Christmas in July? Bah, humbug!

 

It has been yet another busy, crazy, scary month on what one of my favorite online wits, Jeff Tiedrich, likes to describe as the stupidest possible timeline in the dumbest country, but Real Life has occupied much of my time this month once again, taking me away from my blogging duties. And now the month is almost gone.

But I did want to make a passing mention of a few items. First up is the sad occasion that I've covered on this blog every year since 2010: the anniversary of the death of Colleen Conaway, a faithful follower of a sociopathic huckster named James Arthur Ray, at one of Ray's live events in San Diego. This is the 16th anniversary of Colleen's death on July 25, 2009. (Here is more information, from my 10-year anniversary post.)

Ray was never charged or convicted for his part in Colleen's passing, although he was charged, convicted, and served (far too little) time for the deaths of three more followers -- Kirby Brown, Liz Neuman, and James Shore -- who died as a result of participating in his marathon "sweat lodge" torture session in Sedona, Arizona in October of 2009.

All of this might seem mostly moot now that Ray himself has passed away; as reported here, he died in January of this year. He can do no more damage. And after I write my annual post in October, I may very well retire my own yearly observations of the deaths of people at Ray's live events.

But I don't want anyone to ever forget about these people, nor do I want them to forget that while Ray is gone, others will almost certainly rise up in his place, to deceive and possibly harm new generations of followers. This is true of the New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality industries, as well as fringe religious organizations, as well as political groups; due to the very human desire for leaders and heroes and saviors, cults -- and charismatic, cult-like "leaders" -- remain a danger and probably always will.

(Many would contend that MAGA is a cult, though some would argue that it's not quite a cult... but in any case, the devotion heaped upon Cheeto Jeezus has had an enormous impact on the US and arguably on other countries as well, and there seems to be a growing sentiment that this impact has been overwhelmingly terrible.)

* * * * *

July 25 is also a sad day for me personally because it would have been the birthday of my only sister, who died in March 2024, as a result of health problems that were poorly managed because of our broken f-----g health care system. It was on his own birthday last year that my brother -- and the police -- found her in her home. She had been gone for some time. I'll leave it at that.

And yesterday, July 24, was the five-month anniversary of the death of my husband, Ron Kaye. I'm still reeling from that, and still trying to process the years-long nightmare of his illness, while tending to dozens of practical details, most notably finances.

There is a long tradition of informally celebrating "Christmas in July." For me, this month has been, for the most part, the opposite of a reason to celebrate, both on a personal and political basis. Still, I look forward to better times ahead. I haven't entirely given up hope, especially now that it seems MAGA is finally splintering over the Epstein scandal and other matters. And besides, this blog's 19th (!) birthday is coming up on July 27. So I'm just going to keep on keeping on, and I hope you will too.

Before you leave...
While money cannot make some nightmares go away, be they political or personal, it can make them far easier to bear. With my husband Ron's passing in February 2025, I have experienced significant income loss and am scrambling to find more work, but in an industry increasingly being taken over by AI, it has been a challenge. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
• New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to my PayPal page.
• Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is for "friends and family," which will waive PayPal's substantial transaction fee.

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.

 

Breaking: James Arthur Ray, infamous "sweat lodge" guru, is dead

Notorious McSpirituality/selfish-help guru, star of the New-Wage moviemercial The Secret, and (in more recent times) devoted reich-wing conspiranoid Trumpster James Arthur Ray -- best known for his infamous deadly "sweat lodge" in Sedona, Arizona in 2009 -- passed away on the evening of January 3, 2025 [or more likely January 2; see January 7 update below]. Ray's brother John announced it on a pinned post on Ray's Xitter timeline. No cause of death was given; the brother only said that Ray passed away "suddenly and unexpectedly."

