The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate.

[Peter Lemkin]

[Fred Steeves]

A sticking point with me Peter is that just as it's never brought up to examine why immigrants are so compelled to leave their homelands in the first place, so it is never brought up what compelled Americans to not only once, but now twice, vote for this guy. And nobody even try and tell me it's all because they're racists, and on and on.

I am by no means an Orange Jesus supporter.

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

A sticking point with me Peter is that just as it's never brought up to examine why immigrants are so compelled to leave their homelands in the first place, so it is never brought up what compelled Americans to not only once, but now twice, vote for this guy. And nobody even try and tell me it's all because they're racists, and on and on.

I am by no means an Orange Jesus supporter.

I'm not sure I get your point. Immigrants from different countries have various reasons - all well known - no mystery to me. Surely the low-information/poorly-educated Trump voters don't know, as they 1] don't know history 2] don't follow current affairs outside of their state, usually 3] are drinking the propaganda kool-aid of the Right-Wing Propaganda machine.
It is not good to generalize, but generally most followers of MAGA movement are, yes, racist and most, not all, immigrants are not white. But this nation was formed out of immigrants - and bad ones at that - who proceeded to commit a longterm genocide on the Native Americans. Later they brought in African slaves as free labor and even fought a War to retain that system - which only BEGAN to give way in the 1960s through 1990s. Now Trump (who's grandfather was an out and out Nazi and who's father went to KKK meetings) - and who himself is obviously a racist, misogynist, anti-science idiot, con-man, and criminal psychopath with narcissistic personality disorder claims falsely that most immigrants are criminals [false] and taking away jobs of MAGA lower class [false] should be removed en masse. He even suggests those born here who are not white could also be deported.
Most who come here, come from totally dysfunctional dictatorships that are dangerous to life of the ordinary citizen. Sadly, most of those countries would not be in such bad shape had the USA and UK, and further back other European colonial powers not f***ked them over with CIA led coups and raped them financially for the benefit of the large corporations. Now, I see Trump as wanting to do the same to those inside the country as has historically been done outside using CIA, Military, etc.
I have a bumper sticker that says "If you're not a Native American, you're an Illegal Alien". I find it true!, and it is the bumper sticker that angers people on the Right the most, because they know it is a truth they don't want to face. We killed several hundred million Native Americans in North, Central and South America! Then we killed tens of millions of Africans, and enslaved other tens of millions of them, then kept them as 2-class citizens through today. We spent hundred of years taking over and destroying other countries, and illegal immigration is one of the results of that. Do I think we should control the borders? Yes, but humanely, understanding that we [and a few other countries secondarily] are the primary CAUSE of their needing to flee their countries. America even turned away some ships of Jews who died in the Holocaust when they were refused landing rights after fleeing Nazi Germany! We have a horrible hidden history one needs to know to evaluate such things fairly. An idiot like Trumpf doesn't know history and distorts what little he does know. This website is full of this hidden history and I'd be glad to point out any specific area you are interested in. May I suggest for starters the book 'A People's History of the United States'. Not what they taught you in school - but more truthful than what they taught [and didn't mention]. Name a country and I'll tell you how the USA fucked it up, so that it now is desperately poor and has a dictatorship [which we often installed and/or backed], and why they now seek to get to where they think is a safe haven. Now, the USA is not a safe haven and they should for their own good stop coming - but those who are here are working at jobs no one else wants; and they pay taxes but can not collect social security etc. Personally, I'd only be in favor of deporting the FEW who are violent and committed crimes [about 0.5%] - not the others. They are not taking anyone's jobs. The rich took the jobs away from the MAGA dumbillies - and are still doing it in plain sight! The 'TechBros' and others.....

[Peter Lemkin]

[Fred Steeves]

I'm not sure I get your point.

You do on immigration, and we just disagree on the general Trump voter.

So, my overall point spelled out is that the immigration conversation NEVER includes the source of why many of these immigrants are flooding here in the first place, that being the US has done great harm to their home countries as you so aptly pointed out. Most happy people choose to live their entire lives in the country of their birth, leaving home is an act of desperation. 

