"Today is the 57th anniversary of a terrific event and a beautiful speech made by a great man."
That's what DJTrump didn't say about the Commitment "Get Your Knee Off Our Necks" March on Friday. In fact he said nothing.
On August 28, 1963, some 250,000 people gathered on the National Mall in what was called The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. I'm sure a great many people remember where they were that Wednesday.
Although the march was a protest action the spirit of the day was one of celebration, brotherhood, and aspiration. Speakers included a bevy of Christian and Jewish clergy and most of the leaders of major civil rights organizations.
The stream of speakers was punctuated with music by the likes of Marian Anderson, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Mahalia Jackson. It was at this gathering that "We Shall Overcome" became the civil rights anthem it remains.
And it was where The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr told us about his dream. The "I Have a Dream" speech was inspired. Partially improvised, it speaks of visions Dr. King had for an integrated and free future. It was one of the great addresses of the 20th century, and Dr. King is still held up as one of the century's greatest orators.
Yesterday's rally had much of the same spirit, now carried by a generation new to civil strife, but no less energized to meet it. Dr. King's son, Martin Luther King III spoke. He is an effective speaker, and reinforced the battle cry of the march: "There’s a knee upon the neck of democracy and our nation can only live so long without the oxygen of freedom. . . . The simple challenge before us is that everyone can cast a ballot and everyone who can must cast a ballot."¹
But it was clear that Dr. King's mantle of Chief Orator of the new civil rights movement has fallen squarely on The Rev. Al Sharpton. He has a commanding voice and the intensity and classical cadence of generations of preachers before him: "We need Mitch McConnell and the U.S. Senate to meet on the George Floyd
Policing and Justice Act or we’re going to meet you Senators at the polls November 3rd. Whether we’ve got to mail in, walk in, ride in,
crawl in, we want our bill passed." And, "It’s time we have a conversation with America. We need to have a
conversation about your racism, about your bigotry, about your hate,
about how you would put your knee on our neck while we cry out for our lives. We need a new conversation. . . .You act like it’s no trouble to shoot us in the back. You act like it’s no
trouble to put a chokehold on us while we scream, 'I can’t breathe' 11
times. You act like it’s no trouble to hold a man down on the ground until you squeeze the life out of him. It’s time for a new conversation."²
His is the voice that will gain followers and grab the attention of the disinterested and disenfranchised. He will need to use it wisely to speak truth to all things Trump and to raise the spirit of revolution in the American people.
Our voices will rise again, and We Shall Overcome.
--- Diogenes, 8/29/2020
¹ https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/2020-march-on-washington-event-transcript (Begins about 26 minutes in)
² https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/al-sharpton-speech-transcript-2020-march-on-washington
* Videos of the event are available on YouTube, MSNBC, and CBS, among others.
U.S. Constitution
The voice of the people
29 August 2020
27 August 2020
Will We Never Learn?
Police have killed 766 Americans this year.*
Two hundred fifty-five of those deaths--almost exactly one-third--have happened since George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis.
And now Kenosha. Last Sunday, Rusten Sheskey, a seven-year veteran of the Kenosha police force, shot unarmed 29-year-old Jacob Blake seven times in the back.
Seven times. In the back.
Blake is alive for now, paralyzed from the waist down and with severe internal injuries. He was shot as he was attempting to get into his car. Shesky fired at very close range. Putting seven rounds into a suspect you're actually holding by his shirt is beyond excessive. It speaks of intent to kill.
If anyone thought, in this season of plague and politics, that Kenosha would remain quiet after the needless shooting of a Black man at the hands of police officers, they've been living on a different planet.
Violence begets violence. Senseless violence begets anger and more senseless violence. Of course protests were going to happen, and of course they would turn violent. America is angry.
The target of our anger is, oxymoronically, a vacuum: the vacuum of leadership in Washington that should have offered assistance, supported victims and helped to find a peaceful way to resolve the situation. Instead, the fearmongering, hate-spewing, tyrannical Psycho-in-Chief, knowing nothing of leadership or conflict resolution, blames everyone in reach and makes inflammatory threats to send in troops, which heightens the tension, leading to more violence, and on and on . . .
We will fight back.
I happen to believe that the majority of American police forces are staffed by women and men who take seriously the charge "To protect and defend." But the profession also draws rogues who are attracted by the notion of having control over citizens, and sadists like Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd.
