There is a line from scripture, proverb 29:18-19 KJV, that deserves reflection when considering the awful state of our politics, public discourse and national condition: Where there is no vision, the people perish: But he that keepeth the law, happy is he. A servant will not be corrected by words: For though he understand he will not answer.
I can tell you the problem , and you already know it Steve -
How can one party be so committed to foisting the Orange Menace to the pinnacle of their party? There obsession is beyond Jonestown and the Heavensgate cultism. And for what? The Fat Man is such a bumbling moron who fancies himself the greatest. All I see is a laughingstock - and to all of those that follow this tool, a level of ignorance unmatched since 1939
Next to climate change the biggest problem in the US is extreme economic inequality. The young people have lost hope because of that more than anything else. We need to get serious about real solutions to that problem.
Love the space program but love more President Johnson's War Against Poverty which resulted in The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 that created the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), providing funds for vocational training, created the Job Corps to train youths in conservation camps and urban centres, and established VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), a domestic counterpart to the Peace Corps, and Head Start, an early-education program for children of poor families, among other programs. What the F did Trump establish?
Thank you Steve. I love this quite literally. It is real American values - its high hope, high intelligence, high innovation, high prosperity, all for the benefit of better human conditions on this planet. This and the other similar messages you have been sending out are simple, well researched, and very powerful - and will certainly be sent to the relatives, friends and children of this reader. This is it, the reason why we must sustain our Democracy.
One personal goal I have is to work on making sure that 100 people I know will get out and vote for, at the least, anyone except the miscreant. And to send 100 letters to members of Congress, the Senate, the clergy, anyone who does not get it. I expect to step to do much more. Take Steve's baton here with this Proud to be an American series (I am sure he has a better name for it).
President's Kennedy's message here is exactly 180 degrees from that of any the miscreant has ever spewed. Any. That is so clear. The difference is chilling and stark. The cult must be stopped.
I think many of us are missing the boat. We have an election coming up and Trump is rising while Biden is falling. Nobody seems to know why. If they did, they would do something about it. Steve, for all of his fine qualities, spent an entire day's work bludgeoning the New York Times. The New York Times! It's almost insane. We are sinking and Steven is belaboring the engine room staff for minor league miscreants. We need a better sense of proportion, folks. If there is one source feeding our politics with poison gas it is Fox News. I know. we've heard it all before. But we haven't. Here are two simple facts we should be pondering. Fact one: Fox News leads all others as a primary news source. That is almost incomprehensible. Sad fact two: almost 40% of the country depends for its news on Fox. Here is my simple claim: Fox has created and maintains each day the world view of its watchers. Its effectiveness can be gauged by the degree of misinformation that fills the minds of that segment of the population.
The benighted folks that follow Fox do not even know how Fox goes about its business of brainwashing them. They don't know how Fox does what it does. Nobody has told them. Nobody tells them day to day how they are being deceived. The comparison with Jim Jones and Jonestown is truly apt: hundreds of thousands of Americans died because they were misinformed about Covid. Think of that. Hundreds of thousands. And they don't know it even now. They haven't been told. Watch Fox News for any 24 hour period and you will be informed of how they do business.
We need to do a better job shutting down Fox News, either directly by boycotting its advertisers, or indirectly, by exposing them and constantly calling attention to its deceptions and deceivers.
Martin Dillon; stay tuned to the Smartmatic defamation lawsuit against Fox that will be in court soon. It’s even for a larger sum than the previous Dominion lawsuit, which Fox settled right before trial for $787 million. My hope is it further trashes Fox’s credibility. If they keep defaming people with more lies, maybe there will be more lawsuits in the future.
He does and has done some extraordinarily fine pieces attacking Fox for what it does. What is my point then? If all faulty coverage in The NY Times could by some miracle be erased from the world, Trump’s influence would be untouched. If the same were done to Fox News coverage, Trump world would disappear.
If you think it’s fine for the NYTIMES to have changed the language in an OPINION piece submitted by a sitting US Senator without informing him, then they’re not much better than Fox News. That was Steve’s point. “Belaboring the engine room?” Please.
Comparing "changed language in an OPINION" to the Orwellian Fox News can't be serious. It's even too far fetched to serve as an example of failure of proportionality. No one would say the failure of the NYT in this instance is fine. It's not fine. It should not have happened. Is it habitual? Has it happened often? Daily, weekly, monthly? Of course not. It's at most, very occasional. Fox News, every single night, does more damage 100 times over than this misstep of the Times. Please. Say to yourself, "hundreds of thousands of lives".
Dec 22, 2023·edited Dec 23, 2023Liked by Steve Schmidt
Great piece Steve, forward thinking is always welcomed especially when Republicans are trying to bring our country back to the 19th century with their bans. We have come far in our ability to leave this planet even though we are still in our infancy in space travel. However, you do not learn or advance your knowledge without first taking the necessary steps and repeating them until they are perfected. I believe the enormous expense of space travel is worth our endeavors because of how it advances Humanity and our future existence. We humans have always been explorers and our explorations have advanced our societies and benefiting all mankind.
