Things don't just disappear, do they? They always eventually turn up, don't they? Still I get skeptical and paranoid. Nothing to worry about, right?

 Thanks to Simon & Garfunkel: The Sound of Silence is settling over our country. Been nice talking to all of you. We communicated while we could. We venture into uncharted territory now.

 Some people are not capable of changing. They are what they are, what you see, and they will always be what they are now.

 

The DOJ is getting hammered hard, but this is merely part of what is shaping up to be Trump's efforts to purge the federal government of employees who do anything but fight wars and deport migrants. It started with firing "DEI" workers and instructions to everyone else to rat out coworkers for harboring the forbidden pro-diversity views. Seventeen inspectors general were also illegally fired. There were escalating announcements of illegal funding halts, culminating in an outrageous effort to stop most federal grants and loans, which was such a disaster Trump was forced to walk it back. Then federal workers got an email, clearly copied from billionaire Elon Musk's similar malicious campaign against Twitter employees, pressuring them to resign and implying they could be fired if they don't. 

This is all being spun by the Trump administration as an effort to save money and reduce government "waste," but no one should be fooled. The sadism of these efforts belies the psychological damage motivating people like Musk and Russ Vought, the Project 2025 author Trump nominated to run the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). MAGA is certainly a racist and sexist movement, but it's crucially also a movement of bullies lashing out at people whose skills and talents remind MAGA folks of their own insecurities. Nowhere is this more evident than in the unhinged MAGA hatred of federal workers, a group largely known for being humble and hard-working, reminding MAGA leaders of their own lack of basic virtues. 

-Amanda Marcotte in Salon.com

 

Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”

Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others. ~Timothy Leary

 I've come this far without large print books. I've come this far without having to make up excuses. Real excuses are still plentiful. I'd still make a good witness on the stand. When I say I don't remember I'm telling the truth. Still no bench warrants outstanding. It's still a long way to Tipperary. The past isn't over. It still isn't past and is more real than the present.

 

If you are sick, it's your fault, a matter of personal responsibility, and not a matter for public concern.  So says the sickest man in country, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Despite his apparent malady, Kennedy stuck to his shtick of reframing health as a matter of private virtue rather than public concern. Over the course of the hearing, it became clear why this lifelong Democrat has switched to the GOP. His view that sick people did it to themselves and deserve what's coming to them offers a nifty justification for Republicans' long-standing desire to deny health care to millions of Americans. Kennedy may dress this up as "prevention" or concern for children, but the message came through loud and clear: Medical patients are parasites who suck up resources from better, more responsible people.

 

For sure Woody Allen in his movies and humorous pieces and his autobiography is not as funny as he used to be, but then who is as funny as they used to be?  Even the Bible has lost some its humor,  a talking donkey and an addled Peter making a fool of himself denying Christ three times.  But in these ultra serious times, the humor seems stilted and not as funny as it used to be.

 If Mack the Knife is back in town I'm hoping he doesn't show up at Starbucks, a respectable joint. We're a classy town, here in Pelham. We're in church on Sundays, having studied our Sunday School lesson, and listen attentively to the sermon. We support our local schools and have a keen community spirit. If you need helping hand, just let one of us know, and we'll be right over. We all get along, all for one, and one for all. Now that I've got that bit of puffery out of the way, I can get back to the dismal national news.

 I admit I do not understand AI. The question is: Does a man my age and shirt size need to understand AI in my remaining number of breaths or should I get a pass?

It Has Come to This

 Future historians digging thru the ruble of what used to be the United States will have much to work with. Who are these Americans now? I never would have believed in the 60's and 70's that it would come to this.

 Print reading and screen reading are not the same kind of reading. They are different species of reading. I stand my ground.

 ". . . . . Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else. . . . Whatever the Party holds to be truth IS truth. It is impossible to see truth except by looking thru the eyes of the Party. This is the fact that you have to learn, Winston. it takes an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane."

George Orwell, 1984, PP. 205-206

 One strategy for being happy is to be oblivious of all of the stupid things around us. It can work but can be rather dangerous on the wrong days.

Where Does This Leave Us?

 Not only is the future not what it used to be (Yogi Berra), the past is not what it used to be either (the Fascist erasing of the past). What you see is not what's happening (Donald Trump). So where does this leave us?

 Millions of Americans who voted for Kamala Harris, and who believe in American democracy and the common good, remain collectively stuck in the various stages of grief. That grief is made even more painful by the fact that tens of millions of other Americans are jubilant at Trump’s return to the White House and his vows of revenge against “the enemy within” as part making America "great again.” Most people who voted for Trump under the mistaken belief that he would improve their lives and “restore” the nation have no experience living under autocratic or authoritarian regimes. They perhaps voted to “shake things up” and believed they were supporting a leader who will "break the rules” to “get things done. That will turn out to be a Faustian bargain. While the MAGA are likely to feast on the proverbial fat of the land, the rank and file will be feasted upon like everyone else.

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

 

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“…The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous

presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”

~Carl Sagan

 

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The nature of the universe, which holds

the center still and moves all around it,

begins here as if from its turning post.

This heaven has no other where than this:

the mind of God, in which are kindled both

the love that turns it and the force it rains.

-Dante, Paradiso (1320)

 Those of you reading this will be paying for the Republican Party's tax cuts for the rich. This is just a start. Get ready!

House G.O.P. Floats Medicaid Cuts and More to Finance Trump’s Huge Agenda
President Trump wants a massive tax cut and immigration crackdown bill. Republicans must decide what to cut to help pay for it.
-NY Times

It's Not About Merit

 Donald Trump lies about everything, but the lies strewn throughout his executive order shutting down diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies in the federal government are especially taxing on one's credulity. Efforts to improve diversity, the order reads, "deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement." This paean to the importance of "excellence" and "hard work" comes from a man who, a mere five years ago, looked a row of medical researchers and doctors in the eye and suggested he understands science better than they do, despite having not studied it for a day of his life. He then theorized that Lysol and bleach be used to treat COVID-19 patients "by injection inside, or almost a cleaning, because, you see, it gets in the lungs," aware of the basic scientific principle that painting your lungs in poisonous substances will kill you. 

The new executive order insists that recruiting diverse applicants is "diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination." It was signed by a man who has nominated Pete Hegseth, an understudy Fox News host, to run the Department of Defense. Hegseth's only prior administrative experience comes from running two small-time charities into the ground, resulting in his removal from leadership. This ode to the value of skills and knowledge comes from the same half-literate president who also nominated Robert Kennedy to run the Health and Human Services agency, even though Kennedy claims cognitive decline from a brain worm and also refuses to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence showing vaccines are safe and effective. The only reason the alleged testament to "merit" is even readable is because someone other than Trump wrote it. The "merit"-loving president famously can't get through a 240-character social media post without multiple grammatical errors and misspellings. 

Amanda Marcotte in Salon.com

Mark Bauerlein - The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future

 The word "Dumbest" is unfortunate.  "Young Americans" are dumb only to the extent that they do not have or learn the traditional knowledge base that I know and have grown up with.  We live in different worlds and there is no way the worlds will be united.

Sticking with "dumbest" though for a moment, I consider MAGAS the dumbest Americans extant.  No doubt.

This is a reread.  Since he has a sequel out now, I thought I would cruise this first one again, an easy read.

The short story is digital vs. print.  I am a traditional print person and always will be.  Today's Milliennials are all digital, which is unstoppable.  I understand that, but digital is not my world.  What digital youth miss in my traditional print world, reading books, simply is what it is.  What this means in the world at large and the survival of the species I have no idea.

I am on Facebook but mainly just to show my creative writing, not to keep up with a social media world.  I am not into a social media world.  I do not keep up with an in-group online.  I do not need to be in touch with friends online.  I do not have the need to have a presence online to keep up with FB friends.

 

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When someone says to me, “We need to talk,” I know it’s not a good sign. When someone says to me,”I’ve been meaning to ask you. . . . “ I figure it’s not a good sign. When someone says to me,”You’ve got to be kidding me. . . “ they know good and well I am not kidding.

 "Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has illuminated the fasten seat belt sign indicating choppy air in the area. Please remain seated and check the security of your seat belt."

