'It’s no surprise that isolationists quickly become imperialists. They know it all sucks. You can’t let people come to those conclusions through the culture naturally. It wouldn’t happen. You have to manipulate, intimidate and pontificate. No different than corporate fads. The true fusion of liberal culture is when something proves its value through its undeniable and inherent greatness. Time tells.' https://trkingston.substack.com/p/hello-transient-expressionism-part-768
Saw for the first time -and again- a TV ad for Starlink service to be added to any mobile phone by T-Mobile. Read of the Musk plan to switch air traffic control and navigation to Starlink's system. Read of China's development of a satellite-destroying space laser that has already demolished some in orbit. Don't know but am betting Tesla cars use Starlink navigation and not GPS; and of course SpaceX does; don't know what our military is using now, nor maritime industry, but I heard Ukraine has Starlink systems for its war effort ....so that emerging scary and vulnerable monopoly is unfolding without. a lot of press attention and could have huge consequences for every part of our lives.
I have the greatest respect for Will Selber and I thank him for his service to the nation. And while I agree with most of the points he made today in his article on veterans, I respectfully disagree with him on some of them.
I only spent five years in the U.S. Navy, but my observation while on active duty was that there were an extraordinarily high number of right-wing extremists serving in uniform. And I believe the same thing to be true of the veterans community, based on my observations.
This does not in any way mean that most of these people will ever ever break the law. But I am convinced that at least 60% of active duty military personnel and veterans who participate in presidential general elections will vote for any extreme right-wing candidate over any Democrat or traditional Republican, regardless of how awful he/she is.
THANK YOU, Bill. I felt SO desperate, throughout the entire summer, when I saw that THIS is the conversation that we urgently needed to have and no one was having it. Instead, the Bulwark (and in a very well-intentioned way) was 95% focused on ridiculing Trump as a person. Yes, of course, from a democratic perspective, most of what Trump said and did was ridiculous. But personalizing/psychologizing it all came at a tremendous cost: people did not realize that this WAS the VERY well planned and mapped out installation of fascism in the US, with Trump merely being their clown in chief. Biden and Harris said it over and over again: this is the end of democracy, it's bad, and it goes way beyond the usual policy debates between left and right. And yet, while the legacy media refused to have this debate AND massively focused on Trump's tweets (designed to generate clickbait headlines which the corporate media love above anything else) while ignoring 99% of Harris's message and limiting themselves to constantly insisting on wanting even more "policy proposal details" than what she was already providing... the Bulwark praised Harris for providing so many policy details and coming up with perfectly centrist and good policies, AND... also focused most of the time on the last Trump tweet or shocking rally behavior. In this way, we never ever had any debate about THE most important thing at stake during the 2024 election.
Fortunately, in the end, both NYT op-eds and the Bulwark DID use the WORD "fascism". But by then it was September already, and no one went beyond just calling it fascism. Result? Most people saw it as petty name-calling, with NO real consciousness of what was going on at all. Harris to me felt like the lone wolf crying out in the desert that the media landscape had by then become.
And, I have to admit, most of the The Bulwark reporting since Nov. 5 felt so utterly superfluous to me precisely because now, even the word fascism was no longer used. Most videos went back to just laughing at how stupid and ridiculous Trump had been again. We were literally "amusing ourselves to death", being entertained by the king of reality TV while a real disaster was going on.
So for all these reason, it's such a relief to see that you now interview Anne Applebaum yesterday, Bill, and are commenting on the NPR interview today (I missed it, so thanks for signaling it and posting the link to it).
Neoconservatism was always an ideology, not a real philosophy. But ideologies are what turns a democracy into fascism, so blatantly ignoring them, as the media are still largely doing today, meant literally "sleepwalking into dictatorship", as another expert whom I hope you'll soon interview (Kim Scheppele) called it years ago already. Irving Kristol was one of the founding fathers of neoconservatism. Imho it was one of the most disastrous decisions the GOP ever made, and one of the root causes of what is happening today. Still, he WAS a real ideologue. So I hope that from now one, starting to laser-focus on ideology to help people understand the "brutally serious consequences" (as Harris called it during the DNC convention) of the outcome of the election, will be what comes naturally to you, since it is a family tradition, after all, and some things do deserve "conservation"...
