Trump hails six months of chaos as history-making. But the numbers don’t lie; his second term isn’t a revival. It’s a slow-motion collapse in real time.
Do you remember the old days when we knew we would have a law abiding, Constitution following person leading us and didn't have to worry about a human wreck, mentally, emotionally and psychologically out of control in the White House?
Do you remember when they mocked us for saying Trump is a wannabe dictator who will always put himself above the Constitution?
How could we have possibly voted such a classless and unqualified man as our President again? It boggles my mind... 🤦♀️
I noticed MAGAs stopped asking if we were better off than 4 years ago... 🤔
If you did NOT vote for Kamala Harris you are fully responsible for everything that Trump MAGA GOP dictatorial regime is doing. Period. That's why I often wear this "Don't blame me, I voted for her" t-shirt 👇
For that matter, if you refused to vote for Hillary in 2016. That would probably have sent him off to obscurity and we would not have had the last 10 miserable years of criminal clowns owning the airwaves.
Troubles have been brewing for a long time. Some experts believe this goes back to the Timothy McVeigh Oklahoma bombings, way back when. The anger, resentments, the sense of betrayal from Government, from especially young white men in poorer regions of the country, has grown exponentially thanks to social media. I'm not sure this is only about Hillary, Obama, or Kamala, I think it goes way back to Reagan...promising a better life, that just never happened for so many. Just my thoughts, I could be mistaken.
I am so sick of the Bernie Bros blaming Hillary and the DNC for Bernie not getting the nomination. The FACTS are thus: We held primaries in 50 states and Hillary WON more primaries and therefore the Nomination. She did not "boot" him from anything.!! Same with Biden......HE won the primaries and therefore the nomination. THAT alone proves Bernie would have never won the popular vote. The Bernie Bros are as bad as maga when it comes to their ideas/obsession about rigged elections.
And in the unlikely event that he had, would he have been able to put a competent administration together? Sure, he was once mayor of Brattleboro, Vt., population 40K or so, but he's basically an orator and not much more than that.
No. Only those who voted for Drumpf are to blame. To blame anyone that voted for anyone else is to claim that this broken 2 party system is the only right system and that's just wrong.
Bad things happen when good people say and do nothing. Your system can be changed but while you do nothing but say I didn't vote for him you (or not enough of you) didn't vote against him either.
But the rethugs also cheated.......read Greg Palasts article about the purging of voting rolls of hundreds of thousands of legally qualified voters, cutting the number of drop boxes and polling places, and the throwing out or not counting of over 4 million votes. This all happened in those critical swing state districts WE needed to win. Stalin said it: It is not WHO votes, it is WHO COUNTS the votes. And trump with his criminal cabal in the WH along with the rethugs in congress and the RW extremists on SCOTUS are all planning right now how to rig all future elections in their favor
[The Party] differed from the political parties we know. It had its own source of law in [its leader and his adjunct]. It had its own courts and its own police. The conspirators set up a government within the Party to exercise outside the law every sanction that any legitimate state could exercise and many that it could not. Its chain of command was military, and its formations were martial. … The Party had its own secret police, its security units, its intelligence and espionage division, its raiding forces, and its youth forces. It established elaborate administrative mechanisms to identify and liquidate spies and informers, to manage concentration camps … and to finance the whole movement. Through concentric circles of authority, the [Party] eventually organized and dominated every phase of [daily] life-but not until they had waged a bitter internal struggle characterized by brutal criminality … In preparation for this phase of their struggle, they created a Party police system. This became the pattern and the instrument of the police state … the first goal in their plan. The Party formations, including the …infamous Secret State Police … were recruited only from recklessly devoted [zealots], ready in conviction and temperament to do the most violent of deeds to advance the common program. They terrorized and silenced democratic opposition and were able at length to combine with political opportunists, militarists, industrialists, monarchists, and political reactionaries. … [The police were] completely unrestrained and irresponsible. Secret arrest and indefinite detention, without charges, without evidence, without hearing, without counsel, became the method of inflicting inhuman punishment on any whom the [State] police suspected or disliked.
Step by step, play by play. Projects 2025 should have been required reading for the sycophantic crowd, but they were so caught up in the bs they refused to look at any truth.
Well, there were many during the pandemic who went to their graves insisting that they didn’t have Covid. Willful ignorance doesn’t change the outcome.
Ok, I admit, I really liked the movie “Judgement at Nuremberg ” with Spencer Tracey. I can remember watching it in black & white on tv as a young child. History has always fascinated me since I was a kid.
