I wouldn’t hold your breath just yet. It’s likely to get even worse before it gets better. I’ve seen it too many times in other countries over a 40 year career in international finance.
That poll was from two years ago. I wonder what it would look like now? But I agree, it is frightening that so many people are sympathetic. I also wonder if they understand that Christian nationalism is NOT Christianity?
I don't think they understand that! I have two lifelong friends (one was my pastor's wife at one time), and they are convinced this is all part of God's plan. It sickens me.
I saw a nice placard on Substack. It read - Religion is like a penis: It's okay to have one, it's okay to be proud of it. However: do not pull it out in public, do not push it on children, do not write laws with it, do not think with it.
Kind of silly, and unfortunately just another way of denying evolution. I suggest reading up on cognitive science and evolutionary ethics - religion was part and parcel of it all - for good and for bad.
The Heritage Foundation was part of the campaign as a power grab over the last 50 years by the wealthy oligarchy in America that began after the Powell memo in 1971 to control the federal government and the legal system including the Supreme Court. As Krugman said, the wealthy oligarchy gathered support from Christian Nationalists who wanted changes in the legal system. However, the main objective was to have the federal government take and steal wealth from 95% of people and give it to the top 5% with most going to the top 0.01%. The wealth transfer must be stopped by restoring fair taxes. The tax rates for the top 1% and 5% in 2024 should be changed to what the tax rates were for the top 1% and 5% in 1965 with the tax rates for the 95% in 2024 remaining unchanged to what the rates were in 2024. That would create $1.3 trillion of new federal revenue for funding solutions to core problems including affordability of healthcare and housing.
For Democrats to get elected in 2028, a PROJECT 2029 is needed to solve core problems including affordability and putting an end to the autocracy run by the wealthy oligarchy in America which was enabled by the insurrection that began on January 6, 2021, and continued in 2025.
Trump was elected because voters were angry at politicians in both political parties who controlled the federal government but ignored affordability for decades. Unfortunately, voters believed Trump’s lying that he would solve affordability and bring back manufacturing. A new generation of progressive Democrats can get elected in 2026 and 2028 if they campaign with a plan in PROJECT 2029 to implement solutions to affordability and other core problems that must be funded with new taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
After getting elected in 2028, Democrats must solve the core problem in the legal system by enforcing the federal law on insurrection in 2029 to arrest, convict, and imprison Trump, members of his administration including his Cabinet, Republicans in Congress, and six justices on the Supreme Court. What’s happened in America in 2025 is an insurrection by Trump, his administration, Republicans in Congress, and six justices on the Supreme Court. The insurrection started on January 6, 2021, and was planned in PROJECT 2025 to continue as planned in 2025. Insurrection is defined as a felony crime in federal law (18 U.S. Code § 2383) in language that is clear and easy to understand:
“Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
For the top 5%, a net worth of $1.17 million to $2.7 million secures your spot, while the top 10% requires between $970,900 and $1.9 million. If you are aspiring to the top 25%, you’ll need roughly $340,000 to $500,000, a milestone many Gen Z professionals can target early in their careers. At the pinnacle, the top 0.1% command a staggering $62 million, often amassed through entrepreneurship, high-growth investments, or inheritance.
Just adding this to point out where everyone stands. The top 1% is $11.5-13.5M while 5 and 10% is probably a lot of "middle or upper middle-class" folks. The focus needs to be on the 0.1%
William L Miller, I am very happy to have run across your post this morning. That I did is a perfect example of "Something I Learned while looking up something else." (I think someone famous invented that category, but even ChatGPT had trouble identifying who it might be. Possibly columnist **Sydney J. Harris.**).
Anyway, your comment above is the truest, most succinct, and most accurate summary of the last 50 years of American political and economic history I've ever read. I'd guess that it's at least partly based on your familiarity with studies by mathematician Carter C. Price. ("Trends in Income 1975 to 2018") and updated to 2023 in his second article. Both published by Rand. I'm not sufficiently well-read to be sure, but I think very few other writers on American political history are aware of what you described in your comment except, of course, the authoritative, humane historian Heather Cox Richardson whom I read on Substack. First thing. Nearly every morning.
If knowledge of this history was more widespread, then the appropriate degree of (nonviolent) rage could be directed at conservative Republican oligarchs and their populist, Christian Nationalist, MAGA allies and we'd stand a better chance of defeating them. As it is now, I think most Americans don't know who has been abusing them and diverting the wealth generated by our highly productive economy away from them, to themselves for, as you say, the last fifty years.
Reforming the tax code and returning to a confiscatory marginal tax rate is in fact exactly the fix, and it'll happen, but it may take generations.
In the short term, you'd have to have a Democrat as a strong and charismatic leader and the willing support of a supermajority in both Houses, but it could be done. But, where's the beef? No such Democrat exists at the moment. We face decades of instability.
> The tax rates for the top 1% and 5% in 2024 should be changed to what the tax rates were for the top 1% and 5% in 1965 with the tax rates for the 95% in 2024 remaining unchanged to what the rates were in 2024.
Sigh. This naïveté again. The billionaires do not pay income tax because they do not have W-2 income. They are not taxed like you and me. Whether they pay any is entirely a choice based on whether they collect their living expenses through capital gains, interest or loans taken out on their holdings. Except where they willingly step into this trap, the top marginal tax rate is for some well paid doctors, lawyers and engineers, not billionaires. Changing income tax rates is not a way to get to the 0.1%.
It might work if you remove the special tax rate for long term capital gains. It might work to tax wealth instead. We probably need to institute a tax on robot / AI labor. However, as it stands all these lets raise the top marginal tax rates to 90% isn't going to change the tax rates of excessively wealthy individuals because they can go without income entirely their entire lives.
*I see an new generation of dems pracricing organizing of everything at NoKings.org? :)
* We need internet-native good structure thinking info-enginweering nerds like Cory doctorow to regulate social media intelligently and clearly with an explained synthesis of free speech, anti-monopoly and anti-corruption of reality, truth and ultimately systems, economy and people
* And regulate the competition for global investmenrs top level or balance it with organized internatilnalist worker movement networks to not get a race to bottom - or maybe not if YOU just quit dragging the conditions for workers to the bottom ! ;D
* And somehow inject other perspectives in the bubbles. Often it just takes ONE voice that goes against the inthink to keep it sane. Ive often practiced being that voice.
* Digital democracy is the solution for the totally splintered media debate which goes nowhere and buids no new grand bargains, needed for cohesion - check Estonia, South Korea, Taiwan! And visualized collective debate in pol.is !
* The goal is going from current infotech violent Renaissance, to a real internet Enlightenment! :)
"God's plan" is the last refuge of the ignorant (and in some cases of scoundrels). No thinking required when the Big Guy (it's always a guy for these people) is taking care of everything.
No. It's not refuge for ignorant, but one for cruel people. It's the American version of "I was just following the rule" heard in Europe in 1945. The Bible says something to the effect of "Who knows God's, who has been his counselor?"
Absolutely, but I also think this is where the divide is finally happening/going to happen. There are a (still too small but) growing number of actual Christians who are either gaining enough courage or finally seeing the truth and are beginning to push back. When that group, people who actually practice what Christianity actually teaches, gets it together, that *should* be enough to shatter MAGA. The question is, will they have corrupted enough, will we have leaned too far into authoritarian territory to actually be able to kick them out of positions of power and to the gutter? And if we really want to reclaim our country and work toward regaining some respect in the world, toss them in jail where they actually belong?
Yes....I have tried to point that out. When my friend was so angry at me for not voting for Trump, I tried to tell her that many, many Christians are not voting for him, and it was like she just didn't believe me. But it keeps hope alive for me.
It appears that MTG has now publicly and permanently defected from trumpism. NYT recently did a lengthy interview with her. So, if a diehard like MTG woke up and said no more, it’s likely that there are others who are much less devoted than she’s been.
The NYT article was gifted by Simon Rosenberg this morning through his Substack account. Scroll to the bottom of this comment for access to the active link -
“New York Times has published a must-read, long-profile of Marjorie Taylor Greene (gift link), ‘I Was Just So Naive’: Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump. Here’s one of the many remarkable passages:
“For Greene, the decades that Epstein spent eluding justice for exploiting and sexually assaulting countless girls and young women while amassing a fortune, and the seeming efforts by the government to cover up the injustice, “represents everything wrong with Washington,” she told me. This September, Greene spoke with several of Epstein’s victims for the first time in a closed-door House Oversight Committee meeting. She knew that the women had paid their own way to come to Washington. She saw some of them trembling and crying as they spoke. Their accounts struck her as entirely believable. Greene herself had never been sexually abused, but she knew women who had. In her own small way, Greene later told me, she could understand what it was like for a woman to stand up to a powerful man.
“After the hearing, Greene held a news conference at which she threatened to identify some of the men who had abused the women. (Greene says that she didn’t know those names herself but that she could have gotten them from the victims.) Trump called Greene to voice his displeasure. Greene was in her Capitol Hill office, and according to a staff member, everyone in the suite of rooms could hear him yelling at her as she listened to him on speakerphone. Greene says she expressed her perplexity over his intransigence. According to Greene, Trump replied, “My friends will get hurt.”
“When she urged Trump to invite some of Epstein’s female victims to the Oval Office, she says, he angrily informed her that they had done nothing to merit the honor. It would be the last conversation Greene and Trump would ever have.”
The gifted link to the full NYT story is included in the post below. If interest, scroll down close to the bottom of his post and you’ll see the story with an active link.
The Epstein fallout is the key to Trump's and MAGA fall.
White evangelical voters might hold their noses at Trump's un Christ-like behavior or maintain some level of cognitive dissonance, but when it comes to pedophilia - that is too much to stomach.
Depends, though, on your definition of a god. God's just another god. Your friends would say that everything is part of their "God". One can't take these things personally.
Perhaps they regard the holocaust as part of Gods plan too since it happened under Gods watch. Saying that what ever happens is part of Gods plan is specifically motivated by an almost total lack of moral development. If everything that happens is part of Gods plan then what do we need Satan for? Oh yeah, Satan was also part of Gods plan for testing the world, but you see we are charged with telling the difference between the influence of God VS Satan, if we conflate them we have no moral ability, we fail the test.
We just emerged from two world wars where Christians murdered hundreds of millions of other Christians for the sake of NATIONALISM. Jesus said "sell all you own and come follow me" The only way anyone owns anything is through nationalism, without nation states to protect property there is none, selling all you own means rejecting nationalism as the ultimate authority.
Satan tested Jesus by offering him every nation, an offer Jesus refused when he said "get thee behind me Satan" and that is what we should say to Christian Nationalists, "get thee behind me".
Republican Christianity is not Christianity. Not in the biblical sense. Indeed, most Christians, including Republicans, routinely ignore Jesus’ teachings. Jesus would be aghast at America today.
I've said many times about Christian Nationalists and the Christian Right - I don't want to define who is a "Christian" but the Bible they're reading/quoting isn't the Bible I'm reading and following.
Clearly not. I read the article and the strongest support for Christian Nationalism comes from those who attend church one or more times a week. And they think "being Christian' is necessary to be an American.
Jesus was EXECUTED by the ROMAN NATION which makes the term "Christian Nationalism" an oxymoron. Jesus said "give Caesar what is Caesars" to specifically indicate that ones soul does not belong to any nation. Christian Nationalism is the kind of movement that Jesus warned us against when he said that he would be betrayed by they who claim to follow him.
I'm guessing it's the same, give or take a couple points. And I'd bet if you were to take a poll from 10 years ago, 15, however many....it'd be roughly the same. Which is to say that faction has always been among us. In fact, I'd wager to say it's probably so strong right now because it'd waning, not b/c it's waxing. They're powerful b/c they overtook a GOP that'd been hollowed out. It's like a shooting star, burning brightest right before it burns out.
How exactly it happens, is hard to say. Something to keep in mind, though: MAGA is a personality cult. Some members want white nationalism. Regardless, the loyalty is to Trump; not the GOP; not whatever "conservatism" is. Trump the man. Who's not long for the world. Personality cults don't transfer well.
It's not like Reagan passing the baton to Bush. Vance doesn't have "it". Nor do DJTJ or Eric. When Don goes, there'll be a struggle for power. And it won't be pretty. That's when I think you'll see a lot of the crackup.
The extraterrestrial MAGA species has killed many humans in the US and replaced them with superficially liberal voters who actually vote according to the needs of the MAGA invasion. In particular "the boys" have killed and replaced at least 7.5 million human lesbians. Most overtly human lesbians in Florida and Georgia are actually extraterrestrials. Many MAGA voters hold two registrations, just as Steve Bannon was registered in FL and DC during the 2016 presidential election.
This MAGA takeover cannot be diffused easily until there's a law which says only a human being can be a US citizen. And then back that law with in-person voting and DNA testing at the polling place.
Too bad we can't deport the extraterrestrials to their place of origin, but we can continue to hunt their spacecraft in Earth's oceans.
So true! Christian Nationalism is NOT Christianity. Do these followers of Christian’s Nationalism know anything at all about the kindness of Jesus? Jesus taught love and compassion. Christian Nationalists believe in HATE.
Yes .. as Yuval Noah Harari says, story is what we belive in. We all have our holy ones, the ones giving us existensial bliss and meanig. The ones we feel are True. Be they holy scriptures, theories or history of success for a football team... Or your kisds and friends or dog or society. Anything worth following wirh curiosity and love.
I feel that now is a time of sorrow for you... You have run so far and for so long on exceptionalism, hope and faith, and suddenly.. its not possible anymore. The furues we seem to run towards... Is no longer desirable for most of us. :/
But you know what? I think it's because... we have arrived. :o We are not supposed to run anywhere anymore. We are supposed to slow down, and rest, and let the soul and purpose catch up with us. Sprout roots, all the way back to Kalahari where our genes originates from. :o No longer be rolling stones, but get positively indigenously PRESENT.
Grow new respectful relations with ourselves and others. Understand and marvel at how we really see the same things, just in such different ways! And that everybody seem to comes to the same place eventually, even if starting out in wildly different directions.
Always intuitively reinventing the things that gives a feeling of distinct resonance from our genes, like how to give birth and make love, and dance and laugh at a pun. <3 Remember what was said in Havamal, the Viking book of wisdom - humans is humans joy. Ultimately.
... And when it isn't, we must organize differently.
We now have all the tech and knowledge we need to rebuild and emulate a more hunter/gatherer style life in top of tech. If we just find/reclaim the right stories to tell around it, and start to tell them. <3 And always remember the hunter gatherers basic needs.
Abraham Maslow was blow away by those people. He said they had ALL their basic needs fulfilled from the beginning. They went straight for the highest level - self realisation, personal development. We recreate that life when living in for example a good leaderless ashram with nice people.
Or at a really nice hipppish, cooperative folk music festical, living in tents, enjoying eveybodys company, helping our naturally with everything that is needed. <3 Everything that has sproutes out of the inspirational seed that Woodstock was - YOU dared to follow your genes and invent that! :D Thank you! <3 It was in a small place like that I became fully human, in the nineties.
And the troubles that we see is much because of the immense amounts of trauma we have collected and bestowed upon each others on the way here. Agricultural trauma, with constant warfare and slavery. But at last we have enslaved the machines to do the hard work for us! If we can only keep from running so fast we end up enslaved instead. ;) ;p Oh the irony.
I am looking for them. Practricing to write them.
I find it half amusing, half frustrating that its so easy to see how the "blind belief" component spills over to blind faith in the "invisible hand of the market"... Making this a switch-and-bait trick between God, and Mammon, plus Fortuna, lady luck.
Just because they managed to cheerypick Adam Smith beyond all recogniton to make him as viral among the more practically minded as Marx. He would be SO angry for that. We MUST avenge him by educating about the lost stuff, the parts of tending to the markets, too! They are everywhere, really, they are really COMMONS :o , that need to be guarded from tragedy!
And who needs added choices to whenever good choices are lacking! Case in point - political parties! ;) ;p
Really, we invented the internet as a virtual market where estate was endless and entry fees low. So it would always be simple to just create an alternative. And opensource contributed so much to that!
And it worked too in the beginning and still does, there ARE far better alternatives than Facebook available, for example - its just that the info marked flipped silently from scarcity to overflow. :o Taking us from the knowledge society to the attention society, and removed the most knowledgeable from the top, and installed the most attention grabbing. =:/ With ANY means!
Being his own media, and making his own daily TV show our of reality! Twisting it expertly with bullshit salesmanship and Facebook ad tools on joseph Goebbels level of brainwash and amygdala hijacking, making people continously more stupid than they are, to get there and stay there.
Dread Pirate Captain Trump, and his band of scurvy scalawags, who can just barely sail a ship and fire a gun, bur know how to play a scary villain role and to own the air. Living half way into Neverland, mixing fantastic with far too real. :/
They just have never seem to have learned how to play, until at that level, feeling that powerful and safe and supported by their crew. Me and my fellow bullied nerds, did that at university and at our startups. Broadened and got human. It seems the broligachs.. never did? :( They were too damaged, too insecure and really trust no one for their security but themselves.
They hate and manipulate neurorypical ordinary humans, with Stupid Feelings(tm) that always ger in the way of their understanding, and constantly leads them astray - and want to "evolve" them, and flee to Mars! :o Such are the constant climbers and runners. - Small, small men stunted along the way, always needing to conquer, just like Ghinghis Khan. :/ And evangelize.
It's not so much frightening as depressing. That 1/3 is the MAGA base, who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old and that Trump is doing a great job. They will only go away when Trump tells them to drink the Kool-Aid.
