As a forever enthusiast of Hartmann's work I need to make one thing clear: this is the most consequential piece I've read.
More specifically, naming the enemy is job number one for all of us. And who exactly is this enemy? Not so much the obvious front personalities like Trump and his ever devolving cabinet picks - no - the enemy are those mostly obscure and shadowy figures and institutions that make it all possible. Think Heritage, Koch, Mercer, Freedomworks, Federalist Society, ALEC, AIPAC, Harlan Crowe, Leonard Leo, The Family, Focus on the Family, and on and on and on.
Learn them, name them, share them. Make the name of the enemy a household name. Until then, we're chasing ghosts.
Maybe illustrations or photos or people working with a leech on their face or neck symbolizing the person's labor value being sucked up by those who earn money while they sleep. I'm sure we can think of something disgusting and symbolic to fight against.
Gloria, we are so screwed. Trump is placing a Russian asset, Tulsi Gabbard, in charge of the Department of National Intelligence, the NSA works for the DNI, the DoD is dependent on the DNI and Putin has his own private line, it works both ways, to the DNI.
Biden could, in the name of national security, if he had any balls, use his executive powers and the immunity that SCOTUS gave him to save us., but that is a forlorn hope. He will go down in history alongside Neville Chamberlain, but our history will memoralize him as a stepping stone to Donald "the great"
Except for Mercer, Koch, Crowe the rest are the recipients of largess, Trace the financiers of these organizations back to their source and you find the cabal that runs the country., and their agenda. Which is simply domination/control of the resources and energy of this country.the most efficient at social control is a church state. Attila the Hun and the Witch doctor.
The relation ship is interdependent, each relies on the other for validation and control, but it is also fraught with tension and sub rosa mistrust and hostility.
One problem with that, Jon: you are suggesting that the great unwashed (the "working class") educate ourselves as to the specific identity of these offending individuals and organizations DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT in an era when the average American can't even name the three branches of government and reads at a sixth grade level if not being totally illuterate. Have you ever seen the exams required to pass middle school back in FDR's time? I doubt most college freshmen today could pass one of those. What's been sorely overlooked here is that the denizens of Thom's forum do not come anywhere close to representing the state of the public at large. As much as I value the quality of Thom's writing and the intelligent commentary it evokes from his readers, this is essentially an echo chamber. Without a relatively well educated and concerned populace, standing here shouting that we must identify the enemy and CRUSH THE BASTARDS is futile if 90% of the gross American public has become do dumbed down that they can barely pry their dead asses out of the couch to getch another beer during Monday Night Football. And I mean them no disrespect; WE, the readers here have collectively allowed this sad situation to develop over the past 60 years, and the real question is: how do you fix THAT!
Actually the Democrat Wilson followed Taft. He did start the Federal Reserve but also raised taxes and controlled the economy as much as possible for the World War I effort. And I would say there were additional issues causing the Depression, including Germany's bankruptcy (it couldn't borrow to pay its terrible war repatriations), a lack of controls on the stock market (a situation we are in again) and a US tariff so high it almost stopped world trade.
But none of this affects your basic argument, which I agree with. Now the question is, with wealthy massive corporations controlling much of the media, with Citizens United squashing or at least overwhelming almost any serious political reformer (notice how Sanders could never get a national platform that many people heard) and with a country fragmented and distracted in so many ways, how do we pull together and get this message out? FDR and Goebbels both knew how to use the more limited mass media of their times--radio and movies. And perhaps people in general were more trusting of government to finally do the right thing, had a slower, quieter world where they had time to think about these things, and were desperate enough to take radical solutions but within the framework of the Constitution. Today I'm not sure any of those factors are true.
We have to try, with perhaps the first step being an overthrow of the entrenched interests who keep the Democratic Party almost like a middle of the road business. But any such action would lead to the GOP claiming it is becoming “more radical”. And that might scare off more people. You know how Trump simplistically called Harris a “Communist.” Ridiculous, but maybe he even believed it. Change from the bottom up is needed, but will the national system be able to reform itself? Perhaps a real wiping of the board is required, with the party turning into a sort of mild socialist-green organization, but I’m not sure that is viable either. Harris had a message and not enough people listened. Would they want to hear something really different? But maybe an angry, combative approach is as you say the best, maybe only, path forward.
It wasn't us. It was them. Psyops. The spread in the blue wall states is probably about 2%.
But for psyops, we wudda won bigly. THEY target visceral, not rational people. Goes directly to hatred of "the other." No rational person would vote for a criminal, a grifter, would vote against their own economic or physical health.
