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By "declining birth rate" do you perhaps mean "declining *white* birth rate"?

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I think that is what the GQP is concerned about. They want to punish white women who won’t have “white” babies, and to punish Black women for reproduction. Musk also shows that supposedly successful people can believe in some very stupid ideas. Viktor Orbán is the last person people should look to as a role model, yet here we are.

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Yes. When Republicans say "Americans," they mean "white Americans." When they talk about "immigrant crime," the victims they single out are, as far as I can tell, invariably white.

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Well, I’ve heard part of the problem today is women not finding any half decent men they could even care to form a connection with. You, Sir, seem to be illustrating this problem most excellently. Deep sigh

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This is already well underway. Back in 2022 this became apparent:

“How the loss of Roe directly serves white supremacists' horrifying plot

“Some white supremacist groups see rape of white women as an “extremely effective” way to increase white births. After the death of Roe, the ideology is all the more horrifying.” https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/how-anti-abortion-rights-white-supremacist-extremism-overlap-n1297896

Couple this with the insanity of Greg Abbott:

“Greg Abbott Said He’d “Eliminate Rape” to Justify an Abortion Ban. He’s Failed Horribly.

“Thanks to his ban, Texas leads the nation: 26,300 estimated pregnancies as a result of rape.” https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/01/abbott-texas-abortion-ban-rape-record-pregnancies-failure/

And you realize that we must follow Joyce Vance’s advice and Roe, Roe, Roe the Vote!

If these Christofascists steal this election and implement Project 2025 the US might end up with a white only version of Gilead. The threat is real.

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Exactly, the threat is very real. I have believed all along that repealing Roe was always about forcing population growth out of white women. And for the low income white women, those offspring are future service and factory workers. Except that will implode as well, because robots will do these jobs.

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Julie - history says that 16 years from now crime will increase in places like MAGATX. 18 years after Roe statistical analysis showed a significant decrease in crime. https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-impact-of-legalized-abortion-on-crime-over-the-last-two-decades/

If we still have 120 guns per 100 people and are awash in assault rifles those are going to be some well armed, unwanted teenagers. If MAGATX law enforcement performs like they did in Uvalde where over 400 were cowards, gangs will rule. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/20/uvalde-shooting-police-ar-15/

Police in our country are outgunned! And when you encourage civilians to open carry guns officers have no idea who is good and who is bad. A civilian open carrying and AR-15 terrorizes me.

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I agree. I think about all of this A LOT.

Picture Mad Max movie.

Texas already has a large amount of rapes. I think the most of any state. And as I am sure you know, it's long been estimated that only half of the victims ever come forward.

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I have been working with Melbourne, Australia based, TheJuiceMedia,

on their latest Honest Government Ad (HGA) TRUMP2024 (Stop the Steal). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHuMjIhS6t0

The goal of this HGA is to educate Americans about Steve Bannon’s “precinct strategy” and to encourage Americans to check their voter registration, register and vote!

Please help spread their work! They garnered over 10,000,000 views for this Trump 2020 HGA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpIkl2QnJeI

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I sure hope “The Handmaid’s Tale” doesn’t become a reality.

I’m amazed at the number of people who claim that they don’t “do” politics. You make choices even when you don’t choose: you give it away to another person who will likely not have you in their best interest.

Your best interests are all about political choices whether you acknowledge it or not.

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No decision is a decision.

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Thank you, Ruth, for seeing so clearly and laying it all out so we know what we're dealing with.

It seems to me that Christianity was first weaponized by Constantine, Emperor of Rome in the early 300s C.E. At his direction, men who believed they were following Jesus viciously smashed the faces off of "pagan" Goddess statuary and representations of Greek gods and goddesses. They maniacally tore down Hellenic architectural marvels, great marble columns of temples that today stand as ruins across what was once the Holy Roman Empire. One converted at the point of a sword or were beheaded. The people fought to retain their "pagan" gods and goddesses against Constantine's fanatical militias who worshipped the power to destroy and dominate. What we're experiencing today is only the most recent version of this ancient misogynistic, fascistic Christianity. What remains to be seen is if we'll vanquish this hateful, rageful movement any more successfully today than did the pagans 1700 years ago.

suppressed-histories.teachable.com

"Church-State Authoritarianism: War on Pagans"

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I’d also look to a later emperor of Rome, Theodosius. He took Constantine’s approach even further.

