I just love what you said about the makings of a positive future…once this regime comes to an, I would add, ignominious, end. I have to look for the small signs of hope and of resistance to this evil treachery. Will it be Trump supporters? I hope so, because those who have left a cult are the most powerful supporters of truth. Will the other cult members believe them? Not all at once, but peeling an onion takes time, a sharp knife and the willingness to shed painful tears to finish the job.
It's astonishing to me how many people still don't understand what is going on here. So many are slipping into the throws of authoritarianism without any understanding whatsoever. That is the power of the massive propaganda campaigns, so besides the fighters that you have pointed out, we desperately need people who can somehow minimize the effects of their propaganda machines. I don't know how we can do that, but I know it must be done. The independent media that popping up is awesome, but the people most under their propaganda spell isn't seeing any of that. We need minds much smarter than me. Anyway, thank you for your wise words.
It’s all true. That is large part because (using the most polite term) we are a semi-literate nation. When more than half (54%) read on an elementary school level (below 6th grade) and another 21% are not able to read we can expect a lot of things are not understood.
Roughly half of these folks are below the poverty line. They are not seeking out explanations of political theories or policies. There’s a general distaste for politics and skepticism. Add the “propaganda machines” (as you said). They absorb the noise by osmosis because it is everywhere they go - especially social media helped by its algorithms.
I see an “all marketing all the time” (or propaganda) approach coming given the ‘picks’ by the orange menace and the approach to the “DOGE” thing with Musk & Ramaswamy (and MTG). All made for media personalities, grifters & opinionators with followers & fans. Evidently frequent podcasts are planned from this dodgy fake agency. I suspect Comer & Jordon’s show trial hearings are about to be replaced / overshadowed. Then amplified throughout the propaganda machines.
Through various wars and many evil oppressive governments in history, there was always a robust ‘resistance’. The stories are all profiles in courage. Can you recommend a reading list? Navalny is a good example I think. There were multiple pockets of resistance to Hitler’s reign of terror from within his own military.
The heroes may arise where we least expect them. For example, there are many who like to castigate "big pharma" for their greed, but they surely are a subset of the wealthy whose wealth is threatened by kooks like RFK. There must be other entities like them who may rise up in opposition purely to protect their resources. "The enemies of my enemies are my friends." Some of them have yet to realize the threat, protected as they have been by a functioning democracy.
This is definitely a touchstone moment for Democrats and how they respond. Will the Democrats and independents in the Senate rise to defend democracy or will they be limp wristed. I would love to hear from our legal experts such as Judge Luttig, Lawrence Tribe, Neal Katyal, about RFK, Jr if confirmed, regarding vaccines. Can he stop vaccinations and if so is there recourse if someone becomes ill because they couldn’t get vaccinated against an illness?
seems as if his minions could make it very hard for researchers to get government funding. Vaccines are such a "stay ahead of the problem" game. Also, could they not allow senior citizens to get vaccinated under Medicare?
Most of the medical breakthroughs are done in University Labs across this country, paid by taxpayers who else, big pharma would have to do R+R and they don’t much.
I don't know but I'm sure there will be lawsuits. Now that the corrupt Supreme Court has done away with the Chevron Doctrine, Republicans in charge of federal agencies will be on the receiving end for a change.
Our nation is like a huge ocean liner. When a ship starts to sink we look for the leak in its foundation. That’s something no one in power is doing because people are truly clueless about education, democracy’s foundation.
I’m one of the few talking about it and the people in power aren’t listening because depriving everyone from being able to report the corruption that has taken over education for decades IS the corruption in education. It has worked like evil magic.
By turning the public against teachers, the crooks, who’ve hijacked education and made it their treasure chests, eliminated the only way their corruption could be known.
If we had no respect for doctors, we’d be a sickly nation. If we had no respect for scientists, we’d eventually lose this planet. By creating no respect for teachers - the people who once molded citizens - those running our schools hid from scrutiny while ending the molding of citizens. That’s how democracy slipped away. The only way we’ll get it back is by fumigating our corrupt education system and empowering called to teach teachers to show us the way.
The question is: did they do such a good job at prejudicing you against teachers you won’t listen to us even now when we know what happened to democracy? We used to be the heroes. Don’t let their need to evade the law take away your teachers - society’s organic heroes. I offer you my memoir about my teaching days, A Graver Danger, with hope a teacher can still do her job.
A lot of that is true. But the public does rebel. Ky tossed a governor who went after teachers. This year they voted 65% No to 35% Yes on using public $$ for private ed. Rural areas were afraid it would affect their communities. Uh huh. It was A-OK when their Reps were targeting those big blue dots. Even the thought is not so good coming to their town.