One such is 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, a police and/or militia wannabe who showed up with some other rifle-toting terrorists on the third night of protests. At some point, possibly because he had fallen and feared attack, he fired randomly into the crowd, killing two people and injuring one. He was arrested and is being held in Antioch, Illinois. He faces first-degree murder charges.
And he is celebrated. Fools-of-a-Kind Aubrey Huff and Tucker Carlson actually praised Rittenhouse, a terrorist whom on-site videos show to be a cold-blooded killer.
Will we never learn?
--- Diogenes, 8/27/2020
Please share widely
* The Washington Post, "Fatal Force," https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/
Two hundred fifty-five of those deaths--almost exactly one-third--have happened since George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis.
And now Kenosha. Last Sunday, Rusten Sheskey, a seven-year veteran of the Kenosha police force, shot unarmed 29-year-old Jacob Blake seven times in the back.
Seven times. In the back.
Blake is alive for now, paralyzed from the waist down and with severe internal injuries. He was shot as he was attempting to get into his car. Shesky fired at very close range. Putting seven rounds into a suspect you're actually holding by his shirt is beyond excessive. It speaks of intent to kill.
If anyone thought, in this season of plague and politics, that Kenosha would remain quiet after the needless shooting of a Black man at the hands of police officers, they've been living on a different planet.
Violence begets violence. Senseless violence begets anger and more senseless violence. Of course protests were going to happen, and of course they would turn violent. America is angry.
The target of our anger is, oxymoronically, a vacuum: the vacuum of leadership in Washington that should have offered assistance, supported victims and helped to find a peaceful way to resolve the situation. Instead, the fearmongering, hate-spewing, tyrannical Psycho-in-Chief, knowing nothing of leadership or conflict resolution, blames everyone in reach and makes inflammatory threats to send in troops, which heightens the tension, leading to more violence, and on and on . . .
We will fight back.
I happen to believe that the majority of American police forces are staffed by women and men who take seriously the charge "To protect and defend." But the profession also draws rogues who are attracted by the notion of having control over citizens, and sadists like Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd.
One such is 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, a police and/or militia wannabe who showed up with some other rifle-toting terrorists on the third night of protests. At some point, possibly because he had fallen and feared attack, he fired randomly into the crowd, killing two people and injuring one. He was arrested and is being held in Antioch, Illinois. He faces first-degree murder charges.
And he is celebrated. Fools-of-a-Kind Aubrey Huff and Tucker Carlson actually praised Rittenhouse, a terrorist whom on-site videos show to be a cold-blooded killer.
Will we never learn?
--- Diogenes, 8/27/2020
Please share widely
* The Washington Post, "Fatal Force," https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/
26 August 2020
A Brief Study in Gentility
The only thing within lightyears of being slightly positive about DJTrump's unpresidency is that it affirms what we were told as children: anybody can become president.
The first 44 American presidents had experience in military and/or public service.
Not only does #45 no have such experience, he has no idea what "service" means. He does get "public." It's the rabble that he governs. The American people, via the obsolete and archaic Electoral College, have put a buffoon who knows nothing about government in charge of it.
Robert Heinlein once quipped that "Vox populi vox dei" best translates as "My God! How did we get in this mess?" How very apt.
The Framers were Gentlemen, a term from British society designating a land-owning, low-ranking nobleman. In America it signified a man worthy of respect by reason of his honesty, good character, and integrity.
Signing the Declaration of Independence they swore, "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." In an age when honor was everything, prized even more highly than one's life, that was saying something.
We still use the term "gentleman," but it has become degraded. As wealth in the United States came to be prized more than ancestry, America's richest men began to fancy themselves the nation's gentry. They built mansions in cities and summer "cottages"--palaces to the rest of us--in places like Newport, Rhode Island, and Hyde Park, New York.
Then came the trustbusters, WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII. Wealth was redistributed, redefined, and reallocated. New species of moneyed classes appeared: Hollywood actors, professional athletes, "celebrities."
Few vestiges of gentility remain in this country, and certainly not in the White House. The Poser-in-Chief can put on the trappings of fancy dress and ceremony, but he's still obviously a schlub. He has bad posture, looks terrible in a tuxedo, and doesn't know how to shake hands. His social skills are nonexistent, and polite conversation is beyond him. Completing sentences in extemporaneous speech is a skill his expensive schools never taught him.
Facing an interviewer he leans forward, mouth agape, hands clasped between spread knees, far more resembling a horny adolescent watching a striptease than anything vaguely gentle or manly.
And this is the chief executive of these United States.
--- Diogenes, 8/26/2020
The first 44 American presidents had experience in military and/or public service.
Not only does #45 no have such experience, he has no idea what "service" means. He does get "public." It's the rabble that he governs. The American people, via the obsolete and archaic Electoral College, have put a buffoon who knows nothing about government in charge of it.
Robert Heinlein once quipped that "Vox populi vox dei" best translates as "My God! How did we get in this mess?" How very apt.
The Framers were Gentlemen, a term from British society designating a land-owning, low-ranking nobleman. In America it signified a man worthy of respect by reason of his honesty, good character, and integrity.
Signing the Declaration of Independence they swore, "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." In an age when honor was everything, prized even more highly than one's life, that was saying something.
We still use the term "gentleman," but it has become degraded. As wealth in the United States came to be prized more than ancestry, America's richest men began to fancy themselves the nation's gentry. They built mansions in cities and summer "cottages"--palaces to the rest of us--in places like Newport, Rhode Island, and Hyde Park, New York.
Then came the trustbusters, WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII. Wealth was redistributed, redefined, and reallocated. New species of moneyed classes appeared: Hollywood actors, professional athletes, "celebrities."
Few vestiges of gentility remain in this country, and certainly not in the White House. The Poser-in-Chief can put on the trappings of fancy dress and ceremony, but he's still obviously a schlub. He has bad posture, looks terrible in a tuxedo, and doesn't know how to shake hands. His social skills are nonexistent, and polite conversation is beyond him. Completing sentences in extemporaneous speech is a skill his expensive schools never taught him.
Facing an interviewer he leans forward, mouth agape, hands clasped between spread knees, far more resembling a horny adolescent watching a striptease than anything vaguely gentle or manly.
And this is the chief executive of these United States.
--- Diogenes, 8/26/2020
25 August 2020
Mr Mxyztplk
Here's what I've taken away from the Tumpalalooza so far:
I I I I I I I I--AM GREAT!! I AM THE GREATEST, NOT WHATSISNAME THE BOXER. MEHRR,T BIDENN JSOTHW OMD I HAVE NO SKY FALLING HSIWRHVUENWN APOCALYPSE WITH HARRIS NASTYU C B,,WITCH IS HE STILL ALIVE? NO NOT BIDEN, WHATHISNAME YOU KNOW THE COL--B-B-BLACK BOXER--ALLEY/ ALI, HE'S NOT--THEN I AM THE GREATEST! AND YOU KNOW WHO I AM.
HERE'S--WHATSYERNAME, SWEETIE? OH YEAH--K-K-KIMBERLY, ONE OF MY SON'S GIRLFRIENDS, (WINK, WINK) TO TALK ABOUT ME--WELL, OF COURSE ME, WHO ELSE.
HEY, EVERYBODY--WHERE ARE YA? I CAN'T SEE ANYBODY? WELL, ANYWAY, I JUST WANNA SAY WHAT A GREAT GUY DONALD IS. OH, YEAH, I KNOW HE'S THE PREZ, BUT HE LETS ME CALL HIM DONALD. ISN'T THAT JUST ADORABLE? AND HE'S A GREAT GUY, YA KNOW--I MEAN HE'S JUST GREAT, AND HE'S DONE A LOT OF STUFF AND HE'L KEEP DOIN MORE--SO GOODNIGHT.
BACK TO THE PREZ: YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT--I'VE DONE SO MUCH GOOD STUFF I CAN'T EVEN REMEMBER MOST OF IT BUT I KNOW IT WAS GOOD. DKMSDPKPF A LOT BET--BET--BETTER THAN OBAMA EVER DID, AND HJHDU SLEEPY JOE WON'T EVEN COME CLOSEKKDJBI I'M GOING TO M CJB BE PRESIDENT FOREVER. HUH?
