A couple days ago the Secretary of State in Maine determined Trump’s name should be removed from the ballot in her state and, already, I’m getting emails asking me to sign petitions THANKING her for, in essence, doing her job. Only in America! Let’s see! Section three of the 14th Amendment to our constitution couldn’t be any CLEARER. It’s straight forward that if you’ve taken an oath to defend the constitution AND you CHOOSE to participate in INSURRECTION or give “aid and comfort” to those who’ve participated in INSURRECTION, you’re INELIGIBLE to hold any office of any kind, federal or state, PERIOD! Full Stop!

So, why do we have to go out of our way to “thank” someone in elective office for simply “doing their job.” Well, the answer’s easy – there are very few office holders in America who are willing to do their job when it runs into/comes in conflict with Donald Trump. We all know the result. My guess is this Secretary of State is already facing DEATH THREATS from the unhinged MAGA “faithful” and, likely, Trump is egging them on – with his mob style rhetoric where he can’t be held accountable in case one of his “deranged” supporters might happen to do something really naughty. Our TWICE IMPEACHED so-called two time popular vote LOSING (ex) president facing 91 FELONIES likes to code his words in “dog whistles” and my guess is he’s already doing it toward this lady who’s simply doing her job.

Of course, Colorado’s Supreme Court sent the first “salvo” in the attempt to get Trump thrown off the ballots – well, at least in Colorado. Now Maine! Who’s next? I have to add, from what I’ve read, even the “progressive” legal experts I’ve listened to – and there are many – it seems almost unanimous they think the Supreme Court will find a way to overturn these two decsions – both based on “state’s rights” and a “textual” reading of the constitution (which is what Court conservatives claim to “hold dear,”) And, trust me, I’m with them. I’ve been watching the SCOTUS make politically charged decisions since AT LEAST 2000. So, the only thing which will be surprising is how they go about violating their own principles.

But let’s take a look at the actual definition of insurrection and then compare it to Trump’s own words – From the American Heritage Dictionary:

1. The act or an instance of open revolt against civil authority or a constituted government.
2. A rising up; uprising.
3. The act of rising against civil authority or governmental restraint; specifically, the armed resistance of a number of persons to the power of the state; incipient or limited rebellion.

So, if you’ve been paying attention you know Trump continues to (the “Big Lie”) say the 2020 election was “rigged.” Even though there’s been NUMEROUS members of his own administration who’ve pointed out he was told there was virtually NO “fraud” in the 2020 election which could change the outcome. He knew he LOST. He LOST over 60 lawsuits. He just is unable to accept reality due to what appears to be the fact he’s a narcissistic sociopath (alleged). However, that certainly does not mean he’s not culpable for the attack on our nation’s Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021 – which according to the above definition was an “insurrection.”

Of course Trump has been continually attempting to avoid accountability for his participation in that INSURRECTION. His own words are stuck in my head: “We have to go the the Capitol and fight like hell. If you (talking to the mob) don’t fight like hell you won’t have a country anymore.” Obviously, his followers took his words literally and the result was Trump watching (proudly) as his supporters attacked the Capitol and Metropolitan Police officers (in response to his call to action) injuring over 140 of them leading to (I believe) the DEATH of three of them. The Police officers were attacked with a variety of weapons and a torrent of disgusting verbal assaults (especially the African American officers).

Trump watched the INSURRECTION he had incited on TV in the “White House” for something like 3 hours – even sending a “tweet” to his supporters that “Mike Pense didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done” as his supporters were chanting “Hang Mike Pense” – they had actually constructed a gallows on the Capitol grounds. Reports are that when Trump was advised his VP was in danger his response was “He deserves it.” Since then, as I said above, Trump has been doing everything he can to avoid accountability – including running once again for president in 2024 as a “get out of jail free card.”

Those of us who’ve been watching this process – meaning the indictments Trump is facing, including four FELONY charges relating to the January 6th INSURRECTION – play out, and who want to see Trump face a jury of his peers regarding his actions after the November 2020 election culminating with the attack on the Capitol prior to the 2024 election – people like me – are confident he’s GUILTY as charged. (I guess I’d be a bad person to sit on the jury) I’ve read MOST of the books pointing out what happened (including recently Cassidy Hutchinson’s book) and the evidence is, in my view, overwhelming Trump belongs in jail.

To be clear, his own words are sufficient to, it seems to me, make the case regarding the 14th amendment issues. I actually heard/saw Trump say the following (on TV) which actually proves his “intent” to overturn a “free and fair election” – “That’s right!! Mike Pence failed us. Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away,” Trump added in his statement. “Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the election!” He said these words in response to the Senate proposing legislation to amend the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to ensure no Vice President (in the future) could entertain the option of overturning an election (that would include Kamala Harris, by the way) – Trump apparently was thinking the fact Senators felt the need to make it clear Pense’s constitutional role was ceremonial only – proved the two of them COULD have “overturned the election” of November 2020.

So, I refer back to the definition of INSURRECTION – “The act or an instance of open revolt against civil authority or a constituted government.” Did he or didn’t he? To me, the evidence is irrefutable – HE DID! participate in INSURRECTION. Full Stop! Do I expect the Supreme Court to agree with Colorado’s Supreme Court and barr Trump from the ballot in the upcoming election. Of course not. They will find a way to say section 3 of the 14th amendment to the constitution doesn’t say what it actually says – which is:

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

To me, if you’re a “textualist” as the “conservative” members would have us believe (they are overturning one precedent after another because of what they refer to is the actual “text” of the constitution) it couldn’t be clearer Trump SHOULD be disqualified from holding ANY office in ANY state or the federal government because he’s an INSURRECTIONIST – by his own words and the “text” of the definition of INSURRECTIONIST and Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

Here’s my prediction: Judge Thomas, who by all accounts SHOULD recuse himself from this case – after all, his wife was a participant in the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election by (allegedly) participating in the “fraudulent elector” scheme – but, he won’t. Also, I expect Judge Gorsuch to reverse himself – in regard to a ruling he made when he was on the Court of Appeals overseeing Colorado (they mentioned his ruling in the majority opinion of Colorado’s Supreme Court ruling Trump SHOULD be disqualified). In 2012 concerning a challenge to a person’s claim of eligibilty to run for president Gorsuch wrote: “it is ‘a state’s legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process’ that ‘permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.”

Just as I expect Judge Thomas to reverse himself in the upcoming challenge to the “Chevron doctrine” (I’ll write more about that later) I expect Gorsuch to find a “creative” way around his own words/decision just over 10 years ago. This court has proven itself to be nothing more than right wing Puppets who are controlled by the billionaire/corporate oligarchs who are attempting to wrest control of America from “we the people.” John Roberts will go down in History as one of the WEAKEST Chief Justices to ever be in that important positions. The CORRUPTION of members of his court – likely including him via the connections of his wife – is, to me, sickening.

Selfishly, I don’t have too much time on this planet, and it grieves me to watch what this court is doing to the established precedents which helped to “make this country great.” We have a long way to go, but the beauty of the constitution is that it’s a “living document” which has been able to evolve over time getting us closer to the original ideals (which I have to add were written down by slave holders). We’ve come a long way in my lifetime and we’re witnessing a concerted attack on America’s late 20th century and 21st century progress – and, much of these gains have been painstaking – especially for those Americans who are part of “minorities.” That is, not “White Anglo Saxon Protestent.” The Roberts Court is attempting to “turn back the clock.” How will they jusify Trump’s INSURRECTION?

Final Thought: Not only is Trump facing 4 CRIMINAL indictments but his, like a true sixth grade bully, attacking our court system as he’s facing – in the words of Bernie Sanders – YUGE civil penalties. Likely over $250 BILLION in the New York Fraud trial plus, who knows how much in punitive damages, likely MORE than Rudy Giuliani was fined, in the E Jean Carroll trial. Trump chose to sit in the court, challenge the judge’s authority, and continue DEFAMING Ms. Carroll from inside the courtroom where the entire purpose is to determine the amount of damages. Is that STUPID or what. Plus, by all accounts his attorney is in way over her head. The judge has had to instruct her on – get this – how to introduce evidence. I believe he used the term “courtroom 101.”

I decided to do a little “checking” and discovered Trump, who will likely appeal whatever the verdict is (meaning the amount he owes Ms. Carroll) PLUS will appeal the verdict in the Fraud Trial. I thought, “can he do that and simply not pay any money until after he pushes an appeal out for – maybe – years?” (Putting the liability on his children) Well, what I discovered is Trump will have to post a bond, secured by real property, in the amount of any judgement he owes PLUS the anticipated interest which will accrue during the appeal as a requirement to appeal the verdicts. It’s not hard to imagine he’ll have to post a bond in the amount of $500 MILLION (the interest in New York on an unpaid judgement accrues at – only – 2% per annum) plus at least a couple MILLION to cover the interest if it appears he’s going to be able to stall the payment a couple of years. Stay tuned….

Does the EPA Die Today?

The Supreme Court, it appears, is planning to gut most of America’s regulatory agencies in what could be the most consequential re-write of the protective “deep state” since the New Deal…

THOM HARTMANN

JAN 17, 2024

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Republicans on the Supreme Court are, it appears, planning to gut most of America’s regulatory agencies, in what could be the most consequential re-write of the protective “deep state” since it was largely created during the New Deal in the 1930s.

The vehicle for this radical transformation of America is a case that will be argued today, in just a few hours, before the Court: Loper Bright Enterprises v Gina Raimondo.

If they pull it off, these six corrupt Republicans on the Court could destroy the ability of:

— the EPA to regulate pollutants,
— the USDA to keep our food supply safe,
— the FDA to oversee drugs going onto the market,
— OSHA to protect workers,
— the CPSC to keep dangerous toys and consumer products off the market,
— the FTC to regulate monopolies,
— the DOT to come up with highway and automobile safety standards,
— the ATF to regulate guns,
— the Interior Department to regulate drilling and mining on federal lands,
— the Forest Service to protect our woodlands and rivers,
— the FCC to protect us from internet predators,
— and the Department of Labor to protect workers’ rights.

Virtually the entirety of America’s ability to protect its citizens from corporate predation through regulation rests on what’s called the Chevron deference (more on that in a moment), which the Court appears prepared to overturn in today’s case.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says he wants to eliminate the Department of Education “on day one” if he’s elected president. If the Supreme Court has its way, he wouldn’t have to bother. It’ll become impotent.

Far-right conservatives and libertarians have been working for this destruction of agencies — the ultimate in deregulation — ever since the first regulatory agencies came into being with the 1906 creation of the Pure Food and Drugs Act, a response to Upton Sinclair’s bestselling horror story published that year (The Jungle) about American slaughterhouses and meat-packing operations.

Gutting these agencies is what Steve Bannon meant when Trump brought him into the White House and he said one of the main goals of that administration was to “deconstruct the administrative state.” If there’s any coherent explanation of the phrase “deep state” as used by Republicans, it’s our nation’s regulatory agencies.

The modern effort to destroy or at least neuter America’s protective agencies began when Ronald Reagan put Anne Gorsuch in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

She directed the agency to dial back restrictions on expansion of factories and other operations that were already polluting the atmosphere. That provoked a challenge to the Supreme Court, Natural Resources Defense Council, v. Gorsuch, where the Court overruled the Reagan administration.

Gorsuch nonetheless continued her efforts to gut the EPA. In her first year heading the agency, there was a 79 percent decline in enforcement cases, and a 69 percent drop in cases the EPA referred to the Justice Department for prosecution. She pushed a 25 percent cut in her own agency’s funding into Reagan’s first budget proposal.

It took Congress years to overturn her cuts to the Clean Air Act “on everything from automobiles to furniture manufacturers,” according to Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust.

She took a meataxe to President Carter’s renewable energy programs and “set solar back a decade” according to Clapp.

Gorsuch finally resigned her office to avoid prosecution for what Newsweek described as “a nasty scandal involving political manipulation, [Super]fund mismanagement, perjury, and destruction of subpoenaed documents, among other things.”

Her son, Neil Gorsuch, was devastated by his mother’s resignation. In her memoir Are You Tough Enough? she tells the story of how Neil confronted her when she resigned:

“Neil,” she wrote, “got very upset. Halfway through Georgetown prep and smart as a whip, Neil knew from the beginning the seriousness of my problems. He also had an unerring sense of fairness, as do so many people his age.

“‘You should never have resigned,’ he said firmly. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. You only did what the president [Reagan] ordered. Why are you quitting? You raised me not to be a quitter. Why are you a quitter?’

“He was really upset,” she added.

Now, it appears, her son is preparing his revenge.

To get there, he and the other Republicans on the Court appear hell-bent-for-leather to turn regulatory agency rule-making upside-down, which will please the billionaires who give them luxury vacations, buy them homes, and pay them absurd speaking fees (and paid Roberts’ wife over $10 million).

Here’s how regulatory law — using the example of the EPA and CO2 — is supposed to work (in super-simplified form):

1. Congress passes a law that says, for example, that the Environmental Protection Agency should limit the damage that pollutants in the environment cause to the planet. Congress (the Constitution’s Article I branch of government) defines the broad goal of the legislation, but the Executive Branch (Article II, which encompasses the EPA and other regulatory agencies) has the responsibility to carry it out.

2. The EPA, part of that Executive Branch and answering both to the law and the President, then convenes panels of experts. They spend a year or more doing an exhaustive, deep dive into the science, coming up with dozens or even hundreds of suggestions to limit atmospheric CO2, ranging from rules on how much emission cars can expel to drilling and refining processes that may leak CO2 or methane (which degrades into CO2), etc.

3. The experts’ suggestions are then run past a panel of rule-making bureaucrats and hired-gun rule-making experts for the EPA to decide what the standards should be. They take into consideration the current abilities of industry and the costs versus the benefits of various rules, among other things.

4. After they’ve come up with those tentative regulations, they submit them for public review and hearings. When that process is done and a consensus is achieved, they make them into official EPA rules, publish them, enforce them, and the CO2 emissions begin to drop.

This is a process that simply comports with common sense, as the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 when they established what’s called the “Chevron deference” to legitimize and defend our regulatory agencies.

That doctrine — established by the Supreme Court and reflecting a century of the will of Congress and presidents of both parties who signed regulatory agencies into existence — says that when a regulatory agency does its due diligence and determines reasonable rules for a substance or behavior they have the legal authority to regulate, the courts should “defer” to the judgment of the agency.

Congress passes laws that empower regulatory agencies to solve problems, the agencies figure out how to do that and put the rules into place, and the solutions get enforced by the agencies. And when somebody sues to overturn the rules, if the courts determine they were arrived at through a reasonable process without corruption, those rules stand.

Then came a group of rightwing Supreme Court justices — including Neil Gorsuch — who overturned rules made by the EPA about CO2 emissions from power plants in their June, 2022 West Virginia v EPA decision. This set up today’s arguments.

Their rationale was that because the legislation that created the EPA doesn’t specifically mention “regulating CO2,” the agency lacks that power. And now it has lost that power, the result of that West Virginia v EPA decision a year-and-a-half ago.

The coal-, oil-, and natural-gas-fired power plant industry has been popping champagne corks for almost two years now, as CO2 levels continue to increase along with the temperature of our planet.

In addition to Gorsuch, the Court’s decision-makers in West Virginia v EPA included Amy Coney Barrett whose father was a lawyer for Shell Oil for decades, and John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh who are all on the Court in part because of support from a network funded by fossil fuel billionaires and their industry (among others).

And, of course, Clarence “on the take” Thomas, who supported the Chevron deference 15 years ago but in 2020 wrote:

“Chevron compels judges to abdicate the judicial power without constitutional sanction. … Chevron also gives federal agencies unconstitutional power.”

Giving us a clue to how this will probably go down, all six Republicans on the Court voted to gut the EPA’s ability to regulate CO2; all 3 Democratic nominees opposed the decision.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the Court:

“[D]oes not have a clue about how to address climate change…yet it appoints itself, instead of congress or the expert agency…the decision-maker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.”

Their ruling was, essentially, that all of that research into the specifics of anticipated regulations — all those hundreds of scientists, millions of public comments, and hundreds of thousands of science-hours invested in understanding problems and coming up with workable solutions — must be done by Congress rather than administrative regulatory agencies.

As if Congress had the time and staff. As if Congress was stocked with scientific experts, a much larger budget, and had millions of hours a year for hearings. As if Republicans in the pockets of fossil fuel billionaires wouldn’t block any congressional action even if it did.

