Let me get this right? Ron "daahh" Santis is running for president against his own state constituent? WWWTP?

Echo opinion letter published in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper:

(Maine Writer- What is it about the lunacy of running a campaign against your own constituent, who is the former guy, that the D. "daahh" Santis campaign does not get?) 

Seems to me like the "Governor DeSanctimonious" needs to rethink his failing campaign strategy.

D. Santis or "daahh❗-Santis"? Loose cannons hurtling through Florida

Ponce de Leon’s Spanish sailors first docked in “La Florida” in 1513, at a place later named St. Augustine. 

Those sailors were always fearful that one of their ship’s cannons would break loose from its moorings and cause havoc as it careened wildly about the ship’s deck. The term “loose cannon” slowly transitioned into describing people who create havoc. Over 500 years later de Leon’s sailors’ fear came true, as “loose cannon” Ron DeSantis (aka, daaah-Santis) became governor of Florida, partially due to the support of another “loose cannon” named Donald Trump.

So, now Florida has two loose cannons careening wildly around Florida firing verbal fusillades at each other, not caring about the collateral damage they are causing. 

Both of these loose cannons need to be jettisoned overboard before they completely destroy democracy in America.

Trump Goes Scorched Earth On DeSantis With Freaky Hitler/Satan Post (Huffington Post).  "I’m gonna kick your ass very soon," mocked the former guy.

I wonder if our Florida governor even realizes that slavery was introduced into Florida in 1539, courtesy of Hernando DeSoto, almost 100 years before Jamestown, Virginia. 

History at times is sad and despicable, but it shouldn’t be whitewashed as DeSantis would like.

From James Stuart Emery in Valrico, Florida

WWWTP?

Freedom of the press has not come "for free": Hypocritical Republicans attemp to abolish it

"...the murder "[gave] a shock as of an earthquake throughout this country", John Quincy Adams.  

"..mob law..", Abraham Lincoln

Wood engraving of November 7, 1837 mob attack in Alton, IL. Antislavery publisher Elijah Lovejoy was killed and his press, hidden in this warehouse, was destroyed, with the pieces thrown into the Mississippi River.

Elijah Lovejoy (1892-1837) Faced Down Violent Mobs to Champion Abolition and the Free Press by Ken Ellingwood

By Ken Ellingwood, a former Los Angeles Times correspondent now living in Abu Dhabi, is the author of First to Fall, a forthcoming book about Elijah Lovejoy.

It was gratifying that Rep. Jamie Raskin would invoke an obscure 19th century newspaper editor while laying out the impeachment case charging President Trump with incitement in the brutal January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The editor was Elijah Lovejoy, whose slaying at the hands of a proslavery mob in 1837, encapsulated a chilling wave of political violence that Abraham Lincoln, then an Illinois lawmaker, condemned as “mob law.”

As Congress confronts the aftermath of the pro-Trump crowd’s frenzied violence—some of which was directed against journalists trying to covering the events—it is a good moment to recall courageous editors such as Lovejoy who defended American freedom of the press in the face of violent and often well-organized efforts to silence them. Lovejoy’s story is a reminder that the liberties journalists hold dear are more fragile than we’d like to admit.

Over many months, before he was killed, in Alton, Illinois, Lovejoy, who ran a weekly paper called the Observer, was repeatedly targeted by mobs over his persistent writings against slavery—a stance considered akin to treason along the edge of the slavery South. 

A white Presbyterian pastor from Albion, Maine, Lovejoy was chased from St. Louis in 1836 over columns denouncing slavery as immoral. He scurried across the Mississippi River to the free state of Illinois to keep printing his weekly, but ran afoul of critics there, too. Three times, vigilantes destroyed his press and threw it into the river. Three times, friends helped Lovejoy buy a new one.

Lovejoy belonged to a small fraternity of editors—often devout Quakers or Presbyterians, mostly white—who used their printing presses in the decades before the Civil War to call for an end to chattel slavery, sometimes within the very states that practiced it. Early antislavery editors, such as the Quaker Benjamin Lundy, sought to prick the nation’s conscience before any large abolitionist movement had taken shape.