SO NOW---KEEP REMEMBERING THAT I'M THE ONE WHO KEEPS YOU---FJEOM WHO KEEPS YOU SAFE AND WILL NOT LET UNDESIRABLES MOVE INTO YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD. HOLD THE DAMN TELEPROMTER F'KNIJO SDTILL! YES, I PERSONALLY WILL KEEP UNDESIRABLES--YOU KNOW WHO I MEAN, RIGHT? THEY'RE NOT WHITE. THEYVE GOT DE PLACES TO GO AND ITS NOT YOUR NEIGHBOR----HUH? CNN TURNED OFF? WELL, FUCK 'EM I AM THE GREATSOKMK M F AND FOX IS THERE. I KNOW--I BOUGHT 'EM ALLF JJNVNKJFP
Diogenes --- 8/25/2020
I I I I I I I I--AM GREAT!! I AM THE GREATEST, NOT WHATSISNAME THE BOXER. MEHRR,T BIDENN JSOTHW OMD I HAVE NO SKY FALLING HSIWRHVUENWN APOCALYPSE WITH HARRIS NASTYU C B,,WITCH IS HE STILL ALIVE? NO NOT BIDEN, WHATHISNAME YOU KNOW THE COL--B-B-BLACK BOXER--ALLEY/ ALI, HE'S NOT--THEN I AM THE GREATEST! AND YOU KNOW WHO I AM.
HERE'S--WHATSYERNAME, SWEETIE? OH YEAH--K-K-KIMBERLY, ONE OF MY SON'S GIRLFRIENDS, (WINK, WINK) TO TALK ABOUT ME--WELL, OF COURSE ME, WHO ELSE.
HEY, EVERYBODY--WHERE ARE YA? I CAN'T SEE ANYBODY? WELL, ANYWAY, I JUST WANNA SAY WHAT A GREAT GUY DONALD IS. OH, YEAH, I KNOW HE'S THE PREZ, BUT HE LETS ME CALL HIM DONALD. ISN'T THAT JUST ADORABLE? AND HE'S A GREAT GUY, YA KNOW--I MEAN HE'S JUST GREAT, AND HE'S DONE A LOT OF STUFF AND HE'L KEEP DOIN MORE--SO GOODNIGHT.
BACK TO THE PREZ: YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT--I'VE DONE SO MUCH GOOD STUFF I CAN'T EVEN REMEMBER MOST OF IT BUT I KNOW IT WAS GOOD. DKMSDPKPF A LOT BET--BET--BETTER THAN OBAMA EVER DID, AND HJHDU SLEEPY JOE WON'T EVEN COME CLOSEKKDJBI I'M GOING TO M CJB BE PRESIDENT FOREVER. HUH?
SO NOW---KEEP REMEMBERING THAT I'M THE ONE WHO KEEPS YOU---FJEOM WHO KEEPS YOU SAFE AND WILL NOT LET UNDESIRABLES MOVE INTO YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD. HOLD THE DAMN TELEPROMTER F'KNIJO SDTILL! YES, I PERSONALLY WILL KEEP UNDESIRABLES--YOU KNOW WHO I MEAN, RIGHT? THEY'RE NOT WHITE. THEYVE GOT DE PLACES TO GO AND ITS NOT YOUR NEIGHBOR----HUH? CNN TURNED OFF? WELL, FUCK 'EM I AM THE GREATSOKMK M F AND FOX IS THERE. I KNOW--I BOUGHT 'EM ALLF JJNVNKJFP
Diogenes --- 8/25/2020
23 August 2020
America v. Америка
There was a time when "America" was synonymous with strength, justice, freedom, opportunity, enlightenment, peace, cooperation, fairness, and understanding.
Other nations looked to us for leadership, for assistance, for intervention, for friendship, for alliances.
Now we are shunned by many other countries. We have become an outlier, indeed a pariah of the community of nations where we were once a major player.
Once when we spoke, nations listened; now they snicker.
This downfall of America's reputation has been brought about single-handedly by the ill-begotten president, Donald Trump. Tyrannis Trump has spent his term trying to change America into what he thinks it should be.
The unpresident's psychopathy dictates that the world has to be Trumpcentric. Whether he'll manage to make the world in his own image is doubtful, but he's been working hard to transform this nation into something he may have seen in a dream.
Trump's ultimate delusional goal is an America for Americans only, by which he means white English-speaking non-Catholic Christians. There is no place in his philosophy for people of any color or ethnicity, including the indigenous nations who were here long before Europeans arrived.
He was elected on a platform of racism, xenophobia, and paranoia. His only clearly stated plan was to build a wall to keep Mexicans out. By May 2020, only 3 miles out of 194 miles of wall constructed or replaced under the Trump administration was new fencing. The border is 1,954 miles long.
