Martyrs are used by messianic movements to sanctify violence. To show any mercy or understanding toward the enemy is to betray the martyr and the cause the martyr died defending.
The USA is dead and gone. It pretty much was since its inception. The USA was founded on genocide and slavery by a group of rich white wealthy men for their benefit. Nothing has changed since then in any real manner. And here we are on the brink of another civil war instigated by a bunch of angry violent bigoted racist fools. The future is nothing but a bloody dystopian nightmare now. As Martin Luther King said: “We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools.” It’s pretty obvious which choice has been made now. I will hold onto whatever kindness and sanity that I can in our final days, though I am not sure I can ever forgive the MAGA cult for their hatred and insanity they have imposed on the rest of us. Maybe that makes me no better than them. I’m not sure I believe that old saying: Forgive them for they know not what they do. They know exactly what they are doing and it is akin to evil personified.
Cubans and Venezuelans would have a much better quality of life if they weren’t continually targeted with sanctions and blockades by the US government. Learn some history about the hemisphere you live in.
If it were easy and affordable for regular people to become permanent residents of other countries, I sure as shit would have vacated the US a long time ago.
It's not a capitalist society. More socialist, so they must fail in order to prove that capitalism is the be all and end all.
The way things are going, I'll be in jail accused of being a Marxist, and, according to Hudson and Wolff, you only understand Marxism if you read all three volumes of Das Capital. I only know of his headstone: Workers of the World, Unite! Good enough for me.
Ah yes, the old Love It Or Leave it bullshit. The MAGA cult are the ones who hate this country and true freedom for ALL. Why don’t they leave it since they hate it so much.
For all its faults this is the country where individual liberty is most protected. Most of our problems are due to the sloth of the public. The peaceful means are there to fix all our problems, We the People just need to put down our cellphones and actually do the work.
There are any number of countries around the world that have more protection of individual liberty than the USA for its citizens. And day by day those protections are being taken away in the USA. Keep on believing in the American Exceptionalism nonsense. It is far from that now if it ever was.
I need not bother as Mo Mast has clearly shown them to you. You clearly are an ignorant fool at best with your nonsensical assertions about how great the USA is when it comes to freedom for its citizens. People have been arrested in the USA for non-violent protesting against the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians as one recent example. So much for your beloved freedom in this country. Your apparent nationalism is truly unbecoming and why the USA is going down the drain.
I live in Australia. The US pushed Britain to gaol Julian Assange. Our government bent over backwards to get the US to drop the major charges and let him come home to the land of Oz. I believe we have a lot more personal liberty than US citizens.
It seems from far off Australia your system of good governance is failing badly. Otherwise Trump would have been removed by now. He should never have been allowed to run for President in the first place. The distances between people appears to be growing. Collapse is inevitable. Perhaps outdoor the ashes something better can emerge.
Don't worry........if the civil war goes well in your own borders there'll be lots of Christ loving white boys willing to go to all those countries and set the natives straight.
America's penchant for knowing better than the natives what is good for said natives is at least a century old and going strong. Hard to care much about you when that despicable willingness to regime change other people's governments rides rough shod over any ability you might develop to run your own more fairly.
Some of us are trying. I make phone calls for Mamdani and other candidates I believe will help this country, like Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman most recently. I sort of do it selfishly, as I learn a lot from the people I talk to.
To give you a bit of hope: A few weeks ago I made phone calls for Mamdani and looked at the participants list. Out of 250 callers, a quarter of us had Jewish surnames, a quarter Muslim surnames, and the rest "regular". It was gratifying to see that Jews and Muslims were fighting on the same side, as we've also seen on college campuses. The light surrounging the cloud we see ourselves in right now.
What for? We're almost ahead of them when it comes to suppression of women's rights, and gun violence. Sit back and enjoy the shit-show brought to you by that misogynist felon and pedophile, Donald J. Trump and his fascist henchmen, too many to count.....
Accept the taste of shit or move. Who are these ultimatum fucks that think that they can say shit like that? This country has fallen significantly in my lifetime. It will never be great again with group
Same old mantra. Things a more nuanced than that. With Ronald Reagan, I saw the resurrection of the Confederacy. It was creeping in slowly and bit by bit. Now those same toxic memes are accelerating.
“We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools.” It’s pretty obvious which choice has been made now. Trump is not leader but a opportunist. Abram Lincoln said pretty much the same thing when he spoke to the Illinois Young Men's Lyceum.
For all its faults, this country survived a Civil War and held elections during that titanic struggle.
“For all its faults, this country survived a Civil War and held elections during that titanic struggle.”
All I can say is that was then, this is now. We shall see how it plays out this time. Back then the citizens weren’t armed to the teeth with all sorts of guns following a guy who is calling out everyone as enemies of the state with a cult that hangs on his every word as if it were the truth of god. Like I said we shall see how it plays out this time and I don’t see how what happened in the last Civil War can be compared to what we are now witnessing.
Times are different but the institutions survived. People were pretty well armed with 19th century weapons. Nothing like today with respect to the power of the weapons.
Since Trump is a chaos creator, he is the last person who should be president. As citizens we do have the tools to oppose this presidency.
I agree with your comment up to the anti-MAGA portion. I can't stand MAGA either, but as you pointed out and then ignored, the deep problems of this country started way before Trump's grandfather was born, let alone MAGA. And Trump or MAGA didn't start a proxy war against Russia or start a genocide in Gaza, Biden and the Democrats did. Trump is a vile pig to be sure -- so was Charlie Kirk, so good riddance -- but he's nothing but a symptom. If you're obsessed with Trump and MAGA, Trump's got you. Whether you love or hate him makes no difference, just opposite sides of the same coin.
I completely agree that the deep problems of this country started way before Trump’s grandfather… However I disagree with you regarding Trump and MAGA. Trump and MAGA are akin to a catalyst that has vastly amplified and “legitimized” those problems in a manner not seen so out in the open for a long time. The outright hatred and vitriol from MAGA towards “others” that Trump has normalized as normal discourse is something I have not witnessed in my 70 years of life so far. Both brands of the corporate/oligarch uni-party have contributed to the ongoing decline of the USA to say nothing of illegal wars around the world. But to pretend that Trump and MAGA are not supercharging the worst of the USA at this point seems a bit naive to me. Trump and his cult are literally calling those who disagree with him/them as enemies of the state and worse. And that they should be jailed or worse. Those actions seem a bit more dangerous than simply a symptom as you so nicely put it. We will have to disagree on this issue.
I don't think we disagree substantially about Trump & MAGA. As I said, I can't stand them either. What Trump mainly does is make already bad situations worse. Politically, I am, first and foremost, and Earth First! environmentalist (or what ever you want to call being a radical wilderness and wildlife supporter and an anti-human supremacist environmentalist). Trump is rivaling Reagan/Watt in his attempts to destroy the natural world and the native life there. So I have no love for Trump or MAGA either.
My problem with all the TDSers is that they support evil Democrats in order to oppose Trump. I hate that as much as I hate Trump & MAGA. There is no such thing as a lesser evil; it's all evil, period. It's not legitimate to oppose Trump by voting for or otherwise supporting other evils, like Democrats. That may be where our difference lies. We're about the same age, so we've experienced a lot of the same crap during our lives in this country.
We are on the same page it seems. I detest the Democrats as I detest the Republicans/MAGA. I consider those who blindly support the Democrats as stupid as their MAGA brethren. And I have refused to vote for either so-called political party for decades. Both of them only serve their oligarch/corporate masters and not the citizens. Ever since Clinton came along and completely sold out the Democrats once and for all the game was over. I still clearly recall when Obama had the White House, Senate and House from 2008-2010 they did nothing for the citizens. All they did was to prattle on and on about how the big bad Republicans might filibuster anything they might propose so they did NOTHING except bitch and moan. I also clearly recall how Obama signed the NDAA at the time which in effect did away with the Posse Comitatus Act which opened the door to use the military against the citizens in the USA. Actually Hedges was one of the folks who challenged that in court and of course ended up losing. So it was Obama who handed the ability to someone like Trump to invoke the military against the citizenry at home. That is who the Democrats are. As you mentioned, evil is evil and the whole lesser evil argument is compete bullshit which I have proclaimed many times in the past on various sites. Thanks for mentioning it again as it is a basic truth that should be stated over and over again.
As my partner tells people, we are left of left when it comes to our beliefs and no political party represents us, with the possible exception of the Greens who are impotent and effectively meaningless. We would have voted for Stein here in Nevada during the last election but the god damn Democrats made sure she was kicked off the ballot. Once again those are who the Democrats are. They don’t give a fuck about free and fair elections just like their MAGA bros don’t either. May both parties rot in hell.
And finally a shout out to the late great Edward Abbey and his many writings especially The Monkey Wrench Gang.
Given your hatred of the two major US parties, precisely what is your practical plan to make our country better today? Or do you simply enjoy being a chronic defeatist and general pessimist?
The Dems here in California are endorsing Newsom's prop 50. "Fight fire with fire" they say. This rubs me the wrong way. We are slipping down a slippery slope into a land we won't recognize, nor our parents who grew up in FDR's and Eisenhower's time. The Dems are not endorsing Mamdani? He's my only hope. In 2020 it was Bernie, for whom I walked many neighborhoods and learned a great deal of what the Dems don't do for the poor. As one man told me, "I had hope for change. I didn't get change, and I lost hope." I have offered to call 500 people and ask why they didn't vote in the last election. I think I've got the answer, but I'm willing to listen and learn.