Writing against slavery could be dangerous—Lundy was assaulted by a slave trader about whom he had written in his Baltimore newspaper. William Lloyd Garrison, the firebrand editor of the Liberator, was publicly paraded by a Boston crowd with a rope looped around him. Antislavery editors were threatened, pursued by vigilantes and, in Lovejoy’s case, shot dead. Even in free states of the North, antislavery journalists were reviled as deranged fanatics bent on destroying the Union—an earlier era’s version of “enemy of the people.”

Except for Garrison, abolitionist editors have languished in the footnotes of the larger saga of slavery and the Civil War. That’s a shame. By using their newspapers to press for an end to human bondage, editors such as Lovejoy and James G. Birney elevated a twin cause: freedom of the press. These ink-stained abolitionists defied attempts to muzzle their papers at a moment when the young country was still working out how free its newspapers would be. Their defense of the right to publish on any topic, even unpopular ones, contributed to a national understanding of how a free press acts—even today.

Slavery’s defenders went to astonishing lengths to stifle public criticism, even in the North. Slave states outlawed “incendiary” abolitionist journals, which they said could incite slaves to rebel. Southern lawmakers sought vainly to get counterparts in the North to crack down on abolitionist materials at their source. Suppression extended even to Congress: the House of Representatives, dominated by Southerners and their Northern allies, approved a “gag rule” in 1836 to prevent discussion of slavery within its walls.

These steps and rampant mobs in the North represented a vast effort to suppress antislavery sentiment as a small but growing number of whites and free Blacks in the North had begun to mobilize. Pro-slavery forces in the South went so far as to intercept and burn sacks of antislavery journals sent through the U.S. mail.

But canny abolitionists spotted advantage in marrying the cause of the slave with freedom of the press. Birney, a White Kentuckian who liberated his slaves and embraced abolitionism, founded an antislavery newspaper in Cincinnati. Mobs twice wrecked his press, though Birney was uninjured.

Birney viewed mob attacks on the press as a chance to sow indignation in the North, and to cast abolitionists as defenders of civil liberties in the face of tyranny. “The contest is becoming—has become, one not alone of freedom for the black,” he told a fellow activist, “but of freedom for the white.” Even after his second press was destroyed while Cincinnati’s mayor looked on, Birney resumed publishing.

No editor carried the fight further than Lovejoy, whose Observer grew more strident after his flight to Illinois. Thugs in Alton sacked his office and threatened to tar and feather him. Local elites, including the Illinois attorney general, and hostile newspapers across the river in the slave state of Missouri employed pressure and thinly veiled threats to get him to stop writing about slavery.

Lovejoy refused, again and again, arguing that his freedom to publish on any subject was granted by the Constitution and God. “You may burn me at the stake…or you may tar and feather me, or throw me in the Mississippi, as you have often threatened to do,” Lovejoy told a gathering of citizens summoned to persuade him to quit. “But you cannot disgrace me.”

Days after that, on November 7, 1837, Lovejoy was fatally shot while fending off a pro-slavery mob. His press was hammered to pieces and tossed into the Mississippi. Lovejoy, 34, became the first American martyred in defense of journalism. John Quincy Adams, the Massachusetts congressman and former president, compared the shock of Lovejoy’s killing to “an earthquake throughout this continent.”

That was hyperbole. Yet Lovejoy’s struggle did help solidify an expansive understanding of press freedom for future generations of journalists. At moment when white nationalists now seek to turn “Murder the Media” into a right-wing brand, Lovejoy, and Birney remind us that an unfettered press has long tried to light our way, and that the liberties we take for granted didn’t come for free.

Cruel Donald Trump immigration policies- a Biblical view

The stranger is Jesus in disguise

This opinion essay was published in The Conversation written by Mathew Schmalz* and dated January 2017, one year ago. This essay is even more timely in 2018 and the future ahead of us.

