markpkessinger
markpkessinger's JournalPope Francis v. J.D. Vance
J.D. Vance's theology (such as it is):
“You love your family, then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.”
In a letter to U.S. bishops dated 10 February 2025 (https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2025/documents/20250210-lettera-vescovi-usa.html), Pope Francis specifically responded to this:
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. [It is a] love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
Posted this last night on Facebook re: Kilmar Abrego Garca
There will likely be some ruptured family relationships over my post, but I don't care anymore. I needed to say this!
Of all the things Trump has done, the deportation, with no due process, of Mr. Abrego García to a brutal prison in El Salvador, from which, it is said, there is virtually no hope of ever being released, despite a Federal judge's order prohibiting the government from deporting him to that country, and despite the fact that the man has never been accused of a crime in either the U.S. or El Salvador, and Trump's outright refusal to lift a finger to facilitate his return, despite a UNANIMOUS Supreme Court ruling ordering the administration to do just that, is so far beyond the pale both legally and morally as to beggar belief!
It is something straight out of the USSR under Stalin, or out of 1930s Germany. It is monstrous . A lawyer for the Trump administration admitted that the man's deportation was "a mistake," and that there was no basis for deporting him. (And for telling the truth in Court, said lawyer was promptly fired by Pam Bondi.)
And just as disturbing as Trump's actions have been the reactions by many Trump supporters. One, commenting in the New York Times, wrote: "I don't see the problem; the man was here illegally, and now he's back in El Salvador where he belongs." Look, yes, Mr. Abrego García initially entered the country illegally. But he soon thereafter commenced an application for asylum. That case has not yet been finally adjudicated, but a federal judge found his claim to be credible enough to issue the order that should have protected him. Once that order had been issued, Mr. Abrego García's legal status changed, and from that point forward he had every right to be here. Full stop.
And even if you believe that he should have been denied legal status, the idea that a man who was fleeing violence in his country of origin, and entered the country illegally, committed such a grave crime as to be deserving of life imprisonment in one of the most brutal prisons in the world . . . that is just about the sickest, cruelest, most inhumane and inhuman response imaginable.
Not to mention that the right to due process is one of the foundational rights for which this country fought a revolution.
How could anyone, knowing he had perpetrated such an injustice against someone, be unwilling to do everything in his power to correct it? The fact that Trump is so unwilling to even try makes me wonder, horrible though it is to contemplate, if Mr. Abrego García is even still alive.
So I will say this to ANY Trump supporter in my orbit: if you can look at what has been done to Mr. Abrego García and still support Trump, or even if you can look at it and shrug with indifference, then I no longer know who you are. And if your humanity has become so constricted that you cannot see this for the utter moral outrage it is, I'm really not sure I want to know you at all!
To those who just last week derisively referred to fellow DUers as "Doomers" . . .
. . . I think, in light of what has transpired in the last few days, you really owe an apology to this entire community!
The behavior of the DC police at USIP should be a lesson for all of us!
When the DOGE thugs essentially forced their way into USIP's headquarters, USIP personnel contacted the DC police, believing, naively, that the DC police would recognize USIP's rightful ownership of the premises. Instead, the DC police escorted USIP personnel out of the building, and gave entry to the DOGE thugs who had no right to be there.
If history teaches us anything, it should be that in times when authoritarian movements are taking over governments, the very LAST organizations anybody should trust to protect them or their rights are law enforcement agencies!
Ugh! And once again, the party's leadership completely misreads the room!
From The New York Times (note: this is a gift link, so you shouldn't encounter a paywall):
Progressive and moderate Democrats criticized a protest by Representative Al Green as a distraction, and the party leadership tried to refocus attention on economic issues.
Democratic lawmakers on Sunday expressed disappointment at their party’s uncoordinated response to President Trump’s address to Congress last week, criticizing a colleague who staged a one-man protest during the speech by standing up and repeatedly shouting, “No mandate.”
The party’s leadership urged its members last week to stage a solemn and staid protest during Mr. Trump’s Tuesday speech, which was televised to nearly 37 million viewers. But Representative Al Green of Texas heckled the president and eventually was escorted out of the chamber.
The criticisms aimed at Mr. Green come as congressional Democrats debate how much to obstruct Mr. Trump’s agenda. With government funding set to expire after midnight Friday, Democrats must decide whether they will vote for legislation to avert a shutdown or refuse to do so while Mr. Trump is defunding and dismantling Congressionally approved federal programs.
On Sunday news shows, five Democratic lawmakers, including two progressives, made roundabout criticisms of Mr. Green. They pointed to the backlash his protest generated from both Republican and nonpartisan voters, as well as the media attention it created, which they saw as a distraction to Democrats’ messaging against Mr. Trump’s policies."
While they are right to lament the lack of a coordinated response, they shouldn't be laying the blame on Al Green! Rather, they should be pointing the finger at themselves for just sitting there while a sitting president heaped one uncivil insult after another at them!
Al Green is a class act!
?si=ytTYaMo88zIFuj8RThe use of dismissive labels like "Extreme Left" or "Far Left" by Democrats toward other Democrats is a tactic . . .
