I agree wholeheartedly except for holding the Nazis accountable. The US did end up hiring some of them into government positions. Other than that excellent piece.
EXCELLENT job - and you've barely started going down the list here!
-----
Zigong asked about governance.
Confucius said: “Enough food, enough weapons, and the trust of the people.”
Zigong said: “If you had to go without one of these three, which one would you give up?”
Confucius replied: “Weapons.”
Zigong asked: “If you had to go without one of the remaining two, which one would you give up?” Confucius replied: “Food. From ancient times, death has been the fate of everyone. But without the trust of the people, the government cannot stand.”
-----
Funny how we've been going the dead-ass opposite order....
The mainstream media (and publicists) are bought and paid for and part of the brainwashing problem, Searching for good information is our responsibility but of course is discouraged labelling everything on social media false. Not so..that's where we all can get smart by using our own critical thinking,
You are absolutely right also self-educating on how the government is actually supposed to run. I think that's the reason why the first 2 classes cut in high schools were Civics and Government.
There are also handbook size copies of the Constitution, the Preamble(Declaration if Rights) available for a small fee and everyone should have a copy. I got mine 15+ years ago from a veterans group but there are several places to get one.
I read your short bio, see that what you’ve said appears legit. Your article resonates. I’d like to add the inability to trust texts, emails, phone calls on a daily basis (sometimes up to 12 daily). Almost everyone I speak to has been scammed, oftentimes more than once. Losses are anywhere from $750 to “loyalty” points or a bait & switch scam. Trust goes back to the “before times” and everything since is suspect. The fabric of society is rotten. The re-balancing is necessary. Establishing trust will be long and painful.
I particularly like the “no one could have seen this coming!” argument.
After 9/11. “No one could have seen this coming!”
Really? Because John Carpenter apparently saw it coming when he made “Escape From New York” in 1981. The movie opens with a group of terrorists hijacking Air Force One and crashing it into a Manhattan skyscraper. Sound familiar?
Don’t we pay you guys to see stuff coming? What the hell are we getting for our money?
the outgoing Clinton administration had shared all its intel about the plans they'd uncovered for a big terrorist attack with the incoming Bush administration which then did nothing (and there was previous talk by them about needing a "new Pearl Harbor" to install the surveillance state we now have...)
Thanks, Mommadillo,, and let's remember the female CIA analyst (Valerie something?) who said that contrary to Chaney and other poobahs' lies about Sadam having weapons of mass destruction, that was a fabrication for us to mess with Iraq.
Absolutely right on the mark! The crumbling of former American pseudo-democracy through lies and lack of trust. With no longer an honorable center, America is too big not to fail.
When “we the people” are lied to we lack power and ability to govern. Our only function is absorbing all blame and accountability for the crimes of those who do have power.
Can’t speak for leadership but as to media, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) dot org, Media Matters dot org, and the Citations Needed podcast are really good.
You said we can't agree on what the problems are, but I think there is widespread, bipartisan agreement about the problems are among the people. The only people in denial about those problems are the billionaires and their pet politicians. The example you cite of the fake WMDs that caused the Iraq war are a prime example--calling that out was one of the main ways Trump distinguished himself from other Republicans, and how he appealed to many on the anti-establishment left. Trump won because he spoke to those problems. The fact that he offers no viable solutions helped as well, since the Barnum Effect allowed his voters to project their own ideas of what will happen after the election onto that empty space.
Hello Fractal... DJT was initially for the Iraqi Invasion... When it turned into a Quagmire, and the MAGAs saw that it was their Sons & Daughters that were sent off to War, the Wind-Shifted... FOX News picked that up.... DJT is addicted to FOX News... DJT is Programmed by FOX News... DJT plays to FOX News...
