Failing to prosecute confederate leaders in an effort to bind the nation's wounds is an admirable impulse - until you consider that's why we still have Lost Causers today. Pardoning Richard Nixon instead of impeaching, convicting and then prosecuting him is why we have Trump today.
Prosecution and conviction followed by serious prison time would have done more 'for the good of the nation' than sympathy for the devils who perpetrated crimes against us.
"If we could learn to look instead of gawking,
We'd see the horror in the heart of farce,
If only we could act instead of talking,
We wouldn't always end up on our arse.
This was the thing that nearly had us mastered;
Don't yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!
Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again.”
― Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Scenario, the Democrats win in 2026 and for the next two years launch a variety of investigations. Democrats win in 2028 but don't push through the structural reforms needed to ensure we don't end up here again. 2030, the electorate are complacent after two wave elections and the Republicans win in 2030 and just like 2010 we get screwed for a decade because of redistricting.
The last paragraph is the one still resonating: “Unless people are willing to truly fight for freedom and democracy to utterly and finally break the systems and the men who put them there, more will arise, powered by money and tech that makes today’s systems look primitive.”
I fear too many are still sleeping, lulled by normalcy bias into the comfortable assumption that this too shall pass in their (our) lifetimes. It will only pass if we make it pass.
My Cassandra Call for the day is this: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever" - George Orwell.
But the boot may not first appear as we typically imagine it - doors kicked down and critics of the regime disappearing in the night.
Rick points to the threat of future tech, but I think we have plenty to fear from the fully operational tech of the moment. Peter Thiel’s machines and AI are storing and parsing every word of every post, email and text we and everyone everywhere posts or sends. This is right now, and the machines never sleep. Rick has pointed out the depths and details of the modern surveillance state more than once, so I won’t elaborate further.
The point is that it’s not a stretch at all to imagine the machine-operated, fully automated coordination between the [in]Justice Department, the IRS and the Social Security Administration. The tech exists in this very moment to identify anyone critical of the trump regime, declare them (us) enemies of the state, audit them (us), seize their (our) assets and bank accounts, and revoke their (our) social security. The attempts to seize and consolidate all of our personal information are not just about suppressing our votes. The first stamp of the boot is likely to be in the form of electronic transfers.
The second stamp? Don’t think for one minute those 80,000 “bed” concentration camps being built all over the country are just for brown immigrants. I have beachfront property in Elko, Nevada for sale to anyone who puts anything past Trump and the people behind him. He will die, and the sooner the better. But he’s the fool who wears the crown. There are foul and dangerous minds behind him who use his daily dumpster fires to distract and exhaust us while they lay the groundwork for the boot on the human face forever.
So what does “truly [fighting] for freedom and democracy” look like? Maybe the more important questions are 1) Who are we really fighting? And 2) How do we fight them?
We can put Pam Bondi, Corey Lewandowski, Stephen Miller, Todd Blanche, Kash Patel et al. in prison, and that’s a critical step in the right direction. It might set the disease back a couple years. But Fox will still be there pumping Kremlin propaganda and other lies into the flabby minds of nearly half the nation. X will still be spreading race hatred and misogyny. Facebook will still be amplifying the authoritarian disinformation campaigns of every bad actor and charlatan on the planet. CBS and CNN (Paramount) are now propaganda outlets for the Heritage Foundation. The Washington Post is now a useless tabloid husk, suitable only for wrapping fish and chips. And so on.
I’ll name some names. The long, hard fight is against the likes of the Murdochs, the Ellisons, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Peter Theil, Alex Karp, Steve Bannon, and Kevin Roberts, to name just a few. Unsubscribing is nice, but that amounts to little more than a mosquito buzz in the ear of a rock troll. How do we stop these people? Ideas please.
It’s been almost a century since the surge of Nazism and fascism in Europe. Do we have to keep relearning the lessons every 100 years or so?
I read another report this morning about the likelihood of an Orban loss. We’ve seen that (with the exception of the US), the rest of the world largely turned away from authoritarianism during the last election cycle. I just hope that Hungary will be able to hold a free and fair election and that the winner will ultimately be allowed to take office.
