I hear what you’re saying, and agree, but I do wonder what is happening these days with people. Americans seem to be tossing aside good judgment in the name of supporting extremism.
Case in point: The MAGA Candidate for Governor of North Carolina just met with a group called Moms for Liberty. This group supports this man unequivocally.
Yet, this is the same man who said we were a better country when moms and daughters and sisters could not vote. I remain sadly flabbergasted that any group would support him, let alone a group of female voters.
Often, you can read the tels of American fascists in their discontent. Seeing a chorus of them suddenly gathered around the patrician originalitist dogma of 'three steps behind', they clearly are worried about the feminist influence on their agenda. They boo-booed big-time with aborting Roe and they are now knowing it. Not that they realized that this miscalculation in their incipient, chest-pounding macho audacity would ever backfire on them--given the history of suppressing females. But a prescient, ground-changing revolution has happened in America, at least counting tangibles that can no longer be dismissed. Women in America today have changed the field. Still a big fight, but women's challenge to this current fascist threat can quite possibly injure determinatively the fascist march and further establish gender equality. As I see it, providence has provided, after decades of struggle, that women are the biggest threat to the arcane notions of male dominance in this and all fascist assaults. Women need to react with the momentum they have to vote the bastards out.
I view the race here in North Carolina as emblematic of what you’re saying — and it is emblematic in the most jarring terms. The MAGA Candidate here in North Carolina has made the most misogynistic statements I have ever seen from a public official. He is also polling at 48 percent here. SAD.
I, being a North Carolinian, am right there with you. The GOP nominee is so radical, became Lt Governor as a fluke and now is taking us back to the 1950s. What has happened? Did every person following the MAGA mindset had their brains tinkered with? Subliminal messages maybe? Gullibility?
Lest anyone forget, it was educated, white, suburban women who swung the election to Trump in 2016. Women can be very careless sometimes. Many are fear based so then respond on that kind of irrational level. There are many women AND men out there who would rather give up their freedoms for a modicum of perceived safety. They want a "daddy" (a strong man, maybe even in the form of a strongman) to protect them. Moms for Liberty don't really want liberty. What they really want is to go back in time when liberty was first institutionalized in the life of "man"kind, but not ironically, that kind of liberty excluded women, slaves, and the indigenous.
I would vote for Joe Biden even if he was Bernie Lomax, which sadly is the way many voters perceive him. Contrast our current President with "the great communicator," Ronald Reagan, who effectively sold Americans on destructively crappy concepts like "greed is good", trickle-down economics and distrust of all-things government.
Fast forward 40 years and we now have a cavalcade of professional right-wing truth dissemblers in Congress, on television, radio and social media that have convinced half the country that the sky is falling, the end is near, but somehow a demented and disgusting orange blob can fix it. Our side? We have the quiet competence of Joe Biden, but we also have feckless Senators like Dick Durbin, and a host of scolding, self-absorbed, hectoring harrumphs on the fringy left that unwittingly supply ammunition to right wing extremists.
I didn't think the movie comedy Idiocracy was all that funny when I watched it a number of years ago, but it plays now like a documentary. More to the point, there is an assumption amongst the DNC brain trust that a majority of voters will ultimately see through the right-wing bombast, lies, and theatrics. That's wishful thinking, as the extremists continue to do a stellar job of "flooding the zone" with sewage.
The high-minded good works of the Biden administration aren't breaking through, which is a shame and isn't fair, but we never lived in an era of rat-a-tat-tat deception and curated darkness coming from every direction. Positive messaging is drowned out and falling on deaf ears.
We can't effectively convince undecided voters by condescendingly lecturing them about their gullibility, but we can show them how they're being played, and maybe enough will catch on without feeling shamed. Easier said than done, but we need a posse of firebrand surrogates that can deliver a very focused message about the anti-democratic heavy-handed madness a second term of Trump will rein upon America, and how it will impact everyday lives in a terrible way. Put a metaphorical "kick-me-hard" sign on Trumps backside and pound away every minute of every day. God knows, Trump provided enough campaign fodder for us just this week alone.
I like to imagine a world without MAGA, with the nefarious right wing billionaire influencers kicked to the curb. It's possible, but we have a tidal wave of dis and misinformation to battle.
