#and federal judge i hope you live a long prosperous life

[totally-normal-guy]

Sentences that are both relieving and terrifying at the same time.

[snowwhitelass]

I’m pleased to be here today to discuss who I’ll be supporting for president, and why.

It was the honor of my life to represent my state, Arizona — my family’s home — in the United States House and Senate for eighteen years. I am a conservative. I’ve always felt that my conservative beliefs and values were best expressed in the Republican Party. I was a Republican long before the president ever called himself one, and I will be a Republican long after identifying as such is no longer useful to him. Principle does not go in and out of fashion, does not chase ratings, or play to the base, or care too much about polls. And principle is the provenance of no one party. That is one of the things I am here to talk about today.

The other thing I am here to talk about is the future — both of my party, but more importantly, the future of our country.

I was raised on a cattle ranch in Northern Arizona. Goldwater country. When I was a kid, the Republican Party under President Reagan was brimming with ideas, full of purpose and principle. It was coherent, and inspiring, and idealistic. So much so that it awakened the imagination of a kid from the town of Snowflake, and a whole generation of other kids just like him. Made us think big thoughts, and of our place in the world, and of what it meant to be an American in America, the shining city on a hill.

With Reagan, a conservative’s vision of America as the indispensable nation was benevolent and big-hearted, a beacon to the striver and to the subjugated and those locked behind an ideological wall that divided the world into free and oppressed. It was morning in Reagan’s America. It wasn’t perfect, but it was always getting better. We were the sum of our goodness, not our gripes — of our resolve, not our resentments.

I got into public service believing that for our politics to be healthy, the American government needed people who believed as I do, but also people who believed differently from me. This has become somewhat of a novel idea. But it is the genius of our founders that the Constitution forces compromise. Governing is hard. Democracy is hard. Decency shouldn’t be that hard, but apparently it is. You know what’s easy? Name calling. Demagoguery. The politics of vengeance is easy. Dehumanization requires very little talent.

By raging at each other, our minds vacant of reason and reeling with ill-will and tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, we have given in to the horrible tribal impulse to first mistake our opponents for our enemies… then become seized with the conviction that we must destroy that enemy… seemingly oblivious to the fact that not only are we not enemies, we are each vital organs in the same body.

It’s as if in order to save itself, your brain decided to destroy your heart. That’s about the level of care we are currently bringing to the proceedings. There is a sickness in our system, and we have infected the whole country with it.

We’re all old enough to remember when we elected presidents who spoke to our highest ideals and aspirations as a nation, not to our darkest dystopian fears. I can remember when, once an election was settled, a new president would reach out a hand to those who had opposed him, and pledge to do right by all Americans, not just those who were loyal to him.

That’s the way presidents once sought to lead and govern. In fact, it is the way every other president in the modern era, Republican or Democrat, tried to conduct himself in office. Each possessed a keen awareness that a president’s principal role is to serve not himself or his interests or the interests of his clan, but the people of the United States. That was once the American way.

Those of us of a certain age in this country have also had the rare good fortune of growing up and into adulthood not having to think too much about the consequences of our votes — or even whether we vote at all in a given election.

For our entire lives, through some very fractious political periods, we have taken steady self-governance for granted, and that is a luxury that so many of our fellow human beings living in other countries have never had for a single day of their lives.

But the story of the past 3 ½ years is the story of the power that we vest in the presidency, and the consequences when a president does not use that power well. And these times prove the folly of taking anything for granted.

In 2016, one candidate running for the Republican nomination described our current President as a “chaos candidate” and if elected he would be a “chaos president.” Can anyone now seriously argue against this proposition?

Of course, in 2016 the President was a private citizen, and thus was unaccountable for the chaos he caused. And these traits of the man who would become the standard bearer of my party were bad enough when exhibited by a mere candidate for president.

In 2016, it was bad enough when for months in advance of the election, the Republican nominee for president claimed falsely that the coming election would be rigged. Now, as president of the United States, he has said, and I quote: “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.” What kind of president talks like that? What kind of American leader undermines confidence in elections in his own country, as part of his strategy to hold power? This is extraordinarily dangerous to a free society and it stands to inflict lasting damage to our democracy.

It was bad enough when as a candidate he attacked a federal judge because of his heritage, saying that Judge Gonzalo Curiel couldn’t preside fairly over a certain case because Curiel’s parents were from Mexico. As President, he has only intensified his attack on judges. He has interfered in cases involving his friends and threatened jail for his opponents, demonstrating how little he knows or appreciates about the independent administration of justice in America.

In 2016, it was bad enough for a mere candidate for president to sweet talk the Russian dictator, calling Vladimir Putin a “strong leader for his people,” as if “his people” had a say in the matter. Watching that man as president stand with Putin at Helsinki and take the dictator’s side, defying his own intelligence community and denying the ongoing Russian attacks on our elections — was shocking and appalling. In that moment, and in so many other inexplicable moments of deference to dictators, a president of the United States degraded his office and diminished America’s role as leader of the free world.

It was bad enough in 2016 when as a candidate he resorted to calling his opponents childish names. That behavior in a president — which has only gotten worse, is an embarrassment to the office. Do any of us want our children to emulate this behavior?

I could go on, but the litany is all too familiar. It is apparent by now that the president’s behavior has not and will not change, whatever hopes we Republicans might have entertained about the office changing the man.

Some of my conservative friends will say, yes, we don’t like his behavior, but he governs as a conservative. Here, today, I will say to my fellow conservatives: Whatever else you might call the behavior I have just described, it is most assuredly not conservative. Indifference to the truth or to the careful stewardship of the institutions of American liberty is not conservative. Disregard for the separation of powers — the centerpiece of our constitutional system — is not conservative. Governing by tweet is not conservative. It’s not even governing.

And to the refrain — Well, it’s all about the Supreme Court, I say: To fall back on Supreme Court appointments as the last remnant by which we define a once vibrant conservative movement should offer little solace to conservatives.

Three conservative principles have defined and animated the Republican Party over the past several decades. A belief in limited government, a commitment to free trade, and a recognition that strong American leadership around the globe makes America a more secure nation and the world a better place.

So, how are we doing with these principles?

Well, we were running trillion-dollar deficits even before the coronavirus hit us. We have destroyed foreign markets for our goods and services. We have threatened security agreements that have kept the peace for nearly three quarters of a century. We have offended allies who we will desperately need to face China and other long-term threats to our security and prosperity. For no good reason.

Can any of us stand here today and claim that our party has remained faithful to conservative principles during the President’s time in office? No, we cannot.

If we are honest, there is less of a conservative case to be made for reelecting the President than there is a blatant appeal for more rank tribalism. And further division. And more willful amnesia in the face of more outlandish presidential behavior.

I cannot and will not be a part of that. There simply is no future in it. To my fellow Republicans who, like me, believe in the power of conservative ideas — ask yourself: Will we be in a better position to make a conservative case for governing after four more years of this administration? I think we all know the answer.

So here we are today. During the 2016 election, given what I had already seen during the campaign, I knew I could not vote for the President. Like many of my colleagues, I chose to vote for a third-party candidate. Today, given what we have experienced over the past four years, it is not enough to just to register our disapproval of the President. We need to elect someone else in his place, someone who will stop the chaos and reverse the damage.

Putting country over party has a noble history here in Arizona. In 1992, Mr. Republican, Barry Goldwater, endorsed a Democrat running for Congress over the Republican he felt would not represent the party well. Goldwater hadn’t traded in his conservative credentials. Far from it. He simply believed, in that case, that the conservative cause would be better served over the long term if the Democrat prevailed.

And that is what I believe today, in this election. And that is what a growing number of Republicans believe and are declaring today as well.

I have never before voted for a Democrat for president. But I’ve been asked many times over the past four years if I, as a conservative, could vote for a Democrat for President. “Sure,” has been my ready answer, “if he or she were a Joe Biden-kinda-Democrat.

Well, the Democratic Party just nominated a Joe Biden-kinda-Democrat, whom I am confident will approach his constitutional role with the reverence and dignity it deserves. I know that he will reach across the aisle, because that’s what he’s done his entire career.

After the turmoil of the past four years, we need a president who unifies rather than divides.

We need a president who prefers teamwork to tribalism.

We need a president who summons our better angels, not a president who appeals to our baser instincts.

That’s why we need Joe Biden.

If we have learned anything over the past four years, it is that character matters. Decency matters. Civility never goes out of style. And we should expect our president to exhibit these virtues.

I have known Vice President Biden for two decades now. I served with him in Congress for much of that time. He is a good and decent man. I haven’t always agreed with him, and there will be many policies on which we will disagree in the future, and that’s okay. The steadiness of leadership, and the health and survival of our democracy — those things far supersede any policy issues on which we might disagree.

And this much I know: With Joe Biden as president, we will be able to preserve the civic space wherein Republicans and Democrats can go back to merely disagreeing about issues of policy, without fear of revenge or reprisal.

That day cannot come soon enough.

