While Americans were trained to fear immigrants, trans kids, and each other, the billionaire class quietly extracted trillions from the middle class and captured the nation’s politics, media & courts…
“This should be a national scandal. It should be the lead story on every progressive show, in every Democratic stump speech, in every union newsletter, and on every front page.” I.e., let’s not continue to ignore this in favor of “kitchen table issues”. Silence is tacit support, which will only serve to perpetuate and feed the disease. Knowledge is power; we could use some of both.
Robber Barons have bought the U.S. Government multiple times at the laborers expense. They take the money and file bankruptcy , leaving the labors to “bail out” the thrives. Wars are also a tactic to extract money. They steal our lives by insufficient pay and benefits. Social Security and retirement funds are a scam to benefit “robber barons”.
As I read this, the thought that comes to mind is. Just how stupid and gullible humans are, that they fall for this crap. But then again that is the very founding principle of advertising People actually believe the crap that the see on TV and now the internet. I bought a set of earphones, and now I can hardly open a web page without seeing an ad for earphones, like I would two sets, what a waste, even the algorithm is stupid.
We live in a world where the sociopath rules. If status and success is your goal, and you want to fill your pockets with silver, then you best be a sociopath and lack all empathy.
Do lions, tigers, bears, alligators have empathy, if they did they would have died out as a species.
Can you blame them for doing what they were born to do? Those of us who have little furry companions, which we love. turn out eyes from the fact that they are sociopathic killers.
Trump, Musk, Bezo's, Zuck, Sacks, Ellison, all of them are sociopathic predators, doing what comes naturally, and we are the prey.
Unlike four legged prey, two legged prey, actually embolden support, promote and sustain their predators.
Predators will be predators, a herd of Thompson gazelles can not do anything about a cheetah,
However humans can do something about their predators, they can starve and disempower them.
But do we? Or do we feed, sustain and empower hem.Then sit back and complain
Pogo had it right. I've seen the enemy and it is us.
I'm old enough to remember the promotion of statements like "Kill or be killed" "Eat or be eaten" that permeated the discourse of motivation when I was in college in the 70"s. While taking a very simple "look see" into ancient modern humans one finds death and destruction on massive scales comparable to present day animal farming methods that feed millions of people today. There were not that many people then. Look at "kite" traps mostly featured in the Levant areas of the Middle East. There are still remnants visible. It is surmised that these massive neolithic killing machines were not made for just feeding the populations but for processing living entities into tradeable goods - AKA MONEY. The natural massive herd numbers of many animal species were decimated - possibly being the motivation for the development of agriculture. And I believe agriculture has been discussed as a (possible) reason for wealth and class distinctions - those who have the crops have... those who don't have the crops don't have. It is hard wired in us.
Great I like the analogy. I know what kite traps are. I wonder how many people do.
A Black Friday Sale, only with kite traps the animals are driven in, modern kite traps are effective by luring the victim in.
Going technical. The kite traps would have killed more than a small population could have eaten before the meat decayed, so there must have been a sa;t trade or a salt deposit nearby (Apologies of going astray)
I do not think that agriculture is responsible for class distinctions, in regards of there always being a ruling class, "Gog the bad and his family and friends at the top" and the rest of the tribe, with Magog as the head of the clan"
What agriculture did was to create a niche of assistants for the leader, scribes who could keep account of the wheat and other foodstuffs, including animals, and security guards that could guard the storehouse, treasury., and a merchant class who traveled far and wide to sell off excess to other tribal leaders
The natural order of tribes is an overclass and an underclass. Commerce, trade, laid the foundation of a middle class..
But commerce has existed since the neolithic if not before, the copper in Otzi's axe (the 5,000 mummy found in the Alps) came from Tuscany, thus evidence of long distance trading.
A middle class is rather a new invention in human history. I found an ancestor listed in the Registry of the Freemen of York in the 1400's.This implies that there were serfs and freemen. My ancestor was a wool dyer.
There were a series of plagues, five of them, that swept England, after 1400, that did away with serfdom, they created a labor shortage, that enabled the serf to travel and sell his labor.
That and the reforms (tax laws) of Henry VII, created a middle class, to even where a butchers son, could go to university and become an advisor to his son (Thomas Cromwell and his son Henry VIII)
I am not sure about the idea that lions, tigers, etc. are sociopathic predators. Wildlife exists in a natural framework that balances prey and predator. When humans disrupt that balance like killing all the wolves, allowing deer herds to expand beyond the carrying capacity of their environment, the herds starve. The wolves are needed to keep the herd healthy and in balance.
