It is a privilege to live in an area where all kinds of people are welcome and respected. I didn't realize how lucky we are here in the PNW until the first trump regime. I have never seen a red hat, any of the merch, or any of those stupid bumper stickers. MAGA may have sympathizers here, but they're hidden. I don't have an answer for people who live in red states. I wouldn't be able to tolerate it.
lol right? WA5 is VERY different from the Salish Seacoast 😁: my neighbor across the street had a HUGE "Trump won: you know it, I know it" banner over his barn/garage double door until it finally rotted away last year.
My boss got mad at me for posting anti-PedoPINO stuff on FakeBook.
Two of our Parts guys used to mock me for not liking TrumPedo, until I started asking them VERY POINTED QUESTIONS ("You were mad at Biden for high gas prices, despite POTUSes not setting the price of oil or gas. Now that Trump has started the forever war and gas prices are higher, who do you blame?" "If the riot to stop the election certification on J6 was not an insurrection, what do you call the attempt to interfere in the peaceful transfer of power?" "Are you ALSO in favor of continuing to hide the Trump-Epstein files in violation of the law?")
My former landlady told racist jokes I had never heard...and I grew up in the SOUTH in the 70s!
One MAGAT coworker imported a wife (I joke. They met online. She is a VERY sweet lady and I hope she becomes a fellow American soon), and I asked if he would be upset if she was extrajudicially kidnapped/assaulted/trafficked by ICE/Gestapo. He doesn't talk to me much anymore after that. (I think I may have made him THINK, and as you know, MAGATS HATE THINKING! That's why I'm getting the "Ralph Wiggum wearing a MAGA hat and picking his nose with the speech bubble saying 'I'm waiting for Trump to tell me what to think' T-shirt" to wear when I'm feeling antagonistic.)
I was shocked, both because I thought --like many-- that racism was mostly a Southern thing (NOPE! Even exists in other countries, like Nazi Musk's apartheid); but also because most of my neighbors are very kind and helpful people, and you'd NEVER know they hated our Constitution until you talk about something where politics or ethnicity touch.
I worked in conjunction with police, and I used to know a sheriff's deputy in upstate NY who told horrible racist jokes and who claimed, in agreement with one of my co-workers, that white people and black people are 2 different species. The judge I worked for told us he wouldn't let his daughter attend a school dance because there would be "roving bands of African Americans there."
Racism is terrible all over the world. I was disgusted by it in Egypt because it's so prevalent there. Sub-Saharan people emigrate to Egypt to get work or as refugees from all the wars and political problems in many countries on the continent.
I help to run a bridge brigade in MN and have been trying to decide on tomorrow's message. After reading this, I'm sold on DIVERSITY = STRENGTH. We don't have many MAGA types here, but I hope the ones who pass by our message are forced to think a little before giving us the finger.
Pamela, you and I are on the same page. In response to Jennifer Rubin's post on Substack yesterday about the upcoming midterms, I ended it this way: "Our diversity is our strength."
The holier-than-thou Bible thumper Little Mikie Johnson should remember part of the lyrics to the song about Jesus' love for all the children I was taught in Sunday School a long, long time ago when I was a kid: "red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight."
Although I moved on from the religious teachings of my early years quite some time ago, the message of inclusion communicated in that little song has stayed with me and is more relevant than ever now.
Kudos to you! If you need to defend your assertion, feel free to invoke James Madison and the U.S. Constitution. Madison was rightly lauded as the Father of the Constitution and the Father of the Bill of Rights. He wrote many of the Federalist Papers to explain our Constitution to convince people to support its ratification. Madison directly explained that diversity was crucial to the strength of our Constitution and the strength of our nation.
Many people opposed our Constitution and opposed creating one nation out of the very diverse peoples of the 13 then-independent nations that became one nation with the ratification of the Constitution. So in Federalist No. 10 (https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493273), Madison explained and emphasized that our Constitution was designed to provide “a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government.” Such diseases include “faction,” which can easily result in a “tyranny of the majority,” as Tocqueville put it in his book “Democracy In America.”
Madison highlighted how factions divide people in a manner that presents an existential danger. Many people invoke “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions” precisely “to kindle [the most] unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.” Anything “interesting to the human passions” can be “inflamed” to make people “much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.” So our Constitution was designed “[t]o secure the public good and private rights against the danger of [any] faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government.” Those were the obvious, vital and overarching purposes of our Constitution.
Madison expressly emphasized the vital importance of preserving the “diversity in the faculties of” diverse peoples. “The diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights of property originate, is” an “insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. [Even so, t]he protection of these faculties is the first object of government.”
In Federalist No. 51 (https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-51-60#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493427), Madison directly and expressly emphasized that diversity in society is one of the essential sources of the strength of our union. Diversity helps secure justice, safety and security. Madison emphasized (repeatedly) that “Justice is the end [i.e., the ultimate goal] of government.” Madison even provided examples. Diversity is essential to the security of “civil rights” and “religious rights.” Our security is promoted by promoting our diversity.
“It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable.”
The act of “creating a will in the community independent of the majority” is what the People did by writing and ratifying our Constitution. The First Amendment and the prohibition on religious tests in Article VI and the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Sixth Amendments and the many ways that our Constitution included states and preserved the power of the people of individual states were expressly directed at using our Constitution to secure and promote diversity and inclusion (and thereby promote equity/justice).
The second method, above (“comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable”) is diversity and inclusion. That was the primary principle underlying the 1st, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments Each such amendment clarified or changed the meaning of the expression “We the People” at the beginning of our Constitution.
In Federalist No. 51 Madison directly highlighted the importance of diversity of society to the strength of our Union and our Constitution: “Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity [diversity] of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity [diversity] of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number [diversity] of interests and sects; and this [diversity] may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under the same government.”
Thanks for sharing these thoughts. They fit right in with the book I am reading The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood, a very interesting account of how the founders tried to figure out how to implement a government-by-the-people at a large scale.