If I had to guess the cause offhand, I'd say that long term anabolic steroid use finally caught up with him. But that is pure speculation on my part, so don't quote me. I really do not know. I will update when/if I find out. I did notice that Ray's brother said that Ray's wish was to be cremated and that he didn't want people to make a big fuss about his death. I wonder if there is even going to be an autopsy, and if not... why? That might be something worth exploring, though at this point it's a little early.

So far, as I'm writing this at nearly 10:30 PM Central Standard Time, the news media do not seem to have gotten wind of the news; if you Google or Bing "James Arthur Ray death," you just get scads of results about the deaths he caused and for which he was convicted and imprisoned for a couple of years, not his own death. Nor is Ray's passing mentioned yet on his Wikipedia page.
[NOTE: SEE UPDATES AT THE END OF THIS POST. ~CC]

But some folks were paying attention, and that's how I learned about Ray's demise. Through their organization, Seek Safely, the family of Kirby Brown, one of Ray's Sedona death lodge victims, made a statement, which said in part:

While there could be some small measure of relief in knowing that Ray will no longer be able to harm anyone, it is, truly, very little comfort. It became clear to us early on after Kirby’s passing that Ray was just one operator in a multi-billion dollar per year industry built on the exploitation of those who would improve their lives and find fulfillment. The rot in this industry has always been much greater and more complex than the actions of a single so-called “guru.” James Ray was one among countless exploitative and dangerous self-help providers. SEEK Safely was founded in this reality—that an entire industry, not just one man, was responsible for Kirby’s death.

Greater than any sense of relief is a feeling of disappointment that Ray could have played a unique role in helping to define both the problems and the solutions for this industry. But rather than demonstrating true transformation, he remained stuck in the paradigm of an industry built on manipulation and mistruth.

We can only, at this juncture, remind seekers that no “guru,” or program, or mindset is larger than life or without fault. That a journey of self-improvement is noble and vulnerable. That we must always remain in charge of that process of growth and change, rooted in our values, our worth, and our right to seek free from harm.

That's exactly right. Ray's death won't clear an entire industry of its rot, any more than Trump's eventual demise will, after all the years of damage, clear America and the world of Trumpism/fascism. There are no neat and tidy endings.

While it would be inaccurate and certainly crass for me to say that I am giddy about James Arthur Ray's passing, it would also be inaccurate for me to say that I'm sad about it. Ray had many chances to try to redeem himself after causing the deaths of his followers; instead, he never stopped making their deaths all about him and the wrongs he had suffered because people were unfairly blaming him for "a tragic accident." Now, on the surface it may have seemed that he took responsibility, especially since the introduction to a book he penned a few years ago, The Business of Redemption, began with the sentence, "I am responsible for the deaths of three people." Then he goes on to write about how deeply this hurts him every single day.

But instead of actually taking responsibility, he found ways to crapitalize on his imagined status as a drawn-and-quartered martyr: a survivor of a trial by fire (literally and figuratively) who was abundantly qualified to guide others, for a hefty price of course, on their own journeys from darkness back to light. And he was still flogging that hero narrative to the end. In December 2024 he was featured on a conspiranoia/alt-health podcast called The Ripple Effect, hosted by a guy named Ricky Varandas; the blurb for the promo clip on Varandas' TwitterX page read, "From Prison to Purpose: My Hero's Journey to Redemption." Gimme a break.

I know that Ray had people who loved him. But again, I would be lying if I were to say that I'm sorry he's gone. 

UPDATE 5 January 2025:

• Some of the Arizona news media have picked up on the story since I published this post last night (January 4, 2025) at 10:43 PM Central Standard Time. NBC affiliate 12 News (KPNX, serving the greater Phoenix area) posted news about James Arthur Ray's death on Saturday night, January 4, at 10:25 PM Mountain Standard Time (11:25 PM my time), and updated it at 11:10 PM MST (12:10 AM January 5 my time). No cause of death has been mentioned as of this time. News 12 cited the same sources I did: the Xitter statement by Ray's brother John, and the Seek Safely statement.
• AZ Central (Arizona Republic) posted a brief story as well today, January 5, at about 3:30 PM my time (2:30 Mountain Standard Time). As was the case with the 12 News story, the only sources cited were the Xitter statement by Ray's brother, and the Seek Safely statement. No cause of death has been mentioned as of this time.
• The Wikipedia page for James Arthur Ray was updated on the morning of January 5, 2025, and now mentions his death, but only the date; the source cited is the Arizona News 12 story listed above. No cause of death has been mentioned as of this time.