You are correct, sociopath is a term that can only be applied to humans. But the fact is that they kill with out remorse or conscience,without a second thought, the same as sociopaths.
And I know all about the evolutionary and ecological benefits behind predation, that was and is not the subject.
Anthropomorphizing animals, which is what I did to make a point, sociopath is predation without remorse or concern, or the observation of such.
Even spaced out over 50 years, extracting $79 trillion from the worker/consumer base of the economy while crippling the necessary regulation of this same economy will cause this system to collapse. Capitalism is eating itself, and no amount of purchased propaganda will keep this from happening.
One thing I have mentioned several times before is that, psychologically, rage is an effective tool to shut down critical reasoning. When I tell you that immigrants on your block are so weird that they are eating neighborhood pets, your disgust at the very thought switches your brain to the "tell-me-more" mode. That is how Trump and his ilk promoted the notion that hating people different from oneself is not only acceptable, but it is Christian and patriotic.
Trump is following in the footprints of other fascist failures like Mussolini and Hitler, as their incompetent and reckless governing is deteriorating most voters' quality of life, and that is undermining their belief in the lies they embraced as "alternative" facts.
Thank you for this. Folks need to understand this as we're at a powerful moment of inflection. It was the basis for an article that I published yesterday titled "The Opening." It's focused not just on this but also on what we can all do to open the conversation about how this is a shared experience so that we can build our coalition. "You know that the Epstein files didn’t reveal a scandal — they revealed a class that bought impunity with money and lawyers and silence.
You know all of this. And you are tired of watching people you love being handed a different explanation for the same pain — and believing it. You’ve watched someone one medical bill away from bankruptcy argue against the people trying to fix that. You’ve watched a conversation about insulin costs somehow end up being about Obama. You’ve heard the hollow deflections, the practiced redirects, the blame that always — somehow — lands anywhere but where it belongs.
That helplessness is not a personal failure. It is the intended outcome. The people profiting from the misdirection need you exhausted and isolated, convinced the gap is too wide to cross. They need you to believe the other side is too far gone to reach. It is the only way the con keeps working." https://danismart.substack.com/p/the-opening
To think how the internet and the mass media are used to manipulate the general population so that their misery can be blamed on one another is intolerable.
And now adding AI into the mix - we are experiencing George Orwell's "1984".
And with Trump's reign - we are experiencing George Orwell's "Animal Farm".
“Every nation gets the government it deserves.” — Joseph de Maistre, 1811
Devoid of intelligence, wisdom, justice, or humanity, 77.3 million fools elected : A thief. A Kiddie Rapist. A Low-IQ Thug. A Geopolitical Buffoon. A Homicidal Psycho. A Commie Tool. The illiterate son of a Klan hooligan. A Traitor. A Race Baiter and a Draft Dodger. In a word: An abomination.
Cambridge Dictionary defines race‑baiting as “the act of intentionally encouraging racism or anger about issues relating to race, often to get a political advantage.”
So, what'd we expect? I repeat . . . “Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite.”
Sure Thom, and the DNC spent millions on influencers to garner support for Kamala Harris from young people and AIPAC spent dark money on social media groups to demonize pro-Palestinian protestors and drum up support for genocide during the 2024 election. The issue is not who is trying to fool us, but why are we so easily fooled? Could it be those who are controlling the information that we see are themselves working in their own vested interests, or the interests of a particular industry or a political party that is beholden to industry? I find it fascinating that in this expose you fail to mention Bill Clinton, Robert Reich and NAFTA, one of the great con jobs perpetrated on organized labor and the American public. Reich helped Clinton to push through the cornerstone of neoliberalism and American deindustrialization, one of the prime sources of wealth extraction for the ruling class. The perpetual war and genocide supported by both parties is also a prime source of wealth extraction and reduction in social safety nets. The Affordable Care Act and Medicare Advantage have also forced us to shell out unfathomable sums to financial institutions for subsistence health care. So while Reagan was certainly the catalyst, Democrats have participated 50/50 in putting 70% of the population on the brink of bankruptcy and/or starvation.
That is why we have to tax wealth not just income. A revised version of the plan is below.
National Debt Elimination Wealth Tax
The Republican tax cuts (Reagan, Bush and Trump) all have been deficit financed. They have accelerated a redistribution of wealth from the lower 90% of the population to the top 1% and have created an even greater concentration at the top .01%, the billionaire class. This great wealth inequality has created a new Gilded Age. The richest man, Elon Musk, has 280,000 times more wealth than a middle class person who has $1 million in an IRA and home equity.
The current Republican solution is to take healthcare and food from the poorest Americans to continue giving tax cuts to the richest. I propose the opposite solution to this debt crisis. Since the rich gained the most from these deficits they should have to pay off the National debt.
