Category Archives: Right-Wing Takeover

Midterm Election Worries

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I’m a bit worried about how Trump’s offer of $5,000 will move a few “low-information” voters. We on the list are well-informed and overestimate what other people “out there” might “know” and what “information” they are getting. Listen to focus groups and you’ll realize that people out there “know” very different things from what we do. (To say the least.) And even when they do know some actual real facts they have VERY short memories. WE remember that Trump makes promises he doesn’t keep but elections only take a few percent to move the other way. So I worry that a there are people hearing they’ll get a check for $5K if they vote Republican, period. No counter messaging, no understanding, just $5K.

Billionaire Dark Money

Something else I’m worried about is the unknown effect of the unreported dark money the billionaires are putting into the election. Musk is putting hundreds of millions in all by himself.

Think about AI analyzing ALL the data, microtargeting individuals, getting specific, personal messaging directly to them through channels we don’t know about. Cambridge Analytica and Facebook happened generations ago and we got Brexit and Trump from that. Since then they own Twitter and CBS and WAPO – and everything else – and have gathered all the personal information that exists, and have AI to analyze it, and the means to reach individuals under the radar.

Headlines Say “GOP,” Not “Republican”

Also to what extent do voters who don’t like Trump even make the connection to Republicans? How many even know that Republican candidates support Trump? Do they even know that headlines that say “GOP” are referring to “Republicans?”

Little Numbers Can Add Up

I’m talking about lots and lots of small percentages adding up. 2% who don’t know GOP means Republicans, 3% who only hear they’ll get checks, 3% of Dems who hear Talarico is really a corporate CEO andis in the Epstein files…

This is the kind of stuff we hear about in the months and years after a surprise…

Organize And Be Ready

So we have to organize and organize and reach individuals and make sure they turn out and make sure it’s counted and be ready to show up if they mess with the results.

And remember, if there are typos here I do it for you.

Most Voters Too Young To Remember

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy.

I was thinking about how most voters out there have no memory of all kinds of things people who are older remember.

Tax Cuts Will Pay For Themselves

They don’t remember Reagan promising that tax cuts for the rich will cause them to invest in the economy and bring all kinds of great things that meant the tax cuts “will pay for themselves.” They didn’t watch the resulting shift from government taxing the rich and doing things for people, into “borrowing” FROM the rich, doing nothing for the people, and paying massive amounts of interest TO the rich. AND the resulting massive inequality. They don’t remember that there weren’t billionaires. Now it’s billionaires with all the money vs people in food lines, etc.

Deregulating Corporations Will Unleash Growth And Bring Prices Down

They don’t remember Reagan promising that deregulation of corporations will “unleash” growth, causing them to provide more great things so we would all be so much better off. Now they pollute at will and scam everyone. They don’t remember the promise that getting rid of antitrust regulations would force prices down and make everything better. They didn’t watch as merger after merger transformed the economy into a few giant monopolies that charge whatever they want and make you pay monthly to use products you already paid for.

Elections Were Competitive

They don’t remember competitive elections before campaign finance was undone. Regular people could run for office. Now a few oligarchs decide elections with “dark money” so no one knows who pays for the ads and bots and propaganda.

They don’t remember the Democratic Party standing up and fighting for working people.

Before The Propaganda

They don’t remember that TV news used to have rules about serving the public interest. They don’t remember that commercials were not allowed to lie. They don’t remember when the benefits of belonging to unions was allowed to be discussed on the air. They don’t remember that “markets are better at making decisions than government (i.e. “democracy”)” was laughed at. They don’t remember that there was a fight to allow non-whites to vote. They don’t remember that women couldn’t get bank accounts or credit cards without their husband’s permission. They don’t remember that government existed to make people’s lives better.

There are all kinds of things they know nothing about…

For a lot of them ALL they are old enough to remember is Trump coming down an escalator and saying immigrants are all criminals who rape and murder, etc…

They Meant It

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy.

In 2005 I wrote a post titled “They Mean It” that warned about Christian fascism and the intent to take over the US. This is how it ended:

These people mean it. America is an experiment. Democracy is an experiment. American democracy has not been around very long, and we have never been so perilously close to losing it. All the checks and balances have been removed by allies of these people. They mean it. The leader of the Senate is saying that Democrats hate “people of faith.” They mean it. Time magazine puts on their cover a person who calls for murdering us.