Good round-up and encouraging view of the future. My bone to pick, though:
"But for the sake of the American republic, we need to end this one politically."
Sorry, hoss, we aren't in charge of that. We kept saying that "we've got to make sure he doesn't do this or that..." and did not because we could not. We all can only dimly see the very outlines of what has happened so far, and can control less. The scale of it is so vast as to swamp our senses, even without the Bannonesque flooding of all our zones. Your graphic of the Elite Bro being defenestrated, supposedly by the Masses, was *certainly* metaphorical, n'est pas?
But things haven't gone, and won't go, the way we say they 'should'. I agree with you that it *should* be purely political at the ballot box. In fact, the restraint shown by the protesters to date has just floored me, I really thought things would have been forced sideways by agents provocateurs or brutal military-grade crackdowns. But no, not as I expected. I hope that holds, but I'm not betting the farm on it.
Oh, and Elite Bro doing the swan dive? It's more likely he was pushed by another elite's thug during a frantic self-preservation power struggle.
Joe Biden's greatest shortcoming was not maxing out the short time his party held the governing trifecta and razing maga to the ground and plowing salt into the earth. Yes, that mostly falls on Merrick Garland (Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema share the silver medal), but we ELECTED Biden for the sole purpose of eradicating maga and restoring nice, boring sanity.
So true - root out the evil so the convicted perpetrators never see sunlight again. They are traitors, worthy of Dante's deepest circle of the Inferno reserved for traitors - and have no doubt, these are true traitors.
I say this as often as i can get away with it- as a neuropsychiatrically savvy physician, imo, trump has late onset frontotemporal dementia (FTD)- garbled sppech, poor ex̌ecutive function without memory loss as in Alzheimers. As the the saltatory distance between verbal connections increases, he has early psychosis - a known complication of FTD. To add fuel to this demented tale, please remember trrmp's racist fathet died with dementia. Since FTD can be dx"d on MRI, i venture the most highly protected DC secret are trump's probably dx'tic MRIs!
I am in agreement with all said but the most bothersome thing is that the "No Kings" protests got diminished coverage. I have never imagined protests this large and they are frightening by any standard. The media's fear is palpable and being a former journalist, I am ashamed by their cowardice and patronizing of an insane bully of a thug.
I see the same thing, but I've grown pretty sanguine about it. The death of Corporate News has been underway for a long, long time. It was being decried back in '80s (that's during the TwenCen, by cracky!). There has been a tidal wave of former corporate-level talent leaving and being pushed out of the Corpo world and making spots for themselves in the New Media. Some of them have turned out to be a whole ton of fun when they're out from under their evil overlords, it's been actually good for them.
Who listens to what the Corpos have to say and cares? I dunno, but I'm skeptical that their loving attention matters as much as it used to, and I observe that influence is sinking fast. The Corporations have been shifting rapidly over to entertainment. That's where the bean-counters tell them the profits are. Anything left of their old news operations are becoming ceremonial relics, given all the respect they deserve.
“America’s techno-authoritarians, political authoritarians, and white nationalist authoritarians (yes, the Venn diagram overlaps meaningfully) loved Orban with the heat usually reserved for melting Grindr servers at CPAC.”
I have an idea. Since Trump and MAGA have endorsed Orban, all democrats need to do is start an ad campaign of what a decade of of management under th reins of an authoritarian kakistocracy can do to a nation.
Hungary is a perfect example of a failed European state from the perspective of economic prosperity. Hungary’s economy is consistently at the bottom fifth EU in economic health, and wealth. Its infrastructure is in shambles and the only reason they are a viable state is because of Orban’s extortion racket—$98 billion in EU loans to allow the EU to arm and fund Ukraine’s defense from the Red Menace.
Bottom line, Orban is running an extortion racket; otherwise, Hungary would be far worse economically than they are currently experiencing!
