A couple of local happenings

 

Here are a couple of local happenings that were not of interest to local news reporting, but were “news” to me, even if I was too tired to try to “fit” them into some “bigger picture” on our current sociopolitical reality.  Yesterday this guy here on the ledge by the downtown monorail tracks apparently was “excited” to ride the monorail for the first time, so much so that when the train arrived it was warned via walkie-talkie not to let him aboard. The man heard this and snatched the device away from someone and held court here, already for an hour by the time I passed by:

 

In this image we see there was some “interest” in his antics…

 

…but if he wanted the attention of TV news, he didn’t get it. The person right of center in the red jacket appeared and told him to stop acting like an “idiot.” She was approached by police, and she told them that she knew the man and that he was “educated,” but had just been released from “detox” and was not in “the right mind.” I didn’t hang around because I could see the man was careful to watch where his feet were and this wasn’t some suicide mission. But it could have been handled differently.

Here we see Kent police the previous Friday arresting some teenager with “suspiciously” brown skin:

 

Why were they arresting him? I’m not sure, except maybe they thought he was snooping around the garbage around the boarded-up "residence" on the other side there. When I passed by and saw the police with this kid in handcuffs sitting on a barrel I called out to the cops about how many city laws those white people who had been living there for years had broken and they had done nothing about it:

 

There were three junked vehicles there, one of them out of the frame on the right, in plain sight from the street. According to state law

One or more junk or inoperable vehicles, or parts thereof, which have been accumulated, dismantled, parked, placed, or stored on private property, except a vehicle or part thereof that is completely enclosed within a building in a lawful manner where it is not visible from the street or other public or private property when stored within a garage, constitute a public nuisance.

According to the Kent Police code enforcement page, it is illegal to have “Abandoned junk, and/or inoperable vehicles parked on private property.” Someone who works nearby told me that a fire had broken out inside the house, but when police and firefighters arrived, the residents were nowhere to be found; I mean, why would they hang around when Kent police might be finally forced to do code enforcement?

But then again, in Kent there are two different sets of laws: one for white people, and one for the “others.” Even the numerous white vagrants who have a habit of “finding” property that doesn’t belong to them (or stealing it from each other) are left alone. Kent used to be, like Bellevue, a place for people with right-wing beliefs to escape to from Seattle, which is why every election cycle you see campaign signs for Republican candidates and how to vote the right-wing way on initiatives. Not that everyone “listens,” because according to the Census, the city it is less than 38 percent white today.

Well, that’s it. Although the “standard” edition of Vinegar Syndrome’s Looking For Mr. Goodbar Blu-ray release will be available on Amazon at the end of January, the “deluxe” edition is (or was) available for pre-order and (eventual) delivery from Vinegar Syndrome’s website until Black Friday (it doesn’t appear on searches now). I’m going to review the Blu-ray next week. I have some “issues” with the transfer looking at it on my laptop screen, but maybe it will look “different” if I watch it on a large screen monitor.

Packers beat Seahawks to clinch first 10-win season in Jordan Love era

 

I haven’t talked about the Packers for a  awhile. Some things just seemed to be more important to talk about than football. But what has happened since the Bears game, which they were lucky to escape with a win? They whipped a Purdy-less 49ers team, scoring three touchdowns off turnovers in a 38-10 win, and then opened-up a 27-3 lead on the Dolphins on the way to a 30-17 win, with Tua throwing for a lot of ineffectual yardage, and then lost to the Lions on a last second field goal 34-31, in a game that the Lions—as the Packers appeared to be doing in many of their games—seemed to be trying to give the game away, and then gave-up trying when the opponent just wouldn’t take it.

In yesterday’s game against the Seahawks, a team I generally ignore even though it’s the “local” team, I didn’t worry too much about the outcome, because even though the Seahawks had a temporary division lead in the NFC West, it’s just not a very good division this year, with the 49ers following up their Super Bowl appearance with a very down year, and just because the Rams beat them on Thursday in a game neither team scored a touchdown doesn’t mean the Rams are back on a Super Bowl run.

One thing you can say about the Packers this year is that once they (or their opponent) get off to an early two-score lead, the game is over. Not that it means it’s all party time the rest of the day, but what drama there is usually is like the hare waking up in time to notice the tortoise is catching up. Against the Seahawks, the Packers blew-out to a 14-0 lead in the first quarter. Geno Smith, who has had a “career rejuvenation” since his time with the Jets, at least statistical-wise, if not wins and playoff appearances-wise, engineered a brief “comeback” opportunity, but messed it up by throwing an interception in the end zone that would have made it a one-score game late in the first half, and instead of an eventual 20-3 deficit into the break.

Josh Jacobs started out “hot,” scoring the first touchdown of the game, but ended-up averaging 3.6 YPG on 26 carries. You know, he was pretty hyped-up when the Packers brought him in, but he really has had only one “pro bowl” type year in the previous five. But that is nit-picking. Let’s talk about Sam Howell, who played quarterback for football powerhouse North Carolina in college and in his second NFL season last year started all 17 games for a 4-13 Commanders team that leads the NFC East this season with a 9-5 record.

I suppose the Seahawks hoped for a backup who was an  “experience option to back-up Pro-Bowl quarterback Geno Smith,” according to Seahawks.com. I’m not sure what voters were thinking when they selected Smith for the Pro Bowl in both 2022 and 2023, but it is par for the course that the Seahawks would trade for a quarterback who the other team was eager to get rid of, seeing how the Seahawks got two draft picks to offset the two picks they sent to the Commanders to get Howell.

Anyways, I’m not sure what the Seahawks were expecting to see, but after Smith went down with a knee injury, in came Howell, who on 18 passing plays (14 passes, 4 sacks) accumulated 3 net yards passing. Unfortunately for my inquisitive mind, that is nowhere near a “record.” I remember the 1970s when NFL offenses were mostly run-oriented, and under 50 percent pass completion percentages and more interceptions than touchdown passes was closer to the “norm.” While only three times in NFL history has a team thrown for negative “gross” yards passing, negative “net” yards passing—with sack yardage included—is not completely uncommon. 12 of the “top” 24 games as such occurred during the Seventies, including -52 net yards by the Bengals in 1971.

The Packers have two games on that list—and a third if you throw-in game number 25, a Lombardi team where Bart Starr had one of his worst games, completing just 4 of 19 for 42 yards, and sacked 5 times for negative 52 yards, for -10 net yards. The Packers still beat the Cowboys that day 13-3, with five takeaways to none by themselves.

Oh, yeah, the Packers won this game 30-13, and at least we can say that the Packers have at least one 10-win season in the Jordan Love era, even if he actually only won seven of them. The Packers should win at least two of their final three games, next week against the Saints at home and ditto against the Bears in the season finale. They have a playoff spot locked-up given that the other divisions are likely not to have more suitable prospects for wild card candidates.