UPDATE 6 January 2025:

Some former followers who knew James Ray personally have privately speculated to me that his death might have been due to drug overdose or interaction. And some folks, myself included, have not been above wondering, if only in passing, if perhaps Ray was in some deep trouble and, with the help of his family, faked his own death. That sort of scenario is normally a little bit conspiranoid for my taste, but sometimes you just wonder...

In any case, AP finally got hold of the story today, and mentioned only this regarding cause of death:

In a post on X, his family announced that Ray died “suddenly and unexpectedly” late last week but didn’t specify the cause...

...Stephanie Wheatley, a spokesperson for Clark County in Nevada where was Ray residing, said it had received a death report of a man matching Ray’s name and age.

I'm a little busy right now, but anyone who wants to pursue this further might try the Clark County NV coroner's page, which will direct you to a PDF that you can perhaps fill out online and ask for more detailed information. Good luck! Let me know if you find out anything.

UPDATE 7 January 2025:

I got a few free moments and decided to send an email to the Clark County NV coroner today, asking for confirmation of James Arthur Ray's death, and inquiring whether cause of death was known yet and if there would be an autopsy. Here's the reply I received:

Hi Connie,

The Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner does not have jurisdiction over this case. I can only confirm the CCOCME did receive a report of a decedent with the name of James Ray, age 67. The date of death was 1/2/25.

Not all deaths in Clark County are CCOCME cases. Some examples of non-coroner cases include those where the decedent was in the long-term care of a doctor and/or had extensive medical history.

I'm guessing there won't be an autopsy, and if he's really deceased there won't be a body to poke, only embers.

I thought it was interesting that according to the email, the report the Clark County coroner's office received said the date of death was January 2, 2025. But brother John's tweet was dated the morning of January 4, and he clearly said that James had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly "last night' -- which would have been January 3, not January 2. It's possible that John was just copying and pasting an earlier message that had actually been written on January 3, and when he posted to James' Xitter feed on January 4 he neglected to edit it to reflect the actual date of death. In any case, Wikipedia has his date of death as January 3, 2025, but the source they cited was probably using the post on James' Xitter feed as a reference.

But to me the main issue is the cause of death, and the mystery continues... And I do need to state that in general I respect a family's right to privacy, especially regarding medical matters. However, when a public figure like Ray brands himself as an expert on physical as well as mental and emotional and spiritual health, and then dies "suddenly and unexpectedly," his public has a right to know what killed him.

Before you leave...
This past year has been a nightmare for me on several counts. While money cannot make some personal nightmares go away, it can make them far easier to bear. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
• New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to my PayPal page.
• Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account of my husband, RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is a gift, which it is (as opposed to a conventional purchase, for which PayPal deducts a percentage for their fee).

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.

Fifteen years after Sedona "sweat lodge" deaths, McSpirituality guru and Trumpanzee James Arthur Ray is still hustling and lying (and his victims are still dead)

 

Today, October 8, 2024, is the 15th anniversary of the day that sociopathic New-Wage/McSpirituality guru/cult leader James Arthur Ray killed two of his followers: Kirby Brown and James Shore, and set in motion the death, nine days later, of a third follower, Liz Neuman.

The instrument of their deaths was a fake and utterly reckless "sweat lodge" ceremony in Sedona, Arizona. Dozens of other participants were also injured and emotionally traumatized. The phony sweat lodge had been the "final challenge" at Ray's pricey "Spiritual Warrior" workshop, and unfortunately for three good people, it really was final.