Gorsuch, et al, succeeded in the West Virginia v EPA case, but it was narrowly focused on CO2.

In the case being argued today, however, the Court is explicitly preparing to expand that victory by blowing the entire Chevron deference out of the water, thus ending or severely limiting most protective government regulations in America and opening the door to court challenges to every regulatory agency listed at the open of this article (and more).

They’re saying, essentially, that the EPA (and any other regulatory agency) can’t do all the steps listed above: instead, that detailed and time-consuming analysis of a problem, developing specific solutions, and writing specific rules has to be done, they say, by Congress itself.

Specifically, this case the Court is hearing today — Loper Bright Enterprises v Gina Raimondo — has to do with whether or not fishermen should have to pay fees that help cover the cost of the agency that regulates them.

But when you look at the briefs being filed by billionaire- and corporate-funded rightwing groups like the CATO Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Pacific Legal Foundation, Independent Women’s Law Center, Southeastern Legal Foundation, Christian Employer’s Alliance, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Advancing American Freedom, and the Buckeye Institute, you find the real goal of this litigation.

CATO, for example, writes:

“[I]t is now clear that Chevron deference is unconstitutional and ahistorical. Over the past forty years and counting, it has wreaked havoc in the lower courts upon people and businesses.”

Competitive Enterprise writes of the National Marine Fisheries Service:

“The agency lacks inherent legislative power: it may only use the powers that Congress gives it. … Only Congress can decide if a power given to it by the Constitution should be exercised. … The agency’s attempt to exercise this never- assigned power not only goes beyond the authority Congress gave it; it goes beyond any authority that Congress could legitimately give it.”

Pacific Legal Foundation cuts right to the heart of the ability of agencies to regulate anything, saying the case turns on:

“Whether the Court should overrule Chevron…”

The Buckeye Institute writes they’re submitting their amicus brief to the Court:

“[T]o speak on behalf of the thousands of small businesses concerned with agency aggrandizement of power through Chevron deference…”

On the side of you, me, and most other average Americans who just want clean air and water, safe drugs and cars, and reasonable protections in the workplace, the Biden administration has stepped up.

In defense of America’s regulatory agencies, the federal government’s brief filed with the Court lays out what’s at stake:

“Petitioners bear an especially heavy burden in asking this Court to overrule Chevron, which stands at the head of ‘a long line of precedents’ reaching back decades. The Court in Chevron described its approach not as an innovation, but as the application of “well-settled principles” concerning the respective roles of agencies and courts in resolving statutory ambiguities.

“Federal courts have invoked Chevron in thousands of reported decisions, and Congress has repeatedly legislated against its backdrop. Regulated entities and others routinely rely on agency interpretations that courts have upheld under the Chevron framework.

“By centralizing interpretive decisions in agencies supervised by the President, Chevron also promotes political accountability, national uniformity and predictability, and it respects the expertise agencies can bring to bear in ad- ministering complex statutory schemes.

“Petitioners offer no persuasive ‘special justification’ for overruling Chevron, let alone the type of ‘particularly special justification’ that would be required to overturn such a deeply ingrained part of administrative law.

“Petitioners principally contend that Chevron improperly transfers the authority to ‘say what the law is’ from the Judicial Branch to the Executive Branch. But this Court has explained that the Chevron framework rests on a presumption that ‘a statute’s ambiguity constitutes an implicit delegation from Congress to the agency to fill in the statutory gaps.’ (emphasis mine)

This could be the big enchilada, the case that fundamentally transforms America and American government from a modern, well-functioning nation into a third-world backwater where massive corporations and the billionaires they made rich, instead of We the People through elected representatives, set the rules. It’s corporate America’s dream.

It could fulfill Bannon’s and Trump’s promise to dismantle — or at least eviscerate — most of America’s regulatory agencies, leaving us all subject to the tender mercies of the country’s CEOs.

Several groups have called on Gorsuch to recuse himself from the case because one of his friends and patrons is a billionaire who’ll profit greatly from the destruction of our regulatory agencies. Not to mention fulfilling his mother’s legacy.

So far, though, he doesn’t seem to care about the apparent conflict of interest: the Republicans on this Court seem incapable of feeling shame or behaving ethically.

Keep an eye on this case and pay attention to the reporting on today’s arguments before the Court. Knowing what’s coming down the road — and why, and from whom — may well be vital for those of us concerned with the future of our country and our children’s safety.

Thank you for reading The Hartmann Report. This post is public so feel free to share it.

The Snowflaking of White Privilege

If America is ever to become a pluralistic, multiracial democratic republic we must come to terms with racism and white privilege…

THOM HARTMANNJAN 11, 2024176

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Some white people really don’t want to hear that if they’d been born Black their lives would have almost certainly been much harder. It shatters their ability to cling to the number one most important aspect/benefit of white privilege. It confronts them with the end of innocence.

This is particularly difficult for America’s elite media. The very idea of calling out, for example, Trump supporters for their racism is “beyond the pale.” And I mean that nearly literally.

A “palus,” the “pale” referenced in that old phrase, was a sharpened stake sticking out from a fence designed to keep people within a certain area: it was the 13th century version of barbed or razor wire. They were called “paling fences.” The British used them back then to keep Irish people from leaving their Gaza-like confinement areas in eastern parts of Ireland, the area that, for the British, was “beyond the pales.”

America’s news media is as wary of calling Republicans racists as the Irish were of getting themselves impaled (also where that word came from) on the British fences. Think about it: when was the last time you heard or read Trump, or his cult followers, being explicitly identified as “racist” by any of our major media outlets.

And yet they are racists.

Even when Trump calls Letitia James “Peekaboo James,” evoking the old “Jigab**” slur from the era of his childhood, they look away. Even when he uses his favorite descriptor for Black people: “thugs.” Or when he talks about brown-skinned immigrants “poisoning the blood” of America. They’ll acknowledge he’s quoting Hitler but appear terrified of calling him a racist or pointing out he’s using racism as a political weapon.

On my radio/TV program yesterday, a caller brought up the topic of Trump’s racism in the context of white privilege. I commented that I was probably in my 50s before I realized that the biggest, most important, most powerful, most impactful aspect of white privilege was that, as a white guy, I didn’t have to think about the color of my skin every day.

I don’t have to worry how the color of my skin will influence the interaction when I’m pulled over by a cop. I don’t have to wonder if the color of my skin was why I was given a crappy seat in a restaurant. If I’m walking around a department store and somebody seems to be interested in the same things I’m looking at, I don’t need to wonder if they’re following me because of the color of my skin.

A few months ago, Karen Hunter — one of the truly top-notch hosts on SiriusXM — was kind enough to invite me on her show. She asked me what white privilege meant to me and I gave her the description in the previous paragraph. Karen seemed thoughtfully amused, suggesting that perhaps I was bragging.

But what I meant was that I was absolutely shocked when this realization hit me: horrified that I hadn’t understood it earlier, that I hadn’t learned about it in school, that my parents had never discussed it with me.

Of course, I knew it at some deep level. I had all the knowledge necessary for that insight. I’d just never applied it to myself and my own life: I’d always told myself the story that I got where I was because I was smart and worked hard: I’d left home at 16 and never went back. Throughout my life, I’d omitted the color of my skin from my personal origin story (which, of course, is the highest expression of white privilege).

Similarly, I’m aghast at all the racist rightwingers on a jihad against any school or teacher who would help the kids growing up today come to what had been a belated realization for me.

They’re on their crusade against DEI, CRT, and Black history because when white kids are hit with that realization it’s usually accompanied by empathy for those people who are forced, every day, every time they leave the house or apply for a job or even get admitted to a hospital, to confront the many ways in which their skin color can make their experience so very different from that of white people.

And G-d forbid white people have empathy for their fellow human beings born with darker skin.

That could lead to America becoming a society where “the content of your character” is more important than the color of your skin. Republicans love to quote that phrase of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but what they’re really saying is that we shouldn’t discuss skin color and its impact at all.

After my riff on the air yesterday about my personal insight, a listener named Donna sent me the following email:

“Stop with the white privilege. Don’t you know every time you mention that and racism you are constantly dividing our great country. Why do progressives always do this. All races are privileged during their lives. Yet you never mention them. Many Muslins, Asians, Jews, Puerto Ricans and many other races are privileged. Do you not know they work from the bottom up to get that privilege. I know many immigrants came here legally like the Irish and Italians etc. that worked damn hard to get here and were treated like the lowest class of people. Yet they worked hard to get that privilege. So cut out your nonsense.

“When you work hard to raise your family and [are] proud of this country you can become privileged. It’s your choice. The opportunity is yours. Stop putting us into different classes. It really harms this country. I believe we were put here to be kind to each other and help each other not to divide. Please stop your nonsense. I’m white and don’t feel privileged. Lost a parent at young age and worked hard. No privilege there. I don’t appreciate your constant rambling about this.”

My point in quoting this email is not to call out or embarrass Donna, but to highlight her almost perfect articulation of how most white people think of their own white privilege. Which is to say, they don’t: “No privilege here.”

And, apparently, no privilege in our media, either.

Dan Froomkin over at Press Watchers has spent a good part of the past year identifying this same type of denial, both among Trump-humpers and in our mainstream media. In his Press Watch newsletter last week, he asked the question, “How much of Trump’s support is due to racism?”

He also explores the problem of the American press’ near-absolute unwillingness to call much of Trump’s and his followers’ behavior and rhetoric what it clearly is: good-old-fashioned all-American racism.

Froomkin points to a recent Washington Post article about how Trump and most GOP politicians regularly take openly racist positions, both rhetorically and on legislative issues. But throughout the article, the authors refused to describe these Republicans as racists. They wouldn’t even quote anybody calling them racists: that would be, by the standards of today’s journalism, beyond the pale:

“When mainstream journalists do address racism,” Froomkin writes, “they do so with euphemisms and denials. These days that means they understate the racist rhetoric from Trump and other leading Republicans, and they actively cover up the racism of his supporters and make excuses for them.”

This is, he notes, even worse than simply ignoring racism because its effect is to normalize it. And he encourages his journalistic peers to take the next step and do some real reporting:

“Reporters should be fanning out to assess racism’s role in the choices the electorate is making. And that doesn’t mean asking: Are you racist? When they say no, that’s meaningless.

“It means asking them what they believe. Do they subscribe to the great replacement theory? They’re racist. Do they believe that white Europeans are more desirable as immigrants than Africans or Asians? Racist. Do they believe that immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood’ of the country? Racist. Do they feel like minorities are unfairly getting ahead of them in line for the American Dream? Racist.”

As I was writing the first draft of this article yesterday afternoon, an email came into my in-box from Donald Trump.

It was absolutely dripping with the racism that Trump has proudly exhibited all the way back to the days when he was demanding the death penalty for five innocent young Black men accused of a Central Park rape, a demand he continues to make today, long after they were all exonerated and the man who actually committed the crime was arrested and successfully prosecuted:

“Reports all over the country,” Trump starts out, “show that Obama is hellbent on stopping our 2024 campaign. He’s RETALIATING because I’m the President who ripped his disastrous ‘legacy’ to shreds.” 

Right. Go after the Black guy to raise money and get out the vote in the last weeks of your primary campaign. Nothing racist about that, right?

Trump then features three headlines citing his destruction of President Obama’s legacy:

“How Trump is rolling back Obama’s legacy”
       Source: Washington Post

“Trump Discards Obama Legacy, One Rule at a Time”
      Source: New York Times

“Obama’s Legacy Has Already Been Destroyed”
      Source: NY Mag

Trump wrapped up yesterday’s pitch to his racist base with this:

“Come January 20, 2025, we will FINISH the job and remove the last remnants of Obama’s legacy AND cast Biden’s legacy to the ash heap of history along with it.”

While that email presumably went to millions of Americans, I think it’s safe to say that it won’t be called out by the media. There won’t be a story about it in today’s newspaper or this morning‘s television. Just like most media refused to call him a racist when he told four Black congresswomen to “go back … [to the] places from which they came.”

Politico quoted a few Democrats calling Trump’s “go back” comment racist, but didn’t identify the statement or Trump himself as racist. Ditto for NBC News, CBS News, and USA Today. The New York Times at least identified the phrase itself, but did so by way of correcting an error of Trump’s:

“Wrapped inside that insult, which was widely established as a racist trope, was a factually inaccurate claim: Only one of the lawmakers was born outside the country.”

Last night on Fox News, one of their hosts did a segment asking if DEI was responsible for the door blowing off a Boeing plane. Because, you know, Black people are stupid and if you hire a bunch of them to build airplanes you’re gonna have substandard airplanes.

Nothing racist about Fox “News,” right?

If America is ever to become a pluralistic, multiracial democratic republic we must come to terms with this endemic racism and white privilege.

Our media must stop being terrified of the paling fence Republicans have erected around themselves and their racist rhetoric. So what if these “conservatives” (the modern-day euphemism for “racists”: William F. Buckley Jr., the godfather of modern conservatism, wrote about whites as the “advanced race”) are such snowflakes that they’ll yell, scream, and play victim?

It’s way past time to call racists what they are, teach the actual history of America, and — as a society and culture — make unacceptable the kinds of semi-coded racist rhetoric and racially-targeted Red state anti-voter legislation that’s so common today across the GOP.

And that begins with white people: we must understand our own sordid history, acknowledge our privilege, and strive to remake America into a nation that works for all its citizens.

As President Kennedy said of world peace but also more generally argued when it came to racial reconciliation, “We are not helpless before that task.”

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Why is Marjorie Taylor Greene Channeling Centuries of Racist Rhetoric?

What is the opposite of diversity, equity, and inclusion? Whites-only communities, whites-only jobs, and racial segregation…

Thom Hartmann Jan 9

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As one of Georgia’s most high-profile racists (a high bar in that state), Marjorie Taylor Greene has a reputation to uphold. Which is probably why this week she posted an attack on the Blackrock investment firm for having DEI or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs at that company.

“Corporate communists believe they have to force behaviors,” Greene wrote on her Xitter feed. “They only need to remember as a corporation or business their ONLY job is to SERVE THEIR CUSTOMER with the best job possible to make their customers happy! It’s not about gender, sex, race and blah blah blah.”

In this, Greene is channeling centuries of racist rhetoric that argued it was inappropriate for government or companies to have any concerns about racial fairness or equity. After all, the white customers of Georgia’s segregated 1960s lunch counters were “happy!” What else is necessary?  

There’s a reason why America’s white supremacist Republican politicians like Greene and Stefanik are pushing so hard to get rid of DEI and to fire Black people in academia and the Pentagon: it wins them votes. From the geriatric Fox “News” followers, to white nationalist militias, to the preachers in all-white evangelical churches, the browning of America has provoked a collective freak-out.

And when you put it into the context of presidential administration policies over the past seventy or so years, it just makes sense that at this moment in time we’d see this explosion of exploitative racism from the hard right in America.

Like with any six-decade-old memory (from childhood, no less), I can’t be sure my recollection is as vivid as I think it is, but I have a clear recollection of my Dad pointing out and commenting about a “Colored Entrance Around Back” sign (or words to that effect) at the old RE Olds Hotel (later renamed the Jack Tar) in downtown Lansing, Michigan in the late 1950s.

The hotel housed one of the better sit-down restaurants in Lansing and we went out only rarely, but it was one of my parents’ favorites, that sign notwithstanding. My recollection is that the sign offended my Dad who, although a Republican, was a strong advocate of civil rights (at that time, the segregated South was almost entirely Democratic).

Chattel slavery had only ended about 90 years earlier, the Klan was riding high, and Fred Koch was funding “Impeach Earl Warren” billboards across the country, expressing rightwing outrage over the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v Board decision that required the racial integration of our nation’s public schools.

Virtually every door to opportunity was closed to Black people in the 1950s. Their segregated public schools were substandard; America’s top colleges only occasionally let in women, much less Black people; unions and employers alike opposed African Americans in the workplace; and it was nearly impossible to find a Black doctor, lawyer, college professor (outside of HBCUs), or cop.

In a speech which began the racial transformation of America, President John Kennedy addressed the nation on June 11, 1963 about this issue:

“We are confronted today primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.

“The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?

“One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

“We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is the land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes?

“Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise.”

Kennedy didn’t live to see the legislation he proposed pass Congress: that job fell to Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and 1965 with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. But JFK set the stage for racial reconciliation and Black opportunity, and America is the better for it.

