The Wild Reed

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

God Rest Us . . .

. . . Rest that part of us which is tired.
Awaken that part of us which is asleep.
God awaken us and awake within us.

Amen.

– Michael Leunig

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• A Longing and a Prayer
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Don't Go Back to Sleep
• Clarity, Hope and Courage
• Keeping the Spark Alive: Conversing with a Modern Mystic
• The Most Sacred and Simple Mystery of All
• The Source Is Within You
• A New Day

Image: Lenny Kravitz by Ruven Atanador (1995).

Saturday, September 07, 2019

Historian Martin Duberman on the Rightward Shift of the Gay Movement

I realized today that with my sudden need to return to Australia last month I did not finish this year's Queer Appreciation series, one comprised of informed and insightful writings to mark Gay Pride . . . or, as I prefer to call it (since 2011), “Queer Appreciation.”

In a previous installment of this year's series I shared black feminist author and activist Barbara Smith's critique of the contemporary gay rights movement. In today's installment I share a similar critique by historian, author and activist Martin Duberman (right), who writer Jonathan Kozol describes as "a deeply moral and reflective man who has engaged the greatest struggles of our times with an unflinching nerve, a wise heart, and a brilliant intellect." . . . Yes, definitely my kind of guy!

Actually, I find both Duberman's and Barbara Smith's insights interesting and relevant – including personally relevant. After all, both identify the early-mid 1990s, which was the time I relocated to the U.S. from Australia, as the critical point when the gay movement in the U.S. shifted markedly to the right. In the 25 years since, I've witnessed (and often proactively sought to disrupt and correct) this unfortunate shift.

The words of Duberman that I share today are excerpted from the memoir section of The Martin Duberman Reader: The Essential Historical, Biographical, and Autobiographical Writings (The New Press, 2013).

_______________________

The effect of AIDS on public opinion had [by 1992] become a double-edged sword: heightened fear of dreaded gay “carriers” counter-balanced by increased sympathy for their suffering. President Clinton’s new administration in 1992 exemplified the contradiction: when his initial impulse to lift the ban on gay and lesbians serving openly in the military met with a barrage of opposition, he scurried for cover, settling with relief on a “compromise” solution of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” that all at once fully exploited the military service of gay people while pretending they didn’t exist as human beings.

At the core of homophobia, it has always seemed to me, lies the central fear of “differentness.” Why the full, splendid spectrum of humanity should inspire terror in some people rather than joyful wonder is a puzzler. What can be learned from a neighbor whose expressions, habits, and values are a duplicate of one’s own? “Nothing!” exults the crowd, “and that’s exactly the way we like it. It was hard enough learning the dominant social codes; having finally mastered them, and feeling accepted and comfortable, let us alone!”

Yet the softening of homophobia was real. In a culture with a profoundly contradictory heritage of conformity and permissiveness, the way forward would necessarily be gradual (though only if the demands were for full and instant change; you ask for the whole pie in order to get a portion of it) and would periodically be marked by retreats – yet the fact would remain that nowhere else in the world was there a comparably vibrant and effective gay rights movement. In the 1970s, when the first gay civil rights measures were submitted to public referendum, only 29 percent of the voters reacted favorably; by the early nineties, the percentage had risen to 39 percent – and would continue to rise.

In 1993,a Newsweek article wrote us up as “the new power brokers” (a weird exaggeration) and the cover of an issue of New York magazine read “The Bold, Brave New World of Gay Women.” Yet the early nineties also saw a 30 percent increase in assaults and hate crimes against gay people. The dragon of homophobia had hardly been slain. The slow increase in respect and acceptance amounted to no more than a fragile inclusion,and the inclusion was pretty much confined to those gay people who looked and behaved like “normal” folks – meaning primarily middle-class white men who put their faith in polite lobbying, eschewed confrontational tactics, and shied away (as the seventies gay movement had not) from left-wing issues relating to racism, sexism, and economic inequality. The April 25, 1993 March on Washington, which I took part in, exemplified the turn away from “extremist” ACT-UP zaps; to me it seemed a bland, juiceless event more parade than protest – especially when contrasted with the earlier marches in 1979 and 1987.

. . .[B]y the mid-nineties many in the gay world, and particularly in the more tolerant urban areas, chose to believe that equality was around the corner, bound to happen, that a little more tidying up around the edges – perhaps best done by pushing the freaks as far off-stage as possible – and the struggle would be over.