I’ll add that you can’t educate people well if they can’t read. Most adults in the US either read on an elementary school level (54%) or can’t read at all (21%). That’s a problem. It also means they tend to have low incomes & surviving day to day is their big concern.
Steven, In my book, I had a plan for great schools that I knew would work the way my plans for my students always worked. Now it won’t work.
After the election, I thought I’d need to retire from my 29 year job of educating the public about education. It took a couple days for me to create a new plan: we must get people who have learned what happened to education to run for school boards on a save democracy platform. Running on ending school shootings will be a winning platform. Shootings are warnings about having banished called to teach teachers. Shootings will stop when we repopulate with great teachers and teaching.
We can create an island for democracy that the Trump autocrats cannot touch.
Now education autocrats with all the power groom board members and create puppet boards. We can change that once people know what’s been going on. We can seize that power and keep democracy alive.
I am an expert at dealing with autocrats. Abraham Lincoln correctly said, "The philosophy of the school room in one generation, will be the philosophy of government in the next."
I know these people well. I’ve been standing up to the education version for 29 years. I can teach journalists who want to save democracy what needs to be done.
They can start by looking at the altered document my district submitted into my hearing record, which is in my book with the original document showing what they removed. It’s unlawful, but it’s been there for over 20 years because no one would investigate. I have lots of other receipts and lots of other whistleblowing teachers at hand having organized over 2000 of us at EndTeacherAbuse.org since 2002. I can make an investigation forge ahead.
Most of all I have evidence that will force our unions to admit that they too went along to get along. They are the secondary “crooks” as are the teachers who remain silent. We need unions. But the power at the top has been too much, which I explain in my book, and everyone succumbed except the whistleblowers that have no power.
Please read my book. Teachers are the antidote to Trumpism. I know my book can change everything. This was what society agreed teachers could do but stopped believing in due to the crooks running our schools.
A supreme irony: A few Republican Senators - belatedly - tremblingly stand up to Trump and “save” the Party. And in our next episode, Pauline is rescued, at the very last moment, from dangling off the cliff.
Who will save us? Trump voters who, once again, realize his betrayal.
We are in for a rough four years! I hope the American people don’t close their eyes and ears to what goes on and stand up against it before it’s too late ! That’s how fascism and dictatorships flourish and hard to turn back from!
I’m hoping they screw up badly enough in the first 2, that the midterm results blunts the last 2. The fly in the ointment is people will have to see past the noise to want change; to realize the orange menace is out of control & pulling the strings in the House & Senate.
Steve, your questions are spot on. But we will need to keep in mind the radicals’ efforts to eliminate federal jobs.
So who writes the payroll for, say, the Department of Education, when the payroll writers have been fired? As Musk and Ramaswamy take chain saws to our everyday government, who will stop them? Who could stop them since all the levers of power are in the sweaty hands of the radical right?
Oratory won’t work, nor writing columns and columns of essays, since the radical right doesn’t read you or listen to Olbermann or any other voice of accuracy.
Speaking of which, how soon will the radical right turn the Voice of America into a propaganda arm aimed directly at Americans? Hmmm. Trump will have his very own radio and television system.
One thing we must do (I don't know how exactly but it might involve lobbying Mark Cuban) is keep MSNBC out of Musk's grubby little paws. I hear he's thinking of buying it. So is Mark Cuban. For Musk to ruin it as he has Twitter would be a disaster.
What if we were all heroes? (Other than the villains, that is.) As individual heroes we can act locally - starting in our own homes - by taking our money out of the Republican Administration's economy. If their economy goes down the toilet, MAGA piliticians might be flushed down with it.
We have power to stop spending too much money and the power to take our eyes away from the craziness we call "news," and pay all of our attention to our local communities. Without attention, the Strongman will wilt.
Mass Deportation won’t be what you think. Under Trump's second administration, ICE will take the easy, fast, and cheap road to instill terror. How? Tom Homan and Steven Miller will move quickly to expand ISAP (ICE’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program), an existing digital surveillance program featuring ankle bracelets and intrusive smartphone apps. Although workplace raids and high-profile deportations will be the spectacle, digital surveillance will be the self-funding workhorse of terror. That’s because the infrastructure to charge targeted immigrants fees to wear ankle bracelets is already in place. How much money? To delay incarceration or deportation, targeted immigrants will incur costs as much as $400 per month. They will pay for their own surveillance. The more people tracked, the more money generated.
Once again I raise up Sun Tzu: Chinese philosopher/Warrior Sun Tzu: "An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes."
