February 2022

MSNBC reported that a GOP Congressman said he can’t go against the Orange Jesus! WOW! The ‘C’ in R-N-C, really does stand for CULT, of self-humiliation. (Google: Orange Jesus, which refers to Trump, since his 2015 campaign-launch for president.) “Orange Jesus” even has a Facebook Home page! Texas Congressman, Dan Crenshaw, recently said, “Superman & Jesus are superhero archetypes, and I could name a thousand REAL characters also”. REALLY?! Marjorie Taylor Greene, was aired recently, slamming Pelosi, talking about “Pelosi’s Gazpacho police, spying on GOP Congress”, (as she administers her Speaker rules over the entire House). Is that like imposing ‘Sangria Law’? That’s just crackers! ‘Marjorie-3-names’ meant ‘Gestapo-police’, but she’s all for book-banning, so she’s not ‘souper-smart’. There’s the GOP, deceitful-hype about Biden spending millions to provide clean crack pipes to crackheads; not true, but they don’t care. Marco Rubio, running for Senate reelection in Florida tweeted, “the president is sending free meth & crack pipes to minority communities in the name of racial equity”. Just another Big Lie! I wonder how Rubio & gang feels about communities using Narcan to save lives, antidoting heroin overdoses? There are EXISTING syringe services programs, and other harm-reduction assists under Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services, in charge of grant programs. Does the GOP prefer we fill up the prisons with addicts & then build more?

Fox ramped up the whole “Freedom Convoy”, trucker protests (over vaccine requirements) on the U.S. & Canadian border, so now there’s an American truckers group, dubbed the “People’s Convoy”, basically mobilized by extremists, anti-vaxxers, pro-Trumpers & Q-supporters, for upcoming road closures in the U.S. They plan a convoy from California to arrive in Washington D.C. for a ‘mandate protest’ in early March. Ninety percent of the Canadian residents & truckers are vaccinated, and regard those at the border, shutting down cross-border trade, creating significant economic losses, as lunatic-fringe; speaking of such, there’s the 8 GOP Senators, who are opposing the major airlines’ requests of DOJ to help them create a no-fly list for convicted, unruly passengers, of which there’s been over 500 since 2022 began, and over 6400 since Jan 2021. During the last 2 weeks, two unruly passengers tried opening exit doors during flights. Across America there’s been a big spike in general lawlessness, racially-driven attacks, murders, violence, thefts, vehicle mortalities, raging drivers, oppositional, unruly citizens attacking others, schoolboard fights among parents, and a huge increase in school bullying and brawling. “Is our children learning?” asked one former president (W. Bush). WHAT are they learning? I say, “FOX, Put DOWN the crackpipes!”

Trish Forsyth Voss

2

The FBI has traced & identified several juveniles responsible for calling in more than a dozen bomb-threats to Black colleges since the beginning of February’s Black History month. Neo-Nazi groups recently gathered in Atlanta, GA & Orange Co, FL, harassing & attacking passersby on the street; some Neo-Nazis appeared on 1/22/2022 at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, passing out flyers with pictures of two doctors, condemning them for giving “preferential healthcare policies for non-white patients”, in response to those hospitals trying to amend their storied-practice of institutional racism. This incident resulted from a Fox Network, Tucker Carlson story, and was parroted by Donald Trump at a recent rally, where Trump also said, “IF I run again in 2024, and IF I win, I will give pardons for the Jan 6th people” (insurrectionists). There have been countless brutal attacks on Asians, and numerous threats to synagogues & churches. These kinds of threats & attacks have escalated recently. We must not allow domestic terrorists to takeover America. We must fight back with justice, restraints, education & compassion. From whence do these terrible urges arise? Why do some parents seem more concerned with banning books than guns in our schools & society, displaying more fear of their children learning, than in their dying? We must neutralize this FEAR with knowledge, acceptance & radical LOVE.

The authoritarian urges bubbling up from the boiling cauldron of fearful-humanity are similar to the first half of the 20th century. Are we doomed to repeat a damned history, enslaving others by our own twisted willpower, trafficking, torturing, keeping others bound, imprisoned, starving & homeless? Book-burnings as occurred in 1930s Germany, is now happening in 21st century America! Private-prison-enslavers, Klansmen, neo-Nazis, racists; we are teaching our children to hate, and WE, are the only ones who CAN CHOOSE to CHANGE; we can re-form Hate with ‘the universal solvent’ of Love. We must simply apply it. We can strive to bring our better angels to the forefront of our minds, hearts & lives. We can CHOOSE tolerance, allowance, even embracing an appreciation for others’ cultures & traditions. What will it take for us to do so & HOW? There is room for different tastes in music, dress, literary & religious thought. The Bible says, in Acts 17:26, “God hath made of one blood all nations to dwell on the face of the earth”. Jesus repeatedly urged us to “Love one another”, and He was the embodiment of Radical Love. Let us TRY to emulate that.

