Perceiving Ourselves More Clearly So, We Can Perceive the World Around Us More Clearly and Act More Powerfully

A wonderful friend wrote a powerful and frightening article about the situation we humans face right now. I can’t share it here because he’s sent it out and it hasn’t, yet, been published. But I would like to share its central insight.

 

Most of us already know how difficult the situation is now, between climate change, the threats of autocracy, hate-manipulated gun violence, war, etc. We might be consumed by so many concerns that we get lost in fears and retreat to the usual, the safe. But what we face is not usual and not at all safe.

 

I sometimes wonder if we can even conceive of the challenge we face. We need our rational minds to evaluate all the evidence. But maybe we need to feel it even more than grasp it. We certainly can imagine what a small town looks like after a massive tornado; or what a city like New Orleans looked like after the flooding of Katrina. Or what burned out towns in California look like or cities when sidewalks and streets melt from the increasing heat. This is the face of the climate emergency. And whatever we’ve seen in the past, we’ll probably be seeing worse in coming days and years.

 

We might read about what it was like living in cities like London before environmental regulations were passed, when people couldn’t go outdoors without getting sick due to torrential smog. Or we can imagine a world without any wildlife outside zoos, no lions, tigers, and bears, no elephants, no eagles and ravens, no owls. Or no honeybees. Without bees, no honey, no fruit, no crops.

 

Or what happens to a nation when increasing hate fueled violence, like in Buffalo, NY fills the streets. The number of hate crimes has more than doubled since 2015, when DJT first ran for office. Or what a dictator like Putin is doing to Ukraine or what would happen if a white nationalist or Nazis became president or Dictator.

 

Or what happens when children are forced to read or learn about only what people driven by hate, bigotry, and lust for power want them to read. Or when women are no longer allowed to control their own healthcare options or how their bodies are treated.

 

My friend feels the terrifying frustration of seeing a threat so clearly yet also feeling powerless to stop it. I think he speaks the fear and concern that a majority of Americans feel. But for him, only dramatic changes will be noticed. Little changes can get lost in the storm clouds of images of what might be coming. Crying out to the world, “Why can’t anyone stop this?” can drive anyone crazy.

 

Yet, a democracy is all about many people doing relatively small actions together. The wheels of law and change can move with painful slowness.

 

A few close friends talked with him about not obsessing over these awful possibilities. And he knows this. But words do not reach deep enough to lift us out of an image of oblivion.

 

He spells out or shouts out a clear line of action we can all take….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

Companions Who Walk with Us Moment by Moment

COVID has been devastating to our communities and culture, terrifying to so many of us. But it had one positive result for me, and others. Our relationship with other species in our neighborhoods was enriched. As we became more distanced from other people, birds, turkeys, fox, peepers, possum, deer, bear, rabbits, eagles, owls⎼ all our non-human neighbors, depending on where we lived, jumped more frequently to the center of our attention, and became, sort of, friends.

 

Of course, the bear that crushed our bird feeder one early morning and knocked on our front door was a little scary and we had to chase it away. And one night at about 3:00 am one of our cats stood up on our bed, hissed loudly, and woke us up to a raccoon coming in the cat door. The raccoon got stuck and I had to push him out with an oak cane.

 

In the spring morning, the gold and purple finches, cardinals, and red winged black birds added color and songs to the air, and later, the peepers such comfort. And taking walks with such companions as oak trees leaning against each other to speak, and ravens coughing as they flew overhead added wonders to my day.

 

But hearing about the climate emergency and the extinction crisis we face⎼ I felt so bereft. I felt such grief over the increasing instability of nature itself, weather disasters, and the loss of species ⎼ for example, frogs, peepers, and salamanders, about one-third of amphibians ⎼ 12% of bird species, all threatened with extinction, as well as ash trees which used to fill the forests near my home. We must all take this emergency very seriously.

