"The Play Pretty Book" by the Kentucky Youth Research Center & Illustrated by Tom Whitaker

 

The title of this book uses an old Appalachian expression for children's toys, Play Pretty, and was produced by the Kentucky Youth Research Center and illustrated by the renowned Kentucky artist Tom Whitaker of Magoffin County who also taught art at what is now known as the Big Sandy Community and Technical College for many years.  It is subtitled, and further described on the flyleaf as "An Appalachian Curriculum Handbook for Teachers of Preschool Children".  It is an interesting piece of work and in some ways difficult to describe in a few words. It was produced by a committee of at least 8 or 9 people from the counties of Breathitt, Clay, Elliott, Floyd, Jackson, Knott, Lee, Leslie, Letcher, Magoffin, Morgan, Owsley, Perry, and Wolfe.  The book was funded by a "special grant from the Kentucky Social Welfare Foundation."  I have extensive experience in nearly all of the 14 counties from which the committee was selected from professionals working with preschool children.  For the first 6 years of my life, I lived in Floyd County within a mile of one of the hundreds of Appalachian coal camp towns, Wayland, which is still today one of the most physically intact of such towns.  For the next 14 years of my life, I lived and was educated in Knott County but still only three miles from the Floyd County line and the town of Wayland where on August 31, 2024, I will be attending the Wayland Homecoming.  I was actually born just across the county line in Lackey, Kentucky, in Knott County; and, ever since at least 1790 my extended family and ancestors have lived in Knott and Floyd counties.  For the past 32 years, I have lived in Morgan County.  I have also worked as a social worker, mental health and substance abuse therapist in Magoffin, Breathitt, Jackson, and Wolfe counties.  I have worked as an auctioneer holding both estate and consignment auctions in Floyd, Letcher, Johnson, Magoffin, and Morgan counties. At the risk of appearing a bit overly impressed with my own resume, I believe I can state that I am an expert on Appalachian Culture.  I believe that I can state unequivocally that I am qualified to discuss the many aspects of culture, education, mental health, and most other aspects of life in any of these counties on that list of 14 since I have also spent large amounts of time in all the other counties on the list. I have also coauthored two articles about culturally appropriate human services and culturally apprroprate supervision of counselors in Appalachia which are on the permanent data base for counseling professionals of The American Counseling Association  Therefore, I am proud to say that this is a book which was and still is well suited to be used in early childhood education for the children of Appalachia.  Admittedly, the book is a bit aged, having been published in 1975, but it contains a small fortune of great cultural information which deserves to be preserved and passed on to the children whose predecessors have lived it.  

 

The book is described in the introduction in this manner:

"We sent a call out over the mountains and into the hollers.  "Tell us about your Play Pretties, the ones you make and do at home with your children and grandchildren, and those you make and do at the centers where you teach."  Mountain Folk took time to remember Play Pretties made for them when they were children, Play Pretties they make right now...It was our great, great grandparents who came to the mountains...They didn't have toy stores in those days to buy us toys so they made Play Pretties out of what was at hand, corn stalks, buttons saved from the store bought clothes, leaves, twigs, seeds, and nuts." 

The book is spiral bound, 8 1/2 x 11 inches, and 96 pages broken into six sections entitled, "Introduction, Play Pretties, Let's Go Play, Fixin' Vittles, Jist Lookin', and Frolickin'." It is illustrated throughout with black and white line drawings by Tom Whitaker who is best known for his many paintings and prints of life in Appalachia during both his own lifetime  from 1945 to 2020, and the Appalachia of his ancestors who lived in the region for several generations before he was born.  The various sections address numerous kinds of Appalachian Play Pretties, how they are made complete with instructions, how they are utilized, and also includes some recipes and songs from the region.  I had strayed into a few apparently unused copies of the book in a sizeable purchase of books from the estate of a former Morgan County principal and teacher.  If you teach young children in Appalachia or are simply committed to the preservation of Appalachian Culture and can find a copy of the book it is well worth buying and utilizing either in a preschool classroom or with your own young children and grandchildren.  It's a fun and truly unique little book. 

Immoral and Amoral, Two Very Different Words

 

I have to admit that using a photograph of the cover of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as the header photograph for this blog post might have been a fine way to run off potential readers.  But it is a far better thing to do than to begin this post with a photograph of either of the two people whose actions have merited their mention in this larger discussion of two related, but very different words: IMMORAL and AMORAL.  Or if we use their noun forms instead of the adjectival forms: IMMORALITY and AMORALITY.  If we refer to the "Concise Oxford English Dictionary", which I do frequently, we find that IMMORAL means "not conforming to accepted forms of morality".  AMORAL means "lacking a moral sense; unconcerned whether something is right or wrong".  Now you ask, what on earth could he be thinking to write a blog post about just two words in the vast English language which has always required 26 volumes for the complete Oxford English Dictionary.  This is not the first time I have written a blog post about the differences between two words.  This blog post about "Practicing" and "Professing" came up for the very same reason this one has, because our country and our democracy are under threat today by some of the most dangerous enemies this country has ever had, enemies who falsely claim to be devoted to this country and the values on which it has been built and which have made it the world's greatest representative democracy.  AMORAL and IMMORAL are very closely related and come from the same root word, and they both refer to deficiencies in morals in a human, or more appropriately, in a human soul.  IMMORAL refers to a person who lacks sufficient moral values or moral fiber, if you prefer, to meet the customary minimum standards of a civilized society.  But the IMMORAL person has one unique quality which the AMORAL person does not.  The IMMORAL person has the capacity to change, learn, improve, and to develop sufficient morals in order to become a socially acceptable person who is worthy of trust, respect, and, in some cases, admiration.  The AMORAL person is not built the same way psychologically as the IMMORAL person.  The AMORAL person lacks the ability to change, learn, improve and to develop morally to become a better human being who is worthy of trust, respect, or even admiration.  Psychologically, the AMORAL person is a very different breed of animal and, even more to be distrusted, disrespected, and guarded against in all forms of human interaction.  They have no internal controls or moderating factors to make them capable of successful, productive, and humane interactions with the human race.  Some examples of people who were AMORAL instead of IMMORAL would include Adolph Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Benito Mussolini, and Sadaam Hussein.  

