As many of you with at least high school diplomas, obtained by satisfactory-to-exceptional test scores and grades in biology class, and as those of you with under-grad degrees who perhaps had college-level biology, cytology, epidemiology, or virology as part of your coursework know… we are once again being forced urged by our health professionals—as a communal courtesy—to return to necessary public health & safety measures and mandates because of sharply rising new COVID-19 cases. I am more than happy to do this and whatever it takes as my civic part to stem and eradicate this pandemic. But why yet again, are we having to do this with seemingly MORE vocalized defiance and hecklers screaming of their Constitutional individual liberties being violated?
It’s quite simple. Four major reasons: 1) our public health systems are going through yet another mass surge in new COVID-19 cases with the Delta and now Omicron variants causing the spike because of 2) a dismal public percentage rate of fully vaccinated teenagers and adults across the nation, and this is caused by 3) a large percentage of defiant anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers who do not know or understand the reliable, proven medical science behind all these public safety measures. And as a secondary consequence of those three reasons, 4) the latter naïve-defiant percentage continue to spread erroneous information and logic upon more naïve people.
The other day I serendipitously stumbled into a 10-15 minute conversation, if it could be called that, going on with our property manager and two other residents. We three residents had been to our mailboxes about the same time; they are near the management office inside the main building. When I walked up the conversation was about the return of mask mandates (indoors) at places of business “open to the public,” etc. This would naturally effect our property seeing that its corporate HQ was out of state. I was not going to miss out on the viewpoints or explanations these three ladies voiced, including the property manager’s personal opinions on the subject of public health & safety, COVID, and the fact that all of us were going into our THIRD YEAR (2022) of losing this biological war which has now claimed 842,465+ Americans dead and still counting.
You ask, What does this have to do with “Oncoming High-Beams” on night time streets and highways?
It has to do with one of the opinions and justifications given by one of the residents and vigorously supported by the property manager. What was said and justified? One elderly resident complained that she had every Constitutional right to wear on her body (face) whatever she wished, or not wished to, and whether or not she wished to be vaccinated was “her personal choice as well.” This was what was proclaimed, then strenuously reaffirmed by the Pro-Trumpeter property manager.
Since the conversation was in an open forum, or not being privately held in a closed-door office, I felt it was perfectly within my capacity to also share my thoughts of masking back up, getting vaccinated and boostered, and being a civic team-player, not a lone prima-donna. I was happy to be equally candid too. Once an opportunity to interject was afforded, I took my chance with gusto!
I interrupted and asked:
“Mrs. So-n-So and Ms. Misty Property Manager, do you enjoy driving at night on highways or streets and oncoming cars or the typical Texas monster-hunting trucks have lit not only their high-beam lights blinding you, but also have on their fog-lamps or hunting spotlights shining directly into your face making it impossible to see the road ahead, much less anything in or crossing the road or highway? Is that safe?”
Usually I get a paused silence when I ask angry anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers this question. I wait for either A) the intelligent, thought-out answer, or B) the pure asinine (selfish?) answer. Don’t ask me how many times I get the B-answer. I live in the Hill Country of central Texas! By the way, I was the only one there wearing a mask and intentionally staying 5-6 feet from everyone present. Also, myself, Mom, and sister are all fully vaccinated as well as boostered, by my persistent prodding I might add. We happily did our necessary civil parts (as team players) and as quickly as was possible, especially with the boosters.
After everyone silently stared at each other for 10-20 seconds, I asked my second question to Ms. Misty Property Manager…
“Misty, you have three kids. Your youngest is 12 or 13-yrs old, yes?” She acknowledges me. “How would you feel if I told you that I could CARELESS if I drove through her school zone at 70 MPH every day or through your residential neighborhood or your nearby park playground every day because that’s my individual liberty and right to do so? Would you applaud me for it?”
More blank stares and silence.
I grinned at all three ladies and as I turned to go out the building’s doors I politely told them, “THAT is public health and safety working correctly for ALL caring, law-abiding Americans. THAT is why ‘E Pluribus Unum’ is engraved on the Great Seal of the United States.”
I bid them all a very good, safe holidays and exited.
If a person has even half an ounce of compassion, decency, and care for other’s welfare, then there is not one single good reason or any justification a sane, intelligent person with a heart can give to be a loud-mouthed anti-masker or anti-vaxxer. None. Period.
Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always – Be A TeamPlayer
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The Professor's Convatorium 
Not comparable in the least, when you have high beams on like that on the road you present a demonstrably danger to the physical safety of other people on the road. If you don’t feel that people should be doing all of this because of the cold, which you don’t because you didn’t do this until covid oh, then you shouldn’t feel that we have to do it for covid. But good job on rationalizing to yourself while you’re going through all these motions, even though they do nothing to slow or stop the spread. In fact if anything, over time, it would seem that places with lockdown policies seem to experience worse surges.
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Hi Mr. Sutter. Thanks for visiting and commenting for the very first time. Haven’t seen you around our blog-circles, but nonetheless: welcome.
Since this is indeed your first-time to participate, I’d like to courteously mention to you to please read carefully my Professor’s Netiquette page for nine (9) simple Rules of Conduct I expect from all visitors and Followers. Thank you Mr. Sutter. You wrote:
Umm, that is precisely my point, causing potentially serious danger to others on public roads or out in public sectors. We are in total agreement here Mr. Sutter. Did you mis-write what you actually intended to say, that we are in agreement?
Cold? As in temperature or the illness? I respectfully request you clarify exactly what you mean please by “cold.” Furthermore, whether you imply frigid temperatures OR the common cold, your writing/grammar is vague and/or ambiguous. What do either have to do with rude, discourteous drivers blinding other drivers and causing high-risks of collisions or running off the road/highway? It doesn’t. But feel free to further clarify please so all of us better understand what you are trying to convey. Thanks.
Sorry, this gets even worse. #1 – what is “covid oh”? And #2 – please tell me what I was doing BEFORE “covid oh” Hahaha. Do you somehow know me personally over a few years? Please clarify and elaborate on this. Thanks.
And again, this is just spiraling into deeper ambiguity and vagueness. Please feel free to clarify and elaborate. Thanks.
Now THIS bit stinks of unnecessary immaturity, almost pure unwarranted provocation WITHOUT first spelling out in precise detail your disagreement(s) supported by a good degree of proofs, evidence, reputable professional sources, etc, etc. If I am mistaken in this interpretation of what you wrote, then I apologize and ask you to please clarify by better articulation. Thanks. And btw, do you have ANY exact, truthful ideas of what myself and my family have been doing “to slow or stop the spread” of COVID-19 since Dec. 2019? I’d be very happy to show you our last 3-years of public/civic team-playing! 😉 This portion here also stinks of erroneous preconceived notions of my/our behavior the last 3-yrs, BUT… I will give you the benefit of doubt that you are actually in error, giving you a chance to correct yourself Mr. Sutter. 🙂
This I will certainly challenge you on. Please provide established, reliable, expert-professional sources for making this claim. Go ahead and provide as many links as you can gather to corroborate this highly debatable claim you make—I will regularly check my Moderation-Spam folder for your lengthy Bibliography-Reply and post it once you’ve provided good-to-ample support to your personal claim/opinion here. Thanks Mr. Sutter.
Again, welcome to my Convatorium and I appreciate you thoroughly & carefully reading over my Netiquette page.
Best regards to you and yours this holiday season.
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😂
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Is that seriously all you can conjure? I hope that does not reflect your current capacity for articulated, intellectual capacities for expression. Surely not! Please do prove me wrong here and provide the requested detailed elaboration. Thank you.
You have been offered another chance sir, but the clock is ticking. (tick, tock, tick, tock…)
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My man, you make the mistake of thinking I have something to prove to you. I’m not going to waste any time or energy on someone who’s clearly conversating in bad faith. Typos happen, especially when you use talk to text, pretty sure you could figure what I was saying where each of those typos was at. As for citing studies, do your own research, just chiming in with my two cents. Do what you want with them, even if the only thing you choose to use them for his to make yourself feel smug 😜👌
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Yes, let’s not waste anymore of ANYONE’S valuable time with your weightless, pointless non-sense. I will keep this comment and your two previous empty ambiguous comments visible here. But otherwise, you were courteously given an equitable chance to defend and/or corroborate your debatable (illegitimate, unproven?) claim. You copped out, threw in the towel. That speaks volumes right there.
You have a very long way to tread Mr. Sutter. I bid you farewell and much better, open-minded learning. Goodbye. 🙂
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For my visitors & Followers as well as Mr. Sutter…
I wanted to give Mr. Sutter the chance to corroborate his fanciful personal claim about what states of population in the U.S. had HIGHER infection rates. But he copped out, refused to make his wild speculation a tiny bit persuasive. He failed. I want to corroborate the OPPOSITE of what he falsely claimed. Sutter wrote up above:
From my Oct. 2020 blog-post on this exact subject Mr. Sutter gets totally wrong.
