Cheeto and his Nazi allies know that WE the People will carry the day So one of the prominent overarching Nazi strategies is to weaken the middle class
What does that look like? Primarily it’s the inflation game If you make it hard for the average American to make a living, the pressure becomes overwhelming and damaging Instead of 1 job, one needs to take on 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet No time for vacations, no time for time off, just bruising through with no end in sight This leads to an electorate that can’t pay attention to what’s happening politically and is so stressed due to inflation that voting becomes secondary or unimportant at all
This is why Cheeto is pushing all the country’s wealth away from the middle class and to the top 10% of the electorate which will reward him with support in political campaigns And this is why Cheeto wants to emphatically lower interest rates because this will cause inflation to go even higher
Inflation is the name of the game for Cheeto because it will create a politically disabled middle class and create a wealthy dominant oligarchic ruling class
I have been thinking about one particular question asked in this article, that is, "What is your red line?" My red line was crossed when tRump was elected the first time. That election destroyed my faith in the idea that people thoroughly reflect and vote on true principle and conviction, learning that people are shallow and complacent, and that my idea of America was completely incorrect.
The shallowness and complacency, I believe, arose from years and years of being fed the "trickle down effect" and this "Captitalistic Society" in general, that seems rooted in more is better, and money, power, and having it all, at any cost, it is devoid of morals, principles, truth, and real justice.
In forming a new version of democracy, it would include, for me, a hard and, fast line in the sand when it comes to "White Christian Nationalism," it would include not allowing any talk that debases, devalues, and otherwise tries to make one less than, based on culture, breed, creed, color, language, sex, or gender. A "new democracy" must clearly be rooted in true justice for all, and it must be secular. Religion has no place in the creation and foundation of a new democracy.
We must fully embrace the idea that everyone is equal, differences are good, and this provides for robust discussion and deliberation of policies that govern society. We must all agree to let scientific good data, truth, and civil discourse lead and determine policies that benefit all.
I suppose I would be called a socialist because the policies that Bernie, AOC, and Mamdani espouse are policies that benefit all. Water should not be monetized, environments should not be destroyed in the name of $$ and greed. I see having clean drinking water, a healthy environment, fair pay, free and good health care for all, real reproductive healthcare that is not influenced by politics and culture wars but rooted in science, free and good education, and housing for all, are in my mind, human rights.
The same playing field for all, a societal contract that one must subscribe to wholly for the betterment of all, one created based on science, data, a benefit to all, and it came from real civil discourse and debate.
I am over capitalism, greed, culture wars, racism, and the hate espewed incessantly aimed a dividing a people who really have much more in common than not. I am tired of this regime trying to make everyone afraid, and fearful differences, and everything, and everyone. I want my 23-year-old son to have more than this disgust that is swallowing up this nation if we fail to act by utilizing our power as the people, who this country belongs to. Take breaks to power up again but, this is it, we had better get in this game now before it is too late.
I agree in so many ways. I think things went sour for me when I saw Trump gaining in the '16 primaries. But since then, the more I write, the more I learn, the more I realize that we set ourselves out to fail from the very beginning...
In the Declaration of Independence we declared that "all men are created equal" with "unalienable rights" that include "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" Then we immediately proceeded to write a Constitution that enshrined slavery.
Some hundred years after that, we fought a Civil War, killed one another, essentially over what "freedom" means. We declared Slavery dead, and then proceeded to allow Jim Crow to be a thing for almost another 100 years...
We wrote in the 1st Amendment, as the very first clause, that the government shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, and yet we have tolerated people trying to push for just that since the day the Constitution was signed...
The point that I'm making is this: from the very beginning we set out to do these great things, in concept, but we made no effort to truly guard against those who would do whatever they could, even if it cost their own lives—or everybody else's—to ensure that plan failed.
