Donald Trump only knows how to lie. He would not know how to tell the truth if it bit him in the ass. Watch Elisa Slotkin's response on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwQT8UNvzYA&t=3s. Thank you.
We need to start a substack or TikTok or something called "MAGA did you vote for this?" ...and take one or two things each time. Egg prices (since they screamed about that and tell them why they are up), gas prices and why they are up, inflation and why it's up, his tax plan and why it will hurt everyone but FElon and his muskrats and billionaire buddies, and point out every single lie with facts. Maybe eventually some of it will get through. We could also do one showing all the parallels with Weimar Germany. Maybe some of these people will start to wake up. Judging by some of these town halls some of them are already starting to wake up. Maybe we can help it along
I am crap at speaking on camera but I can write plenty well (way too many college credits and degrees to my name so I've written a whole lot about a whole lot so how about i write it, and you perform it...not perform exactly but speak it sounds dumb. You get what I mean. Maybe eventually some of those MAGA lites will stumble across it and start sharing it out and realizing "hey...you're right...holy $hit i didn't vote for this, i didn't want this " and we can save the midterms and at least hamstring him then. And if we are really lucky we can fire up these Republicans enough that their reps get a bit of a backbone and realize that if they keep doing what they're doing, all FElons money won't matter because NOBODY will vote for them unless they start standing up and being counted and putting a stop to at least some of this madness. Maybe the senate will grow a backbone (except my senator good ol grandpa munster himself cancun cruz...he's hopeless) and start pushing back. Maybe...
If you haven't, I'd suggest you check out Sarah Longwell's Focus Group podcast. For the past eight years, she's made a career out of talking to Trump voters.
The problem with people like us in this community when it comes to trying to engage Trump voters is that we suffer from the Eternal Gobsmack. How could you vote for this guy ?? He's a convicted felon, an adjudicated fraudster, a rapist, a con artist, a failure as a businessman, a pathological liar ! What's wrong with you ???
This, of course, never works. When you hit voters with moral arguments that make perfect sense to us, or ask them how they could believe such lies, they only dig in and accuse you of Trump Derangement Syndrome. That's just human nature and the way we resolve cognitive dissonance. The sunk cost fallacy is very powerful.
What you have to do is _listen_ to Trump voters and encourage the doubts they're beginning to express themselves. And you can't offer smug told-you-so's.
It's more complicated, time-consuming and frustrating than it looks, but it can be done. It just takes a boatload of empathy and a willingness to bracket off our first reactions to ideas that might appall us. It's a fundamentally Socratic process.
As a holder of an advanced psychology degree, i agree. I've found that asking questions...simple to start, then asking more based on their answers and challenging those answers gently with " ok then what do you think of him doing this? What do you think of that happening? How do you feel about his policy on this? And so on" tends to help get somewhere. On sarah longwell...love her. I love the bulwark epsidoes on YouTube and absolutely love her and all of them at the bulwark. Also a huge fan of Rick Wilson and the Lincoln project. But anyway, I've found that asking them gentle and simple questions then taking their answers and gently countering with facts and basically walking them through it and holding their hand through the cognitive dissonance to help them see they got conned without making them feel stupid helps some of the time...or at least it has most of the times I've tried it. Encouraging people to check sources also helps but only for those who are willing to do such work to see how what they've been presented was misrepresented at best and an all out lie at worst is also useful.
Is Putin preparing for peace? The Kremlin’s hybrid warfare strategy in 2025: goals & countermeasures. My new material covers major ongoing Kremlin disinformation campaigns, its readiness for peace talks, and the most likely developments in Russian policy under Putin. Link: https://substack.com/home/post/p-158071520
Awesome video. Laughed out loud at the word “chucklefucks.” So good. Why do I have feeling Rick would pay 50k to go one three-minute round with the orange diaper-wearing fuck? With 8 oz gloves. I’d pay 5k to watch.