ABC interrupted [its broadcast of] the documentary film "Judgment at Nuremberg" — a film about Nazi racism—to show the shocking footage of police in Alabama attacking American citizens. Andrew Young remembers, “The film was interrupted several times to interject updates and replays of the violence in Selma, and many viewers apparently mistook these clips for portions of the Nuremberg film. The violence in Selma was so similar to the violence in Nazi Germany that viewers could hardly miss the connection.” Eyes on the Prize, p. 90. https://www.facinghistory.org/sites/default/files/2022-06/Eyes_on_the_Prize_0.pdf
This actually started with reagan. The Heritage Foundation wrote the first Mandate for Leadership in 1979. Reagan implemented the 1st and 2nd editions of the Mandate. Now we have the NINTH version of the Mandate called Project 2025. We have been moving towards this moment for decades! Slowly pushing the country further right on the political spectrum. The "moderate" or "middle" Dems of today would have been the Republicans in the 1950s/60s.
Some people say Americans take our freedom for granted. I think that may be the most glorious gift of all. The Constitution we have makes it possible for all Americans to assume that political freedom is their birthright from the moment they open their eyes. There are people who try to will freedom away. They try to legislate it away. Worse yet, they even go so far as to deny the validity of certain segments of our freedom. But the ungodly force called tyranny still cannot rid the human soul of its freedom, no matter how hard it may try. Tyrants can defy the benefits -- or deny the benefits, I should say -- of freedom to their peoples, can kill freedom by killing free people. But freedom itself they cannot have. Our greatest freedom, the freedom to choose right from wrong, cannot be willed away by the tyrants. In a society like ours, where all men are created equal, the best a human being can hope to achieve is to make himself or herself an example to clear a path to righteousness that others may follow.
And now history repeats itself and we that have seen this coming for at least a decade are called overreacting and that we have a fake medical condition because we don’t like the people responsible!
I will take a chance and say, that from the first reading about trump and his talks I did not trust him. When I was a child in the early 40s and read Life magazine with the picture of a person answering the door at night and a gestapo soldier was standing there waiting at the door, it frightened me so bad that I had night terrors. Seeing and hearing about the war. Saving the foil from our chewing gum packages, making balls of foil to turn in to the local store at the end of the street. We had a victory garden, we lived on rationed foods, shoes and nothing was wasted. At the advent of trumps presidency, I had a sick feeling and in my mind I relived that sick feeling about his words, he said what he was going to do and he is doing that. At the age of 90 it is for me a prophecy of a world gone mad and a dystopia is not far from now.
Because buried underneath the stats and they’re damning…is a tone I know too well. It’s not just analysis. It’s confession. And that’s what makes it land. You weren’t just watching the fantasy unfold. You helped write the script. I know that line. I’ve lived it.
I was inside the system for over 20 years. Not as a pundit or campaign hand, but in the kind of job where you see the gap between what the country says it is and what it really looks like up close. I saw the damage. I saw the disinformation. And I saw how easy it is to confuse spectacle for strength, volume for truth, and chaos for leadership—especially when the uniform still fits and the lights are still on.
You’re right to call this moment what it is. A revival but not of the country. Of the lie. The one that says cruelty is power, media is the enemy, and only one man can fix what he broke.
But what scared me most in your piece wasn’t the numbers. It was the line: “And an audience that confuses volume for truth.” Because that’s the virus. That’s the thing we haven’t vaccinated against. And unless more of us step up….especially those who were inside we’re going to keep mistaking noise for a heartbeat.
Appreciate you putting this down in a way that might actually break through. I’ve been writing through the fallout too. Quietly. For those still listening.
The truth is that Biden saved us from the mess trump made with covid. Biden had everything going in the right direction. We were the envy of the world. trump is going to wreck it again and this time he'll take a lot of the world with him.
Trump didn’t write the word “apocalyptic” because one, he cannot spell and two, he doesn’t know the word! Had to be Stephen Miller writing that in his usual vampirish-self style. Can’t argue with anything you say, Michael. Your ex-boss is a shanda!
Haha. Unless it's rage tweets at 4 am in caps and misspellings, it's not him writing. It's the vampire. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Who else has his acct who writes like this? Especially the really long ones?
We are already in trouble and much will never be undone, and please include the entire GOP Congress when assessing blame. Each and every one supports his actions. They may sort of tell their Democratic coworkers they are scared but that is a lie..they just find it better to be thought of as a coward than a truly bad person. The alliances that the rest of the world is forming with each other will never be quite undone. When tariffs are removed and even if sanity returns to the white house and congress, no one will trust us and they will have figured out they get along fine without us. As far as I can tell, America really doesn't have much that they need except consumers who are willing to go way into debt to buy their products, but many other nations have things the US needs, from rare minerals and not so rare minerals like potash, to a healthy work force and COFFEE!!! We cannot grow coffee or chocolate in America. So who needs whom???? If Americans are fine with buying as much coffee or using as much aluminum or copper as we have been and jut paying a whole lot more for it because of the tariffs, that's fine for the nations that supply it. Even if things return to "normal" I doubt tourists will return...they will have found out that there are many other places to visit just as nice. And it won't take but a few years for every industrialized nation to surpass our leadership in scientific advancement and never look back. It seems to me (and I am neither an economist or a political scientist) that the trade wars and the insults trump and the GOP Congress have hurled at every other nation has tended to solidify those nations and that is making it easier for them to quickly agree on courses of action to move them forward without the US an I don't think those actions will ever be undone.
