If I had a dime for every “Penny in a pan” abortion survivor story, I’d have ten cents.
That said, how long before Penny in a Pan becomes the next Joe the Plumber presidential campaign sideshow?
How long before other farfetched family folklore and fables seep into the lexicon of Republican presidential candidates?
How long before we listen to Tim Scott on a debate stage relay an incredible Debby in a dumpster or Terry in the trash abortion survivor story?
How long before hundreds of “abortion survivors” pop up across America in a weird parade of zygote zombies and pro-life Presidential hopefuls?
What’s the “over-under” of these scenarios?
Just asking.
Meanwhile, political leaders (especially Republicans) refuse to confront genuine problems or propose solutions to issues affecting people, like the high cost of healthcare, housing, and education, the changing climate, gun violence, sky-rocketing anxiety and depression in children and young adults.
There’s such a deficit of decency in public service today.
Public service, where public servants look to make a difference in the lives of others, is on life support in America.
Public service today is a bunch of self-serving politicians constantly pushing cultural hot-button issues and fostering petty grievances to catapult themselves into positions of power, wealth, and authority.
Meanwhile, our world and our sense of safety erodes and crumbles around us.
No matter the strength of the evidence in the multiple indictments in which this man is named, he is assumed innocent until proven guilty.
So, let’s put aside the four criminal cases and 91 felony counts he faces and instead look at some of his actions as President.
As President, this man:
Knowingly lied to the public about the dangers of the COVID-19 virus.
Regularly praised anti-democratic and authoritarian leaders around the world.
Equated the moral character of neo-Nazis with the people protesting neo-Nazis.
Welcomed interference from foreign governments into American elections.
Refused to accept the results of a free and fair election even after sixty court cases, and his own attorney general stated the claims of election fraud were bullshit.
Sat idly in the Oval Office for nearly 3 hours as his supporters attacked the capital building and assaulted police officers.
Even if you believe this man is innocent of the 91 felony charges, he is demonstrably guilty of being a shitty human being.
I’m unsure why millions of Americans refuse to look at this man’s lack of ethics and morality and continue to support him, but my gut says it’s human behavior.
Admitting Trump is a shitty human means admitting you knowingly voted for a shitty human, which reflects poorly on you. So, to avoid the embarrassment of your vote and inability to judge a person’s character, you turn a blind eye to all that orange shittieness and hop on the “What About Hunter Biden” bandwagon.
A president or presidential candidate’s lack of character threatens the republic only when voters are unable or unwilling to judge that character.
Until Republicans discover their character and admit politics blinded them to Trump’s lack of morality and that they were conned, America will continue to teeter on the abyss.
What happens to the partnership between the Evangelical Church and the Republican party when compassionate conservatism gets replaced with MAGA mania?
How do Evangelical ministers square the teachings of Christ with their MAGA-infected flock?
What happens when ultra-MAGA Evangelicals sit fidgety in church pews and listen to sermons contradictory to the messages spewed by their political Messiah on the campaign trail?
It won’t be long before we see a sectarian split within the Evangelical church and radical versions of Evangelicalism start popping up across the country, like crack houses in the 80s.
These radical Evangelical churches will teach a MAGA-tinged Christianity, where Christ, a muscular blue-eyed-blond-messiah, wields his razor-edged cross to slice and dice woke liberals, immigrants, homosexuals, and atheists, to reestablish truth, order, and the American way.
Break-away Evangelical churches are how MAGA survives and (thrives). These churches will become radicalization factories in America like Wahhabi mosques in Saudi Arabia.
MAGA politicians are no different than any other. They understand religion is a tool for controlling and mobilizing masses – Churches plant seeds dipped in fear and bigotry to grow compliant human saplings so that future outcomes that align with religious ideology can take hold in society.
“The meek shall inherit the earth” will be replaced by a mite-is-right mentality—where the rationalization and justification of cruelty to achieve a particular end is the norm.
The transformation of the Evangelical church will correlate and coincide with criminal charges against former president Trump and his impending legal jeopardy.
Let’s keep our eyes peeled for an upstart-fire-brand Evangelical minister looking to make a name for himself by taking advantage of political chaos.
Donald Trump will be the new radical Evangelical church’s prophet of revenge and retribution.
I hope none of this comes to fruition, but I would not be surprised if it did.
I’m stunned but not surprised at the number of Americans promoting the notion that many slaves were happily indentured, treated nicely by their owners, and benefited from their involuntary servitude.
Do you know what enslaved people couldn’t do? Leave.
Do you know why? Because they didn’t have the freedom to do so.
Creating a counter-narrative to absolve America of the sin of slavery and then instituting that narrative into public education is the very definition of White fragility and privilege.
I don’t give a flying fuck if the enslaver’s behavior ran the spectrum from humanistic to violent rapist; the fact is America kidnapped human beings from another country and forced them to provide free labor.
