Review of the Video Game "America's Army". Brainwashing Your Children in the Comfort of Home. Programming Them To Become Killers for Corporate Profit and then Throwaway PTSD Victims...

full text of the newspaper article I wrote for The Lumberjack Newspaper: 

US Army designs "shoot 'em up" VIDEO GAME.

I was outraged to see that the Taxpayers paid the US Army to create a Video Game that teaches teenagers about war and gives them an opportunity to explore careers in the military. www.americasarmy.com is the home of a game that lets people experience virtually the art of war using a military simulator

that teaches tactics and strategies to civilians. Blow stuff up too. This game is rated "T" for teen by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board.

Players may join virtual teams to compete online with others across the internet. A headset microphone is recommended for shouting orders to your teammates. The marketing strategy is brilliant. A teenager might make the intellectual leap from "Gee, It's a lot of FUN to blow up people in this Video Game " to "Gee, if I enlist, I can blow up people FOR REAL". A player may get a copy of the game on CD by visiting their US ARMY recruiter. The talents of a Video Game player would be very useful to an army that uses complex computer controlled weapons. I remember that the CNN broadcast of the bombing of Baghdad looked eerily familiar. The surrealistic green color scheme of the night-vision cameras and the trails left by the bombs seemed to be identical to the Video Game "Missile Command". However, unlike a game, when a player kills a person in reality they stay dead, no replays. The graphics in this game are superb, a typical scene shows oil wells and a "Escher-like" tile floor. The action appears to take place in a Middle Eastern city.

A link to shopping lets you purchase dolls to play with offline. Handy to have when your kid sister wants to serve tea to her dollies. You can have your action figures shoot up the tea room and blast all the bad guys. One doll is an Indigenous Soldier. "Special Forces teams have a proud history of training

indigenous forces to fight to liberate their countrymen from oppression". Another doll is a Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant. "The Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant is responsible for collecting and providing essential intelligence during missions, conducting and handling agent reports,

analyzing risks associated with friendly and enemy courses of action, and acts to counter or neutralize identified intelligence threats". Of course, the intelligent Sergeant needs a machine gun to fill out those reports. OOPS, I typed intelligent when I meant Intelligence... A slip that anyone could make... Assuming the Sergeant to BE SMART, not collect rumors.

A basic concept in mind-control is to saturate the subject with virtual blood and gore to allow them to become used to seeing horrible sights. When faced with actual blood and gore, the person is not offended due to familiarity. The actual US Military has been using motion pictures to train soldiers for

years. The first time a new recruit sees a "sucking chest wound" they are disgusted and often vomit. Upon repeated exposure, the new recruit becomes comfortable with the images. Training soldiers often uses the concepts of Pavlov and B.F. Skinner. This style of training is effective, a soldier should

not question a command but execute it instantly for the Army to function properly. If a soldier has lingering doubts about the wisdom of invading a foreign country that has no WMDs, no ties to Al-Qaeda and nothing at all to do with the mass murder on 9/11/2001, then they will hesitate when the time comes to pull the trigger. Just like practicing flying an airplane using

a flight simulator, a "shoot 'em up" Video Game can be used to speed up reaction times. This opportunity to program your own mind is now available to any teenager with a computer and an Internet connection. Playstation and XBOX versions are available too.

SEE, they learned a lot from project MKULTRA.

www.riseofasoldier.com is the website for the new version of the game created by UBISOFT. Epic Games designed the underlying architecture for these games. The U.S. Army announced that it has licensed Unreal Engine 3 for the next generation versions of America's Army. In addition

to serving over 5 million registered users playing more than 1.34 billion missions "a wide variety of agencies from the U.S. Navy to national laboratories have re purposed America’s Army for applications ranging from appended training devices for weapon systems to adaptive thinking and leadership training simulations".

 ~~~end of article by gregvanderlaan ~~~

~~~and now, years later... more thoughts~~~

Farmville is a completely different video game that is played by 1% of the world's population. It teaches cooperation and working together with your neighbors. If you help each

other, everyone benefits... quite a different message... Hopefully, this concept will spread. What if?

