I hear you. I’m for the true believers, even if don’t agree with their cause in every respect, and I can understand why people fight the power and spur that old nag straight at the windmill. I have a soft spot for people who lay everything in the line for something meaningful, and the weakness of these people is one I know well because I share it. We are naive and are easy for the professional class to manipulate for their own designs. In the end, I have to believe no sacrifice will be for nothing, no injustice unanswered, no Lie left standing. Have a peaceful night.
Hi Matt, Did I miss your piece on the torture and killing of American Journalist Gonzalo Lira by the Ukraine government(AKA Zelensky)? Seems like all western media just swept that one right under the rug because it didn’t fit the narrative.
Thank you Matt. Yes, for the good to do nothing. The Second Coming by Yeats ends similarly. How often must we be reminded by the living dead, like Navalny, that our very lives are in peril. When justice prevails, it's an American tragedy, when people get a hand up, it's the progressive ruin of the Nation, when the truth is manifest its a damn Liberal lie and on and on. I am a bit reminded of a Kingston Trio song, The John Birch Society. " We'll teach you how to spot em,
In the city or the sticks - for even Jasper Junction is just full of liberal dicks, the CIAs subversive and so is the FCC. There's no one left but we and thee and we're not sure of thee!!" Minor lyrics adjustment to replace Bolsheviks with liberal dicks - seems timely.
A student in my class asked if we could talk about MAGA and how we're supposed to be understanding and civil with it/them. He couldn't know how gut wrenching that question is to me. I am enraged by this uncivil, voodoo curse that's been willingly cast upon millions of people.
I always commend reason. I try to always be on the side of rationality. I can't this time. There's nothing coming from me other than bile and barred teeth.
I'm lost. I can't make any sense of it. How can this one waste of protoplasm hold the attention of this many cerebral sausages for so long? I have no effing idea! The Huckster and Fools have commingled into an incestuous relationship that can't be unknotted.
In the history of non sequiturs, none is more cognitively dissonant than that you have just posted of the Tangerine Emperor making fleeting mention of Alexei Navalny’s “sudden death” — or, as virtually the entirety of the free world would describe it, cold-blooded murder — only to somehow tie it to everything Trump thinks is wrong about America. Of course, the Marmalade Messiah wouldn’t know a non sequitur if Melania used one of her stilettos to hit him square in his jowly, orange-powdered mug with one. Russia has had its moral giants, Solzhenitsyn and Sharansky are just a couple. Alexei Navalny eclipses them both. Navalny’s moral courage and life legacy will live on long after the toxin of Trump’s MAGAism finally leaches out of this country’s civic culture. Whenever that day comes, it can’t come soon enough.
I lived in Russia for many years in the 80s as a diplomat. A horrible place. Amazing to see Putin crank back up the secret police and the assassinations of days of yore.
I'm beside myself losing my hero Navalny. Before it all ends, I may lose my only other hero, Zalenski, with Congress withholding military support. (Funny things happen in a war when you have no artillery shells to fire back. The South Vietnamese Army held the North Vietnamese Army at bay for two years after we scooted out in '73. Until Congress cut off supplying, you guessed it, artillery shells.)
To be a "peacemaker," will Trump cut off weapons for Ukraine, and force Ukraine to reward Putin with Crimea and other chunks of territory.? Will Trump largely abandon the NATO alliance? Will he get a Nobel Peace Prize for all this?
Is that how we make America great again?
My political party is for a strong defense, and not some pouting isolationism. Gotta find out where my party went. Matt, should I just write in Santa Clause this year?
Of course, I could vote for Biden, who will assuredly be carted off for cause well within the next 24 months to an old age home. Then we'll have President Kamala, who it is whispered in Washington, is an incompetent Leona Helmsley.
Mother Russia sometimes has a way of leaving a very strong impression on her children. I once met an Orthodox priest, Father Boris was his name, out Siberia way. He had been imprisoned in the Gulag and subsequently escaped from Russia. After enjoying his freedom for a while, like Navalny, he felt compelled to return to Russia and minister there.
