A bold case for reimagining the American project and making American democracy real—from a formidable new voice in political journalism
Frustrated with our political dysfunction, wearied by the thinness of contemporary political discourse, and troubled by the rise of anti-democratic attitudes across the political spectrum, journalist Osita Nwanevu has spent the Trump era examining the very meaning of democracy in search of answers to questions many have asked in the wake of the 2024 election: Are our institutions fundamentally broken? How can a country so divided govern itself? Does democracy even work as well as we believe?
The Right of the People offers us challenging answers: while democracy remains vital, American democracy is an illusion we must make real by transforming not only our political institutions but the American economy. In a text that spans democratic theory, the American Founding, our aging political system, and the dizzying inequalities of our new Gilded Age, Nwanevu makes a visionary case for a political and economic agenda to fulfill the promise of American democracy and revive faith in the American project.
“Nearly two hundred fifty years ago, the men who founded America made a fundamental break not just from their old country but from the past—casting off an order that had subjugated them with worn and weak ideas for the promise of true self-governance and greater prosperity in a new republic,” Nwanevu writes. “With exactly their sense of purpose and even higher, more righteous ambitions for America than they themselves had, we should do the same now—work as hard as we can in the decades ahead to ‘institute new Government’ for the benefit of all and not just the few.”
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
–Winston Smith in 1984 by George Orwell
John Hurt as Winston Smith in the 1984 version of 1984 (Image from jgdb.com)
Winston Smith is a fictional character and the protagonist of George Orwell’s dystopian 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The character was employed by Orwell as an everyman in the setting of the novel, a “central eye … [the reader] can readily identify with.” Wikipedia
Frances Perkins is no longer a household name, yet she was one of the most influential women of the twentieth century. Based on eight years of research, extensive archival materials, new documents, and exclusive access to Perkins’s family members and friends, this biography is the first complete portrait of a devoted public servant with a passionate personal life, a mother who changed the landscape of American business and society.
Frances Perkins was named Secretary of Labor by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. As the first female cabinet secretary, she spearheaded the fight to improve the lives of America’s working people while juggling her own complex family responsibilities. Perkins’s ideas became the cornerstones of the most important social welfare and legislation in the nation’s history, including unemployment compensation, child labor laws, and the forty-hour work week.
Arriving in Washington at the height of the Great Depression, Perkins pushed for massive public works projects that created millions of jobs for unemployed workers. She breathed life back into the nation’s labor movement, boosting living standards across the country. As head of the Immigration Service, she fought to bring European refugees to safety in the United States. Her greatest triumph was creating Social Security.
Written with a wit that echoes Frances Perkins’s own, award-winning journalist Kirstin Downey gives us a riveting exploration of how and why Perkins slipped into historical oblivion, and restores Perkins to her proper place in history.
Drawn from more than two decades of pathbreaking writing, the iconic and bestselling David Graeber’s most important essays and interviews.
“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently,” wrote David Graeber. A renowned anthropologist, activist, and author of such classic books as Debt and the breakout New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything (with David Wengrow), Graeber was as well-known for his sharp, lively essays as he was for his iconic role in the Occupy movement and his paradigm-shifting tomes.
There are converging political, economic, and ecological crises, and yet our politics is dominated by either business as usual or nostalgia for a mythical past. Thinking against the grain, Graeber was one of the few who dared to imagine a new understanding of the past and a liberatory vision of the future—to imagine a social order based on humans’ fundamental freedom. In essays published over three decades and ranging across the biggest issues of our time— inequality, technology, the identity of “the West,” democracy, art, power, anger, mutual aid, and protest—he challenges the old assumptions about political life. A trenchant critic of the order of things, and driven by a bold imagination and a passionate commitment to human freedom, he offers hope that our world can be different.
During a moment of daunting upheaval and pervasive despair, the incisive, entertaining, and urgent essays collected in The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World . . . , edited and with an introduction by Nika Dubrovksy and a foreword by Rebecca Solnit, make for essential and inspiring reading. They are a profound reminder of Graeber’s enduring significance as an iconic, playful, necessary thinker.
