Thank you Professor. You have sounded the alarm. Is it possible to imagine, just 80 years after American GIs led the assault on Nazi Germany, that an American President is talking about another Reich established right here in the New World? The red flags, red hats and red T-shirts are running wild in 2024 America. Now is the time for another D-Day, a time to defend and protect Democracy. The Hun cannot be allowed to win.
For Bush2's inaugural, I painted a large poster. On a white background. Superimposed over a heavy red cross dissecting the full poster, in heavy black block lettering: One People, One Nation, One God. Intentionally an echo of the Nazi slogan Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer. I stood for hours at the Georgetown security check entrance to the National Mall. Where there were large crowds. I got a preponderance of smiles, thumbs up, Thanks, and even people asking to take their picture with my poster. Sometimes I would flip to the other side, where in Herblock (of blessed memory) style I had cowboy Bush flanked by a klansman in full regalia and a monopoly game capitalist in top hat. Then there was general befuddlement. Only a relatively few 'got it.'
Bush's Politics of Faith heralded the GOP repurposing our American democratic republic as a corporate clerical fascist state.
Charles Koch bagman and human manure spreader Leonard Leo had fertile ground to grow their GOP Gospel of God, Guns, and Greed. The seeds were already planted. Who knew a Trump would be their avatar. Now Trump can do anything - Republican voters will still lock step march to the voting booth to put him in the White House. With help from Trump's enablers Jill Stein, RFKJR, Cornell West et al.
“I got a preponderance of smiles, thumbs up, Thanks, and even people asking to take their picture with my poster.”
The cult had slept thru their class on the Nazi slogan.
Too many of the curious and educated among us are not cognizant of the many others, brought up in authoritarian homes, with their curiosity murdered at young ages.
American bigotry is not limited to the incurious and uneducated. For a view of curious and educated bigotry, dip into Henry James' The American Scene. James' ex-pat thoughts on returning to a post civil war, liberalizing, United States. Preston Bush (GHW's father) did business with Nazi Germany. Joseph Kennedy was such a Hitler fanboy that FDR had to remove him as ambassador to England. As AG RFK made a favorable settlement with GAF which favored those who had done business with the Nazis. And then there was William F. Buckley Jr. And today, that 'great white hope' from Missouri, Stanford and Yale's own Jan 6 insurrectionist fist-bumping, Bambi sprinting Josh Hawley.
Lin, thank you for both your excellent posts, reminding us of how earlier certain people were Nazi sympathizers. And your description of Koch and Leo are spot on. What is interesting to me is that often in public appearances, death star's developing dementia is in plain view, yet he manages to come out with these scary declarations. I am wondering who is pulling the strings and writing the script. I have long considered the Bushes a crime family and am not a big Kennedy family fan either. Mafia don's crime family, however, earns top ratings for being totally nasty and corrupt. I also believe that Rs won't do anything about guns because they want the plebs to do their dirty work. Nearly every night there is a news story about gun violence and much wringing of hands about what we can do about it. Today is primary election day in Oregon where it is so easy to vote and turnout is absolutely tepid even thought there are some important choices. I am always amazed about seeing all the people dropping off their ballots at the last minute when they could have easily mailed them much earlier.
Yes,, I was phoning voters about voting for Susheela yesterday. Sad that so many people are voting for the AIPAC pick. And that they still had their ballots at home. I still believe that mail-in voting is easy and should be available in all states. And there are those of us who simply like to meet our neighbors at the polling places in the house across the street.
Incurious often goes along with educated. In fact, it seems to me that many of the products of education in the most prestigious educational institutions are the least curious. Perhaps it comes of having professors that are too famous to be questioned? Colleges that are too expensive to be questioned?
And aren't the Republicans working hard to kill curiosity in education?
“And aren't the Republicans working hard to kill curiosity in education?” Absolutely, yes! For the purpose of subservience to authoritarian control, murdering curiosity in youth is essential. It follows that a public education system set up by authoritarians will do everything they can to kill curiosity.
An examination of the initiation of public education, set up at the height of patriarchy, might lead one to understand how it perpetuates authoritarianism regimes. We are doing better, but we must do far better. I read John Gatto’s books. He became extreme in advocating to destroy public education. Public education is needed in the 21st century much like clean air and water, but we must continually work to understand how to make it better meet the needs of the current world we find ourselves living in.
The most prestigious schools attract those who value prestige more than they do knowledge herein their output of the least curious. I would argue there are many who still get an excellent education and contribute greatly to making the world a better place. Their choice to attend though is based on curiosity in their field of interest and a humility that keeps their mind open?
"Joseph Kennedy was such a Hitler fanboy that FDR had to remove him as ambassador to England. "
Funny how much deference is paid to outright right-wing oriented crimes and misfeasance that would otherwise meet with complete suppression if even tinged with the left.
Oh the irony! Here we have a substack written by a pre-eminent historian, with a comment that has a few scraps of fact twisted into a misleading ahistorical narrative. The commenter seems either dim and confused or deliberately misleading.
Isolated incidents turned into character defining narratives. Ahistorical accusations. Ludicrous comparisons: RFK (Sr) bucketed with William F Buckley and Josh Hawley?
I try not to post on this comment section, but this sort of puffed up “knowledge” and the tone of pseudo-expert moral highbrow was just too much.
The premise of the comment to which you object is: American bigotry is not limited to the incurious and uneducated.
Bigotry among the educated is the shared characteristic which links the individuals listed. From the post civil war onwards. (I might have started with the Founding Fathers.)
You object to the inclusion of Robert F.Kennedy. In this you ignore much of Kennedy's history. I would suggest that RFK held with his father bigotry until it was a bad look and advocating for civil rights was a better one. Then he changed, but never fully shook off old prejudices. Was his advocacy as sincere as his ambition? People are complicated.
Kennedy started his career working for Kennedy family friend Sen. Joeseph McCarthy's infamous subcommittee. Kennedy's initial reaction to the Civil Rights movement was that it made his brother look bad. (Going back to Joseph Kennedy - who preached image above everything.) RFK issued a written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the SCLC. There were irregularities with how complaints King filed with the Justice Department between 1961 and 1963 were handled - with the administration stepping back from involvement or support.
Kennedy also brokered a settlement for the sale of GAF a multimillion‐dollar corporation owned by the German chemical combine, I. G. Farben which was seized as enemy property during World War II. Kennedy provided millions to Interhandel a Swiss front for IG Farben. A move criticized by four former Attorney Generals.
"General Aniline and Film Corporation, the longest lasting hangover from the Alien Property Custodian‟s seizure of German property n WW2, and pre-war affiliate of the German Chemical combine IG Farben, was sold by the US Justice Department for $320 million. As part of the deal the US gave Interhandel, a Swiss Corporation, (owned by the Union Bank of Switzerland) more than one third of the sale price. This settlement came as a surprise to most commentators, who had assumed that the US was fully justified in seizing enemy property in time of war. Moreover, the US had constantly claimed that Interhandel was nothing but a financial cloak, designed by IG Farben to conceal German assets. In fact, the deal had taken years to negotiate, with Robert Kennedy offering a complex settlement formula that would see the Swiss getting a large share provided the company was sold at a high price."
You are so right. I knew W was a plant, especially when Dickie became his partner. I was apoplectic when Ted K and others bowed and scrapped. Boy, have we paid a price for our blinders. We cover the minutiae of the road we are on, but who sees the destination. The big picture is there and the puzzle is almost complete, but who has the vision.
The blinders belonged to the far-right Supreme Court which wanted a servant to the fossil fuel biggies, so stepped in to kill Florida's final counting of votes, handing the presidency to Dickie-boy and his boy-knave.
"The blinders belonged to the far-right Supreme Court which wanted a servant to the fossil fuel biggies"
The carbon biggies as personified by Charles Koch gave billions of dollars to Leonard Leo to spend capturing the Supreme Court. From Thomas to Coney Barrett. Leo advertised Thomas and ran a media campaign against Anita Hill. But Leo made his GOP bones by getting Alito on the Court. After Bork was rejected, Leo's efforts went into sinking Miers and appointing Alito -a guaranteed pro-carbon vote.
This tidbit is amazingly lost on most of us of how far back Leo has been involved.
I am aware only because of "Democracy in Chains", by Nancy MacLean of the far right plans. Koch is central along with Milton Friedman and his "Chicago boys" with "Profit above all else" mantra. Way too many lawyers and MBA folks have bought into economic liberty (the right to monopolize everything) at the expense of our Constitutional sovereignty and democracy. They are only beholden to $$$$$$$ and can't see the way out of vulture profiteering.
Their moralistic leaning towards the Catholic bent is just exertion of power over others and exploiting their ideas of virtue. Its vanity, ego, power and money they all drink from.
P.S., great read-back toward Bjork. The policies being flouted now by GOP were perfectly aligned with Bjork'ian philosophies that got him rightfully tanked and yet fueled the backlash by those still wanting these draconian policies against others.
And Alito has turned out to be 'oh-so-much-more' than the righties ever expected. Alito (and Thomas) the gifts to the right wing, who just keep giving. And grifting.
I was majorly pissed by the SC decision, but Dems just acquiesced, which is what our history and our traditions demanded. I have lived through many of these events. I have been blinded by the political realities that made my soul hurt, while friends and family cheered the unfathomable. One example, the son of my bff jumped out of his seat to cheer W when he went to China after the debacle in Iraq. I was mortified, but I thought the next election would right our ship. I have thought that for most of my adult life. One step forward, two back. But now we are regressing at warp speed. The SC has multiple feet on the acceleration to the past.
Jeri, I will address you because I know you will be my fiercest critic. We all can agree on the threat. What we usually disagree on is how our side has foolishly lost or is losing the narrative o issues such as the border and little wedge issues (yes I’m repeating because they add to the weakness) like boys becoming girls in order to play on female sports teams which I am 100% against because it threatens female athletes programs.
I can’t believe how thickheaded Biden has become over these issues but especially the border. Couldn’t he see the handwriting? Couldn’t we all see it? We are potentially leading to a defeat for what? Allowing hundreds of thousands and millions to violate our immigration laws? And all our side can do is argue amongst ourselves over these issues while Rome burns? My God.
The gop want nothing more than to have the border be the single issue to fight about. Yet, the gop tanked the hard-fought Senate bill that would have helped. Instead the gop choose trump'ian philosophy of issue wars while they loot the till.
Rome is burning with RU illegal assault on Ukraine Sovereignty that effects all of the NATO countries that are in Putin's sights.
Rome is burning with Israel (Netanyahu) loosing 80 year of good will with "Never Again" by failure to deal with legitimate Palestinian civilians and a two-state solution. Hamas (Hezbollah) is the perpetrator where the civilians being used as shields are innocents being murdered. Not Jus in Bello (Laws in war) vs. Jus ad Bellum (the just cause for war).
Rome is burning when the gop are playing with anarchy against our Constitutional framework of our country. The border has been a border problem since I lived in San Diego in early 80's and before. Just look at the history of border politics vs border policies. The gop loves the strawman for electoral fear mongering.
I understand and agree. Biden made a very big mistake but not at least issuing an executive order on the border not because it would be effective. But to show he wants to get something done. And he demurred. I’ll cut and paste the last short from my book to explain the behavior of Trump. It really is that simple. Give me a moment.
Bill, boys do not become girls to play on female sports teams. Intersexed individuals and transsexuals exist. I cringe a little about trans girls playing female sports, too, but checking the record does not show they are always or even usually victorious over girls. Also, border activity has been much slower in recent weeks due to the Biden admin efforts. Please don't contribute to the hysteria.
I was thinking of the trans issue as I watched women's basketball the other day. I have a trans niece. No way on God's green earth would she compete with women's basketball players, or soft ball players. She's 5'7" or so, very slim build.
My point is, not ALL TRANS WOMEN at 6'2" and 200lb. There are also a very small number of trans people in sports. I think any focus the Biden administration has put on trans people is that they're seen and acknowledged and deserve to exist.
My biggest concern is Trump's deportation plan. How do you find 15milion people who clearly don't want to be found? Raid businesses? Raid neighborhoods on the south side (my town is mostly Latino on the south side where I grew up). Are we going to look for Latino sounding last names? I mean, I am 100% sure this will focus on Latinos more than anyone.
Another huge concern: a national abortion ban. That doesn't affect me personally at all, but it affects me as a person who believes in privacy right.
"Wedge issues". Hoo boy. Next thing, you're going to say that abortion is a wedge issue because it only impacts women. Or that the ability of same sex couples to marry is a wedge issue because it only impacts roughly 10% of the population.
Chump’s disciples don’t even care that they trashed a reasonable immigration bill. I went from a “what do they not understand about illegal” to a supporter of immigration. Not a supporter of the coyotes or the network of gangs that lure desperate people to make the journey. My ancestors, (and likely many others) made the journey without the coyotes or money middle-men. Why not go after them? Anyway, an article in Nat Geo about 10 years ago detailing what the journey looked like for many, and the need we have for younger citizens, changed my mind. I have said for years that the repubs will never agree to a decent immigration bill. What else can they use to flagellate the Dems.
Yes Dems advocate some things that I shake my head over. Still, they (we) are the hope of our country and not only our species, but likely all except the cockroaches…
My grandparents emigrated from Mexico in the early 20th century when there wasn't an issue of coming over the border.
When you look at what people go through to get here, how difficult it is, and the hope they carry...I honestly can't understand how a person is NOT moved by that.
Our parents and grandparents who fought in World War II must be rolling over in their graves. I think about all of our ancestors who fought for freedom and democracy. Think about how many people died in the Civil War to preserve democracy and freedom. MAGA & Trump is a clear and present danger. The spineless cowards in the GOP are enabling this and deserve to be soundly defeated in the next election. Propaganda disseminated by right wing media and the failure of the press to call it out is a cancer in our society.
Lin*, but you are forgetting that we are are own worse enemy. Not self aggrandizing Jill and RFK Jr. not even Cornell. We are our own enemy because we are convinced that WE have done no wrong. That all our positions are right on. That an open border where millions can rush across the deserts of the south is okie Doki. Then there are other new fangled issues that just don’t add up to logic that we insist are right. So we March blindly into the future into that future of waiting arms of the enemy because we lost. And I’ve repeated this a million times but all I get from us (yes I identify with y’all, lol) is push back.
Tell me how often you have found a trans man on a men’s sport team? Let me answer my question. There aren’t any because en are genetically stronger than women. But this in a way is less important. We are pushing the envelope to the max and most A Erica s don’t want to go there. Since we are on this rather sensitive topic, man I’m glad I don’t have any daughters in high school sports not knowing if a trans girl with genitalia would be showering in the girl’s shower. As unpalatable as this discussion is, the far left will gladly lose to an autocratic government perhaps and also lose a constitution and a democracy and be able to proudly exclaim how proud they were to fight the good fight. I’m a middle road democrat. Not the far left and certainly not the extreme cult post Nazi right.
In my experience, the people who are overly concerned about those with “dangly bits” in restrooms assaulting those without dangly bits are utterly and completely clueless about the process of transitioning and the process of transitioning.
Bill, I know of *no one* who wants an open border, so your logic is faulty. I'd say most Americans want border security along with humane, compassionate, timely yet rigorous vetting of immigrants. House Republicans didn't want to give Biden credit for legislation which would accomplish that, because their leader told them not to. Blame them, not him.
Forget about the slogans. Change course but it could be too late. I have maintained that there is something wrong with our, that is, our democratic principles on issues most important to most of us and that being the border. That stupid border which we have shown a disinterest in DOING SOMETHING anything if only an executive order. But we will fuss and fart over how welcoming our land is to immigrants and how we are the beacon for the dispossessed of the world because it is so written on the Statute of Liberty that btw, another nation wrote as a gift.
I’m flummoxed. Do ya like that word? I’m flummoxed.
I agree that our border policy needs to be updated, but I think you’re laying the blame in the wrong place. Just a few short months ago, democrats and republicans crafted bipartisan border legislation, which the republicans then tanked on Trump’s orders, to prevent Biden from being able to claim the win. Looks like that strategy worked, huh?
I would also add that I suspect that few women on the left think the border is the most important issue in this election. We want bodily autonomy. That is our most important issue, not the border. Followed in a close second by protecting our democracy (the two are linked, of course). At least, those are my top two, and I think that even though I’m past reproductive age. I have daughters and many friends who are young women. There are lot of issues I think are more important than the border.
Give us a significant enough congressional majority and the White House, and we can get to work on all these critical issues: women’s and other marginalized people’s rights, climate change, democracy, voting rights, judicial overhaul, Citizens United, foreign policy, etc., and yes, the border too.
Sorry, KR; women's and other marginalized people's rights are wedge issues. Just quoting Mr. Katz. <I guess this font is "pissed off and rolling my eyes" font>
Yup. Never mind that those rights are the foundation for it all - including coherent immigration policy. As the mom of a trans daughter, my terror for her is through the roof. I think I’m more scared than she is.
Actually, we did do something about the border, and then Trump changed his mind because he didn't want to "give Biden a win," and House Republicans killed the bill. It is the _Republicans'_ fault that we haven't "fixed the border," and Dems and the news media should be reminding voters of that fact.
Yes and no. Yes a senate bill was sent but if you read the bill, it had so many crazy requirements such as the number of those running over the border and soon It was enough to drive me crazy let alone a legislator. And yes, Trump killed it in order to use as a political weapon. Remember one thing about Trump. It’s not so much that he is intelligent. Unless you include that cunning and being street-wise and the ability to bully your way to convincing others you are correct is an aspect of intelligence which I do not subscribe to. Humans have been obeying sheep for centuries under amd leadership and it won’t stop now.
