Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 16:05
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The Common Genius of Lincoln and Einstein
The president and the physicist teach us a lesson about Moral Genius. Like high-achieving individuals in science or the arts, moral geniuses are willing to stand against conventional opinion. Trump and Musk are also willing to stand against conventional opinion about morality and seek to overthrow it, making them Immoral Geniuses.
By Andrew O’Hehir | October 2, 2014
https://nautil.us/the-common-genius-of-lincoln-and-einstein-235125/
Abraham Lincoln would still be remembered today as a self-taught prairie prodigy and an astute political operator who crushed the Confederate uprising, even without the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the end of slavery. Albert Einstein would still be the most famous physicist of the 20th century, and the author of the most famous equation in history, had he not called on his fellow scientists to address the moral consequences of their discoveries, speaking out against war and nuclear weapons. But both men possessed a quality that went beyond their immense talents in politics and science and elevated them to world-historical stature: an ambiguous but distinctive quality that scientists, historians, and philosophers have begun to call moral genius. By suggesting that morality can, like math or chemistry or musical composition, admit of genius-level contributions, the phrase challenges us to reconsider the nature of genius itself.
Columbia University philosopher Elliot Paul observes that at first glance a great moral leader does not appear “creative” in the same sense as a revolutionary artist or a brilliant scientist. The ideas represented by Lincoln or Einstein or Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., in their capacity as moral leaders, were not necessarily new. A great many 19th century Americans were deeply uncomfortable with slavery and understood that it conflicted with the nation’s alleged ideals on a fundamental level. Einstein was hardly the only person, or the only physicist, to notice that the immense scientific advance of splitting the atom threatened the human race with extinction. King and Gandhi personally experienced racial discrimination and saw it as a corrosive moral wrong that sickened entire societies, but they were certainly not alone.
What these people did that was creative and distinctive was to seize the moment—to recognize a great moral wrong and embrace the idea that they had a unique responsibility, and ability, to do something about it. Psychological theory on the subject of unusual creativity has often focused on the idea that genius is a self-created phenomenon. In the words of the late psychologist Howard Gruber, genius is best understood as “an organization that was constructed by the person himself in the course of his life, in the course of his work, as needed in order to meet the tasks that he encountered.” (Gruber’s gendered pronouns reflected standard usage at the time, highlighting the fact that women have historically been excluded from the category.)
Like high-achieving individuals in science or the arts, Paul suggests, moral geniuses are willing to stand against conventional opinion, often within their own nation or community, and seek to overthrow it. That kind of individual courage, we might say, becomes the subject or the text of the moral genius’s greatness. While the specifics vary greatly, we could describe a moral genius as someone who rejects the innate caution and the hypocritical compromises of normative social morality. (King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” his most sustained accomplishment in rhetorical prose, addresses precisely this issue.) “To become a moral leader is a demanding and inherently risky thing to do,” says William B. Irvine, a professor of philosophy at Wright State University and author of the forthcoming book Aha! The Moments of Insight That Shape Our World. “And moral leadership is most important in a situation where everybody is going to look down on you as a social traitor.” Gandhi opposed not just British imperialism but also H
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Navajo Code Talkers disappear from military websites after Trump DEI order
By Erin Alberty | Mar 17, 2025
https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2025/03/17/navajo-code-talk
ers-trump-dei-military-websites-wwii
Articles about the renowned Native American Code Talkers have disappeared from some military websites, with several broken URLs now labeled "DEI."
Why it matters: From 1942 to 1945, the Navajo Code Talkers were instrumental in every major Marine Corps operation in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
They were critical to securing America's victory at Iwo Jima.
Driving the news: Axios identified at least 10 articles mentioning the Code Talkers that had disappeared from the U.S. Army and Department of Defense websites as of Monday.
How it works: The Defense department's URLs were amended with the letters DEI, suggesting they were removed following President Trump's executive order ending federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
The Internet Archive shows the deleted Army pages were live as recently as November, with many visible until February or March. None are shown with error messages until Trump took office.
The other side: Asked about the missing pages, Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot replied in a statement: "As Secretary [Pete] Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department. ... We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms."
The statement did not address whether the Code Talkers are considered divisive DEI figures that "erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution." Indigenous Americans have enlisted in the U.S. military at a rate five times the national average, per Trump's own proclamation in 2018. That proclamation has also been removed.
More at https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2025/03/17/navajo-code-talk
ers-trump-dei-military-websites-wwii
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:So?
It’s bad for farmers who provide food aid.
Quote:Our TB cases are mostly imported. If we control our borders this won't be a problem.
It’s bad for overall human health in the United States. We’re seeing our own numbers of tuberculosis cases go up every year, and that will accelerate now.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Quote:
If Einstein looks like a universally revered figure in the rear-view mirror, it did not always seem so during his life: He was the subject of extensive FBI surveillance and harassment, and consistently depicted as a traitorous or unpatriotic Communist sympathizer by right-wing critics.
So, I guess when I'm called a Russian troll Einstein is right beside me.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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For all the "auditing" that's been done, the Federal government is $35 trillion in debt.