In that same respect, the way the US liberal class (which is not the left) reasons out why people voted for bad orange man never goes any further than that they're racist, stupid, etc. There's zero introspection into what the democrat party could do better in actually going out and winning votes, as the constant drumbeat of "Trump Bad!" should be all it takes.

What's also not talked about is that in 2015 Trump won some key midwestern states that republicans seldom win, because of disaffected Obama voters. Not racist republican voters.

Same thing this time around, Michigan went to Trump based on Biden/Harris refusing to lift a finger to stop the carnage in Gaza. The joy filled "Trump Bad" candidate lost Michigan not because of racist republicans, but because she pissed away the Muslim vote. 

The only other thing I would ad is that from my observations sure, the average Trump voter is stupid, incredibly so! But certainly no more stupid than someone anxious to vote for Hillary Clinton, or Kamala Harris. I should also clarify that a bit. By "stupid", I don't mean IQ wise. 

Any more I see both parties as true cults, and things like intelligence/introspection/nuance necessarily go flying out the window once one succumbs to cult standards.

[Peter Lemkin]

I'm not 'in love' with all Democratic Party positions or ideals. Some, like support of Israel I detest. I usually vote third party, but Trump was simply too dangerous and I voted Democrat. After we get back to relative sanity and away from Fascism, I'd want to work for a multiparty system, end to the electoral college and something better than the Democrats - but I'll not live that long. Trump is an existential danger to the US and World, and we will be lucky if we can flood the House and Senate with Democrats in 2 years and impeach him [although Vance is equally bad] - it might just destroy the MAGA movement which I view as dangerous to the survival of humanity - not just the USA polity.

As for people always wanting to live in their own country, with well educated people who are more mobile that is not always true. I have often lived in Europe though born in the USA. Half of my life I've lived in other countries. The MAGA crowd speak only one language [poorly] and are afraid to even vacation outside of the USA, being mostly provincial and poorly educated. Yes, of course, some Democratic voters are also not well educated, but the average difference, along with how they rate on racism and misogyny scales is enormous. MAGA are also anti-science, and their religious beliefs I find regressive and dangerous.

On the long-term the Environmental Crisis is the greatest threat and MAGA/Trump totally deny there even is a Crisis! On the short-term I haven't seen any positive move by Trump. He is the worst human I have seen in politics and I find it frightening he has a following. His trajectory is parallel to that of Hitler, if different countries and times - and I view him as equally dangerous. Both parties are controlled by the wealthy and that is the problem in the USA. It has always been an Oligarchy. Before it was less dangerous to the individual, but always dangerous to the society as a whole. Many of the Oligarchs who backed the Democrats are shifting over to back MAGA and a new class of Oligarchs [High Tech] seem to have been captured by Trump, as he is willing to allow them lower taxes and fewer regulations - when they deserve the strongest possible regulations and fair taxation.

[Peter Lemkin]

Pete Hegseth’s War on Religious Freedom and the Constitution
What Pete Hegseth’s record says about where he would lead the Department of Defense
Frederick Clarkson  January 16, 2025
This is a tale about Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, whose story has become part of the backstory of the politics and culture of our time. Hegseth is not only a proponent of Christian Nationalism, as it is commonly understood as the fusion of government with conservative Christian values, but an advocate for a revolutionary theocratic vision for the overthrow of the Constitution of the United States.

