...favorite geopolitical theorist, but the guy is a professor in Russia who writes big fat books that don't get translated into English very much, and are expensive when they do get translated (I looked him up on Amazon back when I first heard about him).

It's scary shit, like everything else about Vlad. It's not a "theory," it is an understood reality. We know now that Putin helped finance and promote Brexit -- and that begins to tear the EU alliance apart. People in the UK never expected it to actually pass -- sound familiar?

There's a wave of far-right anti-immigrant "populism" all around Europe -- Putin's fingerprints all over the place.

The frosting on the cake for me personally was learning that Calexit, the cockamamie idea that California should secede from the Union, was led by an American with an office in Siberia. I'm a Californian, by the way.

Godsdammit, I hate Trumpists and all their works.

I also hate their enablers, whatever they choose to call themselves.

So at DU, all during the Obama years, we had to put up with shit from people with ODS who claimed to speak for the LGBTQ community. He was "spelunking," "throwing people under the bus" every day, lying from start to finish.

Now everything Barack Obama managed to get done for the LGBTQ community is being undone as fast as Trumpists can manage. Just wait till they come for marriage. That, I dare say, is going to be the LGBTQ community's Roe v. Wade -- something they think is settled law until bigots and fanatics go to war chipping away at it.

Where is the endless outrage from those DUers? Where is the recognition that they were wrong? Trump is the Enemy. Worse, Trump is the Trojan Horse.

That hot minute when he said he was a Democrat left a lot of us feeling used the next morning. Oh sure he whispered sweet nothings in our ears (or rather, he bellowed them at rallies) -- and he promised to respect us in the morning. But really, what did it all mean? Love 'em and leave 'em. Wham bam thank you ma'am.

Senator Sanders can toddle off and reform his own damned party.

...peace there has been maintained by the secular State of Israel for almost 70 years. In these modern times Christian sects cannot agree among themselves on who gets access to holy sites and when, and never have been able to. When Jerusalem was overrun by Crusaders in the Middle Ages, they slaughtered every man, woman, and child in the city.

But wait! It gets better! While the Ultra-Orthodox Jews refuse to accept the modern State of Israel because God told them in no uncertain terms that he would send a Messiah to found a theocracy, they are glad to accept help from the Evangelical Christian end-timers because reasons, despite the fact the Evangelicals believe all unconverted Jews are going to burn in Hell for eternity. The End-timers believe the return of their Messiah will be heralded by cataclysmic war in the Middle East. When they talk about "restoring Israel to its Biblical boundaries" that would pretty much do it -- just compare a modern map and the map included in many Bibles.

Trump, a man who believes only in himself, is catering to people who have no business in American politics.

Japan was really quite xenophobic.

The Dutch had access for awhile -- long enough to introduce such novelties as pistols, bread, and Christianity. The drawings of the seagoing Dutch by Japanese are amusing from this distance: blue pantaloons, big noses, strange blond hair.

When the government decided that the trade they were allowing was not worth the risk to their culture, they closed the port. They tried to wipe out Japanese Christians as a threat to traditional culture as well.

As an island nation they had always felt their vulnerability to attacks from China and Korea, but had managed to prevail -- at least once by dint of a powerful storm that sank the enemy ships: the divine wind, or kami kaze. That was rather like the time the Spanish Armada sank in a storm off Britain.

A lifetime ago I studied Japanese history, and I ended up pondering the differences between the two island nations of Britain and Japan. Japan, tho powerfully influenced by China far back in history, was very resistant to not just invasion but immigration and settlement. Homogeneity is built into the national psyche of Japan in ways not understandable to Americans or to our parent culture, Britain.

Britain is a culture of invasions and invaders who assimilated: Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Norsemen, Normans -- reinforced over centuries by the intermarriage of their royal families. And all of this before Indian, African, and Caribbean people from the now-former Empire started arriving. They have their troubles with race, just as we do, but they work at it, just as we do.