Many say that they voted ... MBV votes were ditched. Realtively easy to do. Others say the codes to the voting machines were hacked, votes switched. No prrof of this ...yet. Need probable cause to investigate.
"Whose ballots? If you’re Black, Hispanic or Asian-American, the chance you were shunted to one of these provisional ballots is 300% higher than if you’re white."
"How many Black ballots were thrown in the electoral dumpster?"
"As a former professor of statistics, I know there’s still a lot of sleuthing in the numbers I have to do, but I can tell you this: The number of rejected provisional ballots, the number of voters wrongly purged from the rolls, the number of ballots “spoiled” and not counted, has unquestionably skyrocketed."
Those votes in swing states may have been enough to change the outcome. Is Tulsi Gabbard, named to control national security, an agent or just a willing idiot for Putin? Is this a payoff to Putin for "fixing" the election?
About 15 million didn't show up. It's reasonable to expect some people were scared shitless. For months Russian propganda predicted violence on election day. In some places ballots were burned. My wife worked the polls during early voting. Aqui mismo, Proud Boys showed up. Polling places closed in Democratic areas due to Russian fake bomb threats. In some places ballots were burned. Mailboxes and collection boxes destroyed.
I persaonally think it's the amygdala factor. Many women voted for abortion and for Trump. Here 57% forted for abortion. Trump got 56.1%.
Has anyone but me noticed the absence of our friend Boris (Dr Barry) since Putin, I mean Trump won the election.
And especially now that Putin's personal asset, Tulsi Gabbard is going to be the Director of National Intelligence The gig is up, game set and over, poor Ukraians, Poor Lithuanians, Poor Baltic states, poor NATO.
Those in the know will be learning the Cyrillic alphabet and learning Russian. Russia will not take over the U.S., too big, too much to bite off, but if you want to survive and get ahead in post Democratic America, it will help to have Russian as a second language, Mandarin on the West Coast, The U.S. is too big a bone for one nation to chew on
I see it now the Sino-Russian co prosperity sphere.
50 years ago I spoke pidgeon Vienamese/Hmong/petit pous Frances. In the late 80s I held boucoups hearings for Hmong and others, when I was in Fresno. One year at a Veterans' Day parade in DC I gave a little speech in pidgeon and marched with the Hmong/Vietnamese. I speak fluent pho.
I've been in the same advanced Spanish lit class for many years via zoom, but U of Miami.
For the westerner Vietnamese is the most frustrating language to speak, or understand, the vowels have so many diacritics/
For instance the word moi, sounds to our ears as moi, even moui as in ten, VN pronounciation as in ba mười ba literally 3 10 3 or 33. Salt, mosquito, to our ears they all sound the same.
First time I ordered Phở in a "Howard Johnson's" I asked for salt, and said mosquito, they all laughed and then were aghast that I asked for salt after lacing it with soy sauce and nước mắm (garam as the Romans called it)
Never did work with hmong, or montegnards as the French called them, người miền núi as the Vietnamese called them.
I worked with the CIA advisors and the Khmer Serat (Free Cambodes), but not the hmong. I know this they were not a homogenous culture or language, different regions, even villages had their own dialect even languages.
I did visit a village near Minth Thanh during Operation Junction City.
My halting knowledge saved my life in Jan 67, sitting in a restaurant in Dalat in the central highlands, where the VN AF Academy is located, the only people in it were myself and four dudes on the other side, plotting something that was to happen later. I foolishly stared, and one caught my eyes, came over to me and asked if I was military police (I was in civvies and worse a mohair sweater).
I had heard one of them say "he understands us, the other said, wait I will check him out.
The owner of the bar in Dalat, had been a soldier of the emperor, but didn't leave,nor was he punished or killed, when the Empire withdrew, An interesting dude spoke 4 or 5 languages.
I knew a mama san or two who had been a prostitute when the French occupied the country.One of them had a thing for Freddie, his name is on the wall, always gave him free beer, but he never bedded her.
Your comment describes my fears about the election. HCR said much the same in last nights LFAA - Black vote was down because of voter suppression. Also down ballot Blue but voted for Trump? Elonia Musk said only one line of code needed changing. There needs to be a forensic manual recount of presidential votes. The election was very close. It didnt take many votes in some states to swing the electora votes.
