Pittsburgh’s transformation from Rust Belt phoenix to progressive tech stronghold was supposed to be the Democrats’ long-term ace in the hole for Pennsylvania. Instead, hubris might just hand the…

Leaders and diplomats are set to address a meeting Monday on strengthening the U.N. system, a day after agreeing to work together to address a range of global challenges, including climate change, conflicts…

Out of this world.

NEWS: The Pact for the Future has been adopted by member countries by consensus at UN Headquarters in New York. The adoption will help pave the way for greater international cooperation for #OurCommonFuture. pic.twitter.com/JnennVi2Jb — United Nations (@UN) September 22, 2024

by John Deyermond, Maj. Gen (ret.), All News Pipeline: Today our military services face growing threats around the world while their ability to maintain a quality, well-trained, and capable force is at risk.  Our focus should be on readiness, warfighting, and especially selecting the best qualified leaders possible, not on recruiting Drag Queens to perform […]

  In 1787, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the framers created the new position of president to lead the new executive branch. This figure would be quite powerful, with the role of commander-in-chief of the military, chief executive of a growing bureaucracy, and chief diplomat who gave a singular voice of America to foreign countries. As chief executive, this president would appoint judges to fill all judicial vacancies. He would also be able to pardon those convicted of federal crimes. How could such a powerful man be prevented from becoming corrupt or tyrannical? To prevent these eventualities, the framers gave Congress the ability to impeach the president. Is it an effective check on the president’s power?   The Federalist No. 70: A Powerful Singular Executive A graphic inviting readers to learn more about The Federalist Papers, written by three supporters of the new US Constitution to urge ratification. Source: Academy4SC.org   The United States Constitution of 1787, drafted in secret in Philadelphia, was printed for the American public and caused quite a stir. Instead of merely reforming the Articles of Confederation, the nation’s original founding charter, the Constitution created a new central government. One of its most controversial portions was Article II: the chief executive. Under the Articles, the United States had no chief executive. Now, it was proposed that a single man should have tremendous power to act swiftly in times of emergency and serve as a singular voice of the nation.   To alleviate skepticism and fear, The Federalist Papers explained how the Constitution would prevent such a powerful man from becoming corrupt or tyrannical. Federalist Paper No. 70 defended the role of a singular executive and argued that the elected figure needed to be able to act decisively. Would the checks and balances in the Constitution to prevent a tyrannical president, specifically the Electoral College and the process of impeachment, be sufficient to prevent a popular chief executive from becoming a dictator? Over time, these questions became more pressing as the power of the president continuously expanded.   The Process of Impeachment A graphic showing the steps to impeach a United States president, which has occurred four times in the nation’s history. Source: Northeastern University   Should a president be accused of breaking the law, they may undergo impeachment by Congress. As chief executive, the president is the nation’s highest-ranking law enforcement officer and thus may be somewhat immune from arrest. Additionally, as appointer of all federal judges whose seats come open during his tenure, the federal courts may also treat the president too leniently. Thus, Congress was given the duty of impeachment in the Constitution to hold accountable those who might hold too much power over the executive and judicial branches.   Impeachment is famously an intra-branch check as well as an inter-branch check. Executives and federal judges may be impeached, but the two chambers of Congress have different roles. The US House of Representatives votes to impeach, and then the US Senate holds the trial (which is presided over by the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court). Removal from office requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate. This two-step process with such a high threshold for guilt is intended to check a potentially radical Congress: only a clearly guilty executive or federal judge is likely to be removed from office under such rigor.   Non-Presidential Impeachments A map showing the distribution of federal courts in the United States, with federal judges more frequently impeached than US presidents. Source: Constitutional Accountability Center   Most Americans only hear about impeachment in regard to the president. However, other executives and federal judges have been impeached and are actually impeached more often than presidents. Five men were impeached prior to the first presidential impeachment in 1868, four of them federal judges and one a former US senator. Since then, eleven federal judges and two cabinet secretaries (members of the executive branch) have been impeached, compared to four impeachments of US presidents.   Impeachments also occur in state governments, with most states’ impeachment rules similar to those of the federal government. Only Oregon does not allow impeachment of its chief executive, the governor. State impeachments are rare, with the most recent newsworthy one occurring in Texas in September 2023. The state’s Attorney General was acquitted in an impeachment trial, with fewer than two-thirds of state senators voting to convict. Since the nation’s founding, fewer than twenty state governors and several state officials like sheriffs, treasurers, and commissioners have been impeached.   