Drastic Times Require Drastic Countermeasures

My opinion, change my mind.

May Day: A Reminder That "We, The People" Must Hold Our US Government To Account

"May Day has two meanings, both of which are directly applicable to today. It commemorates the solidarity of the labor movement (139 years ago today, workers gathered in the streets of Chicago to demand an eight-hour day).

“'Mayday!' is also a distress signal used by pilots to indicate imminent danger or a life-threatening emergency (derived from the French phrase 'm’aider,' meaning 'help me').

"That about sums it up: Our solidarity is necessary to overcome the imminent dangers we now face, all from Donald J. Trump.

"I doubt we can wait until the midterm elections to contain him. Unless we stop the damage he’s doing to both our democracy and our economy before then, much of it will be irreversible. It’s not even clear what sort of election we’ll be able to have 18 months from now." (link)

The USA Is Following An Ancient & Harmful Governing Pattern

"Witnessing a social, criminal, political, psychological, and a faith phenomenon in the United States has only been seen in glimpses in other contexts, and not to the extent now. To understand what is going on and to hopefully devise remedies will require examining the primary causes and the interactions.

"From the beginnings of civilization in the Fertile Crescent, the Indus River valley, and China politics, rule has been intertwined with faith, religious traditions. The leader, ruler, the monarch was considered divine and could do no wrong, at least to the faithful followers. All negative stories, facts were considered fake or propaganda. Being a priest meant you had the leader's ear, thereby influencing the direction of society and the nation. It was also a good position for increasing your wealth by selling the people and the leaders' promises that are, in fact, baseless. This has taken the form of charismatic preachers grifting so much that they build their own super churches, colleges, and homes. The faith also could and has had a significant impact on loyalty to the monarch, driving it ever higher.

"Being part of a court held immense power and possibilities, so long as you did what the leader asked or ordered you to do. Such a position also had the leader's ear, with the possibility of influencing state policies and increasing your own wealth. So being part of a cabinet, a Soviet, a portion of the executive staff, meant that you could have your own fiefdom to exploit. Any position below that was a minor nobleman or a capo who had their own soldiers. Yes, government and organized crime are similar in structure, with goals of maintaining territory, gaining territory, power, and wealth. It has only been in the recent 200 years that the development of democracy has started to change. However, the old ways always have a way of returning.

"All dictators and their courts have degrees of narcissism. Trump has been classified as a malignant narcissist with sociopathy, which presents us with a unique, extremely dangerous situation that is potentially mortal to the country and its citizens! Was Hitler narcissistic? The answer is most probably yes, as all dictators and monarchs are. A known con man, liar, and cheat is Trump. His experience in fighting in the courts gave him the experience and knowledge of how to manipulate our justice system! Is or was our government and judicial system up to putting up guardrails? Part of his sickness is thinking like a godfather and being able to threaten others, particularly Republican politicians, without saying it directly. This forces the GOP to bend to his worst instincts. Note that his experience as a con man makes him charming and convincing to his audience/supporters. This is by knowing their grievances, fears, and anger, thereby co-opting them to control them. The help of the regime's propaganda media, Fox News, has captured a viewership. Trump's mental illness is very focused on two things: wealth and power, but keeping his followers convinced that he is fighting for them! He doesn’t care about anybody else, no matter how close; those around him, including his own family, are expendable.

"This sets up an environment and needs to resist, peacefully if possible, but it may have to be taken to the next level, VIOLENCE! Don’t get me wrong, to assume that I recommend violence via internal war is what I want. But as the ruling class feels more threatened, the more likely they will resort to violence themselves at any cost. So history and psychology tell us to be ready. Then you ask why the Russian 1917 revolution didn’t lead to such massive wars. They remembered that the peasants saw the czar and his nobles as the ruthless ruling class stealing from them. They saw the Bolsheviks working and protecting them, promising land reform, equality, etc. Sometimes it takes generations to reform or end dictatorships. If Trump and MAGA win, how long will it take for America to end the dictatorship?

Stephen Stripe (from his post on Facebook, 4/21/2025)

The Truth About The USA

"Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan gave the Democratic rebuttal to President Trump's joint address to Congress on Tuesday night. She explained how to 'protect the middle class,' and also said, 'the president pits Americans against each other."

Watch: Sen. Elissa Slotkin refutes Trump's speech to Congress in Democratic rebuttal

Authoritarianism: Two Podcast Episodes To Help In Better Understanding

"Authoritarianism and autocracies take many forms. So how do you know it when you see it? Our guide to the erosion of choice, rights, truth and power is Anne Applebaum, author of several books including, most recently, Autocracy, Inc."

