The Jon Swift 2024 Roundup is up at Vagabond Scholar

 

One of the finest traditions of the political blog culture, the Jon Swift Roundup, is once again hosted by stalwart Batocchio at Vagabond Scholar. It's always a treat to revisit the year by seeing the best of our blogposts as chosen by the bloggers themselves. Check in, peruse, return--it's a way to reacquaint yourself with the blog posts you might have liked, might have missed, or get to know bloggers you haven't really sampled before. It's one of this season's lovely gifts to folks who care about our body politic and the political bodies who bother about it. 

I know if you are a regular here, you love to see it, too. If you're new here and haven't heard about "Our Thing"--check it out! 

I raise a glass to all posters and toast the host with the most. Thanks always! 

It's Up to Us

 

I spent the last few days putting off writing about the "Pass the Torch" movement. Oh, I was getting ready. I was going to sit down and take names and call out the fuckery. People didn't start one minute from the first question during the debate before I think the "drop Biden" movement started, in a way that felt coordinated and desperately shitty to me. 

Who the fuck treats a decent man who just gave us an astonishingly successful 3.5 years like this? Why are Democrats even airing our laundry in public? I'm a fan of transparency on one hand, but on the other it felt disrespectful to the man and his honorable public service. 

Every dumb horserace "Here's what a contested convention would look like" article, every "who might we see in a blitz primary?" thumbsucker, seemed to be a repudiation of the primaries we just had. 

The last straw wasn't the has-been campaign mahoffs of yesteryear who have displayed the political savvy of brain-damaged lemmings in the rush to shaft the incumbent Democratic president, though, that was going to make me bleed my frustration all over the internet--it was the distilled self-parody of Sorkinism: suggesting Democrats nominate Mitt Romney. 

Big "not The Onion" energy, but why did my eyes water? 

Because much as my feelings about Mitt Romney have moderated from 2012--he still isn't a Democrat, and it felt defeatist. One major party is captured by racist, violent authoritarianism, and the other is consigned to irrelevance and mere "Never Trumpism"?  Fuck that. 

TWGB: Perspective is a Dangerous Drug

 

Something very stupid happened today: Donald Trump as a candidate for POTUS had a hearing before the Supreme Court of the United States as to whether he was eligible to stand for president having participated in an insurrection against the US government, while the current US president, his opponent in that year, was exonerated of a charge regarding keeping classified documents but got some backhanded BS from a partisan Republican Special Counsel about being old with a bad memory. 

So, of course, the discourse on the socials is about the latter, not the former. 

To put things into perspective for me, I selected photos of both guys at my age (roughly) and they look terrible. (I'm not going to drop a selfie but I'm not looking my age--I'm fat but not old.)  Neither settled into their 50-something hairlines with grace. Trump's eyebrows were always bad, but at least this was before he applied his makeup with a wet turd. One is thinking, the other, mid-talking. It looks about right. 

Does that seem shallow?  Bitches please! I'm seeing people talk about whether Biden is a gaffe machine when he's been one since he was younger than me. He has always BEEN confusing names and whatnot, but getting off deep one-liners. And Trump has always been a crook. 

You First, Assholes

 

“People are so sick of being preached at about politics from rock bands”

“Stick to what you’re good at. You’re not a political analyst. You’re probably not really well read on the issues that Americans really care about” pic.twitter.com/vnGna7jkzo

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 2, 2024

Maybe Fox News pretend analysts need to shut up--at least long enough to hear what others are saying.

Actually, successful rock bands are political analysts or at least, seize the zeitgeist and appeal to people because they enunciate feelings other people can vibe with.  Are people really sick of being preached at about politics from rock bands--or is it that something they say resonates and that's why they have a following? I mean, songs like "For What It's Worth", or "Ohio" or "Southern Man" or "Leaving on a Jet Plane" or "Eve of Destruction"--the "freedom rock " Woodstock era stuff I heard as my early lullabies, weren't any more neutral than the "Ballad of the Green Berets" was. 

Now, whether I listened to the Dead Kennedys or INXS or The Clash, I heard politics, even as a kid. I don't understand people who ever listened to the lyrics of Rage Against the Machine and never understood what the machine was. Was it a soda machine? Were they just mad they couldn't get their Barq's root beer jones on?  Of course, they were political. 

Look, one of my ear-influences is Billy Bragg. Punk as fuck. Not punk as fuck--slipping in your old age and deciding Trump is punk. Trump is The Man that fighting the power has been about since, whatever. 