A Misconception: Expulsion Versus Impeachment A photograph of the US Capitol building, whose members must be expelled rather than impeached. Source: Jurist News   During intensely partisan elections, it is not uncommon for people to declare that a member of Congress should be impeached. Technically, members of Congress cannot be impeached; only members of the other two branches are subject to the process. These legislators can be expelled, with each chamber—the House of Representatives and the Senate—requiring a two-thirds vote to expel a member. Unlike the process of impeachment, an expulsion vote does not require a trial-like hearing. There are usually hearings before the expulsion vote, however, to present evidence against the targeted member.   A graphic showing the word “impeachment” in Article I of the United States Constitution of 1787. Source: American Constitution Society (ACS)   On December 1, 2023, US Representative George Santos of New York became the twenty-first member of Congress to be expelled, thereby making congressional expulsion about as common (or uncommon) as federal impeachment. Both presidents and members of Congress can be censured, or formally rebuked, by one or both chambers of Congress. It is rare for anyone other than a member of that congressional chamber to be censured, which is only a symbolic punishment. One punishment between a censure and expulsion is involuntary removal from committee assignments, where a US representative or US senator is removed from their committees (and thus cannot influence bills).   First Presidential Impeachment: Andrew Johnson A photograph of the members of the House impeachment managers presenting the case against US President Andrew Johnson in March 1868. Source: National Archives   In 1864, Republican US President Abraham Lincoln chose southern Democrat Andrew Johnson as his running mate to show support for southerners and Democrats who had remained loyal to the Union during the American Civil War (1861-65). Lincoln won re-election but was assassinated only months into his second term, thrusting Johnson into the presidency. Quickly, Johnson—a native of Tennessee—became unpopular with most Lincoln supporters in Washington DC by treating the defeated Confederacy leniently. Unfortunately, Southern states appeared to take advantage of Johnson’s leniency by quickly crafting black codes to return most formerly enslaved people into states of bondage.   A hostile relationship developed between Democratic President Johnson and a Republican supermajority in Congress. With their two-thirds majority, Republicans in Congress began overriding Johnson’s vetoes of Reconstruction legislation. After Johnson fired a cabinet secretary in violation of a law passed by Congress, the US House of Representatives voted to impeach a president for the first time. On March 4, 1868, Johnson’s trial began in the Senate, where he managed to win some favor. Ultimately, the president avoided expulsion by a single vote. The election that autumn did not see Johnson as the Democratic presidential nominee; he was replaced by Horatio Seymour, who lost to Republican nominee Ulysses S. Grant.   The Canceled Impeachment: Richard Nixon A ticket to impeachment hearings against US President Richard Nixon being held in the House of Representatives, which led to his resignation. Source: Harvard University   A little over a century later, a second US president incurred the wrath of Congress. Republican chief executive Richard Nixon, having won a second term in 1972 in a landslide, was exposed as having covered up his campaign’s break-in of Democratic Party offices in the Watergate office complex. As more evidence came out that Nixon knew about the cover-up, the president took action to thwart investigations into him in the Saturday Night Massacre of April 1973. Nixon fired the prosecutor looking into his actions, leading the Attorney General to resign.   In response to the Saturday Night Massacre, Congress began looking at articles of impeachment. On July 27, 1974, the US House of Representatives adopted three articles of impeachment against the president. Republicans in Congress informed Nixon that the party would not support him, meaning he would likely be convicted in the Senate and, therefore, expelled from office. Days later, Richard Nixon became the first—and so far, only—president to resign from office. Although Nixon was not impeached, the impending impeachment led directly to his decision to resign rather than face trial.   Second Presidential Impeachment: Bill Clinton US President Bill Clinton giving the annual State of the Union speech in 1999 amid his impeachment trial. Source: National Public Radio (NPR)   A quarter century later, a Democratic president found himself squaring off against opponents in Congress. Similar to Richard Nixon, US President Bill Clinton had recently won re-election by a very solid margin. In January 1998, the news cycle erupted when it was revealed that Clinton had had an extramarital affair with a White House intern. The affair was bad enough, but the fact that it was with a subordinate added increased ethical and legal implications. Republicans quickly moved to investigate the president’s actions. In August, Clinton publicly admitted to the affair, which he had previously denied…under oath.   By denying the affair under oath before Congress, Clinton had allegedly committed perjury. In December 1998, the House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment against the president, one for perjury and one for obstruction of justice. Clinton was put on trial in the Senate on January 7, 1999. Controversially, the Senate chose not to allow live witnesses in the trial, just depositions. On February 12, Clinton was acquitted when fewer than two-thirds of the US Senate voted to convict him on both counts.   