Thom, this is one of the clearest explanations I have read of why so many Americans feel that something fundamental has been taken from them.
The American Dream did not simply fade through forces nobody could control. Over several decades, wages stopped reflecting productivity, unions lost their bargaining power, housing and education became increasingly unaffordable, healthcare began bankrupting families, and an astonishing share of our nation’s wealth accumulated at the very top.
But perhaps your most important point is what happened to the resulting anger. Instead of allowing working people to recognize their shared economic interests, powerful political and media forces redirected that anger toward immigrants, minorities, women, and fellow Americans with different political beliefs. People who should have been standing together were encouraged to blame one another.
That strategy does more than protect concentrated wealth. It divides citizens and weakens the democratic institutions through which peaceful reform must occur.
Ultimately, the only peaceful way we can take our country back is through elections that Americans across the political spectrum can believe in. Too many citizens have become discouraged or stopped participating because they no longer trust that their voices matter. Our comparatively low voter participation among democratic nations should concern every American, regardless of party.
We will never agree on every candidate or policy, but we should be able to agree on this: voting must remain secret, counting must be public, and election results must be transparent and publicly verifiable. Trust cannot be demanded. It must be earned through verification.
Thank you, Thom, for documenting this history so clearly. People should read this chapter, examine the numbers for themselves, and share it widely.
It took a concerted effort of 45 years of incessant anti-Democratic propaganda misinformation, and hundreds of millions of dollars, for the Republicans to convince 70 million malcontents that they themselves (yes, the Republicans) were not the cause of their problems - but convince them, they did. The Republicans, since the so-called Reagan Revolution, have hardly ever brought up or voted for any legislation to help the average worker, but their supporters have seldom checked the record or the voting facts.
Cynical or hypocritical or cowardly or ineffectual establishment corporate Democrats have facilitated collapse across the board. Their response to DSA or social democracy-leaning candidates suggests they intend to stay the course. Out with them all.
The democrats need to stay together regardless of ideology in order to win elections and rid ourselves of the most corrupt, dangerous and incompetent government ever imagined.
The last time establishment Dems had a crack at him, POSOTUS walked. Available evidence confirms they’ve leaned nothing from that failure. We do, indeed, need people who will FIGHT this regime.
I was 22 when I bought my first house. I assumed the loan on a two br, one bath, rancher with carport from a Staff Sergeant who had used his VA loan to acquire the house. Price $9,000 that same house is $240,000 today.
I was 39 years old when I bought my 2nd house, three BR,one bath with garage, for $35,000 while it was still being built. I chose the color, the rugs and had them insert footings for the patio roof, which I would build.. Cost today $250,000 or more.
I bought this property in 2001, 5 acres, 5 buildings, in a depressed sale, as the previous owner, had allowed tenants to build a meth lab inside a travel trailer in the barn. Price $240,000. Market value over $1.5 million, tax valuation over $650,000
I see claptrap condo's (in reality apartments) and town houses, all made of inferior products and cheap, unskilled labor, go for $600,000 and higher, and they don't even own the land and are under the dictatorship of an HOA.
My brand new 1965 Mustang cost $2,000 todays Mustang is a computer on wheels and costs over $60,000. The 2013 Chrysler Town and Country, which cost me $31,000 is now over $47,000 and called a Pacifica
I owned a 1970 Maverick, which I drove for 13 years, back and forth across the country and down the Pan American highway to Panama. I carried pliers and a flat bladed screwdriver as my tool kit, did all of my own maintenance, including changing brakes and spark plugs, dropping the gas tank.
In March I bought a 2026 Maverick, pick up (not even the same type of vehicle as the 1970) it is a computer on wheels, and I still don't know most of the functions. I had to pay $27 for an owners manual, that even told me how many quarts of oil. the manual that came wit it, was about the computer display. Indeed it is a computer on wheels and there is no way that my local mechanic can do anything but change oil, filters and tires.