 

These species are not just companions. They are intimate mirrors of our lives and mental state that we can see them everywhere. The deep red of the Japanese maple in the garden, which is more of a bush than a tree⎼ what amazing feeling is right there. A crow flies overhead and its harsh call echoes in our body.

 

We often think of ourselves as located behind these two eyes, a mind isolated in this shell of a body, a shell within a shell within a shell. And only within this shell can we locate what is most intimately ourselves. Or we think of the red color and harsh call as coming from “outside” us.

 

Yet, is not that Japanese maple and the crow also, in some way, intimately ourselves?

Don’t we carry those colors and sounds in us? We don’t just hear and see and feel them. We give them life. The red of the cardinal is how our mind gifts color to the electromagnetic or light waves bouncing off the bird’s breast. Color is the way we perceive a wavelength of light to which our eyes are sensitive.

 

The harshness of the crow’s voice is how our mind translates the sound wave frequencies emitted by the bird. That red, that song is intimately us. No us, no song, just wavelengths.

Because conscious perception is awareness aware of itself, it simultaneously looks within as it looks out. It is a deeply felt mystery that we live. When we stop playing the shell game, the world is most intimately ourselves.

 

*To read the whole article, please go to the Good Men Project.

 

We Need More Creative Drama in Our Lives: Arts Education Might Not Cure Society, but It Can Help Heal Students

Even before the COVID pandemic, arts education was being cut in school districts throughout the country. This was extremely shortsighted then, even worse now.

 

Our children are suffering. According to a report by the American Psychological Association, 71% of parents said the pandemic has taken a toll on their children. Nearly half of LGBTQ+ teens and over 25% of girls have recently contemplated suicide. Many feel hopeless. Anxiety levels are skyrocketing.

 

According to MedicalNewsToday, 75% of youth feel the future is frightening. Although the American Rescue Plan passed by the Biden Administration was a great first step, providing $170 Billion for mental health services for school children, more is needed.

 

And it’s not just the pandemic, not just children missing in-person instruction. It’s our response to the pandemic in the past and the lack of a coherent cultural response now to the environmental emergency, to mass shootings, to injustice and the threat of hate, autocracy and what DJT represents. It’s the GOP attacks on education itself.

 

For many children, the arts could provide motivation to get to school and a doorway into learning itself. It can make school something more than mere work, but a place where they can come alive and see their concerns reflected in the curriculum. They can feel a sense of meaning when so much of the reality around them seems hopeless.

 

According to a study called Champions of Change, arts education can level the playing field, and improve student performance in all areas of learning. This was particularly true with students from low-income backgrounds.

 

The arts provide a more direct entrance into understanding and caring about the experience of others than any other discipline. As such, they provide one of the best ways to embed compassion into the curriculum and to empower young people to take action in all areas of life. This won’t cure society but might heal a student.

 

In 1969, I was in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, and got a chance to witness a ceremony of spirit beings emerging from the jungle to dance a story about the responsibilities of adulthood. The spirits were villagers wearing carved wood masks and raffia from their neck to their feet. After the dance, spirits walked amongst us and then returned to the jungle. I didn’t realize then that I was seeing an early form of theatre.

 

In Ancient Greece, the poet Thespis was supposedly the first to have an actor step on a stage and turn choral recitation into drama. Their culture was amazingly social and public. Unlike us, who view our emotions as individual, personal, and essentially hidden, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly claim that for the Greeks, “moods were public and shared.” Emotions were visitations by gods. This was not like movies and tv today, not something to view isolated on a home computer, but shared, in a group, with each spectator knowing the lines so they could join in the recitation…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

We Just Don’t Know, but We Can Wonder: Is Uncertainty A Blessing, A Curse, Both, or Just Reality?

Every once and awhile, we turn on a radio program, pick up a book or newspaper, get a text, and right there waiting in the headline or title or first line is information relevant to a question or concern we were wrestling with.  This happened to me yesterday.