Summary: Impeachment as a (Weak) Check A screenshot of a news report that the US Senate dismissed impeachment charges against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas in April 2024. Source: C-SPAN   Three US presidents have been impeached, with a fourth resigning before he could be so charged. Thanks to the high bar for conviction, all three impeached presidents have been acquitted. Critics of impeachment argue that the two-thirds requirement for conviction is too high given the two-party system that roughly divides power in both the House and the Senate between the two parties. This system almost guarantees that at least fifteen senators would have to cross party lines to convict someone in an impeachment trial. Because the US president is the de facto head of their political party, this is very unlikely.   Essentially, impeachment is only likely to remove a president in the case of extreme corruption or tyranny that is well-documented. Only the case of Richard Nixon met this bar; other presidents still retained the support of their respective political parties. However, having two recent presidential impeachments, followed by the impeachment of a cabinet secretary, may increase the strength of the impeachment check on presidential corruption by showing that the House of Representatives will not hesitate to use this power. If impeachments become more common, they may check presidential wrongdoing—even if conviction is not a real threat—due to bad press alone.

  In 1954, as French colonial forces normalized mass killings and torture in Algeria, Frantz Fanon served as the director of a psychiatric hospital near Algiers. His books, Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), forged in the heat of anti-colonial struggle, have become modern classics of political theory. Today Fanon is regarded as one of the most influential revolutionary thinkers of the twentieth century. Although his writings are well-regarded in academic circles, his revolutionary vision was deeply personal and shaped by his experiences as a participant in the Algerian liberation struggle.   Early Life and Education Colonial-era map of the French island colony of Martinique, Source: Wikimedia Commons   Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was born into a middle-class family in Fort-de-France in the French Caribbean colony of Martinique. Educated by the writer and poet, Aimé Césaire, Fanon excelled at school. He claimed that the first three words he was taught to spell at school were “Je suis Francais” (I am French).    During the Second World War, he fought with the Free French Forces. Before he became a revolutionary he trained as a psychiatrist in Lyon, France, graduating in 1951, before taking a post at a psychiatric hospital in Algeria. He joined the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) and remained dedicated to the cause until his death.    Fanon remained optimistic that the victims of Western colonialism, whom he called “the wretched of the earth”, would achieve freedom both from the material brutality of colonial rule, but also fom the “colonization of the mind”. He died of complications of Leukemia (pneumonia) at 36 years old.    Black Skin, White Masks Anti-colonial icon: Frantz Fanon, date unknown, Source: University of Warwick   In Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Fanon recounts a humiliating experience from his time in Lyon, when a white French boy on a train was sufficiently startled by his appearance to alert his mother to the presence of a “nègre” in the carriage.    The incident shattered Fanon’s self-perception of himself as a French man of color, revealing instead that he was seen as black, dangerous, and “other.” Black Skin, White Masks reveals the shadow that colonial racism casts over the lives of subjects, natives, and above all, “black” people.    The book explores how colonial racism leaves black people with feelings of inferiority, self-hatred, and cultural marginalization in the context of a Western popular culture that equates purity and good with whiteness and blackness with impurity and evil.   Fanon in Algeria Soldiers of the FLN in 1958. Their flag is the national flag of Algeria today, from the Museum of African Art (Belgrade). Source: History Today   According to Adam Shatz, Fanon arrived in Mali in 1960 on a fake passport before making his way with his comrades to Algeria. His mission aimed to open a window on the country’s southern border with Mali, to move guns and ammunition to the rebels of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN).    Fanon had been in Algeria between 1953 and 1957 until he was expelled for giving sanctuary and treatment to FLN rebels at his psychiatric hospital. He treated both Algerian torture victims and the French officers and soldiers who carried out the torture.    While in exile in Tunisia Fanon joined the FLN. His famous defense of the right of colonized people to use violence against the oppressor derived in large part from his experiences. Drawing directly from his experience with the FLN, in The Wretched of The Earth (1961), he proposed that armed struggle against the oppressor was not just a reaction to colonial violence, but a type of psychological medicine.    The Wretched of the Earth The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon, Source: Umutesi Open Library   The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon’s most famous work, provides a psychosocial analysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization on the individual, and its collective impact on the nation. The psychological case studies of the book, detailing the psychological impact of racism and the sheer brutality of colonialism were collected firsthand.    Written during the final stages of the Algerian revolution, Fanon noted that ‘decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a programme of complete disorder.’ In the book’s first and most famous chapter – ‘On Violence’ – Fanon speaks of the practical and psychological need for violence against colonialism.  He argued that the violent racism of colonialism not only impoverishes the colonized but dehumanizes them in equal measure. Decolonization was the first step towards the birth of a new world where both the colonizer and the colonized would finally be free.

