How did America reach this point where about half our country thinks up is down, black is white, and Republicans are best trusted with our money and national security?
I'm a retired broadcast journalist. Thanks for all that you're doing. I'm 79 and for the first time in my life, I fear I'm going to be a witness to the end of our democratic republic and my children / grandchildren are going to grow up in a vastly different environment than I. I hope Trump fails but I have no faith in our ignorant society. I live in Idaho now because it's such a beautiful place but it's a republican / white nationalist haven and actually a frightening place when it comes to politics. So very heartbreaking.
I have lived in Montana, Idaho and the mountains of North Carolina, all beautiful places. But I have never understood why they attract such backward thinking people. Perhaps it's the relative isolation that gives them the freedom to promote their misguided way of thinking.
Oh. OK. So you think if I posted some of my opinions about today's media on the major networks pages, they'd change their philosophy? :) Ha. I actually worked for WTTG-TV in. Washington, DC for a few years and I can assure you Rupert doesn't give a rat's ass about anybody's opinions except maybe one or two of his billionaire friends. He started that network to serve the Republican Party, not to be a News source. I suspect the same is true of Disney, Comcast and Paramount Global as far as not caring about who likes their little news divisions.
Lots of people on social media are starved for logic. Check out the DNC "social ambassador" program. Potentially millions of contacts. https://democrats.org/reach/
I worked in DC for more than 20 years. Fox is only one network. And after Dominion, he's vulnerable.
It sure is, but it doesn't mean I have to be quiet about the dangerous politics that exist here. :) I feel obligated to remind the trump minions that not everybody is as blind to reality as they've chosen to be.
I don't believe the Donald supporters even know what a dictatorship is. I have tried posting on supposedly neutral websites and have been banned for telling the maga, that a dictator can end the minimum wage, take their guns and can hire immigrants over citizens if they work for less money and a dictator can end social security and torture them and make them sex slaves and poison their water and food,medicine and Air and send them off to extermination camps... I don't tell them all at one time, I don't use profanity and am polite but I still get censored. Now everything I post, even if it's entertainment gets censored without any reason given. We are losing our ability to bring sanity to the GOP voters. If they think it is bad now and I do think it is and I do not like Biden, but I will vote for him, because a dictatorship could destroy America for a thousand years or more! It will be a lot worse in the future. Thank God I don't have any children!
It's the same old song, brother. What you cite here is very similar to a recent Hartmann Report article in which you cite how veterinary hospitals are now being swallowed up by large corporations and the fees are astronomical. It's all a variation of "Citizens United" (more like corporations united). That, from where this Black Man in the United States sits, is a problem with the society as a whole because the way it is structured once money enters the picture, everyone becomes a whore and, thusly, principles, decency and, most of all, truth go out of the window.
Well said. I just read that private equity has bought clinics in Florida and are doing C-sections outside hospitals. That is so dangerous. But if they thinks it saves a dollar, the greedy will do it.
Can't "like." So annoying, but adding observation that you don't have to be an investing opportunity genius to see the market "choke" in the Vet market! What burns my brisket is, there's a dad gum DENTIST on every block, and yet they will bankrupt you in a hurry! any monopoly/gouging investigations there?
I'm afraid that we (Progressives) can't do anything about right wing takeover of media until we control all three branches of our government. Same with the SCOTUS. We have to win it at the ballot box first.
Agreed. We need to vote our way back to democracy, take over all three branches, and institute electoral reform to protect voting rights and lessen the influence of big money, expand the Supreme Court to restore balance and impose ethics rules, and pass a 21st century fairness doctrine. Then we can move on to other progressive priorities including protecting the environment, investing in people, green infrastructure, and creating an economy that works for all and not just the morbidly rich.
I wish I had faith that things could be improved even IF Democrats controlled all three branches, because at the end of it all, they are as beholden to The Money, as the Republicans and that is due to the evil machinations of the SCOTUS whose right-wing majority is bought and paid for with blatant bribes. A free quarter-million dollar RV? Not a bribe? Who believes this?
Hello, wanted to like - only hope is us females not wanting to go back in our aprons. Let us all get a load of all of Harrison Butker's chiding us about what women really want. (What HIS god wants for females.)
I don't think going back into your aprons is even a possibility. It will take two incomes just to survive. You know the billionaires are not going to raise wages.
Good point! Thom has related the second transition, from women going to work in WW2 to women needing to work to support the baseline family aspirations. Lordy, now what, you want her to die for your procreation, or be a "homemaker," but also win the bread? crazy, indeed!
Not only is everything Thom said true, but embarrassingly, Democrats either enabled it or sat back and let it happen. Biden has done much to start enforcing anti-trust laws. Unfortunately, that appears to have freaked the Billionaires who are now plotting with Musk to defeat Biden in 2024. Like many, if not most voters in 2020, we voted for the UN-Trump; not for Biden per se. However, today, the Democrats need a younger candidate who is more in-touch with Gens X thru Z than Biden has shown himself to be.
The facts Thom listed (ouch!) are strong evidence that Biden is a lousy communicator. As a 77-year-old retiree, I find those poll's knowledge results to be both scary and appalling evidence of the sad state of US democracy. We really do appear to be at risk of a fascist takeover by reactionaries who want power, but have no interest in governing to improve the lot of most Americans. Sadly, by the time the MAGAs and sleepy Dems get woke, nothing about America will seem like the USA.