Nancy Mace doesn't appreciate being "assaulted" by the truth about herself

 

Rep. Bob Good of Virginia, leader of the far-right Freedom Caucus (i.e. “free” to be a self-serving jerk), departed with a “farewell speech” since losing his seat after being beaten in the Republican primary as “punishment” for supporting Ron DeSantis over Trump. He tried to put the usual spin on why Republicans like himself always seem to do nothing when they control Congress (except pass tax cuts for the rich), even when there is a Republican in the White House: "Most of what we do here in Washington is bad, certainly unconstitutional, unjustified and often downright harmful."

He’s right, but not in the way we assume he implies. The utterly shameless subservient support (with a tiny few exceptions) of Republicans for a convicted felon who has committed in what in an earlier time would be regarded treasonous actions shows there is no abyss deep enough for which Republicans will allow themselves to fall into. The Republican Party has been taken over by cranks and crackpots without a sliver of human decency, and as this opinion piece in an Iowa newspaper last year tells us 1, Republicans don’t seem to have time for anything save wasting taxpayer money in barroom brawls amongst themselves and “investigations” that result in nothing consequential, merely publicity stunts to get themselves on Fox News or “impress” Trump—the more loony, the “better.”

Of course, Democrats have (or had, after they “retire” after the current term) their own loons, like Manchin and Sinema, the latter who missed three weeks of votes and then made a “dramatic” entry just to vote against a Democrat as head of the NLRB, just before the missing Manchin “rushed in” to do the same. Both have their “priorities”: Manchin is beholden to his state’s coal industry, to which of course mine workers’ safety is not exactly a priority, and Sinema will have her lucrative corporate lobbying career as a reward for her beholdenness to business interests.

But that is all relative. Republicans in the House especially give one pause about the mental health of the country, or at least people in “red” states.  Take for example one individual who may be crazier than all the rest, but has received only sporadic attention which she craves: Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, who defends her despicable behavior and pronouncements behind the hypocritical shield of female “victimization.” Every criticism of her is immediately proclaimed as such. Mace isn’t the only white female Republican who uses her gender as a defense against charges of racism and bigotry, but Mace is in a whole new “category.”

“I work on a lot of civil rights issues” she once declared. “I was the ranking member of the civil rights subcommittee last session on oversight. Due process is a really important issue.” What this fanatical anti-DEI and CRT opponent doesn’t mention is that she means the “civil rights” and "due process" of white people, and more specifically for self-obsessed white women like herself.  The National Review pointed out that Mace has also failed to mention that the subcommittee no longer exists: “She helped lead the charge to disband it,” TNR notes.

Mace furthered her hypocrisy by claiming that “I take great pride as a white female Republican to address the inadequacies in our country,” she said. But as TNR pointed out, she limits this concern to her own particular demographic, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out

that Mace’s position appeared more valuable to her as a title to be wielded over Democrats than an actual leadership role in safeguarding the rights of minorities across the country. After all, the subcommittee did not just cease to exist. Mace, along with Kentucky Representative and abortive Biden impeachment architect James Comer, had overseen its elimination in early 2023.

Of course, Mace has made it her whole reason for being these days to oppose the civil rights of trans-gender people (I have my own doubts about this, but as long as they leave me alone…). The other day Mace claimed she was “assaulted” by a trans-rights supporter after a meeting of foster care advocates in an office building near Capitol Hill. The alleged perpetrator was arrested by Capitol police. Mace claimed that this was an example of an “unsafe environment” for women. End of story, right?

Wrong. I mean, this is Nancy Mace we are talking about here, who if she can’t walk into a PR stunt to get herself on Fox News, she’ll invent one, as she apparently has done here after the alleged “assault,” shown wearing an arm sling for “effect”:

 

Mace exposed what she actually feels she was “assaulted” by with this post: “One new brace for my wrist and some ice for my arm and it’ll heal just fine. The Capitol police arrested the guy. Your tr*ns violence and threats on my life will only make me double down. FAFO. #HoldTheLine,”

Yes, this is the same Nancy Mace who decided to go after Rep. Sarah McBride, who is the only openly “trans” individual in Congress. I suppose if McBride cut her hair she would look, well, “mannish,” but to each their own. Both Mace and Marjorie Taylor Green have gone on record as saying that they consider it “assault” if McBride is allowed into female facilities, so we know that the word “assault” is more psychological than physical; yet when they use the word assault, they want you to assume it is a “physical” attack.

Mace claims she was raped when she was 16, but never told the police or anyone else until 25 years later, and likely a made-up story when "memories" of "details" are dim, but just saying so is enough to bolster her victim “cred.” She also claimed she was “abused” by her former fiancé; the only examples of this “abuse” she has mentioned was when she caught him using a dating app on his phone, and when she felt “pushed” for sex, bragging to a Christian forum before which she spoke that she denied him said sex, using the excuse that she was preparing for a speaking engagement at another Christian-themed meeting. Yes, she gave-up sex for you.

Mace, who as late as 2021 claimed to be a supporter of LGBTQ rights, reversed course after the election of McBride, and Mace’s crusade on the rights of one individual of course displays her essential small-minded, hypocritical and narcissistic nature. Last week, trans supporters staged a sit-in at the Capitol to protest Mike Johnson’s acquiescence to Mace’s desires, which of course Mace called an “assault” on her personally. Like the “Scarlet A” t-shirt she wore after shocking her own staffers by voting for the removal of Kevin McCarthy from the House speakership, Mace needed a “prop,” so she found a bullhorn to harangue the protestors to gain more attention to herself.  

Not surprisingly, there are those calling “bullshit” on Mace’s version of events, We are told following the event, an award-winning advocate for foster children named James McIntyre approached her, extended his hands to her, and she voluntarily reached out hers to him and they shook hands. Nothing wrong there, except that he made a comment that Mace took as a personal “assault,” telling her that there were many trans-gender youth in foster care, and that they needed her “support” too.

This is what witnesses have stated they also saw and heard. Mace’s own staffers—and she has had a revolving door of them—may have been skeptical of her story, so a couple of them searched the office building, found McIntyre, asked him his version of events, and decided to contact Capitol police anyways to stay on Mace’s “good side.” Capitol police arrested McIntyre, probably because they knew if they didn’t they wouldn’t hear the end of it from Mace or Fox News. McIntyre was released the next day and told not to go near Mace again, more for his own good than hers, no doubt.

The Huffington Post reports that the attention-seeking Mace does not like all the attention she has drummed-up in this case. This from a person who former staffers say that among the many things in a toxic work environment they were forced to do was for each to come-up with several ideas to get her “publicity,” preferably in front of a camera or on a news show. When questions arose of her characterization of the encounter, she accused those disputing her story (meaning witnesses who actually saw the encounter) of the hypocritical claim of “victim-shaming.”

After she “displayed” herself wearing that arm sling, immediate ridicule on social media followed, and a former staffer named Natalie Johnson opined that it was yet another of Mace’s “pathetic ploys” for attention. “This is the same woman who told staff, myself included, during Jan. 6 that she wanted to get ‘punched in the face’ by a rioter so she could get on TV.”

