State of the Union 2025

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I am not sure I’ll waste any time tonight watching the 2026 State of the Union.

For sure, today, I’ll revisit the President March 4, 2025, State of the Union address, which you can read here.  Remember, this is the speech one year ago.

I recommend, also, two posts I did in the last two days.

The first is a commentary by Janice Andersen in my Church’s newsletter for Feb 21-22.  Janice is a long time friend and her full-time job for many years has been social justice.  She speaks from the heart.

The second is a brief re-introduction to Iran and environs, since the sabers are rattling.  At least take a quick look.

I solicit comments, but will probably not add e-mailed comments until after tonight.

Good advice on the coffee shop blackboard: We all matter.

POSTNOTE 10:45 PM Feb. 24:  “You Matter” is all I need to say.

COMMENTS: 

from Jeff: I sent a photo of a TRUMP 2020 t shirt to some friends in a text and told them I was wearing it tonight….they said they can’t watch…I sadly commented we might miss him livestreaming missile attacks on Tehran…sadly in emphasis in retrospect.

from Norm:  That the one plus hour of whining about the SCOTUS that were supposed to be loyal to him; Biden and Obama for leaving him a mess; the 2020 elections being stolen from him; the press for picking on him; those dad burned Norwegians for not giving him the Nobel or Noble as he calls it Peace Prize; and (fill-in-the-blanks).

He will then launch into praising himself for ending those eight unidentified wars; closing the borders; stopping fraud in Minnesota; cleaning up the claimed messes left for him by Biden and Obama;  and (fill-in-the-blanks) before he is  finished following a long and often rambling session of whining and self praising!☹
So, be sure to enjoy an adult beverage or two before sitting down to endure the deal that begins at 7 tonight.
Enjoy!

from Carol: I’m sending this link in case you weren’t aware of it.  [State of the Swamp Rebuttal to the State of the Union, start at 3:48:15].  For sure watch Minneapolis’ Mayor Frey.  He blew me out of the water!!  Not since Obama have I been so inspired by a political speech.  With Kennedy-like good looks, plus charisma… I think that one result of ICE trying to take over Minneapolis is that Frey is now being noticed in the political world.

Joyce Vance, Civil Discourse Feb. 25.  [recap of the entire two hour speech]

from Kathy: NPR fact check on State of the Union Feb 24 here.

Iran

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See also March 3 2026 post

Tuesday night, it is probably a good guess that the topic of Iran will come up in the State of the Union.

It is a good time to once again reprint the map of Iran and its close neighbors in the Middle East.

Iran Lebanon Israel area (pdf – includes Israel)

Iran and environs, 1987 Readers Digest Atlas of the World

Iran is almost exactly the same geographic size as Alaska, and has a population of about 93 million, more than twice the population of California.  While Alaska and Iran are about the same size, Alaska has less than 1% of Iran’s population (738,000).  Most people in Iran live in cities.  It is a major world country.  It is important to come to an understanding of the country, its people, and particularly its relationship to the west, especially to the United States.  Note especially the Strait of Hormuz, and if I’d make any suggestions start your history with the early 1950s, democracy in Iran, and oil….

I asked some folks I know who are Iranian if they have any sources of info which they would consider credible.   Here’s one: “Article that may be of help:  https://jacobin.com/2026/02/protests-revolution-iran-war-intervention.  I would also check out Quincy institute and their materials.”

This brief post comes about because of an e-mail (forwarded with permission) by a native Iranian (long time American), sent to a friend in the last few days.  Here’s the note in its entirety.  The opinion is as all opinions are: the view of the writer.

“It’s heartwarming to know that you and people like you care.

Internet is somewhat reconnected and the news are horrifying.  I don’t think there is an accurate statistics of the murdered but 40,000 would not be an exaggeration.  At this point anyone I know either knows a killed one personally or knows of them!

The streets were covered in blood of the innocent.  They even attacked the hospitals and shot the wounded!!  We know this because some of the bodies still had hospital stuff attached to them and gunshots in the forehead.

People are divided and really desperate.  Almost half the people really want him to attack!!!  I’m talking about people inside Iran.

I’m totally against this brutal stupidity but understand the desperate people whose logic is: we are getting killed anyways and there is no help.  Even if the help comes in the form of getting more of us killed but giving us freedom we take it.

A lot of people are waiting to be bombed to freedom.”

I only add this comment which I made to the person who sent me the above writing: “As you know ’the west’ has a very long history with Iran, much of it going back to the early 50s and oil and the Shah and the like.”

I could add much more to this, but let it suffice for this post.  This is yet another crucial opportunity to learn.

Here’s an additional response from someone in a position to know what Iran is.

History is important we also must understand what is the Israel’s plan for the region, and Russia and China’s plans and needs for $$ power and oil.  

Many are playing a chess game with all of our lives,  for their reach to power.  Keep in mind the Epstein file exposes how so many leaders were manipulated to do as asked.   

There is so much we don’t know!   Yet Iranians keep going from one autocrat to another instead of getting their own plan put together.   They are asking for Israel to help them, not sure if they are aware that they will live similar to Syria and Iraq…… 

I know despair is where they are at and unfortunately they don’t empower their own intellectuals to help.   It is so sad…. 


from a friend of over 70 years, who’s ancestry is Syrian (Mar 4, 2026) This comment also appears in the March 14 post):       It was appropriate for you to look back to 1950 and mention the Shah in your discussion, but you neglected the most important event from that period. In 1949 Iran had freed themselves from other powers and established a democracy patterned after our American democracy.  I can still remember young girls running around in short skirts like the girls were doing in the United States.  Then next came the actions taken by the US in support of this new democracy.  Instead of supporting it, our CIA joined forces with the British Intelligence Agency and worked to destroy this democracy and return it to the rule of the Shah.  When the British are involved, there is a caste system involved.  I worked with three individuals at [my company who] were part of that Privileged Caste System, and in spite of all the factual information that they had, they would not accept the premise that they were a part of that Privileged Caste System.  It was all the horrible things that the US did to the Iranian democracy that resulted in the Iranians pleading “Death to America”, something that you would have also done if they had done such horrible things to you.  That was the most important point that your discussion had overlooked.

The British Government is one of the most horrible in the world, which doesn’t always extend to the population, but generally does.  Remember the actions taken by the early British settlers that were working to take land away from the Native Americans folks [in North Dakota] and surrounding areas so they could farm if.  I doubt if there was ever a treaty with the Native Americans that the British settlers ever honored.  And I believe that I shared with you the horrible things that were done to the Native Americans in [North Dakota] and surrounding areas that had fled to northern Canada where they could find food and were then herded back … and held there until most of them starved to death. That British culture is in general a horrible culture, and I am bothered by how much of it has extended to America.