To be fair to Biden, Democratic messaging has been lousy for the past 50 years. It doesn't have much to do with Biden's age, but the hidebound party machine.
Yes, but Biden is part of that Machine - a central part. I have read 6 MSM articles today all reading like Biden's political obituary. What does it take to wake Biden and DNC UP?
The problem is the culture of the Democratic Party, they don't have anyone else Tomonthebeach.
The DNC is as resistant to change as the Republicans. It is a conservative institution, and is a wing of the beltway establishment.
To be rewarded by the DNC, one has to have paid their dues, pay homage, to accrued the creditentials that they feel are necessary, such as foreign service (for global trade and international finance). As a consequence when it is time to enter the fray, they reach into their stable of old tried, reliable race horses and pick one, and one that is a loser, an example is Terry McAuliffe who they chose to run for Governor of Virginia, out of touch with his constituency he made faux pas after faux pas and we got Youngkin, a radical right who posed as a moderate conservative.
And there is Hillary,another race horse who was biding her time, training and accruing credentials, only those credentials didn't matter in a changing social environment.
If Obama could have run for a third term, he would be President again, but the only race horse they had, was an old tired, obsolete (bipartisan trained) Biden, and in 2020 a head of cabbage could have beat Trump.
America has become inured of outrage and chaos. Scandal and threats are he new norm, thanks to a complicit media, Americans as did Rome, crave spectacle, excitement, violence and Trump delivers that, whereas Biden is boring, plodding and steadfast, no drama, no theater and very forgetable.
There is no race horse in the DNC stable, no horse padding around the paddock, other than old tired race horses, and the DNC is terrified of taking a chance on the likes of a Gretchen Whitmer or a Gavin Newsom and a Joe Biden is too egotistic to admit that his time has come and it is time to retire. Like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Diane Feinstein they hang on till they die, because they have no other identity or reason to live, same with Edward Kennedy he hung on till he died and was replaced with Republican Scott Brown.
Biden gets on the TV today and announces that he thinks it is best for the nation if he retires at the end of his term in office to make room for a younger candidate with the energy level to deal with Israel, Ukraine, China, Russia, etc. and to continue his quest to improve the standard of living for America's middle class. A new candidate would be more immune from Trump lying assertions that he is a victim of Biden weaponizing government against him. The new candidate could also hammer that the election is a choice between fascism and democracy. We would stop using the dollar as a war weapon, and minimize the use of tariffs. If China offers cheaper EVs and other climate-change products, then the US should focus on getting more competitive (they are currently going in the opposite direction) by helping improve Detroit's and others' competitiveness; not by banning via tariffs the very products that would speed a reduction in pollution.
Another sobering report, Thom, though sadly not new or news to me. It’s too late. Decades of propaganda driven deep into the minds of even not gullible people will not be rectified or overcome but November. I will keep fighting, but I think the morbidly rich have won. My only satisfaction, and it is grim, is that at some point they and their families, or some of them, will pay the ultimate price for their greed and its destruction of our country, our species and our planet. That may only come on Judgment Day, but I fear God is too merciful and will forgive them. It is sinful of me, but before that day, I hope some of the humans whose lives they have destroyed will make them pay hard in this life. I weep for my grandson. He is the center of my life, a wonderful little boy if six I have helped raise, and for all that, given the grotesque world he will inherit, I wish he had never been born. He will have more resources when he turns 18 than many, and a solid education, but I think his adult life will be miserable, and that only his memories of the idyllic childhood we are giving him (which me, my wife and his Mom did not have) will sustain him. I face November with determination but faint hope. Keep the truth coming, Thom, until you are claimed by a crazed MAGAt or an American gulag. I give thanks for the day I found you and the Bulwark.
Tell it like it is, brother! I'm 84, with five children and five grandchildren. all excellent in some way or another. My grandchildren range in age from 6 to 13, they're all above-average to gifted, and all I see for a future for them is a maelstrom of misery. They're innocent lambs headed for slaughter, and they're smart enough to be able to realize what will be being done to them.
The parents of the Greatest Generation, of which I am a child, spanked their children when they needed it and made them do chores. I acquired one of my attributes of which I am most proud literally in the middle of a hard spanking being administered by my father with a belt. And I'm now proud of the hard summers I spent working all alone adding after-the-fact batt insulation to the crawl space and attic of our house. I was shown how to do it and then was left to do it on my own, all alone, and I'm really proud of the job I did. Those were gifts to me, handed to me by my parents.
Tragically, where we are as a nation is unfixable.
I still think that MAGATs are visceral, and the lumpen proletariat is same as it ever was...lumpen: of or relating to dispossessed and uprooted individuals cut off from the economic and social class with which they might normally be identified.
All that stuff about what the public "thinks" is based on polling that is suspicious.
Ask the unwashed whether they want a fascist government?
I am visiting family in Oklahoma (I live in a blue state.) The degree of brainwashing is amazing. When the news is on, it's all the disinformation the Republicans, who own the state, can spew. These are simple people here, and they get their information from the local news, which they trust and that lies to them daily. Many are good-hearted people; they do work hard, but they are brainwashed and this has been going on for at least 50 years.
