May 2024 – Susan Feathers

“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.”

The words are taken from a letter written to Abigail Adams from the President’s House by Adams in 1800.

Character Matters: Let’s Examine the Facts.

The 2020 Election was fair and square.
The former president and hundreds of citizens attempted to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power – an insurrection. Deaths and injury and denegration of the Capitol building were witnessed across the country and the world.
The current MAGA rep for President is morally flawed and unfit to lead America.
President Biden and his Administration have demonstrated a commitment to the welfare of citizens and passed major legislation for the betterment of families, small businesses, and working Americans. Biden is the first among recent Presidents to form and pass comprehensive funding to support a clean energy transition with major goals to combat climate change.
The American economy under the Biden Administration, is booming and by every measure has rebounded after the Pandemic along with American businesses and families. America has the strongest economy and job growth among countries across the world.
Biden’s character is rock solid and proven over decades of leadership in the U.S. federal government. His record stands.
The world is always a very tricky and challenging arena for foreign policy. Under the leadership of Biden and Anthony Blinken, Secretary of State, NATO is robust and added democratic nations after Russia attacked Ukraine.
Our support of Ukraine’s young democracy is vital to democracy across the world and our own democracy. We need to gain back the bravery and national cohesion that the Ukarinian citizens are showing every day of this war.
Finally, America has always been an ally of Israel.
Biden is both honest and wise. Age is little import given what we are up against. Our country is focused on age but would we be better off to invoke John Adam’s blessing that only honest and wise men (and women) inhabit the White House?

Third party candidates and sitting out on your vote will destroy our democracy.

Every vote for the Democratic ticket is needed now to prevent an autocracy and Christian Nationalist government from forning in our Republic. We must come together on that blue ticket as never before; many of you are lifetime Republicans, many of you are inflamed over the murder and injury to innocent Gazans (as we should be). Together we must get past this real threat from MAGA which is clearly and openly telling us they intend to destroy the democracy we have maintained together for nearly 250 years. They tell us openly they intend to install a Christian Nationalist government. Women are one of their targets. After losing the right to choose, families now face the real threat that contraceptives will be imperiled making family planning impossible. I still cannot believe this is happening in the America I know and love.

Think about what’s at stake. See what you can do.

The Children of Gaza

600,000 children have no education.

This morning on National Public Radio Morning Edition, Ricardo Pires from UNICEF described the collapse of the education system in Gaza. Here is the whole segment.

No matter your thoughts about what must be done in Gaza or how the Israeli govenment must act in defending itself against the horrendous attack by HAMAS, the children’s needs are immediate and cannot wait. Food, medical care, safety — these are priorities. But, the fact that there are no longer school buildings for education, and there is no longer a safe place to learn — not even to be sent to neighboring countries due to walls that prevent them from going anywhere — further traumatizes children. Education is their future and their solace when the world they knew is shattered. How many of us have been saved emotionally and physically through education in which we keep building skills, understanding, and resilience? Even with chaos around us, if we can keep learning with our peers, we can sustain hope.

Are we now to tolerate the loss of a future for Gaza’s children?

This morning I wrote my own government about creating educational games and stories that could be included in aide packages along with food and medical supplies. It seems so little, even an afterthought, in light of how opposition to the Israeli Army’s ongoing assault must grow among us. It may even be happening as I know that UNICEF and SAVE THE CHILDREN consider education a key part of protecting children from trauma and mental stress.

All the oxygen sucked from the American public’s attention by the presumptive candidate for MAGA Repubicans and his sorry life and character are not an excuse to turn a blind eye to what is happening in Gaza.

University and high school students who grieve lawfully on behalf of Gazans are on the right path. We all must join them in a collective call to end the war.

Contact your reps in Congress! Contact your Senators.

Donate to UNICEF

Donate to the UN Food Program

5 Ways Children are Impacted by the Gaza Israel Conflict

Riding on this election?

Nothing less than our survival.

Aldo Leopold Shack and Restored Prairie. Photo by Susan Feathers

The rights of individuals as written in the U.S. Constitution and a system of secular governance and freedom of religion are the principles at the heart of the American Republic.

Our European ancestors and writers of the Constitution had all lived under the tyranny of kings and queens and the Church, often in cahoots with an authoritarian government.

The Constitution was written to free individuals from those bonds to determine their own lives within a system of laws and justice. Protestant or Catholic, Jew or Muslim, atheist or agnostic, Calvanist or Puritan, Amish or Mennonite, and so on… each with the freedom to pursue their religious lives. The Bill of Rights freed citizens to determine for themselves how to live their lives. As long as a citizen’s choices did not infringe on another’s, they were free to pursue ideas and courses of action to develop happiness and meaning. Actions, property, social norms were subject to laws that protect individuals’ freedoms.

This is what is unique about American governance: at its core is the belief that all persons are created equal.

At the heart of the MAGA Republican movement is the rejection of this principle. All men are not equal and, America should be a Christian country.

UNDERSTAND THAT THE INTENT OF THE MAGA REPUBLICANS IS TO END THE FORM OF GOVERNANCE ESTABLISHED IN THE CONSTITUTION.

What are the actions promised by the candidate they support:

End all restrictions on oil and gas development;
Slash and Burn the institutions of the Republic and replace them with an authoriarian governing system;
Further suppress women’s reproductive rights including birth control;
Rid the government of environmental and climate change experts, departments and regulations associated with them. We are free to kill ourselves, our families, fellow human, plant and animal lives on planet Earth.
Support authoritarian leaders and governments. Putin and Russia, Kim Jong Un and North Korea; Viktor Orbán and Hungary; Xi Jingping and China. All enemies of democracy.

ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION? THIS IS NOT A NORMAL ELECTION. THIS IS ABOUT THE LOSS OF OUR DEMOCRACY AND OUR WAY OF LIFE!

Listen to historian Heather Cox Richardson and historian Jeffrey Rosen interviewed by Ken Burns. Richardson published Democracy Awakening and Jeff Rosen, The Pursuit of Happiness this year. They remind us what democracy is and how we always agreed about these principles among our political parties. We debated how those principles should be carried out and protected, generation after generation. This was the American Project. Now, one party intends to destroy these governing principle for an autocracy.

New Orleans Book Festival

Do Not Be Distracted

“I see a safe journey, I see a safe return.” ~ Kundun, 1997, about the 14th Dalai Lama. A Martin Scorsese film.

“Do not be distracted,” a Buddhist master says to the young Dalai Lama as he comes into the enlightenment. Well, friends and neighbors, I say this to the American public when discernment of the truth is critical among America’s voting public. We ARE the ones standing and acting at a dangerous turning point where how we vote, who we vote for will determine whether America holds together, as it was intended to be – a country of mutually crafted laws and norms, the rule of law and freedom to participate in governance and a free exchange of ideas.

Gnawing at the gates of Freedom are wolves, artful dodgers, hoodwinkers, and cowards. Don’t let them in!

“If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, its probably is a duck.”

National Consitution Center in Philadelphia is a treasure trove of discussions that can help us stay clear on what our Founders established and how we strive to perfect and interpret it through each generation of Americans. Check it out!

Left, Right and Center podcast.

Think for yourself.

Readers: what other sources of balanced, fact based sources do you recommend? Leave the link to them in the comment function. Thanks!