 

The Globalization of Indifference

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Each Sunday at Basilica of St. Mary each person receives a newsletter/worship aid for the specific weekend service.  The first two pages generally are a column written by one of the staff members of the Parish.

Todays was entitled “The Gift of Tears” by Janice Andersen, for many years Director of Christian Life at the Basilica.  You can read it here:Janice Andersen Feb 22 2026.  Janice’s time at Basilica of St. Mary is roughly the same as my own, so she is certainly not a stranger to me, or to most of those who participate at the Basilica, particularly those involved in social justice concerns.

As usual, Janice writes from the heart, and leaves the reader with something to think about.  Take a few minutes to read her thoughts.  I think you’ll be glad you did.

Thoughts

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As I begin this post, the President is railing on against the Supreme Courts decision on Tariffs.  There is such an avalanche of issues, one wonders where to start.  More later in this post.  There are a few thought starters I’d like to suggest today.

THE RIGHT TO VOTE

There is a continuing effort to make it as difficult as possible for certain persons to vote in this country.  Saturday morning, Feb 21,  Joyce Vance and Stacy Abrams discussed this matter on line.  The 27 minute link to the recording is here.  

My brief personal opinion on the matter of IDs:

A couple of weeks ago I accessed my Passport.

I’m an old guy, so when I opened my Passport, I saw it expired 29 Nov 2025.  It noted that in the 10 years it was in effect I hadn’t been outside the country.  The likelihood I will renew the Passport is uncertain.  When I renewed my Drivers License last year I went with the Enhanced License, which required more money and more time and more documentation, which I provided.  It supposedly covers most situations within country.

Re voting, every personal story is unique, which makes understanding the nuances more important.

In my case, I have lived at the same address, under the same name, for the last 25 years.  No aberrations.  For me, voting is easy.  Now.

I qualified to vote at age 21, in 1961 (I wasn’t old enough to vote in 1960).  I was a college student, who’d been at the college for three years.  I don’t know what the nuances of residency were, then.  But my home town, was not the town where I went to college….  North Dakotan.

Then I was in the U.S. Army in Colorado.

Then I got my first post college job in Minnesota, the fall President Kennedy was assassinated.  In the fall of 1964, election year, I had been back in North Dakota for three months, after essentially a three year absence.

In 1965 I returned to Minnesota, and in the following 35 years, before 2000, I resided in 7 different communities.

100% of the time I was a U.S. citizen, residing in a U.S. state.  But….

The takeaway for me, when I think about voting, is that I can be deceived into thinking that it’s no big deal since so much of my life has been at one single address; in the earlier years, however, I had to deal with the same kinds of circumstances that other ordinary Americans have to navigate, including a time when my personal economics and savvy were by no means the same as now.

A suggestion: as you begin to navigate this question for yourself and others you know who may never have engaged in the process of registering to vote, do the same thing I did, and learn the specifics of participation in elections in your state.  It is not difficult, the Secretary of States office is usually a good entry point.  There are general elections in every state every two (even-numbered) years for every member of Congress, and every four years for President.  It will help you, personally, come to understand the situation better.

POSTNOTE: I went to check on renewing my passport this afternoon. I’ve had probably four passports, so the process isn’t new, but neither is it simple.  And it will cost about $150 to renew, and be time consuming.  I can renew in person or by mail.  No mistakes.

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THE TARIFF DECISION BY THE SUPREME COURT: PAUL KRUGMAN on the Supreme Court Tariff Decision; also here (Feb 22).

and JOYCE VANCE, and HEATHER COX RICHARDSON.

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PAUL KRUGMAN on the extreme wealth in this country: Billionaires Gone Wild; The Ultra Rich are Different from You and Me.

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A PERSONAL COMMENTARY ON COMMUNICATING IN THE INTERNET AGE; Finally, A Pause to Refresh from Paul Krugman.  About the top subscriber platforms on Substack.

As you know, I frequently reference and attach op eds from on-line sources I have come to trust over a long period of time.  This is especially true here, today.  Those referenced above: Joyce Vance, Paul Krugman, along with Heather Cox Richardson and Robert Reich, are commentators I subscribe to.  There are a few others with significant followings to whom I subscribe: Garrison Keillor and Mary Trump come to mind.  I don’t subscribe to the Bulwark or Mehdi Hasan though I often see their work, the former from a multiple of authors.  I am a paper (as in newsprint) subscriber to the Minnesota Star Tribune; and on-line subscriber to New York Times.  Like you, I am not a bottomless pit of financial resources, but I try to do my best to contribute to contributors.

I could go on.  I strongly encourage subscribing to sources you trust.

The free press is not free.  Back in the day I was very careful of getting permission to reprint anything, and back in the day there was an easy process to get such permission.  Today there are so many varieties of opinions, it is impossible to keep track of, much less afford, doing much other than making sure that anything I send along is fully sourced.  In a sense, what I do now is similar to what we used to do with clips from newspapers, which would be sent person-to-person.

This is a dilemma of course. The media generally is trying to deal with this.  So into the mix comes paywalls, gifts articles, etc., etc. etc.

For me, this isn’t personal laziness, and for sure not because of lack of respect.  We need to inform each other, and I’m thankful for each such signed opinion, particularly if it at least is someone I’ve heard of, especially in particular is the source of the writing is someone I actually know in the ‘real world’.

Keep contributing.  I censor nothing.  I can’t and won’t respond to everything, but I do print it.

COMMENTS (more at end of post)

from Laura: Really appreciate your thoughts, Dick.

from Brian: Thanks for sharing.  Very interesting

from Jeff: passport renewal was pretty easy, all online, of course that was prior to Trumpistan rules .. not sure if changed?   i did it for my daughter 2 yrs ago, you even took your own photo and uploaded it. no docs to provide as you are on record.

you do need to have a secure online account, but if you have ss and medicare you likely already have that…go to state dept page to see,

Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti

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This morning I made my first visit to the sites where Renee Good and Alex Pretti were murdered in January.  Mine was only a short visit about 9 a.m.  Alex’s death was on the west side of Nicollet Avenue, between 25th and 26th Street.  Renee died on the east side of Portland Avenue  at about 34th Street.  (some snapshots at end to the post)

Five years earlier, I had visited the site where George Floyd was killed, outside Cup Foods on Chicago Avenue at 38th Street.  The three sites are in close geographic proximity, within a mile or two.