America the Stupid! What a heartbreak to utter these words, yet the conclusion is unmistakable. Seen against the imaginative and challenging vision of John F. Kennedy just 60 years ago, the country is looking like a drunken sailor staggering from lamp post to lamp post unable to figure out how to get to tomorrow. A criminal lunatic would-be dictator is making his inexorable march toward the presidency with apparently nothing to stop him short of a cannon. The chickenshit Supreme Court will not even consider whether he is immune from criminal prosecution when the issue stretches the limits of absurdity beyond the breaking point. Trump, the goon, said it - he could shoot someone of 5th Avenue and get away with it. Apparently so. Certainly the Supreme Court allows for the possibility by their inability to deal with a question so central to the stability of a democratic republic as to put it squarely in harms way through their ignorance and incompetence. They know that their actions may allow Trump to escape a trial before the next election. And this is but one of Trump’s magical delays. He will think of more. Count on it! Because no one thought that such an uncaring Sociopath as Trump would attain a position of power, there is nothing that can be done about it, not least because his bag of aimless, whimpering syncophants happens to have a seat or two majority in the House. In case anyone thinks differently or is looking under his desk for excuses, as W once looked under his desk for weapons of mass destruction, (another Supreme Court gem), let's be clear, nobody did this to America but America. You can feel the gravity pulling an entire nation down the rabbit hole under the guidance of a tiny, yes infinitesimal, group of insurrectionists who seem free to do as they wish because all three branches of government have tied their own hands, rendering themselves impotent. And we know that there is a growing group of incredibly naive people who are sucking their thumbs and thinking about a protest vote or maybe a third party or maybe Trump is not so bad or Joe is too old. This is like looking at two people facing you, one with a gun and an itchy trigger finger, the other with a bouquet of flowers and you get to choose. Duh. There are so many good people in your country. Who is going to marshall and aim them to defeat a threat many times greater than America has ever contemplated? THAT is the question and the answer better come soon. The institutions are failing.
When Mr. Schmidt uses the Bible's proverbs to educate us, he also should use the Quran's exact equal in proverbs sometimes, as well, and that is called the Luqman.
His latest use of a Bible's proverb is a splendid one, and I liked it a lot. It is true and will always be true.
Appropos of that proverb, there has rarely been any nation on all 4 continents which had a worthwhile vision. Instead it usually is about some person grabbing Power over his people.
ALL nations have at one time or another ruled the world, from the gold mines of central Africa which caused that African country to rule the non-Eurpean African continent for 0h-a century or two at least-, to India ruling over its Untouchable castes for millenia, ,and China's many emperors--- and let's not forget our many Oligarchs who became president right here.
None but one had the greatest people that ever lived : artistically endowed, philosophy rich Athens, 5th century BC, and, sadly, the wise Pericles had already announced he would free the slaves to become citizens just before he died of the plague.
Second, comes the ruling of the middle class merchants over the royalty in France, Bismarck's Prussia with its extremely liberal form of government, the great Tsatsos socialist government of Greece, and a few others; all had a vision.
WHY DO WE THINK WE ARE THE ONLY ONE with a 'vision'?
True, we needed to break with King George so we started our own nation. MANY nations have done that!
What was our Vision?
To get rich by pillaging an entire continent and slaughtering its indigent people here while buying slaves?- Well that WAS part of the plan.
There was also a hope , a mere hope, that our citizens would Voluntarily care about keeping a clean ethical Congress in power.
As Plato said "There is no such thing possible as a Good Government, becasue it is run by men".
Democracy can never work because IMMEDIATELY the rich control the powers of government and keep the citizens stupid about the corruption in their government.
It was a beautiful but naive wish for this nation to begin with.
Maybe it’s as simple as Trump is perceived as strong and Biden as weak. Performance politics is rooted in American culture and appears to be based on entertainment value as opposed to doing the hard work needed especially now. After years of feeding the American public with Joe Biden’s gaffs, falls, even occasional nodding off, that’s just not “the look” we the people want. I’ve been scratching my head over these poll numbers but when Trump cites Hitler his ratings go up. What do we need, the wicked witch of the North?
Ahhh, the fortunate few. All may dream, only few will realize those dreams into ambitions.
We owe this unfortunate circumstance to ourselves.
Our very own education institutions allow support of the fortunate few to open the dream aperture towards youthful ambitions.
Bring education of our proud democratic principles through education and civic service to our youth. That will bring the support of dreams and cultivate leadership.
Our youth today do not have the influence of a family member that devoted themselves to public service, honor, devotion or sacrifice. What they have now is high powered, marketing, social media and their souls to be devoured by drugs, alcohol and AI. They are NOT the fortunate few. We allowed this and all the love we have for them cannot prevent it.
Let’s admit our mistakes and help ourselves with education and service programs designed for youth to support America.
What kind of future can America realistically anticipate when tens of millions refuse to budge from their support of a man--who among his many demonstrated hideous traits--is so clearly amoral, corrupt, and blatantly anti-democratic. And doesn't mind one bit who knows it.