And Green Day's "American Idiot" was explicitly a political album. Just like Neil Young's "Living with War."  Bob Dylan--political. Bruce Springsteen--political. Patti Smith, Bikini Kill, Hole, Pussy Riot. 

Fox News talking heads are not political analysts.  They are propagandists. Who knows what ass they pull what they say from? They aren't musical, they aren't artful, they aren't well-informed, and they say whatever the network wants. Conservatism isn't edgy when they go against the mainstream--mostly they are just counterfactual and fronting for some paymaster--the dead opposite of the punk ethos.

Or to put it in rank Gen X terms--they are sell outs. They want you to dismiss what you are hearing because "you can't handle the reality of it". But you totally could get "woke" if you listened to the lyrics around you.  Fox News "analysts" are fake and don't represent anything going on in the real world. If they want someone to stop talking about politics--instead of shutting up artists who care about the world, they could shut the hell up because they just care about payday. 

Maybe the Boomers who listen to Fox should go ahead and re-listen to that "freedom rock" I teethed on as a kid. It was politics. And a lot of it was dead-on. 

The Jon Swift Memorial 2023 Round-Up is Here!

 

No, not here here. It's as always at Vagabond Scholar, where stalwart Batocchio keeps a great year-end tradition alive in hosting the best of the year from small-ish bloggers, as chosen by the bloggers themselves. It's something I always look forward to--all thrilla and no filla! 

So go on over there if you like good blogging and sample the richness. Me, I treat it like a box of nice chocolates and dip back in a few times over the week. It won't disappoint.

The Jon Swift 2022 Roundup is All Present and Correct.

 

The blogosphere's faithful host of this year-end treat, Batocchio, has once again collected an engaging selection of blog posts from the year that was, as chosen by the blog authors themselves. It never fails to remind us of the value of the diverse voices of small blogs and the reason why we do the thing we do: because we can use our unique and sometimes specialized perspectives to cast a light on certain corners of our daily events and explain what we are seeing in a way mainstream journalism generally doesn't. 

Anyway, it's always a treat--like a sampler of candies you just have to bite into not knowing exactly what to expect but knowing they will be good. I never read through these posts without thinking about what a great community the left blogosphere is, and what a cool thing it is to get such a neat recap of its highlights. 

Go--treat yourself. It can take a few days to go through. But it is one of the most worthwhile internet traditions, and I'm happy one of my posts is a part of it. 

How to Interview a Bigot

 

Jon interviewed Leslie Rutledge, Arkansas Attorney General, about why her state banned gender-affirming care for minors - ignoring the guidelines of major medical organizations and taking the decision out of parents’ hands. Watch the full interview on @AppleTVPlus pic.twitter.com/4SoH3orWa6

— The Problem With Jon Stewart (@TheProblem) October 7, 2022

You challenge their bullshit. It's that simple. You do not let them push a completely fake narrative without challenging it. Every actual journalist needs to take note that this is completely a thing you can do. Know enough about the topic to understand when you are hearing bullshit, and then when you hear it, call it out. The point of journalism isn't airing a side without facts or creating a false equivalency--at some level it has to be about respecting the truth, the facts, the Big Picture, or you are just creating an unchecked forum for actual trash people to unloose their trash opinions in.

The Far-Right in Europe is a Global Mess (UPDATED)

I don't want to think about what it means for Giorgia Meloni to break the glass ceiling of women in power in Italy when to me it sounds like the breaking of so much other terrible glass elsewhere. Perhaps a "Kristallnacht."  I do want to think about what it means when US Republicans think that she is a great example of the fight against Communism and the kind of politician we need more of, here. 

Scalise on Meloni: It’s interesting to see that Europe is leading the way by throwing out Socialists with Conservatives and great bold Conservative women like Meloni and Truss. We need to bring that kind of conservatism to the United States” pic.twitter.com/Ln7XHCe24v

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 25, 2022

Does he just not know the difference? Or is it true that "David Duke without the baggage" absolutely does want fascism right here, right now?  I can't help but think he does. She supports Viktor Orban of Hungary, the focal point of CPAC and Tucker Carlson's wretched White Power Hour. 

Is she the worst? I don't pretend I know. I know me and the spouse won't be comfortable visiting the homeland with this person in charge and hope the weird vagaries of Italian politics make a new vote a thing in a pretty basic tick tock. 