While everything you write in today's America's Undoing is essentially correct between the distrust coming from institutional lies versus Trump's personal lies. However, you do not address the fundamental differences between the two and most importantly the killing of U.S. democracy that I am writing about in the third book of my Trump trilogy to be published after the 2026 elections entitled-- Regime Change, Authoritarian Treason, and the Outlaw-in-Chief: President Donald Trump's Struggle to Kill U.S. Democracy & Realign American Global Power. Here is a link to the second Trump book that also provides an analysis of the differences between these lies. https://www.routledge.com/Indicting-the-45th-President-Boss-Trump-the-GOP-and-What-We-Can-Do-About-the-Threat-to-American-Democracy/Barak/p/book/9781032454771.
Excuse me for using your AU's substack --now that I have the attention of Thisoldman, Apache, Wendell Ann, and Robert's attention/likes -- and than you for allowing me to pivot to where the Trump/Epstein cover up conflates both institutional state corruption and the personal-state corruption of DJT--. BTW, I have also worked for the Federal Bureau of Prisons back in the day so I have some knowledge about these things like the fact that the recording with the minute missing that folks are speculating about is nothing but one big diversion as Epstein's death occurred in a totally different room that night without a working camera! Interesting eh? And, we have never seen the autopsy report either. Make of this as you will but why else are we being shown a recording of a room that we have no idea who was in? Reportedly, it was not Epstein. As for Donald's cover up, it may or may not have to do with Epstein's death but it does have to do with Donald's alleged participation in the rape of a least one teenage girl in Epstein's NY condo that I identify by quoting from two 2016 lawsuits against defendants Trump and Epstein in a Raw Story commentary of mine from last week:
I’ve been pondering this issue for years. The majority of us likely have a basic sense of rightness, fairness, and morality. Moreover, we’ve been aware of major problems like corruption, inequality, racism, climate issues, and war for decades — and the solutions are largely known. But why have we made so little meaningful progress?
I’ve come to believe the originating First Cause is the loss of a sense of our shared humanity and shared destiny. Instead, we live in a social-economic-political system that is DESIGNED to keep us separated — lone actors, “self-made men”, living in our mini-fortresses separated by fences and walls, mistrustful of others, viewing them as competitors who we must keep up with or get ahead of, endlessly consuming and accumulating in an effort to reach the ever-receding mirage of “security”.
So of course, under such circumstances, over time, it is the most ruthless, sociopathic, necrophilic people who will eventually rise to the top. Just look at the news today — do we really need any more proof?
It’s not going to be easy to change course. Even the best of us are locked into a system that demands constant “growth”, and we depend upon investments that must “go up”. That extra value has to be extracted from somewhere — the environment, the lower classes, the Third World. Most of those have been substantially depleted, so now what?
The shift, which at this point may be difficult to achieve without significant collapse of the current paradigm, is a move away from dehumanizing megalopolis cities and institutions toward a network of smaller scale communities, where people have more ongoing connection, involvement, and concern for each other.
Sociologists suggest that historically, a functional community size is that of a tribal village about 150 people. In this day and age, with all of the technology available, perhaps that could be expanded to several hundred or thousand.
As major cities become more costly, unlivable, and difficult to manage, perhaps a deliberate effort by public or private agencies to create model, holistically planned communities would help us return to a more functional lifestyle. (We’d just need to keep the sociopaths out of the planning process.)
This is an excellent read because it acknowledges that we have to have a system that will visit on white-collar and political criminals the punishment they deserve -- i.e., we're not going to change the system without reliving the past, "hurting some feelings," and in some instances meting out some severe penalties to those responsible for the egregious injuries inflicted on ordinary, innocent Americans by the current system. But this requires a revolution in the courts, and among the judges in the civil and justice systems that are the foundation of justice and accountability in this society.
As a civil rights lawyer that concentrates in the areas of inmate rights and police misconduct, I can't begin to describe to you the myriad doctrines and legal minefields that are intended to deny people who have been injured in their encounters with law enforcement a fair hearing. It demonstrates again and again to me that our alleged national "commitment" to civil rights is a myth. I know of any number of civil rights lawyers who have gone bankrupt trying to make the system live up to its promise. A young partner of mine quit the practice of law entirely because he could no longer stomach the hypocrisy.