 

We are facing the most momentous presidential election in the history of this nation which is almost 250 years old.  Even the presidential election of 1860 was not as potentially consequential as the presidential election of 2024.  If the 1860 election had gone wrong and Abraham Lincoln had not been elected, the United States would have simply split into two separate countries and both might well still be in existence today.  If the presidential election of 2024 goes wrong, the most likely outcome would be that while the title of United States of America might remain in use for an extended period of time, the United States of America would cease to exist in practice, not just as the most powerful democracy in the world, but as a democracy at all.  Fascism and Democracy are the real opponents in this presidential election with Democracy, as it has existed for almost 250 years, being represented by Vice President Kamala Harris and whomever she chooses as her running mate ; and with TRAITOR Trump and J. D. Vance representing the future Fascist and oppressive entity which might continue to exist under the name United States of America but would almost instantly become a government devoted to the destruction of nearly all individual rights, and totally uncommitted to defending our mutual interests jointly with our long term fellow democracies. This election is literally a contest between Good and Evil, Democracy and Fascism, Liberty and Totalitarianism, AMORALITY and MORALITY.  TRAITOR Trump and J. D. Vance both represent everything that is evil, destructive, dangerous, unethical, and AMORAL in the world today.  There is no crime which either of these men will not commit if it will further their momentary gains.  We, as loyal Americans, must ensure that MORALITY wins in this election.  We must not allow two men who belittle anyone different from them, and seek to destroy anything human, animal, mineral, or vegetable which stands between them and their short term desires. As Americans at the voting booth, we must support Democracy, Humanity, Fealty, Decency, Patriotism, and above all MORALITY.  We must not allow our country to follow in the historically malevolent footsteps of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist Cambodia, or any other nation which allowed itself, in the course of human history, to become the slave of a dictator and that dictator's evil.  

"Too Much And Never Enough: How My Family Created The World's Most Dangerous Man" by Mary Trump--An Older Book For Today's Times

I had read this book by Mary Trump, Ph.D, in the summer of 2020 shortly after it was published but   never wrote about it on this blog.  I sincerely wish that now, four years later, I had not been required by circumstances to write about it after all.  Mary Trump is the only niece of TRAITOR Trump and a doctoral level psychologist who has known TRAITOR Trump her entire life. While she, like every other qualified mental health professional in America, has never been afforded the opportunity, or necessity, of doing a full psychological or psychiatric examination on TRAITOR Trump, she has a lifetime of experience in close contact with him as a member of the extended family and knows far more than enough about him to form a legitimate professional opinion about his serious mental illness. This book was a moderate best seller in 2020 and deserved to have been a greater success in the market place and to have been much more seriously regarded by the general public especially as they walked into a voting booth.  It is a book which should be required reading for every voter in America today four years after its publication.  The title says a great deal about how Mary Trump regards her TREASONOUS uncle.  Since shortly before the book was published, Mary Trump has devoted most of  her life to helping America fight the existential battle against her uncle.  She states in the book's first few pages that her uncle has serious mental health problems which are indicative and diagnostic of one or more serious and seriously dangerous mental health disorders.  

"Does Donald have other symptoms we aren't aware of? Are there other disorders that might have as much or more explanatory power? Maybe. A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe form is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others. Is there comorbidity? Probably...He may also have a long undiagnosed learning disability that for decades has interfered with his ability to process information." (Mary Trump, "Too Much and Never Enough...", pages 12-13)

That pretty much hit the nail on the head didn't it?  Let me state for the record that I have also worked as a mental health and substance abuse therapist for over twenty years although I am now retired from that profession.  I was a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor in Kentucky during the years in which I practiced and also served for a few years as an adjunct instructor in the same graduate school program in which I received my Masters Degree in Counseling and Human Development.  I concur with Mary Trump wholeheartedly. As TRAITOR Trump rose to illegitimate power with the assistance of Vladimir Putin's Russian hackers, I believed, like Mary Trump, that he meets the diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder but most other mental health professionals who have spoken out on that subject have refrained from actually saying out loud that he is an antisocial personality disordered person.  In my opinion, that fact has been influenced greatly by a long history in mental health treatment and diagnostic circles of never giving that diagnosis to anyone except criminals of the most dangerous and generally well documented kind. But what crime can be worse than TREASON with your country's most virulent enemies such as Kim Jung Un and Vladimir Putin, or stealing documents from the White House and refusing to surrender them when ordered to by the agency with jurisdiction over them?  TRAITOR Trump manifests serious mental health disorders every time he opens his mouth in a public setting. He is also a pathological liar and has one physical, subconscious behavior which is a dead giveaway every time he is telling a lie.  When he does that little, odd head bob to one side or the other, it is a dead giveaway that he is lying.  Mary Trump is not remotely the only qualified mental health professional to speak out about his serious mental illness.  Dr. Bandy X. Lee, M. D. edited a book entitled "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" which was written in individual articles by 27 of the best, most experienced, and most respected psychiatrists in America.  "Rocket Man: Nuclear Madness And The Mind Of Donald Trump" was edited by John Gartner, Steven Buser, and Leonard Cruz in 2018.  That book is composed of 23 chapters, an introduction, and an afterword with the individual chapters having been written by an equally well qualified group of expert mental health professionals and military experts.  That book was specifically addressing the overwhelming danger of allowing an individual with TRAITOR Trump's overwhelming, and overwhelmingly dangerous, mental disorders to have access to the nuclear arsenal of the nation.  I will write about it further when I have finished reading it.

Now, let's get back to Mary Trump's excellent book.  if you would like a little indicator of how much I value this book, consider that I had passed on my original copy to a family member who also passed it on to another reader.  Hopefully, that copy is still making a journey around the country through multiple readers' hands until it becomes dogeared, begrimed, and beloved by more than one reader.  After having given away that first copy, as this election became more and more ominous, I chose to pay for another copy in order to read it again and write about it until we are no longer endangered by the TREACHEROUS subject of the book.  I began this discussion of Mary Trump's book with a quotation from it's early pages.  Now, let's conclude this discussion of the book with another quotation from its final pages.  This quotation refers to TRAITOR Trump's refusal to take any action to mitigate the oncoming Covid 19 pandemic after he was warned multiple times in January and February 2020 that the pandemic was coming to America and could devastate the country.   

"Donald's initial response to Covid-19 underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs.  Fear--the equivalent of weakness in our family--is an unacceptable to him now as it was when he was three years old...Donald didn't drag his feet in December 2019, in January, in February, in March because of his narcissism; he did it because of his fear of appearing weak or failing to project the message that everything was "great", "beautiful", and "perfect".  The irony is that his failure to face the truth has inevitably led to massive failure anyway.  In this case, the lives of potentially hundreds of thousands of people will be lost and the economy of the richest country in history may well be destroyed.  Donald will acknowledge none of this, moving the goal posts to hide the evidence and convincing himself in the process that he's done a better job than anybody else could have if only a few hundred thousand die instead of 2 million." (Mary L. Trump, Ph.D, "Too Much And Never Enough: How My Family Created The World's Most Dangerous Man", pages 207-208.)