Paralleling the rise of optimism about the goal of converting AIDS to a “manageable disease” was a surge of conviction that as a people we were now unstoppable. Some prominent gay leaders and organizations, and in particular Elizabeth Birch and the influential (largest and wealthiest) Human Rights Campaign, were entirely in accord with the goal of assimilation and with fostering an image of gay people that would accelerate that process. That meant replicate themselves, featuring one segment only of a diverse gay community: mostly white, educated, well-spoken folks who dressed for success and held mainstream values.

Those gay people with left-wing politics saw assimilationism as defeat and deceit – a misrepresentation of the many different communities that constituted the gay world and a denial of the subversive potential of our distinctive values and perspectives. The lefties didn’t want to serve openly in the military; they wanted to destroy the war machine. They didn’t want to settle down into traditional marital relationships, nor give them privileged status; they wanted to challenge sexual monogamy, gender stereotyping, and traditional patterns of child rearing.

But left-wing gays had shrunk by the mid-nineties, in contrast to the early seventies, to a small, nearly silent voice in the community as a whole. The majority of gay people chose to see themselves as “just folks”; their highest aspiration was to join the mainstream, not to challenge its orthodoxies.

Many ACT-UP chapters had ceased to operate by the late 1990s and others had refocused their efforts on the global issue of getting affordable versions of the new drugs to poor countries. By this point the gay movement as a whole had drifted decidedly to the right, with the issues of gay marriage and gays in the military leapfrogging to the top of the agendas of the most powerful movement organizations (and especially the Human Rights Campaign). As early as 1994, during the celebrations of Stonewall’s twentieth-fifth anniversary, one of the top fund-raising events – to the disgust of everyone one inch left of center – was held on the deck of the aircraft carrier Intrepid; for weeks before, ads for credit cards with rainbow flags appeared in the gay male press. That press, incidentally, was itself becoming unrecognizably different from the politically aware publications (New York Native, QW, etc.) that had once held sway. By the late nineties, the popular favorites were Genre (specializing in poolside swimwear) and OUT, which as late as 2008 boasted a five-man fashion department, but not a single literary, theater, or politics editor.

– Martin Duberman
Excerpted from The Martin Duberman Reader:
The Essential Historical, Biographical,
and Autobiographical Writings
pp. 298-299 & 301-302

NEXT: Queer Black Panther

For previous installments in The Wild Reed's 2019 Queer Appreciation series, see:
• Quote of the Day – May 31, 2019
• James Baldwin's Potent Interweavings of Race, Homoeroticism, and the Spiritual
• John Gehring on Why Catholics Should Participate in LGBTQ Pride Parades
• A Dance of Queer Love
• The Queer Liberation March: Bringing Back the Spirit of Stonewall
• Barbara Smith on Why She Left the Mainstream LGBTQI Movement
• Remembering the Stonewall Uprising on Its 50th Anniversary
• In a Historic First, Country Music's Latest Star Is a Queer Black Man

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• A Lose/Lose Situation
• Making the Connections
• Michelangelo Signorile on the Rebellious Purpose of Queer Pride
• Reclaiming and Re-Queering Pride

Thursday, September 05, 2019

Quote of the Day

There is human knowledge and then there is the truth. The gap between the two is overwhelming and so we fill it – with faith, with fear, with anger, with love, with skepticism, with disinterest. If your choice gives you hope and does no harm to others, you deserve no derision.

To dismiss the spirituality of Marianne Williamson and like-minded individuals is to assume that your own knowledge extends all the way to the truth. It doesn’t. To read the spirituality of Williamson and like-minded individuals in such relentlessly bad faith is to indulge in an intellectual arrogance bordering on bigotry.

Science brought us nuclear proliferation. Reason brought us the Domino Theory. “Acceptable” presidential candidates voted for the Iraq War and jailed poor parents for truancy. [In her recent tweet in relation to Hurricane Dorian] Williamson [simply] asked some people to close their eyes and envision a safer world.

– Jesse Crall
Excerpted from “Marianne Misread”
Medium
September 4, 2019

Wednesday, September 04, 2019

Photo of the Day

NEXT: Out and About – Autumn 2019

See also the related Wild Reed posts:
• Dad
• Remembering and Celebrating Dad
• Family Time in Guruk . . . and Glimpses of Somaliland
• Across the Mountains . . . from Guruk to Gunnedah
• An Unexpected Visitor
• Family Time in Gunnedah
• Return to Guruk
• In Northern Rivers Country

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

Monday, September 02, 2019

Family Time in Guruk . . . and Glimpses of Somaliland

With the exception of my nephew Liam, who lives with his fiancee Kylie in Coral Bay, Western Australia, all my family live in the south-eastern area of Australia – as far north as Guruk (the traditional Birpai name for that part of coastal Australia where the New South Wales town of Port Macquarie is located); as far south as Melbourne, Victoria; as far inland as the New South Wales town of Gunnedah, in the heart of Kamilaroi country; and in places within this area, namely Sydney and Newcastle. Extended family members (cousins on my Mum's side of the family) live in Raymond Terrance and Dubbo.