“funding decisions with the interests of the citizens of the United States.”
No. This administration now makes funding decisions of every single function in the federal government, and every function it snatches from independent sources, be in accordance with the interest of the fpotus, and only the fpotus. Never will this administration do anything in "the interests of the citizens of the US". Never. Fpotus, the oligarchs, the sycophants - their interests alone rule in the US federal system now. Fact. Outright corruption is now embedded as official policy in every agency funding decision.
Pressman “The first tool was essentially constructing a system where institutions are captured and then creating an architecture of rewarding and punishing,” if that isn't the truth. Nearly everything Trump and his appointees are doing is focused on punishing.
DOGE is an undercover operation to implement the Project 2025 agenda.
After all, Government efficiency is about delivering services to the citizens in a more cost effective manner, with little to no impact to the citizens. Mass firings and the refusal to release payments, is all about delivering far fewer services to the citizens (customer). The impact to the citizens are significant and any savings result from the delivery of fewer services.
This de factor shuttering of agencies through these actions, is ineffective for efficiency reduction, but very effective for implementing Project 2025 in a transparently non-transparent manner, usurping the authority of the legislative branch. The unitary executive theory.
The only question is does Musk realize this, or is he just a useful fool of the Project 2025 crowd.
It's not a conspiracy theory, it's a proven fact. Project 2025 and neofascism ARE what many tech billionaires actively thought about, debated and WANT, for years already. Musk is not a "useful fool", he's an ARCHITECT of neofascism in the US and knows perfectly well what he's doing. It's 100% transparent for those who studied autocracy and neofascism in the US. The only "fools" here are the media and therefore most citizens who are only gradually realizing what is truly going on today.
Two books may help you to wake up: "Dawn's Early Light" by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, and "Crack-Up Capitalism" by Quinn Slobodian.
As Roberts writes on the first pages of the book: we vitally NEED to "burn down all US institutions". It's the "chainsaw approach" to a pro-democracy government that exists for two centuries already, knowing that there is no other way to turn around such a massive ship and install fascism in only two years (they may not have more than that, this time around, with the 2026 elections coming up). And the destruction is NOT the goal at all, it's just phase one. Musk, Bannon, Vance... they all LITERALLY told us this, and for months already. And all these guys are not just driven by greed, they are truly passionate about "saving humanity", as Musk calls it. So the sad truth is that today, the elites in DC actively believe that democracy is NOT the best system out there, a neofascist form of government is - and not just at home but for the entire planet. THAT is why they side with neofascist Putin and against pro-democracy NATO and the UN. Putin's palace ideologue, Alexander Dugin, wrote about "illiberalism" (their word for neofascism) for decades already. Steve Bannon met him, in person, and America's neofascists (from the tech billionaires to the Heritage Foundation) fully AGREE with him, on an ideological level. Putin managed to change the hearts and minds of the GOP leadership, so he basically WON the ideological war between autocratic Russia/China and "the free world", the West. THIS is what is going on today, literally. So things are much much worse than having a few fools who wouldn't know what they're doing in the WH... and a real reason to start informing ourselves and then develop a strategy that is in phase with the enormity of the disaster...
I wonder how many ethical press people will follow Jim Acosta and begin their own social media news coverage? I’d love to see some of these folks create a “journal” of some sort where we could pay for a subscription and get several articles in one. Having said that, I would still continue to support individuals regardless.
I think this just puts any/all of them at greater risk of attack. As individuals, it is much easier to go after them as people, whereas, as an employee for CNN, he's afforded more personal protection and support.
They're certainly brave, and I support their efforts, but it seems it is a divide and conquer strategy on the part of MAGA that will just make it easier to silence their critics. I'm reminded of JVL's comments a few weeks back, where he said he'd be willing to be the first guy taken down by MAGA, but not the 10th. I think about this for all of us who stand opposed to this assault. If I'm going to go down, at least make it matter, because if it doesn't...then what is the point?
The only institutions beyond trump's reach are the states, and that's where we have to pin our hopes now. Whether that starts as a go-slow obedience or outright disobedience, there will come a time when we have to face up to the fact that the federal government is irretrievably broken. Either we just ignore it or declare our independence and get the fuck out while the getting is good.