Now, let's remind ourselves that Mary Trump's book was published on July 14, 2020, and in today's publishing world, it is likely that the last time she had an opportunity to edit her text could have been a few months before that.  So, she had no idea at the time that she wrote the words "if only a few hundred thousand die instead of 2 million" that Covid 19 would actually kill almost 2 million innocent victims of her uncle's murderous inaction.  Her figures were pretty far off, but her accuracy in understanding and stating his willingness to allow his personal mental health impairment to facilitate hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths in America was right on target.  This is a book which every American voter should be required to read before ever stepping into a voting booth again.  You can find good, clean, used copies of the book quite cheaply on most used book websites; and, if you local library isn't influenced by Right Wing Radical Repugnican book banning, you can probably find a copy there.  Read it!  Study it!  Realize that it is factual and use it to influence your voting decision in November 2024.  

 

Minnie Adkins Day, July 20, 2024, Sandy Hook, Kentucky

 

Roger D. Hicks and Minnie Adkins

My wife Candice and I traveled to Sandy Hook, Kentucky, in nearby Elliott County on Saturday, July 20, 2024, for this year's annual Minnie Adkins Day which is held each year on the third Saturday of July.  Minnie Adkins Day is both a celebration of the life and work of Minnie Adkins and a general, small town Folk Art festival at which numerous folk artists from all around the southeast exhibit and offer for sale their own works. We both really enjoy the brief amounts of time we get to spend with Minnie and have also recently attended an exhibition of her work at the Huntington Art Museum.  Due to the fact that we both love and collect Folk Art, we have come to know several Folk Artists in the Eastern Kentucky area.  Some of them we might see and converse with a few times during the year, and others we only see at this affair.  It is always fun to see the art, talk with artists, other lovers of Folk Art, and a few of our neighbors in the area we might not have seen for some time.  It was also sad to learn at the festival that Lexington collector Thomas "Tom" Clark had died earlier in the year, and I had actually gone there wanting to be able to ask him about someone who might be able to repair a piece I have which has been damaged.  Tom was a great collector and dealer in both Folk Art and general antiques.  For many years, he had operated an antique and Folk Art shop on North Broadway in Lexington which he had closed a few years ago.  I had known Tom in a limited way for several  years since I had outbid him once for a piece at an estate sale.  He was a vast library of information about Folk Art, Folk Artists, and antiques and he will be missed by his many friends and customers.  

Minnie Adkins and Brent Collinsworth

One of the area Folk Artists who has become a genuine friend, and whose work I collect, is Brent Collinsworth who is a wonderful artist, great conversationalist, and a valued source of information also.  We were both able to spend some time with Brent and his wife at this festival and that is always a treat. Brent's work is always interesting, entertaining, and, at times, surprising.  

 

Tim Lewis

I was also able to spend some time talking with Tim Lewis who is a first cousin to Minnie Adkins and also a native of Elliott County.  Tim has worked in both stone and wood and has some of his work in the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, as does Minnie.  Tim loves to carve and paint birds and also had a good carved and painted depiction of The Last Supper at the show.  I was remiss in not taking an actual photograph of that piece and some of Tim's other work.  Sadly, he has had some relatively serious health problems this year which resulted in a hospitalization over last Christmas.  As a result, he had probably less work at this show than I have seen him exhibit for sale in the past.  Tim is also a great conversationalist and fun to talk with.  

Minnie Adkins Day is always fun to visit and participate in and has as many as 100 artists exhibiting and selling their work most years.  This year there was a threat of rain all day although it generally only sprinkled but it seemed that this had depressed visitor attendance to a degree. 

 

Watching "Judgment At Nuremberg" In Very Similar Times In America

 

My wife and I have just watched the incredibly well made movie "Judgment At Nuremberg" which was made in 1961 by Director Stanley Kramer.  The movie is about the trial of several Nazi judges at Nuremberg in 1947.  The movie was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and actually won three, including Maximilian Schell for Best Actor, who won out over his costar Spencer Tracy.  The movie was loaded with one of the greatest casts ever assembled in Hollywood history with Maximilian Schell, Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, and a young William Shatner.  But this blog post is not about a movie for a movie's sake.  This blog post is about the movie's depiction of a small part of the aftermath of World War II and its lasting effects on the world and how it is possible that the events which led to the trials at Nuremberg could be about to be repeated in America today.  

The movie portrays several of the Nazi judges and their trial for the crimes against humanity they committed for Adolph Hitler and the Nazis before and during World War II.  It discusses how these judges and, in particular, the judge played by Burt Lancaster could have been led to believe that their abuses of human rights could have been committed by men who had previously in their lives been relatively normal members of the German judicial system.  One of the most persistent questions which is still not fully answered about Adolph Hitler, the Nazis, and the ordinary German people who assisted them throughout World War II and the Holocaust involves the question of how the German people have been able to commit the atrocities they did, to murder more than 6 million innocent men, women, and children, to sterilize thousands of others, and to have driven hundreds of thousands of others out of the country.  The 16 judges who were actually tried at Nuremberg are represented in the movie by four characters played by Burt Lancaster and three other actors.  These judges held fake trials for hundreds of thousands of innocent German citizens who were sentenced to the concentration camps, and eventual death for most of them, or for compulsory sexual sterilization simply because they were different from the Nazis in some way due to their religions, racial or ethnic identities, political beliefs, or physical handicaps and disabilities. These people's fates were decided before they ever entered the courtrooms at the time someone in the Nazi chain of command had them arrested, sent to the court system, tried in sham trials with little or no evidence, and given sentences which were predetermined by the Nazi system and the judges involved.  After they were found guilty, the concentration camp system completed the work of the Nazi regime whether it be eventual death or a brutal life of starvation and slave labor until the Allied forces could win the war and liberate the camps.  

