ann

political junkie since age 8

[ann @parduetree]

🍬Vase with sandDad's bookCat runningWall lampApple juice“No, I’m not,” Elias said, leaning in to kiss her again, a soft, tender kiss that made her heart flutter, even more than the first one.

[ann @parduetree]

🧇Evening reading book on the pillowLearn one new piece of knowledge each day, widen your inner world through steady study. Absorb fresh insights daily, new wisdom opens brand-new doors within easy daily reach around you.

[ann @parduetree]

😧Video game with friend Friend, cameTreat every stranger you encounter equal soft gentle kindness never judge others outer physical looks seek inner kindness all daily social face to face meeting interaction contacts

[ann @parduetree]

🥋I focus on details: adjusting parameters, striving for resultsI call out in excitement, my voice echoing across the water. I keep reeling, guiding the tuna toward the boat, my hands shaking with adrenaline. I use a net to scoop it up, lifting it aboard with a final heave.

[ann @parduetree]

🥒Grateful for every sunrise and every moment.Elara took the locket, clutching it tightly in her hand, tears streaming down her face. “Thank you, Margaret,” she said. “Thank you for everything. I’ll never forget what you’ve taught me, never forget our family’s legacy. I’l

[ann @parduetree]

@mtaibbi @walterkirn Goodness! Matt Taibbi a Flannery O'Connor fan! How great is that?

[ann @parduetree]

@MarioNawfal Go for it!

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🚨🇺🇸 THE $5 TRILLION PROOF THAT AMERICA NEEDS A THIRD PARTY

Elon is right.

When Congress passes the biggest debt ceiling increase in history, something is fundamentally broken.

Senator Rand Paul exposed the uncomfortable truth: This bill adds $270 billion to the deficit next year while raising the debt ceiling by $5 trillion.

That astronomical number isn't just spending, it's an admission that both parties have given up on fiscal responsibility.

The cycle is predictable and soul-crushing.

Republicans campaign on smaller government, Democrats on helping working families.

Both get elected, both feed the same machine.

The debt explodes, the establishment wins, Americans lose.

This isn't about attacking conservatives who voted for this bill, it's about recognizing a system that forces good people into bad choices.

When the only options are Big Government Party A and Big Government Party B, the deep state wins by default.

Polling shows 60-70% of Americans desperately want a viable third option.

They're exhausted by the uniparty theater where corporate donors pull the strings while the national debt becomes a generational curse.

The America Party isn't just a protest vote, it's a liberation movement.

A chance to break the stranglehold of special interests and give power back to actual people.

When both parties fail this spectacularly, a third way isn't radical. It's necessary.

Source: Reuters, NYT, The Guardian, Fox

[ann @parduetree]

@JanRavensbergen @walterkirn @AmericaWeek @mtaibbi Yes! Aside from her writings, the peacocks are my next favorite story about Flannery O'Connor!

[Jan Ravensbergen @JanRavensbergen]

@walterkirn @AmericaWeek @mtaibbi A special connection — peacocks are prominent — bridges our era with Flannery O’Connor’s physical spell on this earth

Surprise element: the gritty, resilient, under-rated Lucinda Williams, she of Stories from a Rock ‘n Roll Heart…

https://t.co/nI2ubZy1sQ

[Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi]

Tomorrow with @walterkirn on America This Week we’ll be reading “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” in honor of Flannery O’Connor, born 100 years ago this week.

[ann @parduetree]

@mtaibbi Green card!

[ann @parduetree]

@BasedMikeLee Yes!

[Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee]

Indifference toward freedom = enemy to freedom

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is actually an interesting debate in that it illustrates the immense gap - which is far from new - between Americans' supposed "traditional values" and their actions. That Vance feels compelled to redefine core Christian teachings to obscure this hypocrisy only sharpens the contradiction.

It also illustrates the perils of linking politics with religion, and particularly Christianity, whose universalist ethics—like the command to 'love thy enemy'—collide irreconcilably with statecraft’s inherent brutality (especially in America’s case). Attempting this fusion inevitably debases either the faith or the state.

The only way we know how to square this circle is to either run a theocracy that actually implements Christian principles (historically doomed to either collapse or compromise), or adopt a secular moral philosophy compatible with governance. Confucianism is a good example of the latter—a system prioritizing social harmony through reciprocal obligations, not divine edicts. Unlike religion, it rejects transcendent ideals for pragmatic role-based ethics: statecraft as collective choreography, not the application of dogma.

The Enlightenment attempted something similar with liberalism but 3 centuries later we're obviously reaching the end of that cycle: as should be obvious to anyone paying attention liberalism’s extreme individualism has eroded the social fabric and collective purpose that bind societies. Western societies are now largely adrift—atomized, purposeless, and increasingly nihilistic.

This is probably why we're witnessing this strange moment where folks like Vance perform theological contortions to grope their way towards a more communitarian framework. Vance knows that liberalism isn't working and that there's a thirst out there for more collective purpose and social cohesion. And he's trying to awkwardly retrofit Christianity to serve that role.

Today’s crisis interestingly mirrors the Enlightenment era, when the existing paradigm — Christian theology as a framework for governance — crumbled under the weight of its own contradictions. Just as the Wars of Religion exposed the dangers of dogmatic governance, today’s fractures—social isolation, inequality, America's endless wars—reveal liberalism’s limits.

And fascinatingly, few know that at the time Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire and Leibniz turned to Confucianism for inspiration. They saw in it a secular antidote to Europe’s theological bloodshed—morality rooted in social harmony, not scripture. Voltaire in particular was so in love with China that he had only one portrait in his study: that of Confucius, whom he described as “speaking only of the purest morality” and writing that, “since his time”, no “finer rule of conduct has ever been given throughout the earth”.

Yet the West chose liberalism—a system emphasizing individual rights over Confucian harmony. Three centuries later, we face the consequences: a society so obsessed with the individual it has forgotten how to sustain a common good. We've reached a wall just as our Enlightenment predecessors faced the limitations of Christian statecraft.

So in a funny way our 300-year experiment in prioritizing individual rights resembles a tragicomic attempt to outsmart Confucian wisdom. And we’re now rediscovering the value of his ‘differential order’ (差序格局)—not a rigid hierarchy, but a living network of mutual duties binding family, community, and nation.

The tragedy is that we’ll now likely repeat history’s mistakes: instead of embracing a Confucian-like pragmatism, we may distort Christianity into a state ideology — the very outcome the Enlightenment sought to escape. Vance’s rhetoric hints at this path: using faith not to unite, but to exclude.

All in all, three centuries later, the question endures: can we craft a moral framework that honors both individual dignity and the common good, free from dogma or nihilism? The answer, I think, lies not in hollowed-out liberalism or mangled theology, but rather in humility — recognizing that traditions once dismissed as ‘backward,’ like Confucianism’s reciprocity, Ubuntu’s ‘I am because we are,’ or even Hindu dharma’s contextual ethics, may hold keys to rebuilding societies that balance I and we.

[Sherry B @Smartin9_]

@SidneyPowell1 Not just the dems, let’s not forget the RHINO’s.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

If you’re a hardcore software engineer and want to build the everything app, please join us by sending your best work to [email protected].

We don’t care where you went to school or even whether you went to school or what “big name” company you worked at.

Just show us your code.

[Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee]

No es tu tierra

Es nuestra tierra

[ann @parduetree]

@CharlieKNews Yes! That should have always been the case!