He was renowned in that area because he lent out his church building to the Baptists and the Adventists when they had no place for their Christmas Eve services. I'm not so sure what the Orthodox powers in Moscow thought about that move, but I'm rather certain what the Powers in heaven thought about it. At our only meeting, and knowing nothing about me, Father Boris asked me to offer the prayer for the evening meal.
When I think about these two Russian men, I wish only that I had half of their courage. Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven..
I have grown increasingly tired of neo-fascists wrapping themselves in the flag, hanging a crucifix around their necks, and proclaiming themselves patriots and Christians. I call bullshit. To which their apologists say, "well, you don't know what's in their hearts." As if I give ,00473 of a shit what's in their hearts. What matters is not what they feel, is not even what they (if you'll pardon the expression) think. It is what they do. If you eschew the Constitution, excuse the hell out of me, but you are not a patriot. If you bear false witness, if you ignore the very core of Christian teaching, then you are no Christian, regardless of the quantity or blinginess of your cruciform jewelry.
Many of us who oppose the GOP's drift toward authoritarianism argue that we oughtn't call attention to the vapidity of the MAGgots stances, 'cause donchaknow they've run to Trump because those who take the sapiens part of our Linnaean classification seriously look at them askance. And I call bullshit again. Pretending that there is a rational argument for Trumpism that is consistent with either American or Christian values insults everyone's intelligence, not least of which theirs. Time to speak the truth.
When I consider the sacrifices made by so very many of our forebears in juxtaposition to the facile blatherings of these nitwits it makes my blood boil.
I hear you. I’m for the true believers, even if don’t agree with their cause in every respect, and I can understand why people fight the power and spur that old nag straight at the windmill. I have a soft spot for people who lay everything in the line for something meaningful, and the weakness of these people is one I know well because I share it. We are naive and are easy for the professional class to manipulate for their own designs. In the end, I have to believe no sacrifice will be for nothing, no injustice unanswered, no Lie left standing. Have a peaceful night.
Hi Matt, Did I miss your piece on the torture and killing of American Journalist Gonzalo Lira by the Ukraine government(AKA Zelensky)? Seems like all western media just swept that one right under the rug because it didn’t fit the narrative.
Thank you for that poignant comparison of hearts.
Sneaker Salesman!
Thank you Matt. Yes, for the good to do nothing. The Second Coming by Yeats ends similarly. How often must we be reminded by the living dead, like Navalny, that our very lives are in peril. When justice prevails, it's an American tragedy, when people get a hand up, it's the progressive ruin of the Nation, when the truth is manifest its a damn Liberal lie and on and on. I am a bit reminded of a Kingston Trio song, The John Birch Society. " We'll teach you how to spot em,
In the city or the sticks - for even Jasper Junction is just full of liberal dicks, the CIAs subversive and so is the FCC. There's no one left but we and thee and we're not sure of thee!!" Minor lyrics adjustment to replace Bolsheviks with liberal dicks - seems timely.
A student in my class asked if we could talk about MAGA and how we're supposed to be understanding and civil with it/them. He couldn't know how gut wrenching that question is to me. I am enraged by this uncivil, voodoo curse that's been willingly cast upon millions of people.
I always commend reason. I try to always be on the side of rationality. I can't this time. There's nothing coming from me other than bile and barred teeth.
I'm lost. I can't make any sense of it. How can this one waste of protoplasm hold the attention of this many cerebral sausages for so long? I have no effing idea! The Huckster and Fools have commingled into an incestuous relationship that can't be unknotted.
Gotta go... gotta spit in someone's eye.