Ray, who had shot to fame following his appearance in the simplistic and crassly materialistic New-Wage moviemercial The Secret, was convicted of negligent homicide for the three deaths in Sedona -- and consequently served less than two years in an Arizona state prison -- but he was never criminally charged in the death of yet another follower, Colleen Conaway, at a San Diego Ray event a couple of months before Sedona.

For Ray, the daze of the four- and five-figure live events such as Spiritual Warrior would seem to be over, and that's a good thing. His homicide creds are right there at the top of the page on Google search results along with the promotional stuff, and although he has been struggling mightily to make a comeback since his release from prison in July of 2013, framing the whole Sedona thing as a terrible trial and tribulation for him, his audience -- both live and online -- has shriveled like the balls of a long-time steroid user.

Though his base of followers remains as shrunken as his nads, Ray keeps on keeping on with his various shticks, because it's all he knows how to do. These days he spends a lot of time on Xitter alternating between spouting Bible verses like the man-o-God he wants you to think he is, and stumping for the American fascist movement popularly known as MAGA, kissing up shamelessly to the Mango Mussolini.

Naturally, much of Ray's MAGAt efforts center around demonizing the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, an angle I wrote about here back in August. He hasn't let up on his attacks on VP Harris, continually reposting highly edited videos and anti-Kamala memes that paint her as the destroyer of American democracy and an evil manipulator. If you know anything about Ray it should be clear that there's a lot of projection in those tweets and re-tweets, and a mercenary angle as well. As I wrote on my August post, in the context of Ray tweeting that Harris is evil and an abuser of power:

Well, I must say that Ray is a fine one to talk about "evil." Obviously he's projecting again. In any case it should come as no surprise that he is an ardent Trump supporter who is perfectly willing to paint Madame Vice President as an evil, dangerous, power-crazed demon, while totally overlooking Mango Mussolini's lies, felonies, authoritarian obsessions, and total lack of moral compass.

Ray, like his serial-scammer colleague Kevin Trudeau, is just another sorry illustration of the marriage-made-in-hell between Scamworld and reich-wing politix. Grifters are attracted to reich-wing/republican philosophies and policies, and I've been saying for years that this is due in large part to the reich's traditional disdain for consumer protection laws and regulations, the very tools that, apart from education, are necessary to protect the rest of us from the crooks.

Even as he has no room to talk about evil, Ray has zero standing in any discussion about the abuse of power. For years he abused his power over his followers, resulting in numerous injuries and at least four deaths of said followers.

I will repeat what I wrote on last year's Death Lodge anniversary post: as long as he continues to try to claw his way back to the top of an industry that has more than its share of sociopaths and predators, I feel duty-bound to post periodic reminders of why you should not listen to James Arthur Ray. In addition to being a MAGA social media warrior, he is still playing his dual role of faux-hero and martyr -- and most of all, still refusing to take any blame for the deaths and injuries of his faithful followers. And the people he killed are still dead.

Never forget.