This article hits home with me in that I actually thought having Cheney and Adam Kinzinger as well as the Republican mayor of Mesa ( and other Republicans statements) good messaging reinforcing tRump’s unfitness but maybe not. It was ineffective against the massive brainwashing and sanewashing by Faux Noise and other right wing sites that incessantly poured out their hate rhetoric against Biden, Harris/Waltz. People I know and are close to me believe tRump is magically going to fix the economy and thump on all those POC/immigrants who they blame for “taking stuff from us”. I don’t think it’s fixable. These willfully ignorant bigots are all around us. They don’t understand how government or national finances work and believe simplistic BS solutions that tRump spouts continually. They have been indoctrinated to ignore facts and reality as well as blame the “other “ for grocery prices, immigration issues and crime which the useless MSM harps on every day. I am resigned to having these people in my life because some are family, friends and acquaintances in daily life. I have explained to those around me to fact check, take everything that tRump spouts as lying or exaggeration and also explained tariffs as they really are not what tRump proposes as the miracle fix. Hopefully some reality checks get through but I think Americans are headed for massive pain. And it annoys the Helll out of me that it’s always the Democrats who take blame for everything and not the “no nothing jackass “ Republicans who will always side with the 1% and not the working class.
The main problem I have with the theseis is that we have some allies....
Second, ironically people like Thom could be considered to be in the class he's attacking, Virtually every "successful" author, artist etc. regardless, can be considered to be upper class. Reminds me of Dr, Zhivago.
Third, the main problem I have with the "other" guys is racism, the hatred of "the other." When I win the lottery, don't confuse me with the Rockefellers or the Mellons. Likewise I have anomosity to Nazis, whether or not they are working class. Fuck 'em.
Most of the people who consider themselves to be Brahmins probably deserve recrimination. But FDR, JKK fit into the category and they are heroes.
The way that the Democrats have dragged their feet and avoided doing anything against the upper classes makes me, and probably many others, feel like they are in the billionaire’s pockets.
It is not a feeling but a fact, Choose the Congress critter and check Opensecrets.org
And guess what happens to a congress critter that retires or resigns. They get employed by a corporation, most often as a lobbyist, but if they headed a committeee (and important one for business) they might wind up an executive, also true , especially true of Colonels and Generals.
Or if the corporation has something that they want to hawk to the miliary, they will induce someone to retire early and head up a sales team.
These morbidly wealthy people are the predator class. They subjugate workers with inadequate wages and draconian working conditions and threaten to fire those who dissent. All this while owning multiple extravagant dwellings, yachts and other trappings of obscene wealth. I left the corporate world in the mid 1980's because of the predatory treatment of women with lower wage scales and unreasonable working conditions.
About where I am Tom. Thank you....We fought the Civil War to abolish the classification of some people as property enshrined in the original Constitution. The new version of that self-serving conceit is that corporations are people and money is free speech, concepts now enshrined in Supreme Court decisions as tactics in the plutocratic revolution started under Regan, now entering its violent phase under Trump, as all revolutions do.
I understand that we need to declare a class war. The best term that I can think of that describes the morbidly rich and what they are doing to the country is "blood sucking leeches" who are sucking the life blood out the body of our country and won't stop until until they have all we have. Anybody who has gone fishing has experienced the horror of having leeches stuck to their skin and sucking blood.
How about a campaign to stop the "blood sucking leeches?" Let's brain storm Thom's idea. Somebody working for the wealthy to distract us came up with a "war on terror." We can do better.
Yes, let's stop screwing around with peripheral issues and get right to the source: The looting and pillaging of the working class over the last 50 years! It all goes back to there. Sure, there are the political manifestations as the billionaire class uses the wealth it has robbed from the working class to buy off the Republican Party to do its political bidding. But ultimately the issue is that they shouldn't have that money in the first place. That's the money I should be using to buy a better car! And this approach is not a matter of being crafty in our approach. It is simply about telling the truth.
For those that hate this neo con. Consider his words, no the source
What a 24 hours! The lightest of lightweights, Pete Hegseth, is nominated for secretary of defense. A leading Assad and Putin apologist, Tulsi Gabbard, is announced as director of national intelligence. The poster child of moral degradation, Matt Gaetz, is selected for attorney general.
If you’re surprised, you’re a dupe. President Trump is going to do in his second term what he said he’d do on the campaign trail, and what he tried fitfully to do in his first term. He’s going to turn the federal government into an instrument of MAGA policy and grievance. He’s going to pursue retribution against enemies. He’s going to destroy what remains of the older norms that guide the operations of the government, and of the institutional checks that constrain the abuse of power.
He told us this was his plan. The only surprise is how quickly he’s acting on it
For those that actually believe that this is a glitch in the matrix and the ship of state will be righted in 2028 when Trumpism fails.
Then you have amnesia. He told you what he is going to do Kevin Roberts gave him the playbook/instruction manual and told us that this was a second revolution and that it will be bloodless(for some) if the left allows it to be.
There is no coming back from a revolution.
