Thursday, March 7, 2024

the one true religion

 

My wife and I were both baptized in the Roman Catholic church. We also got married in the Catholic church, and our children were baptized in the church when they came of age. After we moved to Illinois, both of our children made their first communion at a Catholic church in Naperville, Illinois.

We joined a newcomer’s group after we settled in Aurora, and one of our friends was the Loveless family.

Sharon and Marge hit it  off immediately, and Marge soon invited us to attend her church, an ELCA church named St. James. Their pastor was a dynamic young pastor named K.C. Hendriks, and we DID enjoy his sermons.

Although we continued to go to the local Catholic church (a new parish had started up very close to our new home) we found that the Catholic priest was boring, and we struggled to get our kids to come to church with us.

As a result, we started to go to the ELCA church on a regular basis. Eventually I wound up becoming the council president, even though I was not a Lutheran. Both of our kids made their confirmation at the church.

Somewhere along the line, K.C. Hendriks had an affair, which ended his marriage, and his association with the church. He was replaced by Roger Timm, who was a nice guy, but a little boring. In a fairly short time, he was transferred to a parish in Oak Park that had an older congregation.

He was replaced by Rob Douglas, who is a great guy. We both liked cigars, and had more than a couple of beers together. That was the parish that we attended until I moved to China, and Sharon and Kelly moved to Chicago.

After we moved to Arizona, we attended a few masses at the Catholic church in Flagstaff. Eventually, we were referred to a Baptist church (Mountain View) that was led by a dynamic pastor named Michael, who has since moved on.

Sharon and I both worked for the Flagstaff United School District. She was a teacher’s aide, and I was a substitute teacher. After spending all week working with kids, the though of traveling back into town for a one-hour service became a burden, and we stopped going to church altogether.

After we moved to Tucson in the fall of 2015, we made no effort at all of find a new church community.

The message below was posted on Messenger a few days ago:

“It takes a great deal of arrogance to live in the United States with over 200 different sects of Christianity, all with their own unique theology, yet insist that only your sect has the moral authority to speak, not only for all Christians, but for all the people in our country as well”

Tommy and Dick Smothers addressed this issue a VERY long time ago:

AllReligions | The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (youtube.com)

After I joined Toastmasters in the early 1980’s, I learned that you always need to be careful when discussing religion and politics – especially with people that you do not know well. As a result, I am NOT going to criticize anyone’s religious beliefs. At the same time, I am not going to tolerate anyone who criticizes MY religious beliefs – or lack thereof.

I am of the opinion that going to church that going to church every week does not make you a better person, and it is also true that not going to church at all does not make you a bad person.

 

After we moved to Evanston, Illinois, I discovered that there were roughly 100 places of worship in town – so I decided to visit as many of them as I could.

https://dailynorthwestern.com/2023/05/24/city/happy-birthday-evanston/how-evanston-became-the-city-of-churches/#:~:text=Evanston%20is%20home%20to%20about%20100%20places%20of,a%20steeple%20is%20usually%20visible%20in%20the%20skyline.

 

Since I worked on Friday nights, I was unable to attend either a mosque or a synagogue, but I DID manage to visit about 65 churches before I ran out of energy.

Most were OK, a few were reminiscent of a cult, and a few of them I liked well enough that I made some return trips.

We are drifting closer and closer to Christian nationalism in our country, and that is a dangerous thing.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2022/08/christian-nationalism.html

Religion is one of the topics that I have written about on my blog, and I have done it a lot. Like many people, our friends and relatives range from Catholics who attend the mass every week to a few people who have become atheists.

My mother-in-law was a very strict Catholic, and she would not let her daughter (my wife) go to a church that was not Catholic. For that reason, I thought you might like to hear from some “fallen away” Catholics:

 

 

The first response I got was from a couple that we have known for more than 50 years. I’ll refer to them as librarian 1 and librarian 2.