Many of these family members travelled to Guruk for my father's funeral on August 6, my parents having moved to Port Macquarie from our hometown of Gunnedah in 2002. Of these family members my youngest nephew Brendan was the last to return south to his home and studies in Melbourne on August 19. Because of this I spent a lot of time with Brendan, introducing him to some of my favorite coastal spots. (He also got to accompany Mum and I on a visit to Gunnedah.)

Following are images of the special time for my family in Guruk between August 6 and 13, 2019.

Above: The sculpture in Port Macquarie's Mrs York’s Garden entitled "Together as One (Guri wakul gagil)."

Described as a "contemporary interpretation of Australia’s first surf rescue," the work, erected in 2016, commemorates the events of December 9, 1827, when seven Aboriginal men rescued the crew of a small European pilot boat after it was capsized by a large wave. For more about this story, see this previous Wild Reed post.

Above: Mum with her brother Michael.

Above: Standing second from left with (from left) my nephew Brendan, my younger brother Tim, Mum, my older brother Chris, and my nephew Ryan. My niece Layne took this photo.

Above: My brother Chris snapped this photo of me standing on what I experience as especially sacred ground.

Above and below: Brendan and I by the sea at Guruk.

Left and below: Throughout my August sojourn in Australia, I stayed in contact via Skype and Facebook Messenger with my friend Adnan in that part of Somalia known as Somaliland. I had last seen Adnan in July, just before he left Minneapolis for Somaliland, a very different place from the U.S., where Adnan has lived since he was a child. It was, in many ways, a difficult time for him, and so we'd often be in contact so I could offer friendship and support. We also shared photos and videos – him of his experiences in Somaliland, me of my time in Australia.

NEXT:
Across the Mountains
. . . from Guruk to Gunnedah

and

Reunion with Saaxiib Qurux Badan
– 12/27/2019

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Remembering and Celebrating Dad
• Australian Sojourn – April-May 2019: Port Macquarie
• Return to Guruk (2017)
• Australian Sojourn – May 2016: Port Macquarie
• Australian Sojourn – April 2015: Port Macquarie, Wingham, and Ellenborough Falls
• Port Macquarie Days (2014)
• Port Macquarie (2008)
• The Bayly Family – January 2010
• A Visit from the Hometown Relatives (2010)

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Presidential Candidate Marianne Williamson on The Breakfast Club, 8/29/19

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Something to Think About . . .

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Something We Dare Call Hope
• Of Mustard Seeds and Walled Gardens
• See the World!
• Our New Possibility
• Radical Returnings
• The Harvest Within the Heart

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

An Unexpected Visitor

On one of our mornings during our recent time in Gunnedah, my nephew Brendan and I encountered an unexpected visitor in the front yard of my aunt's home.

It was a neighbor's steer which had somehow managed to get out of its nearby paddock!

Apparently, this has happened before, and it resulted in much damage to my aunt's lawn and garden. As Mum, Brendan, and I headed out to visit family and friends, Mum phoned her sister (who had left earlier that morning to take her grandson to daycare) and alerted her to the unwanted visitor in her yard. My aunt then contacted the steer's owner who came and returned it to its paddock.

NEXT: Family Time in Gunnedah

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Across the Mountains . . . from Guruk to Gunnedah
• Journey to Gunnedah (2011)
• A Visit to Gunnedah (2014)
• A Visit to Gunnedah (2017)

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Five Powerful Responses to the Amazon Fires

– Artwork: Giovana Medeiros

As I mentioned in my previous post, a wildfire has been burning west of Guruk (aka Port Macquarie) for over a month. Called the Lindfield Park Road bushfire, the blaze, writes Robert Dougherty, has been responsible for a “thick blanket of choking gray smoke [that] rolls across the hills and highways. . . . edg[ing] silently forward [and] consuming Port Macquarie like something out of a Stephen King horror novel.”

The "horror," however, is not confined to Port Macquarie. All around the world there are wildfires burning – in Indonesia (right), Siberia, the Canary Islands, Alaska, Greenland, parts of Africa, including Angola and Congo, and throughout South America.

