...and instead make the transition from a white-controlled economic and political system to a truly multiracial, multi-religious pluralistic democracy with a stable middle class?
The first thing I recommend is that Kamala starts running against JD Vance and not Trump! I know it is late in the game but Kamala and Tim need to be flexible. It is very apparent that Trump is losing his mind and that the money people want Vance to be dictator for the next 30 years! The commercials that Kamala runs needs to mention a lot of the instances of Trump's mental health failings and that Vance is part of the New World order deep state globalist that gave us "voodoo economics"! Free trade, deficit spending, immigration, tax breaks for the wealthy, drugs, crime, homelessness, obstruction by the GOP, capitalist healthcare, unfunded wars....
The GOP keeps comparing Kamala to Joe Biden, so it's only fair that Kamala compares JD Vance to Donald Trump!
The cult likes Donald Trump for some weird reason? They don't like JD Vance! Trump will be removed with the 25th amendment immediately after the election, if he makes too big of a spectacle of himself. Or gets too demanding from the rich.
Thom, it makes sense that the rich create most of the civil wars. I always thought it was the poor people revolting thanks to Marie Antoinette "let them eat cake"!
I hope they do indeed invoke the 25th A against him. He'll go down kicking and screaming, and his base may express their displeasure in an interesting manner, but the keys to the nuclear arsenal will be taken away from him.
He'll still be running the show, of course, just as he ran the 119th Congress from the golf course, but he won't have the keys.
We've spent so much time diagnosing what radicalizes young jihadists in the Middle East, we've overlooked that the same factors, which you identify here, have radicalized nearly half the U.S. We aren't exceptional, we have the same flaws as everyone else, with the same direct line between economic inequality and civil strife. With Project 2025, the right has already started our next civil war; the question is how far we'll let it go before we fight back.
Good point Sabrina. There are two differences between Islamic Jihadists and Christian Jihadists, one is the name of their god, the other is that Islamic Jihadists will die for their cause, and Christian Jihadists are cowards.
The electorate is becoming more "tolerant" as we speak. Rassenreinheit may exist in a few isolated locations in this country, but they are few and far between. All of the white supremacist groups have been infiltrated by federal agencies.
IMHO all the polls are missing a pending registration deluge. Gen Z trends heavily Democratic and can swamp the election. Meanwhile Harris actually leads in senior voters, which was Trump's biggest demographic. Trump underperformed in the primaries, especially In the blue wall states. Recent data shows that Republican defections are more than 10%. New voting gives Democrats a lead. E.G. Pennsylvania. https://targetearly.targetsmart.com/g2024?state=PA&view_type=state
What extraordinary times we're living in, there's so many outside entities bombarding the American people this election. The corporate media is No help in getting the Facts and the Truth out, instead,we get only trump coverage 24/7 since 2017 ! This has been a long hard Kick to Democracy. I'm of the mind that the Civil War that's coming, won't succeed, because, I don't think people want to risk jail, injury or death. True there's the White Supremacy grounds out their, but I feel State and local police with SWAT assistant, could squash any real Threat. Let's hope trump loses and the country can start healing with a Harris Walz/ticket, and a Majority in both the House and Senate. Excellent article this morning ☕ Thom and will reStack ASAP 💯👍🇺🇸💙🌊🌊🌊🌊
There will be violence if Trump steals the election (he can't win, he can only steal) he has said so and has empowered his cult. If by chance his attempt to steal is thwarted, his cult will react violently, they have threatened to so so, but this time it will not be an attack on the Capitol in DC but in the streets, directed against, to start, local officials.
As regards State and Local police and SWATteams, evidently you are unfamiliar with the Constittional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, Oath Keepers and their alliance with Proud Boys and Bugaloo Boyz, not to mention the hundreds of right wing Militias, like the Michigan Militia.
Also the cops are conservative, a liberal or progressive cop is as rare as hens teeth, and even black cops are blue first.
Five black Memphis police officers involved in the deadly beating of Tyre Nichols have been indicted by a federal grand jury,
It boils over into the streets, by that I don't mean riots, but taking revenge on neighbors who they have identified as liberals., or who have the 'wrong' bumper stickers, or signs on the lawn, or maybe who aren't flying an American Flag, which as we know is the "true test of a true patriot".