And so, it is because of my conservatism, and because of my belief in the Constitution, and in the separation of power, and because I am gravely concerned about the conduct and behavior of our current president that I stand here today — proudly and wholeheartedly — to endorse Joe Biden to be our next president of the United States of America.

America’s best days are ahead. Go Joe.

Thank you very much.

27 Prominent Republicans endorse Joe Biden for President.

[davidshawnsown]

MESSAGE IN HONOR OF THE 243RD YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Ladies and gentlemen, to all the people of the United States of America, to all our remaining living veterans of the Second World War of 1939-1945 and of all conflicts past and present and their families, to our veterans, active servicemen and women and reservists of  the entire United States Armed Forces, to all the immediate families, relatives, children and grandchildren of the deceased veterans, fallen service personnel and wounded personnel of our military services and civil uniformed security and civil defense services, to all our workers, farmers and intellectuals, to our youth and personnel serving in youth uniformed and cadet organizations and all our athletes, coaches, judges, team managers and front office staff, sports trainers and sports officials, and to all our sports fans, to all our workers of culture, music, traditional arts and the theatrical arts, radio, television, digital media and social media, cinema, heavy and light industry, business and the press, and to all our millions of people of the free world:

Today, as one united people, we mark yet another year since the pivotal events of July 4, 1776, the day in which the 13 colonies of then British North America officially declared independence from the United Kingdom as the first of the great republics of the modern world, the United States of America, through an historic act made by several representatives of the Second Continental Congress - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman – in the city of Philadelphia, Pennslyvania, and approved by almost the whole Congress on this very day 243 years ago led by its president John Hancock, which was the climax of a month-long efforts by its delegates on the future political destiny of the colonies, which had been at war against the Royal Navy and British Army for over a year.

The shots fired at Lexington and Concord 244 years ago was only the spark that began the long road towards the independence longed for by the American people and her armed forces supported by the governments, people and armed forces of France and Spain in the Revolutionary War,which would end in 1781 with the victory in Yorktown and the subsequent Treaty of Paris much later. It was only the first of many events that would shape the identity and character of our homeland to the superpower and fame it enjoys today as a beacon of liberty and independence to the millions all over the globe. Today the billions of Americans remember with deep pride and honor the millions of men and women of her Armed Forces, the National Guard and state defense forces, as well as of the local state and community police and fire departments, beach lifeguard, forest firefighting and emergency management service units and the federal law enforcement organizations who in times of peace and war have offered their lives for the defense and protection of our homeland and people, many of them paying their ultimate sacrifices for the cause of the freedom and independence of the republic born out of the great revolution of 1776, as well as the people who through their time and talents brought glory and honor to the homeland and spread to their world the American way of life and culture, as well as our place as a sporting powerhouse, and ordinary citizens of all ways of life who even risked their lives to save others and thus placed their marks on the altar of our independent republic. In this wide land streching from the Pacific to the Atlantic, either in the snowy expanses of Alaska, the tropical lands of Hawaii, and in our vast and diverse landscape, whenever the people of all races, genders, nationalities and religions live, work and gather, as the nation has changed so much in these past 243 years, the character of this people will never change – a people humble, happy, loving, friendly and ready to share with others and the world at large.

It is with great honor that Americans everywhere mark this great day with great celebration as the whole country celebrates yet another year of independence and recalls once more the sacrifices of the millions of men and women in the uniformed services, the hard work and labor of her people in all fields of endeavor and the proud culture and tradition it shares to the millions of people everywhere in the globe. In these evolving times for the Union, her people and the uniformed services of the republic and the local communities, together with the nation’s industries and corporations, united more than ever as one, are determined, standing under one flag, to show the world that no matter what happens every American man and woman will be ready to risk life and limb to live the values that are part of the heritage of our vast country as the beacon of freedom and independence, the hand of assistance to the suffering of disasters everywhere, the strong arm of defense of the free nations of the world and the spirit of friendship, cooperation, excellence, sportsmanship and fair play of her people.

Today, as the people of these United States of America celebrate as one nation the 243rd anniversary of her independence, I join once more in sending my greetings together with all the peoples of the free world to the American people who once more on this day of remembrance of the origins of the republic and of the freedom they have so cherished and in which millions fought and died,  rejoice as one nation as they commemorate the day in which this great republic was created during a period of national revolution as a union of 13 states united against a common aggressor, which in the years afterward grew up into the country known today as one of the strongest, prosperous and independent countries of the world. Today, as we joyfully commemorate this historic day in the history of humankind, Americans everywhere march on as one in the streets in every parade and celebration all over this great country  honoring the men and women who have made this day come true while keeping alive the memory of the millions of men and women who served in its uniformed services and have made the nation proud through their services in various fields of endeavor, in sports, culture, industry and in film, radio and television and the millions who died in the service of this great country in the uniformed services and in civil acts of heroism. All over our great world, the Fourth of July thus is a great day in which we join hands in celebration of this very birthday of the first of the great republics of the modern world, a very day of great importance to remember and commemorate the memory of the heroes who built this nation and of the men and women who have given the republic honor, glory, prestige and distinction and have flew the Stars and Stripes all over the world. To all our dear military, police, fire, EMS, forest service and border guard servicemen and women, agents and detectives and our  veterans of military and civil security operations within the country and abroad, as well as to all our national athletes and coaches in sports, we remember you today with our deepest respect and gratitude, for the service you gave for this country will be honored for generations to come. Today and always you will always be the beacons of hope for the youth of our tomorrow and for the millions of the people of the world an inspiration and guide towards a brighter future for all of humanity. And to all who died for the sake of this great nation, today and always, we keep you all in our remembrance in our memories, for your legacies which sustained the young nation in the early years of her existence will continue to guide our republic today and in the years to come as it walks forward the third century of independence and beyond. As the United States and her people march on as one to the 250th Indepedence Day in 2026, more than ever, it marches on with the spirit of determination, bravery and courage of her heroes and martyrs and the great spirit of freedom and independence that has led this country out of the womb of foreign dominance and into victory after victory in the past, the very same spirit will guide this country today and into the future.

In conclusion, may we who join the American people in celebration of this the 243rd year anniversary of the historic declaration of the independence of the United States of America declared on this day in Philadelphia by the delegates of the Second Continental Congress, as one united people, mark this important day with fitting tributes and always hold on to the legacy and promise of this great land for the inheritance of our future generations and joyfully celebrate the very day in which the American people broke the chains of British colonial governance, which brought great suffering to the peoples of the colonies which make up the first states of our Union, and opened wide the door of a new era of the history of humanity with the creation of this the first independent republic in the American continent and in the modern world!

ETERNAL GLORY TO THE MEMORY OF THE MILLIONS OF MEN AND WOMEN OF THE UNIFORMED SERVICES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WHO DIED FOR THE INDEPENDENCE AND LIBERTY OF THIS GREAT COUNTRY AND HER PEOPLE!

ETERNAL GLORY TO THE MEMORY OF ALL THOSE WHO MADE THEIR MARK AND HAVE DONE GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND HAVE BROUGHT FORTH HER NAME TO ALL CORNERS OF THE WORLD!

LONG LIVE THE 243RD ANNIVERSARY OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

LONG LIVE THE VALORIOUS, INVINCIBLE AND LEGENDARY AMERICAN NATION, ITS EVER-VICTORIOUS PEOPLE, AND THE ACTIVE AND RESERVE SERVING MEN AND WOMEN IN SERVICE OF ITS ARMED FORCES, THE NATIONAL GUARD, STATE DEFENSE FORCES AND CIVIL UNIFORMED LAW ENFORCEMENT AND EMERGENCY SERVICES!

LONG LIVE THE VETERANS OF THE UNIFORMED MILITARY AND CIVIL SECURITY AND DEFENSE SERVICES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

GLORY TO THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, GUARDIAN DEFENDERS OF OUR DEMOCRATIC WAY OF LIFE, OUR FREEDOM AND OUR LIBERTY AND GUARANTEE OF A FUTURE WORTHY OF OUR GENERATIONS TO COME!

GLORY TO THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF JULY 4, 1776, ONE OF THE GREATEST EVENTS IN THE HISTORY OF HUMANITY, THE GREAT EVENT THAT TRANSFORMED 13 COLONIES INTO ONE, MIGHTY, STRONG AND GREAT COUNTRY, THE FIRST REPUBLIC OF OUR MODERN WORLD AND OF ALL OF HUMANKIND!

GLORY TO THE FIRST AND THE GREATEST OF ALL THE FREE NATIONS OF THE WORLD, OUR GREAT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

MAY OUR ALMIGHTY GOD BLESS THE LAND OF THE FREE AND THE HOME OF THE BRAVE, OUR GREAT AND ETERNAL HOMELAND, OUR INDEPENDENT COUNTRY, THESE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

0000h, July 4, 2019, the 243rd year of the United States of America, the 244th year of the United States Army, Navy and Marine Corps, the 125th of the International Olympic Committee, the 123rd of the Olympic Games, the 78th since the beginning of the Second World War in the Eastern Front and in the Pacific Theater, the 74th since the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the victories in Europe and the Pacific, the 7th since the attacks on Benghazi, the 14th of Operation Red Wings, and the 72nd of the United States Department of Defense and the modern United States Armed Forces.