Today is Valentine’s Day, and I think this is an appropriate day for this brief remembrance in the middle of the second month of the second year of this dark time of what amounts to an attempt at ethnic cleansing in the middle of our 250th year as a United States of America.

Sue, in an e-mail last night says all that needs to be said today: I went to a concert in Minneapolis last night; it was Cantus, the Minnesota men’s acapella singing group, and their guests from England, The King’s Singers, who had been invited last year to do a dual concert with Cantus in Minneapolis this month.  Then the ICE invasion happened, and the prospects for the concert looked bleak. But in the end the English acapella men’s group decided to come. Cantus spokesmen, before the concert began, explained how they had given their guests a tour of the landmark sites of the incidents of the last month: where Renee Good was murdered; where Alex Pretti was murdered; where the Whipple Building is, with protesters outside 24/7. We were told that the King’s Singers had already heard of the rising of the people of Minnesota against the Administration’s war against our people, citizens and non-citizens alike. The artists led a virtual cheering event inside Orchestra Hall touting the strength and resilience of the good people of our state, and it was repeated more than once between songs, the theme of which was “friendship.” Very lovely stuff.

(Both groups can be heard on YouTube)

Several persons forwarded a Feb. 10, 2026, commentary by Sabrina Tavernise in the New York Times: ‘We’ve Found our Voice’: Many in Twin Cities Emerge With a Sense of Power”.   Several others referred The Editors Pick for the February 11 Minnesota Star Tribune: “The Unexpected resistance to ICE in Minnesota: The soccer moms of Signal” by Mara Klecker: MN Star Trib 2 11 26.

Finally, SAK, my long-time friend across the pond in England sent a long comment related to my post on Immigrants, Feb 7.  I’ve added it there and it is very worth your time.

Here are some few snapshots from this mornings visit to south Minneapolis.  There is no attempt to be Pulitzer quality – I just wanted to get an impression of the nearby environment.

25th and Nicollet, Minneapolis Feb 14 2026

Alex Pretti memorial, 25th and Nicollet Minneapolis Feb 14, 2026

General location where Renee Good died, about 34th and Portland Ave S Minneapolis

Renee Good Memorial Feb 14 2026 near 34th and Portland Minneapolis

COMMENTS:

Jane:     Thanks for representing.  Every day should be Valentines Day.  This would could definitely use a lot more love!

MaryEllen:  Powerful, as always. The courage of those soccer Moms is amazing.

I am proud of my home state.
My sister in South Carolina said people are saying awful things about Minnesota in their area near Charleston. I need to ask her for specifics.
Have you read Sinclair Lewis’s ‘It can’t happen here’ ?

Response to Mary Ellen: I’m very aware of Lewis’ book, and have been for years.  It’s been brought to life in real terms in more recent years, when the flirtation with fascism was very real and very nearly catastrophic.  I suppose Charles Lindbergh, because of his celebrity, sort of became the face of the American flirtation with the Nazis; but Minnesota and particularly Minneapolis became something of a hotbed – ‘silver shirts’ and the like.  I hope we’re in the process, now, and dodging the bullet of full-throated fascism here, but it’s too soon to know, yet.  The Germans were too smart to be so stupid when Hitler and his gang came to power.  We all know what the end result was of 12 years of the 1,000 year Reich.  Keep on.

from Carol’s relative in Czech Republic: … what has happened in the last couple months in Minneapolis is the perfect example of a republic in action. These were common citizens, not professional politicians, called from their daily lives out into the streets braving Sub-Zero weather to witness and document what their government was doing in their names, even in the wake of two of their neighbors having been murdered. I think there’s no better definition of a Republic. I wasn’t there myself, but I’m immensely proud to call them my fellow Americans.

ps. Europeans who have expressed disbelief and even sympathy to me this past year are now stopping me on the street to enthuse about those “brave Americans in Minneapolis. to which I say “I even have some cousins who live there”.

 

Abraham Lincoln

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This morning came a 4-minute YouTube I ask you to NOT watch until you read the rest, below, first.

Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.  Heather Cox Richardson offers a marvelous summary, here.

The column got me to thinking back to my own history, which includes lots of tourist stops over many years.  Among these stops at various times earlier in life were Lincoln’s birth home; where he grew up; thence practiced Law and got into politics; the White House; Gettysburg; Ford’s Theatre and across the street where he died; his grave in Springfield….

Abe Lincoln

The image of Lincoln (above) is at arms length from where I’m typing this post.  It’s been there for years.  It was a small impulse purchase at an antique store on the edge of Dickeyville WI.  The store had been a home of one of my family ancestors who arrived in Wisconsin from Germany about 1872.  It’s just an iron cast hanging on a wall.  Somebody might wonder “why did he keep this?” when they’re cleaning out my home office….

We all know about the Civil War and related.  It doesn’t take much study to know that Lincoln led in tumultuous times in the U.S.

It was a time of explosive growth in the United States.  It was a not a time of kind and gentle treatment of Native Americans.  The rapid expansion of railroads and technology like the telegraph made settlement simpler.  All of my migrant ancestors from French Canada and Germany arrived in this part of the United States in this general time.  The U.S. population increased from about 31 million in 1860 to about 39 million in 1870 (2026 estimate: about 349 million).  There is a great plenty to criticize.

Lincoln, a country boy, had an impossible task.

What made the difference for him as compared to most U.S. Presidents?

He had, it seems to me, a profound sense of community – a place for all of us – that he actually managed to convey in the limited ways available at the time.  It was a daunting task – when he became president he appointed what Doris Kearns Goodwin called “A Team of Rivals” integral to his cabinet.  And you know the rest.

I leave it to each of you to fill in the blanks, as you see him, as compared to today’s chaotic time in which we currently live…and then to implement in each of our own small way some improvements in the status quo.

Which leaves the YouTube I asked you to hold till now:

It came from one of the readers of this post, Fred, who in turn had received it from his friend, Bob.  Here are their few words of introduction:

Bob: I have never been so moved by Shakespeare.  The man had a way with words.  This is powerful, powerful stuff.

Fred:  Check this out. It is a powerful message that those needing to hear it would likely not understand. McKellan was speaking on the Colbert show.

As a sophomore in college, I found myself cornered by a need for an elective. The only one I could find that had the potential to be interesting was Theater. Its instructor was actually a part-time actress in Twin Cities theatre circles. I lucked out. She loved Shakespeare and I was awed. Turns out, of course, his work was topical!

COMMENTS:


from Jeff: I thought  Professor Richardson today did a great job noting how Lincoln dated the beginning of the USA to the Declaration, not the Constitution which enshrined slavery into the country.

