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Notes and Messages

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Ian Sanders

We are the bees of the invisible.

“Nature, the things of our intercourse and use, are provisional and perishable; but they are, as long as we are here, our property and our friendship, co-knowers of our distress and gladness, as they have already been the familiars of our forbears. So it is important not only not to run down and degrade all that is here, but just because of its provisionalness, which it shares with us, these phenomena and things should be understood and transformed by us in a most fervent sense. Transformed? Yes, for it is our task to imprint this provisional, perishable earth so deeply, so patiently and passionately in ourselves that its reality shall arise in us again "invisibly".

We are the bees of the invisible. We collect the honey of the visible and store it up in the golden hive of the invisible. The Elegies show us at this work, at the work of these continual conversions of the beloved visible and tangible into the invisible vibrations and excitation of our own nature, which introduces new vibration-frequencies into the vibration-spheres of the universe. (Since different elements in the cosmos are only different vibration-exponents, we prepare for ourselves in this way not only intensities of a spiritual nature but also, who knows, new bodies, metals, nebulae and constellations.)”

~ Rilke, letter to Witold von Huleivicz (postmarked Sierrc, November 13, 1925)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Up above the world so far. 1911. :: Internet Archive

* * * * *

“Sensations, from the beginning, involve a sort of doing. This means that, in an important sense, it is your doing self that brings your core self into being. You are responsible at the very deepest level for what it feels like to be you. But then, for your next trick, well, how about spreading some of that soul dust onto the things around you? Remember, too, that it is your mind that projects phenomenal qualities onto external objects. If you only knew it, you yourself are responsible for the feel of the world.”

- Nicholas Humphrey Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness commonplace

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

P.S. Krøyer - Midsummer Eve Bonfire on Skagen Beach, 1906.

* * *

Ravenous Butterflies

"The most important thing in all human relationships is conversation, but people don’t talk anymore, they don’t sit down to talk and listen. They go to the theater, the cinema, watch television, listen to the radio, read books, but they almost never talk. If we want to change the world, we have to go back to a time when warriors would gather around a fire and tell stories."

Paulo Coelho

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Artist: MJ.Hiblen

* * * *

At 9:27 this morning, the President walked into the Oval Office, excited to once again be the first to do something. He was almost giddy as he made small talk while the event got underway, his attention captured by the large gold bell sitting on his desk. “I’m going to ring that bell. And does that bell stay in the White House? Because I’m not giving it back. We’re going to put that in the middle of the new ballroom. I’m not going to give that bell back. It looks to me like it’s going to stay here.”

Then he stepped into position in front of the desk, repeatedly pushing into the children who had been strategically placed as he struggled to get himself fully into the cameras’ view. It was another reminder of how completely unaware he seemed of the people around him. The most concerning moment came when he was asked about cryptocurrency. Instead of denying wrongdoing or defending his administration’s actions, the President of the United States casually took credit for federal investigations being dropped, suggesting those who benefited had him to thank. “Every time I see a crypto guy where they dropped an investigation,” Trump said, “I tell them, ‘You’re lucky I’m president.’”

As disturbing as that admission is, it’s who this administration is prosecuting, and who it isn’t, that shows us the dark direction our country is headed. Because on the same day the president boasted about making investigations disappear for the industry that has personally earned him over a billion dollars, we learned more about how one of his own agencies, ICE, was using its investigative power to track down Americans. Going after their fellow citizens who criticize it through intimidation, surveillance, and formal warning notices hand-delivered to their front doors by federal agents. All to discourage dissent.

Today, Wired published an investigation revealing that ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility, known as OPR, has opened more than 100 cases against Americans accused of what ICE officials call “incidents of doxing and threats” against ICE employees. That might sound reasonable until you understand what OPR actually is. It is ICE’s internal affairs unit. It was created to investigate misconduct, corruption, and abuse of authority by ICE’s own officers. It exists to hold the agency accountable from the inside. It is the office that is supposed to investigate agents who use excessive force, violate civil rights, and break the rules they are sworn to uphold. That is its mandate and purpose. And it is now being aimed outward, at American civilians, for the act of speaking.

That is more than 100 investigations. Not into the agents who shot and killed Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA. Not into the agents who killed Renée Macklin Good. Or into any of the other dozens of DHS shootings since last July that were prematurely declared justified before investigations were even completed. Not a single federal officer has been held accountable. The office built to police ICE is now being used by ICE to police us.

And we know exactly how they are doing it. Today the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C., on behalf of a man named David Streever. He is a 45-year-old who lives in Rochester, New York. His wife, the Reverend Hilary Streever, is an Episcopal priest. On January 26, after watching federal agents shoot and kill two American citizens in Minneapolis and then watching this administration call those citizens terrorists, David Streever did what Americans have done since the founding of this country. He wrote a letter to the person in charge.