He was brought up in the Lutheran faith, and she was raised in the Catholic faith. After the military transferred overseas in the early 1970’s, they met a couple who practiced the Baha’i faith, and it was not long before they both converted to that faith.

Here are her comments:

“” As members of the Baha'i Faith, we recognize all religions as true and do not impose our beliefs on anyone.  We are happy to share the principles of the Baha'i Faith with anyone who is interested.  But we do that in the spirit of creating meaningful discussions, not in an attempt to proselytize.

 I think having a spiritual life is essential.  To me that means having a set of principles which guide your choices and actions and being of service wherever and whenever you can be.”  

 Editor’s note:

 Here are the principles of the Baha’i’ faith:


 https://bahai.com/principles.html

 • The oneness of mankind.

• Universal peace upheld by a world government.

• Independent investigation of truth.

• The common foundation of all religions.

• The essential harmony of science and religion.

• Equality of men and women.

• Elimination of prejudice of all kinds.

• Universal compulsory education.

• A spiritual solution to the economic problem.

• A universal auxiliary language.

 

The link above goes into more detail on each of these principles.

 

The first Baha’i’ temple in the world was built in Wilmette, Illinois, and it was dedicated in 1953.

 There are only nine Bahá’í houses of worship in the world.




All nine temples share certain design features, including domes and gardens. Each temple is nine-sided because Bahá’ís consider the number nine—the highest single number—a symbol of oneness, comprehensiveness and unity. In Wilmette, the temple includes nine entrances and nine verses above the doors and the alcoves. Of all the temples, the Wilmette house of worship is the oldest. It has been named a National Historic Landmark, one of the Seven Wonders of Illinois and is visited by 250,000 people a year. Aside from being called the “Temple of Light and Unity,” the 1100-seat Wilmette building is known as the “Mother Temple of the West” by Bahá’ís around the world. Today, it remains the only Bahá’í temple in the U.S.

 

********************************************************************

 One of our relatives eventually gravitated toward the Unitarian faith.

https://neighborhooduu.org/

Unitarianism  is a Nontrinitarian branch of Christianity. Unitarian Christians affirm the unitary nature of God as the singular and unique creator of the universe, believe that Jesus Christ was inspired by God in his moral teachings and that he is the savior of humankind but he is not equal to God himself.

Unitarianism was established in order to restore "primitive Christianity before later corruptions set in" Likewise, Unitarian Christians generally reject the doctrine of original sin. The churchmanship of Unitarianism may include liberal denominations or Unitarian Christian denominations that are more conservative, with the latter being known as biblical Unitarians.

The birth of the Unitarian faith is proximate to the Radical Reformation, beginning almost simultaneously among the Protestant Polish Brethren in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and in the Principality of Transylvania in the mid-16th century. The first Unitarian Christian denomination known to have emerged during that time was the Unitarian Church of Transylvania, founded by the Unitarian preacher and theologian Ferenc Dávid (c.15201579).

Among its adherents were a significant number of Italians who took refuge in BohemiaMoravia, Poland, and Transylvania in order to escape from the religious persecution perpetrated against them by the Roman Catholic and Magisterial Protestant churches.

 In the 17th century, significant repression in Poland led many Unitarians to flee or be killed for their faith. From the 16th to 18th centuries, Unitarians in Britain often faced significant political persecution, including John BiddleMary Wollstonecraft, and Theophilus Lindsey. In England, the first Unitarian Church was established in 1774 on Essex Street, London, where today's British Unitarian headquarters is still located.

As is typical of dissenters and nonconformists, Unitarianism does not constitute one single Christian denomination; rather, it refers to a collection of both existing and extinct Christian groups (whether historically related to each other or not) that share a common theological concept of the unitary nature of God.