In his speech, Kennedy pointed out how far behind Black people were, as a result of centuries of slavery and nearly a century of legally enforced segregation:

“The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the Nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing a high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day, one-third as much chance of completing college, one-third as much chance of becoming a professional man, twice as much chance of becoming unemployed, about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year, a life expectancy which is 7 years shorter, and the prospects of earning only half as much.”

But just ending legal segregation and discrimination in America wasn’t enough, Kennedy knew. That’s why he originated the term “affirmative action” with his Executive Order 10925, which required any contractor or company that wanted to do business with the federal government to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”  

President Johnson followed up with his own Executive Order, 11246, which spelled out exactly what affirmative action meant:

“Such action shall include, but not be limited to the following: employment, upgrading, demotion, or transfer; recruitment or recruitment advertising; layoff or termination; rates of pay or other forms of compensation; and selection for training, including apprenticeship.”

Over the loud objections of white supremacists and open racists like George Wallace and Ronald Reagan, affirmative action became a watchword phrase during the 1970s. That decade saw the first wave of Black people getting a quality education and finding good jobs, particularly in the government sector.

Then came the Reagan Revolution, powered in part by white backlash against Kennedy’s, Johnson’s, and Carter’s affirmative action programs.

Reagan’s first official campaign stop had been to speak at an all-white county fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the brutal murder of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, in 1964. The subject of his speech was “states’ rights,” which everybody knew was code for “let the southern states continue their segregation programs.”

On the 1980 campaign trail, Reagan told the story of the “strapping young buck” in line at the supermarket upsetting all the hard-working white people when he whipped out his food stamps to pay for his “steak and beer”; it was the male complement to Reagan’s Black “welfare queen” myth.  Cut off his food stamps, the logic went, and he’ll be forced to look for gainful employment…even if there were no jobs within miles and white employers wouldn’t then hire Black people. 

But Reagan didn’t just talk about stopping affirmative action: he took steps to push America back to the white supremacist 1950s. As The Washington Post noted:

“In the 1980s, the Reagan administration began to roll back civil rights protections and legally designated targets for affirmative action hires, thus bringing the politics of reverse discrimination to the White House. Under the now familiar banner of ‘Let’s Make America Great Again,’ Reagan campaigned vigorously against affirmative action in 1980, promising voters he would overturn policies that mandated, in his view, “federal guidelines or quotas which require race, ethnicity, or sex . . . to be the principle factor in hiring or education.”

As president, Reagan directed his Justice Department to stop promoting affirmative action and instead attack those programs in pleadings before the courts. When the Supreme Court refused to outlaw such programs, though, Reagan began what The Washington Post called “a two-pronged approach to circumvent existing civil rights laws.”

Up and down the line at the DOJ, the Reagan administration simply refused to enforce civil rights laws and affirmative action laws and policies they didn’t like. As the Post article noted:

“Reagan’s secretary of labor, for example, implemented new federal compliance guidelines that exempted as many as 75 percent of companies contracting with the federal government from previously mandatory affirmative action programs.”

Reagan also fired people in the federal government who supported affirmative action, replacing them with opponents of school integration and bussing like the man he put in charge of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, William Bradford Reynolds.

Reynolds and his compatriot Clarence Thomas (then Chairman of Reagan’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) blocked the federal government from using lawsuits to enforce affirmative action.

When Bill Clinton came into the White House in 1993, he re-started the affirmative action programs put into place by Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.  In a speech, he said:

“My experiences with discrimination are rooted in the South and in the legacy slavery left. … The job of ending discrimination in this country is not done. … We should reaffirm the principle of affirmative action and fix the practices.”

By the time George W. Bush became president, private industry and academia had both begun a serious embrace of what President Kennedy called affirmative action.

A new system, called “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” set standards that colleges and companies were eager to embrace in pursuit of a more diverse and fairer educational and work environment. From Ivy League universities to the nation’s largest corporations, DEI initiatives were the hot new thing in the 21st century.

The Bush administration, arguably the first Republican administration since the Civil War to reject racism as a political strategy, embraced DEI, as did the Obama administration which followed.

Donald Trump, however, wanted to put an end to the entire process. This was the guy, after all, who as a teenager worked for his father interviewing people for the subsidized housing project they owned and would write a “C” (for “Colored”) on the applications from Black people so they never got an apartment in Fred Trump’s properties. Fred had, just decades earlier, been arrested at a 1927 Klan rally.

Trump reverted to Reagan’s policies: He issued an executive order banning diversity training on racial and gender biases across government agencies, nonprofits, and institutions with federal contracts. As The New York Times headline noted: “Trump Attack on Diversity Training Has a Quick and Chilling Effect.” The article pointed out:

“Both implicitly and explicitly, Mr. Trump has made race a centerpiece of his bid for re-election, warning suburban voters of the perils of low-income housing and the spreading of ‘anarchy’ in the cities. During the debate, he refused to condemn white supremacy and told the Proud Boys, an organization linked with white supremacy and acts of violence, to ‘stand back and stand by.’

“Beyond rhetoric, the president has mobilized the federal government to prosecute his efforts. Microsoft said this month that the Labor Department had initiated an investigation into its commitment to double the number of Black employees in leadership posts by 2025. The Justice Department sued Yale University last week, accusing the school of discriminating against white and Asian-American applicants in admissions.”

Trump is now running for president again, and his racist base are wildly enthusiastic about the prospect. They hate DEI and affirmative action, and want to see women and Black people returned to their second-class status that preceded the civil rights era.

Republican racists — much like Democratic racists before Kennedy’s presidency — proudly lay it out for all to see. They’re campaigning on their racism.

After all, what is the opposite of diversity, equity, and inclusion? Whites-only communities, whites-only jobs, and racial segregation.

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OK, I’ve got to do this: Here’s the definition of “Libertarian:”

libertarian /lĭb″ər-târ′ē-ən/

noun

1. One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.
2. One who believes in free will.
3. One who maintains the doctrine of the freedom of the will (especially in an extreme form): opposed to necessitarian.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition 

Most “conservatives” consider themselves “libertarian” to some degree or another. And, yes, I’m talking about republicans – just look at the definition and that’s what they – still today – (unless you look at their “policies”) would call a “typical republican.” You know, less government, more individual “freedom.” So, let’s just take a bit closer look at what I’ve been referring to as “today’s republicans” for the past 20 years. (Keeping in mind the now infamous “Koch Brothers” – only one “brother” is left – have been funding the rightward “drift” of the republican party since David Koch received about 1% of the vote in 1980 as the VP candidate of the “Libertarian Party.”

The Koch’s supported the push which ultimately got Roe v Wade overturned by the right wing Supreme Court – pushed in that direction by a web of right wing “libertarians” who want the government to stay out of their business, but don’t hesitate to get into “yours.” We’re talking about not only the right of a woman to have control over her own body, but the hypocrisy goes well beyond that. So, with the present 6 – 3 right wing majority on the court we’re seeing one “right” after another being scaled back. It’s as if the Court wants to turn “we the people” back to the Gilded Age (or worse). I’ve said many times “It’s easier to lose a ‘right’ than to get it back!

Let’s take a one by one look at some of the classic republican hypocrisy. Of course, the issue that first comes to mind is the issue of abortion. Now, as I’ve explained here several times the “abortion” issue is far from “black and white.” We’re seeing one example after another of women/girls who find themselves in dangerous circumstances – with the “media” picking up on the examples where women have the wherewithal to hire a lawyer to help them navigate what amounts to, in many instances, a life threatening circumstance. The most recent example was Kate Cox in Texas who was carrying a dying/dead fetus and Texas Attorney General (corrupt) Ken Paxton refused to allow her to have the life saving surgery she needed – causing her to leave the state to receive treatment. I’ll put it this way – if you don’t believe in abortion, don’t have one. (Wouldn’t that be the “libertarian” point of view?)

“Maximizing individual rights and minmizing the role of the state?” you ask – of course not, just the opposite. This is becoming routine in the republican party – which was “libertarian” until, well, it wasn’t – which was NEVER! And, of course, as I always say, with republicans there’s always more. The other day I was watching a clip of Pete Buttigieg, the 19th Secretary of Transportation, a member of Naval Intelligence in Afghanistan, and the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He came across in this interview (with Brian Tyler Cohen) as someone who’s VERY intelligent and who “knows his stuff” when it comes to the enactment of the so-called “Bipartisan infrastructure bill” passed in President Biden’s first two years “at the helm.” Listening to him brought some excitement to mind in an area which has been “left behind” for the past couple of decades.

America is falling farther and farther behind the rest of the world when it comes to our outdated and crumbling infrastructure. FINALLY, something’s being done about it. From the roads and bridges, to the build out of high speed internet into rural areas, to the EV charging stations (and the impending buildout of EV autos), to the high speed rail projects, and a whole lot more my aging mind can’t remember – it was MOST impressive. UNLESS, of course, you’re a republican. Republicans OPPOSE anything which is intended to mitigate the effects of the Climate Crisis. (Are you paying attention young Americans) And, more disgusting, republicans OPPOSE anything done by Buttigieg because, well, he’s – dare I use the term – “queer?” He’s “gay.” He’s got a gay husband and him and his husband have adopted a set of twins. OMG, that has set the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s and Donald Trump’s “hair on fire.”

In fact, Trump made a special posting on his (un)Truth Social (network) on Christmas day giving his example of “Christmas cheer.” I won’t try to paraphrase it, that wouldn’t do, so, here it is: After directing holiday wishes to world leaders “both good and bad” Trump aimed his vitriol at, well, among others, me – as follows: “None … are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA,” Trump finished his rant with “MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

I’ve got to spend a little time on that one (and, of course, he also attacked Joe Biden and Jack Smith, but, at this point, that should go without saying – that’s a daily ritual). First, our “borders” aren’t “open.” There are MILLIONS attempting to cross the border from Central and South America – but, President Biden can’t change the border laws – that’s up to Congress. The Biden administration is rejecting potential immigrants in record numbers – and, the idea they’re a bunch of “rapists, murderers, or terrorists” is not supported by the facts. Next, inflation his dwindled by about 70% in the last year – near the targets of the Fed. Plus, there have been record jobs numbers, record unemployment, and wages growing faster than inflation for the first time since, well, I can’t remember.

I’ll keep this one simple, the Afghanistan “surrender” was negotiated by, you guessed it, Trump. Trump essentially enabled the Taliban’s return to power – Biden simply attempted to carry out the task with the number of troops at hand (Was it awkward? Yes, but take a bit of time to check out our withdrawal from Viet Nam. It’s really hard to admit – when you’re the U.S. – you’ve been losing this “war” for the past 20 years. Next; The “Green New Scam” as Trump puts it just might allow our younger generation to have an inhabitable planet in another 30 years, just sayin…. although there’s a WHOLE lot more to do. Oh yes, taxes aren’t any higher today than they were when Trump was in office, in my view, unfortunately. I believe taxes SHOULD be higher in top incomes and, for certain, on Capital Gains taxes – which is how America’s filthy rich – yes, I’m talking about you jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. etc. – gain their “salaries.” Via “stock options.” People like Bezos and Musk and Zuckerberg can’t sell their shares fast enough to dwindle their holdings – i.e., they get more stock than they sell each year. Bezos actually moved from Washington State to Miami because Washington passed a Capital Gains tax. Yowee!!! GREED is a terrible thing!

There’s no energy independence because, despite the U.S. being the world’s leading producer of oil, it is sold on the international markets – i.e. to the highest bidder. Presumably much of it ends up in America’s polluting cars, but we produce more than we use. So, really, why do we continue importing oil from places like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, ect.? Click HERE. So, on this one, just like the others, Trump is, surprise surprise, full of Bull Sh*t, Not sure what he means by “Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran” other than on those topics he’s also full of Bull Sh*t. Suggesting we have a “woke” military infers we actually have leaders in the military who aren’t white – which is true. If you’re a white nationalist/supremacist like Trump, well, that’s an uncomfortable feeling. (If he actually has “feelings”)

Here’s where it gets really personal for me. When he refers to the “All Electric Car Lunacy” I do take that personally, I’ve owned TWO Chevrolet Volts – the one I have now has an electric motor along with a gas generator which runs the electric motor when I use up my EV miles. Depending on the time of year I get anywhere from 50 – 70 EV miles per charge – with an additional range of about 350 miles with the gas generator. To me, a great concept, but Chevrolet quit making them in 2019. In the 7 years I’ve owned this car I’ve put about 70 gallons of gas into the generator. It costs about $25 per month to charge it if I drive it at least 1000 miles. My wife is on her 2nd Nissan Leaf which is ALL Electric and this one gets around 250 EV miles per charge and also costs about $25/ month to keep charged. When I retired in 2014 I had 32 Solar panels installed on our outbuildings and we’ve produced over 90,000 KW. of power since then – about 10,000 KW. per year.

I don’t think people like me are trying to “destroy our once great USA.” In fact, I’ve gone to great lengths to point out the USA is great, has been great – despite ALL the “warts” (like what it’s been like if you’re not white) – except for maybe the four years when Trump was in the “White House.” I have to say it was no surprise to me Trump would say in all CAPS “MAY THEY ROT IN HELL” to, apparently, people like me. Of course, he then follows that up with “Again, Merry Christmas,” as if he’s already said it. Honestly, I have to wonder how his base is made up with “Conservative Christians.” Oh yes, that gets me back to my original point – the hypocrisy of “libertarian” i.e. “conservative” republicans. That kind of language doesn’t seem compatible with the Bible I read. (I’ve read it cover to cover a couple times)

Where was I? Oh yes, the Buttigiegs. Libertarians/Conservatives are looking to roll back the progress made in America to where people who are gay no longer have to hide in the shadows and can expect the same rights and privileges as the rest of us. I knew several students in my teaching career who had “two moms” and, in every instance, the families seemed “healthy” to me. I’ve never considered it “my business” to be probing into the personal lives of anyone else. I’ve got plenty to worry about managing my own life. My understanding is we’re all equal under the law. Correct me if I’m wrong. Of course, republicans are attempting to “turn back the clock” to when that was iess evident – however, I say we’ve still got a ways to go to live up to our lofty “ideals.”

What about, for example, Voting Rights? Of course, it’s republicans attempting to restrict voting rights in state after state because they believe the fewer the number of voters the better chance they have to “win.” (In essence, they’re a minority party, and CHEATING is the only way they can win) Civil Rights? Why do you think they’ve been programming their minions to hate the word “woke?” What do you think it means? Where does it come from? Well, It comes out of the experience of Black people of knowing that you have to be conscious of the politics of race, class, gender, systemic racism, ways that society is stratified and not equal. So, when you hear a republican use the term “woke” just substitute the word “Black” and you’ll get their “drift.” With republicans, every word is a “dog whistle.”

How about education? Certainly, “libertarians aren’t hypocritical there, are they?” Well, to make this easy on you, remember, “libertarians” are republicans – so, OF COURSE they’re hypocritical there, just like (well, just about) everywhere else. Let me remind you, if you’re a student, republicans want to determine which books you can read. They absolutely want to exclude Black History (ie “woke” history) from the curriculum and they’re actually BURNING some of the best books I’ve ever read. One of my favorites was “CASTE” by Isabel Wilkerson. It was a riveting history of SLAVERY in America like I’d never read before and, of course, it’s being banned in one “red state” after another. As a retired educator, my first thought after reading it was it should be required reading in High School classes across America. As the saying goes “you’ll never solve a problem until you understand the problem exists.” I’ll let you figure that one out.

I’ve sort of mentioned the Climate Crisis – and it IS a CRISIS. Yikes! in the stomach wrenching thought Americans would re-elect Trump to another four AWFUL years (and, who knows, maybe more if he pulls off his “dictator” thing) he’s promised to “only be a dictator on day one” – which would include the promise to “drill, drill, drill” (of course, to me, that comment is simply one more statement verifying Trump is an IDIOT – because, as I pointed out above, we’re already “drill, drill, drilling.” How would it be possible to “drill, drill, drill” on “day one.” Oh yes, I remind myself Trump believes his followers are, well, STUPID and they’ll believe anything he says. (Sadly, he’s correct)

I could go on and on – republicans say they believe in “law and order” unless they’re the ones breaking the laws. Likewise, they believe in the constitution – except where it doesn’t suit their purposes. They believe in “free markets” except where it interferes with their profiteering. They believe in lower taxes unless you’re a lower socioeconomic class American – then they want to make sure you’re paying enough taxes. They believe government should avoid interfering in business, unless they are unable to make up their own rules in running their own business. (ie, serving queer people, etc.) With republicans you can pick the issue and, in essence, the hypocrisy is a never ending cycle. Trump, in his business, is about to be adjudicated, once more, a massive fraudster – likely being kicked out of doing business in New York. He thinks he should be able to commit whatever FRAUD he wants and, of course, the government should stay out of it. Do you see how this works? Maybe this is a better way to put this – if republicans accuse you of doing something illegal, that means they’re actually doing it! For example, how many gay republicans have made their “mark” by bashing gays? Full Stop!