 

I was reading a book of essays by theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli called There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important than Kindness: And Other Thoughts on Physics, Philosophy, and the World. I’ve been reading the book on and off for a month or so, and it keeps sparking insights. I wrote about buying the book as a gift to myself in a previous blog.  The latest chapter I read is called “Bruno de Finetti: Uncertainty Is Not the Enemy.”

 

Bruno de Finetti was a relatively little known Italian probabilistic statistician, college lecturer, and philosopher of science. The chapter discusses the impossibility of having absolute knowledge and certainty. Uncertainty is a critical element of reality.

 

This is not news. We might think we have absolute answers, think we know what’s true. But all we really have, and many of us somewhere know this, is a subjective notion of what might probably be true.

 

We can, says Rovelli and de Finetti, diminish uncertainly. We can develop, through rigorous examination, justified and credible convictions that are shared by others who have rigorously studied the subject. But we can’t make uncertainty disappear. All we can hope for is reliable probability.

 

And uncertainty can be a positive lifelong companion, says Rovelli. If there were no unknowns, there would be no possibilities. It makes life interesting. Yet, how often do we pray for it to be otherwise?

 

Although it can lead to debilitating worry and anxiety, it can also energize us to prepare, and learn more about ourselves and a situation. So much depends on our response. Do we try to hide from any awareness of our feelings and limitations, or study and utilize that awareness? Because we don’t have complete knowledge, we can and need to continuously learn. Adapt. Listen to other beings.

 

At night, the dark makes the borders between almost everything more indeterminate, returning almost everything to the realm of what’s unknown. That realization, and the stories dreams weave in us about our lives, help us wake in the morning to a fresh, new world. Uncertainty can do the same for our time in the light.

 

Yet, we know too well that such intellectual realizations, no matter how insightful, are not enough. The intellect can point out a path but not walk it for us. We need to learn additional skills and a different sort of rigor, one of the body and emotions, to check on our reasoning. We can learn to better self-reflect on our thinking by using a sustained, moment-by-moment, kindly attention, to feelings, sensations, thoughts, and inclinations to act….

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

 

Who Are We? The Way We interpret An Action Determines How We Respond to It

How can we best understand ourselves and our history as a species? We humans have created so much violence, environmental degradation, inequality. Yet, we’ve also created incredible art, science, and love relationships. How do we emotionally and otherwise take in these absurd contradictions?

 

This is not just an intellectual question. It’s a huge and infinitely complex one. It concerns the nature of our mind and body, what we’ve inherited from parents or biological evolution, and what by history and cultural evolution. It has tremendous social-political implications as well as personal. It can affect how we feel about, and how much suffering we cause, ourselves and others.

 

Three friends from college and I zoom together once or twice a month. We often share poems, music, articles, suggestions, and questions. One recently shared article was particularly relevant to this question. It’s by Adam Kirsch and published in the January/February Atlantic. It’s titled The People Cheering for Humanity’s End: A disparate Group of Thinkers Says We Should Welcome Our Demise. It focuses on two opposing theories of where our species is headed, or where our evolutionary traits are driving us.

 

Most of us realize that the possibility of extinction is very real but would prefer to delay that ending as long as possible. But Kirsch says a variety of thinkers have challenged that assumption and revolted against humanity itself. The two most prominent of these theories are Anthropocene anti-humanism and Transhumanism.

 

The first states that our self-destruction is inevitable, but we should welcome it. Our species is destroying our home and the other creatures we share it with. What we most glorify in us, namely our reason and the scientific and technological achievements it spawns, is precisely what is destroying us. To preserve our home, we should leave it.

 

The second theory, Transhumanism, expresses a love for what the anti-humanists decry. Transhumanists imagine that some of our most recent and illustrious discoveries, like nanotechnology, and genetic engineering, will save us by allowing us to abandon the frail, destructive being we are now in favor of a new species that we’ve created. For example, a cyborg or hybrid of human and computer; or maybe a brand-new artificial intelligence.