McKellen simply magnificent on performance value alone [YouTube].  What a master. The message delivered with such strength and grace has even more impact.

from Molly:

WOW!
just plain breathtaking!
(& I will surely be sharing forthwith!)
and Thank You, Dick!

POSTNOTE: The word today is that the Minneapolis Surge by ICE is ending.  I will believe it when it actually happens.  I think the response by Minneapolis (and by my state, generally) should be used as a tutorial for other places which ICE etc plan to mobilize. The fight is not over, it is just beginning.   March 28 is the next nationwide protest with focus on Minneapolis.  Mark your calendar and participate where you live.

Sidenote:  I am aware that President Obama enters the “me-too” conversation.  He was tough on deportation.  This is probably true, however, the process used, apparently, was totally different than present-day ICE.  The focus was on illegal foreign nationals already sentenced and in jail or prison.  In the present instance, the focus was on reaching quotas, which led to the abundant abuses.  The whole story will be told in coming months.  Also, I keep thinking of the bipartisan House-Senate-Biden White House immigration reform bill towards the end of the Biden administration, which DJT had the Republicans pull so it was never voted on.  He had a different strategy, which is what we’re living through now.  Keep that in mind/

 

Immigrants

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PRENOTE: My post about our Precinct Caucus February 3, here

This is being written on Saturday of Super Bowl weekend, almost a sacred day for many in the U.S.  I need to admit that I don’t know which teams are playing in the Super Bowl this year, or where it is being played, but by the time of kickoff I’ll probably watch for awhile, try to catch Bad Bunny (first time I’ve heard/seen him) at half-time, no interest in the commercials….

It does seem to be a good time to muse about Immigrants, since its constantly on the front page here in the Twin Cities of ICE, including half of the front page of this morning’s paper: “ONE MONTH IN MINNESOTA” continued pp A4-9 and  about the month of January; “Resisting or obstructing?  Line is blurry“;  “5-year-old’s deportation on fast track“.  Pages A 3,8, 12&13 (opinion) are almost 100% on the topic of the horror of ICE in the Twin Cities.

Feb. 5, a lady came in the coffee shop with a novel and effective approach to keeping the Twin Cities protest alive (yes there is a head on the other side of the hood!):

Feb. 5, 2026 Woodbury MN

This morning came this from Carol (I trust her sourcing, but don’t have it yet): “The mass deportation is projected to cost the federal government between $315 billion and nearly $1 trillion over the next decade. Under 2025 legislative proposals, the annual cost to deport one million people annually is estimated to be roughly $88 billion per year. Experts estimate an average cost of roughly $70,000 per person to arrest, detain, process, and remove undocumented immigrants. In 2023, immigrants in the United States—including both documented and undocumented individuals—paid a total of nearly $652 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. Social Security/Medicare: They have contributed over a quarter of a trillion dollars to these programs.”

Here’s a related article on the topic from the National Immigration Law Center.  And another from the American Immigration Council.

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This morning immigrants are closer to my mind than usual because of a recent and unexpected dusting off of my own family history – specifically the German side (50% of me).  It came via an e-mail from Texas from the great-great granddaughter of the man who was my great grandfathers brother.  I have only very recently become acquainted with her.  Her John, my Wilhelm, their brother Herman, and their father and stepmother, Bernard and Maria Anna, came to America in 1872 and 1873.  At time of migration the brothers were all in their 20s, born between 1846 and 1852.  Their Dad was born in 1816; their birth Mom had died in 1857.

These were not tourists on luxury liners.  Their migration stories would match any other voluntary migration stories from any time from any place.  They came from modest circumstances.  America represented opportunity and big risks.  They settled in a place where people were basically like them, in  language, culture and religion.  No different than other voluntary migrants at any time in history, including today.  People with their own stories.

My newly discovered relative and I have worked on our respective family stories for many years. and early indications are that it is a fortuitous find for both of us.  (Her Dad, from Illinois, who I’ve met only one time in person,  started on his family quest about the same time as I did – in 1981.  And he introduced the two of us.  This is how this business often works.  Sometimes it takes many years, but you need to prepare for this possibility.)

(My other ‘side’ – I’m 50% French-Canadian – has similar stories to my German kin, albeit longer in North America – the first arriving in 1618 to what is now Quebec, the last to Quebec from France in 1757.  Thence to what is the United States beginning in the 1840s and 50s.)

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I, indeed most all of us in this country, are descendants of immigrants from somewhere.  The only difference is the circumstance of their arrival on our shores.  Of course, before all of them were the indigenous people called “Indians”, one of whom was the mother of my first ancestor born in North America.

We need to pay very, very close attention to the catastrophe now under way in this country.  Our legacy as a country was built by  immigrants from everywhere.  There are endless stories.  Take time to learn your own.

from Brian in Massachusetts Jan 26, 2026:

Brian in MA Jan 26 2026

POSTNOTE: One of the many immigrant groups kicked around by DJT and company was the Haitian Community of Springfield OH.  Recently, Tim Snyder, a native of Springfield, wrote two posts about the Springfield situation.  They are accessible here and well worth your time.

Personally, I had the privilege, twice, of visiting Haiti on study trips in 2003 (right before the coup) and 2006, meeting with and seeing people and places of Haiti and Haitians.  Brian, pictured above, is a long time advocate for justice in Haiti.

My personal Haiti website, which has been on-line for years, is still available to browse if you wish.  I’d personally recommend my Open Letter to U.S policy leaders in April 2006.  It was my small effort to get some sense of policy problems relating to the relationship between U.S. and Haiti going back for their entire history as independent countries.

ALSO, recently I received two excellent writings on present day sources of information.  The first, “Twitter is not real life”, can be accessed here.  The second is “How to tell you’re being manipulated by a story”

COMMENTS (more at end):

from Joyce: [We] have been in Spain all week, on a Road Scholar tour of Andalusia. It’s 2:40AM as I write this, about to leave for the airport and home. We’ve had bizarre weather, heavy rain all week in a region that’s usually sunny and dry, thanks to an atmospheric river. My point in writing this is to let you know that everyone we’ve spoken with this week, the 18 other people from all over the US and Canada who are on the tour with us, the Spanish people with whom we have spoken, all expressed admiration for Minnesota’s standing up for immigrants. The world is with us.

from Brian: Great post–thanks!   That’s why I call them ICE holes

from Ruth: Not watching the Super Bowl.  I am watching the Olympics.  Canadians are boycotting US.  Saw Lyndsay Vaughan taken off the ski hill.  Very sad to see a great athlete go down.  Like to see the world come together for a good cause.  Best wishes to the protesters in Minnesota.  We are with you in spirit.

responding to Ruth:  My bad!  I hadn’t even thought about the Olympics, but we’ve already had it on, and know about Lyndsay’s mishap.  Don’t know any details, but my guess is her career is now ended.  I guess my personal excuse about winter sports is that when I was in 7th grade, I was wearing my Dad’s speed skates (size 13 or something), which didn’t enhance my ability to keep my feet during a kids ‘crack the pit’ on the school yard ice pond.  Ended up breaking my leg.  And lost my enthusiasm for skating, period.  There was no way I could get myself into those skates such that I could skate. I was probably size 8….

from SAK, Feb 14, 2026:

Thanks for that post & for mentioning Lincoln, he can’t be mentioned too often. The world needs a constant reminder! A war was fought mainly over the issue of race & exclusion.