I propose a National Debt Elimination Wealth Tax (NDEWT), which tax revenue can only be used to finance the deficit or purchase the National Debt. This would be a progressive tax structure. The first $10 million of wealth would be exempted. Between $10 to $100 Million would have a 2% rate, with a maximum tax of $1.8 Million.
$100 Million to-$1 Billion 3% rate, max tax $27 Million.
$1-$100 Billion 4% tax rate , max tax $4 Billion
Over $100 Billion 5% tax rate.
The tax would be paid by purchasing special National Debt bonds that would pay zero interest. The bonds will only be used to finance the deficit and once a surplus has been reached to retire the national debt. The bonds could not be cashed in or traded. The bonds are a place holder to insure the tax revenue is used for only deficit financing and debt elimination. This is like an inheritance tax but is paid throughout your life time once you go over $10 million in wealth. At the time of the bond holders death the bonds would be returned to the government to eliminate that amount of national debt. The bonds would not count as your wealth.
Wealth would be determined by stock value at end of year, property value would be appraised, insured or purchase price, whichever is most current. Everyone gets a year end statement which tells you the value of your stock holdings at the end of the year. No one who had less than $5 million in stock value or property would have to even file. No one who had less than $10 million would pay anything. Billionaires that have a trust to give all or most of their wealth away would not be taxed on that wealth since they are already helping the less fortunate. The National Debt should be paid off as a percentage of private wealth, not as currently calculated per capita.
All true. For over 40 years I suggested and offered to apply real-world message framing, marketing experience and real salesmanship to create a tight, sell-able Progressive Brand that can compete.
Whether by ACORN (now deceased) or various other movements I was, and still am, ignored, frowned upon, rebuffed. Apparently, the feeling has been that real-world applications learned in the marketplace that work somehow sullied the purity of the message.
But, where is the alternative counter to the Right Wing Echo Chamber? A handful of admittedly clever comics on TV... yes, OK. Then... nothing.
Apparently, the Carville, et. Al. "consultants" know better.
Review the story of the Democratic Leadership Council, including their darling, Bill Clinton, to understand Progressive failure.
"Who paid for that post?" Thanks, Thom. I'm going to use that response.
“This should be a national scandal. It should be the lead story on every progressive show, in every Democratic stump speech, in every union newsletter, and on every front page.” I.e., let’s not continue to ignore this in favor of “kitchen table issues”. Silence is tacit support, which will only serve to perpetuate and feed the disease. Knowledge is power; we could use some of both.
Robber Barons have bought the U.S. Government multiple times at the laborers expense. They take the money and file bankruptcy , leaving the labors to “bail out” the thrives. Wars are also a tactic to extract money. They steal our lives by insufficient pay and benefits. Social Security and retirement funds are a scam to benefit “robber barons”.
As I read this, the thought that comes to mind is. Just how stupid and gullible humans are, that they fall for this crap. But then again that is the very founding principle of advertising People actually believe the crap that the see on TV and now the internet. I bought a set of earphones, and now I can hardly open a web page without seeing an ad for earphones, like I would two sets, what a waste, even the algorithm is stupid.
We live in a world where the sociopath rules. If status and success is your goal, and you want to fill your pockets with silver, then you best be a sociopath and lack all empathy.
Do lions, tigers, bears, alligators have empathy, if they did they would have died out as a species.
Can you blame them for doing what they were born to do? Those of us who have little furry companions, which we love. turn out eyes from the fact that they are sociopathic killers.
Trump, Musk, Bezo's, Zuck, Sacks, Ellison, all of them are sociopathic predators, doing what comes naturally, and we are the prey.
Unlike four legged prey, two legged prey, actually embolden support, promote and sustain their predators.
Predators will be predators, a herd of Thompson gazelles can not do anything about a cheetah,
However humans can do something about their predators, they can starve and disempower them.
But do we? Or do we feed, sustain and empower hem.Then sit back and complain
Pogo had it right. I've seen the enemy and it is us.
I'm old enough to remember the promotion of statements like "Kill or be killed" "Eat or be eaten" that permeated the discourse of motivation when I was in college in the 70"s. While taking a very simple "look see" into ancient modern humans one finds death and destruction on massive scales comparable to present day animal farming methods that feed millions of people today. There were not that many people then. Look at "kite" traps mostly featured in the Levant areas of the Middle East. There are still remnants visible. It is surmised that these massive neolithic killing machines were not made for just feeding the populations but for processing living entities into tradeable goods - AKA MONEY. The natural massive herd numbers of many animal species were decimated - possibly being the motivation for the development of agriculture. And I believe agriculture has been discussed as a (possible) reason for wealth and class distinctions - those who have the crops have... those who don't have the crops don't have. It is hard wired in us.