A general comment about your fondness for referring to the “morbidly rich”: they’re flourishing, even as they poison the rest of us. They should be labeled the “toxic rich.”
I agree with your piece. Two things that I think are getting overlooked, that should not be, are:
1. Trump is decompensating mentally rapidly. His narcissism has become quasi-delusional and pathetic. His reason for staying in the race is NOT the reason he got into Presidential politics in 2014. Right now, he wants, more than anything in the world, to stay out of jail. Its that simple.
2. If there is anything like a civil war, it will be between those that value people more than money, and those that value money more than people. Fossil fuels, industrialization, and technologization have created a capitalist economic system that has control of the world's institutions currently, and considers the death of millions (or billions, depending on the whether the biosphere survives) collateral damage. Profit is God, and the capitalist oligarchs have declared war on humanity, at the altar of profit. The creation of corporations, in which investors owned the means of production, freed economic entities to disregard the wellbeing of humans (and the biosphere that sustains human life),
and make profit God, and greed the driving force of human life.
Is the civil war already with us? The weapons of war are that of vicious lies vs truth. The soldiers are the gullible vs reality based. Victory must be ours.
A civil war is two organized factions fighting each other. Example: The English Civil war of Parliamentarians vs Royalists (Roundheads vs Cavaliers, Cromwell vs King Charles I, the American Civil War, Union vs Confederacy, North vs South
What is in the offing is a Mixed War. We don't hear the term because it is not well known and unthinkable. It is the people against each other or a nation fights against private individuals, such as the Barbary pirates.
The American revolution was a mixed war. Mixed wars involve a combination of state and non-state actors, and can be more difficult to define and regulate than public wars. Wars between nations are public wars.
This country has been embroiled in a mixed war since the Nebraska Missouri Compromise which led to the succession procession and the firing on Ft Sumter.
The civil war settled nothing, it just put the question in hibernation, just as the Treaty of Versaille settled nothing only the hibernation period was a lot shorter.
As communication technology has advanced, the interregnum between events has diminished.
It is dire to say this, and will be met with objections, but there is no solution to the situation that confronts us and democracy today,
Problems have solutions. There is no solution, to a problem caused by biological imperative, other than an end to the anthropocene, which by all reckoning is on the near horizon.
The problems of racism, classism, inequality, misogyny, homophobia can all be sourced to a biological imperative of domination, control. Control and subordination of the female and offspring at bottom of the pyramid, to the domination and control of the group, then the domination and control of the tribe, then the clan, then the nation, then the world.
And it all starts with the biological need for procreation.. We see it in four legged animals, but deny it in two legged animals.
Stallions, bulls, wolves even solitary animals like cats, fight for mating rights, but males of pack and herd animals (social creatures like humans) fight, to the death for domination of the herd or pack.
We really are no different, though we like to tell ourselves we are superior.
This country has been at war with ourselves since 1820, it foments, gathers steam,pressure is raised until it explodes like it did in 1860, pressure was released at the cost of over 600,000 lives, but the heat on the pressure cooker was still there, only turned down, it rose again until 1917, WWI released the pressure, rose again and Dec 7, 1941 released the pressure, Korea 1950 also released pressure Vietnam would have been a pressure release, had it not been for the development of instant news and battlefield reports. 9/11 had the potential, but was mismanaged by Dubya, because he did not have full control over the media, though he did try by forbidding the coverage of funerals and caskets being unloaded from C-141's at Dover AFB, DE.
The info landscape today is anarchy, everyone with a cell phone is a news reporter, a photographer, and instant communication has resulted in tribal factions. Factions who have gravitated to established organized factions. Namely the Republican and Democratic Party.
The war is between the two factions which constitute the members or alliances within those two parties.
And shots have already been fired. The first shot fired was by Kyle Rittenhouse. I am not ignoring the blue on black violence, or the Stonewall Rios, or Ruby Ridge, or WACO, or the Bundy Standoff's.
Kyle fired the first civilian shot,and got away with it, unpunished and has been made a hero and lionized.
Whether Trump wins or loses, there will be violence. If he wins, he will seek revenge and his cult will do the same on their enemy.. the libs and their coalition. If He loses his cult and he will not accept the results and will take to the streets and do a better job than last time, lessons learned and Jan 6 was a trial run for them.