Yes. Cult members have been known to chug poisoned Kool Aid. What benefit did they gain from that? There’s no point in trying to reach the segment of the MAGA base that’s jumping for joy over their own pain. They’re beyond saving!
They will continue to support Trump no matter what. They know what he is, and they just don't care. They sold their worthless souls when they willfully elected a serial liar and known fraud. They see their own ignorance and hypocrisy in him and it emboldens them.
Do you remember when Trump on the campaign trail said: “I care about your vote, I don’t care about you, I care about your vote” and they CHEERED? 🤦♀️
They will stay dumb, they'd still vote for Trump. The diehard MAGA base is just too ignorant to be swayed by reality... That's why you will trigger them if you wear these kinds of shirts in public 👇
I used to think that all they needed was a little bit of reliable healthcare, but it's beyond that. They don't mind having to sleep under a bridge provided all the brown people have to sleep under cardboard or be deported. They are the 35% of Germans who voted for Hitler in 1932. They are the Little Englanders who voted for Brexit. They are in every society and every nation.
I can't see a solution other than secession back to the 50 states. It's what MAGA wants anyway. We could form an American Union (AU) of 50 states along similar lines to the EU. And....no more food stamps courtesy of the rich states, what's not to like?
Agree. They were beaten down in 1865 but not eliminated, and they will never stop fighting to be left alone to their religious ignorance, racism and depravity. Like a partner who wants divorce but doesn't want to be the one who files the paperwork they will make us miserable every day until they get what they want.
No one would mind if the MAGA detached themselves from society and went their own way. The problem is their support for authoritarian control over others, and their negative influence on all our institutions.
But they’d never let us alone. They hate we exist, and they desperately want to make us pay. They are the enemy; and I’m desperately worried this will end in civil war. But if they want civil war, we should make sure they drink their fill, as Gen. Sherman recommended.
It’s not surprising to me. It’s nothing new. Most Americans did not have to be aware of their bigotry and hate. Everything was great until neoliberalism hollowed out labor based manufacturing and the general public swallowed “trickle down”, like it was vanilla ice cream.
People of color always knew they existed by the simple fact, they experience the hate and bigotry from these Christian nationalists daily. In other words It’s always been here from the Christian justification of slavery to the Christian justification of Native American genocide and today, white nationalist justifications of bigotry.
The way I read the chart, it isn't everyone it's those who identify as Christian Nationalists or Christian. I don't think it could be a third of all Americans because not that many people identify as Christian. It would be good to clarify who was being polled.
It says that it is on a continuum so that people are not just CNs or not, but that many people share some of the beliefs of CNs, and that is scary in and of itself.
Here is CN and Project 2025 expert Andra Watkins reviewing the Christian Nationalism and Project 2025 for the year.
From the top link: “Whatever we think of the term Christian nationalism, the thing it refers to is real, and the thing needs a label. The thing I’m trying to label is simple: Americans who believe that America is a “Christian nation” and that the government should keep it that way.”
Thank you for sharing this. This great article by Andra Watkins is essential for understanding the theological underpinnings of the current government's actions to diminish scientific and medical research, to undercut vaccines as a public health measure, to dismantle USAID, to demonize trans people, etc., etc.
You can also be Christian and not a nationalist, and a Nationalist and not Christian. There are many combinations we are talking about but here CNs subscribe to certain beliefs about Christianity and Nationalism that contradict our constitution.
We old people can learn if we are informed about what’s coming up from Groypers. True, we old people have a hard time imagining young men being happy with Hitler. These young men may have a hard time understanding why young women do not find them attractive.
My kids are mid to late 40s, their kids teens and a four.
I remember how our house sounded before my son was given a Pac-Man.
They loved being read to, both generations. Kids’ picture books rock, the kind from the library!
I have determined there are kids in my neighborhood. They come out of their houses to wait for the school bus. Weekends, after school hours you hardly see them at all. Some have a trampoline in their front yard, but I never see any of them using it. Same for basketball hoops. Bike riding is with parents. Sigh!
Tablet Magazine has an interesting take on the Tucker Carlson/Nick Fuentes/Heritage Foundation affair (in an article titled "The Buchanan Resurrection").
"Carlson didn’t challenge Fuentes in his interview because it wasn’t an interview, or even an effort to mainstream him; rather, it was a demonstration. He showed he was consolidating control of a splinter faction in order to exact concessions and money. It’s how community organizers work, by co-opting the hard cases so that the authorities pay up, or else. Now, whoever wants something from the Groypers, whether it’s votes, social media support, or—perhaps most importantly—their silence, they have to go through Carlson to get it. The goal, as he recently admitted, is to reshape Republican foreign policy—by which he means downgrading Israel’s place in the party to shrink evangelical power on the right, just as Obama did with Jewish Democrats to restructure the left in his own image. And, in time, if the plot succeeds, the minority faction will take over, just as it did with the Democrats."
Keep your ageism to yourself, please. I don’t know what you mean by “old”; for me it meant “ don’t trust anyone over 30” back when I was 18. I’m in my 70’s now and know what a Groyper is, Pepe The Frog, Nick Fuentes, etc. To me it’s just another hate group that seems to appeal more to Incels. As far as “ what’s coming up”, please. I’ve seen it before, and worse - same terrible fascism “ slouching towards Bethlehem”.
I am an old person and I am wondering what you mean as "coming." Perhaps MAGA 2.0 as Julie Roginsky discusses in this article where she says 2.0 which includes Fuentes are even worse than 1.0.
In Germany the AfD has managed to revive their youth group, which was so full of open Nazis it was shut down before. With same membership it has restarted, and they all sound like Nazis. Will they get shut down again? I hope so.
Decent people have to recoil from the violence perpetrated on immigrants and I think they ARE. And our gold lamé presidency. And just bringing up the Epstein files let alone reading details. True that there is a trend world wide to swing to the right but out country which has enjoyed high stature in the world, has become scummy and unattractive. Therein lies the revolt.
In Marjorie Taylor Greene's interview with the NYT she said Trump told her he wanted to stop the release of the Epstein files because it would hurt his friends. I think that's the crux of it. Trump is part of the rich boys world and sexual exploitation was always a part of it. He doesn't see anything wrong with it. I don't think he's a Humbert Humbert who enjoys very young women, but I doubt he sees anything wrong with it either.
I believe "Epstein" survivor Katie Johnson (alias), who has given a video affidavit in which she states she was raped by Donald Trump (he fancied her because her appearance reminded him of Ivanka). If and when this is fully disclosed to the public, it MAY be the straw that causes the implosion of MAGA.
trouble is that Katie J has disappeared - either in deep hiding from the MAGA loonies, or already their victim. And we can be sure that Fox and its ilk will not be reporting her statements.
That information has been available for years, He said it on the Howard Stern show and I watched it live! I think Ivanka was like 13, he's not only attracted to underage girls but your right about 1 thing he sees nothing wrong with it as other countries allow 12 & 13 year olds to get married my own Mother signed for me at 15 & he was a 33 so that's probably why he gets along so good with him the Saudi's women are considered property and it's still normal for the brides family to pay for everything
she claims she finally noticed that Trump isn't a man of faith when he said he hates his enemies at the Kirk memorial (the widow had just said she forgave the shooter). hey, if MTG can lead others to the light, good.
I have seen video of her trying to convince a group that we should make Christianity the official religion of the United States. She also stated that she was very happy when the last pope died. She doesn't regard Catholics as Christians. I don't want to go to where she leads.
she also has not recanted her accusation that the Parkland high school shooting was done by crisis actors, i.e. not real, or that Biden's administration could make hurricanes come to land where it wanted to, and MANY other lunatic or mean-spirited statements.
It says in the declaration of Independence the freedom from religion if you choose the religion of your choice! I'm spiritual but I refuse to belong to a organized religion as Christ said my father is not in a building made of mortar and brick, but we know they never read it and if they did they didn't understand the first 2 pages and put it on display for when company comes over
He owned “Miss Teenage America” and as owner of the pageant he would walk into the dressing room while the young girls were dressing. Then he bragged about it. He’s definitely a pedophile although now that he’s caught he’s denying it. He has no respect for women or girls, he’s a misogynist.
It’s not about his friends. It’s about Melania. Remember that press conference she was going to have “within the next two weeks” … back in 2016; she was going to explain how she got an Einstein visa. Wait, did I say Einstein? What if I’m off by a letter or two? Dollars to doughnuts: melania is an Epstein Girl - which is kind of like a Harvey Girl but skimpier clothes with a menu of extras and a guaranteed Happy Ending … lol
If she’s an Epstein girl, she may be a survivor , turned knowing where her bread is buttered but at some point exploited to get into this country which brings the whole hypocritical immigration policies around to to all the corruption in this administration
For someone who has been waiting many years for some reliable, plausible 'tall tales' or even fact-checked, professionally responsible journalistic horror stories that would explain in detail exactly what makes Kim Jong-un so nutty, so comical, the chance to relish Trump's antics and the casual reception they get from Americans is profoundly copacetic. The world is seeing in the US what we have been imagining, or naively hoping they would see in each of our favorite foreign policy bogeymen, be they Putin, Assad, Maduro, even the grandson who represents a nation's laborious, excruciating, home-grown victory and expulsion of their own, historical Jeffrey Epstein-type character, only in the form of a massively powerful empire. And on this very day, much to our own consternation, we are seeing its very vestige threatened across the Taiwan Strait.
Barbara I am not holding my breath either. These cons are incorrigible. I also will never view the Heritage Foundation created to legitimize neoliberalism as okay. It was never okay, and it has never had legitimate research. It is corrupt, corrupt, corrupt from the point where Reagan made it legit to now. When I first read George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson's claim that Neoliberalism leads to fascism in "Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism" I was skeptical. Now I am not. The Heritage Foundation and Business Schools, and other such foundations helped to lead us to the point where we are now. Their destruction, and whatever the horrid Pence's fake Christian foundation is about would be best all destroyed. We need a fresh start. I would also argue that we need more than 2 sane political parties. We need several more.
We need a direct democracy like the Swiss were the people only vote on a law and it's passed or not depending how the voters vote! It's 100% a government run by the citizens, cuz obviously electing Reps to take are wishes to draft a bill and have to have both sides agree to get it passed doesn't work we elected a senator to vote in are behalf but instead of are interests brought to the floor, it's big business and what they want! If we ever get back in they need to pass laws where no corporations are allowed to contribute to an election! Truthfully I don't understand why they need to raise mega $ to run a campaign it should be there elected to run not paid to run
We lefties imagine using the "glass half empty/Glass half full" meme. Paul Krugman wants to paint this story as a half full one. Thomas Frank wrote a book (Pity The Billionaire) about fifteen years ago, and it was the half empty kind. Money, wealth and influence won't ever go away. It'll just come back in one way or another, over and over again.
https://www.npr.org/2012/01/06/144783945/pity-the-billionaire-the-rights-unlikely-comeback . Since I have been paying attention to this republican story starting in the sixties, I-we could have never imagined how something like LBJ signing the Civil Rights and the Voting Rights acts would kick this growth of the far right into action by kicking the hateful and racist out of the party...and sending them to the other party. Anyone thinks this movement will finally go away, it will just morph. First, Nixon's Southern Strategy and the dixiecrats left. Next, the growth of faux christianity and the "moral majority" after Roe v Wade. There's the corrupt Agnew and Nixon stories. Reagan and the criminality of that administration such as Iran-Contra, Savings and Loan, HUD, EPA...Over 130 administration officials were investigated, indicted, or convicted across these scandals. G bush senior then pardons all those convicted outlaws from Reagans terms. Limbaugh, Gingrich, Buchanan and Fox all happen, Harvey LeRoy "Lee" Atwater happened (look him up) and then the Heritage Foundation. This bunch just keeps trucking along. They are hungrier than us lefties and progressives. Every kindness, consideration human right and improvement made during the 20th century became a target. You know, I just read what I wrote and think "God, I hope I'm wrong."
None of us are taxed because we are guilty. We are taxed because society needs money to run. If wealth is hoarded by a few sociopaths it injures society and society needs to defend its self from the danger they represent.
They can be what they have been all along without extreme wealth. Being merely outrageously wealthy should be enough for any sane person.
Scott, "God" is just a useful and secular phrase. And both Phil and Scott, There were laws created during the 20th century to curtail greed. Both TR and FDR, Wilson and Taft installed legislations and taxations. Remember learning about the Teapot dome scandal in school? Now, do you remember that the Reagan financial deregulation instigated a number of scandals involving financial institutions in the 80s? And good old boy Bill Clinton got in on the deregulation game, eliminating the FDR installed Glass-Steagall Act which brought on the financial crisis in 2007-8. We call ourselves a nation of laws but the important elephant in the room is wealth in all its forms. The wealthy own the laws and the useful idiot trump has invited all who feel constrained by laws to bypass them. We are a nation of outlaws.
With the trusty billionaires willing to clean out their fat-lined pockets, I have to wonder if the mechanism of grant making will shore up the Heritage for a while. Especially considering the gutting of our academic/scientific traditional sources. Conservatives love to fill empty spaces (at a soul-degrading price).
I think the TechBros and Financial Wizards, which are connecting through crypto, are not necessarily in the same boat as our traditional companies and corporations.
The Trumpian policies have been crafted by the former and screw that latter. Much of American business have been hurt by Trump's policies and especially his chaos.
This is an administration which favors certain sectors and gleefully damages others.
If history is any guide, the US dollar will tank because no one will want to buy US debt and those who hold it will sell off in coordinated waves until we finally see sense. Sooo…with the current admin, your guess is as good as mine.
That’s the beginning of the slippery slope. Let’s see how long it takes before someone in the administration finally reins the orange buffoon in. Probably not before more significant damage is done, I’m guessing.
I feel like hyperinflation & a depression are imminent but am not in the financial sector. What can we watch for as a tipping point in that direction? Or am I (hopefully) just catastrophizing?
Well I’m hopeful that the tide is turning. But I don’t want to count my chickens before they’re hatched, so to speak. Wheels turn too slowly in shepherding the economy, and the market back lash can be very harsh when people have had enough. I’m personally concerned that more people AREN’T acknowledging the risk we face with regard to other countries dumping our bonds. Canada and several others who together hold enough to hurt us are already telegraphing their potential intent. And the administration just keeps charging ahead like a bull in a china shop. And China holds a lot as well.
I worked for three years in Indonesia during the Asian crisis, trying to shore up the financial sector. We had to close 55 banks in two weeks. The currency tanked. They became an international pariah, and the IMF had to become lender of last resort before any other lender would help bail them out. Our team endured death threats and having our names plus the name of our hotel published in the paper. They set the central bank on fire while IMF staff were inside. There were riots at our hotel and we couldn’t leave for three days. I learned what it felt like to travel everywhere with armed guards in bulletproof cars. It alarms me when I see the US blithely charging down a similar path and everyone in a position to know is staying largely silent. Everyone thinks that the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency will save us. I personally don’t think that’s true any longer. Countries have been moving away from using the dollar in bilateral trade and financial deals. That’s a bad sign for us.
Hyperinflation and a depression are not likely to occur at the same time. During a depression, many people can't afford to buy things. That typically causes vendors to reduce prices. Some vendors simply go out of business, which increases the number of people who can't afford to buy.
On the other hand, we can see from the history of the Weimar republic in Germany that hyperinflation can set the stage for a depression.
Hey, I'm 73 too. But I sympathize with that TV ad of several years ago, which shows a guy being pushed forward at several stages in life and saying every time, "But I'm not ready!" It's no fun considering the many catastrophes that have recently become more likely, more imminent. It's all so unnecessary. I retire in one month, and I guess I should start brushing up on survival skills that I let languish.
In a year? Maneuvering between R hopefuls to succeed Trump: Vance, Rubio (Susie Wiles says that Vance & Rubio are planning to run together), Cruz. Who else?
There are many elected Rs who have a stake in preservation of the R party who will carry on carrying on and who will be an impediment to the creation of a new party.
Also we will likely see many more election rules in place "leveling the playing field" in favor of the Rs. The US has a Constitutional / legal structure that preserves and empowers minorities. The Supreme Court has made this structure become ever more favorable to the Rs and Christian nationalists and continues to do so.
Politicians can and are relegated to irrelevancy. Your last paragraph points to one of the major issues, another being money in politics. Those two combined empower the few with the means. Trump is a heinous person, but he is a spoiled child that is allowed to run around smashing things as long as he doesn’t get it wrong or too far off the rails (for them, not real people living in the real world). I find Vance much more frightening as he actually does have a brain, and he is savvy enough to not be blinded by his narcissism as it appears to us regular folk…ie he knows “The Vance Kennedy Center” is idiotic, tearing down a wing of the White House is idiotic. He would be an ideal puppet because he’s more than willing to play nicely as long as he keeps his power and money.
I don't think he'd be a puppet. He'd be a Putin, not a Xi. Xi wants power but I do think he cares about the Chinese people. Putin doesn't care about the Russian people, he cares about power.
I don't want either of those models. I want messy, not particularly efficient, democracy. Even in a world full of ignorant idiots, democracy is better than autocracy or monarchy.
True…about Putin v Xi and that Vance would be more akin to Putin. Also probably true not so much a puppet as a willing participant. He would make an excellent front man, but I could still see him ultimately being disposable if the true cabal decided he’d met the end of his usefulness.