New Thinking Aug 6, 2025 Miranda Alcott, MA, is an intuitive, animal communicator. She has been a certified Crisis Responder and instructor/trainer for the National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA), as well as a member of NOVA’s Response Team. She earned her masters degree in spiritual psychology from the University of Santa Monica. She studied with renowned “animal ambassador,” Linda Tellington-Jones, and is a Certified TTOUCH Practitioner for Companion Animals. She is also author of a chapter titled “Listening to Water” in the book, The Healing Power of Water, edited by Masaru Emoto. Her website is https://mirandaalcott.com/ Here she focuses on many aspects of her work as a professional intuitive consultant. She addresses the issue of determining what other people really mean when they are speaking, and what they really need to hear or learn. She speaks to the dilemma of getting in touch with one’s inner voice in a world where love is often submerged by war and strife. She notes the importance of taking care of oneself in the face of dangers, both natural and domestic. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “Parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He currently serves as Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on December 10, 2019)
Palestinians suffering from extreme hunger under Israel’s intense attacks and blockade gather at an aid distribution center near the Zikim border crossing in Gaza to access limited food on August 03, 2025. Photo by Khames Alrefi/Anadolu via Getty Images
AFTER 22 MONTHS of Israel’s war on Palestinians in Gaza, something changed in the last week.
Israeli human rights groups and scholars for the first time called the bombardment and siege of the Palestinian territory a genocide. The governments of France, the United Kingdom, and Canada have all signaled they are prepared to join the vast majority of the world’s nations in recognizing Palestinian statehood. A majority of Senate Democrats voted last week in favor of blocking the U.S. from selling weapons to Israel, an historic first. Even the right-wing lawmaker Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., now calls Israel’s actions a genocide, the first Republican lawmaker to do so.
A recent Gallup poll showed that just 32 percent of Americans approve of Israel’s military action in Gaza: a new low. The majority of Americans — 60 percent — disapprove of the offensive, and, for the first time, a majority said they disapprove of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Such shifting attitudes were most prominent among younger Americans.
These recent swings have yet to materialize into policies that exert actual pressure on Israel and save Palestinian lives. Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza continues unabated, with the death toll topping 60,000 last week — though the number is likely 40 percent higher, according to a Lancet study. A slight loosening of Israel’s aid blockade has done little to ease famine conditions. At least 175 people — 92 children and 82 adults — have died of hunger in Gaza in recent weeks; killings continue near the few available aid sites; and airdrops have been criticized as ineffective, expensive, and dangerous, resulting in the death of one Palestinian on the ground and injuries for at least a dozen others.
Yet there is a growing belief among organizers and advocates that a new groundswell of outrage may translate into lasting consequences for U.S. foreign policy on Israel and Palestine.
“It’s too late obviously to impact policy in a way that would save Palestinian lives now,” said Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a U.S. policy fellow at Al-Shabaka, who is Palestinian and whose family is from Gaza. “But I think that the picture the current moment paints for a future of a pro-Palestine movement in the U.S. is significant.”
A Historic Senate Vote
A major flashpoint of the past week in U.S politics was a vote in the Senate on a pair of resolutions, authored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.,to block sales of certain U.S. weapons to Israel. Since November, Sanders has introduced several similar resolutions. With a Republican-controlled Senate, Sanders’s resolutions have largely been symbolic chances for lawmakers to signal to voters and lobbies where they stand on Palestine and Israel.
One of the recent resolutions aimed to bar the sale of more than $675.7 million worth of bombs — including hundreds of MK 83 1,000-pound bombs and BLU-110A/B General Purpose 1,000-pound bombs — as well as block the sale of tens of thousands of automatic assault rifles.
With tallies of 27-70 and 24-73, the resolutions failed to pass the Senate. But they drew the largest showing of support for blocking weapons deals with Israel so far. Among the new Democrats who joined in the vote were ranking members Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire (Foreign Relations Committee), Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island (Armed Services), and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington (Appropriations). Another supporter was Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, who had voted in favor of a similar resolution in November but opposed another arms embargo attempt in April after considerable pushback from the powerful lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
In his vote to prohibit assault rifle sales, Ossoff cited “the extreme mass deprivation of civilians in Gaza, including the intolerable starvation of children, that have resulted from the policies” of Israel. This stood out to Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, especially since Ossoff is up for reelection next year amid the AIPAC pressure.
