uranium1, personal email deletions, mishandling classified info (the standard for criminal liability was gross negligence, she used a private server, end of story), fast and furious, etc. It's stunning and nauseating to behold. Trump betrays the nation and these people are still rambling on about emails. Stunning. Dr. Robert Altemeyer looks like a goddamn genius for the ages with his theory of Right Wing Authoritarianism explaining this insanity.
It's 3:47 in the a.m., I'm sure we all have better things to do, so I'll wrap up.
This is useful, I've likely shown it to you before. Along with the Steele Dossier, it drives the right wingers nuts: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
Enjoy your day,
Darrin
Thanks for the link! Re: Quora, I only go to lurk, read the comments, but not to post. This blog is basically where I do most of my opinionating. :)
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