This isn’t a crisis of one man. It’s the collapse of trust built by decades of bipartisan lies, media complicity, and a democracy that stopped working long ago.
Keep telling it! “moderate Democrats” (WTF is that), want us to believe the country just wants to get back to “normal.” Normal (in your awesomely honest post) and the status quo democrats are what gave us Trump. The scale tippers said, “I won’t hold my nose again. If Trump destroys everything in his path. . . maybe that’s what the country needs.”
If a Bernie disciple doesn’t run, we’re screwed (again).
This post is actually trash, though. Why does he talk about 9/11 - what is the "truth" about it? Was the mainstream and corporate media correct and it was all CrAzY Arabic jihadis who just hate American freedom so much? That sounds like typical Republican rhetoric. We killed how many people in Iran to satisfy you war hawks and racists?
Just like so many… complain but bring no real solutions to the table. Tell us how exactly how to rebuild real democracy in this country. Not hopeful nonstarters like get rid of the filibuster… tell us how you do that. Tell us how you would get rid of big money and dark money in politics. Come to the table with real solutions.
Solutions or not, I think the article supplies a necessary perspective. It’s difficult to solve problems without an accurate understanding of its nature and causes. And far too many people in the Left/Progressive camp still seem invested in the attempt to recover what was. Yet as the writer points out, “what was“ had Trumpism as it’s end result.
I know it may seem an insurmountable challenge at this stage of culture, but we really need a fundamentally new social paradigm. (And no, it’s not Communism.) The 20th Century ethic of individualism, competition, wealth accumulation, and the “self-made man” worked well enough for a few, and OK for many more , yet left so many others behind. At broadest level, we need a paradigm that values living things over non-living systems, institutions, symbols, abstractions.
Yet we are so invested in the current model that I’m doubtful we can make such a shift — at least not without significant collapse. But I hope to be proved wrong.
The fact that Moose-olini is tearing everything down, stupidly and with no plan, gives us an unprecedented opportunity.
It's a bit like taking a house down to studs, demolishing the interior and the exterior. It's going to be REALLY uncomfortable, really challenging, but we're going to figure out who WE are as a nation. Whether we'll allow the establishment politicians back in AT ALL (mostly I think we shouldn't), whether we'll let the bigots and militia types to keep setting policy,
OR
we can TAKE THE REINS OF POWER AND RECREATE OUR DEMOCRACY as WE WANT IT TO BE.
FIRST, in my opinion, will be to make sure the perpetrators of this coup, and the horrifying data purging and thefts, are held responsible TO THE ABSOLUTE LIMIT OF THE LAW.
No more "let them go so the country can heal" bullshit. Never again. That's a lie and a bad faith argument from the start, and why liberals are considered untrustworthy now. (Republikkkans are considered untrustworthy bc they lie constantly.)
If we allow no punishment, we have no effective laws. It's that simple.
Idk how we wouldnt let establishment at least at first. But we need to do way better at being informed and not vote for names on the ballot bc we've heard of them for a long time. As well as participate. The thing about everything mentioned by the author is that even tho many knew govt just did something that wasnt rigjt or unconstitutional etc, a majority of the country regardless of party, didnt understand how it could bring down democracy. Everything was a little, then a little more etc. What i learned is that we never, ever, should side with politicians over our fellow citizens. Its doable to figure out what a problem is or disagreement whatever than it is to go up against govt. Also we have to get in the street every.single.time govt oversteps, which means we have to know they have which is why its necessary to get and stay informed. There actually is a way, not so much to find the trutj about everything, but it is possible to know which press spins more or lies etc. I really believe journos and anchors want to do good work, its editors and corp owners but we need it busted up and go back to private ownership. The founders specifically put the free press in the constition bc they imagined tens or hundreds of individually owned and operated press outlets scattered across the country specifically so what we have now wouldnt happen...a handful of oligarchs that control the narrative to their own financial benefit. The change happened as the author said, but obviously it really happened at some point before. There was a single press outlet that i cant remember the name right off hand but it was the only press in DC that printed the truth that things didnt add up according to the govts claims. Allcthe rest lied and that single outlet went out of business pretty quickly. The press didnt report the truth that the Bush2/Gore election was stolen, and when the pres during his first time in office still hadnt conceded the election and republicans n congress either lied or wouldnt answer when asked...the press and cable news said his behavior was bc he never lost at anything before so he was basically brooding. In real life he was still working the diff levers to try to stay in office.
We'll keep working, right? Until the fascists are in prison and BROKE. We'll need to freeze and seize assets so our country can recover some of its losses 😅
No Citizens United. Make a limit for political elections, all parties held to the same amounts.
Supreme Court must have term limits and enforceable ethics, and a fully determined means of removal for breaches. Chief Justice to be mutually acceptable to all parties involved.
Periodic federal court review of the Constitution, with some provision made for changes with state elections (?) every 10 years (?). Something like that.
That's just a couple of things off the top of my head.
It took numerous people a few years to hammer out the documents our country started with. Does anyone think we should give this crisis any less?
Historically, political change, of our needed magnitude, usually involves hunger and revolution—except for Ghandi, but Britain was busy with a war. (Should I have misspelled a word to show that I'm human? La vida loca!)
Because we have to offer the solutions and we have to be more engaged. It’s going to require work that we have not been willing to do let alone fully aware that it needed doing. Mass media and spectacle are a seductive pill a la Brave New World.
With you. We don’t need this let’s just slash our wrists because we all fucked up shit. Let’s do something about it. Yes, use these points you’ve (the author) laid out with immediate follow up; include it in the article right here behind every issue.
1. A living wage (forget about minumum wage). 40hr week. Employer/employee pension.
2. Universal health care. (I get care at the VA. Pretty good, not perfect.) All physicians become officers in Public Health Service (like research doctors now at NIH).
3. Universal public service requirement. (a draft, but not only military. 2 years after high school. Both boys and girls. with some occupational specialty training.
4. Universal education. HS mandatory. Public support for advanced occupational training and college.
5. Immigration reform. Offer a path to citizenship for hardworking, ambitious newcomers.
6. Affordable housing. (Japan has been in a slump for 35 years, but life there is good. Why? Housing costs are affordable, not a huge chunk of income.)
7. Draconian taxes (90%) on incomes over $5million. (Nobody needs more than $13, 698/day. Corporate resources will be reallocated to more investment in R&D.)
8. Social commitment requirement for corporate charters. (No corporation gets a charter without committing to public interest. No more abandoning communities to seek cheap labor overseas.)
9. Congressional districting along existing county lines. (No more gerrymander.)
[Could go on, but running out of napkin.]
#s 1-8 require congressional votes. #9 requires state action, I think.