A friend of mine has intentionally selected people that live on different CONTINENTS to be her Farmville Neighbors. Some of the websites are written in different Alphabets and different Languages. Fortunately, we have auto translate built into the computer system. Babblefish and Google both will give a machine translation... Often that is  close enough for her to understand people a world away... If the internet can connect  us all, war will become a quaint historical memory... Why Not?

http://www.babblefish.com/ 

http://translate.google.com/

The game teaches scheduling and keeping appointments. Important life skills often overlooked in this ADHD world. A player plows and plants crops that are to be harvested in a specific time. If you plant a crop of strawberries, they are ready to harvest in 4 hours. If a player fails to harvest them in a timely manner, they wither and are not sell able. In my game, on the weekend I plant short time crops and during the work week I plant crops that take 2,3 or 4 days to mature. 

Animals never need attention... go figure... One would think that slopping the hogs would be required. However, it's just a game. I "harvested" my pigs yet got no bacon.

Two thumbs UP for Farmville. Both my friend and I feel it is a good game for KIDS of all ages.

Here is what my farm looks like. I found GOD on Farmville... Actually, CROP CIRCLES are a popular pastime on Farmville. People engineer beautiful farms and on the ZYNGA message board they enter their creations in a contest. With virtual coins as a prize.

This style of game has become so very popular that there are now MANY similar games. Fishville, Cafe World, Frontierville, Farm TOWN... all based on SIM. Simulating a real world scenario and letting multiple players interact on the same game. For example: I just sent my friend a Surfboard and now her gameboard has it proudly displayed. Another friend sent my the PINK COW that is the center of the "G" shown above. Without a little help from my friends, my farm would not be as fun...

and now ZYNGA, the parent company, has decided to borrow a billion dollars by having a Stock Market IPO. What could they do with all that money? Have they already built their good idea?  Will everyone who invests simply lose their money? 

I plan to buy some stock, for amusement purposes only.  Maybe they will give stockholders some cute virtual animals...

~~~~~~the IPO has happened~~~~~~~

Stock prices have mostly remained the same as the $10 they started it at. and the quality of the game has gone down... 

Remember: ALWAYS REFUSE TO VOLUNTEER FOR THE US MILITARY. Why Die For Corporate Profit? I Interviewed Hundreds of Veterans and They ALL Said Joining the US Military Was A Mistake...

I worked at the Welfare Office in Humboldt County, California and Talked to Thousands of Homeless People applying for Food Stamps, Medi-Cal and General Relief...

I Met Many HOMELESS VETERANS...

It Was Really Eye Opening To Hear Their Tragic Stories...

However... They All Agreed that The US Military Was a Bad Career Choice... PTSD is Very Real and Very Difficult to Help...

For One Thing, Many PTSD Soldiers Refuse any Help

FROM THE MILITARY... Too Many Lies Have Made Veterans Very Suspicious of Anything Told to Them By The Military Industrial Complex... Totally Justified Paranoia... 

****** (~);-} ******

Feel Free To Print as Many Copies as You Want

and Color Using Felt Pens, Pencils or Crayons...

Free Coloring Book - gvan42 - Peace Sign

How to Disrupt the Military Industrial Complex. A Step by Step Guide to the Violet Overgrow of the US Gubbermint. 

First Realize that: We Waste a Lot of Engineering Talent Designing Better Weapons. Those Draftsmen, Designers and Engineers COULD BE Doing Something Useful With Their Life BUT, Sadly, They Work for LaughHead, Raytheon, Dow and DuPont...

There ARE Meetings where Employees Decide WHICH CONTRACTS TO BID ON. We Simply Started Bidding on Civilian Projects. 

At MY JOB... We made Data Encryption Computers that Allowed USAF Airplanes to Communicate Securely with The Base. That Same Computer was also useful for Banks to Allow Automatic Teller Machines to Communicate Securely with the Bank. Everyone at Work STOPPED Doing Work for the WAR MACHINE and Started Preventing Bank Robbery... GEE, That's a Much Better Way To Earn a Living. At That Time I was Recently Divorced and on Dates, The Woman often asked "What Do You Do For A Living?" and NOW, I Had a Respectable Job! Many "Organic Earth Mothers" Select to NOT Associate with Defense Contractors... Just too creepy a Way to Earn a Living... Killing People for Corporate Profit... 

Not Only Do We Waste Trillions of Taxpayer Dollars Fighting Wars In Countries Far Away Against "Enemies" that Pose No Threat to the USA... But... We Also Cause Vast Ecological Damage. Depleted Uranium Bullets in Iraq and Yugoslavia Have increased Miscarriages. Therefore THOSE GENES will not be part of Future Generations. That's the Basic Definition of Genocide. Who Could Possibly Benefit from Bombing? All those Destroyed Houses and Destroyed Lives... then the people become refugees... WTF? And Lockheed Designed Smart Bombs That Kill People in Yemen That are NOT Attacking the USA instead of Designing Electric Cars, Solar Cells, Windmills or Better Air Conditioners...

Of Course, We Still Need People to March in Protest Marches... NO NUKES! Demonstrations Have Actually Worked! But in this Crazy World We All Need to Pull Together As A Team... People on the Inside, Voluntarily Selecting to Refuse to Bid On Pentagon Contracts... People on the Outside Beating Drums in Lafayette Park... OR BOTH!

How to Disrupt The Military Industrial Complex by gvan42
free coloring book art

Step Two: Use the Power of the Internet to INFLUENCE PUBLIC OPINION... Just Like We Marched in the Streets Protesting the Vietnam War AND EVENTUALLY CHANGED THE BEHAVIOR OF THE US GOVERNMENT... We Now Have an Opportunity to Digitally Walk Around With a Protest Sign Stating: "Cut the Pentagon Budget in Half and Refund the Money to the Taxpayers!"

A Handy Guide to the Violet Overgrow is Contained in my eBook called: AMERICA'S BOGUS WARS (Cut the Defense Budget in Half and Refund the Money to the Taxpayers) by Gregory Vanderlaan - Chapter Zero: Since 1945, The Pentagon Has Never Defended The Country, Not Even Once. Ever since VJ Day (Victory in Japan), All of Our Wars have been Marketing Tools to Sell Weapons for the Military Industrial Complex. One time there was a Need to Defend the Country and The Military Failed Completely. Civilians took down the Airplane in Pennsylvania on 9/11/2001. Frankly Speaking, Can't We Buy Total Failure at a Lower Price? gregvan@yahoo.com

Link to read the Entire eBook:

https://gvan42.blogspot.com/2019/07/great-book-americas-bogus-wars-since.html