I’m sorry you don’t perceive a difference between the enormous evil of the militant MAGA far-right ideology and the far more socially-attuned agenda of the Democrats.
Perhaps you’re waiting for a utopia in which one side is composed of angels. But we live in the real world where there’s far more gray than black and white.
I’ve spent my life working towards making the world a better place. I’m not waiting for perfect. I don’t oppose Trump because I merely dislike him — I fervently oppose the ideology that raised him to power.
I’ll fight side by side with everyone else who believes in human rights, freedom, majority rule, justice, and equality. I hope you’re on that side too.
Typical Democratic Party/establishment propaganda. The Democrats are just as evil on most of the big issues as Republicans, and that includes Trump. I never said there was no difference between them -- there are differences between any groups -- I just said that it's not legitimate to oppose one evil by supporting another one. If you support evil, like the Democrats, you get evil. The Democrats support the evil U.S. empire, the war machine, Wall Street, the rich, etc. Is that what you want?
It’s not what I want but it’s the best we can get at this time. I’m a pragmatist — this is a capitalist country in which politicians will always be controlled by the super rich and their corporations.
I don’t see any revolutionary change on the table. All I see are slow, incremental changes. Rather than sit back and declare myself better than both of our two major parties, I work with the better party on every incremental change that makes our country a better place in my lifetime.
Progress is slow and the arc of history is long. That doesn’t dissuade me from doing whatever I can within the current system to improve it. I don’t consider that the lesser of two evils — I consider it to be the best path forward at this time.
How good were things under Biden and Obama? Both were bad on civil liberties. Obama boasted of how many countries he bombed. He stood with the rich. (Trump armed Ukraine in between the two Dems.) Biden was also bad on civil liberties, e.g., all the censorship. He too stood with the rich, e.g., wouldn't let the railroad workers strike. Biden refused to negotiate with Russia. He demonized Putin and backed the Ukrainians to the point of risking WWIII.
For all that is bad about Trump, which I concede, he met with Putin and does seem to be trying to make some peace in Ukraine and, above all, avoid WWIII.
Biden and Trump are both guilty of facilitating genocide in Gaza. Could there be some blowback in store for us because of that?
You’ve turned history upside down. Obama didn’t boast about bombing. Trump didn’t arm Ukraine. Biden appropriately treated Putin like the imperialist thug and war criminal that he is.
Biden was the most pro-worker president since FDR and the first to join striking workers on the picket line. Trump’s fanboy meetings with Putin are virtually proof that he’s a Russian asset.
Biden despised Netanyahu, who is essentially Israel’s Trump. He supported Israel after the attack by Hamas but increasingly withdrew his support as the genocide began. Could he have done more? Probably not until his second term — alienating Israel’s American supporters would have lost him the election.
So spare me the praise for Trump and his far right MAGA coalition of militant neofascists. Trump will go down in history as America’s worst president. There’s no whitewashing his legacy.
Right. I see it as kind of a volleyball game where the Dems volley the ball and the Repubs slam it over the net into our court--they get the point, we get zero. Basically they are on the same team. There should be a football analogy there, as well, but I don't know football all that well.
I have to disagree. Yes, both major parties are controlled by billionaires. They have always represented the super rich more than the working and middle classes. This is, after all, a capitalist nation.
But there remains a wide difference between the modern GOP, which champions the rights of wealthy white men, and the modern Democrats, who support unions, civil rights, equality for women, universal healthcare, voting rights, and education.
Your last paragraph is hilarious. Clinton gave us NAFTA that screwed over the working class, so much for supporting unions. Biden screwed over the railroad workers wanting to strike for better working conditions and benefits, so much for supporting unions. Clinton signed the biggest crime bill that purposefully incarcerated blacks in a number never seen before, so much for civil rights. Obama signed the NDAA which overturned the Posse Comitatus Act, allowing military troops to be used agains the citizens in the USA. Obama cracked down on the Occupy Wall Street movement, again so much for civil rights. Voting rights?! You’re talking about the party that refused to hold primaries this last election and anointed brain dead Biden until it was too late. The same party that banded together to screw over Sanders when he had massive momentum in the primaries. What a joke regarding voting rights. Regarding women’s rights, please remind us of all the times the Democrats bothered to try and codify Roe V Wade while they were in power. Nada. And as for universal health care, the Democrats have made it clear they will never vote for such a thing, Clinton refused, Obama broke his promise he campaigned on regarding single payer, and Biden outright said he would never sign such a bill if it came to him. Those are just a few examples of who and what the Democrats truly stand for and it is not for the citizens in any real manner.
Universal healthcare? Maybe in words, but not in deeds. Be careful when a politician says "healthcare is a right" but doesn't say anything about "universal", "socialized medicine", or the GATS treaty that Clinton signed into law. Because of that treaty, we will never get universal healthcare unless we break that treaty. Most people don't know about the General Agreement in Trade in Services. If you look it up, you'll be disappointed.
You haven’t seen this level of vitriol in 70 years?
In 68 years, I’ve witnessed the McCarthy Era, the Civil Rights movement, the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and the Kent State 4, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Vietnam War, the Silent Majority, the massive anti-war movement of the 1960s, Watergate, Reaganomics, the destruction of the air tracker controllers’ union and many unions thereafter, the Iran-Contra scandal, Clinton’s impeachment, Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, Bush Jr stealing the 2000 election from Al Gore, 9/11, the WMD hoax that resulted in our invasion of Libya, the Arab Spring, the US invasion of Afghanistan, the Great Recession, the Tea Party, Trump stealing the 2016 election with help from Russia, Trump’s two impeachments, the J6 insurrection, the COVID pandemic, Trump’s narrow reelection, and everything since.
America politics have ALWAYS been a battle between the haves and have nots, whites and people of color, bosses and unions, the right and the left, neofascists and democrats. I don’t remember a single decade without significant vitriol.
The battle we’re currently in is the battle that began with the American Revolution. Every generation has faced different iterations of the battle for freedom, justice, and equality. This is our turn.
I have no partisan attitude. I detest both brands of the corporate/oligarch uni-party and have refused to vote for either of them. My original post invoked MAGA as they are the ones in power now and have taken the destruction of the USA to a whole new level. Read my response to Jeff above if you wish to read more about my position on both so-called parties who have both contributed to the ongoing destruction of the USA.
I’m not an apologist for the Democrats. Both parties are owned by and beholden to major corporations and billionaire donors.
When push comes to shove, they both represent the super rich rather than American workers. I was an independent for many years before my growing alarm at the rise of the extreme right wing led me to join the Democratic Party.
The two parties DO differ on a significant number of issues that I consider important. The GOP believes in minority rule and doesn’t care about the needs of the average American, the environment, global warming, public health, white collar crime, income inequality, women’s rights, voting rights, reducing the federal deficit, the balance of powers, or government corruption.
Their claims to caring about any of those issues are nothing more than lip service. Their actions reveal their naked self-interest.
On the other hand, the Dems believe in majority rule, the balance of powers, and the rule of law. They consistently support a strong social safety net, new regulation to roll back global warming, public health and access to healthcare, addressing income inequality, women’s rights, minority rights, and workers’ rights.
That’s a big enough difference for me to feel that not voting isn’t an option. If you don’t support the better of these two choices, you enable the worse one.
Agree its dead and gone now. But there were at least a few times when there was at least a chance it could have developed into something better. The Civil War, the constitutional amendments that followed it and, importantly, Reconstruction, might have led to something better if it had been allowed to proceed. Then, there was the rise of the labor movement progressive era and later the New Deal. Then, of course, the Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam War, women and LGBTQ+ rights movements. With the Church Commission and Ford presidency, the imperial/militarist state was in retreat in the 1970s. Ah, what might have been!
Perk up! You forget that in the ensuing 240+ years since the inception of the United States, a population has emerged and experienced, learned, and been educated in the values of democracy. This citizenry did not exist when the United States was founded, but it does exist now and has gained in power and agency. Rather than saying things are over and hopeless, think instead that this democracy is not yet finished, has not yet been refined to the point that it represents fairly the majority of the people. We are still working on it.
The USA is now an oligarchy/plutocracy, not a democracy. It is indeed finished. Just who are the we that are working on it and just what are they doing. The citizens keep on voting for two corrupt parties for a long ago rigged system that threw them overboard a long time ago. Keep on dreaming if it helps you cope with the ongoing destruction of the USA.
While most of your observations are accurate, I don’t share your nihilistic conclusion.
I don’t ascribe to American exceptionalism but the USA remains the longest-lasting democracy in modern history.
It was forged in battle against the oppression of monarchy and the struggle for its continued existence has been nonstop.
Our times are not unusual for this country. Similar eras and far worse chapters are an indelible part of American history.
We have been the fortunate recipients of a long period of relative domestic calm following the massive social and political upheaval of the 1960s.
That time of largely peaceful progress wasn’t a gift — it was fought for by those of us who believed that loving our country and its democratic principles meant NOT leaving it.
I refuse to give up. This current battle has just begun. We have won it repeatedly in the past and we can win it again if we stand together with hope, the belief in a better tomorrow, and the determination to make that future come true.