Friedman and her organization have monitored statements from members of Congress on issues related to Israel and Palestine since 2017. Although many lawmakers doubled down on their support for Israel last week and blamed the lack of aid on Hamas, she noticed a shift in the number of lawmakers making statements of support for Palestinians. Many, she said, were voicing their disgust at Israel’s starvation policy. Whether they would back up their statements with votes on the floor to pressure Israel, however, remains in question.
When Friedman previously worked as a lobbyist advocating for the human rights of Palestinians, she said there was an open joke about the futility of trying to sway Hill lawmakers on the issue. Behind closed doors, she said, members of Congress would tell her and her colleagues: “I agree with you on everything you’re saying, thank you so much for your doing, but don’t ask me to do anything unless you can get my constituents to defend me because otherwise AIPAC will take me down.”
The recent Senate votes may signal a shift.
“Is it that the members are suddenly more courageous, or do they suddenly feel like somebody’s got their back more and have more room to maneuver? Maybe it’s a combination,” Friedman said. “Something is changing in the calculation, and that is only good.”
Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser for Sanders, has been in touch with congressional offices where staffers are reporting an uptick in constituents calling about Israel’s starvation campaign in Gaza.
In the 24 hours leading up the weapons Senate vote, IfNotNow interim executive director Morriah Kaplan said her group organized several thousand people to send letters to Senate offices in support of the resolutions.
“There’s possibility that Democratic lawmakers are also willing to step out against the AIPAC party line in a way that I think could fundamentally realign some of the politics around this issue,” Kaplan said. “And I hope that makes the Israeli government very nervous.”
Combating Israel’s Propaganda
There is tension for pro-Palestinian organizers and advocates grateful to see what feels like a wave of new support for Palestine within the U.S. and in other Western nations, while also questioning why it took so long.
“As someone who’s been a witness for 22 months of livestreamed genocide every day, what is it that made it a tipping point?” Friedman said. “I would have thought that the pictures of babies and kids killed with bombs, bullets, and deprivation of medical care over the past 22 months would have done it — it wasn’t.”
She and others pointed to the images of starvation in Gaza — emaciated babies, mothers holding their dying children, aid-seekers running from gunfire at aid sites laced with barbed wire — has forced a different kind of reckoning.
“There’s a realization that Israel is in fact intending to harm civilians.”
“Before, you could obfuscate. You could say, ‘There were 80 civilians killed because they wanted to go after one Hamas guy,’ or ‘Hamas is using human shields and hiding in tunnels behind civilians,’” said Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies who helped negotiate deals between Palestinian leadership and Israel in the past. “But that obfuscation is no longer feasible. There’s a realization that Israel is in fact intending to harm civilians. It’s taken literally starved babies, babies dying of hunger to get to this point. And that is a very sobering concept if you’ve spent the last two years telling yourself that Israel is doing its best to minimize civilian harm.”
The mainstream news organizations that have repeatedly run Israeli disinformation around aid shortages for months leading up to the current famine in Gaza are now publishing front-page stories and television broadcasts featuring images of starving Palestinians. Such images even drew sympathetic comments from President Donald Trump, who has a long record of dehumanizing Palestinians.
The images are circulating widely, perhaps reaching Americans who could previously overlook the war’s human toll. Powerful images have a history of shifting perspectives, such as an image of the drowned Syrian boy Alan Kurdi lying dead on a Mediterranean Sea beach amid the Syrian civil war, a photograph of children running from a U.S. napalm strike on Trảng Bàng village during the Vietnam War, and pictures of the dead and malnourished survivors at Nazi death camps.
“Images that are coming out of Gaza right now, those are reminiscent of the Holocaust,” Al-Shabaka’s Kenney-Shawa said. “Moments like that hold a lot of space in the American psyche.”
