Nothing new under the sun. This should frighten us to march on Saturday. Thanks for your observations on how like the Confederate (= Lost Cause) agenda is alive and well in Washington DC and across America. And permeate our society as a whole, though most would never admit it.
Trump Targets Democratic Districts by Halting Billions During Shutdown
By Tony Romm and Lazaro Gamio, NYT.
Following the government shutdown that began on October 1, 2025, the Trump administration withheld $2.1 billion in federal funding for Chicago infrastructure projects, including an extension of the CTA Red Line and the Red and Purple Line Modernization Project. The administration also canceled millions in Magnet Schools Assistance Program grants for Chicago Public Schools (CPS)
"The old South’s leadership was concentrated among interrelated planter aristocrats who controlled politics for generations. In modern America, political dynasties and billionaire networks serve the same role."
We are the "richest country in the world" and have "free speech" in name only. Millions of working Americans are deprived of their paychecks and can't buy food during this shutdown and millions more will lose their medical insurance, while the wealth is condensed to just several families. Now we are being teargassed for showing up? Yeah, land of the free and the brave....
I can't afford to pay a top lawyer but am lucky enough to have one as a good friend who has assured me he'll represent me for free. I am sure between the ACLU and others lawyers if others like me need good lawyers we'll find attornies more than willing to take on the fascist state.
All true Thom, but with a new wrinkle. Their goals will not only be reached by what they do to people on the streets, but what they can do to them with technology. The new oligarchs ARE the Tech-Bros, and they recently dined at the White House with Orange Hitler.
Miller is moving us from the protest column to the terrorist column on their spreadsheet via National Security Directive NSPM-7. We do not know what #6 was because they are usually SECRET. This is them saying they are coming for us.
The TRump Regime will be looking at what they deem to be anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-capitalism activity. Meidas Touch on 10/14 did a YouTube piece with Ken Klippenstein called Trump Secret Watch List for Americans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lURA__ng9dM
Is it Saturday yet? Let's give them 10 million names to sort through. See you in the streets.
Ultimate goal of the Tech-Bros---look-up The Technate of America, Cornell University.
The map goes from Canada and Greenland on down through Venezuela and Columbia. Sound familiar? Musk's grandfather, Joshua N. Haldeman (WIKI) was involved in the original Technocracy movement in the last century. Nazi/racist that emigrated from Canada to South Africa. Their baaaack!
Right. However, it turned out that most of the true geniuses do not fit the mold. We've been arguing nature vs nurture. Most of the "science" of eugenics was bullshit.
E.G. A 1985 study revealed that Einstein's brain had more glial cells relative to neurons in the left inferior parietal lobe. Glial cells support and nourish neurons, and the higher ratio may have indicated that his neurons had an increased metabolic need.
Denser neurons: A 1996 study reported that while Einstein's brain was slightly smaller than average, the neurons were more densely packed in a specific area of the cerebral cortex.
Unusual anatomy: Photographs of Einstein's brain showed some unique features, including an unusual pattern of folds in the prefrontal cortex and an enlarged parietal lobe, an area linked to visuospatial and mathematical abilities.
Wasn't able to speak until late. Flunked several subjects in school. He would have been exterminated by the Nazis.
I reported many times how my 'ol pappy had to take eugenics in college, where he learned that our people were mostly feeble minded, had criminal tendxencies and can not possibly benefit from a liberal education.
IMHO intellectually, the forces behind it are the Chicago School that Thom has identified as "neoiberals" post WW II; Milty Friedman, Hayek, etc. Add the Scalias/Posners, both who taught at UC School of Law. At Northwestern, Steve Caabrisi, former head and founder of the Federalist Society.
Most are dead. Posner is probably farblunget, but what do the modern exponents like Calabrisi, a Chicago kind of guy. have to say?
Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990. He was a Meese protege. Was in the Reagan administration.
I know that it looks like the tech bros are all over it, but as I keep sayin, Trump needs to be king of the hill. There shall be no other kings before him. He views everyone else as mere vassals, or in his grift mode, marks.
The Voughts et al are religious fenatics. Some would make women and non WASPS second class citizens and even consider exterminating gay and trans people.
What I can't understand is how homsexuals likew Bessent, Thiel, Sam Altman et al can't see it?
See that's the problem with psychopaths, they all think they are smarter than EVERYONE else. Those you listed are smarter than TRump. Bessent just got his buddy a fine Argentinian deal, Thiel got JD a heartbeat away, and Altman just wants his porn AI and the money it will generate. UCK!