Thank you Chris. I know you write this from a platform of experience and a deep understanding of political history. It is a sober reflection on the progress we have made towards tyranny and what is to come.
I agree with you that Charlie Kirk has been martyred, but I believe the fingerprints of the intellimafia are as clear as they are on every other high-profile assassination of the past century.
“You may love Charlie Kirk; you may loathe him. The fact that he is such a firebrand for the manufactured political divide makes him an ideal sacrificial lamb for maneuvering in the next phase of totalitarianism.”
I think this is clearly a Problem-Reaction-Solution setup, and the more people who understand the intellimafia is intentionally pitting artificially manufactured tribes against one another, the more successful we will be at resisting their efforts to kick off civil war so they can justify escalating tyranny.
I urge everyone to read the short introductory essay to the above article and share my analysis and plea to foil their plans by responding not with vitriol but with compassion, not with resentment but empathy, not with hatred but with love.
The intellimafia wants to dehumanize each side in the eyes of the other so they will no longer engage in rational dialogue. We need to rehumanize one another so we experience each other as human beings face to face instead of caricatured villains through screens.
We can defuse the intellimafia’s civil war bomb with love.
To quote from my piece:
“The intellimafia wants you to think this is about left versus right, gender politics, immigration, race, Trump, and every other hot-button topic they’ve installed in people’s minds so they can mass-manipulate the populace at will.
“They want us to hate, feel outrage, blame the other, strike back, and dive head-last into uncivil war.…
“They want to toss out the ragebait and hide behind the curtain while we dogfight.
“We defeat their attempts to divide, dissipate, and decimate us by refusing to let them play our emotions, cognitive biases, and trauma like a well-worn record.
“We cancel their programming by remembering one another’s humanity, engaging in respectful dialogue, cutting the puppeteers’ strings, and alchemizing pain into love.”
The problem might be that there is a real divide in your country.......one created by free market capitalism and its excesses.........and then turned paranoid by the reality of global warming and the rise of Asian economic power.
There simply isn't enough to go around, on a limited planet....for a nation that believes in 'wealth creation' to the nth degree. But Capitalism believes in nothing else.
So...I suspect there are a lot of young people....most noisy among them young white men......who genuinely see no golden future ahead for them. Not smart enough to get a ph.D., not well connected enough to have a golden parachute, not wily enough to land that perfect job with potential................I suspect a lot of the desperation is real.
Add to that fundamentalist religion and reductive, two ideas one of them wrong, thinking.........and a lot of young people feel trapped..........aging in place in a no place of precarity.
BUT HEAVEN FORBID WE SHOULD ACCUSE CAPITALISM....OR ITS CHAMPIONS, ALPHA MALES LIKE TRUMP (AND EPSTEIN)..........so what is left???
A fascist revolution where we eliminate the competition (women, blacks, browns, immigrants, intellectuals, etc. etc.) makes a kind of sense.
Where the real low IQ becomes obvious, is the ease with which so many are willing to join the hate wagon..........sure, its DEI, Gender Diversity, Feminists, Leftists, Immigrants.........
ALMOST ANYONE LOWER ON THE TOTEM POLE THAN YOURSELF....its safe to blame them.
Would take courage and a belief in justice to go for the real culprits.
Those expensive suits and smarmy sneers they venerate, listen to, obey.
I doubt they have anything but contempt for your love, compassion or good will.
I have predicted for many years that Christian Nationalism would lead to the collapse of the country. My first thought when I heard that Kirk had been assassinated was, “Now the movement has its martyr”. Thank you, Chris, for confirming my thought. The reaction of the MSM has been abominable, per usual. What else would I expect from the same people who are silent about a genocide?
Activists from 44 countries have launched the largest civilian flotilla in history at the end of August in an effort to break Israel’s siege on Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid to the starving population of the enclave.
The Global Sumud Flotilla, along with three allied initiatives, will send dozens of boats from Spanish ports on 31 August and Tunisian ports on 4 September, aiming to establish a humanitarian corridor and confront what organizers call Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.
Thank you for your honest assessment of Charlie Kirk's work. Mainstream media has been working overtime to gloss over the reality of who the man was. They hint and say that he was "controversial" but refuse to say why he was controversial as if reporting the facts was an act of unkindness to the dead man who must be forgiven all because of the way he died.
Yes, he harnessed the demonic power of the antisocial media in service to a political agenda and yes, he will become the Horst Wessel of 21st Century Nationalist Socialism. And perhaps this is the Fort Sumter moment for the next civil war.
"Uncouth" is blaming the victim for their own murder before he's even made it to the funeral parlor. It's generally seen as in bad taste by normal people.
Kirk advocated and justified murder and reaped what he sowed. It was wrong and dangerous for him and wrong and dangerous for his killer. I could care less about his arguments about manliness and whiteness. All fascists come up with similar drivel. But he tried to make what he claimed to be a 'Christian' argument for genocide. Anyone who has read the New Testament knows that Jesus opposed all violence, especially against children, and opposed the religious leaders of his day. His teachings have been completely dismissed and replaced in most organized Christianity by something closer to a settler colonialist war on the earth and the people of the earth.
Jesus idea was not to build an army of conquest, but communities of healing, through loving inclusion, sharing of food and wealth, non-violent persuasion, justice for all- weak and strong, continuous secret prayer to unite in spirit with divine grace. Many others have seen the same vision. The words and names and teachers are less important than the consciousness that can heal the earth and each other.
Exactly......but what amazes me is that so few Christians are speaking up against the fascist version of same. I read the gospels as a child, loved everything Jesus said.
I can't find a speck of him in what most white Christian nationalists go on about. Suspect they've never read the gospels.
that is NOT what his words meant if u bothered to understand them but u will have to think for yourself instead of lying about what the msnbc reporter said.....wake up man
They were completely socialist, the State had taken over all of society- before the war started. Everything was subject to State "coordination", business owners reduced to mere managers complying with State dictacts.
But Bill........one party dictatorships run that way also........doesn't mean its a socialist project.
The idea of democratic socialism has been so demonized in your country that I fear many good people can't imagine any alternative to free market capitalism...........
which might be why the right is rising., If only competition and over production create wealth, then most of us poor humans have to be content with little and less all the time.
Democratic socialism imagines a mixed economy, with regulations, progressive taxes, and a commitment to the welfare of all citizens.
We have to get over the idea that there are only two ideas possible....one of them wrong.
It's stupid......and it doesn't work, as the polarity in your country is demonstrating as I write. In Canada our third party has helped us avoid the extremes of capitalism/communism...........and build a country where public education is free and universal.......and health care is also provided to all citizens.
True: The CAPITALIST RIGHT ARE TRYING TO DESTROY AND PRIVATIZE IT AS I WRITE....but having lived inside a mixed economy...I wouldn't have it any other way. Socialist is from Social....is akin to Society.........a governing system that cares for all its citizens.
Quite possible. And having nothing to do with the Nazism of Hitler.
We had a functioning mixed, necessarily regulated economy thanks to the New Deal. It was systematically destroyed, the assets it generated looted. I'm a lover of history, that is why im still a registered Democratic in memory of the Party that put the middle class and working poor first, becore the "new left" and later the neoliberals killed it.
I know. I have a history/poli sc minor......and a lifetime commitment to social justice from my CCF farmer dad and nurse mom. They lived through the Great Depression/WWII........and wanted something better for our future.
But up here too.....neoliberalism is dismantling our version of the New Deal, little bit by little bit.
At its inception, regardless of how it developed after the late 1920s and early 1930s it was called national socialism to distinguish it from international socialism of the communists.
Unlike Marxism and Communism a specific economic theory did not direct the NAZIs much as Trump's economic theories are often made up as he goes along.
Are people still pushing that old line? No, I don’t know it, and neither do you. You just think you do. Naziism was a murderous, totalitarian, movement. Fascism is the opposite of Socialism. If you want to see it in action, turn on the news and watch version 2.0 live from Jerusalem.
That is the main difference between the Old School Nazis and our 21st Century National Socialists. As they accumulate power they welcome a diversity of people into the movement: Jews and antisemites, Christians and atheists, white supremacists and black and brown people, misogynists and feminists, straight, gay and even trans people.
As long as they are committed to depriving "the left" of power they can play and as long as they submit to the authority of the straight, white, Christian men who are in charge.
This will probably change as the competing and contradictory elements that make up the movement now try and consolidate power and dominance. The MAGA coalition will probably continue as long as Trump remains the dominant figure. Then will come the purges.
There is a war brewing in Europe, a civil war brewing in the U.S., which will prevent them from helping the Europeans, and the continuing messes in the middle east and Africa.
I don't see anything but misery in the near future for everyone. I'm starting to look for a safer place to live. Maybe I will look into moving back to Maine.
It's not the gun totters I'm worried about as I have guns. It's the idiots who don't know what to do with them that worries me. I lived in Maine half my life, and still have family there. My people go back four generations in Maine. Living there wasn't that bad, it was just the isolation and lack of decent housing that drove me out. Not that the housing issue is any better but I would feel a lot safer there if a civil war breaks out.
Nowhere will eve be completely safe but if you can find a place with few humans living around you, then your place will be easier to defend when they come. A basic rule of defense when setting up a defensive position in hostile countries. (Taken from the U.S. Army military doctrines. I'm a former combat soldier).