Why are not more people with a public voice willing to accuse Trump and his cronies of extorting Volodimir Zelenski with the same method gangsters used to exact money from the vulnerable small businesses found in their territory? (In Ukraine’s case, «Rare Minerals»).
Trump is using with Ukraine the same method used by Hitler to make Richard Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier surrender to his whims to the horror of Winston Churchill.
Look at how media corporations, for example, MSNBC, are reshaping their policies by stopping Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow, who have been willing to take risks yelling the truth to Trump and Republicans─ hoping to attract, by whatever means, Trump’s attention from the Australian Baron’s owned FOX. So much for the U. S. Constitutional «Freedom of the Press.»
The indecent surrendering of U. S. Federal legislators to George W Bush’s ill plans to invade Iraq, which was not only an unnecessary war but served to favor corporations politically connected to the administration, v.gr. Halliburton (Cf. Halliburton’s no-bid contracts, https://www.mcclatchydc.com/latest-news/article24442288.html); sending Secretary Collin Powell to make false claims justifying at the Unit Nations’ Security Council the invasion and in the process, destroying his political career (perhaps seizing the opportunity to launch some racially motivated «pre-empting» strategy).
Discrediting Democrats is the wrong approach, especially if the critics are former Republicans. It only strengthens the latter, who are equally corrupt. The Democrats are already discredited enough by their own doing. The old military method of challenging and motivating competition is no longer effective in politics. The Media manipulates to confuse. It is better to be straight.
A constructive way of helping fight despotic Trump may be for political experts like the journalists of Bulwark and Substack to objectively analyze the situation and propose effective political solutions without prejudices or predispositions.
Actually, Rachel Maddows was brought back and went from having one program a week to one a day, so what makes you imagine that MSNBC is "stopping" her?
As to Democrats: discrediting them is absolutely the wrong approach, because they're the only politicians warning us about what Bill describes above for a long time already, AND who are fighting back (within the legal power that "we the people" gave them), so why do you then go on claiming that they "are discredited enough by their own doing"? What are you referring to more precisely?
You are a civil person who, when in disagreement, asks questions for clarification before jumping to impulsive conclusions, which is not a common virtue. Thank you! The Democrats miserably failed to disarm and defeat the brutal bullying strategy of the Republicans and Big Money in both Federal Houses, especially against the Harris campaign and the many decent members of the Biden-Harris Administration summoned to their respective hearings (to cite one hideous case, the Attorney General). In so doing, they preferred a calculated failure to losing the support of Big Money or the meager number of possible Republican votes. Such behavior could amount to betraying their constituency and their political platform, yet they preferred the risks involved. The wrong betting. They miserably lost. People who lose or betray are discredited by their loss and defeat. That is why I still believe the Democrats were discredited by their own doing. Perhaps I did not express my opinion adequately because of my unsatisfactory dominion of US English.
Thanks for reading my comment. Did you mean «brought back?» It is possible that I posted my comment while she was being «brought back.» At any rate, if I did not write it, then please accept my apologies.
Let me thank you if, as Grammarly suggest, you intended to teach me US English. Being a legal immigrant (though naturalized a citizen 40 years ago) of age 81+, I am fully aware that I will die without mastering US English. No doubt, Grammarly’s suggestion is too harsh or arrogant a judgment coming from just some software application, no matter how well credited it might be. Nonetheless, with the utmost respect, allow me to suggest always asking for clarifications before impulsively jumping to conclusions (in any case of disagreement), if not for other reasons, for the sake of civility and respect may be very beneficial for all parties involved. Best regards.
Your comment, "Trump is using with Ukraine the same method used by Hitler to make Richard Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier surrender to his whims to the horror of Winston Churchill."confused a B-list actor of one generation (Richard) with an A-list politician of a previous generation (Neville) who was a protagonist of one of the iconic betrayals of the 20th Century. Next time you're tempted to take offense when caught in a factual error, try to remember that sarcasm doesn't come across too well in text, the affect of the medium is too flat. Rest easy on one thing, though: your English is fine.
