Christian Evangelical voters are sold a "pig in a poke" when they join the Trump cult

"...Christian nationalism a la Trump makes Trump the god..."

Donald Trump and Uses and Misuses of the Bible

Echo opinion essay published by Nicole Russell in the Las Vegas Sun: Trump has poisioned Christian Evangelicals

Many (wrongminded😓😡) evangelical Christians ✝️ have convinced themselves that voting for Donald Trump is the best way to win over the culture war, get prayer back in schools and restore the United States to its theocratic roots.  (Wrong❗🆇)

This is prominent in evangelical strains across the U.S., but especially in the South, in the Southern Baptist Convention and, of course, in Texas.

People Question Trump's Biblical Literacy After He Touts Bible Classes

Evangelicals, particularly, lean on the call of Jesus to his own disciples to bring good news to all and tell them of the hope that faith in Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection offers. By spreading the good news evangelicals hope to return the U.S. to a more conservative, God-honoring state.

Christian nationalists take this a big step further and, as Christianity Today defines it, “believe American identity is inextricable from Christianity,” and it is their duty to restore this via policy and politicians.

Religious influence has always existed in American politics. Today’s modern evangelical convergence into politics started with Ronald Reagan and heightened with George W. Bush. His candidacy galvanized millions of social conservatives, Christians who voted on just a handful or sometimes even one topic: abortion. Evangelicals found hope in a born-again Texan’s leadership, which seemed faith-based yet tangible, strong yet compassionate.

But still the country has continued to shift away from any kind of faith-based values. While some continued to pour their lives into mission work, charitable organizations or churches, more and more looked to politics to be their earthly religion, and Republican leaders to be their god.

Enter 2016, Trump. After eight years of Barack Obama, Trump seemed to be the leader to change America’s course. Even though almost nothing about his personal life demonstrated that he held true faith in God, or anything but himself. Even though he didn’t seem to even try to live in a way that demonstrated upward values, Trump was charismatic, promised conservative victories and courted Christians who were easily manipulated. This year, Trump is doing the same thing with the same results.

At the end of 2023, according to the Pew Research Center, 55% of white evangelical Republican voters said they would vote for Trump. Now that he has clinched the Republican nomination, that number has probably risen. At the grassroots level, this means that in churches across Texas, pastors will endorse Trump from the pulpit, and other Republican candidates down-ballot, violating tax law. Organizations such as NEXUS Mountain Network, a Christian-based social network, will promote the idea that evangelicals have a right and a duty to be politically active and advocate for Christian nationalism.

The problem with all this isn’t that evangelicals are involved in politics — they should be. Heck, everyone, regardless of religion or creed, should show some interest in civics. It isn’t that evangelicals encourage their friends to vote or are pro-life, or even that they think America would lose its identity or freedom if we fail to preserve our cultural inheritance.

The biggest problem, mostly, is that evangelical Christians have decided political power is the way to usher America back to its roots and that Trump is not just the salve but the key, the leader through which to do this.

Trump’s candidacy has recognized and glorified Christian nationalism: Now, it’s more vocal, determined, and — ironically — more hypocritical than ever. Trump rarely espouses Christian values in his personal life, though he did champion religious liberty and claimed to be pro-life while in office. He lured populist voters and attracted fringe extremists — the kind of people who fly from Texas to the Capitol to participate in an insurrection, get arrested, and claim they were just restoring Christian values to their beloved democratic republic.

God did not call Christians to follow Trump or the American political system, or even to preserve America’s heritage above all. Christian nationalism a la Trump makes Trump the god and makes power the goal, rather than faith or even embracing the values Christ spoke of: loving him above all and our neighbors as we love ourselves. This isn’t right.

Nicole Russell is a columnist for the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram.

Pig in a poke is an English idiom which means a kind of deceptive trick. It is a blind bargain. A purchase which turns out not to be what the seller claimed it was

P.S. Maine Writer- In my opinion, Christian Evangelical voters are being duped into believing the oldest con game known. They are being sold a "pig in a poke". 

Nikki Haley gets justifiably bashed in main stream media because of her Civil War racist response in New Hampshire

In flub over Civil War, Nikki Haley reveals a surprising truth about the culture wars:  Nikki Haley’s comment on the US civil war was no gaffe caused by the excuse of being "fatigued".

"Nikki Haley goes on Civil War autopilot, runs over her own campaign," Washington Post.

Opinion by Erika Smith echo report in the Las Vegas Sun newspaper"

African-American soilder in uniform Civil War (1863-1865)

Despite the buzz and the endorsements and right-wing donors funneling millions of dollars into her campaign, Republican candidate Nikki Haley may have eliminated what little chance she had of becoming president of the United States.

Race and racism, as it turns out, are important issues, even for Republicans. Well, sort of. But first, let’s back up.

By now, we have heard in main stream and social media about the extraordinarily simple question that Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, couldn’t bring herself to answer during a town hall campaign event in New Hampshire the last week of December.

What,” a man stood up to ask, “was the cause of the United States Civil War?”  (A "no brainer" question any high school history student could have answered correctly!)

Haley, who broke barriers as the first Indian American woman in the nation to serve as a governor and the first in a White House Cabinet-level role as U.N. ambassador, seemed genuinely flummoxed. “Well, don’t come with an easy question,” she told the man.

She continued: “I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run — the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”

“I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are,” Haley added. “And we — I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life.”

To this nonanswer that echoed the excuses of segregationists, the man told Haley, “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery.’ ”

Sorry, but that’s not astonishing. Haley is not and never has been a moderate. Her history on issues of race is, at best, mixed.

As Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement, “This is what Black South Carolinians have come to expect from Nikki Haley, and now the rest of the country is getting to see her for who she is.”

The is the woman who, when she was running for governor in 2010, met with the leaders of Confederate heritage groups and told them that the Civil War was a fight between “tradition” and “change,” and that she supported having a Confederate history month.

This is also the woman who, during her campaign for reelection as governor in 2014, rejected calls to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the South Carolina State House. This was after it came out that she had offered to leverage her identity as a child of immigrants to somehow convince the NAACP that the Confederate flag “is not something that is racist.”