If coffee gets too expensive here, I'm going to have to move to Mexico, Brazil or Columbia. Anywhere with coffee, really. ☕ Do a lot of Americans feel the same?
Switched to buying our own Canadian beans, grown, roasted, bagged, right here. Everyone else's coffee has at least doubled up here since this madness began. 🇨🇦
And Hawai'i doesn't have the capacity to grow enough coffee for the entire US population. There are some alternatives. Chicory and mushroom coffee. You can use in the whole OR mix them with real coffee to stretch it out and make it last longer.
Years ago the US invaded Iraq because we were told by our President George W Bush that Saddam Hussein had weapons of “mass destruction”. Look where that got us.
And here we are, again, on the brink of war…A CIVIL WAR. But this time the enemy is from within. It’s the POTUS. Donald J. Trump.
Yes. Trump himself is THE WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION!
Absolutely. Trump thirsts for power, global power. Authoritarian power. So he’s busy aligning himself with other authoritarian regimes under the guise of being the great negotiator, the peace maker. But it’s obvious that he wants to expand his empire, his trump brand, GLOBALLY. He wants his name, his face EVERYWHERE.
SO he wants Netanyahu to keep bombing Gaza and Palestine, just like he wants Putin to keep bombing Ukraine.
But don't forget the entire GOP Congress is right there supporting him. They do not care about democracy at all, only about retaining the tiny bit of power they have by bowing down to trump.
Yep. That issue is on the “goes with saying” list since I don’t have time to write a 10-page essay about all the issues!
But I will say that trump and the GOP are already attempting to preempt the odds that the house will flip in midterms by altering voters rights and by increasing gerrymandered districts in specific areas, like Texas, to secure their advantage.
And Newsom has already responded by saying he’ll beat them at their own game if they try.
The GOP is well known for ignoring the rules when it suits them. And then they fight in the gutters.
So yes, we’re in trouble. But trump IS vulnerable right now. And he knows it. So hitting him hard in his weak spots is absolutely essential…no holds
Gut punches yes for the GOP Congress and trump but not so much for their supporters...we need to be welcoming and not belittling to anyone who wants to come under our tent. We will not attract new voters by yelling at them condemning them but rather by showing genuine interest in their concerns and treating them with respect and never ever say "Well what did you expect, you voted for a known liar, pedophile, bankrupter, incoherent self centered not very bright but very mean person" even if we are thinking that! As I've said I prefer to think that many who voted for trump are just decent human beings who choose to believe no one running for president would lie to them even though that's all he's ever done. Now I hope may are seeing the light, but let's be real...if someone like Lisa Murkowski was fooled (although I just can't believe she is that dumb to have believed she would not get screwed by trump and that she was not in fat cheated, but this was part of the whole plan to make her look good to her constituents while she' just as bad/worse than all the rest) the average person, who I think grew up with the adage thou shall not lie just found it easy to believe that pretty much most folks don't lie except used car sales persons and they believed the wonderful promises trump made and maybe the in-depth policy messages of Harris were just too much (plus she's a Black Woman). We need to counter the GOP with facts and kindness and face to face meetings.
Because he wants to destroy Democracy..,and he wants to replace it with fascism. ..I think many Americans will do whatever it takes to stop him...it won't be easy but it can be done...
It is mind boggling for normal empathetic people to understand.......but a heartless Orange narcissitic easter bunny ..with bad make up.....filled with diabolical emptyness....steals power and brainwashes millions of souless sycophants...tyranny is the result.
IT took decades of RW AM Radio and Fox News to brainwash those people (AGAIN, thanks to reagans deregulation of the media and the getting rid of the FAIR Act which were part of the first Mandate for Leadership)......Trump just used that to his advantage. He even said so......he was a registered Democrat all his life until he decided to run for the Presidency. He said the republican voters were so easy to fool and lie to.
If you’ve been following the trumpian saga, you know that he has been diagnosed by a variety of professionals, including his own niece, Mary Trump, who is a licensed psychologist (and who grew up with him), as a narcissistic sociopath. He’s a deeply flawed man, pathological liar and a conman, a reality tv host who knows how to manipulate people.
So he was easily able to target a specific demographic and draw them into his lair. They literally worship him as the second coming, their messiah, their salvation and retribution. They make up about half of the Republican Party, so about 45% of the electorate. Unfortunately republicans politicians are afraid to confront Trump, so they’ve been refusing to step up and stop him.
There are also several politicians and leaders along with grassroots efforts at the federal, state and local levels who are united, organized and highly motivated to protest and push back on trump’s agenda. Millions are coming out on specific days to march and peacefully protest. And the numbers are growing.