Vance does have the non-Trumpian ability to finish the same sentence he begins, but he is not likely to have the cult following of Trump. As someone in this column said, a couple of months ago, he has the personality of wet blotting paper. (Now *that* analogy
As a Canadian, I hope another isolationist like Vance doesn’t get elected. Isolationism provides the rationale for tariffs (not to mention leaving situations like Ukraine for others to settle).
So by that thinking, the politician is then allowed to do whatever he or she wants once in office, regardless of the platform they ran on? You’re letting them off the hook rather easily, no?
I’ve lived in some of those countries and agree. It got much worse, thousands of victims of state sponsored terrorism, torture and murder before anything changed. And it took violence and even a section of the military opposed to the regime to change it, as well as international pressure and a much more engaged and willing to fight populace. Hard to see what will change it here. The corporate influence, broligarchy, media capitulation and misinformation, low education, apathy and deep seated racism seem too embedded here.
Though women were made full equal members of our Republic the day it was formed, and they became fellow republican-democrats with men 11 years, 11 months, & 7 days later when our Constitution was ratified (June 21, 1788), representation among our public servants in Government has not kept with the times. This is how we change that:
... Would you say I am right to see the hope over at NoKings.org?
They are organizing now, not only for protests but for mutual aid and food banks and stuff.
I'm thinking this was the way you evenrually got our of the depression, organising outside the institutions, taking over the legitimacy of those who actually delivers somerhing for the people, and being able to press the Democrats from below.
Doing for others has always been the thing that motivates me. And it needs to be what motivates others if we want things like the events sponsored by NoKings to truly take root. America has become a very insular society that all too often sits isolated in our over-large houses, scrolling on our tech. We have forgotten the lessons of earlier decades where mass protests were the thing that saved our democracy. I work in Europe, and life is so different there. People are out and about, interacting with others, in cafes, coffee shops and public parks. In Greece it’s the opposite of America. Here, if I fell down in the street, people would most likely step around me and keep going, so intent on their own agenda. In Greece, everyone would rush to be part of the throng helping me back up, talking so fast that my nascent Greek would still be stuck inside me during the confusion.
Yes… especially the Mediterranean people are like that. Immediate.
I feel its a southern thing, too, even if there are many factors.
But it's definitely shapes by what demands you have on YOU, individually, to deliver. Be high productive. Are you in a forgiving atmosphere or not? Do you have TIME to stop and help? And are you at all present, or already preparing the next meeting in your head, not wanting to drop that mental state, and allow maybe even strong feelings?
We hackers learned that it was ALWAYS ok to put up a hand in the air when someone came into the room : “don't disturb, i have built a five storeys high house of cards architecture in my mind, and of I don't capture it NOW it's gone and takes all day to remake!” ;)
And now, we are all promoted to our very limits of our mental capabilities, and then we get older, too. . :/ I hade to get a diagnose at 50.
All of that I think about when I see worried reports about growth in southern Europe.
“Yes, but…. They know how to LIVE, still! What's important! And where are we supposed to go on vacation to relax, and regulate our emotions otherwise? Life is OLD there, everything has happened so many times before. This too shall pass! “
I don’t think PK is holding his breathe. He’s predicting what will *ultimately* happen, not what’s coning in the near future. But whether MAGA’s destruction happens in 10 yrs or 10 minutes, it can’t be doing enough.
This is the natural and predetermined end for conservatism in America. From the defection of southern Democrats over desegregation going back to Truman's time right through Reagan launching his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi with a speech about states' rights on to today when we have Trump as an open racist pushing fascism and Nazism into our politics and government, this is where is was going to end up.
Read more Heather Cox Richardson. We’re building what comes next — now. Americans have historically and repeatedly rejected the attempts of the wealthy few to seize total power over the rest of us. We have risen, expanding inclusion in our democracy, forming a more perfect union. We are rapidly building the power of nonviolent noncooperation — the proven most powerful way to prevent and defeat dictatorships. Not easy, but unstoppable.
from what Ive read, its true that many liberal Americans indeed do hope for better, and 'reject the attempts of the wealthy few to seize total power over the rest of us'.
How's that working out- has the dream been advancing?
If any of you haven’t seen the PBS documentary series, The American Revolution, I highly recommend it.
The colonists fought for a decade to create a land where people weren’t beholden to a king and in control of their own freedom.
FREEDOM! One of the biggest drivers of human aspirations and when faced with not having it, the furor in the face of losing it will be the force that stops the new age robber baron billionaires.
They need us much more than we need them-they are 1% and we are everyone else
Democratic capitulation and caution....they are best at taking knives to gun fights...if they decide to go down this road, another fascist will be vomited up after trump
Yes. This is what worries me--not whether the GOP/MAGA nightmare will fracture into infighting and passivity, but whether the Democrats will do everything they can to accelerate that, take power, and force the structural changes to enable them to keep that power. Such as making D.C. and Puerto Rico states, expanding the Supreme Court, reversing Citizens United, and repairing and restoring the agencies DOGE wrecked. Paul says we need two sane political parties. Let's say. Even so, I don't grant the right, or "conservatives," the presumption of acting in good faith. They basically exist, and are funded, to help the rich. Let them do what they can, post-MAGA, but under better (and enforcable) rules within a decent tax system.
Excellent comment and you hit the nail on the head regarding the deep, necessary, structural reforms needed. The problem with a two party system is, if both parties
simply become performative, pretending to oppose each other while maintaining the dark money system that allows them all to stay in power, even watershed moments like this with the extrajudicial killing of a white, female, American citizen by a State sanctioned paramilitary force won’t lead to significant change. See Rep Jeffries and Chuck Schumer’s refusal to fight for reductions in the massively swollen ICE/CBP budgets. 🤨 I think you all need to work harder for your candidates, legislators and laws at the local and state level. Take back power from the ground up. That’s how the Republicans did it! 🤷♂️
I agree with your point, but another fascist would have a tough act to follow after Trump. He has the genius and the secret sauce to mesmerize ignorant rubes enough to get them to venture out of their hovels and vote. That's not easy, or common.
Agreed. He gives it focus. Without something to rally around, they are just incapable rubes wandering in circles, muttering to themselves. Job One for us is to return them to that state.
You're right; we're hoping it's the end and of course anything can happen, but barring a violent civil war all we see now extrapolates out to the American people realizing their power without tens of thousands of people being killed in battle. We have our wallets. And we have women who are pissed at a system openly stacked against us lately, which is an understatement.
If your number is correct then 52% of women who voted in 2024 voted for someone other than Trump. Why do we not get conscious credit for that rather than subliminal blame?
Let's hope MEN step up in 2028, because they didn't in 2024, and men deserve blame for Trump.
Overall, men voted for Trump by 11 points (43 percent Harris – 54 percent Trump). Women voted for Harris by 6 points (51 percent Harris – 45 percent Trump).
But I agree. I hope more women realize what they're about to lose and overwhelm to electoral college as well as the popular vote and take control of both houses of Congress.
Leigh Hamilton, though you haven't developed your position to a great extent (who would? We're not writing position papers here), I agree with what you've said. Our Indivisible group here in rural Minnesota mainly consists of and is led by capable women. Then consider that American women in general are becoming splendid over-achievers compared to American men. We seem interested mainly in competitive beer drinking, cursing Libtards, and becoming the best video game players in our individual circle of friends. But, it's a (free, democratic, American) republic, if (women) can keep it.
Women don't have the Republic to keep - yet. Story: My husband read an article asserting younger men weren't having as much sex as they used to 20-30 years ago (comparing the same age groups). He blames the music and lack of "free love". I blame the chin beards.
Yes, women are excelling. The needle seems to be stuck in "I want a sandwich and a raging erection" for men.
When someone says, "48% of women voted for Trump" that generally means 48% of REPUBLICAN females, not all female voters, so those women were conned as well. They were all conned, because most of them are stupid. That's easy to understand and hard to forgive.
What works me up is that among Democratic voters, women outnumbered men in voting for Harris, yet women still seem to get the dog-whistle of blame for not having voted as they were supposed to. Hard to understand, hard to forgive.
Why do you think women don't get conscious credit? Women are not a monolithic bloc. Credit goes where it is earned. And you're certainly right to rage against those men who voted overwhelmingly against Harris and for Trump. One wonders what the outcome would have been had a white male had led the D ticket.
"Why do we not get conscious credit for that rather than subliminal blame?"
----
Sorry, but taking credit for a marginal majority doesn't work for me. Until we can acknowledge that a distressingly large percentage of women supported Trump ([deleted incorrect stats]), we can't address it properly.
Let me reiterate that it was 48% of *Republican* female voters, not all female voters. I don't understand why people can't get their heads around that. So that "marginal percentage" to which you're referring is within the Republican ranks.
A distressingly large proportion of voting men voted against Harris - Republicans and Democrats; obviously more Republican men of course, but still... Women made up the largest voting percentage for Harris. And it wasn't "marginal". Why is that so hard to understand? Have you looked at the demographic breakdowns?
Of 100% of female voters who voted for Trump (important distinction here) only 48% voted for Trump. Over half of female Republican women did NOT vote for Trump.
Of all registered voters, more voted for someone OTHER than Trump. He won male & female 49.8%, and Harris 48.3%. Had men stepped up to the plate, she could have won. But that's hindsight.
Women should absolutely take credit, and if you're wise, you'll stop unzipping your male privilege trousers and exposing yourself. You're blaming women for doing better than men - in both parties.
I don't blame either one, musk picked up those machines a few hours before election and they just let him do it, Russia doubled down as they saw in 2020 their hacking wasn't enough no one counted on the masses that showed up to vote, that's why the cheating was so powerful this time that they came outta the wood work destroyed election boxes set on fire one was soaked so they would be unreadable! They should have legally said this election was tampered with and it's null and void one election official just got caught with bags of elections in a mail bag pushed under a counter or something like that and when they called her out she just grabbed her purse and coat and walked out the door and nothing happened WHY?
Over half of ALL White women who voted at all voted for Trump (51%), but less than half of all women (thanks to strong Harris vote among women of color) did (44%). Women’s turnout wasn’t as high as in previous elections, some former Biden supporters among women (and even more so among men) stayed home, which baffles me. Less than half of white women with college degrees voted for Trump, which may have created the illusion of majority support among white women for Harris, but far less than half of all white women have degrees.
She wasn’t completely stupid. She knew very well that when things get too disgusting, people finally nope out, and it snowballs. Google this: Engineers under Stalin left USSR en masse by boat … I think she got the idea from there.
One key pillar of the today's GOP propaganda is that they are "outsiders". Victimhood is the selling point. The Republican contract with their voters is, "we're not those evil Democrats who have made your life horrible".
The problem with this strategy is that it defeats itself: the minute they gain power, as they now have (Trump is arguably the most powerful president in US history), their voters now want... actual results.
Trump and the GOP made a clear economic promise in the 2024 election: they were going to abolish income taxes and use tariffs instead that China and Mexico will pay for.
Yes, it was a stupid promise, but a lot of stupid people believed it and voted R because of that. The problem is, they can't deliver on this nonsense and unlike other broken promised like The Wall or whatever, this broken promise *hurts* because it's a direct economic benefit they had probably counted on in their financial planning.
When Republicans base so much of their pitch to Americans on their being OUT of power, victory is self-defeating. Trump boasting that he's the most powerful president ever (and he is) detracts from their position because now their voters want actual results.
I don't think Republicans are "outsiders." Rather, they pose as outsiders, they pose as new-hatched, uncorrupted people, even when Republican office-holders have been involved in politics for decades. Ronald Reagan was a new (sort of) face in 1980, but was a conservative movement figure for some time, though he claimed to be an outsider and an innocent.
Yes, I didn't quite express that correctly in my first draft. The #1 cable news channel by audience--Fox News--tells their audience they must fear the "main stream media", etc. etc. A key part of the Republican argument to voters is victimhood, and the key to that is to make their audience feel like they are the underdogs.
If Republicans lose this, they suddenly have to... govern. And we all know they don't want to do that.
The racists may go, but the wealthy, and their control of media that uses ever more advanced psychological manipulation, still pretend there's a moral justification for selfishness. At the lower income levels, of course, we have the Prosperity Gospel types who have already bought into that, and any cultural group that sees itself as higher caste.
I dont understand what you mean by "the natural and predetermined end for conservatism in America" - if you mean Trump is a clueless and dangerous simpleton like Reagan and most of the modern presidents then I agree. Fascism has been surging since Truman.
But they fought fire with fire something the Democrats aren't willing to do, even the civil war was fighting fire with fire and I fear that it's we're were heading but I'm not sure I know what the southern states actually want?
Good morning, Mr. Krugman. How is joining Mike Pence's foundation a sign of anything more than a chance at keeping a job in the same general political universe? Pence was a loyal foot soldier for Trump whose unctious performative piety was always devoid of Christian charity, honesty, or character.
Agree. I live in Indiana, where Pence was governor for one term. He has persistently characterized himself as "a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order." No mention of American or even Hoosier.
As governor, Pence embarrassed the state when he promoted a virulently anti-gay so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which he was unable to defend in a TV interview. He also deleted comments critical of him in his official social media accounts, and tried to establish a state-run media, i.e. propaganda, outlet. He was on track to possibly lose reelection in red Indiana in 2016, until Trump rescued him by choosing him as his vice president. Pence is not a better alternative to MAGA.
Not to mention the fact that Pence was in the WH when meetings were held re: Jan 6 to which he was privy, and he said NOTHING. It wasn't until the J6 mob started shouting "Hang Mike Pence" that he wee'd his britches and chickened out. Then he decided to take the high road - but only when his own life was at stake. Big hero /s.
But the U.S. media called him out as a hero, and subsequently Indiana refused to obey Trump's gerrymandering command. Now Pence is presenting himself as the Sane Anti-Trump Conservative who will restore traditional conservative values.
He has the personality and animation of a cardboard cutout, and the MAGA cult would eat his liver for breakfast on day one. But, bless 'im, the man will split the ticket.
How about a think tank or Republican party that recommits to separation of church and state, for a start?
I am heartily sick of political hacks that cater to Christian nationalists (read misogynists and racists) who demonized everyone who aren't members of their group.
Wasn't Pence almost killed during the capital insurrection? His bodyguards were calling their WAGs to say goodbye Why the hell is he even still loyal to Trump?
I like to think that many conservatives are disconfited by, for example, Ice raids. (Government overreach and all that) i do, in fact, know a few. Dunno how many. Have serious doubts about their guts. But they do exist.
I really don't mean to get in an argument. I just need to have a little hope. There have been a few. (Liz Cheney, Adam Kitzenger, Jeff Flake. The Indiana Senate) but they mostly got bounced. I chuckle sardonically when Trump hits some new low, and there are a spate of stories about how the rank-and-file are whispering of their concerns. (And delivering bold speeches to their bathroom mirrors)
Le vrai sujet n'est pas le modèle. C'est l'architecture autour, la boucle de contrôle, la fiabilité, et le niveau d'autonomie qu'on accepte de donner. Sans ça, un agent reste juste une démo brillante.
I disagree. Mike Pence was a loyal foot soldier in Trump 1. But when he was pressured to nullify the election results, he didn't, at great cost to himself. He is a Conservative Christian and I disagree with him on many policies, but he isn't anti-democratic. At this point in America, that's what matters. His guiding light isn't domination and retribution, as is Trump's and the MAGA lords.
As a moderate liberal, I believe that we need to respect and applaud differences. We need to recognize those that share our fundamental values. Those values aren't about women's rights, abortion or health care. They are the values of rule of law and support for democracy. When those are re-established, we can fight about policies.
Pence perfected the art of moral compromise dressed in Sunday best. His piety was always transactional, his principles for rent. That he finds refuge among the professionally devout should surprise no one.
Oh I do hope this article is correct. As a Brit looking on from the outside it is totally incomprehensible and deeply depressing seeing what Trump has done to the US, its citizens and the rest of Western civilisation. From being the leader of the free world, the US has become a pariah - the sight of Trump and Netanyahu, two felonious corrupt leaders embracing each other yesterday typifies the depths to which US government corruption and immorality has sunk. Let’s hope to god that 2026 will see the beginning of the end of Trump and MAGA. Let’s see a return of American fair play, decency and the restoration of a working judiciary and functioning legislature.
Brovo----Good, good, post. My hopes are same. America can get back to being being somewhat it used to be. Hope, hope, and more hope that we can rally. It is going to take all of the Dems and many Reps to want to take us back beyond Trumpism. Some Reps are beginning to see the light..
The sight of two indicted leaders embracing while democracy burns is not irony but prophecy. When power protects only itself, the republic becomes a mere costume worn by grifters.
Russell Vought of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) who tends to operate under the national media radar is one of the major architects of P2025. He's captain, or at least first mate, of the white male Christian supremacist boat from the White House. If women aren't pregnant, they should be in bed being impregnated and obeying their husbands in every room at home. He'd strip them of their vote. He absolutely *loathes* "wokeism" and liberalism.
Doesn't it feel like there are too many fronts to fight at once and we don't know where to look? I believe that's deliberate on this administration's part. We're exhausted, tired, confused, and angry. Their hope is to paralyze us all. They are bracing for the mid-terms. I believe they know they've lost; they just can't get off life support.
I think you and I don’t differ. The electoral college is the issue but it cannot be done away with easily without a constitutional amendment. Hence my wish that a couple of red states need to be in play for democrats - campaign money won’t flow into red states that cannot be won. Trump’s chaotic handling of the Obamacare and loss of revenue to farmers owing to tariffs might provide an opening.