That is a very interesting and insightful book! Very well worth reading today for multiple reasons!
One reason is all the times that Wood (or people he quoted) used any variation of the word "dependence" (including "independence"). Wood essentially proved the meaning of the word "independence" to the people who wrote, defended or later relied on (e.g., Abraham Lincoln) the Declaration of Independence. It wasn't about mere independence of the states from Britain. It was about the independence of people from all the links in the "chain of dependency" that bound everyone in society.
Have you also read Gordon Wood's "Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution"? I'd strongly recommend reading it after "The Radicalism of the American Revolution." The last chapter of "Power and Liberty" also (briefly) addresses some of the most important aspects of "The Radicalism of the American Revolution."
I got Radicalism from the library and considered buying it and now I will - it is a profound read and I think worth going through again. I will definitely also get Power and Liberty. BTW, someone on one of the substacks recommended the book and I was surprised by how old it was, but suddenly it is popular as I wasn't able to renew it as there was a waiting list!
I bought it, and I'm happy I did. I got about 150 pages into it and then I started all over again so that I could start highlighting (very selectively). In part, I highlighted every time Wood or someone he quoted used any form of the word "dependence" (including independence, dependent, independent, dependency) or "equal" or "chain."
To me, Part 9 (Enlightened Paternalism) was particularly insightful and interesting. As Wood highlighted, the American Revolution was to a great extent a "revolution against patriarchy" and a revolution in education.
When I began reading it, I told my husband that this may be worthwhile adding to our library. I just bought both books and decided on the Kindle version so I can search for things - it was a toss-up as I like to write notes and underline passages in paper books. I found his insights fascinating in that he provides a solid foundation in how societies function in ways I never even thought of before. And, the debates among the founders are so interesting. I got through Chapter 14 last night before losing the book today for what could be several weeks. Decided it IS a keeper, especially after your comments. Thanks! P.S. Now I won't feel rushed trying to get through it. He really does get one thinking deeply, which is needed to absorb what he is saying.
The foundation is strongest NOT when it contains only "pure" cement; but when it contains aggregate and rebar, as well. Diversity = strength.
We all used to eat Gros Michel cultivar bananas until a disease wiped them out. We still have commercially-grown bananas because some growers grew Cavendish cultivars. Diversity = strength.
The most secure code against the WWII Nazis was not an ENIGMA machine of our own, but the native language of the Navajo Code Talkers. Diversity =strength.
Decades ago, I lived in a quiet cul de sac where a neighbor and his family had fled Iran. You know what they had the audacity to do? Play soccer in the street with their young children in the early evening. Crazy Muslims? They belonged to a Universalist Church. Kind people. Their English was better than most Americans. And the list could go on and on. Bigotry is alive and well in America.
I’m a lifelong Star Trek fan. In the original series episode Balance of Terror, Captain Kirk reprimands lieutenant Stiles when he questions Spock’s loyalty because he looks somewhat like a Romulan. Kirk: "Leave any bigotry in your quarters. There's no room for it on the bridge." Good times.
The neighbors behind me are Iranian and the most gracious people one could imagine. When I first came to Silicon Valley, I worked at a small semiconductor testing lab owned and operated by immigrant middle eastern Muslims; they, too, were very gracious people, in fact, much more so than so-called Christians.
That’s been my experience, too. I lived in a Muslim community in the Balkans for a couple of years. They were kind, gracious, generous with their time and their food, and strongly family-centered at the same time. Lovely people!
Apparently a majority of white Americans have convinced themselves, by way of constant propaganda, that they are members of a persecuted class. Funny how they don't understand that they are indeed members of a downtrodden class who have been victims of the wealth inequality that has run rampant since Reagan. It has made me, a white man, afraid of the overwhelmingly white oligarchs who rule our country. All of us in the bottom 90% are being sold out by both parties playing games.
I’m looking forward to a time when bigotry is gone. But, I will settle for fewer bigoted elected representatives, acceptance of DEI again, and celebrations of holidays with respect for many ways to say, “Welcome, neighbor.”
From a 1945 United States Army pamphlet fact sheet on “what is fascism”:
“The fascist doctrine of hate fulfills a triple mission. By creating disunity — it weakens democracy. By getting men to hate rather than to think — it prevents men from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem. By fake promises of jobs and security, fascism then tries to lure men to its program as the way out of insecurity. Only by democratically solving the economic problems of our day can there be any certainty that fascism won't happen here. That is our job as citizens.”
We live about two blocks away from the American-Muslim center here in Dearborn, MI, and the worst thing we can say about that is the traffic in the neighborhood on Friday afternoons. Like the traffic on Saturday evenings ("guitar mass") and Sunday mornings around the Catholic Church I attended as a kid. Like Mr. El-Sayed, for whom we voted in the primaries, we like pancakes, but have to wait in line sometimes after the black Baptist Churches in Del Rey / River Rouge let out. One of the things all these groups have in common is that they will be forever shat upon by the likes of washed-up POS politicians like Mike Rogers, and the faux Christians in congress.
Funny that terrorism is always the product of The Other. No mention made of white evangelical rage against brown-skinned immigrants, black-skinned residents or anyone not WASP.
A message from the Bible to Tommy Tubby: Deuteronomy 20:16-17
16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.
There's an entire wikipedia page on "Genocide in the [Old Testament of the] Bible." Who gets not left alive? The people who don't follow YHWH *and their animals*.
We all know TT can't read much less read the Bible but ffs.
Isn't Christianity supposed to be based on the New Testament? Don't Christians believe that Christ is God and if Christ is in fact God, didn't God decide to become "woke" and make a new covenant, voiding the old one?