Corbin, should you ever want to discuss how truly fucked up our civil rights "enforcement" system is, let me know. You are an important voice, and you're digging deep and getting closer and closer to the heart of the matter.
Excellent post. The lack of accountability indicates elites are in control and fear challenges to their positions. Ultimately this not only ends democracy, which causes me so much sadness, but the inevitable decline of a state. Read Why Nations Fail.
Out on a limb here, so I apologize for the length and audacity ...
The institutions, systems, and other objects we create for ourselves are only a problem if they are poorly designed, poorly maintained, or poorly protected. What puts the "poorly" into those three phases of our existence are individual people who have chosen to reject goodness for personal power, control, and wealth. What allows those people to do their destructive thing, is we, the good people. We focus on obvious and dense criminality instead of the far more damaging soft and subtle, technically legal attitudes and behaviors that insidiously corrode our institutions. And then we blame the institutions! Oh how happy we have made the people who only care about destroying others while building up themselves.
We do not correctly educate ourselves about human nature, the first bit being: some people choose goodness, the rest reject it. It's intentional. They do it on purpose. Get that through your head: They do what they do, on purpose! Because human nature is what it is, it is our JOB to protect our institutional/cultural designs with checks and balances that make the best use of our people resources, while also limiting any person's or group's ability to do damage, without limiting that things that make us feel free. That's accountability that works. Right now, everyone is feeling the loss of their freedoms, and some act out more than others as a result.
I hesitate to use words like always, but in this case, it is correct: Accountability without the right checks and balances, will always be eroded by those who relish power and control for themselves, from parenting children to governing nations. And because there will always be those who love to erode, like currents at the shore, we need to always be alert, mindful, and ready to act, nipping little problems in the bud so that they cannot become bigger problems, thereby corrupting our institutions and systems, from families to nations.
We cannot see the truth of anything, though, without remaining grounded, calm, and assertive.
The truth is, we need both kinds of people because they both have value. Those who choose goodness as a way of life, we can call "light" or "daytime" workers. The rest we can call "dark" or "nighttime" workers. We need both, the same way we need night and day. Everyone and everything has a purpose in life. To ignore that is to allow corruption to grow like mold, at best.
Reckoning cannot be about "punishing" the people involved in corruption: All punishment does is create a temporary lull until the next batch of abusers rises to the top within all our institutions and systems. Rinse, repeat. So, when thinking of reckoning, it is foolish to focus on their destruction or elimination. Instead, we are wise to shine the light of day on the attitudes and behaviors that lead to insidious abuses, install the checks and balances needed to keep those unwanted attitudes and behaviors in check, and put those who need more from life to such good use that they are contented. In this way, we can begin to protect what we value, and along the way find peace, togetherness, and happiness.
If we allow ourselves to be outraged or otherwise detracted from being calm, grounded, and assertive, we will never be able to think clearly enough to identify our problems at the root and preventive levels - and both are desperately needed at all times, not just now.
Those who prioritize "me and mine" will never stop, which is why those who prioritize "yours and ours" must forever and fully wizen ourselves to what constitutes insidious abuse and protect our creations from erosion, without excluding anyone. There is a place in this world, for everyone. We just need to be much smarter about it, and that requires a cool head - something the insidious abuser knows how to do, excellently.
I agree wholeheartedly except for holding the Nazis accountable. The US did end up hiring some of them into government positions. Other than that excellent piece.
operation paperclip
EXCELLENT job - and you've barely started going down the list here!
-----
Zigong asked about governance.
Confucius said: “Enough food, enough weapons, and the trust of the people.”
Zigong said: “If you had to go without one of these three, which one would you give up?”
Confucius replied: “Weapons.”
Zigong asked: “If you had to go without one of the remaining two, which one would you give up?” Confucius replied: “Food. From ancient times, death has been the fate of everyone. But without the trust of the people, the government cannot stand.”
-----
Funny how we've been going the dead-ass opposite order....
Hello Inconvenient... The Chinese are ahead of the West at least 2,000 Years in Political Philosopy... They seen it all Again & Again...