  Before he was identified as an indigenous god, Quetzalcoatl was simply a peculiar snake-bird carving on a broken stone tablet found in Mexico—a carving, it turns out, from the Mesoamerican mother culture, the Olmecs. This appearance was the first of many, as explorations revealed the iconography of the feathered serpent peppered throughout Mesoamerican history, across cultures and religions, right up until the Conquistadors appeared. At one time, even blamed for the success of the Spanish conquest, Quetzalcoatl is an enduring example of how the line between myth and history can become blurred.   As Above, So Below: The Myths of the Feathered Serpent “The quetzal feather snake / God of the wind,” Bourbon Codice, Lam. 22, Smithsonian Virtual Online Archive. 1500-1600 CE. Source: The Smithsonian Institution   A ubiquitous Mesoamerican deity occupying space in both the Aztec and Mayan pantheons, the feathered serpent was known by two primary names. Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec name, comes from the Nahuatl language, combining quetzal, a species of brightly feathered bird, and coatl, “snake.” The Mayan name, Kukulkan, is derived from the Yucatec Maya dialect, combining kukul, feathered, and kan, which was used for both “sky” and “snake.” In Mayan iconography, the snake is associated with life above and below the earth, pictured alternately in myth as a snake boy who grew too large and had to be hidden in a cave, and a winged serpent that flew too close to the sun and became the sun’s pet.   Beyond these stories, little is known about the Mayan Kukulkan, though his existence supports the theory that the feathered serpent motif is much older than either the Maya or the Aztec, likely dating to the much earlier Olmec civilization (1600–400 BCE). During what is generally referred to as the Formative period, Olmec and Mayan territories overlapped in the highlands of Guatemala, where Mayans continue to live to this day.   Much of what is known today of pre- and immediate-post-colonial Mesoamerican civilizations comes from extant written records, known as codices. The Aztec and Mayan codices were screenfold manuscripts, painted on front and back, made either of leather or the bark of various trees. The oldest known Mayan codex (Dresden) dates from around 1200 CE, though it may be a copy of an earlier book. Others, such as the Aztec codices, are more recent, often bearing the signs of Spanish influence, which calls their veracity into question. While examples of pre-conquest Mayan and Mixtec codices are known to exist, very few—as many as five, but as few as one—can be attributed to the Aztecs. Though more are known to have been written, some fell victim to the hot damp environment of the jungle, while others were burned by Catholic priests.   Quetzalcoatl depicted in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, Folio 8v, 1550. Source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France   In addition to information about the astronomy of Aztec and Mayan civilizations, the codices provide a clear picture, literally, of their creation myths. The Aztec myth begins with the old god Ometoltl (from ome, “dual” and teotl, “divine”), a creator deity whose dual aspects resulted in the binary Ometecuhtli (male) and Omecihuatl (female) deities. Interestingly, little attention seems to have been paid to these creator deities and no temples were dedicated to them, since it was believed that people communicated not through them but through their four sons: Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, and Xipe Totec.   Of the four brothers, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl were principally responsible for the creation of the world, or worlds, of which the Aztec believed there were four previous. Each world was created through the combined efforts of the brothers, embodying the dual aspects of light (Quetzalcoatl) and dark (Tezcatlipoca), good and evil, like two sides of the same deity. Alternately, one brother would decide that the other had messed up and destroyed his creation. After the fourth creation, it was Quetzalcoatl’s turn again. He descended into the underworld, Mictlān, to collect the bones of the dead from the previous four creations to create the people of the fifth, which included the Mexica.   