And I think part of the problem is that we set out with outcomes/rights in mind, like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or even with outcomes, like the idea of equality, but we never took the time to decide what core values would guide us to bring about any of those things. And in doing so, we left a vacuum that would be filled by theocrats and proceduralists. And to this day we're paying for it. On one side, you have those who would turn America into a Christo-Fascist ethnostate. On the other, you have people who seem to have turned process and procedure into their own deity, who seem perfectly content with watching corporations shackle all of us into some new form of slavery so long as it is done so by another name and by "legal" means rubberstamped by the Supreme Court.
It's no secret that I have picked 5 core values that I believe should govern everything we do: fairness, truth, merit, responsibility and simplicity, and I've written extensively (though most people have no idea about it since it was one of the very first things I published before I had any audience) about how anchoring the social contract onto these values would lead to all the things we originally set out to do, including much of what you described, all of which I agree with.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about socialism/capitalism too. Honestly, I think that if we anchor society to these values, our economic system sorts itself out on its own such that whatever we call it is irrelevant. Even Capitalism would start bending back towards what it was during the New Deal and go even further towards something that some might consider socialism (I'm working on a long piece that scaffolds a taxation system that could sit directly atop the Capitalism we have today that would drastically change the impacts of Capitalism into something much akin to the core of what Socialists would aim for, despite the system itself remaining fully capitalist — in essence, the taxation system is self-adjusting, and allows for someone to pursue all the greed/ambition they want, because the more they extract from society, the more they owe back to society, such that a balance is inevitable while still allowing for fierce market competition).
But yea, if you think about it, ideas like "the same playing field for all" and "not allowing any talk that debases, devalues, and otherwise tries to make one less than, based on breed, creed, color, language, sex, or gender" are all things that would happen naturally downstream from a combination of the values I listed earlier, in this case specifically, Fairness and Responsibility. Letting Science prevail for social policy would naturally happen downstream from Truth, etc. The ultimate guardrail would come from Merit, whereby unless your actions and your speech clearly align with all 5 core values, you are not qualified to be elected or to serve in any public office of trust, from local law enforcement or mayor, all the way to Congressperson, Supreme Court Justice or President of the United States.
Me too. I know that TACO would inflict unrestrained rage on the American people for loosing the 2020 election. This is not an Administration, it is a Seditious Crime Syndicate taking bribes and running a protection racket .
Well said. And appreciate the clarification right up front that this wasn't about first principles. But the operating system.
"It. Is. Dead. Liberal democracy has died.
Not the first principles that make self-government worth having, but the operating system that claimed to protect them: a process-first framework that mistook manners for mission and procedure for principle. It taught citizens to equate legality with legitimacy while teaching power how to use law as a weapon. The result is not a mystery—it’s the world we’re in: polite forms fronting anti-democratic ends, institutions that flinch at signals from above, and a politics that praises “the right way” even when the project is to end self-government."
Also catastrophic, but a tell of the coming coup: Trump v. Anderson, March 4, 2024, unanimously reversing the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling that had disqualified Trump from the state's presidential ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
That very decision was what led me to start this Substack. My very first piece of writing here was a long essay on the issue with the ruling and how Dems should have handled it to ensure that Trump was disqualified via §3 of the 14th Amendment from being confirmed by Congress.
I take it "defensive democracy" would be something like they have in Germany? The government can be criticized but certain things like swastikas are not allowed? Those poor folks had to learn it the hard way...but they don't want to ever forget the lesson. Meanwhile, we have people in the US who don't believe there's such a thing as hate speech...or even hate crimes!
I remember when I was a young twirp, there were a few prototype Rush Limbaughs. One of them was a guy named Joe Pyne, who lived in California. He used to say, "Don't be so broad-minded that you're flat-headed." I think this is what happened to Democrats.
Exactly. It's democracy with very basic “minimum requirements,” which in short is to say that before a thing can be considered speech it must not be designed to dismantle democracy/promote single group supremacy/etc. Pass that low bar, you're good to go and protected. Don't pass that bar, it's not speech and hence not protected and you're not entitled to any constitutional protections to be able to disseminate it.