As a lot of us know, when hostilities break out, people become refugees and move out of the line of fire, it they're able. I have a plan to avoid that as much as possible. I know pretty much where the majority of non-combatant Americans would go if fighting breaks out between the red and blue states and I plan to go elsewhere to a place I know will be one of the last places refugees will go to within the U.S. There are quite a few, if you know where to look. If you've never had to live in a situation like that (which very few Americans have), prepare to have your life completely upended. Kind of like the people having to evacuate from a wildfire in the west, only with people shooting at you.
I definitely would cross Europe off of your list. There's no housing in Ireland, their fighting the immigrants in the north, Spain is discouraging Americans from immigrating to Spain and Germany is gearing up to go to war with Russia. Canada is going through some growing pains as they decouple from the U.S. and their crime rate is creeping up. Fiji is okay for now, until the next typhoon roars across the islands again. I hear south America is okay, if you can learn the language, although I would stay away from Venezuela and Guyana right now with Trump making plans to bomb the crap out of Venezuela soon. As Americans under Trump rule, our escape options are getting narrower and narrower every month.
It's not as if I'm primed and ready-or able- to pick up and move, you see. I just figure there has to be someplace on this planet that is not as cluster-fucked-up as this nation is becoming. I have friends who speak of moving to Greece. But that place is not for me either. And South America? No way
And that is the rub. We're running out of decent places to run to now. Even in Maine, there are a lot of people living there that would take up arms against their neighbors if a civil war were to break out. The trick is in the knowing where to go. I know of places around the state that would be fairly quiet that few others outside of Maine would know about.
I have traveled all over the world and seen things few people should see. I've also been to countries that were lovely to visit years ago that have now changed for the worse and are no longer friendly to Americans.
Right now, with everything that's starting to happen, there are no real safe places anymore, unless you want to move to China, where the crime rate is very low, for a good reason. But, outside of the wealthiest, the standard of living is not what you see in the western tabloids. I know first hand as my wife escaped from north eastern China fifteen years ago.
I'm going to stick around the U.S. until things get to the point of absolute personal danger, for either myself as a non-Christian activist, or for my wife because she's an immigrant.
My fear is that there is a new war brewing in Europe. If certain countries in the EU bloc go belly up soon, they may start a war with Russia. With the U.S. in its death throes, as far as democracy is concerned, I'm just going to continue to watch and wait for now. I have already plotted an escape route, should I need it in the future. I will only use it if I strongly feel like our lives are in imminent danger.
If a new war breaks out between western Europe and the east, the U.S. may not assist with Trump in power. He may have more domestic issues to contend with.
I'm more concerned with the U.S. breaking down into a civil war, and the fallout of a global war centering in Europe and the middle east. I think escaping to a foreign safe haven will become moot as everything erupts in flames everywhere. Defend your castle until you can't, then run, if you still can.
Not anymore. Their economy is falling apart. Their culture is becoming unraveled over immigration. Their crime rate is skyrocketing. There's no housing, unless your filthy rich. That coupled with the extreme weather, makes Australia a dangerous place to live, if they even let you in beyond a tourist visa. Americans are not well liked down under anymore.
Clearly there’s more in the water than fluoride. Humans are murdered every day all over the earth, not much discussion is going on about them.
When one human is made a ‘Star’ and is murdered, all hell is supposed to break out. Yes, Charlie Kirk’s demise is a tragedy, so are the others being murdered. They too had families.
Call on Pope Leo XIV to do whatever it takes to save Gaza and stop the bombing, and end the starvation. Let him go to Gaza and stand with the suffering people who are being massacred by Israel and the Western posers. He can go to Gaza right now, and insist aid be allowed in.
Is there anything more important in today's world than this?
(Martyrs sacralize violence. They are used to turn the moral order upside down. Depravity becomes morality. Atrocities become heroism. Crime becomes justice. Hate becomes virtue. Greed and nepotism become civic virtues. Murder becomes good.)
Look at what we do know: deadly accurate sniper shooting from 180 metres away; hit to the carotid artery, guaranteed to make the victim bleed out straight away; sniper gets away clean; neither him nor the weapon found. This is not a politically motivated nutbag, but a paid professional. The fact that Trump and his cohorts immediately shouted, "The Left Did It" from the rooftops smacks of an Operation Gladio type killing with a Mossad twist. Why? Because Kirk was starting to fraternise with the wrong people: Tucker Carlson, and Candice Owens. He was also going very cool on denying the genocide. So much so that Amichai Chikli,
Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, State of Israel, wrote Kirk a Cease and Desist letter. One and One makes Two.
This murder does seem like a gift to the MAGA crowd, especially its timing. As one of those quoted by Chris admonished the base, now is the time for the right to come together. When some were beginning to criticize the administration’s stonewalling on the Epstein files and complain about the Trump economy, the timing really does seem fortuitous from a rightist perspective.
Charlie lived the attention he received for his often stupid and divisive commentary. He was of the view, any publicity is good publicity. He reaped what he sowed! There will be others too.
Kate he was a young man, a husband a father and what ever his sins, no doubt, no worse then most in both political parties. No one deserves to be shot down in cold blood! No one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The question of who deserves what in life is not what I am concerned with. Neither am concerned with concepts of sin. I simply point out a fact. Charlie Kirk lived his life as someone who promoted gun culture, amongst other things I vehemently disagreed with. I will not turn him into a saint because he was shot and killed . Sadly there were others in the YSA who also lost their lives to gun violence. He could have chosen so many other paths to follow……..,
Could almost make you wonder. I knew nothing of this person before he was shot. Now I think I have to read a few of his speeches.............or perhaps a few American reporters will do it for me...........and find in the texts who might have had it in for him.
The blame game is not only a lot of fun.......it can be dangerous if taken so far that people start to believe you mean exactly what you say.
1.) The intellectual framework as shown in Samuel P. Huntington's 1996 book //The Clash of Cultures.// Where everything but west Euro and colonist descendants are enemy. Indigenous peoples not mentioned at all--well, they're by definition not "civilized," whereas the vicious empire builders and H bomb manufacturers are.
2.) The political framework in the rightward push of neolib Dems which helped enable the Rs to move full on fascist. The Ds' abandonment of the majority working class left us little choice. Like in effect voting NO by not voting. Or because of disgust with tepid, ineffective Ds and sheer economic desperation, to try to get the Ds attention by voting R. Especially after the Ds of the Biden administration allied with the neocons; their lust for empire as backed up by endless war. To be fought by recruits of the economic draft.
3.) The religious framework an emphasis on a Calvinism pushed by right wing wealthy TV preachers where the saved are an elect successful in this life because chosen by God for the next. So the rich and powerful are to be admired and the marginalized poor ignored or even denigrated. These same preachers dismiss empathy by saying lib scolds citing "do unto others" or "love thine enemies" are a dangerous distraction. To listen to them is to collaborate with evil. After all, as the Shakespearean truism (ie it's not biblical) has it, even the devil can quote scripture.
There we have it. An unholy alliance of techie anarcho-capitalists, neo Robber Barons, and Christofascists. With a well funded mouthpiece spewing hateful lies now turned patron saint.
We may witness a slow rise to wholesale depravity and degradation. Trump already is using this as his platform to spew forth more hate-filled bile. Instead of showing true and moral leadership, he stoops to his own form of terrorism. Our world is a less-safe place because he wants intolerance and violence. Charlle Kirk's murder may be Trump's "shot heard 'round the world".
The USA is dead and gone. It pretty much was since its inception. The USA was founded on genocide and slavery by a group of rich white wealthy men for their benefit. Nothing has changed since then in any real manner. And here we are on the brink of another civil war instigated by a bunch of angry violent bigoted racist fools. The future is nothing but a bloody dystopian nightmare now. As Martin Luther King said: “We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools.” It’s pretty obvious which choice has been made now. I will hold onto whatever kindness and sanity that I can in our final days, though I am not sure I can ever forgive the MAGA cult for their hatred and insanity they have imposed on the rest of us. Maybe that makes me no better than them. I’m not sure I believe that old saying: Forgive them for they know not what they do. They know exactly what they are doing and it is akin to evil personified.
Still time yet to enjoy the peace and freedom of Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela.
Cubans and Venezuelans would have a much better quality of life if they weren’t continually targeted with sanctions and blockades by the US government. Learn some history about the hemisphere you live in.
If it were easy and affordable for regular people to become permanent residents of other countries, I sure as shit would have vacated the US a long time ago.
This is kinda an aside: why is the US at war against CUBA??????? Bonkers!
It's not a capitalist society. More socialist, so they must fail in order to prove that capitalism is the be all and end all.
The way things are going, I'll be in jail accused of being a Marxist, and, according to Hudson and Wolff, you only understand Marxism if you read all three volumes of Das Capital. I only know of his headstone: Workers of the World, Unite! Good enough for me.
Ah yes, the old Love It Or Leave it bullshit. The MAGA cult are the ones who hate this country and true freedom for ALL. Why don’t they leave it since they hate it so much.
For all its faults this is the country where individual liberty is most protected. Most of our problems are due to the sloth of the public. The peaceful means are there to fix all our problems, We the People just need to put down our cellphones and actually do the work.
There are any number of countries around the world that have more protection of individual liberty than the USA for its citizens. And day by day those protections are being taken away in the USA. Keep on believing in the American Exceptionalism nonsense. It is far from that now if it ever was.