So the greater question, still unresolved, is this: could such a series of murderous, corrupt, and evil events take place in a country like the United States of America.  The common knee jerk response to that question is almost always "it couldn't happen here".  That knee jerk response was satirically portrayed in the song "It Can't Happen Here" by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention.  It was also tested under laboratory conditions by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram in one of the most famous psychological experiments ever completed.  Milgram's work is still a mandatory topic of discussion in nearly every college level class in group psychology or the clinical term social psychology. Stanley Milgram wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly prone to obey orders from their superiors since this was the most common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II. Milgram obtained volunteers for his experiment by advertising for people to take part in a study of learning at Yale University. The method of the experiment required that each participant was paired with another person and they drew lots to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher.’  The draw was fixed so that the volunteer was always the teacher, and the learner was one of Milgram’s associates at Yale who was "in on the scam" so to speak. The so-called "learners" were placed in a room and had electrodes attached to their arms, and the teacher and researcher went into a room next door that contained an electric shock generator and a row of switches marked Slight Shock, Moderate Shock, and Severe Shock. The shocks in Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments were not real. The “learners” were actors who were part of the experimental staff did not actually receive any shocks.  But the study volunteers were never told this and fully believed that the shocks they were told to administer were real.  The main goal of the experiment was to learn if the volunteers would continue to administer shocks to the "learners" which the volunteers believed would be capable of delivering serious injury or even death. The results of the experiment were that the great majority of the volunteers would continue to obey an authority figure to the point of administering a "shock" which they believed was capable of killing the other person.  The gist of the experiment was that American were no different than the Germans who had been those convicted judges, concentration camp guards, and other members of the general population of Germany who had assisted the Nazi regime in the murder of more than 6 million innocent victims.  

So the question now becomes what is the difference between normal American citizens today and normal German citizens of the 1930's and 1940's.  The answer derived from Doctor Milgram's experiment is that there was not in 1961, and is not today, one iota of difference between American citizens and German citizens when it comes to obeying people whom they believe to be legitimate authority figures.  And that is where we momentarily return to the movie "Judgment At Nuremberg".  It portrayed German judges, and discussed ordinary German citizens, who prior to the rise of the Nazi party had been simply ordinary members of society who later, at the direction of Nazi authority figures, murdered more than 6 million innocent victims, sterilized thousands of others, and were capable of committing any crime under the orders of their leaders.  And Americans today are no different.  And we are in a time, politically in America, when just such similar events could be possible if the American voters make a tragic mistake in the 2024 Presidential Election.  On January 6, 2021, we saw a few thousand "ordinary American citizens" commit both a mass insurrection and thousands of individual crimes against the government of the United States at the direction and incitement of what they perceived to be an appropriate authority figure, TRAITOR Trump, who had called upon them to "come to Washington on January 6.  It will be big."  The US Capitol was breached, seriously damaged, and five people died because TRAITOR Trump, a person those criminals believed to be a legitimate authority figure, told them it was the right thing to do to subvert the will of the American voters, prevent the congressional approval of that electoral process, and stop the US Congress from carrying out its constitutional duty by certifying the election of President Biden on November 3, 2020.  Today, we are faced with the fact that once again the Right Wing Radical Repugnican party has nominated TRAITOR  Trump as their presidential candidate, and he has chosen the equally reprehensible J. D. Vance to be his running mate. Both these men are malignant narcissists at the very least and are willing to commit any crime at any time against anyone in order to achieve their personal objectives.  And, at this point, on July 22, 2024, we do not absolutely know who the Democratic nominee for president will be which is temporarily clouding the issues involved in this most important election in American History.  We can assume the Democratic nominee will be Vice President Kamala Harris who was also a target of TRAITOR Trump's TREASON and his minions on January 6.  There is absolutely no doubt that both TRAITOR Trump and J. D. Vance would be willing in January 2025 to incite an even worse insurrection against the United States of America.  And, based on Stanley Milgram's experiment and the actions of the German people in World War II, there can be no doubt that many of the very same people who supported the insurrection of January 6, 2021, will be willing and ready to stage an even worse insurrection, kill even more people, and destroy the legally constituted government of the United States of America.  We also now have a House of Representatives under the control of the very same people who have never admitted to the fact that TRAITOR Trump and the actual participants of the Januarey 6 insurrection are criminals.  We also have a 6 vote Right Wing Radical majority on the United States Supreme Court which has already minimized the nature of the previous TREASON of TRAITOR Trump and given him, quite literally, a license to kill.  

 These times in America are just as dangerous as the times were in Germany in the 1930's and 1940's.  TRAITOR Trump is just as dangerous, just as demented, just as evil as Adolph Hitler was.  He is also just as maliciously and malevolently ambitious as Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Idi Amin,, Pol Pot, or any other malevolent dictator ever were.  He is also still under the control of Vladimir Putin and Russia.  We as American citizens must prevent America from becoming what Germany was in World War II.  We must go to the polls in the highest numbers ever recorded in an American election and we must elect the Democratic nominee no matter who that person is.  And, I can hear a few of you muttering "but what if the nominee isn't somebody I like or somebody who is qualified".  I can assure you that in America today we have roughly 45 million registered Democrats, and anyone of those 45 million people is a far more qualified candidate for president than either TRAITOR Trump or J. D. Vance.  We must, as a nation, do what we should have been doing in every election in recent times, vote Straight Democratic and prevent another insurrection by TRAITOR Trump and his Right Wing Radical Repugican followers.  We must not do as the German people did in the 1930's and allow evil in one of its most dangerous and virulent forms to win either at the ballot box, the streets of Washington, or the court system of America.

"Enough" by Cassidy Hutchinsion, An 'Almost Mea Culpa'

 

 "I had started my job with the belief that my colleagues and I were doing something important for the country. But when the "president" I had served wholeheartedly persuaded his supporters to reject the legitimacy of a free and fair election, I knew he was leading a dangerous assault on our political ideals and governing institutions for no other purpose than to soothe his injured pride." (Cassidy Hutchinson, "Enough" pages 353-354)

When this book was initially released, I decided that I wouldn't bother to read it.  But after I read Liz Cheney's fine book, I changed my mind and ordered the book based on the numerous compliments Cheney gave to Hutchinson based on their multiple contacts during the work of the January 6 Committee. In another relatively minor "three degrees of separation" connection, I have a cousin who is an employee of Christopher Newport University where Hutchinson received her degree.  They say they never actually had any contact with her on campus but did remember her from her time there without any particular opinion of her, either good or bad.  As I read the book, I found myself disgusted pretty thoroughly during the first half or so of the book due to her persistent use of the adjective "President" in reference to TRAITOR Trump.  It is a word which I never have and never will use to refer to TRAITOR Trump who is the ultimate recipient of the self-centered largess of Vladimir Putin and Russia in the form of his hackers having helped steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton  with a total margin of just a little over 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan combined.  He is a TRAITOR, a Russian Agent, and a clear cut threat to democracy so long as he is alive and able to further incite his cult members.  It will take at least fifty years of good, honest, democratic government to undo the moral and ethical damage he and his supporters have done to America, American Democracy, and democracy worldwide.  