Hello Professor. The problem you ran into with Mr Sutter is a problem I have run into on right wing media editorial cartoons comment forums. A refusal to cite sources, a refusal to use reason when they compare things not related, and the insistence that because they are repeating what they heard voiced by an opinion host it must be the unquestioned truth despite reality. The weird thing on these sites is I get flagged for trying to correct their deliberate incorrect statements with citable facts while their disinformation is allowed to remain. Scottie
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I completely understand Scottie. You’re correct, sadly in this case. 😔
Funny, what you describe as “…the insistence that because they are repeating what they heard voiced by an opinion host it must be the unquestioned truth despite reality” …sounds eerily identical to what 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-century CE Greco-Roman Gentiles were told—by an epileptic (TLE) Hellenic, rogue Mysticist named Saul from Tarsus—believed it hook, line, and sinker! Repeated so many times (falsely I might add) Voilà… it became a purely Roman Catholic Church with absolutely ZERO Late Second Temple Messianic Jews of Syro-Palestine! 😲 And by no weird irony at all… JESUS’ (Yeshua bar Yosef’s) small Hebrew sect of 12 from Judea, as Jewish reformers only, are completely washed away and lost! HAH! 😆
P.S. Please excuse me getting off topic a bit there. But… they are very similar historical events! 😉
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Reblogged this on Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News.
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Thank you Ned. 🙂
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It’s just plain odd why there is so much resistance to this whole business. If it were a virulent strain of plague with people dropping dead in the streets there would be no arguments with masking.
Yes, there is very high recovery rate – apparently – but the long term after effects don’t seem to be getting much airtime.
Might be an idea to have some sort of forum/ TV show, doccie? where those who pulled through but are now suffering debilitating health problems discuss what their lives are now like living post-covid recovery. I would bet that some of the stories would be enough to put the fear of Yahweh into some of these ‘I’m alright Jack’ blasé anti-vaxxers.
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That is an excellent idea Ark. My own daughter and son-in-law could be one of the couples interviewed for post-COVID after siding with the political anti-science, anti-vaxxers on the pandemic—he suffered badly and definitely has the long-term medical issues from it. Sad, so very sad.
The fear of Yahweh/God? HAH! That dog won’t hunt in their circles. They manipulate “God’s providence & judgements” on Earth in this life. That’s the Fundy-Evangy way ya know—no need for true, real “Faith” or letting God work on His own time-table. They want to see God work on their own terms, in ways THEY deem suitable, not the other way around. 🙄😄
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I think your analogies make a decent point. After all, we’re coming close to 1 million deaths from COVID. The number of people suffering from long-COVID may be higher. As a society, we’ve paid an enormous price to care for those who became sick and continue to get sick. We have never experienced similar case rates, complications, or death rates from common colds. The argument that COVID doesn’t pose a demonstrable danger to others, isn’t convincing. It’s straight out of the Monty Python handbook for arguing: state the opposite of your opponent and claim that it’s true.
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Agreed Carol; true indeed. Repeatedly distort facts, evidence, data, high plausibilities so egregiously and eventually many gullible lazy people who just don’t want to verify thoroughly themselves what loud-mouths spout off, I guess they just apathetically allow ridiculous untruths and partial-truths to fester and grow causing more needless confusion. At least that’s what I deduce when conversing with others and asking them several questions Carol… granted, in rural Texas. Hah!
It’s an entertaining mystery, that’s for sure! 😄
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Thank you for this cogent look at the crisis that the pandemic has already caused. I also appreciated how you brought the word “civic” into the argument. The idea that we do not have *any* duty to protect the common good gets conflated with “freedom” at any mention of wearing a mask. You can connect the dots between placing a fellow citizen at risk by sharing COVID by filling the atmosphere in a room and causing the death of another by that very predictable result.
I am also reblogging this on my website, as well. This is important stuff, Sir!
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Couldn’t have summed it up any better Bill! Thank you very much for your feedback here. Excellent stuff! 😁
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Many thanks, Sir! I feel very strongly about this as well.
