“Pretty boy” Pete Hegseth left a stinking path of adulterous cheating in his marriage path
Most of you have likely seen photos of an amped-up Pete Hegseth, covered in tattoos signifying various belief systems he adheres to. The documented laundry list of right-wing delusional markings imprinted on his body includes:
“Deus Vult”: This Latin phrase, which translates to “God wills it” and was a battle cry during the Crusades, is tattooed on his bicep. This tattoo was reportedly a reason a fellow service member flagged him as a potential “insider threat,” leading to his removal from duty at President Biden’s 2021 inauguration.
Jerusalem Cross: Located on his chest, this large cross surrounded by four smaller crosses is a historic Christian symbol representing the five wounds of Christ and the spread of the Gospel.
“Kafir”: Hegseth got a new tattoo in Arabic that reads “Kafir,” an Arabic word meaning “infidel” or “non-believer,” which has sparked outrage and criticism from some Muslim advocacy groups.
“We the People”: He has “We the people,” the opening words of the U.S. Constitution, emblazoned on his forearm.
1775, 13 stars, and an AR-15/American flag design: Above the “We the People” tattoo, he has “1775” in Roman numerals, representing the year of the Second Continental Congress, surrounded by 13 stars and an image combining an AR-15 rifle and an American flag.
Sword with Bible reference: A tattoo of a cross and sword referencing the Bible verse Matthew 10:34, which he interprets as “not peace, but a sword”.
All these religious undertones in ink became religious overtones in Hegseth’s public life. But it’s all pathetically hubristic garbage if you analyze it with the least bit of theological and historical context. The “five wounds of Christ” allusion is in reality a gory testament to excessive government authoritarian cruelty in the Roman Empire, which Trump and Hegseth seek to emulate. His cultural appropriation of the Kafir word meaning “infidel” aligns with the inane “not peace, but a sword” ideology of the Christian Crusades that wrought nothing but insane, warlike trips to the Middle East based on religious zealotry and political jealousy. That manic tradition of killing for dominance continues to this day. We saw it in two Iraqi Wars and the continual military-industrial support of Israel to our own country’s impoverishment.
Pre-Constitutional fervor
Even Hegseth’s claims to Constitutional fidelity, borne in the tattoo 1775, take an anachronistic off-ramp by celebrating a period before the United States was a fully formed nation. Combining that purposeful gap in patriotic fulfillment with an image of a deadly AR-15 rifle, created 200 years later, illustrates the irreconcilable inanity of Hegseth’s radical notions of what constitutes American ideals.
Proving that while Pete Hegseth is educated, he’s also willfully stupid. A Dumb Bro with a higher education degree is still a Dumb Bro.
The sick part of all this ill-educated symbolism is that the disgusting little prig had every opportunity to use his education and background to do somegood in this world. Instead, over time, he’s become a man addicted to many things; alcohol, sex, rule-breaking, adultery, lies, aggressive hyperbole, and death. He’s a fraud on par with his boss Donald Trump, and just as woefully bigoted, ignorant, and incurious. It
Selfishness as a worldview
But most of all, Hegseth is a selfish prick. He cares nothing about other people, other than to use them for his self-aggrandizing thirst for power and control. He stood before our nation’s generals spitting out threats amid calls for loyalty without having done a single thing to earn them.
Now, after retitling his responsibilities to the “Department of War,” he’s a man out of control and murdering people on the world’s oceans based on vague notions of “war” against the United States by people in little boats who could never reach our shores carrying drugs, if they were carrying any such cargo at all. We’re supposed to “trust the word” of the people carrying out the murders at sea that these boats are filled with dangerous drugs. But everyone allied with the Trump administration or forced to function in subservient roles is a demonstrated liar. Every. Single. One.
Turning Point terrorism
Another “pretty boy” fascist eager for death and destruction to bolster his sense of manhood
Thirst for Death
Hegseth’s addled-brained supporters love his unapologetic thirst for death. As reported by historian Heather Cox Richardson, “This evening, Andrew Kolvet of Turning Point USA posted on social media: “Every new attack aimed at Pete Hegseth makes me want another narco drug boat blown up and sent to the bottom of the ocean.”
To which Hegseth turned around, quoted Kolvet, and commented: “Your wish is our command, Andrew. Just sunk another narco boat.” Richardson notes: The U.S. Southern Command confirmed the strike against a small boat in the eastern Pacific, saying that “[i]ntelligence confirmed that the vessel was carrying illicit narcotics and transiting along a known narco-trafficking route…. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed.”
But even after they blow up the boats, they return to kill any survivors floating on the wreckage. These are war crimes by any definition of the word. But to Pete Hegseth, they are offerings to the Religion of Death he has tattooed across his body. This campaign is Pete Hegseth’s international Crusade, his Inquisition, and his Christo-fascist lust for bodies floating in blood to make himself feel like he’s serving the God of Destruction and Chaos. Hegseth is inked on the outside and hollow on the inside.
But he loves death, and he’s good at that it seems. Perhaps it was even Hegseth who did Turning Point’s “dirty work” in murdering Charlie Kirk? Who knows? There’s so much wanton killing, masked abduction and brutality, illegal ICE raids, warrantless beatings, and detention centers bordering on torture chambers that we can’t tell who’s killing who, or why?
It’s just “business as usual” in Trumplandia.
Like Father Trump, Like Son Hegseth
As long as we’re touching on Hegseth’s callow interests and Trumplike qualities, he also reportedly paid $50,000 to a woman who alleges he sexually assaulted her. Hegseth never effectively denied the encounter, only its nature. He insists it was “consensual.
As noted on the website 19thnews.org: “She reported the matter to police, but no charges were ever filed against Hegseth. He and his representatives have maintained that the encounter was consensual. At the time, Hegseth was still legally married to his second wife and had recently welcomed a child with the woman who would become his third.
“But you acknowledge that you cheated on your wife and you cheated on a woman by whom you had just fathered a child? You have admitted that,” pressed Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.
“I will allow your words to speak for themselves,” Hegseth said.
Some contend that rape (or sexual assault) is as bad as homicide because of what it kills in the life of its victims. The National Library of Medicine seems to think so.
My wife and I attended the Paramount Theater production of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, The Musical in Aurora, Illinois. We subscribe to the Broadway Series because the Paramount produces top-quality shows, and we’ve seen close to two dozen, I’d estimate, over the years.
My all-time favorite was an all-Black cast production of Jesus Christ Superstar. But every show we’ve seen has offered something unique and a vital presentation of themes old and new.
Which brings me to a “review” of the current production of White Christmas, and why it has modern relevance and revelations to offer more than half a century after its creation.
First: huge compliments to the performers, whose incredible talents in singing, dance, acting, and tap dancing wowed the audience into impromptu cheers and long applause after each section of the show. I tried imagining what it would be like to work in the theater profession while leafing through the Playbill reading the actor bios. Many of them thanked their agents for their work, which prompted me to look up the casting director and director, who, in notes to the audience, noted the show’s devotion to “everyday acts of kindness” and “counting our blessings.”
That’s the main theme of the production, yet there is far more going on with this musical production than the White Christmas movie seemed to convey. Perhaps it’s the result of being “present” with the cast as they portray each character’s story in real time, but the story made so much more sense as a play than it did for us onscreen.
The context of the story is post-WW II during the time when everyone who fought in the war or experienced its impacts “back at home” was figuring out what life was supposed to look like after the threat of worldwide fascism fell to the “good guys” fighting overseas. That’s where the play opens with two talented men holding a battlefield Christmas Eve musical of their own. Upon being discovered by their strong-willed General, they retreat to their duties, but he sternly thanks them for that touch of home despite the breach of wartime conduct.
It’s a raw feeling realizing that nowadays, half the United States seems to have forgotten what the threat of fascism looks like. For that reason, it’s taking place right before our eyes as Trump sends militarized ICE mercenaries out into the streets wearing masks without identification to drag people away without recourse. That’s the kind of dog-whistle racism, anti-immigration, anti-Semitic, anti-Liberal, anti-intellectual sentiments that America fought against in Germany’s Nazi era.
The other stark realization is that General Dwight Eisenhower is mentioned several times in the musical as the President who won the war and now presides over 1954 America. A glance at the 1956 Republican Party Platform illustrates how far from sanity that party has drifted in the seventy years since Eisenhower ran the nation. Eisenhower also warned against the “military-industrial complex” and the United States now spends more on its military (and now its ICE military) than the next six or seven nations combined. We’re insane, in other words.
The play also acknowledges the classic issue of ageism in America, as one song is literally titled “What Can You Do With A General. The tune focuses on the problems faced by those who choose to continue working but are no longer deemed ‘fit for duty’ or useful to society. Millions of Americans are now experiencing those feelings as they are “generally” constrained to menial, low-paying jobs in the service or retail industry.
The General in White Christmas owns and runs a hotel, but a distinctly warm winter in Vermont isn’t helping things upstate, where everyone who came to see and rub their faces in the snow is disappointed and leaves. These days, it’s climate change that screwing everything up, as noted from reports around the world: “Ski resorts are struggling with climate change, experiencing shorter seasons and lost revenue due to less predictable and decreasing snowfall. In response, many are adapting by investing in more efficient snowmaking, implementing energy-saving measures, and changing their business models to be more sustainable, though the long-term outlook remains challenging.”
Finding hope
White Christmas depicts a faction of people who turn to creativity and ingenuity to prop up the General’s enterprise. In the end, it helps him overcome an unfortunate tendency toward stubborn conservatism. His mind undergoes revelations as he watches the play preparations unfold, including the scene in which the two lead men play feminine roles in a reprise of a Sisters fan dance previously performed by the two female leads. Irving Berlin was far ahead of his time in illustrating the gender-fluid nature of the arts and how they break down emotional barriers.
Human values
There’s a quasi-religious theme behind it all, but not the conservative Christian kind where people use religion to control others. The song Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep calls us to take stock of the good things we do for others and the good things they do for us. In some respects, that’s liberal Christianity and the Golden Rule. But Berlin’s play is more humanistic than it is religious, and that’s an important distinction these days when Right wing Christians try to claim that all good traits emanate from God. That’s partly true if one doesn’t turn religion into a weapon. White Christmas The Musical drops more than a few hints that there is a strong relationship between the kinds of people who engage in personal relationship betrayal and societal corruption.
Deeper themes
All of these deeper themes resonate beneath the show’s history as a classic musical. But it’s the glamour that brings it all to life, and the staging at Paramount is incredible. That is apparently a product of being “presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals,” because the stagecraft brings you right into the old barn where the fundraising play will be staged. But there’s also wall-sized rotating set of piano keys that delivers jaw-dropping visuals.
Director Stephen Schellhardt brings it all together thanks to the ensemble of enormously talented actors, dancers, and singers. We even got a chance to sing along at one point in the play! What really fascinated me was how frequent and convincing the costume changes were. It all climaxes with a Christmas-themed final number in which the two female leads emerge in the sparkliest dresses you’ve ever seen, backed by the cast performing “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.”
That’s the sentiment of connection that Schellhardt sought to convey. But for me, it was the contrast between the good vibes of the past with the harsh realities of the present that made the show so meaningful. I don’t think the current administration would grasp those contrasts, or understand why the humanistic precepts of White Christmas are what Make America Great Again, and always have.
Instead, it’s likely Trump and his fascist band of Christian nationalists and bigoted supremacists would think “White Christmas” means cleansing the countryside of Brown or Black People, immigrants, and anyone who dares to question Trump’s sociopathic authority and doesn’t embrace White Replacement Theory.
Recently I researched how Wheaton College felt about its graduate Russell Vought, whose fealty to Project 2025 is now on full display in his job serving the Trump Administration. I found a column by Timon Cline, whose bio reads: “Editor in Chief at American Reformer. He is an attorney and a fellow at the Craig Center at Westminster Theological Seminary and the Director of Scholarly Initiatives at the Hale Institute of New Saint Andrews College. His writing has appeared in the American Spectator, Mere Orthodoxy, American Greatness, Areo Magazine, and the American Mind, among others.”
I’ve dissected Cline’s column in the American Reformer attacking Wheaton College graduates for criticizing Vought and his version of Christianity. Cline’s writing in his column is featured here in bold. My analysis of his claims follow.
Wheaton Alumni Issue Attack on Russ Vought
Last week, Wheaton College did a very normal thing: it issued a congratulatory statement on social media to one of its graduates, Russ Vought (‘98), who was recently confirmed as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
The author of this piece, Timon Cline, opens with a vapid attempt to normalize Russell Vought’s goal of replacing the Constitutional Separation of Church and State* with Project2025’s legalistic version of Christianity as law in the United States of America.
Cline ignores the fact that Vought’s views on religion ought to have nothing to do with his duties as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. But legalistic religious authorities have a long history of blurring the lines between religion and government. The Bible shows that John the Baptist and Jesus fought the Pharisees and Sadducees over legalistic scriptural interpretations used to create stumbling blocks to God and turn the temple into a commercial enterprise. We can draw a straight line from the practices of those religious authorities to the political and religious objectives of Project 2025 today. They are practically the same people in different eras.
Here’s the sad part. Christians were supposed to learn from Jesus’ example not to fall into legalistic worship patterns created under the “traditions of men.” But once legalistic Christianity consolidated with the Roman Empire, the course was set to impose authoritarian, persecutorial religion for millennia to come. Over time, conservative Christianity became the one thing Jesus most despised, a legalistic religious institution bent on absolute power and authority. Even Reformation attempts failed to eradicate these instincts, and Evangelical Protestant legalism with its literalistic Bible interpretations and “apologetics” are just as bad, if not worse, than the original Catholic model of absolute authority and political control.
That hypocrisy is evident in all of Russell Vought’s attempts to impose a controlling version of religion in the name of Christian nationalism here in America. That’s why Wheaton College alumni protested when the school casually congratulated Vought for his “success” in government. Cline finds that ethical accountability offensive, and seeks to dismiss the corrupt nature of Voughts political theology by heightening the importance of Vought’s position. This is Cline’s attempt to overwhelm resistance to Project 2025’s objectives. Cline writes:
“Few people reach such a high level in American government, and Vought has done it twice. Certainly, this is something worth celebrating for any college, especially for a small evangelical college. Wheaton graduates have done impressive things, but very few have served in such an elevated position as Vought. Though a not insignificant amount have served in government, most of Wheaton’s well-known graduates are theologians and evangelists–think Billy Graham, John Piper, and William Lane Craig. Perhaps, Dan Coats, former Director of National Security, and Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House, are the only Wheaton alumni to rival Vought in achievement in government service.”
Wheaton has long claimed Billy Graham as a celebrated graduate, and that’s fair enough. He wasn’t a perfect man, we must note. At one point he stated that Jews had a “stranglehood” on America that must be broken, and Graham tolerated segregation at his rallies to mollify whites offended by integration. Such are the habits of many so-called conservative Christians, who always seem willing to compromise their biblical principles to satisfy political allies and “save face.” But many also have disturbingly secret skeletons in their closets. Dennis Hastert is one such notable Wheaton College alum. Hastert’s political career ended in disgrace when his hush money payments to cover up a child sexual abuse case became known. Yet Cline casually dismisses that corrupt behavior out of deference to people in powerful positions. One has to ask, is that what Jesus would do?
From this theologically corrupt standpoint, Cline begins his line of questioning (he is a lawyer, after all) why Wheaton College removed its post about Russell Vought. Given the shallowness of Cline’s premise, the argument seems to be, “He’s certainly no worse than any other conflicted Christian hypocrite.”
In fact, there’s no stopping Cline’s vacuous strains once he’s gained momentum. He tries justifying Wheaton’s complicit honoring of Vought as a “simple congratulatory statement.”
Wheaton’s post was a simple congratulatory statement including a call to prayer for Vought—a standard 1 Timothy 2:2 practice, it must be said. A day later, the post was removed and replaced with a new one. The “significant concern expressed online” led Wheaton to delete the post. The College did not want to make a “political endorsement,” it said. The College explained to Fox News that the post had led to thousands of “hostile comments,” which prompted them to remove the post “rather than allow it to become an ongoing online distraction,” adding that said removal did not constitute an apology for expressing congratulations to Vought.
What Cline chooses to ignore is that Wheaton College recognized (or was forced into admitting by its protesting alumni) that its announcement constituted patent approval of Vought’s Christian hypocrisy in turning legalistic scripture into law. Jesus once warned:
25 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”
Despite such clear scriptural warnings that legalistic religion used for political purposes offended Jesus, Cline whines that Wheaton’s action was “unfair” to Vought somehow, and proceeds to malign its graduates for standing up to Vought’s brand of Right-wing Christian nationalism. He writes:
In other words, what Wheaton itself characterized as a typical announcement was rescinded because enough people dislike the recipient. As Chase Davis posted on X, this is a “glimpse into how Christian colleges and seminaries have been captured by emotional sabotage. Is that really the standard under which Wheaton wants to operate? Vought appropriately commented with one word: “Sad!”