I'm loathe to use the insulting word "ignorant" here, so I won't; "how we are the beacon for the dispossessed of the world because it is so written on the Statute of Liberty that btw, another nation wrote as a gift" is misinformed. Emma Lazarus, a Jewish several-generations American, wrote the poem you're talking about. It was not "written on the Statue of Liberty" given us by France, but mounted on the US-designed and -funded pedestal on which Lady L is mounted. And the exploitation of those tired, poor, huddled masses, wretched refuse, homeless and tempest-tossed fueled the development of the industrial colossus of the new home that treated them just a little better than the treatment they fled. I could try to explain to you how critical to our current economy, standard of living, and future the current generation of asylum-seekers is, but will leave you flummoxed.
Bill - As a flummoxed denier, some of your comments denote a rant or denigration of positivity rather than looking for solutions. Sounds as if you’ve already made up your mind to vote against the only candidate who can save us. If I’m wrong, I will be happy about that 🥁🇺🇸🗽🗳️💙
Yes 🙌 I do like it. Me too, I’m bewildered 😳 and perplexed 😕 … you’re right… it’s not the slogan that counts but the concept that’s important. We must communicate, make sense that feeling of being lost… We must call out to all ! -> perhaps especially the immigrants of so many generations and those fleeing plights! to defend and protect our democracy…
Yes, Michael, his "mental decline is picking up speed."
And the way Heather carefully contrasts American realities with Trump's grotesquely contrasting lies verges on comedy for her.
Except, while it's all a mad, mad, mad, mad world, the MAGA-land, look -- here come more Republican bit players dutifully appearing at the Manhattan courthouse to ape their clown-in-chief.
See? Here they are, again now, day after day, goofuses all, all in the same red ties, to show off their suck-up behavior along with jury tampering.
Trouble is, they belong to the same movement by which most recently Alito on the Clarence court has tipped his insurrectionist hand. But he's been serving the predator billionaire class for years, as has his fellow Clarence. And the majority of this clown court can do most serious things involving the lives and health and family choices of American women. As do the billionaires involving the millions of American jobs they offshored. As do other billionaires organizing hate and divisiveness on social media. More billionaires with their standardized testing. And more planning worse with their Chevron Precedent case and their Project 2025.
Culturally, scientifically, industrially Germany was an advanced nation in 1933
A nut job took it over.
The rich, the aristocracy, the clergy, and the military all thought they could control him. They were as out of touch with the people then as have been American elites since the Powell memo handed all power to U.S. and allied worldwide billionaire classes, and they in turn handed all power educationally to the neutered dehumanized.
You oppose standardized testing? How else would we know how effective our education system is working? Having standards does not mean the students would all think alike but that they can all think.
Testing is a fine tool, but it is only a tool. Our deluded educators and legislators declared the test was the standard tho, and that's the road to failure. See Goodheart's Law and also The Cobra Effect:
The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, people began to breed cobras for the income.
Training the students to pass the test du jour is not the same as educating them.
Learn skills in essaying to see others as individuals.
The standardized testing just enforces group think. Plus linear-think. Category-think. Simple-causality-think. Abstraction-dominant. All ways of thinking deadly to the human or any living, natural systems.
The standardized testing is now almost all machine gradable, further removing the human, further pushing all the impersonal, neutered conceits of our dehumanized rich.
In Japan, where I live in the mountains of Kyushu, there is almost no school in the entire country where anyone learns to read any book whole. The ministry of ed breaks all lit down into fragments conducive to the totally dehumanized, out-of-context, computer-gradable standardized testing. The "best" grow up immune to people. Without friends. Sexless. Zombies like their living dead teachers.
See Minae Mizumura, "The Fall of Language in the Age of English" (English translation, 2016, Columbia U Press).
For the shibboleths, orthodoxies, and other crippling effects of group-think, see Diane Ravitch (especially her appendices) in "The Language Police" (2003).
So you are content to wait say twenty years after high school and then evaluate how successfully the graduate has navigated the vicissitudes of life. Then you can pronounce whether that person had a good or crappy education. You perhaps are not familiar with the roles of luck, opportunity, connections and biology in shaping a life. Education should provide an individual with the tools by which that person can develop their unique skills. Society needs a system to determine if the student is developing those skills if it is expected to fund the process. How the students life progresses is far too complex to provide any insight into education quality.
George, comments on substack are probably not the best place to have a meaningful conversation on standardized testing. We’re living thru an era of increasing numbers of people motivated by cheating and corruption. What can go wrong with standardized testing?
With the standardized testing brought about by GW’s NCLB, I have little doubt that corporate America would benefit the most from knowing which foot soldiers are best prepared for their mission.
Also that creativity would be lost over time.
Maybe some standardized testing could be helpful, I’m skeptical.
I feel confident that we, “as a society” can do better. Relying on standardized testing to assess our educational system would be a mistake.
Can you imagine if the power on his teleprompter went out and he had to fake his way through the same drivel he has repeated dozens of time?
And basically that's what the debates with Biden will be. I hope he fails as badly as one expects he will.
He is completely devoid of any ideas to help anyone on the planet except for billionaires and large corporations. And he will only help them to the extent they donate to him or his campaign (quid pro quo).
Will MSM notice, Fox NEVER showed chump idiocy. A cut and pasted caricature of presidential actions, sort of like his NFT’s. Just like an old definition of Trumpery - “anything calculated to deceive by false show.”
Oddly enough besides Reich translating to "realm, empire, nation, kingdom or the German state, it has a uncommon translation of "a licensed practitioner of psychoanalysis" which is certainly the only thing that could cure him of his madness.
Trump cannot be cured - at least not in his lifetime. It is not insanity he has, it's worse. Personality disorders -narcissism. megalomania, sociopath.
@Fay: I take a wider view than you on what psychoanalysis or therapy could help the sufferer recover from. But where Trump is concerned I doubt very much that he wants help or has any inkling that he needs help. He is dominated by a deep and pathological need to dominate.
And to add - he was taught from childhood that the world was for his taking and he should always "win" no matter how much he actually loses in life.
I was astonished to see the listing posted yesterday of financial loses he's incurred in the capital B billion. I am certain his greedy hands on our US Treasury levers of power have syphoned much to deal with his increasingly negative cash flow problems, let alone the debts/favors owed that he can never repay.
I truly believe if he accepts his fear of losing and "to be reconciled" with it would damage his lifelong psyche to the point of mumbling, drooling - which I think he's quickly headed for as the criminal shenanigans before, during and after his "presidency" cannot be swept under like his family business were. (quoted as I never believed he acted in the interest of USA)
How incredulous that he died in jail in 1957 due to his delusions, while his most important earlier works, warning of monsters like Tffg were burned. And here we are in 2024 unable to jail the real monster among us.
If only we could come to understand the complexity of the human mind and how it does and doesn’t serve us, sooner rather than later.
I didn't remember the medieval book-burning, Christy... That must have killed him.
My impression is of someone who had a direct insight into an important truth, then veered off into an academic labyrinth inhabited by conceptual monsters, in which he completely lost the thread...
Once or twice in the 1980s, I came across Reich followers. They seemed serious enough, unlike the guys running around with pyramids on their heads and other such New Age kooks. Unfortunately, I never had a proper talk with them.
I recall a brilliant and utterly zany Yugoslav film of libidinous adventures spliced with Reich and Reichian matter: W.R. The Mysteries of the Organism by -- if my memory serves me rightly -- one Dusan Makavajev...
As mad as some of Emir Kusturica's later output...
Psychoanalysis cannot. As a therapist said to me. “In order for therapy to touch him (a student with narcissistic personality disorder) his psyche would have to be torn down and restructured. Cannot be done outside of residential placement.” Chump can’t live so long.
Look, there's something none of us may have thought of - he might mean Steve Reich, one of the world's leading exponents of the minimalist school of musical composition. Obsessive repetition of the same musical figure, over and over and over again. Or perhaps we could introduce, say, Thomas Adès? Too stimulating, perhaps. Or if none of that reaches him, perhaps Mozart's German dances, than which I know nothing more boring? Bore him into silence?
The minimalists could bore anyone into silence, or even repose. Funny you should mention the German Dances. There is a simple tune I liked that for years we would play around Christmastime. It was "A Musical Sleigh Ride" by, I thought, Leopold Mozart. It's on a Christmas disc featuring Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops (which should give you an idea of just how old I am). I just found out it was one of the German Dances you decry. Even bad Mozart is still Mozart. :-)
My reply has gone. Never mind, it's way off topic. But bad Mozart is not Leopold Mozart (whose own Musical Sleighride was composed before Wolfgang was born).
Thank you. I didn't know that. It must be that the "Sleigh Ride" on my Pops disc was misidentified as that of Leopold. It's certainly the same music as the German Dance by Wolfgang, but with sleigh bells added to the trio. Or did Wolfgang plagiarize his Dad's song to add to his own collection? Now I'll have to track down Leopold's Sleigh Ride.
But I regret to note you as yet contemporary, as -- like our "educated" elites today -- you effort no connection of those humanities then to our poisoned billionaires and their enabling elites now,
Michael Corthell, is there real evidence that Trump is in accelerating mental decline? Yes, he’s dangerous and amoral. Yes, he would destroy our nation to serve himself. But those are not necessarily signs of dementia. I realize, you didn’t mention dementia, but I assume that’s the mental decline you meant.
Stanley, I think when one compares and contrasts video of him speaking eight years ago, four years ago, and today, the decline is pretty obvious. Simplistic word choices, posture, struggles to follow the teleprompter, inability to stay on topic, sleeping in court, repetitive and boring is Trump today.
Is the cause of it dementia? Is it the long term consequences of something like adderall addiction? Is it normal aging? Who knows, and I don’t care. The bottom line is that in addition to being unfit for office because he was a terrible president and he’s an adjudicated rapist, a lying insurrectionist, and a budding tyrant, he’s also unfit mentally and physically for this most demanding job.
I will be shocked if he actually does debate Biden.
I know dementia, at least in one case. No resemblance at all. There are many iterations of mental decline, even Alz. I would hate to guess the origin and type of his decline. Worms, perhaps?
In Trump’s case picking up speed is crushing & snorting adderall (documented - Noel Casler, Celebrity Apprentice aid to Ivanka T. Trump won’t follow through on threats to sue Casler / violation of NDA to avoid facts revealed in court). That’s the white chunks spewing out his mouth when he’s babbling bs. TFG was still at it in prez term. + Look at photos of Don Jr. & Kimberly Guilfoyle together at 45 events wrecked on cocaine & booze. What was going on with coke during secret service ptotection? https://www.celebitchy.com/677989/even_legit_news_sites_wonder_if_don_trump_jr_was_coked_out_of_his_mind/
"It is not clear to me how anyone can any longer deny that Trump is promising to destroy our democracy and usher in authoritarianism."
It is a total mystery to me that HCR never mentions Charles Koch bagman Leonard Leo - who funnels the money to the Federalist Society, Heritage Foundation, Teneo Network, and innumerable antidemocratic initiatives. Fascism doesn't happen on its own. Follow the money.
Lin, as I recall, she has in the past brought up Leo and (name escapes me) the other more wealthy & lesser known fellow who funneled scads of bucks to far right causes.
“Leo is now in charge of Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit organized in May 2020 with a $1.6 billion donation from donor Barre Seid to push right-wing politics at every level.)”
Yeah, that’s the guy I was thinking of…I can’t wrap my head around having that much money/assets…at least he gave a ginormous amount to a cause he believes in (as much as I disagree with it).
lin* referred to HCR, our host, not HRC, the most qualified nominee for the presidency in my leading-edge-of-the-baby-boom life who nailed not only the VR-WC but also, remarkably improvidently, the basket of deplorables.
I've often heard HCR say "follow the money", mostly on her Tuesday FB Politics Chats. She seems to feel more free to say what are her "hair on fire" moments than in her Letters.
“It is a total mystery to me that HCR never mentions Charles Koch bagman Leonard Leo”
Words matter. The word “never” has always been a red flag for me when deciding on a comment’s veracity.
You lost me here.
Leo’s name comes up repeatedly in LFAA. Here’s just two.
“These cases, based on fictional accounts, dovetail with the fictional history in amicus briefs. These are so-called friend-of-the-court briefs from someone who is not a party in the case to offer analysis of the issues. Yesterday, Heidi Przybyla of Politico showed how right-wing lawyers connected to Leonard Leo, co-chair of the board of the activist right-wing Federalist Society, have filed amicus briefs that invent a past that the right-wing justices then lift into the decisions themselves to shape modern society.”
“Yesterday, on the same day that Shawn Boburg, Emma Brown, and Ann E. Marimow added to all the recent stories of Supreme Court corruption an exclusive story showing how then-leader of the Federalist Society Leonard Leo funded a “a coordinated and sophisticated public relations campaign to defend and celebrate” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to advance a bill that would require the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt a binding code of ethics.”
I will not be the teeniest bit surprised if Melania quietly exits Mar a Lago once Barron is safely at university. Even if Trump wins (heaven forbid) it seems like she hated many aspects of being First Lady ... still wouldn't be surprised if she leaves right after the election and declines the FL job.
TFFG tells the same whoppers so many times that his followers believe, not only those lies but EVERYTHING he says.
One of my wife's relatives said, "Trump has never told a lie." Even when it's an obvious lie, that is easily proven to be incorrect, they turn off their brains or defend him. They may even have a spouse or other close relative that died of Covid-19 and they still think TFFG did everything possible to end the pandemic.
And then their rich white preachers and priest rail on the pulpit about what a terrible person Biden is and how he is the devil.
Religious cretins do just that, not new. Just after Obama won a second term, I heard my sister-in-law at a Baptist pulpit, call him an evil socialist. My eyes were “woke” that day.
What was WWII fought for? To stop murderous dictators from ruling the world. The home countries of those dictators have enjoyed with the rest of the world the freedom and liberty of DEMOCRACIES. And now we are witnessing the rise of authoritarians. That is due in large part a reaction to immigrants, as I suspect it may be a primary reason. The world is turning to dictators to prevent the migration of people who only want a better life. All the dictators and wannabes need to do is gin up fear and hatred to gain power and power is all they crave. Dictators are much more capable of solving problems then are democracies which tend to be messy, but produce polices that tend to be better for the masses. Dictators make things better for themselves and the small group of supporters.
Well, it was just reported on the BBC World News - "staffer error"...but it took 19 hours before it was removed. Soundbyte of Kamala Harris denouncing it. Nothing in the NYT? How very surprising.
Except no one’s listening except us who know the stakes. Finally an article from WSJ about it. But not enough media coverage. Some but not enough. Wonder if Fox News even covers this stuff. My Father is a Republican and doesn’t talk about authoritarianism but talks about Biden Crime family. I hope something breaks soon.
Just your comment was enough! On a technical note, I find that a dry finger can sometimes not make good contact with a screen surface. That might be your problem.
Unfortunately, the Hun's base have methodically been deprived of education that would alert them to the dangers of the Great Orange Grifter.
That said, MAGA is also a personality cult, aka new religion; and as a former member of an international cult religion, and having a fairly decent knowledge about history, I willingly joined this door to door cult, but when I realized that critical thinking was not allowed, I was able to leave.
Many people with high IQs and an alphabet soup of degrees behind their names have also been attracted to many personality-based cults.
My take away from this mess is that we have a VERY important opportunity to address the basic causes of this situation and set the country on the track of a Progressive government that will embrace the future by learning from the past.
I am old enough to remember Hitler. To me Trump seems as demented and dangerous as the Fuhrer.
MEIN KAMPF was an authoritarian blueprint that Hitler wrote while he was an obscure jailed German.
Ex-president Trump provided his own MEIN KAMPF in his extraordinary interviews with Time Magazine. These reflected the authoritarian takeover in the voluminous Project 2025.
I am gobsmacked that the great majority of Americans are not frightened by Trump and his MAGATS.
He scares the hell out of me and the America that my grandchildren should inherit.
1) DISREGARD THE CONSTITUTION
2) CASTRATE THE JUDICIARY, THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, AND THE FBI
3) ONLY APPOINT INDIVIDUALS WHO STATE THAT THE 2020 ELECTION WAS STOLEN
4) BROMANCE WITH PUTIN, WHO SEEKS TO DESTROY THE SOVEREIGN STATE OF UKRAINE
5) ATTACK AND DESTROY HIS OPPONENTS.
I have witnessed the ravages of Hitler. I profoundly fear the ravages of Trump.
It’s the propaganda that is delivered by 21st century technology.
When one is curious and educated and experienced by such a full life, it’s hard to imagine the consumption of Fox and social media 24/7 without ever picking up a book or newspaper.
Words matter. Propaganda rules. Unloved boys can become vengeful, power and adulation obsessed tyrants.
So true Christy. I post LFAA daily to my FB page, and have for years (!) now. Any pushback comes not from an ideological or factual basis but from a completely base recitation of half truths and half the story. Writing “Review the footnotes” falls on deaf ears. There is no curiosity.
I’m so worried for our grandchildren. I truly am. Yesterday I watched the documentary Bad Faith and am imploring people I know to watch it so they can gain a thorough understanding of the genuine threat the modern GOP poses. People are overwhelmed and so terrified they’re frozen with fear. They don’t even want to talk about it, but our voices are our strongest defense. We can’t afford to remain silent.
“People are overwhelmed and so terrified they’re frozen with fear”. I would add to that sentiment that we are exhausted. The new forms of communication give us fire hoses of opinion masguerading as information. Our options for sifting through that mess are HCR and occasionally the mainstream press.