It actually has it roots in 1937 Germany as "militant democracy." Defensive Democracy is a more recent term which reflects militant democracy with some changes.
Nothing too complex so it can't be twisted/exploited:
Trying to convert us into a theocracy? Disqualified.
Trying to subdue all ethnicities under a single one (pushing for an ethnostate)? Disqualified.
Pushing for laws that controls people's actions that are not harmful to others (such as seeking to interfere with bodily autonomy)? Disqualified.
And even these are outcomes downstream from defining fundamental principles that all laws must seek to advance (the ones listed in the article which I'll expand on next - though I've covered them broadly n the USOS series): truth, fairness, merit, responsibility and simplicity.
Great ideas to think about, I’m glad to revamp our democracy to prevent this fucked up situation from ever happening again!! This is part of a winning strategy and gives us all a chance to chop wood, carry water to a better democracy together!👍🥰❤️
It is amazing that you hit the nail on the head EVERY time! I have ben saying the same thing. I watched these arrogant imbeciles line up to vote early, and you knew they were MAGA. So I had a BAD premonition that ffotus (first felon of the united states) was going to win. And he has subsequently shown his true bastardly colors.
Although I agree with a large majority of the main article and the focus on fairness, neutrality and simplicity. However I fell the root is much deeper than political and social surface fixes.
The quickest way to convert my idea is not meant to be insulting but many take it that way.
Humans are still monkeys trying to collect the most bananas even after we have more bananas than we could consume in a life time.
Although your premise is good the human nature requires a bit of redirect.
Instead of adulation for the money who has the most bananas we need to shift of value paradigm from acquisition to achievement but not self achievement. The achievement that would generate the most adulation from society would require that achievement to benefit the most members of a given society bonus points if those who benefited the most did not include the one who made achievement.
As long as aquistion is for self gratification the human species will wind up in the same predicament regardless of the governing style.
We need to grow beyond our own selfishness and greed or we as a species will destroy ourselves and possibly every other li ing thing on the planet. We'll unless planet decides to take out the human species first with what ever is lunching in the permafrost.
Although I agree with a large majority of the main article and the focus on fairness, neutrality and simplicity. However I fell the root is much deeper than political and social surface fixes.
The quickest way to convert my idea is not meant to be insulting but many take it that way.
Humans are still monkeys trying to collect the most bananas even after we have more bananas than we could consume in a life time.
Although your premise is good the human nature requires a bit of redirect.
Instead of adulation for the money who has the most bananas we need to shift of value paradigm from acquisition to achievement but not self achievement. The achievement that would generate the most adulation from society would require that achievement to benefit the most members of a given society bonus points if those who benefited the most did not include the one who made achievement.
As long as aquistion is for self gratification the human species will wind up in the same predicament regardless of the governing style.
We need to grow beyond our own selfishness and greed or we as a species will destroy ourselves and possibly every other li ing thing on the planet. We'll unless planet decides to take out the human species first with what ever is lunching in the permafrost.
Stay tuned, I've been working on something for a few months that addresses this, which I mentioned to Annette Frank's comment: a taxation system that does precisely what you describe here:
"Instead of adulation for the money who has the most bananas we need to shift of value paradigm from acquisition to achievement but not self achievement. The achievement that would generate the most adulation from society would require that achievement to benefit the most members of a given society bonus points if those who benefited the most did not include the one who made achievement."
The system is fully designed and to the degree that my non-professional modelling skills have enabled me to test, the system does exactly this, but with a twist which I honestly prefer: rather than trying to change the monkey's brain and convince it that it should not be selfish, it says: "ok, be selfish all you want, but by however much you extract assets from society (the more wealth you build), the more you will owe back to society."
All the work I'm doing right now is preemptively addressing the myriad of ways I know "economists" who have been taught the Friedman "shareholder economy" mentality for the last 80 years will try to challenge my plan.