Please list the nations that will not jail you for public comments that you'd rather live in.
lol. the u.s. ranks 55th in the freedom index of the world. not the shiny city on the hill anymore. but hey delusions are comforting, that's why they are so popular.https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freest-countries
I need not bother as Mo Mast has clearly shown them to you. You clearly are an ignorant fool at best with your nonsensical assertions about how great the USA is when it comes to freedom for its citizens. People have been arrested in the USA for non-violent protesting against the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians as one recent example. So much for your beloved freedom in this country. Your apparent nationalism is truly unbecoming and why the USA is going down the drain.
I live in Australia. The US pushed Britain to gaol Julian Assange. Our government bent over backwards to get the US to drop the major charges and let him come home to the land of Oz. I believe we have a lot more personal liberty than US citizens.
denmark, sweded, switzerland, iceland, etc etc etc
It seems from far off Australia your system of good governance is failing badly. Otherwise Trump would have been removed by now. He should never have been allowed to run for President in the first place. The distances between people appears to be growing. Collapse is inevitable. Perhaps outdoor the ashes something better can emerge.
Don't worry........if the civil war goes well in your own borders there'll be lots of Christ loving white boys willing to go to all those countries and set the natives straight.
America's penchant for knowing better than the natives what is good for said natives is at least a century old and going strong. Hard to care much about you when that despicable willingness to regime change other people's governments rides rough shod over any ability you might develop to run your own more fairly.
Some of us are trying. I make phone calls for Mamdani and other candidates I believe will help this country, like Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman most recently. I sort of do it selfishly, as I learn a lot from the people I talk to.
To give you a bit of hope: A few weeks ago I made phone calls for Mamdani and looked at the participants list. Out of 250 callers, a quarter of us had Jewish surnames, a quarter Muslim surnames, and the rest "regular". It was gratifying to see that Jews and Muslims were fighting on the same side, as we've also seen on college campuses. The light surrounging the cloud we see ourselves in right now.
What for? We're almost ahead of them when it comes to suppression of women's rights, and gun violence. Sit back and enjoy the shit-show brought to you by that misogynist felon and pedophile, Donald J. Trump and his fascist henchmen, too many to count.....
Accept the taste of shit or move. Who are these ultimatum fucks that think that they can say shit like that? This country has fallen significantly in my lifetime. It will never be great again with group
Same old mantra. Things a more nuanced than that. With Ronald Reagan, I saw the resurrection of the Confederacy. It was creeping in slowly and bit by bit. Now those same toxic memes are accelerating.
“We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools.” It’s pretty obvious which choice has been made now. Trump is not leader but a opportunist. Abram Lincoln said pretty much the same thing when he spoke to the Illinois Young Men's Lyceum.
For all its faults, this country survived a Civil War and held elections during that titanic struggle.
“For all its faults, this country survived a Civil War and held elections during that titanic struggle.”
All I can say is that was then, this is now. We shall see how it plays out this time. Back then the citizens weren’t armed to the teeth with all sorts of guns following a guy who is calling out everyone as enemies of the state with a cult that hangs on his every word as if it were the truth of god. Like I said we shall see how it plays out this time and I don’t see how what happened in the last Civil War can be compared to what we are now witnessing.
Times are different but the institutions survived. People were pretty well armed with 19th century weapons. Nothing like today with respect to the power of the weapons.
Since Trump is a chaos creator, he is the last person who should be president. As citizens we do have the tools to oppose this presidency.
I agree with your comment up to the anti-MAGA portion. I can't stand MAGA either, but as you pointed out and then ignored, the deep problems of this country started way before Trump's grandfather was born, let alone MAGA. And Trump or MAGA didn't start a proxy war against Russia or start a genocide in Gaza, Biden and the Democrats did. Trump is a vile pig to be sure -- so was Charlie Kirk, so good riddance -- but he's nothing but a symptom. If you're obsessed with Trump and MAGA, Trump's got you. Whether you love or hate him makes no difference, just opposite sides of the same coin.
I completely agree that the deep problems of this country started way before Trump’s grandfather… However I disagree with you regarding Trump and MAGA. Trump and MAGA are akin to a catalyst that has vastly amplified and “legitimized” those problems in a manner not seen so out in the open for a long time. The outright hatred and vitriol from MAGA towards “others” that Trump has normalized as normal discourse is something I have not witnessed in my 70 years of life so far. Both brands of the corporate/oligarch uni-party have contributed to the ongoing decline of the USA to say nothing of illegal wars around the world. But to pretend that Trump and MAGA are not supercharging the worst of the USA at this point seems a bit naive to me. Trump and his cult are literally calling those who disagree with him/them as enemies of the state and worse. And that they should be jailed or worse. Those actions seem a bit more dangerous than simply a symptom as you so nicely put it. We will have to disagree on this issue.
I don't think we disagree substantially about Trump & MAGA. As I said, I can't stand them either. What Trump mainly does is make already bad situations worse. Politically, I am, first and foremost, and Earth First! environmentalist (or what ever you want to call being a radical wilderness and wildlife supporter and an anti-human supremacist environmentalist). Trump is rivaling Reagan/Watt in his attempts to destroy the natural world and the native life there. So I have no love for Trump or MAGA either.
My problem with all the TDSers is that they support evil Democrats in order to oppose Trump. I hate that as much as I hate Trump & MAGA. There is no such thing as a lesser evil; it's all evil, period. It's not legitimate to oppose Trump by voting for or otherwise supporting other evils, like Democrats. That may be where our difference lies. We're about the same age, so we've experienced a lot of the same crap during our lives in this country.
We are on the same page it seems. I detest the Democrats as I detest the Republicans/MAGA. I consider those who blindly support the Democrats as stupid as their MAGA brethren. And I have refused to vote for either so-called political party for decades. Both of them only serve their oligarch/corporate masters and not the citizens. Ever since Clinton came along and completely sold out the Democrats once and for all the game was over. I still clearly recall when Obama had the White House, Senate and House from 2008-2010 they did nothing for the citizens. All they did was to prattle on and on about how the big bad Republicans might filibuster anything they might propose so they did NOTHING except bitch and moan. I also clearly recall how Obama signed the NDAA at the time which in effect did away with the Posse Comitatus Act which opened the door to use the military against the citizens in the USA. Actually Hedges was one of the folks who challenged that in court and of course ended up losing. So it was Obama who handed the ability to someone like Trump to invoke the military against the citizenry at home. That is who the Democrats are. As you mentioned, evil is evil and the whole lesser evil argument is compete bullshit which I have proclaimed many times in the past on various sites. Thanks for mentioning it again as it is a basic truth that should be stated over and over again.
As my partner tells people, we are left of left when it comes to our beliefs and no political party represents us, with the possible exception of the Greens who are impotent and effectively meaningless. We would have voted for Stein here in Nevada during the last election but the god damn Democrats made sure she was kicked off the ballot. Once again those are who the Democrats are. They don’t give a fuck about free and fair elections just like their MAGA bros don’t either. May both parties rot in hell.
And finally a shout out to the late great Edward Abbey and his many writings especially The Monkey Wrench Gang.
Given your hatred of the two major US parties, precisely what is your practical plan to make our country better today? Or do you simply enjoy being a chronic defeatist and general pessimist?
The Dems here in California are endorsing Newsom's prop 50. "Fight fire with fire" they say. This rubs me the wrong way. We are slipping down a slippery slope into a land we won't recognize, nor our parents who grew up in FDR's and Eisenhower's time. The Dems are not endorsing Mamdani? He's my only hope. In 2020 it was Bernie, for whom I walked many neighborhoods and learned a great deal of what the Dems don't do for the poor. As one man told me, "I had hope for change. I didn't get change, and I lost hope." I have offered to call 500 people and ask why they didn't vote in the last election. I think I've got the answer, but I'm willing to listen and learn.
I’m sorry you don’t perceive a difference between the enormous evil of the militant MAGA far-right ideology and the far more socially-attuned agenda of the Democrats.
Perhaps you’re waiting for a utopia in which one side is composed of angels. But we live in the real world where there’s far more gray than black and white.
I’ve spent my life working towards making the world a better place. I’m not waiting for perfect. I don’t oppose Trump because I merely dislike him — I fervently oppose the ideology that raised him to power.
I’ll fight side by side with everyone else who believes in human rights, freedom, majority rule, justice, and equality. I hope you’re on that side too.
Typical Democratic Party/establishment propaganda. The Democrats are just as evil on most of the big issues as Republicans, and that includes Trump. I never said there was no difference between them -- there are differences between any groups -- I just said that it's not legitimate to oppose one evil by supporting another one. If you support evil, like the Democrats, you get evil. The Democrats support the evil U.S. empire, the war machine, Wall Street, the rich, etc. Is that what you want?
It’s not what I want but it’s the best we can get at this time. I’m a pragmatist — this is a capitalist country in which politicians will always be controlled by the super rich and their corporations.
I don’t see any revolutionary change on the table. All I see are slow, incremental changes. Rather than sit back and declare myself better than both of our two major parties, I work with the better party on every incremental change that makes our country a better place in my lifetime.
Progress is slow and the arc of history is long. That doesn’t dissuade me from doing whatever I can within the current system to improve it. I don’t consider that the lesser of two evils — I consider it to be the best path forward at this time.