Unitarian Christian communities and churches have developed in Central Europe (mostly Romania and Hungary), IrelandIndiaJamaicaJapanCanadaNigeriaSouth Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In British America, different schools of Unitarian theology first spread in the New England Colonies and subsequently in the Mid-Atlantic States. The first official acceptance of the Unitarian faith on the part of a congregation in North America was by King's Chapel in Boston, from where James Freeman began teaching Unitarian doctrine in 1784 and was appointed rector. Later in 1785, he created a revised Unitarian Book of Common Prayer based on Lindsey's work.

 

Like the Baha’i faith, Unitarians are respectful of other religions. As example of that is the fact that the Unitarian church in Evanston hosts an inter-denominational service every year, which I attended in 2010:

 

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2010/11/thanksgiving-with-enemy.html

 

 

70% of the people in America consider themselves to be Christian – but America is NOT a Christian nation. That fact was stated in the 1st amendment to the Constitution.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/

The fastest growing group in America are the folks who are not affiliated with any religion, a group that includes atheists, agnostics, and “none”.

Muslims make up less than 1% of our population, but they (like Jewish people) are most likely for face religious prosecution. For what it’s worth, I am one of the few Caucasians that has actually read the Koran, which is more similar to the Bible than you might think.

The link below will allow you to read my thoughts on the book:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2021/08/what-vietnam-can-teach-us-about-koran.html

The main reason that freedom of religion is enshrined in the constitution is that the Founding Fathers were aware of the centuries of religious wars in Europe, and were also familiar with religious discrimination in America. One example is the Quakers:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2010/10/day-quakers-died.html

30% of the American population believe that the Bible is literally true.

The links below explain why that makes no sense at all:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2013/04/noahs-ark-and-othe-rfairy-tales.html

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2010/09/bible-told-me-so.html

In summary, if you are looking to find the one true religion, you’ll eventually come to the same conclusion that I did.

There isn’t one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday, March 3, 2024

We can save our democracy !

 

These are perilous times for our democracy. However, there have also been numerous other times in our country’s history when our system of government could have been destroyed, but was not.

Fortunately, there are things we can do now that give homage to the thought in Lincoln’s Gettysburg address:

 

[...] that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 

Both Rachel Maddow and Heather Cox Richardson just released new books that examine the perils that we have faced in the past, and how we overcame them.

 

Rachel Anne Maddow (born April 1, 1973) is an American television news program host and liberal political commentator. Maddow hosts The Rachel Maddow Show, a weekly television show on MSNBC, and serves as the cable network's special event co-anchor.Her syndicated talk radio program of the same name aired on Air America Radio from 2005 to 2010.

Maddow has received multiple Emmy Awards for her broadcasting work and in 2021 received a Grammy Award for the audiobook version of Blowout (2019).

Maddow holds a bachelor's degree in public policy from Stanford University and a doctorate in political science from the University of Oxford and is the first openly lesbian anchor to host a major prime-time news program in the United States.

 

Maddow wrote Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power (2012) about the role of the military in postwar American politics. Upon its release, Drift reached the first position of The New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover nonfiction.

In December 2013, The Washington Post announced that Maddow would write a monthly opinion column for the paper, contributing one article per month over a period of six months.

On March 2, 2018, The New York Times published Maddow's first crossword puzzle, in collaboration with Joe DiPietro. On the eve of its publication, she said: "This is kind of it, like there will never be a baby, but there's this freaking crossword puzzle, and I am very, very excited about it."

Maddow's second book Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth was published in October 2019. In March 2021, the audiobook version of Blowout, recorded by Maddow, won the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards.

Her third book, Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House, written with Michael Yarvitz, was published in December 2020.

Maddow's fourth book, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism was published on October 17, 2023. It is based on her podcast Ultra.

 

I have read all 4 of her books, and recently finished reading “Prequel”

 

Heather Cox Richardson is an American academic historian, author, and educator. She is a professor of history at Boston College, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and the Plains Indians. She previously taught history at MIT and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Richardson has authored seven books on history and politics. In 2019, Richardson started publishing Letters from an American, a nightly newsletter that chronicles current events in the larger context of American history. The newsletter accrued over one million subscribers, making her, as of December 2020, the most successful individual author of a paid publication on Substack.