TicTok is a Fascist's Dream

 TikTok is good for Trump, and for one simple reason: It is a maelstrom of disinformation so gargantuan that even Elon Musk-controlled Twitter fails to compete. It's a train wreck of B.S., from people claiming sunscreen and vaccines don't work to bizarre videos claiming demons infect everything to old-fashioned authoritarian lies. The company claims to stand for "free speech," but the Chinese government censors information that doesn't serve its political goals. The algorithm is hidden from public view, but it's easy to see it favors divisive, emotionally manipulative and misleading information. It ratchets up culture war tensions and stokes arguments while undermining people's mental ability to focus on developing solutions. Hundreds of millions of people willingly plug into an app that feeds them the demoralizing propaganda authoritarians have been trying to shove down our throats forever. It's a fascist's dream. 

-Amanda Marcotte in Salon.com

 Here in my neck of the Boondocks in Pelham, Alabama, named for a legendary Confederate soldier, we seldom speak of Shakespeare and Michaelangelo,and listen to chamber music, but we love line dancing and study our Sunday School lessons: we are who we are, and we won't back down.

 

That “content of their character” quote — taken from King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech — has proved to be one of the most dangerous weapons in the effort to airbrush his legacy. It is used widely to suggest that King wished for a color-blind society — that he would have opposed affirmative action, for example — and that all he ever stood for was peace, harmony and coalition-building.

In 2017, when I interviewed entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte, he wondered aloud whether the holiday had done more harm than good to King’s legacy, making us forget the man’s radicalism, even erasing talk of racism.

King never wanted White Americans to get comfortable with discrimination. He never remotely suggested that his dream of a society free of racial discrimination should make us blind to the persistence of racism and inequality.

In an essay published after his assassination, King criticized White America for its “ingrained and tenacious racism.” Even in his “Dream” speech, before he mentioned “content of their character,” he talked about racial segregation, the lasting social and economic impact of slavery, and the Black victims of police brutality. To come away from that speech thinking King called for a color-blind society requires willful distortion, which is exactly what we have seen.

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If the King holiday has become a “contested site of memory,” as historian John Kirk put it, we can fight back by celebrating more honestly. We can begin by remembering that, until his death in 1968, King had never gained the approval of most White Americans. In 1966, even after he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, a Gallup survey showedthat 63 percent of Americans viewed him negatively. Just prior to his assassination, 3 out of every 4 White Americans disapproved of him. After the assassination, a shocking 31 percent of Americans, according to one survey, believed that King “brought it on himself.”

At the time, some members of the Black community turned on King, criticizing him for being too accommodating to White people. He further alienated key allies (most notably President Lyndon B. Johnson) by his high-profile opposition to the Vietnam War.

-Jonathan Eig in the WaPost

On Liberalism that Endures

 

Defeat is a great teacher. It taught me that liberalism endures because it’s a way of being and a set of values that tell us who we should try to be. This is what gives liberalism its hidden resilience, its capacity to rebuild after political reversals. If we want to rebuild, we’ll need to recover what the word used to mean. It once was a synonym for generosity. In the old days, a liberal gentleman was a generous man. We’ll want to discard these male, elitist associations by marrying generosity to the egalitarian individualism at the core of the liberal creed. The creed tells us we’re no better than anybody else but also no worse. What liberals value should be within everyone’s reach. A liberal person wants to be generous, open, alive to new possibility, willing to learn from anyone. We want to share whatever wealth and fortune we have, to welcome strangers to our table, to stand up for people when they’re in trouble. We know we have to change our minds when someone’s idea is better than ours. We have faith that history rewards those willing to fight for what they believe. Now, none of us is ever as generous as we’d like to be, and no liberal has a monopoly on generosity, but the largeness of spirit it calls us to does define our horizon of hope. Such values are embattled today, and they need defending because our societies so desperately need largeness of spirit, together with a revived liberal ideal of solidarity. We need to be filling out this vision and bringing our citizens to believe in it. Defeat has taught me we can’t afford to jettison our values when the tides of politics turn against us. Liberalism’s incorrigible vitality comes from the fact that it tells us who we most deeply want to be, provided that we are willing to fight for it and never surrender to the passing fashions of despair.

-Canadian Michael Ignatief in the WaPost

 Next Monday, Donald Trump will become president of the United States for a second time. He has promised and threatened to be a dictator on "day one."