~~~~~~ (~);-} ~~~~~~

and then... 

Take a Break From the Madness...

~~~~~~ (~);-} ~~~~~~

Infinite Rainbow in the Forest Mug FOR SALE!

Cosmic Rainbow Spirals 

in the Redwood Forest of Eureka...

Infinite Rainbow in the Forest Mug
by gregvan

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 at Google Image Search

using the Keywords: gvan42 free coloring book 

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Digital Rainbow Spiral Button FOR SALE!

Classic Math Art - a Spiral made out of 

Rainbow Squares...

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Digital Rainbow Spiral Compact Mirror
by gregvan

Digital Rainbow Spiral BUTTON FOR SALE! - 

Classic Math Art... a Spiral made out of a Rainbow Square... copied, pasted, reduced size and rotated slightly... again and again and again... Like a Tie Dye but Digital!

Digital Rainbow Spiral Button
by gregvan

Digital Rainbow Spiral Sunglasses FOR SALE!

Digital Rainbow Spiral Sunglasses
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US Army VX Nerve Gas Accident Killed 6,249 Sheep near Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Rancher Paid $376,685 for His Loss. [US History They Don't Teach in School]

The Dugway sheep incident of March 1968 made visible the military’s covert attempts to test and stockpile millions of dollars worth of chemical weapons...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-death-6000-sheep-spurred-american-debate-chemical-weapons-cold-war-180968717/

As more sheep sickened and died, spokespeople for the Dugway facility denied testing any weapons in the days before the die-off. But on March 21, U.S. Senator Frank Moss, a Democrat representing Utah, released a Pentagon document that proved otherwise: On March 13, the day before Sherriff Gilette came across the macabre scene, a high-speed jet had sprayed 320 gallons of nerve gas VX across the Dugway grounds in a weapons test. The odorless, tasteless chemical is so deadly that less than 10 milligrams is enough to kill a human by asphyxiation, via paralysis of the respiratory muscles.

Although the Army never released a full, detailed report, they paid $376,685 to rancher Alvin Hatch, whose sheep accounted for 90 percent of those afflicted. The military also lent bulldozers for the mass burial of the dead sheep, and initiated a review of the safety protocol at Dugway.

After World War I, in which every major power deployed chemical weapons—resulting in 1 million casualties and more than 90,000 deaths

Western nations signed the 1925 Geneva Protocol. The agreement prohibited the use of chemical and biological weapons, and for a time it seemed as if it would be obeyed.

But the United States never signed the agreement. Between 1961 and 1969 alone, the U.S. military spent $2 billion on its chemical weapons stockpile, writes science historian Simone Müller in Historical Social Research. Over that same period, the military dumped hundreds of thousands of tons of old chemical weapons directly into the ocean, without bothering to keep records of precisely where or how many weapons were disposed of. The military also discovered multiple instances of chemicals leaking out of their containers, including 21,000 leaky bomb clusters discovered in the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Denver.

Yet the American public was almost entirely unaware of any of the stockpiles, or the danger of testing, storing and transporting them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dugway_Proving_Ground

There were at least 1,100 other chemical tests at Dugway during the time period of the Dugway sheep incident (see below). In total, almost 500,000 lb (230,000 kg) of nerve agent were dispersed during open-air tests.[15] There were also tests at Dugway involving other weapons of mass destruction, including 328 open-air tests of biological weapons, 74 dirty bomb tests, and eight furnace heatings of nuclear material under open-air conditions to simulate the dispersal of fallout in the case of meltdown of aeronautic nuclear reactors.[15]

