supreme court | The Direction of Intention

The Number One Need [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on September 1, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Recently we wrote about the ubiquitous question, “What can I do?” We-the-people are under assault by a government racing toward fascism and often find ourselves frozen in disbelief. John Pavlovitz’s answer to the question is to look local. Find a local need and fill it. A million small acts of kindness and support add up to a tsunami of good will across our injured landscape. It’s the Butterfly Effect.

It is also important to look nationally. Though we’re not hearing about it in the mainstream media, the Supremes are poised to strike a death-blow to democracy. They are hearing arguments to strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act which prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It is, as Mark Elias says, “A Five Alarm Fire” for our democracy.

On the list of needs, raising awareness of the importance of this assault on voters rights is urgent. It, too, is the Butterfly Effect. Erase protections from racial discrimination in voting and there will be no constitutional prohibition on the republican gerrymander. A tsunami of republican political manipulations will sweep across our land and essentially end free and fair elections for all of us. Pushing back, protesting, ringing the alarm on this assault on minority voter protection…is utmost on the list of needs.

The republicans are attempting to push through their SAVE ACT that places limits on voting rights. The repeal of The Voting Rights Act would essentially be the nail in democracy’s coffin.

Number one on our national list of needs: a republican party that actually believes in democracy. They work to restrict voter access to free and fair elections while openly scheming to rig elections so they will forever remain in power.

Perhaps the number one need is mainstream news sources that actually report the news. Where-oh-where has the free press gone?

With a corrupt Supreme court doing the bidding of the wanna-be-king that they made, with a goosestepping republican congress and a largely AWOL democratic congress, it seems that the buck stops with us. A million tiny actions, like ringing the alarm or taking to the streets…can lead to very large consequences. After all, democracy, a government of, by, and for the people is, in practice, The Butterfly Effect. Every single individual act – every individual vote in a free and fair election -when combined with millions of votes – can send a tsunami of good will across our injured land. But first we have to actively protect the integrity of our right to vote from a deeply rotten Supreme Court and a republican party that serves a corrupt man rather than the oath they swore to our Constitution.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE LIST OF NEEDS

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Filed under: Awakening, Edges, Merely A Thought Monday | Tagged: artistry, Brian Tyler Cohen, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, elections, free and fair elections, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Mark Elias, story, studio melange, supreme court, The Butterfly Effect, The Constitution of The United States, the melange, Voting Rights Act | 1 Comment »

Begin With The Words [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on April 19, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

republic (noun): a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.

“The term [Republic] originates from Latin, meaning “matters of the public.” Republics emerged as a response to absolute monarchies, aiming to create systems more responsive to the will of the people.” EBSCO

No child or adult in this nation has ever stood before a flag and sworn allegiance to a monarch or dictator. The same is true of our elected representatives. And yet, this Republican administration, the Republican Congress in their obeisance, consolidate power into the executive, into the hands of a single man.

The conservative justices on the Supreme Court, men and a woman who also stand before flags and pledge their allegiance, granted this president immunity from the law, effectively making him a monarch, effectively undermining the republic.

The Republican Congress and conservative Supremes no longer swear allegiance to the Republic or to the Constitution, but to a dictator, a divided nation under authoritarianism.

No longer a Republic, liberty and justice for all is the first casualty.

Many law firms and universities suspend their commitment to truth and abandon their allegiance to the law (the Constitution) and the pursuit of knowledge. They genuflect and swear oaths to the dictator.

Who knew that this nation that prides itself on rugged individualism, the veneration of liberty and the exercise of free will would roll over so easily, pledging their allegiance to something so sullied as a rapist wrapped in something so ugly as Christian Nationalism; a bully, pathological liar with nary a scruple to his name? Given all of our cowboy swagger I imagined we were made of sturdier stuff.

You’d think our pledge of allegiance to the flag of The United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands…would have inspired more fortitude in our elected leaders, more respect from our highest court, more dedication from practitioners of the law and seekers of knowledge.

If we are going to ask our children, our citizens, to place their hands over their hearts and speak the words in unison, then the Pledge of Allegiance certainly deserves more deference from our populace and the representatives that we elect.

Perhaps, in speaking it by rote, we’ve either forgotten or perhaps do not fully understand what it means? Let’s begin with the words “Allegiance” as it relates to the word “Republic”…

allegiance (noun): loyalty. commitment. faithfulness. fidelity.

To what do we pledge our allegiance (return to the top)?

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE PLEDGE

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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: Allegiance, artistry, authoritarianism, commitment, Congress, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, justice, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, liberty, loyalty, republic, republicans, story, studio melange, supreme court, the melange, The Pledge of Allegiance | 1 Comment »

Blink Open Your Eyes [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 27, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

In an interview, Thomas Friedman called what we now face in this nation a “slow erosion.” Societies do not collapse all at once. They slow boil, frog in a pot.

Timothy Snyder said, ‘Ideas matter.” After all, ideas become action. Ideals matter, too. Democracy is an idea. It is not a given. Those who erode its foundation must believe it is inevitable, otherwise they would think twice before perpetuating The Big Lie, brazenly participating in sedition. Make no mistake, justifying an assault on the succession principle is to turn against the fundamental idea. Democracy is nothing more or less than a succession principle. Ideas matter.

