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summer_in_TX

summer_in_TX's Journal
summer_in_TX's Journal
July 6, 2025

I feel it strongly: If our spirit is right, we shall overcome.

I subscribe to Father Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditations." This week the focus has been Liberation and Justice. Today's struck me as profound.

https://cac.org/daily-meditations/liberation-and-justice-weekly-summary/

Fight for a Vision!

An authentic faith—which is never comfortable or completely personal—always involves a deep desire to change the world.
—Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium


Simone Campbell is a Catholic sister and activist. She describes what drives her work for economic emancipation:

Touching the real pain of all is at the heart of the movement toward emancipation. But it can’t stop there. There is a second component to this journey toward freedom: fight! Too often we think of fighting as “fighting against.” I have learned that when you “fight against” someone or some policy, that person or policy may actually be reinforced. Rather, in this spiritual journey toward emancipation, we are called to fight for a vision that can be shared. We fight for a world that is inclusive of all creation. We fight for an economy of inclusion….

It is my experience that we realize emancipation when we combine radical acceptance with fighting for a vision. Embracing all with care and fighting for an economy that benefits the 100% will liberate us from the shackles of polarization and division. In my experience, these events become like a communal fire. There is a flaming-up of community dedicated to the good of all. It is fire in the warmth of the care we share with each other and in the commitment to make a difference. It is a fire that frees us from fear, judgment, and isolation, and opens us to the freedom of an abundant universe….

In our time of being shackled by income and wealth disparity, we are called to let God flame up in our lives. Emancipation happens when our contemplative journey takes us beyond ourselves into care for all and fighting for a vision that benefits the 100%.... The emancipation proclamation of our day is that together we must end the shackles of income and wealth disparity in our nation and around the world. This one body of creation is in a single great struggle….


Exactly right. It's a great conundrum to oppose Trumpism but to keep our focus on what we are fighting for.

It seems to me that having our spirit right is essential for the ability to overcome authoritarianism – and this points the way.

If we don’t deserve to prevail, because we are hate-filled, judgmental, unforgiving, can we possibly be rewarded by overcoming? And if we do overcome, will the fruit be good fruit? Or will it be rotten because of how it came about.

I see far too many posts by some who oppose the authoritarianism, who say things like, “I will NEVER forgive them,” about Trump voters. The NEVER FORGIVERS, is how I think of them. It troubles my heart immensely.

What we “fight against” can and does get reinforced. It's a spiritual struggle in which we can sink into toxic hatred or rise to the occasion and be part of a profound force to liberate ourselves and our fellow Americans and to create space for healing.

I think what Sister Simone said would find agreement from Timothy Snyder.

We need our own Truth and Reconciliation process.
July 4, 2025

Timothy Snyder warns us in "Thinking About...Concentration Camp Labor"

Timothy Snyder's July 4 article
https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/concentration-camp-labor

Concentration Camp Labor Cannot Become Normal

Timothy Snyder anticipates an "archipelago" of concentration camps across the United States. It is not too early to prepare.

Concentration camps are sites of tempting slave labor. Among many other aims, the Soviets used concentration camp labor to build canals and work mines. The Nazi German concentration camp system followed a capitalist version of the same logic: it drew in businesses with the prospect of inexpensive labor.

[snip…]

What happens next in the U.S.? Workers who are presented as "undocumented" will be taken to the camps. Perhaps they will work in the camps themselves, as slaves to government projects. But more likely they will be offered to American companies on special terms: a one-time payment to the government, for example, with no need for wages or benefits. In the simplest version, and perhaps the most likely, detained people will be offered back to the companies for which they were just working. Their stay in the concentration camp will be presented as a purge or a legalization for which companies should be grateful. Trump has already said that this is the idea, calling it "owner responsibility."

[snip…]

The government is putting before us the temptation to cooperate in fascist dehumanization on a grand scale. But that does not mean we must do so. This is an area where actions by individuals, by civil society, by the professions, and by companies can be decisive.

The first action is simple. CEOs should now, this summer, this month, next week, sign a pledge not to use labor from concentration camps. It could be as simple as that: "On behalf of my firm I promise not to use labor from concentration camps nor to cooperate with any firm that does."


Signing a pledge may seem small, he says, but these small choices now open up a "broad, bright terrain of action." If those opportunities are missed, that terrain "closes and darkens."

Are you a corporate executive? Own stock in a corporation? A friend or family member of anyone who fits that description? A consumer of goods from corporations?