My opinion Daniel is that for psychopaths, power and control are all that is important. If they have that then nothing else matters.
Consider Kiowa Army scouts chasing down Lakota Sioux
But it is more than that.. When you are at the top of the food chain, you make the rules and don't have to follow them
All critters. save humans, occupy a position in the food chain that comes with birth, and advances as the age (A blue heron will eat a freshly hatched crocodile, but an adult croc eats blue herons. Once at the top of the food chain the only thing that can dislodge them is something that is big and bad enough to kill and eat them.
Humans are both predator and prey, not only of other species but their own, and their climb up the food chain, depends on the power that they amass and their hold at the top is tenuous, never secure.
Trump is terrified of what happens when he is knocked off the top of the chain, and is using every tool, every instrument available to him to ensure that that will never happen (ergo, no election in 2028, not the kind we are accustomed to anyway)
Peter Thiel has used every tool available to him in our democracy, to claw his way up the food chain, and now at the top he needs to stay there.
The most potent tool in our society for safety, security and control is information., and Thiel, a queer, Musk a NAZI and Ellison a Jew, have control of all personal and governmental information of everyone in our society, and probably beyond.
And now they have fantastic tools, artificial intelligence, facial scanning, CCTV, Satellites which can capture the license plate on a car.
Except for Musk, whom I consider an inbred NAZI to the core, those at the top of the pyramid are way beyond the identity politics and belonging that us poor slobs labor under.
A personal example. I get called an Islamophobe and an antisemite, from the aspect of those leveling the charge.. guilty as charged.
I could care less about Jews, Muslims or Christians for that matter, except when they would oppress me. I am intolerant of intolerance.
I could care less about Israel, Palestine or even Ukraine for that matter, except to the extent that their fate and situation affects me. Call me selfish I don't care, but the human body has about 1.3 gals or 5 liters of blood, and I have only so much blood to bleed and so much shit to give to take on the worlds woes, harms, injustices. And who is the ultimate arbiter on whose cause is just and whose cause is unjust.
If there is one thing that all humankind shares it is pain, injustice, inhumanity, being wronged and wronging others.I can only do so much, and today I did what I can do to my two favorite charities, feral cat spay and neuter and my no kill animal shelter.
I help humans where I can and when I feel it is appropriate, but the trope about biting the hand that feeds you, is more appropriate to humans than animals, if an animal bites the hand that feeds it, is not on purpose, but when a human does so it is lack of gratitude.
How many have hired someone who really needs the job, only to have that same person stab them in the back.? How many have befriended someone who needed a friend only to have them turn on them. Example: Pakistan and the Taliban.
A favorite movie plot is allowing someone into your home that needs help, only to have that person rob and kill the host.
The point is that I can explain the likes of Peter Thiel, he is a narcissistic, self centered, sociopathic psychopath, that could very easily be a serial killer, and so long as it is hands on the control throttle and levers of power, he is safe and to stay safe, he has to maintain pressure, to keep the pot from boiling over and exploding.
Back in the 19th Century, when the English discovered that Egypt was a graveyard full of mummies, they would dig them up and ship them to England to be used as fuel in the new fangled steam engines
We, including run of the mill queers, are mere mummies to fuel the engines of "progress,
Mr. Solomon. I think homosexuals like those men CAN see it. But they feel protected by their wealth and position.
I am not gay, so I cannot explain how this can be. But I know it does happen. In my youth my favorite hobbies were fishing and hunting in Northern Michigan and Ontario. As I hauled in the increasingly diminishing stocks of various fish eg, Steelheads; and as I shot deer and ducks and geese, I knew I should stop doing it. But it took some time for the message to sink in. My fishing gear is gone, my guns are gone. It finally sank in.
Those fanatics from the Chicago school of economics are the same people who encouraged the CIA to destroy Chile in order to protect private copper companies. The same people who scrambled to Russia after 1991 to help the Russians convert their economy into an extremely corrosive kind of unrestrained, private capitalism; from which they now suffer, unless they are willing to bend their knee to the Chinese, which is probably the only thing saving them economically.
Alis there are contradictions that I cannot make sense of like Jewish NAZI's (Stephen Miller, et al), black NAZI's like Mark Robinson, black white nationalists like Clarence Thomas, and gay homophobles like Peter Thiel.
Misogynistic women, I understand, self hating, Stockholm Syndrome, brainwashed trad wives.
