Are we all smarter than a billionaire? Did Murdoch, Koch and all the other oligarchs that have protected and promoted Trump know that he would be this stupid, this catastrophically incompetent? Was that the point? Destroy everything? What were the pro-Trump oligarchs expecting? How can there be this much derangement, this much literally psychotic paranoia and destructiveness? Boomers like me are being forced to witness here what was going on in Eurpoe before we were born. It's horrific.
Trump is part of a cancer which is an oligarchy in America run by billionaires and supported by Republicans and 60 millionaire people (including MAGA white male supremacists who hate women, blacks and immigrants) who still give Trump a 35% approval rating. The oligarchy operates with an ongoing insurrection planned by Project 2025 that created a lawless fascist autocracy.
What must and can be done? The cancer which is the oligarchy must and can be removed. Two things enabled the oligarchy. The theft of wealth from 95% of Americans was enabled by attacks on democracy to steal the wealth disguised with adoption of Milton Freidman’s fake unregulated free market supply side shareholder economic policy implemented beginning with Reagan’s trickle-down economics and supported by neoliberal Democrats (Clinton & Obama) and Biden who failed to enforce the law against insurrection. Lincoln stopped the cancer of the Confederacy by enforcing the law. Democrat FDR stopped the oligarchy, recovered from the Great Depression and created a middle class after winning WW2 with Keynesian economics and the policies of the New Deal.
Oligarchy gets political, legal and economic power by having corrupt Republicans support oligarchy in Congress, elect a corrupt Republican to the presidency and stack the Supreme Court with corrupt justices to attack democracy and the Constitution, change laws, suppress enforcement of laws by the government and the courts, and deny equal justice by the government and the courts to steal wealth from 95% of Americans and transfer the wealth to the oligarchs and their Republican agents. The oligarchy uses the political, legal and economic power to implement a lawless fascist autocracy which is created with an insurrection and sustained with an ongoing insurrection by the agents of the oligarchy who are Trump, members of his administration, Republicans in Congress, six justices on the Supreme Court, and a few dozen billionaire oligarchs.
The oligarchy must be stopped by getting Democrats elected in 2028 to the presidency in control of the House and the Senate by campaigning with Project 2029 to stop the oligarchy by enforcing the law and solve core problems including taxes to fund solutions to affordability. Enforcing the federal law against insurrection to arrest prosecute convict and imprison Trump members of his administration Republicans in Congress six justices on the Supreme Court and billionaire oligarchs will get Democratic super majority control of the federal government to fund solutions to affordability including Medicare for All by taxing corporations (at 50%) and billionaires (2% annual wealth tax + 90% income tax that includes capital gains) and then passing legislation that ends Citizens United, reforms and restarts immigration, and fixes many other bad things Republicans and oligarchs created.
Very good. So what is going to be their endgame? When you take all the money, you take away all the desire for bettering yourself, what's the point. The dollar is no longer the reserve currency when it valued like the ruble. So, what is the point?
We desperately need major tax reform as the past 40+ years have seen: 1) a major shift in wealth upwards due to tax reform that has favored capital owners, and 2) an explosion in our national debt. Since at least the early 80's, the share of productivity gains going to wage earners has steadily declined, while the costs of housing, health care and education have increased rapidly. The result has been that too many households struggle financially and are basically living one unplanned expense away from disaster.
By contrast, the top 10% (and especially the top 1%+) have seen enormous gains in both income and wealth. It is estimated that the top1% of income earners own 50% of total US capital, while the share owned by the top 10% of earners is estimated to be 85% plus.
Only through major tax reform can the mechanisms that created this concentration in wealth be addressed. I am not endorsing Mr. Miller's specific suggestions, but would agree that our tax system is rife with deductions and exemptions that have accumulated over time and which inordinately favor wealthy capital owners over others. This is not to say that all such deductions and exemptions are inherently bad, but our tax system has been substantially tilted to favor business and capital owners over the past 40-50 years in ways that are directly responsible for both our national debt and current wealth inequality. And, despite the claims of many, we are not going to "grow" our way out of these problems as the lions share of any such gains will continue to accrue to existing capitol owners.
Ideas: Tax capital gains in companies you've worked for at the same rate as wage income, because a lot of people are using that as a substitute for wage income. (For example, any CEO that takes a $1 salary and earns money through stock appreciation instead.) Eliminate the step-up basis at death for assets worth more than $500,000. (Include an exemption for primary residences or family farms if you need to.) Further close the "buy borrow die" loophole by treating the value of assets used as as collateral for loans as realized gains for tax purposes.
Company stock buy-backs raise the stock price (fewer shares) which assists execs to sooner reach the strike price of their millions of options. Nothing happens by accident.
If we don't pay attention to how taxable income is reduced by deductions and exemptions, the top line tax rate becomes meaningless. If 70% of otherwise taxable income can be eliminated through deductions and exemptions, a 90% tax on the remaining 30% only amounts to an effective rate of 27%.
We need to go Eisenhower on them, with progressive taxation. Incentivise increasing income up to a point. Dis-incentivise making more than reasonable wealth. No one needs to hoard a trillion dollars. No one needs to "better" themselves with an 8 figure annual income. If the highest tax rate is 90%, people will self- regulate their income, or give more away. Both help regulate the economy.
"You take away all the desire for bettering yourself"? Only if greed is your only motivation. What about those of us who want to earn a comfortable living but also live along with others who are also doing well in our shared community with good schools, low pollution, recreation opportunities, great shopping, maintained infrastructure, cultural diversity, a strong social safety net, and transparent local government.
1. The market to crash to hurt us again, not the oligarchs.
2. Banks/CUs to not be backed by the FDIC (musk was in it @2025 March). Oh, Paul, or someone else, can you help with this one?
3. I was friends with an economist. I learned enough to believe the dollar was going to be devalued and at some point, be worthless. Crypto will be used because it can't be tracked.
I think the point is to destroy all things American including us (not all maggots). Hope I'm wrong but we're preparing if I'm right and we'll still be in trouble.
Following 2007-2008 banking collapse, Congress rewrote Dodd-Frank so as allow banks to bail-in during the next one. The government will not be on the hook to bail-out the banks. FDIC will cover some losses but in a big one, will Congress vote additional funds or will it be "tough luck?" Under bail-in, depositors become unsecured creditors of the bank, ranking somewhere below derivatives in bankruptcy payouts. Google "bail-in" for more information. Ellen Brown (Web of Debt Blog) pointed out in a 2023 article on bail-in that insiders crafting the new law decided not to let the general public know so as not to create doubts about the banking system. They also said that, "those that needed to know" could be advised in advance if there was going to be a bail-in. Privatize profit, socialize the losses.
Many thanks for your response. I come to Krugman (tv and substack) looking for them and asking if Paul hasn't covered it.
Congress isn't alive anymore. They're talking but they're not passing much of anything. Makes sense that once again, the public won't be informed of anything but billionaires will be. When a bank or CU crashes, we find out after not before. It's just worse now. It's why I kept checking a website of banks and CUs to see how stable they are. (I realize that the stability of a bank or CU isn't on the mind of the ass. Killing them off is.)
I did have to search "bail-in". New term learned (thanks). Here's an excerpt from Ellen Brown's blog for folks.
Ellen Brown, founder of WebofDebt.com, thinks so-called ‘bail-ins’
are coming. Depositors’ money will be legally taken. Brown
says, “That’s the big disaster that’s coming. Probably one of
these big derivative banks will go bankrupt . . . the derivative
players will get first dibs. They’ll grab all the deposits, and there
won’t be anything left.”
I think I've seen one other comment about the FDIC death in the year since the destruction and lies started about it. We have our accts spread out over a few banks so if one goes kaput, we're not broke until the others are hit which could be really fast ...
??? FDIC still exists to protect depositors. The banks will take the losses along with Wall Street investors. What’s wrong with the revised Dodd-Frank signed by Obama in 2010?
You forgot Truth and Reconciliation hearings or Nuremburg type trials to hold those responsible accountable and claw back the billions of dollars that they've stolen. I'm looking at you Lutnick, Kushner, Witkoff , Trumps, et al.
Well, considering that Hakeem Jeffries recently announced his opposition to Medicare For All (after accepting millions in healthcare-funded PACs), Project 2029 is little more than so concept of a plan, with zero details and no bold plans t o either harden drmocracy (or whatever remain of it, and mostly BS moderate talking points), your optimism seems unwarranted.
Aside from the fact that simply electing Democrats (when most accept a picture of AIPAC, crypto, AI, pharma, or other special interest dollar) will result in a continuation of the status quo, corporate Democrats are dead set against taxing the wealthy.
If Americans had the fortitude to organize, or the willingness to engage in mass sustained economic boycotts, there might be a very slim chance for change...but clearly we lack any real strength of character.
Unfortunately any such boycott would require significant personal and financial sacrifice on the part of too many Americans who can ill-afford it. And, even if successful, it would still require political action to provide a lasting solution. Unless we start sending people to Congress who will actually do the people's business and who are not beholden to special interests, I fear that not much will change.
It costs nothing to delete social media apps, which make their money collecting your data and selling advertising based on user numbers.
It saves money to delete Amazon Prime subscriptions (Amazon often has higher costs per item than msny other outlets).
It saves money to delete streaming services apps snd switch to free library offerings.
I don't buy the affordability argument.
As to political action, we've seen clearly that money runs DC and legacy media.
If you want to see political change, you have to 1) depress the money available to buy politicians and write legislation, ad 2) elect progressives who refuse to accept corporate or soecial interest "donations".
Since we can't count on Americans to do the most basic level of research to see who owns their representatives, economic boycotting must be a concurrent action.
If people are too apathetic or firmly in denial to do either, much less both, then they might as well accept that the US will continue its terminal decline...and our rights, freedoms, and flimsy social safety net will continue to evaporate.
Wishful thinking is neither a strategy nor a tactic...it's a form of denial.
You beat me to it - couldn't agree more. Most of the billionaire class would sell their own mothers into prostitution for a few more bucks. They prove it every day by their actions.
And they are stupid and hubristic enough that they really didn't expect the long-term damage to have any impact on themselves (and they are probably correct).
Exactly. To the extent they gave it any thought, they probably figured the "adults in the room" would contain the worst impulses. And arguably from 2017-2020 they did.
But to come into this last election and think everything would be okay required a Herculean effort of denial.
Hitler got into power because the ultra-conservatives thought they could well control him and they and the ultra-rich were all afraid of the left. History doesn't repeat itself, but boy does it rhyme.
The big difference is that Hitler was intelligent. He had his delusions, including thinking that extreme violence could survive long term.
But was able to lead a country and a war which overwhelmed Éurope for a time, before collapsing. He saw himself as the new Roman emperor, forgetting what happened to the Roman empire, and how it actually functioned.
The really cognitive smart ones that got them into power were actually Goering and Goebbels, Hitler had all the charisma and the self-delusion, but he wasn't very intelligent or well educated. He had quite simplistic (wrong) convictions. Some of the key large blunders in the war were his (London blitz, not securing North Africa when it was still possible, Stalingrad, key decisions in Barbarossa (here when it collapsed his simplemindedness worked somewhat for a short while, but keeping that going instead of a flexible defense cost him a lot), declaring war on the US without having Japan declare war on Russia, the Ardennes offensive. The German general staff after the war tried to pin all errors on him, which wasn't fair, they had supported some of these, but I suspect historians mostly agree his decisions were more dumb than smart.