Thanks for taking the time to read my comments and for correcting my errors. There is no reason to be concerned with my dementia yet: I still remember Richard in The Thurn Birds, Montecristo, Wallenberg, All the Winters That Have Been, and others, though not chronologically. I think I did not confuse my list of actors. Chamberlain was a coward and committed a tragic error. Perhaps his intentions were good, even if he wished to turn his face to avoid the fast approaching fumes of war. Yet, in the fearful eyes of many the war was already inevitable: Hitler was not a reasonable man. He was neither trustable nor could he care less for the blood bath he was about to climax on. His obsession with «MAKING GERMANY GREAT AGAIN» was too strong, and Schadenfreude had taken over him. Hitler wished to invade not another country (for which he had rearmed sufficiently) but also Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, and soon thereafter, France, Britain, and the Scandinavian countries. By the end of the last meeting with Hitler, Chamberlain knew it. At any rate, Chamberlain was out, Halifax was in, and Britain, France, and Europe were left alone waiting for the Valkyries who were already marching on. Halifax must have reproached Chamberlain for it. How could he not? Forgive me if I am exaggerating. Churchill had reasons to feel horribly embarrased, did he not?
Thank you for your response, and please pardon my irritability -- it's a habitual shortcoming. I, too, live in a country where I'm an immigrant and speak my second language most of the day. While I feel that I've mastered it for most uses most of the time, it still throws me for a loop once in a while, so I identify. I believe that it was Churchill who did the reproaching (although quite gently, all things considered) and Halifax who had reason to be embarrassed, but other than that, I think that your summary is spot on.
From reading the report on Hungary's descent into authoritarianism, from the former US ambassador to Hungary, it sounds like Trump & his minions have the same scenario pretty much down pat.: Destroy the free press, promote the oligarchs, fire all the loyal & experienced federal workers, intimidate members of of your own party in Congress, & make Americans fearful to speak out.
Actually, it's Steve Bannon who went to Hungary and mapped out the transition to autocracy there together with Orban. Then, they created the Danube Institute, an English-speaking think tank that worked together directly with the Heritage Foundation and shared what it learned to help it design Project 2025, an improved version of how the experiment in Hungary went.
Trump or his minions have studied Orban's techniques for dismantling Hungary's democracy very carefully. Orban has been more subtle than Putin--no killing--but his goal was the same: one-man rule. Orban destroyed the free press by putting financial pressure on independent newspapers and TV stations and forcing them to sell out to his cronies. He has cultivated a group of oligarchs by handing out properties and EC subsidies to them. Orban politicized the bureaucracy, the army and the judiciary, through intimidation rather than jailing people. Sound familiar?
It's worse than that. It's Putin's ideologue Alexander Dugin who came up with the "illiberal ideology" idea, and Steve Bannon and part of America's neofascists studied him, MET him in person and AGREED with him. Bannon and Trump advisor Sebastian Gorka then became Orban's advisors and helped him do what Trump had already managed to achieve during his first term in the US. Then, together, they mapped out a plan to try to install Putin's autocratic oligarchy inside Hungary. Next step: Orban created the Danube Institute, an English-speaking think tank that transferred what it learned to... the Heritage Foundation, and worked directly with it to write Project 2025, designed to do what Bannon, Gorda and Orban did in Hungary, only faster and better.
And as you know, no doubt, CPAC held one of its annual conferences in Budapest and showcased as their keynote speaker….Orban. The CPAC liked what they heard so much that they invited Orban to be the keynote speaker at another conference in the US. That fell through because of scheduling issues, but their admiration of his “illiberal democracy” shows their true values…profoundly anti-democratic.
In MAGA-thought, the "administrative state" is antidemocratic - whereas an elected monarch who bulldozes all restraints on his power and then rigs the electoral system in his favor is the Voice of the People.
Request to Eugene Daniels: Please make public the names of each day's press poolers. That is the only way the public will know if the pool reports are complete, accurate, and reliable. Maximum transparency from the Correspondents Association is imperative now.
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
George Orwell
'It’s no surprise that isolationists quickly become imperialists. They know it all sucks. You can’t let people come to those conclusions through the culture naturally. It wouldn’t happen. You have to manipulate, intimidate and pontificate. No different than corporate fads. The true fusion of liberal culture is when something proves its value through its undeniable and inherent greatness. Time tells.' https://trkingston.substack.com/p/hello-transient-expressionism-part-768
Saw for the first time -and again- a TV ad for Starlink service to be added to any mobile phone by T-Mobile. Read of the Musk plan to switch air traffic control and navigation to Starlink's system. Read of China's development of a satellite-destroying space laser that has already demolished some in orbit. Don't know but am betting Tesla cars use Starlink navigation and not GPS; and of course SpaceX does; don't know what our military is using now, nor maritime industry, but I heard Ukraine has Starlink systems for its war effort ....so that emerging scary and vulnerable monopoly is unfolding without. a lot of press attention and could have huge consequences for every part of our lives.