The press is trying to normalize everything to keep the viewer from hanging by hope, their jobs, their income, their social status depends on it, as do many of their lives as Trump exacts his promised revenge.
Trump is a liar, but there is one thing he doesn't lie about, his thirst for power, money and revenge.
Some of us have a choice,kneel on the hassock and pledge fealty., other of us can't even do that.
Many are already kneeling. Over on Robert Reich's substack more than one poster has said "Trump won, now give him a chance".
What weapon, what army have I to fight with, when my neighbor sides with the Stazi or is the Stazi?
How do I organize a resistance when Tulsi Gabbard is head of the Department of National Intelligence, and Gaetz is head of DOJ.
The resistance is going to have to follow the OBL model, go analog, post em notes, paper and pin, word of mouth stay off the phone and the internet.
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote “Legislators in Lyndon Johnson’s Washington did not vacate the capital every weekend to raise money. They played poker together, they drank together, their families knew one another.” Today, election money is an exponentially more important matter thanks to wealth being concentrated at the top so that the ultra-rich can pay for relentless TV ads and creative misinformation on social networks. I am all for class warfare but Democrats must have money to pay for ads. How to get it?
And if Democrats should get the money, it will likely pay for them to heed LBJ's 1956 advice to avoid "big issues and big fights with the Republicans" and to offer the people the 2024 version of LBJ's "a little medical care, a rug on the floor, a picture on the wall, a little music in the house, and a place to take Molly and the grandchildren when [they retire]."
The Dems were pretty much shoulder to shoulder with the GOP on the neoliberal band wagon beginning (I’m sorry to say) with Jimmy Carter. He was the first deregulatory (trucking iirc) and a complete deficit hawk —- he instituted PayGo —- the idiotic rule that every bit of legislation had to be evaluated in terms of its impact on the deficit.
Deficit Hawk Syndrome inevitably leads to austerity. And austerity is the hot house of income inequality. Income inequality breeds mistrust, criminality, bigotry & all manner of social ills (teen pregnancy, HS drop outs, drug abuse, punitive justice systems, even cardio vascular disease (see Spirit Level, Wilkerson & Pickett)
The political & theoretical antidote to the horse poop that is neoliberalism is the full on rejection of balanced budget buggery.
Why? Bc if budgets must be balanced & taxes can’t be raised, then all manner of social spending gets cut. Ergo Austerity.
Getting beyond balanced budget nonsense requires Modern Monetary Theory, MMT. Two small contributions by moi posted below. Happy to answer questions.
I must be missing something. The article is allegedly about "waging war" but there is nothing in it that an average American like myself can see, about how to do that.
This is what I see in this article: "And defeat them he did (even in the face of an assassination attempt); by the end of his presidency, American oligarchs had gone back to doing business and getting rich, largely avoiding politics and keeping their noses clean."
WHAT? What did he do? HOW did he defeat them? I think you must've left out a paragraph or two.
Later, it says, - "It’s far past time to take the gloves off and start punching.
Democrats have become so rusty, so wary of class warfare, that they haven’t even identified a term or metaphor to describe the rightwing billionaires for whom the GOP fronts."
SO, is that the secret? The way to win back control of our government? By coming up with a "metaphor" for rightwing billionaires? WHAT? TELL ME I"M MISSING SOMETHING REALLY IMPORTANT HERE!! I call them f'ing jerks and assholes, thieves and liars but I don't think they really care about my name calling.
Well-written, comprehensive, and all true, historically.
So who in the Democratic Party, on a national level, today, is listening and will take the lead, visibly?
Who will lead the charge?
Do we know who the emerging leaders are -- if they even exist?
Can we talk to them, discuss and work together without the deadly "focus" group events orchestrated by high-priced consultants that parse American people into categories?
Sorry I cut off my closing sentence but it is evident we have work to do to move forward in this country obviously , as racism and misogyny rule our nation.
As a forever enthusiast of Hartmann's work I need to make one thing clear: this is the most consequential piece I've read.
More specifically, naming the enemy is job number one for all of us. And who exactly is this enemy? Not so much the obvious front personalities like Trump and his ever devolving cabinet picks - no - the enemy are those mostly obscure and shadowy figures and institutions that make it all possible. Think Heritage, Koch, Mercer, Freedomworks, Federalist Society, ALEC, AIPAC, Harlan Crowe, Leonard Leo, The Family, Focus on the Family, and on and on and on.
Learn them, name them, share them. Make the name of the enemy a household name. Until then, we're chasing ghosts.
Maybe illustrations or photos or people working with a leech on their face or neck symbolizing the person's labor value being sucked up by those who earn money while they sleep. I'm sure we can think of something disgusting and symbolic to fight against.