Trump and this administration’s lunacy is so audacious—we’ve past the point of absurdity! IMHO…:)
Righteous commentary today. God forbid the Democrats win, and then embark on a forgiveness, "let's put all this behind us" tour like Obama did when he won. While Obama was being the gracious winner, Mitch McConnell and the GOP engaged in eight years of obstruction and delegitimizing. I'm convinced that his conciliatory moves (and his neglect to indict Wall Streeters for the Bush financial crash) emboldened his foes, and resulted in the backlash that gave us Trump. We cannot afford for the Dems to repeat that behavior. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries must go; we must have new leadership with fire in their veins and steel in their spines to go after the corruption of the Trump era. We should even consider turning Trump over to the ICC, after we charge and convict him here. No Truth and Reconciliation committees, we need Nuremburg trials for Trump, his entire cabinet and his billionaire shadow cabinet. If we don't, we will face a more dire, sophisticated authoritarian and a bloody reckoning in the future. Because the lesson the GOP has learned up to now is this: power excuses any action, whether illegal or unconstitutional. And any effort to gain or retain power is justified. Trump has taught Republicans they can create their own reality by lying or denying facts, and that most people don't pay close enough attention to care because they're busy with their own lives. And the Republicans long ago realized they could live with a one-party system, because they have seen that capitalism doesn't need democracy to flourish; China has proved that. So strap up, Democrats, and get tough with these bastards. This is a renewal of the American revolution.
Have you seen any Democrats with "fire in their veins"? I haven't. There are too many Democrats that are okay with the status quo. The voters have to show some Democrats that
we're just as unhappy with them as we are with Trump.
Amen. No more playing nice and no more efforts toward bipartisan agreement until MAGA has been burned to the ground and its minions uprooted from every cranny of the bureaucracy they've managed to infiltrate. Trials for the corrupt criminals among them. Democrats need to take a page from the GOP and show no mercy. FDT and all of his rotten-to-the-core enablers.
Michelle (and above) Christine, Haven't we been harping on this thru 2 admin...er regimes? A few dems have stood up some with, most without, the 'fire in their veins' along with the 'need to take a page from the GOP and show no mercy' but we have yet to see it.
I think, since there is sooo many points to attack, there needs to be a strategic effort that sends out 'those firey' dems each with a few of trumps points to attack. I posit Sen. Chris Murphy as one dem to lead one of those attacks...Pritzker, Newsome, Merkley and Raskin come to mind to also lead other attacks. But they have to show how really mad they and how mad the country truly is...and...be brutal, dammit make some dammed loud noise! As citizens, we need to tell/show those folks now what is truly needed. I hope the heed and truly have the fire.
BTW- Michelle you are right - 'FDT and all of his rotten-to-the-core enablers.' And might I add...with a rusty shovel... to each and all...
To truly end this, the Constitution has to be amended with guardrails. The executive branch power needs to be outlined extensively. There has to be terminology for automatic sanctions against Congress for inaction. The Heritage Foundation and the predecessors that led up to its formation has to be permanently erased. Only then can we say we are on the mend.
But a very huge task. Since many people can't agree on what side of the street they like, getting 50 states to agree at a Constitutional Convention will be almost impossible. And it will take forever. There is no governing body that can take forever to move things like Congress.
One way I can think of to erase them is exposure--pull back the curtain, point to the emperors in their new clothes--but everybody has to LOOK. With the mainstream media so controlled now, we need exemplary leadership to get everyone to look and listen to something besides Fox News.
The other way is a mass grassroots movement in which everybody becomes a Minnesotan.
It's mattering less and less the provenance of so-called mainstream media because it's dying and being instantly replaced by blogs, substacks, podcasts, etc. Keith Olbermann is perfectly okay with letting CBS News crash and burn because it no longer matters.
He was heartbroken when they took CBS News Radio off the air last month, though.
My fear has shifted from having an authoritarian regime to having no accountability, no consequences. I am fairly confident the Dems will take the House, but utterly afraid that they will do nothing after that. The new House should remove Hakeem Jeffries as leader. And if the Dems take the Senate, they should remove Chuck Schumer as leader. Those two would lead us right back into fascism. Dems need to get rid of the old guard who do not understand and are not equipped for this new fight.