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-is-authoritarianism/id1195657423?i=1000679860773

"We’re in strange times. In the U.S., we’re finding ourselves in a situation in which the possibility of genuine democratic retrenchment and some version of presidential authoritarian dictatorship is a real possibility. There’s a lot to consider as the liberal democracy we’ve become accustomed to could erode right before our eyes in the near future. Steve Levitsky is a professor of government at Harvard and serves as the director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Levitsky is also a New York Times bestselling author of numerous books including, “How Democracies Die” and “Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point,” which he co-authored with Daniel Ziblatt. He joins WITHpod to discuss entering into a new era, the uncertainty of this moment, the process by which a democracy might backslide into something that's less democratic and resisting the erosion."

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-democratic-backsliding-happens-with-steve-levitsky/id1382983397?i=1000679858361 

Two Views Of The Future In The USA

Click on the two links below for two views that can't be reconciled:

The Democrats

The Republicans

VOTE WISELY!!

Mathematics Debunks Democracy

"Democracy might be mathematically impossible – here’s why."

Click here for a fascinating trip through the history of attempts to devise the perfect model for achieving a true and fair democracy.

The USA Has Always Struggled With Trusting "We, The People"

"Spirits among Kamala Harris supporters, Democrats, and anyone opposing Trumpism are at an all-time high right now. That's both fortuitous and crucial to the upcoming election. By the very nature of Trumpism, this election will be the most flagrantly contested in history with far more Trump loyalists in place ready to throw wrenches in the works wherever they can. Nothing short of an overwhelming victory for the Harris/Waltz ticket is necessary to stave off a constitutional crisis."

Click on the link below for a "wake up" call regarding how close the USA is to losing its representative democracy, and how even the Founding Fathers didn't want to share power with "the other." The first election only had 6% of the population voting: "Only white male landowners need to apply."

The threat of minority rule through election denialism

A Reminder: Democracy Requires Vigilance

"Every time we expand democracy, it seems we get complacent, thinking it’s a done deal. We forget that democracy is a process and that it’s never finished.

"And when we get complacent, people who want power use our system to take over the government. They get control of the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court, and they begin to undermine the principle that we should be treated equally before the law and to chip away at the idea that we have a right to a say in our government. And it starts to seem like we have lost our democracy.

"But all the while, there are people who keep the faith. Lawmakers, of course, but also teachers and journalists and the musicians who push back against the fear by reminding us of love and family and community. And in those communities, people begin to organize—the marginalized people who are the first to feel the bite of reaction, and grassroots groups. They keep the embers of democracy alive."

Click on this link for more: 

The Radical Right: The Disease Is Spreading Throughout The Democratic World

"The European elections could have been worse but they weren't great. Shifting politics among mainstream parties is legitimizing far-right policies at the same time as people's concerns over immigration are being reflected in a willingness to vote for far-right parties."

Click on this link for a lengthy podcast presenting the shocking reality that democracy is losing, not only in the USA, but also in Western Europe, Israel, and other free societies.

Socrates And Democracy

"We’re used to thinking hugely well of democracy. But interestingly, one of the wisest people who ever lived, Socrates, had deep suspicions of it."

Click on this link for a frank look at the soft underbelly of education in the USA. THIS is the reason why the disinformation and gaslighting of the Republicans are so successful. Even if the Democrats win in November, our democracy will be tentative for decades unless the USA changes regarding education and critical thinking.

No, Only One Major US Political Party Is "Small D" Democratic

"The conservative movement, born in opposition to an overwhelmingly popular New Deal order, has always taken a dim view of popular self-government. But the American right’s latent contempt for democracy has grown more unabashed in recent years. As its white, rural, Christian base has rapidly lost demographic weight; as the GOP has lost the popular vote in seven of eight presidential elections; as conservatives have managed to retain outsize influence over public policy on the strength of their coalition’s overrepresentation in Congress and on the Supreme Court; and, of course, as Donald Trump turned hostility to the peaceful transfer of power into a litmus test for conservative purity, the Republican Party has become a forthrightly anti-democratic political institution."

Click on the link below for a presentation of the history of the Republican and Democratic Parties since the US Depression supporting the claim of this post:

The Democratic Party is America’s only small-d democratic party.