Even this backpedaling was not enough. Wheaton alumni have begun circulating an Open Letter against Vought which American Reformer has obtained and is printed in full below. As is usually the case, Wheaton’s capitulation to the mob has not satisfied it. Now it must be rebuked.
Let’s consider what Cline is trying to accomplish here. It’s nothing short of gaslighting to advance the notion that Vought is somehow theologically and constitutionally “pure,” which is what conservatives always love to claim. But let’s be clear: Project 2025 is a patently extremist view of American government, if you can even call it that. But consider this view from the Global Extremism Project website:
“Within weeks of taking office, Trump issued sweeping executive orders, attempting to grab more power for himself and the executive branch. The dismantling of federal agencies and firing of tens of thousands civil servants has accelerated the far-right and authoritarian takeover of government institutions that will hurt ordinary Americans. And this is just the beginning. Christian nationalist ideals are set to shape this administration, and this country, as Project 2025’s architects work to consolidate power, dismantle progressive policies, and entrench their agenda.”
The ”agenda” Cline supports is rife with bigotry and authoritarian construction and the Project 2025 mission is both vicious and dauntless. The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, recently said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” That’s a threat, not diplomacy. Whe Roberts insinuate violence if people don’t fall into line, he’s not exaggerating.
The Kettering Foundatio analyzed Project 2025’s goals: “The plan is ambitious. The Mandatefor Leadership is both specific in detail and vengeful in tone. Its central agenda is to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States. Christian nationalism believes that the Christian Bible, as God’s infallible law, should be the basis of government and have primacy over public and private institutions. Its patriarchal view does not recognize gender equality or gay rights and sanctions discrimination based on religious beliefs. Christian nationalist ideas are woven through the plans of Project 2025 and the pages of Mandate for Leadership. Its thousands of recommendations include specific executive orders to be repealed or implemented. Laws, regulations, departments, and whole agencies would be abolished. It portrays anyone who opposes its sweeping ambitions as being enemies of our republic.”
Cline likes to pretend that this agenda does not threaten the nation. But speciously, he’s never done whining either. He winces at objections to his call to install Trump as king.
Predictably, the Letter picks up media narratives about Project 2025.
What exactly is it about Vought’s contribution to Project 2025, “Executive Office of the President of the United States,” that is offensive, misguided, or unbiblical? Likely, none of the signatories have read the 900-pageMandate for Leadership, but surely, they have perused Vought’s chapter, right? The Open Letter denounces Vought and Project 2025 as authoritarian. Strange given that the first citation on the first page of Vought’s chapter is to Federalist No. 47 wherein James Madison warns against the accumulation of all governmental powers into the same hand or hands. Vought proceeds to argue for constitutional restoration over and against bureaucratic theft of power.
Cline’s argument that Project 2025 is “constitutional restoration” is a patent lie, and he gaslights by quoting James Madison when the Project’s goals have no intention of respecting those limits. There is also no “bureaucratic theft of power.” What he’s calling “bureaucracy” is regulatory agencies created by Congress to protect human and consumer rights, manage financial industries, and protect environmental health and sustainability. Those are basic governmental principles aligne with “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” without monopolistic industries trashing the country, stealing money through Big Pharma and privatized health insurance, and raping the environment from shore-to-shore.
But Right-wing autocrats want those protections out of the way principally to reward the super wealthy with the right to “privatize the profits and socialize the losses.” Cline goes on to play dumb in the face of his own specious arguments. Instead, he replaces bureaucracy with autocracy. Listening to his ugly rationalizations we find a series of contradictions that current forms of government are “overreaching.” Instead, he says Vought and Trump and Musk and Johnson deserve the “whole hog” right to do whatever they want to Americans. But especially Trump, for whom Cline seems to have a political hard-on.
In truth, everything in Vought’s summation of the constitutional power of the executive is mainstream and unsurprising. An executive acting like an executive may seem odd to us now—so accustomed are we to neutered figureheads in the Oval Office, to a “feeble executive” and thereby a “feeble government.” Checks and balances, separation of powers, requires not only that each branch does not encroach upon the power of the others, but also that each one fully exerts the power granted to it. Effective government is hardly unconstitutional. Neither is a well-managed budget according to the actual priorities of government. That is, use of taxpayer dollars for things more pertinent to their safety and flourishing than DEI operas and comic book campaigns in Europe or gender studies programs in the Middle East or spreading atheism in Asia–all things prioritized by the previous administration to the tune of millions.
In those last few lines, Cline paints himself into a partisan corner with his spoiled and possibly uneducated punk attitude. He’s so desperate to hate on liberalism that his word salad denigrates Black history and human equity enlightened dramas here and abroad as “DEI operas.” Apparently, the only programming, theater or movies Cline can handle are Christian-oriented biopics of blabbering demagogues like Reagan and Bush, albeit with a litany of Trump’s Greatest Hits thrown in as croutons on a Christo-fascist salad.
The entire concept of gender also seems to frighten Cline, who also adopts the idea that atheism is “the enemy” of justice and culture. For icing on the cake, Cline attempts a swipe at the “previous administration” by appealing, in the early part of the paragraph, that any initiative aimed at promoting factual history and human rights is a waste of taxpayer money.
Then comes the really ugly part of Cline’s petulant essay. He appeals to anachronism and Federalism as justification for his “winner-take-all” version of triumphal nationalism.
Moreover, an energetic executive is exactly what Alexander Hamilton presented in Federalist No. 70. Indeed, a single executive exercising control over the executive branch was the only path to true vigilance on behalf of the people, said Hamilton. A “vigorous executive” was not inconsistent with republican government but rather its guarantee. “Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” Surely, “all men of sense” would agree with this proposition, thought Hamilton.
To answer Hamilton’s question, we can turn quickly a personal, political, and economic analysis of Trump, who is not a man of “good sense” by any human standard. Certainly not morally, where Trump is a massive failure, having cheated on a series of wives, often with much younger women, as an NBC News story reported, “Trump was at one point friends with Epstein. “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002, before there were any public allegations of wrongdoing against multimillionaire money manager. “He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Trump said then. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Trump also lacks truthful financial sense, as his own Trump University paid $25M in fraud fines. His Foundation closed after Trump was found guilty of stealing its funds. His business enterprises earned a $400M+ fine for lying about property valuations. Famously, he also bankrupted Atlantic City casinos. None of these habituated losses point to Trump as a “man of sense.”
He also led attacks on American democracy and the Republic, claiming that he lost the 2020 election due to voter fraud, all while conspiring to create “fake electors” to steal the election for himself. When his supporters came to Washington at his request, they responded to his urgent call to “fight like hell” and invaded the Capitol in a specific attempt to block the certification of Electoral College votes and install himself as President. Trump watched on TV as the rioters bearing Trump and Confederate flags bludgeoned Capitol police, broke into the building and vandalized the property while insane militia members led chants to “Hang Mike Pence,” which Trump never declined. Instead, he insisted Pence did not have the courage to “do the right thing.” You normally don’t get to just walk away from events like that, but Republicans declined the rightful impeachment of Trump for the insurrection, and Right-wing judges excused and delayed justice for high crimes. These were seditious actions.
All of this proves that men like Timon Cline know exactly what they’re doing by insisting that Trump has the right to absolute power. They throw his abuses right back in our faces, proving that Cline is a sycophantic Christian nationalist and an avid fascist. He denies this in “theory,” but he admits it in practice.
The so-called unitary executive theory is not a theory; it is not authoritarianism. It’s just Article II of the Constitution. Russ Vought’s crime, then, is that he wants a well-functioning, secure constitutional order, the only path to ensure, in his words, “the survival of self-governance in America.” And the big reveal over the past few months from outlets like ProPublica is that Vought is aligned with the presidential administration in which he is now serving. Shocker.
It is clear that Timon Cline would suck at the game of poker because he always overplays his hand. He goes on to re-write biblical and American history in revisionist fashion.
If Project 2025 proposed a true monarchy, the Wheaton alumni have a problem. If such a model is “unbiblical” then King David is in trouble. But, in fact, Project 2025 is, in large part, a repudiation of the trajectory set by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s long tenure which was as close to a monarchical “restructuring of society” as America has ever gotten. (Indeed, FDR was quite effective in his use of the OMB itself.) If anyone is responsible for the omnipotent, unaccountable bureaucratic deep state, it is FDR and his progeny.
First off, King David was a genocidal, adulterous asshole, whom God disavowed at the end of his earthly life telling him, “No you can’t build a temple in my honor. You have too much blood on your hands.” But Cline seems not to care that his supposedly “biblical” heroes are everything America is supposed to resist. We are supposed to learn from David’s example not to act like him. But evangelical American Christians love to proclaim that “God works with flawed people” because secretly, they understand their entire theology is a hypocritical trashpit of cherry-picking creationism and longstanding bigotry based on tiny bits of scripture that amount to a house of cards.
And so predictably, Cline also chooses to ignore the fact that FDR came into power after Robber Baron capitalists crashed the economy in a spectacularly speculative fashion. Unemployment reached 25% during the Great Depression, while the Dust Bowl raged across the American plains because lying Christo-fascists dismissed the environmental realities of arid country to promise hapless farmers that “rain would follow the plow.” God hates liars, but liars hate to admit they’re ever wrong. Look at Trump.
Amidst these 1930s Right Wing failures, FDR used the government to restore a sense of balance and security in the face of rampant abuse by free market capitalists whose “privatize the profits, socialize the losses” approach was the perverse form of socialism preferred by greedy capitalists. Trump and Project 2025 seek to return to those failed policies again in America and are proceeding with fascist fervor led by the corporatist Elon Musk and the Heritage Foundation’s murky band of bigots, economic terrorists, and Libertarian hustlers.
I read Project 2025 and found it grossly unpalatable in tone and objectives. It is a fascist document much like Hitler’s Mein Kampf. There are similarities to its authors, and Trump, and one other famous fascist. As the United States Holocaust Museum website note, “Mein Kampf promoted the key components of Nazism: rabid antisemitism, a racist world view, and an aggressive foreign policy geared to gaining Lebensraum (living space) in eastern Europe.” Do you note the similarities to Trump’s approach here? He’s trying to annex Canada and Greenland for “living space” and “security” for America.
There’s also similarities between Hitler’s economic aims and Trump’s constant grift of selling Trump Bibles and other crap bearing his image. The parallel is that Trump spent time as a political exile, and like Hitler, rose to power again due to populist rhetoric of hate and malignant dog-whistle racism. “Hitler began writing Mein Kampf in 1924 in Landsberg prison, following his conviction for high treason for attempting to overthrow the German republic in November 1923 in the so-called Beer Hall Putsch. Although his coup failed, Hitler used his trial as a pulpit to spread Nazi propaganda. Largely unknown before this event, he gained immediate notoriety in the German and international press. The court sentenced him to five years imprisonment, of which he served less than 9 months. With his political career at an all-time low, he hoped that publishing the book would earn him some money and serve as a propaganda platform to air his radical views and attack those whom he accused of betraying him and Germany.
I created this timeline to show how we’ve moved from MAGA to fascism.
Cline doesn’t recognize it as such, but he’s an avowed fascist. He openly attacked Wheaton College grads for not sharing his brand of Christo-fascist hatred. He also tears at the fabric of scripture itself to score points with his Right Wing audience.
Apart from this fearmongering, the Open Letter lodges a litany of leftwing complaints. The issues? Vought’s goals do not sufficiently prioritize illegal immigrants, homosexuality, and abortion, and do not pay adequate homage to the altar of “racial injustice.” All these typically left-of-center hobbyhorses, apparently, have biblical precedent, according to the Wheaton alumni.
The alumni also complain that Project 2025—the entirety of which they pin on Vought—is insufficiently “concerned with governing faithfully as Christians.” A speech from Wheaton president Phil Ryken is quoted wherein Ryken elevated the type of Christian who can “carry forward the Great Commission.” And I had thought Christian Nationalism was the problem, not the solution. Curious.
The ardent cynicism with which men like Cline engage with these subjects borders on pathological. So there’s an instructional moment here. Pathology is “the study of disease, including its causes, mechanisms, development, and effects,” and Cline’s version of religion and politics is a virus feeding on its host of religious and political conservatism.
At the end of the previous paragraph, Cline conflates the Great Commission with political authoritarianism, perhaps believing that the call to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you,” is a political call to action. Cline and his ilk take that “commission” to mean “convert or die,” which is why the Crusades took so many lives, and why the Wheaton College mascot was once the Crusaders. But the Wheaton College alumni questioning Vought’s nationalistic tactics invite believers back to Jesus’ original intention: Offer love, not law. Welcome all, not just the chosen few.
But Cline is the unrepentant type, so he cherry-picks some targets much like his hateful hero Trump.
Since Wheaton alums seem so concerned about the OMB all of a sudden, where was the outrage over Shalanda Young, President Biden’s demonstrably unqualified director, and her enthusiasm for federal funding of abortion? Of course, Young isn’t a Wheaton alum. But what about when Michael Gerson (‘86) went soft on gay marriage? Did a very concerned alumni letter circulate then?
Cline leaps to ardently ignorant conclusions here by trotting out terms that appeal to right-wing hypocrites. He maligns those who protect abortion rights, yet where is the right-wing call for men to stop impregnating women rather than blaming women for getting abortions after the fact? The ignorance of the so-called Pro-Life movement is going on fifty years of public whining when in fact, Jesus would tell them, “If you must depend on the law to bring about the Kingdom of God, you have already failed.” Birth control is readily available to prevent the need for abortions, but right-wingers oppose that too. See how lies add up to more lies?
But Cline isn’t with his brand of dishonest apologetics. Not yet. He blames honest Wheaton College alumni for holding “rigid ideological lines” defined as “too liberal” for Cline’s tastes. You’ll get to read that letter at the end of this piece, and will find that many of Wheaton’s graduates do understand scripture, and point that out in their letter protesting Vought’s perverted brand of dismissively bigoted religion.
But, clearly, alumni status is not the determinative criteria for alumni outrage. Wheaton students had no problem weighing in on Jerry Falwell Jr’s views on guns and Muslims, especially when the Washington Post was willing to publish their complaints. Nathan Heath, an analyst at NSI and the second signature on the Open Letter, was one of the authors on the Post piece along with Ciera Horton McElroy, the former editor of the Wheaton student paper and another signatory.
What is clear is that the Wheaton alumni opposing Vought possess their own “rigid ideological lines.” Vought and the Trump administration generally represent a rolling back of the status quo in which the largely millennial and obviously left of center Wheaton alumni are quite comfortable.
Their problem with Wheaton College’s congratulation of Russ Vought is not that he is a political figure; it is that he has the wrong political views.
So yes, Timon Cline. Let’s be clear. Russell Vought is the exact kind of religious authority that Jesus would find (and did find) disgusting for the love of power, self-righteous status, and personal aggrandizement. And you don’t get that?
And yet, Timon Cline is all about the language of victimhood and self-proclaimed persecution.
Obviously, congratulating an alum for achievement in government service does not constitute an endorsement of any policy or view. Deplorables like Vought, however, can receive no such treatment. Again, wrong politics. Wheaton couldn’t stop celebrating Michael Gerson whom they pronounced “God’s wordsmith.” Was this sacrilege? Too political? But then again, Gerson had the right politics.
To be clear, colleges should celebrate the accomplishments of their graduates. This is natural and appropriate. By any measure, Gerson was accomplished, but so is Russ Vought. Objectively so.
Cline’s claim here is not sophisticated. He avows fealty to triumphalism, not morality. Then he goes on to gaslighting the Wheaton alums once more by accusing them of Christian Nationalism.
The authors and signatories of the Open Letter should drop the pretense and simply admit that they would like their alma mater to support their vision for the country and not Vought’s. That is all that they are saying. This has nothing to do with decorum or precedent or norms. Indeed, the vision cast by the Open Letter is decidedly Christian nationalist, just of a different variety. The Open Letter is, in fact, asking Wheaton College to take a stand on policy, their policy. The College should not capitulate. Last I checked, Russ Vought, for all his alleged “authoritarianism,” had issued no such demand to his alma mater. Who is the better liberal here?
These word games from Cline are passive-aggressive instincts at play, defined as, “expressing negative emotions indirectly, often through subtle acts of resistance or defiance instead of directly addressing the issue, such as through sarcasm, procrastination, or withholding information.” Many passive-aggressive individuals are manipulative, abusive gaslighters who try to make other people think they’re the crazy ones. It’s a bit surprising that Cline didn’t see fit to insert the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” here. It certainly fit his other methods.