A Bigger Umbrella
Advocates and organizers say there must be accountability for Democratic leaders, such as President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for their role in creating the conditions that have allowed the genocide to devolve to this point of mass starvation. But those who spoke with The Intercept were in favor of postponing such reckoning for a big-tent approach. Building a larger coalition, they say, will be more fruitful in getting aid to starving Palestinians, halting the war in Gaza, and ending U.S. support for Israel.
“There’s a very desperate situation on the ground, there is a huge imbalance of power, and you need as many people as you can involved in pushing in the right direction,” said Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel Program at Arab Center Washington DC and former executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
On top of the billions in taxpayer money earmarked for Israel to buy new weapons, the U.S. government each year sends military weapons, vehicles, and munitions from existing American military stockpiles to the Israeli military — typically with the approval of Congress. The U.S. also helps finance Israel’s own domestic arms manufacturing industry. Munayyer and others hope this new groundswell might pressure legislators to end such unchecked financing of Israel and put sanctions on the country’s military leaders.
Other activists urged those who have newly taken up the pro-Palestine cause to call their elected representatives; protest arms transfers at ports; and embrace the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, a Palestinian-led campaign seeking to halt financial support for corporations and institutions complicit in Israel’s apartheid and genocide.
Duss, of Center for International Policy, said he was familiar with several former members of the Biden administration who are using their credibility and influence to pressure elected officials around Gaza. But he was disappointed at how few are doing so and called for more action from his colleagues. “Successful movements don’t scold people for being late, they welcome converts — that’s just successful politics,” he said.
“We may reasonably ask, what took you so long?” he said. “But we need to make it attractive for people to join this movement and to take the right position, even if they’re doing so belatedly.”
IfNotNow’s Kaplan said that she and other organizers have reported shifts in conversations with family members who previously had doubled down on supporting Israel after Hamas’s October 7 attack. These people, she said, are now more willing to break from their unconditional support for the Israeli government. She hopes those conversations spark a longer-term reckoning within the American Jewish community, but her group’s current priority is pushing for an immediate end to the genocide in Gaza.
“We can’t afford to push people away who are joining us for the first time now,” Kaplan said. “Those who are just now joining us have a responsibility to do everything that they can and take the most courageous action that they can to leverage the power they have to end the genocide. Right now, we need to embrace them when they want to join us. It’s our responsibility to do so if we actually want to win and if we actually want to build our power.”
Elections and Beyond
While Munayyer applauded the growing number of votes in the Senate as an important sign of progress, he also said it was “insufficient” considering how many Democrats continue to support arming Israel. The vote, however, can serve as a record for Americans to consider in future elections, exposing a disconnect between elected officials and their constituencies.
“You have half the Senate Democrats still voting to support weapons to Israel even though upwards of 80 percent of Democrats in polls oppose what Israel is doing in Gaza,” he said. “It exposes that these senators are not even representing their constituents.”
A chasm between Democratic lawmakers and their constituents on Israel and Palestine is nothing new, said Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Friedman. But what’s novel is that progressives are no longer willing to make exceptions for Israel and are noticing the ways attacks on the pro-Palestine movement intersects with campaigns against free speech, racial justice, LGBTQ+ communities, and other efforts to curtail the rights of Americans, such as with the detentions of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk.
And this moment of outrage around Gaza may actually spell consequences for Democratic lawmakers who continue to unconditionally support Israel.
“There’s only been costs for holding up Palestinian lives as valuable.”
“The problem with U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine is that there’s only been costs for holding up Palestinian lives as valuable,” Duss said. “There need to be cost imposed from the other side now, as well, and I think that’s happening. That’s part of what’s changing the equation.”
Experts and advocates point to the New York City mayoral primary victory of Zohran Mamdani as a sign of a shifting base among young voters. Mamdani is an outspoken critic of Israel, decrying its offensive in Gaza as a genocide, voicing support for the BDS movement, and pledging to arrest Netanyahu if he were to visit New York in response to war crime warrants from the International Criminal Court. Mamdani outlasted attacks from former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who campaigned by conflating anti-Zionism with attacks on Jews. With Mamdani’s decisive victory and a new poll showing his popularity among Jewish voters in New York, there are already signs the Democratic Party is accordingly adjusting.