We are told the right succeeds because the left fails to do more than point out that the right exists and is terrible. But the right does exist and is terrible. I don't know what the left needed to do because unless a party is in power, they can do little to demonstrate their ideals. But there is always the idea of defining their morality and highlighting the difference. 

I don't know if that is enough. 

I don't know why knowledge of history is so limited it isn't already enough. 

UPDATE: If I were Liz Truss, I would hate this comparison so much I'd go out of my way to refute it, and I rather hope she does. 

UPDATE: A further introspection into what the US rightwing (and other right-aligned folks) see in Meloni might be summed up in this meaningless, but buzzword-laden speech that seems defiant against an unknown "them" that is trying to deny people their cultural and family heritage. No one is saying Meloni can't be a woman, a Christian. an Italian, a mother. What an absurdity! Can I proclaim myself a woman, an atheist, an American, and childfree? I do. The existence of other people and their experiences don't negate my own, they start conversations. 

But what is Meloni's answer to people who are different? LGBT people fear for their families with her in a position of leadership, because she would deny them their right to be themselves, to be parents, to have their legacy and authenticity. Every right-wing claim of victimhood is a confession about what they would do to others--always. 

Strangely Blogged 2021: Year in Review

 

I haven't been doing year in review posts or top fives or whatever for a few years because it felt weird to gather my personal best and show it off, but I guess I'm over that? So anyway, here's a year in review from me because this was some kind of year, all right. 

January: Little Noted but Long Remembered  : Just post 1/6, angry and patriotic. 

February: Unraveled Bolero: Just who was that man the GOP was bound to sell their country and themselves out for? 

March: While They Were in the Nursery: Where I dress-down Republicans for championing lazy culture war bullshit over effective policies because they are puerile. 

April: Let Them Know, Joe! : I'm encouraged that the Biden Administration understands the stakes and will do good things.

May: The Republican War on History: I take a look at why CRT is being attacked by the GOP and it is not good. 

June: TWGB: The Once and Future President: This is who the GOP are putting all their chips on? Seriously?

July: The Fall of Icarus:  Where I consider that mythology tells us something about our climate change and COVID-19 denialists.

August: Denial and Co-Dependency in Afghanistan:  I sum up recent Afghanistan War history and why the war must be over, and how the Biden Administration can only do the best they can with the cards dealt.

September: It's the Public Health, Stupid: In which I note that GOP COVID-19 policies are stupid ulture-war signifying and deadly

September Bonus:  Dolchstoß-Legende and Trump's Lost Cause : In which I notice that Trump and his followers are a little too interest in the ideas of Civil War and a Lost Cause.

October: Die Fahn Hoch: Obvious fascists are being obvious (basically, whenever I title a blogpost in German, I think my observations are grim, sadly).

November: Autumn of Our Discontent: We are living in an absurd timeline and people believe increasingly desperate and bizarre things.

December: The Big Lie and The Big Liars Telling It: How can anyone democratically support a party that just doesn't believe in democracy anymore? 

Anyway, that's my year. in review. Here's to a better New Year--even if I'm skeptical and even a little paranoid about that (but would my readers expect less?).

The Jon Swift Roundup 2021 is Up

 

The Jon Swift Roundup: a yearly compilation of the best posts (as chosen by the bloggers themselves) is now upon us, and is as always, a bountiful feast of commentary and perspectives, hosted by the one and only Batocchio of Vagabond Scholar. By all means, hustle on over to the link and find posts that will make you think, will recap complex stories of our past year, will introduce you to new and unfamiliar blogging voices, or will get you back in touch with favorites you might have lost touch with over time. It is always a delight to read over a period of days, and for me, it has always been a fine experience in contributing.

 

The Jon Swift Memorial Roundup for 2020 is Up

 

It's always a fine capper to the year to browse the years best posts as chosen by the bloggers themselves, and as always, much thanks to Batocchio for bringing this together. Go on over when you get a chance.

JFC, This is How We Get Trump

Hard to imagine this after that 1st debate last June... https://t.co/pJWEB8CTNZ

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) March 8, 2020

Is this woman brand new? Has she never covered a presidential election before? Is she unfamiliar with how politics in general works? Are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris strangers to this person who got a job in the news business just yesterday? Is water the least bit moist? How many fingers am I holding up right now?

I bet you all know how many fingers I am holding up, right now, and also, which ones.