Related on this Whirled

• October 2010: Musings on a tragedy and its meanings.
  I published this on the one-year anniversary of the infamous "sweat lodge," framing my musings around a review of Connie Joy's Tragedy in Sedona: My Life in James Arthur Ray's Inner Circle. That's another one you need to read.
• April 2019: From drawn-and-quartered martyr to "Crisis Coach": James Arthur Ray's newest desperate gimmick
  This is just one of numerous posts about Ray's arrogant yet pathetic attempts to reestablish himself as a selfish-help superstar. In this one we focus on Ray's efforts to brand himself as a "Crisis Coach."
• August 2020: Whiny babies of Scamworld
  Of the three "whiny babies" I wrote about in this post, James Arthur Ray is the worst, because even after being directly responsible for the deaths of four people at his events, and directly responsible for the physical and emotional injuries of countless others, he continues to paint himself as the real victim.
• October 2022: 13 years after James Arthur Ray's deadly sweat lodge, cults are still a danger
  This post, published last year on the Death Lodge anniversary, was a tale of two Virginias, one despicable one (that would be the infamous Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, insurrectionist extraordinaire, who was once a member of a selfish-help cult), and one admirable one: Virginia Brown, mother of one of James Arthur Ray's death lodge victims, Kirby Brown. One of the ways that Kirby Brown's family chose was to found a nonprofit organization, SEEK Safely to help educate the public, hold self-help leaders accountable, and hopefully avoid more deaths and injuries at the hands of reckless gurus. Even if you don't read my post, I urge you to visit the SEEK Safely site, which is continually expanding. You will find a wealth of useful information, as well as opportunities to get involved if you're so inclined.*
  October 2023: Fourteen years after Sedona "sweat lodge" deaths, James Arthur Ray, now a full-on reich-wing conspiranoid, is still hustling and whining (and his victims are still dead)
  Published on last year's Death Lodge anniversary, this is the first post where I discussed at length Ray's new-ish alliance with reich-wing conspiranoids and conspicuous contrarians.

* Currently on the SEEK Safely site:
Join us for SEEK Week, October 7-11. Streaming Live each night at 8pm ET on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Before you leave...
This has been, through what is no apparent fault of her own (excluding, perhaps karmic matters that are quite beyond her ability to comprehend), a nightmare of a year for the ruler of this Whirled. Money, alas, cannot make the nightmare go away, but it can make it easier to bear. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
  New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to Cosmic Connie's PayPal page.
  Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account of Cosmic Connie's husband, RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is a gift, which it is (as opposed to a conventional purchase, for which PayPal deducts a percentage for their fee).

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.

James Arthur Ray v Madame VP: MAGA asswipe warns of Kamala's pen swipe

 

Like scads of other reich-wingers on the Internet, convicted killer and devout Trumpophant James Arthur "Death" Ray has sounded the alarm on Xitter about a deceptive video snippet of Kamala Harris's "swipe of a pen" speech

A completely context-free snippet of a 2019 speech by Kamala Harris, past and present presidential candidate (and hopefully the future president!), currently has the reich wing in a tizzy. The truncated video appears to show Vice President Harris nefariously boasting about her power as a prosecutor to control and even destroy people's lives with a swipe of her pen.

Sociopathic New-Wage guru and convicted killer James Arthur Ray, who has flung himself head first and with mouth wide open into the toxic waste dump that is Trumpism, shared the deceptive snippet on Xitter on August 30, 2024, accompanied by this comment:

Is this the person you want in charge of the most powerful country in the world? Anyone who thinks this way has evil within them...

Well, I must say that Ray is a fine one to talk about "evil." Obviously he's projecting again. In any case it should come as no surprise that he is an ardent Trump supporter who is perfectly willing to paint Madame Vice President as an evil, dangerous, power-crazed demon, while totally overlooking Mango Mussolini's lies, felonies, authoritarian obsessions, and total lack of moral compass.

Ray, like his serial-scammer colleague Kevin Trudeau, is just another sorry illustration of the marriage-made-in-hell between Scamworld and reich-wing politix. Grifters are attracted to reich-wing/republican philosophies and policies, and I've been saying for years that this is due in large part to the reich's traditional disdain for consumer protection laws and regulations, the very tools that, apart from education, are necessary to protect the rest of us from the crooks.

Even as he has no room to talk about evil, Ray has zero standing in any discussion about the abuse of power. For years he abused his power over his followers, resulting in numerous injuries and at least four deaths of said followers.

The original Xitter post that Ray shared was generated by "Paul Hookem," a pro-Trump and MAGA disinformation account that boasts of being un-banned by Elon after four years in exile. Great work, Elon. You brought the class back to Xitter.