Final Thought: Do you still believe Trump “didn’t do it?” When it comes to the 91 FELONIES he’s been charged with? Really? OK, Do you still believe Trump was telling the “truth” when he said ALL twenty five women who came forward and claimed he’s sexually assaulted them were LYING? Really? Did the jury get it wrong when they said Trump was guilty of, in essence, raping E. Jean Carroll? You know the woman he said “is not my type” and then identified her in his deposition for the trial as his first wife. Really? (And OBTW – the next E. Jean Carroll trial will simply be for the jury to decide damages – this should be no surprise – right after Trump was declared guilty of “defaming” her by the jury – right on que he DEFAMED her once again. (I’m anxious to see if he’ll do it once again, a third time, after this next verdict.

Did you notice the punitive damages awarded the two Georgia election workers who were defamed by Rudy Giuliani? Should Trump be a bit nervous – we’re talking $10 MILLION plus potential punitive damages – which, if I understand it correctly, can be four times compensatory damages – the $10 MILLION. That could potentially be $50 MILLION! That, and in the middle to end of January, the verdict – meaning how much he’ll owe in DAMAGES – will come down in Trump’s FRAUD case in Manhattan. New York’s Attorney General has sued for $250 MILLION – I’ve heard reports the final amount could be between $500 MILLION and $1 BILLION. Will that be enough to shut Trump’s mouth – or will he have to be heading to jail to SHUT the f*#k up? The walls are closing in and the ONLY thing he knows how to do is to lash out and ATTACK his “enemies.” It seems to me he simply keeps COMPOUNDING his problems – while GRIFTING his minions – who he treats as if they’re STUPID – for even more of their hard earned MONEY! They keep paying, does that mean his right? Stay tuned……..

Why have Americans embraced so many toxic GOP scams?

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The GOP — to keep the support of “average” American voters while they work entirely for the benefit of giant corporations, the weapons and fossil fuel industries, and the morbidly rich — have run a whole series of scams on voters ever since the original Reagan grift of trickle-down economics.

Oddly, there’s nothing comparable on the Democratic side. No lies or BS to justify unjustifiable policies: Democrats just say up-front what they’re all about:

Healthcare and quality education for all. Treat all people and religions with respect and fairness. Trust women to make their own decisions. Raise the pay of working people and support unionization. Get assault weapons off the streets. Do something about climate change. Clean up toxic waste sites and outlaw pesticides that damage children. Replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

Nonetheless, the media persists in treating the two parties as if they were equally honest and equally interested in the needs of all Americans. In part, that’s because one of the GOP’s most effective scams — the “liberal media bias” scam — has been so successful ever since Lee Atwater invented it back in the early years of the Reagan Revolution.

For example, right now there’s a lot of huffing and puffing in the media about how the Supreme Court might rule in the case of Trump being thrown off the ballot in Colorado. They almost always mention “originalism” and “textualism” as if they’re honest, good-faith methods for interpreting the Constitution when, in fact, they’re cynical scams invented to justify unjustifiable rulings.

Thus, the question: how much longer will Americans (and the American media) continue to fall for the GOP’s scams?

They include:

— Originalism: Robert Bork came up with this scam back in the 1980s when Reagan appointed him to the Supreme Court and he couldn’t come up with honest or reasonable answers for his jurisprudential positions, particularly those justifying white supremacy. By saying that he could read the minds of the Founders and Framers of the Constitution, Bork gave himself and future generations of Republicans on the Court the fig leaf they needed.

The simple fact is that there was rarely a consensus among the Framers and among the politicians of the founding generation about pretty much anything. And to say that we should govern America by the standards of a white-men-only era before even the industrial revolution much less today’s modern medicine, communications, and understanding of economics is absurd on its face.

— Voter Fraud: This scam, used by white supremacists across the South in the years after the failure of Reconstruction to prevent Black people from voting, was reinvented in 1993, when Bill Clinton and Democrats in Congress succeeded in passing what’s today called the “Motor Voter” law that lets states automatically register people to vote when they renew their driver’s licenses. Republicans freaked out at the idea that more people might be voting, and claimed the new law would cause voter fraud (it didn’t).

By 1997, following Democratic victories in the 1996 election, it had become a major meme to justify purging voting rolls of Black and Hispanic people. Today it’s the justification for over 300 voter suppression laws passed in Red states in just in the past 2 years, all intended to make it harder for working class people, minorities, women, the elderly dependent on Social Security, and students (all Democratic constituencies) to vote.

The most recent iteration of it is Donald Trump‘s claim that the 2020 election, which he lost by fully 7 million votes, was stolen from him by voter fraud committed by Black people in major cities.

As a massive exposé in yesterday’s Washington Post titled “GOP Voter-Fraud Crackdown Overwhelmingly Targets Minorities, Democrats” points out, the simple reality is that voter fraud in the US is so rare as to be meaningless, and has never, ever, anywhere been documented to swing a single election.

But Republicans have been using it as a very effective excuse to make it harder for Democratic voters to cast a ballot, and to excuse their purging almost 40,000,000 Americans off the voting rolls in the last five years.

Right To Work (For Less): back in the 1940s, Republicans came up with this scam. Over the veto of President Harry Truman, they pushed through what he referred to as “the vicious Taft-Hartley Act,” which lets states make it almost impossible for unions to survive. Virtually every Red state has now adopted “right to work,” which has left their working class people impoverished and, because it guts the political power of working people, their minimum wage unchanged.

— Bush v Gore: The simple reality is that Al Gore won Florida in 2000, won the national popular vote by a half-million, and five Republicans on the Supreme Court denied him the presidency. Florida Governor and George W. Bush’s brother Jeb had his Secretary of State, Kathryn Harris, throw around 90,000 African Americans off the voting rolls just before the election and then, when the votes had come in and it was clear former Vice President Al Gore had still won, she invented a new category of ballots for the 2000 election: “Spoiled.”

As The New York Times reported a year after the 2000 election when the consortium of newspapers they were part of finally recounted all the ballots:

“While 35,176 voters wrote in Bush’s name after punching the hole for him, 80,775 wrote in Gore’s name while punching the hole for Gore. [Florida Secretary of State] Katherine Harris decided that these were ‘spoiled’ ballots because they were both punched and written upon and ordered that none of them should be counted.
“Many were from African American districts, where older and often broken machines were distributed, causing voters to write onto their ballots so their intent would be unambiguous.”

George W. Bush “won” the election by 537 votes in Florida, because the statewide recount — which would have revealed Harris’s crime and counted the “spoiled” ballots, handing the election to Gore (who’d won the popular vote by over a half-million) — was stopped when George HW Bush appointee Clarence Thomas became the deciding vote on the Supreme Court to block the recount order from the Florida Supreme Court.

Harris’ decision to not count the 45,599 more votes for Gore than Bush was completely arbitrary; there is no legal category and no legal precedent, outside of the old Confederate states simply refusing to count the votes of Black people, to justify it. The intent of the voters was unambiguous. And the 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court jumped in to block the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court (in violation of the 10th Amendment) just in time to prevent those “spoiled” votes from being counted, cementing Bush’s illegitimate presidency.

— Money is “Free Speech” and corporations are “persons”: This scam was invented entirely by Republicans on the Supreme Court, although billionaire GOP donors — infuriated by campaign contribution and dark money limits put into law in the 1970s after the Nixon bribery scandals — had been funding legal efforts to get it before the Court for years.

In a decision that twists logic beyond rationality, the five Republicans on the Court — over the strong, emphatic objections of all the Democrats on the Court — ruled that our individual right to free speech guaranteed in the First Amendment also includes the “right to listen,” as I lay out in detail in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and they wrote in Citizens United:

“The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it.”

Without being able to hear from the most knowledgeable entities, they argued, Americans couldn’t be well-informed about the issues of the day.

And who was in the best position to inform us? As Lewis Powell himself wrote in the Bellotti decision, echoed in Citizens United, it’s those corporate “persons”:

“Corporations and other associations, like individuals, contribute to the ‘discussion, debate, and the dissemination of information and ideas’ that the First Amendment seeks to foster…”
“Political speech is ‘indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual.’ … The inherent worth of the speech in terms of its capacity for informing the public does not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union, or individual.”

They doubled down, arguing that corporations and billionaires should be allowed to dump unlimited amounts of money into the political campaigns of those politicians they want to own so long as they go into dark money operations instead of formal campaigns. What was called “bribery” for over 200 years is now “free speech”:

“For the reasons explained above, we [five Republicans on the Supreme Court] now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

— Cutting taxes raises revenue: As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman notes, the idea promoted by Reagan, Bush, and Trump to justify almost $30 trillion in cumulative tax cuts for billionaires and giant corporations is “The Biggest Tax Scam in History.”

Reagan first pitched this to justify cutting the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich from 74% down to 25% in the 1980s, and it was reprised by both George W. Bush and Donald Trump for their own massive tax breaks for their well-off donors and peers.

The simple fact is that America went from a national debt of over 124% of GDP following World War II to a national debt of a mere $800 billion when Reagan came into office. We’d been paying down our debt steadily, and had enough money to build the interstate highway system, brand new schools and hospitals from coast to coast, and even to put men on the moon.

Since Reagan rolled out his tax scam, however, our national debt has gone from less than a trillion in 1980 to over 30 trillion today: we’re back, in terms of debt, to where we were during WWII when FDR raised the tippy-top bracket income tax rate to 90% to deal with the cost of the war. We should be back to that tax rate for the morbidly rich today, as well.

— Destroying unions helps workers: In their eagerness to help their corporate donors, Reagan rolled out a novel idea in 1981, arguing that instead of helping working people, corrupt “union bosses” were actually ripping them off.

Union leaders work on a salary and are elected by their members: the very idea that they, like CEOs who are compensated with stock options and performance bonuses and appointed by their boards, could somehow put their own interests first is ludicrous. Their only interest, if they want to retain their jobs, is to do what the workers want.

But Reagan was a hell of a salesman, and he was so successful with this pitch he cut union membership in America during his and his VP’s presidency by more than 50 percent.

— Corporations can provide better Medicare than the government: For a corporation to exist over the long term, particularly a publicly-traded corporation, it must produce a profit. That’s why when George W. Bush and friends invented the Medicare Advantage scam in 2003 they allowed Advantage providers to make as much as 20 percent in pure profit.

Government overhead for real Medicare is around 2% — the cost of administration — and corporations could probably run their Advantage programs with a similar overhead, but they have to make that 20% profit nut, so they hire larger staffs to examine every single request to pay for procedures, surgeries, tests, imaging, and even doctors’ appointments. And reject, according to The New York Times, around 18% of them.

“Advantage plans also refused to pay legitimate claims, according to the report. About 18 percent of payments were denied despite meeting Medicare coverage rules, an estimated 1.5 million payments for all of 2019.”

When they deny you care, they make money. If they ran like real Medicare and paid every bill (except the fraudulent ones), they’d merely break even, and no company can do that. Nonetheless, Republicans continue to claim that “choice” in the marketplace is more important than fixing Medicare.

With the $140 billion that for-profit insurance companies overcharge us and steal from our government every year, if Medicare Advantage vanished there would be enough money left over to cut Medicare premiums to almost nothing and add dental, vision, and hearing. But don’t expect Republicans to ever go along with that: they take too much money from the insurance industry (thanks to five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court).

— More guns means more safety: Remember the NRA’s old “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”? They’re still at it, and there’s hardly a single Republican in America who will step up and do anything about the gun violence crisis that is uniquely experienced by our nation.

Bullets are now the leading cause of death among children in the US, and we’re literally the only country in the entire world for which that is true. And a child living in Red state Mississippi is ten times more likely to die from a gun than a child in Blue state Massachusetts. But as long as the NRA owns them, Republicans will never do anything about it.

— The media has a liberal bias: This canard was started by Lee Atwater in an attempt to “work the refs” of the media, demanding that they stop pointing out the scams Republicans were engaging in (at the time it was trickle-down). The simple reality is that America’s media, from TV and radio networks to newspapers to websites, are overwhelmingly owned by billionaires and corporations with an openly conservative bent.

There are over 1500 rightwing radio stations (and 1000 religious broadcasters, who are increasingly political), three rightwing TV networks, and an army of tens of thousands of paid conservative activists turning out news releases and policy papers in every state, every day of the year. There are even well-funded social media operations.

There is nothing comparable on the left. Even MSNBC is owned by Comcast and so never touches issues of corporate governance, media bias (they fired Brian Stelter!), or the corruption of Congress by its big pharma and Medicare Advantage advertisers.

— Republicans are the party of faith: Republicans claim to be the pious ones, from Mike Johnson’s creepy “chastity ball” with his daughter, to their hate of queer people, to their embrace of multimillionaire TV and megachurch preachers. But Democrats, who are more accepting of people of all faiths and tend not to wear their religion on their sleeves, are the ones following Jesus’ teachings.

Jesus, arguably the founder of Christianity, was emphatic that you should never pray in public, do your good deeds in private as well, and that the only way to get to heaven is to feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, and love every other human as much as you love yourself.

Republicans, on the other hand, wave their piety like a bloody shirt, issue press releases about their private charities, and fight every effort to have our government feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, or even respect, much less love, people who look or live or pray differently from them.

— Crime is exploding and you’re safer living in an area Republicans control: In fact, crime of almost all sorts is at a low not seen since 1969. Only car thefts are up, and some of that appears to have to do with social media “how to” videos and a few very vulnerable makes of autos.

New FBI statistics find that violent crime nationwide is down 8 percent; in big cities it’s down nearly 15 percent, robbery and burglary are down 10 and 12 percent respectively.

But what crime there is is overwhelmingly happening in Red states. Over the past 21 years, all types of crime in Red states are 23 percent higher than in Blue states: in 2020, murder rates were a mind-boggling 40 percent higher in states that voted for Trump than those Biden carried.

— Global warming is a hoax: Ever since fossil fuel billionaires and the fossil fuel industry started using the legal bribery rights five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court created for them, virtually every Republican politician in the nation is either directly on the take or benefits indirectly from the massive infrastructure created by the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel barons. As a result, it’s almost impossible to find even one brave, truthful Republican who’s willing to do anything about the climate crisis that is most likely to crash not just the US but civilization itself.

— Hispanic immigrants are “murderers and rapists”: Donald Trump threw this out when he first announced his candidacy for president in 2015, saying, “They are bringing drugs. They are bringing crime. They’re rapists.” In fact, Hispanic immigrants (legal or without documentation) are far less likely, per capita and by any other measure, to commit crime of any sort than white citizens.

— Helping people makes them lazy. The old Limbaugh joke about “kicking people when they’re down is the only way to get them up” reveals the mindset behind this Republican scam, which argues that when people get money or things they didn’t work for it actually injures them and society by making them lazy. The GOP has used this rationalization to oppose everything from unemployment insurance in the 1930s to food stamps, Medicaid, and housing supports today.

In fact, not only is there no evidence for it, but studies of Universal Basic Income (UBI), where people are given a few hundred dollars a month with no strings attached, finds that the vast majority use the extra funds to improve themselves. They upgrade their housing, look for better jobs, and go back to school.

If the morbidly rich people behind the GOP who promote this scam really believed it, they’d be arguing for a 100% estate tax, to prevent their own children from ending up “lazy.” Good luck finding any who are leaving their trust-fund kids destitute.

— Tobacco doesn’t cause cancer: Back in 2000, soon-to-be Indiana Governor and then-Congressman Mike Pence wrote a column that was published statewide saying, “Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill.” Pence’s family had made money off tobacco for years with a small chain of now-bankrupt convenience stores called “Tobacco Road,” but he was also being spiffed by the industry.

Similarly, George W. Bush pushed the “Healthy Forests Initiative” as president after big contributions from the timber industry: “healthy” meant “clear cut.” Bush also had his “Clear Skies Initiative” that let polluters dump more poison into our air. And the Trump administration, after big bucks and heavy lobbying from the chemical and Big Ag industries, refused to ban a very profitable pesticide used on human food crops that was found to definitely cause brain damage and cancer in children.