Great I like the analogy. I know what kite traps are. I wonder how many people do.
A Black Friday Sale, only with kite traps the animals are driven in, modern kite traps are effective by luring the victim in.
Going technical. The kite traps would have killed more than a small population could have eaten before the meat decayed, so there must have been a sa;t trade or a salt deposit nearby (Apologies of going astray)
I do not think that agriculture is responsible for class distinctions, in regards of there always being a ruling class, "Gog the bad and his family and friends at the top" and the rest of the tribe, with Magog as the head of the clan"
What agriculture did was to create a niche of assistants for the leader, scribes who could keep account of the wheat and other foodstuffs, including animals, and security guards that could guard the storehouse, treasury., and a merchant class who traveled far and wide to sell off excess to other tribal leaders
The natural order of tribes is an overclass and an underclass. Commerce, trade, laid the foundation of a middle class..
But commerce has existed since the neolithic if not before, the copper in Otzi's axe (the 5,000 mummy found in the Alps) came from Tuscany, thus evidence of long distance trading.
A middle class is rather a new invention in human history. I found an ancestor listed in the Registry of the Freemen of York in the 1400's.This implies that there were serfs and freemen. My ancestor was a wool dyer.
Freemen were craftsmen, carpenters, wool dyers, potters,tinkers, tailors. skinners, smithies, specialists
There were a series of plagues, five of them, that swept England, after 1400, that did away with serfdom, they created a labor shortage, that enabled the serf to travel and sell his labor.
That and the reforms (tax laws) of Henry VII, created a middle class, to even where a butchers son, could go to university and become an advisor to his son (Thomas Cromwell and his son Henry VIII)
I am not sure about the idea that lions, tigers, etc. are sociopathic predators. Wildlife exists in a natural framework that balances prey and predator. When humans disrupt that balance like killing all the wolves, allowing deer herds to expand beyond the carrying capacity of their environment, the herds starve. The wolves are needed to keep the herd healthy and in balance.
You are correct, sociopath is a term that can only be applied to humans. But the fact is that they kill with out remorse or conscience,without a second thought, the same as sociopaths.
And I know all about the evolutionary and ecological benefits behind predation, that was and is not the subject.
Anthropomorphizing animals, which is what I did to make a point, sociopath is predation without remorse or concern, or the observation of such.
Even spaced out over 50 years, extracting $79 trillion from the worker/consumer base of the economy while crippling the necessary regulation of this same economy will cause this system to collapse. Capitalism is eating itself, and no amount of purchased propaganda will keep this from happening.
One thing I have mentioned several times before is that, psychologically, rage is an effective tool to shut down critical reasoning. When I tell you that immigrants on your block are so weird that they are eating neighborhood pets, your disgust at the very thought switches your brain to the "tell-me-more" mode. That is how Trump and his ilk promoted the notion that hating people different from oneself is not only acceptable, but it is Christian and patriotic.
Trump is following in the footprints of other fascist failures like Mussolini and Hitler, as their incompetent and reckless governing is deteriorating most voters' quality of life, and that is undermining their belief in the lies they embraced as "alternative" facts.
The global plutocracy, following the lead of Putin, has spent billions making sure that Americans are ignorant, fearful, and angry.
Thank you for this. Folks need to understand this as we're at a powerful moment of inflection. It was the basis for an article that I published yesterday titled "The Opening." It's focused not just on this but also on what we can all do to open the conversation about how this is a shared experience so that we can build our coalition. "You know that the Epstein files didn’t reveal a scandal — they revealed a class that bought impunity with money and lawyers and silence.
You know all of this. And you are tired of watching people you love being handed a different explanation for the same pain — and believing it. You’ve watched someone one medical bill away from bankruptcy argue against the people trying to fix that. You’ve watched a conversation about insulin costs somehow end up being about Obama. You’ve heard the hollow deflections, the practiced redirects, the blame that always — somehow — lands anywhere but where it belongs.
That helplessness is not a personal failure. It is the intended outcome. The people profiting from the misdirection need you exhausted and isolated, convinced the gap is too wide to cross. They need you to believe the other side is too far gone to reach. It is the only way the con keeps working." https://danismart.substack.com/p/the-opening
Scary!
To think how the internet and the mass media are used to manipulate the general population so that their misery can be blamed on one another is intolerable.
And now adding AI into the mix - we are experiencing George Orwell's "1984".
And with Trump's reign - we are experiencing George Orwell's "Animal Farm".