Gar is on target about the use of condescending language. I know anti MAGA would like to see harsher and harder pushback. Anti MAGA crowd needs to play better political chess than use Trump like condescending lectures. We seem to have been always responding these past years. Like after the verdict: all the Trump supporters were singing from the same page, within minutes of the verdict. Anti trump leaders did not lay foundation for responses with either guilty or non guilty verdict. Let's come up with acronyms like HOPE : helping (all) Our People Every day or ..FAIR: For All, Inclusive Representation
I cannot count how many times I've considered the possibility of this SCOTUS handing a contested election to Trump. The thought of us being doomed before we even vote is chilling.
“Donald Trump is the leader of an American fascist movement that has laid out a specific authoritarian playbook that will assert absolute power and the right to control what it pleases and take what it wants.”
They are already half way there since they will own the federal judiciary if Trump wins. Add Project 2025, and you have a perfect storm of fascist and authoritarian rule. These people don’t even hide their disdain and contempt for a secular democracy.
Yet, when you speak to our youth, and geriatrics, they just don’t care. Apathy will be the death of our democracy. They’re all willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater, even though our economy isn’t going to get any better than this for years.
Americans need to grow up. You just may have to be a leader and tell your neighbor (out of love for this great country) you are offended by fascist and people that support fascism. You may have to tell them you live in the land where your anthem ends with ‘Home of the Brave’. That’s my stake in it. Any flag flying on this country’s soil that isn’t the American Flag but a Fascist sympathizers flag is the alien that doesn’t BELONG in America. Russia is accepting emigration at this time.
In the Washington Post, they report Elon Musk meeting with Trump several times per month. What are the other billionaires doing? Likely the same. Trump is likely not the leader - not of the real doers, not of the controlling Christians, or the reporting media. I have been struggling with the apparent ignorance of the American public (about half anyway), and that they just don't care about our country - but they are like robots. To see Mike Johnson lying directly into the camera, so obviously - there used to be decent Americans who would be publicly calling him on it. There is a huge, ugly swamp about to crest the banks and flow into the whole of our society. They're hardly hiding it anymore.
This is where the kids in North Carolina will suffer with a MAGA win. One MAGA candidate wants to ban science through the 5th grade and the other MAGA candidate simply despises public school teachers.
A good education is tough enough to get, but the obstacles would make it impossible. I hope the kids will be able to recover. What is their imagination for the future?
Somehow the political system in this state let two unqualified and ignorant people bubble up to the top. The only response is to send them both packing.
Time to watch (or rewatch) HBOs Chernobyl, released in 2019. It's a chilling narrative of the nuclear reactor meltdown tragedy and how it unfolded. Perfect picture of how authoritarianism controls everything that touches human lives. I just rewashed it and it has jarred me to my core.
The fact that Fascism is so popular seems to have three branches. Billionaires, right out of the Godfather movie. The scene is in Havana , the heads of the Mafia families gather at a hotel, Hyman Roth says to the heads of the other families, “ This is what we always dreamed of, a government we can work with.” Certainly Trump has advertised that he is for sale. Billionaires will buy lower taxes on them ( so lower income will pay the money government needs), removal of regulations and safeguards to the health of the public so they earn even more, trickle down economics with no trickle down, a return of child labor at low rates…
Then there is the corrupt politicians and insane politicians that have sold their souls cheap to simply be enablers the a mentally ill conman. They serve themselves and not the people that they are supposed to serve.
They are media whores that lie , cheat and steal without shame or remorse. They weaponize the government to protect a dictator rather than the people who they swore to protect.
Then there is the undereducated, misinformed, bigots, violence prone, entitled (not earned) malcontents that act as fodder , useful idiots, and human shields for a man that has demonstrated that he doesn’t possess the traits of loyalty, empathy, or any regard for their well being. They were be the people that will be crushed the most by Trump and his group.
Minorities ( religious, ethnic, racial, gender, and the poor) will be the worse off if Trump is elected. They don’t see it, they aren’t listening to his words and like the Jews of Germany in the early 1930s, they just don’t believe it will happen to them.
Trump and his group are in it for the power and the glory not to help humanity. That’s for suckers as Trump has said.
The media is asleep at the wheel. The democrats hierarchy are deaf to their own party pleas for a different candidate ( arrogance, complacency, failure to understand the stakes involved).