None of this was fated or preordained. An alternate version of this reality and timeline could easily exist if two million Americans made a different choice on Election Day. This is especially true if Kamala Harris received the same number of votes as President Joe Biden had in 2020 (Biden received approximately 81 million votes in that election. Harris received only 74 million votes in the 2024 election).

Trump will return to power on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Remembrance Day. This is a horrible coincidence of dates; Trump and King are two men whose lives and missions are antithetical. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, King emphasized how we are “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Trump rejects such principles and values of social democracy and human dignity and rights. Trump’s life philosophy is based on selfishness, self-interest and corrupt power

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

 I could start walking like an Egyptian and bellowing like a cow, but I doubt either one would do any good.

Brian Krassenstein © K

@krassenstein

Adolf Hitler, a CONVICTED FELON, rose to power as Chancellor of

Germany in 1933. He cleverly positioned himself as the voice of the

"common man," railing against the elites and the establishment.

To solidify his base, Hitler masterfully scapegoated minorities for the

nation's problems, exploiting societal divisions with an "us vs. them"

narrative. It's almost as if dividing people and stoking anger can serve a

political agenda--who would've guessed?

Once in power, he wasted no time dismantling democratic institutions.

Loyalty wasn't just encouraged; it was demanded. Opponents? Silenced.

Media that dared to question him? Vilified as "the enemy," naturally.

But hey, history is just history, right? It's not like anyone would fall for

something like that again. 

 Next Monday, Donald Trump will become president of the United States for a second time. He has promised and threatened to be a dictator on "day one."

None of this was fated or preordained. An alternate version of this reality and timeline could easily exist if two million Americans made a different choice on Election Day. This is especially true if Kamala Harris received the same number of votes as President Joe Biden had in 2020 (Biden received approximately 81 million votes in that election. Harris received only 74 million votes in the 2024 election).

Trump will return to power on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Remembrance Day. This is a horrible coincidence of dates; Trump and King are two men whose lives and missions are antithetical. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, King emphasized how we are “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Trump rejects such principles and values of social democracy and human dignity and rights. Trump’s life philosophy is based on selfishness, self-interest and corrupt power.

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

Joan Didion: South and West (From a Notebook)

 Joan Didion writes from an excerpt from her famous notebook of a trip across the South in June of 1970.  Called South and West.  A confirmed Californian in the Heart of the South during the George Wallace Days when the South was still distinctive.  A trip she took with her husband John Gregory Dunne through Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama.  A capsule of Southern observations in 1970.  Observations, brief, cursory, but not W.J. Cash type of analysis.  A collection of very short essays.

Joan Didion has always kept notebooks---of overheard dialogue, interviews, drafts of essays, copies of articles.  South and North gives us two extended excerpts from notebooks she kept in the 1970s, read together they form a piercing view of the American political and cultural landscape.  (Back cover)

Joan Didion is at the pool at the Howard Johnson in Meridian at the intersection of I-20 and I-59.    In this collection of short writings she seems to visited at  every pool at every motel where she stayed.

P. IX

The idea was to start in New Orleans and from there we had no plan. 

Tennessee Williams thought he was made for New Orleans.

William Faulkner moved there when he was fired as the postmaster in Oxford.

Nobody remembers anything anymore especially our country's history even in the South which is supposed to always be looking backwards. William Faulkner famously said the past isn't over. It isn't even past. Not anymore. It is past now. (Added here)

1-16-25

P. XVIII

An unquestioned premise among those who live in cities with international airports is that Enlightenment values will come to all of America just as Thomas Jefferson thought that Unitarian values were the future, but they were wrong. But the South has become the future now instead.

WINFIELD 

P. 73-74

Maybe the rural South is the last place in America where one is still aware of trains and what they can mean, their awesome possibilities.

I put my clothes in the laundromat and walk on down the dirt at the side of the road to the beauty shop.  A girl with long straight blonde hair gave me a manicure.  Her name was Debby.

"I got one more year at Winfield High," Debby said, "then I'm getting out."

I asked where she would get out to.

"Birmingham," she said.

I asked what she would do in Birmingham.

"Well, if I keep on working while I'm in school, I'll have enough hours for my cosmetologist's license.  You need three thousand, I got twelve hundred already.  Then I'll go to modeling school.  Debby reflected for a moment.  "I hope I will."