Semper Fortis

John Emmanuel Ramos-Henderson

Makati City, Philippines

Grandson of Philippine Navy veteran PO2 Paterno Cueno, PN (Ret.)

(Star Spangled Banner) (Taps) (Rendering Honors)

[chicojimj]

Stacey Abrams Rebuttal to State of the Union 2019 Good evening, my fellow Americans. Happy Lunar New Year. I’m Stacey Abrams, and I am honored to join the conversation about the state of our union. Growing up, my family went back and forth between lower middle class and working poor. Yet, even when they came home weary and bone-tired, my parents found a way to show us all who we could be. My librarian mother taught us to love learning. My father, a shipyard worker, put in overtime and extra shifts; and they made sure we volunteered to help others. Later, they both became United Methodist ministers, an expression of the faith that guides us. These were our family values – faith, service, education and responsibility. Now, we only had one car, so sometimes my dad had to hitchhike and walk long stretches during the 30 mile trip home from the shipyards. One rainy night, Mom got worried. We piled in the car and went out looking for him - and eventually found Dad making his way along the road, soaked and shivering in his shirtsleeves. When he got in the car, Mom asked if he'd left his coat at work. He explained he’d given it to a homeless man he’d met on the highway. When we asked why he'd given away his only jacket, Dad turned to us and said, “I knew when I left that man, he’d still be alone. But I could give him my coat, because I knew you were coming for me.” Our power and strength as Americans lives in our hard work and our belief in more. My family understood firsthand that while success is not guaranteed, we live in a nation where opportunity is possible. But we do not succeed alone – in these United States, when times are tough, we can persevere because our friends and neighbors will come for us. Our first responders will come for us. It is this mantra - this uncommon grace of community - that has driven me to become an attorney, a small business owner, a writer, and most recently, the Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia. My reason for running for governor was simple: I love our country and its promise of opportunity for all, and I stand here tonight because I hold fast to my father’s credo – together, we are coming for America, for a better America. Just a few weeks ago, I joined volunteers to distribute meals to furloughed federal workers. They waited in line for a box of food and a sliver of hope since they hadn’t received a paycheck in weeks. Making their livelihoods a pawn for political games is a disgrace. The shutdown was a stunt engineered by the President of the United States, one that defied every tenet of fairness and abandoned not just our people - but our values. For seven years, I led the Democratic Party in the Georgia House of Representatives. I didn’t always agree with the Republican Speaker or Governor, but I understood that our constituents didn’t care about our political parties – they cared about their lives. So, when we had to negotiate criminal justice reform or transportation or foster care improvements, the leaders of our state didn’t shut down – we came together. And we kept our word. It should be no different in our nation’s capital. We may come from different sides of the political aisle; but, our joint commitment to the ideals of this nation cannot be negotiable. Our most urgent work is to realize Americans’ dreams of today and tomorrow. To carve a path to independence and prosperity that can last a lifetime. Children deserve an excellent education from cradle to career. We owe them safe schools and the highest standards, regardless of zip code. Yet this White House responds timidly while first graders practice active shooter drills and the price of higher education grows ever steeper. From now on, our leaders must be willing to tackle gun safety measures and face the crippling effect of educational loans; to support educators and invest what is necessary to unleash the power of America’s greatest minds. In Georgia and around the country, people are striving for a middle class where a salary truly equals economic security. But instead, families’ hopes are being crushed by Republican leadership that ignores real life or just doesn’t understand it. Under the current administration, far too many hard-working Americans are falling behind, living paycheck to paycheck, most without labor unions to protect them from even worse harm. The Republican tax bill rigged the system against working people. Rather than bringing back jobs, plants are closing, layoffs are looming and wages struggle to keep pace with the actual cost of living. We owe more to the millions of everyday folks who keep our economy running: like truck drivers forced to buy their own rigs, farmers caught in a trade war, small business owners in search of capital, and domestic workers serving without labor protections. Women and men who could thrive if only they had the support and freedom to do so. We know bipartisanship could craft a 21st century immigration plan, but this administration chooses to cage children and tear families apart. Compassionate treatment at the border is not the same as open borders. President Reagan understood this. President Obama understood this. Americans understand this. And Democrats stand ready to effectively secure our ports and borders. But we must all embrace that from agriculture to healthcare to entrepreneurship, America is made stronger by the presence of immigrants - not walls. Rather than suing to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, as Republican Attorneys General have, our leaders must protect the progress we’ve made and commit to expanding healthcare and lowering costs for everyone. My father has battled prostate cancer for years. To help cover the costs, I found myself sinking deeper into debt -- because while you can defer some payments, you can’t defer cancer treatment. In this great nation, Americans are skipping blood pressure pills, forced to choose between buying medicine or paying rent. Maternal mortality rates show that mothers, especially black mothers, risk death to give birth. And in 14 states, including my home state where a majority want it, our leaders refuse to expand Medicaid, which could save rural hospitals, economies, and lives. We can do so much more: Take action on climate change. Defend individual liberties with fair-minded judges. But none of these ambitions are possible without the bedrock guarantee of our right to vote. Let’s be clear: voter suppression is real. From making it harder to register and stay on the rolls to moving and closing polling places to rejecting lawful ballots, we can no longer ignore these threats to democracy. While I acknowledged the results of the 2018 election here in Georgia – I did not and we cannot accept efforts to undermine our right to vote. That’s why I started a nonpartisan organization called Fair Fight to advocate for voting rights. This is the next battle for our democracy, one where all eligible citizens can have their say about the vision we want for our country. We must reject the cynicism that says allowing every eligible vote to be cast and counted is a “power grab.” Americans understand that these are the values our brave men and women in uniform and our veterans risk their lives to defend. The foundation of our moral leadership around the globe is free and fair elections, where voters pick their leaders – not where politicians pick their voters. In this time of division and crisis, we must come together and stand for, and with, one another. America has stumbled time and again on its quest towards justice and equality; but with each generation, we have revisited our fundamental truths, and where we falter, we make amends. We fought Jim Crow with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, yet we continue to confront racism from our past and in our present – which is why we must hold everyone from the very highest offices to our own families accountable for racist words and deeds – and call racism what it is. Wrong. America achieved a measure of reproductive justice in Roe v. Wade, but we must never forget it is immoral to allow politicians to harm women and families to advance a political agenda. We affirmed marriage equality, and yet, the LGBTQ community remains under attack. So even as I am very disappointed by the President’s approach to our problems – I still don’t want him to fail. But we need him to tell the truth, and to respect his duties and the extraordinary diversity that defines America. Our progress has always found refuge in the basic instinct of the American experiment – to do right by our people. And with a renewed commitment to social and economic justice, we will create a stronger America, together. Because America wins by fighting for our shared values against all enemies: foreign and domestic. That is who we are – and when we do so, never wavering - the state of our union will always be strong. Thank you, and may God bless the United States of America.

[douglasacogan]

Notable criminal justice reform discussion in draft 2020 Democratic Party Platform

As reported in this NPR piece, "Democrats met remotely Monday afternoon to approve a lengthy policy platform that seeks to balance the interests of the Democratic Party's more moderate and liberal factions."  Here is a bit more about the meeting and its product:

The virtual meeting came three weeks ahead of what will be one of the strangest party conventions in U.S. history: No delegates and few Democratic dignitaries will travel to Milwaukee to nominate former Vice President Joe Biden to be the party's standard-bearer. Instead, the convention will be held mostly remotely, with only Biden and a few other speakers appearing from Milwaukee.

The draft platform, released last week, draws heavily from a report issued this month by joint task forces organized by Biden and his onetime campaign rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. It tries to bridge the gap between Sanders' progressive politics and Biden's more moderate approach to governing.

The criminal justice discussion and recommendations, which appear at pp. 32 to 35 of this 80-page draft DNC platform, includes a number of reform proposals that track ideas and language emerging from the 110-page Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force recommendations discussed here.  Here are some sections that should be of special interest to sentencing fans:

Democrats know we can end the era of mass incarceration and dramatically reduce the number of Americans held in jails and prisons while continuing to reduce crime rates, which have fallen steadily from their peak nearly three decades ago....

A growing number of states have recognized it is unjust — and unjustifiable — to punish children and teenagers as harshly as adults. We believe that if you aren’t old enough to drink, you aren’t old enough to be sentenced to life without parole. The federal government will incentivize states to stop incarcerating kids, and develop community-based alternatives to prison and detention centers for youth and invest in after-school programs, community centers, and summer jobs to provide opportunities for young people at risk....

It is past time to end the failed “War on Drugs,” which has imprisoned millions of Americans — disproportionately people of color — and hasn’t been effective in reducing drug use. Democrats support policies that will reorient our public safety approach toward prevention, and away from over-policing — including by making evidence-based investments in jobs, housing, education, and the arts that will make our nation fairer, freer, and more prosperous....