Your post as well a couple of other things brought the issues of racism, anti-immigrants & misogyny to mind.

  • I listened again to an old programme about the American Populists, a political party that gained popularity in the late 19th & early 20thcentury.  [This is] highly recommended!

    To fight the populists, who were more liberal & egalitarian – no comparison with today’s oft called “populists”, the usual tactics were used: divide the poor farmers (white vs black) & limit their voting rights via various laws & restrictions. The Jim Crow Laws were setup mainly in the south to impose segregation thus helping division – people are unlikely to work together politically if they can’t even meet! The poor white farmer had to choose between voting along with black farmers for their mutual benefit or voting “against” the black farmer & thus feeling superior just due to the distinction of being white. Thus Thomas E Watson said: “You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars both.” Plus ça change . . .

    • As the article below shows, the fight is never done & dusted – it has to be fought again & again. Complacency allows backward slipping & sliding. Is that what happened in the early 21st century & resulted in the present predicament? Are new Jim Crow laws being proposed & instituted?

    • Elon Musk posted about race almost every day in the past January & the posts were “indiscernible from those of white supremacists” say experts.

      • A British billionaire, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, has caused an almighty commotion by declaring totally wrong figures about immigration & saying the UK is being “colonized” (with an ‘s’ not a ‘z’ in the UK!) by immigrants.  He is mentioned in the article below but just to note that he is one of the richest people in the UK, was part of the Brexit campaign to leave the EU, a campaign Trump & Musk favoured. Once the Leave campaign won, Sir Ratcliffe up & left for Monaco to avoid paying taxes. It is not inappropriate to say, as one journalist & broadcaster put it: “I have a hunch more Brits would say they prefer people, immigrants or not, who pay their taxes, rather than billionaires who bugger off to Monaco and don’t”. Another article highlights how Sir Ratcliffe benefits from the UK system which educated him & subsidised his business as well as topping up his employees’ livelihoods because they receive basic salaries etc.
  • The shocking videoclip Trump posted of the Obamas & did not even explicitly apologise!

Trump, Musk and now UK billionaire Jim Ratcliffe – they are the enablers, making racists feel great again

With their profile and vile words, these malign provocateurs are tearing down decency’s guardrails

Fri 13 Feb 2026    Jonathan Freedland

It lacks the elegance of “greed is good”, but as a distillation of the spirit of the age, it’s right up there. “I feel liberated,” a top banker told the Financial Times shortly after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 US presidential election. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled … it’s a new dawn.”

So that’s what they meant by “vibe shift”. Though, as the Epstein files reveal daily, the top 0.01% were hardly primly biting their tongues before Trump’s win, at least not in private. Those with telephone-number fortunes and great power felt able to speak, and write, to each other about women in language so vicious, so filled with hate – women discussed as body parts, as “less than human”, in Gordon Brown’s apt phrase – that they didn’t need the encouragement of a “grab ’em by the pussy” president to cast off their inhibitions.

Still, as that unnamed banker made clear to the FT, women are not the only group the powerful and privileged have been itching to disparage. This week it was migrants who were the target, accused by the billionaire Monaco resident Sir Jim Ratcliffe of having “colonised” Britain.

He may have got his stats wrong – he was in quite a muddle about the size of the UK population – but he did usefully debunk one stubbornly persistent assumption. For a while, it was taken as read that anti-immigrant sentiment was a function of economic anxiety: indeed, that was the instant explanation offered for Trump’s victory in 2016. But Ratcliffe, whose fortune is estimated at £17bn, won’t be feeling too much angst in the economic department. That is truer still of Elon Musk, who is simultaneously the backer of anti-immigration parties across Europe and the world’s richest man.

Indeed, the data shows no correlation at all between hostility to immigration and income. In January, Ipsos found that it was the most affluent fifth of voters in Britain who, more than any other group, named immigration as their most pressing concern.

The increasingly uninhibited musings of the super-rich are, alas, just one factor in a shift that is becoming ever more apparent. While of course we must say that Sir Jim’s comments did not specify the racial origins of immigrants, that’s inevitably how they were heard. We are, in the words of Sunder Katwala, who as the director of the British Future thinktank observes these trends more keenly than most, “going backwards on racism”.

The evidence is all around you. It’s there in the 116,000 hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales, but excluding London, for the year to March 2025 – up on the previous year, and a fifth of it involving violence.

It’s there in the “ugly”, 1970s-style racism directed at NHS staff, incidents of verbal and physical abuse based on skin colour so frequent that the health secretary, Wes Streeting, warned last November that it was becoming “socially acceptable to be racist”.

It’s there in a changed public discourse, where the bounds of acceptability have shifted to include notions that most thought had been left behind two generations ago. Suddenly there’s a debate, drawing in mainstream commentators, over whether Rishi Sunak is English. A former cabinet minister, Robert Jenrick, can lament not seeing “another white face” in a Birmingham neighbourhood. A former prime minister, Liz Truss, appears as a guest on an online show where she chats with Connor Tomlinson, who believes, among other things, that British citizens from ethnic minorities should not be allowed to become members of parliament. The Sun’s Harry Cole hosts that same far-right figure on his online show.

It’s there on social media, where it has become routine to hurl the P-word [Paki for Pakistani] at politicians from the Tories’ Priti Patel to Labour’s Shabana Mahmood, from onetime Corbynite Zarah Sultana to Reform’s Zia Yusuf. And it’s there in the daily, lived experience of Britain’s minorities, measurable in both data and anecdote. Figures released this week, for example, showed yet another rise in antisemitic incidents, including a spike straight after October’s deadly attack on a synagogue in Heaton Park, Manchester, which left two dead on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar – more than half of that spike made up of incidents directly referring to, or celebrating, the killings at Heaton Park. Last autumn, Katwala wrote: “I personally get so much more racist abuse most weeks in 2025 than I ever did in 2005.”