The Japanese reverence for racial and cultural homogeneity has persisted throughout time. Back in the 1970s one of my work colleagues had a side job as a Japanese/English interpreter at the airport. This blue eyed blond was born and raised in Japan, and I asked her why she left. She said that it was because there was no assimilation possible, that she would always be a gaijin (foreigner), so she decided to leave. It's one thing to arrive as a fully formed adult, but it's another to absorb a language and culture from infancy and to be always told it is not your own.

With the aging of Japan's population, foreigners have been invited in to fill vital roles in caring for the aged and so on, and now that it's been going on for some decades, I wonder if the Japanese government has finally managed to grapple with the problem of citizenship for foreigners and the children of foreigners born in Japan.

Admiral Perry broke their isolation, and they embarked on a very successful program of modernization. WW II was a disaster from start to finish, but by the late 1960s one of my professors remarked: They achieved everything they ever wanted by peaceful means that they failed to do by war.

What he didn't remark on was how powerfully they feel that they are Japanese, and that nobody else is.

...to our present troubles.

I find the fact that a clacque of posters here keep putting it forth -- it's repugnant as hell.

Some people new to DU may be mistaken about the meaning of "Underground" in this context, and when they are told they then have a choice whether to stay or go. Others are trolling hard and, if I may say so, putting the site in danger.

No. Just no.

...by a razor thin margin, but not thin enough to require a recount. It can be made to appear that a 3rd party candidate shaved off enough disgruntled voters to kill off Democratic votes. It can be made to appear that certain states or districts were bafflingly more "red" that polls showed.

It can be made to appear that for the first time in the history of elections, exit polls were wildly wrong, so lets not do those any more rather than figuring out what actually went wrong. As happened when Bush "won" over Gore.

Or it can be made to appear that someone was having a little fun, as when Max Cleland's results came in 181818 all over the place.

Talk of a blue wave makes my teeth itch. Lawrence O'Donnell gloating awhile back made me want to throw things at the tv.

...and all but destroy it. They tried hard to destroy us. Somebody had to care enough to do that--whether it was alt-right hatred or just a little demonstration on the side from one of Russia's hacking groups, I have no way of knowing.

It had the feel of someone saying: See how casually we can disrupt you?

Within the same period of time a Congressional hearing or meeting being broadcast on CSPAN was flipped to the RT newsroom. You know them, right? It happened the moment someone in the meeting said "Russia." How did that happen? Why? What earthly connection could there be between the two locations?

Again, that feeling of: See how easy?

It's not about inflating the importance of DU in the grand scheme of things, it's about America. All of our infrastructure is vulnerable. With apologies to John Donne, DU is only a part of the continent, a piece of the main -- but like CSPAN, the continent we are a part of is America.

As with 9-11, I was still sleeping. That day my daughter called me from her workplace and ordered me to turn in CNN. After awhile I went out into the front yard to get the newspaper, still clad in my fuzzy pink bathrobe. I saw my neighbor across the street and called out to her that we had been attacked.

Today a friend called me to in essence cry on my shoulder -- altho maybe ranting might be a better description. I Turned on MSNBC and muted it. After nearly an hour she rang off and I turned on the sound. Stephanie Ruhl was in full cry, God bless her.

On 9-11 I was still capable of shock. Today I am benumbed.

July 16, 2018, a day that will live in infamy.

Who did I call? One of my oldest friends, who lives on the other coast. I left a voicemail message: "Was just watching the Trump-Putin press conference. Just wanted to hear the sound of your voice." To my surprise, my voice shook a little.

And, to put it politely, your posts are full of inaccuracies. Once again I will point out that, by the numbers, HILLARY WON -- and that means her policies and those of the Dem Party resonated with more people than did Trump.

May I ask -- again -- what you propose to do about the cyberinvasion by a hostile foreign power? What do you propose to do about Jim Crow laws? Gerrymandering?

Are you aware at all of which of our Democratic leaders are working hard on these issues?

No? Can you name any? Are you on their email lists?

Oh, and by the way, last time I saw you you were complaining about our "message" and seemed to think we had none to speak of and that's why we "lost." I recommended you read the Democratic Platform. Did you find it enlightening?