The Jon Swift Roundup for 2019 is Up

And as always, it is a brilliant collection of the best of the blogs as chosen by the bloggers themselves. All thanks and praise to Batocchio for keeping this tradition alive. It's always food for thought and a lovely year-end gift to read.

Unbearably Hostile. And Also Very Contrite.

I found myself basically uncharacteristically without calm in my own comment section, which I've spent the last day and a half trying to get myself rational about. Regarding third party voting, or as I look at it, "voting your feelings", I absolutely wasn't trying to offer a good faith argument against voting third party because the exercise itself is infuriating to me. It feels like the reason not to do it should be self-evident and I should not have to make the case against it because history already did. 

But I can't leave it like that, because my commenter hurled some pretty justifiable shit at me, and in retrospect, my freaking out over electoral shenanigans isn't a good excuse for me to be rude, unhelpful, and above all, unbearably hostile to people who aren't acting with deliberate bad intent, no matter what I think the results of their decisions could be. Other folks' feelings about what they do with their vote is legitimate to them, even if fully unfathomable to me. All I can do is try to unpack my white-knuckle panic at what I view as a threat to anything like a progressive electoral agenda going forward.

When I half-jokingly tell people I am still not fully over the 2000 Presidential election, it's just that--only half-jokingly. I've had time to replay how the media covered the candidates, whether the Florida recount debacle could have gone another way, and oh so much time wondering how the period 2001-2008 would have looked different if only Al Gore won. Take just having someone in office who took climate change seriously and might have addressed it then. Or someone who might have listened and responded differently to intelligence about operatives on behalf of Bin Laden looking to unleash an attack on US soil, or with the patience to view the search for WMD's in Iraq wholly differently. I'm not kidding when I say I developed a distinctly hostile attitude to the concept of third party voting from this exact line of thought. 

The political calculation with respects to our two-party set up just seemed pretty crystalline clear to me--the party that gets the most votes, wins. Regardless of how the other parties place or show. And if Democrats, the established left-leaning party in this country, doesn't get the most votes in a contest, progressive policy values don't advance. You get Republicans in office. And progressive momentum is stalled or rolled back. It isn't the intention of the third party voter. It's just the damn effect. Numbers don't care about feelings.  This is why I clench up when I hear people sincerely talk about how it would be nice to just have some other options. 

We're not looking back fondly on the presidencies of Jack Anderson or Angela Davis or Ross Perot. That's because of a lot of things, structurally, about the US electorate--there isn't a lot that tempts most voters away from one of the two established political firms in this country, and despite all the media "both-sidesing" in the world, if you have historically voted with one party or the other, you already know the hell why you do and how the parties are different. And if this question was a little muddy in 2000, it sure as hell should not have been by 2016 as the parties only grew more ideologically divergent, and the actual personal history, experience, and character of the Republican and Democratic contestants should have made abundantly clear. 

You would have thought. But after microscopic focus on emails and Benghazi and pantsuits and hot sauce for Clinton, and a fuzzy focus on what basically amounts to a whole entire life of crime-adjacency for Trump, there were still enough people (especially after microtargeted Facebook ads and bad-mouthing via RT and people who I will never look at the same way, like Chris Hedges and Cornell West, trying to make Jill Stein look legit) who were ready for Not Hillary. 

What the fuck did these people expect? The only Not Hillary they were ever going to get was Trump. There isn't a magic curtain that slides open when enough left-leaning folks of good will get together and say "welp--the Democratic Party done shit the bed" that gives them a whole new party with shiny new faces and a do-over. 

You just get Republicans. And have you seen these Morlocks lately? They don't know if there should be a minimum wage or why food stamps should be a thing. Health care isn't a right and carrying a child to term is mandatory. And they like voter suppression and don't give a flying fuck about civil rights for minorities, whether religious, ethnic or sexual. And forget about regulatory agencies protecting consumers, the environment, or Homeland Security being good at helping people in times of trouble (Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Maria). They'll just be about baby jails, and people getting hurt, and families being separated, etc. 

Democrats aren't the sterling exemplars of everything good and great you might want them to be, but they'll hold the fucking line. If they can.

And that's the big "if". Democrats have to be in office and have the votes to get shit done. There is no Green Lantern ring that magically makes everything possible just because we had a Democratic president, in the case of Obama, or a Democratic House right now. Because Republicans are still here. Doing as they do. 

And their voters have amaaazing brand loyalty. Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins got re-elected being under indictment. Steven King and Louie Gohmert are open bigots with brain worms, but by golly, they are still here. 