In Brazil, as I'm sure everyone reading this would know, the Amazon rainforest is currently burning at a record rate. In fact, Brazil has experienced more than 76,000 fires this year; last year’s total was about 40,000. About 10,000 of this year’s fires have started in the past two weeks, and most have been deliberately lit as part of the Brazilian government's deforestation agenda. Many other parts of South America are burning too, including Bolivia, Paraguay, Colombia, and Venezuela. The map below, created by Global Forest Watch using satellite data, shows every fire that has started burning since August 13 across central South America.

How does one even begin to respond to such a nightmare scenario?

The first thing I always try to do when confronted with a seemingly overwhelming situation like the one occurring in Brazil and elsewhere is to ground and center myself in an awareness of Sacred Presence, both within and beyond me. What I find helps me most in doing this is spending time in nature.

So, yes, I've been doing exactly that a lot lately, mostly down by the ocean at places that as I've noted previously, I experience as “sacred ground.”

Second, I turn to thinkers, writers, activists, and artists whom I've come to trust. I trust them because they give me hope;. I trust them because I recognize that their words, art and actions provide the tools and strategies and insights needed to move forward in positive and proactive ways.

Tonight I share the responses of five such people to the crisis in the Amazon and beyond. These people are artists Giovana Medeiros and Eduardo Sanabria; spiritual author, activist and Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson; activist Christian Poirier; and my friend, Kurt Seaberg, who is a Minneapolis-based artist and activist. I hope the responses of these five people inspire you as much as they inspire me.

The Amazon burning is a reminder of humanity’s pathological irreverence toward the earth, a self-destructive dysfunction from which we will either heal or possibly not even survive as a species. This is more than a climate crisis; it is a survival crisis and it should be seen as such. Our ability to take in both the horror of what is happening environmentally, as well as summon up the courage to do something about it, will define the most critical moment in humanity’s history: whether we choose to continue the journey of evolution, or rather through our own selfishness and greed and recklessness elect to end it.

– Marianne Williamson
via Facebook
August 22, 2019

– Artwork: Eduardo Sanabria

This is the twilight of the capitalist system, the religion of western “civilization,” which views nature as a “resource” and consumes her at an ever accelerating rate. That system rests upon the delusion of never ending growth and development, as it consumes the world like a metastasizing cancer. What we haven’t learned yet is that we are setting fire to our own house and to the next generation that lives in it. Our survival, and perhaps the survival of all living things, depends upon our recognition, in the final hours, that everything is connected, and what we do to the living earth we do to ourselves.

– Kurt Seaberg
via Facebook
August 22, 2019

We are witnessing [in Brazil is] a government that denies its responsibility for this tragedy while it dismantles [the country]'s environmental protections and rejects its duty to uphold human rights. A president so desperate to deflect culpability that he concocts pathetic theories that the very organizations dedicated to defending the rainforest are themselves responsible for this disaster. We are witnessing a perfect storm, with no end in sight.

Amazon Watch is working around the clock to ensure that the world understands both the causes and the solutions to this crisis. These fires were set deliberately and those who are resisting need our urgent support. A global solidarity movement must rise to directly oppose [President] Bolsonaro, and as a solidarity organization Amazon Watch aims to spearhead these critical efforts.

Our recent Complicity in Destruction II report exposes the global corporate financiers of Amazon destruction, but the power to force them to change their actions comes from organizing and raising our collective voice. Today's massive outcry over the Amazon fires and the outpouring of support toward solutions is magnifying our ability to shift these actors and ultimately the Bolsonaro regime. We will channel this support to our allies on the ground to amplify their messages and their struggles, empowering acts of resistance from all quarters.

. . . We are heartened by today's global backlash to Bolsonaro's assault. Protests are mounting around the world targeting Brazilian embassies and consulates as well as some of the companies complicit with Bolsonaro's agenda, and heads of state are calling for multilateral action to curb this disaster, given its implications for us all. We are joining with other allies to call for an International Day of Action for the Amazon on Thursday, September 5th. We hope many around the globe will join a march or organize their own actions to send a unified message to Brazil that it must defend the Amazon and support indigenous rights.

– Christian Poirier
Excerpted from “With the Brazilian Amazon in Flames,
We Must All Be the Resistance”
Amazon Watch
August 23, 2019

Above: This is an image I've filter-treated with the Prisma app and which I found a while back on the Internet. I find it incredibly powerful, and although I've attempted to find information about it, I have not have much success. What I do know is that it's from a 2013 action in support of the environment and indigenous rights that took place somewhere in South America, but I'm not sure where exactly. If anyone can find or has more information about it, please feel free to share it in the comments section of this post. Thanks.