Of course, these days, Haley loves to lean into her decision to back the removal the flag in 2015, after a white supremacist killed nine Black people at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church. She did so again at yet another town hall event in New Hampshire the day after her Civil War gaffe.

“By the grace of God, we did the right thing and slavery is no more,” Haley said, according to The Washington Post. “I say that as a Southerner. I say that as a Southern governor who removed the Confederate flag off the State House grounds.”

“Yes, we know the Civil War was about slavery,” she added.

Not that Haley is not convincing anyone, let alone Democrats. As Harrison said, “I am disgusted, but I’m not surprised.”

Republicans cannot govern but waste time doing "nothing" in Congress: Republicans are the problem!

The first session of the 118th Congress was an unmitigated disaster. An echo opinion editorial published in the Las Vegas Sun newspaper:

After needing an unprecedented 15 ballots to elect Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the GOP-controlled House proceeded to accomplish … essentially nothing besides insane politically motivated investigations.

The first session of the 118th Congress was an unmitigated disaster. After needing an unprecedented 15 ballots to elect Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the GOP-controlled House proceeded to accomplish … essentially nothing besides insane politically motivated investigations.

Well, almost nothing. It did oust McCarthy and leave the House paralyzed and without a leader for weeks in the middle of the session.

After all the turmoil surrounding leadership, we would’ve expected the new speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, to hit the ground running and move quickly to pass much needed legislation and funding related to the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza and more. At the very least we hoped he would usher through legislation to ensure elementary-aged schoolchildren have access to lunch at school.

Instead, we got nothing. Well, almost nothing.

The first session of the 118th Congress successfully enacted fewer than 30 bills — the fewest since at least 1973. Most of those were ceremonial or temporary in nature.

Congress did pass a defensebudget and two continuing resolutions to keep the government open. Both resolutions did little more than kick the budgetary can down the road, and both passed over the objections of the far right.

The reason for the lack of productivity is beyond dispute: congressional Republicans, who spent more time grandstanding and showboating for social media than governing the country.

Almost all of the very few substantive laws to pass the House required Democrats to step in and save the country from the dysfunctional GOP that thinks an angry tweet fulfills its responsibility to govern.

Left to their own devices, House Republicans would have refused to pay the country’s bills, defaulted on the nation’s debt and plunged the U.S. financial system into chaos.

That’s not hyperbole. This opinion is not an exaggeration because the facts are self evident.

Republican cannot govern! Fail to protect American children from the horrors of gun violence.

Remember, this summer’s fight over the debt limit wasn’t about increasing or decreasing spending in the future. It was about making a payment for money already spent on the nation’s credit card. 

Had Democrats failed to step in and support a compromise with McCarthy, the nation’s creditors would’ve done what any creditor would do if they stopped receiving payments: downgraded the nation’s credit rating and made borrowing far more expensive, or cut off access to credit altogether.

The same is true of temporary spending bills, which passed with more Democratic votes than Republican votes, even though Republicans held the majority in the House.

Without these bills, the government would have shut down, leaving millions of Americans who work tirelessly to make our federal government function unpaid and hundreds of millions of Americans — including seniors and veterans — who rely on the federal government for everything from health care to housing in dire financial straits.

The possibility of a shutdown is back on the table again this month and it’s likely that Democrats will once again be asked to come to the rescue of a nation abandoned by GOP leaders.

With that said, congressional Republicans didn’t fail at everything, especially when we consider a radical senator.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., succeeded in (wrong-minded❗) blocking military promotions and appointments, leaving several branches of the U.S. armed services without leadership for months on end. In the process, Tuberville (aka "Blubberfilled")  threw military families into chaos because officers awaiting confirmation couldn’t purchase homes, help their spouses find jobs or enroll their kids in schools in the location of their new appointment.

Support the Ukraine 💙💛

By failing to support funding for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion, congressional Republicans also successfully sent a message to dictators like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that they can invade sovereign nations without consequence. It also tells our allies not to count on the GOP to stand up to monsters. The GOP’s failure was so clear that at his annual address to the country, Putin made joyful reference to America’s lack of support for Ukraine.For good reason, Putin considers GOP leadership and the U.S. far right as assisting his geopolitical goals.

And, while useful idiots, these are highly incompetent allies.

For instance, House Republicans also succeeded at setting a modern record for bills proposed by members of the majority party that were defeated in procedural or final votes, or died without receiving a vote due to lack of majority support. That’s right, they were killing their own bills at a record pace. 😏😩😳Why❓ Because so many of the bills sprang from the latest social media outrage of the moment or Fox News hysteria rather than serious efforts to tackle the nation’s challenges.

In other words, Republicans are incapable of governing.

That level of failure should not only anger those Americans who care more about good governance than partisanship, it should anger Republicans. After all, their party shot itself in the foot and failed to achieve any of its stated policy objectives.

When Democrats took control of Congress in 2020, they seized on the opportunity to demonstrate leadership by passing important legislation. The Democrat-controlled 117th Congress’ accomplishments include investments in U.S. manufacturing and infrastructure, increased environmental protections, expanded opportunities for STEM education, increased benefits for veterans and lower prescription drug prices for seniors and Americans with diabetes.

Congressional Republicans in the 118th Congress haven’t even tried to govern. Instead, they have focused on enacting retribution on their political enemies and launching wild investigations into unfounded conspiracy theories.

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that Johnson will lead his party to be any more effective in 2024. Johnson is an extremist and conspiracy theorist who has already shown that he is comfortable with chaos, cozy with authoritarians and extremists, and disinterested in doing the hard work of governing.

Voters of all political stripes should be appalled by the failure of the 118th Congress and, specifically, the failure of GOP legislators who refuse to govern. The American people deserve better than do-nothing grandstanders collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck while failing at even the most basic duties of their job. It’s up to the American people to create accountability at the polls.

Republicans wasting time and money on nothing burgers

Echo editorial published in the Las Vegas Nevada Sun newspaper:

House Republicans have no qualms about wasting their time and our money in pursuit of revenge❗

So let me get this right? 

