To date, unfolding right in front of us, the current culmination of this is Project 2025, spearheaded by far-right Heritage Foundation and others. It is the Trump regime playbook, and was devised by far right political intellectuals, including Christian nationalists, and is the plan to dismantle democracy, sector by sector, smashing guardrails against autocracy one-by-one.
Browsing: Opinions
I have the argument dozens of different ways. Video of Congresswoman Lisa McClain (from March 25th) is routinely recycled: Trump could have the cure for cancer and the democrats would still be upset. Normally this is the kind of trolling or red-meat-to-the-MAGA-base kind of statement I ignore, but these are not normal times. In critical thinking there are several ‘smell tests’ that can be applied to check the soundness of an argument. Fallacies and contradictions are always things for which critical thinkers should lookout.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the major countries of the world have been aligning in two different blocs: NATO (which includes most European nations, the United States, and Canada), Japan, and South Korea, on one side, and Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and India on the other.
As we enter the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—a time meant for reflecting on where we’ve strayed from compassion—I keep returning to the dehumanization of Palestinians I’ve witnessed among the observant Jewish community I grew up in.
The fall of Roe v. Wade showed how weaponized misinformation can gut constitutional rights. That same tool is now being turned against free speech. What began as a crusade to control women’s reproductive rights is expanding into a campaign to muzzle dissent, punish satire, and intimidate the media.
Everyone knows a truth-teller. The truth-tellers are the men and women who no one wants to speak at the Black History program, the MLK Day Program, or the Juneteenth Bar-Be-Que.
Campaign Nonviolence Action Days is underway an impressive 5,595+ actions and events across the United States and around the world working to “build a culture of peace and active nonviolence, free from war, poverty, racism, and environmental destruction.”
On September 13, the British public was startled when more than 110,000 people turned out for a raucous far-right rally in London featuring racist conspiracy theories, anti-Muslim hate speech, and violent assaults upon police. Whipping up the crowd, Tommy Robinson―a popular far-right agitator, march organizer, and five-time convicted criminal―told the assemblage that British government officials believed “that Somalians, Afghans, Pakistanis, all of them, their rights supersede yours, the British public, the people that built this nation.” Signs carried by the demonstrators invoked racist and xenophobic themes, such as: “Why are white people despised when our money pays for everything?”
Charlie Kirk’s killing – and the aftermath of grief and political outrage – are too overwhelming to ignore, even though I couldn’t possibly have anything to say that hasn’t already been said.
One cannot examine the wars in Ukraine and Gaza without noticing certain parallels. First and foremost are the human and economic costs of aggression. Those costs are staggering, and how they might be made up is anybody’s guess, since the aggressors—Russia and Israel—are not going to pay. And the aggressors happen to be led by people judged war criminals—Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, and their inner circles—another parallel.