Who Would Have Thought?

In 2016, I cancelled my subscription to the New York Times for one reason: the coverage of candidate Donald J. Trump was appalling. I waited for "all the news that's fit to print" to hit page one. "The Donald" was, after all, a hometown boy, of sorts. Business was his middle name around Manhattan real estate with a reputation as tall as any skyscraper that he owned. Around that time, I heard an NPR story that described the Russian mafia's relationship with DJT in great detail. (Remember these were early days.)

The "Times", that is, The New York Times

hardly wrote about those connections, or

his long-standing practice of racism toward black tenants, the fake"University" that ripped off innocent people, the sexual abuses of women in and around the Big Apple. Instead, the "man of the hour" got a pass from the largest paper of record in the US when it should have been exposing him as the man that he is not. Instead, the NYT gave space to escapades of one of the rich and famous (Think Elon Musk) moving about in a jet plane with his name in letters that can be read from the ground. Reporters didn't dog this candidate in the early days when it mattered most. Yet, they pounced on other candidates running for President of the free world. The outcome could not have been worse. I blamed the NYT for its failure to tell the truth about this person who swore with his hand on a Bible on a bitter January day in 2016 to uphold the Constitution.

If he were a "fair-haired" boy, a "golden boy" with a lineage to boast and a record to back it up, then one might almost understand propping up such a stalwart despite shortcomings. (Think JFK) But, let's be honest, this towhead bears no resemblance to any other Presidential candidate to have ever faced reporters' questions so often designed for a lame brain. There is no other way to understand how such a swindler has gotten so far, and away with so much. In days since, the NYT cannot give enough coverage to the truth about this candidate now trolling for another "get out of jail free" card, which seems to be handed out like candy from judges in high and low courts and even the media.

You can pull the wool over people's eyes with lies that go unchecked, un-fact checked, that is. The job of the free press is to keep us informed about those wolves in sheep's clothing. The NTY, in my humble opinion, failed and has been trying ever since to make up for the worst possible outcome this country has ever experienced. I have not returned to that publication for my news. There are other sources that so far have earned my trust.

The NYT gets a second chance to do their job by giving fair and balanced coverage to all candidates. This may feel like "Her Moment" to ride a wave to victory, thereby sinking the second presidency of the one who shall not be named here, but who must be named and called out in bold face by major publications like the NYT for his woeful limitations, and most importantly for the plethora of lies that go unchallenged. We shall see what the next 90 days bring.

Childless Cat Lady Julian

Mystic and First Woman to Write

a book in English in the Fourteenth Century.

She lived alone, indeed, with a cat, in a cell called an Anchorage, attached to St. Julian's Church in Norwich, England.

There she lived and there she wrote Revelations of Divine Love during the infamous Black Death plagues.

Her message of hope was embraced by those who came to her window to hear about Love, Divine Love.

It's been 650 years, but Lady Julian has not been forgotten by the world writ large.

She lived as the insider/outsider in the in-between space, the liminal

space. Her theology was founded there. It is a “thinking/experiential” theology born of her mystical encounters with the Divine. The message lived beyond the church’s oppressive authority. She was never called a heretic, she was never sainted. She was someone between the two, careful with her words to honor “Holy church” while sharing with her “Even Christians”, like us, the message of hope and unconditional love. Pilgrims, like me, travel long distances to sit in her Anchorage. Some of her titles are: Lady Julian, Mother Julian, Dame Julian.

Photo of the Anchorage attached to St. Julian's Church, Norwich.

What hasn't changed?

What a whirlwind of change we are witnessing. When the time is right, things happen. Some Eastern traditions would call it the "auspicious time"; others might say, in "God's time". Eastern or Western points of view in this case amount to the same ideology that things move whenever greater forces are at work. Something is clearly at work, no matter how you look at it. With 100 days to go, change is breathing new life into the upcoming US Presidential election. Seeing new faces, it's easy to think that everything has changed and that we've turned a corner, no worries. But, look beneath the surface to see a whole 'nother story.

There has been zero change in the past week, nor will there be in the next four months to the hard right's agenda to end abortions; protect guns; deport migrants; ban books; eliminate LGBTQ+. Their message is loud and clear. They have written a manifesto, Project 2025, a mega 900-plus page document is an attempt to rewrite the United States Constitution. A side by side comparison of a small excerpt proves the point:

Chapter Two of Project 2025*

The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power— including power currently held by the executive branch—to the American people. Success in meeting that challenge will require a rare combination of boldness and self-denial: boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will and self-denial to use the bureaucratic machine to send power away from Washington and back to America’s families, faith communities, local governments, and states. Fortunately, a President who is willing to lead will find in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) the levers necessary to reverse this trend and impose a sound direction for the nation on the federal bureaucracy. The effectiveness of those EOP levers depends on the fundamental premise that it is the President’s agenda that should matter to the departments and agencies) that operate under his constitutional authority and that, as a general matter, it is the President’s chosen advisers who have the best sense of the President’s aims and intentions, both with respect to the policies he intends to enact and with respect to the interests that must be secured to govern successfully on behalf of the American people.

Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution:**

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

That's not all. There is also citizen's "call to action" wrapped in a "training" academy to prepare (?) for Day One:

The Presidential Administration Academy is a one-of-a-kind educational and skill-building program designed to prepare and equip future political appointees now to be ready on Day One of the next conservative Administration. This academy provides aspiring appointees with the insight, background knowledge, and expertise in governance to immediately begin rolling back destructive policy and advancing conservative ideas in the federal government.***

"Aspiring appointees . . ." Who might they be? A book published in 1955: They Thought They Were Free, The Germans ,1933-45 by Milton Mayer is a sobering look-back on the rise of Naziism under Hitler. The author interviewed ten former Nazis. He wanted to understand how ordinary, every day German people had done, or not done the unthinkable on their own, during the years leading to and including Hitler's reign of terror. More striking than the interviews themselves, is the foreword written by the author in which he spells out his own sense of what had gone so terribly wrong:

. . ."I would rather judge Germans than Americans. Now I see a little better how Nazism overcame Germany --not by attack from without or by subversion from within, but with a whoop and a holler. It was what most Germans wanted --or under pressure of combined reality and illusion, came to want. They wanted it; they got it; and they liked it.

I came back home a little afraid for my country, afraid of what it might want, and get, and like, under pressure of combined reality and illusion. I felt --and feel--that it was not German Man that I had met, but Man. He happened to be in Germany under certain conditions. He might be here, under certain conditions. He might, under certain conditions, be I.

If I--and my countrymen--ever succumbed to that concatenation of condition, no Constitution, no laws, no police, and certainly no army would be able to protect us from harm." ****

The race is on to protect ourselves against nefarious forces at work by lifting up the work and good will of the majority. We the people are here at this auspicious time in history. This is the time to add our voices and to take action to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States of America as written. This is not going to be a "cakewalk".

As Written and in the National Archives

*https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf

**https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text

***https://www.project2025.org/training/presidential-administration-academy/

****They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1933-45. Mayer.1955