Gloria, we are so screwed. Trump is placing a Russian asset, Tulsi Gabbard, in charge of the Department of National Intelligence, the NSA works for the DNI, the DoD is dependent on the DNI and Putin has his own private line, it works both ways, to the DNI.
Biden could, in the name of national security, if he had any balls, use his executive powers and the immunity that SCOTUS gave him to save us., but that is a forlorn hope. He will go down in history alongside Neville Chamberlain, but our history will memoralize him as a stepping stone to Donald "the great"
Except for Mercer, Koch, Crowe the rest are the recipients of largess, Trace the financiers of these organizations back to their source and you find the cabal that runs the country., and their agenda. Which is simply domination/control of the resources and energy of this country.the most efficient at social control is a church state. Attila the Hun and the Witch doctor.
The relation ship is interdependent, each relies on the other for validation and control, but it is also fraught with tension and sub rosa mistrust and hostility.
One problem with that, Jon: you are suggesting that the great unwashed (the "working class") educate ourselves as to the specific identity of these offending individuals and organizations DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT in an era when the average American can't even name the three branches of government and reads at a sixth grade level if not being totally illuterate. Have you ever seen the exams required to pass middle school back in FDR's time? I doubt most college freshmen today could pass one of those. What's been sorely overlooked here is that the denizens of Thom's forum do not come anywhere close to representing the state of the public at large. As much as I value the quality of Thom's writing and the intelligent commentary it evokes from his readers, this is essentially an echo chamber. Without a relatively well educated and concerned populace, standing here shouting that we must identify the enemy and CRUSH THE BASTARDS is futile if 90% of the gross American public has become do dumbed down that they can barely pry their dead asses out of the couch to getch another beer during Monday Night Football. And I mean them no disrespect; WE, the readers here have collectively allowed this sad situation to develop over the past 60 years, and the real question is: how do you fix THAT!
And why can I no longer edit out my typos on substack? I apologize, folks.
Actually the Democrat Wilson followed Taft. He did start the Federal Reserve but also raised taxes and controlled the economy as much as possible for the World War I effort. And I would say there were additional issues causing the Depression, including Germany's bankruptcy (it couldn't borrow to pay its terrible war repatriations), a lack of controls on the stock market (a situation we are in again) and a US tariff so high it almost stopped world trade.
But none of this affects your basic argument, which I agree with. Now the question is, with wealthy massive corporations controlling much of the media, with Citizens United squashing or at least overwhelming almost any serious political reformer (notice how Sanders could never get a national platform that many people heard) and with a country fragmented and distracted in so many ways, how do we pull together and get this message out? FDR and Goebbels both knew how to use the more limited mass media of their times--radio and movies. And perhaps people in general were more trusting of government to finally do the right thing, had a slower, quieter world where they had time to think about these things, and were desperate enough to take radical solutions but within the framework of the Constitution. Today I'm not sure any of those factors are true.
We have to try, with perhaps the first step being an overthrow of the entrenched interests who keep the Democratic Party almost like a middle of the road business. But any such action would lead to the GOP claiming it is becoming “more radical”. And that might scare off more people. You know how Trump simplistically called Harris a “Communist.” Ridiculous, but maybe he even believed it. Change from the bottom up is needed, but will the national system be able to reform itself? Perhaps a real wiping of the board is required, with the party turning into a sort of mild socialist-green organization, but I’m not sure that is viable either. Harris had a message and not enough people listened. Would they want to hear something really different? But maybe an angry, combative approach is as you say the best, maybe only, path forward.
It wasn't us. It was them. Psyops. The spread in the blue wall states is probably about 2%.
But for psyops, we wudda won bigly. THEY target visceral, not rational people. Goes directly to hatred of "the other." No rational person would vote for a criminal, a grifter, would vote against their own economic or physical health.
Many say that they voted ... MBV votes were ditched. Realtively easy to do. Others say the codes to the voting machines were hacked, votes switched. No prrof of this ...yet. Need probable cause to investigate.
According to Greg Palast, 2.7 million provisional ballots were tossed. https://www.gregpalast.com/
"Whose ballots? If you’re Black, Hispanic or Asian-American, the chance you were shunted to one of these provisional ballots is 300% higher than if you’re white."
"How many Black ballots were thrown in the electoral dumpster?"
"As a former professor of statistics, I know there’s still a lot of sleuthing in the numbers I have to do, but I can tell you this: The number of rejected provisional ballots, the number of voters wrongly purged from the rolls, the number of ballots “spoiled” and not counted, has unquestionably skyrocketed."