My fear is that the election interference laws and schemes put in place the last 4 years, will result in Congress deciding with a Contingent Election., each state has one vote and their are more red states than blue.
Our saving grace is that the polls haven't been honest or accurate, and there is a blue tsunami, in which we not only trounce Trump, but also take back control of Congress.
There is always hope in massive blue voting turnout.
There are significant number of Republicans voting for Harris, but I fear that down ticket they will vote Republican.
The closest thing to national hostilities occurred in 1968. Riots from coast to coast, border to border. The George Floyd riots paled by comparison, but many of them were caused by white supremacists manipulating rage.
Trump has called for revenge many times since Jan 6, and so far nobody answered the call. When he made the call at his arraignment here in Baghdad By the Sea, the riot capitol of America, not even the Proud Boys showed up. Same for NYC and Hotlanta.
Thom et al: I read the Nick Hanauer article from 2020 that you referenced (last week?). What it points out is what I have known, but only anecdotally, not quotably. As you repeat here, over the last 45-50 years, some $50 Trillion has been shifted from the bottom 90% (mainly the middle classes, I would posit) to the top 1%. I'm sure if you drilled down, you'd find that the vast majority of that went to the top tenth of one percent, right?
This didn't happen by the nefarious evil of corporations., but by deliberate policy of the United States government. The amount of money lost in annual wages to people like me in the middle is staggering. In the aggregate, it seems to me, a huge chunk of the aggrieved 90% no longer believe either party, no matter what they are told, because policy after policy has continued and accelerated that steady flow. The message is clear, and depressing. AND, it explains Trumpism pretty damned well.
I keep looking for the ways to explain it all. but first I need to understand it all. Sometimes pieces come in rushes, as with the article I'm quoting followed by the article I'm writing IN. Once you have lost the trust of people, good luck getting it back, but STILL, you have to TRY. Reading out loud to unhappy people from the Hanauer article the wages lost would telegraph TRUE comprehension of the scope of the problem, and if tied to a commitment to begin the process of disconnecting from what created the problem, and beginning the process of FIXING it, you might gain some grudging respect, if only "Well, let's wait and see".
Because ANOCRACY cannot be allowed to stand as a permanent definition for America. It MUST be turned around. And it is NOT just a Republican phenomenon. Worse with them, absolutely, but one has to be in another cult to believe that Democrats are above all that. If they were, the problem would have been named long ago, BY THEM, and pushed back against MUCH harder.
By the way, do you concur, Thom: No mention made at all in Hanauer's article about the speed of money, nor the flagrant offshoring of taxable shifted monies. OUT of tax-paying pockets, into pockets that have no intention of paying taxes at all, which exacerbates the criminally insane extent of the policies that brought us here, made ON PURPOSE, by design, to enrich the few and force a worse life on the many. THAT'S one of the reasons for the loss of revenues to do anything at all.
I don't share your confidence that the Harris/Walz team gets all this, Thom. They are INFINITELY better than Trump, no question, and they have a lot of my money already. But I haven't heard or seen the signals that tell me what I want to hear/see. I keep hoping, but I haven't heard anything close to this yet.
Lastly, I don't hear anyone in these notes here expressing any nervousness about a Christian Nationalist being elected into the White House with a Project 2025 gameplan to concern ourselves with.
My goodness - the comments on her Ted talk video from right wing idiots are more alarming/depressing than the content of the video itself. The most challenging aspect of this problem is that there is a huge chunk of the population that is unwilling to engage in any fact-based conversation and who have gotten themselves worked up into a righteous lather believing that their fellow citizens, who are equally harmed by the corporatocracy, are the true enemy and the source of all of their perceived problems. We all know that it is no accident that they believe this, and we all know who is responsible, but piercing this shield of animosity may prove to be impossible. Nonetheless, giving up is not an option, so we must vote, vote, vote and advocate incessantly for reason and rationality to win.
Again, why not use the Libertarian slogans in the final days of campaign: NO GOVERNMENT! NO TAXES! NO SERVICES! Think about it. VOTE BLUE (before it's too late)
Youth. Passion. Where are those elements TODAY? It's just hard to imagine any kind of shooting war happening without them.