I think we know what we need to do.
July 3, 2025

Trump's Guard deployment is weakening the firefighting force in Cali

BREAKING: Trump Didn’t Just Deploy the National Guard to L.A. – He Weakened California’s Firefighting Force

… all 2,000 National Guard troops deployed to Los Angeles came from the single unit California depends on to fight wildfires. Many of these troops serve in Taskforce Rattlesnake — a specialised, embedded wildfire crew trained in fire mitigation, prevention, and direct suppression.

The crews of Taskforce Rattlesnake are not general-purpose fire crews. According to the Department of Defense, these are specialised units within the California National Guard, built to address the increasing scale and intensity of the state’s wildfires. They are fully embedded within California’s firefighting system. They train, deploy, and operate alongside Cal Fire, and work year-round.

That 1 in 54 selection doesn't look random. It’s statistically unlikely to be accidental, especially when other units were locally available that had no connection to the state’s wildfire response. He could have drawn from the 40th Infantry Division headquarters, the 1st Battalion of the 144th Field Artillery Regiment, the Combat Aviation Brigade, the Sustainment Brigade, or even military police units.


Writer Lori Corbet Mann refers back to a recent Substack of hers (BREAKING: How Trump Plans to Use Wildfires to Redraw American Federalism) in the next excerpt.
When I wrote — less than a week ago — about how the Trump administration is using wildfire policy to redraw American federalism, I said the next phase would move quickly. It looks now like it already had.


I don’t know if any California news media have made the connection between the exact National Guard unit that Trump deployed to LA, but it sure doesn’t look like a coincidence that it is from the elite firefighting unit.

But as of July 1 it looks like the firefighting unit has finally been allowed to go back to their critical firefighting role.
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/07/01/national-guard-firefighters-finally-back-to-work-but-trumps-militarization-of-la-has-pulled-cops-from-the-street-and-teachers-out-of-classrooms/
June 4, 2025

Joe Walsh Leaps From the TEA Party to the Democratic Party

https://open.substack.com/pub/socialcontractwithjoewalsh/p/from-the-tea-party-to-the-democratic

Joe Walsh left the Republican party five years ago and became an independent. Now he has officially joined the Democratic Party.

Worth the read

From the TEA Party to the Democratic Party, all in the past 15 years. What a wild, crazy, .unprecedented political journey it’s been. My constant thread on this journey, my lodestar, has always been my reverence for freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. Along the way, I’ve rediscovered my reverence for decency and tolerance, for pluralism. Only one of America’s two major political parties today is squarely on the side of decency, tolerance, pluralism, freedom, democracy, and the rule of law—the Democratic Party. So I join that party. I proudly and humbly join the Democratic Party.

Now let’s fight! Let’s fight like we’ve never fought before.


I don’t know if anybody else finds Joe Walsh joining us officially encouraging and validating like I do, but for me after the grief I felt the first time I heard Rush Limbaugh inveighing against liberals, and Democrats, and saying that we want to destroy the country and for long after, I really was glad to hear him lauding us and what we have in common, our love for this country, its freedoms, and the rule of law.

I like the ways I’ve seen him change over time.

I’ve opened my eyes and listened to people who don’t think like me. And by doing so, I gained a greater understanding of and appreciation for LGBTQ issues, structural racism, the need for empathetic immigration reform, the dangers of climate change, and the role government must play to help care for the neediest and most vulnerable among us.
Most importantly, I’ve changed how I behave…I was passionate about my cause—so passionate that I said and did things I regret, so passionate that I became, way more than I’m proud of, a divisive political asshole. That’s no longer who I am.
After Trump’s first election, I woke up. Seven years ago, I came out publicly against Trump. Five years ago, I left the Republican Party. I’m still a conservative, but I’m not a conservative jerk. For the past seven years, I’ve been on a mission to help heal the divide in this country—the divide I helped to create.
Decency, tolerance, understanding, empathy...I now get how vital these all are to our politics, and there’s only one political party these days that values and practices these traits—the Democratic Party. Donald Trump is the worst of us, and, sadly, the rest of the Republican Party emulates his cruelty, dishonesty, and authoritarianism. We’re better than what we’ve seen every day these past four months. America is better than this. As a former Republican, I know that cruelty sells. Well, it’s time for decency to sell.