. . . and an unproductive and profoundly destructive one at that! In decades past, we had seen Republicans engaging in attempts to label nearly all of Democrats' policy objectives as "Socialist" or "Communist" or "radical leftist," as a means of discrediting them More recently, we have seen Democratic centrists use this same tactic to attack progressives and others within the party who dare to question the tactics and strategy of the centrist Democratic leaders who have largely been running the show within the party for several decades as the "extreme left" or "far left," even though the policy objectives endorsed by both groups is largely the same. It has served as an all-too-convenient way to shut down the expression of valid concerns, and to insulate themselves from any criticism. But it is the same tactic, irrespective of who happens to be deploying it at any given moment, and it is high time it was called out for what it actually is: an attempt to "otherize" those who have serious, honest disagreements or valid concerns over strategy and tactics.
The latest example is Hakeem Jeffries' complaining that "the extreme left protest me more than they protest Donald Trump...I think because I've chosen not to bend the knee to either people on the far left and certainly not to Donald Trump and the far right." I have a lot of Democrats in my social media circle, most of them pretty traditional. They are teachers, clergy, professionals and working people, most of whom would be quite surprised to hear themselves called "extreme" about anything. They have all been quite critical of what they have seen as Jeffries' somnambulant response to the present crisis. These are not people who are trying to take down Jeffries. They are people who are frightened, and trying their damndest not to fall into a pit of despair and hopelessness, who are extremely worried that the Democratic response to date has failed to meet the moment. We can disagree over the relative merit of such concerns, but to dismiss them out-of-hand as coming from the "extreme left" is both wrong, and, in many cases, totally inaccurate.
Neither the party's centrist nor progressive wings can do without the other. One of the things that made Biden so successful during his presidency was that he had the wisdom not to engage in such dismissive "othering." Would that more in our party would recognize that wisdom!
On the National Park Service's removal of all trans references from the Stonewall National Monument
This is a comment I posted to a Facebook posting of an article that appeared in TimeoutNYC (see https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/all-trans-references-have-been-removed-from-the-stonewall-national-monument-website-021425?fbclid=IwY2xjawIgdQ9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHUsVTkbyetZJznMLC_jWdNUl_weIiUSsiH12dKS7Bvgv8YJW8OXc1WOyOA_aem_WgUi8uB6GFPss-qMaVco0w ).
You know, the original Stonewall bar was not a place that was frequented by buttoned-down gay professionals of the sort you might find today at a meeting of the Log Cabin Republicans. It was a seedy, mafia-run dive, the clientele of which was a mix of drag queens, trans people, hairdressers, theatre people, hustler boys and others from the very margins of an already marginalized community. Sure, there were a few who came across as more mainstream. But on the whole, it was a very fringe group. We, today, forget that at our peril.
Sadly, there are some in our community -- thankfully, a relatively small minority, I believe -- who are perfectly fine with excluding trans people, either because they don't personally relate to the experience of being trans, or because they believe -- mistakenly -- that by excluding trans people, the gay and lesbian community will suddenly be deemed to be acceptable to those on the right. And reading the comments to this post, we see a few of these folks here.
This is, and always has been, a dangerous delusion. And it isn't new, either. It is much the same delusion that guided the old Mattachine Society -- i.e., that if only gay people made themselves outwardly respectable enough, they would "earn" the respect of straight society. The Mattachine leaders even insisted that at protests for gay rights, that men should wear suits and ties and women should wear dresses and heels! But that approach ultimately failed to stop the endless police harassment, the raids of our gathering places, and the publication of those arrested in newspapers, resulting in lost housing, lost jobs, lost family, and ruined lives. It was only after the community became more confrontational, led by some very brave trans people, and insisted on living our lives openly and unapologetically, that we began to see progress.
If I have learned anything in my 63 years, it is this: that bigotry never requires a reason to continue to exist, but it will gladly seize upon any convenient rationalization in order to justify its own existence!
Understand what this is: it is a cruel, inhumane attempt by Trump to sever trans people, a tiny and extremely vulnerable minority, from their brothers and sisters in the lesbian, gay and bi community. It is a classic "divide and conquer" strategy, and NO gay, lesbian or bisexual person should fall for it, because I can promise you, it won't stop there!
The trans community has contributed to the wider LGBTQ+ community and the cause of LGBTQ+ civil rights at a level that far exceeds their numbers, and those contributions went unacknowledged by the wider LGBTQ+ community until quite recently. And hence, those of us in the gay, lesbian and bisexual community OWE the trans community our support!"
As disgusted as I am with elected Democrats who aren't speaking out . . .
. . . I am even more disgusted by those who make excuses for them. One common retort that I find particularly galling is, "Well, what do you expect them to do?"
Look, I fully get the numbers problem we have in both houses of Congress. But even if the only tool we have left is the voices of our elected Democratic senators and representatives, I damned well expect them to use it, making as much noise as they possibly can, because their silence is tantamount to complicity!
Are laws even operative anymore?
That's a serious, non-hyperbolic question. We have a Congress that refuses to hold Trump accountable, and a Supreme Court who has declared him immune from prosecution for anything he does under the guise of official acts.
So I ask again: Are laws even operative at this point?
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