It is a different world,not mine. In my world you could be thrifty, save, have a future over which you had a modicum of control.
Today, you are born mortgaged to private equity, investors, the Broligarchy, financiers and the petro cabal.
Same for me. I bought my first house as a single woman for $35,000. My first Honda civic was $3,000. It is unbelievable how much things cost these days! Beef at $16 a lb, a hair-do is $225? My daughter at 40 can’t afford a home for her family.
Something needs to be done to change this unaffordable time. I’m not sure the Dems will be able to do much to change this. Maybe we can make a dent in 28’ if we get rid of citizens united and raise wealth taxes. Let’s hope so. I feel for those starting out in this mess.
I fear that the Republicans have already rigged the game, And the only thing that will save us is a turnout like that unseen previously , that and a lot of Trump voters, including some MAGAts, seeing through the veil that was draped over their eyes.
I often call reliance on hope as hopium, hope as a drug, but sometimes that is all we have left, considering how soft, lethargic and self centered Americans are.
We are not suppose to draw parallels with NAZI Germany, but honestly I look at the mentality of my fellow citizens and can't help but see a shadow of the German citizen in 1933-1945.
I’m convinced that the truth of what’s going on in our country that Thom is so good at researching and writing about hardly fazes most of our population. We should have long lines at polls in November to take back congress with most of us voting early, but I’m afraid that ads on FOX, and social media are the main source of info for most people, now. Why take off from work to vote if you don’t even believe the candidate has a chance?
The Dems need to get someone that the majority of voters get excited about, not just because there’s no other choice. Someone who turns their back on PAC and billionaire influence money and is honest, squeaky clean and has plenty of charisma and fight to appeal to a wide audience, etc. The candidate needs to prove they can overcome the billionaire crime lords in control. The candidate needs to get their campaign money from a population who really believes in them and is willing to overcome the billions contributed by the powerful few.
The population needs to get excited and hopeful about this country, again. Change is needed, but unless a candidate can show people that change is possible, they will ignore the election or God forbid they will be too scared of retribution to show up. This needs to be grass roots and powerful.
The vast majority of registered voters need to get off the sofa long enough to vote both in Midterms and in ‘28 but it’s not going to happen if Dems don’t stop drinking at the same well they have been in the past. This election in November will be a big tell, and our next president may just come from a viable winner in the November midterms.
"this is one of the clearest explanations I have read of why so many Americans feel that something fundamental has been taken from them"
Over and over, again and again - the voters in Red MAGA America VOTED FOR ALL THE PEOPLE WHO ENACT ALL THIS BS and then claim foul. This voting sickness seems now a genetic fact. This rabies infested lunacy is what has to be overcome but I fear only a direct experience, over and over again, is what will be necessary for the RED MAGA people to reevaluate their position. But the rest of us will experience it also.
Greedy Fascist Republicans Is Meshed With Their Corruption
Makes immoral corrupt sense. Cheeto invests in private prison companies to whom he then gives huge government contracts so the DHS can house ICE detainees in unsanitary inhumane conditions which is against the federal law. Cheeto makes big $$$ off his investment to illegally detain lawful immigrants. And fascist greedy Republicans cheer on this corruption.
On MSNOW which has been calling out Cheeto for years on his lies and now brazen corruption and Paxton along with Cheeto’s endorsement, displays the rot in OUR broken political system. O’Donnell interviewed James Talarico(bit.ly/4vV78je). As Talarico comments, in a democracy politicians are to serve WE the People not themselves. Corporate America has been stealing from the American People. Reagan’s debunked trickle down economics is another name for theft.
Microsoft paid an effective federal income tax rate of 2.4 percent while posting record income of over $100 billion for its fiscal year 2026.
Krugman economist and Nobel laureate has posted a second of a series on a wealth tax policy on his Substack channel…long but in depth with convincing arguments that Democratic progressives have been making for at least 5 election cycles(bit.ly/3S4k748). Of course the rise of the oligarchy fueled by wealth inequality will push aggressively against such a taxation policy but it’s clearly time for the American electorate to rebel for the sake of fighting against this huge yawning chasm of wealth gap in the country.
Accountability and affordability are both on the political agenda for the next 4 election cycles.
This is exactly where we are and how we got there.
Reagan knew what he was doing, just as the Supreme Court rigid Right knows what they are doing. This giving the wealth of a country to its wealthiest and least scrupulous citizens is truly destruction .
Somehow they need to be held accountable. And soon . It’s already gone on way too long.
And trump calls this the 'golden age???? I wish these figures were given more plainly to the MAGAs who are sooo thrilled w/trump and all he's doing!! What they don't understand is how much this war w/Iran is costing them!!! It won't be the oligarchs that struggle -- I understand trump's sons have shares of all sorts of war stuff and they will make $$billions on it while regular Americans send their sons and daughters to war because trump says so.
"Perhaps most grotesque, check out wealth concentration. In 1980, the top 1 percent owned about 20 percent of all wealth. Today, they own over 35 percent. The top 0.1 percent, one in a thousand Americans, owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent of all Americans combined. Just three white men own more wealth than the entire bottom half of Americans."
It could be that the ball was dropped before 1980 when "...the top 1% owned about 20% off all wealth". That might have been the time to question why so few had so much wealth. That is no less a mind-boggling statistic. What pathological conditions had to exist to allow such an imbalance? How was it missed that any individual could garner so much money and therefore power and control over the rest of the population in what was reputed to be a fair, just, and approximately equal society? We were all asleep at the wheel, apparently.
That is a very valid point, and I would say it accurately describes my own situation. But there was for nearly everyone a tacit acceptance of the conception that making a fortune by hook or by crook was just the American way and there was not much anyone could do about it and that government had a very limited role in preventing inequality regardless of how extreme it became. I have become convinced that government should have policies not limited to taxation which, despite screams of communism, should require personal and family wealth to be kept within certain bounds recognizing the power and control inherent in excess (morbid) wealth and possession of property, resources, or means of production.
I went through an MBA program in the 1980s, as Reagan was implementing “trickle down economics.” The only thing we learned about it, was that it was an invalid economic model that had been tried several times in several counties (including in the U.S. in the 1920s). It always failed and created great wealth at the top, while everyone else struggled. In the U.S. it led to the Gilded Age for the rich and the Republican Great Depression.
BTW, progressives, please quit referring to yourselves or progressives as democratic socialists. You and they are not. We are Welfare Capitalists just like FDR, Truman and LBJ…and even Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower. Even Nixon supported national healthcare. Do not let Republicans lump progressive Dems with the extremist Democratic Socialists of America organization. I wouldn’t be surprised if DSA was being supported by Republican donors to hurt the Democratic Party.
It’s an effective tool for the right to use names as propaganda to get their base to hate the libs. They have lied long and hard to convince people that the socialists and communists are ruining our country.
Look at Trump spending billions of taxpayer money to buy stakes in companies and profit himself.
This is communism owning the means of production. Giving the workers no safety net or wages that allow them to prosper.
Good point. We are, and always have been (more or less) a Socialist/Capitalist/Republic, where capitalism brought in the money, socialism controlled and distributed it, and representatives(not the people) voted for the "public servants" who decided what to do with it. So okay, the DSA (or whatever) is what we need this time around.
Thom, they don’t believe in all the great things American people would love to have a life where they can afford to live. Thom, we believe these things should happen for the American people but they really don’t care! Thom! American Dream is right dream on. We, deserve so much more.
Thom, this is one of the clearest explanations I have read of why so many Americans feel that something fundamental has been taken from them.
The American Dream did not simply fade through forces nobody could control. Over several decades, wages stopped reflecting productivity, unions lost their bargaining power, housing and education became increasingly unaffordable, healthcare began bankrupting families, and an astonishing share of our nation’s wealth accumulated at the very top.