In the history of non sequiturs, none is more cognitively dissonant than that you have just posted of the Tangerine Emperor making fleeting mention of Alexei Navalny’s “sudden death” — or, as virtually the entirety of the free world would describe it, cold-blooded murder — only to somehow tie it to everything Trump thinks is wrong about America. Of course, the Marmalade Messiah wouldn’t know a non sequitur if Melania used one of her stilettos to hit him square in his jowly, orange-powdered mug with one. Russia has had its moral giants, Solzhenitsyn and Sharansky are just a couple. Alexei Navalny eclipses them both. Navalny’s moral courage and life legacy will live on long after the toxin of Trump’s MAGAism finally leaches out of this country’s civic culture. Whenever that day comes, it can’t come soon enough.
I lived in Russia for many years in the 80s as a diplomat. A horrible place. Amazing to see Putin crank back up the secret police and the assassinations of days of yore.
I'm beside myself losing my hero Navalny. Before it all ends, I may lose my only other hero, Zalenski, with Congress withholding military support. (Funny things happen in a war when you have no artillery shells to fire back. The South Vietnamese Army held the North Vietnamese Army at bay for two years after we scooted out in '73. Until Congress cut off supplying, you guessed it, artillery shells.)
To be a "peacemaker," will Trump cut off weapons for Ukraine, and force Ukraine to reward Putin with Crimea and other chunks of territory.? Will Trump largely abandon the NATO alliance? Will he get a Nobel Peace Prize for all this?
Is that how we make America great again?
My political party is for a strong defense, and not some pouting isolationism. Gotta find out where my party went. Matt, should I just write in Santa Clause this year?
Of course, I could vote for Biden, who will assuredly be carted off for cause well within the next 24 months to an old age home. Then we'll have President Kamala, who it is whispered in Washington, is an incompetent Leona Helmsley.
Join me for a little swig of Novichok?
Subscribed for great insightful (often inspirational) essays. Nothing but pessimism and hate of late.
Mother Russia sometimes has a way of leaving a very strong impression on her children. I once met an Orthodox priest, Father Boris was his name, out Siberia way. He had been imprisoned in the Gulag and subsequently escaped from Russia. After enjoying his freedom for a while, like Navalny, he felt compelled to return to Russia and minister there.
He was renowned in that area because he lent out his church building to the Baptists and the Adventists when they had no place for their Christmas Eve services. I'm not so sure what the Orthodox powers in Moscow thought about that move, but I'm rather certain what the Powers in heaven thought about it. At our only meeting, and knowing nothing about me, Father Boris asked me to offer the prayer for the evening meal.
When I think about these two Russian men, I wish only that I had half of their courage. Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven..
Thank you Matt, what an awesome guy
I bookmarked the interview, I will watch it later
John Donne would like to retract something he once said.
Spot on, Matt.
I have grown increasingly tired of neo-fascists wrapping themselves in the flag, hanging a crucifix around their necks, and proclaiming themselves patriots and Christians. I call bullshit. To which their apologists say, "well, you don't know what's in their hearts." As if I give ,00473 of a shit what's in their hearts. What matters is not what they feel, is not even what they (if you'll pardon the expression) think. It is what they do. If you eschew the Constitution, excuse the hell out of me, but you are not a patriot. If you bear false witness, if you ignore the very core of Christian teaching, then you are no Christian, regardless of the quantity or blinginess of your cruciform jewelry.
Many of us who oppose the GOP's drift toward authoritarianism argue that we oughtn't call attention to the vapidity of the MAGgots stances, 'cause donchaknow they've run to Trump because those who take the sapiens part of our Linnaean classification seriously look at them askance. And I call bullshit again. Pretending that there is a rational argument for Trumpism that is consistent with either American or Christian values insults everyone's intelligence, not least of which theirs. Time to speak the truth.
When I consider the sacrifices made by so very many of our forebears in juxtaposition to the facile blatherings of these nitwits it makes my blood boil.
Right on!
In remembrance…
https://youtu.be/jsVieeccpQs?si=OaMssRtWJfPJAHSq
You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher
- Peter Gabriel
Succinct. And spot on.