We have a population that has never not had democracy and freedoms. They simply don’t understand what it would be like to lose them. It’s not an experiment. It’s not a dream, it’s a nightmare that will last the rest of their lifetime or end with mass bloodshed.
There are enough people still left to prevent this. To prevent a Trump presidency, to elect competent representatives not loyalists, and to preserve our current way of life. Republicans, Democrats, Independents, minorities, young voters, must unite this one time to save our country and in turn the world . If the US falls, rest assured Putin will march into Europe, China throughout Asia, and there will be no more Israel or even Gaza.
Thank you, but there’s no need for anything demeaning about the borough of Queens. If Trump has an inferiority complex, it’s HIS problem. And, as someone from Queens, we have known about the racism, etc. of the Trump family for a long time. Our problem is that NYC law enforcement did not go after him more aggressively. Shame on you and so many others, Cy Vance. Queens is one of the most diverse areas in the USA, with great people from all over the world. If you want Trumpies, look in the Derp South, not in Queens.
Steve: Please write about the propaganda bath many parts of the United States suffer with wolf-in-sheep's-clothing "news" outlets like the 1.200+ stations of the Sinclair Network which may be CBS, NBC, or ABC (as well as Fox) affiliates, but which have a unitary right wing slant under which Biden is always characterized as virtually brain dead. It is just one result of the gradual consolidation of independent news reporting.
It's only one poll and it's new at that, having only been done once before in 2020. The best place to look at polls is "538" and it includes work for the Economist. Beyond that, don't believe the polls so far out. I don't believe them at all, ever. Too many wrong calls going back over a decade.
We’re not buying your crap troll. Your post is transparent. We’re not stupid like your maga friends. You’re trying to make us feel hopeless. Screw you and hour ilk, you’ll be history soon.
After watching Trump's electric boats & sharks remarks in Las Vegas I'm really skeptical that Trump will dare to show up at the debates. On the other hand, I note the new MAGA type tea shirts proclaiming the wearer's "proud to vote for a convicted felon" message. Maybe the debate is really between rationality vs. emotions grounded in hate. Some people love to hate and hate to love.
Conundrum with dealing with/speaking with MAGA is that the instant one expresses shock/horror/disbelief/incredulity with regard to their stance on ANY subject, for example expressing slack-jawed stupefaction looking at a smiling, smug, and sneering MAGA wearing an "I'm voting for the convicted felon" T-shirt, they instantly go to their default emotional setting that is "VICTIM" and they are, instantly, angry and angered and feeling justified that the only person who will help, save or listen to them is...#DontheCon.
You might disagree with my take, but as this heavyweight battle nears its end, Democrats need to scream as loud as that maniac, or louder, and let's take off the kid gloves, and hit him with as much cruelty and abuse and nicknames and laugh-out-loud video clips and jokes as can be mustered.
Why? Because his worst is yet to come. Wait until he reveals his pick for VP, who will be the second most vile, disgusting and anti-Democratic person we could imagine: his son or son-in-law or Lara or, WTF, maybe he'll just break all the rules and declare: no VP. Just me.
I hear what you’re saying, and agree, but I do wonder what is happening these days with people. Americans seem to be tossing aside good judgment in the name of supporting extremism.
Case in point: The MAGA Candidate for Governor of North Carolina just met with a group called Moms for Liberty. This group supports this man unequivocally.
Yet, this is the same man who said we were a better country when moms and daughters and sisters could not vote. I remain sadly flabbergasted that any group would support him, let alone a group of female voters.
I have two theories:
1. It’s a dog whistle, and what he really means is liberal and secular women.
2. Have you listened to the agenda of Mom’s for Liberty? They believe in every wing-nut religious belief, except Liberty.
In the evangelical world, there is a reason their motto is, “get em young, and keep them dumb!”….:)
Often, you can read the tels of American fascists in their discontent. Seeing a chorus of them suddenly gathered around the patrician originalitist dogma of 'three steps behind', they clearly are worried about the feminist influence on their agenda. They boo-booed big-time with aborting Roe and they are now knowing it. Not that they realized that this miscalculation in their incipient, chest-pounding macho audacity would ever backfire on them--given the history of suppressing females. But a prescient, ground-changing revolution has happened in America, at least counting tangibles that can no longer be dismissed. Women in America today have changed the field. Still a big fight, but women's challenge to this current fascist threat can quite possibly injure determinatively the fascist march and further establish gender equality. As I see it, providence has provided, after decades of struggle, that women are the biggest threat to the arcane notions of male dominance in this and all fascist assaults. Women need to react with the momentum they have to vote the bastards out.
