What the &%$#? Election Musings.

In the wake of recent Electoral Events, I will be posting a series of Commentaries, probably beginning next week through early December. I truly hope to contribute to the dialogue, and invite your comments on my posts.

Unlike the Republicans during President Obama’s administration, I do not hope for and will not work for a failed Trump Presidency. I hope he jettisons all of his campaign rhetoric and does a great job, and I support him in any good things he will do.

These blogs will be for perspective, and for going forward.

Note: I have strong opinions and statements, and I back up what I say with evidence. If you share ideas, please back them up with evidence, not just feelings. I’ll outline that in my blogs. You are free to have feelings, but feelings ≠ (do not equal) evidence.

I do not believe—no, I know—that there are not two sides to every story (there are sometimes, but not always). Sometimes one side is true, and one side is false, and no amount of believing will make the other side true: e.g. Earth is round: Case Closed. Our Media must realize this and act accordingly.

God Bless America!

Future topics:

• Theoretical Methodology. What are facts and Truth, as opposed to Truthiness?
  • A Reading List that will allow you to understand exactly what is taking place
  • The creation of Idiot America where the gut rules, and intellect is despised.
• The context of this election against the understanding of the Eleven Nations of North America.
• How I dealing with my stages of grief.
• How the 2016 Election results happened.
  • How the Republican obstructionist, the Tea Party and Movement Conservatism opened the door.
  • How Trump manipulated the electorate
    • Dog Whistle arguments
    • Enlisting White Rage
    • Enlisting Misogyny
    • Rhetorical techniques
    • Who is Trump after all?
  • How the Democrats were asleep at the switch
  • The Media’s epic failure to cover this election equitably
    • What’s wrong with the media’s approach of two sides to every issue, when there are really not?
  • Extra-campaign factors
    • James Comey and the FBI: motivations
    • Wikileaks
    • Putin and Russia
    • The European phenomenon of whites-first politics (Brexit, Austria, Hungary, Finland, et al.)
• How Movement Conservatism has bamboozled America (It’s a Con of awesome proportions, let me tell you!)
  • How they have created a state of Invincible Ignorance in almost half of our nation’s people
    • How to invade and conquer Invincible Ignorance
• Exposing the Right-Wing efforts–successful–to suppress voting
• The guilt of Fundamentalist and right wing Protestants, and Right-Wing Catholic Bishops in this whole mysoginistic mess as they betray Christ and drive people away from Him and toward the Right-Wing.
• How we can neutralize the Electoral College without a Constitutional Amendment or Convention, and  enter 21st Century reality.
• How we progressives can and must work humbly and contritely to convince America that our agenda is good for Everyone!
  

Steven A. Armstrong

 

Update: Here’s a posting I sent to friends (real friends) on Facebook:

 

OK my (real, not FB) friends, since you’ve all been in the discussions.  I’m not going to belabor this, since I am preparing probably a month of Blog Posts putting forth my whole argument. See the preview at www.stevenaarmstrongsf.com . Here are my basic points:

 