I also understand Trump humping Hispanics, as their culture is very conservative religious, and patriarchal
All mesmerized by what TRump can do for THEM. No morals-no roots-no problem!
Totally agree---a certain percentage of any group is going to have a conservative mind. That said, TRump ain't no conservative, just a psycho.
As for Miller, Robinson,Thomas and Thiel, what a bunch of creeps! Thiel especially, he truly wants to become a machine and live forever ruling over The Technate. Beyond psycho.
Yes, there was a 50's sci fi movie, about an island that had been a test bed for nukes, a ship wrecked about 7 people. There was this giant mutant crab that kept eating the people, and their consciousness became part of the crab as well as their voice.
When the last person was about to be eaten, he asked "why of his friend who had beguiled him, the response was "I am part of the creature now, and it is my survival that is at stake"
That could very well be the answer for most, but not for Peter Thiel, he is at the top of the food chain, and thus immune for social and legal affects. And I think of the Sturmabeitlung, the S.A. or brownshirts, Ernst Rohm and the leadership were gay. In fact when the S.S. burst in on him in that hotel room, he was in bed with another S.A. leader.
Then there is the notorious transphobe, Caitlin (Bruce) Jenner.
Is i loss of identity or choosing the winning side, people do feather their nests, just like birds.
We have to keep refighting this fight because we keep believing democracy and capitalism can peacefully coexist. Democracy is inherently communal, whereas capitalism is inherently hierarchic; it is people vs. money. Money is like the ball in football or basketball--whoever controls it controls the outcome. This is why a democracy can't survive long without taxing wealth heavily.
Let’s say tax the wealthy FAIRLY. All income over a specified amount should be eligible for tax. The wealthy would not be able to go tax free in most of their incoming wealth—if the rest of the population pays 3%, 5%, 10%, or whatever the consensus in law is on their income then the wealthy should also. No more loop holes and tax breaks that the whole population aren’t able to join in.
Also, corporations should be audited by IRS agents with a thorough understanding of how complicated interconnected corporate returns shelter wealth. No more not enough agents or they aren’t able to make heads or tails of the huge and complicated corporate returns for either publicly owned or private companies.
We need to restructure this whole tax system to make it fair for the entire population. Everyone above poverty needs to be contributing to this country’s running without using the old tired excuse of “job providers”. That’s no excuse at all, and all about the sad lie of trickle down economy.
Mr. Baltimore. We had this sort of tax structure under Ike. It has since failed us. I am not opposed to taxing the rich. I am opposed to a system which creates them in the first place.
Democracy and capitalism CAN coexist, but each needs the other to survive, but not without regulations to temper each. From this country's founding, democratic socialistic government programs (like subsidies, tax breaks, etc,) have always bailed out unrealistic capitalist schemes, and wildly-producing successful capitalist schemes have supported the treasury - until Reagan's "Trickle Down" philosophy knocked highest tax rate paid by the capitalists down to a third of what it was.
Mr. Hobbs. I have been saying this for a long time. I think what you mean to say is capitalism wedded to PRIVATE OWNERSHIP, PRIVATE ENTERPRISE? How would you characterize cooperative capitalist enterprises of the kind found in Basque territory?
By what multiple would Trump’s power be estimated basis … by 2026 “elections” vs. 2020 (Jan.6) elections?
The idea that today’s fascist assent will be defeated by means less than the civil war is a foolish denial of the lessons of history and woefully inept understanding of Trump.
Over and over again media commentators underestimate Trump’s bottom, depravity, and lascivious lust for money and power.
Yesterday he said heaven was not in his cards, but the presidential perks were.
Thank you, Thom! This is not only true - the speed with which it is taking hold is terrifying. I grew up in the South - Austin, Texas to be precise - and even then, from the end of WWII to the end of the Vietnam War, the ideas and practices you describe here were in full force - more subtly, of course, but oppressive enough that I finally left Texas and America for Mexico. When I returned, little had changed. The Women's Liberation movement was sweeping the nation, college campuses were crowded with students protesting the war, and shocking events like Kent State politicized many of us. I think this is what must happen now. We cannot cower in fear. We must mobilize and speak up, speak out, refuse to obey - whatever it takes to let Americans and the world know we are not done with the American experiment in democracy - we are only just beginning, and with each other and the help of Heaven, we will succeed.