And NO WE ARE NOT GIVING UP! There are still significantly more of us than there are of them. And now with all the focus on the Epstein scandal and trump’s relationship with Epstein, trumps are is starting to crack. He’s old, his health has deteriorated rapidly. So he’s vulnerable, primed for a stroke or a heart attack. He’s essentially being propped up right now.
It’s horrifying to witness, but there’s too much at stake to sit on the couch.
Substack has several excellent journalists and members who are passionate about educating, organizing and helping people engage, like this person who just recently started an account…
Also, Trump has an insatiable thirst for attention and for power. He’s a madman who is driven by greed. His goal is to destroy our constitution and rule of law, by generating chaos, fear, division, hatred and replace our democracy with an authoritarian oligarchy with him at the helm
Thank you for what you are doing Michael. And I love the picture you posted. Trump needs to count the millions of people who are protesting against him. MAGA loyalists are slowly falling away from Trump. And we need to keep hammering away at the base and uncovering the lies and showing the truth.
Keeping showing the truth Michael. That is what you keep doing.
I have already sent an email to the UN (here is the link https://oios.un.org/content/contact-us) asking for help. We certainly need to make sure our mid-term elections are not meddled with or hampered with by Trump, so I will be asking the UN for help with that and I am asking for everyone to email the UN and ask for help as well.
Good idea, but… “OIOS investigates misconduct allegations that involve personnel and entities within the United Nations Secretariat, including field missions.”
Are you sure that’s the right office to request help regarding a matter that is not specific to the UN?
My brother was watching a documentary on 9/11 last weekend, and they were going thru the plan to get Bin Laden so a lot of smart people in the room...Obama, Brennan, Hillary, etc. I said "I miss having a real President".
Oh it's history making alright. We put a psychotic gangster in the WH and everyone who needed to hold the line caved. I don't think it will get fixed in my lifetime.
We all remember years ago when the US invaded Iraq because we were told by our President George W Bush that Saddam Hussein had weapons of “mass destruction”. Look where that got us.
And here we are, again, on the brink of war. A CIVIL WAR. But this time the enemy is from within. It’s the POTUS.
Trump himself is THE WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION!
We’re literally at a significant turning point that could break us. Which is obviously Trump via P2025 was designed to do. Did they underestimate the power and will of the people? Will we unite and stand strong against this corrupt fascist dictator wannabe? Or, will we surrender? Will we go quietly, gently into that dark, cold night?
Oh we’ll regret it alright! So much damage already. So much more damage to come, especially around November 2026 and then once the BIG effects of the Big Ugly Bill goes into effect pertaining to Medicaid and Medicare cuts! We haven’t seen anything yet.
“A second term we might regret”. Might? I’m not seeing anything good yet, and I’m not holding my breath!!!
Do you remember the old days when we knew we would have a law abiding, Constitution following person leading us and didn't have to worry about a human wreck, mentally, emotionally and psychologically out of control in the White House?
Do you remember when they mocked us for saying Trump is a wannabe dictator who will always put himself above the Constitution?
How could we have possibly voted such a classless and unqualified man as our President again? It boggles my mind... 🤦♀️
I noticed MAGAs stopped asking if we were better off than 4 years ago... 🤔
If you did NOT vote for Kamala Harris you are fully responsible for everything that Trump MAGA GOP dictatorial regime is doing. Period. That's why I often wear this "Don't blame me, I voted for her" t-shirt 👇
https://libtees.dashery.com/products/74030236-dont-blame-me-i-voted-for-harris-t-shirt
She warned us!
For that matter, if you refused to vote for Hillary in 2016. That would probably have sent him off to obscurity and we would not have had the last 10 miserable years of criminal clowns owning the airwaves.
Troubles have been brewing for a long time. Some experts believe this goes back to the Timothy McVeigh Oklahoma bombings, way back when. The anger, resentments, the sense of betrayal from Government, from especially young white men in poorer regions of the country, has grown exponentially thanks to social media. I'm not sure this is only about Hillary, Obama, or Kamala, I think it goes way back to Reagan...promising a better life, that just never happened for so many. Just my thoughts, I could be mistaken.
My husband was so irritated when Regan won. He was a scab and union busting began.
If Hillary hadn’t booted Bernie Sanders he would have won hands down and we wouldn’t have had the first Trump term.
I admire Bernie but he was never going to win in 2016.
I am so sick of the Bernie Bros blaming Hillary and the DNC for Bernie not getting the nomination. The FACTS are thus: We held primaries in 50 states and Hillary WON more primaries and therefore the Nomination. She did not "boot" him from anything.!! Same with Biden......HE won the primaries and therefore the nomination. THAT alone proves Bernie would have never won the popular vote. The Bernie Bros are as bad as maga when it comes to their ideas/obsession about rigged elections.
And in the unlikely event that he had, would he have been able to put a competent administration together? Sure, he was once mayor of Brattleboro, Vt., population 40K or so, but he's basically an orator and not much more than that.
