The main reason to vote against Donald Trump isn’t his unsurpassed record of incompetence, division, violence, faithlessness and corruption, but rather the tragedies to come.
“Let me ask you a question: does that look like the “chief villain of World War II” to you?”
Churchill was definitely not the chief villain during WW2. Churchill was a stalwart of western resolve and valor.
That said, I had no idea that “alternative facts” had infiltrated and been floating throughout MAGA and the far right for so long.
It’s getting to the point where words have no meaning. Fascism, Socialism, and all of the “ism’s” are used so haphazardly, that nothing makes sense anymore. It’s Orwell’s 1984, or worse.
Let’s just hope we get through this election intact and Harris prevails. I can’t even fathom a different result…:)
The USA has now officially descended into madness. Thank you for the clip of Churchill’s funeral. I was born in 1953. No one of my generation who heard the stories of WWII from our parents would ever believe such utter and complete perversion of history and reality. Churchill was revered here, and with good reason. Tucker and his “historian” are selling complete and absolute fascism without apology or shame. “Not Hitler’s fault??????” I feel as if I am living in an alternate reality now. We must not lazily and foolishly fade into this abyss. Thank you again, Steve.
My family and I are also children born in the fifties and my father served honorably in the Navy and my uncles were Army and Marines. We grew up knowing the truth about WWII and the senseless murders of many by the Japanese and Hitler. Unfortunately several of my brothers and most of our friends have forgotten those lessons taught to us by the "greatest generation" and now have forsaken democracy for authoritarianism and the lies spread by Trump and his evil disciples. How do we fight against their ideology when they no longer listen to the truth?
I am a 1954 model who was raised by conservative parents. My father was a WWII veteren who served in the USMC in the South Pacific. Looking back, it seems that everything we did and believed in was informed by WWII and the great heros and villians and the monumental events of that era. I am incredulous that these revisionist "alternate facts" even exist. Both of my parents must be spinning in their graves.
I hope your warning does not go unheeded but there are so many Americans, including most of my family and friends, who believe the lies. I have tried to soft soap my messages to them and they blocked me. I have tried more forcefully to call them out for their beliefs and they disowned me. I am now without support of my whole family when I could use them most. However, I honestly believe my actions were made with the best intentions of my country. We are being attacked from within our own ranks and from abroad by Russian and Chinese governments. It saddens me to think we have our own Quizlings that spew the garbage from RT media and pronounce it as America values. Our government has been slow to act and is only now playing catch up. I hate to say it because it goes against the free speech in the Constitution but we need to start penalizing media outlets for spreading disinformation and lies. Perhaps then trumpism will die and the likes of Tucker Carlson will be silenced.
I'm so sorry about your family, Patrick. As you know, I lost mine to this insanity, too. For me, it has been nearly devastating. We must win in Nov. and maybe the brainwashed will wake up.
Looks like a lot of us have lost family and friends to this political division! Maybe this is the beginning of the "civil war" people are talking about!
I was also born in the early 1950's, and like many of you, I was taught that it is a privilege to live in a great country, like America. I learned at very early age, even before I started school, that the American flag is a symbol of our country, a symbol of liberty. My parents taught me the "Pledge of Allegiance", and how important those words meant! I remember, when saying my prayers at night, also thanking God for allowing me to live in America, in a way that only a four year old could! My family went to parades, we celebrated every American holiday, with the 4th of July being the greatest of the American holidays!
Today, we have the likes of Trump, Carlson, Flynn, Jason Miller, Steve Bannon, MTG, Boebert, Elon Musk, and the rest of the MAGA world, who all they do is tear down everything about America! They would be nothing, if it wasn't for America! I have said it before, and I will say it again; If they hate America so much, they can move to Russia, and see really "great" Russia is!
I am not sure what constitutes being a traitor, or doing treasonous things; but to me these American-haters fit the bill! And, if they are traitors to our country, why isn't the DOJ doing anything about it? so very frustrating!
Hi Donna, I hope you'll keep reposting what you've written here. You've gotten to the core of what it really means to be an American. The traitors are trying to overthrow Democracy and get rid of the Constitution. They've tried to desecrate the flag, the term "Patriot" and so much more. The 14th Amendment should have been upheld so that the insurrectionists were long gone by now! Best, Lisa
Patrick - time will tell. A large number of Americans will see they have been lied to and they are in a cult. There will be a vast number of angry people. Best to you in your attempts to talk to your family.