Those tens of millions have their heels dug in...deep. His support only increases with more lies, venemous slurs and obvious crimes against the country. The stage is being set for America to quite possibly never experience another traditionally certified election again. Indeed, if the Democrats win in 2024, there may need to be a new Constitutional path somehow put in place for the winning candidate to take office on January 20. This may be true of other political offices as well, even going down to the state and local level.
America is sick and getting sicker. Pandora is out of the box and running amuck. This is the reality and the future the country must understand is almost surely coming. What to do? Good luck on that one. In any case, no matter what, those tens of millions ain't going nowhere.
I can tell you the other side is preparing for Armageddon, the final holy” battle where all kinds of strange shit happens. Oh yeah, take Israel back from the Jews. That’s high up on the lightning round. I’m with you and to say these are dangerous times is the understatement of the century.
If you allow an insurrectionist to run for the highest office of the land you might get a result that Germany experienced in 1933. Germans were at the top in terms of science and culture so what made Germany unleash aggressive war to bring death to millions? The prolonged severe depression between the WWI and WWII was no doubt a prime factor. No country can rely on the good judgment of their voters when they're under severe economic distress. That's when a demagogue can grab power. Something like Section 3 of the 14th Amendment can provide helpful protection from such a power grab during desperate times. It's like a surge protector !!
Any of the Warning community who have not already read yesterdays responses to Steve’s piece on the desecration of the Lincoln Memorial should take a moment and read Frank Lee’s answer to David Skogland’s question “what is his (Frank’s) definition of Woke. It should give all of us comfort in knowing...we’re gonna be alright. In order for Trump to win another term would mean that half the country’s voters understand and believe that that spew of psychotic gibberish is true (much less intelligible). And I believe half the country is definitely -not- psychotic.
And Goebbels made sure that every household had a free radio so that speeches of Hitler could be heard by all.
This world is not the world that JFK lived in. In 1962, the mood of the nation, the national identity, the zeitgeist had been formed by the world and national events of the previous 25 years. These events were described to the nation by a relative few sources. Two, and later three major radio and eventually TV networks, about three wire services that provided reports of national and international events to newspapers and broadcasters. State level and national level politicians whose information came from the same few sources servicing the voters. Entertainment was provided by radio and then TV networks, three of them. We lived in a shared reality. The nation was able to have a shared vision.
But not anymore. Today, gigantic and powerful corporations have flooded our awareness with myriad sources of reality. Literally anything that has a chance of making a profit is constantly prodding nearly every individual through a glowing screen in their pockets. A screen that will tell them whatever they want to know or believe, true or false, and more important to their lives than even looking where they are going when walking down the street. At home and work, bigger screens. In metropolitan areas, gigantic glowing screens. Selling, distracting, tweaking human brains into addiction for more, and the corporations know how to tweak. Nefarious political people know how to tweak brains in the way that Goebbels knew how. And it works when selling fear much better than it works selling whatever it was that JFK was selling in 1962. A national vision is simply impossible. The best that can be hoped for, at least in the short term, is avoidance of the mental, emotional and spiritual chaos of the present time by a hair's breadth of enough people so that another block of time passes before.... Does anybody know what it will be?
What is available now is the precise marketing that Goebbels could never imagined. Propaganda/marketing down to the exact voter based on their on-line - or not - profile. Fox network is everywhere. Attempting to get it’s messengering to potentials through the least opening. They have to be “blocked” if one doesn’t want their lies piped into your household. If our Democracy holds - one of the first things to be done is to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine” that Reagan dumped. It’s not entirely fair to blame people for their misunderstanding of the truth when they have been fed lies by a Broadcast Network for years. Every time something is brought up about Trump, Fox reverses it and projects it onto Biden - including poopy diapers. Years and years of this. Younger people never knew anything else but false narratives. Older people may not be aware that the Fairness Doctrine is even gone or that it has been so discarded. I went to a family reunion and heard the Fox bs being regurgitated from intelligent relatives. My late mother was trained as a journalist (old school), she despised this propaganda. I was trained in Marketing Research and Marketing. I worked for Ford at the World Headquarters. We targeted our customers. That was decades ago. It’s all so much more sophisticated now.
I completely support the Colorado Supreme Court decision because I have witnessed what the absence of the Fairness Doctrine has allowed Fox and the rest of the Republican propaganda machine to do to intelligent people. It’s time for the courts to step in. Americans will not kowtow to a dictator. This is a set-up to weaken the country by our international opposition and the extremely wealthy with offshore money (they can move anywhere immediately). If Trump were to win we would have chaos and the only winners would be the absurdly wealthy, Russia, North Korea and the countries that Trump favors - forget NATO
Christopher Wylie blew the whistle on Cambridge Analytica and the theft on 80+ million Facebook account’s data along with otherwise available data to develop methods (highly sophisticated propaganda) to literally begin to change “our” culture. This could be called a sophisticated marketing program to someone of my age and background or a data ??? or process to someone in that industry. It was funded by Robert Mercer and run by Steve Bannon.
