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Robert Jaffee's avatar

“Freedom is not negotiable in America. It was decided long ago that it is a right that comes from a creator, and that right does not need re-interpretation from Doug Wilson and Pete Hegseth.”

Unfortunately for the rest of us, while freedom may not be negotiable, under Trump and Vance; it’s definitely transactional!

And as Sinclair Lewis famously said (or not, depending on the source), “when fascism comes to America, it will be draped in a flag, and carrying a cross!”

One of our problems is we underestimated the evangelical movement in America, and that of their goals and ultimate aims.

This movement is built on fascist principles. God above all, then Church Enders. Then Ministers. Then the Husband/Father. Then the Wife. And finally their adoring and obedient children. And obedience is the point!

Enter Trump: A man who exudes fascism. He adores authoritarian kleptocrats, while despising democracy. And is the embodiment of the Peter Principle; rising to the level of one’s incompetence; although, in fairness, he reached that level in the third grade.

Bottom line, we need to make everyone who supports Trump and the MAGA movement, who aren’t part of the cult, to understand that this is a toxic movement, and one in which the goal is an authoritarian theocracy, not a flourishing democracy; before it’s too late! IMHO…:)

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Lisa Beardsley's avatar

🎯👍👍

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Carol Moore's avatar

I remember reading the Sinclair comment also….your article was reaffirmation of beliefs I totally agree with. Thank you.

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Robert Jaffee's avatar

Thank you..:)

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Urban Hermit's avatar

To understand what Hegseth meant I recommend the documentary film, "Bad Faith" currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

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Betty Moyers's avatar

Don’t do Amazon in any form.

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Anthony j. Santo's avatar

Fantastic documentary! The evil emanating from Ken Copeland is palpable.

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Potter inc's avatar

YouTube rental is available.

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M3333's avatar

Plastered Petey is an imbecile! The Orange Idiot is an imbecile! They are putting the National Guard in Washington as a fascist display so that everyone including MAGA will not focus on the Epstein scandal which shows the Orange Idiot is a pedophile and most likely ran an international child sex trafficking ring with his best buddy Epstein!!! The fascist is a pedophile and GOP stands for Guardians of Pedophilia!!!

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Anthony j. Santo's avatar

And these two imbeciles control the largest military machine and the most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world.

Ali Velshi had anti-nuke activest Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry's, on his morning MSNBC show yesterday. He pointed out that we have the equivalent of 50,000 Hiroshima bombs in our nuclear "deterrent." Far more than necessary if their purpose was as a deterrent. Our military budget is three times that of China, next on the list of heavy military spenders.

We are the cause of the nuclear arms race; we are not reacting to other increases in nuclear capabilities but leading the way. Many nations, understandably believe they need a nuclear deterrent, especially after the failed promise to protect Ukraine from Russian aggression following the break up of the Soviet Union, if Ukraine gave up its Soviet nuclear weapons. They gave them up; the West did not fulfill its promise.

The only reason we spend so much on redundant weapons systems is that we failed to heed Dwight Eisenhower's warning against allowing the development of a military-industrial complex, a situation wherein government spending would keep "defense" industry's extremely profitable and wherein corporate leaders of "defense" industries and their government counterparts were interchangeable.

And now this monstrosity is under the thumb ofa drunken, misogynist fool and his boss, a narcissistic sexual predator in a pattern of increasingly declining cognitive ability.

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Husaria's avatar

And, not to mention what we spend our dollars for defense on.

We still develop, manufacture and maintain cold war era weapons. That’s not to say the current batch of weapons are 1960’s vintage. They’re not. They’re real high tech and fancy. They can shoot a missile from Iowa and hit a Starbucks in Islamabad.

The issue here is that an IED car bomb or suicide bomber vest can take out a power plant, hospital, bridge, radar defense system, a building that houses servers with tons of data, etc, etc. All of those IED threats are low tech and cannot be defended against with our high tech stuff. Take for instance 9 / 11. How would a new tank or battleship protect us against religious fascists on a divine suicide mission?

We are still in a mind set that we will face off against an enemy with a large standing army and fight a conventional war. One good hack of our military satellite system(s) and we’re hosed. How will we shoot all our weapons without a computer network?