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Also Bill, forgot to mention another supporting related analogy…
Not too long (2-3 decades?) ago a victim and sexual-partner of a person knowingly having AIDS-HIV but not first informing the to-be sexual partner, could in many states SUE the AIDS-HIV transmitter for intentional (homicidal?) negligence and manslaughter if the victim dies. Right? Does my memory serve me correctly, at least partially? 🤔
If I’m correct, how much different is knowing you might or likely have COVID-19 around unvaccinated people or family members, exposing them to the potentially lethal virus, and then days/weeks later that person/victim dies of Delta or Omicron COVID. How is this knowing, intentional behavior much different than knowingly driving drunk and killing other motorists because of inebriation?
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You are correct, sir. Such law suits did indeed get issued for such deliberate acts and I think that the anti vaxxers represent just such an in-your-fsce stance. Why is it not called manslaughter?
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Reblogged this on billziegler1947.
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Thank you kindly Sir! 🙂
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All good points, Professor! It is for the lack of responsibility such as Mr. Sutter has shown, that we are all — at least those of us who remember how to use our brains — still mostly isolated in order to protect ourselves, our families, friends and co-workers. I still think the anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers should be relegated to some sort of a special place such as lepers were way back in the day!
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Jill, am I to assume that Mr. Sutter is well-known to this type behavior, familiar to you and your Followers as a specific cyber-harasser and vulgar commenter? My intuition is trying to rouse my suspicion. 🤔
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No, in fact I had never heard of Mr. Sutter until reading your post, but was incensed by his attitude, his absolute lack of any sense of responsibility toward his family, friends, co-workers, or the community at large. I’m fed up to the gills with the anti-masker/anti-vaxxer crowd and their talk about their “rights”. What about my rights? What about the rights of their children and all the other children in the schools their kids attend? What about the rights of their elderly parents and grandparents who are much more likely to die of Covid? No, I don’t know Mr. Sutter, nor do I wish to, but I know of many selfish people whose thinking is just like his … me, me, me, me, me, and to hell with everyone else. Sigh.
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Professor have you noticed that most of those who scream loudest about their freedoms never seem to mention or acknowledge their responsibilities? They do not live alone on an island with no other animals to infect or harm. Why do they think their actions have no effect on the rest of us? We all affect each other for good or bad, so I figure we have a duty to others to work for the greater well being of the community. What was it Benjamin Franklin was supposed to have said, oh yes, “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” Scottie
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Yes, the decibel levels almost always reflect the most reckless and thoughtless. 😉 You mention a tried and proven proverb Scottie by both John Donne and Walt Whitman:
This Pale blue-dot of a planet and all living things upon it can NEVER be totally isolated or unaffected (or infected?) by what goes on next door, nor what happens on the other side, the Dark or Enlightened side of Earth; it doesn’t matter where and yet it DOES matter. This law, this truth is undeniable.
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Regarding the lady who claimed “. . . that she had every Constitutional right to wear on her body (face) whatever she wished, or not wished to . . .” I suggest a test of her constitutional right, as she claims. She should strip off her clothes and walk down the street in her home town buck naked and see if she has the right to wear whatever she wishes.
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BAAM! Drop the 🎤 …you hit the 🎯 Steve.
And THAT too is called Public Health & Safety as well as proper decorum in the public sector. Thank you Steve. 👍🏻
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Moreover, I’ve never run across anything in the Constitution that mentions what a person can or cannot WEAR! Hmmm.
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Exactly Nan. Just another well-known maneuver out of the tRumpeter’s Conspiracist’s Playbook of…
I guess they just want to be told what to do, what to say, and reply “YES SIR my Lord!” or “Immediately my Lord, may I use the bathroom please?” 🙄🤦♂️😄
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2022 is an off-year in the election cycle. Watch Trump’s true believers do absolutely everything to get his supporters elected. Their God-Emperor is still the turd standard, no other candidate is remotely close. Lies lubricated the machinery of the Neroesque fool for four years.
The BIG LIE depends on endless strings of lies of all sizes. As you accurately define the MO: “just make shit up out of thin air!”
https://be-like-bro.fandom.com/wiki/God-Emperor_Trump
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Bill, that is an excellent assessment of what 2022 thru 2024 holds.