After almost 4 years of boasting about the wall and its progress the Bricklayer-in-Chief has only managed to add one-tenth of one percent to what already stood before he was elected. And everything that stands is only 10 percent of the length of the border.
He has steadily worked to isolate the United States from the rest of the world. He has used flimsy and nonsensical reasons to remove the U.S. from several organizations and agreements, including:
The Bumbler-in-Chief has never set out any coherent plan or policy, but the actions above reveal a sort of stream-of-consciousness approach to distancing the United States from the general community of nations.
Isolationism has never worked for the United States. Had Trump ever looked at the history of his own country, he might have come across Thomas Jefferson's 1801 inaugural address, in which he described his vision of American isolationism: "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none…”¹
American presidents have never been able to avoid those entangling alliances. Whether coming to the defense of fellow republics or defending America's own interests, presidents and Congresses have become entangled, usually because it was the right thing to do.
That is a foreign concept to Trump. Everything he does is for his own personal gain and interest, and if anyone else can decipher what that is, they're not talking.
Isolationism is impossible when every citizen has access to worldwide communication. Citizens of the isolationist countries North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, among others, don't have this access.
Don't let the Isolator-in-Chief add the United States of America to that list.
--- Diogenes, 8/23/2020
Please share widely
¹ Robert Longley, "The Evolution of American Isolationism," https://www.thoughtco.com/the-evolution-of-american-isolationism-4123832
Other nations looked to us for leadership, for assistance, for intervention, for friendship, for alliances.
Now we are shunned by many other countries. We have become an outlier, indeed a pariah of the community of nations where we were once a major player.
Once when we spoke, nations listened; now they snicker.
This downfall of America's reputation has been brought about single-handedly by the ill-begotten president, Donald Trump. Tyrannis Trump has spent his term trying to change America into what he thinks it should be.
The unpresident's psychopathy dictates that the world has to be Trumpcentric. Whether he'll manage to make the world in his own image is doubtful, but he's been working hard to transform this nation into something he may have seen in a dream.
Trump's ultimate delusional goal is an America for Americans only, by which he means white English-speaking non-Catholic Christians. There is no place in his philosophy for people of any color or ethnicity, including the indigenous nations who were here long before Europeans arrived.
He was elected on a platform of racism, xenophobia, and paranoia. His only clearly stated plan was to build a wall to keep Mexicans out. By May 2020, only 3 miles out of 194 miles of wall constructed or replaced under the Trump administration was new fencing. The border is 1,954 miles long.
After almost 4 years of boasting about the wall and its progress the Bricklayer-in-Chief has only managed to add one-tenth of one percent to what already stood before he was elected. And everything that stands is only 10 percent of the length of the border.
He has steadily worked to isolate the United States from the rest of the world. He has used flimsy and nonsensical reasons to remove the U.S. from several organizations and agreements, including:
- The Paris Climate Agreement
- The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade bloc
- UNESCO, the UN's culture and education body
- The UN Human Rights Council, responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe
- The UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees in the Near East
- The Iran nuclear accord
- The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty required the U. S. and the Soviet Union to eliminate all nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers
- The Open Skies Treaty allows member nations to overfly other members' territory to collect data on military forces and activities
- and others, including a possible withdrawal from the World Health Organization; he has threatened to withdraw but not carried through
The Bumbler-in-Chief has never set out any coherent plan or policy, but the actions above reveal a sort of stream-of-consciousness approach to distancing the United States from the general community of nations.
Isolationism has never worked for the United States. Had Trump ever looked at the history of his own country, he might have come across Thomas Jefferson's 1801 inaugural address, in which he described his vision of American isolationism: "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none…”¹
American presidents have never been able to avoid those entangling alliances. Whether coming to the defense of fellow republics or defending America's own interests, presidents and Congresses have become entangled, usually because it was the right thing to do.
That is a foreign concept to Trump. Everything he does is for his own personal gain and interest, and if anyone else can decipher what that is, they're not talking.
Isolationism is impossible when every citizen has access to worldwide communication. Citizens of the isolationist countries North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, among others, don't have this access.
Don't let the Isolator-in-Chief add the United States of America to that list.
--- Diogenes, 8/23/2020
Please share widely
¹ Robert Longley, "The Evolution of American Isolationism," https://www.thoughtco.com/the-evolution-of-american-isolationism-4123832
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