Or perhaps he accomplishes the same aim by claiming that the “marginalized and vulnerable” MAGA populace, including, of course, the avowed racists, anti-Semitics, Trump-flag waving militias and bitter CEOs having to recognize DEI policies that are so beset that they can’t function in this world? Cline seems to think so.
For all their moralizing about the “marginalized and the vulnerable” and government “accountability,” the Open Letter includes exactly no mention of the American people who have suffered under the unaccountable government of the past four years, or the past decade, for that matter. It is rich indeed, in the wake of the USAID revelations, to charge the incumbent administration with “authoritarianism,” unaccountability, and neglect of the public good.
The link he includes in that paragraph begins with deranged accusations that USAID promotes aggressively “anti-Christian” agendas. It reads: “While we shouldn’t celebrate the loss of anyone’s job, we should celebrate the dismantling of USAID, which for decades has been squandering our tax dollars to sow sinful corruption in other countries and indoctrinate the world with transgenderism, homosexuality, atheism, and eugenics.”
The amounts of money ascribed to these supposedly horrific aims are pittances, small amounts to support cultural diversity and realities that hard-line, dichotomous religious bigots love to deny. But there are practical solutions to which they object too.
$1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities”
$70,000 for production of a “DEI musical” in Ireland
Despite what numbskulls like Cline and his audience like to proclaim, transgender people are real, human beings. Recognizing their humanity is not “sinful,” nor is producing a play about the potential difficulties of dealing with rampant bigotry in places where intolerance and ignorance often rule. But Cline seems to think that’s what Wheaton College is nowadays.
Wheaton used to produce serious, thoughtful, and accomplished graduates, and it may do so again, if it can overcome evident mission drift. Where, on the present political spectrum do these infantile alumni think Billy Graham and Carl F. H. Henry, for example, would have landed? If Vought is unpalatable, then so are they. (Then again, there’s a reason Franklin Graham recalled his late father’s library from the College years ago.)
Cline doesn’t realize that Franklin Graham is frequently the opposite of everything his father ever stood for. He’s a mean-spirited cuss whose political instincts overwhelm any good work he does.
For example, based on Graham’s own words, we see how and why Right-wing Christians are now “pro-Russian.” Graham stated: In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues. Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation’s children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda.” He dismisses the fact that Putin is a murderous thug and war criminal to equate the supposed “sins” of gay people with the likes of a man frequently throwing political opponents out of tall hotel windows. If Cline had any honesty in his soul, he would disavow such narcissistic self-aggrandizement as Jesus did. But Cline is not about Jesus. He’s about using fear and hate to control his little world. He even issues economic threats to the college in hopes of dunning them into submission. Cline is a brute.
In any case, Wheaton College has a choice: succumb to emotional terrorism or get back to the business of cultivating faithful national leadership on behalf of American evangelicals. The crop of alumni represented in the Open Letter reflects poorly on the College. Should we expect more of the same from Wheaton or more of the older produce like Vought?
At bare minimum, surely the Ryken administration recognizes the Michael Jordan rule: conservatives pay tuition too. But they won’t much longer if liberal alumni can force a denunciation of people who work in the White House.
Here’s the letter Wheaton College alums wrote to their alma mater.
An Open Letter from Wheaton College Alumni on Project 2025 & Endorsing Russell Vought To the Wheaton College Community and our American Neighbors,
We, the undersigned alumni of Wheaton College, write with deep concern over fellow alumnus Russell Vought’s role in forming and implementing Project 2025 on behalf of the current presidential administration. As Wheaton graduates, we were shaped by an education grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which states that the Kingdom of Heaven is known by the Fruit of the Spirit and made manifest by feeding the hungry, giving the stranger a place to sleep, clothing the naked, and caring for the sick. Our Wheaton education taught us that to serve the hurting and broken in our world is to serve Christ himself (Galatians 5:22-23, Matthew 25:31-46). It is precisely because of our commitment to these values that we find Vought’s vision for government, as outlined in Project 2025, to be antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the mission of Wheaton College—and moreover, we are concerned by the college’s quick and public proclamation of support in social media posts on February 7th, 2025.
Institutional Endorsements Wheaton’s own statement, after removing their original post, says: “Our institutional and theological commitments are clear that the College, as a non-profit institution, does not make political endorsements.” However, it has been repeatedly clear that the institution is making public-facing posts that are divisively partisan, including its affirmation of Russell Vought on February 7th, 2025. Wheaton College also gave Fox News a very different response on February 10th, 2025:
“The social media post led to more than 1,000 hostile comments, primarily incendiary, unchristian comments about Mr. Vought, in just a few hours. It was not our intention to embroil the College or Mr. Vought in a political discussion or dispute. Thus, we removed the post, rather than allow it to become an ongoing online distraction. This was in no way an apology for having expressed congratulations or for suggesting prayers for our alumnus.”
Wheaton’s student body, and thereby its alumni family, have always encompassed a broad spectrum of social and political affiliations. What unites us is Christian orthodoxy. We ask that the college be mindful of public proclamations that translate as political endorsements—especially in cases where the issues, as in Project 2025, are antithetical to Christian charity.
Christianity and the Temptation of Totalitarianism Project 2025 is a blueprint for consolidating executive power to remake American government and society along rigid ideological lines. The plan proposes dismantling independent institutions, purging thousands of career civil servants in favor of political loyalists, and centralizing authority under one person. Such a system is not only dangerously authoritarian but also profoundly unbiblical. As fallen and sinful people, we acknowledge the need for accountability, regardless of how high or prestigious one’s position or office; indeed, leaders are held to a higher standard and are accountable not only to the people they lead, but to God himself (1 Timothy 3:1-10, Ezekiel 34:10). Project 2025 is less concerned with governing faithfully as Christians than with cynically using Christianity’s majority status to establish political dominance, remake the United States in their own image, and further marginalize at-risk populations.
The pursuit of unchecked political control dismisses the humility of Christ and the servant-leadership model that Wheaton instilled in us. In Philip Ryken’s plenary address at the Fourth Lausanne Conference on World Evangelization, Wheaton’s president was forthright: “There is only one kind of Christian who is able to carry forward the Great Commission…and that is someone who embraces Christ-like servanthood as a way of life. We are all called to be servants.” The cost of service was high for Christ and his Apostles and is high for us as his followers today. As alumni of Wheaton College, we cannot lend credibility to a rejection of servanthood and an authoritarian restructuring of American society.
Marginalization of the Vulnerable Project 2025 promotes policies that target marginalized communities in ways that unequivocally contradict the biblical command to care for the least of these (Matthew 25:40). Among its stated goals are:
Gutting protections for undocumented immigrants and refugees, despite Scripture’s consistent call to welcome those same persons and condemnation of figures who do not (Leviticus 19:33-34, Deuteronomy 10:17-19, Hebrews 13:2, Matthew 25:43).
Dismantling civil rights protections, dismissing the reality of racial injustice, and refusing to seek the biblical vision of reconciliation and justice (Isaiah 1:17, Amos 5:24, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19, Acts 10:28, Colossians 3:11).
Rolling back opportunities and protections for people with disabilities and LGBTQ individuals, failing to treat all people with the dignity and respect that every image-bearer of God deserves (Genesis 1:26-27 & 5:1, Psalm 8:4-6, Ephesians 4:29-32, Matthew 22:39, 1 John 4:20-21).
Going far beyond humanitarian restrictions on abortion, by limiting access to contraception, daycare, and medical interventions for life-threatening pregnancies; prioritizing surveillance and control of women in crisis situations. (1 John 4:18, Luke 8:43-48, Deuteronomy 31:6, Psalms 46:1-3, John 14:27, Isaiah 41:13).
Slashing educational resources and healthcare for families of little financial means, ignoring the Bible’s emphasis on honoring the poor the same as the rich, Christ’s statement that the poor are blessed and that the kingdom of God belongs to them, and his assertion that those who reject the poor reject Him and are in danger of judgment (James 2:3-4, Proverbs 22:2 & 31:8-9, Luke 14:13-14, Ezekiel 16:49, Luke 6:20, Matthew 25:41-43).
These policies seek to enforce a narrow and exclusionary vision of American identity that aligns with political imperialism rather than biblical Christianity. As Wheaton alumni, we worship in accord with people of all tribes, tongues, nations, and languages, in anticipation of celebrating side by side, as one Church before the throne of God (Revelation 7:9). We celebrate and exhort a return to Wheaton’s foundation as an institution committed to the defense of fundamental freedom for all peoples. Under the guise of limiting government, Project 2025 instead proposes consolidations of presidential power. We believe the design of our government, as reflected in the US Constitution, reflects healthy ideals such as the limitation of human power in order to protect the vulnerable. It would be disastrous to subvert such designs.
Moreover, Christ-like values and character, not raw notoriety and power, are critical to the witness of the Church. We celebrate the God-given differences and unique abilities that make up one Body of many parts (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). Different social, economic, racial, and cultural identities are brought together by faith in Christ so that we as Christians can effectively live out the Great Commission and spread the good news to all peoples (Galatians 3:28, Mark 16:15). The domination of one American tribe and invalidation of all others undermines the Church’s global role. If not in agreement, we are nonetheless called to live together in unity, edifying each other and standing together as one Church (John 13:35, Romans 14:19, Psalm 133). Project 2025 espouses an abusive authority that is fatally misaligned with the Word that stands forever (Isaiah 40:6-8).
A Call to Faithfulness Wheaton College has stood as a beacon of Christian higher education, committed to rigorous intellectual engagement, faithful discipleship, and responsible citizenhood. To align, even indirectly, with a political vision that prioritizes power over service, exclusion over love, and coercion over conscience would be to abandon the very heart of our faith.
As Wheaton alumni, we publicly distance ourselves from Russell Vought’s work and reaffirm our commitment to the Gospel’s radical call to justice, mercy, and humility. Silence in the face of such an anti-Christian vision is complicity.
I downloaded the Project 2025 “book” from The Heritage Foundation website yesterday. Soon, I’ll dig into the contents and its proposals, but the first fascinating dissection examines the tone and nature of its introduction. This document is the product of frightened white men screaming into the void of their paranoia, defined as “a mental state where a person has an irrational fear of others and a persistent belief that they are being harmed or deceived.” The definition perfectly describes The Heritage Foundation and its pet Project 2025. The language is rife with raw hyperbole, blatant hypocrisy, and outright denial of the real cause of America’s disease of conflicted ideology, which is longstanding Republican incompetence in governance and blaming the Left for the problems it engenders.
The first paragraphs reap what it intends to sow, demonstrating the paranoia behind the document’s intention:
The Left has spent millions fearmongering about Project 2025, because they’re terrified of losing their power. And they should be. Project 2025 offers a menu of solutions to the border crisis, inflation, a stagnant economy, and rampant crime. It shows how we can take on China, fix our schools, and support families. But most importantly, it dismantles the unaccountable Deep State, taking power away from Leftist elites and giving it back to the American people.
The opening tactic, as you see here, is to accuse the other side of your own level of paranoia. This is the tone of the entire Project 2025 document. I’ve gone through the opening sections to examine how this fear-driven ideology stakes its ground and employs rabid hyperbole to incite self-righteous rage among its intended audience. They quickly move to accusations against the “cultural elite” they so despise.
“The bad news today is that our political establishment and cultural elite have once again driven America toward decline. The good news is that we know the way out even though the challenges today are not what they were in the 1970s. Conservatives should be confident that we can rescue our kids, reclaim our culture, revive our economy, and defeat the anti-American Left—at home and abroad. We did it before and will do it again.”
Notice the tactic of retreating to the Reagan Era to claim success in the so-called “Culture Wars.” Conservatives love to believe that Ronald Reagan restored conservatism to its rightful place to “unite the nation,” but that’s the first lie, because it ignores the fact that Reagan historically leveraged racial fears using terms such as “welfare queens” to enrage and divide Americans along bigoted lines. This salvo echoes to this day in Trumpism’s dog-whistle racism and fear of intellectual Black people while dismissing the many sins of men like Clarence Thomas whose long record of questionable behavior and ethical breaches earn no rebukes from hypocritical conservatives eager to claim Black men among their ranks. The Republican Party and its newest manifesto eagerly seek to leverage racism, bigotry, misogyny and Christian patriarchal rule over society as the foundation of what they want to call “democracy,” if that is a concern at all.
The passage above refers to revitalization of the economy, which Democrats under Clinton, Obama, and President Joe Biden all accomplished in the wake of Republican malfeasance and economic crashes wrought by massive tax breaks for the wealthy, refusal to respect or uphold financial regulations, and letting predatory lenders run amok with interest rates on credit cards to trading toxic mortgages. The cause of the 2008 recession was manifold, with both parties bearing aspects of blame, but the list of sins weighs heavier on the GOP side, because while selling subprime mortgages to consumers was a bad idea, like most sins, it was hiding the problem that made it far worse. The go-go, white-hot belief in eternal growth during the Bush era fueled conservative hubris that was too good to be true:
Subprime mortgage crisis: During the housing boom, lenders expanded their definition of creditworthiness and began offering mortgages to borrowers with poor credit histories. These high-risk loans, known as subprime mortgages, were packaged and sold to investors.
Deregulation: The financial industry was deregulated, allowing for speculation on derivatives backed by mortgages.
Excessive risk-taking: Banks created too much money too quickly and used it to speculate on financial markets and push up house prices.
Increased borrowing: Banks and investors borrowed more money.
Regulation and policy errors: There were errors in regulations and policies.
Before all that happened, we should not forget that it was the Savings & Loan crisis, as it was essentially Republican permission that first exposed the dangers of banking deregulations foisted on society by Reaganism. The Corporate Finance Institute summarizes it this way: “In conclusion, the banking and S&L crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s was caused by a combination of factors, including deregulation, interest rate risk, a volatile real estate market, risky loans, fraud, and mismanagement.”
This quick analysis of conservative deregulation efforts demonstrates how The Heritage Foundation ignores many things Reagan did wrong while claiming him as a hero for all time. Reagan Worship is at the heart of 2025ism, dependent on the emphatic denial that the despotic Grandpa people branded The Great Communicator led one of the most corrupt administrations in United States history. So the premise that going back to Reaganism would Make America Great Again is the principle falsehood behind conservatism’s sentimental views toward an eventually daft and dementia-ridden corrupt President. They’re repeating the same sin by re-elected a clearly compromised mental mess in Donald Trump after maligning Joe Biden as too old to run again. And worse, when Democrats took charge and counseled Biden to step down, the man did so in respect to his nation’s best interests. None of this can be said for Trump, whose mental deterioration is both evident and dangerous, but whose need to avoid convictions on multiple legal fronts forces him to run for his life. That’s the only reason, along with more opportunities to grift and steal from America’s wealth through personal and political channels, Trump had to again. Trump also wants to remake the world in his image. That’s how a toxic narcissist works.
And yet, the Republican Party loves to reminisce about Reagan’s own version of nation-forming, as “an unyielding Reagan told National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, “I want you to do whatever you have to do to help these people keep body and soul together” about the Contras down south. *PBS report
Those are not the words of a man who loves freedom. They are the words of a man who fears failure because he thinks he’s the most powerful man in the world and can’t admit that people won’t do what he says. Later, in a comic parlay of desperation and determination, Reagan shipped 1500 arms to Iran for a seven-man hostage release after claiming he’d freed all those other folks as his term began. That tells us that Reagan, like today’s Heritage Foundation, sought to undermine honest democratic processes to conduct shadow government activities, all while blaming the “Deep State” for supposedly secret ventures.
If “freedom is a fragile thing,” then so is democracy when it is gutted by the willful actions of a unitary executive and crooked accomplices. Nixon led the way on that, Reagan echoed it, and eventually it was the irascibly domineering VP Dick Cheney who gave voice to it. But all along, it was Republican administrations wishing their guy was king. At the same time, it was those “kings” who led the way in terms of criminal indictments and convictions compared to Democrat presidencies.
Reagan presided over the HUD scandal under James Watt and the Iran-Contra scandal, busting unions and gutting the middle class were just some of the ways Reagan used the government he claimed to despise to dismantle financial protections for Americans and mess around on the world stage. It is also speculated that Reagan played loose with constitutional laws to free the hostages held by Iran, but solid proof never emerged. But do we doubt that there were such efforts given the later actions by Oliver North to commit acts of subterfuge?
That sort of willful denial of past transgressions, extending to the likes of Newt Gingrich and his dismissive views on marriage, leaves The Heritage Foundation able to claim all kinds of high-minded family values and patriotism without a shred of guilt over the bogus values apologetics for Reagan, the Bushes, and now Donald Trump, a serial adulterer and constitutional shredder par excellence.
Republicans went full fever dream over Bill Clinton’s Oval Office blowjobs and the Blue Dress, but so-called righteous Republican never questioned Nancy’s astrological addictions in defiance of Christian despise for such things, much less her dirty little mouth. The euphemistically named “Christian Right” also “looked the other way” when it came to Nancy Reagan’s hooky-spooky astrological beliefs and Hollywood habits.