Donald Trump signed an executive order that placed a stay on refugees from seven Muslim majority countries. Entrance of refugees from Syria, however, will be banned for the next 120 days.

...look to the Bible for guidance when asking about how to best welcome the stranger. 

Two days prior to that, he committed the United States to building a wall on its border with Mexico. Soon after the order, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto canceled an upcoming trip to the United States.

President Trump has also proposed that Mexican goods be taxed at the rate of 20 percent to provide funds for building the wall. This would fulfill his campaign promise that Mexico would actually pay for the wall’s construction, in spite of America’s southern neighbor’s protests.

For Christians, the questions about building the border wall or permitting immigrants and refugees into the United States involve a host of associated considerations not just about the specifics of immigration law, the economics of cheap labor coming across the border or potential terrorist threats.

At issue are both broader and deeper questions about what it means to welcome the stranger.

As a Roman Catholic scholar who lived in South Asia for a total of four years, I know what it is like to be initially considered a “stranger” but be quickly welcomed with open arms. 

And I, like all Christians, look to the Bible for guidance when asking about how to best welcome the stranger.

So, what does the Bible actually say?

We will all be strangers, sometime The Bible affirms – strongly and unequivocally – the obligation to treat strangers with dignity and hospitality.

In “Love the Stranger,” an article written for the annual meeting of the College Theological Society in 1991, biblical scholar Alice Laffey stated that in the Hebrew Bible, the words “gûr” and “gēr” are the ones most often glossed as referring to the “stranger,” though they are also translated as “newcomer” and “alien” or “resident alien,” respectively.

In the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the word “gēr” appears almost 50 times, and the fifth book, Deuteronomy, delineates a number of specific provisions for treating “the stranger” not just with courtesy but also with active support and provision.

For example, the book of Deuteronomy sets out the requirement that a portion of produce be set aside by farmers every third year for strangers, widows and orphans. In the “temple sermon” attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, the Jewish people are exhorted to “not oppress the sojourner.”

Within the Hebrew Bible the requirements of hospitality are sometimes affirmed in very striking ways, as in the story from the book of Judges in which a host offers his own daughter to ruffians in order to safeguard his guest.

Of course, the Israelites themselves were “strangers” during their enslavement in Egypt and captivity in Babylon. The Hebrew Bible recognizes that every one of us can be a stranger and, for that very reason, we need to overcome our fear of those who live among us whom we do not know.

The stranger is Jesus in disguise

Within the New Testament, which Christians read in continuity with the Hebrew Bible or “The Old Testament,” the most often cited passage dealing with welcoming the stranger is from Matthew 25: 31-40.

This section speaks of the Final Judgment, when the righteous will be granted paradise and unrepentant sinners will be consigned to eternal fire. Christ says to those at his right hand that they are “blessed” because “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

The righteous then ask,

“When did we see you, a stranger, and welcome you?”

Christ replies,

“‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’”

As Matthew 25 makes clear, the Christians should see everyone as “Christ” in the flesh. Indeed, scholars argue that in the New Testament, “stranger” and “neighbor” are in fact synonymous. Thus the Golden Rule, “love your neighbor as yourself,” refers not just to people whom you know – your “neighbors” in a conventional sense – but also to people whom you do not know.

Beyond this, in the letters written by Paul of Tarsus (one of the most notable of early Christian missionaries), often known as the Pauline “Epistles,” it is made clear that in Christ,

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave[g] nor free, there is no male and female.”

From this perspective, being “one in Christ” should be taken literally as acknowledging no fundamental differences in kind among human beings.

Bible is unambiguous in its message

Of course, in Christianity the strong admonitions toward treating the stranger with dignity have coexisted with actions that would seem to indicate an opposite attitude: pogroms against Jews, slavery, imperialism and colonialism have been sanctioned by Christians who nonetheless would have affirmed biblical principles regarding caring for those who seem “other” or “alien.”