Substance use disorders are diseases, not crimes.  Democrats believe no one should be in prison solely because they use drugs.  Democrats will decriminalize marijuana use and reschedule it through executive action on the federal level.  We will support legalization of medical marijuana, and believe states should be able to make their own decisions about recreational use.  The Justice Department should not launch federal prosecutions of conduct that is legal at the state level.  All past criminal convictions for cannabis use should be automatically expunged.  And rather than involving the criminal justice system, Democrats support increased use of drug courts, harm reduction interventions, and treatment diversion programs for those struggling with substance use disorders....

Sentencing decisions should be based on the facts of each case, including the severity of the offense and individuals’ circumstances. Democrats support allowing judges to determine appropriate sentences, which is why we will fight to repeal federal mandatory minimums, incentivize states to do the same, and make all sentencing reductions retroactive so judges can reconsider past cases where their hands were tied.  We believe it is long past time to end the federal sentencing disparity between crack and powdered cocaine, which has contributed to the disproportionate imprisonment of people of color.  And Democrats continue to support abolishing the death penalty....

Democrats are proud that the Obama-Biden Administration commuted the sentences of more than 1,700 people serving unjust sentences following thorough review of their individual cases, and we support the continued use of the President’s clemency powers to secure the release of those serving unduly long sentences.  We denounce President Trump’s inappropriate use of clemency to help his friends and political cronies avoid justice.  We also support establishing an independent clemency board to ensure an appropriate, effective process for using clemency, especially to address systemic racism and other priorities.

Democrats support ending the use of private prisons and private detention centers, and will take steps to eliminate profiteering from diversion programs, commercial bail, electronic monitoring, prison commissaries, and reentry and treatment programs.  Democrats believe prisoners should have a meaningful opportunity to challenge wrongful convictions and unconstitutional conditions in prisons. We also believe that too many of our jails and prisons subject people to inhumane treatment, and will work to end practices like solitary confinement for adults and juveniles and ban the use of restraints on pregnant federal inmates.  Incarcerated people must not be denied access to vital medical care or unnecessarily exposed to disease, as they have been during the COVID-19 pandemic.  And Democrats will pursue a holistic approach to rehabilitation, increasing support for programs that provide educational opportunities, including pursuing college degrees, for those in the criminal justice system, both in prison and upon release.

Democrats believe in redemption.  We must deepen our commitment to helping those who have served their time re-enter society, earn a good living, and participate in our democracy as the full citizens they are.  We will aim to ensure access to transitional housing for returning citizens, support expanded access to mental health and substance use treatment, and will stop the practice of reincarcerating people for technical violations of probation or parole. Democrats support federal and state efforts to “ban the box” and will make it easier for returning citizens to access work opportunities through the Job Corps.  The formerly incarcerated should not be blocked from exercising their voting rights or accessing public services, including Pell Grants and nutrition assistance, available to other free citizens of the United States.  Continuing to punish a person after they have rejoined the community is both cruel and counterproductive.

There are lots of consequential (and politically and practically challenging) reforms being proposed here, ranging from pledging to try to do away with the death penalty and all mandatory minimum sentencing provisions to significant marijuana reforms to the creation of a clemency board to making "all sentencing reductions retroactive."  If the Democrats could achieve even a portion of what's called for in this document in the coming years, it would make for a truly historic period in federal criminal justice reform.

And yet, though I like a lot of what I see here, I am still sad some of the most interesting aspects of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force recommendations being left out.  Specifically, that document called, inter alia, for "issu[ing] new federal guidelines that advise prosecutors not to overcharge cases in order to coerce plea deals, or to pursue harsher sentences in order to penalize citizens for exercising their right to a jury trial"; for "encourag[ing] states to invest tax revenue from legal marijuana industries to repair damage to Black and brown communities hit hardest by incarceration"; for "task[ing] the U.S. Sentencing Commission with conducting a comprehensive review of existing sentencing guidelines and statutory sentencing ranges, with the goal of generating legislative recommendations, promulgating new guidelines, and issuing formal guidance to reduce unreasonably long sentences and promote rehabilitation"; for "creat[ing] a U.S. Reentry Commission to conduct a comprehensive review of barriers to reentry, with the goal of taking executive action and proposing legislation to remove as many as possible." 

A number of progressives were concerned that the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force recommendations were too moderate on a number of matters, and it seems that this draft 2020 Democratic Party Platform is reining in the reform vision and ambition still further at least in the criminal justice arena.  That said, both the language and the proposals of this document are far more far-reaching and reform-minded than any comparable document in recent decades.  Though not as bold as some might hope, the fundamental boldness of this draft platform should not be underappreciated.

Prior related post:

Notable criminal justice reform recommendations from Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force 

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[aion-rsa]

Making the Case for Fear City: New York vs the Mafia

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Director Sam Hobkinson’s Fear City: New York vs The Mafia details the historic investigation and prosecution of New York’s criminal Commission. The resulting convictions of the law enforcement actions marked an end of an era. New York was no longer under the thumb of mob bosses; businesses maintained control of their goods, manufacturing and trafficking; the thin blue line thickened.

As the documentary points out, the Mafia was untouchable when they controlled illegal street trade, but when they made offers which legitimate business couldn’t refuse, law enforcement stepped in and cleaned up. Fear City: New York vs The Mafia depicts this specific period in New York as a war zone. “The Bronx was burning every night,” Guardian Angel founder Curtis Sliwa says in the documentary.

While much of the day-to-day peril of city living has been exaggerated into legend, this is what drew a British director to a project on the Five Families: Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Luccese.

“We grew up in the ’70s and ’80s in the UK. For us, New York was a mythical place—violent and exciting,” Hobkinson said in a press statement. “You wouldn’t go there, because everyone said it was too dangerous—and for that reason, it was exotic. This was an opportunity to tell a panoramic tale of New York, from the wiseguys on the streets all the way up to the lawmakers in City Hall, at the most dramatic point in its history. It was also an era that had its own cinematic heritage that we were all inspired by.”

Jon Liebman, who is chairman and CEO of Brillstein, worked for four years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York around this time before he was appointed Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division. The Council on Foreign Relations member and Yale College summa cum laude graduate now puts his expertise to use on investigative documentary journalism. He was Executive Producer of the HBO documentary In Memoriam: New York City 9/11/01, which raised over $1 million for the victims of the Twin Tower attack. Liebman spoke with Den of Geek about expanding how the lens captures street legality.

Den of Geek: You’re mainly associated with TV series like Central Park and Sorry for Your Loss. What drew you to long-form documentary journalism?

Jon Liebman: I got involved in this story because my background brought me there. I was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, which is the office that prosecuted the Commission case, and I got there after the case was over. That case was tried in 1986, and I got there in ’87. So I knew about this case, and I knew a lot of the people involved.

What brought me to this project was the opportunity to work with Netflix and with Raw TV in London, and to be able to tell the story about the people who investigated and mounted this very complex and interesting case to bring down the heads of the Mafia commission.

This is the second documentary series that I’ve been involved in. The first one was something called In Memoriam, which was about 9/11. That was on HBO. I think the great thing about these kinds of documentaries is that you can really tell a story and dive in pretty deeply, and that allows you to tell the story with integrity. You don’t have to finish it in 30 minutes or an hour. It allows you to really show who some of the characters are, show their challenges, and be able to see all different sides of a story.

Netflix has been at the forefront of long-form journalism since Making of a Murderer. Moving forward, how do you see Fear City in the history of documentary filmmaking?

I hope that it meets the level of quality that Netflix has achieved in a number of the great documentary series that they’ve supported. My hope is that people experience the reality and intensity, and suspense of this kind of investigation and prosecution. That’s a success to me if people kind of get a real feel for it, and see how difficult and challenging this kind of thing is, and what a success can be in a complex criminal case.

When you were working in the U.S. Attorney’s office, were you involved in any of the mob trials?

Yes, we had, at that time, an organized crime unit that was run by Louis Freeh, who became the Director of the FBI later. I was in that division for a period of time, and it got involved in a number of mob prosecutions after this case was completed.

I was not involved in this case. I was a young lawyer working in New York City. I was actually clerking for a federal judge in the same courthouse where this trial occurred, and the buzz of that trial, the media circus around it, and all of the attention on the trial made me wander into that courtroom where it happened a number of times. It was actually pretty hard to get in there because it was a big, big trial. The whole courthouse was buzzing, as you can imagine, when you know that the leaders of the mafia families were on trial after Paul Castellano had been killed.

It was this incredible atmosphere, and it was one of the things that led me to want to go into the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and see what it was like to be a federal prosecutor, which is one of the best jobs I ever had.

Since the beginning of movies, the FBI has had a record of approving only positive portrayals before giving their seal approval. Did you have to deal with the Bureau?

We didn’t deal with the Bureau at all, really. The filmmaker, Sam Hobkinson, and his team worked directly with the ex-FBI agents who you see on camera. And they were very forthcoming, and also, I think, acknowledged some of the challenges and difficulties in the investigation.

Sam Hobkinson grew up in England. How did he come to do a piece on the New York mob?