After a destructive tornado nearly wiped him out, a farmer was interviewed by the local news. He lost most of his cattle, his barn, two expensive pieces of large farm equipment and a lot of other, smaller, but crucial items. Insurance is too expensive to insure everything, but there is a federal program that helps a bit - up to 75% of certain, but not all, items. When reminded of this, the farmer, clearly uncomfortable shuffled his feet, looked down and literally mumbled his view that such help was an unearned government handout, took a long time and involved a lot of paperwork. He allowed as he might have to try, even though he felt it wrong. This independent small farmer, clearly on the financial edge, had been taught and conditioned to believe he was not entitled to federal assistance after a disaster than could possibly cost him everything. He did not consider the $30B in subsidies given to the agriculture (mostly big AG) companies, yearly. And none of that is disaster relief - it is just free money from the government to an industry that is posting record profits. This few thousand dollars, that would keep him afloat as an independent farmer, is a drop in the bucket, compared to this largess given to massive farm corporations. Meanwhile, the farming practices of Big AG, become ever more environmentally destructive, and their animal production unbelievably cruel.
I suspect the farmer on the news treated his livestock much better.
You're right, and I'm devastated by the fact that you're right, because I do not see how this situation can be reversed when the means of truthfully educating the public are in enemy hands. You and I and everyone like us cannot be heard by enough people to matter.
The problem is existential for democracy.
Please tell me I'm wrong, and if I AM wrong, then please tell me what can be done to get the truth heard over the noise. I don't see any way forward to get the truth out.
And here's what makes it worse. In addition to Trump's true believers I'm convinced that a very large part, perhaps even a majority, of Trump people don't actually care what he does. I think you could probably get millions of them to admit that "yes, he's a criminal', and 'yes, he did in fact commit each and every one of the crimes he's been indicted for', but they don't care and will vote for him anyway.
Well, we can take heart in the fact that Trump's supporters are getting older and some dying, meanwhile more and more kids are reaching voting age. At least we have that going for us.
Thanks, Thom, for another heartfelt, intelligent, and informative piece of investigative journalism! Sadly, our low information society is a product by design of the billionaires you so accurately expose, although the SCOTUS travesty on Citizens United (among others) protects them from the exposure they so richly deserve. We are entertaining ourselves to death through all of our media and in a Trump rally/presidency, afterall, Our Mad King Donald is a great entertainer and his "rallies" are admission free. I once lived in Savannah, GA, and was fascinated by the story of how the oil, auto, and rubber barons got together in a resort on Jekyll Island to plan the demise of public transportation and force us into their automobiles. Forgive the vulgarity but "money talks and BS walks" is an old adage that still holds true. BTW, I still can't "like" any of the other excellent and thoughtful posts here, the way I can on other feeds. Please tell me I'm not being censored for peaving you or one of your helpers.
Education is the key and you are making a huge positive contribution. FOX NEWS is nearly the sole source of "news" down here in SE Ohio, where the mind set of the rural folk is much like that of other states/areas of our uninformed nation. Trump may be a joke, but we're the only ones laughing. Anyway, climate collapse is the real existential story of the hour and the fossil fuel overlords will literally drive us right off that cliff and into the dying oceans before allowing the truth to be told. I comment about it every day, but anyone can go to copernicus.org for their "Climate Pulse" page to see how fast the air, land and sea are heating and driving the ever more powerful storms that any dam fool can see here in the US and worldwide. Good luck to one and all!
The social pretense that the media is balanced is amazing. How can the results show us anything other than how abnormal our media is? And what is the remedy any of the opposition would agree to? The constant lies and twisting of the truth that goes on is one mass killing of the truth after another. Does anyone in the nation believe in the mainstream media with unfiltered confidence. The destruction of the truth pure and simple is complete and the desire of the right wingers. Nobody holds news media as capable of understanding basic truths without using our own filters. The interests of the owners of media and its political association determine false and twisted views propagandists would be proud of. The founders would be astonished of what is today considered normal.
If Trump wins, and that is highly likely thanks to the asshole Muslims in the great lake states, as well as the voter suppression laws and efforts the Republicans have taken and will take in November. The Corporate media will find itself like the German media in the 1930's and the Hungarian media in the 2020's, taken over by a fascist state.
They still think like Sinclair Lewis: It Can't Happen Here, but Dorothy Thompson says" American Fascism: It Has Happened Here.
Yet another example of Lenin's dictum about ropes and capitalists.
I took a great Lit class from a brilliant professor who discussed Sinclair Lewis at length. The professor would be fired and hounded for further punishment today for even mentioning "Elmer Gantry" a great fictional critique of organized religion.. Lewis attended Yale, was very poor, had bad acne, and had to work in the mess hall, serving very wealthy kids who relentlessly criticized him for his poverty and made cruel jokes about his skin. Years later Lewis was the first American writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. Yale was ecstatic, asking Lewis to accept the prize in their name, and organized a formal event attended by many Yale alumni. Lewis accepted, and when came his time to address Yale's assembled finest, he said this: "Ladies and gentlemen, when I attended Yale, Yale told me to go to hell. I would like to take this opportunity to tell Yale to go to hell.". He walked off the stage and left the building, leaving all the assembled alumni stunned.
What makes me so mad about the Democratic party is that in order to be politically correct we have not forcibly spoken about our values, beliefs and what we want to do to make this a better country for everyone- not just the rich. Instead of taking control of the message we are always reacting to the BS that the Republicans put out- which always makes us look weak. It is almost too late to speak truth to power. We have less than 6 months to do so.