 

Both theories are responses to the climate emergency we face, but they do so in opposite directions except, says Kirsch, the most fundamental. They both share the necessity for the demise of humans. And as I read the article and thought about my friends, what became clear was how our theories about life, and ourselves, are key to our responses, and actions. And this quality of mind and heart is precisely what most makes us human.

 

The theories, at least as far as I understand them from the article by Kirsch, do not deal enough with “why”— why do we act so destructively? Or, since it’s not all of us, why do so many of us act so destructively? Is it Ignorance? Self-centeredness? Greed?

 

Or maybe we’ve been so destructive due to patterns of thought and behavior inherited through cultural evolution as opposed to traits we’ve inherited through biological evolution. Has every human culture been so destructive? Maybe a culture that preaches we’re created in the image of God ⎼ that we must be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over all the earth and over every creeping thing ⎼ might be more narcissistic and less attracted by stewardship, less willing to control its fruitfulness, than one that emphasizes the interdependence of all beings….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

**The photo is of a Mother Goddess figure, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.

The Snow Falls in Slow Motion as the World Turns too Fast: We Age Slowly and Feel It Suddenly

After several days of dangerous weather throughout the nation causing too much death and disruption, a “cyclone bomb” in many places, going from rain to ice to blizzards, with extreme windchills ⎼ temperatures changing where I live in a matter of hours from 45 degrees Fahrenheit to zero or below ⎼ today is cold but the snow is falling lazily, individual flakes dropping from a still, gray sky.

 

Inside myself, there’s a stillness in the center of a storm. A feeling that my life is changing too quickly, that I’m aging too quickly. Despite being 75, until recently I had felt internally maybe 35 or 40. Still exercised an hour and a half to two hours each day. Still wrote blogs each week. Until a year or so ago, despite being retired from regular teaching, and when the pandemic allowed it, I still led an after school martial arts class at my old school. But not this past year. One health concern after another, and the sickness and death of friends and family ⎼ this is aging me.

 

Add the earth in tears with so many species in crisis and near extinction; so much hate, politically manipulated hate and violence, thanks a great deal to a former President who, despite now being out of office, is still lying about and working to overturn an election he had lost, overturn democracy. Then there’s the invasion of Ukraine and the pandemic ⎼ this ages all of us.

 

My dad died at age 96. Before dying, he looked me in the eye and said, “you know, this man is dangerous.” He was warning me that DJT reminded him of the early years of Hitler. He would say the would-be dictator’s name, but wouldn’t say the German dictator’s name, and wouldn’t say ‘Nazis’, just pronouns, ‘him’ and ‘them.’ This wasn’t a warning I needed. But it did make the DJT presidency even more real and frightening to me.

 

Months earlier, my dad had talked about spending his whole morning just getting dressed and ready for the day. And then most of the evening getting prepared for bed. I wasn’t the most understanding, then. My comparative youth got in the way. But now I feel what he was saying. We age to the point where we spend most of our day waking up and then going to sleep. Or maybe, we do that our whole lives without realizing it, preparing for life instead of realizing we’re living each second of it.

 

We think death won’t touch us, then it does, and powerfully. At some point we need to look at the slowly falling snow and realize here we are. This is it. We’re falling; we have been falling since we first stood up. And now, the flake of snow is getting closer to the ground.

 

Can this closeness turn the whole thing around and make us also closer to waking up, to wising up as we get closer to dying?…

 

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

Ancient Lessons About Reducing Anxiety and Embracing the World

Despite feeling tremendous relief just a few nights ago, when Catharine Masto Cortez was declared the winner of the Nevada Senate race and my wife, and I, danced around the living room⎼ today I feel heavy once again. Why is that? I was so happy the Democrats exceeded expectations and maintained control of the Senate. The outpouring of support for the rights of women and to vote has clarified for all that the GOP war for autocracy can be stopped.