But perhaps your most important point is what happened to the resulting anger. Instead of allowing working people to recognize their shared economic interests, powerful political and media forces redirected that anger toward immigrants, minorities, women, and fellow Americans with different political beliefs. People who should have been standing together were encouraged to blame one another.
That strategy does more than protect concentrated wealth. It divides citizens and weakens the democratic institutions through which peaceful reform must occur.
Ultimately, the only peaceful way we can take our country back is through elections that Americans across the political spectrum can believe in. Too many citizens have become discouraged or stopped participating because they no longer trust that their voices matter. Our comparatively low voter participation among democratic nations should concern every American, regardless of party.
We will never agree on every candidate or policy, but we should be able to agree on this: voting must remain secret, counting must be public, and election results must be transparent and publicly verifiable. Trust cannot be demanded. It must be earned through verification.
Thank you, Thom, for documenting this history so clearly. People should read this chapter, examine the numbers for themselves, and share it widely.
—John R. Brakey
The Cassandra Series: Breaking Apollo’s Curse
It took a concerted effort of 45 years of incessant anti-Democratic propaganda misinformation, and hundreds of millions of dollars, for the Republicans to convince 70 million malcontents that they themselves (yes, the Republicans) were not the cause of their problems - but convince them, they did. The Republicans, since the so-called Reagan Revolution, have hardly ever brought up or voted for any legislation to help the average worker, but their supporters have seldom checked the record or the voting facts.
Cynical or hypocritical or cowardly or ineffectual establishment corporate Democrats have facilitated collapse across the board. Their response to DSA or social democracy-leaning candidates suggests they intend to stay the course. Out with them all.
Out with them all really is the final answer.
The democrats need to stay together regardless of ideology in order to win elections and rid ourselves of the most corrupt, dangerous and incompetent government ever imagined.
We the people need to fight this regime!
The last time establishment Dems had a crack at him, POSOTUS walked. Available evidence confirms they’ve leaned nothing from that failure. We do, indeed, need people who will FIGHT this regime.
I was 22 when I bought my first house. I assumed the loan on a two br, one bath, rancher with carport from a Staff Sergeant who had used his VA loan to acquire the house. Price $9,000 that same house is $240,000 today.
I was 39 years old when I bought my 2nd house, three BR,one bath with garage, for $35,000 while it was still being built. I chose the color, the rugs and had them insert footings for the patio roof, which I would build.. Cost today $250,000 or more.
I bought this property in 2001, 5 acres, 5 buildings, in a depressed sale, as the previous owner, had allowed tenants to build a meth lab inside a travel trailer in the barn. Price $240,000. Market value over $1.5 million, tax valuation over $650,000
I see claptrap condo's (in reality apartments) and town houses, all made of inferior products and cheap, unskilled labor, go for $600,000 and higher, and they don't even own the land and are under the dictatorship of an HOA.
My brand new 1965 Mustang cost $2,000 todays Mustang is a computer on wheels and costs over $60,000. The 2013 Chrysler Town and Country, which cost me $31,000 is now over $47,000 and called a Pacifica
I owned a 1970 Maverick, which I drove for 13 years, back and forth across the country and down the Pan American highway to Panama. I carried pliers and a flat bladed screwdriver as my tool kit, did all of my own maintenance, including changing brakes and spark plugs, dropping the gas tank.
In March I bought a 2026 Maverick, pick up (not even the same type of vehicle as the 1970) it is a computer on wheels, and I still don't know most of the functions. I had to pay $27 for an owners manual, that even told me how many quarts of oil. the manual that came wit it, was about the computer display. Indeed it is a computer on wheels and there is no way that my local mechanic can do anything but change oil, filters and tires.
It is a different world,not mine. In my world you could be thrifty, save, have a future over which you had a modicum of control.