Old school- large corporation may decide to “change the “culture” of the corporation”. There were various departments tasked with indoctrinating that “new culture” all up and down the corporate ladder. “Quality is Job 1” was such a change/theme at Ford.
What Cambridge Analytica was doing, was using data to target individual Americans based on social media etc. for certain Facebook news feeds; for certain advertisements, for certain “suggestions”. If all a person is seeing is what coincides with what Trump, Robert Mercer, Steve Bannon, Rupert Murdock, and Franklin Graham want them to see - they will believe that is true. And Fox “News” will confirm it’s veracity and with “solemnity” and proper condemnation for anyone who disagrees. Mr. Wylie finally couldn’t stomach the HATE this was generating in our society. He blew the whistle.
Cambridge Analytics is now called Emerdata, Ltd.
If you are retired or do not have children - ask yourselves why you aren’t seeing nonstop toy commercials right now and over the last week? If you aren’t shopping for toys - you won’t see many commercials. They cost 💲 . Companies target their ad $.
Now imagine your target market is the White House and all the power both militarily and economic that went with it.
What wouldn’t someone with no morals and nothing but self interest do to obtain and keep that prize.???
Excellent Points here -thanks! "Selling, distracting, tweaking human brains into addiction for more, and the corporations know how to tweak. Nefarious political people know how to tweak brains in the way that Goebbels knew how." This is what we're up against. Well said!
I am a big fan of Steve Schmidt, this newsletter, the political philosophy articulated (most but far from all times), and the tone and content of the comments posted here. But, after about 55 years in the communications business (mostly PR, but all specialties over the years) I need to suggest that you cannot define or develop solutions the world is facing until you have recognized that the basic premises of the human worldview have changed in very fundamental ways. We're living in an entirely different world, not unlike the way the Pre-Copernicans and the Post-Copernicans lived with different worldviews. What's as significant as shifting from a geocentric understanding of the universe, centred around Earth, to a heliocentric understanding, centred around the Sun? Consider the significance of Einstein's assertion that time and space are NOT two separate entities (which is a basic premise in our current worldview), but that there is one space-time continuum and we no longer live in a world with 3 dimensions but space-time is a fourth dimension. Is that part of your worldview? No. Should it be if you want to live with a worldview that is accurate? Yes.
At the same time, the human has achieved an amazing evolutionary change that we have been pursuing for about two million years, when human communications consisted of grunting and pantomime. That worked only when those communicating were in the same space and same time. Now, space and time no longer tyrannize human communications because humans evolved and created tools to allow them to communicate in those instances when they need to communicate to people in other spaces, such as the other side of the mountain. So the human used smoke and yelling and pennants to communicate. You know what happened from there -- we haven't yet eliminated space and time from limiting our communications ability ENTIRELY but we are pretty close -- and we will. And that is affecting our worldview, and bringing chaos as the status quo is disrupted to its core, just as happened as the human asked: "you mean I don't live in the center of the universe and everything doesn't revolve around me?" The Copernican Revolution, as disruptive as it was, was not identified for years as it was emerging -- and then it took about 100+ years to "end" and much more than that for religious leaders to accept scientific truth -- "accept" meaning to stop opposing the heliocentric worldview and killing those who advocated for truth. So: why would anyone think that the current revolutionary change in the human worldview is going to occur without disruption, conflict, and turmoil? There is an answer to that question, in my opinion: the revolution has not been identified and therefore it has been misunderstood and underestimated.
This revolutionary era is bringing with it a change in moral standards, currency, motivations, how communities are formed and how they are shaped and grown. I can offer answers to these questions, most of which are probably wrong. I am writing about it all at my new substack newsletter -- but that newsletter is very much in beta stage, so if you want to know more please just message me privately and I'll try to provide a rational response -- I have already taken up too much time and space here (LOL) and probably led many of you to think I am being self-promotional when I am trying to be "truth-promotional." I'm 78. By this time, I have taken so many rights to the jaw that I have very little ego left -- so if you want to challenge my thinking you are invited to be as candid as you want. After taking a lot of rights to the jaw, I've learned a basic lesson: the punch stings .... your head snaps back ... and then your head straightens back up and you get back in the fight. Cheers.
I can tell you the problem , and you already know it Steve -
How can one party be so committed to foisting the Orange Menace to the pinnacle of their party? There obsession is beyond Jonestown and the Heavensgate cultism. And for what? The Fat Man is such a bumbling moron who fancies himself the greatest. All I see is a laughingstock - and to all of those that follow this tool, a level of ignorance unmatched since 1939
But that ignorance in 1939 cost hundreds of millions of lives.
Next to climate change the biggest problem in the US is extreme economic inequality. The young people have lost hope because of that more than anything else. We need to get serious about real solutions to that problem.
Maybe the biggest problem right now is Donald Trump. If we loose in 2024 you can kiss everything goodbye.
