We have the “West”. We have the “Midwest”. We have the “Southwest”. We have the “Post-Jim-Crow South”. We have the “New England” colonies.
All of these regions have their unique character. However, there is a place where this variety gets brewed into a delicious stew. That place is called Maryland. Sorta like “spiral motion physics,” where the motion around a source of attraction forms spiraling patterns toward the source like a whirlpool. That point is DC, and the American stew is at its diversity-best in the surrounding area, Maryland. And it’s not just the people as the geography is also representative of this diversity. Maryland may not be one of the largest states in the US, but with its variety of culture, climate, topographical features, and temperament, some would say…
Maryland is America in Miniature
Now… it’s impossible to speak of Maryland in the year of our lord 2025 without mentioning the apparent shifting in nature of that cultural/political source of gravity in DC. It is a brazen spectacle to behold, our present-day republic teetering on the precipice of a descent into a veritable kakistocracy. A governance of the witless and the fearful as outlined in the so-called “Project 2025.” This ponderous tome, a testament to the enduring American appetite for sanctimonious nonsense, imagines a future so bleakly uniform, so relentlessly scrubbed of the invigorating cacophony of realpolitik, that one is almost moved to pity the authors for their impoverished imaginations. They pine for a nation remade in the image of a white-washed sepulcher, a monotonous ethno-state lorded over by a monarch of their own anointing.
In moments of such profound national heartburn, it is instructive, and indeed, affirming, to cast a backward glance at the decision to remove the federal government’s seat from the feverish grasp of Philadelphia to the relatively blank slate of Maryland and what is now known as the District of Columbia. This was not merely a geographical relocation, but a providential compromise of competing interests escaping the miasma of a political homogeneity that then, as now, threatened to asphyxiate the nascent republic in its sleep.
One need only consider the character of Maryland, that delightful America in Miniature, to appreciate the wisdom of our founders. Here is a state forged in the crucible of religious tolerance, a haven for England’s persecuted Catholics, who, though a minority, were granted the revolutionary courtesy of coexisting with their Puritan tormentors. This early experiment in pluralism, though not without its lamentable “plundering times” at the hands of Cromwellian zealots, set a precedent for the rich and varied tapestry that is modern Maryland. It is a state where, to this day, the descendants of indentured servants and the progeny of freed slaves live and work alongside a vibrant influx of souls from every corner of the globe – Africa, Asia, Central America, and the Caribbean. Indeed, it stands as one of a handful of states where the so-called “minorities” now constitute the majority, a demographic destiny that sends shivers down the spines of the Project 2025 Christian Nationalist hierarchs.
The very soil of Maryland seems to reject the notion of a monolithic culture. From the salt-laced air of the Chesapeake to the rolling hills of the Piedmont, the state’s varied topography mirrors the diversity of its people. It is a place where the first American-born saint rests, a testament to its Catholic roots, yet where Protestants and the happily godless now outnumber the papists. It is a “Free State” not merely in its defiance of Prohibition’s follies, but in its very essence – a haven for the unconventional, boasting one of the highest concentrations of those who defy the rigid taxonomies of gender and sexuality. Let us not forget that the first American to proudly proclaim himself a “drag queen,” the courageous William Dorsey Swann, hailed from these parts, a pioneer in the eternal struggle for the right to be oneself, however flamboyant.
National ArchivesPride Day on the MallCapital HillSummer Cool-Down ShelterAmerica!Navy MemorialHoover FBI BuildingThe Center of GravityTransparency PleaseChina TownCongressional Reading RoomArchives Metro StationWar CabinetWashington MonumentWTH is this?
Contrast this vibrant, chaotic, and ultimately more interesting reality with the sterile vision of the Project 2025 evangelists. They yearn for a nation of one political philosophy, one creed, one stultifying set of beliefs, a landscape as flat and featureless as their own intellectual horizons. Theirs is a philosophy born of fear – fear of the other, fear of the new, fear of the messy and unpredictable nature of a truly free society. They would dismantle the very administrative state that, for all its bureaucratic bungling, provides a framework for our collective endeavor, and replace it with a system of pay-to-play patronage and ideological loyalty tests. They would, in essence, turn the clock back to an imagined golden age that never was.