Today, you are born mortgaged to private equity, investors, the Broligarchy, financiers and the petro cabal.
Same for me. I bought my first house as a single woman for $35,000. My first Honda civic was $3,000. It is unbelievable how much things cost these days! Beef at $16 a lb, a hair-do is $225? My daughter at 40 can’t afford a home for her family.
Something needs to be done to change this unaffordable time. I’m not sure the Dems will be able to do much to change this. Maybe we can make a dent in 28’ if we get rid of citizens united and raise wealth taxes. Let’s hope so. I feel for those starting out in this mess.
I fear that the Republicans have already rigged the game, And the only thing that will save us is a turnout like that unseen previously , that and a lot of Trump voters, including some MAGAts, seeing through the veil that was draped over their eyes.
I often call reliance on hope as hopium, hope as a drug, but sometimes that is all we have left, considering how soft, lethargic and self centered Americans are.
We are not suppose to draw parallels with NAZI Germany, but honestly I look at the mentality of my fellow citizens and can't help but see a shadow of the German citizen in 1933-1945.
I’m convinced that the truth of what’s going on in our country that Thom is so good at researching and writing about hardly fazes most of our population. We should have long lines at polls in November to take back congress with most of us voting early, but I’m afraid that ads on FOX, and social media are the main source of info for most people, now. Why take off from work to vote if you don’t even believe the candidate has a chance?
The Dems need to get someone that the majority of voters get excited about, not just because there’s no other choice. Someone who turns their back on PAC and billionaire influence money and is honest, squeaky clean and has plenty of charisma and fight to appeal to a wide audience, etc. The candidate needs to prove they can overcome the billionaire crime lords in control. The candidate needs to get their campaign money from a population who really believes in them and is willing to overcome the billions contributed by the powerful few.
The population needs to get excited and hopeful about this country, again. Change is needed, but unless a candidate can show people that change is possible, they will ignore the election or God forbid they will be too scared of retribution to show up. This needs to be grass roots and powerful.
The vast majority of registered voters need to get off the sofa long enough to vote both in Midterms and in ‘28 but it’s not going to happen if Dems don’t stop drinking at the same well they have been in the past. This election in November will be a big tell, and our next president may just come from a viable winner in the November midterms.
And timely to your comment: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/will-francesca-hong-and-abdul-el.
If people don't vote because they feel it is useless, then they Deseret the consequences.
The Numbers Don't Lie... which explains Trump's aversion to them.
"this is one of the clearest explanations I have read of why so many Americans feel that something fundamental has been taken from them"
Over and over, again and again - the voters in Red MAGA America VOTED FOR ALL THE PEOPLE WHO ENACT ALL THIS BS and then claim foul. This voting sickness seems now a genetic fact. This rabies infested lunacy is what has to be overcome but I fear only a direct experience, over and over again, is what will be necessary for the RED MAGA people to reevaluate their position. But the rest of us will experience it also.
Greedy Fascist Republicans Is Meshed With Their Corruption
Makes immoral corrupt sense. Cheeto invests in private prison companies to whom he then gives huge government contracts so the DHS can house ICE detainees in unsanitary inhumane conditions which is against the federal law. Cheeto makes big $$$ off his investment to illegally detain lawful immigrants. And fascist greedy Republicans cheer on this corruption.
On MSNOW which has been calling out Cheeto for years on his lies and now brazen corruption and Paxton along with Cheeto’s endorsement, displays the rot in OUR broken political system. O’Donnell interviewed James Talarico(bit.ly/4vV78je). As Talarico comments, in a democracy politicians are to serve WE the People not themselves. Corporate America has been stealing from the American People. Reagan’s debunked trickle down economics is another name for theft.
Microsoft paid an effective federal income tax rate of 2.4 percent while posting record income of over $100 billion for its fiscal year 2026.