Michael Hammer,
economic inequality caused the populist outrage that spawned Donald Trump. If that dynamic continues it will keep feeding “Trumpism” into the future.
Love the space program but love more President Johnson's War Against Poverty which resulted in The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 that created the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), providing funds for vocational training, created the Job Corps to train youths in conservation camps and urban centres, and established VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), a domestic counterpart to the Peace Corps, and Head Start, an early-education program for children of poor families, among other programs. What the F did Trump establish?
Excellent points here -thanks!
Thank you Steve. I love this quite literally. It is real American values - its high hope, high intelligence, high innovation, high prosperity, all for the benefit of better human conditions on this planet. This and the other similar messages you have been sending out are simple, well researched, and very powerful - and will certainly be sent to the relatives, friends and children of this reader. This is it, the reason why we must sustain our Democracy.
One personal goal I have is to work on making sure that 100 people I know will get out and vote for, at the least, anyone except the miscreant. And to send 100 letters to members of Congress, the Senate, the clergy, anyone who does not get it. I expect to step to do much more. Take Steve's baton here with this Proud to be an American series (I am sure he has a better name for it).
President's Kennedy's message here is exactly 180 degrees from that of any the miscreant has ever spewed. Any. That is so clear. The difference is chilling and stark. The cult must be stopped.
Thanks Steve and have a great one.
Love your personal goal! Let’s hope millions of Americans have similar ones.
Steve
I think many of us are missing the boat. We have an election coming up and Trump is rising while Biden is falling. Nobody seems to know why. If they did, they would do something about it. Steve, for all of his fine qualities, spent an entire day's work bludgeoning the New York Times. The New York Times! It's almost insane. We are sinking and Steven is belaboring the engine room staff for minor league miscreants. We need a better sense of proportion, folks. If there is one source feeding our politics with poison gas it is Fox News. I know. we've heard it all before. But we haven't. Here are two simple facts we should be pondering. Fact one: Fox News leads all others as a primary news source. That is almost incomprehensible. Sad fact two: almost 40% of the country depends for its news on Fox. Here is my simple claim: Fox has created and maintains each day the world view of its watchers. Its effectiveness can be gauged by the degree of misinformation that fills the minds of that segment of the population.
The benighted folks that follow Fox do not even know how Fox goes about its business of brainwashing them. They don't know how Fox does what it does. Nobody has told them. Nobody tells them day to day how they are being deceived. The comparison with Jim Jones and Jonestown is truly apt: hundreds of thousands of Americans died because they were misinformed about Covid. Think of that. Hundreds of thousands. And they don't know it even now. They haven't been told. Watch Fox News for any 24 hour period and you will be informed of how they do business.
We need to do a better job shutting down Fox News, either directly by boycotting its advertisers, or indirectly, by exposing them and constantly calling attention to its deceptions and deceivers.
Martin Dillon; stay tuned to the Smartmatic defamation lawsuit against Fox that will be in court soon. It’s even for a larger sum than the previous Dominion lawsuit, which Fox settled right before trial for $787 million. My hope is it further trashes Fox’s credibility. If they keep defaming people with more lies, maybe there will be more lawsuits in the future.
Steve does intensely and brilliantly go after Fox 'news' and MAGA with "Schmidt Storms" .
He does and has done some extraordinarily fine pieces attacking Fox for what it does. What is my point then? If all faulty coverage in The NY Times could by some miracle be erased from the world, Trump’s influence would be untouched. If the same were done to Fox News coverage, Trump world would disappear.
Yes, I agree! I lost my family to extremist talk radio and Fox 'news' in rural Montana.
Thank you!
If you think it’s fine for the NYTIMES to have changed the language in an OPINION piece submitted by a sitting US Senator without informing him, then they’re not much better than Fox News. That was Steve’s point. “Belaboring the engine room?” Please.
Comparing "changed language in an OPINION" to the Orwellian Fox News can't be serious. It's even too far fetched to serve as an example of failure of proportionality. No one would say the failure of the NYT in this instance is fine. It's not fine. It should not have happened. Is it habitual? Has it happened often? Daily, weekly, monthly? Of course not. It's at most, very occasional. Fox News, every single night, does more damage 100 times over than this misstep of the Times. Please. Say to yourself, "hundreds of thousands of lives".
Great piece Steve, forward thinking is always welcomed especially when Republicans are trying to bring our country back to the 19th century with their bans. We have come far in our ability to leave this planet even though we are still in our infancy in space travel. However, you do not learn or advance your knowledge without first taking the necessary steps and repeating them until they are perfected. I believe the enormous expense of space travel is worth our endeavors because of how it advances Humanity and our future existence. We humans have always been explorers and our explorations have advanced our societies and benefiting all mankind.