Quetzalcoatl as depicted in the General History of the Things of New Spain by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún: The Florentine Codex, 16th century. Source: Library of Congress   The equivalent of Ometeotl in Mayan mythology is Itzamná. The word Itz has many meanings including “magic,” “magician,” and “witch,” but also “dew” and “essence.” Like Kukulkan, the lizard god Itzamná was associated with both the upper and lower worlds and had two names: Itzam Yeh (Bird of Heaven) and Itzam Cab Ain (Earth crocodile). Itzamná also had a female counterpart, Ixchel, and together they produced many offspring, including four brothers known as bacabs who, like the four main deities of the Aztec pantheon, each represented a color and a direction.   Mayan mythology diverges between two main groups: the K’iche’ and the Yucatec. Each had a different name for the feathered serpent, the more well known being Kukulkan, in use among the Yucatec. In present-day Guatemala, the feathered serpent was called Gucumatz (Q’uq’umatz). Beginning around 1500 BCE, the Maya have occupied highland Guatemala in one form or another, but no written records of their creation story have been found prior to the writing of the Popol Vuh, the “Mayan bible,” between 1554-1558 CE. Unlike the earlier Yucatec creation story featuring Itzamna and Ixchel, the Popol Vuh substituted Gucumatz and his brother, Tepeu, the K’iche’ equivalent of Tezcatlipoca, as creator gods, resulting in a somewhat simplified version of the Aztec and Yucatec stories of four brothers.   In The Aztec Kings, Susan D. Gillespie states that composite deities, such as Kukulkan or Quetzalcoatl, serve as mediators between humanity and the gods, allowing the gods to live in both worlds, thereby making the supernatural, natural, and vice versa.   Myth to Man: The Evolution of Quetzalcoatl Sculpture of the Feathered Serpent Deity, Quetzalcoatl, Aztec culture, Tenochtitlan, Mexico, 1450-1500 CE. Source: Birmingham Museum of Art.   Apart from its cultural and mythological associations, Quetzalcoatl/Kukulkan became a common cultural and ethnic motif among the Toltec and Maya during the late classic period (800–925 CE) and among the Aztec and Maya during the Postclassic and late Postclassic periods (925–1530 CE), perhaps helping to ease relations between the Itzas of the Yucatan and the Aztecs to the west and central Mexico.   Following the Olmecs, the next evidence of the feathered serpent was found in Teotihuacan (150 CE–600 CE) at the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. While the builders of Teotihuacan were neither Mexica nor Maya but a separate culture, since the city was syncretic in structure, it is likely that the Mayans acquired the iconography of the feathered serpent there and took it with them when they established their own thriving civilization during the Classic period.   The earliest versions of the feathered serpent appear as a snake with a feathered headdress, but as the iconography developed, the figure took on anthropomorphic features and subsequently became identified with human rulers as much as the revered deity itself. By Aztec times, the figure was fully anthropomorphized and associated principally with the Toltec hero, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, later to be associated with Kukulkan and the great Mayan metropolis, Chichen Itza.   According to legend, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was the incumbent lord of Tula, capital of the Toltec Empire, near the time of its fall, around 1170 CE. Topiltzin’s reign was sabotaged by the devotees of the Aztec “devil” Tezcatlipoca, “Smoking Mirror,” a trickster god of war and human sacrifice. As the story goes, Tezcatlipoca appeared to Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl as an aged man and offered him a drink of a sweet, intoxicating potion, pulque, which caused Topiltzin to neglect his priestly duties and sleep with his own sister. Naked and ashamed, Topiltzin left the city of Tula and headed west with a group of his followers, making his way to the ocean where, depending on who tells the story, he either sacrificed himself to flame or sailed off on a raft of snakes promising to return.   Pyramids of San Juan Teotihuacán. The Garden Club of America collection, 1920. Source: Smithsonian Institution.   Around this time the Yucatec Mayans of Chichen Itza speak of a group arriving from the west led by a man identifying as, and dressed in the garb of, the feathered serpent. Their name for this man was Kukulkan, the same feathered serpent deity that the Mayans had been venerating since the classic period, and presumably earlier versions from the Olmec Preclassic period in Guatemala.   