His biggest mistake had to be declaring war on the US. The US could easily have diverted all its attention to the Pacific. To Dr. Krugman's point, the German generals had to have known better, but did nothing to stop his folly. Lucky for a good part of the world.
War in the Atlantic theater was inevitable. While Hitler’s declaration of war made things easier for Roosevelt politically in 1941, eventually an Atlantic Ocean dominated by German U-boats would have been unacceptable to the United States.
WWII what-ifs are stimulating and we’ll never know the answer. I’m not so sure it couldn’t have ended as a Cold War with Nazi Germany instead of as happened with the USSR. Congress (which back then declared wars) and the American public weren’t that keen on foreign entanglements and Japan on its own would already have been a big enough commitment. Without US troops, the British would not have been able to retake the European continent. Barring US entry in the war, Lend Lease would have served a defensive purpose. The Germans could have allowed this. After the failed Luftwaffe campaign over Britain and invading the Soviet Union, there did not seem to be a serious plan to take over the UK. Letting the Expeditionary Force leave Dunkirk (another fortunate mistake) makes one wonder if accomodation with the British Empire wasn’t already in the back of Hitler’s mind. Churchill understood that getting the Americans involved was his best hope for changing the situation in Europe. Hitler obliged. It’s not clear the Soviets would have prevailed in a one front war or that that might not have ended as a stalemate. But that’s another what-if.
Yeah. Hitler declared war on the US primarily because the US was already using its navy to guard ships delivering military supplies to Britain and the US declaring war on Japan gave Hitler an excuse to start using force against the US ships doing the guarding.
Trump is Murdock's Frankenstein monster. The monster has slipped his shackles and is now running amok. The oligarchs still don't think that they'll be affected and have done nothing to rein Trump in. Eventually, after a dozen or so are pushed out of penthouse suite windows, some may see the light. It will be too late by then.
Or maybe the oligaarchs, especially the tech oligarchs feel that what Trump is doing suits their purposes just fine. Who needs NASA when we have Musk? Who needs a military when we have data centers from Greenland to Patagonia to control the seething masses?
Indeed. Tesla was funded by the same program that the Republicans tried to turn into an embarrassment because it also funded a company named Solyndra that failed. And of the US government stops contracting with Space-X, Space-X's rockets most likelu stop being profitable. And the launches that put the Starlink satellites into space were directly funded by US rural broadband subsidies that are paid for by (IIRC) fees on your cell phone bill.
Not quite yet. Give it a few years, when ordered phalanxes of semi-autonomous Police-bots with batons, tear gas and tasers can slap down any who dare object to rule by the Gilded Few in their penthouses.
Do you mean the daughter who went to Ethiopia I thought to start up a shoe business? I can't find it on the internet but she's not as clean as she seems.
There is a plan called Project 2025 - you may have heard of it - which served the purposes of the billionaires with various motivations - economic and religious. Trumpism embodies and draws together monied
practitioners of every deadly sin there is, economic, political, spiritual, and psychological. They have wanted this for decades. Trump is the talisman that could unite their various goals.
I watched the Nuremberg trials on NF. Goebbels had good answers to everything. You saw how that ended. He talked about the utter stupidity of people being brainwashed and how when people spoke the truth, it had no effect on the cult.
I'm reading book on fascism and authoritarianism (check substack for it). While they do end (orban's toast and I hope literally), it's takes protesting and fighting 24/7.
Goering seemed to do the best. He was fluent in English, so he had plenty of time to consider his answers to prosecutor's questions while the translators were translating them into German. He also managed to cheat the hangman.
I watched Nuremberg (the latest) on NF. Decades ago, I read about it. Goebbels’ statements and quotes (to me) were fascinating and unfortunately seem to be used successfully by Miller (through his boss). I’ll look at Goering again.
Saint Ronnie couldn't have had dementia, anointed as he was by God hisself to slash taxes on the rich.
It's a sad day when we look back at Saint Ronnie's Administration; or those of the Bushes...for actually being somewhat competent. Trump2 has ennobled incompetence and corruption as forms of art.
Sometimes things spin out of control - and billionaires are not smarter than others; just more ruthless (and some say, more willing to take chances).
The true GOP leadership has always preferred to put a person in charge of the country who was not to smart or hung up on crazy ideology. He just had to have fidelity to the principle that it's OK for Wall street predators to exploit the masses. Trump fit that bill and was great at conning the ignorant masses; convincing them that they could not trust information from any other sources than himself. He was also easy to bribe, so they didn't have to go through the cumbersome process of K-streeting.
What they did not get was how malignant his narcissism was and that his desperate need to feed his ego could overpower his desire to enrich himself. His mental decline was also a surprise.
But I don't think the billionaires are losing a lot of sleep - after all the world is their oyster. If they mess up the US, there are plenty of other places where they already have build fortified palaces (and underground bunkers). The true burden of a US decline will fall on the foolish voters who got conned by Trump.
Speaking of foolish voters, this NYT article is worthy of retelling as an Aesop fable.
Years of Trump Support Came Undone in 15 Minutes in an Airport.
The case represents a new front in President Trump’s mass deportation drive: arrests at airports of people who have active immigration cases and no criminal history.
“A U.S. citizen just watched his wife get dragged away and had no idea where she’s going,” recalled Mr. Jindra [WHO VOTED FOR TRUMP 3 TIMES!].
In other words. Something Trump did finally affected him. That's when he stopped supporting him. When it was happening to others. He didn't care. Well no sympathy from me guy. You got the day you voted for dude. Enjoy it.
Obviously, ICE has access to all data related to fliers. TSA agents are working with ICE to alert them to non citizens, regardless of their legal status.
And it is falling on those foolish voters. If only they recognized it, but I fear that most don't and will continue to support them even if it means the destruction of their families. Ideology seems to overcome rationality.
I think the best way to interpret them is to consider MAGA to be a cult. They have their own set of "facts" and any attempt to present counter-information just feeds their paranoia about the outside and outsiders. They have an authoritarian leaders and only believe the information coming from him/his trusted sources.
The process of getting someone out of a cult is difficult but not impossible. It usually begins with they themselves raising doubts. Something not being as promised or doesn't make sense. The more successful approaches that sometimes can de-cult a person, involves asking questions that can seed doubts (rather than confront them with adversarial facts).
The Billionaires are wrong. If the great unwashed in the US get really fired up about the destruction of their country, there will be no where on earth for them to hide from retribution.
Yes. Such is the risk of repatriating yur family + billions to the wrong tax haven.
Fortunately for the Epstein Class, their extreme wealth can buy them top-notch tax advice. Switzerland is still top'o'list, as Swiss banking privacy and EU citizenship come with the package. I personally know of such a fellow; who renounced his US for Swiss; but still comes as a tourist to winter in Palm Beach, where he still owns a mansion.
I was born in 1942. saw some of the best years of this country. now i've been watching some of the worst. I hope I live to see a recovery. but at my age i'm not currently hopeful. rwt
I think some billionaires believe they can wrap themselves up so tight in the protective cocoon of their money that nothing can harm them: the less tax they have to pay, the stronger the laws protecting their property, the bigger and better the cocoon. And toying with the fate of millions is a suitable entertainment for someone who has run out of ideas about what to spend their money on.
Not much reason not to believe that said billionaires aren't similarly protected from hearing what they don't want to hear by the people they surround themselves with. You don't bring bad news to the person paying your salary...
And if some of them are actually bright as well, the arrogance that comes along with believing they are smarter than those around them is a secondary cocoon of ignorance because they aren't listening. Been around way too many of them over the years.
Eventually, people not telling them awkward truths is what does for them. When it became clear during the second Gulf War that there were no WMDs in Iraq analysts were briefly puzzled at why Saddam in the run up to the war had behaved as if he had them. But then it dawned on them: he really believed he did have WMDs. Because if you've been put in charge of Saddam's nuclear and biological weapons development program but have been unable to get the raw materials to make them, passing on the bad news to the President is simply not an option.
In the run up to Desert Storm *nobody* of any importance believed Saddam had any WMD's. The tons of Sarin 155mm arty shells buried out in the desert had been inert for years already.
He had no nukes. He maybe had a little Bioweaponry--that the US had in effect given him.
Bush Sr. gave him Uncle Sam's blessing to take Kuwait--but not Saudi or the Gulf States. And once Saddam made his move, Bush clanged the cell door shut.
Their cocoon of ignorance ignorance coupled with the fact that so much money seems to disconnect them from even the idea their actions have consequences or that therr are things such folks shouldn’t even do (renting Venice comes to mind). One of the magazines still publishing good journalism had an article about this very subject recently).
Prof. Krugman, with due respect, the first truth an autocrat does not want to hear is that he is incompetent, and everything else stems from that.
He was almost certainly told about the missile shortage, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and other logistical constraints. But his self-delusion, fueled by his belief in his own "genius instincts," leads him to think that Iran is on the verge of collapse.
He knows this because, in his mind, he is a genius unlike any the world has ever seen. "I know more than the generals." "I alone can fix it." "I, in my infinite wisdom..."
I'm sure Bibi told him at the start of this mess that the Iranians were rioting and that as soon as the US dropped the first bomb, they would revolt. Leaving Trump as their new hero of freedom. This is the type of stuff you get when dealing with an incompetent narcissist.
The most valuable skill in DC today is being able to say "Mr. President, trust your instincts!" And for that you don't hundreds of thousands of federal workers, hence DOGE!
I have read enough Trump to have thoughts and emotions about his writings, words, and behaviors since the 1980s. He is a natural born autocrat. That is what his whole life looks like to this voter. I am a democracy member, full disclosure. Here are our two countries based on partisanship (autocrat versus democracy) over historical time (at least 300 years). Mr. Trump is, again, an autocrat. He is acting just like one. That was predictable. What is not predictable in outcome are any actions meant to direct him or his outpourings of old life energies. Some people have those. They do sleep at other, inappropriate times.
If you focus on one thing and one thing only, how competent to deal with a world which is mulitvarious and filled with angles and meanings and imports, that must be understood and reacted to with care and acceptance of what is, how good could you be at dealing with what is? What are oligarchs interested in? Money. More more more. They will do anything to make more money. If that means promoting fossil fuel extraction and use to make money and ignoring anything that gets in the way of that, that is exactly what they will do. That is indeed what they are doing. Right now, other oligarchs want to make more more more money on the back of AI, which means they have to take more more more land, electricity, water, and use circular economics with their AI oligarch buddies to fund their activities that will make them rich and powerful and all other people the little non-player characters they are (in the AI oligarch's minds), that is what they will do. Indeed, they are trying to do this every second of every day. The stock market is kissing their nasty behinds to make sure this funding and this 'growth' continues unabated. Will this destroy our planet? Yes.
The fossil fuel and AI oligarchs do not care about the destruction of our climate or environment. Their enablers, Trump and crew, the US conservative Supreme court, the Republicans in the Federal and State houses, the US military, and the media do not give a damn about the Earth or its People. They will use the military, robots, computers, and AI, and they will get rid of us too, because we and the Earth are in the way of their grandiose notions of themselves and their greatness, their ingenuity, their perfections. Yes, they do believe human history is meaningless except for them. They demonstrate this with their behaviors every single day, and have now for how long?