— For-profit utilities produce cheaper and more reliable electricity than government-owned and -run ones: This one goes back to the Reagan era, with Republicans arguing that the “free market” will always outperform government, including when it comes to generating and distributing electricity. In fact, each of us has only one wire coming into our homes or offices, so there is no possible competition to drive either improved performance or lower prices among for-profit utilities.

In fact, non-profit community-owned or government run utilities consistently produce more reliable electricity, serve their customers better, and charge lower prices. And the differences have become starker every year since, in 1992, President GHW Bush ended federal regulation of electric utilities. It’s why Texas, which has almost completely privatized its power grid, suffers some of the least reliable and most expensive electricity in the nation when severe weather hits.

— The electoral college protects our democracy: There was a time when both Democrats and Republicans wanted to get rid of the Electoral College; a constitutional amendment to do that failed in Congress by a single vote back in 1970. But after both George W. Bush and Donald Trump lost the White house by a half-million and three million votes respectively but ended up as president anyway, Republicans fell newly in love with the College and are fully planning to use it again in 2024 to seize power even if ten million more people vote for Biden this time (Biden won by 7 million votes in 2020).

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Republicans are now defending billionaires buying off Supreme Court justices and most recently Lever News found that they’ve been spiffing over 100 other federal judges — who regularly vote in favor of the interests of corporations and the morbidly rich — in addition to Alito, Thomas, Roberts, et al.

Republicans are also claiming that:

— Trump isn’t a threat to our democracy and his promises to be a dictator are “mere hyperbole.”
— Letting Putin take Ukraine won’t put Taiwan and other democracies at risk.
— Ignoring churches routinely breaking the law by preaching politics while enjoying immunity from taxes is no big deal.
— Massive consolidation to monopoly levels across virtually every industry in America since Reagan stopped enforcement of our anti-trust laws (causing Americans to pay an average of $5,000 a year more for everything from broadband to drugs than any other country in the world) is just the way business should be run.
— Teaching white children the racial history of America will make them feel bad, rather than feel less racist and more empathetic.
— Queer people are groomers and pedophiles (the majority in these categories are actually straight white men).
— Banning and burning books is good for society and our kids.
— Ending public schools with statewide voucher programs will improve education (every credible study shows the opposite).

I could go on, but you get the point. When will America — and, particularly, American media — wake up to these scams and start calling them out for what they are?

I’m not holding my breath, although you could help get the ball rolling by sharing this admittedly incomplete list as far and wide as possible.

Exposing the toxic Republican scams America embraced in 2023

Thom HartmannDecember 23, 2023 7:52AM ET  

Then-President Donald Trump is greeted by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) before the State of the Union address in the House chamber on Feb. 4, 2020, in Washington, D.C. Leah Millis-Pool/Getty Images

The GOP — to keep the support of “average” American voters while they work entirely for the benefit of giant corporations, the weapons and fossil fuel industries, and the morbidly rich — have run a whole series of scams on voters ever since the original Reagan grift of trickle-down economics.

Oddly, there’s nothing comparable on the Democratic side. No lies or BS to justify unjustifiable policies: Democrats just say up-front what they’re all about:

Healthcare and quality education for all. Treat all people and religions with respect and fairness. Trust women to make their own decisions. Raise the pay of working people and support unionization. Get assault weapons off the streets. Do something about climate change. Clean up toxic waste sites and outlaw pesticides that damage children. Replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

Nonetheless, the media persists in treating the two parties as if they were equally honest and equally interested in the needs of all Americans. In part, that’s because one of the GOP’s most effective scams — the “liberal media bias” scam — has been so successful ever since Lee Atwater invented it back in the early years of the Reagan Revolution.

For example, right now there’s a lot of huffing and puffing in the media about how the Supreme Court might rule in the case of Trump being thrown off the ballot in Colorado. They almost always mention “originalism” and “textualism” as if they’re honest, good-faith methods for interpreting the Constitution when, in fact, they’re cynical scams invented to justify unjustifiable rulings.

Thus, the question: how much longer will Americans (and the American media) continue to fall for the GOP’s scams?

They include:

— Originalism: Robert Bork came up with this scam back in the 1980s when Reagan appointed him to the Supreme Court and he couldn’t come up with honest or reasonable answers for his jurisprudential positions, particularly those justifying white supremacy. By saying that he could read the minds of the Founders and Framers of the Constitution, Bork gave himself and future generations of Republicans on the Court the fig leaf they needed.

The simple fact is that there was rarely a consensus among the Framers and among the politicians of the founding generation about pretty much anything. And to say that we should govern America by the standards of a white-men-only era before even the industrial revolution much less today’s modern medicine, communications, and understanding of economics is absurd on its face.

— Voter Fraud: This scam, used by white supremacists across the South in the years after the failure of Reconstruction to prevent Black people from voting, was reinvented in 1993, when Bill Clinton and Democrats in Congress succeeded in passing what’s today called the “Motor Voter” law that lets states automatically register people to vote when they renew their driver’s licenses. Republicans freaked out at the idea that more people might be voting, and claimed the new law would cause voter fraud (it didn’t).

By 1997, following Democratic victories in the 1996 election, it had become a major meme to justify purging voting rolls of Black and Hispanic people. Today it’s the justification for over 300 voter suppression laws passed in Red states in just in the past 2 years, all intended to make it harder for working class people, minorities, women, the elderly dependent on Social Security, and students (all Democratic constituencies) to vote.

The most recent iteration of it is Donald Trump‘s claim that the 2020 election, which he lost by fully 7 million votes, was stolen from him by voter fraud committed by Black people in major cities.

As a massive exposé in yesterday’s Washington Post titled “GOP Voter-Fraud Crackdown Overwhelmingly Targets Minorities, Democrats” points out, the simple reality is that voter fraud in the US is so rare as to be meaningless, and has never, ever, anywhere been documented to swing a single election.

But Republicans have been using it as a very effective excuse to make it harder for Democratic voters to cast a ballot, and to excuse their purging almost 40,000,000 Americans off the voting rolls in the last five years.

Right To Work (For Less): back in the 1940s, Republicans came up with this scam. Over the veto of President Harry Truman, they pushed through what he referred to as “the vicious Taft-Hartley Act,” which lets states make it almost impossible for unions to survive. Virtually every Red state has now adopted “right to work,” which has left their working class people impoverished and, because it guts the political power of working people, their minimum wage unchanged.

— Bush v Gore: The simple reality is that Al Gore won Florida in 2000, won the national popular vote by a half-million, and five Republicans on the Supreme Court denied him the presidency. Florida Governor and George W. Bush’s brother Jeb had his Secretary of State, Kathryn Harris, throw around 90,000 African Americans off the voting rolls just before the election and then, when the votes had come in and it was clear former Vice President Al Gore had still won, she invented a new category of ballots for the 2000 election: “Spoiled.”

As The New York Times reported a year after the 2000 election when the consortium of newspapers they were part of finally recounted all the ballots:

“While 35,176 voters wrote in Bush’s name after punching the hole for him, 80,775 wrote in Gore’s name while punching the hole for Gore. [Florida Secretary of State] Katherine Harris decided that these were ‘spoiled’ ballots because they were both punched and written upon and ordered that none of them should be counted.
“Many were from African American districts, where older and often broken machines were distributed, causing voters to write onto their ballots so their intent would be unambiguous.”

George W. Bush “won” the election by 537 votes in Florida, because the statewide recount — which would have revealed Harris’s crime and counted the “spoiled” ballots, handing the election to Gore (who’d won the popular vote by over a half-million) — was stopped when George HW Bush appointee Clarence Thomas became the deciding vote on the Supreme Court to block the recount order from the Florida Supreme Court.

Harris’ decision to not count the 45,599 more votes for Gore than Bush was completely arbitrary; there is no legal category and no legal precedent, outside of the old Confederate states simply refusing to count the votes of Black people, to justify it. The intent of the voters was unambiguous. And the 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court jumped in to block the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court (in violation of the 10th Amendment) just in time to prevent those “spoiled” votes from being counted, cementing Bush’s illegitimate presidency.

— Money is “Free Speech” and corporations are “persons”: This scam was invented entirely by Republicans on the Supreme Court, although billionaire GOP donors — infuriated by campaign contribution and dark money limits put into law in the 1970s after the Nixon bribery scandals — had been funding legal efforts to get it before the Court for years.

In a decision that twists logic beyond rationality, the five Republicans on the Court — over the strong, emphatic objections of all the Democrats on the Court — ruled that our individual right to free speech guaranteed in the First Amendment also includes the “right to listen,” as I lay out in detail in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and they wrote in Citizens United:

“The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it.”

Without being able to hear from the most knowledgeable entities, they argued, Americans couldn’t be well-informed about the issues of the day.

And who was in the best position to inform us? As Lewis Powell himself wrote in the Bellotti decision, echoed in Citizens United, it’s those corporate “persons”:

“Corporations and other associations, like individuals, contribute to the ‘discussion, debate, and the dissemination of information and ideas’ that the First Amendment seeks to foster…”
“Political speech is ‘indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual.’ … The inherent worth of the speech in terms of its capacity for informing the public does not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union, or individual.”

They doubled down, arguing that corporations and billionaires should be allowed to dump unlimited amounts of money into the political campaigns of those politicians they want to own so long as they go into dark money operations instead of formal campaigns. What was called “bribery” for over 200 years is now “free speech”:

“For the reasons explained above, we [five Republicans on the Supreme Court] now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

— Cutting taxes raises revenue: As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman notes, the idea promoted by Reagan, Bush, and Trump to justify almost $30 trillion in cumulative tax cuts for billionaires and giant corporations is “The Biggest Tax Scam in History.”

Reagan first pitched this to justify cutting the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich from 74% down to 25% in the 1980s, and it was reprised by both George W. Bush and Donald Trump for their own massive tax breaks for their well-off donors and peers.

The simple fact is that America went from a national debt of over 124% of GDP following World War II to a national debt of a mere $800 billion when Reagan came into office. We’d been paying down our debt steadily, and had enough money to build the interstate highway system, brand new schools and hospitals from coast to coast, and even to put men on the moon.

Since Reagan rolled out his tax scam, however, our national debt has gone from less than a trillion in 1980 to over 30 trillion today: we’re back, in terms of debt, to where we were during WWII when FDR raised the tippy-top bracket income tax rate to 90% to deal with the cost of the war. We should be back to that tax rate for the morbidly rich today, as well.

— Destroying unions helps workers: In their eagerness to help their corporate donors, Reagan rolled out a novel idea in 1981, arguing that instead of helping working people, corrupt “union bosses” were actually ripping them off.

Union leaders work on a salary and are elected by their members: the very idea that they, like CEOs who are compensated with stock options and performance bonuses and appointed by their boards, could somehow put their own interests first is ludicrous. Their only interest, if they want to retain their jobs, is to do what the workers want.

But Reagan was a hell of a salesman, and he was so successful with this pitch he cut union membership in America during his and his VP’s presidency by more than 50 percent.

— Corporations can provide better Medicare than the government: For a corporation to exist over the long term, particularly a publicly-traded corporation, it must produce a profit. That’s why when George W. Bush and friends invented the Medicare Advantage scam in 2003 they allowed Advantage providers to make as much as 20 percent in pure profit.

Government overhead for real Medicare is around 2% — the cost of administration — and corporations could probably run their Advantage programs with a similar overhead, but they have to make that 20% profit nut, so they hire larger staffs to examine every single request to pay for procedures, surgeries, tests, imaging, and even doctors’ appointments. And reject, according to The New York Times, around 18% of them.

“Advantage plans also refused to pay legitimate claims, according to the report. About 18 percent of payments were denied despite meeting Medicare coverage rules, an estimated 1.5 million payments for all of 2019.”

When they deny you care, they make money. If they ran like real Medicare and paid every bill (except the fraudulent ones), they’d merely break even, and no company can do that. Nonetheless, Republicans continue to claim that “choice” in the marketplace is more important than fixing Medicare.

With the $140 billion that for-profit insurance companies overcharge us and steal from our government every year, if Medicare Advantage vanished there would be enough money left over to cut Medicare premiums to almost nothing and add dental, vision, and hearing. But don’t expect Republicans to ever go along with that: they take too much money from the insurance industry (thanks to five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court).

— More guns means more safety: Remember the NRA’s old “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”? They’re still at it, and there’s hardly a single Republican in America who will step up and do anything about the gun violence crisis that is uniquely experienced by our nation.

Bullets are now the leading cause of death among children in the US, and we’re literally the only country in the entire world for which that is true. And a child living in Red state Mississippi is ten times more likely to die from a gun than a child in Blue state Massachusetts. But as long as the NRA owns them, Republicans will never do anything about it.

— The media has a liberal bias: This canard was started by Lee Atwater in an attempt to “work the refs” of the media, demanding that they stop pointing out the scams Republicans were engaging in (at the time it was trickle-down). The simple reality is that America’s media, from TV and radio networks to newspapers to websites, are overwhelmingly owned by billionaires and corporations with an openly conservative bent.

There are over 1500 rightwing radio stations (and 1000 religious broadcasters, who are increasingly political), three rightwing TV networks, and an army of tens of thousands of paid conservative activists turning out news releases and policy papers in every state, every day of the year. There are even well-funded social media operations.

There is nothing comparable on the left. Even MSNBC is owned by Comcast and so never touches issues of corporate governance, media bias (they fired Brian Stelter!), or the corruption of Congress by its big pharma and Medicare Advantage advertisers.

— Republicans are the party of faith: Republicans claim to be the pious ones, from Mike Johnson’s creepy “chastity ball” with his daughter, to their hate of queer people, to their embrace of multimillionaire TV and megachurch preachers. But Democrats, who are more accepting of people of all faiths and tend not to wear their religion on their sleeves, are the ones following Jesus’ teachings.

Jesus, arguably the founder of Christianity, was emphatic that you should never pray in public, do your good deeds in private as well, and that the only way to get to heaven is to feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, and love every other human as much as you love yourself.

Republicans, on the other hand, wave their piety like a bloody shirt, issue press releases about their private charities, and fight every effort to have our government feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, or even respect, much less love, people who look or live or pray differently from them.

— Crime is exploding and you’re safer living in an area Republicans control: In fact, crime of almost all sorts is at a low not seen since 1969. Only car thefts are up, and some of that appears to have to do with social media “how to” videos and a few very vulnerable makes of autos.

New FBI statistics find that violent crime nationwide is down 8 percent; in big cities it’s down nearly 15 percent, robbery and burglary are down 10 and 12 percent respectively.

But what crime there is is overwhelmingly happening in Red states. Over the past 21 years, all types of crime in Red states are 23 percent higher than in Blue states: in 2020, murder rates were a mind-boggling 40 percent higher in states that voted for Trump than those Biden carried.

— Global warming is a hoax: Ever since fossil fuel billionaires and the fossil fuel industry started using the legal bribery rights five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court created for them, virtually every Republican politician in the nation is either directly on the take or benefits indirectly from the massive infrastructure created by the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel barons. As a result, it’s almost impossible to find even one brave, truthful Republican who’s willing to do anything about the climate crisis that is most likely to crash not just the US but civilization itself.

— Hispanic immigrants are “murderers and rapists”: Donald Trump threw this out when he first announced his candidacy for president in 2015, saying, “They are bringing drugs. They are bringing crime. They’re rapists.” In fact, Hispanic immigrants (legal or without documentation) are far less likely, per capita and by any other measure, to commit crime of any sort than white citizens.

— Helping people makes them lazy. The old Limbaugh joke about “kicking people when they’re down is the only way to get them up” reveals the mindset behind this Republican scam, which argues that when people get money or things they didn’t work for it actually injures them and society by making them lazy. The GOP has used this rationalization to oppose everything from unemployment insurance in the 1930s to food stamps, Medicaid, and housing supports today.

In fact, not only is there no evidence for it, but studies of Universal Basic Income (UBI), where people are given a few hundred dollars a month with no strings attached, finds that the vast majority use the extra funds to improve themselves. They upgrade their housing, look for better jobs, and go back to school.

If the morbidly rich people behind the GOP who promote this scam really believed it, they’d be arguing for a 100% estate tax, to prevent their own children from ending up “lazy.” Good luck finding any who are leaving their trust-fund kids destitute.