Don’t ignore MSNBC with its legion of lawyers and judges who are working night and day to get out the truth. Even the horrible commercials cannot wipe out the reportage of these real public servants.
Exactly! Those of us who understand who Leonard Leo, Stephen Miller, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, etc., are have a duty to our children and grandchildren to raise a row.
I thought so too. That's where I just watched it. This whole Christian Nationalism snuck up on me. I kept hearing Evangelicals and I didn't know what that meant. The mining of church rosters was a real a ha moment for me.
Good to hear from you Keith…was thinking of you just the other day whilst reading HCR’s commenters & scrolling to see if you’d weighed in….I always read your posts and am enlightened by them. Live long and prosper! 🖖
You are awake and paying attention. I have watched the oozing of evil (and it is evil) since Nixon, often masqueraded in good old boy terms (Reagan), or high-fluting racist blather (Buckley) and spread by Murdoch, our imported purveyor of bullschittery to the masses of asses. At look back before that gets us the Coup of 1933, and the non-violent civil war (relatively speaking) of post-Civil War and Jim Crow. Now we are seeing the culmination of decades of deliberate treasonous actions, using, of course, the patriotic blather of Goebbels, which resonates with the children and grandchildren of those who fought and/or died in a war you remember. Ukraine will not be the only country he will turn over to Putin. You are 100% right
I stole it from a co-worker at NASA in the 60’s. Wish I could remember his name. I would try Google and see if he lived to write the book that he had the name for.
Love me some like-minds since I live in a sea of red. It’s almost like a zombie land movie in this senior living home. I thought older was wiser but some people just get old and petrified. Not here though.
Jeri, I woke up thinking of you. Can you remind any concious zombie that Trump will have you all in the streets if he gets the government he’s planning (drastic cuts in Social Security) and get to writing GOTV postcards? Blue Wave and/or Tony TheDemocrat will keep you busy. Some zombies may respond to challenges. Do you have any old enough to have been part of the “war effort” as children? That’s part of my “inspiration.” Have written my grandchildren that I’m working hard to leave them a democracy.
He scares the hell out of me, too, Keith. I worry that younger voters aren't aware of the historical context. I was born well after WWII, but - perhaps because of my Ashkenazi origins - I have always known about Hitler, and have educated myself about the Holocaust.
Timothy Snyder's short book "On Tyranny" should be required reading.
Virginia You may recall that I unsubscribed from Snyder. I read his superb book BLOODLANDS. I found that he wasn’t seriously involved on Substack. He posted a series of historical lectures on Ukraine that had been a course for Yale students. One can read his book ON TYRANNY.
superb scholar, poor Substacker—in my opinion. He has published more stimulating articles elsewhere.
And roll back all legislation designed to slow global warming. Many of us will have to endure a T return to the White House for only a short while as we will either be killed by the environment or destroyed by chemicals produced by corporations. PFOS is everywhere in the US. Thank 3M for that....and they knew they were poisoning the environment and people in the 70s. But did nothing.
Nope....totally missed my point. We are not stopping global warming. Just watch the news each night of the weather devastation brought by tornados, floods and high winds and heat.
Thank you, Keith. I was born just 4 years after WWII ended, so I don't remember Hitler per se. But I am close enough in time to remember many of the Dads in my neighborhood, including my own, who fought bravely in that war and understood the intense danger Hitler posed to the world.
Keith, one point in Heather's Letter that I haven't seen commented on much is trompy's lack of interest in expanding his base to capture Haley voters and independents. That's both foolish and frightening, as he seems confident that what once were his dog whistles, now full-throated calls to action (induce chaos and violence to vote counting, etc.) will be successful.
Doug I’ve seen articles elsewhere on this. Trump is either pigheaded (nothing new) or he is awaiting for Haley to genuflect before the orange orangutan.
He isn't interested in appealing to others because he has republican reps and senators out contesting the 2024 election already. They will all contest the results if Biden wins.
Thank you Keith. I take you at your word. Having been born in the USA in 1953, Hitler has always been difficult to imagine, as if he were some villain in a fairytale. My parents and grandparents never spoke to me about him.
Yes, Keith. And I remember when we in Virginia were “spotting” airplanes 24 hours a day. My father, too old for the draft, took the midnight to 4:00 am shift after a day’s work. It was scary times. In my “second childhood have returned to the “war effort.” This time can’t do “foot work,” but can do postcards (25 a day, of the most time consuming, 100 of the least).
Virginia I remember the ‘air spotter’ program. In retrospect it was primarily a citizen psychological involvement effort. 24-hours-a-day at least along the East Coast. I remember folks climbing up a water tower in Marthas Vineyard.
They were looking for Nazi planes. Many, many ‘sightings.’ Big hussle, but nary a Nazi plane. In fact, just before the end of the European war, the Nazis did sent one stripped down bomber across the Atlantic to miles away from the coast.
I was aware even at the time that no one REALLY expected to spot a plane, but who really knew? And you’re right. It got the community involved. So many in the community were involved in “the war effort” one way or another, that it was altogether a bonding experience in my already rather close country community.
Trump's next stage will be oracle, then living martyr, and finally divinely appointed king of the Empire. He proves with every post and rally and disclosure his truth: I am untouchable, I am all the fear you need to destroy those who shun you, hate you, bested you, called you out, made you feel small, showed you to be deplorable. He is becoming the very MAGA he claims to represent. I HAVE RISEN FROM YOU AND AM YOU AND WILL DELIVER YOU YOUR EVERY VICTORY. I am each of you. Exalted. Reviled. Revealed as your Savior. I have risen. You are saved and worthy. Gads, I think I captured the remaining Year of the True God-King-President.
Fred. As someone who put his life on the line for his country, I remember Bone Spur Donnie for his calling folks who served ‘suckers’ and those who died in service to their country ‘losers.’
Trump is an across-the-boards loser who had/has a traitorous relationship with Putin.
As for Republican tax cuts helping you, me, or our country, I second George H.. W. Bush’s assessment: ‘voodoo economics,’ which has been reaffirmed ever since.
Agree. Only reflecting on the false memories that, like Naked Truth, are held to by his followers and apologists. If you give the sucker anything and they need to hide their shame for being taken, they will adore the shiny object and keep face. Cognitive Dissonance.
Keith, your comparison of Mein Kampf and the Time interview of fpotus is chillingly accurate. I've seen several places so far today "when someone tells you who they are, believe them". Well, he's told us, shown us, and shouted at us who he is. I believe him. I believe that is what some on our country want, with all their Christian hearts.
I am speechless that Trump used the word Reich in an ad. I can’t decide if I should assume he doesn’t know what it means, he’s even more befuddled than usual or he’s drugged to the gills while others post this stuff. Thank you for letting us know I haven’t seen any other reporting in this one.
It helps, Christopher, when the U.S. Speaker of the House shows his "Christianity" by flocking like all the other cultists in defense of their cult leader who brags of pussy grabbing, by also-red-tie-costuming Speaker in public defense of same cult leader who has by two juries been found liable of sexual assault, who attempted insurrection, who defamed the crippled, the veterans, women needing to make their own health and family decisions, demonizing, too, our "hungry and poor" immigrants.
Those red tie guys actually sat in a row in the courtroom according to MSNBC commentators. Can you imagine being on the jury and seeing that? They might as well have been wearing red clown noses.
Aye, think Venn Diagrams - circles representing human frailties and failures of peoples with listening disabilities. The intersecting circles include one for Normalization of Deviancy plus one circle for our Inability to Imagine the Unimaginable and another, The Circle of What it is That We Don't Know What We Don't Know. The area defined by the overlapping circles graphically represents der tRumpian Fourth Reich. Fear a demented human more than a lion and never give a sword to a man who can't dance.
Oh, no, "never give a sword to man who can't dance". I don't fully recall but was trump presented with a sword on his first foreign trip that was to Saudi Arabia? Remember that segment when he was standing around that orb. Did he get a sword at that ceremony? If so, your warning is too late, he already has the sword &:we certainly know he can't dance!!! We see proof of that all the time!
I don't think that he doesn't know what it means. He's just ratcheting up his rhetoric to get the media to keep giving him all that free publicity. He can't help himself, he'll lie about anything, assume any public persona, so that he can stay in the limelight. He suffers from the capitalist cancer of more MORE and More at any cost.
Trump doesn’t write his own ads, he probably doesn’t even see them! His cult is telling us exactly who they are and exactly what they stand for. We recently visited 3 WWII memorials in Europe. The Shoe Memorial in Budapest was extremely moving. People were lined up on the side of the Danube, told to take off their shoes(they were valuable), then they were shot and their bodies fell into the river. Then there was the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, another chilling reminder of how cruel man can be to their fellow man. Cheetuni is calling for violence in America, supported by scum like Rubio, Cruz, Johnson from Wisconsin and Speaker Mike, the Fake Christian to name a few. America is definitely under attack from within. I hope we survive!
So true, and I hope that our traditional way of winning will hold. But we would be blind to not take HCR’s message to heart. Chump no longer cares about winning votes, he is depending on his zombie disciples to threaten and the Dems to cave when things get tough. Tougher than we have seen since the not-Civil War. If he cheats his way in, and that is what is planned, they will blather that Dems refuse to accept election results. Side note. They should not have accepted the farce of 2000. Prepare Dems, it will take more than votes.
“In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.” - Lincoln
AND, votes for sure. As never before, a vote is a terrible thing to waste.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad? Trump is said to have kept a book of Hitler's speeches at his bedside. He acknowledged being given the book.
That's why functioning checks and balances are needed, and a large part of why it makes sense to divide political power into equal votes. Our system would work a whole lot better if we took time to clear out some of the more egregious loopholes and short circuits.
I’ve been looking for this on his Instagram but I can’t find it. Maybe he took it down. I wanted to share it on my Facebook page, hoping it might alarm a few people I know who are on the fence.
They missed the Trump outrageous statement that Biden should have gotten the electric chair. Also, Trump’s Truth Social company lost more than $300 million in its first quarter as a public company, and its revenue fell to under $1 million.
Trump has read Mein Kampf and uses Hitler’s words as a roadmap to his own authoritarian impulses. What concerns me is the young people in our country who are potentially going to split Biden’s vote and Trump will win, legitimately. How to get the young people on board to see what their life will be under Trump? Another thing that is never raised, if Trump wins, he’ll never leave and that’ll be the end of our country as we know it. And then what?
"THE CREATION OF A UNIFIED REICH"?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WTF?! Has anyone ever before spoken of the United States as "a reich"? Does the term even have a generally understood meaning, i.e. is it intended to convey a specific vision? I don't know whether "yes" or "no" is the scarier answer. If yes, what is that specific vision and why haven't I heard about it when Trump's intended audience apparently has? If no what can it possibly mean other than an approving reference to Nazi Germany? The only thing keeping me from saying that this is the scariest thing I've ever read is that I don't quite understand what it means. Even so, it's still one of the scariest things I've ever read. I am shaken to my core.
Our MSM is deaf, blind, and has no voice equal to Fox. Plus, Joe Kahn (NYT) said it’s not their job to save democracy. Somebody should have told the founders…
If campaigning openly for a “UNIFIED REICH” doesn’t get the media’s attention, we can only surmise, they are willing participants in undermining our Constitution. Their silence is deafening.
Please, let's give the credit for that where it's due, to Maya Angelou, who said: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." Trump has shown us who he is so many times that people have stopped paying attention. And he keeps getting more and more outrageous, talking now about his third term.
Years ago, I listened to a speech and something said stuck with me: be careful what you let into you life as you can let it take root. The theory was put that the first time something very "out there" is presented, the populace is alarmed or outraged. The second time they see/hear it, they think, oh, that again. The third time, it's established and the populace accept it. It becomes the norm.
This is simplistic, and it is certainly more than 3 times to achieve this, but I think you astute LFAA family get it. Too much of what Trump said in the past was "that's just the way he talks". We can't brush off his remarks.
In mass communication terms that's "shifting the Overton Window".
The first monkey to make the outrageous statement gets pilloried, but if enough monkeys keep chanting it and building on what was said, the group eventually accepts it as normal.
The Overton Window shifted on many aspects of our culture. I wonder how many MAGA are willing to give up their contraceptives if Project 2025 is in place? I hope the young people fired up to oppose Biden over Gaza consider that as well.
Same as ever, the Obergruppenfeuhrer's daughter/wife/mistress has always had access to safe birth control and always will.
It's another example of what drives "conservatism": There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. (Frank Wilholt)
That’s “just the way he talks” is a freaking excuse, not a reason. The reason is that he is a freaking A-hole. Plain and simple. And his followers or cult members are the same! Even if tffg were to disappear from the face of the earth, he has already opened Pandora’s box of hate.
Thank you for this post Dr. Richardson. The thing people need to realize is most polls are bogus. The largest estimated number of MAGA cult members estimated (that I have read) 30 million. There are about 310 million of us who are NOT MAGA cultists. People need to understand that these pollsters Average a total 1500 persons. They not poll all 50 States. They do not post their questions. And I strongly suspect they only poll those who answer their phones and are willing to talk.
You are absolutely correct Dr. Richardson, any educated person listening to trump will recognize his use of Nazi phrases, his promise of a dictatorship, and increasing evidence of dementia in his speech. I'm 13 years older than trump, and I've struggled to find the word I wish to use. Sometimes I just have to say what I mean and ask my listener for the correct word. I use a thesaurus a lot when I'm writing.
But I have never yet been incoherent.
What we, liberal/progressives need to do is reach out to independents and undecideds. Show them the difference in the choices and explain why it is so necessary to vote in this election.
The other thing our current government needs to do is have the National Guard on alert from November 5 though January 20. Because a small number of the MAGAts are violent, well armed, and stupid enough to attack,
If I got the math right you are 90 years old but so coherent that you are an inspiration to this 82 year man and so much more lucid than Rump that I wish you were running. Thank you for demonstrating that age alone tells very little about a person’s competence, Rump and Biden are very nearly the same age but that is all they have in common.
The burr under my saddle today is how the media covered Biden's speech to the Morehouse graduates. Teen Vogue's headline read "Morehouse Students Turn Their Backs - Walk Out of Graduation as Joe Biden Gives Speech". Dramatic headline, right? Give me a break. As I read the article it says "several" students (not the implied 'many') and in reality he received a standing ovation and the chant of "four more years". Why wasn't that the headline? Enough said.
If Biden “were a Republican, he would have been given the electric chair, they would have brought back the death penalty.”
Trump is openly encouraging violence, and not just for the election. It seems to me that he should be arrested and charged with directly threatening and encouraging violence against the President of the United States, judges, government workers, and legislators. Why is this not the number one topic of concern of all normal, decent Americans, the FBI, Secret Service and the justice department?
Democrats must wake up and stop permitting Trump and the Republicans to constantly roll over the People with the insane and violent rhetoric before it is too damned late. Scary times.
How is that going to happen when they find him a total of $10,000 for threatening rhetoric in a courtroom? It seems like everyone is afraid of them and they run away in their pink panties.
DeSantis won his first term as Governor by a slim margin, many consider delivered by ENVIRONMENTALISTS because he promised to help the Everglades so they endorsed. Of course, any Democrat would and has consistently supported Everglades restoration. But DeSantis is a climate change denier and destroying any chance the state has to combat sea level rise and other environmental disasters. But one issue fanatical voters on the LEFT pushed DeSAntis to his first gubernatorial victory and now their own total state environmental disaster. This is a lesson for those on the Left who think Joe Biden is not 'pure enough' on their favorite issue. Recent article about DeSantis greenwashing here. https://airmail.news/issues/2023-8-19/a-snake-in-the-everglades
Total registered voters in Florida number 13,471,645. Republicans - 5,243,299; Democrats - 4,351,265; Minor parties - 343,932; & No Party Affiliation - 3,533,149.
Please quit blaming the Democratic voters for DeSantis winning. The Democratic Party has been putting little effort & funding into Florida as they are supporting other states where they feel they will have a better chance of winning. This is one factor in the domination of Republicans in our state legislature.
Someone needs to point out to DeSantis that pretending that global climate change doesn’t exist won’t make it go away. It didn’t work for “Red Tide Rick” Scott, & it won’t work for him.
Speaking of Florida and ongoing GOP climate change denial,DeSantis just (quietly) signed one of the most heinous laws ever. The law will take effect July 1. No shade, no water breaks !
“DeSantis nixes local efforts to protect outdoor workers from FL’s brutal weather
Governor signs the bill without his usual fanfare.”
📣📣Floridians, here is the Senate/House vote history on HB 433( March 8) As Election Day nears, and the temps heat up, let’s shout out those legislators who voted against humanity.📣📣
I said environmentalists, not Dems. DeSantis won by 42,463 votes. Almost 100,000 votes went to 3rd party, over 8M votes cast. So Jean, you missed the point so as to vent your social Jahad Dijour. Point is, it was a close election, very close, and the environmentalists were purists and endorsed DeSantis most likely giving him the election.
I am gratified to see the YouTube channels of Brian Tyler Cohen (whose also on MSNBC) and "Beau of the Fifth Column" use the term "REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS" as it is more than just abortion--the MAGA want to ban ALL contraceptives.
I wonder how many sexually active young people are willing to sacrifice their sex life and vote against Biden in the theory they are protesting Gaza?
My brother & his son live right on a river that empties into the Gulf of Mexico about 1/2 mile away. That storm that decimated the Gulf coast a year or so ago turned on the last day to make landfall south of Tampa. If it had targeted the area where my family lives their homes would have been part of the Gulf. They were very lucky. But really isn't it only a matter of time? The projections show that as climate change increases the ocean levels & the Gulf of Mexico will rise & en"gulf" (perfect word isn't it?) much of Florida.
One "bright spot", & great business opportunity, a whole new fleet & tourist attractions the "Glass-Bottomed" Boat tours of Florida!!!
"Frank Capra produced a series of science films for Bell Laboratories including: Our Mr. Sun (1956), Hemo the Magnificent (1957), The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957), and Meteora: The Unchained Goddess (1958).
It was in the ‘Unchained Goddess series that he focused an episode on climate science. Capra himself had a degree from Cal Tech in chemical engineering."
From the script:
Dr. Frank C. Baxter:
“Extremely dangerous questions. Because with our present knowledge we have no idea what would happen? Even now, man may be unwittingly changing the worlds climate through the waste products of his civilization. Due to our release through factories and automobiles every year of more than 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide, which helps air absorb heat from the sun, our atmosphere seems to be getting warmer.”
Richard Carlson:
“This is bad?”
Dr. Frank C. Baxter:
“Well, it’s been calculated a few degrees rise in the earths temperature would melt the polar ice caps. And if this happens, an inland sea would fill a good portion of the Mississippi valley. Tourists in glass bottom boats would be viewing the drowned towers of Miami through 150 feet of tropical water. For in weather, were not only dealing with forces of a far greater variety than even the atomic physicist encounters, but with life itself.”
And what if we had taken the hint? Nixon supported environmental issues and established the EPA. Carter was strongly pro-environmental protection. Reagan absolutely loathed it, and the momentum has not been the same since.
It is just 'matter of time' and it is already happening in notable events as you mention and street flooding. BUT look around other cities, Boston, Wilmington DE, Virgina Beach, D.C. and they are no better. Pensacola is high ground on the water, Mormon church bought/spent over $B buying land near there.
DC was built on a marsh so they really have problems. Black History Museum had to do major alterations in order to level it I think!
Human really have a whole lot of hubris thinking that they can bend nature to their will. It works for a while but then Mom Nature gets pissed & it all comes tumbling down or burns down etc. the lakes behind the dams fill with silt & eventually hold less & less water. It's just a matter of time for a lot of things!
the autocrat playbook. Get elected making popular promises, deliver on them, get a mandate reelection on the promises kept, then the real agenda can be implemented. DeSatan has done just that.
Thank you, Ma'am, for another 'sobrifying' essay (i.e., sobering + terrifying).
🤝
Kudos to people like Ms Courtney Gore for having the integrity to reject Trump by owning her part in Trump's sheiße storm and repudiating the hypocrisy. People like Ms Gore will be powerfully persuasive to undecideds.
⚖️
Can not tell what's blowing harder: the trumper tantrums or seasonal tropical storms.
😱
The threats, overt and implied, are serious and may be an early sign of wide-spread violence. I will fight, if I have to. Though I can barely hit the side of a barn. I thank G-D that the typical M.A.G.A. militia man is as wide as a barn.
😊
With the turmoil, things are beginning to feel like a re-run of 1968.
Reply from a friend in Iran who I contacted when I saw that the helicopter had crashed: "We certainly seem to be in some kind of vortex 😱".
Living in turmoil requires some radically difficult adaptive capacities and so I search for what helps me deal. I am led to the "Compass Questions" (and other content) at the website of Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) https://decolonialfutures.net/compass-questions/. What I read in this HCR newsletter helps my intellectual comprehension but what's going on somatically requires other coping, including the practice of rotating my compost tumbler.
Thank you, Joan. I will check that site. I am not sure I am connecting with your thinking when I make this comment. Forty-plus years ago, I read a sociology book on suicide by Emil Durkheim. In that ponderous work, if my shrinking grey matter serves, Dr Durkheim noted that suicide rates rise sharply when there is a wide-spread feeling of 'anomie' among people; I inferred that anomie meant that sinking feeling that one's world is falling apart. We may be in just such a period, now; perhaps something like anomie -- of a world in threatening flux -- is what your Iranian friend meant by a vortex. Thank you, again, for a thoughtful response.
Ned, thank you. "Anomie" is a new word for me and what you describe as a "sinking feeling that one's world is falling apart" is not new to me. Creativity makes use of destruction so I've learned to notice the opportunities in times when things are falling apart; even though it can be painful, it's inevitable and as normal as the natural world. What Shahrzad meant by the vortex I cannot say but we became friends by being in a group of globally dispersed citizens with a common interest in, "Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism".
Nice thought, the dimensions of the MAGA militia man/female. You know, this is getting to the stage when I think Biden and his team will be able to sort it out, with kindness and negotiation.
As a former risk manager and a Pisces, I am rarely one way or the other; so I assign percentages to things . . . utterly subjectively. I am 55-60% confident, within me, that President Biden will succeed and that this virulence unleashed by the demagogy that enables evil around the world will recede. Thank you for answering, Anne-Louise.
I don't see a lot of parallel to 1968 except that social discord and the useless war was rending national unity. I think we have ventured into far more perilous territory.
Jeri and J.L., I should be more specific and more transparent. In 1968, I was all of eleven years old and living a world away in Australia. Thank you for your responsive exchange with each other.
What reminds of 1968 are the protests, often led by students, around the world. We are in a more fluid, flammable place like 1940 -- if analogies are serviceable at all. The irony of today versus 1968, for me at least, is that the rejection of "the establishment" comes from the right-wingnuts like Representatives Marjorie Flailer Spleen and HazMatt Gaetz.
The most menacing difference for me is that there was an optimism still around in 1968 that we could make our society and culture better; that we could bring down a government pursuing a ghastly war; and, that peace was a possibility. These days, there seems to a profound pessimism, even nihilism, driving events. That worries me.
“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”
- Maya Angelou
Dismissing Trump's initial actions and rhetoric allowed him time to consolidate power. This has made it harder to stop his take-over of the GOP. His destructive agenda is in plain view now.
It seems that if yelling "Fire in a crowded theater" was once the line for freedom of speech, yelling "Open fire in a crowded theater" would be considered far worse. The fact that Trump is apathetic about engaging more moderate Republican voters while increasing his hateful rhetoric is important insight as to his intent after an election loss.
The fact that he remains free to wreak havoc upon the American system, while extremist and/or corrupt judges remain seated on the bench is a flashing red indicator as to the state of justice (or lack thereof) in the United States.
The Justice Department, historically, has vigorously pursued leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated to peace, justice, and equality in America. I suppose if he had been calling for the "Proud Boys" to stand up and stand by -that would just be another ordinary day in the "land of the free".
Falsely crying "fire" in a theater, which had occurred resulting in deaths, was originally used by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes to justify imprisoning Americans opposing the draft, but was later reinterpreted more narrowly. Still, while wanting to err on the side of free speech, I have trouble when lies, especially told by persons entrusted with public responsibilities, result in deaths with no legal consequences; and there has been quite an uptick in that lately. Lies certainly can kill, be it about matters of health, racism, sexism, homophobia, war, etc.
“These guys are Nazis, they’re boogaloo boys, they’re Proud Boys. These are the same people we fought in World War II,” Milley said a week after the attack on the Capitol.
So very true. One need not look far into recent events when Americans confronting a deadly, highly contagious pandemic were told to drink bleach as a remedy.
I have more to say, however I'm traveling and using a small keyboard and display instead of my diva-like home office configuration. I do believe that there is a line and the point I make (beyond yours with regard to public responsibility which I whole-heartedly agree) is that the line varies with the level of education and information in a society. A better educated and informed society is equipped to discern evidence-based facts from lies, propaganda, and disinformation and therefore, from my perspective, the line shifts.
Certainly education is protective as well as instructive, yet I know a number of very well educated people who are Trump fanatics. One of those seems to have undergone a dramatic personality change to do so. I am serious when I say that I think of cult dynamics as a kind of mental malware.
I also think that "education" per se is a somewhat nebulous category. I am unconvinced that education centered on improving SAT scores. whcih seems dominant, is improving keen observation and empirical, critical thinking skills. My wife was a teacher, and I think teachers struggle within the constraints they are given (I know of some who left the profession dispirited by "teach to the test") but we as a society must be missing something for irrationality to be on such a roll.
It seems to me that the two core mental skills a human needs to be "well" educated is to be empowered to determine though logic and evidence, what is likely to be true, and what likely is not, and also to have a grasp, as individuals and as a society, on what sort of choices are most likely to matter for reasonably secure and fulfilling lives.
Indeed -and thank you. I am intentionally abstract by the term education in order to be concise (a characteristic with which I frequently struggle). Certainly "informed' and "engaged" are also purposefully abstract. I'm guided by the unwritten rule a mantra must be 100 pages or less. :)
I am not saying I think that you are being vague, but that we as a culture might benefit from clarifying terms we use every day on which there is usually only a very fuzzy consensus as to meaning. I think it is statically true that those with more education of any sort are less likely to fall for big lies, yet oddly many are just the same. So does the kind of education make a difference? And what of education that does not take place is school? We do we as a culture do or not do to encourage enriching experiential learning? Can one gain vast education yet be lacking in wisdom? We as ostensible citizen/managers of our own society need to discuss such things, but endless sales pitches of one sort or the other are hogging most of public spaces.
Dr. Richardson - your letters are full of critical information. I fear that it is not being seen by any but those who subscribe. Have you considered trying to bring your wisdom to newspapers and internet sites where those who are desperately in need of better information will be able to read it (if they read at all?). Maybe it is time for you to appear on Fox and Friends? I know that this would be difficult (your work life is already busier than most could tolerate) but these facts need to be seen by everyone, and especially the “undecided”.
Excellent point. She is indeed singing to the choir. And as part of the choir I much appreciate her take. Also I often share these letters on my social media accounts where folks with much less singing chops will see them.
But what about those MAGA’s not in Facebook, on which I post HCR’s letters daily? I have sent them in email and text messages to my most MAGA friends & family. Then told to stop forwarding them or I will lose those family & friends. I have lost some, but others are dear to me. Now I can’t even bring up anything even remotely political.
It is OUR job to amplify her voice. If you watch her plitics chat, she often answers the "what can i do?" questions.
Forward her letter to friends and relatives. Write your own letters to the editor based on what you have learned. WE have to step up. Run for office. Support a candidate. VOTE.
A Robertson, your suggestions are the very best i have seen in a very long time. It sure would benefit our cause tremendously if Dr. Richarson's excellent work could be seen nationwide!
I have watched her when she is on a panel discussion, and she is excellent at explaining so everyone can understand. She’s better than any other panelist!!
Thank you Professor. You have sounded the alarm. Is it possible to imagine, just 80 years after American GIs led the assault on Nazi Germany, that an American President is talking about another Reich established right here in the New World? The red flags, red hats and red T-shirts are running wild in 2024 America. Now is the time for another D-Day, a time to defend and protect Democracy. The Hun cannot be allowed to win.
Great slogan !!! The new D-Day! The Modern D-Day-> Defend Domestic Democracy Now !!!
For Bush2's inaugural, I painted a large poster. On a white background. Superimposed over a heavy red cross dissecting the full poster, in heavy black block lettering: One People, One Nation, One God. Intentionally an echo of the Nazi slogan Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer. I stood for hours at the Georgetown security check entrance to the National Mall. Where there were large crowds. I got a preponderance of smiles, thumbs up, Thanks, and even people asking to take their picture with my poster. Sometimes I would flip to the other side, where in Herblock (of blessed memory) style I had cowboy Bush flanked by a klansman in full regalia and a monopoly game capitalist in top hat. Then there was general befuddlement. Only a relatively few 'got it.'
Bush's Politics of Faith heralded the GOP repurposing our American democratic republic as a corporate clerical fascist state.
Charles Koch bagman and human manure spreader Leonard Leo had fertile ground to grow their GOP Gospel of God, Guns, and Greed. The seeds were already planted. Who knew a Trump would be their avatar. Now Trump can do anything - Republican voters will still lock step march to the voting booth to put him in the White House. With help from Trump's enablers Jill Stein, RFKJR, Cornell West et al.
“I got a preponderance of smiles, thumbs up, Thanks, and even people asking to take their picture with my poster.”
The cult had slept thru their class on the Nazi slogan.
Too many of the curious and educated among us are not cognizant of the many others, brought up in authoritarian homes, with their curiosity murdered at young ages.
American bigotry is not limited to the incurious and uneducated. For a view of curious and educated bigotry, dip into Henry James' The American Scene. James' ex-pat thoughts on returning to a post civil war, liberalizing, United States. Preston Bush (GHW's father) did business with Nazi Germany. Joseph Kennedy was such a Hitler fanboy that FDR had to remove him as ambassador to England. As AG RFK made a favorable settlement with GAF which favored those who had done business with the Nazis. And then there was William F. Buckley Jr. And today, that 'great white hope' from Missouri, Stanford and Yale's own Jan 6 insurrectionist fist-bumping, Bambi sprinting Josh Hawley.
Hitler was not simply put in place by his cohort.
Lin, thank you for both your excellent posts, reminding us of how earlier certain people were Nazi sympathizers. And your description of Koch and Leo are spot on. What is interesting to me is that often in public appearances, death star's developing dementia is in plain view, yet he manages to come out with these scary declarations. I am wondering who is pulling the strings and writing the script. I have long considered the Bushes a crime family and am not a big Kennedy family fan either. Mafia don's crime family, however, earns top ratings for being totally nasty and corrupt. I also believe that Rs won't do anything about guns because they want the plebs to do their dirty work. Nearly every night there is a news story about gun violence and much wringing of hands about what we can do about it. Today is primary election day in Oregon where it is so easy to vote and turnout is absolutely tepid even thought there are some important choices. I am always amazed about seeing all the people dropping off their ballots at the last minute when they could have easily mailed them much earlier.
Complete with Abbott pardoning convicted murderer Daniel Perry.
Yes,, I was phoning voters about voting for Susheela yesterday. Sad that so many people are voting for the AIPAC pick. And that they still had their ballots at home. I still believe that mail-in voting is easy and should be available in all states. And there are those of us who simply like to meet our neighbors at the polling places in the house across the street.
Incurious often goes along with educated. In fact, it seems to me that many of the products of education in the most prestigious educational institutions are the least curious. Perhaps it comes of having professors that are too famous to be questioned? Colleges that are too expensive to be questioned?
And aren't the Republicans working hard to kill curiosity in education?
“And aren't the Republicans working hard to kill curiosity in education?” Absolutely, yes! For the purpose of subservience to authoritarian control, murdering curiosity in youth is essential. It follows that a public education system set up by authoritarians will do everything they can to kill curiosity.
An examination of the initiation of public education, set up at the height of patriarchy, might lead one to understand how it perpetuates authoritarianism regimes. We are doing better, but we must do far better. I read John Gatto’s books. He became extreme in advocating to destroy public education. Public education is needed in the 21st century much like clean air and water, but we must continually work to understand how to make it better meet the needs of the current world we find ourselves living in.
The most prestigious schools attract those who value prestige more than they do knowledge herein their output of the least curious. I would argue there are many who still get an excellent education and contribute greatly to making the world a better place. Their choice to attend though is based on curiosity in their field of interest and a humility that keeps their mind open?
"Joseph Kennedy was such a Hitler fanboy that FDR had to remove him as ambassador to England. "
Funny how much deference is paid to outright right-wing oriented crimes and misfeasance that would otherwise meet with complete suppression if even tinged with the left.
Oh the irony! Here we have a substack written by a pre-eminent historian, with a comment that has a few scraps of fact twisted into a misleading ahistorical narrative. The commenter seems either dim and confused or deliberately misleading.
Isolated incidents turned into character defining narratives. Ahistorical accusations. Ludicrous comparisons: RFK (Sr) bucketed with William F Buckley and Josh Hawley?
I try not to post on this comment section, but this sort of puffed up “knowledge” and the tone of pseudo-expert moral highbrow was just too much.
The premise of the comment to which you object is: American bigotry is not limited to the incurious and uneducated.
Bigotry among the educated is the shared characteristic which links the individuals listed. From the post civil war onwards. (I might have started with the Founding Fathers.)
You object to the inclusion of Robert F.Kennedy. In this you ignore much of Kennedy's history. I would suggest that RFK held with his father bigotry until it was a bad look and advocating for civil rights was a better one. Then he changed, but never fully shook off old prejudices. Was his advocacy as sincere as his ambition? People are complicated.
Kennedy started his career working for Kennedy family friend Sen. Joeseph McCarthy's infamous subcommittee. Kennedy's initial reaction to the Civil Rights movement was that it made his brother look bad. (Going back to Joseph Kennedy - who preached image above everything.) RFK issued a written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the SCLC. There were irregularities with how complaints King filed with the Justice Department between 1961 and 1963 were handled - with the administration stepping back from involvement or support.
Kennedy also brokered a settlement for the sale of GAF a multimillion‐dollar corporation owned by the German chemical combine, I. G. Farben which was seized as enemy property during World War II. Kennedy provided millions to Interhandel a Swiss front for IG Farben. A move criticized by four former Attorney Generals.
"General Aniline and Film Corporation, the longest lasting hangover from the Alien Property Custodian‟s seizure of German property n WW2, and pre-war affiliate of the German Chemical combine IG Farben, was sold by the US Justice Department for $320 million. As part of the deal the US gave Interhandel, a Swiss Corporation, (owned by the Union Bank of Switzerland) more than one third of the sale price. This settlement came as a surprise to most commentators, who had assumed that the US was fully justified in seizing enemy property in time of war. Moreover, the US had constantly claimed that Interhandel was nothing but a financial cloak, designed by IG Farben to conceal German assets. In fact, the deal had taken years to negotiate, with Robert Kennedy offering a complex settlement formula that would see the Swiss getting a large share provided the company was sold at a high price."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345181824_Morals_and_Money_Ideology_and_Pragmatism_in_the_Kennedy_Administration's_Settlement_of_the_Interhandel-General_Aniline_Film_Case_1962-1965
Thank you for correct usage, in the right context, of the term "authoritarian".
You are so right. I knew W was a plant, especially when Dickie became his partner. I was apoplectic when Ted K and others bowed and scrapped. Boy, have we paid a price for our blinders. We cover the minutiae of the road we are on, but who sees the destination. The big picture is there and the puzzle is almost complete, but who has the vision.
It's not "our blinders."
The blinders belonged to the far-right Supreme Court which wanted a servant to the fossil fuel biggies, so stepped in to kill Florida's final counting of votes, handing the presidency to Dickie-boy and his boy-knave.
"The blinders belonged to the far-right Supreme Court which wanted a servant to the fossil fuel biggies"
The carbon biggies as personified by Charles Koch gave billions of dollars to Leonard Leo to spend capturing the Supreme Court. From Thomas to Coney Barrett. Leo advertised Thomas and ran a media campaign against Anita Hill. But Leo made his GOP bones by getting Alito on the Court. After Bork was rejected, Leo's efforts went into sinking Miers and appointing Alito -a guaranteed pro-carbon vote.
This tidbit is amazingly lost on most of us of how far back Leo has been involved.
I am aware only because of "Democracy in Chains", by Nancy MacLean of the far right plans. Koch is central along with Milton Friedman and his "Chicago boys" with "Profit above all else" mantra. Way too many lawyers and MBA folks have bought into economic liberty (the right to monopolize everything) at the expense of our Constitutional sovereignty and democracy. They are only beholden to $$$$$$$ and can't see the way out of vulture profiteering.
Their moralistic leaning towards the Catholic bent is just exertion of power over others and exploiting their ideas of virtue. Its vanity, ego, power and money they all drink from.
P.S., great read-back toward Bjork. The policies being flouted now by GOP were perfectly aligned with Bjork'ian philosophies that got him rightfully tanked and yet fueled the backlash by those still wanting these draconian policies against others.
And Alito has turned out to be 'oh-so-much-more' than the righties ever expected. Alito (and Thomas) the gifts to the right wing, who just keep giving. And grifting.
It really did start with hanging chads.
And young Brett and Amy counting them.
I was majorly pissed by the SC decision, but Dems just acquiesced, which is what our history and our traditions demanded. I have lived through many of these events. I have been blinded by the political realities that made my soul hurt, while friends and family cheered the unfathomable. One example, the son of my bff jumped out of his seat to cheer W when he went to China after the debacle in Iraq. I was mortified, but I thought the next election would right our ship. I have thought that for most of my adult life. One step forward, two back. But now we are regressing at warp speed. The SC has multiple feet on the acceleration to the past.
Jeri, I will address you because I know you will be my fiercest critic. We all can agree on the threat. What we usually disagree on is how our side has foolishly lost or is losing the narrative o issues such as the border and little wedge issues (yes I’m repeating because they add to the weakness) like boys becoming girls in order to play on female sports teams which I am 100% against because it threatens female athletes programs.
I can’t believe how thickheaded Biden has become over these issues but especially the border. Couldn’t he see the handwriting? Couldn’t we all see it? We are potentially leading to a defeat for what? Allowing hundreds of thousands and millions to violate our immigration laws? And all our side can do is argue amongst ourselves over these issues while Rome burns? My God.
Nothing like changing the subject methods.
The gop want nothing more than to have the border be the single issue to fight about. Yet, the gop tanked the hard-fought Senate bill that would have helped. Instead the gop choose trump'ian philosophy of issue wars while they loot the till.
Rome is burning with RU illegal assault on Ukraine Sovereignty that effects all of the NATO countries that are in Putin's sights.
Rome is burning with Israel (Netanyahu) loosing 80 year of good will with "Never Again" by failure to deal with legitimate Palestinian civilians and a two-state solution. Hamas (Hezbollah) is the perpetrator where the civilians being used as shields are innocents being murdered. Not Jus in Bello (Laws in war) vs. Jus ad Bellum (the just cause for war).
Rome is burning when the gop are playing with anarchy against our Constitutional framework of our country. The border has been a border problem since I lived in San Diego in early 80's and before. Just look at the history of border politics vs border policies. The gop loves the strawman for electoral fear mongering.
I understand and agree. Biden made a very big mistake but not at least issuing an executive order on the border not because it would be effective. But to show he wants to get something done. And he demurred. I’ll cut and paste the last short from my book to explain the behavior of Trump. It really is that simple. Give me a moment.
Bill, boys do not become girls to play on female sports teams. Intersexed individuals and transsexuals exist. I cringe a little about trans girls playing female sports, too, but checking the record does not show they are always or even usually victorious over girls. Also, border activity has been much slower in recent weeks due to the Biden admin efforts. Please don't contribute to the hysteria.
I was thinking of the trans issue as I watched women's basketball the other day. I have a trans niece. No way on God's green earth would she compete with women's basketball players, or soft ball players. She's 5'7" or so, very slim build.
My point is, not ALL TRANS WOMEN at 6'2" and 200lb. There are also a very small number of trans people in sports. I think any focus the Biden administration has put on trans people is that they're seen and acknowledged and deserve to exist.
My biggest concern is Trump's deportation plan. How do you find 15milion people who clearly don't want to be found? Raid businesses? Raid neighborhoods on the south side (my town is mostly Latino on the south side where I grew up). Are we going to look for Latino sounding last names? I mean, I am 100% sure this will focus on Latinos more than anyone.
Another huge concern: a national abortion ban. That doesn't affect me personally at all, but it affects me as a person who believes in privacy right.
"Wedge issues". Hoo boy. Next thing, you're going to say that abortion is a wedge issue because it only impacts women. Or that the ability of same sex couples to marry is a wedge issue because it only impacts roughly 10% of the population.
Bill, boys don't become "girls in order to play on female sports teams." C'mon, that's ridiculous.
Chump’s disciples don’t even care that they trashed a reasonable immigration bill. I went from a “what do they not understand about illegal” to a supporter of immigration. Not a supporter of the coyotes or the network of gangs that lure desperate people to make the journey. My ancestors, (and likely many others) made the journey without the coyotes or money middle-men. Why not go after them? Anyway, an article in Nat Geo about 10 years ago detailing what the journey looked like for many, and the need we have for younger citizens, changed my mind. I have said for years that the repubs will never agree to a decent immigration bill. What else can they use to flagellate the Dems.
Yes Dems advocate some things that I shake my head over. Still, they (we) are the hope of our country and not only our species, but likely all except the cockroaches…
My grandparents emigrated from Mexico in the early 20th century when there wasn't an issue of coming over the border.
When you look at what people go through to get here, how difficult it is, and the hope they carry...I honestly can't understand how a person is NOT moved by that.
Our parents and grandparents who fought in World War II must be rolling over in their graves. I think about all of our ancestors who fought for freedom and democracy. Think about how many people died in the Civil War to preserve democracy and freedom. MAGA & Trump is a clear and present danger. The spineless cowards in the GOP are enabling this and deserve to be soundly defeated in the next election. Propaganda disseminated by right wing media and the failure of the press to call it out is a cancer in our society.
The press, by and large, all went to schools with humanities absent, Seth..
lin- Nice job on the poster! Good comment!
Ahhh, Herblock. My Dad's favorite! He had some amazing political cartoons.
Oh Ally House. Herblock's work is still timely.
https://www.loc.gov/collections/herblock-cartoon-drawings/about-this-collection/
Thanks for the link. Herblock was where I learned what a political cartoon was.
God, Gospel and Greed. Brilliant Lin, so simple and succinct.
If I could, lin...I'd "like" your comment a truckload more times. Great comment! Thank you.
Lin*, but you are forgetting that we are are own worse enemy. Not self aggrandizing Jill and RFK Jr. not even Cornell. We are our own enemy because we are convinced that WE have done no wrong. That all our positions are right on. That an open border where millions can rush across the deserts of the south is okie Doki. Then there are other new fangled issues that just don’t add up to logic that we insist are right. So we March blindly into the future into that future of waiting arms of the enemy because we lost. And I’ve repeated this a million times but all I get from us (yes I identify with y’all, lol) is push back.
I don't know what 'we' or which 'side' you presume to
speak of/for. Even the relatively small demographic of this comments section - and HCR's work - refute your mischaracterizations of 'us'.
Your misrepresentation of
Biden administration policy only repeats GOP and third party lies.
And your prior claim of "boys becoming girls in order to play on female sports teams" is another overlap between bigots.
Tell me how often you have found a trans man on a men’s sport team? Let me answer my question. There aren’t any because en are genetically stronger than women. But this in a way is less important. We are pushing the envelope to the max and most A Erica s don’t want to go there. Since we are on this rather sensitive topic, man I’m glad I don’t have any daughters in high school sports not knowing if a trans girl with genitalia would be showering in the girl’s shower. As unpalatable as this discussion is, the far left will gladly lose to an autocratic government perhaps and also lose a constitution and a democracy and be able to proudly exclaim how proud they were to fight the good fight. I’m a middle road democrat. Not the far left and certainly not the extreme cult post Nazi right.
There you go. You validated my point and thank you.
In my experience, the people who are overly concerned about those with “dangly bits” in restrooms assaulting those without dangly bits are utterly and completely clueless about the process of transitioning and the process of transitioning.
Bill, I know of *no one* who wants an open border, so your logic is faulty. I'd say most Americans want border security along with humane, compassionate, timely yet rigorous vetting of immigrants. House Republicans didn't want to give Biden credit for legislation which would accomplish that, because their leader told them not to. Blame them, not him.
Pushback is necessary. Millions are not rushing across the deserts in the south. Disinformation is easy to spread in want of an audience.
Not to mention it's a very easy talking point.
Damn - this is good.
Leonard Leo, human manure spreader… perfect .. yet he perceives himself as “holier than thou”. Nutty as a fruitcake is more like it.
Dems had better get this message across instead of the crap emails I get.
. . . whose outrage-pandering insults my intelligence precisely like the MAGAts' bs "talking points."
All they have to do is quote the bs of the repubs instead of making up their own. Repubs write the ads for them. Use it, for pity’s sake
Forget about the slogans. Change course but it could be too late. I have maintained that there is something wrong with our, that is, our democratic principles on issues most important to most of us and that being the border. That stupid border which we have shown a disinterest in DOING SOMETHING anything if only an executive order. But we will fuss and fart over how welcoming our land is to immigrants and how we are the beacon for the dispossessed of the world because it is so written on the Statute of Liberty that btw, another nation wrote as a gift.
I’m flummoxed. Do ya like that word? I’m flummoxed.
I agree that our border policy needs to be updated, but I think you’re laying the blame in the wrong place. Just a few short months ago, democrats and republicans crafted bipartisan border legislation, which the republicans then tanked on Trump’s orders, to prevent Biden from being able to claim the win. Looks like that strategy worked, huh?
I would also add that I suspect that few women on the left think the border is the most important issue in this election. We want bodily autonomy. That is our most important issue, not the border. Followed in a close second by protecting our democracy (the two are linked, of course). At least, those are my top two, and I think that even though I’m past reproductive age. I have daughters and many friends who are young women. There are lot of issues I think are more important than the border.
Give us a significant enough congressional majority and the White House, and we can get to work on all these critical issues: women’s and other marginalized people’s rights, climate change, democracy, voting rights, judicial overhaul, Citizens United, foreign policy, etc., and yes, the border too.
Sorry, KR; women's and other marginalized people's rights are wedge issues. Just quoting Mr. Katz. <I guess this font is "pissed off and rolling my eyes" font>
Yup. Never mind that those rights are the foundation for it all - including coherent immigration policy. As the mom of a trans daughter, my terror for her is through the roof. I think I’m more scared than she is.
I can only imagine. I have dear friends whose trans son is in high school. I know they worry about him all the time.
Spot on, KR -- spot on.
Thank you!
Actually, we did do something about the border, and then Trump changed his mind because he didn't want to "give Biden a win," and House Republicans killed the bill. It is the _Republicans'_ fault that we haven't "fixed the border," and Dems and the news media should be reminding voters of that fact.
Yes and no. Yes a senate bill was sent but if you read the bill, it had so many crazy requirements such as the number of those running over the border and soon It was enough to drive me crazy let alone a legislator. And yes, Trump killed it in order to use as a political weapon. Remember one thing about Trump. It’s not so much that he is intelligent. Unless you include that cunning and being street-wise and the ability to bully your way to convincing others you are correct is an aspect of intelligence which I do not subscribe to. Humans have been obeying sheep for centuries under amd leadership and it won’t stop now.
I'm loathe to use the insulting word "ignorant" here, so I won't; "how we are the beacon for the dispossessed of the world because it is so written on the Statute of Liberty that btw, another nation wrote as a gift" is misinformed. Emma Lazarus, a Jewish several-generations American, wrote the poem you're talking about. It was not "written on the Statue of Liberty" given us by France, but mounted on the US-designed and -funded pedestal on which Lady L is mounted. And the exploitation of those tired, poor, huddled masses, wretched refuse, homeless and tempest-tossed fueled the development of the industrial colossus of the new home that treated them just a little better than the treatment they fled. I could try to explain to you how critical to our current economy, standard of living, and future the current generation of asylum-seekers is, but will leave you flummoxed.
Thanks for writing that. I thought about pointing it out too, but decided I had said enough. I’m glad you did.
Bill - As a flummoxed denier, some of your comments denote a rant or denigration of positivity rather than looking for solutions. Sounds as if you’ve already made up your mind to vote against the only candidate who can save us. If I’m wrong, I will be happy about that 🥁🇺🇸🗽🗳️💙
Yes 🙌 I do like it. Me too, I’m bewildered 😳 and perplexed 😕 … you’re right… it’s not the slogan that counts but the concept that’s important. We must communicate, make sense that feeling of being lost… We must call out to all ! -> perhaps especially the immigrants of so many generations and those fleeing plights! to defend and protect our democracy…
Democracy Defenders
DEFEND DEMOCRACY NOW!
The good news is Trump's mental decline is picking up speed.
Yes, Michael, his "mental decline is picking up speed."
And the way Heather carefully contrasts American realities with Trump's grotesquely contrasting lies verges on comedy for her.
Except, while it's all a mad, mad, mad, mad world, the MAGA-land, look -- here come more Republican bit players dutifully appearing at the Manhattan courthouse to ape their clown-in-chief.
See? Here they are, again now, day after day, goofuses all, all in the same red ties, to show off their suck-up behavior along with jury tampering.
Trouble is, they belong to the same movement by which most recently Alito on the Clarence court has tipped his insurrectionist hand. But he's been serving the predator billionaire class for years, as has his fellow Clarence. And the majority of this clown court can do most serious things involving the lives and health and family choices of American women. As do the billionaires involving the millions of American jobs they offshored. As do other billionaires organizing hate and divisiveness on social media. More billionaires with their standardized testing. And more planning worse with their Chevron Precedent case and their Project 2025.
Hilarious, their fat, orange mad man?
And what if there's a crisis that needs a decision from the Commander in Chief.
How can we trust anyone who goes to la-la land without notice?
You know he will fire everyone in the situation room if they make a decision while he is "away" whether he agrees with it or not.
Can we really afford the chaos?
No, we cannot afford the chaos. We had enough of it when that man was in the president's office. Have people forgotten how bad it was?
Culturally, scientifically, industrially Germany was an advanced nation in 1933
A nut job took it over.
The rich, the aristocracy, the clergy, and the military all thought they could control him. They were as out of touch with the people then as have been American elites since the Powell memo handed all power to U.S. and allied worldwide billionaire classes, and they in turn handed all power educationally to the neutered dehumanized.
Hell NO
You oppose standardized testing? How else would we know how effective our education system is working? Having standards does not mean the students would all think alike but that they can all think.
Testing is a fine tool, but it is only a tool. Our deluded educators and legislators declared the test was the standard tho, and that's the road to failure. See Goodheart's Law and also The Cobra Effect:
The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, people began to breed cobras for the income.
Training the students to pass the test du jour is not the same as educating them.
Essay writing, George.
Learn skills in essaying to see others as individuals.
The standardized testing just enforces group think. Plus linear-think. Category-think. Simple-causality-think. Abstraction-dominant. All ways of thinking deadly to the human or any living, natural systems.
The standardized testing is now almost all machine gradable, further removing the human, further pushing all the impersonal, neutered conceits of our dehumanized rich.
In Japan, where I live in the mountains of Kyushu, there is almost no school in the entire country where anyone learns to read any book whole. The ministry of ed breaks all lit down into fragments conducive to the totally dehumanized, out-of-context, computer-gradable standardized testing. The "best" grow up immune to people. Without friends. Sexless. Zombies like their living dead teachers.
See Minae Mizumura, "The Fall of Language in the Age of English" (English translation, 2016, Columbia U Press).
For the shibboleths, orthodoxies, and other crippling effects of group-think, see Diane Ravitch (especially her appendices) in "The Language Police" (2003).
“How else would we know how effective our education system is working?”
By graduating adults that are thriving and contributing to the greater good in whatever way works best for them?
“Having standards does not mean the students would all think alike but that they can all think.”. LOL LOL LOL
right? Or in other words “think like I do”
So you are content to wait say twenty years after high school and then evaluate how successfully the graduate has navigated the vicissitudes of life. Then you can pronounce whether that person had a good or crappy education. You perhaps are not familiar with the roles of luck, opportunity, connections and biology in shaping a life. Education should provide an individual with the tools by which that person can develop their unique skills. Society needs a system to determine if the student is developing those skills if it is expected to fund the process. How the students life progresses is far too complex to provide any insight into education quality.
George, comments on substack are probably not the best place to have a meaningful conversation on standardized testing. We’re living thru an era of increasing numbers of people motivated by cheating and corruption. What can go wrong with standardized testing?
https://www.npr.org/2013/04/10/176784631/el-paso-schools-cheating-scandal-probes-officials-accountability
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-standardized-testing_b_2710470/amp
With the standardized testing brought about by GW’s NCLB, I have little doubt that corporate America would benefit the most from knowing which foot soldiers are best prepared for their mission.
Also that creativity would be lost over time.
Maybe some standardized testing could be helpful, I’m skeptical.
I feel confident that we, “as a society” can do better. Relying on standardized testing to assess our educational system would be a mistake.
I agree that his dementia is picking up speed.
Can you imagine if the power on his teleprompter went out and he had to fake his way through the same drivel he has repeated dozens of time?
And basically that's what the debates with Biden will be. I hope he fails as badly as one expects he will.
He is completely devoid of any ideas to help anyone on the planet except for billionaires and large corporations. And he will only help them to the extent they donate to him or his campaign (quid pro quo).
Sad Sad Sad😡
Will MSM notice, Fox NEVER showed chump idiocy. A cut and pasted caricature of presidential actions, sort of like his NFT’s. Just like an old definition of Trumpery - “anything calculated to deceive by false show.”
Liked for both content and the use of "trumpery." Well played.
The old definition could not be more applicable.
The Presidiot strikes again 😉
Oddly enough besides Reich translating to "realm, empire, nation, kingdom or the German state, it has a uncommon translation of "a licensed practitioner of psychoanalysis" which is certainly the only thing that could cure him of his madness.
Trump cannot be cured - at least not in his lifetime. It is not insanity he has, it's worse. Personality disorders -narcissism. megalomania, sociopath.
Exactly, he is what he is, like we all are at his age.
@Fay: I take a wider view than you on what psychoanalysis or therapy could help the sufferer recover from. But where Trump is concerned I doubt very much that he wants help or has any inkling that he needs help. He is dominated by a deep and pathological need to dominate.
And to add - he was taught from childhood that the world was for his taking and he should always "win" no matter how much he actually loses in life.
I was astonished to see the listing posted yesterday of financial loses he's incurred in the capital B billion. I am certain his greedy hands on our US Treasury levers of power have syphoned much to deal with his increasingly negative cash flow problems, let alone the debts/favors owed that he can never repay.
I truly believe if he accepts his fear of losing and "to be reconciled" with it would damage his lifelong psyche to the point of mumbling, drooling - which I think he's quickly headed for as the criminal shenanigans before, during and after his "presidency" cannot be swept under like his family business were. (quoted as I never believed he acted in the interest of USA)
Can't claim authorship, but appreciate MAGA = "My Assets Got Auctioned."
In definitions of 'reich' there is sometimes a reference to the Proper Noun/Name of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich.
Reich wrote about the psychopathology of leaders like DT and mass movements like MAGA.
Good morning Peter.
How incredulous that he died in jail in 1957 due to his delusions, while his most important earlier works, warning of monsters like Tffg were burned. And here we are in 2024 unable to jail the real monster among us.
If only we could come to understand the complexity of the human mind and how it does and doesn’t serve us, sooner rather than later.
"We" cannot, Christy.
Our novelists, memoirists, historians, musicians, and film makers can, and do.
I didn't remember the medieval book-burning, Christy... That must have killed him.
My impression is of someone who had a direct insight into an important truth, then veered off into an academic labyrinth inhabited by conceptual monsters, in which he completely lost the thread...
Once or twice in the 1980s, I came across Reich followers. They seemed serious enough, unlike the guys running around with pyramids on their heads and other such New Age kooks. Unfortunately, I never had a proper talk with them.
I recall a brilliant and utterly zany Yugoslav film of libidinous adventures spliced with Reich and Reichian matter: W.R. The Mysteries of the Organism by -- if my memory serves me rightly -- one Dusan Makavajev...
As mad as some of Emir Kusturica's later output...
Christy, how incredible?
Psychoanalysis cannot. As a therapist said to me. “In order for therapy to touch him (a student with narcissistic personality disorder) his psyche would have to be torn down and restructured. Cannot be done outside of residential placement.” Chump can’t live so long.
Look, there's something none of us may have thought of - he might mean Steve Reich, one of the world's leading exponents of the minimalist school of musical composition. Obsessive repetition of the same musical figure, over and over and over again. Or perhaps we could introduce, say, Thomas Adès? Too stimulating, perhaps. Or if none of that reaches him, perhaps Mozart's German dances, than which I know nothing more boring? Bore him into silence?
The minimalists could bore anyone into silence, or even repose. Funny you should mention the German Dances. There is a simple tune I liked that for years we would play around Christmastime. It was "A Musical Sleigh Ride" by, I thought, Leopold Mozart. It's on a Christmas disc featuring Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops (which should give you an idea of just how old I am). I just found out it was one of the German Dances you decry. Even bad Mozart is still Mozart. :-)
My reply has gone. Never mind, it's way off topic. But bad Mozart is not Leopold Mozart (whose own Musical Sleighride was composed before Wolfgang was born).
Thank you. I didn't know that. It must be that the "Sleigh Ride" on my Pops disc was misidentified as that of Leopold. It's certainly the same music as the German Dance by Wolfgang, but with sleigh bells added to the trio. Or did Wolfgang plagiarize his Dad's song to add to his own collection? Now I'll have to track down Leopold's Sleigh Ride.
Your ref to some humanities does date you, James.
But I regret to note you as yet contemporary, as -- like our "educated" elites today -- you effort no connection of those humanities then to our poisoned billionaires and their enabling elites now,
Just as likely, he might be referring to Robert Reich.
Michael Corthell, is there real evidence that Trump is in accelerating mental decline? Yes, he’s dangerous and amoral. Yes, he would destroy our nation to serve himself. But those are not necessarily signs of dementia. I realize, you didn’t mention dementia, but I assume that’s the mental decline you meant.
Stanley, I think when one compares and contrasts video of him speaking eight years ago, four years ago, and today, the decline is pretty obvious. Simplistic word choices, posture, struggles to follow the teleprompter, inability to stay on topic, sleeping in court, repetitive and boring is Trump today.
Is the cause of it dementia? Is it the long term consequences of something like adderall addiction? Is it normal aging? Who knows, and I don’t care. The bottom line is that in addition to being unfit for office because he was a terrible president and he’s an adjudicated rapist, a lying insurrectionist, and a budding tyrant, he’s also unfit mentally and physically for this most demanding job.
I will be shocked if he actually does debate Biden.
I know dementia, at least in one case. No resemblance at all. There are many iterations of mental decline, even Alz. I would hate to guess the origin and type of his decline. Worms, perhaps?
🎶There's something wrong, there can be no denying. 🎶
As Carole King sang, it's too late 😉
Stanley, Refer to this Substack regarding Trump’s mental decline: https://open.substack.com/pub/thinkbigpicture/p/john-gartner-trump-cognitive-decline?r=rp9kb&utm_medium=ios
It took 15 years for my husband to die of Alz; we may have a long time to suffer
There are a nu.der of psychiatrists and psychologists who believe so and have said so on line in interviews on some news shows.
With every speech and social media utterance, he sows the seeds of his own destruction.
Some of his crowd…maybe the paid ones, sometimes look at each other after his slurred word salads.
So was Adolf the Meat Tenderizer.
In Trump’s case picking up speed is crushing & snorting adderall (documented - Noel Casler, Celebrity Apprentice aid to Ivanka T. Trump won’t follow through on threats to sue Casler / violation of NDA to avoid facts revealed in court). That’s the white chunks spewing out his mouth when he’s babbling bs. TFG was still at it in prez term. + Look at photos of Don Jr. & Kimberly Guilfoyle together at 45 events wrecked on cocaine & booze. What was going on with coke during secret service ptotection? https://www.celebitchy.com/677989/even_legit_news_sites_wonder_if_don_trump_jr_was_coked_out_of_his_mind/
I keep re-posting this, so sorry if you've seen it:
https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/john-gartner-trump-cognitive-decline?r=hc3zv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2L7Oo72nCU418cjR1uG2sYDBz71rLANErMb6RIgK9asjCmNSAnHkDuelg_aem_ASnNUkYbacup_4aoIA7vktdsfLaSZyeRgroTAJ8Uwwh2pJ8Knk77hiZf4vpgQwi5b6nypr98u6n0iN5RH-waM_5G&triedRedirect=true
"It is not clear to me how anyone can any longer deny that Trump is promising to destroy our democracy and usher in authoritarianism."
It is a total mystery to me that HCR never mentions Charles Koch bagman Leonard Leo - who funnels the money to the Federalist Society, Heritage Foundation, Teneo Network, and innumerable antidemocratic initiatives. Fascism doesn't happen on its own. Follow the money.
Lin, as I recall, she has in the past brought up Leo and (name escapes me) the other more wealthy & lesser known fellow who funneled scads of bucks to far right causes.
Barre Seid ?
“Leo is now in charge of Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit organized in May 2020 with a $1.6 billion donation from donor Barre Seid to push right-wing politics at every level.)”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-21-2023
Thats a lot of dosh for the people who live by the mantra, "Follow the money" no matter the cost.
Yeah, that’s the guy I was thinking of…I can’t wrap my head around having that much money/assets…at least he gave a ginormous amount to a cause he believes in (as much as I disagree with it).
She nailed it with her calling out “ the vast right wing conspiracy” which fell on deaf ears!
lin* referred to HCR, our host, not HRC, the most qualified nominee for the presidency in my leading-edge-of-the-baby-boom life who nailed not only the VR-WC but also, remarkably improvidently, the basket of deplorables.
I've often heard HCR say "follow the money", mostly on her Tuesday FB Politics Chats. She seems to feel more free to say what are her "hair on fire" moments than in her Letters.
“It is a total mystery to me that HCR never mentions Charles Koch bagman Leonard Leo”
Words matter. The word “never” has always been a red flag for me when deciding on a comment’s veracity.
You lost me here.
Leo’s name comes up repeatedly in LFAA. Here’s just two.
“These cases, based on fictional accounts, dovetail with the fictional history in amicus briefs. These are so-called friend-of-the-court briefs from someone who is not a party in the case to offer analysis of the issues. Yesterday, Heidi Przybyla of Politico showed how right-wing lawyers connected to Leonard Leo, co-chair of the board of the activist right-wing Federalist Society, have filed amicus briefs that invent a past that the right-wing justices then lift into the decisions themselves to shape modern society.”
“Yesterday, on the same day that Shawn Boburg, Emma Brown, and Ann E. Marimow added to all the recent stories of Supreme Court corruption an exclusive story showing how then-leader of the Federalist Society Leonard Leo funded a “a coordinated and sophisticated public relations campaign to defend and celebrate” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to advance a bill that would require the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt a binding code of ethics.”
And includes links to more in depth information.
Words matter.
Eric & the long, thin, red ties -- Drumpf is a loser.
Is there a glimmer of rebellion within the ranks? Barron's prior commitments?
I will not be the teeniest bit surprised if Melania quietly exits Mar a Lago once Barron is safely at university. Even if Trump wins (heaven forbid) it seems like she hated many aspects of being First Lady ... still wouldn't be surprised if she leaves right after the election and declines the FL job.
TFFG tells the same whoppers so many times that his followers believe, not only those lies but EVERYTHING he says.
One of my wife's relatives said, "Trump has never told a lie." Even when it's an obvious lie, that is easily proven to be incorrect, they turn off their brains or defend him. They may even have a spouse or other close relative that died of Covid-19 and they still think TFFG did everything possible to end the pandemic.
And then their rich white preachers and priest rail on the pulpit about what a terrible person Biden is and how he is the devil.
Religious cretins do just that, not new. Just after Obama won a second term, I heard my sister-in-law at a Baptist pulpit, call him an evil socialist. My eyes were “woke” that day.
What was WWII fought for? To stop murderous dictators from ruling the world. The home countries of those dictators have enjoyed with the rest of the world the freedom and liberty of DEMOCRACIES. And now we are witnessing the rise of authoritarians. That is due in large part a reaction to immigrants, as I suspect it may be a primary reason. The world is turning to dictators to prevent the migration of people who only want a better life. All the dictators and wannabes need to do is gin up fear and hatred to gain power and power is all they crave. Dictators are much more capable of solving problems then are democracies which tend to be messy, but produce polices that tend to be better for the masses. Dictators make things better for themselves and the small group of supporters.
Amen brother. The time is long over due for Democrats in both the House and Senate to take a stand as has Pres. Biden. It’s now or never.
Robert🙏🙏🙏
The words on Trump's Instagram "the creation of a unified reich" should make the front page of the New York Times. What, It's not there?
Well, it was just reported on the BBC World News - "staffer error"...but it took 19 hours before it was removed. Soundbyte of Kamala Harris denouncing it. Nothing in the NYT? How very surprising.
We humans have a deeply rooted and unconscious habit NOT to learn from history which keeps us in the rut of repeating it.
Except no one’s listening except us who know the stakes. Finally an article from WSJ about it. But not enough media coverage. Some but not enough. Wonder if Fox News even covers this stuff. My Father is a Republican and doesn’t talk about authoritarianism but talks about Biden Crime family. I hope something breaks soon.
If you Vote Red .. We are all Dead 🇺🇸
To say nothing of the adult diapers with trampler's face on them (!), as a symbol of their glorious leader. Who woulda thunk it?
My efforts to "like" are not working. What's wrong?
Just your comment was enough! On a technical note, I find that a dry finger can sometimes not make good contact with a screen surface. That might be your problem.
Unfortunately, the Hun's base have methodically been deprived of education that would alert them to the dangers of the Great Orange Grifter.
That said, MAGA is also a personality cult, aka new religion; and as a former member of an international cult religion, and having a fairly decent knowledge about history, I willingly joined this door to door cult, but when I realized that critical thinking was not allowed, I was able to leave.
Many people with high IQs and an alphabet soup of degrees behind their names have also been attracted to many personality-based cults.
My take away from this mess is that we have a VERY important opportunity to address the basic causes of this situation and set the country on the track of a Progressive government that will embrace the future by learning from the past.
I am old enough to remember Hitler. To me Trump seems as demented and dangerous as the Fuhrer.
MEIN KAMPF was an authoritarian blueprint that Hitler wrote while he was an obscure jailed German.
Ex-president Trump provided his own MEIN KAMPF in his extraordinary interviews with Time Magazine. These reflected the authoritarian takeover in the voluminous Project 2025.
I am gobsmacked that the great majority of Americans are not frightened by Trump and his MAGATS.
He scares the hell out of me and the America that my grandchildren should inherit.
1) DISREGARD THE CONSTITUTION
2) CASTRATE THE JUDICIARY, THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, AND THE FBI
3) ONLY APPOINT INDIVIDUALS WHO STATE THAT THE 2020 ELECTION WAS STOLEN
4) BROMANCE WITH PUTIN, WHO SEEKS TO DESTROY THE SOVEREIGN STATE OF UKRAINE
5) ATTACK AND DESTROY HIS OPPONENTS.
I have witnessed the ravages of Hitler. I profoundly fear the ravages of Trump.
I share all that with you. Last line of "King Lear":
"The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long."
How apt that is, Anne-Louise.
It’s the propaganda that is delivered by 21st century technology.
When one is curious and educated and experienced by such a full life, it’s hard to imagine the consumption of Fox and social media 24/7 without ever picking up a book or newspaper.
Words matter. Propaganda rules. Unloved boys can become vengeful, power and adulation obsessed tyrants.
So true Christy. I post LFAA daily to my FB page, and have for years (!) now. Any pushback comes not from an ideological or factual basis but from a completely base recitation of half truths and half the story. Writing “Review the footnotes” falls on deaf ears. There is no curiosity.
There is only the chant of the hopeful destroyers.
Christy I watched videos of some of Hitler’s speeches. They were spellbinding and frightening.
I’m so worried for our grandchildren. I truly am. Yesterday I watched the documentary Bad Faith and am imploring people I know to watch it so they can gain a thorough understanding of the genuine threat the modern GOP poses. People are overwhelmed and so terrified they’re frozen with fear. They don’t even want to talk about it, but our voices are our strongest defense. We can’t afford to remain silent.
“People are overwhelmed and so terrified they’re frozen with fear”. I would add to that sentiment that we are exhausted. The new forms of communication give us fire hoses of opinion masguerading as information. Our options for sifting through that mess are HCR and occasionally the mainstream press.
Don’t ignore MSNBC with its legion of lawyers and judges who are working night and day to get out the truth. Even the horrible commercials cannot wipe out the reportage of these real public servants.
So very true. I know I am.
CNN is great at fear mongering. It's all apocalypse all the time.
Exactly! Those of us who understand who Leonard Leo, Stephen Miller, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, etc., are have a duty to our children and grandchildren to raise a row.
Please tell me how I can find that documentary, Bad Faith
https://www.google.com/search?q=bad+faith+documentary+streaming&oq=bad+faith+do&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgCEAAYgAQyBggAEEUYOTINCAEQLhiDARixAxiABDIHCAIQABiABDIHCAMQABiABDIHCAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIHCAYQABiABDIHCAcQABiABDIHCAgQABiABNIBCTcxMTBqMGoxNagCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Thank you Ally
I watched it on Amazon prime. Superbly produced.
I thought so too. That's where I just watched it. This whole Christian Nationalism snuck up on me. I kept hearing Evangelicals and I didn't know what that meant. The mining of church rosters was a real a ha moment for me.
Good to hear from you Keith…was thinking of you just the other day whilst reading HCR’s commenters & scrolling to see if you’d weighed in….I always read your posts and am enlightened by them. Live long and prosper! 🖖
Same here. Couple others as well; Will from CA being one of them. Several others with a depth of experience that I lack.
Agree, me too!
You are awake and paying attention. I have watched the oozing of evil (and it is evil) since Nixon, often masqueraded in good old boy terms (Reagan), or high-fluting racist blather (Buckley) and spread by Murdoch, our imported purveyor of bullschittery to the masses of asses. At look back before that gets us the Coup of 1933, and the non-violent civil war (relatively speaking) of post-Civil War and Jim Crow. Now we are seeing the culmination of decades of deliberate treasonous actions, using, of course, the patriotic blather of Goebbels, which resonates with the children and grandchildren of those who fought and/or died in a war you remember. Ukraine will not be the only country he will turn over to Putin. You are 100% right
The masses of asses!
You are in fine form today.
I stole it from a co-worker at NASA in the 60’s. Wish I could remember his name. I would try Google and see if he lived to write the book that he had the name for.
Indeed.
Hey, I just remembered his name. Ivan Nachman. Weird how brain lapses come and go…
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Thank you for laying out here what is constantly in my head.
Love me some like-minds since I live in a sea of red. It’s almost like a zombie land movie in this senior living home. I thought older was wiser but some people just get old and petrified. Not here though.
Jeri, I’m sure you are keeping the place jumping.
I try , but living around so many zombies is a challenge
Jeri, I woke up thinking of you. Can you remind any concious zombie that Trump will have you all in the streets if he gets the government he’s planning (drastic cuts in Social Security) and get to writing GOTV postcards? Blue Wave and/or Tony TheDemocrat will keep you busy. Some zombies may respond to challenges. Do you have any old enough to have been part of the “war effort” as children? That’s part of my “inspiration.” Have written my grandchildren that I’m working hard to leave them a democracy.
He scares the hell out of me, too, Keith. I worry that younger voters aren't aware of the historical context. I was born well after WWII, but - perhaps because of my Ashkenazi origins - I have always known about Hitler, and have educated myself about the Holocaust.
Timothy Snyder's short book "On Tyranny" should be required reading.
Ellen I find Anne Applebaum excellent on Russia, Putin, and Ukraine. Also, Snyder’s “on Tyranny” is an essential read.
Snyder has a long look at tyranny given his work on Russia.
Virginia You may recall that I unsubscribed from Snyder. I read his superb book BLOODLANDS. I found that he wasn’t seriously involved on Substack. He posted a series of historical lectures on Ukraine that had been a course for Yale students. One can read his book ON TYRANNY.
superb scholar, poor Substacker—in my opinion. He has published more stimulating articles elsewhere.
And roll back all legislation designed to slow global warming. Many of us will have to endure a T return to the White House for only a short while as we will either be killed by the environment or destroyed by chemicals produced by corporations. PFOS is everywhere in the US. Thank 3M for that....and they knew they were poisoning the environment and people in the 70s. But did nothing.
Susan, what I'm hearing you say is JOIN or DIE ...... hmm, sounds familiar somehow 😉
Nope....totally missed my point. We are not stopping global warming. Just watch the news each night of the weather devastation brought by tornados, floods and high winds and heat.
Thank you, Keith. I was born just 4 years after WWII ended, so I don't remember Hitler per se. But I am close enough in time to remember many of the Dads in my neighborhood, including my own, who fought bravely in that war and understood the intense danger Hitler posed to the world.
My father remembers hearing Hitler on the radio as a boy. In 2015 he told me Drumpf remainder him of Hitler.
And then voted for him twice, and probably will again.
He goes to church (he was never of a religious bent until now) and considers himself a loyal American.
I can't talk to him. Thank you for remembering accurately.
I am so sorry.
I'm only a little younger than Keith - he does remember accurately. And I remember Churchill.
After all this time...
I have an unusually long memory.
Anne-Louise You remain young at heart with oodles of wisdom!
Keith, one point in Heather's Letter that I haven't seen commented on much is trompy's lack of interest in expanding his base to capture Haley voters and independents. That's both foolish and frightening, as he seems confident that what once were his dog whistles, now full-throated calls to action (induce chaos and violence to vote counting, etc.) will be successful.
Doug I’ve seen articles elsewhere on this. Trump is either pigheaded (nothing new) or he is awaiting for Haley to genuflect before the orange orangutan.
Or he is waiting for the violence to start.
That's my vote.
Yes. It’s the post-election violence that I’m imagining.
He isn't interested in appealing to others because he has republican reps and senators out contesting the 2024 election already. They will all contest the results if Biden wins.
Thank you Keith. I take you at your word. Having been born in the USA in 1953, Hitler has always been difficult to imagine, as if he were some villain in a fairytale. My parents and grandparents never spoke to me about him.
Justin Hitler was fearful. My mother was born in Scotland. She and her relatives were frightened that Hitler would invade England.
Fortunately FDR told bold steps. (Lend Lease) to hep England and prepare the way for D Day (June 6, 1944 invasion of. France.)
Yes, Keith. And I remember when we in Virginia were “spotting” airplanes 24 hours a day. My father, too old for the draft, took the midnight to 4:00 am shift after a day’s work. It was scary times. In my “second childhood have returned to the “war effort.” This time can’t do “foot work,” but can do postcards (25 a day, of the most time consuming, 100 of the least).
Virginia I remember the ‘air spotter’ program. In retrospect it was primarily a citizen psychological involvement effort. 24-hours-a-day at least along the East Coast. I remember folks climbing up a water tower in Marthas Vineyard.
They were looking for Nazi planes. Many, many ‘sightings.’ Big hussle, but nary a Nazi plane. In fact, just before the end of the European war, the Nazis did sent one stripped down bomber across the Atlantic to miles away from the coast.
I was aware even at the time that no one REALLY expected to spot a plane, but who really knew? And you’re right. It got the community involved. So many in the community were involved in “the war effort” one way or another, that it was altogether a bonding experience in my already rather close country community.
Keith - may I share your incredibly important insights?
MaryPat I’d gladly rent a blimp so that you could scatter my middle-of-the-night babbling across our great (grape?) country.
Grape Country here! Cherries, apples and apricots, too!
Trump's next stage will be oracle, then living martyr, and finally divinely appointed king of the Empire. He proves with every post and rally and disclosure his truth: I am untouchable, I am all the fear you need to destroy those who shun you, hate you, bested you, called you out, made you feel small, showed you to be deplorable. He is becoming the very MAGA he claims to represent. I HAVE RISEN FROM YOU AND AM YOU AND WILL DELIVER YOU YOUR EVERY VICTORY. I am each of you. Exalted. Reviled. Revealed as your Savior. I have risen. You are saved and worthy. Gads, I think I captured the remaining Year of the True God-King-President.
Fred Alternately, Trump has feet of clay and will be washed away by enough common sense Americans.
Keith, perhaps, though I suspect remembered for the massive tax cut I got in 2020 or something like it. 👍
Fred. As someone who put his life on the line for his country, I remember Bone Spur Donnie for his calling folks who served ‘suckers’ and those who died in service to their country ‘losers.’
Trump is an across-the-boards loser who had/has a traitorous relationship with Putin.
As for Republican tax cuts helping you, me, or our country, I second George H.. W. Bush’s assessment: ‘voodoo economics,’ which has been reaffirmed ever since.
Agree. Only reflecting on the false memories that, like Naked Truth, are held to by his followers and apologists. If you give the sucker anything and they need to hide their shame for being taken, they will adore the shiny object and keep face. Cognitive Dissonance.
Keith, your comparison of Mein Kampf and the Time interview of fpotus is chillingly accurate. I've seen several places so far today "when someone tells you who they are, believe them". Well, he's told us, shown us, and shouted at us who he is. I believe him. I believe that is what some on our country want, with all their Christian hearts.
Tuba Trump the Antichrist come to save America? I hope that Jesus wouldn’t let such an Old Testament catastrophe to happen.
I'm reminded of a bumper sticker from my college days: "Jesus, save me from your followers."
Yea, verily and forsooth!
🤣🤣🤣
They Think he's the mythical Cyrus, whoever that is.
Justin Cyrus the Great was a long-time Persian ruler he created a seizable empire. I believe it was his son who stubbed his toe in Greece.
I am speechless that Trump used the word Reich in an ad. I can’t decide if I should assume he doesn’t know what it means, he’s even more befuddled than usual or he’s drugged to the gills while others post this stuff. Thank you for letting us know I haven’t seen any other reporting in this one.
Reich, yup, he said it.
Once he's said it a few times it becomes normalised.
Once normalised it becomes an issue, others say it.
Once it's an issue you only have two choices, vote this way or vote thst way - legitimate choices because everybody you know is saying it.
That's how the medicine goes down.
It helps, Christopher, when the U.S. Speaker of the House shows his "Christianity" by flocking like all the other cultists in defense of their cult leader who brags of pussy grabbing, by also-red-tie-costuming Speaker in public defense of same cult leader who has by two juries been found liable of sexual assault, who attempted insurrection, who defamed the crippled, the veterans, women needing to make their own health and family decisions, demonizing, too, our "hungry and poor" immigrants.
Those red tie guys actually sat in a row in the courtroom according to MSNBC commentators. Can you imagine being on the jury and seeing that? They might as well have been wearing red clown noses.
Chump is the epitome of the reformed sinner. The joke is on the cult. He is anything but reformed. They are the most deluded disciples
Aye, think Venn Diagrams - circles representing human frailties and failures of peoples with listening disabilities. The intersecting circles include one for Normalization of Deviancy plus one circle for our Inability to Imagine the Unimaginable and another, The Circle of What it is That We Don't Know What We Don't Know. The area defined by the overlapping circles graphically represents der tRumpian Fourth Reich. Fear a demented human more than a lion and never give a sword to a man who can't dance.
Oh, no, "never give a sword to man who can't dance". I don't fully recall but was trump presented with a sword on his first foreign trip that was to Saudi Arabia? Remember that segment when he was standing around that orb. Did he get a sword at that ceremony? If so, your warning is too late, he already has the sword &:we certainly know he can't dance!!! We see proof of that all the time!
I remember how awkward he looked.
He and Pence.
"Like" meaning "I agree".
Christopher - not everybody. Many people do pay attention I dare say and they are the “real” majority 🇺🇸🗽🗳️
I don't think that he doesn't know what it means. He's just ratcheting up his rhetoric to get the media to keep giving him all that free publicity. He can't help himself, he'll lie about anything, assume any public persona, so that he can stay in the limelight. He suffers from the capitalist cancer of more MORE and More at any cost.
He is ratcheting up his rhetoric abut also devoid of conscience so far as I can see, and would go full despot if we let him.
I think he loves the trials on one level. He is on every screen, front page, and every lip of pundits. Glory days, unless…
You're right Larry. I hope he goes so far as demanding to testify at his trial. I can't wait for him to go down in flames.
Trump doesn’t write his own ads, he probably doesn’t even see them! His cult is telling us exactly who they are and exactly what they stand for. We recently visited 3 WWII memorials in Europe. The Shoe Memorial in Budapest was extremely moving. People were lined up on the side of the Danube, told to take off their shoes(they were valuable), then they were shot and their bodies fell into the river. Then there was the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, another chilling reminder of how cruel man can be to their fellow man. Cheetuni is calling for violence in America, supported by scum like Rubio, Cruz, Johnson from Wisconsin and Speaker Mike, the Fake Christian to name a few. America is definitely under attack from within. I hope we survive!
They are daring us to fight back
The best place to fight back is at the ballot box. Success is the best revenge.
So true, and I hope that our traditional way of winning will hold. But we would be blind to not take HCR’s message to heart. Chump no longer cares about winning votes, he is depending on his zombie disciples to threaten and the Dems to cave when things get tough. Tougher than we have seen since the not-Civil War. If he cheats his way in, and that is what is planned, they will blather that Dems refuse to accept election results. Side note. They should not have accepted the farce of 2000. Prepare Dems, it will take more than votes.
“In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.” - Lincoln
AND, votes for sure. As never before, a vote is a terrible thing to waste.
Your last words should be on every Dems lips and and billboards everywhere.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad? Trump is said to have kept a book of Hitler's speeches at his bedside. He acknowledged being given the book.
Power tends to corrupt and ultimate power corrupts absolutely. Scary stuff.
That's why functioning checks and balances are needed, and a large part of why it makes sense to divide political power into equal votes. Our system would work a whole lot better if we took time to clear out some of the more egregious loopholes and short circuits.
Come on gods, hurry up!
Harland Crow may have gifted him. I hear he has a stash of Nazi crap…
He knows
They are claiming a staffer posted it and didn't notice the word "reich." Really? IDTS (I don't think so)
I’ve been looking for this on his Instagram but I can’t find it. Maybe he took it down. I wanted to share it on my Facebook page, hoping it might alarm a few people I know who are on the fence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/20/us/donald-trump-reich-video.html
I’m still a NYT subscriber so I wrote to Chris Cameron, thanked him and asked him to PLEASE keep writing about the reality of Trump!
They missed the Trump outrageous statement that Biden should have gotten the electric chair. Also, Trump’s Truth Social company lost more than $300 million in its first quarter as a public company, and its revenue fell to under $1 million.
Thank you! Maybe my brain needs to wake up a little more.
You can also find the apnews article here:
https://apnews.com/article/trump-election-2024-rhetoric-germany-antisemitism-31002afb91b642c0314223d19e51f427
This link is in the HCR Substack at the bottom, as she always links all the stories she references, but sometimes it isn’t clear which is which.
They should be afraid. Very afraid.
Maybe he meant the Religious Reich? Who knows.
Trump has read Mein Kampf and uses Hitler’s words as a roadmap to his own authoritarian impulses. What concerns me is the young people in our country who are potentially going to split Biden’s vote and Trump will win, legitimately. How to get the young people on board to see what their life will be under Trump? Another thing that is never raised, if Trump wins, he’ll never leave and that’ll be the end of our country as we know it. And then what?
"THE CREATION OF A UNIFIED REICH"?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WTF?! Has anyone ever before spoken of the United States as "a reich"? Does the term even have a generally understood meaning, i.e. is it intended to convey a specific vision? I don't know whether "yes" or "no" is the scarier answer. If yes, what is that specific vision and why haven't I heard about it when Trump's intended audience apparently has? If no what can it possibly mean other than an approving reference to Nazi Germany? The only thing keeping me from saying that this is the scariest thing I've ever read is that I don't quite understand what it means. Even so, it's still one of the scariest things I've ever read. I am shaken to my core.
They've gone from dog whistle to siren.
As President, he called Europe the foe,and nobody batted an eyelash. I just don't get it.
Our MSM is deaf, blind, and has no voice equal to Fox. Plus, Joe Kahn (NYT) said it’s not their job to save democracy. Somebody should have told the founders…
"Reich" as noun is simply not part of our common language, except in reference or connotation of the German NAZI regime.
If campaigning openly for a “UNIFIED REICH” doesn’t get the media’s attention, we can only surmise, they are willing participants in undermining our Constitution. Their silence is deafening.
Well, the NYT is definitely in the tank for the Yam.
Anything to sell papers, right?
Also, Sulzberger’s shorts are in a bunch because Biden won’t agree to give him a sit down interview.
A tabloid format might be more fitting.
Diane “the surmise” has left the building
Thank you, Heather.
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them.”
Please, let's give the credit for that where it's due, to Maya Angelou, who said: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." Trump has shown us who he is so many times that people have stopped paying attention. And he keeps getting more and more outrageous, talking now about his third term.
Years ago, I listened to a speech and something said stuck with me: be careful what you let into you life as you can let it take root. The theory was put that the first time something very "out there" is presented, the populace is alarmed or outraged. The second time they see/hear it, they think, oh, that again. The third time, it's established and the populace accept it. It becomes the norm.
This is simplistic, and it is certainly more than 3 times to achieve this, but I think you astute LFAA family get it. Too much of what Trump said in the past was "that's just the way he talks". We can't brush off his remarks.
Seems I saw that said in a slightly different way in a translation of Mein Kampf. So true.
In mass communication terms that's "shifting the Overton Window".
The first monkey to make the outrageous statement gets pilloried, but if enough monkeys keep chanting it and building on what was said, the group eventually accepts it as normal.
The Overton Window shifted on many aspects of our culture. I wonder how many MAGA are willing to give up their contraceptives if Project 2025 is in place? I hope the young people fired up to oppose Biden over Gaza consider that as well.
Same as ever, the Obergruppenfeuhrer's daughter/wife/mistress has always had access to safe birth control and always will.
It's another example of what drives "conservatism": There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. (Frank Wilholt)
That’s “just the way he talks” is a freaking excuse, not a reason. The reason is that he is a freaking A-hole. Plain and simple. And his followers or cult members are the same! Even if tffg were to disappear from the face of the earth, he has already opened Pandora’s box of hate.
"that's just the way he talks".
I have heard that line several times from less bellicose MAGA folks. But look at what he has already done!
Mad.
Or as he might say, third Reich.
Thank you for this post Dr. Richardson. The thing people need to realize is most polls are bogus. The largest estimated number of MAGA cult members estimated (that I have read) 30 million. There are about 310 million of us who are NOT MAGA cultists. People need to understand that these pollsters Average a total 1500 persons. They not poll all 50 States. They do not post their questions. And I strongly suspect they only poll those who answer their phones and are willing to talk.
You are absolutely correct Dr. Richardson, any educated person listening to trump will recognize his use of Nazi phrases, his promise of a dictatorship, and increasing evidence of dementia in his speech. I'm 13 years older than trump, and I've struggled to find the word I wish to use. Sometimes I just have to say what I mean and ask my listener for the correct word. I use a thesaurus a lot when I'm writing.
But I have never yet been incoherent.
What we, liberal/progressives need to do is reach out to independents and undecideds. Show them the difference in the choices and explain why it is so necessary to vote in this election.
The other thing our current government needs to do is have the National Guard on alert from November 5 though January 20. Because a small number of the MAGAts are violent, well armed, and stupid enough to attack,
But we've got to convince that 310 million pay more attention and to VOTE BLUE!
If I got the math right you are 90 years old but so coherent that you are an inspiration to this 82 year man and so much more lucid than Rump that I wish you were running. Thank you for demonstrating that age alone tells very little about a person’s competence, Rump and Biden are very nearly the same age but that is all they have in common.
Hope voting still is a thing… we are running blind too often
Jeri - that is what the former president is hoping for. He has no idea what he is really up against.
Hopefully, he will be swamped with blue.
“INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED DRIVEN BY THE CREATION OF A UNIFIED REICH,”
Would you like a sprinkle of gasoline on your salad?
I gotta match, sir...
Gas on salad? Or a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.......
He just needs to say it a few times and it becomes normalised.
Then when it's normalised, everyone you know says it.... except liberal commie socialist criminals.....
Then it's a simple two way vote.....
Just a spoonful of sugar
I just posted a remark and found yours, which supports yours.
How depressing this letter is today!!
The burr under my saddle today is how the media covered Biden's speech to the Morehouse graduates. Teen Vogue's headline read "Morehouse Students Turn Their Backs - Walk Out of Graduation as Joe Biden Gives Speech". Dramatic headline, right? Give me a break. As I read the article it says "several" students (not the implied 'many') and in reality he received a standing ovation and the chant of "four more years". Why wasn't that the headline? Enough said.
If Biden “were a Republican, he would have been given the electric chair, they would have brought back the death penalty.”
Trump is openly encouraging violence, and not just for the election. It seems to me that he should be arrested and charged with directly threatening and encouraging violence against the President of the United States, judges, government workers, and legislators. Why is this not the number one topic of concern of all normal, decent Americans, the FBI, Secret Service and the justice department?
Democrats must wake up and stop permitting Trump and the Republicans to constantly roll over the People with the insane and violent rhetoric before it is too damned late. Scary times.
Thank you, Professor.
Agree.
How is that going to happen when they find him a total of $10,000 for threatening rhetoric in a courtroom? It seems like everyone is afraid of them and they run away in their pink panties.
So the choice is kindness and decency or hatred and retribution. Seems simple.
I admire your faith.
DeSantis won his first term as Governor by a slim margin, many consider delivered by ENVIRONMENTALISTS because he promised to help the Everglades so they endorsed. Of course, any Democrat would and has consistently supported Everglades restoration. But DeSantis is a climate change denier and destroying any chance the state has to combat sea level rise and other environmental disasters. But one issue fanatical voters on the LEFT pushed DeSAntis to his first gubernatorial victory and now their own total state environmental disaster. This is a lesson for those on the Left who think Joe Biden is not 'pure enough' on their favorite issue. Recent article about DeSantis greenwashing here. https://airmail.news/issues/2023-8-19/a-snake-in-the-everglades
Total registered voters in Florida number 13,471,645. Republicans - 5,243,299; Democrats - 4,351,265; Minor parties - 343,932; & No Party Affiliation - 3,533,149.
Please quit blaming the Democratic voters for DeSantis winning. The Democratic Party has been putting little effort & funding into Florida as they are supporting other states where they feel they will have a better chance of winning. This is one factor in the domination of Republicans in our state legislature.
Someone needs to point out to DeSantis that pretending that global climate change doesn’t exist won’t make it go away. It didn’t work for “Red Tide Rick” Scott, & it won’t work for him.
Speaking of Florida and ongoing GOP climate change denial,DeSantis just (quietly) signed one of the most heinous laws ever. The law will take effect July 1. No shade, no water breaks !
“DeSantis nixes local efforts to protect outdoor workers from FL’s brutal weather
Governor signs the bill without his usual fanfare.”
https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/04/12/desantis-nixes-local-efforts-to-protect-outdoor-workers-from-fls-brutal-weather/
📣📣Floridians, here is the Senate/House vote history on HB 433( March 8) As Election Day nears, and the temps heat up, let’s shout out those legislators who voted against humanity.📣📣
https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2024/433/?Tab=VoteHistory
I said environmentalists, not Dems. DeSantis won by 42,463 votes. Almost 100,000 votes went to 3rd party, over 8M votes cast. So Jean, you missed the point so as to vent your social Jahad Dijour. Point is, it was a close election, very close, and the environmentalists were purists and endorsed DeSantis most likely giving him the election.
It’s fun to watch the climate change denier as Florida’s coasts sink into the ocean!! Keep voting for your madman, Florida!
Trump won Florida by 3.2% in 2020. Flip 2% and we win. Abortion, marijuana could increase voting 20%
IMHO spend $1MM on FT6 in Florida, and we can win. Probably more than a million unregistered trend Democratic.
https://www.fieldteam6.org/about-us
I am gratified to see the YouTube channels of Brian Tyler Cohen (whose also on MSNBC) and "Beau of the Fifth Column" use the term "REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS" as it is more than just abortion--the MAGA want to ban ALL contraceptives.
I wonder how many sexually active young people are willing to sacrifice their sex life and vote against Biden in the theory they are protesting Gaza?
If they are dumb enough to vote against Biden over Gaza, these are people we should hope are not reproducing!
My brother & his son live right on a river that empties into the Gulf of Mexico about 1/2 mile away. That storm that decimated the Gulf coast a year or so ago turned on the last day to make landfall south of Tampa. If it had targeted the area where my family lives their homes would have been part of the Gulf. They were very lucky. But really isn't it only a matter of time? The projections show that as climate change increases the ocean levels & the Gulf of Mexico will rise & en"gulf" (perfect word isn't it?) much of Florida.
One "bright spot", & great business opportunity, a whole new fleet & tourist attractions the "Glass-Bottomed" Boat tours of Florida!!!
"Frank Capra produced a series of science films for Bell Laboratories including: Our Mr. Sun (1956), Hemo the Magnificent (1957), The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957), and Meteora: The Unchained Goddess (1958).
It was in the ‘Unchained Goddess series that he focused an episode on climate science. Capra himself had a degree from Cal Tech in chemical engineering."
From the script:
Dr. Frank C. Baxter:
“Extremely dangerous questions. Because with our present knowledge we have no idea what would happen? Even now, man may be unwittingly changing the worlds climate through the waste products of his civilization. Due to our release through factories and automobiles every year of more than 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide, which helps air absorb heat from the sun, our atmosphere seems to be getting warmer.”
Richard Carlson:
“This is bad?”
Dr. Frank C. Baxter:
“Well, it’s been calculated a few degrees rise in the earths temperature would melt the polar ice caps. And if this happens, an inland sea would fill a good portion of the Mississippi valley. Tourists in glass bottom boats would be viewing the drowned towers of Miami through 150 feet of tropical water. For in weather, were not only dealing with forces of a far greater variety than even the atomic physicist encounters, but with life itself.”
https://ossfoundation.org/projects/environment/global-warming/frank-capra-warns-of-global-warming-1958/
Nationally broadcast in 1958.
And what if we had taken the hint? Nixon supported environmental issues and established the EPA. Carter was strongly pro-environmental protection. Reagan absolutely loathed it, and the momentum has not been the same since.
It is just 'matter of time' and it is already happening in notable events as you mention and street flooding. BUT look around other cities, Boston, Wilmington DE, Virgina Beach, D.C. and they are no better. Pensacola is high ground on the water, Mormon church bought/spent over $B buying land near there.
DC was built on a marsh so they really have problems. Black History Museum had to do major alterations in order to level it I think!
Human really have a whole lot of hubris thinking that they can bend nature to their will. It works for a while but then Mom Nature gets pissed & it all comes tumbling down or burns down etc. the lakes behind the dams fill with silt & eventually hold less & less water. It's just a matter of time for a lot of things!
Nature does what nature does. When we work with nature, we get things done. When we ignore the ways of nature, She always gets the last word.
Period.
The evil that men do lives after them.
the autocrat playbook. Get elected making popular promises, deliver on them, get a mandate reelection on the promises kept, then the real agenda can be implemented. DeSatan has done just that.
The one lucky thing we have is term limits, so the Orange Clown wantabe and bootlicking workerbee is gone end of this term.
You are thinking the rules matter to them. Understand, they don't have any and neither do the republicans.
Thank you, Ma'am, for another 'sobrifying' essay (i.e., sobering + terrifying).
🤝
Kudos to people like Ms Courtney Gore for having the integrity to reject Trump by owning her part in Trump's sheiße storm and repudiating the hypocrisy. People like Ms Gore will be powerfully persuasive to undecideds.
⚖️
Can not tell what's blowing harder: the trumper tantrums or seasonal tropical storms.
😱
The threats, overt and implied, are serious and may be an early sign of wide-spread violence. I will fight, if I have to. Though I can barely hit the side of a barn. I thank G-D that the typical M.A.G.A. militia man is as wide as a barn.
😊
With the turmoil, things are beginning to feel like a re-run of 1968.
Reply from a friend in Iran who I contacted when I saw that the helicopter had crashed: "We certainly seem to be in some kind of vortex 😱".
Living in turmoil requires some radically difficult adaptive capacities and so I search for what helps me deal. I am led to the "Compass Questions" (and other content) at the website of Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) https://decolonialfutures.net/compass-questions/. What I read in this HCR newsletter helps my intellectual comprehension but what's going on somatically requires other coping, including the practice of rotating my compost tumbler.
Thank you, Joan. I will check that site. I am not sure I am connecting with your thinking when I make this comment. Forty-plus years ago, I read a sociology book on suicide by Emil Durkheim. In that ponderous work, if my shrinking grey matter serves, Dr Durkheim noted that suicide rates rise sharply when there is a wide-spread feeling of 'anomie' among people; I inferred that anomie meant that sinking feeling that one's world is falling apart. We may be in just such a period, now; perhaps something like anomie -- of a world in threatening flux -- is what your Iranian friend meant by a vortex. Thank you, again, for a thoughtful response.
Ned, thank you. "Anomie" is a new word for me and what you describe as a "sinking feeling that one's world is falling apart" is not new to me. Creativity makes use of destruction so I've learned to notice the opportunities in times when things are falling apart; even though it can be painful, it's inevitable and as normal as the natural world. What Shahrzad meant by the vortex I cannot say but we became friends by being in a group of globally dispersed citizens with a common interest in, "Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism".
Joan,
Thank for an insight filled with the wisdom forged with experience, strength, and, yes, hope in spite of it all. 💖
Ned.
Nice thought, the dimensions of the MAGA militia man/female. You know, this is getting to the stage when I think Biden and his team will be able to sort it out, with kindness and negotiation.
As a former risk manager and a Pisces, I am rarely one way or the other; so I assign percentages to things . . . utterly subjectively. I am 55-60% confident, within me, that President Biden will succeed and that this virulence unleashed by the demagogy that enables evil around the world will recede. Thank you for answering, Anne-Louise.
I remember 1968, we are so far down the rabbit hole…
This looks more like a rat hole.
So true, rabbit warrens are sanctuaries for cute “cuddlies”
I don't see a lot of parallel to 1968 except that social discord and the useless war was rending national unity. I think we have ventured into far more perilous territory.
Jeri and J.L., I should be more specific and more transparent. In 1968, I was all of eleven years old and living a world away in Australia. Thank you for your responsive exchange with each other.
What reminds of 1968 are the protests, often led by students, around the world. We are in a more fluid, flammable place like 1940 -- if analogies are serviceable at all. The irony of today versus 1968, for me at least, is that the rejection of "the establishment" comes from the right-wingnuts like Representatives Marjorie Flailer Spleen and HazMatt Gaetz.
The most menacing difference for me is that there was an optimism still around in 1968 that we could make our society and culture better; that we could bring down a government pursuing a ghastly war; and, that peace was a possibility. These days, there seems to a profound pessimism, even nihilism, driving events. That worries me.
“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”
- Maya Angelou
Dismissing Trump's initial actions and rhetoric allowed him time to consolidate power. This has made it harder to stop his take-over of the GOP. His destructive agenda is in plain view now.
VOTE
Thank you Professor.
It seems that if yelling "Fire in a crowded theater" was once the line for freedom of speech, yelling "Open fire in a crowded theater" would be considered far worse. The fact that Trump is apathetic about engaging more moderate Republican voters while increasing his hateful rhetoric is important insight as to his intent after an election loss.
The fact that he remains free to wreak havoc upon the American system, while extremist and/or corrupt judges remain seated on the bench is a flashing red indicator as to the state of justice (or lack thereof) in the United States.
The Justice Department, historically, has vigorously pursued leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated to peace, justice, and equality in America. I suppose if he had been calling for the "Proud Boys" to stand up and stand by -that would just be another ordinary day in the "land of the free".
Falsely crying "fire" in a theater, which had occurred resulting in deaths, was originally used by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes to justify imprisoning Americans opposing the draft, but was later reinterpreted more narrowly. Still, while wanting to err on the side of free speech, I have trouble when lies, especially told by persons entrusted with public responsibilities, result in deaths with no legal consequences; and there has been quite an uptick in that lately. Lies certainly can kill, be it about matters of health, racism, sexism, homophobia, war, etc.
“These guys are Nazis, they’re boogaloo boys, they’re Proud Boys. These are the same people we fought in World War II,” Milley said a week after the attack on the Capitol.
So very true. One need not look far into recent events when Americans confronting a deadly, highly contagious pandemic were told to drink bleach as a remedy.
I have more to say, however I'm traveling and using a small keyboard and display instead of my diva-like home office configuration. I do believe that there is a line and the point I make (beyond yours with regard to public responsibility which I whole-heartedly agree) is that the line varies with the level of education and information in a society. A better educated and informed society is equipped to discern evidence-based facts from lies, propaganda, and disinformation and therefore, from my perspective, the line shifts.
Certainly education is protective as well as instructive, yet I know a number of very well educated people who are Trump fanatics. One of those seems to have undergone a dramatic personality change to do so. I am serious when I say that I think of cult dynamics as a kind of mental malware.
I also think that "education" per se is a somewhat nebulous category. I am unconvinced that education centered on improving SAT scores. whcih seems dominant, is improving keen observation and empirical, critical thinking skills. My wife was a teacher, and I think teachers struggle within the constraints they are given (I know of some who left the profession dispirited by "teach to the test") but we as a society must be missing something for irrationality to be on such a roll.
It seems to me that the two core mental skills a human needs to be "well" educated is to be empowered to determine though logic and evidence, what is likely to be true, and what likely is not, and also to have a grasp, as individuals and as a society, on what sort of choices are most likely to matter for reasonably secure and fulfilling lives.
Indeed -and thank you. I am intentionally abstract by the term education in order to be concise (a characteristic with which I frequently struggle). Certainly "informed' and "engaged" are also purposefully abstract. I'm guided by the unwritten rule a mantra must be 100 pages or less. :)
I am not saying I think that you are being vague, but that we as a culture might benefit from clarifying terms we use every day on which there is usually only a very fuzzy consensus as to meaning. I think it is statically true that those with more education of any sort are less likely to fall for big lies, yet oddly many are just the same. So does the kind of education make a difference? And what of education that does not take place is school? We do we as a culture do or not do to encourage enriching experiential learning? Can one gain vast education yet be lacking in wisdom? We as ostensible citizen/managers of our own society need to discuss such things, but endless sales pitches of one sort or the other are hogging most of public spaces.
Yep. When I used the word "djinn" I did so in full conscience of its meaning.
And lies about Covid killed hundreds of thousands in the US
I agree with you George 👍!We need to keep TRUMP out of the White House!!!
Dr. Richardson - your letters are full of critical information. I fear that it is not being seen by any but those who subscribe. Have you considered trying to bring your wisdom to newspapers and internet sites where those who are desperately in need of better information will be able to read it (if they read at all?). Maybe it is time for you to appear on Fox and Friends? I know that this would be difficult (your work life is already busier than most could tolerate) but these facts need to be seen by everyone, and especially the “undecided”.
Excellent point. She is indeed singing to the choir. And as part of the choir I much appreciate her take. Also I often share these letters on my social media accounts where folks with much less singing chops will see them.
But what about those MAGA’s not in Facebook, on which I post HCR’s letters daily? I have sent them in email and text messages to my most MAGA friends & family. Then told to stop forwarding them or I will lose those family & friends. I have lost some, but others are dear to me. Now I can’t even bring up anything even remotely political.
She has a million followers on Facebook.
It is OUR job to amplify her voice. If you watch her plitics chat, she often answers the "what can i do?" questions.
Forward her letter to friends and relatives. Write your own letters to the editor based on what you have learned. WE have to step up. Run for office. Support a candidate. VOTE.
She is doing her part. You do yours.
Heather is up to 1.8m followers on FB now.
A Robertson, your suggestions are the very best i have seen in a very long time. It sure would benefit our cause tremendously if Dr. Richarson's excellent work could be seen nationwide!
I have watched her when she is on a panel discussion, and she is excellent at explaining so everyone can understand. She’s better than any other panelist!!