In March 1968, 6,249 sheep died in Skull Valley, an area nearly thirty miles from Dugway's testing sites. When examined, the sheep were found to have been poisoned by an organophosphate chemical. The sickening of the sheep, known as the Dugway sheep incident, coincided with several open-air tests of the nerve agent VX at Dugway. Local attention focused on the Army, which initially denied that VX had caused the deaths, instead blaming the local use of organophosphate pesticides on crops. Necropsies conducted on the dead sheep later definitively identified the presence of VX. The Army never admitted liability, but did pay the ranchers for their losses. On the official record, the claim was for 4,372 "disabled" sheep, of which about 2,150 were either killed outright by the VX exposure or were so critically injured that they needed to be euthanized on-site by veterinarians. Another 1,877 sheep were "temporarily" injured, or showed no signs of injury but ultimately were not marketable due to their potential exposure. All of the exposed sheep that survived the initial exposure were eventually euthanized by the ranchers, since even the potential for exposure had rendered the sheep permanently unsalable for either meat or wool.

The incident, coinciding with the birth of the environmental movement and anti-Vietnam War protests, created an uproar in Utah and the international community.^[17] The incident also starkly underscored the inherent unpredictability of air-dispersal of chemical warfare agents, as well as the extreme lethality of next-generation persistent nerve agents at even extremely low concentrations.

#BubbleUP Economics Works! Raise the Minimum Wage to 15 Dollars an Hour - Raise All Social Security Checks 15% - WE PROMISE TO SPEND THE EXTRA MONEY. Increasing Sales, Increasing Profits... EVERYBODY WINS!

What IS Bubble UP Economics and How Does it Work? Simply Raise the Minimum Wage to Fifteen Dollars an Hour and Raise all Social Security Checks 15%. Then all Those people will spend the extra money in their paychecks at American Businesses. Increasing Profits. Making Stockholders Happy! Then those businesses will have to hire more people to handle the extra Customers. Decreasing Unemployment Insurance Payments. Everybody WINS! With EMPLOYMENT AT A JOB becoming a Viable Alternative to Selling Drugs for a Street Gang, Some teenagers will choose Employment... Reducing CRIME... Reducing Costs for Prisons... Reducing Costs for Law Enforcement... People will buy more food for their Children. Causing Better Health and Smarter Kids... Starvation is Not Good for Children's Brains... Farmers will sell More. Truckers will move more merchandise to stores. Increased Competition for Workers will cause Everybody's Wages to Go Up. All those Workers will pay more in Income Taxes... That would make the Government happy... Right NOW, we are having a National Debt Ceiling Crisis because the Government is Spending More that it Takes in with Taxes... Bubble UP Economics would reverse that trend... The Money Bubbles UP Through Every Layer of Society... With a rising tide, every boat floats! We Tried Ronald Reagan's "Voodoo" Economics and It Has Failed... "People" Say That Bubble UP! Economics WILL MAKE Employers LAY OFF Workers... However... Employers HAVE ALREADY LAID OFF EVERYONE THEY POSSIBLY CAN... Have you Ever Seen a Business where People Work There but Have Nothing To DO? Never! 

Who Could Possibly be Opposed to the JOY of Bubble UP! Economics? Well, there are people in this world that have COMPULSIVE HOARDING OF MONEY SYNDROME. It's a Mental Health Disease just Like The Crazy Cat Lady...