No. Only those who voted for Drumpf are to blame. To blame anyone that voted for anyone else is to claim that this broken 2 party system is the only right system and that's just wrong.
The millions who didn't vote in 2024 are just as much to blame as the ones who voted for Trump.
Bingo!
Bad things happen when good people say and do nothing. Your system can be changed but while you do nothing but say I didn't vote for him you (or not enough of you) didn't vote against him either.
Saying nothing has never been my style. #EffDJT & fuck the MAGAts!
A vote against actually speaks more loudly than a vote for.
Not voting against Trump is allowing him to win. Period.
But the rethugs also cheated.......read Greg Palasts article about the purging of voting rolls of hundreds of thousands of legally qualified voters, cutting the number of drop boxes and polling places, and the throwing out or not counting of over 4 million votes. This all happened in those critical swing state districts WE needed to win. Stalin said it: It is not WHO votes, it is WHO COUNTS the votes. And trump with his criminal cabal in the WH along with the rethugs in congress and the RW extremists on SCOTUS are all planning right now how to rig all future elections in their favor
Yes, let's start asking that question....Are we better than 4 years ago?
Or if you sat this one out as well your guilty.
On November 21, 1945, in the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg, Germany, Justice Robert H. Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States, made his opening statement to the International Military Tribunal. https://www.roberthjackson.org/speech-and-writing/opening-statement-before-the-international-military-tribunal/
[The Party] differed from the political parties we know. It had its own source of law in [its leader and his adjunct]. It had its own courts and its own police. The conspirators set up a government within the Party to exercise outside the law every sanction that any legitimate state could exercise and many that it could not. Its chain of command was military, and its formations were martial. … The Party had its own secret police, its security units, its intelligence and espionage division, its raiding forces, and its youth forces. It established elaborate administrative mechanisms to identify and liquidate spies and informers, to manage concentration camps … and to finance the whole movement. Through concentric circles of authority, the [Party] eventually organized and dominated every phase of [daily] life-but not until they had waged a bitter internal struggle characterized by brutal criminality … In preparation for this phase of their struggle, they created a Party police system. This became the pattern and the instrument of the police state … the first goal in their plan. The Party formations, including the …infamous Secret State Police … were recruited only from recklessly devoted [zealots], ready in conviction and temperament to do the most violent of deeds to advance the common program. They terrorized and silenced democratic opposition and were able at length to combine with political opportunists, militarists, industrialists, monarchists, and political reactionaries. … [The police were] completely unrestrained and irresponsible. Secret arrest and indefinite detention, without charges, without evidence, without hearing, without counsel, became the method of inflicting inhuman punishment on any whom the [State] police suspected or disliked.
Step by step, play by play. Projects 2025 should have been required reading for the sycophantic crowd, but they were so caught up in the bs they refused to look at any truth.
It won’t hit them until it literally hits them!!
It won’t ever hit most of them! They refuse to admit being wrong!
Well, there were many during the pandemic who went to their graves insisting that they didn’t have Covid. Willful ignorance doesn’t change the outcome.
Not were caught up, STILL CAUGHT UP. These rubes will never change, even the Epstein stain is now fading.
Good times when the US stood up for justice....seem long gone now.
Ok, I admit, I really liked the movie “Judgement at Nuremberg ” with Spencer Tracey. I can remember watching it in black & white on tv as a young child. History has always fascinated me since I was a kid.
ABC interrupted [its broadcast of] the documentary film "Judgment at Nuremberg" — a film about Nazi racism—to show the shocking footage of police in Alabama attacking American citizens. Andrew Young remembers, “The film was interrupted several times to interject updates and replays of the violence in Selma, and many viewers apparently mistook these clips for portions of the Nuremberg film. The violence in Selma was so similar to the violence in Nazi Germany that viewers could hardly miss the connection.” Eyes on the Prize, p. 90. https://www.facinghistory.org/sites/default/files/2022-06/Eyes_on_the_Prize_0.pdf
Too late to stop the harm inflicted but understanding the playbook – not easy, but it is what it is – may help us to prevent or limit ongoing and future damage in the works. Project 2025: https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
This actually started with reagan. The Heritage Foundation wrote the first Mandate for Leadership in 1979. Reagan implemented the 1st and 2nd editions of the Mandate. Now we have the NINTH version of the Mandate called Project 2025. We have been moving towards this moment for decades! Slowly pushing the country further right on the political spectrum. The "moderate" or "middle" Dems of today would have been the Republicans in the 1950s/60s.