Solutions are necessary but there is nothing non-factual in what the author said. I would disagree about the times piece tho. Not bc they havent been the shitheads as described, they have. So has the rest of our free press. BUT that they have been unwilling to speak the truth in a straightforward way thats needed with the appropriate amount of urgency is IMO exactly why ppl should take notice. Trump is not the sole cause for our problems. Those that seek to overthrow a govt dont target healthy democracies. Even with the rot in our institutions, it was still necesaary to use the same disinfo methods, tactics in order for them to be able to do it. Bc no one in their right mind willingly votes away their freedoms. Its not so much that ppl seek to further their cause or beliefs as much as it is they get convinced the "others" are trying to destroy the country and make them feel like a foreigner in their own country. When disinfo happens alongside organized churches...catholics for example but there are more that have become extremist in their teaching or basically corrupted to where its poss to preach on scripture, but in the elaborating lose the plot, that combo is all it takes to make ppl willing to war. Ppl must be convinced that the "others" are the enemy and theyve been doing that for a while now. There is no exact fix for the effects of disinfo on a large mass of ppl but ive read that the best things we can do are focus on knowing or at least building a neighborly relationship with the actual neighbors. Build community. BUT dont decide who we want to know or dont based on politics. If politics must come up or if the neighbor brings it up...do not try to change minds or convince ppl of anything. It wont work. One would hope that a sincere level even a little one, of caring for no other reason than that we are all Americans exists. Find commonalities first and always. If whoever brings up politics before commonalities are found and lightly discussed, we dont have to agree but we dont have to make our politics known either. Its possible and doable to keep certain aspects of our lives private. Thats my opinion but it is my opinion bc its advice from experts that know and ppl that have lived it elsewhere. Identity politics must stop, yesterday. Privacy seems to be not so important to some anymore and that is bad in more ways than one. Besides it being the most helpful thing to start to heal us at least from the division, if it becomes past the point, knowing the neighbors goes a long way with knowing who not to trust. Its not too late yet, but we had a better chance of succeeding when i started texting this than do evety second that passes. Dont think protest, think sustained action. Surely ppl smarter and maybe younger than me can figure out if protest is the way. Extremely helpful items i cant rec strongly enough, 2 books: 1) From Dictatorship to Democracy, 2) 198 Methods to peaceful protest. Both by Gene Sharp.
And a Netflix Documentary that can be viewed on youtube free called Winter On Fire
Please, please read them, watch it.
The doc is what it looks like irl to oust a leader thats working toward perm rule. Turn on captions. It will also give a new found respect for the Ukrainian ppl, if some dont already have. Ukraine has been Russia's guinea pig for testing some things in order to know what works. What is happening here now is identcal to what happened to Ukraine a decade ago.
Lastly, LEARN STUFF. Democracy is our responsibility at the end of the day. We dont have it bc it was given to us, and every single thing said by the author and more is exactly why it is anti-democratic to think the govt is our friend, let alone be a cheerleader gor them. Ppl that do that i assume are sincere, but its always bc not enough attn is paid, or boring govt reports read. Bc im old and ive never once known anyone informed even semi-well that liked any politician from any party. There are reasons for that. Its not synical, its truth. Republicans twist info, decieve, and at times straight up lie or create from whole cloth. The democrats do their crap quietly, sneeky. Im not both sides-ing, one is worse at the moment. But everything the author said is true, and there is soooo much more. For ex: i dont see many on the left on s.m. that seem to know that a Professor at Harvard Law was running for president in 2016. His main goals were tackling govt corruption, campaign finance reform, voter access issues & gerrymandering. So you know how there are steps and each step must be acheived before they can move foreward? I dont remember all the details but like candidates were required to raise whatever the amount was but in $1 donations. If i remember right, he raised the amount but the democrats didnt want him to be the cadidate bc he wanted to actually fix things, so when he met the required amount, they increased the required amount. Then he raised that amount and they changed the rules of the next debate and in doing so made him unable to qualify. They didnt care 2 years ago when Bidens age was brought up, until the debate then they just chose a candidate. They dont have open primaries anyway, but ppl had already voted for Biden in the primary. They are as responsible for ignoring anti-trust, and anti-monopoly laws in the 80's and 90's as the republicans were, they even publicly gave their blessing so to speak to some behemoth mergers, and are responsible for allowing the public sale of our free press which is why we now have corp owned press. We could do this for days. SO, whatever is decided the action will be, when it actually takes place ppl should have a very limited set of demands to be met before the action is stopped. And by ppl i mean nationwide and sustained...again see the documentary.. And nothing partisan, like 3 or 4 items that are imperative to democracy and only about democracy which is to say the most important things that govt is supposed to do but they dont or not do but they do etc. not to either party. And i cant stress enough TAKE INITIATIVE. If you havent read the constitution or important founding documents now is a good time. Great on youtube in no particular order: anything by or about Gore Vidal, Gene Sharp, Prof Timothy D Snyder and absolutely watch the newer TED talk by Carol Caldwaller. The Gene Sharp books are thought to be the methods used in the Arab Spring but its not a diect map but kind of a map-ish that requires tweaking bc each country has diff laws, constitutions etc. They also include studied peaceful protest methods . For ex police are less likely to shoot protesters that are sitting down and not engaging with them. Lastly, Musk did not donate 2 or 3 million to the pres campaign bc he dreamt of govt service, lol. The deal with the "DOGE" which is at times barely grown ppl, is to shut down things for the pres., but for him its our data and they already have a shit ton of it. Its being fed into AI and once AI surveillence is a thing...we are toast. In tje same way its been reported that AI can predict certain diseases before a person has symptoms or it shows on tests....it will be able to predict who is most likely to protest, and design s.m. feeds to down to the individual. In the way that some live in a different reality than the rest of the country, and the world really, think that but not necessarily to a group, but non-reality none the less to individuals so much so that the curent generation coming up now may never know that dissent is a thing ppl actually did or is even possible. Put down the devices, go outside, talk to ppl...find commonalities first and always. Make community, help each other. Bond. ✌️❤️🙏
You make it sound like nobody should discuss our national problems unless they can identify specific steps in order to fix them. Personally I think that's nuts, but let's say you got your way. How would you make sure nobody mentioned any problem without simultaneously proffering a solution? That sounds like a mighty big problem itself. Better "stop complaining if you can't bring real solutions to the table."
So you're admitting the person who is writing these emails is nothing more than a commentator and spectator, not interested in change? Maybe that's why the emails come off tone deaf and disconnected. Thank you for your insight.
This is a brilliant analysis and I applaud you for it. Please permit me to add that the global banking collapse of 2008 was made possible by Bill Clinton's agreement to repeal Glass-Steagall in the name of "financial innovation." After the shit hit the fan and both Long-term Capital Management and Lehman Brothers went bankrupt Obama bailed out Wall Street and the big banks but failed to address the catastrophic mortgage foreclosures that threw thousands of families into the streets. America's political leaders privatize gains when capitalism works. But they socialize the losses when the capitalists screw up. No corporate executive faced legal charges. But homelessness subsequently skyrocketed and artificially low interest rates due to the Fed's 14-year accommodative policy stance pushed the cost of buying a home out of reach.
Right. Find a single post from Corben Trent criticizing any Clinton. Funny how they glaze over the corporate brand that's torn this country apart and lost elections. Really fuckn funny.
Can we create a RAMA (whatever the name may be) a manifesto of specific numbered issues we should work to fix and put that to a vote to the American People indifferent of Political Views? Until we create a new blueprint identical as the right did with project 2025 - there should be a decent alternative where people could read and vote their support - perhaps different than the usual way people get suckered into say something or donate a few dollars and they get political emails and beggars asking for donations adding insult to injury. After I am poor and these politicians dont do anything to help me - now I am being asked to support them!!! It is such an insult! Yes I want my vote to count - I want my voice to matter but I don't want to be begged infinitely to throw money into a black whole and or to me made feel more insignificant or suckered!