• Ukraine is on the verge of collapse. 
• Israel is fighting a battle against terrorists using civilians as shields. 
• China, Venezuela, Turkey and North Korea are all saber rattling.

Domestically, critical shortages of highly trained workers continue to plague our schools, hospitals, nursing homes, daycare centers, construction sites, manufacturing plants, small businesses and more. Children and families are going hungry after pandemic-era programs that lifted millions out of poverty abruptly expired, with no plan for how to help the Americans who benefited from them. And a humanitarian crisis on the U.S. southern border is taking the lives of countless children and families that are simply looking for a better life.

Yet, the GOP-led House of Representatives has done exactly nothing to tackle any of these issues.

A lack of productivity seems to define the current House more than almost any other attribute, beyond perhaps a lack of empathy and a fabulist’s enthusiasm for made-up issues.

After almost 12 months in power, House Republicans will leave Washington, D.C. today for their winter recess having accomplished little more than fighting amongst themselves over who their leader would be and taking the nation dangerously close to a government shutdown and debt default.

Despite their mind-boggling inability to agree to anything other than political vandalism, House Republicans did manage to rally together and unite behind a single proposal this week: launching an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden. This (useless effort😕) despite presenting no evidence 😬of the constitutionally required “high crimes or misdemeanors” committed by the president. None.

Just hours after voting to support the impeachment inquiry, Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, even openly admitted that he hasn’t seen any evidence to support Biden’s impeachment.

“The process has been abused,” Joyce said in an interview on NewsNation’s “Dan Abrams Live.” He went on to describe how the impeachment process should be reserved for extraordinary circumstances in which elected officials have lost the capacity to govern or people such as former Rep. George Santos of New York, who are facing a substantial body of evidence suggesting they committed a crime while in office or to obtain office. “I don’t see that yet,” Joyce admitted, before nonsensically explaining that he voted to open the impeachment inquiry so that the investigation could begin.

In other words, after months of investigations by the GOP-led House Oversight Committee, Judiciary Committee, and Ways and Means Committee, and years of investigations by the Justice Department, Joyce voted to launch an impeachment inquiry of the president of the United States so that he could start investigating❓😟😞😠

Impeaching a president should not in any way resemble a game of Mad Libs in which feckless Republicans make up the charges and evidence as they go.

Of course, we do have some idea of the charges the GOP is likely to gin up. They’ve spent years trying to implicate Biden in his son Hunter’s troubling history of substance abuse and foreign lobbying shenanigans.

Even the Fox News’ White House correspondent, Peter Doocy, acknowledged this week that, “The House Oversight Committee has been at this for years, and they have so far not been able to provide any concrete evidence that Joe Biden personally profited from his son Hunter’s overseas business.”

For that matter, they’ve barely been able to implicate Hunter Biden in illegal overseas transactions. Even after Hunter gifted his father’s political opponents with an abandoned laptop filled with salacious images and details of the younger Biden’s troubling life, the most significant criminal charges the Justice Department could muster against him were related to the unlawful purchase and possession of a gun while he was using drugs.

Yet the lack of evidence didn’t stop Republicans in the House, including Nevada’s own Mark Amodei, from formally opening an impeachment inquiry.

Newly elected Speaker and Trump acolyte Mike Johnson, R-La., has said the formal inquiry is necessary to enforce subpoenas and compel witnesses to appear. But the American people know the absurdity of that argument after watching numerous Republican legislators, including Rep. Jim Jordan (#GymJimJordan!) of Ohio, the current chairman of the House Judiciary committee, defy subpoenas from the House committee that investigated  January 6th  attack on the Capitol.

Still, after spending an entire year of doing nothing but investigate Biden and finally building the unified coalition necessary to formally launch an inquiry, it’s hard to imagine right-wing extremists accepting anything less than articles of impeachment.

Moreover, their false idol, Donald Trump, already warned them months ago via social media to “Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION.”

If the House GOP does impeach, it will force its counterparts in the Senate to also waste time and taxpayer dollars conducting a trial. Which is ultimately the point of this entire three-ring circus: weaken Biden by forcing an impeachment trial during an election year; create a counterbalance to the numerous criminal trials facing Trump.

Never mind the two ongoing wars involving U.S. allies, the growing threat of China, the ongoing crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border or the many challenges and struggles facing everyday Americans. House Republicans couldn’t care less about doing the hard work of governing the nation. All they care about is owning the libs and praising their idol.

It’s shameful❗ 

But more importantly, it’s also dangerous. It’s dangerous to the institutions of democracy, dangerous to the economy that sits at the heart of American exceptionalism and influence around the world, and dangerous to our allies, who are fighting for their lives while waiting for us to get our house in order.

Republican nothing burger!

Speaker Kevin McCarthy obviously not interested in paying for America's obligations

Echo editorial opinion published in the Las Vegas Sun news:
McCarthy, Republican Party not serious about nation’s debt limit.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the Republican Party don’t give two cents about fiscal responsibility or reining in spending. What McCarthy cares about is distracting the American people from the reality that the GOP has saddled middle-class taxpayers with footing the bill for trillions of dollars in tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy's plan to keep the rich "richer"!

McCarthy’s own words all but admit it.

McCarthy strolled down to Wall Street on Monday to rally his corporate overlords about next year’s federal budget. He asserted that his support for raising the debt ceiling is dependent on concessions Democrats must make regarding future spending.

McCarthy conveniently forgot to explain one simple fact: The debt ceiling has nothing to do with the upcoming federal budget or future spending.

The only impact of the debt limit debate on future spending is whether the GOP’s refusal to raise the limit will tank the U.S. good faith and credit, leading to skyrocketing interest rates and permanent inflation. The result? A trashed economy and America vandalized by political zealots.

This bears further explanation.

Contrary to the manipulative GOP narrative that tries to draw a connection between the current debt limit and future spending, the debt limit debate is not a debate about how much money the U.S. is going to spend moving forward. It is a debate about whether the U.S. is going to pay back the money we already borrowed and spent.