Conservative Evangelicals in particular pick and choose any section of the American Bible, Old and New Testament, to try to force their ideology on people. They'll even split verses to focus on the thing they care about (say, gay sex) and ignore the thing they don't want to talk about (like, the context of the supposed passage on gay sex that was really about something else entirely). I say the American Bible because the American version of the Bible, which is remarkably used by a minority of Christians, has the fewest books, 66. While Christianity originated in Ethiopia, which typically uses a bible with 88 books, for example. The official Catholic bible has 73 books, by the way. But evangelicals and some other conservative groups really like to focus on the Old Testament books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy because they are mostly rules, rules that the conservative Evangelicals mostly ignore unless its something they can twist into being about abortion or gay sex.
Yes, but they don't disavow the Old Testament or repudiate it. Catholics have also been aware of the sexual abuse of children by priests for literally hundreds of years. Jesus as God, part of the so-called blessed trinity, didn't come to be until several hundred years after the alleged crucifixion and was a motion voted on and passed by the Nicene Council. God split into 3 entities is actually a pretty weird concept.
The ways they’re attacking each other for being insufficient anti-Muslim strikes me as meaningful. I don’t know that I’m ready to declare just what it means, it certainly is a sign of something. Probably that they’re just playing follow the leader.
Did you ever imagine anything like this? The rabid moronic white nationalists seizing the reins of power and the legislature and Supreme Court just letting them do all this?
I’m spittin’ mad. It angries up mah blood sumpin’ fierce. Thanks for helping to keep me from spinning out of control.
It happened because America took itself for granted. Americans stopped voting. I just spoke to someone yesterday who didn't know who our senators and House reps' names are. Trump was able to harness the anger and resentment of low information voters, non-voters and uneducated (remember "I love the uneducated"?), racists, misogynists and miscellaneous dipshits, but most of all, he's done the crony thing where he promised the oligarchs the sun, moon and stars if they'd pony up to get him put back in office. The 2024 election was the most corrupt in the sense that it was won by the rich, for the rich.
It's not even legal. Trump has called upon the National Guard to patrol cities because of nonexistent "rampant crime," a misuse of these people who have been away from their homes and families for months to yell at jaywalkers, and ICE to arrest people who look like foreigners, especially those who look Hispanic or like Arabs. It's terrorism. Because of this kind of "policy," tourism in the US has cratered. We have no friends anymore.
Such rhetoric and implications against any person because of their mere association with people with general opinions regarding religion is obviously un-American and anti-constitutional. The people who wrote and ratified the original Constitution emphasized this principle by including multiple commandments in Article VI.
First, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” If we were meant to be governed according to the opinions of some people about the wishes of a supreme being, a religious test would make perfect sense.
Second, all legislators and “all executive and judicial Officers” of “the United States and of [all] States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution” (not any God).
Third, "the supreme Law of the Land" is limited to our “Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance [of our Constitution]; and all Treaties,” (not any purported commandment from any purported God).
Fourth, all “Judges in every State shall be bound” by “the supreme Law of the Land” despite “any Thing” written anywhere else “to the Contrary.”
Moreover, nearly everything in the First Amendment pertains to freedom of religion, as well as freedom from religion. Everything explicitly or implicitly in that amendment (the freedom of thought, expression, communication, association and assembly) pertains directly to religion except the right to petition the government.
Multiple leading supporters of our Constitution explained why our Constitution outlawed our public servants (and discouraged the public) discriminating based on mere religious opinions.
James Iredell (a leading Federalist and judge in North Carolina, and later a SCOTUS justice who issued an opinion emphasizing the sovereignty of the people) was one of the many who addressed Americans’ liberty regarding any so-called religion. He delivered a speech at the North Carolina ratifying convention defending the protection for freedom of conscience in Article VI:
"I consider the [Religious Test] clause under consideration as one of the strongest proofs that could be adduced, that it was the intention of [the Framers of our Constitution], to establish a general religious liberty in America. . . . [But some people have] objected, that [the Religious Test Clause permits] the people of America [to choose] Representatives who have no religion at all, and that Pagans and Mahometans may be admitted into [federal] offices. But how is it possible to exclude any set of men, without taking away that principle of religious freedom which we ourselves so warmly [passionately] contend for? This is the foundation on which persecution has been raised in every part of the world. The people in power were always in the right, and every body else wrong. If you admit the least difference, the door to persecution is opened."
Iredell also emphasized the self-evident truths that "[i]t would be happy for mankind if religion was permitted to take its own course, and maintain itself by the excellence of its own doctrines. The divine author of our religion never wished for its support by worldly authority."
Iredell repeatedly emphasized that the Religious Test Clause “is calculated to secure universal religious liberty” to serve a purpose that is profoundly important to our Constitution and even, specifically, to national security. Iredell repeatedly emphasized that religious liberty is “the only way to prevent persecution,” and Iredell emphasized how that particular problem threatens national security (the very survival of our nation and our Constitution):
"Every person in the least conversant in the history of mankind, knows what dreadful mischiefs have been committed by religious persecutions. . . . Those in power have generally considered all wisdom centered in themselves, that they alone had a right to dictate to the rest of mankind, and that all opposition to their tenets was profane and impious. The consequence of this intolerant spirit has been, that each church has in turn set itself up against every other, and persecutions and wars of the most implacable and bloody nature have taken place in every part of the world. America has set an example to mankind to think more modestly and reasonably; that a man may be of different religious sentiments from our own, without being a bad member of society."
Oliver Ellsworth (another leading Federalist who helped create the Constitution and who served as the third Chief Justice of SCOTUS) expressed similar thoughts in his published writing in A Landholder VII in 1787:
"The business of civil government is to protect the citizen in his rights, to defend the community from hostile powers, and to promote the general welfare. Civil government has no business to meddle with the private opinions of the people. If I demean myself as a good citizen, I am accountable, not to man, but to God, for the religious opinions which I embrace, and the manner in which I worship the supreme being. If such had been the universal sentiments of mankind, and they had acted accordingly, persecution, the bane of truth and nurse of error, with her bloody axe and flaming hand, would never have turned so great a part of the world into a field of blood."