At the moment, the Mango Monkey holds far too many of the cards. If you're waiting for a real MAGA revolt, I've got some beachfront property in Flagstaff to sell you. But there is hope when MM gets deeper into his persecution complex and paranoia. At some point when he's consolidated enough power, he'll realize that an armed populous is a danger to him, and unilaterally revoke the 2A. Then he will send his loyalist brown shirts out to seize the guns, using as a criteria who hasn't donated sufficiently to him. At that point, SOME of them will realize they've been had and maybe even that it was never going to be the Democrats who were going to take their guns.
The next step will the a 21st Century Operation Hummingbird, to eradicate all within his ranks, from top to the lowliest, who might challenge or even disagree with him.
We've had 80 years of mostly good times. Even the bad times were never near the badness of what had come before, and too many believe it can never happen again. When we have had downturns, it invariably fell upon those least able to survive, while those who no longer pay the bills hang out having parties for their friends in their MacMansions. Until a sizable amount of the ultra wealthy suffer seriously, they'll never show any compassion. Today we have 20M millionaires in America; and around 700 billionaires, many of whom did not work for their elitist wealth status, but inherited it from their deceased husbands (mostly) and fathers and grandfathers (mostly). Think of the offspring of Sam Walton or all the rich oil widows. I'm not going to tell you suffering is good for the soul, because it isn't, but suffering can induce some soul searching and enlightenment, at least in the short run.
I could advocate some paths to lead us out of this, but many are fraught with dangers of many kinds, including the loss of principles in the name of victory. Search your soul for your own answers, and keep ahold of decency and principles. But be prepared to realize that you may need to physically stand up against the tyranny.
Oh, yeah. Obligatory 'Rick is right as usual'.
BTW, if MAGA thinks that if America is standing on wobbly legs alone that her 'friend' Putin is going to help, they're being delusional. The complete collapse of America opens up the world to be harvested by the likes of Putin, and they will do it, until they too turn against each other.
Trump is simply bankrupting the country so his oligarchs can buy it for cheap just like they did in 2008 after the housing collapse. It’s all about “private equity”. After 2008 private scooped up all the housing and raised prices. And while they are diverting our attention with SS musk is granting himself huge government subsidies and canceling competitive contractors contracts. What is the definition of treason.
Rick, instead of listening to Trump trash talk for the umpteenth time ( I knew I would be reading your excellent commentary) I attended a loud angry rally of hundreds at City Hall here in San Antonio. Great signs, inspiring speeches, wonderful people doing whatever they can to save our country from what Stephen King says is "worse than any horror story I've ever written." True - King's blood curdling terrifying stories are fiction - the hellish nightmare we're living now is very real.
I think you summed up everything with that simple line pure bullshit lol unfortunately Trump lies and people eat up these lies but in order to understand the voters, we have to understand what his lies do for these vote voters. I wrote an article about it.
Excellent piece, David. As a strong liberal Democrat I completely endorse it and agree that the solution is to engage in left-populism -- creating counter-narratives about hated bad guys with at least as much emotional valence as the demonizing narratives on the other side.
People still don't understand why Bernie got so much traction with young people. I was very put off by Bernie's supporters who engaged in a politics of virtue signaling that amounted to shutting the conversation down, but I thought his response to Trump last night was more powerful and gripping than Elissa Slotkin's perfectly fine-for-what-it-is centrist approach.
For years principled economic conservatives warned Democrats off "class warfare." But the time has come to put that aside and go full-bore Eat The Rich. Else they'll eat us.
Donald Trump only knows how to lie. He would not know how to tell the truth if it bit him in the ass. Watch Elisa Slotkin's response on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwQT8UNvzYA&t=3s. Thank you.
What does maga even want? What in the hec are they even defending anymore?
We need to start a substack or TikTok or something called "MAGA did you vote for this?" ...and take one or two things each time. Egg prices (since they screamed about that and tell them why they are up), gas prices and why they are up, inflation and why it's up, his tax plan and why it will hurt everyone but FElon and his muskrats and billionaire buddies, and point out every single lie with facts. Maybe eventually some of it will get through. We could also do one showing all the parallels with Weimar Germany. Maybe some of these people will start to wake up. Judging by some of these town halls some of them are already starting to wake up. Maybe we can help it along
Our Job One is to peel off casual Trump voters from the Deep MAGA cultists.