It could be a 30 items list, and upon popular voice they can be prioritized and sought political support. Medicare, Vision and Dental FOR ALL, Women rights, Pollution and Climate Change, Border Security, Immigration Reform, Money out of politics and ban lobbying reform, Eliminate Offshore Tax Heavens and loopholes, Repatriate all offshore funds owned by Corporations doing business in USA and tax it.. Make a list with top 500 US companies and their yearly full tax contributions to see how they compared to all of us little people, invest in affordable housing. The list can include 20 or 30 or 50 top priority items for America and can be a blueprint for tomorrow and something we can hope and fight for, and find politicians who are willing to fight with us and eliminate those like Chuck Shumer, Pelosi or other Dinosaurs (like Ginsburg who for the love of God did not want to vacate her post until she died in it and gifted her position and stack the court to the right) when we know they don't represent human rights and decency as they should... And so on. I/WE are so tired of rhetoric.. We know what is wrong - HOW DO WE FIX IT!! and without a MODERN BLUEPRINT or MANIFESTO for what we fight or support - all we do is create smoke which now exists, and in the next moment is gone.....
This. And we're working on it. We're bringing a project-based platform to market. We are executing projects in 9 categories: Economy, Education, Environment, Government, Health, Infrastructure, Justice, Health, & Other (catchall bucket). We're looking for people with an interest in participating in projects in any of these areas. Subject Matter Experts are paid by the hour for helping teams execute successfully. You determine your rate.
Your analysis is extremely accurate. You might want to also add that every one is pushed to having their personal files stored in "the Cloud" for safety and security. The actual law states that anything stored in "the Cloud" is no longer your property. It can be legally accessed by anyone or any institution who gets court approval and it's not required for you to even be notified. Thank you for your voice but how do we educate, influence the masses, and what is the new system structure to advocate?
"I want to deal with another myth briefly which concerns me and I want to talk about it very honestly and that is over-reliance on the bootstrap philosophy. Now certainly it's very important for people to engage in self-help programs and do all they can to lift themselves by their own bootstraps. Now I'm not talking against that at all. I think there is a great deal that the black people of this country must do for themselves and that nobody else can do for them. And we must see the other side of this question. I remember the other day I was on a plane and a man starting talking with me and he said I'm sympathetic toward what you're trying to do, but I just feel that you people don't do enough for yourself and then he went on to say that my problem is, my concern is that I know of other ethnic groups, many of the ethnic groups that came to this country and they had problems just as negroes and yet they did the job for themselves, they lifted themselves by their own bootstraps. Why is it that negroes can't do that? And I looked at him and I tried to talk as understanding as possible but I said to him, it does not help the negro for unfeeling, sensitive white people to say that other ethnic groups that came to the country maybe a hundred or a hundred and fifty years voluntarily have gotten ahead of them and he was brought here in chains involuntarily almost three hundred and fifty years ago. I said it doesn't help him to be told that and then I went on to say to this gentlemen that he failed to recognize that no other ethnic group has been enslaved on American soil. Then I had to go on to say to him that you failed to realize that America made the black man's color a stigma. Something that he couldn't change. Not only was the color a stigma, but even linguistic then stigmatic conspired against the black man so that his color was thought of as something very evil. If you open Roget's Thesaurus and notice the synonym for black you'll find about a hundred and twenty and most of them represent something dirty, smut, degrading, low, and when you turn to the synonym for white, about one hundred and thirty, all of them represent something high, pure, chaste. You go right down that list. And so in the language a white life is a little better than a black life. Just follow. If somebody goes wrong in the family, we don't call him a white sheep we call him a black sheep. And then if you block somebody from getting somewhere you don't say they've been whiteballed, you say they've been blackballed. And just go down the line. It's not whitemail it's blackmail. I tell you this to seriously say that the nation made the black man's color a stigma and then I had to say to my friend on the plane another thing that is often forgotten in this country. That nobody, no ethnic group has completely lifted itself by it own bootstraps. I can never forget that the black man was free from the bondage of physical slavery in 1863. He wasn't given any land to make that freedom meaningful after being held in slavery 244 years. And it was like keeping a man in prison for many many years and then coming to see that he is not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted. Alright good night and God bless you.
And I was about to say that to free, to have freed the negro from slavery without doing anything to get him started in life on a sound economic footing, it was almost like freeing a man who had been in prison many years and you had discovered that he was unjustly convicted of, that he was innocent of the crime for which he was convicted and you go up to him and say now you're free, but you don't give him any bus fare to get to town or you don't give him any money to buy some clothes to put on his back or to get started in life again. Every code of jurisprudence would rise up against it. This is the very thing that happened to the black man in America. And then when we look at it even deeper than this, it becomes more ironic. We're reaping the harvest of this failure today. While America refused to do anything for the black man at that point, during that very period, the nation, through an act of Congress, was giving away millions of acres of land in the west and the mid-west, which meant that it was willing to under gird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor. Not only did they give the land, they built land grant colleges for them to learn how to farm. Not only that it provided county agents to further their expertise in farming and went beyond this and came to the point of providing low interest rates for these persons so that they could mechanize their farms, and today many of these persons are being paid millions of dollars a year in federal subsidies not to farm and these are so often the very people saying to the black man that he must lift himself by his own bootstraps. I can never think ... Senator Eastland, incidentally, who says this all the time gets a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars a year, not to farm on various areas of his plantation down in Mississippi. And yet he feels that we must do everything for ourselves. Well that appears to me to be a kind of socialism for the rich and rugged hard individualistic capitalism for the poor."
Martin King, less than a month before your government killed him.
Excellent post. The Times literally helped create this mess, by propagating bullshit and treating obviously fascist views as if they were worthy of serious consideration. Now they’re “concerned?” What a fucking joke.
Glad to see you finally got here. You are and have been a faithful patriot who believes in the system, and have come to the realization that the system itself is broken beyond repair. Build Back Better will never cut it. The marriage of disaster capitalism and representative democracy inside a republic leads to collapse for both. The Constitution and the CFR have more holes than a mountain of Swiss cheese.
This was the design since the get go. Remember, 'they' offered to make Washington a king. The only mountain higher than the original is the volcano of lipstick that constantly gets smeared on this intentional beauty-pageant pig. Without an immense amount of good will and effort from many citizens across 240 years, constantly slapping band aids of honest belief on the 'system,' it would have morphed into the monster it now is long ago.
Any road back to the beginning cannot go through the same river of quicksand. This presents a very massive problem, because the maze of dead ends, road blocks and off-ramps that have been built in to the floor plan all lead to the same corporatocracy. All that TFG has done is to bulldoze through many of the walls in that maze on its way to its own personal kleptocracy. TFG has to do it this way due to his outlaw behaviors being the target of the fairly broken justice system inside it.
Right now only a handful of judges and officers of the court with some integrity stand in its way. If it can stymie the military before the rabid dog Hegemonyseth self-destructs, the maga roto-rooter will hollow out the treasury and extort/intimidate/disappear every MacDuff in Scotland.
As you point out vividly, the last battle is just waiting for dawn at Birnam Wood. The only questions that remain are what will the citizen sovereigns do to stop this, how will they do it, and where will the dangers within the republic come from?
Tragically you are so right, Corbin. Thank you for your eloquence and honesty. I wish more ppl would read this excellent analysis of how America eroded its virtues.