“That does show us is that come next presidential election, a smart Democratic candidate would take into account the fact that a majority of Democrats see what Israel is doing as genocide, and factor that into their thinking of how to message on Israel–Palestine,” Kenney-Shawa said.
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With eyes ahead to the 2028 election, Munayyer likened the lead-up to that election to the 2008 Democratic primary in which then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama distinguished himself from then-New York Sen. Hillary Clinton by reminding voters he had long been a critic of the Iraq War while Clinton had voted in Congress to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Obama’s opponent in the general election, Sen. John McCain, was a staunch supporter of the war.
The growing support for Palestine amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza particularly among younger voters mirrors other key political shifts after 9/11 or the Arab Spring, Kenney-Shawa said.
“That’s what’s extremely important because, in five, 10, 15, 20 years down the line, no longer is Israel kind of this untouchable subject in U.S. politics,” Kenney-Shawa said, “where you kind of can’t really talk about it or its political suicide to be supportive of Palestinians or critical of Israel.”
How Will Israel Respond?
It’s unclear how Netanyahu will respond to the current pressure. He has prolonged Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to maintain power by satisfying his right-wing, religious nationalist coalition, which includes leaders like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who have been calling for the mass displacement of Palestinians and the establishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza. But Munayyer pointed out that with Israeli’s Parliament on break until October, Netanyahu is presented with a window to act on ending the genocide with little immediate political blowback.
Netanyahu, however, appears to be doubling down. Reports suggest that the Israeli government plans to expand its operations in Gaza, pursuing a full occupation of the Strip. This spurred some 600 former Israeli security officials to write to Trump on Monday, demanding he end the war in Gaza. The officials, including former heads of Mossad and Israel’s military, said “that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel,” and asked Trump to “steer Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government in the right direction” in order to “end the war, return the hostages, stop the suffering.” Israel had already said it achieved its goal of dismantling Hamas’s military last September. In the letter, the officials added that the return of the remaining hostages captured by Hamas on October 7 can only come through a deal and not extended fighting.
Outside the U.S., pressure is also mounting from the other European countries that are calling on the European Union to halt trade to Israel over its starvation campaign. The EU, Israel’s main trading partner, is also considering a suspension of its research funds to Israel.
The Hague Group, a bloc of countries founded in January, met in Bogotá, Colombia, last month, to strategize how to pressure Israel into ending the genocide. At the conference, 13 countries pledged to block weapons transfers to Israel, including a ban on allowing their ports to be used by vessels carrying arms meant for Israel; review public contracts to prevent funds from supporting unlawful occupation of Palestinian land; support war crimes investigations of bodies such as the ICC and the International Court of Justice; and support universal jurisdiction, which allows for the prosecution of suspected war criminals in a third-party country’s judicial system, even if the crimes were committed in another jurisdiction, such as in the occupied Palestinian territories.Read Our Complete CoverageIsrael’s War on Gaza
Advocates in the U.S., however, don’t expect any such pressure from its government in the near term, despite the escalating outrage. Both the Biden and Trump administrations have routinely allowed the Israeli government latitude to make adjustments to its military campaign to ease public pressure. In fact, the Trump administration last week sanctioned the Palestinian Authority, the government body that rules over the occupied West Bank, due to its efforts to hold Israel accountable for alleged war crimes. Members of Congress have recently pushed for legislation to do the same against South Africa for its role in the genocide case against Israel in the U.N.’s top court.
Throughout the past 22 months, there have been various moments of increased attention on Gaza, from the killing of World Central Kitchen aid workers last April, the “All Eyes on Rafah” campaign as Israel began its bombardment of southern Gaza, or when Israel broke its ceasefire agreement in March. Those moments passed with officials doing little to change the conditions for Palestinians in Gaza.
But each moment is a part of a longer arc of change, Kaplan said. Next comes the challenge of translating such fever-pitch moments into something lasting.
“I’ve been working on this issue for 15 years and I can’t count the number of times when it felt like we’re at a tipping point and that something big is going to change and then it doesn’t,” Kaplan said. “And so I don’t really view moments in that way — I think we just have to keep at it, and I think organizing is how we win.”