I have been trying to get the word out for over a year now that we need targeted television ads at the Republicans in the red States in order to explain what a dictatorship is and can do. So far no billionaires or millionaires have stepped forward to fund such a project that could be accomplished by a group like the Lincoln project. They don't want to pay their fair share in taxes! It will end up costing them a lot more when the Republicans cause another Great depression and people start looting their stores...
There are those who say that the reason there is political correctness is because of liberal values and beliefs., and they call that a campaign against woke.
"Democrats either enabled it or sat back and let it happen". What Democratic Party? Do you reference the Democratic Party that had clear liberal, pro-working class agenda back in the sixties, or today's Democratic Party, erviserated by the Clintons (Bill shamelessly passing NAFTA while Hillary was making two hour speeches to assembled Wall Street "greed is goodsters" receiving six digit checks for her "new Democrats" efforts? The remnants of the true Democratic Party that persist to actually exist are found in Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, etc.--you know, those who have been trivialized and lambooned, sent to the stool in the corner, to be jeered, of course by Republicans but most significantly by the entrenched elected Democrat multimillionaires who continue to reign over the national office. The existence of the Democratic Party in DC is a Kabuki using the old defining props and scenery, pretending to exist as it was. Clearly this explains the many, many instances when Republicans grew in malice, changing the political landscape, pirating the once fair and balanced economy, erecting new bastions of legal protection, while the the Democratic Party responded, if at all, with the murmured weepings of sanctimonious victim hood. Realizing on some level that the center has not held, frantic liberals became disoriented and felt abandoned, and they scattered, creating exaggerated wokisms to counter the morbid sellout, sadly, misguidedly, an effort to cling on. Meanwhile, in continued Kabuki metaphor the multimillionaire Democrats in DC are smiling, repairing to that secret country club to which both sides secretly belong. In the end, do vote for Biden, since, should he win, only then can a massive change be instigated to rebuild the old, the only, Democratic Party. If Trump wins, pure fascism.
Well said Mr Lewis,my sentiments exactly. The Democratic party is moribund, stuck in their culture of bipartisanship, centrism, and begging for donor dollars. They hate and fear the new blood, like AOC, and the progressive caucus, Nancy ignored them, held them back, Rahm called them fucking retarded.
The only race horses in the DNC stable are old tired horses that have been around the track, paid their dues and waited patiently in line for their turn.
One seat I worry about is the Senate seat from California. an apparatchik of Wall Street was showered with money, and beat out true progressives, like Katie Porter who was biting at the bit.
I hope Adam Schiff wins only because he isn't a Trumpkin, but he is bought and paid for by the powers that be.
Adam Schiff and Sean Patrick Maloney, leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – effectively the head strategist and fundraiser for the House Democrats ,ran off to Paris junketeering in the midst of a campaign, and New York lost four seats and the power shifted to Jim Jordan in the House.
Adam Schiff has never seen a camera that he doesn't love. The only accomplishments of Schiff per wikiepedia are He previously served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Schiff was the lead impeachment manager in the first impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. He had previously served as the joint-lead impeachment manager in two judicial impeachments trials.
I hold him responsible for the loss of the house to the Republicans, him and Sean Patrick Mahoney.
Yet it is he or that millionaire right winger Garvey.
It is always voting against a Republican and never for a Democrat, And the moribund DNC and its culture are to blame.
Where are these "polls" taken and who are they asking? Either its mostly republicans or else our educational system has produced the most ignorant pupils ever, being taught by ignorant products of the same dumbed down system.
Victoria: Polls are conducted by corporations, the media is owned by corporations and in fact polling companies and media are incorporated and owned by corporations, who are in turn owned by other corporations, for the large part
Corporations exist to make a profit, to provide a positive rate of return to investors, and are directed to do so by a board, who hires an fires CEO's to do the job.
People are excited by competition, Sports, Reality Shows, movies, and politics.
Excitation means eyeballs and clicks, which means advertisers, which means money, money means profit,profit makes the CEO happy and earns them raises and benefits, it makes the board happy as it makes the investors and owners happy.
If there is no horse race,there is no excitement, and no excitement means no advertisers, which means no revenue, which means no profit or return on investment and everyone is miserable, and people lose their jobs.
I'm a retired broadcast journalist. Thanks for all that you're doing. I'm 79 and for the first time in my life, I fear I'm going to be a witness to the end of our democratic republic and my children / grandchildren are going to grow up in a vastly different environment than I. I hope Trump fails but I have no faith in our ignorant society. I live in Idaho now because it's such a beautiful place but it's a republican / white nationalist haven and actually a frightening place when it comes to politics. So very heartbreaking.
I have lived in Montana, Idaho and the mountains of North Carolina, all beautiful places. But I have never understood why they attract such backward thinking people. Perhaps it's the relative isolation that gives them the freedom to promote their misguided way of thinking.
You know what you can do about it.
No. No I don't.
If you can comment on the Hartmann Report, you can comment on MSM.
Oh. OK. So you think if I posted some of my opinions about today's media on the major networks pages, they'd change their philosophy? :) Ha. I actually worked for WTTG-TV in. Washington, DC for a few years and I can assure you Rupert doesn't give a rat's ass about anybody's opinions except maybe one or two of his billionaire friends. He started that network to serve the Republican Party, not to be a News source. I suspect the same is true of Disney, Comcast and Paramount Global as far as not caring about who likes their little news divisions.