In 2017, when then-President Donald Trump proposed welfare for the wealthy in the form of massive tax cuts for billionaires and multinational corporations, the U.S. was forced to borrow $2.289 trillion over the next 10 years to finance the tax cuts. We’re currently in Year 6 of paying for that Trump borrowing spree to support his rich friends.

Yet, now that Joe Biden is president, the same members of the GOP who kissed Trump’s ring and passed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017, are suddenly concerned that the U.S. is borrowing too much and don’t want to pay back the loans we already took out and spent.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy is asleep when it comes to caring about helping the middle class.

The GOP is quite literally advocating that the U.S. become a freeloading nation, borrowing from creditors around the world and then running away from our debts and refusing to pay them back. This shouldn’t come as a surprise given that this is exactly how Trump financed many of his biggest real estate development projects, using bankruptcy court to leave contractors, architects and more holding the bag for Trump’s woefully bad business leadership and inept management.

What is a surprise, however, is just how openly deceitful and two-faced the GOP is being about its plan to turn the United States into the largest freeloading grifter nation the world has ever known.

It was less than a year ago, when President Biden announced his student loan forgiveness plan, that Republican legislators couldn’t stop talking about the need for borrowers to take responsibility for the debt they signed up for and pay back their creditors. As recently as Wednesday, McCarthy bragged about blocking Biden’s “student loan giveaway for the wealthy.”

Yet, somehow, McCarthy is completely comfortable with the government borrowing money for Trump’s tax giveaways for the wealthy and then refusing to pay them back. He’s also surprisingly comfortable telegraphing to the world that the U.S. government is led by a collection of deadbeat swindlers who can’t be trusted to pay back their debts.

McCarthy and the GOP are putting on a show designed to feign interest in federal spending and good governance while distracting from the reality that they are the ones who keep upping the ante on the cycle of federal debt. 

The GOP is the party that keeps borrowing and borrowing and borrowing and then refusing to take responsibility for its borrowing and spending, let alone pay it back. It has also raided the formerly stable Social Security trust fund to pay for previous tax cuts — a way of shifting the burden to other generations.

Remember, when Trump was in office Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling three times without so much as a peep about the need to control spending. Not one word.

Worst of all, some Democrats are falling for the Republican dog and pony show.

While Biden has held firm in his conviction that the U.S. must be a nation that can be trusted to repay our debts on the international stage, Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., told Axios, “I respect the White House position, but not in perpetuity. Because negotiation, that’s what this whole institution is about.” Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., echoed that sentiment, saying, “We’re going to have to negotiate. We obviously want to move away from just legislating by crisis ... I’m encouraging continued negotiations.”

Both legislators are missing the point that the time for negotiation regarding this spending has already passed. The U.S. already spent the money. The only possible thing to negotiate is whether we’re going to default on our debt and tank our national creditworthiness, which shouldn’t be up for negotiation at all.

In other words, arguing that the federal government shouldn’t raise the debt ceiling without first making major cuts is backwards.

McCarthy knows it, but it scores him political points so he doesn’t care. He’s bald-faced lying to the American people, trading the full faith and credit of the United States of America and trading the economic health of our children and grandchildren so he can win a game of political chess. It’s shameful.

If Republicans want to argue about future spending cuts, they are welcome to do so — after they raise the debt ceiling and actually work cooperatively to figure out how to pay for the money they already spent.

Support for Ukraine motivates momentum in the war against invading Russians

Echo opinion written by David Brooks for The New York Times and published in the Las Vegas Sun a Nevada newspaper:

In the Ukraine, the war is not only a military event, it’s an intellectual event. 

Slava Ukraini! Official salute of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Ukrainians are winning the hearts and minds of their people and the western world, not only because of the superiority of their troops, but because they are fighting for a superior idea — an idea that inspires Ukrainians to fight so doggedly, an idea that inspires people across the West to stand behind Ukraine and back it to the hilt.

That idea is actually two jammed together. The first is liberalism, which promotes democracy, individual dignity, a rule-based international order.

Second is the idea is nationalism. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a nationalist. He is fighting not just for democracy but also for Ukraine — Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian land, the Ukrainian people and tongue. The symbol of this war is the Ukrainian flag, a nationalist symbol.

There are many people who assume that liberalism and nationalism are opposites. Liberalism, in their mind, is modern and progressive. It’s about freedom of choice, diversity and individual autonomy. Nationalism, meanwhile, is primordial, xenophobic, tribal, aggressive and exclusionary.

By this thinking, modern nations should try to tamp down nationalist passions and embrace the universal brotherhood of all humankind. As John Lennon famously sang, “Imagine there’s no countries/ It isn’t hard to do/ Nothing to kill or die for/ And no religion too.”

Those people are not all wrong. Nationalism has a lot of blood on its hands. But it has become clear that there are two kinds of nationalism: the illiberal nationalism of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump,  as opposed to the (IMO - enlightened) liberal nationalism of Zelenskyy. The former nationalism is backward-looking, xenophobic and authoritarian. The latter nationalism is forward-looking, inclusive and builds a society around the rule of law, not the personal power of the maximum leader. It’s become clear that if it is to survive, liberalism needs to rest on a bed of this kind of nationalism.

Nationalism provides people with a fervent sense of belonging. Countries don’t hold together because citizens make a cold assessment that it’s in their self-interest to do so. Countries are held together by shared loves for a particular way of life, a particular culture, a particular land. These loves have to be stirred in the heart before they can be analyzed by the brain.

Nationalism provides people with a sense of meaning. Nationalists tell stories that stretch from a glorious if broken past forward to a golden future. Individuals live and die, but the nation goes on. 

People feel their life has significance because they contribute these eternal stories. “Freedom is hollow outside of a meaning-providing system,” Yael Tamir writes in her book “Why Nationalism.”

Democracies need nationalism if they are to defend themselves against their foes. Democracies also need this kind of nationalism if they are to hold together. In his book “The Great Experiment,” Yascha Mounk celebrates the growing diversity enjoyed by many Western nations. But he argues they also need the centripetal force of “cultural patriotism,” to balance the centrifugal forces that this diversity ignites.

