One place where everything comes together
Reading Time: 5 minutes On Thursday night, President Donald Trump flew to Montana to headline a rally for Matt Rosendale, the Republican nominee against Sen. Jon Tester (D) this November. Trump’s speech was, like most of his addresses, a remarkable mix of stream-of-consciousness thinking, fact-challenged claims and demagoguery.
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Reading Time: 5 minutes You can decide your own opinion, but you can’t decide your own facts. And the fact is that there is a definition for abuse, just like there is a definition for fascism, for authoritarianism, for dictatorship, for tyranny. It’s shocking to me how many parallels there are between our current political climate and living in an abusive relationship – from the gaslighting to the total lack of respect – respect for norms, for human dignity, for women, for the truth, for the rule of law.
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Reading Time: 5 minutes I believe all white people are racists. Hold on. Don’t switch off. Hear me out. When I say all, and I mean “ALL” white people are racist, I am saying each of you have benefitted from the ill-gotten gains of racism, because you have benefited from the system being designed by y’all, for y’all and to y’alls benefit. No matter how bad you feel about this, your tears do not put me on an equal footing with you culturally or systematically.
And I am going to need to you to process this and get your life together because we are in this together. Get over your personal guilt and the attack you feel. It is not about you. Kinda sorta. But no. Those feelings you are experiencing are your soul saying you have a role in getting this together and healing this wound that is in your orbit. Therefore, learn. Dig deep. Process guilt. Do not let white women’s tears derail this process. Tap into your power.
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Reading Time: < 1 minute Yeah, it’s hard to watch. However to anyone who says the comparisons between the run-up to Nazi Germany and Trump’s America are overblown…
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Reading Time: 5 minutes I don’t think it’s appropriate to celebrate a holiday based on a history that has separated children from parents from the inception of our nation and has thousands in custody now that will not be returned to their parents.
I don’t think it’s wise to dedicate a red, white, and blue barbeque to a commercialized notion of God and country when by doing so we’re continuing to sell the illusion that holds this hostile takeover together.
So, as we’re facing down Independence Day wondering how we’re going to get our independence back, maybe the first step is to stop pretending everything is just fine when things are not. Pretending is exactly what they want us to do because if things look like they always have maybe we’re fine enough not to want to demand our democracy back.
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Reading Time: 7 minutes Almost sixty comments back and forth later, I realized there was no joy in the debate. I sent this person news stories and articles from more than 25 separate news sources, including Miltary.com and The Bush Foundation website. None of it landed. Don’t judge me for my back-ally comment fight with an idiot. I said all the things you wish you could a lot of the time. You can thank me later.
It ended when my right wing, wingnut “friend” started repeatedly telling me I was ignorant. I enlisted the help of family members to assist me in causing him a heart attack after he expressed he was very angry multiple times and suggested I was causing him a severe headache. The last comment exchanged was from my sister who boldly told him he didn’t want to get in an IQ competition with me – actually, it stopped when my child threw up a stop sign emoticon at the bottom of the comments.
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Reading Time: 8 minutes We must revisit our assumptions and explore what our prejudices mean when we deny those seeking survival the opportunity to live. My language might sound extreme, but I do believe that this is about basic survival and life. These folks are not trying to come into this country to live luxurious lives. I believe they are seeking refuge in this country because the option is literal death for them.
The sense of superiority I see all around me is learned and we must unlearn it if we want to solve complex problems and become aware of our own role in it. We must lay down this sense of superiority that we have that, in America, we are entitled to what we have and that we worked hard for it and therefore, we must protect it from others.
Reading Time: 3 minutes Maybe it is her job. However, she’s the message bringer of one of the most dangerous regimes in the history of the world. To the best of our knowledge, she’s not being held against her will in that building. Sarah Sanders routinely berates the press and discredits their work. She is carrying the torch of an Alt-right pandering President who is remaking both U.S. and world politics with an agenda for profit and whiteness.
So, yes, she is doing her job.
And so was Goebbels.
Civility is a thing that matters in society.
However, when civility becomes an excuse for passively entertaining evil we risk losing everything we know about our civilization. Sometimes love says no.
Reading Time: < 1 minute When women run for office the reasons they do it are far and wide more personal than political. More women are running for office than ever before. Record numbers of women making the very vulnerable decision to run for office, many without the support of the systems that have elected their career politics opponents.
Most political ads are a bunch of campaign mumbo-jumbo intended to build name recognition. This one is different. This candidate is different. Buckle up, buttercup. Meet MJ Hegar, she’s running for Congress in Texas District 31. It’s personal for this woman on yet another mission.
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Reading Time: 3 minutes The unrelenting pressure on the Trump administration to stop the family separations may pay off. More importantly, it may signal that this is not who we want to be anymore. For those families, and especially for those children, it’s an unconscionably high price to pay for us, as a nation, to find a moral compass that won’t allow that kind of human mistreatment moving forward.
However, generations of black and brown people in our country are still paying the price for a reality most of us do not want to remember. Until we own our past, it is unlikely we will ever fully learn how to stop the cycle of history repeating itself.
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