But let’s be honest: Nancy Mace has plenty of company in the House of Representatives, and she isn’t the worst of them; in fact because her hypocrisy is so brazen, she merely appears to be pathetic compared to MTG and Lauren Boebert. Unlike her colleagues who don’t pretend to be supporters of, say, abortion rights, Mace has been time and again confronted with her support of a rapist like Trump and supporting bills with anti-abortion clauses, and she responds to suggestions of hypocrisy by claiming that they are merely attempts to “shame” her. TNR points that on

This Week. When host George Stephanopolous asked Mace how she can “square” her support for Trump with his being found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll and then defaming her, Mace immediately began repeatedly accusing Stephanopoulos of trying to “shame” her for being sexually assaulted. When Stephanopolous reiterated that a jury had found Trump liable for rape, a decision upheld by the presiding judge and then reinforced by a second jury, Mace snapped, “It was not a criminal court, number one. Number two, I live with shame, and you’re asking me a question about my political choices, trying to shame me as a rape victim, and I find it disgusting,”

I think what is “disgusting” is Mace inventing made-up “shame” from made-up stories to “shame” people from attacking her constant lies and hypocrisies. But then again, in this age of nihilism that Trump released from the Pandora’s Box, that is just a “taste” of the shameless anti-democratic power-grabbing that is to come--save on a much, much larger scale. 

Already House Republicans deliberately delayed for months passing a bill  to increase judgeships in the hope that Trump would be elected and it would be too late for Biden to fill the posts, and in North Carolina, after losing its super majority in the next term, the Republican legislature over-road a veto to strip power from the Democratic governor and attorney general, as well reducing the time to count votes. And Trump isn't even back in office yet.

Well, you "asked" for it

 Updated Dec. 11

  

Well, first the goods news, at least for videophiles who had given-up all hope, due to alleged "music rights" issues: the first Tuesday of December will see Vinegar Syndrome's 4k UHD and Blu-ray release of Looking For Mr. Goodbar (which I looked at here 1), following last week's release of the "lost in rights" hell WWII horror cult film The Keep.  I am told, however, that VS won't ship these "exclusive" titles sold only on their own website until the end of the month. With that out of the way, the (really) bad news...

As a consequence of... 

 

...we are "discovering" that Donald Trump wasn't "kidding" when he said he was going to "drain the swamp"; he just didn't mention that the pool of extremist political sewage was going to settle in his White House. Trump's recent "Meet the Press" interview showed his confidence in his ability to overplay his hand, displaying his contempt for democracy by indicating he will pardon those who attempted to overthrow it in his name, and threats to "lock-up" those who attempted to expose his role in it, like Liz Cheney. I guess those "radical left lunatic" insurrectionists never showed-up to "lock-up." This is what has been unleashed on the country, this so-called beacon of democracy for the past 250 years.

Trump, of course, never told us before the election that the real threat to the country was not migrants, but his destructive agenda run by incompetent, irresponsibly radical picks for administrative and cabinet offices, all who he  claims are "great" people--which in Trump lingo means those who please his ego the most, engage in full frontal flattery, mindless sycophancy and those who have their own wild ideas they now have the authority (they think) to test out on the public. 

We can see that Trump is going to play Hitler, allowing his appointed fanatical minions to "heed" his "promises" based on lies and moral and ethical corruption, and run with them like there is no tomorrow, literally.

People like Kash Patel, Mr. January 6 conspiracy crackpot himself, who has no law enforcement experience, and who has been tapped as Trump's personal thug for FBI Director. Like other Trump picks, he has no other interest but to tear down the agency he will "lead" for no other reason than petty personal vindictiveness and to convert its principle function from investigating white collar crime, Russian election interference, treasonous insurrections, constitutional and civil rights violations, and into an apparatus to exterminate Trump's enemies and offensive-looking, brown-skinned "vermin." 

Patel may appear "human," but who knows: most of Trump's administration picks are inhuman enough to pass for "aliens" in human form, preparing to take over the country as in John Carpenter's take on Reaganism in They Live:

 

We do  know what "obey" means in Trump World. It means that after Trump decided the best course to evade the consequences for his crimes was to be elected president again, he solicited the servility of his goons sitting on courtroom benches and in the U.S. Supreme Court to issue delaying tactics and then decisions of outright criminal negligence. Trump is unlikely even to face punishment in the hush money case thanks to those who "obey." 

Worse, of course, is that voters decided to ignore his crimes and "obey." They can make up all the "rationalizations" they want, but the truth is they believed his lies because they lie to themselves, because fear and hate cloud reasoned thought, like not listening to those who warn that Trump's proposals might actually make things worse, by a lot. Those still "human" and know the truth must be "eradicated," or they will become political insurgents, keeping up the fight for freedom from the hills.

As  the song goes, "Nothing from nothing leaves nothing." Trump and Stephen Miller wailed lies about crime and rape by migrants, yet here we see the country electing a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who cheated on his pregnant wife with a porn star? What does it mean to be "human," anyways? I don't know what that means anymore. In a nihilistic society, morality and ethics are completely meaningless.

By the way, if there is a "God," he must be gazing upon all of this, in utter disbelief that so-called "believers" are taking his name in vain by electing as their  "leader" someone who has violated at least 8 of the 10 commandments (maybe we can even throw murder in there, given that four people died during the January 6 insurrection that Trump instigated) and has absolutely no contrition about it.

Anyways, few of Trump's administrative nominees have “experience” in the positions they have been offered, but most appear to have the serious liability of not just twisting facts to suit Trump’s ignorances, but in many cases in fact share his ignorances just to be "contrary" when they have been fact-checked too often, which makes them "mad" in more ways than one.

Some people think this means “shaking things up,” but it is more like one of those old etch-a-sketch toys where you “shake it up” and wreck everything, and then make things up as you go—unless, of course, the Heritage Foundation with its Project 2025 is running the show behind the scenes, and the Federalist Society continues to hand-pick Trump’s judges with their anti-government, anti-civil rights agenda. 

On his own, Trump's pick for director of counter-terrorism, Sebastian Gorka, is universally reviled outside the far-right Twilight Zone, which appears to demonstrate that Trump has not only not learned from past mistakes, but is doubling down on them, as befits a power-mad dictator.

It is already clear that Trump’s picks do not represent anything but Trump’s own personal interests—his “business” interests, his narcissistic view of himself and putting into action his petty personal grievances. Trump is 78 years old; it's all about what he can do for himself and his billionaire friends now. Thus he plans to cancel orders for electrified vehicles for use by USPS 5. Oh, how nice: Trump claims to support the U.S. automotive industry, yet he undermines new high-tech production by Ford to replace old, low-tech vehicles for the sake of drill-baby-drill.