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, who were writing primarily to the people of New York, did not feel the need to address in The Federalist Papers such issues as directly as Iredell and Ellsworth did. Even so, they addressed related issues.
Hamilton emphasized in The Federalist No. 1, “in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.” He also highlighted that, too often, in politics and religion “passions and prejudices” have proved to be “little favorable to the discovery of truth.” Too often, a “torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose.” Too often, political or religious factions seek “to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives.”
Madison in The Federalist No. 10 addressed related issues. His thoughts coincide precisely with the phenomenon we see today in the SCOTUS majority’s conduct in multiple decisions:
"a faction [means] a number of citizens . . . who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."
"The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, [pertaining to] speculation [or] practice [about what to think or do]; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts."
Madison writing to Thomas Jefferson in October 1787 more directly revealed his fears about persecution and oppression based on religion: “When Indeed Religion is kindled into enthusiasm, its force like that of other passions is increased by the sympathy of a multitude,” and “it has been much oftener a motive to oppression than a restraint from it.” “If the same sect form a majority and have the power, other sects will be sure to be depressed.” Madison clearly meant something like “the more powerful, the meaner.” So “[t]he same security seems requisite for the civil as for the religious rights of individuals.” “The great desideratum in Government is” to ensure that it is “sufficiently neutral between different parts of the Society to controul one part from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the entire Society.”
Discussion such as the foregoing pertained to the original Constitution in 1787-1789. So such discussions necessarily were a crucial part of the background for and understanding of the First Amendment re: religion (which was written and published in 1789 and submitted for ratification from 1789 to 1791). The primary point of the First Amendment re: religion never was merely preventing any "law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The primary purposes of our entire Constitution always were (as the Preamble emphasized from the very start) promoting "a more perfect Union, establish[ing] Justice, insur[ing] domestic Tranquility, provid[ing] for the common defence, promot[ing] the general Welfare, and secur[ing] the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." The people who wrote and ratified our original Constitution and our Bill of Rights understood that we cannot accomplish any of the purposes of our Constitution if we're fighting each other or persecuting each other over different opinions about so-called religion or some so-called god.
In his "Two Very Different America's" [sic] meme, the contrast may not be exactly what PedoPINO thinks it is:
Abdul is a Rhodes Scholar and a doctor; so HE, unlike PedoPINO, probably knows the difference between possessive and plural, and therefore exhibits a fluency in English better than the orange bigot who calls Muslims nasty names.
Dr. Sarah Jukaku is a psychiatrist who ACTUALLY helps people to "be better." Melania Trump went to college for a quarter or two, but was in America on an Epstein visa... sorry, EINSTEIN visa for her extraordinary ability (WHAT that "extraordinary ability" *IS*, precisely, is not known), and used the phrase "Be Better" after visiting children in American concentration camps wearing a jacket that read "I don't really care, do you?" and not standing with survivors of CSA at the hands of her husband (likely) and his bestie of over a decade to help them get justice.
Abdul and Sarah appear to enjoy each others' company. Melania seems to only appear quarterly (contractually?).
Drs. El-Sayed and Jukaku want ALL Americans to have healthcare. Trump has spent his entire political career trying to PREVENT that.
As doctors, Abdul and Sarah value science and the empirical method of scientific research. Trump believes horse de-wormer, intravenous bleach, and 100-watt bulb suppository cures a virus.
Abdul believes ALL Americans belong here, exactly as our Constitution says. Trump believes that only those HE believes should be here, have rights, have food or healthcare, or enjoy safety should be granted those rights, whole or in part.
Not nitpicking, but it was "Be Best." Terrible English. The woman has been in the US 30 years yet she made no effort to improve her English, especially her pronunciation. But you are absolutely right. And the whole idea of America was that it would offer freedom of choice to people who were living under oppressive rule. In other words, everyone belongs here. Under that doctrine, America grew to become the most dreamed-about country on earth. I have lived in places like Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan, and everyone I met expressed a longing to live in America.
Thank you for the correction. I also misquoted it in another post, I think.
I forgot which candidate said something to this effect, but:
Unlike many other countries, America is not an comprised solely of an ethnic group, an "-ism", a religion, a skin color, or a hereditary bloodline: America is an IDEA, and those who wish to be "American" have in our Preamble a set of values to uphold, and in our Constitution a set of laws to constrain government, so that we know what's expected of US, AND what's demanded of our government. Those who CHOOSE to be constrained by our Constitution, whether by their values to our nation or by their governance as an elected, can be Americans if they aspire to do so.
The Republican cult trying to decide WHICH Americans are "allowed" to be here or "allowed" to live is quite literally the opposite of what "America" actually is supposed to be.
America has not been an idea for many years. It is an institution, a country, not some lofty notion. The demise of that exceptionalism is long overdue. I was astonished that there are people who carry such lofty ideals about America in their heads when America is so horribly flawed and so far away from those old ideals.
Virginia voters made history by electing our first Muslim Lieutenant Governor, Ghazala Hashmi. She is getting out of Richmond (where she makes all of $36,000 per year) and appearing around the Commonwealth. Of course, looking at how regions voted, rural MAGA rejected her in favor of the gay Republican (and crazy guy who never had a chance). Personally, I love El-Sayed and Mandami, not because they're Muslim, but because they work for their people and are the future of the Democratic party.
I see only one religion whose political and media "spokespeople" are attempting to coerce another into conforming or being eliminated. The level of un-American behavior here is stunning. As this president’s term moves forward it's increasingly hard to believe there isn't the intent to destroy this country.
It is a privilege to live in an area where all kinds of people are welcome and respected. I didn't realize how lucky we are here in the PNW until the first trump regime. I have never seen a red hat, any of the merch, or any of those stupid bumper stickers. MAGA may have sympathizers here, but they're hidden. I don't have an answer for people who live in red states. I wouldn't be able to tolerate it.