[I posted this elsewhere before reading the message to which this replies. I add it here for] Some perspective
President Ronald Reagan, November 10, 1988
Remarks at a Luncheon for Recipients of the Medal of Freedom
https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-luncheon-recipients-medal-freedom
Some people say Americans take our freedom for granted. I think that may be the most glorious gift of all. The Constitution we have makes it possible for all Americans to assume that political freedom is their birthright from the moment they open their eyes. There are people who try to will freedom away. They try to legislate it away. Worse yet, they even go so far as to deny the validity of certain segments of our freedom. But the ungodly force called tyranny still cannot rid the human soul of its freedom, no matter how hard it may try. Tyrants can defy the benefits -- or deny the benefits, I should say -- of freedom to their peoples, can kill freedom by killing free people. But freedom itself they cannot have. Our greatest freedom, the freedom to choose right from wrong, cannot be willed away by the tyrants. In a society like ours, where all men are created equal, the best a human being can hope to achieve is to make himself or herself an example to clear a path to righteousness that others may follow.
Excellent post!!
And now history repeats itself and we that have seen this coming for at least a decade are called overreacting and that we have a fake medical condition because we don’t like the people responsible!
I will take a chance and say, that from the first reading about trump and his talks I did not trust him. When I was a child in the early 40s and read Life magazine with the picture of a person answering the door at night and a gestapo soldier was standing there waiting at the door, it frightened me so bad that I had night terrors. Seeing and hearing about the war. Saving the foil from our chewing gum packages, making balls of foil to turn in to the local store at the end of the street. We had a victory garden, we lived on rationed foods, shoes and nothing was wasted. At the advent of trumps presidency, I had a sick feeling and in my mind I relived that sick feeling about his words, he said what he was going to do and he is doing that. At the age of 90 it is for me a prophecy of a world gone mad and a dystopia is not far from now.
That looks/sounds hideously familiar…we’re living this waking nightmare.
If I could have added 1000 likes I would have.
I read this twice.
Because buried underneath the stats and they’re damning…is a tone I know too well. It’s not just analysis. It’s confession. And that’s what makes it land. You weren’t just watching the fantasy unfold. You helped write the script. I know that line. I’ve lived it.
I was inside the system for over 20 years. Not as a pundit or campaign hand, but in the kind of job where you see the gap between what the country says it is and what it really looks like up close. I saw the damage. I saw the disinformation. And I saw how easy it is to confuse spectacle for strength, volume for truth, and chaos for leadership—especially when the uniform still fits and the lights are still on.
You’re right to call this moment what it is. A revival but not of the country. Of the lie. The one that says cruelty is power, media is the enemy, and only one man can fix what he broke.
But what scared me most in your piece wasn’t the numbers. It was the line: “And an audience that confuses volume for truth.” Because that’s the virus. That’s the thing we haven’t vaccinated against. And unless more of us step up….especially those who were inside we’re going to keep mistaking noise for a heartbeat.
Appreciate you putting this down in a way that might actually break through. I’ve been writing through the fallout too. Quietly. For those still listening.
When he is never in the news again, I will be happy.
I will welcome seeing the Felon in the news when he’s wearing shackles, and/or when we’re celebrating his overdue demise.
The truth is that Biden saved us from the mess trump made with covid. Biden had everything going in the right direction. We were the envy of the world. trump is going to wreck it again and this time he'll take a lot of the world with him.
He already has wrecked it. Only thing left is handing it over to his boss Putin.
Trump didn’t write the word “apocalyptic” because one, he cannot spell and two, he doesn’t know the word! Had to be Stephen Miller writing that in his usual vampirish-self style. Can’t argue with anything you say, Michael. Your ex-boss is a shanda!
OMG!!! I thought I was there only one who called that little weasel, "Nosferatu"! 🤣🤣🤣
Me, I have called him that for years!!!!💙
Haha. Unless it's rage tweets at 4 am in caps and misspellings, it's not him writing. It's the vampire. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Who else has his acct who writes like this? Especially the really long ones?
At least in our lifetimes.
What it took nearly 250 years to create, it took him 6 months to DESTROY.
The powers behind trumpf have been planning this since the end of the civil war.
This is mostly true but ENTIRELY TRUE since the 1930’s. Rachel Maddow has amazing podcasts on this.
I agree that it has accelerated as time has passed.
trump is the figurehead, this is the heritage foundation. They are who did this.
The Felon did set a record…it took Hitler 18 months to reach this point.
We are already in trouble and much will never be undone, and please include the entire GOP Congress when assessing blame. Each and every one supports his actions. They may sort of tell their Democratic coworkers they are scared but that is a lie..they just find it better to be thought of as a coward than a truly bad person. The alliances that the rest of the world is forming with each other will never be quite undone. When tariffs are removed and even if sanity returns to the white house and congress, no one will trust us and they will have figured out they get along fine without us. As far as I can tell, America really doesn't have much that they need except consumers who are willing to go way into debt to buy their products, but many other nations have things the US needs, from rare minerals and not so rare minerals like potash, to a healthy work force and COFFEE!!! We cannot grow coffee or chocolate in America. So who needs whom???? If Americans are fine with buying as much coffee or using as much aluminum or copper as we have been and jut paying a whole lot more for it because of the tariffs, that's fine for the nations that supply it. Even if things return to "normal" I doubt tourists will return...they will have found out that there are many other places to visit just as nice. And it won't take but a few years for every industrialized nation to surpass our leadership in scientific advancement and never look back. It seems to me (and I am neither an economist or a political scientist) that the trade wars and the insults trump and the GOP Congress have hurled at every other nation has tended to solidify those nations and that is making it easier for them to quickly agree on courses of action to move them forward without the US an I don't think those actions will ever be undone.