...but we've had access to all of it; the Enlightenment thinkers and Founding Fathers drew from it as much as much as anything.
The question is, who's NOT learning, and how do they keep managing to keep down those who have??
Definitely true and it's a bipartisan problem aided and abetted by the media and the publicist inability to think critically.
The mainstream media (and publicists) are bought and paid for and part of the brainwashing problem, Searching for good information is our responsibility but of course is discouraged labelling everything on social media false. Not so..that's where we all can get smart by using our own critical thinking,
You are absolutely right also self-educating on how the government is actually supposed to run. I think that's the reason why the first 2 classes cut in high schools were Civics and Government.
There are also handbook size copies of the Constitution, the Preamble(Declaration if Rights) available for a small fee and everyone should have a copy. I got mine 15+ years ago from a veterans group but there are several places to get one.
I read your short bio, see that what you’ve said appears legit. Your article resonates. I’d like to add the inability to trust texts, emails, phone calls on a daily basis (sometimes up to 12 daily). Almost everyone I speak to has been scammed, oftentimes more than once. Losses are anywhere from $750 to “loyalty” points or a bait & switch scam. Trust goes back to the “before times” and everything since is suspect. The fabric of society is rotten. The re-balancing is necessary. Establishing trust will be long and painful.
That makes a lot of sense.
And what’s AI gonna add to all of these lies?
AI is the final step through the looking glass
I particularly like the “no one could have seen this coming!” argument.
After 9/11. “No one could have seen this coming!”
Really? Because John Carpenter apparently saw it coming when he made “Escape From New York” in 1981. The movie opens with a group of terrorists hijacking Air Force One and crashing it into a Manhattan skyscraper. Sound familiar?
Don’t we pay you guys to see stuff coming? What the hell are we getting for our money?
the outgoing Clinton administration had shared all its intel about the plans they'd uncovered for a big terrorist attack with the incoming Bush administration which then did nothing (and there was previous talk by them about needing a "new Pearl Harbor" to install the surveillance state we now have...)
Thanks, Mommadillo,, and let's remember the female CIA analyst (Valerie something?) who said that contrary to Chaney and other poobahs' lies about Sadam having weapons of mass destruction, that was a fabrication for us to mess with Iraq.
Absolutely right on the mark! The crumbling of former American pseudo-democracy through lies and lack of trust. With no longer an honorable center, America is too big not to fail.
When “we the people” are lied to we lack power and ability to govern. Our only function is absorbing all blame and accountability for the crimes of those who do have power.
And fighting among ourselves
So...who's actually speaking the unvarnished truth? In our leadership choices?
I’m not seeing much of it yet.
Maybe Jasmine Crockett, who strikes me as fearless.
Can’t speak for leadership but as to media, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) dot org, Media Matters dot org, and the Citations Needed podcast are really good.
Also, ProPublica. Old-fashioned labor-intensive digging and reporting.
You said we can't agree on what the problems are, but I think there is widespread, bipartisan agreement about the problems are among the people. The only people in denial about those problems are the billionaires and their pet politicians. The example you cite of the fake WMDs that caused the Iraq war are a prime example--calling that out was one of the main ways Trump distinguished himself from other Republicans, and how he appealed to many on the anti-establishment left. Trump won because he spoke to those problems. The fact that he offers no viable solutions helped as well, since the Barnum Effect allowed his voters to project their own ideas of what will happen after the election onto that empty space.
Hello Fractal... DJT was initially for the Iraqi Invasion... When it turned into a Quagmire, and the MAGAs saw that it was their Sons & Daughters that were sent off to War, the Wind-Shifted... FOX News picked that up.... DJT is addicted to FOX News... DJT is Programmed by FOX News... DJT plays to FOX News...