Of course, there will be multiple and varied explanations for all this, but there are a few common threads. When it comes to the discourse, the shaping effect of online influencers is unmistakable. The likes of Tomlinson would once have been handing out badly stencilled leaflets in pub backrooms. Now he can reach millions, with TV production values previously the exclusive preserve of the major broadcasters. But the medium affects the message.

Put simply, the loudmouths of the far right are competing in an attention economy. Saying something shocking wins attention, but to keep it they have to say something more shocking still. There is a ratchet effect, which ensures the conversation becomes ever more extreme. Note the latest effusion from the white supremacist US influencer Nick Fuentes. Holocaust denial worked for him for a while, but his audience demands more. This week, he provided it by directing his fire at women, whom he castigated for encouraging sympathy for the poor and minorities. “The number one political enemy in America is women,” he told his audience on the Rumble platform. And so, “Every woman and girl is sent to the gulags. We will determine who the good ones are after the fact.” But first, to the gulags. “They go to the breeding gulags.”

These figures should be far beyond the fringe, but they keep getting amplified. Tucker Carlson hosted Fuentes on his show; Musk regularly promotes some of Britain’s most extreme voices, including Advance UK, a political party that now includes Tommy Robinson and that vows to ban indefinite leave to remain, ban the foreign-born from becoming British citizens and encourage all settled migrants to leave. Musk seems to think Advance is the real deal, preferable to the “weak sauce” of Nigel Farage. All the while, his X platform barely stirs as users racially abuse others, in the foulest language.

Throw in the brain-boiling effect of the pandemic period, when a small, extremely online minority became radicalised by conspiracy theories of every flavour, with anti-vax talk as the gateway drug, and you have some of the causes of this retrograde shift.

It’s important to hold on to the fact that most people do not think this way, that attitudes of tolerance are now deeply embedded in Britain: the data shows that too. Still, that led too many to become complacent, to assume that this was a problem of our past, one that we’d solved. But racism and prejudice are not like that. The battles against them have to be fought, and re-fought, in every generation. They are light sleepers – and some loud, powerful voices are determined to shake them awake.

Caucus

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Six months from today is the 4th of July, the 250th birthday of the United States.  By my count that’s 147 days; beyond that, by my count 269 days from now, is Election Day, 2026, November 3.  How does your “making a difference” calendar look like between now and then.  Set aside some time every day to our future as a country.  We, the people, are our destiny – each one of us.

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I always attend my precinct caucus.  Last night there were 34 in our room, and they were engaged (not enraged, engaged).    I knew few of those attending.  They represented the diversity of our precinct. Two years ago, the same precinct meeting saw about a half dozen of us.  The weather on that caucus night was awful.

(In 2008, the Obama-Clinton year, in another school classroom, it was standing room only at our Precinct meeting.  (see POSTNOTE below).  People came to put either “Clinton” or “Obama” on a scrap of paper (they ran out of anything resembling a ballot really early), and once they voted, many  just left.)

Our state representative and state senator stopped by very briefly as did representatives for our congressperson and one candidate for federal office, and another for county office.  There just is no time for politicking  in such a setting.  But I think simply showing up is worthwhile.  Politics is very hard work for candidates.  Most important, the people in the room play an integral role in ultimately endorsing who the candidates will be.

There were about 10 well thought out and argued resolutions proposed and explained by several individuals who were well prepared.  Their proposals were generally supported by the group, and will go on to the next level, which will be the Senate District Convention Feb 28, then the Congressional District, thence Minnesota State DFL convention.  Committees of volunteers will sort and refine resolutions into groups, by topic (i.e. Labor), ultimately becoming the parties philosophical platform.  This process defines pretty well the DFL’s ‘big tent’ orientation – to respect everyone’s input in an exceedingly complex society.  It is impressive to watch it begin at the basic level, our precinct caucus.

At the end of the meeting I connected with one of the presenters who had submitted a resolution that particularly interested me.  Possibly, we will meet further about ways to approach the issue.

Yes, there’s LOTS of politics ahead, and that is good and it is intentional.  In Minnesota it begins with the precinct caucus.

We from Precinct 5, meeting in a classroom at Woodbury High School, were authorized 36 delegates and 36 alternates to the next level.  There were fewer of us in the room than those numbers, and I’m guessing most signed on for delegate status.  We’ll see how many show up on Feb. 28 for the Senate District Convention.  They and others from other places are the designated decision makers in the upcoming political process.

At the end of the caucus, one attendee related something that happened earlier in her day.  She had some kind of complaint about a product not received or such, and she had occasion to call customer service and her contact was a very helpful man with an accent – he turned out to be Nepalese, in a call center in that part of the world.  In a small departure from business, he asked the lady how she was doing, knowing she was from Minnesota.  The conversation was short, but he mentioned that everyone he knew, knew all about what has happened recently in Minnesota, and Minnesotans were on their minds.  The interchange made a deep impression on her, glad to know that someone elsewhere in the world knew and cared.

It was a great ending to a good night.

POSTNOTE:  Here’s my comment about 2008, recalled in my blog for February 7, 2012:

Four years ago, Feb. 5, 2008…well, here’s what I said, then:
“I’ve attended precinct caucuses for years. Our particular caucus location for the last several years has been a junior high school a 15 minute drive from me, just off I-94.
That’s 15 minutes on a normal day.
Tonight it took almost an hour to drive to the location, most of that time spent in the last half mile jammed bumper to bumper on the freeway and the exit ramp, and then another 15 minutes to walk to the school from my car which I had to park on the shoulder of the road.
The time spent had everything to do with the precinct caucus attendance, which was HUGE.
My caucus location was teeming with young people. The young guy who serves me coffee most mornings at my local Caribou was there, volunteering
for Al Franken. It is nice to make occasional unexpected connections like these….”

 

 

Black History Month

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February is Black History Month.

I’d offer the post I did a couple of weeks ago on Martin Luther King Jr Day, which is here.  This post contains Martin Luther King Jrs Letter from the Birmingham Jail, and the letter from Birmingham church leaders at the time, which led to his response from Jail about Easter time, 1963.  If you haven’t read it, or haven’t read it for some time, take the time to take it in today.  There are some small ‘gymnastics’ to get the two letters – that is intentional on my part.

Heather Cox Richardson gives a succinct history of the day here (Feb. 1 2026).

Of course, nothing is easy these days.  February 1 I heard that the President had signed the usual proclamation for Black History Month.  No such luck.  (You can find one if you’re diligent.  The one he signed was January 31, 2025, one year ago less than two weeks into his reign.)