The stranger is Jesus in disguise

Within the New Testament, which Christians read in continuity with the Hebrew Bible or “The Old Testament,” the most often cited passage dealing with welcoming the stranger is from Matthew 25: 31-40.

This section speaks of the Final Judgment, when the righteous will be granted paradise and unrepentant sinners will be consigned to eternal fire. Christ says to those at his right hand that they are “blessed” because

“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

The righteous then ask,

“When did we see you, a stranger, and welcome you?”

Christ replies, “‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me'.”

As Matthew 25 makes clear, the Christians should see everyone as “Christ” in the flesh. Indeed, scholars argue that in the New Testament, “stranger” and “neighbor” are in fact synonymous. Thus the Golden Rule, “love your neighbor as yourself,” refers not just to people whom you know – your “neighbors” in a conventional sense – but also to people whom you do not know.

Beyond this, in the letters written by Paul of Tarsus (one of the most notable of early Christian missionaries), often known as the Pauline “Epistles,” it is made clear that in Christ,

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave[g] nor free, there is no male and female.”

From this perspective, being “one in Christ” should be taken literally as acknowledging no fundamental differences in kind among human beings.

Bible is unambiguous in its message

Of course, in Christianity the strong admonitions toward treating the stranger with dignity have coexisted with actions that would seem to indicate an opposite attitude: pogroms against Jews, slavery, imperialism and colonialism have been sanctioned by Christians who nonetheless would have affirmed biblical principles regarding caring for those who seem “other” or “alien.”

Indeed, when it comes to the specific questions concerning building a wall on America’s border with Mexico or welcoming immigrants and refugees, some Christians would argue that doing so does not violate any biblical precepts concerning hospitality to the stranger, since the issue is one of legality and, of course, a good number of Christians did indeed support Donald Trump’s candidacy for the presidency. Other Christians have taken a diametrically different position, and have called for cities and educational institutions to be set apart as “safe zones” for undocumented immigrants.

It is true that the application of biblical principles to contemporary matters of policy is less than clear to the many Christians who have taken opposing sides regarding how the United States should deal with immigrants, undocumented workers and refugees.

However, in my reading of the Bible, the principles regarding welcoming the stranger are broad-reaching and unambiguous.

*Mathew Schmalz wrote this essay, he is Associate Professor of Religion, College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA.

History ~ describing the advent of a Progressive Era

Two cliche's seem to be appropriate to describe this interview:

1.  Is America at a "glass half full or empty" moment?

Historian Ed Ayers interview in Salon.com and the History News Network
2. If Americans forget about history, are we doomed to repeat it?

It seems as though people must be pushed to the precipice of a political cliff before they collectively decide to abandon the historical situation at hand ~ like turning back the tide of the Trumpzi era of right wing zealots. Let's prevent Americans from falling victim to the lure of extremism.

An interview with historian Edward L. Ayers explains the history about the political precipice facing America and how to seize the opportunity at the moment, to change the right wing extremist course.  

Journalist Chauncey DeVegas asks these timely questions:

• How can we reconcile the rise of Donald Trump with to the long view of American history? 
• Why do so many Americans still fight about the real causes of the Civil War? 
• What explains the Confederacy's enduring allure for many white Americans? 
• Should the statues and other monuments honoring the Confederacy be removed from public spaces? 
• If so, what should be done with them?

Published in Salon.com and the History News Network ~

Interview with historian Ed Ayers, a professor at the University of Richmond and the author of numerous books and also a co-host of the popular podcast series "BackStory."

What is history, and why do we study it?

It’s all the information we have about everything that happened before today. It has no intrinsic shape or form. It’s not just a bunch of stories that we’re told. It can be anything. In the same way, I don’t know about you but I’m nothing other than my memories and my experiences. If you took those away, I would just be a blank slate. A large part of my work has been to try to gather together a way to see all those stories, those memories, those experiences and those interactions.

How do you reconcile the rise of Donald Trump with a longer view of American history?