Nor did anyone follow up on Nancy Reagan’s odd reputation as shared by political commentator Hunter S. Thompson, who said, “I had a soft spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth, and also because his wife gave the best head in Hollywood.”
She put her mouth to other clandestine uses with her seemingly innocent anti-drug “Just Say No” campaign preaching substance abstinence to white suburban kids. But the people victimized by that campaign were instead thousands of Black Americans rounded up and jailed on small drug charges. But Republicans used that legacy as an accusatory tool of Jim Crow imposition on Black Men.The for-profit jail industry that emerged to reap dough from that travesty turned out to be a favorite among conservatives eager to punish Black Americans for standing up to White Authority of any kind. Private prisons also replaced slavery as tools for cheap labor.
It all began even earlier, under Nixon. As documented in the OpenSecrets website: “Since President Richard Nixon declared the national “War on Drugs” in the 1970s, the American prison population has skyrocketed; the same is true of the numbers of people locked up in private prisons, especially since the 1990s. Of the 2016 contributions that went to candidates or parties, 85 percent went to Republicans. That’s higher than in most previous cycles, but consistent with the conservative leanings of this industry. Since 1990, private prisons have given 73 percent of their total party-and-candidate contributions to Republicans.” The criminal persecution and prejudice against of Black men and women, on top of economic losses wrought by the disadvantage of slavery, is responsible for that culture’s familial difficulties, pursuant crime and gang activity, and the still-relentless blaming of “minorities” and immigrants for America’s problems. Many Black Americans lead the nation in every human endeavor, which is proof that the prejudice aimed against them in this nation is the travesty for which the country needs to account. That’s why the claims of The Heritage Foundation drip with bloody irony when making statements such as these in Project 2025:
“Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation[.]1 “
The Heritage Foundation loves to ignore the Republican affiliation with its dirty bedfellows, such as those openly waving flags at the insurrection. These include Confederacy holdouts, neo-Nazis, the KKK, anti-Semitic groups and influencers, and backwoods militias eager to overthrow the government using AR-15s atop their bulging waistbands. The GOP loves such complicity in its stalwarts and doesn’t seem to care if they stand for everything America isn’t supposed to be.
P25 loves to ring the bell of “family values” and freedom based ostensibly on the Constitution as one bookend and Christian values on the other. But the volumes between constitute a condensed library of bigotry, discrimination, religious persecution, and self-proclaimed victimhood. There’s also irony amid transitional statements like this one:
“Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.”
Supposedly, conservatives don’t like the government interfering in the lives of people. That’s the opposite of conservatism. It’s unclear what or how The Heritage Foundation plans to do to impose “the family as the centerpiece of American life,” but if you look at the weird calls for corporal punishment tin schools, one wonders if Project 2025 isn’t a massive excuse for profligate child abuse. Yahoo News reports, “Oklahoma State Rep. Jim Olsen says corporal punishment in schools has been “successful” for centuries and should remain legal, even for students with disabilities.”
Pro-Life? More like Pro-Sperm.
Any organization refusing to hold men accountable for abortions caused my male imposition of sperm on women is hypocritical.
That’s right, every single abortion in America is caused by a man’s sperm.
But the so-called “Pro-Life” movement never mentions that fact. Instead, they persist in accusing women of being irresponsible by holding to what are now called “reproductive rights.” To enforce this misogynistic worldview, the Heritage Foundation identified potential Supreme Court justices willing to overturn the established law of Roe vs. Wade and throw the abortion rights issue back to the jurisdiction of states. Those justices acted deceitfully in their testimony, insinuating they respected established law on abortion, but in effect, they lied. Now the tragedies of undercutting women’s healthcare rights results in death for women facing medical emergencies.
The conservative faction of America even preaches that pregnancies wrought by rape should be “brought to term.” By those measures, women are nothing but vessels for male sperm according to The Heritage Foundation.
There is nothing “pro-family” about blaming women for problems caused by men or supported by busybody moralizing Christian women behaving like Conservative Mean Girls looking to control other women’s lives. They may “pray” to end abortion, and that’s fine. But then they vote for men willing to stick their dicks into women’s lives without remorse.
The hypocrisy of the Pro-Life defies its supposed roots in Christian values. The Bible shows Jesus dismissing those accusing a woman of adultery by stating, “Let he that is without sin cast the first stone.” With that statement, Jesus indicts not just the men seeking to kill the woman according to their laws (an idea recently raised in some US) but also indicts the authoritarian state from which the stoning tradition emanated. In other words, Jesus indicted the men who brought the women before him, not the woman accused by them.
This proves that if Jesus were alive today, he would say, “If you must depend upon the law to bring about the kingdom of God, you have already failed.”
So yes, on every issue, The Heritage Foundation fails America with its dystopian Project 2025.
(dys·to·pi·an/disˈtōpēən/ “relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice.) version of authoritarian rule over society.
The HF P 25 is not only dystopian, it is fascist at its core. Consider the definition fascism as it relates to what you’ve already read and learned here, and what is about to come:
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy (Christianity), subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race (White people) and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
That last note about fascism on the Right, strong regimentation of society and the economy is ardently resisted by Republican fascists claiming instead that they advocate “free market economics.”
But since Reagan the forcible redistribution of wealth from the middle class to America’s wealthiest citizens is not a product of the “free market” at all. Reagan’s specious version of “trickle-down economics” is an economic experiment rewarding corporatism and a plutocracy aided by massive tax breaks for the uber-wealthy while workers’ wages remain flat or depressed. Efforts to raise minimum wages are called “socialism” by economic cynics, a gaslighting of the lower and middle class to subjugate their interests.
A small sector of the US population now possesses more wealth than the other 96% combined. Statistics aren’t the point. The real matter is how factions of society impacted by these policies now believe that the people who caused them are the cure to their problems! The wealthy plutocrat named Donald Trump makes all sorts of promises to Make America Great Again while bloating the national debt by 25%, promising tax cuts for the middle class that expired, and giving billions over to the rich who fund his feckless whims of tariffs, false accounting and outright lies. He’s promised to exclude corporations from environmental legislation who ante up billions to avoid being accountable. That’s environmental injustice bought and sold. The people typically victimized by environmental pollution are the poor, especially minorities.
The Heritage Foundation reflects this vow to sell off American virtues to the highest bidder by dismantling governmental protections and blaming Americans for their own problems:
“Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.”
There’s another counter to this P25 argument. The “administrative state” under Trump’s rule led to an attempt to overthrow the government after he lost the 2020 election. His lies about election fraud, the plot to assemble fake electors and his attempted coup through the January 6th insurrection all prove that his vision of the “administrative state” is a fascist form of government where he rules like a king without question of his authority. The Heritage Foundation knows this, but refuses to admit it. In fact, it is their entire goal to use Trump as a leveraging device, wait for him to croak from his bad habits, and put in place a theocratic state ruling over the United States of American with administrative impact forcing itself into every aspect of our lives.
But oh, yeah, there’s also the “border crisis.” Let’s talk about that.
“Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.”
Hey guys, you know who welcomed millions of immigrant into America over the last fifty years? That’s right: it was companies seeking cheap labor while privatizing the profits and socializing the losses. And the accounting of supposed “costs” to Americans in terms of taxes covering immigrant needs seem to ignore the tax contributions of those targeted by such accusations.
And yes, our schools and public facilities need support to deal with language-challenged immigrant children and adults. But that support should come from the companies employing cheaper immigrant labor, because they are privatizing the profits and exporting the costs to everyday Americans. That’s true in Big Ag. That’s true in the restaurant industry, hospitality, you name it. That’s not how the “free market” is supposed to work. If you use the product, which is immigrants, you should pay the bills for those benefits. What we’re actually seeing is socialized corporatism. The Nanny State of corporate welfare is the real problem, not benefits earned and secured by Americans through Social Security, Medicare, or Veteran’s Affairs.
But all P25 wants to talk about is God, because, you know, that sounds righteous and true.
“Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”
Well, now we see how hypocritical the Heritage Foundation is. They opposite aims than to secure the “Blessings of Liberty.” People already suffer the effects of Right-Wing identity politics suppressing women’s rights, Black and civil equity, human diversity, or any kind of inclusion. The Heritage Foundation advocates fascism, not freedom, and is in truth a godless organization in all its principle claims. It spits on Jesus by seeking to create a society divided along ideological terms with specific terms of discrimination.
Anyone familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan knows better. It was self-righteous religious zealots passing by the man left for dead in the ditch because he was considered “unclean” according to religious and cultural laws imposed by legalistic authorities. Instead, the Good Samaritan, a man from a people despised by the community, who saved the man from suffering, paid for his care (that’s socialism) and even funded his needs until he was nursed back to health. If left to the devices of The Heritage Foundation, that man rots in the ditch because he’s unworthy of protection under “God’s Laws” according to biblically literal interpretations of anachronistic scriptures. The Good Samaritan, while well-off, constituted a “radical, bleeding-heart do-gooder” of the type that Jesus proclaimed as worthy of God’s grace.
All of this proves that Project 2025 is a gaslighting pack of self-righteous lies.
“In 1979, the threats we faced were the Soviet Union, the socialism of 1970s liberals, and the predatory deviancy of cultural elites. Reagan defeated these beasts by ignoring their tentacles and striking instead at their hearts.”
No, Reagan did not “defeat these beasts.” Conservatism emphatically lost the battle to control the lives of people based on identity politics, but now they’re engaging in warlike attempts at a fascist takeover of American laws.
For sure, the Moral Majority movement took hold in the United States. It’s denial of reality became the foundation of right-wing politics. Religious conservatism embraced that fight by opposing the teaching of evolution and scientific truth in public schools, seeking to replace it with the “science of denial” based on creationism and euphemistic Intelligent Design. This inane ideology of denial infects nearly 40% of the American population. That is the “majority” that supports the likes of a devilish liar like Trump while claiming he’s a “man of God” made in the image of King David while insisting, quite devilishly in its own right, that “God works with flawed people.”
Well, guess what? John the Baptist would argue with that. The “man of the wilderness” defined the religious and political authorities of his day in advance of Jesus’ arrival on the scene. John called the religious authorities a “brood of vipers” in an echo of the legalistic Serpent who deceived Adam and Eve in that holy parable of humanity’s creation. The Baptist also tossed out religious rituals and the “pay for play” model of Prosperity Gospel in force at the Temple, where money-changers turned God’s house into a commercial enterprise. John later paid the price for his honesty when King Herod, the prophetically perfect model for Donald Trump in his melding of politics and religion, had John’s head chopped off on a promise to his daughter that if she danced lasciviously for his audience the King would grant her any favor she asked. Her corrupt mother asked for the head of John the Baptist because “he publicly denounced her marriage to Herod Antipas, criticizing it as unlawful since she was previously married to Herod’s brother Philip, which went against Jewish law; this public rebuke deeply offended Herodias and fueled her desire for revenge against John.”
Oh, my Lord! What does that say about the serial adulterer and thrice-married and divorced Donald Trump? It does not sound like John the Baptist, the precessor to Jesus in Judeo-Christian heritage, would approve of the sexually abusive narcissist whose relationship with Jeffrey Epstein revealed that he “likes them young?”
Well, even so. The Baptist’s disapproval still does not make it an “American Value” or representative of the liberties promised in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The Separation Clause in the 1st Amendment proves that there shall be no state religion. But if the Project 2025 initiative DOES succeed, shouldn’t it impose John the Baptists indictment on the likes of Donald Trump? Okay! Bring it on! Let’s see it!
What about Russia and Putin?
As for threats from the Soviet Union being “defeated” by Reagan, America now lives under the thumb of Vladimir Putin’s dictates through Trump, including collusion that he denies, and documented election interference by the Russian state through American social media and even its conservative talking heads on Fox, Newsmax and many other outlets trumping talking points straight from the Pipeline of Putin. Trump is also a kompromat to Russian interests and investment in his businesses. And whether Trump likes to admit it or not, the information revealed about him in the dossier a few years back rings all too true given his corrupt and perverted behavior confessed in public and alluded in his Jeffrey Epstein affiliations.
But look at how P25 tries to avoid their support of a corrupt felon and adjudicated rapist.
“In many ways, the entire point of centralizing political power is to subvert the family. Its purpose is to replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatural ones. You see this in the popular left-wing aphorism, “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.” But in real life, most of the things people “do together” have nothing to do with government.”
Well, we know that Reagan once stated, “Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem.” And yet P25 plans to use the government to impose its well over all Americans. Again, the hypocrisy and gaslighting the fear and bigotry, the outright hate and delusion are all wrapped together in the paranoid fascism and accusations of the Right that the Left, whose main mission is equal rights, is somehow the cause of America’s problems.
Just look at the fascist tone of this insane statement:
“Furthermore, the next conservative President must understand that using government alone to respond to symptoms of the family crisis is a dead end. Federal power must instead be wielded to reverse the crisis and rescue America’s kids from familial breakdown. The Conservative Promise includes dozens of specific policies to accomplish this existential task.”
See how that works? When liberalism advocates for personal freedoms, it’s evil. But when conservatism threatens fascist impositions, it is liberty at work. These people are nuts. They are consumed with a paranoia so deep it infests their minds like brain worms. Perhaps that’s why RFK, Jr. is so popular a choice for an administrative post.
Here’s more P25 paranoia:
“Today the Left is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that reject woke progressivism. They will soon turn to Christian schools and clubs with the same totalitarian intent.”
This might be justified given the many churches seem to be little more than political delivery points for fascist right-wing agendas. The entire premise upon which tax-exempt status is granted is avoiding political purposes through religion. That’s based on the First Amendment Separation Clause. So, get a clue, Heritage Foundation. The only reason churches would lose tax-exempt status is by doing your bidding. You’re the cause, not the solution to religious loss of liberty.
But Oh My God, the next bit of language sounds like Civil War.
“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors.”
That’s a violent threat. That’s viciousness as policy. That’s un-American, and yet Trump embraces it by stating he plans to persecute “the enemy within.” The sociopathic tone of the hate directed toward “woke culture warriors” shows zero empathy for people long victimized by the longstanding cultural contract of bigotry imposed according to by race, sexual orientation, gender, and religion. Fascism loves to ignore its hateful side and history to claim perpetual authority.
“This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Well, look at that. A great example of censorship to impose bigotry and thought control. That’s George Orwell’s 1984 in action. Then look at the terrified word salad that comes along next. Paranoid much?
(“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensi- tive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”
That’s censorship, people. The Heritage Foundation wants to “cancel culture” everything it fears. What goddamned hypocrites.
Oh, and naked pictures? Well, that has to go too.
“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women.”
Art by Christopher Cudworth titled, “Commisseration” ®2022
As for child sexual abuse. Do you know who conducts some of the worst child predation and pedophilia in America? It’s religious institutions ranging from the Catholic Church to Protestant and Evangelical Youth Pastors. Even the Boy Scouts of America, a highly conservative organization, paid out billions to victims of youth sexual abuse for conduct documented for decades. Even former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert got caught hiding illicit behavior and child abuse from his wrestling coach days. The bigger they are the harder that fall.
All forms of child sexual abuse are awful, but The Heritage Foundation ignores the facts of its real sources to aim hatred at others, especially targets like Drag Queens, while ignoring its closest friends sticking their hands down the pants of boys and girls alike.
What P25 really fears is how many of its own folks can’t resist some good fapping. Even Speaker Mike Johnson enlisted his son as an anti-porn agent, which suggests it was a big problem for both of them. That’s pretty typical out there in the world of suppressed sexual urges. Many of the world’s worst offenders become anti-this-or-that oppressors until they’re ultimate exposed as liars about their own natures. And yes, porn is addictive. So if that’s a problem for you, take personal responsibility, get some treatment, and deal with it like one should for any addiction. Here’s a quick little fun game. When you read the next P25 excerpt in bold, replace the word “pornography” with “football,” and the language is pretty revealing and a bit amusing. Add in gambling and the whole package of the NFL, which behaves like a pornography invading every possible day of the week while claiming family values and military patriotism, feels obscene.
“Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
Man, Oh Man. That’s some Orwellian language right there.
But let’s move on to education, a favorite target of Right Wing despotism and fear.
This writer is a substitute teacher with five years of experience working in public schools from Pre-K through high school. I’ve earned high praise as a teacher for encouraging kids with a wide range of capabilities to learn the best way they can. I’ve also learned skills in classroom management and teaching correct behavior. But the P25 wants to blame public schools for somehow undermining parental authority. Let me clue you in on something. That’s about as far from the real problem as you can get. If anything, it is self-righteous conservative parents bitching about their kid’s grades and telling teachers how to do their job that is the problem. =P25 loves bitching about education because they hate it as a path to critical thinking, which is what public schools and colleges are supposed to do; help us learn to think for ourselves. Any parent that doesn’t agree with that is a control freak, and potentially abusive in their indoctrination habits, oppressive insecurity, and inadequate feelings of self-importance. There, we’ve said it. Schools have a balancing role in society. The idea that parents are perfect and own all rights to their child’s mind is a product of a deeply flawed tribal narrative.