Maybe we can all have an informal Everybody’s History Month between now and July 4, 2026, without diminishing Black History.  There can be other notes, like the significance of January 6, 2021….  We, everyone of us, are players in the ongoing history of this country of ours.  We cannot simply be spectators.

And Ken Burns 6-part 12-hour History of the American Revolution is still widely available on Public Broadcasting (PBS) – it just replayed within the last week, and I’m sure it will replay again.  Contact your station.  Rachel Maddow’s pod cast Burn Order, about the disgraceful interning of the Japanese in WWII America is also available.

Jan 13, long-time friend and colleague Paul wrote about the Burns series:

I watched, slowly, the Ken Burns series and was impressed by the detail, depth and breadth of the stories told.  Of course, there were many things we never learned when we were young.  Some because we were kids and would never have absorbed it all – imagine teaching a 6th grade class American history and trying to include it all in depth.  However, it is instructive to think about the selection of stories we were told and the ones that were not selected. There was obvious bias in that selection.  Burns gets to most of those missing pieces. Finally, women, indigenous people, slaves and free blacks and poor mountain men and more are all included in the series. Thank you, Ken Burns.  Now if we can just get the flag-waving, history erasing, politicians and their followers to watch this, we might have a chance to save our country.

COMMENTS:

from John:  Hopefully tensions in Minnesota have lessened a little bit– heard a long interview with the mayor of Minneapolis and he seemed to be hopeful – and it appears that the “Short Attention Span Theatre” that is our president has moved on to other things. I’m sure that won’t last though…

Participated in a vigil here Sunday evening, and checking other events that are scheduled locally to keep the awareness and presence going

response from Dick: Noted that 60 Minutes first segment last night was Minneapolis.  I have lots of confidence in Minneapolis Mayor, Police Chief and Minnesota Governor.  They know the routine with this guy.   The real basic training was George Floyd murder Memorial Day 2020 and the following chaos (which I believe, with respect particularly to the burnings, was ‘false flag’ stuff by hoodlums whose assignment was what used to be called Molotov cocktails).  Of course, police malpractice was the fuel for this in the first place, so there are other factors, but the week after Floyd was killed, DJT was musing about violence against protestors in Lafayette park across from the White House.  Remember that?  Of course, I can’t prove any of what I just alleged.  That week was in the really bad phase of Covid-19 and masks were the uniform of the day.

The People Part of Politics

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It has been a rough 7 months since Melissa and John Hortman were assassinated in suburban Minneapolis on June 24, 2025.  Thence came Annunciation School children targeted at Catholic Mass in south Mpls, followed by the recent killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti on south Minneapolis streets at hands of ICE, and more.  I know how these and other situations have been covered by the national media; and the more intense coverage in our local area.  What I also know is how life on the ground is here in the Twin Cities, and my post on “9 hours in a hospital” is my small effort to look at the other side of life here in the twin cities.  We’re hanging in there, non-violently.  We’re concerned and we are also determined to make it through this.  We’re up to it.  Expect to see many of us on the streets in the future.  Know that more of us are working as hard but not as visibly.  There are bright spots: today Bruce Springsteen was live at First Avenue in Minneapolis, an unexpected high spot to go along with his new song to Minneapolis.  Thank you all.

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PRENOTE:

Related, relevant, a post I wrote yesterday about my 9 hours in a Minneapolis hospital on Wednesday Jan. 28.

IMPORTANT FOR MINNESOTANS: Minnesota Precinct Caucus Tuesday Feb 3.    This is crucial for anyone wishing to impact on their parties candidates or position on issues.  I’m Democrat.  Here’s the MN caucus preview from the DFL website.

I’m a contributing member of Indivisible (which apparently makes me a ‘domestic terrorist’ in the view of some).  I contributed $50 about the time of the fall No Kings rally, and I’m glad I did.  The next: Saturday. March 28.  Here are details.

In case you haven’t heard: Bruce Springsteen: the Streets of Minneapolis.

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Years ago, for some unremembered workshop, or maybe sitting on some committee, I sketched out an alternative definition of a Power Pyramid.   It’s undated, but I kept it all these years, and it seems more impactful, un-gussied-up.

My definition: People, even a little united, have all the power, and power people with competing interest know this, and spend their time devising ways to keep the people divided and fighting amongst themselves.  Any person in power lives in dread of being found out.  You can fill in the blanks.

There are three crucial dates ahead:

First. (In Minnesota) Precinct Caucuses on Tuesday, Feb. 3.  They are open to all, most often attended by relatively few, and (my opinion) the most important political meeting one can attend.  My last caucus was two years ago.  It had very low attendance, due largely to very bad weather, and a few of us rattled around to elect delegates and propose resolutions for later levels of political conventions.  In my case, we surviving delegates had to reconvene twice to endorse candidates for legislator vacancies in our district.  The last endorsing convention, in December, 2025, 24 of us (out of over 28,000 registered voters) nominated the endorsed candidate for interim state legislator.  Our candidate was endorsed by 21 of the 24, won the primary (requested by the candidate who was endorsed by a single delegate), and ultimately won the general election on Jan 26 with near 98% of the vote (48 write-ins for other candidates).  The only reason I had a say in who was nominated and was subsequently elected was that I showed up on that miserable winter evening two years ago, and then came to the meetings to choose successor candidates.  Of course, the candidate for office similarly had to show up and campaign for office.  This is what democracy looks like, it is what democracy is.  (Each state has its own system.  So, if you don’t know your entry level political meeting, just ask someone you know who is political!)

The second crucial date: July 4, 2026: the 250th birthday of the United States.  More on that later.  My guess is that this summer will be complicated.  If you can, search out and watch for the first time, or again, Ken Burns series on the American Revolution which led to the United States of America.

The third crucial date: Tuesday, November 10, Election Day.  On this date every member of Congress will be elected, and many other offices, local, state and federal.  Know your candidates as ethereally are, and vote for all offices..

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It is often said that we, the people, are very distrustful of Congress.  On the other hand, we like our own Congressional representative.  There is huge cognitive dissonance.
“We, the People” ARE the people who pick our own representative for all sorts of reasons.  What is yours?
Pay attention.  Your future, and ours is at stake.

POSTNOTE JAN. 31, 2026: After I’d completed the above, and overnight, came Heather Cox Richardson’s Jan. 30 post with some details about the arrest of former CNN journalist Don Lemon, and Twin Cities journalist Georgia Fort in reporting on a protest at a St. Paul church.

COMMENTS (more at end):

from Laura: Thanks, Dick.