How good were things under Biden and Obama? Both were bad on civil liberties. Obama boasted of how many countries he bombed. He stood with the rich. (Trump armed Ukraine in between the two Dems.) Biden was also bad on civil liberties, e.g., all the censorship. He too stood with the rich, e.g., wouldn't let the railroad workers strike. Biden refused to negotiate with Russia. He demonized Putin and backed the Ukrainians to the point of risking WWIII.
For all that is bad about Trump, which I concede, he met with Putin and does seem to be trying to make some peace in Ukraine and, above all, avoid WWIII.
Biden and Trump are both guilty of facilitating genocide in Gaza. Could there be some blowback in store for us because of that?
You’ve turned history upside down. Obama didn’t boast about bombing. Trump didn’t arm Ukraine. Biden appropriately treated Putin like the imperialist thug and war criminal that he is.
Biden was the most pro-worker president since FDR and the first to join striking workers on the picket line. Trump’s fanboy meetings with Putin are virtually proof that he’s a Russian asset.
Biden despised Netanyahu, who is essentially Israel’s Trump. He supported Israel after the attack by Hamas but increasingly withdrew his support as the genocide began. Could he have done more? Probably not until his second term — alienating Israel’s American supporters would have lost him the election.
So spare me the praise for Trump and his far right MAGA coalition of militant neofascists. Trump will go down in history as America’s worst president. There’s no whitewashing his legacy.
Right. I see it as kind of a volleyball game where the Dems volley the ball and the Repubs slam it over the net into our court--they get the point, we get zero. Basically they are on the same team. There should be a football analogy there, as well, but I don't know football all that well.
I have to disagree. Yes, both major parties are controlled by billionaires. They have always represented the super rich more than the working and middle classes. This is, after all, a capitalist nation.
But there remains a wide difference between the modern GOP, which champions the rights of wealthy white men, and the modern Democrats, who support unions, civil rights, equality for women, universal healthcare, voting rights, and education.
Your last paragraph is hilarious. Clinton gave us NAFTA that screwed over the working class, so much for supporting unions. Biden screwed over the railroad workers wanting to strike for better working conditions and benefits, so much for supporting unions. Clinton signed the biggest crime bill that purposefully incarcerated blacks in a number never seen before, so much for civil rights. Obama signed the NDAA which overturned the Posse Comitatus Act, allowing military troops to be used agains the citizens in the USA. Obama cracked down on the Occupy Wall Street movement, again so much for civil rights. Voting rights?! You’re talking about the party that refused to hold primaries this last election and anointed brain dead Biden until it was too late. The same party that banded together to screw over Sanders when he had massive momentum in the primaries. What a joke regarding voting rights. Regarding women’s rights, please remind us of all the times the Democrats bothered to try and codify Roe V Wade while they were in power. Nada. And as for universal health care, the Democrats have made it clear they will never vote for such a thing, Clinton refused, Obama broke his promise he campaigned on regarding single payer, and Biden outright said he would never sign such a bill if it came to him. Those are just a few examples of who and what the Democrats truly stand for and it is not for the citizens in any real manner.
Universal healthcare? Maybe in words, but not in deeds. Be careful when a politician says "healthcare is a right" but doesn't say anything about "universal", "socialized medicine", or the GATS treaty that Clinton signed into law. Because of that treaty, we will never get universal healthcare unless we break that treaty. Most people don't know about the General Agreement in Trade in Services. If you look it up, you'll be disappointed.
You haven’t seen this level of vitriol in 70 years?
In 68 years, I’ve witnessed the McCarthy Era, the Civil Rights movement, the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and the Kent State 4, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Vietnam War, the Silent Majority, the massive anti-war movement of the 1960s, Watergate, Reaganomics, the destruction of the air tracker controllers’ union and many unions thereafter, the Iran-Contra scandal, Clinton’s impeachment, Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, Bush Jr stealing the 2000 election from Al Gore, 9/11, the WMD hoax that resulted in our invasion of Libya, the Arab Spring, the US invasion of Afghanistan, the Great Recession, the Tea Party, Trump stealing the 2016 election with help from Russia, Trump’s two impeachments, the J6 insurrection, the COVID pandemic, Trump’s narrow reelection, and everything since.
America politics have ALWAYS been a battle between the haves and have nots, whites and people of color, bosses and unions, the right and the left, neofascists and democrats. I don’t remember a single decade without significant vitriol.
The battle we’re currently in is the battle that began with the American Revolution. Every generation has faced different iterations of the battle for freedom, justice, and equality. This is our turn.
(Trump stealing the 2016 election with help from Russia,)-
You're clearly smarter then that. Don't let your partisanship blind you to the truth.
There is little doubt that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump.
The Mueller report proved it and a number of Trump’s campaign staff were imprisoned as a result (Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, etc)
The Senate investigatory committee, chaired by Marco Rubio, similarly found that there was Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The only thing that wasn’t proven was Trump’s knowledge of the coordination between his campaign and the Russians.
The only
I think your partisan attitude is a self fulfilling prophecy of us vs them. Remember that the problems didn't start on January 20th and try again.
I have no partisan attitude. I detest both brands of the corporate/oligarch uni-party and have refused to vote for either of them. My original post invoked MAGA as they are the ones in power now and have taken the destruction of the USA to a whole new level. Read my response to Jeff above if you wish to read more about my position on both so-called parties who have both contributed to the ongoing destruction of the USA.
The question isn’t who you don’t support, but who you do support. Words without actions are meaningless.
I’m not an apologist for the Democrats. Both parties are owned by and beholden to major corporations and billionaire donors.
When push comes to shove, they both represent the super rich rather than American workers. I was an independent for many years before my growing alarm at the rise of the extreme right wing led me to join the Democratic Party.
The two parties DO differ on a significant number of issues that I consider important. The GOP believes in minority rule and doesn’t care about the needs of the average American, the environment, global warming, public health, white collar crime, income inequality, women’s rights, voting rights, reducing the federal deficit, the balance of powers, or government corruption.
Their claims to caring about any of those issues are nothing more than lip service. Their actions reveal their naked self-interest.
On the other hand, the Dems believe in majority rule, the balance of powers, and the rule of law. They consistently support a strong social safety net, new regulation to roll back global warming, public health and access to healthcare, addressing income inequality, women’s rights, minority rights, and workers’ rights.
That’s a big enough difference for me to feel that not voting isn’t an option. If you don’t support the better of these two choices, you enable the worse one.
I'm confused now. Consistent denunciation of both parties. But you also claim to support the uni-Party ?
Our problems didn’t start on Jan 20th but they have certainly worsened considerably since then.
I agree with you on all your points. Keep writing. Don't let anyone shut you down.
Sincerely, secondmamma
Agree its dead and gone now. But there were at least a few times when there was at least a chance it could have developed into something better. The Civil War, the constitutional amendments that followed it and, importantly, Reconstruction, might have led to something better if it had been allowed to proceed. Then, there was the rise of the labor movement progressive era and later the New Deal. Then, of course, the Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam War, women and LGBTQ+ rights movements. With the Church Commission and Ford presidency, the imperial/militarist state was in retreat in the 1970s. Ah, what might have been!
Perk up! You forget that in the ensuing 240+ years since the inception of the United States, a population has emerged and experienced, learned, and been educated in the values of democracy. This citizenry did not exist when the United States was founded, but it does exist now and has gained in power and agency. Rather than saying things are over and hopeless, think instead that this democracy is not yet finished, has not yet been refined to the point that it represents fairly the majority of the people. We are still working on it.
The USA is now an oligarchy/plutocracy, not a democracy. It is indeed finished. Just who are the we that are working on it and just what are they doing. The citizens keep on voting for two corrupt parties for a long ago rigged system that threw them overboard a long time ago. Keep on dreaming if it helps you cope with the ongoing destruction of the USA.
While most of your observations are accurate, I don’t share your nihilistic conclusion.
I don’t ascribe to American exceptionalism but the USA remains the longest-lasting democracy in modern history.
It was forged in battle against the oppression of monarchy and the struggle for its continued existence has been nonstop.
Our times are not unusual for this country. Similar eras and far worse chapters are an indelible part of American history.
We have been the fortunate recipients of a long period of relative domestic calm following the massive social and political upheaval of the 1960s.
That time of largely peaceful progress wasn’t a gift — it was fought for by those of us who believed that loving our country and its democratic principles meant NOT leaving it.
I refuse to give up. This current battle has just begun. We have won it repeatedly in the past and we can win it again if we stand together with hope, the belief in a better tomorrow, and the determination to make that future come true.
Thank you Chris. I know you write this from a platform of experience and a deep understanding of political history. It is a sober reflection on the progress we have made towards tyranny and what is to come.
zero
I agree with you that Charlie Kirk has been martyred, but I believe the fingerprints of the intellimafia are as clear as they are on every other high-profile assassination of the past century.
Kirk was chosen precisely because he is a controversial figure who engenders admiration and revulsion. As I wrote in my piece this morning ( https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/memes-by-themes-20-the-intellimafia ):
“You may love Charlie Kirk; you may loathe him. The fact that he is such a firebrand for the manufactured political divide makes him an ideal sacrificial lamb for maneuvering in the next phase of totalitarianism.”