Big Ugly Blill.....$250.00 US entry charge for tourists.........Trump destroys hospitality industry
https://www.yahoo.com/news/buried-trump-beautiful-bill-250-124400225.html?cdmc=30BYRCviQaBBqXU7UKXZjuM81sk&refcode2=30BYRCviQaBBqXU7UKXZjuM81sk&refcodecdmc=30BYRCviQaBBqXU7UKXZjuM81sk
If coffee gets too expensive here, I'm going to have to move to Mexico, Brazil or Columbia. Anywhere with coffee, really. ☕ Do a lot of Americans feel the same?
Switched to buying our own Canadian beans, grown, roasted, bagged, right here. Everyone else's coffee has at least doubled up here since this madness began. 🇨🇦
I’m learning how to like water again. If we ever lose the capacity to make ice, I’ll have to move to Antarctica.
Kona coffee is grown in Hawaii but expensive.
And Hawai'i doesn't have the capacity to grow enough coffee for the entire US population. There are some alternatives. Chicory and mushroom coffee. You can use in the whole OR mix them with real coffee to stretch it out and make it last longer.
Yes. We’re already in trouble.
Years ago the US invaded Iraq because we were told by our President George W Bush that Saddam Hussein had weapons of “mass destruction”. Look where that got us.
And here we are, again, on the brink of war…A CIVIL WAR. But this time the enemy is from within. It’s the POTUS. Donald J. Trump.
Yes. Trump himself is THE WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION!
Netanyahu talked W into Iraq and he's trying like hell to talk Trump into war in Iran
Absolutely. Trump thirsts for power, global power. Authoritarian power. So he’s busy aligning himself with other authoritarian regimes under the guise of being the great negotiator, the peace maker. But it’s obvious that he wants to expand his empire, his trump brand, GLOBALLY. He wants his name, his face EVERYWHERE.
SO he wants Netanyahu to keep bombing Gaza and Palestine, just like he wants Putin to keep bombing Ukraine.
But don't forget the entire GOP Congress is right there supporting him. They do not care about democracy at all, only about retaining the tiny bit of power they have by bowing down to trump.
Yep. That issue is on the “goes with saying” list since I don’t have time to write a 10-page essay about all the issues!
But I will say that trump and the GOP are already attempting to preempt the odds that the house will flip in midterms by altering voters rights and by increasing gerrymandered districts in specific areas, like Texas, to secure their advantage.
And Newsom has already responded by saying he’ll beat them at their own game if they try.
The GOP is well known for ignoring the rules when it suits them. And then they fight in the gutters.
So yes, we’re in trouble. But trump IS vulnerable right now. And he knows it. So hitting him hard in his weak spots is absolutely essential…no holds
barred! Gut punches required!
Gut punches yes for the GOP Congress and trump but not so much for their supporters...we need to be welcoming and not belittling to anyone who wants to come under our tent. We will not attract new voters by yelling at them condemning them but rather by showing genuine interest in their concerns and treating them with respect and never ever say "Well what did you expect, you voted for a known liar, pedophile, bankrupter, incoherent self centered not very bright but very mean person" even if we are thinking that! As I've said I prefer to think that many who voted for trump are just decent human beings who choose to believe no one running for president would lie to them even though that's all he's ever done. Now I hope may are seeing the light, but let's be real...if someone like Lisa Murkowski was fooled (although I just can't believe she is that dumb to have believed she would not get screwed by trump and that she was not in fat cheated, but this was part of the whole plan to make her look good to her constituents while she' just as bad/worse than all the rest) the average person, who I think grew up with the adage thou shall not lie just found it easy to believe that pretty much most folks don't lie except used car sales persons and they believed the wonderful promises trump made and maybe the in-depth policy messages of Harris were just too much (plus she's a Black Woman). We need to counter the GOP with facts and kindness and face to face meetings.
From a Canadian view.......my one question to Americans is.......Why does Donald Trump want to destroy your country???
My next question is.......How far are going to go to save it or are you going to give up??
Because he wants to destroy Democracy..,and he wants to replace it with fascism. ..I think many Americans will do whatever it takes to stop him...it won't be easy but it can be done...
It is mind boggling for normal empathetic people to understand.......but a heartless Orange narcissitic easter bunny ..with bad make up.....filled with diabolical emptyness....steals power and brainwashes millions of souless sycophants...tyranny is the result.