My instinct is that we are at the beginning of a new Progressive Era in American history. I think what we are also seeing is a great mobilization of people who had been complacent under the Obama years, when it seemed like progress was just going to continue to unfold naturally. Now people realize that progress will only continue when you fight for it.

One thing about history is that the thing that people expect to happen never does. If there was a poll in the United States during 1860 which asked, “Who thinks that the largest and most powerful system of slavery in the modern world is going to be gone in five years?”, nobody would have said yes. Nobody thought it was possible to destroy something that big that quickly.

I think you’ll see, however, that as the Trump administration ends, the amount of energy that’s been spun up among young people, people of color, the gay community and other groups now has a focus in a way it did not before. ...

[T]here is a great deal of rhetoric in the editorial pages of many major newspapers, as well on right-wing conspiracy websites, that America is in the midst -- or soon will be -- of a new Civil War. As a Civil War historian, when you hear such language do you just dismiss it out of hand?

I try to think very thoughtfully about what it is that they’re saying. In a new Civil War, if it happened today, the equivalent of eight million Americans would be killed. Are we really looking at something like that? I don’t think so.

On the other hand, in my books I show that there was a Civil War because people didn’t believe there could be one. They just kept calling each other's bluff and drawing new lines in the sand. They ended up basically talking and voting themselves into a war that nobody wanted. It is always good to be alert to the danger, but it’s also important to have some sense of historical perspective about what true war looks like. America is not there yet.

Yes, things that are much worse than we can imagine can happen. You have to be alert. But that same vigilance can also allow you to see the possibilities for hopeful change that surround us as well. ...

In response to social progress there is an inevitable backlash. 

We saw this in the racist and authoritarian response by white America to Obama's presidency. (Although I appreciate your insights about a new progressive era_....but I’m deeply worried by how the vast majority of Americans appear to be stuck in a state of learned helplessness.

The barometer will be the 2018 midterm elections. There we will see if people are so full of despair that they have given up on the nation. I’m hopeful that people are going to recognize that voting matters, that politics matters, that governance matters.

Nobody understands what’s happening right now. In my new book, I talked about how nobody saw Gettysburg. Nobody saw the election of 1864. Living through something offers a really poor indicator of what actually happened. You see a part of it, and there’s an authenticity to that. We simply lack the capacity to assemble the flow of events into a coherent story.

Certainly under the Trump administration we’re living through something unprecedented. But that might also mean that we’re living through the beginning of an unprecedentedly comprehensive and inclusive progressive era.

The first progressive era was basically white people. Now we have the chance for one composed of people from lots of different identities coming together for the greater good. So since we can’t know whether that’s true or not, I choose to believe it in the meantime.

That's a wonderful and hopeful vision. As a counterpoint, there is a great deal of rhetoric in the editorial pages of many major newspapers, as well on right-wing conspiracy websites, that America is in the midst -- or soon will be -- of a new Civil War. 

As a Civil War historian, when you hear such language do you just dismiss it out of hand?

I try to think very thoughtfully about what it is that they’re saying. In a new Civil War, if it happened today, the equivalent of eight million Americans would be killed. Are we really looking at something like that? I don’t think so.

On the other hand, in my books I show that there was a Civil War because people didn’t believe there could be one. They just kept calling each other's bluff and drawing new lines in the sand. 

They ended up basically talking and voting themselves into a war that nobody wanted. It is always good to be alert to the danger, but it’s also important to have some sense of historical perspective about what true war looks like. America is not there yet.

Yes, things that are much worse than we can imagine can happen. You have to be alert. But that same vigilance can also allow you to see the possibilities for hopeful change that surround us as well.

The Republican Party is in many ways the Confederacy and the Jim Crow South updated for the 21st century. There has long been a neo-Confederate element in the post-civil rights era Republican Party. With Trump's election they have fully empowered. 

Even worse, in the aftermath of the Charlottesville violence, we actually saw the president of the United States, suggesting that there are "some very fine people" among neo-Nazis and white supremacists. How do you make sense of this?