America the Stupid! What a heartbreak to utter these words, yet the conclusion is unmistakable. Seen against the imaginative and challenging vision of John F. Kennedy just 60 years ago, the country is looking like a drunken sailor staggering from lamp post to lamp post unable to figure out how to get to tomorrow. A criminal lunatic would-be dictator is making his inexorable march toward the presidency with apparently nothing to stop him short of a cannon. The chickenshit Supreme Court will not even consider whether he is immune from criminal prosecution when the issue stretches the limits of absurdity beyond the breaking point. Trump, the goon, said it - he could shoot someone of 5th Avenue and get away with it. Apparently so. Certainly the Supreme Court allows for the possibility by their inability to deal with a question so central to the stability of a democratic republic as to put it squarely in harms way through their ignorance and incompetence. They know that their actions may allow Trump to escape a trial before the next election. And this is but one of Trump’s magical delays. He will think of more. Count on it! Because no one thought that such an uncaring Sociopath as Trump would attain a position of power, there is nothing that can be done about it, not least because his bag of aimless, whimpering syncophants happens to have a seat or two majority in the House. In case anyone thinks differently or is looking under his desk for excuses, as W once looked under his desk for weapons of mass destruction, (another Supreme Court gem), let's be clear, nobody did this to America but America. You can feel the gravity pulling an entire nation down the rabbit hole under the guidance of a tiny, yes infinitesimal, group of insurrectionists who seem free to do as they wish because all three branches of government have tied their own hands, rendering themselves impotent. And we know that there is a growing group of incredibly naive people who are sucking their thumbs and thinking about a protest vote or maybe a third party or maybe Trump is not so bad or Joe is too old. This is like looking at two people facing you, one with a gun and an itchy trigger finger, the other with a bouquet of flowers and you get to choose. Duh. There are so many good people in your country. Who is going to marshall and aim them to defeat a threat many times greater than America has ever contemplated? THAT is the question and the answer better come soon. The institutions are failing.
When Mr. Schmidt uses the Bible's proverbs to educate us, he also should use the Quran's exact equal in proverbs sometimes, as well, and that is called the Luqman.
His latest use of a Bible's proverb is a splendid one, and I liked it a lot. It is true and will always be true.
Appropos of that proverb, there has rarely been any nation on all 4 continents which had a worthwhile vision. Instead it usually is about some person grabbing Power over his people.
ALL nations have at one time or another ruled the world, from the gold mines of central Africa which caused that African country to rule the non-Eurpean African continent for 0h-a century or two at least-, to India ruling over its Untouchable castes for millenia, ,and China's many emperors--- and let's not forget our many Oligarchs who became president right here.
None but one had the greatest people that ever lived : artistically endowed, philosophy rich Athens, 5th century BC, and, sadly, the wise Pericles had already announced he would free the slaves to become citizens just before he died of the plague.
Second, comes the ruling of the middle class merchants over the royalty in France, Bismarck's Prussia with its extremely liberal form of government, the great Tsatsos socialist government of Greece, and a few others; all had a vision.
WHY DO WE THINK WE ARE THE ONLY ONE with a 'vision'?
True, we needed to break with King George so we started our own nation. MANY nations have done that!
What was our Vision?
To get rich by pillaging an entire continent and slaughtering its indigent people here while buying slaves?- Well that WAS part of the plan.
There was also a hope , a mere hope, that our citizens would Voluntarily care about keeping a clean ethical Congress in power.
As Plato said "There is no such thing possible as a Good Government, becasue it is run by men".
Democracy can never work because IMMEDIATELY the rich control the powers of government and keep the citizens stupid about the corruption in their government.
It was a beautiful but naive wish for this nation to begin with.
Maybe it’s as simple as Trump is perceived as strong and Biden as weak. Performance politics is rooted in American culture and appears to be based on entertainment value as opposed to doing the hard work needed especially now. After years of feeding the American public with Joe Biden’s gaffs, falls, even occasional nodding off, that’s just not “the look” we the people want. I’ve been scratching my head over these poll numbers but when Trump cites Hitler his ratings go up. What do we need, the wicked witch of the North?
I see you replied to my comment. However, your comment has nothing to do with commenting on my comment.
Therefore, I shall have to comment on yours without you having commented on mine, and so, here is my comment on your comment:
we are talking like children who play games with action figure in war battles.
Soon, if a first dictatorship happens here, it will then be a permanent dictatorship.
We are EXACTLY like Germany in the 30's, full of hate and ignorance, capable of legally voting for fascism.
Yikes!
Sit back and enjoy the show. We all paid for front row seats by merely existing as citizens here..
Ahhh, the fortunate few. All may dream, only few will realize those dreams into ambitions.
We owe this unfortunate circumstance to ourselves.
Our very own education institutions allow support of the fortunate few to open the dream aperture towards youthful ambitions.
Bring education of our proud democratic principles through education and civic service to our youth. That will bring the support of dreams and cultivate leadership.
Our youth today do not have the influence of a family member that devoted themselves to public service, honor, devotion or sacrifice. What they have now is high powered, marketing, social media and their souls to be devoured by drugs, alcohol and AI. They are NOT the fortunate few. We allowed this and all the love we have for them cannot prevent it.
Let’s admit our mistakes and help ourselves with education and service programs designed for youth to support America.
Right On!! Thanks.