May 5, 2025

Nevada Governor and BLM Sign Agreement to Release Federal Lands for DEVELOPMENT

There's a powerful cry of anguish and a call to action here about the massive theft of public lands that are underway.

https://morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/nevada-governor-and-blm-sign-agreement

Nevada Governor and BLM Sign Agreement to Release Federal Lands for Development
They’re literally calling it a “disposal of public lands” as if shared wilderness, sacred ground, and national inheritance are garbage to be cleared and sold.

Snip…

The Great Nevada Land Raid Is Underway

So, the governor stood at a podium without blinking and in full cahoots with the very folks who are supposed to stand in his way stated his intent plainly:

“I’m pleased to announce the State’s joint agreement with the Bureau of Land Management, Nevada today. This agreement will improve our ability to share critical data about public lands in Nevada and help inform future housing and economic development in our communities.”

Data means maps. Maps mean parcels. Parcels mean profit.


The "Call to Action: Copy This Letter and Send It to Congress" at the end of the article makes it easy to take action.
April 21, 2025

Smart people are thinking about what comes after DEI - and it's pretty good!

https://archive.ph/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/21/what-comes-after-dei

Colleges around the country, in the face of legal and political backlash to their diversity programs, are pivoting to an alternative framework known as pluralism.
In 2018, Allen and a group of colleagues published a report suggesting that viewpoint diversity and free expression are crucial components of inclusion and belonging on university campuses. But it was a hard time to push for viewpoint diversity, with Trump in office and the nation on the cusp of a racial reckoning. Conversations about “inclusion and belonging” effectively became limited to race, gender, sexuality, and disability, Allen said. “I’ve experienced some frustration, I will admit, as I watched that paradigm narrowing in the years post-George Floyd,” she told me. “All those identities matter, but what we need to do as a pluralistic society and as pluralistic campuses is broader than that.”
Recently, the mood in higher ed has shifted from introspective to panicked. In March, the Department of Education warned sixty schools that they had potentially violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by allowing “relentless antisemitic eruptions” on their campuses. The D.O.E. pulled four hundred million dollars in federal funds from Columbia University; in response, the university has reportedly pledged to overhaul its security protocols and review its Middle East-studies programs. The Trump Administration also froze a hundred and seventy-five million dollars in funding for the University of Pennsylvania, for allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports. Other universities that depend heavily on federal money for scientific research, such as Johns Hopkins, have laid off workers and closed labs following deep cuts across federal agencies—cuts that were partly premised on objections to D.E.I.
All of this has prompted college presidents to take another look at the ideas that Allen and her allies have long promoted. Call it the pluralism pivot: a desire for a new paradigm that might ward off skeptical politicians and heal the bad vibes that have plagued higher ed. Though many college presidents were already trying to fix the cultural problems on their campuses, their hands may soon be forced by policymakers. Some of the universities that have most fully embraced pluralism are in politically purple or red states, such as Utah, where legislators have been moving to stamp out D.E.I. “I’m sorry—deeply, profoundly sad and sorry—that our sector had to start its reconsideration under these kinds of circumstances,” Allen told me. “That said, I’m glad to see that the pluralism concepts and frameworks are getting traction.”
As recently as a few years ago, the University of Utah—the state’s flagship public school, which has about thirty-six thousand students—seemed eager to advertise its progressive bona fides. In a 2022 issue of the alumni magazine, a feature on Taylor Randall, the recently installed president of the U (as people call it), listed some books he recommended, including Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist.” A web extra detailed the history of the U’s Black Cultural Center, which its then director described as “trying to fight anti-Blackness” through a “pan-African lens.” Letters to the editor praised a profile of an alum who performs as the ice-skating drag queen Denali Fox: “That’s our gurl out here slaying!”[/excerpt}

I'm pleased to see a framework that ensures universities remain inclusive and diverse.
Pluralism is concept that hearkens back to the early days of our Republic. That makes it harder for those against it, I would guess.
April 12, 2025

The Quiet Deprogramming of Trumpers Has Begun

https://open.substack.com/pub/ossiana/p/the-quiet-deprogramming-of-trumpers

The actions of Trump in the last several weeks, especially the financial devastation from the tariff war, have a lead to deprogramming beginning to happen among Trumpers. Hooray! About time!

As it starts taking hold, the author has thoughts for us on how to handle it.