Finally, as I read further between several necessary breaks from the misled praise of TRAITOR Trump, I found that Hutchinson did gradually come to her senses while working in the White House and struggled in her soul with the necessary psychic shift which was required for her to finally realize just how much damage he and his cult were doing to the country.  The first occasion I remember when I began to believe that Hutchinson was actually in the process of making that psychic shift was when she says in the book that TRAITOR Trump "...lacked the empathy to deal with the Covid epidemic".  But, over the course of her time inside the White House, she reached a point in that shift to enable her to initially testify in camera to the committee and then to agree to the public testimony which has now made her famous.  She developed what seems to be a meaningful and mutually respectful relationship with Liz Cheney which gave her the courage to eventually take the big step and cut her ties to the attorney which what she calls "Trump World" had provided for her after the insurrection and domestic terrorism of January 6, and search until she found other high level attorneys who have guided her through her final testimony sessions with the committee, the isolation she suffered afterward from the people inside the White House and the Right Wing Radical Repugnican party who made her a pariah in the circles in which she had previously moved.  She is obviously an intelligent, hard working, loyal woman who found herself in a position where her heartfelt version of patriotism could not be reconciled with a group of TRAITORS, domestic terrorists, and insurrectionists who were willing to overthrow the US government and murder Mike Pence in order to satisfy their TREASONOUS leader, TRAITOR Trump.  She also developed a relationship with Alexander Butterfield, the elderly former Richard Nixon aide who had disclosed to investigators that a White House recording system existed which eventually led to the downfall of Nixon.  She describes reading Bob Woodward's book, "The Last of The President's Mean", which tells Butterfield's story, and being deeply affected by Butterfield's morals which led to his being able to take a step in 1973 which was very similar to the one she had to take in 2021to testify against the occupant of the White House in order for each of them to be able to face themselves in the mirror.  

In my title to this blog post, I used the phrase"An Almost Mea Culpa", and I believe that Hutchinson came up a bit short of actually admitting that while she worked in the White House she was also partially culpable with TRAITOR Trump and those who perpetrated the January 6 insurrection and domestic terrorism for the outcomes of that crime including the deaths of five people.  That is a long step which I doubt that she will ever take.  This is a book which is worth reading but only after the prospective reader has read Liz Cheney's fine book, reread the US Constitution, and carefully studied a high school civics book.  

Pascal's Wager And The 2024 Presidential Election

 

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, and philosopher who was born in 1623 and died in 1662 at the age of 39.  Despite his short life, much of his work is still important to several fields of human endeavor today including decision theory, game theory, theology, and philosophy.  Arguably, the most important part of that work is Pascal's Wager which he originally created as an argument to justify the existence of God and to assist those agnostics who applied it to their cognitive processes to arrive at the conclusion that God does exist, or to at least convince them to choose to support that contention.  Pascal's Wager, in the most simplistic terms, says that anytime you are attempting to make a decision about anything which has two options you should follow this process in your decision making.  Pascal's Wager works when the two decision options you are considering have the following qualities.  One of the options means that if you choose it and are correct that you will win everything and lose nothing.  The second option means that if you choose it and are correct that you will win nothing and lose everything.  

The 2024 Presidential Election is the perfect situation for the use of Pascal's Wager.  We have two options in the upcoming November 2024 election.  By choosing President Joe Biden, we will be giving four more years to the same president and administration that saved America from both the Covid pandemic, which was never dealt with by TRAITOR Trump, and which began in the USA in January 2020 after TRAITOR Trump had been informed and warned by both the American healthcare community and the American intelligence agencies that the pandemic was coming and could destroy the country.  The country was nearly destroyed by the pandemic and more than one million innocent Americans died as a result while and because the illegal occupant of the White House was doing nothing, broadly resisting and refusing the input and suggestions of the medical community, and even suggesting that Americans should inject themselves with poisonous chemicals such as Clorox. In interviews with Bob Woodward, TRAITOR Trump even admitted to concealing and minimizing the danger of Covid from the public. If President Biden had not been elected and immediately begun to work with the scientific and healthcare communities, we have no idea how many innocent victims of the pandemic would have died.  TRAITOR Trump did nothing about Covid and President Biden saved the country from Covid.  The resultant economic disaster which was caused by TRAITOR Trump's initial failure to deal with Covid and the million plus deaths and the requisite quarantines and shutdowns of much of the country also nearly destroyed the country.  At the time President Biden won the election on November 8, 2020, the Dow Jones Average was at about 29,000.  Today, July 17, 2024, after three plus years of intelligent and productive work by President Biden, the Federal Reserve Board, and the entire economic community, the Dow Jones Average is at 40,000.90.  It has gained 10,000 points under President Biden and Covid is no longer an issue so long as we maintain an effective level of vaccinations, confront the antivaccine ignorance which was grossly exacerbated by TRAITOR Trump, and never allow TRAITOR Trump to get anywhere near an American decision making process again.  And with the two choices we face in the election, we have a clear cut case of how to apply Pascal's Wager in our decision making.  Additionally, TRAITOR Trump has been a Russian asset for at least 40 years, incited and defends the worst insurrection in American histroy, has sought to be accepted by every outlaw dictator in the world, and has steadily proven that he his unfit to lead a one car funeral.  

 

If we vote in support of TRAITOR Trump, we have absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose.  If we reelect President Biden, we have everything to gain and nothing to lose.  America has been salvaged from the disasters created by TRAITOR Trump over the period from June 16, 2015, to the present.  President Biden has not only protected America from Covid but also led the country to full recovery from TRAITOR Trump's destruction of the economy.  He has rebuilt America's respect in the world, protected Ukraine and NATO from Putin and Russia.  He has actually expanded NATO and with the admission of two Scandinavian countries into NATO  has given the civilized world an 800 mile border with Russia which makes it impossible for Russia to ever succeed in a conventional war with any NATO country.  He is in the process of doing what Ronald Reagan only fantasized about and is very close to breaking down the Russian hold on their country and its people with steady, rational confrontation, embargoes, and diplomatic successes against Russia.  

 

 

All you have  to do is apply Pascal's Wager on election day in November and vote to reelect President Biden.  America will be safe after that...except for a likely second attempted insurrection by TRAITOR Trump when he loses his third election.   