Patrick, though determining guidelines, methods of enforcement, and penalties will be difficult, I agree with you, "we need to start penalizing media outlets for spreading disinformation and lies."
The development of increasingly effective weapons of war necessitated reasonable restrictions on the 2nd amendment right to bear arms. I believe the proliferation of different types of social media and methods of spreading misinformation and disinformation are creating chaos in the our country and we need to stop the consequent damage to our social, political, and economic systems.
For the record, I too have lost many relatives because of the chasm between my progressive democratic leanings and their evangelical maga worldview. They consider me un-American for not supporting Trump and I can not convince them they are wrong; however, I do detect some movement away from Trump among those I still try to communicate with.
We need to have a Democratic trifecta beginning in January; with that trifecta, the media's Fairness Doctrine can be updated (to include all technologies used by the media) and reinstated with strong enforcement penalties. The poisoning of the public discourse needs to stop.
Elizabeth, you are right.The evidence is overwhelming that Trump has so thoroughly brainwashed members of his cult that they are totally incapable of thinking clearly or rationally.
One example: Trump tells them their children might come home from school having undergone gender-altering surgery w/o their knowledge. Though absurd, they believe it. We know that many children have come home in body bags because their side rejects common sense gun laws like universal background checks, red-flag laws, and a ban on assault weapons. But they are told the violence is a result of video games, or the 2nd amendment prohibits such legislation. And they believe it.
There is something special about the report, in the midst of the DOJ release about Russian election propaganda, that the RT spies viewed and considered using, Tucker Carlson's rapturous tour of a Moscow supermarket. They decided not to on the grounds no one would believe such obvious nonsense!
"...despite the later inevitable amnesia that makes it impossible to find a MAGA supporter."
Like trying to find a supporter of our Bagdad invasion in 2003. The same chest thumpers that thought Iraq was a righteous war soon erased the USA-USA chants from their memory bank, when it became clear that it was the foreign policy disaster that should have been obvious to them from the get-go. Twenty-one years ago, but I think of that catastrophe when I see or read posts from Trump supporters today. They can't see the iceberg from the deck of the Titanic.
If ever God fashioned a man to serve his time, that man was Winston Churchill. As far as that "chief villain" nonsense, prior to the rise and aggression of Hitler, Churchill was widely considered a failure in British politics.
It was only after Hitler launched World War Two, demonstrating the nearly fatal mistake of appeasement, that Churchill rose up to save his country, and the world, in its darkest hour.
This is another fact that scares me to death ! People like Tucker are traitors of the worst kind ! I was born in 1943 Germany in the middle of WWII surrounded by death and destruction. Then the years of foraging for food and shelter in a country that was annihilated.
Eventually I married an American Officer whose career took him to Vietnam and he too saw death and destruction in a war he opposed . He had no choice as a career soldier. His 2 tours as med evac pilot later caused him to succumb to the effects of Agent Orange. I have seen what fascism, communism and the arrogance of politicians and the like can do to humanity. What is wrong with these people?
It is men with no sense of self worth who are the root of this weed. Just look at any of them as they spout the lies that lead their followers on the path to our national destruction. Women regardless their professed politics must unite in order to save our nation and frankly the world as it is clear men will not get beyond their violent responses which brought your birth nation and now our world to the edge of extinction.
Trump has private militias ready to act on his orders, believes in patriarchy, tells big lies in furtherance of his cause, scapegoats "others" for all our problems, threatens and intimidates his enemies, wants to be a dictator, and surrounds himself with second rate criminals and bullies willing to swear loyalty to him like Bannon, Stone, and Carlson. If it quacks and walks like a duck, it's probably fascism.
He sees women as vessels to produce the next generation of alpha males. That is why Maga is in favor of IVF even though it contradicts their claim of personhood for fertilized human eggs.
Carlson is just another of Russia’s useful idiots.
The traitor and his cronies are very bad and dangerous. What worries me, nay I say scare, is how so many people believe everything that is spouted by the useful idiots. Everything is a lie, but some is just downright fantasy. No where, no where in our country are babies “aborted” after birth. That’s called murder. And yet so many of the followers believe it.
Steve, thank you for this article and for keeping the true threats front and center. Your voice of reason and alarm is desperately needed and appreciated. Their revisionist history is a concern beyond words that I am capable of, so yours help immensely. Please continue beating the drum loudly and never doubt the urgency and importance of your message.