Cheeto And Destruction Of The Middle Class
Cheeto and his Nazi allies know that WE the People will carry the day So one of the prominent overarching Nazi strategies is to weaken the middle class
What does that look like? Primarily it’s the inflation game If you make it hard for the average American to make a living, the pressure becomes overwhelming and damaging Instead of 1 job, one needs to take on 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet No time for vacations, no time for time off, just bruising through with no end in sight This leads to an electorate that can’t pay attention to what’s happening politically and is so stressed due to inflation that voting becomes secondary or unimportant at all
This is why Cheeto is pushing all the country’s wealth away from the middle class and to the top 10% of the electorate which will reward him with support in political campaigns And this is why Cheeto wants to emphatically lower interest rates because this will cause inflation to go even higher
Inflation is the name of the game for Cheeto because it will create a politically disabled middle class and create a wealthy dominant oligarchic ruling class
II agree with this assessment
I have been thinking about one particular question asked in this article, that is, "What is your red line?" My red line was crossed when tRump was elected the first time. That election destroyed my faith in the idea that people thoroughly reflect and vote on true principle and conviction, learning that people are shallow and complacent, and that my idea of America was completely incorrect.
The shallowness and complacency, I believe, arose from years and years of being fed the "trickle down effect" and this "Captitalistic Society" in general, that seems rooted in more is better, and money, power, and having it all, at any cost, it is devoid of morals, principles, truth, and real justice.
In forming a new version of democracy, it would include, for me, a hard and, fast line in the sand when it comes to "White Christian Nationalism," it would include not allowing any talk that debases, devalues, and otherwise tries to make one less than, based on culture, breed, creed, color, language, sex, or gender. A "new democracy" must clearly be rooted in true justice for all, and it must be secular. Religion has no place in the creation and foundation of a new democracy.
We must fully embrace the idea that everyone is equal, differences are good, and this provides for robust discussion and deliberation of policies that govern society. We must all agree to let scientific good data, truth, and civil discourse lead and determine policies that benefit all.
I suppose I would be called a socialist because the policies that Bernie, AOC, and Mamdani espouse are policies that benefit all. Water should not be monetized, environments should not be destroyed in the name of $$ and greed. I see having clean drinking water, a healthy environment, fair pay, free and good health care for all, real reproductive healthcare that is not influenced by politics and culture wars but rooted in science, free and good education, and housing for all, are in my mind, human rights.
The same playing field for all, a societal contract that one must subscribe to wholly for the betterment of all, one created based on science, data, a benefit to all, and it came from real civil discourse and debate.
I am over capitalism, greed, culture wars, racism, and the hate espewed incessantly aimed a dividing a people who really have much more in common than not. I am tired of this regime trying to make everyone afraid, and fearful differences, and everything, and everyone. I want my 23-year-old son to have more than this disgust that is swallowing up this nation if we fail to act by utilizing our power as the people, who this country belongs to. Take breaks to power up again but, this is it, we had better get in this game now before it is too late.
I agree in so many ways. I think things went sour for me when I saw Trump gaining in the '16 primaries. But since then, the more I write, the more I learn, the more I realize that we set ourselves out to fail from the very beginning...
In the Declaration of Independence we declared that "all men are created equal" with "unalienable rights" that include "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" Then we immediately proceeded to write a Constitution that enshrined slavery.
Some hundred years after that, we fought a Civil War, killed one another, essentially over what "freedom" means. We declared Slavery dead, and then proceeded to allow Jim Crow to be a thing for almost another 100 years...
We wrote in the 1st Amendment, as the very first clause, that the government shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, and yet we have tolerated people trying to push for just that since the day the Constitution was signed...
The point that I'm making is this: from the very beginning we set out to do these great things, in concept, but we made no effort to truly guard against those who would do whatever they could, even if it cost their own lives—or everybody else's—to ensure that plan failed.