Yet here we are, in the opening up of the 2020 Democratic primaries, when it should genuinely look like Trump is too corrupt and has too many investigations into himself to even be shining up his campaign shoes, but his white evangelical followers talk about him like he's the Second Coming, and we have damn fools already speculating if Elizabeth Warren is likable enough or if her DNA test was too damn much (not Trump's overt racism). 

I can't face third party talk without becoming unbearably hostile. I don't know what genuine consideration of who the GOP is right now vs who the Democrats are right now, makes that search for oh, something different, not seem like sheer folly. It's blowing the damn rent money on a longshot nag. It's saying "Yeah, Republicans are pretty bad, boy, but what about this bullshit Clinton/Biden/some other Democrat m'f-r did 20 years ago?"

We don't have time for this. We don't have time to build a sweet-ass clean and pretty and totally pure party and hope it somehow wildly eclipses the liberal party vehicle we already have. The environment doesn't have time. People need their health care. People need access to reproductive health choices. People need affordable education and opportunities. We need to make the Democratic Party Great Again--

And we're off to a great start with the most diverse and female new Congress getting sworn in, and I am very proud of Senator Sanders for his work in encouraging a more genuinely left new generation of the Democratic party, even if he still isn't in or of it. This energy is welcomed, and gives me a lot of hope. 

But I'm still a frantic white-knuckled hostile mess about talk regarding third parties. And for that matter, I'm already deep in my feelings about people saying "well, it can't be anybody but Joe Biden", or "Berner for Life" or "I'm still mad as hell about Al Franken and Kirsten Gillibrand can kick rocks" and so forth. 

I have my own opinions about who I want to see run on the 2020 Democratic ticket (please don't start some "Kamala is a cop" on my watch, thanks!) but I will go hard for whoever the nominee eventually is, regardless. If it's Beto O'Rourke, I will stan: He shreds. Skateboard, fretboard, headboard--whev. If it's Lincoln Chafee, I...  Look it could be that Buttigieg dude. I'll put on my best face. 

I'm just saying, in 2008 I would have fought a raging PUMA and I am still that unbearably hostile to people who can't get their shit together for the cause (not for the person if you aren't feeling it--the overall liberal agenda). 

But I am also very contrite at my prior failure to fully articulate all this. I see third party voting as a pointless and ineffective gesture that can have the reverse consequences of what one intends. I can't hold third party voters responsible for Dems not winning all the time but even if it's once in 1000 elections, it's a shame ( I once could have been down with voting third party for state office until I became persuaded, quite recently, that there's no reason not to consider the Democratic party viable and capable of being built upon and given a local character in any state, and it might be the best bet for holding/expanding voting rights locally.) I get that the Democratic party has disappointed voters--I'm not thrilled with everything I've witnessed from then the past thirty years or so I've been paying attention. But the Republican party is always worse. Always. And I'm with Jane Curtin--death to the GOP. Not like, be killing their dudez. But that party is exactly why we can't ever have nice stuff. 

It's That Time of Year Again--Jon Swift 2018 Roundup Time!

In one of the finest traditions of the internet, Batocchio has again solicited the best posts in the estimation of our blogosphere, and once again, a lovely crop has been cultivated for your reading pleasure, in the spirit of the gone, but not forgotten champion of small blogs, Al Weisel/Jon Swift (page defunct now, but the internet never truly forgets). Head on over for a recap of the year, to engage with the work of bloggers you have not read before or whom you haven't read for a bit or just to revisit the work of the writers you already enjoy in light of what they found to be their best this time around. It is always a year-end treat.

I'm also going to give props to Batocchio's latest, and his own submission to the roundup--it's a good history of where conservatism has gone, and the problems with addressing it. It's just comprehensive first-class work. 

Please Check Out the Jon Swift Roundup 2017

The Jon Swift Roundup: a yearly compilation of the best posts (as chosen by the bloggers themselves) is now upon us, and is as always, a bountiful feast of commentary and perspectives, hosted by the one and only Batocchio of Vagabond Scholar.  By all means, hustle on over to the link and find posts that will make you think, will recap complex stories of our past year, will introduce you to new and unfamiliar blogging voices, or will get you back in touch with favorites you might have lost touch with over time. It is always a delight to read over a period of days, and for me, it has always been a fine experience in contributing. 

You will not be disappointed: the works of many fine bloggers awaits.