GUIN

P. 77-80

At a motel in Gu-Win.  Can you believe that the Pulitzer Prize writer Joan Didion was at a motel in Gu-Win, Alabama, in June of 1970?  I did not know there was a motel in Gu-Win unless it's the one I would say is in Guin itself on the highway.

Her description doesn't sound like Guin.  She speaks of a drive-in in Hamilton.  No, that's Gu-Win.  Her details take liberties.

P. 101

In Greenville, a different kind of town.

P. 105

We stopped at Walker Percy's in Covington, Louisiana.  We sat out in back by the bayou and drank gin and tonics and when a light rain began to fall, a kind of mist,  Walker never paid any min but just kept talking an walking up to the house to get fresh drinks.  It was a thunderstorm, with odd light, and there were occasional water-skiers on the black bayou water.  "The South," he said, "owes a debt to the North. . . tore the Union apart once. . . and now only the South can save the North."  

So in the summer of 1970 fledgling West Coast writer Joan Didion felt like she had to visit the South.  She felt this urge which I don't really understand, but maybe she was on to something.  To understand this country maybe you have to come to terms with the South especially now in what will unfortunately be knowns as  the Age of Trump.  (Added)

  Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election was an extreme failure for the United States as both a nation and a country. He has open contempt for democracy and the Constitution. He is publicly promising and threatening (and putting in place the means) to rule as the country’s first elected dictator on “day one.” Trump, like other such autocrats and authoritarians, means what he says both literally and figuratively. 

A country consists of a defined territory and borders, founding documents, laws and institutions. The United States failed to protect its democracy by putting an autocrat and his larger authoritarian populist movement and cadre of kleptocratic allies in control of its governing institutions — including Congress. This is a great failure of the United States as a country. 

A nation consists of shared values and ideas, myths, narratives, stories and a sense of shared community and identity (and perhaps even destiny) that tie together a people. One of the tenets of America as a nation is a belief in American Exceptionalism. Be it a “shining city on a hill” or “the world’s greatest democracy,” Trump's return to power further undermines America's self-image of greatness. The United States has now been brought down to the level of being common, and just another of many examples across the centuries, of how a failing and sick democracy succumbs to demagogues, strongmen and authoritarians and their false promises of renewed greatness and easy solutions to complex problems.

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

Cold, Calculating, Unimpassioned Reason

 In response, Lincoln had counseled reason, “cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason.”

But his ultimate aim, Lincoln said, was to secure “a reverence for the constitution and laws.” That reverence was the predicate for all the changes he later wrought in America.

Perhaps the first step away from the dangers of that passion, and toward the reasoned reverence Lincoln counseled, is a simple recognition that the perpetuation of our political institutions is not assured — and that our constitutional order has been more fragile than we’ve recently been led to understand.

-Russell Riley in the WaPost

 Writer Joan Didion has arrived in my reading life.

  To say we’re in an unprecedented place is vastly understating it. We are in a place where no proper democracy has ever been or should ever be. We are about to have a president for whom there are utterly and literally no expectations. No one expects him to behave well. No one expects him to uphold normal standards of decency. If he muses one day about bombing London, or bombing Vancouver, or for that matter bombing Detroit, he will surprise no one. The panelists on The Five will just joke that there are certain sections of Detroit that a good bombing would only improve. Ha ha. 

Trump will enter office facing no accountability, and with virtually no chance that he will ever be held accountable. You think I’m exaggerating? OK. Let’s play out a hypothetical. Let’s say President Trump gives nuclear secrets to North Korea. The New York Times breaks the story, let’s say. What would happen? 

We know all too well what would happen. One of two things. Either he’d lie and call it fake news, in which case the right-wing agitprop machine would grind its gears in his defense. They’d unload on the Times. They’d snoop around and find out that the reporter on the story cheated on an algebra test in tenth grade. Fox and the others would have the story “debunked” within about two days, and the Times and the rest of the mainstream media would be overpowered.

-Michael Tomasky in The New Republic

Freaky Thing

 One of the freaky things about hanging out in my local Starbucks is that I have frequent random chats with lots of people and most of the time I do not remember with whom I have conversed. A young man (anyone under 50 is a young man to me) just walked by with his lady telling me that they were on their way to the gym across the highway. He thanked me for the conversations we've had saying I am one of the most interesting people he's ever met. I appreciate the compliment, but I honestly have no memory of ever talking to him. I am trying hard not to feel shame.