— Tobacco doesn’t cause cancer: Back in 2000, soon-to-be Indiana Governor and then-Congressman Mike Pence wrote a column that was published statewide saying, “Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill.” Pence’s family had made money off tobacco for years with a small chain of now-bankrupt convenience stores called “Tobacco Road,” but he was also being spiffed by the industry.

Similarly, George W. Bush pushed the “Healthy Forests Initiative” as president after big contributions from the timber industry: “healthy” meant “clear cut.” Bush also had his “Clear Skies Initiative” that let polluters dump more poison into our air. And the Trump administration, after big bucks and heavy lobbying from the chemical and Big Ag industries, refused to ban a very profitable pesticide used on human food crops that was found to definitely cause brain damage and cancer in children.

— For-profit utilities produce cheaper and more reliable electricity than government-owned and -run ones: This one goes back to the Reagan era, with Republicans arguing that the “free market” will always outperform government, including when it comes to generating and distributing electricity. In fact, each of us has only one wire coming into our homes or offices, so there is no possible competition to drive either improved performance or lower prices among for-profit utilities.

In fact, non-profit community-owned or government run utilities consistently produce more reliable electricity, serve their customers better, and charge lower prices. And the differences have become starker every year since, in 1992, President GHW Bush ended federal regulation of electric utilities. It’s why Texas, which has almost completely privatized its power grid, suffers some of the least reliable and most expensive electricity in the nation when severe weather hits.

— The electoral college protects our democracy: There was a time when both Democrats and Republicans wanted to get rid of the Electoral College; a constitutional amendment to do that failed in Congress by a single vote back in 1970. But after both George W. Bush and Donald Trump lost the White house by a half-million and three million votes respectively but ended up as president anyway, Republicans fell newly in love with the College and are fully planning to use it again in 2024 to seize power even if ten million more people vote for Biden this time (Biden won by 7 million votes in 2020).

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Republicans are now defending billionaires buying off Supreme Court justices and most recently Lever News found that they’ve been spiffing over 100 other federal judges — who regularly vote in favor of the interests of corporations and the morbidly rich — in addition to Alito, Thomas, Roberts, et al.

Republicans are also claiming that:

— Trump isn’t a threat to our democracy and his promises to be a dictator are “mere hyperbole.”
— Letting Putin take Ukraine won’t put Taiwan and other democracies at risk.
— Ignoring churches routinely breaking the law by preaching politics while enjoying immunity from taxes is no big deal.
— Massive consolidation to monopoly levels across virtually every industry in America since Reagan stopped enforcement of our anti-trust laws (causing Americans to pay an average of $5,000 a year more for everything from broadband to drugs than any other country in the world) is just the way business should be run.
— Teaching white children the racial history of America will make them feel bad, rather than feel less racist and more empathetic.
— Queer people are groomers and pedophiles (the majority in these categories are actually straight white men).
— Banning and burning books is good for society and our kids.
— Ending public schools with statewide voucher programs will improve education (every credible study shows the opposite).

I could go on, but you get the point. When will America — and, particularly, American media — wake up to these scams and start calling them out for what they are?

I’m not holding my breath, although you could help get the ball rolling by sharing this admittedly incomplete list as far and wide as possible.

Something’s ROTTEN in America right now and, while I want to say you could understand it with the word TRUMP, the reality is there’s a significant percentage of Americans who aspire to the White Nationalist/Supremacist philosophy of neo-Nazi’s Trump, himself, is pushing. Is Trump the actual cause, or is he just the surface of the problem? Well, either way, what Trump represents in America is ROTTEN to the core. Listening to some of his supporters makes my stomach curl. As a former teacher I’m always wondering: “How could so many people be so STUPID?”

I’m coming from the perspective of someone whose father was in the Army during WW II. I’ve said this here several times, “Trump is coming closer to turning America into a fascist nation than Hitler ever did.” However, I still see this scheme to be much deeper than any of the aforementioned. For example, the Supreme Court has been right in the “cross hairs” of right wing republicans for years and, certainly, since the year 2000 the Court has been laying the groundwork for Trump. And, when you look closer you see the ROT has been permeating the republican party since the days of Newt Gingrich. (If my mother was still alive she’d say it was since the days of Herbert Hoover!)

Republicans have been slowly tilting farther and farther to the right since Gingrich introduced the “vote against everything” and “lie about everything” policy during the Clinton administration and, for me, the “icing on the cake” came when the SCOTUS “crowned” GW Bush/DICK Cheney as our president/vice president by refusing to allow a viable recount of the votes in Florida – with GW Bush’s brother Jeb conspiring to allow him to win an election where Al Gore got the MOST votes AND should have won the MOST Electoral votes had the Florida recount been allowed to go to a fair conclusion.

I started writing here about 15 years ago with the “main idea” being “we the people” need to vote republicans into the History books – this was well before Trump. I watched after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 how MANY very wealthy Americans – led by the now infamous “Koch Brothers” (only one “brother” is left) – ginning up America’s white nationalists by “sicking” the so-called “Tea Party” on “we the people.” And, if you’ve paid attention to recent American History you know Trump saw his “opening” to enter politics via the phony “Birther movement” which was “spawned” by America’s leading racists suggesting President Obama wasn’t born in America. Trump was the PERFECT LIAR to lead that disgusting racist campaign – designed to, in the words of Mich McConnell, make sure President Obama is a one-term president.

So, here we are – and it’s ROTTEN and getting rottener. (Not sure if that’s a word) For anyone who’s paying attention Trump is busy convincing everyone who believes he doesn’t read they’re wrong – it appears, if nothing else, he’s read Mein Kampf – Adolf Hitler’s “handbook.” I’ve been writing for several years about Trump’s (and the republicans’) use of Hitler’s “Big Lie Theory” and their constant use of PROJECTION – both “strategies” right out of Hitler’s chief of propaganda Joseph Goebbels’ lexicon. But, now Trump is getting less subtle – that is, saying the “quiet part out loud.”

Over the past few weeks Trump has been complaining about “immigration” and suggesting immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of Americans. OK, once again, right out of Mein Kampf. But, was this some kind of misstatement by Trump? Nope! He keeps doubling down, apparently, to make sure all of us liberals get our “panties in a bunch.” Now, I’ve been making the “Hitler” references when writing about Trump for years. Of course as I’m writing this, we’re seeing members of the so-called “liberal media” acting as if they’re in “shock” upon hearing these overt references to Hitler. In fact, not only are “immigrants poisoning the blood” of Americans, according to Trump, but, additionally, “liberals” – and anyone who’s a Trump opponent, are “Communist, Marxist, Fascist (Projection) vermin.” Yep, there he goes again, Hitler!

But, as I always say, with republicans there’s always more. Not only have I referred to Trump as a “fascist” but on MANY occasions I’ve compared him to a “Mob boss.” It’s almost as if he’s reading my blog and attempting to make me look good. Just the other day, as he was complaining about the 91 FELONY charges he’s facing he tried to compare himself to the infamous Al Capone. He referred to Capone (who had over 200 people MURDERED) as “The great Al Capone” suggesting it was “bullsh*t” he was facing more charges than Capone. Apparently, Capone was SMARTER than Trump. I’ve just finished reading “Proof of Conspiracy” by Seth Abramson and, to me, the book just “cements” how ROTTEN Trump really is. He’s (allegedly) committed WAY more crimes than the 91 he’s now indicted for in various courts!

He’s facing more charges than “the great” Capone because he’s been violating America’s laws with impunity since well before he came down that escalator back in 2015. According to Abramson’s book (which he documents with real evidence) the “conspiracy” to “win” the “White House” back in 2016 went much deeper than simply the Russians. Bottom line, Trump has no compulsion to accept help from foreigners/foreign entities – he’s said that publicly on multiple occasions. And, as Adam Schiff promised us – “he’s going to do it again.” We all KNOW he’ll do it again – likely as I’m writing this. Facebook and Xwitter are both open for misinformation business. Do you think Trump and his sycophants/co-conspirators won’t take advantage of that? Do you really believe they won’t be using AI?

Trump’s schtick of late – from what I’ve been able to tell based on the amount of time I’ve been able to force myself to listen to him before I get sick to my stomach that anyone would be such a LIAR – is an absurd attack on our “Southern border” and the “15 – 17 MILLION illegal immigrants” Biden has let into the country to ‘poison the blood’ of our “people.” Now, think carefully, is the problem really at our Southern border? Or, is the problem in our Southern Hemisphere? Why do you think so many people from Countries in Central and South America are willing to risk their lives to get to America? A reminder: we are a “nation of immigrants.” Virtually ALL of us! (OK, you want to exclude “Native Americans” – but, the reality is they “immigrated” here something like 10,000 years ago)

In fact, Trump’s grandfather immigrated from Germany in the late 19th century and Trump is a second generation immigrant married to a first generation immigrant with a son who’s a son of an immigrant. (Born while his father was CHEATING on his Mom) And, for those who believe Trump when he says he hasn’t read “Mein Kampf” – and, I tend to believe him – keep in mind one of his closest “advisors” is Steven Miller- and, I haven’t the shadow of a doubt Miller has read “Mein Kampf” and Miller is one of Trump’s speechwriters. They’ve discovered the Hitler references actually gin up their “base” and he’s likely to keep repeating “immigrants are poisoning our blood” for the immediate future until he discovers it’s causing him to lose voters. Then he’ll say “just kidding.” This election is going to be hotly contested and I can guarantee you, when Trump LOSES there will be more right wing violence.

Trump’s PROJECTION is a critical part of their (republicans) media strategy – and, with Americans who actually believe this pathological LIAR (and his sycophants) – it’s working. This next election will be decided by the outcome in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. If either candidate wins all three they will be the next president. I believe Biden has a chance in several other “red” states because of, you guessed it, the abortion issue. Ohio, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and ???? Will women vote in large numbers? Then there’s the voter suppression efforts of the republicans. An appropriate example would be Wisconsin. In the 2022 Mid-terms a republican official bragged that republicans were able to block enough Black voters from turning out (in Milwawkee, I believe) to make the difference for Ron Johnson, one of the worst (and STUPIDEST) members of the Senate. I’ve been saying for years, with republicans “The end justifies the means.” It’s all about POWER!

As progressives (ie “liberals) we need to fully grasp the reality that Trump’s “base” across the South is made up of direct (close) descendants of the racist Southerners who were the proponents of “Jim Crow” laws and the years of LYNCHING African Americans – with members of the churches gawking in crowds cheering on the TORTURE of Americans because of the color of their skin. Should it surprise any of us what is going on right now in this country. I have a former friend I used to have breakfast with who, after we lost touch because he became angry about Trump LOSING the 2020 election (obviously, he bought the “stolen election” koolaid), I’m periodically reminded of stuff he said which I didn’t pick up at the time. He had actually adopted three Black children and the first thing which stuck wrong with my “craw” was comments he made about his (Black) daughter, which came across to me as overt racism.

Then I began, as I thought about him and prayed for him, remembering stuff he said which now makes me understand why he allowed himself to get sucked into Trump’s CULT. He, on several occasions, said “I don’t believe in democracy.” (I would always explain we live in a “democratic republic”) He said, more than once Trump’s followers were going to start a “civil war.” (going to far right websites?) And, the last thing I remember was him demanding I “prove” that Joe Biden had actually won the 2020 election. I explained the entire process to him which he interpreted as “bullying.” I even pointed out January 6th was nothing more than a ceremonial counting of Electoral votes. Well, little did I know what Trump had up his sleeve. (My former friend has never responded to an email since that date.)

The border “bullsh*t” is going to be a constant refrain between now and the 2024 election and Trump will continue LYING about our “it.” There IS a record number of immigrants attempting to cross our Southern border from all I can tell, but there is ALSO a record number of immigrants being “rejected” and sent out of the country. As I said above, the problem isn’t a “Joe Biden” problem, the problem is what the hell is going on in the Southern Hemisphere which causes so many people to want to leave their homes and risk their lives to immigrate here? And, why can’t Congress devise an immigration bill? It really is on them.

I do have to add that we NEED many of these immigrants to come here because they’re willing to work in places most Americans are not – like in the fields of America’s farmers. Remember, if you’re a Christian – I point this out repeatedly here – Christ said, “what you do FOR the least of these you do FOR Me. What you do TO the least of these you do TO Me.” In my mind, the “Christian Right” in America has made a “deal with the devil!” Trump is ROTTEN to the core!

Final Thought: Not a day goes by I don’t think about what is going on in Ukraine and Gaza/Israel. When I talk about how “Rotten” republicans are, just take a good look at our House of Representatives. They chose to take a THREE week break (I think it’s more like four weeks) without approving military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine and without addressing the issue of Israel and the Palestinians. They remind me of Neville Chamberlain back in the early stages of WW II where he was appeasing Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Of course, we know how that turned out. (Or, at least, you SHOULD know) I’ve mentioned here Vladimir Putin reminds me of Hitler. (Maybe that’s why Trump is attempting to put himself in that same conversation) It’s DISGUSTING to me the republicans in the House who have been openly expressing their support for Putin. Voters MUST remember this next November!

When it comes to Israel, I “get” why “we the people” must be diligent in our support of the nation of Israel. However, that doesn’t, to me, mean we “must” be supporting Netanyahu. Netanyahu is CORRUPT similarly to Trump. He was attempting to “beat” the charges against him by subjugating Israel’s court system to his “government.” This is the classic playbook of a tyrant. Add to that the Israeli intelligence KNEW for up to a year the plans of Hamas’ surprise attack and FAILED to counteract what they KNEW was coming. (Netanyahu has actually supported Hamas in the past because he’s OPPOSED to the “two state solution.” I believe the Israeli people will rid themselves of Netanyahu as soon as this most recent war is “over.” (Until there’s a “two state solution” I don’t believe it will EVER be over – if then)

My point it it’s in Netanyahu’s interest to keep this devastation going on in Gaza as long as he can. However, in my mind, he’s just making his place in History worse. Most Israeli’s want the violence to end (I believe) and they want negotiations which return the hostages. Most Americans want the violence to end and to have the hostages released. There have now been over 20,000 Palestinians KILLED in Isreal’s “revenge” for October 7th – their point has been made. As far as I’m concerned it’s well past the point where the Israeli’s pull out of Gaza. Hopefully the U.N. can come in and help stabilize things and facilitate the reconstruction of all the destroyed infrastructure in Gaza. I believe just as Hamas will be accused of WAR CRIMES, unfortunately, so will the Israeli’s. I’ve had numerous conversations with my 34 year old son, and he’s become a supporter of the Palestinians as many of his online friends are as well. Biden has a lot of work to do to motivate these young Americans to understand the importance of them VOTING (for him) in the next election.

It’s all on the line for young Americans. Climate Change, Voting Rights, Civil Rights, the environment (things like clean water regulations, clean air regulations, etc.) Abortion access, Health Care (Trump still wants to eliminate “Obamacare” – ie “The Affordable Care Act”) Education, institutions like the Courts, the FDA, the CDC, institutions which Trump has claimed he’ll fill with “loyalists,” (The Supreme Court is already “stacked” for a generation – that alone should be enough to get young voters to the polls voting for Biden) I could go on and on, but “democracy” itself will be on the 2024 ballot (unless Trump gets “thumped” in the primaries – unlikely). Each election since 2018 I’ve referred to as “The most important election in my lifetime.” And, along those lines, nothing’s changed.

Just imagine where we’d be if democrats hadn’t taken control of the House in 2018, or where we’d be if Trump had managed to get re-elected in 2020. Republicans retaking the House in 2022 has created the WORST “do nothing” Congress in modern history after an historic first two years of Biden’s administration. The reality is 2024 IS the MOST important election in my lifetime – and, I don’t expect these right wing neo-fascists to go away even if (when) Trump is turned out to “pasture.” (Jail ???) Trump’s PROJECTION is so ROTTEN he’s convincing people Biden is turning America into a “third world country” while that is exactly his aim! The democrats messaging MUST improve! Stay tuned……

As a (liberal) Christian I’m not supposed to “hate” anyone and I’m trying hard to fulfill that part of my beliefs. That being said I’m going to attempt to choose my words carefully – I’m DISGUSTED with republicans. Now, I know a lot of republicans – in fact, my guess is a LARGE percentage of those who attend my church are republicans and I’m not disgusted with virtually any of them. I usually play it safe and don’t broach the subject of “politics” with any of them – and, in the rare cases where it comes up the conversations end quickly because it quickly becomes obvious the person I’m talking to is a purveyor of right wing media, usually Fox “news.” The last example, I made a “joke” about Trump going to jail and the response was “he’ll be there with the Biden Crime Family.” End of conversation!