He sent a three-paragraph email to then-acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. The subject line read “What’s next.” He called Lyons a “monstrous human being.” He compared him to a Nazi. He wrote that Lyons would be tormented by his own conscience. He sent it to the government email address. It was raw, it was angry, and it was protected speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Five months passed. Nothing happened. And then, while David Streever was on vacation in Finland with his seven-year-old daughter, visiting a children’s theme park called Moomin World, his doorbell camera back home in Rochester picked up something unusual. Two federal agents in blue jackets were standing on his front porch, stepping past children’s toys to ring the bell. They were from Homeland Security Investigations, HSI, the unit built to investigate transnational organized crime, drug trafficking, human trafficking, cybercrime, and terrorism. The unit with access to cell phone location data, credit card transactions, surveillance cameras, and administrative subpoenas to every major tech company in the country. That is the unit they sent to David Streever’s house. For an email.

His wife arrived home still wearing her clergy collar. One of the agents handed her a document. It was printed on official federal stationery from ICE and DHS. Across the top, in underlined capital letters, it read: “WARNING NOTICE.” Below that: “YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW.” It instructed Streever to “promptly remove and/or discontinue” his “behavior” and warned that the notice would be “taken into consideration” if he continued to be involved in “criminal activities.”

His wife told the agents her husband was out of the country with their daughter and would be home Friday. But they did not wait. Just hours after Streever and his daughter landed at JFK International Airport, a third HSI agent tracked him to the airport hotel where they were staying for the night. The agent left a business card at the front desk. His wife had not told the agents which hotel he would be at. They found him anyway.

“Like many Americans, I was deeply upset after the shootings in Minnesota and I felt compelled to do something,” Streever said in a statement. “Writing an email to the head of ICE seemed like the least I could do to express my sense of outrage. I never dreamed it would lead to a knock on my door by federal officers or descending on my hotel in the dark of night.”

FIRE’s senior attorney, Adam Steinbaugh, put it plainly: “If someone is really threatening a government official, you don’t wait five months to act on it. The fact that authorities didn’t respond immediately shows that David presented no threat. This pursuit is designed to intimidate lawful speech, pure and simple.”

And David Streever was not the only one. On the same day agents showed up at his home, June 23, the same two HSI agents visited Paigelynne Gonyea in Syracuse. She was working at a polling place. It was primary election day in New York. They left her a voicemail saying they had just visited her former apartment and were calling about “a post that we believe you made on Instagram.” They presented her with the same kind of warning notice. She refused to sign it. These are the first two cases where Americans have come forward to report receiving formal written warnings from federal agents over their speech. Civil liberties groups say they are the first known instances of DHS using these notices at all. And now there are more than one hundred investigations.

This is how it begins. Not with mass arrests or with news stations going dark overnight. Nor with millions of Americans suddenly losing the right to speak. Authoritarian governments almost never begin there. They begin by making examples out of a few people. They test the public’s tolerance. They watch to see whether fear spreads faster than outrage. They want the next person sitting at their keyboard to hesitate before pressing “Post.” They want us to stop before writing an email to a government official and ask ourselves, “Is this worth someone showing up at my front door?” If they can make enough of us ask that question, they don’t have to outlaw free speech. They can convince us to surrender it ourselves. That is why the architecture of what is happening here is so troubling.

Authoritarian governments focus on silencing dissent and consolidating power. Over the last century, we have seen other regimes follow some version of the same playbook. The Stasi in East Germany did not begin as a tool of mass civilian surveillance. It evolved into one. The Soviet Union’s security apparatus was gradually transformed from policing the state into policing the people. Under Augusto Pinochet in Chile, the institutions that were supposed to protect the public were redirected toward identifying, intimidating, and eliminating political opposition. The pattern is always the same. The office that is supposed to hold power accountable is slowly repurposed to protect those in power from the people they govern. And once that transformation is complete, there is no one left to investigate the investigators. Leaving everyone vulnerable to the whims of the man in charge.

We are watching that transformation happen again. The office that was created to investigate misconduct inside ICE is now investigating Americans who criticize ICE. The First Amendment was never meant to protect speech everyone agrees with. It exists to protect the speech those in power would rather silence. The Founders understood something timeless about human nature. Before a government can undermine elections, intimidate political opponents, or silence a free press, it must first convince ordinary people that speaking honestly is dangerous. That is why freedom of speech was not buried somewhere deeper in the Bill of Rights. It was placed first. They understood that if citizens lose the ability to criticize their government without fear of retaliation, every other liberty eventually becomes negotiable.