I am crap at speaking on camera but I can write plenty well (way too many college credits and degrees to my name so I've written a whole lot about a whole lot so how about i write it, and you perform it...not perform exactly but speak it sounds dumb. You get what I mean. Maybe eventually some of those MAGA lites will stumble across it and start sharing it out and realizing "hey...you're right...holy $hit i didn't vote for this, i didn't want this " and we can save the midterms and at least hamstring him then. And if we are really lucky we can fire up these Republicans enough that their reps get a bit of a backbone and realize that if they keep doing what they're doing, all FElons money won't matter because NOBODY will vote for them unless they start standing up and being counted and putting a stop to at least some of this madness. Maybe the senate will grow a backbone (except my senator good ol grandpa munster himself cancun cruz...he's hopeless) and start pushing back. Maybe...
If you haven't, I'd suggest you check out Sarah Longwell's Focus Group podcast. For the past eight years, she's made a career out of talking to Trump voters.
The problem with people like us in this community when it comes to trying to engage Trump voters is that we suffer from the Eternal Gobsmack. How could you vote for this guy ?? He's a convicted felon, an adjudicated fraudster, a rapist, a con artist, a failure as a businessman, a pathological liar ! What's wrong with you ???
This, of course, never works. When you hit voters with moral arguments that make perfect sense to us, or ask them how they could believe such lies, they only dig in and accuse you of Trump Derangement Syndrome. That's just human nature and the way we resolve cognitive dissonance. The sunk cost fallacy is very powerful.
What you have to do is _listen_ to Trump voters and encourage the doubts they're beginning to express themselves. And you can't offer smug told-you-so's.
It's more complicated, time-consuming and frustrating than it looks, but it can be done. It just takes a boatload of empathy and a willingness to bracket off our first reactions to ideas that might appall us. It's a fundamentally Socratic process.
As a holder of an advanced psychology degree, i agree. I've found that asking questions...simple to start, then asking more based on their answers and challenging those answers gently with " ok then what do you think of him doing this? What do you think of that happening? How do you feel about his policy on this? And so on" tends to help get somewhere. On sarah longwell...love her. I love the bulwark epsidoes on YouTube and absolutely love her and all of them at the bulwark. Also a huge fan of Rick Wilson and the Lincoln project. But anyway, I've found that asking them gentle and simple questions then taking their answers and gently countering with facts and basically walking them through it and holding their hand through the cognitive dissonance to help them see they got conned without making them feel stupid helps some of the time...or at least it has most of the times I've tried it. Encouraging people to check sources also helps but only for those who are willing to do such work to see how what they've been presented was misrepresented at best and an all out lie at worst is also useful.
Consider looking at it from this perspective.
https://open.substack.com/pub/georgeallenbooks/p/spirituality-and-democracy-revisited?r=4pmgma&utm_medium=ios
You're right on once again Rick!! Your Mango Mussolini impression is dead nuts! 👍
Is Putin preparing for peace? The Kremlin’s hybrid warfare strategy in 2025: goals & countermeasures. My new material covers major ongoing Kremlin disinformation campaigns, its readiness for peace talks, and the most likely developments in Russian policy under Putin. Link: https://substack.com/home/post/p-158071520
Awesome video. Laughed out loud at the word “chucklefucks.” So good. Why do I have feeling Rick would pay 50k to go one three-minute round with the orange diaper-wearing fuck? With 8 oz gloves. I’d pay 5k to watch.
Keeping me sane. Thanks Rick
At the moment, the Mango Monkey holds far too many of the cards. If you're waiting for a real MAGA revolt, I've got some beachfront property in Flagstaff to sell you. But there is hope when MM gets deeper into his persecution complex and paranoia. At some point when he's consolidated enough power, he'll realize that an armed populous is a danger to him, and unilaterally revoke the 2A. Then he will send his loyalist brown shirts out to seize the guns, using as a criteria who hasn't donated sufficiently to him. At that point, SOME of them will realize they've been had and maybe even that it was never going to be the Democrats who were going to take their guns.