What kind of future can America realistically anticipate when tens of millions refuse to budge from their support of a man--who among his many demonstrated hideous traits--is so clearly amoral, corrupt, and blatantly anti-democratic. And doesn't mind one bit who knows it.
Those tens of millions have their heels dug in...deep. His support only increases with more lies, venemous slurs and obvious crimes against the country. The stage is being set for America to quite possibly never experience another traditionally certified election again. Indeed, if the Democrats win in 2024, there may need to be a new Constitutional path somehow put in place for the winning candidate to take office on January 20. This may be true of other political offices as well, even going down to the state and local level.
America is sick and getting sicker. Pandora is out of the box and running amuck. This is the reality and the future the country must understand is almost surely coming. What to do? Good luck on that one. In any case, no matter what, those tens of millions ain't going nowhere.
I can tell you the other side is preparing for Armageddon, the final holy” battle where all kinds of strange shit happens. Oh yeah, take Israel back from the Jews. That’s high up on the lightning round. I’m with you and to say these are dangerous times is the understatement of the century.
I really hope those insanely hypocritical shits are right about a Judgement Day. There won't be enough popcorn in all the universe.
Just magnificent Steve. Thank you. As Nicholas Cage says in National Treasure; “People don’t talk that way anymore.” Just a beautiful speech.
If America ever needed another JFK it would be today. Proud to be a member of his party.
If you allow an insurrectionist to run for the highest office of the land you might get a result that Germany experienced in 1933. Germans were at the top in terms of science and culture so what made Germany unleash aggressive war to bring death to millions? The prolonged severe depression between the WWI and WWII was no doubt a prime factor. No country can rely on the good judgment of their voters when they're under severe economic distress. That's when a demagogue can grab power. Something like Section 3 of the 14th Amendment can provide helpful protection from such a power grab during desperate times. It's like a surge protector !!
Any of the Warning community who have not already read yesterdays responses to Steve’s piece on the desecration of the Lincoln Memorial should take a moment and read Frank Lee’s answer to David Skogland’s question “what is his (Frank’s) definition of Woke. It should give all of us comfort in knowing...we’re gonna be alright. In order for Trump to win another term would mean that half the country’s voters understand and believe that that spew of psychotic gibberish is true (much less intelligible). And I believe half the country is definitely -not- psychotic.
Thank you Justin!
"We have made the Reich by Propaganda"-- Goebbels
And Goebbels made sure that every household had a free radio so that speeches of Hitler could be heard by all.
This world is not the world that JFK lived in. In 1962, the mood of the nation, the national identity, the zeitgeist had been formed by the world and national events of the previous 25 years. These events were described to the nation by a relative few sources. Two, and later three major radio and eventually TV networks, about three wire services that provided reports of national and international events to newspapers and broadcasters. State level and national level politicians whose information came from the same few sources servicing the voters. Entertainment was provided by radio and then TV networks, three of them. We lived in a shared reality. The nation was able to have a shared vision.
But not anymore. Today, gigantic and powerful corporations have flooded our awareness with myriad sources of reality. Literally anything that has a chance of making a profit is constantly prodding nearly every individual through a glowing screen in their pockets. A screen that will tell them whatever they want to know or believe, true or false, and more important to their lives than even looking where they are going when walking down the street. At home and work, bigger screens. In metropolitan areas, gigantic glowing screens. Selling, distracting, tweaking human brains into addiction for more, and the corporations know how to tweak. Nefarious political people know how to tweak brains in the way that Goebbels knew how. And it works when selling fear much better than it works selling whatever it was that JFK was selling in 1962. A national vision is simply impossible. The best that can be hoped for, at least in the short term, is avoidance of the mental, emotional and spiritual chaos of the present time by a hair's breadth of enough people so that another block of time passes before.... Does anybody know what it will be?
What is available now is the precise marketing that Goebbels could never imagined. Propaganda/marketing down to the exact voter based on their on-line - or not - profile. Fox network is everywhere. Attempting to get it’s messengering to potentials through the least opening. They have to be “blocked” if one doesn’t want their lies piped into your household. If our Democracy holds - one of the first things to be done is to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine” that Reagan dumped. It’s not entirely fair to blame people for their misunderstanding of the truth when they have been fed lies by a Broadcast Network for years. Every time something is brought up about Trump, Fox reverses it and projects it onto Biden - including poopy diapers. Years and years of this. Younger people never knew anything else but false narratives. Older people may not be aware that the Fairness Doctrine is even gone or that it has been so discarded. I went to a family reunion and heard the Fox bs being regurgitated from intelligent relatives. My late mother was trained as a journalist (old school), she despised this propaganda. I was trained in Marketing Research and Marketing. I worked for Ford at the World Headquarters. We targeted our customers. That was decades ago. It’s all so much more sophisticated now.