IT took decades of RW AM Radio and Fox News to brainwash those people (AGAIN, thanks to reagans deregulation of the media and the getting rid of the FAIR Act which were part of the first Mandate for Leadership)......Trump just used that to his advantage. He even said so......he was a registered Democrat all his life until he decided to run for the Presidency. He said the republican voters were so easy to fool and lie to.
Thanks for the reminder about Taco Tits saying GOP voters are easy to fool. Now he is tossing MAGA because they want the Epstein pedoFILES.
He must be Satans most prized con artist and a special place in hell awaits the Orange Turd.
If you’ve been following the trumpian saga, you know that he has been diagnosed by a variety of professionals, including his own niece, Mary Trump, who is a licensed psychologist (and who grew up with him), as a narcissistic sociopath. He’s a deeply flawed man, pathological liar and a conman, a reality tv host who knows how to manipulate people.
So he was easily able to target a specific demographic and draw them into his lair. They literally worship him as the second coming, their messiah, their salvation and retribution. They make up about half of the Republican Party, so about 45% of the electorate. Unfortunately republicans politicians are afraid to confront Trump, so they’ve been refusing to step up and stop him.
There are also several politicians and leaders along with grassroots efforts at the federal, state and local levels who are united, organized and highly motivated to protest and push back on trump’s agenda. Millions are coming out on specific days to march and peacefully protest. And the numbers are growing.
And NO WE ARE NOT GIVING UP! There are still significantly more of us than there are of them. And now with all the focus on the Epstein scandal and trump’s relationship with Epstein, trumps are is starting to crack. He’s old, his health has deteriorated rapidly. So he’s vulnerable, primed for a stroke or a heart attack. He’s essentially being propped up right now.
It’s horrifying to witness, but there’s too much at stake to sit on the couch.
Substack has several excellent journalists and members who are passionate about educating, organizing and helping people engage, like this person who just recently started an account…
https://www.mind-war.com/p/a-moment-in-time-organize-right-now?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=9qpal&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Mind War site gives hope that is needed. Keep pushing the Epstein Pedophile Outrage everyday Definatly Taco Tits is losing his health.
Millions need to be marching and more often in the streets this summer.
Now is the time to go for the win.
Also, Trump has an insatiable thirst for attention and for power. He’s a madman who is driven by greed. His goal is to destroy our constitution and rule of law, by generating chaos, fear, division, hatred and replace our democracy with an authoritarian oligarchy with him at the helm
Agreed
Thank you for what you are doing Michael. And I love the picture you posted. Trump needs to count the millions of people who are protesting against him. MAGA loyalists are slowly falling away from Trump. And we need to keep hammering away at the base and uncovering the lies and showing the truth.
Keeping showing the truth Michael. That is what you keep doing.
I have already sent an email to the UN (here is the link https://oios.un.org/content/contact-us) asking for help. We certainly need to make sure our mid-term elections are not meddled with or hampered with by Trump, so I will be asking the UN for help with that and I am asking for everyone to email the UN and ask for help as well.
I want the TRUTH ! They are hiding something and we need to know what it is.
Good idea, but… “OIOS investigates misconduct allegations that involve personnel and entities within the United Nations Secretariat, including field missions.”
Are you sure that’s the right office to request help regarding a matter that is not specific to the UN?
When you click on that link, to the right is an investigations hotline and that is where I clicked to get to the email hotline.
I also did go to the UN website and found other areas to file complaints.
My brother was watching a documentary on 9/11 last weekend, and they were going thru the plan to get Bin Laden so a lot of smart people in the room...Obama, Brennan, Hillary, etc. I said "I miss having a real President".
At the very least a real human being.
F D T
A gold plate turd is still a turd
Oh it's history making alright. We put a psychotic gangster in the WH and everyone who needed to hold the line caved. I don't think it will get fixed in my lifetime.
We’re already in trouble. Is it too late?
We all remember years ago when the US invaded Iraq because we were told by our President George W Bush that Saddam Hussein had weapons of “mass destruction”. Look where that got us.
And here we are, again, on the brink of war. A CIVIL WAR. But this time the enemy is from within. It’s the POTUS.
Trump himself is THE WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION!
We’re literally at a significant turning point that could break us. Which is obviously Trump via P2025 was designed to do. Did they underestimate the power and will of the people? Will we unite and stand strong against this corrupt fascist dictator wannabe? Or, will we surrender? Will we go quietly, gently into that dark, cold night?
"Might"????
Oh we’ll regret it alright! So much damage already. So much more damage to come, especially around November 2026 and then once the BIG effects of the Big Ugly Bill goes into effect pertaining to Medicaid and Medicare cuts! We haven’t seen anything yet.
He's a lying, felonious and racist pedophile 🤬 I do not understand why anyone supports his dumb ass🤬
And rapist. And killer.
literally- 34 counts