We are told that Trump His Interior Secretary pick, Doug Burgum, has one-only-one thing he needs to do: that drill-baby-drill and to hell with its environmental impacts on federal lands; the information on this energy website 4 suggests that Trump's plans are a lot of "hot gas," since the U.S. already has more operating rigs than it needs, some which occasionally must be shut down because of over-production.

Meanwhile, his new chief-of-staff pick, Susie Wiles, is referred to as the “Ice Maiden,” although to me she just looks more like your typical bleach-blonde whatever (like Marjorie Taylor Greene), and she is apparently exactly what he wants, rather than what he needs. During his first term, successive chiefs-of-staff tried and mostly failed to “police” traffic from people with crackpot ideas and conspiracy theories that were easy sells to Trump’s paranoid delusions to curry his favor. 

Wiles is not the person to succeed in this, in fact with her background as a business lobbyist, the Oval Office is likely to become a free-for-all for Wiles’ business connections seeking "relief" from Trump's tariff plans, and crackpots with something to “sell." That’s probably all Trump wants her to do—and there’s something “in it” for her too.

Of course, you have a puppy-killer who is slated to run the Department of Homeland Security, but at least Kristi Noem isn’t in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, given her “handling”—or lack thereof—of the COVID pandemic in South Dakota, including the infamous Sturgis Motorcycle Rally which was blamed for 260,000 cases of COVID in the country. Noem is the type who doesn’t think in human terms, which is more suitable for the job she is now being brought in to do, although she will probably be taking direction from Trump’s “deputy chief of policy,” the neo-Nazi Miller, who wears his racist, fascist beliefs like a tailored suit. 

HHS is instead going to be headed by RFK Jr., whose “good” ideas about healthy eating are at least as old as the first “food pyramid” created in the 1970s, but some of his other ideas, particularly his anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, are at least “new” as of 2020. He also opposes fluoridation of water, which one may remember from the Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove, the crazed colonel believed that it was a “communist conspiracy” to “sap and impurify” Americans’ “precious bodily fluids.”

Trump's new pick for the head of the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, is also a "controversial" COVID-denier. A Republican House panel just released a new pandemic report in which it praises Trump's response, forgetting his initial denial that anything worth worrying about was happening. The report hypocritically praises Trump's "Operation Warp Speed," and yet criticizes the efficacy of the vaccines it produced. Scientists now warn of a potential bird flu pandemic; I can see it now: Trump and Bhattacharya together in a news conference, declaring 10,000 deaths a day a "victory" for "patriotism" and "freedom." Maybe some people forget that twice the COVID death toll passed 5,000 in a day. 

Then you have Matt Gaetz, who was slated to be Attorney General before he stepped aside when it became clear that senators would demand to see the House Ethics Committee report on his adventures with teen sex partners. Gaetz probably wouldn’t have been subject to such an investigation (see Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh) had he not burned a lot of bridges, but we can suspect that Trump thought that Gaetz would be sufficiently motivated to join him in weaponizing the Justice Department as a tool to wreak “vengeance” on his “enemies.”

Update: Trump's new pick for AG is a "real American," meaning a blonde white woman named Pam Bondi, described by CNN as an "America First" fanatic whose "fealty to Trump make her a key enforcer on his proposed policies around immigration, reproductive health and political retribution."

Some of Trump’s nominees are truly baffling—or not. Given Trump’s admittance of “friendship” with Vladimir Putin, why should we be surprised that his pick for Director of National Intelligence—Tulsi Gabbard—is referred to by the Russian media as “Russia’s girlfriend” for echoing its disinformation campaign justifying its war against Ukraine? Certainly it is difficult to believe how she can be trusted to interpret or disseminate classified information.

And who is this guy slated for Secretary of Defense? A weekend Fox News commentator who few people outside the Fox News bubble have even heard of, Pete Hegseth, and who is subject of his own allegations of  sexual misconduct which for Democrats would be immediately disqualifying, but for Republicans it’s always “fake news” to embarrass them. 

Marco Rubio, who voted against the last Ukraine aid bill, is Trump's pick for Secretary of State. You think that is not a reason that Trump thought he was most "suitable" for the job? Putin knows Trump is going to shit in his pants when he makes threats about how the U.S. will suffer "tremors and horrors" if he doesn't bend to his knees before him, and with Rubio, Trump is willing to "barter" Ukraine's independence in exchange for certain "favors." Trump of course calls for a "ceasefire," but without additional aid to Ukraine, that only means allowing Russia time to rebuild its  weapons stockpiles and then break the ceasefire when it sees it  has the advantage.

Meanwhile, the real Mike Johnson, untethered from being forced to look "moderate" with a Democratic president and Senate, now feels unconstrained in far-right extremism and his hypocritical "morals," not just in cutting 75 percent of federal agencies and suggesting that lonely PBS isn't quiet enough before the screeching of far-right corporate-controlled radio and its fascist talk minions, but suggesting that Trump, that "defender" of democracy, is the final arbiter on the fate of Ukraine. And this after the failure of Trump's foreign policy was made abundantly clear when Kim Jong-Un let it be known that he is no longer in "love" with Trump, and Putin probably never did, laughing at this buffoon to his Kremlin cronies.

Let's be clear: Trump has nothing to "bargain" with save continued support for Ukraine. The evidence that Trump is personally compromised was "suggested" on Russia's version of "60 Minutes," which broadcast old nude images of Melania, a "subtle" hint to Trump that the "rumored" pictorial evidence of his own escapades was not only real, but Putin is willing to reveal it to the world if he doesn't "behave" as he wishes. Note that Putin isn't making similar threats to European leaders; he knows  his "friend" Trump is easy to manipulate, and maybe he can even blackmail him for some of those classified documents after all.

Meanwhile, Musk and his friend Vivek Ramaswamy are being given a "make-work" job in "government efficiency" to stop him from being an annoyance. There is obviously conflict of interest involved, as Musk has already announced that he hopes to  cut jobs in NASA and environmental and energy agencies that interfere with him doing whatever the hell he wants to do his business ventures, which of course includes ignoring labor rights. 

However, as his Wall Street Journal op-ed implies, his knowledge of the law is as dim as his efforts to evade it; the U.S. Supreme Court rulings that he uses to justify taking a meat cleaver to regulations and regulators do not, in fact, give him that power, and in fact his and  Ramaswamy's plans violate the Constitution, according to Bloomberg 7

"Working people" who voted for Trump will learn the hard way that he was just using them. Louis DeJoy was his pick to run the Post Office. Why he was allowed to remain in the position, who knows. We do know he hoped to use USPS to provide "business" for his own trucking business. But if his idea of "improving service" is like this...

 

...then what else does Trump have in store for us? After all, his "expertise" was in real estate and tax cheating, not in any of his "business" ventures which all failed and/or ended in bankruptcy, with the people dumb enough to invest in them the ones who lost his money. For Trump, just his "brand" was "enough" of a personal "investment."