Krugman economist and Nobel laureate has posted a second of a series on a wealth tax policy on his Substack channel…long but in depth with convincing arguments that Democratic progressives have been making for at least 5 election cycles(bit.ly/3S4k748). Of course the rise of the oligarchy fueled by wealth inequality will push aggressively against such a taxation policy but it’s clearly time for the American electorate to rebel for the sake of fighting against this huge yawning chasm of wealth gap in the country.
Accountability and affordability are both on the political agenda for the next 4 election cycles.
Let's hope that (what's left of) our democracy can just get through this coming election - if we even have it.
This is exactly where we are and how we got there.
Reagan knew what he was doing, just as the Supreme Court rigid Right knows what they are doing. This giving the wealth of a country to its wealthiest and least scrupulous citizens is truly destruction .
Somehow they need to be held accountable. And soon . It’s already gone on way too long.
And trump calls this the 'golden age???? I wish these figures were given more plainly to the MAGAs who are sooo thrilled w/trump and all he's doing!! What they don't understand is how much this war w/Iran is costing them!!! It won't be the oligarchs that struggle -- I understand trump's sons have shares of all sorts of war stuff and they will make $$billions on it while regular Americans send their sons and daughters to war because trump says so.
"Perhaps most grotesque, check out wealth concentration. In 1980, the top 1 percent owned about 20 percent of all wealth. Today, they own over 35 percent. The top 0.1 percent, one in a thousand Americans, owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent of all Americans combined. Just three white men own more wealth than the entire bottom half of Americans."
It could be that the ball was dropped before 1980 when "...the top 1% owned about 20% off all wealth". That might have been the time to question why so few had so much wealth. That is no less a mind-boggling statistic. What pathological conditions had to exist to allow such an imbalance? How was it missed that any individual could garner so much money and therefore power and control over the rest of the population in what was reputed to be a fair, just, and approximately equal society? We were all asleep at the wheel, apparently.
Working hard and enjoying it less---that's what we were doing. It too was by design, Robert. So I would say exhausted at the wheel.
That is a very valid point, and I would say it accurately describes my own situation. But there was for nearly everyone a tacit acceptance of the conception that making a fortune by hook or by crook was just the American way and there was not much anyone could do about it and that government had a very limited role in preventing inequality regardless of how extreme it became. I have become convinced that government should have policies not limited to taxation which, despite screams of communism, should require personal and family wealth to be kept within certain bounds recognizing the power and control inherent in excess (morbid) wealth and possession of property, resources, or means of production.
I went through an MBA program in the 1980s, as Reagan was implementing “trickle down economics.” The only thing we learned about it, was that it was an invalid economic model that had been tried several times in several counties (including in the U.S. in the 1920s). It always failed and created great wealth at the top, while everyone else struggled. In the U.S. it led to the Gilded Age for the rich and the Republican Great Depression.
BTW, progressives, please quit referring to yourselves or progressives as democratic socialists. You and they are not. We are Welfare Capitalists just like FDR, Truman and LBJ…and even Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower. Even Nixon supported national healthcare. Do not let Republicans lump progressive Dems with the extremist Democratic Socialists of America organization. I wouldn’t be surprised if DSA was being supported by Republican donors to hurt the Democratic Party.
It’s an effective tool for the right to use names as propaganda to get their base to hate the libs. They have lied long and hard to convince people that the socialists and communists are ruining our country.
Look at Trump spending billions of taxpayer money to buy stakes in companies and profit himself.
This is communism owning the means of production. Giving the workers no safety net or wages that allow them to prosper.
Good point. We are, and always have been (more or less) a Socialist/Capitalist/Republic, where capitalism brought in the money, socialism controlled and distributed it, and representatives(not the people) voted for the "public servants" who decided what to do with it. So okay, the DSA (or whatever) is what we need this time around.
Thom, they don’t believe in all the great things American people would love to have a life where they can afford to live. Thom, we believe these things should happen for the American people but they really don’t care! Thom! American Dream is right dream on. We, deserve so much more.