The historical record of Maryland stands as a powerful rebuke to this retrograde fantasy. It was in Maryland that the ideals of the Revolution led to the liberation of thousands of slaves, a moral awakening that, while imperfect and tragically delayed, pointed toward a more just future. It was on Maryland’s soil, at Antietam, that the tide of a bloody Civil War, fought over the very soul of the nation, began to turn. And it was Maryland that, in the ashes of that conflict, abolished slavery and extended the franchise to its non-white citizens. This is not the history of a people wedded to a single, exclusionary identity, but of a people grappling, often violently, with the complexities of building a society out of disparate and often conflicting parts.
The proponents of this newfangled ethno-nationalist monarchy would do well to study this history. They would do well to observe the thriving economy of Maryland, buoyed by its proximity to the very federal government they seek to corrupt. They would do well to visit its public libraries, those bastions of self-directed education that offer knowledge to all, regardless of station or background.
In the final analysis, the decision to plant the nation’s capital in the embrace of Maryland was a stroke of genius. It was an implicit recognition that the strength of this republic lies not in its ability to enforce a bland uniformity, but in its capacity to absorb and celebrate its manifold diversities. The future of this nation, if it is to have a future worth mentioning, will not be found in the sterile pages of Project 2025, but in the noisy, vibrant, and gloriously untidy reality of places like Maryland. Let the hollow sycophants preach their gospel of homogeneity; the rest of us, the free human beings in this republic, will continue to draw our strength from the rich and fertile soil of our diversity.
And that’s all we have to say about that.
Onward through the fog… RH
You can’t just waltz by… The state of Maryland… Too much to see… Too much to do… Get on the Metro… To the Fed. Triangle… And don’t forget… To hydrate properly.
I have to get something off my chest before moving on with Phase II of the Hot Springs or Busk tour. It veers into politics, and though i know it’s more polite to avoid politics and religion in casual conversation, both are on the ballot in the upcoming election. Though i don’t expect to persuade anyone away from their way of thinking, i feel it necessary to call attention to a few areas of personal concern, vis our future as citizens of the UNITED States of America.
First, i can appreciate the IT-system metaphor advanced by MAGA’s current brain trust (Peter Thiel, Steve Bannon, Curtis Yarvin, etc.) for modern governance. Specifically, that we need to shut the current system down and bring it back up. I mean, this (adaptive change) should be the goal of all democratic referenda, right? Strangely, there are powerful voices behind the new-right providing wind beneath MAGA’s wings. They assert (d)emocractic processes aren’t sweeping enough. (or, democracy is incompatible with “freedom”?) They say there’s an entrenched nefarious “deep state” at the root of all U.S. disfunction and the only way to fix it is to burn it all the way down. My problem with their proposed solution is that they would merely replace the existing “administrative state” with their own version. You know, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”. I’m not persuaded that this will be an improvement for every day working people. Maybe for the billionaire or millionaire class, but not for the folks i know and love. They (new right) don’t want to merely reform the system, they want to scrap democracy (Lincoln’s version) and replace it with a techno-monarchy featuring all-powerful CEOs (like modern corporate governance). No, really. And ya… i’m not persuaded. They say we need to get over our “dictator-phobia”. WTF? We already litigated the divine right of kings, and we’ve also litigated authoritarian fascism.
Not only no, but HELL to the NO…! We aren’t going there, ever again… hello!
That said, as a former IT professional, i understand the corrosive effects entropy can have on complex adaptive systems such as hardware/software synergies and electoral politics. And so, i’m open to ideas. But, rather than throw the founders’ baby out with the bathwater of institutional corruption (dark money, lobbyist/congress revolving door, etc.), let’s take a look at how our leaders are chosen. Let’s scrap the zero-sum “winner take all” method of the current electoral system and replace it with ranked choice contests, enforcing radical transparency in the funding of campaign messaging. This would force all campaigns to appeal to voters outside of narrow ideological lanes. If nothing else, taking down the temperature of divisive campaign vitriol.
I realize i’m veering off my lane as i’m not a political scientist, but i had to throw a couple pennies in there as the ideas these guys are throwing around, whether simply trolling for reactions, or worse, if they’re serious, have me more than a little concerned. Seriously… melt the underclasses down into bio-fuel? Jack them into “Matrix-like” virtual-world simulations, red pills, blue pills? Is this supposed to be funny? Sorry, i’m not on board. Enjoyed the movie, immensely, not amused by Mr. Yarvin’s analogy. In fact, he’s got it all quite backwards. He calls the administrative state and a collection of elite opinion makers a “cathedral”, but, as a fellow IT maven, he should remember the software development structures described in the early days of the Internet by Eric S. Raymond as the Cathedral and the Bazaar. With mission-aligned engineers developing commercial software being the Cathedral, and the loose confederation of developers contributing to open-source projects being the Bazaar. As i see it, the current loose configuration of influences making up MAGA’s nemesis, the “deep state” operate like Raymond’s description of the Bazaar, and the ideologically-aligned power structure Project 2025 aims to install “on day one” would be closer to Raymond’s description of the Cathedral. Yes… ass backwards. But enough of that digression.