But do you expect any "thinking" from a Trump administration? It's all vindictiveness and small-mindedness. Trump says he is going to impose a 25 percent tariff on Mexican imports. How stupid is that? NAFTA, or whatever Trump calls it now, imposed protections on U.S. produce that bankrupted Mexican small farmers, sending them to look elsewhere for work. I wonder where. And now Trump hopes to throw even more out of work with this new tariff proposal. Yeah, go ahead and try to stop them from coming across the border looking for work.

But it just doesn’t matter, does it? As we are told in this New York Times op-ed 6  Trump is who "we" are, at least more than half of us are, with a little bit of that "Nazi" inside people pretend isn't there. If we were involved in the killing of American citizens who were causing "trouble" for our “interests” in Latin America, who cares? This Times article 1 discusses the U.S. connivance in the murder of two American citizens in Chile following the 1973 coup, which was the subject of the Costa-Gavras film Missing. 

One of the American military advisors there at the time who was believed to have provided information to the Pinochet regime to facilitate the arrest of the two men seemed to “justify” it when “He called Mr. Teruggi and Mr. Horman part of the problem' in Chile. ‘They were down there handing out pamphlets against the government,' he said.” So much for "free speech."

In the film, the American ambassador to Chile and the father of missing American Charles Horman have the following discussion about the case:

What is your role here besides endorsing a regime that murders thousands of human beings?

Let's level with each other. If you hadn't been involved in this unfortunate incident you'd be sitting at home complacent and more or less oblivious to all of this. 

.

Where are the political movies today? If anything, the lack of them indicates the level of corporate control over thought, a symptom of the fact that today many if not most people have different ideas of what corruption is, as the election of the most corrupt individual ever to run for president proves. Even “family-friendly” Disney and other “liberal” companies have ended their advertising boycott of X to the thankfulness of Elon Musk, a “victory” for xenophobia, racism and white nationalism as well as the usual lies, misinformation and conspiracies. 

Sure, they’ll let feminist directors portray themselves in "political" films as “victims” of society, but as we have learned too painfully, and the New York Times commentator Maureen Dowd clearly has not, that Trump would not have been elected either in 2016 or 2024 if the majority of white women had not in fact voted for him, and feminist views and films are apparently merely the purview of a fringe demographic and film critics. 

As for the "feminist" movement itself, it can "congratulate" itself for passing laws in "blue" states that mainly help them destroy individual lives, but in the end it has no influence on white women who are also racists, xenophobes and white nationalists, which apparently out-number them by a considerable margin. But let's be honest: I think much of feminist rhetoric contributes to racist stereotypes in this country.

Of course being “oblivious” is easy when you just believe anything you are told because it aligns with an alternate world view that dispenses with facts and morality. Ed Coper in The Guardian noted that

The first candidate to grasp how to use “new media” in a presidential campaign effectively and who – rather than getting to work in Washington after the election, as expected, immediately took off on vacation to play golf.

Despite all this, the candidate’s popularity among his “stonehead” supporters grew and grew – “an audience of small town yokels, of low political serfs, or morons scarcely able to understand a word of more than two syllables, and wholly unable to pursue a logical idea for more than two centimeters.”

That was a quote from H.L. Mencken about the supporters of Warren G. Harding, elected president in 1920 with no political experience, but enjoyed some popularity until he passed away prematurely half-way through his presidency. He is now looked-upon as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history, when after his death the rampant corruption in his administration was revealed, and ranks with that of the Grant and Nixon administrations as the most corrupt ever (of course some people think that the Reagan administration should join that “select group” as well).

The self-deception goes on. Politico claims that Democrats have “forgotten” about the working class. Yeah, that’s why Democrats promote workers rights, health care and jobs-creating infrastructure. What does Trump offer the working class? Opposition to unions? Wreck the ACA? Promote tax policies that will wreck Social Security? Tariffs that will make inflation look like a black market? 

Today, Amazon is suing the National Labor Relations Board for taking it to court for refusing to negotiate with the newly-elected union at a New York City facility, claiming that NLRB is itself “illegal” and “unconstitutional.” Elon Musk’s SpaceX has joined the suit, after it was accused of firing employees because they wrote a letter critical of Musk, suggesting that employees were being “surveilled” for their political beliefs.

Democrats didn’t “forget” about the working class; they just assumed working people knew who was working for their interests. What was life like before the NLRB? Probably not a whole lot different than the 1963 Italian film The Organizer, when some would-be unionists marched to the home of some Sicilian transplant to demand that he abide by the voted-for strike at the company that forces them to work 14-hour days for a pittance, and discover he has a rather large family to support, living in a shack:

 

They give him “permission” to return to work (alone), and all he gets for his “loyalty” to the company is a slap in the face…

 

…and getting himself arrested for the crime of just showing up:

 

What a world we live in; even so-called “bipartisanship” is a fraud. Take for example the effort to repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO), which when passed in 1983 was meant to curtail the "flaw" in the 1935 Social Security Act—back in the days of patronage when government employees enjoyed retirement benefits while if most working people wanted to “retire” instead of slaving until they were dead, lived with one of their working children (like in The Waltons)—which allowed state and local government workers (or their spouses if they died in the case of the GPO) to collect full SS benefits while also collecting a government pension without paying into the SS fund.

There are those who declare this is “unfair,” but in relation to what? To low-income retirees barely surviving if not on the streets? To most farm workers who pay into SS but will never be eligible to collect it, which a 2023 New York Times article referred to as “Retirement without a net: The plight of America’s aging farmworkers”?

Critics of Congress’ rash act note that people effected by the WEP and GPO already on average have higher retirement incomes that than those who do not have government-paid pensions, some of which is paid for by individual taxpayers who already pay into their own SS, and will add nearly $200 billion in additional debt over the next 10 years, since none of it will be paid for by forcing government workers (including police and fire departments) to pay into the SS fund like taxpayers pay into their SS “pension” fund. 

This will also mean Social Security will draw closer to insolvency—especially if Trump follows through on his own tax plans—while the beneficiaries of the repeal effort will still have their government pensions to live off of if SS goes under.

Of course things could get much "worse," in a fashion, like not being able to conceal the things you do that you prefer other people not to see. It could be the merely “personal,” like when just for kicks I checked out the “public” restroom at the Seattle Convention Center, which they “remodeled” some years ago, to see if it was still as I recalled the one time I actually felt compelled to use it. Yes, the men’s room was still the same…

 

…where the people who decided these stalls were “appropriate” really put the “public” in public. On the other hand, the people who decided what the women’s public restroom should “reveal” probably realized that females like to keep the performance of their natural functions kept a little more “private”:

 

Personally, I call it discrimination against and the “shaming” of vagrant males from spending too much time hiding in the stalls, as we can see in the previous image (although there might be other reasons people don’t want to be seen, of course).   