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It’s interesting to me this topic comes up in the same newsletter that Ruth is introducing her Baptist religious speaker for the next lucid zoom. A lot of these problems were birthed from the purity culture. Women from a very young age being taught our virginity was our importance and then our procreation value was. That women who don’t reproduce are “bad” because they’re not “blessed”. The misogyny to keep women in control. All of it - it starts with girls (and to some degree boys) near puberty age being indoctrinated and groomed in purity culture. The 90’s they REALLY pushed it.

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True. Purity culture is very misogynistic and values a girl or woman only in terms of her lack of sexual knowledge before marriage and her capacity to reproduce after marriage. These are personal matters the government does not have any moral authority to enforce, nor should it.

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I am acutely aware of JD Vance's comments about childless women. I'm also very aware that he hasn't once mentioned (to my knowledge, anyway) childless men. I interpret this as more misogyny and hatred of women. And how convenient that the burden is entirely on women, just as it usually is with contraception. When are we going to start using our power?

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Vance is one of my senators, unfortunately, and we have a risk of losing our decent senator, Sherrod Brown, to Trump-endorsed car salesman Bernie Moreno. Peter Thiel bought Vance for us, and I for one, would like to return him to Cincinnati. Vance is a ridiculous misogynist, and I say this as a straight single happy cat lady.

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Kathy, I just want you to know that even though we live in Texas, we are making monthly contributions to Sherrod Brown's campaign. We understand how important his re-election is, and know that there are no billionaires out there who are buying him.

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Can confirm Cincinnati doesn’t want him… ;)

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Sep 26·edited Sep 26

Peter Thiel is one sick puppy. All of his protege's seem to be fascists. One of his clowns (Blake Masters) ran for office in AZ but lost. He was arrogant, belligerent and cold blooded ........ classic fascist material.

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Very odd: At the same time as Vance is blaming childless women, he has rejected the Great Replacement Theory by having three mixed-race children … I guess logic does not apply to dictator wannabes.

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Very good point, David!

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Madeline, thank you for the ancient history which sheds additional light, in my view, as to the roots of American fascism; further back in time than most seem to assume. Jason Stanley, at one of Lucid’s recent Q&As stated, as I recall, that the fascist label can apply to fascists of long ago (I’m paraphrasing.) Unfortunately, he addressed the use of the fascist term while the meeting was not recorded.

Perhaps, we should invite him again to address the reluctance to call fascists fascist, even when all the characteristics are met. We prefer to create a myriad of euphemisms, some seemingly Orwellian.

My apologies for being unable to “like” your truth-telling commentaries. For now, I’m only able to say, as usual, we’ll said and thank you sharing your knowledge and understanding; we need more people like you enlightening the conversation helping uncover the often obfuscated truth.

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Thanks Robert. I wonder if Ruth could tell us more about the actual term, fascist, which I think was first used by Mussolini. I use it rather loosely and maybe that's not appropriate but to my mind Roman soldiers behaved like fascists. There's nothing new about organized groups of men dominating and controlling women and other men. Some researchers think that that evolved as humans left the hunter-gatherer way of life and began to settle into agricultural communities. The concept of land ownership came into being, then the notion of inheritance. Men began to want to know for certain who their offspring were so they started to control women and reproduction. It's a theory and there's some logic to it. But however it began, it's oppressive. Neither women nor men enjoy being controlled by others.

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Unfortunately, the fascists that I know, deny that fascism is a far right concept. They believe that it's left wing and therefore they are not fascists. How convenient! Even when I explain how Hitler hated socialists and Marxists, they still believe that fascism is left wing. What we're seeing here is the Backfire Effect.