I was in Charlottesville that day. I was going to teach a class that afternoon at the University of Virginia. I would start by explaining how there are people who turn to the symbols of the Confederacy as a native, indigenous rebellion against the power of the federal government. That appeals to a lot of people. But when you see that Confederate flag being mingled with Nazi flags, suddenly that claim upon an indigenous, pure and non-racialized argument about politics and "traditions" is gone. It has been forever entangled with white supremacy.

You might be surprised by the number of people who will come up to me after I give a lecture and tell me, "Slavery was wrong, I would never defend it. But the fact is that Robert E. Lee was a fine man and he was fighting for his home, right? He was fighting for what he thought was right." You hear that a lot. It makes you realize all the evasions that are built into this defense of the Confederacy. 

We have all these formulas that people use to say that they are proud of their ancestors. For example, he was a "good" slaveholder. Two, he didn’t really believe in slavery. Three, he wanted to get rid of slavery. Four, most white Southerners weren’t slaveholders so they could not have been fighting for slavery, and so forth. I listen to these folks and I then say, yes, let’s think about this. Let’s forget about whatever you might think about the character or identity of Robert E. Lee. What if the Confederacy had won? What if those men on horseback had actually accomplished what they set out to do? They would have created a nation explicitly based on perpetual bondage that would have been the fourth-richest economy in the world with a monopoly over the single most valuable commodity in the world. How would world history have been different? Other parts of the world would have looked to the South and said, “Ah, the path to the future leads through slavery."

If you try to argue with them on the same ground that they form the question on, you will have a hard time persuading them. But it’s also the case that white Northerners and Westerners have a smug belief in the inevitable end of American slavery that is not warranted either.

Are there any well-respected and properly trained historians who believe that the Civil War was about something other than slavery? Is that just bad pop history at this point? 

Where do these ridiculous ideas come from?

No serious historian has argued for more than half a century that the Civil War was over anything other than slavery. Yes, there are different ways that it was over slavery, right? One of the formulas I have for this is that white Southerners didn’t fight for slavery, they fought for a nation based on slavery. If you don’t put the nation part in there, you don’t have a place for the flags and a place for your girl to love you, a way for your mama to believe that this is Jesus’ plan, right? You have a larger framework of identity that obscures the centrality of slavery.

Many of the statues that were at the center of the protests and the racist riot at Charlottesville are relatively new. They were erected well after the Civil War, even through the middle of the 20th century, as expressions of white supremacy, especially in response to the civil rights movement.

A lot of schools were named after Lee and [Stonewall] Jackson in the 1950s and 1960s. This is something that people either had not known or maybe had forgotten. The Confederate battle flag also became popular during roughly the same time period. Somebody asked me about that in a recent talk and I pointed out this is the same time the Confederate battle flag became popular. I think we have to seize this moment for people to understand the real consequences of the things that they think are just their "heritage."

Confederate statues and other monuments are an effort to create a type of living history. 

After World War II, statues and monuments to Hitler and the Nazi regime were removed. That was a choice, because that type of public memory was not acceptable in post-war Germany. For a lot of black folks, and a good number of white folks as well, the Confederate flag is the American swastika. Why are so many white Southerners and others so psychologically invested in these symbols?

They just say, "You don’t understand what it really means. I wish no harm to anybody but they just need to be educated to the true history of Robert E. Lee." I offer this story. I gave a talk in Richmond where an older African-American woman came up to me at the end. She shook my hand and then said, "Dr. Ayers, when I was a child, my parents would take me to look at those statues and they said to me, 'These are for us. These are symbols for us to be quiet, to stay out of the way. The city doesn’t belong to us.'"

The movement to remove those statues is not contemporary "political correctness." John Mitchell Jr., who was on the city council and was also the editor of the Richmond Planet African-American newspaper, said in 1890 that the Robert E. Lee statue was "a monument to treason." Ultimately, we need to think of new ways to recall the horror of slavery and the suffering of the Civil War.

What are you hopeful for in this moment of American history? What are you afraid of or worried about?