I think this is clearly a Problem-Reaction-Solution setup, and the more people who understand the intellimafia is intentionally pitting artificially manufactured tribes against one another, the more successful we will be at resisting their efforts to kick off civil war so they can justify escalating tyranny.
I urge everyone to read the short introductory essay to the above article and share my analysis and plea to foil their plans by responding not with vitriol but with compassion, not with resentment but empathy, not with hatred but with love.
The intellimafia wants to dehumanize each side in the eyes of the other so they will no longer engage in rational dialogue. We need to rehumanize one another so we experience each other as human beings face to face instead of caricatured villains through screens.
We can defuse the intellimafia’s civil war bomb with love.
To quote from my piece:
“The intellimafia wants you to think this is about left versus right, gender politics, immigration, race, Trump, and every other hot-button topic they’ve installed in people’s minds so they can mass-manipulate the populace at will.
“They want us to hate, feel outrage, blame the other, strike back, and dive head-last into uncivil war.…
“They want to toss out the ragebait and hide behind the curtain while we dogfight.
“We defeat their attempts to divide, dissipate, and decimate us by refusing to let them play our emotions, cognitive biases, and trauma like a well-worn record.
“We cancel their programming by remembering one another’s humanity, engaging in respectful dialogue, cutting the puppeteers’ strings, and alchemizing pain into love.”
The objective is always to have us fighting with one another while ignoring the corrupt misrule of "our" Establishment.
The problem might be that there is a real divide in your country.......one created by free market capitalism and its excesses.........and then turned paranoid by the reality of global warming and the rise of Asian economic power.
There simply isn't enough to go around, on a limited planet....for a nation that believes in 'wealth creation' to the nth degree. But Capitalism believes in nothing else.
So...I suspect there are a lot of young people....most noisy among them young white men......who genuinely see no golden future ahead for them. Not smart enough to get a ph.D., not well connected enough to have a golden parachute, not wily enough to land that perfect job with potential................I suspect a lot of the desperation is real.
Add to that fundamentalist religion and reductive, two ideas one of them wrong, thinking.........and a lot of young people feel trapped..........aging in place in a no place of precarity.
BUT HEAVEN FORBID WE SHOULD ACCUSE CAPITALISM....OR ITS CHAMPIONS, ALPHA MALES LIKE TRUMP (AND EPSTEIN)..........so what is left???
A fascist revolution where we eliminate the competition (women, blacks, browns, immigrants, intellectuals, etc. etc.) makes a kind of sense.
Where the real low IQ becomes obvious, is the ease with which so many are willing to join the hate wagon..........sure, its DEI, Gender Diversity, Feminists, Leftists, Immigrants.........
ALMOST ANYONE LOWER ON THE TOTEM POLE THAN YOURSELF....its safe to blame them.
Would take courage and a belief in justice to go for the real culprits.
Those expensive suits and smarmy sneers they venerate, listen to, obey.
I doubt they have anything but contempt for your love, compassion or good will.
Be careful. It's a jungle out there.
S U P E R B !
My heart and pagan prayers are with all the good people in your country.Chris Hedges chief among them.
I have predicted for many years that Christian Nationalism would lead to the collapse of the country. My first thought when I heard that Kirk had been assassinated was, “Now the movement has its martyr”. Thank you, Chris, for confirming my thought. The reaction of the MSM has been abominable, per usual. What else would I expect from the same people who are silent about a genocide?
Activists from 44 countries have launched the largest civilian flotilla in history at the end of August in an effort to break Israel’s siege on Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid to the starving population of the enclave.
The Global Sumud Flotilla, along with three allied initiatives, will send dozens of boats from Spanish ports on 31 August and Tunisian ports on 4 September, aiming to establish a humanitarian corridor and confront what organizers call Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.
https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/07/largest-civilian-flotilla-in-history-to-set-sail-for-gaza/
Reports are they have already come under attack twice!
Join them; support them:
https://globalsumudflotilla.org
https://freedomflotilla.org
Thank you for your honest assessment of Charlie Kirk's work. Mainstream media has been working overtime to gloss over the reality of who the man was. They hint and say that he was "controversial" but refuse to say why he was controversial as if reporting the facts was an act of unkindness to the dead man who must be forgiven all because of the way he died.
Yes, he harnessed the demonic power of the antisocial media in service to a political agenda and yes, he will become the Horst Wessel of 21st Century Nationalist Socialism. And perhaps this is the Fort Sumter moment for the next civil war.
MSNBC fired Matthew Dowd for speaking the truth about Kirk.
They fired him for being uncouth.
look around pal at the media esp the right wing media....its way beyond uncouth
And what, in the name of the higher powers, does uncouth mean in your disintegrating republic?
"Uncouth" is blaming the victim for their own murder before he's even made it to the funeral parlor. It's generally seen as in bad taste by normal people.
I see. So there was nothing in Kirk's rhetoric designed to make anyone angry or afraid??
Or is it simply that in the politically correct US of A it isn't allowed to speak ill of the dead??
Kirk advocated and justified murder and reaped what he sowed. It was wrong and dangerous for him and wrong and dangerous for his killer. I could care less about his arguments about manliness and whiteness. All fascists come up with similar drivel. But he tried to make what he claimed to be a 'Christian' argument for genocide. Anyone who has read the New Testament knows that Jesus opposed all violence, especially against children, and opposed the religious leaders of his day. His teachings have been completely dismissed and replaced in most organized Christianity by something closer to a settler colonialist war on the earth and the people of the earth.
Jesus idea was not to build an army of conquest, but communities of healing, through loving inclusion, sharing of food and wealth, non-violent persuasion, justice for all- weak and strong, continuous secret prayer to unite in spirit with divine grace. Many others have seen the same vision. The words and names and teachers are less important than the consciousness that can heal the earth and each other.
Exactly......but what amazes me is that so few Christians are speaking up against the fascist version of same. I read the gospels as a child, loved everything Jesus said.
I can't find a speck of him in what most white Christian nationalists go on about. Suspect they've never read the gospels.
that is NOT what his words meant if u bothered to understand them but u will have to think for yourself instead of lying about what the msnbc reporter said.....wake up man
bullshit
You do know that the NAZI's were socialist anti Christians, right? Their name is kind of a hint.
They weren't socialist at all............the put the word in their party to confuse the issue.
It seems to still be working.
They were completely socialist, the State had taken over all of society- before the war started. Everything was subject to State "coordination", business owners reduced to mere managers complying with State dictacts.
But Bill........one party dictatorships run that way also........doesn't mean its a socialist project.
The idea of democratic socialism has been so demonized in your country that I fear many good people can't imagine any alternative to free market capitalism...........
which might be why the right is rising., If only competition and over production create wealth, then most of us poor humans have to be content with little and less all the time.
Democratic socialism imagines a mixed economy, with regulations, progressive taxes, and a commitment to the welfare of all citizens.
We have to get over the idea that there are only two ideas possible....one of them wrong.
It's stupid......and it doesn't work, as the polarity in your country is demonstrating as I write. In Canada our third party has helped us avoid the extremes of capitalism/communism...........and build a country where public education is free and universal.......and health care is also provided to all citizens.
True: The CAPITALIST RIGHT ARE TRYING TO DESTROY AND PRIVATIZE IT AS I WRITE....but having lived inside a mixed economy...I wouldn't have it any other way. Socialist is from Social....is akin to Society.........a governing system that cares for all its citizens.
Quite possible. And having nothing to do with the Nazism of Hitler.
We had a functioning mixed, necessarily regulated economy thanks to the New Deal. It was systematically destroyed, the assets it generated looted. I'm a lover of history, that is why im still a registered Democratic in memory of the Party that put the middle class and working poor first, becore the "new left" and later the neoliberals killed it.
I know. I have a history/poli sc minor......and a lifetime commitment to social justice from my CCF farmer dad and nurse mom. They lived through the Great Depression/WWII........and wanted something better for our future.
But up here too.....neoliberalism is dismantling our version of the New Deal, little bit by little bit.
At its inception, regardless of how it developed after the late 1920s and early 1930s it was called national socialism to distinguish it from international socialism of the communists.
Unlike Marxism and Communism a specific economic theory did not direct the NAZIs much as Trump's economic theories are often made up as he goes along.
God Forbid we should do any planning...or seek systemic change.
Dictatorship and autocracy more like it!
Read "The Vampire Economy"- 1939 to glimpse it.
Are people still pushing that old line? No, I don’t know it, and neither do you. You just think you do. Naziism was a murderous, totalitarian, movement. Fascism is the opposite of Socialism. If you want to see it in action, turn on the news and watch version 2.0 live from Jerusalem.
Sera they were not fascist but instead National Socialist- race based socialism. I do agree Israel is mutating into some form of it.
Race based Socialism? You mean, like vegan capitalism?
they weren't socialists but fascists
That is the main difference between the Old School Nazis and our 21st Century National Socialists. As they accumulate power they welcome a diversity of people into the movement: Jews and antisemites, Christians and atheists, white supremacists and black and brown people, misogynists and feminists, straight, gay and even trans people.
As long as they are committed to depriving "the left" of power they can play and as long as they submit to the authority of the straight, white, Christian men who are in charge.
This will probably change as the competing and contradictory elements that make up the movement now try and consolidate power and dominance. The MAGA coalition will probably continue as long as Trump remains the dominant figure. Then will come the purges.
Not anti - Christian .