Finally, democracies need this kind of nationalism to regenerate the nation. Liberal nationalists are not stuck with a single archaic national narrative. They are perpetually going back, reinterpreting the past, modernizing the story and reinventing the community.

Over the past decades, this kind of ardent nationalism has often been regarded as passé within the circles of the educated elites. I suspect there are many people in this country who are proud to wear the Ukrainian flag but wouldn’t be caught dead wearing an American flag because they fear it would mark them as reactionary, jingoistic, low class.

The first problem with this posture is that it opened up a cultural divide between the educated class and the millions of Americans for whom patriotism is a central part of their identity. 

Second, by associating liberalism with the cosmopolitan global elite, it made liberalism seem like a system used to preserve the privileges of that elite. The populist class backlash combined with an anti-liberal backlash, imperiling democracies across the globe. Third, it opened the door for people like Trump to seize and hijack American patriotism.

Liberal nationalism believes in what liberals believe, but it also believes that nations are moral communities and the borders that define them need to be secure. It believes that it’s sometimes OK to put Americans first — to adopt policies that give American workers an edge over workers elsewhere. It believes it’s important to celebrate diversity, but a country that doesn’t construct a shared moral culture will probably rip itself to shreds.

American nationalism has characteristically been a liberal nationalism. From Alexander Hamilton to Walt Whitman to Theodore Roosevelt, it has often been a song in praise of a liberal revolution, a liberal constitution and a diverse, liberal society. 

On the other hand, Trumpian nationalism doesn’t flow from that traditional American nationalism, but is a repudiation of it.

Ukraine’s tenacity shows how powerful liberal nationalism can be in the face of an authoritarian threat. It shows how liberal nationalism can mobilize a society and inspire it to fantastic achievements. It shows what a renewed American liberal nationalism could do, if only the center and left could get over their squeamishness about patriotic ardor and would embrace and reinvent our national tradition.

Yael Tamir makes the essential point: “Self-centered individualism must therefore be replaced with a more collectivist spirit that nationalism knows how to kindle.”

David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times. 

Immigration is American history!

Echo opinion published in the Las Vegas Sun: 

Immigration reform is the right thing to do
By Selena Torres

Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022

Nevada is a state where almost everyone is from somewhere else — it is a state of opportunity both built by immigrants and fueled by a largely immigrant labor force. In fact, the Census Bureau's Racial and Ethnic Diversity Index puts Nevada as the third most diverse state in the country, behind only California and Hawaii. 

According to the Census Bureau, there is a 68.8% chance that two Nevadans chosen at random will be from different racial and ethnic groups.Aug 16, 2021

According to the American Immigration Council, 1 in 5 Nevadans are immigrants, and 1 in 6 “native-born” U.S. citizens have immigrant parents. These Nevadans are our neighbors, friends, colleagues, nurses, or maybe your child’s teacher.

For years, activists, Dreamers (DACA) and advocacy groups have been fighting to create a pathway to citizenship for recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and other undocumented immigrants. While President Joe Biden’s plan to add immigration into his Build Back Better bill is currently not looking like a promising vehicle, there are still opportunities to pass desperately needed protections for undocumented immigrants who have lived in our country for an average of 20 years.

Despite some disappointing setbacks, including rulings made by the Senate parliamentarian, expanding protections for undocumented immigrants in Nevada and across the country must be a priority for our leaders in the Senate. They should explore the various options available in order to secure protections for undocumented immigrants through this legislation.

As our late former senator, Harry Reid, told The Hill in October, “Americans want legal status for immigrants who have worked hard, paid taxes and made their lives in the United States.”

He’s right. Data shows that the immigration provisions in the Build Back Better Act are supported by 75% of Americans overall, including 88% of Democrats, 81% of independents and 58% of Republicans.

As an assemblywoman, it is my duty to advocate for all those in my community who need it, and I stand with the Dreamers, Temporary Protective Status holders and other undocumented immigrants who have stood with us in difficult times.

It is well past time for us all to stand with them. Nevadans deserve better, Americans deserve better.

I know Nevada Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto care about solving this issue. We are lucky to have leaders who listen to us, and I urge them to push their colleagues to take any and all steps necessary to ensure that this gets done now.

We are tired of empty promises when there are lives and livelihoods at stake, vulnerable to deportation and separation — when the chance to relieve them of their worries is here. 

Congress must pass robust immigration relief, whether in the Build Back Better Act or in any vehicle necessary to deliver for millions of American families and help keep our economy recovering. 

As the late Harry Reid said about immigration relief, “the time is now.”

Assemblywoman Selena Torres
Party: Democratic

Selena Torres was elected to the Nevada Assembly in 2018, and re-elected in 2020. She serves District 3.

Let's name prisons and jails after Donald Trump - creative ideas are welcomed!

Opinion NYTimes echo re-published in the Las Vegas Sun, a Nevada newspaper: 

Maine Writer- I can envision many creative names for federal and state prisons that can be named after Donald Trump. In the tradition of naming things after our presidents, maybe Trump can begin a new trend for re-naming prisons in his notorious memory.  Let's try this: Donald Federal Security Camp with Trump designed prison towers!

Feel free to fantasize about Trump behind bars

By Gail Collins a columnist for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/opinion/trump-grand-jury-investigation.html

Witch Hunt!  Meet the Grand Jury!

So many investigations, people.

“This is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history,” Donald Trump said, complaining about the multiple probes into his business practices.

That was in an online statement practically no one seems to have read. Truly, of all the former president’s problems, his greatest woe has to be that Twitter ban. As The Washington Post cruelly reported, the new website he’s put up as a replacement has “attracted fewer estimated visitors than the pet-adoption service Petfinder and the recipe site Delish.”

Well, yeah. Take your pick: a new puppy, a new pasta recipe or a new post-presidential whine.