You think i’m joking? Look it up…Curtis Yarvin is admired by Peter Thiel, Steve Bannon, and VP Candidate JD Vance. Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation’s sanitized version of the brave new world order these radical libertarians have in mind, and they know libertarianism can never take power without totalitarian monarchical rule so, rather than face reality and modify their expectations, they propose we simply scrap democracy and install CEO Tzars…? Seriously… shouldn’t this simply be the end of discussion?
Well it’s not, and the way i see it, we stand at a very important crossroad in our nation’s history. Sure, the current system has major flaws, and corruption seems to have become the norm rather than the exception. So, we should consider seemingly wacky reform ideas and let the best rise to the top for implementation. After all, we still have the Electoral College. A reasonable compromise in the horse and buggy days. And it did serve a noble purpose at one time. Do we really need it now? This should be up for vigorous debate. And the lobbyist/congress-critter revolving door in D.C…? is this the best way to bring citizens in so they can have their say in the way the rest of us are governed? Some might say, “hell no”, but the critters in the revolving door will fight to keep that gravy train a’rollin’.
Thing is… we are still the gold standard City on the Hill. Surely everyone can identify areas of the founders’ brilliant framework that remain relevant, and fill the gaps of, how would Peter Thiel put it, outdated policy “software” in order to go forward in a manner that benefits all citizens, not just the millionaire/billionaire class.
Anyway… we report, you decide, and that’s all i wanna say about that.
Back to the search for the fibrillating heart of our divided nation, the 2024-25 Hot Springs or Busk tour.
“What we know is a drop… What we don’t know is the ocean.” ~ Isaac Newton
I tried… i really tried. Or maybe i’m adjusting to life’s inevitable curveballs scrambling the perfect symmetry of my best laid plan. You know, the one where i, knight-errant in a rolling studio apartment christened Rocinante, traversing the 48 contiguous states. The noble quest? To get my arms around the “fibrillating heart of our divided nation“. To get these insights from whomever in these sleepy college towns might be willing to spend five minutes with a weirdo packing a guitar and a head full of questions.
But fate, that fickle wench, had other plans. First, it was the librarians. Pale, overworked automatons shuffling through Dewey decimals, with nary a moment to spare for philosophical pontificating on state mottos. Was it time constraints, or a gut-wrenching fear of my “political agenda”? And don’t get me started on the chilling possibility that the modern anti-intellectualism plague has seeped its tendrils into the heartland’s libraries! The horror! I quickly concluded my approach was to blame. I mean, c’mon, what the hell is this all about?
Then came the body blows: Rocinante’s innards failing like a politician’s promise, and a Utah road pebble punching a hole in our windshield. The Hot Springs or Busk mission – a symphony of soaking in geothermal glory and serenading the masses for petty cash – lay in tatters. Sure, the Dakotas and Wyoming soothed my travel-weary soul with their natural mineral baths, but that dream’s on hold till the autumn chill sets in. And busking? That one never even sprouted wings. Turns out, maintaining personal hygiene on the road, wrestling with writer’s block, acquiring provisions, and figuring out where to sleep takes up most of a day.
But here’s the kicker, loopers. The world’s gone batty, and burying my head in the sand just ain’t gonna cut it anymore. “Project 2025” leaked like a sieve, painting a dystopian portrait of a second Trumpian reign that’d make Orwell blush. And don’t even get me started on the assassination attempt – the twisted pandora’s box exposing an unholy alliance of theocratic nutjobs, techie snake-oil salesmen, and white-bread racists all marching in lockstep toward MAGA-land.