 

But sometimes, we get so caught up in a situation, a worry, expectation, and lose any perspective. We might be too frightened, traumatized, or invested and we see things only one way, as if the moment stood isolated in time. And we lose sight of how the situation came to be.

 

We might lose sight, for example, of just how traumatized we all were by past threats and those still looming. We have the GOP barely gaining control of the House and, of course, keeping control of the Supreme Court. And their leaders, DJT and others like him, are still threatening to seize the Presidency, avoid prosecution for their crimes, and impose their will on the rest of us. And the chaos they might yet cause, with their program of hate, lies, and division, and denying the factual results of this and past elections.

 

But not only is no human an island but no moment. The past sets up the present, as this moment educates the next. One moment’s mistake can lead either to another mistake ⎼ or to insight, when we can allow our heart, mind, and senses to be open to it.

 

I was reading a book by Joan Sutherland, a Zen meditation teacher, called Through Forests of Every Color: Awakening with Koans. In chapter two, she talked about how a new form of Zen developed in China in the eighth century in response to catastrophic times. Over just ten years, two-thirds of the population died due to rebellion, invasion, famine, and disease. The Tang dynasty of the time went from a flourishing empire to, afterwards, a barely surviving one, where life was so tenuous.

 

Of course, this mirrored back to me our own time, marked as we know too well, with so much disease, so many climate disasters, and the threats mentioned earlier of violence, and the attempted destruction of our democratic form of government.

 

No moment is the same as any other, but how did people, in awful times in the past, or going through awful times today, cope? Can we today, or those from the past, reveal ways of living that can help us through the pain to something we could welcome, to ways of living that meet our needs and strengthen our humanity?

 

I especially look to people like Zen adepts, those who have spent years studying the mind, body, and heart, and living harmoniously with others and nature. According to Sutherland, the Zen adepts and innovators of the 8th century,  realized that trying to escape their world through a narrow path to personal peace or religious ceremony would not serve them or their culture. They needed a sense of immediacy and, awful as it was, they got it….

 

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

What We Once Had, We Might Not Have Ever Again: Speaking for the Majesty of an Eagle Taking Flight

Listen. It’s raining. Luckily, it’s not yet snow. For the last four or five years, we have become more aware of how extreme and precious the rain can be, switching between either drought or flood. It comes like a storm, harsh, or like a shadow, then it’s gone.

 

But not today. The rain is steady, and the sound is beautiful. Like the sound of crickets and cicadas, the wind, and the waves of the sea, it’s absorbing and surprisingly comforting. For the moment, it even washes away any anxiety over the election.

 

Even the muted light is soothing today.

 

I notice the fallen leaves, yellow, burnt orange, a bit of startling red. The leaves almost cover the deep green grass, which is eagerly drinking in the rain. The earth is thirsty.

 

I close my eyes and just listen. The sound gets more distinct. There are currents in the rain. The pace of falling water speeds up, creating a wind of rainwater pushing against my body even though I am in the house. Then it softens to barely a whisper. What before seemed steady and continuous is now revealed as something else, something unique in its pace. When I simply listen, there is more to hear.

 

Two days ago, my wife and I drove into town. From the opposite side of the road, just before the farm stand where we buy corn in season, an eagle rose out of the tall grass. Majestically and ever so slowly, it took flight right in front of a dark van. Its wingspan was wider than the van, yet somehow the eagle wasn’t hit. It flew off in front of my car window, unhurt. But the driver of the van barely maintained control of his vehicle and then pulled off the road and stopped.

 

We can easily assume so much. That one moment will be like the previous one. We walk out of the memory of yesterday’s door and drive on our memory of yesterday’s road.

 

We might assume that because we can (hopefully) vote, now, or because we have (hopefully) protections on the job now, or can get Social Security, or healthcare, we will have it tomorrow. We might tell ourselves or others we will have it no matter who wins the election on Tuesday, November 8. But as the GOP have said, all this can and will end if they win control, just as they work to take away a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her own health and when or if to have a family.