But we live in a country where there is no shame to be found, and certain people are completely unselfconscious about revealing their faults and even boasting about them. In Trump World, there is no shame in lying, cheating, lacking in moral or ethical scruples, no guilt, no self-awareness, a lack of humility or respect for others, no awareness that even words used wrongly have consequences, that actions not thought out can cause great damage.

In North Carolina, as reported by the Charlotte Observer, Republicans who have lost their super-majority are going all-out in their lame-duck session to make a “shameless” power grab to remove any authority from the Democratic governor, the attorney general and the elections board 2 .   

By the way, all those "hits" I'm getting from Brazil, it is interesting to note that Trump-wannabe former president Jair Bolsonaro and 36 others are currently under federal indictment for attempting a "coup" after he lost the 2022 election, when he refused to leave the presidential palace, which we are told that Trump wished he had also done in 2020.

And of course Republicans are insuring that people will repeat history by being ignorant of it. Gestapo-style “surveillance” is what is happening today at Texas universities following the anti-DEI SB 17 law, which essentially tells affected teachers and  students that they have no right to speak to their own concerns in a state run by fascists like Abbott, Paxton and Patrick. 

The anti-DEI movement is relatively new, insofar it didn’t pick-up steam until the writings of a “researcher” for the Seattle-based “Discovery Institute” named Christopher Rufo gained some traction first with Tucker Carlson at Fox News, and then to Trump’s executive order bans on “racial sensitivity training”; the fact that we still live in a "majority rules" country means he didn't dare ban the gender variety.

The Institute claims to be “non-partisan” but in fact is a far-right, anti-science purveyor of what it calls “intelligent design,” meaning as we can see from the headlines for its “racial justice” articles on its website, that some “higher intelligence” in the universe meant to create some species of human lower (or higher) than others, so fighting racism is "racist" against the "superior" being:

 

According to a report in Austin television station KXAN, UT-Austin is “flagging” words allegedly “related” to DEI that can be accessed by white people for whom such words can be “interpreted” to be easily “offensive” to them or lead to discussions that might be “offensive” to them 1.  Musk and his friends can post anything on X that is offensive to anyone who isn’t white or Asian, but anything outside a class room or a school library isn’t regarded as “educational,” is it? But then again, for some people social media bullshit is their sole source of information.

In Texas, “ground zero” for the white nationalist far-right to impose its own version of “woke” on the country, CNN reports that

Officials in Texas have backed a controversial new public school curriculum that would incorporate Christian lessons from the Bible as early as kindergarten. Eight out of 15 state school board members voted Tuesday to keep the Bluebonnet Learning curriculum on a list of K-5 reading and English language arts materials that could be used for the 2025-26 school year. Adopting the optional, Texas Education Agency-developed open education resource can earn schools $40 per student annually.

That’s right, impose your “Christian” hypocrisy that is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state in public schools by bribing them with a $40-per-student increase in education spending for your district. The Bible was once used to “justify” slavery, but now for a fee you can be taught that the “golden rule” is so you can claim that treating the “others” like there are “nothing” is "OK" because whatever the "others" think about you is “nothing.” 

At the University of North Texas, any course that contains “race,” “gender” or “class” in the title are being banned. Some teachers in Texas think this is going too far; according to Brian Evans, president of the Texas conference of the American Association of University Professors:

"Regardless of their intent, the UNT administration conducted a campaign of censorship of content in more than 200 courses. It's censoring what topics students can discuss and think critically about. In order for students to have the freedom to learn, faculty need to have the freedom to teach."

Why don't they just come out and say that "christian" morality stops at grade 12, and after that you are on your own? As they say, those who forget the past are bound to repeat it, and we see that today. And it is getting worse with Trump ready to impose white nationalism/fascism on the country, with an army of sycophants in his administration raring to go with all guns blazing to impose their version of “wokeness” on America. You think this attempt to brainwash America into accepting authoritarianism based on "patriotism" and "religion" is any different than in China, Iran or even North Korea?

The Oklahoma education superintendent, Ryan Walters, for example is showing the way, creating a “Department of Religious Freedom and Patriotism,” announced in a video which is “required” viewing by all students and their parents, in which Walters issues a directive that we learn he spent $3 million in public funds to purchase bibles for the purpose of using them for required courses in grades 5-12. He also adds a “prayer” for Trump who will bring “change” to the country.

Walters is being sued on several fronts, including the misuse of public funds for this project, but he claims he won’t be deterred in fight against “wokism.” Of course he is engaging in his own version of “woke” by inventing a past where “religion” and “patriotism” were synonymous. Of course Walters didn’t invent this all by himself; we are learning that he is being used as a tool by the Heritage Foundation.

Of course it is denied that the Foundation is “in charge,” but records obtained from a public records request show that Walters and the Foundation have been working hand-in-glove to change what they call a “de-politicization” of schools, when in fact politicizing schools to satisfy a white nationalist agenda is exactly what they have planned.

Not of course, that Oklahoma schools have not been entirely forthcoming about the history of the state before; students were “shocked” to learn about the Tulsa race riots documented in the film Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre and the murder of Osage Indians by whites for their oil “headrights” documented in the Martin Scorcese film Killers of the Flower Moon.

Meanwhile, there has been talk of eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. Trump’s new pick for head of the agency is typically head-scratching—Linda McMahon who with her husband was in charge of  World Wrestling Entertainment, which, you know, is mostly “fake.” McMahon won’t likely be able to “oversee” the elimination of her own department, but she can make sure it does as little as possible to control people like Walter; she also is expected to continue Betsy DeVoss’ crusade for “school choice,” which is little more than a cover for continuing re-segregation of schools.

But that is just a sideline to what Trump has in store for the country. When there is talk about immigration, you wonder what filth is in the heads of people they don’t want you know? Well, you know what's in your head. Maybe about the “great replacement” conspiracy theory or American Nazi Stephen Miller’s “America for Americans” shibboleth that ignores the fact that Spain once claimed two-thirds of the continental U.S.:

 

It's a changing world, alright. In Seattle, the so-called "International District" is mostly occupied by Southeast Asians, and residents complain about crime and homeless people. But damn, it must have been a long time since I've taken a stroll into South Lake Union, since it now has the look of a "foreign" country since Google and Amazon moved offices there. Taking a turn from Harrison St., I hung out at the Amazon office complexes here on either side of Boren Ave. N...

 

...and whites definitely qualify along with blacks and Hispanics as an underrepresented "minority." The only black person I saw was the woman sitting on the right, wearing a uniform and apparently a lowly day porter. Amazon admits it must try harder at "diversifying" its office employees, but as I pointed out elsewhere, especially Indian managers do not want to work with non-Indians and inflate requests for work visas to avoid hiring "demanding" and "lazy" white people or "others" they regard as "inferior."  That latter also includes inter-caste discrimination, as talked about here 5 that is practiced even in this country.

But nobody wants to talk about that; they prefer to go on Quora and be completely shameless about telling you what they think about the “Mexicans”:

A lot of Mexican males have staring problems and they're creepy. I've been followed at stores by Mexican males and stared down with such angry hateful stares for no reason. They are very creepy and ugly to look at.