So wonderful to read a YOUNG writer almost get it right. But you got enough correct to give hope an old Hippie. I disagree on some points but will not nit pick. The system is corrupt and haas begetting worse with each succeeding new President since Reagan? Or is it Kennedy?
It matters not. We are headed into a period of great disruption. And it matters not if you are liberal or conservative or old enough to realise that the political definitions are irrelevant. (Libs used to oppose wars and support the 1st Amendment. Thanks to the Deep State, or is it the financialisation crowd , or the Neocons that have directed us since Clinton, or perhaps the tech bros billionaires- the plan has cascaded into a nonproductive society where for the vast majority of people it's a struggle to survive, forget about effectively gathering the Truth to make a reasoned decision about politics).
Here's a simple rule-FOLLOW THE BENJAMINS.
( thank god for Mammon as there should never be a full sale nuclear war-there's no money in it if half the population and the cities they live in are annihilated. Who would the ultra-rich scare into buying useless material goods that meet half the production value that existed in the '90s). Remember the '90s , if you will. If you were alive in 1998 a gallon of gasoline cost less than a gallon of water-an absolute mark of a booming economy. All while Slick Willie rid us of Glass-Steagle, assuring us a decade later of a crashing economy. All while Bill visited Epstein Island a number of times according to signed affidavits of percipient witnesses. But he was a hell of a guy as we hadn't reached the point where abuse of women was condemned.
And I've no other alternative- Bush stole the election by all measures and led us into a 20 year war in the Mideast that has resulted in a genocidal plan to achieve peace, which was motivated by a bunch of Hamas lunatics who thought killing innocent Israelis would be ignored by one of the most ferocious fighting forces in the world who is supported by a hegemonic United States.
Obama continued a plan initiated by Clinton and his neocon backers to push NATO into Ukraine while promising each successive Russian leader that no such plan was intended. And today we have a NATO free EU planning to take on Russia as they watch the Ukrainians get chewed up on the battlefield while the EU faces a likely depression as their energy costs, minus the NordStream oil supply, skyrocket.
And the NY Times and WaPo are known collaborators with the Intelligence Community that pushes neocon wars and blatantly lied about Trump's alleged connection to Russia. Both papers received Pulitzers pushing that pack of now proven lies. But retain the Pulitzers because - it
wasn't their fault, it was Trump's fault for their pushing lies because he's a Red headed Hitler, and any way he stinks- so there.
I marched in opposition to the Viet Nam War, Clinton's admitted quasi-genocide of the Iraqi people( mostly Shias) to the acknowledged amount of 600,000 and The Idiot Bush's abortive attack for no provable reason upon the Iraqis ( except for the control of oil, of course)...and on and on and on. Until at 71 I wish you all luck as you attack Teslas in opportunistic performative acts of nonsense against what you 3 years ago viewed as the partial solution to the environment's degradation. Hoping that a deballed Bernie and a joke of a candidate in AOC, who is only slightly more electable than Harris, who was a joke of a candidate, will somehow convince the average worker to support a Dem party that supports billionaires over the working man( mind you Trump is a billionaire, but makes people believe that he cares-desperation is a great blinder of reason) is not a feasible strategy.( look to Gov Shapiro of Pa. Mind you, short of an economic crash under Trump the Dems won't sniff the White House until 2036. I also did politics for 40 yearend haven't missed a Presidential election prediction since 1984- It's always
the economy, stupid.
the solution is community and family and networking to protect your family and community while the world falls apart . That's a hopeful prescription. That's because the monied interests value money over sense, over belief in hope and compassion. And values that are basic to all humans.
It's actually a simple choice when you think of it.
Obama continued a plan initiated by Clinton and his neocon backers to push NATO into Ukraine while promising each successive Russian leader that no such plan was intended. And today we have a NATO free EU planning to take on Russia as they watch the Ukrainians get chewed up on the battlefield while the EU faces a likely depression as their energy costs, minus the NordStream oil supply, skyrocket.
And the NY Times and WaPo are known collaborators with the Intelligence Community that pushes neocon wars and blatantly lied about Trump's alleged connection to Russia. Both papers received Pulitzers pushing that pack of now proven lies. But retain the Pulitzers because - it
wasn't their fault, it was Trump's fault for their pushing lies because he's a Red headed Hitler, and any way he stinks- so there.
I marched in opposition to the Viet Nam War, Clinton's admitted quasi-genocide of the Iraqi people( mostly Shias) to the acknowledged amount of 600,000 and The Idiot Bush's abortive attack for no provable reason upon the Iraqis ( except for the control of oil, of course)...and on and on and on. Until at 71 I wish you all luck as you attack Teslas in opportunistic performative acts of nonsense against what you 3 years ago viewed as the partial solution to the environment's degradation. Hoping that a deballed Bernie and a joke of a candidate in AOC, who is only slightly more electable than Harris, who was a joke of a candidate, will somehow convince the average worker to support a Dem party that supports billionaires over the working man( mind you Trump is a billionaire, but makes people believe that he cares-desperation is a great blinder of reason) is not a feasible strategy.( look to Gov Shapiro of Pa. Mind you, short of an economic crash under Trump the Dems won't sniff the White House until 2036. I also did politics for 40 yearend haven't missed a Presidential election prediction since 1984- It's always
the economy, stupid.
the solution is community and family and networking to protect your family and community while the world falls apart . That's a hopeful prescription. That's because the monied interests value money over sense, over belief in hope and compassion. And values that are basic to all humans.
It's actually a simple choice when you think of it.
"The fault, dear Brutus is in ourselves, not in our (politicians) that we are underlings." After reading the case of Richard Medhurst and seeing the Theroux film on Settlers of the West Bank we can probably relieve ourselves of our Western exceptionalist delusion. What a relief!
We'll never fix a problem until we admit it's existence, a major flaw in AmeriCANism.
All my life there have been Trumps for politicians to rag on, essentially saying if only we get him out of the system we will become that thing we were always supposed to become but never really did, because he was always in the way. It might be a good idea to ensure that America, where I live, is made a safe and enjoyable place to function for as many of it's citizens as possible. I think it's a good idea but most of us don't or we would have done it by now. Change it from an uneven playing field of inane competition which we seem to like or we'd have changed that too, long ago.
It seems to me the Shakespeare might have said it's "in our aspirations we are underlings." Wealth and status seem to be the main Western aspirations, preoccupations. I'd say we might replace them with enough and dignity and we'd be off in a different, much more fruitful direction.
9/11 brought us the security state, or more accurately brought it to white people, for the first time perhaps since they left Europe where it has thrived for centuries. It needn't have. With a little courage and imagination some bright thing might have called a world wide peace symposium in Alexandria, a cultural fusion if ever there was, but no. Gotta keep our enemies out there or we'd cease to exist.
Thank you for this. Can you make a comment about the larger world situation regarding AI, ASI, supercomputing, and the notion of the Techno-Overlords? I feel like Trump is taking advantage of a) the Republican party and b) the silicon valley billionaires to create some national/global authoritarianism based on the control of both.
Keep telling it! “moderate Democrats” (WTF is that), want us to believe the country just wants to get back to “normal.” Normal (in your awesomely honest post) and the status quo democrats are what gave us Trump. The scale tippers said, “I won’t hold my nose again. If Trump destroys everything in his path. . . maybe that’s what the country needs.”