Good god, that quick shot is...depressing.
I have the greatest respect for Will Selber and I thank him for his service to the nation. And while I agree with most of the points he made today in his article on veterans, I respectfully disagree with him on some of them.
I only spent five years in the U.S. Navy, but my observation while on active duty was that there were an extraordinarily high number of right-wing extremists serving in uniform. And I believe the same thing to be true of the veterans community, based on my observations.
This does not in any way mean that most of these people will ever ever break the law. But I am convinced that at least 60% of active duty military personnel and veterans who participate in presidential general elections will vote for any extreme right-wing candidate over any Democrat or traditional Republican, regardless of how awful he/she is.
THANK YOU, Bill. I felt SO desperate, throughout the entire summer, when I saw that THIS is the conversation that we urgently needed to have and no one was having it. Instead, the Bulwark (and in a very well-intentioned way) was 95% focused on ridiculing Trump as a person. Yes, of course, from a democratic perspective, most of what Trump said and did was ridiculous. But personalizing/psychologizing it all came at a tremendous cost: people did not realize that this WAS the VERY well planned and mapped out installation of fascism in the US, with Trump merely being their clown in chief. Biden and Harris said it over and over again: this is the end of democracy, it's bad, and it goes way beyond the usual policy debates between left and right. And yet, while the legacy media refused to have this debate AND massively focused on Trump's tweets (designed to generate clickbait headlines which the corporate media love above anything else) while ignoring 99% of Harris's message and limiting themselves to constantly insisting on wanting even more "policy proposal details" than what she was already providing... the Bulwark praised Harris for providing so many policy details and coming up with perfectly centrist and good policies, AND... also focused most of the time on the last Trump tweet or shocking rally behavior. In this way, we never ever had any debate about THE most important thing at stake during the 2024 election.
Fortunately, in the end, both NYT op-eds and the Bulwark DID use the WORD "fascism". But by then it was September already, and no one went beyond just calling it fascism. Result? Most people saw it as petty name-calling, with NO real consciousness of what was going on at all. Harris to me felt like the lone wolf crying out in the desert that the media landscape had by then become.
And, I have to admit, most of the The Bulwark reporting since Nov. 5 felt so utterly superfluous to me precisely because now, even the word fascism was no longer used. Most videos went back to just laughing at how stupid and ridiculous Trump had been again. We were literally "amusing ourselves to death", being entertained by the king of reality TV while a real disaster was going on.
So for all these reason, it's such a relief to see that you now interview Anne Applebaum yesterday, Bill, and are commenting on the NPR interview today (I missed it, so thanks for signaling it and posting the link to it).
Neoconservatism was always an ideology, not a real philosophy. But ideologies are what turns a democracy into fascism, so blatantly ignoring them, as the media are still largely doing today, meant literally "sleepwalking into dictatorship", as another expert whom I hope you'll soon interview (Kim Scheppele) called it years ago already. Irving Kristol was one of the founding fathers of neoconservatism. Imho it was one of the most disastrous decisions the GOP ever made, and one of the root causes of what is happening today. Still, he WAS a real ideologue. So I hope that from now one, starting to laser-focus on ideology to help people understand the "brutally serious consequences" (as Harris called it during the DNC convention) of the outcome of the election, will be what comes naturally to you, since it is a family tradition, after all, and some things do deserve "conservation"...
“funding decisions with the interests of the citizens of the United States.”
No. This administration now makes funding decisions of every single function in the federal government, and every function it snatches from independent sources, be in accordance with the interest of the fpotus, and only the fpotus. Never will this administration do anything in "the interests of the citizens of the US". Never. Fpotus, the oligarchs, the sycophants - their interests alone rule in the US federal system now. Fact. Outright corruption is now embedded as official policy in every agency funding decision.
