Family, friends, nature, books, writing, a good pen and journal, freedom of thought, culture, and peaceful co-relations - these are the things that occupy my mind, my heart, my time...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
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.
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?
“Remember the ladies… Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.” ~ Abigail Adams
One of the treasures of the early American Republic is Abigail Adams, First Lady with President John Adams. She wrote a trove of letters to her husband John during the colonies’ break with Britain and the subsequent American Revolution. She endured President Adam’s long absences as he worked to finance the revolution and then later to construct a binding set of prinicples and laws that would help a new democracy sustain itself and grow. It was a formative time in our nation’s hsitory without the pomp and circumstance we modern Americans expect. The White House was but a dirty shell without furniture or amenities. Building continued during Adams’s Presidency, accomplished by enslaved people in sight of the symbols of freedom and equality.
Now consider that Abraham Lincoln held that the central principle of a democracy is consent of the governed. Consent he said derived from this: If I would not be a slave, so I must not enslave any person. Lincoln called this the “sheet anchor” of the Republic. This is realized through each person’s morality, that we consent to not impose any rule on another person without their consent. This creates high expectations on all Americans to live up to the principals outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I want my freedom of speech protected, I must protect every other person’s right to free speech.
The keystone of our American Democracy lay with the virtues or mores that each citizen must possess to fully engage in a democratic form of governance.
Without these guidewires, democracies risk the rise of despots who would misuse the words of freedom to their own selfish ends. This was the caution Abigail gave to John Adams. Women are providing strong leadership today. Kamala Harris is such a woman. She has a keen sense of humor and eagle eye for connivers and crooks and possesses the clarity and will to stand up for the truth without fear. We witnessed this in the only debate with Trump.
Such women are changemakers.
In the American body politic people’s common sense is kicking in as we are daily shocked by the ravages and rantings of what has become a diminished Republican Party and home to authoritarians.
Over time we have allowed people and parties and other countries to chip away at our democratic norms, twisting their meaning, denigrating their importance.
Republicans of the grand old party are joining Kamala and Tim to prevent men and women who have lost their moral compass and whose behavior is outside the boundaries (democratic norms) that leaders of a democracy must possess.
As more and more citizens join The Party of Opportunity, a new consensus is forming that is center of left and center of right. At least each shares a belief in the principles inherent in democracy and the Constitution – the expected norms by which we operate, legislate, and govern ourselves.
If we can take this yearning for truth and decency, to form a body politic that works together on behalf of all of us, then we may rise again as the most vibrant hope for a democratic way of life on Earth.
It’s possible we might even rescue civil discourse.
Sunrise on the Gulf of Mexico. Photo by Susan Feathers
“John O’Donohue was born in 1956, into a native Gaelic speaking family, on the farm inhabited by previous generations in the Burren Region of County Clare, Ireland. As the oldest of four children, he learned to work alongside his parents and uncle, developing a close kinship with the wild landscape, framed by an ethereal view of a limestone valley and the beckoning waters of Galway Bay. This valley was the shell of John’s soul, forging a deep and powerful connection with the elements shaping him. He was educated at the local primary school, alternating his studies with the farm chores of tending livestock, raising crops and carving peat for fuel, in his youth. John later described the profound influence of his childhood home as, “A huge wild invitation to extend your imagination…an ancient conversation between the land and sea.”
Susan Feathers 