Lots of people on social media are starved for logic. Check out the DNC "social ambassador" program. Potentially millions of contacts. https://democrats.org/reach/
I worked in DC for more than 20 years. Fox is only one network. And after Dominion, he's vulnerable.
Damn! Can't like, so just, you tell it, Ron!
" I live in Idaho now because it's such a beautiful place..."
There's your clue. That's your choice.
It sure is, but it doesn't mean I have to be quiet about the dangerous politics that exist here. :) I feel obligated to remind the trump minions that not everybody is as blind to reality as they've chosen to be.
I don't believe the Donald supporters even know what a dictatorship is. I have tried posting on supposedly neutral websites and have been banned for telling the maga, that a dictator can end the minimum wage, take their guns and can hire immigrants over citizens if they work for less money and a dictator can end social security and torture them and make them sex slaves and poison their water and food,medicine and Air and send them off to extermination camps... I don't tell them all at one time, I don't use profanity and am polite but I still get censored. Now everything I post, even if it's entertainment gets censored without any reason given. We are losing our ability to bring sanity to the GOP voters. If they think it is bad now and I do think it is and I do not like Biden, but I will vote for him, because a dictatorship could destroy America for a thousand years or more! It will be a lot worse in the future. Thank God I don't have any children!
BeeJay...you always bring it with brutal and unflinching goddamned precision.
I will ignore, if not forgive, your partisanism. Afterall...
you can't help it:)
It's the same old song, brother. What you cite here is very similar to a recent Hartmann Report article in which you cite how veterinary hospitals are now being swallowed up by large corporations and the fees are astronomical. It's all a variation of "Citizens United" (more like corporations united). That, from where this Black Man in the United States sits, is a problem with the society as a whole because the way it is structured once money enters the picture, everyone becomes a whore and, thusly, principles, decency and, most of all, truth go out of the window.
Well said. I just read that private equity has bought clinics in Florida and are doing C-sections outside hospitals. That is so dangerous. But if they thinks it saves a dollar, the greedy will do it.
Indeed.
Can't "like." So annoying, but adding observation that you don't have to be an investing opportunity genius to see the market "choke" in the Vet market! What burns my brisket is, there's a dad gum DENTIST on every block, and yet they will bankrupt you in a hurry! any monopoly/gouging investigations there?
I understand.
I'm afraid that we (Progressives) can't do anything about right wing takeover of media until we control all three branches of our government. Same with the SCOTUS. We have to win it at the ballot box first.
Agreed. We need to vote our way back to democracy, take over all three branches, and institute electoral reform to protect voting rights and lessen the influence of big money, expand the Supreme Court to restore balance and impose ethics rules, and pass a 21st century fairness doctrine. Then we can move on to other progressive priorities including protecting the environment, investing in people, green infrastructure, and creating an economy that works for all and not just the morbidly rich.
I wish I had faith that things could be improved even IF Democrats controlled all three branches, because at the end of it all, they are as beholden to The Money, as the Republicans and that is due to the evil machinations of the SCOTUS whose right-wing majority is bought and paid for with blatant bribes. A free quarter-million dollar RV? Not a bribe? Who believes this?
Yeah SuZieCoyote, but it's the only chance we have. I admit, it is discouraging sometimes.
Hello, wanted to like - only hope is us females not wanting to go back in our aprons. Let us all get a load of all of Harrison Butker's chiding us about what women really want. (What HIS god wants for females.)
I don't think going back into your aprons is even a possibility. It will take two incomes just to survive. You know the billionaires are not going to raise wages.
Good point! Thom has related the second transition, from women going to work in WW2 to women needing to work to support the baseline family aspirations. Lordy, now what, you want her to die for your procreation, or be a "homemaker," but also win the bread? crazy, indeed!
The low-information voter is a threat to our liberal democratic order.
The political environment is designed to divide. The media designed to amplify - BS, misinformation, and lies included.
John Meachum this morning…
Americans are confusing nationalism with patriotism.
Not only is everything Thom said true, but embarrassingly, Democrats either enabled it or sat back and let it happen. Biden has done much to start enforcing anti-trust laws. Unfortunately, that appears to have freaked the Billionaires who are now plotting with Musk to defeat Biden in 2024. Like many, if not most voters in 2020, we voted for the UN-Trump; not for Biden per se. However, today, the Democrats need a younger candidate who is more in-touch with Gens X thru Z than Biden has shown himself to be.
The facts Thom listed (ouch!) are strong evidence that Biden is a lousy communicator. As a 77-year-old retiree, I find those poll's knowledge results to be both scary and appalling evidence of the sad state of US democracy. We really do appear to be at risk of a fascist takeover by reactionaries who want power, but have no interest in governing to improve the lot of most Americans. Sadly, by the time the MAGAs and sleepy Dems get woke, nothing about America will seem like the USA.
To be fair to Biden, Democratic messaging has been lousy for the past 50 years. It doesn't have much to do with Biden's age, but the hidebound party machine.
Yes, but Biden is part of that Machine - a central part. I have read 6 MSM articles today all reading like Biden's political obituary. What does it take to wake Biden and DNC UP?