This, loopers, is where Rocinante and i draw a line in the sand. It’s time to stand up, or at least yell obscenities at the oncoming storm, in defense of the freaking democratic republic our forefathers sweat blood to build. This ain’t some pre-packaged travelogue anymore, folks. This is a gonzo odyssey hurtling towards a cliffhanger ending November, 2024, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Let me establish some bona fides, loopers. It was 1993, the Jurassic period of the internet, when i, a late-blooming recently reformed rock-n-roll wannabe made his way to the meticulously landscaped limestone campus of Fort Hays State University. At this frontier outpost, i stumbled upon a great tech-fueled human awakening. The era, mind you, when dial-up modems whined their mating calls, and the internet itself resided in a fluorescent-lit dungeon called the “computing center” – a place that would make a Kafka setting look like some cheerful dentist’s waiting room.
There, on a terminal that resembled a torture device from a B-movie, i logged onto a primordial internet, a MUD (multi-user dungeon) teeming with virtual spelunkers from across the globe. It was like falling into a rabbit hole populated by Aussies, Brits, and basement-dwelling samurai – a world where geography dissolved like a bad acid trip.
Intrigued (and maybe a little scared), i embarked on a quest to understand this beast. I traded my dog-eared textbooks for a master’s degree in the field of “communication studies,” focusing on the particular learning styles of these early internet adopters. As the web blossomed (or maybe more accurately, sprouted like a particularly virulent fungus), so did my career. I landed in academia, a Don Quixote tilting at windmills of ignorance, determined to share this newfound curiosity.
Ah, but this paradise wasn’t built for everyone. Back then, computing power was the exclusive domain of pocket-protected engineers and those with the social graces of an abacus. The average digital apprentice, like myself, had two options: learn the arcane language of coding, a feat akin to deciphering ancient Sumerian, or grovel before the high priests of computer science. And for what reward? The dubious honor of navigating a buggy wasteland of productivity tools resembling a drunken Rube Goldberg contraption. The “graphical user interface” revolution, if you can call it that, was just another layer of lipstick on this technological pig.
Before the internet, navigating the marketplace of ideas meant a pilgrimage to the library, that mausoleum of knowledge and arcanery. You either wrestled with the Dewey Decimal System, a logic puzzle designed by Satan himself, or relied on the benevolence of the librarians, those gatekeepers of the pulp-n-ink media. The contrast between the Dark Ages of ’78 and the digital supernova of 2024 is enough to make your head spin.
Now, we drown in a tsunami of technological pronouncements – quantum computing, designer DNA, the ever-present threat of Skynet. But fear not, loopers, for even as we stand on the precipice of a technological singularity, nearly half the population still believes the Earth is flat and six thousand years old. We are a nation of flickering attention spans, perpetually distracted by the digital fireflies flitting across our screens – a society of shuffling zombies, hypnotized by the glow of our handheld gods, and there will be a reckoning… oh yea.
Look, i’m no Luddite. Here i am, hunched over a keyboard in the merciful silence of the library, instead of downing near-beer and swapping healthcare stories at the Bingo Hall. The digital siren song is hard to resist. But where’s the master plan in all this? Who’s steering this chrome chariot hurtling towards who-knows-where? It feels like a rigged game, doesn’t it? The puppet masters, these billionaire Übermenschen, dangle their techno-baubles in front of us, content to keep the masses hypnotized. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s just economics, not some grand conspiracy. After all, we don’t wanna give spoiled, marginally-competent “self-made” trust-fund babies too much credit, right?
Anyway, we stand at a crossroads, teetering on the edge of a technological revolution. The chaos around us is a symptom of our collective unpreparedness. Let’s arm ourselves with knowledge, not just the latest gadgets. The future is ours to shape, but only if we wrest control from the digital puppeteers and use this power wisely. After all, wouldn’t you rather be the architect than another brick in the wall?
Either way, we’re in a heap of trouble. The gap between the haves and have-nots is wider than the Grand Canyon on a bad acid trip. We’re hurtling towards a technological future with all the grace of a drunken walrus on roller skates. What’s the answer? Jeezus! Who knows…? If i had the answers my dispatches wouldn’t live in an obscure blog no more discernable than a needle in the galaxy of obscurity. I’d be one of the puppet masters, right? There would be publicists, and media tours, and wardrobe people, personal trainers, financial advisors, domestic services staff, etc..
So, assuming my guess is as good as anyone with comparable bona fides, consider this: What if we were to pump our educational systems full of digital steroids, create a generation of media-savvy citizens who can think critically, not just parrot the latest pronouncements from Silicon Valley snake-oil salesmen? Also… maybe leave the religious dogma to Sunday schools.