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There is a war brewing in Europe, a civil war brewing in the U.S., which will prevent them from helping the Europeans, and the continuing messes in the middle east and Africa.
I don't see anything but misery in the near future for everyone. I'm starting to look for a safer place to live. Maybe I will look into moving back to Maine.
Maine has a lot of gun nuts, from what I understand.
This was not done by a nutter with a gun. This was a professional hit.
It's not the gun totters I'm worried about as I have guns. It's the idiots who don't know what to do with them that worries me. I lived in Maine half my life, and still have family there. My people go back four generations in Maine. Living there wasn't that bad, it was just the isolation and lack of decent housing that drove me out. Not that the housing issue is any better but I would feel a lot safer there if a civil war breaks out.
Why?? Nowhere will be safe. There won't be. Mason- Dixon line.
Nowhere will eve be completely safe but if you can find a place with few humans living around you, then your place will be easier to defend when they come. A basic rule of defense when setting up a defensive position in hostile countries. (Taken from the U.S. Army military doctrines. I'm a former combat soldier).
As a lot of us know, when hostilities break out, people become refugees and move out of the line of fire, it they're able. I have a plan to avoid that as much as possible. I know pretty much where the majority of non-combatant Americans would go if fighting breaks out between the red and blue states and I plan to go elsewhere to a place I know will be one of the last places refugees will go to within the U.S. There are quite a few, if you know where to look. If you've never had to live in a situation like that (which very few Americans have), prepare to have your life completely upended. Kind of like the people having to evacuate from a wildfire in the west, only with people shooting at you.
I'm contemplating Spain, Germany, Ireland, Canada.....or the Fiji Islands for that matter
I definitely would cross Europe off of your list. There's no housing in Ireland, their fighting the immigrants in the north, Spain is discouraging Americans from immigrating to Spain and Germany is gearing up to go to war with Russia. Canada is going through some growing pains as they decouple from the U.S. and their crime rate is creeping up. Fiji is okay for now, until the next typhoon roars across the islands again. I hear south America is okay, if you can learn the language, although I would stay away from Venezuela and Guyana right now with Trump making plans to bomb the crap out of Venezuela soon. As Americans under Trump rule, our escape options are getting narrower and narrower every month.
It's not as if I'm primed and ready-or able- to pick up and move, you see. I just figure there has to be someplace on this planet that is not as cluster-fucked-up as this nation is becoming. I have friends who speak of moving to Greece. But that place is not for me either. And South America? No way
And that is the rub. We're running out of decent places to run to now. Even in Maine, there are a lot of people living there that would take up arms against their neighbors if a civil war were to break out. The trick is in the knowing where to go. I know of places around the state that would be fairly quiet that few others outside of Maine would know about.
I have traveled all over the world and seen things few people should see. I've also been to countries that were lovely to visit years ago that have now changed for the worse and are no longer friendly to Americans.
Right now, with everything that's starting to happen, there are no real safe places anymore, unless you want to move to China, where the crime rate is very low, for a good reason. But, outside of the wealthiest, the standard of living is not what you see in the western tabloids. I know first hand as my wife escaped from north eastern China fifteen years ago.
I'm going to stick around the U.S. until things get to the point of absolute personal danger, for either myself as a non-Christian activist, or for my wife because she's an immigrant.
My fear is that there is a new war brewing in Europe. If certain countries in the EU bloc go belly up soon, they may start a war with Russia. With the U.S. in its death throes, as far as democracy is concerned, I'm just going to continue to watch and wait for now. I have already plotted an escape route, should I need it in the future. I will only use it if I strongly feel like our lives are in imminent danger.
If a new war breaks out between western Europe and the east, the U.S. may not assist with Trump in power. He may have more domestic issues to contend with.
I'm more concerned with the U.S. breaking down into a civil war, and the fallout of a global war centering in Europe and the middle east. I think escaping to a foreign safe haven will become moot as everything erupts in flames everywhere. Defend your castle until you can't, then run, if you still can.
Australia should be a good fit?
Not anymore. Their economy is falling apart. Their culture is becoming unraveled over immigration. Their crime rate is skyrocketing. There's no housing, unless your filthy rich. That coupled with the extreme weather, makes Australia a dangerous place to live, if they even let you in beyond a tourist visa. Americans are not well liked down under anymore.
Clearly there’s more in the water than fluoride. Humans are murdered every day all over the earth, not much discussion is going on about them.
When one human is made a ‘Star’ and is murdered, all hell is supposed to break out. Yes, Charlie Kirk’s demise is a tragedy, so are the others being murdered. They too had families.
Where is the outrage and concern?
Call on Pope Leo XIV to do whatever it takes to save Gaza and stop the bombing, and end the starvation. Let him go to Gaza and stand with the suffering people who are being massacred by Israel and the Western posers. He can go to Gaza right now, and insist aid be allowed in.
Is there anything more important in today's world than this?
https://chng.it/gkvBfY44rq
Please sign the petition and share widely.
Signed. As I’ve said elsewhere, the RC Church has been pretty disappointing so far.
That’s one of the biggest understatements possible. Across many centuries.
So true.
(Martyrs sacralize violence. They are used to turn the moral order upside down. Depravity becomes morality. Atrocities become heroism. Crime becomes justice. Hate becomes virtue. Greed and nepotism become civic virtues. Murder becomes good.)
In other words George Floyd.
Look at what we do know: deadly accurate sniper shooting from 180 metres away; hit to the carotid artery, guaranteed to make the victim bleed out straight away; sniper gets away clean; neither him nor the weapon found. This is not a politically motivated nutbag, but a paid professional. The fact that Trump and his cohorts immediately shouted, "The Left Did It" from the rooftops smacks of an Operation Gladio type killing with a Mossad twist. Why? Because Kirk was starting to fraternise with the wrong people: Tucker Carlson, and Candice Owens. He was also going very cool on denying the genocide. So much so that Amichai Chikli,
Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, State of Israel, wrote Kirk a Cease and Desist letter. One and One makes Two.
This murder does seem like a gift to the MAGA crowd, especially its timing. As one of those quoted by Chris admonished the base, now is the time for the right to come together. When some were beginning to criticize the administration’s stonewalling on the Epstein files and complain about the Trump economy, the timing really does seem fortuitous from a rightist perspective.
It's a gift to the Zionist lobby because Charlie was going to condem the Gaza operation at that debate.
Can you provide some evidence of that, and it's not because I don't believe you, just want to see it myself.
Charlie lived the attention he received for his often stupid and divisive commentary. He was of the view, any publicity is good publicity. He reaped what he sowed! There will be others too.
Why don't you take a look at what was recently published on the Grayzone.
Kate he was a young man, a husband a father and what ever his sins, no doubt, no worse then most in both political parties. No one deserves to be shot down in cold blood! No one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The question of who deserves what in life is not what I am concerned with. Neither am concerned with concepts of sin. I simply point out a fact. Charlie Kirk lived his life as someone who promoted gun culture, amongst other things I vehemently disagreed with. I will not turn him into a saint because he was shot and killed . Sadly there were others in the YSA who also lost their lives to gun violence. He could have chosen so many other paths to follow……..,
Ok Kathy, Aside from your insensitive comment. Did you forget the political backlash that is going to result?
Could almost make you wonder. I knew nothing of this person before he was shot. Now I think I have to read a few of his speeches.............or perhaps a few American reporters will do it for me...........and find in the texts who might have had it in for him.
The blame game is not only a lot of fun.......it can be dangerous if taken so far that people start to believe you mean exactly what you say.
1.) The intellectual framework as shown in Samuel P. Huntington's 1996 book //The Clash of Cultures.// Where everything but west Euro and colonist descendants are enemy. Indigenous peoples not mentioned at all--well, they're by definition not "civilized," whereas the vicious empire builders and H bomb manufacturers are.
2.) The political framework in the rightward push of neolib Dems which helped enable the Rs to move full on fascist. The Ds' abandonment of the majority working class left us little choice. Like in effect voting NO by not voting. Or because of disgust with tepid, ineffective Ds and sheer economic desperation, to try to get the Ds attention by voting R. Especially after the Ds of the Biden administration allied with the neocons; their lust for empire as backed up by endless war. To be fought by recruits of the economic draft.
3.) The religious framework an emphasis on a Calvinism pushed by right wing wealthy TV preachers where the saved are an elect successful in this life because chosen by God for the next. So the rich and powerful are to be admired and the marginalized poor ignored or even denigrated. These same preachers dismiss empathy by saying lib scolds citing "do unto others" or "love thine enemies" are a dangerous distraction. To listen to them is to collaborate with evil. After all, as the Shakespearean truism (ie it's not biblical) has it, even the devil can quote scripture.
There we have it. An unholy alliance of techie anarcho-capitalists, neo Robber Barons, and Christofascists. With a well funded mouthpiece spewing hateful lies now turned patron saint.
Sounds like a very good movie........by American standards..lol.
We may witness a slow rise to wholesale depravity and degradation. Trump already is using this as his platform to spew forth more hate-filled bile. Instead of showing true and moral leadership, he stoops to his own form of terrorism. Our world is a less-safe place because he wants intolerance and violence. Charlle Kirk's murder may be Trump's "shot heard 'round the world".
Great essay but a big shout out to Mr. Fish for his excellent cartoon work. Spot on.