Young people and their constant connectivity paints a very different picture in America today. Even with gangs being really violent now, they are a lot less loyal than they were in the past.
Throw in all the distractions on the internet such as porn, gaming, selfies, and other preening---I just don't see these younger folks killing one another on a large scale. In the meantime, they are being ROBBED and a bunch of them know it. I hope some of the aware ones are on the ballot this year.
This takes us right back to domestic terrorism and failed insurrections being a much more likely result.
in the 50s in West Orange, NJ, our new next door neighbor was a milkman, a good Catholic family with 5 girls. Able to purchase on his single income and purchased a new 52 very stripped down Ford to boot. Next door, Dad was a teacher, Mom worked part time as our church Secretary, having purchased our home in '37 for $5,000 and paid off by '47. Sister and I went to college fully parent financed. We managed well. Parents retired in '63 to a new home in Pompano Beach, Fla. around 50 yards walk to the ocean. Jersey house went for around $15k and Florida house purchased for $17k. Today two income families struggle. Wife and I purchased a Victorian in San Francisco in '71, child born in 72. We both worked as teachers, really one income sufficed so second was mostly extra, Two cars, Symphony, Ballet, Opera, Europe trips, annual trips to family in Florida and Yonkers, NY, also private school for our only child. Just to underscore part of your message today.
Not sure enough people would participate in an elite group against other group factions that are not in uniform. I think or hope the mix is so dispersed that knowing who is who would be a major problem except for those without any morals and killing is their true desire. Killing those not part of the conflict would turn the country against that group. Moreover, America's real army would overwhelm any made up militia's. The conflict would end quickly as times are not like in the Civil War where horses and guns generally available were if equal quality. Tanks and superior arms make the outcome not debatable. The culture of America itself makes the outcome to overcome society most unlikely.
The first thing I recommend is that Kamala starts running against JD Vance and not Trump! I know it is late in the game but Kamala and Tim need to be flexible. It is very apparent that Trump is losing his mind and that the money people want Vance to be dictator for the next 30 years! The commercials that Kamala runs needs to mention a lot of the instances of Trump's mental health failings and that Vance is part of the New World order deep state globalist that gave us "voodoo economics"! Free trade, deficit spending, immigration, tax breaks for the wealthy, drugs, crime, homelessness, obstruction by the GOP, capitalist healthcare, unfunded wars....
The GOP keeps comparing Kamala to Joe Biden, so it's only fair that Kamala compares JD Vance to Donald Trump!
The cult likes Donald Trump for some weird reason? They don't like JD Vance! Trump will be removed with the 25th amendment immediately after the election, if he makes too big of a spectacle of himself. Or gets too demanding from the rich.
Thom, it makes sense that the rich create most of the civil wars. I always thought it was the poor people revolting thanks to Marie Antoinette "let them eat cake"!
I agree Bob, Kamala needs to run against Vance, but in a smart way, it is up to the PACS though, to get down and dirty.
I hope they do indeed invoke the 25th A against him. He'll go down kicking and screaming, and his base may express their displeasure in an interesting manner, but the keys to the nuclear arsenal will be taken away from him.
He'll still be running the show, of course, just as he ran the 119th Congress from the golf course, but he won't have the keys.
We've spent so much time diagnosing what radicalizes young jihadists in the Middle East, we've overlooked that the same factors, which you identify here, have radicalized nearly half the U.S. We aren't exceptional, we have the same flaws as everyone else, with the same direct line between economic inequality and civil strife. With Project 2025, the right has already started our next civil war; the question is how far we'll let it go before we fight back.
Good point Sabrina. There are two differences between Islamic Jihadists and Christian Jihadists, one is the name of their god, the other is that Islamic Jihadists will die for their cause, and Christian Jihadists are cowards.
Backwards Christian soldiers.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8-I2nK0qRQ
Ans. Yes.
The electorate is becoming more "tolerant" as we speak. Rassenreinheit may exist in a few isolated locations in this country, but they are few and far between. All of the white supremacist groups have been infiltrated by federal agencies.