Apart from considering the (scummy, scammy) sources of the tweet and re-tweet, when I actually watched the video it was quite clear to me that it had been, shall we say, strategically edited. A quick fact-check search verified my suspicion. From Politifact, August 30, 2024:

...rather than bragging about her prosecutorial power, Harris was discussing the importance of leaders using power responsibly because of the potential for harm if power is misused. She said that it was something she realized early in her 20s when she started work as a prosecutor.

In her 2019 speech, Harris sought to describe then-President Donald Trump as using his power irresponsibly. The viral clip ends before a crucial part of her speech.

"And I was just a lowly deputy DA," she went on to say to laughter from the audience. "Yet we have a person in the White House who holds the office of president of the United States, who does not fully, or even partially, understand what it means to have power," she said of Trump. "When you truly understand what it means to be powerful, you understand that the greatest measure of your strength is not who you beat down, it is who you lift up."...

...After talking about her pen swipe’s power, she added: "It is an incredible amount of power, and you want to make sure that the people who have this kind of power are taking seriously, the responsibility, in terms of understanding as much as anything the impact on the people who will be affected by that."

The full footage of Harris' 45-minute keynote speech, delivered to the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Democrats annual banquet in 2019, was captured on C-SPAN.

* * * * *

As I've noted on previous blog posts, James Ray's Xitter activity normally generates very little, if any, engagement. Despite his ongoing boasts about all of his accomplishments, he's essentially as much of a nobody on Xitter as I am. But a Xitter user named George Wade did choose to engage on this particular post, responding in the affirmative to Ray's question re Kamala, "Is this the person you want in charge of the most powerful country in the world?"

Yes. I hear responsible compassion from this statement. She learned not to be rash and instinctive in judgment. She learned there is complexity in management. She learned to be a moral person, unlike someone else we know.

To which Ray responded:

Marxists are not moral. Not sure what you're seeing claiming to be Christian. But their policies are the farthest thing from Christ's teachings.

The references to Christianity and Christ are apparently based on George Wade's Xitter profile, which leads with the phrase, "Lifelong faith in the Lord God." Ray is hardly the person to be preaching about Christ's teachings, and certainly not one to judge somebody else's professed faith -- but then again, sanctimonious babbling about Jeezus is the foundation of the Christofascist/MAGA playbook, and Ray seems to be solidly in that camp these days.

Mr. Wade responded with the suggestion that Harris' so-called Marxism was only Ray's opinion, based on a "misconstrued" definition of Marxism, and he added, "I suppose you're in love with fascist Nazism?"

To which Ray replied:

I'm in love with liberty, freedom, and justice. A constitutional Republic funded (sic) in God's Laws. You've been duped through grifters and manipulation.

Some two-bit troll using the handle @CosmicConnie wrote:

James, you don't have a whole lot of room, morally speaking, to be talking about grifters or manipulation.

George Wade's response to Ray was more to the point.

I want freedom, Liberty & justice. As do citizens of every race, creed & ethnicity.We do not want Donald Trump’s authoritarian, fascist heavy hand removing our freedom.

The definition of a constitutional republic, btw, is a representative democracy with a freely elected president.

A little later Ray wrote:

Listen to what [Kamala] tells you my friend. Have you done this? Her father was a communist (look it up) and all of her policies are communistic/socialistic.

Well, technically, Donald Harris, a Stanford University professor and author of the 1978 book Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution, was a post-Keynesian economist with a Marxist perspective. Oh, goodness gracious, where's old Joe McCarthy when you need him?

It's amusing that so many morons throw the words "communism," "socialism," and "Marxism" around so carelessly and interchangeably, seemingly without any awareness of the differences.

Ray, never a beacon of originality, is copycatting again by participating in the new Red Scare that is spreading around the reich-wing idiosphere like crabs on 1960s hippies. (Yes, I know I've used that simile on previous blog posts, but I believe in recycling.) It's become quite the reich-wing fashion to hurl accusations of communism at anyone who doesn't have his or her nose up Trump's ass.