I view the race here in North Carolina as emblematic of what you’re saying — and it is emblematic in the most jarring terms. The MAGA Candidate here in North Carolina has made the most misogynistic statements I have ever seen from a public official. He is also polling at 48 percent here. SAD.
Right on!!!! Sisters unite! Let’s get the bastards!
I, being a North Carolinian, am right there with you. The GOP nominee is so radical, became Lt Governor as a fluke and now is taking us back to the 1950s. What has happened? Did every person following the MAGA mindset had their brains tinkered with? Subliminal messages maybe? Gullibility?
Off by a century. 1850’s.
Not yet till the GOP takes women’s right to vote….
Lest anyone forget, it was educated, white, suburban women who swung the election to Trump in 2016. Women can be very careless sometimes. Many are fear based so then respond on that kind of irrational level. There are many women AND men out there who would rather give up their freedoms for a modicum of perceived safety. They want a "daddy" (a strong man, maybe even in the form of a strongman) to protect them. Moms for Liberty don't really want liberty. What they really want is to go back in time when liberty was first institutionalized in the life of "man"kind, but not ironically, that kind of liberty excluded women, slaves, and the indigenous.
Totally agree with you. It is so depressing! Hoping and praying the democrats win the election!
I would vote for Joe Biden even if he was Bernie Lomax, which sadly is the way many voters perceive him. Contrast our current President with "the great communicator," Ronald Reagan, who effectively sold Americans on destructively crappy concepts like "greed is good", trickle-down economics and distrust of all-things government.
Fast forward 40 years and we now have a cavalcade of professional right-wing truth dissemblers in Congress, on television, radio and social media that have convinced half the country that the sky is falling, the end is near, but somehow a demented and disgusting orange blob can fix it. Our side? We have the quiet competence of Joe Biden, but we also have feckless Senators like Dick Durbin, and a host of scolding, self-absorbed, hectoring harrumphs on the fringy left that unwittingly supply ammunition to right wing extremists.
I didn't think the movie comedy Idiocracy was all that funny when I watched it a number of years ago, but it plays now like a documentary. More to the point, there is an assumption amongst the DNC brain trust that a majority of voters will ultimately see through the right-wing bombast, lies, and theatrics. That's wishful thinking, as the extremists continue to do a stellar job of "flooding the zone" with sewage.
The high-minded good works of the Biden administration aren't breaking through, which is a shame and isn't fair, but we never lived in an era of rat-a-tat-tat deception and curated darkness coming from every direction. Positive messaging is drowned out and falling on deaf ears.
We can't effectively convince undecided voters by condescendingly lecturing them about their gullibility, but we can show them how they're being played, and maybe enough will catch on without feeling shamed. Easier said than done, but we need a posse of firebrand surrogates that can deliver a very focused message about the anti-democratic heavy-handed madness a second term of Trump will rein upon America, and how it will impact everyday lives in a terrible way. Put a metaphorical "kick-me-hard" sign on Trumps backside and pound away every minute of every day. God knows, Trump provided enough campaign fodder for us just this week alone.
I like to imagine a world without MAGA, with the nefarious right wing billionaire influencers kicked to the curb. It's possible, but we have a tidal wave of dis and misinformation to battle.
Gar is on target about the use of condescending language. I know anti MAGA would like to see harsher and harder pushback. Anti MAGA crowd needs to play better political chess than use Trump like condescending lectures. We seem to have been always responding these past years. Like after the verdict: all the Trump supporters were singing from the same page, within minutes of the verdict. Anti trump leaders did not lay foundation for responses with either guilty or non guilty verdict. Let's come up with acronyms like HOPE : helping (all) Our People Every day or ..FAIR: For All, Inclusive Representation
Great acronyms. We need those!
"The nation’s high court has lost legitimacy."
I cannot count how many times I've considered the possibility of this SCOTUS handing a contested election to Trump. The thought of us being doomed before we even vote is chilling.