We can create a blue tsunami. Just encourage more people to register and vote. Still registering Democrats in selected states. https://www.mobilize.us/ft6/?q=phone%20banks&tag_ids=20038
IMHO all the polls are missing a pending registration deluge. Gen Z trends heavily Democratic and can swamp the election. Meanwhile Harris actually leads in senior voters, which was Trump's biggest demographic. Trump underperformed in the primaries, especially In the blue wall states. Recent data shows that Republican defections are more than 10%. New voting gives Democrats a lead. E.G. Pennsylvania. https://targetearly.targetsmart.com/g2024?state=PA&view_type=state
More. https://www.mobilize.us/
What extraordinary times we're living in, there's so many outside entities bombarding the American people this election. The corporate media is No help in getting the Facts and the Truth out, instead,we get only trump coverage 24/7 since 2017 ! This has been a long hard Kick to Democracy. I'm of the mind that the Civil War that's coming, won't succeed, because, I don't think people want to risk jail, injury or death. True there's the White Supremacy grounds out their, but I feel State and local police with SWAT assistant, could squash any real Threat. Let's hope trump loses and the country can start healing with a Harris Walz/ticket, and a Majority in both the House and Senate. Excellent article this morning ☕ Thom and will reStack ASAP 💯👍🇺🇸💙🌊🌊🌊🌊
# See you soon on FStv 👈!
There will be violence if Trump steals the election (he can't win, he can only steal) he has said so and has empowered his cult. If by chance his attempt to steal is thwarted, his cult will react violently, they have threatened to so so, but this time it will not be an attack on the Capitol in DC but in the streets, directed against, to start, local officials.
As regards State and Local police and SWATteams, evidently you are unfamiliar with the Constittional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, Oath Keepers and their alliance with Proud Boys and Bugaloo Boyz, not to mention the hundreds of right wing Militias, like the Michigan Militia.
Also the cops are conservative, a liberal or progressive cop is as rare as hens teeth, and even black cops are blue first.
Five black Memphis police officers involved in the deadly beating of Tyre Nichols have been indicted by a federal grand jury,
Not streets but predictably state capitals.
It boils over into the streets, by that I don't mean riots, but taking revenge on neighbors who they have identified as liberals., or who have the 'wrong' bumper stickers, or signs on the lawn, or maybe who aren't flying an American Flag, which as we know is the "true test of a true patriot".
A general comment about your fondness for referring to the “morbidly rich”: they’re flourishing, even as they poison the rest of us. They should be labeled the “toxic rich.”
Outstanding analysis, Thom. Thank you as always!
Yes, by cutting off the Head of the Snake.
Speaking of reptiles.....
https://www.tiktok.com/@debbieforflorida/video/7426243292779597099
Great ad Daniel.
Totally agree !!
I agree with your piece. Two things that I think are getting overlooked, that should not be, are:
1. Trump is decompensating mentally rapidly. His narcissism has become quasi-delusional and pathetic. His reason for staying in the race is NOT the reason he got into Presidential politics in 2014. Right now, he wants, more than anything in the world, to stay out of jail. Its that simple.
2. If there is anything like a civil war, it will be between those that value people more than money, and those that value money more than people. Fossil fuels, industrialization, and technologization have created a capitalist economic system that has control of the world's institutions currently, and considers the death of millions (or billions, depending on the whether the biosphere survives) collateral damage. Profit is God, and the capitalist oligarchs have declared war on humanity, at the altar of profit. The creation of corporations, in which investors owned the means of production, freed economic entities to disregard the wellbeing of humans (and the biosphere that sustains human life),
and make profit God, and greed the driving force of human life.
Is the civil war already with us? The weapons of war are that of vicious lies vs truth. The soldiers are the gullible vs reality based. Victory must be ours.
A civil war is two organized factions fighting each other. Example: The English Civil war of Parliamentarians vs Royalists (Roundheads vs Cavaliers, Cromwell vs King Charles I, the American Civil War, Union vs Confederacy, North vs South
What is in the offing is a Mixed War. We don't hear the term because it is not well known and unthinkable. It is the people against each other or a nation fights against private individuals, such as the Barbary pirates.
The American revolution was a mixed war. Mixed wars involve a combination of state and non-state actors, and can be more difficult to define and regulate than public wars. Wars between nations are public wars.
This country has been embroiled in a mixed war since the Nebraska Missouri Compromise which led to the succession procession and the firing on Ft Sumter.