Our media does not have a really good handle on what fascism is, so they are reluctant to use the label. Also, I believe that they might feel that they are offending millions of viewers by calling tRump a fascist. But not calling him what he actually is, only gives him a free pass to spread fascism. A huge mistake.

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Master race 2.0. Extremist Christians desire to breed a white Christian master race to dominate the world.

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It’s an effort doomed to fail because there’s no way it would work. Of course, it still means that the true believers can and will make many people, especially women, miserable in their attempts to do so.

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thank-you for your historical perspective on these authoritarian topics. It is so important. I have learned so much between this substack and your book 'Strongmen'

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founding

And if we follow demographic/population issues to “state level” corruption and connections in state races/issues such as that which involves Incumbent Ohio US Senator Sherrod Brown and the corrupt Republican extremist Bernie Moreno (with even crazier demographic/population issues/claims) ………….and just recently New York City Mayor Eric Adams who has been indicted amid multiple corruption probes into his administration. With probes citing people & focuses on Adams campaign that conspired with Turkey to receive illegal foreign donations! Adams also has ties and multiple visits with the Turkish community in NYC, as well as meeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan while he served as the Brooklyn borough president!!!!

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In Ohio, we have citizen redistricting on the ballot, and I’ll vote yes for it. As GOP,control of Ohio has wrecked the state, and our GOP Secretary of State, Frank LaRose, wrote the same sort of misleading ballot summary for it that he did with his attempt to require a supermajority to amend the state constitution (we voted it down,) and in his attempt to prevent the state constitution to recognize abortion rights (Issue 1 was voted in.)

Even if the ballot initiative for citizen redistricting passes, I expect our GOP dominated General Assembly to drag its collective feet on it the way they did when we passed an initiative to require nonpartisan redistricting a few years ago,

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founding

Thanks so much Kathy!! We may also have some hope by voting in an Ohio Supreme Court Democrat majority AND getting rid of Gym Jordan this Nov 2024 which would be so helpful in eroding the influences of the extremist Republicans (Autocrats) in Ohio!

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I am in a Democrats Abroad group reading Project 2025. We have recently been questioning whether we would stop at the election with a Harris win, but because we see it implemented in states and the US Supreme court supporting its implementation, we decided that not only are we learning a lot about government, but we are also learning a lot about what the right wing plans are for the USA. I have also been following Andra Watkins who writes a Substack, How Project 2025 Will Ruin YOUR Life, that analyzes the Christian Nationalist as well as financial aspects of Project 2025. I have read an articles by others who were former members of Christian Nationalist Churches and left them and now write about it. I am learning a lot. One, I am glad I was not subjected to this world view while growing up. Two, if people see the End of Days as being near, they will not have a reason to care about the environment, over reliance on fossil fuels, or even public education. So, I try to look at all of the issues from that point of view, as well as the desire to save the wealthy from paying taxes. In fact, after seeing a clip on Jeff Tiedrich's Substack with 3 Christian Nationalist men talking about Kamala Harris as in how dare she dishonor Trump a man during the debate, I sent it to Andra and asked for her take on what they were saying because I do not speak Christian Nationalist. She not only wrote me a response, but also did a piece on it.

https://project2025istheocracy.substack.com/p/why-is-a-white-guy-calling-harris

What she is saying takes me further back than Il Duce, and to the middle ages where heretics were viewed as witches. Seems that is still the case. She explains that everyone who thinks differently than they do are considered to be practicing witchcraft and there is no qualitative difference made from one group to the next. This plan to take over has been a long time in the making if we go by the planning discussed in Prof. Kathleen Belew in her book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. She discusses White Supremacist militias formed after returning from Vietnam deciding to ally with Christian Nationalists who were close to them in beliefs without the violence, tone down their overtly racist rhetoric and instead of fighting against the government, to infiltrate it by running for office and then taking over. The goal is a race war with them winning and having a White Supremacist planet. As said here, women have a supporting role of keeping up the home front, bearing children, and sexually servicing men at their every whim. This came about after the Oklahoma City Bombing. These ideas of White Supremacy are not dying fast enough for me. Instead, those who hold on to them remain as scary and dangerous as Hitler and his Nazi party, or Mussolini and his fascists, or the Southern plantation owners and their slave system. If I am home on time, I look forward to this coming discussion tomorrow. I will want to hear how CNs will take over when Africa with ~1.5 bil and Asia with ~5 bil are the continents with the greatest populations.

