Trump tweets about his health remind me of a story my late father-in-law Peter Worthington told about covering the Six Day War in 1967 ... 1/x

Yoga employs more Americans than coal. But compare and contrast 1/2

and 2/2

I think many of us carry in our minds an image of the US economy that looks like this

when the reality is this

and this

You're hearing a lot of talk about "irregularities" in the election of 1876 that led to a "disputed" outcome. What is being referred to in this hazy terms?

Across the state of South Carolina, white conservatives had used terror and massacre to deter former slaves from voting in 1876. Here's the story of an attack upon the small town of Hamburg in July

Hundreds of black South Carolinians were killed by white conservative militias. Blacks fought back in many places, but they were out-gunned.

The killings were not spontaneous outbursts. They were part of planned campaign of anti-black voter

Some of the elements of the conservative plan to suppress black votes in South Carolina in 1876 sound queasily familiar in our own time, adjusting for the antique language and technology.

But back of it all was terror and violence, more violence than could be contained by the limited federal forces in the area - who were anyway constrained by the white conservative Democratic House majority elected in 1874.

On October 16 2020, a secondary school teacher named Samuel Paty was beheaded with a meat cleaver in the street of a small town 20 miles down the Seine from Paris. 1/x

Paty's murderer, a young Chechen refugee, had never met the teacher. The killer was incited to the crime by a multi-day campaign of defamation and disinformation on French social media. 2/x

For 5 years, Paty had taught his classes a unit on free speech and its limits in a democratic society. As part of the discussion, he showed his students some of the famous Charlie Hebdo cartoons - after inviting those who might be offended to leave and then rejoin the class. 3/x

One parent of one student - not the student herself - then set in motion a campaign of denunciation against Paty. And the result was a crime that shocked France and pulled tens of thousands to vigils and protests. 4/x

France has suffered terrible crimes in the name of religion before the Paty killing. We're only 5 years from the horrifying nightclub attacks that killed 130 in November 2015. But past attacks caught France by surprise. This murder announced itself in advance. 5/x

In February 1981, pro-Franco army officers attacked the Spanish Parliament hoping to halt Spain's evolution toward democracy and liberalism. 1/x

The coup was soon suppressed, in large part because of a miscalculation by the dying Franco regime. In 1975, the regime had restored the old Spanish monarchy, hoping to glamorize authoritarianism. Instead, King Juan Carlos opposed the coup - and most of the army obeyed. 2/x

Here's where the story gets interesting for our current purposes ...

The coup launched to thwart Spain's shift to democracy instead consolidated Spanish democracy. The next year, 1982, social democrats won the biggest landslide in Spanish electoral history. 3/x

The elected social democrats formed a government without a single minister connected to the old regime. State support of the Catholic church ended. Family law was modernized, minority language rights were protected. If Franco had opposed it - the new Spain wanted it. 4/x

The process was not instant. Not until 2019 would the state remove Franco's remains from the lavish tomb he built to himself. But the process was inexorable. The pro-Franco attempted coup guaranteed the total doom of Francoism in Spain. 5/x

Much like the Gulf War, Trump's presidency never happened. Yes, there were soldiers in Kuwait, and there was a man named Donald Trump in the white house, but there was never a war, and there was never a presidency.

Trumpism was a bubble, and on Wednesday, it popped. In 2016, it felt like the beginning of a new American nationalism. Without Trump, that "movement" dies. Will those embers merely fade, or can the fire be rekindled?

If you want to transform the world, or your country, you cannot fuel your movement on discontent, nor on reasonableness. No, transformation can only be built on a foundation of extravagant hope

Gold toilets aside, Trump never had extravagance, in fact he had no content at all. He was the first fully post-modern president; what he did was so filtered through media that there's no effective difference between what happened and what the media says happened

We projected our dreams onto Donald Trump. A successful mass movement requires belief in an infallible leader or an irresistible doctrine. There is no mass movement without a little delusion (we call it a little delusion) "Reasonable" people can't effect big change

1) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Senate Trial today
 
What is expected to be the final day of President Trump’s second impeachment trial will begin at 10 am et today. We anticipate a final vote on the guilt or innocence of the former President as early as midday.

@Nick_Carmody @NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator The same tactics used with Trump were used with Hitler by the Evangelicals to set up someone who exhibits qualities as an AntiChrist into a role of a Saint but this time targetting Muslims as Killers of Americans & still using gay people as abomination of God to con churches...1/

@NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator This was by design and process that developed over 60 years of psychological influencing through a collaboration of the entertainment world, religious broadcasts, oil/gas loyalists who bastardized the US Constitution, and #KochNetwork #DarkMoney orgs connected to DeVos...2/

@NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator Judeo-Christian America never existed. 1A was designed to removed Roman Catholic Church of England hold over the newly formed US Government. It demands zero influence of religion over law or government decisions. The Virginia Baptist insisted on it w/ Thomas Jefferson...2/

@NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator Judeo-Christian is coined from Nitzche's book "The AntiChrist" that means Jews converting to Christianity. It is used in the context we see today to tie in a Jewish Jesus into the Torah so that the strict rules of the Torah are elevated to a Christian philosophy. A paradox...4/

@NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator It is a paradox because Jesus was a rebel Jew. He defied the teachings of the Torah which pissed off the Pharisees - Jewish religious leaders. He elevated poor & people society condemned to same level as leaders. He is nothing like what we see today as American Christianity...5/

THREAD: To cap off the Trump era, I interviewed a politically diverse group of constitutional scholars, presidential historians and experts on democracy to put together a definitive list of Trump's ten most egregious abuses of power. Here's what we found.

1) SUBVERTING THE 2020 ELECTION. There is broad agreement that Trump's worst abuse was his relentless effort to undermine the vote and overturn the legitimate results. No POTUS ever tried a political coup like this. It's simply un-American, experts said.

2) INCITING AN INSURRECTION. We all saw what happened on January 6. Trump incited a rally supporters in DC to attack the US Capitol while electoral votes were being counted. He got impeached for it. A permanent scar on his legacy, experts said.

3) ABUSING THE BULLY PULPIT. Different than other abuses because it's speech, not actions. But still, experts said this was a very big deal. His nonstop lying, attacks, racist rhetoric, and fanning of flames was deeply corrosive to our political culture.

4) POLITICIZING THE DOJ. Trump repeatedly crossed lines and violated norms that have been in place since Watergate to create independence between the WH and federal law enforcement. Wielded DOJ as a weapon against enemies and shield for himself and allies.