People have wondered why I have spent 3 days mostly pushing back on this idea that "defund the police" is bad marketing.

The reason is, it's an example of this magic trick, the oldest trick in the book.

It's a competition between what I call compass statements. And it matters.

I'd like to speak the obvious necessary things about the Republican Party, the most central of which is that this is not an organization that is participating in democracy.

Rather, they are cynically utilizing our democracy's vulnerabilities.

The last two Republican Presidents to enter the White House did so without the popular vote.

The last Republican President to enter the White House with the popular vote did so in 1989.

Yet, when they win, they behave as though they have the mandate that comes with a landslide.

For example, they upend the healthcare program.

They give out trillions in corporate welfare.

They start torture programs.

They start surveillance programs.

They lie us into wars.

They gerrymander at every level they can. They deliberately disenfranchise. They make our elections so imbalanced they can get less votes than Democrats but win 60% of the seats.

They are not interested in democracy. They are not participating in a democracy.

When a Democrat actually does win the popular vote—by a lot—they behave as if they are a majority opposition.

They stall. They filibuster. They delay. They engage in deliberate sabotage to gain political advantage.

They are not participating in our democracy.

The Great American Forgetting Project starts today. They're going to simultaneously try to tell us the last four years were an aberration that is over, and that it never happened.

And it's natural to want to forget these awful years.

It's our moral duty not to.

Those who benefit from our country's malicious priorities will do everything they can now to get us to forget how incontrovertibly Trump exposed those priorities.

Many of us thought we were something better than we were, but now we know.

We've seen our nation's face.

And many among us knew the truth all along. Many of us always saw our nation unmasked, because they were the ones who suffered it.

They told us all along, and the rest of us didn't listen.

Now that they've been proven correct, we're going to be asked to not listen again.

We can't deny anymore, that there are people among us, everywhere, for whom no lie is so obvious they won't believe it, as long as they think it serves their ends.

They don't care about truth, and never did.

We should care about truth, and speak it plain.

This is us.

We've seen our national tolerance for open racism, for cruelty, for corruption, for false equivocation.

Not just the tolerance, but the enthusiasm.

Trump didn't create it. It was there. He exploited it.

We'll never become what we want to be if we don't admit what we are.

Republicans caused this to happen, because they wanted it to happen.

The president.
The Senators.
The Representatives.
And their voters.

An open show that they care about nothing but domination. That is their politics.

The American Fascist Party.

The gates were opened for them.

Later they were escorted out.

In between, they delivered their message. This space belongs to white supremacy, because this country belongs to white supremacy.

And now those who orchestrated it will pretend they had nothing to do with it.

"The worst of us are safer at their very worst than any of the rest of you are at your best."

That's the message. Republicans have delivered it for decades, last year most notably in their Covid policy.

They're very consistent to it.

The American Fascist Party.

If you belong to this party, and you aren't a white supremacist fascist, yes you are.

Yes. You are.

You just gave yourself an alternate reason to join. And you lend your support to the things an American Fascist Party does, which they do use, to deliver their promised atrocity.

The events of yesterday shocked everyone—with the exception of those who were pretending to be shocked.

But for millions of us, it wasn't a surprise. We've been watching what Republicans do and say.

An attempt to overthrow democracy was always the promise.

And still is.

A passage from a book I read in January this year by Megan Watterson: Mary Magdalene Revealed. I was flying to Perth, and it as my birthday (31st January - also her birthday) when I could feel myself activated by the Angels as I read this... given what I experienced on that

flight, so incredible. There was no one to meet me at the other end. I knew no one. I had to make my way to a friend's house where I was staying, and I spent my birthday entirely alone. I finished this book while I was alone with Her that day:

"If I could start over from the

beginning, I would start with the most invisible, the threads in the web of our ecosystem that are rarely named, much less revered. I would start by listing the trees, the flowers, the seeds that carry the light that give us light and that give us life, because its this we have

forgotten This is where our reverence has not yet reached. I would start with Frankincense and Myrrh, the Boswellia and Commiphora trees that made them. I would start with the honeybee and the sweet nectar it feeds on. I would start first with what goes unnoticed and with what we

haven't realised is the the most sacred amongst us. I would start with the names of everyone we have excluded: the street children, the millions slowly starving to death in plain daylight, I would start with the outsiders, the outcasts. I would start with every one of us who

#NowReading #ShoReadingList

दोन वर्षांपूर्वी जेव्हा मी ‘लीन इन’ हे पुस्तक वाचले होते तेव्हा मला कधीच वाटले नव्हते की ह्या पुस्तकाचा माझ्यावर कायमचा परिणाम होईल.
“खरोखर समान जग असे आहे की जेथे महिलांनी आपले अर्धे देश आणि कंपन्या आणि पुरुषांनी अर्धी घरं चालवतील. “
- शेरिल सँडबर्ग.

अध्याय वाचताना मला जाणवलं की प्रत्येक महिला जिला तिच्या आवडीनिवडींशी कोणतीही तडजोड न करता स्वत: चे करियर बनवायचे आहे, तिच्यासाठी हा manifesto आहे. या वास्तववादी पुस्तकाची लेखिका शेरिल सँडबर्ग आहे. प्रामाणिक बोलं तर मी त्यावेळी तिचं नाव कधीच ऐकले नव्हते.

काही खुलासे करणारे तथ्य शोधल्यानंतर मी तिच्या संदर्भात अधिक माहितीसाठी थोडा इंटरनेट सर्फ केलं. हार्वर्डमधून इकॉनॉमिक्सची पदवी घेतली व पदवी पूर्ण झाल्यावर तिला कॉलेजमध्ये वुमन इन इकॉनॉमिक्स नावाची एक संस्था स्थापित केली. एका वर्षासाठी वर्ल्ड बँकेत काम केले आणि कुष्ठरोगास आळा

घालण्याच्या एका कार्यक्रमाअंतर्गत त्यांनी भारतातही प्रवास केला. नंतर हार्वर्ड येथे एमबीए केले आणि वर्षभर मॅककिन्से आणि कंपनीबरोबर काम केले. माझ्यासारख्या भारतीय महिलेसाठी, तिने आपल्या पुस्तकात लिहून दिलेल्या कामाच्या ठिकाणी महिलांच्या वागणुकीच्या साध्या साध्या निरीक्षणाद्वारे

निश्चितच एक आदर्श म्हणून काम केले. मला वैयक्तिकरित्या कळले की पुस्तकात नोंदवलेल्या बर्‍याच अज्ञात, नकळत वर्तन तथ्य सत्य आहेत. त्यापैकी काहींचा समावेश आहे की महिला ज्या प्रकल्पात काम करतात त्या कोणत्याही प्रकल्पात पुढाकार अर्थात initiative घेत नाहीत,

If you're still in your 20s, read this:

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