Pressman “The first tool was essentially constructing a system where institutions are captured and then creating an architecture of rewarding and punishing,” if that isn't the truth. Nearly everything Trump and his appointees are doing is focused on punishing.
Here's a conspiracy theory for you.
DOGE is an undercover operation to implement the Project 2025 agenda.
After all, Government efficiency is about delivering services to the citizens in a more cost effective manner, with little to no impact to the citizens. Mass firings and the refusal to release payments, is all about delivering far fewer services to the citizens (customer). The impact to the citizens are significant and any savings result from the delivery of fewer services.
This de factor shuttering of agencies through these actions, is ineffective for efficiency reduction, but very effective for implementing Project 2025 in a transparently non-transparent manner, usurping the authority of the legislative branch. The unitary executive theory.
The only question is does Musk realize this, or is he just a useful fool of the Project 2025 crowd.
It's not a conspiracy theory, it's a proven fact. Project 2025 and neofascism ARE what many tech billionaires actively thought about, debated and WANT, for years already. Musk is not a "useful fool", he's an ARCHITECT of neofascism in the US and knows perfectly well what he's doing. It's 100% transparent for those who studied autocracy and neofascism in the US. The only "fools" here are the media and therefore most citizens who are only gradually realizing what is truly going on today.
Two books may help you to wake up: "Dawn's Early Light" by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, and "Crack-Up Capitalism" by Quinn Slobodian.
As Roberts writes on the first pages of the book: we vitally NEED to "burn down all US institutions". It's the "chainsaw approach" to a pro-democracy government that exists for two centuries already, knowing that there is no other way to turn around such a massive ship and install fascism in only two years (they may not have more than that, this time around, with the 2026 elections coming up). And the destruction is NOT the goal at all, it's just phase one. Musk, Bannon, Vance... they all LITERALLY told us this, and for months already. And all these guys are not just driven by greed, they are truly passionate about "saving humanity", as Musk calls it. So the sad truth is that today, the elites in DC actively believe that democracy is NOT the best system out there, a neofascist form of government is - and not just at home but for the entire planet. THAT is why they side with neofascist Putin and against pro-democracy NATO and the UN. Putin's palace ideologue, Alexander Dugin, wrote about "illiberalism" (their word for neofascism) for decades already. Steve Bannon met him, in person, and America's neofascists (from the tech billionaires to the Heritage Foundation) fully AGREE with him, on an ideological level. Putin managed to change the hearts and minds of the GOP leadership, so he basically WON the ideological war between autocratic Russia/China and "the free world", the West. THIS is what is going on today, literally. So things are much much worse than having a few fools who wouldn't know what they're doing in the WH... and a real reason to start informing ourselves and then develop a strategy that is in phase with the enormity of the disaster...
MuskX is all in with Project 2025's implementation. He stands to benefit financially like all the billionaires behind that project.
When correcting a typo I had made, I realized that maybe it was a Freudian slip.
DOGE = Deficiency of Government experience. A great description of Musk and the DOGE boys.
I wonder how many ethical press people will follow Jim Acosta and begin their own social media news coverage? I’d love to see some of these folks create a “journal” of some sort where we could pay for a subscription and get several articles in one. Having said that, I would still continue to support individuals regardless.
I think this just puts any/all of them at greater risk of attack. As individuals, it is much easier to go after them as people, whereas, as an employee for CNN, he's afforded more personal protection and support.
They're certainly brave, and I support their efforts, but it seems it is a divide and conquer strategy on the part of MAGA that will just make it easier to silence their critics. I'm reminded of JVL's comments a few weeks back, where he said he'd be willing to be the first guy taken down by MAGA, but not the 10th. I think about this for all of us who stand opposed to this assault. If I'm going to go down, at least make it matter, because if it doesn't...then what is the point?
Jen Rubin and others have done that with The Contrarian
Yes, following them too.
The only institutions beyond trump's reach are the states, and that's where we have to pin our hopes now. Whether that starts as a go-slow obedience or outright disobedience, there will come a time when we have to face up to the fact that the federal government is irretrievably broken. Either we just ignore it or declare our independence and get the fuck out while the getting is good.
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/26/nx-s1-5309695/trump-gaza-video
And when he's done here, he's going to Gaza...maybe that'll be trump's retirement plan: have his own country for real???