Whatever we decide to do, it’s time to stop worshipping false idols (as seen in the 10 Commandments) and reclaim our rightful place as that shining pluralistic city on the hill. Let’s stop vilifying intelligence, but celebrate it. From there, maybe we really CAN … Make Humanity Great Again.
Ok… enough for now. Stay tuned for a reverse “red-pill” treatment… we’ll flip the whole “Cathedral” of the neo-liberal “deep-state” on it’s head. We’ll restate The Who’s pithy observation from their anthem, Won’t Get Fooled Again…
OH BOY. Project 2025… This is where i have to crawl out of the closet:
THIS RESPONSE ADDRESSED TO: Kevin Roberts (Heritage Foundation’s Poobah) See below, a few high points i am compelled to address… Otherwise… this could be a sleepless, nightmare, Hellscape of a year. OR… go HERE for a less angry synopsis (pro & con).
History teaches that a President’s power to implement an agenda is at its apex during the administration’s opening days. To execute requires a well-conceived, coordinated, unified plan and a trained and committed cadre of personnel to implement it. (xiii)
Ummm… ok… organized political action, kudos.
In the winter of 1980, the fledging Heritage Foundation handed to President-elect Ronald Reagan the inaugural Mandate for Leadership. (xiv)
So… in effect, giving POTUS marching orders? You go on to say, for Project 2025, you need to go “back to the future…” ??? LOL… love this wordsmithing, so subtle. I’m starting to warm up to these loopers… 😉
The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. (xvi)
Ok… seriously… what are you talking about, here? “Cultural Marxism”… what the hell does that even mean? This? -or- This? For now, let’s just put it in the “straw man” category, that way we can get on with it, as Monty Python would say.
The federal government is a behemoth… (xiv).
Truedat… like anything else… there are good and bad aspects. Reform should be a regular feature. As well, some attempt to keep communication and information management capabilities up to date would be nice.
The federal government is weaponized against American citizens and conservative values… (xvi)
Bullshit… bullshit… straight-up bullshit! But even if it were true, no part of the weaponized librul gub’mnt is gonna murder conservative standard-bearers like when the flip was on the other flop. Remember… when America was great, in the 1960s?? Please? Can we just skip over the breathless hyperbole?
…with freedom and liberty under siege as never before. (xvi)
What the hell does this even mean?? Seriously… c’mon… skip the hyperbole…
Ok… now, a quick summary of the four pillars of the… plan… manifesto? Can we call it a manifesto? Sure… let’s do that.
Pillar I: With the help of partisan consultants, each president gets to decide how each federal agency is run. (xiv)
Intriguing, but won’t this lead to a counterproductive level of chaos? Oh… that’s right… you don’t plan to cede power to pedophilic cultural Marxists ever again, am i reading this right? Sure. Got it.
Pillar II: Populate federal agencies with partisan activists only… (xiv)
So… anyone see Stalinist overtones, here… Buhler… Buhler…?
Pillar III: Presidential Administration Academy, an online educational system taught by experts from our coalition. (xvi)
READ => Political indoctrination/grooming… hello…! WAIT…! Isn’t this what conservatives accuse leftists of doing all the time? Isn’t this some classic Freudian Projection? Is every accusation gonna end up, after the receipts come in, freaking confessions? Hey… i’m just asking questions here.
Pillar IV (the playbook): …we are forming agency teams and drafting transition plans to move out upon the President’s utterance of ‘so help me God.’ (xiv)
Ok… you’re ready to rumble as soon as you get your emperor installed. I wonder if anyone saw this coming? Hmmmmmm…
Forty-four years ago, the United States and the conservative movement were in dire straits. Both had been betrayed by the Washington establishment and were uncertain whom to trust. (1)
Still sore about Nixon’s fall from grace?
Now, as then (1970s), our political class has been discredited by wholesale dishonesty and corruption. (1)
Couldn’t agree more… but… to lay it all at the feet of your political opponents is disingenuous at best, political expedience at second best, willful deceit in fact.
Contemporary elites have even repurposed the worst ingredients of 1970s ‘radical chic’ to build the totalitarian cult known today as ‘The Great Awokening.’ (1)
Totalitarian cult? Again… disingenuous treatment. You see, in the wake of the ‘summer of racial reckoning’ there was an academic movement scrutinizing the plague of institutional racism. The media bubble Jon Stewart calls “Bullshit Mountain” and others, latched onto this moniker (The Great Awokening). They identified a convenient boogyman, and are now furiously tilting at it while the rest of us stand back and marvel at the energy expelled by these Errant Knights of Christendom.