That is why tonight’s story is about far more than cryptocurrency or ICE. It is about whether Americans will continue to feel free to tell the truth tomorrow. Because if enough people become afraid to write posts like I do every night, send an email, call a reporter, attend a peaceful protest, or criticize those in power, they won’t need to repeal the First Amendment. It will still exist on paper. It just won’t exist in practice. And once a government discovers it can intimidate its own citizens into silence, history shows it rarely stops there. It pushes further. It tests another boundary. Then another. Until fear becomes the law, even if the Constitution still says otherwise.

So what do we do? We speak. All of us. Right now. Today. They tracked one man across the state of New York for one email. And now they want the rest of us to see that and think twice before saying anything. But here’s what they don’t have the resources to do. They can’t investigate every American who objects to what ICE is doing. They don’t have the bandwidth or the infrastructure. The system of intimidation only works when people are isolated, believe they are alone, and think the cost of speaking is too high and staying quiet is the safer option.

It’s not. It never has been. Silence is how these movements grow. Silence is what they’re counting on. We are not calling for violence against ICE officers. We are not calling for threats against anyone. We are taking a stand against what ICE has become, an agency that has killed American citizens, that is holding people in conditions that violate basic human decency, that has turned its own internal watchdog against the public, and that is using the full weight of federal law enforcement to punish people who say so out loud. We are calling for investigations into what has happened inside those detention facilities. We are calling for accountability for the officers who used lethal force against American citizens. We are calling for this to stop.

And the way we do that is by making it impossible to silence us. Post about it. Write about it. Call your representatives. Put your name on it. Do what David Streever did. Use your voice. Because if millions of Americans speak out at once, they can’t show up at all of our doors. They can intimidate one person. They cannot intimidate a country.

David Streever did not stay silent. He was handed a formal warning suggesting his speech might be a federal crime, and he still refused to back down. Today, he is the plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security. The man they tried to silence is now the reason millions of Americans know what they are doing. That is what happens when one person refuses to be afraid. Courage has a way of spreading faster than fear once someone is willing to go first.

That is our responsibility now. Not to answer intimidation with violence or hatred, but with more voices. More truth. More people willing to stand up peacefully and say, “This is not who we are.” Because they can intimidate one person. They can intimidate a hundred. But they cannot intimidate an entire country that refuses to surrender its voice. And every single day, more people are finding the courage to speak. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,

Heather

[Heather Delaney Reese]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 6, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson

Jul 07, 2026

Last week, U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team forward Folarin Balogun, the team’s top scorer, received a red card in a World Cup match against Bosnia-Herzegovina, suspending him for today’s game against Belgium. Then, on Sunday, the Disciplinary Committee of the international soccer governing body FIFA made a surprise announcement, saying that Balogun would be allowed a year-long probation, enabling him to play on Monday.

Almost immediately, Sophia Cai of Politico reported that White House FIFA World Cup Task Force executive director Andrew Giuliani, the son of Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, told President Donald J. Trump about the suspension. As officials from the U.S. Soccer Federation prepared and submitted an appeal to FIFA, Giuliani and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick offered White House lawyers and dug into the professional history of the referee who had made the red card call. Then, on Thursday, Trump called FIFA president Gianni Infantino, with whom he has been friendly for eight years.

On Sunday, FIFA cleared Balogun to play on Monday. The last, and only, time a red card went unpunished before was in 1962.

The suspension of the suspension has created an international outcry although, as the Associated Press pointed out, this is only the latest step in a pattern in which Infantino appears to have been interfering with the independence of FIFA’s judicial and disciplinary bodies.

The Belgian soccer federation is challenging the ruling. “Regardless of the sporting outcome of the match,” it said, it was “deeply concerned by the way these events have unfolded and will continue, in the hours, days and months ahead, to pursue every available avenue to uphold the fundamental principles of ethics, sporting fairness and the interests of football as a whole.”

The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has called the decision “incomprehensible and unjustifiable.” “When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined,” it said. “Football is the most loved sport in the world because it is a beautiful game and is trusted because it is played everywhere with the same laws.”

But a world in which playing fields are level is not the world Trump wants. He wants one in which people in power can ignore the rule of law for their own ends.

Today, at the White House, he told reporters: “So I saw the play. And I’m a person that loves sports and was a good athlete. And I understand sports really well. Really well. And that wasn’t a foul. That wasn’t even an infraction. That was two guys running full speed that happened to crash into each other…. No, these were two great athletes that got tangled up, and this referee, who— is a little bit suspect— if you check his, if you check his past.”

“[Balogun] didn’t do anything wrong, and he’s our best player or one of our best players, a very— vital player, and he gave him a red card. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t think it meant much. Then I started hearing that that means he can’t play in the next game, at least in the next game. I said, Boy, that’s a big— You know, if it happened to another player, it would have been unfair, but when they take your best player or just about, they have some great players, but, and they say, you can’t play. That’s very unfair. That’s, you know, it’s one thing to penalize somebody for the game. But how do you penalize them for a game that hasn’t been played yet? is very unfair. You can’t do that. So, yes, I asked for a review by FIFA.