The Deep & Wide Republican Plans To Dismantle US Democracy

"Today, we take a look at the strategies underway to systematically dismantle democracy in the United States including installing Big-Lie™ believers in elected and poll-working positions, preventing state-level Supreme Courts from holding GOP-dominated state legislators to the state constitutions, and wiping out tens of thousands of career civil servants from the federal government to be replaced by right-wing extremists loyal to the Republican Party."

Click on the link below for a podcast from last year that needs more exposure. Pay attention, they are up-front, committed, and are carrying this out presently:

Installing Loyalists: The Multi-Pronged Destruction of Our Democracy Already in Progress

Education And Democracy Are 4-Letter Words To Conservatives

"Today, we take a look at the history and present of the interconnected movements to privatize education and dismantle democracy."

Click on the link below for a podcast that exposes the harm of the conservatives in two main areas of society:

Destroying Education and Democracy for Fun and Profit

Why The Republican Party Is Anti-Democratic

"If working people were a bit more desperate about their economic situations, the wealthy believe they’d be less likely to organize, protest, or even vote."

There is no doubt that the Republican party is for the rich and is anti-democratic. To understand why one has to understand its full history and evolution of it. Click on the link below for a 12-minute video that fully exposes why it acts the way it does:

The Dark Reason The Rich Hate Democracy Revealed.

Click on the link below for an analysis of our cyclic views of wealth in the USA:

The Real Reason The Rich Flock To Davos

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Trump Was The Nerve Center To A Wide Conspiracy

 "The conventional narrative of former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election frames Trump as the culprit and most Republican lawmakers as tolerating it or tagging along out of political expediency. But the leak of a massive trove of text exchanges between Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, and dozens of Republican lawmakers highlights how that narrative lets the GOP off too easily. The texts, published by Talking Points Memo, show Trump wasn’t a lone actor, but something closer to a nerve center of anti-democratic activity. Republicans didn’t just put up with Trump, but worked proactively with him to try to discredit the election both before and after the Jan. 6 insurrection."

Click on the link below for an expose of what REALLY happened regarding the attempt to destroy democracy in the US:

Mark Meadows' leaked texts destroy the Trump lone actor narrative

The Political System In The USA Sucks

"Elections are coming up in the United States, so I thought it was a good opportunity to talk about the world's best and worst voting systems. Why are US elections so weird? And how can it be fixed?"

Ironically, the USA has one of the best Constitutions in the world. Too bad it fails so badly in its application. Click on the link below for a video exposing just how badly the USA performs in being a genuinely representative democracy:

The One Where I Get Slightly Political And Lose Half My Subscribers

The USA Is BOTH A Republic And A Democracy!

"Since 2020 Republicans across the U.S. have been undermining democracy by fabricating claims of voter fraud and passing laws to make it harder to vote. But a disturbing new report by Robert Draper in The New York Times Magazine shows how Arizona Republicans are increasingly committed to waging a war on the idea of democracy itself, in part through a bid to call the U.S. only a “republic” and not a democracy. These Republicans think they’re defending American traditions of governance, but they’re not in touch with the history they believe they’re championing, and they’re catalyzing more virulent anti-democratic extremism on the right."

Just more evidence of the harm from today's Republicans. Click on the link below for the details:

Arizona Republicans are making a case against democracy itself

As Bad As You May Think It Is, It's Worse

"Today, we take a look at the strategies underway to systematically dismantle democracy in the United States including installing Big-Lie™ believers in elected and poll-working positions, preventing state-level Supreme Courts from holding GOP-dominated state legislators to the state constitutions, and wiping out tens of thousands of career civil servants from the federal government to be replaced by right-wing extremists loyal to the Republican Party."

Click on the link below for a shocking presentation of the treasonous activities that the Republicans are doing now to destroy representative democracy in the USA beginning in the 2022 election:

Installing Loyalists: The Multi-Pronged Destruction of Our Democracy Already in Progress

The Anti-Democracy Movement: Not Just The USA

"Decades ago, America’s wealthy backed a Republican establishment that believed in fiscal conservatism, anti-communism, and constitutional democracy. But today’s billionaire class is pushing a radically anti-democratic agenda for America — backing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, calling for restrictions on voting, and even questioning the value of democracy."

"Meanwhile, the major annual event of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — the premier convening organization of the American political right — starts today in Budapest. That’s no accident. The Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz party have become a prominent source of inspiration for America’s anti-democracy movement. Stephen Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, describes Orban’s agenda as that of a 'Trump before Trump.'”

Click on the link below to understand how deep and wide this cancer is spreading:

What you need to know about the anti-democracy movement