If a Bernie disciple doesn’t run, we’re screwed (again).
And one elected person can’t turn it around and restructure alone……..
Look at what ONE person (and a totally compliant House and Senate) is doing.
This post is actually trash, though. Why does he talk about 9/11 - what is the "truth" about it? Was the mainstream and corporate media correct and it was all CrAzY Arabic jihadis who just hate American freedom so much? That sounds like typical Republican rhetoric. We killed how many people in Iran to satisfy you war hawks and racists?
Just like so many… complain but bring no real solutions to the table. Tell us how exactly how to rebuild real democracy in this country. Not hopeful nonstarters like get rid of the filibuster… tell us how you do that. Tell us how you would get rid of big money and dark money in politics. Come to the table with real solutions.
Solutions or not, I think the article supplies a necessary perspective. It’s difficult to solve problems without an accurate understanding of its nature and causes. And far too many people in the Left/Progressive camp still seem invested in the attempt to recover what was. Yet as the writer points out, “what was“ had Trumpism as it’s end result.
I know it may seem an insurmountable challenge at this stage of culture, but we really need a fundamentally new social paradigm. (And no, it’s not Communism.) The 20th Century ethic of individualism, competition, wealth accumulation, and the “self-made man” worked well enough for a few, and OK for many more , yet left so many others behind. At broadest level, we need a paradigm that values living things over non-living systems, institutions, symbols, abstractions.
Yet we are so invested in the current model that I’m doubtful we can make such a shift — at least not without significant collapse. But I hope to be proved wrong.
The fact that Moose-olini is tearing everything down, stupidly and with no plan, gives us an unprecedented opportunity.
It's a bit like taking a house down to studs, demolishing the interior and the exterior. It's going to be REALLY uncomfortable, really challenging, but we're going to figure out who WE are as a nation. Whether we'll allow the establishment politicians back in AT ALL (mostly I think we shouldn't), whether we'll let the bigots and militia types to keep setting policy,
OR
we can TAKE THE REINS OF POWER AND RECREATE OUR DEMOCRACY as WE WANT IT TO BE.
FIRST, in my opinion, will be to make sure the perpetrators of this coup, and the horrifying data purging and thefts, are held responsible TO THE ABSOLUTE LIMIT OF THE LAW.
No more "let them go so the country can heal" bullshit. Never again. That's a lie and a bad faith argument from the start, and why liberals are considered untrustworthy now. (Republikkkans are considered untrustworthy bc they lie constantly.)
If we allow no punishment, we have no effective laws. It's that simple.
Then we REALLY get to work.
Idk how we wouldnt let establishment at least at first. But we need to do way better at being informed and not vote for names on the ballot bc we've heard of them for a long time. As well as participate. The thing about everything mentioned by the author is that even tho many knew govt just did something that wasnt rigjt or unconstitutional etc, a majority of the country regardless of party, didnt understand how it could bring down democracy. Everything was a little, then a little more etc. What i learned is that we never, ever, should side with politicians over our fellow citizens. Its doable to figure out what a problem is or disagreement whatever than it is to go up against govt. Also we have to get in the street every.single.time govt oversteps, which means we have to know they have which is why its necessary to get and stay informed. There actually is a way, not so much to find the trutj about everything, but it is possible to know which press spins more or lies etc. I really believe journos and anchors want to do good work, its editors and corp owners but we need it busted up and go back to private ownership. The founders specifically put the free press in the constition bc they imagined tens or hundreds of individually owned and operated press outlets scattered across the country specifically so what we have now wouldnt happen...a handful of oligarchs that control the narrative to their own financial benefit. The change happened as the author said, but obviously it really happened at some point before. There was a single press outlet that i cant remember the name right off hand but it was the only press in DC that printed the truth that things didnt add up according to the govts claims. Allcthe rest lied and that single outlet went out of business pretty quickly. The press didnt report the truth that the Bush2/Gore election was stolen, and when the pres during his first time in office still hadnt conceded the election and republicans n congress either lied or wouldnt answer when asked...the press and cable news said his behavior was bc he never lost at anything before so he was basically brooding. In real life he was still working the diff levers to try to stay in office.
Right on Carlye! May it be so!
We'll keep working, right? Until the fascists are in prison and BROKE. We'll need to freeze and seize assets so our country can recover some of its losses 😅
Btw, several steps to recreating our democracy:
No Citizens United. Make a limit for political elections, all parties held to the same amounts.
Supreme Court must have term limits and enforceable ethics, and a fully determined means of removal for breaches. Chief Justice to be mutually acceptable to all parties involved.
Periodic federal court review of the Constitution, with some provision made for changes with state elections (?) every 10 years (?). Something like that.
That's just a couple of things off the top of my head.
It took numerous people a few years to hammer out the documents our country started with. Does anyone think we should give this crisis any less?
Historically, political change, of our needed magnitude, usually involves hunger and revolution—except for Ghandi, but Britain was busy with a war. (Should I have misspelled a word to show that I'm human? La vida loca!)
You are so right. All we ever get is a litany of all the problems but no one offers workable solutions that we can all get behind and support.
Because we have to offer the solutions and we have to be more engaged. It’s going to require work that we have not been willing to do let alone fully aware that it needed doing. Mass media and spectacle are a seductive pill a la Brave New World.
Yet this post promotes mass media's corporate lie about 9/11. Funny how war promoters find a way to distract from Israeli lobbying.
With you. We don’t need this let’s just slash our wrists because we all fucked up shit. Let’s do something about it. Yes, use these points you’ve (the author) laid out with immediate follow up; include it in the article right here behind every issue.
Back of the napkin agenda for change:
1. A living wage (forget about minumum wage). 40hr week. Employer/employee pension.
2. Universal health care. (I get care at the VA. Pretty good, not perfect.) All physicians become officers in Public Health Service (like research doctors now at NIH).
3. Universal public service requirement. (a draft, but not only military. 2 years after high school. Both boys and girls. with some occupational specialty training.
4. Universal education. HS mandatory. Public support for advanced occupational training and college.
5. Immigration reform. Offer a path to citizenship for hardworking, ambitious newcomers.
6. Affordable housing. (Japan has been in a slump for 35 years, but life there is good. Why? Housing costs are affordable, not a huge chunk of income.)
7. Draconian taxes (90%) on incomes over $5million. (Nobody needs more than $13, 698/day. Corporate resources will be reallocated to more investment in R&D.)
8. Social commitment requirement for corporate charters. (No corporation gets a charter without committing to public interest. No more abandoning communities to seek cheap labor overseas.)
9. Congressional districting along existing county lines. (No more gerrymander.)
[Could go on, but running out of napkin.]
#s 1-8 require congressional votes. #9 requires state action, I think.