I take it that you live west of the Cascades.
lol right? WA5 is VERY different from the Salish Seacoast 😁: my neighbor across the street had a HUGE "Trump won: you know it, I know it" banner over his barn/garage double door until it finally rotted away last year.
My boss got mad at me for posting anti-PedoPINO stuff on FakeBook.
Two of our Parts guys used to mock me for not liking TrumPedo, until I started asking them VERY POINTED QUESTIONS ("You were mad at Biden for high gas prices, despite POTUSes not setting the price of oil or gas. Now that Trump has started the forever war and gas prices are higher, who do you blame?" "If the riot to stop the election certification on J6 was not an insurrection, what do you call the attempt to interfere in the peaceful transfer of power?" "Are you ALSO in favor of continuing to hide the Trump-Epstein files in violation of the law?")
My former landlady told racist jokes I had never heard...and I grew up in the SOUTH in the 70s!
One MAGAT coworker imported a wife (I joke. They met online. She is a VERY sweet lady and I hope she becomes a fellow American soon), and I asked if he would be upset if she was extrajudicially kidnapped/assaulted/trafficked by ICE/Gestapo. He doesn't talk to me much anymore after that. (I think I may have made him THINK, and as you know, MAGATS HATE THINKING! That's why I'm getting the "Ralph Wiggum wearing a MAGA hat and picking his nose with the speech bubble saying 'I'm waiting for Trump to tell me what to think' T-shirt" to wear when I'm feeling antagonistic.)
I was shocked, both because I thought --like many-- that racism was mostly a Southern thing (NOPE! Even exists in other countries, like Nazi Musk's apartheid); but also because most of my neighbors are very kind and helpful people, and you'd NEVER know they hated our Constitution until you talk about something where politics or ethnicity touch.
I worked in conjunction with police, and I used to know a sheriff's deputy in upstate NY who told horrible racist jokes and who claimed, in agreement with one of my co-workers, that white people and black people are 2 different species. The judge I worked for told us he wouldn't let his daughter attend a school dance because there would be "roving bands of African Americans there."
Racism is terrible all over the world. I was disgusted by it in Egypt because it's so prevalent there. Sub-Saharan people emigrate to Egypt to get work or as refugees from all the wars and political problems in many countries on the continent.
Hannah you are very lucky. What state do you live in?
I help to run a bridge brigade in MN and have been trying to decide on tomorrow's message. After reading this, I'm sold on DIVERSITY = STRENGTH. We don't have many MAGA types here, but I hope the ones who pass by our message are forced to think a little before giving us the finger.
Pamela, you and I are on the same page. In response to Jennifer Rubin's post on Substack yesterday about the upcoming midterms, I ended it this way: "Our diversity is our strength."
The holier-than-thou Bible thumper Little Mikie Johnson should remember part of the lyrics to the song about Jesus' love for all the children I was taught in Sunday School a long, long time ago when I was a kid: "red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight."
Although I moved on from the religious teachings of my early years quite some time ago, the message of inclusion communicated in that little song has stayed with me and is more relevant than ever now.
Yes, DIVERSITY = STRENGTH.
Kudos to you! If you need to defend your assertion, feel free to invoke James Madison and the U.S. Constitution. Madison was rightly lauded as the Father of the Constitution and the Father of the Bill of Rights. He wrote many of the Federalist Papers to explain our Constitution to convince people to support its ratification. Madison directly explained that diversity was crucial to the strength of our Constitution and the strength of our nation.
Many people opposed our Constitution and opposed creating one nation out of the very diverse peoples of the 13 then-independent nations that became one nation with the ratification of the Constitution. So in Federalist No. 10 (https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493273), Madison explained and emphasized that our Constitution was designed to provide “a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government.” Such diseases include “faction,” which can easily result in a “tyranny of the majority,” as Tocqueville put it in his book “Democracy In America.”
Madison highlighted how factions divide people in a manner that presents an existential danger. Many people invoke “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions” precisely “to kindle [the most] unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.” Anything “interesting to the human passions” can be “inflamed” to make people “much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.” So our Constitution was designed “[t]o secure the public good and private rights against the danger of [any] faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government.” Those were the obvious, vital and overarching purposes of our Constitution.
Madison expressly emphasized the vital importance of preserving the “diversity in the faculties of” diverse peoples. “The diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights of property originate, is” an “insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. [Even so, t]he protection of these faculties is the first object of government.”
In Federalist No. 51 (https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-51-60#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493427), Madison directly and expressly emphasized that diversity in society is one of the essential sources of the strength of our union. Diversity helps secure justice, safety and security. Madison emphasized (repeatedly) that “Justice is the end [i.e., the ultimate goal] of government.” Madison even provided examples. Diversity is essential to the security of “civil rights” and “religious rights.” Our security is promoted by promoting our diversity.
“It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable.”
The act of “creating a will in the community independent of the majority” is what the People did by writing and ratifying our Constitution. The First Amendment and the prohibition on religious tests in Article VI and the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Sixth Amendments and the many ways that our Constitution included states and preserved the power of the people of individual states were expressly directed at using our Constitution to secure and promote diversity and inclusion (and thereby promote equity/justice).
The second method, above (“comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable”) is diversity and inclusion. That was the primary principle underlying the 1st, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments Each such amendment clarified or changed the meaning of the expression “We the People” at the beginning of our Constitution.
In Federalist No. 51 Madison directly highlighted the importance of diversity of society to the strength of our Union and our Constitution: “Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity [diversity] of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity [diversity] of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number [diversity] of interests and sects; and this [diversity] may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under the same government.”
Thanks for sharing these thoughts. They fit right in with the book I am reading The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood, a very interesting account of how the founders tried to figure out how to implement a government-by-the-people at a large scale.