 

We need reassurance that our world won’t totally flip over on us. But to get that, we must pay enough attention, and be ready to act, so we’re not shocked when today almost slams into the windshield of our car….

 

 

*This is an update of a blog from October, 2020.

 

**Please go to The Good Men Project to read the whole article.

The Time Has Come: Right Now Our Future is Created

Right now is our time. For months if not two years, we’ve thought and worried about the upcoming November 8th election. And right now might be the last chance we have to influence the outcome and to vote. Right now, our future is created. Right now, our wishes, needs, and dreams can be recognized, or our worst fears realized. In some states, early voting has begun. In Georgia, for example, it begins October 17. If we act now, we can help secure the immediate future we need and hope for.

 

We all know this. The choice before us is both wonderful and dreadful. We have the opportunity to advance and protect our rights and the workings of law and justice, to protect our loved ones and community. To protect our natural world.

 

On the one hand, Democrats have worked for our interests, not always as well as we’d hope but as much as we could expect considering the nature of their opposition– considering that so many in the GOP are still lying about the election that Biden clearly won. Democrats made mistakes, but so have we all. They’ve passed some of the most important legislation in decades, to protect our health, environment, jobs, education. And they’ve done this even though much of the press refused to emphasize the good they’ve accomplished, the gains made by Biden, in terms of protecting labor and making healthcare more equitable.

 

On the other hand, besides perfecting the bald-faced lie, the GOP are firmly the party of autocracy if not White Nationalism. They cry about freedom, but want the freedom restricted for themselves. They oppose⎼ voting rights for all, choosing who we will vote for and having our vote counted; they oppose protecting the right to make health decisions for our own body, deciding if and when we have children, who we will marry , if we will have clean air to breathe or a climate that sustains human life. They oppose allowing us to decide what we will read and if we can afford to go to college.

 

The GOP, as signaled by Justice Thomas in the Dodds decision overturning Roe v Wade and overturning established legal precedent, threatened to destroy marriage equality and even the right of access to contraception. They talk about rising inflation and problems in the economy and try to blame problems their policies have helped create or worsen on President Biden. They opposed the Inflation Reduction Act en masse, after years of failing to create or pass any positive, meaningful legislation of their own when they controlled Congress, yet the states they control take the money provided and try to claim the benefits as their own, the coming jobs, infrastructure improvements, reduction in prescription drugs and healthcare. In 2017, they reduced taxation on the rich and have consistently worked to increase the sickening and unsustainable wealth gap. When taxes on the rich are lowered, economic threats rise and the rest of us are forced to make up the deficit. According to the latest Federal Reserve data, the top 1% of Americans hold more wealth than the lowest 50%.

 

Always remember, and bring this to the voting booth: Autocracy means only one person, or group is free⎼ and DJT is all about himself and rule by himself alone. For the rest of us, the vast majority of us, autocracy means oppression; it means the end of the rule of law and possible incarceration without due process. It means the whole vehicle of political and economic power is driven by the interests of only one person or group and they can run over the rest of us as they please. When you have no political power, all your power and freedom is curtailed.

 

Autocracy means living in fear and surrounded by hate. This is one reason why DJT and many GOP have supported Russian disinformation about Ukraine and the 2020 election. They want to unite with fellow oppressors and have become soldiers for autocracy. Putin knows he can’t defeat the U. S. with arms, so he is trying to destroy democracy with lies.

 

So right now, we must do all we can to get access to the news and get out the vote. Democrats, if we support them, have a good chance of keeping or even increasing control in the Senate but the House is clearly threatened. We can give financial support to, or make calls for Democratic candidates, or write cards to voters in our own neighborhood, not only for Congress but for a state’s Attorney General who can control how votes are counted. We can work as poll workers to ensure a fair and safe election and counter the GOP push to entrench those who will do their bidding and undermine the election. We can work to protect journalists and get out truth. [The links* provided in this paragraph provide ways to take action.]

