Your weekly chapter excerpt from one of my books. This week: "Who Killed the American Dream: The Greatest Political Crime Ever Told." See Thom's take on how this chapter relates to today below...
Rounding up immigrants and sending them out of the country was supposed to create more jobs for the native born. How did that work out, according to Friday's employment report?
Capitalism couldn't continue without victim-blaming, and the victims believing they are at fault.
Thom, as usual, is spot on. But I have to ask, for the millionth -- if that is a word -- time
"What's the plan?"
The bad guys have a plan to run an organized BS machine, with the means to first develop, then frame, then deliver a consistent, repeatable message. They also have the discipline to keep in tune and stay in line with the play book.
They know who to give the money to and what they get for it.
I have a thousand different orgs/people -- most I never heard of -- asking me to "chip in"... To what, for what, is never made clear. Most begin with "... do you know what (he/they) just did???"
Outrage only goes so far, and we get exhausted.
So, again: "What's the plan?"
And, "Who's in charge of what part of the plan?"
Twenty five years and counting, I am still waiting for an answer...
That's the Mothership Vortex plan to fleece your funds as effortlessly as possible. They are email and text appeals—pumped out by computers stamped out more uniformly than a cookie cutter could produce— Three parts.
1. OUTRAGE at something
2. BLAME - usually Trump or "antifa," the other half of the uniparty, or maybe Palestinians.
3. DONATE here! RUSH!!!
See what is missing: Commitment to govern in terms of any specific the spammers might be held accountable to DO!
Want to see vacuous speeches or literature not PROMISING to unite to do something> How about Kamala Harris waffle flipping campaign speeches in which you cannot even hear an assertion that a genocide is WRONG, especially when it is being carried out by a foreign leader shadow-governing your own citizens?, Want to see the opposite? Watch Zohran Mamdani's record of actual governance DELIVERING on what he campaigned to DO. He has risen in six months to becoming one of the top 5 most admired politicians in the U.S.
Ask your cartel party's operatives like the DNC: "What have you lead and organized the candidates to be FOR?" "What if elected have you organized your candidates to COMMIT to DO?"
There is no government because the parties have no one as operatives with the will or capacity to LEAD for governance. No wonder the "Party picks" are being replaced.
I've been thinking. Layers, long game, chess, things are never as we think they are.
Racism, sexism, nationalism, all distractions.
Look at how the world is moving today.
George Orwells world of Oceania, Eurasia, East Asia is not fiction, it was prophetic.
Oceania, The Technate of America. aka The Shield of America, Trumplandia, From Greenland through to Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador. including Cuba..all targets of obsessions of Trump.
Are Trumps obsessions, really his? Or are they implanted in his ear, and from there he takes ownership.
Eurasia, from the Atlantic to Russia. NATO is being dissembled thanks to Trump, and Putin, despite the distraction of Ukraine is becoming more aggressive, and making test assaualts on the Baltic States, Poland and Germany.
East Asia, under Xi/ America, thanks to Trumps misconceived or was it.. Whiskey Pete has displayed his sympathies with Putin. Kash Patel is going to Russia to meet with his counterparts.The United States has expended it's defensive and offensive missiles and Whiskey Pete and Trump have exposed the Pentagon as weak, ineffective and feckless, and a paper tiger. only capable of special ops against a weak subject. in other words a bully.
The Mideast and North Africa. Three significant entities fighting for control, of them all one has the the biggest Army in NATO, outside of the US, and one that is well disciplined, and proven fighters (ask those who fought with them in the Korean war).
Saudi Arabia has billions of dollars of weapons, but a shit army that doesn't really want to fight.
There is enough tension between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran to keep the Mideast destabilized, while the global south is exploited for it's resources.
Greenland, bully, Canada bullying, Venezuela bullying, Cuba bullying, Tariffs bullying,Bullying NATO, but it didn't start there. The banana wars, Nicaragua.. the overthrow of Mossadegh,
Isn't that patriarchalism? The strong dominating the weak, if the subject isn't weak, then make them feel weak, convince them that they are weak..
Something has to be done to convince people that they are not powerless, and that if they help each other, they can lift themselves up. A bald lie, that makes the poor the agents of their own circumstances, repeated loudly and often (like the corporate propaganda assault of the last fifty years,) was often believed by the mis or mal-informed because it had not effectively been countered from the time it began. When the voices of democracy tried to intervene, it was too late.
So that’s where we are now, and even if this administration’s policies and actions all fall flat, who will the misinformed believe? Very few will look to other sources, and by the time of the mid terms, if things are not going Trump’s way - guess what! There could easily be conjured some national “emergency” crisis that calls for martial law. Then what? It doesn’t look good from where I sit.