Yup. It’s all here. Thanks for summarizing it so well, Thom.
Thanks Thom - hard to read but a must read.
“Every nation gets the government it deserves.” — Joseph de Maistre, 1811
Devoid of intelligence, wisdom, justice, or humanity, 77.3 million fools elected : A thief. A Kiddie Rapist. A Low-IQ Thug. A Geopolitical Buffoon. A Homicidal Psycho. A Commie Tool. The illiterate son of a Klan hooligan. A Traitor. A Race Baiter and a Draft Dodger. In a word: An abomination.
Cambridge Dictionary defines race‑baiting as “the act of intentionally encouraging racism or anger about issues relating to race, often to get a political advantage.”
So, what'd we expect? I repeat . . . “Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite.”
#Vote #Draft Barron
Sure Thom, and the DNC spent millions on influencers to garner support for Kamala Harris from young people and AIPAC spent dark money on social media groups to demonize pro-Palestinian protestors and drum up support for genocide during the 2024 election. The issue is not who is trying to fool us, but why are we so easily fooled? Could it be those who are controlling the information that we see are themselves working in their own vested interests, or the interests of a particular industry or a political party that is beholden to industry? I find it fascinating that in this expose you fail to mention Bill Clinton, Robert Reich and NAFTA, one of the great con jobs perpetrated on organized labor and the American public. Reich helped Clinton to push through the cornerstone of neoliberalism and American deindustrialization, one of the prime sources of wealth extraction for the ruling class. The perpetual war and genocide supported by both parties is also a prime source of wealth extraction and reduction in social safety nets. The Affordable Care Act and Medicare Advantage have also forced us to shell out unfathomable sums to financial institutions for subsistence health care. So while Reagan was certainly the catalyst, Democrats have participated 50/50 in putting 70% of the population on the brink of bankruptcy and/or starvation.
That is why we have to tax wealth not just income. A revised version of the plan is below.
National Debt Elimination Wealth Tax
The Republican tax cuts (Reagan, Bush and Trump) all have been deficit financed. They have accelerated a redistribution of wealth from the lower 90% of the population to the top 1% and have created an even greater concentration at the top .01%, the billionaire class. This great wealth inequality has created a new Gilded Age. The richest man, Elon Musk, has 280,000 times more wealth than a middle class person who has $1 million in an IRA and home equity.
The current Republican solution is to take healthcare and food from the poorest Americans to continue giving tax cuts to the richest. I propose the opposite solution to this debt crisis. Since the rich gained the most from these deficits they should have to pay off the National debt.
I propose a National Debt Elimination Wealth Tax (NDEWT), which tax revenue can only be used to finance the deficit or purchase the National Debt. This would be a progressive tax structure. The first $10 million of wealth would be exempted. Between $10 to $100 Million would have a 2% rate, with a maximum tax of $1.8 Million.
$100 Million to-$1 Billion 3% rate, max tax $27 Million.
$1-$100 Billion 4% tax rate , max tax $4 Billion
Over $100 Billion 5% tax rate.
The tax would be paid by purchasing special National Debt bonds that would pay zero interest. The bonds will only be used to finance the deficit and once a surplus has been reached to retire the national debt. The bonds could not be cashed in or traded. The bonds are a place holder to insure the tax revenue is used for only deficit financing and debt elimination. This is like an inheritance tax but is paid throughout your life time once you go over $10 million in wealth. At the time of the bond holders death the bonds would be returned to the government to eliminate that amount of national debt. The bonds would not count as your wealth.
Wealth would be determined by stock value at end of year, property value would be appraised, insured or purchase price, whichever is most current. Everyone gets a year end statement which tells you the value of your stock holdings at the end of the year. No one who had less than $5 million in stock value or property would have to even file. No one who had less than $10 million would pay anything. Billionaires that have a trust to give all or most of their wealth away would not be taxed on that wealth since they are already helping the less fortunate. The National Debt should be paid off as a percentage of private wealth, not as currently calculated per capita.
All true. For over 40 years I suggested and offered to apply real-world message framing, marketing experience and real salesmanship to create a tight, sell-able Progressive Brand that can compete.
Whether by ACORN (now deceased) or various other movements I was, and still am, ignored, frowned upon, rebuffed. Apparently, the feeling has been that real-world applications learned in the marketplace that work somehow sullied the purity of the message.
But, where is the alternative counter to the Right Wing Echo Chamber? A handful of admittedly clever comics on TV... yes, OK. Then... nothing.
Apparently, the Carville, et. Al. "consultants" know better.
Review the story of the Democratic Leadership Council, including their darling, Bill Clinton, to understand Progressive failure.
DL