While everything you write in today's America's Undoing is essentially correct between the distrust coming from institutional lies versus Trump's personal lies. However, you do not address the fundamental differences between the two and most importantly the killing of U.S. democracy that I am writing about in the third book of my Trump trilogy to be published after the 2026 elections entitled-- Regime Change, Authoritarian Treason, and the Outlaw-in-Chief: President Donald Trump's Struggle to Kill U.S. Democracy & Realign American Global Power. Here is a link to the second Trump book that also provides an analysis of the differences between these lies. https://www.routledge.com/Indicting-the-45th-President-Boss-Trump-the-GOP-and-What-We-Can-Do-About-the-Threat-to-American-Democracy/Barak/p/book/9781032454771.
Excuse me for using your AU's substack --now that I have the attention of Thisoldman, Apache, Wendell Ann, and Robert's attention/likes -- and than you for allowing me to pivot to where the Trump/Epstein cover up conflates both institutional state corruption and the personal-state corruption of DJT--. BTW, I have also worked for the Federal Bureau of Prisons back in the day so I have some knowledge about these things like the fact that the recording with the minute missing that folks are speculating about is nothing but one big diversion as Epstein's death occurred in a totally different room that night without a working camera! Interesting eh? And, we have never seen the autopsy report either. Make of this as you will but why else are we being shown a recording of a room that we have no idea who was in? Reportedly, it was not Epstein. As for Donald's cover up, it may or may not have to do with Epstein's death but it does have to do with Donald's alleged participation in the rape of a least one teenage girl in Epstein's NY condo that I identify by quoting from two 2016 lawsuits against defendants Trump and Epstein in a Raw Story commentary of mine from last week:
https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/trump-rage-epstein/.
I’ve been pondering this issue for years. The majority of us likely have a basic sense of rightness, fairness, and morality. Moreover, we’ve been aware of major problems like corruption, inequality, racism, climate issues, and war for decades — and the solutions are largely known. But why have we made so little meaningful progress?
I’ve come to believe the originating First Cause is the loss of a sense of our shared humanity and shared destiny. Instead, we live in a social-economic-political system that is DESIGNED to keep us separated — lone actors, “self-made men”, living in our mini-fortresses separated by fences and walls, mistrustful of others, viewing them as competitors who we must keep up with or get ahead of, endlessly consuming and accumulating in an effort to reach the ever-receding mirage of “security”.
So of course, under such circumstances, over time, it is the most ruthless, sociopathic, necrophilic people who will eventually rise to the top. Just look at the news today — do we really need any more proof?
It’s not going to be easy to change course. Even the best of us are locked into a system that demands constant “growth”, and we depend upon investments that must “go up”. That extra value has to be extracted from somewhere — the environment, the lower classes, the Third World. Most of those have been substantially depleted, so now what?
The shift, which at this point may be difficult to achieve without significant collapse of the current paradigm, is a move away from dehumanizing megalopolis cities and institutions toward a network of smaller scale communities, where people have more ongoing connection, involvement, and concern for each other.
Sociologists suggest that historically, a functional community size is that of a tribal village about 150 people. In this day and age, with all of the technology available, perhaps that could be expanded to several hundred or thousand.
As major cities become more costly, unlivable, and difficult to manage, perhaps a deliberate effort by public or private agencies to create model, holistically planned communities would help us return to a more functional lifestyle. (We’d just need to keep the sociopaths out of the planning process.)
This is an excellent read because it acknowledges that we have to have a system that will visit on white-collar and political criminals the punishment they deserve -- i.e., we're not going to change the system without reliving the past, "hurting some feelings," and in some instances meting out some severe penalties to those responsible for the egregious injuries inflicted on ordinary, innocent Americans by the current system. But this requires a revolution in the courts, and among the judges in the civil and justice systems that are the foundation of justice and accountability in this society.
As a civil rights lawyer that concentrates in the areas of inmate rights and police misconduct, I can't begin to describe to you the myriad doctrines and legal minefields that are intended to deny people who have been injured in their encounters with law enforcement a fair hearing. It demonstrates again and again to me that our alleged national "commitment" to civil rights is a myth. I know of any number of civil rights lawyers who have gone bankrupt trying to make the system live up to its promise. A young partner of mine quit the practice of law entirely because he could no longer stomach the hypocrisy.