Trump & Co. are bringing a wrecking ball to our democratic republic. It is difficult to wrap one's head around how one person and group can be so lacking in compassion, humanity and integrity. Yes, we need heroes from every quarter. Those who supported Trump are in for a very rude awakening; very, very rude. Trump at his Vegas rally in June: “I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.” The people CHEERED! They are totally daft. That was a slam-dunk in your face dismissal of every supporter.
There will be heroes from all sides. How effective they will be only time will tell. The levers of power will be concentrated into a small population of the most sinister, the most vicious and the most malicious. Some of those operatives have been planning and working for years to dismantle our democratic republic. They want their world imprinted on every life, no matter its horror or vengeful impact. Your happiness and contentment in life, and mine, are of no importance to them. Take a moment to read German theologian Martin Niemöller's poem, "First they came for the Socialists", written while Germany was under Nazi rule.
I do not think there is anyone on the horizon right now to do the job. If there were, they would have made some impression during the election. No one impressed me. We are in for it for awhile till someone young and feisty shows up out of the blue. We wait.
Here we are at this abysmal juncture of our nation's existence when common sense and morality have been sacrificed at the altar of dogma and greed. How did we ever let this happen? What does it say about our values when the majority are unable to differentiate between the polar opposites of good and evil? Or is that majority just too indolent and ignorant to care that power has been handed to a sick, corrupt, unintelligent, traitorous, racist bigot who is hellbent on destroying this country from within?
We, our elected officials and each one of us, will have to push back at every turn, as you say, Steven. Over and above that, though, we need to organize a national movement, led by able leaders, to show that we stand united against bigotry and evil. But the work to build that movement must start now so that we are ready, at the first intimation of official wrongdoing, to shut this country down with massive, national strikes and to do so for as long as it takes to bring the regime down.
If there is a glimmer of hope for us, it is in the fact that fissures, driven by infighting, will start to open within the regime's ranks not long after it assumes power. We, however, will need to be prepared to wrench those fissures wide open.
Thank you, Steven. There are many of us who recognize the need to oppose this hostile takeover at every level of government. Let’s keep at it!
I just love what you said about the makings of a positive future…once this regime comes to an, I would add, ignominious, end. I have to look for the small signs of hope and of resistance to this evil treachery. Will it be Trump supporters? I hope so, because those who have left a cult are the most powerful supporters of truth. Will the other cult members believe them? Not all at once, but peeling an onion takes time, a sharp knife and the willingness to shed painful tears to finish the job.
It's astonishing to me how many people still don't understand what is going on here. So many are slipping into the throws of authoritarianism without any understanding whatsoever. That is the power of the massive propaganda campaigns, so besides the fighters that you have pointed out, we desperately need people who can somehow minimize the effects of their propaganda machines. I don't know how we can do that, but I know it must be done. The independent media that popping up is awesome, but the people most under their propaganda spell isn't seeing any of that. We need minds much smarter than me. Anyway, thank you for your wise words.
It’s all true. That is large part because (using the most polite term) we are a semi-literate nation. When more than half (54%) read on an elementary school level (below 6th grade) and another 21% are not able to read we can expect a lot of things are not understood.
Roughly half of these folks are below the poverty line. They are not seeking out explanations of political theories or policies. There’s a general distaste for politics and skepticism. Add the “propaganda machines” (as you said). They absorb the noise by osmosis because it is everywhere they go - especially social media helped by its algorithms.
I see an “all marketing all the time” (or propaganda) approach coming given the ‘picks’ by the orange menace and the approach to the “DOGE” thing with Musk & Ramaswamy (and MTG). All made for media personalities, grifters & opinionators with followers & fans. Evidently frequent podcasts are planned from this dodgy fake agency. I suspect Comer & Jordon’s show trial hearings are about to be replaced / overshadowed. Then amplified throughout the propaganda machines.
Through various wars and many evil oppressive governments in history, there was always a robust ‘resistance’. The stories are all profiles in courage. Can you recommend a reading list? Navalny is a good example I think. There were multiple pockets of resistance to Hitler’s reign of terror from within his own military.
The heroes may arise where we least expect them. For example, there are many who like to castigate "big pharma" for their greed, but they surely are a subset of the wealthy whose wealth is threatened by kooks like RFK. There must be other entities like them who may rise up in opposition purely to protect their resources. "The enemies of my enemies are my friends." Some of them have yet to realize the threat, protected as they have been by a functioning democracy.