“In our schools, the question of parental authority over their children’s education is a simple one: Schools serve parents, not the other way around. That is, of course, the best argument for universal school choice—a goal all conservatives and conservative Presidents must pursue.
P25 won’t admit it, but ‘school choice’ is a euphemism for ‘we don’t want our kids to learn science or history that conflicts with our conservative beliefs.’
Just look at what comes next in the P25 Manifesto. This is what this entire document is about. It is equivalent to a Unabomber Level incendiary call to gut American society and replace it with a paranoid religious conservative dystopian version of reality. Look at what they fear most:
“The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity and even their moral status while on the other they are taught to deny the very creatureliness that inheres in being human and consists in accepting the givenness of our nature as men or women.”
No, you specious bigots. The United States has a racist and bigoted history of discrimination that needs to be taught to be understood. Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it. If the Heritage Foundation lived up to its name, it would abide in that premise. Instead, its denials are a dishonest attempt to avoid conservatism’s deep role in the ugly aspects of our nation’s history. You’d rather lie to yourselves than admit that truth! The Heritage Foundation avoids our nation’s heritagebecause we are not a perfect country. Germany had the guts to apologize for the Holocaust. Gutless conservatives want to proclaim United States’ innocence in the face of all its transgressions. That is the sign of a deeply dishonest mindset.
The same thing goes for conservative, legalistic Christianity, a belief system long used to foment and support the ugliest forms of indoctrination and domination, especially of indigenous peoples. That bwing of religion focused on absolutism is evil in using its twisted version of God and Christ to marginalize people through biblical literalism and its supposed infallible authority.
“Of course, the surest way to put the federal government back to work for the American people is to reduce its size and scope back to something resembling the original constitutional intent. Conservatives desire a smaller government not for its own sake, but for the sake of human flourishing. But the Washington Establishment doesn’t want a constitutionally limited government because it means they lose power and are held more accountable by the people who put them in power.”
The eternal whine about government size is the originalist complaint that the “Founders” never intended for government to grow. That’s idiotic. As for being “accountable by the people who put them in power,” what was that event on January 6th about again? Was that a “constitutionally limited government” at work for the people? Or was that the product of a conservatively supported lying fascist trying to gut the government for selfish purposes. We know the difference. The Heritage Foundation is the organization that aggressively denies our nation’s laws.
“In the case of making the federal government smaller, more effective, and accountable, the simple answer is the Constitution itself. The surest proof of this is how strenuously and creatively generations of progressives and many Republican insiders have worked to cut themselves free from the strictures of the 1789 Constitution and subsequent amendments.”
This is utter nonsense. The worst offense when it comes to superseding the 1789 Constitution and its amendments is the conservative gutting of the Second Amendment by splicing it in half to give unrestricted gun rights to any Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to carry military-grade weapons around and conduct mass shootings of children in schools, people in churches, concertgoer and 4th of July parade crowds. The Second Amendment call for a “well-regulated militia” is the originalist value that should be restored.
“Consider the federal budget. Under current law, Congress is required to pass a budget—and 12 issue-specific spending bills comporting with it—every single year. The last time Congress did so was in 1996. Congress no longer meaningfully budgets, authorizes, or categorizes spending.”
Hey boys. Back when Clinton was President, he worked collaboratively with Republicans to balance the budget. Cross-party collaboration is how this is supposed to work. But the Tea Party radicalized the process and now MAGA extremists want to punish Americans for playing by the rules and make their own set of rules.
“The term Administrative State refers to the policymaking work done by the bureaucracies of all the federal government’s departments, agencies, and millions of employees. Under Article I of the Constitution, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” That is, federal law is enacted only by elected legislators in both houses of Congress.”
How ironic. The conservative Supreme Court has, for the last decade, been making laws and imposing legislation right and left. So shut the hell up about Congress, P25. You’re way off base about this one.
“This exclusive authority was part of the Framers’ doctrine of “separated powers.” They not only split the federal government’s legislative, executive, and judicial powers into different branches. They also gave each branch checks over the others. Under our Constitution, the legislative branch—Congress—is far and away the most powerful and, correspondingly, the most accountable to the people.”
Here’s a real winner of a statement. The Republican-led House is the least effective legislative body in the history of the nation, and the Republican-led Senate refused to affirm the impeachment of Trump for the insurrection. Stop the apologetics for an incompetent political travesty on the Right.
“Unaccountable federal spending is the secret lifeblood of the Great Awokening. Nearly every power center held by the Left is funded or supported, one way or another, through the bureaucracy by Congress.”
Again, the US military once had an audit done and the accountants assigned to that task gave up. No one can tell where the money’s spent, what goes where, or what military-industrial contractors are benefitting the most.
“Let’s be clear: The most egregious regulations promulgated by the current Administration come from one place: the Oval Office. The President cannot hide.”
And you see no irony in this statement when considering that Trump lied to the American people repeatedly about the threat of Covid? And that he golfed far more than he governed, and cheated at that? And his workdays started at 11:00 am to allow time to paint his face and execute his combover. And when presented with information it had to be summarized on one page so that his short attention span could handle it? And can he even read?
We’ve seen it all by now, and the President can hide. A ton. And Trump attempted coercion of Ukraine, and tried to hide it with obstruction of justice, to gain political dirt on his opponent Joe Biden. And, Trump engaged in election lies that led to an insurrection, and tried to hide that. He also hid Classified documents in his personal residence, and tried to hide that too. He tried to hide his scandalous relationship with a series of high-profile porn stars, including $130,000 payoffs as hush money, a case that is concluding as this piece is written. He also “hid” from the public a sexual assault years ago on a woman whom he defamed and now has to pay millions of dollars because he lied about it.
With all these clear indications of your pet president hiding the truth, what are you people at The Heritage Foundation doing beside kissing each other’s rings? Oh wait. We’re about to see. You’re going to project all these faults on others. That’s the way you do it. You get your money for nothing and your chicks for free?
“A conservative President must move swiftly to do away with these vast abuses of presidential power and remove the career and political bureaucrats who fuel it.”
We’ve heard how you think this is supposed to work, but the incoming President is currently beholden to technology billionaires and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who dictates American foreign policy to a “conservative President” too damned weak yet patently narcissistic in his public shows of “strength” to stand up to authoritarians and wealthy figures he admires.
“As monolithic as the Left’s institutional power appears to be, it originates with appropriations from Congress and is made complete by a feckless President. A conservative President must look to the legislative branch for decisive action.”
Hey, Heritage biggies, what are you really talking about here? President Joe Biden stabilized the economy after Trump crashed it just like Obama did after Bush crashed it. And Reagan didn’t do anything good for the economy either! His buddie GHWB promise “no new taxes” but whoopsie doops! Many times now, Democrat Presidents saved America from economic devastation with steady hands and wise policy. There’s nothing monolithic about good governance. But Republicans don’t recognize it, so they blame others for the problems caused by conflicted ideology and religious denial.
“Finally, the President can restore public confidence and accountability to our most important government function of all: national defense. The American people desire a military full of highly skilled servicemen and women who can protect the homeland and our interests overseas. The next conservative President must end the Left’s social experimentation with the military, restore warfighting as its sole mission, and set defeating the threat of the Chinese Communist Party as its highest priority.”
Does this statment mean The Heritage Foundation wants to start wars? Because that’s what Bush did after letting America’s guard down, allowing terrorist attacks in New York and DC, (including our Pentagon, for God’s Sake) and going to war on false premises and lies, conducting torture in the same cells used by Saddam Hussein, and generally messing around to the tune of $7T of unbudgeted war spending with no result but death and injury, mental suffering and PTSD for thousands of servicemen and women of all diversity spectrum willing to serve but deemed “suckers and losers” by the likes of Donald Trump, a draft-dodger.
“The next conservative President must possess the courage to relentlessly put the interests of the everyday American over the desires of the ruling elite. Their outrage cannot be prevented; it must simply be ignored. And it can be. The Left derives its power from the institutions they control. But those institutions are only powerful to the extent that constitutional officers surrender their own legitimate authority to them.”
Here’s a question for all your die-hard conservatives out there: What is “The Left?”
It’s people who believe trust that an understanding of the humanities, science, critical thinking and cultural equity are good things. Those are American values held closely by the Founding Fathers. So we have to surmise that it’s conservatism that undermines democracy when it chooses bigotry over equality, and fascism over democratic rule of law.
“To most Americans, this is common sense. But in Washington, D.C. and other centers of Leftist power like the media and the academy, this statement of basic civics is branded hate speech. Progressive elites speak in lofty terms of openness, progress, expertise, cooperation, and globalization. But too often, these terms are just rhetorical Trojan horses concealing their true intention—stripping “we the people” of our constitutional authority over our country’s future.
Perhaps it’s Time for a reality check, folks. Common sense does not mean acting like the world was created in six literal days, or that a global flood once covered the whole earth. We need to start with baseline concepts of reality if we’re going to discuss common sense.
And, when you talk about “openness, progress, expertise, cooperation, and globalization,” those are all aspects of the American experiment that promoted growth and international respect.
“Instead, they believe in a kind of 21st century Wilsonian order in which the “enlightened,” highly educated managerial elite runs things rather than the humble, patriotic working families who make up the majority of what the elites contemptuously call “fly-over country.”
That’s quite a hard-on The Heritage Foundation has for the name “Wilson.”
Are they talking about that volleyball in the movie Castaway? Because that Wilson guy seemed like a good friend in a time of need, and America needs one of those right now. But also, no one on the Left calls middle America “fly-over country.” We live her. That’s a term invented by the Right to claim self-victimhood. Oh my gosh, they’re still bent over Wilson. Look at this.
“This Wilsonian hubris has spread like a cancer through many of America’s largest corporations, its public institutions, and its popular culture. Those who run our so-called American corporations have bent to the will of the woke agenda and care more for their foreign investors and organizations than their American workers and customers.”
There is no “woke agenda.” There is a commitment among respectful people to honor the personal autonomy of all people. We understand you’re either too stubborn or willfully ignorant to grasp that, but we know why. You’re profoundly afraid of people different than you––including young people, because THF is primarily angry old white men and batty bigoted control freaks––who want to punish people for being themselves rather than cowing to some whitewashed version of a Republican tombstone.
And take note, if you’re supposedlly “pro-life,” because when it comes to “cancer,” let’s recall who got rid of the vicious threat of “pre-existing conditions” as a determinant for who in American can get healthcare coverage and who can’t. The ironically “Darwinian” call by conservatives to exclude those with health problems from the healthcare system is a product of abjectly dismissive corporatism, not a liberal agenda. The real “death squads” acting on Americans are healthcare insurers denying claims and letting people die to collect more profits. If you couldn’t figure that out, that’s why the United Healthcare guy got shot. Got a clue yet?
Here goes P25 xenophobia next:
“Progressive policymakers and pundits in America either fail to understand this premise or intentionally reject it. They enthusiastically support supranational organizations like the United Nations and European Union, which are run and staffed almost entirely by people who share their values and are mostly insulated from the influence of national elections. That’s why they are eager for America to sign international treaties on everything from pharmaceutical patents to climate change to “the rights of the child”—and why those treaties invariably endorse poli- cies that could never pass through the U.S. Congress.”
Okay, you’re xenophobic. We get it. But collaborating with the world’s other nations on healthcare, for example, could help us prevent future pandemics. Obama planned for that and Trump gutted our agencies tasked with that purpose, then denied the threat of Covid and blamed everyone else for his lies and incompetence. He’s a vicious liar, that one. Selfish. Fearful. Narcissistic. Dismissive. A grifter willing to sell $100 Bibles made in China while screaming about Chinese influence on America.
“That’s why today’s progressive Left so cavalierly supports open borders despite the lawless humanitarian crisis their policy created along America’s southern border. They seek to purge the very concept of the nation-state from the American ethos, no matter how much crime increases or resources drop for schools and hospitals or wages decrease for the working class. Open-borders activism is a classic example of what the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”—publicly promoting one’s own virtue without risking any personal incon- venience. Indeed, the only direct impact of open borders on pro-open borders elites is that the constant flow of illegal immigration suppresses the wages of their housekeepers, landscapers, and busboys.”
Illegal immigration went down during Obama’s presidency. Get a clue.
And you don’t get to cite Dietrich Bonhoeffer about “cheap grace.” This is a complete misuse of that term, and an ignorant one at that. Bonhoeffer stood up to the specific forms of fascism the Heritage Foundation and P25 are now proposing. He gave his life defending genuine Christian principles and proposed that Christianity should give up its religiosity and embrace the “this worldliness” of its Judaistic heritage. He did this because religious legalism in league with political fascism led to The Holocaust, in which Hitler stated, “We’re only doing to the Jews what Christianity has been doing for 1500 years.” So you fake Christians at the Heritage Foundation do not get to use Bonhoeffer as an example of your virtues. You are the precise opposite of everything he stood for.
But now, let’s look at your other abuse of Bonhoeffer’s words…
“Cheap grace” aptly describes the Left’s love affair with environmental extremism. Those who suffer most from the policies environmentalism would have us enact are the aged, poor, and vulnerable. It is not a political cause, but a pseudo-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue.”
On this subject you are absolutely wrong. The term “Environmental justice” describes how the poor and those of racial origins other than white peope are most often victims of pollution caused by industry and bad public policy. There is nothing ‘extremist’ about holding corporations responsible for these abuses accountable. But you flip it around casually to support your absolutely dishonest notions about “cheap grace.” You should be ashamed. Or do you have no shame, just a lousy grasp of theology and an addiction to stealing words from heroes to make yourself look heroic? You’re frauds. Just like Trump.
“At its very heart, environmental extremism is decidedly anti-human. Stewardship and conservation are supplanted by population control and economic regression. Environmental ideologues would ban the fuels that run almost all of the world’s cars, planes, factories, farms, and electricity grids. Abandoning confidence in human resilience and creativity in responding to the challenges of the future would raise impediments to the most meaningful human activities. They would stand human affairs on their head, regarding human activity itself as fundamentally a threat to be sacrificed to the god of nature.?”
Oh, so it’s still all about oil and gas, is it? And we know you think climate change “isn’t real.” That’s one more layer of terminal denial employed as an ideology of selfish profit-making and dismissal of accountability.
“The same goals are the heart of elite support for economic globalization. For 30 years, America’s political, economic, and cultural leaders embraced and enriched Communist China and its genocidal Communist Party while hollowing out America’s industrial base. What may have started out with good intentions has now been made clear. Unfettered trade with China has been a catastrophe. It has made a handful of American corporations enormously profitable while twisting their business incentives away from the American people’s needs.”
It’s frustrating to read statements like this when it was America’s corporations shipping jobs overseas in search of cheap labor while America’s unions were gutted first by Reagan and decades of corporatist dissolution. How Republicans try to claim the high road on this issue? Could you be any more specious about cause and effect? Yes, you can. So let’s see it.
“For a generation, politicians of both parties promised that engagement with Beijing would grow our economy while injecting American values into China. The opposite has happened. American factories have closed. Jobs have been outsourced. Our manufacturing economy has been financialized. And all along, the corporations profiting failed to export our values of human rights and freedom; rather, they imported China’s anti-American values into their C-suites.”
What the heck does this mean… “Our manufacturing economy has been financialized.” Talk about Orwellian speak. Who taught you English? Do you just make things up to sound smart? Because you’re not sounding smart making statements like this that mean nothing.
But by the way, when it comes to American industry’s interests, President Joe Biden just blocked the sale of US Steel to Nippon in Japan. Democrats have stood by workers and manufacturers for decades, and Biden’s infrastructure investment is forward-looking and futuristic. Trump promised to bring back American jobs and did nothing.
“When the Founders spoke of “pursuit of Happiness,” what they meant might be understood today as in essence “pursuit of Blessedness.” That is, an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish. Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought. This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family—marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like. Many find happiness through their work. Think of dedicated teach- ers or health care professionals you know, entrepreneurs or plumbers throwing themselves into their businesses—anyone who sees a job well done as a personal reward. Religious devotion and spirituality are the greatest sources of happiness.”
This religious language is steeped in dog-whistle bigotry. If an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained, then leave people alone. Stop legislating religious morals based on anachronistic values long debunked by biblical scholars willing to confront the age-old tradition leading to persecution of Jews, gay people, Black people, women and more. You’re hypocrites on every front.
