Our Constitutional Republic faces a clear and present danger more deadly than that of the Civil War. The danger is the Republican Party, a "political party" that has sold out to white supremacy, autocracy, misogyny, and hatred of everything our Nation stands for. Republicans dismiss any sense of a common American narrative. The "Republican Party" is an outlier in our history – ideologically extreme; contemptuous of social and economic policies that have sustained us for a century; unwilling to compromise; dismissive of evidence, fact, and science; dismissive of the legitimacy of any viewpoint except their own. America needs to face the simple, frightening fact that the Republican Party is a clear and present danger to our Constitutional Republic.
Special Counsel Jack Smith is not finished. He now turns his attention to the DC grand jury that soon will indict Trump for his role in planning, plotting, and leading the Jan 6 coup attempt.
Then, there are other indictments coming.
Georgia DA will indict Trump for attempting to overturn the Georgia election results as well as his role in planning the fake elector scheme.
NY AG has sued Trump’s businesses for $250 million for their 30-year record of bank, insurance, and tax fraud.
NYC DA is going to trail on Trump’s hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
E. Jean Carroll, having won a judgment against Trump for rape and defamation, is suing him again for remarks he made after the trial.
There is something else to consider here. Trump and his lawyers have made a career for the past 40 years of delay, file motions, delay, complain, bitch and moan, delay, go public, ask for new judge, ask for new venue, delay. The courts are now wise to his delay, delay, delay tactics. Look for the judges to throw out all his lawyers’ motions that will delay his trials by even a day or two.
For example: Representative Clay Higgins R-LA went on Twitter to encourage armed militias to rise up in opposition to Trump’s Tuesday arraignment.
Look him up. Four wives. Five short stints in law enforcement jobs before being elected to Congress. Higgins is a violent egotistical lunatic…when he’s having a good day.
His career path also included managing several used car dealerships.
And carrying a pistol on his hip and challenging critics to fights.
It’s Pride month! Corporations around the country, realizing that LGBTQ+ people also buy stuff and are a part of families that buy stuff, have been showing their support. The “anti-woke” crowds, always crying about “cancel culture,” have been spending the past few weeks trying to cancel all of their favorite mass-produced products. Companies ranging from Bud Light to Target have been subjected to the Puritan hordes of Republican-inspired LGBTQ+ phobias.
Now, self-appointed conservative watchdogs across the Twittersphere are going after Cracker Barrel for going woke. Yes, the same Cracker Barrel that was sued by the NAACP for discriminatory practices multiple times andsettled in 2004. The same Cracker Barrel that in 2013 was pressured into continuing to sell the merchandise of bigot Phil Robertson, of television’s “Duck Dynasty” fame. According to the conservative Texas Family Project, Cracker Barrel “has fallen.” In fact, they have “caved to the mob.” What mob? The company’s Facebook account released a post featuring a picture of a Cracker Barrel porch, replete with their standard rocking chairs, and one rainbow-painted chair, with the caption, “We are excited to celebrate Pride Month with our employees and guests. Everyone is always welcome at our table (and our rainbow rocker). Happy Pride!”
Cracker Barrel now joins the historically conservative Chick-fil-A, which became the subject of right-wing ire when it was discovered that for more than two years, Chick-fil-A has employed an executive position that oversees diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.And while Cracker Barrel is one of the larger Southern fast-casual chains, it doesn’t break the top ten in the U.S. Even Chick-fil-A is only the fifth-largest fast-food chain in the United States, according to career and jobs portal Zippia. There are nine other fast-food chains available to these red-blooded patriots who refuse to grab food from an institution that has gone woke!
The largest fast-food chain, according to Zippia, is no surprise: McDonald’s! Uh oh—they have a very thorough page detailing the company’s commitment to “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI).” This includes making sure that women receive more equitable pay to their male counterparts, and working to “best represent the diverse communities in which we operate.”
Next up is Taco Bell. Run for the border! Just last year, Taco Bell announced a plan to create a training program directed at lifting up “operators from diverse backgrounds” at their company.
The third-largest fast-food company is Subway and its sandwiches. Subway’s“commitment” includes promoting diversity within its franchises and the communities in which they operate. Boooooo! Subway also prides itself on providing access to disabled patrons. Double booooo!
Subway is followed by Chipotle Mexican Grill. (What would MAGA do without the cultural influence of Mexico?) Bad news for MAGA land: Chipotle has been making proclamations in support of things like “the Black community,” and its CEO Brian Niccol was even included (that word again!) on the top 25 list of “Top-Rated CEOs for Diversity in large companies.”
No. 5 on the list is Chick-fil-A, followed by Pizza Hut. Yum! Brands Inc., owns Pizza Hut (as well as KFC and Taco Bell). I suspect that the Texas-based pizza chain’s “Diversity & Inclusion: Everyone At The Table” page would count as having “fallen” to the “woke mob.” If you want pizza, why not try Domino’s? Ruh roh!
No worries! There’s still Panera Bread Company … and its VP of DEI. Ouch. They have a separate report on their inclusion initiatives here. There’s always Wendy’s. Of course, if the concept of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” continues to be a deal-breaker, you should probably stay away from Wendy’s. But never fear: Burger King is No. 10 with a bullet (cue M. Night Shyamalan twist ending music): a diversity initiative bullet!
The good news for bigots is that fast food is generally unhealthy and shouldn’t be eaten too frequently. The bad news is that if you plan on holding another insurrection or driving cross-country to support your suspected criminal former president, there are going to be a lot of places you cannot eat. Like, most of them. Better start looking at the 7-Eleven menu. Oh no!!!!!
When Haiti was hit by a devastating 2010 earthquake that killed an estimated 250,000 people, it wasn’t enough for Virginia Beach televangelist Pat Robertson to merely blame the victims. He demonized them.
The Haitians “were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III or whatever,” Robertson said on a broadcast of his “700 Club” TV show. “And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.'”
“You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.”
Actually, the “curse” was a global economic embargo imposed by the United States and Europe against the new Haitian republic, whose uprising was viewed as a dangerous example. France demanded reparations, saddling Haiti with debts into the 20th century. But Robertson’s take was in character for a man who concurred with Jerry Falwell in assigning blame for the 9/11 terrorist attack on America to “abortionists,” feminists, gays and lesbians, and the ACLU.
Robertson, who died Thursday at 93, leaves an indelible print on America as a man who used the media to rise to power, fused religion and politics, and helped set the precarious table upon which the fragile china of our democracy sits.
“Pat Robertson is part of that post-World War II wave of evangelical conservative Christians who sought not only to expand their religious ranks, but who saw it as part of their religious calling to change the very culture and fabric of American society,” says Corey D.B. Walker, interim dean of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity.
“He also did it in a very unique way by really harnessing the nascent power of television and other forms of visual media to not only advance evangelical conservative Christianity … but also a new style of conservative politics that really did not believe that there should be a separation of church and state,” said Walker, formerly of the University of Richmond and Virginia Union University.
It appears this project succeeded. Walker called Robertson and his fellow wave of evangelical conservatives “the architects of what we now call Christian nationalism.”
Thanks for nothing, guys. It’s only natural that Robertson died as news broke that former president Donald Trump has been indicated. Robertson’s media-fueled rise, the attacks on the marginalized, the cult of personality, the weaponization of religion as a political cudgel, created a template for Trump and Trumpism.
“He’s one of those real pioneers in transforming the very terrain of American democracy,” Walker said, adding that Robertson’s “is really a narrow vision of what democracy is.”
That vision is at loggerheads with America’s founding ideas of the role — and limits — of religion on American life, as enshrined in the Constitution. Ironically, these latter-day men of faith ushered in a divisive form of politics, “a politics of political annihilation of opponents, a politics fueled with denigration,” Walker said. In the process, they introduced “a deep, antidemocratic element in American politics that we’re going to have to continue to wrestle with now and into the long future.”
Think about it: A president who relentlessly peddled the lie of a stolen election, and stoked a violent insurrection to keep himself in office, somehow remains eligible to again be handed the keys to the White House and is attempting to game the democratic process to avoid conviction and imprisonment. If he somehow manages to be re-elected president before the legal process can play out, he’ll likely end his prosecution altogether.
If that plays out, we will no longer be a government of laws, but of corrupt men. America, as we know it, will be officially broken.
Not that religion has been unscathed by Robertson’s influence.
The rise of evangelical Christianity has coincided with the decline of denominationalism and religious affiliation in American public life, Walker said. “We’re now in the age of the religious ‘nones’ — those who don’t identify with the dominant mainline institutions of American Christianity.”
A younger generation in particular is turned off by the denial of humanity to LGBTQ people and immigrants and the attack on women’s reproductive rights. “American society has fundamentally shifted in support of being more open and inclusive, but (these evangelical conservatives) have been the opposite and the antithesis of that openness and inclusion.”
That message is not resonating with a younger audience, who “are not only voting in the ballot box; they’re also voting with their feet by not showing up in the pews of those once-robust churches.”
This nation’s founders were imperfect and too often, hypocritical. But they were infinitely wise in assigning the church a separate space from the state.
Robertson and Falwell ushered in a religious takeover of one of our nation’s two major political parties. The result debased both religion and government, and jeopardized the future of America’s experiment with a multiethnic, pluralistic democracy.
This unholy pact between Christian nationalists and the political right is Robertson’s legacy. The curse could be right around the corner.
While everyone is focused on Trump’s indictment in Florida federal court for violating the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice, that’s just the beginning!!
GEORGIA
Remember that telephone call in which Trump pressured Georgia officials to find more vote for him? Indictments in that case likely will be released in August.
JANUARY 6
As the January 6 Committee determined, Trump was up to his neck in plotting and carrying out the attempted coup on Jan 6. Special Counsel Jack Smith is likely to indict Trump for his role in Han 6 for trial in DC federal court.
