Peg Gillard: Believe You Matter

lifelong educator assistant middle school principal reader motorcyclist camper learner tech-geek mother of 4 explorer of ideas traveler speck of the universe

[Peg Gillard: Believe You Matter @gracinginfinity]

A1: Challenges are possibilities in the making, opportunities calling, forks in the path, clearer vision #LEADFROMWITHIN

[Malcolm Nance @MalcolmNance]

Starlink taken from Musk and needs to be nationalized. It is a US Dept of Defense system. We paid for it. We own it. We should dictate how it operates.

[Badd Company @BaddCompani]

ICC!

[The Shallow State @OurShallowState]

This is a fascinating post from a year ago, check it out.

[Mario @PawlowskiMario]

I live in a small MAGA town.
I know MAGA people. I drink with them. I talk to them. I study them.

They’re not the loud Twitter yappers, at least most of them. They’re quieter. Slower. But the delusion runs deep, just bottled up in passive smiles and soft voices.

A few weeks ago, one of them tried to convert me at a bar. He knew I wasn’t into the Trump cult, but he started soft. Calm voice. Friendly tone.

“Mario, you’re white. You can drink a lot, you eat meat, “he was just surprised that I was eating rare burger” and drinking vodka chasing it with Guinness. He also said, “You’re one of us. You should feel proud.”

That’s their seduction tactic.
Not facts. Not logic. Just subtle tribal grooming.
“You’re white. You drink. You belong.”

It was almost sweet, in a sad, culty way.
Like a Jehovah’s Witness trying to sell you eternal life with a shaky brochure and cheap suit.

But let’s talk about the whole ecosystem.
The truth.

MAGA men?
Most are not warriors.
They’re out-of-shape, insecure, jealous small-town boys who peaked in high school, still clinging to stories from when they “almost went pro” or “should’ve been in the military.”
They’re proud of being able to drink a case of light beer, drive a truck, and scream about freedom while their knees buckle from sugar and rage.

They’re easy to manipulate because they don’t ask questions.
They don’t read.
They react.

They memorize memes like scripture and repeat them like gospel.
They think being loud equals being right.

They think the world is laughing with them.
It’s not.
The world’s laughing at them, when it’s not just ignoring them entirely.

MAGA women?

They’re caught in a brutal paradox, constantly screaming about how proud and strong they are, while reshaping every inch of their body to meet a fake beauty standard pushed by the very system they claim to hate.
Plastic lips. Inflated cheeks. Eyelashes thick as windshield wipers.
Trying to look rich while shopping clearance at Walmart.
They scream about “natural family values” while injecting Botox and collapsing into MLM scams that promise empowerment through overpriced lipstick.

They mock liberals for being “gender confused” while wearing more synthetic parts than a Barbie made in a Russian factory.

Here’s the thing: MAGA America isn’t just backward.

It’s boring. MAGA folks are simply subsimple.

There’s nothing imaginative about it. No new culture. No innovation. No ideas.
They don’t invent, they imitate.
They don’t challenge, they chant.

It’s the same five phrases over and over.
The same flag. The same truck. The same outfit.
Patriot cosplay.

And that’s why the world doesn’t just hate MAGA.
It forgets it.
Because once the shouting stops, there’s nothing under the hood.

Just cheap beer breath, fake smiles, and a belief that whiteness and loudness are still enough to matter.

You want the brutal truth?

Even without Trump, even without the cult, most of them would still be irrelevant.
Not because they’re evil.
But because they chose comfort over growth.
Tribalism over truth.
Imitation over imagination.

They don’t want to understand the world.
They want the world to stay small enough to understand them.

And that’s the saddest, most humiliating part.

[GOP Ls @GOP__Ls]

🚨 BREAKING: Republican Darline Graham’s campaign took $21,000 from two Epstein affiliate billionaires.

[Ted Lieu @tedlieu]

HEADLINE: trump is bragging about making money while people are suffering at the pump.

November is coming.

[Badd Company @BaddCompani]

Absolute Bullshit Fearmongering!

[Tymofiy Mylovanov @Mylovanov]

Ukrainian Nobel laureate Matviichuk: Russian occupiers abducted a woman for her pro-Ukrainian views. They tortured her and gang-raped her multiple times.

Then they took her to Russia and fabricated criminal charges against her.