Strangely Blogged is Ten Years Old

Although this may be hard to believe, I've been blogging for 10 years. I suppose there are worse things I could do. I set out with the idea, on this blog, to be blogging for me, with whatever interested me at any given time, and while I didn't explicitly set out to be a mostly politics blog, well, that was bound to happen. I've concentrated at times on the environment, social justice, atheism, feminism, reproductive justice and race, and occasionally I've reviewed books and movies (not quite as much as I originally thought I would). 

Anyway, I'm still going to do it, even if 10 years is a little long in the tooth in blog-years. I've enjoyed putting thoughts out there, and the people I meet in this weird thing we do. 

This is What I know About the UK Election

So I know I had good feelings in general about the recent election in France, and I generally think it a salutary thing when people show interest in the democratic franchise, so it feel like I might have an opinion about the UK election. However, while I guess it is indicative of something that Labour picked up seats and the Conservative party lost some, I'm not going to pretend I know what that something is, or derive any conclusions from it to apply to US politics, such as forming a takeaway that because Labour made gains (while not forming a majority) this year, meant that Bernie Sanders would have won our election last year, or that somehow, the Conservative party's lost seats are part of a "Trump-lash". Theresa May made some odd choices during the campaign, like not showing up for a debate, and just didn't come across as effective. Putting those things in perspective probably is beyond me as a foreign observer.

The above picture, however, pretty much sums up for me why I am refraining from comment. That Theresa May is standing on a stage with Lord Buckethead and Elmo, is something so, perhaps,  Pythonesque? This lets me know for an actual certainty that I don't get the flavor of UK politics. Because I really can't imagine, say, Trump and Clinton, standing alongside Vermin Supreme in any kind of event. And since we don't have a parliamentary system, the idea of anything like a coalition government because there are more than two parties to work with also seems quite weird. Libertarians, Greens, Socialists, and Constitutionalists are unlikely to get very far in our electoral structure. We just have random independents who caucus one way or another.

Which is not to cast aspersions on either how we do things here, or how they do things there--it's just really different from US politics, and it's all I can do to keep up with them.

Jon Swift Memorial Round-up 2016

Once again, it is time for the Jon Swift Memorial Round Up of blog posts celebrating the best of small blogs around the blogosphere, as chosen by the bloggers themselves. I have participated for many years, but have always appreciated the contributions of the many other bloggers that make up our community. This is a great occasion to sample blogs you have not read before, or get back in touch with blogs you used to know. This is always a great "gathering in"--a blogular harvest. I thank Batocchio at Vagabond Scholar for this exemplary tradition of the internets. You do us all proud by letting us share in this blog-pride occasion.

2015-Year in Review

In years past, I managed to complete my "year in review" or "blog round-up" post before the year was out, but for 2015, I wanted to experiment with something a little more elaborate. In looking back at the prior year's blog posts, it seemed to me that each month suggested an ongoing theme playing out at that given time, so I wanted to recap each month by tying the theme for the month in with posts that evoke that theme--it's a little ambitious, I know.

January: The violent attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine started the year off with what became a recurring theme: freedom of speech versus criticism, state penalties, and terror. I also addressed "political correctness" as a critique of speech that could be useful in some ways, censorious in others.

February: The theme for February was misinformation. The month kicked off with some irritation with anti-vaxxers, whose poor understanding of how vaccines work is a positive danger. I got irritated with people who don't grasp why "Muslims who do bad things" is only a subset of "all Muslims" in the same way that "Christians who do bad things" is just a subset of "all Christians". And I remain really mad at people who seem to deliberately misunderstand the US fight against Daesh for purely ideological reasons.

March: The theme for March was the "Obama-Haters For War to Keep us Safe". Franklin Graham seems to like saying Obama is influenced by Muslims, and I like saying Franklin Graham is a bigoted shitlord. Forty-seven Dumbass Ronin showed their asses, and Sen. Cotton was their king. Also, a couple people just frankly said "Bomb Iran and it will rain Viagra for 40 days and nights".

April: I think the theme was "Separation of Church and State". My former senator and 2016 GOP presidential candidate (for now) Rick Santorum was ready to stand with IN Gov. Mike Pence in his support for a bill that would protect the "right" to discriminate against people for religious reasons. (My fear with discriminatory measures is that what starts with sanctioning discrimination, can lead to tolerance of abuse and worse.)  It seemed to me that favoring discrimination, whether on religious grounds or not, was a failure to understand US history, which is something we need to learn from.  But I brought the topic back around to how church and state separation is a social necessity.