Rock and a hard place? If one goes out to peacefully protest that can be construed as a MOB that needs military recourse. If one goes out and the protest becomes not so peaceful it's a TERRORIST RIOT and the military will be called again. Who's enforcing the Constitution's right to peaceful protest? No one that I can see. Ballots? Who's that guy with a mask and a Confederate flag on his back standing in front of the ballot box with an AK47. The Dems need to hold out as long as possible for maximum effect with this shut down, esp if Miller and Trump go berserk on Saturday the 18th and call out the military everywhere against the people and to shoot them - don't forget the F**K the children Trump rallying call of ICE.
When the Brown Shirts [aka ICE] shot that priest in the melon [head] with a pepper ball, I was scared for him as those balls at that short range striking the skull's pterion point are often lethal.
It reminded me of when Pastor Matthew Collins is killed in the 1953 film "The War of the Worlds" while attempting to approach the alien war machines with a Bible in hand.
One of the most haunting scenes. As the Martian war machines begin their assault, Pastor Collins walks toward them reciting Psalm 23 [which we did in K-12,] hoping to communicate peace through faith.
Tragically, the aliens respond with lethal force, vaporizing him with their heat ray—a moment that underscores the futility of human appeals to morality or religion in the face of overwhelming extraterrestrial power.
Or, in America's case, overwhelming rogue Nazi state power.
And to fight the power, we've got 2 cartoons, Droopy [Schumer] and Daffy {Jeffries.]
Well ... that was not to take physically of course. A kind of damned allegory somehow. But of course we are all free to do whatever we want as long as this fucking conma and scotus and corrupt gop do not interfere. You see now that there will be no other elections in this dictatorship? Because most of these corrupt congress will never be re elected. Ouch
I was musing about a graffito I had seen back in the the late 60s' in the Student Union bathroom at Berkeley. Gazing up from the urinal I saw where someone had written "Fuck Reagan!", he being governor at the time. Underneath somebody else had written "Fuck him? I don't even want to touch him!" Better days, alas.
I'm appalled & disgusted that the same ignorant, racist, fearful, hateful, selfish people (including both poor and extremely wealthy white people) continue to undermine American democracy because they can't bear racial equality.
We must either rise together and survive or re-live the ugly racial division that has always dragged America down.
I have been teaching my students about slave power and the coming civil war. The words, policies, and actions of the current GOP and economic oligarchs are eerily reminiscent of slave power and the Confederacy.
I wonder how The Right Honorable Oligarchs of America see our (assuming you are white, Protestant, and male) future country, after the vermin and blood poisoners are, by various means (heh heh), eradicated. Will the vision of that shining city on the hill at last be realized, the Millennium come at last?
Probably not. Utopia is, by definition, not attainable. There will be no Millennium, no worldly paradise. Golden Ages are rare, their duration brief. And they do not include the "lower" tiers of their societies. The brave new world that Project 2025 envisions most definitely is not going to include everybody left after the tear gas dissipates, no matter how white or how Christian they may be. Unless one is a trained monkey, it won't matter how noble the genealogy if one's bank account is lacking. The angriest can always find jobs as goons — look at ICE — because, until the infrastructure is entirely maintained by robots and AIs, there is always going to be the peasantry, and the peasantry is always going to chafe under the yoke.
Always the lie is king to dictators and fascists. The illusion of "truth" of the dear leader Krasnov runs deep to what facts are. How dear illusions are to these false leaders of corruption. The economic royalists run amok the power centers. They all bail when the scene gets rough and act surprised when it is time for accountability. There is no base for the ways of fear anymore and how surprised the ICE agents will be when the floor falls below their unholy feet.
Nothing new under the sun. This should frighten us to march on Saturday. Thanks for your observations on how like the Confederate (= Lost Cause) agenda is alive and well in Washington DC and across America. And permeate our society as a whole, though most would never admit it.
Trump Targets Democratic Districts by Halting Billions During Shutdown
By Tony Romm and Lazaro Gamio, NYT.
Following the government shutdown that began on October 1, 2025, the Trump administration withheld $2.1 billion in federal funding for Chicago infrastructure projects, including an extension of the CTA Red Line and the Red and Purple Line Modernization Project. The administration also canceled millions in Magnet Schools Assistance Program grants for Chicago Public Schools (CPS)
"The old South’s leadership was concentrated among interrelated planter aristocrats who controlled politics for generations. In modern America, political dynasties and billionaire networks serve the same role."