We have to do something about this and we are almost out of time to do so. The Earth and its living biome have been put in the position of having to defend themselves or die. Sure, humans are part of the living Earth biome. We don't realize that though, do we? Do the oligarchs and Trumpers realize humans are dying too? Do they realize they too are human? No, they can't see that much.
There's a movie from 2024 called THE END. It's about an ultra-wealthy family living in a bunker after environmental collapse. Not a great movie, but the fact that they are surrounded by a warehouse of hoarded, priceless art pieces as well as the fact that they are facing a worthless, joyless future is hilarious.
This sounds like an end of the world story, and that we can't hide from what is coming, even if we retreat to a bunker because we can.
Takeaway: We need each other, and Earth environment. That is what many of us have come to believe in the decades of the last Boomer years. Humans need each other and their Earth home. We need to live together.
Amen to that. Cooperation by the unwashed masses is what the Oligarchs fear most. They prefer us to compete in life-or-death struggles for the crumbs off their tables.
100% correct. These oligarchs have now become so rich that they can no compete with each other on the basis of earthly goods accumulation. They are now competing on the plane of who can achieve immortality. Think vampires!
No, no, because *my* fortified mega-bunker in the Swiss Alps *will* survive the nuclear or biological cataclysm. No matter the rest of the world. Me, my spoiled children, and an elite selection of technicians and guards will see to it that me and mine will survive. No matter what.
I am amazed how they don’t realize that the day the social order ends and they withdraw into their bunkers, their own bodyguards will cut their throats because who would stop them?
Even if that doesn't happen, these folks are now trapped in their bunkers for safety. What comes next? We should ask that question from their perspectives, but also from the perspectives of all the human and other living species' experiences on Earth once the bunker-abled folks disappear into their bunkers.
Social order may end in US but not in the whole world - unless earth get hit with a huge meteor. Their plan is to always move to the most stable and controllable environment on the planet. Many a former dictator that was overthrown, now lives comfortably in another country. If a single responsible and hated person can do that - our hundreds of corporate dictators can figure that out too.
Yes. And assuming you committed no extraditable crimes, that location is called Switzerland.
Ah, Switzerland! Where you can safely park your billions. Or hundreds of millions, even. And where the Swiss government is selling off a huge portion of the bunkers they'd built in the Alps for WW2.
On The Beach is instructional in that any self-respecting billionaire needs hisself a fully NBC-protected bunker complex. Where he can have his servants grow hydroponic food...and prepare to repopulate the Earth once the radiation subsides.
They are making lots of money in the short term and that's all they care about. They don't care if we become a shit hole country as long as they can skim profits from it.
The arc of Silicon Valley’s moral universe doesn’t seem to last longer than the next presidential election. In the end, it’s not bombs that Silicon Valley loves, but profits.
UNBELIEVABLE--Just a breezy, this too shall pass conclusion. WOW
Putin--or the KGB (FSB) rather--is competent at recruiting dumbass business types like D. Trump. Just as the FSB does most all of the work of keeping 156m Russians under its thumb.
But he displayed massive incompetence in his invasion of Ukraine. A country with not even a quarter of Russia's population and resources.
Just like Trump--with Hegseth--displayed colossal incompetence planning and executing his Iran War. No pre-positioned minesweepers, or base anti-drone defenses. No urgent ramping up of smart munition production in the months before. The only qualities Trump2 excels at are incompetence and corruption. That, and bald-face lying. All of which MAGA voters are content with--*as long as it upsets the Libs.* Crazy times indeed.
Oligarchs are an easy target but not the correct point of focus to change and redirect the cascade to authoritarianism. At least until our democracy is fully discarded, oligarchs are not the instrument of power. Focus on changing the Republican majority Senate confirming one DJT kakistocrat after another. Focus on changing the Republican House where Rep Mike Johnson stands beside Rep Jim Jordan and spinning up "investigations".
No denying the nation is in desperate straights when a sclerotic Democratic Party is the only viable avenue to effect these changes. Focus on stopping the Democratic Party from rummaging around in its own underwear drawer and staring at itself in a funhouse mirror trying decide if today is a "Jockey" or a "Munsingwear" day.
Resist the daily distractions of disinformation and pettiness. Sharpen every comment here and everywhere on the naked corruption, incompetence and stupidity of DJT, his kakistocratic administration and reject at the polls the "We are all afraid" Republican Party for its cowardice in choosing power over principles of government in our Declaration of Independence.
Any objective observer should have known since 2016 that reality and competance were not in Trump's domain. The fact that his distance from reality is becoming more obvious is unfortunate, and intelligent Republicans (as well as many Democrats) should do more to correct the situation.
As for many oligarchs, they are benefiting from the free ride on taxes, so their short term interests prevail.
Don't look now, but Trump has just destroyed the South Korean alliance, while increasing ties to NK and Russia. Seems a good plan, especially as the alliance with Canada and Europe is close to disintegrating. The US deserves this; this is what it has brought on to itself and what it sustains daily.
Trump thinks he is a smart ass, he is actually a dumb-ass. Jeffery Epstein sold the goods to Putin and that is what he is using to control dumb-ass Trump......LETS HAVE THE REST OF THE EPSTEIN FILES RELEASED..NOW!!
Agree! Release the damn Epstein files and hold everyone accountable to the fullest extent of the law!
But considering the extent to which this administration has gone to prevent that from happening- including the wag the catastrophic “it’s not a war” dog in Iran which has rapidly escalated throughout the Middle East, and an undefined trajectory, I admit I have my doubts about where it’s all headed, except that the potential ending doesn’t look good.
So, all things considered, I won’t be holding my breath until the sundowning incompetence finally ends.
Even street level GOP voters have always been obsessed with other people's sex lives. They don't really care about the abuse of the Epstein mess, it's the sex side show they love and don't care if anything is ever done about it. They loved the Clinton show, the affair reveals, the sexting rumors (of Democrats only), transexuals, TV hosts with cleavage, women with maga makeup obedience fetishes, men who conduct religious versions of bdsm in their homes, etc. They don't care about people starving or losing jobs or having families ripped apart and deported, or nazi shootings in the streets. Nothing new.
Trump is one of the Russian secrecy agencies biggest success stories. They've been grooming him since the 1980s and he swallowed the bait. He's been laundering money in his properties and casinos ever since then. One of his casinos was given the largest fine at the time for laundering Russian Mafia money.
It all started when Ivana Trump's relatives in communist Czechoslovakia thought Donald could be useful to them and gave his name to the KGB.
Yes, Putin almost certainly has Kompromat on trump, but don’t underestimate how much he longs to join the dictators club. They’re exactly what he has long aspired to be.
Trump's a pathological liar. He says one thing for American votes and another thing once he's elected. When is he going to release his tax returns? Where is the cheaper, better health care plan that was ready for day one? Trump has made thousands of promises that he has no intention of keeping.
To Trump, reality is whatever he thinks will work for the moment. He has no objective concept of reality, so in that sense, he never sees himself as lying.
"They actually actively dislike competence. Because someone who is competent, someone who knows what they’re doing, might stand on their dignity, might refuse to follow instructions from above. You need third-raters or worse."
They tried to tell him he'd lost the election.
As a result of that insulting truth, he fomented an insurrection. It failed, but barely. He was willing to see his vice president murdered in order to retain power.
We have to vote in numbers "never seen before" this November to send the unambiguous message that his rule by kakistocracy is on the ropes.
why are all the Rs lap dogs, most are rich and would lose nothing by being true to their oath? "OMG, I might get primaried." Even tillis and cassidy kissed his ass while not running again. Are they in the trump-epstein files?
Trump power is strong in the cult. Fox Cult News and other right wing media created a huge cult that is so used to being manipulated by their media, that transferring that cult behavior to Trump was easy for them. The MAGAs do what the cult leader tells them.
OMG, anon threats which the SS and FBI would investigate. Well, it seems the Ds are actually killed. Regardless, the Rs wouldn't have stormed Normandy - such feckless cowards. We do have Nathan Hale as a model of patriotism which is lacking in congress.
Trump has made statements admitting that he lost the election, and is recorded as trying to falsify the results in Georgia. To say that he doesn't really know he lost is disingenious at best.
Trump and his cronies and those who voted for him may deserve this but not the rest of us. Many of us worked hard to not get him elected but failed. We need to get him out of office.
Donnie's superpower is destroying things. He is the enshitifier. Everything he touches turns to shit. He has gone bankrupt repeatedly, destroyed the XFL, and propped himself up through Russian money laundering. The US military is now being Trumped. Half of the electorate was willing to put him back in power just to validate their bigotry and racism. The disaster we are living through is their fault.
While pulling our carrier out of the Pacific to relieve the Abraham Lincoln. I mean, what could go wrong? Signal that we have no dog in the 70 year old frozen conflict and then remove our force from the region... what do you think could happen? I don't think DRPK could or would take South Korea, because South Korea learned well the lessons of the US military and has an advanced economy and good logistics. But I do worry about Taiwan.
I was just going to make the same comment. Trump is a bully and his hero is the guy who bullies even better than he does. He loves all authoritarians because that’s what he wants to be.
His obsession with wind turbines came about when he failed to bully the Scottish government into cancelling a wind farm that would be (and is) visible from his golf course over there. It's just more evidence of his main drive to bully others.
I don’t like to psychoanalyze dictators and criminals because it shouldn’t matter why they do what they do. And too many MAGAts don’t care: “He may be a thug, but he’s our thug.”
But in this case his personality disorder, plus dementia,* is so obviously behind most of what he says and does, and the stakes are so high, that it might be useful to consider it when planning for the future.
They are lazy; Americans, many of us, are what Thomas Paine called
“ sunshine patriots “. No change will happen until enough people become uncomfortable and demand the change that has been needed for more than 50 years.
"Uncomfortable" may be an understatement. Thinking back to PK's Saturday interview with Vanessa, the truth about autocracy will become very real to voters when they have to empty their pockets to pay its accumulated debt. The clearest sign I see that Trump is "sunsetting" is that he shows no concern for what could happen to him and is legacy if he precipitates a financial crisis.
And, Hegseth has fired all the competent people who understood how stuff really works... And Donnie Demento still has The Nuclear Launch Codes. The rethugs in Congress are still cowering under their desks afraid he'll target them next. and SCOTUS is corrupted beyond doing any least little thing which would be good for our Nation. Talk about a Perfect Storm.
He hasn’t fired everyone. There are still lots of generals and other senior officers (colonels) who were appointed more than a year and a half ago and who have to be highly competent, experienced, knowledgeable. But they are keeping their heads down.
The “people that matter” are *never* in it. Chickenhawks never hawk…. At least not before extremely high levels of conflict (ww ii) and maybe not then.
It seems the press is the only institution that can actually influence the regime, as Krugman says -- but if you look closer you might find that no, Trump won't recognize a problem unless it's reported on Fox ...?
There are protests everyday around the country. My main group has a protest every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Another group has one every Wednesday. Another group every Sunday. those are just the groups I’m part of in my slice of the country.
better question: why don’t you look into something before saying it’s not happening?
Albania is a country smaller than all but 2 US states with a third of the population living in the capital.
Constantly comparing the US protests with the protests in Europe doesn't make any sense. We have different infrastructure and the population is more dispersed. You're not going to get the same shots of a massive group of people in the majority of places. The last no kings day (since we have easy numbers for it) had thousands of locations all across the country.