That is a very interesting and insightful book! Very well worth reading today for multiple reasons!
One reason is all the times that Wood (or people he quoted) used any variation of the word "dependence" (including "independence"). Wood essentially proved the meaning of the word "independence" to the people who wrote, defended or later relied on (e.g., Abraham Lincoln) the Declaration of Independence. It wasn't about mere independence of the states from Britain. It was about the independence of people from all the links in the "chain of dependency" that bound everyone in society.
Have you also read Gordon Wood's "Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution"? I'd strongly recommend reading it after "The Radicalism of the American Revolution." The last chapter of "Power and Liberty" also (briefly) addresses some of the most important aspects of "The Radicalism of the American Revolution."
I got Radicalism from the library and considered buying it and now I will - it is a profound read and I think worth going through again. I will definitely also get Power and Liberty. BTW, someone on one of the substacks recommended the book and I was surprised by how old it was, but suddenly it is popular as I wasn't able to renew it as there was a waiting list!
I bought it, and I'm happy I did. I got about 150 pages into it and then I started all over again so that I could start highlighting (very selectively). In part, I highlighted every time Wood or someone he quoted used any form of the word "dependence" (including independence, dependent, independent, dependency) or "equal" or "chain."
To me, Part 9 (Enlightened Paternalism) was particularly insightful and interesting. As Wood highlighted, the American Revolution was to a great extent a "revolution against patriarchy" and a revolution in education.
When I began reading it, I told my husband that this may be worthwhile adding to our library. I just bought both books and decided on the Kindle version so I can search for things - it was a toss-up as I like to write notes and underline passages in paper books. I found his insights fascinating in that he provides a solid foundation in how societies function in ways I never even thought of before. And, the debates among the founders are so interesting. I got through Chapter 14 last night before losing the book today for what could be several weeks. Decided it IS a keeper, especially after your comments. Thanks! P.S. Now I won't feel rushed trying to get through it. He really does get one thinking deeply, which is needed to absorb what he is saying.
The foundation is strongest NOT when it contains only "pure" cement; but when it contains aggregate and rebar, as well. Diversity = strength.
We all used to eat Gros Michel cultivar bananas until a disease wiped them out. We still have commercially-grown bananas because some growers grew Cavendish cultivars. Diversity = strength.
The most secure code against the WWII Nazis was not an ENIGMA machine of our own, but the native language of the Navajo Code Talkers. Diversity =strength.
Decades ago, I lived in a quiet cul de sac where a neighbor and his family had fled Iran. You know what they had the audacity to do? Play soccer in the street with their young children in the early evening. Crazy Muslims? They belonged to a Universalist Church. Kind people. Their English was better than most Americans. And the list could go on and on. Bigotry is alive and well in America.
I’m a lifelong Star Trek fan. In the original series episode Balance of Terror, Captain Kirk reprimands lieutenant Stiles when he questions Spock’s loyalty because he looks somewhat like a Romulan. Kirk: "Leave any bigotry in your quarters. There's no room for it on the bridge." Good times.
The neighbors behind me are Iranian and the most gracious people one could imagine. When I first came to Silicon Valley, I worked at a small semiconductor testing lab owned and operated by immigrant middle eastern Muslims; they, too, were very gracious people, in fact, much more so than so-called Christians.
That’s been my experience, too. I lived in a Muslim community in the Balkans for a couple of years. They were kind, gracious, generous with their time and their food, and strongly family-centered at the same time. Lovely people!
Apparently a majority of white Americans have convinced themselves, by way of constant propaganda, that they are members of a persecuted class. Funny how they don't understand that they are indeed members of a downtrodden class who have been victims of the wealth inequality that has run rampant since Reagan. It has made me, a white man, afraid of the overwhelmingly white oligarchs who rule our country. All of us in the bottom 90% are being sold out by both parties playing games.
Not a majority, but a persistent minority.
I’m looking forward to a time when bigotry is gone. But, I will settle for fewer bigoted elected representatives, acceptance of DEI again, and celebrations of holidays with respect for many ways to say, “Welcome, neighbor.”
From a 1945 United States Army pamphlet fact sheet on “what is fascism”:
“The fascist doctrine of hate fulfills a triple mission. By creating disunity — it weakens democracy. By getting men to hate rather than to think — it prevents men from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem. By fake promises of jobs and security, fascism then tries to lure men to its program as the way out of insecurity. Only by democratically solving the economic problems of our day can there be any certainty that fascism won't happen here. That is our job as citizens.”
https://ia801608.us.archive.org/21/items/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism/Fascism64.pdf
We live about two blocks away from the American-Muslim center here in Dearborn, MI, and the worst thing we can say about that is the traffic in the neighborhood on Friday afternoons. Like the traffic on Saturday evenings ("guitar mass") and Sunday mornings around the Catholic Church I attended as a kid. Like Mr. El-Sayed, for whom we voted in the primaries, we like pancakes, but have to wait in line sometimes after the black Baptist Churches in Del Rey / River Rouge let out. One of the things all these groups have in common is that they will be forever shat upon by the likes of washed-up POS politicians like Mike Rogers, and the faux Christians in congress.
Funny that terrorism is always the product of The Other. No mention made of white evangelical rage against brown-skinned immigrants, black-skinned residents or anyone not WASP.
I have filed this hatred under "what do you expect from pigs but a snort?"
A message from the Bible to Tommy Tubby: Deuteronomy 20:16-17
16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.
There's an entire wikipedia page on "Genocide in the [Old Testament of the] Bible." Who gets not left alive? The people who don't follow YHWH *and their animals*.
We all know TT can't read much less read the Bible but ffs.
Isn't Christianity supposed to be based on the New Testament? Don't Christians believe that Christ is God and if Christ is in fact God, didn't God decide to become "woke" and make a new covenant, voiding the old one?