Pete Hegseth speaking with attendees at the 2019 Teen Student Action Summit hosted by Turning Point USA at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, D.C. (Gage Skidmore)
Almost as remarkable as Hegseth’s views is the fact that none of this came up during his confirmation hearing. The religious identities of presidential nominees for high office and judgeships have become something of a third rail that Senators dare not touch, despite the potential consequences for the foundations of constitutional democracy.
To say that Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) was appalled by the Senate’s lack of attention to Hegseth’s Chrisian nationalist and Dominionist views, would be an understatement. He told Barn Raiser, “Failure to specifically confront the miserable wretch Donald Trump’s equally miserable wretch of a Defense Department secretary nominee about his complete embrace of despicably unconstitutional fundamentalist Christian nationalism extremism is tantamount to asking Mrs. Lincoln how she liked the play other than the assassination.”
Weinstein, a former Air Force officer who served as Assistant General Counsel in the Reagan White House, added, “The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been around for nearly 20 years and currently has assisted over 92,000 members of the U.S. military-active duty, reserve, National Guard, including military academy/ROTC/OTS/OCS cadets and midshipmen as well as veterans, and clients in all 18 national security agencies. Consistently about 95% of those desperately coming to us for help in fighting the Christian Nationalism attempting to extinguish them, are practicing Christians themselves, who have been abused by their superiors in government for not being ‘Christian enough.’ ”
Hegseth showed us who he was in 2018, when Minnesota State Sen. John Marty (DFL) stood to oppose an amendment to an education bill that would allow privately funded displays of the national motto, “In God We Trust,” in Minnesota’s public schools. Little did he know that he would soon be smeared, along with other opponents of the measure, on Fox & Friends Weekend by the bill’s sponsor Republican State Sen. Dan Hall and the show’s co-host Pete Hegseth.
“Why is God, the mention of God in our schools, controversial to the Left today?” Hegseth asked. Hall replied that “There seems to be an anti-faith movement in our country—to suppress anything that is religious in any way and wipe it out of government.” It was, said Hall, a matter of “religious freedom” that “In God We Trust” be posted prominently in public schools.
Hegseth concluded the segment by claiming, “When we stripped God out of the schools, we replaced it with something else—like ideological indoctrination, and we are seeing the fruits of that right now.”
Unbeknownst to Hegseth and Hall, Marty was in church during their faith-baiting performance. “Came home from church this morning to a vile, obscene voice message attacking me for hating religion,” Marty wrote on Facebook. “Also, several angry emails and Twitter messages attacking me as anti-religious and un-American.”   
On a Sunday morning in 2018, Minnesota State Sen. John Marty (D) came home from church and discovered he had been smeared by Fox & Friends cohost Pete Hegseth.
It turned out that Hegseth and Hall had picked on the wrong Democrat to call anti-religious. Senator Marty comes from a family of Lutheran clergy who take their faith seriously. His father, Martin E. Marty is one of the most prominent religion scholars of our time and was a longtime professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School. John’s brother Peter is the publisher of The Christian Century magazine.
In a subsequent appearance on Fox & Friends, Marty defended the integrity of his faith and his opposition to the In God We Trust amendment. He insisted that the prospective In God We Trust posters in schools was “offensive” to both religious believers and the non-religious. Speaking as a Christian, he said that the “government sanctioned motto does not strengthen our religion, but it demeans, devalues and cheapens our religion.” 
Apparently, rather than continue to give the articulate Marty a platform, the smears stopped.
In an interview at the time Marty told me:
“I spoke out on behalf of the 21% of the public who do not believe in God, and on behalf of many of the 79% who (according to the author of the legislation) do hold religious beliefs. The ‘In God We Trust’ motto is certainly not a welcome message to people who do not believe in God, or to people who believe in different gods, or to Christians who don’t want government interfering with their religion and telling them what to believe.
“When I learned that the ‘In God We Trust’ bills are part of a long-term plan for conservative Christian domination… under the rubric of religious freedom, I realized that this is a moment to sit up and take notice.
“I am continually surprised that people who say they want a smaller, less intrusive government are so eager to promote this intrusion of government into the most personal parts of our lives.”
Whatever Hall and Hegseth’s intention, they certainly got opponents of posting ‘In God We Trust’ in public schools on the record. Right-wing media from Breitbart to LifeSiteNews exploded with coverage of this minor legislative discussion, smearing Marty and other proponents of the separation of church and state as un-godly.
While the legislation did not pass in Minnesota, similar bills have become law in several states including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana and Texas.
Project Blitz