 

Born in Chicago in 1962 and raised in Maine, Richardson attended Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. She received both her BA and PhD from Harvard University, where she studied under David Herbert Donald and William Gienapp.

 

In 2023, Richardson published her seventh book, entitled Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America that she characterized as having grown from writings she began in 2019 and subsequent interactions with her readers. Those writings deal with discussion of contemporary events Richardson relates to historical developments and that were moved from postings on Facebook to her newsletter entitled Letters from an American and published, almost daily, on Substack.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Cox_Richardson

I finished reading “Democracy Awakening” recently, and found that it was similar to Rachel Maddow’s “Prequel”.

Sadly, not enough people will read either book, which is why our government is sliding towards a society that could become a full-blown dictatorship if the wrong people get elected in November.

Both women point out that the biggest threat to our democracy is Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans.

The refusal of House Republicans to fund aid for Ukraine, their insistence on pursuing a bogus impeachment scheme hatched by an indicted Russian FBI source in contact with Russian intelligence services and their unfailing loyalty to an anti-democratic demagogue infatuated with Russian President Vladimir Putin will further aggravate the existential threat facing democracy around the globe. MAGA Republicans’ recent conduct will only hasten the dangerous trend toward authoritarianism spelled out in Freedom House’s recent report “Freedom in the World 2024: The Mounting Damage of Flawed Elections and Armed Conflict.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/04/democracy-freedom-house-republicans/#:~:text=The%20refusal%20of,Armed%20Conflict.%E2%80%9D

The problem we have as a country, though, is that there simply are not enough educated voters.

9 of the 10 most popular shows on television are on the FOX network, which is actually not a news channel, since it was registered in 1996 as an entertainment channel.

Until Tucker Carlson was fired by FOX in 2023 (for lying about the 2020 election)  he was one of the highest rated shows on cable television, with an audience as large as 3.7 million people.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_Carlson

 

As far back at May of 2017, Der Spiegel proclaimed that DonaldTrump is not fit for office.

 

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/donald-trump-is-a-menace-to-the-world-opinion-a-1148471.html

 

Although you can read the complete article at the link shown above, here are a few kay points:

Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States . He does not possess the requisite intellect and does not understand the significance of the office he holds  nor the tasks associated with it. He doesn't read. He doesn't bother to peruse important files and intelligence reports and knows little about the issues that he has identified as his priorities. His decisions are capricious and they are delivered in the form of tyrannical decrees.

He is a man free of morals. As has been demonstrated hundreds of times, he is a liar, a racist and a cheat. I feel ashamed to use these words, as sharp and loud as they are. But if they apply to anyone, they apply to Trump . And one of the media's tasks is to continue telling things as they are: Trump has to be removed from the White House. Quickly. He is a danger to the world.

Trump is a miserable politician. He fired the FBI director simply because he could. James Comey had gotten under his skin with his investigation into Trump's confidants. Comey had also refused to swear loyalty and fealty to Trump and to abandon the investigation. He had to go.

Trump is also a miserable boss. His people invent excuses for him and lie on his behalf because they have to, but then Trump wakes up and posts tweets that contradict what they have said. He doesn't care that his spokesman, his secretary of state and his national security adviser had just denied that the president had handed Russia (of all countries) sensitive intelligence gleaned from Israel (of all countries). Trump tweeted: Yes, yes, I did, because I can. I'm president after all.

Nothing is as it should be in this White House. Everyone working there has been compromised multiple times and now they all despise each other - and everyone except for Trump despises Trump. Because of all that, after just 120 days of the Trump administration, we are witness to an American tragedy for which there are five theoretical solutions.

The first is Trump's resignation, which won't happen.

The second is that Republicans in the House and Senate support impeachment, which would be justified by the president's proven obstruction of justice, but won't happen because of the Republicans' thirst for power, which they won't willingly give up.