Ross Rosenberg Aug 6, 2025 February 2019 Mother Wound discussion with Rick. https://bit.ly/mother_wound 395,000 views! In this powerful reunion, Ross Rosenberg sits down once again with life coach and author Rick Belden to revisit the profound topic of the mother wound. Their last discussion on this subject reached over 400,000 views, and for good reason — it’s a topic that resonates deeply with so many. This time, they go even deeper, exploring how early relational injuries with a mother — whether due to neglect, enmeshment, or emotional absence — can lead to lifelong patterns of self-neglect, codependency, and a fractured sense of self. Rick shares his unique perspective working primarily with men, while Ross draws connections to his own Self-Love Deficit Disorder (SLDD) model and Human Magnet Syndrome, offering a broader lens on developmental trauma. Together, they unpack the subtle yet devastating effects of being unseen, unsupported, or used to fulfill a parent’s unmet needs — and how that trauma often leads adults into self-sacrificing roles and painful relationship cycles. From grief and body-based healing to reparenting one’s younger self, this conversation is rich with insight, compassion, and hope for transformation. Whether you’re struggling to understand your own past or working to support someone else, this episode offers the validation, tools, and language needed to take the next step toward healing. NOW AVAILABLE: THE HUMAN MAGNET SYNDROME WORKBOOK. https://bit.ly/HMS_Workbook Consider subscribing to Ross Rosenberg’s/Self-Love Recovery Institute’s new Patreon Subscription, where you can access exclusive content, insights, and services. / rossrosenbergslriatreon ABOUT ROSS ROSENBERG Ross Rosenberg, M.Ed., LCPC, CADC, is a psychotherapist, educator, expert witness, and celebrated author. He is also a global thought leader and clinical expert in codependency, trauma, pathological narcissism, narcissistic abuse, and addictions. Ross’s pioneering contributions to codependency have provided sweeping theoretical and practical updates and developed a treatment program that permanently resolves the issue. Ross has been featured on national TV and radio and is a regular radio and podcast guest. In addition, he has traveled the world, giving his one-of-a-kind keynote presentations and educational workshops. His global impact is best illustrated by his YouTube channel, with 30 million views and 297,000 subscribers, and the sale of 190,000 Human Magnet Syndrome books published in 12 languages. In 2013, Ross created The Self-Love Recovery Institute, a hub for his personal development, workshops, professional training, retreats, other programs, and services. Learn more at www.SelfLoveRecovery.com.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation [the United States], or any nation so conceived [in liberty] and so dedicated [to the proposition that all men are created equal], can long endure. Among the many things on which the South disagreed with Abraham Lincoln was the term “civil war.” Confederates termed it “the war of Union aggression,” doing the kind of up-is-down expression of reality—there was, after all, that attack on Fort Sumter—that Donald Trump routinely practices. But in the war’s aftermath, Southern writers and politicos began calling it “the War Between the States,” which elided the reality that theirs was a war against the United States. But a war between the states is a pretty fair description of the last couple of weeks in the business of redistricting. Because no nonpartisan national commission exists to redistrict our federal legislature, as is the case in France and the U.K.; because our 18th-century constitution vests this national power in individual states; and because the profound political differences that defined our nation before the Civil War remain with us to this very day, red states and blue are now battling over the composition of the next Congress, not through elections but through line-redrawing. Texas Republicans are endeavoring to stage a 21st-century version of the attack on Fort Sumter; California Democrats are vowing to retaliate in kind. And a growing number of other states are on the periphery, poised to strike if the generals give the order. It goes without saying that Trump is no Lincoln. What must be said is that he’s more the resurrection of Jefferson Davis, who ordered the bombardment of Sumter, much as Trump has ordered his Texas MAGAnauts to initiate the seizure of House seats by redistricting. For that matter, instigating the January 6th insurrection was more in the spirit of Davis than that of any former president of the United States.