The problem is the culture of the Democratic Party, they don't have anyone else Tomonthebeach.
The DNC is as resistant to change as the Republicans. It is a conservative institution, and is a wing of the beltway establishment.
To be rewarded by the DNC, one has to have paid their dues, pay homage, to accrued the creditentials that they feel are necessary, such as foreign service (for global trade and international finance). As a consequence when it is time to enter the fray, they reach into their stable of old tried, reliable race horses and pick one, and one that is a loser, an example is Terry McAuliffe who they chose to run for Governor of Virginia, out of touch with his constituency he made faux pas after faux pas and we got Youngkin, a radical right who posed as a moderate conservative.
And there is Hillary,another race horse who was biding her time, training and accruing credentials, only those credentials didn't matter in a changing social environment.
If Obama could have run for a third term, he would be President again, but the only race horse they had, was an old tired, obsolete (bipartisan trained) Biden, and in 2020 a head of cabbage could have beat Trump.
America has become inured of outrage and chaos. Scandal and threats are he new norm, thanks to a complicit media, Americans as did Rome, crave spectacle, excitement, violence and Trump delivers that, whereas Biden is boring, plodding and steadfast, no drama, no theater and very forgetable.
There is no race horse in the DNC stable, no horse padding around the paddock, other than old tired race horses, and the DNC is terrified of taking a chance on the likes of a Gretchen Whitmer or a Gavin Newsom and a Joe Biden is too egotistic to admit that his time has come and it is time to retire. Like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Diane Feinstein they hang on till they die, because they have no other identity or reason to live, same with Edward Kennedy he hung on till he died and was replaced with Republican Scott Brown.
So what do you suggest we do and how are you handling the trump mess?
Biden gets on the TV today and announces that he thinks it is best for the nation if he retires at the end of his term in office to make room for a younger candidate with the energy level to deal with Israel, Ukraine, China, Russia, etc. and to continue his quest to improve the standard of living for America's middle class. A new candidate would be more immune from Trump lying assertions that he is a victim of Biden weaponizing government against him. The new candidate could also hammer that the election is a choice between fascism and democracy. We would stop using the dollar as a war weapon, and minimize the use of tariffs. If China offers cheaper EVs and other climate-change products, then the US should focus on getting more competitive (they are currently going in the opposite direction) by helping improve Detroit's and others' competitiveness; not by banning via tariffs the very products that would speed a reduction in pollution.
Another sobering report, Thom, though sadly not new or news to me. It’s too late. Decades of propaganda driven deep into the minds of even not gullible people will not be rectified or overcome but November. I will keep fighting, but I think the morbidly rich have won. My only satisfaction, and it is grim, is that at some point they and their families, or some of them, will pay the ultimate price for their greed and its destruction of our country, our species and our planet. That may only come on Judgment Day, but I fear God is too merciful and will forgive them. It is sinful of me, but before that day, I hope some of the humans whose lives they have destroyed will make them pay hard in this life. I weep for my grandson. He is the center of my life, a wonderful little boy if six I have helped raise, and for all that, given the grotesque world he will inherit, I wish he had never been born. He will have more resources when he turns 18 than many, and a solid education, but I think his adult life will be miserable, and that only his memories of the idyllic childhood we are giving him (which me, my wife and his Mom did not have) will sustain him. I face November with determination but faint hope. Keep the truth coming, Thom, until you are claimed by a crazed MAGAt or an American gulag. I give thanks for the day I found you and the Bulwark.
Tell it like it is, brother! I'm 84, with five children and five grandchildren. all excellent in some way or another. My grandchildren range in age from 6 to 13, they're all above-average to gifted, and all I see for a future for them is a maelstrom of misery. They're innocent lambs headed for slaughter, and they're smart enough to be able to realize what will be being done to them.
The parents of the Greatest Generation, of which I am a child, spanked their children when they needed it and made them do chores. I acquired one of my attributes of which I am most proud literally in the middle of a hard spanking being administered by my father with a belt. And I'm now proud of the hard summers I spent working all alone adding after-the-fact batt insulation to the crawl space and attic of our house. I was shown how to do it and then was left to do it on my own, all alone, and I'm really proud of the job I did. Those were gifts to me, handed to me by my parents.
Tragically, where we are as a nation is unfixable.
Wow, you started late. I'm 85,my youngest grandchild is 29 my oldest is 41, and I have 30 great grandchildren and one great great grandchild.
I still think that MAGATs are visceral, and the lumpen proletariat is same as it ever was...lumpen: of or relating to dispossessed and uprooted individuals cut off from the economic and social class with which they might normally be identified.
All that stuff about what the public "thinks" is based on polling that is suspicious.
Ask the unwashed whether they want a fascist government?
Whether they support someone who hates dogs?
I am visiting family in Oklahoma (I live in a blue state.) The degree of brainwashing is amazing. When the news is on, it's all the disinformation the Republicans, who own the state, can spew. These are simple people here, and they get their information from the local news, which they trust and that lies to them daily. Many are good-hearted people; they do work hard, but they are brainwashed and this has been going on for at least 50 years.