The third possible solution is the invocation of the 25th Amendment, which would require the cabinet to declare Trump unfit to discharge the powers of the presidency. That isn't particularly likely either.

Fourth: The Democrats get ready to fight and win back majorities in the House and Senate in midterm elections, which are 18 months away, before they then pursue option two, impeachment.

Fifth: the international community wakes up and finds a way to circumvent the White House and free itself of its dependence on the U.S. Unlike the preceding four options, the fifth doesn't directly solve the Trump problem, but it is nevertheless necessary - and possible.

 

According to The Guardian, Trump is the worst president in our nation’s history – and he would be far worse if elected to a second term of office.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/20/presidents-ranking-trump-biden-list


There are other sources that confirm that status as well. Here are a few key phrases from The Guardian’s article:

Donald Trump finished 45th and rock bottom of a list ranking US presidents by greatness, trailing even “historically calamitous chief executives” who failed to stop the civil war or botched its aftermath.

 

Worse for the likely Republican nominee this year, his probable opponent, Joe Biden, debuted at No 14.

 

“Biden’s most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall,” Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus, the political scientists behind the survey, wrote in the Los Angeles Times.”

 

Trump is the only president who has been impeached twice.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_of_Donald_Trump

 

The first impeachment of President Donald Trump occurred on December 18, 2019. On that date, the House of Representatives adopted two articles of impeachment against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. On February 5, 2020, the Senate voted to acquit Trump on both articles of impeachment, almost exclusively on party lines. The final vote in the senate was 52 against removal from office, and 48 in favor of removing him from office. Mitt Romney was the only Republican voting to remove him from office.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_of_Donald_Trump

 

Trump was impeached for the second time on January 13, 2021, one week before his term expired. It was the fourth impeachment of a U.S. president, and the second for Trump after his first impeachment in December of 2019.

Ten Republican representatives voted for the second impeachment, the most pro-impeachment votes ever from a president's party. This was also the first presidential impeachment in which the majority caucus voted unanimously for impeachment. Trump was indicted on August 1, 2023, for the conduct for which he was impeached.

The House of Representatives of the 117th U.S. Congress adopted one article of impeachment against Trump of "incitement of insurrection", stating that he had incited the January 6 attack of the U.S. Capitol. These events were preceded by attempts by Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election, as well as his pushing of voter fraud conspiracy theories on his social media channels before, during, and after the election.

 

 At the conclusion of the trial, the Senate voted 57–43 to convict Trump of inciting insurrection, falling 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution, and Trump was therefore acquitted. Seven Republican senators joined all Democratic and independent senators in voting to convict Trump, the largest bipartisan vote for an impeachment conviction of a U.S. president or former U.S. president. After the vote on the acquittal, Mitch McConnell said there is no doubt that Trump is practically and morally responsible for inciting the events at the Capitol but he voted against conviction due to his interpretation of the United States Constitution.

 




Since Congress failed twice to remove Trump from office, the sole remedy remaining is to remove him from office using the court system.

Trump spent more than $50 million on legal fees last year, some of which were paid for by the Republican national committee.

More than a year after the 2020 presidential election, the GOP is still covering numerous legal bills for the benefit of former President Donald Trump -- and the price tag is ruffling the feathers of some longtime GOP donors who are now critical of Trump.

In October and November alone, the Republican National Committee spent nearly $720,000 of its donor money on paying law firms representing Trump in various legal challenges, including criminal investigations into his businesses in New York, according to campaign finance records.

Trump's legal bills have sent the Republican Party's total legal expenditures soaring in recent months, resulting in $3 million spent just between September and November. In contrast, the Democratic National Committee has been gradually winding down its legal expenses over the last few months.