But Trump is certainly getting a lot of attention on the non-fan front. Here in New York he just lost an 18-month battle to keep the Manhattan district attorney from peeping at his financial records. As we all know, Trump is an absolute shrinking violet when it comes to his tax returns, and he made two trips to the Supreme Court trying to keep them out of the hands of anybody with the power of subpoena.

In Georgia, prosecutors are investigating Trump’s postelection call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. You’ll remember the one in which he asked Raffensperger to “find” him some more votes. 

It does seem possible the Donald is going to spend the rest of his life struggling to stay out of jail, doesn’t it?

Darn.

The Manhattan DA, Cyrus Vance Jr., has reportedly convened a grand jury that’ll be looking into Trumpian … issues. The whole probe could take six months and readers, I want you to send out a couple of good thoughts every now and then to those grand jury members. How many times have you rejoiced that you don’t have to think about Donald Trump every single day anymore? How would you feel about half a year of constant contemplation?

Vance is now working with the state attorney general, Letitia James, who has been investigating — among multitudinous other things — a $25 million tax deduction Trump took for a failed housing development project in California.

If Trump has any genuine business acumen, it’s been his ability to simultaneously present himself as a real estate genius for the purpose of bank loans while also claiming massive business losses when he’s dealing with the Internal Revenue Service.

But be fair: You could certainly make a lot of good arguments for Trump’s being a loser. If any of his business has survived, it’s at least in part because you the taxpayer were helping to bail him out by paying Trump properties for rooms the Secret Service rented while guarding the Trumps.

And remember the $600,000 you the taxpayer spent in 2019, to shuttle Mike Pence between meetings in Dublin and his accommodations at the Trump hotel, 180 miles away? 

By the way, whatever happened to Mike? Well, he seems to have moved back to Indiana to prepare to run for president in 2024. Dwell on that for a minute.

Anyway, when it comes to making money off the government, the Trumpian beat goes on. Recently we learned that the minute he left the White House and moved to Mar-a-Lago, he began charging the Secret Service about $400, a night for a room at his resort.

It’s possible that the only part of the real estate business Trump is actually any good at is finding ways to bill the taxpayer for this kind of stuff. But once the poor grand jury finishes its labors we may know a whole lot more. Some of his minions are apparently jabbering to investigators like cicadas.

Here in New York, besides all the investigations, the city has been trying to can the Trump company that runs its public golf course in the Bronx. The family — led by son Eric — is demanding $30 million in return.

So, New Yorkers, would you rather (?):

a) Cough up some money to make the Trumps go away.

b) Find a mayoral candidate who will countersue for $30 million worth of public irritation.

c) Turn the golf course into a pest control center named the Donald Trump Animal Shelter for Mistreated Rodents.

Experts say this fight could go on for years. Meanwhile, north of the city, concerned citizens have been trying to erase Trump’s name from a state park, located on land he donated after the collapse of his original plan to build a golf course. The Trump Organization says it may go to court if there’s a change. Lots of ways of getting around this, but I do like the one proposed to PolitiFact by a legal expert, who mentioned the possibility of a sign saying, “Unnamed State Park, next right.”

It’ll be a long while before we find out how these investigations turn out. But it’s already crystal clear that if you took a sweeping view of Trump’s empire, the two perpetually recurring motifs would be “golf” and “failed development.”

This gives me the opportunity to note that during one of those early real estate disasters, I wrote a column referring to him as “an extremely well-dressed pile of debt, wearing an unusual haircut.” That was in 1992, and next year I want you to remind me to celebrate my 30th, anniversary of making fun of Donald Trump.

Gail Collins is a columnist for The New York Times.

Another naming idea:  Donald Trump Maximum Security Penitentiary 

Serial tragedies: Gun violence in America

Opinion editorial published in the Las Vegas Sun by Brian Greenspun

I heard the officer say it. I know he meant it. I am sure he wished it were true.

In the immediate aftermath of yet another horrific mass shooting — this time it was the murder of nine members of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) in San Jose, Calif. — the sheriff’s spokesman did his best to answer so many unanswerable questions from the media, which was trying to report the next chapter in the unrelenting story of gun violence in America.

He wasn’t the first spokesman to confront the public’s desire — no, need — for answers about why these shootings continue and, more importantly, why the greatest country on Earth allows them to continue.

And, sadly, he won’t be the last.

The United States of America — while it embraces the craziness of QAnon, the dangerous idiocy of “the big lie” about the 2020 presidential election, and the gross hypocrisy of a Republican Party gone over the edge — has settled into a routine. This routine has everyone in the country accepting the fact that there will be death and destruction, due to gun violence,every week or so and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that our leaders in Washington and down the street are willing to do to stop it.

We have brought ourselves to our own knees by refusing to hold our leaders accountable to that very basic precept in the preamble to our Constitution — “insure domestic Tranquility” — which means exactly what it says.

There is nothing tranquil about being shot up on a daily basis — in the movie theaters, our grocery stores, at a concert and, yes, in our places of work — and living and dying with the knowledge that we are too weak, too afraid and too devoid of sufficient willpower to make the changes needed to keep ourselves, our friends and neighbors and our children safe.

That’s what struck me listening to that first news conference this past week in San Jose.

I know the spokesman meant to convey a message of security and safety amid the chaos of the carnage that lay before him in that transit yard. But when he told his fellow citizens that the shooter was dead and that they were “safe now,” he couldn’t possibly realize the enormity of the misinformation and false sense of security he was spreading.

No, America, we are not safe.

Just because some deranged shooter with a gun kills himself or is killed by responding police officers, we cannot possibly believe we will be safe. Or, more to the point, are safe.

Not when there is a mass shooting practically every week in America and not when those who are in positions of responsibility — elected leaders who can stop some, most or all of the senseless murders — won’t do a damn thing to keep their neighbors, constituents and countrymen safe and “tranquil.”

And we will never be safe until people wake up and accept the fact that a person’s politics and beliefs will not stop a bullet — just like we can’t stop COVID-19 based on party affiliation.

There is one other lesson that the VTA massacre has taught us — at least that part of us who have been deluding ourselves with yet another phony excuse not to act.