After a destructive tornado nearly wiped him out, a farmer was interviewed by the local news. He lost most of his cattle, his barn, two expensive pieces of large farm equipment and a lot of other, smaller, but crucial items. Insurance is too expensive to insure everything, but there is a federal program that helps a bit - up to 75% of certain, but not all, items. When reminded of this, the farmer, clearly uncomfortable shuffled his feet, looked down and literally mumbled his view that such help was an unearned government handout, took a long time and involved a lot of paperwork. He allowed as he might have to try, even though he felt it wrong. This independent small farmer, clearly on the financial edge, had been taught and conditioned to believe he was not entitled to federal assistance after a disaster than could possibly cost him everything. He did not consider the $30B in subsidies given to the agriculture (mostly big AG) companies, yearly. And none of that is disaster relief - it is just free money from the government to an industry that is posting record profits. This few thousand dollars, that would keep him afloat as an independent farmer, is a drop in the bucket, compared to this largess given to massive farm corporations. Meanwhile, the farming practices of Big AG, become ever more environmentally destructive, and their animal production unbelievably cruel.
I suspect the farmer on the news treated his livestock much better.
You're right, and I'm devastated by the fact that you're right, because I do not see how this situation can be reversed when the means of truthfully educating the public are in enemy hands. You and I and everyone like us cannot be heard by enough people to matter.
The problem is existential for democracy.
Please tell me I'm wrong, and if I AM wrong, then please tell me what can be done to get the truth heard over the noise. I don't see any way forward to get the truth out.
And here's what makes it worse. In addition to Trump's true believers I'm convinced that a very large part, perhaps even a majority, of Trump people don't actually care what he does. I think you could probably get millions of them to admit that "yes, he's a criminal', and 'yes, he did in fact commit each and every one of the crimes he's been indicted for', but they don't care and will vote for him anyway.
Please tell me I'm wrong.
Well, we can take heart in the fact that Trump's supporters are getting older and some dying, meanwhile more and more kids are reaching voting age. At least we have that going for us.
Thanks, Thom, for another heartfelt, intelligent, and informative piece of investigative journalism! Sadly, our low information society is a product by design of the billionaires you so accurately expose, although the SCOTUS travesty on Citizens United (among others) protects them from the exposure they so richly deserve. We are entertaining ourselves to death through all of our media and in a Trump rally/presidency, afterall, Our Mad King Donald is a great entertainer and his "rallies" are admission free. I once lived in Savannah, GA, and was fascinated by the story of how the oil, auto, and rubber barons got together in a resort on Jekyll Island to plan the demise of public transportation and force us into their automobiles. Forgive the vulgarity but "money talks and BS walks" is an old adage that still holds true. BTW, I still can't "like" any of the other excellent and thoughtful posts here, the way I can on other feeds. Please tell me I'm not being censored for peaving you or one of your helpers.
Education is the key and you are making a huge positive contribution. FOX NEWS is nearly the sole source of "news" down here in SE Ohio, where the mind set of the rural folk is much like that of other states/areas of our uninformed nation. Trump may be a joke, but we're the only ones laughing. Anyway, climate collapse is the real existential story of the hour and the fossil fuel overlords will literally drive us right off that cliff and into the dying oceans before allowing the truth to be told. I comment about it every day, but anyone can go to copernicus.org for their "Climate Pulse" page to see how fast the air, land and sea are heating and driving the ever more powerful storms that any dam fool can see here in the US and worldwide. Good luck to one and all!
This is a long standing issue , constructed by devious Republicans over decades.
They have one major goal in common, the destruction of Democracy.
I read about the Big tech companies in Silicon Valley.
Many of them are changing their long term support of Democrats and supporting Trump , because Joe Biden said they should pay taxes.
The entitlement of these wealthy Americans is remarkable.
There seems to be not one wealthy group in this Country anymore who cares about anyone but themselves.
Not even a glimpse at common sense which would perhaps indicate that anyone else exists in their world.
Having said that , the media is remarkably biased just as directed.
The chaos advanced by Trump and his group has made it difficult to see much clearly.
The constant lies , a tool of fascists, is constant .
I’m not sure this is Biden’s shortcoming re communication.
However the Democrats in general ( I ‘ll include myself ) are not adept at opposing these lies directly and in a timely fashion.
I think that the Republican message Is constant and repetitive and chaotic and meant to be .
It is hard to know how to fight back
And so we are reluctant or confused about how to do so .
The social pretense that the media is balanced is amazing. How can the results show us anything other than how abnormal our media is? And what is the remedy any of the opposition would agree to? The constant lies and twisting of the truth that goes on is one mass killing of the truth after another. Does anyone in the nation believe in the mainstream media with unfiltered confidence. The destruction of the truth pure and simple is complete and the desire of the right wingers. Nobody holds news media as capable of understanding basic truths without using our own filters. The interests of the owners of media and its political association determine false and twisted views propagandists would be proud of. The founders would be astonished of what is today considered normal.
If Trump wins, and that is highly likely thanks to the asshole Muslims in the great lake states, as well as the voter suppression laws and efforts the Republicans have taken and will take in November. The Corporate media will find itself like the German media in the 1930's and the Hungarian media in the 2020's, taken over by a fascist state.
They still think like Sinclair Lewis: It Can't Happen Here, but Dorothy Thompson says" American Fascism: It Has Happened Here.
Yet another example of Lenin's dictum about ropes and capitalists.