Excellent, Steve. Trump fuses the two most paradigmatic antitheses of human normalcy -- moral evil and contagious or shared psychotic delusion -- into a cult-driven negation of objective reality. Like Hitler, he has managed to seduce, through demonization of phantom enemies and fear, a substantial minority of the population to dissociate themselves from reason, evidence and human empathy., etc., into a similar fanatical and bloodthirsty cult comprised of violent martinets and acquiescent ‘Good Germans’.
This outrageous lie is only surpassed by the other one preferred by these two disgusting, odious, excuses for human beings: that Hitler didn’t really want to exterminate the Jews and those who in the death camps were the victims of “overcrowding.”
I equate Tucker Carlson, in terms of his fascist poison, at the same level as Charles Lindbergh and some of the other prominent German Bund leaders and some members of Congress in the 1930s that were Hitler's Nazi sycophants in America. They are all cut from the same cloth- despotic, chillingly evil, and hateful beyond measure. It's beyond me why Calson doesn't just move to Russia or Hungary since he loves Orban and Putin so much, Wait! I know why- those countries suck and don't measure up to the one he wants to convert to fascist authoritarianism which is the good 'ol USA! Carlson is a traitor of the first degree, in my estimation. The history books, if written accurately, must portray Carlson's betrayal of the U.S. accurately, and that betrayal is of a huge magnitude.
Thank you for sending the clip. I was born in 1969 and had never seen it. The contrast is striking, and I assume that was your goal.
You are a hero. In a time of need like this, we should all have the courage to stand up against others, even our own group, and do what is right, as you have done. Of course, our primary group is the human race, and we are all citizens of the world as well.
There is no sarcasm here—just the plain truth. I can't articulate how important your work has been to me. It is difficult when you see what is happening - and others just don't have the life experience, time, or insight to understand. It feels lonely often.
“Let me ask you a question: does that look like the “chief villain of World War II” to you?”
Churchill was definitely not the chief villain during WW2. Churchill was a stalwart of western resolve and valor.
That said, I had no idea that “alternative facts” had infiltrated and been floating throughout MAGA and the far right for so long.
It’s getting to the point where words have no meaning. Fascism, Socialism, and all of the “ism’s” are used so haphazardly, that nothing makes sense anymore. It’s Orwell’s 1984, or worse.
Let’s just hope we get through this election intact and Harris prevails. I can’t even fathom a different result…:)
Some words still have meaning. Hope, humility and joy come to mind when thinking about the next 8 years.
The good side MUST win....there is no other alternative.
The USA has now officially descended into madness. Thank you for the clip of Churchill’s funeral. I was born in 1953. No one of my generation who heard the stories of WWII from our parents would ever believe such utter and complete perversion of history and reality. Churchill was revered here, and with good reason. Tucker and his “historian” are selling complete and absolute fascism without apology or shame. “Not Hitler’s fault??????” I feel as if I am living in an alternate reality now. We must not lazily and foolishly fade into this abyss. Thank you again, Steve.
My family and I are also children born in the fifties and my father served honorably in the Navy and my uncles were Army and Marines. We grew up knowing the truth about WWII and the senseless murders of many by the Japanese and Hitler. Unfortunately several of my brothers and most of our friends have forgotten those lessons taught to us by the "greatest generation" and now have forsaken democracy for authoritarianism and the lies spread by Trump and his evil disciples. How do we fight against their ideology when they no longer listen to the truth?
I am a 1954 model who was raised by conservative parents. My father was a WWII veteren who served in the USMC in the South Pacific. Looking back, it seems that everything we did and believed in was informed by WWII and the great heros and villians and the monumental events of that era. I am incredulous that these revisionist "alternate facts" even exist. Both of my parents must be spinning in their graves.
They will eventually learn the truth just as the January 6th cowards and traitors learned.
I hope your warning does not go unheeded but there are so many Americans, including most of my family and friends, who believe the lies. I have tried to soft soap my messages to them and they blocked me. I have tried more forcefully to call them out for their beliefs and they disowned me. I am now without support of my whole family when I could use them most. However, I honestly believe my actions were made with the best intentions of my country. We are being attacked from within our own ranks and from abroad by Russian and Chinese governments. It saddens me to think we have our own Quizlings that spew the garbage from RT media and pronounce it as America values. Our government has been slow to act and is only now playing catch up. I hate to say it because it goes against the free speech in the Constitution but we need to start penalizing media outlets for spreading disinformation and lies. Perhaps then trumpism will die and the likes of Tucker Carlson will be silenced.