Too many people excuse inaction on gun safety laws by advancing the belief that common sense laws are not the answer. They claim that a “good man with a gun will stop a bad man with a gun” so there is no need to act.

That’s a lot of hooey.

Just across the street from the VTA, mere seconds away from the mayhem, were many, many good men with guns. The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department was just a few steps from the shooter and its officers couldn’t stop him from murdering nine innocent people.

These were people, I should add, who protected and served the lives of countless fellow citizens by doing their jobs in the most difficult and dangerous circumstances during the pandemic, only to be cut down for just “ doing their jobs” in a mostly post-COVID world.

California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom has seen what we have all witnessed in San Jose this week and across the country week after week after week.

I believe he spoke for every decent American when he said:

“There’s a numbness I imagine some of us are feeling about this because there is a sameness to this. Anywhere, USA....

“It begs the damn question: What the hell’s going on in the United States of America?”

“What the hell’s wrong with us?”

Yep. That’s the question.

Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Las Vegas Sun

Republicans are hypocrites and the leadership are cowards

Echo opinion letter published in the Las Vegas Sun, in Nevada

Ken Kolman in Henderson Nevada

Marjorie Taylor Greene Wants People to Know that She's Not Just Crazy, but she's also a bigot.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (aka, a wooden dummy come alive!) of California is showing his true colors. 

Kevin McCarthy may offer proof for the "dummy is alive" syndrome!

First, he condemned #FormerGuy Trump for starting the Jan. 6th Capitol insurrection, and in his next breath he flew out to Florida to suck up to the almighty one and kiss the ring.

Then, he got Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., removed from her position in the House and replaced her with another Trump suck-up.

Now, he will not take any action against rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., (a GQP crazy!) ridiculously claiming that mask mandates are the same as the Holocaust, when Jewish people were made to wear a yellow star and sent to concentration camps. McCarthy has not said a word about these insults to the Jewish community because Greene is another Trump suck-up.

One member gets removed for telling the truth, but another keeps ridiculing ethnic groups and nothing happens to her. When it comes time to re-elect Greene, I hope that Georgians in her district think long and hard about having a lunatic making these statements. Their vote is their best tool to stop this lunacy, since McCarthy will not do anything to stop her. 

Ja! Let's hear it for Greenland!

Opinion echo editorial published in the Las Vegas Sun, in Nevada.

GREENLAND- A recent reminder that sanity has returned to the White House came from Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Greenland last week, where he offered assurance that the President Biden administration didn’t share the previous president’s interest in purchasing the vast island.

Ja! There are no plans for the President Biden administration to buy Greenland

Blinken deserves credit for handling the visit with professional tact and with a perfectly straight face, considering it was the diplomatic equivalent of a party host making day-after calls to appease guests over the antics of a drunken buffoon who had crashed the gathering.

But in all seriousness, the visit was a nice step forward.

Blinken’s purpose was to deliver a message of solidarity, aimed at repairing damage from the Trump administration’s delusional notions about purchasing the country. The idea of the United States buying a country that wasn’t for sale may have been a punchline to most of the world, but it definitely wasn’t to Greenland. The island’s citizens were justifiably offended at the proposed hostile takeover, which had everything to do with America’s interests and nothing to do with the well-being of Greenlanders. The Trump administration openly acknowledged it was acting in the name of strategic defense interests and was after the potential oil and mineral resources that may lie beneath Greenland’s melting ice sheet.

More damaging yet, then- #FormerGuy doubled down on the disrespect when, after Greenland rejected his idea, he petulantly canceled a state visit to Denmark, of which Greenland is a territory.

“You don’t talk to the United States that way, at least under me,” he added. (Smart people in Denmark did not seem to notice!)

Tough talk, but later the adults in the administration quietly did some damage-control work by providing $12 million in economic development funding to Greenland and opening a consulate there. Still, the damage was done.

No such clean-up work will be needed after Blinken’s visit. 

To his credit, he didn’t focus on the past four years but instead looked ahead, saying the U.S. was looking to build stronger ties to Nordic nations to help address climate change, push back against Russia’s growing military presence in the Arctic and counter China’s growing economic influence in the region.

“What was important about coming here today was to demonstrate that the way we see the relationship is a partnership,” Blinken said during the visit. “We have shared interests, we have shared values, at a time when the world is ever more complicated and challenging.”

Those words hit home with Greenland’s leaders, who said they were honored by the visit and once again felt respected by the U.S.

That’s refreshing to hear. In one regard, Trump wasn’t wrong — Greenland is an important factor in protecting the national interests of the U.S. It’s the home of the U.S. military’s northernmost base, a key installation for missile warnings and space surveillance, and its geographic location at the intersection of the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean makes it a critical point from which to guard against Russian incursion.

The alarming glacial melt in Greenland also is a significant factor in sea-level rise, which is already spurring human migrations that are heightening geopolitical tensions. In partnering with Greenland and other nations to support efforts to curb global warming, the U.S. is taking a step in protecting our national interests.

But that’s how it’s done — by partnering, not by treating an ally like a commodity to be exploited, or suggesting that no one has the right to criticize the U.S.

President Joe Biden will end the reality show Trump

This is an excellent and expressive editorial in the Las Vegas Sun, in Nevada! 

President Elect Joe Biden and Vice-President Elect Kamala 

Harris have earned our support to lead the nation

Las Vegas Sun Editor’s note: The Sun wrote this endorsement prior to Donald Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis and hospitalization. (Updated by Maine Writer- Thank you "Sun"!)

On rare occasions, history offers us a clear choice that demands one, and only one, proper answer. This election is such a moment, and the proper answer is Joe Biden for president.

We have lived through the chaotic, traumatic and utterly debased Trump years. We have all the evidence we need from the damage he and his supporters have done to the beautiful idea that is America.

It is time to heal our nation. 

America needs Biden in ways that are as broad as protecting our future as a free people, and as personal as a grade-schooler getting enough to eat. They’re as broad as protecting the planet from the effects of global warming, as personal as every American’s ability to obtain affordable health care when we’re sick or injured. They’re as broad as overcoming the pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 of us, as personal as the treatment of any Black American in interactions with police.

