Seeing is believing
This is a season of burning.
When it comes to what Winston Churchill called “The Great Republic,” our Cleon has arrived. Trump is the demagogue that the founders feared — an unworthy man without honor, decency, conviction, integrity or shame with a talent for lying, inciting knieving, stealing, abusing, conning, grifting and blustering.
He is a tornado of idiocy with unparalleled destructive potential.
He is proof of the Turkish proverb that when a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a sultan. The palace becomes a circus.
Let us not pretend that what is happening in front of us is not happening.
The New York Times, the world’s largest puzzle company, has chosen either denialism or gaslighting as their narrative frame for covering shocking events that occurred on live television, which in some sick game of kabuki insists we didn’t see and comprehend.
The paper of record shares something with Donald Trump. It may be the only institution in America besides Harvard and the NFL as arrogant and cloistered as he is.
Apparently, the “Grey Lady” has seen officiating at a Kansas City Chiefs game, and decided it shall be the model for the next variant of access journalism. Madness doesn’t begin to describe it.
It appears that The New York Times has seen the moment, and said, “What would Walter Durante have done?” Maybe they even rubbed his pulitzer for inspiration. Self-censorship is always a travesty at a news organization.
There has been a gathering for a tradition that is the cornerstone of the American civilization and the greatest invention in our history — the peaceful transfer of political power at the direction of We the People. We call it an Inauguration.
Until Donald Trump assaulted the Congress, and sent a mob to overthrow the elected government of the United States, hang the vice president, kill the Speaker of the House and shred the US Constitution, the Inauguration of an American president had always been a moment of supreme dignity.
Whether in front of a flag draped casket and blood-stained 36-year-old widow and mother of three, or in front of a million people on the west front of the US Capitol who watched Barack Obama take the oath, it has always been a simple and sublime affair — until it wasn’t.
The Inauguration was lunacy projected as normalcy.
The media coverage was mostly an abomination. What went on at CNN, ABC and NBC News was appalling on January 20, 2025. In fact, spectacularly so.
Trump’s festivus of aggrieved billionaires who share his love of self-pity was a desecration of our most noble ideals. Apparently Zuck is affronted by being called an oligarch.
It made a mockery of them. Over and over and over again. The seating of the richest men in the world in front of the Cabinet was a corrupt act and an antagonizing one. Trump is baring his teeth, and making clear that the oligarchs are his puppets, much stronger than the Chinese and Russian ones. Much richer.
He is showing the world that he is in control with the tools of a latter day Oz, protected by a gilded guard of winged tech monkeys who opined about utopia before they delivered dystopia.
Perhaps it is best to start by looking back at the moment immediately before Donald Trump descended via escalator in Trump Tower into the 2016 presidential race on June 16, 2015.
Three thousand four hundred and seventy-nine days have passed since then, and the end stage of a great American travesty and tragedy is at hand.
What lies beyond it is unclear because behind us is a vast wreckage field where shards of shattered trust and the jagged edges of obliterated integrity lay scattered.
The American people have lost faith in their society, and become estranged from the nation’s most important institutions. They disdain the media, politics, politicians, political parties, powerful tech companies, billionaires, corporations, and a system where there seems to be one set of rules for people at the top, and one for everyone else.
Trump’s rise is a symptom, not the cause, of America’s current cancer.
A man like Trump simply does not get elected to the presidency of a stable and healthy country. He is a marker of decay and a catalyst for it. His first presidency was a vicious cycle of degradations, national humiliations, collaboration, betrayal, failure and incandescent cowardice. It has led us here — to this epic hour during which the citizens of the United States must make a decision for the future that will either begin an era of renewal and reform, or one that cripples American democracy and murders the republic born in 1776.
Whatever the choice may be, it will be made by this generation of Americans on the eve of America’s 250th anniversary of independence.
Maybe we wouldn’t have gotten here if there wasn’t so much arrogant disdain for the achievements of our ancestors and the magnificence of their most noble acts.
There has never been a just or perfect era in America’s story.
Instead, there has been the opportunity for progress and the expansion of justice handed to each generation of free citizens who can all claim the legacy of America’s founding. The unfolding story of American liberty is among mankind’s greatest achievements.
Understanding the story and knowing the details is essential to its survival and continuation. Let us talk about George Washington.