The government needs more than an audit. It needs a severe trimming, with an eye to furthering our core missions but eliminating non-essential spending i.e. spending that doesn't help America and Americans.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Quote:Did I tell you that Trumptards can't tell the difference between reality and imagination? At least all the ones I know can't and it causes endless trouble for them, troubles that they don't blame on their mental handicaps. They never blame themselves for the crappy lives they live.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:So?
It’s bad for farmers who provide food aid.Quote:Our TB cases are mostly imported. If we control our borders this won't be a problem.
It’s bad for overall human health in the United States. We’re seeing our own numbers of tuberculosis cases go up every year, and that will accelerate now.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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How Oklahoma’s superintendent set off a holy war in classrooms
Even for the devout, Ryan Walters’ mandate requiring that public school students learn from the Bible goes too far
By Linda K. Wertheimer | March 17, 2025
Walters’s pitch is a play for national attention, given his abundance of social media posts praising Donald Trump, who campaigned on returning prayer to schools and as president has established a White House Faith Office and a task force to root out “anti-Christian bias.” In September, Walters proposed spending $3 million to buy 55,000 copies of the Bible that has been endorsed by the president and for which he receives royalties.
But beyond Walter’s national aspirations, the Bible mandate also seems like an attempt at one-upmanship, with other states angling to infuse Christianity into public schools. Louisiana, for instance, is in a court battle over its push for Ten Commandments posters in schools. Texas fought off Democratic opposition to approve an optional Bible-infused curriculum and financial incentives for school districts that use the materials. A slew of states have passed or promoted similar measures, including ones allowing chaplains to act as counselors in schools. Unsurprisingly, Walters, too, has advocated for displaying the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
“He’s saying you can’t be a good American citizen if you don’t understand the Bible. It’s this merger of American and Christian identities, the idea that only Christians are true Americans.”
More at https://hechingerreport.org/how-oklahomas-superintendent-set-off-a-hol
y-war-in-classrooms/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Did I tell you that Trumptards can't tell the difference between reality and imagination? At least all the ones I know can't and it causes endless trouble for them, troubles that they don't blame on their mental handicaps. They never blame themselves for the crappy lives they live.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:So?
It’s bad for farmers who provide food aid.Quote:Our TB cases are mostly imported. If we control our borders this won't be a problem.
It’s bad for overall human health in the United States. We’re seeing our own numbers of tuberculosis cases go up every year, and that will accelerate now.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
REALITY:
Quote:
* Nationally, 76 percent of TB cases in 2023 occurred in foreign-born patients.[4]
* Counties, states and metropolitan areas with high foreign-born populations have higher TB rates than those with lower foreign-born populations.[5]
* Some countries of origin for both legal and illegal aliens have TB rates as high as 60 times the U.S. rate.[6]
* The government’s health screening for TB in potential immigrants is deficient; some categories of aliens do not undergo health screening at all.[7]
* Latent TB is not grounds for inadmissibility, even though the progression of latent TB accounts for over 80 percent of active TB cases in the U.S.[8]
* Some U.S. border counties have TB rates exceeding rates in high-risk countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon.[9]
* The cost of treating each case of TB is over $20,000, and can reach over $500,000 if the case is extensively drug-resistant.[10]
https://www.fairus.org/issue/tuberculosis-mass-migration-drives-its-pr
evalence-united-states
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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FWIW ... you won't find me 100% for everything that Trump is doing. You won't find me 100% against, either. I'm not trying to take a "middle road", I'm trying to be realistic about how we can improve America FOR AMERICANS.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Navajo Code Talkers disappear from military websites after Trump DEI order
By Erin Alberty | Mar 17, 2025
https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2025/03/17/navajo-code-talk
ers-trump-dei-military-websites-wwii
Articles about the renowned Native American Code Talkers have disappeared from some military websites, with several broken URLs now labeled "DEI."
Why it matters: From 1942 to 1945, the Navajo Code Talkers were instrumental in every major Marine Corps operation in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
They were critical to securing America's victory at Iwo Jima.
Driving the news: Axios identified at least 10 articles mentioning the Code Talkers that had disappeared from the U.S. Army and Department of Defense websites as of Monday.
How it works: The Defense department's URLs were amended with the letters DEI, suggesting they were removed following President Trump's executive order ending federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
The Internet Archive shows the deleted Army pages were live as recently as November, with many visible until February or March. None are shown with error messages until Trump took office.
The other side: Asked about the missing pages, Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot replied in a statement: "As Secretary [Pete] Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department. ... We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms."
The statement did not address whether the Code Talkers are considered divisive DEI figures that "erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution." Indigenous Americans have enlisted in the U.S. military at a rate five times the national average, per Trump's own proclamation in 2018. That proclamation has also been removed.
More at https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2025/03/17/navajo-code-talk
ers-trump-dei-military-websites-wwii
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
No surprise the code talkers are being erased. I saw this coming. Many historical Indigenous figures I am sure will be erased as well.
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