Hang in there, you are part of the correct side of history.
I'm so sorry about your family, Patrick. As you know, I lost mine to this insanity, too. For me, it has been nearly devastating. We must win in Nov. and maybe the brainwashed will wake up.
Stay strong Lisa, we are becoming a family of the warning and our bond is patriotism.
Beautiful :-)
Looks like a lot of us have lost family and friends to this political division! Maybe this is the beginning of the "civil war" people are talking about!
I was also born in the early 1950's, and like many of you, I was taught that it is a privilege to live in a great country, like America. I learned at very early age, even before I started school, that the American flag is a symbol of our country, a symbol of liberty. My parents taught me the "Pledge of Allegiance", and how important those words meant! I remember, when saying my prayers at night, also thanking God for allowing me to live in America, in a way that only a four year old could! My family went to parades, we celebrated every American holiday, with the 4th of July being the greatest of the American holidays!
Today, we have the likes of Trump, Carlson, Flynn, Jason Miller, Steve Bannon, MTG, Boebert, Elon Musk, and the rest of the MAGA world, who all they do is tear down everything about America! They would be nothing, if it wasn't for America! I have said it before, and I will say it again; If they hate America so much, they can move to Russia, and see really "great" Russia is!
I am not sure what constitutes being a traitor, or doing treasonous things; but to me these American-haters fit the bill! And, if they are traitors to our country, why isn't the DOJ doing anything about it? so very frustrating!
Hi Donna, I hope you'll keep reposting what you've written here. You've gotten to the core of what it really means to be an American. The traitors are trying to overthrow Democracy and get rid of the Constitution. They've tried to desecrate the flag, the term "Patriot" and so much more. The 14th Amendment should have been upheld so that the insurrectionists were long gone by now! Best, Lisa
Hi Lisa! Thank you, for your kind words!
Patrick - time will tell. A large number of Americans will see they have been lied to and they are in a cult. There will be a vast number of angry people. Best to you in your attempts to talk to your family.
Patrick, though determining guidelines, methods of enforcement, and penalties will be difficult, I agree with you, "we need to start penalizing media outlets for spreading disinformation and lies."
The development of increasingly effective weapons of war necessitated reasonable restrictions on the 2nd amendment right to bear arms. I believe the proliferation of different types of social media and methods of spreading misinformation and disinformation are creating chaos in the our country and we need to stop the consequent damage to our social, political, and economic systems.
For the record, I too have lost many relatives because of the chasm between my progressive democratic leanings and their evangelical maga worldview. They consider me un-American for not supporting Trump and I can not convince them they are wrong; however, I do detect some movement away from Trump among those I still try to communicate with.
We need to have a Democratic trifecta beginning in January; with that trifecta, the media's Fairness Doctrine can be updated (to include all technologies used by the media) and reinstated with strong enforcement penalties. The poisoning of the public discourse needs to stop.
Elizabeth, you are right.The evidence is overwhelming that Trump has so thoroughly brainwashed members of his cult that they are totally incapable of thinking clearly or rationally.
One example: Trump tells them their children might come home from school having undergone gender-altering surgery w/o their knowledge. Though absurd, they believe it. We know that many children have come home in body bags because their side rejects common sense gun laws like universal background checks, red-flag laws, and a ban on assault weapons. But they are told the violence is a result of video games, or the 2nd amendment prohibits such legislation. And they believe it.
There is something special about the report, in the midst of the DOJ release about Russian election propaganda, that the RT spies viewed and considered using, Tucker Carlson's rapturous tour of a Moscow supermarket. They decided not to on the grounds no one would believe such obvious nonsense!
Tucker, are you listening?
"...despite the later inevitable amnesia that makes it impossible to find a MAGA supporter."
Like trying to find a supporter of our Bagdad invasion in 2003. The same chest thumpers that thought Iraq was a righteous war soon erased the USA-USA chants from their memory bank, when it became clear that it was the foreign policy disaster that should have been obvious to them from the get-go. Twenty-one years ago, but I think of that catastrophe when I see or read posts from Trump supporters today. They can't see the iceberg from the deck of the Titanic.
If ever God fashioned a man to serve his time, that man was Winston Churchill. As far as that "chief villain" nonsense, prior to the rise and aggression of Hitler, Churchill was widely considered a failure in British politics.
It was only after Hitler launched World War Two, demonstrating the nearly fatal mistake of appeasement, that Churchill rose up to save his country, and the world, in its darkest hour.