Don't believe every poll. I read an excellent post this morning on Heather Cox Richardson's Substack that rips that poll to threads.
Every post from HCR is excellent. She's amazing.
“Donald Trump is the leader of an American fascist movement that has laid out a specific authoritarian playbook that will assert absolute power and the right to control what it pleases and take what it wants.”
They are already half way there since they will own the federal judiciary if Trump wins. Add Project 2025, and you have a perfect storm of fascist and authoritarian rule. These people don’t even hide their disdain and contempt for a secular democracy.
Yet, when you speak to our youth, and geriatrics, they just don’t care. Apathy will be the death of our democracy. They’re all willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater, even though our economy isn’t going to get any better than this for years.
I remember the bumper stickers: Don’t Blame Me. I Voted For McGovern.
Sadly, it is very possible we will be facing an “I told you so” moment — and it will be far, far worse than 1972.
Well I’m here along with you and others because I do not wish to BELONG to the ‘Club of Indifference’. Now I must go out there.
Americans need to grow up. You just may have to be a leader and tell your neighbor (out of love for this great country) you are offended by fascist and people that support fascism. You may have to tell them you live in the land where your anthem ends with ‘Home of the Brave’. That’s my stake in it. Any flag flying on this country’s soil that isn’t the American Flag but a Fascist sympathizers flag is the alien that doesn’t BELONG in America. Russia is accepting emigration at this time.
In the Washington Post, they report Elon Musk meeting with Trump several times per month. What are the other billionaires doing? Likely the same. Trump is likely not the leader - not of the real doers, not of the controlling Christians, or the reporting media. I have been struggling with the apparent ignorance of the American public (about half anyway), and that they just don't care about our country - but they are like robots. To see Mike Johnson lying directly into the camera, so obviously - there used to be decent Americans who would be publicly calling him on it. There is a huge, ugly swamp about to crest the banks and flow into the whole of our society. They're hardly hiding it anymore.
Without proper education in history, civics and critical thinking skills, we're doomed.
So true!
This is where the kids in North Carolina will suffer with a MAGA win. One MAGA candidate wants to ban science through the 5th grade and the other MAGA candidate simply despises public school teachers.
A good education is tough enough to get, but the obstacles would make it impossible. I hope the kids will be able to recover. What is their imagination for the future?
Somehow the political system in this state let two unqualified and ignorant people bubble up to the top. The only response is to send them both packing.
Idaho is bright red. The worst part is how they describe everything is Biden's fault and they demand, and then they shame everything. Just ridiculous.
Time to watch (or rewatch) HBOs Chernobyl, released in 2019. It's a chilling narrative of the nuclear reactor meltdown tragedy and how it unfolded. Perfect picture of how authoritarianism controls everything that touches human lives. I just rewashed it and it has jarred me to my core.
The fact that Fascism is so popular seems to have three branches. Billionaires, right out of the Godfather movie. The scene is in Havana , the heads of the Mafia families gather at a hotel, Hyman Roth says to the heads of the other families, “ This is what we always dreamed of, a government we can work with.” Certainly Trump has advertised that he is for sale. Billionaires will buy lower taxes on them ( so lower income will pay the money government needs), removal of regulations and safeguards to the health of the public so they earn even more, trickle down economics with no trickle down, a return of child labor at low rates…
Then there is the corrupt politicians and insane politicians that have sold their souls cheap to simply be enablers the a mentally ill conman. They serve themselves and not the people that they are supposed to serve.
They are media whores that lie , cheat and steal without shame or remorse. They weaponize the government to protect a dictator rather than the people who they swore to protect.
Then there is the undereducated, misinformed, bigots, violence prone, entitled (not earned) malcontents that act as fodder , useful idiots, and human shields for a man that has demonstrated that he doesn’t possess the traits of loyalty, empathy, or any regard for their well being. They were be the people that will be crushed the most by Trump and his group.
Minorities ( religious, ethnic, racial, gender, and the poor) will be the worse off if Trump is elected. They don’t see it, they aren’t listening to his words and like the Jews of Germany in the early 1930s, they just don’t believe it will happen to them.
Trump and his group are in it for the power and the glory not to help humanity. That’s for suckers as Trump has said.
The media is asleep at the wheel. The democrats hierarchy are deaf to their own party pleas for a different candidate ( arrogance, complacency, failure to understand the stakes involved).