Most alarming of all, the very moral foundations of our society are in peril. (1)
Please explain yourself… cos, to me, this sounds like desperation. Your churches are losing their cultural dominance, and you want to call this “moral decline” as if your moral compass is the only one worth considering? I know this might sound harsh, but bless you, bless you, and by all means, bless all the way off. Yours is not the only worthy moral code out there. In fact, it’s not even the most beneficial. Please take a look at your ten commandments… four out of the ten are no better than tossing glitter to the sky for all the benefit they provide. Again… bless you, and the unicorn you rode in on!
We brought together hundreds of conservative scholars and academics across the conservative movement. Together, this team created a 20-volume, 3,000-page governing handbook containing more than 2,000 conservative policies to reform the federal government and rescue the American people from Washington dysfunction. (2)
Admirable collective effort, no knock there. Unfortunately, your policies are not popular with the one-person-one-vote world. You know… democracy? I suspect you had picked up on this, and so now, you want to keep Mr. Trump’s 2025 campaign platform mum till such time as it is too late for voters to thoughtfully consider the implications. You employ subterfuge and obfuscation to slip your plan into a place that can’t be easily dislodged? Hey… i get it, your pragmatism is admirable, but i think i’d rather see a federal government reflect the actual will of the governed… you know the kind of government Lincoln dedicated his life to preserve. Ah shucks, i know… that’s just me… me and 81,283,500 others.
As Ronald Reagan put it: (2)
Seriously… i. don’t. care! The only thing i’ll remember about Mr. Reagan, other than that whole Bed Time for Bonzo business, is his VooDoo economic plan gutting the US middle-class, turning them into the “working poor.” Congratulations Conservatives (in name only), you’ve made billionaires very happy. all the while slowly deleting the very thing that made America Great in the first place (a thriving middle-class).
The bad news today is that our political establishment and cultural elite have once again driven America toward decline. (2)
Unfortunately, it’s hard to mount a counter argument here, but again with your disingenuousness. The blame does not simply lie at the feet of your political opponents. I know that kind of talk gives your base a swell of righteous pride, and gives your opponents a rallying cry against zero-sum zealots, but to the rest of us (non-affiliated independents), it just makes you look like playground simpletons, and thanks a lot, you’ve allowed the neighborhood bully into your “cool kids” clique… tsk tsk.
…this book is the work of the entire conservative movement. As such, the authors express consensus recommendations already forged, especially along four broad fronts that will decide America’s future: 1) Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children, 2) Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people, 3) Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats, and 4) Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.’ (3)
Right… to have our kids raised with loving, stable families is super important, but restoring the “nuclear family?” … yea… no thanks… this is an outmoded bankrupt system of determining a man’s “chattel property” … it’s no longer a sustainable model… let’s go back to the drawing board, shall we?
Yes, there have been difficult and dysfunctional periods in the regulatory movements and agencies in the past. But these agencies have also done much to mitigate dangers inherent with laissez-faire capitalism. Example… Denver’s “brown cloud“… in the 70s… damn… very bad… by the time the Clinton Admin was finished, much improvement. I imagine this story isn’t uncommon among industrial centers of the USofA.
Yes… agree, but immigrants aren’t the enemy. The real question should be whether the USofA still has carrying capacity for more of the world’s “tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free”? If not, then we should start restricting immigration to emergency cases? I don’t know… and i wouldn’t want to be responsible for making these damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t decisions.
Just what are you referring to with this “blessings of liberty” thing? I suspect this is just an excuse for “predatory acquisitive individualism” because, founding fathers, baseball, apple pie, Mom… Jesus? And though i have given over to the logic of markets, i’m not sold on the current trend of rendering individual votes subordinate to the almighty dollar. See, the gap between those obscenely rich and merely getting by, those millions of “working poor,” is so wide now as to be unimaginable for anyone not trained in exponential mathematics. Democracy is at stake, but not due to the straw man right-wingers have constructed (the deep state), but rather the corrosive influence of filthy rich donors manipulating power in their favor, against the interests of the working poor, and the doomed. Yea… in other universes, this might be known as institutionalized corruption.
This was one of the secrets of conservatives’ success in the Reagan Era, one our generation should emulate. (3)
Again… we have a fundamental disagreement on the matter of Reagan’s legacy… and i would be fine if we never brought it up again. I’ll make an exception if you want to discuss Mr. Reagan in the context of the relative merits of “Supply Side” economics.