Raw TV, which is a production company in London with which Sam has associated, produced the documentary along with our company, Brillstein Entertainment. And Sam and the folks at Raw, growing up in London, really had a feel for what was happening in New York, and they were enamored of much of New York and the vibe of it. The story of the mobsters, I think, they felt was maybe more glamorous than it really is. It’s like a bunch of guys from London who kind of looked over the pond, and this was one of the stories they found fascinating.

The defense doesn’t get much air time. I read that Sam Hobkinson tried to get Carmine Persico and other figures.

Yeah. The defense got a little time. Some of the defense lawyers passed away. James LaRosa, who was one of the big lawyers in the case, had died. I think there’s maybe one or two of the lawyers, I forget, who were interviewed for the series. And then Carmine Persico, of course, defended himself, but he didn’t participate in this. That’s one of the challenges when you do these things, and 35 years later. You kind of get who’s around.

Read more

TV

Fear City: New York vs The Mafia Undercover Agent Gets Caught on Tape

By Tony Sokol

Culture

The Real Goodfellas: Gangsters That Inspired the Martin Scorsese Film

By Tony Sokol

Do you think Fear City de-glamourizes mob life?

I think it tells the reality. I’ve seen some people comment that it’s not about the glamour. I think that the mobsters speak for themselves on the tapes, and the FBI agents and the prosecutors get to speak for themselves. The surveillance photos are there, and the way the case was constructed is laid out. So I think it’s really more about what’s real than about the “glamour” of the Mafia, which is something that you see more in movies and fictional series.

Episode three opens with news reports that the city is prospering 10 years after being bankrupt. Do you think the mob had anything to do with this prosperity?

Well, they certainly capitalized on it. They capitalized on the building boom that occurred, and they capitalized on their infiltration of unions, as well as the establishment of the Concrete Club. I think they were able to benefit from a construction boom that certainly has led to the changing skyscrapers of New York. But in my point of view, I wouldn’t say that they made it happen or anything. I would say it was more that they benefited from the economic changes by capitalizing on their position.

Also in Episode three, the documentary brings in Donald Trump’s dealings as a real estate developer. Was there anything you were trying to say in that?

My sense is that the point, that a number of the participants made, that the construction industry had to deal with the Concrete Club, and that was something that was true if you were in construction. But I don’t think there was any intention to make a specific point at the heart of a specific project.

Do you think we’ll ever see a mainstream series on something like the unmarked federal vans, which have been reported in Oregon?

I’d love to. That would be amazing. What’s happening in Oregon is crazy, and I think with the development of people taking cell phone video of what’s going on and citizen journalism, I think there’s a real good chance that we’ll see a lot more great stories coming from people who are at the scene of these situations. Whether they’re crimes, like we saw with George Floyd, or with what’s happening in Oregon and other places in the country. I think that there’s definitely going to be lots of good journalism that comes out of it.

If you wanted to do something like that, how would you get it started?

I think it always starts with people who are on the ground and involved. People who are knowledgeable and have specific information. I think that’s, a lot of times, the way these things start. So you’ve got people who’ve got a story to tell because they were particularly involved, or they have video that they shot, or maybe somebody who was involved in this, who becomes a whistleblower or something. I think that’s the way these things start.

A lot of networks right now are pulling police-positive shows. Has this docu-series gotten any blowback or any criticism because of that?

I’m not sure whether they’ve really received any kind of a reaction to it. It hasn’t aired yet, so we’ll see. I haven’t heard that so far.

In a lot of movies, and on The Sopranos, the law seems to be if there’s not a crime being committed, the police have to stop listening to surveillance tapes.

Right.

Would the investigators have had to turn off the tape if the conversation was just about Castellano’s affair with the maid and not about criminal activity?

It’s called minimizing it, and you’re absolutely right: What the law requires is that if they hear something that is not connected to possible criminal activity, then they have to stop listening and pause the tape. Then they can come back after 30 seconds or something, and keep listening. I don’t know what minimizing they did, but sometimes what happens is that in order to find out that it’s something that you shouldn’t be listening to, you have to listen to it. If she was a source, then she’s a person of interest.

One of the investigators says in the documentary he sent greeting cards to Castellano.

I think he was saying it was a little bit of psychological opposition tactics. Clearly, these guys knew they were under investigation, so it was a little bit of “We’re watching you.” It seems like what he was talking about.

Sam Hobkinson once mentioned being inspired to do this by watching Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. Coppola also made The Godfather. I was wondering how you see gangster movies as a law enforcement person?

I’m not a law enforcement person now. It’s been 30 years for me since I was doing that, but I just loved those movies. I loved the storytelling. In The Godfather and The Godfather II, I love how deep you get into the families, and how you get to know the characters in those movies. So it’s just wonderful filmmaking.

What I’m drawn to in these kinds of docu-series is digging deep and getting into the weeds as much as you can so that people can understand how things happened, how things worked, what people went through. And it sounds like you’ve interviewed a number of the people, and you get it, which is great. Because a lot of times when you see a one-hour show or something, you don’t get to touch on the different aspects of a story. I think here, with three hours of it, we were able to touch on the power and influence of the Mafia in episode one, the investigation in episode two, and then the take down of the case and the prosecution of the case in episode three. So it had room to breathe.

Are there any plans for Fear City 2?

Not at the moment, but it would be great to see what the reaction to this is, and see what could come next. Just I think, as you know from having lived in Fear City, that there are plenty of stories to tell that go beyond this, and every one of those guys that you look at in the documentary, that you see in the surveillance photos or on tapes, could be a documentary in and of themselves.Fear City: New York City vs The Mafia is available to stream on Netflix.

The post Making the Case for Fear City: New York vs the Mafia appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3g7dx4T

[biofunmy]

Why Many in China Oppose Hong Kong’s Protests

Cecilia Zhang is the sort of Chinese person who you might think would be sympathetic to the protesters in Hong Kong. She went to a prestigious American university, gets her news from foreign media and has no plan to move back to the mainland from Hong Kong, where she has worked in the financial industry for the past four years.

But she says she doesn’t understand why people in Hong Kong continue to take to the streets. In fact, she thinks they should go home.

“Hong Kong’s economy is going to be ugly this year after all the strikes,” she said. “Why would you do something that’s not going to benefit you? What can you get out of it?”

It isn’t a surprise that many people in China oppose the protests against a proposed law that would allow Hong Kong to extradite criminal suspects to mainland China. They see only the news that Beijing’s censors let them see.

What is surprising is that many Chinese people who know the full story share that opinion.

Independent polling isn’t allowed in China, so judging public attitudes toward Hong Kong is largely guesswork. But among the educated Chinese I know, the ones who travel and can see the global internet, a large number believe the protesters are wasting their time. They should instead be working to rebuild Hong Kong, they say, a city they see as a one-time beacon of prosperity that is losing its promise.

Their views suggest a hard Chinese line against Hong Kong that goes beyond propaganda. It shows a fundamental shift in how many people in China see the city — and, by extension, how they see their own country. And it reflects a deeply rooted belief in the success of what many call the China Model: economic growth at the cost of individual rights.

The Communist Party has long pushed the Chinese people to look at the world through the lens of economic interests, and skeptical attitudes toward the Hong Kong protests show it has taken firm root. Freedom can’t fill stomachs, this thinking goes. And individual rights of the kind that people in Hong Kong enjoy — to challenge the government in the press, in the courts and on the streets — would lead to chaos in China, bringing back poverty and hunger.

That attitude even among the elite suggests more conflict ahead between Hong Kong and the mainland. It also casts further doubt on the possibility that as China becomes more middle class, its people will inevitably demand more individual rights, forcing the Communist Party to ease its control over society or even democratize.

“Over the past 40 years we’ve only talked about business in the mainland, nothing else,” Zhao Jianfei, a tech executive in Beijing, wrote on his WeChat timeline recently. “All of our thinking is based on the assumption that people are economic animals.”

“Looking at the future, this assumption isn’t going to work,” Mr. Zhao wrote. “We need to wake up.”

That hard focus on economics is by no means unanimous among business types and academics. My colleagues wrote about how some mainlanders living in Hong Kong took part in the protests. At a recent dinner I attended, a group of eight businesspeople largely from the mainland began to belt out in Cantonese “Boundless Oceans, Vast Skies,” Hong Kong’s unofficial freedom anthem by the rock band Beyond.

“Forgive me for embracing freedom with abandonment in my life,” they sang, then cheered for Hong Kong.

But it isn’t hard to find critics of the Hong Kong protests among Western-educated Chinese people. Some worry that the demonstrations will result in violent suppression, as the Chinese government did in 1989 in Tiananmen Square. Others simply think the protesters are worried about the wrong thing.