Prof. Krugman, you "guess that there have long been many people at Heritage who were privately disgusted at what the organization had become." Possibly. Maybe. Heritage has had terrible leaders before; Sen. DeMint, for example, inspired the exit of many Heritage employees. But working at Heritage is a good credential for Rs. And the real function of Heritage is cover for corporations. Corporations fund "analysis" that they can use to secure legislation, deregulation, and tax breaks. If Heritage no longer is the preeminent "think tank" for such corporate money, then Stephen Miller's group or Mike Pence's group or some other will replace it.
Of course Heritage is not by any means the only right-wing "think tank." Many others are nurtured through hard-to-trace donations from the Koch Brothers and other enemies of democracy. Most, I think, are meant to support low taxes for industrialists and high-tech bros. and reduce the authority of the federal government to regulate for the benefit of the masses. Few seem to be as overtly theocratic as Heritage.
Let us hope and pray that Steven Miller gets no place of importance. He is running the Trump office now. Running it badly. Has a Natzi view, even admits it.
The Heritage Foundation is indeed a clearinghouse for yesterday's zealots. The Moral Majority died; the Tea Party drowned; but the personnel merely changed offices. The crusade continues under different letterhead.
Was there any consequence for the January 6, insurrectionists? I wouldn't be surprised to see Trump issue a blanket pardon before he leaves office. Presuming that he and his ilk ever do.
The Constitution says "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
When the President says Russia is our best friend and the European nations are pretty close to being our enemies, this gets very confusing.
I have come to believe the 2026 midterms are at risk. If they are allowed to happen, it will be under duress. The results will be questioned. It may be the end. In the immediate future, everything will be an emergency.
There has to be a serious rebellion against Trump. He is a madman and a monster. He has to be removed even if his replacement is scary to ponder. There are only 11 months to ammegeddon or redemption.
I hope so too Jim. But I'm not holding my breath because so many Americans are disengaged. They bitch about affordability but mostly shrug their collective shoulders about the erosion of the Constitution, racism, and antisemitism. The MAGAts are one slogan away from a win. Expect big checks in the way of rebates as proof of the success of Trumpiffs.
Elections happened even during the Civil War. They'll happen. Besides, they need to happen for legitimacy (even 2020 election deniers believe in having elections, they just don't believe 2020 was free and fair).
The things we need to worry about are voter suppression, voter intimidation, and denial of the results. We need to do everything we can to mitigate those risks (and to win, of course).
Excellent follow up to my having finished Navalny’s memoir and then watching a bunch of videos of him being interviewed by Lesley Stahl. The downfall of Heritage cannot come soon enough. [ BTW, I had forgotten about Pussy Riot. ]
I’m about to finish Navalny’s excellent book. Among its many themes, Navalny describes what life is like when a society is completely corrupted by constant lying … and it’s coming to the U-S-A
Sooner or later, the deeply ingrained anti-semitism of the far right was bound to surface, with the Heritage gang and MAGA.
At which point Israel and its supporters may regret its own drift to a racist far right and the alliances with MAGA Republicans, as those real anti-semites re-emerge.
Agree. Ditto for black people who become fabulously wealthy by carrying water for white supremacy… double scrabble points for black females who throw women under the bus!
The MAGA implosion is, to some extent, well-described in the piece yesterday in the Times about the schism that developed between MT Greene and Trump. She is outright on her continued political adherence to Trump, but something in her snapped. She was faced with a moral crisis, and she chose political ostracism in order to preserve at least a minimal level of Christian values (a sort of replay of the key moment in Huck Finn where he chooses to go to hell rather than turn Jim in as a runaway slave). In the case of conservatives, they have spent huge effort (Project 2025) to tear things down, but without building things up in an alternative vision based on our "now". Healthcare is the best example of this: They despise the PPACA (Obamacare), but there is no cogent alternative on the table. DOGE attacked the agencies, but it saved next to nothing. In the process, it caused critical weakening of FEMA, to the detriment of red states. At some point, conservatives need to ask themselves just what they want, aside from a huge ballroom on the White House grounds.
MJT did not face a moral crisis, she faced a financial crisis, in that her own family was going to have to pay a lot. If she had faced a moral crisis she would denounce all the other wacko views that she has proclaimed over the time she’s been in government.
True, but Margie has become quite wealthy in her short career as a legislator… me thinks she wants to run for president and this nytimes reader skipped right over that article
You should read it. It was interesting. I will never be a fan of hers, but there was some interesting tidbits in it. I found the threats of violence she faces and what Trump told her about the Epstein files particularly interesting. Her journey, as ugly as it was, was informative.
She is jumping ship, but she would have been better off waiting instead of being one of the first.
I would love to know which of her past political position she has discounted? If she did quit because of the death threats From Trump supporters and because Trump threatened her too, that’s a whole different thing. But she should just say that. Her part in the big lie is hard to discount.
She said that Trump was going to primary her and it didn't make sense for her to spend a million dollars or more campaigning to keep her seat. The threats were icing on the cake. She retired after her pension was secured. There's been speculation that she'll compete in State politics.
MUSK AND HIS MUSKRATS DID AMERICA alot of harm and Trump let it happen. It saved no money as they pillaged our systems and collected our data, for a purpose that we will find out about later.
Well said. I know a fair number of affluent people who voted for Trump, as my particular job in a big company involves working with senior management. I had the rare opportunity to speak freely with one of them recently. A former manager and current friend had just told me in very colorful language what he really thought about certain individuals in our office, and I shot back with my unvarnished thoughts about Trump and Musk. I think he was genuinely shocked by the depth of my anger … whereas I already knew that he hates my current boss.
I saw MTG's appearance on The View. I wonder whether whether some events, such as the abuse of women by Epstein and his buddied, triggered a crisis of faith for her. Perhaps she began to understand that if she is truly Christian, she must treat others as Jesus would have done. What strikes me from all of this is that a strong Democratic party candidate for president will need to pound away at the lack of Judeo-Christian morals in the current administration.
Why do you keep equating religion with politics? Adherence to any organised religion calls into question a politician’s motives as evidenced by the MAGA christo-fascists currently running the country. The American constitution was founded on the principle of a separation of religion from government, but now if you’re not an avowed Christian you can kiss goodbye to any senior office of state. An assertion of faith and reference to the bible lets a politician off the hook for all manner of wicked behaviour. Let’s keep it secular and be suspicious of any Pence or Vance figure who tells you his version of the faith is the truth, and hang the rest.
I would be cautious about assuming that what happens at an institution like Heritage has much relevance to "MAGA," which as a movement is really about voters rather than institutions. In particular, it is about voters who have lost faith in institutions and grasp a cult of personality as an alternative. MAGA voters probably have as little interest in educated elites in historically "conservative" institutions (however one wishes to define conservative) as they do educated elites in any other institution. MAGA is about belief as identity and it needs to have its beliefs shaken before it will abandon its identify. I have a hard time believing that anything happening at Heritage will affect them. I do wonder how the performance of Trump's businesses (DJT and the meme coin) will affect them, but I think it will be bankruptcies and unemployment that will finally jolt them into a different frame of mind.
I don't want to be too optimistic, but it's very possible that we are witnessing an "extinction burst" of the MAGA right. As hoped for "benefits" of these extreme policies fail to materialize, the defections and fragmentation will accelerate.
I appreciate the analysis of what a post-Trump era might look like for the Heritage Foundation. What about extending that forecast to what a post-Trump America looks like?
I see a problem: MAGA did not come out of nowhere. The Republican Party has been on the trajectory toward Trump ever since the people behind Reagan took over the party in 1980. An alliance between the white supremacists and ultra wealthy has dominated the party ever since and it has become more extreme every decade, from Reagan to Gingrich to the Tea Party to Trump. In the beginning the coalition was successful in getting the Fundamentalist support (probably because of the racism) without giving them much, but that eroded until the so-called Christian Nationalists and extreme White Supremacists took over. Meanwhile, Reaganism produced the massive inequality and anti-government mania we suffer from now. I'm not sure that Republicans going back to "Reagan conservativism" is going to help. Have the "never Trumpers" given up on their beloved Zombie economic ideas? Will they admit that turning the country over to Reagan and his backroom cabal was an historic mistake? Until they do, even if they should wrest back control of the Republican Party, we'll just be in a continuing cycle that will lead back to Trumpism. And don't get me started on the uselessness of the current Democratic establishment to do anything about it.
Adding that I would really like to why so many men are willing to see their wives, daughters, sisters lose the right to make their own decisions about their bodies.
Why are so many men willing to treat women as less than fully human?
I think the Never Trumpers -- at least at The Bulwark -- were never hard core trickle-down zealots. And yes, they've moved away from some of the zombie economics. These folks were largely 'information workers' for the GOP: message crafters, coms people... They were more Bushies re: domestic policy ('compassionate conservatism') and into Reagan for the foreign policy (standing up to the Evil Empire). Confronted with the rise of Trump, and MAGA swallowing many political people they though they knew, they've had to question many of their assumptions and consider whether, as Stuart Stevens put it, "It was all a lie."
Perhaps these are the sorts of folks Prof. K. imagines would lead a reborn GOP. Tellingly, as I read them, they actually understand their brand of conservatism has far to small a constituency with either the electorate or the funderate to emerge from the wilderness. The political situation throughout the West is the utter collapse of the old center-right, with it's former constituents moving toward powerful rising fascist movements, pitched against stumbling fading neo-liberal corporatist centrist parties, with those facing pressures from the democratic left.
Isn't the Democratic Party also facing a problem with its voters? Norman Solomon has an interesting piece in today's Guardian about the DNC. Yesterday, there was a good piece on the Working Families Party that is making headway in Democratic districts, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/29/working-families-party-2026-run
Is it the disgust that inequality has driven the Democrats to chase big donors, both corporate and private, and accede to their wishes, rather than the people they serve?
Perhaps we are in for a political upheaval. The two main political parties in the UK are rapidly losing voter share to other parties, both on the left and the right, as both of the two big parties failed to deliver for their voters. Voters are looking for alternatives. Why should the US be immune to such desires?
Maybe so, but I take heart that so many Democrats when they talk to people in the states’ various races come out winning. Because they’re talking to people. Which used to be called retail politics. If they keep doing that in more and more races especially down ticket races, it may be that the working families party could join with the Democrats. But the UK is different they vote for parties not for people. So I don’t think that’s a perfect analogy. In this country if you split off into third parties, you give all the power to the one you’re trying to beat. Because they just need to hang together.
Actually talking to people is good. You may recall the Democrats pretty much don't even field candidates in many districts, believing it is a waste of resources. That is an unnecessary loss and an opening for a 3rd party that becomes the opposing party in those districts.
Strategic candidacy and voting can make a difference. Changing the voting method can too. For example, changing First Past the Post to Alternative Voting, as has been done in a number of US States.
Talking to people also means remaining active in teh community after elections, even if you lose. Democrats often fail to do so, just turning up for elections and then disappearing. There may be no sustained Party presence in the community. leaving the opposing party to influence the local population. Many years ago, when I had a problem that needed fixing, only the local Republican responded and fixed the problem. None of the Democrats I wrote to even bothered to reply, even though they had the power to fix the problem. I regard this as an example of "Judge people by their actions, not their words."
Yes, of course they do, but it’s not a feature of the political system like it is in the UK. The thing that mystifies me in this country is that some people say they’re disgusted with the Republicans and they hate Trump but yet they also say they would never vote democratic. I guess if you’re a Democrat that’s good news because they probably aren’t voting at all at that point!
We have had new parties arise, just not very often. I see the desire for a new party at our local level. I would like to see the formation of a new party. I think the Democratic elite who brought us the 2024 disaster needs to be gone.
The article makes it plain that they mostly endorse candidates, much like Emily's List. Presumably, those are progressive candidates, mostly Democrats, and not the candidate of choice of the local party during primaries. They could become spoilers if they start fielding candidates for federal elections, like the Green Party in 2016, or the Independent Party that was a spoiler for the GOP in the 1990s. Nevertheless, some Congresspeople are neither D nor R. Progressive candidates would be welcome, especially if they unseat DINOs like my supposedly Democratic House rep.
Typically, popular candidates pull the Big Party candidates in their political direction. The Tea Party, then MAGA, pulled the GOP further to the right. In the UK, reform has done the same to the Tory party. I expect the polling successes of the Greens and LibDems will pull the Labour Party back towards the left, from its rightward drift.
The Working Families Party has endorsed a bunch of Democrats. They have advocated for eliminating the party line on New Jersey primary ballots, which were eventually eliminated as the result of a lawsuit brought by Democrat Andy Kim (Kim v. Hanlon, 3:24-cv-01098). In short, it doesn’t seem like an actual political party, a very influential group, or a threat to the Democratic Party. At most it can hope to influence the outcome of some Democratic primary elections.
If they push the Ds leftward at the state and national levels, that would still be of value. The rightward drift of Ds rightward ever since the Clinton administration is a problem that needs reversing.
I wouldn’t hold your breath just yet. It’s likely to get even worse before it gets better. I’ve seen it too many times in other countries over a 40 year career in international finance.
According to his chart, almost a third of Americans are either adherents to or in sympathy with Christian nationalism. That’s frightening.
That poll was from two years ago. I wonder what it would look like now? But I agree, it is frightening that so many people are sympathetic. I also wonder if they understand that Christian nationalism is NOT Christianity?
I don't think they understand that! I have two lifelong friends (one was my pastor's wife at one time), and they are convinced this is all part of God's plan. It sickens me.
I saw a nice placard on Substack. It read - Religion is like a penis: It's okay to have one, it's okay to be proud of it. However: do not pull it out in public, do not push it on children, do not write laws with it, do not think with it.
"Religion should be treated like sex; keep it to your bedroom".
Kind of silly, and unfortunately just another way of denying evolution. I suggest reading up on cognitive science and evolutionary ethics - religion was part and parcel of it all - for good and for bad.
The key to word being *was*. It's totally irrelevant now and an utter waste of time. In my 'humble' opinion.
And that goes for a clitoris also.
God's "plan", which means it's a power grab by these phony Christians
The Heritage Foundation was part of the campaign as a power grab over the last 50 years by the wealthy oligarchy in America that began after the Powell memo in 1971 to control the federal government and the legal system including the Supreme Court. As Krugman said, the wealthy oligarchy gathered support from Christian Nationalists who wanted changes in the legal system. However, the main objective was to have the federal government take and steal wealth from 95% of people and give it to the top 5% with most going to the top 0.01%. The wealth transfer must be stopped by restoring fair taxes. The tax rates for the top 1% and 5% in 2024 should be changed to what the tax rates were for the top 1% and 5% in 1965 with the tax rates for the 95% in 2024 remaining unchanged to what the rates were in 2024. That would create $1.3 trillion of new federal revenue for funding solutions to core problems including affordability of healthcare and housing.
For Democrats to get elected in 2028, a PROJECT 2029 is needed to solve core problems including affordability and putting an end to the autocracy run by the wealthy oligarchy in America which was enabled by the insurrection that began on January 6, 2021, and continued in 2025.
Trump was elected because voters were angry at politicians in both political parties who controlled the federal government but ignored affordability for decades. Unfortunately, voters believed Trump’s lying that he would solve affordability and bring back manufacturing. A new generation of progressive Democrats can get elected in 2026 and 2028 if they campaign with a plan in PROJECT 2029 to implement solutions to affordability and other core problems that must be funded with new taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
After getting elected in 2028, Democrats must solve the core problem in the legal system by enforcing the federal law on insurrection in 2029 to arrest, convict, and imprison Trump, members of his administration including his Cabinet, Republicans in Congress, and six justices on the Supreme Court. What’s happened in America in 2025 is an insurrection by Trump, his administration, Republicans in Congress, and six justices on the Supreme Court. The insurrection started on January 6, 2021, and was planned in PROJECT 2025 to continue as planned in 2025. Insurrection is defined as a felony crime in federal law (18 U.S. Code § 2383) in language that is clear and easy to understand:
“Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
Rebellion against “. . .the laws thereof” can bring fines or imprisonment not more than ten years.
Trump will claim he is the authority of the United States, but he, his cabinet officers, DOGE, are in rebellion against the laws of the United States.
From Forbes:
For the top 5%, a net worth of $1.17 million to $2.7 million secures your spot, while the top 10% requires between $970,900 and $1.9 million. If you are aspiring to the top 25%, you’ll need roughly $340,000 to $500,000, a milestone many Gen Z professionals can target early in their careers. At the pinnacle, the top 0.1% command a staggering $62 million, often amassed through entrepreneurship, high-growth investments, or inheritance.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2025/04/22/what-net-worth-puts-you-in-the-top-1-5-and-10-of-americans/
Just adding this to point out where everyone stands. The top 1% is $11.5-13.5M while 5 and 10% is probably a lot of "middle or upper middle-class" folks. The focus needs to be on the 0.1%
William L Miller, I am very happy to have run across your post this morning. That I did is a perfect example of "Something I Learned while looking up something else." (I think someone famous invented that category, but even ChatGPT had trouble identifying who it might be. Possibly columnist **Sydney J. Harris.**).
Anyway, your comment above is the truest, most succinct, and most accurate summary of the last 50 years of American political and economic history I've ever read. I'd guess that it's at least partly based on your familiarity with studies by mathematician Carter C. Price. ("Trends in Income 1975 to 2018") and updated to 2023 in his second article. Both published by Rand. I'm not sufficiently well-read to be sure, but I think very few other writers on American political history are aware of what you described in your comment except, of course, the authoritative, humane historian Heather Cox Richardson whom I read on Substack. First thing. Nearly every morning.