They don't have unlimited resources, so they will not bother with safe districts, meaning those that are reliably Republican. They are concentrating on problematic districts, mostly in Swing states, and a few in Red states..
Our hope lies in Republican complacency, there could be a surprise in red states. there is the general lethargy on the part of the Republicans, the usual mid term apathy, and large disappointment or disillusionment with Trump.
Other than that. be sure that they have the big guns out, armed poll watchers. MAGA election commissioners
Republicans, and all fascists, like Hitler, have used what the late Hunter Thompson referred to as "fear and loathing" to animate political support by opening the emotional door to let in hateful messages to get elected. Good to keep in mind that it works on liberals too. Nearly everybody has resentment or discomfort about some group: the homeless, immigrants, racial minorities, etc. While we might not manifest it often, that door to our emotions is always ajar, waiting for a Trump to ignite our hatred.
In 1961, I shared with my pals that I would skip the local high school as I had talked my mother into sending me to a Catholic prep school a block walk from the famous Chicago Water Tower on Michigan Avenue. Several chorused: "Well, don't let the N--gers getcha." I naively was expecting: "Wow! That sounds cool." Noteworthy was that none of my pals had likely ever seen a person of color close up, as we lived in Whiteflightburbia 20 miles west of Chicago. By age 15, I was already a junior member of the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE), marching for civil rights, and participating in after-school volunteer work in Chicago's public housing ghettoes.
Fraud is an intentional act of deception or a knowing misrepresentation of the truth designed to secure an unfair or unlawful gain or to deprive a victim of their money, property, or legal rights.
One thing is for sure, Republicans have over the last 40y have gradually defrauded WE the People with Reagan’s trickle down economics, a debunked theory that essentially whittled down the middle class and debilitated the unions, making the corporate boardrooms king. Of course for rich donors came the tax breaks for the wealthy.
Remember Reagan’s fraud of the “welfare queen”, which was the beginning of the attack on the social safety net for those less fortunate who supported the wealthy’s tax breaks and continues in earnest today.
Remember how John Roberts and the fascist Heritage Foundation thought up the unitary executive theory and then before Cheeto’s second term got started gave the president immunity from crimes committed during the presidency. This has led to brazen criminal corruption today.
Now the evolving Republican party has become a full blown fascist party and pulled the biggest fraud of all by getting the American electorate to buy into Cheeto’s lies and get a felon elected to the presidency. The fascist Republicans should not be trusted with government’s power again.
Trump’s post should bother all of us—and not for the reason its racist creator intended. Indeed, it presents two different visions of America: one that asks us to judge people by their appearance, religion and ethnicity, and another that reminds us to judge people by their character, their contributions and how they treat others.
Everything I have learned about Abdul El-Sayed and his wife reflects the qualities we should admire in any American: intelligence, education, hard work, compassion, service to others and a strong moral center. They aren't somehow a different America. They are America.
And that's what makes this image so disturbing. A president of the United States should be expanding our understanding of who belongs in the American family—not encouraging us to decide who belongs by looking at someone's skin, name or the clothing associated with their faith.
I'm so grateful for your contribution to our understanding of Who Killed the American Dream? As I continue reading your latest book, I'm riveted. Chapter 10 is one of the most sobering yet. This sidebar about Trump's post feels painfully connected to the larger story you're telling: when enormous economic inequality becomes harder to defend, division becomes a very useful political weapon. If working people look suspiciously and disdainfully at one another, they're less likely to look up at who holds the wealth and power.
Billboards all across America shud say, "trumps America equals WE THE OLIGARCHS and below it should say: NOT WE The PEOPLE" I'd like to add : Suckers vote republican" Too nasty?
I really want to FW this article to 4 of my trumper friends/relatives, but they would just delete it as they know MY politics. One cousin actually said quit sending me your nonsense. Over and over again it makes me realize just how deeply entrenched racism is. And she calls herself a jesus krishtyun.
The welfare queen trope was based on the real story of Linda Taylor, who actually stole far less than Reagan claimed. Taylor’s example wasn’t typical, but the backlash from her crimes harmed ordinary people. Taylor was involved with suspected murders to acquire property and in the early 1960s, tried to claim she was the daughter of a Chicago bookie. Her mother’s family testified against her, but they perjured themselves in the process. Linda was the product of her white mother’s transient relationship with an African American man, which could have led to the man’s murder. Linda’s maternal family didn’t exactly welcome her and she left home as an adult.
Rounding up immigrants and sending them out of the country was supposed to create more jobs for the native born. How did that work out, according to Friday's employment report?
Capitalism couldn't continue without victim-blaming, and the victims believing they are at fault.
On point again Thom...Thanks for your work to bring these matters to light.