Those votes in swing states may have been enough to change the outcome. Is Tulsi Gabbard, named to control national security, an agent or just a willing idiot for Putin? Is this a payoff to Putin for "fixing" the election?
About 15 million didn't show up. It's reasonable to expect some people were scared shitless. For months Russian propganda predicted violence on election day. In some places ballots were burned. My wife worked the polls during early voting. Aqui mismo, Proud Boys showed up. Polling places closed in Democratic areas due to Russian fake bomb threats. In some places ballots were burned. Mailboxes and collection boxes destroyed.
I persaonally think it's the amygdala factor. Many women voted for abortion and for Trump. Here 57% forted for abortion. Trump got 56.1%.
Has anyone but me noticed the absence of our friend Boris (Dr Barry) since Putin, I mean Trump won the election.
And especially now that Putin's personal asset, Tulsi Gabbard is going to be the Director of National Intelligence The gig is up, game set and over, poor Ukraians, Poor Lithuanians, Poor Baltic states, poor NATO.
Those in the know will be learning the Cyrillic alphabet and learning Russian. Russia will not take over the U.S., too big, too much to bite off, but if you want to survive and get ahead in post Democratic America, it will help to have Russian as a second language, Mandarin on the West Coast, The U.S. is too big a bone for one nation to chew on
I see it now the Sino-Russian co prosperity sphere.
My wife is registering for the class.
If I didn't have one foot in the grave I would also, Daniel Russia is easier than Vietnamese and I learned enough in one year to save my life
50 years ago I spoke pidgeon Vienamese/Hmong/petit pous Frances. In the late 80s I held boucoups hearings for Hmong and others, when I was in Fresno. One year at a Veterans' Day parade in DC I gave a little speech in pidgeon and marched with the Hmong/Vietnamese. I speak fluent pho.
I've been in the same advanced Spanish lit class for many years via zoom, but U of Miami.
For the westerner Vietnamese is the most frustrating language to speak, or understand, the vowels have so many diacritics/
For instance the word moi, sounds to our ears as moi, even moui as in ten, VN pronounciation as in ba mười ba literally 3 10 3 or 33. Salt, mosquito, to our ears they all sound the same.
First time I ordered Phở in a "Howard Johnson's" I asked for salt, and said mosquito, they all laughed and then were aghast that I asked for salt after lacing it with soy sauce and nước mắm (garam as the Romans called it)
Never did work with hmong, or montegnards as the French called them, người miền núi as the Vietnamese called them.
I worked with the CIA advisors and the Khmer Serat (Free Cambodes), but not the hmong. I know this they were not a homogenous culture or language, different regions, even villages had their own dialect even languages.
I did visit a village near Minth Thanh during Operation Junction City.
My halting knowledge saved my life in Jan 67, sitting in a restaurant in Dalat in the central highlands, where the VN AF Academy is located, the only people in it were myself and four dudes on the other side, plotting something that was to happen later. I foolishly stared, and one caught my eyes, came over to me and asked if I was military police (I was in civvies and worse a mohair sweater).
I had heard one of them say "he understands us, the other said, wait I will check him out.
The owner of the bar in Dalat, had been a soldier of the emperor, but didn't leave,nor was he punished or killed, when the Empire withdrew, An interesting dude spoke 4 or 5 languages.
I knew a mama san or two who had been a prostitute when the French occupied the country.One of them had a thing for Freddie, his name is on the wall, always gave him free beer, but he never bedded her.
Your comment describes my fears about the election. HCR said much the same in last nights LFAA - Black vote was down because of voter suppression. Also down ballot Blue but voted for Trump? Elonia Musk said only one line of code needed changing. There needs to be a forensic manual recount of presidential votes. The election was very close. It didnt take many votes in some states to swing the electora votes.
At least ‘delay’ .
A recount won't change a thing. Harris couldn't wait to concede. She sanctified Trump, even before all votes were counted.
Granted concessions aren't legal, but they might as well be.
I wish I had more time. Kamala might have won if she said"Trump needs to go to prison, and I'm gonna put him there".