We have a population that has never not had democracy and freedoms. They simply don’t understand what it would be like to lose them. It’s not an experiment. It’s not a dream, it’s a nightmare that will last the rest of their lifetime or end with mass bloodshed.
There are enough people still left to prevent this. To prevent a Trump presidency, to elect competent representatives not loyalists, and to preserve our current way of life. Republicans, Democrats, Independents, minorities, young voters, must unite this one time to save our country and in turn the world . If the US falls, rest assured Putin will march into Europe, China throughout Asia, and there will be no more Israel or even Gaza.
Then there is the cult
Thank you, but there’s no need for anything demeaning about the borough of Queens. If Trump has an inferiority complex, it’s HIS problem. And, as someone from Queens, we have known about the racism, etc. of the Trump family for a long time. Our problem is that NYC law enforcement did not go after him more aggressively. Shame on you and so many others, Cy Vance. Queens is one of the most diverse areas in the USA, with great people from all over the world. If you want Trumpies, look in the Derp South, not in Queens.
Steve: Please write about the propaganda bath many parts of the United States suffer with wolf-in-sheep's-clothing "news" outlets like the 1.200+ stations of the Sinclair Network which may be CBS, NBC, or ABC (as well as Fox) affiliates, but which have a unitary right wing slant under which Biden is always characterized as virtually brain dead. It is just one result of the gradual consolidation of independent news reporting.
Yes, and we need to understand cult-indoctrination tactics and social-media algorithms.
Thank you Steve. I love it when you’re like this - direct, clear, no BS. Such a relief to hear you say these things “out loud” today. Thank you.
According to the analysis provided by The Economist podcast Intelligence yesterday Trump has a 60-40 chance to win this election.
So, once again, the Question must be asked:
What country are you living in??
There is only one remaining issue. Why is Joe Biden seeking reelection amidst unprecedented unpopularity for an incumbent?
His hubris is going to condemn American democracy and our Constitutional Republic to a cataclysmic collapse. History will judge him accordingly.
Mark,
It's only one poll and it's new at that, having only been done once before in 2020. The best place to look at polls is "538" and it includes work for the Economist. Beyond that, don't believe the polls so far out. I don't believe them at all, ever. Too many wrong calls going back over a decade.
Strongly suggest that you locate and listen to The Intelligence podcast from The Economist.
Their analytical process is elite and their accuracy is excellent.
According to you. Troll
We’re not buying your crap troll. Your post is transparent. We’re not stupid like your maga friends. You’re trying to make us feel hopeless. Screw you and hour ilk, you’ll be history soon.
"Americanism and patriotism are incompatible with fascism.
Good Americans rebuke and revile fascists.
Donald Trump is a fascist, which makes him a bad American and his movement un-American.
President Biden needs to look Trump in the eye and say it directly. It must be said.
MAGA is a threat to our liberty.
It is a threat to America."
These seven sentences from this excellent post say it all. Well done, Mr. Schmidt.
After watching Trump's electric boats & sharks remarks in Las Vegas I'm really skeptical that Trump will dare to show up at the debates. On the other hand, I note the new MAGA type tea shirts proclaiming the wearer's "proud to vote for a convicted felon" message. Maybe the debate is really between rationality vs. emotions grounded in hate. Some people love to hate and hate to love.
Conundrum with dealing with/speaking with MAGA is that the instant one expresses shock/horror/disbelief/incredulity with regard to their stance on ANY subject, for example expressing slack-jawed stupefaction looking at a smiling, smug, and sneering MAGA wearing an "I'm voting for the convicted felon" T-shirt, they instantly go to their default emotional setting that is "VICTIM" and they are, instantly, angry and angered and feeling justified that the only person who will help, save or listen to them is...#DontheCon.
You might disagree with my take, but as this heavyweight battle nears its end, Democrats need to scream as loud as that maniac, or louder, and let's take off the kid gloves, and hit him with as much cruelty and abuse and nicknames and laugh-out-loud video clips and jokes as can be mustered.
Why? Because his worst is yet to come. Wait until he reveals his pick for VP, who will be the second most vile, disgusting and anti-Democratic person we could imagine: his son or son-in-law or Lara or, WTF, maybe he'll just break all the rules and declare: no VP. Just me.