Suppose I was arrested for snatching a young woman from the street, locking her in my basement, making her clean and cook for me, and using her sexually. Should I be spared a harsh judgment at sentencing because, while enslaved by me, the girl developed and sharpened her culinary skills?
Instead of whitewashing and minimizing slavery’s impact by saying enslaved people learned valuable skills, we should condemn it uniformly, formally apologize for it, and never suggest a positive aspect (and then espouse that positive impact in our textbooks).
When I worked for IBM, all employees were required to review and sign IBM’s Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs) annually. IBM’s BCGs are the behavioral business principles and standards they expect from their employees.
Many companies send their version of BCGs annually to employees through training materials and reference documents. The employees complete the training, read the documents, and sign indicating compliance.
If an employee violates their company’s BCGs, the employer can terminate them.
Violating the guidelines can also lead to criminal or civil prosecution.
When the Government discovered that former President Trump had taken hundreds of their classified documents, they repeatedly asked (with deference) for him to return them. If former President Trump had done the right thing and returned the documents that were not “declassified,” not “Presidential records,” and that DID NOT BELONG TO HIM, he’d have one less scandal to worry about.
But, of course, Donald Trump didn’t do the right thing. Instead, he lied, deflected, and obstructed his way to a 37-count indictment.
If you or I purposely violated our employer’s Business Conduct Guidelines by stealing proprietary or classified information and then lying about it, we’d be in legal trouble—and rightfully so.
Concerning his conduct in general, former President Trump has a long record of dubious businesses and business deals, for which he’s paid millions of dollars in legal settlements – not to mention his abhorrent personal behavior.
And yet, this crooked, twice-impeached, ethically vacuous convicted felon is the Presidential candidate for the Republican party.
Intelligent and decent-minded people not tainted by political tribalism are appalled at the mere thought of Trump once again sitting at the helm of American democracy.
I usually refrain from making political posts on LinkedIn. But I’m at a point where I have zero fucks to give, so I’ll speak my mind regarding America and American values (regardless of the venue), especially when both are in jeopardy of being trampled.
Additionally, I firmly believe a second Trump presidency will damage the collective psyche of Americans, especially those who genuinely care about conduct, ethics, and integrity.
Our political parties, institutions, and businesses coexist in the same ecosystem. The rot from today’s GOP will seep into other areas of society unless we stop it at the ballot box.
The ballot box is America’s last line of defense against the rot of political grift, intolerance, and authoritarianism, which will erode the fabric of our country, including corporate America.
With that said, here we go.
After the 2020 election and the events of January 6th, most Americans just wanted to put our abusive relationship with Trump in the rearview mirror and return to normalcy.
Unfortunately, Trump lingers like a fart in a closet.
After eight years of Trump polluting our politics with dishonesty and unethical behavior, we continue to wallow in a palpable and inescapable MAGA malaise – because Trump is all around, all the time. He’s on the news, in the newspapers, on social media.
Most Americans are exhausted (not to mention ashamed and embarrassed) by Trump.
When hard-working Americans pull their noses away from the grindstone and look up to see the former highest official in the land lying and disregarding the rule of law, with an entire political party backing that behavior and an onslaught of propaganda aimed at deconstructing our democratic institutions, they begin to question the stability of the country in which they live and work.
And quite honestly, I think that’s the intent of the Trump-led GOP. To weaken Americans’ confidence in democratic institutions and systems so they can dismantle and replace them with authoritarian-based systems.
Americans generally refrain from discussing politics at work (historically, we know nothing good comes from it). We willingly accept our political differences because we know (or at least we thought we knew) that values like honesty and integrity transcend politics – that if a President were demonstrably dishonest and unethical, we’d put aside politics and condemn him uniformly.
Unfortunately, we discovered that with the Trump presidency, the reverse is true – politics transcends values. As former President Trump once said, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any of his supporters.
The assault on truth and our democracy did not end when Trump-inspired rioters left the capital late in the afternoon on January 6th. The assault is ongoing. Today’s perpetrators are not violent insurrectionists beating police officers with American flags but elected and appointed officials with blind and cult-like allegiance to a corrupt demagogue. The assault and threat are equally, if not more dangerous, as it has the illusion of legitimacy.
Several months ago, Republicans voted unanimously to censure a member of the opposition party for his role in the impeachment trial of former President Trump. Republicans have floated a proposition to “expunge” the impeachments of President Trump, who knowingly tried to extort the leader of a foreign country and overturn a free and fair election.
The GOP crossed the Rubicon by embracing Trump and Trumpism – dragging millions of brainwashed Americans with them.
American corporations who spoke out against the events of January 6th and pulled support from candidates who knowingly lied about that day need to tap back into the sense of urgency and condemn what is happening currently with the Republican Party. So, when former President Trump gets on his social media platform, and spouts lie after lie about the 2020 election, companies need to return to form and explicitly and publicly denounce him and any member of Congress who regurgitates the lies. Silence provides a haven and fertile environment for unethical conduct to grow and spread.