~~~~~~ (~);-} ~~~~~~

and then on Facebook SC Said: 

This post has appeared in my feed several times now, and I'm disgusted by some of the things people are saying: calling employees "lazy" for not cleaning up the mess, and saying that they probably don't have enough employees because people "don't want to work because they get more on unemployment." I worked at JC Penney for 4 years, and this is very common in retail stores. It's NOT because employees are lazy. Employees can only do so much, and customers can truly be disgusting pigs! I could write a book about all of the nasty, disgusting things customers did when I worked at JCP. Employees did the best they could to keep up, but you can only do so much when a store is busy and you have to ring customers up on the register, or you have to help customers on the sales floor. During the holiday season, they hired extra seasonal workers whose entire job was to do nothing but fold clothes and put things back where they belonged, and even with extra employees, it was STILL impossible to keep up with the speed at which the customers went through and destroyed everything. This is NOT the fault of "lazy" workers. If you've ever worked in a department store, especially a big chain like a Macy's, you're not ALLOWED to be "lazy." The management makes sure the employees are doing their work at all times...and if a store is messy, I can promise you that there are people constantly working to get it cleaned up! 

I'm getting really sick and tired of hearing this mantra that "people don't want to work because they get more on unemployment." People DON'T get more on unemployment. Unemployment is NEVER as much as you make by working, and unemployment is finite. It doesn't last forever. Also, you don't get to just say, "I don't feel like working, so I think I'll just collect unemployment instead." In order to qualify for unemployment, you have to have been let go from your last job. You can't voluntarily quit a job and then collect unemployment. You have to be let go, and then you have to constantly show them that you are looking for work, and you can't turn down any work if it's offered. So no, nobody is just refusing to work because they'd rather collect unemployment. The system isn't set up that way. 

Customers in retail stores need to start showing a little more respect for retail workers. You probably look down on retail workers just like you look down at "burger-flippers." How DARE these people want a living wage?!?!? And in the meantime, you come in and trash their place of employment, probably thinking to yourself, "I don't have to clean up my mess. That's THEIR job! The lazy bums!" Show a little respect for working people. Quit trashing retail stores, and quit saying that nobody wants to work. And when you see a post like this one, quit blaming the employees and calling them "lazy." If you've ever worked retail, you KNOW this isn't the fault of the employees. They're working their tails off to wait on lazy, disgusting slobs who treat them like peons. Retail workers deserve a LOT more pay than they get, and they also deserve a lot more respect.

~~~~~~ (~);-} ~~~~~~

What did Timothy Leary mean by "find the others"? Did he ever expand on this phrase? (Was he around to enjoy its popularity?) How did this phrase describe his own experiences? In what context does he suggest this course of action?

Here's the full quote from Timothy Leary :

Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others.[2]