Washington is America’s most important and wisest teacher. His lessons were about humility. There is great strength through authentic humility. America should remember this:
This painting by John Trumbull of General Washington resigning his commission hangs in the rotunda of the United States Capitol. Notice the chair larger than the rest draped with a cloak.
It symbolizes Washington’s act of resigning from his position of power. Turnbull considered this to be amongst the “highest moral lessons ever given to the world.”
It was past this painting that Trump’s violent mob of insurrectionists carried the Confederate flag and defecated on the floors and smeared their excrement on the walls.
It is around this painting these type of pitiful images were taken:
Washington entered the chambers of the Maryland State House where the Congress of the Confederation had convened for a highly scripted ceremony planned meticulously to the last detail.
The date was December 23, 1783, and Washington had come to lay down his power.
He could have been Caesar.
Instead, he became president six years later when his country called him to service again.
Washington could have been a tyrant or a king. He chose a different path because of the magnificence of his character.
The great tragedy of this moment is that Trump’s delusions simply needed to be repudiated with the truth. Yet there was none to be found on a vast desert of MAGA cowardice, where the essence of the American system was left undefended, lest it piss Trump off.
The fear of mean tweets is all it took to undo the act of humility that made the nation spring to life. Combined with the selfishness of an unworthy opposition and their national gaslighting that took place around Joe Biden, it has come undone.
When Trump sent his mob to reverse Washington’s submission to Congress and make him dictator, they paraded past the old painting of George Washington. The criminals who attacked on Trump’s orders smeared excrement on the walls of the Capitol and urinated on the floors of the US Senate and House. They desecrated America’s capitol and founding with treachery and venom. It was a despicable act, and it was created by Trump. It was his moment. His actions were a declaration of repudiation against what Washington fought to create.
Shameful doesn’t begin to describe it then or now.
The decision by CNN to suppress discussion that, for the first time in American history, power was being handed to someone who has no intention of keeping his oath was remarkable.
What we witnessed was an act of pretend, an illusion that will be remembered as the last gasp of an elite who led us to this awful place, facing a crisis that will grow until its obviousness is clear to most every American.
Perhaps then they will be ready for a “Better Deal.” Until then, we will get darker days.
The news of the day was fourfold
First, political power transferred.
Second, it transferred to a convicted felon who tried to overthrow the government with an enemies list and a plan for retribution and empire-building by military adventurism, despite claiming his longing for peace.
Third, his benefactor and the richest man in the world delivered the fascist Hitler salute in a state of exultation and almost orgasmic ecstasy.
Fourth, he pardoned approximately 1,500 violent criminals and seditious extremists who attacked the Congress in the very same room that Trump summoned his court and proclaimed he had been “saved by God to make America great again.” No sicker or malignant words have ever passed the lips of an American president. Ever.
These people will be Trump’s ready thugs. They are his stormtroopers. Have no doubt that by the time they march from the White House to the Capitol in a recreation of the disgrace they will be an army. They will be an army of thugs who intimidate dissent and disagreement into hiding, while Trump stifles information with a little help from his friends, conducts a daily bread and circus for the media, and cons the country into believing he is strong and popular when he is not.
There was no room for We the People at Trump’s carnival of capitulation. With all due respect to “Morning Joe’s” Donny Deutsch, Donald Trump has not “co-opted the heartbeat” of the people, but you, sir, have no doubt caught his attention with flatteries spun that could not be won on bended knee upon even on the plushest Mar-a-Lago carpets.
We the People were frozen out of Trump’s version of the Inaugural, just like all of the realities swirling about it.
Like anything Trump touches, it was gaudy and low-class.
When Mr. McGuire told young Benjamin Braddock that “there’s a great future in plastic,” he wasn’t kidding.”
Every American who believes in the promise of this nation will be called to make “good trouble.”
Even the most blinded should see that something is amiss when evil that is real can be denied as unreal:
This happened, and it is absolutely clear what it is.
It is a Sieg Heil.
It is a fascist salute by a fascist making his move.
He is a threat to global peace, who is as arrogant, corrupt and unbridled than any man has ever been.
What we are witnessing is a monstrous birth.
I urge you to follow and spread the truth about Elon Musk by following Popular Information and Musk Watch by Judd Legum, who represents the very highest ethical standards in the broken business of journalism.
He’s the real deal.
There is a crisis in America and soon there will be a global crisis. There are forces who do not believe in democracy who are pragmatic enough to appreciate it can only all be toppled at the ballot box.