“The American Republic was founded on principles prioritizing and maximizing individuals’ rights to live their best life or to enjoy what the Framers called “the Blessings of Liberty.” It’s this radical equality—liberty for all—not just of rights but of authority—that the rich and powerful have hated about democracy in America since 1776. They resent Americans’ audacity in insisting that we don’t need them to tell us how to live. It’s this inalienable right of self-direction—of each person’s opportunity to direct himself or herself, and his or her community, to the good— that the ruling class disdains.”
You don’t even hear yourselves speak, do you? Everything you cite here is exactly what liberalism advocates. But because you disapprove of gay people, or don’t want to hold men accountable for causing abortions, or think that teaching real American history with all its abuses and genocide, racism, slavery, and Confederate treason is going to ruin young minds, you’d rather lie that it’s bigoted people who are beset by government and “the Libs.” That’s just perverse logic.
“Left to our own devices, the American people rejected European monarchy and colonialism just as we rejected slavery, second-class citizenship for women, mercantilism, socialism, Wilsonian globalism, Fascism, Communism, and (today) wokeism. To the Left, these assertions of patriotic self-assurance are just so many signs of our moral depravity and intellectual inferiority—proof that, in fact, we need a ruling elite making decisions for us.”
Americans were not “left to our own devices.” People in that era arrived through principles of Enlightenment, not religion, at a belief that America should be self-governing, not subject to a king’s rule. But conservatives of the day wanted to stick with Britain! You’ve been on the wrong side of history from the beginning, and now you’re gutting our constitution with a “Promise” of a ruling elite based on theocracy, fascist instincts and denial of the Constitution as proven by Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the government. Donald Trump is not a president for all people. He’s stated that emphatically.
“The promise of socialism—Communism, Marxism, progressivism, Fascism, whatever name it chooses—is simple: Government control of the economy can ensure equal outcomes for all people. The problem is that it has never done so. There is no such thing as “the government.” There are just people who work for the government and wield its power and who—at almost every opportunity—wield it to serve themselves first and everyone else a distant second. This is not a failing of one nation or socialist party, but inherent in human nature.”
There you go again, throwing words around to sound smart? It’s hilarious that you claim that there’s no such thing as “the government.” You’ve already spent thousands of word outlining what the government should be and needs to be, and haven’t even gotten to the part where you map out the dogmatic tactics you plan to employe. Interestingly, on review, the entire document created as Project 2025 amounts to a denial of its own existence because every contention is a dystopian dream that you’re somehow persecuted when the entire “plan” is to in turn… persecute, disenfranchise, punish, and depict “the other” as “the enemy within.” You’re clearly a paranoid pack of fools with an 8th grade grasp of civics, immature, and decidedly antagonistic.
“Analogous pro-growth reforms for America’s voluntary civil society are also in order. America is not an economy; it is a country. Economic freedom is not the only important freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the freedom to assemble also represent key components of the American promise. Today, in addition to the problem of Big Tech censorship, we see speakers at universities shouted down, parents investigated and arrested for attempting to speak at school board meetings, and donors to conservative causes harassed and intimidated. The next conservative President must defend our First Amendment rights. “
When people are called to account for bigotry, lying about science, repeating disinformation as truth, claiming “alternative facts” (as Trump did) and generally trolling members of society as having “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to gaslight people into submission, they are not the persecutors you claim. They’re standing up for the freedoms you say you defend yet abuse. The Fox News Network paid $750 in defamation lawsuits to a election machine tech company it publicly maligned. And Trump earned fines of $450M for illegal business practices. These are the abuses evidencing real corruption. And those people shouted down at school board meetings? Free speech works both ways.
“Ultimately, the Left does not believe that all men are created equal—they think they are special. They certainly don’t think all people have an unalienable right to pursue the good life. They think only they themselves have such a right along with a moral responsibility to make decisions for everyone else. They don’t think any citizen, state, business, church, or charity should be allowed any freedom until they first bend the knee.”
Um, let’s review the evidence here when it comes to “all men are created equal.” First, it is religious beliefs that deem folks the “chosen people” of God. America’s history includes the ugly effects of Manifest Destiny used to commit genocide and hold slaves, both of which defied equality for all “men.” It was conservatives denying women the right to vote, and it’s conservatives to this day denying gay people the right to marriage, all based on “special status” of the Christian religion as a dictator of values for America. That’s unconstitutional.
“Conservatives have just two years and one shot to get this right. With enemies at home and abroad, there is no margin for error. Time is running short. If we fail, the fight for the very idea of America may be lost.”
Look at the fear and desperation and the acknowledged brevity of the entire P25 premise, which is this: impose thy will on others quickly before they see the lies upon which it is based. That’s why Trumpism and MAGA works. They are shallow, slogan-based claims to authority based on fear, willful ignorance, self-proclaimed victimhood and dystopian paranoia. The Right Wing media leverages these fears for profits.
I think you included the following quote in the P25 doc, but it might have popped up somewhere else too. It’s appropriate describing what’s going on in America, but not in favor of P25.
Just two years after the death of the last surviving Constitutional Convention delegate, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln warned that the greatest threat to America would come not from without, but from within.
A couple weeks ago, an email arrived through my website with a request for an illustration job. The creative brief was quite complete, albeit for an interesting subject. Apparently, some “client” of the emailer wanted to produce a presentation to warn youth about the dangers of monkey pox disease.
I found the request a bit odd because I didn’t think monkey pox was much of a threat these days. I’m no expert on infectious diseases, but if someone wants to help spread the news on the value of vaccinations, I’m all for it. The creative brief came with illustration descriptions that were quite detailed. Still, I responded requesting more information about the job. The potential client proposed compensation for the sixteen illustrations inviting at one thousand dollars per 8 X 10” full-color panel. That’s higher than most jobs I’ve done in a 40-year creative and illustration career, but again, some clients just want the work done and don’t care about the budget. If luck would have it, I wasn’t going to turn it down.
There were however Red Flags about the assignment. The person contacting explained that he was hearing impaired and would communicate via email and text. “Okay…” I thought to myself. “We’ll see how this goes.”
Progress
I did one quick sketch that took fifteen minutes and sent it to the client for approval. He said yes with hardly any feedback. That made me suspicious, but the money still sounded good.
Within a week after our initial contact, the “client” requested my address to send a check for a down payment. I stated that 25-50% as part of the initial $4000 first phase of the project was sufficient. I don’t start a job these days, especially one received online, without receiving earnest money. A few days later, the client confirmed that he’d sent a message to arrive through UPS and the US Mail.
Something in the process still felt funny to me. “I’m not sure this is real,” I told my wife and son. They agreed that I should proceed with caution. “Wait until you get a check and cash it before doing anything for them,” my wife advised.
The check arrived in a big USPS envelope. Again, the check was just floating around inside a 15″ X 12″ shipping envelope. “Who does that?” I thought. At a glance, the check looked legitimate enough. I investigated the company listed on check on Linkedin and did a search online to corroborate its location and it lined up. My wife and I joked that I should “run to the bank” to test it all out. A part of me wondered if that was the right thing to do.
Text talk
Then I received a text from the client:
“Hi Christopher, usps confirmed the successful delivery of the package to you…Kindly confirm you have received it so that we can proceed. I await your response.”
I confirmed receipt of the check and immediately got another message. “Thanks for the update. Kindly go ahead and deposit the check and let me know as soon as you do…” I took the check to the ATM machine and paused to take a photo of the document before depositing it. I had no idea if that was legal, but I did it anyway in case something odd happened with the deposit. The check had a small iridescent seal on it that looked a bit like a chip you’d find on a credit or debit card. Not having seen that on a check before, I paused before depositing it. I wondered: could that chip somehow send information back to a potential scammer? One never knows these days…
The check slipped into the ATM machine and the bank showed that the deposit registered.
The next morning I received another text: “Hi Christopher, How are you doing today? I would like to know if you successfully deposited the check. I have to give feedback to my sponsor on the payment. How’s the project coming along? Warm regards.”
To this point, nothing about these interactions felt right or authentic to me. While I was relieved in some sense that the check deposited the night before and a deposit showed up as deposited in my account, that chip on the check still made me nervous. The ATM spit out a receipt showing my prior balance and the new deposit combined. I still wasn’t convinced the check was real or that the “job” wasn’t a scam.
Then another communication came. This one raised my suspicions to another level. “Okay, thanks for the update. I’d be glad if you could confirm funds availability in your account now and get back to me. I await response.”
At that point, every red flag I’d learned in online scam training had been checked. I was no longer convinced anything about that check was authentic. Then came the text that confirmed all my suspicions. “The sponsor has requested that the 2nd phase of the project be cancelled due to a family emergency,” the message read. “We will only work on the first phase and ensure to keep up with its deadline date.”
This scam is being exposed on Reddit
I decided to play along and draw the scammer out in full fashion. “Okay, so what’s that mean on refunding the money?” I asked. “I’m not using any of it until the assignment is completed,” I added. My thinking was that for legal reasons and self-protection I should construct a line of defense about ‘acceptance and intent.’ I’m no lawyer, but I’ve come to understand that exhibiting intention is sometimes as bad as actually doing something wrong. I live in the state where former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was caught shopping political promises under the mantle “This is Golden.”
Refund defund
The scammer (of course) welcomed the conversation about a refund. “Yes, that sounds good. The sponsor has provided me with her Zelle and PayPal details for the refund of the 2nd phase. Please advise which of the information I should provide you with so you can proceed with the refund now for $4000. Thank you.”
I responded. “This is quite strange to me. I’m going to check with the bank first.” That is what I proceeded to do. Then I wrote: “I’m not comfortable with any of this process. I will inform you of the next steps when I’ve checked with the bank.” Frankly, by that point, I was hoping to gather information that might somehow track back to the sender.
That communication engendered a different tone in response. “I am sorry about the inconvenience. Yes, you may check the bank, but the bank has already confirmed the check and funded your account. She decided to cancel phase 2 for a family emergency and until the vaccination exercise has concluded. Therefore, the second phase of the workshop has been moved to a later date next year. I’m giving you $200 more for your stress and canceling of the project. This is just to compensate for the dashed expectation.”
The real question is why scammers like this cannot be caught? I contacted my bank. I called the police.
That communication was received while I was on the phone with my bank, first through a local branch and then through the Fraud Alert national network. They didn’t indicate they’d do anything but did suggest I not send the money. The guy on the line also congratulated me on being cautious in that respect. Still, I asked, “Don’t we do anything right now?”
The Fraud Alert guy replied that the bank has to let the check clear or bounce, or “come back” as it was explained to me. My thinking was much different. Shouldn’t we get the FBI be involved? Wasn’t this an attempted crime in progress? It sure had all the marks of an outright scam.
Meanwhile, the scammer kept up his pressure to refund money. I responded, “I’m not sending you any money. I am on the phone with the bank now.”
“What did your bank say?”
I wrote back again. “Just got off. They said don’t send any money.”
Then came the emotion-based plea: “Chris, please. I hope this doesn’t affect the project in any way because your feedback is top-notch, and professionalism is impeccable. You have been been giving me the best service ever since my very first message to you. I don’t want this to affect my relationship with my sponsor.”
For all of you out there reading this, I hope you recognize the problem here: This brand of broken English is a sign that things are not right with the contact.
I replied, “Unless that check clears inspection by my bank nothing is happening. I talked with them already. I’m perplexed and suspicious by refund requests. I’m not doing that. If your sponsor is legit they can wait.”
At that point my only purpose was holding him at bay in hopes of getting some kind of investigation going. It wasn’t until that evening that I had a chance to Google “Peter Welsh illustration scam” and immediately found the thread on Reddit where a discussion about the same guy doing the same scam in various forms was shared by many others. The people behind these multiple personas and versions of the scam are apparently prodigious in their craft.
Here’s another version of the same scam.
The scammer tried one more time to get me involved: “I’m so sorry this happened, and don’t feel bad. The check is legitimate, and the payment has gone through, so there’s not a compelling reason to put a hold on it. Please, I would appreciate it if you can send the money out today. You can also use money order.”
I read that message and muttered to myself…”F you…”
And after that, it was radio silence from the scammer for five hours. It is highly likely that he sensed my suspicions and moved over to another “account” that looked more promising. In the interim, I went about my business as a substitute PE teacher for the day, and drove home glad that the scammer had let up and that I’d called the authorities. On the way home, I set up and appointment to make a police report. Then I opened the original Gmail message to look closer at the photo attached to the Sender. As others noted, perhaps he’s some kind of real person. More likely not. In the age of facial recognition, this photo is probably stolen from somewhere else. Just like the check I received. It’s a fake.
I looked up the name of the company from which the check was issued. I’m not sure what to think about that. Their Glassdoor and Google reviews feature a long string of one-star reviews. They ostensibly sell automotive parts, but they must also be missing stacks of checks or else someone is creating fake ones using their company’s name.
Of course, that check that I “cashed” did not clear the bank and it immediately caused other problems. Admittedly, I did not protect myself well enough in this instance. That said, I filed the police report against this scammer. The officer shared that their department gets 8-10 calls for different kinds of scams each week. “It’s sad,” the officer shared. “People lose tens of thousands of dollars sometimes. Especially older people.”
One last shot
In late afternoon I received a phone call from the scammer. He talked in some sort of Eastern European accent, possibly Russian. Over the years I’ve worked with numerous Eastern European caregivers for my late father. These accents are often difficult to tell apart. It wasn’t a surprise to me that this guy was from some odd origin. That’s often how all of this works. Even the 2016 presidential election was impacted by fake social media accounts run by Russian interests. Meta recently announced the 4000+ fake accounts pumping out political disinformation were removed from Facebook. Scamming works at a global level these days.
My caller, whose working name is “Peter Welsh” started right in talking about whether the check had cleared or not. I was ahead of him on that, having already called the bank and checked online to see that it was “Oh Hold.” Our conversation veered from one place to another over the course of a minute. My goal was to get home off the line asap. He tried to manipulate me by telling me I was “acting weird” about the refund. I outright told him to stop gaslighting me and hung up. Then I Blocked any remaining calls from his number. I admit that I could not resist sending him a semi-nasty text. Father, Forgive My Sins.
Just think: this guy and his ‘operation’ is doing this kind of thing to dozens, perhaps hundreds of people across the country. He’s probably had success too. Even if he works 10-12 marks a week, $4-10,000 isn’t bad pay for a week’s work.
It’s a scammy world
Clearly I’m not alone in this being exposed to this scam experience. I’m sharing this in hopes that other people will be wiser and keep their guard up. To be honest: I’ve always been too trusting person in this world. That has cost me in many ways, including in business where even the people you work with have “agendas” that in some cases qualify as “scams” when seeking internal favor just grabbing additional compensation.
The love of money really is the root of all evil. I think back to a time when a fellow salesperson sandbagged his cumulative ad sales during a competition. He waited until the last minute to turn them in so that he could a $250 sales prize. Working hard in my little territory, I’d led the contest all along. Meanwhile, this jerkwad sold just enough to say ahead of me in his better territory, then walked over the board on the last day and filled in his totals. He scammed me, in other words.
Big picture fraud
There’s a ton of fraud taking place in this world. Along with scammers like this scuzzy Peter Welsh, scams take place in all kinds of places. Most common these days are online scammers (Facebook Marketplace, etc.) and cryptocurrency crooks, to name just a couple. The scams and fraud in this world include those concocted by deceptive CEOs or financial crooks (remember Enron, or Bernie Madoff?) Even seemingly “upright” corporate directors collect millions in salaries wrought from real or imagined profits while the workers driving productivity struggle to make ends meet. Wealth inequality is at a disturbing level in the United States of America.
We also see political scammers collecting millions in fund raising dollars while making all sorts of false promises to bilk money from supporters. One notable scammer in George Santos just got booted from Congress yet the likes of Trump (“Mexico is gonna build that wall…and if they don’t, we will!) still walks free. Trump excels in stealing support from millions of people even though his own University has been held culpable for fraud. The same holds true for his main business which is facing banishment from the State of New York for decades of scamming banks and the government with falsified financial reports and inflated and deflated property values. Trump is a proven crook and scammer. Now he’s on trial for host of other alleged yet well-documented crimes including attempts to steal an election, conduct an insurrection, and theft of Classified documents that include exposing national secrets to domestic and foreign sources.
Trump knows that his supporters don’t care that he’s a scammer. He’s their scammer for bragging that he’d “drain the swamp” while his administration turned out to be one of the most corrupt in US and World History.
A sucker born every minute
It’s often been said that there are “suckers born every minute” (P.T. Barnum, at right) Much has been made of this fact by huckster of many kind. Somehow, the general public never figures out who to trust. Mark Twain once said, “All it takes is ignorance and confidence, and success is sure.”