Thom, as usual, is spot on. But I have to ask, for the millionth -- if that is a word -- time
"What's the plan?"
The bad guys have a plan to run an organized BS machine, with the means to first develop, then frame, then deliver a consistent, repeatable message. They also have the discipline to keep in tune and stay in line with the play book.
They know who to give the money to and what they get for it.
I have a thousand different orgs/people -- most I never heard of -- asking me to "chip in"... To what, for what, is never made clear. Most begin with "... do you know what (he/they) just did???"
Outrage only goes so far, and we get exhausted.
So, again: "What's the plan?"
And, "Who's in charge of what part of the plan?"
Twenty five years and counting, I am still waiting for an answer...
D.L.
That's the Mothership Vortex plan to fleece your funds as effortlessly as possible. They are email and text appeals—pumped out by computers stamped out more uniformly than a cookie cutter could produce— Three parts.
1. OUTRAGE at something
2. BLAME - usually Trump or "antifa," the other half of the uniparty, or maybe Palestinians.
3. DONATE here! RUSH!!!
See what is missing: Commitment to govern in terms of any specific the spammers might be held accountable to DO!
Want to see vacuous speeches or literature not PROMISING to unite to do something> How about Kamala Harris waffle flipping campaign speeches in which you cannot even hear an assertion that a genocide is WRONG, especially when it is being carried out by a foreign leader shadow-governing your own citizens?, Want to see the opposite? Watch Zohran Mamdani's record of actual governance DELIVERING on what he campaigned to DO. He has risen in six months to becoming one of the top 5 most admired politicians in the U.S.
Ask your cartel party's operatives like the DNC: "What have you lead and organized the candidates to be FOR?" "What if elected have you organized your candidates to COMMIT to DO?"
There is no government because the parties have no one as operatives with the will or capacity to LEAD for governance. No wonder the "Party picks" are being replaced.
I've been thinking. Layers, long game, chess, things are never as we think they are.
Racism, sexism, nationalism, all distractions.
Look at how the world is moving today.
George Orwells world of Oceania, Eurasia, East Asia is not fiction, it was prophetic.
Oceania, The Technate of America. aka The Shield of America, Trumplandia, From Greenland through to Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador. including Cuba..all targets of obsessions of Trump.
Are Trumps obsessions, really his? Or are they implanted in his ear, and from there he takes ownership.
Eurasia, from the Atlantic to Russia. NATO is being dissembled thanks to Trump, and Putin, despite the distraction of Ukraine is becoming more aggressive, and making test assaualts on the Baltic States, Poland and Germany.
East Asia, under Xi/ America, thanks to Trumps misconceived or was it.. Whiskey Pete has displayed his sympathies with Putin. Kash Patel is going to Russia to meet with his counterparts.The United States has expended it's defensive and offensive missiles and Whiskey Pete and Trump have exposed the Pentagon as weak, ineffective and feckless, and a paper tiger. only capable of special ops against a weak subject. in other words a bully.
The Mideast and North Africa. Three significant entities fighting for control, of them all one has the the biggest Army in NATO, outside of the US, and one that is well disciplined, and proven fighters (ask those who fought with them in the Korean war).
Saudi Arabia has billions of dollars of weapons, but a shit army that doesn't really want to fight.
There is enough tension between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran to keep the Mideast destabilized, while the global south is exploited for it's resources.
Greenland, bully, Canada bullying, Venezuela bullying, Cuba bullying, Tariffs bullying,Bullying NATO, but it didn't start there. The banana wars, Nicaragua.. the overthrow of Mossadegh,
Isn't that patriarchalism? The strong dominating the weak, if the subject isn't weak, then make them feel weak, convince them that they are weak..
Something has to be done to convince people that they are not powerless, and that if they help each other, they can lift themselves up. A bald lie, that makes the poor the agents of their own circumstances, repeated loudly and often (like the corporate propaganda assault of the last fifty years,) was often believed by the mis or mal-informed because it had not effectively been countered from the time it began. When the voices of democracy tried to intervene, it was too late.
So that’s where we are now, and even if this administration’s policies and actions all fall flat, who will the misinformed believe? Very few will look to other sources, and by the time of the mid terms, if things are not going Trump’s way - guess what! There could easily be conjured some national “emergency” crisis that calls for martial law. Then what? It doesn’t look good from where I sit.
They don't have unlimited resources, so they will not bother with safe districts, meaning those that are reliably Republican. They are concentrating on problematic districts, mostly in Swing states, and a few in Red states..
Our hope lies in Republican complacency, there could be a surprise in red states. there is the general lethargy on the part of the Republicans, the usual mid term apathy, and large disappointment or disillusionment with Trump.