I urge you to recognize the crisis.
It is now.
It is happening.
Remain calm.
I stand in absolute opposition to Donald Trump and the disgrace he has brought to the American presidency.
I urge that you do too.
If it is true that Martin Luther King is correct and the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice then January 20, 2025, will be seen as a moment of infamy and ignominy.
Whether it be resolve for something, defiance against something, faith for something or faith against something, so long as you believe in the US Constitution and the ideas of the United States of America then I ask you to lift up the voices who champion human freedom.
There is no other way.
I wish to associate myself with Pedro Sánchez, prime minister of Spain.
Hear him, and pass it on:
The democracy we defend is not one tweet, one vote; it’s one person, one vote.
Prime Minister Sanchez is a champion of freedom.
At a very fundamental level, Donald Trump cannot dampen the ideas with which America has lit the world. They have spread everywhere. They cannot be contained anymore than truth can be bottled and sold.
Do not be afraid of the snarling menace before you.
More importantly, do not ignore or disengage from it.
Indifference towards what is happening is as despicable as what is happening — all of it is a metastasis, a contagion.
What faces you is less a tiger — or even a naked Gorka leering through a window with a knife and a fascist medal — than a simple choice.
Indifference is a grave sin.
Are you indifferent?
Yes or no?
Are you weak?
Can you hear the prophet Elie Wiesel calling us to moral arms at the edge of the millennium?
He knew. He tried to tell us:
Do not be afraid.
Instead, be grateful.
Trouble has come in our time, and not that of our children.
Let it be known that Donald Trump is weak.
His approval level is 47 percent.
A room full of sycophants is evidence of a cult — not approval from the nation.
Perhaps it is also evidence of an alliance with a cult of opportunity married to a cult of personality.
Whatever it may be called it is an appeasement of the wrong in the name of self- interest. It puts the country last in the name of Trump, who should never be confused with the American people or the United States. They are the world’s most capable grifters and the American people are their marks.
Let it be known that Trump’s approval level will drop precipitously in the months ahead.
He will grow weaker and weaker because he is surrounded by a phalanx of incompetence and competing rivalries who hate each other.
This hatred within MAGA must be stoked by an insurgent political campaign that highlights the hypocrisy and corruption from within. This will destabilize the operation, and that is good for America and world peace.
The careless dismantlement of every stabilizing institution in the world with nihilistic zeal, fueled by a spirit of revenge, is evidence of the type of diseased mind that commits great crimes.
It seems that the philosophy of the Joker from “The Dark Knight” has come to life. Let it all burn seems to be the goal of Trump’s rage.
Let him rage, and let him snit.
Trump’s majority is a sham. It is a plurality, and it will drop soon enough.
Trump’s opposition is singular. It is the American people and them alone now.
Many of you ask what can be done?
Take action.
Find two partners, and organize a meeting with the goal of 10 people attending.
Build from there. Political power is taken, not given, in America.
Last question: shall Donald Trump lock up Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, who dared to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to him?
Poor Donald. He’s confused. Blowhards like Franklin Graham and Cardinal Dolan told him he was Christ.
Shall Director Patel send a squad to get Bishop Budde?
Where shall she be sent?
Who might be next?
Look at Trump’s rage during her sermon. Look at the rottenness etched on the faces of so many people in this photo who melt when confronted by a message that calls for better than their poisonous dogma and self-serving tripe:
For the record, Jesus Christ had a message. Dr. King understood that there was political utility within it. This is how Trump collapses. He is but a money changer in the temple of democracy. He will lose his table to a righteous fury when it is time .
Here it is. The gospel of Matthew:
The crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.
The Beatitudes
2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons[a] of God.
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Trump’s inauguration was a blasphemous event. It was shameful. At Bishop Budd’s inaugural service he was confronted by a truth more powerful than he can comprehend.
Look at the sneering, the rage, the entitlement
Observe the lack of humility and disdain for dissent.
There is no empathy. Nothing. Just anger and hatred, mixed with certitude about the greatness of the man in the mirror, who must never be told no — or else.
Fight back against the coming tide.
Do not get in line.
Do not lay down your dignity. After all, Trump already filled his court.
Beautiful heartfelt speech by Bishop Budde! Wow, amazing that she got in. Amazing Grace indeed. I watched in real time and was blown away.
The felon has twice praised Elon’s voting machines for assistance in PA. Please check into this.