 

 

A Message For All You Rat Fink, Turncoat, So-called Democrats!

 I like the photograph of President Biden because it is one I personally shot of him when he was simply "the former Vice President" in Owingsville, Kentucky, when he was in Kentucky campaigning for Amy McGrath.  I know it isn't the best photograph anyone ever shot of the President but I still like it.  

Now, let's get to the real point of this blog post.  At this point in history, a couple of dozen of the slimiest, self-described, but at best questionable, self-described "Democrats" in America are on a misbegotten and self-serving campaign to force the President to drop out of the race for re-election simply because he had a "bad debate".  Nearly all of these jackasses fall into one of two groups.  They are either members of the House of Representatives who represent districts which are either swing districts or districts which have recently been gerrymandered. A few of them also represent generally dependable Democratic districts in otherwise Right Wing Radical Repugnican states. The other portion of the majority of these jackasses have the even more misbegotten idea that they are qualified to be President and think that if it comes down to a brokered convention they might be the nominee.  This group includes Mark Warner, US Senator from Virginia, and a couple of others.  None of the individuals who are trying to pull off this coup are remotely capable of winning the White House against even a candidate as reprehensible as TRAITOR Trump. Then, there are one or two more who are already proven idiots.  What they all have in common, and have already proven as soon as they opened their mouths on this topic is that they are willing to sacrifice both the White House and the country to keep a seat in congress.  It is long past time for all of them to sit down, shut up, and wait until several other members of Democratic party who have higher morals, better judgment, and more elevated IQ scores to tell them they actually know enough to be allowed to speak in public.  

Yes, I shot this photograph on the same day as the other. 
 

The question  now becomes "what does the average, loyal American Democrat do in the face of this asinine effort by a group of malcontents who are willing to destroy America for their jobs".  First, you don't fall for their jackass idea and remain loyal to the President.  Second, you work your ass off both in public and in private to help guarantee that the President is re-elected.  That means that you not only go to vote but you also get as many others as possible to vote for President Biden.  You speak out at every opportunity, both in public and in private, in support of the President. You confront this ignorance every time you hear it no matter whose mouth it is coming from.  Third, you wait for the day to come when the Democratic party once again has control of all three branches of government and prove that you have not forgotten what these jackasses have done and do all you can to help defeat every one of them in any way can and to guarantee that they no longer hold any position of public trust at any level all the way down to dogcatcher in some small, poverty stricken district.  

 

President Biden must be re-elected if America is to remain a democracy.  He is running against a proven TRAITOR, convicted felon, career criminal, pathological liar, insurrectionist, domestic terrorist, and idiot whose IQ on the best day of his life would have been 15 to 25 points below that of President Biden today or even as it is likely to be 10 years from now.  This is a race between Patriotism and TREASON, Democracy and Fascism, Statesmanship and Criminality, Morality and Amorality, Truth and Deliberate Lies, Decency and Indecency, Hope For The Future and Guaranteed Disaster on a monstrous scale.  Do all you can to guarantee that President Biden is reelected.  Do it on a daily basis!  Do it at every opportunity and work on a daily basis to create, locate, and utilize more opportunities to do the same.  

What Is A Scab?

 Recently on a social media group of which I am a member, I saw someone post a photograph of a group of scabs being guarded by Kentucky National Guard soldiers in order for them to cross a picket line in a historical Harlan County strike in order to assist the coal company to break the strike.  This person had described the scabs and their activity in this manner: "1939 Harlan County Kentucky. Miners being escorted to work by the National Guard. This is how the name Bloody Harlan mostly came about among other reasons."  This was obviously an attempt by someone with anti union sentiments to make the scabs appear respectable and normal as if they were ordinary coal miners which is the furthest thing from the truth.  I immediately confronted the anti union nature of the description in this manner: " You are partly correct but you forgot the most important word. Those were not miners. They were SCABS, the lowest form of life in the mining world."  I attached a link to Jack London's famous description of a scab from over a hundred years ago.  Jack London died in 1916, and I have no idea exactly when he initially published that beautiful piece of writing.  But it just as accurate today as it was when Jack London first sat down to write it.  I am including a small portion of London's description so none of you can ever say you haven't known about at least part of it.   

"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a waterlogged brain, and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.  When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out. No man has a right to scab as long as there is a pool of water deep enough to drown his body in, or a rope long enough to hang his carcass with. Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his Master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab hasn't." (Jack London, "Ode To A Scab")

 

This is a fine little story about a scab from a speech Mother Jones, the great female union organizer, told during a speech to striking miners in 1912.  

"An old Irish woman had two sons who were scabs. The women threw one of them over the fence to his mother. He lay there still. His mother thought he was dead and she ran into the house for a bottle of holy water and shook it over Mike.  “Oh for God’s sake, come back to life,” she hollered.  Come back and join the union.” He opened his eyes and saw our women standing around him. “Sure, I’ll go to hell before I’ll scab again,’ says he." (Mother Jones, "Autobiography", Chapter 11, from the website of The International Workers of The World)

 

Although John L. Lewis did not specifically use the word "scab' in the quote I am using below, he definitely was talking about scabs, gun thugs, all other forms of vermin which follow on the heels of corporate managers hoping to pick up some small bone or crust which these greater vermin leave behind for doing their bidding all the way up to murder and robbery, and they know in their small, black hearts that they are unfit to sleep in an honest woman's bed, eat a meal at an honest man's table, or father a child capable of becoming a decent, hard working human.  

“No tin-hat brigade of goose-stepping vigilantes or bibble-babbling mob of blackguarding and corporation paid scoundrels will prevent the onward march of labor, or divert its purpose to play its natural and rational part in the development of the economic, political and social life of our nation.”  (John L. Lewis) 

 