Conservative Evangelicals in particular pick and choose any section of the American Bible, Old and New Testament, to try to force their ideology on people. They'll even split verses to focus on the thing they care about (say, gay sex) and ignore the thing they don't want to talk about (like, the context of the supposed passage on gay sex that was really about something else entirely). I say the American Bible because the American version of the Bible, which is remarkably used by a minority of Christians, has the fewest books, 66. While Christianity originated in Ethiopia, which typically uses a bible with 88 books, for example. The official Catholic bible has 73 books, by the way. But evangelicals and some other conservative groups really like to focus on the Old Testament books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy because they are mostly rules, rules that the conservative Evangelicals mostly ignore unless its something they can twist into being about abortion or gay sex.
Yes, but they don't disavow the Old Testament or repudiate it. Catholics have also been aware of the sexual abuse of children by priests for literally hundreds of years. Jesus as God, part of the so-called blessed trinity, didn't come to be until several hundred years after the alleged crucifixion and was a motion voted on and passed by the Nicene Council. God split into 3 entities is actually a pretty weird concept.
The ways they’re attacking each other for being insufficient anti-Muslim strikes me as meaningful. I don’t know that I’m ready to declare just what it means, it certainly is a sign of something. Probably that they’re just playing follow the leader.
Did you ever imagine anything like this? The rabid moronic white nationalists seizing the reins of power and the legislature and Supreme Court just letting them do all this?
I’m spittin’ mad. It angries up mah blood sumpin’ fierce. Thanks for helping to keep me from spinning out of control.
It happened because America took itself for granted. Americans stopped voting. I just spoke to someone yesterday who didn't know who our senators and House reps' names are. Trump was able to harness the anger and resentment of low information voters, non-voters and uneducated (remember "I love the uneducated"?), racists, misogynists and miscellaneous dipshits, but most of all, he's done the crony thing where he promised the oligarchs the sun, moon and stars if they'd pony up to get him put back in office. The 2024 election was the most corrupt in the sense that it was won by the rich, for the rich.
If what ICE is doing isn’t terrorism, what is?
It's not even legal. Trump has called upon the National Guard to patrol cities because of nonexistent "rampant crime," a misuse of these people who have been away from their homes and families for months to yell at jaywalkers, and ICE to arrest people who look like foreigners, especially those who look Hispanic or like Arabs. It's terrorism. Because of this kind of "policy," tourism in the US has cratered. We have no friends anymore.
Such rhetoric and implications against any person because of their mere association with people with general opinions regarding religion is obviously un-American and anti-constitutional. The people who wrote and ratified the original Constitution emphasized this principle by including multiple commandments in Article VI.
First, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” If we were meant to be governed according to the opinions of some people about the wishes of a supreme being, a religious test would make perfect sense.
Second, all legislators and “all executive and judicial Officers” of “the United States and of [all] States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution” (not any God).
Third, "the supreme Law of the Land" is limited to our “Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance [of our Constitution]; and all Treaties,” (not any purported commandment from any purported God).
Fourth, all “Judges in every State shall be bound” by “the supreme Law of the Land” despite “any Thing” written anywhere else “to the Contrary.”
Moreover, nearly everything in the First Amendment pertains to freedom of religion, as well as freedom from religion. Everything explicitly or implicitly in that amendment (the freedom of thought, expression, communication, association and assembly) pertains directly to religion except the right to petition the government.
Multiple leading supporters of our Constitution explained why our Constitution outlawed our public servants (and discouraged the public) discriminating based on mere religious opinions.
James Iredell (a leading Federalist and judge in North Carolina, and later a SCOTUS justice who issued an opinion emphasizing the sovereignty of the people) was one of the many who addressed Americans’ liberty regarding any so-called religion. He delivered a speech at the North Carolina ratifying convention defending the protection for freedom of conscience in Article VI:
"I consider the [Religious Test] clause under consideration as one of the strongest proofs that could be adduced, that it was the intention of [the Framers of our Constitution], to establish a general religious liberty in America. . . . [But some people have] objected, that [the Religious Test Clause permits] the people of America [to choose] Representatives who have no religion at all, and that Pagans and Mahometans may be admitted into [federal] offices. But how is it possible to exclude any set of men, without taking away that principle of religious freedom which we ourselves so warmly [passionately] contend for? This is the foundation on which persecution has been raised in every part of the world. The people in power were always in the right, and every body else wrong. If you admit the least difference, the door to persecution is opened."
Iredell also emphasized the self-evident truths that "[i]t would be happy for mankind if religion was permitted to take its own course, and maintain itself by the excellence of its own doctrines. The divine author of our religion never wished for its support by worldly authority."
Iredell repeatedly emphasized that the Religious Test Clause “is calculated to secure universal religious liberty” to serve a purpose that is profoundly important to our Constitution and even, specifically, to national security. Iredell repeatedly emphasized that religious liberty is “the only way to prevent persecution,” and Iredell emphasized how that particular problem threatens national security (the very survival of our nation and our Constitution):
"Every person in the least conversant in the history of mankind, knows what dreadful mischiefs have been committed by religious persecutions. . . . Those in power have generally considered all wisdom centered in themselves, that they alone had a right to dictate to the rest of mankind, and that all opposition to their tenets was profane and impious. The consequence of this intolerant spirit has been, that each church has in turn set itself up against every other, and persecutions and wars of the most implacable and bloody nature have taken place in every part of the world. America has set an example to mankind to think more modestly and reasonably; that a man may be of different religious sentiments from our own, without being a bad member of society."
Oliver Ellsworth (another leading Federalist who helped create the Constitution and who served as the third Chief Justice of SCOTUS) expressed similar thoughts in his published writing in A Landholder VII in 1787:
"The business of civil government is to protect the citizen in his rights, to defend the community from hostile powers, and to promote the general welfare. Civil government has no business to meddle with the private opinions of the people. If I demean myself as a good citizen, I am accountable, not to man, but to God, for the religious opinions which I embrace, and the manner in which I worship the supreme being. If such had been the universal sentiments of mankind, and they had acted accordingly, persecution, the bane of truth and nurse of error, with her bloody axe and flaming hand, would never have turned so great a part of the world into a field of blood."