And I think part of the problem is that we set out with outcomes/rights in mind, like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or even with outcomes, like the idea of equality, but we never took the time to decide what core values would guide us to bring about any of those things. And in doing so, we left a vacuum that would be filled by theocrats and proceduralists. And to this day we're paying for it. On one side, you have those who would turn America into a Christo-Fascist ethnostate. On the other, you have people who seem to have turned process and procedure into their own deity, who seem perfectly content with watching corporations shackle all of us into some new form of slavery so long as it is done so by another name and by "legal" means rubberstamped by the Supreme Court.
It's no secret that I have picked 5 core values that I believe should govern everything we do: fairness, truth, merit, responsibility and simplicity, and I've written extensively (though most people have no idea about it since it was one of the very first things I published before I had any audience) about how anchoring the social contract onto these values would lead to all the things we originally set out to do, including much of what you described, all of which I agree with.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about socialism/capitalism too. Honestly, I think that if we anchor society to these values, our economic system sorts itself out on its own such that whatever we call it is irrelevant. Even Capitalism would start bending back towards what it was during the New Deal and go even further towards something that some might consider socialism (I'm working on a long piece that scaffolds a taxation system that could sit directly atop the Capitalism we have today that would drastically change the impacts of Capitalism into something much akin to the core of what Socialists would aim for, despite the system itself remaining fully capitalist — in essence, the taxation system is self-adjusting, and allows for someone to pursue all the greed/ambition they want, because the more they extract from society, the more they owe back to society, such that a balance is inevitable while still allowing for fierce market competition).
But yea, if you think about it, ideas like "the same playing field for all" and "not allowing any talk that debases, devalues, and otherwise tries to make one less than, based on breed, creed, color, language, sex, or gender" are all things that would happen naturally downstream from a combination of the values I listed earlier, in this case specifically, Fairness and Responsibility. Letting Science prevail for social policy would naturally happen downstream from Truth, etc. The ultimate guardrail would come from Merit, whereby unless your actions and your speech clearly align with all 5 core values, you are not qualified to be elected or to serve in any public office of trust, from local law enforcement or mayor, all the way to Congressperson, Supreme Court Justice or President of the United States.
Me too. I know that TACO would inflict unrestrained rage on the American people for loosing the 2020 election. This is not an Administration, it is a Seditious Crime Syndicate taking bribes and running a protection racket .
Well said. And appreciate the clarification right up front that this wasn't about first principles. But the operating system.
"It. Is. Dead. Liberal democracy has died.
Not the first principles that make self-government worth having, but the operating system that claimed to protect them: a process-first framework that mistook manners for mission and procedure for principle. It taught citizens to equate legality with legitimacy while teaching power how to use law as a weapon. The result is not a mystery—it’s the world we’re in: polite forms fronting anti-democratic ends, institutions that flinch at signals from above, and a politics that praises “the right way” even when the project is to end self-government."
Also catastrophic, but a tell of the coming coup: Trump v. Anderson, March 4, 2024, unanimously reversing the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling that had disqualified Trump from the state's presidential ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
💯
That very decision was what led me to start this Substack. My very first piece of writing here was a long essay on the issue with the ruling and how Dems should have handled it to ensure that Trump was disqualified via §3 of the 14th Amendment from being confirmed by Congress.
I take it "defensive democracy" would be something like they have in Germany? The government can be criticized but certain things like swastikas are not allowed? Those poor folks had to learn it the hard way...but they don't want to ever forget the lesson. Meanwhile, we have people in the US who don't believe there's such a thing as hate speech...or even hate crimes!
I remember when I was a young twirp, there were a few prototype Rush Limbaughs. One of them was a guy named Joe Pyne, who lived in California. He used to say, "Don't be so broad-minded that you're flat-headed." I think this is what happened to Democrats.
Exactly. It's democracy with very basic “minimum requirements,” which in short is to say that before a thing can be considered speech it must not be designed to dismantle democracy/promote single group supremacy/etc. Pass that low bar, you're good to go and protected. Don't pass that bar, it's not speech and hence not protected and you're not entitled to any constitutional protections to be able to disseminate it.
It actually has it roots in 1937 Germany as "militant democracy." Defensive Democracy is a more recent term which reflects militant democracy with some changes.