Yes, we do need some conventional capabilities. No question. But the military industrialists don’t care about that. They care about the profits, bottom line. This doesn’t make us safer. But, it does make them richer

I don’t expect any of this admin to grasp this. These dotards think that humans and dinosaurs walked together on this earth 2000 years ago.

Do you think they will see the clear and present danger before their eyes?

Puh-lease!

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Mike's avatar

Read Nuclear War, by Annie Jacobsen.

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Anthony j. Santo's avatar

Thanks for the recommendation.

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M3333's avatar

Watching Plastered Petey, Bullshit Bondi, and the Orange Imbecile stand and LIE about Washington, DC!!! What a farce!!!

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Phyllis Greenberg's avatar

You can say it’s a farce but it’s coming to every city in AMERIKA

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Anthony j. Santo's avatar

There are three universal characteristics of Maga leaders and their sheep; they are stupid; they are cruel; they lie freely to achieve their goals.

Trump's nominees to federal courts are uniformly anti-choice.· Trump nominated Joshua Divine to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri on May 6. He openly states that Christians are obligated to impose their version of morality on everyone.

One of Trump's nominees "spread misinformation about medication abortion, including that it 'starves the baby to death in the womb' in a lawsuit aiming to challenge the FDA's approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.'" The Daily Gazette 8/11 p. A7 AP article by Christine Fernando

Of course, the racism and hypocrisy in this lie (misinformation) is obvious. The nominee MUST be aware of the starvation of children in Gaza, accomplished, in part, with American aid to Israel. But the nominee doesn't care about dark complected Gazan children. He is more interested in fulfilling biblical prophecies, including the creation of a greater Israel, because only then can Armeggedon occur.

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Betty Moyers's avatar

Just like Trump the criminal in chief. Stupid, cruel and lies freely.

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Jill Stoner's avatar

Just one caveat. There are a few smart ones, pulling strings behind the scenes, gleefully managing their own agenda with an army of idiots in high places at their service.

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Anthony j. Santo's avatar

You are correct. Thank you for reminding us. Scamevangelists like Franklin Graham and Ken Copeland and politicians like Graham, Cruz, and Rubio, and the mega wealthy like Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg are taking advantage of the vulnerable population.

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Mike's avatar

All part of the plan. The Project 2025 plan.

When I became aware of Project 2025 in September '23 I couldn't believe my eyes. There it was written out, all 900+ pages of it. People I told about it couldn't believe it either and wouldn't until I shared the document and website with them. Now it's the law of the land. What have we done to ourselves?

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Lisa Beardsley's avatar

🎯👍👍

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Jeff Clabault's avatar

White supremacy and Christian nationalism are being fused into a hate fueled, racist, mysoginistic, cabal of power and evil. Notice that all of the targets of the Trump/MAGA actions are non-white and non-male. The majority must stand firm against those horrid creatures and that resistance must be forceful.

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Betty Moyers's avatar

Why aren’t we getting rid of HIM???

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Anthony j. Santo's avatar

If you mean Trump, there are not enough Republicans to impeach him in the House and they still seem as a tool to implements Project 2025.

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Betty Moyers's avatar

Impeachment was not what I was thinking.

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Mike's avatar

Just don't say it too loud.

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Anthony j. Santo's avatar

And what better proof than Homan's admission that "physical characteristics" can justify detainment and arrest or Hegseth's call to end the vote for women and end medical choice in pregnancy or the obvious plan to end public education through subsidizing private, mostly Christian, schools?

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John D.'s avatar

Perhaps an understanding of many Americans today could be brought to light by a visit to Tyrell County, North Carolina. There, at the County Courthouse, is a statue dedicated in 1902. The inscription below the Confederate officer reads “In Appreciation of Our Faithful Slaves.”

The majority of people in that County, through their elected leaders, want it to remain.

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Betty Moyers's avatar

Hit the nail on the head.

Like I said... IGNORANCE

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John D.'s avatar

The abolishment of the Electoral College must take place. We cannot continue to put National Power in the hands of a small number of voters who happen to live in certain states, one of them being this one.

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Betty Moyers's avatar

White trash ignorance is what all this is in a nutshell. White trash voted for white trash. Pray we come out of it with out

as much damage as I think.