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, who were writing primarily to the people of New York, did not feel the need to address in The Federalist Papers such issues as directly as Iredell and Ellsworth did. Even so, they addressed related issues.
Hamilton emphasized in The Federalist No. 1, “in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.” He also highlighted that, too often, in politics and religion “passions and prejudices” have proved to be “little favorable to the discovery of truth.” Too often, a “torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose.” Too often, political or religious factions seek “to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives.”
Madison in The Federalist No. 10 addressed related issues. His thoughts coincide precisely with the phenomenon we see today in the SCOTUS majority’s conduct in multiple decisions:
"a faction [means] a number of citizens . . . who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."
"The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, [pertaining to] speculation [or] practice [about what to think or do]; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts."
Madison writing to Thomas Jefferson in October 1787 more directly revealed his fears about persecution and oppression based on religion: “When Indeed Religion is kindled into enthusiasm, its force like that of other passions is increased by the sympathy of a multitude,” and “it has been much oftener a motive to oppression than a restraint from it.” “If the same sect form a majority and have the power, other sects will be sure to be depressed.” Madison clearly meant something like “the more powerful, the meaner.” So “[t]he same security seems requisite for the civil as for the religious rights of individuals.” “The great desideratum in Government is” to ensure that it is “sufficiently neutral between different parts of the Society to controul one part from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the entire Society.”
Discussion such as the foregoing pertained to the original Constitution in 1787-1789. So such discussions necessarily were a crucial part of the background for and understanding of the First Amendment re: religion (which was written and published in 1789 and submitted for ratification from 1789 to 1791). The primary point of the First Amendment re: religion never was merely preventing any "law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The primary purposes of our entire Constitution always were (as the Preamble emphasized from the very start) promoting "a more perfect Union, establish[ing] Justice, insur[ing] domestic Tranquility, provid[ing] for the common defence, promot[ing] the general Welfare, and secur[ing] the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." The people who wrote and ratified our original Constitution and our Bill of Rights understood that we cannot accomplish any of the purposes of our Constitution if we're fighting each other or persecuting each other over different opinions about so-called religion or some so-called god.
Thank you so much for sharing this! Extremely interesting!
In his "Two Very Different America's" [sic] meme, the contrast may not be exactly what PedoPINO thinks it is:
Abdul is a Rhodes Scholar and a doctor; so HE, unlike PedoPINO, probably knows the difference between possessive and plural, and therefore exhibits a fluency in English better than the orange bigot who calls Muslims nasty names.
Dr. Sarah Jukaku is a psychiatrist who ACTUALLY helps people to "be better." Melania Trump went to college for a quarter or two, but was in America on an Epstein visa... sorry, EINSTEIN visa for her extraordinary ability (WHAT that "extraordinary ability" *IS*, precisely, is not known), and used the phrase "Be Better" after visiting children in American concentration camps wearing a jacket that read "I don't really care, do you?" and not standing with survivors of CSA at the hands of her husband (likely) and his bestie of over a decade to help them get justice.
Abdul and Sarah appear to enjoy each others' company. Melania seems to only appear quarterly (contractually?).
Drs. El-Sayed and Jukaku want ALL Americans to have healthcare. Trump has spent his entire political career trying to PREVENT that.
As doctors, Abdul and Sarah value science and the empirical method of scientific research. Trump believes horse de-wormer, intravenous bleach, and 100-watt bulb suppository cures a virus.
Abdul believes ALL Americans belong here, exactly as our Constitution says. Trump believes that only those HE believes should be here, have rights, have food or healthcare, or enjoy safety should be granted those rights, whole or in part.
Very different "America's," indeed.
Not nitpicking, but it was "Be Best." Terrible English. The woman has been in the US 30 years yet she made no effort to improve her English, especially her pronunciation. But you are absolutely right. And the whole idea of America was that it would offer freedom of choice to people who were living under oppressive rule. In other words, everyone belongs here. Under that doctrine, America grew to become the most dreamed-about country on earth. I have lived in places like Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan, and everyone I met expressed a longing to live in America.
Thank you for the correction. I also misquoted it in another post, I think.
I forgot which candidate said something to this effect, but:
Unlike many other countries, America is not an comprised solely of an ethnic group, an "-ism", a religion, a skin color, or a hereditary bloodline: America is an IDEA, and those who wish to be "American" have in our Preamble a set of values to uphold, and in our Constitution a set of laws to constrain government, so that we know what's expected of US, AND what's demanded of our government. Those who CHOOSE to be constrained by our Constitution, whether by their values to our nation or by their governance as an elected, can be Americans if they aspire to do so.
The Republican cult trying to decide WHICH Americans are "allowed" to be here or "allowed" to live is quite literally the opposite of what "America" actually is supposed to be.
America has not been an idea for many years. It is an institution, a country, not some lofty notion. The demise of that exceptionalism is long overdue. I was astonished that there are people who carry such lofty ideals about America in their heads when America is so horribly flawed and so far away from those old ideals.
Virginia voters made history by electing our first Muslim Lieutenant Governor, Ghazala Hashmi. She is getting out of Richmond (where she makes all of $36,000 per year) and appearing around the Commonwealth. Of course, looking at how regions voted, rural MAGA rejected her in favor of the gay Republican (and crazy guy who never had a chance). Personally, I love El-Sayed and Mandami, not because they're Muslim, but because they work for their people and are the future of the Democratic party.
I see only one religion whose political and media "spokespeople" are attempting to coerce another into conforming or being eliminated. The level of un-American behavior here is stunning. As this president’s term moves forward it's increasingly hard to believe there isn't the intent to destroy this country.