I hope that all the people of good will can find commonality. That there are a lot of fundamental things in this nation that transcend any particular identity that we might have. Freedom of the press, freedom to vote, freedom of conscience and related values have gotten a little fragmented. My hope is that people will find a common voice to come together and to defend freedom and democracy more broadly.

What do I fear? Resentment and resistance will actually gain force rather than be diminished in the struggle that is to come. That’s the big question. Will people realize that we’re standing on the precipice of something much worse if we keep going down the road we are on? Or will they say, “Wait -- this is not really what’s best about America"?

Republicans - memory impaired politicians

It's obvious the Republican party has supported a systematic "dumbing down" of the voter. Rather than build up America with inspired visionary ideas, the party has succedded to construct their reputation as an anti-tax, anti-immigration, anti- second amendment reforms, anti-science, anti-women's reproductive health, anti-poor minority people and anti- history. Unfortunately, Republicans who contribute to this stunted philosophy of regressive thinking must be suffering with memory impariment.  

Here's why:

1.  Anti-tax forgetfuleness: By constantly cutting taxes, the Republicans are putting our nation's already crumbling infrastructure into a state off delayed maintenance disrepair. In other words, by saving tax payers money, the Republcians will, in reality, cost us more in the long run because fixing "delayed maintenance" will be more expensive over time, than keeping repairs current. Republicans forget the value of "opportunity costs". It's an accounting 101 principle, where the cost of investing today will support competitive initiatives for the future. By delaying the payment for infrastructure using today's tax dollars, the Republicans will cost us more when repairs expenses grow with inflation. 

2.  Anti-immigration- Republicans have acute "short term memory loss" regarding their anti-immigration reforms.  Simply stated, every single one of the Republicans who oppose immigration reforms are descended from immigrants. They have forgotten this basic genealogical fact.

3.  Anti-second amendment regulatory reforms - Rather than protect Americans from gun violence, Republicans deliberately forget their "pro-life" zeal. They forget to be pro-life for the purpose of allowing everybody to own guns. In fact, Republicans forget to be "pro-life" when they're asked to support regulatory changes to improve gun safety and prevent thousands of preventable deaths by keeping assault weapons out of the hands of people intent taking life away from other human beings. Indeed, the Second Amendment is hardly "pro-life".

4.  Anti-science- Republicans have actue short term memory loss when they are confronted with the science about the damage climate change is doing to our environment. They forget about the melting polar ice caps, the growing intensity of ocean storms and the sinking of the Polynesian Islands. Pretty soon, if the ice caps continue to melt, if ocean storms wipe out the population infrastructures on both American coastlines and Polynesia becomes a sub-Pacific mountain chain, then Republicans won't have to remember how people, the nature in their enviornments and the places where they lived ever existed.  

5.  Anti-women's health- Republicans forget about physiological facts when confronted about how to protect women's reproductive health.  Rather than remember how rape is a violent crime, some of them believe the woman has a physiological ability to prevent pregnancy during an assault. Republicans choose to forget how supporting women's health is essential to population growth. We must remember to respect the reproductive health of all women.

6.  Anti- minority poor - Republicans forget how the American dream made each of them prosperous. Instead, they seem to deny others the opportunities they have enjoyed as a result of being given access to equal rights. Most Republicans weren't born into wealth. In fact, many were raised in minority ethnic communities.Nevertheless, for some unexplainable reason, those who share in America's wealth do not remember  how to give the same chance to others.

Republicans are leading voters into the terminall illness caused by memory impairment

7.  Anti-history - Republicans forget to remember how Black slaves were trapped and forced from their families and homes in Africa to be bought and sold like property, stripped of all human rights.  Instead, Texas history books are now calling slaves "migrant workers". Republicans have short term history memories.

Memory impaired Republicans are infecting our nation with their impairments.

Democrats must strenuously rally behind progressive candidates who provide urgently needed antedotes to stop the political poison and the dumbing down of the American voter. We must remind everyone how short term memory losses eventually risks becoming terminal diseases.