This article hits home with me in that I actually thought having Cheney and Adam Kinzinger as well as the Republican mayor of Mesa ( and other Republicans statements) good messaging reinforcing tRump’s unfitness but maybe not. It was ineffective against the massive brainwashing and sanewashing by Faux Noise and other right wing sites that incessantly poured out their hate rhetoric against Biden, Harris/Waltz. People I know and are close to me believe tRump is magically going to fix the economy and thump on all those POC/immigrants who they blame for “taking stuff from us”. I don’t think it’s fixable. These willfully ignorant bigots are all around us. They don’t understand how government or national finances work and believe simplistic BS solutions that tRump spouts continually. They have been indoctrinated to ignore facts and reality as well as blame the “other “ for grocery prices, immigration issues and crime which the useless MSM harps on every day. I am resigned to having these people in my life because some are family, friends and acquaintances in daily life. I have explained to those around me to fact check, take everything that tRump spouts as lying or exaggeration and also explained tariffs as they really are not what tRump proposes as the miracle fix. Hopefully some reality checks get through but I think Americans are headed for massive pain. And it annoys the Helll out of me that it’s always the Democrats who take blame for everything and not the “no nothing jackass “ Republicans who will always side with the 1% and not the working class.
The main problem I have with the theseis is that we have some allies....
Second, ironically people like Thom could be considered to be in the class he's attacking, Virtually every "successful" author, artist etc. regardless, can be considered to be upper class. Reminds me of Dr, Zhivago.
Third, the main problem I have with the "other" guys is racism, the hatred of "the other." When I win the lottery, don't confuse me with the Rockefellers or the Mellons. Likewise I have anomosity to Nazis, whether or not they are working class. Fuck 'em.
Most of the people who consider themselves to be Brahmins probably deserve recrimination. But FDR, JKK fit into the category and they are heroes.
The way that the Democrats have dragged their feet and avoided doing anything against the upper classes makes me, and probably many others, feel like they are in the billionaire’s pockets.
It is not a feeling but a fact, Choose the Congress critter and check Opensecrets.org
And guess what happens to a congress critter that retires or resigns. They get employed by a corporation, most often as a lobbyist, but if they headed a committeee (and important one for business) they might wind up an executive, also true , especially true of Colonels and Generals.
Or if the corporation has something that they want to hawk to the miliary, they will induce someone to retire early and head up a sales team.
They are., Paul.
Now is the time to drag feet, slow and stop the majorities are also fragmented some have scruples. It’s a ray of hope.
These morbidly wealthy people are the predator class. They subjugate workers with inadequate wages and draconian working conditions and threaten to fire those who dissent. All this while owning multiple extravagant dwellings, yachts and other trappings of obscene wealth. I left the corporate world in the mid 1980's because of the predatory treatment of women with lower wage scales and unreasonable working conditions.
About where I am Tom. Thank you....We fought the Civil War to abolish the classification of some people as property enshrined in the original Constitution. The new version of that self-serving conceit is that corporations are people and money is free speech, concepts now enshrined in Supreme Court decisions as tactics in the plutocratic revolution started under Regan, now entering its violent phase under Trump, as all revolutions do.
I understand that we need to declare a class war. The best term that I can think of that describes the morbidly rich and what they are doing to the country is "blood sucking leeches" who are sucking the life blood out the body of our country and won't stop until until they have all we have. Anybody who has gone fishing has experienced the horror of having leeches stuck to their skin and sucking blood.
How about a campaign to stop the "blood sucking leeches?" Let's brain storm Thom's idea. Somebody working for the wealthy to distract us came up with a "war on terror." We can do better.
Yes, let's stop screwing around with peripheral issues and get right to the source: The looting and pillaging of the working class over the last 50 years! It all goes back to there. Sure, there are the political manifestations as the billionaire class uses the wealth it has robbed from the working class to buy off the Republican Party to do its political bidding. But ultimately the issue is that they shouldn't have that money in the first place. That's the money I should be using to buy a better car! And this approach is not a matter of being crafty in our approach. It is simply about telling the truth.
There is no stopping it Thom. It is a fait acompli.
Quoting from WilliamKristol in todays https://politicalwire.com/2024/11/14/those-poor-poor-vichy-republicans/
For those that hate this neo con. Consider his words, no the source
What a 24 hours! The lightest of lightweights, Pete Hegseth, is nominated for secretary of defense. A leading Assad and Putin apologist, Tulsi Gabbard, is announced as director of national intelligence. The poster child of moral degradation, Matt Gaetz, is selected for attorney general.
If you’re surprised, you’re a dupe. President Trump is going to do in his second term what he said he’d do on the campaign trail, and what he tried fitfully to do in his first term. He’s going to turn the federal government into an instrument of MAGA policy and grievance. He’s going to pursue retribution against enemies. He’s going to destroy what remains of the older norms that guide the operations of the government, and of the institutional checks that constrain the abuse of power.
He told us this was his plan. The only surprise is how quickly he’s acting on it
For those that actually believe that this is a glitch in the matrix and the ship of state will be righted in 2028 when Trumpism fails.