This is definitely a touchstone moment for Democrats and how they respond. Will the Democrats and independents in the Senate rise to defend democracy or will they be limp wristed. I would love to hear from our legal experts such as Judge Luttig, Lawrence Tribe, Neal Katyal, about RFK, Jr if confirmed, regarding vaccines. Can he stop vaccinations and if so is there recourse if someone becomes ill because they couldn’t get vaccinated against an illness?
I'm not sure he can outlaw vaccines but he might be able to discourage their use. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2024/rfk-jr-ban-vaccines-health-human-services-secretary/
seems as if his minions could make it very hard for researchers to get government funding. Vaccines are such a "stay ahead of the problem" game. Also, could they not allow senior citizens to get vaccinated under Medicare?
Most of the medical breakthroughs are done in University Labs across this country, paid by taxpayers who else, big pharma would have to do R+R and they don’t much.
I don't know but I'm sure there will be lawsuits. Now that the corrupt Supreme Court has done away with the Chevron Doctrine, Republicans in charge of federal agencies will be on the receiving end for a change.
Our nation is like a huge ocean liner. When a ship starts to sink we look for the leak in its foundation. That’s something no one in power is doing because people are truly clueless about education, democracy’s foundation.
I’m one of the few talking about it and the people in power aren’t listening because depriving everyone from being able to report the corruption that has taken over education for decades IS the corruption in education. It has worked like evil magic.
By turning the public against teachers, the crooks, who’ve hijacked education and made it their treasure chests, eliminated the only way their corruption could be known.
If we had no respect for doctors, we’d be a sickly nation. If we had no respect for scientists, we’d eventually lose this planet. By creating no respect for teachers - the people who once molded citizens - those running our schools hid from scrutiny while ending the molding of citizens. That’s how democracy slipped away. The only way we’ll get it back is by fumigating our corrupt education system and empowering called to teach teachers to show us the way.
The question is: did they do such a good job at prejudicing you against teachers you won’t listen to us even now when we know what happened to democracy? We used to be the heroes. Don’t let their need to evade the law take away your teachers - society’s organic heroes. I offer you my memoir about my teaching days, A Graver Danger, with hope a teacher can still do her job.
https://karenhorwitz.substack.com/p/the-prologue-of-a-graver-danger
A lot of that is true. But the public does rebel. Ky tossed a governor who went after teachers. This year they voted 65% No to 35% Yes on using public $$ for private ed. Rural areas were afraid it would affect their communities. Uh huh. It was A-OK when their Reps were targeting those big blue dots. Even the thought is not so good coming to their town.
I’ll add that you can’t educate people well if they can’t read. Most adults in the US either read on an elementary school level (54%) or can’t read at all (21%). That’s a problem. It also means they tend to have low incomes & surviving day to day is their big concern.
Steven, In my book, I had a plan for great schools that I knew would work the way my plans for my students always worked. Now it won’t work.
After the election, I thought I’d need to retire from my 29 year job of educating the public about education. It took a couple days for me to create a new plan: we must get people who have learned what happened to education to run for school boards on a save democracy platform. Running on ending school shootings will be a winning platform. Shootings are warnings about having banished called to teach teachers. Shootings will stop when we repopulate with great teachers and teaching.
We can create an island for democracy that the Trump autocrats cannot touch.
Now education autocrats with all the power groom board members and create puppet boards. We can change that once people know what’s been going on. We can seize that power and keep democracy alive.
I am an expert at dealing with autocrats. Abraham Lincoln correctly said, "The philosophy of the school room in one generation, will be the philosophy of government in the next."
I know these people well. I’ve been standing up to the education version for 29 years. I can teach journalists who want to save democracy what needs to be done.
They can start by looking at the altered document my district submitted into my hearing record, which is in my book with the original document showing what they removed. It’s unlawful, but it’s been there for over 20 years because no one would investigate. I have lots of other receipts and lots of other whistleblowing teachers at hand having organized over 2000 of us at EndTeacherAbuse.org since 2002. I can make an investigation forge ahead.
Most of all I have evidence that will force our unions to admit that they too went along to get along. They are the secondary “crooks” as are the teachers who remain silent. We need unions. But the power at the top has been too much, which I explain in my book, and everyone succumbed except the whistleblowers that have no power.
Please read my book. Teachers are the antidote to Trumpism. I know my book can change everything. This was what society agreed teachers could do but stopped believing in due to the crooks running our schools.
A supreme irony: A few Republican Senators - belatedly - tremblingly stand up to Trump and “save” the Party. And in our next episode, Pauline is rescued, at the very last moment, from dangling off the cliff.
Who will save us? Trump voters who, once again, realize his betrayal.