I completely support the Colorado Supreme Court decision because I have witnessed what the absence of the Fairness Doctrine has allowed Fox and the rest of the Republican propaganda machine to do to intelligent people. It’s time for the courts to step in. Americans will not kowtow to a dictator. This is a set-up to weaken the country by our international opposition and the extremely wealthy with offshore money (they can move anywhere immediately). If Trump were to win we would have chaos and the only winners would be the absurdly wealthy, Russia, North Korea and the countries that Trump favors - forget NATO
"Propaganda/marketing down to the exact voter based on their on-line - or not - profile."
Please keep speaking out on this, Kay. We need to understand this and soon!
Christopher Wylie blew the whistle on Cambridge Analytica and the theft on 80+ million Facebook account’s data along with otherwise available data to develop methods (highly sophisticated propaganda) to literally begin to change “our” culture. This could be called a sophisticated marketing program to someone of my age and background or a data ??? or process to someone in that industry. It was funded by Robert Mercer and run by Steve Bannon.
Old school- large corporation may decide to “change the “culture” of the corporation”. There were various departments tasked with indoctrinating that “new culture” all up and down the corporate ladder. “Quality is Job 1” was such a change/theme at Ford.
What Cambridge Analytica was doing, was using data to target individual Americans based on social media etc. for certain Facebook news feeds; for certain advertisements, for certain “suggestions”. If all a person is seeing is what coincides with what Trump, Robert Mercer, Steve Bannon, Rupert Murdock, and Franklin Graham want them to see - they will believe that is true. And Fox “News” will confirm it’s veracity and with “solemnity” and proper condemnation for anyone who disagrees. Mr. Wylie finally couldn’t stomach the HATE this was generating in our society. He blew the whistle.
Cambridge Analytics is now called Emerdata, Ltd.
If you are retired or do not have children - ask yourselves why you aren’t seeing nonstop toy commercials right now and over the last week? If you aren’t shopping for toys - you won’t see many commercials. They cost 💲 . Companies target their ad $.
Now imagine your target market is the White House and all the power both militarily and economic that went with it.
What wouldn’t someone with no morals and nothing but self interest do to obtain and keep that prize.???
Excellent Points here -thanks! "Selling, distracting, tweaking human brains into addiction for more, and the corporations know how to tweak. Nefarious political people know how to tweak brains in the way that Goebbels knew how." This is what we're up against. Well said!
I am a big fan of Steve Schmidt, this newsletter, the political philosophy articulated (most but far from all times), and the tone and content of the comments posted here. But, after about 55 years in the communications business (mostly PR, but all specialties over the years) I need to suggest that you cannot define or develop solutions the world is facing until you have recognized that the basic premises of the human worldview have changed in very fundamental ways. We're living in an entirely different world, not unlike the way the Pre-Copernicans and the Post-Copernicans lived with different worldviews. What's as significant as shifting from a geocentric understanding of the universe, centred around Earth, to a heliocentric understanding, centred around the Sun? Consider the significance of Einstein's assertion that time and space are NOT two separate entities (which is a basic premise in our current worldview), but that there is one space-time continuum and we no longer live in a world with 3 dimensions but space-time is a fourth dimension. Is that part of your worldview? No. Should it be if you want to live with a worldview that is accurate? Yes.
At the same time, the human has achieved an amazing evolutionary change that we have been pursuing for about two million years, when human communications consisted of grunting and pantomime. That worked only when those communicating were in the same space and same time. Now, space and time no longer tyrannize human communications because humans evolved and created tools to allow them to communicate in those instances when they need to communicate to people in other spaces, such as the other side of the mountain. So the human used smoke and yelling and pennants to communicate. You know what happened from there -- we haven't yet eliminated space and time from limiting our communications ability ENTIRELY but we are pretty close -- and we will. And that is affecting our worldview, and bringing chaos as the status quo is disrupted to its core, just as happened as the human asked: "you mean I don't live in the center of the universe and everything doesn't revolve around me?" The Copernican Revolution, as disruptive as it was, was not identified for years as it was emerging -- and then it took about 100+ years to "end" and much more than that for religious leaders to accept scientific truth -- "accept" meaning to stop opposing the heliocentric worldview and killing those who advocated for truth. So: why would anyone think that the current revolutionary change in the human worldview is going to occur without disruption, conflict, and turmoil? There is an answer to that question, in my opinion: the revolution has not been identified and therefore it has been misunderstood and underestimated.
This revolutionary era is bringing with it a change in moral standards, currency, motivations, how communities are formed and how they are shaped and grown. I can offer answers to these questions, most of which are probably wrong. I am writing about it all at my new substack newsletter -- but that newsletter is very much in beta stage, so if you want to know more please just message me privately and I'll try to provide a rational response -- I have already taken up too much time and space here (LOL) and probably led many of you to think I am being self-promotional when I am trying to be "truth-promotional." I'm 78. By this time, I have taken so many rights to the jaw that I have very little ego left -- so if you want to challenge my thinking you are invited to be as candid as you want. After taking a lot of rights to the jaw, I've learned a basic lesson: the punch stings .... your head snaps back ... and then your head straightens back up and you get back in the fight. Cheers.
Mind-expanding! Thanks.
Thanks -- That's a great compliment as far as I'm concerned.