Inneresting approach, crafting definitions to act as disqualifications. Maybe we should try that. :)
Nothing too complex so it can't be twisted/exploited:
Trying to convert us into a theocracy? Disqualified.
Trying to subdue all ethnicities under a single one (pushing for an ethnostate)? Disqualified.
Pushing for laws that controls people's actions that are not harmful to others (such as seeking to interfere with bodily autonomy)? Disqualified.
And even these are outcomes downstream from defining fundamental principles that all laws must seek to advance (the ones listed in the article which I'll expand on next - though I've covered them broadly n the USOS series): truth, fairness, merit, responsibility and simplicity.
Agreed. And I don't know how anybody can look at a picture of Auschwitz & think that wasn't a hate crime.
Great ideas to think about, I’m glad to revamp our democracy to prevent this fucked up situation from ever happening again!! This is part of a winning strategy and gives us all a chance to chop wood, carry water to a better democracy together!👍🥰❤️
We have to start from the very low bottom
It is amazing that you hit the nail on the head EVERY time! I have ben saying the same thing. I watched these arrogant imbeciles line up to vote early, and you knew they were MAGA. So I had a BAD premonition that ffotus (first felon of the united states) was going to win. And he has subsequently shown his true bastardly colors.
Although I agree with a large majority of the main article and the focus on fairness, neutrality and simplicity. However I fell the root is much deeper than political and social surface fixes.
The quickest way to convert my idea is not meant to be insulting but many take it that way.
Humans are still monkeys trying to collect the most bananas even after we have more bananas than we could consume in a life time.
Although your premise is good the human nature requires a bit of redirect.
Instead of adulation for the money who has the most bananas we need to shift of value paradigm from acquisition to achievement but not self achievement. The achievement that would generate the most adulation from society would require that achievement to benefit the most members of a given society bonus points if those who benefited the most did not include the one who made achievement.
As long as aquistion is for self gratification the human species will wind up in the same predicament regardless of the governing style.
We need to grow beyond our own selfishness and greed or we as a species will destroy ourselves and possibly every other li ing thing on the planet. We'll unless planet decides to take out the human species first with what ever is lunching in the permafrost.
Although I agree with a large majority of the main article and the focus on fairness, neutrality and simplicity. However I fell the root is much deeper than political and social surface fixes.
The quickest way to convert my idea is not meant to be insulting but many take it that way.
Humans are still monkeys trying to collect the most bananas even after we have more bananas than we could consume in a life time.
Although your premise is good the human nature requires a bit of redirect.
Instead of adulation for the money who has the most bananas we need to shift of value paradigm from acquisition to achievement but not self achievement. The achievement that would generate the most adulation from society would require that achievement to benefit the most members of a given society bonus points if those who benefited the most did not include the one who made achievement.
As long as aquistion is for self gratification the human species will wind up in the same predicament regardless of the governing style.
We need to grow beyond our own selfishness and greed or we as a species will destroy ourselves and possibly every other li ing thing on the planet. We'll unless planet decides to take out the human species first with what ever is lunching in the permafrost.
Love this!
Stay tuned, I've been working on something for a few months that addresses this, which I mentioned to Annette Frank's comment: a taxation system that does precisely what you describe here:
"Instead of adulation for the money who has the most bananas we need to shift of value paradigm from acquisition to achievement but not self achievement. The achievement that would generate the most adulation from society would require that achievement to benefit the most members of a given society bonus points if those who benefited the most did not include the one who made achievement."
The system is fully designed and to the degree that my non-professional modelling skills have enabled me to test, the system does exactly this, but with a twist which I honestly prefer: rather than trying to change the monkey's brain and convince it that it should not be selfish, it says: "ok, be selfish all you want, but by however much you extract assets from society (the more wealth you build), the more you will owe back to society."
All the work I'm doing right now is preemptively addressing the myriad of ways I know "economists" who have been taught the Friedman "shareholder economy" mentality for the last 80 years will try to challenge my plan.