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elliott oberman's avatar

Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, seems less focused on doing his job and more interested in making women second-class citizens. A tweet he posted late last week isn’t getting nearly enough attention. In any other administration, there would have been swift calls for his resignation. Here, mostly crickets.

Pete Hegseth was a disgrace before the Senate confirmed him, and he’s done nothing since to rise to the occasion. Currently, 28% of the members of Congress are women. It seems more than likely that people who want to keep women from voting certainly don’t believe they should serve. At a minimum, Hegseth should be called before an oversight committee to explain how his views are consistent with the Constitution and his leadership role in the military. That won’t happen unless we make a lot of noise.

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River girl's avatar

Have you noticed, many of the women military commanders in positions of authority have been "reassigned" by Pete Kegseth.

Can you imagine, if women religious leaders spouted on about not letting MEN vote or have any power.... Heads exploding

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elliott oberman's avatar

All of Trumps picks are the most incompetent useless people, sex abusers haters of democracy where we have multicultural benefit's, they all suck, get them out of office now!

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Kathy  Utley's avatar

https://open.substack.com/pub/kathy4u/p/special-event-christian-nationalism?r=4fywbx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

The Utley Post is hosting an online event on Christian Nationalism and the rising resistance from the Christian mainstream. Please help me spread the message.

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Mike M's avatar

All of the organs of federal government are under MAGA control. The administrative branch, congress and the SCOTUS are gone down the fascist rabbit hole. Is there any chance at all that the Republicans in congress will wake up and what will it take to get them to do their jobs?

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Lynn Johnson's avatar

Great picture of Hegseth with the bottle. Looks like he's practicing for his next meeting with Trump. Everyone says these people bend their knees to kiss his ring, I say they're kissing something. I wouldn't bet it was his ring! Maybe we'll find out if the Epstein files are released. Could be he and Epstein were a lot closer then anyone imagined. Maybe really close.

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Forrest Grump's avatar

It’s time, Steve, to rename your Substack from “The Warning” to “The Twilight Zone.” Only now, sitting atop the nonfiction section.

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Peter Paul Santa Ana's avatar

We fight!

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Steven Jonas's avatar

Suggest that Hegseth and Trump, but more importantly Vought and the Catholic/Right-wing majority on the Supreme Court, read the First Amendment to the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

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Linda Morway's avatar

Wilson is an unfuckable tub of lard mixed with bile,

racism and unadulterated evil.

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Protect the Vote's avatar

Technological Nazi Attack on Gerrymandering and Voting

Marc Elias’ interview with Trey Martiinez sheds light on gerrymandering 2.0 21st century style Nobody in the Texas legislature knows where the new maps were concocted and that’s because the new map comes from the RNC computers that are so sophisticated that the old idea of gerrymandering doesn’t hold a candle to the demographic precision that the Nazis are presently using

With that context then Peter Theil’s Palantir platform appears to be a big player in the scheme of “rigging” elections particularly now that the DOJ is demanding state voter rolls There is only one conclusion that can be made after the 2024 election The Nazis are in the process of “rigging” elections so that there will never be an American free and fair election again

This should send a clear message to WE the People We have to organize like WE have never done before to thwart this authoritarian takeover Protest Protest Protest and form coalitions with neighbors friends relatives family Join Indivisible.org and make your voice heard in order to organize the resistance movement Aug13 join One Million Rising put together by Indivisible to help organize the movement Once coalitions are formed then WE the People can begin to boycott companies and governments across the country to demand that oligarchs/authoritarians do not run this country

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Martin Dillon's avatar

I wish we would all stop complaining about Trump and his minions and start complaining about the enabling Republican lackeys in the Senate who do the bidding of Trump. If we can't get even a handful of them to recognize the approaching collapse we are heading under Trump, we are lost.

They have to understand that they, personally, have more to lose remaining silent and complicit than finding the courage to go against Trump. To date, they have not been assailed in their public life in anything like the tone and volume they deserve. They should not be able to walk the streets of any city without being roundly booed. Like Dershowitz on Martha's Vineyard, they should not be allowed on the public square. Force them to drive to the microphones of Fox News using limousines with darkened windows.

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