We are the "richest country in the world" and have "free speech" in name only. Millions of working Americans are deprived of their paychecks and can't buy food during this shutdown and millions more will lose their medical insurance, while the wealth is condensed to just several families. Now we are being teargassed for showing up? Yeah, land of the free and the brave....
I wrote about what happened in Chicago in my Substack today: Feds again show us who the real fascists are. "I am Anti-fascist" should be our rallying cry. https://halbrown.substack.com/p/feds-again-show-us-who-the-real-fascists
To perform civil disobedience, they'll need good lawyers.
I can't afford to pay a top lawyer but am lucky enough to have one as a good friend who has assured me he'll represent me for free. I am sure between the ACLU and others lawyers if others like me need good lawyers we'll find attornies more than willing to take on the fascist state.
Everything old is new again
All true Thom, but with a new wrinkle. Their goals will not only be reached by what they do to people on the streets, but what they can do to them with technology. The new oligarchs ARE the Tech-Bros, and they recently dined at the White House with Orange Hitler.
Miller is moving us from the protest column to the terrorist column on their spreadsheet via National Security Directive NSPM-7. We do not know what #6 was because they are usually SECRET. This is them saying they are coming for us.
The TRump Regime will be looking at what they deem to be anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-capitalism activity. Meidas Touch on 10/14 did a YouTube piece with Ken Klippenstein called Trump Secret Watch List for Americans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lURA__ng9dM
Is it Saturday yet? Let's give them 10 million names to sort through. See you in the streets.
Ultimate goal of the Tech-Bros---look-up The Technate of America, Cornell University.
The map goes from Canada and Greenland on down through Venezuela and Columbia. Sound familiar? Musk's grandfather, Joshua N. Haldeman (WIKI) was involved in the original Technocracy movement in the last century. Nazi/racist that emigrated from Canada to South Africa. Their baaaack!
Right. However, it turned out that most of the true geniuses do not fit the mold. We've been arguing nature vs nurture. Most of the "science" of eugenics was bullshit.
E.G. A 1985 study revealed that Einstein's brain had more glial cells relative to neurons in the left inferior parietal lobe. Glial cells support and nourish neurons, and the higher ratio may have indicated that his neurons had an increased metabolic need.
Denser neurons: A 1996 study reported that while Einstein's brain was slightly smaller than average, the neurons were more densely packed in a specific area of the cerebral cortex.
Unusual anatomy: Photographs of Einstein's brain showed some unique features, including an unusual pattern of folds in the prefrontal cortex and an enlarged parietal lobe, an area linked to visuospatial and mathematical abilities.
Wasn't able to speak until late. Flunked several subjects in school. He would have been exterminated by the Nazis.
I reported many times how my 'ol pappy had to take eugenics in college, where he learned that our people were mostly feeble minded, had criminal tendxencies and can not possibly benefit from a liberal education.
Guess who got the highest grades?
Also read that Einstein's "sylvian fissure" was shorter and less extensive. Could have meant more interconnections.
And speaking of criminal tendencies, Pathologist Thomas Harvey was a thief. He carried "Albert" around with him. Not nice.
I think they'll end up with the entire South American continent eventually.
IMHO intellectually, the forces behind it are the Chicago School that Thom has identified as "neoiberals" post WW II; Milty Friedman, Hayek, etc. Add the Scalias/Posners, both who taught at UC School of Law. At Northwestern, Steve Caabrisi, former head and founder of the Federalist Society.
Most are dead. Posner is probably farblunget, but what do the modern exponents like Calabrisi, a Chicago kind of guy. have to say?
Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990. He was a Meese protege. Was in the Reagan administration.
I know that it looks like the tech bros are all over it, but as I keep sayin, Trump needs to be king of the hill. There shall be no other kings before him. He views everyone else as mere vassals, or in his grift mode, marks.
The Voughts et al are religious fenatics. Some would make women and non WASPS second class citizens and even consider exterminating gay and trans people.
What I can't understand is how homsexuals likew Bessent, Thiel, Sam Altman et al can't see it?
See that's the problem with psychopaths, they all think they are smarter than EVERYONE else. Those you listed are smarter than TRump. Bessent just got his buddy a fine Argentinian deal, Thiel got JD a heartbeat away, and Altman just wants his porn AI and the money it will generate. UCK!
My opinion Daniel is that for psychopaths, power and control are all that is important. If they have that then nothing else matters.