Allow and encourage people who deconstructed to be on the right side of history.
Yes, it will take time to fully trust them. No, that doesn’t mean you should judge them and make them feel less than as a result. The worst thing you can do is continually bring up the past with them.
A lot of people who are deconstructing will feel shoved out and return back to the GOP if they feel like they can “never live it down,” so do what you can to limit that kind of speech.
Yes, we know that the tears we’re seeing from them is all about themselves. It burns that they’re only angry when it affects them, but it’s important to focus on what those tears are starting. That can be the first step to finding the empathy they may have lost or never had to begin with.

Snip…
You might be surprised at how many people are just afraid to talk because of the shame they feel. The GOP is banking on the left being intolerant of former right-wingers to keep their death grip on people. Don’t let them win.”


“The GOP is banking on the left being intolerant of former right-wingers to keep their death grip on people. Don’t let them win.”

That’s going to be tough. But the full article helped me realize that there are things I can do and say that are honest about my feelings while making no it possible for them to continue to deprogram.

I haven’t seen my two Trumper sons in a while, but we will be getting together in a few weeks. I am so curious about whether they’ve budged at all. But it’s going to have to be a very careful approach. I’m saving this article so I can remember it for then.


April 7, 2025

In what world do Trump's tariffs make sense?

Trump‘s tariffs make no sense as economic policy as Senator Chris Murphy explains so well in this little video. How does it make sense? That’s much darker.

They do make sense as the tool Trump is using to collapse democracy, and bully companies to come to him and beg for relief. Like he’s been bullying law firms and universities. 🔥🔥🔥
https://youtube.com/shorts/Vib5FVWBW2U?si=wx2UMn1ebnXAK8iy

March 16, 2025

An apology to Chuck Schumer

I just read this apology to Chuck Schumer on Substack and thought it worth sharing. Robby Kumar penned it.

Ok, I owe Chuck Schumer an apology.

If the government had shutdown as I was advocating, the courts would also have been shut down. The same federal courts that today blocked Trump from invoking the Alien Enemies act that was used to intern Japanese Americans in World War 2 and is only meant to be used in a state of emergency. The deportation flights that were literally in the air were forced to turn around.

I have very little faith in the Supreme Court, but I do take some solace when we get decisions on the right side of the law. The third branch hangs by a very flimsy thread but it is hanging. The rest will be up to us. Taking down Elon and 8647 is a We The People project. In the meantime, Chuck was right and he specifically noted the courts in his reasoning. Separately, Elon said Hitler, Stalin, and Mao didn’t kill anyone, it was their “public servants” that did.


Courts do have (limited) reserve funds – maybe two weeks worth or so – but would find it very difficult to continue for very long if the government shut down and would have to reduce their activities even before they were forced to shut down. In the face of this onslaught of Trump actions, I’ve got to agree that would be disastrous.
March 12, 2025

Trump's seemingly inexplicable desire to take over Greenland and Canada made us laugh in disbelief.

I'm not laughing any more.

This article makes sense of Trump's obsession with Greenland and making Canada the 51st state.

https://7thing.substack.com/p/how-an-arctic-cold-rush-explains

How An Arctic Cold Rush Explains Trump’s Putin Pivot.

Snip…
Whilst politicians puzzle over Trump’s Russian rapprochement, his bullying of traditional allies, and his fascination with Greenland, the Arctic reveals his true purpose. Look north, and his strategy crystallises with unmistakable clarity.

The Arctic holds 30% of undiscovered global gas reserves and 13% of oil. The Arctic Council governs its development, lining up the US, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden – and Russia.

Nordic environmental hand-wringing stands between American energy giants and this frozen treasure trove. A direct deal with Putin would shatter these constraints overnight. The prizes?
• Greenland contains the West’s largest rare earth deposits, the critical minerals powering everything from iPhones to F-35s. China currently holds this supply chain hostage.

Snip…


The author, Adrian Monck, now retired, was high up in the World Economic Forum, was a professor of journalism, also had a long career in journalism, both print and broadcast.
https://adrianmonck.com/about/about/

I found this article so plausible – and chilling – that I sent the link to a friend in the Norwegian health ministry hoping she would consider passing it on to higher ups and to all the governments of countries near the Arctic Circle. Her older two sons serve in the Norwegian army and police, respectively. The eldest is a major, the second son currently serves on the Norwegian border with Russia.

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Hometown: Austin, Texas
Home country: United States
Current location: Central Texas
Member since: Mon May 15, 2017, 12:06 AM
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About summer_in_TX

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