Some people just "see" what they want to see, like all these people who ask me if I have anything to "sell." The above commentary was a woman who identified herself as Chinese and doesn’t like the term “Chino,” which she apparently does not know is Spanish for “Chinese.” I suppose it is true that East Asians are more racist than white people.

We are told that Hispanics who voted for Trump blamed migrants for making them look "bad." That is simply foolish thinking, and they need to look in the mirror and see what others "see," like this racist individual:

The older generations of mexicans (sic) are hardworking and have respect for our land. But sadly, this younger generation is disrespectful and lazy. The main problem is that the new generation of immigrants and illegal Mexicans don't respect our land. Most of them are littering the highways, trashing our border States, having children they can't afford and staying on welfare. They park cars in their front yard like they are in Mexico and depreciate our neighborhoods.

I don't know when parents of the older generation stopped teaching their kids respect for the country they immigrated to, but this was never a problem 50 years ago.

Well, first off racist white people were saying these same things about "Mexicans" 50 years ago, and anyways, none of what this guy said is true in the generality. So how is the current “older generation” being referred to as? According to Miller in his despicable MSG “speech,” not hard-working people looking for something close to “heaven,” but for whom this country is just another hellscape where their “contribution” to it is that they are just “gangs” that cross the border to “rape and murder with impunity” and that we are  supposed to think about how “evil a system is that allows gangs to come into this country to rape and murder little girls.” 

Of course we are supposed to think he is referring to little white girls, and not girls like Hania Aguilar:

 

 

Six years since her kidnapping, rape and murder by a non-Hispanic native-born American citizen, there is still no justice for her. Update: A day after I posted this, it is now being reported that Michael McLellan (who targeted local Hispanic communities in the belief they had "money and drugs") has pleaded guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, avoiding a potential death sentence. 

We are told that McLellan, who a DNA match showed that he was the perpetrator in a previous rape of another Hispanic female in 2016 but that evidence had been "misplaced" and he was never prosecuted for despite being a known "career criminal," had apparently used homemade "keys" from prison material in attempted escapes from police custody both on the way to the courthouse, and then while returning to prison after his sentencing.

Hispanic males are also victims; a Nicaraguan asylum seeker who spoke no English was lured into a Las Vegas hotel room by two women, shot and killed, with the two women--probably prostitutes--shown on video running off minutes after entering the room with his wallet, as reported here 9. The two were allowed to plead guilty to only second-degree murder rather than first-degree, which implies intent and premeditation, and were sentenced to just 10 years in prison. At least he wasn't a 103-pound man zipped up in a suitcase in an alleged "game" of "hide-and-seek," beaten with a baseball bat and left to suffocate to death inside of it 11 . The killer actually called this little man the "monster."

And we should also remember that it is the other way around about "gangs": thanks to the 1996 immigration "reform" law, it is the U.S. that is sending U.S.-bred legal residents convicted of crimes, some of them members of gangs that originated in this country, back to countries like El Salvador that are ill-equipped to deal with them, and ordinary people trying to live are the ones "paying" for social and political dysfunction and racism in the U.S..

Meanwhile this song from someone named Louise entitled “Welcome to Trump’s Version of Hell" arrived in my inbox and it is worth sharing, since it suggests the kind of world that Trump and Miller have in store for people who thought they were escaping it by coming here: 3

 

We will soon see. Trump seemed on his "Meet the Press" interview to slightly "humanize" his more inhuman plans, probably to the disappointment of MAGA voters, but they should not worry too much. It would be a "bad look' to start rounding-up all undocumented people in this country right now, so he's just going to start with the "criminals." He still promotes the lie that undocumented workers are "costing the country a fortune," which all economists call a lie, and will cost a "fortune" not only to the economy and tax revenues (including taxes for Social Security which most of these people will never see), but deporting everyone will cost by some estimates $350 billion, doing nothing but add to the federal deficit.

Remember when he backed-off on a bi-partisan immigration deal in 2017 that would include giving legal status to DACA recipients, claiming that they were from "shit-hole" countries? Now he wants to "work" with Democrats to give Dreamers legal status? Obviously this is just a "carrot" to the "stick" he wants to use to beat on the "others." Trump thinks he can issue an executive order removing citizenship status to people born in this country; frankly he can start with himself. 

Now lets be even more frank about this: hasn't Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham told us what this is "really" about often enough? The far-right is terrified of the Hispanic vote; we can see that in Texas today. Eventually Hispanics will get around to realizing the fact that they are are being used as the stand-ins in this country what Jewish "vermin" were in Nazi Germany. And its not anything "new," of course. I watched the Charles Bronson film Mr. Majestyk, and you heard the same "language" about migrants in 1974 as you do today.

Musk recently became the subject of ridicule for using a screenshot from the Paul Verhoeven film Starship Troopers and misinterpreting its meaning. Verhoeven’s film actually ridicules the right-wing tendency to militaristic fascism (euphemistically called "patriotism" today); in an audio commentary for the film, he states that he wanted to show that it was a bad idea for people go for propaganda that didn’t show reality as it was (in other words, believing lies). 

He was going to build the perfect fascist world on screen (with soldiers dressed in obviously Nazi-inspired uniforms) that wasn’t good for anything but killing “bugs”—or in the case of this country today, brown-skinned “vermin” and “liberals”--or die "patriotic" deaths by the millions. The "bugs" certainly were not capable of the technology to send an asteroid to Earth, the "justification" to invade their planet and "exterminate" them. It helps, of course, to

 

 Just insure that you "conceal" your torture techniques:

 

It didn't have to be this way; those two new "N-words"--narcissism and nihilism--didn't have to be the defining terms of today's culture.  People need something to believe in. The Democratic leadership was too frightened to stand for anything to avoid offending "centrists" who voted for Trump anyways. It did its best to sideline Bernie Sanders and his progressive, pro-worker agenda, representing the opposite side of the same coin as Trump, but without all the corruption and moral and ethical deficits. 

Like Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris was too fearful of a vice president who might "overshadow" her. But if Sanders had been her running mate, working people would have known that they would have a strong "voice" in a Harris White House. Instead, a lot of working people were fooled by Trump, as noted in a New York Times article by Claire Miller about how Sanders supporters had gravitated to Trump before (actress Susan Sarandon told CNN in 2016 if Sanders wasn't the Democratic nominee, she would vote for Trump), and those who would have preferred to vote for Sanders in 2024 didn't have  that "choice."

In the Times story, one Trump voter named Gideon Smith in Puyallup, WA who claims to be a union member, asserted that he thinks Trump will bring back manufacturing jobs to the U.S.; Smith obviously blames migrants and not profit-hungry billionaires like Trump who along with Musk wants to gut regulations so they can do any unlawful thing they want that will hurt the lives of working people, as Thom Hartmann points out here 12, where the lust for profit feeds on death. 