Tian Feilong, an associate law professor in Beijing who has translated several books on constitutional law and federalism to Chinese from English, asserted in a recent article that the protests were supported by foreign forces, would cause chaos in Hong Kong and ultimately hurt China. It won support online, including the comment from one reader that “it wouldn’t take long for Hong Kong to shrink to a fishing village.” Mr. Tian didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In another popular article headlined “Can Hong Kong be Saved?” the author, Zhao Haoyang, who graduated from a master’s program in the city a few years ago, declared that Hong Kong’s youth aren’t bad people — they’re merely stupid. Hong Kong people have a type of post-prosperity arrogance, he wrote, and the city’s exposure to Western values helps delude the public. The article got over 100,000 page views on the social media platform WeChat, and about 7,000 people made cash donations to the author. The article was later deleted for violating unspecified WeChat content rules, and the author didn’t respond to a request for comment.

These attitudes are a big reversal from how many in China once saw the former British colony. For many Chinese in the 1980s and ’90s, Hong Kong symbolized what we wanted China to be. We imitated fashions in Hong Kong soap operas, learned rudimentary Cantonese so we could sing Cantopop, and were surprised that the police in television shows had to work hard to prove that anybody, even a gangster, was guilty.

“Hong Kong, Hong Kong, why is it so fragrant?” goes the lyric of a popular song in China in the early 1990s, referring to Hong Kong’s Chinese name, which translates to “Fragrant Harbor.” It cited the impending 1997 handover of the city by its British rulers back to Chinese control with the lyrics, “1997, please come soonest. I can go to Hong Kong.”

Many Chinese, including me, stayed up until the early hours of July 1, 1997, to watch the ceremonial handover back to China. We were filled with pride that the shining pearl in the Orient — the name of a popular patriotic song — had returned to the motherland. We were imbued with hope that the rest of China could be as prosperous as Hong Kong.

That was before China became the world’s second-largest economy and a budding superpower. Now, there has been a shift in the way people view the rest of the world. Just as many Chinese people are underwhelmed by the outdated New York City subway systems and by potholes on the highways in Silicon Valley, they are increasingly losing interest in the Hong Kong model of free borders and freedom of speech. Many have come to believe that Hong Kong wouldn’t be so rich without mainland China.

Now the world goes directly to Beijing. Hong Kong’s skyscrapers are overshadowed by those in Shanghai and Shenzhen. Many Hong Kong entertainers learned to speak Mandarin, the primary mainland Chinese dialect. Hong Kong retailers increasingly rely on mainland tourists who splurge on luxury goods.

Hong Kong’s people don’t look as rich as they once did. Mainlanders now see that the majority of Hong Kong residents don’t live in sea view villas, drive luxury cars or dine in fine restaurants as they saw in soap operas. They live in cramped apartments, often much smaller than theirs in Beijing and Shanghai, and work long hours to make a living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Mainland visitors are also mistreated at times. Fairly or not, many in Hong Kong blame people from China for spiraling housing costs, as China’s rich park their money in expensive apartments. They see mainlanders as rude and uncultured, and stereotype them as unable to form a line properly or allowing their children to urinate on the streets. That has led to confrontations and resentment on both sides.

Now Hong Kong has become a source of what many mainlanders fear most: instability. They don’t see a fight over individual rights. They see ungrateful separatists and troublemakers. And they believe the Communist Party will get its way eventually.

“I want to take the best of Hong Kong, but I won’t take part in that nonsense local stuff,” said Ms. Zhang, the Hong Kong resident from the mainland. “If there’s no return on your investment, what’s the point?”

Sahred From Source link Business

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[jordancat]

Stacey Abrams SOTU Rebuttal

STACEY ABRAMS: Good evening my fellow Americans and happy Lunar New Year. I’m Stacey Abrams and I’m honored to join the conversation about the state of our union.

Growing up, my family went back and forth between lower middle class and working class, yet even when they came home weary and bone tired my parents found a way to show us all who we could be.

My librarian mother taught us to love learning. My father, a shipyard worker, put in overtime and extra shifts. And they made sure we volunteered to help others. Later, they both became United Methodist ministers, an expression of the faith that guides us.

These were our family values. Faith, service, education, and responsibility.

Now, we only had one car, so sometimes my dad had to hitchhike and walk long stretches during the 30 mile trip home from the shipyards. One rainy night, my mom got worried. We piled in the car and went out looking for him, and we eventually found my dad making his way along the road, soaked and shivering in his shirt sleeves.

When he got in the car, my mom asked if he had left his coat at work. He explained that he’d given it to a homeless man he’d met on the highway. When we asked why he’d given away his only jacket, my dad turned to us and said, “I knew when I left that man, he’d still be alone, but I could give him my coat, because I knew you were coming for me.”

Our power and strength as Americans lives in our hard work and our belief in more. My family understood firsthand that while success is not guaranteed, we live in a nation where opportunity is possible.

But we do not succeed alone.

In these United States, when times are tough, we can persevere because our friends and neighbors will come for us. Our first responders will come for us. It is this mantra, this uncommon grace of community that has driven me to become an attorney, a small-business owner, a writer, and most recently the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia.

My reason for running was simple. I love our country and its promise of opportunity for all. And I stand here tonight because I hold fast to my father’s credo.

Together, we are coming for America. For a better America.

Just a few weeks ago, I joined volunteers to distribute meals to furloughed federal workers. They waited in line for a box of food and a sliver of hope since they hadn’t received paychecks in weeks.

Making livelihoods of our federal workers a pawn for political games is a disgrace. The shutdown was a stunt, engineered by the president of the United States, one that defied every tenant of fairness and abandoned not just our people, but our values.

For seven years, I led the Democratic Party in the Georgia House of Representatives. I didn’t always agree with the Republican speaker or governor, but I understood that our constituents didn’t care about our political parties.

They cared about their lives.

So when we had to negotiate criminal justice reform or transportation or foster care improvements, the leaders of our state didn’t shut down. We came together and we kept our word.

It should be no different in our nation’s capital. We may come from different sides of the political aisle, but our joint commitment to the ideals of this nation cannot be negotiable. Our most urgent work is to realize Americans’ dreams of today and tomorrow, to carve a path to independence and prosperity that can last a lifetime.

Children deserve an excellent education from cradle to  career. We owe them safe schools and the highest standards, regardless of ZIP code.

Yet this White House responds timidly, while first graders practice active shooter drills and the price of higher education grows ever steeper. From now on, our leaders must be willing to tackle gun safety measures and face the crippling effect of educational loans. To support educators and invest what is necessary to unleash the power of America’s greatest minds.

In Georgia and around the country, people are striving for a middle class where a salary truly equals economic security. But instead, families’ hopes are being crushed by Republican leadership that ignores real life or just doesn’t understand it.

Under the current administration, far too many hard-working Americans are falling behind, living paycheck to paycheck, most without labor unions to protect them from even worse harm.

The Republican tax bill rigged the system against working people. Rather than bringing back jobs, plants are closing, layoffs are looming, and wages struggle to keep pace with the actual cost of living.

We owe more to the millions of everyday folks who keep our economy running, like truck drivers forced to buy their own rigs, farmers caught in a trade war, small business owners in search of capital and domestic workers serving without labor protections.

Women and men who could thrive if only they had the support and freedom to do so.

We know bipartisanship could craft a 21st century immigration plan, but this administration chooses to cage children and tear families apart.

Compassionate treatment at the border is not the same as open borders. President Reagan understood this. President Obama understood this. Americans understand this and the Democrats stand ready to effectively secure our ports and borders.

But we must all embrace that from agriculture to health care to entrepreneurship, America is made stronger by the presence of immigrants, not walls.

And rather than suing to dismantle the affordable care act as Republican attorneys general have, our leaders must protect the progress we’ve made and commit to expanding health care and lowering cost for everyone.

My father has battled prostate cancer for years. To help cover the cost, I found myself sinking deeper into debt, because while you can defer some payments, you can’t defer cancer treatment.

In this great nation, Americans are skipping blood pressurepills, forced to choose between buying medicine or paying rent.

Maternal mortality rates show that mothers, especially black mothers, risk death to give birth and in 14 states, including my home state, where a majority want it, our leaders refuse to expand Medicaid, which could save rural hospitals, save economies, and save lives.

We can do so much more, take action on climate change, defend individual liberties with fair-minded judges. But none of these ambitions are possible without the bedrock guarantee of our right to vote.

Let’s be clear. Voter suppression is real. From making it harder to register and stay on the rolls, to moving and closing polling places to rejecting lawful ballots, we can no longer ignore these threats to democracy.

While I acknowledge the results of the 2018 election here in Georgia, I did not and we cannot accept efforts to undermine our right to vote. That’s why I started a nonpartisan organization called Fair Fight to advocate for voting rights. This is the next battle for our democracy, one where all eligible citizens can have their say about the vision we want for our country.

We must reject the cynicism that says allowing every eligible vote to be cast and counted is a power grab. Americans understand that these are the values that our brave men and women in uniform and our veterans risk their lives to defend.

The foundation of our moral leadership around the globe is free and fair elections, where voters pick their leaders, not where politicians pick their voters.

In this time of division and crisis, we must come together and stand for and with one another. America has stumbled time and again on its quest towards justice and equality. But with each generation, we have revisited our fundamental truths, and where we falter, we make amends.

We fought Jim Crow with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Yet we continue to confront racism from our past and in our present, which is why we must hold everyone from the highest offices to our own families accountable for racist words and deeds and call racism what it is, wrong.