“I spoke to a man who’s highly respected, and, by the way, whose level of respect has gone up tenfold, and he was good before this started. But, you know, he really pushed it in this country.” And then, Trump was back to his usual grievances. “I’m the one that got them to do it. It was not Biden. Biden was asleep. I got him to do it. In fact, it was very sad because I got him to do it. And if the progression was normal, I would have been retired. Now, the Democrats are saying, Man, we should have just let him have his way, he would have. We would have had him gone, but I said, you know, the saddest thing is, I got the Olympics, and I got the World Cup.”

The president of the United States pressuring the president of FIFA to change the rules for his favored player perfectly represents the way Trump thinks about the rule of law in the United States. And the rejection of a level playing field shows in the way Trump and the Republicans have skewed the U.S economy so only their team can win.

Almost exactly a year ago, on July 4, 2025, Trump signed into law what he called the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” It passed both the House and the Senate without a single Democratic vote, making it a signature piece of legislation for Trump and his party. As Shannon Pettypiece and Mike Hixenbaugh of NBC News reported on July 1, there was a “seismic shift” at the heart of the new law: it extended about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts to corporations and wealthy Americans over ten years while cutting about $1.1 trillion from healthcare and food assistance programs that serve poor and working-class Americans. It also adds about $4.7 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years.

Public policy scholar Chris Howard noted that the law so dramatically rolls back the modern government constructed during and after the Depression and World War II, from 1933 to 1981, that it amounts to “Robin Hood in reverse.” “It deliberately targets some of the most vulnerable members of society,” he told Pettypiece and Hixenbaugh, “while providing huge windfalls to the richest individuals and to big business.”

After the economic free-for-all of the 1920s led to the Great Crash and the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats began the process of creating a modern state that established a level economic playing field. They created a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, protected civil rights, and supported a rules-based international order. Then Republican president Dwight Eisenhower built on the foundation the Democrats built. Members of both parties supported such a system, recognizing that without a level economic playing field that made sure everyone had the ability to succeed, a few men would monopolize the nation’s wealth and power.

Their inspiration for creating a government that kept the economic playing field level came from those before them who had seen what happened when a few wealthy men controlled the government. In the early twentieth century, when corporations dominated the economy and their millionaire owners threw their weight into political contests, Republican president Theodore Roosevelt fulminated against that “small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.”

He insisted that America must break up this class in order to return to “an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.” He called for government to regulate business, prohibit corporate funding of political campaigns,

and impose income and inheritance taxes. He demanded a “square deal” for the American people.

In late 1901, financier J.P. Morgan joined the nation’s main railroad interest into a giant new conglomerate designed to get around antitrust legislation. In February 1902, Roosevelt’s attorney general told reporters that the formation of the Northern Securities Company was illegal and that he would be suing it. Businessmen were aghast, not only because Roosevelt was going after a business combination but also because he had acted without consulting Wall Street. When J. P. Morgan complained that he had not been informed, Roosevelt told him that that was the whole point. “If we have done anything wrong,” said the astonished Morgan, “send your man [the attorney general] to my man [one of his lawyers] and they can fix it up.” The president declined.

“We don’t want to fix it up,” explained the attorney general. “We want to stop it.”

As the Boston Globe put it: “‘Justice for all alike—a square deal for every man, great or small, rich or poor,’ is the Roosevelt ideal to be attained by the framing and the administration of the law. And he would tell you that that means Mr Morgan and Mr Rockefeller [sic] as well as the poor fellow who cannot pay his rent.”

And yet in 2026, Trump has taken to saying that those Americans calling for the government to maintain the rule of law to make sure the economic playing field is level, rather than working for corporations and the wealthy, are “communists.”

So he is looking to put a thumb on the scale of the midterm elections as he did in the FIFA match and the economy. Trump is demanding that Congress pass the so-called SAVE America Act, a massive voter suppression bill. Yesterday House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told the Fox News Channel that he will try to get Congress to pass the measure by using the budget reconciliation process. Since such a process cannot be filibustered, Republicans might be able to pass it despite Democratic opposition.

Trump has repeatedly insisted that if the Republicans pass the measure, they won’t lose another election for a hundred years.

“The game tonight’s going to be amazing,” Trump said today about tonight’s match. “We’re going to have a full team and Belgium is going to have a full team. And you know what? If they beat us, then they can be really proud. The other way, if they beat us, we’ll say it was— I say it was rigged just like the election was rigged in 2020.”