Hegseth and Hall did not disclose that the bill they were promoting was drawn from a strategy playbook produced by Project Blitz, a coalition of religious groups that has drafted model legislation to advance Christianity’s dominion over civic life. “ ‘Project Blitz’ Seeks to Do for Christian Nationalism What ALEC Does for Big Business,” reads the headline of an article I wrote in April 2018 for Religion Dispatches.
In 2017, the then-little known Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, headquartered in Chesapeake, Virginia, and led by the founder of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, former Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) authored the 116-page “Report and Analysis on Religious Freedom Measures Impacting Prayer and Faith in America,” in partnership with the Pro-Family Legislative Network, led by Christian nationalist activist David Barton of Wallbuilders and the small National Legal Foundation.
The manual served two purposes. First, it was a remarkable distillation of lessons learned from legislative battles around the country. Based on that experience, the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation crafted 19 model bills and resolutions. These were accompanied by talking points and responses to the likely objections from the opposition. Second, it informed a national network of state legislative “prayer caucuses” in three dozen states modeled after the national Congressional Prayer Caucus. The lists of prayer caucus chairs and members were posted on the foundation’s web site. Some states had dozens of members, others only a few.
The model legislation ranged from efforts to display posters of the Ten Commandments in public schools, to anti-LGBTQ adoption bills, to versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and what they termed the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), which sought religious exemptions from legal respect for marriage equality. Their stated purpose of these model bills was to offer “the collective wisdom and experience of individual legislators and legal teams” to “groups who have or will support such legislation.”
Following my original exposés, Project Blitz drew unwanted media coverage (from the  New York Times, the Guardian, Religion News Service, Church & State magazine, and Salon, to name a few) and massive opposition. Project Blitz was forced to drop its name and scrub most related material from its website, including the names of members of the prayer caucuses for whom Project Blitz had become politically toxic. However, Project Blitz lives on in the form of prayer caucuses under the rubric of the American Prayer Caucus Network, and legislation whose provenance is Project Blitz, is still being introduced in state legislatures today. It also continues to be monitored by Blitz Watch, which has archived the Project Blitz legislative playbooks on its website.
It is worth noting that the original U.S. motto since 1782, “E Pluribus Unum” (out of many, one), which still appears on the Great Seal of the United States and some U.S. currencies, much better reflects the aspirations of the founding fathers who sought unity amidst diversity. But that’s not the goal of the new national motto, “In God We Trust,” which was passed by Congress during the height of the Cold War. The new motto was part of an effort to frame the United States as having God on its side against allegedly godless communism. This framing has lived on in the smear of John Marty and many others to this day. This is, of course, why the prominent display and invocation of In God We Trust is central to the Christian Right’s program.
Following the playbook
Nevertheless, this Christian Nationalist program features a stealth component.
In the Fox segment, Hall did not disclose that he was the Minnesota chair of the state Legislative Prayer Caucus, which had been organized by Project Blitz. He also did not disclose that his amendment was based on the model bill, the “National Motto Display Act.”
Unsurprisingly, the segment closely followed the talking points and political strategy behind the bill as outlined in the manual.
“It is critical to think strategically” the 2017 manual advised. Thus, legislators were urged to consider, “before filing any piece of religious liberty legislation” to assess the probability of success once they have established their goal: “Is it passage? To educate fellow legislators and the public on an issue? To get opponents on a recorded vote? To change the terms of the discussion?”
Maggie Garrett, Legislative Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told me at the time she saw these bills as introducing government-sponsored religion into public schools, where children are a “captive audience.”
“For students who don’t believe in God or have non-traditional concepts of a deity,” she said, “this is a fundamental violation of their right of conscience. Government should be neutral in matters of religion and certainly should not be using public schools to tell young people that there is one God and they must trust that God.”
David R. Brockman, a Nonresident Scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, told me that he viewed Project Blitz “as a covert campaign for conservative Christian dominion over law and public policy.”
“Dominionism as I understand it,” he said, seeks to align law and public policy with conservative Christian beliefs.”
In light of this episode, it is not unreasonable to think that Hegseth might act on his view of using the institutions of government to promote his religious views across all branches of the armed forces, should be become Secretary of Defense.