Why am I “disgusted” with republicans? Let me attempt to “count the ways.” The first thing that comes to mind is the young lady in Texas who was, in essence, carrying a deceased fetus and the Texas Supreme Court – after an appeal of a district court decision – said this woman was not able to get a “D & C” (dilation and curettage) which is the “long term” for an abortion (or other “cleaning out of the uterus.”) I had no idea a “D & C” referred to an abortion until recently as the issue has become more “in the news” because of anti abortion laws spreading around the nation. This lady in Texas received THREATS from (CORRUPT) Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as did with her doctors and the hospital she would have received this life saving care from – THREATENING felonies with penalties potentially of life in prison and fines up to $100,000. Pro life???

Fortunately, this lady had the means to leave the state to get the health care she so desperately needed but couldn’t get in her home state. In the last month she had been to the Emergency room four times. I will be watching to see what happens when she returns to Texas – or if she can return to Texas because I’ve read reports where they don’t consider leaving the state as making women protected from the Texas abortion law. Now, I’m not someone who would support an abortion (in my family) as “birth control” but I’m always reminded that the first time my wife became pregnant she had a miscarriage. She was actually prescribed a (cortizone) cream at the Emergency room which clearly caused the miscarriage – a “D & C.” was performed for her safety and to preserve her ability to have children in the future. I keep thinking had this pregnancy happened today and we lived in Texas her life would have been in danger. At the time we in no way had the means to leave the state to get the needed procedure.

The reality is, in places like Texas, becoming pregnant is potentially a “life threatening illness.” Women are forced there to carry a miscarriage to the point of becoming septic which is, in itself, life threatening. It was Donald Trump who proudly put three members on the Supreme Court (with the help of Mitch McConnell) on the court with the publicly stated expectation they would overturn Roe v Wade – the policy of the previous 50 years allowing women to be able to have needed medical care based on decisions they made with their doctors. Ironically, it’s become republicans who’ve decided they need to intervene in the private lives of the American people – completely OPPOSITE of their so-called “conservative/libertarian” beliefs. I’ve come to the conclusion they have no beliefs – other than doing what they believe will keep them in good standing with Trump.

Will the American public simply ignore the FACT America’s women will now have their personal health care decisions determined by (mostly) republican men like Ken Paxton? (His common denominator with Trump is they’re both facing charges of CORRUPTION – Paxton was actually IMPEACHED by the Texas legislature) Will the husband’s of American women accept that should their wives or someone else in their family have a similar experience to the above mentioned woman in Texas they should simply carry a dead fetus to term and “hope for the best?” In the case involving my own wife she was taken to surgery immediately because it was a serious threat to her health – PLUS – her future ability to have children. (I’m happy to say she, later, was able to carry two beautiful little girls to term – both who now have their own families)

It honestly makes me a bit angry everytime I witness (from afar, of course) another example of a woman going through pregnancy as a life threatening “illness.” (I really don’t know how else to say it) Think of ALL the women in places like Texas who don’t have the means to travel to another state to get the health care they need. Most women I’ve known WANT (or wanted – I’m very old) to have children. As a sixth grade teacher in a high poverty school I witnessed MANY children who had moms who desperately loved them but who – the circumstances varied greatly – were struggling to parent them. In almost every instance that comes to mind as I’m writing this I’m talking about single moms. Working hard in an attempt to survive financially without the means to afford child care would create incredibly difficult circumstances. I have etched in my brain a young boy telling me he and his mom had a package of hot dogs and a half a loaf of bread to make it until Monday (it was Friday) when his mom would get paid.

I’m in no way suggesting someone should get an abortion because – short of the circumstances I mentioned above – I would oppose it – in my own family. (Several years ago I came to the conclusion “if you don’t believe in abortion, don’t have one”) I just bring this up because the issue with this woman in Texas reminds me of why I’m disgusted with republicans. It was Donald Trump who – I remember this from an interview, I believe it was on MSNBC back in 2016 as they were attempting to “both sides” the campaign with Hillary Clinton, (which they’re doing once again) when Trump said “The woman who gets an abortion should be “punished.” Does that mean jail? he was asked if my memory is correct, and he answered in the affirmative. I don’t think he’ll be able to run away from the issue of abortion in the upcoming election and, remember, over half the nation’s voters are WOMEN! Remember, it seems as if these republicans have no intentions for the “men” to get “punished.”

Is the abortion issue the only reason I’m “disgusted” with republicans? Not even close. But there’s another one which was at the top of the “news” today and that’s the war in Ukraine. Shockingly, republicans are blocking further aid to Ukraine! I almost can’t even believe I’m being led to write this. Vladimir Putin is jumping for joy. Are the republicans going to save him? Why on earth would they do this? OK, anyone without their “head in the sand” knows Trump idolizes Putin. He envisions himself as being the American version of Putin by retaking the “White House” and, apparently declaring himself president for life – or something, something…..

Here’s the deal. Trump was hell bent on destroying NATO (as the greatest favor he could give to Putin) had he won the election in 2020. He was close to accomplishing that (TERRIBLE) goal prior to the pandemic. To make matters worse for Trump, Joe Biden not only has led the FIGHT to stop Putin in Ukraine (and, beyond had Putin been able to take over “in a matter of days” as originally planned – remember Trump referred to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as “genious”) but Biden has also pulled NATO back together and led a strengthening of the Alliance, including NATO adding Finland and Sweden due to their concern Putin could attack them as well. The thought republicans might actually BLOCK additional aid to Ukraine making it possible for Putin to potentially win the war makes my stomach curdle. Republicans actually want the Ukrainians to cede portions of their country to Russia in order to get the fighting to stop. Again, I’m having a hard time believing what I feel compelled to write.

So, abortion, Ukraine, is that it? Of course not! There’s not enough space in this document for me to list everything – and, if you’ve been around this site before you’ve got a good idea what’s coming next – but, I’m going to list a few more reasons why I’m “disgusted” with republicans – anyway, and, I don’t expect myself to go back to the days of GW Bush/Cheney or Reagan/HW Bush or even back to Nixon. (OBTW – Watergate “stuff” has been back in the news regarding Trump attempting to avoid accountability similarly to Nixon) Let’s start with the Climate Crisis. To Trump or to people like me (old people) the reality our young people are facing is, compared to what we’ve lived through, well, not even close to similar. The last I heard was we are already facing what Climate Scientists refer to as “Global Tipping points.” This from the “Guardian:” (To which I subscribe)

“Tipping points in the Earth system pose threats of a magnitude never faced by humanity,” said Tim Lenton, from the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute. “They can trigger devastating domino effects, including the loss of whole ecosystems and capacity to grow staple crops, with societal impacts including mass displacement, political instability and financial collapse.

The tipping points at risk include the collapse of big ice sheets in Greenland and the West Antarctic, the widespread thawing of permafrost, the death of coral reefs in warm waters, and the collapse of one oceanic current in the North Atlantic.

Unlike other changes to the climate such as hotter heat waves and heavier rainfall, these systems do not slowly shift in line with greenhouse gas emissions but can instead flip from one state to an entirely different one. When a climatic system tips – sometimes with a sudden shock – it may permanently alter the way the planet works.”

Keep in mind, Trump is a confirmed “Climate denier.” Part of his “Dictator on day 1” strategy is to “drill, drill, drill.” To me, the man is “disgusting.” Of course he is, he’s a republican! (And, of course, his “day 1” will last for, well, until he’s finally IMPEACHED and removed from office – that is if republicans ever get the “stones” to do so – although, I’m with Liz Cheney, “we the people” MUST make sure he’s NEVER close to the Oval Office EVER again!

At the recent COP28 United Nations Climate Conference – held in the United Arab Emerates – according to US negotiator John Kerry a “breakthrough agreement was reached.” The goal is to reduce the use of fossil fuels to “zero” by 2050. Obviously, people like me and Trump won’t be around at that time, but you can bet any agreement signed by the Biden administration will be “torn up” the day Trump re-enters the Oval Office if that terrible day ever occurs. And, the interesting thing about his “drill, drill, drill” promise is that the United States is already the world’s leading oil producer. (We’re also the largest oil “user.” We seem to like gas guzzlers)

That’s a lot of words to explain the previously mentioned “reasons republicans disgust me.” (Interesting fact: one in four billionaires gained their fortune via fossil fuels) In summary women SHOULD be voting against Trump (and republicans down the ballot) because of the attack on their bodily autonomy. “We the people” SHOULD be voting against republicans because they’re siding with Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine war. (Unthinkable to me!) And, all of us, especially younger Americans – like my children and grandchildren (only one who’s old enough to vote) SHOULD be attempting to vote out of office any republican we can because of the Climate issue.

As usual, with republicans, however, there’s always more! Across the country, states with republican led legislatures are also passing one law after another aimed at suppressing the vote. And, are you STUPID enough to think their aim is republican voters? Of course not! That is an issue that could possibly be fixed if “we the people” would give President Biden a Congress which has a larger percentage of progressive democrats – especially in the Senate where the filibuster has been a (Jim Crow era) “road block” to Voting Rights legislation. Which leads me to another reason why republicans disgust me and why “we the people” SHOULD be voting for democrats up and down the “ticket” for a generation. (Keep in mind, I’ve NEVER been a registered democrat – I’ve considered myself an independent since the first day I cast a ballot back in 1968)

The Supreme Court. Reversing Roe is NOT the only reason the Supreme Court is a dangerous co-conspirator with right wing republicans attempting to, in essence, overturn our constitution and turn America into, at a minimum, what I’ve called a Mussolini type fascist state – that is (and, some would suggest we’re already there) a corporate/government partnership. I mean, have you paid attention to what people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, etc. are saying and doing? The Court has made it possible for these filthy RICH Americans to just keep piling up the “dough” and find creative ways to avoid paying taxes. (Jeff Bezos recently moved from my state – Washington – to Miami, Florida because – well my state is expecting RICH people to “pay their fair share” of taxes. Disgusting, from my viewpoint)

Let’s start with the Court imposing the Bush/Cheney administration on “we the people” – which led to the DISASTROUS (and illegal) invasion of Iraq. (I won’t get into the TORTURE authorized by Bush AND Cheney). Then came the (disastrous) “Citizen’s United” decision which led Mitt Romney to (infamously) say “Corporations are people my friend.” A “headnote” in a decision back in the 1880’s was used by Sam Alito and John Roberts to turn corporations into people in the “Citizens United” case and the Court has been granting more “rights” to corporations, ‘inch by inch” ever since. Corporate money has FLOODED our electoral process since Citizen’s United to the point where “Super PAC’s” are commonplace and DISGUSTING! My point: The Supreme Court will have this right wing “bent” for a generation and “we the people” MUST vote AGAINST republicans for that issue alone. Can you imagine if the right wing majority became 7 – 2? (Or worse – at least now, the issue could be mitigated by expanding the court where there would be an equal number of seats to the number of Circuits – 13)

Civil Rights, Education, issues like College admissions practices, book bans, gun rights and gun laws, the right to be able to choose the person you love, and on and on. If you look at American History, virtually every “right” “we the people” seemed to have come to take for granted – the 40 hour work week, child labor laws, Food inspectors being regulated, Water quality being regulated, CO2 emissions being regulated, Car seats for children being regulated, Seat belts in cars (they weren’t there when I was young), Social Security and Medicare (which, BTW republicans want to tear apart instead of making them STRONGER), Women’s rights (remember women couldn’t even vote until about 1920), Hiway laws and regulations, the building up of the “commons” (schools, libraries, Post offices, Court houses, etc. etc. – virtually ALL of these are the result of “liberals” fighting for change.

And, I keep saying: “rights are much easier to lose than to regain.” Many of the people I know who are republicans have NO idea what they’re actually supporting. For example, many of them my age depend on Social Security (to varying degrees) and Medicare. I don’t think they support cutting them back as proposed by the new “Speaker of the House.” I don’t think many of them either understand what Trump is actually proposing (“I’m your retribution,” etc.) or believe he’d actually follow through on his “promises.”

I know several who don’t believe Trump committed any criminal conduct – let alone enough for 91 FELONIES. I actually know grown republican men who don’t believe there was a violent attack on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. That, despite the visual evidence to the contrary. They watch Fox “news” and you can’t even talk to them about it or SHOW them the PROOF that THOUSANDS of INSURRECTIONISTS attacked the nation’s Capitol injuring over 150 police officers and leading to at least 7 deaths. And, despite taking part in the “Lock her up” chants regarding Hillary Clinton’s private email server they believe it was OK for Trump to have STOLEN hundreds of our nation’s top secrets and, apparently, shared some of those secrets somewhat routinely with others. (And, therefore, it was OK to refuse to return the documents when ordered to via a legal subpoena) Speaking of “Lock her Up” chants – republicans don’t see the irony in the Trumps, Kushner, and others in the “White House” using personal cell phones for communications likely listened to by the Russians. (Kushner was regularly using “What’s App” to communicate with MBS)

I’ve already surpassed the limit I had in mind when originally following this thought as I’ve – over the last week or so – watched republicans in Texas attempt to force a pregnant woman with a fetus which was dying or had already died to carry this, essentially, dead tissue to term. People like Ken Paxton (facing multiple indictments) and Trump (facing NUMEROUS indictments), well, I kept telling myself it’s wrong to “hate” them – and, I really don’t “hate” them – but, the truth is they and many of their brethren disgust me. The members of my church who’ve been “sucked in to Trump’s CULT don’t disgust me, because I really believe they don’t understand what they’re supporting as republicans – and they are constantly bombarded by bile (ie disgusting) propaganda because they get their “news” from Fox or Newmax or worse.

Should they be able to sort out the LIES from the “truth?” Yes, I believe they should – the people I’m talking about are “educated” adults. It’s just that when you learn about how effective the “Big Lie Theory” has been since the day Hitler came up with it you begin to understand why you can’t have a “dialogue” about politics with them. For example, if you point out how 25% of our national debt was accrued under Trump, they just won’t believe you – just like any other issue you attempt to have a rational discussion over. (Heck, they even believe Trump tells them the truth – that, honestly, makes me feel a bit hopeless in communicating with them – to me, that’s just stupid! It’s very similar to republicans voting against legislation and then taking credit for the good it creates “back home.” In this case, republicans I know take for granted “blessings” which resulted from “liberals” while telling me they “hate” liberals – calling them “socialists” or – whatever. Republican leaders have been working to convince their minions to “hate” liberals since the days of Newt Gingrich – to me, the “father” of all this division. Hopefully, you get my drift. I’m saddened my thinking has evolved to this place, but, “it is what it is.”

Final Thought: During this past week while House republicans were refusing to vote for aid to Ukraine (or Israel, for that matter) before giving themselves a four week “vacation,” many of the most DISGUTING members of their party were meeting in Washington DC with none other than Viktor Orban, the neo-fascist RULER of Hungary who’s attempting to prevent the EU from also sending aid to Ukraine. Putin has a bevy of “cheerleaders” around the world like Trump, Orban, Erdogan, MBS, MBZ (The Crown Prince of the United Arab Emerates), el Sissi in Egypt, and, to a degree Netanyahu – dictators (or wannabe dictators) all. You have right wing groups meeting, like Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA where the anti-semitism is so thick you could “cut it with a knife.” Steve Bannon’s lining up right wing neo-Nazi groups all across Europe (and, of course, in the U.S.A. – plus he’s back in Trump’s good graces) and who knows what Roger Stone is doing – although, we can assume it’s “no good.” Trump’s crowds cheer his references to Hitler in his recent speeches – which he continues to repeat – “immigrants are poisoning our blood” democrats are “vermin” and he’ll only be a dictator on “day 1.”

Here’s his view of “day 1:” day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, etc. etc. OK, hopefully you get my drift! Stay tuned….

Thom HartmannDecember 13, 2023 7:00AM ET 

Another article by Thom Hartman – one of my favorite “thinkers” in America. I pulled it from “Raw Story” one of the online news outlets I subscribe to. Check them and Thom out!T 

Trump speaking at a rally in 2019. (Shutterstock.com)

Most people, particularly Democrats, would never speak of Donald Trump and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the same breath or context. But the very strategy that King used to help end legal discrimination in America is what Trump is today using to try to win back the White House in 2024: movement politics.