In fact people like this don't realize that fat-cat billionaires like Trump and his DOGE pals are joining forces with far-right Republicans like Sen. Mike Lee and House Speaker Mike Johnson to end Social Security and Medicare ("Everything is on the table") as observed here 1. That's right: while they get richer, you are expected to work for low wages until you die. They don't care now--they already got your vote, you dumbass. And you thought that migrants were their only "targets." No you are too--migrants were just the cover story you fell for.

People like Smith also forget that by the end of Trump's first presidency, the U.S. had fewer manufacturing jobs and jobs overall than when he started, and his tariffs only increased prices for consumers. Deport farm workers? See food prices go sky-high if you think they are merely "high" now. Trump says he is going to quadruple-down on those same failed policies. Union voters like Smith actually believe his bullshit?

What Democrats need to do now before it's too late is to take a breather on "identity" politics, because it isn't "working." Joe Biden was elected in 2020 because people just wanted a "breather" from Trump's antics (but oh how people forget, just as they "forgot" about January 6). We are told that Biden is being pressured to sign-off on the Equal Rights Amendment before Trump takes office (that's still around?). The ERA has been criticized for being redundant and may even harm "equal rights" for women if, like affirmative action based on race being seen as "discriminating" against whites and over-represented Asians, is seen to promote policies that discriminate against men, especially in courts with Trump-appointed judges. 

Exit polls show that a majority of white women voted for Trump in each of the last three elections, even when two of the Democratic candidates were women. What did people miss? One thing is a 2014 study that showed that 70 percent of white women "somewhat" or "strongly" opposed affirmative action based on race, which also helps explain why twice initiatives opposing affirmative action based on race won in the "blue" state of Washington. Yet Title IX, essentially affirmative action for white women, is untouchable.

The hypocrisy of this is exposed by many studies that have shown that white women have been the principle beneficiaries of affirmative action in both higher education and in the private sector. But since they tend to vote in higher numbers than any other demographic, they have  their particular "rights" that must be "respected." That is why Republicans rail against immigration and crime, both dog whistles for racism, but also "discrimination" against whites, including women. Thus Republicans tend to avoid being overtly dismissive of (white) women, since they know that they have the majority of their votes if they leave well enough alone.

When Harris spoke of abortion rights and gender "identity" issues as "winning" themes for her campaign, this was contingent on both high minority voter turnout, and the support of white women. Neither happened, perhaps from a sense of being merely "patronizing." Since many working class male voters with their own concerns were largely alienated by this, and a majority of white women were less concerned about the rights of "the others" but rather in their own insularity, the lack of focus on the concerns of working class people in the generality lost Democrats the "blue wall" states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. 

Of course it can also be said that for voters who ran with Trump, this is largely a matter of their misplaced perceptions, since Democratic initiatives, like the ACA, help all who apply. Trump and the Republicans still want to dismantle it, which helps no one but profit-hungry private healthcare businesses who would deny the poor the right to live. With all federal social programs on the chopping block as "cost-cutting" and "government efficiency" measures, and the majority of the recipients of those programs not minorities but white people, at least we can say that Trump and company have equal "regard" for all those in need (male or female), including billionaires, more so--or much less so.

Yes, not just democracy, but a society that is not a permanently unequal one based economic disparity is at stake. Raising the marginal tax rate to "punish" billionaires for being greedy as well as removing the income ceiling for Social Security taxes would fix a lot of the problems in this country, including the federal deficit. But no, we have to take pity on poor billionaires and somehow fool working class people--men and women--into believing that "helps" them too. 

So what was it that Trump is going to do for working people again? I forget. Deport immigrants which will have a negative effect both on the economy and jobs dependent on the work they do, massive tariffs that will balloon inflation, put businesses out of business, cut more taxes for the rich, and go after his personal enemies (mostly). Now where is the part about helping working people? I forget--uh, nothing?

Maybe those negatively effected by Trump's plans will "punish" whoever promotes those same policies in 2028, but it will likely be too late to reverse course in any meaningful way save by a "new" New Deal. For now, those "desperate" enough will, like the Germans who abandoned the Weimar Republic in 1933, embrace a dictator like Trump if he "speaks" to their fears and hatreds. Those with dictatorial impulses only pay lip-service to democracy when they win; we saw what happens when they lose on January 6, 2021.  And make no mistake: Trump did secretly hope that something would happen to overturn the 2020 election.

We can see what has happened in Turkey, where we learn in this article by the Brookings Institute 1, when Erdogan promised "reform," what followed instead was the slow meltdown of democracy, at least on the federal level. As in Russia and Hungary, the legislative branch gave away its checks-and-balances authority to allow for authoritarian "big man" rule, fueled by 90 percent of the media being right-wing government propaganda, and the "abandonment of inclusive politics in favor of exclusionary policies  (that) further aggravated Turkey’s societal polarization along conservative-religious and secular-progressive lines, complicating efforts to defend shared democratic values."

Israel, by the way, is also succumbing to the dictator bug, with as right-wing as Netanyahu is, even worse is his decision to form a government with the fascist far-right parties who have no use for democracy or truth. Netanyahu, in an ongoing trial for corruption, has recently testified in court that yes, he did try to undermine freedom of the press and the truth in the country by attempting to force the sale of a leading left-leaning newspaper, Walla, to right-wing buyers to convert it into a propaganda organ for his regime, to support moves such as de-fanging the judicial system and preventing it from ruling against his unconstitutional power grabs.

For the "cause" of "democracy," Trump says he will "change" elections by requiring paper ballots, but we do remember what happened in 2000, don't we? When the Florida paper ballot recount appeared increasingly likely that Al Gore might pull it out after all with all those uncounted "hanging chad" ballots, the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and stopped the recount. We've already have seen how this court stepped-in to save Trump from his deserved reckoning.

Republicans are just opportunistic hypocrites dedicated only to their own power. They were once opposed to the Russian menace, and today most of them want to be "friends" with a power-,mad dictator trying to re-absorb a democratic state just because Trump tells them to be. As long as hate and lies "work," they will keep doing it until voters realize hate and lies don't make things so "great" after all, in fact makes this country appear to the world to be careening toward being a failed state, not the one Bill McKay in The Candidate thought this country should be:

I think the time has come when the American people realize that we're in this together and that we sink or swim together. And I say to you, maybe, just maybe that's how it should be. The test of our courage, of our compassion, our faith in ourselves, and our faith in our country.

It might not be "safe" in the short term, but in the long-term taking a strong and unmistakable stand for the principles this country allegedly stands for will be seen as necessary to "fix" the destructive impact on the country by the fascist rule of Trump and the Republican Party before it is too late. If Trump and his fellow fascists want a "war," then give to them. Even the brutal Assad regime that lasted 53-years in Syria fell in one day. If Trump actually does what he says he will do, a reckoning will come, for the country if not the man.