They mean it. A Supreme Court Justice declares that rulers should be chosen by God, not the people. They mean it. The Vice President is the keynote speaker at a conference where other speakers called for “a new McCarthyism” to bring “terror” to intellectuals, saying “let’s oppress them [liberals],” and that “the entire Harvard faculty” are “traitors.” They mean it. They mean it.

Watch your backs. I mean it.

Well, now we know. They meant it. People didn’t watch their backs – and they did it.

They meant it, and they did it. And here we are.

The Virginia Gerrymandering Ruling: Rules Are Rules

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The main site for Seeing the Forest is now Seeing the Forest at Substack. Please check it out.

This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy.

Virginia broke the rules. That’s all there is to it. Rules are rules.

Republican states can gerrymander to favor Republicans, Democratic states cannot gerrymander to favor Democrats. States can draw districts that exclude minority representation. States cannot draw districts that enable minority representation. Rules are rules.

It’s like “Stand Your Ground” gun laws. White people can stand their ground and shoot black people. Black people better not get near a gun. Rules are rules.

It’s like when I was a kid. All my neighbors were Black. I had to go to what was called the “white” school. It was a shiny new school some distance away. All my neighbors went to what was called the “black” school. It was built in the 1800s, run down, moldy, leaking roof, etc. Rules are rules. (Ann Arbor). Along came LBJ and Civil Rights and Democrats lost the South forever.

The South has risen again.

PS Also, women couldn’t get bank accounts, loans, managerial positions, and got paid 59 cents for each dollar men got paid for the same job, etc so expect that soon, too.

Rules are rules. 

Crypto Crash – The Serious Money Is Betting Trump Will Fail

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy

The crypto crash means the “serious money people” are betting that Trump will fail.

When crypto started to become big money serious investors got involved. Serious investors do real analysis and usually know what they’re involved in. Sure, there are the dupes out there who think crypto has real “value.” But the real money in crypto comes from real investors putting millions into it and doing some degree of actual analysis of the risks.

Crypto’s only real use is crime. Its “use case” is ransomware, organized crime, bribery, fraud. With Trump there is the “rug-pull” fraud use case where you “issue” crypto coins, people place bets, and the issuer pulls the rug and cashes out. (Note – When you buy crypto you are giving crypto owners liquidity – backing the ability of criminals to cash out after their ransomware/bribery/whatever score.)

“Investing” in crypto is really just a bet on criming going up.

Crypto’s price went up and up because the real money made bets that Trump is going to be able to keep the crime racket going, even increasing it. They also believed the US government would step in and back it, buying up billions and maintaining its liquidity. A bet on crypto was a bet on Trump’s success at imposing a mafia state on the world.

So by pulling out and crashing the price, the “prediction market” of crypto – the big players – are betting that Trumpism isn’t going to succeed.

There Is No Line

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy

If you think there is a line Trump will cross and lose his supporters, please Google “Jim Jones” or “drinking the Kool-Aid”.

It’s a cult. There is no line.

This is a photo of Republicans in Congress reaching their crossed “line”:

This Is America Now

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy

This is what the world sees. Read it.

ICE ‘throw flash-bang at family car’ as 6 kids hospitalized including a 6-month-old baby,

She further explained: “ICE agents began tear-gassing a residential neighborhood after shooting a man nearby. As the gas spread, a family got into their vehicle to escape the tear gas. In the video, a man is seen standing in front of a car with airbags deployed on all sides, explaining that he told the agents he was trying to leave his house, with his family because of the tear gas. It comes after an out-of-control ICE agent yelled a disgusting 3-word slur before shooting a woman 5 times.

“Despite this, an agent threw multiple flash-bang grenades at the vehicle anyway… while children were inside.

“Inside the van was a 6-month-old infant who stopped breathing after the attack. EMTs were called and taking the baby in an ambulance.

Once this stuff gets started it only gets worse.

Chemtrails

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Atrios makes a great point about right-wingers. You can’t appease them because they’re nuts. They’ll always want more.

Florida passed a law banning airplanes from spreading chemtrails (plus 7 other Republican states – so far). But people look up and still see the vapor trails from planes!!!

Lesson to learn: When they get done removing all the “illegals” (crossing the border is a misdemeanor) They will STILL see people who “don’t look like us” and that huge ICE apparatus they’re building will go to work on the rest of the population, until only the “pure” remain.

Chemtrails

The dangers of indulging the fantasies of the crazies.Since the state law went into effect, the Floridians who backed it have grown increasingly angry by seeing the skies just as marked by white trails as they were prior to the state law.