…conservatives should gratefully celebrate the greatest pro-family win in a generation: overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that for five decades made a mockery of our Constitution and facilitated the deaths of tens of millions of unborn children. (6)
So… first, let’s take a look at the premise of this longstanding argument. That advocates for female agency and bodily autonomy do not “value human life”? Again, with the disingenuousness… you KNOW your political opponents value life, and their children. Yet, your bald-faced lie persists. In my view, the cruxt of the disagreement is where we can logically recognize a sentient human life. The Roe standard is at the point of “fetal viability,” that is the point where a NICU could keep a baby healthy and vital outside the confines of the mother’s womb. You profess to believe a dignified, ensouled human life is created as soon as the egg accepts a sperm and begins cell division. But… this is at odds with your own holy book. Genesis 2:7 says life begins with the first breath. Not deterred, you declare, your conception of Pro-Life to be the ultimate moral stand, and with self-righteous pomposity, you say it out loud between bites of a pulled pork sandwich, then proudly assert yourself occupier of the high ground, like Donald J. Trump at a NATO summit, all the while cheering the latest state-sanctioned execution… “Pro-Life”? Please…?? I’ve read Orwell… i’m on to your jam.
Listen: You KNOW there have been instances of unjust capital punishment, but you rationalize it as a deterrent anyway. Living, dreaming, self-aware human beings? In my view, one unjust execution is too many and should trigger YOUR “right to life” instinct far more than the abortion of a 12-week-old fetus. Astounding hypocrisy! And then there’s the exercise of geo-political power in the form of war. We willingly kill those we perceive as enemies… living, dreaming self-aware human beings? No problem. But… abort an unplanned, unwanted, pre-viability pregnancy, even IF it’s the product of rape or incest, and oh boy do we have a problem! In my view, it’s none of your business what goes on with Shelly down the street’s rape baby, or Patty’s oops. Medically reversing these mistakes engenders more outrage in you than the execution of an innocent person… especially when that innocent person doesn’t look like you or any of your neighbors? Tsk tsk… shame on you!
Want to hear an alternative vision for where humanness begins? Yea, i know, you don’t. You think your view is backed by the creator of the universe. Wow! News flash! Your view of the source of “ultimate authority” isn’t universally embraced. In fact, the fastest growing religious affiliation in the US is “none of the above,” a group to which i belong after a reasonably normal childhood of indoctrination, groomed in the Christian bosom (baptized Mennonite). So, that said, i’ll throw it out there, cos i can. What if true humanness requires self-awareness? You know, that point when a baby starts recognizing Mom or Dad. When the baby starts looking at items around them, like toes, and toys, and crib bars, etc. Two months or so after trauma of birth? Does anyone actually want to draw the line there? No one i know of, but you could put the logic to the test. And what if that logic was put to the test, and what if it were determined the baby isn’t really self-aware until weeks after the trauma of birth, would that justify infanticide for unwanted or defective pregnancies as Mr. Tumpty Dumpty repeatedly alleges? Hell to the no! But drawing the line needs to address all concerned parties. Yes, even the pearl-clutching church crowd. In my view, Roe got it about as right as it can be got. Listen, if we could interview everyone approaching legitimate medical practitioners for abortion services, i believe we’d find an ocean of remorse and mourning for the life that could have been, and the means for reversing the course nature was on. Again… none of my, or your, business.
And if we can just drop all the subterfuge surrounding this issue, we’d have to acknowledge this full-court press to stop abortion as a means of birth-control is more about a fear of brown people outbreeding whites than anything else. With the white grievance crowd fearing browns might exact a similar sort of oppression that they (whites) exercised and continue to exercise over non-whites now. If we can drop the obfuscation and subterfuge, we can confess this “Project 2025” is all about control. But i suspect this control, if applied, is going to be no more effective than the legend of the Dutch boy holding back the dam with his finger. I learned from my civil-engineering friends, water always finds its way “downhill.” This whole Project 2025 swagger has got desperate fear written all over it. And you, Kevin Roberts, when you say the quiet part out loud, when you threaten your political opponents with violence, you will answer to the government of, by, and for the people when the people finally prevail. It may not be this time around, but it will happen. You will lose in a truly democratic contest. And when you do, you will have to account for your authoritarian aspirations.
The people will out… “From many, One. E’Pluribus Unum.” “One Nation, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All.”
Loopcircus 