The next step will the a 21st Century Operation Hummingbird, to eradicate all within his ranks, from top to the lowliest, who might challenge or even disagree with him.
We've had 80 years of mostly good times. Even the bad times were never near the badness of what had come before, and too many believe it can never happen again. When we have had downturns, it invariably fell upon those least able to survive, while those who no longer pay the bills hang out having parties for their friends in their MacMansions. Until a sizable amount of the ultra wealthy suffer seriously, they'll never show any compassion. Today we have 20M millionaires in America; and around 700 billionaires, many of whom did not work for their elitist wealth status, but inherited it from their deceased husbands (mostly) and fathers and grandfathers (mostly). Think of the offspring of Sam Walton or all the rich oil widows. I'm not going to tell you suffering is good for the soul, because it isn't, but suffering can induce some soul searching and enlightenment, at least in the short run.
I could advocate some paths to lead us out of this, but many are fraught with dangers of many kinds, including the loss of principles in the name of victory. Search your soul for your own answers, and keep ahold of decency and principles. But be prepared to realize that you may need to physically stand up against the tyranny.
Oh, yeah. Obligatory 'Rick is right as usual'.
BTW, if MAGA thinks that if America is standing on wobbly legs alone that her 'friend' Putin is going to help, they're being delusional. The complete collapse of America opens up the world to be harvested by the likes of Putin, and they will do it, until they too turn against each other.
Trump is simply bankrupting the country so his oligarchs can buy it for cheap just like they did in 2008 after the housing collapse. It’s all about “private equity”. After 2008 private scooped up all the housing and raised prices. And while they are diverting our attention with SS musk is granting himself huge government subsidies and canceling competitive contractors contracts. What is the definition of treason.
In FElons case, what is the definition of monopoly
Bingo. It's all about private equity.
If I lose any source of income I sure as hell can't buy stuff, nor pay my mortgage... how does that benefit the oligarchs that sell me stuff.🤷♀️
As I explained in my big post below, this is not simply another recipe for fleecing the masses, although it's also that.
This is eschatological.
Yep you're exactly right. This guy explains why. They're doing ALL of this on purpose.
https://open.substack.com/pub/longmemo/p/the-great-american-fire-sale-tonights?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2o7uvb
Rick, instead of listening to Trump trash talk for the umpteenth time ( I knew I would be reading your excellent commentary) I attended a loud angry rally of hundreds at City Hall here in San Antonio. Great signs, inspiring speeches, wonderful people doing whatever they can to save our country from what Stephen King says is "worse than any horror story I've ever written." True - King's blood curdling terrifying stories are fiction - the hellish nightmare we're living now is very real.
Thanks Rick I feel better if that’s possible lol
I agree !
From your mouth to God's ears! ❤️
FANTASTIC! BRAVO RICK WILSON!!!
I think you summed up everything with that simple line pure bullshit lol unfortunately Trump lies and people eat up these lies but in order to understand the voters, we have to understand what his lies do for these vote voters. I wrote an article about it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidsypherjr/p/what-trumps-lies-say-about-his-own?r=2sshtz&utm_medium=ios
Excellent piece, David. As a strong liberal Democrat I completely endorse it and agree that the solution is to engage in left-populism -- creating counter-narratives about hated bad guys with at least as much emotional valence as the demonizing narratives on the other side.
People still don't understand why Bernie got so much traction with young people. I was very put off by Bernie's supporters who engaged in a politics of virtue signaling that amounted to shutting the conversation down, but I thought his response to Trump last night was more powerful and gripping than Elissa Slotkin's perfectly fine-for-what-it-is centrist approach.
For years principled economic conservatives warned Democrats off "class warfare." But the time has come to put that aside and go full-bore Eat The Rich. Else they'll eat us.
Well said my friend