Return to Beauty
My sources of inspiration are men and women who have graced our world by writing or painting or creating soliliques about nature, about the land, about the nonhuman existence. Trees, bears, bugs, soil, water in all its forms. The human, with our species ability to think, rarely understands how thought stands between the experience of being alive and the life of the mind.
Thought can stand between wonder and the mind – our political constructs a recent example. I have to relearn this periodically. Nature is an endless well of creativity and joy and the font from which the best thoughts arose when our species had ready and more intact nature for inspiration.
People can be wells of beauty, too. Think on a little child and the wonderment in his eyes…before thoughts circumvent that pure sense of wonderment into an altered form of itself. The people whom I turn to for inspiration go to nature often and some eventually return to a life in the wood.
Somewhere in “there” we might reside in joy and be a part of a constructed world. We would need to rethink almost everything about modern Western culture that places a dollar value on everything. Everything.
I came to believe that what is on the news, the fear-saturated society in which we have become experts at scaring the s**t out of ourselves, is real. Then, I go to the trees or the mountains and step into wonder and commune with them. I had forgotten we are not in a political jail without a get-out-of- jail free card. My God, I got sucked down that well of artificiality, again!
It’s not that I step completely away from our self-made social terribles, but only that I remember what is real, where my soul resides, and how to stay sane when the world we’ve made becomes insane, as it has in my country now. We got here because so many of us believed a contructed image, a constructed reality that is anything but real. Because of that, we have lost our minds.
I step toward beauty. I step toward love and communion as one of God’s beings on a vast and beautiful planet spinning in a universe more awesome than we can ever conceive. I understand that I do not understand.
Photo by Susan Feathers
Requiem for America
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
Mozart never finished the score to the Requiem mass. The story of how it was finally finished is a drama itself. See this history. **What is important here is that others picked up the mantle to finish it and ultimately this work was performed and now lives across the planet as hope in the face of death.
I leave this with readers who mourn the loss of our democratic principles in the election of Donald Trump and the rise of autocracy in the USA.
I am broken-hearted on this day, November 6, 2024. But, I will not yield to oppressive forces in my homeland. Our Constitution is truth manifest. These are times when Americans have faltered in their discernment of what the 2024 election means for the American experiment. God help us.
A Republic – If We Can Keep It
Benjamin Franklin’s famous response to Elizabeth Willing Powell at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, rings with great meaning today.
Our Republic’s integrity, its very existence, will be decided on this day in American history. Let’s ask Mrs. Powell’s question today.
Well, Dr. Franklin, what have we got, a Republic or a Monarchy?
Photo by Susan Feathers
It is about the Constitution
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generations. John F. Kennedy
Will the peaceful transfer of power and the rule of law prevail in the United States of America?
Dear Readers, America is at the brink.
How a candidate more UNqualified to lead this nation, and a man who committed crimes against the country, when he incited an insurrection, EVER WAS PRESIDENT continues to baffle me.
Autocracy is a creeping malice that begins when Americans forget their obligation to think for themselves, to learn the truth and speak their minds about that truth. To be an American takes effort on everyone’s part.
It saddens me that in today’s America we have forced candidates to speak about what they will give us, what they will do for us. We no longer discuss what we should be collectively under the mantle of this great nation’s mandate: All people are created equal and leaders govern under the consent of the people. We have obligations and responsibilities to keep democracy strong, as well as having rights.
No one has said this better than a notable Republican Judge. Michael Luttig was appointed by George H.W. Bush and served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006. Here is the link to his recent Opinion in the New York Times. I encourage readers to take time to read it.
NY Times Opinion by the Honorable Micael Luttig
Concessions to a Dictator
Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny and most recently Freedom, offers a Substack message about the moguls and news agencies “Obeying in Advance” – in anticipation of a dictator coming to power.
See this video about the first step in the rise of tyranny.
It is the lowest form of behavior, to cower in the belief that a dictator will reek havoc on you and your business interests for your political position. That has made our nation smell very bad. Our body politic reeks of cowardice and self aggrandizement today as we witness the cowering of our news agencies and people with too much money and power, kneel to the dictator. We have not learned from the 20th Century which documents how Hilter and the Nazi movement came to power.
Jeff Bezos (billionaire owner of Amazon and The Washington Post) decided the paper will not endorse Kamala Harris as promised. In that, he has lent his endorsement to a dictator promising retribution, destruction of our democratic government, promises to support the rich and powerful, and head honcho for a right-wing, Christian nationalism movement building over the last decade with the emergence of a man not fit to be our President.
The Washington Post not endorsing Harris and Walz to remain neutral right when the nation teeters on the knife edge of tyranny is a massive error of judgement. Anticipation of retribution: what a cowardly lot you all are.
Americans, drink your coffee and stand in front of a mirror. Do you want to be ruled by powerful megawealthy and people who purport to care about you but don’t give a damn in reality?
Let them eat cake! Echoes from history are not whispering today, they are shouting! The news agencies turning their backs on you and your family to be “neutral” or to endorse a vindictive man with no regard for the American Republic, let alone understanding of what it is, will regret their action. History will record it. But there will be decades of suffering before it ends.
Adding this message from the Editor of the Guardian today, 10-26-24:
Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief |
| What does the richest man on the planet really want from a Donald Trump victory?That is a question our reporters and columnists have been answering this week as Elon Musk ramps up his involvement in the US presidential election. Musk has been giving away millions of dollars to voters in swing states who sign a petition tied to his political action committee (Pac). Oliver Laughland watched the potentially illegal spectacle play out in Pittsburgh on Sunday.The most obvious answer to what Musk wants, wrote Blake Montgomery, tech editor for Guardian US (and the new author of our TechScape newsletter), is a dramatic burst of deregulation in the US and beyond. That point was made clear in this analysis by Nick Robins-Early and Rachel Leingang, two Guardian US reporters who specialise in the threat of mis- and disinformation. The pair looked at how Musk has ploughed millions into Republican campaigns and used his 202m-follower X account as a megaphone to promote Trump. On Politics Weekly America, Rachel and host Jonathan Freedland considered how culture wars play into why Elon Musk needs Trump to win, and Adam Gabbatt and Lucy Hough discussed Musk’s millions on our must-listen daily Election Extra podcast too.Blake revealed this week how Musk’s pro-Trump Pac is pouring millions into Facebook ads, while Hugo Lowell exposed some potentially bad news for Trump’s campaign, revealing claims that canvassers working for Musk’s America Pac may not have knocked on the doors they claimed to.None of this is what those of us who believe in democracy, equality and a fairer distribution of wealth would want, and it’s our journalistic challenge to hold the world’s richest man to account. As Marina Hyde put it: “There have been vested interests as long as there has been US politics, of course. But no robber baron of the Gilded Age was ever this relatively rich, or as artlessly open about what – and whom – a relatively tiny amount of money can buy.”This week Tesla’s profits jumped again, making Musk even richer and even more powerful. Our scrutiny of Musk over the past few years has certainly caught his attention (he has called the Guardian “insufferable” alongside other much ruder messages) – and our editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris this week won’t have helped on that front. But while the former president has a man worth $250bn in his corner, we have readers like you. If you can afford to support the Guardian today, please do. |
Patriotism or Nationalism?
Jon Meacham Goldman lecture at the Cullman Center
Begin at 5:13.
Sit with Yourself Before You Vote
Before you vote, sit with yourself in quietude – if possible. Think about which candidate represents your values. Which candidate has earned the right to lead a representative democracy based on consent of the governed, the rule of law, and the belief that no one is above the law?
Who shows the character and knowledge (experience) to represent us at home and abroad? Who is consistent in the values that govern their public life?
Who lifts people up? Who presents a positive vision of who we are and where our nation can go together? Who brings us together without putting people down? Finally, who would you bring home to meet your mother?