Then you have amnesia. He told you what he is going to do Kevin Roberts gave him the playbook/instruction manual and told us that this was a second revolution and that it will be bloodless(for some) if the left allows it to be.
There is no coming back from a revolution.
The press is trying to normalize everything to keep the viewer from hanging by hope, their jobs, their income, their social status depends on it, as do many of their lives as Trump exacts his promised revenge.
Trump is a liar, but there is one thing he doesn't lie about, his thirst for power, money and revenge.
Some of us have a choice,kneel on the hassock and pledge fealty., other of us can't even do that.
Many are already kneeling. Over on Robert Reich's substack more than one poster has said "Trump won, now give him a chance".
What weapon, what army have I to fight with, when my neighbor sides with the Stazi or is the Stazi?
How do I organize a resistance when Tulsi Gabbard is head of the Department of National Intelligence, and Gaetz is head of DOJ.
The resistance is going to have to follow the OBL model, go analog, post em notes, paper and pin, word of mouth stay off the phone and the internet.
NSA reports to DNI, FBI reports to DOJ.
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote “Legislators in Lyndon Johnson’s Washington did not vacate the capital every weekend to raise money. They played poker together, they drank together, their families knew one another.” Today, election money is an exponentially more important matter thanks to wealth being concentrated at the top so that the ultra-rich can pay for relentless TV ads and creative misinformation on social networks. I am all for class warfare but Democrats must have money to pay for ads. How to get it?
And if Democrats should get the money, it will likely pay for them to heed LBJ's 1956 advice to avoid "big issues and big fights with the Republicans" and to offer the people the 2024 version of LBJ's "a little medical care, a rug on the floor, a picture on the wall, a little music in the house, and a place to take Molly and the grandchildren when [they retire]."
My Prediction for Today: Drumpf will nominate the My Pillow Guy for Treasury Secretary - because he is so good at money!
The Dems were pretty much shoulder to shoulder with the GOP on the neoliberal band wagon beginning (I’m sorry to say) with Jimmy Carter. He was the first deregulatory (trucking iirc) and a complete deficit hawk —- he instituted PayGo —- the idiotic rule that every bit of legislation had to be evaluated in terms of its impact on the deficit.
Deficit Hawk Syndrome inevitably leads to austerity. And austerity is the hot house of income inequality. Income inequality breeds mistrust, criminality, bigotry & all manner of social ills (teen pregnancy, HS drop outs, drug abuse, punitive justice systems, even cardio vascular disease (see Spirit Level, Wilkerson & Pickett)
The political & theoretical antidote to the horse poop that is neoliberalism is the full on rejection of balanced budget buggery.
Why? Bc if budgets must be balanced & taxes can’t be raised, then all manner of social spending gets cut. Ergo Austerity.
Getting beyond balanced budget nonsense requires Modern Monetary Theory, MMT. Two small contributions by moi posted below. Happy to answer questions.
https://www.pressherald.com/2012/08/05/why-baseball-can-never-run-out-of-home-runs____2012-08-05/
https://msmagazine.com/2011/07/14/a-woman-economist-speaks-out-deficits-are-a-grrrls-best-friend/
Compared to Trump, we stand on the side of ANGELS. Darth Vader and his daughter supported truth, justice and the American way in this election.
Who did you support?
I must be missing something. The article is allegedly about "waging war" but there is nothing in it that an average American like myself can see, about how to do that.
This is what I see in this article: "And defeat them he did (even in the face of an assassination attempt); by the end of his presidency, American oligarchs had gone back to doing business and getting rich, largely avoiding politics and keeping their noses clean."
WHAT? What did he do? HOW did he defeat them? I think you must've left out a paragraph or two.
Later, it says, - "It’s far past time to take the gloves off and start punching.
Democrats have become so rusty, so wary of class warfare, that they haven’t even identified a term or metaphor to describe the rightwing billionaires for whom the GOP fronts."
SO, is that the secret? The way to win back control of our government? By coming up with a "metaphor" for rightwing billionaires? WHAT? TELL ME I"M MISSING SOMETHING REALLY IMPORTANT HERE!! I call them f'ing jerks and assholes, thieves and liars but I don't think they really care about my name calling.
Well-written, comprehensive, and all true, historically.
So who in the Democratic Party, on a national level, today, is listening and will take the lead, visibly?
Who will lead the charge?
Do we know who the emerging leaders are -- if they even exist?
Can we talk to them, discuss and work together without the deadly "focus" group events orchestrated by high-priced consultants that parse American people into categories?
Help!
D. L.
Sorry I cut off my closing sentence but it is evident we have work to do to move forward in this country obviously , as racism and misogyny rule our nation.