Raising up an underground army
Indeed, since 2018, Hegseth has gone on to embrace an even more militantly Dominionist form of Christian Nationalism. In 2023 he moved his family from New Jersey to Tennessee to join a church in the Nashville-headquartered Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida has said of the church, “Their goal is to reestablish biblical law as the standard for society. So, when they say they believe that America should be a Christian nation, they actually believe that all nations should be Christian.” 
Pete Hegseth is a follower of Doug Wilson, the pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. Wilson has characterized Mainline Protestants as part of the “enemy camp.” (Christ Church, Moscow Idaho.)
The denomination was formed in 1998 by Pastor Doug Wilson, who emerged from the Presbyterian Reformed world of Calvinist theologian R.J. Rushdoony, the leading theocratic theologian of the 20th century. Wilson, who leads a church in Moscow, Idaho, has also cobbled together an education and publishing empire of national influence. It includes New St. Andrews College and a related seminary in Moscow; as well as the Association of Classical Christian Schools, which serves as an accrediting agency for about 500 K-12 Christian member schools in 48 states. Wilson also founded the Canon Press, which has published his books and others consistent with his views.
Wilson is part of the broad movement called Christian Reconstructionism, which seeks to take Christian “dominion” by transforming society to be governed under what they call “Biblical Law.” (Their political theology is known as Dominionism.) The movement has been profoundly influential in the development of the politics of the Christian Right over the past half century. For his part, Wilson is unambiguous about seeking this kind of Christian dominion, ominously adding in March 2023 that more mainstream Christians are in “the enemy camp” and that “you don’t have to die for dominion, but you have be willing to.”
According to Ingersoll[/url], Wilson was notorious for his 1996 book Southern Slavery: As it Was, which, she says, “revives pre-Civil War arguments in favor of slavery.” He has also been implicated in accusations of abuse, including abuses of power and sexual abuse.
In a 2018 YouTube video, Wilson calls for implementing a Christian Reconstructionist vision to replace the secular U.S. Constitution with biblical law. He says he does not favor imposing it in a “top-down” fashion. He does, however, heartily support Hegseth’s nomination, as do the pastors of Hegseth’s church. One of them cheered the idea of Hegseth “replacing degenerates with God fearing Christian men,” adding, “Trump’s White House will be staffed by (at least some) faithful, God-fearing Christians who will be advising president Trump and wielding political power.”
As for Hegseth, in 2023 he and David Goodwin, the co-author of their book The Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation, discussed “mounting an insurgency” aimed at public education. This is not surprising, as Ingersoll observed, since one of Rushdoony’s most important strategies for Christian Reconstructionism to prevail, “was to eliminate public education and replace it with Christian education.”
In his book Battle for the American Mind, Hegseth supports “mounting an insurgency” against public education. In an appearance on The Classical Difference Network YouTube channel, Hegseth said, “Marxists, atheists, humanists burrowed in at key places that became the pipelines to the commanding heights. So, it’s not that they instantly controlled teachers colleges, or instantly controlled unions, or instantly controlled universities, or the accreditations. They started to slowly but surely push their philosophies and then their minions and their people into those positions.” (Classical Difference Network YouTube screenshot.)
In a November 2024 interview with CrossPolitic to promote his book, Hegseth described his vision of classical Christian schools as “bootcamps” for a future insurgency. He said:
“[We] draw out in the last part of the book what an educational insurgency would look like—because I was a counter-insurgency instructor in Afghanistan—and kind of the phases that Mao wrote about.
“And we’re in middle phase one right now, which is effectively a tactical retreat where you regroup, consolidate and reorganize, and as you do so you build your army underground, with the opportunity later on taking offensive operations in an overt way. And obviously all of this is metaphorical and all that good stuff.”
At this point in the interview, Hegseth and the CrossPolitic hosts laughed. Whether their chuckles reflect a vision of violence, or the perspective of revolutionaries playing the long game, is unclear. Their dire view of education and of society is, however, unambiguous.
The Christian supremacism Hegseth displayed in the Project Blitz episode in 2018 has apparently intensified since he gravitated into Pastor Wilson’s orbit. The Constitution, the First Amendment and the Supreme Court do not hold that one’s religious identity should be either an advantage or a disadvantage in one’s status as a citizen. But apparently that is not Pete Hegseth’s view. As someone who advocated the use of public schools to promote his religious views, one can only imagine what he might want to do with the Pentagon and the military academies, bases, ships, and planes and communications media of the armed services to promote or impose his theocratic views on others.