Actions speak louder than words. As President John Adams once famously wrote from the newly built White House: “I Pray Heaven To Bestow The Best Of Blessings On This House And All that shall hereafter Inhabit it. May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under This Roof.”
Our world is changing. Don’t miss the chance to be a part of assuring our nation continues on its long and hopeful path as the flagship of democracy.
STOP, WAIT, CONSIDER.
Where Climate and Politics Meet
If the last year has been about a phase change in our planet’s climate, the next year has to be about a phase change in our planet’s politics. ~ Bill McKibben on Substack, August 22, 2023
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the only candidates who are engaged at the national and state levels to manage climate adaptation and the clean energy transition – both of which lead to reduction of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide that are drivers of heating the atmosphere and thus the oceans.
Oceans have been a sink for heat in the atmosphere throughout the Earth’s history. The ice sheets at the polar caps also reflect incoming sunlight, another of Earth’s modifying functions. Both of these processes have managed to keep the Earth’s temperature at a temperature that supports life. It had been so for 4.3 million years. Humans have long benefitted from the planet’s incredible renewing forces that have made life so abundant and predictable.
Then came the industrial age and with it the burning of fossil fuels. Hundreds of years of wanton deforestation has also removed another natural carbon dioxide “sink” that once kept the Earth cool. The Earth’s temperature has been rising since the industrialization of farming and later industries that burn coal, gas, and other fuels put too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
We have been made aware of this for a century. (Actually, Alexander Humbolt, in the 1799, warned people that the Earth was heating up from human induced causes.) But, I’ve learned something about humans. We are short term thinkers on the whole. When it shows up at our door, we might act but that is not even a guarantee. The problem with that kind of thinking is that once the heat is in the oceans and the atmosphere, it stays there for centuries.
I watch as so much of our heartland is being destroyed by floods and fires, and hurricanes with massive flooding events. Iconic cities and natural areas are disappearing before our eyes. And with them, our livlihoods and lives.
With the other party denying climate change, heads in the sand, while extolling how brilliant they are, please vote for the team already leading on climate mitigation and solutions for our children and all the children to come.
For two centuries the USA has been the biggest emitter and so we have contributed most to the warming of the atmosphere and oceans. Cry babies, some who hold Congressional offices, cry out that China is the biggest emitter today, ignoring our much longer contributions. We have to become adults!
Its about our generation standing up for future generations. Our Children’s Trust recently put it very succintly.
Vote for Harris and Walz as if your life depends on it, because it does.
The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
Photo by Susan Feathers. Pensacola Beach on Santa Rosa Island, Florida
How We Miss the Mark in This Election
The 2024 Election is a struggle between democracy and not democracy. It is not an election between political parties of a free people living in a Republic.
“One of the great ironies of how democracies die is that the very defense of democracy is often used as a pretext for its subversion. Would-be autocrats often use economic crises, natural disasters, and especially security threats—wars, armed insurgencies, or terrorist attacks—to justify antidemocratic measures.”
― Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future
As if we have no creative gene, our major media outlets are giving autocrats, known as MAGAS, equal air time and legitimizjng them in an illusion of discussing policies and issues. Policies of authoritarinism are presented as a legitimate party platform and discussed on national television as the choice American voters must decide between.
Presenting the American public with the appearance that the “issues” are about the economy and the border is insanity. I expect our media to be free enough to educate the public by telling the truth and nothing but the truth.
Tonight is a debate between Tim Walz and a so-called VP candidate. This is normalization of evil.
What will become of us when we cannot discern the truth of this moment?
Updated on October 4, 2024 – We the People Podcast from the National Constitution Center discusssion with Anne Applebaum: Autocratic Threats Around the World. https://constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/podcasts/anne-applebaum-on-autocratic-threats-around-the-world
Other Resources
Timothy Snyder on Substack Thinking about…
Heather Cox Richardson on Substack Letters from An American
Susan Feathers 