Tonight, Belgium defeated the USA 4–1 in the World Cup match played in Seattle.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Indigenous Australian: artist unknown

* * * *

A focus on linear, abstract, declarative knowledge alone not only fails to create complex connectivity but damages the mind. We are biologically punished for this destructive behavior with a neurochemical rush of lethargy and discomfort that most people call boredom. Extended periods of this affect a person’s mental health, resulting in bouts of rage, depression, and worse. In centralized knowledge institutions today, this illness is called misbehavior or misconduct. Without the spark of creation in your neural system, the mind-body system stagnates and falls apart, affecting not only your ability to learn but your health and relationships as well, leading to increasingly destructive behaviors.

If you are an Aboriginal person living in Australia, this will almost certainly lead to incarceration and/or a decreased life span. The creative spark is a process that allows us to solve seemingly impossible problems. It involves representing real-life elements with metaphors, which transform tangible things into spirit, images in an abstract space. That is the action of the line at the top of the symbol. In that Dreaming space, the abstract entities can be manipulated and reorganized to find solutions to real-life problems. This is how the thought experiments in this book have been conducted. For a simple example of this Turnaround process, consider the way four apples and two hungry people can be translated into the abstract symbols of 4/2. The solution (=2) may then be found in the abstract space, transferred back to reality and applied to share the apples equally. If one person has more nutritional requirements than the other, then the abstract of 3:1 might be applied.

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

by Tyson Yunkaporta

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

My Dream Job [Tuba Skinny]

* * * *

when the eye stops the heart

What then are we to do with all those moments when the eye stops the heart

That gesture there, that glint of beauty going by

And the thought, Who will remember it if I don’t? That daub of heaven on a half-lowered eye- lid

— Vasiliki Katsarou, “A Dab of Blue Paint” in Memento Tsunami (Ragged Sky Press, January 1, 2011)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Migrant camp at Bruzgi, on the border of Belarus and Poland, November 2021 - photo by James Hill for the New York Times.

* * * *

Tuesday 9/11/01 Lucille Clifton - 1936-2010

thunder and lightning and our world is another place         no day will ever be the same no blood untouched

they know this storm in otherwheres israel      ireland palestine but     God has blessed America we sing

and God has blessed America to learn that noone is exempt the world is one    all fear is one all life        all death  all one

From the Academy of American Poets Archives. This poem is part of "September Suite" by Lucille Clifton, 2001.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Okay, I gotta say this. I have not ever, anytime, in any of my life, seen either of my grandmothers in church. So you know how most Black people who ain't from New Orleans, they got that praying grandmother, and they got that cookie baking grandmama, and they got that other grandmama? Not me. One bet horses, and one had eleven husbands. A man is like a bus: miss one, catch the next. Those are words of wisdom from my grandmother.

In Our Mothers' Gardens (2021) | dir. Shantrelle P. Lewis

* * * *

I’ve learned love is like a brick, you can build a house or sink a dead body.

-Lady Gaga

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

INSOMNIA

All over the world people can’t sleep. In different times zones they’re lying awake Bodies still, minds trudging along like child laborers. They worry about bills, they worry whether the shoes they just bought are really too small. One’s husband’s died, her son left for college and she doesn’t know how to program the VCR. Another was beaten by her husband One is planning a getaway One holding stolen goods. One’s on the plaid couch in ICU. His daughter, it turned out Actually goes have a tumour Even though the doctor said they’d do the MRI just to rule it out. The woman on the other couch is snoring which is strangely soothing Evidence that people do sleep. Some are lying on Charisma sheets Some in hammocks Some in jail Some under bridges One is at the north pole studying the impact of pollution A man in Massachusetts thinks about a lover he once had in Dar es Salaam and the jasmine blossoms she strung along the shaft of a silver pin fastened in her hair at night. Coincidentally, the lover, now in Rome, remembers looking out the window over the sink where she was washing dishes And seeing him reading in the lawn chair and she thought how perhaps for the first time she wasn’t lonely. They’re all up. some are too cold, some too hot. some hungry, some in pain Some are in hotels listening to people having sex in the next room Some are crying One the cat woke up and now she’s worried about the rash she noticed in the evening and wonders if her daughter who’s afraid to swim should be pushed Some get up Others stay in bed They eat oreos, or drink wine Or both Many read A few make Hallowe'en costumes Some check their email They try sleep tapes, hypnosis, drugs They listen to their clocks tick Smartly, as a woman in high heels Those who can, cling to their mates An ear pressed to those neighboring lungs Like a stethoscope hoping to catch a ride on the steady sleep breath of the other to be carried like a seed on the body of one who is able. Right now in Japan dawn is coming, and everyone who’s been up all night is relieved; they can stop trying In Guatemala though the insomniacs are just getting started and have the whole night ahead of them. It’s like a wave at the baseball stadium, hands around the world. So here’s a prayer for the wakeful The souls who can’t rest as you lie with your eyes open or closed May something comfort you—a mockingbird, a breeze, the smell of crushed mint rain on the roof, Chopin’s Nocturnes your child’s birth a kiss, or even me—in my chilly kitchen with my coat on—thinking of you

~Ellen Bass [alive on all channels]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Judson Memorial Church

+

“As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.” ― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Yours is the light by which my spirit’s born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.

