17 Comments
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July 4, 2021
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Need not be. Honest Abe shed Light there. More recently, Dr King did. Even Dubya did not aspire to be an autocrat

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The Jill Lepore book THESE TRUTHS examines all of this in great detail. Highly recommended.

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Thank you. I wish there were an obvious answer to the problems that our country faces today. The fact that so many of our fellow Americans can blindly believe the lies spewed by the former guy & his sycophant congressmen & congresswomen is hard to understand. The term “cult” is frequently used to describe his followers, & I can’t think of a more accurate term. Facts don’t matter to them. I worry about our future. May the odds be in our favor.

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We have to start treating it as a cult and listen to the deprogrammers. We must.

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Brilliant in every way

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If I were a flag flyer I would fly it at half mast today.

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Good idea.

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No one in the MAGA mob, including its absolute monarch, can read the Declaration. They do not have the skill or vocabulary to read it, have no idea what it says, and they don’t care. I mean, they cannot understand the language or the sentence structure. They are completely lost by word seven.

But they can’t read the King James Bible or the works of Shakespeare either.

Maybe we need a modern translation, a Revised Standard Version. Something like:

“Yo, ho, you been throwing shade on the home boys…”

Anyway, good column. Thanks.

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They can misread the Second Amendment, though...

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The sentence in the Declaration of Independence doesn't end with "puruit of happiness." This was posted by Lynell on HCR' site, the difference punctuation (instead of a comma, a typo period) can make, for 245 years.

https://youtu.be/AqiFMiQeXNQ

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Yes, it was part of a very long compound-complex sentence, when they get to the point of, basically, "We have no choice but to bail." The punctuation, the spelling, and the random capitalizations of that time are odd.

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What a perfect newsletter for today. I particularly like your closing comment:

"Maybe the first step is to have the MAGA horde actually, you know, read the Declaration of Independence, which predates the Constitution they won’t stop talking about, and point out how Jefferson may as well have been writing about Trump. Although if we are relying on reading comprehension to save us, the republic is already doomed.

In a perverse sort of way, Lauren Boebert was right—this is 1776. But it’s not the redcoats who are coming; it’s the red hats. And they’re already here."

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Thank you!

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Celebrate the Fourth of July, and Tom Jefferson, our quirky genius who gave the "What For" to the King, collectively on our behalf

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Ok, great writing, but I could have done without ‘Karen-like hypocrisy’. How about ‘Tulsi-like’ or ‘Nikki-like’??

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I've already apologized to another Karen who called me out on this, so let me also apologize to you. True: I've never met an actual Karen I didn't like.

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Apology accepted!

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