The civil war settled nothing, it just put the question in hibernation, just as the Treaty of Versaille settled nothing only the hibernation period was a lot shorter.
As communication technology has advanced, the interregnum between events has diminished.
It is dire to say this, and will be met with objections, but there is no solution to the situation that confronts us and democracy today,
Problems have solutions. There is no solution, to a problem caused by biological imperative, other than an end to the anthropocene, which by all reckoning is on the near horizon.
The problems of racism, classism, inequality, misogyny, homophobia can all be sourced to a biological imperative of domination, control. Control and subordination of the female and offspring at bottom of the pyramid, to the domination and control of the group, then the domination and control of the tribe, then the clan, then the nation, then the world.
And it all starts with the biological need for procreation.. We see it in four legged animals, but deny it in two legged animals.
Stallions, bulls, wolves even solitary animals like cats, fight for mating rights, but males of pack and herd animals (social creatures like humans) fight, to the death for domination of the herd or pack.
We really are no different, though we like to tell ourselves we are superior.
This country has been at war with ourselves since 1820, it foments, gathers steam,pressure is raised until it explodes like it did in 1860, pressure was released at the cost of over 600,000 lives, but the heat on the pressure cooker was still there, only turned down, it rose again until 1917, WWI released the pressure, rose again and Dec 7, 1941 released the pressure, Korea 1950 also released pressure Vietnam would have been a pressure release, had it not been for the development of instant news and battlefield reports. 9/11 had the potential, but was mismanaged by Dubya, because he did not have full control over the media, though he did try by forbidding the coverage of funerals and caskets being unloaded from C-141's at Dover AFB, DE.
The info landscape today is anarchy, everyone with a cell phone is a news reporter, a photographer, and instant communication has resulted in tribal factions. Factions who have gravitated to established organized factions. Namely the Republican and Democratic Party.
The war is between the two factions which constitute the members or alliances within those two parties.
And shots have already been fired. The first shot fired was by Kyle Rittenhouse. I am not ignoring the blue on black violence, or the Stonewall Rios, or Ruby Ridge, or WACO, or the Bundy Standoff's.
Kyle fired the first civilian shot,and got away with it, unpunished and has been made a hero and lionized.
Whether Trump wins or loses, there will be violence. If he wins, he will seek revenge and his cult will do the same on their enemy.. the libs and their coalition. If He loses his cult and he will not accept the results and will take to the streets and do a better job than last time, lessons learned and Jan 6 was a trial run for them.
My fear is that the election interference laws and schemes put in place the last 4 years, will result in Congress deciding with a Contingent Election., each state has one vote and their are more red states than blue.
Our saving grace is that the polls haven't been honest or accurate, and there is a blue tsunami, in which we not only trounce Trump, but also take back control of Congress.
There is always hope in massive blue voting turnout.
There are significant number of Republicans voting for Harris, but I fear that down ticket they will vote Republican.
The closest thing to national hostilities occurred in 1968. Riots from coast to coast, border to border. The George Floyd riots paled by comparison, but many of them were caused by white supremacists manipulating rage.
Trump has called for revenge many times since Jan 6, and so far nobody answered the call. When he made the call at his arraignment here in Baghdad By the Sea, the riot capitol of America, not even the Proud Boys showed up. Same for NYC and Hotlanta.
Thom et al: I read the Nick Hanauer article from 2020 that you referenced (last week?). What it points out is what I have known, but only anecdotally, not quotably. As you repeat here, over the last 45-50 years, some $50 Trillion has been shifted from the bottom 90% (mainly the middle classes, I would posit) to the top 1%. I'm sure if you drilled down, you'd find that the vast majority of that went to the top tenth of one percent, right?
This didn't happen by the nefarious evil of corporations., but by deliberate policy of the United States government. The amount of money lost in annual wages to people like me in the middle is staggering. In the aggregate, it seems to me, a huge chunk of the aggrieved 90% no longer believe either party, no matter what they are told, because policy after policy has continued and accelerated that steady flow. The message is clear, and depressing. AND, it explains Trumpism pretty damned well.
