I Am The Sun

this seems as good a place as any to announce the new baby!

STEAL THIS POST.

don’t just reblog but REPOST, rephrase, do your own research and run with it however you want. DM me to email you the high resolution images if you need them. just help spread the word.

A. Go to https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/02/25/2025-03014/removal-of-national-environmental-policy-act-implementing-regulations

B. Click on the green rectangle in the upper right corner ("SUBMIT A PUBLIC COMMENT") .

Oh my Godddd. The US Army chorus was told to perform at the White House for Trump and his cronies and they chose to perform One Day More from Les Miserables. What a gutsy move. A giant middle finger to authoritarianism right in front of Trump's face. Good for them.

To every member of the military and every civil servant fighting in big ways and small, public and private, to protect the Constitution and uphold the oaths you swore, thank you for your service. We see you and we love you. We're counting on you and we're all behind you 100%. Hold the line.

This made me actually tear up and feel a little hopeful. Everyone, no matter who they are needs to do their part. The Fascists are dangerous but they are few. Together we can all defeat them and keep the freedoms so many have fought so hard for.

Also I am living for these comments!

They start with the finale/the reprise of "Do You Hear the People Sing."

Now, the first "Do You Hear The People Sing" is a rousing battle cry, a call to revolution--but the revolution fails.

The reprise is sung on the deathbed of the main character, as the spirits of those who died fighting for a better world they will never see return to tell the audience that, even though they lost their battle, that doesn't mean hope is gone, because "even the darkest night will end/ and the sun will rise." Even if the day when "the chain will be broken/and all men will have their reward" is far away, "the distant drums" are still coming.

They then transition into "One Day More" with the line that the revolutionaries use to declare that they're through with their preparations and ready to fight: "the time is now/the day is here."

They've skipped the first half of the song, where everyone reflects on their individual choices and circumstances, and jumped right to the things they want to say.

The part they are singing actually has five overlapping melodies, each with having it's own lyrics, so it can be pretty hard to understand any one line, if you don't already know the words, but they've simplified things a lot so you can hear every word.

Valjean's part actually doesn't overlap that much, and it sounds like they've pulled back the Eponine and Marius/Cosette lines so they mostly just support the other lines, and you really hear the Thenadiers and Javert lines. The Thenadiers, as stated above, are grifters and monsters, while Javert is a policeman who genuinely believes he is righteous no matter what he does, because he is on the side of the law, only to be faced with the reality of the harm he's supported and take his own life because he can't handle it.

So, the audience may know they're grifters, or they may think they're righteous, but they are told that they're the villains either way.

But that's only on one level!

The other level is that the audience aren't the characters, but that the lines are being sung to them by the US Army (keeping in mind that some Maga folk have referred to themselves as revolutionaries and heroes of the people...) And... wow.

They've actually dropped some of the lines. Here are the verses; the parts in parentheses are what they didn't sing:

Thenadiers:

Watch 'em run amok, Catch 'em as they fall, Never know your luck When there's a free-for-all Here a little dip There a little touch Most of 'em are goners, (So they won't miss much!) Javert:

I will join these people's heroes I will follow where they go I will learn their little secrets, I will know the things they know! One more day to revolution We will nip it in the bud! We'll be ready for these schoolboys (They will wet themselves with blood!)

So the army is saying, "you can run amok and collect your prizes, but most of you are goners" and "we will learn all of your secrets and be ready for you"

And then those lines lead directly into "Tomorrow is the judgement day."

There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

But upon posting this, I received over 400 asks (I stopped counting) from different people demanding that I take the post down, telling me how dare I suggest that people vote in this political climate, and even several dozen anonymous asks threatening to attack/kill me for “spreading nationalistic propaganda”

It’s hard to remember, but that was the general sentiment around the election online in 2020: Rampant disinformation. Large-scale campaigns dissuading people from voting. Hundreds of negative comments on any post that even MENTIONED voting. You couldn’t get away.

But this election? It’s night and day. While I’m sure there’s still some people whining in a sad dark corner somewhere that moral purity is dead and they’re the last chosen saints of leftism, etc etc, the vast, VAST majority of people have zero tolerance for that bullshit this time around.

We are voting. We are talking to our friends and family about voting. We are reading the actual news and trying to cut through BS online quick-takes. We are getting people to the polls and donating to Harris and standing in line with others waiting to vote.

I’ve voted in every primary and election since I turned 18, but I have never seen young people voting on this level before. It’s truly mind-boggling just how much the younger voting block has mobilized in this election. This is the kind of thing that can change a nation if we let it.

It takes time to count all the votes and every vote counts.