Greenmantled

"When Musk & Hegseth argue that a racially diverse nation is inherently weak, they're not returning us to some long-established American tradition from which we've recently strayed. They are, instead, parroting the exact same propaganda that Nazi Germany promoted against America during World War II"

YouTube video by The Royal Society People of Science with Brian Cox - Sir David Attenborough on Charles Darwin

#Darwinday
Sir David Attenborough talks to Brian Cox about his admiration for the achievements of Charles Darwin, and how On the Origin of Species inspires him in his work in the natural world.

Sir David Attenborough on Charles Darwin 🧪
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yEX...

I agree that concentration camp is the correct term for sites that imprison immigrants. I also find it interesting that the term concentration camp fell into disuse during Biden’s presidency while the camps themselves remained…

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

There are 3,800 kids in ICE custody.

Trump’s Republicans are doing everything they told us the Democrats would do.

Every accusation is a confession.

“Imagine how they lie when there’s no evidence to contradict them.”

Watch this powerful message from Jon Stewart.

Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs. The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The Trump admin is scrambling because the secret police it sends out for kidnappings and rioting has been killing people on video then brazenly lying about it, but Schumer's instinct is to whip his caucus into taking a position *more conservative* than that held by the median voter.

He's got to go.

Read Bondi’s Letter to Minnesota’s Governor Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota on Saturday that blamed him and other Democratic officials for allowing “lawlessness” in the state. It was not immediately clear ...

If I sent a letter saying I would continue to inflict violence and murder on a community unless that community made legal concessions to me, I would go to prison.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Rest in Peace Alex Jeffrey Pretti🙏🏾 The VA ICU Nurses send him off right 💔

There is a line in the book “Is Paris Burning?” where General Dietrich von Choltitz, who disobeyed the order to destroy the city, says, “Hitler is mad. Are you blind? Didn’t you see him at Berchtesgaden?” I think you could write a modern version: “Didn’t you see him at Davos?”

From Senator Chris McDaniel: “Lately, some folks have taken to calling ICE “the Gestapo.” It sounds fierce. It feels righteous. But it isn’t true, and it isn’t harmless. The Gestapo was a secret police force. No warrants. No courts. No lawyers. And no appeals. People vanished in the night, not because they broke the law, but because the law no longer meant anything. The knock on the door was the sentence. ICE isn’t that. Not even close. ICE is a public agency enforcing laws passed by elected officials. Its agents file reports. They seek warrants. They lose cases. Judges stop them. Lawyers challenge them. Some detainees go home. That’s not tyranny. That’s bureaucracy, for better and worse. You can hate immigration policy. You can argue enforcement is too harsh, too sloppy, or too broad. You can work to have the law changed if you wish. That’s a republic doing what it’s supposed to do. But when you call ordinary law enforcement “the Gestapo,” you cheapen real evil. You turn history into a slogan and suffering into a metaphor. And once every badge is tyranny, no tyranny is left to recognize. In Mississippi, I was raised to believe words should earn their weight. This one hasn't yet. It throws around the language of dictatorship while living under a system where courts still rule, lawyers still argue, and the government still loses. That difference matters. Because the day enforcement becomes secret, unchecked, and answerable to no one, we won’t need to borrow names from history. We’ll know exactly what we’re dealing with. And we’ll wish we’d kept our words honest.”

“ICE isn’t the Gestapo. The Gestapo was…” (proceeds to describe qualities that apply to what ICE is currently doing)

Tao Te Ching, Ursula K. Le Guin translation

Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation

"The disordered society is full of loyal patriots."

Tao Te Ching, Ursula K. Le Guin translation

“They avoided one another's faces, for fear of what they might see mirrored there. Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I'll murmur agreement, not actually say anything, I'm not stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard... No one said anything. The cowards, thought each man.” ― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

As Pratchett said:

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He really is doing all of it.

A screenshot from the website Meduza reads: Last year was arguably the worst one yet for Russia’s publishing industry. Bookstores were raided; independent publishing houses were shuttered; publishers pulled beloved novels from sale; and an increasing number of books came out in censored form. While the book business has long been one of the riskiest in the country, the degree of pressure on the industry was still striking — and it’s only growing more intense. At Meduza’s request, literary critic Alex Mesropov takes stock of how the Kremlin reshaped the Russian book industry in 2025: On December 18, Russian police raided bookstores in at least three cities. This time, the target was Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness, published by the company Azbuka. Following the raids, the book was pulled from sale. First published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness was met with international acclaim and was even translated into Russian during the Soviet era. It explores themes of androgyny, interrogating gender and sexual stereotypes — which, by all appearances, is precisely what Russian security forces found objectionable.

"When art shows only how and what, it is trivial entertainment, whether optimistic or despairing. When it asks why, it rises from mere emotional response to real statement, and to intelligent ethical choice. It becomes, not a passive reflection, but an act. And that is when all the censors, of the governments and of the marketplace, become afraid of it." From "The Stalin in the Soul" by Ursula K. Le Guin, first published in 1973

Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

Common Sense, published 250 years ago today.

It's striking that progressives like Tim Walz and Zohran Mamdani evoke the middle American attitude that, "Yes, we can fix these social problems because we're Americans and it's the right thing to do!" While the "America first" right only emulates failed and failing nation-states elsewhere.

The Dark Is Rising - 1. Midwinter Eve - BBC Sounds This night will be bad. Tomorrow will be beyond all imagining

I still recommend this dramatisation every year since its launch. The sound design is magnificent so worth listening on headphones. Interested in discovering any other winter listening rituals that others have.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Just finished this and it’s one of my favorite books on Tolkien ever. Deeply insightful and a little heartbreaking.

Opinion | Why I Keep Returning to Middle-Earth

This piece by Michael Drout is outstanding. I have felt the "great black wave of anguish" of losing a child he describes; the disappointment that there was no eucatastrophe, no miracle that awful morning. Yet we still find hope amid sorrow.
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/o...

#tolkien #lotr

In America, where irony is dead, a hotel chain uses a policy denying shelter to local people, for fear of accidentally housing homeless persons…

To deny a reservation to the author of a much-lauded book on how American economic unfairness forces working people into homelessness.

Thanks so much. For me it’s caffeine, and I find it impossible to give up coffee 😣

Well thanks. I’m still struggling with it

Mind if I ask what this regime is?

Can someone please respond to Stephen Miller with this message from Frank Sinatra?

OLD CHRISTMAS WASHINGTON IRVING Green cover, gold lettering and decoration Holly as border, Christmas cake, mistletoe and party scene with dancing and music.

Book Cover of the Day: