Trump’s lawyers rested their defense of the former president today, putting an end to the testimony we will hear in the case. Trump did not testify. Trump's refusal to take the stand encapsulates the MAGA approach to politics. Since the 2020 presidential election, he and his surrogates have made repeated accusations and statements about how the system is rigged against them and alleged there is evidence that proves them right.
For most of my youth, it seemed that Joe McCarthy's legacy was infamy, but it seemed that after Nixon's disgrace, Republican's drew the lesson that if you are going to lie, then lie really BIGLY, always attack, and never, ever, ever admit fault. Apart from serving the very, very wealthy, it is now the core modus operani of the party.
"You didn't come out guns blazing and just challenge them. You showed weakness," Trump told the friend, according to Woodward. "You've got to be strong. You've got to be aggressive. You've got to push back hard. You've got to deny anything that's said about you. Never admit."
That's just what Trump's followers are doing. Denying and not admitting the truth. Of course their "truth" is distorted by their allegiance to a liar and a cheat.
Dave, I really hope not, but wouldn't be surprised since they should have just let the lower court's decision stand. There was a meme on Facebook showing Alito upside down. Both he and Thomas should recuse themselves. They won't of course because they are totally without decency and integrity.
And if it was televised they would not show it on Fox "Entertainment". I was at the French Lick Indiana Resort. I walked into an empty room and they had the television turned to Fox News. I turned the television off!
We don’t need him to stop lying which won’t happen anyway simply because he’s in his own world in his head. We need the press to stop fanning his flames by giving him and his followers so much print and air time. Psychologists agree hearing a falsehood enough times eventually leads to believing it’s true. Can we please just put a gag on this snake oul salesman’s show and be done with him? Yes what he’s dine and been makes him news. But how about burying it on the back pages instead of blaring it above the fold?
Here is a piece I wrote for my book, "Donald's Vanity Tantrums." It neatly reveals where and why od TFG. I now hate saying his name anymore. Enjoy.
The Citizen Kane Movie of Tomorrow: Citizen Trump
February 17, 2024
The classic movie Citizen Kane directed, produced, and starred in by Orson Welles will one day in the future, have a remake only this time the main pseudo-fictional character will be Donald Trump. The movie scene will open with a very bloated relic of his former self; uneven orange-smeared makeup slobbed across his face in bed. His overgrown blond hair is found similar to the muss of Boris Johnson’s now showing gray roots from lack of up-to-date hair dye. He periodically wakes from a semi-conscious state at his future dilapidated Mar-a-Lago residence (for lack of having sufficient funds to upkeep the property due to previous constant litigation and losses.) He looks around demanding more Kentucky Fried Chicken wings as low paid personal rush in another bucket and his last word is not “Rosebud” as in the movie Citizen Kane but:
“Stormy.” And the ex 45th president of the United States expires. The camera fades to black then opens at Le Club in the early disco 1970s, a members-only Manhattan nightclub in the East 50s, where models, fashionistas and a variety of Eurotrash (including his wife) went to be seen.
“The government has just filed suit against our company,” said Trump, “saying we discriminated against Blacks. What do you think we should do?”
The Roy Cohn obedient ass-kisser to Senator Joe McCarthy hearings accusing entertainment personalities of being communists shoots back, “Tell them to go to hell and fight the thing in court and let them prove you discriminated against them.”
Roy Cohn has become Trump’s go-to lawyer and fixer.
Cohn admonishes the young Trump to 1. Never settle. Never surrender. 2. Counter-attack, counter-sue immediately. 3. No matter what happens, no matter how deep into the shit you get, claim victory and never admit defeat.
These lessons were found to be the essential attributes of his future self.
You really had me, Mr. Katz, you’re imagining a new film about the rotting-away of the evil Orange Idiot, a movie based on an old, amazing masterpiece. Your description was captivating, the possibility fascinating … SCREEEEEEEEEECH!!!
WHY? WHY would you spoil the brilliant ending of a movie, any movie, especially a cinematic masterpiece? Infuriating, one of my fiercest pet peeves. No, not everyone has seen it, not all of us have seen ALL the movies. Yes, I’ve seen Citizen Kane. Several times. NO, there is no excuse for spoiling ANY film. When we spoil endings, we steal the delight, the searing enormity of a moment from another person. There is no excuse for it.
Ok Gang, what are we going to do about it meaningfully? Please focus now and for the next 5+ months on registration and turnout of voters 18 to 29! They are focused personally on protecting reproductive rights, effective gun safety legislation, and really battling climate change. Young women will lead them. But I respectfully submit that our focus should be only on truly “competitive” House districts and Senate states. Agree? Brilliant Harvard students and their local recruits are at work right now in 78 competitive CDs and 14 Senate elections as you read this and in more than 1,300 high schools registering tens of thousands of new voters! And in 378 Community Colleges located only in “competitive” CDs and Senate races, they have started the initial push to register and turnout hundreds of thousands of motivated new voters! Time for each of us to lend a helping hand so please contribute generously at www.TurnUp.US and pass their message on to your friends and family! They will make the critical difference! No time to waste to save our democracy, I am sure you agree? Thanks.
Most people learn from their life experiences including their mistakes and failures. Some people learn the wrong lesson and double down on dishonesty. I don't get it because in the long run, that is a self-destructive path. Most of the people in Prof. Richardson's article illustrate that perfectly. Those fellas in the trump costumes outside the courthouse the other day reminded me of that. Everyone who's hitched their wagon to trump is in a world of trouble which will increase and they appear to be totally blind to that fact.
Do you think it's possible that Trump doesn't care if he wins (no actual on the ground campaign!) because he's just been riling up the base to rebel again when he loses? I don't want to think this but I read something somewhere that started the thought....
HCR's introduction in her book, "How the South Won the Civil War," makes it clear, IMO, that the oligarchs trick the white Protestant racists into thinking that they are part of them, (i.e., the oligarchs who exploit them financially,) because they are white. They (the whites) reap no benefit for themselves by voting Republican. This ruse was used before the Civil War and is being used now. ("What's the Matter with Kansas" by Thomas Frank.) MAGA is 21st century KKK.
That book nearly broke my heart. My father, very very poor white trash from Florida, still uses the n word and would be appalled if you called him a racist. He's found religion too. He remembers hearing Hitler on the radio, served in the Air Force, built AWACS for Boeing and had a high security clearance.
I'm so sorry. He sounds like my recently departed Father-in-Law. USAF veteran who, when tasked with finding qualified Black pilots to join the Air Force One cadre, assumed he couldn't find any because of <pick your racist belief here, he had 'em all> rather than the fact that they had, because of military segregation, not had the same opportunities that he had to learn how to fly. He, too, voted for fpotus twice.
Your father’s conversion sounds eerily like my British mother’s conversion to maga crazy. When she first arrived here she was appalled by how racism was so tolerated and openly accepted, and wrote home about it. My uncle said she was incensed with how Black people were being treated. In the end, she had fully flipped the switch and sounded like the very people she once deplored and voted for trump twice and proudly sneered she would again. Ironically, she watched WWII movies until the day she died, bemoaning the holocaust and fascism without seeing the similarities between trump and hitler. She did regret voting for DeSantis, however.
Jen, long ago I hoped that the explicit racism his generation (and that of my parents, although my parents weren't at all what I'd call racist -- my dad voted for Obama twice) expressed would die with them. Sadly that is not true, but there is hope that children reject the biases of their parents, as you evidently have.
I have a sinking feeling that the repubs have a plan to resurrect some version of the KKK if he wins (or if he doesn’t) so that their generational hatred is kept alive in our friends, neighbors, and family.
Jeri, MAGA is already KKK. Remember the marchers at Charlottesville in 2017? "Jews will not replace us." And the push for a white Protestant autocracy - that's KKK. Timothy Egan's book, "A Fever in the Heartland," about the rise of the KKK in the Midwest in the 1920's leaves one with this takeaway: MAGA is 21st century KKK.
Richard Sutherland - I read "A Fever in the Heartland" last week. I have about 15 pages with post-its on them, starting with Chapter 9 on page 104. On page 106, Egan discusses Dr. Harry H. Laughlin. Laughlin apparently believed if you allowed strong healthy animals to be crossed only with other strong healthy animals, then "weaker" humans, such as "imbeciles" and degenerates," i.e. homosexuals should be sterilized so as to not weaken the gene pool.
In the book, Egan comments that Indiana passed the world's first eugenic sterilization law in 1907, and that ultimately, about 70,000 people across many states were forcibly sterilized. Other targets for sterilization included Blacks, immigrants, Jews, (the KKK at that time also targeted Catholics, but I don't recall reading if they were advocating sterilizations for Catholics), and those with diseases such as epilepsy. German proto-Nazis were strongly influenced by Laughlin's work.
I could go on, but would rather encourage everyone on this forum to read the book. It's shocking at what so many people were drawn into!
Now we come to Project 2025, and trump's words. I saw a video clip from his appearance in Minnesota last weekend where he said something like, "Racehorses, I like racehorses because they are fast." Sounds innocuous at first, but does it perhaps give a wink and a nod to Laughlin's beliefs, because we all know that racehorses are bred to be fast, cattle and pigs are bred to provide more meat, and turkeys are bred to have larger breasts for more white meat.
If trump wins in November, will we see a resurgent KKK openly advocating for white supremacy? I hope not, and will do whatever I can to convince others of the danger ahead should trump win.
My dad (1900-1980) lived his entire life in Texas. He could not accept Blacks and Hispanics as “equals.” IMO it was a case of implicit bias. He had never seen a well educated and well dressed African American or Hispanic.
Too true TC. But it goes back a little bit further to at least Benjamin Harrison's Presidency. Many of HCR's newsletter readers have also read "Wounded Knee" which goes into great detail the corruption of the Republican Party led by Harrison.
The Republicans thought they had sidelined Teddy Roosevelt from his progressive ideals, but that all ended when McKinley was assassinated in August, 1901.
We cannot pigeonhole Trump. He needs to be found guilty by our Federal and State justice systems.
Did Goebbels ever write a book? The Art of Convincing? By then I guess his career was already made and he'd diversified to microphone technique. "McCarthyism" enriched the international language - in naive post-war Australia, we thought above all that the rule of law was particularly one-eyed and merciless in America (with uneasy compassion for the ruined careers). It was never clear that he'd made it all up. You just didn't do that sort of thing. Heather's Letter brings some comfort today.
Mr Leo cannot, however, be blamed for living in an immensely powerful country whose institutions have become so threadbare that it can select an extreme security risk as Commander-in-Chief... This, quite apart from all those decades as a notorious conman, systematically cheating contractors... and the IRS... just for starters.
My post starting "There was another" seems to have vanished. Pity, the attached article was a very detailed (true) story. There's plenty on the internet, but that one was very good. Google "Willi Münzenberg", or combine Willi Münzenberg Rupert Murdoch and see what comes up.
I was thinking of Mr. Moloch, of course, when I spoke of damage...
This man clearly understood too much, and paid the price.
Must have influenced Goebbels...
Most of the more respectable US press has a whiff of a capitalist Pravda about it... Yet, given the dirty looks I got in the Deepest Deep South when carrying a copy of the NYT, it might as well have been Pravda...
Seems to be similarities in trying to leave the Party he once believed it, after he saw what it was becoming (or looked a bit more under the covers at what it secretly had been longer than anyone thought).
Many wouldn't want to believe what they came to see until they tried to leave the party. Political factions shouldn't be like Mob Gangs where lack of loyalty can be deadly.
I learned to consider different perspectives in many ways, but an early one was from a life long Republican that had been Paul Robeson's locker-mate at Rutgers. He wouldn't tolerate careless criticism of such a talented person for something as simple as his skin color, or as deep as why Robeson would not denigrate communism (without looking at the flaws in our own society).
George, I’ve become so tired of the phrase “no smoke without fire”. My Trumpist neighbors are fond of proclaiming “why are they investigating Biden if there’s nothing there?” The idea that 45 is just throwing his own actions (hidden or obvious) against the wall has not occurred to them. 45 (and his minions) are counting on the public not being able to keep up the fact checking of the lies so that some sneak through: “See, if it’s not true, why isn’t Biden offering the proof?”
Thank you Mary -it’s why my mantra has become any meaningful attempt at democracy requires an educated, informed, and engaged society.
We are drowning in gaslighting, lies, propaganda, and hypocrisy. The MAGA/GOP investigates “the weaponization of investigations” while doing exactly that!
George, it’s like a horde of mosquitoes or moles. We have to mentally fight the feeling of being overwhelmed and do our part to ensure that he isn’t our next president.
Recently, at a Global democracy conference in Bucharest, I had the honor to meet speakers from Tblisi, Georgia and Kyiv, Ukraine. Their commitment and courage in the face of great danger filled me with the inspiration to keep moving forward.
It’s also important to take extra good care of yourself during these times. As people have reminded us “Do your work, then step back” -give yourself a chance to rest, recover, and then do what you can to continue to patiently help people understand what is happening to the societal aspirations toward democracy, justice, and equality.
I’m fascinated by the use of the lie in Russia to develop its conviction of empire. The Germans planted the big lie in Russia by sneaking the super conniver Lenin into the chaos of revolution.
Lenin organized the gigantic lie that was Communism and then those theorists, for 70 years, kept forcing the lie over the bodies of millions of dead people.
Kruschev revealed the terrible Stalin lies then Gorbachev blew out the wispy flame only to have Putin resurrect it as Fascism with an Eurasian empire.
Now the cancer of perpetual lying to justify personal power has spread to MAGA America and thoroughly saturated rightwing media we witness the attempted thwarting of justice by the Trump dynamic to develop his empire.
Thanks Hap -it almost seems that the lying and the political system are just tools in the hands of narcissists who will do anything to concentrate wealth and power.
From “Freedom and Government” an essay by Bertrand Russell
"The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity.
The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other."
The very first time I had the honor to meet Noam Chomsky it was at his office (at the time, at MIT).
Not only was it intimidating to meet Noam (“I’m not worthy was playing on loop in my head”) the feeling was magnified by a poster of Bertrand Russell on Noam’s office wall. A very stern looking Bertrand Russell.
They licensed their name for Drumf Towers in every other sphere of Influnce countries. But those towers/buildings are vehicles of money laundering for Putin and his oligarghs. To claim the money they have mined out of Russian industry, they first have to get it out of the country. Real estate is the easiest way to do this. Maga likes this because TFG doesn’t need banks any more, just shady Russian investors to buy his condos and licenseee his name with none of his skin in the game. This scheme started after the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are even references to this laundering strategy in popular movies from the 90’s to 2000 when it was still a new phenomenon. ( Boondock Saints, The Equalizer, We Own the Night). New York City, Brighton Beach, Boston, London. The Russian Mafia filled a vacuum on the East Coast after a certain NY prosecutor took down the Italian American Mafia. The big difference with the Russian Mafia is that they work for the Russian foreign intelligence services for additional funding, dirty work, bribes, payoffs, set up compromat, and make donations to political campaigns.
Truth and decency connect to the human -- to ways the best among us have learned to grow.
But most schools around the world today hew to the dehumanized.
No school in the world can admit the human. They've pretty much all fallen instead for the ur-rational: linear-think, easily-labeled categories, and simple causality by the chronological, sequential, and mechanical. This isn’t life, of course. Not human, not natural. But their opposite, school conceits as packaged, programmed, and abstracted, interchangeable units, all fit the machine-gradable, computer gradable standardized tests beloved of our ruling living dead.
Most schools promote such death trips. But it serves the packages, demagogue or biz ed corporate. Of course. No humans need apply. No humanities apply.
The lack of emphasis on the liberal arts and the focus on business and stem is leaving half of our thinking capacity behind. The liberal arts is the “if and why”, Stem is the “ what and how” . You need both for a progressive society. John Dewey is very focused on the principle that democracy can only survive with the truth.
I hope this is not true everywhere. My granddaughter in Prague has a long list of “classics” which is given to students when they enter high school. These books have to be read and the student is required to select some of them on which he or she will answer questions during the final oral exam.
Clever, Sophie. I like it. I am not sure that I am particularly creative, but I do know I have flagged every computer course I have ever taken. Perhaps, I lack that binary aspect. Sure feel out of step with my time. No, not better but painfully obsolete.
Phil, Christopher & Ned, I suspect the imbalance between linear, either/or computer-code thinking in our schools (and much of our society at large) that you decry is a product of the biological bicameral structure of our brains with left side which harbors most of the activity for speech and "scientific" factual analysis and the right side wherein we perceive larger patterns and meanings and which can hold both sides of paradox, like faith, at once [see The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist]. This battle between the different ways of thinking between the two sides has been and will likely remain a source of difference between and among educators and all of us to some degree. Your brains have obviously been more able to synthesize the perspectives of both sides of your brains better than most! "In The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, the product of 20 years of research, renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist delves into the world of difference between our two hemispheres and argues that the formal structures of modern society significantly -- and dangerously -- prioritize the left brain, resulting in a culture shackled by rigidity and bureaucracy, driven by self-interest, and ultimately incapacitated by its own imbalance."
I once took a test for right-vs-left brain thinking. Came out hare-brain. 😉😱🥳 Seriously, John, thank you for taking the time to write out a thoughtful and compelling response. ✌️😇🤝
P.S. Just re-took free samplers. Still strongly right-brained and strongly introverted (i.e., anti-social with a good vocabulary 😉). The point you make, John, really is what left-brainiacs would be prone to declare presumptively: that it is mission critical.
💡
Three and a half years ago, I re-read 'Theodicy' by Leibniz to see if I could better understand this best-of-all-possible-worlds scheiße.
To my surprise, the second time through, after a generation of my stepping away from the bog, made sense when I applied the framework of the 17th century tome-aine poisoning to modern financial thinking about optimization of investment portfolioes.
😯
What came clear to me -- and this is where your valuable insight comes in, John -- is that free-will is out of balance. In Modern Portfolio Theory, idiosyncrasies (e.g., the personalities of C.E.O.s or H.R. policies) among companies cancel each other out in a portfolio of fifteen-to-twenty diverse stocks or bonds.
🤔
That is to say: in the 'real' world (i.e., the tug-of-war between individualism and determinism), the free wills of individuals tend to cancel each other out to yield a determined and balanced collectivity of will.
⚖️
The problem with our NOT-best-possible -- or sub-optimal -- world may lie in these idiosyncratic factors NOT cancelling each other out. This imbalance occurs in times like this one where left-brain thinking super-ordinates other modes of mind (e.g., the repeated failures of technocrats) or when an ideology seduces a large majority of the people (e.g., nazism / stalinism).
😳
That imbalance creates problems to be redressed, often passively (e.g., crawling into climate change mitigation), always painfully (World War II). The world will re-balance with or without us. That is our choice. 😱
Angels IN America, Christopher . . . One of the most important theatrical events to have occurred in the early aughts. And one which the homophobic neofascists and christofascists would probably ban today. It's appalling that, despite all the mess of the first decade of the 21st century, it was in some ways a better world to live in than now for non-cis, non-white, non-penis-wriggling people.
Hope you just made the sign of the cross, Christopher, like a good RC:). Haven’t heard that trio expression in a long time, only when I go back home to MA. Although I do use myself, as a prayer of course:)
As always, the historical context you provide gives a continuity to events I hadn’t realized were related, such as today’s connection between McCarthy, Cohn and Trump. It shows who Trump is trying to emulate, when he isn’t channeling Hitler.
And in typical Trump fashion, he’s now trying out the newest claim about the FBI search warrant and deadly force by taking something common place and throwing it against the wall to see what sticks. The gag order lies about stopping him from testifying seemed to play well for him but with the trial drawing to a close he’ll need a new one and so he’s trying this on for size. He also often seems to try irrelevant words on for size when describing and insulting people without seeming to understand their actual meaning. Referring to Judge Merchan as conflicted is an odd choice of descriptions to me. To quote from one of my favorite movies, “You keep using that word. I do not think that word means what you think it means.”
There are many who have known about Cohn mentoring Trump in his early years. Unfortunately, it was well hidden when we needed to know before the 2016 election.
This was written in Politico back in 2019: 'Roy Cohn, who has been described by people who knew him as “a snake,” “a scoundrel” and “a new strain of son of a bitch,” is the subject of a new documentary out this week from producer and director Matt Tyrnauer. It’s an occasion to once again look at Cohn and ask how much of him and his “savage,” “abrasive” and “amoral” behavior is visible in the behavior of the current president. Trump, as has been well-established, learned so much from the truculent, unrepentant Cohn about how to get what he wants, and he pines for Cohn and his notorious capabilities still.'
I seem to recall press and magazine hints and implications throughout the long Roy Cohn/tfg association in terms of questionable practices from 1973 until Cohn's aids related death in 1986. Cohn, of course, cut his political chops assisting Senator Joseph McCarthy and turned around to coach tfg and introduce him to such stellar "movers and shakers" as Manafort and Stone. The seeds were there for decades.
"Crucially, they make those arguments only in front of television cameras or on podcasts and radio. They refuse to make them under oath in a court of law, where there are penalties for lying."
In consultation with his BFF Bill Barr, Mueller infamously did not subpoena Trump to testify under oath. Instead he allowed Trump to answer questions cherry-picked by Trump's lawyers. Most of the answers were essentially non-answers. Without Trump's testimony under oath there was no way to establish intent and therefore no way to prove conspiracy. It undermined the investigation and permitted Trump et al to scream 'Russia Hoax' - which they still do. Now, in NYC, if only one juror is convinced that the prosecution did not make their case, Trump walks. Meanwhile, the Federalist Society Supreme Court majority is obstructing Jack Smith's case. Justice delayed is justice denied. To we the people.
So if the Thomas Supreme Court rules that Trump had total immunity, then Biden can indeed get Trump executed as a danger to American society and never be held accountable. MTG could be included in that cleanup for good measure. I do like the sound of that scenario, but the usually quiet adult on my shoulder is asking, "If so, then where will such actions stop?"
No, we have to beat the f-ers at the ballot box and restore normalcy to our politics.
Great expression, Jerry: "the usually quiet adult on my shoulder". I've got one of those too who sometimes stops me from ranting on when others want to just move on, at least for the moment.
Unfortunately, these "f-ers" have also managed to ruin our justice system following years of careful planning (credit where credit is due), so we now have only the ballot box to save us.
And who knows what is in store for us on election day if the results are anything less than a Democratic landslide? The pressure is on all of us now.
I have one too. She begs me to keep my mouth shut around my husbands vast (catholic) family who are in the trump delirium (save 1 aunt - that makes 3 of us)
As when my neighbor came over for a chat sporting his “I Identify as NonBidenary” tee shirt. I suggested he turn it inside out, then dropped the matter.
I agree, Jerry. Promoting a belief that the courts are going to save the American people from authoritarian rule always has always been a disservice. The media and the two parties have colluded in distracting the citizens with a delusional fantasy. If voters do not turn out in record masses, they most certainly will be ruled by an authoritarian realm in which oligarchs govern and wealth buys a governance of unbounded privileges over the masses of workers. Originalism embraces a Constitution without a Bill of Rights.
WRITTEN ELSEWHERE. DRs LEE & COX RICARDSON should collaborate. Their aggregated knowledge would not only be compelling, but also frightening. Dr Lee explains how Trump's mental illness feeds ever more outrageous lies and enables similarly anti-republican behaviors from people like the preppy whore, Tucker Carlson.
Unfortunately, the Goldwater Rule is preventing experts from informing the rest of us just how precarious things are right now. The Goldwater Rule forbids psychiatrists from making analytical judgements about public figures whom they have not met directly.
😱
Dr Bandy Lee is one psychiatrist, on the nature of violence, who really has stuck her neck out and been punished by the American Psychiatric Association (#AmericanPsychiatricAssociation) for violating the 'Goldwater Rule' (i.e., making a professional evaluation without direct contact with the analysand who is a public figure).
She is writing a series of essays about what she labels as the #TrumpContagion, of which Mr Carlson, for example, is manifestly both a carrier and symptom; she perseveres in defiance of, and as an exile from, the A.P.A.
Needless to say, Dr Lee has the bravery of a whistle-blower in facing adverse professional consequences. What the #APA overlooks is that . . .
> readers of analyses like those of Dr Lee can think for themselves; as well as,
> one can detect when a professional crosses the invisible line-of-bias between opportune counsel for the rest of us AND opportunism at the expense of the rest of us.
Dozens of 501(c)(3) organizations violate the Johnson Amendment. Why is the Justice Department along with the Treasury Department not revoking their tax exempt status. If they want to denigrate Joe Biden and the Democrats, then make them pay taxes.
Once their status is revoked billions of dollars in taxes would come due from the white-Christian Nationalist churches in property taxes and income taxes.
The Johnson Amendment is a provision in the U.S. tax code, since 1954, that prohibits all 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Section 501(c)(3) organizations are the most common type of nonprofit organization in the United States, ranging from charitable foundations to universities and churches. The amendment is named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who introduced it in a preliminary draft of the law in July 1954.
I support enforcement of the Johnson Amendment but enforcement must be consistently and uniformly enforced to maximize effectiveness, not simply because, “If they want to denigrate Joe Biden and the Democrats, then make them pay taxes.”
Which is not an easy thing to do. But I agree with you. Several "churches" put out a voting guide which is supposed to be non-partisan, but they only recommend candidates from one party with suspect reasons for ALWAYS voting for the candidates of their choosing. I think if you took away the 501(c)(3) status of a few of the obvious candidates (see documentary BAD FAITH) where week after week they rail on only Democrat candidates and then very briefly mention the Bible.
Not to pick on the mega-churches, but why should someone have to listen to political BS when they go to church to worship.
Ned, a factor that seems to be left out of the Goldwater Rule folks is that we have a public figure here....who has repeatedly and consistently shown us, in public, his behavior dynamics for years!! We HAVE " met" him; his deeply disturbed personality is obvious to even us non- psychiatrists!
Dr Lee makes the same point. She feels ethically bound to hoist her flag against Trump. So her career and A.P.A. be damned she is going to do it. Perhaps that moxxy comes from her graduate degree in theology.
Oh how I wish that was true, since it would mean the pus bag full of shit was DEAD.
The stupid fucking moron is too ignorant to be able to use English, not that the lifetime residents of Flyover Loserville would notice, being ignorant morons themselves.
Autocratic, demagogue, dictatorial regimes always depend on massive lying.
The lies always fit labels for nefarious "others," always other groups, as if we can only live life by seeing groups-only and accompanying scripted slogans only.
This of course forecloses on any schools ever teaching any real humanities, where things get messy with characters having nuances, contradictions, complicated history, and other contingencies.
So is it a sign of today's world, mostly run by billionaires, that schools around the world debase to the vulgarity of the rich? Or debase to the parallel vulgarity of religious packagers of hate and resentment?
“Autocratic, demagogue, dictatorial regimes always depend on massive lying.” True, but usually they are not believed, so they depend even more on terror and arbitrariness. Their effect on the truth is to make everything and everyone suspect.
If people have upbringing for decency -- which includes interests in artists who can see better than us -- people will have independence from the liars and the vulgar.
Many "know" humanities as exotic, marginalized, decorative-only -- and have also learned that one never uses any, never cites any apropos of anything.
Even on Heather's site here, please count how often any citations of any novels, memoirs, films, songs, or other arts.
If we're honest, more of us would feel like Doctor Zhivago in "The Forest Brotherhood" chapter where, abducted by a partisan group and forced to serve as its doctor, he's also forced continuously to hear nothing but the banalities of slogans, abstractions, and other wonk language of that time.
I read HCR's letter as soon as it came in during the wee hours (and obviously before my coffee) - always a big, big mistake for my ability to go back to sleep! So, I agree with all the early comments and will now get back to some REM where trump and the batshit crazies don't exist!
Early to bed, early to rise. Walk the dog, drink the coffee, THEN and only then dive into the analysis of those three and more. But now I have a problem. A good one. There are so many terrific newsletters on Substack now. How to read them and still live a normal life?
Bill, I hear you. I subscribe (pay) to several more than I should, and grab several of the free ones. No wonder the weeds are winning in my yard... <my "yard" is 1/2 of a city lot that boarders on an unimproved city park. I get lots of weeds from that park. This month alone I have filled my pickup with weeds 6 times and hauled them to the place where I pay to drop weeds/scrap wood/brush/clay only to go back through the line and get good soil, mulch, and wood chips.>
I'm not awake during the "wee hours," so I don't see HCR's letter until the early morning, after I've had my coffee, showered, and dressed. Even so, my husband wonders how I can read it as my first task of the day.
It's not just what Trump stands for that should eliminate him as a choice for president, but how he's trying to get re-elected, which starkly exposes his criminal character. His ingenuity at manufacturing lies boggles my mind as does the stalwart foolishness of his supporters in believing them.
Not if he's convicted. There are no grounds to acquit Trump so he will either be found guilty or it will be a hung jury. If it's a hung jury, someone from the jury will likely tell us why and who so they can retry TFFG. That would truly be an ugly result (to retry) but it could happen before November. And if he is found guilty TFFG will appeal. Hopefully, his appeal would/will be denied and we can get on with his prison time.
So many great choices of prison in NY for the orange menace!
Great post - thanks. Regrettably, Donald J. Trump appears to be above the law. "At no point during his long career as a celebrity real estate mogul and businessman has Trump faced any meaningful consequences for his fraudulent, even criminal, behavior. He has operated for decades with a shield of impunity crafted from his shamelessness, his celebrity and his craven willingness to intimidate critics with litigation or even just the threat of litigation.
What is striking is the extent to which this shield of impunity has only been strengthened by the political and legal institutions of the United States." Jamelle Bouie, New York Times, as quoted in my blog at https://natpernick.substack.com/p/who-will-challenge-donald-trump-as .
What will happen if he becomes President? Who will challenge him them and incur not only his threats but those of the Proud Boys and his other supporters? It's time for all of us to get more politically active - we cannot do everything but we can do a little more than we are doing now.
Don’t forget he’s a master at delay. He knows how to exhaust his opponents resources and money.
The 1980’s tax fraud case was where he took NY tax payer money for trump tower with contractual promise of payback. NY found his books so confusing, and surprise, a flood in the basement where records were kept - and finally gave up.
Today he is shocked that USA vs trump hasn’t collapsed under all the high dollar lawyer motions trying to bury in paper the cases. He never contemplated these felonies by a former President are so serious they can’t just expire and be swept under. He wants his “get out of jail” card simply because he should.
America can not afford to let these cases die on the vine. Our Constitutional framework hangs on law vs. popularity contests.
Today's analysis, linking the current events in Trump's Manhattan courthouse to McCarthyism, was particularly interesting. I would like to know more about how "up to 20 million people...saw him (McCarthy) for what he was - a vicious, lying bully - and most of them turned against him." We need to do the same with Trump and his cronies. In the age of the Internet, what is the best way to do that? Who needs to do what by when (certainly before the November election) to expose Trump as a weak fraud and convicted felon who was never qualified to be president?
My guess is it would only endanger you & those close to you. I'm afraid it is going to have to come from within the beast itself. It's those people that "believe" in trump that need to see that they are being taken. We can point it out all day & night but until THEY see the light themselves it's not going to break the fever.
I'd say we should go after FOX & other outlets but FOX owes millions from court cases & it hasn't shut them up.
When MAGA deports 15 million people or tries to that's when it will come home to roost. When there will be no one to tend the fields, harvest & process the food we eat that it might sink in that they have been lied to over & over. When all those "pesky" immigrants are gone & our economy plummets only then will they realize what following trump means!
Thank you for your reply from Paris. It's questionable whether having an intellectual argument over Truth Social or any SNS service would be effective, but it might work. A high profile Democrat could be a good spokesperson.
The first thing that comes to mind is that a behavioral standard is always appropriate no matter what the preparation; that is the preparation for some, and I don't mean just people that other people look down on. Everybody, every body has a story. And our stories make our livable, understandable and able to move towards general agreements that promote the general health of everyone in the country, even the tribe. There are samples and examples of this working throughout history and herstory.
It is more than time for this leading nation of the world to promote and support and learn from any and every workable form of civil discussion, all ideas are up for a good look at what they actually do in reality, which is the test really.
No one is born sinful. Period.
Stressed? Always. Which is why and how and wherefore that we need a kinder world everywhere. And anybody can do this, can contribute.
We were made for this; nature abhors a vacuum and we are part of nature.
Before the advent of mass bombing from the air, there were two ways of defeating an enemy holed up behind its own fortifications and which refuses to fight in the open. To starve the enemy by blockading its supply lines or to sap its walls from underground coupled with artillery or projectiles. Good generals did all that. What they didn’t do was send warriors behind enemy walls without a plan to bring down the enemy’s fortifications and send strong back-up for their people inside.
If he would have taken the stand and it was televised and he was under oath, it might have been an opportunity for the voting public to see him for what he is.
Thank you Professor.
The MAGA-controlled GOP, who now talk about a "unified Reich". I think they draw from a toxic pool that precedes McCarthy.
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
― Joseph Goebbels
For most of my youth, it seemed that Joe McCarthy's legacy was infamy, but it seemed that after Nixon's disgrace, Republican's drew the lesson that if you are going to lie, then lie really BIGLY, always attack, and never, ever, ever admit fault. Apart from serving the very, very wealthy, it is now the core modus operani of the party.
"You didn't come out guns blazing and just challenge them. You showed weakness," Trump told the friend, according to Woodward. "You've got to be strong. You've got to be aggressive. You've got to push back hard. You've got to deny anything that's said about you. Never admit."
That's just what Trump's followers are doing. Denying and not admitting the truth. Of course their "truth" is distorted by their allegiance to a liar and a cheat.
But with the Gang of Six destroying law, his immunity is imminent
Dave, I really hope not, but wouldn't be surprised since they should have just let the lower court's decision stand. There was a meme on Facebook showing Alito upside down. Both he and Thomas should recuse themselves. They won't of course because they are totally without decency and integrity.
Then Biden really CAN authorize the FBI to use deadly force!
And they get away with it because the trial is not televised.
And if it was televised they would not show it on Fox "Entertainment". I was at the French Lick Indiana Resort. I walked into an empty room and they had the television turned to Fox News. I turned the television off!
God bless you for turning off the Murdochian Ministry of Mendacity, Sharon!
In the birthplace of Larry Bird of all places, all good Americans would do the same thing!
Primed and pumped, now, not only by the indiscriminate ramblings of a candidate /mob boss but by the lackey wannabe "leaders" of the new repub party.
It is spelled out in www.Project2025.org.
So true!!
We don’t need him to stop lying which won’t happen anyway simply because he’s in his own world in his head. We need the press to stop fanning his flames by giving him and his followers so much print and air time. Psychologists agree hearing a falsehood enough times eventually leads to believing it’s true. Can we please just put a gag on this snake oul salesman’s show and be done with him? Yes what he’s dine and been makes him news. But how about burying it on the back pages instead of blaring it above the fold?
That’s snake oil.
And don’t forget, he sells bibles too. I think we’re in some serious s**t.here. Time for the Dems to Join Pres. Biden and go on the offensive.
Robert🙏🙏😳
YES!
Never, ever admit that you are wrong. That’s what he said in an interview with “Sun” in 2005. My momma would have tanned our hides.
Mine, too, Jeri.
Any parent that had an ounce of competency and caring
Any parent that had an ounce of competency and caring
Those who take a position, and refuse to apologize or alter their position when the evidence is clearly against that stand, are arrogant fools.
A true leader learns from others' mistakes as well as their own,
and accepts wise counsel and expert evidence.
The odds are better that such an intelligent person will arrive at better conclusions and solutions, and handle crises more favorably.
Now if we can only convince the voting citizenry to elect the more qualified candidate(s).
Preferably ones looking forward addressing the future,
rather than going backwards into "the dark ages."
You gott'a be Roy Cohn.
It would be a miracle to hear him admit to any of his wrongdoings, but we wait for it…
It would be a miracle if his voice was stilled, but for the echo of a cell, or eternity.
I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you … he will never admit to being wrong about anything!!!
Here is a piece I wrote for my book, "Donald's Vanity Tantrums." It neatly reveals where and why od TFG. I now hate saying his name anymore. Enjoy.
The Citizen Kane Movie of Tomorrow: Citizen Trump
February 17, 2024
The classic movie Citizen Kane directed, produced, and starred in by Orson Welles will one day in the future, have a remake only this time the main pseudo-fictional character will be Donald Trump. The movie scene will open with a very bloated relic of his former self; uneven orange-smeared makeup slobbed across his face in bed. His overgrown blond hair is found similar to the muss of Boris Johnson’s now showing gray roots from lack of up-to-date hair dye. He periodically wakes from a semi-conscious state at his future dilapidated Mar-a-Lago residence (for lack of having sufficient funds to upkeep the property due to previous constant litigation and losses.) He looks around demanding more Kentucky Fried Chicken wings as low paid personal rush in another bucket and his last word is not “Rosebud” as in the movie Citizen Kane but:
“Stormy.” And the ex 45th president of the United States expires. The camera fades to black then opens at Le Club in the early disco 1970s, a members-only Manhattan nightclub in the East 50s, where models, fashionistas and a variety of Eurotrash (including his wife) went to be seen.
“The government has just filed suit against our company,” said Trump, “saying we discriminated against Blacks. What do you think we should do?”
The Roy Cohn obedient ass-kisser to Senator Joe McCarthy hearings accusing entertainment personalities of being communists shoots back, “Tell them to go to hell and fight the thing in court and let them prove you discriminated against them.”
Roy Cohn has become Trump’s go-to lawyer and fixer.
Cohn admonishes the young Trump to 1. Never settle. Never surrender. 2. Counter-attack, counter-sue immediately. 3. No matter what happens, no matter how deep into the shit you get, claim victory and never admit defeat.
These lessons were found to be the essential attributes of his future self.
And so it was.
The lead story in the NYT should be "Donald Trump chose not to testify!"
@ Katz. Your book should be entitled "Flim, Flam, Trump." Everything is a con. Primarily he's fleecing his sheep who mistake the wolf as one of them.
His pitch today is that he's the victim. Lies that he's gagged from testifying by a "foreign" corrupt force.
Cohn was in reality a disbarred AIDS riddled sniveling coward as depicted in Angels in America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_in_America
Daniel, I saw Angels in America and boy, was it enlightening.
You really had me, Mr. Katz, you’re imagining a new film about the rotting-away of the evil Orange Idiot, a movie based on an old, amazing masterpiece. Your description was captivating, the possibility fascinating … SCREEEEEEEEEECH!!!
WHY? WHY would you spoil the brilliant ending of a movie, any movie, especially a cinematic masterpiece? Infuriating, one of my fiercest pet peeves. No, not everyone has seen it, not all of us have seen ALL the movies. Yes, I’ve seen Citizen Kane. Several times. NO, there is no excuse for spoiling ANY film. When we spoil endings, we steal the delight, the searing enormity of a moment from another person. There is no excuse for it.
It’s satire and I’ll plug myself, pretty good sheet.
Ok Gang, what are we going to do about it meaningfully? Please focus now and for the next 5+ months on registration and turnout of voters 18 to 29! They are focused personally on protecting reproductive rights, effective gun safety legislation, and really battling climate change. Young women will lead them. But I respectfully submit that our focus should be only on truly “competitive” House districts and Senate states. Agree? Brilliant Harvard students and their local recruits are at work right now in 78 competitive CDs and 14 Senate elections as you read this and in more than 1,300 high schools registering tens of thousands of new voters! And in 378 Community Colleges located only in “competitive” CDs and Senate races, they have started the initial push to register and turnout hundreds of thousands of motivated new voters! Time for each of us to lend a helping hand so please contribute generously at www.TurnUp.US and pass their message on to your friends and family! They will make the critical difference! No time to waste to save our democracy, I am sure you agree? Thanks.
It is tax deductible as a C3 and is nonpartisan based on only those important issues to prospective younger voters!
Most people learn from their life experiences including their mistakes and failures. Some people learn the wrong lesson and double down on dishonesty. I don't get it because in the long run, that is a self-destructive path. Most of the people in Prof. Richardson's article illustrate that perfectly. Those fellas in the trump costumes outside the courthouse the other day reminded me of that. Everyone who's hitched their wagon to trump is in a world of trouble which will increase and they appear to be totally blind to that fact.
Do you think it's possible that Trump doesn't care if he wins (no actual on the ground campaign!) because he's just been riling up the base to rebel again when he loses? I don't want to think this but I read something somewhere that started the thought....
I've seen that thought expressed elsewhere too. It's scary to think that might be the case. If so, hopefully, we'll be better prepared this time.
Indeed!
Interestingly, this reminds me of the British royal family: never explain, never apologize. Hm.
the GOP has been pro-dictators for the past 124 years.. Read Jacob Heilbrunn's "America Last."
HCR's introduction in her book, "How the South Won the Civil War," makes it clear, IMO, that the oligarchs trick the white Protestant racists into thinking that they are part of them, (i.e., the oligarchs who exploit them financially,) because they are white. They (the whites) reap no benefit for themselves by voting Republican. This ruse was used before the Civil War and is being used now. ("What's the Matter with Kansas" by Thomas Frank.) MAGA is 21st century KKK.
That book nearly broke my heart. My father, very very poor white trash from Florida, still uses the n word and would be appalled if you called him a racist. He's found religion too. He remembers hearing Hitler on the radio, served in the Air Force, built AWACS for Boeing and had a high security clearance.
He voted for Drumpf. Twice.
I'm so sorry. He sounds like my recently departed Father-in-Law. USAF veteran who, when tasked with finding qualified Black pilots to join the Air Force One cadre, assumed he couldn't find any because of <pick your racist belief here, he had 'em all> rather than the fact that they had, because of military segregation, not had the same opportunities that he had to learn how to fly. He, too, voted for fpotus twice.
He won't vote this time!
Your father’s conversion sounds eerily like my British mother’s conversion to maga crazy. When she first arrived here she was appalled by how racism was so tolerated and openly accepted, and wrote home about it. My uncle said she was incensed with how Black people were being treated. In the end, she had fully flipped the switch and sounded like the very people she once deplored and voted for trump twice and proudly sneered she would again. Ironically, she watched WWII movies until the day she died, bemoaning the holocaust and fascism without seeing the similarities between trump and hitler. She did regret voting for DeSantis, however.
Jen, long ago I hoped that the explicit racism his generation (and that of my parents, although my parents weren't at all what I'd call racist -- my dad voted for Obama twice) expressed would die with them. Sadly that is not true, but there is hope that children reject the biases of their parents, as you evidently have.
I have a sinking feeling that the repubs have a plan to resurrect some version of the KKK if he wins (or if he doesn’t) so that their generational hatred is kept alive in our friends, neighbors, and family.
Jeri, MAGA is already KKK. Remember the marchers at Charlottesville in 2017? "Jews will not replace us." And the push for a white Protestant autocracy - that's KKK. Timothy Egan's book, "A Fever in the Heartland," about the rise of the KKK in the Midwest in the 1920's leaves one with this takeaway: MAGA is 21st century KKK.
Richard Sutherland - I read "A Fever in the Heartland" last week. I have about 15 pages with post-its on them, starting with Chapter 9 on page 104. On page 106, Egan discusses Dr. Harry H. Laughlin. Laughlin apparently believed if you allowed strong healthy animals to be crossed only with other strong healthy animals, then "weaker" humans, such as "imbeciles" and degenerates," i.e. homosexuals should be sterilized so as to not weaken the gene pool.
In the book, Egan comments that Indiana passed the world's first eugenic sterilization law in 1907, and that ultimately, about 70,000 people across many states were forcibly sterilized. Other targets for sterilization included Blacks, immigrants, Jews, (the KKK at that time also targeted Catholics, but I don't recall reading if they were advocating sterilizations for Catholics), and those with diseases such as epilepsy. German proto-Nazis were strongly influenced by Laughlin's work.
I could go on, but would rather encourage everyone on this forum to read the book. It's shocking at what so many people were drawn into!
Now we come to Project 2025, and trump's words. I saw a video clip from his appearance in Minnesota last weekend where he said something like, "Racehorses, I like racehorses because they are fast." Sounds innocuous at first, but does it perhaps give a wink and a nod to Laughlin's beliefs, because we all know that racehorses are bred to be fast, cattle and pigs are bred to provide more meat, and turkeys are bred to have larger breasts for more white meat.
If trump wins in November, will we see a resurgent KKK openly advocating for white supremacy? I hope not, and will do whatever I can to convince others of the danger ahead should trump win.
We ain’t seen nothin yet…
Heather teaches us it's been here forever, more or less dormant.
The trick the Rpubs want to pull is to make it acceptable. My daughter is furious if I say the word "fat" about a human so there's hope
I’ll repeat. We ain’t seen nothin yet…
My dad (1900-1980) lived his entire life in Texas. He could not accept Blacks and Hispanics as “equals.” IMO it was a case of implicit bias. He had never seen a well educated and well dressed African American or Hispanic.
I’m so sorry Jen. It must be very difficult.
Sorry for him and you
Does he love dogs?
After a fashion.
I he a sucker or a loser?
Too true TC. But it goes back a little bit further to at least Benjamin Harrison's Presidency. Many of HCR's newsletter readers have also read "Wounded Knee" which goes into great detail the corruption of the Republican Party led by Harrison.
The Republicans thought they had sidelined Teddy Roosevelt from his progressive ideals, but that all ended when McKinley was assassinated in August, 1901.
We cannot pigeonhole Trump. He needs to be found guilty by our Federal and State justice systems.
Did Goebbels ever write a book? The Art of Convincing? By then I guess his career was already made and he'd diversified to microphone technique. "McCarthyism" enriched the international language - in naive post-war Australia, we thought above all that the rule of law was particularly one-eyed and merciless in America (with uneasy compassion for the ruined careers). It was never clear that he'd made it all up. You just didn't do that sort of thing. Heather's Letter brings some comfort today.
I've maintained for decades that Goebbels was the most influential politician of our time.
The grandmaster of political staging.
Just like Leonard Leo is the puppet master of the far-right members of the Supreme Court.
I had to look that up -- you are well informed Gary! https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority There is always someone pulling the puppet strings.
Selecting the best judges that money can buy...
Mr Leo cannot, however, be blamed for living in an immensely powerful country whose institutions have become so threadbare that it can select an extreme security risk as Commander-in-Chief... This, quite apart from all those decades as a notorious conman, systematically cheating contractors... and the IRS... just for starters.
My post starting "There was another" seems to have vanished. Pity, the attached article was a very detailed (true) story. There's plenty on the internet, but that one was very good. Google "Willi Münzenberg", or combine Willi Münzenberg Rupert Murdoch and see what comes up.
Shall look it up.
Extraordinary, how much harm one single businessman can do...
Willi had newspapers and an enormous network. That's where the Murdoch reference ends.
He ended up garotted in a French forest in June 1940.
Just read in The Jacobin. Excellent article.
I was thinking of Mr. Moloch, of course, when I spoke of damage...
This man clearly understood too much, and paid the price.
Must have influenced Goebbels...
Most of the more respectable US press has a whiff of a capitalist Pravda about it... Yet, given the dirty looks I got in the Deepest Deep South when carrying a copy of the NYT, it might as well have been Pravda...
Seems to be similarities in trying to leave the Party he once believed it, after he saw what it was becoming (or looked a bit more under the covers at what it secretly had been longer than anyone thought).
Many wouldn't want to believe what they came to see until they tried to leave the party. Political factions shouldn't be like Mob Gangs where lack of loyalty can be deadly.
I learned to consider different perspectives in many ways, but an early one was from a life long Republican that had been Paul Robeson's locker-mate at Rutgers. He wouldn't tolerate careless criticism of such a talented person for something as simple as his skin color, or as deep as why Robeson would not denigrate communism (without looking at the flaws in our own society).
George, I’ve become so tired of the phrase “no smoke without fire”. My Trumpist neighbors are fond of proclaiming “why are they investigating Biden if there’s nothing there?” The idea that 45 is just throwing his own actions (hidden or obvious) against the wall has not occurred to them. 45 (and his minions) are counting on the public not being able to keep up the fact checking of the lies so that some sneak through: “See, if it’s not true, why isn’t Biden offering the proof?”
Thank you Mary -it’s why my mantra has become any meaningful attempt at democracy requires an educated, informed, and engaged society.
We are drowning in gaslighting, lies, propaganda, and hypocrisy. The MAGA/GOP investigates “the weaponization of investigations” while doing exactly that!
George, it’s like a horde of mosquitoes or moles. We have to mentally fight the feeling of being overwhelmed and do our part to ensure that he isn’t our next president.
Recently, at a Global democracy conference in Bucharest, I had the honor to meet speakers from Tblisi, Georgia and Kyiv, Ukraine. Their commitment and courage in the face of great danger filled me with the inspiration to keep moving forward.
It’s also important to take extra good care of yourself during these times. As people have reminded us “Do your work, then step back” -give yourself a chance to rest, recover, and then do what you can to continue to patiently help people understand what is happening to the societal aspirations toward democracy, justice, and equality.
My go to: Stagger Breathing. The only way to keep 10's of measures going solid.
Yep. We get the government we deserve. :(
For some reason, I can't message you Richard Sutherland. If you see this comment, please check us out. https://www.veteransforallvoters.org/
I’m fascinated by the use of the lie in Russia to develop its conviction of empire. The Germans planted the big lie in Russia by sneaking the super conniver Lenin into the chaos of revolution.
Lenin organized the gigantic lie that was Communism and then those theorists, for 70 years, kept forcing the lie over the bodies of millions of dead people.
Kruschev revealed the terrible Stalin lies then Gorbachev blew out the wispy flame only to have Putin resurrect it as Fascism with an Eurasian empire.
Now the cancer of perpetual lying to justify personal power has spread to MAGA America and thoroughly saturated rightwing media we witness the attempted thwarting of justice by the Trump dynamic to develop his empire.
Thanks Hap -it almost seems that the lying and the political system are just tools in the hands of narcissists who will do anything to concentrate wealth and power.
From “Freedom and Government” an essay by Bertrand Russell
"The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity.
The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other."
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2024/02/28/fools-muzzle/
The very first time I had the honor to meet Noam Chomsky it was at his office (at the time, at MIT).
Not only was it intimidating to meet Noam (“I’m not worthy was playing on loop in my head”) the feeling was magnified by a poster of Bertrand Russell on Noam’s office wall. A very stern looking Bertrand Russell.
Oh to have been at Cambridge a hundred years ago. Russell, Hardy, Littlewood, Ramanujan et al. what conversations they must have had.
If Tucker’s show is being rebroadcast in Russia, does that mean Putin’s Russia is part of the MAGA Unified Reich?
I'm certain the Prison Apprentice would still be delighted to build Trump Tower Moscow, so yes!
They licensed their name for Drumf Towers in every other sphere of Influnce countries. But those towers/buildings are vehicles of money laundering for Putin and his oligarghs. To claim the money they have mined out of Russian industry, they first have to get it out of the country. Real estate is the easiest way to do this. Maga likes this because TFG doesn’t need banks any more, just shady Russian investors to buy his condos and licenseee his name with none of his skin in the game. This scheme started after the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are even references to this laundering strategy in popular movies from the 90’s to 2000 when it was still a new phenomenon. ( Boondock Saints, The Equalizer, We Own the Night). New York City, Brighton Beach, Boston, London. The Russian Mafia filled a vacuum on the East Coast after a certain NY prosecutor took down the Italian American Mafia. The big difference with the Russian Mafia is that they work for the Russian foreign intelligence services for additional funding, dirty work, bribes, payoffs, set up compromat, and make donations to political campaigns.
I'm pretty sure that's from an English translation of Mein Kampf. Goebbels gets credit for actuating the concept but it originated with AH.
This is very true George 👍and very very scary!!!
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, where has all the truth and decency gone?
We're it, Christopher.
Morning, Lynell. Yes we are.
Morning, Ally!
Nice Q, Christopher.
Truth and decency connect to the human -- to ways the best among us have learned to grow.
But most schools around the world today hew to the dehumanized.
No school in the world can admit the human. They've pretty much all fallen instead for the ur-rational: linear-think, easily-labeled categories, and simple causality by the chronological, sequential, and mechanical. This isn’t life, of course. Not human, not natural. But their opposite, school conceits as packaged, programmed, and abstracted, interchangeable units, all fit the machine-gradable, computer gradable standardized tests beloved of our ruling living dead.
Most schools promote such death trips. But it serves the packages, demagogue or biz ed corporate. Of course. No humans need apply. No humanities apply.
The lack of emphasis on the liberal arts and the focus on business and stem is leaving half of our thinking capacity behind. The liberal arts is the “if and why”, Stem is the “ what and how” . You need both for a progressive society. John Dewey is very focused on the principle that democracy can only survive with the truth.
I hope this is not true everywhere. My granddaughter in Prague has a long list of “classics” which is given to students when they enter high school. These books have to be read and the student is required to select some of them on which he or she will answer questions during the final oral exam.
The digital technology of the information revolution conditions one's world-view toward the binary thinking coded into programming. 🤢
Or the binary thinking of humans cut off from creative thinking led to the development of binary coding.
Clever, Sophie. I like it. I am not sure that I am particularly creative, but I do know I have flagged every computer course I have ever taken. Perhaps, I lack that binary aspect. Sure feel out of step with my time. No, not better but painfully obsolete.
Phil, Christopher & Ned, I suspect the imbalance between linear, either/or computer-code thinking in our schools (and much of our society at large) that you decry is a product of the biological bicameral structure of our brains with left side which harbors most of the activity for speech and "scientific" factual analysis and the right side wherein we perceive larger patterns and meanings and which can hold both sides of paradox, like faith, at once [see The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist]. This battle between the different ways of thinking between the two sides has been and will likely remain a source of difference between and among educators and all of us to some degree. Your brains have obviously been more able to synthesize the perspectives of both sides of your brains better than most! "In The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, the product of 20 years of research, renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist delves into the world of difference between our two hemispheres and argues that the formal structures of modern society significantly -- and dangerously -- prioritize the left brain, resulting in a culture shackled by rigidity and bureaucracy, driven by self-interest, and ultimately incapacitated by its own imbalance."
Interesting thoughts here, John. Thanks for sharing the work of McGilcrist.
I once took a test for right-vs-left brain thinking. Came out hare-brain. 😉😱🥳 Seriously, John, thank you for taking the time to write out a thoughtful and compelling response. ✌️😇🤝
P.S. Just re-took free samplers. Still strongly right-brained and strongly introverted (i.e., anti-social with a good vocabulary 😉). The point you make, John, really is what left-brainiacs would be prone to declare presumptively: that it is mission critical.
💡
Three and a half years ago, I re-read 'Theodicy' by Leibniz to see if I could better understand this best-of-all-possible-worlds scheiße.
https://nedmcdletters.blogspot.com/2020/12/letter-167-free-will-and-determinism.html (no expectations of your reading; simply available)
🫣
To my surprise, the second time through, after a generation of my stepping away from the bog, made sense when I applied the framework of the 17th century tome-aine poisoning to modern financial thinking about optimization of investment portfolioes.
😯
What came clear to me -- and this is where your valuable insight comes in, John -- is that free-will is out of balance. In Modern Portfolio Theory, idiosyncrasies (e.g., the personalities of C.E.O.s or H.R. policies) among companies cancel each other out in a portfolio of fifteen-to-twenty diverse stocks or bonds.
🤔
That is to say: in the 'real' world (i.e., the tug-of-war between individualism and determinism), the free wills of individuals tend to cancel each other out to yield a determined and balanced collectivity of will.
⚖️
The problem with our NOT-best-possible -- or sub-optimal -- world may lie in these idiosyncratic factors NOT cancelling each other out. This imbalance occurs in times like this one where left-brain thinking super-ordinates other modes of mind (e.g., the repeated failures of technocrats) or when an ideology seduces a large majority of the people (e.g., nazism / stalinism).
😳
That imbalance creates problems to be redressed, often passively (e.g., crawling into climate change mitigation), always painfully (World War II). The world will re-balance with or without us. That is our choice. 😱
In addition to Iain McGilchrist, John, there is Robert Lustig.
The latter wrote "The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of our Bodies and Brains."
A neural scientist, he's very good especially on how "they" know how to breed and exploit people's addictions to dopamine.
Angels of America
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0318997/
Angels IN America, Christopher . . . One of the most important theatrical events to have occurred in the early aughts. And one which the homophobic neofascists and christofascists would probably ban today. It's appalling that, despite all the mess of the first decade of the 21st century, it was in some ways a better world to live in than now for non-cis, non-white, non-penis-wriggling people.
Nicely said, Linda.
But the children of Evangelicals are leaving the Evangelical Church. Good news.
Hope you just made the sign of the cross, Christopher, like a good RC:). Haven’t heard that trio expression in a long time, only when I go back home to MA. Although I do use myself, as a prayer of course:)
It got shot and run over by GOOD CHRISTIANS.
Christopher, the "truth" has gone to the "Religious Reich". You heard it here first.
I am glad you included Joseph. He is often overlooked
As always, the historical context you provide gives a continuity to events I hadn’t realized were related, such as today’s connection between McCarthy, Cohn and Trump. It shows who Trump is trying to emulate, when he isn’t channeling Hitler.
And in typical Trump fashion, he’s now trying out the newest claim about the FBI search warrant and deadly force by taking something common place and throwing it against the wall to see what sticks. The gag order lies about stopping him from testifying seemed to play well for him but with the trial drawing to a close he’ll need a new one and so he’s trying this on for size. He also often seems to try irrelevant words on for size when describing and insulting people without seeming to understand their actual meaning. Referring to Judge Merchan as conflicted is an odd choice of descriptions to me. To quote from one of my favorite movies, “You keep using that word. I do not think that word means what you think it means.”
There are many who have known about Cohn mentoring Trump in his early years. Unfortunately, it was well hidden when we needed to know before the 2016 election.
This was written in Politico back in 2019: 'Roy Cohn, who has been described by people who knew him as “a snake,” “a scoundrel” and “a new strain of son of a bitch,” is the subject of a new documentary out this week from producer and director Matt Tyrnauer. It’s an occasion to once again look at Cohn and ask how much of him and his “savage,” “abrasive” and “amoral” behavior is visible in the behavior of the current president. Trump, as has been well-established, learned so much from the truculent, unrepentant Cohn about how to get what he wants, and he pines for Cohn and his notorious capabilities still.'
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/19/roy-cohn-donald-trump-documentary-228144/
I seem to recall press and magazine hints and implications throughout the long Roy Cohn/tfg association in terms of questionable practices from 1973 until Cohn's aids related death in 1986. Cohn, of course, cut his political chops assisting Senator Joseph McCarthy and turned around to coach tfg and introduce him to such stellar "movers and shakers" as Manafort and Stone. The seeds were there for decades.
I share your jaw-drop at this whole thing. When you step back to survey who McCarthy, Cohn and Trump really are they become cartoon characters....
Heather doesn’t comment, just quotes: In an email with a subject line “They were authorized to shoot me—I nearly escaped death,”
So unfortunately not true.
"Crucially, they make those arguments only in front of television cameras or on podcasts and radio. They refuse to make them under oath in a court of law, where there are penalties for lying."
In consultation with his BFF Bill Barr, Mueller infamously did not subpoena Trump to testify under oath. Instead he allowed Trump to answer questions cherry-picked by Trump's lawyers. Most of the answers were essentially non-answers. Without Trump's testimony under oath there was no way to establish intent and therefore no way to prove conspiracy. It undermined the investigation and permitted Trump et al to scream 'Russia Hoax' - which they still do. Now, in NYC, if only one juror is convinced that the prosecution did not make their case, Trump walks. Meanwhile, the Federalist Society Supreme Court majority is obstructing Jack Smith's case. Justice delayed is justice denied. To we the people.
Can anyone explain why the Justice Department is slow walking the prosecution of Dump?
Are they afraid of the threat of civil conflict or repercussions if dump regains power. ?
They’re not. They are following the rule of law.
Thanks
So if the Thomas Supreme Court rules that Trump had total immunity, then Biden can indeed get Trump executed as a danger to American society and never be held accountable. MTG could be included in that cleanup for good measure. I do like the sound of that scenario, but the usually quiet adult on my shoulder is asking, "If so, then where will such actions stop?"
No, we have to beat the f-ers at the ballot box and restore normalcy to our politics.
Great expression, Jerry: "the usually quiet adult on my shoulder". I've got one of those too who sometimes stops me from ranting on when others want to just move on, at least for the moment.
Unfortunately, these "f-ers" have also managed to ruin our justice system following years of careful planning (credit where credit is due), so we now have only the ballot box to save us.
And who knows what is in store for us on election day if the results are anything less than a Democratic landslide? The pressure is on all of us now.
I have one too. She begs me to keep my mouth shut around my husbands vast (catholic) family who are in the trump delirium (save 1 aunt - that makes 3 of us)
As when my neighbor came over for a chat sporting his “I Identify as NonBidenary” tee shirt. I suggested he turn it inside out, then dropped the matter.
Ugh!
Humor in the service of evil. Interesting.
Yeah. Fun life here in the country. The stupidity hurts.
I agree, Jerry. Promoting a belief that the courts are going to save the American people from authoritarian rule always has always been a disservice. The media and the two parties have colluded in distracting the citizens with a delusional fantasy. If voters do not turn out in record masses, they most certainly will be ruled by an authoritarian realm in which oligarchs govern and wealth buys a governance of unbounded privileges over the masses of workers. Originalism embraces a Constitution without a Bill of Rights.
WRITTEN ELSEWHERE. DRs LEE & COX RICARDSON should collaborate. Their aggregated knowledge would not only be compelling, but also frightening. Dr Lee explains how Trump's mental illness feeds ever more outrageous lies and enables similarly anti-republican behaviors from people like the preppy whore, Tucker Carlson.
Unfortunately, the Goldwater Rule is preventing experts from informing the rest of us just how precarious things are right now. The Goldwater Rule forbids psychiatrists from making analytical judgements about public figures whom they have not met directly.
😱
Dr Bandy Lee is one psychiatrist, on the nature of violence, who really has stuck her neck out and been punished by the American Psychiatric Association (#AmericanPsychiatricAssociation) for violating the 'Goldwater Rule' (i.e., making a professional evaluation without direct contact with the analysand who is a public figure).
https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/trump-contagion-past-and-future/
She is writing a series of essays about what she labels as the #TrumpContagion, of which Mr Carlson, for example, is manifestly both a carrier and symptom; she perseveres in defiance of, and as an exile from, the A.P.A.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-pacific-heart/202405/responsible-dialogue-on-the-goldwater-rule-must-continue
Needless to say, Dr Lee has the bravery of a whistle-blower in facing adverse professional consequences. What the #APA overlooks is that . . .
> readers of analyses like those of Dr Lee can think for themselves; as well as,
> one can detect when a professional crosses the invisible line-of-bias between opportune counsel for the rest of us AND opportunism at the expense of the rest of us.
Dozens of 501(c)(3) organizations violate the Johnson Amendment. Why is the Justice Department along with the Treasury Department not revoking their tax exempt status. If they want to denigrate Joe Biden and the Democrats, then make them pay taxes.
Once their status is revoked billions of dollars in taxes would come due from the white-Christian Nationalist churches in property taxes and income taxes.
The Johnson Amendment is a provision in the U.S. tax code, since 1954, that prohibits all 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Section 501(c)(3) organizations are the most common type of nonprofit organization in the United States, ranging from charitable foundations to universities and churches. The amendment is named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who introduced it in a preliminary draft of the law in July 1954.
I support enforcement of the Johnson Amendment but enforcement must be consistently and uniformly enforced to maximize effectiveness, not simply because, “If they want to denigrate Joe Biden and the Democrats, then make them pay taxes.”
Which is not an easy thing to do. But I agree with you. Several "churches" put out a voting guide which is supposed to be non-partisan, but they only recommend candidates from one party with suspect reasons for ALWAYS voting for the candidates of their choosing. I think if you took away the 501(c)(3) status of a few of the obvious candidates (see documentary BAD FAITH) where week after week they rail on only Democrat candidates and then very briefly mention the Bible.
Not to pick on the mega-churches, but why should someone have to listen to political BS when they go to church to worship.
There’s also 501(c)(4) which allows advocacy. Many are offshoots of entities established as (c)(3). For example Planned Parenthood has a (c)(4) arm. https://afj.org/resource/comparison-of-501c3-and-501c4-permissible-activities/
At the very least, 501(c)4s, acting in contravention of the Johnson Amendment, should impose an income tax on the 501(c)3s funding them.
Ned, a factor that seems to be left out of the Goldwater Rule folks is that we have a public figure here....who has repeatedly and consistently shown us, in public, his behavior dynamics for years!! We HAVE " met" him; his deeply disturbed personality is obvious to even us non- psychiatrists!
Dr Lee makes the same point. She feels ethically bound to hoist her flag against Trump. So her career and A.P.A. be damned she is going to do it. Perhaps that moxxy comes from her graduate degree in theology.
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B072YQ8TYZ/about
Yes! Strongly recommend reading Dr Lee's Substack.
I just read yesterday's post. I'm not sure I can bear more of this. My hair is already on fire.
Remember there are more of us than them, as much as I hate dividing this country into us versus them.
Same, Jen, same.
I feel depressed, but ready to fight if I have to.
We can't begin to handle a problem as large as these challenges to democracy without first identifying the form and function of those challenges. You
might want to wrap an ice towel around your head and keep going 😉 and you are not at all alone.
"I nearly escaped death"
Oh how I wish that was true, since it would mean the pus bag full of shit was DEAD.
The stupid fucking moron is too ignorant to be able to use English, not that the lifetime residents of Flyover Loserville would notice, being ignorant morons themselves.
A cousin just sent this to us:
Morality Test
Are you as moral as you think you are?
This test only has one question, but it's a very important one.
By giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally.
The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation in which
you will have to make a decision. Only you will know the results so
your answer needs to be honest.
THE SITUATION:
You are in Florida, Miami to be specific. There is chaos all around
you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding. This is a flood of
biblical proportions. You are a photojournalist working for a major
newspaper, and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster. The
situation is nearly hopeless. You're trying to shoot career-making
photos. There are houses and people swirling around you, some
disappearing under the water.
THE TEST:
Suddenly you see a man in the water. He's fighting for his life, trying
not to be taken down with the debris. You move closer. Somehow the man
looks familiar. You suddenly realize who it is.
It's Donald Trump!
At the same time, you notice that the raging waters are about to take
him under forever.
YOU HAVE TWO OPTIONS:
You can save the life of Donald Trump or you can shoot a dramatic
Pulitzer Prize-winning photo documenting the death of one of the
world's most powerful Republican man hell-bent on the destruction of
America.
THE QUESTION:
Here's the question, and please give an honest answer.
Would you select high contrast colour film or would you go with the
classic simplicity of black and white?
😂😂😂👏👏👏
🤣😉🤣
Question the Question: How many lives can you save if you let him drown?
Countless...
Black and white
Thanks, TCinLA. My thoughts about the situation, EXACTLY!!!
Tell us how you really feel TC. /S
Zinnnnnngggg!
Tell us how you really feel, TC!
Trump stepped in it again - so much for "presidential immunity", no?
Autocratic, demagogue, dictatorial regimes always depend on massive lying.
The lies always fit labels for nefarious "others," always other groups, as if we can only live life by seeing groups-only and accompanying scripted slogans only.
This of course forecloses on any schools ever teaching any real humanities, where things get messy with characters having nuances, contradictions, complicated history, and other contingencies.
So is it a sign of today's world, mostly run by billionaires, that schools around the world debase to the vulgarity of the rich? Or debase to the parallel vulgarity of religious packagers of hate and resentment?
“Autocratic, demagogue, dictatorial regimes always depend on massive lying.” True, but usually they are not believed, so they depend even more on terror and arbitrariness. Their effect on the truth is to make everything and everyone suspect.
Depends, Sophie.
If people have upbringing for decency -- which includes interests in artists who can see better than us -- people will have independence from the liars and the vulgar.
"...the parallel vulgarities and religious packagers of hate and resentment"
SPOT ON!!
Or the distraction of celebrity culture.
You often generalize to all schools. My granddaughter recently told me "I still take humanities," when I asked her if she knew what it was.
Let's measure in application, Kathy.
Many "know" humanities as exotic, marginalized, decorative-only -- and have also learned that one never uses any, never cites any apropos of anything.
Even on Heather's site here, please count how often any citations of any novels, memoirs, films, songs, or other arts.
If we're honest, more of us would feel like Doctor Zhivago in "The Forest Brotherhood" chapter where, abducted by a partisan group and forced to serve as its doctor, he's also forced continuously to hear nothing but the banalities of slogans, abstractions, and other wonk language of that time.
Thanks for the recap of the McCarthy era, Professor. I was born in 1952, so had no knowledge of that news of the time.
As for 2024, as exhausting as it is to do, we must keep pushing the truth and pushing back against the lies.
Thank you Professor Heather Cox Richardson.
I’m voting against these MAGA punks, bullies, Nazi’s …….
Enough talk, Vote blue, for Biden / Harris 2024
I read HCR's letter as soon as it came in during the wee hours (and obviously before my coffee) - always a big, big mistake for my ability to go back to sleep! So, I agree with all the early comments and will now get back to some REM where trump and the batshit crazies don't exist!
I have an ironclad rule: HCR, Hubbell, and Joyce always wait til morning.
Early to bed, early to rise. Walk the dog, drink the coffee, THEN and only then dive into the analysis of those three and more. But now I have a problem. A good one. There are so many terrific newsletters on Substack now. How to read them and still live a normal life?
Ooops. Almost 8:00 am. Got to feed the dog.
Bill, I hear you. I subscribe (pay) to several more than I should, and grab several of the free ones. No wonder the weeds are winning in my yard... <my "yard" is 1/2 of a city lot that boarders on an unimproved city park. I get lots of weeds from that park. This month alone I have filled my pickup with weeds 6 times and hauled them to the place where I pay to drop weeds/scrap wood/brush/clay only to go back through the line and get good soil, mulch, and wood chips.>
I agree . . . then every once in a while, I break my own rule :)
I can break it with Joyce, but never Heather if I want any sleep.
Me too. My own thoughts are scary enough
Unfortunately, many of us take TFFG and other Republican demons to bed with us.
What's your trick?
Dry Bar Comedy!! :)
I'm not awake during the "wee hours," so I don't see HCR's letter until the early morning, after I've had my coffee, showered, and dressed. Even so, my husband wonders how I can read it as my first task of the day.
I'm with you, Ellen. Heading for cup number two here...
It's not just what Trump stands for that should eliminate him as a choice for president, but how he's trying to get re-elected, which starkly exposes his criminal character. His ingenuity at manufacturing lies boggles my mind as does the stalwart foolishness of his supporters in believing them.
Very interesting the direct link of Roy Cohen from McCarthy to Trump. I recall Trump asking aloud “Where’s my Roy Cohen”?
Ans. Michael Cohen.
The courts move so slowly that Trump is on to the next con before the court rules and the earlier con is old news.
Not if he's convicted. There are no grounds to acquit Trump so he will either be found guilty or it will be a hung jury. If it's a hung jury, someone from the jury will likely tell us why and who so they can retry TFFG. That would truly be an ugly result (to retry) but it could happen before November. And if he is found guilty TFFG will appeal. Hopefully, his appeal would/will be denied and we can get on with his prison time.
So many great choices of prison in NY for the orange menace!
But what is the maximum prison sentence? The minimum?
It depends on what counts he is found guilty - if he is.
Great post - thanks. Regrettably, Donald J. Trump appears to be above the law. "At no point during his long career as a celebrity real estate mogul and businessman has Trump faced any meaningful consequences for his fraudulent, even criminal, behavior. He has operated for decades with a shield of impunity crafted from his shamelessness, his celebrity and his craven willingness to intimidate critics with litigation or even just the threat of litigation.
What is striking is the extent to which this shield of impunity has only been strengthened by the political and legal institutions of the United States." Jamelle Bouie, New York Times, as quoted in my blog at https://natpernick.substack.com/p/who-will-challenge-donald-trump-as .
What will happen if he becomes President? Who will challenge him them and incur not only his threats but those of the Proud Boys and his other supporters? It's time for all of us to get more politically active - we cannot do everything but we can do a little more than we are doing now.
Don’t forget he’s a master at delay. He knows how to exhaust his opponents resources and money.
The 1980’s tax fraud case was where he took NY tax payer money for trump tower with contractual promise of payback. NY found his books so confusing, and surprise, a flood in the basement where records were kept - and finally gave up.
Today he is shocked that USA vs trump hasn’t collapsed under all the high dollar lawyer motions trying to bury in paper the cases. He never contemplated these felonies by a former President are so serious they can’t just expire and be swept under. He wants his “get out of jail” card simply because he should.
America can not afford to let these cases die on the vine. Our Constitutional framework hangs on law vs. popularity contests.
Today's analysis, linking the current events in Trump's Manhattan courthouse to McCarthyism, was particularly interesting. I would like to know more about how "up to 20 million people...saw him (McCarthy) for what he was - a vicious, lying bully - and most of them turned against him." We need to do the same with Trump and his cronies. In the age of the Internet, what is the best way to do that? Who needs to do what by when (certainly before the November election) to expose Trump as a weak fraud and convicted felon who was never qualified to be president?
I don’t have an account on truth social - should we to rebut the lies? Or would it harm worse than it helps?
My guess is it would only endanger you & those close to you. I'm afraid it is going to have to come from within the beast itself. It's those people that "believe" in trump that need to see that they are being taken. We can point it out all day & night but until THEY see the light themselves it's not going to break the fever.
I'd say we should go after FOX & other outlets but FOX owes millions from court cases & it hasn't shut them up.
When MAGA deports 15 million people or tries to that's when it will come home to roost. When there will be no one to tend the fields, harvest & process the food we eat that it might sink in that they have been lied to over & over. When all those "pesky" immigrants are gone & our economy plummets only then will they realize what following trump means!
Thank you for your reply from Paris. It's questionable whether having an intellectual argument over Truth Social or any SNS service would be effective, but it might work. A high profile Democrat could be a good spokesperson.
The first thing that comes to mind is that a behavioral standard is always appropriate no matter what the preparation; that is the preparation for some, and I don't mean just people that other people look down on. Everybody, every body has a story. And our stories make our livable, understandable and able to move towards general agreements that promote the general health of everyone in the country, even the tribe. There are samples and examples of this working throughout history and herstory.
It is more than time for this leading nation of the world to promote and support and learn from any and every workable form of civil discussion, all ideas are up for a good look at what they actually do in reality, which is the test really.
No one is born sinful. Period.
Stressed? Always. Which is why and how and wherefore that we need a kinder world everywhere. And anybody can do this, can contribute.
We were made for this; nature abhors a vacuum and we are part of nature.
Before the advent of mass bombing from the air, there were two ways of defeating an enemy holed up behind its own fortifications and which refuses to fight in the open. To starve the enemy by blockading its supply lines or to sap its walls from underground coupled with artillery or projectiles. Good generals did all that. What they didn’t do was send warriors behind enemy walls without a plan to bring down the enemy’s fortifications and send strong back-up for their people inside.
Short clips of McCarthy and Cohn talking nonsense followed by clips of Cohn and Trump and then Trump now - repeat, repeat, repeat
These images would be powerful.
If he would have taken the stand and it was televised and he was under oath, it might have been an opportunity for the voting public to see him for what he is.
Agree.