Solutions are necessary but there is nothing non-factual in what the author said. I would disagree about the times piece tho. Not bc they havent been the shitheads as described, they have. So has the rest of our free press. BUT that they have been unwilling to speak the truth in a straightforward way thats needed with the appropriate amount of urgency is IMO exactly why ppl should take notice. Trump is not the sole cause for our problems. Those that seek to overthrow a govt dont target healthy democracies. Even with the rot in our institutions, it was still necesaary to use the same disinfo methods, tactics in order for them to be able to do it. Bc no one in their right mind willingly votes away their freedoms. Its not so much that ppl seek to further their cause or beliefs as much as it is they get convinced the "others" are trying to destroy the country and make them feel like a foreigner in their own country. When disinfo happens alongside organized churches...catholics for example but there are more that have become extremist in their teaching or basically corrupted to where its poss to preach on scripture, but in the elaborating lose the plot, that combo is all it takes to make ppl willing to war. Ppl must be convinced that the "others" are the enemy and theyve been doing that for a while now. There is no exact fix for the effects of disinfo on a large mass of ppl but ive read that the best things we can do are focus on knowing or at least building a neighborly relationship with the actual neighbors. Build community. BUT dont decide who we want to know or dont based on politics. If politics must come up or if the neighbor brings it up...do not try to change minds or convince ppl of anything. It wont work. One would hope that a sincere level even a little one, of caring for no other reason than that we are all Americans exists. Find commonalities first and always. If whoever brings up politics before commonalities are found and lightly discussed, we dont have to agree but we dont have to make our politics known either. Its possible and doable to keep certain aspects of our lives private. Thats my opinion but it is my opinion bc its advice from experts that know and ppl that have lived it elsewhere. Identity politics must stop, yesterday. Privacy seems to be not so important to some anymore and that is bad in more ways than one. Besides it being the most helpful thing to start to heal us at least from the division, if it becomes past the point, knowing the neighbors goes a long way with knowing who not to trust. Its not too late yet, but we had a better chance of succeeding when i started texting this than do evety second that passes. Dont think protest, think sustained action. Surely ppl smarter and maybe younger than me can figure out if protest is the way. Extremely helpful items i cant rec strongly enough, 2 books: 1) From Dictatorship to Democracy, 2) 198 Methods to peaceful protest. Both by Gene Sharp.
And a Netflix Documentary that can be viewed on youtube free called Winter On Fire
Please, please read them, watch it.
The doc is what it looks like irl to oust a leader thats working toward perm rule. Turn on captions. It will also give a new found respect for the Ukrainian ppl, if some dont already have. Ukraine has been Russia's guinea pig for testing some things in order to know what works. What is happening here now is identcal to what happened to Ukraine a decade ago.
Lastly, LEARN STUFF. Democracy is our responsibility at the end of the day. We dont have it bc it was given to us, and every single thing said by the author and more is exactly why it is anti-democratic to think the govt is our friend, let alone be a cheerleader gor them. Ppl that do that i assume are sincere, but its always bc not enough attn is paid, or boring govt reports read. Bc im old and ive never once known anyone informed even semi-well that liked any politician from any party. There are reasons for that. Its not synical, its truth. Republicans twist info, decieve, and at times straight up lie or create from whole cloth. The democrats do their crap quietly, sneeky. Im not both sides-ing, one is worse at the moment. But everything the author said is true, and there is soooo much more. For ex: i dont see many on the left on s.m. that seem to know that a Professor at Harvard Law was running for president in 2016. His main goals were tackling govt corruption, campaign finance reform, voter access issues & gerrymandering. So you know how there are steps and each step must be acheived before they can move foreward? I dont remember all the details but like candidates were required to raise whatever the amount was but in $1 donations. If i remember right, he raised the amount but the democrats didnt want him to be the cadidate bc he wanted to actually fix things, so when he met the required amount, they increased the required amount. Then he raised that amount and they changed the rules of the next debate and in doing so made him unable to qualify. They didnt care 2 years ago when Bidens age was brought up, until the debate then they just chose a candidate. They dont have open primaries anyway, but ppl had already voted for Biden in the primary. They are as responsible for ignoring anti-trust, and anti-monopoly laws in the 80's and 90's as the republicans were, they even publicly gave their blessing so to speak to some behemoth mergers, and are responsible for allowing the public sale of our free press which is why we now have corp owned press. We could do this for days. SO, whatever is decided the action will be, when it actually takes place ppl should have a very limited set of demands to be met before the action is stopped. And by ppl i mean nationwide and sustained...again see the documentary.. And nothing partisan, like 3 or 4 items that are imperative to democracy and only about democracy which is to say the most important things that govt is supposed to do but they dont or not do but they do etc. not to either party. And i cant stress enough TAKE INITIATIVE. If you havent read the constitution or important founding documents now is a good time. Great on youtube in no particular order: anything by or about Gore Vidal, Gene Sharp, Prof Timothy D Snyder and absolutely watch the newer TED talk by Carol Caldwaller. The Gene Sharp books are thought to be the methods used in the Arab Spring but its not a diect map but kind of a map-ish that requires tweaking bc each country has diff laws, constitutions etc. They also include studied peaceful protest methods . For ex police are less likely to shoot protesters that are sitting down and not engaging with them. Lastly, Musk did not donate 2 or 3 million to the pres campaign bc he dreamt of govt service, lol. The deal with the "DOGE" which is at times barely grown ppl, is to shut down things for the pres., but for him its our data and they already have a shit ton of it. Its being fed into AI and once AI surveillence is a thing...we are toast. In tje same way its been reported that AI can predict certain diseases before a person has symptoms or it shows on tests....it will be able to predict who is most likely to protest, and design s.m. feeds to down to the individual. In the way that some live in a different reality than the rest of the country, and the world really, think that but not necessarily to a group, but non-reality none the less to individuals so much so that the curent generation coming up now may never know that dissent is a thing ppl actually did or is even possible. Put down the devices, go outside, talk to ppl...find commonalities first and always. Make community, help each other. Bond. ✌️❤️🙏
You make it sound like nobody should discuss our national problems unless they can identify specific steps in order to fix them. Personally I think that's nuts, but let's say you got your way. How would you make sure nobody mentioned any problem without simultaneously proffering a solution? That sounds like a mighty big problem itself. Better "stop complaining if you can't bring real solutions to the table."
So you're admitting the person who is writing these emails is nothing more than a commentator and spectator, not interested in change? Maybe that's why the emails come off tone deaf and disconnected. Thank you for your insight.
This is a brilliant analysis and I applaud you for it. Please permit me to add that the global banking collapse of 2008 was made possible by Bill Clinton's agreement to repeal Glass-Steagall in the name of "financial innovation." After the shit hit the fan and both Long-term Capital Management and Lehman Brothers went bankrupt Obama bailed out Wall Street and the big banks but failed to address the catastrophic mortgage foreclosures that threw thousands of families into the streets. America's political leaders privatize gains when capitalism works. But they socialize the losses when the capitalists screw up. No corporate executive faced legal charges. But homelessness subsequently skyrocketed and artificially low interest rates due to the Fed's 14-year accommodative policy stance pushed the cost of buying a home out of reach.
Right. Find a single post from Corben Trent criticizing any Clinton. Funny how they glaze over the corporate brand that's torn this country apart and lost elections. Really fuckn funny.
Can we create a RAMA (whatever the name may be) a manifesto of specific numbered issues we should work to fix and put that to a vote to the American People indifferent of Political Views? Until we create a new blueprint identical as the right did with project 2025 - there should be a decent alternative where people could read and vote their support - perhaps different than the usual way people get suckered into say something or donate a few dollars and they get political emails and beggars asking for donations adding insult to injury. After I am poor and these politicians dont do anything to help me - now I am being asked to support them!!! It is such an insult! Yes I want my vote to count - I want my voice to matter but I don't want to be begged infinitely to throw money into a black whole and or to me made feel more insignificant or suckered!