The corporations we work for can help Make Americans Proud Again by speaking out against dishonest and unethical behavior and the assault on truth from Trump and Trump sycophants in the GOP. Otherwise, confidence in American institutions will wane, cynicism will take root, and morale will drop – which isn’t good for business.
But Donald Trump is a creeping fracture on the hip of America’s democracy.
Biden is a danger to himself.
Trump is a danger to the republic and the freedom for which it stands.
Do I think Joe Biden is too old for the presidency? Yes, I do. But that problem will eventually take care of itself, as it does for all of us.
We must stop thinking about 2024 as a contest between two men, one who has clearly lost a step, the other hell-bent on lying his way back to the presidency.
The 2024 election is not about Biden or Trump; it’s about good versus bad ideas.
It’s about whether we move the country forward or backward. It’s about whether we expand rights or restrict them. It’s about whether we try to bridge our gaps and differences or widen them. In 2024, either we embrace and promote the ideas of western Democracy, or we don’t.
Trumpism – the metastasizing malignancy of malevolence and malfeasance has taken root in the Republican party. Trumpism is less of a political platform and more of a manifesto of intolerance, anger, fear-baiting, and grievance. And that’s today’s GOP.
To move the country forward and to trigger a “re-set” for the Republican party, we need to bury it under an avalanche of votes that screams DEMOCRACY MATTERS!
Today, banning books, demonizing “the other,” promoting one religion over others, and protecting unfettered access to weapons, even in the face of mass shooting after mass shootings, are Republican ideals, but they’re not American ideals.
While Republicans bitch and moan about pronouns, wokeness, and drag show readings, broken parents relive the scene of janitors mopping up the blood of their children from the hallways and classrooms in schools.
Most Americans are tired of nonsense in the face of real-life challenges and hardship.
The 2024 election, more than any other past election, is about ideas. Foundational ideas. The ideas upon which America will stand or crumble.
According to a new poll, America is pulling back from the values that once defined it, such as patriotism and religion. One might look at the poll results and think, “Damn, that’s not good,” — but maybe we should look at the results as an awakening.
A Growing Disconnect
There’s a growing disconnect between the values Americans traditionally associate with religion and patriotism and what we witness behaviorally in society regarding religion and patriotism.
Christ is no longer Christianity’s messenger.
Instead, rich and powerful opportunists weave narratives that intertwine cherry-picked aspects of Christianity with firmly held socio-political beliefs. Deep pockets allow these opportunists to promote that narrative through lobbyists, who feed it to money-grubbing, power-hungry politicians.
Christianity isn’t about love and charity anymore. Instead, it’s transparently transactional – and more Americans (especially the skeptical and educated) view politically infused transaction-based religion with disdain. When you combine transparently transactional religion with the equally transparent absence of God in our lives, people will pull back from religion as a value.
The function of religion in American society has moved away from the individual and towards a political collective. This shift has transformed religion from a set of beliefs for coping with a chaotic and hate-filled world to a political directive that disrespects marginalized communities, restricts rights, and promotes hate.
Our Patriotic Divide
Concerning patriotism, America is split between the loud crowd of MAGA-hat-wearing Republicans hell-bent on transforming the country into a dystopian America-First Christian Nationalist society and progressives who want to expand rights and freedoms to everyone.
For patriotism to take root, citizens must agree on what it means to “be patriotic.” If there’s disagreement, the unifying knot of patriotism begins to fray. For example, millions of Americans view the assault on the capital as an act of patriotism and the protests against systemic racism in our justice system as un-American – while just as many (if not more) Americans hold the opposite view. Until most of us can agree on what is and isn’t patriotic, we’ll continue to retreat from patriotism as a value.
So, it’s no surprise Americans are rethinking the values around religion and patriotism. We’re woke to religion and patriotism being hijacked and manipulated by individuals and entities for political or personal gain, altering the meaning of both fundamentally.
Being aware is the first step to instituting change.
A child weeps while on the bus leaving The Covenant School following a mass shooting at the school in Nashville, Tenn., Monday, March 27, 2023. (Nicole Hester/The Tennessean via AP)
This is the America Republican politicians say we can’t do anything about.
This is the America where we raise our children.
This is the America that our children wake up to every day, sitting nervously at the kitchen table and wondering if today will be the day they die in a school shooting.
This is the America where parents send their kids to school and wonder, as their child enters the building, if they will come out alive.
This is the America where children practice active shooter drills and are coached on fighting off a deranged person with an AR-15 intent on slaughtering them and their classmates.
This is the America where that deranged person can easily obtain a weapon of war designed to afflict devastating injuries and mass casualties.
This is America, where even though most of the citizens support regulations that would make it more challenging to obtain these weapons, politicians refuse to enact legislation to make that so.
bendingtheneedle 