Why are not more people with a public voice willing to accuse Trump and his cronies of extorting Volodimir Zelenski with the same method gangsters used to exact money from the vulnerable small businesses found in their territory? (In Ukraine’s case, «Rare Minerals»).
Trump is using with Ukraine the same method used by Hitler to make Richard Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier surrender to his whims to the horror of Winston Churchill.
Look at how media corporations, for example, MSNBC, are reshaping their policies by stopping Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow, who have been willing to take risks yelling the truth to Trump and Republicans─ hoping to attract, by whatever means, Trump’s attention from the Australian Baron’s owned FOX. So much for the U. S. Constitutional «Freedom of the Press.»
The indecent surrendering of U. S. Federal legislators to George W Bush’s ill plans to invade Iraq, which was not only an unnecessary war but served to favor corporations politically connected to the administration, v.gr. Halliburton (Cf. Halliburton’s no-bid contracts, https://www.mcclatchydc.com/latest-news/article24442288.html); sending Secretary Collin Powell to make false claims justifying at the Unit Nations’ Security Council the invasion and in the process, destroying his political career (perhaps seizing the opportunity to launch some racially motivated «pre-empting» strategy).
Look for The Economist (Europe edition of 26 March 2024) and look for the so illuminating photo of the irresponsible George W Bush searching for Iraq’s WMDs underneath a sofa in the Oval Office to the amusement of Condoleezza Rice. (Cf. https://www.democracynow.org/2004/3/26/headlines/bush_jokes_about_not_finding_wmds_in_iraq).
Discrediting Democrats is the wrong approach, especially if the critics are former Republicans. It only strengthens the latter, who are equally corrupt. The Democrats are already discredited enough by their own doing. The old military method of challenging and motivating competition is no longer effective in politics. The Media manipulates to confuse. It is better to be straight.
A constructive way of helping fight despotic Trump may be for political experts like the journalists of Bulwark and Substack to objectively analyze the situation and propose effective political solutions without prejudices or predispositions.
Actually, Rachel Maddows was brought back and went from having one program a week to one a day, so what makes you imagine that MSNBC is "stopping" her?
As to Democrats: discrediting them is absolutely the wrong approach, because they're the only politicians warning us about what Bill describes above for a long time already, AND who are fighting back (within the legal power that "we the people" gave them), so why do you then go on claiming that they "are discredited enough by their own doing"? What are you referring to more precisely?
You are a civil person who, when in disagreement, asks questions for clarification before jumping to impulsive conclusions, which is not a common virtue. Thank you! The Democrats miserably failed to disarm and defeat the brutal bullying strategy of the Republicans and Big Money in both Federal Houses, especially against the Harris campaign and the many decent members of the Biden-Harris Administration summoned to their respective hearings (to cite one hideous case, the Attorney General). In so doing, they preferred a calculated failure to losing the support of Big Money or the meager number of possible Republican votes. Such behavior could amount to betraying their constituency and their political platform, yet they preferred the risks involved. The wrong betting. They miserably lost. People who lose or betray are discredited by their loss and defeat. That is why I still believe the Democrats were discredited by their own doing. Perhaps I did not express my opinion adequately because of my unsatisfactory dominion of US English.
Thanks for reading my comment. Did you mean «brought back?» It is possible that I posted my comment while she was being «brought back.» At any rate, if I did not write it, then please accept my apologies.
That would be Neville Chamberlain. A politician, not an actor.
Let me thank you if, as Grammarly suggest, you intended to teach me US English. Being a legal immigrant (though naturalized a citizen 40 years ago) of age 81+, I am fully aware that I will die without mastering US English. No doubt, Grammarly’s suggestion is too harsh or arrogant a judgment coming from just some software application, no matter how well credited it might be. Nonetheless, with the utmost respect, allow me to suggest always asking for clarifications before impulsively jumping to conclusions (in any case of disagreement), if not for other reasons, for the sake of civility and respect may be very beneficial for all parties involved. Best regards.
