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Call your Congresscritters! Keep Calling!
I was going to write about Intellectual Humility as discussed in David McRaney’s podcast, You Are Not So Smart, Episode 322.
Maybe next week.
In the meantime I invite you to listen to the episode and possibly subscribe to McRaney’s podcast.
It’s a dose of sanity in a world that’s going off the rails.
The murder of Charlie Kirk last week was horrendous, as was the school shooting in Evergreen, CO on the same day, the murder of a Minnesota State House member and her husband in June and the 302 people killed, 1,354 people wounded in 309 mass shootings in the US as of August 31, 2025.1
For the record, no matter how much I disagree with someone, I don’t think they should be shot. Or punched. Or physically attacked in any way.
I have a lot of issues with what Charlie Kirk had to say. He identified as a Christian Nationalist.
I could write a whole column on how I think that the Christian Nationalist movement is, to be charitable, misinformed. But not today.
My main concern as I sit and type this is the reaction to this murder by spokespeople for the right wing.
Within hours our Convict-in-Chief blamed “the radical left” for the shooting. At that point nobody knew who fired the shot, much less what their motive(s) might have been.
A week later a suspect has been arrested and charged, and the evidence against him appears to be strong, but he’s not talking.
There is lots of speculation on his motive(s) from questioning of his family and roommate, who may or may not be a transgender woman who may or may not have been in a romantic relationship with him.
According to news coverage I’ve seen, his extremely religious and right wing family speculate that his politics have moved left over the last year or so, but what looks left wing to devout Mormon parents may be pretty middle-of-the-road to other folks.
So I’m waiting for more information before I start attributing one or more motives to this alleged murderer.2
However, a lot of prominent right wing spokespeople are putting the blame squarely on the “radical left.”
As near as I can tell, these folks think that anyone who has the audacity to criticize or question the policies of the current administration is on the “radical left.”
I guess by their definition that makes me a radical leftist.
But the funniest thing I’m hearing is our President and his spokescritters promising they will investigate antifa.
In a very real sense, there is no such thing as antifa. It’s short for “anti-fascist.”
Seems to me being against fascism is a good thing.
There is no organization called “antifa.” There is an antifa.org website. It is a joke site with one page, no links:
I guess you could call antifa a movement. It’s like being a fan of a sports franchise. Or a vegan. Or a pastafarian3.
There is no leader. There is no headquarters. There is nobody to investigate.
There is just a very, very loose movement of people who think fascism and authoritarianism are bad ideas.
Many of these people4 think our current president and most, if not all of his cabinet, staff, and political appointees are totally unqualified for their jobs.
Yes, in the past there were some folks calling themselves antifa who advocated for “punching Nazis.”
They didn’t last long.
We’re allowed criticize our government and “petition the Government for a redress of grievances” under the First Amendment, just as those on the right are allowed to call us “radical left terrorists” or “communist lunatics” no matter how ridiculous that characterization is.
The organizations I am currently working with, Indivisible, 50501, Mobilize, etc. are all dedicated to non-partisan, non-violent, resistance to what we consider to be the illegal, unconstitutional, unethical and immoral actions of and by the current administration.
The First Amendment allows us to do that. Period.
I could also write a whole column on how our current VP is completely wrong when he says that, statistically, most political violence is coming from the left.
This is, to use a technical term, bullshit.
Stay tuned.
Call your Congresscritters! Keep Calling!
Trump lie of the week:
Lies our President has told recently. Not necessarily this week. I’m only posting statements rated “Pants On Fire!” by Politifact. I’m too disorganized/lazy to keep track of these so I there may be duplicates once in a while.
I may have posted this one before, but it’s unbelievable to me that he and a lot of his base still claim to think the 2020 election was stolen. It wasn’t.
Musical Coda:
A repeat, but a good one.
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As, I think, everyone should.
Actually, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster appears to be pretty organized with a web page and everything. It’s way more organized than antifa.
I.e. me.