America achieved a measure of reproductive justice in Roe v. Wade, but we must never forget, it is immoral to allow politicians to harm women and families, to advance a political agenda. We affirmed marriage equality, and yet the LGBTQ community remains under attack.

So even as I am very disappointed by the president’s approach to our problems, I still don’t want him to fail. But we need him to tell the truth and to respect his duties and respect the extraordinary diversity that defines America. Our progress has always been found in the refuge, in the basic instinct of the American experiment, to do right by our people.

And with a renewed commitment to social and economic justice, we will create a stronger America together.

Because America wins by fighting for our shared values against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That is who we are, and when we do so, never wavering, the state of our union will always be strong.

Thank you and may God bless the United States of America.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/us/politics/stacey-abrams-speech.html

[intlchristianherald]

LISTEN: Whyte House Family Devotions: A Prayer for the Family, the Church, the Nation and the World #366 (Wednesday, June 27, 2018): "An Answer to Problems," by Billy Graham

[caption id="attachment_40916" align="alignleft" width="156"] Daniel Whyte III[/caption] My family and I have had morning devotions, or family altar as some people call it, every day ever since my wife, Meriqua, and I were married 30 years ago. We have prayed and read the Bible together as well as other devotional books as a family, and it is the only reason why this family has stayed together, and the only reason why God has blessed our family and used our family in ministry all of these years. We read Ephesians 5 and 6 every morning as it relates to the role of each member of the family and how that we need to put on the whole armor of God to fight against the devil who is seeking to destroy our family and all Christian families, churches, and Christians. So, now after 30 years of doing this in our home, we are opening this up to others who don't have a family to pray with, who don't have a spouse, or who are single by choice, and to encourage all families who are still intact to go back to the family altar and have devotions together every morning. In these devotions, you may hear me deal with a temptation I'm facing in my life, you may hear me rebuke my wife about not doing what she should be doing, or you may hear me get on one of my children's cases about something they're doing. Don't be shocked; this is real life. SING "DOXOLOGY" Praise God from Whom all blessings flow Praise Him, all creatures here below Praise Him above, ye heavenly hosts Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost Amen Billy Graham said, “Death for a Christian is no accident. With God there are no accidents, no tragedies, and no catastrophes as far as His children are concerned.” ------ RECITE: THE NEW APOSTLES' CREED I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of Heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead; He was seen alive by Mary Magdalene and the other women, the disciples, and over 500 other brethren; He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth on the Right Hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen. ------ EPHESIANS 6:14 14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; Stephen J. Cole writes in his commentary on this passage: "What is truth? God's Word is his revelation of truth. Jesus prayed 'Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.' Paul referred to the Bible and its central message, the gospel, as 'the word of truth'.' Therefore, any deviation from God’s Word is error or falsehood. Clearly, God communicated the truth of His word in written, propositional statements that may be understood. The emerging church movement rejects this and opts for a story-telling approach to the Bible. But in the process they make many false propositional statements about the propositional statements in the Bible! Long before the emerging church latched onto postmodernism, Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, "The truth can be defined, it can be stated in propositions. That is what we find in these Epistles. It teaches clearly that you must therefore say that any other teaching is wrong and you must condemn it. The New Testament argues; the New Testament is polemical. The Apostle Paul uses very strong language. He says that some people 'believe a lie,' that there are 'false teachers,' and he warns people to flee from them."" ------- PRAYER ------- DEVOTIONAL PASSAGE: Psalm 144 1 Blessed be the Lord my strength which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight: 2 My goodness, and my fortress; my high tower, and my deliverer; my shield, and he in whom I trust; who subdueth my people under me. 3 Lord, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! or the son of man, that thou makest account of him! 4 Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away. 5 Bow thy heavens, O Lord, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke. 6 Cast forth lightning, and scatter them: shoot out thine arrows, and destroy them. 7 Send thine hand from above; rid me, and deliver me out of great waters, from the hand of strange children; 8 Whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood. 9 I will sing a new song unto thee, O God: upon a psaltery and an instrument of ten strings will I sing praises unto thee. 10 It is he that giveth salvation unto kings: who delivereth David his servant from the hurtful sword. 11 Rid me, and deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood: 12 That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as corner stones, polished after the similitude of a palace: 13 That our garners may be full, affording all manner of store: that our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our streets: 14 That our oxen may be strong to labour; that there be no breaking in, nor going out; that there be no complaining in our streets. 15 Happy is that people, that is in such a case: yea, happy is that people, whose God is the Lord. Regarding this passage, Matthew Henry writes: “Fresh favours call for fresh returns of thanks; we must praise God for the mercies we hope for by his promise, as well as those we have received by his providence. To be saved from the hurtful sword, or from wasting sickness, without deliverance from the dominion of sin and the wrath to come, is but a small advantage. The public prosperity David desired for his people, is stated. It adds much to the comfort and happiness of parents in this world, to see their children likely to do well. To see them as plants, not as weeds, not as thorns; to see them as plants growing, not withered and blasted; to see them likely to bring forth fruit unto God in their day; to see them in their youth growing strong in the Spirit. ” --------- PRAYER FOR THE ESTATES 1. Family 2. Church 3. Government 4. People 5. Traditional media 6. New media PRAYER FOR THE FAMILY PRAYER FOR CHURCH LEADERSHIP GOVERNMENT LEADERS 1 Timothy 2:1-2 says, "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty." President Donald Trump and his administration Vice President Mike Pence First Lady Melania Trump Second Lady Karen Pence All White House staff including: Senior Counselor Kellyanne Conway All leaders of federal agencies including: Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces Scott W. Stucky All state governors including: Alabama Governor Kay Ivey All city mayors including: DeLand, FL, Mayor Robert F. Apgar All members of Congress including: Georgia Representative Buddy Carter All law enforcement officials including: DeLand, FL, Police Chief Jason D. Umberger All military leaders including: Defense Secretary James Mattis / Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corp. General Glenn M. Walters Leaders of nations around the world including: Oman’s Sultan and Prime Minister Qaboos bin Said al Said The peace of Jerusalem PRAYER FOR THE PEOPLE PRAYER FOR THE MEDIA PRAYER FOR CURRENT EVENTS AROUND THE WORLD - For a positive resolution to the migrant/refugee crises affecting the globe especially in the southern U.S. and in southern Europe. - For the comfort of the families of 86 people killed in clashes between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria. - For the deliverance of 13,000 migrants expelled from Algeria and abandoned in the Sahara desert. PRAYER REQUESTS Bhima please provide them with the money they need to continue ministry in India Anita Please be with her and guide her Eric please provide him with the money he needs for his daughter’s medical needs; bless his ministry with the help and support it needs THOSE WHO HAVE ACCEPTED CHRIST AS SAVIOR Arthur Lovish Hary THOSE WHO HAVE RECOMMITTED THEIR LIVES TO CHRIST Jaya Anne Dominic DEVOTIONAL READING: “Who Am I?” by Billy Graham Psalm 68:19 says, “What a glorious Lord! He who daily bears our burdens also gives us our salvation.” The writer Edward Dahlberg observed, “At 19, I was a stranger to myself. At 40, I asked, ‘Who am I?’ At 50, I concluded I would never know.” This unexplored personal wilderness is the home of millions of people. Ninety-two percent of all Canadian university students, according to June Callwood, the Toronto sociologist, don’t really know who they are. The Bible says that man is an immortal soul. When God made man in the first place, He created him and “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” One’s soul is the essence, the core, the eternal and real person. And he will be restless until he opens his life to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Now, if you do not know Jesus Christ as your Savior, allow me to show you how you can place your faith and trust in Him for Salvation from sin and Hell. First, accept the fact that you are a sinner, and that you have broken God's law. The Bible says in Romans 3:23: "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Second, accept the fact that there is a penalty for sin. The Bible states in Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death…" Third, accept the fact that you are on the road to hell. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 10:28: "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Now that is bad news, but here's the good news. Jesus Christ said in John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Just believe in your heart that Jesus Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose from the dead by the power of God for you so that you can live eternally with Him. Pray and ask Him to come into your heart today, and He will. Romans 10:9 & 13 says, "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved… For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." If you believe that Jesus Christ died on the Cross for your sins, was buried, and rose from the dead, and you want to trust Him for your Salvation today, please pray with me this simple prayer: Holy Father God, I realize that I am a sinner and that I have done some bad things in my life. I am sorry for my sins, and today I choose to turn from my sins. For Jesus Christ sake, please forgive me of my sins. I believe with all of my heart that Jesus Christ died for me, was buried, and rose again. I trust Jesus Christ as my Savior and I choose to follow Him as Lord from this day forward. Lord Jesus, please come into my heart and save my soul and change my life today. Amen. If you just trusted Jesus Christ as your Saviour, and you prayed that prayer and meant it from your heart, I declare to you that based upon the Word of God, you are now saved from Hell and you are on your way to Heaven. Welcome to the family of God! I want to congratulate you on doing the most important thing in life and that is receiving Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour. For more information to help you grow in your newfound faith in Christ, go to Gospel Light Society.com and read "What To Do After You Enter Through the Door". Jesus Christ said in John 10:9, "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." Until next time, May the Lord Bless You!