If knowledge of this history was more widespread, then the appropriate degree of (nonviolent) rage could be directed at conservative Republican oligarchs and their populist, Christian Nationalist, MAGA allies and we'd stand a better chance of defeating them. As it is now, I think most Americans don't know who has been abusing them and diverting the wealth generated by our highly productive economy away from them, to themselves for, as you say, the last fifty years.
Good essay. Thank you.
Reforming the tax code and returning to a confiscatory marginal tax rate is in fact exactly the fix, and it'll happen, but it may take generations.
In the short term, you'd have to have a Democrat as a strong and charismatic leader and the willing support of a supermajority in both Houses, but it could be done. But, where's the beef? No such Democrat exists at the moment. We face decades of instability.
> The tax rates for the top 1% and 5% in 2024 should be changed to what the tax rates were for the top 1% and 5% in 1965 with the tax rates for the 95% in 2024 remaining unchanged to what the rates were in 2024.
Sigh. This naïveté again. The billionaires do not pay income tax because they do not have W-2 income. They are not taxed like you and me. Whether they pay any is entirely a choice based on whether they collect their living expenses through capital gains, interest or loans taken out on their holdings. Except where they willingly step into this trap, the top marginal tax rate is for some well paid doctors, lawyers and engineers, not billionaires. Changing income tax rates is not a way to get to the 0.1%.
It might work if you remove the special tax rate for long term capital gains. It might work to tax wealth instead. We probably need to institute a tax on robot / AI labor. However, as it stands all these lets raise the top marginal tax rates to 90% isn't going to change the tax rates of excessively wealthy individuals because they can go without income entirely their entire lives.
See "Buy-Borrow-Die"
What a thread! :D this must be put in pol.is really and visualised!
Yes. Thanks. This has clarity. :)
My own brain dump:
*What about citizens united in this?
*I see an new generation of dems pracricing organizing of everything at NoKings.org? :)
* We need internet-native good structure thinking info-enginweering nerds like Cory doctorow to regulate social media intelligently and clearly with an explained synthesis of free speech, anti-monopoly and anti-corruption of reality, truth and ultimately systems, economy and people
* And regulate the competition for global investmenrs top level or balance it with organized internatilnalist worker movement networks to not get a race to bottom - or maybe not if YOU just quit dragging the conditions for workers to the bottom ! ;D
* And somehow inject other perspectives in the bubbles. Often it just takes ONE voice that goes against the inthink to keep it sane. Ive often practiced being that voice.
* Digital democracy is the solution for the totally splintered media debate which goes nowhere and buids no new grand bargains, needed for cohesion - check Estonia, South Korea, Taiwan! And visualized collective debate in pol.is !
* The goal is going from current infotech violent Renaissance, to a real internet Enlightenment! :)
Precisely.
"God's plan" is the last refuge of the ignorant (and in some cases of scoundrels). No thinking required when the Big Guy (it's always a guy for these people) is taking care of everything.
And - one might say "miraculously" - "God" always - always - agrees with whatever it is that they happen to think.
No. It's not refuge for ignorant, but one for cruel people. It's the American version of "I was just following the rule" heard in Europe in 1945. The Bible says something to the effect of "Who knows God's, who has been his counselor?"
Exactly.
Is is interesting that "God's Plan" almost never contains love, compassion,and/or hope.
Sounds like a pretty cruel god.
And I'll have them know it!
Well, MY gods plan does! ;D
Absolutely, but I also think this is where the divide is finally happening/going to happen. There are a (still too small but) growing number of actual Christians who are either gaining enough courage or finally seeing the truth and are beginning to push back. When that group, people who actually practice what Christianity actually teaches, gets it together, that *should* be enough to shatter MAGA. The question is, will they have corrupted enough, will we have leaned too far into authoritarian territory to actually be able to kick them out of positions of power and to the gutter? And if we really want to reclaim our country and work toward regaining some respect in the world, toss them in jail where they actually belong?
There are tens of millions of US Christians who stick with Jesus and abhor Christian nationalism. And that’s not a new phenomenon.
Yes....I have tried to point that out. When my friend was so angry at me for not voting for Trump, I tried to tell her that many, many Christians are not voting for him, and it was like she just didn't believe me. But it keeps hope alive for me.
We have to get louder and we have to vote in every election, from school board to President, and we have to run where possible.
well they need to SPEAK UP!
Yes...and I wonder how much brainwashing is a part of this. It feels like a cult.
Exactly.
True believers will think anything, no matter how wretched, is part of God's plan. How can it not be?
It appears that MTG has now publicly and permanently defected from trumpism. NYT recently did a lengthy interview with her. So, if a diehard like MTG woke up and said no more, it’s likely that there are others who are much less devoted than she’s been.
The NYT article was gifted by Simon Rosenberg this morning through his Substack account. Scroll to the bottom of this comment for access to the active link -
“New York Times has published a must-read, long-profile of Marjorie Taylor Greene (gift link), ‘I Was Just So Naive’: Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump. Here’s one of the many remarkable passages:
“For Greene, the decades that Epstein spent eluding justice for exploiting and sexually assaulting countless girls and young women while amassing a fortune, and the seeming efforts by the government to cover up the injustice, “represents everything wrong with Washington,” she told me. This September, Greene spoke with several of Epstein’s victims for the first time in a closed-door House Oversight Committee meeting. She knew that the women had paid their own way to come to Washington. She saw some of them trembling and crying as they spoke. Their accounts struck her as entirely believable. Greene herself had never been sexually abused, but she knew women who had. In her own small way, Greene later told me, she could understand what it was like for a woman to stand up to a powerful man.
“After the hearing, Greene held a news conference at which she threatened to identify some of the men who had abused the women. (Greene says that she didn’t know those names herself but that she could have gotten them from the victims.) Trump called Greene to voice his displeasure. Greene was in her Capitol Hill office, and according to a staff member, everyone in the suite of rooms could hear him yelling at her as she listened to him on speakerphone. Greene says she expressed her perplexity over his intransigence. According to Greene, Trump replied, “My friends will get hurt.”
“When she urged Trump to invite some of Epstein’s female victims to the Oval Office, she says, he angrily informed her that they had done nothing to merit the honor. It would be the last conversation Greene and Trump would ever have.”
The gifted link to the full NYT story is included in the post below. If interest, scroll down close to the bottom of his post and you’ll see the story with an active link.
https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/trumps-staggering-betrayal-of-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1223483&post_id=182956408&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=9qpal&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The Epstein fallout is the key to Trump's and MAGA fall.
White evangelical voters might hold their noses at Trump's un Christ-like behavior or maintain some level of cognitive dissonance, but when it comes to pedophilia - that is too much to stomach.
Agree. A bridge too for…even for the most devoted trump cult members, like MTG.
The people of Sodom and Gomorrah thought that too.
Depends, though, on your definition of a god. God's just another god. Your friends would say that everything is part of their "God". One can't take these things personally.
Perhaps they regard the holocaust as part of Gods plan too since it happened under Gods watch. Saying that what ever happens is part of Gods plan is specifically motivated by an almost total lack of moral development. If everything that happens is part of Gods plan then what do we need Satan for? Oh yeah, Satan was also part of Gods plan for testing the world, but you see we are charged with telling the difference between the influence of God VS Satan, if we conflate them we have no moral ability, we fail the test.
We just emerged from two world wars where Christians murdered hundreds of millions of other Christians for the sake of NATIONALISM. Jesus said "sell all you own and come follow me" The only way anyone owns anything is through nationalism, without nation states to protect property there is none, selling all you own means rejecting nationalism as the ultimate authority.
Satan tested Jesus by offering him every nation, an offer Jesus refused when he said "get thee behind me Satan" and that is what we should say to Christian Nationalists, "get thee behind me".
"All part of God's plan" is meaningless, because God's plan is defined as "whatever actually happens."
Scott…you are so right. I have read that book. Very good.
Republican Christianity is not Christianity. Not in the biblical sense. Indeed, most Christians, including Republicans, routinely ignore Jesus’ teachings. Jesus would be aghast at America today.
I've said many times about Christian Nationalists and the Christian Right - I don't want to define who is a "Christian" but the Bible they're reading/quoting isn't the Bible I'm reading and following.
Clearly not. I read the article and the strongest support for Christian Nationalism comes from those who attend church one or more times a week. And they think "being Christian' is necessary to be an American.
Then they have no idea what it means to be a Christian OR an American.
It is way past time to tax the churches.
Don't mix politics and religions (your forefathers even prescribed it in their declaration of independence)
Jesus was EXECUTED by the ROMAN NATION which makes the term "Christian Nationalism" an oxymoron. Jesus said "give Caesar what is Caesars" to specifically indicate that ones soul does not belong to any nation. Christian Nationalism is the kind of movement that Jesus warned us against when he said that he would be betrayed by they who claim to follow him.
I'm guessing it's the same, give or take a couple points. And I'd bet if you were to take a poll from 10 years ago, 15, however many....it'd be roughly the same. Which is to say that faction has always been among us. In fact, I'd wager to say it's probably so strong right now because it'd waning, not b/c it's waxing. They're powerful b/c they overtook a GOP that'd been hollowed out. It's like a shooting star, burning brightest right before it burns out.
How exactly it happens, is hard to say. Something to keep in mind, though: MAGA is a personality cult. Some members want white nationalism. Regardless, the loyalty is to Trump; not the GOP; not whatever "conservatism" is. Trump the man. Who's not long for the world. Personality cults don't transfer well.
It's not like Reagan passing the baton to Bush. Vance doesn't have "it". Nor do DJTJ or Eric. When Don goes, there'll be a struggle for power. And it won't be pretty. That's when I think you'll see a lot of the crackup.
They do not understand this difference, they right all his wrongs, just because they elected him
Too much of the kool aid for a long time.
The extraterrestrial MAGA species has killed many humans in the US and replaced them with superficially liberal voters who actually vote according to the needs of the MAGA invasion. In particular "the boys" have killed and replaced at least 7.5 million human lesbians. Most overtly human lesbians in Florida and Georgia are actually extraterrestrials. Many MAGA voters hold two registrations, just as Steve Bannon was registered in FL and DC during the 2016 presidential election.
This MAGA takeover cannot be diffused easily until there's a law which says only a human being can be a US citizen. And then back that law with in-person voting and DNA testing at the polling place.
Too bad we can't deport the extraterrestrials to their place of origin, but we can continue to hunt their spacecraft in Earth's oceans.
So true! Christian Nationalism is NOT Christianity. Do these followers of Christian’s Nationalism know anything at all about the kindness of Jesus? Jesus taught love and compassion. Christian Nationalists believe in HATE.
Yes .. as Yuval Noah Harari says, story is what we belive in. We all have our holy ones, the ones giving us existensial bliss and meanig. The ones we feel are True. Be they holy scriptures, theories or history of success for a football team... Or your kisds and friends or dog or society. Anything worth following wirh curiosity and love.
I feel that now is a time of sorrow for you... You have run so far and for so long on exceptionalism, hope and faith, and suddenly.. its not possible anymore. The furues we seem to run towards... Is no longer desirable for most of us. :/
But you know what? I think it's because... we have arrived. :o We are not supposed to run anywhere anymore. We are supposed to slow down, and rest, and let the soul and purpose catch up with us. Sprout roots, all the way back to Kalahari where our genes originates from. :o No longer be rolling stones, but get positively indigenously PRESENT.
Grow new respectful relations with ourselves and others. Understand and marvel at how we really see the same things, just in such different ways! And that everybody seem to comes to the same place eventually, even if starting out in wildly different directions.
Always intuitively reinventing the things that gives a feeling of distinct resonance from our genes, like how to give birth and make love, and dance and laugh at a pun. <3 Remember what was said in Havamal, the Viking book of wisdom - humans is humans joy. Ultimately.
... And when it isn't, we must organize differently.
We now have all the tech and knowledge we need to rebuild and emulate a more hunter/gatherer style life in top of tech. If we just find/reclaim the right stories to tell around it, and start to tell them. <3 And always remember the hunter gatherers basic needs.
Abraham Maslow was blow away by those people. He said they had ALL their basic needs fulfilled from the beginning. They went straight for the highest level - self realisation, personal development. We recreate that life when living in for example a good leaderless ashram with nice people.
Or at a really nice hipppish, cooperative folk music festical, living in tents, enjoying eveybodys company, helping our naturally with everything that is needed. <3 Everything that has sproutes out of the inspirational seed that Woodstock was - YOU dared to follow your genes and invent that! :D Thank you! <3 It was in a small place like that I became fully human, in the nineties.
And the troubles that we see is much because of the immense amounts of trauma we have collected and bestowed upon each others on the way here. Agricultural trauma, with constant warfare and slavery. But at last we have enslaved the machines to do the hard work for us! If we can only keep from running so fast we end up enslaved instead. ;) ;p Oh the irony.
I am looking for them. Practricing to write them.
I find it half amusing, half frustrating that its so easy to see how the "blind belief" component spills over to blind faith in the "invisible hand of the market"... Making this a switch-and-bait trick between God, and Mammon, plus Fortuna, lady luck.
Just because they managed to cheerypick Adam Smith beyond all recogniton to make him as viral among the more practically minded as Marx. He would be SO angry for that. We MUST avenge him by educating about the lost stuff, the parts of tending to the markets, too! They are everywhere, really, they are really COMMONS :o , that need to be guarded from tragedy!
And who needs added choices to whenever good choices are lacking! Case in point - political parties! ;) ;p
Really, we invented the internet as a virtual market where estate was endless and entry fees low. So it would always be simple to just create an alternative. And opensource contributed so much to that!
And it worked too in the beginning and still does, there ARE far better alternatives than Facebook available, for example - its just that the info marked flipped silently from scarcity to overflow. :o Taking us from the knowledge society to the attention society, and removed the most knowledgeable from the top, and installed the most attention grabbing. =:/ With ANY means!
Being his own media, and making his own daily TV show our of reality! Twisting it expertly with bullshit salesmanship and Facebook ad tools on joseph Goebbels level of brainwash and amygdala hijacking, making people continously more stupid than they are, to get there and stay there.
Dread Pirate Captain Trump, and his band of scurvy scalawags, who can just barely sail a ship and fire a gun, bur know how to play a scary villain role and to own the air. Living half way into Neverland, mixing fantastic with far too real. :/
They just have never seem to have learned how to play, until at that level, feeling that powerful and safe and supported by their crew. Me and my fellow bullied nerds, did that at university and at our startups. Broadened and got human. It seems the broligachs.. never did? :( They were too damaged, too insecure and really trust no one for their security but themselves.
They hate and manipulate neurorypical ordinary humans, with Stupid Feelings(tm) that always ger in the way of their understanding, and constantly leads them astray - and want to "evolve" them, and flee to Mars! :o Such are the constant climbers and runners. - Small, small men stunted along the way, always needing to conquer, just like Ghinghis Khan. :/ And evangelize.
It's not so much frightening as depressing. That 1/3 is the MAGA base, who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old and that Trump is doing a great job. They will only go away when Trump tells them to drink the Kool-Aid.
Yes. Cult members have been known to chug poisoned Kool Aid. What benefit did they gain from that? There’s no point in trying to reach the segment of the MAGA base that’s jumping for joy over their own pain. They’re beyond saving!
They will continue to support Trump no matter what. They know what he is, and they just don't care. They sold their worthless souls when they willfully elected a serial liar and known fraud. They see their own ignorance and hypocrisy in him and it emboldens them.
Do you remember when Trump on the campaign trail said: “I care about your vote, I don’t care about you, I care about your vote” and they CHEERED? 🤦♀️
They will stay dumb, they'd still vote for Trump. The diehard MAGA base is just too ignorant to be swayed by reality... That's why you will trigger them if you wear these kinds of shirts in public 👇
https://libtees.dashery.com/t-shirts
I used to think that all they needed was a little bit of reliable healthcare, but it's beyond that. They don't mind having to sleep under a bridge provided all the brown people have to sleep under cardboard or be deported. They are the 35% of Germans who voted for Hitler in 1932. They are the Little Englanders who voted for Brexit. They are in every society and every nation.
I can't see a solution other than secession back to the 50 states. It's what MAGA wants anyway. We could form an American Union (AU) of 50 states along similar lines to the EU. And....no more food stamps courtesy of the rich states, what's not to like?
Agree. They were beaten down in 1865 but not eliminated, and they will never stop fighting to be left alone to their religious ignorance, racism and depravity. Like a partner who wants divorce but doesn't want to be the one who files the paperwork they will make us miserable every day until they get what they want.
Let them go. We don't want them or need them.
No one would mind if the MAGA detached themselves from society and went their own way. The problem is their support for authoritarian control over others, and their negative influence on all our institutions.
But they’d never let us alone. They hate we exist, and they desperately want to make us pay. They are the enemy; and I’m desperately worried this will end in civil war. But if they want civil war, we should make sure they drink their fill, as Gen. Sherman recommended.
I suggest Devo’s Dare to Be Stupid…or was that weird Al? As a new national anthem.
It’s not surprising to me. It’s nothing new. Most Americans did not have to be aware of their bigotry and hate. Everything was great until neoliberalism hollowed out labor based manufacturing and the general public swallowed “trickle down”, like it was vanilla ice cream.
People of color always knew they existed by the simple fact, they experience the hate and bigotry from these Christian nationalists daily. In other words It’s always been here from the Christian justification of slavery to the Christian justification of Native American genocide and today, white nationalist justifications of bigotry.
