Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"What we need to recognize is that the people who attacked our country, the people capitol, the people who attacked our way of life, and our way of governance, they belong to a faction. We can call it a Jim Crow faction, we can call it a Confederate faction -- it's a faction. And as James Madison defined it, a faction is a small group of people, a minority, that is intent -- who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion or of interest -- adverse to the rights of other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community. This is what Madison was writing about in The Federalist Papers that he feared. And we have had this faction as a facet of our history from the founding of this country. This is a faction that, of course, refused to join the United States until they were assured that they could enslave other human beings. This was a faction that nullified laws that they rejected. This is the faction that more recently refused to grant that President Barack Obama was a United States citizen, American born. This is an ethos and an idea that has been part and parcel of this country since its founding. And at every turn we have not vanquished it; at every turn we have not identified it. And if we do not understand that today's Big Lie, the big lie that the will of the people should be vacated because of course we had the temerity to let Black and brown and young and new Americans vote, is simple the latest iteration of the overarching Big Lie -- the overarching big lie that we are in fact not created equal, the overarching big lie that there are certain people -- African Americans, indigenous people, newer immigrants -- who will never be, in some people's eyes, full and true citizens. And so I think it's incredibly important to position this 1/6/'21 investigation, this attack on or country, as a rooting-out of a supremely un-democratic, un-equal, unjust force that we need to get to the bottom of, and to understand that this faction, it's not a political party. It's taken up host in the GOP; it's a parasite on our nation, but it operates well beyond the GOP: it operates as a media syndicate [...], Fox News, Sinclair, Newsmax, OWN; it operates through talk radio, it operates through state legislatures, it operates through social media, it operates through paramilitaries like the Proud Boys. This is a faction that every single American of good conscience needs to care about, needs to get to the bottom of, and it is something that we simply cannot continue to live with as a nation if we are going to be united and make real the promise of liberty and justice for all. And so, once we recognize that the faction is ... well, it's a parasite on our naion, and if you'll allow the mixed metaphor, it's either a boil that we will lance, or it's a cancer that will continue to spread." -- Anat Shekner-Osotio (anatosaurus) Pod Save America, 2021-07-01 (0:08:49 - 0:12:10)

[Wishing my countrymen a good Independence Day, and may we ever strive to make our nation better and closer to its ideals!]