Consider Kiowa Army scouts chasing down Lakota Sioux
But it is more than that.. When you are at the top of the food chain, you make the rules and don't have to follow them
All critters. save humans, occupy a position in the food chain that comes with birth, and advances as the age (A blue heron will eat a freshly hatched crocodile, but an adult croc eats blue herons. Once at the top of the food chain the only thing that can dislodge them is something that is big and bad enough to kill and eat them.
Humans are both predator and prey, not only of other species but their own, and their climb up the food chain, depends on the power that they amass and their hold at the top is tenuous, never secure.
Trump is terrified of what happens when he is knocked off the top of the chain, and is using every tool, every instrument available to him to ensure that that will never happen (ergo, no election in 2028, not the kind we are accustomed to anyway)
Peter Thiel has used every tool available to him in our democracy, to claw his way up the food chain, and now at the top he needs to stay there.
The most potent tool in our society for safety, security and control is information., and Thiel, a queer, Musk a NAZI and Ellison a Jew, have control of all personal and governmental information of everyone in our society, and probably beyond.
And now they have fantastic tools, artificial intelligence, facial scanning, CCTV, Satellites which can capture the license plate on a car.
Except for Musk, whom I consider an inbred NAZI to the core, those at the top of the pyramid are way beyond the identity politics and belonging that us poor slobs labor under.
A personal example. I get called an Islamophobe and an antisemite, from the aspect of those leveling the charge.. guilty as charged.
I could care less about Jews, Muslims or Christians for that matter, except when they would oppress me. I am intolerant of intolerance.
I could care less about Israel, Palestine or even Ukraine for that matter, except to the extent that their fate and situation affects me. Call me selfish I don't care, but the human body has about 1.3 gals or 5 liters of blood, and I have only so much blood to bleed and so much shit to give to take on the worlds woes, harms, injustices. And who is the ultimate arbiter on whose cause is just and whose cause is unjust.
If there is one thing that all humankind shares it is pain, injustice, inhumanity, being wronged and wronging others.I can only do so much, and today I did what I can do to my two favorite charities, feral cat spay and neuter and my no kill animal shelter.
I help humans where I can and when I feel it is appropriate, but the trope about biting the hand that feeds you, is more appropriate to humans than animals, if an animal bites the hand that feeds it, is not on purpose, but when a human does so it is lack of gratitude.
How many have hired someone who really needs the job, only to have that same person stab them in the back.? How many have befriended someone who needed a friend only to have them turn on them. Example: Pakistan and the Taliban.
A favorite movie plot is allowing someone into your home that needs help, only to have that person rob and kill the host.
The point is that I can explain the likes of Peter Thiel, he is a narcissistic, self centered, sociopathic psychopath, that could very easily be a serial killer, and so long as it is hands on the control throttle and levers of power, he is safe and to stay safe, he has to maintain pressure, to keep the pot from boiling over and exploding.
Back in the 19th Century, when the English discovered that Egypt was a graveyard full of mummies, they would dig them up and ship them to England to be used as fuel in the new fangled steam engines
We, including run of the mill queers, are mere mummies to fuel the engines of "progress,
And walking among us are sonderkommandos, who do the dirty work just to live another day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando
Indifference to others. Egomaniacs.
Here is something I think you will appreciate as it is appropos to our discussion. I just read it, on the way out of the door.
https://www.mind-war.com/p/delete-yourself-the-metaphysics-of
Mr. Farrar. Thanks for the reference to Stewartson. Interesting.
One of my favorite substacks. I actually learn from him
Mr. Solomon. I think homosexuals like those men CAN see it. But they feel protected by their wealth and position.
I am not gay, so I cannot explain how this can be. But I know it does happen. In my youth my favorite hobbies were fishing and hunting in Northern Michigan and Ontario. As I hauled in the increasingly diminishing stocks of various fish eg, Steelheads; and as I shot deer and ducks and geese, I knew I should stop doing it. But it took some time for the message to sink in. My fishing gear is gone, my guns are gone. It finally sank in.
Those fanatics from the Chicago school of economics are the same people who encouraged the CIA to destroy Chile in order to protect private copper companies. The same people who scrambled to Russia after 1991 to help the Russians convert their economy into an extremely corrosive kind of unrestrained, private capitalism; from which they now suffer, unless they are willing to bend their knee to the Chinese, which is probably the only thing saving them economically.
Consider? They won't stop there. Check Project 2025. It's the same list as the Nazis used.