Other than that. be sure that they have the big guns out, armed poll watchers. MAGA election commissioners
Republicans, and all fascists, like Hitler, have used what the late Hunter Thompson referred to as "fear and loathing" to animate political support by opening the emotional door to let in hateful messages to get elected. Good to keep in mind that it works on liberals too. Nearly everybody has resentment or discomfort about some group: the homeless, immigrants, racial minorities, etc. While we might not manifest it often, that door to our emotions is always ajar, waiting for a Trump to ignite our hatred.
In 1961, I shared with my pals that I would skip the local high school as I had talked my mother into sending me to a Catholic prep school a block walk from the famous Chicago Water Tower on Michigan Avenue. Several chorused: "Well, don't let the N--gers getcha." I naively was expecting: "Wow! That sounds cool." Noteworthy was that none of my pals had likely ever seen a person of color close up, as we lived in Whiteflightburbia 20 miles west of Chicago. By age 15, I was already a junior member of the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE), marching for civil rights, and participating in after-school volunteer work in Chicago's public housing ghettoes.
The Republican Fraud On WE the People
Fraud is an intentional act of deception or a knowing misrepresentation of the truth designed to secure an unfair or unlawful gain or to deprive a victim of their money, property, or legal rights.
One thing is for sure, Republicans have over the last 40y have gradually defrauded WE the People with Reagan’s trickle down economics, a debunked theory that essentially whittled down the middle class and debilitated the unions, making the corporate boardrooms king. Of course for rich donors came the tax breaks for the wealthy.
Remember Reagan’s fraud of the “welfare queen”, which was the beginning of the attack on the social safety net for those less fortunate who supported the wealthy’s tax breaks and continues in earnest today.
Remember how John Roberts and the fascist Heritage Foundation thought up the unitary executive theory and then before Cheeto’s second term got started gave the president immunity from crimes committed during the presidency. This has led to brazen criminal corruption today.
Now the evolving Republican party has become a full blown fascist party and pulled the biggest fraud of all by getting the American electorate to buy into Cheeto’s lies and get a felon elected to the presidency. The fascist Republicans should not be trusted with government’s power again.
I love these reports and share them. The problem is, finances are tight and I can't seem to make the unsubscribe button work.
If you want to end your paid subscription, just drop a note to nigel at nigelpeacock dot com and he will take care of it for you.
Thanks Thom. You truly are the best voice. Unfortunately, that's not a complete email address and doesn't work.
Me either, so I maxed out my credit card, and can't subscribe further - problem solved.
Trump’s post should bother all of us—and not for the reason its racist creator intended. Indeed, it presents two different visions of America: one that asks us to judge people by their appearance, religion and ethnicity, and another that reminds us to judge people by their character, their contributions and how they treat others.
Everything I have learned about Abdul El-Sayed and his wife reflects the qualities we should admire in any American: intelligence, education, hard work, compassion, service to others and a strong moral center. They aren't somehow a different America. They are America.
And that's what makes this image so disturbing. A president of the United States should be expanding our understanding of who belongs in the American family—not encouraging us to decide who belongs by looking at someone's skin, name or the clothing associated with their faith.
I'm so grateful for your contribution to our understanding of Who Killed the American Dream? As I continue reading your latest book, I'm riveted. Chapter 10 is one of the most sobering yet. This sidebar about Trump's post feels painfully connected to the larger story you're telling: when enormous economic inequality becomes harder to defend, division becomes a very useful political weapon. If working people look suspiciously and disdainfully at one another, they're less likely to look up at who holds the wealth and power.
Billboards all across America shud say, "trumps America equals WE THE OLIGARCHS and below it should say: NOT WE The PEOPLE" I'd like to add : Suckers vote republican" Too nasty?
No!
I really want to FW this article to 4 of my trumper friends/relatives, but they would just delete it as they know MY politics. One cousin actually said quit sending me your nonsense. Over and over again it makes me realize just how deeply entrenched racism is. And she calls herself a jesus krishtyun.
Tyrants or in our case mob boss’s are always blind to their fate.
Just ask the ghosts of Benito Mussolini and
The other tyrants of history.
Eat an oligarch!! The rest will fall in line.
The welfare queen trope was based on the real story of Linda Taylor, who actually stole far less than Reagan claimed. Taylor’s example wasn’t typical, but the backlash from her crimes harmed ordinary people. Taylor was involved with suspected murders to acquire property and in the early 1960s, tried to claim she was the daughter of a Chicago bookie. Her mother’s family testified against her, but they perjured themselves in the process. Linda was the product of her white mother’s transient relationship with an African American man, which could have led to the man’s murder. Linda’s maternal family didn’t exactly welcome her and she left home as an adult.