Cassandra was a woman cursed to tell only the truth. I began calling myself Cassandra when I was first elected to the School Board because I was always looking ahead to what could possibly go wrong with school board decisions. After I stepped off the School Board I was alarmed when the board succeeding me decided to go around voters to build the biggest school facilities plan imaginable. That was the Red Plan which consumed this blog and this author for the better part of five years. (Wow. More than 1,800 posts) There are only six posts referring to “Cassandra” and the earliest only goes back to 2010 when I wrote that Loren Martell has taken over my role as Cassandra.
Another more relatable person to people in the Christian world is a “prophet.” I’ll accept that description as well with no qualms.
I have been finishing the book Founding Rivals by Chris DeRose. Its excellent. I’ve left my book full or yellow marker. Here is a bit of prophecy by James Madison:
“Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
We have two sides in America who believe this. Republicans of the Fox News persuasion say this will be done by Democrats. But over the past twenty years Democrats have seen the usurpations mount from the Fox News side. This is a large part of the book I am putting together. I offer my witness that its the Republicans not the Democrats that have succeeded blindingly well at this. And now they have the gunslingers from the survivalist Era marching into state capitol buildings intimidating elected officials under the guise of protecting the rattlesnake they have come to embody.
Every news story I link to about the hellish changes we are making to our environment are me playing Cassandra. My four years of railing against Donald Trump in tiny out-of-left-field Duluth are me being Cassandra. Columns I wrote twenty years ago about the narrowness and the extremism of Republicans were me playing Cassandra. My warning that a Trump supporter who has a reputation as a nice guy is little more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing is yet another sample of me being Cassandra. Or it might be more accurate to say Congressman Pete Stauber is a sheep in the employ of a wolf. There are a lot of other things we call such sheep none of them too pleasant.
Donald Trump is a wolf but I agree with this description of him in the recent column about just how terrible the Covid-19 pandemic is likely to become. She Predicted the Coronavirus. What Does She Foresee Next? She too has been called a Cassandra. She said of Trump:
“But she called Trump “the most incompetent, foolhardy buffoon imaginable.”
And she’s shocked that America isn’t in a position to lead the global response to this crisis, in part because science and scientists have been so degraded under Trump.
Referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and its analogues abroad, she told me: “I’ve heard from every C.D.C. in the world — the European C.D.C., the African C.D.C., China C.D.C. — and they say, ‘Normally our first call is to Atlanta, but we ain’t hearing back.’ There’s nothing going on down there. They’ve gutted that place. They’ve gagged that place. I can’t get calls returned anymore. Nobody down there is feeling like it’s safe to talk. Have you even seen anything important and vital coming out of the C.D.C.?””