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Linda, as always, what you write is very informative. As one who is technically white (I'm half Jewish), I find white nationalism very offensive. The border city I live in has a population that is 80% hispanic, and IMO, they are what makes it such a wonderful place to live. It is the only place I've ever lived where being a minority is not a big deal. I wrote a comment earlier about an anthropology class I took on race, which is one I've never forgotten. From what I learned there, people with darker skin can survive anywhere, but whites can't - they are a mutation that would die out immediately if they had to try to survive in central Africa. I have to agree with you that white supremacy can't die out fast enough.

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Susan, I don't know if that is true. If we take away modern vitamins, darker skin needs more vitamin D, and won't be getting it in the Northernmost winter climes with no sun. There will need to be supplements. That being said, we adapt our cities to us, not vice versa, so we can all live pretty much anywhere, even Antarctica. However, in Project 2025, there is a lot of discussion on cutting all food aid to other countries, as well as within the US, and that will affect people across the planet. Still, I take heart in the geographic ignorance of those who embrace White Power plans to get rid of everyone who is not White from the planet, because that is really a lot more people than they can imagine.

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I always learn from you, Linda. I didn't know about dark skin needing more vitamin D. The idea of cutting out all food aid to everyone, especially in view of their denial of climate change, is just a disaster. I try to support meaningful charities, and one of the two most meaningful I support is our local food bank, because there are a lot of poor people here, who have to deal with food insecurity. The two places people should absolutely not have to deal with insecurity are food and housing. So it will come as no surprise that my other favorite charity is Habitat for Humanity. When I think about getting rid of all the people on the planet except for whites, the only ones who would benefit would be the wildlife. Although, IMO whites are the ones who are most responsible for climate change, along with the Chinese. I personally would hate having all the "others" removed from the planet. Some of the nicest people I've met in my life have been the so-called "others". I don't see whites as more special than anyone else. I will say again that the people who are in the majority in my community are what make our community so nice.

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Susan, I have to agree with you about skin color being special. In my family, we follow the skin color is not a race, it is a genetic variation of one race---the Human Race belief. Eye color, ear attachment or not, longer first or second toe, eye shape, hair texture, hair color, all of these are variations that make us 1) adapted to the place where our ancestors come from, and 2) different and interesting, and 3) ways of not repeating genetic diseases if we mix. I probably should have said, the darker the skin the harder to get vitamin D from the sun, and therefore it is not so much as needing more, but getting more in sunny climes than in darker climes. I have always liked the saying Variety is the spice of life, and for the most part I agree with this not just in foods, but in people too. I see everyone on the brown scale of skin color, with some being more reddish, and some more towards very, dark brown, which looks Black. I agree that living in a diverse community is more enjoyable for me. I make up the diversity too. Brown skin and German is not a majority group yet.

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You sound like that anthropology class I took, Linda. The characteristic I remember most vividly is very long noses in people who are from the Sahara desert - that enables them to better moisturize air on its way to the lungs. Learning that darker skin has a harder time getting vitamin D from the sun makes me wonder if dermatologists tell darker skinned people to use sunscreen if they are out in the sun. Mine wants me to use it because she want's to prevent skin cancer. But I think about the vitamin D aspect and try to find every way I can to follow her instructions (mostly) but not use sunscreen, which I hate. Having a brown skin/German majority group somewhere might make life interesting…