As showcased often throughout the history of civilization, as rulers grow in power, so too does their opinion of themselves. They live in the best dwellings, eat the finest food and do little to no physical work—who wouldn’t begin to feel a little like a god? Considering the long pedigree of feathered serpent iconography on everything from pottery to friezes to stelae, the symbol would seem to suggest an association with greatness, lending legitimacy to one’s family or, in the case of the Aztecs, to their entire civilization.   Sculpture of the Feathered Serpent deity, Quetzalcoatl, 1325–1521. Source: The Cleveland Museum of Art   From this perspective, Quetzalcoatl was not simply a deity or a mythological figure. He, or rather it, represented the priestly class that helped carry civilization through its various ups and downs. When the Aztecs founded their magnificent city, Tenochtitlan in what is now Mexico City, they had been migrating south for two hundred years. According to their story, they had come from Aztlan, a remote and possibly mythical place in the North. At that time they were simple nomads whose principal deity was Huitzilopochtli (Hummingbird on the Left).   While wandering in the desert, Huitzilopochtli spoke to them from a tree, instructing them to go off in search of a new land and bestowing on them a new name: Mexica. Along the way, they settled briefly at Tula, a Toltec site that they promptly appropriated, along with the claim to Toltec heritage. They did not stay long though. As soon as their leaders had convinced themselves and their people of their rightful place as Toltec descendants, they burned what was left of Tula and set out with a new plan, given to them once again by Huitzilopochtli: to look for a sign in the form of an eagle with a snake in its mouth—an obvious feathered serpent reference—which they finally found 40 miles south on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco.   Quetzalcoatl Returns? The Rise and Fall of Tenochtitlan The modern-day Mexican flag, bearing the bird and snake iconography associated with Quetzalcoatl. Source: United States Census Bureau   By 1345, the Mexica had succeeded. In the span of 174 years, they had transformed the swampy marshland they’d discovered into a metropolis of 8 square miles, with as many as 200,000-500,000 inhabitants, the largest city outside of China at the time.   Upon first laying eyes on the city of Tenochtitlan in 1519, Hernán Cortés and his fellow Spaniards were amazed. With the arrival of these Europeans, though, a number of apocryphal accounts begin to arise, including the popular theory that the emperor Montezuma believed Cortés to be the return of Quetzalcoatl, bringing the feathered serpent to the attention of Europeans. Suspiciously, Cortés himself never mentioned being received as a god in any of his letters, and records show that Montezuma had already been informed of Cortés’s existence long before his arrival in Tenochtitlan. The conflation of Cortés with the gods likely came from uncertainty on the part of the indigenous peoples over what to call the Spaniards as a group. Since many of them acted as missionaries, the Aztecs may have used the word teotl to refer to them, a Nahuatl word often translated as “god,” but that in fact embodies many facets of divinity and spirituality. For his part, Cortés would have quickly belied any notion of himself as a long lost Aztec deity, as he moved quickly to vandalize an Aztec temple where he was given lodgings, stage a revolt with the help of his Tlaxcalan allies, and imprison Montezuma, ultimately resulting in the fall of Tenochtitlan.   Aztec Calendar, Stone. 1502. Photographed between 1880–1887. Source: Library of Congress.   Like many things related to pre-conquest Mesoamerica, myth and history have become blurred, due in no small part to the cyclical nature of time in both Mayan and Aztec calendars, where events are anticipated to recur over and over again. Worlds are created and destroyed. It is just one more aspect of the feathered serpent myth that continues to evolve.

Remember when the Republicans got fact-checked to oblivion by every mainstream outlet and apparent media watchdog over Vice President Kamala Harris supposedly being named the "border czar?" This was just one of the statements that sent that professional class of liberal fig leaf-painters into a tizzy, from Donald Trump's campaign...

Perhaps this writer is just naive. But when perusing leftist headlines (the whole "know your enemy, know thyself" Sun Tzu thing), seeing the rare headline that's in favor of former President Donald Trump -- the GOP presidential candidate and known enemy of the liberal media -- certainly piques your interest....