Alis there are contradictions that I cannot make sense of like Jewish NAZI's (Stephen Miller, et al), black NAZI's like Mark Robinson, black white nationalists like Clarence Thomas, and gay homophobles like Peter Thiel.
Misogynistic women, I understand, self hating, Stockholm Syndrome, brainwashed trad wives.
I also understand Trump humping Hispanics, as their culture is very conservative religious, and patriarchal
All mesmerized by what TRump can do for THEM. No morals-no roots-no problem!
Totally agree---a certain percentage of any group is going to have a conservative mind. That said, TRump ain't no conservative, just a psycho.
As for Miller, Robinson,Thomas and Thiel, what a bunch of creeps! Thiel especially, he truly wants to become a machine and live forever ruling over The Technate. Beyond psycho.
Ans. psychological loss of identity.
Yes, there was a 50's sci fi movie, about an island that had been a test bed for nukes, a ship wrecked about 7 people. There was this giant mutant crab that kept eating the people, and their consciousness became part of the crab as well as their voice.
When the last person was about to be eaten, he asked "why of his friend who had beguiled him, the response was "I am part of the creature now, and it is my survival that is at stake"
That could very well be the answer for most, but not for Peter Thiel, he is at the top of the food chain, and thus immune for social and legal affects. And I think of the Sturmabeitlung, the S.A. or brownshirts, Ernst Rohm and the leadership were gay. In fact when the S.S. burst in on him in that hotel room, he was in bed with another S.A. leader.
Then there is the notorious transphobe, Caitlin (Bruce) Jenner.
Is i loss of identity or choosing the winning side, people do feather their nests, just like birds.
Oh, that was good, William! Still laughing about the crab.
We have to keep refighting this fight because we keep believing democracy and capitalism can peacefully coexist. Democracy is inherently communal, whereas capitalism is inherently hierarchic; it is people vs. money. Money is like the ball in football or basketball--whoever controls it controls the outcome. This is why a democracy can't survive long without taxing wealth heavily.
Let’s say tax the wealthy FAIRLY. All income over a specified amount should be eligible for tax. The wealthy would not be able to go tax free in most of their incoming wealth—if the rest of the population pays 3%, 5%, 10%, or whatever the consensus in law is on their income then the wealthy should also. No more loop holes and tax breaks that the whole population aren’t able to join in.
Also, corporations should be audited by IRS agents with a thorough understanding of how complicated interconnected corporate returns shelter wealth. No more not enough agents or they aren’t able to make heads or tails of the huge and complicated corporate returns for either publicly owned or private companies.
We need to restructure this whole tax system to make it fair for the entire population. Everyone above poverty needs to be contributing to this country’s running without using the old tired excuse of “job providers”. That’s no excuse at all, and all about the sad lie of trickle down economy.
Yes, G.P., all of these things should have been done, but that ship has sailed - until we get another chance - if ever.
Mr. Baltimore. We had this sort of tax structure under Ike. It has since failed us. I am not opposed to taxing the rich. I am opposed to a system which creates them in the first place.
Democracy and capitalism CAN coexist, but each needs the other to survive, but not without regulations to temper each. From this country's founding, democratic socialistic government programs (like subsidies, tax breaks, etc,) have always bailed out unrealistic capitalist schemes, and wildly-producing successful capitalist schemes have supported the treasury - until Reagan's "Trickle Down" philosophy knocked highest tax rate paid by the capitalists down to a third of what it was.
Mr. Hobbs. I have been saying this for a long time. I think what you mean to say is capitalism wedded to PRIVATE OWNERSHIP, PRIVATE ENTERPRISE? How would you characterize cooperative capitalist enterprises of the kind found in Basque territory?
Or the Kibbutzim of Israel?
By what multiple would Trump’s power be estimated basis … by 2026 “elections” vs. 2020 (Jan.6) elections?
The idea that today’s fascist assent will be defeated by means less than the civil war is a foolish denial of the lessons of history and woefully inept understanding of Trump.
Over and over again media commentators underestimate Trump’s bottom, depravity, and lascivious lust for money and power.
Yesterday he said heaven was not in his cards, but the presidential perks were.
Here is your card to 1984!