~~~~~~ (~);-} ~~~~~~

Since 1945, The US Military Has Never Defended The USA. Not Even Once. Ever Since Victory over Japan, Every War Has Been a BOGUS Marketing Trick Designed to Sell Weapons for the Military Industrial Complex. https://gvan42.blogspot.com/2019/07/great-book-americas-bogus-wars-since.html

~~~~~~ (~);-} ~~~~~~

Trump-0-Nomics FAILED the 99% Embroidered Baseball Cap FOR SALE!

Awaken Americans! The Talking Heads on TV Keep on Saying that the Economy is "Booming" - BUT - That's only true for the SUPER RICH... We the People are Hurting BAD!

Trump-0-Nomics FAILED the 99% Embroidered Baseball Cap for sale...
by gregvan

#TrumpHasFailed The U.S. economy suffered its worst period ever in the second quarter, with GDP falling 32.9%. Gross Domestic Product. https://gvan42.blogspot.com/2020/07/trumphasfailed-us-economy-suffered-its.html

tRUMP Fired the Entire Pandemic Response Team in 2018... INSANE! #TrumpVirus Has Killed 150,000* Americans SO FAR... More than World War One, 9/11 and Charles Manson Combined! (Death Total as of 7/29/2020) https://gvan42.blogspot.com/2020/05/true-trump-fired-entire-pandemic.html

Winners Don't Need Excuses. Trump Supporters Give Endless Reasons for His Failure... But they Never Dispute the Fact That #TrumpHasFailed https://gvan42.blogspot.com/2020/07/winners-dont-need-excuses-trump.html

Trump's Plan: MAKE RUSSIA GREAT AGAIN! The Big Winners of Trump's Trade War are Russian Soybean Farmers... China Refused to Buy from the USA, So the Russians Stepped Right Up and Took advantage of Trump's Mistake... https://gvan42.blogspot.com/2019/08/trumps-plan-make-russia-great-again-big.html

Remember: REFUSE TO VOLUNTEER FOR THE US MILITARY. Why Die For Corporate Profit? I Interviewed Hundreds of Veterans and They ALL Said It Was A Mistake... https://gvan42.blogspot.com/2020/01/remember-refuse-to-volunteer-for-us.html

There Was Fifteen Years of Peace Following the End of The Vietnam War. WE WOKE UP! Americans Refused to Participate in Bogus Wars for Corporate Profit. https://gvan42.blogspot.com/2020/05/there-was-fifteen-years-of-peace.html

~~~~~~ (~);-} ~~~~~~

Former GW Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson

"President Richard Nixon demonstrated that the GOP could win with a message of White grievance. That dubious achievement somehow got lodged in Donald Trump’s brain as a political ideal. But this time it will lead his party toward eventual and deserved failure.

Amid the social turbulence of the late 1960s and early 1970s, many White people were convinced that American identity was being assaulted, diluted or corrupted. Some tried to blame African American rioters, radicals and “agitators.” Some placed the main responsibility on hippies, weak-kneed liberals and pointy-headed intellectuals. Nixon took such resentments and sent them into political battle.

The strategy made political (though not moral) sense. When Nixon announced the existence of a “silent majority” in late 1969 and employed the “Southern strategy” in two presidential elections, he had two things going for him. First, about 88 percent of the U.S. population was White. Second, the social disorders that Nixon decried were widespread. In July 1967 alone, there were riots in Newark (where 26 people died), Plainfield, N.J.; Minneapolis; Detroit (where 43 people were killed); and Milwaukee. After the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in early 1968, violence spread to more than 100 cities. In that demographic and social environment, appeals to “law and order” were often disturbingly effective.

It sometimes seems like Trump has just emerged from a time machine — fresh from a delightful strategy lunch with Vice President Spiro Agnew, an instructive discussion on campaign ethics with Attorney General John Mitchell and an editing session with speechwriter Pat Buchanan. Trump stokes fears that minorities will invade the suburbs, that migrants will steal jobs and rape women and that Muslim refugees are “Trojan horse” threats. He attacks journalists as “enemies of the people.” He tries to lump peaceful protesters with violent provocateurs. It is all very much like Nixon — without the intelligence, military service, governing experience or geostrategic insight.

Trump’s advocates cite some factors in their favor. They claim that the dislocation caused by globalization is the dry underbrush for their populist wildfire. And among White evangelicals, Trump has taken full advantage of the fear and resentment fueled by lost social status.

But this is not Nixon’s America. About 72 percent of the American population is now White, and more minority children than White children are being born each year. Even given recent events in Portland, Ore., and Chicago, the level of social disorder does not compare to the late 1960s. A solid majority of Americans supports the aims of the Black Lives Matter movement, rather than fearing (as Fox News’s Tucker Carlson charmingly put it) that it will “come for you.”