 The upcoming inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States — and the four years of his presidency to follow — will put American democracy to the test. His return to the Oval Office has already reignited debates over the legitimacy of elections, with partisan media framing his presidency as either a triumph or a travesty. This polarization underscores a growing danger: We no longer share a common reality. 

The erosion of trust in common facts and the fracturing of our nation's ability to engage in constructive dialogue means many of us can no longer accept a shared reality. In 2023, a CNN poll found that 69% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believed President Biden’s 2020 win was not legitimate. That’s not surprising given new reporting that popular conservative pundits are frequently sharing election falsehoods on YouTube, which stopped moderating election-related content 18 months ago.

-Sandra Mätz in salon.com

When Will This End?

 The centrists, institutionalists and other such mainstream voices who continue to naively believe in a version of an eternally democratic and decent America that does not exist and where autocrats and demagogues are anathema to the country’s political traditions and culture were (self- and incorrectly) convinced that the events of Jan. 6, 2021, would be the end of Donald Trump’s political power and the MAGA movement. Instead, Donald Trump and the MAGA movement would endure and grow in power and influence. There is a deep appetite for authoritarianism in America (and other parts of the world).

In all, Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, the certification of the Electoral College votes on Monday, and Jan. 6, 2021, have caused a type of cognitive dissonance and frustration among pro-democracy Americans and other members of the “reality-based community” that none of this should be happening but all of it has and continues to. On this, Heather Cox Richardson writes in her newsletter Letters from an American how, “Democracy stood in the sense that its norms were honored today as they were not four years ago, which is no small thing. But it is a blow indeed that the man who shattered those norms by trying to overturn the will of the American voters and seize the government will soon be leading it again.”

Jan 20 Inauguration and King Holiday

 On Monday, Donald Trump was officially certified by Congress as the winner of the 2024 Electoral College vote. Vice President Kamala Harris, who Trump defeated in the election, fulfilled her responsibilities by overseeing the vote count and ceremony. Trump will take power on January 20. His inauguration coincides with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Remembrance Day. Trump is America’s first White president. Dr. King is one of America’s great freedom warriors for multiracial democracy and human rights. He was martyred for his struggle to force America to live up to its professed ideals and unrealized potential. The coincidence of these two events is one more example of how this version of reality feels fundamentally broken.

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

From the WaPost

 

Trump’s call to Alito sparks demands that justice recuse from sentencing case

Some experts and Democratic lawmakers say a phone call between the president-elect and Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was ethically problematic.

By Justin Jouvenal

Ignoring Trump

 

save

President-elect Donald Trump did not garner a universally warm welcome at the state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter.

All five living presidents and former presidents attended the funeral, but the list of people who gave the Carter critic the cold shoulder and those with open arms did not follow party lines.

Former Vice President Mike Pence greeted the president-elect in one of the pair’s only public interactions since Trump’s supporters called for Pence’s death during the Jan. 6 attacks, briefly shaking his hand. But other Republican mourners were less friendly.

Pence's wife, Karen, declined to acknowledge Donald or Melania Trump at the service. She stayed seated as they greeted the row. She had previously said that Trump "puts himself above the Constitution" and was unfit for office. That was before a court filing revealed that Trump responded, “So what?” to reports of a mob threatening former Vice President Pence’s life during the storming of the Capitol.

Former President George Bush also coasted past President-elect Trump without a greeting, instead giving President Barack Obama a belly tap. Bush declined to throw his support behind the ostensible leader of the Republican Party during the presidential election, offering no endorsement for any candidate.

Related

How Jimmy Carter's so-called betrayal of evangelicals led to MAGA

President Joe Biden delivered a eulogy for Carter, highlighting the former president’s character in the address while subtly condemning abuses of presidential power.

“We have an obligation to give hate no safe harbor and to stand up to what my dad used to say is the greatest sin of all, the abuse of power,” Biden said in a seeming nod at President-elect Trump.

twitter.com/Acyn/status/1877395574670110997

Biden previously told reporters that the president-elect could learn “decency” from Carter.

Attending the ceremony without former First Lady Michelle Obama, former President Obama acted chummy while sitting with Trump and was caught on camera laughing with the president-elect.

From Salon.com

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