Hopefully he will, and they will drink it.
The way I read the chart, it isn't everyone it's those who identify as Christian Nationalists or Christian. I don't think it could be a third of all Americans because not that many people identify as Christian. It would be good to clarify who was being polled.
Too true. 😩
Here is an analysis of that survey.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/2023/03/christian-nationalism-ct-white-evangelical-america-religion/
It says that it is on a continuum so that people are not just CNs or not, but that many people share some of the beliefs of CNs, and that is scary in and of itself.
Here is CN and Project 2025 expert Andra Watkins reviewing the Christian Nationalism and Project 2025 for the year.
https://open.substack.com/pub/andrawatkins/p/reviewing-project-2025s-christian?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
From the top link: “Whatever we think of the term Christian nationalism, the thing it refers to is real, and the thing needs a label. The thing I’m trying to label is simple: Americans who believe that America is a “Christian nation” and that the government should keep it that way.”
Thank you for sharing this. This great article by Andra Watkins is essential for understanding the theological underpinnings of the current government's actions to diminish scientific and medical research, to undercut vaccines as a public health measure, to dismantle USAID, to demonize trans people, etc., etc.
Thanks for the links.
You can be Christian and Nationalist and not a Christian Nationalist. Just saying.
You can also be Christian and not a nationalist, and a Nationalist and not Christian. There are many combinations we are talking about but here CNs subscribe to certain beliefs about Christianity and Nationalism that contradict our constitution.
Your constitution and Christianity!
Exactly!
Remember the KKK is only asleep.
Republicans have weaponized religion for political purposes.
What the hell is the matter with people??? I can’t even believe this.
Yes, it is terrifying!
Whatever happened to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself!’?
Surprised me, too. I wonder about the "skeptical" part: does that equate to "in sympathy with"?
We old people can learn if we are informed about what’s coming up from Groypers. True, we old people have a hard time imagining young men being happy with Hitler. These young men may have a hard time understanding why young women do not find them attractive.
Completely agree about Zuckerberg, et al.
My kids are mid to late 40s, their kids teens and a four.
I remember how our house sounded before my son was given a Pac-Man.
They loved being read to, both generations. Kids’ picture books rock, the kind from the library!
I have determined there are kids in my neighborhood. They come out of their houses to wait for the school bus. Weekends, after school hours you hardly see them at all. Some have a trampoline in their front yard, but I never see any of them using it. Same for basketball hoops. Bike riding is with parents. Sigh!
Tablet Magazine has an interesting take on the Tucker Carlson/Nick Fuentes/Heritage Foundation affair (in an article titled "The Buchanan Resurrection").
"Carlson didn’t challenge Fuentes in his interview because it wasn’t an interview, or even an effort to mainstream him; rather, it was a demonstration. He showed he was consolidating control of a splinter faction in order to exact concessions and money. It’s how community organizers work, by co-opting the hard cases so that the authorities pay up, or else. Now, whoever wants something from the Groypers, whether it’s votes, social media support, or—perhaps most importantly—their silence, they have to go through Carlson to get it. The goal, as he recently admitted, is to reshape Republican foreign policy—by which he means downgrading Israel’s place in the party to shrink evangelical power on the right, just as Obama did with Jewish Democrats to restructure the left in his own image. And, in time, if the plot succeeds, the minority faction will take over, just as it did with the Democrats."
Carlson is scum.
Keep your ageism to yourself, please. I don’t know what you mean by “old”; for me it meant “ don’t trust anyone over 30” back when I was 18. I’m in my 70’s now and know what a Groyper is, Pepe The Frog, Nick Fuentes, etc. To me it’s just another hate group that seems to appeal more to Incels. As far as “ what’s coming up”, please. I’ve seen it before, and worse - same terrible fascism “ slouching towards Bethlehem”.
I am an old person and I am wondering what you mean as "coming." Perhaps MAGA 2.0 as Julie Roginsky discusses in this article where she says 2.0 which includes Fuentes are even worse than 1.0.
https://open.substack.com/pub/saltypolitics/p/there-is-something-scarier-afoot?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
In Germany the AfD has managed to revive their youth group, which was so full of open Nazis it was shut down before. With same membership it has restarted, and they all sound like Nazis. Will they get shut down again? I hope so.
Krugman linked to the November article on groypers, etc. The Bulwark has covered them extensively too (many of us subscribe to both).
Excellent that your nephews don’t know him.
Actually I’m 74 and I had heard of him even before Tucker Carlson interviewed him.
Decent people have to recoil from the violence perpetrated on immigrants and I think they ARE. And our gold lamé presidency. And just bringing up the Epstein files let alone reading details. True that there is a trend world wide to swing to the right but out country which has enjoyed high stature in the world, has become scummy and unattractive. Therein lies the revolt.
In Marjorie Taylor Greene's interview with the NYT she said Trump told her he wanted to stop the release of the Epstein files because it would hurt his friends. I think that's the crux of it. Trump is part of the rich boys world and sexual exploitation was always a part of it. He doesn't see anything wrong with it. I don't think he's a Humbert Humbert who enjoys very young women, but I doubt he sees anything wrong with it either.
I believe "Epstein" survivor Katie Johnson (alias), who has given a video affidavit in which she states she was raped by Donald Trump (he fancied her because her appearance reminded him of Ivanka). If and when this is fully disclosed to the public, it MAY be the straw that causes the implosion of MAGA.
trouble is that Katie J has disappeared - either in deep hiding from the MAGA loonies, or already their victim. And we can be sure that Fox and its ilk will not be reporting her statements.
That information has been available for years, He said it on the Howard Stern show and I watched it live! I think Ivanka was like 13, he's not only attracted to underage girls but your right about 1 thing he sees nothing wrong with it as other countries allow 12 & 13 year olds to get married my own Mother signed for me at 15 & he was a 33 so that's probably why he gets along so good with him the Saudi's women are considered property and it's still normal for the brides family to pay for everything
she claims she finally noticed that Trump isn't a man of faith when he said he hates his enemies at the Kirk memorial (the widow had just said she forgave the shooter). hey, if MTG can lead others to the light, good.
I have seen video of her trying to convince a group that we should make Christianity the official religion of the United States. She also stated that she was very happy when the last pope died. She doesn't regard Catholics as Christians. I don't want to go to where she leads.
she also has not recanted her accusation that the Parkland high school shooting was done by crisis actors, i.e. not real, or that Biden's administration could make hurricanes come to land where it wanted to, and MANY other lunatic or mean-spirited statements.
She’s a Christian nationalist by the definition in article Linda Weide linked to:
“Americans who believe that America is a “Christian nation” and that the government should keep it that way.”
It says in the declaration of Independence the freedom from religion if you choose the religion of your choice! I'm spiritual but I refuse to belong to a organized religion as Christ said my father is not in a building made of mortar and brick, but we know they never read it and if they did they didn't understand the first 2 pages and put it on display for when company comes over
He owned “Miss Teenage America” and as owner of the pageant he would walk into the dressing room while the young girls were dressing. Then he bragged about it. He’s definitely a pedophile although now that he’s caught he’s denying it. He has no respect for women or girls, he’s a misogynist.
It’s not about his friends. It’s about Melania. Remember that press conference she was going to have “within the next two weeks” … back in 2016; she was going to explain how she got an Einstein visa. Wait, did I say Einstein? What if I’m off by a letter or two? Dollars to doughnuts: melania is an Epstein Girl - which is kind of like a Harvey Girl but skimpier clothes with a menu of extras and a guaranteed Happy Ending … lol
If she’s an Epstein girl, she may be a survivor , turned knowing where her bread is buttered but at some point exploited to get into this country which brings the whole hypocritical immigration policies around to to all the corruption in this administration
For someone who has been waiting many years for some reliable, plausible 'tall tales' or even fact-checked, professionally responsible journalistic horror stories that would explain in detail exactly what makes Kim Jong-un so nutty, so comical, the chance to relish Trump's antics and the casual reception they get from Americans is profoundly copacetic. The world is seeing in the US what we have been imagining, or naively hoping they would see in each of our favorite foreign policy bogeymen, be they Putin, Assad, Maduro, even the grandson who represents a nation's laborious, excruciating, home-grown victory and expulsion of their own, historical Jeffrey Epstein-type character, only in the form of a massively powerful empire. And on this very day, much to our own consternation, we are seeing its very vestige threatened across the Taiwan Strait.
Roll guillotine!
Barbara I am not holding my breath either. These cons are incorrigible. I also will never view the Heritage Foundation created to legitimize neoliberalism as okay. It was never okay, and it has never had legitimate research. It is corrupt, corrupt, corrupt from the point where Reagan made it legit to now. When I first read George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson's claim that Neoliberalism leads to fascism in "Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism" I was skeptical. Now I am not. The Heritage Foundation and Business Schools, and other such foundations helped to lead us to the point where we are now. Their destruction, and whatever the horrid Pence's fake Christian foundation is about would be best all destroyed. We need a fresh start. I would also argue that we need more than 2 sane political parties. We need several more.
We need a direct democracy like the Swiss were the people only vote on a law and it's passed or not depending how the voters vote! It's 100% a government run by the citizens, cuz obviously electing Reps to take are wishes to draft a bill and have to have both sides agree to get it passed doesn't work we elected a senator to vote in are behalf but instead of are interests brought to the floor, it's big business and what they want! If we ever get back in they need to pass laws where no corporations are allowed to contribute to an election! Truthfully I don't understand why they need to raise mega $ to run a campaign it should be there elected to run not paid to run
We lefties imagine using the "glass half empty/Glass half full" meme. Paul Krugman wants to paint this story as a half full one. Thomas Frank wrote a book (Pity The Billionaire) about fifteen years ago, and it was the half empty kind. Money, wealth and influence won't ever go away. It'll just come back in one way or another, over and over again.
https://www.npr.org/2012/01/06/144783945/pity-the-billionaire-the-rights-unlikely-comeback . Since I have been paying attention to this republican story starting in the sixties, I-we could have never imagined how something like LBJ signing the Civil Rights and the Voting Rights acts would kick this growth of the far right into action by kicking the hateful and racist out of the party...and sending them to the other party. Anyone thinks this movement will finally go away, it will just morph. First, Nixon's Southern Strategy and the dixiecrats left. Next, the growth of faux christianity and the "moral majority" after Roe v Wade. There's the corrupt Agnew and Nixon stories. Reagan and the criminality of that administration such as Iran-Contra, Savings and Loan, HUD, EPA...Over 130 administration officials were investigated, indicted, or convicted across these scandals. G bush senior then pardons all those convicted outlaws from Reagans terms. Limbaugh, Gingrich, Buchanan and Fox all happen, Harvey LeRoy "Lee" Atwater happened (look him up) and then the Heritage Foundation. This bunch just keeps trucking along. They are hungrier than us lefties and progressives. Every kindness, consideration human right and improvement made during the 20th century became a target. You know, I just read what I wrote and think "God, I hope I'm wrong."
The problem is extreme wealth.
Until we outlaw that they will continue to be always waiting in the weeds.
None of us are taxed because we are guilty. We are taxed because society needs money to run. If wealth is hoarded by a few sociopaths it injures society and society needs to defend its self from the danger they represent.
They can be what they have been all along without extreme wealth. Being merely outrageously wealthy should be enough for any sane person.
Scott, "God" is just a useful and secular phrase. And both Phil and Scott, There were laws created during the 20th century to curtail greed. Both TR and FDR, Wilson and Taft installed legislations and taxations. Remember learning about the Teapot dome scandal in school? Now, do you remember that the Reagan financial deregulation instigated a number of scandals involving financial institutions in the 80s? And good old boy Bill Clinton got in on the deregulation game, eliminating the FDR installed Glass-Steagall Act which brought on the financial crisis in 2007-8. We call ourselves a nation of laws but the important elephant in the room is wealth in all its forms. The wealthy own the laws and the useful idiot trump has invited all who feel constrained by laws to bypass them. We are a nation of outlaws.
Very true. And sad for the rest of us.
Overturning Citizens United or Capping Corporate Donations
SCOTUS Ethics Committee
With the trusty billionaires willing to clean out their fat-lined pockets, I have to wonder if the mechanism of grant making will shore up the Heritage for a while. Especially considering the gutting of our academic/scientific traditional sources. Conservatives love to fill empty spaces (at a soul-degrading price).
I think the TechBros and Financial Wizards, which are connecting through crypto, are not necessarily in the same boat as our traditional companies and corporations.
The Trumpian policies have been crafted by the former and screw that latter. Much of American business have been hurt by Trump's policies and especially his chaos.
This is an administration which favors certain sectors and gleefully damages others.
Apple got a tariff exemption on iPhones by delivering a golden gift to Trump.
I hope you are wrong, but if you are right, where will we be in let’s say a year?
If history is any guide, the US dollar will tank because no one will want to buy US debt and those who hold it will sell off in coordinated waves until we finally see sense. Sooo…with the current admin, your guess is as good as mine.
Financial Times reported yesterday that foreign investors are bailing on US stocks and investments
That’s the beginning of the slippery slope. Let’s see how long it takes before someone in the administration finally reins the orange buffoon in. Probably not before more significant damage is done, I’m guessing.
I feel like hyperinflation & a depression are imminent but am not in the financial sector. What can we watch for as a tipping point in that direction? Or am I (hopefully) just catastrophizing?
Well I’m hopeful that the tide is turning. But I don’t want to count my chickens before they’re hatched, so to speak. Wheels turn too slowly in shepherding the economy, and the market back lash can be very harsh when people have had enough. I’m personally concerned that more people AREN’T acknowledging the risk we face with regard to other countries dumping our bonds. Canada and several others who together hold enough to hurt us are already telegraphing their potential intent. And the administration just keeps charging ahead like a bull in a china shop. And China holds a lot as well.
I worked for three years in Indonesia during the Asian crisis, trying to shore up the financial sector. We had to close 55 banks in two weeks. The currency tanked. They became an international pariah, and the IMF had to become lender of last resort before any other lender would help bail them out. Our team endured death threats and having our names plus the name of our hotel published in the paper. They set the central bank on fire while IMF staff were inside. There were riots at our hotel and we couldn’t leave for three days. I learned what it felt like to travel everywhere with armed guards in bulletproof cars. It alarms me when I see the US blithely charging down a similar path and everyone in a position to know is staying largely silent. Everyone thinks that the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency will save us. I personally don’t think that’s true any longer. Countries have been moving away from using the dollar in bilateral trade and financial deals. That’s a bad sign for us.
Hyperinflation and a depression are not likely to occur at the same time. During a depression, many people can't afford to buy things. That typically causes vendors to reduce prices. Some vendors simply go out of business, which increases the number of people who can't afford to buy.
On the other hand, we can see from the history of the Weimar republic in Germany that hyperinflation can set the stage for a depression.
When the 401K managers and pension funds start selling off, the market will head down pretty rapidly. That may trigger lots of sell orders.
I’m ready for any exigency. At 73 years, I’ve been through a few things.
Hey, I'm 73 too. But I sympathize with that TV ad of several years ago, which shows a guy being pushed forward at several stages in life and saying every time, "But I'm not ready!" It's no fun considering the many catastrophes that have recently become more likely, more imminent. It's all so unnecessary. I retire in one month, and I guess I should start brushing up on survival skills that I let languish.
In a year? Maneuvering between R hopefuls to succeed Trump: Vance, Rubio (Susie Wiles says that Vance & Rubio are planning to run together), Cruz. Who else?
There are many elected Rs who have a stake in preservation of the R party who will carry on carrying on and who will be an impediment to the creation of a new party.
Also we will likely see many more election rules in place "leveling the playing field" in favor of the Rs. The US has a Constitutional / legal structure that preserves and empowers minorities. The Supreme Court has made this structure become ever more favorable to the Rs and Christian nationalists and continues to do so.
Politicians can and are relegated to irrelevancy. Your last paragraph points to one of the major issues, another being money in politics. Those two combined empower the few with the means. Trump is a heinous person, but he is a spoiled child that is allowed to run around smashing things as long as he doesn’t get it wrong or too far off the rails (for them, not real people living in the real world). I find Vance much more frightening as he actually does have a brain, and he is savvy enough to not be blinded by his narcissism as it appears to us regular folk…ie he knows “The Vance Kennedy Center” is idiotic, tearing down a wing of the White House is idiotic. He would be an ideal puppet because he’s more than willing to play nicely as long as he keeps his power and money.
I don't think he'd be a puppet. He'd be a Putin, not a Xi. Xi wants power but I do think he cares about the Chinese people. Putin doesn't care about the Russian people, he cares about power.
I don't want either of those models. I want messy, not particularly efficient, democracy. Even in a world full of ignorant idiots, democracy is better than autocracy or monarchy.
True…about Putin v Xi and that Vance would be more akin to Putin. Also probably true not so much a puppet as a willing participant. He would make an excellent front man, but I could still see him ultimately being disposable if the true cabal decided he’d met the end of his usefulness.
Vance does have the non-Trumpian ability to finish the same sentence he begins, but he is not likely to have the cult following of Trump. As someone in this column said, a couple of months ago, he has the personality of wet blotting paper. (Now *that* analogy
probably dates me!)
As a Canadian, I hope another isolationist like Vance doesn’t get elected. Isolationism provides the rationale for tariffs (not to mention leaving situations like Ukraine for others to settle).
So by that thinking, the politician is then allowed to do whatever he or she wants once in office, regardless of the platform they ran on? You’re letting them off the hook rather easily, no?
I’ve lived in some of those countries and agree. It got much worse, thousands of victims of state sponsored terrorism, torture and murder before anything changed. And it took violence and even a section of the military opposed to the regime to change it, as well as international pressure and a much more engaged and willing to fight populace. Hard to see what will change it here. The corporate influence, broligarchy, media capitulation and misinformation, low education, apathy and deep seated racism seem too embedded here.
Though women were made full equal members of our Republic the day it was formed, and they became fellow republican-democrats with men 11 years, 11 months, & 7 days later when our Constitution was ratified (June 21, 1788), representation among our public servants in Government has not kept with the times. This is how we change that:
https://open.substack.com/pub/republia/p/for-the-preservation-of-freedom-and?r=4ucf6d&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
Thats good but irritating experience.
... Would you say I am right to see the hope over at NoKings.org?
They are organizing now, not only for protests but for mutual aid and food banks and stuff.
I'm thinking this was the way you evenrually got our of the depression, organising outside the institutions, taking over the legitimacy of those who actually delivers somerhing for the people, and being able to press the Democrats from below.
Aristoteles says thats the way too.
Doing for others has always been the thing that motivates me. And it needs to be what motivates others if we want things like the events sponsored by NoKings to truly take root. America has become a very insular society that all too often sits isolated in our over-large houses, scrolling on our tech. We have forgotten the lessons of earlier decades where mass protests were the thing that saved our democracy. I work in Europe, and life is so different there. People are out and about, interacting with others, in cafes, coffee shops and public parks. In Greece it’s the opposite of America. Here, if I fell down in the street, people would most likely step around me and keep going, so intent on their own agenda. In Greece, everyone would rush to be part of the throng helping me back up, talking so fast that my nascent Greek would still be stuck inside me during the confusion.
Haha! :D
Yes… especially the Mediterranean people are like that. Immediate.
I feel its a southern thing, too, even if there are many factors.
But it's definitely shapes by what demands you have on YOU, individually, to deliver. Be high productive. Are you in a forgiving atmosphere or not? Do you have TIME to stop and help? And are you at all present, or already preparing the next meeting in your head, not wanting to drop that mental state, and allow maybe even strong feelings?
We hackers learned that it was ALWAYS ok to put up a hand in the air when someone came into the room : “don't disturb, i have built a five storeys high house of cards architecture in my mind, and of I don't capture it NOW it's gone and takes all day to remake!” ;)
And now, we are all promoted to our very limits of our mental capabilities, and then we get older, too. . :/ I hade to get a diagnose at 50.
All of that I think about when I see worried reports about growth in southern Europe.
“Yes, but…. They know how to LIVE, still! What's important! And where are we supposed to go on vacation to relax, and regulate our emotions otherwise? Life is OLD there, everything has happened so many times before. This too shall pass! “
“Civilizational erase”, huh? ;)
It will not get better if we let it get worse.
Nothing good is happening to normal Americans until Trump is dead (not removed from office, not sent to prison, but DEAD)!
How does Greed fade from The Greedy? I don't recall that ever happening.
I’m not sure it ever has. Unless it’s at the end of life, when it’s almost too late to rectify a lifetime of always putting yourself above others.
I don’t think PK is holding his breathe. He’s predicting what will *ultimately* happen, not what’s coning in the near future. But whether MAGA’s destruction happens in 10 yrs or 10 minutes, it can’t be doing enough.
This is the natural and predetermined end for conservatism in America. From the defection of southern Democrats over desegregation going back to Truman's time right through Reagan launching his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi with a speech about states' rights on to today when we have Trump as an open racist pushing fascism and Nazism into our politics and government, this is where is was going to end up.
The question is, what's on the other side?
Read more Heather Cox Richardson. We’re building what comes next — now. Americans have historically and repeatedly rejected the attempts of the wealthy few to seize total power over the rest of us. We have risen, expanding inclusion in our democracy, forming a more perfect union. We are rapidly building the power of nonviolent noncooperation — the proven most powerful way to prevent and defeat dictatorships. Not easy, but unstoppable.
from what Ive read, its true that many liberal Americans indeed do hope for better, and 'reject the attempts of the wealthy few to seize total power over the rest of us'.
How's that working out- has the dream been advancing?
The recent elections indicate that it has been. The next one, if it comes off, will show us.
Hope is the ray of light in deep darkness.
If any of you haven’t seen the PBS documentary series, The American Revolution, I highly recommend it.
The colonists fought for a decade to create a land where people weren’t beholden to a king and in control of their own freedom.
FREEDOM! One of the biggest drivers of human aspirations and when faced with not having it, the furor in the face of losing it will be the force that stops the new age robber baron billionaires.
They need us much more than we need them-they are 1% and we are everyone else
She’s incredible!
Democratic capitulation and caution....they are best at taking knives to gun fights...if they decide to go down this road, another fascist will be vomited up after trump
Yes. This is what worries me--not whether the GOP/MAGA nightmare will fracture into infighting and passivity, but whether the Democrats will do everything they can to accelerate that, take power, and force the structural changes to enable them to keep that power. Such as making D.C. and Puerto Rico states, expanding the Supreme Court, reversing Citizens United, and repairing and restoring the agencies DOGE wrecked. Paul says we need two sane political parties. Let's say. Even so, I don't grant the right, or "conservatives," the presumption of acting in good faith. They basically exist, and are funded, to help the rich. Let them do what they can, post-MAGA, but under better (and enforcable) rules within a decent tax system.
I prefer the old corporate euphemism: *right-sizing* the Supreme Court. 😉
Excellent comment and you hit the nail on the head regarding the deep, necessary, structural reforms needed. The problem with a two party system is, if both parties
simply become performative, pretending to oppose each other while maintaining the dark money system that allows them all to stay in power, even watershed moments like this with the extrajudicial killing of a white, female, American citizen by a State sanctioned paramilitary force won’t lead to significant change. See Rep Jeffries and Chuck Schumer’s refusal to fight for reductions in the massively swollen ICE/CBP budgets. 🤨 I think you all need to work harder for your candidates, legislators and laws at the local and state level. Take back power from the ground up. That’s how the Republicans did it! 🤷♂️
https://www.commondreams.org/news/government-shutdown-january
When did the Republicans do that?
I agree with your point, but another fascist would have a tough act to follow after Trump. He has the genius and the secret sauce to mesmerize ignorant rubes enough to get them to venture out of their hovels and vote. That's not easy, or common.
But hate is and this is only the latest iteration of white supremism in this country. It has never died.
Agreed. He gives it focus. Without something to rally around, they are just incapable rubes wandering in circles, muttering to themselves. Job One for us is to return them to that state.
You are hoping it is the end. What is on the other side could well be more of the same, perhaps with a different slogan on the hat.
You're right; we're hoping it's the end and of course anything can happen, but barring a violent civil war all we see now extrapolates out to the American people realizing their power without tens of thousands of people being killed in battle. We have our wallets. And we have women who are pissed at a system openly stacked against us lately, which is an understatement.
I hope we have enough women who are pissed. 48% of women who voted in 2024 voted for the Misogynist in Chief.
If your number is correct then 52% of women who voted in 2024 voted for someone other than Trump. Why do we not get conscious credit for that rather than subliminal blame?
Let's hope MEN step up in 2028, because they didn't in 2024, and men deserve blame for Trump.
Overall, men voted for Trump by 11 points (43 percent Harris – 54 percent Trump). Women voted for Harris by 6 points (51 percent Harris – 45 percent Trump).
But I agree. I hope more women realize what they're about to lose and overwhelm to electoral college as well as the popular vote and take control of both houses of Congress.
Leigh Hamilton, though you haven't developed your position to a great extent (who would? We're not writing position papers here), I agree with what you've said. Our Indivisible group here in rural Minnesota mainly consists of and is led by capable women. Then consider that American women in general are becoming splendid over-achievers compared to American men. We seem interested mainly in competitive beer drinking, cursing Libtards, and becoming the best video game players in our individual circle of friends. But, it's a (free, democratic, American) republic, if (women) can keep it.
Women don't have the Republic to keep - yet. Story: My husband read an article asserting younger men weren't having as much sex as they used to 20-30 years ago (comparing the same age groups). He blames the music and lack of "free love". I blame the chin beards.
Yes, women are excelling. The needle seems to be stuck in "I want a sandwich and a raging erection" for men.
And those men were sold a bill of goods, conned…
MAGA’s Manly Manufacturing Misfire
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/magas-manly-manufacturing-misfire
When someone says, "48% of women voted for Trump" that generally means 48% of REPUBLICAN females, not all female voters, so those women were conned as well. They were all conned, because most of them are stupid. That's easy to understand and hard to forgive.
What works me up is that among Democratic voters, women outnumbered men in voting for Harris, yet women still seem to get the dog-whistle of blame for not having voted as they were supposed to. Hard to understand, hard to forgive.
Why do you think women don't get conscious credit? Women are not a monolithic bloc. Credit goes where it is earned. And you're certainly right to rage against those men who voted overwhelmingly against Harris and for Trump. One wonders what the outcome would have been had a white male had led the D ticket.
I hope my previous post was deleted. I misread your post at first.
"Why do we not get conscious credit for that rather than subliminal blame?"
----
Sorry, but taking credit for a marginal majority doesn't work for me. Until we can acknowledge that a distressingly large percentage of women supported Trump ([deleted incorrect stats]), we can't address it properly.
Let me reiterate that it was 48% of *Republican* female voters, not all female voters. I don't understand why people can't get their heads around that. So that "marginal percentage" to which you're referring is within the Republican ranks.
A distressingly large proportion of voting men voted against Harris - Republicans and Democrats; obviously more Republican men of course, but still... Women made up the largest voting percentage for Harris. And it wasn't "marginal". Why is that so hard to understand? Have you looked at the demographic breakdowns?
Of 100% of female voters who voted for Trump (important distinction here) only 48% voted for Trump. Over half of female Republican women did NOT vote for Trump.
Of all registered voters, more voted for someone OTHER than Trump. He won male & female 49.8%, and Harris 48.3%. Had men stepped up to the plate, she could have won. But that's hindsight.
Women should absolutely take credit, and if you're wise, you'll stop unzipping your male privilege trousers and exposing yourself. You're blaming women for doing better than men - in both parties.
I don't blame either one, musk picked up those machines a few hours before election and they just let him do it, Russia doubled down as they saw in 2020 their hacking wasn't enough no one counted on the masses that showed up to vote, that's why the cheating was so powerful this time that they came outta the wood work destroyed election boxes set on fire one was soaked so they would be unreadable! They should have legally said this election was tampered with and it's null and void one election official just got caught with bags of elections in a mail bag pushed under a counter or something like that and when they called her out she just grabbed her purse and coat and walked out the door and nothing happened WHY?
Were they Republicans or Democrats? Are you arguing that over half the female voters in the U.S. voted for Trump?
Over half of ALL White women who voted at all voted for Trump (51%), but less than half of all women (thanks to strong Harris vote among women of color) did (44%). Women’s turnout wasn’t as high as in previous elections, some former Biden supporters among women (and even more so among men) stayed home, which baffles me. Less than half of white women with college degrees voted for Trump, which may have created the illusion of majority support among white women for Harris, but far less than half of all white women have degrees.
https://www.pewresearch.org/?attachment_id=263084
"Ayn Rand Über Alles"?
She wasn’t completely stupid. She knew very well that when things get too disgusting, people finally nope out, and it snowballs. Google this: Engineers under Stalin left USSR en masse by boat … I think she got the idea from there.
I often point out to people that Ayn Rand was amazing: She not only gave birth to herself, she built the building she was born in.
One key pillar of the today's GOP propaganda is that they are "outsiders". Victimhood is the selling point. The Republican contract with their voters is, "we're not those evil Democrats who have made your life horrible".
The problem with this strategy is that it defeats itself: the minute they gain power, as they now have (Trump is arguably the most powerful president in US history), their voters now want... actual results.
Trump and the GOP made a clear economic promise in the 2024 election: they were going to abolish income taxes and use tariffs instead that China and Mexico will pay for.
Yes, it was a stupid promise, but a lot of stupid people believed it and voted R because of that. The problem is, they can't deliver on this nonsense and unlike other broken promised like The Wall or whatever, this broken promise *hurts* because it's a direct economic benefit they had probably counted on in their financial planning.
When Republicans base so much of their pitch to Americans on their being OUT of power, victory is self-defeating. Trump boasting that he's the most powerful president ever (and he is) detracts from their position because now their voters want actual results.
I don't think Republicans are "outsiders." Rather, they pose as outsiders, they pose as new-hatched, uncorrupted people, even when Republican office-holders have been involved in politics for decades. Ronald Reagan was a new (sort of) face in 1980, but was a conservative movement figure for some time, though he claimed to be an outsider and an innocent.
Yes, I didn't quite express that correctly in my first draft. The #1 cable news channel by audience--Fox News--tells their audience they must fear the "main stream media", etc. etc. A key part of the Republican argument to voters is victimhood, and the key to that is to make their audience feel like they are the underdogs.
If Republicans lose this, they suddenly have to... govern. And we all know they don't want to do that.
The racists may go, but the wealthy, and their control of media that uses ever more advanced psychological manipulation, still pretend there's a moral justification for selfishness. At the lower income levels, of course, we have the Prosperity Gospel types who have already bought into that, and any cultural group that sees itself as higher caste.
Prosperity gospel is common amongst Christian Nationalists, I read the other day.
Who is John Gault?
It’s spelled without a “u”: but you have a point.
Thanks…always can use a good editor.
Progressives. Taxing the uber wealthy.
I dont understand what you mean by "the natural and predetermined end for conservatism in America" - if you mean Trump is a clueless and dangerous simpleton like Reagan and most of the modern presidents then I agree. Fascism has been surging since Truman.
But they fought fire with fire something the Democrats aren't willing to do, even the civil war was fighting fire with fire and I fear that it's we're were heading but I'm not sure I know what the southern states actually want?
Good morning, Mr. Krugman. How is joining Mike Pence's foundation a sign of anything more than a chance at keeping a job in the same general political universe? Pence was a loyal foot soldier for Trump whose unctious performative piety was always devoid of Christian charity, honesty, or character.
Agree. I live in Indiana, where Pence was governor for one term. He has persistently characterized himself as "a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order." No mention of American or even Hoosier.
As governor, Pence embarrassed the state when he promoted a virulently anti-gay so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which he was unable to defend in a TV interview. He also deleted comments critical of him in his official social media accounts, and tried to establish a state-run media, i.e. propaganda, outlet. He was on track to possibly lose reelection in red Indiana in 2016, until Trump rescued him by choosing him as his vice president. Pence is not a better alternative to MAGA.
Not to mention the fact that Pence was in the WH when meetings were held re: Jan 6 to which he was privy, and he said NOTHING. It wasn't until the J6 mob started shouting "Hang Mike Pence" that he wee'd his britches and chickened out. Then he decided to take the high road - but only when his own life was at stake. Big hero /s.
But the U.S. media called him out as a hero, and subsequently Indiana refused to obey Trump's gerrymandering command. Now Pence is presenting himself as the Sane Anti-Trump Conservative who will restore traditional conservative values.
He has the personality and animation of a cardboard cutout, and the MAGA cult would eat his liver for breakfast on day one. But, bless 'im, the man will split the ticket.
Remember that Pence refused to be in a room meeting w/ a woman without other people in the room. And/or "Mother." Seems misogynistic to me.
That's because Pence and company are misogynists.
How about a think tank or Republican party that recommits to separation of church and state, for a start?
I am heartily sick of political hacks that cater to Christian nationalists (read misogynists and racists) who demonized everyone who aren't members of their group.
Sounds like the closet was getting a little stuffy.
Because he has no impulse control himself?
He became, and still is a DJTbag. I know a bunch of Christians. DJTbags don't do Christian - they're mutually exclusive.
Pence is a sanctimonious putz.
Wasn't Pence almost killed during the capital insurrection? His bodyguards were calling their WAGs to say goodbye Why the hell is he even still loyal to Trump?
He isn't. He doesn't showboat, but he has refused to shake Trump's hand at funerals. This think tank seems to be non-MAGA conservative.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend?
At least an occasional ally.
Well that's good to hear at least
I like to think that many conservatives are disconfited by, for example, Ice raids. (Government overreach and all that) i do, in fact, know a few. Dunno how many. Have serious doubts about their guts. But they do exist.
I really don't mean to get in an argument. I just need to have a little hope. There have been a few. (Liz Cheney, Adam Kitzenger, Jeff Flake. The Indiana Senate) but they mostly got bounced. I chuckle sardonically when Trump hits some new low, and there are a spate of stories about how the rank-and-file are whispering of their concerns. (And delivering bold speeches to their bathroom mirrors)
Still will never forget Mrs.Pence's face when trump tried to shake her hand at Jimmy Carter's funeral. Classic.
Le vrai sujet n'est pas le modèle. C'est l'architecture autour, la boucle de contrôle, la fiabilité, et le niveau d'autonomie qu'on accepte de donner. Sans ça, un agent reste juste une démo brillante.
Unctuous performative piety… I’m gonna steal that! Nice words!
I disagree. Mike Pence was a loyal foot soldier in Trump 1. But when he was pressured to nullify the election results, he didn't, at great cost to himself. He is a Conservative Christian and I disagree with him on many policies, but he isn't anti-democratic. At this point in America, that's what matters. His guiding light isn't domination and retribution, as is Trump's and the MAGA lords.
As a moderate liberal, I believe that we need to respect and applaud differences. We need to recognize those that share our fundamental values. Those values aren't about women's rights, abortion or health care. They are the values of rule of law and support for democracy. When those are re-established, we can fight about policies.
In politics, apparently, we have to make issue-specific alliances in order to get a majority in favor of progress.
Pence perfected the art of moral compromise dressed in Sunday best. His piety was always transactional, his principles for rent. That he finds refuge among the professionally devout should surprise no one.
Any type of fragmentation weakens them.
Like Mike Johnson, you mean.
Reverend Johnson, you mean.
Oh I do hope this article is correct. As a Brit looking on from the outside it is totally incomprehensible and deeply depressing seeing what Trump has done to the US, its citizens and the rest of Western civilisation. From being the leader of the free world, the US has become a pariah - the sight of Trump and Netanyahu, two felonious corrupt leaders embracing each other yesterday typifies the depths to which US government corruption and immorality has sunk. Let’s hope to god that 2026 will see the beginning of the end of Trump and MAGA. Let’s see a return of American fair play, decency and the restoration of a working judiciary and functioning legislature.
Brovo----Good, good, post. My hopes are same. America can get back to being being somewhat it used to be. Hope, hope, and more hope that we can rally. It is going to take all of the Dems and many Reps to want to take us back beyond Trumpism. Some Reps are beginning to see the light..
The sight of two indicted leaders embracing while democracy burns is not irony but prophecy. When power protects only itself, the republic becomes a mere costume worn by grifters.
This Canadian agrees.
I think the Heritage Foundation is probably staffed with repackaged Moral Majority and Tea Party members.
Russell Vought of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) who tends to operate under the national media radar is one of the major architects of P2025. He's captain, or at least first mate, of the white male Christian supremacist boat from the White House. If women aren't pregnant, they should be in bed being impregnated and obeying their husbands in every room at home. He'd strip them of their vote. He absolutely *loathes* "wokeism" and liberalism.
That alone should terrify girls and women everywhere! Where are the women and men who will stand up to the project 2025 bullies????
Doesn't it feel like there are too many fronts to fight at once and we don't know where to look? I believe that's deliberate on this administration's part. We're exhausted, tired, confused, and angry. Their hope is to paralyze us all. They are bracing for the mid-terms. I believe they know they've lost; they just can't get off life support.
Steve Bannon literally said just that. That they were going to keep attacking on every front to overwhelm the opposition.
Hang in there.
Am hanging on. You do the same.
We loathe him right back.
He can just admit he never had a good relationship with women in general like the rest of these men who is on this boat
Electoral college …. A couple of dark red states have to see the truth and turn purple.
I think you and I don’t differ. The electoral college is the issue but it cannot be done away with easily without a constitutional amendment. Hence my wish that a couple of red states need to be in play for democrats - campaign money won’t flow into red states that cannot be won. Trump’s chaotic handling of the Obamacare and loss of revenue to farmers owing to tariffs might provide an opening.
Prof. Krugman, you "guess that there have long been many people at Heritage who were privately disgusted at what the organization had become." Possibly. Maybe. Heritage has had terrible leaders before; Sen. DeMint, for example, inspired the exit of many Heritage employees. But working at Heritage is a good credential for Rs. And the real function of Heritage is cover for corporations. Corporations fund "analysis" that they can use to secure legislation, deregulation, and tax breaks. If Heritage no longer is the preeminent "think tank" for such corporate money, then Stephen Miller's group or Mike Pence's group or some other will replace it.
Of course Heritage is not by any means the only right-wing "think tank." Many others are nurtured through hard-to-trace donations from the Koch Brothers and other enemies of democracy. Most, I think, are meant to support low taxes for industrialists and high-tech bros. and reduce the authority of the federal government to regulate for the benefit of the masses. Few seem to be as overtly theocratic as Heritage.
Let us hope and pray that Steven Miller gets no place of importance. He is running the Trump office now. Running it badly. Has a Natzi view, even admits it.
I suspect the Hitler enthusiasts were always there, but pollsters never asked about it before now.
They do walk among us. Manage to stay under the radar. After all it doesn't come up in daily conversation much
Lots of Opus Dei Catholics are among them.
The Heritage Foundation is indeed a clearinghouse for yesterday's zealots. The Moral Majority died; the Tea Party drowned; but the personnel merely changed offices. The crusade continues under different letterhead.
Will there be any legal consequences for these people, surely project 2025 counts as treason?
Was there any consequence for the January 6, insurrectionists? I wouldn't be surprised to see Trump issue a blanket pardon before he leaves office. Presuming that he and his ilk ever do.
The Constitution says "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
When the President says Russia is our best friend and the European nations are pretty close to being our enemies, this gets very confusing.
I have come to believe the 2026 midterms are at risk. If they are allowed to happen, it will be under duress. The results will be questioned. It may be the end. In the immediate future, everything will be an emergency.
There has to be a serious rebellion against Trump. He is a madman and a monster. He has to be removed even if his replacement is scary to ponder. There are only 11 months to ammegeddon or redemption.
I hope America can pull this off.
I hope so too Jim. But I'm not holding my breath because so many Americans are disengaged. They bitch about affordability but mostly shrug their collective shoulders about the erosion of the Constitution, racism, and antisemitism. The MAGAts are one slogan away from a win. Expect big checks in the way of rebates as proof of the success of Trumpiffs.
Elections happened even during the Civil War. They'll happen. Besides, they need to happen for legitimacy (even 2020 election deniers believe in having elections, they just don't believe 2020 was free and fair).
The things we need to worry about are voter suppression, voter intimidation, and denial of the results. We need to do everything we can to mitigate those risks (and to win, of course).
Excellent follow up to my having finished Navalny’s memoir and then watching a bunch of videos of him being interviewed by Lesley Stahl. The downfall of Heritage cannot come soon enough. [ BTW, I had forgotten about Pussy Riot. ]
I’m about to finish Navalny’s excellent book. Among its many themes, Navalny describes what life is like when a society is completely corrupted by constant lying … and it’s coming to the U-S-A
Exactly, Laura.
I’m not a Christian, but I see a christ-like figure in Alexei Navalny. I could not stop seeing him this way, reading his words over the December break
I agree. That particular choice of words was a reference to the great Leonard Cohen (Democracy is coming… to the U S A) 😊
Sooner or later, the deeply ingrained anti-semitism of the far right was bound to surface, with the Heritage gang and MAGA.
At which point Israel and its supporters may regret its own drift to a racist far right and the alliances with MAGA Republicans, as those real anti-semites re-emerge.
Agree. Ditto for black people who become fabulously wealthy by carrying water for white supremacy… double scrabble points for black females who throw women under the bus!
You can see some MAGA apologists (both black and white) starting to back pedal.
The MAGA implosion is, to some extent, well-described in the piece yesterday in the Times about the schism that developed between MT Greene and Trump. She is outright on her continued political adherence to Trump, but something in her snapped. She was faced with a moral crisis, and she chose political ostracism in order to preserve at least a minimal level of Christian values (a sort of replay of the key moment in Huck Finn where he chooses to go to hell rather than turn Jim in as a runaway slave). In the case of conservatives, they have spent huge effort (Project 2025) to tear things down, but without building things up in an alternative vision based on our "now". Healthcare is the best example of this: They despise the PPACA (Obamacare), but there is no cogent alternative on the table. DOGE attacked the agencies, but it saved next to nothing. In the process, it caused critical weakening of FEMA, to the detriment of red states. At some point, conservatives need to ask themselves just what they want, aside from a huge ballroom on the White House grounds.
MJT did not face a moral crisis, she faced a financial crisis, in that her own family was going to have to pay a lot. If she had faced a moral crisis she would denounce all the other wacko views that she has proclaimed over the time she’s been in government.
True, but Margie has become quite wealthy in her short career as a legislator… me thinks she wants to run for president and this nytimes reader skipped right over that article
You should read it. It was interesting. I will never be a fan of hers, but there was some interesting tidbits in it. I found the threats of violence she faces and what Trump told her about the Epstein files particularly interesting. Her journey, as ugly as it was, was informative.
She is jumping ship, but she would have been better off waiting instead of being one of the first.
I’ll go back and read it … despite not trusting anything that she says
And Trump snubbed her in her run for the Senate.
She seems to have her eye on becoming the Governor of Georgia.
She is dangerous, she has Jewish space laser syndrome!
I would love to know which of her past political position she has discounted? If she did quit because of the death threats From Trump supporters and because Trump threatened her too, that’s a whole different thing. But she should just say that. Her part in the big lie is hard to discount.
She said that Trump was going to primary her and it didn't make sense for her to spend a million dollars or more campaigning to keep her seat. The threats were icing on the cake. She retired after her pension was secured. There's been speculation that she'll compete in State politics.
People can learn and change for the better. For now I give her the benefit of the doubt.
MUSK AND HIS MUSKRATS DID AMERICA alot of harm and Trump let it happen. It saved no money as they pillaged our systems and collected our data, for a purpose that we will find out about later.
Well said. I know a fair number of affluent people who voted for Trump, as my particular job in a big company involves working with senior management. I had the rare opportunity to speak freely with one of them recently. A former manager and current friend had just told me in very colorful language what he really thought about certain individuals in our office, and I shot back with my unvarnished thoughts about Trump and Musk. I think he was genuinely shocked by the depth of my anger … whereas I already knew that he hates my current boss.
Having read the NYT article I'm still skeptical about Greene.
I saw MTG's appearance on The View. I wonder whether whether some events, such as the abuse of women by Epstein and his buddied, triggered a crisis of faith for her. Perhaps she began to understand that if she is truly Christian, she must treat others as Jesus would have done. What strikes me from all of this is that a strong Democratic party candidate for president will need to pound away at the lack of Judeo-Christian morals in the current administration.
Marge likes the money, and if it’s a moral crisis, she hasn’t denounced her other wacko views, so count skeptical.
Why do you keep equating religion with politics? Adherence to any organised religion calls into question a politician’s motives as evidenced by the MAGA christo-fascists currently running the country. The American constitution was founded on the principle of a separation of religion from government, but now if you’re not an avowed Christian you can kiss goodbye to any senior office of state. An assertion of faith and reference to the bible lets a politician off the hook for all manner of wicked behaviour. Let’s keep it secular and be suspicious of any Pence or Vance figure who tells you his version of the faith is the truth, and hang the rest.
and perhaps get a little education on other faiths.
My! She’s getting around these days… warming up for a future campaign as a normal person
I would be cautious about assuming that what happens at an institution like Heritage has much relevance to "MAGA," which as a movement is really about voters rather than institutions. In particular, it is about voters who have lost faith in institutions and grasp a cult of personality as an alternative. MAGA voters probably have as little interest in educated elites in historically "conservative" institutions (however one wishes to define conservative) as they do educated elites in any other institution. MAGA is about belief as identity and it needs to have its beliefs shaken before it will abandon its identify. I have a hard time believing that anything happening at Heritage will affect them. I do wonder how the performance of Trump's businesses (DJT and the meme coin) will affect them, but I think it will be bankruptcies and unemployment that will finally jolt them into a different frame of mind.
Project 2025 came from the Heritage Foundation.
I don't want to be too optimistic, but it's very possible that we are witnessing an "extinction burst" of the MAGA right. As hoped for "benefits" of these extreme policies fail to materialize, the defections and fragmentation will accelerate.
🤞
I appreciate the analysis of what a post-Trump era might look like for the Heritage Foundation. What about extending that forecast to what a post-Trump America looks like?
I see a problem: MAGA did not come out of nowhere. The Republican Party has been on the trajectory toward Trump ever since the people behind Reagan took over the party in 1980. An alliance between the white supremacists and ultra wealthy has dominated the party ever since and it has become more extreme every decade, from Reagan to Gingrich to the Tea Party to Trump. In the beginning the coalition was successful in getting the Fundamentalist support (probably because of the racism) without giving them much, but that eroded until the so-called Christian Nationalists and extreme White Supremacists took over. Meanwhile, Reaganism produced the massive inequality and anti-government mania we suffer from now. I'm not sure that Republicans going back to "Reagan conservativism" is going to help. Have the "never Trumpers" given up on their beloved Zombie economic ideas? Will they admit that turning the country over to Reagan and his backroom cabal was an historic mistake? Until they do, even if they should wrest back control of the Republican Party, we'll just be in a continuing cycle that will lead back to Trumpism. And don't get me started on the uselessness of the current Democratic establishment to do anything about it.
Adding that I would really like to why so many men are willing to see their wives, daughters, sisters lose the right to make their own decisions about their bodies.
Why are so many men willing to treat women as less than fully human?
I think the Never Trumpers -- at least at The Bulwark -- were never hard core trickle-down zealots. And yes, they've moved away from some of the zombie economics. These folks were largely 'information workers' for the GOP: message crafters, coms people... They were more Bushies re: domestic policy ('compassionate conservatism') and into Reagan for the foreign policy (standing up to the Evil Empire). Confronted with the rise of Trump, and MAGA swallowing many political people they though they knew, they've had to question many of their assumptions and consider whether, as Stuart Stevens put it, "It was all a lie."
Perhaps these are the sorts of folks Prof. K. imagines would lead a reborn GOP. Tellingly, as I read them, they actually understand their brand of conservatism has far to small a constituency with either the electorate or the funderate to emerge from the wilderness. The political situation throughout the West is the utter collapse of the old center-right, with it's former constituents moving toward powerful rising fascist movements, pitched against stumbling fading neo-liberal corporatist centrist parties, with those facing pressures from the democratic left.
Isn't the Democratic Party also facing a problem with its voters? Norman Solomon has an interesting piece in today's Guardian about the DNC. Yesterday, there was a good piece on the Working Families Party that is making headway in Democratic districts, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/29/working-families-party-2026-run
Is it the disgust that inequality has driven the Democrats to chase big donors, both corporate and private, and accede to their wishes, rather than the people they serve?
Perhaps we are in for a political upheaval. The two main political parties in the UK are rapidly losing voter share to other parties, both on the left and the right, as both of the two big parties failed to deliver for their voters. Voters are looking for alternatives. Why should the US be immune to such desires?
Maybe so, but I take heart that so many Democrats when they talk to people in the states’ various races come out winning. Because they’re talking to people. Which used to be called retail politics. If they keep doing that in more and more races especially down ticket races, it may be that the working families party could join with the Democrats. But the UK is different they vote for parties not for people. So I don’t think that’s a perfect analogy. In this country if you split off into third parties, you give all the power to the one you’re trying to beat. Because they just need to hang together.
Actually talking to people is good. You may recall the Democrats pretty much don't even field candidates in many districts, believing it is a waste of resources. That is an unnecessary loss and an opening for a 3rd party that becomes the opposing party in those districts.
Strategic candidacy and voting can make a difference. Changing the voting method can too. For example, changing First Past the Post to Alternative Voting, as has been done in a number of US States.
All good and talking to people it’s many of the recently successful candidates have actually done.
Talking to people also means remaining active in teh community after elections, even if you lose. Democrats often fail to do so, just turning up for elections and then disappearing. There may be no sustained Party presence in the community. leaving the opposing party to influence the local population. Many years ago, when I had a problem that needed fixing, only the local Republican responded and fixed the problem. None of the Democrats I wrote to even bothered to reply, even though they had the power to fix the problem. I regard this as an example of "Judge people by their actions, not their words."
Many people in the US also vote for parties, not people.
Yes, of course they do, but it’s not a feature of the political system like it is in the UK. The thing that mystifies me in this country is that some people say they’re disgusted with the Republicans and they hate Trump but yet they also say they would never vote democratic. I guess if you’re a Democrat that’s good news because they probably aren’t voting at all at that point!
because the two parties here have rigged it so a third party cannot play
We have had new parties arise, just not very often. I see the desire for a new party at our local level. I would like to see the formation of a new party. I think the Democratic elite who brought us the 2024 disaster needs to be gone.
That isn't set in stone. It can be changed.
How many Working Families Party candidates have been elected?
The article makes it plain that they mostly endorse candidates, much like Emily's List. Presumably, those are progressive candidates, mostly Democrats, and not the candidate of choice of the local party during primaries. They could become spoilers if they start fielding candidates for federal elections, like the Green Party in 2016, or the Independent Party that was a spoiler for the GOP in the 1990s. Nevertheless, some Congresspeople are neither D nor R. Progressive candidates would be welcome, especially if they unseat DINOs like my supposedly Democratic House rep.
Typically, popular candidates pull the Big Party candidates in their political direction. The Tea Party, then MAGA, pulled the GOP further to the right. In the UK, reform has done the same to the Tory party. I expect the polling successes of the Greens and LibDems will pull the Labour Party back towards the left, from its rightward drift.
After all, where are the Whig parties these days?
The Working Families Party has endorsed a bunch of Democrats. They have advocated for eliminating the party line on New Jersey primary ballots, which were eventually eliminated as the result of a lawsuit brought by Democrat Andy Kim (Kim v. Hanlon, 3:24-cv-01098). In short, it doesn’t seem like an actual political party, a very influential group, or a threat to the Democratic Party. At most it can hope to influence the outcome of some Democratic primary elections.
If they push the Ds leftward at the state and national levels, that would still be of value. The rightward drift of Ds rightward ever since the Clinton administration is a problem that needs reversing.
Insightful article outlining a plausible demise of MAGA. Fingers crossed from this side of the Atlantic (Ireland).
Love Ireland! You have a beautiful country. Wish I could emigrate 😖
With MTV gone, I allow myself the replacement gift of singing with Sting: "I want my, I want my USA" - from Germany with longing and trepidation