1. I love you as my friends, and nothing will change that. Bottom line.
2. The Donald has to prove himself to me. See #9 below for how he’s blowing it so far. The clock is ticking.
3. I have messaged the poster of the homophobic car note and asked him to verify. He is an Episcopal Priest. I have heard back and the note is genuine. I have verified it. This happened to a real Gay Episcopal married priest, not the poster. Shame!!
4. I’m sorry the college student lied about the Hijab. That’s wrong, and perhaps actionable. She made a very bad mistake which then plays into the other camp’s hands.
5. Anything I post, please fact-check. I want to be accurate about facts.
6. I can assure you—and you know me to be an honorable man—there are millions of us out here who are terrified at the promises DJT made during the Campaign. If you don’t accept that, I don’t know what to say. Talk to people outside your circle.
   1. I must be honest with you. A vote for Trump viscerally feels to me like a repudiation of everything I have worked for my entire life. Sorry, but that what it feels like to me. It doesn’t mean I don’t still like my friends who voted for Trump, but this is personal for me.
   2. We are particularly terrified at the possible effects on SCOTUS. God help us!
7. I heard a very wise statement the other day: “Those who took Trump seriously, did not take him literally. Those who did not take him seriously took him literally.” I take the man at his word…and it scares the hell out of me.
8. I cannot for the life of me understand how we listened to the exact same Trump rallies and speeches and tweets, and you don’t see how hate-filled his whole campaign was with Dog Whistles everywhere.
9. World perspective: White Europeans and their descendants are trying to claw back the power they have lost since they conquered the world in the 16^th-19^th Centuries: see Brexit, Austria, Hungary, Finland, Russia, and now us. As a Sion of Spain, Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales, I reject this movement: Anathema Sit!
10. I cannot for the life of me understand how we listened to the exact same Trump rallies and speeches and tweets, and you don’t see how he either lied or just made stuff up as he went along. No drought in CA, no Climate change, and so forth and so on. No contact with Russia, when Russia affirms his staff was in contact.
11. I cannot for the life of me understand how when you see the gang of thieves, cut-throats, white supremacists, homophobes, and cronies he is loading his transition team with, you are not as appalled as I am. My heavens, Steve Bannon, the very heart and soul and enabler of the evil Alt-Right! How can you countenance that?
    1. Doesn’t it bother you that White Supremacists and the KKK laud him? They know his true agenda.
12. I do not care in the slightest that George Soros may be assisting the protests. The Koch Brothers do the same thing with the Tea Party, etc. I’m a Soros fan! Thank God we have some rich guys on the peoples’ side.
13. One of the ways Trump won was by the racist voter suppression laws in many States which are tantamount to a resurrected Jim Crow. I believe that the US should issue a free National ID Card to all actual citizens, and that all citizens be compelled to vote as in Australia. They can vote a blank ballot if they want. Any one—like Fr. Deacon Paul Weyrich, with whom I served at the Altar, one of the founders of Movement Conservatism and its unholy alliance with Right-wing Christianity—who says “We don’t want everyone to vote” is un-American. I pray for his repose. He died of a terrible illness. A great Deacon, a terrible politician. We both loved trains. You see, I have been at the Heart of the Beast and understand it from the inside.
14. Some of my basic principles:
    1. There are not two legitimate sides to every story. The media does not have to give time to “both sides” when one is demonstrably false by any valid test. For example, Pence says tobacco doesn’t cause cancer. Sorry Mike, you are just wrong. No justification for listening to you on that. The world is round: No time need be spent on alternate theories.
    2. The greatest evil threatening our nation is “Movement Conservatism,” which is a quasi-religious Cult. I’m not talking about ordinary conservative thinkers. I mean the doctrinaire cult that brought us trickle-down economics, etc., and now has control of Congress. Far more dangerous to us and to the world than Daesh or Al Qaida. And the Republican Party, once the dignified GOP of Eisenhower and Rockefeller, is its biggest victim.
       1. Example: The Left and Right are not equivalent. Liberal think-tanks were created to examine problems from a purely objective standpoint and avoid all partisanship, finding fact-based solutions. Conservative think-tanks eschew all objectivity and were created solely to press for the Movement Conservative agenda. The first is genuine, the second is partisan hogwash.
    3. The New Deal is the greatest achievement of our Nation’s social policy. Of course it had flaws and needs updating over time, but I stand by Our Father and Mother among the Saints, Franklin and Eleanor. I will fight every attempt to destroy it.
    4. The Left, and in particular, the Democratic Party, has made many mistakes. I do not claim infallibility for them at all. In particular, in this election, they did not take account of the rise of White Rage, the disaffection of many of the white middle-class, and the fickleness of minority voters. They did not effectively get out the vote.
       1. The rule by experts of Kennedy and Johnson administrations had many missteps. It’s still the right way, but we need to humbly admit it needs work.
    5. Finally, I intuit very deeply that we are in mid-1930s Germany.
       1. Trump wants to keep holding rallies! Can we say Nuremberg and Reichsparteitag?
       2. He has no concept of how a Democracy works. Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.
       3. Here are the key notes of Fascism. They sound like DJT to me:

Nationalism: Fascism seeks to solve economic, political, and social problems by achieving a millenarian national rebirth, exalting the nation or race above all else, and promoting cults of unity, strength, and purity

Totalitarianism: It opposes liberal democracy, rejects multi-party systems, and supports a one-party state, which we now have with all the power with the Republicans.

Economics: Some of this does not fit Trump. I am an honest guy. But this part does: Fascists criticized egalitarianism as preserving the weak. They instead promoted social Darwinist views.

Action: Fascism emphasizes direct action, including supporting the legitimacy of political violence, as a core part of its politics. See his rallies.

Age and gender roles: His misogyny, sexual abuse, and a retrograde gender view.

1. My conversations with my European and other foreign friends confirm that everyone else in the world already sees this. Those who cannot see it here are simply self-deluded. I’m sorry, I must be blunt. There is no American Exceptionalism.
2. This is my credo. I will not be silent:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. — Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

i.

I am doing this for you, to save all of us! You have no idea the evil that has been loosed upon us.

Enough for tonight. I will continue my battle tomorrow and the next, and the next until we have built Jerusalem in America’s green and pleasant lands.

 

Please God, Truly bless America, and make her The City set on a Hilltop.

My modern adaptation of the Troparion of the Holy Cross in my Byzantine Christian tradition:

“O Lord, save Thy People and Bless Thine Inheritance,
granting to Thy People Victory over any who oppose Justice!
And by the Power of Thy Cross, Preserving Thy Commonwealth!”

Here’s the video:

NB: Some of the accents are wrong in the Greek–not my doing! They forgot the rule about grave accents on the ultima before other words. Ah well!

The sacred meaning is still intact!