~ e.e. cummings

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Arnold Pouwel :: Wild Night

* * * *

I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Stevie Wonder - As - Live In The Studio 1976

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

As around the sun the earth knows she's revolving And the rosebuds know to bloom in early may Just as hate knows love's the cure You can rest your mind assure That I'll be loving you always

As now can't reveal the mystery of tomorrow But in passing will grow older every day Just as all that's born is new You know what I say is true That I'll be loving you always

always (Until the ocean covers every mountain high) always (Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea) always (Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream)

Did you know that true love asks for nothing Her acceptance is the way we pay Did you know that life has given love a guarantee To last through forever and another day

Just as time knew to move on since the beginning And the seasons know exactly when to change Just as kindness knows no shame Know through all your joy and pain That I'll be loving you always

As today I know I'm living but tomorrow Could make me the past but that I mustn't fear For I'll know deep in my mind The love of me I've left behind 'Cause I'll be loving you always

always (Until the trees and seas just up and fly away) always (Until the day that eight times eight times eight is four) always (Until the day that is the day that are no more) Did you know you're loved by somebody? (Until the day the earth starts turnin' right to left) always (Until the earth just for the sun denies itself) I'll be lovin' you forever (Until dear mother nature says her work is through) always (Until the day that you are me and I am you) always (Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky) Until the ocean severs every mountain high) always

We all know sometimes life hates and troubles Can make you wish you were born in another time and space But you can bet your lifetimes that and twice it's double That god knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed So make sure when you say you're in it, but not of it You're not helpin' to make this earth A place sometimes called hell Change your words into truths And then change that truth into love And maybe our children's grandchildren And their great grandchildren will tell I'll be loving you

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. It wasn’t the world being round that agitated people, but that the world wasn’t flat. When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic. 

 - Dresden James

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Lance Rosen

I Don't Need To Defend Democratic Socialism. I Need To Keep Proving That "MAGA" Is Just Another Name For The Nazis- Trump went to Mount Rushmore for several reasons. One, is that he wants his head on it. (I would be happy to place his real one there ASAP as opposed to a sculpture, but I digress.) Two, because the monument itself is symbolic in that it was built on the stolen land of the Lakota people, and that act of theft is described as "our heritage" by the racist white supremacists, pushing their mythological doctrine of "manifest destiny." Third, it is a Trump favorite location for promulgating the big lie that America exists because white Christian men built it for future generations of other white Christian men, "just like him." It is a special place for him because he feels that sculpting his obscene visage on Mt. Rushmore will outlive all of the buildings and places where he is obsessively trying to stick his cursed family name. Mountains are forever you see, and also like his "towers" they have phallic connotations. It is a form of self-consoling fantasy to help himself cope with the fact that he is the worst failure of all Presidents by any objective historical standard. (Though he has certainly broken all the records for stealing from the public to enrich himself, with the help of the Supreme Court immunity ruling) As we are aware, an egomaniac with narcissistic personality disorder such as Trump is perpetually frozen in time and space, staring at his own reflection in a fun house mirror, trying to pretend that his distorted image is the ideal of male perfection.

The irony of the monument of course is that on one hand the former Presidents memorialized by it, each of whom being both highly accomplished but morally imperfect, made world historic contributions to democracy despite their obvious flaws.

Two of the founding fathers, Washington and Jefferson, were slave-owners. Yet one led the fight for Independence and the other wrote our founding document. (Whose words an imbecilic MAGA influencer today would call subversive communism if they ever bothered to read it)

Another, Lincoln, was willing to kick the slavery can down the road if only the slaveowning states decided to not leave the Union. Yet he was the President who ended it, because he was morally opposed to it.

And a fourth, Teddy Roosevelt, was also a published author who wrote a book advocating racial eugenics called "Race Decadence," and who in his earlier phase as Under-Secretary Of the Navy helped drag the US into its stupidest ever imperial war with Spain. Yet he was also a "progressive reformer" who busted the trusts, passed laws to protect labor and supported women's suffrage.

But on the issue of greatest moral contradiction in US history, black chattel slavery, they were at best incrementalists who prioritized keeping the nation together first, in the hope that America would "grow out of" its institutionalized racism, as well as the culture of patriarchy. "Growing out of it" only became possible as a result of a bloody Civil War, and a 100 year long struggle by the former slaves and their descendants for the right to vote, to an education, to live in decent conditions, and to not live in fear of being lynched from a tree.

TR was on one hand an exception in regard to his positions on both slavery and women's rights. But his belief in race science saw its consequences put on trial a mere 50 years after his presidency in a place called Nuremberg, hardly the desired legacy of a "Progressive" leader.