There have been longlasting protests in every state and probably every city in the country. There have been massive protests nationwide. There is a huge concentrated effort by protesters, voters and organizers. Hell, Minnesota protested for like a month straight in the dead of winter when it was -20 degrees Fahrenheit.
I take your point, though I was trying to explain her use of the word "sustained." There is precious little reported in the legacy media about any protests, so they certainly do not appear sustained. But to add to your reasoning, there is something much sadder. I have the strong impression that many Americans are so trapped in having to work long hours for barely enough pay that they don't have the leisure, strength or time to protest.
Yea, thats under discussed. Not to mention, losing your job means losing your health insurance. We have no requirement for paid time off or sick leave so you can't necessarily take time off to protest. People are doing it, but its not easy and its not being reported on. Its hard to grow (or measure) a movement with no media reporting.
We are so sorry to you, the people of Canada and the world! Frump was elected by a very slim margin, aided by gerrymandering, propaganda, money in our elections, and disaffected people, etc. Many many of us are working as hard as we can to overcome this cruel, corrupt, criminal regime and save our Democracy. It’s hard and scary and exhausting but we will not give up until we overcome.
They may feel safe now with their white skin and fat investment accounts, but haven't they given a thought to what will happen eventually to their grandchildren? A world with no clean air or water, no freedom of speech?
Have you been to any protest or apart of any community organization fighting Trump? It's pretty much all organized by people over the age of 65, mostly women.
There are sustained protests but they get little coverage except by Rachel Maddow on MSNOW and Robert B. Hubbell and Scott Dworkin daily right here on Substack. Please follow them. You’ll be glad you did.
WW2 had Eisenhower and his mastery of logistics ...... Mulberry Harbors ....... and the troops knew WHY they were fighting.
The comparison is stunning and I suspect that morale suffers because our military really doesn't know why they are where they are and how to get out of the hole that they were commanded to get into.
Men were drafted for Vietnam. A lesson was learned from that. Have voluntary military service be a life saver for young people who have very few options and there are a lot of young people in our country now that HAVE very few options.
They are there to make a fortune for the American military industrial complex and to stroke Trump's fragile need to look like he's a tough hero when he's a spineless wimp.
6. 47 announced a multiyear “tariff cliff” for generic medications: 0% through July 2028 (just before the end of his term), then 100% for one year and 200% thereafter, explicitly tying penalties to failure to establish US manufacturing capacity.
Put another way... we see what Trump has done to the military BECAUSE we are at war. Stress the economy with a financial crisis, or public health with an outbreak State level public health cannot handle, and we could find more systems are as broken as the military.
How is it that we have had many wars in the past and they lasted for years and years and we never ran out of weapons? This war was only fought for a couple of months and we are out of weapons? Wars now are fought with drones, why are we using these expensive weapons!? Why aren’t we building drones? In the middle of a war this president wants to redecorate our battleships? Something is seriously wrong!
The water that Trump wasted was solely for farm use. It was hundreds of miles away from the fires then burning and had nothing to do with them - but it was water that farmers would have used.
I find it astonishing that the navy of the richest nation ever is running out of food and toiletries, I remember a WWI documentary where the American general in charge, Pershing? Asked for more guns and fewer lawnmowers. Trump must be a Russian asset.
Yes, but I don't think that it is something that could embarrass Trump. Trump is embarrassed by nothing. More likely it is in the form of flattery and bribes. Those are far more effective with Trump.
The Pentagon budget is ONE TRILLION DOLLARS. I don't give a shit if their supply base HAS been blown by Iranians. It was Hegseths job to create another mode for logistics.
I experienced a recent ray of hope, out canvassing in our rather purple area. Speaking with Republicans, a fair number have said they were planning to vote for Democrats. Even Republicans seem to be coming to the conclusion that this craziness has gone too far.
In the 2016 and 2024 elections the DNC was too busy chasing Republican votes instead of ensuring that their base gets out to vote for them. Most Republicans who dislike what Trump does aren't voting for Democrats, they support other Republicans besides Trump. Encourage your voter base to vote and let the opposition party stay home on voting day.
The other night I went to see The Odyssey. Before the movie started there were advertisements projected and one of them was to encourage service in the military. Not only was the message saturated with Hegseth bro-ism and all about killing, at the bottom of the screen it said “Paid for by the Department of War”!! At the end of the commercial it provided the website to go to for more information - War.Gov. It made me sick.
Tolstoy: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."
Every day that the feckless GOP lackeys in congress and the senate leave Trump in office is a day closer to the one where Trump inadvertently kicks off a major war. It will look nothing like a video game. One never knows what the spark that starts the firestorm will be. How many people even knew who Archduke Ferdinand was prior to WW1?
Yes, in the WSJ this weekend was an article about Iran’s plans for a wider war. They see trump & the US as weak & wanting out due to domestic concerns, but trump could easily miscalculate & start something worse.
The Department of War was originally the real department of defense. They changed the name to the Department of Defense when it really became the department of war. Under Trump and Hegseth it's now the department of the military industrial welfare complex.
"But how does somebody like this end up able to impose his will on these disastrous things? How does he end up able to eviscerate the military?" Again Paul ignores the obvious. Because roughly one third of the country doesn't care and is actually AVERSE to democracy if it means sharing control with Democrats and people of color and therefore are FINE with a semi-fascist regime if it extends white Christian dominance over the country. Just Say It, Paul!
Unfortunately, I believe that one third is out of reach. It’s the one third who sat on their hands or voted Stein et al, that I worry about. From what I read online (hopefully not representative) they still don’t take responsibility and stick to some utopian thinking points. I’m very worried about our future.
It may not be obvious now, but some of the most serious damage to the US from the current kakistocracy is going to be to the military. Who, in the future, is going to sign up to be an expendable pawn of whatever random claudillo happens to have won the last election?
I disagree. We see the military and are shocked by what we see. That really does limit the Trump administration. The most serious damage will be from the hit we do not see coming.
Lots of great points here, but I think you're missing the biggest one - the destruction of the military is exactly part of the same principle of replacing competence with loyal incompetence. What do they really want the military for? Ultimately for domestic population control. When they take off the last fig leaf and openly declare themselves the absolute rulers, they want an armed force they can count on to be turned against the population at home. So the genuine, competent military who could not be counted on to fill that role, is being destroyed and replaced with the totally incompetent but blindly loyal ICE.
What I fear is with 5000 NGs in DC until 2029 at $3 Billion, ICE acting as Storm Troopers, Concentration Camps @$38 billion with a capacity of 100000 persons. If we have elections in Nov, Ds win big, trump's lawsuits fail, he declares martial law, the NG and ICE roundup Ds to fill the CCs ? I fear that is the goal. Yeah, that can't happen here.
What a way to start the day. It is more than demoralizing to read your totally accurate description of this man let loose on our country. Misery is an understatement. Solutions to this narcissistic problem are needed. Or some adults in the room.
Which is what they fear and therefore are spending $3,000,000 /day or approximately 1$ Billion/year housing national guard troops in The U S Capitol. They are correct about 1 thing. Crime has increased in the Capital but it not on the streets but in the halls of power. The most corrupt government in our history!!!
Marching only on the capitol would be logistically difficult. We are too spread out. Focusing on D.C. could be used as an excuse for martial law. There are federal buildings in every major city. Spreading out might be more effective.
Wish people taking to the streets would change this but there are new factors at play such as social media brainwashing and reality distortion, tons of money in the hands of the oligarchs that could be used against individuals and communities AND what we’re already seeing—the threatening of family members (Comey’s daughter as an example). That third one is what gives me pause in protesting outside an ICE facility. I’m old and willing to sacrifice my security but what about my son and grandchildren? That’s what gives me pause and could be behind the lack of backbone we’re seeing in former Republicans like Mitt Romney.
Are we all smarter than a billionaire? Did Murdoch, Koch and all the other oligarchs that have protected and promoted Trump know that he would be this stupid, this catastrophically incompetent? Was that the point? Destroy everything? What were the pro-Trump oligarchs expecting? How can there be this much derangement, this much literally psychotic paranoia and destructiveness? Boomers like me are being forced to witness here what was going on in Eurpoe before we were born. It's horrific.
What the billionaires saw were tax cuts, deregulation, and lucrative government contracts. The general welfare of the country was not a consideration.
Carolyn
Agree.
Trump is part of a cancer which is an oligarchy in America run by billionaires and supported by Republicans and 60 millionaire people (including MAGA white male supremacists who hate women, blacks and immigrants) who still give Trump a 35% approval rating. The oligarchy operates with an ongoing insurrection planned by Project 2025 that created a lawless fascist autocracy.
What must and can be done? The cancer which is the oligarchy must and can be removed. Two things enabled the oligarchy. The theft of wealth from 95% of Americans was enabled by attacks on democracy to steal the wealth disguised with adoption of Milton Freidman’s fake unregulated free market supply side shareholder economic policy implemented beginning with Reagan’s trickle-down economics and supported by neoliberal Democrats (Clinton & Obama) and Biden who failed to enforce the law against insurrection. Lincoln stopped the cancer of the Confederacy by enforcing the law. Democrat FDR stopped the oligarchy, recovered from the Great Depression and created a middle class after winning WW2 with Keynesian economics and the policies of the New Deal.
Oligarchy gets political, legal and economic power by having corrupt Republicans support oligarchy in Congress, elect a corrupt Republican to the presidency and stack the Supreme Court with corrupt justices to attack democracy and the Constitution, change laws, suppress enforcement of laws by the government and the courts, and deny equal justice by the government and the courts to steal wealth from 95% of Americans and transfer the wealth to the oligarchs and their Republican agents. The oligarchy uses the political, legal and economic power to implement a lawless fascist autocracy which is created with an insurrection and sustained with an ongoing insurrection by the agents of the oligarchy who are Trump, members of his administration, Republicans in Congress, six justices on the Supreme Court, and a few dozen billionaire oligarchs.
The oligarchy must be stopped by getting Democrats elected in 2028 to the presidency in control of the House and the Senate by campaigning with Project 2029 to stop the oligarchy by enforcing the law and solve core problems including taxes to fund solutions to affordability. Enforcing the federal law against insurrection to arrest prosecute convict and imprison Trump members of his administration Republicans in Congress six justices on the Supreme Court and billionaire oligarchs will get Democratic super majority control of the federal government to fund solutions to affordability including Medicare for All by taxing corporations (at 50%) and billionaires (2% annual wealth tax + 90% income tax that includes capital gains) and then passing legislation that ends Citizens United, reforms and restarts immigration, and fixes many other bad things Republicans and oligarchs created.
Very good. So what is going to be their endgame? When you take all the money, you take away all the desire for bettering yourself, what's the point. The dollar is no longer the reserve currency when it valued like the ruble. So, what is the point?
We desperately need major tax reform as the past 40+ years have seen: 1) a major shift in wealth upwards due to tax reform that has favored capital owners, and 2) an explosion in our national debt. Since at least the early 80's, the share of productivity gains going to wage earners has steadily declined, while the costs of housing, health care and education have increased rapidly. The result has been that too many households struggle financially and are basically living one unplanned expense away from disaster.
By contrast, the top 10% (and especially the top 1%+) have seen enormous gains in both income and wealth. It is estimated that the top1% of income earners own 50% of total US capital, while the share owned by the top 10% of earners is estimated to be 85% plus.
Only through major tax reform can the mechanisms that created this concentration in wealth be addressed. I am not endorsing Mr. Miller's specific suggestions, but would agree that our tax system is rife with deductions and exemptions that have accumulated over time and which inordinately favor wealthy capital owners over others. This is not to say that all such deductions and exemptions are inherently bad, but our tax system has been substantially tilted to favor business and capital owners over the past 40-50 years in ways that are directly responsible for both our national debt and current wealth inequality. And, despite the claims of many, we are not going to "grow" our way out of these problems as the lions share of any such gains will continue to accrue to existing capitol owners.
Ideas: Tax capital gains in companies you've worked for at the same rate as wage income, because a lot of people are using that as a substitute for wage income. (For example, any CEO that takes a $1 salary and earns money through stock appreciation instead.) Eliminate the step-up basis at death for assets worth more than $500,000. (Include an exemption for primary residences or family farms if you need to.) Further close the "buy borrow die" loophole by treating the value of assets used as as collateral for loans as realized gains for tax purposes.
Company stock buy-backs raise the stock price (fewer shares) which assists execs to sooner reach the strike price of their millions of options. Nothing happens by accident.
The 90% top rate would be on all income above a very high threshold. They will still have far more disposable income than the other 99%
If we don't pay attention to how taxable income is reduced by deductions and exemptions, the top line tax rate becomes meaningless. If 70% of otherwise taxable income can be eliminated through deductions and exemptions, a 90% tax on the remaining 30% only amounts to an effective rate of 27%.
We need to go Eisenhower on them, with progressive taxation. Incentivise increasing income up to a point. Dis-incentivise making more than reasonable wealth. No one needs to hoard a trillion dollars. No one needs to "better" themselves with an 8 figure annual income. If the highest tax rate is 90%, people will self- regulate their income, or give more away. Both help regulate the economy.
"You take away all the desire for bettering yourself"? Only if greed is your only motivation. What about those of us who want to earn a comfortable living but also live along with others who are also doing well in our shared community with good schools, low pollution, recreation opportunities, great shopping, maintained infrastructure, cultural diversity, a strong social safety net, and transparent local government.
Huh? What's the point of maintaining the status quo????
I'm watching for the following:
1. The market to crash to hurt us again, not the oligarchs.
2. Banks/CUs to not be backed by the FDIC (musk was in it @2025 March). Oh, Paul, or someone else, can you help with this one?
3. I was friends with an economist. I learned enough to believe the dollar was going to be devalued and at some point, be worthless. Crypto will be used because it can't be tracked.
I think the point is to destroy all things American including us (not all maggots). Hope I'm wrong but we're preparing if I'm right and we'll still be in trouble.
Following 2007-2008 banking collapse, Congress rewrote Dodd-Frank so as allow banks to bail-in during the next one. The government will not be on the hook to bail-out the banks. FDIC will cover some losses but in a big one, will Congress vote additional funds or will it be "tough luck?" Under bail-in, depositors become unsecured creditors of the bank, ranking somewhere below derivatives in bankruptcy payouts. Google "bail-in" for more information. Ellen Brown (Web of Debt Blog) pointed out in a 2023 article on bail-in that insiders crafting the new law decided not to let the general public know so as not to create doubts about the banking system. They also said that, "those that needed to know" could be advised in advance if there was going to be a bail-in. Privatize profit, socialize the losses.
Many thanks for your response. I come to Krugman (tv and substack) looking for them and asking if Paul hasn't covered it.
Congress isn't alive anymore. They're talking but they're not passing much of anything. Makes sense that once again, the public won't be informed of anything but billionaires will be. When a bank or CU crashes, we find out after not before. It's just worse now. It's why I kept checking a website of banks and CUs to see how stable they are. (I realize that the stability of a bank or CU isn't on the mind of the ass. Killing them off is.)
I did have to search "bail-in". New term learned (thanks). Here's an excerpt from Ellen Brown's blog for folks.
Ellen Brown, founder of WebofDebt.com, thinks so-called ‘bail-ins’
are coming. Depositors’ money will be legally taken. Brown
says, “That’s the big disaster that’s coming. Probably one of
these big derivative banks will go bankrupt . . . the derivative
players will get first dibs. They’ll grab all the deposits, and there
won’t be anything left.”
I think I've seen one other comment about the FDIC death in the year since the destruction and lies started about it. We have our accts spread out over a few banks so if one goes kaput, we're not broke until the others are hit which could be really fast ...
??? FDIC still exists to protect depositors. The banks will take the losses along with Wall Street investors. What’s wrong with the revised Dodd-Frank signed by Obama in 2010?
You forgot Truth and Reconciliation hearings or Nuremburg type trials to hold those responsible accountable and claw back the billions of dollars that they've stolen. I'm looking at you Lutnick, Kushner, Witkoff , Trumps, et al.
I'd prefer Truth and Consequences hearings.
Actually, it goes back to James Buchanan and the resurrection of the likes of Hayek in which dollars equal votes.......
Don't forget about White Christian Nationalism, just watched Bad Faith on Prime, they have serious power.
Well, considering that Hakeem Jeffries recently announced his opposition to Medicare For All (after accepting millions in healthcare-funded PACs), Project 2029 is little more than so concept of a plan, with zero details and no bold plans t o either harden drmocracy (or whatever remain of it, and mostly BS moderate talking points), your optimism seems unwarranted.
Aside from the fact that simply electing Democrats (when most accept a picture of AIPAC, crypto, AI, pharma, or other special interest dollar) will result in a continuation of the status quo, corporate Democrats are dead set against taxing the wealthy.
If Americans had the fortitude to organize, or the willingness to engage in mass sustained economic boycotts, there might be a very slim chance for change...but clearly we lack any real strength of character.
None of us should be surprised at how this ends.
Unfortunately any such boycott would require significant personal and financial sacrifice on the part of too many Americans who can ill-afford it. And, even if successful, it would still require political action to provide a lasting solution. Unless we start sending people to Congress who will actually do the people's business and who are not beholden to special interests, I fear that not much will change.
It costs nothing to delete social media apps, which make their money collecting your data and selling advertising based on user numbers.
It saves money to delete Amazon Prime subscriptions (Amazon often has higher costs per item than msny other outlets).
It saves money to delete streaming services apps snd switch to free library offerings.
I don't buy the affordability argument.
As to political action, we've seen clearly that money runs DC and legacy media.
If you want to see political change, you have to 1) depress the money available to buy politicians and write legislation, ad 2) elect progressives who refuse to accept corporate or soecial interest "donations".
Since we can't count on Americans to do the most basic level of research to see who owns their representatives, economic boycotting must be a concurrent action.
If people are too apathetic or firmly in denial to do either, much less both, then they might as well accept that the US will continue its terminal decline...and our rights, freedoms, and flimsy social safety net will continue to evaporate.
Wishful thinking is neither a strategy nor a tactic...it's a form of denial.
Do not forget SNAP.
You beat me to it - couldn't agree more. Most of the billionaire class would sell their own mothers into prostitution for a few more bucks. They prove it every day by their actions.
And they are stupid and hubristic enough that they really didn't expect the long-term damage to have any impact on themselves (and they are probably correct).
💯
Exactly, immediate return.
Carolyn - Bingo!
Exactly. To the extent they gave it any thought, they probably figured the "adults in the room" would contain the worst impulses. And arguably from 2017-2020 they did.
But to come into this last election and think everything would be okay required a Herculean effort of denial.
since when has the welfare of the country been a business or company's or shareholders consideration?
Hitler got into power because the ultra-conservatives thought they could well control him and they and the ultra-rich were all afraid of the left. History doesn't repeat itself, but boy does it rhyme.
The big difference is that Hitler was intelligent. He had his delusions, including thinking that extreme violence could survive long term.
But was able to lead a country and a war which overwhelmed Éurope for a time, before collapsing. He saw himself as the new Roman emperor, forgetting what happened to the Roman empire, and how it actually functioned.
The really cognitive smart ones that got them into power were actually Goering and Goebbels, Hitler had all the charisma and the self-delusion, but he wasn't very intelligent or well educated. He had quite simplistic (wrong) convictions. Some of the key large blunders in the war were his (London blitz, not securing North Africa when it was still possible, Stalingrad, key decisions in Barbarossa (here when it collapsed his simplemindedness worked somewhat for a short while, but keeping that going instead of a flexible defense cost him a lot), declaring war on the US without having Japan declare war on Russia, the Ardennes offensive. The German general staff after the war tried to pin all errors on him, which wasn't fair, they had supported some of these, but I suspect historians mostly agree his decisions were more dumb than smart.
His biggest mistake had to be declaring war on the US. The US could easily have diverted all its attention to the Pacific. To Dr. Krugman's point, the German generals had to have known better, but did nothing to stop his folly. Lucky for a good part of the world.
War in the Atlantic theater was inevitable. While Hitler’s declaration of war made things easier for Roosevelt politically in 1941, eventually an Atlantic Ocean dominated by German U-boats would have been unacceptable to the United States.
WWII what-ifs are stimulating and we’ll never know the answer. I’m not so sure it couldn’t have ended as a Cold War with Nazi Germany instead of as happened with the USSR. Congress (which back then declared wars) and the American public weren’t that keen on foreign entanglements and Japan on its own would already have been a big enough commitment. Without US troops, the British would not have been able to retake the European continent. Barring US entry in the war, Lend Lease would have served a defensive purpose. The Germans could have allowed this. After the failed Luftwaffe campaign over Britain and invading the Soviet Union, there did not seem to be a serious plan to take over the UK. Letting the Expeditionary Force leave Dunkirk (another fortunate mistake) makes one wonder if accomodation with the British Empire wasn’t already in the back of Hitler’s mind. Churchill understood that getting the Americans involved was his best hope for changing the situation in Europe. Hitler obliged. It’s not clear the Soviets would have prevailed in a one front war or that that might not have ended as a stalemate. But that’s another what-if.
Yeah. Hitler declared war on the US primarily because the US was already using its navy to guard ships delivering military supplies to Britain and the US declaring war on Japan gave Hitler an excuse to start using force against the US ships doing the guarding.
In the last few years of the war, Hitler did just what Trump and Hegseth are doing; ignoring evidence and shooting bringers of bad tidings.
Trump is Murdock's Frankenstein monster. The monster has slipped his shackles and is now running amok. The oligarchs still don't think that they'll be affected and have done nothing to rein Trump in. Eventually, after a dozen or so are pushed out of penthouse suite windows, some may see the light. It will be too late by then.
Or maybe the oligaarchs, especially the tech oligarchs feel that what Trump is doing suits their purposes just fine. Who needs NASA when we have Musk? Who needs a military when we have data centers from Greenland to Patagonia to control the seething masses?
"Who needs NASA when we have Musk?"
And without the publicly funded prior art creaed by NASA, what would Space-X even be?
Let's not forget that Musk has gotten a huge amount of funding from the US government.
Indeed. Tesla was funded by the same program that the Republicans tried to turn into an embarrassment because it also funded a company named Solyndra that failed. And of the US government stops contracting with Space-X, Space-X's rockets most likelu stop being profitable. And the launches that put the Starlink satellites into space were directly funded by US rural broadband subsidies that are paid for by (IIRC) fees on your cell phone bill.
Not quite yet. Give it a few years, when ordered phalanxes of semi-autonomous Police-bots with batons, tear gas and tasers can slap down any who dare object to rule by the Gilded Few in their penthouses.
Hear, hear!!
It is not yet Russia.
The Trumps are bilionaires and I can confidently assert here that I am smarter than they are. All put together. And I'm no brain-box.
I can promise you that you're a brain-box when compared to any Trump!
His older sons seem to share his stupidity, but not so sure about his daughters.
Do you mean the daughter who went to Ethiopia I thought to start up a shoe business? I can't find it on the internet but she's not as clean as she seems.
There is a plan called Project 2025 - you may have heard of it - which served the purposes of the billionaires with various motivations - economic and religious. Trumpism embodies and draws together monied
practitioners of every deadly sin there is, economic, political, spiritual, and psychological. They have wanted this for decades. Trump is the talisman that could unite their various goals.
Yep. Nothing controls the masses as well as a little faux religious guilt trip.
How to stop it?
I watched the Nuremberg trials on NF. Goebbels had good answers to everything. You saw how that ended. He talked about the utter stupidity of people being brainwashed and how when people spoke the truth, it had no effect on the cult.
I'm reading book on fascism and authoritarianism (check substack for it). While they do end (orban's toast and I hope literally), it's takes protesting and fighting 24/7.
Goering seemed to do the best. He was fluent in English, so he had plenty of time to consider his answers to prosecutor's questions while the translators were translating them into German. He also managed to cheat the hangman.
I watched Nuremberg (the latest) on NF. Decades ago, I read about it. Goebbels’ statements and quotes (to me) were fascinating and unfortunately seem to be used successfully by Miller (through his boss). I’ll look at Goering again.
Wasn't Reagan supposedly suffering from dementia ?
Reagan revisited.
Alzheimer’s.
yes to both Orc and Winston. He had alzheimer's especially in the 2nd term.
Saint Ronnie couldn't have had dementia, anointed as he was by God hisself to slash taxes on the rich.
It's a sad day when we look back at Saint Ronnie's Administration; or those of the Bushes...for actually being somewhat competent. Trump2 has ennobled incompetence and corruption as forms of art.
Sometimes things spin out of control - and billionaires are not smarter than others; just more ruthless (and some say, more willing to take chances).
The true GOP leadership has always preferred to put a person in charge of the country who was not to smart or hung up on crazy ideology. He just had to have fidelity to the principle that it's OK for Wall street predators to exploit the masses. Trump fit that bill and was great at conning the ignorant masses; convincing them that they could not trust information from any other sources than himself. He was also easy to bribe, so they didn't have to go through the cumbersome process of K-streeting.
What they did not get was how malignant his narcissism was and that his desperate need to feed his ego could overpower his desire to enrich himself. His mental decline was also a surprise.
But I don't think the billionaires are losing a lot of sleep - after all the world is their oyster. If they mess up the US, there are plenty of other places where they already have build fortified palaces (and underground bunkers). The true burden of a US decline will fall on the foolish voters who got conned by Trump.
Speaking of foolish voters, this NYT article is worthy of retelling as an Aesop fable.
Years of Trump Support Came Undone in 15 Minutes in an Airport.
The case represents a new front in President Trump’s mass deportation drive: arrests at airports of people who have active immigration cases and no criminal history.
“A U.S. citizen just watched his wife get dragged away and had no idea where she’s going,” recalled Mr. Jindra [WHO VOTED FOR TRUMP 3 TIMES!].
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/16/us/trump-immigration-crackdown.html
In other words. Something Trump did finally affected him. That's when he stopped supporting him. When it was happening to others. He didn't care. Well no sympathy from me guy. You got the day you voted for dude. Enjoy it.
But sympathy for his wife.
Thanks for sharing the NYT piece without a paywall!! Wondering if Mr. Jindra will vote for Trump a fourth time....
In another article, he said he would not.
The "Leopard Ate My Face Party" voters continue to amaze.
Obviously, ICE has access to all data related to fliers. TSA agents are working with ICE to alert them to non citizens, regardless of their legal status.
And it is falling on those foolish voters. If only they recognized it, but I fear that most don't and will continue to support them even if it means the destruction of their families. Ideology seems to overcome rationality.
I think the best way to interpret them is to consider MAGA to be a cult. They have their own set of "facts" and any attempt to present counter-information just feeds their paranoia about the outside and outsiders. They have an authoritarian leaders and only believe the information coming from him/his trusted sources.
The process of getting someone out of a cult is difficult but not impossible. It usually begins with they themselves raising doubts. Something not being as promised or doesn't make sense. The more successful approaches that sometimes can de-cult a person, involves asking questions that can seed doubts (rather than confront them with adversarial facts).
Here's how - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVy-Iag4Qtk
The Billionaires are wrong. If the great unwashed in the US get really fired up about the destruction of their country, there will be no where on earth for them to hide from retribution.
Probably not. Sadly.
Wealth is often extremely portable. Plenty of smaller countries where they can buy citizenship and park their fortunes.
They can be "Maduro-ed"
Yes. Such is the risk of repatriating yur family + billions to the wrong tax haven.
Fortunately for the Epstein Class, their extreme wealth can buy them top-notch tax advice. Switzerland is still top'o'list, as Swiss banking privacy and EU citizenship come with the package. I personally know of such a fellow; who renounced his US for Swiss; but still comes as a tourist to winter in Palm Beach, where he still owns a mansion.
I was born in 1942. saw some of the best years of this country. now i've been watching some of the worst. I hope I live to see a recovery. but at my age i'm not currently hopeful. rwt
I was born during McCarthyism and hope I don't have much longer in this insanity.
I think some billionaires believe they can wrap themselves up so tight in the protective cocoon of their money that nothing can harm them: the less tax they have to pay, the stronger the laws protecting their property, the bigger and better the cocoon. And toying with the fate of millions is a suitable entertainment for someone who has run out of ideas about what to spend their money on.
Not much reason not to believe that said billionaires aren't similarly protected from hearing what they don't want to hear by the people they surround themselves with. You don't bring bad news to the person paying your salary...
And if some of them are actually bright as well, the arrogance that comes along with believing they are smarter than those around them is a secondary cocoon of ignorance because they aren't listening. Been around way too many of them over the years.
Eventually, people not telling them awkward truths is what does for them. When it became clear during the second Gulf War that there were no WMDs in Iraq analysts were briefly puzzled at why Saddam in the run up to the war had behaved as if he had them. But then it dawned on them: he really believed he did have WMDs. Because if you've been put in charge of Saddam's nuclear and biological weapons development program but have been unable to get the raw materials to make them, passing on the bad news to the President is simply not an option.
In the run up to Desert Storm *nobody* of any importance believed Saddam had any WMD's. The tons of Sarin 155mm arty shells buried out in the desert had been inert for years already.
He had no nukes. He maybe had a little Bioweaponry--that the US had in effect given him.
Bush Sr. gave him Uncle Sam's blessing to take Kuwait--but not Saudi or the Gulf States. And once Saddam made his move, Bush clanged the cell door shut.
Their cocoon of ignorance ignorance coupled with the fact that so much money seems to disconnect them from even the idea their actions have consequences or that therr are things such folks shouldn’t even do (renting Venice comes to mind). One of the magazines still publishing good journalism had an article about this very subject recently).
You are so correct Dr. Krugman
Prof. Krugman, with due respect, the first truth an autocrat does not want to hear is that he is incompetent, and everything else stems from that.
He was almost certainly told about the missile shortage, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and other logistical constraints. But his self-delusion, fueled by his belief in his own "genius instincts," leads him to think that Iran is on the verge of collapse.
He knows this because, in his mind, he is a genius unlike any the world has ever seen. "I know more than the generals." "I alone can fix it." "I, in my infinite wisdom..."
I'm sure Bibi told him at the start of this mess that the Iranians were rioting and that as soon as the US dropped the first bomb, they would revolt. Leaving Trump as their new hero of freedom. This is the type of stuff you get when dealing with an incompetent narcissist.
The most valuable skill in DC today is being able to say "Mr. President, trust your instincts!" And for that you don't hundreds of thousands of federal workers, hence DOGE!
https://tdhawkes.substack.com/p/we-are-too-grand-too-grand-for-words
I have read enough Trump to have thoughts and emotions about his writings, words, and behaviors since the 1980s. He is a natural born autocrat. That is what his whole life looks like to this voter. I am a democracy member, full disclosure. Here are our two countries based on partisanship (autocrat versus democracy) over historical time (at least 300 years). Mr. Trump is, again, an autocrat. He is acting just like one. That was predictable. What is not predictable in outcome are any actions meant to direct him or his outpourings of old life energies. Some people have those. They do sleep at other, inappropriate times.
If you focus on one thing and one thing only, how competent to deal with a world which is mulitvarious and filled with angles and meanings and imports, that must be understood and reacted to with care and acceptance of what is, how good could you be at dealing with what is? What are oligarchs interested in? Money. More more more. They will do anything to make more money. If that means promoting fossil fuel extraction and use to make money and ignoring anything that gets in the way of that, that is exactly what they will do. That is indeed what they are doing. Right now, other oligarchs want to make more more more money on the back of AI, which means they have to take more more more land, electricity, water, and use circular economics with their AI oligarch buddies to fund their activities that will make them rich and powerful and all other people the little non-player characters they are (in the AI oligarch's minds), that is what they will do. Indeed, they are trying to do this every second of every day. The stock market is kissing their nasty behinds to make sure this funding and this 'growth' continues unabated. Will this destroy our planet? Yes.
The fossil fuel and AI oligarchs do not care about the destruction of our climate or environment. Their enablers, Trump and crew, the US conservative Supreme court, the Republicans in the Federal and State houses, the US military, and the media do not give a damn about the Earth or its People. They will use the military, robots, computers, and AI, and they will get rid of us too, because we and the Earth are in the way of their grandiose notions of themselves and their greatness, their ingenuity, their perfections. Yes, they do believe human history is meaningless except for them. They demonstrate this with their behaviors every single day, and have now for how long?
We have to do something about this and we are almost out of time to do so. The Earth and its living biome have been put in the position of having to defend themselves or die. Sure, humans are part of the living Earth biome. We don't realize that though, do we? Do the oligarchs and Trumpers realize humans are dying too? Do they realize they too are human? No, they can't see that much.
There's a movie from 2024 called THE END. It's about an ultra-wealthy family living in a bunker after environmental collapse. Not a great movie, but the fact that they are surrounded by a warehouse of hoarded, priceless art pieces as well as the fact that they are facing a worthless, joyless future is hilarious.
This sounds like an end of the world story, and that we can't hide from what is coming, even if we retreat to a bunker because we can.
Takeaway: We need each other, and Earth environment. That is what many of us have come to believe in the decades of the last Boomer years. Humans need each other and their Earth home. We need to live together.
Amen to that. Cooperation by the unwashed masses is what the Oligarchs fear most. They prefer us to compete in life-or-death struggles for the crumbs off their tables.
We disregard nature at our own peril.
Agreed!
100% correct. These oligarchs have now become so rich that they can no compete with each other on the basis of earthly goods accumulation. They are now competing on the plane of who can achieve immortality. Think vampires!
No, no, because *my* fortified mega-bunker in the Swiss Alps *will* survive the nuclear or biological cataclysm. No matter the rest of the world. Me, my spoiled children, and an elite selection of technicians and guards will see to it that me and mine will survive. No matter what.
LOL.
I am amazed how they don’t realize that the day the social order ends and they withdraw into their bunkers, their own bodyguards will cut their throats because who would stop them?
Even if that doesn't happen, these folks are now trapped in their bunkers for safety. What comes next? We should ask that question from their perspectives, but also from the perspectives of all the human and other living species' experiences on Earth once the bunker-abled folks disappear into their bunkers.
Social order may end in US but not in the whole world - unless earth get hit with a huge meteor. Their plan is to always move to the most stable and controllable environment on the planet. Many a former dictator that was overthrown, now lives comfortably in another country. If a single responsible and hated person can do that - our hundreds of corporate dictators can figure that out too.
Yes. And assuming you committed no extraditable crimes, that location is called Switzerland.
Ah, Switzerland! Where you can safely park your billions. Or hundreds of millions, even. And where the Swiss government is selling off a huge portion of the bunkers they'd built in the Alps for WW2.
On The Beach is instructional in that any self-respecting billionaire needs hisself a fully NBC-protected bunker complex. Where he can have his servants grow hydroponic food...and prepare to repopulate the Earth once the radiation subsides.
I totally agree with your added nuances. Go!!!
They are making lots of money in the short term and that's all they care about. They don't care if we become a shit hole country as long as they can skim profits from it.
Here’s what going on. From today’s NYT - gift 🎁-
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/opinion/silicon-valley-war-pentagon.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6FA.x9ZA.eZ-zsoAudgJZ&smid=nytcore-ios-share
Concluding paragraph:
The arc of Silicon Valley’s moral universe doesn’t seem to last longer than the next presidential election. In the end, it’s not bombs that Silicon Valley loves, but profits.
UNBELIEVABLE--Just a breezy, this too shall pass conclusion. WOW
Why do you say not dumb or not competent?
PUTIN IS COMPETENT
THE NORTH KOREAN GUY IS COMPETENT
THEY ARE EFFECTIVE AGAINST THE PAST DEFENDER OF DEMOCRACIES.
Trump is simply doing what they asked.
Our funding for Ukraine has stopped.
From day 1 of when Tulsi Gabbard was installed at the CIA, she stopped the anti-Russian cyber operations.
Now our fleet is to practice less with the S. Koreans because he likes more the North Koreans.
Putin--or the KGB (FSB) rather--is competent at recruiting dumbass business types like D. Trump. Just as the FSB does most all of the work of keeping 156m Russians under its thumb.
But he displayed massive incompetence in his invasion of Ukraine. A country with not even a quarter of Russia's population and resources.
Just like Trump--with Hegseth--displayed colossal incompetence planning and executing his Iran War. No pre-positioned minesweepers, or base anti-drone defenses. No urgent ramping up of smart munition production in the months before. The only qualities Trump2 excels at are incompetence and corruption. That, and bald-face lying. All of which MAGA voters are content with--*as long as it upsets the Libs.* Crazy times indeed.
Oligarchs are an easy target but not the correct point of focus to change and redirect the cascade to authoritarianism. At least until our democracy is fully discarded, oligarchs are not the instrument of power. Focus on changing the Republican majority Senate confirming one DJT kakistocrat after another. Focus on changing the Republican House where Rep Mike Johnson stands beside Rep Jim Jordan and spinning up "investigations".
No denying the nation is in desperate straights when a sclerotic Democratic Party is the only viable avenue to effect these changes. Focus on stopping the Democratic Party from rummaging around in its own underwear drawer and staring at itself in a funhouse mirror trying decide if today is a "Jockey" or a "Munsingwear" day.
Resist the daily distractions of disinformation and pettiness. Sharpen every comment here and everywhere on the naked corruption, incompetence and stupidity of DJT, his kakistocratic administration and reject at the polls the "We are all afraid" Republican Party for its cowardice in choosing power over principles of government in our Declaration of Independence.
Any objective observer should have known since 2016 that reality and competance were not in Trump's domain. The fact that his distance from reality is becoming more obvious is unfortunate, and intelligent Republicans (as well as many Democrats) should do more to correct the situation.
As for many oligarchs, they are benefiting from the free ride on taxes, so their short term interests prevail.
Don't look now, but Trump has just destroyed the South Korean alliance, while increasing ties to NK and Russia. Seems a good plan, especially as the alliance with Canada and Europe is close to disintegrating. The US deserves this; this is what it has brought on to itself and what it sustains daily.
Trump thinks he is a smart ass, he is actually a dumb-ass. Jeffery Epstein sold the goods to Putin and that is what he is using to control dumb-ass Trump......LETS HAVE THE REST OF THE EPSTEIN FILES RELEASED..NOW!!
Agree! Release the damn Epstein files and hold everyone accountable to the fullest extent of the law!
But considering the extent to which this administration has gone to prevent that from happening- including the wag the catastrophic “it’s not a war” dog in Iran which has rapidly escalated throughout the Middle East, and an undefined trajectory, I admit I have my doubts about where it’s all headed, except that the potential ending doesn’t look good.
So, all things considered, I won’t be holding my breath until the sundowning incompetence finally ends.
What a friggin’ mess.
(And, uh, have a great day…?) 😳
putin has the golden shower videos which he will release when trump is no longer useful and that will bring down trump and his cabinet
Even street level GOP voters have always been obsessed with other people's sex lives. They don't really care about the abuse of the Epstein mess, it's the sex side show they love and don't care if anything is ever done about it. They loved the Clinton show, the affair reveals, the sexting rumors (of Democrats only), transexuals, TV hosts with cleavage, women with maga makeup obedience fetishes, men who conduct religious versions of bdsm in their homes, etc. They don't care about people starving or losing jobs or having families ripped apart and deported, or nazi shootings in the streets. Nothing new.
Trump is one of the Russian secrecy agencies biggest success stories. They've been grooming him since the 1980s and he swallowed the bait. He's been laundering money in his properties and casinos ever since then. One of his casinos was given the largest fine at the time for laundering Russian Mafia money.
It all started when Ivana Trump's relatives in communist Czechoslovakia thought Donald could be useful to them and gave his name to the KGB.
I'm willing to bet EVERYONE has seen the full, unredacted Epstein files except for the American public.
Yes, Putin almost certainly has Kompromat on trump, but don’t underestimate how much he longs to join the dictators club. They’re exactly what he has long aspired to be.
Trump's a pathological liar. He says one thing for American votes and another thing once he's elected. When is he going to release his tax returns? Where is the cheaper, better health care plan that was ready for day one? Trump has made thousands of promises that he has no intention of keeping.
To Trump, reality is whatever he thinks will work for the moment. He has no objective concept of reality, so in that sense, he never sees himself as lying.
"They actually actively dislike competence. Because someone who is competent, someone who knows what they’re doing, might stand on their dignity, might refuse to follow instructions from above. You need third-raters or worse."
They tried to tell him he'd lost the election.
As a result of that insulting truth, he fomented an insurrection. It failed, but barely. He was willing to see his vice president murdered in order to retain power.
We have to vote in numbers "never seen before" this November to send the unambiguous message that his rule by kakistocracy is on the ropes.
why are all the Rs lap dogs, most are rich and would lose nothing by being true to their oath? "OMG, I might get primaried." Even tillis and cassidy kissed his ass while not running again. Are they in the trump-epstein files?
They want post-congress Republican jobs. Sad situation.
Trump power is strong in the cult. Fox Cult News and other right wing media created a huge cult that is so used to being manipulated by their media, that transferring that cult behavior to Trump was easy for them. The MAGAs do what the cult leader tells them.
Yes. Fox created the environment for people to believe in one source for "reality."
OMG, anon threats which the SS and FBI would investigate. Well, it seems the Ds are actually killed. Regardless, the Rs wouldn't have stormed Normandy - such feckless cowards. We do have Nathan Hale as a model of patriotism which is lacking in congress.
Trump has made statements admitting that he lost the election, and is recorded as trying to falsify the results in Georgia. To say that he doesn't really know he lost is disingenious at best.
Trump and his cronies and those who voted for him may deserve this but not the rest of us. Many of us worked hard to not get him elected but failed. We need to get him out of office.
Criminy. Just what we need. A rekindled bromance. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/2/28/trump-and-kim-in-quotes-from-bitter-rivalry-to-unlikely-bromance
And they call Democrats Communists. Who supports the real Communists?- Republicans.
And they have insane Muslim paranoia. But who behaves like and holds values most similar to fundamentalist Islam? MAGA.
Donnie's superpower is destroying things. He is the enshitifier. Everything he touches turns to shit. He has gone bankrupt repeatedly, destroyed the XFL, and propped himself up through Russian money laundering. The US military is now being Trumped. Half of the electorate was willing to put him back in power just to validate their bigotry and racism. The disaster we are living through is their fault.
While pulling our carrier out of the Pacific to relieve the Abraham Lincoln. I mean, what could go wrong? Signal that we have no dog in the 70 year old frozen conflict and then remove our force from the region... what do you think could happen? I don't think DRPK could or would take South Korea, because South Korea learned well the lessons of the US military and has an advanced economy and good logistics. But I do worry about Taiwan.
Only @ half + 1 of the US deserves it...
Has no one noticed it‘s what Putin told him to do?
I was just going to make the same comment. Trump is a bully and his hero is the guy who bullies even better than he does. He loves all authoritarians because that’s what he wants to be.
trump is an authoritarian submissive
His obsession with wind turbines came about when he failed to bully the Scottish government into cancelling a wind farm that would be (and is) visible from his golf course over there. It's just more evidence of his main drive to bully others.
I don’t like to psychoanalyze dictators and criminals because it shouldn’t matter why they do what they do. And too many MAGAts don’t care: “He may be a thug, but he’s our thug.”
But in this case his personality disorder, plus dementia,* is so obviously behind most of what he says and does, and the stakes are so high, that it might be useful to consider it when planning for the future.
*plus whatever Putin has on him
My same initial thought.
If we ever find out what's said on those long phone calls....
Why aren't there sustained protests? Kind of looks like Americans either agree with trump or are too lazy/cocooned/hasn't hurt me yet to care.
They are lazy; Americans, many of us, are what Thomas Paine called
“ sunshine patriots “. No change will happen until enough people become uncomfortable and demand the change that has been needed for more than 50 years.
"Uncomfortable" may be an understatement. Thinking back to PK's Saturday interview with Vanessa, the truth about autocracy will become very real to voters when they have to empty their pockets to pay its accumulated debt. The clearest sign I see that Trump is "sunsetting" is that he shows no concern for what could happen to him and is legacy if he precipitates a financial crisis.
I'm protesting since Dec 2015- please, join me
They don't care. Its an "All Volunteer Military " and the "people that matter" aren't in it.
And, Hegseth has fired all the competent people who understood how stuff really works... And Donnie Demento still has The Nuclear Launch Codes. The rethugs in Congress are still cowering under their desks afraid he'll target them next. and SCOTUS is corrupted beyond doing any least little thing which would be good for our Nation. Talk about a Perfect Storm.
He hasn’t fired everyone. There are still lots of generals and other senior officers (colonels) who were appointed more than a year and a half ago and who have to be highly competent, experienced, knowledgeable. But they are keeping their heads down.
The “people that matter” are *never* in it. Chickenhawks never hawk…. At least not before extremely high levels of conflict (ww ii) and maybe not then.
It seems the press is the only institution that can actually influence the regime, as Krugman says -- but if you look closer you might find that no, Trump won't recognize a problem unless it's reported on Fox ...?
There are protests everyday around the country. My main group has a protest every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Another group has one every Wednesday. Another group every Sunday. those are just the groups I’m part of in my slice of the country.
better question: why don’t you look into something before saying it’s not happening?
I think what she means is that there is no massive, concentrated, longlasting protest as there was in Albania
Albania is a country smaller than all but 2 US states with a third of the population living in the capital.
Constantly comparing the US protests with the protests in Europe doesn't make any sense. We have different infrastructure and the population is more dispersed. You're not going to get the same shots of a massive group of people in the majority of places. The last no kings day (since we have easy numbers for it) had thousands of locations all across the country.
There have been longlasting protests in every state and probably every city in the country. There have been massive protests nationwide. There is a huge concentrated effort by protesters, voters and organizers. Hell, Minnesota protested for like a month straight in the dead of winter when it was -20 degrees Fahrenheit.
I take your point, though I was trying to explain her use of the word "sustained." There is precious little reported in the legacy media about any protests, so they certainly do not appear sustained. But to add to your reasoning, there is something much sadder. I have the strong impression that many Americans are so trapped in having to work long hours for barely enough pay that they don't have the leisure, strength or time to protest.
Yea, thats under discussed. Not to mention, losing your job means losing your health insurance. We have no requirement for paid time off or sick leave so you can't necessarily take time off to protest. People are doing it, but its not easy and its not being reported on. Its hard to grow (or measure) a movement with no media reporting.
Watching from Canada as your government attacks us. Where should I look??
As noted above: Rachel Maddow, MSNOW; Robert B. Hubbell, Substack; Scott Dworkin, Substack.
We are so sorry to you, the people of Canada and the world! Frump was elected by a very slim margin, aided by gerrymandering, propaganda, money in our elections, and disaffected people, etc. Many many of us are working as hard as we can to overcome this cruel, corrupt, criminal regime and save our Democracy. It’s hard and scary and exhausting but we will not give up until we overcome.
Easy to say if you don’t live here
They may feel safe now with their white skin and fat investment accounts, but haven't they given a thought to what will happen eventually to their grandchildren? A world with no clean air or water, no freedom of speech?
Have you been to any protest or apart of any community organization fighting Trump? It's pretty much all organized by people over the age of 65, mostly women.
Much truth in what you say. If it doesn't touch them specifically…they go about their merry way.
There are sustained protests but they get little coverage except by Rachel Maddow on MSNOW and Robert B. Hubbell and Scott Dworkin daily right here on Substack. Please follow them. You’ll be glad you did.
WW2 had Eisenhower and his mastery of logistics ...... Mulberry Harbors ....... and the troops knew WHY they were fighting.
The comparison is stunning and I suspect that morale suffers because our military really doesn't know why they are where they are and how to get out of the hole that they were commanded to get into.
Not unlike Vietnam from my time.
Men were drafted for Vietnam. A lesson was learned from that. Have voluntary military service be a life saver for young people who have very few options and there are a lot of young people in our country now that HAVE very few options.
They are there to make a fortune for the American military industrial complex and to stroke Trump's fragile need to look like he's a tough hero when he's a spineless wimp.
And to distract from the Epstein files!
Appalling but unsurprising.
National Guard troops protecting the Capitol after January 6 were served tainted food.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/541429-ational-guards-defending-us-capitol-are-reportedly-getting-sick/
This territory is all too familiar.
Remember when…
1. 47 ripped off his covid mask in 2020? We lost 1M friends and family members. Some of those deaths were preventable. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/10/possible-fallout-from-trumps-dismissal-of-face-masks/
2. 47 ordered the incineration of 500 tons of emergency rations that could have been airdropped to famine sufferers. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/07/usaid-emergency-food-incinerate-trump/683532/
3. 47 ordered the destruction of 10M worth of birth control that was targeted for low income people in Africa who can’t afford another child.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/health/usaid-contraceptives-destroyed-trump.html
4. 47 dumped billions of gallons of freshwater in CA that farmers and firefighters were counting on.
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/07/nx-s1-5287016/farmers-are-worried-after-trump-released-billions-of-gallons-of-water-in-california
5. 47 imposed travel sanctions on ICC members and their families. Sounds like someone is getting nervous.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/06/trump-sanction-icc
6. 47 announced a multiyear “tariff cliff” for generic medications: 0% through July 2028 (just before the end of his term), then 100% for one year and 200% thereafter, explicitly tying penalties to failure to establish US manufacturing capacity.
There will be preventable deaths. https://pharmaphorum.com/news/trump-sets-course-100-then-200-tariffs-generics
Thanks for the list. 47 is the source of so many destructive actions that is is difficult to keep track of all of them!
Put another way... we see what Trump has done to the military BECAUSE we are at war. Stress the economy with a financial crisis, or public health with an outbreak State level public health cannot handle, and we could find more systems are as broken as the military.
How is it that we have had many wars in the past and they lasted for years and years and we never ran out of weapons? This war was only fought for a couple of months and we are out of weapons? Wars now are fought with drones, why are we using these expensive weapons!? Why aren’t we building drones? In the middle of a war this president wants to redecorate our battleships? Something is seriously wrong!
The water that Trump wasted was solely for farm use. It was hundreds of miles away from the fires then burning and had nothing to do with them - but it was water that farmers would have used.
I find it astonishing that the navy of the richest nation ever is running out of food and toiletries, I remember a WWI documentary where the American general in charge, Pershing? Asked for more guns and fewer lawnmowers. Trump must be a Russian asset.
Oh yes, he is very much Putin’s bitch
Putin has something on him. Remember their meeting in Helsinki?
Yes, but I don't think that it is something that could embarrass Trump. Trump is embarrassed by nothing. More likely it is in the form of flattery and bribes. Those are far more effective with Trump.
I will NEVER forget the stunned look on Donnys face. Putin had a smug look.
At first, I thought it was pee tapes. Now I think it’s far worse.
Ya THINK?
Yeah I do.
The Pentagon budget is ONE TRILLION DOLLARS. I don't give a shit if their supply base HAS been blown by Iranians. It was Hegseths job to create another mode for logistics.
Trump is the Russian Spy Agencies biggest success story.
I experienced a recent ray of hope, out canvassing in our rather purple area. Speaking with Republicans, a fair number have said they were planning to vote for Democrats. Even Republicans seem to be coming to the conclusion that this craziness has gone too far.
We can only hope these Republicans follow through...
I take notice of how many people show up at a local protest in NW Connecticut, and how many drivers honk with approval… agree.
In the 2016 and 2024 elections the DNC was too busy chasing Republican votes instead of ensuring that their base gets out to vote for them. Most Republicans who dislike what Trump does aren't voting for Democrats, they support other Republicans besides Trump. Encourage your voter base to vote and let the opposition party stay home on voting day.
The other night I went to see The Odyssey. Before the movie started there were advertisements projected and one of them was to encourage service in the military. Not only was the message saturated with Hegseth bro-ism and all about killing, at the bottom of the screen it said “Paid for by the Department of War”!! At the end of the commercial it provided the website to go to for more information - War.Gov. It made me sick.
I saw that too. Threw popcorn at the screen.
Tolstoy: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."
Every day that the feckless GOP lackeys in congress and the senate leave Trump in office is a day closer to the one where Trump inadvertently kicks off a major war. It will look nothing like a video game. One never knows what the spark that starts the firestorm will be. How many people even knew who Archduke Ferdinand was prior to WW1?
Yes, in the WSJ this weekend was an article about Iran’s plans for a wider war. They see trump & the US as weak & wanting out due to domestic concerns, but trump could easily miscalculate & start something worse.
I see us inching ever closer to WWIII. My hope is MamaEarth rattles the shit out of all us but she hitting the wrong places at the moment.
The Department of War was originally the real department of defense. They changed the name to the Department of Defense when it really became the department of war. Under Trump and Hegseth it's now the department of the military industrial welfare complex.
"But how does somebody like this end up able to impose his will on these disastrous things? How does he end up able to eviscerate the military?" Again Paul ignores the obvious. Because roughly one third of the country doesn't care and is actually AVERSE to democracy if it means sharing control with Democrats and people of color and therefore are FINE with a semi-fascist regime if it extends white Christian dominance over the country. Just Say It, Paul!
Unfortunately, I believe that one third is out of reach. It’s the one third who sat on their hands or voted Stein et al, that I worry about. From what I read online (hopefully not representative) they still don’t take responsibility and stick to some utopian thinking points. I’m very worried about our future.
Hear, hear!!
It may not be obvious now, but some of the most serious damage to the US from the current kakistocracy is going to be to the military. Who, in the future, is going to sign up to be an expendable pawn of whatever random claudillo happens to have won the last election?
Yup. Going to be hard to staff the enlisted ranks, given that women and minorities aren’t welcome.
They have automated Selective Service—anticipate a draft in the future.
I disagree. We see the military and are shocked by what we see. That really does limit the Trump administration. The most serious damage will be from the hit we do not see coming.
Trump's miserable inner world is being imprinted on to his administration.
The confusion, hypocrisy, greed and literal filth that runs through his mind (so called) are now made manifest in our government and our country.
Great article Professor, thank you. One can only hope USians start to hear it, and care.
Lots of great points here, but I think you're missing the biggest one - the destruction of the military is exactly part of the same principle of replacing competence with loyal incompetence. What do they really want the military for? Ultimately for domestic population control. When they take off the last fig leaf and openly declare themselves the absolute rulers, they want an armed force they can count on to be turned against the population at home. So the genuine, competent military who could not be counted on to fill that role, is being destroyed and replaced with the totally incompetent but blindly loyal ICE.
What I fear is with 5000 NGs in DC until 2029 at $3 Billion, ICE acting as Storm Troopers, Concentration Camps @$38 billion with a capacity of 100000 persons. If we have elections in Nov, Ds win big, trump's lawsuits fail, he declares martial law, the NG and ICE roundup Ds to fill the CCs ? I fear that is the goal. Yeah, that can't happen here.
What a way to start the day. It is more than demoralizing to read your totally accurate description of this man let loose on our country. Misery is an understatement. Solutions to this narcissistic problem are needed. Or some adults in the room.
The solution, which no one wants to hear, is marching on the Capitol or the White House. In the millions.
Which is what they fear and therefore are spending $3,000,000 /day or approximately 1$ Billion/year housing national guard troops in The U S Capitol. They are correct about 1 thing. Crime has increased in the Capital but it not on the streets but in the halls of power. The most corrupt government in our history!!!
Marching only on the capitol would be logistically difficult. We are too spread out. Focusing on D.C. could be used as an excuse for martial law. There are federal buildings in every major city. Spreading out might be more effective.
Wish people taking to the streets would change this but there are new factors at play such as social media brainwashing and reality distortion, tons of money in the hands of the oligarchs that could be used against individuals and communities AND what we’re already seeing—the threatening of family members (Comey’s daughter as an example). That third one is what gives me pause in protesting outside an ICE facility. I’m old and willing to sacrifice my security but what about my son and grandchildren? That’s what gives me pause and could be behind the lack of backbone we’re seeing in former Republicans like Mitt Romney.
Appalling but well done, Paul!