Politics – Page 3 – Susan Feathers

IT IS BIDEN: LEADERSHIP & WISDOM

Biden at the 75th Anniversary of the founding of NATO, our great alliance of democraces across the Atlantic, delivers a powerful message. I am solidly behind President Biden as the leader who has the greatest vision of America’s role at home and in the world. Let him lead: elect him to a second term to finish his vision of a free world and more just America, ready and able to help stem climate impacts and secure America’s and the world’s futures.

Biden’s Record: A Great President

Heather Cox Richardson’s July 9 Substack Letter reviews Biden Administration’s accomplishments from the viewpoint of a historian as opposed to “horse race” media reporting.

The most consequential investment in renewable energy and justice for Energy Transistion required to secure American families and the world community during climate change. It is underway and already transforming communities across America while employing Americans in great jobs at unprecented rates. States, red and blue, are benefitting economically.

A record of high jobs creation, low unemployment and business growth. Support of workers’ rights, wages and benefits, and support of unions. Inflation is low and steady.

Legislation to reduce college debt, improve health care, support families and children through reduction of poverty; calling out companies that drain wealth from families through high interest rates and inflated costs of products and services. Reduction of the high cost of pharmaceuticals, and allowances for Medicare to negotiate the cost of life-saving drugs for all Americans.

Standing for the rights of LGBTQ and Transgender individuals to the protections of the Constitution as citizens with equal rights to the bounties of citizenship and the community of a freedom-loving people.

Maintaining the separation of church and state as a fundamental tenet of the U.S. Constitution since its founding.

Unwavering support for women’s reproductive rights and healthcare. This is one of the most important protections of women’s rights now struck down by a partisan Supreme Court. Biden promises to sign reproductive rights into law when reelected for a second term. This is about health and freedom of choice.

Assertive foreign policy with NATO and in new alliances in the Global South and among Pacific allies to protect democracy across the world. Unflinching commitment to support Ukraine in its justified defense against unprovoked aggression by Russia. Biden will continue to support Ukraine to victory with a strong NATO commitment. NATO has grown stronger, adding new countries in Europe during Biden’s term of office. Support for Israel while negotiating for justice for Palestinians in Gaza. We are safer with Biden’s leadership. He has the long vision younger Americans do not possess at this critical time in history. This is the time to support wisdom and experience.

Call me an optimist, but to me Americans “get” all this and will come through to victory against the second internal threat to our democracy in recent history with Trump and the MAGA Republicans. This is not supposition. We experienced four years of Trump in the White House and its termination with an insurrection in the Capitol and assault against the rule of law by convicted criminals. The latter is only the latest odd ball and dangerous internal grab for power and suppression of liberty among our people seen from time to time in America’s history. Recall: the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Now we are the watchmen and we must not fail Liberty.

America is about the steady and determined growth toward plurality and diversity as promised in our founding documents and principles. We are about the steady march to freedom and liberty for all. We have stumbled in the past and sometimes lost that vision, but in this time, in this place in history the future of life on Earth is at stake. Its too high a danger to fail now.

On the Precipice

I consider Citizen’s United the Trojan Horse that released democracy’s enemies into the Body Politic. ~ Citizen for Freedom

July 3, 2024

As a young child I loved this week which contains both the 4th of July celebration and my birthday. It was a time of great celebration of our country’s role protecting freedom at home and abroad. 1950. I was five years old and IKE was Predident. American and Europe were free from the Nazi menace and rebuilding Europe and its allies, forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a guardrail for democratic nations, pledging to come to each other’s aid when enemies of freedom attacked unprovoked.

Is that world I knew as a child and grew up in – the family, the nation, and a free world – passing?

This present day America which has grown rich and powerful, is in a world of hurt. Gnawing at its foundational principles and structure is a cancer fed by disinformation and superwealth of individuals and corporations empowered by the Citizen’s United ruling – the agent of its dissolution. Corporations do what they do not by consent of their employees but by the inclinations of its leadership: superrich CEO’s and Board members. Whose freedom of speech did Citizen’s United protect?