Trish Forsyth Voss

Trump, in the final days of his presidency, tried to get Dept. of Defense, Homeland Security and DOJ, Atty General Barr to seize voting machines. Trump asked Secretaries of State in several states to have local law enforcement officials seize voting equipment to bolster the Big Lie, and to ultimately change election results in his favor. Trump played a role in proposing plans & pressuring people to overturn the election, infamously calling on Sec. of State, Brad Raffensperger, to find him 11,780 votes in Georgia. The Jan 6th Investigative Commission has received a trove of documents, and have so far interviewed hundreds of people, that were ‘in the know’, and have issued subpoenas to many more. Michael T. Flynn pushed for rerunning the election, based on their bogus claims of Dominion voting machines having been hacked & voter-fraud. Mike Flynn & Sidney ‘Release-the-Kraken’ Powell, met with Trump in the White House on 12/18/20, advising him to sign their paperwork to call for national security emergency powers, and for US Marshalls or National Guard, under auspices of the Pentagon, to recount votes in six states by 12/25/20, and to rerun elections. In the hours during the Jan 6 attack on our Capitol, Michael’s brother, Charles A. Flynn, deputy chief of the Army, participated in phone calls from DC govt & Capitol Police officials begging for help, and the Pentagon basically stalled efforts to amass national guard troops for the purpose of quelling violence at our Capitol.

Another explosive finding is that fake electors in seven states, forged govt. certificates of ascertainment, declaring Trump the winner of their state’s votes, and they sent the forged documents to the National Archives, in order to muddy the waters, so that VP Mike Pence could more easily refuse to certify the vote count on Jan 6, 2021. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”, lamented Sir Walter Scott (1808). Swing-state Trumpers forged electoral letters to overturn Biden’s win in: AZ, GA, MI, NM, NV, PA, WI, in a deceitful & disgracefully illegal ploy to keep Trump in power. Jeffrey Clark, at the DOJ in 2020, had sent a letter to GA lawmakers urging them to decertify Georgia’s votes. Trump lost his bid with SCOTUS to disallow the Jan 6th Commission from obtaining his presidential correspondences, and the commission is working hard to bring criminals to justice and to ensure an ‘attempted-coup-fiasco’ like this NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN!

Trish Forsyth Voss

Hours before President Biden arrived in Pittsburgh on 1/28/22, to talk about his Infrastructure & Jobs Act, which passed in 2021, a two-lane, 52-year-old bridge collapsed with a semi, 2 buses, and several vehicles on it, and miraculously no one died; 10 people were injured, and treated after a heroic search & rescue. The collapse caused a gas leak, which was shut off. There are another 3300 bridges in Pennsylvania, deemed structurally deficient! Imagine how many bridges across our country are long overdue for renovations. President Biden vowed, “We’re going to fix them all!” Nineteen GOP senators helped pass BIF, but too many to name here, who voted against it, are telling their constituents how these funds will help their states, AS IF they helped bring it to fruition. HYPOCRITES!

Holocaust Remembrance Day was Jan 27th. On Jan 10th, a Tennessee school district decided to remove from their curriculum, the book: MAUS, written by Art Spiegelman, in which he told the story of his parents living in 1940 Poland, and depicts him interviewing his father, as a Holocaust survivor. MAUS won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992; that same year I purchased the two-book set, and within the next two years my twelve-year-old son found it on the bookshelf and read it. The TN school district banned the graphic-novel due to inappropriate language (it contains 8 curse words) and an illustration of a nude ‘woman’, drawn as a mouse; the Jews are drawn as mice, the Nazis drawn as cats. The U.S. Holocaust Museum tweeted, “MAUS has played a vital role in education about the Holocaust through sharing detailed and personal experiences of victims and survivors”.

Conservative officials across our nation are increasingly trying to limit the type of books that youth are exposed to, including books addressing structural racism & LGBTQ issues. In 2021, Texas Governor Abbott, signed a bill regulating how U.S. history and certain ideas about race can be taught in schools. Then, TX state rep, Matt Krause, released a list of 850 books he wants banned from school libraries. He claimed the books, “make students feel discomfort, because of their content about race and sexuality”. We must join in fighting back against these anti-modernity, Orwellian-tactics fueled by ‘White Fear’, with its attempts to whitewash our history, (as the Texas Round Rock Black Parent Association mobilized & fought back against attempts to ban the book: “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You”, and other books). Students, despite discomfort, need to learn about the Native American Holocaust, the Jewish Holocaust, the African Holocaust, that happened here, and the 250 years of slavery in America. Genocide shouldn’t be a comfortable topic. Modern schools should encourage an inclusive environment for ALL students. (Personally, as a student, I suffered great discomfort in having to study several years of MATH! UGH!)

Trish Forsyth Voss