[url=https://barnraisingmedia.com/author/frederick-clarkson/]

[Fred Steeves]

I'm not 'in love' with all Democratic Party positions or ideals. Some, like support of Israel I detest. I usually vote third party, but Trump was simply too dangerous and I voted Democrat. After we get back to relative sanity and away from Fascism, I'd want to work for a multiparty system, end to the electoral college and something better than the Democrats - but I'll not live that long. Trump is an existential danger to the US and World, and we will be lucky if we can flood the House and Senate with Democrats in 2 years and impeach him [although Vance is equally bad] - it might just destroy the MAGA movement which I view as dangerous to the survival of humanity - not just the USA polity.

As for people always wanting to live in their own country, with well educated people who are more mobile that is not always true. I have often lived in Europe though born in the USA. Half of my life I've lived in other countries. The MAGA crowd speak only one language [poorly] and are afraid to even vacation outside of the USA, being mostly provincial and poorly educated. Yes, of course, some Democratic voters are also not well educated, but the average difference, along with how they rate on racism and misogyny scales is enormous. MAGA are also anti-science, and their religious beliefs I find regressive and dangerous.

On the long-term the Environmental Crisis is the greatest threat and MAGA/Trump totally deny there even is a Crisis! On the short-term I haven't seen any positive move by Trump. He is the worst human I have seen in politics and I find it frightening he has a following. His trajectory is parallel to that of Hitler, if different countries and times - and I view him as equally dangerous. Both parties are controlled by the wealthy and that is the problem in the USA. It has always been an Oligarchy. Before it was less dangerous to the individual, but always dangerous to the society as a whole. Many of the Oligarchs who backed the Democrats are shifting over to back MAGA and a new class of Oligarchs [High Tech] seem to have been captured by Trump, as he is willing to allow them lower taxes and fewer regulations - when they deserve the strongest possible regulations and fair taxation.

I know the storyline well. Trump is just too dangerous, he's the next Hitler, which leaves us with no choice but to vote blue no matter who. All one has to do is ignore the genocide facilitation, driving Russia into the arms of China, the proxy war against a that rival great power, getting Al Qaida in charge of Syria, a Middle East on fire, and with the giggling joy filled candidate not even needing votes to make the run in the first place.

And I see Hegseth there as well. While I agree a guy straight from FOX NEWS who longs to re-ignite the Crusades is dangerous indeed, his predecessor stood before the people daily lying through his teeth, while steadily angling us toward WW3.

The dems will NEVER be held to account for their own mortal sins, so long as a great number of their voters expect absolutely nothing from them save for running around like headless chickens yelling "Trump Bad!", while seeking to either impeach him (for what exactly this time?) or throwing their political rival behind bars...

These people became a sick joke on the world stage over those 4 years, everyone save for "the golden billion" could see right through them, and with the other 6 billion now flocking for the relative safety of BRICS, the Rules Based Order is crumbling right before our very eyes. But then again that's not necessarily a bad thing so maybe Team Blue was onto something. Keep it up!  

Then again bad orange man has them flocking with urgency to BRICS as well, just in a different way. I guess the global south doesn't like this new faction in charge either.

[Peter Lemkin]

Oh, there are an abundance of things to impeach Trump on - based only on most of the executive orders of his first week! [and surely more impeachable things coming in a steady flow]. A majority of his EOs were not just outrageous politically disgusting, but actually and provably illegal - and in many instances directly unconstitutional! That along with his pardoning of all his Jan. 6 thugs, he wants to use for other beat-em-ups, is more than enough for impeachment. We just need the numbers.

We must aim to get enough House and Senate members by the midterms to impeach him [as he should have been twice before]. The damage will be enormous and take decades to set right.

Yes, the Democrats need reform and many younger people elected, but we have to end the Fascist dictatorship first before we can reform them much.