Here’s a smattering of irate posts on X in the two months since the state law went into effect:

— “Yes, the spraying has taken place every single day since the Ban was put in place!”

— “The invasion continues. Florida skies are under constant attack.”

— “DeSantis, why do you lie? Why do you say that you signed a Florida Bill getting rid of these hideous chemtrails, and it is all a fat big LIE?”

— “Welcome to Florida, the chemtrails state. Now we are being sprayed from 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., so by 10 a.m. the skies are cleared but you are breathing heavy metals. Thank you DeSantis.”

— “See how the chemicals are spreading out. Trees are dying, crops are barely growing. Why is our government doing this to us?”

By humoring Florida’s free-dumb coalition on chemtrails, state lawmakers have unleashed a tornado of disappointment upon themselves.While not precisely the same, there is a lesson here about trying to give anti-immigration zealots something you can’t give them. They don’t want cuts to illegal immigration or even legal immigration.

They want you to send them all back again, and if you can’t provide that, they won’t be happy. They will vote for the people who they think might.

Stop negotiating with the imaginary Reasonable Republican in your head, imagining that surely this compromise will appeal to them, because it’s very sensible. Reasonable Republicans don’t exist, and they haven’t agreed to your compromise.

Trump Isn’t The Collapse, Trump Is A Consequence Of The Collapse

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy.

People say America and its democracy are being collapsed by Trump. I have come to believe that what we have been calling “late-stage capitalism” was a system that had already collapsed.

Trump isn’t the collapse, Trump is the consequence of the collapse.

The Rule of Law had departed some time ago. The Constitutional system was nonfunctional. The economic system was rigged. The political system benefited only the wealthy and their corporations. That was collapse.

Accountability had long ago disappeared. (A pardon for Nixon? What?) Executives at corporations are never prosecuted. Instead the company itself would be fined – as if companies are sentient entities that can make decisions and do things. White-collar criminals were rarely prosecuted. This is how Trump was able to even be on the scene in the first place to run for office, instead of imprisoned for sex crimes, money laundering, fraud, etc.

The collapse was how Reagan was able to get away with the deal with Iran, and the later Iran/Contra deal.

The collapse was how the Supreme Court was able to make Bush president.

The collapse was how the Iraq War happened.

The collapse was how the climate crisis came about in the first place, how the companies were allowed to continue to put carbon into the air after scientists warned us of the harm it was causing, and how the executives at the companies that caused it got rich instead of being prosecuted.

The collapse was how tax cuts for the rich & corporations, with budget cuts for things government does to make people’s lives better happened.

The collapse was how no bankers were prosecuted for fraud after the financial collapse, and Wall Street but not the public was bailed out.

Rule of Law and accountability had long since disappeared from the United States. That was the collapse.

This wasn’t “late stage capitalism,” it was collapse.

People called these things “late stage capitalism.” This wasn’t late stage capitalism at all. We were already living with the collapse of the Constitutional system, the collapse of Rule of Law, the collapse of accountability. It was corruption taking over. It had been happening for decades.

Trump is just a consequence of that collapse.

In 2017’s Democracy and Corruption I wrote about “democracy off the rails” and democracy “corroded,” not realizing Trump was only possible was because the collapse had already happened.

Trump didn’t just come out of nowhere. The road to Trump goes back a long way. Trump comes out of a steady and intentional undermining of rule of law, norms, equality, civility and democracy.

They say these things happen slowly, then all at once. The collapse was happening for decades, then all at once with Trump.

How Dem Betrayal Brought Us Trump

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Of all people, David Brooks, in a confession, does a good job or explaining Trumpism in Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now? Read it all, but this about moving manufacturing out of the country,

We embraced a free trade policy that moved industrial jobs to low-cost countries overseas so that we could focus our energies on knowledge economy enterprises run by people with advanced degrees. The financial and consulting sector mushroomed while manufacturing employment shriveled.

In a word, “NAFTA,” which is the shorthand codeword for “markets over democracy” neoliberal policies that drove everything upward to the wealthy. Jobs went away, social services dried up and people were left on their own, infrastructure crumbled, entire regions were devastated.

I wrote this in 2010, and I think it describes why we have Trumpism:

As you drive from town to town in Michigan and Ohio you see one after another a ring of the “big box” stores and national chain stores around each city. You also see the “brownfields” of rusted-out, closed factories, empty, falling-down buildings. Then you go to the downtown and you see boarded up houses, empty storefronts, deteriorating and deteriorated communities, idle people standing on corners. As you drive into these towns you can just see what is happening in a nutshell.