At first regarding your link to the Wiki-esque God-Emperor Trump 😉 website, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to stomach anymore gastrointestinal nausea & probable vomiting reading even MORE implausible delusions by Trumpeters and their God-Emperor. But alas… it had the opposite effect on my morning demeanor! 🤩 I’m euphoric now! 🤗
I hope the creator of the page will update it soon. I would thoroughly enjoy much more satire at the expense of the orange orangutan with absolutely NO government experience (prior to 2017), who learned how to completely desecrate our federal government in less than 4-years, and is desperately begging his loyally deluded minions—45% to 48% of Americans?—to return him to his royal 🚽 throne… for more piles of 💩. Let’s hope for the sake of the last bastions of democracy in the U.S. (non-tRumpeters) and as a very diminished beacon for the world by 2019 that the God-Emperor-of-Gargantuan 💩 is not returned to Pennsylvania Ave.!
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As the New Year approaches, I reflect on just how much evil t has *not* inflicted on the planet. On how many of those “tourists” on January 6 would have been assigned key position with power and influence, tourists who also have had no political experience aside from erecting a gallows at the Capitol Building. On the number of criminals he has *not* been able to pardon. Then to contemplate on how many days he might have lived it up in the Oval Office, the number of days until Inauguration Day 2025. Gad.
It continues to astonish me that 48% of the citizenry would celebrate his return, perhaps gold-plating that sacred gallows. Gargantuan 💩 indeed.
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What the mouth breathers fail to understand is, It Ain’t About You! You Freaking Moron!
My wife and I are fully vaxxed, with the booster, we still wear masks into public spaces. Not because we fear covid, we have done our best to prevent it, but it can still happen. No, we don’t mask up for our benefit, we mask up on the slim chance we could have covid, not know it, and be spreading it! It is our personal responsibility to do our best, to not be passing on a highly contagious and deadly virus.
How people fail to see that distinction, is beyond me. Ignorant, petty, childish, selfishness, to the point of voluntary manslaughter. Not a look I want to wear.
I was at the pharmacy a week or so back, I was in line behind a guy I know, he realized it was me, saw the mask, and said “oh, you’re one of them.” I said “yep.” “We always mask up in public places.”
Then he said something along the lines of covid being a racket. To which I replied “yep, the funeral homes are doing quite well.” He walked out without another word.
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That’s often similar to my response to idiots too Shell, however, I usually retort right back with “Yeah, go talk intimately with all those 848,885+ (and still counting!) families with DEAD loved ones; their children, spouses, sisters, brothers, parents and tell them exactly what you feel/think about this lethal virus-pandemic! See how they respond to you, you insensitive, asinine moron.” Grrrrr, can I tell you how I REALLY feel Shell? 🙄
THEY need to be the ones on the “frontlines” at hospitals, ER’s, and overtaxed funeral homes to drive it thru their thick skulls. But first they must pull their heads out of their _________! 😡
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Oh, FWIW, the super duper, heavy duty, twice as bright as the sun, headlight thing, is one of my peeves.
Your privilege of being able to see well on the highway ends, when my right to see at all, on the highway has been compromised. It is way past time something needs to be done about this.
Dark highway, bright ass oncoming lights, if I had not caught the faint moment of unusual dimming of those lights, and slowed, I’d have hit the freaking deer broadside at 60 mph. I never saw the deer until that effing car had passed the deer, then I could see it in my “normal” headlights. It’s more than a nuisance. It’s deadly.
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And hence if I may tweak your last sentences Sir…
“[Anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers are] more than a nuisance. [They’re literally] deadly.”
You’ve nailed my ultimate point here Shell, thank you!!!
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Very well put Prof. As for your first commentator, well, everyone’s entitled to an opinion but some knuckle draggers need removing from the gene pool.
I volunteer at the local vaccine clinic and it’s amazing that 1% of those that turn up (all pre-booked) are all out for a fight when asked to put on a face covering before entering the clinic or sanatising their hands some even refused certain vaccines! I think our Country is less anti than perhaps the States but we still get the knob heads.
As for Ark’s point we have had people with ‘long covid’ on the tv telling of their symptoms, not nice.
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Hahahaha… indeed they do and such sheer idiocy would allow “Natural Selection” to take its evolutionary course much faster and for the betterment of humanity, eh? 😉
Less anti than us? I should think so. Here in the Disunited States of America we STILL have a large populous living in the 1850’s–1880’s in slavery (but a modern version), the American Civil War of North vs. South and individual State’s Rights over Federal Jurisdiction & the Whole, and instead of the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) turning it into the Deconstruction-of-Democracy Era into an eventual Authoritarian Era by one demographic, and one god-head. Care to guess which demographic that would be?
Yes, yes, I know; it’s a rhetorical question, but nonetheless a serious one. 🤦♂️
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