I dunno, Radha. This seems to be a running theme of the comments but I'd feel better about it if Democrats were rallying around particular alternatives for the chairs and that's not happening yet.
As a very long lifelong Democrat, I have faith that enough Ds are aware of the peril of being “reasonable” once we defeat MAGA this fall.
We could, right now, have a decent national healthcare system, had they not tried to appease the damn insurance companies in the first Obama administration.
With you all the way, Michele. Obama did what he could as a Black man on a tightrope. We need an Andy Beshears to run. As much as I like Newsom, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie and Kamala, they are too easily branded by the right and may turn off the very voters we need. I was crushed when Tim Walz flunked debate class on national TV.
Rick Wilson offers a scintilla of optimism and an oil tanker filled with pessimism. He worries, as I do, that Democrats won’t seize the opportunity voters will give them on November 3rd.
Over on Rick Sloan’s Substack, What Comes Next, I argue that Democratic leaders ought to create A Blueprint for America’s Future. This ten year agenda would be concise and persuasive and signed by every Democratic governor, Senator, and Member of Congress. Before the election.
Democrats were "too progressive" in 2024. There aren't many 37 year old white men who can't afford housing, had to move in with parents who really care about abortion or transgender rights. Personally, I don't care about transgender rights. I care about the
right to vote, the right to say what I want, the right to practice or not practice my religion.
Those are the rights I care about, THE BILL OF RIGHTS.
Not just one paragraph, every line of Rick Wilson is true and vital. Those of us in Europe support you with all our hope and strength.
Failing to prosecute confederate leaders in an effort to bind the nation's wounds is an admirable impulse - until you consider that's why we still have Lost Causers today. Pardoning Richard Nixon instead of impeaching, convicting and then prosecuting him is why we have Trump today.
Prosecution and conviction followed by serious prison time would have done more 'for the good of the nation' than sympathy for the devils who perpetrated crimes against us.
"If we could learn to look instead of gawking,
We'd see the horror in the heart of farce,
If only we could act instead of talking,
We wouldn't always end up on our arse.
This was the thing that nearly had us mastered;
Don't yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!
Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again.”
― Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Scenario, the Democrats win in 2026 and for the next two years launch a variety of investigations. Democrats win in 2028 but don't push through the structural reforms needed to ensure we don't end up here again. 2030, the electorate are complacent after two wave elections and the Republicans win in 2030 and just like 2010 we get screwed for a decade because of redistricting.
The last paragraph is the one still resonating: “Unless people are willing to truly fight for freedom and democracy to utterly and finally break the systems and the men who put them there, more will arise, powered by money and tech that makes today’s systems look primitive.”
I fear too many are still sleeping, lulled by normalcy bias into the comfortable assumption that this too shall pass in their (our) lifetimes. It will only pass if we make it pass.
My Cassandra Call for the day is this: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever" - George Orwell.
But the boot may not first appear as we typically imagine it - doors kicked down and critics of the regime disappearing in the night.
Rick points to the threat of future tech, but I think we have plenty to fear from the fully operational tech of the moment. Peter Thiel’s machines and AI are storing and parsing every word of every post, email and text we and everyone everywhere posts or sends. This is right now, and the machines never sleep. Rick has pointed out the depths and details of the modern surveillance state more than once, so I won’t elaborate further.
The point is that it’s not a stretch at all to imagine the machine-operated, fully automated coordination between the [in]Justice Department, the IRS and the Social Security Administration. The tech exists in this very moment to identify anyone critical of the trump regime, declare them (us) enemies of the state, audit them (us), seize their (our) assets and bank accounts, and revoke their (our) social security. The attempts to seize and consolidate all of our personal information are not just about suppressing our votes. The first stamp of the boot is likely to be in the form of electronic transfers.
The second stamp? Don’t think for one minute those 80,000 “bed” concentration camps being built all over the country are just for brown immigrants. I have beachfront property in Elko, Nevada for sale to anyone who puts anything past Trump and the people behind him. He will die, and the sooner the better. But he’s the fool who wears the crown. There are foul and dangerous minds behind him who use his daily dumpster fires to distract and exhaust us while they lay the groundwork for the boot on the human face forever.
So what does “truly [fighting] for freedom and democracy” look like? Maybe the more important questions are 1) Who are we really fighting? And 2) How do we fight them?
We can put Pam Bondi, Corey Lewandowski, Stephen Miller, Todd Blanche, Kash Patel et al. in prison, and that’s a critical step in the right direction. It might set the disease back a couple years. But Fox will still be there pumping Kremlin propaganda and other lies into the flabby minds of nearly half the nation. X will still be spreading race hatred and misogyny. Facebook will still be amplifying the authoritarian disinformation campaigns of every bad actor and charlatan on the planet. CBS and CNN (Paramount) are now propaganda outlets for the Heritage Foundation. The Washington Post is now a useless tabloid husk, suitable only for wrapping fish and chips. And so on.
I’ll name some names. The long, hard fight is against the likes of the Murdochs, the Ellisons, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Peter Theil, Alex Karp, Steve Bannon, and Kevin Roberts, to name just a few. Unsubscribing is nice, but that amounts to little more than a mosquito buzz in the ear of a rock troll. How do we stop these people? Ideas please.
It’s been almost a century since the surge of Nazism and fascism in Europe. Do we have to keep relearning the lessons every 100 years or so?
I read another report this morning about the likelihood of an Orban loss. We’ve seen that (with the exception of the US), the rest of the world largely turned away from authoritarianism during the last election cycle. I just hope that Hungary will be able to hold a free and fair election and that the winner will ultimately be allowed to take office.
Good round-up and encouraging view of the future. My bone to pick, though:
"But for the sake of the American republic, we need to end this one politically."
Sorry, hoss, we aren't in charge of that. We kept saying that "we've got to make sure he doesn't do this or that..." and did not because we could not. We all can only dimly see the very outlines of what has happened so far, and can control less. The scale of it is so vast as to swamp our senses, even without the Bannonesque flooding of all our zones. Your graphic of the Elite Bro being defenestrated, supposedly by the Masses, was *certainly* metaphorical, n'est pas?
But things haven't gone, and won't go, the way we say they 'should'. I agree with you that it *should* be purely political at the ballot box. In fact, the restraint shown by the protesters to date has just floored me, I really thought things would have been forced sideways by agents provocateurs or brutal military-grade crackdowns. But no, not as I expected. I hope that holds, but I'm not betting the farm on it.
Oh, and Elite Bro doing the swan dive? It's more likely he was pushed by another elite's thug during a frantic self-preservation power struggle.
Speaking for myself, I don't tickle pesky flies to death. I reach for the swatter. *sssSNAP*
I share your hopes, Rick, that the Dems can do things right.
Joe Biden's greatest shortcoming was not maxing out the short time his party held the governing trifecta and razing maga to the ground and plowing salt into the earth. Yes, that mostly falls on Merrick Garland (Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema share the silver medal), but we ELECTED Biden for the sole purpose of eradicating maga and restoring nice, boring sanity.
So true - root out the evil so the convicted perpetrators never see sunlight again. They are traitors, worthy of Dante's deepest circle of the Inferno reserved for traitors - and have no doubt, these are true traitors.
I say this as often as i can get away with it- as a neuropsychiatrically savvy physician, imo, trump has late onset frontotemporal dementia (FTD)- garbled sppech, poor ex̌ecutive function without memory loss as in Alzheimers. As the the saltatory distance between verbal connections increases, he has early psychosis - a known complication of FTD. To add fuel to this demented tale, please remember trrmp's racist fathet died with dementia. Since FTD can be dx"d on MRI, i venture the most highly protected DC secret are trump's probably dx'tic MRIs!
I am in agreement with all said but the most bothersome thing is that the "No Kings" protests got diminished coverage. I have never imagined protests this large and they are frightening by any standard. The media's fear is palpable and being a former journalist, I am ashamed by their cowardice and patronizing of an insane bully of a thug.
I see the same thing, but I've grown pretty sanguine about it. The death of Corporate News has been underway for a long, long time. It was being decried back in '80s (that's during the TwenCen, by cracky!). There has been a tidal wave of former corporate-level talent leaving and being pushed out of the Corpo world and making spots for themselves in the New Media. Some of them have turned out to be a whole ton of fun when they're out from under their evil overlords, it's been actually good for them.
Who listens to what the Corpos have to say and cares? I dunno, but I'm skeptical that their loving attention matters as much as it used to, and I observe that influence is sinking fast. The Corporations have been shifting rapidly over to entertainment. That's where the bean-counters tell them the profits are. Anything left of their old news operations are becoming ceremonial relics, given all the respect they deserve.
“America’s techno-authoritarians, political authoritarians, and white nationalist authoritarians (yes, the Venn diagram overlaps meaningfully) loved Orban with the heat usually reserved for melting Grindr servers at CPAC.”
I have an idea. Since Trump and MAGA have endorsed Orban, all democrats need to do is start an ad campaign of what a decade of of management under th reins of an authoritarian kakistocracy can do to a nation.
Hungary is a perfect example of a failed European state from the perspective of economic prosperity. Hungary’s economy is consistently at the bottom fifth EU in economic health, and wealth. Its infrastructure is in shambles and the only reason they are a viable state is because of Orban’s extortion racket—$98 billion in EU loans to allow the EU to arm and fund Ukraine’s defense from the Red Menace.
Bottom line, Orban is running an extortion racket; otherwise, Hungary would be far worse economically than they are currently experiencing!
Trump and this administration’s lunacy is so audacious—we’ve past the point of absurdity! IMHO…:)
Righteous commentary today. God forbid the Democrats win, and then embark on a forgiveness, "let's put all this behind us" tour like Obama did when he won. While Obama was being the gracious winner, Mitch McConnell and the GOP engaged in eight years of obstruction and delegitimizing. I'm convinced that his conciliatory moves (and his neglect to indict Wall Streeters for the Bush financial crash) emboldened his foes, and resulted in the backlash that gave us Trump. We cannot afford for the Dems to repeat that behavior. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries must go; we must have new leadership with fire in their veins and steel in their spines to go after the corruption of the Trump era. We should even consider turning Trump over to the ICC, after we charge and convict him here. No Truth and Reconciliation committees, we need Nuremburg trials for Trump, his entire cabinet and his billionaire shadow cabinet. If we don't, we will face a more dire, sophisticated authoritarian and a bloody reckoning in the future. Because the lesson the GOP has learned up to now is this: power excuses any action, whether illegal or unconstitutional. And any effort to gain or retain power is justified. Trump has taught Republicans they can create their own reality by lying or denying facts, and that most people don't pay close enough attention to care because they're busy with their own lives. And the Republicans long ago realized they could live with a one-party system, because they have seen that capitalism doesn't need democracy to flourish; China has proved that. So strap up, Democrats, and get tough with these bastards. This is a renewal of the American revolution.
Have you seen any Democrats with "fire in their veins"? I haven't. There are too many Democrats that are okay with the status quo. The voters have to show some Democrats that
we're just as unhappy with them as we are with Trump.
You know how a double hater expresses their political views?
They stay home.
Don't be a double hater. The Democrats and the Republicans aren't in the same galaxy cluster.
Very agreed - This Purity over Party mindset is horseshit.
Amen. No more playing nice and no more efforts toward bipartisan agreement until MAGA has been burned to the ground and its minions uprooted from every cranny of the bureaucracy they've managed to infiltrate. Trials for the corrupt criminals among them. Democrats need to take a page from the GOP and show no mercy. FDT and all of his rotten-to-the-core enablers.
Michelle (and above) Christine, Haven't we been harping on this thru 2 admin...er regimes? A few dems have stood up some with, most without, the 'fire in their veins' along with the 'need to take a page from the GOP and show no mercy' but we have yet to see it.
I think, since there is sooo many points to attack, there needs to be a strategic effort that sends out 'those firey' dems each with a few of trumps points to attack. I posit Sen. Chris Murphy as one dem to lead one of those attacks...Pritzker, Newsome, Merkley and Raskin come to mind to also lead other attacks. But they have to show how really mad they and how mad the country truly is...and...be brutal, dammit make some dammed loud noise! As citizens, we need to tell/show those folks now what is truly needed. I hope the heed and truly have the fire.
BTW- Michelle you are right - 'FDT and all of his rotten-to-the-core enablers.' And might I add...with a rusty shovel... to each and all...
oh, how could I forget and not add Jared Moskowitz the list of leaders!
lifelong Democrat here and i have the same fear.
To truly end this, the Constitution has to be amended with guardrails. The executive branch power needs to be outlined extensively. There has to be terminology for automatic sanctions against Congress for inaction. The Heritage Foundation and the predecessors that led up to its formation has to be permanently erased. Only then can we say we are on the mend.
But a very huge task. Since many people can't agree on what side of the street they like, getting 50 states to agree at a Constitutional Convention will be almost impossible. And it will take forever. There is no governing body that can take forever to move things like Congress.
One way I can think of to erase them is exposure--pull back the curtain, point to the emperors in their new clothes--but everybody has to LOOK. With the mainstream media so controlled now, we need exemplary leadership to get everyone to look and listen to something besides Fox News.
The other way is a mass grassroots movement in which everybody becomes a Minnesotan.
It's mattering less and less the provenance of so-called mainstream media because it's dying and being instantly replaced by blogs, substacks, podcasts, etc. Keith Olbermann is perfectly okay with letting CBS News crash and burn because it no longer matters.
He was heartbroken when they took CBS News Radio off the air last month, though.
My fear has shifted from having an authoritarian regime to having no accountability, no consequences. I am fairly confident the Dems will take the House, but utterly afraid that they will do nothing after that. The new House should remove Hakeem Jeffries as leader. And if the Dems take the Senate, they should remove Chuck Schumer as leader. Those two would lead us right back into fascism. Dems need to get rid of the old guard who do not understand and are not equipped for this new fight.
I dunno, Radha. This seems to be a running theme of the comments but I'd feel better about it if Democrats were rallying around particular alternatives for the chairs and that's not happening yet.
All in good time! :-) Gotta get the corporate Dems OUT of the way. We’re all working on it in a billion ways.
Do we? Even if that were desirable, would it even be possible? And isn't the current grassroots rift with Schumer and Jeffries more about AIPAC?
As a very long lifelong Democrat, I have faith that enough Ds are aware of the peril of being “reasonable” once we defeat MAGA this fall.
We could, right now, have a decent national healthcare system, had they not tried to appease the damn insurance companies in the first Obama administration.
Let’s go, Dems. Take our country the hell back.
With you all the way, Michele. Obama did what he could as a Black man on a tightrope. We need an Andy Beshears to run. As much as I like Newsom, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie and Kamala, they are too easily branded by the right and may turn off the very voters we need. I was crushed when Tim Walz flunked debate class on national TV.
Rick Wilson offers a scintilla of optimism and an oil tanker filled with pessimism. He worries, as I do, that Democrats won’t seize the opportunity voters will give them on November 3rd.
Over on Rick Sloan’s Substack, What Comes Next, I argue that Democratic leaders ought to create A Blueprint for America’s Future. This ten year agenda would be concise and persuasive and signed by every Democratic governor, Senator, and Member of Congress. Before the election.
How ‘bout WE build that blueprint and make them follow it… or we toss them out ?
I agree. But which Demcrat will lead the way?
Democrats were "too progressive" in 2024. There aren't many 37 year old white men who can't afford housing, had to move in with parents who really care about abortion or transgender rights. Personally, I don't care about transgender rights. I care about the
right to vote, the right to say what I want, the right to practice or not practice my religion.
Those are the rights I care about, THE BILL OF RIGHTS.
Yes. Analogous to the GOP Contract With America as a messaging banner. Rick's been on about this more than a few times.