Slow erosion. Slow boil.

Watching the news, reading the streams, there’s not much more that can be said after the court’s assault on a woman’s right to choose what happens with her body. Equality is an ideal. It is not a given. We not only have to choose it, we have to choose it again and again and again. Equality is a kind of power structure. It is the rhetorical central idea of our society.

And, so, we work on and on to make our central ideal more than rhetoric. We fought a war over inequality. We actively chose our central ideal with equal rights amendments. Early in our history, we chose it when we extended the vote beyond white male land owners. We chose it again when we prevented government from dictating what a woman could and could not do with her body. Equal rights.

Equality scares those who stand atop the hierarchy, who believe their privilege is their power. Ask Ginni Thomas what drives her sedition? Ask her husband Clarence why, now that the nation has rendered women second-class citizens, we now must revisit the rules of contraception and same-sex marriage? Ask Mitch McConnell about his life-long mission to pack the courts. What, exactly, might they be afraid of? Why are they working so hard to undermine rather than further democratic ideals? Why are they choosing to restrict equal rights while pushing forward autocratic candidates with authoritarian ideals?

My grandfather told me it was wiser to listen to a person’s actions and not their words.

Ideas, ideals – like equality – are powerful and made visible in chosen actions. Tom used to say that you can see the power of an idea by “the size of the tide that rises against it.” Right now there is a mighty tide rising against the democratic ideal of equality and the core principle of succession. It’s not a given. We are seeing what happens when the guardians of the principle turn against it. Slow erosion. Robbed nest.

The good news is that Tom’s phrase works both ways: you know the power of an idea by the size of the tide that rises to defend the idea.

Timothy Snyder also said that we have recently been a nation of sleepwalkers. Democracy is not inevitable. It is a choice made again and again and again. We create it on a daily basis through our choices and actions – or we lose it. Perhaps this latest assault on the ideal will wake us up? Perhaps we might blink open our eyes and realize that, as the stewards of the democratic ideal, we’d best start choosing to walk toward it rather than allow this minority, that so fears the power of equality, to continue their assault on the right to choose.

read Kerri’s blog post about ROBBING ROBIN’S EGGS

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Call It What It Is [on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on October 28, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

If you are disgusted and surprised by the Republican senators’ hypocritical jamming through of the nomination of Amy Coney Barret to the Supreme Court then it’s a good bet you don’t live in Wisconsin. Life in Wisconsin is basic-training for the stomach-turning antics of modern day Republicans. Governance is nowhere on the agenda. If you lived in Wisconsin you’d be utterly surprised if belief in the democratic process was more than bloviated rhetoric by the party in red.

Consider this: in the midst of a global pandemic, with a national economic melt-down erasing jobs and driving folks from their homes, the Wisconsin Republican-led legislature simply refuses to meet. In 195 days they’ve managed to gavel open a few sessions called by the Democratic governor only to gavel them closed seconds later. They simply refuse to debate, collaborate, or compromise (the tools of governance). They’ve only one lonely tool in their sad little tool box: obstruction. They plug their ears and drown out all other voices. They can and do sue with ease, especially when reasonable minds and public health officials try to protect citizens from a deadly virus. The good-old-boys stop the process every time so it should come as no surprise that the seven day average of new cases in Wisconsin has jumped 405% in the past two months. Obstruction has a price.

The Wisconsin Republicans are famous for their 2011 gerrymandering the legislative map. The maps are so egregiously tipped [rigged] for Republican success that fair representation is nigh-on impossible. It’s their ball and they’ll play when they want to – and they’ll only play if they’re guaranteed a win. The Supreme Court is weighing in. Though, on this day, the Supremes, in a 5-3 decision, just ruled against a voter’s right to have mail-in ballots counted in the days following the election. Our neighborhood is pocked with signs demanding fair elections and fair legislative maps. Wish us luck and don’t hold your breath.

If you lived in Wisconsin you’d not be surprised by the shenanigans of the national Republican party that is gifted at obstruction but resistant to participation. The stack of legislation sitting on Mitch McConnell’s desk is legendary. In these past four years the red party’s enabling of the-pathological-liar-at-the-helm has undermined our system of governance and given us the sad experience of flailing during a pandemic. Who isn’t sickened to hear yet again “rounding the curve” while the numbers of deaths and infections skyrocket? Who isn’t sickened by the guys-in-ties defending the lie and the liar?

MM recently wrote that he is awakening to the reality that this nation, this government is not what he’s always assumed it to be. I suspect he’s not the only person having that revelation. We are routinely lectured by our leaders about ethics, values, the virtues of moral compass, fair play, responsibility to community. As Hamlet said to Polonius, “Words, words, words.”

Politics are ugly but we are no longer in the arena of politics. For that to be true, Republicans would have to once again believe in the democratic process. They would have to stand by their words.

It could happen. But it’s a good bet it won’t start in Wisconsin.

read Kerri’s blog post about DISHONEST PERIODS