All it takes to deceive people is a bit of swagger and a carefully leveraged appearance of credibility. It’s been true since the dawn of recorded history. The Serpent in Genesis used the Word of God (“You will not surely die…) to lead Adam and Eve into temptation. According to scripture, they were the first suckers in history. But the real suckers are those who take the Bible narrative literally. Because, where did the wives for Adam and Cain come from? We’re supposed to ignore those casual details somehow?
The shocking thing is how so many people to this day seem eager and willing to be deceived. They’ll open their wallets and place their wholehearted trust––even their religious faith––behind proven scammers as if their life depends on it. There is nothing more disheartening that seeing otherwise good people get caught up in propagandistic schemes that are nothing more than artistic scams. All while the sociopathic crooks in power dishonestly insist they’ve got their victims’ best interests in mind.
Reverse prosperity gospel
None other than Jesus Christ warned against this kind of “reverse prosperity” scam system. He castigated the religious authorities of his day for taking money and gaining power by manipulating the masses through guilt and tradition. Today we have “Prosperity Gospel” preachers raking in millions in contributions while bilking people into thinking their donations will return prosperity to them. They’ve stolen pages from religious scammers of the past and modernized them through media.
These forms of religious scams are blatantly obvious, but people fall for them every day. Hell, even the Catholic Church ran a purgatory scam with its ‘indulgences’ program before one of their own priests, a guy named Martin Luther, called them to account. Purgatory and the collection of indulgences served as a money funnel to “protect” people from a place that existed only in the minds and bank accounts of the religious authorities. The many scams concocted by televangelists (End Times supplies, anyone?) and politicians claiming religious affiliation (Mike Johnson is now Speaker of the House) are no different. They are all working against the original truth and goodness that the Bible depicts in the person of Jesus.
Roped in but not duty bound
The attempted scammer successfully roped me in, but his last-minute try at gaslighting me into guilt didn’t work. Still, he knows those psychological bonds and ploys are what help him succeed. The more emotional a scammer can make a potential victim feel, the more chance they’ll get their hands on their money––and their soul.
While I nearly got tricked by the scammer, I’m grateful for having received direct training on how to identify scams before they take full effect. I was misled at first, but as the Red Flags added up, I wised up. My father wasn’t so lucky many years ago. He got roped into a network marketing scheme that cost our family $5000 in early 1970s money. I’ve had keen antennae up against such schemes ever since.
So beware. Scammers are real. They are all around you in this world and they’re committed to putting all their intellect and artistic deception to work in building “real relationships.” In fact, they’re merely trying to win your approval, steal your money, steal your vote, or steal an electionthey’ve already lost to escape prosecution for the crimes they’ve already committed. All while presenting themselves as a salvation from the evils of this world. These
The sad thing is that so many people embrace these scams as absolute truth. Even worse, they gaslight the rest of us for holding fast to honesty while claiming that we’re the liars. Meanwhile the security of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness all stand at risk because so many people fall for scams and never realize they’re the mark, not the wise ones.
It is with little consolation that I write the title above this article, or share the graphic that I created to describe how Trump moved from slogans to fascism. Way back when Trump announced his candidacy for US President I lit into the man for his brutish behavior well before he gained a single vote. From that time forward, I observed that Trump had more in common with the fake sport of professional wrestling than anything else. I also observed that he behaved like a pirate with his thieving, grifting ways.
Beyond theorizing about his awful character, the regular news about his behavior was far more damning that anything I conceived allegorically. He threatened to withhold pre-approved funding for military assistance to Ukraine by trying to force the President of Ukraine to generate dirt on Hunter Biden. For that offense, Trump was rightly impeached for abuse of power.
The more time he spent in office the worse it got for America and the world. Trump lied to Americans about the threat of Covid-19 to public health, a fact recorded for posterity by journalist Bob Woodward. Millions of Americans pursuantly defied medical directives to mask up and get vaccinated. Trump’s supporters worsened and then prolonged the pandemic as Covid spread and killed hundreds of thousands of people, many of who would not have gotten infected if appropriate mask precautions were taken, and many that would possibly have lived if they were indeed vaccinated.
But people kept giving up their lives for Trump, whose lies kept piling up and whose behavior became more extreme and corrupt by the day. His public support for racist and para-military organizations led to violence while his refusal to hold police accountable for brutality on Black citizens drove protests that led to even more violence from activists defying Trump’s fascist approach to government.
Thus it was not surprising that Trump welcomed the fascist attack on the United States Capitol in an attempt to block the certification of results from a legitimate election. Trump’s people brought 60+ lawsuits trying to demonstrate election fraud, and all of them failed for lack of evidence. And still, Trump’s lies turned into the Big Lie, a propagandist tactic directly adopted from other fascist regimes whose success in nationalistic populism appears to be Trump’s main playbook.
After his failed attempt at re-election due to his moral depravity and lack of personal or governmental accountability, Trump retreated to his pirate’s lair in south Florida with goods and records stolen from the US Government. Now he’s being investigated for all kinds of crimes against the nation, and his prized Trump organization just got convicted and slammed for tax evasion. That only confirms his prior fraudulent behavior with his “Trump University” which got fined $25M for lying to its customers.
But what did we expect from a proven misogynist and sexual abuser that cheats at golf and claims that he hates exercise because it will “wear down his battery.” He’s an ignorant fraud whose vision of reality is skewed by a narcissistic need to be “right” all the time even when he’s been proven completely wrong. Who else stares up at a solar eclipse?
The pain of being right about Trump all along offers no solace. His Republican Party has zero conscience when it comes to political or civil morality. They are a depraved band of pirates who claim that women should be happy they were raped and whose history of blocking environmental legislation and climate change action means they’ll willingly rape the world if it somehow keeps them in power.
And that’s why being right about Trump is absolutely no fun at all.
In which we study the similarities between Make America Great Again and Make Russia Great Again
MAGA rioters attack Capitol police on January 6, 2020
We all watched the outcome of MAGA (Make America Great Again) in the United States of America. Four years of MAGA propaganda by the Trump Administration led to an insurrection against the nation by a manic mix of pro-fascist “demonstrators” claiming the 2020 election was stolen.
That was a horrific moment in American history. But the worst part of the Trump years was the support provided by the Christian evangelical community who cheered on Trump’s often lawless campaign to use the office of President as his personal stomping grounds for whatever enemies he chose to attack. All of Trump’s vengeful behavior was dismissed as necessary because he was ostensibly acting for the “greater good” by literally carrying out the will of God. According to populist notions of Trump’s rise to power, he was the one anointed to advance the idea that the United States of America is a Christian Nation under God.
That was one of dog-whistle (or God-whistle) messages driving Make America Great Again. It carried with it the promise to ban abortion and block gay people from civil rights, two key social issues to conservative Christians tied to the anachronistic dogma of the religion when it dominated American society. And this despite its demonstrated history of supporting institutional slavery and racism in the likes of ‘Christian-based’ groups like the KKK.
MAGA’s ugly underbelly
MAGA’s ugly underbelly revealed itself during Trump’s first campaign for president as he embraced racist organizations, complimenting them as “good people.” Those groups and others coalesced into the aggressive branch of MAGA whose militias broke down barriers, attacked police, and threatened to murder the Vice President, Mike Pence, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
And while all this happened, the evangelical leadership in America either remained silent or cheered on the events while justifying Trump’s reign of terror by claiming that “God works with flawed people.”
The terrifying fact of the religious rationalization is that it is now being extended, in a brutally ironic fashion, to the leader of Russia, Vladimir Putin, during his military invasion of Ukraine. And here’s the kicker: Putin is carrying out this mission for much the same religious reasons that the American evangelical community wanted to Make America Great Again. Putin views Ukraine as a necessary iconic element in the re-establishment of a Christian-dominated Russia and for all we know, the rest of Europe. This war in Ukraine is an attack on a sovereign nation that values free and fair elections just like the United States of America and other democracies around the world. But Putin wants to install his Christo-fascist version of power over the nation’s people and its resources and call it Russia+. This is Putin’s version of MAGA. So we can legitimately brand it MRGA: Make Russia Great Again.
American Christian’s support for Putin
Conflating God with country is a favorite pastime of the Christian conservative community
Thus it is no coincidence that America’s evangelical Christian community and their conservative friends seem to support Putin. There are also whispers in the halls of End Times Theology that “this is the big one,” because religious zealots hoping for the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ to rule it all pray that this is their moment of vengeance against the heathens and humanistic believers who want to solve the world’s problems, not turn them into an excuse for Armageddon.
Even Israel can’t make up its mind what to do about Russia, because Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is himself a Jew. There are political and economic striations to consider as well, so the nation perpetually caught between Jewish and Christian interests is now stuck between the rocks of conflicting ideologies, convenient loyalties, and funding to protect its own people.
MRGA and the Taliban
But MRGA will stop for no one under Putin’s direction. His army might be exhausted by the time he overcomes Ukraine, but the people of that occupied nation will keep fighting back. The frightening truth is that if anyone else gets involved beyond sanctions, Putin has threatened nuclear retaliation, even aggression. He also took control of nuclear power plants in Ukraine, and he’s such a despot that he might just let some radiation leak to cow people to his will.
The really sinister part here is that MRGA has been cheered on by some of Trump’s high-profile fans and supporters, including Tucker Carlson at Fox News––and others. In an interview on Fox News, retired Army Colonel Douglas McGregor, who served under Donald Trump and apparently remains loyal to the cause, opined on behalf of Putin telling host Stuart Varney: “The first five days Russian forces I think frankly were too gentle. They’ve now corrected that. So, I would say another ten days this should be completely over.”
Macgregor went on to say that the war could have “ended days ago” if Zelensky had acquiesced to what Russia wanted.”
Those statements drew a rebuke from a noted Republican purist Liz Cheney: “Douglas MacGregor, nominated by Trump as ambassador to Germany; appointed by Trump as senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense, says Russian forces have been ‘too gentle’ and ‘I don’t see anything heroic’ about Zelensky,” Cheney wrote. “This is the Putin wing of the GOP.”
So we can see that the militaristic nature of the latter-day GOP willingly dismisses any notion of international principle in favor of personal opinion, purpose, and priority. It is the classic example of the “ends justifies the means” approach to gaining and retaining power.
This fealty to power when fueled by aggressive conservative and Christo-fascist instincts is devastating to the health of democracies around the world. It is also brutally ironic given the resistance in the Christian sphere to similar efforts by conservative Muslim sects to establish religious control over entire countries. The entire American occupation in Afghanistan, the “war” that lasted more than twenty years–– was driven in part by attempts to rid the country of the religiously driven motives of the Taliban, an arch-Right brand of Islam. And the United States of America failed to quell that influence.
Ugly convenience
None of this surprises us because the ugly convenience of justifying social control and even conducting wars on religious grounds is as old as civilization itself. But consider the irony: It was Jesus that resisted the legalistic control of society by the religious authorities of his day. They killed him for trying to promote a more liberal and socialistic brand of religion based on love, compassion, and a personal relationship with God. None of that was evident in the conduct of the MAGA revolution in America, whose selfish conduct resounded in the halls of Congress when thousands of fascist-minded people beat the police and raided the Capitol.
Nor is there any sign of Jesus Christ in the Russian MRGA attack on Ukraine. This is also a selfishly narcissistic and vainglorious attempt by Putin to grab respect through brute force rather than earn it by respecting international law and having the confidence to build a nation that does not depend on corruption, dirty dealings, and graft to survive. Like Trump, he’s both immensely calculating and lazy at the same time, and sure enough, Trump initially complimented Putin’s military move into Ukraine as “savvy.” God Forbid if Trump was still President. He’d probably be cheering Putin on as Ukrainians died because Trump no doubt has a chip on his shoulder toward Ukraine’s President, who stood up to his corrupt effort to bribe him into doing some political dirty work on Trump’s behalf. To Donald Trump, there is no sweeter feeling than gaining revenge, and now we can see how bad the situation would be if Trump were still in control.
Functionally, we now recognize that MAGA and MRGA are essentially the same thing, twisting religion to serve despotic needs. That is the Red Letter commonality between two equally fascist movements. It also bears strong resemblance to the motives behind the second World War. And that’s bad news for everyone in the world.
A HANDS-ON LOOK AT HOW WE GOT FROM THERE (2016) TO HERE (2021) UNDER THE RULE OF EX-PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP
However we define Trumpism, there is no denying its existence in the United States of America. Its effects were on full display during the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. The question we now face is whether Trumpism should be primarily defined as a political or personal condition.
The tactics used to promote Trumpism began with the political slogan Make America Great Again. Those four words symbolized the Trump campaign’s claim that the nation was in desperate need of recovery.
The MAGA slogan worked wonders with those already convinced that Donald Trump represented something “great” about America. His purported wealth and worldwide brand delivered a pre-packaged sense of competency and vision.
Yet that is not what Donald Trump ultimately wound up selling. Instead, he saw an opportunity in convincing people that the nation had abandoned them. That gave millions of already disgruntled people the idea that they had something genuine to complain about. Whether they knew the true sources of their purported misery, or whether they were justified in their self-proclaimed victimhood did not matter. Trump tapped into their anger. That was all that mattered.
To his retinue of pledged supporters, Trump added the support of the evangelical Christian community by choosing a dogmatically zealous Mike Pence as his running mate. The implicit promise in that action was banning abortion and installing some form of Christian theocracy on the nation.
Safely delivered from political criticism by his religious associations, Trump engaged with far-less-admirable brands of populists. Specifically, he offered approval to avowed racist groups as “good people” and chortled with glee as militia groups and violence-prone police threatened to bust heads as a means to maintain order.
All the while, he continued the drumbeat against illegal immigration and repeated his warlike call to ‘build the wall.” That brand of xenophobia resonated with Americans convinced that brown people were freeloaders and stealing their piece of the American pie. Others welcomed Trump’s dog-whistle racism as justification for their own terminal prejudices. Meanwhile, the wealthiest MAGA supporters happily embraced Trump’s “I’ve Got Mine” mentality because it promised a return to tax policies favoring their economic status.
As illustrated in the Trumpism Spectrum, it is easy to trace the initial migration from slogans to tribalism, and from religious legalism to populism. All these tactics were designed to cement a coalition of committed collaborators in the Make America Great Again cabal. Anyone that criticized that cabal was accused of Trump Derangement Syndrome, a supposed mental condition that caused people to act irrationally in response to the ex-President. But that invented term was itself a form of gaslighting, an attempt to make sane people feel crazy about their grip on reality.
Adding to the mix was the rising influence of conspiracy theorists including QAnon, a willfully ignorant and semi-mysterious source of insane accusations and outright lies invented by some Internet gnome lurking on the outskirts of humanity. While Trump griped and whined about the supposed lies contained in the campaign-driven Steele Dossier, he did nothing to counteract rumors that Democrats were involved in human sex trafficking or the daily piles of Right-Wing garbage pumped out by the political right, including but not limited to Fox News.
As Trump’s presidency proceeded, he relied on an increasingly aggressive mix of propaganda to cover up his many illegal activities and political graft in defiance of the emoluments clause and bans on pursuing campaign aid from foreign governments. He was impeached twice for his corruption, but excused by Republican henchman in both the Senate and the House. A few freely admitted that he’d cheated and even broken the law on several counts. But they are power-driven hypocrites and political whores of the worst kind. They are loyal to their party and traitors to our nation.
The only place that Trump’s lies and cheating seemed to catch up with him was during the Covid pandemic when it became obvious that he was both incapable and unconcerned about protecting Americans from a deadly disease. Rather that amend his ways, Trump’s authoritarian instincts drove him to evolve from a man in a perpetual state of denial of his real performance to a man recognizing his failures. Those he feared more than anything else, and in an effort to protect himself from legal and financial jeopardy, he began to plot ways to steal the election in 2020.
This was nothing new, as even before the 2016 election Trump refused to commit his approval for results if he lost. He merely expanded on this tactic in 2020, denying in advance that he could possibly lose. When he did, he launched the Big Lie that the election was “stolen” from him. This lie was invented to foment unrest among his deplorable cabal of truth-denying bigots and zealots. It also appealed to the selfishly wealthy along with the fearful politicians that stood by him through two legitimate impeachments for corruption.
But the sickest loyalty of all is the continued support for Trump even after the acts of sedition conducted by Trump supporters at his direction. The violent, multi-front riots brutalized police officers and left people dead as a result of the insurrection. In the end, Trump invented a brand of fascism that entirely suited him, as he stood watching it all transpire on television even while his violent mob sought to capture and kill the Vice President of the United States. Trump didn’t care. Like his fast-food mentality dictates, he was “having it his way.”