I took a great Lit class from a brilliant professor who discussed Sinclair Lewis at length. The professor would be fired and hounded for further punishment today for even mentioning "Elmer Gantry" a great fictional critique of organized religion.. Lewis attended Yale, was very poor, had bad acne, and had to work in the mess hall, serving very wealthy kids who relentlessly criticized him for his poverty and made cruel jokes about his skin. Years later Lewis was the first American writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. Yale was ecstatic, asking Lewis to accept the prize in their name, and organized a formal event attended by many Yale alumni. Lewis accepted, and when came his time to address Yale's assembled finest, he said this: "Ladies and gentlemen, when I attended Yale, Yale told me to go to hell. I would like to take this opportunity to tell Yale to go to hell.". He walked off the stage and left the building, leaving all the assembled alumni stunned.
Thanks for that anecdote .I got a chuckle out of Sinclair telling Yale to go to hell.
i wish you all would stop paying attention to these worthless msm polls!!
What makes me so mad about the Democratic party is that in order to be politically correct we have not forcibly spoken about our values, beliefs and what we want to do to make this a better country for everyone- not just the rich. Instead of taking control of the message we are always reacting to the BS that the Republicans put out- which always makes us look weak. It is almost too late to speak truth to power. We have less than 6 months to do so.
I have been trying to get the word out for over a year now that we need targeted television ads at the Republicans in the red States in order to explain what a dictatorship is and can do. So far no billionaires or millionaires have stepped forward to fund such a project that could be accomplished by a group like the Lincoln project. They don't want to pay their fair share in taxes! It will end up costing them a lot more when the Republicans cause another Great depression and people start looting their stores...
There are those who say that the reason there is political correctness is because of liberal values and beliefs., and they call that a campaign against woke.
"Democrats either enabled it or sat back and let it happen". What Democratic Party? Do you reference the Democratic Party that had clear liberal, pro-working class agenda back in the sixties, or today's Democratic Party, erviserated by the Clintons (Bill shamelessly passing NAFTA while Hillary was making two hour speeches to assembled Wall Street "greed is goodsters" receiving six digit checks for her "new Democrats" efforts? The remnants of the true Democratic Party that persist to actually exist are found in Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, etc.--you know, those who have been trivialized and lambooned, sent to the stool in the corner, to be jeered, of course by Republicans but most significantly by the entrenched elected Democrat multimillionaires who continue to reign over the national office. The existence of the Democratic Party in DC is a Kabuki using the old defining props and scenery, pretending to exist as it was. Clearly this explains the many, many instances when Republicans grew in malice, changing the political landscape, pirating the once fair and balanced economy, erecting new bastions of legal protection, while the the Democratic Party responded, if at all, with the murmured weepings of sanctimonious victim hood. Realizing on some level that the center has not held, frantic liberals became disoriented and felt abandoned, and they scattered, creating exaggerated wokisms to counter the morbid sellout, sadly, misguidedly, an effort to cling on. Meanwhile, in continued Kabuki metaphor the multimillionaire Democrats in DC are smiling, repairing to that secret country club to which both sides secretly belong. In the end, do vote for Biden, since, should he win, only then can a massive change be instigated to rebuild the old, the only, Democratic Party. If Trump wins, pure fascism.
Well said Mr Lewis,my sentiments exactly. The Democratic party is moribund, stuck in their culture of bipartisanship, centrism, and begging for donor dollars. They hate and fear the new blood, like AOC, and the progressive caucus, Nancy ignored them, held them back, Rahm called them fucking retarded.
The only race horses in the DNC stable are old tired horses that have been around the track, paid their dues and waited patiently in line for their turn.
One seat I worry about is the Senate seat from California. an apparatchik of Wall Street was showered with money, and beat out true progressives, like Katie Porter who was biting at the bit.
I hope Adam Schiff wins only because he isn't a Trumpkin, but he is bought and paid for by the powers that be.
Adam Schiff and Sean Patrick Maloney, leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – effectively the head strategist and fundraiser for the House Democrats ,ran off to Paris junketeering in the midst of a campaign, and New York lost four seats and the power shifted to Jim Jordan in the House.
Adam Schiff has never seen a camera that he doesn't love. The only accomplishments of Schiff per wikiepedia are He previously served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Schiff was the lead impeachment manager in the first impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. He had previously served as the joint-lead impeachment manager in two judicial impeachments trials.
I hold him responsible for the loss of the house to the Republicans, him and Sean Patrick Mahoney.
Yet it is he or that millionaire right winger Garvey.
It is always voting against a Republican and never for a Democrat, And the moribund DNC and its culture are to blame.
Where are these "polls" taken and who are they asking? Either its mostly republicans or else our educational system has produced the most ignorant pupils ever, being taught by ignorant products of the same dumbed down system.
Victoria: Polls are conducted by corporations, the media is owned by corporations and in fact polling companies and media are incorporated and owned by corporations, who are in turn owned by other corporations, for the large part
Corporations exist to make a profit, to provide a positive rate of return to investors, and are directed to do so by a board, who hires an fires CEO's to do the job.
People are excited by competition, Sports, Reality Shows, movies, and politics.
Excitation means eyeballs and clicks, which means advertisers, which means money, money means profit,profit makes the CEO happy and earns them raises and benefits, it makes the board happy as it makes the investors and owners happy.
If there is no horse race,there is no excitement, and no excitement means no advertisers, which means no revenue, which means no profit or return on investment and everyone is miserable, and people lose their jobs.