I keep looking for the ways to explain it all. but first I need to understand it all. Sometimes pieces come in rushes, as with the article I'm quoting followed by the article I'm writing IN. Once you have lost the trust of people, good luck getting it back, but STILL, you have to TRY. Reading out loud to unhappy people from the Hanauer article the wages lost would telegraph TRUE comprehension of the scope of the problem, and if tied to a commitment to begin the process of disconnecting from what created the problem, and beginning the process of FIXING it, you might gain some grudging respect, if only "Well, let's wait and see".
Because ANOCRACY cannot be allowed to stand as a permanent definition for America. It MUST be turned around. And it is NOT just a Republican phenomenon. Worse with them, absolutely, but one has to be in another cult to believe that Democrats are above all that. If they were, the problem would have been named long ago, BY THEM, and pushed back against MUCH harder.
By the way, do you concur, Thom: No mention made at all in Hanauer's article about the speed of money, nor the flagrant offshoring of taxable shifted monies. OUT of tax-paying pockets, into pockets that have no intention of paying taxes at all, which exacerbates the criminally insane extent of the policies that brought us here, made ON PURPOSE, by design, to enrich the few and force a worse life on the many. THAT'S one of the reasons for the loss of revenues to do anything at all.
I don't share your confidence that the Harris/Walz team gets all this, Thom. They are INFINITELY better than Trump, no question, and they have a lot of my money already. But I haven't heard or seen the signals that tell me what I want to hear/see. I keep hoping, but I haven't heard anything close to this yet.
Lastly, I don't hear anyone in these notes here expressing any nervousness about a Christian Nationalist being elected into the White House with a Project 2025 gameplan to concern ourselves with.
My goodness - the comments on her Ted talk video from right wing idiots are more alarming/depressing than the content of the video itself. The most challenging aspect of this problem is that there is a huge chunk of the population that is unwilling to engage in any fact-based conversation and who have gotten themselves worked up into a righteous lather believing that their fellow citizens, who are equally harmed by the corporatocracy, are the true enemy and the source of all of their perceived problems. We all know that it is no accident that they believe this, and we all know who is responsible, but piercing this shield of animosity may prove to be impossible. Nonetheless, giving up is not an option, so we must vote, vote, vote and advocate incessantly for reason and rationality to win.
Again, why not use the Libertarian slogans in the final days of campaign: NO GOVERNMENT! NO TAXES! NO SERVICES! Think about it. VOTE BLUE (before it's too late)
Youth. Passion. Where are those elements TODAY? It's just hard to imagine any kind of shooting war happening without them.
Young people and their constant connectivity paints a very different picture in America today. Even with gangs being really violent now, they are a lot less loyal than they were in the past.
Throw in all the distractions on the internet such as porn, gaming, selfies, and other preening---I just don't see these younger folks killing one another on a large scale. In the meantime, they are being ROBBED and a bunch of them know it. I hope some of the aware ones are on the ballot this year.
This takes us right back to domestic terrorism and failed insurrections being a much more likely result.
in the 50s in West Orange, NJ, our new next door neighbor was a milkman, a good Catholic family with 5 girls. Able to purchase on his single income and purchased a new 52 very stripped down Ford to boot. Next door, Dad was a teacher, Mom worked part time as our church Secretary, having purchased our home in '37 for $5,000 and paid off by '47. Sister and I went to college fully parent financed. We managed well. Parents retired in '63 to a new home in Pompano Beach, Fla. around 50 yards walk to the ocean. Jersey house went for around $15k and Florida house purchased for $17k. Today two income families struggle. Wife and I purchased a Victorian in San Francisco in '71, child born in 72. We both worked as teachers, really one income sufficed so second was mostly extra, Two cars, Symphony, Ballet, Opera, Europe trips, annual trips to family in Florida and Yonkers, NY, also private school for our only child. Just to underscore part of your message today.
Not sure enough people would participate in an elite group against other group factions that are not in uniform. I think or hope the mix is so dispersed that knowing who is who would be a major problem except for those without any morals and killing is their true desire. Killing those not part of the conflict would turn the country against that group. Moreover, America's real army would overwhelm any made up militia's. The conflict would end quickly as times are not like in the Civil War where horses and guns generally available were if equal quality. Tanks and superior arms make the outcome not debatable. The culture of America itself makes the outcome to overcome society most unlikely.