You used to hear about how Wal-Mart was predatory, how it would show up in an area and after a while the downtowns would dry up, local business-owners would go broke, local business employees would be laid off, and the local people would have to work for low wages at Wal-Mart, while the region’s spending money would go off to the wealthy few who run these things.

Well a juicy story of devastation like that one gets around, and there are those who hear it and say, “Hey, that’s a great idea, I wanna get me some of that.” So the Wal-Mart business model has taken off and now there are any number of these vultures, ringing the cities and towns around the country, so often private-equity owned. They are draining away the lifeblood of the downtowns, fighting off the unions to keep wages down, even demanding tax breaks to move in and “create jobs.” You see all the same stores circling every town now, running all of the local and regional businesses unto the ground.

Here are some pictures from the inner Lorain area but you see it all around: (click for large)
P1000784P1000802 P1000791P1000795P1000789P1000787

Democracy Was Lost Decades Ago

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1) Trump got 2 million fewer votes than 2020. This election turned on the 12 million who voted for Biden in 2020 but not Harris. I guess there’s historical value in finding out why they didn’t vote. Gaza was clearly one factor in this. I’m not saying it was all Gaza but Michigan would have gone to Harris except for Gaza. This is very clear when you look at Michigan’s vote count, Fewer than 100,000 votes would have given Michigan to Harris. But this doesn’t account for the 12 million nationwide.

2) As I wrote, this was inevitable Dems have been fighting a holding action for decades, and the dam broke. I wrote about how this loss is the culmination of the long-term, strategic, billionaire/corporate-funded “Conservative Movement” plan that has played out since the 70s. The Master Plan podcast does an excellent job of showing how this played out. If you want to know what has happened, please listen to this podcast. You can’t fight that with short-term efforts at election time. The country was lost long before this election.

3) I think if there is a root of this loss during the Biden admin it was that big Build Back Better bill was split in half, with the social spending split from the infrastructure part. The Chamber of Commerce wanted the infrastructure part. Biden promised not to allow that part to pass without the other part. They passed the first part. Manchin/Sinema worked with the right to kill the social spending. Progressives refused to vote for one but not the other, then corporate Dems used that as a cudgel to defeat progressives.

That social spending was what would have made people FEEL that the economy was working for them. That’s why the Chamber got it knocked out of the bill.

4) But really it is #2, which many of us “dirty hippies” have been warning about since the early 2000s at least, trying to get ANYONE to set up a counter-effort. Democracy Alliance was an attempt…

5) I do not see a way to overcome this. The world has entered a new era of oligarchal control. Democracy was defeated some time ago. Just look at all the studies showing that literally nothing has been passed in the US without the support of the wealthy, regardless of population support.

6) If it is as bad as we think the “blue” states will have to decide their own way forward apart from the rest of the country. California and others should become countries and try to fight off what is happening.

The Debate And The Election

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese (Chronicling the collapse of democracy)

The way I look at the election and in particular this debate is, “how the fuck is Trump even or ahead in the polls, and how does the voting public see things?” Not, “how do I see things?” How in the world does the voting public see their lives under Dems and Biden as worse than Trump?

So you look at the information environment that regular people are in. And you try to see what they see.

I know what the public saw in the first 15 minutes of the debate – which is all that matters. Impressions are set and no one cares after that.

I am of the belief that you have to vote for Biden anyway because of the existential threat of Trump or at this point any Republican. (I wavered because of Gaza but am still there.) And I was shaken by what I saw, wondering even if Biden can even stay alive until November, never mind another 4 years. And the brain was not functioning. I see no future in a Biden vote. No hope for more of what we saw that last four years, only a Harris ascension quite soon. But I still will vote Biden – only because of Trump.

Will the debate change things? The right-wing-dominated information environment regular people live in already had Biden as old and demented, so all that happened is that was confirmed. For people outside of that information environment, Trump is clearly understood as extremely dangerous, and that was confirmed if you could stomach even watching him which I could not and did not except for a bit.

Anyway what matters now is are the polls going to change? I think maybe not. I think enough people already had it in their mind that Biden is too old but Trump is too dangerous.

If we can change the information environment America could come back. At this point that means overcoming Murdoch, Sinclair, private equity, billionaires etc. Musk and his cohorts did not buy Twitter to make a profit.