Thank you, Thom! This is not only true - the speed with which it is taking hold is terrifying. I grew up in the South - Austin, Texas to be precise - and even then, from the end of WWII to the end of the Vietnam War, the ideas and practices you describe here were in full force - more subtly, of course, but oppressive enough that I finally left Texas and America for Mexico. When I returned, little had changed. The Women's Liberation movement was sweeping the nation, college campuses were crowded with students protesting the war, and shocking events like Kent State politicized many of us. I think this is what must happen now. We cannot cower in fear. We must mobilize and speak up, speak out, refuse to obey - whatever it takes to let Americans and the world know we are not done with the American experiment in democracy - we are only just beginning, and with each other and the help of Heaven, we will succeed.
Rock and a hard place? If one goes out to peacefully protest that can be construed as a MOB that needs military recourse. If one goes out and the protest becomes not so peaceful it's a TERRORIST RIOT and the military will be called again. Who's enforcing the Constitution's right to peaceful protest? No one that I can see. Ballots? Who's that guy with a mask and a Confederate flag on his back standing in front of the ballot box with an AK47. The Dems need to hold out as long as possible for maximum effect with this shut down, esp if Miller and Trump go berserk on Saturday the 18th and call out the military everywhere against the people and to shoot them - don't forget the F**K the children Trump rallying call of ICE.
A++
Thank you, Mr. Hartmann.
When the Brown Shirts [aka ICE] shot that priest in the melon [head] with a pepper ball, I was scared for him as those balls at that short range striking the skull's pterion point are often lethal.
It reminded me of when Pastor Matthew Collins is killed in the 1953 film "The War of the Worlds" while attempting to approach the alien war machines with a Bible in hand.
One of the most haunting scenes. As the Martian war machines begin their assault, Pastor Collins walks toward them reciting Psalm 23 [which we did in K-12,] hoping to communicate peace through faith.
Tragically, the aliens respond with lethal force, vaporizing him with their heat ray—a moment that underscores the futility of human appeals to morality or religion in the face of overwhelming extraterrestrial power.
Or, in America's case, overwhelming rogue Nazi state power.
And to fight the power, we've got 2 cartoons, Droopy [Schumer] and Daffy {Jeffries.]
One slight revision: The Title of this Article should be:
Are the Streets of Chicago Showing Us the Future of America
Buy local, withhold money from corporations, show up in the streets be kind to everyone.
Fuck von trump!
Never without a condom.
Well ... that was not to take physically of course. A kind of damned allegory somehow. But of course we are all free to do whatever we want as long as this fucking conma and scotus and corrupt gop do not interfere. You see now that there will be no other elections in this dictatorship? Because most of these corrupt congress will never be re elected. Ouch
I was musing about a graffito I had seen back in the the late 60s' in the Student Union bathroom at Berkeley. Gazing up from the urinal I saw where someone had written "Fuck Reagan!", he being governor at the time. Underneath somebody else had written "Fuck him? I don't even want to touch him!" Better days, alas.
I'm appalled & disgusted that the same ignorant, racist, fearful, hateful, selfish people (including both poor and extremely wealthy white people) continue to undermine American democracy because they can't bear racial equality.
We must either rise together and survive or re-live the ugly racial division that has always dragged America down.
Thom,
I have been teaching my students about slave power and the coming civil war. The words, policies, and actions of the current GOP and economic oligarchs are eerily reminiscent of slave power and the Confederacy.
Keep writing and reporting, and watch your six.
Steve Dundas
I wonder how The Right Honorable Oligarchs of America see our (assuming you are white, Protestant, and male) future country, after the vermin and blood poisoners are, by various means (heh heh), eradicated. Will the vision of that shining city on the hill at last be realized, the Millennium come at last?
Probably not. Utopia is, by definition, not attainable. There will be no Millennium, no worldly paradise. Golden Ages are rare, their duration brief. And they do not include the "lower" tiers of their societies. The brave new world that Project 2025 envisions most definitely is not going to include everybody left after the tear gas dissipates, no matter how white or how Christian they may be. Unless one is a trained monkey, it won't matter how noble the genealogy if one's bank account is lacking. The angriest can always find jobs as goons — look at ICE — because, until the infrastructure is entirely maintained by robots and AIs, there is always going to be the peasantry, and the peasantry is always going to chafe under the yoke.
After the peasants are no longer necessary...
Always the lie is king to dictators and fascists. The illusion of "truth" of the dear leader Krasnov runs deep to what facts are. How dear illusions are to these false leaders of corruption. The economic royalists run amok the power centers. They all bail when the scene gets rough and act surprised when it is time for accountability. There is no base for the ways of fear anymore and how surprised the ICE agents will be when the floor falls below their unholy feet.