I met her five-year-old daughter. She hugged me, started crying and begged: "Please return my mom."

I'm a human rights lawyer, but I have no legal tools to force Russia to return her mother. I felt broken.

I hugged her and promised we'd fight for her mother until she returned home.

[Henry Winkler @hwinkler4real]

This is IT!!!

[Scott Dworkin @funder]

Trump says fraud is robbing America blind. He's right. Jamie Raskin's staff counted how much got wiped out, case by case, and whose signature did it. Trump's Republicans will never hold that hearing. Democrats will. The number is in here.
https://t.co/GZ1EdSbiWX

[Essenviews @essenviews]

Trump can't reach an agreement with Putin so he blames me...

[Badd Company @BaddCompani]

The Universe has stepped in. Yes, this is real!

Russian tanker en route to the US with diesel may have gone down in a storm off Ireland!

Karma, Irony, and Mother Nature just teamed up!

[Mike Nellis @MikeNellis]

Joe Manchin is right to call out Vivek’s disgusting ad. But he’s the last guy who should be lecturing anybody about the state of our politics.

Manchin chaired the Senate Energy Committee, writing America’s energy policy, while pocketing roughly $500,000 a year from the family coal company his son runs. Then he gutted Biden’s climate agenda while fossil fuel donors stuffed his campaign coffers.

He’s one of the most corrupt politicians in America.

[R.Scott Tipton, MPA @rscotttipton1A]

I am from the United States 🇺🇸.
I support Ukraine 🇺🇦.

[Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger]

Trump’s oil deal with Venezuela was negotiated in secret. Now we know why. The contract just leaked, and it doesn’t say what Trump says it says. 

What it does say is that we bought 35 percent of a company for a penny a share. The company is run by Alejandro Betancourt, a Venezuelan businessman who’s been investigated for money laundering in Switzerland, Spain, and the United States. DOJ officials reportedly asked foreign governments to close those investigations and let him travel.

The parent company is registered through a Barbados shell, so nobody can see who the other owners are. Any dispute goes to a court in Texas. One person involved said it was built to insulate the deal from future administrations.

The company pumps about 200,000 barrels a day. America burns through that in 15 minutes. If this were a good deal, they wouldn’t have had to hide it. I break it all down in today’s show (link in reply).

[WarTranslated @wartranslated]

More photos of the Ozon warehouse burning in Omsk. Looks like it's going to burn to the ground.

[Badd Company @BaddCompani]

As I said yesterday, the reason why Americans have been told to leave the Middle East is not because of our bombing of Iran!

[Peg Gillard: Believe You Matter @gracinginfinity]

@HeatherThomasAF How does Murkowski feel about this? Did she offer it up?

[Heather Thomas @HeatherThomasAF]

Trump was never sending Kushner and Witkoff to broker peace. He was having those two crooks sell our Alaskan public land and our Alaskan natural resources to the fucking Russians as if it were his.
https://t.co/uM4zdlAjQq

[IN TRUMP WE TRUST @TrumpweTrust47]

Here is George Clooney’s response after Trump accused him of being a "Hollywood elite."

"Here’s the thing: I grew up in Kentucky. I sold insurance door-to-door. I sold ladies’ shoes. I worked at an all-night liquor store. I would buy suits that were too big and too long and cut the bottom of the pants off to make ties so I’d have a tie to go on job interviews. I grew up understanding what it was like to not have health insurance for eight years.

So this idea that I’m somehow the “Hollywood elite” and this guy who takes a shit in a gold toilet is somehow the man of the people is laughable.

People in Hollywood, for the most part, are people from the Midwest who moved to Hollywood to have a career. So this idea of “coastal elites” living in a bubble is ridiculous. Who lives in a bigger bubble?

He lives in a gold tower and has twelve people in his company. He doesn’t run a corporation of hundreds of thousands of people he employs and takes care of. He ran a company of twelve people!

When you direct a film you have seven different unions all wanting different things, you have to find consensus with all of them, and you have to get them moving in the same direction.

He’s never had to do any of that kind of stuff. I just look at it and I laugh when I see him say “Hollywood elite.” Hollywood elite? I don’t have a star on Hollywood Boulevard, Donald Trump has a star on Hollywood Boulevard! Fuck you!"

- George Clooney

actor, philanthropist, humanitarian & activist