We are in for a rough four years! I hope the American people don’t close their eyes and ears to what goes on and stand up against it before it’s too late ! That’s how fascism and dictatorships flourish and hard to turn back from!
I’m hoping they screw up badly enough in the first 2, that the midterm results blunts the last 2. The fly in the ointment is people will have to see past the noise to want change; to realize the orange menace is out of control & pulling the strings in the House & Senate.
Steve, your questions are spot on. But we will need to keep in mind the radicals’ efforts to eliminate federal jobs.
So who writes the payroll for, say, the Department of Education, when the payroll writers have been fired? As Musk and Ramaswamy take chain saws to our everyday government, who will stop them? Who could stop them since all the levers of power are in the sweaty hands of the radical right?
Oratory won’t work, nor writing columns and columns of essays, since the radical right doesn’t read you or listen to Olbermann or any other voice of accuracy.
Speaking of which, how soon will the radical right turn the Voice of America into a propaganda arm aimed directly at Americans? Hmmm. Trump will have his very own radio and television system.
One thing we must do (I don't know how exactly but it might involve lobbying Mark Cuban) is keep MSNBC out of Musk's grubby little paws. I hear he's thinking of buying it. So is Mark Cuban. For Musk to ruin it as he has Twitter would be a disaster.
What if we were all heroes? (Other than the villains, that is.) As individual heroes we can act locally - starting in our own homes - by taking our money out of the Republican Administration's economy. If their economy goes down the toilet, MAGA piliticians might be flushed down with it.
We have power to stop spending too much money and the power to take our eyes away from the craziness we call "news," and pay all of our attention to our local communities. Without attention, the Strongman will wilt.
Each of us can help.
This is everything laid out in perfect order. What to watch out for. Thanks Steven.
Mass Deportation won’t be what you think. Under Trump's second administration, ICE will take the easy, fast, and cheap road to instill terror. How? Tom Homan and Steven Miller will move quickly to expand ISAP (ICE’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program), an existing digital surveillance program featuring ankle bracelets and intrusive smartphone apps. Although workplace raids and high-profile deportations will be the spectacle, digital surveillance will be the self-funding workhorse of terror. That’s because the infrastructure to charge targeted immigrants fees to wear ankle bracelets is already in place. How much money? To delay incarceration or deportation, targeted immigrants will incur costs as much as $400 per month. They will pay for their own surveillance. The more people tracked, the more money generated.
https://bit.ly/MassSurveillance (note case sensitive)
Once again I raise up Sun Tzu: Chinese philosopher/Warrior Sun Tzu: "An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes."
Trump & Co. are bringing a wrecking ball to our democratic republic. It is difficult to wrap one's head around how one person and group can be so lacking in compassion, humanity and integrity. Yes, we need heroes from every quarter. Those who supported Trump are in for a very rude awakening; very, very rude. Trump at his Vegas rally in June: “I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.” The people CHEERED! They are totally daft. That was a slam-dunk in your face dismissal of every supporter.
There will be heroes from all sides. How effective they will be only time will tell. The levers of power will be concentrated into a small population of the most sinister, the most vicious and the most malicious. Some of those operatives have been planning and working for years to dismantle our democratic republic. They want their world imprinted on every life, no matter its horror or vengeful impact. Your happiness and contentment in life, and mine, are of no importance to them. Take a moment to read German theologian Martin Niemöller's poem, "First they came for the Socialists", written while Germany was under Nazi rule.
I do not think there is anyone on the horizon right now to do the job. If there were, they would have made some impression during the election. No one impressed me. We are in for it for awhile till someone young and feisty shows up out of the blue. We wait.
Here we are at this abysmal juncture of our nation's existence when common sense and morality have been sacrificed at the altar of dogma and greed. How did we ever let this happen? What does it say about our values when the majority are unable to differentiate between the polar opposites of good and evil? Or is that majority just too indolent and ignorant to care that power has been handed to a sick, corrupt, unintelligent, traitorous, racist bigot who is hellbent on destroying this country from within?
We, our elected officials and each one of us, will have to push back at every turn, as you say, Steven. Over and above that, though, we need to organize a national movement, led by able leaders, to show that we stand united against bigotry and evil. But the work to build that movement must start now so that we are ready, at the first intimation of official wrongdoing, to shut this country down with massive, national strikes and to do so for as long as it takes to bring the regime down.
If there is a glimmer of hope for us, it is in the fact that fissures, driven by infighting, will start to open within the regime's ranks not long after it assumes power. We, however, will need to be prepared to wrench those fissures wide open.