That’s how we got from There to Here over the last six or so years. Looking back at the progression as illustrated on the Trumpism Spectrum graphic, it is pretty clear that it will be too hard to go back through time and fix things. Instead, we need to race forward in the near term to prevent it from happening all over again in 2022 and 2024. Trumpism is a toxic brand of hate-driven politics that was used to beat the nation over the head with an American flag. Despite his ugly pleas, we owe Donald Trump nothing in the way of compassion or compensation. He has done nothing to earn either privilege nor does he deserve it. He is no longer an American in any sense of the word. He is nothing but a greedy traitor, a perpetual con man and an abusive sociopath with nothing to offer the United States of America but an end to the great experiment that launched a democracy worthy of admiration by the whole world.
But under another four years of Trump, that great experiment would cease to exist.
What now seems like ancient history, the 2000 United States Presidential election was far closer than most of us probably recall. The website 270 to win shares this succinct summary of what transpired in the wake of Bill Clinton’s two terms:
“The United States presidential election of 2000 was a contest between Republican candidate George W. Bush, then-governor of Texas and son of former president George H. W. Bush (1989–1993), and Democratic candidate Al Gore, then-Vice President.
Bill Clinton, the incumbent President, was vacating the position after serving the maximum two terms allowed by the Twenty-second Amendment. Bush narrowly won the November 7 election, with 271 electoral votes to Gore’s 266 (with one elector abstaining in the official tally).”
The election was skewed by several factors, including the distraction of Ralph Nader running for President. The nearly 3M votes he received undoubtedly stoles votes from Gore’s side of the ledger, potentially handing Gore the victory had Nader not stubbornly stuck to his efforts.
What most might recall is the long delay in vote-counting that came down to a Florida decision that handed the election to Bush and Cheney.
2000 Election Facts
Outcome of race unknown for several weeks due to dispute over close vote totals in Florida
Green Party candidate Ralph Nader received 2,882,728 votes, but no Electoral Votes
Gore won DC; however one elector did not cast a vote
One of only 5 elections (1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, 2016) where the popular vote winner was defeated
Issues of the Day: Impeachment, Presidential ethics, Good economy
To make matters worse, the controversies over recounts and the narrow margin of 537 distinguishable votes was thrown first to the Florida Supreme Court and then the United States Supreme court, where five justices nominated by Republican Presidents Reagan, Bush and Nixon all voted to install Bush as President of the United States.
Then the Shit Show began.
First, Bush and Cheney triumphantly ignored credible warnings about the 9/11 attacks handed over from President Clinton and Richard Clarke. We all know what happened then. Terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. The world watched in horror and fear, but the first thing the Bush clan did was fly bin Laden family members out of the country. As reported on CBS News, “Two dozen members of Osama bin Laden’s family were urgently evacuated from the United States in the first days following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, according to the Saudi ambassador to Washington.
One of bin Laden’s brothers frantically called the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington looking for protection, Prince Bandar bin Sultan told The New York Times. The brother was sent to a room in the Watergate Hotel and was told not to open the door.
Most of bin Laden’s relatives were attending high school and college. The young members of the bin Laden family were driven or flown under FBI supervision to a secret place in Texas and then to Washington, The Times reported Sunday.”
Bush and Cheney did the big power play of attacking Afghanistan to get at the vigilante member of the bin Laden family. They failed. Then Bush admitted, “I am not that concerned about him” In fact, bin Laden escaped into Pakistan to hide out for another decade or more before being hunted down and killed during the Obama administration.
All the while, American forces rooted around in Afghanistan trying to quell the influence of the Taliban, who were essentially blamed for the 9/11 attacks when actually, it was just one rich hermit and a band of willing mercenaries that carried out the dirty work of killing thousands of Americans on a bright fall day in New York City on 9/11.
Lying all along
So the Bush-Cheney regime never had the story right or a plan in place to exit Afghanistan if nothing was being accomplished. The Taliban might have been chased into the hills, but did not disappear. When American killed one Taliban leader another one simply slipped into place. As all this warlike activity transpired, warlords sucked up skidloads of American dollars while our troops tried not to get killed. Thousands did. Tens of thousands more were wounded. And still we stayed.
That was not even the worst part of life after Gore lost to Bush. Because one of the pet projects of the illegitimate President was to attempt a Middle East takeover with an invasion of Iraq. The United States attacked that nation based on falsified information about weapons of mass destruction of which international inspection teams found no evidence. Even General Colin Powell got sucked into the Post-9/11 fray and lied to us all about what was really going on in Iraq.
Which was awful, but still no reason to invade that nation on claims that it had anything to do with 9/11 or that Iraq posed any terrorist threat to the United States. Yet still we attacked. Saddam Hussein was captured, tried and sentenced to death. But all that America could find to do in the wake of that murderer’s death was to round people up and torture them in the same prisons used by Hussein to persecute his own countrymen.
The Iraq War Crimes Adventure also welcomed mercenary forces from guns-for-hire companies such as Blackwater and Halliburton, both of which reportedly direspected American troops and committed war crimes of their own on occasion.
The Brookings Institute reported: “But there were two problems: Despite its mission of guarding U.S. officials in Iraq, Blackwater had no license with the Iraqi government. Secondly, the murky legal status of the contractors meant they might be considered exempt from Iraqi law because of a mandate left over from the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. governing authority in Iraq that was dissolved more than two years prior.”
The relative lawlessness that led to billions of dollars wasted in military expenditures, torture and war crimes in Iraq seemed not to bother the Bush regime. It was our soldiers that paid for this folly with their health and their lives. Men like Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld famously dismissed our military’s lack of preparation for the Iraq venture by stating, ““You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
Unapologetic wastefulness
Such was the unapologetic approach of Bush and Cheney to everything they encountered. As America squandered trillions in its treasure on extended, fruitless wars, the world’s climate was busy heating up due to global warming. The Republican control of the Oval Office, Senate, Congress and the Supreme Court ensured that no legislation would pass to help counter the rolling effects of carbon dioxide polluting the atmosphere. Al Gore published a book warning that America had better look out for its true enemy, which was climate change, but conservatives mocked him as pedantic and hypocritical.
Now the government in Afghanistan has collapsed and the Taliban rushed across the nation taking over provincial capitols and finally, the national government in Kabul gave up and ran off. None of the Afghani troops “trained” by American forces over the last two decades put up any resistance. The entire Bush-Cheney debacle collapsed before the world’s eyes. Meanwhile, climate change is burning up the world with July 2021 registering as the hottest month in all recorded history.
It would have been so much different had Al Gore not been blocked from serving as President of the United States. He won the popular vote. In all likelihood, he even won the Electoral College vote if politics had not been played in the queasy state of Florida.
We could have avoided 9/11. Most certainly, the former VP is a prudent man who understood the threat of terrorism in real time, not as some abstract distraction to be avoided by the likes of Bush and Cheney. America might well have taken steps to ward off climate change as well. At least we’d have a start of some sort.
Lies and racism
Instead, we were forced to suffer through eight years of blatant lies and ractist attacks against President Obama, who also happened to rescue the nation from the collapsed economy wrought by the many abuses wrought upon it during the Bush years, when the price of health insurance alone climbed by 96%. When Obama pushed for the Affordable Health Care act, Republicans attacked the concept as unconstitutional and socialist. But much like Al Gore, Obama had American’s long-term interests in mind.
Sadly, the populist reaction to good governance was to install an openly racist demagogue in the person of Donald Trump, a TV personality that ignores science, denies climate change, and claimed to love our troops even while his apparent buddies the Russians were placing bounties on their heads. The facts about Republican corruption are plain to see. They should be much more broadly known.
Trump was nothing more than a feckless version of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, combined. He exhibits the same bumbling inability to communicate effectively, instead engaging in a “downtalking” approach soaked in the ideology of victimhood. He pats his supporters on the head with patriarchal cynicism and glee, also welcoming the adoring affections of hypocritical evangelical supporters eager to trade their religious ethics for access to power.
Trump devastated the country with hapless tariffs, greedy tax cuts and rampant golfing excursions that cost the country hundreds times more than the meager $360K (or whatever) salary comes with the office. Where Obama was serious, considerate and collaborative, Trump was specious, angry, and bullying.
That approach appealed to his deplorable political base, which included openly racist populists and whorishly sycophantic political operatives within his administration that to this day claim that a legitimate election was stolen through some outlandish method for which there is zero evidence. That led to a massive insurrection in which the core of governance in the United States of America was under attack by a fascist mob urged on (and gleefully witnessed) by Trump and his minions.
But then, there was zero real evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There was zero evidence that Rush Limbaugh was ever honest or right about anything in his life. There was zero evidence that torture was necessary or desirable in Iraq. Zero evidence that Guantanamo was a good way to hold supposed terrorists when many were simply people caught up in the military horrors executed upon Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is zero evidence that anything the Republican Party has done the last twenty to forty years has benefited the United States of America in any way. There is less than zero evidence that the party proper has any intention of admitting to its incompetence, cruelty, or the many criminal indictments and convictions of its political representatives during the Reagan, Bush II or Trump administrations.
Yes, this country and the whole world could–and should–have been much different if Al Gore had become President. Instead, we’re left with a nation torn apart by domestic terrorists, gun proliferation, racism on the rise, and attacks on the Capitol by lawless vigilantes acting on the urges of a twice-impeached ex-President who lied so often in office that the entire world was gaslighted by his dangerously narcissistic psyche.
His toxic brand of rule led to more than 600,000 Americans dying from Covid-19 infection in a country where it was perfectly possible to prevent such tragic loss of life. But Trump lied to the nation about the threat, obscured its potential contagiousness, and mocked those wearing masks to prevent its spread. Even to this moment in time, his ardently deluded supporters refuse to wear masks and are contracting the Delta variant and dying in the hospital while begging to be vaccinated.
But it’s too late, in most of those case. It’s almost too late to recognize the pandemic that is Republican policy and the anti-government plague it has wrought on the country. As President Joe Biden noted, we have a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” That symbolizes the delusional nature of gaslighting tactics dating all the way back to President Ronald Reagan and his anti-American claim that government must be shrunk down to nothing in order to serve the people better. He was a liar just like the Bushes and the Cheney’s and the Trumps. The McConnells and the McCarthys are just as bad, along with the Fox News and Tucker Carlson crowd. It’s sickening.
None of this would have happened if Al Gore had become President. None of it.
G. Gordon Liddy. A lifetime cheater who claimed a higher ground.
The Chicago Tribune carried a news story about the death at age 90 of G. Gordon Liddy, the well-known mastermind of the Watergate burglary that led to scandal and the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.
Liddy said of his actions, “I’m proud of the fact that I am the guy who did not talk.”
That sort of “loyalty” leads to all kinds of misery in this world. The Tribune article contained this interesting observation. “Born in Hoboken, N.J., George Gordon Battle Liddy was a frail boy who grew up in a neighborhood populated mostly by German-Americans. From friends and a maid who was a German national, Liddy developed a curiosity about German leader Adolf Hitler and was inspired by listening to Hitler’s radio speeches in the 1930s.’
As we all know, followers of Hitler were famous for ‘not talking’ even as the regime carried through on plans for a Holocaust taking the lives of millions of people. All while Hitler claimed to be aiming the nation toward a “higher ground.”
But Liddy liked Hitler because he felt kinship with the man’s journey from frailty to power.
“If an entire nation could be changed, lifted out of weakness to extraordinary strength, so could one person,” Liddy wrote in “Will,” his autobiography. Liddy decided it was critical to face his fears and overcome them. At age 11, Liddy roasted a rat and ate it to overcome his fear of rats. “From now on, rats could fear me as they feared cats,” he wrote.
That instinct for payback against the world seems to have driven Liddy to extremes in ideology that bordered on manic. “While recruiting a woman to help carry out one of his schemes, Liddy tried to convince her that no one could force him to reveal her identity or anything else against his will. To convince her, Liddy held his hand over a flaming cigarette lighter. His hand was badly burned. The woman turned down the job.”
That refusal to join Liddy’s team was an indication of sanity. No completely rational person behaves as Liddy did in that or any other circumstance.
Manic charisma
Liddy’s crazed brand of commitment to cause and manic charisma grew a great following among conservatives as he became a popular media personality. “Liddy learned to market his reputation as a fearless, if sometimes overzealous, advocate of conservative causes. Liddy’s syndicated radio talk show, broadcast from Virginia-based WJFK, was long one of the most popular in the country. He wrote best-selling books, acted in TV shows like “Miami Vice,” was a frequent guest lecturer on college campuses, started a private eye franchise and worked as a security consultant. For a time, he teamed on the lecture circuit with an unlikely partner, 1960s LSD guru Timothy Leary.”
Liddy never hid even his most dire intentions, even illegal motives: “Liddy became known for such offbeat suggestions as kidnapping war protest organizers and taking them to Mexico during the Republican National Convention; assassinating investigative journalist Jack Anderson; and firebombing the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank in Washington where classified documents leaked by Ellsberg were being stored.”
History shows that Liddy worked to subvert the legitimate dealings of government on behalf of Nixon. After serving time for his crimes, he decide to plant roots of public distrust in the government and even law enforcement agents. “In the mid-1990s, Liddy told gun-toting radio listeners to aim for the head when encountered by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. “Head shots, head shots,” he stressed, explaining that most agents wear bullet-resistant vests under their jackets. Liddy said later he wasn’t encouraging people to hunt agents, but added that if an agent comes at someone with deadly force, “you should defend yourself and your rights with deadly force.”
It is no wonder that an America fed such rhetoric for so long grew immune to the use of high-powered, cop-killing weapons such as AR-15s when men like Liddy were spouting anti-government rhetoric over the decades. Liddy normalized such violence in the minds of millions of people. He made them believe that violence equals patriotism and freedom.
Fascist roots and violent instincts
Liddy’s autocratic attitude and fascist roots fueled his violent instincts. These he spilled into the American dialogue without remorse or responsibility. We can draw a straight line from Liddy’s unhinged rhetoric to the brute nature of Trumpism and the insurrection at the Capitol driven by domestic terrorists, white supremacists and stark-raving nationalists claiming.the higher ground even while they devastated law officers charged with protecting the elected official inside.
One can easily imagine G. Gordon Liddy masterminding such a coup, just as he tried to do way back in the 1970s.Trump preached to his followers in advance of his attempted sedition, “Come to DC. It will be wild!”
Trump’s level of corruption exceeded even President Ronald Reagan’s administration, one of the most corrupt in history with a pile of indictments and convictions left behind. The leading contender for Most Corrupt was Colonel Oliver North, who engineered the Iran-Contra affair and then went on to preach in mega-churches that he’s always been on God’s side.
Generations of lies
The liar in chief Donald Trump made a career exploiting cognitive dissonance in his followers.
A significant portion of America has spent several generations worshipping the wrong kind of heroes. That political bulwark Pat Buchanan claims this backwards philosophy of elevating criminals and corrupt bigots to top-level posts is pointing the country in the right direction. In a column titled “Trump–Once and Future Kind,” he praises the ex-president for his supposed success in economic terms. “Trump succeeded in enacting the traditional GOP platform of low taxes and deregulation, producing record-low unemployment — before the pandemic hit”
But Buchanan exhibits cognitive dissonance in his failure to even mention how Trump instantly spoiled economic prospects by selfishly denying the portent of the pandemic because he feared any deleterious effects to the economy. The result was a pandemic that spilled out of control, resulting in the need for economic lockdowns at the state level to assist overwhelmed healthcare systems. Trump’s lack of vision and stubborn claim that the pandemic was not a threat––despite his own admission to Bob Woodward that it was––directly caused the downfall of his supposed plans for prosperity. Trump has no one to blame but himself for his failure as a President.
Yet Trump speciously claimed the election itself was fraudulent because he could not imagine that so many would show up to vote against his despotic lies and political deceptions.
Blame Bush and Cheney, if anyone
Trump liked to blame all of America’s problems on President Barack Obama. But actually, the endless wars and drain on the economy caused by the economic recession under Bush took every effort by Obama to reconcile. He was largely a success at that, and won a second term despite constant Republican obfuscation.
Obama could not cure all of Bush’s mess because the GOP never admitted they were the primary cause. The feckless administrative style of George Bush depended on the direction of Dick Cheney, mastermind of the doctrine that led our country into the war in Iraq under false and badly miscalculated pretenses. That cost the country $7T in Iraq alone, all while torturing and killing its residents in the supposed name of peace. That war was America’s greatest failure, worse in many respects than the Vietnam debacle fifty years before.
All this misguided saber-rattling impoverishes the nation yearly, with a military so bloated by waste that a recent investigation into its accounting procedures resulted in a “no-contest” from the accountants hired to do the job. “We can’t even begin to figure out where the money goes,” was the summary issued, and I paraphrase, but that’s the outcome.
It all comes back to the toxic misappropriation of honesty and truth by men like G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, Dick Cheney and Donald Trump. They are all men raised to believe in themselves as a higher power unto itself. Those who believe in them are worshipping the wrong kind of heroes.
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