I must say here, in the interest of total honesty, that I have never spent one day as a member of  a labor union.  But I grew up in a home and a community where nearly everyone knew the important work that labor unions have done and will always continue to do for the good of all working men and women.  The hundreds of benefits which have been won for the working class have been won by the blood, sweat, and tears of good, fearless union men and women who have faithfully stood their ground against corporations, their officers, and their scabs until all those parties realized the error of their ways and stopped resisting union efforts to improve the world.  Several members of my extended family have spent their lives as union members.  As child by the time I was 9 or 10, I was allowed to read the "United Mine Workers Journal" each month after my uncle Mabry Hicks, an electrician at a tipple in Wheelwright, Kentucky, was done with his copy.  I often spent long winter evenings sitting in my parents' grocery store listening to the union members in our community talk about their efforts to organize, and how much they benefited from union membership.  As an adult, I came to know several men and women who had spent their lives fighting as union organizers all over Central and Southern Appalachia.  They served as my mentors and professors, teaching me on a daily basis just how important trade unions are to the success of America. I came to know at least four people who had been hauled in front of Fascist Senator Joseph McCarthy's committee in the 1950's and who stood their ground against his efforts to destroy their lives.  I attended the funeral of my brother Hewie Hicks who was killed in a nonunion punch mine in Floyd County Kentucky and knew full well that he might have lived a much longer life if he had been working in a union mine.  I know full well the danger that scabs have helped coal operators perpetrate against the working class of  Appalachia and other coal producing states.  I also know that labor unions all across America, in all forms of industry, have saved thousands of lives with the contracts they have won and the laws and government regulations they have brought into existence.  You should recognize these truths also and support unions wherever they are working for the betterment of working conditions for men and women in America.  Union, Yes!  

"Where All Light Tends To Go" by David Joy, A Book Without Light Or Joy

 

Sometime in the summer of 2023, I saw a television documentary about writers in Appalachia in which David Joy was portrayed as one of the newer and most respected writers of Appalachian fiction and ordered this book and three more of his novels.  I read this book with my wife shortly after it arrived, still don't know why, and have never touched either of the other two novels which I actually received.  I have also been quite thankful that one of the four I ordered from a used book website had actually already been sold but not removed from the website by the seller/member. I rejoiced when I got my money back instead of another of this man's books. I doubt that I will ever touch either of the other two novels unless I am snowbound for an extended period of time and have nothing else to read which is very unlikely since I own somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 books of all types.  I could very likely also buy copies of both "War And Peace" and "Ulysses" to hold in reserve for just such a blizzard.  DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF BELIEVING THAT I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK BECAUSE I HAVE CHOSEN TO WRITE ABOUT IT!

This novel is set somewhere in the Carolinas in a fictitious town in which the protagonist (and I use that word very loosely), the teenage son of the local drug kingpin, is about to graduate from high school and has an ongoing relationship with the most desirable girl in the school and hopes to marry her someday.  They have grown up as best friends from babyhood and the girl hates the occupation of this boy's father.  The boy is making what initially appears to be a genuine effort to avoid becoming his father's right hand man in the drug trade which they disguise behind an owner operated mechanic business.  The boy's father is well connected in the area and has strong and well funded connections with the local law enforcement which protect him and his drug dealing from any law enforcement interventions.  The boy's mother, divorced from the father, lives in another house and is a drug addict with a mutually negative relationship with her ex-husband.  The boy works daily to maintain acceptable relationships with both his parents.  

As the novel progresses, the boy finds himself drawn into his father's drug operation due primarily to his dependence on his father for his daily existence.  He also becomes angry at a party because a local boy with connections to the sheriff's department is making a move on the girl he loves. He savagely assaults the boy and finds himself facing several criminal charges and must depend on his father's connections to dodge the penitentiary.  He eventually finds himself present at what he believes is the murder of another young man whom his father has ordered his son and two of his henchmen to take adverse action against.  They dump what they believe is the dead young man over a mountain and somehow he survives which intensifies the attention toward all of them by law enforcement.  Our hero, and I assure you that is a misnomer, finds himself deep in the drug business and appears to be trying to get out somehow after also helping the same two henchmen to dump a different body in the local lake in his father's favorite graveyard.  Just as the reader begins to develop hope that the boy will somehow find a way to testify against his father and escape the clutches of the drug trade, he goes completely off the deep end, shoots and kills the sheriff when they come to arrest him and the novel comes to a very undesirable end.  

It is abundantly clear that David Joy simply took his publisher's money and ran, has no commitment to supporting Appalachia or defending it in any venue, and is unworthy of the positive regard of any citizen of the greater Appalachian Region, especially if such a citizen has any positive regard for Appalachia, Appalachian Culture, or Appalachia's hopes for the future.  He is simply another writer who writes well enough to be published in the drug store novel trade, and likely has no ambition to become any better.  

What do I have to say further about this disgusting piece of work?  David Joy cannot be perceived, in my opinion, as a writer who is worthy of the respect of other natives of Appalachia.  This novel makes it abundantly clear that David Joy joined all the other detractors and defamers of Appalachia and Appalachian people, grabbed the easy money, and acquiesced to the commonly held belief outside the area that all Appalachia's best writers such as Thomas Wolfe, Pearl Buck, Marie Manilla, and a dozen others can either go to hell if living, and, if dead, can just roll over in their graves .  He has filled this novel with every negative, hateful, ignorant, and defamatory depiction he could envision of Appalachia; Appalachian people; the drug problem in America which is not just an Appalachian problem but a national problem; and has clearly chosen to produce the kind of writing which those other detractors of Appalachia love to produce, read, and spread as far around the world as they can.  This is a totally detestable novel and unworthy of anyone's time to read.  DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF BELIEVING THAT I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK BECAUSE I HAVE CHOSEN TO WRITE ABOUT IT! DON'T BOTHER WITH IT!  IF NECESSARY, GO TO YOUR BATHROOM WHEN YOU RUN OUT OF READING MATERIAL AND READ THE BACK OF THE AIR FRESHER CAN WHILE YOU TAKE A CRAP! 

"So Much To Be Angry About, Appalachian Movement Press and Radical DIY Publishing, 1969-1979" by Shaun Slifer--Comments On A Book

This book was published by West Virginia University Press in 2021, and I read it shortly after it was released since I had known the primary subject of the book, Tom Woodruff, who built and ran Appalachian Movement Press for its entire effective life before he left the publishing industry to become a union organizer for Local 1199 and to eventually rise to be its national leader.  About a week ago, I had posted a blog post about John Hennen's excellent book, "A Union For Appalachian Healthcare Workers, The Radical Roots and Hard Fights of Local 1199". That review of Hennen's book is available at the link above.Tom Woodruff, the primary subject of this book founded Appalachian Movement Press in 1969 and ran it in Huntington, West Virginia, where he had attended Marshall University.  During several years of the life of the press, Tom was also an adjunct professor at The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College, a branch campus of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, which had been founded by Robert "Bob" Snyder. The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antoch College was initially founded in Huntington, West Virginia, and after a short time, was moved to Beckley, West Virginia, for the remainder of its existence.  The press published a large number of excellent, small publications with political leanings to the political left by authors including Don West, Bob Snyder, P. J. Laska, Rod Harless, and Woodruff himself. Don West eventually bought the printing equipment of the press from Tom Woodruff and transported it to the Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia, where he managed to use the equipment to produce a few pamphlets primarily of his own political oriented writings.  But the equipment was stored in the watery basement of a chapel at the Folklife Center and fell into disrepair due to the fact that West could not operate it himself and had no full time printer who knew the intricacies of operating and maintaining such equipment which Woodruff had actually bought used, and we might say "well used".  