Traditionally, national political parties have at times covered presidents and their advisers' legal fees in matters related to their presidential campaigns. And throughout his presidency, the Republican Party has footed legal bills for Trump, his family members and his political allies, going back to the days of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the 2016 election, through the impeachment proceedings following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/year-election-rnc-spending-hundreds-thousands-cover-trumps/story?id=82114367

In November of 2022, RNC chair Ronna McDaniel announced that the RNC would not pay Trump’s legal fees if her ran for president. Recently, Trump forced her resignation, and plans to install his daughter-in law Lara Trump as the chair.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rnc-trump-legal-fees-end-candidate-ronna-mcdaniel_n_636877bbe4b08f849aac9e51

Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and handpicked choice to help lead the Republican National Committee said she thinks Republican voters would support having the political organization pay the former president’s ballooning legal fees.

Lara Trump said Wednesday while campaigning for her father-in-law ahead of the South Carolina primary that she was not familiar with the RNC’s rules about paying Donald Trump’s legal fees in a multitude of criminal and civil cases.

But she said she thought the idea would get broad support among GOP voters who see his legal cases as political persecution.

“That’s why people are furious right now. And they see the attacks against him. They feel like it’s an attack not just on Donald Trump but on this country,” she said. “So yeah, I think that is a big interest to people, absolutely.”

https://apnews.com/article/lara-trump-rnc-donald-trump-9c25a74e096439cd7b0ac37c96530675

By April of 2020, Trump had been involved in 3500 lawsuits.

https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/attorney-and-author-on-his-portrait-of-donald-trump-through-more-than-3500-lawsuits

Currently, Trump faces 91 felony counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of which could potentially produce a prison sentence. He’s also dealing with a civil suit in New York that could force drastic changes to his business empire, including closing down its operations in his home state. Meanwhile, he is the leading Republican candidate in the race to become the next president—though the Supreme Court has now heard a case seeking to disqualify him. If the criminal and civil cases unfold with any reasonable timeliness, he could be in the heat of the campaign at the same time that his legal fate is being decided.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/donald-trump-legal-cases-charges/675531/

He recently was forced to pay over $80 million to E. J. Carroll in her defamation suits.

In the fall of 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a civil suit against Trump, his adult sons, and his former aide Allen Weisselberg, alleging a years-long scheme in which Trump fraudulently reported the value of properties in order to either lower his tax bill or improve the terms of his loans, all with an eye toward inflating his net worth.

That case was recently settled, and Trump was ordered to pay over $500 million

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/donald-trump-legal-cases-charges/675531/

The document case of Florida is still active, but its timetable has been pushed back.

The Manhattan hush money case was scheduled to start on March 25, but has been put on hold while the Supreme Court ponders Trump’s immunity claim.

The Fulton Country case brought by Fani Willlis is now stalled due to allegations of sexual impropriety with her chief prosecutor.

Special Counsel Smith has also charged Trump with four federal felonies in connection with his attempt to remain in power after losing the 2020 election. This case is in court in Washington, D.C.

When?


A grand jury indicted Trump on August 1, 2023. The trial was originally schedule for March 4, but Judge Tanya Chutkan said in early February that the date would change, as an appeals court deliberated on Trump’s claim of absolute immunity. A three-judge panel roundly rejected that claim on February 6, but no new trial date has been announced yet. As with the other DOJ case, Smith will need to move quickly, before Trump or any other Republican president could shut down a case upon taking office in January 2025. Other tangential legal skirmishes continue: In October, after verbal attacks by Trump on witnesses and Smith’s wife, Chutkan issued an order limiting what Trump can say about the case.

Given the glacial speed that the legal system operates in, it’s entirely possible that the Georgia case, and Jack Smith’s will not be resolved until after November election. Worst still, a huge number of Trump voters would stick with him even if he were a felon.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/15/heres-how-much-criminal-conviction-could-hurt-trump-2024/

Several states have tried to keep Trump off the ballot in their states, but have run into legal issues, which means that the only way to preserve our democracy is a simple solution:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/03/trump-colorado-ballot-supreme-court-decision/

Vote