It is absurd to talk about White grievance politics as the wave of the political future. Republicans are now determining if the 2016 presidential election was the last time this message worked, or the second-to-last time. The stakes are high between those two possibilities. But the direction of American society toward greater diversity is not in doubt.

This recognition (or its absence) matters greatly to the immediate future of Republican politics at the national level. One faction of thinkers and prospective presidential candidates (such as Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton) believes that the Trump wave is the new, permanent level of the ideological tide. They seek to practice Trump’s grievance politics minus the crazy. But they underestimate how discredited this type of politics has become because of Trump’s cruelty and deadly incompetence — and how complete the public repudiation of the GOP is likely to be in November.

The Nixon/Trump practice of White grievance politics is just one Republican ideological option. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ronald Reagan reorganized the GOP message around the principle of economic opportunity, arguing for the moral achievements of democratic capitalism. Reagan disciples such as Jack Kemp turned a message of economic empowerment into an instrument of outreach.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, George W. Bush attempted to reconstitute the Republican message around the theme of community. Since human beings are shaped in the context of social institutions — such as families, neighborhoods and charitable organizations — compassionate conservatives sought ways to strengthen civil society.

These are the three elements of the modern Republican ideological triad: identity, opportunity and community. Contending that the last two are discredited or irrelevant is a ploy by Trump supporters and Trump’s liberal opponents to reduce Republican ideology to identity alone.

The appeal of opportunity is never spent because it is the economic expression of human creativity and institution building. The appeal of civil society is never finally exhausted because it emerges from our need for belonging and love. You might as well declare that the human kidney or liver is outdated.

The Trump occupation of the GOP is an intellectual and moral disaster. But there are paths of intellectual recovery beyond the ruins."

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• 

  Since there are NO ACTUAL JOBS Designing or Building Nuclear Power Plants, Most Physics Graduates Write Newspaper and Magazine Articles About HOW GREAT ATOMIC ENERGY IS and How We Really Ought to Build Some Power Plants... Hey, It's Work!

  Remember: Every Year There are Fewer and Fewer Nuclear Power Plants Because ACTUAL Professionals That Work at ACTUAL Power Companies All Say...
• 

  HEADLINE: Trump Plans to Start Holding More Campaign Rallies... WONDERFUL! More Superspreader Events Designed to Infect His Followers.

   In Other News...  CAUGHT! Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire! Right Wing Whack Job Resigns after False Store Revealed... SEE? It's NOT FUN To Be...
• 

  The Number of Uneducated Racist Old White Men is Shrinking... Most Voters are Young People, Minorities, Women or College Graduates. The GOP is Doomed... DOOMED!

  Kamala Harris, Daughter of Immigrants, Is the Face of America’s Demographic Shift... Her parents’ arrival to Berkeley as young graduat...
• 

  The GOP is Officially the "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire" Party. #RUNAWAY - They Rejected Liz Cheney for Telling the Truth. In Fact, #DumpTrump Lost the 2020 Election and It Was NOT Stolen. The People of the USA Simply Voted Against #TotalFailureDonald and His #QAnon FREAKS!

  Since the GOP Cannot Run on What a Wonderful Job They Did... They Endlessly LIE... and Try To Make It Difficult for Voters to Vote... and Di...

Pop Quiz

POP QUIZ! WHAT DO THESE PEOPLE HAVE IN COMMON??? Steve Bannon=Arrested, Roger Stone=Guilty, Paul Manafort=Guilty, Mike Flynn=Guilty, Michael Cohen=Guilty, Rick Gates=Guilty, George Papadopoulos=Guilty, Alexander Vanderzwaan=Guilty, Maria Butina=Guilty, Paul Erickson = Guilty, Duncan Hunter=Guilty, Chris Collins=Guilty, George Nader=Guilty, Elliott Broidy=Arrested
AND... 441 TrumpNiks® Have Been Arrested for the FAILED OVERTHROW OF THE US GOVERNMENT on 1/6/2021... CAN YOU SPOT THE FREAKING TREND?
HERE IS THE ANSWER TO THIS CRYPTIC PUZZLE!

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