The current redistricting offensive is hardly the only Republican echo of the politics of the slaveocracy, of course. The ICE seizures in and deportations from American cities have borne a striking resemblance to the slaveholders’ seizures in Northern cities of former slaves, under the authority of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Just as Bostonians in the decade before the Civil War rallied to defend Blacks who’d escaped to the North, and sought to obstruct the men the slaveholders sent to recapture them, so Angelenos have rallied to obstruct the ICE agents who’ve been sundering families and disrupting communities in Los Angeles. And just as the escaped slaves had violated no federal law save the Fugitive Slave Act, so the clear majority of ICE detainees and deportees have violated no law save that of unlawful entry to the United States, which is not classified as a felony. During the first two years of the Civil War, the South had hoped to win diplomatic recognition from the two dominant European nations: France and, chiefly, Britain. The British clothing and textile industry relied overwhelmingly on cotton from the South. But by late 1862, once the war to preserve the Union was clearly transforming into the war to end American slavery, Britain and France were compelled to abandon any thought of recognizing the Confederacy. Would that Europe had adhered to an anti-neo-Confederate perspective in recent decades. Instead, a host of major European companies have opened their U.S.-based plants exclusively in right-to-work Southern states and (except for Volkswagen) opposed all efforts of the workers in those plants to unionize. As such, they’ve sided with Southern Republicans who’ve viewed with horror the prospect of their workers gaining democratic rights and, just maybe, more Democratic-aligned politics. In a sense, those European companies’ perspective has been that of the British textile magnates of 1861, but there’s been no effective counterforce to that “bottom line über alles” viewpoint this time around. Trump has expressed a desire to have his likeness added to those of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt on Mount Rushmore. Where he really belongs is on Stone Mountain in Georgia, where the likenesses of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis look down on a South that still seeks to weaken popular rule and is far from convinced that all men are created equal.
CAPE CANAVERAL, FL—Hailing the dawn of a new era in long-distance highway travel, NASA officials unveiled Monday the agency’s ambitious plans to put a man on a bus to Cleveland, OH by early 2013.
The complex and dangerous three-day mission, dubbed “Chariot I,” is expected to pass through six states and include two brief transfers in Atlanta and Louisville in both directions, at a reported total cost of $360 dollars plus taxes and fees.
“For almost as long as our nation has existed, man has gazed upon a map of the eastern United States and dreamed of traveling to Cleveland, the largest metropolitan area in Ohio,” NASA administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr. said at a press conference announcing the agency’s first major initiative since the discontinuation of the space shuttle program. “Until now, the immense physical and psychological risks involved in any manned mission had put that dream sadly out of reach.”
“But not anymore,” he added. “Next year we are going to Cleveland and back.”
Standing next to a scale model of the vehicle that will make the difficult 1,039-mile voyage—a Motor Coach Industries 102DL3 equipped with extra legroom, power outlets, and a wheelchair lift—Bolden discussed the details of the mission, which is set to carry a payload that includes one change of clothes and a paperback copy of Erik Larson’s The Devil In The White City.
According to Bolden, barring any weather-related delays or the driver not showing up for some reason, the bus will depart from a station in Orlando on a north-northwesterly path following the curvature of Interstate 75 though the inhospitable central regions of Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Once it reaches Cincinnati, the bus will alter its attitude due east and slingshot around the city, merging onto I-71 for the final 130 mile stretch to Cleveland.
“En route to Ohio the vehicle will pass through some of the most unforgiving environments known to science,” said Bolden, alluding to, among other areas, the barren vacuum of Appalachia with nothing going on for hundreds of miles. “But the dangers aren’t limited to outside the bus—whoever makes the journey will have to contend with a host of toxic smells; loud, unrelenting noises at all hours of the day and night; and highly unstable passengers with whom a lack of eye contact alone does not necessarily guarantee one’s personal safety.”
“And those don’t even account for less predictable difficulties,” Bolden added. “The entire mission can suddenly be brought to a halt by the driver’s decision to pull over for a smoke.”
Candidates for the first Chariot mission have already begun rigorous training at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in a true-to-life bus simulator capable of replicating the 52 hours of intense jostling they will experience in a threadbare, minimally reclinable seat. The preparation also addresses specific scenarios such as reading on the moving bus without throwing up, using the vehicle’s disgusting bathroom in stop-and-go traffic, and diffusing a conversation with a man who is clearly going to Cleveland to stalk his ex-wife.