Daniel Whyte III has spoken in meetings across the United States and in over twenty-five foreign countries. He is the author of over forty books including the Essence Magazine, Dallas Morning News, and Amazon.com national bestseller, Letters to Young Black Men. He is also the president of Gospel Light Society International, a worldwide evangelistic ministry that reaches thousands with the Gospel each week, as well as president of Torch Ministries International, a Christian literature ministry. He is heard by thousands each week on his radio broadcasts/podcasts, which include: The Prayer Motivator Devotional, The Prayer Motivator Minute, as well as Gospel Light Minute X, the Gospel Light Minute, the Sunday Evening Evangelistic Message, the Prophet Daniel’s Report, the Second Coming Watch Update and the Soul-Winning Motivator, among others. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Theology from Bethany Divinity College, a Bachelor’s degree in Religion from Texas Wesleyan University, a Master’s degree in Religion, a Master of Divinity degree, and a Master of Theology degree from Liberty University's Rawlings School of Divinity (formerly Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary). He is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Ministry degree. He has been married to the former Meriqua Althea Dixon, of Christiana, Jamaica since 1987. God has blessed their union with seven children.

[theadmiringbog]

An empathy wall is an obstacle to deep understanding of another person, one that can make us feel indifferent or even hostile to those who hold different beliefs or whose childhood is rooted in different circumstances.

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is it possible, without changing our beliefs, to know others from the inside, to see reality through their eyes, to understand the links between life, feeling, and politics; that is, to cross the empathy wall? I thought it was.                

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In 1960, when a survey asked American adults whether it would “disturb” them if their child married a member of the other political party, no more than 5 percent of either party answered “yes.” 

But in 2010, 33 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of Republicans answered “yes.” In fact, partyism, as some call it, now beats race as the source of divisive prejudice.

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According to The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded Americans Is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing, when people move today, it is more often to live near others who share their views. People are segregating themselves into different emotionally toned enclaves—anger here, hopefulness and trust there. A group of libertarian Texans have bought land in the salt flats east of El Paso, named it Paulville, and reserved it for enthusiastic “freedom-loving” followers of Ron Paul. 

And the more that people confine themselves to likeminded company, the more extreme their views become. According to a 2014 Pew study of over 10,000 Americans, the most politically engaged on each side see those in the “other party” not just as wrong, but as “so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being.” Compared to the past, each side also increasingly gets its news from its own television channel—the right from Fox News, the left from MSNBC. 

And so the divide widens.  

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To begin with, I read what other thinkers had to say about the rise of the right. At one extreme, some argued that a band of the very rich, wanting to guard their money, had hired “movement entrepreneurs” to create an “astro-turf grassroots following.”

Others argued that extremely rich people had stirred the movement to life, without arguing that grassroots support was fake. The New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer describes the strategy of billionaire oil baron brothers Charles and David Koch to direct $889,000,000 to help right-wing candidates and causes in 2016 alone. 

“To bring about social change,” Charles Koch says, “requires a strategy” that uses “vertically and horizontally integrated” planning “from idea creation to policy development to education to grassroots organizations to lobbying to litigation to political action.” It was like a vast, sprawling company that owns the forest, the pulp mill, the publishing house, and pays authors to write slanted books. Such a political “company” could wield astonishing influence. Particularly in the years after Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 Supreme Court decision permitting unlimited anonymous corporate gifts to political candidates, this influence is, indeed, at work. 

Just 158 rich families contributed nearly half of the $176 million given to candidates in the first phase of the presidential election of 2016—$138 million to Republicans and $20 million to Democrats.                

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Tracing their roots to a caste system, whites in Dixie states treasure local control and resist federal power—linked as that is to the defeat, 150 years ago, of the South by the North. 

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When we listen to a political leader, we don’t simply hear words; we listen predisposed to want to feel certain things.                

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At play are “feeling rules,” left ones and right ones.                 

The right seeks release from liberal notions of what they should feel—happy for the gay newlywed, sad at the plight of the Syrian refugee, unresentful about paying taxes. The left sees prejudice.                

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“deep story,” a story that feels as if it were true.                

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I began to recognize the power of blue-state catcalls taunting red state residents. Limbaugh was a firewall against liberal insults thrown at her and her ancestors, she felt.                

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“I do that too sometimes,” she said, “try to get myself out of the way to see what another person feels.”

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Tea Party adherents seemed to arrive at their dislike of the federal government via three routes—through their religious faith (the government curtailed the church, they felt), through hatred of taxes (which they saw as too high and too progressive), and through its impact on their loss of honor,                

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“We’re on this earth for a limited amount of time,” he says, leaning on the edge of the window. “But if we get our souls saved, we go to Heaven, and Heaven is for eternity. We’ll never have to worry about the environment from then on. That’s the most important thing. I’m thinking long-term.”                

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The logic was this. The more oil, the more jobs. The more jobs, the more prosperity, and the less need for government aid. And the less the people depend on government —local, state, or federal—the better off they will be.

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If, in 2010, you lived in a county with a higher exposure to toxic pollution, we discovered, you are more likely to believe that Americans “worry too much” about the environment and to believe that the United States is doing “more than enough” about it. You are also more likely to describe yourself as a strong Republican. 

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Powell drew up a list of characteristics of the “least resistant personality profile”:        

•  Longtime residents of small towns in the South or Midwest        

•  High school educated only        

•  Catholic        

•  Uninvolved in social issues, and without a culture of activism        

•  Involved in mining, farming, ranching (what Cerrell called “nature exploitative occupations”)        

•  Conservative        

•  Republican        

•  Advocates of the free market                

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“Environmentalists want to stop the American Dream to protect the endangered toad,” she says, “but if I had to choose between the American Dream and a toad, hey, I’ll take the American Dream.” Others I spoke to also pose the same either-or scenario—                

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“How can you tell straight news from opinion?” I ask. 

“By their tone of voice,” she explains. “Take Christiane Amanpour. She’ll be kneeling by a sick African child, or a bedraggled Indian, looking into the camera, and her voice is saying, ‘Something’s wrong. We have to fix it.’ Or worse, we caused the problem. She’s using that child to say, ‘Do something, America.’ But that child’s problems aren’t our fault.” 

The Tea Party listener felt Christiane Amanpour was implicitly scolding her. She was imposing liberal feeling rules about whom to feel sorry for. The woman didn’t want to be told she should feel sorry for, or responsible for, the fate of the child. Amanpour was overstepping her role as commentator by suggesting how to feel. The woman had her feeling guard up. “No,” she told herself in so many words, “That’s PC. That’s what liberals want listeners like me to feel. I don’t like it. And what’s more, I don’t want to be told I’m a bad person if I don’t feel sorry for that child.”                 

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A deep story is a feels-as-if story—it’s the story feelings tell, in the language of symbols. It removes judgment. It removes fact. It tells us how things feel.

Such a story permits those on both sides of the political spectrum to stand back and explore the subjective prism through which the party on the other side sees the world. And I don’t believe we understand anyone’s politics, right or left, without it. For we all have a deep story.                

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When the tax payer finally gets to retire, he sees the bureaucrats in Washington have raided the fund. And the rest of us are waiting in line.

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In his interviews with Tea Party members in New York, Jersey City, Newark, and elsewhere in New Jersey, the sociologist Nils Kumkar found spontaneous mention of the idea of annoyance at others cutting in line.                

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As I and others use the term, however, racism refers to the belief in a natural hierarchy that places blacks at the bottom, and the tendency of whites to judge their own worth by distance from that bottom.                

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Missing from the image of blacks in most of the minds of those I came to know was a man or woman standing patiently in line next to them waiting for a well-deserved reward.                

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For the right today, the main theater of conflict is neither the factory floor nor an Occupy protest. The theater of conflict—at the heart of the deep story—is the local welfare office and the mailbox where undeserved disability checks and SNAP stamps arrive. Government checks for the listless and idle—this seems most unfair.                

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If unfairness in Occupy is expressed in the moral vocabulary of a “fair share” of resources and a properly proportioned society, unfairness in the right’s deep story is found in the language of “makers” and “takers.”                

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For the left, the flashpoint is up the class ladder (between the very top and the rest); for the right, it is down between the middle class and the poor. 

For the left, the flashpoint is centered in the private sector; for the right, in the public sector.

Ironically, both call for an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.                

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I see that the scene had been set for Trump’s rise, like kindling before a match is lit. Three elements had come together. Since 1980, virtually all those I talked with felt on shaky economic ground, a fact that made them brace at the very idea of “redistribution.” They also felt culturally marginalized: their views about abortion, gay marriage, gender roles, race, guns, and the Confederate flag all were held up to ridicule in the national media as backward. And they felt part of a demographic decline; “there are fewer and fewer white Christians like us,” Madonna had told me.                 

They’d begun to feel like a besieged minority.