It could be a 30 items list, and upon popular voice they can be prioritized and sought political support. Medicare, Vision and Dental FOR ALL, Women rights, Pollution and Climate Change, Border Security, Immigration Reform, Money out of politics and ban lobbying reform, Eliminate Offshore Tax Heavens and loopholes, Repatriate all offshore funds owned by Corporations doing business in USA and tax it.. Make a list with top 500 US companies and their yearly full tax contributions to see how they compared to all of us little people, invest in affordable housing. The list can include 20 or 30 or 50 top priority items for America and can be a blueprint for tomorrow and something we can hope and fight for, and find politicians who are willing to fight with us and eliminate those like Chuck Shumer, Pelosi or other Dinosaurs (like Ginsburg who for the love of God did not want to vacate her post until she died in it and gifted her position and stack the court to the right) when we know they don't represent human rights and decency as they should... And so on. I/WE are so tired of rhetoric.. We know what is wrong - HOW DO WE FIX IT!! and without a MODERN BLUEPRINT or MANIFESTO for what we fight or support - all we do is create smoke which now exists, and in the next moment is gone.....
And we need to break things down into manageable sections. So we can all help.
This. And we're working on it. We're bringing a project-based platform to market. We are executing projects in 9 categories: Economy, Education, Environment, Government, Health, Infrastructure, Justice, Health, & Other (catchall bucket). We're looking for people with an interest in participating in projects in any of these areas. Subject Matter Experts are paid by the hour for helping teams execute successfully. You determine your rate.
RAMA - RESTART AMERICA - or call it what you want.
Your analysis is extremely accurate. You might want to also add that every one is pushed to having their personal files stored in "the Cloud" for safety and security. The actual law states that anything stored in "the Cloud" is no longer your property. It can be legally accessed by anyone or any institution who gets court approval and it's not required for you to even be notified. Thank you for your voice but how do we educate, influence the masses, and what is the new system structure to advocate?
Fighting symptoms never stops the disease. Thank you.
"I want to deal with another myth briefly which concerns me and I want to talk about it very honestly and that is over-reliance on the bootstrap philosophy. Now certainly it's very important for people to engage in self-help programs and do all they can to lift themselves by their own bootstraps. Now I'm not talking against that at all. I think there is a great deal that the black people of this country must do for themselves and that nobody else can do for them. And we must see the other side of this question. I remember the other day I was on a plane and a man starting talking with me and he said I'm sympathetic toward what you're trying to do, but I just feel that you people don't do enough for yourself and then he went on to say that my problem is, my concern is that I know of other ethnic groups, many of the ethnic groups that came to this country and they had problems just as negroes and yet they did the job for themselves, they lifted themselves by their own bootstraps. Why is it that negroes can't do that? And I looked at him and I tried to talk as understanding as possible but I said to him, it does not help the negro for unfeeling, sensitive white people to say that other ethnic groups that came to the country maybe a hundred or a hundred and fifty years voluntarily have gotten ahead of them and he was brought here in chains involuntarily almost three hundred and fifty years ago. I said it doesn't help him to be told that and then I went on to say to this gentlemen that he failed to recognize that no other ethnic group has been enslaved on American soil. Then I had to go on to say to him that you failed to realize that America made the black man's color a stigma. Something that he couldn't change. Not only was the color a stigma, but even linguistic then stigmatic conspired against the black man so that his color was thought of as something very evil. If you open Roget's Thesaurus and notice the synonym for black you'll find about a hundred and twenty and most of them represent something dirty, smut, degrading, low, and when you turn to the synonym for white, about one hundred and thirty, all of them represent something high, pure, chaste. You go right down that list. And so in the language a white life is a little better than a black life. Just follow. If somebody goes wrong in the family, we don't call him a white sheep we call him a black sheep. And then if you block somebody from getting somewhere you don't say they've been whiteballed, you say they've been blackballed. And just go down the line. It's not whitemail it's blackmail. I tell you this to seriously say that the nation made the black man's color a stigma and then I had to say to my friend on the plane another thing that is often forgotten in this country. That nobody, no ethnic group has completely lifted itself by it own bootstraps. I can never forget that the black man was free from the bondage of physical slavery in 1863. He wasn't given any land to make that freedom meaningful after being held in slavery 244 years. And it was like keeping a man in prison for many many years and then coming to see that he is not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted. Alright good night and God bless you.
And I was about to say that to free, to have freed the negro from slavery without doing anything to get him started in life on a sound economic footing, it was almost like freeing a man who had been in prison many years and you had discovered that he was unjustly convicted of, that he was innocent of the crime for which he was convicted and you go up to him and say now you're free, but you don't give him any bus fare to get to town or you don't give him any money to buy some clothes to put on his back or to get started in life again. Every code of jurisprudence would rise up against it. This is the very thing that happened to the black man in America. And then when we look at it even deeper than this, it becomes more ironic. We're reaping the harvest of this failure today. While America refused to do anything for the black man at that point, during that very period, the nation, through an act of Congress, was giving away millions of acres of land in the west and the mid-west, which meant that it was willing to under gird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor. Not only did they give the land, they built land grant colleges for them to learn how to farm. Not only that it provided county agents to further their expertise in farming and went beyond this and came to the point of providing low interest rates for these persons so that they could mechanize their farms, and today many of these persons are being paid millions of dollars a year in federal subsidies not to farm and these are so often the very people saying to the black man that he must lift himself by his own bootstraps. I can never think ... Senator Eastland, incidentally, who says this all the time gets a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars a year, not to farm on various areas of his plantation down in Mississippi. And yet he feels that we must do everything for ourselves. Well that appears to me to be a kind of socialism for the rich and rugged hard individualistic capitalism for the poor."
Martin King, less than a month before your government killed him.
Excellent post. The Times literally helped create this mess, by propagating bullshit and treating obviously fascist views as if they were worthy of serious consideration. Now they’re “concerned?” What a fucking joke.
Glad to see you finally got here. You are and have been a faithful patriot who believes in the system, and have come to the realization that the system itself is broken beyond repair. Build Back Better will never cut it. The marriage of disaster capitalism and representative democracy inside a republic leads to collapse for both. The Constitution and the CFR have more holes than a mountain of Swiss cheese.
This was the design since the get go. Remember, 'they' offered to make Washington a king. The only mountain higher than the original is the volcano of lipstick that constantly gets smeared on this intentional beauty-pageant pig. Without an immense amount of good will and effort from many citizens across 240 years, constantly slapping band aids of honest belief on the 'system,' it would have morphed into the monster it now is long ago.
Any road back to the beginning cannot go through the same river of quicksand. This presents a very massive problem, because the maze of dead ends, road blocks and off-ramps that have been built in to the floor plan all lead to the same corporatocracy. All that TFG has done is to bulldoze through many of the walls in that maze on its way to its own personal kleptocracy. TFG has to do it this way due to his outlaw behaviors being the target of the fairly broken justice system inside it.
Right now only a handful of judges and officers of the court with some integrity stand in its way. If it can stymie the military before the rabid dog Hegemonyseth self-destructs, the maga roto-rooter will hollow out the treasury and extort/intimidate/disappear every MacDuff in Scotland.
As you point out vividly, the last battle is just waiting for dawn at Birnam Wood. The only questions that remain are what will the citizen sovereigns do to stop this, how will they do it, and where will the dangers within the republic come from?