Sources said that of the original 48 applicants, more than three quarters have washed out and returned to their respective branches of the military. Those who remain will spend months training for Chariot’s several scheduled EVAs, or extravehicular activities, during which they will leave the bus for a period of time to pick up food and hang out at a highway rest stop.
“The EVA presents the greatest risk for something to go wrong, whether it’s forgetting where the bus is parked or encountering a ridiculous line at the KFC/Taco Bell,” said mission control specialist John Lawton, who will be in constant contact with the passenger via a direct cell phone line. “You’ve got to be ready to improvise on a moment’s notice, grabbing a slice at Sbarro or, in a worst case scenario, a cup of soft-serve TCBY, and then waiting by the bus until people start to come back.”
“Because if that thing pulls away and you’re not on it, it might be days before NASA can mount a rescue,” he added.
Speculating on what future trips might entail, Lawton said that if the first mission is a success, a three-man Chariot II crew could return to Cleveland by bus later in the summer. He suggested that down the line, perhaps with Chariot V or VI, a NASA team may be able to reach Tucson, where research shows there is a possibility of hailing a cab to the Marriott Courtyard.
“Right now we are committed to putting a man on a bus to Cleveland and bringing him back safely, but ultimately Cleveland is just a stepping stone,” Lawton said. “If all goes as planned, we’ll have voyages to the outer reaches of Chicago, Minneapolis, and beyond.”
“And who knows?” he added. “Maybe it will even happen in my lifetime.”
Translation is a 5-step process of “straight thinking in the abstract” comparing and contrasting what seems to be truth with what you can syllogistically, axiomatically and mathematically (using word equations) prove is the truth. It is not an effort to change, alter or heal anything.
The claims in a Translation may seem outrageous, but they are always (or should always be) based on self-evident syllogistic reasoning. Here is one Translation from this week.
1) Truth is that which is so. That which is not truth is not so. Therefore Truth is all that is. Truth being all is therefore total, therefore whole, therefore entire. Truth being true is therefore right, therefore correct, therefore perfect, therefore sound, therefore undamaged. I think therefore I am. Since I am and since Truth is all that is, therefore I, being, am Truth. Since i, being, am Truth, therefore I, being, have all the attributes of Truth. Therefore i, being, am total, whole, entrre, true, correct, perfct, sound (sane), undamaged. Since I am mind (self-evident) and since I, being, am Truth, therefore Truth is Mind. (Two things being equal to a third thing are equal to each other.) Since Truth is Mind, therefore Mind has all the attributes fo Truth. Therefore Mind is total, whole, entrie, true, correct, perfect, sound, undamaged.
2) Only the people (not our leaders) can overcome fascism.
Word-tracking: people: mortals, humans, imperfect leader: to guide guide: to make known, to render knowable fascism: magic spell in which one ties up the victim, a bundle of authoritative rods, fascination, central control of private enterprise, repression of opposition, extreme nationalism spell: magic, supernatural, sorcerer, making impossible things happen charismatic: charm
3) Truth being all that is is therefore all that’s possible. Since Truth is all that is possible and since magic makes the impossible possible that would mean making untruth possible, and that’s not possible. Therefore magic is impossible. Since there is no magic, therefore nobody can be cast under a spell. Therefore there are no spells to be broken no fascism (fascination) to be undone. Since Truth is Mind, therefore Consciousness, therefore Knowing, and since leadership (guidance) is a rendering to Knowing, therefore leadership can only guide us to Truth. Since Truth is perfect and people are “only human,” therefore not Truth, therefore all is divinity OR Truth divines all.
4) Magic is impossible. There are no spells to be broken no fascism (fascination) to be undone. Leadership can only guide us to Truth. All is divinity OR Truth divines all.
5) Truth divines all.
Weekly Invitational Translation Group invites your participation. If you would like to submit a Translation on any subject, feel free to send your weekly Translation to zonta1111@aol.com and we will anonymously post it on the Bathtub Bulletin on Friday.