 

In 2016, Shaun Slifer and  his wife paid a visit to the Folklife Center during which he discovered the press and a large amount of publications both from the time when Woodruff had operated it in Huntington and those few items which Don West has managed to publish after he bought the equipment.  Slifer salvaged as much of the publications as he could and wrote this book about the press and Woodruff.  He also implied in the book that there were other such Do It Yourself, radical leaning presses in the Appalachian Region at the time.  But the book contains little or no actual information about any of those other presses. It is fortunate that Slifer managed to stray into the press and publications, salvage as much as he could, and took the initiative to write the book.  It is, however, unfortunate that he did inadequate research and writing about the other implied presses of a similar nature.  That work remains for some other interested researcher and writer, if one ever appears on the scene.  I knew both Tom Woodruff and Don West, spent a period of time as a student at The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College, and lived for about a year at the Folklife Center. That entire series of experiences was one of the formative influences in my adult life as a writer and political activist.  I am grateful that as much was salvaged as has been of the publications.  They are a genuinely important piece of the history of the leftward leaning political actions which were taking place in West Virginia and Appalachia at that time.  There are some excellent photographs of some of the publications in the book which can serve as clues for any future researchers and writers who may take on the task of completing the job which Slifer began. I am proud to say that I own a few of the publications from that period. This book was a beginning but nowhere near the work which deserves to be produced about the Appalachian Movement Press, the Appalachian South Folklife Center during the time Don West was operating it himself, and of the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College at which Bob Snyder assembled one of the finest collections of Appalachian educators, political activists, and writers which has ever been in one location in the region for any significant period of time. That assemblage of people included both the faculty and several of the students who have gone on to produce effective works about, for, and in defense of Appalachia. All three organizations deserve to have their history(ies) fully and adequately told and preserved for the future in a single work which would address the interconnections and influences which existed between them.  Slifer's book did not even begin to scratch the surface of that collective history and the interconnections of the triumvirate.  Due to the fact that both West and Woodruff taught at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College and several students at Antioch worked with either Woodruff or West and, in some cases, lived at the Folklife Center, this complete story needs to be adequately addressed by another better researcher and writer.  But Slifer's book is worth reading for the student of Appalachia and Appalachian History.  The image below is of a literary journal which was produced by the students and faculty of The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College and produced at Appalachian Movement Press. 

Will This Be Our Last Real Independence Day?

 

Today is July 3, 2024, and the United States is  facing the most grave danger of being destroyed as a nation at least since Pearl Harbor.  What is even worse about this impending disaster is that the grave danger is within our own borders, centered in the 6 justices on the US Supreme Court who voted to give a convicted felon, Russian Agent, TRAITOR, serial sex offender, tax cheat, career criminal, pathological liar, and idiot a free pass on having incited the greatest insurrection in the history of our nation, having stolen and attempted to retain hundreds of classified documents which are clearly the property of the US government and no one else.  It is also centered in and led by that very same convicted felon, Russian Agent, TRAITOR, serial sex offender, tax cheat, career criminal, pathological liar, and idiot.  We are living the prediction of Nikita Kruschev when he said " We do not have to invade the United States, we will destroy you from within."  That dire prediction from the former Russian leader is being personified in the Russian Agent this country allowed to live illegally in the White House for 4 years after having committed TREASON with Vladimir Putin and Russia.  Just a few days ago one of this country's greatest historians and writers, Timothy Snyder posted a list of "50 Reasons..." why TRAITOR Trump owes a debt to Putin and Russia.  And, according to Snyder, every one of those fifty acts is documented in the public record.  That list of events which Snyder has provided includes occasions on both sides when money has changed hands between TRAITOR Trump and Russian people, probable intelligence agents, and entities, occasions when TRAITOR Trump has done political favors for Russia including the time shortly after he was allowed to enter the White House that he turned and brought the Russian Ambassador and a Russian (Translation: FSB, Russian Intelligence Agents) into the Oval Office. Those Russian agents were the only videographers and sound technicians in the Oval Office during that visit.  What do you think they were doing?  It also includes the deal for useless real estate in Florida for which a Russian paid nearly $100Million dollars, an amount vastly greater than the land's worth. There is also a great deal of credible intelligence that TRAITOR Trump has laundered an untold amount of Russian money through his companies.  Many Russian citizens also have bought units in the many condominium buildings he has built.  Timothy Snyder has been warning the US and our citizens about TRAITOR Trump for several years and his excellent little book, "On Tyranny", is one of the best examples of his many warnings.  But that book and read it closely!  It is small but it is a very important book in today's world.

Over the years since that horrible day in June 2015, when TRAITOR Trump came riding down that gold elevator at Trump Tower spouting the outrageous idea that he was fit to be the leader of the free world, I have written extensively on this blog about the grave danger he and those around him present to the country.  I know that a few people have listened to me and, hopefully, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of others have listened to the American heroes and heroines like Timothy Snyder, President Biden, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and all the other members of the January 6th Select Committee.  But we are still faced with the horrible possibility  that the same TRAITOR who has constantly exposed himself to be exactly what all of us have been saying he is, was, always has been, and always will be might actually manage with the help of Russia and other enemies of America to once again occupy the White House even after the Supreme Court has proven they are owned by the same enemies of the country which own him and that they will never make an effort to stop him, hold him responsible for his thousands of crimes, and will actually assist him in his efforts to destroy America for his Russian owners.  We cannot allow that tragedy to occur to the greatest country in the world. He must be stopped both at the ballot box and in the courts of the nation. He must be held responsible for his crimes.  He must be convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned or the nation will not survive.  The greatest democracy in the world will have fulfilled the prediction of Nikita Kruschev that they will destroy us without firing a shot, that they will take us from within.  We must vote, we must educate other voters, we must take them to the polls if they cannot drive, we must carry our lap tops to their homes and help them register and vote if they cannot leave home.  We must hold him responsible for every destructive action he and his followers have taken to destroy this nation.  We must ensure that democracy is restored to and never again endangered by traitors and agents of other countries.