Completely agree. Thanks for writing this post.
Wow. Finally.
Wow. Finally.
Tragically you are so right, Corbin. Thank you for your eloquence and honesty. I wish more ppl would read this excellent analysis of how America eroded its virtues.
So wonderful to read a YOUNG writer almost get it right. But you got enough correct to give hope an old Hippie. I disagree on some points but will not nit pick. The system is corrupt and haas begetting worse with each succeeding new President since Reagan? Or is it Kennedy?
It matters not. We are headed into a period of great disruption. And it matters not if you are liberal or conservative or old enough to realise that the political definitions are irrelevant. (Libs used to oppose wars and support the 1st Amendment. Thanks to the Deep State, or is it the financialisation crowd , or the Neocons that have directed us since Clinton, or perhaps the tech bros billionaires- the plan has cascaded into a nonproductive society where for the vast majority of people it's a struggle to survive, forget about effectively gathering the Truth to make a reasoned decision about politics).
Here's a simple rule-FOLLOW THE BENJAMINS.
( thank god for Mammon as there should never be a full sale nuclear war-there's no money in it if half the population and the cities they live in are annihilated. Who would the ultra-rich scare into buying useless material goods that meet half the production value that existed in the '90s). Remember the '90s , if you will. If you were alive in 1998 a gallon of gasoline cost less than a gallon of water-an absolute mark of a booming economy. All while Slick Willie rid us of Glass-Steagle, assuring us a decade later of a crashing economy. All while Bill visited Epstein Island a number of times according to signed affidavits of percipient witnesses. But he was a hell of a guy as we hadn't reached the point where abuse of women was condemned.
And I've no other alternative- Bush stole the election by all measures and led us into a 20 year war in the Mideast that has resulted in a genocidal plan to achieve peace, which was motivated by a bunch of Hamas lunatics who thought killing innocent Israelis would be ignored by one of the most ferocious fighting forces in the world who is supported by a hegemonic United States.
Obama continued a plan initiated by Clinton and his neocon backers to push NATO into Ukraine while promising each successive Russian leader that no such plan was intended. And today we have a NATO free EU planning to take on Russia as they watch the Ukrainians get chewed up on the battlefield while the EU faces a likely depression as their energy costs, minus the NordStream oil supply, skyrocket.
And the NY Times and WaPo are known collaborators with the Intelligence Community that pushes neocon wars and blatantly lied about Trump's alleged connection to Russia. Both papers received Pulitzers pushing that pack of now proven lies. But retain the Pulitzers because - it
wasn't their fault, it was Trump's fault for their pushing lies because he's a Red headed Hitler, and any way he stinks- so there.
I marched in opposition to the Viet Nam War, Clinton's admitted quasi-genocide of the Iraqi people( mostly Shias) to the acknowledged amount of 600,000 and The Idiot Bush's abortive attack for no provable reason upon the Iraqis ( except for the control of oil, of course)...and on and on and on. Until at 71 I wish you all luck as you attack Teslas in opportunistic performative acts of nonsense against what you 3 years ago viewed as the partial solution to the environment's degradation. Hoping that a deballed Bernie and a joke of a candidate in AOC, who is only slightly more electable than Harris, who was a joke of a candidate, will somehow convince the average worker to support a Dem party that supports billionaires over the working man( mind you Trump is a billionaire, but makes people believe that he cares-desperation is a great blinder of reason) is not a feasible strategy.( look to Gov Shapiro of Pa. Mind you, short of an economic crash under Trump the Dems won't sniff the White House until 2036. I also did politics for 40 yearend haven't missed a Presidential election prediction since 1984- It's always
the economy, stupid.
the solution is community and family and networking to protect your family and community while the world falls apart . That's a hopeful prescription. That's because the monied interests value money over sense, over belief in hope and compassion. And values that are basic to all humans.
It's actually a simple choice when you think of it.
Obama continued a plan initiated by Clinton and his neocon backers to push NATO into Ukraine while promising each successive Russian leader that no such plan was intended. And today we have a NATO free EU planning to take on Russia as they watch the Ukrainians get chewed up on the battlefield while the EU faces a likely depression as their energy costs, minus the NordStream oil supply, skyrocket.
And the NY Times and WaPo are known collaborators with the Intelligence Community that pushes neocon wars and blatantly lied about Trump's alleged connection to Russia. Both papers received Pulitzers pushing that pack of now proven lies. But retain the Pulitzers because - it
wasn't their fault, it was Trump's fault for their pushing lies because he's a Red headed Hitler, and any way he stinks- so there.
I marched in opposition to the Viet Nam War, Clinton's admitted quasi-genocide of the Iraqi people( mostly Shias) to the acknowledged amount of 600,000 and The Idiot Bush's abortive attack for no provable reason upon the Iraqis ( except for the control of oil, of course)...and on and on and on. Until at 71 I wish you all luck as you attack Teslas in opportunistic performative acts of nonsense against what you 3 years ago viewed as the partial solution to the environment's degradation. Hoping that a deballed Bernie and a joke of a candidate in AOC, who is only slightly more electable than Harris, who was a joke of a candidate, will somehow convince the average worker to support a Dem party that supports billionaires over the working man( mind you Trump is a billionaire, but makes people believe that he cares-desperation is a great blinder of reason) is not a feasible strategy.( look to Gov Shapiro of Pa. Mind you, short of an economic crash under Trump the Dems won't sniff the White House until 2036. I also did politics for 40 yearend haven't missed a Presidential election prediction since 1984- It's always
the economy, stupid.
the solution is community and family and networking to protect your family and community while the world falls apart . That's a hopeful prescription. That's because the monied interests value money over sense, over belief in hope and compassion. And values that are basic to all humans.
It's actually a simple choice when you think of it.
"The fault, dear Brutus is in ourselves, not in our (politicians) that we are underlings." After reading the case of Richard Medhurst and seeing the Theroux film on Settlers of the West Bank we can probably relieve ourselves of our Western exceptionalist delusion. What a relief!
We'll never fix a problem until we admit it's existence, a major flaw in AmeriCANism.
All my life there have been Trumps for politicians to rag on, essentially saying if only we get him out of the system we will become that thing we were always supposed to become but never really did, because he was always in the way. It might be a good idea to ensure that America, where I live, is made a safe and enjoyable place to function for as many of it's citizens as possible. I think it's a good idea but most of us don't or we would have done it by now. Change it from an uneven playing field of inane competition which we seem to like or we'd have changed that too, long ago.
It seems to me the Shakespeare might have said it's "in our aspirations we are underlings." Wealth and status seem to be the main Western aspirations, preoccupations. I'd say we might replace them with enough and dignity and we'd be off in a different, much more fruitful direction.
9/11 brought us the security state, or more accurately brought it to white people, for the first time perhaps since they left Europe where it has thrived for centuries. It needn't have. With a little courage and imagination some bright thing might have called a world wide peace symposium in Alexandria, a cultural fusion if ever there was, but no. Gotta keep our enemies out there or we'd cease to exist.
Thank you for this. Can you make a comment about the larger world situation regarding AI, ASI, supercomputing, and the notion of the Techno-Overlords? I feel like Trump is taking advantage of a) the Republican party and b) the silicon valley billionaires to create some national/global authoritarianism based on the control of both.