 

During the DJT years, anxiety in the US increased dramatically. Trump Anxiety Disorder became a major psychological problem. Then the pandemic happened and anxiety increased even more, especially in Black, Hispanic, and Asian-American communities. Just before the 2020 election, anxiety increased and then decreased after President Biden was elected, although levels are rising once again.

 

Acting to win the election of candidates who will work in the interests of Democracy and for most Americans not only improves the chances of creating the political system we need, but of reducing the fear and anxiety many of us feel.

 

 

*Please consult the links above; in the first paragraph if you want to find the dates for early voting in your state. Or in the third to last paragraph, to find ways to help GOTV and elect Democratic candidates. Some GOTV campaigns are ending this week.

 

***This blog was syndicated by The Good Men Project.

 

 

 

The Hideous and the Beautiful: A Good News Newsletter on the Two and the Infinite Sides of Humanity

There’s so much in our society and world right now that angers or frightens me, but also so much that is providing optimism, maybe, or at least, reassurance, that what we need or wish for is possible. I’m often tempted lately to write a good news newsletter to cheer up and energize myself and others.

 

First, there is the news that our legal system is greatly damaged but not broken. In 2021 and 2022, the murderers of Ahmaud Arbery were found guilty of murder and hate crimes. The DOJ has also increased its efforts to prosecute hate crimes.

 

Secondly, it has been so jarring and has created such anxiety in so many of us to see DJT’s obvious criminal, unjust, even traitorous actions escape any legal consequences, until, maybe, now. The Jan. 6 Hearings have and will continue to present for all to see (if they’d look) new and old evidence of DJT working to violently overthrow our constitutional democracy. Then there’s the evidence collected at Mar-A-Lago that DJT illegally took government documents, including classified files, with him as he left office. He obstructed investigations into that theft.  And the DOJ has opened investigations into his election interference, and issued over 40 subpoenas to people in DJT’s orbit. He faces a very good chance of a criminal indictment.

 

The GOP cry they must enact controls on voting (i. e. suppress the vote) due to voting fraud, but the evidence shows their claims are disinformation. Such fraud is a GOP created myth.

 

The biggest voting fraud is by DJT followers, some of whom are now being held accountable. For example, GOP officials and lawyers, such as Sidney Powell, have been exposed for breaching and illegally sharing voting information. In Michigan, DJT’s pick for attorney general is being investigated for a conspiracy to get access to voting machines. There is Representative Scott Perry in Pennsylvania and a GOP election official in Troy, New York, named Jason Schofield. According to the DOJ, Schofield “was arraigned on an indictment charging him with unlawfully using the names and dates of birth of voters to fraudulently apply for absentee ballots for elections held in Rensselaer County in 2021.”

 

Then we have criminal investigations against DJT in Georgia, fraud investigations in New York. And the investigation into DJT fraudulently raising money to fight a fraud that never happened, but he spent the money for his own personal uses. Some of these charges could result in jail time and/or disqualification from running for office.

 

Thirdly, with abortion, the GOP have exposed their heartlessness. Having an abortion is an awful choice to make, but it’s a mother’s choice. The GOP are not only trying to rip from women the right to make decisions regarding their own bodies; they’re demonizing mothers who want the right to decide when, how many, or if they have children. They’re trying to ensure women are legally considered second to men.

 

This has frightened and angered so many people. And GOP Senator Lindsey Graham’s call for making abortion illegal nationally just increased that anger. The number of those registering to vote to protect the right to abortion even in red states like Kansas has increased dramatically, and with young people as well as women. The whole election calculus is changing. In many states, the number one concern motivating women and young people to come out and vote is abortion, second only to protecting democracy. This is happening in many other states as well.

 

People are saying, “enough.” …

 

**To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.