Trump wants to gaslight Americans today and in the open-ended future by repeating the bad joke that he is the greatest of all Presidents. He, in contrast to the others, has no good side at all, not one positive accomplishment to speak of, ever. Not even by accident. Not even the stuff he makes up that he has pointed to as his successes are remotely good, except for his Nazi billionaire friends bank accounts. He doesn't belong on top of that mountain. He belongs underneath it.

Every day the regime and its propagandists give new meaning to the word "gaslight." The latest blast of MAGAsphere projectile horseshit was Trump's Reflecting Pool version of the Green New Deal, claiming Antifa vandalized it. Now we have a new doozy. Supposedly Saturday's Patriot Front "march of the deflated penises" in DC were actually "Antifa" provocateurs dressed in drag as Nazis. (Despite them all being clearly white men with crew cuts, wearing fascist tactical uniforms, trained to march in formation) And what line of crap does the White House have for their goons, that this march was likely paid for by "leftist Jews" George Soros and Mike Bloomberg in order to spoil Trump's July 4th? They don't even have to say it, that's been their standard diversionary lie for years.

And by the way, not that it matters to a MAGAt, but there is no real Antifa, just like there's no Santa Claus. No headquarters at the North Pole, no officers, no organization, no literature, no dress code. No Elves or reindeer. The people who carry their banners are largely college kids on skateboards with their earbuds in, who are anything but all-white, and won't even put their clothes away, much less dress in coordinated uniforms. You need proof these Nazis weren't Antifa undercover? Not one of them was photographed looking at their phones or taking selfies. Go try organizing a parade with a 400 person group of anarchists, and then get back to us to let us know how orderly it went, ffs.

Now, you are wondering what is the point of this longish, barely disguised rant?

Trump's "message" (if that's what you want to call his speech which was nothing but an Air Force One Barf Bag chock-full of bile written by Stephen Miller) was that he is declaring war on "communism." He announced that all people who are Democratic voters, or who don't like his hairstyle, that won't buy his Crypto, (maybe because it dropped from $75 a share to below $1.60) who refuse to order his cheapshit Chinese made merch, who won't lie for him, who don't watch Fox News, who don't think the FLOTUS Melania is hot, (or who can't even understand what the AF she's talking about because she doesn't seem to care if we do) and who object to his attempts to rebrand the Planet Earth as "Planet Trump," according to him are all card-carrying "commies." Wow.

We are all communists now, apparently. Well, maybe I would support nationalizing at least one or two corporations when the people get their government back. You already know which ones.

So, to recap, every single individual among the 63% of Americans recently polled who have concluded he really sucks at this presidency thing, must be a hardcore Marxist-Leninist, terrorist hater of everything American, who should be censored, arrested, indicted, imprisoned, or shot, just for starters.

Now, get this one, some of these same micro-encephalous MAGA bonespur-licking morons are incredibly claiming that the Democrats modified the weather in order to cancel their parade and fireworks. How did they find this out I wonder? Did they track the Amazon truck that finally delivered that Iranian made space-based geostatic global heating unit to DNC Headquarters last week? It was "Prime Week" after all. JFC.

If there is such a thing as an electronic Rohrschach test to identify symptoms of advanced untreatable mental illness, the overcooked vegetables that host Fox News like Jesse Watters and Laura Ingraham have filled that niche very nicely.

As with every one of his vanity projects, (I hate that expression, it's so lame) which are really just acts of narcissistic auto-fellatio that will eventually lead to his own self-asphyxiation, (though not soon enough) he wants to give Mt. Rushmore his head while he is living, so he can masturbate to his own image. Everything with him is a psycho-sexual pathology, now mashed up with a heavy component of dementia.

Also, out of pure malevolent race-hatred and revanchism, he is leading the campaign to literally whitewash American history, by purging our national parks, government buildings, and monuments of any exhibit critical of slavery, and defending the existence of hundreds of Confederate monuments (refurbishing actually) which celebrate the lives of that batch of traitors and genocidalists. But for Abraham Lincoln's merciful soul, moral pigs like Jefferson Davis and his cabinet, Robert E. Lee and his Generals would have been tried, convicted, and hanged.

Likewise, as we know, Trump is attempting to annihilate any physical or electronic reference to the historic achievements by women, ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, LGBTQ persons, immigrants, former slaves, and so forth.

So, last week, this failing, dying, decomposing morbidly obese serial kleptocrat and soon to be impeached walking thrombosis, schlepped himself off to Mt. Rushmore in his new Qatari gifted 400 million dollar flying Depends disposal unit, in order to have a conversation with an AI Teddy Roosevelt, about some pile of who TF knows what nonsense. Maybe Trump learned something about TR from his mentor Roy Cohn, who had quite a reputation as a "Rough Rider" himself.