We know it’s an election cliché to say that America needs (fill in the blank). But this year, with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris filling that blank, it couldn’t be more true.

A Biden/Harris administration brings an end to four years of sabotaging of our democratic foundations in pursuit of autocracy, of undermining our standing in the global community, of demeaning our allies while embracing despotic leaders, of vandalizing our civility and ethical standards, of trampling our American values of inclusion and equality, of encouraging racism and vigilantism by violent extremists, of rigging our election process with the goal of establishing minority rule, of vilifying immigrants and people of color, of tilting our economy to funnel more money to those at the very top of the income bracket, of using unmarked federal forces to conduct extrajudicial detainments of protesters, of turning back the clock on equal rights for women and minorities, and much more.

With Biden as president, adults will pry the steering wheel from a wild (spoiled, narcissistic) toddler. America would be led by a president with decades of effective leadership in Washington, who knows how to pull the levers of government as opposed to only knowing how to break them. 

President Elect Joe Biden and and Vice President Elect Kamala Harris will form the nucleus of a team of policy professionals with the experience, education and skills to address complex issues. 

Moreover, the revolving door of White House incompetents will stop.

President Elect Biden comes armed with a detailed array of strategies for leading Americans — all Americans — into a new era. He stood out among the Democratic candidates in large part because he developed a particularly impressive set of policies covering a huge array of issues critical to Americans — health care, climate, energy, infrastructure, gun violence, foreign policy, and more. Look on his website, (A President for All Americans!) and you’ll find detailed policies covering nearly 50 topics.

The America ushered in by these policies will be healthier, more prosperous, safer, greener, more just, more inclusive. The middle class will have a chance again and so will the environment. The bleak resurgent racism of the Trump years will be pushed back as America continues to work toward real equality. And American decency will flourish once more.

There is a narrative about true American greatness and hope found in these policies.

That’s leadership from someone who knows how government works. By contrast, Donald Trump’s campaign site offers practically nothing of a vision for a second term. Instead Trump presents a list of “promises kept.” Right (OMG!)— like building the wall and making Mexico pay for it? Promises like that? Let’s see, only about 300 miles of the 1,200-mile wall have been constructed, and much of that was replacement. And we’re still waiting for that check from Mexico.

Trump has never had an actual policy that wasn’t handed to him by (Moscow!) Mitch McConnell or Fox News (aka "right wing fake news!).

While Trump has no discernible policy, other than self-interest, he does have goals: He’s a stone-cold racist, a self-serving grifter and an aspiring dictator. We spent all of the 20th century fighting people like Trump at home and abroad, and now in this young century, by a confluence of cruel forces, America has endured his occupancy in the White House.

There would be an end to the exodus of government experts in science, health and other fields who have left the government in disgust or after being hounded out. There would also be an end to the attack on inspectors general, the watchdogs who help hold the presidency accountable.

In President Biden, America will have a president who listens to public health experts about the coronavirus pandemic, as opposed to disdaining them and refusing to follow their advice by even doing something so simple as routinely wearing a mask in public.

Biden provides essential leadership qualities that have been absent under the Trump administration — humility, empathy and honesty. He’s able to admit he’s wrong, and that he’s not the smartest person in every room on every topic. He’s opened himself to public scrutiny through his career in office and learned to face criticism.

He can admit he’s imperfect.

And let’s be clear, he is imperfect. Biden has notoriously been his own worst enemy due to lapses in judgment, including when he lost his temper at a couple of everyday Americans who challenged him during Q&A sessions on the campaign trail.

Yet Biden, unlike Trump, shows the character traits the nation desperately needs in our next leader.

Does anyone really believe Trump cares about a child who goes to school hungry? A woman who requires a health clinic for a pelvic exam? A Dreamer facing deportation? A Black man under the knee of the police? A Puerto Rican family recovering from a hurricane? A Mexican child? A peaceful protester for social justice? Young people growing up with an epidemic of gun violence? Anyone who loathes today’s tribalism?

Of course Trump doesn’t care! He has a narrow list of things he cares about: himself, primarily, then his family, golf, adulation and the odd cheeseburger or porn star. Oh, and Vladimir Putin.

With President Biden in the Oval Office, the reality show presidency of the past four years will end.

No more wanton perversion of our justice system. No encouragement of extremists like militias, the Proud Boys and Boogaloo Bois to commit violence against their fellow Americans. No insider reports about the president calling U.S. soldiers “losers” and “suckers.” No teargassing of peaceful protesters in order to conduct a photo op with an upside-down Bible.

A Biden presidency cuts the noise, replacing it with calm-headed, expert-guided leadership and a detailed policy blueprint for a better tomorrow.

Biden’s choice of running mate, Kamala Harris, is every bit as impressive as his other choices. Poised and brilliant by any measure, Harris is exceptionally well-equipped to help Biden guide the nation during the long and complicated process of repairing the damage of the Trump years. As a city prosecutor, state attorney general and U.S. senator, Harris understands the impact of government on people’s lives at all levels. In the event something horrible happens, Harris would be immediately ready to occupy the Oval Office. Adding to her spectacular qualifications there is this: It is high time for America to have a woman of color occupying the highest offices in the land.

Rarely has the country more desperately needed this type of even-handed leadership, with millions out of work due to the pandemic and far too many families either having faced the loss of loved ones or illness from the coronavirus themselves. Meanwhile, Trump has made it clear he’ll continue to fuel tensions between Black Lives Matter protesters and law enforcement, a cynical strategy to protect his own interests by claiming the clashes represent the future of the nation under Biden and Democratic leadership.

That’s not the case at all. Biden, unlike Trump, has clearly denounced violence in the protests on all sides, and has done nothing to encourage violence on anyone’s part.

This is what a president should do. This is what President Biden and Vice-President Harris will do.

Simply put, America needs a president and vice president who can lead all of us and know how to do that. We need them on a global level, on a national level and at a kitchen-table level.

This year, it’s no cliché. America needs President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris.