The Republicans should tread carefully. If they cheat to the extent that the outcome for them defies all reason, there WILL be violence. I'm not making a threat, but it should be obvious that a horrible economy, combined with the stress of the last 10 years (scumbag Trump in office, the pandemic horribly handled by him, blackmailed and gutless "GOP"s in the House & Senate, etc.) will cause things to happen that the "GOP" doesn't want to happen. And THEY flooded the country with guns, through Putin sending money to the NRA, to buy almost exclusively Republican candidates.
Even without your background and ample experience in politics and especially with the Republican party, just remembering Watergate was enough to disavow me of any trust of Republicans in general. I saw this with full knowledge that a few Democrats have been a little on the shady side, too, but as a party, not so much.
I've lived under the assumption that Trump will do everything to cheat using his rigged "tools" like those you've described in your article, especially since he encouraged an insurrection to try and steal the election in 2021.
So, I have diligently been "reminding" my senators and representatives, plus Schumer and Jeffries, that the Dems better be ready: No infighting, no arguing about far-left issues that can wait, no f'ing bullshit, period! Dems absolutely have the tendency to eat their young instead of focusing on the enemy at hand. Extolling your virtues means nothing if you end up losing to the criminal party!
To paraphrase your words, Rick, the Dems better be ready to get down and dirty to fight every damn trick the Republicans will absolutely pull. If we don't gain majority in the House, at minimum, we may as well hang it up as the country we once were. Yet, I can't let myself go there. I'll go down fighting even if Trump's goon squad of gestapo ICE agents drag me off to a American-made gulag.
And the Democrat headquarters in my county is having a fucking corn roast and tossing around the idea if the currently rising socialist “no more police departments” candidate is suitable to run against a popular Trump loyalist with a shit ton of backing in a critical swing state. I just can’t anymore with this utter lack of urgency.
Rick, you scare the SHIT out of me! I love it! I hope this essay goes far and wide. It needs to be read by any and all of us that care about this country and how it will go in the future. Keep it up, man. We need you.
I’ve worked in the toy industry for decades. NDAs and an instinct for self-preservation prevent me from disclosing the names of famous toy products for which I’ve been the lead sound designer. Parents from around the globe would surely have me tracked down and terminated, with prejudice.
I’ve referred to the Democratic party – and the left of the US body politic in general – as the Sparkle Princess Unicorn Pony Party since 2000. The reason couldn’t be simpler: too many of us are petulant children who stomp off to our rooms and pout when we don’t get our Special Pink-Orange-Blue Glitter-Wing Sparkle Princess Unicorn Pony for our very own special birthday candidate. We cloak our ego-attachments as adhering to principle, but it’s bullshit. Suicidal bullshit.
Just one Example: People who stayed home or threw their votes away on non-viable candidates because Kamala Harris wouldn’t promise the complete financial and military abandonment of Israel, share the burden of responsibility for the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. There is no way Harris could have made such an absolutist promise during a campaign, but she would have been sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people. She would have applied tremendous backchannel and overt pressure on Netanyahu to stop this slaughter.
Instead, we have an administration that not only allowed for this genocidal slaughter but encouraged it. We have an administration that sees Gaza as a development project – gleaming glass and steel towers with Trump, Kushner and Witkoff names all over them. An administration using American tax dollars (in the form of ordnance given to Israel) to do the demo phase of the project for them. And why pay to relocate a huge population when you can just bury them in rubble?
I have my ponies too! I want Citizens United and McCutcheon overturned and abolished forever by supermajorities in the House and Senate. I feel very strongly about this, because it’s my opinion that our law-making bodies and chief executives will remain unable and unwilling to do anything meaningful for the people or the planet until the huge corporate and oligarch donations stop, and multi-billion-dollar superPACs are abolished. I also want radical action to mitigate climate change at the national level, which will never happen as long as our congress, courts and executives are owned by corporations and oligarchs. See above.
If we’re truly principled, we will put aside our factional attachments and act as a tidal force to stand against the brazen, authoritarian takeover of our country. We will elect savvy people who are at least quietly sympathetic to the specific causes we each hold so dear – people who know that substantial majorities need to be achieved before bold legislative action can be taken; people who know corrupt courts need to be reformed and repopulated before bold actions taken can stand.
This platform is named after a savvy politician who knew not to show all his cards at once, who understood inertia and that big changes require tidal force applied over time, and who knew he wouldn’t achieve everything he wanted to in his lifetime.
I know I’m not going to get my ponies this year, but I’m adult enough to work to put people in power who will do their best to preserve a Representative Republic capable of right action in the future. The alternative is the loss and destruction of everything that matters to any of us left of Hitler and Franco. Time to grow up.
As you know too well Rick, Democrat circular firing squads are hard-wired in. From my experience it's something they have real pride about and they don't take kindly to being questioned. This is a party that has, and will continue to go down in flames for principles and causes. Stubborn is stubborn whether it's attached to a D, P, R or M. People gonna do and not do what makes them feel most proud. Meanwhile, it’s like watching a cat rodeo while the opponent has barred the exits with 100-ton tanks. I would love nothing more to be proven wrong.
The Democratic Party needs to hire you, Rick, to stand up a war room that every day calls out every single lie, every grift, every up and regulation to protect us, every destructive executive order. Has someone said, the hunter laptop story is still going after four years. We need a loud war room that you lead Rick screaming across every possible platform.
We are so screwed. You’re asking the Democratic Party to look ahead, identify an existential problem, make a plan, implement the plan, and then stick to the plan when shit gets ugly. The party of Schumer? Of Jeffries? Obama? Martin?
Great polemic. I hope it doesn't age well, but fear that it will.
Not sure the Democratic party writ large, is treating the situation with the gravity it deserves. Going to be too tied up in the post Graham Platner circular firing squad festival.
We have skyrocketing disapproval of trump in terms of numbers and absolute loathing, and an administration racing to implement a system of oppression. At some point soon, those trend lines are going to intersect.
After reading this thread, I m convinced that this country will not survive.
The legislators who have served this country for decades have sold their souls and are very willing to fry in Hell than lose power.
Their blind allegiance to Trump and his lies will not be destroyed by any election in November.
Don’t believe there are ‘good’ Republican politicians any more. The only ones that have become vocal have nothing to lose, because they don’t have a job.
I live in a blue state and one of my senators is up for reelection. He’s 79 and a younger Democrat is challenging him.
Why can’t he retire and step aside at 79?
Why can’t these Baby Boomers give it a rest?
The rest of us have had to retire, and not at 79.
We baby boomers are responsible for the mess we are in. We’ve been in charge for years.
The Republicans should tread carefully. If they cheat to the extent that the outcome for them defies all reason, there WILL be violence. I'm not making a threat, but it should be obvious that a horrible economy, combined with the stress of the last 10 years (scumbag Trump in office, the pandemic horribly handled by him, blackmailed and gutless "GOP"s in the House & Senate, etc.) will cause things to happen that the "GOP" doesn't want to happen. And THEY flooded the country with guns, through Putin sending money to the NRA, to buy almost exclusively Republican candidates.
Even without your background and ample experience in politics and especially with the Republican party, just remembering Watergate was enough to disavow me of any trust of Republicans in general. I saw this with full knowledge that a few Democrats have been a little on the shady side, too, but as a party, not so much.
I've lived under the assumption that Trump will do everything to cheat using his rigged "tools" like those you've described in your article, especially since he encouraged an insurrection to try and steal the election in 2021.
So, I have diligently been "reminding" my senators and representatives, plus Schumer and Jeffries, that the Dems better be ready: No infighting, no arguing about far-left issues that can wait, no f'ing bullshit, period! Dems absolutely have the tendency to eat their young instead of focusing on the enemy at hand. Extolling your virtues means nothing if you end up losing to the criminal party!
To paraphrase your words, Rick, the Dems better be ready to get down and dirty to fight every damn trick the Republicans will absolutely pull. If we don't gain majority in the House, at minimum, we may as well hang it up as the country we once were. Yet, I can't let myself go there. I'll go down fighting even if Trump's goon squad of gestapo ICE agents drag me off to a American-made gulag.
And the Democrat headquarters in my county is having a fucking corn roast and tossing around the idea if the currently rising socialist “no more police departments” candidate is suitable to run against a popular Trump loyalist with a shit ton of backing in a critical swing state. I just can’t anymore with this utter lack of urgency.
Rick, you scare the SHIT out of me! I love it! I hope this essay goes far and wide. It needs to be read by any and all of us that care about this country and how it will go in the future. Keep it up, man. We need you.
That was fucking fantastic. THANK YOU!!!
I’ve worked in the toy industry for decades. NDAs and an instinct for self-preservation prevent me from disclosing the names of famous toy products for which I’ve been the lead sound designer. Parents from around the globe would surely have me tracked down and terminated, with prejudice.
I’ve referred to the Democratic party – and the left of the US body politic in general – as the Sparkle Princess Unicorn Pony Party since 2000. The reason couldn’t be simpler: too many of us are petulant children who stomp off to our rooms and pout when we don’t get our Special Pink-Orange-Blue Glitter-Wing Sparkle Princess Unicorn Pony for our very own special birthday candidate. We cloak our ego-attachments as adhering to principle, but it’s bullshit. Suicidal bullshit.
Just one Example: People who stayed home or threw their votes away on non-viable candidates because Kamala Harris wouldn’t promise the complete financial and military abandonment of Israel, share the burden of responsibility for the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. There is no way Harris could have made such an absolutist promise during a campaign, but she would have been sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people. She would have applied tremendous backchannel and overt pressure on Netanyahu to stop this slaughter.
Instead, we have an administration that not only allowed for this genocidal slaughter but encouraged it. We have an administration that sees Gaza as a development project – gleaming glass and steel towers with Trump, Kushner and Witkoff names all over them. An administration using American tax dollars (in the form of ordnance given to Israel) to do the demo phase of the project for them. And why pay to relocate a huge population when you can just bury them in rubble?
I have my ponies too! I want Citizens United and McCutcheon overturned and abolished forever by supermajorities in the House and Senate. I feel very strongly about this, because it’s my opinion that our law-making bodies and chief executives will remain unable and unwilling to do anything meaningful for the people or the planet until the huge corporate and oligarch donations stop, and multi-billion-dollar superPACs are abolished. I also want radical action to mitigate climate change at the national level, which will never happen as long as our congress, courts and executives are owned by corporations and oligarchs. See above.
If we’re truly principled, we will put aside our factional attachments and act as a tidal force to stand against the brazen, authoritarian takeover of our country. We will elect savvy people who are at least quietly sympathetic to the specific causes we each hold so dear – people who know that substantial majorities need to be achieved before bold legislative action can be taken; people who know corrupt courts need to be reformed and repopulated before bold actions taken can stand.
This platform is named after a savvy politician who knew not to show all his cards at once, who understood inertia and that big changes require tidal force applied over time, and who knew he wouldn’t achieve everything he wanted to in his lifetime.
I know I’m not going to get my ponies this year, but I’m adult enough to work to put people in power who will do their best to preserve a Representative Republic capable of right action in the future. The alternative is the loss and destruction of everything that matters to any of us left of Hitler and Franco. Time to grow up.
As you know too well Rick, Democrat circular firing squads are hard-wired in. From my experience it's something they have real pride about and they don't take kindly to being questioned. This is a party that has, and will continue to go down in flames for principles and causes. Stubborn is stubborn whether it's attached to a D, P, R or M. People gonna do and not do what makes them feel most proud. Meanwhile, it’s like watching a cat rodeo while the opponent has barred the exits with 100-ton tanks. I would love nothing more to be proven wrong.
The Democratic Party needs to hire you, Rick, to stand up a war room that every day calls out every single lie, every grift, every up and regulation to protect us, every destructive executive order. Has someone said, the hunter laptop story is still going after four years. We need a loud war room that you lead Rick screaming across every possible platform.
Amen! If you are not already under contract with the Dems, Rick, make it happen! We need your guts.
Typos. Call out every up-ended regulation they pass that had existed to protect us
Good one Ruck. Except Guccifer 2 was determined to have been not a Macedonian teenager but a GRU created persona.
NOBODY IS COMING TO SAVE US.
STAND TF UP.
Thank you Rick for yet another eye-opener, jaw-dropper, warning flare.
We are so screwed. You’re asking the Democratic Party to look ahead, identify an existential problem, make a plan, implement the plan, and then stick to the plan when shit gets ugly. The party of Schumer? Of Jeffries? Obama? Martin?
Great polemic. I hope it doesn't age well, but fear that it will.
Not sure the Democratic party writ large, is treating the situation with the gravity it deserves. Going to be too tied up in the post Graham Platner circular firing squad festival.
We have skyrocketing disapproval of trump in terms of numbers and absolute loathing, and an administration racing to implement a system of oppression. At some point soon, those trend lines are going to intersect.
I know why people don’t vote!
After reading this thread, I m convinced that this country will not survive.
The legislators who have served this country for decades have sold their souls and are very willing to fry in Hell than lose power.
Their blind allegiance to Trump and his lies will not be destroyed by any election in November.
Don’t believe there are ‘good’ Republican politicians any more. The only ones that have become vocal have nothing to lose, because they don’t have a job.
I live in a blue state and one of my senators is up for reelection. He’s 79 and a younger Democrat is challenging him.
Why can’t he retire and step aside at 79?
Why can’t these Baby Boomers give it a rest?
The rest of us have had to retire, and not at 79.
We baby boomers are responsible for the mess we are in. We’ve been in charge for years.
I’m really sick of the e whole system!
Hear hear!!