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Susan, as an elementary teacher, I was teaching about these things. I found good materials about the evolution of the ideas of race from Facing History Facing Ourselves. When I lived in the Dominican Republic and taught in an International school that was built in the first house by a Jewish family that was escaping Nazi Austria, Germans were the largest expat group on the island at least in my part. So, given that they were marrying and having children with Dominicans, there were a lot of brown-Dominican German children. Although, when I was there the Dominicans would tell me I was White, but that was more about socioeconomic status than color. White mean money not skin color, so again, these are sociological constructs. I have to have sunscreen or I rash up from the sun. Another thing I do is I avoid being out during the late morning to early afternoon unless I have a hat and long sleeves on. My asthma medication from many years ago seems to have made me sensitive to the sun. It had that warning but I did not realize it was permanent. I think above 43 degrees N latitude it is less harmful. My summer is spent more north. I have to take Vitamin D supplement, but so does my daughter who is not really brown, but a light beige that many would call White. When she was little she asked me what her skin color was called and I said her name as the color, and that did not satisfy her. She wanted a name like brown. So, I love Angelica Dass' work because she has taken human skin colors and broken them down into Pantones. https://angelicadass.com/photography/humanae/

I do like theories on human characteristic evolution. I read somewhere that ADHD is an adaption of the brain to life circumstances as well. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/21/adhd-may-have-been-an-evolutionary-advantage-research-suggests

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Harris for the People!

The halloween season fantasies, lawless depravity & corruption of MAGA leadership has consequences. That the base may "lap it up" is not an excuse, but of course MSM needs to normalize the whining MAGA depravity & create a horse race…ads, eyeballs, $...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmr1owmG2aI

BTW, Trump knows nothing about Project 2025, Robinson, Stormy, E Jean, & supports a self proclaimed Nazi slavery supporter for governor of NC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVXuNgNPpmU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJCuAm83AoU

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In addition to the fear of “the browning of America,” Trump supporters are worried about the economic shrinkage caused be a declining birth rate. School construction, textbook publishing and sales, clothing, home construction and sales and the core of the consumer economy are all tied to the national birth rate. As the birth rate declines demand for goods to meet the needs of growing children declines. Some colleges are already planning for the dramatic drop in enrollment which will hit about 2030–the demographic cliff. The Trumpers seem to fear the shrinkage in the pool of non degreed White people who are needed for military service, factory and agricultural work, manual labor and domestic help. Increasing the immigrant population will not solve the problem, because of resistance to assimilation and racism.

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As a childless woman, I find the attitude of trump/vance and all others like them, disgusting. I am certain that the reason I did not marry young and have children is because of what men did to me when I was a child. Child sexual abuse is far more widespread than most people want to believe, and that can be one explanation for why women remain childless. Another is that if you deprive poor women of nutrition, they probably will also have issues with achieving pregnancy. Despite my skin color, I do not at all understand why people of color are such a threat to so many whites. Back in college I took an anthropology class on the subject of race, and what that class pointed out was that if you lined up all the people in the world according to racial characteristics, you would have hills and valleys, with some people personifying a set of characteristics, but with unlimited variations between the peaks of those characteristics. Plus, as I understand it, humanity came to be in Africa, and white skin is a mutation that was able to survive in the northern parts of the world, but would not survive in the tropics.

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Such a SCAM unveiling at record pace , I laugh feeling slightly guilty however -we/me questioning its sanctity -and they keep right on digging the whole hole ..I ‘m still torn…moving on?…I’m so proud of our sister , the grassroots movement,yes and even those saving face and confessing /credit due with an ‘about time’ whispered… the air is electric and I’m keeping the heat on for my granddaughters and yours as well. I’m excited to see women taking the stage vs ‘getting it’ because this is our right to shine. Let’s clean this proper . Blue Wave, Rising Tide will lift ALL our boats.

A woman and great brother by her side. Harris /Walz let’s ride!!!!!💙

Thank you Ruth 🫶

💙💙VOTE BLUE.LETS END THIS COUP💙💙

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