Corbin, should you ever want to discuss how truly fucked up our civil rights "enforcement" system is, let me know. You are an important voice, and you're digging deep and getting closer and closer to the heart of the matter.
Please read this Op Ed from Antonio Delgado, NY's Lieutenant Governor. I agree with him and feel like this is the call I needed:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/opinion/antonio-delgado-kathy-hochul-democrats.html?unlocked_article_code=1.aU8.tRws.iCfVd4tnOtXB&smid=url-share
Thanks. I was able to read it because you subscribe.
July 31: Corbin, PLEASE INTERVIEW DAN FROOMKIN on your podcast.
Ten points for restoring the USA after Trump - DRAFT for comment
From: Heads Up from Dan Froomkin <headsupnews@substack.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 30, 2025
Subject: Is it time to start planning a post-Trump restoration?
https://www.headsupnews.org/p/is-it-time-to-start-planning-a-post
Excellent post. The lack of accountability indicates elites are in control and fear challenges to their positions. Ultimately this not only ends democracy, which causes me so much sadness, but the inevitable decline of a state. Read Why Nations Fail.
Out on a limb here, so I apologize for the length and audacity ...
The institutions, systems, and other objects we create for ourselves are only a problem if they are poorly designed, poorly maintained, or poorly protected. What puts the "poorly" into those three phases of our existence are individual people who have chosen to reject goodness for personal power, control, and wealth. What allows those people to do their destructive thing, is we, the good people. We focus on obvious and dense criminality instead of the far more damaging soft and subtle, technically legal attitudes and behaviors that insidiously corrode our institutions. And then we blame the institutions! Oh how happy we have made the people who only care about destroying others while building up themselves.
We do not correctly educate ourselves about human nature, the first bit being: some people choose goodness, the rest reject it. It's intentional. They do it on purpose. Get that through your head: They do what they do, on purpose! Because human nature is what it is, it is our JOB to protect our institutional/cultural designs with checks and balances that make the best use of our people resources, while also limiting any person's or group's ability to do damage, without limiting that things that make us feel free. That's accountability that works. Right now, everyone is feeling the loss of their freedoms, and some act out more than others as a result.
I hesitate to use words like always, but in this case, it is correct: Accountability without the right checks and balances, will always be eroded by those who relish power and control for themselves, from parenting children to governing nations. And because there will always be those who love to erode, like currents at the shore, we need to always be alert, mindful, and ready to act, nipping little problems in the bud so that they cannot become bigger problems, thereby corrupting our institutions and systems, from families to nations.
We cannot see the truth of anything, though, without remaining grounded, calm, and assertive.
The truth is, we need both kinds of people because they both have value. Those who choose goodness as a way of life, we can call "light" or "daytime" workers. The rest we can call "dark" or "nighttime" workers. We need both, the same way we need night and day. Everyone and everything has a purpose in life. To ignore that is to allow corruption to grow like mold, at best.
Reckoning cannot be about "punishing" the people involved in corruption: All punishment does is create a temporary lull until the next batch of abusers rises to the top within all our institutions and systems. Rinse, repeat. So, when thinking of reckoning, it is foolish to focus on their destruction or elimination. Instead, we are wise to shine the light of day on the attitudes and behaviors that lead to insidious abuses, install the checks and balances needed to keep those unwanted attitudes and behaviors in check, and put those who need more from life to such good use that they are contented. In this way, we can begin to protect what we value, and along the way find peace, togetherness, and happiness.
If we allow ourselves to be outraged or otherwise detracted from being calm, grounded, and assertive, we will never be able to think clearly enough to identify our problems at the root and preventive levels - and both are desperately needed at all times, not just now.
Those who prioritize "me and mine" will never stop, which is why those who prioritize "yours and ours" must forever and fully wizen ourselves to what constitutes insidious abuse and protect our creations from erosion, without excluding anyone. There is a place in this world, for everyone. We just need to be much smarter about it, and that requires a cool head - something the insidious abuser knows how to do, excellently.