So it's no surprise whatsoever that Kamala Harris would be a popular target of these accusations. There's another reich-wing thing going around that purports to show her commie party membership card. The card is totally fake, of course.

And it's not just Kamala Harris who's getting the Red-Scare treatment, nor is it a brand-new phenomenon. From PBS, June 19, 2023:

Experts who study political messaging say associating Democrats with Marxism only furthers the country’s polarization — and is simply wrong: Biden has promoted capitalism and Democratic lawmakers are not pushing to reshape American democracy into a communist system.

That hasn’t mattered to Trump and other Republicans, who for years have used hyperbolic references to the associated political ideologies to spark fears about Democrats and the dangers they supposedly pose.

Moreover, those who esteem Trump and his MAGA allies as the guardians of capitalism and the free market seriously need to reconsider that stance. In a May 29, 2024 opinion piece on TIME.com titled "The Coming MAGA Assault on Capitalism," Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld wrote:

Sensationalist narratives trumpeting how business leaders are supposedly eager to welcome Donald Trump back to the White House and pining for the days of his business-friendly tax cuts are missing an important dimension: the escalating, overt hostility of populist MAGA voices to business.

This hostility starts from the top with Trump himself. While many business leaders regard certain aspects of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda, such as Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan’s zealous antitrust enforcement, as overreach; they surely do not miss Trump’s far more invasive and micro-managerial meddling in their business affairs. The former President was notorious for inserting himself into business and regulatory processes to carry out personal vendettas and help friends. Although the GOP has long been the home of big business, many observers overlook the frequency with which Trump targeted business leaders as a big, bad bogeyman to advance populist policies...

...Trump’s capriciousness obfuscated his complex brew of personal business interests with genuine U.S. commercial and national security priorities. U.S. tech companies were bewildered when he reversed course in sanctioning China’s ZTE despite massive documented proliferation violations helping Iran. Trump’s explanation, that it would cost 50,000 jobs in China, rang hollow.

This highly personalized divide and conquer, carrots and sticks approach characterized Trump’s dealings with business leaders time and time again, as he tried repeatedly to pit rivals firms against each other in WWE-style slapdowns and Trump fealty contests: General Motors vs. Ford, Lockheed Martin vs. Boeing, Pfizer vs. Merck, and so on...

Professor Sonnenfeld goes on to explain why it is becoming increasingly clear that a second Trump term would feature "far more policies which are substantively anti-business than even his first term," citing such republican luminaries as Trump's running-off-at-the-mouth-mate JD Vance, as well as Matt Gaetz and Ted Cruz. They're all for small government -- except when big government and serious government overreach suit their own agendas. (Reference reproductive choice and LGBTQ rights, f'rinstance.)

But all of that stuff is far too subtle for most MAGAts, including, it appears, James Arthur Ray. Ray has clearly found a comfortable position on his knees to Trump, just sucking and sucking and sucking, in every  sense of the word... and that's totally on brand for him. Evil attracts evil.

The good news is that there are powerful and growing forces countering that evil. Ever since the Harris/Walz ticket became a thing, I've felt more hopeful about the future of American democracy than I'd felt in a long time. So I'm going to do my part to fight evil by voting blue in November. If you're an eligible and registered US voter, I hope that you do too.

Before you leave...
This has been, through what is no apparent fault of her own (excluding, perhaps karmic matters that are quite beyond her ability to comprehend), a nightmare of a year for the ruler of this Whirled. Money, alas, cannot make the nightmare go away, but it can make it easier to bear. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
  New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to Cosmic Connie's PayPal page.
  Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account of Cosmic Connie's husband, RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is a gift, which it is (as opposed to a conventional purchase, for which PayPal deducts a percentage for their fee).

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.