Your comment, "Trump is using with Ukraine the same method used by Hitler to make Richard Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier surrender to his whims to the horror of Winston Churchill."confused a B-list actor of one generation (Richard) with an A-list politician of a previous generation (Neville) who was a protagonist of one of the iconic betrayals of the 20th Century. Next time you're tempted to take offense when caught in a factual error, try to remember that sarcasm doesn't come across too well in text, the affect of the medium is too flat. Rest easy on one thing, though: your English is fine.
Thanks for taking the time to read my comments and for correcting my errors. There is no reason to be concerned with my dementia yet: I still remember Richard in The Thurn Birds, Montecristo, Wallenberg, All the Winters That Have Been, and others, though not chronologically. I think I did not confuse my list of actors. Chamberlain was a coward and committed a tragic error. Perhaps his intentions were good, even if he wished to turn his face to avoid the fast approaching fumes of war. Yet, in the fearful eyes of many the war was already inevitable: Hitler was not a reasonable man. He was neither trustable nor could he care less for the blood bath he was about to climax on. His obsession with «MAKING GERMANY GREAT AGAIN» was too strong, and Schadenfreude had taken over him. Hitler wished to invade not another country (for which he had rearmed sufficiently) but also Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, and soon thereafter, France, Britain, and the Scandinavian countries. By the end of the last meeting with Hitler, Chamberlain knew it. At any rate, Chamberlain was out, Halifax was in, and Britain, France, and Europe were left alone waiting for the Valkyries who were already marching on. Halifax must have reproached Chamberlain for it. How could he not? Forgive me if I am exaggerating. Churchill had reasons to feel horribly embarrased, did he not?
Thank you for your response, and please pardon my irritability -- it's a habitual shortcoming. I, too, live in a country where I'm an immigrant and speak my second language most of the day. While I feel that I've mastered it for most uses most of the time, it still throws me for a loop once in a while, so I identify. I believe that it was Churchill who did the reproaching (although quite gently, all things considered) and Halifax who had reason to be embarrassed, but other than that, I think that your summary is spot on.
From reading the report on Hungary's descent into authoritarianism, from the former US ambassador to Hungary, it sounds like Trump & his minions have the same scenario pretty much down pat.: Destroy the free press, promote the oligarchs, fire all the loyal & experienced federal workers, intimidate members of of your own party in Congress, & make Americans fearful to speak out.
Actually, it's Steve Bannon who went to Hungary and mapped out the transition to autocracy there together with Orban. Then, they created the Danube Institute, an English-speaking think tank that worked together directly with the Heritage Foundation and shared what it learned to help it design Project 2025, an improved version of how the experiment in Hungary went.
Trump or his minions have studied Orban's techniques for dismantling Hungary's democracy very carefully. Orban has been more subtle than Putin--no killing--but his goal was the same: one-man rule. Orban destroyed the free press by putting financial pressure on independent newspapers and TV stations and forcing them to sell out to his cronies. He has cultivated a group of oligarchs by handing out properties and EC subsidies to them. Orban politicized the bureaucracy, the army and the judiciary, through intimidation rather than jailing people. Sound familiar?
It's worse than that. It's Putin's ideologue Alexander Dugin who came up with the "illiberal ideology" idea, and Steve Bannon and part of America's neofascists studied him, MET him in person and AGREED with him. Bannon and Trump advisor Sebastian Gorka then became Orban's advisors and helped him do what Trump had already managed to achieve during his first term in the US. Then, together, they mapped out a plan to try to install Putin's autocratic oligarchy inside Hungary. Next step: Orban created the Danube Institute, an English-speaking think tank that transferred what it learned to... the Heritage Foundation, and worked directly with it to write Project 2025, designed to do what Bannon, Gorda and Orban did in Hungary, only faster and better.
And as you know, no doubt, CPAC held one of its annual conferences in Budapest and showcased as their keynote speaker….Orban. The CPAC liked what they heard so much that they invited Orban to be the keynote speaker at another conference in the US. That fell through because of scheduling issues, but their admiration of his “illiberal democracy” shows their true values…profoundly anti-democratic.
In MAGA-thought, the "administrative state" is antidemocratic - whereas an elected monarch who bulldozes all restraints on his power and then rigs the electoral system in his favor is the Voice of the People.
Request to Eugene Daniels: Please make public the names of each day's press poolers. That is the only way the public will know if the pool reports are complete, accurate, and reliable. Maximum transparency from the Correspondents Association is imperative now.