This abberation of the law is what gnaws at the heartwood of American Democracy. It empowers wealth to choose for us. We can see clearly today that it matters who we put on the Supreme Court. The justices who made the ruling on July 1, 2024 extending Presidential Immunity from the law, struck deep into our essential freedoms, making it not only easier but likely that Presidential power will be abused. It circumscribes citizen’s freedoms making it easier for men to become despots and citizens no more than serfs.

The current Supreme Court has made one ruling after another in which we witness the slow but sure weakening of the Body Politic: 1) Circumscribing the Voter’s Rights laws; 2) Eliminating guardrails on discrimination; 3) Striking down Women’s Rights; 4) weakening the administrative state which has long stabilized the democracy from one adminstrtion to the next; and 5) re-balancing the Balance of Power in our democractic structure and function by giving unlimited power to the Presidency though immunity from the law.

They struck at our basic tenet: no one is above the law in America.

While in theory, a President with character and true loyalty to the basic laws and tenets of a free people would not abuse this power, the fact is that we are now left with the elimination of the legislature’s role as a check on Presidential power (i.e. the people’s consent). Or, the burden of proof just got harder.

Freedom-loving Americns must rise to this singular moment in the country’s history. While we are not perfect by any means, we are still a democracy where voters determine its future.

No matter one’s opinions on political philosophy, you cannot deny that Joe Biden is a man of character and his Cabinet has worked tirelessly to help average Americans. The Blue Ticket has always been for the average citizen but this year the Blue Ticket is about preserving the Republic.

We are at the precipice of freedom.

A Free People is the final refuge of Liberty. Today I call upon everyone I know to stand against the Supreme Court’s decision, to flood the election precincts on November 5 and vote the Blue Ticket to turn the tide away from authoritarianism and flowing back toward freedom of individuals to govern by consent only.

See it for what it truly is: the Vote of Our Lives.

Democracy Health Checkup

American culture is a busy, somewhat fraught place as individuals and groups strive to influence the direction of markets and ideas. More and more these activities take place on digital platforms that are globally accessed and influenced by everyone from elementary school children to foreign governments and posers (human and artificial). Evermore diverse and without much internal control except that which participants choose to shape, democracies depend on the individual’s commitment to discerning the truth.

John Adams reminded citizens that “facts are stubborn things,” meaning that truth cannot be corrupted. Yet in today’s digital environment, truth is battered, shaped, recolored and redressed until it represents its opposite. An example is the kidnapping of democratic language used to support MAGA athoritarianism. Citizens duped and caught up in the web of lies are aiding authoritarian forces that seek to destroy the liberal order established after WWII and the system of governance established at our founding.

This article from Pew Research reports on the growing number of Americans who favor technology companies or the U.S. government restricting false or violent information. What do you think? What are the risks? Gains? What are the challenges the average citizen faces in attempting to discern the truth in today’s marketplace of ideas and influencers?

A world made whole

From my earliest memory, I have loved being in nature. I frolicked in the out of doors, savoring every second I could:

rolled down a hill with gravity pulling me faster and faster, out of control; jumped into a fragrant pile of leaves trusting it would cushion me;

plunged into a pool when the air popped with heat; shushed down a quiet, snow covered slope toward a tiny chalet, smoke twirling above its chimney;

rocketed a backhand, uncoiling the power of my body to propel a fuzzy ball on an accelerating arc to my opponent’s feet.

These are the gifts of being alive on Earth, this magnificent creation.

Only here can I be carried away by the scent of orange blossoms; only here can I gaze into the blue mirror of a lake at mountain peaks and passing clouds.

I come away from digital kingdoms that replicate at exponential speed; I come away to a world made whole, and wholly holy.

For years I sensed Earth’s wholeness, whenever I remembered and returned.

For years I pursued knowledge to understand why it was that way.

And then, I just accepted the world was made whole.

And now, I realize I was, too.