This is another fact that scares me to death ! People like Tucker are traitors of the worst kind ! I was born in 1943 Germany in the middle of WWII surrounded by death and destruction. Then the years of foraging for food and shelter in a country that was annihilated.
Eventually I married an American Officer whose career took him to Vietnam and he too saw death and destruction in a war he opposed . He had no choice as a career soldier. His 2 tours as med evac pilot later caused him to succumb to the effects of Agent Orange. I have seen what fascism, communism and the arrogance of politicians and the like can do to humanity. What is wrong with these people?
It is men with no sense of self worth who are the root of this weed. Just look at any of them as they spout the lies that lead their followers on the path to our national destruction. Women regardless their professed politics must unite in order to save our nation and frankly the world as it is clear men will not get beyond their violent responses which brought your birth nation and now our world to the edge of extinction.
Helga, what you write adds a lot of context to what is going on right now. Thank you for sharing part of your life story. We need to hear the truths.
Du weisst was es bedeutet Amerikannerin zu sein.
Not so sure anymore. But I will fight with those Americans who do the right thing .
Trump has private militias ready to act on his orders, believes in patriarchy, tells big lies in furtherance of his cause, scapegoats "others" for all our problems, threatens and intimidates his enemies, wants to be a dictator, and surrounds himself with second rate criminals and bullies willing to swear loyalty to him like Bannon, Stone, and Carlson. If it quacks and walks like a duck, it's probably fascism.
He sees women as vessels to produce the next generation of alpha males. That is why Maga is in favor of IVF even though it contradicts their claim of personhood for fertilized human eggs.
...and the continual demonizing of 'the enemy' results in school shootings...pure evil.
The Churchill video brought tears to my eyes. The Battle Hymn of the Republic was so moving🥲. It caught me off guard.
It made me cry also.
Carlson is just another of Russia’s useful idiots.
The traitor and his cronies are very bad and dangerous. What worries me, nay I say scare, is how so many people believe everything that is spouted by the useful idiots. Everything is a lie, but some is just downright fantasy. No where, no where in our country are babies “aborted” after birth. That’s called murder. And yet so many of the followers believe it.
Without proper education in history, civics, and critical thinking skills, we're doomed.
Steve, thank you for this article and for keeping the true threats front and center. Your voice of reason and alarm is desperately needed and appreciated. Their revisionist history is a concern beyond words that I am capable of, so yours help immensely. Please continue beating the drum loudly and never doubt the urgency and importance of your message.
Excellent, Steve. Trump fuses the two most paradigmatic antitheses of human normalcy -- moral evil and contagious or shared psychotic delusion -- into a cult-driven negation of objective reality. Like Hitler, he has managed to seduce, through demonization of phantom enemies and fear, a substantial minority of the population to dissociate themselves from reason, evidence and human empathy., etc., into a similar fanatical and bloodthirsty cult comprised of violent martinets and acquiescent ‘Good Germans’.
"...cult-driven negation of objective reality." Exactly!
This outrageous lie is only surpassed by the other one preferred by these two disgusting, odious, excuses for human beings: that Hitler didn’t really want to exterminate the Jews and those who in the death camps were the victims of “overcrowding.”
I had not made the connection form the news yesterday to Tucker Carlson. How disgusting.
I equate Tucker Carlson, in terms of his fascist poison, at the same level as Charles Lindbergh and some of the other prominent German Bund leaders and some members of Congress in the 1930s that were Hitler's Nazi sycophants in America. They are all cut from the same cloth- despotic, chillingly evil, and hateful beyond measure. It's beyond me why Calson doesn't just move to Russia or Hungary since he loves Orban and Putin so much, Wait! I know why- those countries suck and don't measure up to the one he wants to convert to fascist authoritarianism which is the good 'ol USA! Carlson is a traitor of the first degree, in my estimation. The history books, if written accurately, must portray Carlson's betrayal of the U.S. accurately, and that betrayal is of a huge magnitude.
www.tomthe democratist.com
Steve,
Thank you for sending the clip. I was born in 1969 and had never seen it. The contrast is striking, and I assume that was your goal.
You are a hero. In a time of need like this, we should all have the courage to stand up against others, even our own group, and do what is right, as you have done. Of course, our primary group is the human race, and we are all citizens of the world as well.
There is no sarcasm here—just the plain truth. I can't articulate how important your work has been to me. It is difficult when you see what is happening - and others just don't have the life experience, time, or insight to understand. It feels lonely often.
You are a beacon of light -