So, back to the main thing. Trump is lying about the Democrats in response to the new heightened anti-Trump activism headed into the midterms, as reflected in the primary and general election victories of non-establishment Democrats. That's all that's happening here. He's scared of being impeached again and losing his Presidential legal shield. These candidates are people who stand in total contrast to the "do-nothing" Democrats who were silent when Trump bombed Iran on behalf of Israel, who triangulated on the budget, who voted yes to confirm Trump nominees, or just did nothing but give performative speeches for C-Span to help their re-election fundraising.

Some of these successful new candidates identify as "Democratic Socialists," and they and we who voted for them are now the targets of Trump's spectacular lies.

I have a problem with how we are reacting to this. It reminds me of the same timid, defensive, scared response which a majority of Americans displayed in the face of McCarthyism. We are expending way too much emotional energy in trying to prove that we are not communists. We are busy trying to debate with them about the benefits of social democracy by robotically listing all of the different programs which they and we benefit from which they think are "communistic," but are really not.

We are trying to convince them with rational arguments and a poop sheet filled with AI generated talking points in order to refute what is, in effect, a Manchurian Candidate type brainwashing program offered up by Fox News.

Too many of you are engaging in tit-for-tat debate with people who actually believe that Antifa vandalized the Reflecting Pool, that the "Patriotic Front" goons out celebrating the Confederacy and Aryan brotherhood were really just an outlier group of highly disciplined Nazi cosplaying anarchists, and lastly, that the Democrats somehow fucked around with the weather to make Trump look bad on July 4th.

You are trading talking points with them? Are you high? You might as well be arguing with the mold growing in your bathtub soap dish. Or talking to yourselves.

What are you doing?

This is what is wrong with social media, not the medium itself but the "ten second video" culture associated with it. You are digging for facts and information to change the minds of virtually psychotic asylum inmates who believe they are the authentic Napoleon Bonaparte. Of course you will get nowhere with them. What is even the point of lining up your facts like ducks in a row to refute them?

"Well, gee Elmer, I know how much you like your guns and want to kill a commie for mommy, but you do like getting Social Security right?" "I mean, c'mon Elmer, you know that without that money coming in every month, you couldn't even afford your shooting range membership or to buy Ammo at your local sporting goods store." (aptly named "Dick's" Sporting Goods) "So Elmer, the truth is, Democrats are really helping you to fight communism by funding your second amendment hobbies, that is, if they ever do invade us, right?"

That's what many of you sound like. You post these stupid-ass internet generated memes with all these lists of New Deal programs they call communist to try and prove to them that they aren't, and that Democratic Socialism is not the same as communism, that it is really a good thing, and that it's unfair to say it's not.

And we feel we need more information to defend socialism to guys like Elmer? To Fox News addicts?

It sounds just like people in the McCarthy era, trying to convince their neighbors that they are loyal Americans, not "pink," and that expressing dissenting opinion is really patriotic.

Talk to someone who lived through all that. People who lived in fear of the blacklist. Who were afraid of being labeled "security risks" and kept their mouths shut and their heads down in order to keep their jobs. That whole red scare period was led and organized by Trump's mentor and lawyer, Roy Cohn, who was McCarthy's general counsel.

Where do you think this Mt. Rushmore speech came from? He knows that the communist labeling will put people on the defensive mentally. We need to do the opposite, and not by running the red flag up the flagpole. That just serves Trump's purpose of dividing our ranks because the majority of Democratic voters, especially in the Midwest, don't like the label of "socialist."

Go on the offensive. We have mountains of evidence gathered over years that Trump is a serial rapist, a grifter, a fascist, a warmonger, and that his family is running a criminal enterprise. Attack the enemy, don't try to prove you aren't a communist, or make some academic argument on the benefits of socialism, or proudly proclaim to the universe that you are one. What is the point?

Why make an argument you'll never win, given that the people you are trying to convince lost their powers of independent judgment long ago?

Our problem is one of identity. It is a sense of littleness, capitulation to cynicism, despair, resignation, and dread. Social media is controlled by the people who are out to destroy democracy. They aren't telling you to hate democracy. They do it by cultivating defensiveness, timidity, and fear. Don't adapt to it. I won't, and I'll call it out when I see it. If we change our mindset and project our moral authority as the champions of Democratic values, then we can more effectively impact these idiots out there, and do it without a cheat sheet to read off a list of facts and talking points. That is how we will get past their fact-resistant low information barrier. By showing others that we have changed, and we mean business.

On that final note, have a good week, and don't forget to be offensive. 

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

David Hockney (British, born 1937)

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“The permanent is ebbing. Is leaving nothing in the way of trails, they are blown over, grasses shoot up, life disturbing life…” ― Jorie Graham, [To] The Last [Be] Human