And if Democrats don’t figure out a way to match the passion and fervor (and organization) of Trump’s MAGA movement — yes, it’s as real a movement as was the Civil Rights movement — with their own passionate, broad-based, slogan- and action-driven movement, things could get very ugly for next year’s elections.

As of this moment, the biggest mistake the Democratic Party and most Democratic politicians are making is not realizing that political movements and political parties are very different things.

Barack Obama understood movement politics: he created a movement and it carried him into the White House. For the Democratic Party today, though, not so much…

Political parties deal with policy and practicality:

“How do we get healthcare for the most people in the most efficient way possible?
“What kind of legislation will best deal with poverty and make our streets safer?”
“How do we raise money to spread our message and get people out to the polls?”

Movements, on the other hand, deal with identity and passion. They spawn activists and evangelists:

“I’m in the street because I’m mad as hell that those idiots in the state capitol outlawed my right to healthcare.”
“Hey, buddy in the next booth over here in the diner, I just heard you mention Trump and I want you to know he’s a liar, con man, and rapist!”
“Officer, I believe that a new and better America is possible with the ideas of our movement, and I’m willing to let you arrest me for it.”

The Democratic Party of today is no longer involved in movement building.

It was building a movement during the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s, when millions showed up for FDR’s rallies or listened to his fireside chats on the radio, volunteered or joined the three-letter agencies to rebuild America, and helped the war effort to save the world from fascism.

It was engaged in movement-building during the Johnson administration, when the Party embraced MLK’s Civil Rights movement and passed a whole series of Great Society legislation, beginning with the Civil and Voting Rights Acts and then leading to Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps and others that lifted millions out of poverty and laid the foundation for our first serious step in generations toward a genuinely inclusive, pluralistic society.

As mentioned, Barack Obama created a movement and without it never could’ve gotten elected or passed Obamacare.

Part of the Democratic Party was definitely recruiting people into a movement during the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016 when tens of thousands of people showed up for rallies and Bernie himself repeatedly said:

“This campaign is not just about me. It is about building a movement of human solidarity…”

But since the Bernie movement was crushed by the Clinton machine and the remnants of Clinton’s and Obama’s neoliberal “New Democrats” in the 2016 primary, the Democratic Party has devolved into a safe and predictable fundraising and electoral-strategy institution. It’s left the movement building to us.

While many people, particularly women, supported Hillary, she didn’t run her campaign like a movement, probably because both she and her husband had been politicians their entire lives, rather than activists. The closest she came to it was the millions of women wearing “pussy” hats nationwide right after Trump’s inauguration, but by then it was far too late and that wasn’t even led by her.

My friend and SiriusXM radio colleague Joe Madison is fond of saying:

“The difference between a moment and a movement is sacrifice.”

Politics, and political parties, deal with moments. They raise money, push legislation, get people elected, popularize issues, and react to the challenges of the day and to other parties’ rhetoric.

People, not institutions, generally create and populate movements. And, as Joe Madison says, doing so requires effort, persistence, passion, evangelism, and, yes, sacrifice.

While Democrats decry “the cult of Trump” and the media often ridicules Trump’s “personality cult,” the reality is that there’s never been a successful movement in history that didn’t have a charismatic leader. The movement may have preceded the leader, but the leader and his or her charisma is what makes it so potent.

Trump is a rapist, grifter, criminal, and all-around-horrible human being. But, like many high functioning psychopaths, he has extraordinary charisma and can be very charming. He knows how to lead a movement, and that movement will be his main weapon next November.

I remember Bernie telling me in an off-line conversation years ago that most politicians — and some of the best and most effective politicians — are followers, not leaders. They look for a “parade” (the start of a movement, in this example) and, when the parade is big enough, they’ll run out to the front of it, lift its flag, and proclaim, “This is my movement!”

It sounds cynical, but it’s almost always true. And because the self-organization of the movement preceded the political leadership, it’s actually a rather organic process.

Certainly, that’s what FDR and LBJ did, as did Teddy Roosevelt back in the day. Each responded to movements that were already growing on the ground, ultimately leading those movements in ways that literally changed America for the better.

Obama, a uniquely brilliant politician who came up as an activist and community organizer, created his own movement from scratch and it carried him into the White House.

And movement building and leading are what Donald Trump has been doing — although not to better America — ever since he came down his escalator in 2015.

His pitch was about emotion, not detail; about tribe, not facts; about identity and values, not politics. It was the language of movement, not momentary politics.

Even today, Trump is engaging in movement-building — this time a new and more forceful movement than in 2016, that is well-armed and enthusiastic about using violence — as he repeatedly proclaims his intention to use it to become a dictator if re-elected.

It cuts both ways. In their early days, most successful modern dictators were first leaders of movements.

Mussolini had his Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, the violent street mobs that became the enforcers of his Fascist movement when it made the transition to becoming a political party. Hitler brought people into the beer halls and the streets from the very beginning. Franco called his Spanish fascist Falange party “The Movement” to his dying day.

Most Democrats are passionate about defeating Trump and defending democracy, and some issues like abortion, pot, and voting rights will get people into polling places, but where is today’s progressive movement?

Outside of the protests against the murder of George Floyd in 2020 (which were then demonized by the right, as they have every leftist movement in history), most on the left have been content to consign all that “sacrifice” to the Democratic Party.

Instead of talking about values — the “right” of people to vote, healthcare, quality free education, a stable environment, or abortion, for example — the Democratic Party’s most powerful and visible leaders, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Senator Schumer, talk about legislation and Republican obstructionism.

That’s all well and good, and people need to know those things, but details and information rarely motivate people the way a movement and its implicit invitation to membership, participation, and evangelism does.

When my old friend the late Tom Hayden helped organize Students for a Democratic Society, he and its founders envisioned it as a movement, not a party. I started showing up for the MSU chapter of SDS in 1967, hanging out repeatedly at the Student Union, for meetings off-campus, and in the streets, and ended up in jail for a week, shaved bald and beaten, for my efforts. Politicians don’t go to jail: movement participants (some of them politicians) do.

This comes out of something deep within our basic human nature.

As any psychologist or competent novelist can tell you, we human beings are story machines: we carry deep within us stories about our nation, about our lives, about ourselves and our place in family and society.

Those stories drive our behavior more than any amount of data or information. They transcend party. And they drive movements.

Deeply embedded into each of those stories are layers of emotion, identity, and a sense of self. It’s the stories that motivate us, which is why it’s always stories that drive movements.

Nobody ever got up off their couch and ran into the streets, particularly into a line of police or jeering militia thugs, because they were excited by a policy proposal offered in a boring floor speech read in a droning voice by the Senate Majority Leader.

Movement leaders know how to tell these stories to rouse people’s emotions and motivate them to action. It’s one of the keys to creating and sustaining movements.

From JFK calling a “new generation” to action, to MLK proclaiming a “promised land,” to Donald Trump saying “I am your vengeance,” movement leaders reach deep into the stories that underpin our sense of who we are and our understanding of how we got into the messes we confront.

They are usually driven by a deep longing for change, and often animated by wounds, unfairness, and grievance as much as idealism, hope, and a desire to embrace others. Witness the Act Up movement demanding action about AIDS during the Reagan administration when that homophobic monster refused to say the word “AIDS” out loud for eight long years, much less do anything about it as so many people (including three very close friends of mine) died an agonizing death.

Read the history of the labor rights movement, from the slaughters of the late 19th century to the Flint Sit-Down Strike to Shawn Fain’s brilliant leadership of the UAW today. It has waxed and waned for almost two centuries; it’s reviving itself as a movement again right now (and Fain has the talent to become a major force).

Movements can come out of pain, but they can also come out of hope. The belief that a pluralistic, multiracial society free of poverty was possible in America was, for example, the initial motivation and mission of SDS: that was the essence of Hayden’s Port Huron Statement. Its anti-war activity came later.

This movement requirement for narrative, for deep story that transcends mere details and summarizes entire complex issues into a single crystalized legend, is why movements so often have not just leaders but also martyrs. They are the yin to the yang of leadership and heroes, and for a movement to be successful both are often useful or even necessary.

Sometimes the leader and the martyr are the same; the persecution of Malcolm X, for example, or the repeated jailing of Martin Luther King. Hitler played that role when he went to prison in the 1920s for trying to overthrow the government of Bavaria; Trump plays it today with his candidacy for president overlaid by his victim routine about his 91 indictments and the daily drama of his legal travails.

The Civil Rights movement had Emmett Till and Rosa Parks, with other famous names in its deeper history. The women’s movement had Susan B. Anthony, who was arrested for voting-while-female in 1872 and thus became both the movement’s martyr and leader.

Hitler’s movement held up Horst Wessel, who was killed in his violent street-gang Sturmabteilung volunteer militia that was often, initially, met with violence by police and anti-Nazi mobs.

FDR had a generation of martyrs destroyed by the Republican Great Depression and brought to popular consciousness by John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie.

LBJ used the memory of the death of JFK to push through the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, and then he and RFK pointed to martyrs in the poverty-wracked South and a retiring WWII generation who couldn’t get health insurance in old age to build a movement for his Great Society programs of Medicare and Medicaid.

Tim McVeigh, who aspired to kick off a “new [white nationalist] America” movement blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building on the anniversary of the death of white supremacist David Koresh and in the memory of white nationalist Randy Weaver, leading Trump, today having seized the mantle of leadership of Koresh’s and McVeigh’s movement, to give his first speech as a 2024 presidential candidate in Waco.

Trump regularly honors Ashli Babbit (and trots out her mother), killed by a Black Capitol Police officer during January 6th, along with the imprisoned January 6th insurrectionists (and their chorus) the way Hitler did with Wessel and his early Munich brawlers who’d been arrested or killed. He mentions Babbit and sings along with a recording of the imprisoned traitors at nearly every rally.

Trump’s movement also has multiple spin-off but aligned astroturf movements, many funded to the tune of millions by oil, tobacco, pharma, banking, tech, and other industry billionaires.

For example, the Tea Party — funded by those billionaires — was successful in driving a nationwide movement to stop a national healthcare program and guarantee that Obamacare ran exclusively through the highly profitable insurance industry.

Moms for Liberty has chapters all across America and delights in harassing teachers and school boards while promoting the banning of books (except about threesomes?).

Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA has over 300 chapters on campuses across America and sponsors conferences around the country; their stated purpose includes “to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom…” Not a word in there about policy or even politics, although they’re having a huge impact on both.

There’s an entire infrastructure — capitalized to the tune of billions of dollars a year — that supports the white nationalist, low-tax, small-government, anti-union, anti-woman, pro-fossil-fuel, anti-public-school movements and all their branches and offshoots that Trump successfully captured and now leads.

It has over 1500 radio stations blaring hate and fear 24/7; three national television networks daily promoting propaganda friendly to their billionaire owners; newspapers, websites, and appears to even be embraced by the billionaire owners of America’s largest social media companies who refuse to make public their algorithms that drive public opinion and, often, public outrage.

It pays for the political campaigns of politicians who support it, funds outsiders like Manchin and Sinema who will betray and disrupt its enemies, and ensures total loyalty to the movement and its leader Trump with the promise of funding primary challengers against anybody who deviates even the slightest from its orthodoxy.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has none of this.

Its three most visible movement leaders of my lifetime, JFK, RFK, and MLK, were all murdered in the 1960s. SDS died in the 1970s when its violent offshoot, the Weather Underground, was finally brought down. The Civil Rights movement endures but never recaptured its vitality after the brutal murder of King.

When Bernie took up the progressive movement’s mantle in 2012 and 2016, he was opposed by the institutional Democratic Party in ways that leave his supporters bitter to this day and led former DNC Chair Donna Brazile to pen an apology to him in her autobiography and on multiple TV appearances.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the “Squad” had their moment in the sun, but haven’t caught on as national movement leaders; similarly, the short-lived Black Lives Matter movement caught fire after the murder of George Floyd but has now devolved into internecine warfare.

Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi did yeoman’s work overhauling the American economy and getting America back on track after the disastrous Trump years, but neither has the charisma (or youth or drivenness) to lead a new progressive movement.

Gavin Newsom is a fresh new face for much of America, and certainly mopped the floor with Ron DeSantis in a recent Fox “News” debate, but he’s yet to take the steps — and the chances/sacrifices — that could catapult him from politician to movement leader.

And it’s that risk-taking that almost always characterizes the difference between mere politicians and leaders of movements.

Politicians play within the system; movement leaders aren’t afraid to offend or even injure the system if it will advance the movement. Politicians follow the rules; movement leaders often intentionally break them, if for no other reason than to demonstrate the need for their reform.

Movement leaders — like true movements themselves — are disruptive. They lay down in the street, stand before lines of police, let themselves get beaten and arrested for a greater cause. They sacrifice.

The successful ones are almost always talented in the arts of mass communication, in public speaking, in organizing political and guerrilla theater.

For better or worse, from Gandhi to Trump, John Lewis to David Duke and Alex Jones, Gloria Steinem to Nick Fuentes, movement leaders defy the status quo and gain an almost mythic stature and power from the audaciousness of their insurgencies.

Heading into the 2024 election, Democrats are facing a massive, multi-faceted movement driving Trump’s faction, held together by white supremacy, authoritarianism, hate, and fear of the “other.” In response, Democrats are holding up their considerable accomplishments, but have yet to activate or find their own grass-roots movement in response.

The craving for movement and movement leadership on the left is palpable: look at how the country rallied around the Tennessee Three, for example. But their local activism hasn’t succeeded in going national and has only occasionally — and then with minimal national press — been replicated in state houses across the nation.

Similarly, the Occupy Movement had a powerful moment, until it was co-opted by a New York Maoist cult leader and collapsed.

There’s still a dramatic imbalance between the massive, organized, and well-funded “anti-woke” movement driving the politics of the right, and the scattershot state-by-state efforts at reform and to salvage democracy on the left.

The closest to movement politics we have at the moment are the millions of American women (and their male allies) who want control of their bodies and are outraged at GOP attempts to return them to the status of men’s servants and playthings, from the boardroom to the bedroom.

That movement is beginning to find its voice and even has a current martyr in Texas’ Kate Cox, the woman who the men running Texas threatened to force a doomed pregnancy to term at the risk of her own life.

Will it become organized and national? Will a charismatic leader emerge or step forward to carry the women’s rights banner?

The other issue that President Biden keeps trying to evoke movement politics around — so far with only lip service from the press — is the attempt to rescue American freedom and democracy from both the corruption of six billionaire-owned Republicans on the Supreme Court and a fascist demagogue who promises to become a dictator from “day one.”

A movement for democracy.

(Anand Giridharadas, one of America’s most thoughtful commentators, recently had a discussion about this very topic with Joe Scarborough that’s well worth viewing.)

The power of the freedom meme is so great that fossil fuel billionaires have hijacked it for decades, smearing the words “freedom” and “liberty” all over everything they do. It resonates deeply in the American psyche.

Will a progressive democracy movement leader emerge to take on the growing forces of fascism represented by the Trump and Qanon cults — and the handful of third-party wannabee movement leaders — in America?

Are there people with talent and charisma willing to risk the fate of JFK and MLK to take head-on the armed militias and algorithm-fueled haters who’ve sworn their lives and allegiance to Trump and his ideal of a Christian-only white supremacist nation?

And, if one or more does, will the institutional Democratic Party treat them as a threat, the way they did Bernie and Howard Dean before him? Or will they recognize that the only way to defeat a movement like Trump now commands is with another movement of equal passion and fervor — and to get behind it, collaborate, and use its force and energy to change policy and politics, the way LBJ did when he saw that MLK would never give up?

As Jen Psaki said on Morning Joe this morning about the great recent economic news:

“Data doesn’t move people, emotions do.”

She noted that its “never about the data” and the Democratic Party needs storytellers to convert Biden’s great economic data into narratives about “how this impacts you and your family.”

Similarly, should a movement and movement leadership emerge in the next few months that could inspire Bernie-like enthusiasm to drive millions to the polls, will the handful of billionaires associated with the Democratic Party, and the consultants who make their living on fees from conventional advertising, dismiss it the way they did Bernie, BLM, the Sunrise Movement, and the Occupy Movement?

Or have they finally learned their lesson and will thus embrace movement politics the way their rightwing peers did with the Tea Party, Trump in 2016, and continue to do today with all the spinoff “anti-woke” movements they fund?

The answer to that question may well determine the future of democracy in both our republic and around the world.