Be sure to view the YouTube three minute Marsh family  song Minnesota Tribute, it’s beautiful.

from Mary: I did hear yesterday that Minneapolis is to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize – first time for a city.  Probably just a pipe dream but would be a fitting reward for the persistence of the activism.  And DJT would be furious!

from Larry: Excellent piece and the recent shootings took those two legislators out of the breaking news. Glad you brought up those victims. My God, Minnesota is turning into some kind of assassination/murder capital – something like NYC when it was run by the mafia. But in Minnesota’s case, it’s the federal gov’t under Donald Trump that is doing the shooting. Appalling! As Rachelle Cordova (known in social media as “Elle”), who is a Youtuber who grew up in Fargo and is a U of M grad, said in a recent “short” video essay: “Nothing will make Trump’s magabase turn against him...but he is losing approval points (with the general public) almost as fast as he’s losing his marbles.”  So true. LG


from SAK (two contributions):

Dear Mr Bernard, I was moved by your “We’re hanging in there, non-violently.  We’re concerned and we are also determined to make it through this.  We’re up to it.  Expect to see many of us on the streets in the future.”

It parallels 2 lines from Marilynne Robinson’s article which was on the front page of the Financial Times’ Life & Arts today, Saturday 31st of January, 2026:

“This country is in a state of crisis that began decades ago and will continue for decades more, if we are fortunate. The worst outcome would be a quiet that meant the exhaustion of the public resistance to the post-democratic, post-constitutional movement that controls the government at present.”

Here is the full article:

The killings in Minneapolis

 

As American cities have been left reeling by the deployment of ICE federal agents, acclaimed novelist Marilynne Robinson explores the deeper conflict that lies behind Donald Trump’s show of force.

This country is in a state of crisis that began decades ago and will continue for decades more, if we are fortunate. The worst outcome would be a quiet that meant the exhaustion of the public resistance to the post-democratic, post-constitutional movement that controls the government at present. The disorder we are seeing now is a show of force for its own sake encountering resistance that is entirely to be anticipated, since, as a matter of common sense, these cities that have offered sanctuary to immigrants do not want to see them abused or expelled. If they were, in any significant numbers, the gangsters and criminals and the burden on resources President Donald Trump says they are, hundreds of thousands of people would not be turning out to defend them, to help them stay.

It is clear from what Trump frequently says about immigrants and the countries many of them come from that he quite sincerely despises them. He earnestly wishes that America could be the pure white country it never was. But there is a profounder issue here, that is, whether the American people really do have the right to govern themselves. Federal troops have surged into blue cities, cities that usually elect Democrats to govern them, that provide necessities and amenities to their populations with a freer hand than might be done elsewhere, that embrace new thinking about the definition of family or about environmental issues, for example. They tend to be prosperous and well educated, and to love themselves. And they tend to know their rights. Minneapolis is a prime example of all this. Renée Good and Alex Pretti were credits to their community.

This is the source of its present troubles. There has long been a controversy in this country about what a real America is or would be. Is it its history of change and reform, or is it the past that was lost in all that progress? There is something else in play now that has disrupted the old, frayed likemindedness, our former willingness, however grudging, to grant the other side a point or two. Now we have a president with no sense of shared history or purpose, who speaks of carnage in the streets and calls his opposition “left lunatics” and “very sick people” who hate our country and want to destroy it. Obviously this view of things is not compatible with the orderly transfer of power or any other civil virtue of democracy, or, frankly, of normal adulthood.

There is no better angel to be appealed to in his case. In demonising those who disagree with him he gives himself and his henchmen frightening licence to attack them. Having had so much more experience with the law than a law- abiding citizen, or non-citizen, he knows it can be thwarted or delayed, or weaponised, and that by this and other means he can enjoy more impunity than an honest man would desire or have any use for. We will learn sooner or later if the killings in Minneapolis will simply be one more demonstration of the effectiveness of his methods. We can hardly expect anything but chaos from him. The true variable here is the American in the street, the American in the voting booth.

We must hope that we are teaching our children to enjoy their rights and honour the rights of others, because this conflict may go on for generations. A weird offshoot of old controversies has sprung up, a subculture that rejects democracy. The Trump phenomenon has rested on the love and loyalty of “people”, who are more “people” than the rest of us because when they gather in crowds we are told we are witnessing “populism”. New Yorkers can amass in astonishing numbers, their worries and passions never becoming populism. Fairly or not, they are assumed to read books.

The coming Maga, or Magog, are definitely not “people” in this sense. They are masculinists with very inflated notions of their own intelligence and no respect at all for the generality of humankind. Enough of them are billionaires to make it fairly certain that their intertwined zealotries will persist and have influence. They want to make us all Christians — a tragic history there! — and they want to make us all emulate the values of Aristotle, a pagan before the word, or Word. It is all sophomoric, but with actual academic credentials and publications, a carefully constructed soi-disant elite is emerging who really wouldn’t want those Maga crowds or those Americans in the streets to know what they have in mind, once democracy is out of the way. Knowingly or not, aged Trump is preparing the world for them, a world that will claim to be Christian.

Surely nothing better can be said about the past than that it yielded the present. And no aspect of the present was harder won than the emancipation of Christianity from the state and from the custom and expectation of sectarian hatred and the repression and violence that so often made it unworthy of the name. People who call themselves conservative seem to yearn for those days, to feel the rush of that old certainty while doing sanctified harm to “very sick people”. It is still statistically true in America that there are Christians in any random group. Recently we saw soldiers gathered around a man they held prostrate. They beat him first. If Christ appears to us in this moment, he is not among the executioners.

Marilynne Robinson’s most recent books are the novel ‘Jack’ and ‘Reading Genesis’.

more from SAK, Feb 3:

To introduce Jefferson, not that he needs an introduction, this is what John F. Kennedy said at a dinner honouring Nobel prize winners:

“I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”  😊

Compare that with those dining at the White House these days – many of whom dined at an Epstein mansion or island  . . .

Well Jefferson wrote on one January 30th a few years ago:

“Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states in a great one. [England has since much improved one hopes . . . ] 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen [hopefully it will not be seen in one or more of these United States]. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the 1st. condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has it’s evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem [I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery]. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”

Sadly one must also admit that Jefferson kept slaves & had a long term relationship with a young slave who bore him many children that he did not acknowledge I think.

As a tender novel, The Go-Between, opens: “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” This is not meant to justify however.

Jefferson goes on to say:

“Our citizens can never be induced, either as militia or as souldiers [sic], to go there to cut the throats of their own brothers and sons,”

Sadly, as a famous Minnesotan sang, “The times they are a-changin’ . . .”, sometimes for the worse not better. Surely the pendulum has started swinging for the better though.