UPDATE: What Can We Do?

Note: The following is excerpted from Jonathan Watts's August 24, 2019 Guardian article, “Amazon Fires: What Is Happening and Is There Anything We Can Do?”

The most important actions are political and collective. Join a party or campaign group that makes the Amazon a priority. Through these groups, urge your elected representatives to block trade deals with countries that destroy their forests and to provide more support for countries that expand tree cover.

Apart from this, donate to organisations that support the forest, forest dwellers and biodiversity, including Instituto Socioambiental, Amazon Watch, WWF, Greenpeace, Imazon, International Rivers and Friends of the Earth.

As consumers, think twice before buying Brazilian beef or other products unless certified by groups such as Rainforest Alliance. The Amazon connection is not always obvious.

Related Off-site Links:
Major Wildfires Have Ignited Across Europe, Asia, and Latin America – Umair Irfan and Kainaz Amaria (Vox, August 22, 2019).
The Amazon in Brazil Is On Fire – How Bad Is It? – The Visual and Data Journalism Team (BBC News, August 23, 2019).
Fires in the Amazon Could Be Part of a Doomsday Scenario That Sees the Rainforest Spewing Carbon Into the Atmosphere and Speeding Up Climate Change Even More – Sinéad Baker (Business Insider, August 22, 2019).
Record Wildfires Raging Through the Amazon Can Now Be Seen From Space – Claire Knox (ABC News, August 20, 2019).
Smoke From the Burning Amazon Rainforest Plunged Brazil's Largest City Into Darkness in the Middle of the Day – Stephanie K. Baer (BuzzFeed News, August 20, 2019).
The Only Three Things You Need to Know About the Amazon Rainforest Fires – Vrutika Shah (GQ, August 22, 2019).
Tens of Thousands of Fires Ravage Brazilian Amazon, Where Deforestation Has Spiked – Colin Dwyer (NPR News, August 21, 2019).
Leaked Documents Show Brazil’s Bolsonaro Has Grave Plans for Amazon Rainforest – Manuella Libardi (Common Dreams, August 22, 2019).
Amazon Rainforest Fire: How Artists Answer – FeelDesain.com (August 23, 2019).
Brazil's Indigenous People: “We Fight for the Right to Exist” – BBC News (April 25, 2019).
“He Wants to Destroy Us”: Bolsonaro Poses Gravest Threat in Decades, Amazon Tribes Say – Tom Phillips (The Guardian, July 26, 2019).
Indigenous Movement Calls for International Support to Prevent Genocide in Brazil – Morning Star for Peace and Socialism (February 7, 2019).
The Amazon Cannot Be Recovered Once It’s Gone – Robinson Meyer (The Atlantic, August 24, 2019).
Bolsonaro and the Apocalypse: The Most Dangerous Man on Earth – George Monbiot (via YouTube, May 30, 2019).

UPDATES: Brazil Isn’t the Only Far-Right Government Destroying the Planet – Basav Sen (Common Dreams, August 26, 2019).
The Complexity of the Amazon Fires – Sean McShee (The Wild Hunt: Modern Pagan News and Commentary, August 28, 2019).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• As the World Burns, Calls for a "Green New Deal"
• Quote of the Day – March 16, 2019
• Quote of the Day – November 19, 2018
• Let Us Be “Energized by the Beauty That Is All Around Us”: Jane Goodall's New Year Message
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – August 29, 2017
• The People's Climate Solidarity March – Minneapolis, 4/29/17
• Prayer of the Week – April 24, 2017
• "It Is All Connected"
• Standing in Prayer and Solidarity with the Water Protectors of Standing Rock
• Standing Together
• Discerning and Embodying Sacred Presence in Times of Violence and Strife

Image 1: Giovana Medeiros.
Image 2: Photographer unknown.
Image 3: Getty Images.
Image 4: Global Forest Watch.
Image 5: Photographer unknown.
Image 6: Brendan Bayly.
Image 7: Eduardo Sanabria.
Image 8: Photographer unknown.
Image 9: Artist unknown.

Friday, August 23, 2019

“This Woman Is Going to Win the Nomination”

Matt Taibbi on Marianne Williamson in Iowa

Following, with added images and links, is an excerpt from Matt Taibbi's July 29, 2019 Rolling Stone article, “The Iowa Circus.”

Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a Sunday morning, just after services at the Unity Center, an alternative church that preaches a “practical approach to Christianity.” It’s a place you might expect to buy healing salts or take hypnotism lessons. The crowd is younger and more female than at most campaign stops.

Marianne Williamson, the self-help author made famous by Oprah Winfrey, is speaking to about 50 people. “When we get bad news, when we learn that something really terrible is going on, so many superficial concerns drop away. And we become very intelligent,” she says, glaring and pausing for emphasis.

Williamson is a small, almost ethereal figure with silver-streaked hair and intense eyes that 19th-century authors would have described as being “like coals.” Her superficial eccentricities and occasional incautious statements (she once said “there’s a skepticism which is actually healthy” on the issue of vaccines) have caused reporters to chortle at her run.

But her speech is not a lifeless collection of policy positions. It’s an interesting, tightly written diagnosis of the American problem. Precisely because socio-economic stresses have pushed them into heightened awareness, she says, the American public sees what she calls “a transition from democracy to aristocracy,” and the corporate sector’s “insatiable appetite” for money that dominates American life.

Williamson is not a traditional orator, with a voice that fills the room. You can barely hear her without a microphone. But she grabs crowds. Nobody is checking sports scores or Twitter. They’re in.

Williamson goes on to say that most Americans are aware that their government is now little more than a handmaiden to sociopathic forces. She describes a two-party system that, at its worst, operates in perfect harmony with the darkest impulses of corporate capitalism, and at best — presumably she refers more to Democrats here — sounds like institutionalized beggary.

“‘Pretty please, can I maybe have a hundred-thousand-dollar grant here?’ ” she says. “ ‘Pretty please, can we maybe have a million dollars in the budget for all this?’”

Heads are nodding all over the place.

“They say, ‘I can get you a cookie.’”

This elicits a few yeahs from the crowd.

Christ, I think. This woman is going to win the nomination.

Trump, she says, can’t be beaten by conventional thinking. “[He is] not just a politician,” she says. “This man is a phenomenon. . . . The only way we are going to defeat a phenomenon at the polls in 2020 is by creating a phenomenon.”

She stumbles a bit in Q&A, especially when a woman asks what she would do about the credit-score system. Williamson frowns, seeming genuinely perplexed. She clearly doesn’t know what having bad credit is like, and promises to look into it, in the tone of voice of a person who promises gamely to try a jellied-eel appetizer.

Still, she gets a rousing ovation at the end of her speech. After, she takes a few minutes to talk.

“The political establishment has the veneer of a deep conversation,” she says. “They think their political dialogue is so sophisticated. But it’s not sophisticated. It’s very unsophisticated.”

That lack of sophistication, she says, is what made Trump possible. Young people, in particular, have no more patience for the phoniness. “I see it especially in people who were born this century,” she says. “They’re tired of the nonsense.”

Williamson belongs to a category of candidate you might call the Ignored. They’re candidates blown off by national political wizards who don’t believe, or don’t want to believe, they can win. How anyone can think this way after 2016 is mind-boggling.

The list includes Williamson, entrepreneur and Universal Basic Income proponent Andrew Yang, Hawaii congresswoman and regime-change opponent Tulsi Gabbard, and, most conspicuously, Bernie Sanders.

It’s unseemly, the degree to which the press is rooting for Sanders to get his socialist tuchis out of the race. This is an actual headline from Politico after the first set of debates: “Harris, Warren Tie for Third in New Poll, But Biden Still Leads.”

The Washington Post/ABC poll showed Biden dropping to 25 percent nationally, with Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren jousting for third at nine percent. Where’s Waldo? The missing data point is that Sanders doubled both Harris and Warren in said poll at 18 percent. He also has the highest number of unique donors, and is the leading fundraiser overall in the race.

– Matt Taibbi
Excerpted from “The Iowa Circus”
Rolling Stone
July 29, 2019

The Wild Reed

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

God Rest Us . . .

Saturday, September 07, 2019

Historian Martin Duberman on the Rightward Shift of the Gay Movement

Thursday, September 05, 2019

Quote of the Day

Wednesday, September 04, 2019

Photo of the Day

Monday, September 02, 2019

Family Time in Guruk . . . and Glimpses of Somaliland

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Presidential Candidate Marianne Williamson on The Breakfast Club, 8/29/19

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Something to Think About . . .

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

An Unexpected Visitor

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Five Powerful Responses to the Amazon Fires

Friday, August 23, 2019

“This Woman Is Going to Win the Nomination”

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